Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

by Johnstone, William W.

  What mustn’t happen was to let himself stumble into the welcoming arms of the law.

  Though he’d done nothing, even he had to admit that the circumstances made him look as guilty as hell.

  He trudged on, knowing he needed to find something to eat if he was to maintain his strength for whatever lay before him.

  Two hundred yards across the field, he stopped and looked back around the edge of the woods and toward the outskirts of his town.

  Within the bounds of Nashville his mother was probably at work, hands flying with needle and thread, a new garment being made, or repaired, or decorated. All Kate Kerrigan’s work was done well, which made Trace proud.

  As the eldest child, he knew better than the others the value of his mother’s character, skill, and dedication.

  She’d persuaded him, merely by the way she had lived her life and persevered through so much pain, loss, and hardship, that there was nothing she could not do if she dedicated herself to it.

  And the same, he figured, held true for him, too, as her son.

  He missed his father, he and Quinn having been old enough to remember him.

  He recalled some of what Joe Kerrigan had taught him, and tried hard to follow it.

  Even so, it was his mother from whom the best direction and example had come.

  He remembered a famous quote from the late Lincoln—a man many of Nashville’s predominately pro-Confederate Irish folk despised, but whom Trace couldn’t help but admire on some levels—to the effect that most of the worthy things he had learned in life, he owed to his mother.

  Trace understood that fully. It was that way with him, too.

  He was not prone to cry, was Trace. It was unmanly. Quinn shed tears over a wounded butterfly, to his everlasting shame, but it was not a Kerrigan thing to put one’s emotions on display like that.

  But Trace was alone now, accompanied only by his fears and in possession only of the clothes on his back, the boots on his feet, and the fine customized Colt revolver thrust under his belt. And for that he had only enough ammunition pocketed to reload it a few times.

  He stared at the low, rough outline of the city where he’d been born, and wished he were free to go back to it and to his secure home again.

  He smiled to himself.

  Unmanly or not, he missed the luxury of tears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Shannon Kerrigan’s health seemed to be improving. Her coughing had grown less frequent and her fever was gone.

  Kate’s earlier anger at providence was tempered now by seeing that her prayers for her daughter seemed at last to be receiving positive answers.

  Shannon was growing well enough that she soon might be up and doing the things that five-year-olds do.

  “Mother, I’m thirsty,” Shannon said.

  Not in her bed now, as she had been for what seemed an eternity of days, Shannon was sitting up and holding a doll her older sister, nine-year-old Ivy, had made for her from scraps given to her by her mother.

  The doll wore a plain blue dress Kate had sewn together, also from scraps, and Shannon had named the doll Katie.

  “She’s named after her grandmother, you see,” she said to Kate. “After you.”

  “I am honored, I think,” Kate told the child, and gave her a smile.

  Smiles were hard to generate at the moment, despite Shannon’s improvement. The situation of Trace was difficult beyond endurance.

  Kate was quite sure her son would never have been involved in the deaths of the Lundy father and son, yet she saw realized how bad the matter had to look to others, including the police.

  Her greatest fear was not that Trace would be found to be involved in the fatalities, but that he would be found dead himself.

  He’d been seen leaving the gun shop with his revolver in hand. Then he’d not been seen since. Had he been wounded by whoever really did the shootings? Might he have gone off and died in some spot where he could not readily be found?

  Kate spoke to the police, who assured her that they believed her son was still alive.

  “And well?” she said.

  “That we cannot say, Ma’am.”

  The authorities had no clue where Trace was and when Kate suggested she go look for him herself, they dismissed the idea.

  Inspector Chariton, a small, scholarly looking man with intelligent brown eyes, said, “Mrs. Kerrigan, we’re talking about a crime that involves guns and gunmen here, and both kill people. Search on your own and you launch yourself into dangerous waters and I cannot be responsible for your safety.”

  “I’m willing to take the chance,” Kate said.

  “And where would you look? North, east, south, or west? Such a search would take a regiment of horses a week and maybe more. How could you succeed when so far the police have failed, and you are still not much more than a slip of a girl yourself?”

  Kate was defiant.

  “I’ll do whatever it takes to save my son,” she said.

  Chariton shook his head.

  “Mrs. Kerrigan, if I must, I’ll place a police guard on your house to prevent you from venturing forth. Now, do not provoke me into such an action.”

  That frightened Kate.

  Suppose Trace tried to come home, perhaps wounded, and saw police at the door?

  He might run and keep on running and she’d never see him again.

  “Very well, Inspector, I’ll do as you say,” she said. A bitter pill.

  “We’ll keep you informed, Mrs. Kerrigan.”

  “My son didn’t kill those men.”

  “That will be for a court to decide.”

  “Then bring him in alive, Inspector.”

  “That will be for Trace to decide,” Chariton said.

  Almost as worried about Trace as Kate was his brother Quinn.

  Despite the significant differences in physique, interest, and temperament between the brothers, Quinn even so idolized his elder brother and secretly envied his good looks and attractiveness to girls. Quinn could only dream of having girls look at him the way they looked at Trace.

  He’d decided it would probably never happen, which was one reason he had toyed at times with the idea of becoming a priest.

  If he was destined to live with little chance of feminine attentions and affections, why not face reality and enter a world in which there was no expectation of a man cutting a dash, or whatever it was men did to attract pretty girls?

  The older Quinn grew, though, the more difficult it was to seriously consider a life devoid of the love of the opposite sex.

  If it was as wonderful a thing as Quinn had heard men say, he didn’t want to miss out on it, even for such a great cause as serving the Church.

  As he worked cataloging hundreds of volumes in Mr. Cheatham’s private library, Quinn pondered the question of why it was the man seemed to have little interest in women.

  He was not a priest, under no obligation to live without a mate, yet he never spoke of women he had known and loved, or commented to Quinn, as so many men did, about the beauty of Kate Kerrigan.

  Quinn had heard from his mother that there were some men who could only care for one woman in a lifetime, and though rare, Arnold Cheatham was one of them. Ma considered it a virtue.

  It made Quinn uncomfortable to think about it, living a life without pretty girls around, especially since Mr. Cheatham seemed to love only his books.

  Quinn put his strange employer out of his mind, throwing himself into the labor of shelving books. And worrying about Trace.

  Where was he? Was he safe and well? Had he actually been involved in the violence that left the Lundy men dead? No, that was impossible.

  There was a sharp rapping on the front door and Cheatham called from elsewhere in the house, asking Quinn to answer it.

  Quinn climbed down from the library ladder he’d been standing on and went to the door.

  Willie Tobin, whom Quinn recalled was a vagabond tinker with wife troubles, stood on the step.

  “
Hello, Mr. Tobin,” he said.

  “Hello, Quinn. How fare you?”

  “Well enough. Have you come to see Mr. Cheatham?”

  “Truth is, I came to see you.”

  “Me? I have no need for needles and pins today, or money to buy them.”

  “No sales today, Quinn. Is there a place where I could talk to you privately, like?”

  Quinn was instantly ill at ease.

  Willie Tobin looked like he’d missed a night’s sleep and his last four meals.

  But he was certainly no policeman, constable, or deputy, in fact had often been on the wrong side in his relationship with that breed.

  So surely whatever he had come to Quinn about was not part of some attempt to ferret out Trace from hiding.

  Even so, Kate had warned her children to avoid any casual discussions regarding their oldest brother, because one never knew . . .

  Quinn stepped outside and quietly closed the door.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Tobin?”

  Willie Tobin looked around as though expecting detectives to leap out of the shrubbery. He leaned closer and spoke in a near whisper to Quinn.

  “Your brother sent me,” he said.

  Quinn was instantly suspicious.

  Willie Tobin had never been a friend or confidant of any of the Kerrigans, and seemed an unlikely candidate to be playing messenger for Trace.

  Quinn looked around, suspecting some sort of police trap.

  “You’ve seen Trace?”

  “I have. I had cause to seek a hiding place for myself, and found Trace already settled there. He sent me to give you word to take back to your ma that he is safe and well and will be back with his kin as soon as it is safe to do so. He said he is under false suspicion for something he did not do.”

  “Yes, he is. But he is well, you say?”

  “Indeed, he is.”

  “I am relieved. Where is he?”

  “An empty house. It would be to no avail in trying to find him there now. He will be gone. Would you wish me to go tell your mother, to spare you the need?”

  “No. She will be glad to hear Trace is alive and knows to keep himself out of view.”

  “I’d be glad to tell her, young sir.”

  “No, I’ll do it. But thank you for telling me.”

  “You were outside for a time?” Cheatham asked Quinn later.

  “Yes, I was. A man came to see me and give me some news. He has seen my brother and says he is safe.”

  “You mustn’t spread that information far, my friend. This town is ablaze with talk about the young gunman who is said to have killed those two men.”

  “I know. But Trace didn’t do it. He claims innocence and I believe him.”

  “Truth sometimes does not matter, Quinn. There are those who have decided what they think your brother is, and nothing will persuade them differently, truth be damned. It is the nature of most human beings to do that. I know it all too well in the experience of my own life.”

  “Please, sir, don’t tell anyone what I have just shared with you. It might make the police feel more sure that Trace is close by, and make them look harder for him.”

  “No one will hear a word from me, Quinn.”

  Cheatham paused, looking closely at his young hireling, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  “Come with me a moment, Quinn. There is something I want you to see. Something related to what I was saying about the propensity of human beings to prejudge others and then cling to that prejudice no matter how wrongheaded it may be.”

  The room was small, roughly the size of a humble pantry, and lined with book-laden shelves like much of Arthur Cheatham’s dwelling. Quinn had not seen this particular room before, the door usually being closed.

  Cheatham went to a particular shelf and removed a volume. He opened it, then motioned Quinn closer.

  It was a scrapbook of images, both sketches and photographs, showing the face of a dark-haired young woman, quite pretty. Cheatham sighed as he looked at it.

  “Who is she, sir?”

  Cheatham looked down at Quinn and smiled. “She was my wife, Quinn. I was once a married man. Are you surprised?”

  “I . . . I am, sir.”

  “Most people are, which is one of the reasons I don’t reveal that particular fact to many. I am distressed by their surprise, and the obvious misconceptions they carry regarding me. It causes me to wonder what all might have been said about me out in the town.”

  “People can be . . . harsh, sir. Unkind.”

  “I know. Believe me, I know. Harsh, and wrong-thinking.”

  “What was her name?”

  “This is my beloved lost Phoebe. Killed two years into our marriage in a most bizarre accident. A train jumped its track and crashed over the edge of an overpass. Phoebe was in a carriage on the road below, traveling with her sister to a child’s baptism. The locomotive crushed the carriage like an egg beneath a big man’s boot. I doubt either of them had the slightest awareness of what was happening, it being so swift and . . . destructive.”

  “Mercy, sir, I’m very sorry.”

  “Mercy, you say. Oddly enough, the only mercy I could see in Phoebe’s loss was the speed of it. There was no time for suffering, or asking unanswerable questions. She was alive, and a moment later, gone.”

  “You had no children?”

  “None. Had she lived, perhaps later, though that chance is now gone.”

  “How long ago did you lose her?”

  “Fifteen years. Long and lonely years they have been. At one time I kept some of these images of her hanging in a small hallway, when I lived in Atlanta. It became too painful to see them so readily, though. Eventually I put them away in this volume, so I could see her face whenever I felt the need of it, but not be subjected to the pain of seeing it at other times.”

  “Did you ever think of remarrying?”

  The question caused Cheatham to grow silent and stare up a few moments into a cobwebbed upper corner of the little room. He spoke at last.

  “Quinn, men are not all the same. Not in their appearances, their sizes, races, interests, passions. Or degrees of the latter. Even when I was married to my Phoebe, who was the center of my life and the very beat of my heart, I was not a man of strong passions, if you understand me. But I was not, and never have felt the slightest inclination to be, the kind of man many have avowed that I am.”

  Cheatham smiled.

  “I have no inclination to be a preacher, a priest or whatever else they say, and I am certainly not a murderer. What happened to me was that whatever degree of intimate passions I possessed with Phoebe, well, those passions died with her. When she was gone I never felt drawn, at any level, to another woman. The drive was simply gone. Like Phoebe. And I have lived without feeling its tugs and urgings from that time forward.”

  “Oh.” Quinn had no idea what to say. Then, “But why do they accuse you of being a murderer?”

  “Because I’m a man who lives alone and does not much care for the company of others. That makes me different and people who are different are always suspect.”

  “I wish you could find another Phoebe,” Quinn said.

  “Well, it’s a blessing, in its way. It removes one of the struggles most have to live with. I can immerse myself more deeply in other things I care about—art, literature, history, and anything and all things to do with the world of books. If Phoebe could return to me, perhaps some other things I have lost might return as well. Without her—well, I simply don’t care. That is the truth of this sad man who stands before you, my boy.”

  The conversation was growing awkward and Quinn sought a way to redirect it.

  “Did you do those sketches of her face, sir?”

  “I did. One of my old hobbies, now seldom pursued. I have nothing left worth sketching, you see.”

  “She was lovely,” Quinn said.

  “She defined loveliness, lad. And love itself. Ah, me!”

  “I am sorry you lost her. But at least yo
u had her for a time.”

  “That, Quinn, is my only consolation. Better to have loved and lost, and all that. It’s really true, you know. But the pain, the pain!”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Quinn, if you would, please go back to what you were doing before. I want to visit with my lost love a few minutes more, and then I’ll join you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quinn walked home pondering the unusual truths that had come his way that day.

  Lost in thought, he didn’t notice a man who abruptly blocked his way.

  The man had come out of a doorway near the Kerrigan home and Quinn ran into him and almost lost his balance.

  “Need to watch where you’re going,” patrolman Harold Simpkins said as he gripped Quinn by the shoulders and looked down into his startled face. “You ought not run over folks like that.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. You stepped out in front of me, that’s all.”

  Simpkins laughed. “You’re right, boy. I made it happen. And there’s other things I can make happen, too.”

  Quinn just stared, puzzled and alarmed.

  Simpkins was a tall, thin, lank man with black eyes and hair and a narrow, pointed chin like Punch from the puppet show. He was a man without conscience and possessed a quick, agile brain.

  “Come here, boy,” the policeman said, and all but dragged Quinn into the alley beside them. He manhandled Quinn around to face him, and then gripped his shoulders, hard.

  “One of the things I can make happen is I can go visit that pretty mama of yours and let her know the kind of things her boy has been doing for that monster you work for.”

  Quinn found his voice. “Sir, Mr. Cheatham is not a monster of any kind. I help him catalog his books, that’s all I do. He’s got hundreds of them, and he’s trying to get them in good order so he can find the ones he needs when he needs them.”

  “Did you ever hear him mention Roxy Sinclair?” Simpkins said.

  “No, I did not.”

  “She was Cheatham’s last victim, murdered in an alley, her throat cut from ear to ear.”

  Quinn considered making a dash for it, but he dared not.