Dead Man Walking

by Derek Rutherford

  ‘If I walk you home perhaps I could?’

  She laughed.

  ‘I could lie and say Roberta will be asleep, but I know she’ll be waiting up for me. I’ll thank her for you. Now please, let me go.’

  ‘Let you go?’

  ‘Yes. Let me go. If you ever come back please look me up, care of the Centre for Population and Housing.’

  He looked at her and she felt her heartbeat quicken. His eyes held hers.

  ‘Let me go.’ But even as she said the words she reached out her hands for him to hold.

  ‘I’ll watch you, if you insist on walking alone.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  She eased her hands free, turned, and walked away.

  Jim Jackson sighed. It had been a long time since he had felt this way about a woman. It wasn’t a physical thing – or rather, it wasn’t just a physical thing. There was no denying that Rosalie was very beautiful. She held herself well, too, walked nicely, and had a poise and grace about her. So it was that. But it wasn’t just that. She was her own woman, knew her own mind. Was prepared to go on a date – if that’s what it had been – with a man that she had seen kill someone the day before. She had travelled to the west – like he – and though she had come back, admitting that it had scared her, the tales she had told were far from that of a fearful woman. He admired the way that she hadn’t judged him. She was caring, that much was clear, too. It was all of these things, and he hadn’t felt like this since he had walked away from Jennifer-Anne all those years ago in a bid to make a fortune that would be worthy of her.

  He watched Rosalie now. He willed her to turn. One more smile, please.

  But she didn’t turn, and he understood why. She had felt the attraction, too. But he was going away. Leon needed his help more than he needed to stay here and fall in love.

  When he was sure she wasn’t going to turn, he turned instead. He’d make a start right away. Ride through the night. The sooner he could get to Madison County the sooner he could figure a way of getting Leon out of there.

  Ben Adams watched the two of them hold hands. What was it with these two? Did they know each other? They looked close. In fact he had to admit they looked good together, right together. But the way they were talking earlier, he wasn’t sure it had been a romantic liaison. It had looked more businesslike. Yet after the note had been exchanged – the note that had made Flanders turn pale – things had changed. Business had been done, and maybe things moved on to pleasure. Yes, that’s what it was. The note was the business.

  He’d followed them out of the steakhouse, crossed the road and cut into an alleyway. From the shadows he watched them continue their conversation and eventually hold hands. He had been surprised they hadn’t kissed. But then when she turned from him there was something about her body language that suggested that the holding hands had been everything that she was prepared to give.

  Once Flanders had turned away from the departing girl, Adams stepped out from the alleyway and started walking fast, closing in on her with every step.

  Chapter Eight

  The moon wasn’t full, but it was close, and it looked pure and large and silver in the Texas sky. There was something she’d read once, a poem in which two lovers looked at the moon from many miles apart at the same time and in doing so felt – or maintained – a connection.

  As she turned into East Cedar Street, Rosalie Robertson wondered if the intriguing Jim Jackson might be looking at the moon right now. Was he thinking of her? Did he feel what she felt? Was it right that they – assuming he felt it, too – should or could feel this way after just a day or two?

  Then she told herself she was being nonsensical. He was probably thinking about his friend Leon and what they were going to do together once Jim had rescued him. And what if Jim got caught? Wasn’t that the most likely outcome? How could one man rescue another from a prison?

  No, whichever way you looked at it, he was gone and wouldn’t be coming back, no matter how romantic the moon and stars made one feel.

  She gazed at the moon for a moment longer, not wanting to give up the fantasy, and in that moment someone grabbed her wrist so tightly that pain lanced up her arm. She opened her mouth to scream and felt the barrel of a gun jabbed hard into her spine.

  ‘It’s cocked and my finger is on the trigger,’ a man said, his mouth close to her ear. ‘I have no qualms about shooting a lady. I’ve done it before. Now keep walking.’

  She twisted, trying to see him.

  ‘Keep walking.’

  He was just a shape behind her. A shape that had a very strong grip on her wrist. A shape that smelled of beer. A shape with a harsh but quiet voice and, she hoped, a steady trigger finger.

  ‘Cross the street.’

  There was no one around. And anyway, so what if there had been?

  ‘Who are you?’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘Believe it or not, I’m the good guy.’

  She looked up at the moon and felt tears on her face. For all her adventures out west, adventures that had always felt scary and as if she was on the edge of great danger, there had never been anything like this.

  ‘Left,’ he said.

  Together, walking closely like moonlit lovers, they circled back into the business district.

  It was a warehouse, or maybe a storeroom. It was dark and it smelled damp. He lit an oil lamp and he sat her down on a chair in the middle of the room. In the flickering light she saw he was a thin man with hard eyes and a beard.

  There was a table in the corner and a second chair pushed neatly beneath it. There was a coil of rope on the table. In the light from the oil lamp she thought she saw stains on the floor.

  Blood.

  Or maybe it was just the damp that she could smell.

  Either way she shivered.

  He took off his hat and placed it on the table. He ran a hand through thinning hair. He looked old, she thought. Fifty-ish.

  ‘What was in the note?’ he said.

  ‘Note?’

  He closed his eyes briefly. He sighed, then opened his hands in front of him and looked at them as if puzzled at what he saw.

  ‘It’s been a long day. I’ve walked more miles than you know. I’ve stood in the hot sun longer that I should have. I’m tired. What was in the note?’

  Now she realized what he meant. The note she had handed to Jim.

  ‘You were watching us. You were spying on us.’

  He interlocked his fingers and turned his hands round so that the palms of his hands face outwards and he stretched his arms and his fingers cracked.

  ‘I meant it when I said I’m the good guy. My job is to protect the likes of you. Well, not just you. Maybe not you at all. Maybe everyone else. It depends on how we get along over the next few minutes.’

  She shivered. The shivers became a shudder. Her insides churned.

  ‘What did the note say?’

  No, she was not going to tell him. He was not a good guy. A good guy did not force a young woman off the street at gunpoint. A good guy did not bring that young woman into a deserted storeroom with bloodstains on the floor.

  She shook her head.

  ‘What does that mean? You don’t know? You don’t want to tell me?’

  She wished he would speak louder. The quietness of his voice, almost a whisper, was unnerving.

  Once, in Kansas, she had seen the body of a man hanging from a tree. There had been thousands of flies crawling over the corpse and the eyes were missing. ‘A rustler,’ a local farmer had said, ‘We left him there as a warning to the rest of the gang.’ The farmer’s voice had been quiet, too. Quiet and harsh, almost a rasp. When Rosalie had looked closer she had noticed a long scar across the man’s throat. He saw her looking and said, ‘That was a card-cheat. I called him out and sure enough he had the Jack of Hearts in his pocket. He cut my throat on the way out the door but the doc stitched me up.’ The farmer had smiled. ‘A fellow walking by tripped him up. I mean he tripped up
the cheater, not the doctor. We hanged him, too. I mean the cheater, not the fellow who tripped him up.’ Then the farmer had winked. That’s how it had been out there in the west. There was scary stuff but it had always already happened, or was about to happen.

  Here, the bad stuff was actually happening.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, trying to buy time. Her hands were shaking. She wiped her nose. She swallowed and tensed her stomach, trying to maintain some sense of calm. She had survived a country where they hanged rustlers and let the birds eat their eyes; she could survive this.

  ‘I ask the questions.’

  She could tell him that she didn’t know what was in the note. But then he’d want to know who wrote it and that would implicate Roberta. She could tell him what it said – but that would be like giving up Jim. It was unthinkable.

  She could make something up. Yes, that was the thing to do.

  But what?

  Think!

  ‘Last chance,’ he said. ‘What was in that note you gave to. . . .’ He paused. ‘You tell me his name, too.’

  He doesn’t know Jim’s name, she thought. Her mind was whirling. It was too hard to think. She was suddenly very hot as if a great fire had been set right in front of her. Sweat rolled down the sides of her face and down her back and sides.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ the man said.

  ‘What?’

  He stepped forward and, despite not being that tall, it felt like he towered above her. His shape blocked out the minimal light. He took her right hand. She tried to pull it away but he held it firm.

  ‘I hate to hurt a pretty woman,’ he said. ‘But. . . .’

  Then he bent a finger back so far and so fast that it snapped like a dry twig. Pain exploded within her hand, her arm, and her shoulder. It was as if a stick of dynamite had lit up a silent darkness with the loudest roar and the brightest light imaginable. She screamed and he clamped his hand over her mouth. She writhed like a snake that someone had driven a pitchfork through. She sobbed through his foul-tasting fingers, and he held her tight: her face, her hand, her whole body.

  When he let her go she jumped from the chair and ran to a corner of the room, pressing her hand against her breast. The tears came and it was hard to breathe in between the violent sobs. Her legs trembled and then gave way and she found herself on the floor, the oil lamp flickering and in the dancing pools of light she saw the blood stains once again.

  ‘Now,’ the man said, still very quietly, ‘are you ready to answer my questions?’

  It was midnight.

  The streets were quiet, just a few people stumbling around where the taverns and hotels remained open.

  Jim Jackson moved through the shadows, his saddle-bags, which contained a few clothes, a few books and all else he owned, over his shoulders. It was a good time to leave town – in the dark, with people moving towards sleep rather than wakefulness.

  He had found what he had come to find – and thinking now of Rosalie he wondered if he hadn’t found something more, too. But he pushed such thoughts from his mind. They were thoughts for another time. For now his attention had to be on his old friend Leon. He had to find Leon and figure a way of getting him away from wherever he was.

  And then?

  Then there was a story to share with Leon. A story of a man called Anderson in a place called Leyton, Texas.

  Jim Jackson rested his hand on the gun at his hip. Sam McRae’s gun. McRae, who had arrested Jim all those years ago. Just a few months back, in Parker’s Crossing, New Mexico, Sam McRae had located Jim Jackson and had apologised for that arrest. Or rather, not for the arrest, but for the subsequent conviction for a murder that McRae had come to know Jim Jackson hadn’t committed. McRae had been killed in that New Mexico town and Jackson had exacted a suitable revenge. But before he had died, McRae had told him about Anderson.

  ‘Over in Leyton, Texas, there’s a fellow named Jack Anderson who’s been talking up a killing he did during a train robbery some twelve years ago,’ McRae had said. ‘Are you listening to me, Jim?’

  ‘Yep. Fellow I never heard of called Anderson killed someone in a place I never heard of.’

  ‘He didn’t kill anyone in Leyton. That’s where he lives now. He’s a tough guy and he’s trying hard to build a tougher reputation. He’s talking about killing a Texas Ranger during a train robbery.’

  Jim knew that he hadn’t killed a Texas Ranger in their final ever train robbery. And he knew that Leon hadn’t either. Leon had been up on the footplate taking care of the driver and fireman.

  But someone had.

  They’d all worn black hats and black bandanas. Black coats, too. Hans Freidlich, the leader, had once said, ‘Perhaps they’ll call us the Black Mask gang?’ The idea had been that they all looked alike, that after each robbery there’s be no way of identifying individuals.

  Of course, it hadn’t really happened like that. Even masked and hatted, Jim Jackson had developed a reputation as the gentleman. He’d always been polite and kind to the women; he often let them keep engagement or wedding rings. At his trial that girl had even testified that the gentleman hadn’t been the killer.

  Such testimony had stood for nothing.

  Someone had wanted him convicted for murder and so it had been.

  Leon, too.

  And they had strung up Hans, shot poor Billy Moore, and Patrick had died in Huntsville.

  They’d all been set up and McRae had suggested it was by a fellow called Anderson in Leyton, Texas.

  Well, he and Leon would be paying that fellow a visit.

  He could see the livery up ahead. It was dark save for one window behind which a soft light flickered. Yes, this was a good time for leaving Austin. That damn train robbery on the way in could have spoiled everything. He’d wanted to come in and leave quietly. Well he’d come in shooting. But at least he managed to keep his head down ever since, and luckily for him no one had found out who he really was.

  ‘His name is Jim Jackson,’ Adams said.

  Maxwell Higgs wasn’t happy. He was in a dressing gown although he hadn’t yet retired upstairs when Adam’s had started knocking on his door.

  ‘You’ve come here at midnight to tell me you’ve found out the fellow’s name?’

  ‘No. I’ve come here to tell you that he was a train robber—’

  ‘He foiled a train robbery just yesterday.’

  ‘Exactly. He knows how they work. He’s not scared by masked fellows shouting. He knows how to handle a gun.’

  ‘Like lightning.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘It still could have waited until morning.’

  But the truth was Maxwell Higgs was excited. These were good times for the Houston and Texas Central Railroad. They had two men dead over at the mortuary – and the interest from the townsfolk had been incredible. Folks had been coming in and out all day. Some several times. It was only because of the concern over the growing smell of the bodies that he had decided not to hold a second day’s viewing. Then there were those two fellows over in the jailhouse. One had a broken arm and the other a sore head. They’d both soon have broken necks. There’d been a growing concern over train robberies and the board were concerned it would shortly start to impact business. But Higgs was leading the way in beating the robbers. He could see a promotion on the horizon. And most definitely a pay-rise.

  ‘Sherry?’ he said, walking over to his sideboard. He lifted a decanter.

  ‘Sure. Thank you.’

  ‘So Daniel Flanders was a made-up name. I told you.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I assume there’s more?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Higgs handed Adams a sherry glass. ‘Good health.’ They clinked glasses. ‘It sounds like you’ve been busy. Tell me the rest.’

  ‘He did ten years, this Jim Jackson.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Right here in Texas.’

  ‘And he’s come back. Brave or foolish.’

  ‘He was part
of a gang and they’re all dead. Except one.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Leon Winters. Leasing Camp 13. Prairie City, Madison County. That’s exactly how she said it.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘The young lady who told me all of this.’

  Higgs sipped his sherry. ‘I trust you were nice to her. I don’t want any more complaints.’

  ‘We came to an understanding rather quickly.’

  ‘So he’s a train robber who did time in Texas and an old colleague is still alive. Why did he come back?’

  ‘To find out where his colleague was. The records are here in Austin.’

  ‘Ah. Now I understand. So the assumption is that he’s about to try and do something about this Leon Winters?’

  ‘Indeed it is.’

  ‘Where is he staying?’

  ‘The Alamo.’

  ‘And I offered him the Washington.’

  ‘He’s a train robber. The Alamo is much more his style.’

  ‘So let me get this straight. He did his time but now we believe he’s going to head up to . . . don’t tell me . . .’ Higgs prided himself on his memory. ‘Camp 13, Madison County.’

  ‘Prairie City.’

  ‘Yes. Do we know who’s in charge up there?’

  ‘No. But I’ll wire them first thing in the morning.’

  ‘And you’ll follow him?’

  ‘Yes. I had a fellow up at the livery with instructions not to let Jackson leave. But now I’ve told him to stand down. We know where Jackson’s going. And we know he’s going tomorrow.’

  ‘And the moment he tries something. . . .’

  ‘We’ll be waiting.’

  Chapter Nine

  Red Kelly said, ‘Who has visitors at midnight?’

  Callum Short said, ‘I visited a few places at midnight in my time. Cathouses, mostly.’

  ‘And you were always out by five past,’ Ned Donovan said.

  ‘Boys, shut up,’ Red said.

  They were across the street from Maxwell Higgs’ impressive house. It stood alone in a well-kept plot of land, looking very white and clean in the moonlight.