I picked up the shotgun and took half-a-dozen shells from the pocket of his long frock coat and moved from that clearing to a large flat rock a hundred or so yards away from his body. My mouth was dry and my ears ringing from the thunder of the gunshots in that rock-filled enclosure. I would have moved further, but suddenly my legs would not carry me, and I began to tremble, and then to weep. The tears flowed freely. After a while I pulled myself together, extracted the spent shells from my Rainmaker and reloaded it, leaving an empty under the hammer. It was an excellent piece in single or double action. I sat there, thinking quietly of disjointed thoughts: rivers and wolves and spring mornings in a Wyoming breeze, on a grassland littered with wildflowers, and aspen groves filled with bird song. Such thoughts steadied my trembling hands as I went through Hadley’s saddlebags and removed a large leather pouch of Mexican gold coins and transferred them to my own. He had undoubtedly removed them from one of the dead mules before we had arrived on the scene. I stripped his horse and turned it loose, knowing one way or another it would find its way back to the Circle V. Then, very tired, I chose a flat rock a hundred yards or so from the body and waited for I know not what . . . some sort of epiphany, maybe?
Nothing happened.
After a little while I noticed a pair of ravens, their black eyes in their black heads eying me, wondering if I was a threat to them this far away from the ranch in the valley by the river from which they had been driven. Smart bird, the raven. Feeling I was not a threat to them, they moved down to lunch on the dead Max Hadley, very much late of Bitter Creek, New Mexico. One sat on his forehead and attacked the bloody wound of his eye socket and the other chose the shot away foot. I smiled to myself: maybe they would meet somewhere in the middle before the coyote, the cougar and bigger raptors were aware of the feast offered them by the dead one-time deputy sheriff of Dry Water, south Texas. This was my Tempest. ‘Hell is empty and all of the devils are here . . .’
I am a well-read man, as Annie would have said of that passing thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Trail’s End
By the time I arrived back in San Pedro the following day, it was late afternoon, and Henri met me at the livery. She was pleased to see me and I was pleased that she was pleased.
‘We were worried.’
‘No need, but thanks just the same,’ I said.
‘You find Hadley?’ she asked quietly.
‘Yes, I did. I found him, right enough.’
‘And?’
‘He will not be coming back.’
‘Permanently?’
‘Very.’
She looked around carefully and then moved closer to me, allowing me to pull her close and kiss her gently. I stood back and ran my fingers through her hair.
‘You smell like your horse and you need a shave,’ she said, but did not pull away for a long moment. Then she stepped back, her voice a little above a whisper. ‘I am so happy that you are OK. Beaufort said you would be but I was not so sure. You left an angry man, and angry men make mistakes.’
‘You are right about that. It was close, but it is now done and a lot of my misery died with him. How are things here?’
‘Beaufort has called a meeting and booked a private room at the Drover’s. Dinner at eight: that gives you time to wash up, get a shave, change and maybe get an hour’s rest. You OK with that?’
‘Go tell them I’m back and I won’t be late.’
‘Yes, boss,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘I will do just that.’
Then she was gone, leaving with me the scent of her hair in my nostrils and the taste of her lips on mine. Do detectives ever grow old, I wondered, or do they, like old soldiers, just fade away? I felt very tired, my back ached, my legs were stiff and my ears were still ringing a little from the Rainmaker and the shotgun blast, but I certainly did not feel old.
They were already drinking when I arrived following a bath, a change of clothes and an hour’s catnap. Beaufort was seated at the round table with Benbow to his right, Billy Bob Hunt to his left and Henri next to an empty seat, which I assumed, was for me, and had either been Beaufort’s or Henri’s idea.
‘I hear you had a successful hunt, Lucas, and I am glad to hear it.’ Beaufort raised his glass, as did the others, and I charged mine and toasted what he considered to be a successful mission. And so it was in most respects. The gold, except for the coins now safely locked in my room, was recovered. Hadley was dead, Vagg’s men mostly dead and Billy Bob Hunt was back as one of the highest office holders in the county. But somehow that did not all sit well with me. However, unusually for me, I held my own council on that.
‘The Diaz gold left this afternoon with an escort of battle-hardened cavalry sent by the US Marshal’s office and with a posse of our people to protect it. I see no reason it will not be delivered safely to San Antonio. Benbow and I will be leaving first thing tomorrow on the Overland and Henri will follow later in the week; apparently she has some unfinished business here.’ Beaufort could not resist a wink in my direction.
I ignored the inference but offered him a smile. I liked him very much.
‘And Vagg?’ I asked quietly. ‘What of the old man responsible for the killing and the chaos? All of those bodies in Diablo are on his tally sheet.’
Beaufort nodded his head in the direction of the county sheriff.
‘Vagg’s about done,’ Billy Bob offered, not hiding the delight in his voice. ‘His sister has left him cold; run off to New Orleans with her albino bodyguard and took most of his fortune with her. Seems most of his funds and land transactions were tied up in her name. Smart lady, that one; will probably run for public office one day. Even Hector Munro quit: left for Nogales this morning, his voice a little higher but happy to be gone.’
‘So that’s it?’ I asked.
‘No real proof against Vagg for any of the shootings. He just sits there with his one manservant, drinking fine wine and chewing on peyote. He’s already in his own hell: leave him there, I say. The county will not pursue any charges, but if you boys want to, that will be OK with me.’ He looked at me and then at Beaufort.
‘You OK with that, Lucas?’
‘I am not happy with it, but I will study on it some and get back to you. The man is a killer. He may not have pulled a trigger but he sure enough loaded the guns.’
Beaufort was quiet for a moment, looking from me to Henri and back again before finally deciding to pick up the bell beside his plate. He rang it, and within seconds two waiters from the Drovers were among us, heaping our plates and pouring our wine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The end game
Henri and I watched as the dust from the departing Overland stage settled on the rutted street of San Pedro. I leaned against one of the sidewalk uprights and stacked my pipe, looking into the half-distance somewhere between tomorrow and sundown, wondering just what would be the right thing for me to do to finish this unfinished assignment. I had originally been hired to check out the business of Frank Vagg, and that I had done, but his sitting out on his ranch untouched by the mayhem he had created irritated me. At just about that moment, as I made up my mind what needed doing to end it, Henri drifted up to my side and leaned against me. I put my arm around her shoulders and squeezed.
‘You are going out to see him, aren’t you?’
It was not really a question but more a statement of fact, probably known to her long before I ever reached that same conclusion.
‘I guess I will have to.’
‘Will it help? He is a mean, duplicitous man and nothing you can do about it, but go if you must. I will understand. But be careful: he is a wounded animal in many ways and probably looking for a place and a way to die that will mean something to somebody, if not to himself.’
I placed my unlit pipe in my pocket and kissed her lightly on the cheek. ‘I will be careful.’
There was nothing more to say. I winked at her and crossed the street slowly to the livery stable and one more ride on the
Morgan.
It was a little after midday when I rode into the deserted front yard of the Circle V. The only signs of life were two ponies standing hip shod in the large pole corral, their tails busy brushing away the horse flies, and a thin trail of smoke drifting from the cookshack’s stone chimney. Miguel, Vagg’s manservant, was asleep on the porch rocker. He was not the man he had been: his shirt was soiled and sweat stained, his pants creased and dirty and he sported several days’ growth on his dark face. He was snoring and tobacco juice slipped from his lower lip. I kicked the chair hard and he sat bolt upright, then, ignoring me, slipped back into the chair. I kicked again, harder this time.
‘Can I help you, señor?’ His words were slurred and he stank of cheap whiskey.
‘I came to see Mr Vagg. Please tell him I am here.’
‘Mr Vagg is not at home.’
‘Go tell him anyway,’ I said.
He thought about that for a long moment, got unsteadily to his feet and went into the house, staggering a little.
I waited on his return; it was only a matter of minutes.
‘Mr Vagg will be happy to see you. Follow me, please.’
I brushed past him, telling him I knew the way, and he stepped to one side. I watched as he sank back onto the rocker, his head dropping forward and his chin hitting his chest with an audible crunch. Within seconds he was snoring again.
It seemed to me that Frank Vagg had diminished considerably in size. He was seated in a wicker wheelchair in front of a table littered with the remains of a breakfast, a half-empty bottle of whiskey and two glasses. His white-shirted shoulders and lap were covered in plaid wool blankets, the shoulders and hands hidden in the warmth of their depths. His only visible skin was the skull-like pallid face, with its goatee wisp of a beard and the lids covering piercing black eyes. His large-brimmed Panama hat rested on the tops of his large ears. He gave the appearance of a decaying heap of tattered brush waiting for the south Texas wind to blow him away. He studied me for some moments before indicating the chair opposite him with a nod of his head.
‘Take a seat. Smoke if you want; there are cigars on the side table.’ His voice was thin, rasping, almost a whisper.
I shook my head and took out my pipe, but did not light it.
‘Nothing to say? You are not usually a man short on words, Santana.’
In truth, in that moment I was uncertain and not sure of what I wanted to say, although I had gone over the meeting many times on my ride out to the Circle V.
‘I knew you would come eventually, either to gloat or to arrest me. Which is it to be?’
‘Neither, actually,’ I said.
‘What else is there?’ he said, puzzled by my reply.
‘I wanted to ask you a question. Just the one.’
‘And that would be?’
‘Why?’
‘Why, what?’ he said.
‘Why did you do what you did? Why did you orchestrate the death or displacement of so many? You didn’t need the money; you had a fine ranch here, a business below the border well out of sight or sphere of interference from federal law enforcement, a tame sheriff, wealth and power plenty enough for one man. Why endanger that?’
‘Maybe I don’t like Texas or Texans. They have an attitude of which I do not approve.’
‘Texans are Texans. Men of Texas are no different from you or me,’ I smiled, and could see that it irritated him.
‘You think you are a smart man, Santana, but you really don’t know a lot about people, people with money. We got our money because we wanted it and when we get it we want just a little more. We are acquisitive. We collect money; we invest. It’s what we do with the money we get: we use it to make more. You yourself make a little money if you are good at what you do and I guess you steal a little on the side. You are as corrupt as you consider me to be: you just do it on a pennyante level, is all.’
I thought of the gold I had transferred from Max Hadley’s saddlebag to my own. So I stole from a thief; did that make me a bad person? Vagg may have been close there and although I ignored it, it was something to think about another time.
‘Your current employer, the Pinkerton Agency, is not entirely blameless. You work for the rich, the railroad barons and a discredited, bankrupt government. Were you in on the raid that blew Jesse James’ mother and kid brother to oblivion, or are your hands clean?’
I ignored the comment, although, then again, there was some truth in what he said. ‘But yours was a senseless gamble,’ I pressed on. ‘Had you got a hold of the Mexican gold, the army would have been down on you and turned this county upside-down within days and you with it. Your gamble on the railroad: the Denver and Rio Grande was never coming this way. It made no sense. Whoever fed you that information was no friend of yours.’
His cheeks flushed, a startling pink against the whiteness of his skin. Anger: the great betrayer.
‘You don’t know that, you cannot know that.’
‘Your sister, did she leave a forwarding address?’
‘Shut your dirty mouth, Santana. You would never understand; you are just a small change gunman, a thief and a liar.’
I sat back in my chair and tamped my pipe, lit it and looked over the smoke at the dry stick of the man I had been hired to investigate. ‘You don’t really know why, do you, Frank? Your sister has run off with your money and her albino bodyguard, your men are either dead or on the run, you are broke and alone and you have no idea yourself as to the why of any of it.’
Frank Vagg looked at me long and hard. Then a faint smile and a glint burned in the obsidian black eyes, a glimmer that seemed to gather in the darkness of his inner thoughts. He tried to chuckle but it rasped and rattled around inside his chest and came out as a dry cough. I waited: Frank Vagg was a very sick man.
‘You consider yourself to be a well-read man, Santana, and are happy to quote Shakespeare when it suits you. Well, so am I. Consider these words: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” Macbeth. Now, you think on that as the answer to your question in the few seconds you have left to fret and strut.’
The revolver had been hidden in the folds of the blanket covering his skinny legs. Now it was cocked and pointed at my chest and there was not a damned thing I could do about it.
‘Time to say goodbye.’ He fixed his pale eyes upon me, the muzzle of the Colt resting on the table between us and clearly pointing in my direction with hammer back, his bony finger white upon the trigger.
A slight pop, a muffled report from somewhere behind me. A look of anger on his distorted face. A growing, flowerlike pattern of dark red on the front of his pristine white shirt. His eyes fixed behind me, anger replaced by fear. His fingers relaxed, and the gun settled gently upon the tabletop then, a second popping sound and a third eye leaked blood as his head snapped back. A cloud of feathers drifted by my head, and I could smell the stink of black powder and the scorching odour of burning cloth. Then Henri Larsson walked past me, my smoking nickel-plated .45 Derringer in one hand and a smouldering cushion in the other. She dropped that onto the floor at my feet. I tipped the last of Vagg’s wine over it, causing the feathers to hiss and steam.
I stared at her and then back at the dead man.
‘And the cushion?’
‘I did not want to awaken the help,’ she said quietly.
‘You followed me,’ I said.
‘How observant of you.’
I looked hard at the little .45 she had fired to such devastating effect into the frail body of Frank Vagg. ‘I didn’t know female agents were permitted to carry,’ were the only words I had for her.
‘We are not. I could be fired for this, but what the hell, I found it in your room. . . .’
I took the warm piece gently from her trembling hand and dropped it into my jacket pocket. ‘Fair shooting for such a little gun,’ I said.
&nbs
p; ‘I just pointed and fired is all. Lucky I didn’t hit you.’
‘Indeed, thank you.’
‘I hope it was worth the effort,’ she said very quietly.
It was there again, the vaguest hint of laughter in her voice . . . or was it just the satisfaction, the relief of an outcome reached that could have ended badly for me had she not followed me from San Pedro? I could not be sure.
‘I will make it so,’ I said.
It was all very straight forward after that. I signed the papers for Billy Bob Hunt, describing how I had shot Frank Vagg dead as he threatened me with a revolver when I confronted him with the possibility of his arrest because of his suspected involvement in the killing of the Mexican soldiers and the harassment of the homesteaders on the eastern side of his boundary. The old sheriff noted it as being an act of self-defence and the circuit judge signed off on it. Then, with his best wishes, and after informing Beaufort of our plans by telegraph, we hit the road, riding the Overland to Dallas and the iron rails north to Wyoming.
EPILOGUE
Thoughtfully, Jesse Overlander had replaced the swing seat upon which Annie Blue had taken the .44.40 round that had been meant for me, with a newly constructed wood frame and a lovely woven canvas seat patterned with wildflowers sewn together by his sister. He had moved the seat so that it faced east one way and west the other, and I was reminded of a line from Walt Whitman, the civil war poet: ‘Keep your face always toward the sunshine and the shadows will form behind you.’ I did not think Overlander had ever read Whitman, but I could have been wrong about that, as I had been about so many things over the past two years.
Needless to say, but Henri fell in love with Wildcat at first glance. It was that golden Wyoming time of the year and the shadows that had surrounded us over the last month or so dissipated quickly, like the wood smoke from our fire lifted by the ever-gentle breeze. Bart took an instant shine to her, and I often found them up by Willard’s Rocks, dressing Annie Blue’s grave with wildflowers. There was nothing morbid about their being there; it was simply a gentle homage to a past now shared.
Where No Ravens Fly Page 10