The Peacemaker’s Vengeance

by Gary D. Svee

  “I should have killed him, Frank. I should have beaten him to death so he had a chance to feel sorry for what he had done. But I’ve been in the law a long time, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t. I thought I was shut of him, but a problem doesn’t go away just because you hide it upriver.”

  Thompson sighed. “Frank, Galt’s living in Eagles Nest, now, running a smithy.”

  Thompson stood and walked over to where Drinkwalter was sitting. He leaned down to look into his friend’s eyes.

  “I think you ought to kill him, Frank. I think you ought to kill him and haul him out somewhere in the country and drop a clay bank on him. That’s what you ought to do, Frank.”

  Thompson shook his head and stomped back to his seat on the wagon box. “But you won’t do that. You won’t do that any more than I could beat him to death, and we’ll all be the sorrier for it. He’ll put that godawful knife to some woman, and we’ll all be the sorrier for it.”

  Mac poked into the conversation. “He took Milt Jenkins’s place. You know, the wheelwright.”

  “When Galt moved in, I went down to see what he was doing there. He set a forge by those double doors. That building is built with rock from the quarry, and it’s just like a cave. Galt didn’t have any lights on, just the light from the forge and the sunlight that comes in through the windows and doors.”

  “I walked past the doors, and the heat hit me like a fist. It seemed to me that Galt had opened a vent to hell, and I was smelling fire and brimstone. At night you can only see that forge. He’s just a black shape, moving around the glow of the fire.”

  Mac pulled his eyes up to look at Thompson. “Sometimes when I saw him I’d think he was the devil, warming himself at the fires of hell.”

  “That’s Jack Galt, all right,” Thompson said. “I’m sorry as hell I set him on you, Frank. Sorry as hell.”

  11

  Nelly Frobisher sat at a table in her tiny office, separated from the front room of her establishment by a heavy green velvet curtain. She could do her bookwork behind the curtain and still hear anyone coming through the establishment’s front door. Nelly liked to think of her house as an establishment and herself as an entrepreneur.

  She kept immaculate books, knowing to the penny how much each of her three women produced. Of course, the total didn’t count any tips their clients might leave them. Tips in this country of cowboys and penny-ante businessmen were rare. Nelly held that her women were entitled to any tips for extra services they offered their clients. The women appreciated the little extra they had each month.

  The business was all there on the desk in front of her: income, expenses for heating and lighting and food and liquor and monthly examinations by Doc Soliloquy. That wasn’t his real name, of course. Most people called him by his proper name, Dr. L. C. Higgins. But Nelly had studied for the theater before she became … before she entered her current form of employment, and Higgins’s mutterings as he treated his patients reminded her of the soliloquies of the stage.

  Nelly buried those thoughts in her ledger, written in her own tight hand. To think about those early years was to think about what she might have been—and what she was. Nelly didn’t like to think about that.

  Like all businesspeople, she pondered each week how she might cut expenses and increase profits. She ran her finger down the page to an entry marked LIQUOR. Liquor wasn’t a big moneymaker for her, not even after she had mixed the booze half and half with water. Most of her clients appeared at the door drunk as lords, more than a few of them too drunk to do what they came to do. It was not rare that one of the men would pass out before they partook of the establishment’s offerings. In decent weather she would drag the clients outside and prop them against the back wall so they wouldn’t clutter the front room. When the drunks awoke and staggered back inside, Nelly would tell him how shocked her girls were at his “manliness.” She would whisper into the drunk’s ear: “Bridget said you were an animal. You ought to come around here more often, Henry … or George … or Philip.” And Henry or George or Philip would go home with a little spring in his step, as much spring, at any rate, as the alcohol allowed.

  Nelly peered back at her books in the soft yellow light of a kerosene lamp. She might have had the pantry/office wired for electric lights, but for reasons she didn’t really understand, she didn’t like the idea of doing her books in their harsh white glare.

  March had been a good month, the longer days of spring bringing out the sap in men just as it did in the cottonwoods along the Yellowstone River. The heating bill was down considerably, and the light bill, too. Everything was going along quite nicely.

  Nelly sat in the soft yellow light, feeling content, as content at any rate as she could. A nagging emptiness drove her from her solitude whenever her mind pulled her away from her books and left her alone. She was about to stand when it began. “Uh, uh, uh, oh, oh, oh, o-o-o-o-h, e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!” The squeal reached a crescendo that seemed to endanger the very windows of Nelly Frobisher’s little house on the west edge of Eagles Nest.

  Nelly grimaced. She didn’t like being reminded of what went on in her rooms. She didn’t like to be reminded that while she was, indeed, a businesswoman, the business was so venal. Still, Beulah’s enthusiasm was good for business. Beulah earned nearly as much as both other women combined, and when the men asked for a woman by name, they usually asked for her.

  Beulah was an anachronism, a lady of the night who sought the trade from sheer enjoyment. Most of the men liked that. It seemed, then, that their … activity … was something more than a simple business transaction.

  Nelly had wondered often about Beulah’s squealing. Surely, it was forced, bred of business sense and not physical passion. Sometime, when the house was quiet and Beulah was alone, Nelly intended to talk to her about that matter—discreetly, of course.

  The front door scuffed open. The rare humidity occasioned by melting winter snows had swelled the door, set it rubbing against its step. Ole had promised to take the door down and plane it smooth, but the season belonged to the wind, and leaving a door open to its icy blast was simply not acceptable.

  Nelly smoothed her dress, a sequined blue silk that she had found years ago in St. Louis, and stepped outside into the front room.

  Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter was standing there, and when Nelly appeared, the sheriff took off his hat, running the brim through his fingers. Courtesy was a rare commodity in a house of ill repute, and Nelly blushed at the gesture.

  The sheriff was a handsome man, tall and lean. His face showed strength and serenity, a thoughtfulness that Nelly didn’t often see in her business.

  “Why, I haven’t seen you in a month of Sundays.”

  Nelly remembered then who she was and who the sheriff was, and the smile fled her face. “There isn’t any trouble, is there? I’m very strict about the girls. They don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to them. I run an honest establishment here, and I wouldn’t allow any stealing no matter what anyone says.”

  “No, Nelly, it isn’t anything like that. I was just wondering if I could speak to you for a moment?”

  “Certainly, Sheriff, I’d be pleased to buy you a drink. I have some fine bottled in bond …”

  “No, Nelly. Coffee if you have it made. Maybe we could talk in the kitchen.”

  Color fled Nelly’s face. Of course the sheriff wouldn’t want to be seen in her parlor. If someone came in and saw him in her parlor, they would think he was …

  Nelly’s defenses crumbled. She could take the stabbing looks she suffered in Eagles Nest. She understood mothers shuffling their children to the other side of the street whenever she appeared. Even the gutter language of her clients didn’t pierce her armor, but the sheriff with his soft words and his courteous ways had skewered her soul, left her pinned to the door of her own profession.

  Sheriff Drinkwalter didn’t want to be seen with her, and she a businesswoman who paid taxes and salaries just like any of those stuffe
d shirts on Main Street. Well, she wouldn’t put up with his high-handed ways. She wouldn’t allow the sheriff free rein to her feelings. Nelly’s back stiffened, and her face hardened.

  “My parlor is not so abhorrent to my customers.”

  “No, it isn’t, Nelly. But I might be.”

  Understanding spread across Nelly’s face—and then embarrassment. “Yes, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking of.”

  Nelly’s hands fluttered down her dress to smooth the material over her hips, and then she realized what she was doing and a blush spread up from her neck. How could he fluster her so? Why did he make her feel like a child?

  She drove those thoughts from her mind and managed to say, “Would you like some tea, Sheriff?”

  “Coffee if you’ve got it. Don’t make any on my account, but a cup of coffee would be nice to take off the chill.”

  “Yes, it is chilly tonight. It’s the wind, I believe.”

  “Yes, the wind.”

  Nelly opened the door and showed the sheriff into her kitchen. While the parlor was decorated in what might be described as lavish decadence, the kitchen was nothing if not utilitarian. The wooden floor was scrubbed and waxed until it shone. A simple table painted white stood in the middle of the room, contrasting with the huge, black range and water tank that dominated the opposite wall. A sink with a hand pump framed a window looking over the river. Spotless: Everything in the room was freshly painted or scrubbed.

  Drinkwalter stepped over and examined the cupboard doors. Squarely in the center of each was an intricate painting of flowers and leaves, highly stylized, and each identical to the other.

  “These are beautiful, Nelly. Did you …?”

  Nelly smiled. “No, I haven’t got that in me. Never been able to draw or paint. I’ve always been oriented toward … business. Ole Stinsdahl did that for me. I didn’t know he was doing it, I just came down to fix dinner, and he was putting on the final touches.”

  “He said the kitchen reminded him of his parents’ home in Norway, so he painted those flowers on the cupboards. He called them fjell flora. I made him keep repeating it until I could pronounce it. I look at them in the winter, when it’s cold outside and this is the only warm room in the house. They remind me that behind every winter, there is a spring.”

  Nelly couldn’t imagine why she told the sheriff that. She hadn’t told anyone else. Her hand darted to her face then, and when she realized what she was doing, she buried her hand in her lap, tying her fingers together to control a nervousness she didn’t understand.

  “I never would have thought that Ole had those flowers in him,” Drinkwalter said.

  “The flowers don’t really look like that. He painted them not so much as they are as how he sees them. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to see the world though Ole Stinsdahl’s eyes?”

  Nelly clapped her hand over her mouth. What was it about this man that flustered her so? She was a professional businesswoman, and she was chattering childish things to the sheriff. She resented the sheriff, then. Resented his intrusion. Resented the effect he was having on her. She began to rebuild the wall around herself with words.

  “Here I am boring you, when you want a cup of coffee. That’s what we women are for: to give you men what you want. Sometimes I forget that, Sheriff.”

  “The flowers are beautiful, Nelly.”

  Nelly’s jaw clenched. “Let’s get down to business. You didn’t come here to drink my coffee or look at my kitchen.”

  “No, although I am pleased to be doing both.”

  Nelly looked at the sheriff then, and the hard shell of her faced cracked, just a little bit, but it cracked nonetheless.

  “Nelly, I’ve got some bad news.”

  Nelly jumped from her chair and stalked to the window over the sink, starring through it into a black wall of night. “Is there any other kind? What is it? Did the good ladies of Eagles Nest decide that I am a scourge on their community?”

  She turned then to glare at the sheriff. “Or did some of the community leaders come to you and ask you to run me and my establishment out of town? Is that what you’re here for, Sheriff, to run me out of town?”

  Sheriff Drinkwalter shook his head. “No, Nelly, I’m not here about anything like that, but I do have bad news, really bad news for the both of us.”

  Nelly’s face softened. “For both of us?”

  “Yes. We’ll have to work together on this.”

  “You need my help?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it, money? You need some money to give to someone to keep the do-gooders off both our backs. Is that it?”

  “Sit down, Nelly. Sit down, and drink a cup of your coffee. Listen to what I say, and then tell me what you think we can do. Is that so much?”

  Nelly Frobisher shook her head and sat at the table. What was it about the sheriff that made her emotions bounce around like a stick on a river riffle?

  “I’m sorry.”

  Drinkwalter shook his head. “No reason to be sorry about that.”

  Now it was the sheriff’s turn to fidget in his chair. He hesitated and then looked across the table. “Nelly, a woman was killed in Billings a month ago. A man cut her up something awful with a knife. She was … uh, she was living in one of those cribs down by the railroad track.”

  The color drained from Nelly’s face. “What was her name, Sheriff? Do you remember what her name was?”

  “The Yellowstone County sheriff said her name was Sally Higgins.”

  Nelly’s hands curled into fists and jumped to her face as though she meant to hide behind them. Her eyes opened wide with shock.

  “Not Sally,” Nelly said, shaking her head. “Not Sally.”

  “You knew her, Nelly?”

  Nelly pressed her fists into to her face, trying to hold in her emotions, trying to meld her face into some semblance of normality, but the effort failed. Tears gushed from her eyes, leaving a glistening path across her face, and then the sobs broke through her fists as a river breaks through a line of boulders.

  Nelly fled to the window, staring out into the blackness, her shoulders shaking. The sheriff rose, stepped to the window, taking Nelly in his arms. She didn’t attempt to stop the crying, then. She laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed, her tears wetting his shoulder.

  And just when the sobbing began to ebb, the door to the kitchen crashed open. Beulah stormed through. Her substantial body, constrained only by the robe she wore, rolled, bobbed, shimmered and shook with each determined step. Her eyes shone with the fierceness of a woman warrior, and her blond hair seemed afire with the heat of her fury.

  But Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter’s attention was focused on the double-barrel Parker shotgun, carried with both hammers at full cock. Her words came in a snarl. “You son of a bitch, you leave Nelly alone or so help me God, I’ll splatter your guts all the way back to …”

  And then a question crawled across Beulah’s face. “Sheriff?”

  Nelly stepped toward her protector, a tentative smile belying the tears that still ran down the woman’s face. “No, Beulah, it isn’t anything like that. The sheriff brought me some bad news, about Sally. A man killed her, carved her up with a knife.” The words turned into a wail.

  The butt of the shotgun thumped against the floor as the woman warrior propped the weapon against the wall by the door. Beulah’s face cracked into tears, then, and the two women embraced, sobbing.

  When the sobbing eased, the sheriff intruded. “I apologize. I didn’t know that you knew Sally. I would have—”

  Nelly turned toward the sheriff, sniffling. “No way you would have known. Beulah, you go up and tell the girls everything is all right. No sense scaring them over something they can’t do anything about. If someone comes in, you … uh, handle it, would you? The sheriff will tell me what happened to Sally, and I’ll pass it along. Is that all right?”

  Beulah nodded and stepped toward the door, leaning down to pick up the shotgun by the barrel as
she passed through.

  Drinkwalter watched the door for several seconds after it closed. “You know, she shouldn’t be carrying that shotgun around with both hammers at full cock.”

  Nelly smiled wanly at the sheriff. “She has such little hands, and not much power in them, and that old shotgun needs a good cleaning and oiling. So the hammers are stiff, hard for her to pull back. She doesn’t want to be struggling to tug back the hammers when she needs the gun, so she carries it around like that.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be on Beulah’s bad side.”

  “She doesn’t have a bad side. She’s just sweet as can be. It’s just that we … well, we have to stick up for each other out here. There are so many men, who …”

  Nelly stepped to the cupboard and took out two cups. She filled them with coffee, trying to put her thoughts in order before she joined the sheriff at the table. She cleared her throat and began, “Beulah was indentured to a family somewhere near Boston, and the master of the house was using her in ways a man shouldn’t use a child. So when she saw the newspaper advertisement about a man in Montana wanting a wife, she wrote, and he wrote back with train tickets. He was a pig farmer out of Springtime. First night, he found out she was ‘used goods.’”

  Nelly was wringing her hands together, staring at them as though they were Christ’s bleeding hands.

  “They were married. Not much he could do about that. But he made her life a living hell. He built her a little shack out by the pigpen and locked her in there. He fed her table scraps and brought her out to work during the day.”

  Nelly looked across the table at the sheriff. “He beat her, the way a man might beat a horse that wouldn’t let him tighten a cinch. It’s one thing for a man to lose his temper. But he just beat her like it was one of the chores he had to do. There’s something wrong with a man like that, Sheriff.”

  Drinkwalter nodded.

  “Well, he had an accident one day and fell into the pen with the hogs. I guess those hogs went crazy. Wasn’t anything left of him, but some bones.”