Three heads nodded.
“Of course. Well, Lobo Blacke is going to thrash this all out, and it might be nice for you to be alive when he does it, especially if it works out your way.”
Feathers was muttering half under his breath, “It’s a trick, it’s a trick,” but I think the old man could see I was sincere. I was about to press the point home when the princess attacked me.
She was a naked wildcat, all claws and teeth, and she seemed to be in a dozen places at once. I could have shot her, I suppose, but I’d been so intent on putting the idea across that I was out to save their lives that I couldn’t make the mental transition in time.
Then the princess did another surprising thing. She broke her vow of silence.
“Run!” she screamed in a voice so tortured it might well have come from ancient Egypt.
Feathers didn’t wait to take her up on it. In seconds, he was in and out of the wagon with two sacks of money, then up on a horse tied to the back, and he was gone. By the time I managed to throw the princess off me, there was nothing left of him but echoing hoofbeats.
13
BUT THE PRINCESS WASN’T gone. She was coiling for another spring when Herkimer said, “No. No, my darling. You mustn’t. We must go with the man.”
She looked at him as if he were insane.
“Yes, we must. Joseph has made a grave mistake in running away.”
Grave may just be the word, I thought.
“We’re innocent, my princess. We have harmed no one. If we run away, not only do we risk our own lives, but even if we did get away, we could never again draw a peaceful breath. We must clear our name. And the name of Ozono.”
The princess dropped her head and stood there, helpless.
“All right,” I said. “Back inside, with me this time. Get dressed. Touch nothing but your clothes.”
They dressed as I watched. Herkimer didn’t bother with vest, collar, or tie. The princess, for her part, put on a chaste gingham dress with a high lace collar that wouldn’t have been out of place in Rebecca’s current wardrobe.
When they were finished, I made Herkimer get their horse and hitch him up. Then I made the princess get out there with him on the board, told him to take the reins and head the wagon for town at a decent clip. I sat just inside the open doors of the wagon itself, holding the gun in my right hand and trying to assess the damage done to me by the princess with the other.
My eyes were still in their sockets, and no blood was actually flowing anywhere on my face; it just stung so much, it seemed as if there should be. I supposed I’d have to be contented with that.
I made him stop a little way down the trail while I retrieved Posy and tied her to the back of the wagon. It was a ticklish maneuver, and I shouldn’t have even attempted it. A calm old horse like Posy would wander on home when she got lonely. But I didn’t think about that until later. In the meantime, I was encouraged that neither Herkimer nor the princess did anything about trying to escape.
The sky was lightening to the east. That scared me. I’d taken too long at this. Blacke had said the mob would be in full flower by dawn, and that wasn’t too far away.
I told Mr. Herkimer to go a little faster. He obliged, and he also got conversational.
“You seem a rather cultured man to be a deputy sheriff in this part of the world.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, I’m hoping to shrink into the job.”
“Witty, too,” Herkimer observed.
I decided I’d be happier chatting than worrying about what we were going to face as the sky got lighter and the sun popped up over the horizon.
“All right. As long as we’re buttering each other up, I’d like to say you seem to be a rather honest man for one in your profession.”
“Having known numerous others in my profession, I will take that as a compliment. But what makes you say so?”
Now that he wasn’t orating, it was possible to detect the trace of an accent in his voice, from somewhere in the Southwest—Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, something like that. They all tended to sound the same to my eastern ears, but Blacke could tell the difference.
“You’ve had two pretty good chances to escape, but you haven’t taken them.”
He turned around a little so I could see his smile in the growing light
“Ah, my friend, that wasn’t honesty. My honesty manifests itself in the wholesomeness of Ozono. I shudder to think what some other medicine men put in their tonics.”
“Silver nitrate,” I suggested.
“Oh, no. Not that. That would turn a man—”
“Yes, I know. So what do you call your willingness to be brought in?”
“Practicality. A man in my field must be above all a practical man. I love what I do, and I do it well.”
His pause seemed to invite a comment. I obliged. “Superbly.”
“Thank you. But as I’m sure you can appreciate, my livelihood depends almost entirely on attracting notice. If we became fugitives, the only way we could even hope that the mob or the law wouldn’t catch up to us would be to abandon this wagon, and our entire life. And my princess and I love the life I lead.”
“You might still be convicted of something, you know. This is a mighty angry town.”
“And properly so.” He bowed his head. “Dear Lord, have mercy. But do I not have your promise that the great Lobo Blacke is going to lay the blame for this horror where it truly belongs?”
“I said he’d work on it. And what’s wrong with Feathers? Does he lack your love of the business, or does he not have any faith in Blacke?”
The old man sighed. “Joseph is young and headstrong. He’s learned he can’t trust everyone, but he has yet to gain the deeper wisdom that life is impossible unless you know when to trust someone.”
“And I’m that special someone, am I?”
Again the smile. “In the circumstances, trusting you seems like the practical thing to do.”
“It certainly is your best chance,” I conceded. “I don’t suppose Feathers’s idea of practicality would include circling around and setting up an ambush?”
I was surprised when I heard myself say that. It was the first time this whole night that I had thought of any possible problem before it actually occurred.
“Oh, dear Lord, I hope not,” Herkimer said, and he sounded sincere. But I reminded myself that while Herkimer might be the most honest medicine-show man walking the earth, that still didn’t say much.
Well, I told myself, I hope you’re satisfied. Now you’ve given yourself two things to worry about. And worry about them I did. I worried myself sick about them for the next twenty minutes. Then we ran into the mob, and I stopped worrying about Joseph Feathers.
They were just at the north fringe of town, on Railroad Street, not too far from Jennie Murdo’s cottage, a little way below where the street itself peters out to the north trail.
And mob was the word for them. I saw guns, but they didn’t even seem to have a rope. It was still a murky, predawn light, so I couldn’t make out any of the faces of the crowd, but I knew it would include some people I’d seen and smiled with every day for the past five months.
I grabbed Feathers’s Winchester repeater—I’d had the old man retrieve it while he was hitching up the horse—holding my pistol dead on him and making him hold the rifle only by the barrel.
Then I said, “Stop the wagon. You two get in back here.”
They showed no hesitation about obliging—more practicality, I supposed—and I replaced them at the reins. For reasons of morale alone, I snapped the reins and let the horse pull us on a few yards. Then the mob confronted the wagon directly.
A tall gangly man was at the front of the mob.
“Come down off the wagon, Booker. We got no quarrel with you.”
Stu Burkhart. Of all people. I never would have imagined him a leader of men. Stu seemed sober enough; maybe he’d gotten a look at what the arsenic had done and been shocked sober. I’ve heard it can happen.
“Unfortunately, you’re making it a quarrel. Stand aside, all of you.”
I hadn’t expected that to work, so I wasn’t disappointed.
“We’re going to get at those killers whether you like it or not!” came a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize.
“They’ve got to pay, Booker, and you know it.” That from Stu again.
“Listen,” I said. “Does anybody know how Asa Harlan is?”
“Real sick.” “Sleepin’.” “Doctor said he might make it.”
“Well, look at this badge,” I said.
“Asa Harlan pinned this badge on me just after he took sick,” I lied, “and told me to bring these people in. Bring them in to the sheriff’s office, to be locked up. Not hand them over to a crazy mob. Crazy with grief, maybe. But killing folks before you know all the facts will just make this worse.”
“We’ve got all the facts we need!”
“We mean to have them, Booker.”
“If you mean to have these people,” I said quietly, “you’re going to have to kill me first.”
Stu Burkhart was just as quiet “If that’s the way it’s got to be, Booker.”
For effect, I raised the Winchester to my eye and sighted down the barrel at the bottom of Stu Burkhart’s neck. I didn’t need to do it. I could hardly have missed from that distance. But I wanted the people at the back of the crowd to see me.
I raised my voice. “Whoever’s going to shoot me had better get me in the head.” What the blazes, I thought, it had already worked once tonight. “Because a shot anywhere else, and I’ll ventilate him right here. And you folks behind him might find it healthier to stand aside. That’s good. Now, if innocent people have to start dying, Stu, you and I can be the first.”
This worked for a while. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of an end to it. Some of the mob were perfectly willing to sacrifice Stu and me and an unspecified number of others to get to the “low-down poisoners” in the back of the wagon.
The sun was well up now, and I could feel it hot on the side of my face. Sweat was beginning to gather in my hair, and I wondered how long I could keep this up.
Then I heard hoofbeats and the creaking of a buckboard being driven too fast. It reined in as close behind the mob as I was in front of it.
“All right, Booker,” said the welcome voice of Lobo Blacke. “Nobody’s gonna do anything now.”
“That’s bold talk for a cripple!” came a voice from the crowd.
Blacke’s voice was deadly. “Who said that? I don’t care. Go for your gun. I’ll find you in the crowd and kill you before you clear leather.”
There was not a sound.
Blacke grunted. “So leave the bold talk for men with the tripes to back it up.”
There was grumbling.
“There’ll be no lynching,” Blacke said. “Simple as that.”
“You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” said the voice of Rebecca Payson, and I was so startled I took my eye away from its bead on Stu Burkhart. There she was on the buckboard next to Blacke, standing now, yelling at them like a firebrand at a temperance meeting.
“Ashamed of yourselves,” she said again. “Before Mr. Booker went out to fetch these people, he spent half the night with me, tending the sick. Mr. Barr, he talked your wife through the worst of it; the doctor says she’s going to live. Mrs. Paiswenden, the last gentle touch and kind word your husband ever knew was Quinn Booker’s.
“And now, you threaten to kill him because he stands in the way of your committing a wicked, evil act that none of you would even consider if you were in your right minds!”
I wanted to kiss her. While they were thinking that over, Blacke broke in. “And think about this. Now that Harlan is laid up, Booker is the law around here. I spent most of my life seeing that the law was enforced, and I’m not stopping now.”
Since he had his hand on his gun butt, this impressed even more of them.
“All right,” I said. “Now, break this up and go home.” Much to my surprise, they started to do so. I was beginning to believe I would get through the night alive, after all.
“Except for you, Stu. I want you to stroll yourself down to the sheriff’s office. It’s about a seven-minute walk—you can have ten.”
“Why the extra time?”
“You can leave your gun somewhere for safekeeping on the way.”
Stu made an ugly scowl and I thought he was going to say something, but I didn’t give him the chance.
“Just don’t make me come looking for you.” Then I snapped the reins and brought my prisoners off to jail.
14
MY LONG NIGHT WASN’T over until eleven o’clock in the morning. I left the keys to the jail, and a whole lot of guns, with Stick Witherspoon, Lucius Jenkins’s top hand, who’d been forced out of his bed by recovering arsenic victims over at Dr. Mayhew’s. Stick, as you may remember, took a bad leg wound last winter, and still wasn’t just right.
I went back to the Witness office, took a bath, had a late breakfast, then collapsed in my room for a two-hour nap. When I went downstairs, I found Blacke engaged in his twice-weekly checkers game with Lucius Jenkins.
That was Blacke, always probing, always looking for a way through Jenkins’s defenses. With all that had been going on, I personally would have been just as glad to put a long-term project like hanging my old friend on the back burner for a while.
I sat down at my desk and began to write up the story for Wednesday’s paper; we might even put out an extra.
I hadn’t even dipped my pen in the ink when Blacke said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
I told him.
“Afraid not, lawman. Your place is down the street.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Like we told the crowd this morning, Booker. With Asa out of commission, you’re the law in this town.”
“Nice job this morning, by the way,” said Lucius Jenkins without looking up from the checkerboard. Sunlight through the window gleamed on his bald head. “I never did think a man should be hanged without a court’s say-so.”
Blacke shot him a look, but there was nothing to read on Jenkins’s face.
Thanks,” I said. “And very droll, Blacke. But I’m not a lawman or anything like one. I just had Harlan deputize me so that I’d have some authority to get the job done.”
“Listen, Booker.” Blacke was using his “I’ve-got-no-time-for-nonsense” tone of voice. “You may know you’re not a lawman, and I may know it. Lucius knows it now, too. But to the people of this town, you are the law. If you try to put the badge down, that mob will be right back at the steps of the jail. And this time nobody will be able to talk them out of it.”
The sick, hollow feeling inside me told me Blacke was right. “But Harlan might be sick for days.”
Jenkins was nodding solemnly. “Maybe weeks. Doc Mayhew says there’s no doubt you saved his life. Sheriff asked me to thank you.”
“Yeah,” Blacke said dryly. “Lucius is a real Christian. Visiting the sick.”
“Good. He can come and visit me while I try to play sheriff.”
My face must have made an eloquent display of all I’d been feeling, because suddenly the two men at the checkerboard laughed, and for a second, you could think they were still just friends.
“You just better hope this poisoning distracts the other unfriendly elements around here, or Le Four is likely to experience a real crime wave.”
Blacke was still smiling. “It’s not as bad as all that, Booker. Lucius, as the town’s leading citizen, and I, as the owner of the local paper, have wired to Cheyenne to have a federal marshal sent out here and take over until Harlan’s back on his feet. Should take five days or less.”
“It’s better than weeks,” I conceded. I wiped a spot of now-useless ink from my hands and stood up. “I guess I’ll work out life as a lawman as I go along,” I said.
“Don’t be a martyr,” Blacke told me. “You can still have your meal
s here. But of course, you’ll have to sleep over there.”
I was glum. “I thought so. Have you seen Harlan’s quarters?”
“No, Booker. I don’t get upstairs much anywhere.”
“Well, in this case you haven’t missed much. The place is a pigsty.”
“Not anymore,” Blacke told me. “While you’ve been shirking your duties in slothful slumber, Becky and Mrs. Sundberg have been over there giving the place an overhaul. You won’t recognize it.”
“That’ll be a help.”
“Oh,” Jenkins said. “To do everything legal, I’ve set it up with the town clerk to put you and Stick Witherspoon on the payroll as full-time deputies. I’ll stand for the wages.”
“Thanks. But do you think Stick is up to it? Full-time, I mean? With that limp, and all?”
Blacke said, “Sure, he’s probably glad to have something to do. And don’t worry about the limp. There was a fellow Lucius and I knew back in Dodge, had a deputy with a limp. He did fine. What was his name, Lucius?”
Jenkins scratched his big black moustache. “Damned if I remember. Doolin? Something like that.”
I left them, went back upstairs to my room, and packed some personal things. When I came back, the game was over, and they were still reminiscing.
I said good-bye, put on my jacket and hat, and reached for the doorknob.
“Wait a second,” Blacke said.
“What now?”
“You should be wearing something you’re not, lawman.”
For what seemed like the hundredth time in the last fourteen hours, I pointed at the star on my vest.
“Not that,” Blacke said. “The gun.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
I unlocked the drawer in which it was kept and buckled the evil thing around myself again.
“If you get a chance,” I said, “I’d like for you to come by and pay me a visit later. I think we ought to have a talk.”
“I’ll be there,” Blacke promised. He was putting the pieces back on the checkerboard when I left.
In the short walk down the road from the Witness to the sheriff’s office, I already felt like a fraud. By the time I’d rung the bell, and Stick Witherspoon looked at me through the peephole in the new wood panel that replaced the glass I’d smashed, unlocked all the locks, moved the chair from under the knob, and let me in, I felt like an absolute fool.
Fatal Elixir Page 9
