Left Hand of the Law

by Charles G. West

  Ben was rapidly losing his patience with Arnold Freeman. He had a feeling that Freeman knew exactly where to find Garth Beaudry, and for some reason, he didn’t want to tell them. He glanced briefly at Jonah, who stood motionless, astonished by Freeman’s lack of cooperation. It only made him madder. He shifted his gaze back to fix on Freeman again. “I’m gonna ask you one more time, and this time I expect an honest answer outta you. If you wanted to talk to Garth Beaudry, where would you go to find him?”

  The look of the scar-faced man was terrifying to a man of mild nature like Arnold Freeman. Thinking it in his best interest, he answered at once. “He’s got a little office next to the Bella Union in Deadwood.”

  “Much obliged,” Ben said, and turned to leave. Without a word from either, Cleve and Jonah followed him out the door. Once outside, Ben confided to Cleve, “I don’t know what that was all about. Did it strike you the same way, that that feller didn’t want to tell us where to look for Victoria’s husband?”

  “He was mighty peculiar about it,” Cleve agreed. “We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he added for Jonah’s benefit.

  Inside the mining office, one of the two clerks who had overheard the entire conversation walked over to the window where Freeman was standing and watching the departing threesome. “Beaudry’s wife and boy,” he said. “Angel’s gonna be plumb tickled to hear that.”

  “I doubt Garth’s gonna be too pleased, himself,” Freeman replied. “Maybe you better ride on back to Deadwood and let him know they’re comin’.” When the clerk started for the door, he added, “You better hurry. They might be goin’ straight to Beaudry’s place. Take that buckboard. It’s still hitched up out front.”

  Startled by the sudden burst of the young clerk out the door behind them, the three paused to wonder what had caused his hurry. They stood there for a few moments, about to climb on their horses, astounded by the young man’s seemingly frantic leap onto a buckboard tied at the front rail. Lashing the horse as if he were going to a fire, he took off up the road. “I got a feelin’ if we follow that feller, he’ll take us right to your son-in-law,” Cleve commented.

  “I agree,” Ben said.

  They followed along behind the man in the buckboard, holding to a pace that kept him in sight, but not close enough to crowd him. Ben and Cleve riding easy in their saddles, Jonah bouncing along on Graham Barrett’s Morgan. Right from the start, there was little mystery as to where the clerk was going, for he retraced the trail they had used when they came to Lead. He did not spare the horse for the entire distance of the three-odd miles back to Deadwood, where he drove the buckboard around behind the Bella Union Saloon.

  Garth Beaudry looked up in surprise to see Toby Wilson, a clerk at the Homestake, burst into his cabin. In the midst of packing his saddlebags in preparation to leave town, he didn’t have time to talk. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked rather harshly.

  “Mr. Freeman sent me to warn you that some fellows came to the mine looking for you. He wasn’t sure if you’d wanna see ’em or not.”

  “I already knew that,” Beaudry replied impatiently. The bartender in the Bella Union had told him that three fellows had been in the saloon earlier, asking about him. One of them had claimed to be his father-in-law. “Pete told me, and Freeman’s right. I sure as hell don’t wanna see them.” There had been a lot of changes in his life since he had left the farm near Omaha. He was a different man, with a different life—one he had no desire to share with the plain little woman he had married before he came west and got a taste of the life he craved.

  He was proud of what he had accomplished. He had status with the operators of the Homestake Mining Company, status you didn’t get if you worried about the right and wrong of things. George Hearst had expanded the properties of the mine by fair means whenever possible, buying out the claims that would sell. Other claims were acquired through the courts, awarded by judges who were not averse to under-the-table persuasion. Although Beaudry never received orders directly from Hearst, he was noticed early in his employment by his boss, Arnold Freeman, as a man willing to do most anything to get ahead. His opportunity to gain the status he enjoyed came when a stubborn claim owner, whose property was a key piece in the Homestake’s future plans, refused to sell. Garth volunteered to convince the owner to reconsider. The man was found dead at his sluice box the next morning, and by that afternoon, Homestake took over his claim.

  Garth Beaudry had been Freeman’s bully boy ever since. It was a position Garth enjoyed, and one he was well paid for. In the wide-open, lawless town of Deadwood, it was easy enough to hire ruthless men to do his bidding, so it was no longer necessary to soil his hands taking care of the dirty details of the mine’s business. His responsibility was to facilitate the acquisition of difficult land parcels, and Arnold Freeman preferred not to know how it was accomplished. People were killed, or simply left their claims every week in Lead and Deadwood. Those remaining cared very little about the reason. The only thing that could spoil Beaudry’s world had fallen upon him now, like a bad dream that had come to fruition, and it could not have come at a worse time for him. Freeman had recently informed Garth that the company’s plan was to run him for sheriff. With him in the sheriff’s office, it would make a lot of things that much easier. Of particular concern to Freeman was to get the backing of the mayor and council, and the support of the merchants and working people of the town. That might be difficult with a wife and child showing up to sully his reputation when there had already been concern by the mayor about the fact that Garth lived with an ex-prostitute.

  Thoughts of the plain, almost homely girl he had married only because she was pregnant were enough to give him a sick feeling inside. Had it not been for his father’s threats to castrate him if he didn’t do the proper thing by the naive young lady, he would never have considered marriage. Three years he endured the simple, hardworking life on his father’s farm, mainly because of the novelty of having a woman to submit to his carnal pleasures whenever he desired. But familiarity soon wore the shine off that pastime and he became more and more aware of Victoria’s dull, listless hair and plain, simple face—and he felt he deserved something better.

  It had taken a lot of convincing on his part to get his father to finance his trek to the Black Hills, supposedly to capture a portion of the wealth being taken out of the ground and use it to establish a solid life for his young family. On the day he set out from Nebraska, however, Garth had no intention of ever seeing his father or his wife and child again. Not long after he had arrived in Deadwood, he sent his father a wire, telling him that he was doing well. The only reason had been to keep the family ties a little longer in case he might be in need of more money. But things had moved rapidly for him, and he had no further need of his father’s help. And now this. He thought of the plain, innocent face of his lawful wife and compared it to the sensual, full-lipped visage of Angel Lopez, the saucy senorita who had retired from her position in Madame Dora DuFran’s brothel to practice her art of seduction exclusively for him.

  The thought of his mistress prompted him to say to Toby, “Here’s fifty dollars, paper. Go up to my rooms in the hotel and give it to Angel. Tell her I’ve got to go out of town for a few days. That oughta hold her till I get back.” Toby turned toward the door, but Beaudry grabbed his arm. “And damn it, when I get back, I’m gonna ask her if you gave her fifty dollars.”

  “I wouldn’t cheat you, Garth,” Toby replied. “I’ve got better sense.” He took the money and started again for the door, just in time to hear horses’ hooves outside in the alley behind the saloon.

  With one accusing look at Toby, Garth stepped quickly to the window and peered out at the three riders pulling up before his cabin. “Damn you!” he spat at Toby. “You’ve led them straight to my office.” Standing to the side of the dingy window, he peeked out at the insignificant little man who was his father-in-law. “Damn!” he swore again. “That little worm.” He stared then at the two men with him. Th
ey looked like hired gunmen, he thought, and two he had never seen around Deadwood before. “All right,” he blurted, trying to decide the best thing to do. “You go on out there and tell them I’m not here. Tell ’em you don’t know where I am.”

  Toby walked out the door just as the three riders were dismounting. He walked over to the buckboard, stopped there, and turned around to face them. “If you gentlemen are lookin’ for Mr. Beaudry, he ain’t here.”

  Jonah’s face reflected his disappointment, and he would have climbed back up on his horse, but Ben wasn’t satisfied with the young clerk’s assertion. There was a feeling about the reaction of everyone they had asked about Garth Beaudry that didn’t seem right somehow. Like a worm in his mind, the thought continued to bother him until he began to wonder if something had happened to Victoria’s husband, something that a lot of people were trying to cover up. “Is that Beaudry’s house?” Ben asked.

  “Ah, no, sir. That’s his office—I reckon you would call it. But he ain’t there.”

  “I notice the door ain’t locked. Reckon when he might be back?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know,” Toby answered, visibly flustered. “Not for a long time, I s’pose.”

  “Well, I reckon we oughta go in, anyway,” Ben said. “Leave him a note maybe. Let him know his wife and kid are here. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.” The look of distress in the young clerk’s face told him that there was definitely something that wasn’t right about the whereabouts of Garth Beaudry, and he intended to satisfy himself that Victoria’s husband was all right.

  Picking up Ben’s sense of suspicion, Cleve commented, “Yeah, that’d be the decent thing to do, leave him a note. His pappy-in-law here is a schoolteacher. He can write it.”

  When they started for the door, Toby wasn’t sure what he should do. Garth had told him to get rid of them, but he didn’t know what else he could say to dissuade them from going inside. And one look at the menacing face of the big one discouraged him from trying to insist that they not go inside. Being an otherwise fairly bright young man, he did the sensible thing. He got in the buckboard and went back to the mine.

  Inside the cabin, peering out of the curtains Angel Lopez had hung on the windows, Beaudry scowled. “That little son of a bitch,” he muttered when he saw Toby drive away. There was no back door to his cabin. He was going to have to deal with his visitors, so he moved quickly back to sit down at a table he used as a desk and waited. The first one through the door was Cleve, and Beaudry looked up, feigning surprise. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Before Cleve could reply, Jonah shoved past him to exclaim, “Garth! I didn’t think we were going to find you! We’re here, Mary and me, Victoria and Caleb. It took a long time, but we made it.” He stood there, waiting for a response equal in enthusiasm to his own, puzzled when his son-in-law showed no sign of joyous surprise. “That fellow outside said you weren’t here.”

  Beaudry rose to shake the hand Jonah extended, his focus fixed momentarily on the intimidating man standing beside him. “Toby,” he said. “Don’t pay any attention to him.” Shifting his gaze back to Jonah, he said, “Mr. Marple, I’m glad to see you made it all right. If you’da let me know you were coming, I woulda been a little more prepared.”

  “Victoria and Caleb are both in good health,” Jonah went on, “and anxious to see you.”

  “I was just gonna ask you about ’em,” Beaudry said.

  “You’re not going to believe how much your son has grown since you’ve last seen him,” Jonah continued, crediting Garth’s lack of excitement to shock at having his family suddenly appear out of nowhere. “Caleb’s looking more like you every day.” Remembering then, he gestured toward his friends. “This is Cleve Goganis and Ben Cutler. They joined us at Ogallala and graciously volunteered to help me find you.”

  Beaudry nodded briefly. “I wish I had known you were in town.” He gestured toward the saddlebags on the table. “I was just fixing to leave town on some business for the mine.” Noting the look of astonishment on the faces of all three men, he hastened to add, “But I reckon I can postpone it long enough to visit my family.” He glanced at Ben again, unable to get over the feeling that the eerie-looking individual was measuring him. “Where are Victoria and the others?”

  Jonah gave him directions to the miner’s shanty they had confiscated, and Beaudry suggested that he should take care of some urgent business, but would join them for supper later on. Then he walked them to the door, leaving Jonah in a state of confusion outside by their horses, perplexed by his son-in-law’s cool reception. Jonah was no more mystified than Ben, however. The reunion left him wondering just what kind of cold, emotionless man Victoria’s husband could be; after being away from his wife and child for over a year, a normal man would have rushed immediately to see them. Cleve defined the meeting succinctly for them when he commented, “He didn’t exactly turn cartwheels when he found out his family was here, did he?”

  Deep in thought, Jonah hesitated a moment before reflecting. “Garth always was a little bit reserved, I guess. Mary and I never got to know him really well.” He looked up then and smiled hopefully. “I expect he’s probably just in shock to find us here.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably it,” Ben said, while thinking their arrival seemed more like bad news to Beaudry.

  Totally astonished, Victoria could scarcely believe that Garth had not come back immediately with her father when told that she and Caleb were here to join him. Surely there had to be some miscommunication, but there was no reasonable explanation for it. She could not help feeling embarrassed, even shamed, by his blasé reaction. He had not seen them for a year! It was difficult to explain to Caleb why his father was too busy to come to see him right away. She could not escape a feeling of despair while she busied herself by helping her mother prepare supper. It was hard not to compare the sensation she felt now to that of the evening when Garth came over to her father’s house in Omaha to stand by her when they announced her pregnancy. “What?” she asked, just then realizing that her mother had spoken to her.

  “I said Garth was probably so shocked when your father walked into his office with those two roughlooking men, he didn’t know what to think. I’m sure he’ll be just as excited as you are to be together again.” She made the statement as much for her benefit as for her daughter’s. In her heart, she had never forgiven Garth for taking advantage of her daughter. Victoria had been so young and innocent, and because of her lack of beauty, starved for affection. Mary did not deny her failing in preparing Victoria for rutty young boys like Garth Beaudry. Instead, she tried to keep Victoria from growing out of her little girl stage. Well, no harm done in the long run, she thought, as long as they build a solid marriage. “I suppose we should go ahead and feed the men,” she said. “No use letting the food get cold. Maybe Garth will show up pretty soon.” She went to the back door of the shanty and called to Cleve and Ben.

  “He’s missin’ some mighty fine eatin’,” Cleve commented as he reached for another biscuit. He was going to miss Mary’s and Victoria’s cooking, since he and Ben planned to leave in the morning and head back into the mountains. They had already stayed longer than planned, primarily because Ben wanted to see that Victoria and her husband were all right. “Speak of the devil,” Cleve commented as they heard the sound of horse’s hooves outside the shack.

  With a quick look at herself in a hand mirror, Victoria brushed her hair back with her hand, smoothed her apron, and ran to the front door to meet her husband. Eager to greet him after so many months apart, she didn’t wait for him to come in, but ran to him in the small front yard. He turned from his horse in time to catch her rather stiffly in his arms, as she pressed tightly against his chest. At once aware of his awkwardness, she released him and stepped back to look up into his face.

  He frowned and asked, “How’ve you been, Victoria?”

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, confused by his apparent constraint. “Aren’t you glad to see me? Don’t
you want to see your son? What’s wrong, Garth?” She searched for the excitement in his eyes that she had felt until this very moment when he seemed unresponsive to her greeting. There was no tenderness in his gaze.

  “You shouldn’t have come out here, Victoria,” he told her in a voice calm, but cold. “This is no place for a woman like you.” He glanced through the open door behind her at the people seated around a small table. “And it’s certainly no place for a man like your pa. This place will eat him up and spit him out.” He nodded his head toward the door. “Who are those two men with your pa?”

  “They’re friends who helped us get out here to see you,” she replied. “I’m not sure we would have made it without them.” She quickly returned to his comment that had just sent her reeling. “I had not heard from you in so long, I was afraid something had happened to you. I missed you. We all missed you. Don’t you want to see your son?” She turned her head briefly to call Caleb, then returned to gaze beseechingly at her husband.

  “He has grown a lot,” he said when Caleb ran out and pressed against his mother’s skirt, shy before this stranger. He wished then that he had told Jonah the straight of things earlier at his cabin, so he quickly returned his attention to Victoria. “Look, Victoria, I came up here to tell you things have changed. Go on back east. It’s the best thing for you to do. Our marriage is over. I never wanted it in the first place. This is where I’m gonna stay, and I don’t want you around. Is that clear enough for you?”

  Afraid she was going to fall, she backed up until she felt the edge of the low porch against her calves. Then she sank heavily down on the porch, feeling as if her entire nervous system was going to fail her. Unable to understand what was happening to his mother, Caleb tried to pull her up again, until she quieted him. “Go back in the house,” she said, in a voice drained of emotion. “Tell your grandma that your father won’t be staying for supper.”