Dead Time

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Fallon shook his head. He looked at his own plate and realized he had played with his food more than he had eaten anything. He was as bad as the precious little girl sitting next to him.

  “Maybe,” he said, and he lowered his voice into a whisper and leaned across the table, closer to the lawyer and Fallon’s beautiful wife. “Maybe I should have just killed that lowdown dog when I had my chance.”

  Ehrlander sat back, his face showing concern and shock, but it was Fallon’s wife’s response that had caused Fallon to wake up instantly.

  “Yes, Hank, but what if the jury was right? What if Crites was an innocent man?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  He hated himself. Because he couldn’t go out in the dark now. Because he couldn’t kill Chris Ehrlander in cold blood. That damned dream. It had been like . . . his wife . . . she had . . . been . . . talking to him from the dead. Only the troubling part was that his wife looked just like Renee, but the voice . . . the voice was Christina Whitney’s.

  This time, Fallon did not fall back asleep. He lay in his bunk, sometimes feeling the tears well in his eyes but never break from the dam. He stared at the dark ceiling until the guards came to bring them to the sugarcane fields one more time.

  As he filed out of the bunkhouse, he glanced at the darkened windows of the Justice mansion, then moved into the washroom, the shelter where the cooks dished out the slop and poured the coffee, and, after making himself eat and drink, into the barn to hitch the wagons, check the tools, and prepare for another grueling day harvesting cane.

  Once again, Fallon saw that the buggy was gone, but this time he watched Chris Ehrlander say good-bye to Colonel Justice and drive away toward Natchitoches.

  Again, that worked in Fallon’s favor. He couldn’t kill the man, could not avenge the deaths of his wife and daughter, but the lawyer could not identify Fallon as a former deputy marshal. Even if he had—even if Ehrlander had somehow recognized Fallon from the distance—Fallon could come up with a quick response. Yeah, he had been a deputy, and he had gone to prison. So he had no love for the U.S. marshals or any lawmen after hard time in Joliet. And if you wanted to check a little bit more into Fallon’s life since getting paroled out of Illinois, you could see that a man named Harry Fulton had spent some brief time in Yuma. He probably should leave Jefferson City out of it, though, unless they had found out about his time there, too.

  It might work. It probably wouldn’t, though, and Fallon would be supper for the gators in the swamps that surrounded Justice’s plantation.

  He was back at it, working again under the supervision of the Cajun named Eyeballs, sweating, working till his fingers and hands felt sticky with sugar, and wondering if the American Detective Agency’s information was just plain wrong. Perhaps all Justice was guilty of was being a horse’s ass and cheapskate who got practically free labor for his sugarcane.

  As he carried an armload of cane to load into the wagon, Fallon saw another inmate standing beside the cart, wiping his brow. The big man, bald, with his left ear missing and the other ear with the texture of cauliflower, took a long time with that rag he was using to mop the sweat off his shining head. Too long. Guards typically jumped on a convict for not working.

  The man’s nose was misshapen, and as Fallon neared him, he noticed the scars on his face, the brutal hands that had been covered with tattoos. He was dark skinned, maybe six foot two and two hundred pounds. Fallon glanced at the guards, who fanned themselves in the shade. He looked at Eyeballs, but the Cajun was busy picking his fingernails.

  Fallon nodded at the big man, dumped his load into the wagon, wiped his hands on his britches, and started back to the cane fields.

  He heard the rush of air, then felt the wicked blow against his right shoulder and back—biting like a whip and definitely leaving a welt on his back. Fallon hit the ground, rolled over, and saw the big man flinging the busted stalk of cane into the dirt. The big man laughed and reached for another length of sugarcane.

  “I don’t like you,” the big man said. “So I’m gonna kill you.”

  With sugarcane? Fallon thought as he came up to his feet.

  Eyeballs was standing now, tilting his head, trying to figure out what was going on and what had started the commotion. The guards rose from their seats. One pointed. They stared, although one of the more experienced ones lifted his shotgun and began talking to the others.

  The man took a few steps forward, toying with Fallon with the cane, maybe seven feet long. He waved it gently at Fallon’s nose, crouched, then swung hard. Fallon jumped back and let the cane pass.

  “Colonel-tar-your-hide-for-busting-up-cane-you-crazy-fool-you-get-us-all-in-trouble-or-dem-guards-gun-you-down-the-both-of-you-and-dump-you-in-swamp-as-supper-for-dem-hungry-gators-you-crazy-polecat,” Eyeballs said, and backed away.

  Now the big man lifted the cane over his shoulder and came down quickly, downward, like some knight with a battle-ax or cavalryman slashing a saber. Fallon jumped to his left, feeling the cane whistle past him. The cane came up, moved toward Fallon, who ducked underneath it. Then the bald-headed man brought it lower, at Fallon’s ankles, but Fallon leaped above it. He leaped to his right as the cane moved down again. To his left. Left again. Ducking as it came over his head and rolled over his back.

  Fallon leaped back. The end of the stalk tugged at Fallon’s sweat-soaked shirt. The big man laughed, brought the cane up, and slammed it down at Fallon, but this time it did not come close.

  For a man that size, the big dog moved with surprising speed, but now he had to stop to wipe his eyes with his shirtsleeve, and his lungs heaved from the exertion.

  Yet Fallon breathed hard, too, and took time to wipe sweat from his breath. Then he had to avoid another swipe of cane.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Fallon saw that other hands had stopped working and gathered in groups to watch the show. Guards had rushed forward to make sure none of the noncombatants made an attempt to escape—not that anyone was likely to do that. Escape meant getting through the swamps. Besides, it was too hot to escape.

  For that matter, it was too hot to fight.

  The bald man swung again with the cane, angrily this time, and Fallon couldn’t jump over or around this one. He lifted his left arm, felt the cane slam into it, and the cane broke, hung limply, like a busted sword, as the big man brought the cane back toward him. He looked at it, shrugged, and pitched it to the ground.

  Fallon rubbed his forearm, which hurt like blazes.

  “I’ve toyed with you enough,” his attacker said, and pulled out a knife, a big blade, more machete than the small one Fallon had.

  “Stop it there, Moeller,” the sergeant yelled. “I said STOP!”

  Moeller paid the guard no attention, even when the sergeant brought up a Winchester rifle and pulled back the hammer. “I don’t want to kill you, Moeller.”

  “I have to kill this man,” Moeller said to the guard as he approached Fallon, moving the knife left and right, grinning. “Then I go back to cutting cane.”

  The guard looked thunderstruck.

  Fallon backed toward the wagon. The blade came slashing toward his belly, but Fallon moved, and the man slipped to one knee. Fallon saw his chance, turned, and bolted a few feet, then leaped into the back of the wagon filled with sugarcane. Moeller stood, stopped, and stared.

  “Come down from there,” he told Fallon.

  Fallon held a length of cane in his right hand.

  “Come and get me,” Fallon told the man. He began carving one end of the cane with his knife.

  “What are you doing?” Moeller asked. Then he saw the point Fallon had made at the end of the cane. “That won’t do nothin’,” he said.

  “Won’t it?” Fallon grinned.

  Moeller hesitated, swallowed, and resumed his walk.

  When Moeller took his third step toward the wagon, Fallon threw his makeshift spear.

  Moeller ducked, the stalk whistled over his head, and when he started to straighten, smili
ng, even laughing at Fallon’s weapon, he saw only the soles of Fallon’s shoes as Fallon sailed off the wagon bed right behind his spear.

  The feet caught Moeller in his face and chest. The knife went sailing into the marshy ground, and down went the bald man, spitting out teeth, blood, and vile curses.

  Fallon hit the ground as he twisted around and extended his arms to break his fall. He sank into the muck that was earth, rolled over, bent his knees, and leaped up. Moeller was trying to rise, and he got his mangled head lifted as he groped for the knife, for anything. Fallon kicked him right underneath the chin, breaking the jaw, and Moeller went on his back.

  The sergeant had lowered his rifle. He scratched his head. Two other guards rushed forward but the sergeant called out to them, “Might as well let them finish this.”

  Both guards stopped.

  “Looks like Big Mo’s already finished,” one of them said.

  But Fallon knew better.

  Moeller was coming to his feet again, roaring like a wounded lion despite that broken jaw, summoning up all the strength he could. Fallon charged, leaped, twisting in the air, and letting his entire body catch the bleeding, mangled man’s chest. Down they went, Fallon using his weight to drive the bald fighter deeper into the ground. He rolled over the bruiser’s face, kept rolling, knocking over the cane spear, and coming up to his knees.

  He had hoped that would have finished Moeller, taken the last ounce of strength from his muscle-bound body. But as Fallon caught his breath and blinked the sweat out of his eyes, he saw Moeller was already up. And fate had let him find the big knife he had dropped.

  Moeller tried to laugh, but this time the broken jaw, busted teeth, and smashed lips refused to cooperate, so all he did was manage a gurgle or two. He charged with the knife, his feet making a squishing sound as they sank into the muck. Fallon found the cane, pulled it up, and charged himself as he rose to his feet. The point of the cane tip caught the big man in his stomach. The cane stalk broke, and Fallon tumbled to the ground, rolled up, and saw Moeller jerking the natural spear from his gut.

  Blood spurted from the hole in the man’s stomach. Somehow, Moeller refused to stop, sink, or even die. He spit out blood and froth, again tried to scream or curse or laugh. He had dropped the knife, but he stooped to pick it up and almost tilted forward when he tried to rise.

  But there was no quit in this beast. Moeller did not fall. He did not lose consciousness. And he refused to die.

  Fallon looked around. He saw the pail of water by Eyeballs’s little camp. Fallon ran to it, grabbed the pail, and hurled it at the staggering man with the big knife. The water container slammed into Moeller’s head, the handle slicing into his cheek and just above his left eye. The tin pail sprayed water onto the man’s ruined face and caromed off and into the field. The blow staggered the beast, but still he came. Now Fallon ran back to the wagon, where he had dropped the small knife. He found it just as Moeller’s knife slashed down, ripping Fallon’s shirt, cutting his back, not deep, but a painful wound.

  Fallon swung around, saw Moeller lifting his hand, raising the big knife once more, starting to bring it down. Fallon rammed his own knife into the man’s chest, driving it deep between the ribs, then sidestepping around as the big knife of Moeller’s thudded into the wooden tailgate of the wagon.

  Fallon stumbled, but managed to keep his feet. He whirled around, chest heaving, back burning from the wound and the sweat, and yet Moeller still stood.

  Swearing, Fallon tried to catch his breath and wondered if anything could kill this beast named Moeller.

  The guards provided an answer for Fallon.

  “Hell. That’s enough, boys. Put Moeller out of his misery.”

  The sergeant aimed his rifle.

  The weapon spoke, and two other guards echoed the blast with their shotguns.

  Fallon cringed as Moeller twisted from the bullet and the buckshot, sank to his knees, opened his mouth as best he could, and let out a silent scream as he fell into the cane field dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “How’s your back?”

  Fallon was trying to find a comfortable spot in the wicker chair on Colonel Justice’s veranda. His back hurt. So did his arm and practically everywhere else on his body.

  The man in the white suit laughed.

  Fallon let him laugh. The Colonel had offered Fallon some brandy, but he had politely declined—even though he could have used the drink, if only for medicinal purposes.

  “I bet the rest of your body doesn’t feel a whole lot better,” Colonel Justice said, his eyes beaming with delight, his face warmed by his own cocktail and the heat of a Louisiana evening.

  “You’d win that bet.”

  Justice laughed again, found a cigar in a fancy wooden box on a small table, opened it, clipped the end of the cigar, and dipped it in his snifter before putting the Havana in his mouth and lighting it. He did not bother to offer a fine cigar to Fallon.

  The medical treatment Fallon had received after his encounter in the cane fields with Moeller had not amounted to a whole hell of a lot. Eyeballs had rubbed some salve over the welts and cuts, but that seemed more like a mixture of bacon grease and grass than anything else, and then the Cajun had wrapped some rags over the wounds. There was no hospital at Justice’s plantation, and nobody sent for a doctor. On the other hand, Fallon got better treatment than the bald prisoner, now dead.

  A trusty had been sent to the plantation to fetch a mule, and Moeller’s body had been tossed without any ceremony over the mule’s back. Two guards carted the mule off, but did not take the path to the plantation. They took the body to the nearest swamp.

  “Gators-ain’t-no-dif’rent-than-us-critters-or-any-types-of-animals-mister,” Eyeballs had said to Fallon as they watched the funeral train of a mule, a corpse, and two guards embittered by their latest assignment. “They-eats-good-tonight-though-ol’-Moeller-being-aright-big-man-with-lots-a-meat-on-his-bone-so-don’t-you-give-me-that-look-you-low-down-convict-because-I-rather-that-gator-or-crow-or-buzzard-be-eating-the-meat-off-ol’-Moeller’s-bones-than-a-gnawing-on-mine-and-you-don’t-wanna-say-it-but-you-know-it-be-how-you-feel-too-exactly.”

  Fallon hadn’t answered Eyeballs’s statement. He wasn’t thinking about the treatment the dead man was receiving, for Fallon had no remorse over the death of a man who was bound and determined to kill Fallon. What Fallon wondered was why Moeller had been on the prod. Fallon hadn’t said one word to the big, bald man since he had arrived in Natchitoches. Few other inmates had spoken to Moeller, either. What Fallon was thinking as the cortege made its way to the nearest swamp was that the guards had not notified the local sheriff. This had been a shooting, justifiable at least in Fallon’s eyes as a former federal lawman, but there were things like jurisdiction that Justice and the guards from The Walls were overlooking. Not to mention the fact that even a brute like Moeller might have next of kin, and burial in Peckerwood Hill or the potter’s field at Natchitoches or Justice’s plantation was certainly more fitting than the disposing of a corpse in the croaking, foul-smelling bayous and swamps.

  When Justice had his cigar to his liking, he removed it from his mouth, took another sip of brandy, and asked, “Are you sure you would not like some brandy? It’s the best there is. From France.”

  Fallon shook his head.

  The Colonel sighed. “Suit yourself.” He puffed on the cigar. “What do you think is the matter with this country today, Mr. Alexander?”

  Fallon shrugged. Which hurt his neck and his shoulder. “I imagine the prison system could use some reevaluation.”

  As Justice chuckled, sipped brandy, and smoked his cigar, Fallon glanced outside. Still no buggy. No sign of Chris Ehrlander returning.

  “Are you not enjoying your accommodations and reapplying the skills you learned in cane fields?”

  Fallon did not answer.

  “I’ll take that as a resounding no, suh.” The cigar was placed in a silver ashtray. “Would you care to hear my as
sessment?”

  “You are my host,” Fallon said, “and this is better than the bunkhouse.”

  “I should hope so.” The Colonel leaned back in his chair. “We remain a nation divided, and one that never should have been reunited. Reconstruction has been over, for, what, fifteen years or so? The coloreds are still inferior in all regards to the white race. The Yankees have learned that they might be able to produce iron and whatever, but it remains the South that feeds the nation. You look like you do not agree with me, Mr. Alexander.”

  Fallon sighed. “The West produces cattle. Even sheep these days. The Midwest grows wheat and other grains.”

  “You have a point. But my point is this: the South never should have lost the war.”

  “But we did.”

  “Yes. And do you know why?”

  Fallon shook his head, waiting for the Colonel to finish puffing on the cigar, which he had picked up from his silver tray, again soaked the end in the brandy, and smoke, drank, rocked, and stared.

  “It is,” he drawled as he returned the cigar to the tray, “because our soldiers were boys. Untrained. They did not know how to fight.”

  “They fought well enough to die.”

  “And they died for a glorious cause. But these were sons of farmers, boys who had been brought up without proper training. And our leaders, our commanders, they knew not how to command or fight, themselves. That is what cost the South the war. Our generals sent boys charging at fortified positions. Our boys were too stupid to say no. We should have learned from the Indians.”

  Fallon cocked his head. “Indians?”

  “Indeed. Those savage tribes teach their youth how to fight at an early age. And the Indians fought as those bushwhackers in Missouri and elsewhere. Slash. Hit. Kill. Run.”

  Fallon massaged his sore arm.

  “You see my point, don’t you, Mr. Alexander?”

  “Well . . . the bushwhackers in Missouri are mostly dead now. The Indians are a defeated race.”