Fatal Elixir

by William L. DeAndrea

  “No, ma’am,” I said. “But even if the Lord used this way to end your husband’s suffering, I don’t think he would have sacrificed thirteen other men, women, and children of this town to do it.”

  “Everyone has his destiny, Mr. Booker. I grieve for the families, but I don’t presume to question the Almighty’s purpose in allowing it to happen.”

  “His purpose? No. But my destiny, apparently, is to be the deputy sheriff of this town for a few days, and I intend to question whoever put the arsenic in the medicine. And everyone who might help me find that person.”

  She smiled approvingly.

  “We all do what we must, Mr. Booker.”

  “Did you see anything unusual at the medicine show, Mrs. Simpkins?”

  “Well, I don’t call a young woman dancing practically naked ‘usual,’ do you, Mr. Booker?”

  I suppressed a smile.

  “I meant anything that might help identify who did this. One witness has said he saw someone sneaking out of the wagon before the show, when the three showpeople were accounted for. Did you see anyone?”

  She squinted her bright blue eyes and put a finger to her chin while she concentrated.

  “Do you know,” she said after a few moments, “I believe I did. A small figure, coming down the wagon stairs a little while before the show started. I was going to knock on the door and ask if I could simply buy some of the product and go home, but I decided against it. I’m quite timid in some matters, Mr. Booker. But yes, your witness is right. I did see someone. May I ask who your witness might be?”

  “I wish you wouldn’t; I’d hate to have to refuse you. Can you tell me anything more about the figure you saw coming down the stairs?”

  “No, I really can’t. It seemed small, and quite dark, but it was late in the day then, and the shadows were deep, so that might account for that part of it.”

  “Was the figure carrying anything? Looking around? Did it make any noise?”

  She shook her head. “No, Mr. Booker. I truly am sorry. It was just a figure in the shadows that I saw for a matter of seconds. I used to stress to my pupils the importance of being observant, but now I find I’m no better than the worst of them. I truly am sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “At least now I’m sure the intruder did exist. Now, thank you for your time. If you should think of anything—”

  Then she gave a little gasping “Oh!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I just did.”

  “Just did what?”

  “Just did think of something.”

  “That’s quick results.”

  “I saw someone there, at the medicine show. Someone I hadn’t seen in years. An old pupil of mine. That’s what reminded me, you see.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Harold Collier.”

  “Harold Collier,” I echoed. The name seemed familiar to me.

  “Harold is in many ways a tragic figure. He was a very bright and willing boy, and a hard worker. He had arranged for his childhood sweetheart to come meet him here, so that they would be married in the spring—her family had moved to Texas, you see, I don’t recall her name—but over the winter, some horrid patent medicine had darkened his skin—”

  “The blue man,” I said. “Dr. Mayhew told me about him.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Simpkins said sadly. “He refused to see his sweetheart when she came. She went back to Texas, and no one has seen Harold for several years. I was one of the last people, I suppose, who spoke to him before he went into seclusion. When he showed up last night in gloves and bundled up in furs, I knew it was him. I tried to talk to him, but he pretended not to know me. I suppose that’s natural.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because the last time I saw him, he was swearing vengeance.”

  16

  THE FIRST THING I decided to do was nothing.

  I mean, I could have saddled up Posy and galloped hell for leather (whatever that means) out the forty miles or so to the place where Harold Collier had holed up, but I couldn’t see the point to it. If Harold were really as dedicated a hermit as he seemed to be, it might lead to another of those conversations that take place with the participants pointing guns at each other, and I was sick of those already.

  All Mrs. Simpkins had told me was that Harold Collier’s life had been ruined by a patent medicine man, and that he had (at the time) expressed a flaming hatred of the breed.

  At first, I was excited to hear it, though I realized shortly that I already knew it. I also realized that I had myself seen Harold’s fur-swathed figure at the medicine show. I could tell you one thing—he wasn’t a “small figure” by any stretch of the imagination.

  No. A talk with the blue man was definitely on my agenda, but he’d keep.

  I didn’t think it was Harold, anyway. It just didn’t feel right. Sure, he could have arsenic—everybody had arsenic. The two forms of wildlife the West had in common with the East were the robin and the rat, and arsenic was for rats. But why would he pick on this medicine show? How would a hermit with little or no human contact even know when one was in town?

  I shook my head as I took a long walk down Main Street. I just felt in my bones it was somebody closer to home.

  And at that, something was going on close to home. My new home, God help me, the sheriff’s office. Right out in front of it, in fact. A couple of cowboys had hold of Merton Mayhew. One, a redhead, had the boy’s arm twisted up behind his back; another, wearing a Mexican sombrero, had a hand around his throat.

  They weren’t doing the boy any immediate harm, and they were yelling something at the door of the jail.

  I ducked into a doorway. I didn’t want my sudden appearance to touch anything off. Also, I wanted to hear what they were saying.

  “Booker,” the one with the hand on the throat was saying, “we’ve got the doctor’s kid out here. We won’t hurt him if you just open the door.”

  There was a response from inside, but I couldn’t make out the words. I looked over the cowboys, but I didn’t recognize them. Not Jenkins’s men. I’d made a special effort to know the faces of all of Jenkins’s punchers by sight. These guys must have been from one of the smaller outfits to the south of town.

  Stick was done saying whatever he had to say. Diplomacy was obviously not one of his strong suits, because Sombrero’s face turned red, and his voice got even rougher.

  “Yeah? Well, I don’t really give a damn where he is, Witherspoon. What the hell’s the matter with you? You know that old bastard killed Shorty Rogers out at our place. When they kill your friend, you’ve got to do something about it, and we aim to!”

  Sombrero nodded at Red, and he jerked Merton’s arm a notch. The boy let out a yell.

  “Did you hear that, Witherspoon? We got nothing against the boy, but it’s gonna go hard for him if you don’t open up that damn door!”

  They’d gathered a bit of a crowd by this time, but the bystanders were afraid to do anything. Both men wore guns low on their hips, and they were already showing that nothing much was beneath them.

  I was proud of Stick, but I knew he couldn’t, just in the name of decency, listen to Merton being hurt outside.

  My blood was boiling already. I forgot to be scared, but not, thank God, to be cautious. I had my gun in my hand when I stepped out of the doorway.

  I didn’t even say a word. I took careful aim and shot Red in the back of the leg. It wasn’t that I had a heart filled with mercy. That was just the spot at which I could hit him with the least danger of hitting Merton.

  Red went down, clutching his leg. He brought Merton with him, but the boy was soon up and scrambling away. Sombrero was going for his hip.

  In a drawdown, he would have killed me, but if I don’t have to draw, I’m a good shot. As soon as Merton was clear, I had a bead on Sombrero’s chest, and he knew it. He took his hand away from his hip, empty.

  “Hold them high,” I said, walking toward him. Even as I did so, I
wondered why I didn’t shoot him. Everything that had happened since last night had boiled up in me so much, I was so mad I wanted to puke.

  “You shot him in the back, Booker,” Sombrero said.

  “I’ll cry about it all night,” I said. “The scorn of such a hero as yourself will haunt me the rest of my life. Take off your gun. Slowly.”

  He complied. While that was going on, I spoke to a couple of onlookers.

  “Drag the redhead over to Dr. Mayhew’s. Tell them why I shot him, and tell him to fix this man up good. Tell him I said to use plenty of carbolic.” Carbolic acid killed the invisible, tiny animals that made wounds turn septic. It could save a man’s life, but it burned worse than fire.

  Sombrero was aghast. “You’re going to turn Red over to the boy’s father? That ain’t right.”

  “When I feel the need for instruction in moral philosophy,” I told him, “I’ll find a better source than you.”

  Sombrero said, “Huh?”

  “Never mind. What’s your name?”

  “Fenster. Nathan Fenster.”

  “Well, Nathan Fenster,” I said, “you were torturing a boy in order to get the chance to kill an old man.”

  “Somebody’s got to do something.”

  “Oh, somebody’s going to do something. I intend to do something. And I want the whole town to see it. I’m going to find out how tough you are against somebody who can fight back.”

  I told some of the crowd to hold Fenster while I got my gun off and handed it to Merton.

  It’s happening again, I thought. Give me a role to play, and Fate makes me play it out. I couldn’t put Fenster in jail (couldn’t risk the safety of Herkimer), but he needed to be punished. And I was sick and tired of lynch-mob mentality. Rebecca that morning had held them off with words, but that was only temporary. The town needed a lesson that could be seen and remembered and spread by word of mouth.

  And who was there to provide this salutary service? Quinn Booker, Scourge of the Frontier. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so angry.

  “Merton,” I said. “You’ve got the gun. Do you want to shoot him?”

  “Huh? Don’t be silly, Mr. Booker.”

  I smiled a little. “Right answer, Merton. Go to the head of the class.”

  I shed my jacket and hat.

  “All right,” I said. “Let him go.”

  As soon as they did, Fenster surprised me—he ran. Ran like a fox from the hounds right down the middle of the street.

  He didn’t run far. I’d played in the first fifteen of rugby for Columbia University (it made a large contribution to the current shape of my nose), and I knew what to do with a running man. I chased him, dove at his knees, wrapped my arms around them, and brought him down.

  When I was done, I walked to the sheriff’s office in half a daze. The crowd that had gathered parted for me, in silence, just as they had when I’d had my ridiculous gunfight last winter. It’s appalling how much respect a man can earn with a violent act.

  Some of them murmured congratulations to me. It was obvious that they enjoyed the show. If I’d claimed I had a patent medicine that made me able to shoot people and beat them that way, I could have sold it by the gallon.

  “Go home,” I said, and by God, they began to. I called through the door. “All clear, Stick. Let me in.”

  Slowly the barricades came down, and the locks were undone, and Stick opened the door. I slipped inside, Merton right behind me. Stick grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “What about the kid?” he asked me.

  “I still have a message to deliver,” Merton protested.

  “Let him in,” I said. “He’s suffered already in the line of duty for it.”

  Stick let him in and blockaded the door again. We kept doing that until that whole business was over, but we never needed it again. Apparently, all the people of Le Four needed to return to their peaceful, law-abiding selves was the sight of their deputy sheriff acting like a madman.

  “You know,” Stick said, “I used to not have a lot of respect for easterners, but there are places in you ain’t nobody found yet.”

  “I hope to God nobody ever will. What have you got to tell me, Merton?”

  “Mr. Blacke apologizes—”

  “Stop the presses! BLACKE APOLOGIZES. There’s a page-one headline right there.”

  “—but he’s taking the liberty of inviting himself and Mrs. Murdo to meet you here at seven o’clock to discuss something of importance.”

  “Jennie Murdo?” I said.

  “If that’s okay with you,” Merton concluded.

  “What?” I said. I was still trying to figure out what Blacke wanted to bring Jennie Murdo here for. To confront the prisoners? To go hysterical on me again?

  “How are the prisoners, by the way?” I asked Stick.

  “They’re fine. I moved the princess upstairs to that room you wanted me to ring up.”

  “Fine,” I said. I turned to Merton. “Tell Mr. Blacke I will be pleased to entertain him and Mrs. Murdo at the appointed hour. Then go have your father look at your arm.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing, Mr. B—”

  “Go!”

  He went. I spent the next few hours wondering what Blacke could possibly have on his mind.

  17

  BLACKE SHOWED UP WELL before seven. I’d already sent Stick back to the doctor’s (I was sending everybody there today, it seemed), so I opened the door myself, took the wheelchair from Rebecca, and brought him in.

  She said she’d be back in an hour and a half to take him home and left, ignoring Blacke’s shouted protests that he could damn well get home by himself, he was a cripple, he wasn’t a baby.

  I gave him a minute to calm down before I asked, “Where’s Mrs. Murdo?”

  “I sent McGruder from the livery stable to pick her up in a wagon. He’ll take her home, too. She’s liable to be a little shaky.”

  “Her son died horribly before her eyes less than twenty-four hours ago,” I pointed out. “She has an excuse to be shaky.”

  “Sure,” he said, shrugging it off. “Well, you’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?”

  I shuddered. “I was going to kill them, Blacke. I wanted to kill the one. I probably would have beaten him to death if Merton hadn’t stopped me.”

  “No you wouldn’t have.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Been there myself, too many times. There’s a line a good man doesn’t cross, no matter how hard he’s pushed.”

  “I wish I were as sure of it as you are.”

  “Let me worry about that. All it means is that you weren’t cut out to be a lawman.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying from the beginning!” I shouted.

  Blacke was nodding. “And for once you were right.”

  I wasn’t about to rise to that kind of bait.

  “Any word on when the marshal is supposed to get here?” I asked.

  “He’s supposed to ride out tomorrow. Be here in a few days. I heard something else, though, in reply to my wire, and that’s what this is all about tonight.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

  “What for?”

  “It’s going to be such a relief to know what anything is all about around here lately, I may faint.”

  “Before you do that, why don’t you fill me in on what you’ve been up to today?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “Only the spectacular stuff.”

  So I filled him in on everything from the Sundberg/Payson cleaning frenzy to my talk with Mrs. Simpkins to the last little details of my excursion into wanton violence.

  Blacke rubbed his chin. “I don’t know if you noticed this, boy, but you’ve got hold of a good indication these people are innocent”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rebecca’s attitude. She’s a real good judge of people. And while she’d want any prisoner to get decent treatment, I don’t think she would have gotten
so intense about it if she believed these people could have poisoned half the town.”

  “It’s hard to believe anybody could, but I think I know what you mean. I suppose I should have picked up on that. Of course, you know Rebecca much better than I do.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  I wasn’t about to get started on that topic again. Fortunately, a knock came on the door, giving me an excuse to let the matter lie.

  I figured it was a fairly robust knock for a woman the size of Jennie Murdo. Cursing the lack of a peephole, I yelled through the door and asked who it was.

  “Hector Mayhew. I’ve got that information you wanted.”

  When I’d let him in, he kept talking as though there’d never been a pause.

  “I would have had this a lot sooner,” he said, waving a small wad of paper with tiny hen-scratch writing all over it, “if you hadn’t spent the day filling my surgery with customers.”

  Blacke smiled. “Did you use a lot of carbolic on Red’s leg?”

  The doctor ventured one of his own rare smiles. “I used carbolic,” he said, “in copious amounts. I daresay, it will be only the bravest and most foolhardy microorganism that ventures anywhere near the vicinity of that man’s leg in the coming weeks.” The smile vanished. “Seriously, Booker,” the doctor said, “thank you for what you did for my son.”

  “I would have done it for anybody,” I said. I think I was telling the truth. “It was just an added pleasure that I was able to do it for Merton.”

  “Well, thank you anyway. You are rapidly becoming in my son’s eyes a bigger hero than Ulysses.”

  I felt embarrassed. “Maybe you should have the boy fitted for spectacles,” I suggested. “Anyway, Doctor, what did you find out?”

  “It’s all here,” he said, attempting to hand the papers to me.

  Blacke said, “No one can read your writing, Doctor. It’s just a good thing you fill your own prescriptions.”

  “You’d like me to report this orally, then?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Blacke said.

  “A phrase, Mr. Blacke, should be added to the Hippocratic oath, forswearing for the physician the right ever to find something ‘too much trouble.’ For a doctor, the concept simply does not exist. However, if I am going to do this, I would prefer to do it in the presence of Herkimer himself. Is that possible?”