Death Rattle

by Jory Sherman

  Pilar reached across the table and touched Felicity’s hand. She patted it.

  “As a woman,” she said, “you must take what you are given. You must love, and you will be loved. This is true.”

  Felicity shook her head, and that look of sadness crept back into her eyes. Then she closed them and began to weep. Her body trembled and her shoulders shook. She looked whipped.

  “I can no longer accept the way things are,” she sobbed. “Pilar, I’m so terribly lonely.”

  “But when Brad is here?”

  “I’m still lonely. That’s the trouble. And now I hate myself for telling you all this.”

  “Do not hate yourself, Felicity. You are a beautiful woman and you have much to give. Your husband will know this. He will see. He will love you as you wish to be loved.”

  The flame flickered in the lamp and the clouds seemed to envelop the house. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed all around, lighting every window, rattling every pane. Then the rain burst upon them, splashing against the windows, pounding the roof and blowing hard against the doors, striking all outside surfaces with the rattle and force of buckshot.

  Felicity stood up and walked to the front window. She peered out and could not see the cattle or the grass, but only sheets of rain as dark as the black and empty meadow of her mind. She knew Brad would not come through this storm. He would not come to save her, to pull her out of her dark cave of despair and loneliness.

  “I go home now,” Pilar said. “Julio will be there by now.”

  “Yes, of course. Go,” Felicity said.

  Pilar opened the door, and the rain swept inside on the blasting wind. Felicity closed the door and latched it, soaked to the skin. She stepped to the window and saw Pilar running to her house, past the milk barn, her shawl pulled over her head. She vanished into sheets of rain and was gone.

  A crack of thunder drove Felicity away from the window just as the kitchen lamp ran out of oil and the flame died in the dry wick.

  The house went dark and Felicity threw herself on the divan and wept in a sudden miasma of sadness that felt like a smothering cloak enveloping her very soul.

  SEVEN

  Mortimer Taggert, owner of the Clarendon Hotel in Leadville, was visibly nervous as he ushered Pete Farnsworth into his office. Pete noticed Deputy Sheriff Wally Culver standing just inside the doorway, looking through a peephole at the people in the lobby.

  “He still there?” Taggert said to Culver.

  “Still there, Mort. Only he’s standing at the desk, looking at the ledger. He got up just after Pete checked in.”

  “What’s going on, Mort?” Pete asked. “Where’s Sheriff Dimsdale?”

  “Didn’t you hear, Pete? Dimsdale was shot to death a week ago on his front porch. Wally’s acting sheriff for now. Wally, point out that man to Pete,” Taggert said.

  Culver stepped away from the peephole and Pete took his place.

  “The hard case up at the desk,” Culver said. “He’s looked at that ledger after each check-in.”

  Pete looked at the man who was now staring at the door to Taggert’s office, his eyes narrowed, his beard-stubbled jaw set hard, an unlit cheroot sliding back and forth in his mouth. He wasn’t a big man, shorter than Pete, with slumped shoulders and a caved-in chest, a dirty bandanna sagging on his neck, an unbuttoned leather vest over his black-and-white checkered shirt.

  “What’s he want?” Pete asked Taggert.

  “He’s one of the men, one of that gang who barged in here this morning and demanded I pay them money every week. Two percent of what we take in.”

  “For what?”

  “To stay open, they said. When I refused, they said I’d be sorry, that the Golden Council would see to it that I paid or died.”

  Pete stepped away from the peephole.

  “Know his name?” Pete asked.

  “I heard him called Cole by the other feller,” Taggert said.

  “His name is Cole Buskirk,” Culver said. “I think he’s one of the men who shot Sheriff Dimsdale to death, but I can’t prove it.”

  “Sit down, boys,” Taggert said. “I’m glad as hell to see you, Pete. Wally here is outgunned now that Dimsdale’s dead and he’s by himself. The other deputies quit after what happened to Dimsdale. Two dead sheriffs in less than a year. Both dead under somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

  Pete sprawled his lanky body in an upholstered chair and stretched out his long legs. Wally sat in a matching chair facing Taggert’s cherrywood desk on which sat an inkwell, three quill pens, paid bills impaled on a metal spindle, a black ledger trimmed in red at the corners and spine, a stack of receipts in a small wooden box, three ashtrays, a briar pipe, and a small pouch of tobacco. On the wall there was a map of Colorado with LEADVILLE printed in large letters and black roads showing the distances between the major towns and some smaller ones, a tintype of the Clarendon, a portrait of George Washington, and a reproduction of the U.S. Constitution. There were no windows in the room, and one corner was taken up by a large, closed steel safe, a large captain’s wheel positioned over the combination lock.

  Pete looked at Wally.

  “What can you tell me about this bunch, Wally? How do they operate? Do you know who the boss is? Mr. Pendergast told me the name of the man who killed his son, one Earl Fincher. He said Quince recognized his voice and that Earl and the others all wore yellow hoods.”

  “Earl rode shotgun on the stage for a while, with Quince,” Wally said. “I guess he was learnin’ the ropes. I don’t know him, but Dimsdale said he was a hard case and to keep an eye on him.”

  “They call themselves the ‘Golden Council,’” Taggert said. “If anyone refuses to pay protection money, a bunch of them wearing yellow hoods show up at the man’s home and drag him out, beat him half to death, threaten to burn down his house, destroy his business. Generally, after a visit by the Golden Council, the men pay up.”

  “We don’t know how many businessmen here are paying this gang,” Wally said. “Most of ’em are afraid to talk about it.”

  “So, we know the names of two of them,” Farnsworth said, “Cole out there and this Earl Fincher.”

  “There was another man with Cole Buskirk,” Taggert said. “Don’t know his name, but he left.”

  Pete looked at Wally with raised eyebrows.

  Wally shrugged. “I didn’t see him. I got here after he left.”

  “There’s another thing,” Taggert said.

  “What’s that?” Farnsworth said.

  “I’m on the town council, and we had a meeting last night to appoint a new sheriff to replace Dimsdale. I put Wally’s name in the hat, but the president, Adolphus Wolfe, said we were going to hire a man named Alonzo Jigger.”

  “Who’s Alonzo Jigger?” Farnsworth asked. He looked at both Taggert and Culver.

  Culver cleared his throat.

  “After Mort told me about it, I looked through our wanted posters and dodgers, and there was an old one with a small reward for Alonzo Jigger out of Pueblo. Two hunnert dollars, I think. No likeness on the dodger.”

  “What was the charge?” Farnsworth asked.

  “Embezzlement.”

  “Hmmm,” Farnsworth murmured. “Very interesting. What do you make of this Jigger?”

  “Supposed to take over as sheriff tomorrow,” Culver said. “Never heard of him.”

  Pete looked at Mort Taggert as they all heard the faint stutter of thunder. They could also hear the wind swirling around outside and slapping the wooden frame of the hotel.

  “Anything else, Mr. Taggert?”

  “Why, yes. I tried to bring up this Golden Council thing, and the other board members, including Wolfe, said it was none of our business.”

  “What exactly was said?” Pete asked.

  “Adolphus said there was nothing illegal about men selling insurance policies. He said that’s all they were doing. None of the others had ever heard of men wearing yellow hoods and using intimidation.”

  “Insur
ance policies?” Farnsworth said.

  Taggert picked up a document, handed it to Farnsworth. “Cole Buskirk gave me this when he and that other man first came into my office this morning.”

  Pete read the document.

  LOBO SURETY COMPANY was printed out in bold letters across the top. It seemed to be written in legal terms and offered insurance against robbery, fire, and all other calamities that were not acts of God for the sum of two percent of the signee’s gross income per week.

  “This is outrageous,” Farnsworth said.

  “It’s extortion,” Taggert exploded, pounding a fist on his desk. “Downright extortion.”

  Culver smiled wanly as the sound of thunder grew louder. The door to Taggert’s office rattled slightly as the wind followed a patron into the hotel.

  “I expect we can get to the bottom of this,” Farnsworth said. “I expect to have another detective check in sometime this afternoon or tonight.”

  “Brad Storm?” Taggert said.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Pendergast has a permanent room here for him and you, Mr. Farnsworth.”

  “Call me Pete.”

  “I heard of Storm,” Wally said. “Ain’t he the man who busted up that gang of cattle rustlers last year? Him and you?”

  “The very same,” Pete said. “Good man.”

  “Why do they call him ‘Sidewinder’?” Wally asked.

  “Long story,” Pete said, and rose to his feet. “I left my kit at the stage stop. I’ll be up in my room when Storm gets here, Mr. Taggert.”

  “I’ll send him right up, Pete.”

  Pete smiled.

  He leaned over and shook Taggert’s hand. Then he walked over to Culver.

  “Wally, are you afraid of this Golden Council?”

  “No, I reckon not.”

  “Good. Then we may need you to help us round them up.”

  “I’m ready to help.”

  “And I want to meet this new sheriff as soon as possible. Tomorrow, you say?”

  “That’s when he’s supposed to take over.”

  Pete stopped at the door and turned around to look at Taggert.

  “What’s the name of that banker again?”

  “Adolphus Wolfe. He owns the Leadville Bank and Trust. Why?”

  “Just curious,” Pete said and left. He saw no sign of Cole Buskirk in the lobby. He stopped at the desk and rang the bell. A clerk emerged from a small room.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Farnsworth, what can I do for you?”

  “Where’d that man go who was here a few minutes ago?”

  “Oh, he left. Went outside and got on his horse. I saw him ride off.”

  “Thanks.”

  He saw the black sky light up as he looked out the window. There wasn’t a soul on the street. A few lamps burned in some of the windows. They cast yellow light onto the boardwalks.

  It looked, he thought, like a ghost town.

  EIGHT

  Brad rode Ginger a few yards above the blockhouse and turned left to look at the other side of it. It was a small frame building made of whipsawed lumber that had lost its paint and weathered to a dull gray under the onslaughts of wind, rain, snow, and blowing sand. There was a small tin chimney on one side of the sloped roof, its opening covered by a piece of tin bolted on above it in the shape of a Chinese coolie’s straw hat. There was probably room inside for a cot or two, a table, and a couple of chairs, he thought. And next to the building was a half cord of wood and a box full of kindling. Likely they had a potbellied stove to keep the occupants warm in cold weather.

  He turned and saw that the blockhouse had a good view of the road behind him, clear to the top of the grade where it disappeared. When he looked down at the smelter, he could see Tom walking with slow steps toward the entrance some four hundred yards away. In the basin where the smelter buildings stood sprawled out, he saw adobe houses, probably built for the hard-rock miners and mill workers. There were a dozen, at least, some with lighted windows, others crumbling along their sides. There could be dozens of men housed in the compound, Brad thought, perhaps more. And at one end of the bowl, the slate black waters of a creek wound in a half circle before it vanished below the compound. There were no ripples in the water, and it looked deep enough to last all year round. There was a small earthen dam and a ditch leading to the smelter, sloped so the water could run inside the mill through a square opening in the main building.

  He wondered if he should have boasted about his return to face so many men.

  There was no sign on the smelter’s walls or on its roof. He thought that it must be one of the first to be built in and around Leadville, perhaps before the original settlement of Oro City had been founded and named.

  He emptied the cylinder of Tom’s pistol and dropped it to the ground before he turned Ginger in the direction of Leadville.

  Tom had not yet reached the halfway point between the blockhouse and the old abandoned smelter. Brad topped the slope leading down to the basin and took to the wagon-rutted road.

  Facing him, to the west, huge black thunderheads hid the mountains. He saw occasional lances of lightning that lit jagged pathways through the clouds, and moments later he heard the muttered murmurs of rolling thunder, so faint he could barely hear them above the creak of saddle leather.

  He shivered in the tidal wave of cold that washed over him, a cold borne on the beating wings of the wind that preceded the oncoming storm. He did not know how far it was to Leadville, but his senses told him that it was probably no more than five miles. And he was sure that this road he was on, fresh-tracked with three sets of horseshoes heading west and two heading back to the smelter, would take him where he needed to go. Those tracks told a story, but he did not know the whole of it. Three men rode into town. Two rode back.

  He felt a slight twinge in his left hand. He turned it over and looked at the fleshy part. That was where the sidewinder had bitten him, and there were two flesh protuberances where the snake’s fangs had punctured his flesh. The healed-over wounds acted up when the weather changed and were a reminder of his close call with death. And of the Hopi who had saved him, nursed him back to health—the same Hopi who had cut off the rattles and strung a leather thong through the wide end. The same set of rattles he now wore around his neck. Gray Owl had since gone back to his own country, back to the land of the sidewinders. And somewhere up in the deeps of the mountains, his good friend Wading Crow, who had let him witness the Snake Dance taught to him by Gray Owl, was summering with his Arapaho tribes people, still free.

  Brad rubbed the twin moles on his hand and the itch subsided. He topped the rise and rode into broken country. It was odd how fast the land could change in the foothills. The road was not visible for long stretches, but followed the contours of the broken land, through gullies and arroyos, over humpbacks and rugged knolls. Maybe, he thought, it was more than five miles to Leadville. There was no way to tell because the black clouds had sunk even lower in the sky and blocked his view for many miles. He had to imagine the Rockies, for they were now hidden, their brawny muscles tickled by forks of lightning and the shrouding rain a thin scrim beneath the clouds, a ragged curtain dripping from the bowels of the thunderheads.

  And then Ginger’s ears stiffened, twisted right and left, a pair of cones. The horse had heard something or smelled something. Brad rode on, down into a shallow gully, his right hand resting on the butt of his Colt, his senses sharpened to a razor’s edge. Ginger made a low sound in his throat, and then the horseman appeared over the edge of the gully, riding a steel dust gray.

  Brad reined Ginger to a halt and waited as the man approached.

  “Howdy,” Cole said. “You must be Jig. That right? Finch said you might show up today.”

  “Yeah,” Brad lied. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “I’m Cole Buskirk. I’m the man who got you the vacancy.” Cole snickered as he said it.

  “Vacancy?”

  “Yeah, you’re going to be the new sheriff in Lead
ville. Right?”

  “Right,” Brad said.

  “Well, didn’t Earl tell you? I put that bald-headed bastard Rodney Dimsdale’s lamp out. You ought to have seen it, Jigger. I shot him on his front porch just about dusk. A clean shot to the head. His brains flew out like custard, and blood poured all over his shirt, as red as his damned suspenders. He never knew what hit him. He dropped like a sack of meal right off his porch.”

  “Good job,” Brad said, feeling a sickness inside his belly, a revulsion that rose up in him like an angry cougar, all claws and fangs. He had known Dimsdale and liked him.

  “So, you’ll be the new sheriff, Jig. Or should I call you Alonzo?”

  “Jig is fine.”

  “Should make it easy for the Golden Council from now on with you sittin’ in Dimsdale’s chair.”

  “How far is it to Leadville?”

  “Oh, maybe three, four miles from here. I just left the Clarendon. You got a detective snoopin’ around. I saw him check in. Name of Pete Farnsworth. I can’t wait to tell Finch.”

  “Well, you better get crackin’, Cole. Looks like we’re both going to get wet before this day’s over.”

  “Yeah.” Cole stood up in stirrups and turned around to look at the sky, but he couldn’t see how close the rain was from inside the gully. “I’ll tell Finch and the boys I seen you, Jig. I surely will.”

  “You do that, Cole,” Brad said.

  The two men passed each other. When Brad looked back, Cole was waving good-bye as he rode out of the gully.

  It was a good four miles to Leadville by Brad’s reckoning. A long, hard four miles, mostly uphill, and when he saw the low buildings of town, his heart raced. He had now identified two of the men who rode with Earl Fincher, the man who had killed Hugh Pendergast. He knew their faces and their names. That was a start, at least.

  He wondered what the Golden Council was. Was that the name of Fincher’s gang or a company they all worked for? Well, maybe Pete Farnsworth would know what it meant.