by Ed Gorman
Whoever the old man was, he was three times as smart and four times as articulate as most of the pompous bastards in the national Congress. And he obviously had an effect on his fellows. Man and woman alike looked chastened by his words. A man sitting in front of Rafferty spoke up and said, “That’s a very wise speech you give, Nick. And I’m all for it.”
Before the crowd could stand up and make it unanimous, I stood up and faced them.
Rafferty, sensing what might be coming said, “You don’t have no say in this, federal man. Sit down. We all know you threw in with Terhurne here.”
“I didn’t throw in with anybody. I’m just doing my job. And Terhurne is helping me.”
Terhurne said: “Folks, I admit that I’m responsible for what happened in my own jail. And I know I need help to find out who killed Molly Kincaid. I know you think I’m arrogant sometimes—and sometimes I guess I am—but I’m not so arrogant that I don’t know a superior lawman when I see one. And that’s why I’m happy that Mr. Ford here is in charge of the investigation. I’m doing all I can to help him.”
Rafferty: “I wouldn’t need no help if I was runnin’ this investigation. I’d have the killer in jail or strung up by now.”
A few followers remained loyal and made some minor noises in Rafferty’s favor. But most seemed to see that even if they didn’t like Terhurne, he was asking for their sympathy and help. Apparently just admitting that he’d made a mistake was enough to shock most people at the meeting that night.
I said: “There’s an election coming up, folks. And I’m assuming there’ll be a couple of debates between the candidates. That’s the time to decide who you want to vote for. And I’d ask you to consider their histories and experience. Terhurne isn’t young anymore but from what I can see he’s got a very good deputy in Knut Jagland. And Knut’s getting a good grounding in law enforcement from Terhurne. I’d keep those things in mind.”
Rafferty: “I thought you weren’t takin’ any sides in this?”
“I’m not much for lynch mobs, Rafferty. And I don’t appreciate the way you called for this meeting tonight. You just wanted to embarrass Terhurne and nothing else. I don’t think that’s a good start for a man who wants to be a lawman. Stirring people up is always dangerous, no matter who does it.”
I glimpsed Liz Thayer sticking her head in the door, notebook and pencil in hand. She must have been covering things from the hall. No room to squeeze in. She’d want a dramatic finish for the evening but she wasn’t getting one. Nobody stood up and speechified. Reasonable people are usually quiet people. Terhurne hadn’t converted them back to his side. But I think they’d had a close look at Rafferty and now had doubts about him as anything more than a mouth without a brain.
Nobody said goodnight. Nobody came up to offer a hand. Nobody even nodded at us. They just filed silently out the door. Rafferty had disappeared.
Liz came into the room and walked up to us. “Going to be a close election, Sheriff.”
“I wonder if I even want it anymore.”
“Sure you do. Or your pride does, anyway. You might quit after you win. But you want to win first.”
“Damned pride,” Terhurne said. “And nobody’s got more pride than a mick like me.”
“Rafferty makes you look like a great statesman,” I said. “He’s doing you a favor by being in the race.”
“Where’s Knut tonight?” Liz asked.
Terhurne nodded to me. “Noah here thought it’d be good to make Knut night sheriff. Not have a kid at night. But a real sheriff. That’s his title now. Night sheriff.”
That had been the only way I could see to bring the younger, smarter Knut into prominence without damaging Terhurne any more than I had to. Day sheriff and night sheriff. It had worked for a while in Kansas City. No reason it wouldn’t work in Junction City.
“I’ve got to get back to the newspaper. You going back to your hotel, Noah?”
“Be my pleasure to escort such a fine-looking lady.”
Terhurne smiled. “I used to talk fancy like that. But it doesn’t work when you’re old. You just look silly.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, Terhurne, she’s always telling me how old I am.”
He studied me. “Well, I think she might have a point there.”
Liz laughed but I wasn’t so sure he was kidding.
“You know, he really shouldn’t be reelected,” Liz said as we walked down the street.
“I know. But look at who’s running against him.”
“That’s always been his saving grace. He’s never had any real competition.” Then: “God, wish I could put this night in a bottle and keep it with me all the time. Smell the apple blossoms. But you have to go back to your stuffy little hotel room and I have to go back to my newspaper.”
“We could always have a meal and talk.”
“You know what that means, Noah, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Too old, eh?”
“You know it’s not just that. I just can’t do things that way. Soon as you figure out what’s going on here, you’ll be gone. Then I’d be left feeling sort of—loose. I don’t like feeling that way about myself. A lot of the town women are already suspicious of me. Now that I’m divorced they think I’ve got my eyes on their husbands. I don’t want to give them the wrong impression by being loose.”
“Well, I guess that’s the way it’ll have to be.”
When she hugged me, the top of her head came right to the middle of my chest. Her breasts, her warmth, and woman scent of her made me lonelier than I cared to feel so I pushed her gently away.
“I’m kind of restless, I guess,” I said. “Think I’ll go have a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.”
“Thanks for understanding, Noah.”
She went inside the lighted newspaper office. Somebody was using the press. Looked like the same man I’d seen there earlier.
I wanted coffee but I also wanted a walk. Liz hadn’t been kidding about bottling that night. It was one of the soft warm nights when you’d sleep with the window cracked open and you’d feel good about things in a way you hadn’t for a long time. One of God’s small but indispensable blessings. Especially those apple blossoms.
I ended up downline from the depot where the railroad line kept a large garage for repairs. The smell of engine oil brought back boyhood. I’d been around the big trains long before they’d been able to call themselves transcontinental. I’d doted on trains the way other boys doted on hitting home runs. Trains were magical.
A small diner. A horse at the hitching post. The aroma of strong coffee and some kind of pie, probably apple.
The only other customer was a geezer at the end of the counter. He had set his teeth out next to his coffee cup and was pulling his mouth back into fake smiles. The storeboughts must have been giving him some pain. Old age sure didn’t look all that appealing.
A wiry bald man took my order and laid out my coffee and pie within a minute of my planting my ass on the counter stool.
Just after he set my coffee down, he glanced over my shoulder to the window. He must have seen something out there because his expression got tight and nervous.
He leaned in so Toothless down the way couldn’t hear. “I ain’t getting involved in this but there’s a couple fellas out there that I’m pretty sure are waitin’ for you.”
“You know them?”
“Like I said, I don’t want to get involved.”
The counterman went away. Toothless put his teeth back in, tossed some money on the counter, and left.
The counterman stayed away from me. I glanced over my shoulder only once. I got a ghostlike glimpse of a large man peering out from behind a tree to see if I was still in there. Another man peeked out moments later. They both wore the latest in bandana fashion for stagecoach robbers. Even in a glance one of the face-covering bandanas looked crusted with something. I didn’t like to speculate on just what that might be.
For the time, I was safe where
I was. But I didn’t plan to be for long.
To the counterman, I said: “There a back door?”
“Please don’t get me involved, mister. I got a sick wife.”
“All I asked was if you had a back door?”
“Yeah, but I should tell you it sticks pretty bad. Don’t tell ’em I told you that.”
I decided to make them wait a while. I read a page of a very old newspaper. I drank a second cup of coffee. And then I strolled over to pay my bill. You always want the person you’re watching to do something interesting. I made sure not to do a single thing interesting.
I would have to move fast. I drew my Colt and then made quickly for the back door to the right of the stove.
I could have run but I wanted to find out who they were working for. I had enough enemies in this town to be curious.
The counterman hadn’t been kidding about the door sticking. The kitchen had been scrubbed down and cleaned up for the night. Everything looked orderly. Except the door. You could see where weather had warped it along the edge and that it bloated out enough that it didn’t quite fit into the frame in places.
All this gave the thugs watching me the impression that I was going to run out the back door. I hoped they’d be tricked.
I managed to get the door kicked open and then I turned around and headed out the front way. By now the thug I’d seen running from the tree would be waiting for me in the back.
I stood just at the edge of the front of the building. He came racing around from the back. Running, he was off balance. All I needed to do was kick his legs out from under him.
He was a heavyset man in a red plaid shirt and dungarees. In the moonlight his bandana looked blue. His black wide-brimmed hat flew off when he slammed face first into the ground.
He hit hard enough that he let go of the club he’d been carrying. But the other hand still clutched the six-shooter. That was easily enough taken care of. Before he could even think of using it, I walked over and brought the heel of my boot down hard right on his knuckles. He lost his grip. I kicked his gun into the darkness.
He expressed his pain in curses. He knew some good ones. He’d been going to use his club on me, if not his gun. I didn’t owe him being gentle. I kicked him hard in the ribs.
His mask started to slip and he grabbed it with his good hand, pulled it all the way up to his eyes.
“Get up.”
He kept his face flat to the ground. He didn’t want me to see it. He didn’t look in any way familiar.
Curious then, I reached down and started to grab his mask. I was still aware that there was another punk lurking around somewhere.
That was when I heard the footsteps. Only afterward did I realize that whoever it was wanted me to hear the footsteps. He wanted me standing up so he could aim true.
And true it was. He threw a sizable rock at me. The force knocked me to the ground. He wasn’t finished. He must have realized how much he’d hurt me. All it took was one solid punch and I fell flat on the ground.
All I had time to see was a second at most of the masked thug grappling to his feet.
The one standing above me said: “You stay out of our business in town here.”
If either of them put more pain on me, I wasn’t conscious to hear it or feel it.
I was long gone.
Chapter 20
“And here I thought you were a tough hombre.”
The voice, female, was familiar. But who did it belong to?
“He got hit pretty hard, he did.”
“Yeah, but he’s federal. They’re supposed to be tougher than the rest of us.”
Whoever she was, her preferred means of communication was sarcasm.
I was struggling to get my eyes open. Having difficulty. And even when I did manage to get one of them open everything was so fuzzy I still couldn’t tell who was talking.
“I guess I’ll just have to write an editorial about how federal men just aren’t as tough as we’d thought.”
The diminutive Liz Thayer. Frontier journalist.
The scents then. Medical scents.
I was on an examining table.
The doc, who was a fleshy middle-aged man with thinning red hair, was presently putting a wooden stethoscope to my chest.
“His heart seems to be all right.”
“I’m surprised he’s got a heart.”
The doc laughed. “You’re a mean one, you are.”
Now both eyes were open. Liz leaned in and said, “I was just kidding you so you’d wake up faster. Getting mad gives you energy.”
“That’s her idea of medicine,” the doc said.
“I was walking home from the newspaper when a man came running up the street shouting. He took me over to you. We got you up on a horse and brought you over here. Which reminds me, I stole somebody’s horse. I’d better be getting it back.”
“I thank you for that.”
“Any idea of who did this to you, Noah?”
“The first one had a mask on. The second one I didn’t see at all.”
I made the mistake of trying to raise my head just a bit. The pain in my skull traveled all the way down into my shoulders. I heard myself groan.
“Probably not a good idea,” the doc said. “I’d just stay still.”
“I need to get back to my room. I’ve got things to do early tomorrow morning.”
“Not right away you don’t. I need you to lie here for an hour. I think you can probably manage that, can’t you?” Then: “Damned patients. You try to help them and they fight you all the way.”
“We heard you, Doc,” Liz said.
“Good. I meant you to.” He walked to the door. “Now you sit here and entertain him. I’ve got things to do in my little lab. I’ll be back in an hour.”
When he left, Liz said, “I’m going to find out who they were.”
“Who who were?”
“The two that did this to you.”
“I pretty much know they came from Rafferty.”
“I know. But I want you to know which two it was.”
“You got a stake in this?”
“Yes. If they’re who I think they are, they’re two men who need to get slapped around for a good long time. And you can do it.”
“You read too many dime novels. I’m no hero. Two men at one time. They’d put me right back here.”
“No, dopey. You’d go after them one at a time. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“Right now the last thing I want to think about is fighting.”
I closed my eyes.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t remember. But I read it somewhere. About when you suspect somebody’s got a concussion.”
“The doc didn’t say anything about that.”
“He probably forgot. I got him rattled. He thinks I talk too much.”
“I sure can’t imagine where he’d get an idea like that.”
“Very funny.”
At some point in the narrow silence that ensued I fell deep down into the welcome crevice of sleep. Luxurious, healing sleep.
Then: “So what’s so important about tomorrow morning?”
I woke again. “What?”
“I said what’s so important about tomorrow morning?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Must be federal, huh?”
“Very federal.”
“I talk too much but I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“Good for you. I still can’t tell you.”
“You’ve figured something out, haven’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“The payoff?”
Her words startled me. I started to raise my head but then groaned and laid it back down again.
“You shouldn’t try and sit up, Noah.”
“Thanks for the advice. And what the hell do you know about the ‘payoff,’ as you call it?”
“I’m a newspaper woman, remember
? Meaning I’m not stupid. Meaning I’ve thought a lot about what’s going on in this town. Meaning that Grieves and Dobbs got together. Dobbs had something secret he wanted to sell. Given the articles I read about him, he was obviously selling something the government considers secret. Dobbs wouldn’t know how to market it but Grieves would. Those were my first thoughts. Want to hear a few more?”
“I’m just going to lie here and pretend I’m dead. I’m not hearing anything you’re saying.”
“That’s because I’ve figured it out and federal men don’t want newspaper women to figure anything out. It threatens them. If a dumb little newspaper woman can figure it out, then maybe my job isn’t so tough after all. Maybe I’m not the big shot I think I am.”
“I’m not hearing any of this, remember? I’m officially dead.”
“So anyway, I’m trying to figure out who Grieves would be dealing with in town here. And when you analyze it, there are only two people it could be. And that would be Nan and Glen Turner. They’ve got connections somewhere. Probably everywhere. They pay Grieves and Dobbs so much money for the whatever it is and then they re-sell it for a lot more money somewhere else. Pretty good so far, isn’t it?”
“I know where this is leading and you’re not going with me.”
“Sure I am. And you can’t stop me. I may not be riding alongside you but I’ll be behind you somewhere.”
