Relentless (9 page)

    “A gunfight?” she said. “Nobody has gunfights anymore.”

    "Tell
him
that, not
me.
Anyway, I went up to his room and took the bullets out of our respective guns, and then challenged him to a fight without bullets.”

    “That old trick of yours still work?”

    “Works fine. At least it did that morning. He saw that I could beat him, so he decided maybe a gunfight wasn’t such a good idea. I told him to be on a train or coach by yesterday afternoon.”

    “He didn’t go.”

    “Oh, he went all right. I had Bob Sanchez put him on the train personally. The thing is, he obviously came back.”

    “And made some kind of trouble?”

    This was going to be the difficult part. Telling her what he’d been saying over the course of a long night in town following the murder of David Stanton.

    “I have a feeling that Paul put him up to it.”

    She sat there in her blue cotton robe, pretty even in her mussed morning way. I could see in her eyes and the tension in the angle of her long white neck that she knew what was coming. She appeared to be holding her breath. And then she said, before I could say it, “He’s been telling people about me, hasn’t he? Me and David?”

    “Yeah.”

    “So everybody knows.”

    “Those who don’t will know sometime this morning.”

    “Wanted felon teaching schoolchildren.”

    “Maybe people will have more faith in you than that.” She smiled sadly and touched my hand. “You know better than that, Lane. I can just hear Grice and people like that now. I’ll sound like Mary Magdalen, before they’re through with me. They’ll never let me go inside that schoolhouse again. And I imagine the county attorney will press charges.”

    “We’ll get a lawyer. A good one.”

    “We’ll have to move.”

    I took her hand. “Honey, right now that’s not the important thing. Not legally.”

    She studied me as if I’d just spoken in a foreign language she didn’t understand. “Not legally? What’re you saying?”

    “I’m saying that if that’s the only story Hastings was pushing, we could probably handle it. The worst that would happen is that you’d have to go back to Chicago and face charges. But there are enough mitigating circumstances-you didn’t have anything to do with Stanton cheating that old widow out of her money, you just happened to be married to him is all-that a good lawyer can probably get you off without too much trouble. Especially since you’ve led such a good life since you left Chicago.”

    “Then what’s the trouble?”

    “That isn’t all Hastings is saying.”

    She studied me some more. “What else?”

    “He claims he followed you to the hotel where Stanton was.”

    “Oh, Lord.”

    “And,” I said, “he claims he heard you stab Stanton and then saw you run away.”

    

    

    EYES.

    I’d had to escort a man past his family once. I was taking him to prison where he would be hanged. His folks didn’t yell at me or scream at me. They just watched me as if trying to take my measure, as if trying to understand me and how I could do the job I did.

    Eyes.

    I’d seen a man totally withdraw from reality one day when the riverboat he was on sank and he was unable to save his four-year-old son from drowning. The look in his eyes was unfathomable, and I doubt he ever recovered in any but the most superficial way.

    Eyes.

    I’d once arrested two white men who’d drunkenly kidnapped a young Indian man, skinned him, and then set him on fire. The town I was marshal of then was not exactly a hotbed of affection and esteem for Kiowa. But their act had been so savage, so unimaginable, that when I brought them into town the crowd, which later tried to lynch them, gaped at them as if they were a species from some other world.

    Eyes.

    They were on me this morning.

    Various eyes held various expressions. The people who hated me-and no town marshal is without his enemies- smiled with their eyes. The people who respected me-and thankfully, there were far more of those-offered me looks of pity and concern. But most of the eyes were just curious.

    Just about everybody in town, it seemed, had heard Hastings ’s story already, and it was barely seven o’clock.

    
His wife, the marshal’s wife, she was married once to that Stanton
fella. They were grifters. There’s a warrant out for her. And this young gunny, this Hastings kid-and I ain’t sayin’ I got any truck with him, because I don’t-this Hastings kid, he swears he followed Callie Morgan up to this Stanton’s room and listened at the door while she murdered him. I wonder what the marshal’s gonna do. You think he’ll arrest his own wife? You think he should be marshal while somethin’ like this is goin’ on? He’s always been so high-and-mighty about the law and all. Be interestin’ to see how he handles this.

    Nobody said this out loud, at least not to me. But they didn’t need to say it out loud. Their eyes said it for them.

    Grice wasn’t waiting for me, but Toomey was. When I came in he was obviously giving Tom a speech about me because they both looked guilty when I came across the threshold.

    “Morning, gentlemen,” I said.

    “Morning,” Tom said, as if he hadn’t already seen me.

    “I hope you can spare a few minutes for me,” Toomey said. He sported another flashy city suit. This one was tan and made his girth appear even larger. “We had a brief breakfast meeting-the town council and I-and I think you should know some of the things that were said there.”

    Tom looked uncomfortable. “I’m going upstairs and getting the prisoners ready for day court.”

    “Thanks, Tom,” I said.

    “Fine man,” Toomey said when Tom was gone.

    “Yes, he is.”

    “Your office is a much better place for our meeting than up here in front.”

    “You’re probably right. Coffee?”

    “I’ve had too much already. It’s hell on my hemorrhoids.”

    We got settled in chairs, my office door closed. “This young Hastings fellow told the council quite a story.” He hadn’t been kidding about his hemorrhoids. He squirmed around a lot, and occasionally winced.

    “I’ll bet he did.”

    “For one thing, he said you tried to run him out of town because you knew he was going to tell the truth about your wife.”

    “I appreciate all the faith you have in me.”

    “You didn’t try to run him out of town?”

    “I sure did. But only because he wanted to draw me into a gunfight.”

    “He didn’t mention that.”

    “I don’t imagine he did.”

    He lit a large cigar. He looked like one of those robber barons in the political cartoons. He probably enjoyed looking that way. “Do you know what he said about your Callie?”

    “If you mean was she once married to Stanton, yes. If you mean is there a felony warrant out for her arrest, yes, though she isn’t guilty. If you mean did she go to his hotel room the night he was murdered, yes. If you mean did she kill him, no.”

    “You’re positive of that?”

    “Yes.”

    “I used the word ‘positive,’ Marshal. That’s a strong word.”

    “So’s Callie’s word. I asked her straight out and she told me straight out. She said that she’d gone to his room, found him dead, tried to see if she could revive him, and then ran away, scared.”

    “And you believe her?”

    “You’re going to make me damned mad here in another minute. Of course I believe her.”

    “I’m not trying to rile you.”

    “Well, you’re doing a good job of it even if you’re not trying.”

    “If she didn’t kill him, who did?”

    “Last night,” I said, “you were sure of Ken Adams.”

    He frowned. “I guess you were right not to be.”

    “Thanks for admitting it.”

    “We’re just worried about the impression we make on the lieutenant governor.”

    “I’m aware of that.” I assumed by “we” he meant more himself and Grice than the town itself.

    He took a long drag on his cigar, removed the cigar from his mouth, and studied it a moment. “We had a vote. Two to two.”

    ‘Two of you-that would be you and Grice-voted that I should step down until we know to your satisfaction that Callie didn’t murder Stanton. And the other two voted to let me stay on for a while.”

    “You must have a crystal ball.”

    “Don’t need it. Not where the town council is concerned.”

    “It’s nothing personal.”

    “No, of course not.”

    “As I said last night, I really don’t like it when you take that tone.”

    “So what’s the decision? Do I take off my badge and hand it over?”

    He shook his head. “You know how Rollie Limbaugh likes to compromise. He voted to give you twenty-four hours more and we went along with it.”

    “Reluctantly.”

    “Of course reluctantly, Marshal. How do you think this looks to the town? Here you’re supposed to be investigating a murder and your wife is a suspect? If the lieutenant governor hears about this, he’ll never-”

    “-help you run for the state house?”

    He flushed bourbon red. “You don’t think I love this town?”

    “This may surprise you, Toomey. But I’m sure you do love this town. But I’d bet you love yourself just a bit more.” He glowered. “As far as I’m concerned, you can hand in your badge right now.”

    “I’m going to surprise you again, Toomey, and agree with you.”

    “Are you serious?”

    I took off my badge and tossed it on the desk in front of him. ‘Tom should be the one doing the investigating now. No matter how good a job I’ll do, everybody’s going to question my motive and my honesty.”

    He stared at the silver badge in front of him. “I don’t believe you just did that.”

    I smiled coldly. “I almost don’t believe it either.”

    

    

    A FEW MINUTES after Toomey left, my badge in his pocket, Tom Ryan came back and said, “What the hell are you doing, Lane?”

    “It’s already done.”

    “None of us here wants you to quit.”

    “I didn’t know I had to check with you on my personal matters.”

    “You sure as hell do if it involves you leaving.”

    I stood up. “I guess I’ll go see how my money’s doing.” He usually grinned when I brought up the subject of my investment, and made some kind of reference to me as a tycoon. But not today. “So what the hell am I supposed to do?”

    “Just what Toomey and Grice want you to do, Tom. Become town marshal. And arrest somebody for Stanton ’s murder before the lieutenant governor gets here tomorrow.”

    “That’s crazy talk.”

    “No, that’s Grice talk. And Toomey talk.”

    “It really does piss me off, Lane. You’re putting me in a hell of a bind.”

    “What bind?”

    He shook his head as if talking to a dense child. “What bind? Choosing between you and the town council. By rights, I should walk out with you.”

    “No, you shouldn’t.”

    “You brought me on. You taught me. Whatever I know about bein’ a peace officer, I learned from you.”

    “Then take what you learned and be a good town marshal. You’re the obvious choice. And I know you can use the extra money.”

    But that wasn’t all that was on his mind, and he knew I knew it. “And as for questioning Callie, that’s part of the job, too,” I said.

    “She’s your wife.”

    “She’s my wife, and you’re the town marshal. If she was your wife, I’d question her in a minute.”

    “She didn’t do it.”

    “You don’t know that for a fact. I know she didn’t do it because I love her and trust her and take her word for things. But you’re a lawman. She used to be married to Stanton. She was afraid of him and she hated him. And she was in his room the night of the murder. You have to question her.”

    “And you’re gonna let me?”

    “How am I going to stop you, Tom? You’re wearing the badge now.”

    He sighed, shook his head again. “This is so damned strange, Lane. It just happened so-fast. It doesn’t make any sense. You’re the town marshal here-or should be.”

    I gave him the best smile I could muster. “I want to go check on my millions now.”

    

    

    Back in the late 1860’s, it was assumed that Denver would get the transcontinental railroad. But then the Union Pacific elected to run track on the northern route through Cheyenne, arguing that the Denver route was too mountainous. Denver retaliated a few years later by building the Denver Pacific line that connected to the Union Pacific. Several small towns around Skylar raised some Eastern capital and voted to make Skylar the terminal for a similar line linking us to the Union Pacific, too. I’d saved some money over the years and invested it in this narrow-gauge line being built.

    There was a hill on the eastern edge of town where you could sit your horse and watch the rail crews laying track. From here there was a beauty, even a poetry, to the hard and relentless work of the crews. It’s always easy to find beauty in somebody else’s labor. You’re not doing the sweating and the hurting. You don’t have the crew bosses on your tail twelve hours a day.

    But whenever I needed to comfort myself-the way my solitary old tomcat used to comfort himself by licking his massive paws-I took to the hill and spent an hour or so watching the gleaming silver tracks take sparkling shape in the sunlight. There were plenty of good reasons to hate the railroads, namely how they’d disrupted the lives of Indians and whites alike. But when you considered the mountains they’d blasted through, the bitter winters and scorching summers their workers had endured to build them, and the prosperity they brought to some of the poorer agricultural areas, you had to be in awe of their plain cussed competence, if not their indifference to the lives of the men who were laying the track.