Servant of the Law

by Dusty Richards

  The woman returned, carrying two steaming cups of aromatic coffee. “Here you are. Gosh, you must be new in town. I’ve met most of the women.”

  “Yes. My name is Mrs. Dolly Arnold.”

  “And I’m Claire Fenton. I own this place. I lost my husband, Chester, a year ago. We had a farm, but we sold it to buy this place. Do you need something with your coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I guess you’re pretty busy with having to feed the prisoners?”

  “I am, but I have a few minutes today to visit, before the crowd rushes in here for breakfast. I hired that Indian girl yesterday. Her name is Silver Belle. Isn’t that a pretty name? She’s frying the prisoners’ mush right now, so that helps a lot.”

  Dolly agreed.

  17

  “Now I know where I’ve seen you before,” Claire said with a look of recognition on her pocked face. “You rode in with that man who arrested the Coyote Kid.”

  Dolly considered the coffee cup on the table before her. She saw see no reason to deny it. She nodded quickly. “Yes.”

  She felt the woman’s eyes studying her intently. “Are you working for the law, too?”

  How should she answer her? Dolly blinked in confusion. “You, I mean, the man that I rode in with … He’s not Mr. Arnold. It … it’s very complicated.”

  The woman’s slow nod only added to her frustration. Looking Claire in the eye, she finally confided, “John Wesley Michaels, the man I rode in with, is an officer of the territorial courts. I’m his cook.”

  “Oh, you cook for him?”

  “Yes,” she said with some relief. “I also herd and hold horses,” she added with a wry smile.

  “I see. He isn’t your husband—” Claire broke off, her face flushed with obvious embarrassment. “Oh, I’m sorry. I remember now. The Kid shot your little boy, didn’t he?”

  Dolly nodded and tried to keep her gaze on the coffee cup. Sharing her loss with another woman made it more real, and caused tears to well up in her eyes. Until this moment, she had put her grief in a deep hole in her heart, protecting it and hiding it from the world, but nothing could contain it. She fought hard, but quickly the sorrow surfaced.

  “It was such a terrible thing,” Claire said softly. “I knew the Kid before he became a killer.”

  “Oh?” Dolly struggled to regain her composure so she could do the job that John had sent her to do. This woman had known the Kid before—how well?

  “Yes. He worked for a rancher then. Chester and I stopped on a big ranch where the Kid worked. He was some sort of a guard against folks homesteading the ranch land.” Claire looked away, a faint smile on her face as if the memory pleased her. “We were almost out of supplies and money when the Kid first showed up. Of course, he was Bobby Budd back then. Bobby told me that his job was to move people off the land. He gave us some money, so … well, we could go on,” Claire said haltingly. “But that was before he went on to this shooting business.”

  “Yes.” Dolly nodded. “I’m sure that he wouldn’t be that nice now.”

  Claire looked toward the front window, a dreamy smile on her face. “But he was nice … then.”

  It did not take someone with a great imagination to know that there was more to the story than Claire was telling her. Dolly sipped her coffee, then spoke quietly. “Did he recognize you?”

  “No.” She avoided looking at Dolly as she spoke. “I’ve taken trays of food over there, but he doesn’t give any sign that he knows me.”

  “I suppose he’s been on the run a long time.”

  “Yes.” Claire shook her head sadly. “I would never have thought that he would turn out this way.”

  Filled with suspicion, Dolly vowed to keep a close watch on the woman. There were too many gaping holes in Claire’s story, and it did not require a shrewd mind to guess at the lapses.

  “I … I’m sorry, Mrs. Arnold, but I have to take those prisoners their meal now.”

  “Dolly,” she corrected her with a friendly smile. “Let me pay you for the coffee.”

  Claire shook her head as she rose from the table. “No, Dolly. It’s my treat. You know, that newspaperman would really like to talk to you about how you helped capture the Coyote Kid.”

  Dolly was shocked by the idea. “Oh no, Claire. I—I couldn’t talk to a … a man about the matter. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course. I have to hurry. I hope you’ll come again.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Dolly looked toward the kitchen area. “That Indian girl is very attractive.”

  “Yes, she seems to have no family,” Claire confided. “She hired on for very little pay. Well, Dolly, goodbye for now.” Claire moved gracefully away from the table to the kitchen.

  Dolly rose, her curiosity piqued. As she stood and smoothed her dress, she once again took a moment to study the Indian. Had she ever seen her at Ben’s store? Many Indians came by and traded there, but she couldn’t recall ever seeing her before.

  Shrugging inwardly, Dolly walked toward the door and went outside in the sunlight.

  At the dry-goods store, she selected some baking soda. She really didn’t need it, but it gave her an excuse to be in the establishment, where she could watch the street. The merchant allowed her to browse unaided through some bolts of material.

  She took up a position near the window so she could observe the jail as she fingered the various dress material. She noted Deputy Neal leaving the jail a few moments after the sheriff arrived. Down by the saloon, a swamper came outside and leaned sleepily on a broom. He was a grizzled-bearded old man. Dolly recognized the type. They usually worked for free lunches and a few drinks, then slept in the storeroom of the saloon.

  Having grown weary of spying, since she had learned nothing that would help John, she moved to the counter and paid for her baking soda.

  “Didn’t find a piece of fabric to suit you?” the storekeeper asked politely.

  “No, not today, but I’ll be back again.”

  “Fine, come look all you want. You new here?”

  “Yes.” She smiled and quickly hurried outside to escape further questioning. Already she grew tired of wearing a dress and the shoes she had stuffed her feet into pinched her toes. But since she could not sit on the bench outside the store and whittle like some old man, she supposed she had better head back toward the campsite. It seemed to her that being a woman was inconvenient at times.

  Walking carefully past the houses at the edge of town, she sighed in relief on reaching a grassy slope. Seating herself on the ground, she removed her shoes and wiggled her freed toes in relief. Then, barefoot, she walked back to camp.

  She was glad when she caught sight of their campsite. Her gray mare and Thomas were grazing across the small stream. There were no signs of John or Jacob.

  Dolly quickly located her jeans and shirt in the pannier then moved to her willow-walled dressing room. A few minutes later, feeling more comfortable, she busied herself with the campfire. The gun on her hip was a reassuring companion.

  Perhaps, she mused, she should start some kind of meal. He would be home sometime. Home? It was sure something that she could think of a shady grove of young ponderosas as home. Laughing softly at her thoughts, she began to put together a meal.

  When John Wesley had left that morning he had taken the road east. The way consisted of two narrow dry ruts that wound through the small checkerboard farms fronting the wagon-track scars. In the cool of the morning, John studied the farmsteads and the lay of the land.

  He noticed a woman hanging out some laundry. Remembering Dolly’s request, he reined the gelding up the path to the house and removed his hat.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  She turned and squinted at him in the sun. “Oh, good morning. May I help you?”

  “The name’s John Wesley Michaels, ma’am. I noticed your brindle cow and wondered if you had any butter to sell?”

  She nodded. “I’ll have some later,” she said as she hung a man’s shirt on the rope lin
e. “I still have to chum it. Will you be passing this way again later?”

  “Yes. Is your husband around?”

  “No.” She hung out a soggy pair of jeans. “I’m a widow, Mr. Michaels.”

  “Oh, sorry. I was judging by the washing.”

  The woman looked at the laundry, then at John Wesley, her eyes suddenly alert. “Th … they belong to that prisoner Bobby Budd. He needed someone to do his washing. I have taken the task upon myself.”

  “I see, Mrs … . ?”

  “Beth Parker.”

  “My pleasure, Mrs. Parker. I’ll stop by later for that butter.”

  “It’ll be ready.”

  He speculated about the woman as he rode away. She seemed pleasant enough, but she had acted odd about the Kid’s laundry. Almost defensive, he decided. He wasn’t sure if she had assumed the role of a martyr or if she actually knew the Kid. It was something to keep in mind.

  He rode past the farms and onto the rangeland. The high country, studded by an occasional stand of pines, rolled away.

  Later, he topped a ridge. The mountain air was clear, except for a few clouds that resembled ripened cotton bolls. In the road ahead, he spotted a disabled wagon. Three men labored with one of the wagon wheels. Perhaps they would have some information that he could use.

  John short-loped his horse down the grassy incline. As he neared the wagon, he could see that a large load of freshcut boards were stacked on the rig. John reined up beside them and greeted the men.

  “Good afternoon. You fellows having trouble?” The pungent odor of resin from the lumber assaulted his nostrils.

  The eldest man looked up. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s two more. Me and the boys were counting on us having a payday today. We got this lumber sold in Snowflake, but we’ll be two days getting the wagon fixed.”

  “You must have a sawmill,” John said conversationally.

  “Sure do. You need some lumber cut, mister?”

  “No, not today.”

  “The name’s Jeremiah Tombs. This here,” he said, indicating the two younger men, “is Ned and Radford, my sons.”

  “How do.” John dismounted and extended his hand. “My name’s John Wesley.”

  The men all shook his hand, then the father spoke. “What manner of business are you in, John Wesley?”

  “I work for the courts.”

  “Hmm,” Tombs commented, “I thought you was some kind of preacher; you could pass for one.”

  “No,” John said with a laugh. “I’m not a preacher, but I could use your help. Have you seen anything of a bunch of cowhands or ranchers riding this way?”

  “No, why?”

  “To be frank with you, Mr. Tombs, I’m concerned that some of the Coyote Kid’s friends may be planning to break him out of jail.”

  Tombs nodded. “Well, the boys and me ain’t seen or heard nothing like that. I was in Poker Town a couple days ago. Never heard a word down there, except that the Kid was captured in that bar. Oh, they’re saying that he shot two men south of there.”

  John frowned at the new information. “Who were they?”

  “A squaw man by the name of Nat Milner and his half-breed brother-in-law. And the fellow who rode with the Kid got it too. Leo somebody. They brung their bodies down to Poker Town.”

  John frowned in thought. So, the Kid had been telling the truth about his partner. “Did Sheriff Rogers go down there and investigate the shootings?”

  Tombs laughed as if John had made a joke. “No way. He has a rancher down there who wears a badge. And another who’s the magistrate. They held court in the saloon, if you want to call it that. Said it was obviously a case of self-defense.”

  John’s teeth clamped down hard at the information. “Who were these ranchers that posed as the law?”

  “One was Cy Edgar. He’s a kind of law around Poker Town. He’s got a crony by the name of Tom Howard who has a magistrate’s license.”

  John knew how that system worked. Those kind of men were the result of the lack of law that ranged the West. Their existence was one of the reasons the governor had appointed a secret security force. The thought caused him to recall the letter he had found in Sheriff Rogers’s office. Major Bowen had explained how sheriffs passed favors out to their political supporters in the form of badges and magistrate licenses. Any big backer could become a lawman if he knew the right people. It was a tyrannical system that had little to do with real justice.

  John pulled his grim thoughts back to the present. He watched the two strapping Tombs boys unhitch the team.

  “Mr. Tombs, I would appreciate it if you hear anything to send me word. Will you?”

  “I sure will, John Wesley. You’re the one who brought in the Kid, ain’t you?”

  He nodded. “But that’s not the important thing. What is important is the fact that he’s in jail, and I want him to stay there to stand trial.”

  “By Gawd, John Wesley, you’re as modest as a preacher. Me and the boys surely will keep our eyes peeled.”

  “I’m camped north of Snowflake on the first stream to the west.”

  “I’ll send word if’n we hear anything. Good luck to you, sir.”

  He thanked the man and mounted Jacob. As he passed the front of the wagon, he said goodbye to the sons. The lumbermen would be his allies. Before this matter with the Kid was over, he knew he would need all the friends he could find. There was a chance that some of the Kid’s rancher buddies would band together to get him out of jail.

  Riding along back to Snowflake, John tried to piece together every possible means of a jailbreak. Nothing shaped in his weary mind. All his ideas led to blind canyons with sheer walls.

  When he rode up the lane to her place, he absently noted that Mrs. Parker had taken all her clothes off the line. He dismounted and tied the gelding to the fence. When he heard the door opening, he turned.

  “I have the butter here in a jar for you, Mr. Michaels.” She moved out on the porch as she spoke. “You do have a place to keep it cool?”

  “I’m sure my, er … the woman does,” he stammered in confusion, instantly regretting his slip.

  “Tell your missus that I would like to meet her. You folks must be new around here.”

  He nodded helplessly. The woman had trapped him. He paid her for the butter and hurried back to his horse.

  When he reached town, he immediately noticed that a crowd had gathered on the porch of the jail. He rode up to the saloon porch trying to see and stopped short.

  “What’s happened?” he demanded of the gray-whiskered swamper.

  “The prisoners have been poisoned. Two of ’em are dead, and the other two are sick as horses.” The old man interrupted his speech to spew a brown stream of tobacco from his wrinkled mouth. “It’s like the colic. Yes, sir. Two died and them others are sicker than a dog.”

  John fought down a fiery rage inside him and asked, “Who died?”

  He dismounted, his hand still holding the jar of butter. Hitching the horse with one hand, he looked at the man impatiently.

  “That Kid and the big one, Gar, are bad off. But hell, I reckon they’re too damned mean to kill.”

  Turning sharply on his heel, John strode toward the jail. He forced his way through the crowd on the porch and stopped in front of Neal, who was cradling a Winchester.

  “Oh, come in, Mr. Michael.”

  “Thanks, Neal. Is Sheriff Rogers here?”

  “Yeah, him and the doc both.” He stood aside for John to enter the jail.

  Inside, John noted how haggard Rogers looked. Another man, who was holding a coffee cup, turned toward him.

  “Doc, this is John Wesley Michaels. He’s the one who brought the prisoners in.” The sheriff looked warily at John. “They’ve been poisoned. In my own damned jail. And I ain’t sure how in the hell it happened,” he admitted in a defeated tone.

  “Doctor, is the Kid dead yet?” John asked curtly.

  The doctor swallowed his coffee and shook his head. “He’ll
probably survive. Him and the big whiskey peddler weren’t as bad off as the others were. Maybe they didn’t get as much poison, or maybe their systems are stronger. The others only lasted a few hours. It was some kind of fast-acting poison.”

  “Well, just what kind of poison was it?”

  The doctor sighed. “That’s the problem. We don’t know, but we think it was some Indian stuff.”

  “Indian?”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said. “Some squaw went to work for Claire yesterday at the cafe. Claire provides the meals for the prisoners.”

  John nodded as he recalled the conversation with the lumberman about the shooting of the squaw man and Indian in Poker Town. “Was this woman living with a white man and a half-breed over south of Poker Town?”

  The sheriff nodded with obvious reluctance. “Some squaw man and a half-breed.”

  “And,” John said, glaring at Rogers. “You knew those men were killed by the Kid?”

  “I heard something like that,” Sheriff Rogers said evasively.

  John fought the anger growing inside his chest. He was not letting this lawman get off that lightly. “Sheriff Rogers, three men were shot, not two days’ ride from here. Your specially appointed deputy up there held an inquest in a saloon, and the whole episode was swept under the rug. You knew about that, didn’t you?”

  “What in the hell are you getting at?” Rogers’s face reddened in outrage.

  “Just that I’m holding you responsible for the death of those prisoners. You and your so-called law are accountable.”

  “It was a mistake! They made an error in judgment. Hell, Michaels, it’s a wonder that Neal wasn’t killed, too. How in hell was I supposed to know about the squaw?”

  John sighed, never bothered to answer Rogers, and turned toward the doctor. “The Kid going to be well enough to stand trial?”

  “It’s too soon to tell, but I expect he’ll recover.” The doctor looked at John and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “You know, it’s a funny thing. Over three weeks ago this Kid and another man came to my place. He was blinded by some bad whiskey he’d been drinking. That blindness seems to have completely healed.” Under John’s steely gaze, he hastily added, “’Course, I didn’t know at the time it was the Coyote Kid.”