by Yenne, Bill
Pushing back the curtain enclosing the private booth, Virgil Stocker shouted to the head waiter. “Get a doctor! Quickly . . . get a doctor!”
Chapter 32
AS THE AFTERNOON HAD SLOWLY FADED, THE SNOW HAD come and gone. The closer they got to Gallatin City, the more traffic they met on the road. There were more wagons, and even the stagecoach headed up toward Diamond City or Helena. As they passed, people regarded this group of chained men escorted by a young woman and a bearded man with great curiosity, but no one said anything beyond exchanging simple greetings.
It was growing dark when they reached the crest of what both Bladen Cole and Hannah Ransdell knew would be the last ridge before Gallatin City. When he saw her pause and look down at the city, he ordered the others to stop and rode up to join her.
He looked at his father’s pocket watch. It was close to six o’clock. The lights of the city were coming on.
“Are you ready for this?” Cole asked.
“No . . . of course not,” she said bitterly. “Could I ever be ready for this?”
“Guess you’ll just have to take it as it comes.”
“Oh, oh,” she said suddenly.
“What?” Cole asked.
“I just saw the light in the bank come on.”
“Is that bad?”
“Actually not . . . I’d much rather this confrontation take place there than at home . . . with the memories of mother . . . and . . .”
Cole could see tears in her eyes.
“I understand,” Cole said, nodding toward the city below. “We’ll deliver this bunch to Deputy Johnson’s jail, then we’ll go over to the bank and . . .”
“No,” Hannah interrupted. “I need to go to see him alone. I know that you will have to get your money . . . but I’ll go to see him first, and I’ll go alone. You won’t need me with you when you deliver these people to the sheriff’s office.”
“But . . .”
“Don’t argue with me.” She smiled, glancing at Edward J. Olson. “You saw what happened to the last man who tried.”
“Be careful,” he said.
“I will.”
“You don’t know what may happen,” he said.
“No . . . I do not,” she admitted. “I’ll be covering new ground.”
“He may have more hired guns,” Cole suggested.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Probably, I guess . . . What a cheery thought.”
“Let me give you something,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s a little something I picked up down in Green River,” he said, reaching deep into his vest pocket.
“What is that?” Hannah asked. In the gathering darkness, she could not identify the small object wrapped in dark cloth that he had in his hand.
“It’s an over-and-under Remington derringer,” he said. “I got it from a man who has no further use for it. It’s more discreet to carry than your rifle.”
“I’m not planning to shoot my own father,” she said, taking the little gun.
“Like we were saying, that which you are planning may involve people other than your father.”
“Okay . . . I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Is it loaded?”
“Two shots, .41-caliber.”
* * *
BLADEN COLE’S LONG-AWAITED RETURN TO GALLATIN CITY came just past dark, so few people noticed that the procession riding into town included three horses with men fastened to their saddles and three carrying men across their saddles.
They paused when they reached the intersection of Main Street and Cottonwood. Down one block on the latter, there was still a light on at the sheriff’s office. Two blocks away on the former, they could see the light burning inside the Gallatin City Bank and Trust.
“Wish me luck,” Hannah Ransdell said as she bade the bounty hunter good-bye. She reached for his hand, and he took it.
“Good luck . . . Stay safe,” he said.
“You too . . . Bladen,” she replied, calling him by his first name for the first time.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST SEVEN O’CLOCK WHEN DEPUTY—ACTING Sheriff—Marcus Johnson heard someone knocking at the door of his office.
He was already in the back room, which functioned as his sleeping quarters, putting a pot on for his supper, and was ready to call it a day.
It had been a slow and quiet day, the kind that he preferred—that is, it had been until about an hour ago, when he had been summoned to the restaurant at the Gallatin House.
Poor Mrs. Blaine.
The recently widowed Mrs. Blaine had died a dramatic death on the floor of a private booth, and naturally the law must be summoned under circumstances where a clamorous demise occurs in a public place. However, the doctor, who was also summoned, ruled it a death from natural causes, so there was nothing for the lawman to do but tell the gawking onlookers that nothing could be done. You can’t arrest an oyster for being tainted.
Now, back in his office, about ready to turn in for the night, Johnson was startled by the knock on the door.
“Who’s there?”
“Bladen Cole . . . the bounty hunter . . . I got some wanted men for that jail of yours.”
Johnson quickly opened his door, looked at Cole and up into the face of the infamous Gideon Porter.
Weeks had passed since the murders at the Blaine house, but the crime was still on the minds of the people of Gallatin City. So too, especially for Johnson, who was there when it happened, was the murder of Sheriff John Hollin.
“You done brought back the Porter boys,” Johnson observed with satisfied wonderment. “Least one of ’em, or two, I guess, with Jimmy Goode here.”
“Enoch’s tied across that horse yonder,” Cole said. “You better call the undertaker. He’s started to rot. You’ve also got two others out there, but they’re not nearly so ripe.”
“Good evening, Mr. Olson,” Johnson said, spotting Edward J. Olson sitting on his hitched horse. In the dark, he did not notice that the banker’s right-hand man was chained to his saddle.
“Okay, you scum, lets dismount,” Cole said, walking first to Porter’s horse. Having detached him from his saddle, he handed him off to Johnson, who happily, though roughly, escorted the defiant outlaw to a waiting cell.
“What happened to you, Jimmy Goode?” Johnson exclaimed, looking at the man’s debilitating injuries.
“It’s what you get for kidnapping a six-year-old,” Cole answered.
“Do tell,” the sheriff said.
Goode glanced at him mournfully and looked away as he was led to a waiting cell.
“Here’s the last of ’em,” Cole said.
Having locked up both Porter and Jimmy Goode, Johnson turned back to the door, where Cole stood with Olson.
“That’s Mr. Olson,” Johnson said with alarm. “You got him in irons!”
“Yes, I do,” Cole explained. “Meet the man who paid for the Porter boys’ rampage over at the Blaine house.”
“Damn right!” Porter shouted from his cell. “He’s the one, all right.”
“Mr. Olson?” Johnson asked. “But you are . . .”
“Nobody . . . none of you. Nobody understands the whole picture,” Olson said angrily.
“And he tried to shoot poor old Gideon to keep him from talking,” Cole added.
Johnson looked at Olson in disbelief and had an almost apologetic expression on his face as he closed a cell door on this erstwhile pillar of the community.
“I’ll be damned if this bastard didn’t try to shoot me,” Porter shouted to Johnson. “Ain’t that right, Jimmy Goode?”
“Damned right for sure,” Jimmy Goode said. “Would have too, but for that Ransdell girl done whacked him . . . whacked him hard. I done saw it.”
“The Ransdell girl?” Johnson asked, addressing his question to Cole.
“She came out to help me round ’em up,” Cole said.
“What?” Johnson gasped incredulously. “Where is she now?”
“Over at the bank having words with Mr. Olson’s employer,” Cole explained. “I think that she is—”
His words were interrupted by someone rapping at the door.
“Who’s there?” Johnson asked.
“It’s Virgil Stocker, Sheriff.”
Chapter 33
HANNAH SWALLOWED HARD AND TOOK A DEEP BREATH, gently nudging Hestia down the street. She passed the post office, which she had visited routinely every business day for as long as she had worked for her father. She passed Blaine’s store, where she had shopped since she was a little girl.
It was a street that she had traveled so often throughout her entire life, but tonight things were so very different, and they would never be the same again.
She peered into the bank. It was closed, of course, and the shades were drawn, but through a slit, she could see her father at his desk.
Having steered Hestia to a hitch rail in front of the closed store adjacent to the bank, she dismounted and made an effort to smooth her badly wrinkled skirt. She wished she had a mirror so that she could fix her hair, but she decided this was the least of her concerns.
The bank’s front door would be locked, but Hannah had a key in her jacket pocket.
Isham Ransdell looked up in alarm when he heard the front door open, wondering who it could be and whether he had forgotten to lock it.
“Hannah,” he said in surprise.
To him, having no idea that she had been camping in the wilderness for two nights and on the trail for three days, his daughter looked terrible. Her clothes were wrinkled and dusty, her riding boots muddy. As he watched, she threw her hat on the counter and let her unkempt hair fall down across her shoulders.
“I’m so glad to see you,” he said, standing up from his desk chair.
“Hello, Father,” she said icily.
Her cold demeanor surprised and greatly disturbed him.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Hannah said without emotion.
“Yes . . . I have,” he said. “I just watched Leticia Blaine fall dead . . . less than an hour ago.”
“What?”
This was a twist that Hannah had not seen coming.
“It was tainted oysters . . . over at the Gallatin House.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes . . . she’s dead.”
“There have been a lot of deaths in Gallatin City of late,” Hannah said, her insinuation clear, assuming he chose to hear it.
“A lot has happened since you’ve been in Bozeman,” her father said.
“I didn’t go to Bozeman,” she replied, still disallowing herself from expressing emotion, aside from a perfunctory bitterness in her words.
“But you said . . . you were on the stage . . .”
“It was a ruse,” Hannah said, folding her arms.
“Why? Where?”
“I went up into the Sixteen Mile Creek country,” she explained. “I took Hestia and went up to Sixteen Mile Creek to find the bounty hunter.”
“Did you . . . ?”
“Yes, Father,” she said. “I found the bounty hunter.”
“Why?”
“Why did I go? . . . Or why did I go looking for a bounty hunter?” Hannah asked before proceeding to answer. “I went looking because I overheard your right-hand man—Mr. Edward J. Olson—sending Lyle Blake and Joe Clark to kill the bounty hunter, and to kill the Porter boys. I went looking for the bounty hunter because I wanted to stop that from happening.”
“But why would they . . . ?”
“Because, as you know, Father, dead men cannot point fingers,” Hannah said angrily. “Can they?”
“Point fingers at what?”
“Really? Don’t insult my intelligence, Father. I’m not your little girl anymore.”
“I don’t understand . . .” Isham Ransdell gasped. His daughter had never spoken to him like this.
“I know it all, Father,” she asserted. “I know the whole, sickening story.”
“What story?”
“What story?” Hannah repeated. “Let’s start with ‘Once upon a time there was a railroad that was coming to Gallatin City.’ Then there were four businessmen who owned some land that was not worth too much until the railroad was coming. Do you know this part of the story, Father?”
“Yes, that’s true, of course, but . . . ?”
“But it’s not anything out of the ordinary, is it?” Hannah fumed.
“No . . . not at all,” her father answered, becoming perturbed.
“Until you add on rights of inheritance,” she said, counting one by one on her fingers. “And you add to that a series of murders . . . and next, the shares go not to families, but to surviving partners.”
“You can’t believe . . .”
“I did not want to believe,” she said, fighting back tears. “You asked whether I found the bounty hunter . . . and I said I did . . . and I learned what he did not write in that letter from Fort Benton.”
“Which was?” Isham Ransdell demanded, his own ire growing.
“Which was Milton Waller’s deathbed words. His deathbed words about him and the Porter boys being paid to go to the Blaine home that night. And why did they go there? Because there were four partners. ‘Three must die,’ Waller said, ‘and only one can survive.’ Who was the only man of the four who was not there that night?”
“I wasn’t there, but . . .”
“Exactly!” Hannah shouted.
“What are you saying?”
“Gideon Porter knows, and Gideon Porter is alive. You sent the bounty hunter to bring him back, insinuating that you wanted him dead. You sent Blake and Clark out to kill them, and this morning, your right-hand man, Edward J. Olson, came this close to killing Gideon Porter until your little girl slammed him across the head with the butt of a Winchester . . . but Gideon Porter is alive!”
“I did not hire Gideon Porter to kill anyone,” Isham Ransdell shouted back angrily, though he could tell that this woman who said she was no longer his little girl did not believe a word he was saying.
Chapter 34
THE TALL, IMPECCABLY DRESSED MAN WITH NOTICEABLE scars on his face stepped into the sheriff’s office.
“Good evening, Sheriff,” he said, though his eyes were not on Marcus Johnson but scanning the other faces in the room and the cells.
“Mr. Cole, when I saw you coming down Main Street a moment ago, I could see that you had done your job,” he said, not looking at Cole, but directing his angry eyes at Gideon Porter. “And here is the mangy dog who did this to my face.”
“Gideon kept sayin’ he had friends in high places who were gonna get us off,” Jimmy Goode shouted in uncharacteristic anger. “Now look at him . . . at us.”
For the first time, perhaps in his life, Jimmy Goode had spoken assertively without Gideon Porter denouncing him or telling him to shut up.
Looking at Stocker’s face, Porter’s expression changed from his usual countenance of bitter defiance to one of anxiety.
“And I see Mr. Olson here in a cell,” Stocker said dramatically, as though he was performing before a jury in a packed courtroom. “Can someone explain to me how on earth a pillar of our community has gotten himself locked up?”
“These men have all said that Mr. Olson hired Gideon to do the shootings,” Johnson explained.
“Edward?” Stocker asked, looking at the man himself.
Olson merely hung his head as Porter acrimoniously repeated his earlier assertion.
“The Ransdell girl stopped him from shooting Gideon .
. . to keep Gideon from telling what you just heard he’s already told,” Johnson told the lawyer.
“The Ransdell girl?” Stocker said, having been caught off guard. “Where? She’s in Bozeman . . .”
“Actually not,” Cole said. “She rode with us down from Sixteen Mile Creek. Right now, she’s over at the bank, where she’s laying into the man Olson works for.”
“She’s what?”
“As you know, the man who hired Gideon Porter to do that to your face works for Isham Ransdell,” Cole explained. “Milton Waller told me on his deathbed that they were paid for those killings. It also seems that the only man not present that night stood to inherit some pretty valuable real estate.”
“So you’ve surmised . . . that Isham hired Mr. Olson here . . . to hire Porter to . . . ?” Stocker said thoughtfully, recalling that Hannah had come to exactly the same conclusion.
“Haven’t heard anything to the contrary,” Cole interrupted.
“You were sure lucky, Mr. Stocker,” Johnson added. “They was gunnin’ for you too.”
“I see,” said Stocker thoughtfully. “So now we know the whole story . . . and we have all the perpetrators in custody. Wait, where’s Enoch Porter?”
“He’s out yonder,” Johnson said. “He’s settin’ on his horse, but not upright.”
“I thought I was smelling something pungent as I walked past,” Stocker said.
“Now that everything is taken care of here, maybe I should mosey him on over to the undertaker’s before it gets too late,” Johnson said.
“That would be a very good idea,” Stocker agreed. “We’d hate to have Gallatin City awake to his stench.”
* * *
“MR. COLE, I MUST COMMEND YOU ON ROUNDING UP THE perpetrators of this crime,” Stocker said after Johnson had left the office. “Including one—Mr. Olson—we had not known to be involved.”
Cole merely nodded. His tired brain was fixed on a real bath and a good night’s sleep in a real bed.
He should not have let his mind drift to such distracting thoughts.
“I commend you on figuring out all of the details . . . except one,” Stocker said with a smirk as he suddenly drew a gun and pointed it directly at Cole’s head. “Now, please carefully unstrap your gunbelt and let it drop to the floor.”