The Book of Murdock (17 page)

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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Book of Murdock
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Freemason toyed with
his glass. “Why didn't you tell me what he said the first time I asked? What was the point of pretending to speculate he died as a result of his own manipulations?”
“That part was speculation,” I said. “He didn't live long enough to get around to it. As for the rest, I wasn't sure he was alone. I'm still not, but based on this conversation I'm reasonably satisfied it isn't your wife.”
Colleen appeared unmoved; but so does the outside of a volcano. “What did I say to convince you I'm not?”
“Nothing. If you had, you'd still be under suspicion. It's never easy to tell when you're bluffing, but the higher the stakes, the harder you push a pair of deuces. You didn't say a word when your husband said he couldn't trust you. If ever there was a time for a traitor to prove herself loyal, that was it.”
“God, but you're a bastard.”
“I've worked for Blackthorne a long time. Some of it was
bound to rub off.” A clock outside the door chimed the hour; we'd been locked up most of the day. I looked at Freemason. “You'll see to Cherry's arrangements, I suppose. No doubt his wife will want to bury him in St. Louis.”
“I ought to throw his carcass into the creek, but I've become a respectable man. I'll play the generous benefactor. The damage is done; nothing can be gained by blackening his memory. And what will you be about meanwhile?”
“Sunday is Easter. I've a sermon to prepare.” I rose. Two pairs of eyes followed me.
Freemason said, “You intend to continue as Brother Bernard? Why? Without Cherry, the Bandannas have no hole card. The first time they act on their own they'll blunder into the hands of the Rangers as like as not.”
“I said I'm not sure he was alone. In any case my orders are to break them up or bring them to justice. Also the church needs a pastor.”
“Where will you start?” he asked.
“Matthew, twenty-six.”
“You're trying my patience, Deputy.”
“Brother,” I said. “Let's not slip into any bad habits. I'm going to start by tracing that star brand. They've got as good an eye for horseflesh as any outlaw gang. The trader who sold seven premium mounts at a crack will remember who he sold them to.”
He said, “The brand might not be registered. Smaller ranches crop up all the time. The ranchers are too busy getting established to bother right away, and the registrars can't keep up with the rest.”
“You don't get animals like that from a start-up outfit.
Someone had time to breed them. The brand has to be on file somewhere.”
“Still, that's a lot of legwork for one man.”
“If you're trying to find out how I operate, you're wasting my time as well as yours.”
He flushed again. “You don't care who you insult, do you?”
Colleen said, “He has rules about which questions to answer honestly when he's playing a role, Richard. He likes to keep his lies in a separate pile, and he doesn't trust anyone.”
I shook my head. “You can trust everyone and be betrayed, or no one and betray yourself. My policy is to shoot straight down the middle.”
“Even so,” Freemason said. “Not trusting is a quality a man can do worse than to acquire.”
The old Mexican came in after knocking, hesitated when he saw we were all standing, and spoke in a low tone to Freemason, who bent his head to listen. “Tell him to come in.”
Fielo ghosted out, leaving the door open for the visitor. Captain Jordan of the Texas Rangers stood taller than he sat, despite bowed legs and a slight shoulder stoop. He wore what appeared to be the same faded blue flannel shirt, its pockets stuffed with smoking material, with leather-reinforced riding trousers stuffed into the tops of tall stovepipe boots, long-roweled Mexican spurs jingling behind the heels. He took off his pinch hat, revealing a bald crown cream-colored to the line where the hat ended and his tan began. He smelled of the sweat of horse and man. The steel-shot eyes looked tired and a stubble had sprouted on his chin, as white as his handlebars.
He introduced himself, grasped the sheepman's hand, and nodded to Colleen. When Freemason presented me, the Ranger showed no recognition. His grip would be the last thing about him to give out.
“What luck?” Freemason asked.
“Same as at White Horse,” Jordan said. “Tracks turned into the creek and got lost in the tangle from the last herd that crossed. They know this country, all right. Can't figure out what made them steer so wide of it before this.”
“Brother Bernard has a theory about that,” began Freemason, only to abandon the rest at a look from me.
“I'm always open to spiritual guidance.” Jordan nailed me with his gaze.
I smiled an apology. “That's the only kind I can offer. I just suggested that poor Mr. Cherry may have been the reason the gang singled us out.”
“Any special reason, or does God speak just to you?”
It was an experience new to me, that moment: Two men working overtime to keep a third from knowing the full truth about one of them while the third pretended not to know it already. The frontier was no longer the simple place it used to be.
I told him of the lawyer's last words, and my thought that he'd engineered his own wounding in order to lift suspicion from himself. Jordan took it all in without comment. Colleen excused herself as a nonwitness and left us. The captain declined a drink, stuffed and lit his pipe, and gave us a detailed account of his quest beginning with the message Freemason had sent him in Wichita Falls by way of the rider from the ranch: He and his small command had traded their
lathered mounts for fresh ones Freemason had made available for them at the line shack and followed the trail to extinction. He'd left his men to rest in town while he came to the house to report and gather information.
“What encouragement can you offer that I won't end up fighting this band over my last dollar?” asked the rancher.
“Not knowing how many you got, I can't answer. If the brother's right, a cockeyed scheme like that is a sign they're losing their smarts. However, I ain't what you might call a religious man. The evidence of things unseen don't hold up in San Antonio.”
“What's the reward on these fellows' capture or death?”
“Five hundred a head.”
“I'll add a hundred each, and see if I can get the Stock-Raisers Association to double it.”
“That ought to make things right lively. If I had a blue bandanna I'd burn it.” Jordan stood and offered his hand. “I'd like to ask the brother a couple of questions, just us. He's the one Cherry talked to. He might remember a thing or two more in a place where he's comfortable.”
“You don't have to ask my permission, Captain. That's up to Brother Bernard.”
“I'm afraid I can't tell you anything I haven't, Captain.”
His lips parted to let something out, but I jigged my eyes right and left, hoping he wasn't an unsubtle man. He drew a breath and stirred his handlebars on the exhale. “Well, if you can't take a preacher at his word, who can you? It's getting late and I don't trust that stage trail. I'll spread my roll outside town and start back at first light. This trail won't get no warmer.”
“I've got spare rooms gathering dust,” Freemason said. “I'd consider it a favor if you'd put up here. Mrs. Freemason and I don't get many visitors. Pariahs, don't you know, under the veneer of respect.”
“I'll remember you asked next time. Just now I got men getting set to stretch out on bare panhandle. It wouldn't set right with them to know I spent the night on feathers.”
We left that house. At the bottom of the long flight of steps Jordan and I shook hands. “The parsonage behind the church,” I said. “After dark. I'll leave the back door off the latch.”
He didn't even nod, although I could feel the heat of curiosity glowing deep in those burnished eyes. We turned in opposite directions. As I did so I caught a glimpse of a curtain stirring in an upstairs window of the mansion. When she'd moved in, Colleen would have been sure to secure herself a room with the best view of the town.
 
 
The sun was
long gone when someone tapped at the back door of the parsonage. I'd moved the lamp in the little sitting room to a spot where it wouldn't outline the opening and closed and latched the door behind him quickly. The sacking someone had put up to serve for curtains masked the windows.
“I don't see the need,” Jordan said when we were seated. I'd given him the rocking chair, filled two tin cups from the bottle I'd brought from Helena, and drawn the straightback close so we could talk quietly. There didn't have to be professional spies; the Fielos and Mrs. McIlvaines of the world
have soft soles and long ears. “I thought I did a fair job of explaining the palaver.”
“I've got my reasons,” I said. “They don't have to make sense to anyone but me.”
He didn't pursue the point, and my respect for him went up another healthy notch. He tipped his hat as far back as only a Texan can without it falling off. “I'd as lief wrestle bobwire in the dark as have another meet like that one at Freemason's. Just who knows what?”
“His wife and I have a history. She kept her mouth shut, but he figured it out based on some things she'd told him in the past. Neither of them knows you and I have met before. I'd like to keep it that way for a while. People let down their guard when they think one man is all they have to worry about.”
“I knowed something was in the wind when you gave me the evil eye there at the finish. First Cherry, now his boss? How big is this bunch?”
“I don't know, but Cherry wasn't in it.”
He drank from his cup, his eyes fixed on mine above the rim. “Why would a man lie his way into hell with his last breath? And how do you know he did?”
“I don't. He confessed, but not to informing on Freemason's plans. He wanted me to know he'd strayed once from his marriage. It happened just the one time, he said, back in St. Louis, but he didn't want to die with it on his conscience. He asked me not to tell his wife. I think what happened had something to do with why he accepted Freemason's invitation to set up shop here in Texas.
“He was talking to the collar,” I went on. “I'll probably draw another month in purgatory for it.”
“That was the shebang? He jumped the traces?”
“If there was anything else he didn't last long enough to share it. In that situation you lead with the sin that's most on your mind.”
“So why did you tell Freemason—Oh.” The dawn appeared to break. He nodded. “That's why I came in the back way. How sure are you?”
“Not enough to take any sort of action. Subtracting Cherry, it's the only explanation for what happened out on the road, but I can't take that to Helena. Anyway, you can see why I didn't want anyone to think I had the chance to pass on what I knew to the Rangers. I have to be the lightning rod.”
“A lightning rod can take a lot of hits. With a man, all it takes is one.”
“I've been struck before.”
He shook his leonine head. “I got to tell you, this is one game of poker where you're safer to share your cards.”
“The deck's passed through too many hands as it is.” I lifted my cup, but didn't drink. I tapped a finger on the rim and lowered it. “I've a strong hunch you can hold a secret till it sprouts leaves, but my hunches don't always turn out. It has to stop somewhere. I can't even trust my friends with what I plan to do next.”
“Lone wolves are easier to kill. Just so you know.”
“That doesn't mean it's easy. But if it happens, it means I figured right. The rest will be up to you.”
He got out his pipe, leaving the makings in his pocket. He slid the stem along his lower lip, watching me through the thickets of creases that surrounded his eyes. “I don't mind
dying while I'm moving forward. I'd sure as hell hate it while I'm going the other direction. They don't pay me enough to do it standing still. What do they pay you up there?”
“Free burial, same as you. Did you bring anything for me?”
“Thought you'd ask. Since I was fixing to be in the neighborhood I took it along.” He gave me a thick fold of yellow paper from the flap pocket where he kept his tobacco pouch.
I unfolded it. It was a garble of unrelated words consuming several pages of Western Union scrip, signed HAB. Harlan A. Blackthorne's personal code was more complex than the one I'd worked out with Jordan, but it was a lot less chatty in appearance; anyone who saw it would know immediately it contained confidential information. I was relieved to see it was addressed to the Rangers station and not Bernard Sebastian.

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