Trammel smiled as he left the office and walked upstairs to Judge Bishop’s chambers.
* * *
“How dare you, sir!” Judge James K. Bishop thundered at Trammel after he had delivered Adam Hagen’s message. “Do you have any idea who you’re speaking to? You are not speaking to a man right now, sir. You are speaking to a judge. One who has taken an oath to interpret the law. The very embodiment of justice in all of its forms. One who—”
“Whose name appears in a ledger listing numerous illegal activities.” Tired of getting yelled at, Trammel continued. “A ledger that shows how much he charges for an acquittal or a bail hearing or a guilty verdict, depending on who is paying the fee. A ledger that shows you ruling favorably for every wealthy rancher and landowner in this territory when they met your price and against them when they didn’t.”
Trammel didn’t know if any of what he was saying was true, but from the look on Bishop’s face, at least some of what he had just said made the judge worry, so he kept going. “A ledger that shows you’ve got a real cozy relationship with Charles Hagen. It would be a real shame if someone from the press got hold of the information in that ledger. Some could say it would end your career, maybe land you behind bars in your own jail with some of the men you stuck there.”
Bishop, a small round grayish man with a perpetual sneer, laughed. “If Madam Pinochet has not been able to pull me off this bench, sonny, I doubt a one-armed gambler from Blackstone will be able to do it. And yes, I know all about Adam Hagen’s injuries. I’m only sorry one of those pellets didn’t hit his heart.”
“It’s a mighty small target,” Trammel admitted. “And there is a big difference between Madam Pinochet and Hagen. He’s free. She’s not. And unless you want your wife to read about every dirty secret you have in the morning paper, I would advise you to do what Adam says and deny bail to John Bookman under any circumstances. You would be justified, based on the types of charges I have leveled at him. And the charges will hold up in court.” Trammel pointed at him. “Your court, Your Honor.”
“I refuse to be blackmailed by you or anyone else.” Bishop pounded his desk and pointed at the door. “Get out of here before I have the bailiff take you into custody.”
Trammel stood slowly so the judge could fully appreciate the difference in their sizes. The corrupt jurist took a few steps back and fell into his chair.
“You do what you want, Your Honor. But if you grant Bookman bail, you’d better resign and leave the county right after or you’ll find yourself in the same cell Bookman just vacated.”
The judge continued to yell at him as he left his office and began walking downstairs.
Trammel was not happy to find Sheriff Moran and one of his deputies waiting for him at the base of the stairs. Did Judge Bishop have some kind of bell he rang under his desk to signal the deputies he needed help? He didn’t know what they wanted, but was glad his coat was open and his Peacemaker within easy reach under his left arm. He hoped it did not come to that. “What’s wrong, Rob? Miss me already?”
“It’s not me who misses you,” Moran said. “Our famous prisoner has requested an audience with you, Buck. Madam Pinochet would like to have a word.”
“You’re kidding,” Trammel said.
“I wish he was,” the deputy said. “I don’t know how she found out you were in town, much less in the building, but she did, and she’s been demanding I bring you down there to see her since I locked up Bookman. She’s been asking nonstop for the past hour.”
“I can’t make you go down and see her,” Moran added, “but I’d consider it a personal favor if you did. She seems insistent as hell on seeing you, and she won’t let up until she gets what she wants, which are good qualities in a woman at the right time,” Moran teased.
“But not when she’s in a cell waiting for the hangman,” the deputy said. “Would you talk to her, Sheriff Trammel? I don’t think there’ll be any end to her griping unless you do.”
Trammel did not know why Madam Pinochet would want to talk to him, but he intended to find out. He walked down the stairs toward them. “Lead the way, Deputy.”
“That’s where I come in,” Moran said. “We don’t allow firearms in with the prisoners. Sets up a dangerous situation.” He nodded at the Peacemaker under Trammel’s left arm. “I’ll need that Colt before you go downstairs.”
For a moment, Trammel wondered if this might be some kind of trap on Clay or Alcott’s part. A way to get him to give up his gun and leave him an easier target for a bullet.
But he quickly discarded the notion. Sheriff Rob Moran had never been anything but fair with him and he did not peg him for a Lucien Clay stooge. Trammel was not in the habit of trusting people, but his instinct told him he could trust Moran. He slowly reached for his Colt, eased it from the holster and handed it to Moran, butt forward.
Moran took it. “You’ll get it back as soon as you come upstairs, I promise. If I’m not here, the man at the desk will have it waiting for you.”
Trammel followed the deputy down to the basement where the county jail was housed. He was expecting a dank cellar with bars cut into the bedrock that lie beneath the busy streets of Laramie. Instead, he found a structure that was no different from the offices upstairs. It was well lit by oil torches, and a neat row of iron bars constituted the cells where the prisoners were kept.
The area was three times the size of the cells in his jail, but being that far underground gave Trammel an uneasy feeling. “What’s your name, Deputy?”
“Beau Stiles,” the man said quickly. He was older than Moran and Trammel. Maybe about forty or so, but only looked it if you stared at him long enough. “Can I ask you a question, Sheriff? Why do you wear you gun like that? Under your arm, I mean. I’ve always preferred it on my hip where I can get at it easy enough.”
“You learned to shoot different from the way I learned,” Trammel said. “I worked in New York and other cities were men couldn’t wear their guns out in public. I got used to a shoulder holster, and I suppose I still like the feel of it.”
“Seems to be that way, if what I hear about you is true.” Stiles stopped as he opened the door to the cells. “Did you just say you’ve been to New York?”
“I did,” Trammel told him. “In fact, I was born there.”
“Is it as fancy as I’ve heard?”
“No.” Trammel nodded at the door. “Now how about you open that up so we can find out what Madam Pinochet has to say?”
Deputy Stiles opened the door and allowed Trammel to walk by himself down the aisle between the cells. He ignored the glares and curses and other things the prisoners hurled his way until he found Madam Pinochet’s cell on the right. The cell across from her was empty, and blankets had been hung on both sides of her cell in an attempt, Trammel thought, to give the female prisoner some measure of privacy. They did not have a jail exclusively for women in Laramie, and he imagined Madam Pinochet deserved some measure of consideration, even while she awaited the noose.
Madam Pinochet looked up when Trammel’s shadow fell across the floor of her cell. She no longer had a thin veil to hide the burn marks on her face. Six months of prison food and a lack of sunlight had served to shrink her from a grand dame to a skeletal remnant of the woman she had once been. Her gray prison smock was a far cry from the lavish black gowns she had been known to wear back when she ran her criminal empire from her lair in Blackstone.
The only thing Trammel could still recognize about her was the look in her eyes. They still bore the same hate that had blazed there the day he had dropped her off at this same jail in the spring.
“So you really are here, aren’t you?” She sneered up at him, showing a row of jagged yellow teeth. “You—”
“Say no more.” He had already been insulted enough for one day. “You asked to see me. Say what you want me to hear and make it quick. I’ve got a long ride ahead of me.”
“And I’ve got a long drop at the end of a short rope waiting for me becau
se of you.” Her voice still bore a trace of her native France. “The event of my death will be your doing, Trammel.”
“Your death is no one’s fault but your own.” Despite his size, reputation, and chosen profession, it was against his nature to be coldhearted, especially where a woman was involved. But Madam Pinochet, or Madam Peachtree as the locals had taken to calling her, deserved no such consideration. She had lorded the contents of the ledger over the territory for years, using it to solidify her hold over most of the leading officials as she consolidated control over the opium and gambling markets.
She had somehow lost the ledger to Sheriff Bonner of Blackstone just before Trammel had arrived in town and taken Bonner’s place. When Trammel accidentally discovered the ledger, he thought it was in code since he couldn’t understand it. He asked Adam Hagen to look at it to see if he could understand its contents.
Unfortunately, Trammel learned later that it had not been written in code but only in French, Madam Pinochet’s native language. A language Adam Hagen spoke well. Now he was in possession of the ledger and had taken her place atop the criminal element in the Wyoming Territory. She had ordered her men to kill Trammel, which was what had led to her arrest and soon her execution in Laramie.
Madam Pinochet continued to glower at him as she said, “A lot has passed between us, Sheriff. A surprising amount, given that we’ve barely spoken to each other two or three times.”
“If you hadn’t tried to have me killed, maybe we would’ve been better friends.”
“I tried to buy your friendship, but failed.”
“Having your men try to kill me is a hard way to buy friendship,” Trammel said. “Besides, my friendship isn’t for sale. Neither is my loyalty. Never has been. Never will be. Now, if you’ve got something to say, better get on with it before I leave. This is likely the last time you’ll ever see me.”
She drew herself to the bars and whispered. “You need to be very careful, Sheriff Trammel.”
“I’ve been alive long enough to understand that.”
“I mean careful with everyone. Danger surrounds you at every turn. You have few friends and a great many enemies. More than you know, back in Blackstone and here in Laramie.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. And you’re beginning to waste my time. I’ll find a preacher and ask him to say a prayer for your soul.”
“I don’t need your prayers, you damned fool,” Madam Pinochet spat out. “I need you to listen. I need you to understand that no one is your friend, save for that pretty doctor widow at the edge of town. Adam Hagen is a man bent on revenge against a father who never loved him. He has my ledger and has added a great deal to it in an effort to topple his father and his allies. No good can come of this, and you must be careful to avoid being caught in the middle of their fight. There will be only one winner, and it will not be you.”
“I’ve been looking out for myself for a long time.”
“Yes, in cities where men have rules of conduct they must follow and laws that can be enforced. Laramie and Blackstone are unlike any place you have been, Sheriff. Even Wichita. Life is more brutal here. More personal. Men out here do not forgive slights so easily. And they do not give up when prudence dictates otherwise.”
Trammel did not like the direction this conversation was headed. “Speak plain or don’t speak at all.”
“I still have a few friends who like to visit me, even here in this dingy place,” Madam Pinochet said. “They tell me Lucien Clay has formed an alliance with Jesse Alcott and the Pinkerton men who came here from Chicago. Clay has learned of Adam’s shooting and has spent the last week solidifying power among the county leaders. A steady stream of them has supposedly paraded through town like some kind of pageant.”
So Clay was making the most of Hagen’s disability. Since Clay was a criminal, Trammel had not expected him to keep a vigil by his partner’s bedside. He expected him to do what criminals do—exploit a weakness for their benefit. “So what?”
“So this,” Madam Pinochet went on. “Lucien Clay is not the oafish brute Adam or others would have you believe. He is a cunning man who plans to use the Pinkerton men to not only help him take down Adam Hagen, but retrieve my old ledger. He is reportedly willing to stop at nothing, including burning down all of Blackstone, to accomplish this if necessary.”
Trammel did not believe a word of it. “That’s impossible. Mr. Hagen paid off the Pinkerton Agency a while ago.”
“He may have paid off Mister Pinkerton,” Madam Pinochet clarified, “but Mr. Alcott and his men have been offered positions in Lucien Clay’s new organization if they are successful in their efforts to retrieve the ledger. They have promised to become Clay’s personal army, which will give him complete control over a sizeable portion of the territory, if not all of it.”
Trammel still wasn’t buying it. “Rob Moran and his men would never let that happen.”
“They won’t be foolish enough to take on Sheriff Moran at first,” Madam Pinochet said. “They will have no qualms about coming after Blackstone first. Your celebrity makes you an inviting target, Sheriff Trammel. Once they make an example out of you, who else could dare to believe they could stand up to them and win?” She smiled that crooked yellow smile again. “So you see, Sheriff? Your greatest strength has been made your greatest liability. Such is the way when dealing with men like Lucien Clay. And Adam Hagen.”
Trammel grabbed the bars before he lost his balance. He was not sure how much stock he could put in the ravings of an insane woman staring death in the face on the gallows, but every single thing she had just said made complete sense to him.
It explained why Alcott and his men had not already ridden to Blackstone since arriving in Laramie, much less catching the next train back to Chicago.
He did not know much about Lucien Clay except that the man had once worked with Madam Pinochet to kill him, only to call off his men when Adam Hagen made him a better deal, and eventually, his literal partner in crime.
The old woman had struck close enough at the truth to give Buck Trammel pause. Close enough for him to finally believe she just might be telling the truth.
“You’re telling me a lot of things,” Trammel told her, “but you’re not telling me what I can do about them. Any of them.”
The prisoner’s laugh echoed through the cell block, causing the other prisoners to yell for her to be quiet.
Madam Pinochet spoke over the clamor. “That’s what I’m telling you, Trammel. There’s absolutely nothing you can do about any of it, except maybe run. This is my parting gift to you from the gallows. Pure terror.”
Trammel had to appreciate the depth of the woman’s hatred. He imagined she didn’t care enough about people to actually hate them, but Buck Trammel was obviously an exception. In an odd way, he was proud of himself. “Thanks for the thought, but if I worried about everyone who threatened to kill me, I’d never go outside.”
“You might make it out of the territory before Clay and his hounds find you,” she went on. “Though I doubt you’ll get very far in a wagon with that pretty doctor and her dead husband’s mother in tow.”
Trammel banged his fist against the bars.
Madam Pinochet didn’t flinch. “The truth hurts, Trammel, and inside a place like this, the truth is all I’ve got left. The truth is all there is to keep me warm at night.”
“Good thing for you all of this will be over soon,” Trammel wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing him rub his sore hand. “I’ve got a town to run. But don’t worry. I’ll see you at your hanging. Won’t believe you’re dead unless I see it with my own two eyes.”
She rushed to the bars and howled after him. “I wanted you to know about Alcott. I wanted you to know he’s coming, Trammel. Him and his riders are coming for you and Hagen, and there’s nothing either of you can do to stop them. You might’ve gotten lucky against Clay’s men the last time, but these aren’t Clay’s men. They are Pinkerton men. They hit what
they aim at and they’re aiming at you. Embrace the terror, Trammel. There’s nothing you can do to stop it!”
Her screams echoed out from the cells and carried throughout the building.
Trammel exited the cell block, and Deputy Stiles quickly locked the door behind him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, Sheriff. I sincerely am, but I’m grateful. At least now, maybe she’ll shut up. If not, I can’t dump a bucket on her and not get yelled at by the sheriff for being mean. It’ll put me in a better state of mind.”
Trammel kept walking up the stairs, anxious to retrieve his gun from Sheriff Moran. “That makes one of us.”
CHAPTER 24
Trammel tugged his coat closed against the harsh Laramie wind as he stepped out of the telegraph office. The Colt felt good under his left arm again as he looked up and down the town’s main street. Sheriff Moran had told him the Pinkerton men had not only come to Laramie, but had prospered under Lucien Clay’s protection. They played a key role in his plans to grow past Laramie and throughout the territory, maybe even the entire part of the country. Adam Hagen’s goals were at least simpler and easier to appreciate.
Trammel had no doubt that Alcott and the other Pinkerton men would go along with the plan. He couldn’t blame them. Having spent a significant amount of time with the agency himself, Trammel knew it was a life of interminably long train rides and in carriages and on horses riding to follow orders from a man you didn’t know to protect people you often did not like. The pay was decent enough for the labor required, but it was nothing compared to the untold riches Lucien Clay was undoubtedly promising them. The worst part of it all, at least from Trammel’s perspective, was that Clay wasn’t lying to them. If his plan worked, they would all be very wealthy, powerful men.
Hell, had Trammel still been with the agency, he probably would have taken Clay’s deal, too. Offer a man a place in this world and some money in his pocket? Only a fool would turn that down. Trammel had been given a similar chance when Adam Hagen had taken him to Blackstone, and he had grabbed the opportunity with both hands. He saw no reason why the Pinkerton men would not do the same thing, even if it meant killing Buck Trammel in the process. The life of one man did not mean much when compared to the futures of twelve or the future in general.
Bury the Hatchet Page 19
