Dark Territory

by Terrence McCauley

  “Read about them,” Pappy said, “but who gives a tinker’s damn about what happens in Olivette or Chidester? Two wind-scoured hovels that God should strike from the face of the earth as far as I’m concerned.” Pappy seemed to think about the nature of the question. “Why do you ask? You don’t think they’ll rob a train here next, do you?”

  “Of course not.” He was anxious to move on to something else. “What about Marx? Hear anyone talking politics?”

  “Marx? No. Who is he? He one of the newcomers thinking about running for mayor? I wouldn’t put it past them, you know. We invite these interlopers into our bosom and next thing you know, they’re looking to run the place.”

  “Marx doesn’t live here. He’s in London, I think.”

  “Then what the hell does he have to do with life here?”

  “That’s a good question,” Mackey admitted. “If you hear anyone talking about the robberies or workers organizing or Grant, let me or Billy know, will you?”

  “Consider it done. Now tell your old father, have you and Mrs. Campbell set a date yet?”

  “There’s nothing dear or old about you, Pop. You’re just nosy.”

  * * *

  As he rounded the corner off Front Street and on to Fourth Avenue, Mackey heard someone calling his name. He turned and saw Doc Ridley striding toward him through the muddy thoroughfare. “Wait a moment, sheriff. I would like a word.”

  Six months before, Mackey would have ignored the doctor and kept walking. He had been one of the sheriff’s harshest critics back then, constantly calling his tactics brutal affronts to God. He believed all men were children of God and must be treated accordingly. Mackey tried to point out that God’s children had a habit of trying to kill him and needed to be dealt with accordingly. It was a point the doctor refused to accept and the principal reason why Mackey often ignored him instead.

  But since the Darabont siege on the town, the two men had reached something of an understanding. Something south of friendship, but north of contempt.

  “I wanted to thank you for your assistance today in Tent City,” Ridley said after Mackey helped him climb up to the boardwalk. “Damned dirty business if you ask me. I wish someone could take a torch to that damned place and burn them all out.”

  “That would be against the law,” Mackey said. “Wasn’t too long ago when a Christian man such as yourself would never entertain such notions.”

  “That was before Tent City and that damnable company took this town by the throat. Just look at what they’ve done to our town, Aaron. We forged a nice quiet place in the wilderness. Now it’s a godforsaken den of iniquity. The peace is broken every waking moment by hammering and sawing everywhere you turn, not to mention the foul language of the workers that assault the ears of our womenfolk.”

  Mackey chose his words carefully. Pappy may have been the biggest gossip in town, but Doc Ridley gave his father a run for his money. Anything Mackey said to him was liable to be spread halfway around town before he got back from the telegraph office. “Progress takes time, Doc. We might have to put up with a little inconvenience now, but in a year, it’ll be a distant memory.”

  “From what I hear, that might not be the only thing around here that’ll be a distant memory.”

  Now he had Mackey’s complete attention. “And just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Language, young man,” Ridley said. “And I meant no personal threat to you, of course. Not from me, anyway. But from your new employers? I’m not so sure.”

  “I work for the town, doc. Not Mr. Rice or anyone else.” He remembered the telegram in his pocket but decided the doctor did not need to know about that. “In fact, technically I work for you now that you’re the mayor.”

  “Acting mayor and only for another week, praise the Lord,” Ridley said. “I never wanted the position in the first place. But I know someone who does.” He leaned in closer and said, “Mr. Grant is rumored to be throwing his hat into the ring.”

  This was not the first time Mackey had been told of Grant’s political aspirations, but it did not make sense. Grant already had a good thing going as the eyes and ears of Silas Van Dorn. He controlled the Dover Station Company without risking a dime of his own money. He would be giving up an awful lot to be mayor of a town he already controlled.

  Still, Ridley’s gossip was usually more selective than Pappy’s, so he could not afford to dismiss it out of hand.

  “Grant tell you this himself?”

  “A patient told me.” Ridley blushed as he said, “Let’s just say he tends to talk after their time together and he mentioned it to her.”

  Mackey enjoyed the pious man’s embarrassment. “Why, Doctor Ridley. I thought you’d never treat such women.”

  “Fallen women are children of God, same as you and me, sir. And, despite her shortcomings, she has never lied to me once.”

  Mackey didn’t doubt it. “I don’t think Mr. Rice would stand for him being with the company and the mayor at the same time.”

  “The way things have been going lately, I wonder how much influence Mr. Rice even has these days. I know he owns the company, but he didn’t strike me as the kind of man who would approve of Tent City, do you? Besides, being mayor could give Grant a tremendous amount of power in this town, Aaron. I think he has too much already and I’m not the only one, either.”

  Mackey chose his next words carefully. If he gave Doc the slightest hint of dissension between him and the company, it would be all over town by nightfall. He did not want to goad Grant more than he already had. “The election’s still a couple of weeks away. A lot can change between now and then. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about sending off a message.”

  But Ridley surprised him by grabbing his arm as the sheriff tried to move away. “Goddamn it, son. You’ve got two good eyes and a brain in your head. Use them. You’ve seen what’s been happening since Mr. Rice left town. Van Dorn has given Grant too free of a hand. He decides what gets built when and where. He opened the whorehouses and saloons and the gambling parlors before he built places for people to live. Now we’ve got Tent City on our hands and all of the vice and horror that goes on in squatter settlements. Mark my words, Aaron, that none of this is an accident. All of this is a coordinated effort for some higher purpose that will ultimately serve James Grant, I promise you.”

  Mackey was used to Doc Ridley yelling at him, even insulting him for shooting someone or beating them badly during an arrest. But the look in the doctor’s eyes was something new. Something he had never seen there before.

  Fear.

  Mackey looked at Ridley’s hand on his arm until the doctor slowly removed it. “Forgive me, sheriff. I seem to have forgotten my manners.”

  The man had gone from rage to mildness so quickly, Mackey felt sorry for him. “Nothing to apologize for, Doc. You’ve given me a lot to think about. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d sign the death certificates for the four men over at Wallach’s place. I’ll need them for my report, especially when I give Van Dorn a copy.”

  “Why does that scoundrel need a copy?”

  “Because all four deaths happened on company property.”

  “Yes,” Doc Ridley said thoughtfully. “I suppose they did. Imagine that. A year ago, I would have blamed you for the deaths. Now, we seem to be on the same side. Funny how things change, isn’t it, Aaron?”

  “Dover Station gets stranger each and every day, Doc.” Mackey decided to get to the telegraph office before his luck with Doc Ridley changed.

  * * *

  The Dover Station telegraph office was located in the railway station at the edge of town. Van Dorn and Grant had introduced plans to double the size of the town on the other side of the tracks, but for now, it was one of the last places where someone could enjoy the pastoral views of the Montana wilderness that hadn’t changed since the town’s founding.

  On a clear day, smoke from the bunkhouse chimneys at the old JT Ranch could be seen waft
ing up to the sky, the only sign that man inhabited that part of the world. It was a view Mackey had never taken for granted. Not when he was a boy, not on the day he left for West Point and at no time since. He had spent many a troubled hour sitting on the old bench outside the station in the early morning hours, watching the sun rise above the distant peaks as he ordered his mind.

  He had plenty to think about that day, especially after what Pappy and Doc Ridley had told him about Grant’s plans. Both sets of gossip were headed in the same direction but were independent of each other. They bore some contemplation, but not now. The telegram in his pocket was more important.

  The station building had been the first structure the Dover Station Company had rebuilt after they announced their intentions for the town. It had once been a plain wooden building with a few benches inside for passengers to wait for the train. The platform had been a warped, wooden affair where one could easily walk to the small corral at the end of the platform, where cattle and horses could be loaded onto the train.

  The Dover Station Company had completely transformed it. Since they also owned the railway, they wanted a structure befitting their vision of Dover Station’s promise.

  The old wooden structure had been replaced by a brick and iron building with spires at its peaks, a modern telegraph office, a waiting room with high vaulted ceilings and a proper corral at the far end where both cattle and horses could be loaded onto trains heading to market in Butte and points elsewhere. A brick wall lined with ivy kept passengers boarding the train from seeing the beasts being loaded or unloaded from the train.

  As someone who’d spent most of his life in Dover Station except for his army career, Mackey felt compelled to hate such an elaborate structure in his hometown. But unlike many of the other lifelong Dover residents, he could not help but appreciate the building.

  Mackey found Joe Murphy, the telegrapher, in the stationmaster’s office in the middle of eating a ham sandwich. Joe had only been assigned to Dover Station for a few months and always acted nervous whenever he saw Sheriff Aaron Mackey. He had probably heard the stories about Mackey’s exploits since the day he arrived in town—most of them exaggerations—and he never knew how to act around the lawman.

  That morning was no exception.

  Joe dropped the sandwich on his desk and quickly wiped his hands. “Yes, sir. Good morning. What can I do for you?”

  Mackey had been uncomfortable with formality since he had left the army. “How many times do I have to tell you not to call me ‘sir’? Aaron or ‘sheriff’ is fine.”

  “Yes, sir.” He pawed at his hands with a towel. “How can I help you?”

  Mackey was too tired to correct him again. “I need you to send a telegram for me.” He took the envelope from his pocket. “It’s a reply to Mr. Rice’s telegram from earlier today. I need it to go straight to him, understand? I need it to be confidential. Can you do that?”

  Joe paled. “I can try to raise the person who sent it from New York. If they’re on the other end of the line ready to receive, I can tap out whatever you like. But it’ll still go over the wire, so some of the other stations will most likely get it if they’re of a mind to.”

  Mackey’s years in the army had taught him how telegraphs worked. “That’s fine. But I want the contents of what I send to be confidential as far as Dover Station goes. Do you understand?”

  The look on Joe’s face showed he did not, so Mackey put a finer point on it. “If anyone asks you about this telegram, I want you to keep your mouth shut. That goes for Mr. Van Dorn and Mr. Grant. It’s official sheriff business strictly between me and Mr. Rice. If you get in trouble for it, I’ll accept full responsibility. Do you understand that?”

  “Certainly, sir. But Mr. Grant gets a copy of all the telegrams that go in and out of the office. Every station up and down the line sends him copies every week on the train. He wanted it that way since the robberies started.” He lifted up a blue telegraph book. “Every message gets written in here before I send it out.” He looked around for a moment. “But, seeing as how this is special for Mr. Rice, I suppose I could lose the page with your message if you order me to.”

  “I’m ordering you to.” He took the note out of the envelope and handed it to Joe. “I also appreciate it.”

  Joe eagerly took the paper and began writing it in block letters in his telegrapher’s book. It read:

  MR. RICE: RECEIVED YOUR MESSAGE AND WILL HELP. AWAITING FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. AARON MACKEY

  He watched Murphy tap out a code on the telegraph machine. After a few seconds, he smiled. “They’re ready to receive on the other end, sir. I’ll begin sending it out right now.”

  As he watched his message being transformed into a series of electronic dots and dashes, something Murphy had just mentioned began working its way through his mind.

  Grant had ordered all railway stations to send him copies of all the telegrams they sent after the train robberies began. That meant Grant must have thought there could be a connection between the telegrams and the robberies. Grant had run a telegraph office a few years ago. If true, he’d be familiar with how the system operated.

  But what did telegrams have to do with the robberies?

  Mackey was still puzzling over this when Joe startled him by sneezing. He’d used a ruler to tear the page out of the book and covered the sound of the tearing page by faking a sneeze for the benefit of anyone who might be listening.

  Joe folded the page and Mackey’s message together and handed them back to the sheriff. “Here you are, sir. Anything else I can do for you today?”

  Mackey took both papers and put them in his shirt pocket. “You mentioned Mr. Grant has ordered that copies of all telegrams be sent to him after the robberies.”

  “Yes, sir. Indeed, I did.”

  “Where does he keep these copies? In his office up at Van Dorn House?”

  “No, sir. There are too many of them to be stored in such a small house. We keep them here in the office.”

  Interesting. “He ever look at them?”

  “Can’t say as I’ve ever seen him do it,” Joe admitted. “He’s got a key to the place, so I’m sure he has, just not while I’m here. Why?”

  Mackey didn’t have an answer for that. Yet. But he planned on getting an answer right away.

  Chapter 5

  The offices of The Dover Station Record had been the second building to be redone after the railroad station. It had also been the first business bought by Mr. Van Dorn—at Grant’s urging—before the Dover Station Company announced its intentions to expand the town. A new printing press had been brought all the way from Ohio and installed at great cost.

  While the press was ordered, a new building was erected. It might not have been as grand a structure as the rail station, but it was a big improvement over the crooked wooden house that had occupied the space. A new stone façade with Greek columns now surrounded the building, complete with the paper’s new slogan, Veritas Vos Liberabit, carved into the stone beneath the sign reading THE DOVER STATION RECORD. Mackey’s passing understanding of Latin told him it meant, “The Truth Shall Set You Free.”

  Charles Everett Harrington had been the founder of the Record who had been kept on by Mr. Rice to run the operation, though Mackey could not understand why. Harrington was an affable newspaperman who always had a full flask in his pocket and a story on his mind. He had more of an affinity for drink and late nights spent telling tall tales in saloons than for the running of a serious newspaper.

  But the Record building was not the only town institution to enjoy a transformation following the paper’s sale to the Dover Station Company. Harrington had ditched his slovenly appearance for a pinstriped suit and tie. He had his hair cut once a week and shaved twice a day. He kept regular hours and oversaw the production of a respectable daily journal of events from all over the territory.

  Harrington was the image of the prosperous newspaperman when Mackey found him at his desk, poring over a rough copy of the
Record’s next edition.

  Mackey knocked on the doorframe. “Catch you at a bad time, Charlie?”

  Harrington looked up from his paper and immediately brightened. “It’s never a bad time for you, Aaron. My door is always open for the Savior of Dover Station.”

  Mackey winced as he closed the office door and took a seat without waiting for Harrington to ask him in. “Told you to knock off that shit, remember?”

  “I know and I have,” Harrington said, “but you must allow me a little fun in private. Articles featuring you always sell plenty of copies. Tomorrow’s edition promises to be no exception.” He lifted the paper on his desk. “Want to read it?”

  “No.”

  Harrington read it to him anyway. “The headline will read, ‘Swift Justice Strikes Twice.’” He beamed at Mackey. “Catchy, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t care.”

  But Harrington was on a roll, and nothing could stop him. “Blood flowed, but justice prevailed in the streets of our fair town yesterday as Sheriff Aaron Mackey brought two villains to heel in spectacular fashion.” He looked across his desk to Mackey. “The rest is on hold until you send us your report, which I would imagine is coming directly, eh?”

  “You’ll get it when it’s ready.”

  “Why wait when you’re right here? How about an exclusive interview right now? You can tell me how it happened, straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were? It might make me inclined to accept some favorable editorial suggestions from you as my way of showing gratitude.”

  “Exclusive? Jesus, Charlie. You’re the only newspaper in town. Every story you run is an exclusive. And the answer is still no. I’ve never given you anything early before and I’m not going to start now. It’ll be in my report later tonight and you can read it then.”

  Harrington sagged in his chair. “Well if you didn’t come here to feed me an exclusive, what the hell brought you here?”

  “I need a favor?”

  “A favor?” His bushy eyebrows rose. “You need a favor from me but refuse to grant me one? That’s hardly fair, Aaron.”