‘I’m not surprised,’ said January, as he helped saddle up – stiffly, his grazed back aching from the rough-and-ready treatment his wound had been given. ‘Pollack’s dying. He may be beyond giving instructions by this time, and from what I hear, Rance couldn’t organize an expedition to the out-house. And though the men may know this country, they don’t know what they’re looking for. Let’s get ourselves away before one of them figures it out.’
On the ride to Witch Cave Canyon, January fell in beside Ortega, and confirmed what he had suspected: that the bodyguard had been summarily dismissed on the fifteenth of April, less than twenty-four hours after Silver Joe Fleam and his men, led by Rance Pollack – standing proxy for his incapacitated brother Gideon – broke into the new Record Office in Austin, loaded up the republic’s archives, and drove off with them into the night.
‘He said nothing to me of Madame Valentina,’ reported the bodyguard in his slow, deep rasp. ‘He had not the air of a jealous man. I asked him, what had I done, and he said that his aunt would have no Catholics in the household. He begged my pardon, señor, and gave me ten dollars above my pay.’
He relapsed into silence, lean body moving only with the motion of his horse, dark eyes scanning the prairie which they crossed. After a time January said, ‘I notice you didn’t leave the area.’
The snowy brows deepened above Ortega’s nose. ‘It stunk,’ he said. ‘Señor Taggart wasn’t the man to let that wittery hen woman make him do things, Catholic or not. He didn’t get rid of Juana, or Jalisco.’ He shook his head.
‘I knew the Madrecita, and the aunt, hated Madame for her faith. I knew the brother had his own schemes about the lost mine, and no more brain than my horse. I knew something was wrong.’
He continued slowly, bringing out the words as if language – any language – were some half-forgotten skill, like a childhood game barely remembered. Jalisco had said of him once that he would go for weeks without speaking to anyone but his horse. ‘Father Monastario told me, when he sent me to work for her – when she wedded this Taggart, and would come into town to be confessed – to watch over her, because her heart is pure. I didn’t think it was so,’ he admitted. ‘She is a woman, and you cannot trust them. Not the pretty ones, not the ugly ones, not the ones who are stupid and especially not the ones who are smart. But he spoke true. I would not see her harmed.’
He fell back then, his rifle propped ready on his thigh, and returned to watching the canyon rims as they entered the wooded shadows of Witch Cave Canyon, the men spreading out in a loose circle of scouts to warn of attack. The creek had gone down. The little herd of horses and mules made no trouble as the vaqueros drove them up the old, flooded road to the entrance of the disused tunnel. While the men dragged the wagons into the open, and harnessed the teams, January climbed and scrambled up to the high cave where he’d spent the night before last, and fished out the elements which would, he hoped, prove – or at least corroborate – his story.
Gervase Hookwire’s satchel of inks, pens, and parchment.
Vin Taggart’s bloodstained shirt and trousers.
Gideon Pollack’s letters to Alicia Marryat.
Would any of them prove anything? He didn’t know. And his own testimony would not be admitted in a Texas court. Nor would that of Noah, or Enoch, or any slave in the household. Quite possibly neither Jalisco or Ortega as well.
But we can only, he thought as he roped canvas over the boxes of government records, deeds, property specifications, do what we can do.
The originals of the San Saba and Valenzuela deeds he kept in his satchel.
They reached Austin shortly after dark, and drew up before the single-story clapboard house that sheltered the sheriff’s office and the jail. Quigley was on the porch to meet them.
‘Well, well.’ He folded his shirtsleeved arms. ‘And what do we have here?’
‘The National Archives,’ said January, ‘of the Republic of Texas. Stolen from up the street –’ he nodded along Congress Avenue – ‘a week ago Tuesday night, by a fellow named Silver Joe Fleam, assisted – I’m pretty sure, but can’t prove it – by Rance Pollack. They were supposedly headed for Houston, but Fleam shook Rance off somehow – it couldn’t have been hard – and cached the wagons in the old Bruja mine on Vin Taggart’s property, on promise of payment of a thousand dollars in gold from Taggart, something else I can’t prove. Not,’ he added, carefully keeping his voice neutral, ‘that my testimony would be acceptable in court. I believe that theft was the reason that Taggart was killed.’
‘So Pollack could steal them back?’ The sheriff considered the wagons thoughtfully by the light of the lantern on the porch.
January nodded. ‘So Pollack could search the house, which is where I think he thought they were. At least, that’s where his men were searching the moment everyone was cleared out of the place Thursday night.’
‘Sounds like there’s a lot of speculation and surmise in the story you’re about to tell me.’ Quigley stepped down from the porch, put a foot on the spoke of the near back wheel of the wagon that January drove and hoisted himself up to look under the canvas. ‘But John Watrous – that’s the attorney general – and the land office recorders, will be happy to see this, whatever the story really is. And if your men will be so good as to stand guard for another half-hour, I’ll send to him to have these returned to the General Records Office. And I’ll send a man over to the Eberly House,’ he added, as January climbed stiffly down from the wagon-seat, ‘to fetch your master.’
‘Eberly House?’
‘That’s where he went for dinner,’ said the sheriff, climbing to peek under the covers of the other wagons. ‘After the arraignment this morning, where that friend of his testified to bein’ with him all Thursday mornin’ when Miss Marryat was strangled.’ He raised an eyebrow at January, pale eyes observing him sharply.
In a voice of pleased surprise, January exclaimed, ‘M’am Passmore? Michie Taggart’s – uh – lady-friend?’
It was a bow drawn at a venture, and he fought not to sigh with relief when Quigley’s shoulders relaxed just slightly. ‘That’s the one.’
January wondered how long it had taken the lady to walk back to Austin after he’d stolen her stolen horse. Or had she just helped herself to another from the unguarded corrals? ‘I wasn’t sure if she’d speak up for him, sir – or even if she was still in town.’ He reminded himself that as far as anyone on Rancho Perdition knew, the woman who’d been at the hacienda Thursday morning was a Turkish lady who spoke nothing but pig-Latin. Had part of that twenty-four-hour delay been to rinse the flour out of her hair?
‘She’s in town.’ The sheriff returned to the porch, shaking his head. ‘Gonna be a hell of a job inventoryin’, that’s all I got to say. And M’am Valentina will be at the Capital City Hotel, havin’ supper with Doc Meredith, since she couldn’t very well join your Mr Sefton’s party. Her mother-in-law’s at the Capital City as well, an’ that cold little weasel Francis. I will say,’ Quigley went on, leading the way into the shabby and smoke-smelling office, ‘the both of ’em was damn shook up by Miss Marryat’s death. The boy looked sick as a dog, even before he finally admitted he hadn’t seen M’am Valentina anywhere’s near the hacienda last Monday mornin’. You want some coffee?’
‘I would, yes, thank you, sir.’ January sat in the ladderback kitchen chair the lawman gestured him to. ‘And I realize it’s a terrible imposition, sir, and probably tampering with evidence, but – Jalisco and the men have worked since sun-up, retrieving those wagons and guarding them into town. Every penny I possessed – which includes the money that was in Michie Sefton’s saddlebags – was taken from me last night by the Pollacks.’
He opened the saddlebag he carried, and held it so that Quigley could look inside. ‘These four gold pieces were in here when I found the bag,’ he said. ‘They’re part of the story of the archives and what became of them – and, I think, of what happened to Michie Taggart. May I have your permission to give one o
f them to Jalisco so the men can at least get some supper?’
‘I can’t allow that.’ Quigley opened a drawer of his desk, looked inside, frowned, and dug into his trouser pocket. From it he took four US silver dollars, and from the desk drawer, five more. In his entire sojourn in Texas January had never seen the slightest evidence that the republic coined money, nor that any Texan accepted the republic’s printed red scrip unless he or she absolutely had to. ‘I’ll take your master’s IOU for that,’ the sheriff said. ‘And I take it you’re going to tell me who really shot Vin Taggart?’
‘I am, sir.’ And he handed him the packet of Pollack’s love letters.
‘I think the whole thing started,’ he said, as he sat down again in the sheriff’s office with the lamplight falling in a dim golden pool around the desk, ‘last October, when President Lamar moved the capital from Houston to Austin. I gather there was an uproar over it—’
‘’Bout the degree of uproar as when Joshua showed up outside the walls of Jericho with his marchin’ band,’ agreed Quigley comfortably. ‘But with newspapers thrown in.’
‘And I gather Gideon Pollack decided he was going to do something about it.’
‘Well, at one point he was writin’ letters to the Texas Register callin’ on all right-thinkin’ men to burn Austin to the ground.’ The sheriff lit a cigar, and offered one to January. This was illegal in New Orleans, and January wondered if that went for Texas as well, but accepted. ‘Week after that he wrote there was a Mexican army marchin’ north to invade the new capital – which was pretty much all hogwash. The Rangers rode out an’ couldn’t find so much as a hoof-track, anyways. So I ain’t surprised he thought of liftin’ the archives – lock, stock, an’ barrel – an’ takin’ ’em back to Houston – if that’s what he intended to do with ’em.
‘I will say for Sam Houston –’ the sheriff poured out a tin cup of coffee and pushed it across the desk to January – ‘that he’d probably have ordered ’em back. Or at least would have promised to send ’em back, though he might not have got around to it in any tearin’ hurry. So where’d Taggart come into it? It was long about October,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that Taggart switched over from callin’ Pollack a skunk an’ a traitor, to shakin’ hands with him after church.’
‘It was,’ agreed January.
‘I always wondered what Taggart was up to. He was smart. He musta got wind of Pollack’s plan somehow. Between readin’ law an speculatin’ in town he always had his ear to the ground for rumors, an’ odd bits of news. An’ he hated Pollack. Many times he said to me, that those that wanted to hook Texas onto the United States were cowards and fools, screwin’ up the finest chance they’d ever have to found a republic the right way, based on sound economics rather than a bunch of Northern preachers singin’ hymns through their noses. Then all of a sudden he’s lettin’ Pollack run his sheep on Perdition land, an’ invitin’ him to dinner.’ The sheriff turned the packet of letters over in his hands, then untied the ribbons that bound them. ‘Like my mama always said, somethin’ about that didn’t listen right to her.’
‘That’s what my mama says, too.’
Quigley glanced over the first of the letters, then the last, face expressionless as a poker-player’s behind a drift of smoke. ‘Where’d you find these, Ben?’
‘Hidden with Miss Marryat’s cache of money, under the steps of the backstairs.’
The sheriff made a growling noise in his throat. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised. Taggart told me … Well, one night when he was drunk he said he’d done Miss Marryat a wrong, back in the days when they were both in their teens. Said his older brother had pushed him into doin’ what he knew was wrong, and he’d always felt responsible for his aunt turnin’ a little crazy. This was years ago, before he ever thought she’d be livin’ under the same roof again. So it must have been easy, for Pollack to turn her against him, ’specially if she thought—’
Here he glanced at one of the notes, with a wry twist to his mouth.
‘’Specially if she thought he was going to divorce his wife and marry her. It’s all she ever wanted,’ he added. ‘To get away.’
Like Selina, thought January. Like Valentina.
‘I think,’ he said after a silence, ‘that round about last October, Taggart did indeed hear somehow that Pollack planned to lift the archives, and had hired a man named Silver Joe Fleam to put together ten men from outside of the area – men who wouldn’t blab to anybody in Austin – to do the job. Now, it just so happened that Taggart had been wanting to have a few days in private with the archives himself.’
He saw in the sudden widening of Quigley’s eyes that the reason for this wasn’t a new thought to him, either.
‘He knew Texas land is going to increase in value,’ continued January, ‘the minute the republic gets on its feet – or gets into the Union. Since the banks crashed in ’thirty-seven, you can’t buy land in Alabama and Mississippi the way you used to. But England’s still screaming for cotton. And you can still get land on credit in Texas. Lamar’s whole program of exterminating every Indian tribe he can get in his sights is about making investors and buyers in the United States feel safe enough to settle here.’
‘An’ Taggart knew –’ Quigley jabbed a finger at him excitedly – ‘that when land prices went up, there’d be speculators lookin’ into the San Saba land grant that he bought his land from. Maybe lookin’ into his wife’s land as well. That San Saba grant’s already been called in question by a feller in Houston. Pollack himself got two labor an’ about three leagues by callin’ in lawyers on a man who thought he was buyin’ all rights to the San Marcos grant over on Sunday Creek near San Antonio. Damn!’ he cried, enlightened, as the truth broke over him like surf on the shore.
‘Damn indeed, sir,’ January agreed. ‘That was no accident, back in the lobby of the Capital City Hotel after the duel. Taggart must have been waiting for days, for the right moment to lose his temper and put his men in a cordon around his land.’
‘I thought it wasn’t like him,’ remarked the sheriff. ‘Or at least, I’d like to think I’d have thought so, if I didn’t have about ten of Pollack’s men jumpin’ down my throat. Even when he was drunk, Vin always knew what he was doin’.’
‘Pollack and his brother met with Silver Joe Saturday night – the eleventh – and paid him half the money for the job. But long before that, Taggart promised Silver Joe a thousand dollars in gold if they’d divert the archives, when they got hold of them, to the old Bruja Mine on Perdition land. While he was collecting the gold – and it took him several months to do it – he sent for a professional forger from New Orleans, a man named Gervase Hookwire. I know this because Hookwire was on the Rosabel that brought Mr Sefton and myself to Houston from Galveston on the eighth. Mr Sefton knew him slightly. And Mr Sefton identified him Wednesday morning, when we found his body in a cave up Witch Cave Canyon, staked out naked and cut up pretty bad. He’d been dead about four days. I helped bury him.’
‘Wednesday?’ Quigley’s mouth hardened for a moment. January could see him counting back days. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Fairly sure. The body’d gone limp again – completely – and the maggots in the wounds were not only big and fat, but some of them had had time to turn into pupae. My sister’s protector back in New Orleans,’ he added, a little apologetically, interpreting Quigley’s frown, ‘collects insects – he told me all about this.’ He knew this would sit better with a white Texas sheriff than, I went to medical school in Paris and I’m not really a slave at all …
‘Then he was killed – what? – Sunday or Monday. And if Taggart had put guards all around his land on the twelfth …’
‘The archives were stolen – twice – on the night of the fourteenth. Hookwire’s throat was cut before his body was cut up. The other wounds had hardly bled at all, and the stakes that held his wrists and ankles hadn’t been so much as tugged on. They’d never have held a man being tortured.’
The sheriff drew breath
to speak, then sat back again, the glow of his cigar like a demon eye in the semi-dark.
‘Michie Sefton and I went back Thursday morning,’ continued January, ‘and had a look at the other caves along the canyon. We found this.’ He opened Hookwire’s saddlebag again, and brought out its contents: parchments, inks, pigments, all varieties of pens. Four ten-dollar gold pieces.
Quigley studied the kit, and remarked, ‘I will be dipped in shit.’
‘I hope not, sir.’ From his other saddlebag, January took Taggart’s bloodstained shirt and trousers, and the forged deeds and conveyancing papers pertaining to the original Perdition lands, before Taggart had tripled his holdings by marrying the niece of Don Gael Valenzuela.
‘As for who killed Hookwire,’ he went on quietly, ‘I found these stuffed in the back of the top shelf of the armoire in Taggart’s room.’
The sheriff turned them over in his hands: first the land office papers, confirming beyond all shadow of doubt Taggart’s ownership of the Perdition lands. Then the shirt and trousers, matching up with the eye of long practice what it meant, that some of the bloodstains marked the sleeves, and others, the back of the shirt, and the back of the trousers, where a carried body would leak from a cut throat.
With no doubt whatsoever in his voice, he said, ‘Taggart was gonna swap ’em in.’
‘I think so, yes, sir.’
‘An’ he wanted to shut this Hookwire’s mouth for him, an’ blame the Comanche, if anybody found the body.’
January nodded. ‘That’s how it looked to me, sir.’ The forgeries pertaining to the Valenzuela lands, the lands Valentina had brought to her husband, he had left where Taggart had put them in the archive wagons. The originals were now stowed behind some rocks in the Bruja mine. At a guess, absent a will – and he knew Francis Taggart’s opportunistic efforts in that direction would not stand up in court – Taggart’s original purchase from the San Saba grant would almost certainly be awarded to his family, while Valentina would keep the Valenzuela lands that had originally been her uncle’s. He knew Quigley would never accept the story of a planned forgery unless some forged documents were presented, and while the wagons were being loaded and hitched, had replaced the original Perdition purchase forgeries with their originals.
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