A Good Man (34 page)

“Well, if it was such a damn tidy business, why didn’t the two of you keep at it?”

“Because Tarr got greedy. Price of real estate was going up every day and he went to speculating in it. Then the Great Fire come along and all his property went up in smoke. Lawyer Tarr had borrowed a lot of money to buy them houses. So he done a flit to escape his creditors. Off he went owing everybody money – me included.”

Harding eases back in his chair, laces his fingers over his round paunch. “Well, that was mighty inconsiderate of him to treat his peephole artist that way. But maybe the pleasure of playing peeping Tom was reward enough for you.”

“I don’t hold with defiling the marriage bed,” says Dunne primly. “Marriage is a sacred thing to me. I was happy to see them adulterers get their just deserts.”

“Who’d of thought it? A bachelor so eloquent in defence of married life. Another case of somebody not knowing what he’s talking about.”

“Well, I ain’t going to be a bachelor long. And the woman that marries me will never have worries on that score.” Dunne’s laration surprises him as much as it does Harding. His happiness seems to want to make itself known; it rises out of him, unwilled, unbidden.

There is Harding smirking at him, offensively. “I congratulate you. Who’s the lucky virgin?”

Suddenly, for the first time since the interview began, Dunne feels all at sea. He has uttered his dearest hope, and now Harding is pawing it with his grimy hands, fondling it like one of his precious ore samples. Dunne is furious, but it is a fury he knows he must grind down. With an effort, he controls himself. “Never you mind who it is. Give me an answer. You want me or not?”

“You believe you can find him?”

“If I can’t, nobody can.”

“Then do it.”

“Find him and then do what? Turn him over to the Choteau County sheriff to stand trial for his attempt on Tarr’s life? That what you asking?”

“No, not that,” Harding says quickly, dumping the ore sample back on the table as if it has gone hot in his hands. He seems to find it difficult to find the words for what he wants to say.

Dunne pulls his lips into a self-congratulatory smile. “No, I figure not. Because this time Gobbler Johnson might start blabbing about how his own lawyer, Tarr, was more interested in protecting your sweet interests in that disputed gold claim than he was in representing the client who hired him. And a jury might think old Gobbler had a right to take a shot at Lawyer Tarr, that it was deserved – whatever the law might say. And then he’d be loose again, with a bigger grievance against you.”

Harding is looking longingly at the ore sample, as if he wishes he still had it in his hands, could feel its soothing weight. He clears his throat. “The case was decided on evidence. A contract signed by Johnson, witnessed. Proof from the bank that the purchase price for his claim was deposited in his name.”

“I’m just thinking aloud here,” says Dunne, “like a good lawyer might have done in court. The placer gold gives out on old Gobbler’s claim, all the colour gone and went. At least what can be got with a pan, or sluice box, or rocker cradle. But a man who owns a stamp mill – you own a couple stamp mills, Mr. Harding, don’t you?” Dunne pauses before placidly continuing. “That fellow figures there must be a quartz vein that fed the placer gold into Johnson’s spot on the creek, and that fellow says to himself, I got the machinery to crack the meat out of the nut. So he makes Gobbler an offer on his played-out claim and Gobbler is happy to say yes. But then he gets to thinking, why’s a smart fellow like Harding offering good money for nothing? So he reconsiders and refuses to carry through on the deal. Now, I’m just saying maybe and perhaps. If I was the fellow owned them stamp mills, I’d be mighty unhappy. I might be tempted to put Johnson’s name to that contract and buy some witnesses to say they saw him sign it, then put the money in Gobbler’s bank account and so on to cinch things tight. Me, I understand the position of the fellow with the stamp mill because a deal is a deal and I don’t tolerate a welcher. But not everybody thinks like I dond pgot a generous heart.” Dunne waits for Harding to confirm his suppositions, but Harding only furrows his brows. “A shrewd lawyer might have said a thing or two about all this. He might have questioned that signature on the contract as a forgery. He might have examined the witnesses to it. He might have asked why Johnson never touched the money in the bank. But Tarr didn’t. He just left that old fool prospector biting his lips while he waited for his lawyer to slip the knife in. But Tarr left the knife in the sheath. And that’s mighty peculiar.”

“All right, leave it alone,” says Harding. “You made your goddamn point.”

“So I take it you don’t want Johnson brought in to have his say in court.”

“There’s that. And I got to think of my family. My wife and girls. Next time he might fire the house.”

“So it’s the other?”

Harding nods. Dunne leans over, takes a pencil, writes a figure on the back of an assay report, and shoves it towards Harding. “That’s my price.”

He squints at the number. “That’s a pretty damn high price, you ask me.”

“You got a lot of misery. The cure for what ails you don’t come cheap.”

“And how will I know you’ve taken care of it? I’m supposed to take your word?”

“I get half now, half when the corpse turns up.”

“Nothing gets back to me. You got to guarantee that.”

“Accident or suicide. Depending on the circumstances. Accidents and suicides don’t point fingers.”

Harding is busy lining up pieces of ore on the tabletop, fussily shifting them about. “In the end, that damn claim ain’t going to be worth half of what this is going to cost me.”

“Don’t cry over spilt milk,” says Dunne. “Tarr was just the same as you. Both of you not satisfied until you got all the money there is to get. Gamblers who couldn’t walk away from the table as long as there’s one chip sitting in front of the other fellow. You didn’t have Johnson’s one chip and it was an aggravation to you. It’s your nature, Mr. Harding. Don’t apologize for it.”

FIFTEEN

February 12, 1877

CAN ANYONE REALLY
know himself? Father used to say every man is three people. You are the person you think you are, the person other people think you are, and the person you really are. On the other hand, I remember what my old professor of Greek, Sutherland, once said, that the ancient Hellenes believed that in the mists of time the gods had split us in two, and that our lives are nothing but a search for the missing half that will make us whole. How I want o believe that.

Three days ago Joe brought back news from his monthly saloon crawl. Ada Tarr is now Fort Benton’s schoolmistress. The position fell suddenly vacant because the former holder of the post gave a Christmas orange to a little girl to let him put his hand up her dress. He has made an abrupt departure for places unknown. Joe says there is gossip that Tarr died leaving nothing for her support and a host of unpaid bills.

Since that unfortunate man’s funeral, my head has been a muddle; I have not dared approach her. Write a letter of sympathy? But after having made such unseemly advances towards a married woman, how could I do that without appearing insincere, even cynical? Pay her a condolence call? Perhaps even worse. The visit of any male – let alone a bachelor – would provoke a good deal of tongue-wagging.

But when I learned that she had taken up the duties of schoolmistress it felt to me as if things had somehow changed because she had set mourning aside to answer hard necessity. That she had elected to get on with life. And, somehow too, it struck me that paying a visit to the school would be different than paying a visit to her home where she would be surrounded by reminders of her husband. I told myself that going to the schoolhouse was no different than going to a place of business; it was a public not a private place. True, I had no plausible business to conduct there, but at least it was neutral ground.

Yesterday I waited in the street until I saw the children coming out of the building and heading for home. I crossed Front Street to the schoolhouse. Thick snow muffled the sound of my boots on the porch steps and the door opened noiselessly so she did not hear me enter. I saw her sitting at her desk, wiping slates with a rag. What a peaceful scene, late-afternoon winter sunshine lighting a few motes of chalk dust afloat in the air, the logs in the stove making small, cheerful noises as they crumbled to pieces in the flames.

She must have sensed my presence. Her eyes lifted from the slate on her lap. “Mr. Case?” she said. For a moment, I thought I saw distress in her face.

Suddenly, I realized I had rehearsed nothing to say. I had wanted to see her, so I had come. That was all the reason I had for being there. Making my way to her desk, I improvised on the move, hardly understanding what I was saying, spilling it out in a jumble. My heartfelt sympathies, my hope that she was bearing up, might I be of any service to her? And so forth and so on.

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “Your kind words are very much appreciated.” Then nothing more, she simply sat there, going on with her work.

I stumbled out, “I am sorry that circumstances have made it necessary for you to teach.”

“It is good for me to be occupied. It gives me something else to think about,” she said rather sharply.

I said surely she would have preferred some time to take stock, examine her choices.

“Would I?”

I blundered on, increasingly anxious. “I do not entirely know your circumstances,” I said. “But if you require a loan to tide you over until your husbnd’s affairs are settled, if that is the reason you took this position, I would be only too happy to help.”

“Money?” she whispered. “What am I to make of that?”

I had put my foot wrong again. “A loan,” I hurried to say, “but without obligation.”

“The word loan implies obligation. I know of no other definition.”

“Then let us call it a gesture. A gesture made by one friend to another. You once said you would like to call me friend.”

“If you are expressing a wish to rescue me,” she said, “I do not wish it. I have no interest in putting myself under your protection, or any other man’s.” Her face was flushed a bright pink; a vein was ticking in her neck.

“I think you have misunderstood me, Mrs. Tarr,” I told her. “It appears no good deed goes unpunished.”

“If I have misunderstood you then you must speak more plainly, Mr. Case.”

I was growing as vexed as she. “Then I’ll explain myself. Excuse me for thinking it, but I assumed there might be some relative you wished to go to and might be prevented from doing so by a lack of funds. Or that there were other steps you wished to take to escape your unfortunate situation.”

“I do not find my situation unfortunate. Nor do I wish to be hurried out of it – no matter how convenient someone else might find it to see my back going down the road.”

“I do not know what you mean, Mrs. Tarr,” I said.

“I think you do. So let us let the matter drop.”

“If I knew what this matter is you speak of – why, I would only be too ready to let it drop.”

“Don’t be coy, Mr. Case,” she said.

“I think if anyone wants to see anyone’s back it is you who wants to see mine. So I will oblige you. Good day.” And I walked out, a hound with its tail tucked between its legs.

After Case had made his stony-faced exit from the Fort Benton school, Ada simply folded her hands on the desk and laid her cheek down on them. Behind the isinglass pane of the stove, she could see the embers slumping and settling in the grate, turbulent waves of heat shimmering like a mirage. In the stillness and quiet of the room, she felt her anger subside like them into a grey and bitter ash.

Everything Wesley Case could possibly say to belittle her, he had said. Everything he could do to demean her, he had done. New Year’s Eve, how ready he had been to sham passion because a flirtation with a married woman carries no obligations.
Obligation
, there was a word that made him uneasy, which was why she had rubbed his nose in it. How impetuous and hot he had been then and how coolly srupulous he had been to avoid her after that night, even going so far as to duck his face down at the funeral like a shamefaced boy. As if a crumb of kindness would compromise him. And then to make this mean-spirited assault on her feelings when she was at her lowest point, to demean the honest work she had taken up, talk to her as if she was nothing more than a red-kneed charwoman scrubbing spots from youngsters’ slates, what was that but a ploy to remind her she was a pauper and give him the opportunity to dangle a bribe under her nose? Pocket my money, there’s a good girl, make yourself scarce; throw yourself on the mercy and charity of relatives if you’re lucky enough to have them. And all the while he had stood there, as good as jingling the coins in his pocket. And when she had chosen to tell him she needed nothing from him, he had seized upon that as a justification to act as if it were he who had been insulted, and retreat from her. All along, he had played her for a fool.