Ragtime Cowboys

by Loren D. Estleman

  Sweet oxygen filled his lungs. He tasted it for a while, then dragged himself to the rim, grasped it, and hauled himself erect. Leaning with his hands on the rim and his back to the horizon he looked down at the man sprawled at his feet. He stared at him a long time. The stirring of his back was a fragile movement, the breathing shallow enough to be taken for the action of a breeze from outside. Unbelting the .38, Hammett knelt and placed his ear against the man’s back. His heart beat. Rested. Beat.

  Hammett stood, cocked the hammer, and took aim at a point between Lanyard’s shoulder blades. Then he lowered the hammer gently, returned the weapon to his belt, and bent to grasp the man by his collar with both hands. His own back was drenched with his draining strength, but after a few tries he began to make progress, dragging the eel toward the silo’s rim. Hauling him up and over took most of the rest of his stores. He had him draped over the top and was resting again before the final push when Siringo’s voice called behind him.

  “Don’t bother, son. Can’t you see he’s dead?”

  The young man bent again, listened. The beating had stopped.

  For the second time in his adult life, Dashiell Hammett wept.

  33

  “You’re all under arrest.”

  Becky London giggled, clapped a hand over her mouth.

  Hammett grinned. It was the first flash of humor to appear on the girl’s grave pretty face.

  Siringo told him to keep still.

  Hammett was straddling a chair in the cottage kitchen, stripped to the waist, gripping the back of the chair with both hands, as the old Pinkerton finished cleaning his wound with hydrogen peroxide. Hammett’s skin jumped at the contact.

  They had a clear view through the doorway into the dining room/parlor of Vernon Dillard and his men standing unarmed with their hands raised, staring at the weapons in the hands of the grim-faced ranch laborers, the shotgun Charmian held. The residents of Beauty Ranch had kept the posse at bay while Siringo climbed down from the concrete silo and up the wooden one to assist Hammett.

  Dillard repeated his announcement.

  “Did you bring that warrant?” Charmian asked.

  “No, ma’am, I sure didn’t. I don’t need no scrap of paper to keep the peace in my county.”

  “The law says you do. It says also that a citizen has the right to defend herself on her own property with all force necessary against an armed intrusion.”

  “Those men in the kitchen don’t live here. They ain’t got the right to attack a sheriff and his deputized officers.”

  “They do, because I asked them to help. But the only attacking done here was by you and your men, including that creature of yours on the silo.”

  “He ain’t my creature. I don’t even know who he is.”

  “Then you’re a fool as well as a liar. You brought him here, turned him loose on my property, and you claim he’s a stranger. On whose authority did you take that chance?”

  “You can’t prove I did nothing of the kind.”

  “It’s a small village. I imagine someone saw you both in the car.”

  “Anybody says he did’s a damn liar.”

  Becky seemed to grow weary of the circling conversation. She came into the kitchen. “Is it bad?”

  “It’s never good when metal hits flesh.” Siringo unwound two yards of gauze from the roll from the first-aid kit and tore it loose with his teeth; the ones up front were complete and sound. “It’s just luck the man that shot him was using a pistol. It was near the end of its range and the slug only went in an inch: A rifle round would of gone straight through and come out the front. It’s there in the basin if you like souvenirs.”

  She looked at the bloody lump of lead and shuddered. “No, thank you.”

  Hammett said, “Good. I’ll hang it on my watch chain.”

  “You’ll need it. Your bump of good fortune’s big as mine, but I wouldn’t trust it.”

  “I should be the one tending him,” Becky said.

  “All due respect, miss, you’re a whiz with a blistered foot and a cracked head, but I was patching up gunshot wounds when your father was in knickers. I’m good for something, if not sharpshooting. Good thing I tried for the back and not the head, or I’d of got sky. Mr. Hammett done the rest with his pocket jewelry.”

  “It was too good for him at that. I wish he’d kept breathing long enough to take the same trip he sent me on.”

  “That ain’t Christian, boy.”

  “Daddy would approve,” Becky said. “He believed in praying only to humanity.”

  Charmian’s voice rose in the other room.

  “I will offer you a bargain, Sheriff. Tell me who sent you and I’ll promise not to prosecute.”

  “Nobody sent me. A complaint was made and I carried it out.”

  “Very well.” She turned. “Becky, use the telephone and get Mr. Rance at the Morning Call. He was an admirer of your father’s. I doubt even Mr. Clanahan’s friends in Sacramento will interfere with the process of justice once the world’s read about the Battle of Beauty Ranch.”

  Dillard’s big face lost its high color, but only for a moment.

  “You don’t want to do that. There’s a little matter of a murder committed.”

  She slid her gaze along the men of the posse, shifting their weight from foot to foot with their hands near the ceiling.

  “You all saw what happened. Will you testify under oath that Mr. Siringo acted from any other motive than to defend his partner’s life from a man who will certainly prove to have been implicated in murders of his own?”

  To a man they all looked down at the floor.

  “Mr. Siringo, what’s the penalty for perjury in a homicide trial?”

  “I can’t answer for today, but in my time it was the rope, same as accomplice to murder.”

  “We’ll err on the side of mercy and agree it’s life imprisonment. Gentlemen, I ask you, is it worth it?”

  “It wasn’t murder. It was kill or see murder done.”

  The man who had raised his eyes to hers was the man in the tweed suit Siringo had sent scurrying back to the trees with one shot. His pugnacity seemed to have been spent in that failed attempt at glory.

  “Becky, place that call.”

  “Hang on.” Siringo had tied off the bandage binding the gauze to Hammett’s shoulder. He stepped into the main room, looking up at the ceiling. There was a yawing noise just above the roof, close enough to vibrate the panes in the cottage windows.

  Charmian said, “There’s a private aerodrome just down the road. We’re always being disturbed by amateur pilots pretending to be Eddie Rickenbacker. It upsets the hogs.”

  He went to the window and looked out. “You better hope this one’s no tenderfoot. He’s coming in for a landing, and them hills don’t look any too accommodating.”

  Charmian leaned her shotgun in a corner beyond reach of the captives and joined him at the window, followed by Becky and Hammett, drawing on one of Jack London’s shirts. It was too big in the collar and too short in the sleeves.

  It was dusk and the biplane had its running lights on, but its pale fabric-covered wings and fuselage were visible in the rays of the setting sun. It flew east. It seemed to float entirely on the air, a fragile-looking thing of wood and canvas that resembled nothing so much as a box kite. The moaning sound of its engines seemed separate from the craft, as if added as an afterthought, in case it failed to stay aloft forever on nothing more substantial than warm air from the ground. It bore no markings.

  It descended gradually, the wings dipping on the right side, then trading places with the left by way of some adjustment by the pilot. Just as the wheels seemed about to touch ground, its engines swelled and the nose pointed skyward, placing more space between it and the horizon. It shrank in the distance, then turned back westward, its nose flashing as it caught the sunlight. From that point on it seemed to grow steadily, its propellers roaring louder, its course stable, wobbling only when its wheels encountered a wave of heat
escaping from the earth. They touched down, bounced, touched again and stayed. Siringo heard the hogs squealing and snuffling in the pens.

  The plane continued directly toward the cottage, its engines slowing, until it turned in a lazy half-circle facing east again and then there was silence. The propellers slowed, seemed to rotate briefly in the opposite direction, and stopped.

  The man in the front cockpit vaulted down to the ground easily and strode around the machine, working the tail rudder manually and kicking the tires. The man in the rear climbed out more awkwardly, found his land legs, and started toward the cottage, unstrapping his leather helmet, which didn’t match his business suit. The last patch of scarlet sunlight flashed off the round lenses of his spectacles.

  “Well, scald me live and call me pork,” Siringo said. “I never saw such a one for gall since Billy Bonney.”

  “Who is it?” Charmian asked.

  Hammett’s teeth bared in a wolfish grin.

  “It’s himself. Joseph P. Kennedy, Senior.”

  34

  Kennedy was smoothing the hair rumpled by the aviator’s helmet when Charmian snatched open the door. She hadn’t given him the chance to knock.

  “Come in, Mr. Kennedy, and join your accomplices.”

  He smiled tentatively. The shotgun she was cradling inside her elbow appeared not to concern him.

  “Have I the honor of addressing Mrs. London or Mrs. Shepard?”

  “Mrs. London. I sent my sister-in-law away hours ago. I wanted to cut down on the casualties should things go badly.”

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, although I won’t accept the remark about accomplices. I am a law-abiding man.”

  “That you are a partner to murder and assault we shall discuss; but you are certainly a smuggler of illegal merchandise. Every bootlegger in California knows your name.”

  “I doubt every one. But thank you for giving me the benefit of the doubt as to the other.”

  She closed the door behind him and led him into the main room. Kennedy’s smile crystalized when he saw the men standing with their weary arms raised inside a half-circle of men dressed as laborers. He looked from the assembly to the pile of confiscated weapons on the floor.

  “You gentlemen have been busy, though I’ll not say you worked. Where nothing has been accomplished, no work has been done.”

  “Will you tell these damn—” Dillard began.

  “There are ladies present, Sheriff. I assume you are the local exemplar of the law?”

  “I am; and who the he—heck are you?” Something in the quiet Irishman’s demeanor seemed to quell his natural truculence.

  “My name is Kennedy. Perhaps Mr. Clanahan mentioned me in passing.”

  “Oh.” The big man seemed to shrink. “I’d be obliged if you’d ask these ladies to take away all this artillery and let us put down our hands. I can’t feel mine no more.”

  Siringo spoke up. “You’ll find two more rifles outside. Mr. Hammett dropped one belonging to London and another belonging to a man named Lanyard.”

  “Dropped them?” Kennedy looked at the young man seated in a rocking chair, a bamboo cane leaning nonchalantly against one knee and a stockinged foot resting on an ottoman. The smoke from his cigarette seemed to hang motionless in the air.

  “I’m careless that way,” Hammett said. “I also neglected to bring Lanyard down from the roof.”

  “I take it from your phrasing the man is dead.”

  Siringo said, “He was born dead. He just didn’t acknowledge it till now.”

  “I hardly expect you to believe me, but I never heard the name until just now. I assume he’s one of those unfortunate people Clanahan feels he needs to have around him in order to do business.”

  “I believe you,” Siringo said. “You said you only bet when you hold the cards. That means you don’t bluff.”

  Kennedy smiled at Becky. “Which daughter have I the privilege of meeting?”

  “Becky. His youngest.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. London. Is the child mute?”

  “I’m neither mute nor a child,” Becky said. “My father taught me not to speak to strangers. Based on your performance here today, I find you stranger than most.”

  “Spoken like your father. I never met him, but I’ve studied his speeches in the Socialist cause. I think the Democratic Party would do well to adopt some of his better ideas, such as old-age pensions and medical assistance. I recognized you by the eyes and the frontal development.”

  “She’s got a bump of intelligence for a fact,” Siringo said. “Also one of obstinacy, which I don’t regard as a failing, except in the case of Dillard. A man who don’t know when he’s beat can’t ever expect to win.”

  “Mr. Siringo. I wish I’d known who you were when we met in the Shamrock Club; Mr. Hammett too. Since then I’ve had ample opportunity to study your careers. Would you agree with me that these men are now quite harmless, and may be excused?”

  Charmian said, “The decision’s mine, as the mistress of this house. If you’re too impatient to wait for my decision—”

  “I am not, and I apologize. I assumed these men of action were in command upon your approval. It’s always a mistake to assume something just because it seems obvious. Certainly it’s bad politics. I defer to your authority; although may I point out that these men may be relied upon never to return to this ranch without your invitation, and to take no further action in regard to this affair on pain of humiliation at the least?” The predator’s eyes behind the mild spectacles were trained on Dillard throughout this speech. The sheriff fidgeted.

  “And at the most?” she asked.

  “Incarceration, and possibly although not probably the rope. I have some influence in this regard—should I feel to exercise it.”

  She looked to Siringo, then Hammett. They offered nothing in return.

  “Very well,” she said after a moment. “But their weapons remain here until I see fit to return them.”

  “Hold on,” said Dillard.

  Kennedy’s eyes were on Charmian. “Agreed. You know where to find them should you need to,” he added.

  She looked from one face to the other, as if burning the features into her memory.

  “It’s a small village,” she said. “And Jack has many friends.”

  “Sheriff, you may go. Take your dead with you.”

  Dillard lowered his arms and shook circulation back into his hands. “Clanahan won’t like it.”

  “What Clanahan likes and doesn’t like has never been part of the matter. He’s shortsighted. He can’t see beyond the end of this man Lanyard’s rifle. My vision goes much farther, to places where even the threat of murder carries no weight. Do you understand?”

  It was clear from the look on Vernon Dillard’s face that he didn’t and never would. It was just as clear that he feared the things he didn’t know more than the things he did. He looked at his men, jerked his head toward the door, and led the way out. Hammett smirked, started to say something; but Siringo caught his eye and shook his head. A man stripped of all his authority was as dangerous as a yellow coyote trapped in a corner.

  *

  “I’ve heard wonderful things about your wine,” Kennedy told Charmian, when the last motor had throbbed out of hearing, taking the eel’s body with it. “I wonder if you might take pity on a man who’s survived his first ride on an aeroplane. The year I was born, Boston was still celebrating the miracle of the horse-drawn trolley.”

  “You’ll pardon me if I don’t join you. Jack wouldn’t approve of my drinking with a potential murderer.”

  “I hope to dissuade you of that opinion before this conversation is through.”

  “Can I get you gentlemen anything?” she asked the others.

  “I wouldn’t mind having some of that beer,” Siringo said. “Shooting’s thirsty work.”

  Hammett said, “Beer for me, too. And a ham sandwich, if it isn’t too much trouble. Surviving’s hungry work.”

  �
�What would you like, Becky? We have fresh buttermilk.”

  “Could I have a beer?”

  Charmian frowned.

  “Really, Charmian. It’s illegal for us all; and I think I’ve earned it.”

  She nodded and left.

  *

  “Well, sir, what shall we talk about?” Kennedy sat in a rocker with his legs crossed, the crease in his trousers perfect, the aviator’s helmet on the table at his elbow and a glass of Jack London Vineyards in his hand.

  Siringo, to whom the question was addressed, looked at Charmian, a woman who asked no superfluous questions. She unlocked the drawer of one of the display cabinets, drew out Hammett’s notes, and brought them to Siringo, who tilted his head toward Kennedy. She frowned, but did as directed.

  Kennedy glanced at the top sheet and dropped the notes in his lap. “You know, I could prosecute you for theft.”

  “Seems you started something along them lines.”

  “Clanahan’s a fool, and shortsighted besides. The first affliction is universal. The second is congenital. He’ll finish out his political career in the penitentiary.”

  “Dead, more like,” said Hammett. “It’s a brave new world.”

  “I assumed he’d go through the proper channels. If he’d come here with a warrant, it would have saved everyone a world of trouble.” He sipped at his cabernet, directed an appreciative expression at Charmian, who sat stone-faced in the rocker facing him. “I blame myself, of course. I’d be a poor politician if I did not. I expected too much of my associates when I should have dealt with the business directly.

  “I knew nothing of this man Lanyard. I don’t expect you to accept that, but it’s the truth nonetheless. What are you asking for the original?”

  “That’s up to Mrs. and Miss London,” Siringo said. “It’s this spread we’re sitting on that’s at stake.”