Powder Keg (13 page)

When I came up next to Mrs. Milligan’s desk, she said, “Remember your promise.”

“It’s safe with me, Mrs. Milligan.”

She looked relieved.

Y
ou want beans and pipe tobacco, you go to the general store. You want whiskey and gossip, you head for the saloon.

From what I could overhear while I stood at the crowded bar sipping on a root beer, more than a few of the men in town figured that Flannery had killed everybody. They figured what I figured. He had two reasons to do it, just as I’d told Flannery—his wife and his banks. Nobody else seemed to be in the running.

More than a few blamed Flannery’s wife. A woman like that, one who couldn’t make her mind up, a woman who’d go back and forth between them like that, a woman so selfish she’d put two men through all that anger and humiliation—a woman like that was just as guilty as the man who actually pulled the trigger.

But after a few more drinks, they’d swing back to Flannery. That no-account, no-good, fancy-dressin’, spoiled-brat, cold-hearted, thinks-his-shit-don’t-stink son of a bitch. Killin’ poor Mike Chaney the way he
did. Hell with all those federal men what died. It was poor Mike Chaney they mourned. Onliest one with balls enough to rob them banks and give the money back to the people so they could hold on to their little farms and ranches. Nobody else give two turds about them people except poor Mike Chaney. And then a smart-steppin’, fancy-pants, lyin’-through-his-teeth bastard hides in some trees and shoots poor Mike in the back. Don’t even have guts enough to face him front on. Oh, no, not that silk-underweared chicken-shit ruffled-shirt prick Flannery.

I went to three saloons that night—I take my duties seriously—and in every one of them the palaver was just about the same.

The third saloon, though, was a little more intense because it had a spellbinder leading the uproar.

His name was Nick Tremont. He was one of the men I was supposed to see.

The only time I’d seen him before he was angry but in a controlled, civil way. But that night he was rousing the troops. And he knew how to do it.

He had the kind of strong body, white hair, and thunderous voice that has marked the patriarch of every tribe of men dating all the way back to Old Testament days. He didn’t shout the way the preachers did; he didn’t exhort the way a lawyer does when he faces a jury. Instead, he spoke quietly, reasonably. And in the smoky bar, lighted only by low-hanging Chesterfield lamps over the tables and two large lanterns behind the bar—the whole room listened patiently and silently as he ticked off reason after reason why somebody else would now have to pick up Mike Chaney’s work.

“You know how I hated Chaney. I hold him responsible for killin’ my son when he didn’t have to; when he killed him only because he wanted to, not because he had to. But I never talked against the job he was doin’. He saved a good part of this valley and there sure ain’t any doubt about that.”

“What you gettin’ at, Nick?” someone asked.

“I think you know what I’m getting at but you’re afraid to say it.” He stood up tall in his brown leather coat, a Colt on his hip and cold rage in his brown eyes. His gaze took in the men before him, one by one. His lips moved silently as his gaze searched the room. He appeared to be counting.

“I look out here and what do I see? I see four more men who could lose their ranches within the next sixty days. I have it from someone in the bank—a man who won’t come forward because he’s afraid he’ll lose his job, and I can’t blame him for that—a man who told me that Flannery has convinced his Eastern money friends to be patient—that he’ll have six or maybe even seven spreads for them in the next few months. You men know who you are.”

“Ain’t one of them spreads yours, Nick?” asked a rancher.

“It sure is. And that’s why I say as much as I hated him for killin’ my boy, I think he was doin’ the right thing where Flannery was concerned.”

And then we came to the part that everybody was waiting to hear. A man in the back said: “What’re you saying we should do about it, Nick?”

A long pause. His eyes surveyed the room once again. The only sounds were a few coughs and somebody setting down a beer glass.

He said: “I’m not saying anything other than this is somethin’ we should think about. Maybe have a little meetin’ about.”

“You mean right now?”

“Good a time as any, ain’t it?”

I doubt there was a man in the saloon who didn’t know what was being talked about there. Nobody was going to say anything out loud because if anything actually did happen, he might be blamed for starting it.

“Well, let’s get some more whiskey over here and push these tables together and have our little meeting.”

The man behind the bar didn’t look happy about it. But what could he do? These men were in no mood to be contradicted.

He nodded to my empty glass. I shook my head. There were things I needed to do.

“Well, no sir, not a one of them,” the liveryman said.

The wind was up again. It raced through the places where the walls weren’t flush and rattled the doors up top. He was an older man with a bad complexion left over from boyhood. He kept his thumbs hooked into his bib overalls whenever possible. He liked to rock on his heels while keeping his thumbs in place. He reminded me of a statue that was about to fall over.

“But there’s a reason none of them come in here for their horses.”

“Why’s that?”

“They keep their own horses. I’d like to have their
business but the only one who gets anything out of ’em is Tully the blacksmith. Now that’s the business I shoulda gone into.”

It never comes easy. I’d had this daydream that I’d go over to the livery and he’d give me the names of one or two men on the list who rode out at about the right time to meet up with Connelly and Pepper and Mike Chaney. Flannery was still the likely man. But you need to have proof.

“So Tremont and Long don’t keep their horses here, either?”

“No, they don’t.”

So much for my daydream.

“Well, I appreciate it,” I said.

As I turned to leave, I saw Nordberg’s wife, Wendy, hurrying along the street, the wind pushing her faster than she usually walked. She held her bundled baby wrapped tighter than ever. A number of people joined her in the wind-pushed rush. Men held on to Stetsons and bowlers; women held on to scarves and bonnets. Even the kind that tied under chins got roughed up in weather like that.

I fell into step with Wendy Nordberg and said, “Evening, ma’am.”

“Evening, Mr. Ford.”

I’d forgotten how fine her features were.

“Would you happen to know where I could find your husband?”

“Probably at the office. Though I can’t be sure. With his job he could be anywhere.”

We had to raise our voices to hear each other. Whirling snow ghosts danced down the street. The bloody sun sinking then; the first stars appearing.

“In case I don’t find him, tell him some men are talking about Flannery, getting all worked up. I don’t like the sound of it.”

“You mean lynching?”

“I don’t want to put any words in their mouths. And since I don’t know any of them I don’t know how serious they are when they get worked up. Maybe most of them have gone home for supper. But maybe not.”

The dying light was such that I couldn’t get a good look at her face but I did glimpse her eyes. I’d scared her. I should have thought of what it would be like to hear that your spouse might be facing a lynch mob in an hour or two.

“Tell him I’ll meet him at the office at seven. That’ll give him two hours for supper. I’ll stay down around here and check in at the saloon. Keep an eye on those men.”

“I’d really appreciate it, Mr. Ford,” she said. “Well, good night.”

After she was blown farther down the street, I went to my hotel room. I wrote out a telegram, some of it in code, explaining to the boss that Connelly and Pepper had been murdered and that I was staying in town until I found out who had done it. Then I mentioned Tom Daly and asked if he could contact Tom’s wife. I knew it was a chickenshit thing to do and that by rights I should have done it. But she didn’t like me much and getting the word from me would only make her more miserable. She liked the boss and he liked her. At the Washington Christmas party the agency always throws, the boss always dances her around the floor a few times. Everybody
likes to watch because when you see a stiff old fart like the boss beaming on the likes of a fresh pretty woman, you realize that he really does belong to our species after all.

It took three cigarettes and two drafts to get it down the way I wanted. I hate writing telegrams in a Western Union office. There’s a pressure, real or imagined, to hurry. I’ve got enough pressure on me.

O
nce I was back on the street, the first place I checked was the saloon where Tremont was holding his meeting. The men were rowdier by then. Most of them were married and had imbibed right through the supper hour, which was a bad sign. Only the real drunks drink through the supper hour. The barman glanced at me a couple times, inclined his head to the men over in the corner, and then made a face.

Tremont stopped once and turned to me. “This is a private meeting, sir. I ain’t tryin’ to be rude but I think it’d be best if you went somewhere else to do your drinking.”

The men, as one, snarled their approval.

“You don’t give the orders in my place,” the barman said.

“You be careful, Fred. We can always take our business elsewhere,” Tremont said. “And I mean permanent.”

I walked over to the men. “I have the authority to arrest every one of you. But I won’t if you’ll break
this meeting up and go home and sleep it off and meet me back here tomorrow morning.”

“You can’t arrest us,” one of the men said. “There’s too many of us. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“That’s probably true. But I could arrest some of you and then the rest of you would be charged with resisting arrest. Sooner or later you’d be in jail.” Several more joined the snarling. It was pretty incoherent. But it was the tone that mattered. They’d let Tremont work them up real nice. Pillaging and sacking would be on the agenda soon enough.

“You’re pushing these men into trouble, Tremont. Pretty soon they’ll all have guns in their hands and they’ll do something stupid. And that might include shooting somebody.”

“Like I said, this is a private meeting,” Tremont said.

“There’s a way to handle Flannery. This isn’t the right way. You’re drunk and mad and I can understand that. But you sure as hell don’t want to do something that you’ll be paying for the rest of your lives.” I looked around at the hard faces of hardworking men. “You’ve got families. Think of how they’d feel if Nordberg or I had to ride out and tell them that you’re in jail because things got out of hand. And that you’re facing prison sentences or maybe even worse. How’d that go over with your wife and kids?”

“He’s gonna take our farms!” a man bellered.

“I don’t know if that’s true and neither do you. But I’m going to ask Flannery about it. I’m going to tell him that he’s going to have a lot more trouble if
he goes back to foreclosing on his customers the way he has.”

“He lies, anyway,” Tremont said. “He’s tellin’ everybody that he’s got this other land west of here he’s gonna sell those Easterners. But that’s bullshit. They wouldn’t want that land. Takes damned near an acre to graze two cows. Our land’s what he wants. And he’s gonna go back to takin’ it. We ain’t recovered from that drought two years in a row. There’s no way we can pay off our farms.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” I said. “This meeting tomorrow—”

“We can’t meet tomorrow morning,” a man said. “We got to be to work early.”

“How about the meeting starts at seven right here?”

A couple men laughed. “You couldn’t get Fred out of bed at seven in the morning if you put a rattlesnake in his bed.”

I looked back at Fred. “Fred’s gonna lend me his keys. I’ll open the place up and we’ll meet here. One thing—nobody drinks liquor. The meeting’ll last an hour and then you can get back to your farms and ranches.”

“I still don’t see the point of this meeting,” Tremont said.

“We’re going to have a special guest. Flannery.”

“Flannery!” Tremont said. “No way you could get him here—especially at seven o’clock.”

“He’ll be here.”

One man said, “You gonna guarantee that?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna guarantee that. He’ll be here and we’re all gonna have a meeting. But I want a guaran
tee from you.” I scanned the faces again. “I want you to guarantee me that right after I leave here, you’ll all go home and get some food in your bellies and get to bed early so you can be at this meeting in pretty good shape.”

They were drunk but not so drunk that they could overlook their families. You get them a little sentimental and they’ll back off. My hope was to get them pushing their way through those batwings and on their way home. This wasn’t just Tremont. Mobs feed on themselves even if they don’t have a leader. Flannery I’d have to worry about later. But he was the best lever I’d been able to use.

“I’m going to help you out, mister,” Fred said. He brought up a sawed-off shotgun from behind the bar and said, “I’m closing in five minutes and I don’t want no arguments. And if you decide you never want to come back here, fine by me. I’ll find other customers. Don’t you worry about that.” He held his sawed-off tight to his body, ready to fire. “Five minutes. And the federal man here can stick around to watch you go.”

A pair of men picked up their coats, shrugged into them and started for the door that covered the batwings.

“You gonna shoot us if we don’t go, Fred?”

“I’m sure thinkin’ about it.”

“I don’t like you no more, Fred,” one man said.

“Well, I don’t like people who talk about lynchin’. Last town I live in, seems like they lynched couple men a month. Sometimes they didn’t have no idea whether he was innocent or guilty. They was just pissed so they had to hang somebody.”

Tremont said, “Glad you think so highly of us, Fred.”

“I did until tonight,” Fred said, “until you started talking crazy and all.”

They took ten minutes instead of five, the last of them did, anyway. Fred kept his sawed-off on them the whole time.

“Good riddance.”

“A few of them probably won’t come back.”

“I meant what I said. That place I was talkin’ about was lynch-happy. And hell, the sheriff there threw in with it. He never even tried to stop ’em.” He put the sawed-off down on the bar, lifted up a shot glass and poured himself a full one. “Back in the pioneer days when there wasn’t even a judge who rode circuit, sometimes I s’pose they didn’t have no choice but to lynch the real bad ones. But nowadays there’s no excuse. Got a judge, got a courthouse. No excuse at all.”

“No argument here. Thanks for your help.”