Billy looked at the amount of breath smoke coming from the horse’s nostrils. “You live a long way from here?”
“Not too far,” Aderson said, “not that it’s any damned business of yours. Why?”
“Because that horse has done some hard riding, Mr. Aderson, and this is not hard riding land. It’s fairly flat, and the snowfall was light and uneven at best. That animal’s lathered up, kind of like she was running away from something. That would mean you were running away from something, wouldn’t it?”
He slowly lowered the Sharps until it was aimed at Aderson. “What were you running from, Aderson?”
The man’s eyes squinted. “You know my name?”
“Yes, I do. And now I want to know why that horse is in a lather. And if you make any sudden moves, I’ll fire. I don’t think I have to remind you of what a Sharps can do to a man at close range.”
The paint began to fuss, probably sensing the tension in the air. Aderson brought it under control. “No thanks. I’ve seen enough of what that damned thing can do from a distance already, you murdering son of a bitch.”
Aderson’s pistol cleared leather just as Billy squeezed the rifle’s trigger. The massive slug struck the big man high in the center of the chest and blew him out of the saddle.
As the black paint ran off, Billy brought the rifle up to his shoulder and aimed it down at the fallen man in case there was still any fight left in him. But there wasn’t enough left of the man’s chest for there to be much of anything left of him at all.
Billy kept the rifle aimed down at him as he took the pistol away from the dead man. He did not like to take chances, not even with corpses.
Billy turned when a solitary gunshot came from within the house. He turned and ran inside, cursing himself for not noticing another rider. Had he missed something? Had Aderson just been a decoy?
But when he burst into the bedroom, Sharps at the ready, he found there had been no other rider and that Billy Sunday had not missed anything, save for the pistol the Macums kept in the bedroom, probably for self-defense.
Only this time, Mrs. Macum had used it to take her own life. She had placed the gun barrel under her chin and squeezed the trigger.
Billy lowered his rifle as he sank against the doorway. His only proof of a link between James Grant and the train robbery had just put a bullet in her brain.
Chapter 19
In the doctor’s office in Olivette, Mackey closed his eyes as he waited for the doctor to finish patching up the bandit he had slugged on the train. The man had drifted in and out of consciousness since Mackey had hit him with the pistol, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. As there was no real doctor on the train, Mackey had to wait until the train reached Olivette before he knew if the man would survive.
He looked at Billy, who stood in the doorway rolling another smoke. “I hope you’re not blaming yourself for the Macum woman. You didn’t make her put that pistol to her head any more than you made Aderson draw his gun.”
“Should’ve found a way to make her feel safer. Maybe she wouldn’t have—”
“We’re not lawyers or doctors,” Mackey said. “We don’t deal in maybes. We deal in what is. Maybe if you’d gone back there with her, you would’ve gotten trapped by Aderson and he could’ve killed you both. Maybe she would’ve shot you on account of what you did to her husband, before shooting herself. What happened was bad enough. No need to make it worse by regretting it. You’re alive and they’re dead. At least now we know there was a link between Grant and Macum. We wouldn’t have known that unless you’d ridden out there like you did.”
“Can’t prove it, though.”
“Couldn’t prove it even if we had her signed and sworn testimony before a judge,” Mackey said. “It’s just hearsay, but lucky for us, we’re not going to a court of law or appearing before a judge. There’s only one man we’ve got to convince, and he’s got his doubts already. Mr. Fraser Rice.”
Billy licked the cigarette paper and closed it. “Could be this man you brained knows something we can write down and have him sign.”
“It’s possible,” Mackey said, “if the idiot working on him doesn’t kill him first.”
The doctor at Olivette worked out of an old barn behind the whorehouse off the town’s Main Street. Given that treating sporting ladies of various social diseases was likely the doctor’s surest source of income, the location of the doctor’s office was more out of practicality than anything else. It also dimmed Mackey’s hopes that the doctor could treat the man’s wounds beyond giving him something for a persistent itch.
In the portion of the barn that served as the doctor’s front office, Mackey was seated on a charred pew from the church that had burned down some time ago, though no one could quite remember when or how. The doctor had made a half-hearted attempt to sweep some of the straw out of the place, but a good portion of it still remained in the cracks of the sodden wooden floor.
“I can still smell the animals,” Billy said from the doorway. “How the hell can a doctor work in a place like this?”
Mackey smelled it, too. “Makes house calls whenever he can, I’d imagine.”
There was considerable talk of the town of Olivette generating the same level of interest from Mr. Rice and his partners as Dover Station currently enjoyed, but Mackey did not see much possibility in that. The town of Olivette had cropped up on a forgettable rocky plateau that had neither scenery nor grazing land nor trees for logging. Some miners had managed to scrape out a living on the sparse amounts of copper in the hills, but not enough to make a proper town out of the wind-scoured place. He hoped no one was holding their breath waiting for investment, lest they die of suffocation.
A glass shattered and a woman’s cackle followed by a tinny rendition of “Old Dog Trey” echoed in the alley. Billy glanced behind him. The place of ill repute looked almost quaint against the purple sky of the setting sun and the lamplight in the windows. “At least someone’s having a good time.”
“Just glad it’s not our town,” Mackey said. “Last whorehouse scuffle we broke up caused us a hell of a lot of trouble.”
Billy looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wonder what’s going on back home. Election’s only a couple of weeks away. Wonder if Grant threw his hat in the ring.”
“Probably making sure no one else is going to run against him,” Mackey said. “His ego couldn’t stand opposition, though he’d probably beat anyone who stood against him.”
“Heard your old man might run against him,” Billy said as he lit his smoke, “though it was just a rumor.”
Mackey had not heard that one yet, either from Billy or his other sources. “The only place Pappy is running to is the bank to deposit the small fortune he makes off the Dover Station Company every day. He loves to talk politics, but he’s no politician. He’d resign his office within a week out of boredom.”
Mackey could have gone on about his father’s lack of political acumen, but the doctor trudged out from one of the old stalls he used as a place to treat patients. He dunked his bloody hands into a bucket of water and dried them with a filthy towel.
Mackey pegged Doctor Brenner to be a wiry man of about fifty who was too thin for his frame. Mackey thought he had the look of an opium fiend about him, reddened sunken eyes and pale skin. The sheriff didn’t think he was fit enough to work on an alley cat, much less a human being, but given how the man in question had held a woman at knifepoint and swiped at him with a razor, a cat doctor was better than he deserved.
Brenner tossed the towel to the side and took a bottle from the bottom drawer of his desk. He looked at Mackey as he pulled out the cork. “You the one who did that to his face?”
“I am.”
After two deep swallows, Brenner came up for air, but didn’t put the cork in the bottle. “What the hell did you hit him with? That train out there?”
“Butt of my Peacemaker. Why?”
“Because you caved in half his skull. I had to take his eye.”
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Mackey had not thought he had hit the man that hard, but hadn’t given it much thought either way. “I hit him until he dropped the razor.”
The doctor looked like he wanted to say more, but thought better of it. He took another belt instead. “Guess he shouldn’t have tried to cut you.”
Mackey stood up. “He awake?”
“Drunk as a skunk on account of me having only whiskey and no ether. Never had much call for it since I’ve been here. I ain’t been a surgeon since the army, and even then, it was closer to butchery than medicine.”
But Mackey didn’t care about the drunk’s life story. “Can the man talk or not?”
“I said he was drunk, not unconscious. Bandaged him up as best I could, but he’ll never be pretty again.” Brenner regarded him with the bottle in his bony hand. “I wouldn’t go hitting him anymore if that’s what you’re asking. I bandaged him up as well as I could, but he’ll bleed out if you move him too much.”
Mackey looked back at his deputy. “Keep an eye out for anyone we don’t know. Holler if you see anyone.”
Billy raised his Sharps and laid the stock on his hip. “Take your time.”
Mackey went in to see the patient. From behind him, he heard the doctor say to Billy. “Your friend’s not a forgiving man, is he?”
Billy didn’t answer.
* * *
Mackey found the injured man lying on a cot that looked like it had once served as a trough, now with a couple of planks across it to support a thin mattress. The patient was lying flat on his back with the right side of his face completely bandaged. An empty bottle of whiskey was on the floor beside the makeshift bed. Mackey didn’t know if he’d finished the bottle or if the doctor had. He figured they had both done their part to kill it.
The doctor may have been a drunk, but Mackey could tell he clearly knew how to apply a field dressing. The right side of the man’s head was neatly bandaged from just above the cheek to the top of his head. His good eye widened at the sight of the sheriff standing before him. Some men might have recoiled at the sight. Others might have felt proud to see what had happened to a man who had tried to harm him.
Mackey did not feel anything at all except curious.
The wounded man’s good eye widened when he saw his attacker standing before him. “You come to gloat, you son of a bitch?” His speech was slurred from whiskey.
“No. Came here for some answers. What’s your name?”
He raised his bandaged right hand with two planks of wood strapped to either side of it. “Doc says my wrist is fractured in two places and I’ve lost an eye.” He winced from pain and he lay flat again. “I’d say you’ve gotten enough out of me for one day.”
Mackey looked at the man’s bandages. “You held an innocent woman at knifepoint and tried to stab me. You’re lucky you’re still alive.”
“You call this lucky? You call this alive? Doc says I’ll never be able to deal a hand of cards again.”
“But at least you can walk.” Mackey looked down at the man’s knees, then back at him. “For now.”
The wounded man’s breath caught. “You wouldn’t.”
“I’m still waiting for an answer to my question. And if you lie, don’t count on the rummy who patched you up being able to save you a second time.”
The man’s good eye closed in defeat. “Name’s Gerald Swain out of Mississippi.”
The name actually meant something to Mackey. “The gambler?”
“I was,” Swain said, “right up until I came up against you.”
Mackey had heard of Gerald Swain many times before over the years. He had made his name and fortune as a cardsharp on the grandest riverboats on the Mississippi. Men came from all over the country—and some said the world—to play Swain for high stakes on the paddle-wheeled vessels that roamed the mighty river. Though Mackey had never met the man, Swain was one of those characters he had heard about once, only to have them remain frozen in his memory forever.
Mackey imagined Swain as a dashing riverboat dandy with money to burn and beautiful women on his arm in every port along the river. That mental picture was a far sight away from the broken, bandaged men before him. “How the hell did you get here? Montana’s a long way from New Orleans.”
Swain’s good eye closed slowly. “I guess that’s the point. Found myself pretty far from New Orleans, too, once I’d worn out my welcome on the river. My reputation preceded me, and the captains all wanted a bigger cut of my winnings for allowing me to gamble on their vessels. I had to leave the river entirely and set up permanently in New Orleans. It’s a pretty city, but an expensive option for a man of my tastes, so I found myself a wanderer again. I wound up in Kansas, where the gaming hall bullies were even less amicable than riverboat captains, which speaks volumes about the character of both sets of individuals. My prospects were dwindling as fast as my funds when I met a man with an interesting proposition.”
Mackey leaned against the stall frame. “What was his name?”
“Tommy Macum,” Swain said. “He’s one of the men I assume you killed yesterday. You would have led him back in chains otherwise.”
Mackey leaned against the entrance to the stall. At least now he had another living witness that Tom Macum was working with Grant. “You ever heard of Macum before then?”
“Sure,” Swain admitted. “He’d run stagecoach stations and a telegraph office in a few places. When he approached me about becoming a train robber, my instincts told me to get the hell out of there. Now I wish I’d shot the son of a bitch rather than becoming just another notch on the belt of the great Aaron Mackey, the Hero of Adobe Flats and the Savior of Dover Station.”
Mackey winced at the titles. “So you’ve heard of me?”
“I’m not the only one here with a reputation that precedes him, sheriff.”
Mackey had no interest in flattery. “You said you met Macum in Kansas?”
“He met me,” Swain told him. “Said he’d been searching me out because he had a proposition to make me. That’s when he asked me to join his friends in robbing trains.”
A bout of pain coursed through him and he cried out, reaching for the bottle. “Can I get another, please?”
Mackey found another bottle on a shelf on the far side of the stall, but did not take it. “Keep talking. If I like what I hear, maybe you’ll get some relief.”
Swain groaned through the pain. “If I don’t get whiskey now, I don’t talk.”
Mackey took the empty bottle and smashed it on the ground beside Swain’s bed. “Either you keep talking, or I drag you out of bed and through that glass. Understand me?”
“A butcher and a torturer,” Swain spat. “My, how your family must be proud.”
Mackey grabbed hold of the gambler’s leg and began pulling him from his bed.
Swain quickly resumed his story, “I asked him how he had heard of me but he refused to answer. I had seen him around Abilene for a couple of days before he approached me. He saw how desperate I had become. He knew I was out of money and was in no position to turn him down, so I listened. Because he bought me a drink that I couldn’t pay for on my own.”
“That’s all it took?” Mackey asked. “The price of a glass of whiskey?”
“The fall from grace was a little more gradual than that, but by the time Macum found me, yes, that’s all it took. Macum managed to make it sound like I was lucky he was letting me in on such a sweet deal. He said he was one man shy of a gang and asked me to join him. He said it was sure money and practically no risk to speak of.”
Mackey wasn’t convinced. “You’ve been around long enough to know if something’s too good to be true, it usually is.”
“Desperation can make a man believe all sorts of damned fool notions,” Swain said. “But when Macum told me how sweet the deal actually was, even I was convinced. He said he had a well-heeled backer looking to cash in on robbing trains up in this part of the territory. He said that since I wasn’t known up here, no one could rec
ognize me, so I’d make the perfect ace on the train to make sure none of the passengers got too brave. He even boasted that he had a man on the railroad who would tip him off whenever a train was ripe for the taking. He said the amount we took didn’t matter because we would get paid either way, no matter what we got from the passengers.”
Mackey knew his next question would be his most important. “How much?”
“Fifty bucks a week in gold whether or not we pulled off a robbery. Plus, we got to keep whatever we took from the passengers.”
There was that number again, Mackey thought. The same as Agee told him. Fifty dollars in gold coins. “That strike you as strange?”
“Sure it did,” Swain admitted. “So did the notion that the backer wouldn’t want a piece of the haul. But, as I said before, I was in no position to complain or require an explanation, so I accepted Macum’s deal.”
So far, everything Swain had said matched what Mackey already knew. “Macum tell you who he was working for?”
“He refused to tell me,” Swain said. “I asked him several times, but Tom was a crafty one. He never let anything slip unless he wanted to tell me. He said the less anyone knew about the whole operation, the better. He wanted me to be the group’s inside man on the train, to blend in with the passengers and tamp down any troublemakers on board. If nothing happened, I stayed quiet and handed over my stuff during the robbery just like everyone else, except I always got my stuff back later. In the event I had to back up Macum and his men, I’d ride out with them.”
Swain looked toward the wall. “That’s why I grabbed the woman. I figured it was time for me to get young Joe and ride the hell out of there back to Macum’s ranch. Not very gallant of me, I know, but I assure you she was never in any real danger. I had the back of the razor to her throat, not the blade. I didn’t want to risk hurting her.”
“So you slashed out at me instead.” Mackey looked at Swain’s injuries. “And look at where it got you. You lost an eye, a hand, and bought yourself one last dance at the end of a rope.”
Dark Territory Page 16
