by Max O'Hara
Again, Stockburn laughed, tumbling for the coquette all over again.
The train was now screeching to a halt in front of the depot station, and most of the passengers were rising from their seats, gripping their seat backs before them to keep their balance.
Stockburn gave the girl’s hand an affectionate squeeze. “As much as I regret it, I’ll take a rain check on dinner. I’d best tend to the grim chore of delivering the bodies of those four cutthroats to the local law.”
He did not add that Lori best stay clear of him for a while, since his killing Riley Hennessey might have pasted a target on his back. However, he could tell by the level look she gave him that she understood the unspoken remonstration.
“How ’bout if we ride together out to the Triangle tomorrow?” she suggested. “Maybe you can help me cushion the surprise of my unexpected appearance . . . ?” Lori gave a wry smile. “You’ll want to talk to my father sooner or later, I’m sure. Since the rail crew was attacked on what was once Triangle land . . .”
“Right you are, young lady. Sure. Why not?” Riding together in the country should be harmless enough as long as Wolf watched his back trail, which it was his second nature to do even when he hadn’t killed a nasty little coyote with a truculent pa. “I’ll have to have a palaver with the Stewarts over at the Hell’s Jaw Rail office first, so why don’t we plan to take that ride, oh, say late morning?”
“Wonderful. I do so like to sleep in.” Lori gave him a winning smile then leaned over to press her soft lips against his cheek.
A few minutes later, Wolf stood on the station’s brick platform, watching the pretty gal in the expensive traveling gown flounce off toward the heart of Wild Horse, a half-breed young porter with long, shaggy brown hair pushing a handcart loaded with her luggage along behind her. The half-breed walked with a slight hitch in his gait, so he had trouble keeping up with Lori. She seemed oblivious as she walked forthrightly straight ahead, chin in the air, twirling the orange parasol over her head.
“I’ll be hanged if it ain’t a curiosity,” came a man’s voice from Stockburn’s left.
Wolf turned to the slender, middle-aged man walking toward him, holding a sheaf of ladling papers in one hand, a pencil in the other. He must have been talking to the engineer and the fireman.
Now Frye helped the wounded fireman into the little clapboard depot building, and the slender man stepped up to Stockburn. The brass name plate pinned to his unbuttoned wool jacket read AVERY COLE, STATION AGENT.
“If what ain’t a curiosity, Mister Cole?” Wolf asked.
Cole was staring after Lorelei McCrae, just now leaving the brick platform and flouncing off down the dusty main street of Wild Horse, heading toward the Territorial Hotel. “What that girl’s doing home so soon. A curiosity. Why, I just shipped her back out to her fancy girl school only a month ago. Saw her and her brother off myself.”
The station agent glanced up at Wolf, who stood a whole head taller. “Did she say?”
“Nope. Women have their secrets.”
“I reckon.” Cole extended his bony right hand. “I’m Avery Cole, Station Agent.”
“I see that,” Wolf said, shaking the man’s hand. “I’m—”
“I know who you are, Mister Stockburn. I just talked to Mister Frye. Been expectin’ you. I heard you was headed this way to investigate the Hell’s Jaw trouble. I understand from Frye that you fended off a passel of train robbers, and somehow Miss McCrae got in the middle of it.”
He gave an ominous sigh. “And Kreg Hennessey’s little snot-nosed serpent child is lyin’ dead in the stock car. That’s all right. I like him better that way, but his old man sure won’t!”
CHAPTER 5
“He’s with three others,” Stockburn said.
“I heard that, too,” Cole said. “Frye recognized them as some of the other polecats young Hennessey regularly ran off his leash with.”
“The kid’s father couldn’t control him? Or wouldn’t?”
“The second one. Hennessey’s a nasty man, Mister Stockburn. He may wear a Prince Albert coat and run a business and have his hands in several others as well as own a nice big house—the biggest, in fact, in Wild Horse—and strut around town like a respectable man of business.”
The station agent glanced around secretively then turned back to Stockburn, raised his hand to his mouth, and whispered, “But he’s a devil.” Keeping his voice low, he added, “He was just like Riley back when he was Riley’s age. The way he saw it, Riley was just cuttin’ his teeth. Showin’ some spunk. He usually covered up for the kid by payin’ back the money he stole to keep him out of jail. Around here it worked, because the town marshal, who doubles as a deputy county sheriff, is in Hennessey’s pocket. Or so I’ve heard. Makes sense. The kid’s wanted for crimes outside of this county, however, and there’ve been a few federal men sniffin’ around about him.”
“Nothing came of it, I take it?”
“Nothin’. Wouldn’t doubt it if Hennessey paid them off, or . . .”
“Or . . . ?”
“Killed them.”
“Hmm.”
“There you have it,” Cole said grimly, nervously tapping the end of his pencil against the sheaf of shipping bills in his hand. “You killed the wrong man’s son.”
“Yeah, well, I rarely kill the right one’s son. Why don’t we get those bodies hauled over to the town marshal’s office so I can get that damnable paperwork behind me and get started on what I was sent here to do.”
Wolf had walked over to the stock car, Cole following closely. Several other passengers were leading their horses down the stock car’s wooden ramp, shod hooves drumming hollowly on the worn wood, fresh apples dropping from beneath the arched tail of a dapple-gray and filling the air with that green-hay aroma that, unlike cow manure, was not particularly unpleasant.
At least, not to a man who loved everything about horses, even their smell.
“The town lawman’s out of town,” Cole said. “Same with his two deputies. I seen ’em ride out to the south a couple hours ago, and I haven’t seen ’em ride back. All I had to do till the train arrived was sit and watch on that chair yonder. That’s mostly what a station agent in a town this size does—sit and watch—so I know they’re still out dealing with rustlers or somesuch. Usually when they all go, it’s a rustling matter, sure enough. Nothin’ riles the ranchers around here like rustlin’.”
Stockburn cursed as he walked up the ramp and into the car. Cole followed again as Wolf walked over to his smoky gray stallion, Smoke, and set down his war bag and leaned his Yellowboy rifle against the car’s near wall. “I’ll have Wally Skutter fetch the town undertaker for the bodies,” Cole said, staring down at the four dead men lying belly up at the base of the car’s front wall. “I’ll let the marshal know what happened when he rides back to town.”
“All right.” With a grunt, Wolf threw his saddle blanket and saddle on the stallion’s back. “I’m gonna fetch a good hot meal then look for a passable mattress sack. Any suggestions?”
“The Cosmopolitan Restaurant is the best grub around. It ain’t purty, but it’s the best. You’ll find it on the corner of the main drag there—Wind River Avenue—and Second Street. Just beyond Hennessey’s place. You’ll find the Territorial Hotel directly across the street from the restaurant—all conveniently located for you, Mister Stockburn.”
Stockburn led the stallion down the ramp then mounted up, easing his weight into the leather. “Thanks, Mister Cole. How ’bout a livery barn?”
“I recommend the Federated. Half a block beyond the restaurant. It’s run by a Mexican but, unlike most Mexicans, Señor Ortiz keeps a clean place and runs a tight ship. Has a wonderful touch with a curry brush. Really knows how to bring out a shine!”
Stockburn smiled and pinched his hat brim to the station agent. “Obliged.”
“Enjoy the meal, Mister Stockburn.”
“Thank you—I intend to,” Stockburn said as he booted Smoke out onto the main d
rag, Wind River Avenue, which sat directly north of the depot building, and ran perpendicular to the railroad tracks. He glanced over his shoulder at Cole.
The man was looking at him as though he’d just wished him an enjoyable last supper.
* * *
Avery Cole had been right about the Cosmopolitan. It wasn’t a pretty place, but it served up a juicy T-bone and a savory pile of potatoes with two sunny-side-up eggs on top, just the way Wolf had ordered them. A side dish of green beans cooked in ham lent a little roughage to the array.
It was a large, dark, low-ceilinged place with a lunch counter running along the rear of the room, fronting the kitchen that lay beyond a half-wall over which Stockburn could see a big, fat man with a bushy gray mustache, a loosely rolled cigarette dangling from his lips, ambling around amidst rising steam and the din of frying and boiling food.
The man yelled orders in German to the two stout women—one young and one the cook’s age, late forties, early fifties—who seemed to be dancing around back there with him in some loosely choreographed hoe-down while a slender Chinese gentleman who could just barely speak English poured coffee and took orders.
The slender Chinese gentleman had his hands full, for it had been a quarter after six when Wolf had entered, and a good three-quarters of the dozen or so tables were occupied. There were two long eating tables, also, each able to serve maybe ten men on each side. Only one end of one of the long tables was occupied—by three burly, trail-hardened characters whom Stockburn knew, because he’d eavesdropped on part of their conversation, to be a stagecoach driver and two shotgun messengers.
His table was relatively close to these three sun- and windburned toughnuts, and he eavesdropped because, as a detective, he made it a habit of eavesdropping on other people’s conversations—you never knew when you were going to run into useful information—though if he were to be honest, it was also because he was just plain snoopy. He supposed it was because he lived alone and didn’t socialize enough.
He learned nothing of interest from the men, however, aside from the gruesome fact that the old father of one of the shotgun messengers, whom he lived with, had had “a leaky bowel” corrected by a particularly gruesome surgical process that the man seemed to insist on going into detail about despite the protestations of his fellow diners. The squeamish reactions of his listeners delighted the story-telling messenger no end. Stockburn swabbed his plate clean with a chunk of bread, picked up his coffee cup, and turned his attention to Wild Horse’s main street, which he could see out the window to his left.
Just as he did, three men stomped with grim purpose past the window, on the boardwalk fronting the restaurant. Stockburn knew even before he glimpsed the shimmer of late-day light off tin that this would be the town marshal and his two deputies. A few seconds after they’d passed the window, they reappeared at the front door straight ahead of Stockburn, on the other side of the room.
Stockburn leaned back in his chair, dug a lucifer match out of his shirt pocket, produced his Barlow knife from a pocket of his whipcord trousers, and opened the blade. As he began to shave the lucifer, he looked at the three newcomers—a large, older man and two younger ones. They all wore dust-streaked dusters and high-topped boots with jingling spurs. The spurs jingled and jangled as they walked around the room, scrutinizing the diners and casting each other puzzling, silently conferring glances.
Stockburn smiled as, leaning forward, his elbows on the edge of his table, he continued to file the match.
Finally, the sheriff, whose big gut bowed out the front of his hickory shirt, behind a black vest revealed by the open duster, stopped between two tables to Wolf’s right. He cast his gaze about the shadowy, smoky room until his eyes landed on Stockburn.
The rail detective had removed his hat. It sat on the table ahead and to his left. The light of recognition shown in the lawman’s eyes beneath the broad brim of his own hat as he saw the thick thatch of roached gray hair.
Locking eyes with Stockburn, he acquired a sour expression, and he gave his nose a disapproving wrinkle. He gestured broadly, angrily at his two deputies, each at opposite sides of the room, then walked toward Stockburn’s table, cursing when he stumbled on a chair leg and nearly fell.
The two deputies moved through the crowd, as well, hurrying to catch up with the marshal. They did so as the big-gutted marshal stopped off the right front corner of Wolf’s table and slid both flaps of his duster back and planted his bare fists on his square hips. An old-model Colt with worn walnut grips sagged low on his left hip, positioned for the cross-draw. The cartridge belt was well hidden beneath the man’s sagging gut.
“Well, well, well, if it ain’t the great man himself,” he said through a sneer. His voice was deep and gravelly, a little nasal, as well. His long hair was streaked with gray, his eyes were a washed-out jade, his broad nose badly pitted.
“That him?” asked the deputy standing off Wolf’s right shoulder. He was of average height and chunky, and he held a double-barrel shotgun in both hands. The other deputy, tall and thin and wearing a bowler hat and dragoon-style mustache, stood straight out ahead of Wolf’s table.
He held a Winchester carbine, the barrel resting on his right shoulder.
“That’s him, all right.”
Stockburn set the match and the knife on the table, slid his chair back, tossed his napkin onto the table, and rose. He smiled and extended his hand to the marshal. “If you mean Wolf Stockburn, Wells Fargo, you’ve got your man, all right, Marshal . . .”
“Watt Russell, Town Marshal of Wild Horse,” the man said, not shaking Wolf’s hand but merely scowling at him as though at fresh dog dung on a boardwalk.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Well, the feelin’ ain’t mutual!”
The chunky deputy snickered at that. Watt Russell said, “Shut up, Sonny!”
Sonny winced and looked down at the floor. The deputy with the Winchester and dragoon-style mustache bedeviled Sonny with a sneer.
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Marshal,” Stockburn said.
“Why’d ya have to come, huh?” Russell said, his raspy voice now plaintive, whiny. “Why’d ya have to come and make things complicated. Me an’ my deputies here are hot on the trail of them owlhoots that shot up the rail crew. I done told the Stewarts that, dammit. But still they go and send for you and here you come and kill the son of a very important man in these parts, Stockburn!”
“Had a feelin’ you might’ve heard about that,” Wolf said with irony in his voice.
“Hell, the whole town knows!” said the taller deputy with the bowler hat and mustache.
“Shut up, Diggs!” Watt Russell admonished him.
It was Sonny’s turn to snicker.
By now, most of the nearby diners had overheard the raised voices around Stockburn’s table. They themselves had fallen quiet and had turned to stare at the scene of the commotion. Alarm was spreading, the room going more and more quiet as more and more conversations died and more faces turned to stare toward this side of the room.
Russell turned his anxious, angry gaze back to Stockburn. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?”
“You want me to spill it right here?” Wolf asked. “I sort of thought you’d want to bring in the coroner, seat a jury for an inquest. There were plenty of witnesses, including the girl that little devil was going to kill before I trimmed his wick—Lori McCrae.”
“Lori McCrae?” Russell asked, incredulous. “Pshaw! You got the name wrong. Lori McCrae’s off to a girl’s school back East somewheres.”
“Not anymore she’s not.”
“You sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure.”
“Of course, he’s sure,” said Sonny, gazing sidelong up at Wolf and curling his upper lip with bald disdain and open mockery. “He’s the Wolf of the Rails!”
“Shut up, Sonny,” Stockburn said.
“You can’t tell me to shut up!”
“I can,” Russell sai
d, glaring at the thick-set deputy. “Sew them lips!”
Again, Sonny flinched and looked at the floor. Diggs squealed a short laugh.
Russell turned to Stockburn again. “What’s Miss McCrae doin’ back home so soon?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Marshal.”
“Hmmm.” Russell rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, briefly lowering his gaze to the floor. Returning to the topic at hand, he returned his angry gaze to Wolf and slid his jaws from side to side, like a cow chewing its cud. “We don’t trouble ourselves with no coroner’s inquests or judges ’n’ juries nor any such nonsense as that in these parts, Stockburn.”
“I had a feelin’ you were going to say that,” Wolf said.
“Nah, nah, none o’ that. Especially when it comes to the killing of the sons of important men, we usually just send a wire to the hangman.”
A snicker lifted from one of the many onlookers in the now silent dining room.
“I’m surprised you go to that much trouble,” Wolf said.
Another onlooker laughed.
“You can joke all you want, Stockburn,” Russell said, ignoring the onlookers. “But this here is serious business. I suggest you go back to where you came from an’ let me and my deputies look into the Hell’s Jaw business on our own—since it’s our jurisdiction, after all, an’ there’s no reason for Wells Fargo to mess with it!”
“Wells Fargo already signed a contract with the Hell’s Jaw line, Russell. In anticipation of the rails being finished before the snow flies and the first gold loads being shipped down—via Wells Fargo strongboxes with Wells Fargo messenger guards—by Christmas. That’s what makes it my business. Those contracts can’t be honored until that line is finished. I am here to see that those rails get laid all the way to Hell’s Jaw Pass.”
“Ain’t he just so high ’n’ mighty!”
“Shut up, Diggs!” both Stockburn and Watt Russell said at the same time.