Saved by the Bullet

by Preston Shires

  “Describe her,” I commanded, setting the trap.

  Mr. Martin’s portrait of Beatrice, however, which included details about her head shape and probable intelligence, convinced me that my phrenologist had indeed encountered the judge and his daughter on the Deroin Trail.

  There reigned a silence after Mr. Martin finished his description, but it was soon broken by the voice of Mr. Whitt. “I guess you haven’t come any closer to solving the crime, Miss Furlough, but I do think a game of whisk might prove distracting and pleasant.”

  “No,” I said softly, turning on the druggist, “we haven’t questioned you, have we?”

  “And I don’t see the point of it,” he objected. “None of us had anything to do with the Friend murders.”

  I looked him steadily in the eye. “Why did you put a claim on the Friend property?”

  “It’s a good farm, has black soil. It grows walnut trees, so you know it’s rich.”

  “I doubt that’s the only reason. I found it suspicious that you led us away from the ruins of the old house, didn’t you also find that strange, Jonathan?”

  “I did,” concurred Prudence’s brother, “although Mr. Whitt may not have as sharp a mind as some.”

  “You mean to tell me,” I insisted, maintaining my gaze upon the druggist, “that you really didn’t know where the ashes of that cabin lay?”

  Mr. Whitt shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well, I, uh...I mean...I can’t be expected to remember everything.”

  “And yet you were so adamant about the Friends having left behind a treasure. It seemed you had combed the area carefully looking for it, except that you hadn’t a woman’s intuition to find it, had you?”

  “You see,” Jonathan echoed himself, “not everyone has a sharp mind. Some even weaker in thought than a woman.”

  Pursuing the role of a prosecutor I declared, “You knew where the house was. You wanted to lead us away from it, didn’t you?”

  “By gads!” he exploded. “If there’s a treasure there, it’s mine. I don’t want some Addy Comelately digging it up!”

  “Mr. Whitt, it wasn’t just about the treasure. You wanted me eliminated completely didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “Working out a deal with my landlord to buy my office. You don’t need that shack or that land.”

  “We meant you no harm.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “Yes, a couple of us businessmen got together and thought it best to discourage you. I mean, that newspaper you threatened to produce, and now this gazette. It’s going to give us a bad name. We’ve got money invested in the town.”

  “You know, I might believe one of your made-up stories, but there’s just such a collection of them, that I can’t believe them all. But let’s try. I’ve established that the Post Office shed and the warehouse were put to the torch to destroy evidence relative to the Friend murders. The only person who would have done such a thing, would be precisely he who set fire to the Friend cabin; and the only person who could easily produce the means to create these fires had both whiskey bottles and turpentine at hand. And who possesses these two things in quantity? A druggist, and you are a druggist.”

  “Every druggist in the Territory carries whiskey and turpentine. Besides,” he said, lifting himself up a bit in his chair, “how would I get out to set fire to Nuckolls’s warehouse when I don’t own a horse to get there.”

  “Easily,” I explained. “You used the estray at Coleman’s livery. Its hoofprint was found up at the warehouse. The hostler said it was all lathered up the morning of the fire, like it had been on a run. He thought the fire spooked it, but I think the explanation much simpler. You, knowing nobody would miss the estray, rode it up and back to Mount Vernon in one night to set fire to the warehouse. Plus, I observed you in Saint Jo striking a match to light your cigar. You’ve got matches.”

  Mr. Whitt looked around the kitchen table, his eyes dancing from one person to another. “You can’t believe her, she’s just a woman, she can’t think rationally.”

  “Well then, explain how this is irrational. One, you carry a pistol with you when you travel. Two, I was shot at in Saint Jo. Three, you were observed in Saint Jo.”

  “How would I have gotten to Saint Jo in time to shoot you when I went to Nemaha City and back the day you left?”

  “That’s true,” observed Stewart, “he accompanied me down to Nemaha City.”

  “Oh, it would be easy. Mr. Whitt would just leave his horse with an accomplice, like that shifty-looking hostler from Nemaha City, and then have someone row him out to a passing steamer to catch a ride.”

  Mr. Whitt jumped from his chair and pulled his pistol from his pocket. Teddy and Stewart acted in unison, Teddy throwing him against the door, whilst Stewart wrenched the gun from his hand. “Let me go!” hollered Mr. Whitt. “You have nothing against me!”

  “I think we do, Mr. Whitt,” I said, observing him struggle. “I think we do.”

  Mr. Whitt finally ceased to fight back. While Stewart kept the pistol leveled on him, Teddy grabbed an apron, cut the string, and then bound Mr. Whitt’s hands behind his back.

  EPILOGUE

  There are few things more satisfying than righting an injustice. The Friend family had been wronged, and if it had not been for the mastermind, Jacob and his own would yet walk the earth fulfilling God’s commandments to multiply mankind and cultivate God’s creation.

  “You see, Mr. Whitt, your downfall was your pistol. That night, when I was in your shop, I handled it and felt its barrel. I knew it was roughly the size of the musket ball lodged in my book, Hope Leslie. The bullet fired by my would-be assassin. The local gun seller here in Nebraska City told me that gentlemen tend to buy the same caliber pistols, so that they don’t have to carry two types of ammunition. That’s what put me on your trail, though I must admit, I had two other paths to walk down as well. Tonight’s meeting was to exonerate Mr. Martin and Jonathan, and to catch the culprit, you.”

  I walked over to him and took the ball out of my little purse. “You see, this is what condemned you. If it hadn’t matched the size of your pistol barrel, you would have had no worries.”

  I placed the ball in the muzzle of the pistol in Stewart’s hand. It didn’t fit. I tried again. Same result. I took my pistol out of my handbag, and Stewart held it for me. The bullet fit rather nicely.

  “Kitty,” I said slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you want me to drop the newspaper idea and start a lady’s gazette?”

  “We just thought it would be more your style, why?”

  Hmm, I thought, that’s interesting. I’m afraid my arched eyebrows revealed that I now considered everything relating to the Friend murders in a different light.

  “Well, Mr. Whitt,” I said. “I’m going to give you one more chance, because it looks like this bullet may have just saved your life.”

  Mr. Whitt, who after ending his struggles had assumed the airs of someone digesting a cupful of laudanum, came out of his stupor, looking up at me with hopeful eyes.

  I turned to the door and called out, “Enter, Mr. Hamish Sinclair!” In my instructions, I had told him to enter the house at a quarter past eight and to secrete himself in the storage room down below. I could only hope he had been punctual.

  I held my breath, and everyone stared wonderingly at me for a moment before the door opened. A smallish Scottish gentleman entered the kitchen. Teddy shut the door, and I directed our newly arrived guest to the far side of the room. We turned to face our suspects. “Mr. Sinclair, I would like you to tell me if you recognize anyone before you.” He eyed each face carefully, and then pursed his lips and shook his head to indicate he recognized no one.

  “Mr. Whitt,” I said, “would you please step aside.”

  As he did, Mr. Sinclair exclaimed, “Why yes, that’s the man, sure as life! Hello sir, you do remember me, don’t you?”

  Everyone stood motionless and stared in disbelief at Stewart, who p
ointed my pistol in our general direction. He put down Mr. Whitt’s pistol and reached into his carpet-bag to withdraw another gun. “This here,” he said, “is a Smith and Wesson revolver. It is primed to deliver six bullets. A bad experience in Saint Jo inspired me to buy it to replace this one.” He said this while waving my one-shot pistol at us. “That makes for a total of seven bullets, one for each of you if you don’t behave. Now everybody up against that far wall.”

  Kitty slumped back down in her chair and said with a weak voice, “Stewart, what does this mean? What are you doing?”

  “Don’t you worry, my dear, you come over here with me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, Miss Furlough understands. She may have had the wrong man as her suspect, but otherwise, as to how things happened, she figured it out fairly well. And now, with that bullet not fitting into the muzzle of the pistol, she finally pegged the right man. And, I don’t know if you realized it, love, but she confirmed her most recent suspicion by finding out I wanted her to publish a lady’s gazette rather than a newspaper.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I was hoping she’d dedicate herself to subject matters peculiar to women, rather than investigating a murder case long forgotten by everyone else.” He turned his attention directly on Mr. Whitt as everyone but Kitty, who sat dumbfounded, had gathered on my side of the room. “Yes, Mr. Whitt was kind enough not to mention my interest in booting you out of town, Miss Furlough. I thank you for that, sir. Mr. Martin though, deserves no thanks, telling you to see if all the fires had been started in the same way. If he hadn’t done that, I’m not sure Miss Furlough would have made all the connections. By the way, I’m pleased my beloved didn’t divulge to you my use of Bryant matches.”

  “I, I thought...” said Kitty hesitatingly, “they were common. I never imagined....”

  “And that’s what keeps us together,” he said softly. “We trust each other. You’ll have to trust me now.”

  I was too curious to point out a little idiosyncrasy in his logic. I wanted my deductions confirmed before he went about placing a bullet in each of our hearts. “So, Stewart,” I said, “I would be right in saying you caught the steamer at Nemaha City, and that the hostler we saw at the hotel, the one you pointed out as shifty, was actually your accomplice who kept the horse for you while you were supposed to be on the Deroin Trail.”

  He said nothing, and, as Monsieur Carr would put it, “Qui ne dit mot, consent,” or “He who says not a word, consents.” So, I continued, by asking, “You never did travel down the Deroin Trail, did you?” After a pause, I answered the rhetorical question myself: “No, you never even saw Judge Kinney, you just knew he went to the Big Blue Settlement because I told you he would. I bet if we asked Judge Kinney if he ever saw you on the trail, he’d say no. And as for the mysterious man who left the gun under his pillow, that too was an invention of yours, right?”

  Stewart still said nothing, though he smiled, and I think he enjoyed hearing me explain everything. It made the smug man look smart. I obliged. “When you heard a man had fled the hotel without paying, you were pretty sure he would not have left a forwarding address, and you checked the hotel register which confirmed your suspicion. Then you went to his room, which would have been open for cleaning, and you stealthily deposited the pistol and bullets. Finally, you encouraged Kitty to give me the pistol, so it would look like you wanted to protect me, when in reality you wanted to kill me. Am I not too far off target?”

  “You know, Addy,” he finally remarked, “you were even right about how a man, who didn’t own a horse, could get to Mount Vernon and back within a night. That estray really should be included in Teddy’s horse races.”

  “And Mr. Muir’s leather pass book. He said you were making good speed on Coleman’s old hack. That means you probably trotted past him, and as you did, you leaned over and stole the pass book from the buggy seat.”

  “He didn’t see a thing.”

  Kitty stared blankly at the top of the table and mumbled, “My fiancé is an assassin.”

  “No, no, my dear. Charles Lincoln and his mercenaries did in the Friend family. I just needed the land warrant to get a little seed money to invest in Brownville lots. I thank Mr. Sinclair for his contribution.”

  “And A. Medley, Stewart?” I asked.

  “Well that was man-to-man. He threatened to turn me over to the law, and I got the best of him, and his pistol.”

  “Who’s Steven Nemlon?” Teddy asked.

  “Why that was just very bad penmanship on my part.”

  “Well they probably won’t hire you at the high school then.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need to worry about that, and neither will the rest of you. Come on Kitty.”

  “Never,” she said as she rose to sidle up against Teddy, who put his arm protectively around her.

  “On the contrary, Kitty,” I said, “you should go with Stewart. He’s got a bullet for each of us, but he doesn’t have one for you. However, I would fix the wedding date for April, 1917. A spring wedding is always more inspiring and picturesque.”

  “1917?” she asked.

  “Yes, hopefully by that time your tottering old suitor won’t have the strength to pull a trigger. The only reason he’s pursuing you is because he’s in love with your grandfather’s money. Once gramps is dead and you’re married, there’ll be no more reason to keep you around.”

  “That’s not so,” said Stewart so stridently that it was evident he lied. He stepped back toward the door and raised his revolver squarely in the direction of my bosom.

  “‘If there ain’t no witnesses, there ain’t no criminals,’” said Mr. Whitt softly, as if resigning himself to the inevitable.

  “That’s always been my motto, Mr. Whitt.”

  Blam! The door burst open with the force of a locomotive hitting it, slamming into the back of Stewart’s head. He fell straight to the floor with the pistol going off and its bullet missing my ear by an inch.

  Stewart twisted to get up but a fist came down hard on his jaw and his eyes rolled back into his head as he went limp. Teddy had the revolver now, but Cameron stood astride over the killer.

  My beau looked up at me with his clear blue eyes, his blond hair glimmering in the lamplight, or was it a halo? He said in his deep voice, “Sorry to barge in like this, Miss Furlough, but I had a delivery to make.” He reached into his pocket and produced a small little package.

  “You weren’t eavesdropping, were you?”

  “That would be impolite, I was just observing you through the keyhole.”

  Unwrapping the package, he revealed a small box. My heart sank to my feet. I could guess what might be inside and I wasn’t ready. If he were to propose, even in front of all these witnesses, I couldn’t say yes. I knew he was caring; I knew he was ever so handsome, but we could not be yoked together unless we shared exactly the same faith. How would we resolve differences if the Bible were not our arbiter, God our counsellor? Who would judge between us? We would be left to sort it out with our own selfish selves, each his own prosecutor, defender, and judge. Endless rankling. It’s not that Cameron rejected Christ, it’s that he had never made it conclusive to me that he embraced him wholeheartedly. He was ever the mysterious man, even to me. I needed clarity. I could not do otherwise.

  “I carried out a couple of errands with you in mind, Miss Furlough, while I was in Saint Jo. Firstly to a land agent, and yes, the Weber house was briefly in the name of Stewart Winslow, but it takes a pair of spectacles to decipher the name on the title. My guess is that the aged and ailing Mr. Weber, when he learned his daughter and grandchildren had all died, agreed to sell Mr. Winslow his house and the land warrant on the cheap, if Mr. Winslow would take care of his final expenses. And I will give credit to Stewart, he saw to it that Mr. Weber had a fine funeral when the day came. The undertaker affirmed it.”

  “What an evil man,” observed Mr. Martin looking down upon the unconsciou
s Mr. Winslow. “And to think he wears a skull like that. Who would have guessed?”

  “Well, Mr. Martin,” Cameron said, “we all have choices to make, no matter what we look like. And Miss Furlough here, beautiful as she is, also needs to make one.” He opened the box and in it gleamed a sparkling ring. “Would you be mine, so that I could be yours? Will you marry me?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Many of the names, events, essays, and speeches found in this story are taken from the pages of Brownville’s Nebraska Advertiser and a few other sources dating to the year 1857. Addy’s Fourth of July speech, for example, is taken from a woman’s open letter to the Nebraska Advertiser; Addy’s article decrying racism comes from an article found in an 1857 edition of the Ladies Repository. However, I want to point out that the Friend murders, although they did occur in 1856, did not take place near Brownville, but rather four miles south of Saint Joseph, Missouri. Originally, I did think they happened in Brownville, and I found several posts on the internet that referred to them as a Brownville tragedy. Even Marion Marsh Brown’s The Story of Brownville, a history of the town, places the incident at Brownville. Why the confusion? Because the 1856 Nebraska Advertiser article states that the murders happened “a few miles below this city.” What the Advertiser’s editor did, of course, was to simply copy the Saint Joseph Gazette’s story verbatim onto the page of his own newspaper. A summary report of the affair and the outcome of the trial can be found in the History of Buchanan County and St. Joseph, Missouri. I decided to remain faithful to the story of Brownville and keep the murders in Nebraska Territory. After all, it’s historical fiction and authors have license to do such things. Also, I’d already written much of my story before I found out, and I was too lazy to start over. Finally, I think I wanted to see justice for the Friend family. In Saint Joseph, the culprits got off scot-free. Not in Brownville, by golly.

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