“Two jailers, and now your bailiff.”
“What about all those you deputized to patrol at night?”
“Half of them are down there.” Gilmore nods below. “Brought their weapons, too.”
“You’re the sheriff. What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know.”
Obed Cox leans back. “All right, we have a damned interesting situation. Blaise, you have four men in custody, but you can’t keep them because they’ve been acquitted, they’re free to go. But they can’t do that either. In any case, they’re Mexican nationals, they belong on their own side of the line. Suppose I order you to take them there.”
Gilmore turns. “I wouldn’t, Your Honor. Me and three deputies against a hundred? Thirteen miles to go? We wouldn’t make it past the first tree we came to.”
“I can order you.”
“I’d turn in my badge. I might as well. I try to save their Mex asses and I couldn’t be elected dogcatcher next time. And that applies to Charley, too.”
His Honor sighs. He turns his attention to the army officer who has come back to sit on a table. “What about you, Captain? You brought them up here to try. Can’t you fetch a detail of troops from Columbus and escort them to the line?”
Hedley Carpenter shakes his head. “No sir. The Army’s done its job. They’re out of our jursidiction now. This is civil, not military.”
“Hell,” says Obed Cox.
“Besides, I wouldn’t trust my own men. Not with Villistas. I’d have a firing squad, not an escort.”
“Hell” says Obed Cox.
It is night now. Lights burn in globes of white glass. Through the open windows the mutter of the crowd hones tension in the courtroom.
“Judge, I have a suggestion,” says Charles Vaught. “Counsel for the defense got them off, let him get them out. Gilmore can keep them locked up till midnight. In all probability the crowd will be dispersed by then. Blaise can turn them over to Mr. Wood—he’s an officer of the court. You can so direct.”
Buell Wood looks at him. “You’re not serious.”
“Capital,” says the judge.
“You son of a bitch,” says Wood to Vaught.
“Capital,” says the judge. “All right, Buell. Sheriff will hold them downstairs till midnight. After that, they are hereby remanded to your custody. You’ll be responsible.”
“For God’s sake, Obed–”
“That’s an order of the court.”
“I demand the court’s protection—that means Blaise and his—”
“Sorry, Buell,” says Gilmore.
“Then I want some of the damned Army!”
“I have no authority,” says Carpenter.
The attorney glares at one, then at another. Alone and at bay, he grips the oaken rail separating court from spectators as though to wrench it from the floor.
Charles Vaught lights a cigar. “You can do it, Buell,” he smiles. “You’re good with guns.”
Obed Cox rises unsteadily. “Gentlemen, I am tired and hungry,” he announces. “I am going home to supper.”
The events of the remainder of this March, 1916, night in Harding are confusing, murky. The few women and children in the crowd outside the courthouse are sent home. The men stay, to be joined by others. Soon the brick facade of the building is illuminated by the headlamps of automobiles parked in a row along the street–Chandlers, Fords, Marmons, Durants, Columbias. In their feeble beams the armed men muster. They are not loud, nor unruly; nor is there talk of rushing the courthouse, taking the Mexicans by force. Patiently they wait. Rumors sweep them. Buell Wood may have custody of the Mexicans at midnight. Gilmore has posted a deputy with a shotgun at the head of the steps—that everyone can see —but the shotgun is not loaded. Wood has gone to the priest for assistance. He has telegraphed the governor in Santa Fe, appealing for a detachment of the National Guard. It is all hearsay. Certain facts, however, and certain times, are incontrovertible.
That: Shortly before eleven o’clock five men cross the yard in a body and ascend the courthouse steps. One comes down to the crowd, to Max Goss, a butcher and, by virtue of his bulk and temperament, a leader. The man is Charles Vaught. He takes Goss aside. He tells him his companions are jurors Word, VanDellen, Doc Shelley, and Turnbow. They know already, Vaught reveals to Goss, that they have brought in the wrong verdict, and they are going inside as a deputation to learn what Gilmore actually plans to do with the Villistas—if he will actually give them to Wood or what. Max Goss has no objection.
But he tells Vaught to warn Gilmore that the town will see justice done this night one way or another. The county prosecutor agrees to convey the message, rejoins the others, and the five are admitted to the courthouse by the shotgun deputy at the door.
That: Between eleven o’clock and eleven-thirty, a matched pair of Navy Colts stuck in his belt, Buell Wood crosses the yard, ascends the courthouse steps, and is also admitted.
I I: 1 4 I I : 1 4 I I: 1 4
WOULD I LIKE TO SEE THE PAGES?
“Millie,’ I said, swallowing to open my throat, “I would. Yes I would. My God I would.’
“Be my guest.’
She opened a desk drawer, handed me a sheaf of brown, brittle pages from editions of the Harding Graphic. There were fourteen. The stories on them ran chronologically, from the shootings on Gold Street and the arrest of Buell Wood for murder in May of 1910 to the acquittal of the four Villistas in March of 1916. I read them rapidly, and while I did, Miss Mills took advantage of the interval to renew acquaintance with Mr. Daniel’s.
“Well?” she inquired.
“Fascinating,” I said.
“Aren’t they, though. Will they help?”
“I don’t know. What I’m looking for is some kind of link between two trials. I find one—maybe. It’s with the people involved. Eight men in the first trial were participants in the second.”
“Who?”
I referred to the pages. “Well, four of the eight were present officially. Obed Cox, the judge. Charles S. Vaught, the prosecutor. Buell Wood, accused in the first, defense counsel in the second. And of course Gilmore, the sheriff. We can discount them. But the other four names served on both juries—here they are—Coye Turnbow, Francis Word, Hazen VanDellen, Dr. Jack Shelley. Shelley? Now wait a minute. Would he be any relation to the young Doc Shelley practicing here now?”
“That was his grandfather.”
“Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“I’m not sure. But why would these four serve on both juries?”
“They might. Harding was a very small town in those days. Prominent men served on lots of juries.”
“All right, I’ll accept that. But what about them? What about Turnbow, Word, VanDellen, Shelley?”
“I knew them all.”
“And they’re all dead.”
“And buried. In the town boneyard, where I’ll be presently. And that’s interesting, too.”
“What’s interesting?”
“The way they died, some of them.”
“Tell me, Millie.”
She looked again at the watch pinned to her sweater. “Ten of. We’ve still got ten minutes before the ladies arrive. O.K.” She put elbows on the desk. “Blaise was thrown from a horse in 1919. Broke his neck.”
“Gilmore doesn’t count.”
“Oh yes he does. You’ll see. Coye Turnbow was taken by a heart attack, and Haze VanDellen by pneumonia. Much later. I forget how Francis went—but his son Tom did the damnedest thing.”
I was losing track, but decided not to interrupt, to let the bourbon be her guide.
“Listen to this, Butters. 1972 I think it was—just five years ago. Tom Word—he was Francis’ son, remember–left a note with Don Turnbow—that’s Coye’s son—he’s president of the Merchants’ and Stockmen’s Bank—and asked him to deliver it to Sheriff Chavez. Pingo read it, and it said Tom was dying of cancer and was going to commit suicide and his body would be found down near Columbus, in th
e Pancho Villa State Park. So Pingo drove down there, and there was Tom’s car with the motor running and a hose from the exhaust pipe through a window—carbon monoxide. Well, sir, Pingo got out to see the body and—”
She slid from her chair sideways, as though exiting a car, stepped spryly to a bookcase and out of sight behind it, hopped out, raised arms as though aiming at me. “Boom! Tom Word wasn’t dead, wasn’t in he car at all! It was a trap! He was hiding in an old hut and shot Pingo in the leg! He’s got a limp, you know—that’s how he got it. Then they just blazed away at each other for a while—boom! boom!—and suddenly, boom! When he saw he wasn’t going to bring Pingo down, Tom put the shotgun in his mouth and blew his own head off!” She clapped hands to her cheeks. “Oh, it was awful!” She glided to her chair, sat herself melodramatically down.
“How d’you like them apples?” she beamed. “Who says the Old West is gone?”
Story hour. I could visualize the big round eyes every Wednesday and Saturday. I could guess what treasures and nightmares Millicent Mills had given the children of Harding for fifty-five years. Children not her own.
“Why did Word do it?” I asked.
“He must have had a grudge against Pingo. I mean, to plan it all out. A mortal grudge. What?”
She waved a warning finger. “I told you, I won’t talk about the living. Pingo’s very much alive, the little devil. And rich—have you seen the Diego Riveras in his office? Do you know how much land he owns? And powerful.”
“Then what’s the point of the story?”
“Well, they did an autopsy, and Tom Word really was dying of cancer.”
“Oh.” I forced a smile. I’d have to suffer the sauce, have to lead her. “Very interesting. That takes care of Word–Tom the son, not Francis the father, the juryman. And Turnbow and VanDellen—they died of natural causes. What about Shelley?”
“Ah. Ah.” I had given her a cue. “He was murdered by a robber. In 1917, the year after the second trial. Shot through the heart. Only he wasn’t.”
“Wasn’t?”
“Oh no. Doc Shelley killed himself.”
“Come on now.”
“You listen, Butters. Get the picture. One winter night in his office. He writes a note—’To Whom It May Concern.’ Then he injects poison in his arm. His wife phones–no answer. An hour later, no answer. She calls Blaise Gilmore, the sheriff, asks him to see what’s what. He goes to Shelley’s office, finds him dead, and the hypodermic, reads the note, calls Charles Vaught. He was judge by then. He’d run against Obed Cox in the fall and beaten him. Well, as I was saying, the judge arrives, reads the note. ‘Blaise,’ he says, ‘we can’t have this. We can’t have a suicide. We’ll have to make it look like robbery, and a murder. I’ll take his wallet, you find his cashbox, take the money, strew the checks around. I’ll be responsible for the needle and note.’ So they do these things. Now come here, sit in my chair.”
I went round the desk. She stood. “Here, sit down,” she directed. “You’re Jack Shelley, dead, slumped forward, head down on the desk.” I slumped forward, head down. “Now. I’m the judge. I raise you up and back, so you’re sitting.” She raised me, held me erect by a shoulder. “‘All right, Blaise,’ I say, ‘get out your gun and shoot him through the heart.’ ‘Charley, I can’t do it,’ says Blaise. ‘Why not? Are we committing a crime? Can you murder a dead man?’ Blaise can’t do it, though—after all, he’s the county sheriff. ‘All right, goddammit,’ says the judge, ‘if you can’t, I will.’ So they change places. Blaise gives him his gun.”
She skipped around the desk, leaned over it opposite me, poked a gnarled finger like the muzzle of a gun into my chest.
“Boom! Charles Vaught shoots Jack Shelley through the heart! Without batting an eye! Charley Vaught—the old judge—was a terrible man, terrible! If you don’t believe me, look at his portrait in the courthouse. He shot a dead man! He did! I know!”
She had me on my feet, enthralled. “
“How—how can you know all this?”
“Blaise told me.”
“Why would he tell you?”
She smiled.
“Why would he tell anybody?”
She almost took a bow.
“He was my lover.”
“Oh,” I said.
I suppose I gaped at her.
“Oh,” I said.
As in a minuet, we circled the desk again, took our original places.
“He was married,” she said. “But he gave me this.” She extended her hand, showed me the gold band. “I’ve worn it ever since. And he told me about Jack Shelley because it was on his conscience and he had no one else to tell. He took his guilt to the grave.”
“What was in the note Shelley left?”
“I don’t know. Blaise didn’t say and I didn’t dare ask him.”
“Why did Judge Vaught say they couldn’t have a suicide?”
“Ditto.”
I was battle-weary. For a pacifist, an antigun nut, a self-proclaimed-and-proud-of-it coward, there had been too much gunfire in my life lately. “Millie, may I have a tot of your elixir?”
“Sure thing, partner.” She dived gladly for the Jack Daniel’s.
“Cheers,” I said, and had one.
“Salud,” she said, and had her own. “My,” she said, licking her lips, “my I’ve waited a long time to tell those stories!”
“You’re a one-woman show,” I said. “But what’ve we got? The only link between the two trials is that the same four men, solid citizens I gather, served on both juries. Three of them died of natural causes, and much later. No cause and effect there. The fourth suicided the year after, and the judge then and the sheriff made it look like murder. Why, we don’t know. And the son of one of the four tried to kill the present sheriff fifty years later because he had a grudge about something. What, we don’t know. So where are we, then? Where do I go from here?”
“Don Turnbow,” she said. “And maybe young Doc Shelley—he’s a sweetie, he’s done wonders for my arthritis. And certainly poor Charley Vaught Jr. The judge. If anyone can put a bug in your ear, he can.”
“The living descendants.”
“The only.”
“If they’ll talk.”
“They probably won’t.”
I picked up the sheaf of old Graphic pages, passed them back. “Millie,” I said, “give me a break. Unbosom yourself. What in hell is this town hiding?”
“I told you, Butters. It’s a grand place to live.”
“And die. Violently.”
“Pooh.”
“Millie.”
“The people are good and kind and generous. The children are—”
“Millie.”
She pulled a hankie from somewhere under her sweater, pushed the purple butterfly glasses up over her titty-pink hair, dabbed at her eyes.
“Please, Millie. I’m not here just to dig up the local dirt, believe me. I don’t want to find anything evil or ugly. I hate evil. But if there’s something malignant under Harding’s skin, isn’t it better for all concerned if we locate it and razor it out? Isn’t that what you’d honestly prefer yourself?”
I had cut too close to her civic bone. She blew her nose like a barrage, stuffed the hankie, went over, like a woman, to a counteroffensive. “You’re holding out on me, too,” she accused. “Why are you doing all this, if not for a book? Who sent you? Tyler Vaught?”
I bit my tongue. To tell her about Tyler would be to open a can of very irrelevant worms. And she was not the safest repository for secrets, not with Jack Daniel’s around to unlock her lips.
“Tyler Vaught—wasn’t it?”
“You won’t talk about the living,” I reminded her. “Neither will I.”
“I thought so,” she exulted. “And what about Crossworth and Sansom? They’ve got to be dead. You think they were murdered, don’t you?”
“I know they were.”
“Who did it?”
“Ditto.”
She glared at
me. I acknowledged the impasse by standing, picking up my homburg. “I’m sorry, Millie. But thanks for all your help—I really appreciate. If it’s any satisfaction, I’ll be out of your hair in another twenty-four hours. By noon tomorrow.”
She sniffled, looked at me, looked around at her library, then at me, then pushed back her chair, sprang up, darted round the desk, grabbed me in her arms.
“I’m sorry, too,” she sniffled. “Oh you dear, dear writer. You dear dude.”
I put mine around her. She was so feathery. It was like holding a bird.
Suddenly she sensed something, pulled back, felt with one hand at my waist, unbuttoned my coat, took one horrified look, seized me by the elbows. “A gun! Oh mercy, mercy on us!”
To spare her, I buttoned. To cheer her, I teased. “But you love guns,” I said. “You love to go boom.”
“I love fiction,” she said. “It’s nonfiction I’m afraid of. Why do you think I nip now and again? Why do you think I’m an old maid? Oh please don’t be the third!”
“Third?”
“Murdered.”
“Good writers never die,” I consoled. “Only their copyrights expire.”
She hugged me again, gave me a grandmotherly kiss on the cheek. “Goodbye, dear boy,” she murmured. “Fly back here sometime and see me. Before I go. You and Frisby.”
I left Miss Millicent Mills. Between the bookcases, out the door, on with my hat. Down the street, facing me, the SIU sedan was parked. And down the street, in the other direction, a county sheriff’s patrol car. I couldn’t see either driver’s face because I had something in my eye. A tear?
I had forgotten to sign her books.
According to their headstones, Coye Turnbow had passed on in 1938, his wife Josephine in 1947. If there had been issue, they had not been buried here. According to his, Hazen VanDellen had gone in 1929. His wife Gladys was interred beside him, and a daughter, Junia. Francis Word had died in 1944. The suicide by shotgun of his son Thomas had in fact occurred in 1972.
A stone attested to it. A second son, Allan, a first lieutenant of Artillery, had fallen in Okinawa in 1945, had been brought home to New Mexico for reburial after the war. I found next the plot of Blaise Gilmore, once sheriff. He had indeed been thrown from a horse, fatally, in 1919. Beside him lay his wife, Veretta. A childless couple. Did she sleep uneasy, had she known her husband loved a librarian? Did he turn in dreams, recalling in torment he had been accessory to the slaying of a dead man? Then, beside the pair, a large sandstone slab, the grave of Dr. Jack Shelley, in 1917 killed twice over. A grim proximity. Sheriff and physician. This close together they could, they must, converse. Why in hell did you take poison, Doc? There was no need. Why did you and Charley put a bullet in me, Blaise, when I was already gone? There was no damn need.
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