A Knife in the Heart

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  O’Connor reached the camp and looked down at the escapees. He shoved the shotgun into the scabbard, spit tobacco juice, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, before nodding at Fallon.

  “You do pretty good work alone, Warden.”

  Fallon cracked a knuckle. “I’ve had plenty of practice, Tim. And remember, the name’s Hank.”

  * * *

  It was approaching nine o’clock by the time Fallon opened the door into his new, if rented, home.

  “Papa!” Rachel Renee ran from the woodstove, leaving a toy giraffe on the top, and leaped into his arms. Fallon caught her, laughed, and let her rub her nose against him. Quickly, she jerked away.

  “Ohhhh, Papa . . . you stink . . . you smell . . . horrible.”

  He kissed her forehead and let her down. She turned toward Christina and pinched her nose. “Papa smells bad. Real bad.”

  Fallon closed the door and hung his hat on the rack. “It’s pretty late for a little princess to be awake,” he told her, not scolding, just making a fatherly observation.

  “Mama said I could stay up. To see you. To ask you how your first day on your new job was.”

  “It was”—Fallon slipped off his coat—“different. In some ways.” He grinned at Christina. “And . . . in many ways . . . just more of the same.”

  “Mama baked cookies,” Rachel Renee said. “I helped. Didn’t I, Mama?”

  Christina nodded. “You want some?” the girl called out, but not waiting for an answer, rushed toward the dining-room table. “They’re lemony,” she yelled from the other room.

  “Don’t eat them all,” Christina said pleasantly but sternly. She looked at Fallon. “Did you catch them?”

  “All three,” Fallon said. “In solitary for now. No injuries.”

  Her chin jutted toward Fallon’s right hand.

  “That’s just a scratch.”

  “I imagine I’ll read about it in the Post.”

  “I’ll tell you about it.”

  The girl ran back into the room, extending a cookie that had been nibbled on, but quickly slid to a stop, leaving the cookie held toward Fallon. She sniffed, pouted, and shook her head.

  “You really do stink, Papa.”

  Laughing, Christina stepped forward, took the half-eaten cookie from her daughter’s hand, and told her, “It’s bedtime, Little Princess. Off you go. Now. Say your prayers, and I’ll be in to tuck you in and wish you sweet dreams.”

  The girl yawned, blew Fallon a kiss, and raced to her room. “All right, Mama. Papa can come in, too, but maybe he can just wish me sweet dreams from the doorway. He smells . . . awful.”

  Fallon smiled. Christina stepped toward him, but then she also stopped.

  “My word,” she said. “You do reek.”

  “Yeah,” Fallon said. “It was a pretty long day.”

  She stepped back.

  “Pig farm,” he explained. “One of the prisoners . . . well . . . and then there were a few goes at . . . fisticuffs.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You could help me fill the tub,” Fallon said. “I’ll let you wash my back.”

  She shook her head. “We’re in a big city, darling. There’s a Turkish bath house. And an all-night tonsorial parlor with various soaps and tonics and one of those indoor showers. The Turkish place is open twenty-four hours, too. And that’s where you’re going, my loving husband, while I put Rachel Renee to sleep.” She turned, went into his daughter’s bedroom, and looked back at him.

  “I’m serious, my love. One of the bathhouses or maybe both of them. I’ll see you . . . later.”

  The door closed.

  Harry Fallon reached for his hat.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Fallon saw the young guard staring at him as the prisoners marched forward to resume construction duties. The guard had red hair, curly, underneath his guard’s cap, and what looked to be freckles. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty years old and didn’t look like most of the guards Fallon had know in and out of prisons. Not hardened like most of them. Eventually, the boy must have talked enough courage into himself, because the Adam’s apple bobbed and the young man began crossing the construction zone. The head lowered, but he kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other, until he stopped, looked up.

  Yep, Fallon was reassured, those were freckles. Green eyes, too. But now that the boy stood this close, Fallon began doubting if this kid had reached the age of twenty yet.

  “Warden Fallon,” the boy said.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I speak to you?”

  “That’s what you’re doing, son.” He extended his hand. “I’m Hank Fallon.”

  After the boy shifted his shotgun, they shook. Fallon wondered if the kid would introduce himself. He kept wetting his lips, trying to figure out how to speak.

  “And you are . . . ?” Fallon asked. Sure, it wasn’t polite in the West to ask a man’s name, but this was a federal pen, so politeness could be overlooked. Besides, the boy worked for Fallon, so he had a right to know his name.

  “Oh.” The kid blushed. “I’m Elliott Jefferson.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Elliott. How long have you been working here?”

  “Since they got the orders to build the new pen. They hired a lot of us then.”

  “I see. Like your job?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Well, Elliott, here’s a piece of advice for you. No criticism. Just advice. When you walk across the prison yard, keep your head up. Don’t look at your feet. Head up. Eyes open. You’re carrying a loaded shotgun, with a lever action, and any inmate doing hard time or facing execution would love to get his hands on that Winchester.”

  The mouth dropped, and Fallon thought Elliott Jefferson would drop the twelve-gauge, maybe even break down and bawl.

  Smiling, Fallon brought his hand up and squeezed the kid’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Elliott. I can tell from your reaction that’s one mistake you’ll never make again.”

  “I won’t, Warden. I promise.”

  Fallon nodded, and his grin widened. “How old are you, Elliott?”

  “Nineteen. I know that’s young but . . .”

  “Elliott.” Fallon kept his smile. “I wore a deputy U.S. marshal’s badge when I was younger than that. Age doesn’t matter. It’s the will.”

  The boy sighed and suddenly relaxed. “Thank you, sir.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Fallon kept his own eyes moving, from the boy, to the convicts, watching the guard details, seeing how they oversaw the construction. The buildings were taking shape. Mostly, he studied the inmates, those working, those resting, and those studying what the guards were doing.

  “I think you knew my father,” Elliott Jefferson said.

  Fallon stopped looking at the prisoners. That’s what guards were for, and since Big Tim O’Connor was on hand, Fallon figured the guards had everything well in hand. His eyes focused on the kid. So where had Fallon known the boy’s father? Joliet? Or . . . ?

  “He was a deputy marshal.”

  Fallon’s eyes remained open, but now he didn’t see young Elliott Jefferson. He remembered the blackness and the pain.

  * * *

  Groaning, Fallon felt hands on his shoulder, and felt his body being gently rolled over. The sunlight made his head hurt worse, and he tightened his eyelids shut, but saw orange, purple, red and yellow flashes. Then a coolness wet his lips, and his mouth opened. Water trickled in.

  Something soft, cold, and damp then touched the part of his forehead that hurt so much. It felt better.

  “Nice lump you got there, kid, but it’s just a big-arse knot, so you might not be able to fit a hat on your noggin for a spell, but you don’t require any stitches.”

  His eyes opened, finally, and some time later, he could see the thick, drooping red mustache and green eyes looking down at him. A battered black Stetson topped the head. The face was bronzed from the sun, stubbled with the beginnings of a mustac
he and beard.

  “What . . . happened?” Fallon managed to say.

  “I wasn’t here to witness it, kid, but if I was a detective or a newspaper editor, I’d say you got clubbed by Red-Eye Huston.”

  Fallon pressed his left hand against the rag on the headache. The eyes closed as he nodded his head, just a tad, then said, “Yeah.” Curiosity struck him, and he made himself look into the trail-worn face. “How’ d you know it was Red-Eye Huston?”

  The redheaded stranger’s eyes turned to the left. “Arrest warrant on the ground yonder,” the man said.

  “Red-Eye Huston don’t like getting arrested. Especially since Judge Parker told him if he showed up in his court one more time, he’d rue the day he ever set foot in the Cherokee Nation or the Fort Smith federal courthouse.”

  The canteen came up, the man muttered something, and Fallon drank a few more swallows.

  “Not too much. Don’t want you to get sick. Headache’s bad enough.”

  Fallon nodded. “It is.”

  “Don’t mean to pry, son, but I see from your badge that you’re out of Parker’s court, too. Where’s your jailer and the wagon?”

  Every posse sent out by the U.S. marshal in Fort Smith, Arkansas, went with a jailer and a prison wagon, which would be filled with prisoners as the deputy marshals made their arrests till they returned with a load of prisoners to be tried by Judge Isaac Parker. Fallon actually had started out driving a wagon himself, until his two bosses were murdered. When Fallon tracked down the killers himself, he was rewarded with a promotion. Right about now, Fallon wished he had just let the real lawmen go after those killers. Then he would have been feeding and guarding prisoners somewhere else. And his head wouldn’t feel like it had been run over by a KATY locomotive.

  “Over on the Verdigris.” Fallon made a feeble gesture toward the south.

  “You come after Huston alone?”

  Fallon started to nod, realized that movement was just tormenting him more, so he said, “Yeah. Clint Grisham went after Howie Grady.”

  “You drew the black bean.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “And just who are you?” the redheaded man asked.

  “Fallon. Harry Fallon.”

  The man sat back on his haunches. “You’re the Harry Fallon, the one everybody’s talking about in Fort Smith? The jailer who brought in those cutthroats?”

  Fallon tried to smile. “Same people who’ll be talking about me next week, the idiot Fallon, the dumb-arse kid who let himself get coldcocked by a whiskey runner. Judge Parker will likely ask for my badge, send me back home. Or arrest me.”

  The man chuckled. “Judge Parker and the U.S. solicitor and our chief marshal ain’t about to do no such thing, sonny. Marshals are scarce in this country. And you ain’t the first lawman to get belted by a whiskey runner.” He pointed at a mangled ear. “Jordan Two Horses gave me that.” His red head shook. “And I’d been lawing for two years when it happened, not just two months.”

  His hand lowered, and he lifted his plaid vest, high enough for Fallon to see the six-point star pinned to a torn pocket. Stamped into the tin in large black letters in the center of the star was the title:

  DEPUTY

  U. S.

  MARSHAL

  The big man extended his hand. “I was hoping to make your acquaintance long before now, Marshal Fallon. In Fort Smith, on Garrison Avenue, where I could buy you a beverage. Those lawmen you avenged, they were good friends of mine. I didn’t learn about what happened till after they were buried, being out in the Creek Nation looking for Huachuca Linton. Missed the funeral and everything.”

  They briefly shook. The movement made Fallon’s head throb even more.

  “You’re . . . the man . . . who killed Huachuca Linton?”

  “Well, he didn’t rightly give me much choice. I’d rather have seen him drop through the gallows with George Maledon’s rope around his neck. But, yeah, I am that man.”

  He smiled. “Name’s Jefferson. Edward James Robert Jefferson Junior. Deputy U.S. marshal. Same as you. Call me Eddie, though. Edward James Robert Jefferson Junior is a handful.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Fallon stared at young Elliott Jefferson. The kid had the hair and eyes, but Fallon, from what he remembered of Deputy Marshal Eddie Jefferson, figured young Elliott took after his mother.

  “I should have guessed.” He shook the kid’s hand again, firmer, and grinned. “Your father was a good man. One of the finest lawmen I ever met. Judge Parker, everybody in the court, and especially all the deputies, admired and respected him. No better man ever pinned on a tin star.”

  “Thank you.” The kid seemed to like the praise, but Fallon wasn’t feeding the boy a bunch of tripe. He meant every word. “I don’t remember that much about him. I wasn’t very old when . . .”

  When . . . Yeah. When Marshal Eddie Jefferson got gunned down. Killed in the line of duty. Murdered by some whiskey runner in the Choctaw Nation, not very long before Harry Fallon found himself in the Fort Smith dungeon, framed for a robbery, and about to begin what would turn out to be more than a decade behind the iron bars of prison.

  “How’s your mother?” Fallon made himself ask.

  “Oh. She’s all right. Got a letter from her two weeks ago.”

  “Still living in Fort Smith?”

  “No, no. She stuck it out two years, but . . .” He shook his head. “It was just too painful, I guess, for her. Staying there. Seeing all those lawmen every day. And one after another coming in draped over a saddle, or atop the prison wagon.”

  Fallon nodded somberly. “Yeah. We all saw that too many times.”

  “Well, she moved—took me and my big sister with her—back to her folks’ farm in Indiana. That’s where I grew up. But . . . I came back to Arkansas once my schooling was done. Tried to get a job riding for the U.S. marshals, but they weren’t hiring. So I drifted into Kansas. Everybody told me Leavenworth was booming. And when I read that they were hiring new guards for the new federal penitentiary, I interviewed. Got hired. It’s not the same as being a deputy . . .”

  “It’s just as important, Elliott. Maybe even more so.” The kid looked at him questioningly.

  “I know, son,” Fallon said. “I have plenty of experience in prisons.” His smile brightened. “More, actually, than I have riding as a federal deputy.”

  They looked at each other, and Fallon again studied the prisoners. At length he saw a couple that held his interest, and he did not know how long Elliott Jefferson had been talking to him.

  Fallon looked again at the redheaded kid.

  “What do you think, Warden? Does that sound all right? I mean, it’s not out of line for me to ask, is it?”

  Fallon tried to think of a way to cover his inexcusable actions of not listening to one of his guards.

  “Well . . .”

  “My wife, she cooks real fine, sir. Real fine. And we’d just love to have you . . . and your own wife . . . over.”

  Ah. Fallon nodded. The invitation to supper.

  “Well, that’s kind of you and your wife. We’d be honored.”

  “Seven o’clock, then?” The kid looked like he had managed to talk the Prince of Wales into dining with him. “Friday evening?”

  “I believe we have Friday evening free, but I’ll need to make sure my wife hasn’t made any plans. How about if I confirm with you tomorrow?”

  “That’d be dandy, sir.”

  “Good.” He shook his hand again.

  “You can bring your daughter, too, of course. My wife, Julie, she’ll insist on that.” He blushed. “We want to have a baby of our own. Right now, we just have a cat.”

  “There’s a bit of a difference,” Fallon said. For one, he thought, a man could not trust a cat. For another, cats made him sneeze. But, well, he could suffer for Deputy Marshal Eddie Jefferson’s memory. And Rachel Renee loved cats.

  “Maybe you can tell me some stories about my pa.”

  “I’d be honored. I’l
l just have to think of the good ones. Can we bring anything?”

  “ No.”

  “All right. I’ll let you know tomorrow. But, now, Elliott. Not to sound like a warden, but you probably should get back to your post. Before Captain O’Connor comes down on you like a wagonload of bricks.”

  The boy laughed, shook Fallon’s hand again, and took his lever-action shotgun back to his spot. He kept his head up, though, this time, and made himself take in everything, prisoners, guards, civilians watching the commotion, as he crossed the yard.

  “He’ll do,” Fallon told himself. “He’ll do fine. Just like his old man.” Yeah, Eddie would be proud.

  Fallon looked back, and then he walked toward the prisoners on their smoke break.

  * * *

  He would not have recognized Aaron Holderman, who had lost weight over the past few years, and with his head shaved, the beard gone. Still a brute, but a much smaller brute, and Fallon was used to seeing Holderman, the man who usually did all of Sean MacGregor’s dirty work for the American Detective Agency, in trail duds or a cheap suit that did not come close to fitting.

  Holderman crushed out a cigarette with the thick heels of his prison shoes and pushed himself to his feet.

  “Stripes look good on you, Aaron,” Fallon said, just to torment the oaf.

  “You may speak, prisoner,” Fallon told him, remembering the Auburn Prison System rule—Convicts are required to be silent at all times, unless given permission to speak. Aaron Holderman spoke his mind, briefly, clearly, concisely. His language had not been cleaned up after being sentenced to Leavenworth.

  The man sitting on the rock next to him laughed.

  Fallon looked down at the pathetic old man. “I do not recall giving you permission to speak.”

  Sean MacGregor, still a puny, pathetic man, frowned, but closed his mouth.

  Fallon looked at four other prisoners, all staring at him, and noticed a few guards moving closer.