Powder Keg (12 page)

N
ot much doubt about it being Mike. He’d been shot at least twice in the back with a shotgun.

I looked at the two horses. I picked up their reins and took them over to a tree where I tethered them to heavy branches.

I might never have found them if Connelly hadn’t started moaning.

I hadn’t really counted on anybody being in the woods. But that’s where the moaning came from and so that’s where I went, gun drawn.

It wasn’t a path so much as a narrow clearing that ran straight into the woods. I had a carbine and a pistol then. The dark didn’t scare me. But not knowing what was going on did. This thing didn’t figure at all.

Low pine branches sprinkled snow on me as I brushed against them. The moaning came and went. When I saw them I felt even more spooked. This didn’t make any sense at all.

If they’d decided to kill Mike and leave him on the trail that way, then what were they doing lying on the
ground there? The only light on their faces was moonlight patterned through the pines.

I walked around in the bloody shadows. The only sound in the lee of the looming lonely mountain was my crunching footsteps.

I knelt down next to Pepper. He’d vomited all over his chest. The stink was bad. I tried his neck and wrist for a pulse. Nothing. He was dead for sure. For the first time the woods seemed dark and dangerous to me. An explanation for this situation was forming in my mind. Something to do with these woods.

I rolled Pepper over. He’d been shot in the back several times. I rolled him back over so I could go through his pockets.

“You steal from dead men, Ford?” Connelly, his voice thin and raspy in the cold air.

I said nothing. I kept turning Pepper’s pockets out.

“It isn’t easy for me to talk, Ford. You hear what I asked you?”

I was finished with Pepper. I got up and walked over to Connelly.

He had propped himself up against a tree. He didn’t look all that bad. It was like him to be the survivor.

“It’s cold,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d help me get to town?”

“What happened?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“You didn’t answer mine, either, Connelly.”

He coughed. “Somebody shot us from the woods. We were headed back to town. I didn’t get a chance to see who it was. I knew I’d freeze to death out in the open tonight. I crawled in here. Figured I’d hear
you and the woman when you came down the trail.” He coughed again. “Help me up, huh?”

“Pepper didn’t see anything, either?”

“Nah. I don’t even know how he was able to crawl in here with me. I thought he was dead back on the trail. Now how about a hand up?”

“Mike die right off, did he?”

“Not right off. He was crying like a little baby. You should’ve heard him, Ford. Sickening. Those punks today wouldn’t last a month, goin’ through the shit we been through.”

He moaned again.

“Where’d you get hit?”

“I took two shots high on the shoulder. A doc can fix me up fine. All you need to do is put me on my horse. Now help me up?”

I raised my .44.

“Hey, what the hell’s this, Ford? You got no call to shoot me. We didn’t kill the punk there. The shooter did.”

“Which one of you put the broom up her?”

He started to say something, a lie, and then stopped.

“You saw her, huh?”

“Yeah. I saw her.”

“That kid—the little boy—that was strictly an accident. We shoved him is all and he hit his head. We don’t go around killing little kids. You know us better than that.”

“Which one of you used the broom on her?”

“Pepper. I told him not to do it. You know I wouldn’t do anything like that. Pepper was crazy. You know that. I screwed her. I’ll admit that. But that
broom shit—that was all Pepper. Like I said—” He coughed. “You know how Pepper was. He liked hurtin’ women. He’d screw ’em and then he would hurt them. Her, he hurt bad.”

He was babbling, scared. He saw what I was going to do. “You a Catholic?”

“Most of the time.”

“You know what I’m doing right now? Right here talking to you? I’m shitting my pants. I never even done that in the war. But I’m scared, Noah. I never seen you like this before.” Coughed again. “You kill a man in cold blood, you’ll go straight to hell. I’m a Catholic, too, don’t forget that. That’s what our religion teaches us, Noah. We kill somebody in cold blood and we go to hell.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

I put one bullet in his eye and one bullet in his heart, then I raised the gun and put two shots in his forehead.

I went through his pockets, just like I had gone through Pepper’s a few minutes ago, just like I was trained to do. Half the time anything I find I just throw away. But you can’t be sure what might be in those pockets so you look, you search. And sometimes you get lucky. I didn’t get lucky. Not that night. He hadn’t been lying about shitting his pants. But the animals that would rend him later on that night wouldn’t care. They didn’t have what you might call delicate palates.

I walked out of the dark woods, picked Mike up, and slung him over my shoulder. I felt cold and sick the way I used to get in the war sometimes. And it wasn’t just the weather.

When I reached the top of the hill where Jen had spotted the two horses and Mike’s body, she started walking slowly toward me, Clarice at her side. Then she broke and started running so fast toward me that she nearly fell over twice. With the dying light, the snow was glazing again.

I didn’t say anything to her. What was there to say? She ran up to the horse that carried her brother. I stopped right there and just watched her.

She took his face in her hands and kissed it with great reverence. Then she began touching her face against his, the way animals rub against each other. And finally she took his face again and kissed him on the mouth.

Clarice came up and took my hand. We stood there together just watching Jen. Finally Clarice broke away, ran to Jen, who had now fallen to her knees, sobbing. Clarice came up and slid her arms around Jen and held her very much the way Jen had held Clarice the night before, in the cabin where her mother lay.

At first I thought that Jen might push her away but she suddenly embraced her and they held each other for a long time.

It was time to get back to town. Straight through. No stops except for what the preachers always call “biological necessities.”

I mounted the horse with Mike on it and then said, “We can make town by midnight if we leave now.”

They were both still crying, still clinging to each
other but more loosely now. Jen got up so abruptly I thought she was angry. She stormed over to the other horse, grabbed Clarice, set her up in the saddle and then climbed up herself. She looked back at me and said, “C’mon, Noah, I just want to get the hell out of here.”

It was night by then. In the starlight Jen looked wan but pretty. Clarice looked happy to be on a horse. Every so often she’d tug on the reins. Being a big girl.

We didn’t speak for maybe ten minutes, till Jen said: “How about Connelly and Pepper?”

“Same man killed Mike and Pepper.”

“What about Connelly?”

We rode at a good but easy clip. Talking was no problem.

“I decided to save you folks a trial.”

She just nodded and kissed the top of Clarice’s cap.

“Why’d you kill him?”

“It’s an old tradition in the justice code. Called General Principles.”

“General Principles?”

“Sometimes there are people you can’t kill for any one specific thing. But you can kill them for things they’ve done in general.”

“So you executed him.”

I changed the subject. “Whoever shot everybody tonight figures Nordberg and the county attorney will drop everything, not pursue it. Figure it was just somebody who had it in for Connelly and Pepper and killed your brother so he couldn’t testify against him.”

“You got anybody in mind who that might be?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But give me a couple days.”

I
’m not sure that small towns need those new inventions called telephones. Word spreads fast all by itself.

We hadn’t been back in town with Mike Chaney’s body fifteen minutes before the street outside the funeral home was filled with a crowd of maybe a hundred people.

They had a good day for gawking. The sunlight had lanced through the white clouds and the sky was a light blue. The temperature was in the thirties. Not exactly tropical, but given the past two days, damned comfortable for being outdoors.

Sheriff Nordberg and I were upstairs in the funeral parlor while Doc Tomkins was downstairs examining the body.

Just before you went in the room where the wakes were held, there was an area with a horsehair couch and a small table and chairs. This was likely the area where the family met the other mourners.

But Nordberg wasn’t mourning. He was angry.

“I just can’t credence our own government hiring
a couple of thugs like Connelly and Pepper. Lawmen are supposed to be—law abiding.”

I shrugged. “They knew all the bad guys and a lot of the bad guys trusted them. That was how they got their information for Washington. They could eat, drink, and whore right next to the bad guys. And pick up a lot of information while they were doing it.”

“Yeah. And look what they did to that poor woman in the cabin. Where’s the little girl, anyway?”

“Jen took her home. Give her a bath. Put her to bed. Then fix her a good meal when she wakes up. I hope Jen gets a bath and a meal, too. I hired a couple of men to go out to the cabin and get the girl’s mother and brother. We’ll give them a decent burial here. This has been hard on Clarice. She deserves seeing them buried proper.”

He grimaced. “Hard on the whole town. You see the people in the street?”

“Yeah.”

“That crowd’ll double in size by midafternoon and on toward evening it’ll triple. He was their hero.”

“They didn’t mind him chasing after married women?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Anybody else, they would’ve run out of town. The British like to call men like that ‘bounders.’ Well, around here bounders get run out of town. But with Chaney—they just didn’t want to hear about it. Somebody’d bring the subject up—how he was seen up in the haymow with so-and-so—and they’d just turn away. They saw Mike as their hero. They didn’t want to hear anything that took away from that.”

He leaned back in his chair, his size imposing in
that tiny room where, if you listened carefully, you could still hear the sobbing of mourners, ghost cries that had saturated the air in that house, just as much as the cloying sweet scent of flowers had.

“Not everybody liked him. Somebody in this town killed him.”

“What makes you so sure of that? Somebody killed him but I think who you mean by that is Flannery.”

“That scare you?”

“I’ve got a family to support. You want to know how fast he could get me fired?”

“Would the folks around here stand for that?”

“What choice would they have?”

I reached in my pocket and took out the small notebook I usually carried. “Well, it’s not just Flannery I’m talking about. Here are some names, if you’d like to see them. It’s not necessarily one of them but it’s a start.”

He took my notebook, looked it over. In the office to our left, a woman said, “Did you see the livery bill for last month?”

“He must think we live in Denver,” another woman said, “the prices he charges.”

“Well, Doc certainly isn’t going to stand for this.”

Even in the face of death the daily work goes on, two women bitching about the monthly livery bill. Nordberg got my attention again.

“You going to start bothering them, I suppose?” Nordberg said, handing back my notebook.

“You don’t want to find out who killed the first federal man and then Daly?”

“You don’t care about Connelly and Pepper?” He smiled.

“Not so’s you’d notice.”

“You wouldn’t have killed either one of them, would you?”

“If you’re going in that direction, why not say I killed both of them?”

“Did you?”

“I wanted to but somebody else got to them first.”

He straightened his string tie and sat up straight. I wondered if he’d suddenly seen a pretty lady. “Well, I’ll help you.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“You take a few of the names to check out and I’ll take the rest.” Then: “I’m sorry I’m a coward. A man doesn’t like to think of himself that way. If you wouldn’t mind—”

“Sure. I’ll take Flannery.”

“He won’t be easy.”

“Neither will I.” I picked up the makings I’d left on the table. “And you’re not a coward. Like you say, you have a family. You have to live here. I don’t. I have no family and when this is all done, I get on a train and clear out. I’ve got the easy part.”

“I appreciate you taking Flannery like that.”

I stood up. “Now it’s my turn for a bath and some good sleep. I should be up by late afternoon. I’ll go over to the bank and talk to Flannery.”

“You have to get past Mrs. Milligan first.”

“Who’s Mrs. Milligan?”

He smiled. “Let’s just say she scares the hell out of every man in this county. But you’ll find out for yourself.” He smiled some more and then went downstairs to see what Doc was learning from his examination of the body.

When I reached the front steps, I saw that Nordberg’s prediction had come true. The crowd had grown.

I stared at them and they stared back at me. They’d know I hadn’t killed their hero. But they just might be thinking that if I hadn’t come to town somehow that hero would still be alive.

People need somebody to blame when things go wrong, especially when death’s involved.

Mrs. Milligan’s desk was on a riser set directly in front of the circular vault that had been built into the wall. I had been escorted there by an elderly bank guard who said, “She’s got a head cold so be careful.”

I guess I was expecting a behemoth. You know how you imagine things based on somebody’s comments.

Mrs. Milligan weighed, at the outside, ninety pounds. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun so severe you could see stretch marks on the side of her face. She wore a black dress with a black collar and black-framed glasses almost as tiny as her black eyes. The sharp nose and the huge drooping growth to the right of her mouth gave her the look of a witch. The tiny eyes winced when I came into their view, as if they had just seen something that gave them profound displeasure. She sneezed with such force that her glasses flew from her face and landed on the desktop. The eyes dared me to show amusement.

“God bless you.”

She picked up her glasses and said, “You don’t
look like the sort who has any right to use the Lord’s name.”

“And you must be Mrs. Milligan.”

Her seventy-year-old face broke into a leer. “You’ve heard the stories, then, have you? That’s how the teacher threatens her students. She told me that at the church picnic this summer. She just says, ‘You want me to send you to see Mrs. Milligan?’ She says I scare them more than Geronimo.”

Then she put her glasses back on with knotty little hands and said: “Why do you want to see Mr. Flannery?”

“I’m afraid I can’t discuss it.”

“Then
I’m
afraid you can’t see him.”

I held up my badge.

She said: “Is that thing real?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What if I still won’t let you see him?”

“Then I’ll just walk over to that office that says ‘President’ on the door and go in myself.” I laughed. “I won’t tell anybody about this.”

“About what?” she asked with a whole lot of cross in her voice.

“That you couldn’t stop me because of my badge.”

“I’ve seen badges before.”

“Sure, all the sheriffs of the last twenty years or so. But they’re afraid of the Flannerys, which means they’re also afraid of you. But I’m not afraid of either one of you.”

“You really won’t say anything to anyone?”

“I promise.” I smiled at her again. She was part of the town’s lore. I didn’t want to ruin that lore for her
or
the town.

“You always keep your word, do you?”

“Unless somebody pistol whips me and sets my hair on fire. Then I can’t guarantee a thing.”

Then the unbelievable happened. Mrs. Milligan smiled. “You’re an awfully fresh young man.”

“I try to be, Mrs. Milligan. I really try to be. And thanks for saying I’m ‘young.’ It isn’t true but I guess we’ll just let it stand.”

“The same way we’ll let it stand that you won’t tell anybody?”

I worked up another smile for her. “Exactly the same way, Mrs. Milligan.”

“I figured you’d be in mourning, Flannery.”

He had his feet up on his desk—a pair of fine hand-tooled boots he wore—and a magazine hiding his face when Mrs. Milligan rang a bell letting him know somebody was on his way in.

He pulled the magazine down, looked at me and said: “I thought I might see you sooner or later. I was hoping for later.”

I sat down. “You could always confess and make everything easier for everybody all around. You being such a public-spirited citizen and all.”

He took his feet down, closed the magazine, dropped it on his otherwise clean desk. “What would I be confessing to?”

“You killed Sloane, the first federal man out here.”

“Now why would I do that? He was helping try to find Mike Chaney.”

“Exactly. You shot him in the back assuming Chaney would get blamed for it.”

I glanced around his office. Everything but the man himself was mahogany or rich dark leather.

“But the town didn’t get all excited by Sloane dying because they still thought Mike was their hero, even if he had killed him. Nordberg couldn’t get enough men for a posse. Nobody wanted to ride on it because they knew there would be hell to pay when they got back to town. Folks didn’t want anybody riding after him. And they wouldn’t be happy about anybody who did. Then Connelly and Pepper came to town. You tried to get folks all stirred up again by killing Tom Daly. Even if Nordberg couldn’t get a posse together, you didn’t have to worry. You had Connelly and Pepper ready to go after him. And you made sure they’d go after him and kill him because you sweetened the pot. I don’t know how much you gave them but they weren’t the kind who worked cheap. Then all you had to do was wait for somebody to bring Chaney’s body back. You think your wife would forget him even if he was dead?”

He jabbed a finger at me, arrow true. “You leave my wife off your filthy tongue. She forgot all about Mike Chaney a long time before we even got married.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

I said it soft, with a hint of pity in the words. It’s an old interrogation trick. A soft tone confuses them. They’d expect you to shout something like that, really assault them with it. They weren’t sure how to react.

He started to get mad and then he slumped in his chair. “We all think of old lovers. It doesn’t mean anything.” He waved a hand through the air, dismissing the offending thought. “She probably
did
think of him from time to time. But that doesn’t
mean she did anything about it. I think of girls I courted before my wife. It doesn’t mean anything at all—if you don’t do anything about it.”

“But you had two reasons to hate him.”

“If you mean the banks, we’re doing just fine.”

“But you don’t have the land you wanted for those Eastern investors.”

His laugh was unexpected. “That’s the trouble with gossip. You can never be sure which part of it is true. I’ve found some other land for the Eastern folks. And they’re giving it a lot of thought.”

“Meaning they haven’t said yes.”

“Meaning they haven’t said yes.”

He leaned forward again. “I’m willing to make you a substantial bet, Ford.”

“I’m not much of a gambler.”

“I’m willing to bet you that you don’t have any way to connect me to Mike’s murder.”

“Not yet I don’t. But I’ve just started looking around.” He started to speak. I held up my hand. “Where were you yesterday?”

“I went to Bent River.”

“What time did you leave?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“You take a train?”

“I rode my horse.”

“In weather like this?”

“The weather to the east was fine.”

“Who did you see in Bent River?”

“I didn’t see anybody. I should have said that the weather was fine until I got halfway there. Then it started to snow pretty bad so I turned back for town here.”

“Any way of verifying you actually went there?”

A smirk. “You could always ask my horse.”

“Did you see anybody on your trip?”

“Not a soul.”

“What time did you get back here?”

“About seven o’clock.”

“Took you a long time to get back here considering that you only got halfway to Bent River.”

“Shoe came loose on my horse.”

Now it was my turn to smirk. “You leave town for Bent River. But you have to turn back halfway there. I’m told that’s about a three-hour trip. So if you turned back at midpoint that means you should have been back in town here by one o’clock at the latest.”

“I told you. A shoe came loose on my horse.”

“And it took you all afternoon to fix it?”

He leaned back. “You enjoy this, don’t you? You get to come in here and push me around because of that badge of yours. You’re not my social equal in any way. You could never get into my clubs; you’d never get invited to any of the parties I go to; you don’t have any real standing anywhere—but you’ve got your badge. And that means that you get to take out all your envy on whoever you want to.”

He stood up. “But you know what? I really don’t give a damn about your badge. Or about you. Investigate me all you want but you won’t be able to prove a damned thing. Because I’m smarter than you. You have the badge but you don’t have the brains, Ford.” He pointed to the door. “The next time I see you, you’d damned well better have some evidence. Or I’m going to wire some friends of mine in Washing
ton and have you pulled off this investigation. And don’t think I can’t do it.”

I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. I put my Stetson on and left.