“It’s how I operate,” Betsy says, doing her best to look coy and fetching.
“You was surprised Mr. Figgis was in town. I guess that means he hangs his hat elsewhere.”
“He got a nice little cabin up in the hills. About five miles from here. Well, it ain’t all his – he shares it with the other three fellows. They invited me to visit.”
“Four men, you say?”
“Yes, Mr. Figgis, Mr. Toomey, and a man they call Priest. I think he’s sweet on me too, but I don’t think priests is allowed to marry. And then the one who shooed me out of there, that blasted Mr. Dunne.” She wrinkles her nose. “Him I wouldn’t marry for love nor money.”
McMullen asks, “Could I take a chair, Miss Eberhardt?”
“Yes. But we only got two. When Grandpa comes home, you got to give it up.”
Betsy busies herself dragging the second chair out of a corner and up to the table. He lets the name Dunne sink in his mind, settles his breathing as she watches him with naked curiosity. “I’d like to pay your friends a visit too,” he says once he has recovered his coolness. “I wonder, could you tell me how to get to their cabin?”
Betsy launches into directions, but they’re so haphazard and mingled with chatter about how smitten the men in the cabin are with her, how jealous they are of each other, that by the time she’s finished Joe has only the vaguest idea of where they’re roosting.
“Miss Eberhardt, do you think you could make me a map?”
“I could, but there ain’t no paper nor writing things here.”
Joe considers for a moment, then takes out one of the handkerchiefs he bought for the wedding. “Maybe you could take a bit of coal and draw on this.”
“Oh, that’s too fine and pretty a article to dirty up!” Betsy exclaims.
“I got another in my pocket,” he says. “Picture me a map and the other’s yours.”
Delighted by the promise of a gift, she works away, twisting a lock of hair around her finger, giving him directions as she draws. “Right here is the roofs of Helena. You follow Mullan Road out of town about half a mile to this here stream,” she tells him, scribbling a wavy line on the cloth, “cross over it – it ain’t deep enough to get your feet wet – and move thisaways into the hills,” she says, making peaks and then laying down an arrow over top them. “Keep headed this direction maybe three more mile and soon enough, there you are, you’ve found it!” she cries triumphantly, slapping down an X on the cloth to mark the cabin. Finished, the map is a crude reference, but together with the information she’s supplied, Joe thinks he has a chance of finding the cabin.
McMullen places the other handkerchief on the table under Betsy’s admiring eyes and tells her he best be on his way.
“When you visit them boys you tell them they better come round and see Betsy soon. Tell them they ain’t the only fish in the ocean!”
“I’ll do that.”
Betsy follows him to the door. “Mister, how old are you?”
“Me?” says Joe, taken aback. “I’m fifty-four next birthday.”
Betsy thinks long and hard. “You’re nice, but I guess you’re too old. I reckon Figgis is a better age for me.”
“Yes,” says Joe, tips his hat to her and departs, feeling the throb in his bruised back and head. Maybe I am too old, he thinks, there’s a time I wouldn’t have felt a beating so. Taking the vial of Dover’s powder out of his pocket, he shakes a little into the palm of his hand and licks it up. He needs the opium to help his body do what is required of it now.
It’s a sorry, lamentable sight that greets Joe at the Franklin House. Hathaway is pacing the room in a frenzy. Ada sits on the bed, back bowed, face slumped in misery. She throws him an accusing look. “Why did you leave him, Joe? What were you thinking?”
McMullen wants to keep her from heaping blame and recrimination on her own head for running short on Dover’s powder. “I had to answer a call of nature,” he lies. “Gone but a few ticks. But I seen one of them.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “Whoever are they? Whatever can this be about?”
“I ain’t certain. But there seems to be four involved. Dunne is one of them.”
For a moment Ada sits motionless, a little bit of a sparrow frozen to a winter branch. Then she stirs, passes her hand over her forehead slowly. “Yes. Dunne,” she says in a feeble voice. “I see it.”
“We must go to the sheriff,” announces Hathaway, aglow with resolve. “These fellows must be made to feel the full weight of the law.”
“No,” says Joe, “I don’t want no posse made up of saloon scourings and halfwits blundering about in this. No sheriff calling out to Dunne to surrender his prisoner and give himself up. There ain’t no predicting what he’d do faced with that.”
Ada speaks with quiet desperation. “You’re saying his intention is to murder Wesley. Is that it, Joe? Is it?”
“I ain’t about to try to read his mind. But if all he wanted was Wesley dead, he could have attended to that directly, right here in this room. Instead, Dunne hauled him off. And I’m going to get him back.”
“Yes,” says Hathaway, “I see what you’re thinking. Fall upon them as they fell upon Mr. Case, without warning – effect a swift citizen’s arrest. I agree. Give me a moment to collect my revolver, Mr. McMullen, and we’ll be off.”
“You ainȁt going. You’re staying here to look after Mrs. Tarr.”
Peregrine bridles. “If you doubt my courage, Mr. McMullen, I assure you it will not fail. I would give my life for Mr. Case.”
“I don’t doubt that. But I’m better suited to what needs doing. I got no scruples,” says McMullen. “You’re a good boy, Peregrine, and scruples might get underfoot and bring us down.” He passes the handkerchief-map to Hathaway. “This is where they’re supposed to be at. Give me three hours. If I ain’t returned by then, fall back on the law. Tell them there’s four of them.”
Suddenly, Ada says, “There’s another way, Joe. The two of us could go in the cutter. If I were there, I might be able to reason with Dunne.”
“Never. Get that out your head.”
“I know him. If I came with you, if I appealed to him – I think it might stay his hand.”
“He ain’t the only one, Ada. There’s three more. I ain’t walking you into that. Understand?” He attempts an encouraging smile. “I’ll be fine. My granny foretold I was going to die in a bed. I walk out of here right as rain and that’s how I’ll come back.” McMullen hesitates, then declares, “And when I do I’ll have Wesley with me. I swear it.” He stands looking at her, willing his words to sink in. But there’s no change in her stricken face, no sign she believes him. So Joe quickly sidles through the door, feeling the weight of a vow he’s not sure it’s in his power to keep.
TWENTY-EIGHT
DUNNE HAS CONSIDERED IT from all sides. There’s no gainsaying it; Collins, as his contribution to the enterprise, has hung three millstones around his neck. Figgis, the lookout,
bungled his job, made a dog’s breakfast of it. He brags he smashed McMullen’s brains to jelly, left him as good as dead, but Dunne knows a lie when he hears it. Figgis lost his hood and was seen. And he won’t admit the damage he has done to the undertaking. He just frets and whimpers over his chewed-up arm. “A dog bite ain’t nothing to a man bite,” he says. “They infect up terrible. I got to see a doctor right quick or I’ll lose it.” Dunne knows Figgis. Sooner or later he’ll take himself off to Helena seeking medical attention. That can’t happen.
Case is chuffing like a steam locomotive, is hot as a tin stovepipe, his lips are turning blue, and it all falls on Michael Dunne’s shoulders to preserve this valuable property. Nobody else will lift a finger to help. He asked Priest to take a turn caring for the unconscious man. All he said was, “Oh, Mr. Dunne, I’m not like you. I lack the motherly touch.” Then he laid himself out on his bunk and dove down into sleep, began mumbling. Dunne catches a word here and there dropping from his lips. Priest is dreaming the Rosary
.
Toomey is outside keeping watch. He’s lit a roaring fire that is shooting up sparks like Bangalore rockets and flapping flames sky high, a beacon to attract any pasby. Dunne went out and told him to extinguish it, but Toomey said, “It’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey out here. If you think I’m putting this out, give it another think, Dunne.”
He has given it another think. That fire will soon be out.
If people won’t listen to common sense he must do what he must do.
The scrape of chair legs on the floor interrupts Dunne’s glum thoughts. Figgis is headed to the door, arm dangling like a wounded wing, face full of self-pity.
“Where you off to?” Dunne asks.
“To take a crap, if it’s any of your business.”
The door closes behind Figgis, and Dunne glances over to Priest, Hail Marying away, oblivious to the world. Dunne fetches a cool compress for Case’s forehead, smoothes and pats it down in place. Then he collects his tools.
Outside, he throws his eyes to the sky. There’s a breeze trundling sacks of cloud westward. The moon is full, a brimming basin of the purest, whitest milk. For an instant, a passing cloud curdles its surface, blighting the land in shadows, but then the moon reappears and fills the snowy clearing with a shimmering blue radiance. It sketches the trees against the sky in inky scratches. Padding along, Dunne sniffs the air. It smells of new snow.
When he jerks open the privy door, the moonlight swarms into the cramped space, turning Figgis’s surprised eyes greener than grass, causing the smouldering red of his hair to suddenly blaze. Dunne sweeps away the fire with a single stroke of the curved surgical knife, uncapping the skull. Figgis topples over on his side, soundlessly, ankles shackled in his lowered trousers. Dunne chops at the fallen body until it disintegrates, falls to pieces smoking in the cold air.
Breath gone, Dunne backs out of the charnel house of butchered meat. That, he thinks, got out of hand. The trees crowding the cabin rub their branches together in a low, soft moan. He wipes the sweat from his neck, spelling out in numbers the word for Figgis’s new condition. There’s an appealing, steadying balance, a shapeliness to the integers. Each ends in a 2. Each is divisible by 2. “12, 42, 52, 12,” Dunne says softly to himself. Dead.
Toomey’s great bonfire flares in his eyes. A hundred yards off, he can see it besieging the night, trying to scale its black walls with bright ladders. Toomey is standing before it in a grateful trance, arms extended, holding his palms to the crackling, snapping heat.
They have all lost their minds, thinks Dunne. Every last mother’s son of them.
Priest is awake in his bunk when Dunne trudges heavily into the cabin. Seeing him, Priest scoots his back hard against the wall, draws his knees up tight to his chest, pulls the blanket up under his chin, and goggles at him, dumbstruck. Dunne realizes there must be something amiss in his appearance. Inspecting himself, he finds suspicious matter speckling his shirtfront, sees his cuffs are soaked in gore, his hands gloved in scarlet, that his boots squelch blood.
Priest is shrinking himself up smaller and smaller and beginning to mewl like a famished cat. “Shush,” says Dunne, “shush now.”
When Dunne lays a hand to his shoulder, Priest springs up on the bed. He seems to be attempting to scramble up the log wall, hand over hand. Dunne plucks him back down on the mattress. Over and over, Priest hoarsely jerks out three words through clicking teeth, “I adjure you … I adjure you … I adjure you –” Dunne clamps a hand to his mouth, stopping the incantation. For a moment, the well shafts of Priest’s eyes transfix him; he stares down into them searching for their bottom, but all he can see are tiny reflections of his own face on their surfaces. Two Michael Dunnes, divisible by two. Then Priest begins to struggle violently, to flop and jerk, and his contortions cause Dunne momentarily to lose sight of himself.
The long-bladed knife makes its first pass through Priest as if he were made of feathers and air. His back arches; he wildly paws the handle of the surgical instrument in the same way he had frantically groped the log wall for an escape. Slowly, he slides down the blade and falls flat on the mattress. Dunne passes the knife through him four more times, measured, deliberate thrusts so he doesn’t lose control of himself the way he did with Figgis. Each one, he notes, causes the Michael Dunnes reflected in Priest’s eyes to fade a little. With the last thrust, they disappear entirely.
He shifts off the bed to prevent the blood creeping into the mattress from soaking his trousers, and stares woodenly at Case, wondering if his rest has been disturbed by Priest’s death throes. It doesn’t appear to have been. Dunne takes the corpse by the hair, drags it outside, and pitches it onto a snowbank.
He realizes the time has rolled round to change his patient’s cold compress. Before he does that, he fastidiously wipes his sticky fingers on his trouser seat. When he touches the forehead with the moist cloth, Case’s eyes flicker open, and recognize him for the first time.
“You,” he says.
“Yes,” says Dunne soothingly. “No need for worry. I’ll get you through this.” The look he gives him is almost fond. Dunne is remembering when Bishop Wilson had come to Stipendiary Magistrate McMicken and asked his old friend to investigate the gossip surrounding the death of his son, gossip that claimed Wesley Case should be held responsible for it. McMicken had obliged him by sending his best bloodhound, Michael Dunne, to nose around, find out what he could. And he had turned up a soldier, Sergeant Jimson, who had been witness to Captain Case’s villainy. But then, suddenly, McMicken had told him to let the matter drop. Despite the stench of wrongdoing, the bloodhound had been asked to pretend that he smelled nothing and to leave the dead cat lying under the floorboards.
Dunne had had no doubts that Case’s father, a man with close connections to the government, must have whispered a little something in the Stipendiary Magistrate’s ear. A bagman tipped the political scales more easily than a bishop. At the time he had resented Mr. Edwin Case’s interference, but now he’s grateful for it. Without it, this man wouldn’t be his to profit from.
Case’s eyelids flutter, close. His chest resumes a tortured rasing, the sound of a file being drawn against metal. Steam, Dunne thinks. That’ll help. He puts a kettle to boil on the stove.
He would prefer not to go and put out Toomey’s fire. There are other things he’d rather do. Scrub the filth off him. See to the health of this man who is worth twenty-five thousand dollars. Collins deserves none of the loot. He lost any claim to it by recruiting idiots unfit for the task. The money belongs to Michael Dunne now. He feels a little dazed, a little tired, but the thought of the ransom heartens him, bolsters his will as he waits a little for his strength to return before he steps back into the moonlight to remove the last obstacle to his peace of mind.
No matter whether he finds Wesley dead or alive, Joe means to see Dunne dead before the night is over, to close those pale, shallow eyes that have no more life in them than two saucers of stale water. Dunne is careful and cautious but maybe the same can’t be said of the other three. Men who get themselves involved in a crazy man’s plots are likely to be reckless and loose in all their habits. Maybe he’ll find them drunk, celebrating the capture, or careless in some other way that can be turned to advantage. He can’t count on it, but right now he needs a hopeful thought.
When Joe reaches the stream Betsy Eberhardt had wriggled down on his handkerchief, he casts about for signs of the captors’ passage, and discovers wagon tracks on the bank. Before going on, he cuts pine branches and lays them out on the ground in an arrow. If he doesn’t succeed in freeing Case and it happens to snow, as it looks it might, he doesn’t want a posse to give up the pursuit with the lame excuse that the trail had been blotted out. He will lead the lawmen by their noses so they do not shirk their duty; Case must have a second chance to be rescued if he fails in the attempt.
And this is how he continues to proceed, dismounting at intervals to mark the way at unexpected twists and turns. It slow
s his progress but he wants to leave no room for any confusion as to where to find Dunne and his crew.
After a long period of sitting silent, Ada asks Hathaway to see the map drawn on the handkerchief. She spreads it out on her lap, her forefinger hovering above the cloth, repeatedly tracing the lines and symbols of the crude drawing. Uncomfortably, Peregrine watches her do this, not daring to speak, wondering if this is a prelude to a case of hysterics. At last, Ada looks up at him, her face set. “McMullen is wrong,” she says. “We need the law.” She thrusts the handkerchief into his hand. “Take this to the sheriff. Tell him what has happened. Give him every detail. And see to it he gets moving.”
This is not what he had expected, this sudden show of decision. “But Mr. McMullen said to wait three hours before going to the sheriff. He was most definite on that point,” says Hathaway. “He must have his reasons.”
“He was mistaken in his reasons. This needs to be rectified. There’s no more time to waste. Don’t delay. Go!”
And Hathaway does as he is told.
Left alone, Ada’s mind whirls even faster, her apprehension mounting. She paces the room, thinking of how it is like a man to run so straight at a problem that he blindly runs by other considerations. Joe would not let her accompany him, but if he succeeds in rescuing Wesley, how is he going to get him back to Helena without a conveyance? Pack him out on the back of his horse? Without blankets? It would be a death sentence. And if she had not been in such a jangled state of mind she could have prevailed on him to take the cutter, which would make a serviceable ambulance.
She finds herself at the window looking up at a huge walleyed moon, imagines it staring down into the narrow chasm that holds the town of Helena captive within its steep sides, searching her out.
Go on, she urges herself. Go on. Plunge.
And plunge she does, goes flying about the room, tearing blankets from the bed, rolling them into a bundle, tossing a small bottle of brandy into her purse to warm and invigorate Wesley. The bottle makes an ominous chink. Fearing it has broken, she fumbles her hand inside the reticule and finds the bottle is still intact, encounters the small hard object it had struck. The chilly, slippery feel of the nickel causes her to pull back her hand. Grabbing the bedding, she hurries to the stable, has the liveryman hitch the team and light the lamps on the cutter. Soon she is away, guided by the map she has burned into her mind.
A Good Man Page 44
