Mr. St. John

by Loren D. Estleman

“I don’t want to hear about Congress. Didn’t I hear enough from them when they were whittling away at my jurisdiction? What are you doing now?”

  “Looking for a fellow named Buckner.”

  “Why?”

  He robbed some banks and trains. And his cousin killed George American Horse.”

  “Oh, yes, the Crow tracker. I remember when he testified in the Blackleather trial. He was your friend, wasn’t he?” He read the answer in St. John’s eyes. “Well, this sort of thing won’t do. You know my policy on personal vendettas. Let someone else take charge of the manhunt.”

  St. John was embarrassed. “Beg pardon, your honor, but this isn’t your honor’s case.”

  Parker gave him a look that would melt stone. Then his face relaxed by degrees, as from an effort of will. He sat back in the armchair. “We’re cut from the same bolt, you and I,” he said calmly. “We both place justice ahead of everything, including the law. That’s why the Congress shoved me aside, and it’s why there’s no more place for you on the frontier.” He paused. “I’ve saved you a seat in the gallery, Swami Ike.”

  “I—I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “Oh, but you will.” Parker smiled faintly behind his hand, as he used to do during light moments in court. “That will be all, St. John. We’ll talk again soon.”

  He awoke in darkness with a great weight on his chest. He tried to fill his lungs and failed. His heart thudded irregularly in his ears. He sought to take his mind off his discomfort by pondering his dream, but the details were already fading. He felt nauseated. His left arm had fallen asleep. Awakening, it tingled. Worst of all was his inability to get enough air. Then he remembered Judge Parker’s last words, and when the real pain came it found him in the gallery of the courtroom in Fort Smith.

  At first light Wild Bill Edwards tried to awaken him, recoiling when his hands touched the cold stiffness under the blanket.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The Border

  Through the window of his ground-floor quarters in the El Paso rooming house, Race glowered at the guards on the bridge leading across the Rio Grande into Mexico and waited for darkness. The room was a reconditioned pantry with a side door leading into the kitchen and through it to freedom outside if someone he didn’t want to see came to the front. He had a bed and a washstand, and it was all costing him only a thousand dollars a day. His face was on every wall and post for a dozen blocks.

  He made himself as comfortable as possible on his back in the hollow of the mattress and contemplated the cracks in the ceiling, thinking of Jim Shirley. He missed the cripple more than he missed Merle, with whom he had never really gotten along and whom he had more than once considered cutting from the gang because of his constant grousing over the conditions of life on the scout. Shirley’s quiet strength had been a thing to rely on in emergencies, and Race had liked him besides. The Indian woman was already a shadow, as easily forgotten in death as she was in life.

  Too late, the fugitive had discovered that outlaw income was directly related to the cost of being wanted, that the things ordinary citizens took for granted came at a premium when one was forced to depend on less conspicuous channels. The seven thousand dollars left in his possession would buy him a week’s lodging at the going rate. He knew now that the stories of the James gang’s buried wealth were just stories; the shovel alone would have cost them at least five hundred.

  Merle had been right about one thing: there would be no quitting. Though Mexico beckoned, it was too poor a country to support a man, and there was only one occupation on this side of the border that would keep food in his stomach. He would need help, of course. El Paso was full of talent. In four or five months, when his heels stopped burning, he’d come back across the river to recruit.

  He paid the sour-faced landlady fifty dollars for a fresh newspaper and spread it out on the floor to read, the way he had done since childhood. His eyes fixed on the item headed FAMED LAWMAN DEAD. The black-bordered piece was brief, drawing most of its material from newspaper accounts of Irons St. John’s adventures in the Nations. Little of his early life was public knowledge. The writer mentioned St. John’s recent bid for Congress and ended with the various rumors surrounding his activities at the time of his death.

  Race Buckner stopped reading and sat back on his heels. “So that’s who it was,” he muttered.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Going Home

  Blowing snow rattled against the depot wall in Cheyenne and stung like hot sparks wherever it found exposed flesh. It hissed against the wheezing boiler, running down in rivulets to join the condensed moisture dripping off the end of the steam jets. The drifting clouds of vapor felt like expelled breath and smelled like wet wool drying next to a stove.

  Emmett Force Rawlings was waiting on the platform when Wild Bill Edwards stepped down from the last car and hailed him. The Pinkerton’s face brightened. It was a trifle pale, and the hollows in his cheeks together with his beard gave him the look of an early martyr. His checked suit and overcoat hung on his frame. He waited for the sharpshooter to join him.

  Edwards set down his traps and gently accepted the gloved hand that was gingerly offered him. The detective’s grip was steady, though a tad weak. “How you feeling?”

  “Like a horse kicked me,” said Rawlings. “Dr. Urquhart screamed bloody murder when I said I was leaving. I think he was planning to publish a paper on my case. But an anvil couldn’t have held me to that cot after I read your wire.” He breathed some of the steam-sodden air. “Where is he?”

  “In a box in the baggage car. I had to use some of that advance the Cap’n gave me in Kansas City to get him on this run. W.R. Hearst’s aboard in a private car and I’m told he don’t much hold with dead ones sharing his train.”

  A porter picked up Rawlings’ bag and carried it on board. Said the Pinkerton: “I wired his widow in Rock Springs. She’s taking care of the funeral arrangements there. Will you be coming with me the rest of the way?”

  Edwards shook his head. “What about Race Buckner?”

  “The agency has authorized me to gather a new posse and follow him into Mexico if necessary. The legal papers will be waiting for us in El Paso when we reach the border. I’d like to include you,” he added.

  “No, you wouldn’t. I’d be Race’s best friend in your camp. If I thought otherwise I’d of went on chasing him after the Cap’n—” He shrugged.

  “I’ve always been curious about that. Why did you call him ‘Captain’?”

  Edwards blinked rapidly behind his spectacles. “Because that’s what he was.”

  Rawlings didn’t pursue the point. “He was a hard man to understand,” he said, glancing toward the windowless baggage car.

  “Not to me.”

  “The agency will make good on its offer of a thousand dollars for each of the gang members killed.” The Pinkerton was changing the subject. “They didn’t want to agree to St. John’s wages of two hundred per week, but I burned up the wires between Denver and Cheyenne until they gave in. I can’t accept any of the reward, so half of it goes to you. St. John’s widow gets the rest. Neither George nor Pierce left heirs.”

  “Send me a draft care of the Brevoort Hotel in New York City. I stayed there once with Comanche Tom’s show. I reckon they’ll hold it for me. My gratuities run high when I’m flush,” Edwards explained.

  “What will you do in New York City?”

  “Well, I’ll be spending most of my time across the river in New Jersey, try to get into moving pictures. They’ll be needing sharpshooters in them Westerns. I got two, maybe three good years left and I reckon they’ll put them to good use.”

  Rawlings made no comment. They both knew the chances of a man who wore eyeglasses making a success on the screen. “You won’t reconsider and come with me?”

  Again Edwards shook his head. “But I can give you some names.” He recited some, providing general locations where he could, while the Pinkerton scribbled in his pocket pad. Edwards
hesitated before concluding, “I got to say some of them have done time behind bars.”

  “I hardly thought otherwise.”

  The train whistle blew. Rawlings put away the pad and extended his hand, smiling sadly. “Good luck.”

  Edwards grasped it. “You too, Cap’n.”