"We're in the office," Nash said. "Don't call me that."
"From here on out, I'll call you whatever I want . . . Aaron. And you'll call me the new president of this company."
Nash forgot about the drink. He stared at Eastland for a few seconds, then said, "You've gone mad."
"Not really." Eastland walked over to the desk, opened a wooden box that sat on it, and took out one of Nash's cigars. While his father-in-law stared at him in disbelief, Eastland slid the cigar into his vest pocket and went on, "You see, I've been paying attention. I know that Handley was here looking for that gunman Meadows. I know Meadows has been working for you. You ordered him to destroy Devil's Gorge Camp and if I have to, I'll even testify that you told him to burn down Victoria's boarding house."
"That's a damned lie!" Nash said as he thumped a fist on the desk.
"Maybe . . . but I know how effective a lie can be in court if it's done properly. You taught me all about that, Aaron."
Outrage had puffed Nash up for a moment, but now he seemed to deflate again. "So you're blackmailing me," he said. "What do you want?"
"I told you. I'm the new president of the company. You're going to retire."
"Done," Nash said.
Eastland looked surprised. "That easily?" he said. "You're just going to give up?"
"You would have gotten control of the company eventually, since you're married to Elizabeth. Why not now?"
"Well . . . all right." Eastland still seemed shocked that he had won. He said, "And money. I'll need some extra money."
"Now, that's one thing I can't give you."
"Can't – Now, see here! I know how much this company is worth."
Nash leaned back in his chair and laughed. "You don't know a damned thing! I'm in debt up to my eyeballs, and that means the company is, too. We've been on the brink of disaster for months now, and you've been too blind and stupid to see it! The company's only chance of survival was to put Marcus Baldwin out of business. That's why I brought Meadows in and paid him what cash I could scrape up. So, you want to be the president of the company . . ." Nash threw his arms out and laughed again, uproariously this time. "Take it! It's yours, you fool!"
Eastland stared at his father-in-law, aghast. His plans had collapsed. He swallowed hard and tried to regain something, anything.
"I can still testify that you hired Meadows to commit crimes, even to kill people."
"Go ahead, if you really want to send your wife's father to prison. But remember, legally she's the one who'll take over control of the company if you do. How much power do you think she'll be willing to give you if you're responsible for me being behind bars?"
Nash saw the despair in Eastland's eyes. His blackmail scheme had fallen apart, and now he was left with nothing.
Nothing but desperation.
He reached under his coat and took out a pistol. It was small, a .32 caliber pocket gun, but deadly at close range. Nash started up out of his chair at the sight of it.
"Elizabeth will be perfectly willing for me to run things if her father is murdered by an intruder . . . say, that hired killer Meadows. If a man like that found you couldn't pay him what you'd promised him, he might lose his temper and shoot both you and your secretary. If I tell the authorities that I heard the shots and ran in here and saw Meadows fleeing . . ."
"You really are insane," Nash said. "And you don't have the guts to do it, either."
Eastland lifted the pistol and pulled back the hammer.
Nash tried to rush out from behind the desk. Eastland pulled the trigger. The shot wasn't much louder than if he had slapped the palm of his hand down on the desk, hard. Nash reeled back, collapsed in his chair, and put a hand to his chest where an awful pain had blossomed.
Vaguely he saw Eastland step to one side of the door. The secretary hurried in, drawn by the sound of the shot. Eastland stepped behind him, put the gun muzzle to the back of his head, and pulled the trigger again. This shot wasn't loud, either, but it was enough to send the unfortunate man pitching to the floor on his face as the small caliber slug bounced around inside his skull and pulped his brain.
"You always acted like I was stupid, Aaron," Eastland said. "I was just a show pony you bought for your little girl to cheer her up because she's so ugly. You just never knew, did you?"
Nash made a gurgling sound. His head tipped back slowly against the chair.
He didn't know anything now, and never would again.
26.
Marcus Baldwin was pacing back and forth in his office, obviously agitated about something, when Logan walked in. He stopped short, stared wide-eyed at Logan, and said, "Thank God you're here!"
"What's wrong?" Logan asked. "You've heard about the fire?"
"What fire?" Baldwin shook his head distractedly, then went on, "Oh, yes, I heard something about a fire. A building burned down or something."
"Vickie Eastland's boarding house, where I used to live."
"Good Lord. Is Mrs. Eastland all right?"
"She is," Logan said, "no thanks to Jim Meadows."
"Meadows? That gunman you said has been working for Aaron Nash?"
"That's right. Vickie got a good look at him just before he knocked her out and started the fire."
Baldwin blew out a breath and said, "That's terrible. Why would he do that?"
"I think he was trying to distract me from coming after him. If it looked like the house burning down was an accident, I might have been too upset by Vickie's death to worry about him for a while." Logan's face was hard as stone as he added, "Meadows has a habit of trying to use murder as a distraction."
"Well, somebody needs to do something about the man, no doubt about that, but I have another problem right now and I need your help. Gillian's disappeared."
It was Logan's turn to be surprised. "Disappeared?" he repeated. "What do you mean?"
"I mean she's gone, blast it!" Baldwin wheeled around, snatched a piece of paper off his desk, and thrust it out toward Logan. "My housekeeper found this note from her and brought it here to me. She's run off with that man she's been seeing."
Logan remembered Baldwin mentioning that Gillian had a new beau, but he hadn't really paid much attention and didn't know any of the details. Gillian had probably gone through a dozen different suitors and would likely have a dozen more.
But not if she had run off with the current one. Logan read the note she had left for her father. It explained that she was eloping with the man, who wasn't named, and asked that Baldwin not try to find her. She would be back with her new husband when the time was right, Gillian wrote.
Logan stepped past Baldwin and dropped the note back on the desk. "I'm sorry," he said. "But right now I have to try to find Meadows. Not only that, but I took Vickie Eastland to the hotel. She and Rusty and the other people who lived in the boarding house will need a place to stay, so I told the clerk you'd pay for their rooms. I think you should help her rebuild the place, too."
"Why should I do that?" Baldwin asked with a frown. "I didn't have anything to do with what happened."
"Actually, you did. It was your war with Aaron Nash that brought Meadows here. If the two of you hadn't been feuding, none of this would have happened."
Baldwin glared at Logan for a second, then abruptly shook his head. "All right, that's fine," he said. "I'm as generous as the next man. But right now I have to deal with this other problem. I want you to find Gillian and bring her back!"
"How am I going to do that? I don't have any idea where she might have gone."
A feeling of despair went through him as he realized he didn't know where Meadows might be, either. He and Baldwin were both facing dilemmas they had no hope of solving. They just didn't know enough.
Baldwin must have thought of that, too. He scrubbed a hand over his face and heaved a sigh. "I just can't stand the thought of her running off with that . . . that scar-faced bastard!"
It took a second for what Baldwin said to penetrate Logan's brain. When it did, he s
tiffened, and his hand tightened its clutching grip on the cane.
"What did you say?" he asked through taut lips.
Baldwin waved a hand in agitation. "That man she's been seeing. She tried to keep his existence a secret, of course. Gillian's always been prone to sneaking around and lying, even when there's no good reason to. But some of my servants have caught glimpses of him, and they told me about him. About the scar . . ." Baldwin gestured vaguely toward his face. " . . . on his cheek."
Logan's pulse hammered so hard in his head it felt like his skull was going to crack open. There had to be other men in Hot Springs who had scars on their faces, he told himself.
But Meadows had always been a ladies' man, able to sweep women off their feet with his charm and good looks and get whatever he wanted from them. It seemed like the ugly scar on his face would have put an end to that, but maybe not.
Maybe Meadows had learned how to deal with what had happened, the way that Logan was learning now.
"Mr. Baldwin," he said quietly, "Jim Meadows has a bad scar on his right cheek."
Baldwin took a step back like someone had just punched him in the chest. "You're sure about that?" he asked in a hushed voice.
"Pretty sure," Logan said. "He got it when a shot I fired creased him."
"My God." Baldwin had to rest a hand on the desk to steady himself. "You think he . . . he's the one who's been courting Gillian? Why would he do that?"
"To cover his bets," Logan said. "Meadows always has to be sure of a pay-off, one way or another. If things had fallen through with Nash, he might have tried to extort money from you to get him to leave Gillian alone. Or maybe – "
Logan fell silent as an even worse possibility occurred to him. Meadows could have insinuated himself into Gillian Baldwin's life in order to kidnap her if his other plans fell apart, as they seemed to be doing now. With Meadows running wild, she could easily be in great danger.
"You don't know that Meadows is the man she's been seeing," Baldwin said. His voice shook a little. "You can't be sure about that."
"No," Logan agreed, "but I've known Meadows for a long time. It seems like the sort of thing he'd do. Either way, I still have to find him. Maybe when I do, I'll find Gillian, too."
Baldwin stepped forward and clutched at the sleeve of Logan's coat. "Bring her back to me unharmed and I'll give you anything you want," he said. "I'll build the Eastland woman a new boarding house, and she won't even have to pay me back!"
"We'll talk about that later," Logan said. "I have to think . . ."
The only connection Meadows had in Hot Springs – other than Gillian, if he really was the scar-faced man Baldwin's servants had seen – was Aaron Nash. He should have tried harder to make Nash talk, Logan thought. Nash had seemed to be telling the truth when he claimed he didn't know where Meadows was, but it could be that he was a slick liar. Logan's only hope was to go back to Nash's office and try again.
And this time, if it took putting a gun to the man's head, he would do it.
Logan turned to leave the office. "Just bring her back, Logan," Baldwin said. "That's all I ask."
Logan hurried out of the building, and the first person he saw as he stepped onto the street was Rusty Turner. "There you are," the older man said. "Thought maybe I'd find you here. I wanted to make sure Mr. Baldwin was gonna go along with what you said about him payin' for those rooms at the hotel – "
"Yes, and maybe more than that," Logan said. He didn't have time to stop and explain everything to Rusty, so he went on, "Walk with me. I'm on my way back to Nash's office."
While they hurried along the street, Logan told his friend about Gillian Baldwin running off and his theory that Meadows was her mysterious "beau".
"To be honest, I would have thought that Gillian was too flighty to be attracted to a man with a scar like that," Logan said, "but it's possible she thinks it makes him look dashing and dangerous." He grunted. "Meadows fits that last part of the description, that's for sure."
"You think Nash told him to play up to Gillian, to hurt Mr. Baldwin?" Rusty asked.
Logan hadn't thought about that. He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. "I can't say for sure, but to me it sounds more like something Meadows would come up with on his own. I guess we'll have a better idea when we see how Nash reacts to me telling him about it."
"I'm comin' with you," Rusty said. "I don't trust Aaron Nash any farther than I could throw him."
"Neither do I. And you're welcome to come along." Logan paused. "Just don't be too surprised by anything you see."
He heard the flinty tone in his own voice. The cold-blooded hired gunman he used to be wasn't completely buried, he thought.
And that was a good thing, because Gillian might need somebody like that today.
They were nearing Nash's office when a buggy rattled by in the street, moving fast. Logan glanced at it, then looked again. He turned to watch the buggy go around a corner and disappear.
"What is it?" Rusty asked.
"I'm pretty sure that was Carleton Eastland in that buggy," Logan said.
"So?"
"He was in a big hurry."
Rusty shrugged and said, "Maybe Nash sent him to do a job."
"That's what I'm thinking," Logan said, "but from what I understand, Eastland's not much more than a glorified clerk in the timber company. He's Nash's son-in-law, though, so maybe Nash would trust him to handle something more personal . . . like getting word to Jim Meadows that Vickie didn't die. Nash would want Meadows to disappear. If the law can't catch him, he can't testify against Nash."
"That makes sense," Rusty said with a nod. "Maybe we should follow Eastland and see where he goes." He started to turn. "I'll go back to the barn and hitch up the buggy – "
"We don't have time for that," Logan broke in, "but you can hurry on ahead and have a horse saddled for me by the time I get there."
"You can ride a horse?"
"I don't see why not. And that'll be faster than taking the buggy, since Eastland's already got a lead on us." Now that the plan had formed in Logan's mind, he didn't want to waste any time putting it into action. "Go on, Rusty. I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Well, all right," Rusty said, "but I don't much like the idea of you goin' after Eastland by yourself. What if he leads you to Meadows, like you think he might?"
"Then maybe the two of us can finally settle this without anybody else having to get hurt," Logan said.
27.
Carleton Eastland thought he was rather calm for a man who had just killed two people. In a way, he was a little proud of himself. He was the sort of man nobody had ever paid much attention to. First he was just a clerk and then he was just Elizabeth's husband, and everybody knew that was the only reason he occupied the position in the company he did.
But now he was a killer. A desperado as daring as Jesse James, although if his plan worked no one would ever know that.
He was going to tell Jim Meadows that Vickie had survived and implicated him in attacking her and burning down the boarding house. He would say that Nash had ordered Meadows to get out of the area and lie low for a while. Meadows would want money, of course; his kind always did. So Eastland would tell Meadows that he would meet him tonight and deliver a payoff, money that Meadows could use to put Hot Springs far behind him. That would insure that Meadows would stay in one place for the time being.
Then Eastland would return to town, pretend to discover the bodies of Nash and Teague, the secretary, and tell the authorities that Meadows must have killed them. He could make it sound like he had been aware that Nash was up to something no good but hadn't known any details. Making it all seem innocent on his part, he would reveal just enough to imply that Nash had hired Meadows to cause trouble for Baldwin and kill Vickie, and then he would point the law in the direction of the isolated roadhouse north of town where Meadows and his fellow gunmen spent most of their time.
It was a good thing he had followed Meadows out there one day after ea
vesdropping on a conversation between him and Nash. Eastland smiled as he flapped the reins against the back of the horse hitched to the buggy. He had acted largely on angry impulse when he shot Nash, but almost immediately, the plan had sprung full-blown into his mind. Since then he had thought it all through and saw no reason why it wouldn't work.
Tonight, a posse would descend on the roadhouse. They wouldn't take chances with a man who had such a dangerous reputation. They would pour lead into the ramshackle old building until Meadows and all his friends were dead.
Then he, Carleton Eastland, would be the hero of the whole affair. Elizabeth would gladly turn to him for comfort and support. She didn't know how to run the company. That would fall to him.
Nash had been wrong. Things couldn't be as bad as he claimed they were. Eastland knew that once he took the reins, he would turn everything around and make the company a huge success. Eventually the Eastland Timber Company would be the largest in the state. After that . . .
Well, there was a governor's mansion in Little Rock that would suit him just fine.
Some clouds had started to move in during the drive from Hot Springs, and a cold wind sprang up. The gathering overcast made everything look even more gloomy as Eastland approached the roadhouse. It was built of roughly sawn planks and sat under the beetling brow of a sandstone bluff that bulged above it. Towering pines grew on top of the bluff. The place had a sinister look to it that was entirely appropriate for the sort of men who congregated here. Human jackals, Eastland thought.
But he could force himself to deal with them in order to get what he wanted.
Half a dozen horses were tied up at the hitch rail in front of the roadhouse, and somewhat to Eastland's surprise, so was another buggy. He had figured he would be the only person out here driving such a vehicle. The buggy was an expensive one, and actually, it looked a little familiar to Eastland, but he couldn't recall who it belonged to or where he had seen it before.
A couple of men stepped out of the roadhouse door as Eastland brought his buggy to a stop. One wore a threadbare brown tweed suit and a derby; the other had a sheepskin vest over what looked like the upper half of a pair of long underwear, and a battered old hat perched on a thatch of straw-like hair. Both wore guns, and the tall, skinny man in the sheepskin vest rested his hand on the butt of his.
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