The Book of Murdock

by Loren D. Estleman

  Richard Freemason took my hand in his iron grip; either he was accustomed to dealing with politicians or Captain Jordan had been mistaken when he’d called him a gentleman rancher. Poking letters into pigeonholes is poor exercise for the hands.

  “I felt I’d made a good choice in you when we met,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to have that feeling confirmed.”

  “Thank you, sir. I had misgivings about the references to sheep and cattle.”

  “Those wars are finished, and subtlety is lost on Texas. You should publish.”

  “I wouldn’t presume.”

  “Nonsense. I have some acquaintances in publishing, who may have some contacts with the ecclesiastical press. I’ll give you a recommendation.”

  I thanked him, and found his wife’s gloved hand in mine. “Wherever did you find your inspiration?” Her smile carried no trace of mockery.

  “I found it in a charming new acquaintance, Mrs. Freemason,” I said. If she wanted to broach the subject in the presence of her husband, I wouldn’t back away. “I came with a bundle of sermons, but none was appropriate to our discussion. I promised you a sermon in return for your gracious hospitality, you may remember.”

  Freemason said, “The story of Job is one of Colleen’s bugbears. I’d no idea you two had dissected theology at the house.”

  “Brother Bernard is very approachable, dear. I won’t say he’s converted me to the God of the Old Testament, but he makes an excellent case for the defense. One might think he knew his way around the halls of justice.” She’d made a bargain not to expose me. Nothing had been said about torture.

  I put a smile on my face I hoped was modest. “My father was a deacon. One of his happiest entertainments was to engage me in religious discourse from the time I was old enough to read scripture.”

  “My father was a butcher in Manchester,” Freemason said. “I can’t recall a single intelligent conversation I ever had with him. Tell me, Brother, with which church was your father affiliated?”

  I’d made a mistake in volunteering a detail from Sebastian’s manufactured past. Now I hesitated to provide specific information that could be exploded by a simple inquiry.

  Colleen, of all people, came to my rescue. She placed a hand on his arm. “Dear, we mustn’t monopolize the brother. Others are waiting to speak with him.”

  “Of course. Mrs. Freemason and I would be honored to have you in for dinner. Will you be free this afternoon?”

  “I’m honored to accept.” There was nothing for it but to open myself to further inquisition. Inventing an excuse wasn’t an option. I’ve always found it difficult to tell a white lie while I was living a direct falsehood.

  “Splendid! Two o’clock.”

  Colleen’s smile was angelic. That was when she was at her most diabolical. She gave me a nod and left on her husband’s arm.

  By the time the church doors closed I had three more invitations to dine that week. Returning to the parsonage, I locked the door, opened my valise, took out the bottle of Old Forester I’d brought from Helena, and helped myself to a secular swig.

  SEVENTEEN

  “My mother was American,” Richard Freemason said. “Still is, I suspect, although we haven’t spoken in ten years. She’s never forgiven me for deserting her for the frontier, but since she always cashes the bank draughts I send her in Boston, she hasn’t wasted away from a broken heart. I’m a man, and therefore unworthy of her trust. I have my father to thank for that. He proposed to her in London while she was taking the Grand Tour with her parents, representing himself as the owner of a chain of meatpacking plants that exported abroad, but after a wedding trip to Brighton she learned he had only the one shop and his most distant customer lived six squares away. She divorced him when I was five and brought me with her back to the States. Evidently, having made one disastrous decision on the spur of the moment, she was determined to take her time arriving at the second.”

  “And was that disastrous as well?” I sat back to give Fielo, the venerable Mexican manservant, room to ladle chowder into my shallow china bowl. Ocean fish was an almost nonexistent delicacy in West Texas.

  “Eventually, but I had a hand in how it turned out. My grandparents furnished her with an annuity to help rear me until age eighteen. I leapt the fence at fifteen, and when they found out they cut her off without a penny. She made me aware of that fact in her response to a letter I sent months later, bringing her up to date on my experiences since quitting the maternal nest. That was our last exchange. She’s never sent me so much as an acknowledgment for the money I send regularly—have done, since I got my first job stocking shelves in a dry goods in St. Louis. Her bank takes care of that by providing the canceled draughts with her signature on the back.”

  “Still,” I said, “you have kept the Fifth Commandment. That speaks well of you.”

  “It speaks better of Colleen, who insisted I continue after I expressed the opinion that I had paid the old lady sufficient rent for the time I spent in her womb.”

  Colleen shook her head when the old man arrived at her place with his tureen. He served Freemason and returned to the kitchen. “As with bold entrepreneurs the world over,” she said, “odious rumors follow Richard everywhere he goes. The monthly emolument is a small price to pay to avoid accusations of abandoning his own mother.”

  That was vanity and a sin, but I forebore to point it out. Griffin had drilled into me the importance of not preaching to one’s hosts. Furthermore it was a lie. Colleen had climbed to a precarious level where her past balanced delicately against her current claim to respectability. Whispers that she’d bewitched her husband into maintaining her in luxury while his mother starved would make her an expensive liability if he intended to increase his grip on the panhandle (if that was his aim; I hadn’t gotten his measure yet). To an extent, her true motives exonerated her. The Bible says nothing against taking action in one’s own defense.

  The dining room was small by the standards of that type of house, but seemed spacious by way of its lack of fussy detail. It contained none of the porcelain bric-a-brac and lace and velvet drapery that turned large Eastern salons into crowded airless warehouses where you had to plan your entrances and exits beforehand to avoid knocking over some favorite piece of gimcrack. The rectory table was less than ten feet long and stood on four handsomely turned legs atop a rug of Old World manufacture with both halves of the globe embroidered in its center, with five of the full set of shieldback chairs placed against the walls and a massive sideboard carved from fruitwood where additional courses could be placed to keep the serving apparatus operating smoothly during larger affairs than ours. Good landscapes hung in gilt frames and a crystal chandelier built on the modest scale of the room were the only ornaments in sight. I sensed the hand of the lady of the house in the decoration. She would march resolutely in the opposite direction of the gold-etched mirrors, glistening mahogany, and dripping bronze barbarity of the saloons where she’d made her living before she found an easier way.

  The food was excellent, and in keeping with the room’s quiet taste. After the chowder we ate roasted breast of duckling in a light cream sauce, asparagus in butter, sweet potatoes, warm moist bread (in my experience second only to Jane Sweet’s biscuits at the Pan Handle restaurant), and finished with mincemeat pie and coffee poured from an oriental silver decanter. The cook, Freemason said, had come from Belgium to open a tearoom with her husband in New York City, only to lose him to fever during the voyage. The sheepman had discovered her slinging delicately seasoned stew in a bunkhouse full of ranch hands who wouldn’t know fennel from feather grass and appropriated her to serve as his personal chef. The coffee was as good as Charlie Sweet’s, refined probably with eggshells without recourse to the mythical properties so many amateur brewers assign to chicory.

  I was relaxed, but on my guard. That medicinal jolt of whiskey had flattened my nerves and I had a story ready in case Freemason pressed the point of my fictional father’s church: The fires that had p
lagued Denver until an ordinance was passed requiring all new construction to be made of brick had claimed any number of such institutions, an excuse I hoped would retard the process of confirmation long enough for me to finish my work in Owen. He didn’t ask, however. He seemed more concerned with how much part the First Unitarian church might play in the progress of civilization in the region. Primarily he sought assurance that the railroad would come to town instead of bypassing it for White Horse or some other point, leaving Owen to dry up and blow away before the incessant wind from Arizona.

  “Please don’t be offended when I tell you there was resistance to appointing an evangelist to the pastorship,” he said, stirring sugar into his cup. “Some members of the board of directors opposed the, er, rootlessness of your particular denomination. I reminded them that solid Unitarianism had done nothing to slow the erosion every time the Reverend Rose served up one of his tasteless homilies from Numbers. Surely there is no other book that so thoroughly replicates the effect of reading a shopkeeper’s inventory.”

  I smiled. “Fifty and three thousand and four hundred of the children of Naphtali, six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty of the children of Israel, threescore and two thousand and seven hundred of the children of Dan. I confess that I could never satisfy myself as to the correct total of my mother’s household accounts until I arrived at the same sum three times. I must own that my reason for trying to put life in my sermons is not entirely selflessness. It’s important for a minister to set a good example by staying awake at the pulpit.”

  “And so you did. And so did the congregation, mostly.” He’d been seated in front of the red-faced parishioner who’d snored his way through most of the service from the first hymn to the last “Amen.” “I daresay you bought me some credibility with the rest of the board this morning. The true test will come next Sunday, when we learn the amount of attrition now that native curiosity is satisfied.”

  “You may concern yourself with other things, Richard. Brother Bernard is no flash in the pan.”

  I looked at the lady of the house, sipping her coffee black from a cup so thin I could see the contrast between the contents and its surface. I wasn’t looking for any sign of dissembling, because I knew they wouldn’t show. After the journey through the bleak landscape of the Cimmaron Strip and what lay south of it, I owed myself the pleasure of the sight. It was no wonder Freemason had disregarded the disadvantages of her life story in order to place her at the head of his table.

  Not precisely the head; the couple observed the egalitarian practice of sitting not at opposite ends of the refectory piece, but side by side in the middle, facing their guest. Butcher’s son that he was (and whatever else he may have been, robber baron or murderer or festering thorn in Judge Blackthorne’s thick hide), he had a gift for politics. That was as important a trait in a ranching pioneer as rough justice and vision.

  “Other concerns indeed,” said he, and when I turned my attention back to him there was no indication on his face that the conversation had been light until then. “The sheep wars are finished, barring the odd inevitable flare-up, but these bandits must be addressed. Railroad builders think nothing of blasting their way through miles of granite, but a series of disconnected raids can force them to change their course by a hundred miles. I know you’ve heard about our late troubles in that area. You had breakfast yesterday with Charlie Sweet.”

  I was careful there. The palmists may have been right: Give a man or a thing a moment’s thought in some company and it’s the same as saying the name aloud. “I didn’t see you there.”

  “I wasn’t; Madame Lemonnier’s ducklings and pastries have spoiled me for the beans and bacon in the Pan Handle. It’s a small town still, and that collar stands out. By now, half the population’s convinced you’ve converted Sweeney from Roman idolatry, if not his formidable sister.”

  It was as much a question as a statement, and I took my time chewing and swallowing a mouthful of pie before I answered. “I’d heard about the stagecoach robbery when I stopped in Wichita Falls. The clerk in the freight office here gave me more details. When I found out Mr. Sweet was the man serving me breakfast, I inquired about his health. I’ve learned that talking about such things brings comfort.”

  “Taking action against them brings surcease. Sometimes I think the raids are not disconnected after all, and that these brigands have set themselves to drive me to ruin.”

  “You’re being melodramatic,” Colleen said. “You suffered direct losses in three of the raids, but not all. Considering the amount of business you do, and how dependent it is upon the railroads, you make a broad target.”

  “In a way I’m connected to them all. When they hit their first train they made off with my payroll. The second was carrying securities I’d borrowed from my bank in Chicago to repair the loss. The cattle they rustled at White Horse were purchased from Goodnight to trade in Colorado for breeding stock to improve my wool yield. I’ve suffered more than anyone from these raids, and if the railroad bypasses Owen because of them, I’ll be a pauper. I confess, Brother, to envying Job at one point during your sermon. My faith is not so stalwart.”

  I resisted reminding him that Sweet and the cowhand slain at White Horse may have suffered as much. “If Job’s convictions were less rare, I’d have no work.”

  Colleen said, “You might chide him for the sin of pride. Not every misfortune takes place with him in mind.”

  “I wouldn’t presume, in his own house. I trust pains were taken to keep secret the details of how the valuables were being transported.”

  Freemason’s bulbous forehead gathered in bunches. “They were known to no one but my representatives, myself, and the people I do business with. Are you suggesting a Judas?”

  “I’m unqualified to suggest it. I’m unschooled in the ways of the world, and too curious for comfort. Please accept my apologies.”

  He lifted his cup to his lips. “Sometimes innocent eyes see clearest. Lord knows my garden is crawling with serpents.”

  Colleen said, “Perhaps the Brother suspects Eve.”

  I made so bold as to intercept her gaze, but it lingered less than an instant before turning to her husband, who made a dry sound in his throat and patted her hand. “My dear, I’d sooner suspect the Brother of an indiscretion.” He returned to his reflections. “If I find this serpent and sever its head, another will take its place. I’ve beseeched the governor to send us a company of Rangers, but it appears I exhausted all my goodwill in Austin when he agreed to support the fence-cutting law.” He set down his cup for refilling by Fielo, who’d appeared behind his left shoulder. “I admit I hadn’t considered the possibility of a breech in my wall. That suggests a single enemy. I wonder which one.”

  Colleen said, “Find the breech and trace it to its source.”

  “But where to start?”

  “Coffee, Señor?” The old Mexican hovered over me with the decanter.

  III

  The Book of Judas

  EIGHTEEN

  Colleen reminded Freemason he had work waiting and insisted on seeing me to the door. He shook my hand and withdrew to his study as she looped her arm inside mine. It felt pleasant, even if the last time she’d done that was just before someone had tried yet again to kill me.

  “You came all this way to break up a gang of common bandits?” She spoke low. People who keep servants do as a rule.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to. Richard is the second person in town you’ve spoken to about the robberies. You have no outside interests, Page. You’re quite dull when you come down to it.”

  “We can’t all be as inspirational as Brother Bernard.”

  “I’m not your spy. I’ve more to gain by being loyal to my husband than by robbing him.”

  “You said yourself he’s gone bust.”

  “I’ve seen busted from both sides. His kind has a different definition. When he hasn’t ten cents for a shave he can ra
ise a million dollars on his reputation. There ought to be another word for that kind of busted.”

  “There is. It’s called running a bluff. All the more reason to hit him for the hard cold cash he gets up that way.”

  “I’m not like that anymore.”

  I laughed. “I don’t believe it. No one ever accused you of being dull.”

  “I’m serious. You get awfully tired dealing from the bottom of the deck. You start to wonder if the suckers are right and the game’s more fun if you play it according to Hoyle.”

  “You wouldn’t know Hoyle if he bet his watch and chain against the pot.”

  We’d reached the door. She looked up at me. Her eyes were as clear as flakes of sky. How they stayed that way when they were attached to Colleen Bower’s brain stumped me worse than the Infinite. “I’d suspect you of personal motives if I thought you ever had human qualities,” she said. “Did I break your heart?”

  “You as much as said I don’t have one.”

  “Someone broke mine long before we met, and you know something? You can still feel the pain in a leg after it’s been cut off and buried.”

  “What about the houseboy? He’s old enough to start thinking about a pension.”

  “Fielo belongs to an old aristocratic family wiped out by Juaristas in the revolution. He fought for his country in the Mexican War, only to lose everything, including a son, after Maximilian fell twenty years later. He came here with nothing but the rags on his back and a ferocious hatred for all bandidos. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help out the Yankee variety. Anyway, he’s frail, his duties aren’t physically demanding, and Richard pays him nearly as much as his top hand on the ranch. I asked him to. I doubt the old fellow would take the risk.”

  “I’d like to visit the ranch. Can you arrange it?”

  “So it’s the gang you’re after.”