Murder in Dogleg City (8 page)

Sam shook his head and smiled. “No, I
need something else from you today, Rupe. I need you to tell me
about last night—last night down in Cribtown. Quint found you
passed out there this morning, and seems you’d been out for a good
spell. What do you remember, from before you passed out? Do you
know what time you got there?”

Rupe’s eyes lost their focus, and he
seemed dizzy. He shook his head as if he were trying to clear the
cobwebs.

“
Rupe? Take your time,
now. Just think.

A look of horror passed over the
drunk’s face. He looked slowly up at Sam.

“
I never—I never killed
nobody, Marshal.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “I know you
didn’t, Rupe. I never said anything about killing anybody. Why did
you say that?”

Rupe looked confused. “I don’t—I ain’t
sure why I said that. It just, sort of, come out.”

“
What do you
remember?”

“
I don’t remember
anything—honest, Marshal. I’d tell you if I did. I
just—there’s
something
, I can’t tell what it is, there’s something in my
mind.”

Rupe squeezed his eyes tight and
concentrated. His hands shook with the effort.

“
I’m sorry, Marshal. I’m—I
just—I
can’t remember
.”

Sam sighed. “It’s all
right, Rupe. I believe you. It’ll come to you directly. But just in
case you
did
see
something—something you were never meant to see—well, you’d best
stay here for awhile, where it’s safe, while you finish sleeping it
off.”

Rupe looked crestfallen—quite an
accomplishment, considering how low he usually was to begin with.
“Are you puttin’ me in jail, Sam?”

Sam stared at him for several seconds.
“No, Rupe,” he finally said. “You can sleep it off on my cot, in
the back room. I’m going to be out, probably pretty late, it won’t
be an imposition to me.”

To Sam’s surprise, Rupe almost smiled.
“Thank you, Marshal.” Then a shadow passed over his face. “I hope—I
hope I don’t stink it up too much.”

“
Don’t worry on that
account. I’ll have it cleaned—and send Dab Henry the bill.” They
both smiled at that.

“
Get along then,” Sam
said. “And stay put till I send for you.”

Rupe stumbled into the back room and
collapsed onto the cot. In no time he was snoring deeply. He had
bad dreams, dreams of terror and death, thinly disguised
memories—but they had nothing to do with the previous night. They
were about a previous life.

* * *

Sam decided to stop by the barber shop
across the street and get a shave before he headed to the saloons.
The town’s only barber, John Hix, knew his business—but he had a
bad habit of disappearing from town for days on end with no
explanation. Sam was content to take advantage of his presence when
he was around—a man could shave himself, after all, but it just
didn’t seem cultured.

Sam stepped inside the barber’s shop
and was gratified to see that no one else was waiting—the only
other customer was already in the chair.

“
Hello, John,” Sam said.
“Hello, Reverend Stone,” he added, once he recognized the customer.
Obadiah Stone, preacher at Wolf Creek Community Church, was a bear
of a man with a thick gray-and-red beard. The thought occurred to
him that the reverend and Deputy O’Connor looked like kinsmen—but
even if they were, it would not deflect the Reverend Stone from
loathing the abomination of O’Connor’s papist beliefs.

“
Howdy, Marshal,” Hix
said. “I’ll be right with you, soon as I finish with the reverend
here.”

“
Hello, Marshal,” Stone
said. “My, that is a lovely walking stick you have
there!”

Sam sat down and removed his hat.
“Thank you, Reverend. I know you for a man who appreciates a good
walking stick.”

Stone chuckled. “Mine is leaned
against the corner yonder, as you can see.”

Sam smiled. “Why, I did not recognize
it as such; I thought it a small tree.”

“
I prefer to think of it
as a cudgel,” Stone said. “The Cudgel of the Lord, for smiting the
occasional arrogant sinner.”

Stone’s words were not hyperbole. He
was well known for rapping people lightly on the skull with his
oaken cane when making a doctrinal point to them; and for rapping
not-so-lightly if they got lippy. For especially extreme cases, the
reverend carried a Walker Colt on his saddle and wore one of the
new Smith & Wesson Model 3’s on his hip.

“
Lean on the Lord thy
God,” Reverend Stone said. “And when He needs a hand with His
smiting of the wicked, why, lean into that, too, I say.”

“
Amen,” Sam
said.

“
A-
men
,” the barber agreed
emphatically.

“
Say, Reverend,” Sam said,
“maybe you and I can bring the quarterstaff back into style. Right
out of Robin Hood. Of course, you could play Friar Tuck
or
Little
John.”

The preacher chuckled
amiably.

“
The Reverend here was
just telling me about his war-time service,” Hix said. “Sounds like
he was a real curly wolf back then.”

“
Oh, you exaggerate,”
Stone demurred.

“
You’d better get used to
it, Reverend Stone,” Sam said. “When it comes to the late conflict,
John here has more questions than a little kid. He rummages through
everybody’s memories that pass by, I suspect he may be writing a
military history in his spare time.”

“
Oh, I’m just curious, is
all,” Hix said. “I was out in California, around Frisco, when the
war was goin’ on—I feel like I missed out on somethin’ important.
My grandpa used to set on the front porch and talk about the War of
1812, and this was way bigger’n that’un was. So I like to hear all
about it I can.”

“
Were you out there
panning for gold?” the preacher asked.

“
Oh no. I was just
barberin’ them that was.”

Sam smiled. “I see—you were on the
Barber-y Coast!”

“
Huh?” Hix said, but the
preacher guffawed.

“
It’s a joke, son,” Stone
explained. “A play on words. You know, the Barbary Coast—the
infamous neighborhood in San Francisco?”

“
Oh,” Hix said, and then
laughed nervously. “I’m kinda slow with them kind of
jokes.”

“
No need to apologize,
John,” Sam said, “it was a silly pun.”

Hix smiled. “Okay,” he said.
“anyway—did you know, Marshal, that the reverend was a Union
cavalry officer, just like you was?”

“
Why, I was unaware of
this.”

Stone smiled proudly. “Formerly
Lieutenant-Colonel Obadiah Stone, Eighth Kentucky Cavalry, at your
service, sirs.”

Sam gave him a playful salute. “Former
Captain Gardner, Third Illinois Cavalry, reporting. Always a
pleasure to meet another Union man, especially an old horse
soldier.”

“
I always thought it was
peculiar,” Hix said, “Kentucky not joining the Confederacy. Them
being a slave state and all.”

“
I was no abolitionist, I
assure you,” Stone said. “I fought to preserve this grand Union of
ours—my grandfather gave his life at the Battle of King’s Mountain
to help establish it, I did not intend to see it sundered by a
motley crew of hotheaded fools.”

“
Here, here,” Sam said in
agreement.

“
I hear there was a lot of
guerrilla war in Kentucky, same as out here,” Hix said.

The preacher harrumphed. “Irregulars.
Damned useless lot, if you ask me, on either side. Skulking snakes.
Nothing gave me greater pleasure, sir, than shooting down Rebel
bushwhackers like the dogs they were, and the Good Lord’s Arm was
with me when I did it.”

Hix was standing with his back to Sam,
having turned the preacher’s chair around to face the mirror while
he finished his task. At Reverend Stone’s words, the barber
stiffened—almost imperceptibly—and Sam saw a shadow seem to flit
across the barber’s face in the mirror. In a heartbeat, though, it
was gone. The marshal would have been tempted to ascribe it to
squeamishness, had he not heard reports about the barber’s recent
bravery when the stagecoach he was on was attacked by hostile
Kiowa. He decided, then, that it was lingering embarrassment that
he had not had the honor to serve, and put it out of his
mind.

The marshal would have been surprised
indeed at the true cause of the barber’s reaction. John Hix had
never been to California, and had instead ridden with a band of
Missouri Confederate guerrillas loosely affiliated with
Quantrill—while he was absent at a prison camp, his family had paid
a heavy price at the hands of Kansas Jayhawkers. He inquired about
all his customers’ war service, hoping to find a few former Union
guerrillas and exact a bit of revenge on them. He had come across a
couple in the months he had been at Wolf Creek, and after they left
his barbershop he tracked them down and gave them a much closer
shave than they bargained for.

John Hix smiled amiably into the
mirror and spoke to the preacher. “There we are, Reverend, all
done!”

Stone admired the barber’s handiwork.
“Very good,” he said.

The preacher stood up and paid. “I
hope to see both of you gentlemen at the morning services come
Sunday,” he said.

“
I may surprise you and
show up one day,” Sam said, as he took the preacher’s place in the
barber’s chair.

“
I might see you,” Hix
said—that was always his reply, but he never meant it. On Sunday
mornings, when most of his customers were in church, Hix went down
to Cribtown to see a tiny but buxom whore named Haddie. She didn’t
mind being slapped around a little, and after a full week of
toadying to Yankee sumbitches like these he needed to blow off
steam with a vengeance.
Barber-y Coast my
Rebel ass
, he mused.

He draped a cloth around Sam Gardner’s
neck, his smile still in place.

“
You ready for me to cut
off them pretty curls, Marshal?”

“
You know better, John. My
neck would be cooler in this damn heat, but the ladies about town
would no doubt lynch you for depriving them of anything worthwhile
to run their fingers through. No, I only ask that you trim my
goatee and give my cheeks a nice smooth shave.”

“
Yes, sir,” Hix said, and
proceeded to lather up the marshal’s cheeks. Sam relaxed, closing
his eyes, enjoying the sensation and the barbershop
smells.

“
Marshal Gardner!” a
shrill voice interrupted. Sam’s head jerked up—he was fortunate Hix
had not yet brought out his razor.

His heart fell. It was Edith
Pettigrew, the town shrew. She and her husband Seth had been among
the founders of the town, almost twenty years earlier. She had
always been something of a busybody, and a prude, but folks who had
lived in Wolf Creek a long time told the marshal she had gotten
much worse after her husband died. Sam had known for some time that
her decline involved more than just an increase in
self-righteousness—the rest of the town was slowly figuring that
part out, as well.

She stood uncertainly in the
barbershop doorway. “I apologize for intruding into this—this
masculine sanctuary,” she said. “But practically the only other
place I can find you is in one of those foul saloons, and I refuse
to even darken the doorway of one of those dens of Satan. And it’s
not as though you ever actually show up at your office.”

“
What can I do for you,
Mrs. Pettigrew?”

She looked around, conspiratorially,
then spoke in a hushed tone.

“
He’s at it again,
Marshal!”

“
Who?”

“
That livery man, that’s
who! Tolliver, or Torrance, or Tollison, or whatever he’s calling
himself.”

“
Ah,” Sam said. “Yes, it
is hard to follow his name changes—I’ve come to just think of him
as ‘B. T.’ to simplify things in my own mind. I presume, then, that
our mighty stable-master is once more baring his hirsute torso,
before God and tax-paying citizens, in flagrant disregard of all
civilized rules of propriety?”

“
Why—why yes, that’s
exactly what he’s doing.”

“
He’s doing
what
?” Hix
asked.

“
Ben Tolliver is walking
around without his shirt on again,” Sam explained.

“
Oh,” Hix said.
“Well—ain’t it mighty hot in there with them horses, though, it
bein’ August?”

“
It is mighty hot in Hell,
Mister Hix,” Edith Pettigrew said. “Marshal, I demand you do
something. I am tired of consulting Sheriff Satterlee—he keeps
telling me it is not a county problem, it is a city
problem.”

“
Does he, now,” Sam
said.
Damn his eyes, I’ll get him for
this
.

“
What are you going to do
about it?”

“
Madam, it is a shame you
weren’t here a few minutes earlier. Reverend Stone was in this very
chair—I think this sort of damnable, sinful behavior is more his
territory than mine.”