Novel 1979 - The Iron Marshall (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “Where’s he live?”

  McBane chuckled. “Now that’s a question! To tell you the truth, I doubt if anybody has ever asked that question. Coonskin is one of those people you see around. He comes and he goes. He’s here one day, gone the next. He’s not a man who talks of himself even when he is around.”

  “Somebody killed his burro,” Shanaghy said.

  McBane’s expression changed. “God help them then.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Go where you last saw him and build yourself a fire. Send up a smoke. Coonskin is as curious as any wild animal, and my bet is he will come to you. McAuliffe, who is division superintendent, knows him well and he might give you a lead. Send him a wire.”

  McAuliffe…Big Mac? Maybe.

  “Judge? Do the folks here still think I killed Carpenter?”

  “I am afraid they do. I’d heard the story before ever I got down to breakfast, told me as the gospel. I must say I never believed it for a moment.”

  The door opened and Josh Lundy came in. His rifle was cradled on his arm. “Heard you was back. They got away?”

  “Not yet.”

  Lundy looked at him carefully. “You got some idea? If I can help, count me in.”

  “You have helped, but I do need you. I’m going to need some more help.”

  “I’ll come,” Greenwood said.

  “And I,” Judge McBane added. “What have you got in mind?”

  Briefly, Shanaghy explained how the train had been deliberately backed in front of him to block pursuit, then described his arrival at Holstrum’s place, and what he had learned from Moorhouse.

  “Judge, I want authority from you to search Holstrum’s store and his living quarters. If he is there, then at least part of my conclusions are wrong, but I am betting that he’s gone. And then,” he added, “I want us all at the depot to take the evening train east.”

  McBane shook his head. “Shanaghy, I can’t permit you to enter a man’s private premises on nothing but suspicion.”

  “Suppose we go knock on his door? If he answers the door I shall go no further with it. If he doesn’t, I want to search the area…if I have to,” he added. “I shall do it on my own authority.” He smiled. “If I am wrong you can please the town by firing me.”

  “I can’t believe Holstrum is involved,” McBane said.

  “Judge, he is a man with a dream. He’s a great, hulking, somewhat near-sighted man, but all his life he has dreamed of young, sophisticated women. Suddenly such a woman is here, and he believes she is going to be his. He believes the money is the key to it.”

  “Do you mean he planned it all?” asked the judge.

  Shanaghy shrugged. “I doubt it. He may have started it or somebody may sort of suggested it…Not right out, maybe. I don’t know how it all happened. I don’t even know if I am right, but we’re going to find out.”

  He turned to the door. “Judge? If you’d like to come? And Josh?”

  Tom Shanaghy went up the few steps to the store’s walk. His footsteps echoed hollowly as he walked along, followed by McBane and Josh. He paused at the store’s door. There was a sign: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  “Same sign he always uses,” Josh commented.

  Tom rapped on the door, and the sound echoed hollowly. He waited, listening. When there was no sound, he rapped again.

  “His living quarters are in the back. There’s a door around to the side.”

  Again Shanaghy led the way. There was a sinking inside him. Secretly he had been hoping he would find Holstrum within. He wanted to find no man guilty, and even though all pointed to Holstrum, he could be wrong. He hoped he was wrong. He knew how a dream could die, and how futile had been the dreams of this man. How much worse it would have been for him had he realized the dream in fact, for what could two such people have said to each other? What could they have done together? Sometimes it was better to keep the dream and forget the realization.

  Shanaghy rapped on the back door, and there was no response. Josh walked back to the stable. “His horse is gone,” he called.

  Shanaghy took hold of the doorknob, hesitated. For he shrank at entering the home of another, uninvited. Yet he put his shoulder to the door and the foolish lock burst.

  There was a bare, simple room. A rag rug on the floor, plus two chairs and an old leather settee. There were two paintings on the wall, mystic, ethereal things…obviously originals, like something Poe might have visioned.

  There were a few books, several of poetry, but only the first few leaves had been cut as if the reader had gone that far and stopped. There were a bottle of whiskey and a glass, the bottle half empty. There was a bottle of Chateau LaFite with one drink gone.

  The bed was made, neatly tucked in. The few clothes in the closet were nicely hung. The drawers were half closed as if Holstrum had packed in a hurry.

  The drawers were empty except for one. There was a dainty handkerchief edged with lace…perhaps a memento of the girl Holstrum had seen but once and then never again. Shanaghy picked it up, glanced at it and dropped it back into the drawer. He remembered something Holstrum had said, or that had been said about him, about looking in a window and seeing some elegantly clad people dancing. Well, Holstrum was still looking in windows, and he was still standing outside.

  Shanaghy swore softly, and McBane glanced at him. “He’s missed the boat again,” Tom said, “I wish he could have made it, just once.”

  “You have compassion, my friend. One does not often find it in an officer.”

  “More often than you think,” Shanaghy said.

  “And maybe Holstrum will make it this time.”

  “No…” Shanaghy shook his head slowly. “I know the kind of people he is dealing with and he does not. He is thinking of her, and of what they can do in some great city. She is thinking of that money, and what she can do. And George is thinking of the money and wondering how he can wind up with all or most of it. And I think that other man, I think he is the one named McBride. I think he intends to have it all and knows how he will…And they are all wrong unless I can stop something here.”

  “Here?”

  “We must get our tickets.”

  Shanaghy closed the door behind him, fastening it as securely as possible. They walked back up the alley together. A few people were in the streets now, and some were talking, pointing out where the men had stood when the gunfight took place.

  Shanaghy paused. “You said…I killed them?”

  “Both,” Josh said, “dead center. I never did see better shootin’. Wilson Drako was here on the steps. He went down right there, and Dandy, who was clerkin’ at the ho-tel…”

  “The clerk was a Drako? The one with the rifle?”

  “Didn’t you know? Sure, he was a Drako, and he hated your guts.”

  They had paused on the boardwalk in front of Greenwood’s saloon. “Judge, Josh…where we’re going isn’t far, I’m thinking. But at the end of it there will be shooting, and when there’s that much money at stake they won’t care who they kill, or how many.”

  “I cut my teeth on a shootin’ iron,” the judge said dryly. “I fit Injuns before I was dry behind the ears, and I served four years in the War Between the States. I can stand beside any man when it comes to gunfire.”

  “All right.” Shanaghy paused. “Judge, we’re going to take that evening train out. Josh, you go down and get the tickets for us. Don’t mention where we’re going, just buy tickets for Kansas City.”

  Shanaghy took the money from his pocket. “And above all, don’t tell that agent or anybody else who’s going along. If you want, tell them it’s for the Pendletons.”

  “Do you think he’s in on this?” McBane asked.

  “I do.”

  “And that engineer? And the brakeman?”

  “I think they were slipped a few dollars just to act stupid with the train. And, if anybody came along, to block the road.

  “They had it all timed nicely. I think they had pra
cticed taking that wagon down, and I believe they had horses waiting. And I think they ran them hard to the Holstrum place and then took off on fresh stock.

  “By now they are swinging back around to meet the railroad line—”

  “What if they don’t?”

  “Then I’ll have my work cut out for me. But look at it this way. Some of these people are easterners. The railroad is something they know. They’d have to ride a long, long way to get anywhere a’horseback. They won’t have any idea we have this figured out, and they’ll think we’re running in circles back here. When that train pulls in and they want to board it, we’ll be waiting for them. With luck we can do it without shooting…but don’t bank on it.”

  It was a long shot, and he knew it. Shanaghy checked his guns, then reholstered them.

  “Judge”—he saw Josh coming back up the street with the tickets—“there’s one more thing. Maybe I’ve read this right and maybe I haven’t. Somebody said once, ‘Set a crook to catch a crook.’ Well, I’m no thief but I’ve known a’plenty of them back in New York town. I think what we’ve got here is one of the nastiest triple-crosses I’ve ever seen.”

  “We’d better get on down to the station,” Greenwood suggested.

  “Wait…we’ll hear the whistle and we can start then. It’s less than a hundred yards.

  “What’s happening must have started just about the time you people got together and planned to bring money in here to pay off the cattle drivers, and I don’t know whose idea it was…Maybe it started in two or three places, but I do know there’s one person who not only wanted all the money, but was a bitter, vengeful person along with it.

  “They think they’ve won. They have the money, or think they do, and only one thing remains. That’s to kill the man who caused them so much trouble, and somebody has figured out a way of doing it without risk.”

  “Without risk? You?” Josh exclaimed. “That’s crazy! Why. I’ve seen you in action and there isn’t a man—”

  “That’s right,” Shanaghy said quietly, “so…”

  Mrs. Carpenter was walking up the street toward them.

  Chapter 20

  *

  SHE WAS NEATLY dressed in a fashionable black traveling dress, with a small bonnet perched on her head. In her hand she carried a handbag.

  “You’ve got to be crazy!” Greenwood said. “Why—!”

  “The story is around that I killed her husband. She is a bereaved wife. Who else could kill a man, in this country, and get away with it? Even have the blessing of most of the townspeople?”

  “You mean she was in on it?”

  “Maybe not from the beginning, but you can just bet most of the planning was hers. And right now, if she kills me, she can board that train and ride off a wealthy woman, sharing with no one but her brother.”

  “But they have the gold!”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. I don’t believe the gold ever left the train.”

  She was walking up to them now and she had slipped her hand inside her bag. She stopped. Her thin, rather pretty face was drawn in suddenly hard lines.

  “Marshal, you are an evil man! You murdered my husband! You killed him and then tried to burn the—”

  “Mrs. Carpenter,” Shanaghy said. “Sure, ma’am, and you’re too late. It’s all over. We know what was done and how it was done, and we know that you yourself killed your husband, and that it was you who closed the doors and set the barn afire.

  “It was you, with your brother, who planned to steal all that gold.”

  Her eyes tightened at the corners, as did her mouth. “I have no idea what you are talking about, and—”

  “Mrs. Carpenter, I have no desire to be rough with a woman—even one who has murdered her husband and probably others as well. So please…Do not try to take that gun from your purse, because I—”

  Her hand started to come out from the handbag, but almost casually Shanaghy slapped the purse from her hand with his left and then brought his right hand up under the barrel, twisting it up and away. It was let go or have a broken finger, and Mrs. Carpenter let go. Shanaghy passed the gun to Judge McBane.

  “It is all over, Mrs. Carpenter, all over. None of it worked.”

  She was very cool. The hardness became only a shadow in her eyes, covered by amused contempt. “You’re such a little man, Marshal, so pleased with yourself, taking a gun away from a woman. Mr. Holstrum will testify—”

  “Holstrum is dead,” Shanaghy said.

  McBane turned his head sharply and Josh was staring.

  “Or if he is not, I shall be very surprised. You see, Mrs. Carpenter, some of the others were thinking just as you were. Once outside of town Holstrum was no longer needed, so why share with him? I am betting they killed him somewhere between his ranch and that little station thirty miles east where they planned to rejoin the train.” He smiled. “Rejoin it with what they thought was the gold.”

  “You mean they don’t have it?” Greenwood exclaimed.

  “As I said, it never left the train. What they took off at the water tank were some boxes prepared for the purpose. Mrs. Carpenter’s brother, as station agent, had connived to get the manifest changed. The boxes that actually contained the money were being shipped right back to Kansas City…where Mrs. Carpenter would pick them up.”

  “You mean they have already been shipped back?”

  “My guess is that they went west last night, and that they will be on the evening train when we board it.”

  Mrs. Carpenter stood stock-still, her hands clasping her purse, staring off into space. Yet, while there might be some shock at being frustrated, at having all her carefully laid plans go sky-high, Shanaghy had an idea her mind was working swiftly toward some sort of a solution.

  “I’d like to go home now,” she said suddenly.

  Shanaghy shook his head. “You’re not thinking clearly, Mrs. Carpenter. You are under arrest. But something which you should be thinking of now is your friends, if you can call them that.”

  She merely looked at him.

  “If they have not already discovered that they do not have the gold, they will discover it very soon. They will also suspect what has happened, and when they do I would imagine they would be looking for you.

  “Of course, your plans were to be on the train going east by now, and so safely away. But you are not going east, and neither are they.”

  He paused. “So I shall lock you up until we return.”

  She looked her contempt. “Will you shackle me to the hitching-rail as you did those others?”

  He shook his head. “No, Mrs. Carpenter. Holstrum has a storeroom where we can leave you until we return, which will not be long.”

  In the distance, a train whistled. “Greenwood, would you lock her up? And stay here, if you will. Vince Patterson and his boys should be riding in today and they will want some drinks. Get hold of Vince and tell him what has happened. Tell him everything.”

  They walked to the station. The train whistled again, still far off. Josh reached into his pocket. “By the way, this letter was in your box at the ho-tel. I seen it there after we checked the clerk’s body…You know, Dandy Drako? I figured you’d be wantin’ it.”

  Shanaghy glanced at it. He recognized the handwriting. The letter was from John Morrissey. But there was no time to read it now. That could wait for a more leisurely time. He put the letter in his shirt pocket.

  For the first time he took a look at himself. His shirt was badly torn. His face felt stiff and sore from several punches he had taken. He did not even remember them. You never did, at times like that, except maybe the very hard ones.

  The train was coming down the track and the agent came out to the platform. He looked at them, stopped and started to go back inside.

  “Don’t do it,” Shanaghy said in a conversational tone of voice.

  The agent looked at him. His tongue touched his lips. He was trying to make up his mind, and Tom Shanaghy was remembering that the man had a gun…proba
bly back inside.

  “He means it, Burt,” Josh Lundy said. “If I were you I wouldn’t try.”

  “What’s wrong? I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “You just come with us. You’ll learn.”

  “Come with you? Leave my post, here? I can’t do that, and you can’t make me. I—”

  “You won’t be gone long, not this time.” Shanaghy smiled. “Someday we will have to sit down and you can tell me about your sister. She’s an interesting lady.”

  “Helen? You mean Mrs. Carpenter?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Marshal. Look, I’ve got to go in there and clear some messages and also let them know this train’s gone through.”

  “Later. Right now we’re just going down the track a little ways to meet some of your friends. If they haven’t discovered the double-cross you two have pulled off, they’ll be wanting to load those boxes off the pack animals they have. If they have discovered the cross, they’ll be hunting you and your sister.”

  Burt’s face had taken on a sickly expression. “Marshal, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do know.” Shanaghy watched the train pull in. “Search him and take him aboard,” he told Josh. “I’ll just walk along and check the engineer.”

  The engineer was a different man from before, a burly fellow with white hair and a florid face.

  “My name is Shanaghy,” Tom said, “and I’m marshal here. There’s been a little trouble and some of us are going to ride down the track with you. About thirty miles down the track, there will be some men waiting at that little way station, some men and probably one woman. Stop the train and then get down on the floor. There may be a little lead flying.”

  Once seated on the train, Shanaghy looked over at Josh. “Tell me what you see as we come up to the station,” he suggested. “I want to have a little talk with Burt, here.” Tom glanced over at Judge McBane. “Judge? Would you like to join me? Maybe if we can ask this man the right questions we can keep him alive.”

  “Keep me alive?” Burt started up and Shanaghy pushed him back down into his seat. “What do you mean?”