Dead Man Walking

by William W. Johnstone

  His face was haggard and lined, making him look older than he probably was. His eyes seemed to have trouble focusing as he peered at John Henry. He blinked owlishly.

  “Good Lord, Marshal,” John Henry exclaimed. “You’re sick.”

  “Half the town is,” the man croaked. “Four people dead so far, and a heap more to come, I’m thinkin’.”

  “What is it? What sort of sickness?”

  “Hell, do I look like a sawbones to you?”

  “Don’t you have a doctor here in town?”

  “Two of ’em,” the marshal said. “They come down with the stuff, too, almost right away. That’s one reason we knew it was catchin’. Now everybody who ain’t sick is stayin’ as far away as they can from them that are. When one person in a family gets it, though, it spreads through the rest like wildfire.”

  John Henry had heard of outbreaks of sickness like that. They could devastate an entire community. Usually there wasn’t much doctors could do to help, either. They just tried to halt the spread as much as possible and let the stuff run its course.

  “What are the symptoms?” he asked.

  “You mean what’s wrong with us?” The marshal of Copperhead squinted at him. “You ain’t a pill roller, neither. You said you was a star packer workin’ for Uncle Sam. Why do you want to know?”

  “I just thought I might be able to help.”

  The man shook his head and said, “Ain’t nothin’ nobody can do. But since you asked . . . when you come down with this stuff you get chills and fever first, and then you start to hurt all over. Most folks can’t keep nothin’ on their stomach. Then the fever climbs higher and higher until it bids fair to blister a man’s insides and cook his brain. That’s what kills folks.”

  Fevers were some of the deadliest ailments on the frontier, all right, John Henry thought. They had wiped out towns, decimated entire Indian tribes.

  “You said both of your local doctors are sick. Is there anybody else in town with medical training?”

  “A few ladies who done a spot of nursin’. They’ve been tryin’ to help, but it’s a losin’ battle. You see now why I said you need to turn around and ride out, Marshal. You still got a good chance of not gettin’ sick if you do.”

  John Henry rested both hands on the saddle horn and leaned forward to ease his muscles. He had come a long way on the trail of Penelope Smith and whoever else was part of the counterfeiting gang. He wasn’t going to just turn around, ride off, and give up on this assignment.

  “I followed a woman here,” he said. “She’s a fugitive, and I have to corral her, Marshal. Maybe you saw her. She’s blond, good-looking, would have come into town earlier this afternoon in a buggy. She might have had one or two men with her.”

  “Ain’t you heard a word that I said?” the local lawman demanded. “This town’s a pesthole! It’ll be the death of you if you stay.”

  “What about the woman?” John Henry pressed.

  The town marshal shook his head and said in exasperation, “I ain’t seen nobody like that today, but I’m sick myself. Been layin’ down on a cot in the back room all day. I just happened to be up and see you ridin’ in. So don’t ask me if there are any other strangers in town, because I plumb don’t know.”

  That was fair enough, John Henry supposed. A lawman was supposed to keep up with the comings and goings in his town, but sometimes an hombre was just too sick to do his job. He would have to take a good look around himself. If Penelope was here, her buggy would be, too, and Copperhead wasn’t so big that John Henry couldn’t find it.

  “I’m obliged to you for your help, Marshal, and sorry that you’re sick,” he said. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

  The man groaned and said, “Just let me go back inside, lay down, and die.”

  “I hope that won’t happen,” John Henry said sincerely. He turned his horse toward the hotel across the street.

  If Penelope had reached Copperhead and didn’t know that the town was in the grip of sickness, she probably would have gone to the hotel, which appeared to be the only one in town. Under the circumstances, when she found out what was going on here she might have driven on anyway, even though the next town was quite a few miles away. She might have thought that spending the night on the trail was better than staying in a place where she might contract a deadly illness.

  Maybe somebody at the hotel could tell him, he mused. But before he went inside, he rode around back to check on something else.

  The livery stable where he had stopped when he rode into town was the only one in Copperhead. Penelope’s buggy could have been parked inside the barn, but John Henry considered that unlikely. He probably would have seen it if it had been there.

  But as he suspected, there was a corral behind the hotel, where guests could leave their horses, next to a long, covered shed.

  Several horses were milling around inside the corral.

  And under the shed, a buggy with the team unhitched from it was parked.

  He couldn’t be absolutely sure just yet, but John Henry had a strong hunch that he had caught up to Penelope Smith at last.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  He unlatched the corral gate and rode Buck inside, reaching out to swing the gate closed behind him. He dismounted, tied the reins to a snubbing post, unsaddled, and carried the tack through another gate that led into the covered area under the shed. Several sawhorses sat there, so he put his saddle on one of them and slung the saddlebags over his shoulder.

  Using a piece of blanket and a brush he found in the shed, he gave Buck a good rubdown and brushing. Buck had cooled down and seemed to be recovered from the two hard runs earlier, but John Henry knew the horse had to be worn out. He turned Buck loose to get a drink from the water trough and sample some hay from a pile in a corner of the corral.

  Then he went back into the shed and paused beside the buggy he was pretty sure belonged to Penelope Smith. Well, the one she had rented from Dunleavy, anyway, John Henry amended silently. A glance in the back of it revealed that the area behind the seat was empty. Whatever Penelope had brought with her, she or somebody else had carried into the hotel.

  John Henry was well aware that anybody in the rear part of the hotel, on either story, could look out the window and see him poking around out here, so he stayed alert for any movement. From the corner of his eye, he watched for somebody raising a window and sticking a rifle barrel out.

  Nothing of the sort happened while he was examining the buggy. When he was satisfied that it didn’t have anything to tell him, he walked toward the hotel’s back door. His right hand hung near the butt of the Colt on his hip.

  He knew he could be walking into another ambush, but his quarry was in there. Every lawman’s instinct in his body told him that. After coming so far, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him now.

  The back door wasn’t locked. John Henry let himself into the hotel and paused just inside the door to look and listen. A short hallway led toward the lobby. The hotel was quiet. Hushed, in fact. It almost reminded John Henry of a hospital.

  Which was appropriate, he supposed, considering the wave of sickness that had washed through Copperhead. He wondered if any of the hotel’s guests had come down with the fever or if they were all holed up in there trying to avoid it.

  He went ahead and rested his hand on his gun as he stepped from the rear hallway into the lobby. It was dusty and deserted. Nobody sat in the overstuffed armchairs next to the potted plants. The writing desk in the corner was empty. No clerk waited on duty behind the counter with the cubbyholes for room keys on the wall behind it.

  Even though John Henry now knew that the tense atmosphere hanging over Copperhead had a logical reason, there was still something eerie and almost otherworldly about the place. His nerves were stretched taut just from being here.

  He walked over to the counter where the registration book lay open. If he had expected to find Penelope’s name in it, he would have been disappointed. The last person to c
heck in had signed himself “Edward Munroe.” The name meant nothing to John Henry. The date Munroe had checked in was a week earlier.

  According to the register, he hadn’t checked out.

  That was interesting, John Henry thought, but it didn’t have to mean anything. Maybe Munroe had left town and the clerk had simply failed to make a note of it. Maybe he was lying upstairs in one of the rooms, too sick to move. It was even possible that Munroe was one of the four people who had died from the fever.

  Or maybe Munroe was the man who, a couple of days earlier, had introduced himself to John Henry on the ferry as Clive Denton. John Henry let the theory spin out in his mind. Denton could be the gang’s advance man, traveling ahead of Penelope to the places where she planned to distribute the counterfeit bills. After scouting out each location, Denton doubled back to meet Penelope, send her on ahead, and then watch to make sure no one was following her. If there was any pursuit, it would be Denton’s job to get rid of it . . . obviously by any means necessary.

  As far as John Henry could see, that idea hung together. He had no proof, but it was certainly possible.

  Any connection between “Denton” and “Munroe” was sheer speculation, however. But there was one way to check it out, he thought as he leaned over the book and studied it closer. Someone with different handwriting had put the number “14” in tiny print next to Munroe’s name. The clerk must have done that, John Henry thought, and fourteen was the number of Munroe’s room.

  John Henry glanced up at the pegboard where room keys hung. The peg in the space marked “14” was empty.

  Somebody was up there in that room.

  John Henry’s gut told him he needed to find out who.

  The sudden creak of hinges made his head jerk up and his hand move quickly to the Colt on his hip. A door behind the counter had opened, and a man peered out at him in surprise.

  The man’s face was narrow and pasty. It looked even more pale because of the contrast with his unruly jet-black hair. His eyes were huge behind a pair of thick spectacles that perched on his nose. His ears stuck out from the sides of his head. He wore a string tie, and his shirt collar was buttoned up but still loose around his scrawny neck. His black suit and white shirt continued the striking contrast.

  “Didn’t know anybody was out here,” the man said in a high-pitched voice. His head swayed forward on his skinny neck and then pulled back. “You shouldn’t be here, mister. The hotel’s closed. Not taking any new guests. The town’s got sickness in it.”

  “So I’ve heard,” John Henry said. “But I’ve got important business here, so I’ll have to risk it.”

  “No business is worth your life.”

  “You’re still here,” John Henry pointed out. “But I guess you’ve already got the fever, don’t you?”

  “Me?” The man sounded surprised by that. He shook his head and went on, “I’m as healthy as a horse. Nobody here is sick yet, and I plan to keep it that way. So you need to get out, in case you’re carrying the contagion with you.”

  “I’m not,” John Henry said. “You’re only the third person I’ve talked to in this town.”

  “Who were the others?”

  “The liveryman—”

  “Jacob Gaston. Last I heard he wasn’t sick.”

  “And your town marshal.”

  The man’s face took on a pinched look.

  “Marshal Ledbetter’s got the sickness. I know that for a fact.”

  “He does,” John Henry agreed, “but I stayed well away from him. I never got close enough to catch it. So you can see, it ought to be safe enough for me to stay here.”

  He had a hunch that money would sway the man’s opinion, so he slipped a hand in his pocket and went on, “I need a room, and I can pay.”

  “Well . . .” The man came all the way out of the little room. “Reckon it might not hurt anything, if you’re telling the truth.”

  “I give you my word,” John Henry said.

  The man nodded toward the registration book and said in a surly voice, “Sign in. Rooms are a dollar and a half a night without meals, two dollars with.”

  “You’ve got your own dining room, then?”

  “Yeah. And a good supply of food in the kitchen. Good thing, too, because nobody wants to venture out to find any grub.”

  “Reckon I can understand that.”

  John Henry took the pen from the inkwell next to the registration book and signed “Henry Johnson” on the line under Edward Munroe’s name. In the space for where he was from, he wrote “Fort Smith, Arkansas,” which wasn’t exactly true but close enough for government work, which was what had brought him here.

  The sallow-faced man evidently had mastered the skill of reading upside down. He said, “You’re a long way from home, Mr. Johnson.”

  “Like I said, I’m on business, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Weaver,” the man said. “I own this place.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Weaver,” John Henry said, even though he really wasn’t. “If I can get the key to my room . . .”

  “Room Eight,” Weaver said as he reached for one of the keys hanging on the pegboard.

  John Henry didn’t argue. He just took the key and nodded.

  “Any bags?” Weaver asked.

  “Just these,” John Henry replied as he tapped a fingertip against the saddlebags slung over his left shoulder. Keeping his voice casual, he asked, “Anybody else checked in today, or am I the first one?”

  “You’re the first one,” Weaver said.

  John Henry tried not to frown. That didn’t really make sense. He was convinced that was Penelope’s buggy out in the shed. She couldn’t have arrived that far ahead of him.

  “You want anything else?” Weaver asked.

  John Henry shook his head and said, “No, I reckon not.” Then a thought occurred to him and he asked, “What time is supper?”

  “There’s a pot of beans on the stove in the kitchen. Go in there and help yourself whenever you’re ready. Wash up after yourself, too.”

  And yet the man had the gall to charge an extra fifty cents a night for meals, John Henry thought wryly. He turned and walked to the stairs. As he started up them, he saw Weaver watching him. The man’s head darted forward a little on his scrawny neck and then pulled back several times, as it had been doing sporadically throughout the conversation. It must have been a nervous habit. For some reason it reminded John Henry of a lizard, and that made him dislike the pasty-faced hotel keeper that much more.

  He put all that out of his mind as he reached the second floor landing. Right now he wanted to find out who was in Room 14: Edward Munroe . . . or Penelope Smith. He walked quietly along the rather threadbare carpet runner in the corridor, being careful and testing each board before he put his weight on it. Whoever was in there, he wanted to take them by surprise.

  If Edward Munroe turned out to be who he claimed to be and was completely innocent, it was going to be a mite embarrassing to bust in on him, John Henry told himself. He was willing to risk some embarrassment not to take any chances, though.

  The key to Room 8 was in his pocket, but he went right on past it and came to a stop in front of a door with a pair of flat brass numbers—“1” and “4”—nailed to it. He leaned closer to the door and listened intently.

  Faint sounds told him that someone was in there and moving around. He heard what was probably a wardrobe door open and close. Still moving slowly and carefully, he wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the shiny brass doorknob and tested it.

  Locked.

  John Henry didn’t think that would be too much of a problem. The jamb was warped a little and flimsily built to start with, so he figured he could pop the door open, locked or not.

  He tightened his grip on the knob and placed his left shoulder against the door. With his right hand he slid his revolver from its holster with just the faintest whisper of steel against leather.

  Then he drew in a deep breath and abruptly rammed his weig
ht against the panel while pulling up on the doorknob. Just as he expected, the door flew open and he moved rapidly into the hotel room, sweeping the gun from side to side.

  He wasn’t expecting the sight that met his eyes, though. With a startled gasp, Penelope Smith whirled away from the wardrobe on the left side of the room to face him and then stood there staring at him in shock.

  She wasn’t any more shocked than John Henry was.

  Penelope didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  John Henry had been raised to be a gentleman, and that upbringing betrayed him now. He jerked his head to the side to avert his eyes from that display of creamy female flesh, totally forgetting for an instant that the naked female in the room was also a wanted fugitive.

  Penelope hadn’t forgotten it, though. She recovered from her surprise and lunged toward the dressing table. John Henry saw a little pistol lying there and knew he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about being chivalrous anymore.

  He flung himself across the room, moving even faster than she was. His left arm hooked around her waist. He twisted, pulling her away from the dressing table when her fingers were mere inches away from the gun. A heave sent her flying through the air to land with a bounce on the bed. As she rolled over, John Henry leveled the Colt at her and said, “Don’t move, Miss Smith. It’d be a mighty big shame to shoot you, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

  She stopped moving. She was in an extremely indelicate position, but that didn’t stop her from pushing herself up on her elbows and glaring at him. He saw plenty of anger on her face, but not an ounce of shame.

  “Are you going to just stand there and stare at me?” she demanded.

  “I’m not staring,” John Henry said. “I’m keeping you covered.”

  “Covered is a pretty far cry from what I am right now!”

  She was correct about that. John Henry said, “You can sit up and wrap the bedspread around you.” He paused. “You don’t have a knife hidden under the pillows, do you? Or a Henry rifle? Maybe a stick or two of dynamite?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Still looking outraged, she sat up and tugged the quilted spread loose from the foot of the bed so she could wrap it around her nudity. “Men get lynched for breaking into a woman’s room like this, you know. Especially Indians!”