“Yes. Are you happy now that you got me to say it?”
“The word is relieved. I wanted to make sure you weren’t acting as Blackthorne’s avenging angel.”
“What happened between Freemason and the Judge?”
“Ask the Judge.” She opened the door and held it.
“What about the ranch?”
“Shall I say you’re eager to bring the godless hands into the fold?”
“Tell him Brother Bernard wishes to know more of the world.”
“And if he responds that he wishes to know more of Brother Bernard?”
“He won’t. I accepted this invitation to give his people time to search the parsonage. I hid my traveling bottle in the outhouse and left a letter from Bernard’s sweet dead mother where they wouldn’t have to look too hard to find it.”
Her face drew taut over its very good bones. “Only a deeply corrupt man would suspect such corruption of a man he’d met only twice.”
“Avenging angels don’t get haloes. The man who taught me my gospel made that clear.”
He hadn’t trusted the job to someone clumsy from the bunkhouse. If I hadn’t purposely left the drawer in the nightstand slightly ajar and done some other things to provide tells that someone had been through the place, I’d have thought no one had entered it from the time I left until the time I returned. Mrs. McIlvaine had Sunday afternoon off, to do whatever it was she did when she stood her broom in its shallow closet in the church, so I was fairly certain she hadn’t been in to clean. The counterfeit letter containing Sebastian’s brief biography was where I’d placed it, folded under the brass lamp on the nightstand with his mother’s tintype leaning against its base, but the lamp was turned slightly. That pointed to a literate intruder who’d taken down the information to report to his employer.
It being Sunday, I was sure a communication would be going out to Denver by tomorrow’s Overland, seeking to confirm the letter’s sparse details. Blackthorne never confided the nature of his intelligence organization to subordinates; I had to assume that whoever had handled Sebastian’s telegraph exchange with Freemason was in charge of such followups, but I didn’t trust him, or for that matter anyone else who held my fate in his hands. I had only the hope that the vague wording of the letter on the nightstand would slow down the inevitable long enough for me to get what I needed and make away. Since that involved pumping the Judge for the details of his past relationship with Freemason, I propped myself up in the iron bed with a writing block on my knees and drafted the following message:
Dear Mr. Smith,
I’ve been in Owen days only and everyone I’ve met has gone to great lengths to make me feel important. Although I confess to homesickness, it is, I’m convinced, God’s will that I am in a place where I know my work is useful and wanted. Already I flatter myself that I have brought comfort to the afflicted. Mr. Freemason’s confidence in my humble gifts is reassuring and gives me strength to believe that nothing I did in the past is a tenth part of the good that my service to the Lord will accomplish here. All that came before is prelude to the hard work and sleepless nights put to the purpose of bringing light to Texas.
Please accept my sincere thanks for your kindness to a stranger.
Yours in faith,
Bernard Sebastian
I smudged up several sheets, counting words, striking some out, and adding others, before I had a draft I could transcribe in proper penmanship and put aside to mail by way of the Overland to Mr. J. Smith in care of General Delivery in Wichita Falls. Captain Jordan, who’d assured me there were upwards of two dozen “J. Smiths” in town and among the ranches and settlements within plausible riding distance, had a standing agreement with the postmaster to hold all missives thus addressed for his scrutiny. Together we’d worked out a code that would enable me to write what appeared to be a harmless communication to some random brief friendly acquaintance while putting the Texas Rangers to service to the federal court. It was a simple enough cypher, but with sufficient room provided for to drench it in homely verbiage: After the greeting, every twentieth word conveyed the actual message. If it was urgent and assistance was required immediately and in force, I would begin with “My dear Mr. Smith”; otherwise, I was asking Jordan to forward the actual text by Western Union to Blackthorne. I had written:
important know Freemason’s past before Texas
After placing the letter in the nightstand drawer where I didn’t care who found it if I happened to become separated from it, I got up and fed the scribbled sheets to the fire in the laundry stove. I’d taken all the precautions I could, without feeling one bit more secure than I had before I’d written it. I don’t place much trust in encryptions, on the theory that what one or two men could create, one or two others could dismantle. Carrier pigeons had at least the advantage of passing through no human hands between dispatch and delivery, but the thought that my life depended on a creature that spent most of its time from one mission to the next picking lice from its feathers was worse than knowing that the number of people who were in on my masquerade would fill out the regimental band at Fort Custer, with the last person I’d trust with either my wallet or my hide sharing a bed and who knew how many secrets with the man whose measure I was trying to take.
It was enough to drive a God-fearing man to drink. I was weighing the relative risk of retrieving the whiskey bottle from the outhouse when someone knocked on the door of the parsonage. I reached for my collar, then decided to leave it off and went through the sitting room with my sleeves rolled up and a towel from the dishpan–wash basin over my arm, the Deane-Adams concealed inside its folds.
At first glance I thought the man on my front step was Freemason, but then I saw the frock coat was too large for the visitor’s slight frame and the silk hat rested too low on his forehead, bending down his ears, and knew him for Fielo, the aged houseboy, wearing his master’s castoff. He removed the hat, cradling it with a forearm, and held out an envelope with the Masonic compass-and-square embossed on the flap.
I laid the towel with the revolver rolled inside it on the rocking chair and took the envelope. The note was an invitation from Richard Freemason to accompany him to his ranch Tuesday at dawn. I asked the old man to take my acceptance to him with thanks. He bowed, turned, replaced the hat, and applied himself to the long walk back down the street and the steep climb up the limestone steps to the castle on the hill. He wasn’t as frail as Colleen made out.
NINETEEN
Unexpectedly, I found my suspicions confirmed—or at least supported—the next morning, when the door to the freight office opened away from my hand and I was face to face once again with Fielo, who hesitated, raised and lowered his hand-me-down silk hat, and stepped past me onto the boardwalk. There were any number of reasons why the manservant of a busy ranch owner would have business with a stagecoach line, but I was satisfied that he’d just posted a letter to Denver on Freemason’s behalf to test Brother Bernard’s story.
It was Monday and a coach stood ready before the door. That meant a waiting line inside and I joined it. Luther Cherry, looking every bit the scarecrow I’d met during the trip from Wichita Falls, in a morning coat plastered with lint and stray hairs, stood at the head of the line, arguing with the friendly clerk behind the counter.
“Four-fifty just to carry a letter to St. Louis? I might as well pay a little more and deliver it in person.”
“I’m sorry, sir; that’s the special delivery rate. Undoubtedly it will come down after they string a telegraph line from Wichita Falls. It always does—competition, you understand. But that won’t happen until after the railroad comes through.”
“Until which time, Wells, Fargo will behave as arrogantly as any of the Eastern trusts. My God, I could buy a decent suit of clothes and pocket fifty cents!”
Clearly this invited a suggestion, but being affable by nature the clerk made another. “Regular delivery is two dollars, if you don’t mind it taking an extra day or so.”
“T
hat won’t do.” Muttering to himself, the lawyer produced four banknotes from a lank wallet and laid them on the counter, then snapped open a Scotchman’s coin purse and placed a twenty-five-cent piece, two dimes, and a nickel on top of them. The man behind the counter transferred them to a cash box, stamped a postmark on a long envelope in front of him, and poked it into a pigeonhole at his elbow.
On his way to the door, Cherry, grumbling still, nearly passed me without looking up.
“Life in the wilderness is not as reasonably priced as it was centuries ago, Mr. Cherry,” I said.
“Indeed it is not, friend.” He recognized me then and halted. “Good morning, Brother. I worked late Saturday night and overslept the next day, missing your sermon. I heard it brought down the house.”
“Hardly that, but the reception was most kind.”
“I’m sorry you overheard that altercation. I miss my wife, but if I continue to communicate with her at these rates I won’t be able to afford her fare.” He glanced down at the envelope in my hand. “I hope your people are patient. The Overland is no place for a man sworn to poverty.”
“Fortunately, I made a new friend in Wichita Falls. The collection plate won’t suffer mortally.”
He was only half listening, preoccupied with the hands of his nicked watch. Presently he apologized for the demands of his workload, said good-bye, and took his leave.
When my turn came I handed the clerk my letter to Mr. J. Smith and paid its freight from the loose change in my pocket. He bent my ear over the excellence of the Sunday services until the people behind me began to clear their throats and shuffle their feet. A man tipped his hat and a woman dipped her chin as I walked past. I touched my brim to both. I understood then, a little, about the seductive nature of the Call. Edwin Booth was no more celebrated a figure on the streets of Chicago and San Francisco than a minister in a desert settlement.
Dawn comes early in flat country. I’d just entered the church Tuesday, carrying my second cup of cowboy coffee (paint stirrer required) when the creak of a harness drew me to the door. A Brewster-green Stanhope stood on red wheels beside the boardwalk, hitched to a round-bottomed sorrel with the shoulders of a Percheron; and good job, because it was pulling two passengers already.
Freemason, in a duster and flat-brimmed Stetson, sat holding the lines behind Luther Cherry. Today the sad-faced lawyer wore a straw hat and sturdy tweeds, out at the elbows but a happier union than his town coat. He clutched a battered leather briefcase on his lap and held down his flapping hat with his other hand against a mild forty-mile-an-hour wind. As I climbed aboard, he pressed in close to the driver to make room on a seat properly built for two.
“Another good morning to you, Brother,” he said. “I apologize for the close quarters. I had a question about the boundaries, and Mr. Freemason was gracious enough to invite me to the ranch to see them for myself. No doubt you’re growing tired of me by now.”
He was a drab companion, and I’ve never warmed to skinflints, but I protested the opposite. Surreptiously I wedged my arm between us to keep him from pressing against the revolver in its scabbard. I didn’t want to take the chance of Mrs. McIlvaine finding it in the parsonage, and in any case I wasn’t about to venture into open country unarmed.
Freemason measured out a smile of contrition. “I yielded to an impulse. The cabriolet is at the ranch, and all the twoseaters are out on hire from the livery. I had this rig built to my order, so it’s sound, and Bess is accustomed to hauling furniture in tandem, but by the time we cross the river I fear we’ll be on rather more intimate terms with one another than we bargained for.”
I said, “I don’t mind. Mr. Cherry’s presence shortened my journey here.”
“A fine piece of fortune,” said the sheepman. “I engaged both of you sight unseen, on the strength of my judge of character. Cherry clerked in the St. Louis firm that handled most of my transactions. When he passed the bar with applied study in real property, I retained him immediately. The man’s knowledge is worth ten miles of fence.”
The lawyer laughed. “If I may speak for Brother Bernard as well as for myself, it’s handy there’s just the one seat. You might otherwise have been tempted to bring along our friend the wire drummer, and expose us all to an exhaustive lecture on the relative merits of Glidden versus Reynolds, and whether Sunderland’s Kink is as effective a deterrent as the Brink Twist.”
“I’ve had my life’s portion of those fellows.” Our host released the brake and gave the lines a flip; Bess rolled her haunches and we were in motion. “They make no distinction between the walrus hide of a bull and the tender membrane of a ewe. Great patches of scar tissue are as devastating to the harvest of wool as blight to corn. Barbs are designed to contain cattle, dumb brutes that wander away from sure feed to graze on dead thistle in the desert. A week-old lamb knows better than that. No doubt Bo Peep abused her flock.” No hint of a smile cracked his countenance.
I changed hands on my hat and shouted across the wind. “If you don’t mind my asking, why, then, did you lobby so hard to strengthen the fence-cutting law?”
“Not to keep sheep in, you can be sure of that. I fought for it in order to keep the damn cattlemen out.”
At length we crossed Wild Horse Creek at a point where deep ruts left by other vehicles marked the ford. The waters had just begun to recede from the spring runoff, and lapped at our hubs. When we rolled up the bank on the other side, the big mare shrugged, sprinkling us all. “A second baptism,” offered Cherry.
For a mile or so we rode alongside four strands of wire strung between crazy crooked scrubwood posts that any rancher in good timberland would have scorned in favor of straight pine or cedar, while the tough short stubble of buffalo grass gradually gave ground to a lush expanse of bluestem nearly three feet high, ideal for grazing. Freemason had chosen his location well. The relentless wind combed the tops in hypnotic waves, like the pattern on the surface of an inland ocean. I directed my gaze away from it toward the level horizon to keep from becoming drunk on the sight. The grasses of the High Plains are proof that you can get seasick on dry land.
I spotted the horse and man in the road first, just ahead of the rancher, who stiffened at the sight. The man was out of the saddle and kneeling near the fence in the attitude of cutting the wire. Freemason leaned forward and drew a brass-receiver Winchester from the footboards at the base of the seat onto his lap. This alerted Cherry.
“What a place to come bang up,” he said. “It’s lucky for him we happened along.”
Trust a lawyer to size up a situation at one glance. I could see then that the man was too far from the fence to threaten it. At first I thought his horse had thrown a shoe, but as we drew near I saw that the man down on one knee with his back turned toward us was scraping at its right forefoot with a knife, paring the hoof or prying at a stone or some other object that had gotten wedged inside the iron. Our host relaxed, loosening his grip on the pistol stock of the repeater.
“Need help, friend?” he called out.
The man spun on his knee without rising, cocking and leveling a long-barreled Colt at Freemason across the crook of his right arm. He wore a gray hat, range flannels, and a blue bandanna that covered the lower half of his face.
My reflexes were a split second faster than the rancher’s; my hand made an entirely involuntary move toward the revolver under my coat, but I stopped it through sheer force of will before it had covered a half inch. The masked man was concentrating on Freemason, who snatched at the carbine across his lap. The Colt flamed and something struck a post holding up the Stanhope’s canvas roof. Freemason abandoned the Winchester to seize the lines and calm Bess.
The report seemed to serve double duty as a signal. From the fence and road, the grass-covered ground sloped gently toward the river, forming a shaggy apron some thirty feet wide between hardpack and water. In one smooth motion, a handful of horses scrambled to their feet, seeming to rise from the earth itself as if on hinges and levitating riders i
nto their saddles.
I was more impressed than frightened. It takes more than just good horsemanship to keep eight hundred pounds of nervous animal down on its side without snorting or tossing a head or a tail; two hands are hardly enough to keep it calm and its nostrils covered and man and horse hidden in grass not much more than knee high, and simple athletic ability alone won’t let him rise with it, slipping one foot into the stirrup and swinging the other leg over its back in the same movement, man and beast uniting as one. It was like something out of Revelation:
The first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within …
Only there were five beasts, clad in pale dusters, gray hats, and blue bandannas, and when the man in the road swung aboard his horse, the muzzle of his revolver remaining on point like the needle of a compass, we faced six armed men, the others kneeing their mounts forward until they formed a half circle about us with weapons in hand.
A sharp double-clack rang out across the wind, and I turned my head as a seventh rider cantered our way from Freemason’s property on the other side of the fence with a fresh round levered into a Spencer rifle. He wore the uniform of the pack, a strip of tanned and weathered face showing between the top of his bandanna and the brim of his hat.
“What does the Good Book say about seven angels?” Cherry asked me in a low voice.
“These aren’t angels.”
Ten yards from the fence, the newcomer shouted and smacked his reins across his horse’s withers, breaking it into gallop. It closed the distance in seconds and left the earth with no more apparent effort than a balloon rising, clearing the top strand of wire with inches to spare and braking to a halt short of the road, forelegs stiff and its rider leaning back on the reins, the repeater cradled along his right forearm.
The Book of Murdock Page 14
