Wild Justice

by Loren D. Estleman

  “Why do you sound like you’re disappointed?”

  My gaze must have slipped to her exposed stocking. She swiveled, inserting it in the kneehole, and snatched off her glasses. Exposed, her eyes pinned me to the wall. “I can handle mashers. It isn’t that.”

  “I suppose a hat like that needs a long and wicked pin to hold it in place.”

  Her smile was bitter. “I’m not a dried-up spinster taking a shortcut through the Central Park.” She slid open the belly drawer and took out a Marston derringer no more than five inches long from butt to front sight. It was plated in a mirror finish and the grips were pearl.

  “It’s cute. Does it fire bullets or beans?”

  “The Chief thinks I’m petite. He gave it to me when the police broke a triple murder in Brooklyn Heights and I beat the World to the story. I’d have preferred an Army Colt; but you don’t look a gift gun in the muzzle.”

  “The drawer’s okay, but you should lock it if you really want to slow down your draw.”

  She returned it and slid shut the drawer. “I recognized you. Mr. Hearst hired his house artist out from under the chief of police. He could draw the Mona Lisa from a cabled description without ever having seen it. Your reputation doesn’t include harming law-abiding women.”

  I shook my head. A reporter of all people should know you can’t believe everything you read.

  SIXTEEN

  She deposited the spectacles on the dropleaf desk beside the typewriter, planted an elbow on the other side, and rested her chin in her cupped palm, looking at me. I’d begun to form a theory about those eyeglasses, but the time hadn’t come to test it just yet. Her eyes took on a hard metallic sheen when she applied them to a close study.

  “Is it true you faced down the entire Mercy Gang?”

  I grinned.

  “‘The Mercy Gang,’ is that what they’re calling it now? When I first met them they were the Mercy brothers, scourge of highwaymen, bushwhackers, and men of low character in general. Reputation is a seasonal thing.”

  “You didn’t answer the question. Did you wipe them out or didn’t you?”

  “You can ask Jordan Mercy himself when he gets back from Europe with Buffalo Bill’s outfit.”

  “You’re an impossible interview.”

  “I’m not an interview of any kind. When do you expect to hear back from your people about what became of Rossleigh?”

  “Also relentless. Is it something you learned from Blackthorne, or did you bring it with you? What did you do before that, incidentally? The record’s spotty regarding your early life.”

  “According to Jack Rimfire I stopped Pickett’s Charge with no assistance from the federal army.”

  “I don’t count what the nickel novelists say. They make up all sorts of outrageous things to fill in the blanks.”

  I couldn’t hold out any longer. I snatched up her spectacles and peered through them. The lenses were plain glass. I put them back. “As I thought. You need a stage property so people will take you for a serious journalist instead of an uncommonly pretty woman.”

  “Not so uncommon in New York; although P. T. Barnum offered me a job to stand in for Jenny Lind.”

  “You turned him down?”

  “I chose not to offend him with a refusal. He made the decision himself after he heard me sing.”

  “I’m not the yokel you think. She died when you were in grammar school. I thought you reporters set store in the truth.”

  “In print, yes. Is your past so black you won’t share it even now?”

  “Is Rossleigh’s so black you won’t tell me what he’s about?”

  “I’ve changed my mind. You’re not relentless, merely a bore.” She pushed herself back, opened a cabinet in the bottom of the secretary, and hoisted a rosewood case onto her lap by its rolled leather handle. It was cathedral-shaped, with a pair of doors in front secured with a brass latch. She worked the latch and swung them wide, exposing a crystal decanter held in place with a leather strap and a quartette of cut-glass footed goblets in plush-lined cylinders. “I had to smuggle this aboard. The Chief’s teetotal and expects the same from his staff. I needn’t tell you the deep drawer of every desk in the office is locked. It’s the wettest place in town outside of Delmonico’s cellar.” She unstopped the decanter. “I won’t insult you by offering you a pull from the bottle of Old Liver-Eater that Howard squirreled away in the caboose. You’re a drinking man, of course.”

  “A question phrased as a sentence is still a question.” I scooped out a pair of goblets and set them on the leaf.

  “Napoleon brandy,” she said, filling them a third of the way with liquid the color of thistle honey. “A misnomer, to improve sales. The Little Corporal drank wine only.”

  “A historian as well as a scribbler.” I drew up one of the armchairs, sat, and touched my glass to hers. They rang like silver bells. “To Howard’s safe return from the wilderness.”

  “To his return, anyway. If he’s not back on the reservation come next week, I’ll be on my way East in a public chair car.” She sipped. “This assignment is my ticket-of-leave from the Stunt Feature Bowery. I didn’t accept it to spend the rest of my career riding circus elephants and interviewing lady mountain climbers.” She hesitated, then put down the rest in one jerk. This time her face flushed to the roots of her hair. Even then she might have carried it off, but a harsh little cough brought a wad of lace handkerchief to her lips.

  I chose not to pour coal oil on that fire with a remark, however appropriate. I barely wet my whistle, the way the Judge had instructed me in the gentlemanly arts. The stuff was as good as his brandy, but lacked the mellow smoke of his Scotch whiskey. I replenished her glass without asking. Just the introduction of spirits into the conversation seemed to have pried loose her tongue.

  “I’d be open to considering his disappearance a coincidence if our conductor hadn’t taken a sabbatical at the same time,” I said. “The only thing that keeps me from clamping those slender wrists in iron is why.”

  She turned one, examining it as if it belonged to someone else. “Are they slender? I grew up milking cows on a farm in Ohio. Papa said I could arm-wrestle Sandor the Magnificent.”

  “You couldn’t find Ohio if you boarded an express train.”

  Her face betrayed nothing of her failure. She’d tried to exchange a lead slug for a coin of truth about my own background and we’d both heard the thud.

  “I crossed the northeast corner on the way from Philadelphia to Detroit to cover the unveiling of the world’s largest cook stove. The Michigan Stove Company engaged a family to live in it for a month. The Chief sold the company two pages of advertising at a thousand dollars a pop and I got two days off to visit my cousin in Buffalo. One of them was Washington’s birthday.”

  I said, “I’m a poor investment. I haven’t anything to advertise.”

  “When it comes to boosting circulation, Page Murdock’s life story is almost as good as a war in Cuba. A dash of scarlet on those gray columns is like raw meat to a pack of dogs.”

  “I’m retired. I’m trading my guns for a chair by the fire.”

  She shook her head. “You’re still good copy. You don’t know Mr. Hearst. Once he gets his teeth in a thing he never lets go.”

  “Then he’ll replace you if Rossleigh doesn’t turn up.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure he’ll be thinking that; but I’ve a pretty good set of choppers of my own.”

  We were at a deadlock: Force checked, object unmoved. A whistle blew; the funeral train was fueled up and ready to pull out. I put away the rest of my drink and rose. We promised to share developments. I think for a moment we actually believed we would. Her infernal machine resumed clacking as I stepped to the ground.

  * * *

  As we slowed for a crossing, the climbing sun broke through a dirty scrim of cloud and fell full on a white frame building with a steeple. Mrs. Blackthorne directed me to signal for a stop. I traded my old duck traveling coat for the Prince Albert I�
�d packed in my valise and we attended the Sunday service at the Grace Lutheran Church.

  I was overdressed, as it turned out. The village was a farming community, and clean overalls under a rusty tailcoat was the male uniform. The women in print dresses cut glances at the widow, but the curiosity was directed more toward the lavender and lace she wore than who she was: The only newspaper, The Weekly Democrat, occupied a storefront down the street; its latest number had probably run before the Judge’s death was announced, so the existence of the funeral train hadn’t preceded it there.

  The church was the only place of worship in that two-block arrangement of mercantile, barber shop, livery, blacksmith, and post office, but my companion was the tolerant sort: Apart from an occasional tightening of the lips, scorn for rituals foreign to Presbyterian didn’t manifest itself. Several of the hymns were familiar to us both. She had a strong, clear voice, unclogged and unroughened by years of use. The minister, white-haired, horse-faced, and clean-shaven, delivered a brief sermon from St. Luke, regarding the Lord’s forty-day sabbatical in the wilderness, which drew a quiet smile from Mrs. Blackthorne, and I suppose from myself, although I took care to conceal it, not knowing if the Judge had told her I’d shared her reference to the passage the day they’d arrived in Helena, or if she’d consider it a violation of the marital code.

  When the ceremony was over we joined the queue greeting the minister at the door. When the lady laid her gloved hand in his palm, he remarked that hers was a new face in the congregation.

  “Beatrice Blackthorne, Reverend. I enjoyed your sermon.”

  His expression didn’t change, but his eyes went alight. “I thought perhaps it was you,” he said. “That would make this gentleman Mr. Murdock?”

  That came as a surprise, in view of the general apathy regarding the strangers in the community’s midst. I said, “It would make me Mr. Murdock. I’m not sure about the gentleman part.”

  “A boy asked me to give you this message. He didn’t know the man who gave it to him.”

  He drew a fold of paper from under his robe and put it in my hand.

  “Go with God,” he said.

  “I always do,” said the lady.

  I waited until we were outside and the crowd was thinning before opening it. Mrs. Blackthorne clutched her wrap at her throat, watching me read.

  It was scribbled in pencil, in a script barely legible:

  I am in the livery. Come alone, and make sure no one sees you go inside.

  H. Rossleigh

  SEVENTEEN

  The widow studied the note I’d handed her.

  “Are we certain Rossleigh wrote this?”

  “The reverend said a boy delivered it, at the request of a stranger. I’ve never seen a sample of Rossleigh’s handwriting, but I can’t think what anyone would have to benefit from impersonating him.”

  “You should find the boy and ask for a description.”

  “No time. Our bird may get restless and fly the coop.”

  “He makes no mention of our missing conductor. He may be innocent after all; just another journalist in quest of a story.”

  We stood under a porch roof shared by several buildings, all of them closed on Sunday. With the merchants gone and most of the devoted Lutherans on their way home to prepare and eat luncheon, we had the business district to ourselves.

  I said, “That’s one side of the coin. The other is he wants to make me a stationary target.”

  “I suppose you must look at it that way. Of course you will not accept the invitation.”

  “Shall I be rude, then?”

  She didn’t honor that with a response. I felt a little ashamed for having said it. She’d earned better than my characteristic stance. I switched tracks.

  “It’s a chance we can’t afford to pass up. Until now he’s been asking all the questions. He owes us answers. We’ll begin with how he managed to beat us to this wide spot in the road without The Javelin and work our way back from there.”

  “You persist in saying ‘we,’ but he said to come unaccompanied. You should not go there alone, however. There must be some kind of authority in this settlement.”

  “If they could afford a full-time marshal and not just a noon-breaker, they could afford a depot and a telegraph office. A dry-goods clerk with a cap-and-ball Colt he keeps in a sugar jar is as likely to shoot himself in the knee as a bushwhacker. Then again, it might be my knee he shoots. I’m better off having to look in only one direction.”

  “You do not place much faith in your fellow traveler, do you?”

  “I started out with plenty. It doesn’t grow back.”

  I escorted her back to the train, checked the load in the Deane-Adams again, and made my way to the livery, holding the revolver in the right saddle pocket of my frock coat. A man carrying open draws too much curiosity in a town that size. I should have changed back into the duck; I’d lost two good city coats having to fire through the pocket when there wasn’t time to draw, but I don’t like being late for appointments, especially when they’re with someone who might be inclined not to give me time to clear my weapon.

  Nothing about the building differed from every other barn I’d visited: the same steep-pitched roof, the same boards pegged up vertically with gaps between you could sling a cat through, the same double doors reinforced with crossed planks, closed now but with the padlock hanging from a hasp torn loose of its screws. Being an experienced reporter, Rossleigh would show the usual disrespect to equipment designed to keep him at bay.

  I grasped the rusted handle belonging to the left door, swung it wide, and let go of the handle to grip the top board with my free hand, riding it all the way around. That kept me from making a target inside the frame. I banged up against the outside wall and hung there, waiting for the fireworks. All that came out was a gust of sweet grain, manure, ammonia, and animal sweat; a not-unpleasant odor to anyone who’d spent his life around it, and not as bad as some. Whoever took care of the place kept on top of the important chores.

  I hopped to the ground, then moving at sloth’s pace I edged around the door, hand and revolver now in the open, and yanked it shut behind me with my boot heel hooked on the bottom crossboard. That put me in near-twilight, the late-morning sun parsed into narrow slits with clouds of fine chaff roiling in the current of air churned up by the door’s sweep. At first glance nothing about the place stood apart from every other stable in my experience: A loft twelve feet above the earth floor heaped with straw, a stout ladder leading up to it, narrow stalls at the back, saddles lined up on a wooden rail, a barrel stove (unlit on a fair spring day), a split-bottom chair performing double duty as a hall tree with a shapeless canvas coat hanging from the back, a pair of manure-stained Wellington boots leaning drunkenly against each other, and the obligatory brass spittoon placed a sporting distance from whoever occupied the chair when the place was open for business. A cone of wood shavings lay before the chair, with the whittling knife thrust up to its haft in the dirt. I’d never seen the point; but then I knew my letters for when it came to whiling away the empty hours.

  Nothing happened beyond the ordinary. Even the horses in the stalls greeted the unscheduled visit with no more enthusiasm than snorts and a loud splatter of horse-apples. A couple of them went on munching the fodder in their nosebags, sounding like infantry boots marching through gravel; I meant less to them than a mouthful of soggy oats. But then I never had, not even when I was the one who supplied the oats. Ours was a relationship based on necessity, like baggy dungarees and a pair of suspenders. I’d never ridden a horse that had a name I gave it. The supply lines can get long, and it’s not a good idea to get misty about what might be next week’s blue-plate special.

  I swept the place with my eyes, cocked my ears for creaks in the loft, let out the breath I’d been holding since I opened the door, and seated the hammer on the Deane-Adams.

  Which was a mistake.

  * * *

  The tread of hundreds of feet and hooves had pound
ed the dirt floor as solid as bedrock; the slug slammed into it with a ringing noise like a tack-hammer striking iron, chucking bits of earth up over the toe of my right boot. The report came hard on its echo, a sharp snap that sounded hardly lethal in the openness of the space inside the barn.

  I knew better. I landed on my right shoulder, sliding with the momentum, firing as I went, at an oblique upward angle, aping as close as possible the trajectory of the first bullet from pure instinct. The .45 made a deeper, rounder report, crackling into one of the floorboards in the loft; an axe makes just such a noise biting into a trunk. I sent two more after it, spreading my field of fire, while I was still sliding. I came to rest with a sudden sickening thud against one of the six-by-six beams that held up the building, striking it with my other shoulder; hard enough to remember it today in damp weather.

  Another shot came from the loft. This time I saw the powder flare in a gap between boards. I put the money shot on that spot, but I knew as I sent it that it wouldn’t hit anything mortal. There’s a kind of melancholy strain in a parting report, one intended to give the party on the other end a moment to make his withdrawal.

  Defense: Your Honor, I object. The witness is indulging in fantasy. A shot is a shot; no gunman is capable of expressing his emotions by way of a mechanical device.

  Blackthorne: The jury will disregard the witness’s answer and the reporter will strike it from the record. The bench instructs the witness to adhere to known facts.

  What plays in the moment never works in court; but judge, counsel, and jury are always absent when the moment comes. I knew before I heard the scrape of a sole and the rustle of clothing that my shooter had taken his exit through the window in the loft.

  I sprang up before I heard the thump of feet striking the ground outside from a one-story leap, but running as fast as my legs would straighten, I missed the ambusher. I got to the back corner of the stable in a couple of seconds, just in time to see the dust settle where an alley intersected with the street that ran behind the building.