by Ed Gorman
“I can’t see it.”
“You could if you’d look beyond that saintly role she plays.”
“She loved James.”
“She said she did, anyway.”
“You shoulda been an elixir salesman, Wayland. You got the tongue for it.”
“I’m just saying what’s in the air. You have respect for women. You believe them. So do I. Most of the time. But every once in a while you run across one who doesn’t deserve that pedestal you put them on. And that’s the case here, my friend. Whether you want to believe it or not. Now if you want the gun, and I know you do; and if you want the people who killed your brother, and I know you do—you’ll throw in with me.”
I laughed. “You going to shoot me or stab me?”
“What?”
“Say it’s true. Say Frank Clarion and Gwen did kill my brother and take the gun.”
“And killed Fairbain and Spenser.”
“All right, let’s throw that in the pot, too. Killed James and Tib and my brother; killed Fairbain and Spenser. Let’s assume that’s all true. So we go after Clarion and Gwen.”
“And the gun.”
“All right, and the gun.”
“Now that sounds pretty good to me.”
“I’m sure it does, Wayland. Because you’re already figuring on killing me.”
“Like hell I am.”
“How else you going to get the gun?”
He blushed, actually blushed. He’d been trapped. “I thought maybe you’d reconsider and make that deal I proposed.”
“No, you didn’t. You know I want to take the gun back to Washington, where it belongs. You also know that I may not be the smartest and toughest investigator the Army has, but one thing I am is honest. No matter what you offered me, I wouldn’t take it. And that would leave you only one option. You’d have to kill me, Wayland, in order to get that gun you wanted.”
“I don’t go around shooting people.”
“Not unless you need to.”
He put on a little show for me. The outraged citizen. “I come to you with the story of what’s really going on here—the name of the man who killed your brother, for God’s sake—and this is what I get?”
“This is what you get.”
He lifted his ten-gallon hat from the table. “I deeply resent this, sir.” He was on the stage again, ham actor.
We exchanged one of those glares that are supposed to strike the other man dead. But both of us survived. He left the café. I sat there and finished my coffee.
Chapter 17
I sat my horse in the woods that ran behind James’s house. My field glasses told me that Gwen and her daughter were gone. I’d been here quite a while and hadn’t seen anybody. They were in town, maybe.
What I wanted to do was disprove Wayland’s story about Gwen and Frank Clarion. It wasn’t so much that I had great faith in women—neither sex has any real corner on morality, though women strike me as a lot more reasonable to deal with in general—it was just the simple notion that Gwen would ever take up with Frank Clarion. I needed evidence to disprove Wayland’s wild tale—or evidence to prove it.
I gave myself ten minutes. I slipped from my horse, crossed the wide lawn separating house from woods, and eased myself in the back door. Cooking smells, beef and bread. A doll in a gingham dress and blond hair sitting upright in the middle of the kitchen, enormous blue eyes holding secrets I’d never be able to guess. I moved quickly to the other rooms. I had no idea what I was looking for. Maybe the kind of proof I needed didn’t even exist. It was doubtful they’d written each other letters that laid out their whole relationship—if they’d ever had one.
James had pretty much given up his Cree heritage, at least judging by the things I found in the house. There were a few ceremonial weapons, a clay pipe for smoking, a pair of moccasins decorated with hand-drawn symbols I took to be Cree, and a tribal headdress heavy enough to snap the neck of the poor sonofabitch who had to wear it for long.
There was much more evidence of the little girl. Books, games, blankets with her name embroidered on them, a hobby horse with mismatched buttons for eyes.
Gwen had three dresses, all worn from wearing, half a dozen shirts, and riding skirt and blouse. On the table next to the bed were three Louisa May Alcott novels.
There was a small desk, two tables with drawers, and the sort of long, metal box used for storing valuables to look through. Nothing especially interesting in any of them.
The soughing wind hid their sounds at first. I didn’t really hear them until Julia’s voice sailed right through the back window and into the living room where I stood. It’s always a bit awkward to have folks walk in and find you looking through their things. Most of the time they look surprised, and then they look betrayed. It’d be better if they looked mad. That’d be much easier to handle than the betrayed look. Much easier.
Gwen went through the whole range—surprise, shock, anger, betrayal. She did it in just a few seconds, too. Julia was less abstract: “How come he’s in our house, Mommy?”
Gwen’s eyes showed fury again. “Maybe he’ll be nice enough to explain that, honey.”
“Look, I was just…”
I glanced desperately from Julia to her. “Honey,” Gwen said, taking Julia’s little hand and turning her toward the back door. “Why don’t you go play outside?”
“What should I play, Mommy?”
“Well, how about playing with the new kittens?”
“I did that this morning.”
“Well, how about playing with your new ball?”
“I did that this morning, too.”
Gwen glanced over her shoulder at me. A faint impression of exasperation was in her eyes. I had to wonder if I’d ever have enough patience to be a parent.
Gwen turned back to Julia and said, “I know. Have you ever rolled the ball past the kittens and had them chase it?”
“I guess not.”
“That’d be fun for both you and the kittens, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. I’m sort of sleepy, though.” For emphasis, she rubbed her right eye.
“Well, you go play for a little while, then I’ll make you some warm milk and we’ll take a nap. All right?”
“I guess so,” Julia said, still sounding reluctant.
Gwen scooted the kid away and when she heard the back door slam, she turned around again with a fistful of surprise. She pointed a Colt .45 directly at my chest.
“I’m guessing you heard about Frank and me.”
Hard to guess which was the bigger surprise. The gun or the somewhat casual way she brought up Clarion.
Before I could say anything, she went on quickly. “Nobody knew how James treated me. I tried to leave several times. He said he’d track me down if I did. He wouldn’t kill me, he said. He’d kill Julia. I didn’t have any doubt he’d do just that, either. You had to know him. How crazy he was. Frank Clarion came out here a couple of times when James was drunk. He stopped James from hurting me. I didn’t expect anything to start. In fact, I thought Frank was pretty much of a fool in some ways.”
She walked over and sat down in a rocking chair.
“I can see where holding that gun up would make you tired,” I said. “Why don’t you set it down?”
“It’s not the gun that’s making me tired. It’s my monthly visitor, in case you’re interested. It always tires me out.”
“If you get to sit, how about me sitting?”
“I didn’t know Frank was going to kill James. He never told me that.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, and sat down in a chair of my own.
“I didn’t know he was going to kill anybody, in fact. I only told him about James helping you out because I thought that maybe he could steal the gun from you—after you got it from your brother. That’s how I thought he was going to handle it.”
“So he gets the gun and then what?”
She let her gaze drop for a moment. Regret made her lean face ev
en sharper. “We run away together.”
“He has a wife and kid.”
“Figure it out, Ford. We were in love. Or thought we were. We were very selfish people. We didn’t worry about husbands or wives or even children. He only agreed to let me take Julia along because I convinced him that James would kill her otherwise.”
“You’re still running away?”
She snorted. “After he killed all those people? He’s not right. Up here.” She tapped her head. “He’s even crazier than James was. I have to have this gun on me at all times. I sleep with it on the night table. He’s mad because I won’t take off with him now. He thinks he can sell the gun in New Orleans. He says there’s a hotel where all the arms merchants hang out there.”
“The La Pierre.”
“I guess. Anyway, he claims I’ve destroyed his life.” The snort again. “I’ve destroyed his life? After he killed all those people. That’s the only reason Tib’s wife won’t go to the marshal. She knows that Frank’ll kill her if she does. That he’ll find some way. Frank’s a very devious man.”
The first bullet shattered the west window. The second bullet shattered an oil lamp, which exploded, sending a fist-sized ball of flame along the top of the horsehair couch.
Out back, Julia screamed.
After the first bullet, Gwen had crouched down and headed for the back door. There was no point in trying to stop her. She was out to save her child. There’s no more profound urge than that.
I crawled to the side of the west window to get a fix on where he was. I smashed out what was left of the glass and took a two-second scan of the land. He was out near the barn.
The next minute—and it seemed much longer than that—unfolded this way: Frank Clarion had apparently not been aware of Julia—who’d been on the other side of the barn—until she screamed. Her screams had obviously gotten his attention. Now she was running toward the house. Clarion made the decision to go after her.
Just then Gwen slammed out of the back door and started running toward her daughter. Sight of Gwen must have made Clarion lose control. He shot Gwen twice.
I wanted to fire, but I couldn’t. All three of them were now in range, but they’d also collected together in the middle of the backyard. Gwen was crying out and falling in such a way that she obscured Julia and that gave Clarion time to grab Julia.
By the time Gwen’s body collided with the unyielding ground, Frank Clarion had what he wanted: a hostage.
“I have to tell you to drop your gun?”
“I guess not.”
“Then do it.”
“What’s he going to do to me?” Julia asked me, her lower lip trembling so badly I could barely understand her. Then, as if realizing everything that had happened in the past few minutes, she looked to her left and saw the fallen form of her mother, who lay unmoving facedown on the ground. “Mom!” she cried and suddenly tried to tear herself from Clarion’s armlock around her neck. She kicked him in the shin. For the space of a breath, his hold loosened. I had the exhilarating sense that she was going to jerk and twist free of him. But then his grip was redoubled and when she tried to kick him again, he clipped her on top of the head with the handle of his gun. She slumped in his arm, awake but in pain.
He was done now. Didn’t matter if he had a hostage; didn’t matter if he had David’s gun. He had to know that his world was caving in on him. The shame of destroying his marriage, the shame of murdering several men, and finally the shame of having to take a little girl hostage to save himself—in his frenzy he had to give up on his dime-novel dream of himself. He wasn’t the good guy, he was the bad guy. In his case, a very bad guy.
As if to mock us with its indifference, the cacophony of day went right on its way. Birds sang, sweet breezes blew, cows did what cows do, and the wee kittens were cute and playful. Who gave a damn about this stupid human drama where a little girl was probably about to lose her life? Humans were always doing stupid things like this. They never changed, never learned. Birds, cows and wee kittens had given up on humans a long time ago, anyway.
“I’m walking her to my horse. I don’t have to tell you what happens if you make a move on me, Ford.”
“You killed too many people, Clarion. You’ll never walk away.”
“You don’t have no idea what’s really going on around here.”
“What about James and Tib—and my brother?”
Julia started to rouse. She’d hung limply in his arms but now, like a puppet whose strings had been reattached, the limbs got awkwardly active, jutting this way and that for the arms, the knees strong enough to force the legs to stand upright.
“I didn’t kill nobody. The way I figure, it was Wayland. He heard me run my mouth off to Tib one night when we were drinking—how I was going to kill your brother and take the gun for myself. That was my plan. But by the time I got there, they were all dead. And somebody was in the barn, firing at you and James and Tib. I just rode back to town. Now put your arms up in the air.”
His bay was west of the house, ground-tied. He wouldn’t have any trouble reaching it. Julia was crying quietly, glancing at her mother every few minutes.
Nothing I could do. He was going to leave and he knew there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Julia tried kicking him again, but this time he moved his leg out of the way in time. He slugged her again on the side of the head, but not as hard as last time.
“Is my mommy dead, mister?” she cried out at me as Frank Clarion dragged her past me to his horse.
“She’ll be all right, honey.”
Clarion laughed. “You shoulda been a priest, Ford.”
Julia started crying again. At that moment the world couldn’t make much sense to her. If it ever would again. Far as I could tell, her mother was dead.
He got around the house. He wasn’t having any trouble with Julia. She’d either given up or had passed out. Her arms dangled at her sides, seeming to swing free. I heard a horse whinny and then I heard Clarion muttering instructions to Julia. He was setting her up on his saddle. He was telling her he’d shoot her if she didn’t sit absolutely still. The silence was such that I could hear his saddle leather when he climbed up on the horse. The horse whinnied again and moved around some. He settled it down before moving it away from the yard. He started out slow, the horse moving just a few yards. I wondered if he was having trouble with Julia. Strange he didn’t just start moving fast. A second or two before he did it, I figured out why he was moving so slow. There was one shot and then a second. I don’t know how to describe the sound my horse made, a cry that was part shock and part pain. Then the sound became pure pain. The horse collapsed. The sound seemed as enormous as the cry of pain had been. Then Clarion was moving fast and so was I.
The horse was dead by the time I got to it. Tremors skittered across its flesh like spiderflies on a pond surface. At least the prick had been merciful. Two bullets in the brain.
Gwen was stone dead. You could feel the life still warm but cooling fast in the horse. But Gwen was cold dead. I turned her over on her back. Black ants had collected on the blood red of her blouse. She’d hit the ground so hard that her sharp prairie-elegant nose had been smashed. She smelled pretty bad, everything having emptied out the way it did. People didn’t figure sometimes, didn’t figure at all, and she was one of them. Whatever James had done to her, a shitkicker thief like Clarion sure wasn’t the solution.
Clarion had forgotten about the horse out back of the barn, the one Gwen used for her buckboard. I remembered it only because it made some noise on the downwind. I dragged my saddle off my own poor, dead animal and got it on the ancient cutting horse that somebody had returned from the cattle business years earlier. Getting it to stand still while I saddled it was no easy task. When I finally grabbed the horn and started to swing myself up into the saddle, it spooked and nearly threw me to the ground.
It took me ninety-two minutes by railroad watch to reach town. It should have taken me sixty at the outside.
&nb
sp; Chapter 18
Marshal Wickham was in his office. Just inside the front door, I could hear him talking back there.
I didn’t wait for somebody to find me and escort me back.
His door was closed. I opened it and put my head in.
He was talking to a man in muttonchops. The disgusted way the man looked at me said that he was important. His two big ruby rings and his expensive purple suit said he was important, too. I’m sure he was the president of a lodge or two.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Wickham said, “I’m sort of busy at the moment.” He sounded mad and I didn’t blame him.
I said, “I want you to swear out a warrant for Clarion on one count of murder. There may be others later on.”
Muttonchops turned in his chair and said, “Who the hell is this man, anyway?”
But I’d obviously gotten Wickham’s attention. “What the hell are you talking about, Ford?”
“He just killed Gwen and kidnapped her daughter.”
“Frank Clarion? My deputy?” Easy to see that he wasn’t beyond shock, either, not even for all his years as a lawman. “That’s my nephew.”
He was talking gibberish, the way we all do when we don’t know what else to say. As if it was impossible for his nephew to be capable of even the smallest crime.
“He grew up right here in town.”
“I certainly hope you know what the hell you’re talking about,” Muttonchops said.
I said, “You need to get out of here.” I grabbed him under his hefty arm and jerked him to his feet.
“Just who the hell do you think you are?” he snapped.
“He’s Federal, Felix. Maybe you’d better leave.”
“I don’t give a damn if he’s Federal or not. I don’t like being treated this way.”
I tried to make it easier for him. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have treated you like this. But it’s an emergency and the marshal here and I need to get to work.”
