Mr. St. John

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Yeah.”

  The deputy explained his mission. “Let me just step inside,” he concluded, when the owner of the eyes started to refuse. “Just so I can tell the marshal I looked.”

  After another short silence the peephole clacked shut and something rattled. The door opened, revealing a paunchy man attired in Wells Fargo’s new charcoal-gray uniform with the flap unbuttoned over his side arm. He moved aside to admit the pair. “Make it quick.”

  The car was a windowless box equipped with a hard wooden chair apiece for the guard and the clerk—a stout, fiftyish man whose salt-and-pepper whiskers matched his rumpled suit—a table between them upon which rested a deck of cards and two hands of poker laid face down, and a large black iron safe bearing the WELLS, FARGO & CO. logo painted in gilt letters across the front. Once inside, the conductor limped over to the one vacant chair and dropped down with a loud grunt of relief.

  “Satisfied?” said the guard to the deputy, who stood just inside the door glancing around. “‘Lessen you figure he’s little enough to fit in the safe.”

  The clerk snorted. Even the conductor snickered in a distracted way, massaging one throbbing foot through the thick oxford. The deputy joined in good-naturedly.

  “Open it up,” he said, still laughing.

  The guard’s cynical chuckle rose to a guffaw. The others laughed too, except for the deputy. Then they all fell silent, contemplating the gun in the young man’s freckled hand.

  “Hold it.”

  Long-nosed and furtive in a black cutaway, the photographer resembled a six-foot crow crouched behind the camera and tripod, one spindly arm holding up a flashpan heaped high with magnesium powder. He drew a shallow breath, held it, and squeezed the bulb in his other hand. The coach swelled with blinding blue-white light, bleaching out shadows and trapping the grim faces of the men seated on both sides of the aisle, for schoolboys and antiquarians to study fifty years hence and wonder what demons drove the tense bodies strung with iron and leaning on Winchester rifles among the cigar bums on the leather seats. Then the light retreated and black, acrid smoke rolled through the coach.

  “History is grateful, gentlemen,” announced the photographer, folding his tripod. He was gone before the air cleared.

  George American Horse wrenched open his window to breathe and watched Wild Bill Edwards, who had excused himself from the historic sitting, supervising the loading of their horses into the livestock car behind the coach. The animals were all short-coupled and thick of haunch, all in solid duns and grays without a paint or an appaloosa among them. In that respect, he mused, St. John hadn’t changed; mottled coats signified too many bloodlines for his trust.

  But in other ways the posse chief was a stranger. True, he showed his age, but his character had altered in ways that years alone couldn’t explain. Where, for instance, was that nervous energy that used to spark from him like telegraph signals, so that even when he tried to sit still his drumming fingers and tapping toe gave him away? The St. John he knew would have been on his feet that instant after the shutter was released, barking instructions to the train crew, taking charge of every detail of their departure, not trusting the smallest task to anyone but himself. This St. John, relaxing in the seat in front of him and watching the smoke curl up from the end of today’s cigar as if it might wander in the wrong direction, would take some getting used to, as did the near-teetotaling St. John he had met in the hotel and the failed politician who had laughed tolerantly at Edwards’ crude joke about his loss. Judge Parker’s deputy would have knocked Wild Bill across the room. Perhaps his many disappointments had mellowed him, forced upon him the role of philosopher. Or perhaps, the Indian concluded with a sigh, it was he, George, who had changed.

  Pierce remained the same, worse luck. Immersed as ever in his prop Bible across the aisle from George, the old hypocrite looked as saintly as he had that day in ‘96 when they parted company for the last time after bringing in that three-quarter-breed rapist from what was left of the Cherokee Strip. Soon after, Congress disbanded the Fort Smith court and, as if that were the final blow, the Judge himself died, bringing to an end the most remarkable chapter in the history of the frontier. For twenty-one years the stem Ohio Methodist had sat in judgment over seventy thousand square miles of Indian territory—fourteen of those years with no appeal between himself and God Almighty—trying in the process 13,490 defendants and hanging 79. Many of whom, thought George, were no worse than the man seated across from him peacefully committing the Scriptures to memory.

  His own distaste for Testament stemmed not from the glee with which he took human life, or even from his preference for virgins aged eleven to sixteen (a far greater crime in those parts), but from a purely personal hatred. Pierce believed—and it was not an unpopular delusion—that Indians were descended from that lost tribe branded by God with the mark of Cain and driven from Israel and as such deserved extinction. The Crow had met his share of redskin haters, but none held such frightening, fanatical faith in the righteousness of his prejudice. Zealots of Pierce’s stripe were capable of carrying such a conviction to its fatal extreme at any time without warning, and from what little George had seen of him since their reunion, he suspected that his beliefs were unchanged. Fainter, maybe, and not so likely to erupt into violence without provocation, but there, lurking beneath the pious facade like rats behind the wainscoting. The Indian had never slept soundly in a camp that contained Midian Pierce.

  The posse had grown by two since yesterday. Paco and Diego Menéndez, sitting behind Pierce, leaned morosely on their repeaters and took turns staring out their window with hostile dark eyes. The brothers—if they were brothers; St. John could get through to them with his Spanish but deciphering their Yaqui-and-Mexican dialect was difficult—had ridden in the night before looking for a place with the group. Paco was whipsaw-lean, with a black moustache describing an inverted V over the corners of his mouth and matching scars from ears to chin. His taller, bulkier companion had bowlegs and combed his blue-black hair straight back from forehead to collar. All anyone knew about them was that they used to ride with a cattle rustler named Villa below the border. St. John felt they might be useful at one quarter the wages he was paying the others. They spoke very little even between themselves, but the Indian suspected that they understood more English than they let on. He didn’t trust them any more than he did Pierce.

  Of Rawlings, now perched on the edge of the seat opposite St. John, rummaging through a large open satchel balanced on his knees, George could make little. Like most Pinkertons he was tense and disapproving of his companions, but since he spoke of nothing beyond their mission and kept most of his opinions to himself, his true character remained elusive. That would change, George knew. If you want to learn everything about a man that’s worth knowing, camp with him.

  Rawlings had traded his city clothes for denims and canvas, topped off by a sombrero-like hat with a tall crown and a broad flat brim, and appeared to be inspecting the contents of his bag to make sure nothing had been forgotten. One of the items thus scrutinized was a portable Kodak camera not much larger than a collar box, considerably more compact and less complicated than the photographer’s cumbersome version.

  “Illustrating a book, Mr. Rawlings?” asked St. John.

  The detective glanced up at his inquisitor, then rewrapped the piece of equipment in a black cloth and returned it to the satchel. “I hope it won’t be needed,” he said. “I’m required to take pictures of slain fugitives to be checked against Bertillon measurements in Washington for identification from the records. No living person has ever been photographed by this camera.”

  “We’ll try to see you don’t use it,” said St. John. “But don’t count on it.”

  Rawlings glanced uneasily at the others. “May we speak in private?”

  “Sure thing.” St. John got up and led the way past George to the rear platform of the car.

  The air between the coach and the livestock c
ar where the horses could be heard shuffling and snorting was cold and moist. A mildew-colored sky cast its shadow over the railroad yard and made a dirty smudge of the Kansas City skyline. Even the Missouri River looked motionless and dull. Brown smoke grew crookedly out of factory stacks on the Kansas side. A good day to cut your throat, Rawlings’ coal-mining father used to say.

  “I recognize that you’re in charge of this expedition,” said the Pinkerton, leaning his hands on the platform railing. “But as far as the agency is concerned, I’m responsible for its outcome.”

  “Sounds about right.” St. John puffed his cigar and watched the yard gang greasing the journal boxes. He was wearing an old-style cavalry campaign hat and a hip-length corduroy coat with a bearskin collar. Both had seen much use but now stank of mothballs.

  Rawlings continued. “The Union Pacific feels no qualms about bountying the Buckner gang dead or alive. Pinkerton does. If we bring in a wagonload of corpses, I’ll have failed in my duty as surely as if we came in empty-handed.”

  “Get to the point, son.”

  “To begin with, it strikes me I’m the only member of this posse who doesn’t have a criminal record.”

  The old lawman shifted his weight to look at him. In his trail clothes he looked younger and more rugged than he had at the hotel. “In the first place,” he said, “you’re wrong. George never did a day in jail. In the second place, none of us are killers, except for Testament. I can’t say about the Mexicans. Just having killed doesn’t make you a killer. And you’ll go a long way out here before you find a man you can count on who hasn’t had paper out on him someplace. You knew my past and you still came looking to hire me. I didn’t ask you for this job.”

  “That’s not my—” Rawlings began, but was cut off.

  “I said already we’d try to bring them in upright and breathing. But you got to understand that doesn’t amount to much when it comes down to us or them. They just stuck up a train in ‘Rado for twenty thousand in cash and securities. They didn’t shoot anyone, but it’s sure they would of if something went wrong or a blooded engineer and an armed guard wouldn’t of stood by and let them. When we meet up with them, that’s what I want you thinking about, and not what your boss will say when you dump a load of dead meat on his doorstep.”

  The Pinkerton grimaced. “What about Pierce? You say he’s a killer. Can he be controlled?”

  “He isn’t a dog,” said the other, with exaggerated patience. “I brought him in because he knows how these people think and because when the time comes to kill he’ll do it without having to think about it. Morals are a fine thing, Mr. Rawlings, but sometimes they get the wrong people killed.”

  “That leaves the Mexicans. What do we know about them?”

  “They know their way around guns. With some men you can tell that by looking at them. That’s all I need to know right now. If they give us trouble later, we can always shoot them.”

  The detective looked at him, wondering if he was joking. No smile greeted him. “I hope I haven’t made a mistake,” he said, after a long moment.

  The locomotive whistle blew, a hoarse stridency that set the platform buzzing. St. John clapped a hand on Rawlings’ shoulder.

  “One thing’s sure,” he announced. “Good things and mistakes are done when they’re done and there’s no changing them. Come on inside. You’ll like the scenery betwixt here and Elephant Crossing.”

  The 6 P.M. from Lincoln to Kansas City chattered over the rails at a steady forty miles per hour, its lighted windows painting a yellow streak through the night. In the third coach the conductor handed back the last passenger’s ticket and paused near a black porter carrying a cuspidor with his hand inside to avoid smearing the gleaming finish.

  “See that fellow in back?” he asked the porter.

  The Negro looked at the big man in the last seat, glaring sullenly at the inky blackness outside his window. He was young, but his eyes were hard and his face looked pale and drawn. A kerchief tied around his neck couldn’t conceal a startling splash of white at the throat. On the seat in front of him was hooked a stout cane with a rubber tip. “You means the man with the bandage?”

  “That’s him. Got a stiff leg to boot. How’d you figure he came by an ugly wound like that?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said the conductor. “Besides, I don’t think he can talk. You know what I think? I think he’s an outlaw.”

  “Maybe a lawman.”

  “Same thing. Looks like the devil’s chasing him, don’t he?”

  “Or like he chasing the devil.” The porter touched his hat and returned to his errand.

  For a while the conductor watched the mysterious passenger. Then he gave up and went forward, leaving ex-Sheriff Fred Dieterle to the demons he saw lurking outside.

  Chapter Seven

  Stolen Hours

  While Irons St. John and company were steaming toward Colorado, their quarry was crossing a snow-covered basin five miles south of Pinto Creek, Wyoming. Chins huddled into their chests so that their hat brims met their standing collars, the four slouched along astride lathered mounts whose breath steamed in the crisp air, casting a smoky haze over the scene that reduced the riders to figures in a faded tintype.

  The man in front bore little resemblance to the jaunty youth pictured on Rawlings’ dated bulletin. Two days’ rusty stubble and a bad sunburn aged him ten years instead of three, and the eyes that glared red-rimmed and watering out of the shadow of his bent-down brim had neither the arrogant directness of the eyes in the photograph nor the earnest, trustworthy look that haunted the nightmares of such as former Bank Manager Thorson and Engineer C. T. Goddard. He rode, as was his habit, with one gloved hand on the reins and the other resting on his left thigh, leaving most of the work to the horse. All he had to do to display his cowboy training was step into leather.

  The old man watching them from the door of the exhausted soddy slid his binoculars along the single-file procession, taking in the older, tense man riding behind the young leader; the cripple with his reins wrapped around one stump; the Cherokee woman bringing up the rear in white man’s clothes, her face pumpkin-shaped and oriental under the ruins of a felt hat dragged down over her long hair. Behind them the broken teeth of the Laramie Mountains gnawed at a dull steel sky.

  When they were still outside rifle range the group halted. The man in front stood in his stirrups, his eyes moving past the building and the five horses in the corral and combing the terrain beyond. At length he drew his hip gun and fired a shot into the air. The old man saw the smoke before he heard the report, warped by wind and distance and echoing lispingly off the mountains that ringed the basin. In response he hoisted his Springfield rifle and sent a bullet through the overcast. The blast deafened him momentarily, as if his ears had been boxed.

  Someone let out a whoop and the riders charged the cabin. The horses put up only a token protest, for they had caught the welcome scent of wood smoke. Tiny arcs of snow flew off their hoofs.

  “You’re late,” observed the old man, as they dismounted before the door.

  Merle Buckner snorted. His moustache was ragged and the ends were frosted white, making him look like a contemporary. “A hunnert and fifty miles ain’t a walk around the house. You ought to try her sometime, get rid of that gut.” He poked the other’s hard belly, spilling out through the aperture left by his coat’s being buttoned only at the neck.

  “Done her a thousand times,” the old man retorted. “And I had this gut when you was still on ma’s milk.”

  “That’d be about last year, wouldn’t it, Merle?” Race Buckner laughed and stamped snow off his boots before entering the hut.

  While the Indian woman saw to the horses, the others gathered around a shaky wooden table inside. A fire burned fitfully in the stone fireplace, spitting inadequate yellow light now here, now there, making shadows crawl on the bug-infested walls. Merle opened his coat and unstrapped a canvas money belt
from around his middle. He grunted in relief as he flung it down on the table. “Damn thing’s been gnawing holes in my hide for a hunnert miles. I should get a bigger cut just for carrying it.”

  “You volunteered,” Race said, opening the compartments and pulling out fistfuls of bills. “You wasn’t family, I’d of thought you was fixing to head south.”

  “I like the feel of it. Or I did.” He unbuttoned his shirt to examine the sores in his flesh.

  “Any shooting?” The old man stared transfixed at the cash coming out, his pale tongue moving from side to side in his stubbly white beard.

  Merle shook his head. “Like opening sardines. I thought you said that engineer was hard.”

  “He was back in ‘97, when Ted Northrup’s bunch tried to take that Army payroll. Put Ted’s little brother in the ground like he was a carrot seed. Ted never was the same after. They hung him in Texas after he robbed a general store and kilt the clerk. A general store, for chrissake! Frank and Jesse would of kicked his ass.”

  “Carroll, you do stretch a man’s tolerance,” said Merle, doing his shirt back up. “The James boys, the Daltons, Butch Cassidy—ain’t there anyone famous you didn’t ride with?”

  “William Bonney. Me and Billy never did work the same place at the same time, though we did share a bottle once in Roswell.” He chuckled, ending on a phlegmy cough. “He had the ugliest whore I ever—”

  “Shut up while Race is counting.”

  Carroll swallowed his retort. Jim Shirley, the double amputee, was watching the younger Buckner’ s hands separating the crumpled bills and notes into piles for enumerating. He seldom spoke. The gang had from time to time included transients who drifted in, rode with them for a while, then drifted out; carrying away the belief that he was mute as well as crippled. Silent, armed men had always unnerved Carroll, and on those rare occasions when this fellow whose revolver was attached to one stump gave voice to a command, the old bandit tended to obey.