Frontier Lawyer

by Lawrence L. Blaine

  The sheriff arrived an hour later, with a posse of seven. They were shown into the study, all of them—blunt, rough-looking men, obviously awed by the splendor of the McCandless home. And there was a sense of relief on their faces, too, relief that they had not encountered gunplay from the Spanish rancheros and vaqueros, who were loyal followers of the household. Not even the sheriff of San Carlos County could bluster into Wa-po-nah with impunity.

  Harry faced the men, staring at the hard-eyed sheriff and avoiding any direct contact with Duer’s gaze. Harry was conscious of his own dandified appearance, contrasted with the rough dress of the men who confronted him. But he managed a smile and said lightly, “May I offer you a cigar, Sheriff? And your men? These are my father’s best habanos.”

  “I’m here on business,” said Duer. “Ain’t you interested to know what it is?”

  Harry sank into a brocaded chair and nodded pleasantly. “I’m intensely curious.”

  “I want to talk to you about Honey Morgan, McCandless.”

  Harry noted the dropped title of respect. He finished lighting his cigar and blew a cloud of smoke to the ceiling. “Sheriff, you’re not going after the church vote, are you?” he asked with an air of amusement. “I could name a dozen women you ought to be asking about. What’s Honey done to interest you?”

  Duer exchanged glances with Levi Hughes, his chief deputy, before making a considered answer. “She’s dead, McCandless, that’s what interests me.”

  “Dead?”

  Harry looked about at the circle of glum men. “This is some joke!” he exclaimed. “Honey can’t be dead. Why would she be dead? How could that possibly have happened?”

  “We’re trying to find out,” said Duer quietly.

  “Oh, this is awful! Awful!” said Harry in a shocked tone. “What happened?”

  “She was murdered,” said Duer.

  “Murdered?” Harry echoed. “How? Who would do a thing like that to Honey?” His boyish face was suddenly ashen. Duer got up heavily and eyed the younger man with thoughtful skepticism. “McCandless, it’s a pretty good act you’re giving me,” he said appreciatively. “Under other circumstances, I might admire it, but the fact is that Honey was last known to be alive right here in Wa-po-nah. She was here on your invitation. I’d like you to come along with me to town and answer a few questions.”

  “Do you think I have something to do with it?” Harry asked curiously.

  “I’m just asking you to come and answer questions,” Duer replied stolidly.

  Harry backed away. “Now, just a moment. Is this an arrest, Sheriff? Do you have any grounds to arrest me?”

  “Some,” said Duer. “I’m just asking you to come along in a peaceful way. In any case, you’re going to come along. I’ll have to decide whether or not to make an arrest.”

  The two men exchanged glances.

  “Sheriff,” said Harry finally, “I don’t know why you would want to take this line. I haven’t even seen Honey Morgan in the past two weeks. Isn’t that right, Julian?” he added suddenly, turning to the house servant who had stepped quietly into the room.

  “Mr. Harry—” Julian began.

  “Save your alibi for later,” said Duer heavily. “If you won’t come quietly, I’ll put you under arrest. Are you coming?”

  Harry McCandless stood for a moment in the middle of the room, thinking deeply, and a grim, lurking smile finally formed. “May I take a book with me, Sheriff?”

  “You’d better take a nightgown and a toothbrush,” said Duer. “It may be a while before you get back.”

  “I wonder if you know what you’re doing,” said Harry with amusement. “Is it really a wise thing for you to do? To walk into McCandless property clanking those guns and muddying up our fine hardwood floors? You’re the sheriff of San Carlos County and I’m Dan McCandless’ son. And when this is over, I’ll still be Dan McCandless’ son—but you may not be the sheriff of San Carlos County.”

  “Pick up your book,” said Duer. “All this foolish talk is being remembered. At the right time, we’ll see what it means.”

  “If it weren’t so tragic,” said Harry, “it would be amusing. I’m sorry only that Honey Morgan should be the pretext for this farce.” He put a slim hand to the bookshelf and reached up to the German section and drew out a volume: Wilhelm Meister by Goethe, and turned with a smile. “Some day, Sheriff,” he said lightly, “you ought to read a book. McGuffey’s Reader, First Grade, if it’s not too difficult. You would find it an experience. And now, let’s see if you can make this stick.”

  5.

  “DAD?”

  Carlotta McCandless stood at the door, listening to the sounds of a heavy man pacing in confined quarters. She frowned and knocked again. The footsteps came to a halt.

  “Yes, Carlotta?” said a deep voice.

  “Getting late,” she said with concern.

  “Just got to put on these studs,” said the voice. “Look after your mother.”

  Carlotta waited as the footsteps receded and then turned to the full-length mirror swiveling in a walnut frame. For all her independence of mind, she had a healthy interest in her feminine appearance. She went into a low curtsy, keeping an eye on the neckline of her gown. It struck her as amusingly frivolous—more Newport and New York than San Carlos and Radcliffe. The whole problem of womanly modesty was too tiresome, she thought, in the light of social issues of crucial importance, which were more her concern. However, she reflected, unmarried girls were supposed to show some modesty, especially those with Spanish blood as well as American. With a grimace, Carlotta brought together the revealing lines of her attractive silk gown. She was not in the marriage market, she reflected, with a toss of her head, and she could afford to show reserve.

  She was almost ready to leave now. In the adjoining rooms of their suite at the old Waldorf, Dan and Isabella McCandless were dressing also. The trio would eat at Delmonico’s with Mr. and Mrs. Jay Gould; then, over to the Metropolitan Opera House for a performance of Faust. And finally home around midnight. Carlotta was growing weary of New York high life, with its pretensions and its hollow pomp. She was reluctantly debating the question of a dab of face powder for the occasion when she heard the knocking at the outer door.

  Frowning, she closed the door and turned the telegram over in her hand. Bad news from home. The conviction sprang immediately to her mind. It could be nothing else. A fire at the ranch? Some new financial squeeze at the irrigation and development company? Did it involve Harry?

  “Oh, Dad—” she began.

  She started toward her father’s room. Then she stopped and shook her head. He had enough worries at the moment. He was counting on this evening with Jay Gould to effect a change in his fortunes. But Dan McCandless would need to be in full possession of his powers if he wanted to impress the New York railroad magnate. Dan McCandless had the cold eyes and impassive face of a man whose life had been devoted to the financial world and its struggles and he could well carry off any bad news. But what if it involved Harry?

  The telegram, short and brief, was from Julian DuVivier:

  MISTER HARRY ARRESTED BY SHERIFF DUER IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH OF GIRL NAMED MORGAN STOP WIRE INSTRUCTIONS

  Carlotta sat and considered the telegram with disbelief. Its very terseness was eloquent. It was cryptic, reserved, warning. It bespoke an incredible intrusion on the McCandless power, a blow struck at the face of authority, the violation of a legend. Harry had been troublesome before—but on a schoolboy level, never anything like this. What lay behind the action of the sheriff?

  At twenty-three, three years Harry’s senior, Carlotta had come to expect almost anything of her brilliant wastrel of a younger brother. She knew about his affair with Honey—knew much more about it than her parents did. She knew other things he had done—women and girls he had seduced, money he had stolen from his father, everything. He confided in her as much as he did in any human being. She knew Harry to be moody, unpredictable, arrogant, self-indulgent. But she al
so knew that he was a weak person, unable to defend himself. Whatever trouble he was in now, he needed help—and needed it from someone in San Carlos, not from family thousands of miles away.

  She hesitated. Then, picking up the room telephone, she asked for Western Union. The telegram she dictated to Julian was terse. It instructed him to hire Jake Kilgore to represent her brother. It added that the McCandlesses would return from New York as soon as possible.

  Folding the telegram from Julian, she thrust it into a dresser drawer. Her father would understand why she had kept it from him, and he would approve of the action she had taken. It would be a bitter homecoming tonight after the opera, she thought.

  “Carlotta?” said Dan McCandless from behind his closed door. “Are you ready?”

  “Just about, Father,” she said as calmly as she could.

  “Go knock on your mother’s door, then, and tell her I’m ready to leave.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  The estrangement between her parents had deepened while in New York, she thought. Her father and mother scarcely spoke to one another now, except in public. Carlotta wondered whether the danger to Harry would tend to pull the family together once again. She hoped so. She went down the carpeted hall to knock on Isabella McCandless’ door.

  It was the following morning, another cold day in San Carlos. News was not yet in circulation of Honey’s murder or of Harry’s arrest. Jake Kilgore had noticed much activity in the vicinity of Sheriff Duer’s office, but as yet he had sought no explanation for it. His curiosity was dulled by the ceaseless cold and by the painful throbbing in his ear.

  “Mastoiditis!” said Sarah Hilleboe with concern. “If you don’t call the doctor, I will!”

  “God Almighty,” Kilgore protested. “It’s just an earache. A common, run-of-the-mine, garden-variety earache! I don’t want Doc Hewlitt poking around in my hearing organ with those infected fingers.”

  “If the infection spreads,” she retorted, “you won’t live to see the next cold spell in these parts. You call him or I’ll drag you over by the nose!”

  Lawyer and secretary eyed each other with determination, and for once the formidable, steely gaze of the advocate was lowered before that of a woman.

  “If it don’t improve,” Kilgore agreed, “I’ll run up to Santa Fe and get one of those fancy sawbones to look into it with an instrument. While I’m at it,” he added wickedly, “I’ll pay a social call on Laurie Morgan and find out about that little girl of her’n.”

  “You’re sinful and wicked, Kilgore,” said Sarah acidly, “but you’re a liar by training and a hypocrite by preference. I don’t believe a word you say! I just hope that bragging never catches up with you in court. Suit yourself!”

  Kilgore was breakfasting now with Clem Erskine at Sam Yee’s, the best restaurant in San Carlos, located in an adobe store on the plaza. A sense of gloom swept over him as he considered the fly-specked menu, which he knew by heart. A decision had to be made.

  “Damn this ear,” he muttered, wincing at the hot needle that stabbed into his skull. “What’s your pleasure, Erskine?”

  Erskine smiled uncertainly. “I guess hominy grits and maybe griddle cakes and sausage.”

  Kilgore brushed this aside with contempt. “Sam!” he said loudly to the smiling owner. “Bring this boy a rare steak with mushroom sauce for a starter, and when that’s done, maybe some quail fried in butter, with hash-brown potatoes, and a bowl of canned fruit. I’ll have the steak with lamb chops, but skip the quail.”

  “Are you sick, Mr. Kilgore?” asked Yee anxiously.

  Kilgore shrugged. “I just ain’t feelin’ too hungry this morning.”

  When the food arrived, Kilgore emptied a bottle of ketchup on an enormous steak and shoveled potatoes while meat juices ran down his chin. He kept up a steady line of talk, hardly letting the younger man get in a word. “The one thing I miss,” said Kilgore, belching and sticking a toothpick between his teeth, “is seafood. Fact is, I got a taste for bluepoints on the shell from ridin’ the Santa Fe express across Kansas some years back on this trip from New York I made with Dan McCandless on business. We et like hogs, and lived like kings, and I still remember those fillets of whitefish with Madeira sauce. Let me tell you, Erskine, it’s an experience to cross this great land in a private car with all luxuries provided by a crowd of railroad men who’d cut your throat if they thought they could get away with it. I never was so stuffed. And that Santa Fe crowd would’ve cheerfully poisoned Dan and me, only they didn’t have the guts. Or decided to wait for another day, I guess.” Kilgore grinned. “You know anything about Dan McCandless?”

  “Everybody knows Mr. McCandless,” said Erskine, “from here to Boise. He’s the big noise in this Territory, isn’t he?”

  “It’s an open question. Moot, as we say in the law.” Kilgore poked a finger into his mouth and searched for a shred of meat. “McCandless is in serious money trouble now, and it’s no secret around here. And people have a lot of reason to hate him. Dan did his share of land-grabbing in the old days, and the people haven’t forgotten it. And a lot of them have money in his railroad enterprises, money which they might be about to lose. They blame Dan. And then there’s Joel Tilley.”

  “How does he get into this?”

  “He was Dan’s law partner, years back. But they had a falling out, and they’ve hated each other like poison ever since. And Tilley being a big influence in the Territorial government, why he could hurt Dan real bad if he ever got the chance.”

  “But if they were partners, what came between them?”

  “Nobody knows that but Tilley and McCandless. Oh, they’s a lot of stories about them. That they were mixed up in some old murder and quarreled afterward. I don’t know the real story, and if I did I’d keep it to myself. McCandless is my client when the occasion arises. I kind of enjoy representing the most hated man in the Territory. It’s zestful when things get monotonous in this peaceful country town. As they are right now, for instance. Things are so quiet now that I don’t even know why I took you on. Oh, yeah—you’re taken on. Forget about the one-week trial period.”

  “You mean that, Mr. Kilgore?”

  Kilgore grinned. “I’ve decided you’ll do. You got a nice way of expressing yourself, Clem, and of standing up under fire. I respect your potentialities. It ain’t every boy of twenty-five who can get a recommendation out of Joe Anslinger. He wrote that you read and digested every book in his library, including all of Gildersleeve’s reports, plus the Compiled Statutes, and also the 1856 version of the Kearny Code adopted by Congress for Kansas. He says you’re a born lawyer. You think that’s true?”

  “I’ve got ability, Mr. Kilgore. And maybe a special calling for the profession. When I got out of the pen, I had a hard time locating a job. I got a real taste of feeling like an outlaw, and I drifted up to Leadville, hoping I might get lost in the shuffle. It’s a tough town, Mr. Kilgore, and lots of riffraff are running things, and some of ’em are wearing badges. Well, Mr. Anslinger got me to read his lawbooks—and then, when I began to get the hang, I got the notion I might do something about injustice. Not just bellyache the rest of my life about the tough break I got from Judge Duquesne in Denver.

  “Now that’s exactly why I’m here, Mr. Kilgore,” Erskine concluded. “Mr. Anslinger warned me you were kind of crude in your manner, but he also told me this was only put on for show. He told me you were a remarkable lawyer, outstanding in ability, with a great passion for justice. He says in twenty years you defended over two hundred men accused of murder in this jurisdiction, and others. Of these he says you got all but twenty acquitted—and not one of the rest got himself sentenced to death—”

  “There was one,” said Kilgore. “I got him pardoned on the showing that he was a halfwit. Otherwise that’s the record.” He beamed. “Okay, Erskine. If you want to clerk in my office, I’ll have you. I can teach you law, but from here on you ain’t likely to win any popularity contests. I’m just puttin’ you on notice that
around here a lawyer can be a mighty unliked man.”

  “That’s no matter, Mr. Kilgore. All I want is a chance to learn.”

  Kilgore nodded. “First thing to learn is who’s who around here.” He pointed through the window. “See that tall Nigra coming toward us—the one who looks like he’s eight hundred years old and smarter than any of us? Well, that’s Julian DuVivier. He’s Dan McCandless’ steward, and a mighty strange hombre himself. Used to be attached to the House of Lucero before Dan married into it. Been in the Territory since Coronado’s time, if you believe the stories.”

  “He seems to be coming this way.”

  “Damned if he isn’t,” Kilgore mused. “Julian don’t eat breakfast out. He must be on an errand to see someone for Harry. Me, maybe.”

  Kilgore was right. Julian entered the restaurant, looked around for a moment, then made toward Kilgore’s table. He walked with a floating, unearthly grace.

  His voice was gentle as he said, “Might I see you privately a moment, Mr. Kilgore? Sorry to disturb your meal, but this is rather urgent.”

  “Sit right down here,” Kilgore said, wondering how his Confederate officer of a father would take the idea of his inviting a black to join him at table. Probably would kill old Captain Lew Kilgore, Kilgore thought, if he weren’t dead already. “This is my new clerk, Clem Erskine. You can talk in front of him, Julian.”

  The old man remained standing. “As you wish, Mr. Kilgore.” His voice was barely audible. “Perhaps you have heard that Mr. Harry was arrested yesterday by Sheriff Duer?”

  Kilgore had been trained in the cockpits of the law where the ability to keep a straight face under all circumstances was part of an honorable pursuit. Indeed he had not heard the news, but torture could not have wrung this admission from him.