The Cowboy's Crime

by Evelyn James

  Each time the flap went down so Mary and her customer could have some privacy, Clara distracted herself by studying one of the exhibits. She was getting fed up with studying a mangy badger that was labelled as being the cat-eating monster of Aberdeen, finally caught in 1896, when she heard a commotion coming from Mary’s tent. She was rushing across the short distance within moments and yanked up the flap, having heard Mary’s raised voice.

  She discovered that the older gentleman, who had supposedly wanted his questions asked, had been under the impression that Mary offered extra services and had started to get a little frisky. Clara arrived in time to see Mary kick him hard on the shin then grab him by the ear and throw him out of her tent.

  “You should be ashamed, at your age too!” She declared.

  “Please, just let me see the ones on your back,” the man begged. “I have a postcard of you in my picture album.”

  “Clear off!” Mary yelled at him and the man, who was at least in his sixties, scrambled to his feet and fled.

  “Are you all right?” Clara asked her, shocked by what had occurred.

  Mary clapped her hands together as if brushing off bad business and ridding herself of the feel of touching the man.

  “Oh, don’t bother about it,” she nudged Clara with a grin. “I get one at least once a month trying it on. Some men find the tattoos deeply erotic. They want to know how far they go.”

  Mary laughed.

  “You look utterly appalled.”

  “I think I am a little stunned that such a respectable looking gentleman behaved in such an uncouth fashion.”

  “My dear they are the worst,” Mary patted her arm. “Honestly, it cheers me up to know that I am still attractive to men, though, sadly, my admirers seem to be getting older and older. At this rate I shall only be desired by the decrepit and ghosts!”

  Now Mary roared with laughter and patted her ample hips.

  “I am what I am, Miss Fitzgerald, I have chosen my path and I know most men think I am a freak. The odd one taking a shine to me improves my mood.”

  Clara was not sure how to reply.

  “As long as you are all right.”

  Just then there was the sound of running feet and Tommy grabbed Clara’s arm. She was so startled she almost spun and slapped him but realised who it was in time. She was getting jittery with all this gang business looming over her.

  “Come quick,” Tommy hissed in her ear. “It’s David!”

  Mary heard even with his lowered voice and her face fell.

  “What has happened?” She demanded, then she pulled down the front of her tent. “I shall come with you. I need to know.”

  Clara could not stop her and saw no reason she should. She followed Tommy back through the funfair, trying not to arouse attention among the casual visitors. Fortunately, everyone seemed absorbed by what they were doing.

  “What has happened?” Clara managed to ask her brother when he slowed down due to a crowd of people.

  “Annie came and found me, David has gone missing,” Tommy explained. “He asked Annie if she would go to see the cook and ask for more sugar. When she returned, he was simply gone. She waited and waited, but when it became obvious he was not going to reappear she ran and found me.”

  Clara felt her stomach flip over. She doubted David would leave his stall unattended willingly, which left them with the conclusion that someone had forced him to leave. Mary, who was just behind them, had heard the news and her face had gone pale. She was thinking the same, remembering finding Polly alone in the main tent. Had David been lured away to his doom?

  They reached the coffee stall where Annie stood looking grim.

  “I’m sorry, Clara,” she said at once.

  “Don’t be silly,” Clara told her. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I shouldn’t have gone to fetch the sugar,” Annie insisted. “David was running low and he was getting worried. He couldn’t leave the stand himself and there was no one else about.”

  “Annie, you could not have foreseen this,” Clara took her hands and squeezed them. “I would have done the same.”

  Annie clearly did not believe her.

  “Let’s concentrate on finding our missing man, he can’t be far.”

  As she spoke, Clark appeared with the two security guards.

  “Tommy told me what had happened,” he said. “We are here to help search for David and heaven help the damn cur who has harmed him!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They split up; Clara, Annie and Tommy going one way, while Clark and the two security guards went the other. Clara felt worried as they searched the immediate area around the coffee stall, looking for locations that might be off-limits to the public and thus where an attacker might lure his victim. As it was, they had only searched a small area when they heard Clark shouting that he had found David.

  Rushing back, they found Gunther waving to them from behind one of the wagons used to transport the horses used in the funfair acts. The wagon had been set to one side, not that far from where David had his coffee stall. When they drew closer, Clara had the alarming realisation that the wagon bore the name Gung-Ho. She didn’t like the irony.

  Clark was inside the wagon, just visible through the open back door. He looked over his shoulder at them and motioned they should hurry. The ramp of the wagon was lowered to the ground, making it easy to stride into the main body of the carriage. The floor was covered with straw and there was a pervading smell of horse.

  David was lying close to the far wall, nearest where the driver would sit. He was on his back and appeared unconscious.

  “He’s alive,” Clark said as soon as Clara was near enough. “Look at this.”

  Near David’s hand was a gun, an American revolver. It looked battered and worn.

  “Hook-Tooth Gruber’s revolver,” Clark declared in a hollow voice. “Someone used it to clobber David on the head.”

  He pointed to a red welt on the coffee seller’s temple.

  “Fortunately, they were not out to kill him.”

  At that moment, David groaned.

  “It’s all right,” Clark told him, patting his shoulder. “We got you.”

  David turned his head carefully towards them.

  “W… where…?”

  “A horse wagon,” Clara told him swiftly, not wanting to mention that it happened to be Gung-Ho’s wagon, she doubted the choice was coincidental. “What happened?”

  “Someone… someone was calling for help,” David said, gingerly reaching up a hand to touch the bruise on his face. He winced. “No one else was around. I thought someone might have become lost, that happens.”

  David took a shaky breath.

  “They were calling from inside this wagon. It shouldn’t have been open, but kids mess around…”

  “Hooligans, the lot of them,” Clark said fiercely. “No respect for anybody’s property.”

  “I came in, couldn’t see anyone in the dark. Then I was struck,” David screwed up his face as the memory returned. “Never saw them.”

  “That’s all right, just as long as you are not seriously hurt,” Clara said, though deep down she was disappointed. They had come within a hair’s breadth of the assailant and failed to catch him.

  “Let’s get you back to your caravan,” Clark said, offering David a hand.

  “No… my stall.”

  “For one-night people will have to do without coffee,” Clark said firmly. “Now, steady as we go.”

  He helped the poor man to his feet and, swaying slightly, David walked with him out of the wagon. Every now and then he tentatively felt the lump forming on his skull and gave a gasp of pain.

  Clara picked up the revolver from the floor of the wagon. She brought it out into the light of the funfair.

  “Fingerprints?” Tommy suggested from behind her, a slight rebuke in his tone.

  “Fingerprints require the police to have a record already of the person behind this and I doubt they do,” she rep
lied, but to satisfy him she produced a handkerchief from her pocket and wrapped it around the gun.

  Gunther and Vladimir were lurking nearby, looking uneasy. Clara thought they looked guilty, as if they had failed in their task. She felt a little sorry for them; just the two of them to keep an eye on this entire funfair.

  “He was watching, our friendly assailant,” Clara said to them. “Waiting for a moment when we dropped our guard. That means he was here all night, somewhere in plain view.”

  “We can’t be everywhere,” Vladimir protested.

  “I am not blaming you,” Clara reassured him. “If I blame anyone it is Maven for being so casual about his security arrangements. I am glad you had your eyes on Clark the whole time. Did you notice anything suspicious?”

  The two men shook their heads. Clara was not surprised. The assailant had chosen to go for an easier target than the well-guarded cowboy. At least he had done no more than give David a bad headache.

  “More threats,” Clara mused. “What is this all about? Who is this man trying to avenge? So far, we have three different weapons from three different outlaws, assuming that Hook-Tooth Gruber was an outlaw and one of Clark’s bounties. What is that supposed to tell us?”

  Vladimir and Gunther said nothing, they had no idea. Annie was still looking distressed that she had failed to keep an eye on David. Tommy tried to be helpful.

  “Is the gun loaded?”

  “It won’t be,” Clark’s voice rang out, suddenly loud over the hushed deliberations around the wagon. He was strolling back, a confidence to his swagger that made him every inch the tough, unbeatable gunslinger of the west. “Hook-Tooth Gruber met his end in a slaughterhouse, rather appropriately. It was near the vats where they make glue from horse and cow hooves. Bubbling, reeking wooden half-casks, wide as the spread of a man’s arms. When I shot Gruber, his hand flew back, and his gun landed in one of those vats. They eventually dredged it out, but all the workings were jammed solid. Had Hook-Tooth lived, the loss of his favourite gun would have killed him.”

  Clark hooked his thumbs into his belt.

  “Hook-Tooth was the son of poor ranchers, no education to speak of, other than in the art of shooting things. Some said his mama and daddy were brother and sister, but people always say such things about wild outlaws, makes them feel better to imply these men did not start off ordinary, like,” Clark nodded to the gun. “That was given to Hook-Tooth when he was fifteen by his daddy. Where the man got it from, no one knows, but Gruber always said his daddy took it from the corpse of a dead man he found lying in the desert. Could have been the truth, men die in the desert all the time from natural causes.

  “Anyway, that gun gave Hook-Tooth ideas, probably not what his daddy intended. He got real good at handling it and was a pretty quick draw. Some said he could shoot a nickel thrown up into the air, I never had the chance to ask him if that was true.

  “At sixteen he was holding up lone travellers on the road, robbing them blind. At seventeen he had joined a band of outlaws and was involved in every dirty scheme they thought up. Now, that gun was his pride and joy, was his calling card so to speak. People said that while he carried that gun, no one could win a shootout against him and I dare say after a while Hook-Tooth got to believing that too.

  “One time he was arrested by the sheriff of this tiny town for being drunk and disorderly. Minor offence and the sheriff was ignorant of who he really was. One of those naïve souls who thinks knowing the law is enough to shield you from the bad men of the west. I don’t doubt he only intended for Hook-Tooth to sleep off his drink in a cell and go on his way the next morning, but he took away the revolver, naturally.

  “When Hook-Tooth became sober enough to realise what the sheriff had done, he worked himself up into a mad rage, convinced himself that like some western Samson, he had been robbed of the thing that made him strong – that gun. He dreamt up that the sheriff was trying to weaken him, make him easy pickings for his enemies. That’s the sort of insanity an uneducated mind comes up with.

  “Well, the next morning the sheriff lets him out of the cell and hands him back his revolver, tells him he is free to go, and any sane man would have seen that as his opportunity to depart without trouble, but Hook-Tooth wasn’t sane. He thanked the sheriff, apologised for causing him trouble, then shot him in the head. Shot the deputy too, before going out the door and shooting anyone who was handy, until his bullets ran out. Then he walked off calmly to find his horse and departed.

  “Someone recognised him, however, and a bounty was put on his head. That’s where I come in. I heard about the bounty and I was soon on his trail. Wasn’t hard, Hook-Tooth was bragging about what he had done in every saloon he visited. By the time I caught up with him, I knew the whole story, along with all the embellishments Gruber had gladly added along the way.

  “Now, Hook-Tooth was no fool, reason he had never lost a duel was because he had always been careful who he went up against. As good a draw as he was, he liked to stack the odds in his favour, and I had a reputation preceding me among outlaws. So, when he heard I was in town and looking for him, he hightailed it to the slaughterhouse, intending to shoot it out there. I followed him and let him take a few pot shots at me to get his nerves twitching, before I made my move.

  “He took two bullets, one to the head, the other to the chest. I missed with the third I was aiming at his arm, since he started to fall backwards. And that is the sorry tale of Hook-Tooth Gruber, and quite honestly no one mourned the man, no one even bothered to claim his body.”

  Clark finished his story with a nod of his head, as if declaring ‘that was that’. Gunther and Vladimir shuffled their feet as they listened to the exploit, perhaps marvelling at this man they were assigned to protect. If another person had given such a tale, you might have doubted it, but with Clark it seemed wholly believable.

  “Someone has been collecting souvenirs of your bounties,” Tommy observed. “Did you know such things existed?”

  Clark shrugged.

  “People will make money from anything they can, I guess it is no different to Maven’s Crime Museum he has in one of the smaller tents. He has things that once supposedly belonged to famous criminals. People like to gawp.”

  “Clark, just how many bounties did you collect exactly?” Clara asked.

  Clark paused to consider, he briefly pulled his thumb from his belt and did a quick calculation on his fingers.

  “I’m going to say twenty-five, or thereabouts. I was at it a number of years and I could claim two or three bounties in a given year. Not all of them died, though.”

  “Twenty-five?” Gunther gasped at the implication. “We could have twenty-five of these attacks?”

  “Twenty-two,” Clara said. “Three have already occurred.”

  “Yeah, but this fella has missed out several,” Clark said in his easy drawl. “You know, there were several bounties before Hook-Tooth.”

  “So, the man is only picking out specific bounties?” Clara frowned at the gun. “Or just the ones he is able to find souvenirs from.”

  “What now?” Clark asked.

  “You keep being careful and we shall keep watching,” Clara said, wishing she had a better solution to offer. “This man is going to make a mistake soon.”

  Vladimir gave a quiet huff that indicated he was not convinced, well, nor was Clara, but she wanted to offer Clark some hope.

  “I shall take this gun to the police,” Clara added, not saying that she was far from certain it would do any good.

  The gun was a relic and its owner was long dead. Maybe it bore the fingerprints of the assailant, but even if it did, if the man was not a known criminal in Brighton with his prints on file, that would hardly help them. No, the gun looked a dead end, but Clara had to try.

  Clark shot another look at the wagon, folded his arms and shook his head, before turning away.

  “I have a show to perform,” he called out as he left.

  Gunther and Vladimir roused thems
elves and followed.

  “Rather feels like we have more clues than answers,” Tommy said to Clara.

  She sighed her agreement.

  They wandered back to the now abandoned coffee stall, where Annie spent a few moments putting out the stove and emptying all the pots for David. She retrieved the cardboard box of sugar she had brought over from the food tent. When she had found David missing, she had abandoned it at the side of the stand, now she went to put it away. Opening a cupboard at the back of the stall, she gave an annoyed moan.

  “Silly man!” She declared to Clara. “He had sugar all along, in this box. But someone has mislabelled it as being coffee grains. Oh, had he but looked none of this would have happened.”

  Annie looked forlorn again.

  “This was not your fault,” Clara reminded her once more. “It was one of those things.”

  Annie did not look convinced. Tommy hooked his arm through hers.

  “David is just fine,” he told her. “A little bump on the head, no worse than if he fell down his caravan steps. Just think about that.”

  Clara paused as his words struck her. He was right, it was almost as if the attacks were getting weaker. Gung-Ho had been killed, but Polly had only been strangled to unconsciousness and the bump on David’s head, though enough to knock him out, was negligible compared to the other attacks. It was as if the assailant was becoming more sensitive with each assault. That was odd, usually it worked the other way, with an attacker increasing the violence of their attacks.

  Tommy was escorting Annie towards the gates, talking to her about everything he could think of that was not either coffee or David. Clara followed, thoughtful. There was a pattern here she was failing to see. Why had those specific bounties been picked out? Why had the weapons belonging to those outlaws been used in the attacks? What was it about Buffalo Rock that had sparked all this?

  Clara wished Clark could remember more, but without that option she had to make do with what she had. At least it seemed the assailant was not trying to kill his victims. If this was some sort of mental torture on Clark, to make him suffer, at least the person behind it was not so cruel as to kill his human victims. Poor Gung-Ho was another matter, but you could not charge a person with horse murder.