“Could I see him? Or is he asleep?”
“He doesn’t sleep much. Mostly he sits in a rocking chair and stares.” Edward’s voice hardened. “Seeing him wouldn’t do you any good, and it might upset him. He might think you were here to hurt him again.”
“I didn’t hurt him the first time,” Buckhorn pointed out.
Edward gestured curtly.
“That’s not how I meant it. I just meant that he might recognize you as the same sort of man as the ones who attacked him.”
“I didn’t think he was that aware of what’s going on.”
“Well . . . I guess as far as anybody can tell, he’s not. But I don’t want to risk causing a setback for him, either.”
“Just for a minute. I won’t upset him.”
“You can’t guarantee that.”
Buckhorn shrugged and said, “No, I reckon I can’t. But I’ll try not to.”
Edward frowned in thought for a moment, then sighed.
“All right. But just for a minute.”
He got to his feet, picked up the lamp from the kitchen table, and led Buckhorn along a hall to the door of a bedroom that stood open about six inches. Edward pushed the door open more and held the lamp up so the light spilled into the room. It was simply but comfortably furnished, with a plain bed, whitewashed walls, and yellow curtains over the window. A rocking chair was in the corner, and as Edward had said, his uncle sat there, rocking ever so slightly back and forth.
Matthew Garrett wore slippers and lightweight trousers and shirt. His face was pale, and so were the hands resting on the rocking chair’s arms. He was thin almost to the point of gauntness. His cheekbones stood out sharply against the translucent skin of his face. His white hair had been brushed carefully.
His eyes were open and looked straight ahead in a vacant stare.
“If this keeps up . . . he’s going to waste away to nothing, sooner or later,” Edward said with a catch in his voice. “Mrs. Cranford brings food for him every day, and she and I both try to get him to eat, but he won’t ever take much. It’s just too much effort for him.”
Buckhorn saw the scars on Garrett’s face. They stood out against the pale skin, vivid reminders of the savage beating the man had suffered. In his time, Buckhorn had been on both the giving and receiving end of such brutal thrashings, but he had never beaten up an old man like that.
“He doesn’t ever talk?” Buckhorn asked quietly.
“Hasn’t said a word. Wait a minute. I take that back. The one time he perked up was when Miss Quinn came to see him.” Edward flushed redly in the lamplight. “She’s, uh . . . she runs . . .”
“I know who she is,” Buckhorn said. “In fact, I talked to her earlier. She said she and your uncle were friends.”
“Friends,” Edward repeated. “I guess . . . you could call it that.”
“She insisted that’s all there was between them. I got the feeling she was telling the truth.”
“Well, maybe. Anyway, Uncle Matt did seem glad to see her. And he said something while she was here. It was hard to make out because his mouth doesn’t really work right anymore, but I think he said . . . ‘raven.’”
“Like the bird?”
“Yeah.”
“And that’s all he said?”
“That’s all I heard. I asked Miss Quinn what he might have meant by it, but she didn’t have any idea.”
Neither did Buckhorn, but it was something to file away in his mind, anyway.
“Is it all right if I try to talk to him?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Edward said.
Buckhorn didn’t press the issue. It would be nice if Matthew Garrett suddenly regained his senses, but it wasn’t really necessary to Buckhorn’s plan.
“All right. Let’s go back to the kitchen, and I’ll tell you what I’ve got in mind.”
“I’ll be interested to hear it,” Edward said. “I don’t see any way of breaking the stranglehold Conroy has on this town. Hugh Thornton had the best chance, but I’m afraid he’s going to come up short.”
When they were seated at the kitchen table again, Buckhorn asked, “When does the next issue of the paper come out?”
“The Crater City Chronicle, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“The next issue will be Saturday, four days from now.”
Buckhorn shook his head.
“That’s not soon enough. You’re going to have to put out an extra.”
“I’ve never done that,” Edward protested.
“But you know how. You’ve been publishing the paper by yourself since your uncle was hurt, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah. I can print up an extra . . . but why?”
“To announce that your uncle is showing signs of improvement and that Dr. Cranford now expects him to make a full recovery.”
Edward just stared at Buckhorn as several seconds ticked by, and then he began to shake his head.
“No,” he said flatly. “You can just forget about that, Mr. Buckhorn. They’ve already tried to kill Uncle Matt once. I’m not going to put him in danger again.”
“He’s already in danger,” Buckhorn said, his voice harsh. “I’m surprised they haven’t made another try for him before now. As long as he’s alive, there’s a chance he’ll regain his senses and testify against Conroy. I guess Conroy was willing to risk that as long as it looked like he’d never recover.”
“Conroy won’t run that risk if he thinks Uncle Matt is going to be all right. He can’t afford to let that happen. Anyway, it’s not true! You saw him. Uncle Matt’s never going to be the same again.”
Edward’s voice was bitter as his hands clenched tighter on the coffee cup in front of him.
“All that matters is that Conroy believes it.”
“All that matters to you, maybe!”
“I thought you said that you wanted to settle the score for your uncle.”
“Not by forcing them to finish the job of killing him.”
Buckhorn took a sip of his coffee and then slowly shook his head.
“They won’t kill him because he won’t be here. We’re going to hide him at the whorehouse.”
Edward’s eyes widened.
“At the whorehouse?” he repeated. “That’s a crazy idea! You’d trust a bunch of soiled doves?”
“I trust Miss Quinn. Like you said, she and your uncle were friends.”
“She does business with Conroy. All his men go there.” Edward’s lips twisted in a sneer. “You’ve probably been there as a customer yourself.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about.”
“How do you know she won’t sell us out and go running to Conroy to tell him about your plan?”
“I don’t think she’ll do that. Sure, she’s done business with Conroy. So have a lot of other people in Crater City who’d be glad to see him brought to justice if it didn’t threaten their livelihoods—and their lives.”
Edward propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands as he tried to take in everything Buckhorn was saying. After a minute or so, he sighed and lifted his head.
“All right,” he said. “You might as well tell me your plan, anyway.”
Buckhorn smiled and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do . . .”
CHAPTER 27
The lamp no longer burned beside the front door of Miss Quinn’s house, but a few lights were still visible through the windows on the second floor. Not everyone had turned in for the night yet, although in the middle of the week like this, the place probably didn’t stay open around the clock.
It wasn’t Miss Quinn herself who answered Buckhorn’s knock on the back door this time. Instead it was a tall, broad-shouldered black man with a head as bald as a cue ball. He wore overalls and a work shirt and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at the three men who stood there.
“Go away,” he said, then stiffened in surprise and went on, “Is that Mr. Garrett you got there?”
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From behind him, Miss Quinn asked, “Who’s out there, Abner?”
“You best come see, ma’am,” the man told her.
He moved aside enough for Miss Quinn to step up to the door but kept the scattergun trained on Buckhorn, Edward, and Matthew Garrett. The elderly newspaperman still had that vacant stare on his face. Getting him to cooperate and come here with them hadn’t been easy, but Edward was persistent.
“Matt!” Miss Quinn exclaimed. “Dear Lord, what are you doing here? Edward, what is all this?”
“We need your help, Miss Quinn,” Edward said.
“Of course, of course! Anything, you know that.” She stepped back and motioned for them to follow. “Come in, come in. Matthew doesn’t need to be out in the night air like this. In his weakened condition, he’s liable to catch a chill.”
The three men went into the house. Edward kept a hand on his uncle’s arm to urge him along as Garrett’s feet shuffled slowly. Buckhorn closed the door behind them. He said, “Sorry to bother you so late, but we need a safe place for Mr. Garrett to stay for a while.”
“Abner, light the lamp,” Miss Quinn told the handyman, whose duties obviously also included dealing with any troublesome customers at the house.
When the lamp was lit and yellow light filled the kitchen, Buckhorn asked, “How much do you trust your girls, Miss Quinn?”
“That depends. They’re whores,” she said bluntly. “They like money. But I think they all have a certain degree of loyalty to me, and one or two I would trust with my life.”
“How about Abner here?” Buckhorn asked as he inclined his head toward the big man. Abner frowned at him.
“Abner would never betray me, under any circumstances,” Miss Quinn said.
“Damn right,” the big man growled.
“Good,” Buckhorn said with a nod. “Probably the smartest thing to do would be to put Mr. Garrett in your room, ma’am. You can get a couple of the girls to help you take care of him, just be sure they’re the ones who are the most trustworthy. We need to hide him out for a day or two. It shouldn’t be much longer than that, if any.”
“Matthew is welcome here. He can stay as long as necessary. But you want his presence to be a secret, correct?”
“That’s right,” Buckhorn said. “A lot is riding on it.”
“Then secret it shall be.”
Edward said, “We hate to put you out—”
“Nonsense.” Miss Quinn looked at Buckhorn. “I would like to know what your plan is, however, so I’ll have some idea what to expect.”
“I suppose it won’t hurt anything to tell you.” Buckhorn smiled thinly. “After all, we already have to trust you.”
“That’s right. Abner, would you take Mr. Garrett up to my room and stay with him until I get up there?”
“You’ll be all right with these fellas, ma’am?” he asked with a dubious frown directed toward Buckhorn and Edward.
“As Mr. Buckhorn pointed out, we all have to trust each other.”
“All right.” Abner set the sawed-off shotgun on the table. “But I’ll leave this with you, just in case.”
He took hold of Matthew Garrett’s arm and urged him toward the door. Edward told the old man, “Go with Abner, Uncle Matt. Do what he tells you to.”
The elder Garrett’s face didn’t show any sign that he understood what his nephew told him, but he started shuffling toward the door. Abner went with him, and eventually the slow-moving duo vanished into the corridor.
Miss Quinn asked, “Would you like some coffee, or a real drink?”
Buckhorn shook his head. Edward said, “No thanks.”
“Well, then, sit down and tell me all about it.”
Buckhorn took off his bowler and set it on the table next to the sawed-off as he sank down into one of the chairs. Miss Quinn and Edward seated themselves as well.
Miss Quinn said, “I suppose this has to do with your efforts to expose Mr. Conroy’s villainy and see that justice is done where he’s concerned?”
“That’s right,” Buckhorn said. “I told you earlier tonight that Garrett put together some evidence against Conroy, evidence that disappeared when he was attacked.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, the chances of us finding that evidence are pretty slim, so tomorrow Edward’s going to print up an extra edition of the newspaper and announce that his uncle has started regaining his senses and is expected to make a full recovery.”
Miss Quinn’s eyebrows rose.
“But that’s not true,” she said. “I hate to say it, but Matt doesn’t seem any closer to recovering now than he did right after the attack.”
Edward said, “All that matters is that Conroy believes it.” He glanced over at Buckhorn. “That reminds me, I’ll need to talk to Dr. Cranford and make sure he understands what we’re doing.”
“He’ll play along, won’t he?” asked Buckhorn.
“I think so,” Edward said. “He doesn’t owe any particular allegiance to Conroy, or to Hugh Thornton, either, for that matter. He was here in Crater City before either of them, just like Uncle Matt was. They’ve been friends for years.” The young man nodded. “Yes, I believe we can count on Dr. Cranford to do whatever we need him to do.”
Miss Quinn looked back and forth between the two men and said, “You intend to provoke Mr. Conroy into trying to kill Matt.”
“Trying again,” Buckhorn said. “He’s already ordered one attempt. But as long as Conroy doesn’t know where to find him, Matthew Garrett should be safe. That’s why it’s so important that you keep the secret of where he really is.”
“I understand. As I said, I trust Abner completely. I’m sure I can count on Sandra as well.”
Buckhorn quirked an eyebrow. He remembered the blonde who had tried to put a knife in his back, of course, and he wasn’t sure he would have picked her to trust in keeping this secret. On the other hand, Sandra had a grudge against Yancy Madison over Chet Farley’s killing, and Madison and Conroy were tied together. So maybe it would work out after all.
At any rate, he didn’t have any choice but to put his faith in Miss Quinn’s judgment. All their fates were resting in the madam’s hands at the moment.
“Do you have any customers here right now?” Buckhorn asked.
Miss Quinn shook her head.
“The last one left a short time ago, and I blew out the lamp on the porch. It’s true that Crater City is a boomtown, but in the middle of the week like this . . . well, even the sort of men who congregate in wide-open settlements like this have to sleep sometime.”
“Then maybe you could spare a bed for me,” Buckhorn said with a smile. “I rode out of town early this morning—yesterday morning, now—and I’ve been on the move pretty much ever since.”
“Yes, I think that can be arranged.”
“I’ll pay you, of course—”
Miss Quinn lifted a hand to stop him and said, “No, that won’t be necessary.”
“I don’t work for Conroy anymore, you know. You can’t put it on his tab.”
“You’re trying to do something that Matthew wanted done, and if you’re successful, that will at least partially settle the score with Dennis Conroy. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Buckhorn, that makes us friends.”
“Yeah,” Edward Garrett added. “I guess I feel the same way.”
Buckhorn nodded to both of them.
“I appreciate that. Friends are something that have been, well, in short supply in my life. My own fault, I reckon, given the way I’ve lived, but still . . .”
“Take the word of an old madam for it . . . most people aren’t nearly as bad as they think they are.”
“I’d like to believe you’re right, ma’am,” Buckhorn said. “It’s pretty to think so, anyway.”
* * *
A short time later, Edward Garrett left Miss Quinn’s to go back to the cottage beside the newspaper office. Buckhorn cautioned him to stay out of sight as much as possible.
“You
’ll get the newspaper printed and distributed tomorrow,” Buckhorn told the young man as they stood in the now darkened kitchen. Miss Quinn had already gone upstairs to relieve Abner and see to Matthew Garrett. “It won’t take long for Conroy to get wind of what’s going on, but I don’t think he’ll make a move in broad daylight. He’ll wait until night to send someone after your uncle. By that time, I’ll be there waiting for them, and Matthew will still be safe here.”
“As long as no one finds out where he is.”
“We’ll have to trust Miss Quinn for that.”
Edward nodded and slipped out the back door. Buckhorn closed it behind the young man and turned toward the corridor, where the faint light from a candle in the front room was visible.
So was a human shape, silhouetted against that light.
Buckhorn’s hand started instinctively toward his gun, but he paused as his fingers closed around the walnut grips. The curved figure in the hallway belonged to a woman. She stepped closer and said quietly, “Take it easy. It’s just me.”
“That might be a little more reassuring if you hadn’t tried to kill me the last time we met,” Buckhorn said.
Sandra came closer, close enough for Buckhorn to make out her blond hair in the candlelight. She wore a thin wrapper belted tightly around her waist.
“Miss Quinn told me what’s going on,” she said. “About—”
“I know what you mean,” Buckhorn said. There was a chance one of the other whores could be eavesdropping in the shadows somewhere, although it wasn’t likely. “She seems to think you can be trusted.”
“Damn right I can be trusted,” Sandra snapped. “She’s the first person who’s treated me halfway decent since I . . . well, since I ran off from the farm back in Arkansas ten years ago.”
“Must have been a pretty rough time of it for you between now and then.”
“You don’t know the half of it, mister. Or maybe you do. You haven’t exactly lived what they call a respectable life, either, have you?”
Buckhorn had to laugh. He said, “Not hardly.”
“So I was thinking . . . Since neither one of us is all that respectable . . . maybe we could sort of forget about what happened that other time and start over.”
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