The Stranger from Medina (West Texas Sunrise Book #3): A Novel

by Paul Bagdon

  “A bit, Rev. Winter seems to bring out all the old aches and pains in it.” He rubbed the arm again and added, “It’s a souvenir of a bank robbery a year ago. Ben and Doc saved my life then, you know.”

  “So I heard, sir. Terrible thing. We’ll say a special prayer for you Sunday.”

  “Prayers are always appreciated, Reverend. Thank you.” Sam paused. “What can I do for you today?”

  “Well, I just left Missy,” Warner said. “She insisted that I have the draft made payable to me, withdraw it, and forward it immediately—today.” He grinned. “When Missy gives an order like that, a man doesn’t have a chance to argue with her.”

  Sam looked perplexed. “Forward it to whom?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Mr. Turner. It’s a business opportunity Missy wants to invest in.” He smiled again, holding the bank president’s eyes. “I’ll give you my word as a man of God that I’ve investigated the company and its board of directors carefully and that it’s entirely valid and aboveboard. There’s absolutely no risk to Missy. I’m even putting some of what little money I have into it.”

  Sam didn’t return Warner’s smile. “Frankly,” he said, “I’m not at all comfortable with doing what you ask, Reverend. We’re dealing with a very large amount of money here.”

  Warner’s smile disappeared. “You do know, don’t you, that under the law I have every right to demand the bank draft. I’m not a fool, Mr. Turner. I know that you have no choice but to do what I ask—comfortable or not.”

  Sam stared at him. He slowly reached over for a small silver bell sitting on his desk and shook it. Marcia Hildebrand, a bank employee, appeared in the doorway of the office.

  “Mrs. Hildebrand,” Sam said, “I need you to prepare a bank draft, please. Pull the Hannah Joplin/Duncan Warner file and work directly from that. I need the full amount of the funds made payable directly to Duncan Warner.” He looked again at Warner. “Please wait at the cashier’s window. We’re finished here.”

  * * *

  11

  * * *

  Ben’s office was growing smaller with each moment he sat at his desk. The walls were closing in like a vise, and the inky, smudged faces on the WANTED posters seemed to smirk at him, goading him to do something.

  But what?

  He’d seen Missy in the café earlier that day; she’d seemed subdued, hesitant, as if she were concealing something. Such behavior was out of character for the elderly widow, and it bothered him. Missy had been his friend since the day he rode into Burnt Rock. He’d eaten at her table more times than he could count, and he thought he knew her pretty well. There was something very wrong, and it boiled like water in a cauldron, just below his consciousness.

  His thoughts shifted to Rev Warner. Something about the man had been bothering him for a while now, something he remembered seeing at the preacher’s welcoming party. When Buck Starrett’s rifle went off, the preacher had moved to his right simultaneously with the report from the street. His right hand had darted toward his side; then he’d stumbled over. Or pretended to stumble. Was the man just frightened of the unexpected roar of a gunshot? Or was the move an instinctive gunfighter’s reach for a pistol?

  And then there were the cruel cuts on Chowder’s sides. The search party debacle. Henry’s murder.

  Ben sighed. He knew full well that his own jealousy of Warner entered into the mix.

  He stood and walked to the coffeepot. The semisludge that remained in the bottom of the pot was as thick as horse laxative, and probably, he imagined, about as tasty. He glopped some into his mug and drank it down.

  He paced out of his office and into the cell area, walking quickly but not going anywhere. He went back to his desk and sat down again.

  He couldn’t turn off his thoughts. Suppose Rev Warner was playing the entire congregation and the whole town as a pack of fools? What would make so many months of posing and lying worthwhile? And if Warner was a fake, he was awfully good at playing the part he’d chosen. His sermons had moved the entire congregation—including Ben.

  He fidgeted with a pencil, tapping its point on the surface of his desk in a mindless rhythm. When the point snapped, the small cracking sound seemed to echo through the office.

  His last meeting with Missy came to his mind again. She can’t tell a lie—her eyes give her away. But what was eating at her? Was she afraid of something or someone? Was she sick? Was she simply lonely? Another thought pushed its way into his head. When was the last time I stopped by her house?

  Ben dropped the pencil on the desk, stood, and reached for his hat.

  Ben swung Snorty to the back of Missy’s house and, startled, drew rein more quickly than he’d intended to. Her surrey was just outside the barn, the lines rigged and ready for a horse, the traces resting on the ground. The fenced corral where Missy turned Muffin out in good weather was empty, and there was no sound of any kind from the barn. Even old Muffin in her stall didn’t greet Snorty with her usual squeal.

  Ben dismounted and left his horse ground tied. No light shone from Missy’s house, and the barn was dark too. He touched the grips of his Colt and walked to the front of the barn. He waited for a moment until his eyes adjusted to the thicker darkness. To his left, Muffin was in her stall, facing away from him, as if she were trying to push her way through the corner to the outside. Muffin was a friendly old mare—always had been. Something wasn’t right.

  The barn wasn’t a large one. It had a single box stall, a tack room, and storage for hay and grain to the rear. The surrey, when not in use, fit neatly in front of the pile of baled hay. There were two windows on each side, but they were dirty with hay dust and dead flies, and admitted little light.

  A lantern hung to his left. He took it down and reached up to the beam under the lamp, searching for lucifers. His fingers found them. He struck one and lit the lantern.

  At first, the white bundle adjacent to the hay appeared to be a heap of clothes. But the splash of red that caught his eye indicated the form was much more than tack-cleaning cloths or discarded garments to be used for rags.

  Missy was on her side, her face away from him. He eased her gently onto her back and sucked in a breath when he saw the laceration across her forehead. His fingers searched her throat for a pulse. When he found it—faint and erratic—he whispered his thanks aloud.

  Missy’s face was cold under his fingertips. The wound on her head continued to bleed, but slowly and thickly. The wintry air had helped to partially seal the laceration with clotted and frozen blood. Ben gently allowed Missy’s head to rest on the dirt floor of the barn. Then he stood and backed away a couple of steps before spinning around and rushing to Muffin’s stall.

  The old mare was trembling, and the salty scent of her fear-generated sweat filled Ben’s nostrils. He spoke quietly, mostly nonsense words and sounds, before stepping inside the stall. The gate wasn’t latched—Muffin could have bolted if she weren’t so frightened.

  He stroked the mare’s muzzle, still talking to her. He hated to waste time, but he knew it was better to calm Muffin now than try to wrestle her between the traces in such a spooked condition. After what seemed like a day and a night, Muffin’s trembling quieted and then stopped. He led her to the surrey, buckled the surcingle—the band around her belly and over her back—around her, and fed the lines through the brass rings. Muffin grunted happily; this was all familiar to her. Ben knew that she now felt secure.

  He threw a couple of blankets behind the seat of the surrey. When he picked Missy up, her lack of weight startled him. But he felt the small warmth of her back against his arm, and when she moaned quietly, his hopes surged. He placed her on one of the blankets and tucked the other around her. Then he fetched Snorty, tied him to the back of the surrey, and climbed up to the driver’s seat. When he swung the wagon around, Muffin responded as smoothly as a fine watch, picking up her carriage-lope immediately.

  Most of Burnt Rock was closed down for the night, but there was light in Doc’s w
indow—a providential light. Ben began bellowing when he was still thirty feet away.

  The physician met him as he pulled up in front of the office. He hushed Ben with his hand as he looked over Missy. “Inside,” he said as he spun on his heel and hustled into the dispensary. Ben followed, gently cradling Missy.

  “Out,” Doc grunted as Ben eased her onto the wooden examination table. Doc was already washing his hands at the sink as Ben stepped through the door to the waiting room.

  Rather than sit and count the seconds, Ben drove Missy’s surrey to the livery stable and saw that Muffin was put up for the night. The air was colder now, and the night was fully dark. Stringy clouds scudded past the almost full moon, and the stars seemed close enough to pluck out of the sky, like ripe apples from a tree.

  Doc came into the waiting room shortly after Ben reentered the building. “She’s going to make it,” he said, before Ben could ask. “She took a real bad hit on the head, but she’s a tough old bird. She lost more blood than I like to see in someone her age, but she’s going to be all right. She has a concussion, but it doesn’t seem like a bad one, at least at this point.”

  Ben released his breath in a long, satisfying whoosh.

  “There’s no possibility that it was a fall. There are bruises on her arms, most likely from someone grabbing her. Any idea who did this to her?”

  Ben shook his head. “No. Who in the world would do that to a sweet ol’ woman?”

  “Well, did you go into the house? Maybe she was robbed.”

  “No—I didn’t have time to check. When will she be able to talk?”

  “Probably as soon as she wakes up and gets oriented to where she is. That’s always a shock when a person is knocked—”

  “Doc! Doc!” The voice from the dispensary was hardly that of an injured geriatric patient. “Fetch Ben!”

  Ben and Doc stood still for a moment, looking at each other, then rushed into the back room. Doc moved to Missy’s side, gently pushing her back to a prone position.

  “You stay flat now, Missy. Ben’s right here. What’s the—”

  Missy’s eyes were somewhat dulled by the sedative Doc had given her, but her feisty spirit still burned behind them. She looked up at Ben, who was bending over her, his hand touching her shoulder.

  “It was the preacher, Ben! He’s a fraud and a liar, and he’s on his way to Lee’s house to get the money in her safe!”

  Before Missy could say more, Ben was out of the room, freeing Snorty’s reins from the hitching rail in front of Doc’s office. He vaulted into the saddle and asked his horse for everything he had.

  Carlos tugged against the ropes that held his wrists behind him. He spat a mouthful of blood at Warner’s feet. “You peeg! You theenk you win over Carlos by sneaking up like a snake? Cut thees rope an’ we see who ees a man!”

  Warner pulled the bandanna from around Carlos neck, formed it into a ball, and stuffed it in the man’s mouth. “You know, Mex, you always did flap your jaws too much. You’re not worth killing, but you’re sure worth shutting up.”

  Carlos tried to blink some of the fuzz from his vision. He hadn’t heard Warner approach him from behind in the main barn, and the whack on the top of his head with the butt of a pistol had knocked him silly. When he had awakened, he was in the tack room, trussed like a hog. Now he lay still, thinking. It was time to wait. As soon as Warner left, he would begin pounding his boot heels on the floor. The noise would be sure to attract one of the hands—they walked back and forth in front of the barn on their way to the bunkhouse. Again, futilely, he strained at the ropes.

  Carlos heard Warner’s footsteps toward the front of the barn. He forced himself to wait another full minute and then began slamming his heels against the wooden floor, wrenching his tightly tied legs up as high as possible and then crashing them to the floor. The noise was hollow-sounding but loud. It was sure to attract attention. Sweat broke on his forehead. He pounded the floor even harder.

  Suddenly the darkness was pierced by a dim light. Warner swung the door all the way open, a lantern hanging from his hand. “Not awfully smart, are you, Mex? You think I’d walk away without seeing what you’d do?” He drew his pistol and flipped it in his hand so that the butt faced forward. He stepped closer to Carlos.

  Carlos looked at the phony preacher, refusing to give the man the satisfaction of seeing his eyes close before the blow struck.

  Lee stood in the kitchen working the pump handle to sluice water over her supper dishes. She gazed out the window above the sink, wondering what Carlos was up to in the main barn. He was the only one who had any reason to be there, and she’d watched his lantern moving around, into the tack room, out to the front of the barn, and then into the tack room again. Now the light was moving toward her house, and she smiled. She needed someone to talk to; Carlos would do just fine. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and stepped over to the back door, swinging it open.

  “C’mon in, Carlos. I was just wondering . . .”

  Warner stood in the doorway, smiling at her. “Not expecting me, Lee? I’m hurt that you’d prefer that fat old fool to a man of the cloth.”

  Lee stepped back and raised her hand to her mouth. “Duncan! What on earth . . . ? I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but whatever it is, I don’t like it at all.” She began pushing the door closed, but Warner shoved through and stepped in, slamming the door behind him.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Lee shrieked. “I want you out of my house right now!”

  “I can’t say I care at all about what you want. And I just want one thing: I want you to open that nice little safe you’ve got in your office.”

  “My safe? Duncan—what’s going on with you? I—”

  Warner grabbed her arm and began hauling her toward her office. “You must be as simpleminded as your Mex friend. I want your money, Lee—and that’s all I’ve ever wanted from you.”

  He hung the lantern on the hook inside the small room that served as Lee’s office. Under a library table covered with mare and stallion breeding records, feed bills, and circulars and folders announcing horse sales around the West, sat a dull gray safe.

  “Open it.”

  “You’re a total fraud, aren’t you? You’re no more a preacher than my horse Slick!”

  “I sure did convince you and all your church friends, though, didn’t I? Now I’ve got the old lady’s note that’ll turn right into money wherever I go, and I’ll add yours to it.”

  Lee was silent for a moment, then spoke in anguish. “All this time you lied to us. All the while you’ve been here, you’ve been playing us like a fish on a line.”

  Warner nodded, and when he spoke, his voice was light and conversational. “Did real well, didn’t I? I even had you looking doe-eyes at me, dreaming of marrying up with a preacher.”

  Lee glared at the man, her voice becoming arctic. “You’re assuming an awful lot. I never saw you as anything but a friend. Why, Ben Flood is twice the—”

  Warner took a long step toward her and slapped her across the face. “Open the safe. I don’t have any more time to waste.” His voice had changed again, sounding now like the snarl of a predatory animal.

  “Never. If you’re going to beat me or shoot me, you better do it now, because I’m not giving you any money. I won’t open the safe. There’s nothing you can do to me that’ll force me to. Giving money to you would be like giving it to the devil himself.”

  Warner slapped her again. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she staggered back, catching herself on the edge of the library table.

  “Nothing I can do? How about if I take you out to the barn and make you watch while I use your Mex friend as a target? I can shoot him in lots of places that won’t kill him quick. Then I’d go to the bunkhouse and shoot some rabbits. There isn’t a gunman in that entire crew of losers who hired on with you. What kind of a man would work for a woman boss, anyway, taking her orders and saying ‘Yes, ma’am’ a thousand times a day?” He spat on the floor at L
ee’s feet. “A coward, that’s what kind—and that’s all you’ve got here. Now, open the safe or I’ll go ahead with what I just told you.”

  Lee locked her eyes with Warner’s. Would he really kill Carlos and the men?

  Suddenly, Warner’s gun was in his hand. A shot like that of a cannon blasted through the room. The silver cross that hung on the wall spun to the floor, its right arm twisted upward where the bullet had struck it. The next shot kissed Lee’s hair as it buzzed past.

  “You looking to die?” Warner bellowed. He drew a deep breath. His face remained scarlet, but his voice was level. “Open the safe and save a few lives. I have nothing to lose by shooting you and your whole crew.”

  “It was all an act,” Lee said. “Everything.”

  “Best stage play you ever saw, wasn’t it? I had you, the law, the whole congregation, the whole town convinced I was a preacher. That’s not easy to do for a man with a dozen notches on his pistol grips. I guess I owe it all to my parents.” He laughed. “They sent me off to a theological school when I was twelve. I learned a lot there, before I got out when I was sixteen. I even acted in some plays, learned to control my voice, to speak properly, to handle myself in any situation. I killed my first man when I was seventeen. Outdrew the drunken old fool with a brand-new Smith & Wesson .38 I’d bought that very day.”

  He looked at the weapon he now held—a Colt .45—turning it from side to side in his hand. “I bought this one a couple years later. I needed more stopping power than the .38 could give me, so I went to a .45. It’s never let me down yet.”

  Lee’s eyes swept the office, searching for anything she could use as a weapon. The image of her Winchester 30.06 leaning against the wall next to her front door flashed in her mind. She’d put it there shortly after her house was built. But the Winchester was a room away—and it might just as well have been a mile.

  “We can fix this,” Lee said, her voice far less convincing than she wanted it to be. “Give me Missy’s note and ride on. I’ll see that the marshall doesn’t come after you. You can get away clean.”