Shooting For Justice

by G. Wayne Tilman

  “Do you mean John Wilkes Booth is alive and reading San Francisco papers?” Pope asked incredulously.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “You must have been aware of him not being killed in Virginia after he killed Lincoln, then?”

  “I was. I reckoned wandering the world, waiting for a bullet in the back or a knife across the throat was a far worse punishment than a hangman’s noose. He is virtually a man without a country or without a life.”

  “If he was identified, could it come back on you?” Pope asked.

  “Not if some gunsel or copper in some town identified him. If I identified him to you to arrest, it probably would prompt many questions I wish not to answer in a court of law. It would ruin me. And, ruin Sally,” Kane admitted.

  “I trust you have a plan.”

  “I do. I propose meeting with him alone, but with you outside the door. I will tell him the truth. His daughter and her best friend cooked up this identity switch to let Rita disappear. Yet, if the popular actress dropped out of sight, it would cause too many problems. So, with their plan, Rita could marry her beau and Sally, as Rita, could act for a year or two, then marry and drop from the public eye. The plan was better than it may seem on first reflection. Until the troubled Booth showed up. He was an unstable tool used by Lincoln’s administration.”

  “Michael, Robert Todd Lincoln told me much the same. He and General Lafayette Baker believe members of the Cabinet supported Booth and facilitated his getaway and intentionally buried an imposter.”

  “I am pretty sure it’s exactly what happened. Now, don’t mistake this—Booth did kill Lincoln. But I think of him as an ‘accidental assassin’. He does not have the skills to be a spy as he fancied himself. Shooting an unaware man in the back of the head from a foot away did not take any skill.

  “However, in the ensuing eighteen years, he has to have developed skills to avoid being recognized and captured,” Kane said.

  “What is your opinion of Booth?” Pope asked his friend.

  “He is an egomaniac, he is mentally unstable, misguided politically, and has a miserable personality. I was there when he and his daughter met for the first time in her adult life. They did not seem to like each other and parted on less than warm terms.”

  “I won’t ask how you got involved in all of this,” Pope said.”

  “Good. Then, I won’t have to lie to a friend.”

  “When will your, or maybe our, meeting with him happen?”

  “It has to in next couple of days. I told him we were going back to Virginia soon and if he wanted an answer, it would be at our convenience not his.”

  “If he does not gracefully accept the truth, I fear I will have to kill him in self-defense,” Kane said.

  “I had the same thought. The problem is he would be identified and how you came to have to shoot him would be a question asked you in court. If you have to kill him, you will have to dispose of his body in such a way it will never be found.”

  “Then, I will have to plan the meeting in a dark, deserted area.”

  “Yes,” Pope agreed, adding, “You will need at least a buckboard with a big enough bed to handle a body. Is he a big man?”

  “He’s not as tall as you or I, but still tall. He is medium build. Not an easy body to hide.”

  “Your story is true. He should accept it.”

  “He’s a nutcase though, John. We will have to play it by ear.”

  “Let me know when. I will be available.”

  “Thanks, my friend, I appreciate it,” Kane said as they walked back to the wedding party.

  “Sheriff, are you hiring any girl deputies?” Martha Lane asked.

  “I’m not sure, Miss Martha. I have not really started yet and gotten the lay of the land,” Pope replied pleasantly.

  “How are your trail riding and shooting skills?” he asked.

  “I can ride. Astride, not sidesaddle. I need to learn how to shoot. Will you teach me?”

  “You come out here one weekend, and Sarah and I will do a trail ride and some shooting. She’s the better instructor.”

  “I’m almost nineteen now. What should I buy?” she asked.

  “Try some of ours before deciding. It’s all about what feels right to you,” Sarah answered.

  Mattie stood back listening. She was behaving. It was obvious she was going to come along on this jaunt, though it was Martha who had spoken at length with Sarah about going into law enforcement. Pope remembered the two in summer nightgowns in Sarah’s bed, talking and giggling. Mattie could be a problem, he feared. Less so since he was not employed by Wells Fargo. She must be almost eighteen he thought.

  Both had partnered for the night shift when he was in the hospital recovering from two bullet wounds gotten rescuing Mattie. They had been a godsend with the hours Sarah had spent. Grandpa had sat out front of the hospital with Pope’s dog, Scout, on guard all night. They had coalesced like a family. Then, Mattie’s teenage infatuation matured into something more graphically serious. She knew Pope had Sarah. But they were not married. They were only ten years different in age. She gave it her best effort. Her frequent letters were informative and mature. They were also lusty as hell. Pope was in a bit of a spot. He hoped the letters would subside with the marriage. Time would tell. The looks she was giving him did not seem to bode well for it to happen anytime soon.

  Scout adored Mattie, so at least he kept her busy scratching his ears and telling him what a handsome pup he was. Pope determined to give him some additional beef or venison for a treat tonight. It was not the first time Scout had saved Pope’s bacon.

  The Kanes were staying at a guest house in San Rafael. Israel took them back in the buckboard. Kane and Pope agreed to meet in the morning. Booth had already come to San Rafael, but Kane was unaware of his whereabouts. The town was small, but he was nowhere to be seen. Both Kane and Pope kept a sharp eye around the church and later the woods near Israel’s cabin for the reception. Neither saw the fugitive assassin. Pope decided it would be injudicious to make any inquiries in town and raise curiosity.

  Normally, Pope would have enlisted Israel to help watch. Nobody could have been better. But he did not want to involve his grandfather in what had every indication of becoming a criminal conspiracy. One which might end in murder.

  People began to leave after the Kanes. The Lanes were next. They were staying in town. The last ferry across the Bay had left hours ago.

  Pope and Sarah felt for Joseph, or Joe, Lane and his two daughters having to travel with Harriett Lane. Her expression had become more pinched and intolerant in the months since the kidnapping.

  Millie spent some time talking with her former employer. She told her husband, stepson and daughter-in-law later she thought Mrs. Lane was ill. She remembered her as being a stern but tolerable woman. She had gotten much worse in the last two years. Millie ended with saying she felt sorry for her and the people around her but did not miss her mood swings and narrow-minded comments at all.

  Pope wondered how a narrow-minded woman could bear such an alarmingly open daughter.

  A night deputy came riding fast into the Pope spread around midnight.

  “Sheriff! Somebody has shot up the small hotel where your guests are staying. Nobody is hurt, but the shooter got away!”

  Israel came out in his night shirt, shotgun in hand.

  “Grandpa. There is somebody with a grief against Kane. He told me about it. They could come here. Could you saddle Caesar and one other horse. Saddlebags and canteen, please. And would you kindly stay here and watch out for Millie and Sarah?”

  Before Sarah could raise the expected objections about not arming up and riding, Pope was riding at full gallop with his deputy. They cleared the four miles back to San Rafael.

  He found Kane patrolling around in the dark with the long-barreled Colt.

  “Was it your friend?” he asked Kane.

  “I didn’t get a good look. I would guess so. Who else is crazy enough to shoot up a guest house in th
e middle of the night?” he said between clenched teeth.

  Pope checked around. Kane said the reports sounded like revolver caliber carbines. Probably one man, but he did not know for sure. The guest house was small and only rented a total of three rooms for guests, with the owners living in it and using the other two bedrooms. It was a Victorian style home and bore the pockmarks now of the shooting.

  The sheriff gathered the owners and guests. Most were in night shirts or gowns.

  “Mr. Kane and I are going after whoever did this. I am going to leave the night deputy on patrol. Mr. Lane, are you armed?”

  The Wells Fargo executive nodded.

  “We are seriously understaffed here. All adults are going to have to pitch in. Would you guard your family, except for Martha? Martha, you say you want to be a deputy? Take this backup .44 of mine and go to the Kane’s room. I am deputizing you to stay with Miss Rita until we get back. As a famous actress, she may be the target here.”

  Pope took Martha aside, though her sister accompanied them.

  “This is a .44 British Bulldog. If you have to fire, hold it in two hands and squeeze the trigger. It holds five rounds. You do not have to cock it for each shot. Just pull the trigger. It is for close-in work. Mattie, you will be deputy next time, alright?” She beamed and mouthed a kiss in the dark. Pope spun around and left.

  He made sure the saddlebags had some coffee and he got biscuits from the guest house. Both Caesar and the spare horse had carbines. Pope had stuck his Dietz police lantern in his saddlebag as well as a pair of nippers before leaving home.

  Pope cleared out everyone who had meandered over to the guest house because of the shooting. The lantern showed him what he feared. The onlookers had obliterated any usable tracks. He and Kane found .32-20 brass scattered in the grass outside the house. Most were under a tree. It was definitely the shooting point. There were no additional piles of empties, suggesting one shooter. He found a few prints in a spot where the lookers had not been.

  “Michael. Shoe prints. Not boots. Either a hired gun from San Francisco or our man, I’d venture to say.”

  Pope circled the tree in increasingly wider revolutions until he spotted what he sought.

  “Here! There’s grass bitten off and some horse dung. This is where he tied his horse. Probably a livery horse since most folks trust their animal to stand, reins down. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I think the indication is strong for the livery horse.

  “We need to ride over to the livery stable and scout around. If there’s a horse there with a saddle still on it thirty minutes later, we need to look for a man trying to hide in the dark and wait until time for the ferry in the morning. The trip around the whole Bay is a long, arduous one. I doubt either a San Francisco thug or your man would want to try it in the dark. If nobody is there, we come back here and take the road northeast. It leads to the next town.”

  “Let me offer an option to save time, John. You go to the livery and look for clues. I will start on the road north. If I don’t see anything before I get to where it also veers off to Sonoma, I will leave you a sign as to whether I went north or east. The only fear is if you are right about him being around the livery, you are searching alone.”

  “It’s a good plan, Michael! Searching alone is what I do. Darkness is my friend. Maybe if you get to the cutoff, wait an hour. If I have not caught up by then, ride on back. It should mean I have somebody in custody.”

  “It’s a deal, my friend. Ride safe and shoot straight!”

  Kane spun the horse around and rode at a gallop out of town.

  Pope had a shorter distance and rode slowly, watching for signs the man had been his way. The town street was well-traveled and too hard for Pope to cut sign. He slipped his Winchester ’73 out of its scabbard and rode with it over the saddle horn.

  When he approached the town’s livery stable, he dismounted and left Caesar reins down under a tree.

  Pope moved forward furtively, scanning side-to-side before each step.

  He heard a horse knicker behind the stable. The sound came from the back corner on the side where Pope was standing. So, he edged around the far side, encountering nobody on the way around. From his new corner he spied a horse standing, still saddled. He eased his way up to the horse. The brown gelding was not winded. He had not been ridden far enough or fast enough to give any sign which would be helpful to the lawman.

  What the horse did indicate to Pope, was the probability of his suspect hiding in the immediate area.

  He looked around. Pope had completely circled the livery stable and had not seen a soul. It was raining now. The man would want to seek cover. Where? The stable was locked. The rear door leading to a small, fenced corral was also locked. He looked down the alley behind the stable. The next building was a café.

  The rear of the café had some boards leaning against the wall of the building.

  Pope stood totally motionless and listened. His sense of smell was hampered by the garbage smell behind the café as well as the smell of used grease. He would have to rely on sight and sound.

  He levered the Winchester in the wet silence. The metallic sound of the action opening, the bolt going back cocking the hammer, the lifter raising a cartridge and the bolt being levered down to chamber it carried loudly in the night.

  “This is the sheriff. I can fill the area where you are hiding with .44 bullets and kill you deader than hell. Won’t take but a couple of seconds. Now, you slide your .32-20 out and crawl out and you will have a nice hot breakfast down at the Marin County Jail.

  “Otherwise, your blood will mix in the puddles in the alley as you bleed out. What’s your choice? Smart or stupid?”

  Pope saw a rifle slide out on the dirt alley. A man came out on all fours.

  “Now, lay on your belly and spread your arms out. I am going to approach you and put the nippers on you. You move and you die. No damn questions asked. Die right where you are laying.”

  The man nodded up and down. Pope approached. He left the carbine leaning against the wall. He knew he could draw his Colt in much less than a second. He pulled the nippers from behind his gun belt.

  As he approached, he put one knee down diagonally across the man’s shoulders. Pope took one hand and put the clasp of the handcuff on it. Then, he did the other.

  “Roll over on your side. Now, get up!”

  When the man was standing, Pope patted him down and removed a folding knife and a two-dollar revolver. It was a .22 or maybe a .32. Pope would look at it later.

  He whistled and the big horse walked up. Pope recovered his carbine and put it in the scabbard. He looped his lariat around the handcuffs or nippers and did a double wrap around the saddle horn once he was mounted.

  “Now walk!”

  He walked the man to the sheriff’s office and took him inside. The night deputy was there, having just finished one of his several nightly patrols. Pope set the .32-20 rifle, junk revolver, and pocket4knife on the table as the deputy uncuffed the suspect and put him in one of four temporary holding cells.

  “Know who he is?” Deputy Honus Rasmussen asked.

  “Not yet. Wanted to get him unarmed and in here before it started raining cats and dogs,” Pope replied.

  He walked over to the cell.

  “What’s your name?”

  “None of your damn business!”

  Pope reached between the bars fast as a rattler and grabbed the young man’s collar. He pulled him into the bars and punched him with his left fist between the bars. The man staggered back against the cot as Pope let go of his collar.

  “Let’s try again. What’s your name? If you don’t answer, I will come inside the cell and lock the two of us in and make you answer.”

  “Thomas Maupin.”

  “Where are you from, Thomas?” Pope asked pleasantly.

  “San Francisco.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Old enough!”

  “Yep, Thomas, you are old enough. Old enough for me to
smack hell out of you if you don’t answer my question,” Pope snarled.

  “Eighteen.”

  “Why did you shoot up the San Rafael Guest House less than an hour ago?”

  Silence.

  “The offer to come in and lock the cell door and make you talk is still on the table. You have already interrupted my sleep and gotten me soaking wet in the rain. I’d kinda like to question you up close and personal,” Pope reminded him.

  “They were in there,” Maupin said.

  “Who is ‘they’?” Pope asked, not as pleasantly.

  “The Lanes.”

  “Why did you want to kill the Lanes?”

  “I didn’t want to kill anybody. I shot to just hit the building with a little .32-20. I knew it wouldn’t go through. I just wanted to scare them.”

  “Why was it you wanted to scare them, Thomas?”

  “I asked Mattie out and she said ‘no’,” he responded.

  Mattie again.

  “So, you wanted to scare them because she did not have interest in you?”

  “Yep. Bitch. Said she had an older boyfriend who’d beat me from here to Sunday.”

  Oh, boy, thought Pope. the ‘boyfriend’ kinda just did.

  “Wrap up in the blanket. I don’t want you to die of a cold before the judge sees you.”

  “You gonna arrest me?” Maupin asked.

  “Yep. I’m going to wait until I talk to the district attorney to see how tough he wants to make it on you first, though.”

  Pope walked over to the door and saw Kane, soaking wet, riding into town.

  “I was just going to send a deputy after you. I just put a man in custody. It’s unrelated to the matter we feared, Michael. Thanks for your help. Try to get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning,” Pope said to his friend as he dropped him at the guest house.

  Pope rode Caesar back to the cabin. He led Grandpa’s spare horse Kane had been using.

  It was almost dawn. Sarah was still asleep. What a honeymoon night, he thought as he slid in beside her.