If that was where she really came from, Cully added to himself. He might have the answer to that question soon.
He was still in the office less than an hour later when the door flew open. The telegrapher hurried in with a piece of yellow paper in his hand and said, "Here's the answer to that wire you sent, Cully. It came in quicker than I expected, so I thought I'd run it over here to you."
"Thanks," Cully said, digging a coin out of his pocket and handing it to the man in exchange for the message. He started reading the words printed on the paper, and his face tightened.
When the telegrapher was gone, Flint looked at Cully and asked, "What wire? What's wrong, Cully?"
The deputy took a deep breath. "I sent a telegram to the headquarters of the Christian Ladies Temperance Society, back in Philadelphia," he said. "I wanted to find out more about Augusta Hall's background."
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Because all along, I've had the feeling that she's been hiding something, Marshal. It's like she's got some sort of personal stake in this attempt to wipe out drinking. Maybe whiskey killed somebody close to her, or something like that."
Flint stood, his eyes alive with interest. "That would explain why she's so all-fired determined about it, all right," he said. "I reckon that's the answer from the society you've got there."
Cully nodded.
"Well, were you right?"
Cully held the message toward Flint. "I don't know. According to this, the Christian Ladies Temperance Society has never heard of Miss Augusta Hall, and they sure as hell didn't send her out here to Abilene."
"What?" Taking the message from Cully's outstretched hand, Flint read it quickly. "Then she's been lying all along."
"And that's not the worst of it." Cully's voice was grim. "I remembered something else this morning. Those two cowhands died in the cellblock right after Miss Hall had taken them some coffee."
Flint stared at him, his eyes narrowing. "You think she's the one who poisoned them?"
"I don't know," Cully said honestly. "But I sure intend to find out."
11
Cully was heading toward the door when flint's voice stopped him. "Hold on a minute," the marshal said. "There're a few things you haven't thought of."
"Like what?"
Flint stepped from behind his desk. "What about Alfred Pendleton?"
Cully frowned. "That's right. Pendleton might've died from drinking bad whiskey, too."
"And that was before Augusta Hall showed up in Abilene. That girl doesn't strike me as the sort to go around poisoning people, either."
"She lost her temper and got in a fight with Jessica Partin, and she stormed into the Bull's Head waving a shotgun around," Cully pointed out. "Stockton and Downing said some rough things to her earlier in the evening on the night they died. Maybe she thought she was taking some sort of righteous vengeance on them for helping to ruin her play."
"Joshua did more to ruin it than Stockton and Downing," Flint said bluntly.
Cully's face flushed with anger. "Maybe so, but there's still the matter of that coffee she gave them."
Flint rubbed his jaw, then nodded. "That's true. And it's suspicious enough that it needs to be checked out. Do you want to do it?"
"I surely do. And I'm going to do it right now." Cully turned and reached for the doorknob.
"Hold on a minute. Remember you don't have any proof. It might not be a good idea to start throwing accusations around."
"I'm not going to accuse anybody. I'm just going to see if Miss Hall will answer some questions—like who the devil she really is and what she's doing in Abilene."
Cully went out, almost slamming the door behind him.
He paused on the boardwalk and took a deep breath, trying to force his racing brain to slow down a little. Flint was right; Alfred Pendleton's death threw a kink into his theory. But it was possible that Pendleton hadn’t been poisoned at all. The man might have actually drunk himself to death, just as Flint and Cyril Warren had thought at first. At this late date, there was no way of being sure. Either way, Augusta Hall could still be responsible for the deaths of Stockton and Downing.
Cully didn’t want to believe that. He had liked Augusta from the start, despite her coolness toward him. Even though she might have unwittingly prompted Joshua's relapse into drinking, Cully hadn’t turned against her. But if she had slipped something into the coffee she had given to Stockton and Dowling, then she was nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer, no matter how obnoxious they had been after the performance of the play.
Cully couldn’t forget the fervor in Augusta's voice as she insisted that she would do anything to further her cause.
Anything...including murder?
He walked quickly toward the Grand Palace Hotel and learned from the clerk that Augusta was in Room Seven. Cully took the stairs two at a time as he climbed to the upper corridor.
He rapped sharply on the door of Room Seven, so sharply that he scraped some of the skin off his knuckles. He paid no attention to that. A moment after his knock, a surprised female voice called, "Who is it, please?"
"Cully Markham," he said flatly.
He heard Augusta say, "Oh!" Then, seconds later, she opened the door and looked anxiously up at him. "What is it, Deputy?" she asked. "Have you found your brother?"
Cully shook his head. "No, this isn't about Joshua. He's still missing, though, if you care."
"What do you mean, if I care?" Augusta sounded angry now. "Of course, I care. I've been worried ever since he—"
"I need to ask you some questions," Cully cut in. "Can I come in?"
"Into...my room? I-I'm not sure that would be proper, Deputy Markham, not without some sort of chaperone." Augusta clutched at the door, clearly disturbed by Cully's grim, insistent demeanor.
"All I want is some answers," he said. "And you may want to answer in private once you hear the questions."
"All right." She stepped back. "Please, come in."
Cully strode into the room and glanced around. The small room was immaculate, but he wasn’t surprised at its neatness. That was exactly what he would have expected from Augusta Hall. He remembered enough of his manners to take off his hat, then turned to face her. She was wearing a green dress that was attractive because of its simplicity. Cully thought she looked lovely—but that didn’t have any impact on the reason he had come.
"What is it you want to know?" she asked.
"First of all, who in blazes are you?" he demanded.
Augusta bit her lip. "You know quite well who I am, Deputy. I'm Augusta Hall, from the Christian Ladies Temperance Society—"
"No, you're not," Cully interrupted, shaking his head. "Your name may be Augusta Hall, but that temperance society never heard of you."
"Why, that's preposterous! Of course, they've heard of me. They sent me to Abilene to help stamp out drinking."
"I sent them a wire and received the reply a few minutes ago. They don't have anybody named Augusta Hall on their membership list, and they haven't sent anybody to Abilene to do anything." He wanted to reach out and grab her shoulders and shake the truth out of her, but he restrained himself. "Now, who are you really, and what are you doing here?"
Augusta stared at him for a long moment, her face going pale. Cully returned her gaze steadily. Finally, she sighed and closed her eyes. "My name is Augusta Hall," she said wearily. "I've come to Abilene to put an end to drinking—"
"That's a lie!" Now Cully did reach out with one hand and grasp her upper arm. "I told you, the Temperance Society—"
"Damn the Temperance Society!" Augusta cried out, her eyes opening and flashing with anger. Her fierce reaction stunned Cully, making him release her and take a step back as she went on, "Where was the high and mighty Christian Ladies Temperance Society when my brother was drinking himself to death in some back-alley Kansas saloon? I'll tell you where they were, Cully Markham—they were sipping tea and feeling self-righteous and spouting useless platitudes! They don'
t understand. You have to meet violence with violence!"
Cully could hear the fury in her voice, and in that moment, he was convinced that she was fully capable of killing someone if she believed they deserved to die. Within seconds, she had turned from a petite, attractive young woman into some kind of avenging angel. "And you consider drinking to be violence?" he asked.
"It killed my brother. How much more violent can something be?"
"What happened?" Cully wanted to keep her talking, to give her a chance to calm down a little. He was getting the answers he wanted, but suddenly he wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing.
"Marcus—my brother—started drinking back in Philadelphia. My family is...quite well-to-do. My father said that he wouldn’t have a drunkard in the house, so he threw Marcus out. I only saw him once more before he left the city. He promised me that he had stopped drinking, but he was too proud to return to Father and beg forgiveness. So he intended to come west, to make a new start for himself. He was coming to Kansas, he said..." Augusta's voice trailed off, and a shudder ran through her. Cully kept quiet, and a moment later she regained control and went on, "We received a wire from Abilene about a year ago. My brother Marcus was dead. He had died of pneumonia after he passed out in a drunken stupor in the snow and stayed there for hours before anyone found him. But it was the liquor that really killed him."
Cully shook his head. "I'm sorry. I was already a deputy then, but I don't remember hearing about any Marcus Hall dying last year."
"He was using another name, calling himself Marcus Allen. That was his middle name. I suppose he didn't want to bring any further shame on the family when he got out here and realized that he couldn't quit drinking. But he carried our family's name and address among his belongings. The undertaker wired us...to see if we wanted to pay for the burial." Augusta's voice caught again, but she went on hurriedly, "My father refused. He wired back that he knew no one named Marcus Allen. My brother...my brother is probably buried in an unmarked pauper's plot somewhere on your so-called Boot Hill. I've looked, but I haven't been able to find the grave."
Cully took a deep breath. He had no idea what to say to her. He had expected some sort of story from her to explain her lies, but not this tragic tale she had just revealed. Despite its melodramatic aspects, it rang true.
"I swore then that I was going to do everything in my power to save other people from the fate my brother had suffered," Augusta said. "I've been preparing ever since for the mission that brought me here. And now you know the truth about me, Deputy."
"What about that Christian Ladies Temperance Society business?" Cully asked.
"I went to them first, to see if I could work with them. But I could tell immediately that they didn't really understand the gravity of the situation. However, I thought if I borrowed their name, so to speak, I might be able to find more support from the local temperance groups. You saw how effective it was here. Mrs. Grantham and her friends couldn't do enough for me at first."
Cully nodded. "Until you started brawling in saloons and threatening people with shotguns," he pointed out. "Then that support disappeared pretty quick."
Augusta lifted her chin. "I'll continue the battle alone if need be. Abilene is only the beginning, a symbolic starting place because this is where my brother's life ended."
"Some other folks have died here, too." Cully's voice hardened. "What about those cowhands, Stockton and Downing?"
Augusta's forehead creased in a puzzled frown, and she gave a little shake of her head. "I don't understand. Do you mean those unfortunate men who passed away while they were in jail?"
"The ones who drank the coffee you gave them just before they died," he said coldly.
The young woman's eyes widened in horror as she realized what Cully was implying. "Oh, no," she gasped. "You don't think that I...you couldn't think..."
"You said you'd do anything to get rid of drinking. I reckon that could include killing a couple of drunks."
"I didn't," Augusta insisted, tears glistening in her eyes. "I swear to you that I had nothing to do with their deaths, Deputy. I only want to help people, not hurt them."
"You lied about who you really are," Cully said flatly. "You might be lying about this, too."
"Oh..." Augusta's face became even paler, but then two angry crimson spots flushed her cheeks. Her arm flew up and swung back as she started to slap Cully across the face. His left hand met it easily in a gesture that seemed almost lazy in its deceptive speed. He caught her wrist, his fingers clamping around it like iron and holding it motionless.
"You do lose your temper pretty easy, don't you?"
"You...you are the most arrogant man I've ever known!" she sputtered. "If you think I've broken the law, why don't you go prove it?"
"That's just what I intend to do."
"Fine. But until you do, I'll thank you to get out of my room, sir!"
Releasing her arm, he said, "I'm going. But I'll be back. I'm sorry about your brother, Miss Hall, I really am. But that doesn't change anything."
"Don't you even mention my brother! Just get out of here!"
Cully nodded and turned to the door. He half expected her to throw something at him as he left, but she stayed where she was, standing in the center of the room, shoulders slumped, tears running down her cheeks, breathing heavily. Pausing at the door, he took one last look at her, then closed it softly behind him.
The sound of her sobbing followed him as he started down the hall. At that moment, he hated himself for what he had done. But if she was guilty, he intended to prove it. She had lied to him, lied to Joshua, lied to everyone in Abilene; there was no doubt about that. But was she a killer?
Cully hoped that not too many more people would be hurt before he found the answer.
At noon on Wednesday, Harley Barrow, now fully recovered, had just put the big pot of squirrel stew on the table and was stepping through the front door of the family's cabin to call his brother and cousins when he heard yelling coming from the barn. He hurried to the corner of their ramshackle house and looked around it in time to see Dennis, Chuck, and Eddie running frantically from the barn. Dennis shouted, "It's gonna blow!"
An explosion rocked the barn behind them. Chuck and Eddie howled in fear and flung themselves on the ground, covering their heads with their arms. Dennis kept running until Harley leaped toward him, grabbed his arm, and jerked him to a halt.
"Dammit, what happened?" Harley demanded, shaking his younger brother.
"The line on one of the boilers got twisted up somehow!" Dennis bleated, casting apprehensive glances over his shoulder at the barn. Hissing noises were coming from inside it, and steam was billowing through the open door. Dennis went on excitedly, "We didn't notice in time, and the pressure got too high!"
The twins were still cowering on the ground. Chuck looked up and cried, "The boiler blowed up, Harley! It just blowed up!"
Harley glanced at the barn and spat. "Blowed up real good, from the looks of it," he rasped. "You two get up off the damned ground! We got us some cleanin' up to do."
Pulling Dennis with him, Harley trudged toward the barn. As he passed Chuck and Eddie, he resisted the impulse to kick them. They slowly got to their feet as Harley glared at them, then trailed after him to the barn.
Most of the steam had dissipated quickly, rising to the rafters and escaping through the gaping holes in the siding and through the open door. The barn reeked of whiskey.
Harley stood in the doorway, waving his arms to clear what steam was left from his line of vision, and squinted at the wreckage. They had set up three separate boilers to make as much moonshine as possible, and one of the big metal contraptions had indeed blown up. A huge split ran down one side; the pressure had built to such a point that the metal simply gave way.
"Don't look like the other two stills was hurt," Harley said. He gestured impatiently to his three relatives. "Get in there and clean up that mess. 'Fore you do that, though, put out the fires under them other t
wo boilers. We sure as hell don't want no fire spreadin' in here."
If that happened, it would be even more disastrous than the boiler explosion. If fire were to reach the barrels of stored whiskey that lined one wall of the barn and ignite them, the blast would be so tremendous that it would put even that new invention called dynamite to shame.
"What are we goin' to do, Harley?" Dennis whined as Chuck and Eddie extinguished the fires under the two remaining boilers. "We can't afford to lose that boiler."
"Ain't nothin' else we can do right now. It'll take money to get it fixed up, and we ain't got enough, not since we had to get them new axles for the wagons."
Harley's voice was bleak. This incident was just another in a series of accidents that had plagued the Barrows since their trip into Abilene a couple of days earlier. On Monday night, Dennis had discovered that several of the barrels stored in the barn had mysteriously developed leaks, and valuable whiskey had seeped unnoticed into the ground. None of them knew how long the kegs had been leaking, but a dozen barrels were empty. Then, at the start of a delivery run on Tuesday morning, the rear axles on two of the wagons had broken. Twenty barrels tumbled out of the two beds and broke open, pouring their entire contents on the thirsty Kansas soil.
When things started going bad, it seemed as if they just kept on going that way.
Dennis was still clutching at his brother's sleeve. "We got to do somethin', Harley," he wailed. "Ever'thin's fallin' apart!"
Harley jerked his arm out of Dennis's grip. "Dammit, I know that better'n you!" he snarled. "Lemme think a minute, why don't you..." Suddenly, he turned toward Dennis and waved a hand at the barrels. "We been thinkin' too small. I reckon it's time we made a real whiskey run!"
The twins, hearing the excitement in Harley's voice, stopped cleaning up the barn and rushed over to Dennis and Harley. "What do you mean?" Dennis asked.
"We been sellin' three barrels here and half a dozen there, makin' lots of trips and movin' plenty of whiskey, but what we need is somethin' that'll pay off big. I think we ought to load up ever' barrel we got on hand and take 'em to Dodge City!"
Rattler's Law, Volume One Page 152