by Cole Shelton
“And what did Wainwright say?”
“He said that he wanted me, and some day he’d have me—even if it meant killing Jacob.”
Longbottom walked over to the jury box and stood close.
“‘Even if it meant killing Jacob’,” the county prosecutor quoted. “Now, the sheriff read out Gowrie’s statement that he considered robbery was the motive. Apparently he and his men caught Wainwright rummaging through Mr. King’s pockets. Maybe Wainwright did intend robbing the deceased, but I believe that Mrs. King has just given us another more powerful motive. Wainwright wanted Mr. King’s beautiful wife, wanted her so much he ambushed a decent, God-fearing man to get him out of the way. My case rests.”
“Shane,” Luke Wainwright whispered again, “that female’s lying! I don’t know why, but she’s lying!”
Shane stood up and Celia King avoided his searching eyes. He knew that for Luke’s sake, he had to go easy on this witness. The all-male jury looked plenty sorry for the widow, and Shane figured that any badgering of Celia would antagonize them.
“Mrs. King,” Shane murmured, “I’m sorry about your husband’s death. From all accounts, he was a good man.”
“Thank you, Mr. Preston,” she said, forcing a smile.
“There’s just one point I’d like to clear up, ma’am.”
“I’ll help if I can,” she told him.
“You mentioned about Luke here visiting you and making a pass,” the gunfighter reminded her. “Are you suggesting that after one chance meeting, Luke became so desirous of you that he threatened to kill your husband to get you?”
“One meeting, Mr. Preston?” Celia asked demurely. “Mr. Longbottom only wanted to know about the last time I saw this man. Fact is, he was often around. Very often. He used to sneak in pretending to buy pelts to trade with, trying to get on with me. It was just that two weeks ago he caught me alone. Thank God, Jacob rode back in time!”
Shane stared at her, then he glanced back at his client. Luke Wainwright sat there with an expression of sheer bewilderment on his face. Celia King had to be lying—but why? Maybe she was making sure that the man she believed killed her husband was convicted; perhaps she considered that extra evidence, albeit lying evidence, was necessary finally to seal the doom of Jacob’s murderer.
“That will be all, Mrs. King.”
Every eye was on the willowy figure of Celia King as she glided back to rejoin her neighbor.
Shane asked that Luke Wainwright be put on the stand. He asked the defendant to recount in his own way what had happened in Moose Valley. Luke had been plainly shocked by Celia’s story, and Shane could see that the prisoner was making heavy going of it. In fact, he kept stumbling over the facts, almost contradicting himself, and Shane stepped in as several members of the jury nodded knowingly at each other.
“Luke,” he summed up, “did you murder Mr. King?”
“No,” Wainwright pleaded. “I sure didn’t, sir.”
“I reckon that’s about it, Your Honor,” Shane said.
Judge Sayers made a summary of the case, and even Shane considered his words fair and impartial. He mentioned Gowrie’s change of testimony, but he also emphasized the three bullets missing from Luke Wainwright’s six-gun. Finally he leaned over the bench and addressed the jury. “It’s time for you all to consider your verdict,” he said sonorously. “You may retire to the back room.”
“I don’t reckon we need to, Judge,” Lacey Wakely stated bluntly. He was foreman of the jury. “I figure we can reach our verdict right here and now.”
He turned around on his seat, and the jury members huddled close to him. Shane could feel Luke Wainwright trembling beside him. Behind him, a deep hush had settled over the courtroom, a hush broken by the clock striking eleven o’clock. It had been a short trial.
Two minutes later, Wakely stood up. He was a lean, hungry-looking man with bushy eyebrows and a hooked nose.
“You’ve reached a verdict?” Judge Sayers asked him.
“We sure have,” Lacey Wakely said grimly. “We find Wainwright guilty of murder and we figure he oughta hang—in fact, we should have done it yesterday!”
Sayers hammered his bench as uproar broke out, and when silence finally settled over the crowd, the judge folded his arms and surveyed the foreman.
“I only wanted your verdict, Wakely. It’s for me to pronounce sentence.”
“Sorry, Judge,” Wakely said.
“Luke Wainwright,” Sayers said, fixing his eyes on the prisoner, “stand up.”
Shane stood up with his client.
“You have been found guilty of a vicious murder, and because of what you’ve done, this town has lost a very worthy citizen. I sentence you to hang at sundown tomorrow, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”
Kathleen broke into uncontrolled weeping as the towners surged from their seats towards the door. Shane managed to snatch a quick word with Luke before Sheriff Harper unceremoniously fastened an iron hand on the prisoner’s shoulder and marched him towards the side door. Shane picked up his notes.
“Know something, Mr. Preston?” It was the professional lawyer, Hiram F. Longbottom. “For an ordinary layman, you put up a creditable performance today, but take my advice—stick to your trade. Stick to gunslinging!”
Shane glanced at him. “Maybe I’ll take that advice, Longbottom,” he said quietly.
He strode away and found Kathleen standing alone in the aisle. She buried her tear-streaked face against his chest and he felt her body convulse against him.
“Go home, Kathleen,” he advised her. “I’ll stick around and do what I can.”
“But what can you do?” she wept frantically. “They lied in court, and because they lied, Luke’s going to hang!”
He took hold of her arm. “There’s nothing you can do here,” he assured her.
Shane escorted Kathleen outside to her horse. The crowd was rapidly dispersing in the sunshine, and Shane glimpsed Mrs. King being assisted into a rig by Miles Coventry. The big rancher climbed into the rig beside her, and the sun caught his deeply tanned face and thin mouth. He was clean-shaven, almost handsome, but his expression was grave.
Kathleen mounted up, and Shane watched her ride off. Then the gunfighter paced over to where Snowfire was drinking from the street water trough. He reached his horse and was about to swing into the saddle when his hand fastened around the paper.
It was an envelope tied around his saddlehorn.
Shane unraveled the twine which bound the envelope and ripped open the seal. His fingers drew out a short, neatly written note. The message was brief and to the point, but unsigned.
COME TO ROOM 7 AT THE
ACE OF DIAMONDS
AT FOUR O’CLOCK TODAY.
Six – The Appaloosa
“A drink, Mr. Preston?”
The percentage girl selected two glasses from the cupboard beside her bed, then picked out an unopened bottle of whisky. She placed the glasses on the table and smiled at him.
“The name,” she said, “is Sherry Greves. Of course, Sherry is not my real name, but it sort of suits my duties in the Ace of Diamonds.”
Shane drew deeply on his cigarette as Sherry poured out the liquor. The girl had one of the hardest faces he’d seen on a saloon woman: heavily powdered, rouged, and lined. Her hair was reddish, and it fringed an oval face. Maybe once Sherry had been pretty, but that had been a long time ago. Alcohol, men and the kind of life she led had taken their toll of her. Her body, however, could still attract a man. She was slim and when she walked, her sensuous legs showed through the side slit on her long saloon gown.
“You wrote the note, ma’am?” he queried.
Sherry handed him the drink and raised her own glass to her full, painted lips. “That’s so,” she admitted.
“I can’t believe it was just an invitation to come up here and be one of your clients,” Shane said wryly.
She smiled faintly, letting her green eyes rove longingly over him. “Personally, I
wouldn’t mind,” Sherry murmured. “And in your case, maybe I wouldn’t charge.”
“Why did you ask me here?” Shane asked.
“I was in the courthouse, Mr. Preston,” she said, sipping her rye. “Oh, you probably didn’t see me because I sat right in the back row. The ladies and gentlemen of Destiny Creek sat in the best seats. There’s a couple of things I could’ve said in that courthouse, but I kept quiet.”
Shane studied her over the rim of his glass. “Keep talking, Sherry.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this,” she said, standing up and walking over to the window. “Maybe I should button up and mind my own business.”
“If you know something, Sherry, then I want to hear it,” Shane said. “An innocent man’s gonna hang tomorrow if someone in these parts doesn’t stop minding their own business and talk.”
Sherry stared at him. “I don’t want to get involved, Mr. Preston,” the girl said at length. “But I don’t want to see an innocent man dance at the end of a rope.”
He downed his drink. “What do you know. Sherry?”
“That King woman didn’t love him, Mr. Preston,” the saloon girl blurted out.
“Celia King?”
“She married him for one reason,” said Sherry. “His money and his ranch. I could have spoken up many times, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to hurt Jacob. But Celia was no good. Oh, she acted innocent in court. She only made love to her husband? So she said. But I knew about her, Mr. Preston. She was as much a whore as I am!”
“I’ll have another drink,” Shane said abruptly. “Did she have lovers in Destiny Creek?”
She shrugged. “Here she was the dutiful wife, but before she met Jacob she was a kept woman in Carson.”
“How do you know?”
“I made it my business to find out,” Sherry said. “She was an impostor, Mr. Preston.”
“Mind you,” the gunfighter shrugged, “what she did before she met King isn’t exactly relevant. Maybe she changed.”
“Women like Celia King never change.” They were strange words coming from this saloon woman, but Shane saw that she spoke them with sincerity. “She deceived Jacob, and got what she wanted, a beautiful home on the biggest ranch in the territory. And now it’s all hers, Mr. Preston.”
“What are you saying, Sherry?” Shane murmured.
Sherry swallowed and turned her face away. “I’m—I’m not sure.”
Shane built a cigarette. “You loved him, didn’t you, Sherry?” the tall gunfighter asked with perception.
The woman nodded. “He—he never came here, you understand,” Sherry Greves said. “Jacob wasn’t that kind of man. But we used to meet sometimes ... out of town. He—he made me feel like a lady, Mr. Preston! Maybe you don’t understand, but most men who—who come to my room make me feel cheap, make me feel what I am. A paid woman. But Jacob gave me respect. Then—then he brought back that woman, but I could see through her. Church on Sundays, sweet-talk, attending ladies’ guilds! I could see it was all an act! So I began asking questions of some of my clients passing through here after coming from Celia’s home-town, and that’s how I found out the truth.”
“Nevertheless,” Shane said, “all this has no bearing on the case.”
“But there’s something else!” Sherry said.
“There is?”
“There’s one man who should have been a witness in that courthouse this morning, but he stayed home.”
“Who’s that?” Shane lit his cigarette.
Sherry scrutinized the gunfighter with her green, worldly-wise eyes. “You’re a good-looking man, Mr. Preston,” the percentage girl summed him up. “I reckon if you wanted a woman, then that woman would come to you of her own free will and because she wanted you.”
He shrugged.
“Some men aren’t so fortunate,” Sherry remarked. “They have to pay for their pleasures, so they come here to one of the saloon girls, and when they come, they don’t always, well—make love—if you can call it that.”
“So?”
“So some of them come just to talk. Can you believe that, Mr. Preston?”
“Sure I can.”
“Either their wives don’t listen to them, or they’re just plain lonely, or they just want to share their problems with a good listener. Last night, I had a man in here who wanted to share something he couldn’t talk about to anyone else. It was about Jacob King’s murder.”
“Who was he, Sherry?”
She hesitated. “Normally, I wouldn’t betray a confidence, Mr. Preston. A girl’d lose clients quick if she repeated what she heard in this room, but this time I’m gonna make an exception because I want to see Jacob’s real murderer hang. Like you guessed, Mr. Preston, I loved him.”
Shane sat back while Sherry walked away from the window and went to sit in front of the mirror.
“Last night,” she said to her own reflection, “an old-timer named Judd Sampson came to see me, and he was real agitated, sweating. He said he had to confide in someone about what he’d seen happen in Moose Valley the morning Jacob was murdered. Judd was up on the valley rim, on the eastern side, and he heard the shooting and looked down. Mr. Preston ... he saw exactly what happened.”
“Go on,” Shane said.
“A man rode away from Jacob’s body,” Sherry recalled, “and there was a gun in his hand. He rode hard for an arroyo and dropped down out of sight just before Luke Wainwright headed towards the trail.”
“That rider?” Shane asked tersely. “Was he Gowrie?”
“Judd didn’t get to names,” the saloon girl said.
“Is that all?”
“That’s all he told me.”
“Where can I find Judd Sampson?” Shane Preston wanted to know.
Sherry looked alarmed. “But—but you can’t mention what he told me! He spoke in confidence!”
The gunfighter stood up. “Ever seen a hanging, Sherry?”
She swallowed. “No.”
“It ain’t a pretty sight,” Shane Preston informed her. “Sometimes a man’s neck breaks straight away, sometimes he dances for a while before he finally dies. It’s real ugly when the man on the rope is innocent.”
“I guess so.” Sherry paused, then she said deliberately, “Judd’s shack is in Kiowa Canyon.”
“Thanks for your help, Sherry. And don’t worry about anything gettin’ out. I’m not aiming to shout your name from the rooftops.”
Shane strode from her room and walked down the back stairs of the Ace of Diamonds, so he wouldn’t be seen. Outside, the sun was mellow, and already a cool breeze was whispering up the main street of Destiny Creek.
Two decades back, Dog-face the Kiowa renegade, had made his last stand here in the ravine, and with ten other hardened braves, fought to the death against the troopers who’d come to drag him off to the reservation. Since that day, the canyon bore the Kiowa name and boasted of a tin mine which had closed down just over two years ago. Now, Shane Preston sat saddle beside the weather-scarred sign and looked at the boards nailed across the mouth of the shaft.
Decay and defeat stared at him. An ancient windlass had a frayed rope dangling from it. The boards across the mine entrance were crumbling. Right in front of him was an upturned keg full of bullet holes.
The gunfighter turned his eyes up to the ridge beyond the mine. It was a shoulder of land running right across the ravine floor, and perched on top was a dilapidated shack.
Shane murmured a command to Snowfire, and the stallion walked deeper into the canyon, then upwards towards the lonely shack. Dusk was deepening in the canyon and the last of the dying sun painted the rims a vivid gold as Shane headed for the crest. He topped the rise and reined in.
The shack was leaning at a crazy angle and the windows held no glass, but were covered by sacking. Poking from the roof was a tin pipe from which blue-gray smoke drifted languidly into the sky until the wind whisked it away. The door was shut, but as Shane urged Snowfire closer, the muzzle of a rifle was thrust out
and pointed at him.
“You ain’t welcome, mister!”
The voice was a wheeze and Shane heard the scrape of iron on wood. He halted his palomino, keeping his hand well away from his six-gun.
“Mr. Sampson?”
There was a pause and the door edged open a couple of extra inches. “That’s me, mister!” the voice said. “Now turn your horse and ride on out!”
“We’ve got business together, Sampson. I’m Shane Preston.”
“The name don’t mean a damn thing.”
“I’m here to talk about Jacob King’s murder.”
The door was dragged wide and white whiskers showed above the long barrel of the rifle. Two bleak eyes stared at him, and the hands which gripped the gun were trembling.
“Who did you say you was?” Sampson croaked.
Shane repeated his name. “I’m trying to save an innocent man from being hanged. You know who I mean—Luke Wainwright.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” the oldster shrugged. “Now turn your horse and get the hell outa here. I live alone because I like peace and quiet, and that’s what I aim to get!”
“Sampson,” Shane said harshly, “yesterday you saw something happen in Moose Canyon.”
Judd Sampson drew in his breath. “Who in hell have you been talking to?”
“Never mind,” Shane returned quickly. “Now put that damn gun away and let me inside.”
The oldster slowly lowered his rifle. He turned around and vanished inside his shack, and Shane slipped from his saddle. The gunfighter ducked low through the doorway and took one pace inside. Judd Sampson was seated at a big box with a coffee pot and a bottle of cheap whisky in front of him. The shack was just a single room with a bunk along one wall. It was a room littered with dirty clothes, boxes, canned food and vermin traps. An oil lamp hung from a wall hook.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Preston.” Sampson didn’t even look up as he spoke. “I’ve kept alive over the years because I’ve minded my own business. I just trap a little, pan a little for gold, and live here on my ownsome. No one bothers me. In fact, the only time I got myself into a ruckus was in the town saloon some time back when Gowrie and his boys decided to haze me.”