Kerrigans: A Texas Dynasty

by Johnstone, William W.

  Hard to believe, still, that the animosity between father and son had run so deep.

  And strange that both had died on the same night, in the same place, as though it had been destined. And that Trace Kerrigan, of all people, had been the one situated to fall under suspicion.

  He picked up the Colt and held it up so that a ray of moonlight through the window caught it.

  It was a beautiful weapon, no question, a shining Excalibur fit for a king, so finely tuned and balanced that Trace had hardly felt the kick of it when he fired it in the back lot.

  Odd, Trace pondered, how something as kindly intentioned as the gift of a mere gun had been the spark that ignited the ready tinder of a hate-ruined father and son relationship.

  What if the old man had never given it to him? Would he and Alec still be alive?

  Before Trace could ponder the answer to that question, a man’s voice came quiet and hollow out of the darkness.

  “That’s a fine looking revolver, Trace.”

  The words emerged from the far corner, where the shadow of the big wardrobe was thick.

  The Colt came up fast and Trace said, “Identify yourself and state your intentions.”

  “Hell, don’t shoot me with that fancy gun. It’s me, Trace. It’s Willie Tobin as ever was.”

  Trace managed to get his lungs working again; they’d shut down the moment he heard the unexpected voice.

  He also relaxed his grip on the Colt. He’d grasped it so tightly he could still see the white of his knuckles.

  “Willie? What the blazes? I might have killed you, surprising me like that!”

  “Aye, indeed, and it was my most fervent hope and prayer you wouldn’t. And you haven’t.”

  “Not yet, anyway. Why are you here?”

  “If the truth be told I’m hiding, Trace,” the street peddler said. “My wife has been unfaithful to me, wedding vows be damned. She’s been bumping herself against Tom Grant, the bartender, of all scoundrels, and when I caught them at it, red-handed and bare-bottomed in my own bed, they decided it was time to put an end to old Willie here, and clear the way for their adulteries to go on more free and easy, like. Frank has been hunting me ever since, vowing to end my days.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Willie,” Trace said.

  Sorry, but not surprised.

  Half the population of Nashville’s Irish community had known for months that Martha Tobin had been carrying on with the flashy Tom Grant. Willie was one of the few people in the dark about the situation. It was inevitable he would find out sooner or later.

  “Why are you here, Trace? Why aren’t you home under the wing of that lovely mother of yours?”

  Tobin, a frequent vagrant when Martha threw him out of the house, had edged into touchy territory now.

  Many times Trace had heard the man express his admiration for Kate Kerrigan as an object of beauty, though in Tobin’s case the more accurate word would be lust rather than beauty.

  Once, out on the street, Trace had chanced to overhear Tobin make an extraordinarily foul and perverse joking remark about Kate’s physique, and only the fact Trace was carrying a crate of pistol parts to the gun shop at the time had kept him from going after the man.

  Time, and the fact that he otherwise had always gotten on well with Dublin Willie Tobin, had cooled Trace’s ire.

  “I’m here for the same reason you are, Willie. I’m hiding.”

  “From who?”

  “The law.”

  “By the saints! What have you done, Trace?”

  “That’s the rub, Willie, that’s the rub. Not a thing. I just had the misfortune to be about when Mr. Lundy and his worthless son decided it was time to kill one another. The sum of the problem for me is, I was seen leaving the gun shop with this pistol in my hand earlier tonight, right after the time they died.”

  “Then Lundy father and son are dead, then?”

  “As of earlier this evening, yes.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Saw their corpses, but not the actual deaths. I had the misfortune to be knocked unconscious by Alec and whenever and however they managed to die, I was not awake to see it.”

  “Trace, you sure you didn’t do for them?”

  “No, Willie. I didn’t kill them. I swear on my mother’s Bible. But as drunk and angry as both of them were before I had my pins knocked from beneath me, I’m not full surprised it ended as it did. There were hard feelings there with those two, Willie. Hard as anvil iron. As best I can figure it, they killed one another.”

  “Aye. I’ve overheard arguments a time or two through open windows. But Lord above! To think of them as dead. I can’t get myself to quite believe it.”

  “It’s true. And by noon tomorrow the whole city will know of it. You’re well aware of how such things spread. And I’m not fool enough to think I won’t be held a suspect. That’s why I’ve taken refuge here.”

  “And right you are to do it, too. And Dublin Willie gives you his word here and now that no one will learn of our meeting here tonight. Willie’s eyes have seen naught, nor his ears heard a peep.”

  “Thank you, Willie.” Then came a realization. “Except, Willie, you can be a great help to me.”

  “You say the word. I’m a right helpful man. Willie Tobin by name, Willie Tobin by nature I always say.”

  Trace lost that last comment somewhere along the way.

  He said, “My family doesn’t know, and I’m loath for them to learn of it from the police, who will tell them, no doubt, that I’m the guilty one.”

  “Damned police! Hate ’em, I do.”

  “Most times I have no quarrel with them,” Trace said. “It’s different now.”

  “Aye.”

  “I can’t risk trying to go home, Willie. They’ll be watching. But somebody has to get the word to my family. The true word, not false police suspicions.”

  “I’m your pigeon for that job, Trace. I’ll carry the good word right to your mother.”

  The image of Dublin Willie speaking to his mother was distressing.

  Kate was fully aware of Willie’s obsession with her and the crudity of his interest. She found the man loathsome and had made no secret of it within her family, warning her daughters to avoid the man.

  Trace would not create a situation forcing Kate to face Dublin Willie.

  “I want you to talk to my brother, Quinn, not to my mother. He will be able to tell her this news in a way that will be easiest for her to bear. You know my brother, I think, at least by sight.”

  “I do. But I don’t mind at all to go to your ma . . .”

  “No, Willie. Talk only to Quinn. Tell him I am being forced to hide from a false suspicion, and that it is indeed false. Tell him he and others may be questioned by the police about me. Do not tell him where I am. But tell him that, for now, I am safe and well, and will be with them soon, when I can. Tell him you found me hidden, but that I am not staying where you found me. I must get away from here for my own safety.”

  “When do I go to young Quinn?”

  “As soon as you can. Tell Quinn what I’ve told you. No one else.”

  “I shall. And you will later speak well of me to your fine mother for it, eh, right?”

  Trace did not bite that hook. “Repeat to me what you are to tell Quinn, Willie.”

  He did, satisfactorily.

  “Do not talk to the police. If they collar and press you, you saw nothing of me tonight.”

  “Aye, Trace. So it will be. But before I go, there is something you must know. There is someone in town asking after your mother.”

  “Who?”

  “A stranger. A man with but one leg. He says he has something to give Kate Kerrigan.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “I did not. But I heard him speaking to Pete Smith the blacksmith, asking where he might find the family of Kate Kerrigan so that he might give her something she is intended to have.”

  “What does he have for her?”

  “Somet
hing he said your father gave to him to give her. Something to tell her how to go on without him.”

  Trace stood silent, puzzling.

  “I’ll be gone now,” Tobin said. “Your family will know you are well soon, I promise.”

  “Willie, thank you. And remember, only Quinn. You’ll find him most evenings at Arnold Cheatham’s house buried under a pile of dusty books.”

  Tobin nodded.

  “I know Cheatham. I sold him shoelaces and pins a time or two.”

  Dublin Willie Tobin climbed through the window and vanished into the night, and Trace was again alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Morning came and with it an almost overwhelming impulse to leave the empty old farmhouse and move about normally.

  That impulse died fast when Trace looked out the window and spotted a couple of policemen scouting the area.

  They had no dog and he breathed a sigh of relief. The keen nose of a bloodhound was the last thing he needed.

  But at least the weather was cooperating. Since early that morning it had been raining hard, a steady downpour that fell from a broken sky and hissed like a steam kettle.

  The two cops stopped and studied the house, their oilskin capes shedding streams of rainwater.

  Trace watched them through a hole in a ragged curtain that lingered from the days the house was occupied. He had no doubt that the city’s constabulary was on alert, and all the town talking about the odd and shocking passing of the town’s best gunsmith and his son.

  Who could have done such a thing, the townsfolk would ask one another. Why, it could only be that Irish boy who was seen coming out of the smithy with a pistol in his hand.

  That handsome young Kerrigan boy.

  Trace all but held his breath and remained still as the policemen came to the ivy-shrouded front gate and studied the house intently.

  Advice his father had given him years before sounded in his mind: “In most of what you face, son, you’ll make it through if you don’t give in to panic.”

  He felt some relief when the policemen looked away and one of them said something and nodded his head in the direction of the porch.

  The other seemed to agree and Trace stepped back from the window as boots thudded onto the porch.

  A moment later he heard the rustle of paper sacks as the lawmen removed lunchtime sandwiches from the pockets of their frocked coats, then their voices as they talked around the food stuffed in their mouths.

  Trace recognized both the officers, having passed time with them on many occasions as they made their rounds in the vicinity of the gun shop.

  One of the pair, Harold Simpkins, he didn’t much like because he was an incessant chatterer who included needless and annoying interruptions when anyone else was talking.

  Trace strained to hear what they might be talking about, as if he couldn’t guess, but it was hard to pick up more than scraps of sound. “. . . and no sign of him having gone home, they said. Which shows him as likely guilty.”

  “. . . Probably miles from here by now.”

  “. . . Scrappy fellow, he is, uh-huh, got fine features like his mother, looks to be more a man than his years really make him. Lot different from that baby-faced brother of his. That one’s destined to come to a bad end as ever was. He’s got the makings, you mark my words.”

  “Now, you don’t know that, Harold Simpkins, no matter how much you fret over it.”

  “Why else would he go day after day to that Cheatham fellow’s place, Jonesy, huh? That man Cheatham is secretive, keeps to himself behind locked doors, and I believe there’s many a murder in Nashville that could be laid at his doorstep.”

  “Murders?” Jonesy said. “There’s no proof of that.”

  “Do you know how many whores were murdered in Nashville this last six months?” Simpkins said.

  Jonesy tried to utter some words, but the other cop stomped all over them.

  “Five,” Simpkins said. “I believe a man in this city is down on whores, and that man is Arnold Cheatham.”

  “Did you tell the inspector this?” Jonesy said.

  “No, I’ve kept my own counsel. But I’ll get him. I’ll catch him in the act one foggy night and do for him.”

  “Well, I won’t argue with you. But they say he was married once, but I’ve always took him for a born gospel shooter with that long Yankee face of his.”

  “He’ll turn that boy to murder, if he ain’t already. You mark what I say on that.”

  “Well, you may be right, Harold, or you may be wrong. Hey, we going to look through the house here in a minute?”

  “Reckon so. If Kerrigan’s been in there we might find some sign of it. Guarantee you that he ain’t in there still, even if he was. Long gone by now, I say. Let me finish this sandwich afore we go in.”

  It is not the way of law officers to take the obvious route into a building. They ignored the open window and kicked down the door.

  Hearing the splinter of wood, Trace pulled off his boots, quietly rose and walked in his woolen socks over to the wardrobe in the corner.

  Though he’d expected it to be weak and rickety, it was, fortunately for his intentions, quite stout, made of heavy thick-cut oak, and put together tightly with screws rather than nails.

  Standing beneath a leak-free part of the roof, the wardrobe was not at all afflicted with rot, either wet or dry variety. And the top was broad and flat, and fenced about by the top extensions of the side and front planks.

  Trace heard the door on the lower floor creak open and knew the exploration of the house had begun.

  Harold Simpkins’s voice carried up the staircase, loud enough, Trace noticed, to cover whatever sound he might make doing what he had in mind to do.

  “Look’s like nobody’s lived here in a coon’s age,” Simpkins said. “Like they all just up and left.”

  “Here,” his partner said, “you don’t suppose it was the cholera?”

  “Does it linger in the air?” Simpkins said. “This place has been shut up, you know.”

  “I don’t know if it stays around or not, but let’s make this quick,” the other cop said. “My belly is starting to hurt.”

  “For a man that just ate four cheese and pickle sandwiches, that’s not surprising,” Simpkins said. “But you’re right, we’ll search the place real quick and leave. I want no part of cholera or spooks either for that matter.”

  Hiding inside the wardrobe would be obvious and ineffective. They would not expect him to climb atop it. So to the top it would be.

  Securing his left foot against the top of the wainscot spanning the wall, Trace heaved himself up, laid his boots quietly on the top of the wardrobe, and then scrambled up, trying to make no sound.

  He was pleased to hear the policemen chatter on about ha’ants and such, and hoped the wooden cornice at the top of the high armoire would suffice to hide him if he lay as flat as he could.

  The rectangular wardrobe top, though expansive, would not quite allow him to stretch out fully unless he hung his feet over the side that faced into the corner of the room.

  He was assessing whether it was safer to risk doing that or to lie on his side and hope none of him showed over the top front of the boxy piece of furniture, when he heard their footsteps on the stairs.

  “Trace Kerrigan? You in here, boy?” The voice was of Harold Simpkins.

  Trace, with no further time for self debate, opted to hang his socked feet over the hidden side of the wardrobe top. He lay on his belly and made himself as flat as possible, grateful for his thin build.

  “Look there, Jonesy—there’s a tick mattress over in the corner,” Simpkins said.

  “Yeah. Can you tell if anybody’s been sleeping on it?”

  Trace listened to the policeman cross the room. “Can’t really tell. No blankets or nothing on it.”

  Harold opened the wardrobe door and looked inside. “Ain’t in here.”

  Trace bit his lips and tensed.

  Don’t think about the top, Ha
rold. Nobody’s on the top of this thing, no sir. Not a soul.

  “Don’t know where he is, but he ain’t here, Jake,” Simpkins said.

  “Never expected him to be,” Jonesy said. “I got a nose for these things. Knowed all along he wouldn’t be. He ain’t going to linger hereabouts, not with the trouble he’s facing.”

  Then they were gone and all that remained was the hammer of the rain and the distant roar of thunderclouds tearing their guts out on the craggy peaks of the Appalachians.

  Trace remained where he was for a while, in case the police were baiting him, hoping to lure him out from wherever he was hiding.

  After ten minutes he climbed down from the armoire, pulled his boots on, and left by the door in the old pantry room at the rear of the house.

  After some cautious prowling around, he satisfied himself that the policemen were gone.

  Trace’s heart slowed to normal and then he began to think about food. That and getting as far away from Nashville as fast as he could.

  He had to trust that Willie would do as he said and get the message to Quinn. He would not be free to go home himself for God only knew how long.

  Suddenly he was no longer the tough young hellion he liked to see himself as, but a boy very much in need of seeing and receiving advice from his mother.

  Thoughts of Kate Kerrigan reminded him of what Willie had said about a stranger being in town, asking after her.

  That was really odd.

  Would Willie have concocted the mysterious story in hope of bringing about a chance to make face-to-face contact with Kate?

  Probably so.

  A stranger bearing something from his father, dead now for five years, to be given to his mother? It made little sense.

  Trace tucked his Colt under his belt in a way to let his coat hide it, then entered some woods and began a southward hike that at length brought him into a broad, rolling field with a single hardwood tree in the middle.

  Despite the rain, as Trace walked closer to the tree he startled a flock of crows roosting in the branches. The birds fluttered into the air like pieces of charred paper and caw-cussed Trace for an interloper.

  Where he was going or what he would do the young man did not know.