Dead Man's Return

by Derek Rutherford

  ‘That Greek. Headfirst, always. I told him to bring the man in. Not kill him.’

  ‘Landreth seemed to think the Greek may have been shooting at the fellow’s horse. But for most men that’s the same as being shot at.’

  Smith looked at Beecher. Then he turned and walked over to the sideboard where the whiskey decanter stood, almost empty, almost time for it to be refilled. Again. There was broken glass on the floor where Smith had hurled a whiskey glass earlier. Evelyn had swept up as much glass as she could see, but Smith had been mad and it hadn’t been the time for fastidious cleaning.

  ‘No,’ Smith said, pouring all the remaining whiskey into a glass. ‘Something is going on. I feel it in my bones.’

  ‘Who are we going to set Abraham on this time?’

  ‘Anyone who comes.’

  The morning was cool, a definite sense of fall in the air. Away from the tree line a low ground mist covered the grass, making the trail hard to see. The shadows created by the rising sun were very long and the sky was awash with gorgeous reds and oranges.

  ‘We’ll ride with you to the edge of the flatland,’ Leon said.

  ‘Sure.’ Jim smiled reassuringly.

  Rosalie had cleaned and bandaged the bullet wound again that morning. It hurt. Every time he breathed it hurt. Every step the horse took it hurt. But he figured the smile hid that hurt well.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Rosalie asked.

  ‘When I tried the alternative I ended up with a bullet in my shoulder.’

  ‘I can go instead,’ Leon said. ‘I was there on the train. I heard what Allan had to say. I know the story.’

  ‘No. It’s my place to do this. I was with Sam McRae. If we want to know the truth about what’s really going on we have to trust someone. Baker sounds as good as anyone. Come on. Let’s go.’

  Where the trees ended, where the land opened up into a great rolling plain and where the light wind rippled the low grass like waves on a lake, they paused again. There was cattle grazing out there on the flats, and a buzzard circled lazily above them. The air smelled clean and the breeze felt good on their faces.

  ‘You’ve better eyesight than me,’ Leon said. ‘Do you see him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘We’ll be right here.’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Jim said, nodding to the flatland where there was nowhere to hide, no place to run.

  Jim looked back at Rosalie. ‘I won’t be long.’ Then he heeled his horse and walked her forward into the open, to meet a Texas lawman.

  ‘You’re taking a risk,’ Will Baker said. ‘You’re a wanted man. I mean, you’re one of the wanted men. There’s more than a little money on your head.’

  Jim Jackson looked across at the Texas Ranger. Baker was sitting aside a fine grey. He had a rifle in a saddle scabbard, and he was wearing a six-gun.

  ‘How much?’ Jim asked.

  ‘Five hundred dollars.’

  Jim whistled. ‘Are you tempted?’

  ‘If I bring you in I don’t get a penny.’

  ‘Just glory,’ Jim said.

  ‘Uh-huh. Just glory.’

  Baker smiled. He looked to be in his forties, clean shaven with a tanned and wind-weathered face. The brim of his hat cast a half-shadow over his eyes, but what Jim could see of those eyes they were clear and bright.

  Jim looked across the clearing. There was no one else to be seen. No Rosalie, no Leon, and no other Rangers. His heart was pounding. In many ways this was scarier than standing up in a gunfight. At least Jim knew he could hold his own in such a thing. Here it was all about words, all about trying to make someone understand what had happened and why. It was about discovery, too. And maybe that was the scariest thing. What if he’d laid himself on the line this way and there was nothing to be learned. Who was to say Baker, this man that Roberta’s boyfriend vouched for, actually knew anything?

  Baker said, ‘But then I’ve brought in more than my fair share of train robbers and murderers already. I don’t need any more glory.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean I won’t take you in.’

  Jim wanted to say that Baker could try, that it was by no means a foregone conclusion. But he resisted. Will Baker held all the aces. Hell, he had all the cards. It was not a moment for being antagonistic.

  ‘I thought we were here under an agreement of truce?’

  ‘We are. But there’s always tomorrow.’

  Jim smiled. ‘I don’t deny I’m a train robber. But I did my time. And then some. Murderer? All I ask is that you listen to what I have to say before making your mind up on that one.’

  ‘According to the record pinned up at the depot you killed four men in a gulley just south of the prison camp from where you broke out a serving prisoner. A prison guard and a railroad guard are both missing – most everyone assumes you killed them both and buried the bodies. More recently we hear that a sheriff and three deputies were shot dead up in Leyton. That’s. . . I don’t know. I’ve already lost count. And that’s not including two train robbers you shot dead right here in Austin. It seems to me that you’re a one-man killing spree. But go on, I’m listening.’

  The sun felt hot on Jim’s neck. His throat was dry and dusty. Will Baker was wrong. Jim hadn’t killed all those men he had listed – but he’d killed enough of them, and now he found himself breathing heavily through his open mouth, and wondering if actually he was a cold-blooded killer. There had been others, too. Back in New Mexico. Surely a man wouldn’t leave so many people dead if he was a good man?

  ‘There’s talk of something else, too,’ Baker said. ‘Washington Smith, from. . . .’ He waved his hand in the general direction of the distant trees to his right. ‘From the lumber yard. Talk is he lost three men, two days ago. Shot dead.’

  Jim Jackson said nothing, but he held Baker’s stare.

  ‘You see,’ Baker said. ‘The way I’m thinking is that this has something to do with Washington Smith and that means those three men are most likely not a coincidence. And that in turns mean you may have killed more men than just about anyone I’ve ever come across.’

  There it was again. Baker wasn’t totally wrong. The numbers couldn’t lie. Surely a good person wouldn’t have needed to kill so many men.

  ‘I never killed anyone who wasn’t trying to kill me first,’ Jim said. ‘On that I swear.’

  ‘You must have a lot of enemies.’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’

  Baker nodded, as if the statement dovetailed into something he already knew.

  ‘They told me you knew Sam McRae,’ Jim said.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘This gun . . .’ Jim held his hand out down by his side, careful to keep his hand well clear from the holster. ‘This was McCrae’s gun. The men that killed him. I avenged his death.’

  ‘Parker’s Crossing, New Mexico,’ Will Baker said. ‘Sam was doing a little bounty hunting. I know what happened. More killings. . . But they speak highly of you there.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Not personally.’

  ‘He was hunting some bad men. But that wasn’t the only reason he was there. He came to find me. To apologise to me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Sam wrote it all down. We all write down what we’re doing. Sam kept that habit even after he’d left the Rangers. We’re trained to record things. Well, most things anyway. Right now, this meeting isn’t written down anywhere.’

  Jim Jackson paused for a moment, trying to figure if that was a good thing or not.

  ‘He was the one that arrested me.’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘You were there? I don’t – ‘

  ‘I was young. I was like. . . You know, a young boy just setting out on his first cattle drive. Come back in ten or twelve years’ time and you won’t recognize him.’

  ‘So you know why Sam came to apologise.’

  �
�I do now. It’s the only reason I’m here. The only reason I’m sitting and listening.’

  ‘We were set up,’ Jim said. ‘All of us.’

  ‘By a fellow called Jack Anderson in Leyton. The man you killed just over a week ago.’

  ‘You knew about him?’

  ‘I didn’t know the connection until yesterday when Andrew Beaumont came to see me. I hadn’t looked up Sam’s notes before. No one had. They were covered in dust and the ink was fading, but they were readable.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘Nothing you don’t already know. You were arrested for train robbery and murder. It was a straightforward arrest. Later on he added a note that you were found guilty and that you’d been sent to Huntsville. You were lucky not to hang. I think maybe the judge knew it was all wrong.’

  Baker twisted in his saddle and lifted his water skin. He drank thirstily. Jim Jackson took the opportunity to take some of his own water. It felt cool and clean. His shoulder was throbbing and he could feel sweat running down his back and sides.

  ‘But you know more than that,’ Jim said. ‘Now.’

  ‘Sam wrote that he was convinced you were innocent. That witnesses were adamant. But the jury found you guilty and there was nothing more—’

  ‘Someone should talk to those jurors. It never added up.’

  ‘Sam tended to agree. But it wasn’t his place. It never got done.’

  Baker had kept hold of his water skin. He took another drink.

  ‘Anyway, just before he left us, he added another note. The one about Jack Anderson. I don’t know how Sam found out about Anderson, but there it was. Sam had written, I think this is the man we should be looking at. I even wonder if that’s why he went solo – so he could go and make those investigations himself.’

  ‘John Allan – sorry, Jack Anderson. They’re one and the same. He admitted to me that he had killed the Texas Ranger on that train all those years ago.’

  ‘Just before you killed him?’

  ‘I was tied up. He was going to hang me in the morning. He was gloating.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘The letter Andrew Beaumont gave me. The one your friend Leon wrote.’

  ‘Then you know he did it for a reason. I mean, John Allan. You know John Allan killed that Texas Ranger for a reason.’

  ‘The Texas Ranger was named Riley King. Folks knew him as So-So King. They said he put the nickname out there himself. He let it be known that he was only so-so with a gun. Actually, they say, he was the best. And all those people who went up against him thinking that he was just so-so. Well they lived to regret it. But generally not for very long.’

  ‘Riley King,’ Jim said, picturing the man rising up in that carriage all those years ago, turning smiling, full of confidence that he could take on this entire band of train robbers singlehandedly. The moment that started everything.

  ‘Leon’s letter said that you and he figured Riley wasn’t shot at random and that we should be looking at Beecher and Smith for a reason.’

  ‘Did you look?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And did you find anything?’ Jim asked.

  Jim said to Leon and Rosalie, ‘Riley’s papers were even more dusty and faded than McRae’s had been. No one had really looked at them on account of his killing had seemed so random. Oh they’d checked, just in case there was a connection, but Riley wasn’t a writer, wasn’t fastidious, and most of the good stuff had been on scraps of paper that had just been put in a box.’

  ‘And?’ Rosalie said.

  ‘It turns out that Riley King was suspicious that something was going on with the leasing system.’

  ‘The prisoner leasing system? Where you both ended up?’ Rosalie said.

  They were riding slowly back through the woods, towards their camp.

  ‘Yes. But this was before we’d even been arrested. I don’t know what had triggered Riley King’s interest but he’d noticed that an awful lot of the men that were being sent to leasing camps were being sent to camps run by – or rather owned by – or supplying lumber to Beecher and Smith.’

  ‘Cheap lumber,’ Leon said.

  ‘So he started digging,’ Jim said. ‘He talked to Beecher and Smith. He talked to three commissioners who sat on the prison board – essentially the ones that made the decision as to who went where. They all denied it. But there was something there. That’s what he wrote: There’s something here that smells.’

  Leon shook his head in wonderment.

  ‘So they had John Allan kill him.’

  ‘Yep, looks that way. Maybe the commissioners pressurised Beecher and Smith, or maybe they did it off their own accord. Maybe all three commissioners were in on it, or maybe only two. Baker said he had no idea how Beecher and Smith knew that Riley King would be on that train. The other thing was that someone knew all about our gang and yet we hadn’t been arrested. It was like that somebody had figured we might be worth keeping out there. And sure enough it turned out we were. Baker says he’ll figure all this out eventually.’

  Leon said, ‘So John Allan killed King, we were arrested, and King’s investigation came to a grinding halt.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And all was fine until you were released, and you broke me free,’ Leon said.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And suddenly Beecher and Smith started to get nervous.’

  ‘I think we were meant to die in the system,’ Jim said. ‘Everyone else did. I think – I don’t know – but I think that’s why were treated the way we were. They were trying to kill us without it looking like murder.’

  ‘My God,’ Rosalie said.

  ‘Indeed. Money talks. . . . Maybe they paid the jurors? If they could do that, then it’s only a small step to paying a couple of leasing camp guards to slowly kill us.’

  ‘But we lived,’ Leon said.

  ‘And the only other person who knew the story, or at least part of it, was Allan. And suddenly they were worried that we might track him down—’

  ‘Which we did.’

  ‘And he might tell us what really happened.’

  ‘Which he did.’

  ‘Why didn’t they kill John Allan before?’ Rosalie said?

  ‘I don’t know. Baker doesn’t know. Maybe they figured that if Allan died suddenly it would look too suspicious.’

  Leon said, ‘That’s why they sent out men to kill you. They recognized you and—’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Jim said. ‘I doubt they would have recognized me at that distance. That’s even assuming they know me. I think they are just very scared all of a sudden.’

  ‘So,’ Rosalie said. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘It’s about to get very interesting indeed,’ Jim said.

  Chapter Twelve

  There were four Texas Rangers, including Will Baker. There was Jim Jackson, and Leon Winters. And there was Rosalie Robertson. Baker wasn’t happy about Jim, Leon, and Rosalie being in attendance, but after some debate he had acquiesced. Beecher and Smith were just business men, he said. He didn’t anticipate any trouble, and just maybe the fact that Jim and Leon were there might help. ‘Maybe it’ll put them off-balance. Maybe they’ll say something in haste that they’ll live to regret in leisure,’ he’d said.

  They rode slowly along the trail towards the lumber yard, riding alongside the railroad spur, and then cutting onto the hard-packed road.

  It was morning, not too hot even though it was a very still day.

  Jim looked across at Leon.

  ‘It’s hard to believe it all comes to this – this yard, these two people.’

  ‘And a couple or three politicians,’ Leon said.

  The gates of the lumber yard became visible in the distance.

  ‘These two will sing like birds,’ Jim said. He nodded at the back of Will Baker who was riding about twenty yards ahead of them. ‘According to Will, anyway. They’ll give the commissioners up.’

  ‘Just so long as th
ey don’t escape justice themselves,’ Rosalie said.

  ‘Won’t happen,’ Jim said. ‘No one likes thieves and liars. But men in power who use that power in evil ways. . . They’re the worst. That’s Will speaking, by the way. But I agree with him.’

  ‘Everything that happened,’ Leon said, looking at the distant lumber yard. ‘It could all have been avoided.’

  ‘We weren’t innocent,’ Jim said. ‘And anyway. . . .’ He smiled at Rosalie. ‘I probably wouldn’t change a thing.’

  Ahead of them Will raised a hand and everyone stopped.

  The Ranger turned.

  ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do.’

  Smith was drinking when Beecher came into the office. The tall bearded gunslinger, Abraham, was sitting at Smith’s table.

  ‘They’re here,’ Beecher said.

  Smith turned.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Seven of them. You can see them at the gate from the window in my office.’

  ‘Seven?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Armed?’ Smith said.

  Abraham looked over. ‘Of course they’ll be armed.’ One of his own guns was on the table in front of him. He picked it up and spun the cylinder. He smiled at Beecher.

  ‘Maybe we should talk to them first,’ Beecher said. ‘We don’t know what they want.’

  ‘Abraham here was just telling me that back up in Leyton our friend Jack Anderson had plenty of time to talk to Jim Jackson and Leon Winters.’ Smith held up the faded photos of the two train robbers. ‘And he’s confirmed it was Jackson and Winters who were up there. I’m betting Anderson did some digging of his own over the years. Found out who we were.’

  ‘Why would Anderson have told them anything?’ Beecher asked.

  ‘Men like to boast,’ Abraham said. ‘He had those fellows caged. Was going to hang them. I guess he might have wanted to let them know just how clever he was.’

  ‘And they escaped.’

  ‘I shot Anderson. Just like you two paid me to. If you’d have told me the full story I could have shot those other fellows, too. Then you wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘So they know everything?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Smith said. ‘But I guess we’ll find out when we talk to them.’