by John Legg
“Lord almighty!” Culpepper said. He glanced out through the still open door and saw a small crowd gathered. “Come on, John,” he said, helping Maguire, “sit in my big chair here. Buster, you take that other chair. Durn, I ain’t got a chair for you, Jimmy.”
“That’s all right, Jonas,” Cahill said, sliding his back down along a wall until he was sitting on the floor. “This’ll do just fine.” He looked exhausted.
Culpepper nodded and stepped outside. “One of you folks, go get Doc McQuiston,” he commanded. “And make it quick.” Then he went back inside and kicked the door shut behind him. “Any of you rascals up for some coffee?” he asked.
Cahill shook his head. “Not me.” He paused only an instant. “But a shot of bug juice wouldn’t hurt none.”
“Same here,” Maguire and Reinhardt echoed.
Culpepper got the pint bottle of Jack Daniels No. 7 Whiskey, uncorked it, and helped Maguire take a drink. Then he helped Reinhardt, and finally Cahill.
By then, Dr. Angus McQuiston had arrived. He glanced at each of the three men as he was still walking into the room, and then gravitated to Maguire. He dropped his bag on the desk, then peeled off his coat and dropped that, too.
“It ain’t as bad as I feared,” McQuiston said ten minutes later, wiping his hands off on a cloth as he stepped back. “He’s lost a lot of blood, but the bullet didn’t injure any of his vitals, and lucky for Mister Maguire, the bullet passed clean through him. Now, let’s see about Mister Reinhardt.”
While Reinhardt’s wound was less serious than Maguire’s, the bullet was still lodged in his shoulder, so McQuiston had to root around and get the slug out. That took some time, but the doctor finally managed it. Bandaging the man up was the work of but a few minutes.
McQuiston rose and rolled down his sleeves. “Both you boys need to take it easy for a spell. Couple of weeks ought to do, though you might need a little longer. Let your bodies tell you when you’re ready to hooray the town again.” The physician pulled on his coat and closed his bag. He looked at Culpepper and grinned. “And, yes, Sheriff, I’ll send the bill to the county offices. As if that’ll do me any damn good.” He clomped out, closing the door behind him.
“You three just stay where you are a bit,” Culpepper ordered. He went outside and pointed at four men. “You four come with me,” he commanded. Inside, he told two to help Maguire home and the other two to help Reinhardt. The men didn’t like it much, but they did as requested.
Culpepper followed the men outside and told the crowd to go home. The people who had gathered groaned and grumbled, but moved off.
It was quiet in the office when Culpepper shut the door. He helped Cahill into the chair and made sure the half-empty bottle of whiskey was close enough for Cahill to reach. Then he took his own seat behind the desk. “All right, Jimmy, what the hell happened?” Culpepper asked, using a rare profanity, as mild a one as it was.
Cahill took a slow drink of whiskey, then yawned. “We were a day and a half out, maybe a little more, when all of a sudden there were a dozen men or so in the road, tellin’ us to stop. It was the damnedest thing—they went and ordered us to hand Wiley over to ’em.”
“Durn, I should’ve know some sneaky little scoundrel like Ferd Wiley’d have confederates in these parts.”
“That’s what I thought at first, too. But I ain’t so sure, now that I’ve had a little time to cogitate on it.”
“Why not?” Culpepper asked, surprised.
“For one thing, Ferd looked like he was gonna crap in his britches, he was that scared. And it wasn’t until I think back on it a little that I thought I recognized one or two of the men who were in that road.”
“Outlaws?”
Cahill shook his head. “Miners. Or some kind of employees for a mining company here in Silverton. Maybe they’re even hired gunmen, but I swear at least two of ’em’s linked to the Anvil Minin’ Company somehow.”
“Vigilantes,” Culpepper said sourly. “I’m beginning to like this a lot less with every word you’re tellin’ me, Jimmy.”
“No shit.” Cahill took another swallow of whiskey.
“So what happened?” The cuckoo clock chimed for noon, annoying Culpepper.
“Well, like I said, I thought they were men come to rescue Ferd, and I wasn’t about to let that happen without a fight, so I told them boys to light out. Then the shootin’ started.” Cahill drained the whiskey bottle, looked at it as if he’d never seen it before, and then placed it back on the desk. “It was strange then, too. Lookin’ back on it, it seemed like those boys were tryin’ not to kill anyone—except maybe Ferd, but I think they didn’t even want to shoot him down.”
“Hangin’d make them feel better about themselves,” Culpepper said dryly.
“That was my thinkin’, too. Anyway, me, John, and Buster winged at least a couple of ’em, as we all headed for the trees along the road there. Then they took slugs and I hustled them out of there. We rode an hour or so before I stopped and tended to John and Buster as best I could, hopin’ they’d last ’til I could get ’em back here to Doc McQuiston.”
“So they got Ferd, did they?” Culpepper said, anger bubbling in his stomach.
“I don’t think so,” Cahill said, surprising Culpepper. “I rode back that way once I’d tended to my men. When we hit the trees durin’ that fight, I lost sight of Ferd straight off. I figured they’d caught him and hanged him, so I thought I’d bring the body back here, at least give him a decent burial.”
“But…?”
“But I couldn’t find him anywhere. I spent a couple hours lookin’ for him. I trailed the group who stopped us, but, Christ, their tracks went all over the place. I think they were lookin’ for Ferd, too.”
Culpepper nodded and let the information simmer in his brain a little bit. Finally he asked, “How’re you doin’, Jimmy?”
“Not bad, Jonas. Tired as all hell. I ain’t had much sleep in the past two days.”
“Think you’ll be all right after a good night’s sleep?”
“I reckon so. Why?”
“I want you to stick around the office the next couple days.”
“You goin’ out there?”
Culpepper nodded. “I’ll see if I can find anything. Now that we know a little better what we’re lookin’ for, I might have a little more luck than you did.”
“I can ride with you, Jonas,” Cahill said part angrily, part petulantly. “I ain’t crippled.”
“I know you ain’t crippled. But you’re the one knows those boys who stopped you. If, as you think, they work for Anvil, they’ll show up here again sooner or later. They do, and you spot them, you deputize whoever you want and however many you need and arrest them.”
Cahill nodded. The exhaustion weighed on him like one of the nearby Elephant Hills. He wasn’t sure he could even make it to his room to sleep. All he wanted to do was…
Culpepper smiled as he came around the desk. He easily lifted Cahill over his shoulder. Accompanied by the mastiff, he walked to the boardinghouse where Cahill lived and put the man to bed. Then he went home, walking almost urgently. Though he wanted to be on the move, he knew he could not leave until morning. But there was much to be done between then and now.
Chapter Seven
Culpepper wasted almost four days on the journey out and back. There was no other way to look at it. Cahill had told him he wouldn’t find anything where the deputy and his two men were bushwhacked, but no, Culpepper couldn’t accept that; he had to go see for himself. All he found were some muddy tracks leading every which way. There were no signs of the men who had done the ambushing, and no sign of Ferd Wiley. There was no corpse to be found, either. Even Bear couldn’t find a trail worth following.
He rode back to Silverton, growing angrier the closer he got to the town. None of this sat well with him. Not the call for Wiley’s blood by the mob in front of the jail; not the ambush and wounding of his deputies; not the thought that the Anvil Mining Company might be behind the attack; not t
he thought that Wiley might have escaped.
Culpepper was not too worried about the latter. Wiley had always struck him as a coward and a follower. He would do what other men told him because he had not the brains, the brawn, nor the guts to do much on his own. Still, Wiley was a convicted felon and should be forced to serve his time in prison. On the other hand, Culpepper was fairly certain that Wiley, if he had gotten away, would have headed for parts unknown just as fast as he could. Culpepper hoped that if Wiley was free, this episode would set him back on the straight and narrow.
Wiley was the least of Culpepper’s worries, though. The other things that had made him angry were far more important and carried with them far-reaching implications, none of which boded well for anyone—except possibly Anvil Mining, and even that was highly unlikely.
He stopped at his office as soon as he rode into town, told Cahill he was back, then went up to Greene Street and the Exchange livery. He left his horse. Carrying his rifle, bedroll, and saddlebags, he trudged wearily toward home.
Merry never did tell him that the reason she generally was waiting at the door for him was because she could think of nothing better to do most times when she was waiting for him to return. She had figured he’d have been home yesterday, and so she had been standing at the door almost constantly during her waking hours since yesterday afternoon.
Merry cursed herself silently at times for missing her man so much when he was gone, but she couldn’t help herself. She really couldn’t. The only thing that made her not feel too bad about this quirk in her was the knowledge that Culpepper missed her as much as she did him. Oh, his expression of it—such as it was—was vastly different from hers, but the feelings were the same. And, she had told herself long ago, she would continue to wait anxiously—and eagerly—for him as long as he appreciated that she did.
Culpepper found out after he was in the house that he wasn’t quite as tired as he’d believed. Something about Merry’s cooking and her company often revived him considerably. Still, he went to sleep early.
Culpepper met Cahill at the office in the morning. Over mugs of hot, if poor-tasting, coffee, Culpepper told of the futility of his journey. Then he asked, “You ever see any of them boys in town here?” He didn’t think so, since there were no prisoners in the jail.
“Yeah, I did,” Cahill said carefully.
“And you didn’t arrest him?”
“Had my hands full givin’ Hennessy a hand with some row dies the other night. I spotted the son of a bitch, but there wasn’t much I could do. I’ve been lookin’ for him ever since, every time I leave the office.”
“You got any ideas where he might be holed up?”
“Not really. Other than he’s probably over on Blair Street somewhere.”
“We got a handbill on him?”
“Nope. I looked.” Cahill did not seem happy.
“That’s going to make it a little harder for me to help find him, but I’ll tell you this, Jimmy—if that pukin’ scoundrel’s in Silverton, we’ll find him.” He rose. “And there’s no better time to start lookin’ than right now.”
Blair Street ran from Fourteenth Street to Eleventh, where its character and name changed. Mostly cribs and brothels lined both sides of Blair Street—and the alleys—between Eleventh and Thirteenth Streets. Dance halls and gambling parlors were needed between the false-fronted whorehouses.
At this time of day, it was generally pretty quiet along Blair Street—not through any sense of shame at what the denizens of such a place would be doing, but because the vast majority of the paying customers—the miners—were at work. Everything was open, but there was little going on.
Culpepper and Cahill went from saloon to crib to gambling parlor to theater. They knew most of the folks who worked or lived there, and were greeted warmly enough, if not enthusiastically. At each stop they asked about the man Cahill had seen. The deputy would give the description and then wait for the shake of the head.
They worked up the east side of Blair Street, and the alleys off it, but found no luck. Stopping, Culpepper said, “I aim to go on home to have something to eat.”
“Hell, Jonas, you ain’t foolin’ nobody. You just want to go home and wrassle with Merry some is all.”
“And if I do?” Culpepper demanded, feigning outrage at the hint.
“Then I’m jealous, damn your hide,” Cahill said with a laugh.
“Well, boy, if you’d quit all your fussin’ around and ask Miss June to marry you, you could be doin’ the same. She ain’t going to wait forever for on old cuss like you, you know.”
“Yeah,” Cahill muttered, suddenly embarrassed. “But I don’t know, Jonas. There’s a heap of married men out there using Blair Street more than many of the single ones. June sure seems willin’ enough to take on the duties—all the duties, she tells me—of a wife, but I don’t want to get snookered into marryin’ her and then have her turn all cold on me.”
Culpepper smiled. “It’s just like anything else, Jimmy. You praise her cookin’, and she’ll want to cook for you. You treat her well, she’ll more than likely do the same to you. You teach her what a man wants from his woman in a wifely way, and treat her kind and gentle in the doin’, and you’ll be surprised at what some otherwise straight-laced women’ll do.” He saw the look of questioning in Cahill’s eyes, and he grinned again. “Don’t you even think to ask, you rascal,” he said with a laugh.
“Damn, Jonas,” Cahill muttered. Then he smiled. “Meet you back at the office in an hour?”
Culpepper nodded as he strolled away.
Culpepper left his heavy bear coat at home after lunch. As he walked across the little bridge with Bear at his side, he enjoyed the sun and the sixty-degree warmth that cloaked the day. He met Cahill at the office and they headed straight to Blair Street, figuring to hit the west side of the street this time.
In the second place they stopped, Fatty Collins’ place, Cahill spotted the man he was after. He was sitting at a table near the back, drinking. Fanciful Pearl, one of Collins’ working girls, was sitting on the man’s lap, helping him drink his mug of beer.
Cahill stopped just inside the door, saw the man, and sucked in an angry breath.
Looking where Cahill was staring, Culpepper said, “I take it that’s the feller?”
“It sure as hell is,” Cahill hissed.
“Calm down, boy. He’s not going anywhere.”
Cahill grimaced. “Damn it, Jonas, you know how much I hate it when you give me hell—and’re right about it. Let’s go talk to him.”
They strolled up to the table, though the man was pretty much oblivious to them. “Hey there, Fancy,” Culpepper said nicely, but with a hint of warning, “go take a walk for a while. Me and Jimmy want to talk about some things with your sweetheart.”
The man grabbed Fanciful Pearl’s wrist and kept her on his lap. “I got nothin’ to say to you two law dogs,” he said with a sneer. “Now go away.”
“Dang it, Bob,” Fanciful Pearl snapped, “let me go. I ain’t about to cross the sheriff just for the likes of you.”
“I said you stay right where you’re at,” the man snarled. Culpepper shook his head in annoyance and walked around the table, pulling out a pistol as he did. He cocked the revolver and placed the muzzle lightly against the man’s temple. “Let the lady go, you pukin’ maggot, or I’ll blow your brains out. If you got any.”
The man sat staring straight ahead, defiance stamped on his face. But the small balls of sweat seeping from under his hat betrayed his fear.
“I’ll count to three,” Culpepper said quietly. “One…”
“Damn it, Bob,” Fanciful Pearl said, panicking a little. “Two…”
Fanciful Pearl jerked her arm as hard as she could and managed to free herself. She jumped up and ran.
“Smart move,” Culpepper commented, as he uncocked the Remington. Suddenly he drew the pistol back and then lashed out with it, catching the man a sharp blow between left temple and eyebrow. “That�
��s just to let you know I’m serious in telling you that I will have no truck with reluctance on your part in speaking to me. You got that, maggot?” Culpepper placed the Remington back in the holster.
“Yeah,” the man said, wanting to feel his head where he had been hit, but afraid to.
Culpepper and Cahill sat. “What’s your name, boy?” Culpepper asked.
“Bob. Bob Haggard.”
“Good. Who do you work for?”
“I’m between jobs right now,” Haggard said flatly. “Just sort of driftin’.”
“Drifters don’t join bushwhackers to ambush deputy county sheriffs in the pursuit of their duties,” Culpepper said evenly.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about, Sheriff,” Haggard said, feigning innocence.
“Like Hell...” Cahill snapped. He shut up when Culpepper waved a hand at him.
Culpepper was about to say something to Haggard when a large, obese man shuffled up and said, “How-do, Sheriff?”
“Keep your nose out of this business, Fatty,” Culpepper said quietly.
“Hell, Jonas,” Fatty Collins said with a belly laugh, “you know me better’n that. All I come to see was if you and Jimmy here wanted some snake oil.”
“No,” Culpepper said. “But a beer’d be nice.”
“Comin’ right up, Sheriff,” Collins said jovially. Though Culpepper had no real jurisdiction in Silverton, Collins subscribed to the belief that it never did one any good to ruffle a lawman’s feathers. “How about you, Jimmy?”
“Same for me,” Cahill said distractedly.
“Now, Bob,” Culpepper said easily, “you were just about to tell us who hired you to join that gang of vigilantes.”
“What gang of vigilantes?” Haggard asked, his face blankly innocent.
“I’m a man of considerable patience, Bob,” Culpepper said. “And if you think that by sittin’ here and stonewallin’ me I’ll give up and go away, you’re sadly mistaken, you scoundrel. For if I lose my patience, I won’t just walk out. Oh, no, no, no. What’ll happen is that I’ll take my testiness out on you in various and guaranteed painful ways. Now...”