Death Head Crossing

by James Reasoner

  Everett nodded. “He didn’t want to leave until those killings were cleared up. I got the feeling that he was very intrigued by them.”

  “But now there’s no reason for him to stay, eh?”

  “Well,” Everett frowned, “I’ve been thinking about it, and we still have no idea how the murders were actually accomplished, or what those mysterious floating balls of light were that accompanied the killers.”

  Graham shrugged. “Surely that doesn’t matter now, what with Benjamin Tillman dead.”

  “No, I suppose not, but little things like that nag at a person’s mind.”

  “Don’t let them,” Graham advised. “It would be better to put the whole thing behind you.” He smiled. “Just don’t leave town until I have those portraits ready for you. They should be done tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure we’ll still be here for a day or two longer. Maybe more than that. Like I said, I haven’t really talked about it with Mr. Jackson.”

  Rosalie came in with a platter that held a juicy ham. She set it on the table and returned to the kitchen for the rest of the food, then said, “Sit down, gentlemen.”

  They sat and ate, and once again Everett was impressed by how good the food was and how much of it there was. While Rosalie’s meals weren’t as gargantuan as the ones at the café, Everett was still pleasantly stuffed by the time he was finished. He would have let his belt out a notch if he hadn’t been in the presence of a lady.

  “Why don’t you gentlemen step out onto the porch and enjoy the evening air while I clean up a bit?” Rosalie suggested when the meal was done.

  “I could help with the dishes,” Everett suggested.

  “Nonsense, you’re our guest. Go along with Malcolm now.”

  Everett allowed her to shoo him out of the house along with her brother. Grinning, Graham stood on the front porch and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Cigar?” he asked.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Everett replied. The good meal and Rosalie’s beautiful presence had him feeling expansive. He took the cigar Graham offered him. The newspaperman lit it, then held the match to the tip of another cigar and puffed it into life.

  “Nothing better than a good cigar after a meal,” Graham said as he blew out a cloud of smoke. “Well, I suppose I can think of a few things. . . .” He nudged Everett with an elbow and laughed.

  Everett was a little embarrassed, but tried not to act like it. Graham had accepted him as a fellow man of the world, and that was a welcome change from being regarded as a babe in the woods, which was much more common in Everett’s experience.

  Graham grew more serious and went on. “It’s probably a good thing you’re leaving town.”

  “Oh? Why do you say that?”

  “Because Rosalie likes you. I can tell. If you were here longer, she’d be mighty sad to see you leave.”

  “Mr. Jackson said sort of the same thing.”

  “Did he? Well, Jackson’s a smart man, anybody could tell that. But I don’t want to see my sister hurt.”

  Everett began, “I would never—”

  Graham held up a hand to stop him. “Not intentionally, no. I know that. But if Rosalie got attached to you . . .” He shrugged. “Well, as I said, it’s a good thing you’ll be leaving soon. You might even suggest to Mr. Jackson that you pull out as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll do that,” Everett said, even though it saddened him to think that he might not see Rosalie again after tonight. He was glad he had brought those flowers for her while he had the chance.

  “Anyway,” Graham added with a laugh, “I can’t take a chance on you staying around here. Rosalie might decide to marry you, and then I’d lose her services as cook and housekeeper and printer’s devil.”

  Everett was about to say that he was sure she meant a lot more to Graham than that, when a soft footstep behind them announced her presence.

  “Malcolm,” she said, and Everett thought he heard a note of strain in her voice, “there’s something out in the kitchen you need to deal with.”

  Graham turned to her, a look of surprise on his face. “Really? All right. You stay here and entertain our guest.” He clenched his cigar between his teeth and strode into the house.

  Rosalie joined Everett at the porch railing. The night was cool and pleasant, and the fresh scent of her hair came to him on the gentle evening breeze. He felt his heart begin to pound. One kiss, he thought. He had to have one kiss from her before he left Death Head Crossing. Surely she wouldn’t begrudge him that much.

  But instead of asking for that, he said, “Would you like for me to put this cigar out?”

  “What?” She still seemed distracted. “Oh, no, that’s fine. They don’t bother me. I’m used to Malcolm smoking them. They’re one of his vices.”

  “He’s a fine man. I’m sure he doesn’t have many vices.”

  She laughed, but didn’t sound particularly happy. “You might be surprised.”

  He wondered what she meant by that, but he didn’t think it would be proper to ask. All family members got on each other’s nerves from time to time, he supposed, and they were brother and sister after all.

  Before he could say anything, the sound of a crash came from inside the house. Rosalie gasped and turned sharply toward the front door. Everett swung around as well and took a step toward the door.

  “We’d better see if your brother is all right.”

  She caught hold of his arm, stopping him. “No! I mean . . . I’m sure Mal is fine—”

  Another crash sounded inside the house, and a man’s angry voice said, “You double-crossin’ son of a bitch!”

  The voice didn’t belong to Malcolm Graham.

  Everett pulled free from Rosalie’s grip. “There must be a thief in the house!” he said. “Get out of here, Rosalie! Run to the sheriff’s office! I’ll help Malcolm!”

  She grabbed at his coat again, but missed. Everett threw the door open and plunged inside. He was aware that Rosalie had ignored his advice and was following him, but he didn’t stop to argue with her. The sounds of the fight were intensifying. Graham had to be in danger, somewhere in the rear of the house.

  Everett’s fists were clenched and ready to throw a punch as he ran into the kitchen. By the dim light of a small lamp, he saw two figures locked in a desperate struggle across the room. They lurched back and forth, crashing against the table and the counter. Dishes slid over and shattered. The man wrestling with Malcolm Graham wore dusty range clothes and was trying to get his hands around Graham’s neck. Graham was holding him off as best he could.

  “You bastard!” the man grated. “You promised me a thousand dollars!”

  Everett gaped, openmouthed with astonishment. He recognized the man fighting with Graham as one of the hardcases who had confronted Jackson in the saloon on Everett’s first day in Death Head Crossing. That encounter had been Everett’s introduction to the violence so common in the West, and he would never forget any of the details, including the faces of the two gunmen.

  And as he stared, he remembered that Jackson had met those men again, on the Winged T. He had shot it out with them, in fact, and killed one of them. The man who had survived, the man who was now trying to choke Graham, had been wounded but had headed for the Winged T bunkhouse. He was one of the killers working for . . .

  Working for the Hand of God.

  The struggling men turned, and Graham saw Everett over his opponent’s shoulder. “Damn it!” he rasped. “Stop it, York! We’ve got bigger problems now.”

  York . . . That was the name of the Winged T hand who had found the bodies of Benjamin and Deborah Tillman. Everett’s brain was whirling crazily now. Nothing he was seeing and hearing here in the Graham kitchen made any sense.

  One of Graham’s flailing hands fell on a water pitcher on the counter and grasped the handle. He swung the pitcher up and crashed it against the side of York’s head, shattering the vessel. York let go of Graham and staggered, catching himself against the counter. Graham
reached over and plucked the gun from the holster on the hardcase’s hip.

  But instead of covering York with the weapon, he swung the pistol around and pointed it at Everett. “Don’t move,” he said, panting a little from his exertions.

  “M-Malcolm,” Everett said, forcing the name out through a suddenly dry mouth and throat. “What are you doing? If this man broke in here, we should fetch the sheriff—”

  “I said don’t move, and you might as well shut up too! You’ve seen too much.”

  “Oh, Malcolm,” Rosalie said from behind the young reporter. “Now we’re going to have to kill Everett too.”

  Chapter 32

  Everett didn’t know whether to feel sick, scared, or astonished. All those emotions and more warred within him. Fear and confusion won out. Every trace of affability had vanished from Malcolm Graham’s face. His gaze was icy and merciless as he looked over the barrel of the revolver at Everett.

  The hardcase who owned the gun slumped against the counter, bleeding from a gash on his head that been opened up when Graham crashed the pitcher against his skull. “Damn it, Graham,” he said as he wiped away the gore that dripped in his left eye, “you didn’t have to wallop me like that. We could’ve worked things out.”

  “You were trying to strangle me, remember?” Graham reminded him without taking his eyes off Everett.

  “Aw, hell, I was just mad because you didn’t pay me and the boys all the money we had comin’ to us. You know we have to light a shuck outta these parts. We just need some travelin’ money.”

  “You would have gotten the rest of your money if you’d been patient,” Graham said in a cold, angry voice. “You’ll still get it. First, you’re going to give me a hand with this problem, though. But I’m not going to pay you any extra for helping me get rid of this meddling bastard. We wouldn’t have to kill him if it wasn’t for you.”

  Everett’s pulse hammered like a drum in his head, a drum being played by a madman. He started to turn toward Rosalie, hoping that she could explain things, hoping that once he saw her beautiful face everything would make sense again.

  She lifted a little pistol she had taken from somewhere under her dress and pressed the barrel into his throat just under the jawline. “Don’t,” she said.

  Everett felt like crying, but he didn’t allow the fear to overcome him. He sensed that he had to keep them talking. As long as they were talking, they wouldn’t kill him.

  “What . . . what’s going on here?” he forced out. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Oh, I think you do.” Graham gave the gun back to York and went on. “Keep him covered.” Then he moved closer to Everett and smiled again, but it wasn’t a friendly expression anymore. “I happen to know that you’re a smart young man, Everett. You’ve seen and heard more than enough to figure out what’s going on.”

  Everett shook his head. “I haven’t, I really haven’t. I don’t have any idea. If you just let me go, Malcolm, I’ll—”

  “You’d run straight to Hell Jackson, that’s what you’d do. You know that Benjamin Tillman wasn’t the Hand of God at all.” Graham laughed. “I was.”

  “But why . . . why did you want to . . . kill sinners?”

  “Sinners? Sin had nothing to do with it! This was about money, Everett. Like everything else in this world, it was all about money.”

  York said, “We better not risk a shot. Want me to take him out and cut his throat or stove in his head?”

  “And announce to the entire world that he was murdered? You see, York, this is why I do the thinking, not you.” Graham shook his head. “No, we have to make sure that young Mr. Howard’s death appears to be an accident.”

  “How we gonna do that?”

  “The printing press,” Rosalie said with the air of someone who has just come up with an idea.

  Graham nodded. “Excellent. You really do have an inventive bent, my dear. What exactly did you have in mind?”

  “We can make it look like Everett was working with the press when he got his hands caught in it. They’ll be crushed and mangled, and since he was alone at the time, he’ll bleed to death before anyone finds him.”

  Everett stared at her, unable to believe that such a sweet, beautiful woman could come up with such a thing.

  Graham nodded. “I like it,” he said. “Everyone knows that Everett’s a newspaperman. They might wonder why he was messing around with the press in the middle of the night, but it’s not all that far-fetched. We’ll make certain that he’s injured badly enough to bleed to death, of course, and then we’ll be shocked and saddened to discover his body there in the morning.”

  “You’re crazy!” Everett couldn’t hold the words in. “You’re all insane!”

  “Not at all,” Graham insisted. “In fact, it’s a very clever plan, just like the one to get rid of Benjamin Tillman. He’s dead and out of the way, and no one has the slightest suspicion that he didn’t die by his own hand. We even have his confession to prove it.”

  York gave a hard laugh. “Yeah, and it wasn’t easy to make him write it out neither. Had to threaten that gal cousin of his before he’d do it. Damn fool greenhorn believed that I’d really let ’em both go if he did what I said. He sure looked surprised when I stuck that gun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  “You killed Tillman,” Everett said, “and . . . Deborah?”

  “Well, hell, I couldn’t very well let her live after she’d seen me blow her cousin’s brains out, now could I?”

  A shudder went through Everett. “You killed them both and then made it look like Tillman strangled her and committed suicide?”

  “You see?” Graham said. “I told you you were smart enough to figure it out, Everett.”

  “But . . . but why? Tillman never did anything to you. Why kill him? Why make it look like he was the madman calling himself the Hand of God?”

  “Oh, all right, if you’re going to be so insistent. Tillman took a highly prosperous ranch and was ruining it. He had no concept of how to handle such an operation, and yet he refused to go back East where he came from and allow a competent manager to step in and make the Winged T a lucrative proposition again. So some of his relatives in Philadelphia took matters into their own hands and decided to get rid of him. They left it up to me to decide how to go about doing that.”

  “How did they even know about you?” Everett asked. The story Graham was telling him was incredible, but he sensed it was true.

  “I have . . . connections of my own back East, I suppose you could say,” Graham replied. He hooked his thumbs in his vest and went on with pride in his voice. “I’m known as a man who can get things done. This little backwater cow town was a good place for Rosalie and me to hide out for a while after things got too hot for us, but even here opportunity to make a profit came our way.”

  “Then everything you told me about coming from Dallas was a lie?”

  “We actually did live in Dallas for a while,” Graham said, “but we weren’t raised there. We’re originally from your own hometown, Everett. New Yorkers, my friend, New Yorkers.”

  Everett rested his head in his hand for a moment. How could he have been taken in so completely by them? He had believed everything they told him. Not only that, but he could see now that by befriending him, they had been able to keep track of everything that was going on in the investigation of the murders. They had used him, and now he was going to pay the price for his gullibility.

  “We should get on with this, Malcolm,” Rosalie prodded.

  Graham waved a hand. “In a minute. Everett’s no threat to us now, and I’m rather enjoying explaining all this to someone who’s intelligent enough to appreciate it.”

  Everett grunted in self-disgust. “Not very intelligent,” he said. “Dumb enough to be taken in by the two of you, in fact.” He turned his head to look at Rosalie. “I thought that you . . . I thought . . .”

  “You think too much,” she said, and there wasn’t even a hint of warmth i
n her voice.

  Graham said, “Actually, I believe Rosalie is probably the more ruthless of the two of us. I know she’s more brilliant and creative than I am. She’s the one who took the information we were given by Tillman’s relatives and devised the plan to get rid of him.”

  “Why did Deborah have to die too?” Everett asked. “And what about Luther Berryhill and Mrs. Vance and that cowboy, Harcourt? What earthly connection did they have with all of this?”

  “Window dressing, my young friend, window dressing. You see, before Tillman left Philadelphia, he made the mistake of confessing to one of his relatives that he was in love with his cousin and had been ever since she was a girl. The relative—one of our employers—passed that bit of knowledge on to us, in the event that we might be able to make some use of it. Actually, it became the centerpiece of our plan.”

  Despite her impatience, Rosalie evidently took pride in the scheme too, because she said, “We wanted to make Tillman look insane enough to murder his cousin and then kill himself, so we turned him into the Hand of God and set him loose on some of the sinners in the area, making it all seem appropriately mysterious. Of course Tillman didn’t really know anything about it. Malcolm played the part beautifully.”

  Graham smiled. “Yes, I made a good crazed vigilante, didn’t I?”

  “Are we gonna kill this hombre or not?” York asked.

  “Of course, of course. In fact, I suppose we should get on with it.” Graham gave the hardcase a curt nod.

  York took a step toward Everett. Despite the mental turmoil Everett was in, he knew that his life hung in the balance here. If he didn’t do something to stop them, he would die, just as sure as anything. Knowing that his life was numbered in minutes made him a lot more willing to take chances. Without giving any warning of what he was about to do, he spun toward Rosalie, who had stepped back but still had the little pistol in her hand.

  They had said they didn’t want to shoot him, so he risked making a grab for the pistol. She cried out in alarm and anger as he lunged toward her. He got a hand on her wrist and forced the gun aside. As he reached for the pistol with his other hand, he thought that if he could get hold of the weapon and then turn back to deal with York before the hardcase could reach him—