The Lincoln Hunters

by Wilson Tucker

  “That’s twice we’ve neglected the most obvious place. Go bail him out. Trot, son!”

  “Karl, I must have rocks in my head.”

  “Time enough to examine your head later. Get that cretin out of jail and come home.” Dobbs turned the man around and shoved him on his way. “I’ll tell Whittle the same scare-story, but you bring in the happy ending.”

  Steward obediently trotted away on sore feet, slandering himself for having forgotten the jail.

  Karl Dobbs picked his leisurely way across the night-clad prairie to the waiting machine. He knew a distinct sense of relief, and it pleased him to be able to bring a similar relief to Evelyn Kung.

  13

  THE LAUGHTER OF RAMSES

  THE TOWN JAIL consisted of two small rooms, housed in an equally small building of insecure appearance.

  The outer room served as a booking office and lounging place, masquerading under the euphemism of police headquarters. It contained a quaintly old-fashioned high-back desk pushed against the wall, a battle-scarred but solid chair tilted against the desk, a rack containing two shotguns on another wall, and a long bench covered with a dirty blanket. A smoky kerosene lamp clung to the ceiling.

  The jail keeper was sitting on the bench, still drowsy with sleep.

  He picked at the edge of the soiled blanket, trying to gather his wits about him.

  An iron grillwork separated the first room from the second. Its primary function seemed to be a divisionary line, to enable citizens to know at a glance which were the keepers and which were the prisoners. The solitary man snoring in the cell was a stranger.

  “What did the feller look like?” the jailer asked.

  Steward struggled to conceal his exasperation.

  “Thin,” he explained patiently. “So thin, you’d think he was starving. His elbows stick out and his knees are knobby. About five feet, ten inches tall. Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds. Sallow skin, hollow cheeks and brown eyes. Long black hair—he needed a haircut. And a long, sharp nose. It gets in the way when he tries to kiss a girl.”

  “What?” the startled jailer questioned.

  “A big nose. He was wearing a dark grey coat and black trousers. Black boots—like mine. White shirt, no tie.”

  “You say he runs around kissing women?”

  “No.”

  “We ain’t had no kissing-Johns in here lately.” The jailer ran his fingers through unkempt hair. “There’s been a peck of trouble in town tonight. That there convention, you know.”

  “I know,” Steward said. “Have you seen him?”

  “Seen who?”

  “The man I am describing. My friend. He’s missing.”

  “Well, I can’t rightly say. There’s been a dozen fellers in and out since noontime. What did you say his name was again?”

  “Bobby Bloch.”

  The jailer got up off the bench, stretched and yawned, and then padded over to the rolltop desk. He moved the chair out of his way and opened a large, dog-eared daybook which in other times would be called a police blotter. Diffidently, the sleepy turnkey pushed his finger along a row of names. He was exasperatingly slow.

  “Nope, mister, don’t see no Bloch here. We got a Sullivan and a Hindenburg and two John Smiths and a Rosencrantz—and a whole mess of others—but nope, no Bloch.” He glanced over his shoulder at Steward and grinned slyly. “Them two John Smiths ain’t really John Smith. I knowed them both. They just don’t want their wives to find out.”

  “Bully for them,” the Character snapped. “Perhaps my friend didn’t use his right name—perhaps he didn’t want me to find out. Concentrate on the description. Now, are you sure?”

  The warder did his best to concentrate, which wasn’t much of an effort in his drowsy condition.

  “I just don’t recollect the feller, no I don’t.” And then he added helpfully, “But if I see him, I’ll hold him for you.”

  “Oh, thanks. How many drunks have been in here tonight?”

  “Mister, they all were; it’s that big convention.” The turnkey pondered a moment and then jerked his thumb toward the occupied cell. “ ’Cept that feller back there. He got caught picking pockets. Of course, he was drinking some too, but he ain’t in for that. Another feller turned him in because this feller lifted his valuables. They got to drinking together, you know, and the other feller found out this feller was the thief.”

  “I didn’t know. Was the victim locked up as well?” Steward asked sarcastically. The nuance was lost on the jailer.

  “You mean the feller what had his pockets picked? Why, sure. They was both drinking, and the other feller got to raising a fuss, so I locked them both up. But naturally, when the other feller sobered up and paid his fine, he got out.”

  “Naturally,” Steward echoed. He could easily guess who pocketed the fines. The political convention must have proven a windfall for the police department as well as the town merchants. Steward buttoned his coat and moved despondently toward the door. An ancient epigram came to mind. “The oldest sins in the newest kinds of ways.”

  “What’s that, now?”

  “Just talking to myself,” the Character shrugged. “I’ve got a long, hard trip ahead of me.”

  “No, I mean, what’s that you said? Are you an actor too? It sounded like what the other feller said.”

  Benjamin Steward turned sharply.

  “What other fellow?”

  “My gosh, the one I been telling you about. The Hamlet man.”

  “ ’Sdeath! He is the man I’m looking for! He is Bobby Bloch.”

  “Nope, t’ain’t so. His name was Julius Rosencrantz.” The jailer searched his pockets and then proudly displayed a scrap of paper. “He gave me his autograph. He’s an actor from Cleveland.”

  Steward almost shouted. “He is the man I want! Where is he?”

  “Gone, I said. He up and paid his fine, and he’s gone.” The man revealed his confusion. “You sure his name ain’t Rosencrantz? I got his autograph right here.”

  “His name is Bobby Bloch. Bloch is a Shakespearean actor from Cleveland. Perhaps Rosencrantz is a stage name.”

  The warder stared at his slip of paper.

  “Well, he’s the Hamlet man all right. He spouted Hamlet all the time he was locked up, ’cept when he was sleeping. I had to keep shushing him. He felt kinda mad about this other feller taking his valuables, and he got to hollering out the winder back there. I kept telling him to shush, but he didn’t. When somebody’d come along the street, Mr. Rosencrantz would put his face up to the winder and holler at them. He’d holler, Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens! Well now, folks don’t take kindly to that.”

  “Where did he go?” Steward asked urgently. “Which direction? Did he say where he was going?”

  “I don’t recollect that he did. Nope. He just paid his fine, and give me this autograph, and walked out. He said I keep a good jail. Naturally, when I found out he was a famous actor, I told him I was sorry about it all, but he said never to mind. He said he wouldn’t a’ given it for a wilderness of monkeys. That’s good, ain’t it?”

  “That’s ever so clever.” Steward wanted to throttle the jailer. “Which way?”

  “Over yonder, toward the courthouse.”

  Steward whirled and bolted for the door, to leave it yawning behind him. The turnkey shuffled across the room to close it.

  “Them actors is sure a crazy lot.”

  The courthouse lawn was littered with discarded paper, spent torches and stubborn—or supine-humans. Men were gathered in small clumps, quietly discussing or loudly arguing speeches, issues and politics. An astonishing number of them were claiming to have been members of the Lincoln audience. Other men lounged on comparatively clean places on the grass, similarly engaged in debate. And a very few men, unable to navigate, were peacefully sleeping it off.

  Steward knew the actor was not among those groups discussing politics—because no one of them was tall and thin and demanding attention in a loud voice—and so p
assed them by. Instead, he examined each of the sleepers, hoping to find his quarry stretched out for the night. And then with growing despair he turned again to the saloons and other business houses near the square; a number of them were still lighted and doing a dwindling business. A hasty glance at his watch warned him that he lacked the time for another thorough search, and must content himself with the nearer places.

  Quickening his pace despite the gnawing pain in his feet and ankles, Steward hurried through the taverns. He entered each one, to briefly scan the interior and march the length of the barroom; he took the time to step out the back door—or to whatever other accommodations for relief were offered—and glance around. The one familiar face was never there. Reversing himself, Steward would then hurry across the long room a second time and make his exit. The questioning stares of barmen were ignored. And the routine would be repeated at the next establishment.

  He looked in the restaurants, tried again to enter the gaming hail, revisited the primitive game houses, passed the darkened theater, nodded at the late-working printer, and ran through the alleys. The medicine show had shut up shop.

  The hunt went on and on monotonously, interminably. A creeping, hopeless exhaustion overtook the hunter. His feet were numb with pain.

  Steward realized the end was near.

  When an irritable and sleepy bartender slammed the doors in his face and announced a final closing hour, Steward quit. He was licked.

  The bartender’s symbolic act forcibly called to his attention the reality he had known for the last hour. He was not too surprised to discover that his dulled intellect had already accepted Bloch’s loss as a fact; nor did he shrink when another part of his mind told him the unhappy consequences to follow. By now he was so utterly tired, so deadened in mind and body that he did not care. Let them do their damndest—he didn’t care.

  Ramses was beaten.

  Bobby Bloch would have to be abandoned in the field.

  The dispirited Character started home.

  Bloomington’s water tower and the Last Chance Saloon were behind him.

  Plodding wearily across the lonely morning prairie, Benjamin Steward knew his greatest depth of despair since the death of Sam Wendy. A flush of false dawn rippled the eastern sky, delineating the lines of despondency imprinted on his face. He shared a galling defeat with old Ramses, and would continue to share it with the ancient war lord, no matter how widespread the great lie.

  The bitter knowledge of defeat would never die.

  He noted but paid scant attention to a dimly seen herd of cattle grazing in the distance. They were now familiar objects. His thoughts turned inward, dwelling on the future-or fate—of Bobby Bloch, and upon the hell that would be raised when he returned to the chamber alone.

  Bitterly, Steward recalled the wretched scene when he reported back without Sam Wendy.

  Whittle’s first reaction would be a highly emotional one—the crime of losing a man in the field would shock him, unnerve him, and leave him temporarily speechless. It mattered little that a careful story had been prepared, that confirmation of disaster was only minutes away and the lost Character was presumed dead. The castigation would come when Whittle found voice. It would continue as the news wormed its way upstairs into the executive offices, and it would not cease for a long, long time. Because this was a second offense, it might never stop.

  Evelyn and the engineers would share the shock, but they would say nothing. Evelyn’s critical silence would be the worst to bear. His solitary reappearance in the chamber would stun her, would ram into her consciousness the renewed knowledge that Benjamin Steward, the unreliable, was a widowmaker.

  Evelyn’s silent scrutiny would hurt deeply.

  Whittle’s censure would probably have a more lasting—and damaging—effect on his future employment, but all his words would not equal the contempt of Sam Wendy’s widow.

  Bitter, cheerless homecoming—an appropriate ending to a fouled and faulty shoot.

  Steward came in sight of the murmuring creek and the naked roots of the great oak tree. The nearly invisible bullet was awaiting him.

  Checking the time, he was surprised to discover there were more than ten minutes to spare. A vagrant fancy caught and held his attention. He looked at his feet.

  Impulsively, Steward slid down the muddy bank and yanked off the pinioning boots. The socks followed. He thrust his smarting feet into the cold predawn water and almost cried out as the mixture of pleasure and pain raced through his tired body. After a tingling stab of agony the pain faded, leaving him with a delicious feeling of rapture. The water caressed his feet and acted as a catharsis to his troubled mind, lulling him.

  The Character threw back his head to look at the sky. The last, lingering look at Mr. Lincoln’s marvelous sky.

  A splendid world.

  Earth, sky, sight, sound, smell—heady stuff.

  A world of fire and energy and force, filled with bustling, bumbling, sleepless people who were acutely aware of a revolution barely eighty years behind them; a world of brawling and enthusiastic people, happily unaware of still another revolution four hundred years in their future. They made and unmade governors and presidents with gusto, elected and tumbled congressmen with relish and delight, supremely confident of themselves and their destinies. Four centuries in the future their beloved liberties would come clattering down, and they would be permitted to vote for senators of questionable choice while an emperor ruled the roost.

  Steward stood erect on the creekbed, letting the water course over his knees. He sucked in a great mouthful of cold morning air. Mr. Lincoln’s lucky world.

  There, a herd of cattle becoming more distinct in the growing light. There, a town embroiled in robust self-expression. And there, a solitary Indian grove with a column of smoke rising above the trees.

  His eyes grew wide.

  The smoke climbed steadily upward, unmoved by wind.

  Steward leaped from the water. Boots and socks were forgotten as he clawed his way up the slippery bank and darted across the prairie. He ran with no thought of his suffering feet, with no thought other than the urgency of the moment.

  From some distant farmhouse a rooster crowed garrulously. The false flush was gone, and the true dawn coming. The running man attempted to force more speed into his legs. A fear nibbled at his mind.

  He charged breathlessly across the last few yards of open ground and plunged headlong into the timber, seeking a clearing which might contain a cabin or Indian teepee. Underbrush slowed his progress and now harsh, unseen debris on the timber floor cut into the soles of his feet like shards of glass. He kept going.

  The timber was bright with the approaching day. The sudden and excited outburst of a dog guided him.

  Steward swerved, running toward the dog.

  He found the clearing because the animal was there, barking at his unexpected intrusion, and because Bobby Bloch was there, emoting in a loud, ringing, and happily drunken voice.

  “Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men

  Be-stride our down-fallen birthdom, each new morn

  New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows

  Strike heaven on the face, that it resounds

  As if it felt with Scotland and yelled out

  Like syl . . .”

  The speaker trailed off, gaping with dismay.

  Steward shouted, “Bobby!”

  A sudden silence enveloped the clearing. The dog ceased barking at the savage shout.

  The Shakespearean actor, perched atop a tree stump like a preacher on a podium, had quit in mid-syllable to stare with consternation and surprise. The unforeseen appearance startled him.

  A half-dozen listening Indians who were seated around the stump craned their necks in curiosity.

  “Bobby—jump!”

  “Aha,” Bloch cried, pointing dramatically, “another lean unwashed artifleer!”

  “Come off that, you stupid idiot!”

  The finger waggled in gentle reprov
al. “The dedicated does not leave his audience unfulfilled.”

  Benjamin Steward plunged through the circle of attentive Indians and seized Bloch’s shirt front. He yanked viciously, and the actor hurriedly left the stump. Indians scrambled to get out of the way.

  “Protest, I protest! These gentlemen have gathered here to be entertained. See, they are entranced.”

  Steward lacked the breath to answer. He gathered up speed and raced through the timber, retracing his route as best he could. Bloch followed clumsily and unwillingly, pulled along by the rough hand grasping his shirt.

  The dog took after them in full cry.

  Between gasps, the actor continued his futile protests.

  “Hold up! Patience, sire, or I shall perish!” And he struggled desperately to insert an index finger under his collar and pry loose the clamp it made about his neck. “Succor! The speech will keep. I will ask Mr. Lincoln to run through it again.”

  “The speech,” Steward gritted, “was yesterday.”

  They burst out of the grove.

  Steward flung a worried glance at the eastern sky and found it ablaze. The distant tendrils of cirrus were changing to brilliant pink. He fought frantically to increase his speed. The prolonged exertion had overtaxed his weary body, and his lungs labored for air.

  Bloch stumbled, and was hauled violently upright.

  The actor’s face and neck were assuming a purplish hue. He could no longer talk or even sputter, but he galloped along behind the crew leader with a tardy sense of urgency. A hint of what was happening penetrated the alcoholic fog.

  The two men continued running.

  Miserably short of the goal, the Character suddenly realized he was done.

  The frightening, sun-bright morning closed in on them. Over the noise of their running feet, their laborious breathing, over the racket of the aroused dog came a new sound. It was heard only once.

  A heavy, rocklike object fell into the waters of the creek with a resounding splash.

  Steward did not pause in his stride.