“Pretty sure he’s never had any he ain’t paid for,” the deputy replied. “But he ain’t new in town. He’s that rummy used to sit in Soto’s and beg free drinks.”
Calhoun sat on the stiff bunk and eyed Tuck. “Cleaned up some, ain’t he?”
“Figger it won’t last,” Kanouse said. “But while it does, he’s got the star on.”
“Mo, I’m warning you,” Tuck said. “If I’d known you and Calhoun were pals, I’d have just shot him where he stood.”
Kanouse chuckled. “Oh, me and Ned go way back.”
Simpkins went into the second cell, next to the one Calhoun sat in. When Tuck released him, he nearly fell over, but he caught himself on the bars. Tuck clanged the door shut and turned the key in the lock, then dropped it in his pocket. “Easy, Billy,” he said. “You might want to sit before you hurt yourself.”
Simpkins eyed the bunk a couple of times, as if making a mental measurement of how many steps he would need to reach it. Finally he released the bar, took two stumbling strides, and made it to the bunk just as his knees gave way beneath him.
“You okay?” Tuck asked.
“Fine, Marshal.”
“The marshal will take real good care of you men,” Kanouse said. “On account of he’s no doubt spent considerable time in cells his own self.” He took a coffeepot from a stove, poured some into a mug that looked relatively clean. Handing it to Tuck, he said, “Reckon you got it covered, Marshal? Been a long day for me.”
“Go on,” Tuck said. He didn’t have any other place to sleep, since he doubted it would look good for the town marshal to be caught curled up in an alley somewhere. He took a sip of the strong, hot coffee. “I’ll be here.”
“Calhoun, keep an eye on the marshal,” Kanouse said. “He’s new at this, probably got no idea what he’s doin’.”
Calhoun laughed. “I’ll steer him straight, Mo,” he said.
“Kanouse,” Tuck said before the deputy reached the door. “Where’d those flowers come from?”
“Some feller brought ’em, said they were from the town council,” Kanouse answered. “Kind of a gift, I reckon.”
“What feller?”
“I disremember his name. He’s a hand out at the Broken M.”
“Montclair’s ranch?”
“That’s right.”
“Thanks.”
Kanouse gave a casual nod and went out the door. Tuck settled into the chair at his desk. He didn’t like Kanouse, and he couldn’t argue the fact that up until a few days earlier, he’d have been far more likely to be in the cell than wearing the star. But the man made a decent pot of coffee, he had to give him that.
Chapter Twenty-four
Tuck woke to screams.
He was sitting upright in his desk chair, where he must have been all night. His muscles were so stiff that when he craned his head toward the cells, he felt like Calhoun had spent the night working him over with that Bowie knife. Morning sunlight streamed in through the little window in Calhoun’s cell. Tuck noted it, but turned his attention to Billy Simpkins, who was standing in his cell, fists clenched in front of him, shrieking.
“Simpkins, what the hell?” Tuck asked. He was just becoming aware, as his senses awoke, of a strange, sour smell in the room. His eyes were gummy, but he knuckled them open.
Simpkins didn’t answer. He took a deep, wet breath, then kept screaming.
Tuck followed his horrified gaze.
Calhoun was in his cell, up against the back wall. His toes barely touched the floor. A noose encircled his throat, which looked like it had been stretched a couple of inches. The other end was tied to the bars of the small window. Calhoun’s face was a dark purple color. His mouth was open, his tongue hanging out like a fat, dark worm.
As if that weren’t enough, he’d been split open down the middle, from the center of his chest to his belt. His innards had either spilled out or dangled from the opening.
Simpkins kept screaming.
“Shut up, Billy!” Tuck ordered. “Can’t hear myself think!”
Tuck’s head ached something fierce. He tried to make sense of the scene, but nothing about it was right. He forced himself out of the chair, moved awkwardly to Calhoun’s cell, and tugged on the door. Locked, as it had been last night. He felt his pocket and found the key.
Some of the stink came from Calhoun. But there was more to it than that, and as Tuck moved away from the cell, he realized what it was.
The smell of the killer he had killed in that ghost town, the one whose body had turned to liquid and dripped out of the blanket. He had smelled it in Daisie’s room, and again in the ranch house where he and Turville had found dead bodies. It was familiar by now.
And it was here, in his office.
“Marshal?” Someone had burst through the front door, probably because of Simpkins’s continued screaming. “What’s goin’ on?”
It was Will Greavey, who owned the general store, Tuck realized. He took a step toward the man, but his legs locked up. He staggered and almost fell to the floor, barely catching himself on his desk. When he looked again, two more people had joined Greavey in the doorway.
“There’s a man dead,” Greavey announced. “And that new marshal looks drunk.”
“He is a drunk,” someone else said. “I seen him over at Soto’s, barely able to stand.”
“Billy!” Greavey called. “Can you tell us what happened?”
Simpkins took a couple of hitching breaths, trying to bring himself under control. “I … I don’t rightly know,” he said. “Marshal arrested us last night, me and Calhoun, cause we was fighting. Calhoun’s friends with Mo Kanouse, and he and Mo made some fun at the marshal. Next thing I know, I wake up and Calhoun’s like … like that there.”
“Now hold on,” Tuck said. “That’s not the way it went.”
“I was at Soto’s last night,” the same person who had answered Greavey before said. “I seen the fight, and this rummy marshal arrestin’ them. Him and some whore brought ’em both down here.”
“All right!” Tuck slammed his palms down on the desk. “Everybody out! I got a crime to figure out here!”
“Ask me, he’s the one who done it!” somebody said.
Tuck spun to the rifle rack and snatched up a sawed-off shotgun. “Out!” he cried.
“Marshal’s gone crazy!” Greavey shouted. “Clear out!”
The doorway emptied. Tuck swore softly, knowing his new job—his new life—was in jeopardy before it had really begun.
He couldn’t understand how it had happened. How could somebody have got in and done that, with him sleeping right there at the desk?
A thought came to him. He grabbed up the half-empty coffee cup from the desk, sniffed it. It smelled like strong, stale coffee, but that was all. Still, he didn’t trust Kanouse. Kanouse and Calhoun had been pals, but maybe not good friends. Kanouse had a key to the office, and one to the cells—he could have slipped in while Calhoun and Simpkins were sleeping off their drunk, and hanged the man in his cell. If he’d drugged the coffee somehow, Tuck might have slept through the whole thing. Then his gaze fell on the flowers. Or those? They looked innocent enough. The coffee seemed more likely.
Tuck opened the door. Clutches of people stood on the street, whispering to one another and looking his way. He tossed the coffee into the dirt, wishing there were some way he could know for sure if anything had been slipped into it.
He didn’t think there was, but he knew who to ask.
He couldn’t leave Simpkins in here with the corpse, so he unlocked the man’s cell and told him to skedaddle. Once Simpkins was gone, Tuck drew the curtains over the big front window and left the office, locking the door behind him. He would have to come back and deal with the body, but not yet.
First, he wanted to talk to Mo Kanouse.
* * *
The deputy lived in a house at the north end of town. It wasn’t much more than a shack, thrown together out of odds and ends of wood, with one adobe wall
anchoring it. Tuck became more awake and angrier with every step. Already, word was spreading around town. People eyed him with suspicion, and some spoke to him with outright hostility. He ignored them, focused on finding Kanouse and shaking the truth out of him.
When he got to the house, he pounded on the door. Nobody answered, so he shoved the door open and went in. “Mo!” he shouted. “Kanouse! You in here?”
The place looked worse on the inside than it had out. Kanouse seemed to have held on to everything that his hands had ever lighted on, and it was all tossed haphazardly into the front room. Clothing, boots, old saddles, scraps of paper and cloth and leather, broken-down guns, children’s toys, bones … Tuck could hardly think of a category of item that wasn’t represented, except maybe books. He didn’t see any animal corpses, but that didn’t mean there weren’t some under the top few layers. A narrow path threaded through the debris, leading to an open door. Tuck took the path, hoping he wouldn’t have to stay here long. The smell was awful in a different way from that he’d left behind in the office; it was the aroma of failure, he thought, and poverty, and hopelessness, aged in this little shack along with sweat and piss and booze.
“Kanouse!” he shouted again.
“Huh?” a voice answered from the other side of the door. Tuck went to the doorway and stopped.
In the next room there were additional piles of random belongings, but in the middle of it, like an island in a sea of detritus, was a bed. Mo lay on top of it, on his side, naked. Beside him, face up, legs spread, was a dark-haired woman with pendulous breasts and a round belly. There were a couple of empty liquor jugs beside the bed, and from the smell of them, Kanouse and the woman had poured the contents over themselves. “Kanouse!” Tuck said. “Put some clothes on. Ma’am, you’d best dress and get out of here.”
She started to roll out of bed, but Kanouse reached over and slapped a big hand down on one breast. “You stay put, Joy,” he said. “The marshal won’t be here long.”
“You don’t make that call,” Tuck said. “I’ll stay till I get some answers. Ma’am, it’s time to go.”
“Answers to what?” Kanouse demanded, not releasing the woman.
“Where you were last night, for starters.”
“I was right here. With Joy.”
“All night?”
The woman laughed. It was the kind of laugh that could put ideas in a man’s head. “Oh, we was here all night, that’s for sure,” she said.
“Ma’am, please put something on,” Tuck said.
“Women make you nervous, boss?” Kanouse asked. He released her breast but clamped his hand between her legs. She squealed with pleasure. Tuck turned away.
“No, but I have some manners,” he said. “Guess you don’t.”
“Should I tell him what you were doin’ to me all night, Mo?” she asked. “How you rode me for hours?”
“I don’t need to hear that, ma’am.”
“You might like it, Marshal,” Kanouse said, adding a raucous laugh. “You want to give her a try, mebbe? Joy ain’t too particular once she gets goin’.” He moved his hand on her, and the woman squealed again.
Tuck had heard enough. He wouldn’t get anything out of the deputy, not today. He made his way down the narrow path and banged through the front door.
* * *
A boy of about thirteen was waiting outside the marshal’s office when Tuck got back. Other folks had gathered around, peering through the window, trying to see the body. Tuck was glad he had drawn the curtain. There was a window set into the door, but it didn’t offer a clear view of the cell in question. As Tuck approached, everybody cleared out, except the boy. “Mayor Chaffee wants to see you, Marshal,” he said. “He gimme two bits to tell you.”
“You did your piece, boy,” Tuck said. “Run along.”
The boy did as he was told. Tuck looked in through the window. As he’d thought, he couldn’t see the corpse from there. He could see flies, though, buzzing in lazy circles. No doubt coming in through the barred window in back, the one Calhoun was hanging from.
He wanted to open the office and get the body out. But the mayor was waiting. If he fired Tuck now, dealing with Calhoun’s remains would be somebody else’s job. Tuck could go to Soto’s and start drinking, and not come out again until he had burned through every penny of his advance pay.
He cursed and turned his back on the office. He had worn the star for less than twenty-four hours. Still, that was almost a day longer than he had ever expected to. He crossed the street and went into the town hall building. People looked away when they saw him coming. He made his way upstairs, tapped twice on the mayor’s door, then opened it.
Mayor Chaffee was standing at the window, as long and lean as an afternoon shadow.
“I watched you crossing the road,” he said, without turning around. “I watched people stepping aside to avoid you. Whispering behind your back. Marshal Bringloe, you have managed to find an inordinate amount of trouble for your first day on the job.”
“You don’t have to believe me, Mayor, but—”
Now the mayor did turn, his motions graceful and economical. “I don’t want to hear excuses. Or justifications. You stepped in something, Bringloe. Something that reeks to high heaven.”
“Yeah, only—”
Chaffee cut him off again. “Ahh! Alf Maier swore to me that you had sobered up, on the posse. I heard from several citizens that you were drunk this morning. Drunk, with a prisoner dead in your cell and another one screaming like a child. This was not what we had in mind when we appointed you marshal.”
“I know that, Mayor Chaffee. I wasn’t drunk. I fell asleep sitting up in my chair, and when I woke up, Calhoun had been butchered and Simpkins was screaming.” He thought about adding his suspicion that he’d been drugged, but since he couldn’t back that up, he kept quiet about it. “You can ask at Soto’s, or ask Simpkins. Nobody saw me drinking, because I wasn’t.”
“You’re a mighty sound sleeper, I suppose.”
Tuck hesitated, but again decided to leave out his theory about Kanouse’s coffee. “I don’t know what happened, but I’ll find out. Believe me, I want to get to the bottom of it more than anybody.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Chaffee said. “We on the town council appointed you. I think it’s safe to say we’re very invested in you finding out the truth. Or simply telling the truth, if it’s what it appears to be from here.”
“It’s not,” Tuck said.
“I certainly hope not, for all our sakes. You be careful, Mr. Bringloe. Either you’re a falling-down drunk like people think, or you have made a very bad enemy of someone. The result is that the townsfolk are turning against their lawman. That’s never a good sign. You need to wrap this up in a hurry, or resign and turn in your badge.”
“I aim to,” Tuck said. “Wrap it up, I mean.”
“See that you do, then. And at the first hint of you drinking, you’ll be fired, and you’ll owe the town for every nickel we advanced you. You might want to keep that in mind before you go buying a lot of new clothes.”
Chaffee faced the window again. “Thanks for the flowers,” Tuck said to his back. “They were … unexpected.”
“Flowers? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He blew air from his nose in a snort.
Tuck knew he’d been dismissed. He hurried down the stairs and outside. His head was pounding. The sunlight on the street was like a lance driving through his eyes into his brain. He stood in the shade, leaning against a post, unwilling to risk the bright stretch of road he would have to cross back to his office.
While he stood there, a buckboard rolled past, a lean, older rancher at the reins and a younger man, barely more than a boy, beside him. Neither one looked happy. They didn’t glance his way, just pulled to a stop outside the bank. The man got down and started for the door, and Tuck could see that he was nervous, jittery. His hands quaked and his knees looked like they wanted to fold up at any time.
The y
ounger one waited on the buckboard’s bench, less anxious than the man, Tuck thought, but more sad, like he might start crying at any moment, and never stop.
Tuck knew just how he felt.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Sir,” McKenna said. He was on his feet, and he had an urgent tone to his voice that drove Cuttrell mad. The lieutenant seemed to be perpetually courting favor from somebody, most often him. Cuttrell counted on McKenna, but that didn’t mean he liked him or wanted him around. Mostly, he liked having a man he could assign a task to and know it would get done. But when he didn’t have something specific for McKenna to do, he hated having the man buzzing around trying to impress. “Sir, I’ve been gathering information about some strange goings-on in the vicinity.”
Cuttrell looked around the table. His entire command staff was gathered for this meeting, so Cuttrell couldn’t just tell McKenna to shut up and go away. He had to at least pretend to be interested in the man’s tales. “I hardly think that’s the army’s chief concern, Jimmy,” he said.
“But sir, it has to be a concern. We’re responsible for the safety of the citizenry, and that safety is in considerable jeopardy just now.”
“Maybe Lieutenant McKenna can tell us what sorts of things he’s talking about,” Captain Hannigan suggested. “And then we can decide as a group what our response should be.”
“If any,” Cuttrell added.
“Indeed,” Major Eccles said.
McKenna appeared slightly mollified. He took his seat again, and spread his hands on the tabletop. “There are so many things. The slaughter of the mule train. Over on the J Cross T, cattle being slaughtered. Mutilated. Then cowboys, meeting the same fate. That prostitute murdered at Senora Soto’s, then most of the posse dying in the effort to find the killer. Supposedly, the two remaining members did track him down and kill him, but they returned without a body to show. One of them has since become the town marshal, but today there have been reports that on his first night in the job, a prisoner in a cell was murdered—hanged from window bars, and mutilated there. This is, I think you’ll all agree, a much more significant series of events than we usually see around here. Bad, bloody events. Colonel Cuttrell, this is not normal. This is beyond anything we’ve seen before, and I think we need to respond officially in some way.”
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