Aces & Eights

by Loren D. Estleman

  Correspondence received from a Mr. M. A. Connors, self-confessed confidant of Texas outlaw John Wesley Hardin, relates a “set-to” between Hardin and Wild Bill, whose killer is now undergoing trial in Yankton, in which the former, clad only in “longhandles” after dispatching a would-be assassin in Abilene where Wild Bill was marshal, was forced to depart through his hotel room window when the lawman was seen approaching. Reported Hardin to Connors: “Now, Wild Bill had befriended me, but I believed that if he found me in a defenseless condition, he would take no explanation, but would kill me to add to his reputation.” The desperado was out of ammunition at the time.

  He returned the journal to Grace with a smile and a shake of his head. “They’re really on the defendant’s side in this one.” He helped her on with her wrap, a long one of maroon velvet that went with the rest of her outfit less alarmingly than he might have predicted.

  “Doesn’t it anger you?” she asked.

  “There’s no reason it should. The jury is sequestered; they won’t see a newspaper or talk to anyone not connected with the court until after the trial.”

  “Well, it infuriates me. How can a responsible publication side with a murderer?”

  “He isn’t a murderer until the law proves him one.”

  “Oh, Julian, don’t you ever get upset about anything? Do you never lose your temper?” Patches of color showed through the powder on her cheeks.

  Remembering the deputy waiting outside, he took her gently by the elbow and escorted her away from the door. “Something’s bothering you besides the paper. What is it?”

  Close up, her features were drawn. For the first time since he had known her, she looked like a woman over thirty. “It’s Mother. She’s getting worse.”

  He started to say, “Worse than what?” but the agony in her expression stopped him. “Is she ill?”

  “No. I mean, yes. But not in the way you think. It’s so hard to explain; I don’t understand it myself.”

  He made her sit on the sofa and sank down beside her. The colored maid came in, but withdrew at a signal from him. “You’re going to have to start from the beginning, Grace,” he said. “My impression has always been that your mother is a very strong woman.”

  “That’s what everyone thinks. It’s a pose.” She drew a deep breath and told him everything, of how it had been her mother who had found Edgar dead, of her bizarre behavior afterward, of her voracious interest in violence except when it came close to home, of her interview with the doctor and what he had said. The story took less time to tell than she would have believed possible.

  “Now she’s taken a different turn,” Grace went on. “This morning at breakfast she announced that she had seen a strange man watching the house last night from across the street. I thought she might have spotted that deputy you had with you. I told her about him, though I knew she’d be furious with me for keeping it a secret. But the description she gave me didn’t sound anything like him.” A sudden thought flashed across her features. “Julian, you didn’t ask the marshal to post someone here, did you?”

  “If I had, I would have told you.”

  She closed her eyes. She looked drained. “Then it’s what I was afraid of. She’s having visions.”

  “What did she say she saw?”

  Something in his tone made Grace open her eyes. Julian looked tense. She hesitated. “She said she was watching the street from her window, with the light off. She was in the habit of doing that, she said. I hadn’t known that. She claimed she saw a movement in the shadow of a doorway, and then a few minutes later this man came out into the light of the street lamp, glanced up and down the street, then walked away heading west. Do you think she might really have seen something?”

  He got up. His expression was unchanged. “I think we should speak with her.”

  Chapter 10

  Alone in the parlor with Julian Scout, Marshal Burdick drummed his fingers on his belt buckle and pretended interest in a photograph in an oval frame on the mantel, which depicted a severe-looking old goat with deepset eyes and a grizzled tangle of beard that reached to the second button of his vest. The officer had been in a stormy mood when he arrived, and it had been no help to learn that the man in the picture, who looked to be about Burdick’s age, was the father of that comely woman he had coveted from the moment of their introduction. He didn’t like to be reminded that he was getting on.

  “Mrs. Hope should be down shortly,” commented Scout, in an evident attempt at conversation. Burdick ignored it. Lawyers were one more thing for which he had no use.

  A large man who had been a bare-knuckles prizefighter in his youth, the marshal had entered law enforcement in 1849 when he became a St. Louis police officer, and but for a few side trips along the way as teamster and boat-hauler and bodyguard he had not left it since. In all that time he had never killed anyone, which he supposed counted for something. Fifty now, graying of hair and moustache, he had been a United States marshal for sixteen months, a position he had sought in the belief that it would enable him to rest while his deputies worked. He deeply resented calls like this one. Hysterical old ladies held little attraction for him.

  “I didn’t thank you properly for the other night,” Scout told him. “Having Grace with me placed me in an awkward situation. We’re both grateful.”

  Burdick glared at him. Well, he sounded sincere. “Forget it. I been rousting drunks since before I could talk.”

  “Just the same.” The prosecutor fidgeted uncomfortably. He had trouble relating to men like Burdick. Ostensibly they were both on the same side, but those who invoked the law and those who enforced it were two entirely different types. “I’m sorry to have to bring you out on this, but some things Mrs. Hope said worried me. If there’s anything behind that threat I received, the ones who sent it wouldn’t hesitate to try to get to me through Grace.”

  The marshal said nothing. He had known that assigning that deputy to Scout wouldn’t be the end of it. When the officer had come to fetch him half an hour earlier he hadn’t been surprised.

  After a minute or so of excruciating silence, Mrs. Sargent returned accompanied by a handsome woman of about Burdick’s age in a dark gown, whose composed features and firm, manlike grip when he accepted her hand were anything but what he had been expecting. Greetings were followed by an invitation to sit down, after which the maid appeared as if she had been conjured, to offer refreshment. The marshal declined, and she withdrew.

  “What did this man you saw look like, Mrs. Hope?” asked Burdick.

  Seated across from him in a taffeta-upholstered armchair, she met his gaze steadily, without embarrassment. He marveled at the absence of lines in her face and neck, while the faint creases at the corners of her eyes appealed to him. “I saw him quite clearly when he stepped beneath the street lamp,” she said. “He wore a moustache like yours, only his was poorly kept and drooped at the corners. His face was round and his eyes were tiny; they were little more than slits. He had on a derby and a long, shabby overcoat that came down below his knees. His posture was slightly stooped and he walked with a kind of shamble, as if he was more accustomed to riding.”

  “Did you notice what kind of boots he had on?”

  “No. Is that important?”

  “Not at all. But if you’d had an answer I would have suspected your story. No one sees everything. What makes you think he was watching this house?”

  “I just assumed it. It’s the only building directly opposite the doorway he was standing in. If he’s been watching any of the others on this side, it doesn’t seem as if he’d choose that spot.”

  “He might have been inside and you just saw him leaving.”

  She shook her head. “I glimpsed movement in the doorway some minutes earlier. And he was acting suspiciously when he came out, looking everywhere but in this direction. Marshal, are you trying to rattle me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Scout said, “Do you think she made all this up?” He sounded accu
sing.

  Burdick sat back on the sofa, pursing his lips until he could see his moustache bristling past his nose. “No,” he said, at length. “No, I don’t. And I don’t think she was just seeing things either. I think she saw someone watching this house.”

  “Mother, please forgive me,” Grace said. The older woman placed her hand over her daughter’s.

  “There’s one more question I have to ask.” The marshal was embarrassed. He kept his eyes on the floor before the women’s feet. “Were either of you ladies, er, disrobing at the time he was across the street?”

  “Certainly not!” rapped Mrs. Hope indignantly.

  “I was.”

  Everyone looked at Grace. Her composure was steady, although Scout noticed a faint blush spreading behind her powder. Burdick turned deep red and glanced away.

  “Grace!” exclaimed her mother.

  She shrugged self-consciously. “My mind was on other things. I’m afraid I wasn’t as careful as I usually am. If Mother is right about the time, he was there while I was undressing for bed. Is that what you think he was, Marshal? A Peeping Tom?”

  “It would explain it.” He picked at the brocade on the arm of his chair. “Then again, it might be coincidence.”

  “Could this have anything to do with that fellow in the restaurant?” inquired the prosecutor. He too had colored, either from chagrin or from jealousy.

  “I doubt it. He was just a drunk. But I’ll check it out. In the meantime I’ll assign someone to watch the place.” He got up. He needed a smoke and there was too much femaleness here. “You folks did the right thing by calling for me. I’m sure it’s nothing more than a peeper or someone trying to scare you, like with that note. But it’s best to be safe.”

  “What note is that, Marshal?” Grace was looking at Scout, who seemed uncomfortable. Burdick figured it out.

  “Did I speak out of turn?”

  “It’s all right.” The prosecutor took her hands in his. “The other day I got what amounts to a threatening note telling me to drop the McCall case. I’m sure there’s nothing to it, but I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “You just went out and got yourself a bodyguard.” Her voice was cold.

  “I told you, that was Tessie’s idea. He can be an old hen sometimes.”

  “We’ll talk about this later, Julian.”

  “Would you care to share a cigar with me out on the veranda, Mr. Scout?” The marshal accepted his hat and overcoat from the clairvoyant maid.

  “We’ll talk,” echoed the prosecutor, rising.

  Outside, Burdick drew a long cigar from an inside pocket and offered it to Scout, who shook his head, holding up his pipe. The marshal shrugged and struck a match on the seat of his pants. “Colder’n a dog’s nose,” he observed, lips popping on the cigar. “Dry, though, today. It don’t get into my bones when it’s like this.”

  “You didn’t ask me out here to discuss the weather, Marshal.”

  “I forgot you was a lawyer.” It didn’t sound like a compliment. “I didn’t want to alarm the womenfolks, but if I was you I’d send them both packing tomorrow.”

  “You think there’s something to these threats?”

  “They tried to scare you twice. There ain’t any percentage in trying it again. Next time it might be for real.”

  “We might not even be talking about the same people.”

  “That’s worse. Odds are one of them’s playing for keeps. One thing’s sure, this wasn’t just a Peeping Tom. That’s too much coincidence.”

  “I doubt I could persuade them to leave. Not with Grace angry at me.”

  “That ain’t nothing. I was married twenty years and I can tell you that the woman ain’t been born that could hold a good mad. She’ll come around.”

  “I’ll try. But Mrs. Hope is dead set on staying until the mansion is sold.”

  “She’s nervy, I’ll give her that much.” Burdick buttoned his overcoat. “That won’t dump no scales in her favor when she’s looking down the wrong end of a six-shooter. Don’t they pay you lawyer fellows to argue?”

  “I gather you don’t favor the profession.”

  “It ain’t the profession, it’s them that follow it. Out here, before it got safe enough to bring you fellows out with your briefcases and habeus corpuses and slick talk, we used to hang killers and horse thieves. Now we ask them would they please kindly say they done something not as bad as what we know they done so’s we can lock them up for a spell and get on to the next killer or horse thief.”

  “You have to admit the machinery needed oil, Marshal.”

  “I miss the squeak.”

  They smoked for a while in silence. Then Scout said, “You mentioned a wife. Where is she now?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t you done it. It was the smallpox.” There were two inches of ash on the end of the cigar. He reached up and tapped it off with the end of a blunt forefinger. “I read where this Johnny Varnes was mixed up in the plot to kill Wild Bill.”

  “That’s what McCall claimed before he changed his story again. He said Varnes paid him to do it.”

  “That could be where he got the gold dust to play poker with the day before. I read about that in today’s paper.”

  “Possibly. Why?”

  Burdick shrugged a bearlike shoulder. “Nothing much. Just that I know this Varnes by reputation. He’s meaner’n a gunny sack full of bees. I’d hate to think he was in on what we got here. Well, I’ll send someone around to keep an eye on the place.” He stepped off the porch and left after exchanging a few words with Scout’s bodyguard, slouched against the nearby street lamp. The prosecutor was still standing there minutes after his pipe went out.

  General Crandall had the cell nearest the stove on the ground floor of the city jail. Orville Gannon, accompanied by the guard, found him seated on the cot reading the Daily Press and Dakotaian and chuckling. He glanced up when the key rattled in the lock.

  “This piece on John Wesley Hardin has got to be Magruder’s. It’s his style down to the ground. Have you seen it?” He folded the paper to the second column and handed it to his partner as he stepped inside. The guard clanged shut the door, muttered something about fifteen minutes, and left, his hobnail boots clip-clopping on the oaken floorboards.

  “Free people have to buy their own newspapers,” Gannon replied, glancing at the two-inch item. He handed the paper back. “Isn’t Magruder the one who did the restaurant story?”

  Crandall nodded, eyeing him closely. He looked less jovial without his necktie, which he had surrendered at the time of his incarceration, along with his suspenders and beloved watch and chain. “You don’t approve, do you?”

  The gaunt man’s expression was unreadable. “You have your methods and I have mine. I just happen to believe that cases can be won or lost from the books without recourse to chicanery.”

  “If I believed that, I’d retire tomorrow. How does it look?”

  “Not good. All this quibbling about Hickok’s character is hurting us. The better they make him look, the worse McCall comes off. If we don’t return to the specifics of the case, he’ll swing.”

  “The hell with that. The specifics of the case is McCall killed Hickok in cold blood. Did you bring the stuff?”

  Gannon opened his briefcase and drew out the thick sheaf of books and dusty clippings, tied loosely with a cord. “The turnkey spent ten minutes making sure I didn’t have a derringer hidden among the pages.” He deposited it on the bunk beside Crandall.

  The prisoner untied the cord. “If we can introduce half of this stuff into evidence, McCall will not only walk out of that courtroom a free man, Blair’ll lend him a hundred dollars out of his own pocket to give him a fresh start.”

  “I didn’t realize you took such an interest in your client’s future.”

  “I don’t. He’s physically incapable of telling the truth, and every time I confer with him I make sure to leave my wallet at home first
. Besides, he’s crazy.”

  “Then why defend him?”

  Crandall looked up at his partner in surprise. “You’re a lawyer—figure it out.”

  “Let it go, John. I’m not some green Harvard graduate you can take in with that speech about the Constitution. You’ve a personal stake in this somewhere.”

  “I want Bartholomew’s scalp.” The portly attorney lay the clipping he had been reading in his lap. “When I heard Scout was prosecuting I pulled every political string I knew to get the appointment as public defender, because Scout doesn’t sneeze but that Bartholomew is right there with a handkerchief. You wouldn’t know it, being a book lawyer”—the condescension in his tone stirred Gannon’s atrophied emotions—“but that cornpone-eater has a reputation in the legal profession equal to Hickok’s among assassins. I want it.”

  “He doesn’t have it anymore. I beat him in that assault case.”

  “I’ve seen the transcripts. He never had a chance. The judge and jury were Yankees and his drawl makes General Lee sound like a Canadian. He won it on appeal and a change of venue.”

  “I didn’t prosecute in appellate.”

  “Just as well. He’d have picked you cleaner than a dowager’s false teeth.”

  Gannon ignored the slight. His complexion looked grayer than usual in the minimal illumination filtering through the cell window. “So you win, and his reputation is yours. What then?”

  “Politics, perhaps. I’m told I’d make a fine senator. But at this point that hardly concerns me. Bartholomew’s scalp will be ample enough reward.”

  “What about Scout?”

  “He’s sharper than I thought. But he’s tactics and Tessie is strategy. Remove the general and you take out the company commander.”

  “If McCall is crazy, why don’t you plead insanity?”

  “That would be cheating.”

  “It’s your case.” Carefully arranging the crease in his trousers, the gaunt man sat on the other end of the cot. “Cody testifies tomorrow.”

  Crandall looked at him sharply. “How do you know?”