by Logan, Jake
He spoke to the door as she slammed it behind her and stepped into the hot noonday sun. A quick look around failed to reveal where her son had run off to. It didn’t matter. She felt she had put the fear of God into him so he wouldn’t do anything foolish. For her part, though, Marianne wasn’t sure what she would do. She started walking and somehow ended up at the city lockup just as Sheriff Whitehill came out.
He stopped and looked at her. She had never been able to read his expression. He must make one hell of a poker player.
“Morning, Marianne,” he said, politely touching the brim of his hat. “I was headin’ out for some grub. Want to join me? I’ll buy.”
“Why did you let that snake slither off like that?”
“Suppose Slocum told you.”
“Lester Carstairs deserves to have his guts strung from the telegraph pole all the way across to the lightning rod on top of the hotel.”
“That’s a mighty ugly picture you’re paintin’,” Whitehill said.
“What he did was mighty ugly, Sheriff.”
“Why don’t you call me Harvey? We can take this argument down a mite if it’s not sheriff and citizen but Harvey and Marianne.”
“I want to step it up, not bury it under your honeyed words, Sheriff Whitehill.”
“You think I’m some kind of silver-tongued fox? Do tell,” he said, nodding as if this explained everything. That made her angry all over again. She had held it in check as she stormed around town, but the embers flared again into a raging forest fire.
“I think Carstairs has you cowed, that’s what I think!”
Whitehill shook his head sadly.
“Then you don’t know me so good, Marianne.”
“That’s Miss Lomax to you, Sheriff Whitehill.” She turned and flounced off, her skirts brushing the dusty street and causing small dust devils wherever she stepped.
She felt him watching her and refused to turn and glare back. When she turned the corner in the street and found a spot beside the bakery, she broke down. Tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving dirty tracks that puckered when the small wind blew across her face and dried the tears with its harsh breath. She forced herself to stop sobbing. All the men in her life had abandoned her. Not a one would stand up to Carstairs.
“Why’d you have to go and get yourself killed, Jack?” She wiped away the tears and blew her nose in a hanky she’d brought from Georgia. It had belonged to her mama and shouldn’t be used for such gross cleaning. It was meant to be fluttered about daintily, not become soggy with tears and leakage from her nose.
She crumpled it up and threw it away with sudden determination. If Slocum or Whitehill wouldn’t stand up for her, then she had to do it for herself. Head high and anger under control, she went to the livery stables to have a palaver with the owner.
• • •
In an hour she had ridden to the Argent Mine at the edge of Chloride Flats, where she could hear Carstairs bellowing his orders to slacking miners. Marianne watched Carstairs going around the camp, shouting and doing little to actually get the men working harder. If anything, they stopped altogether as soon as his back was turned. She knew she could cajole them into pulling every ounce of silver from the ground and never once raise her voice. All it took was knowing the individual miners. Working in the Lonely Cuss as barkeep had honed her skills dealing with these men. Some could be browbeaten, but others required sweet-talking.
The work in the mine progressed through the afternoon, but Marianne grew increasingly unsure what to do. Riding up and demanding a confession from Carstairs held no appeal. If he could lie to a lawman, he would lie to her. And what if he fessed up about everything? It would be her word against his, and she had seen how well that worked out before. In the eyes of the sheriff and most of Silver City, she was only a harlot willing to say or do anything for a dollar.
More to the point, and this caused a cold chill to pass through her, what if Carstairs took up where he left off when Slocum had run him out of her hotel room? Marianne touched Randolph’s knife still in her pocket. It gave her a measure of security, but she had to be close enough for Carstairs to grab her before she could use it. A wild thought crossed her mind.
Why hadn’t Billy given Randolph a six-shooter? The boy had a knack for “finding” things. Even a derringer would have stood her in better stead than a knife.
Then she realized how crazy she was becoming. Young boys and firearms were a dangerous mix. It was common enough for boys to carry knives, but not guns, at least around town.
The only thing she could do was sneak close enough to Carstairs so the knife presented a warning that held him at bay. The image of her drawing the sharp blade across the man’s filthy neck both frightened her and gave her a sense of satisfaction. She could kill a man. But murder one? Even Lester Carstairs? She wasn’t sure, but if anyone provoked such killer instincts in her, it had to be the mine foreman.
As the sun sank below the Mogollon Rim, she urged her horse to a game trail that skirted the tent city set up to house the miners. Finding a spot to leave the horse was easy enough. The miners were intent on nothing more than wolfing down their food and passing around a whiskey bottle until it was empty. The liquid painkiller served to put most of the men to sleep. One that wasn’t intent on finding his bunk and going to sleep was her target.
Carstairs made a circuit of the camp, now mostly asleep, then headed back toward the mine. Marianne sucked in her breath. It was now or never. She made a great deal of noise trailing Carstairs, her skirts catching on bushes and her shoes crunching against gravel in the path. He either didn’t hear because he was deaf or was too intent on returning to the mine.
At the edge of the clearing filled with piles of black tailings, she saw him stop and look around. She froze like a deer, not sure if he had spotted her. She trembled as he stared directly at her, then he turned away and began digging in a pile of rocks cast off from the mine. He hadn’t seen her in the dark.
She made her way through the mounds of debris and saw him brushing off a box that had been buried. He opened it and fingered the contents, then closed it and stood. He saw her immediately.
His hand flashed to his side, but he wasn’t wearing a six-gun. His palm smacked his thigh, then he shifted his weight, dropped the box, and took a pugilist’s stance. Fists high, he called out.
“You show yourself, you son of a bitch!”
She stepped forward, still hidden by shadows and the head-high piles of exhausted silver chloride ore.
He lowered his fists when he recognized her.
“Now what brings you out here, little lady? You come to get some of me?” He grabbed his crotch, then made thrusting motions.
“You are disgusting,” she said. “I want you to do the right thing and confess to the sheriff that you burned me out and tried to rape me.”
“Now that’s a mighty fine idea, gettin’ a little action from a piece of ass so downright purty,” Carstairs said. He kicked the box he had dropped. For a moment, this occupied him more than she did.
Curious, she asked, “What’s in the box you’d hidden?”
“Nothin’ that concerns you, bitch.”
A flash of clarity staggered her. He was high-grading the ore, stealing the best hunks of ore and putting the nuggets of silver into this box to remove when none of the other miners saw.
“You are despicable,” she said. “You’re as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Can you ever do anything honest?”
“So I’ll burn in Hell. Ain’t no concern of yours.”
“You burned down my house!”
“I thought I’d just run you off so I could find it, but the fire damned near destroyed everything. Still, I’ll bet a silver dollar you had it hidden somewhere else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, dammit. Where’d Texas Jack hide it? Give it to me
and we can make a deal. You’d like that, and so would I.” Carstairs stepped forward.
Marianne tried to step away, but her heel caught a hunk of ore and she sat heavily.
“That’s more like it, you gettin’ all ready for me. We can have a little fun, then we can deal and you’ll tell me what you done with it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? And you keep your distance!” She spun about to hands and knees, trying to stand.
He shoved her back to the ground. She sprawled facedown and then he hit her. For a brief instant the world exploded in bright star shells, then a curtain of red pain drew across her eyes as he began pummeling her with his fists. The pain proved almost more than she could endure.
Something deep inside caused her to rebel and refuse to yield. Marianne curled up in a ball, taking the blows on her arms and not her back and head. Then she kicked out as hard as she could. She wanted to drive a foot into his balls, but she missed. The sole of her shoe landed hard on his inner thigh and rolled him away, giving her the chance to scramble to her feet.
Battered, head hurting worse than anything she had ever endured, she faced him. Gasping for breath, hands on her knees, she watched as he got to his feet. His fists looked larger than quart jars.
“I changed my mind. I don’t want you. After you tell me what I want to know, I’m gonna pass you around to all my men. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, whore? You do a passel of men ever’ night, don’t you, whore?”
Marianne recognized the tactic. He tried to anger her to improve his chances to grapple. If she made a mistake, clawing for his eyes or trying to kick him again, he would take the pain and she would be his prisoner in a flash. Her hand brushed across her torn skirt and the knife tucked away in the pocket.
“What is it you want? You have to tell me!” She played for time now, in a way different from Carstairs. Her fingers fumbled at the sheathed knife, trying to get it pulled free so she could use the wickedly sharp blade to defend herself.
Hell, she’d kill him if she got the chance!
“It ain’t turned up, so Texas Jack did somethin’ with it. You and him was fornicatin’. He turns up dead, so I reckon you kilt him and took it off his corpse.”
Carstairs edged closer, then pounced like a mountain lion. Marianne tried to yank the knife free but it caught in her skirt. Twisting slightly so her right side was to the charging man, she braced the butt of the knife handle against her thigh an instant before he grabbed for her.
He let out a high-pitched keening and jerked away. She had opened up a cut across his belly. Carstairs reached down and pressed his fingers into the wound. The expression on his face boiled with hatred.
“You can’t cut me, whore. I don’t care if you got the papers or not, I’m—”
She never let him finish. She attacked, the knife free of her pocket now. A savage slash at his eyes sent him stumbling back. He caught his foot on the box filled with the silver chunks and fell hard. His head snapped back as he collided with a big rock. Wary of a trick, Marianne edged forward, the knife handle turning damp in her sweaty grip. She made a few tentative stabs at him but Carstairs lay still. Blood oozed from the belly wound, which was only a shallow scratch and not the disemboweling stroke she had intended.
“Hey, Carstairs, where are you? We heard a commotion. Where’d you git off to?”
From the argument between the men coming from the camp, she faced three or four miners. Marianne stood over Carstairs, who moaned and tried to sit up. A single quick thrust would end all her problems.
She could kill a man. She couldn’t murder one, not even a lowlife like Carstairs.
She almost panicked when the miners came toward her. Marianne bent and grabbed the box that had downed Carstairs, opened the lid, and then emptied it on the man’s chest. The silver gleamed in the starlight.
She threw down the box and ran as if a pack of rabid dogs came after her. Panting harshly, heart pounding, she tried to calm herself. The miners found their boss. Tracking her in the dark wouldn’t be in the cards. Circling the tent camp, she found her horse and started to mount when she realized she still clutched the knife.
Her first impulse was to throw it away, but good sense prevailed. She stared at the blade and saw the thin sheen of drying blood on it. The blade slid easily back into the leather sheath jammed in her pocket. Settling the knife so it wouldn’t fall out, she stepped up and tugged on the reins, getting the horse trotting away from the mining camp.
All the way back to Silver City she fumed and fussed at how Carstairs had beat her up. Her eye was swollen and moving her left arm proved almost impossible. The fight had been over fast, but she had taken more of a beating than she thought at the time. With her head threatening to split, she rode to the stables and left the horse.
Seeing a light in the front window of the hotel, she sneaked around to the back stairs and carefully mounted. Every muscle in her body ached, except for the ones that downright hurt. She winced as she touched her cheek. Her left eye had swollen shut. Fumbling, she got the door open and made her way to her room. Pausing in front of the storage room where Randolph made his bed, she started to open the door to look in on him. A moment’s dizziness hit her.
“No way I could let him see me like this,” she said, squinting out her blurry right eye. The decision to turn in was an easy one. She had gone through too much to stay on her feet any longer.
Marianne took a few minutes to soak a rag and press it onto her left eye, then collapsed on the bed, physically and emotionally exhausted.
She came awake with a start, sunlight slanting through the window. Marianne looked up at the bloodstained tip of a knife.
“You’re under arrest,” Sheriff Whitehill said, “for the murder of Lester Carstairs.”
13
“Slocum,” came the distant voice. “Slocum!” This time a heavy hand shook him awake. He came up, ready to fight. When he saw Dan Tucker, he sagged back to the blanket stretched out on the straw in the back stall of the livery stable.
“Go away,” Slocum said.
“The sheriff arrested her, Slocum. You want to let her rot in jail or are you gonna do something?”
Slocum’s eyes snapped open as he stared hard at the deputy.
“What do you mean? Who’s Whitehill gone and arrested?”
“You’d sleep through the Great Flood,” Tucker said. The deputy perched on a keg of nails, put his hands on his knees, and leaned forward. “The sheriff arrested your lady friend for killing Carstairs. He’s got real good evidence against her, too.”
Slocum knew how het up Marianne had been when he’d seen her the day before, but to kill Carstairs stretched beyond any horizon he could see. He sat up and yawned. Sleep was slow in leaving his brain.
“Is there something I can do about this?”
“Well, Slocum, you ain’t the law. Whitehill’s got evidence and a suspect, so there’s no reason for him to stop, think on it, and then make more work for himself findin’ another suspect.”
“Let the jury decide,” Slocum said. That would doom Marianne for sure. She hadn’t been on good terms with anyone in town. He thought it went beyond her hooking on the side, too. The other soiled doves working in town didn’t cause such disdain and even outright hatred.
It had to be something else, and Slocum had decided it was Texas Jack Bedrich. The prospector had ruffled feathers, and being linked in everyone’s mind with him worked against Marianne.
“That’s about the size of it,” Tucker said. “I’d help you out since I don’t think she done the deed either, but Whitehill’s got me doin’ a dozen different things. I let them slide, he fires me. “’Tween you and me, I need this job. Been too long since I did anything respectable.”
Slocum pulled on his boots, got to his feet, brushed off the straw, and finally strapped on his gun.
“You watch yourself, Slo
cum. If she didn’t kill Carstairs, somebody else did and they won’t cotton much to anyone pokin’ about to find ’em.”
“Thanks, Dan,” Slocum said. He left the stable and stared into the sunrise. Silver City was just now beginning to stir, merchants moving goods to the boardwalk to entice miners and farmers to stop and buy, bakers putting out the bread they’d begun hours earlier, others with an eye toward making it through another day.
His thoughts drifted aimlessly like a buzzard circling above the desert, but his feet knew the way to the jailhouse. He might as well have taken up the sheriff’s offer to bunk down in the cell. The way things ran, Whitehill would find more evidence against him for Bedrich’s murder and let him spend more time with Marianne in the next cell than he wanted.
The sheriff looked up from a stack of papers when Slocum came in. Whitehill rocked back so his hand was closer to his holstered six-shooter.
“Figgered you’d be by sooner or later, Slocum. Dangerous Dan tell you about the new guest back there?” Whitehill jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a cell where a blanket had been strung up to give the inmate some privacy.
“Don’t get many women prisoners, do you, Sheriff?”
“One’s more ’n I want.”
“She didn’t kill him. Marianne’s not capable of that.”
“Dan couldn’t have told you the details since he didn’t know ’em. You’re blowin’ smoke, Slocum, ’cuz you don’t have the facts. She did it. She was shootin’ off her mouth all over town how she was goin’ to slice up Carstairs. That’s how I found him, his guts all exposed by a knife slash.”
“That’s a big jump from being mad to saying she killed him.”
“Found her knife. Had fresh blood on it.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.” Slocum clamped his mouth shut when he started to alibi Marianne by saying she had taken Randolph’s knife from him. It didn’t help anyone dragging the boy into this.
“I have enough to let a jury decide.” Whitehill sounded tired beyond his years. “Doin’ this doesn’t make me feel the least bit good, but I took an oath to do my duty and to follow the law.”