Powder Keg (15 page)

T
wo minutes later I found myself standing in my long johns with my .44 in the face of a tiny gray-haired woman of hunched back and spidery fingers. She had an intensely sweet face, so sweet in fact that I felt stupid holding my gun on her.

“Is that loaded, young man?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Well, you’re not going to shoot me, are you?”

“No, I guess not.”

“I know this is late.”

“Gosh, I guess I hadn’t noticed that. Couldn’t be any later than one, two o’clock in the morning.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

She huddled inside her long draped black coat. The red wool scarf lent her face a touch of vivid color.

“I need to know who you are.”

“Mrs. Ralston.”

She sounded as if I should have known who that was. I had no idea.

“Tim Ralston. He owns the livery?”

“Oh, I see.”

But I didn’t. What the hell was the wife of the livery owner doing at my door that time of morning?

“He would’ve come himself but he’s scared. He needs to talk to you. It’s important.”

“Did he tell you what it’s about?”

“He said he just needed to talk to you and it was important. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. That’s the way he is. He knows all these things about people in town but he won’t trust me with anything. He told me somethin’ once and I kind’ve gossiped about it with my friends and it got all over town and he blamed me. The person it was about, he had to move out of town, it got so bad. So Tim won’t tell me anything ever since that time.”

“So he wants me to come out there now?”

She nodded. “He’s scared. Whatever it is, he just wants to get it off his chest. He said you was in and askin’ him questions and that he told you a lie and that he’s sorry he done that.”

A lie.

I’d asked him about two people, Tremont and Long, whose son Flannery had fired after the robbery. I wondered which one he’d been lying about.

“Dress warm,” she said. “It ain’t far but it’s mighty cold.”

She waited in the hall while I dressed. Tremont or Long. I still wanted it to be Flannery. No family had the right to “own” a town the way they did that one. It was like the mining towns where the company owned all the stores and the houses the miners lived in. I didn’t see much difference between that sort of situation and the socialism that was finding so much support in the workingman ranks.

I dressed warm the way she told me to.

T
he Ralston house was a long, narrow adobe structure that sat on the side of a hill and was surrounded by oak trees. A lamp burned in the front window, sitting on a table and shining in the night like an icon.

When we reached the front door, Mrs. Ralston said, “It shouldn’t be open.”

But it was, not by much, maybe half an inch. The wind had died down so the door stood still.

I drew my gun. “Let me go in first.”

“Oh, Lord, I hope he’s all right.”

“Wait here, Mrs. Ralston. I’ll be right back.”

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York couldn’t have had many more paintings of Jesus than this one did. Or much more palm from Palm Sunday. Or Bibles and prayer books lying around. I was a fallen-away Catholic but all this was familiar to me. My folks hadn’t ever become fanatical about their religion but whenever I had to stay with my Uncle Norm and Aunt Bess, this was the environment that damned near suffocated me. My Aunt Bess knew the names of
every saint in the Book of Saints. She also knew what ailment/catastrophe/dilemma was confronting you. Sneeze and she’d tell you the name of the saint who protected sneezers; open a window and she’d tell you the name of the patron saint of windows; curse and she’d tell you the name of a saint who’d gotten his tongue cut out because he wouldn’t deny his religion. That particular one was supposed to be a moral lesson for me. Here was this saint who willingly let them cleave his tongue with a knife—and here I was, tongue intact, taking the Lord’s name in vain.

The whole house was churchlike. Rosaries or palm were draped over every framed painting of Jesus and in the bedroom alone I counted three Bibles.

The only thing that interested me was the note that had been left on the table where they ate their meals.

I called out Mrs. Ralston’s name. She came inside breathing hard, wound tight from the mystery of the situation.

I handed her the note.

“Oh, good Lord,” she said, crossing herself. “He must be in some kind of trouble. Maybe whatever he was going to talk to you about. Do you think somebody came here and took him away?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t be sure. But look around. The place isn’t messed up. And I happened to notice that there weren’t any footprints in the snow when we came up here. Is there a back door?”

She nodded. Led me to a large enclosure that
served as a washroom and a pantry. A door was at its end.

I opened the door, looked out. “Hold your foot up, would you?”

I got a good impression of the size of it and then stepped out on the small stoop. In the moonlight I could see two sets of footprints. One of them was hers. And one of them had to be her husband’s. Had to be because there were no other prints to see.

“Doesn’t look like anybody took him away.”

“He was nervous about talking to you, that was for sure.”

“Any idea where he might have gone?”

For the first time her small, elderly face showed cunning. She was one of those virtuous people who couldn’t lie well.

“Nearly anywhere. He knows a lot of places he could go.”

“You sure about that?” I forced her to meet my eyes.

She gulped before she lied. “Yeah. Like I said, he knows a lot of places.”

I knew she wasn’t going to help me. She’d caught her husband’s fear.

“Well, maybe you can give him a message for me. A lot of people are awfully upset right now. There was some ugly talk yesterday, and it’ll only get worse if he doesn’t agree to meet with the townfolk. I’ve set something up for tomorrow morning. You know where I’m staying. He should meet me at sunup. He can find me in my room or having breakfast at the Star Café.”

“They have good flapjacks, don’t they? That’s our
treat. Every once in a while we go to the Star and have flapjacks. They’ve got that maple syrup there. That’s what my husband likes. That maple syrup.”

She was babbling. I got her out of her misery. “Well, I need to be going now. Still got a few hours sleep before dawn.”

“I’m sorry I had to wake you up—and for nothing, it turned out.”

“That’s all right. Just remember to tell him where he can find me.”

She followed me through the house to the front door.

“I’ll be sure to tell him soon as I see him.”

I opened the door on a freezing winter night. Even though the wind was down, the cold cut through me.

When I had been out on the back stoop, I had taken notice of where the footsteps led. There was a barn down the street from them. When I left the house I walked the length of what looked to be their property. The footsteps came all the way to the street. They were lost briefly on the narrow road, then they picked up again in the snow leading to the barn.

I figured he was probably up in the haymow watching me. I had to make it look good. I walked down the street. The barn was the property of McGraw’s Seed Company. That’s what the sign said anyway.

I walked past the barn, far enough that he would have given up watching me. I was pretty sure he assumed I had just kept going straight back to my hotel, which was only about three blocks away.

But I tramped over to the railroad tracks and walked on ties all the way back to the barn. I came
down into a gully where I sank into snow that was up to my hips.

He made it easy for me.

He’d left the back door half open so I could slip inside without making any noise. And as I stood in the deep cold shadows of the ground floor, he did me the favor of coming down the ladder from the mow.

The one problem I had was fighting my allergies. The interior of the place was three-quarters filled with bags of seed. My eyes started to run and my sinuses reared up with one of those sneezes that could knock a wall down.

But somehow I managed to fight the sneeze back down.

I pulled out my .44 and walked over to the ladder just as his left foot touched the ground.

“Need to talk to you, Tim.”

He screamed. He fell back into the ladder, nearly knocking it down, putting a hand over his heart.

“Shit, you scared the hell out of me.”

This time when the sneeze came up I let it go full blast. I thought the damned barn was going to collapse all around us, the way that sneeze exploded on dark air.

“Sinuses?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“The missus can’t even come in this place without she’s plugged up for three, four days afterward. She’s tried every kind of patent medicine she can find.”

“None of them work.” I sneezed again.

“You’re just as bad as the missus.”

“How about we go back to your house and have some coffee?”

“I’m not going to tell you nothing.”

“We’ll see.”

“No, we won’t see. You’re a federal man. You get to ride out of here when it’s all over. Me, I got to live here. I’ve had that livery business for going on twenty years. I’m too old to move and too old to start any other kind of business. Plus, I love horses. I couldn’t work in no store or nothing. I’d miss the horses too much.”

“A lot of people have died. I need to find out what’s going on. Now let’s go back to your place. It’s cold as hell in here.”

“I tell you, it won’t do you no good. I thought about it and I just can’t afford to get involved.”

“You know who killed Mike Chaney and the two federal men.”

“I don’t know any such thing and if the missus said otherwise, she’s wrong. All I know is the names of a couple people I forgot to mention to you. That don’t mean they had anything to do with the killing. And if I sic you on them, they’ll know who told you—and then they’ll shun me. That’s how they do it in this town. They shun you and they force you out. I’m too old for that. And, anyways, like I said, I’m sure they didn’t have nothin’ to do with the killing, anyway.”

I sneezed again. Son of a bitch. Freezing my balls off and sneezing.

“So there ain’t no need for you to come back to the house. I was stupid to have the missus go get you and I sincerely apologize for that, mister. But I changed my mind and no matter what you say to me or do to me, I ain’t changin’ it back.”

Another sneeze.

All this—missing sleep, freezing, a sinus explosion—for not one damned scrap of information.

And I knew he was the kind of old boy who would do just what he said. He wasn’t going to tell me anything.

About every thirty feet, all the way back to my hotel, I sneezed.

I
n the morning, the temperature soared to twenty-three degrees above zero. Given the way we’d talked about pancakes, all I could think of when I was washing up and shaving was the café’s famous flapjacks.

The lobby was busier than usual at six-thirty in the morning. Three or four groups of men stood talking with great urgency. I wondered what the hell could be so important. But even more, I wondered how many flapjacks I was going to order. It would probably be embarrassing to order sixteen of them.

There were knots of people up and down the main street talking with the same kind of urgency as the men in the hotel lobby. Something was going on. I would need to fortify myself with flapjacks before I could hear the news.

The café was elbow-to-belly with people. A thundercloud of tobacco smoke hung at about shoulder level. The women who ran the place looked frantic. The men standing up were waiting for the sitters oc
cupying the counter stools and the tables to de-occupy them.

I didn’t give a damn about sitting down. I managed to snag a serving woman and told her that I’d take a stack of six and eat them standing up.

“Really?” she asked, shouting above all the other shouts.

“Really. I’m hungry.”

She glanced around and then turned back to me. “You c’mon back with me, if you’re that hungry.” She leaned closer so that nobody else would hear. I could barely hear. “You can eat in the kitchen.”

Walking into the kitchen, which was the size of a large closet, was similar to walking into a steam bath with all your clothes on. “We don’t use this stove back here unless it’s an emergency—like this morning.” She wiped her brow with the back of a pink hand. “Fred, you fix him up with six flapjacks, all right?”

Despite the cold outside, the man standing over the stove with a huge griddle sitting on top of it wore only an undershirt. It was that hot back there. Too hot.

“Tell you what, how about I stand out back and have a cigarette?”

He didn’t even look at me. He was busy flipping flapjacks. “Don’t make no never mind to me.”

“Then I’ll come back for my flapjacks.”

I went out the back door. I was so hot from the café kitchen that I didn’t feel the cold for a couple minutes. The day was one of sunlight and pure white hills of snow. I got a cigarette going and just studied
the landscape, the nearby field that stretched into the foothills.

From my right came two men tramping through knee-high snow. They were walking over from the rear door of the wagon works down the block.

As they got near enough to hear, one said to the other, “Oh, he was behind it all right. Man don’t kill himself if he’s innocent.”

They came up to the back door, nodding when they saw me.

I said, “What’s all the commotion this morning?”

One was a stocky dark-haired man, the other a stocky bald man with sandy-colored fringes over both ears. Neither wore coats, just work shirts with long johns showing under their shirt cuffs.

“You that federal man?” the bald one asked.

“I am.”

“Yeah. Thought so. My little boy’s teacher was explaining at school the other day what a federal man does. Now my boy says he wants to be a federal man.”

“That’s better than mine,” the dark-haired man laughed. “He wants to be a bank robber.”

His friend smiled. “I’d sure keep an eye on him.”

“So what’s all the hubbub about?”

“Surprised you haven’t heard by now. You know Flannery, the banker?” the bald one asked.

“Sure.”

“Blew his brains out last night,” the dark-haired one said. “But the way I hear it they didn’t find him till about an hour ago.”

I jammed my hand into my pocket for some coins. “Would you pay my bill for me? I need to get out to
Flannery’s place.” I handed the bald one the money. “I appreciate this.”

The dark-haired one said, “Glad to help, mister.”

Suddenly I’d lost my appetite. Not even those locally famous flapjacks sounded good anymore. I’d planned on a meeting with Flannery that morning, but I’d expected him to be alive for it.