Hell's Half-Acre

by Nicholas Nicastro

  He sat for a while with a toothpick and his evening smoke. In one crystal clear moment he saw that there was indeed something more he could do for the girl. He tossed a dollar on the table and went straight out to retrieve the horses from the cobbler’s.

  The livery was east of town, opposite the mills on the bank of the Smoky Hill. After securing his own mount, he led Morris and Crane’s horse—­the one Biyu had ridden—­into the barn. There were two men inside, talking and in no particular hurry to serve him. As he waited, he made some mental calculations of the cost of getting the girl to San Francisco. And though he had no clue how much passage on a freighter to Asia would cost, he hoped the sale of one good chestnut mare would cover most of it.

  He had been turning these thoughts over for some time when he began to attend to what the men were saying. Seems that there was an unusual arrest made at the train station the day before. The person apprehended caused the men some amusement; this was not the usual run of fugitive, but a woman. And not just any woman, but a fine, handsome one, of the caliber rarely seen among Kansas wives or prostitutes. From the way they marveled, Leroy would have guessed the exotic spy of some foreign power had been caught—­the kind that could pass for a countess or the concubine of a king. One of the men was quite sure she was the mistress of a German baron who had disappeared on a bison-­shooting expedition in Nebraska.

  “She killed him?” asked the livery’s owner.

  “There’s talk of murder.”

  “Go right to hell.”

  “I’m only telling you what I heard. Not a word more.”

  Leroy’s curiosity got the better of his patience:

  “Any of you know what this woman looked like?”

  The owner eyed him through the gloom and dust. “Sorry for my language, mister. Didn’t see you standing there.”

  “Got a horse to sell.”

  The man’s examination was quick, composed merely of leading the horse in and out of the barn and slapping its flesh in various places. He looked the animal in the eye, as if asking it what a fair price might be for itself. Then he said “A hundred dollars, including the tack.”

  “I was hoping for a hundred and fifty, and twenty for the saddle.”

  “What a splendid thing is hope.”

  “A hundred twenty. Including tack.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred and ten.”

  “Done.”

  An hour later he had the liveryman’s signature on a note to the bank, payable to “Leroy Dirk.” Fingering it by the edges, he turned it around and around as he contemplated making the liveryman write it again—­but opted not to.

  “So this girl that got clapped yesterday. Did you see it happen?”

  “Not while I got a business to run,” came the frosty reply.

  “Would it be a good bet they’d be keeping her in the town jail?”

  “I never tell a man how to bet. But you’d not be far wrong.”

  The streets of Salina were dirt, but lined with boardwalks neatly carpentered and painted white. Clopping around, Leroy found the jail just a ­couple of blocks from the hotel where he’d had his supper. The wood frame structure looked much like a small office, except for the two cells in the back. His eyes swept the spaces behind the riveted meshwork. There were no prisoners there.

  “Afternoon,” said the suited man behind the desk. A mature gentleman, his pale dome shined where his hair receded. A pair of gray handlebars descended from his ears, bowed along his jawline and met under his nose. There was ink on his lips where the wet his fingers to turn the pages of his newspaper.

  “Good day,” he replied, his position awkward. “I am Leroy Dick, trustee for Labette Township.”

  “Labette? That’s a ways off, Mr. Dick.”

  Extending a hand, the man introduced himself as Luke Parsons, the sheriff.

  At length Leroy learned he was the very Luke Parsons who had joined the John Brown gang during the troubles before the war. He was with Brown at Palymra, and in the fight at Osawatomie, trading fire with a superior force of proslavery Missourians. But when Brown went east to build up his war chest, Parsons chose to settle permanently in Kansas. Like most of Brown’s compatriots, the great man’s reflected notoriety had made him a minor celebrity. That he’d taken up a badge in remote Salina was news to Leroy.

  Parsons was nothing if not instantly obliging to a former jayhawker. On hearing Leroy sought the Benders, Parsons promised to set him up with the best lodgings, a good meal. He regretted the poor deal he had gotten for his horse—­if he’d asked at the jailhouse first, he would have gotten his price or better. He was more than amiable—­until Leroy brought up the subject of the “countess” arrested at the train station.

  “Oh, that. She’s not here.”

  “I can see that. Is there anything to the story?”

  “Well, she ain’t no countess. Or a Bender, for that matter,” he said, face purpling. “There’s a man who thinks she is, I’ll give you. When I came by to make sure it was all done under the flag of law, he waved a document under my nose.” And Parsons tore off the syllables of that word, document, like it was the devil’s own alibi.

  “The governor’s proclamation?”

  “A letter from a certain senator in Topeka, the gist being I should go hang myself. So what was I supposed to do? Go against the interests of senators and congressmen and all the king’s men, for this little confection of a girl? So he’s got her.”

  “Got her?”

  “At the courthouse. If he hasn’t set out with her already. What business is it of mine, anyway? I’m only the sheriff of the whole fucking county.”

  They sat for a moment as Parsons simmered and Leroy pensively chewed his lip.

  “So this man. He’s a Pinkerton?”

  Regaining his humor, Parsons laughed. “You said it, my friend! Though I’d sooner call him a dandy. Say it to his face, in fact, if I didn’t have duties a fair man must place above his pride.”

  The courthouse was a new-­built, two-­story affair made out of native stone, with arched windows and a cupola. It was the kind of grand structure they could only dream of building in Harmony Grove, though Salina was not a much older community. Confronted by a line of chambers off the main corridor, he was directed first upstairs, then to the back of the building, and finally to the most remote room, a small office used by the town surveyor to store the county plats.

  Inside sat two ­people: a man he didn’t know, and Kate Bender. She wore an unadorned traveling dress, her hat and gloves lying on the table before her, beside a half-­drunk cup of tea. As they looked at each other, a smile gathered on her face, as if some private promise had been redeemed. He had to tear his eyes from her.

  The Pinkerton was a real sharper—­a gentleman in a silk suit, with gold cuffs and a mane of silver hair. He also had a cup of tea, and deck of cards laid out for solitaire. Though he only worked for Colonel York, he seemed more a senator than his employer.

  “Something you need?” he asked.

  Leroy explained himself and how he found his way there. As he listened, the Pinkerton leaned back, interlacing his fingers as if he were a critic evaluating a show. When Leroy was done, he kicked his way back to an upright position. Something about the way he did this made Leroy think he would not get a good review.

  “Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Dick, but all I can tell you is what I told the sheriff. I represent certain interests in Topeka that supersede local authority. I’m to deliver this suspect to those interests without distraction or delay, and I intend to do just that.”

  “With respect, sir, as trustee of the jurisdiction where the crimes were committed, I would say I represent more than ‘local authority.’ ”

  “Alleged crimes,” interjected Kate.

  “That may well be,” the sharper replied to Leroy, ignoring Kate. “But my orders ma
ke no such distinction. If you want, you can take it up with the senator.”

  He held up York’s letter for him to read. Leroy didn’t take it.

  “I think you know this is irregular as hell. This woman is a fugitive from justice, not the object of some private vendetta.”

  “You’re wasting your time with this fool, Leroy,” said Kate. “Don’t you think I’ve been telling him the same thing since yesterday?”

  “You shut up, cunt, or I’ll shove those gloves down your cocksucking hole,” snarled the Pinkerton.

  Then he turned back to Leroy and continued as if their exchange had never been anything but a pleasant chat: “You are at liberty to take the matter to Topeka, sir. For now, I must ask you to leave, before you overexcite the prisoner.”

  Vexed now, Leroy turned slowly to the door, then stopped with his hand on the knob.

  “I never caught your name, friend.”

  “Maybe if you read the letter, you would have.”

  He was through the door when Kate called after him, “Don’t let them do me this way, Leroy! If I must answer to the law, let it be by your side!”

  Chapter Twenty-­Seven

  Dispatches

  WHAT WAS HAPPENING, and the obviousness of its impropriety, put Leroy in a writing mood. He went to the train station to send wires. His first telegram went to the governor’s office, protesting this flagrant obstruction of justice. As he did not know the whereabouts of Justice Majors and the Labette Township posse, he sent messages to every station in eastern Kansas, imploring them to come at once to Salina, or if delayed, direct to Topeka. Finally, he dispatched an appeal to all the sheriffs in a hundred mile radius, posing them the question: “Are we men of the Law to surrender our duties entirely to men from private concerns, whose first obligation is not to justice, but the settling of petty scores?” One of these went to the attention of Wild Bill Hickok, who was marshal in Abilene, just twenty miles east. Leroy was fixing his hat on his head to leave when an answer came back—­Hickok, alas, had left his post in Abilene more than a year previous.

  He found Sheriff Parsons in a saloon on Santa Fe Avenue. Parsons seemed glad to see him again, at first—­until Leroy appealed to him to do what was clearly the right thing.

  “It ain’t about what’s right,” he said. “It’s about what’s already fixed to happen. As long as that girl finds her proper end, what’s it matter who ties the noose?”

  “That’s the whole distinction, isn’t it? Whether it’s done under flag of law or some other way.”

  “Maybe most times, but not this time.”

  “I don’t think you believe that.”

  Parsons drank, barked for another round. He sat there looking agitated for some moments, with Leroy silently looking on, not drinking and not leaving, until at last he pounded the bar with his fist.

  “Come on, then.” The sheriff rose, tightening his gun belt a notch.

  Back at the courthouse, the sharper was bent over his dinner. Kate ignored hers, preferring to lose herself in another book, Ivanhoe by Walter Scott. The Pinkerton had found it in the bookshelf that served at the town lending library. He’d picked it for Kate at random, but the sudden appearance of Leroy Dick made a tale of medieval knights and chivalry seem more than apt to her. When Leroy returned with the sheriff, she felt like singing with joy. He has not given up, she thought. He means to redeem me.

  “Something else I can do for you gentlemen?” asked the Pinkerton, who was not liable to sing at all.

  “You can relax,” said Leroy. “We don’t need to see your paper again . . .”

  Parsons stuck an arm around Leroy’s shoulder to shut him up. He said, “As far as I can recollect, there’s nothing in your orders that says we can’t speak to the prisoner. Why don’t you and I get a drink while you let Mr. Dick here interview the young lady?”

  “Have a drink yourself. I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  To prove he meant business, Parsons locked eyes on the man and didn’t waver until the other put down his fork.

  “I see you two will plague me until you get your way. He gets five minutes, then.”

  The sheriff and the Pinkerton retired to the corridor, where the latter crossed his arms and refused to go any further. Parsons took out his rolling papers. “Want one?” he asked.

  The other shook his head. “I don’t smoke those.”

  “ ’Course you don’t.”

  Inside, Kate closed her book, laid it aside, and turned a pair of soft, wondering eyes on Leroy. She no longer felt the anger that had supplanted her devotion. Instead, there was a sense of vindication, for he was there, all alone, waging war for her rescue. But knowing Leroy and his paladin-­like modesty, she would not embarrass him by pronouncing such feelings out loud.

  “I’m happy to see you, Leroy,” she said.

  “Are you? Why would that be?”

  “I see you have some mistaken notions about me that do no credit to your broadness of mind.”

  Leroy would have laughed at her, but he didn’t want the Pinkerton to hear that. Instead, he kept his distance, his back against the opposite wall.

  “What makes you think my mind is broad?”

  “I can see it. Just as I foresaw that you would come for me now. The signs are written of our fates, in letters made of rubies on the golden door. They were there to read, and always have been.”

  He shook his head. “You’re talking nonsense. All I know is what we found buried your claim. All those men. The child.”

  “What child?”

  “The one you threw alive into the pit, to suffocate under her dead father. Remember?”

  She frowned. “Now it’s you speaking nonsense. I remember nothing like that. Who would be capable of such a thing, Leroy? A crazy person?”

  “So you deny any knowledge of the killings?”

  Kate rose and approached him. Her skirts rustled in the quiet of the room. The sound of his own breathing seemed as loud as the trumpets at Jericho. He caught his breath just before she came within arm’s length. She paused.

  “You’re afraid of me, Leroy,” she stated, with a plaintive strain.

  “Will you tell me where the others are?”

  From her heart’s very core, she yearned to reach out to him. Even some article of clothing, like when she seized his hat at Harmony Grove, would have been enough. But she dared not.

  “I won’t lie to you, or try to bargain with knowledge I don’t have. The Lord’s truth is, I don’t know. We figured you were looking for a party of four. So we separated at the station in Humboldt, and never told which direction each was headed.”

  “None of them rode north with you, for even a short while?”

  “Wouldn’t that just defeat the purpose, Leroy?”

  “Who waited in Humboldt for the others to be gone?”

  “I left first. I don’t know who waited the longest.”

  He shifted his feet. What she said had the ring of truth, but he had heard the legends of Bender guile. He sensed he was being served lies wrapped in truth to make them more palatable—­or perhaps truth and falsity cleverly layered. He was out of his depth. But if the Pinkerton got his way, there might never be the chance for a professional lawman to question her.

  He persisted: “And the money?”

  “You might ask the party outside about that. His name is McDonnaugh, by the way. He styles himself ‘Captain McDonnaugh’—­a rank I do believe he gave himself.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  She withdrew to the window to weigh her answer. Beyond the tar-­paper rooftops a train chugged with antlike slowness on the edge of town. Beyond that, the expanse of prairie with its oceanic swells, heaving and rising to meet fleets of cloud. “It’s something more than twelve thousand dollars,” she finally said. />
  Leroy was impressed by this sum—­but not surprised.

  “More than you’d expect from selling patent medicines. Are you sure you’d rather not confess?”

  His tone struck her as mocking. She turned, flaring: “You presume too much. You and ­people like you, all snug and safe in your warm houses and your arrogance—­have you seen what I’ve seen? Do you know what suffering is? If you’d been ripped from the bosom of your family, reduced to petty criminality against your nature . . . maybe then you’d understand. To be just another sheep among the flock is no trick. Try keeping your easy virtue when you’re forced to consort with monsters! Until you know the answer to those questions, who are you to judge me?”

  “So your answer is no?”

  “Go to hell, Leroy Dick.”

  She shifted back to the window. As he could think of nothing more to ask her, he moved to leave. He was halfway through the door when he suddenly reversed himself. McDonnaugh, who was standing with Parsons not five feet away, called out to him as he closed the door: “Two minutes left!”

  Kate didn’t expect him to stay but didn’t betray her surprise. Then he surprised her further by sitting down for the first time, laying his hat on the desk next to him.

  “Sit,” he ordered.

  She obeyed. When she was settled, Leroy leaned forward in his seat, resting his forearms on his knees as he fixed her with his eyes—­a gaze so harsh she would never have suspected him capable of it.

  “They came from where we didn’t expect them, down the Oregon Trail, over Hogsback Ridge in the southwest. We never knew how many until after, when they said more than four hundred men rode into Lawrence that morning. To a man, they were professional bushwhackers—­men who’d killed and maimed and burned through three years of war, and a decade before that, when men did their killing freelance, without need of a flag.

  “First thing they did was block all the roads, so nobody could get in or out of the town. The ­people were driven off the street, into their homes. Then the searches began. They had a list of men they definitely needed to kill—­Jim Lane, for one, and Mayor Collamore, and some newspapermen—­and were determined to hold the town until their errand was done.