The Cowboy's Crime

by Evelyn James

  Clark looked abashed, saddened that he had been of such little help. Mary took his hand and comforted him, much to the disgust of Polly.

  “We even wondered if a stranger was coming into the funfair each night to launch these attacks, yet no one seemed to have noticed anyone odd. That suggested the person behind the crimes was familiar with the fair, someone who Gunther and Vladimir would not notice as being out-of-place. Someone with access to every part of the venue and who no one took heed of,” Clara continued.

  “Mr Maven,” Vladimir said with a grimace. “It was him.”

  “No,” Clara refuted the statement. “Clark seeing him with a gun was just one of those odd coincidences that happen from time to time. Maven was innocently carrying the weapon. Clark, I want you to think back to that moment when you saw Maven with the gun, do you recall how he was carrying it?”

  Clark frowned, anything to do with his memory was a cause for concern for him. The second someone asked him to remember something he felt a chill creeping over him.

  “I guess… he was holding it round the barrel,” he said after a moment, looking relieved that he could recall what he had seen.

  Clara nodded.

  “He was carrying it casually, not holding it like a man about to shoot it.”

  Clark’s face went ashen as he saw what he had failed to realise the night before. Had he taken heed of the way Maven was carrying the gun, he probably would not have rushed to shoot him. Clara did not want to labour the point.

  “Maven was an accident and he does not want to pursue this matter further. He is going to be fine and he understands that recent events have left people very traumatised,” Clara looked around at them all. “And I think that is something to bear in mind as we discuss who is really behind these attacks, because this person is also suffering from trauma, from a grief so strong they have not been able to move past it. As much as they have caused harm, I think we should at least try to understand them.”

  People shuffled their feet uneasily. Mary had lowered her brows and did not look in a forgiving mood. Maybe she was recalling that she had been next on the assailant’s list.

  “Well, who is responsible?” Park-Coombs was growing impatient.

  “Someone we all overlooked because they seemed so unlikely,” Clara said. “Someone who has masked his hate for Clark extremely well over the years, even though everything he has done through the last decade has been about building up the courage to confront Clark about something that happened in America.”

  Clark was looking perplexed. The others were glancing around at each other. Gunther had a stern frown on his face and looked close to leaving. Clara did not hold them in suspense.

  “This was about vengeance, about making Clark pay for another man’s death. Isn’t that right, David.”

  David gave a slight start. He blinked rapidly and then smiled in an awkward way.

  “I am confused?”

  “You have been plotting against Clark these last five years,” Clara told him. “Working up the courage to enact your plan. You see, I think you have tried to put us off your scent, laid down false information, but you let just enough slip to make me pause for thought.”

  “I don’t understand,” David shrugged his shoulders, looking mildly amused by her declaration.

  “David is my friend, Miss Fitzgerald,” Clark jumped in. “He has always looked out for me.”

  “Which makes the betrayal all the more sinister,” Clara replied. “I confess I don’t have all the facts worked out. David told me he left Galicia at the outbreak of the war, in fear of his life, and I think that is true. But while he initially told me he came straight to England and settled here, I now know that is not entirely true. He came to England, yes, but then he went to America for a time. His parents had emigrated to America to start a new life in a land of opportunities. His father had travelled to a place called Blue Sands, where he set up a saloon.

  “Clark, you told me that the first time you tasted coffee like David makes was in Blue Sands, yes?”

  “That’s right,” Clark said. “But David was not there.”

  “No,” Clara agreed. “He was not. But his father was, and it was David’s father who devised an extra special way of making his coffee and taught it to his sons. David described the coffee blend as European tradition mixed with New World style. Now, here coincidences become important again, or rather when a coincidence is just too unlikely. What are the chances of David coming to England and happening across the one American in the country familiar with his father’s coffee? An American who misses that particular coffee blend so much, that he instantly has David employed at the funfair?

  “No, it is all too improbable. The reality is David was using his talents as a means to get to Clark. David deliberately came to England in pursuit of Clark, used knowledge of his father’s coffee to work his way into Clark’s trust, all for the purpose of revenge.”

  “Why?” Mary asked. “Why would he go to such effort?”

  David was sitting silent. Clark looked nauseous.

  “Buffalo Rock,” Clara said. “At Buffalo Rock a young man lost his life. The youth had ridden out with Clark to hunt down an outlaw. He wanted to be like Clark, the cowboy he admired, having met him in his father’s saloon.

  “Clark, you told me that the saloon where you first tasted your favourite coffee was in Blue Sands, and the son of the owner was desperate to be just like you. In fact, you promised to take him with you on the road when he was old enough, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Clark agreed. “But I don’t remember anything about Buffalo Rock. All I know is what I was told earlier today by Tommy.”

  “Well, we know that was where your life changed forever. Sheriff Frankel told us that,” Clara continued. “That day, when a lad you had taken under your wing lost his life, you lost your nerve for bounty hunting. You were torn by guilt, so ashamed of what you had allowed to happen that you did something unthinkable, you left America for good.

  “A few years later, David has to flee his homeland and he heads to America where his parents and younger brother are living. Maybe he had heard about his brother’s death, or maybe he found out when he arrived. After he learned the truth, he could only think of one thing, vengeance on the man who had failed his brother. Does that sound accurate, David?”

  David said nothing, staring at the floor and pretending no one around him existed.

  “David?” Clark asked plaintively.

  “I suppose it took time to prepare the scheme, and then David had to track you down and work his way into your trust,” Clara said. “Then, with everything in place, David began his campaign. He was going to make you suffer, the way he had suffered.”

  “But David was one of those attacked,” Polly whispered in her choked voice.

  “He was, but only because he attacked himself,” Clara replied. “That night he had meant to go after Mary, but with everyone around and Annie guarding him, he could not get away. He had to think of something else. So, he made an excuse for Annie to leave him, went into the horse wagon and hit himself on the head. As Gunther pointed out, the wound was inconsistent with a blow from behind.”

  Gunther looked pleased with himself.

  “Equally, the errand Annie was sent on was a pointless one. David said he was out of sugar, when he was not, and he sent Annie to fetch more,” Clara allowed this information to sink in. “You were trying to lead us astray David and it nearly worked. I think the question we are all curious about is why go to all this trouble? Why now?”

  David was still resolutely silent. Clark turned around in his seat and looked at the younger man.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I did not shoot your brother. I don’t even remember it.”

  “Exactly!” David said, his tone icy. “That is exactly the point! You don’t remember!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  A hush fell over everyone. There was a feeling of disbelief, of a wo
rld turned topsy turvy. Clark’s sad gaze remained fixed on David, not so much accusing, but questioning in a plaintive, hurt fashion. David, who had fallen quiet again after his outburst, shrunk from the look.

  “Stop it,” he said, though with little force.

  “I deserve an explanation,” Clark said. “As does Polly, because she sure as he… sure as heck did not deserve what you did to her.”

  Polly was glaring fiercely at the coffee seller, her mute fury impossible to ignore. David huddled up his shoulders around his ears and tried not to look at anyone.

  “Maybe I got carried away,” he muttered. “You don’t understand, any of you!”

  “I understand you put a lasso around my neck,” Polly told him in her gruff, injured voice. “I thought you were my friend, David.”

  “We all thought you were our friend,” Mary said in a dull, disappointed tone. “How truly wrong we were.”

  David had grown a deep red hue. He flicked his eyes up at the tent exit, but Clara had deliberately made sure he was sat far away from it, with his victims between him and escape. The second he tried to leap up and run, they would have him.

  “If he had just remembered!” David blurted out, throwing a pleading glance at Clark, somehow thinking that this last demand would stir the cobwebs and release the memories he so urgently required Clark to recall.

  “I don’t,” Clark said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry to him!” Mary scolded Clark. “That bloody Jew was planning on killing you!”

  “Let’s not bring race into this,” Inspector Park-Coombs said calmly. “It isn’t necessary.”

  “I wasn’t going to kill Clark!” David insisted.

  “You just wanted to kill his friends?” Polly demanded, her eyes welling with tears, even though she held herself stiff with anger.

  “No, I…” David tried to find some sympathy among the angry faces, remarkably he came across it in the quiet eyes of Clark. “Look, I just needed you to understand…”

  David had now realised it was over, he could not deny what had happened and if he was to survive this meeting, he needed to offer his side of events. He composed himself as best he could and spoke directly to Clark, it was easier to speak to the silent cowboy with his hurt expression than to try to negotiate with the whole crowd.

  “You don’t know what it was like,” he said, begging for compassion. “All the time I was in Galicia, fighting injustice, I thought I was the one in danger, the one who might end up with a bullet in my chest, not my younger brother who had gone with my parents to America. He was starting a new life, a free life. The sort I was fighting for.

  “When they left, it was for the best. They saw more wisely than I did. I refused to leave just then, however, I felt I had a part to play in the politics of my country. I promised one day to join them, but I am not sure I really meant it. I was happy they were safe, that was all. It sustained me through the long, dark years, knowing they could live peacefully.

  “They wrote once a month, let me know how the saloon was coming along. Told me all about Blue Sands, how my brother was doing in school. We all hoped he would do something important, become a doctor or an engineer. He had the brain for it, not like me. I just ran a coffee stand in Galicia, like my father. But Rudi, he was special, he could be anything.

  “I remember a letter coming that talked about this cowboy coming to town, a bounty hunter who told big stories and how Rudi was out of his mind with adulation. He suddenly wanted to be a cowboy, riding the plains and shooting bad men. My parents were horrified, but thankfully the cowboy moved on and things went back to normal.”

  Clark lowered his head. This was the part of the story he knew. The saloon at Blue Sands, the lad so keen to follow in his footsteps that he had barely been able to persuade him to stay put when he left.

  “His name was Rudi,” Clark said softly.

  David nodded.

  “It was two years later when you rode back into town and Rudi insisted on riding out with you. He was older then, old enough to be free of my parents’ hold on him and you agreed,” David hissed the last word with bitterness. “I didn’t know, they never mentioned it in their letters, what happened to Rudi. My own parents lied to me, pretended he was doing fine, getting an education. I don’t think they believed I would ever join them and that it was better I did not learn of my brother’s death in a letter.

  “September 1910 you took a bounty to kill a man called The Mexican. You and my brother. You tracked this outlaw down and there was a gunfight. Rudi took a bullet to his stomach. The Mexican was killed. You… You were unharmed!”

  David clutched his hands into fists to contain his fury at this imbalance, that somehow it was unjust that Clark had not been hurt, not even a scratch when his brother had been brutally slain.

  “Clark carried Rudi back to the town,” Tommy interrupted, his voice low, consoling. “He found him a doctor, paid for it out of his own pocket and stayed by his side until the end. Sheriff Frankel told me that. He said Clark was devastated at what had happened to Rudi, that he frequently said it should have been him. If he could have changed places with Rudi, he would have done so in an instant.

  “If you think Clark carried no guilt, no grief for what occurred, you are wrong, David. Clark was so horrified by what happened that he left America for good, turned his back on bounty hunting and even erased the event from his memory, as he was unable to cope with the trauma. Most men who make their living from bounties would not have done that, would not have felt that.”

  David hung his head, his shoulders slouched, and he was solemn for a time. When he spoke, his voice was strained by the emotion stirring in his chest.

  “Rudi was the person I kept going for. He was the reason I fought for my country. Not because of noble ideas, no, but because I wanted Rudi to have a better life. Even after he was gone to America, I hoped I could change Galicia, make it a place he would be proud to return to. Everything I did, I did for him.

  “And then I arrived in America, my spirit broken, my country lost, a failure in so many ways, but I knew I would see Rudi again and that gave me hope. That carried me over the last few miles when all I wanted to do was give up and admit that I was defeated. There was nothing left for me, but if I could give Rudi a fighting chance then… then…”

  A sob slipped from David’s mouth. To the surprise of everyone, Clark reached out and placed his hand over David’s.

  “It shouldn’t have been this way,” he said.

  “No!” David wailed at him, but he did not pull his hand away. “No, it should not have been like this! If you had just left him at the saloon, if you had not agreed to let him ride with you…”

  “Then he would have ridden off by himself, one day,” Clark said patiently. “You can’t stop a young man with a bee in his bonnet. I am sorry, though, I am very sorry.”

  David’s resolve weakened and his head fell forward. Clara had suspected, when she had suggested this informal arrangement, that it would be through Clark they would get their confession. David could be tough in the face of authority, which would have been represented by the inspector questioning him at the station, but in the face of friendship, he was utterly unarmed.

  “I didn’t know until I reached the saloon,” David continued. “He had been dead five years! All that time I had been fighting I had done it for a dead man, one who would never return to Galicia!”

  “No wonder you were angry,” Clark said with care.

  “It wasn’t just anger it was… ah, I don’t know. Disappointment, maybe. Feeling my brother had wasted his life, had spited me and my parents for all we had done for him. We had found him freedom and how had he repaid us? I was furious with him, furious! But he was dead, and I could not vent my rage on him.

  “Yet you were alive, or so my parents thought. No one knew what had become of you, but if I could find you and tell you what harm you had caused us all. Somehow, that would make things right again.”

  “You track
ed me to England?” Clark asked.

  “I did. It wasn’t easy, but I had nothing else to fill my time. I could work as I searched, doing anything. I did not need much, as long as I had food and a place to rest my head, the search sustained me. At last I came to England and I learned you were a gunslinger at a funfair,” David hesitated, his earlier hurt had faded to something more rational. “I came to the funfair, meant to confront you, then I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say. When there was a problem with the coffee seller, I saw an opportunity. I thought you were an arrogant, self-important man that night, ranting about his coffee. I had imagined you in my head as all these wicked things and when I saw you, it seemed I had been right.

  “Then I got to know you better. Got to know the real Clark. I started to change my mind, but I still needed you to know what you had done to me. I tried to talk about it, tried to draw you out, but nothing would work. It was like you had forgotten my brother Rudi altogether and that seemed the cruellest thing of all!

  “I dreamed of ways to hurt you, but all seemed pointless if you did not know what it was all about. I needed you to remember Rudi and then I could yell at you, tell you what I had been feeling and thinking all these years. All the pain! The heartache! I needed you to remember!”

  “And that is when you thought up this bizarre campaign of attacks?” Park-Coombs twitched his moustache, mildly bemused.

  “I thought, if I could make Clark think about his bounty hunting, then he would recall Rudi. I found a shop in London which sold American things, and among them was this gun from an outlaw, and I knew that Clark had been involved in shooting him, so I bought it, thinking I would show it to him,” David paused, turning again to Clark. “I didn’t mean for things to get so violent; you just would never listen when I tried to talk about America, and I was getting frustrated!”