“I’ll need somewhere to sleep,” Wolpert replied. “And someplace I can get comfortable, since I intend on staying to see what happens to those men.”
“What are you implying, Zeke?”
“Not a thing. That bank was in my jurisdiction. Those men tore through shooting up my streets. Even killed a few folks that were under my protection.” The last part was a bit of spice added to the story, but Wolpert doubted the marshal would call him on it.
“So you think I’ll do anything differently now than if you weren’t looking over my shoulder?”
“Looking over your shoulder or watching from somewhere else, I want to see what happens to those men. If you’d chased them through this damned cold, I’d think you would want the same thing.”
Davis glanced toward the window as a stray lick of wind caused it to tremble in its frame. “I can understand that much. Reminds me of the time we chased those skinny Kliner boys from one end of the state to the other. They only snatched some money from a few dry goods stores, but they gave us more grief than a proper gang.”
“That was a rough couple of days,” Wolpert mused. “I thought those Kliners would be the death of me.”
Looking over to his deputies, Davis said, “And that’s coming from two men who saw real combat in the army. But them redskins fought a whole different fight.” After a few more seconds with his memories, he glanced back over to Wolpert. “You wanna stay with me while you’re in town? I got an extra room and Marie would love to have someone else to cook for. Especially someone with your appetite.”
“Thanks, but no. I wouldn’t want to impose. Besides, I already rented a room.”
“Fine. But you’re coming over for supper. I won’t hear anything more on the matter.”
“So, what happens now with those robbers? I’m a little rusty on procedure.”
Wolpert hated to play up to the marshal like that. Davis could be insufferable enough without thinking someone else had bared his neck to him that easily. More than that, it just went against Wolpert’s grain to work to get on someone’s good side. That sort of thing was best left to politicians. Whether his distaste showed or not, Wolpert’s subtle bow to the marshal’s authority had its desired effect.
“My boys will get them situated in their cages,” Davis said in a more relaxed tone. “After they’ve been softened up a bit, we’ll have a little chat with them about that bank robbery.”
“You probably shouldn’t soften them up too much.”
“Why? You getting sentimental in your old age?”
“No. It’s just that they’ve already been run from one state to another and are far away from Burt Sampil. Now they’re looking at the inside of a cage with the prospect of a noose going around their necks. With all of that piled against you, would you care about another beating?”
“Maybe not,” Davis admitted. “You got something better?”
“Let them sleep. Toss them some water and a scrap of food. Tomorrow, I’ll go in and have a word with them. You or your boys can be there, but we’ll see about turning their heads before twisting them off’a their shoulders.”
“Bribery, huh? Why don’t that surprise me coming from you?”
“Not a bribe so much as incentive. Sometimes, if a man has something to live for, he can make a turnaround that’d surprise even you.”
Davis grinned in a way that showed several sharp teeth. “We’ll just have to see about that.”
Chapter 17
Since he mentioned renting a room, Wolpert figured he should go ahead and do that before Marshal Davis checked up on him. And there was no doubt in his mind that Davis would be checking up on him. He settled on a nice little boardinghouse on Roswell Street. It was quiet, smelled of freshly baked bread and was a stone’s throw from both the saloon district and the marshal’s office without being too close to either one. The woman who ran the place had an old man helping keep it in shape. Neither of them must have heard of Sheriff Wolpert beforehand, because they greeted him as warmly as they would any upstanding keeper of the peace.
When he awoke the next morning, Wolpert was greeted with another scent that was even more pleasant than the one that had drawn him to the boardinghouse in the first place. Stumbling down the stairs while hitching his pants up, he pulled in a deep breath and asked, “Are those biscuits cooking?”
Henrietta was a short woman with wheat-colored hair and a round face. When she smiled at him, her cheeks flushed a bit and became the shapes of small apples. “Close,” she said. “They’re muffins. Blueberry, from my own preserves. Care for one?”
“If I gotta stop at just one, you’d better hide the rest.”
She giggled and waved off the compliment while leading the way to the little round table set up in the cramped room adjacent to her kitchen. “Did you sleep all right?”
“Just fine, thanks.”
“So,” she called from the next room, “are you in Lester on official business?”
“Yes, ma’am. I caught a bunch of bank robbers just the other day.”
Emerging from the kitchen carrying a plate of steaming muffins that had already been neatly cut in half, she gazed at him with wide eyes. “I heard about that! Those men that were marched out of the Songbird!”
“I did the marching.”
Henrietta could have been anywhere from her late twenties to midthirties. Although her face was definitely not one of a young girl, there was enough brightness in her features to shave off a few years no matter how old she truly was. “Oh my! How exciting,” she said with genuine enthusiasm. “I heard there was quite a commotion.”
“It could have been a lot worse, but I’ve had experience in that sort of thing.”
“Yes, I imagine you would. Those men wouldn’t be the same ones who robbed that bank up in Nebraska, would they?”
“Actually, yes. You’ve heard about that?”
“Only this morning. It seems one of my caretaker’s sisters lives in a town that straddles the border between Kansas and Nebraska. She heard lots of talk and told him all about it when she arrived for a visit.” Seeing that he’d already helped himself to his breakfast and was almost done with the second half of his muffin by the time she took a breath, Henrietta said, “The short story is that yes. I’ve heard about it. Sorry for prattling on.”
“Not at all. Sorry for eating like a pig.”
“Would you like another?”
“As quickly as possible,” Wolpert replied. When she picked the plate up and carried it to the kitchen, he said, “I delivered those robbers to your Marshal Davis.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s mine, but go on.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
She came back from the kitchen, this time carrying several whole muffins on the plate along with a healthy portion of butter to go along with them. After setting the plate down, she bustled back and forth to refill his coffee. “Not much, other than he seems to do a fine job. I don’t think I’ve seen him enough to get more than a passing glance at him or his deputies. Things tend to be fairly quiet around this place.”
“What about his deputies? Do you know any of them?”
“They seem like good boys, for the most part.”
“Just for the most part?” Wolpert picked up on the subtle reluctance in her voice the way an experienced tracker could tell by a set of ruts if a wagon was listing more to one side instead of the other. “The reason I ask is that I want to make sure things go smoothly with the transfer from that office to the Dog Creek Jail. One little slip and things could get real messy. I’m sure you can imagine what I mean.”
There was no reason why the owner of a boardinghouse would know what he meant, but the key word he’d used was imagine. Since Henrietta’s eyes wandered as she traced her fingers along the top of her table, it seemed she was definitely imagining something.
“I’ve only seen those deputies in passing,” she said, “but you may want to keep your eye on Otto Berringer.”
“Real
ly? Why?”
“It could be nothing, but I’ve heard a thing or two about him. He’s one of the newer deputies Marshal Davis has taken on, but he’s lived in town all his life. I’ve been quilting with his mother for years and she would always go on about some sort of trouble that Otto got into.”
“What sort of trouble?” Wolpert asked through a mouthful of hot, buttered muffin.
“Nothing serious. Mostly just sneaking into a saloon when he should have been at school. Some say he started a fire that burnt down a neighbor’s shed. His mother sometimes thought he would be more likely to spend time in the jail instead of guarding it. But listen to me go on like this. None of this is very charitable talk. Otto should be just fine. He seems to be doing quite well for himself. He even helped his mother get into a new house.”
And there it was. To some, those things might connect in a sloppy, haphazard way at best. For Wolpert, they were all too familiar. He hadn’t gained his tarnished reputation by only taking a few bribes that were handed to him or looking the other way when the opportunity struck. He’d earned his dirty money by sniffing out opportunities that others would miss, as well as the people who were prime candidates to help him earn more. One very important part of that was being able to spot potentially bad seeds in the bunch. Perhaps it was a gift for finding like-minded souls that could be exploited. Whatever it was that drew him to the conclusion, he thought he could work with Otto Berringer.
“You’re right,” he said before more than a few seconds had ticked by. “It’s probably nothing.”
“Will you be staying for supper?”
“Most definitely. I suppose I’ll be in town for a bit until that excitement you mentioned dies down enough for me to head home.”
Henrietta didn’t say much to that, but was obviously glad to hear it.
With a minimum of snooping, Wolpert was able to figure out where to find Otto Berringer. His mother worked at the town’s only laundry and she was more than happy to talk about her boy. As for gleaning personal information about a man, there was no better source than his mother. No matter what the circumstances, they could always be convinced to tell stories or brag about their sons. Mrs. Berringer was a nice enough lady. So nice, in fact, that Wolpert felt bad for the ease with which he manipulated her into telling him what he’d wanted to know.
Apart from Otto being a stubborn child with a fondness for apple pie, he was making amends for the previous grief he’d given to his entire family by helping pay for a new home. While Mrs. Berringer was exceedingly proud of this, Wolpert saw it as confirmation that Otto was indeed the young man he was after. No marshal’s deputy should have been able to afford anything more than a rented room and the food it took to sustain him. When a deputy working for Marshal Davis was that prosperous, it meant either he was taking bribes to supplement his income or Luke had aged into a very generous employer. Wolpert’s healthy mix of observational skills and cynicism steered him toward the former.
It wasn’t quite noon when Wolpert made his way back to the marshal’s office. Even before he could take a step inside, Adam rushed to the door to greet him.
“Did Marshal Davis tell you to meet him here?” the deputy asked.
“No,” Wolpert replied. “I came to check on my prisoners.”
Twitching at whose prisoners they were truly supposed to be, Adam replied, “They’re doing just fine.”
“Mind if I take a look?”
“You think we’d just cut them loose?”
“No,” Wolpert replied as he stood there like a stump that was perfectly content to impede progress on a busy street.
“Fine,” Adam grunted. “Otto’s watching them now. Talk to him.”
Of course Otto was watching them. Mrs. Berringer had told Wolpert as much during their little chat.
Adam was the only deputy in the front section of the office at the moment. He watched him so closely that Wolpert had to figure Davis had told him about the sheriff’s smudged past.
The door to the back section of the office was shut tight. After he rapped his knuckles against it, another deputy opened it for him.
“Yeah?” asked the man who peered out at Wolpert. His eyes were dark and beady, situated at a height that would put their owner at about half a foot shorter than Wolpert.
“It’s that sheriff from yesterday, Otto,” Adam explained from behind his desk. “He wants to get a look at the prisoners.”
Even through the crack of open space between the door and its frame, Wolpert could see part of a grin reflected in those beady eyes. The door was pulled open and a short, solidly built young man stepped aside. “Come on in,” he said with the same hint of an Alabama accent that had colored his mother’s voice. “I don’t think they’ll want to talk to you, though.”
In the time it took for him to step into the room with the cells and the door to be shut behind him, Wolpert could tell the three outlaws weren’t in a condition to talk to anyone. Juan was in the cell closest to the door. He lay on a cot that was just big enough to support his body while his legs hung off the end. His already dark complexion was marred by several bruises around his eyes and cheek. Tom was in the cell at the back of the room and sported several cuts on the sides of his mouth. His cot was the same as Juan’s, but his larger frame made it look more like something that belonged in a dollhouse. Cade had them all beat. Most of his face was covered with a crust of dried blood and he held his left arm as if it were in a sling. Lying on his side on his cot, he pulled in a breath with a wheeze and let it out in a tired groan.
“What happened to them?” Wolpert asked.
Otto looked at each outlaw in turn. “Oh, they didn’t feel like talkin’ to Marshal Davis. He didn’t like that too much.”
“I thought I was going to be here when they were questioned.”
“Guess you thought wrong.”
Wolpert fought to suppress the urge to knock Otto across the face. He allowed the outlaws to see the subtle, regretful shake of his head before turning a steely expression toward the deputy. “How’d they get so banged up?”
“Can’t you figure it out for yerself?”
“I want you to tell me.”
“Well, it’s like I said. Marshal Davis come in to ask what happened with the bank bein’ robbed and all. That one there,” Otto said while flipping a lazy wave toward Cade, “he had a smart mouth on him, so the marshal told me to shut it. That big fella stepped in and took a mighty good load of a beating. Didn’t seem to bother him much, though.”
It didn’t take astute senses to pick up on the changes that drifted across Otto’s face. When he talked about Cade, the slightest reference to the punishment he’d been given brought a hungry glint to his eyes. The deputy was thinking back to the incident with such intensity that Wolpert could nearly hear the echo of punches cracking against flesh and bone. And when the deputy switched tracks to talk about Tom, the pleasure seeped out of him to be replaced with bitter resentment. Otto wasn’t just disappointed that the big man hadn’t caved. He felt cheated.
Wolpert had been party to a lot of terrible things, but he hadn’t taken such pleasure in them. In Wolpert’s sphere of influence, it was necessary to hold court with men who got a thrill from such disgusting pursuits. Fortunately, after Wolpert lowered himself to their level, they were easy to deal with.
Otto had been going on about some more of Davis’s questioning techniques, but Wolpert didn’t listen once he’d gotten a proper read on the deputy. He forced a grin onto his face, pointed to Cade and asked, “You know what’s worse than that one’s mouth?”
“What?”
“The fact that Eddie Vernon is still alive and kicking.” Dropping his voice to a snarl, Wolpert asked, “You know how many women and children he’s put through hell?”
Furrowing his brow, Otto replied, “Uhhhh . . . no.”
“More than any shortsighted judge knows, that’s for certain. If the law was put squarely into the hands of men who knew what to do with it, men like you
and me, skunks like these three and filthy dogs like Eddie wouldn’t live to see another sunrise.”
Like any simple man who was too ignorant to know how simple he was, Otto nodded and agreed with what Wolpert said without thinking about it.
“It’s fellows like us, who get our hands dirty every day out there in the muck, that know best about how to run things,” Wolpert groused. If there was a quicker way to get on the good side of an ignorant wretch like Otto, he didn’t know it. Bad-mouthing the higher ranks worked in the army and it worked in Lester, Kansas, just as well.
“You got that right,” Otto replied.
“You know who Eddie Vernon is, right?”
“Sure. He’s serving time in Dog Creek Jail.”
Wolpert gave the deputy a nudge and asked, “Think you could get me in to pay him a visit?”
“Why would you wanna do that?”
“I happen to be friends with the father of one of the men Eddie gunned down. He’s got a standing offer of a thousand dollars for Eddie’s head, since there’s not a judge around who’ll charge him with a hanging offense. We go in there, ruin his day along with his good looks and split the money.”
“Five hundred each?”
“If that’s not enough, you can have six.”
If Wolpert had any doubts about choosing Otto for his helper, they disappeared when the deputy asked, “And what do I have to do?”
“Just get Eddie alone in a room or out back somewhere so we can go to work.”
“Marshal Davis will know if a prisoner winds up dead.”
“Then we won’t kill him. I’m sure the grieving family would be satisfied with some other bit of proof. Maybe an ear or a little finger. You think the marshal would notice if one of his prisoners got a little torn up in a scuffle?”
Otto chewed on that for all of three seconds before the nasty smile returned to his face. In fact, he got a look about him that most men got when they were thinking of much more pleasant things. “Yeah,” he sighed. “I think that can be arranged. And you say we’d get paid for this?”
“Handsomely.”
Ralph Compton Rusted Tin Page 17
