by John Legg
“Mister Drake—he’s the undertaker—said to tell you that there’s no charge. He says it’s to thank two brave men.”
“Well, you tell Mister Drake I appreciate it considerably, Ed. And these men’s families’ll appreciate it, too.” He and Hernandez shook hands.
“Time to get movin’, Sheriff,” fireman Chester Graves said. “You and your men best go aboard before Lou decides to pull out without you.”
Culpepper nodded. “Well, Ed, thanks again. You ever get up to Silverton, I’ll spot you a beer and a beefsteak dinner. It’s the least I can do.” Then Culpepper helped Bear up into the boxcar where the other men were already sitting or lying.
The whistle blew and a moment later the train jerked as it puffed into motion. Slowly it gathered speed, and before long it was chugging away at a pretty good clip.
It took only five hours for them to get to the spot where the robbery had taken place a week ago. It was cleared of all the boulders, as Culpepper had known it would be. How else would engineer Lou Barber and fireman Chester Graves have gotten to Durango? Or be ready to take another train north?
Not long after, the train puffed into Silverton and hissed to a stop. Culpepper hopped out of the boxcar first and called to Lee Bondurant, the boy who worked at the depot. He bent and spoke with the ten-year-old for a few moments, handed Lee a coin, and then the boy ran off
“Want me to stick around a while, Jonas?” Reinhardt asked. “Might not hurt,” Culpepper said with a nod. “Get the horses unloaded and then send the men on their way. And here.” Culpepper peeled off one hundred dollars. “Divide that up among the other men.”
“Sure,” Reinhardt said, taking the money and jamming it in a pocket. “What about the other?” he asked, pointing to the boxcar that held the coffins.
“I just sent Lee over to get Dietrich. He ought to be here soon.”
Reinhardt nodded. “I’ll stick around after the others go, just in case.”
“If you’re really feelin’ brave, you can come with me to tell Caroline Maguire and Brown’s wife, what’s her name?”
“Cora, I think.” Reinhardt hesitated. “I’ll come along. John was my friend, too. I didn’t know Luke, really, but we were all in that mess together. I might as well stick it out to the end.”
“Guess you are pretty brave after all,” Culpepper said with a tight smile. “Or else pretty durn stupid.”
“I wouldn’t wager on either side of that one,” Reinhardt said with a little laugh as he walked away, heading toward the boxcar in which the horses were.
Silverton was also big enough a city to have several hearses, and Culpepper stood and watched as Karl Dietrich and some of his men rode majestically down the street. The two carriages stopped, and Dietrich climbed down. He was a short, thin, dapper man, with a perpetually somber face.
“Vhere is dis coffinks?” he asked.
Culpepper pointed to the boxcar. “Treat them well, Karl,” he said quietly.
Dietrich look sharply at him, then nodded. “Yah, I alvays treat dem vell.”
“I suppose you do, Karl. Just take them up to your place for now. As soon as I tell the families, we can decide when to do the burying.”
“I vill have de graves dug,” Dietrich said, then turned away and began issuing quiet, insistent orders.
Reinhardt strolled up. Culpepper looked at him. “We’d best get our work done with.” The two walked slowly up the street. Like many of the married miners, Luke Brown lived in a shack along Eighth Street, near Reese Street.
Telling Cora Brown was difficult, though she seemed to take it well. Especially when Culpepper handed her one hundred fifty dollars. She had never seen so much money at one time. That, she knew, would keep her and the children alive for a while—long enough to find another husband. Even in a place like Silverton, where there were numerous married couples, men still outnumbered women considerably. Cora would have no trouble finding another husband, despite her slovenly dress, unattractive person, and five children. She would want another husband, too; that was a fact. A woman like Cora Brown, with five children and no discernible talent, would die soon after the reward money ran out if she didn’t find another husband.
Afterward, Culpepper and Reinhardt reluctantly walked north along Reese Street, then east on Fourteenth Street. Halfway to Greene Street, on the north side of Fourteenth, was John Maguire’s house. Culpepper hoped Mrs. Maguire was there; he would hate to have to tell her at the store.
She was there. Caroline Maguire knew as soon as she answered Culpepper’s knock on her door. She was a tall, stately woman, with an almost regal handsomeness to her. She allowed Culpepper and Reinhardt into the house, had them sit, then poured them coffee. Finally she sat, too.
“How?” she asked. She was heartbroken, but trying hard not to show it too much.
Culpepper explained it, embellishing it a little as to Maguire’s role. They settled on a burial for the next morning. Then Culpepper sat and held Caroline for a spell while she cried out some of her grief.
When she finished that—for the time being—Culpepper gave her four hundred dollars of the reward money. “I know that don’t in any way make up for your loss, Caroline. But it might help tide you over. The undertaker down in Durango paid for fixin’ John up, and the coffin and all. If Dietrich wants to charge for the burial, the county’ll pay it. Or I will. The money’s reward money, and John earned it. Not only this time, but for all those other times he’s helped me.” He stopped, not knowing what else to say.
Finally he rose, as did Reinhardt. “If you need anything, Caroline,” Culpepper said, “anything at all, you come see me.”
“Or me,” Reinhardt piped in.
Caroline nodded. “Thank you, Sheriff, Mister Reinhardt. I appreciate all you’ve done.”
Feeling absolutely miserable, Culpepper and Reinhardt stepped outside. “Here, Buster,” Culpepper said, handing Reinhardt the final fifty dollars of the reward money.
“I can’t take this, Sheriff,” Reinhardt protested.
“Durn well you can. And you and Vera can use it, too. You were a big help out there, and you deserve it.”
“But what about you? You didn’t get anything out of it.” Culpepper shrugged. “There’ll be other times. Go on to your wife now. She’s probably pinin’ away for you.” He smiled easily.
Reinhardt nodded. The men went their separate ways, with Culpepper heading for his office. Cahill was there, pacing. He knew when the train had come in, and he knew two coffins had been taken off it. He had waited, though, knowing that Culpepper would come to the office as soon as he could—unless the sheriff was in one of the coffins. He had found out that wasn’t true half an hour after the train had pulled in when someone who had watched the proceedings at the depot came by and reported seeing Culpepper.
“Where the hell’ve you been, damn it?” Cahill asked, letting his agitation show.
Culpepper slumped into his chair and rubbed a hand tiredly across his face. “Luke Brown was killed,” he said, even more quietly than usual. “And so was John Maguire.”
“No!” Cahill was shocked.
“Yep. I went to talk to Brown’s widow first. I just come from talking to Caroline Maguire. She took it hard.”
“I’m sure she did.” He paused. “Damn, Jonas, that must’ve been hard, tellin’ her.”
“About the hardest darn thing I ever had to do. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else, Jimmy—I don’t want to have to ever do it again. No, sir.”
“So what happened out there? Did you get Ellsworth?”
“Nope. We popped three of those pukin’ scoundrels, but they got Brown and John. We left off chasing them then and went back to Durango to see that our two men were cared for. Then we came back up here.”
“What’re you plannin’ to do next?”
“Go back after them. After I’ve spent a day or two with Merry.” He rose and walked out.
Culpepper walked into his office two days later, feeling almost refreshe
d. Spending a lot of time with
Merry always went a long way toward making him feel better, and she had been particularly solicitous of him once she’d heard what had happened. He had felt a little better after the first night with Merry, but then the melancholy feeling had come over him again the morning before—when he’d attended the funerals for Luke Brown and John Maguire. The former’s was sparsely attended, since Wilson Pennrose would not let his miners off work to go to the burial.
Still, Merry brought him around again as they had spent all of yesterday after the early morning burials together, simply enjoying each other’s’ company.
His fine mood evaporated in a hurry, though, when he and Bear walked into the office and saw a stranger sitting in his chair, his feet up on the desk. The man wore a badge and was smoking a fat, stinking cigar.
“Get your feet off my desk, maggot, and get out of my chair,” Culpepper growled.
“I’m Deputy United States Marshal Ned Coakley,” the man said, blowing out a long stream of smoke.
“I don’t much care if you’re the President of all these-here United States, you pukin’ scoundrel. Get your feet off my desk and get your tail out of my chair.”
“Or what?” Coakley sneered.
“Get him, Bear,” Culpepper said quietly.
The mastiff bared his fangs and squatted back, ready to launch himself.
“Hold on there, partner,” Coakley said with an uneasy smile. “I’ll get up here in just a minute.”
“Down, Bear,” Culpepper said. He took the few steps separating him from the desk. Then he grabbed Coakley’s ankles where the spur straps cross his boots, and jerked them up. He gave a final shove, sending Coakley rump over teakettle over on his head, the chair crashing backward.
Coakley jumped up, his now-broken cigar sticking out of his fingers, making him look quite foolish. “Why, you overstuffed son of a bitch,” Coakley growled, throwing away the cigar. “I’m gonna gut you, you fat...”
Culpepper ignored him. He simply walked around the back of the desk and righted the chair. Then he sat down and crossed his hands on his stomach. “You’re not going to do a darn thing, maggot. So shut up.”
Coakley’s flaccid face was pasty, and his right hand moved toward a Colt revolver.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you, maggot,” Culpepper said calmly.
Coakley glanced at Bear. “I’m gonna shoot that goddamn stinkin’ animal of yours. Then I’m gonna shoot you...”
“Before you got your piece out, Bear’d have your throat. If there was anything left when he got done with you, I’d finish up for him. Now, quit threatening me. If you’ve got something you need to say to me, say it, then get lost.”
Coakley steamed for a few moments, then grinned. His face brightened, and he didn’t seem quite the crazy man he had. In fact, he looked rather handsome in a pale, sly kind of way. He wasn’t too tall, but had broad shoulders and a slim waist. His hair was long and stringy, except where it curled at the ends. He wore a dark wool suit with a collared off-white shirt that had only four buttons from the top. It was closed with a string tie.
Like Culpepper, he wore two pistols high up on his hips. His hat, which he’d been wearing before Culpepper had dumped him over, had a wide, round brim with a short, flat crown. Despite the suit, he had a tough, well-used look about him.
“They told me you was a hard case, Sheriff,” Coakley said. “Guess they weren’t wrong.”
“Fine. Now that you’re done complimentin’ me, maybe you’d like to tell me the reason you’re here.”
“Well, Sheriff,” Coakley said, “that might take a little doin’.”
“It’s going to take all the durn day if you don’t get started on it,” Culpepper said dryly.
Coakley picked up his hat, dusted it off, and set it on his head. Then he took the other chair in the room and turned its back toward the desk. He straddled it, arms folded along the top of the back. “You were supposed to deliver a prisoner to me in Durango a little while back. You never did.”
“Nope.”
Coakley looked annoyed. “Then I heard about the trouble you had here a week or so ago.”
“The train robbery?”
“Yep.” Coakley took out another cigar and struck a match. “That durn thing going to stink as bad as the last one?” Culpepper asked.
“I expect so,” Coakley said with a chuckle. “It’s the same damn kind.”
“You fire that foul thing up, and I’ll throw it—and you—out in the street.”
“You are joshin’, ain’t you, Sheriff?” Coakley asked, surprised. He jerked as the match singed his fingers, waved the match in the air to put it out, then dropped it in the spittoon by the desk.
“Does it look like I’m joshin’, Marshal?”
“No, I guess it don’t. You know,” he added, as he put the cigar back into an inside coat pocket, “you are one mighty unfriendly cuss, Sheriff.”
“I won’t argue that point with you. But you seem to forget that you’re in my town, in my office. If you had any manners, we wouldn’t be sittin’ here makin’ threats at each other.”
“All right, Sheriff, you’re right,” Coakley said unctuously. “Let’s call a truce, huh?”
“Fine. Now, if you’ve got a reason to be here, perhaps you’d like to make it known.”
“Well, as I was sayin’, we heard about the trouble you folks had up here, so Norm Hendershot—he’s the United States marshal for Colorado—wired me in Durango to come up here and take a look-see for myself.”
Culpepper nodded. “Understandable, I suppose.” He paused, then shrugged. “Now that you’ve had your look-see, you can get out of Silverton.”
“You’re not the town marshal.”
“True,” Culpepper said agreeably. “So get out of San Juan County, which, of course, includes Silverton.”
“Damn, Sheriff. I come in here ready to offer you a helpin’ hand, and you go and spit in that hand of friendship.”
“Hand of friendship my tail,” Culpepper spat, growing angrier.
“How’d your posse do against Ellsworth’s bunch?” Coakley asked with a sneer.
“Not as well as I’d like,” Culpepper said flatly.
“Didn’t get any of ’em, did you?”
“Three.”
Coakley’s eyes widened. “Didn’t you bring ’em back here?”
“What for? They was dead and they were startin’ to get ripe.”
“But what about the reward on them?”
“It’s been paid.”
Coakley scratched at his straggly mustache a moment. “You know, Sheriff, when Marshal Hendershot sent me out here, he put me in charge of all of western Colorado. Left it to my care, as it were.”
“So?”
“So, as the United States deputy marshal for all of western Colorado, it only stands to reason that I should receive a portion of the reward for the slain outlaws.”
Culpepper laughed, though there was little humor in the sound.
“I don’t see that there’s anything funny about this,” Coakley said angrily.
“You mean you weren’t foolin’?” Culpepper asked sarcastically.
“Damn it, me gettin’ some of that reward is only right and proper. Damn right it is. Happens all, the time.”
“Takin’—and demandin’—bribes is against the law in San Juan County, Marshal,” Culpepper growled.
“What bribe?” Coakley asked, seemingly surprised. “All I’m askin’ is for what’s due me.”
“Due you my tail, you pukin’ maggot,” Culpepper snarled angrily. “You come waltzin’ in here with your fancy federal badge and expect everyone to bow at your feet. No, sir, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong town. If others’re givin’ you portions of reward money other folks’ve earned, then I suggest you go on back to one of those places.”
“I see,” Coakley said tightly, “you plan on keepin’ all that reward money yourself, is that it?”
Culpepper had
to wait a minute for the rush of rage to simmer down some. “Marshal,” he said slowly, softly, when he thought he could be reasonable, “I come in here today and find a maggot with no manners takin’ over my office. Then he threatens me, and now he insults me. While I’m a reasonable man most times, I can only be pushed so far.”
“What insult?” Coakley asked. “You keepin’ the reward money? Hell, all sheriffs and marshals do that. I can understand that. But with the system most of us’ve worked out, I should get a little share of it. Hell, twenty-five percent’s all I ask.”
“I couldn’t give it to you even if I’d lost my reason and decided I wanted to do that.”
“Why?” Coakley asked. “I thought you said you got it down in Durango.”
“I did. But it’s gone.”
“How the hell could you blow several hundred dollars in a place like Silverton in only two days?” Coakley demanded, his voice rising in agitation.
“Didn’t say I blew it. That’s another insult. A third one’ll get you thrown out.”
“Then what happened to it?” Coakley asked sarcastically. “If you don’t mind my askin’.”
“Actually, I do mind you askin’, durn you. But since you’re going to be a burr in my tail about it, I’ll tell you. I gave a small portion of the reward money to the men of the posse. I gave the bulk of it to the widows of the two men in my posse who were killed.”
“I don’t believe that for a goddamn minute,” Coakley blurted.
“Your time’s just run out, Marshal,” Culpepper said, standing. He walked around the desk, grabbed a surprised Coakley by the collar of his suit coat, hauled him up, marched him to the door, opened it, and then threw Coakley out into the street.
Coakley landed with a plop in the mud. The sun was still melting the snow on most of the mountainsides around Silverton, making Silverton a muddy mess for most of the spring. Coakley stood, looking at himself in horror when he saw the glop all over his suit. “I’ll get you for this, you dumb son of a bitch!” he shouted, shaking a fist at the office. He turned and stomped off angrily, which caused him to lose his footing. He plopped into the mud again, this time to the accompaniment of laughter from the people on the street.