by J. T. Edson
‘Now just a doggoned minute. I been out there and looked down into the ravine. Me ‘n’ my deputies. We couldn’t see no sign of a bullet wound. And them two cowhands who found Elmo who close enough to have heard a shot.’
‘But you never went into the ravine and looked real close, did you, sheriff?’ asked Dusty.
‘Naw. Hell, you seen that place. What with it being an accident, and that bit about leaving him lie if he died someplace like that ravine, and all, we didn’t see the sense of risking men’s lives to go down there. Elmo was for sure dead and it wouldn’t fetch him back to life if somebody else got killed too. So we got the preacher to say words over him and left him where he fell.’
‘And a killer was left to do more killing,’ Dusty snapped. ‘Three people have died, and another one nearly got killed, all because you didn’t check.’
‘I assume some of the responsibility for that, Dusty,’ Gaunt remarked.
‘If it comes to that, I said we should give Elmo his dying request,’ Mamie went on. ‘Three— You said three people died. Is Jennie—’
‘I didn’t count her,’ Dusty answered, choosing his words carefully. ‘We, Mark, Lon and I, went out there today. While Mark was lowering me into the ravine, somebody took a shot at us.’
‘Who?’ Gaunt asked, wondering why Dusty spoke much louder than usual and put extra clarity into his words as if he wanted them to carry some distance.
‘Jennie.’
‘Jennie!’ At least four voices repeated the word Dusty spoke.
‘Is she dead?’ gasped Mamie.
‘When the Kid heard the shot, he turned, saw a movement in the bushes and started throwing lead—from his rifle.’
The last three words gave a special significance to the listeners, for all knew of the Kid’s amazing skill with a rifle. Once more silence dropped on the room and Dusty waited to see if the bait would draw the killer into his trap. For almost thirty seconds nothing happened.
‘Is she d—’ Thackery finally said.
Even as the lawyer spoke, a sound drew every eye to the fireplace. Its back swung open and, as Dusty hoped would happen, the killer of Casa Thackery burst into the room—but Dusty’s plan only partially worked.
‘Elmo!’ Mamie screamed and collapsed back in her chair looking as if she was seeing a ghost.
‘Father!’ Claude screeched, looking as if he had seen something worse than a ghost; such as the ownership of Casa Thackery departing from his grasp.
Dusty did not speak or move. The old Walker Colt in Elmo Thackery’s right hand lined full on Frankie’s breast and the shotgun gripped on the old man’s claw-like left hand pointed down to the floor.
‘Sit still, all of you!’ he snarled. ‘The gal gets it if you move.’
While Dusty expected Thackery to be listening to the meeting and to make his appearance on hearing of Jennie’s ‘death’, the small Texan had also expected the man to be so shocked at the news that he would not be able to think straight. The gun in Thackery’s hand showed that Dusty had guessed only partly right.
‘Who is that in the ravine, if you’re alive!’ Gaunt asked.
‘Old Bill Turner,’ Thackery answered. ‘Doing something useful for once in his life. Where’s the Kid. Did he kill my Jennie?’
‘Look at the door,’ Dusty, to whom the words had been directed, replied.
Jennie came in, the Kid’s hand on her arm. On seeing her grandfather, the girl jerked herself free and ran to his side. She did not pass before him or in any way interfere with his keeping Frankie covered.
‘Get the scatter, little gal!’ Thackery ordered. ‘Stand easy all of you.’
‘Drop the gun and give it up, Elmo,’ Dusty ordered. ‘You’ll never get away from here.’
‘Maybe we don’t aim to,’ Thackery replied. ‘Call Mark Counter in here.’
‘He’s in the hall, Grandfather!’ Jennie put in, holding the shotgun with easy familiarity.
‘Call him in, Dustine!’ Thackery said and gestured towards Frankie. ‘And he best come empty handed.’
‘Come in with your hands empty, Mark!’ Dusty called.
Holstering his right side Colt, Mark entered the library, his hands held clear of the gun butts. He looked around him, to where Waco stood at the far side of the room, the Kid at the left of the door, Dusty standing before the people who all stared in amazement and horror at Jennie and Elmo Thackery.
‘I don’t reckon he’d kill Frankie,’ Mark said quietly.
‘Don’t try him,’ Dusty answered. ‘He tried last night, with the rattler.’
‘It’d’ve worked too,’ Thackery spat out. ‘It did when I tried it out afore on that greaser gal servant.’
‘You did better on Borg,’ Dusty admitted. ‘Only it didn’t look like suicide, Elmo. You should have held the gun to one side, instead of right behind his head.’
‘Yeah,’ grunted Thackery. ‘I should have. Only he sat up on the bed just after I come out of the cupboard with his gun in his hand and I couldn’t risk him turning and seeing me. So I shot him and he fell forward off the bed. I thought it’d only be Topham there investigating and he’d fall for it. Should have knowed you’d butt in, Dustine. You’re nosey, just like your Uncle Devil.’
‘What do we do about them, Grandfather?’ Jennie asked.
‘Nothing yet. How long you known about me, Dustine, and who’ve you told?’
‘I’ve not told anybody. But I suspected you when I saw the rattler,’ Dusty answered, watching for a chance to break the deadlock without getting Frankie hurt. ‘That’s when I started thinking about you being alive, Elmo. I was suspicious as soon as I heard about the hit at Joan in Newton. That attack on us in the Nations made me more sure. Knowing you, there wouldn’t be many saw your will. I didn’t even think Aunt Mamie had. So it left Frank, and I trusted him, and Jennie. She was sure to know about your will. Why ask Uncle Devil to have us gather the folks?’
‘To show folks how keen I was to get them here. Sending the famous Dusty Fog, Mark Counter and the Ysabel Kid after them. Only it’d be just too bad happen they all got killed when a bunch of raiders hit Dusty Fog’s camp to try to steal his trail drive money. I reckon I handled it real well.’
‘You overdid it, like everything else,’ Dusty drawled. ‘There was too much happened just right. Like your death coming just when we’d be either in or real close to Mulrooney. You’d seen our trail herd passing north—’
‘Sure I had. I’d planned all this earlier though. Couldn’t’ve worked out better, you making for the railroad and all them four being within easy reach.’
‘I still say you overdid it. That piece in your will about leaving your body lie where it fall, it didn’t have any real point unless the body went into a place where folks’d think twice about trying to recover it. You knew Mamie and Frank would respect your last wishes, and that Topham wasn’t going to push it too hard at inspecting the body when he saw the risks involved. So nobody’d know it wasn’t Elmo Thackery lying out there.’
‘That’s right,’ Thackery answered, his eyes gloating at the thought of his brilliant plan. He could not prevent himself boasting, telling everything. ‘Turner came to see me. I sent for him, the night afore and Jennie dropped him. We dressed him in my clothes, some like I was wearing when those cowhands saw me, and took him out to the ravine, tossed him over. Next day I rode up there, turned my hoss loose after I made him rear at the edge, and hid out in the bushes. Come back here and got hid in the priest’s hole behind the fireplace that night. There’s secret passages all round this house, only me ‘n’ Jennie knowed ‘em.’
‘I guessed about them, even though Jennie lied about there being any,’ Dusty told the old man, hoping the gun would waver, but it did not. ‘You used the one that came out in the cupboard in our room when you went to put the snake in Frankie’s bed. That’s why Jennie was so all-fired eager to keep us downstairs. I nearly caught you at it, didn’t I?’
‘And I saved your life, Dustine,’ Jennie
put in. ‘What do we do about them, Grandfather?’
‘I know why you wanted Claude and Marlene dead,’ Dusty put in, before the old man could reply. ‘You was scared they’d contest your will and take some of the land or money from Jennie. And you aimed to get rid of the only other two, Mamie and Frankie, who had any legal claim. But why Borg?’
‘He got drunk one night. Told me it was his father who put me where I am today. That he ought to marry Jennie so that he could get hands on my money. I should have killed him then. But I didn’t. I let him live long enough to think he had a share in my money. Then I killed him.’
‘Why me?’ Joan asked.
‘You?’ Jennie spat out. ‘You thought my Grandfather was an old bag-line bum and you bought him a meal as if he was a tramp. That’s why.’
‘I didn’t want you to get here,’ Thackery went on. ‘So I fixed it with a feller. I know to have a pair of gunnies follow you when he heard about my death, and not to kill you until you knew about the money I’d left you. I wanted you to know it wasn’t a bag-line bum you’d helped. Last night, I thought you and Marlene was going to kill each other. But you didn’t, Jennie here fixed it neat so you’d be blamed after she killed Marlene.’
‘You killed her!’ Claude screamed and started to rise.
The shotgun in Jennie’s hand boomed, its charge slamming into Claude’s chest and hurling him back across the room, smashing the chair beneath him. Frankie screamed, but kept her seat; nor did the Walker Colt’s muzzle waver from line on the girl’s body, so Dusty did not have a chance to make a move.
‘He won’t take Casa Thackery from us now, Grandfather,’ Jennie said, her lips twisting into a mirthless smile that went well with the mad gleam in her eyes.
‘Keep still, all of you!’ Thackery warned. ‘And I reckon you boys had best shed your gunbelts.’
Slowly Joan Shandley moved her right hand into the mouth of the vanity bag she had carried with her all morning and which now rested on her knees. Inside it lay a Remington Double Derringer, an item most saloongirls carried on their persons when working in wild wide-open towns. She had packed the Derringer with her other belongings when she left Newton, never expecting to need it. The incidents since her arrival at Casa Thackery had caused her to unpack the gun again and hide it in the bag. Now it seemed she might have use for the gun.
Looking towards Dusty, Joan saw the indecision on his face. He, and every man in the room, knew that the moment they dropped their guns they would be dead men. Thackery and his granddaughter were crazy enough to try to kill every person in the room.
‘You sent men to kill me?’ Joan asked and saw Thackery’s mean, evilly glinting eyes turn towards her.
‘Had it done. Same feller as fixed with them raiders to hit at you done it for me,’ Thackery replied. ‘And I ain’t askin’—’
‘Beegee Benson died, not me!’ Joan said bitterly.
Flame spurted from the bag. Joan was a poor shot, never having practised with the gun. So her bullet missed Thackery—and struck Jennie in the left breast. The impact spun Jennie around and pain caused her to squeeze the shotgun’s second trigger. Its lethal charge smashed into the wall within inches of the Ysabel Kid’s side. Ka-Dih appeared to be watching over Long Walker’s grandson that day.
On the shot Thackery’s head jerked around and the Walker’s barrel sagged down out of line. Half a second later he was dead.
Seven hands moved the instant the gun no longer lined on Frankie’s body. Seven hands trained in the lightning fast withdrawal of weapons and skilled in aiming the weapons when they lifted clear of leather.
Ahead of the others, Dusty’s matched Colts roared, their lead ripping into Thackery’s head and shattering it like a pumpkin tossed against a wall. Mark’s ivory butted Peacemakers bellowed an instant behind Dusty’s and about the same amount ahead of Waco’s Army Colts making their music. A good quarter of a second later, last of the quartet into action, the Ysabel Kid’s old Dragoon vomited a .44 ball in a thunder-clap roar and a spurt of flame.
Elmo Thackery might not have died out there by the ravine, but he sure as hell was dead when his body smashed into the wall by the fireplace, hung there for a moment, then pitched forward on to his face. There were seven bullets in his body; four of .45 calibre, three a mere .44 in size. Any one of them would have killed him.
Powder-smoke whirled and eddied around the room. Frankie screamed again and twisted herself into her aunt’s arms, shutting her eyes to hide the sight she had just witnessed. The men stayed still as statues for a moment, then the girl’s sobbing jolted Dusty into action.
‘Frank, get the women out of here!’ he snapped. ‘Doc, look to Jennie.’
Holstering his guns, Waco sprang forward. With surprising gentleness he drew the almost hysterical little girl from Mamie’s arms and carried her from the room. Gaunt knocked the vanity bag from Joan’s hand and stamped on it, for the exploding powder’s flames had set fire to the material. With the fire out, he ushered Mamie and Joan out of the room.
Kneeling by Jennie, the doctor looked up to Dusty and shook his head. One glance had told him already that the two male Thackerys had passed beyond any human aid.
‘If I had some of the new gear they’ve brought out in the East I might be able to do something, Dusty,’ he said. ‘But there’s no chance for her with what I have here.’
‘Maybe it’s all for the best, Doc,’ Dusty replied.
Crossing the room without a glance at the bodies, the Kid entered the open priest-hole and looked around. He had seen such rooms in Mexican haciendas and knew what to expect. The room was small, square shaped, with a second entrance opening on to one of the passages built within the walls by some long forgotten architect. A small table stood to the right of the fireplace door, a solitary chair by it. Across the room was a small, thin bed, not much comfort for a man as rich as Elmo Thackery had been. The Kid’s eyes went to the block of stone on the table. It had been pulled out of the wall over a stout stone shelf above the fireplace door. Climbing on to the table, the Kid used it as a step to mount the shelf. He would be behind the portrait; a pair of holes, most likely in the eyes of one of the figures, allowed him to see what went on in the library and hear what the men in the room said with surprising clarity.
A man had to hand it to Dusty, way he figured this whole stinking mess out. Dusty had guessed that Thackery was hidden in the house and would be on hand to spy on any meeting held in the library. Playing on Thackery’s love for Jennie, Dusty hinted that she had been killed in an attempt to bring the man out of hiding. That was the reason for Dusty speaking louder than usual, the Kid could now tell he did not need to have troubled, an ordinary voice, by some trick of acoustics, could be clearly heard from the look-out place behind the portrait.
‘So this’s where he hid out, huh?’ Topham’s voice said from below. ‘Hey, where you at, Kid?’
‘Up here,’ the Kid replied and the startled man jerked back to crack his head on the low door. ‘This’s how somebody managed to kill Marlene Thackery and get out of a room leaving the door and windows locked on the inside. It sure as hell spoiled your open and shut case.’
‘Huh!’ grunted Topham. ‘I never really thought Miss Shandley’d done it.’
Miss Shandley would now be a third owner in the Thackery fortune and it did not pay to speak disrespectfully of powerful folks in the county, so Topham was hoping his words would reach Joan’s ears and cancel out any anger she might feel at his earlier suspicions.
Jumping down, The Kid looked around the small room. ‘Lordy Lord. Elmo sure must have hated folks to live down here ever since he was supposed to have died.’
‘Miss Jennie must’ve brought him food,’ Topham answered. ‘And he likely got out in the fresh air at nights.’
‘Just like you say,’ drawled the Kid and walked out of the room with Topham hot on his heels.
‘Cap’n Fog and Mark went outside,’ the undertaker told the Kid.
Despite his professio
n, the undertaker looked a mite green around the gills. He did not get much trade in his side-line—he actually ran the general store for a living—and did not care to have it delivered wholesale like this.
Mark found Dusty standing on the porch, leaning on the stone rail and looking across the range. For a moment neither man spoke, then Dusty seemed to become aware of his big amigo at his side.
‘How’s the shoulder, Mark?’ he asked.
‘Still there,’ Mark replied. ‘How are you?’
‘Sick to my guts. I knew that girl when she was as sweet, fresh and likeable as Frankie. That was how Jennie was first time I saw her. But she changed. Lord, how she changed. I saw the change when Elmo brought her down to Polveroso and tried to marry us off. He warped Jennie the way he was warped, turned her as mean and miserly as himself. I never regretted killing a man less, Mark.’
‘Do you want me to get the boys and saddle the horses?’
‘No. I’ll pull through. And we’ll have to help the women over this lot.’
At that moment the Kid came from the house, Like Mark, he guessed at Dusty’s mood. Walking forward, he sat on the stone rail and sucked in a breath of fresh air. It seemed unusually good after the acrid stink of burnt powder mingled with human blood and the musty, decayed stench of the priest’s hole.
‘How’d you reckon Elmo allowed to come back after they’d got rid of all the legatees, Dusty?’ he asked.
‘We’ll never know. Maybe he figured to appear one day and allow he’d been hit over the head and couldn’t remember who he was. He might even have thought he could just come back and nobody’s dare think anything wrong.’
‘He’d be plumb loco if he thought that,’ Mark stated.
‘Nothing he did was the act of a sane man,’ Dusty replied. ‘This whole affair, the way he planned every move of it, no sane man would have done all that. He was obsessed with the idea that everything he owned went to Jennie, and he turned her the same way. So they tried to make sure nobody ever laid hands on a cent of it. Lord, I wish Uncle Devil had never straddled us with this chore.’