City of Widows

by Loren D. Estleman

  There being no final statements from the condemned, and the priest having finished reading from Ecclesiastes, the hangman snugged the big knot up under Padilla’s left ear, paused with his hand on the lever, and tripped it. The bottom dropped out from under the man in the hood. His neck broke with a sharp report like a log snapping in a fireplace. He bounced twice, pumped his right leg several times as if trying to climb back up onto the platform, and swayed around in a half-circle. The audience let out its breath in a collective sigh and began shuffling toward the gate.

  The priest was one of the last to go. Just as he passed me he broke wind, reached back to pluck his cassock out of the crease in his buttocks, and picked up his pace.

  As Jubilo herded out the stragglers, Baronet and the hangman loosened the rope and lowered the dead man through the trap, under which two men with funeral coats on over clean overalls caught him and laid him in an unlined cedar box, grunting a little as they wedged in his shoulders. The sheriff shook the hangman’s hand and glanced at me distractedly as he came down the steps. I fell in beside him and we entered the building through the back door. The cells were empty on both sides. He unlocked the door to the office, tossed his keys at the desk, hung up his hat, and began opening and closing drawers in the desk.

  “How many of those you been to?” He found a bottle and a glass and stopped looking.

  “A few.”

  “Ever get used to it?”

  “I never thought I would until I was hanged myself,” I said. “It didn’t take and now it’s just like watching a branding.”

  “You won’t require this then.” He heeled the cork back into the bottle and emptied the glass down his throat. After putting both away he took the embroidered pillow off the swivel behind the desk, pounded it twice, and sat down, poking it behind his back and squirming around until he had contact where he wanted it. He looked up at me, blinking hard. “One of Whiteside’s hands was at your place Friday night. He sat at my table yesterday. He said you had trouble.”

  “Marshal Ortiz is holding a prisoner for you at the mission. He’ll never play any violins with his gun hand.”

  “I heard there was a man killed.”

  “You heard it all then. The third man got away.” I watched his face, but that blink was distracting. It would serve him well at poker. “That’s not the reason I’m here.”

  Jubilo came in the back way and I stopped talking. The sheriff told him to go eat. He looked at me without expression, then went out the front carrying his Creedmoor.

  “Does he sleep with that rifle?” I asked.

  “I wouldn’t know. We haven’t shared a bed.” He waited.

  I leaned back against the high counter and crossed my ankles. The big-bore Remington pistol was sticking out of the notch in his vest but I didn’t think he could use either end of it in his present position without alerting me. “Before we talk you ought to know I just left Ole in front of the livery with his face in a pile of manure.”

  “How could you tell them apart?” He rocked back and forth on the swivel, stopped. “Give me the rest of it.”

  I gave him the rest of it, including the details Colleen and I had worked out the day after the shooting. He listened, blinking and lifting a hand on occasion to smooth one or the other of his handlebars.

  “How much are we discussing?” he asked when I stopped.

  “Two thousand. Less if we can get a good price on those fixtures Mrs. Bower mentioned.”

  “She is your best collateral. If she is as comely as they claim on the circuit, and maybe even if she is not, there isn’t a cowboy or a miner in the territory who wouldn’t lather up a good horse in order to say he played cards with Poker Annie. Or any female, comes to that. There is the little problem of a county ordinance against women gambling in public.”

  “Yours?”

  “It was on the books when I came. Some fracas over a tinhorn from Kansas and his redheaded companion; I disremember the circumstances. I’m told that in Dodge City they get around a similar law by declaring the gaming room private and banning Chinamen from entering.”

  “We have no Chinamen in San Sábado.”

  “Then they should be easy to keep out. What are the terms?”

  “Three percent per month and the note comes due at the end of a year.”

  “Ten percent is customary for me.”

  “No percent is customary for me. Three and a half percent.”

  “Half percentages require too much arithmetic. Eight.”

  “Five.”

  “Eight is as low as I go.”

  “Who supervises the collection at that rate?” I asked. “Your brother Ross?”

  He had stopped blinking. “Ross is dead. He died in Mexico of wounds received in the fighting in Lincoln County.”

  “He handles a Springfield rifle well for a corpse.”

  He shifted in his seat suddenly and I placed my hand on the butt of the Deane-Adams. Crossing his legs, he smiled. “Five percent. I will send someone to collect the first of every month. Not my brother. You are mistaken about him.”

  “The papers will be ready for you to sign when you come to claim Abel Freestone. He is the man Marshal Ortiz is holding at the mission.”

  “Ortiz couldn’t hold his dick in a high wind. Are you heading back today?”

  “No, I am stopping at the Socorro and going back in the morning. I saw Apaches yesterday. If I have the choice I’ll be rested and fresh when I see them next.”

  “They intended no mischief if you saw them. If you wait a few days Jubilo will go with you. I’m sending him for Freestone and he can bring back the loan papers. I cannot leave the county seat at tax time. He is an artist with that Creedmoor.”

  “I’ll think about it. If you don’t hear from me before he leaves I went back already.”

  I went from there to the railroad station to wire the details to Junior and Colleen. The operator, bald and green-faced under his eyeshade, squinted at my name. “You’re Murdock? I was just about to relay this on to San Sábado.” He tore a flimsy off his spike and held it out.

  YOU LEFT YOUR WALKING STICK IN HELENA STOP YOU WILL FIND IT WAITING LARAMIE W T UNTIL THIRTY AUGUST TRACK THREE

  It was unsigned. “When’s the next train north?” I asked.

  The operator called across to the clerk at the ticket window, who checked his board and called back. “Five fifteen.”

  “I need to add something to that telegram I gave you.”

  He handed it back. I thought, then added:

  HAVE LINE ON PURCHASE PIANO LARAMIE BACK IN TEN DAYS

  The operator looked up from counting. “I was in Laramie last month. I don’t remember seeing a piano works.”

  I stared at him until he returned to his totaling.

  The ride north was uneventful, meaning it was hot and sooty and about as smooth as sitting on a rockslide. Educational, too; when you sleep on your tailbone you discover parts of your body you never knew you had. At the station in Laramie I shaved in the gentleman’s water closet beside two other blearyeyed travelers along life’s highway. We couldn’t have shed much more blood if we’d started a razor fight.

  A porter directed me to Track 3, a siding with grass growing between the rails, occupied solely by a redwood Pullman with curtains in the windows. I mounted the platform, rapped on the door, received an invitation, checked my boots for mud, and entered. The inside was all paneling and red plush and crockery lamps with milky glass shades, in the midst of which its only inhabitant, seated in a big yellow leather wingback chair with studs, looked like a plain stone in a baroque setting.

  “Well, Deputy, you are almost late,” announced Judge Blackthorne. “I hope this saloonkeeping episode hasn’t made you forget whom you’re working for.”

  9

  HARLAN A. BLACKTHORNE had once been described by a member of the party to which he ostensibly belonged as a “vest-pocket Lincoln.” The statement was not intended as a compliment. Built along Honest Abe’s narrow lines, wi
th chin whiskers, a high arid brow capped with a swirl of blue-black hair, and prominent bones, he would have required something more lofty than his bankers’ heels to deal with the Great Emancipator on any level other than face-to-cravat. A forty-year-old error in his military record reckoned his height at five feet six and he was vain enough to cite it still, but I knew for a certainty that the army had been uncharacteristically generous by at least three inches. The toes of his custom boots barely touched the floor while he was planted in the big chair.

  His smile, which was a fixed thing with no amusement in it and a source of consternation for his political enemies and the defendants who appeared before him, was more reminiscent of President Washington’s in the portrait that hung in his courtroom. It concealed his total want of teeth. I’d never known him to wear his temporaries at any time except when he was trying a case. I had long since left off asking myself why a man who spent so much time and personal assets on his tailoring—today it was a gray Norfolk and matching trousers with his lucky gold horseshoe tacked to a purple ascot—never took the trouble to visit a dentist who knew his trade. But then I will go to Glory not knowing the man, though I spent the better part of my middle years earning his good opinion.

  “I wouldn’t make light of this saloonkeeping business, sir,” I said, looking for a place to lay my hat. “The hours are better than federal work and I don’t have to pay to bury the men I shoot.”

  “You’ve shot someone so soon? If I thought your intention was to improve upon your previous time I never would have agreed to let you go.”

  I gave up looking and sat down in a padded rocker, crossing my legs and hanging the hat on my knee. “They don’t call me Satan’s Sixgun for sport.”

  “Yes, it seems all of Helena is reading the man Hookstratton’s gentle prose. I expect to see it entered into the Congressional Record any day. Those carpetbaggers in Washington will stop at nothing to cause me grief.” He rapped a finger on the arm of his chair for lack of a gavel. “I am sorry I had to bring you all this way, Deputy. Rail travel is a trial in this climate.”

  “More so for some of us than for others.”

  “I have temporary use of the salon car, no more. I am fortunate in my acquaintances. The apology stands.”

  “It’s unnecessary. You can’t know what a relief it is to be someplace where Billy the Kid didn’t shoot anyone.”

  “Who?”

  “Nobody important, sir. We have to discuss this walking stick device. I doubt there is anyone in Montana who hasn’t seen through it by now.”

  “I did not employ it to deceive anyone in Montana. So far as the territory of New Mexico is concerned, Blackthorne is a name from your past. In any case it brought you here.”

  “The question is, what brought you? Your honor.”

  “We shall come to that presently. What have you to report?”

  “I’m in partnership with Junior Harper as planned. He thinks I took him up on his offer because I’m weary of keeping the peace. It might surprise you to learn how little convincing that required.”

  “You are impertinent. Proceed.”

  “Something we didn’t plan on is named Colleen Bower. Junior cut her in for a full third before I arrived.”

  “The name is not unfamiliar.”

  “She’s known more widely on the circuit as Poker Annie. I had dealings with her two years ago in Breen.”

  “Ah.” His Ah had more sides than a roundhouse. How much he knew or speculated beyond what I had told him of the happenings in Breen was anyone’s guess.

  “She has San Francisco ideas for the Apache Princess. All of them involve money. I suggested we borrow it from Frank Baronet.”

  “Elephantine.”

  “You haven’t met him, sir. Anything less is lost on him. Mrs. Bower agreed to the proposition, although Junior did not. It was a majority decision and I took it to Baronet. He went for it like a steer for water. He is all cash-and-carry.”

  “Anything else?”

  I told him about the pistol-whipping I had received in Socorro City and the man the sheriff killed who claimed to have seen Ross Baronet alive in Mexico. The Judge smoothed his whiskers, always a sign he was troubled.

  “A dead man who happened to say something in your presence and a battery on your person which you confess to have invited through your own intemperance; is that the extent of your grounds?”

  “Yes. Well, except for Ross Baronet attempting to rob the Princess Friday night.”

  “Thunderation!”

  I had seldom heard him bellow, and then only at certain attorneys from back East who thought the law they had learned from their professors assayed out higher than the grade he had panned behind his rude bench. It made the glass in the car ring. He gripped the arms of the chair hard until the spasm passed.

  “Again I apologize,” he said in his customary judicial tone. “You are in San Sábado as a favor to me and I have no right to dictate the manner in which you impart information. I do request that you refrain from the dramatic.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.” I gave him the full account, ending with Dutch Tim’s burial. As he listened he crossed his legs, something he did when particularly pleased, an event more rare for him than shouting.

  “A distinct touch, that headboard. Tweaking Ross Baronet over the loss of his man should help to draw suspicion from your eagerness to enter into a transaction with his brother.” He put the leg down. “My purpose in arranging this meeting is to inform you that we must move up our schedule.”

  “I wasn’t aware we had one.”

  He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “It has come to my attention that certain Democrats in the Congress are conspiring to propose amnesty for all those currently wanted for crimes committed during the war in Lincoln County. The measure will be introduced in the Senate next month in time to pass through both houses before the November elections. Given his preference the American voter will see a scoundrel set free. It is that old revolutionary curse.”

  “Do you think the president will sign such a bill?”

  “Who is to say who will be president when it reaches the White House? Garfield does not appear to be recovering from that assassin’s bullet he took last month. Chester Arthur is a Hudson River hack who blows with Tammany, and that Irish crowd will side with Dolan. If we do not move swiftly we may be forced not only to release our covey, but to present them with the net as well in fee simple for the inconvenience.”

  He paused a beat in case I cared to jump in. I didn’t, and he sat back as far as he ever did, perhaps an inch.

  “Grapeshot tore open my belly at the siege of Monterrey,” he said. “My intestines were lying on the ground beside me. A medical officer commanded an orderly to let me die and go help some other wretch who could still be saved. Sergeant Uriah Spooner leveled his musket at the officer and informed the orderly that if I were not removed to the field station immediately the American expeditionary force in Mexico would be shy one brass-buttons. For this offense he was arrested, court-martialed, and sentenced to death. I was too ill to testify at the first hearing, but when another was convened to review the evidence I appeared on a stretcher. I dislike quoting myself. Suffice it to say I found my calling that day and I have cleaved to the law ever since. Spooner’s sentence was commuted to five years’ penal servitude and a dishonorable discharge.

  “I was present at his wedding ceremony and again at the christening of his only son. I missed his funeral two years ago as I was hearing a capital case at the time. When I learned that Ross Baronet and whoever was with him had killed young Dave Spooner and his wife in Lincoln County, the scars of that old injury began to sting for the first time in thirty-five years. They are stinging yet. I can only conclude that they will continue to vex me until justice is served.”

  He tapped the arm of his chair. Tension fled from the car like heat through a shattered window. “One man’s sore stomach is scarcely grounds for federal action. My jurisdiction does not cover crimes committed in
New Mexico. I therefore accepted your badge and papers and wished you Godspeed on your sojourn into private enterprise. The fact that the enterprise should be located in the county where Frank Baronet presides was mere coincidence.”

  “Helped along by a good memory,” I said. “Dave and Vespa Spooner were still nursing cattle and enjoying good health at the time Junior approached me. I always did take a while deciding my future.”

  We were coming perilously close to an expression of gratitude, but he side-railed it as only a civil servant can who has managed to survive three presidential administrations and an impeachment attempt. “I want the men responsible for these murders arrested, tried, and convicted before the politicians can act. Since the territory was under martial law at the time of the atrocity I want the case heard in federal court where the Dolan influence is less profound. I do not insist that it be my court, but neither will I shirk my responsibilities should the venue shift to Montana to avoid local prejudice. I fear that the delay of even a month may be fatal.”

  I uncrossed my legs and circled my hatbrim through my fingers. “Well, we can arrest Ross for the attempted robbery of the saloon. We can try to peg Dutch Tim’s death on him. It’s a stretch, but if we play him smart he might be persuaded to talk about the raid on the Spooner ranch in return for the promise of a sentence lighter than death.”