Dark Territory

by Terrence McCauley

He put all of them together and tucked them under his arm. He was careful to relock the trunk and blow out the candle before he took his bundle back to the jailhouse. No reason to run the risk of fire.

  When he stepped outside the shack, he was not surprised to find the street was empty. If anyone had heard the ruckus, no one was interested in finding out more about it. Curiosity was a luxury the people of Tent City could ill afford.

  Billy only hoped the contents of the mysterious man’s trunk would be enough to explain why a man was willing to lose his life to defend them.

  Billy put his head down against the wind as he made his way back to the jailhouse. The cold night wind of Montana held more questions than answers for him.

  Chapter 8

  Mackey looked up from the book and the maps Billy had just deposited on his desk half an hour before. “And you’re absolutely certain he was the loony from the street today?”

  Billy drank his coffee. “As certain as I can be without asking him. Clothes were little better than rags, even for Tent City. Looked the same, too.”

  Mackey flipped through the book Billy had given him. It wasn’t English, but close. German, from the looks of it.

  The name on the train ticket was German also. Ernst Hendrik. The ticket had been issued the previous week from the Great Northwestern Train Railroad. “What the hell is a German doing here in Dover Station? And how does he know James Grant?”

  “Don’t ask me, boss. I just kill them, remember.”

  Mackey glared at him. “Knock that shit off. He attacked you. You had no choice but to defend yourself.” He gestured at the pile of books and papers on his desk. “Was this all there was in the chest?”

  “Nope. There were other books in there, too. The stuff I brought was on top and easier to carry, given I had the Winchester to lug around. I figured we could go back for the rest when you were ready.”

  Mackey got up from the desk and pulled his coat on. “Best we get over there right now before anyone else does. Bastards are worse than vultures over there.”

  Billy handed Mackey a rifle as they were heading out the door. “Why do you think Grant was talking to a man with a bunch of German books in his shack?”

  “That’s not even the biggest question.” Mackey locked the jailhouse door and braced himself against the icy wind blowing up Front Street. “What the hell is a man who prizes books so much doing in Tent City in the first place?”

  “All sorts of people end up in all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons, Aaron. Maybe this guy just hit a rough patch and came to town looking for a new life.”

  “Then how did he know Grant? If the man warranted a visit, you’d think Grant would’ve gotten him better lodgings.”

  Mackey kept the wind from taking his hat as they walked. “And why was he ready for a fight when you were at his door? You could’ve been anybody. You could’ve been Grant coming back to talk to him about something or look for something he thought he had left behind. Being so eager to kill isn’t normal, even in Tent City.”

  The more Mackey thought about it as they walked, the less sense it made to him. He only hoped that seeing the dead body for himself would give him some answers.

  * * *

  There were times, especially when the wind was blowing the wrong way, that Mackey cursed the fact that Tent City was so close. But on a cold night such as this he did not complain.

  All the flaps were closed and all of the lights were out in Tent City as the lawmen walked through the squalid huddle of tents and structures of the town’s poor. But he knew someone was watching them. Someone was always awake in Tent City, ready to seize on any opportunity where they could gain an advantage over their neighbors.

  Billy led him to the shack in question, which looked like it had been built by a drunken blind man in one hell of a hurry. There was nary a straight line in the entire ramshackle structure.

  Billy went in first, thumbed a match alive, and lit a candle. Mackey pulled the door behind him. There was barely enough room for the both of them in the building that was hardly wider than a coffin.

  The dim candlelight showed the dead man on the bed, exactly as Billy had described. The knife was sticking out of the right side of his belly. The corpse’s jaw was at an odd angle that told Mackey it had been broken.

  “The trunk with all of the books is at the foot of the bed,” Billy said.

  Mackey found the wooden trunk and opened the lid. Even in the dim light from the candle, he could see the trunk was completely empty.

  “Goddamn it, Aaron,” Billy protested, “that case was filled when I left.”

  The idea that Billy might have been wrong never entered his mind. “Anything else missing here?”

  Billy held the candle before him as he looked around. “Nothing else to take even if someone wanted to. Hell, the most valuable thing in the place is that knife sticking out of his belly, and that’s still there. I’ve heard of bodies being picked clean in this part of town, but why the hell would someone take a bunch of books and leave a valuable knife behind?”

  Mackey closed the lid on the chest. “Means whatever was in there were more valuable to them than Ernst Hendrik or the knife. I don’t know why, but I intend on finding out.”

  To Billy, he said, “It’d be best if you fetched Cy Wallach and tell him to bring his wagon. I’ll feel a whole lot better if the body’s under his care than left for the good people of Tent City to pick over. I’ll stay here until you two get back.”

  “That’ll raise a ruckus,” Billy observed, “especially at this time of night.”

  “It’s not that late, and it needs to be done.”

  Billy handed the candle to Mackey. “Guess I should’ve searched the trunk better.”

  “You did what you could under the circumstances,” Mackey told him. “I’ve got no complaints and neither should you. Now go light a fire under Cy’s ass and get him moving. I know how cozy he gets on cold winter nights, but this can’t wait until morning.”

  Billy took his Winchester and went out into the night, leaving Mackey alone in the shack with the body of the man he had just killed.

  Mackey moved the candle close and took a better look at the dead man’s face. It was the man from the shooting. His hair and beard were long and curly with thick, uneven streaks of black and gray. His clothes were little better than rags and had never been fashionable to begin with. He had a thick build and, in life, had probably been as tall as Mackey and Billy. But in death, things like height didn’t matter much. Neither did a man’s clothes.

  But why did a man like this have such a fancy trunk full of books? And he probably hadn’t gotten on a train dressed like that, at least not without making an impression on some people. Mackey would have heard of it.

  Mackey moved the candle over the corpse. He took another look at its clothes. What could a jumped-up dandy like Grant have to discuss with a man dressed in rags?

  Mackey set the candle on the trunk and began patting down the corpse. A gust of wind buffeted against the shack, making the boards and tin of its construction creak and groan.

  He heard something when he ran his hands over the left side of the corpse. A sound not caused by the wind.

  When the gust died down, he ran his hand over the same spot again and heard the same sound. A crinkling of paper in the man’s jacket.

  Mackey grunted as he rolled the big man over onto his back. The man was bottom heavy. There was too much meat on his bones, considering the way he was dressed. It wasn’t all muscle, either. In fact, Mackey judged most of it was fat. For a poor man, he hadn’t missed many meals.

  He patted down the left side of the jacket again for some kind of an inside pocket. He didn’t find anything, but heard the same sound as he had before. A rustling sound, like paper. And since there was no sign of a pocket, it meant whatever it was had been sewn into the lining of the coat.

  Mackey grabbed hold of the lining and ripped it open. The cheap stitching gave way easily. Inside, he found an
envelope. He took it and brought it over to the candle so he could read it better.

  The letter was addressed to Ernst Mohr of Chicago, Illinois. Mackey removed the letter from the envelope and saw that it had been written in an elegant hand in a language he did not understand. Some of the words were close to English, just like those he had seen in the book Billy had taken from the shack, but Mackey still could not make sense of it. The letter was unsigned.

  He refolded the letter and put it back into the envelope. He looked at the corpse and the Bowie knife sticking out of its belly. Mackey raised the envelope. “Ernst Mohr,” he said to the dead man. “This you? Or are you really Ernst Hendrik? Did you write this to someone? Or were you supposed to deliver it? Why’d you have it sewn into your clothes? What’s so damned important about it that you kept it separate from the rest of your things?”

  He leaned forward and took a closer look at the knife handle jutting out of the man’s belly. “And why the hell did you try to kill my deputy? What were you protecting?”

  He looked around the shack. There was nothing in it except the trunk and some bedding. He got off the bed and lifted the mattress. Nothing. Nothing looked like it had been sewn into it, either.

  He stood up and looked over the sparse scene again. “What were you protecting? And what the hell does any of it have to do with James Grant?”

  He turned when he heard a knock at the door as Billy stepped inside. “Cy’s bringing his wagon around. Should be here any minute.” He hesitated before saying, “Thought I heard you saying something when I walked up here. Kind of like you were talking to yourself.”

  “I wasn’t. I was talking to our dead friend here.”

  Billy looked at the corpse, then at his friend. “He tell you anything?”

  “Yep.” Mackey handed him the envelope he had just taken from the lining of the dead man’s jacket. “I think he might have.”

  Chapter 9

  The cleanliness of Doctor William Ridley’s office would have put many of the kitchens of Dover Station’s best restaurants to shame. His medical degrees hung on the wall behind his desk. Cabinets filled with medicine and books lined both sides of the small examining room that also served as his office. Mackey knew he and his wife lived upstairs as they had since the sheriff had been a boy. Otherwise, he never would have known this room was part of where the doctor had lived most of his life.

  Nothing in the office showed he was the acting mayor of Dover Station.

  Doc Ridley reluctantly looked at the items Mackey had brought him as the sheriff explained how the man died. He thumbed through the book and a letter addressed to an Ernst Mohr. A train ticket for Ernst Hendrik. “Sounds like Tent City is quickly devolving into a bigger cesspool than we had previously thought.”

  “More than you know,” Mackey said. “It’s attracting all types of critters, some you even know.”

  Ridley’s eyebrows rose. “That sounds ominous, Aaron.”

  Mackey hesitated to tell him more, but had no choice. He was the acting mayor of the town and had a right to know. Mackey had a duty to tell him. “Before I tell you why, I need you to promise this stays between us. It’s important, Doc. You can’t mention this to anyone, not even your wife.”

  “Especially my wife.”

  Mackey could not argue with the doctor on that score. Mrs. Ridley used to keep Mackey’s wife Mary informed of the latest gossip about his interactions with Mrs. Campbell. The old battle-ax had been the source of many a sleepless night in the Mackey household, a matter for which he did not hold the doctor responsible.

  “Anything you tell me,” Doc Ridley went on, “will be held in the strictest confidence.”

  Mackey figured that was as close as a guarantee as he could hope. “Billy saw James Grant leaving the dead man’s tent right before he died.”

  Doc Ridley bolted forward in his chair. “You mean Grant killed him?”

  Mackey tried to avoid looking annoyed. The doctor sometimes had a tendency to become distracted. “No. I already told you Billy killed this Ernst fellow in a struggle. The question is what Grant was doing there in the first place.”

  Doc Ridley looked at the pile of books on his desk. “Do you think it has anything to do with any of what you’ve brought here? A map, a train ticket for Dover Station dated last week, a book in German, and a letter in German? What facts do you hope to be able to divine from this?”

  “It’s not everything,” Mackey explained. “Some of his possessions were stolen when Billy came to tell me about what had happened. The trunk was full of books and such when he left, but all of it was gone by the time I got there.”

  “Do you think it was Grant or someone else?”

  “I doubt Grant came back, so it must’ve been someone else. But not just any thief. A Tent City vulture would’ve picked his body clean. Shoes, clothes, everything. Whoever our thief was left all of that behind, including a big bowie knife sticking out of his belly.

  “The way I see it,” Mackey went on, “the best chance we have of figuring out what they took is by reading what we were able to get. Unfortunately, it’s in German. I don’t read the language, but I was hoping you might, Doc. I know a lot of medical books are written in German, and I thought you might be able to tell us what some of this meant.”

  Ridley laughed as he set the letter back on his desk. “Latin comes in handy in my profession, my boy, not German. Though you’re not far off. A great many medical books are, indeed, written in German. Many consisting of the science of the mind and medicine. But I have never found any use for such knowledge, nor any reason to study German. I’ve always been content to wait for the American translations to come out.”

  Doc Ridley folded his hands across his belly and sat back in his chair. “I’m less concerned about these documents than I am about the man who visited their owner. Is Billy absolutely certain that it was Grant?”

  “Never known Billy to be wrong about something like that. If he said he saw Grant, then he did.”

  “Yes,” Ridley allowed. “His eyesight has always been impeccable, even at night. I remember watching him shoot during Darabont’s siege. The amount of people he picked off in near-darkness was remarkable.” The doctor looked at the sheriff. “I heard Cy return with the body late last night, you know? I took the liberty of examining it before Cy turned in. The man was dead before the knife went into his belly. Blunt force trauma to the side of the head killed him. Probably from Billy’s rifle. Don’t get defensive, Aaron. I’m sure Billy had no choice, and I’m going to sign the death certificate as a justifiable homicide.”

  Ridley tapped the book on his desk. “But the man’s death doesn’t explain his life. It doesn’t explain who he was or what he was doing here in Dover Station. Now, since you found a train ticket on him, you might want to ask our friends up in Van Dorn House if he used the train and where he came from. Work your way back to uncovering his identity from there.”

  “Seeing as how Grant was one of the last people to see this man alive,” Mackey said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I happen to think it’s a splendid idea, actually. Confront the bastard. See how he reacts. His reaction to the news of the man’s death could tell you quite a bit. A lack of reaction or a flat-out denial could tell you even more.”

  Mackey gathered up the material he had placed on the doctor’s desk. “I was planning on doing exactly that. But given that you’re acting mayor, I didn’t want to do it without talking to you about it first. Depending on how it goes, Grant might make a lot of noise. I won’t be surprised if he does.”

  “Meaning you didn’t want another man with a knife to your throat, especially given our history.” Ridley slowly stood up and came out from around his desk. “You forget I’ve known you since you were five years old, Aaron. Any conflict between us since your election to sheriff has always been due to my unshakable belief that you were capable of being so much more than a thug with a star. I still believe that. Your actions during Darab
ont’s siege and afterward proved me right.”

  Mackey took his bundle and placed it under his left arm. Six months later and Darabont’s name still came up. “That son of a bitch changed all of us, didn’t he?”

  “Perhaps we’ve both mellowed some,” Ridley allowed. “Change is good for the soul. It’s good for Dover Station, too. I know Mr. Grant and Mr. Van Dorn have big ideas for this place, and I applaud them for it, but I think there was a more humane way of going about it. Tent City is a cancer on this town, and this man’s death is a symptom of that disease. I can’t think of a reason in the world why Grant would have visited a man like this, but there must be a reason for it. I beg you to be careful if you decide to look into it further. Grant went there in secret and left the same way. He obviously has something to hide and may be prepared to go to great lengths to keep it hidden.”

  Mackey had never considered himself to be a dumb man, but knew the doctor had a way of speaking that often took a little while to sink in. “You think I should let this death go?”

  “That’s your decision to make,” Ridley said. “I’m not even a very good acting mayor, so I’m hardly in a position to tell you how to do your job. But if I know anything in this life, I know this town very well. I know James Grant and the company have big plans for this wilderness hamlet. This Ernst whatever-his-name-is obviously played some kind of role in Grant’s plan. I’m merely pointing out that you may not want to dig too deeply into the dead man’s past lest it cause you difficulty in the present.” Ridley’s eyes narrowed as he drove home his point. “Pick your battles carefully, Captain Mackey. That’s what they taught us at the Point, isn’t it?”

  Mackey felt himself smiling. “I keep forgetting you were at West Point before the war.”

  “That makes one of us.”

  * * *

  The morning had proven to be warmer than Mackey had expected as he walked back to the jailhouse. He could sense a hint of snow in the air, but not until the next day at the earliest. At least the wind had died down, making the colder temperature easier to take.