The Judas Tree

by Matt Braun

  “Luke, it’s been a rare treat! Glad you could stop by.”

  Carver’s jolly manner seemed wholly for the benefit of the girl. He walked Starbuck to the door and warmly shook hands. Then, at the last moment, he lowered his voice.

  “Thanks for going along. I wouldn’t want Sally to know anything about our talk. Might upset my love nest!”

  “You just make sure you don’t forget my word to the wise.”

  “I’m no fool, Luke. I heard you the first time.”

  Starbuck let go his hand and moved into the hall. Walking toward the stairs, his thoughts swiftly turned to Virginia City. And a lawyer named George Hoyt.

  • • •

  From the lobby, Starbuck headed for the hotel barroom. He’d already decided to catch the morning westbound, and he reminded himself to check departure schedules. Yet he was still brooding on his conversation with Doc Carver. Something nagged at him, something he had overlooked.

  Hard-won experience had taught him a vital lesson. Detective work was not altogether a matter of analytical reasoning. There was an element of instinct involved, and a man learned never to ignore those swift-felt impulses. His instinct told him he’d missed some critical lead while interrogating Carver. He couldn’t put his thumb on it, and he was disturbed by the oversight. He thought a drink might wash away the cobwebs. A shot of popskull was known for its restorative effects.

  The barroom was dim and pleasantly cool. The hour was early, and few of the tables were occupied. Only one man stood at the polished mahogany bar. Starbuck looked closer and saw that it was Ned Buntline. Too late, he tried to reverse course without being seen. Buntline spotted him and waved.

  “Starbuck!” he called out. “Join me for a drink. I’m buying!”

  Buntline was short and stocky, with bags under his eyes and sagging jowls. There was something baroque about him, even though his fingernails were gnawed to the quick and he had a nervous habit of twisting his mustache. The inveterate hustler, he was glib and clever, forever playing the angle. He was also a man with a checkered past.

  Some years ago he had been caught bare-assed with another man’s wife. He killed the husband in a duel and narrowly escaped being lynched by a mob. Later, following an altercation in New York’s theater district, he had incited a riot. After being tried and convicted, he had spent a year in prison. Then, during the Civil War, he’d proved himself such a malcontent and troublemaker that he was eventually cashiered out of the Union Army. Upon returning to New York, he had at last found his true calling in life. He turned to purple prose and the printed page, where lies and chicanery were the accepted norm. He became a dime novelist.

  Starbuck was aware of the details. Buntline’s unsavory past had in turn been chronicled by the Police Gazette and several western newspapers. He wanted nothing to do with the writer, but he saw no way to avoid it. To decline a man’s invitation was the worst of insults, and never done lightly. He agreed to one drink.

  Buntline immediately launched into a tirade directed at Bill Cody. His tone was vituperative and his eyes blazed with resentment.

  “Bastard!” he cursed sullenly. “After all I’ve done for him, you’d think he’d have a little gratitude!”

  “Has he turned you down?”

  “Not yet,” Buntline said, his voice raw with bitterness. “But I see the handwriting on the wall. Tomorrow he’ll give me the fast shuffle—so long and goodbye!”

  Starbuck raised an uncertain eyebrow. “You figure he owes you something, that it?”

  “He owes me everything!” Buntline replied angrily. “I invented Buffalo Bill Cody!”

  “What do you mean . . . invented?”

  Buntline laughed a tinny sound. “Before I took him underwing, he was just another dime-a-dozen army scout. I literally yanked him out of obscurity with the books and plays I wrote. I sold him to the public! I took a nobody and convinced America he was the white knight of the frontier. I made him famous—a legend!”

  “Maybe so,” Starbuck ventured. “Course, you had something to work with. A Medal of Honor winner isn’t exactly a ‘nobody.’ ”

  “You think not?” Buntline said with wry contempt. “The true Scout of the Plains was a man named Frank North. The summer of ’69, I came west to sign him up for a series of books. He turned me down cold, wouldn’t touch it! So I looked around, and lo and behold, there stood Cody.” He paused with a sourly amused look on his face. “Today Frank North’s a nobody and Buffalo Bill’s a national institution. You still think I didn’t invent him?”

  “If you did,” Starbuck remarked succinctly, “then you should’ve stuck to the truth. These dime novels read like a kid’s fairy tale. Nothing personal, but it’s pure bullshit!”

  “All history is bullshit,” Buntline said, not in the least offended. “Whoever chronicles an event does so with an eye on posterity. Why should I be any different? I’m in the process of creating America’s mythology! The fact that it’s bullshit—based on false heroes—means nothing. A hundred years from now what I’ve written will be accepted as gospel truth. All mythology—Greek, Norse, Anglo-Saxon—was created the same way. Like it or not, legends aren’t born . . . they’re invented.”

  “Cody will be sorry to hear it.”

  “No, not Cody!” Buntline scoffed. “Most of the time he’s so drunk he couldn’t ride a hobbyhorse. He’ll die believing his own press clippings!”

  “Well, like you said,” Starbuck commented, “you sold him to the public. I guess he’s got to live up to his reputation.”

  A crafty look came over Buntline’s face. “I could sell you twice as easy and twice as fast. Your reputation’s the real article—documented fact!”

  Starbuck squinted at him. “Are you offering to make me part of your mythology?”

  “Why not?” Buntline’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “In your case, there’s no need for bullshit. You’re a legend waiting to be born!”

  “Thanks all the same.” Starbuck wagged his head. “I reckon I’ll have to pass.”

  “Stop and think!” Buntline admonished him. “Your autobiography alone would make a fortune! Add dime novels and stage appearances, and you’d end up ten times as famous as Cody. Don’t you understand? You would eclipse Buffalo Bill!”

  Starbuck tossed off his drink. “You ever tried to poke hot butter in a wildcat’s ear?”

  “I don’t get your point.”

  “You write so much as a word about me and you’ll get the point goddamn quick. Savvy?”

  “Your loss, not mine.” Buntline shrugged, sipped at his whiskey. “By the way, I meant to ask earlier. What brought you to North Platte?”

  “Well, I got wind you were here. So I came all the way from Denver to give Cody a message.”

  “Oh?” Buntline eyed him warily. “What message was that?”

  “You’ve heard about his Wild West Show?”

  “Yes?”

  “I told him there’s no room in it for a butthole named Buntline.”

  Starbuck compounded the insult. He fished a cartwheel dollar out of his pocket and dropped it on the counter. Then he turned and walked from the barroom.

  His smile was jack-o’-lantern wide.

  Chapter Seven

  The Virginia City stage rolled to a halt outside the express office. One of the passengers on top of the coach was a ragtag, down-at-the-heels miner. His features were hidden by a floppy slouch hat and a wild, matted beard. He looked like a cocklebur with eyes.

  Starbuck climbed down off the stage. To all appearances, he was another in the horde of miners flocking to Alder Gulch. He wore an oversize mackinaw and he moved with the stoop-shouldered gait of someone broken by hard times. The phony beard, which was a customized theatrical prop, completed his disguise. He collected a worn carpetbag from the luggage boot and shuffled toward the boardwalk. He was all but invisible in the crowds thronging the street.

  The disguise was essential to the plan he’d formulated. His interrogation of Doc Carver had confir
med a chain of events in the case. He had established a tenuous link between the Carver girl’s murderer and the stage robbers. He had also uncovered the name of a potential informant, George Hoyt. The next step was to grill the lawyer and add still another link to the chain. Yet there was no certainty that Hoyt could be trusted. So the approach would be made in the guise of a scruffy miner. Afterward, Starbuck would resurrect the hardcase and drifter, Lee Hall. The switch in disguises would provide him freedom of movement wherever the case might lead. No one, including Hoyt, would be the wiser.

  Starbuck prudently avoided the Gem Theater. He bypassed as well the Virginia Hotel, where he’d stayed while Lola was in town. Instead, he checked into a sleazy fleabag near the red-light district. He requested a room to himself and paid in advance. Upstairs, he sprawled out on the bed and caught a nap. The trip from North Platte had been long and tiring, and he wanted his wits about him tonight. Toward sundown, he rose and inspected his disguise in the washstand mirror. Then he went in search of George Hoyt.

  The lawyer’s office was on Van Buren Street. Starbuck found it by checking along side streets as he wandered through the heart of town. A wooden sign hung over the door and a shaft of lamplight spilled through the window. He walked past and saw a lone man seated at a desk. After checking the street in both directions, he felt reasonably confident he’d gone unobserved. He turned and retraced his steps. He went through the door without knocking.

  The man looked up from a desk littered with paperwork and open law books. He was tall and gangling and wore wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes were magnified through thick lenses, and his features were somehow ascetic in appearance. He smiled pleasantly.

  “May I help you?”

  “Are you George Hoyt?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Starbuck locked the door and pulled the blind on the window. Then he moved forward and took a chair in front of the desk. Hoyt’s eyes were large and wide behind the glasses, as though seen through the wrong end of a telescope. His expression was one of mild befuddlement.

  “Why did you lock the door?”

  “We need to have a talk . . . in private.”

  “Who are you?”

  “What’s in a name?” Starbuck watched him, alert to the slightest reaction. “I was sent here by Doc Carver.”

  All the blood leached out of Hoyt’s face. His lips worked silently, and an odd furtiveness settled over his features. When at last he spoke, there was a faint catch in his voice.

  “What do you want?”

  “For openers”—Starbuck fixed him with a steady, inquiring gaze—“tell me about the Carver girl’s murder.”

  Hoyt’s mouth popped open. “If Carver really sent you, then why didn’t he tell you himself?”

  “I heard his version,” Starbuck said gruffly. “Now I want to hear yours.”

  “Until you’ve identified yourself, I can’t see why I owe you an explanation.”

  “Humor me.” Starbuck studied him with icy detachment. “Otherwise, I’m liable to get mad and break your glasses.”

  Hoyt blinked, swallowed hard. Then he very gingerly nodded his head. “I was escorting Alice back to her hotel one night. It was quite late, and the street was empty. Someone fired from the shadows and missed me. Alice was killed . . . by mistake.”

  “Why would somebody want to murder you?”

  “In addition to my law practice, I serve as the county prosecutor. I’ve sent several men to the gallows and made a great many enemies. Apparently one of them tried to assassinate me.”

  “The men you prosecuted,” Starbuck asked, “were those the outlaws caught by Sheriff Palmer?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you figure one of their friends tried to even the score?”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Where had you been the night Alice Carver was killed?”

  Hoyt looked acutely uncomfortable. “At my home.”

  “You said it was late . . . how late?”

  “A little after three in the morning.”

  Starbuck played a hunch. “You were having an affair with her, weren’t you?”

  “I loved her,” Hoyt confessed. “I still do. What happened between us is none of your business.”

  “Maybe.” Starbuck eyed him in silence a moment. “Let’s go back to the killer. How was he tied in with robbers?”

  “I didn’t say he was.”

  “We both know different, don’t we?”

  “You’re putting words in my mouth!”

  “Like hell!” Starbuck said curtly. “What was his name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Doc Carver says you do.”

  “Thats impossible!” Hoyt blurted. “It was dark and “I never saw anyone. Carver knows that!”

  “He’s changed his mind. He thinks it was somebody connected with the robbers.”

  “Thinking doesn’t make it so!”

  “Don’t spar with me!” Starbuck’s jawline tightened. “Carver’s convinced the killer was one of the gang. Maybe even the gang leader himself.”

  “Gang leader?” Hoyt’s forehead blistered with sweat. “Carver’s crazy! I know nothing of any gang!”

  Starbuck was gripped by a strange feeling. Some complex of instinct and experience told him the lawyer wasn’t lying. Yet there was an underthought struggling to take shape in his mind. He tried to focus on it, quickly give it form and meaning, but he drew a blank. He put it aside and returned to the interrogation.

  “How come Carver believes there’s a gang?”

  “I’m afraid you’d have to ask him.”

  “I’m asking you!” Starbuck regarded him dourly. “And I want an answer . . . now.”

  Hoyt avoided his gaze. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  Starbuck examined his downcast face. “All right, let’s try another tack. You said you’re the county prosecutor?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So you have considerable dealings with Sheriff Palmer?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What’s his opinion?” Starbuck demanded. “Does he think there’s a gang?”

  “Not one gang,” Hoyt said lamely. “I seriously doubt anyone in town believes that.”

  “How about the stagecoach robberies?” Starbuck inquired skeptically. “Has Palmer ever indicated—even hinted—that he thought they were the work of one gang?”

  “No,” Hoyt replied vaguely. “Not to my knowledge.”

  “So Alice Carver’s death was a mistake? Somebody was after you and got her instead. That’s your story?”

  An indirection came into Hoyt’s eyes. “Yes, that’s exactly how it happened. A tragic accident.”

  “And the gang wasn’t involved?”

  “Who are you?” Hoyt said, his voice clogged. “Why are you trying to make me admit something that never happened?”

  “Doc Carver hired me.” Starbuck paused, gave him a narrow look. “Whatever his reasons are, he decided your story’s a load of hogwash. He sent me here to kill whoever murdered his daughter.”

  Hoyt stared at him, aghast. “I don’t believe you! Carver’s not that big a fool!”

  “You’re the fool,” Starbuck countered. “You’re holding out on me, and that could buy you a world of grief.”

  “I’ve told you the truth!”

  “Not the whole truth,” Starbuck pointed out. “Somebody killed Carver’s daughter and threatened his life. That’s why he hightailed it out of town. I think you know that somebody’s name.”

  Hoyt pursed his lips as if his teeth hurt. “You will never make me believe you’re working for Doc Carver. It just doesn’t make sense!”

  “Believe what you want,” Starbuck said, getting up. “Only keep it to yourself. I wouldn’t want anybody to know we had ourselves a chat.”

  “No one would listen even if I told them.”

  Starbuck walked to the door, then turned back. “I’ll be around awhile. Don’t let your lip slip, or you’re liable t
o see me again.”

  “Very well,” Hoyt said hollowly. “You have my word on it.”

  The door opened and closed, and Starbuck was gone. George Hoyt pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Then he seemed to wilt, staring blankly at the door.

  His eyes were rimmed with fear.

  The Gem Theater was packed. The barroom was doing a brisk business, and large crowds were gathered around the gaming tables. Onstage, a juggler played to an indifferent audience.

  Starbuck stood at the bar. Earlier, he’d returned to his seedy hotel room and performed a change in character. The miner’s outfit, along with the phony beard, had gone into his carpetbag. Then he’d donned his old garb and plastered the handlebar mustache in place with spirit gum. Waiting until the desk clerk was busy, he had slipped out of the hotel unobserved. The carpetbag had been consigned to an alley trash heap, and he’d made his way to the Gem. He was now in the guise of Lee Hall.

  Watching the show, he was aware of the looks from those around him. The fight with Pete Johnson was still remembered, and word would quickly spread that he was back in town. His purpose was to make himself visible and put the grapevine to work. Whatever he’d hoped to learn from George Hoyt, the grilling had proved a washout. He was convinced the lawyer had lied, but he was reluctant to push too hard too fast. He planned to wait a couple of days, allowing the pressure to build, and then try again. In the meantime, he would take another stab at his original scheme. He would let it be known that Lee Hall, the toughnut and drifter, was available. If there actually was a gang, the message would be passed along soon enough. All he could do was dangle the bait and await a nibble.

  Omar Stimson, the Gem’s owner, stopped by and bought him a drink. Starbuck played it mysterious about his absence from town. His response to Stimson’s questions was a cryptic smile mixed with vague doubletalk. He left the impression he’d been involved in something slightly windward of the law.

  While they were chatting, Pete Johnson walked through the door. He spotted Starbuck at the bar and halted in his tracks. Starbuck returned his glowering look with a wooden expression. The staring contest ended when Johnson blinked first. He turned on his heel and marched out the door with a stiff-legged stride. Starbuck chuckled softly.