The Book of Murdock

by Loren D. Estleman

  I brought up the Bible from its shelf beneath the lectern, rested it on its loose spine, and let go. It fell open to Second Kings, chapter twenty:

  In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.

  I found that unsatisfactory. I was riffling through the pages for something more encouraging when a window flew apart and I fell over backward with what felt like the entire church resting on my chest.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I’d had my fill of being shot at, whether I was part of the plan or not. When I realized I hadn’t been hit, that when the bullet came through the window I’d gripped the edges of the pulpit from instinct and brought it down with me, landing on my chest and knocking out my wind, I got mad and shoved it off with strength I didn’t have under ordinary circumstances. The Deane-Adams was in my hand now and I made my way on knees and elbows to the broken pane, wheezing as I did so; I couldn’t seem to take in enough air to satisfy my need. It was like swimming in deep water without having gulped in enough oxygen first.

  I raised my head just high enough to see out, resting the barrel of the revolver on the sill, strewn with glass fragments and shards of molding. Out in the street the driver of a wagon loaded with furniture was straining at the lines, trying to keep his brace of wall-eyed, pawing grays from plunging, and townsmen were leaning out through doors and around the sides of porch posts, looking toward the church or turning their heads toward the rooftops across the street. That meant a rifle or carbine, discharging loudly enough in the open air to alert the town. When the gawkers ventured out from cover and started churchward, I knew the shooter was long gone. I stood.

  Too fast. A swarm of bats flew off their perches inside my head, blocking out the light. I fell into the middle of them.

  The crack in the plaster ceiling looked familiar. The first time I’d seen it I thought it looked like the bad map I’d followed into Murfreesboro with General Rosecrans. It was directly above the iron-framed bed in the parsonage.

  Something tinkled. I thought of pieces of glass falling out of the window frame in the church and reached for my suspender scabbard, but I wasn’t wearing it, or a shirt. I lay stripped to my waist on the top sheet. I took a tentative breath, then a deeper one. The air was as sweet as sugar. I gulped in a bellyful and let it out in a whoosh.

  “It’s amazing, is it not, how grateful one can be for the things he takes for granted, once he’s been deprived of them? But then I shouldn’t have to tell a minister that.”

  I recognized the voice without knowing why. I turned my head and watched a man with a spray of beard to the third button of his waistcoat returning instruments to his case. That was the tinkling I’d heard, and I knew him now for Dr. Littlejohn, one of the town’s practitioners and a man who’d approved of both my sermons at the church door. He was sitting in the straightback from the sitting room, wearing a Masonic medal on his watch chain. He had the same insignia in brass on the latch of his black leather bag. I wondered if he was a creature of Freemason’s or just a member of the brotherhood.

  I used my tongue to clear the cobwebs from my mouth. “I had a horse squatting on my chest.” My voice still sounded like cornhusks rustling.

  “I thought at first you had a collapsed lung, but by the time I had your shirt off you’d begun to breathe normally, so it must have been temporary paralysis brought on by physical trauma. Pulpits are meant to stand behind, not used as counterpanes. You blacked out because you weren’t taking in enough oxygen to feed your brain cells. I was afraid I’d have to crack your chest and insert a rubber tube to draw off the pressure.”

  “Have you ever done that?”

  “No. I confess I was a little disappointed not to have the opportunity.”

  “Are you always this honest with your patients?”

  “My practice would be more successful if I weren’t. You’re rather an unusual man in your profession yourself.”

  “Men of God have been shot at before.”

  “Not many react in kind or so quickly. That piece of furniture that fell on you is solid hickory. Most men would still be struggling to get out from under it when help arrived. You tossed it aside like a match and threw down on the enemy.”

  I turned my head the other way, and was relieved to see the Deane-Adams on the nightstand. “It’s the second time in a week I had a bullet pass close to me. You get mad.”

  “Wrath isn’t necessarily a sin. In this case it may have saved your life. You could have suffocated under the constriction.”

  “Who—?”

  “Mrs. Freemason. She was on her way here for a visit when the shot rang out. She found you passed out on the floor and sent for me. By the time I got here, she’d recruited volunteers to carry you in here. I told her that was unwise; for all she knew, you had a broken back, and moving you might have been fatal. She said she knew a broken back when she saw one. How do you suppose she knew that?” He sat back with the bag on his lap, his hands resting on his thighs.

  “She’s a woman of many parts. Where is she?”

  “In your sitting room. She’s been waiting twenty minutes. I told her she should go home, but she demurred.”

  “Demurred.”

  He frowned in his impressive whiskers. “I agree the term seems inadequate. However, she has a way of slamming the door soundly on an argument with the air of someone declining an invitation to badminton.”

  “She’s a well-bred jenny. What do I owe you?”

  “I have my soul to consider. A day and a night in that bed will suffice, for what my counsel is worth. I’ve an idea you’re a mule from the same paddock.”

  “I always heard the Masons were honest men.”

  He fingered the engraving on his bag. “The clergy hasn’t always been so charitable toward the order. When Father Cress sees me coming he crosses himself as if I were the Prince of Lies in person.”

  “Is it true your founders claimed to have removed the body of Christ from its tomb?”

  “That’s a canard,” he said, reddening. “Catholic fanatics have been repeating it since before the Inquisition. We are a benevolent foundation, and as such represent competition with the Church. There’s the source of these centuries of black blood.”

  The emotion in his voice assured me of his affiliation. I said I’d pray for him.

  His color paled to normal. He rose, rested his bag on the chair, and drew the blanket up from the foot of the bed to cover me to the collarbone. “The proprieties, don’t you know. I’ll send her in now, but she can’t stay long. I want to check your ribs while you’re conscious to make sure they’re not cracked and pinching. I’ll bind them if they are. You bled a bit through the knees of your trousers, probably from lacerations when you were crawling through broken glass. They’ll need cleaning and sticking plaster.”

  “I can see to that, and the ribs. This isn’t the first spill I’ve taken.”

  “I didn’t realize preaching the gospel was so dangerous.”

  I’d forgotten myself. The brain is slowest to recover when you’ve stepped back from the stony edge. “I was an awkward child.”

  “All the same,” he said after a tense moment, “I’ll stay and complete the examination. We can’t have you surviving an attempt on your life only to pierce a lung with the end of a broken rib.”

  “You haven’t asked why I was shot at.”

  “I assumed it was because of the subject of your sermon this morning. Judas is somewhat less popular in the State of Texas than General Santa Anna.”

  That was a bald lie, the assumption part, and he could see I knew it, but I didn’t press the point. If there’s a man who can keep a secret as well as a minister, he has Doctor in front of his name. Nevertheless, here was one more recruit to the side of the doubters. In a little while, that shot would be heard throughout the panhandle. My sheep’s clothing was falling away in great bloody patches.r />
  She came in with none of the hesitation of a respectable woman entering a man’s bedroom, as if she were walking into her own. I’d seen her do that, with me following, but that wasn’t going to happen ever again. She had on the velvet dress she’d worn to church, without the hat. The sunlight coming in through the front windows made a copper-colored aura around her pinned-up hair. Black as it comes, there is always red in it.

  I gathered myself into a sitting position. I was careful about it, but a phantom blow struck my chest as if the pulpit had taken a second crack at me. I leaned back against the bedstead, breathing with my mouth open. No pinches, at least, so maybe no cracked ribs. I’d cracked my share, all right, falling off horses and grappling with unarmed fugitives, which made me something of an expert.

  “Nasty bruise,” she said, glancing at my chest.

  “Call it divine retribution. It could’ve been worse. A Spencer packs a hell of a wallop inside its range.”

  “You saw it?”

  “I didn’t have to. I was expecting it.”

  “Evidently.”

  I lifted a hand and let it drop to the blanket. “I thought it would happen out in the open. I fell into the sanctuary trap. That isn’t a mistake I’d have made a few weeks ago. When the disguise assumes you, it’s time to take it off and pin the badge back on.”

  “You never pin it on.”

  “That’s what I was saying. That collar cuts off the blood flow to the brain. My instincts of self-preservation went with it.”

  She transferred the doctor’s bag to the floor, inspected the seat of the chair for dust, and sat, resting her reticule in her lap. “I was certain you were dead.”

  “I disappoint a lot of people.”

  “I’m the one who sent for the doctor.”

  “There wasn’t any reason not to, once you saw I hadn’t been shot.”

  “I’m many things, Page, but a murderess isn’t one of them.”

  I let that blow in the damn Texas wind. “What were you coming to see me about?”

  “You’re welcome. I should have known you wouldn’t fall all over yourself with gratitude.”

  “Thanks. What were you coming to see me about?”

  “I came to warn you.”

  “You came late.”

  “I was late finding out. You’re behaving as if you wished it were anyone else.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time, when it was you.”

  “We weren’t always enemies, you know.”

  I said nothing, watching her.

  She shook her head infinitesimally. “Don’t pretend. You never did know when I was bluffing.”

  The reticule was purple trimmed with yellow to match the rest of her kit. Colleen Bower was capable of letting her house burn down around her while she selected just the right ensemble for flight. She untied the bag and brought out a small rectangular envelope with the initials C.B. embossed in one corner; the B standing for either Bower or Baronet, her most recent married name but one. She wasn’t the kind to let a powerful man like Freemason slap his brand on her.

  The word brand echoed in my head, for any number of reasons. It turned a lingering trace of cold fire, like incendiaries on Independence Day. My mind was still moving at a dead walk.

  I took the envelope from her gloved hand. “Your hole card?”

  “A note. I couldn’t be sure I’d find you in. God alone knows where a minister goes after the last ‘Amen.’”

  I lifted the flap, took out the matching letterhead, and snapped it open:

  You’re in greater danger than you know.

  It was unsigned, but I knew her hand. I ran my thumb over the indentations the pen had made in the soft rag stock. There was a pale spot in the lower loop of the d, where the ink had run out and she’d paused to redip. She couldn’t have manufactured it in my sitting room, and twenty minutes weren’t enough to make the round trip to her house and back. A woman of her standing in the community couldn’t afford to carry around a pot of ink and risk a stain on her handbag. A pencil and coarse paper were the only writing paraphernalia in the parsonage.

  She was telling the truth. I waited for the earth to slip off its axis, but it went on creaking around, one miracle at a time.

  I stuck the note back in its envelope and returned it. In that moment I knew my brain had been trying to tell me something. “I saw the brand on Freemason’s buggy horse,” I said.

  “He puts it on everything. He doesn’t belong, but he’s obsessed with it because of his name. He wouldn’t have the patience to go through initiation.”

  Her husband’s brand was a stylized version of the Masonic compass and square:

  “Hand me that bag.” I pointed to the doctor’s case on the floor.

  She hesitated, then complied. I rooted among the brown bottles and wicked-looking instruments inside, found a grease pencil, and made alterations on the fraternal symbol etched on the latch, drawing two lines only:

  TWENTY-SIX

  “A Star of David?” she said.

  “Just a star. This one never had anything to do with religion.”

  “Is that the brand you saw on the bandits’ horses?”

  “One horse, but I’ve been all through that with Freemason. You can always tell when a string was raised under the same conditions. It only takes twenty seconds with a running iron to change two intersecting V’s into a star. Freemason was smart enough not to send the Blue Bandannas out marauding on horses wearing a mark from his spread, but he’s a sheepman. He underestimated a cowboy’s eye.”

  “Not by much, in this case.”

  “I haven’t swung a lariat since you were in swaddles, but it’s true I was tardy. Thinking like a minister and a lawman and a saddle tramp all at the same time is a challenge.” I dropped the pencil back inside the bag and pushed it aside. “Where’d he tip his hand with you?”

  “His foreman was careless about shutting the door to his study. Richard sent for him. I overheard just enough to find out where he was sending him from there.”

  “Tell me about the foreman.”

  “Jack Kolander, a rough character who thinks he’s a devil with women. I’ve seen how he watches me when he thinks I’m not looking, but he’s too smart to take it any further with the boss’s wife. He’ll never find a billet that pays as well. Richard could hire a full-time ranch manager for less.”

  “Did you ever ask him what Kolander does to earn it?”

  “I just keep the books. Not asking questions I don’t need to know the answers to is the trade I made for his not asking me the same.”

  “I thought you said there were no secrets between you.”

  “Plainly there are. I never knew how many until he accused me of betraying him by not telling him who you were.”

  “I can see why that would make you angry enough to come running here.”

  “I walked. I have a reputation to maintain. And you know me better than to think I’d throw over everything I have because my pride got stung.”

  I searched her eyes. I didn’t know her at all. “You don’t want to see me murdered. I’ll take that as a compliment. Does this Kolander have a broad West Texas accent?”

  “Who doesn’t? When I first came here I had to learn a whole new language. For a long time I thought Bob Wire was one of Richard’s hands. When I found out it was a kind of fence I sat down and listed the names of all the people I made a fool of myself with and who didn’t bother to set me straight. That turned out to be a good thing. You can waste a lot of time learning who your enemies are.”

  “Who else is he overpaying?”

  “Fielo, but that’s a favor to me. It costs more to feed a breed ram than to staff a house with Mexicans, so what he makes doesn’t scratch the budget. He’s quiet, respectful, and he has only the one vice. Can you say the same?”

  I let the wind take that one as well. “The others must be in it for a percentage. I’m betting they tent up at the ranch between raids. What buffalos me is why Captain Jordan and
his Rangers couldn’t tie any of them to descriptions of the Blue Bandannas when they visited.”

  “I remember that day. Kolander wasn’t around. Someone cut the north fence and he took some men and followed a trail of slaughtered sheep as far as the Nations.”

  “How many men?”

  “Five or six.”

  “Six. Freemason made sure the gang was absent when Jordan came to call. If the fence was cut, they cut it. If sheep were slaughtered, they slaughtered them. It was a small enough price to pay to keep them out of the hands of the law. It wasn’t the first time he went out on a limb when his men were in trouble. You never know what the hired help might let slip when they think their boss has abandoned them.”

  “But why would Richard take such a risk? He was robbing himself.”

  “That’s how he wanted it to look, and it’s why he staged that robbery last week with me as a witness, to draw suspicion away from him. You said yourself he’s almost bankrupt. He put his Blue Bandannas up to stealing his payroll, convinced outside investors to make it up, and had them steal that, too; he paid his handpicked bandits out of the first amount and probably cut them in for a piece of the rest and all of whatever they foraged on the side so it wouldn’t look like he was the only victim. He pocketed the lion’s share. Do you know the details of the trouble he got into up in Montana Territory?”

  She watched me. “Is this another attempt to worm information out of me?”

  “That time’s past. Blackthorne came clean finally, when I pressed him. A dozen years ago Freemason was clerk of the U.S. District Court in Helena. That was shortly after Blackthorne took the bench and two years before I came to work for him. Your husband embezzled twenty thousand dollars from the operating budget and used it to start a sheep ranch near the Canadian border. He registered the land in the name of his assistant, and when an auditor from Washington turned up the shortfall, the assistant clerk was arrested, tried, and convicted of misappropriation of public funds.”