The Book of Murdock (19 page)

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Authors: Loren D. Estleman

BOOK: The Book of Murdock
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“Hand me that bag.” I pointed to the doctor's case on the floor.
She hesitated, then complied. I rooted among the brown bottles and wicked-looking instruments inside, found a grease pencil, and made alterations on the fraternal symbol etched on the latch, drawing two lines only:
“
A Star of
David?” she said.
“Just a star. This one never had anything to do with religion.”
“Is that the brand you saw on the bandits' horses?”
“One horse, but I've been all through that with Freemason. You can always tell when a string was raised under the same conditions. It only takes twenty seconds with a running iron to change two intersecting
V
's into a star. Freemason was smart enough not to send the Blue Bandannas out marauding on horses wearing a mark from his spread, but he's a sheepman. He underestimated a cowboy's eye.”
“Not by much, in this case.”
“I haven't swung a lariat since you were in swaddles, but it's true I was tardy. Thinking like a minister and a lawman and a saddle tramp all at the same time is a challenge.” I dropped the pencil back inside the bag and pushed it aside. “Where'd he tip his hand with you?”
“His foreman was careless about shutting the door to his
study. Richard sent for him. I overheard just enough to find out where he was sending him from there.”
“Tell me about the foreman.”
“Jack Kolander, a rough character who thinks he's a devil with women. I've seen how he watches me when he thinks I'm not looking, but he's too smart to take it any further with the boss's wife. He'll never find a billet that pays as well. Richard could hire a full-time ranch manager for less.”
“Did you ever ask him what Kolander does to earn it?”
“I just keep the books. Not asking questions I don't need to know the answers to is the trade I made for his not asking me the same.”
“I thought you said there were no secrets between you.”
“Plainly there are. I never knew how many until he accused me of betraying him by not telling him who you were.”
“I can see why that would make you angry enough to come running here.”
“I walked. I have a reputation to maintain. And you know me better than to think I'd throw over everything I have because my pride got stung.”
I searched her eyes. I didn't know her at all. “You don't want to see me murdered. I'll take that as a compliment. Does this Kolander have a broad West Texas accent?”
“Who doesn't? When I first came here I had to learn a whole new language. For a long time I thought Bob Wire was one of Richard's hands. When I found out it was a kind of fence I sat down and listed the names of all the people I made a fool of myself with and who didn't bother to set me straight. That turned out to be a good thing. You can waste a lot of time learning who your enemies are.”
“Who else is he overpaying?”
“Fielo, but that's a favor to me. It costs more to feed a breed ram than to staff a house with Mexicans, so what he makes doesn't scratch the budget. He's quiet, respectful, and he has only the one vice. Can you say the same?”
I let the wind take that one as well. “The others must be in it for a percentage. I'm betting they tent up at the ranch between raids. What buffalos me is why Captain Jordan and his Rangers couldn't tie any of them to descriptions of the Blue Bandannas when they visited.”
“I remember that day. Kolander wasn't around. Someone cut the north fence and he took some men and followed a trail of slaughtered sheep as far as the Nations.”
“How many men?”
“Five or six.”
“Six. Freemason made sure the gang was absent when Jordan came to call. If the fence was cut, they cut it. If sheep were slaughtered, they slaughtered them. It was a small enough price to pay to keep them out of the hands of the law. It wasn't the first time he went out on a limb when his men were in trouble. You never know what the hired help might let slip when they think their boss has abandoned them.”
“But why would Richard take such a risk? He was robbing himself.”
“That's how he wanted it to look, and it's why he staged that robbery last week with me as a witness, to draw suspicion away from him. You said yourself he's almost bankrupt. He put his Blue Bandannas up to stealing his payroll, convinced outside investors to make it up, and had them steal that, too; he paid his handpicked bandits out of the first
amount and probably cut them in for a piece of the rest and all of whatever they foraged on the side so it wouldn't look like he was the only victim. He pocketed the lion's share. Do you know the details of the trouble he got into up in Montana Territory?”
She watched me. “Is this another attempt to worm information out of me?”
“That time's past. Blackthorne came clean finally, when I pressed him. A dozen years ago Freemason was clerk of the U.S. District Court in Helena. That was shortly after Blackthorne took the bench and two years before I came to work for him. Your husband embezzled twenty thousand dollars from the operating budget and used it to start a sheep ranch near the Canadian border. He registered the land in the name of his assistant, and when an auditor from Washington turned up the shortfall, the assistant clerk was arrested, tried, and convicted of misappropriation of public funds.”
Dr. Littlejohn rapped on the door. “That's long enough, Mrs. Freemason,” he called. “The brother needs his rest.”
She looked at me. We shook our heads simultaneously. She got up, recovered his instrument case, and went to the door. A moment of spirited conversation followed, ending when she passed the bag around the edge of the door, closed it, and turned the key in the lock. She returned to her seat.
I said, “I think you just cost me a parishioner.”
“Does it matter?”
“Not to me, but I don't think I'll be named a saint of the Unitarian Church.” I rubbed my chest. I was giving my bruised lungs a workout. “It fell apart in the end,” I went on. “The assistant's wife hired investigators, who reviewed
the records of the transaction at the county seat where the ranch was, and established that his signature was forged. It came too late for the assistant; a highwayman serving ten to fifteen years for stealing U.S. securities picked a fight with him in the federal penitentiary in Deer Lodge and let his brains out with a chunk of masonry.”
“How much of this can you prove?”
“It's public record.”
Her knuckles tightened on the reticule in her lap. “Richard said he was sentenced to seven years. President Grant pardoned him after three months. Five of the twenty thousand went to the congressman who delivered the Republican vote in seventy-two. All this time I thought Blackthorne's complaint was political.”
“The assistant clerk's name was Velasquez. His father was a prisoner of war during the fighting in Mexico; Blackthorne liked him, but Velasquez turned down his offer to sponsor him after the war. When his son came of age, he called in the marker. The Judge is vain and petty, but he believes in justice, the Presbyterian Church, and his personal obligations, in that order. He didn't say it—that damn code he uses takes too long on both ends, and he never explains himself anyway—but my guess is when he heard Freemason's name in connection with the robberies here, he wasn't sure enough of his suspicions to tell me and possibly send me off in the wrong direction. If his hunch was right, I'd stumble on it myself. In a way it was a vote of confidence from the son of a bitch.”
“The son of a bitch,” she agreed. “I might have gone on thinking I'd pulled myself out of the muck finally.”
“Not you. You're too smart for Freemason. You'd have seen through him soon enough.”
“Not as soon as you.”
“I'm not married to him.”
“You're smart enough to outsmart yourself,” she said. “You knew when you told him Luther Cherry had confessed to being a spy for the Blue Bandannas he knew you were lying. If Cherry didn't set up that robbery on the road to clear himself, it had to have been Richard. You might as well have accused him straight out.”
“If I did, he'd have thought I had enough information to arrest him. As long as he believed I was still building a case, he had a chance to prevent me from delivering it. That's why I turned Captain Jordan away when he said he wanted to ask Brother Bernard more questions in private. As long as Freemason thought I was the only one who suspected him, I could flush him out by drawing his fire. I did outsmart myself,” I said, nodding. “I didn't think he'd mount a direct assault on me in the church, his church. He's more desperate than I thought.”
She shook her head. “Less. He's beaten the system twice with pardons. Once you're out of the way he's convinced he's invincible.”
“A common failing in men of influence. You ought to set your sights on a lowly road agent.”
“Page, that's unkind even for you.”
I looked at her, and the expression on her face surprised me more than the bullet through the window. Moisture glittered like bits of quartz in the corners of her eyes. If she'd brought that to a poker table I'd have cleaned her out.
A floorboard shifted outside the door; the squeak was sharp in the quiet of the room. She stood, rustling her skirts and muttering something about the damn doctor. Before she got to it, the door sprang open and struck the wall on our side. The man who'd kicked it lunged through the opening on the force of his own momentum, grabbed Colleen's shoulder, and spun her to face me with a forearm across her throat. He spun the Spencer rifle in his other hand by the lever, working a round into the chamber, and leveled it at me.
“Beg pardon, Reverend,” he said, “it being the Lord's Own Day and all.” His speech was as wide as West Texas, muffled a little by the blue bandanna that covered his face to the eyes.
My hand twitched
in the direction of the revolver on the nightstand, but I let it fall when he flexed his arm, drawing a strangled croak from Colleen.
“You're square with Jesus, Reverend, but maybe the lady ain't. Push that English pistol off the edge easy.”
I did, using the tips of my fingers. The Deane-Adams struck the floor with a thud. The man with the rifle relaxed his grip a notch. Colleen sucked in air in a long draught.
“I'll have that strongbox from the morning,” he said. “I heard you raked it in.”
“Is that why you shot at me?”
“That was careless. By the time I got to the door the place was crawling. There's still a crowd got their snouts stuck to the windows. I figure if they see you lug that box out they won't think anything about it.”
“They will if I'm with a masked man with a rifle.”
“You won't be. The lady and me'll just make ourselves to home here till you get back.”
“What if I just keep walking?”
“Well, now, that wouldn't set just right with the Almighty. When you get through them pearly gates she'll be waiting with a slug in her head. Same thing if you come back with anybody or anything but that box.”
“Is it all right if I get dressed?”
“Sure. We can't have the parson slanching about half naked. Wouldn't be decent.”
I slid out from under the sheet on the side opposite where I'd dropped the revolver, retrieved my shirt, collar, and coat from the heap where the doctor had left them when he examined me, and drew them on slowly, my fingers fumbling with the collar button behind my neck. I knew the man and his weapon from the road to Freemason's ranch, and I didn't believe for a second that he'd come just for the church collection. He was Freemason's man; I wasn't to survive the transaction to bear witnesses against his employer. The box was extra incentive, and cover for my murder.
“Jack, I can make up the difference if you'll just leave. I—” Jack Kolander, Richard Freemason's foreman, choked her off with his arm. In that instant I saw confusion in his eyes and satisfaction in Colleen's. If the plan was to leave her alive to back up the robbery theory, she'd just tipped it on its head. Plainly, he hadn't orders in case she identified him. The rancher had stopped short of condemning his wife.
I pressed in. “You weren't told some other things. The name's Murdock, not Sebastian. I'm a deputy U.S. marshal.”
The confusion crystallized into something else. He'd made up his mind in favor of his own survival, and to hell
with Freemason. “That makes things easier. I'd sooner slaughter a wolf than a lamb. Now fetch that box.”
I pulled up my braces and turned toward the door, sliding one hand into a sleeve of my rusty black coat.
“I got men on roofs with repeaters,” Kolander said, “in case she ain't reason enough to come back. When I hear shooting, I'll put one in her and clear out.”
I turned back his way, still half in and half out of the coat. It put me a step closer. “You'll do it anyway, and you'll put one in me too as soon as I show up with the money. Why should I waste the time walking all the way to the church and back?”
“On account of every minute's one more you got, both of you.” For emphasis he arched his back, tightening his grip and pulling Colleen off her feet.
That was a mistake.
She'd been preoccupied with keeping both feet on the floor to avoid strangling under her own weight. Now she scissored one leg and raked the heel of her pump down his right shin blade, probably drawing blood. He cursed in a high shrill voice. I whirled my coat underhand in a circle, caught the Spencer's muzzle with the hem, and jerked it toward the ceiling, which blew apart with a shower of plaster chunks and dust when the trigger jerked his finger. In the shock of the moment he relaxed his forearm. Colleen ducked out from under, grasping at the barrel of the rifle with both hands. She failed to gain a purchase, and as he swept it out of her reach he slammed the stock against the side of her head.
She collapsed—on top of me. I'd dived for the Deane-Adams on the floor, but got one foot tangled on the rung of
the straightback chair beside the bed, and all three of us—me, Colleen, and the chair—wound up in a snarl of flesh and bone and pine. I groped for the revolver and found only plank floor.
Something clacked twice, the lever of a repeater jacking a shell into the barrel. A huge black bat flew across my vision; my coat, caught on the front sight of Kolander's Spencer. I wouldn't even see where the bullet was coming from.
A shot cracked; I flinched as if I were hit. Something heavy struck the floor hard enough to shake more plaster from the shattered ceiling. It spilled like salt onto the back of Jack Kolander's white duster, spread like angel's wings where he lay splayed out on his face, his arms flung out in the shape of a cross.
A needle of brimstone stung my nostrils, coming from the barrel of the small slim American Arms pistol in Colleen's kid leather palm. Her reticule lay open on the floor where it had fallen when I'd knocked over the chair.
 
 
Gunfire crackled outside.
Hollow in the open and bent by the wind, it might have been a string of firecrackers going off; in the West every holiday is an occasion for fireworks. I found the Deane-Adams finally—it had skidded under the bed in the scramble—and got up. Colleen, athletic as ever, was already on her feet. I felt as if a dray had run over my chest, leaving deep ruts. I still feel it sometimes when I've lived wrong.
I nearly shot Captain Jordan coming in the door. Colleen came closer; I caught her elbow with an uphand sweep
just as she emptied her second barrel. The little slug dashed yellow splinters out of the door frame just above the Ranger's head. He had on the same clothes I'd seen him in last, riding gear, and carried a sawed-off Stevens ten-gauge shotgun in both hands crossways to his body, like a quarterstaff. His face was red beneath the deep bronze.
His eyes went straight from the distraction of the shot to the body on the floor.
“Dead,” I said. “What about the rest?”
“One dead, one on his way. We winged another. One threw up his hands. Two more run off, but we know where they're headed. We followed 'em here from the ranch. I didn't exactly go back to Wichita Falls after I left here the other night,” he said.
“I wish I'd known.”
“I couldn't get word to you without scaring 'em back into cover.” Belatedly, he took off his hat, watching Colleen. “We need to talk to your husband, Mrs. Freemason. You, too, maybe.”
“She's out in the open,” I said. “She's the one who shot Kolander.”
He cradled the shotgun along a forearm, slid the hat off the back of the dead man's head, pulled it up by a fistful of hair, and tore loose the bandanna. It was a stubbled face with sandy moustaches and spider-traces of blood coming from the corners of his mouth. “Kolander, that's the name?” Jordan spoke to Colleen over his shoulder.
“That's him. Richard's at the house, or was when I left. I don't think he'll resist. It's past the time for gunplay. Now it's the lawyers' turn.”
“We'll bring our guns along just the same.”
I said, “You can't sneak up on him. His house overlooks the whole town.”
“He built it to withstand cattle wars,” Colleen said. “You can shoot at it all day and all night. All you'll do is break china.”
Jordan chewed the ends of his handlebars. In his weathered face I saw faint traces of the fresh features of the young Ranger in the photograph in his office. It had been taken at Fort Sill, where the Comanche Nation had surrendered after breaking its back assaulting a handful of buffalo hunters holed up at Adobe Walls.
“Man has to eat,” he said finally. “We'll wait him out.”
Colleen said, “I'll talk to him. I've always been able to make him listen to reason.”
“No, ma'am. I'll not put a chip in his hands.”
“I don't have to ask your permission. It's my house. You can place me under restraint, but I'll put up a fight. It will take three men. How many do you need to lay siege to a fortress?”
He looked at me. I shook my head. “I wouldn't argue with her. I still have scars.”
She said, “He's no ordinary fugitive. He has resources. The chances are he's already put them to work. Why risk panicking him with an attack party?”
“Well, hell,” he said; and that was the end of the resistance.
I unhooked my coat from the end of Kolander's Spencer and shrugged into it. The hole he'd blown through it had smoldered for a while, but it had stopped, leaving an evil smell. “You fixing to come with us?” Jordan asked.
“If you'll have me. This is the first time I've had the blinders off since Helena.”
“Let's get to it, then, before our past life catches up with us.”
I asked him for a moment and went to get my Bible. Colleen and Jordan watched in silence as I read over the dead man. When I finished I closed the book, put it in my side pocket, and took off the clerical collar. I put it on the bed and picked up the Deane-Adams.

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