by Gary D. Svee
They were drunk, Jack Galt and Leaks Donnan. Donnan came in spraddle-legged, willing his alcohol-numbed body to follow Galt.
The alcohol had left only a flush on Galt’s face. He showed no emotion, not even alcohol lighting a flicker of humanity.
“Where’s Nelly?” Galt whispered, his voice dead as his eyes. “Bring her here.”
Bridget stood transfixed at the kitchen door. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t, standing impaled on Galt’s stare.
“Bring her here, damn it! This is a whorehouse and I am in need of a whore. Get her down here!”
“We’re closed,” Bridget whispered.
“Closed, hell. Who ever heard of a whorehouse being closed? Get Nelly. My friend and me are having a party.”
The thump of feet rattled down the narrow staircase like a boulder rolling down a mountain. Beulah burst into the room. Her face was red, eyes squinted almost shut, and in her hands was the Parker double-barrel shotgun. The woman was a force, a strong force, and her entry shoved Galt and Donnan back a step.
“You Galt?”
Galt nodded.
“Going to kill you. No man should do what you did to Sally.”
“I was never charged with that.”
“No matter, I’m going to kill you anyhow. You, too, Leaks, you slimy little bastard.”
Donnan’s face was dead white. His eyebrows had crawled up his forehead to make room for eyes round as roller bearings.
A dull red color had come to Galt’s face. “Don’t you threaten me with no gun. Ain’t no whore can threaten me with a gun.”
“Bridget, cover your ears. This will make a helluva lot of noise in this little room.”
Bridget nodded.
KATHUMP!
The force of the blast rattled every window on the first floor and brushed Jack Galt aside as he lunged for the door. Beulah swung the shotgun’s muzzle toward the suddenly sober Leaks Donnan. Donnan dived toward the door as the blast shattered the window, showering him with broken glass. He yowled once, his voice disappearing in the clatter of running feet.
Beulah turned toward Bridget, quivering now in the door to the kitchen.
“Whatever in the hell prompted you two to open that door?”
“Jezzie, I … uh … Mike Mulligan.”
Beulah sighed. “Well, it’s done now. You lock the door and get over there and take care of Jezzie. I’ll go upstairs and make sure that Nelly’s all right. We’ll get Ole here in the morning to fix everything up.”
Beulah stepped toward the stairs.
“Beulah?” The words were stretched tight.
“Yeah?”
“Were you trying to kill them?”
“No.” Beulah said. “Nelly doesn’t have any pigs.”
Bridget shook her head as Beulah climbed the stairs toward Nelly.
Jim Pratt sat behind his desk in the Stillwater County Courthouse. The office was government utilitarian. A small dark-stained oak desk with a green leather pad built into the top was backed against the windows. Low-backed oak chairs lined the opposite wall.
The office occupied the southwest corner of the second floor of the courthouse, collecting the morning and afternoon sun. Pratt played the sun to his benefit. Visitors to his office could see little more than his silhouette against the bright light, their own faces revealed in minute detail.
But now Pratt didn’t want to see the man sitting across from him. Head down, he scribbled furiously at a sheet of paper on his desk, hoping the Stillwater County sheriff would leave his office.
Drinkwalter didn’t budge, waiting patiently for Pratt to finish his game. Pratt was a doodler. The scratches on the pad meant nothing. They were window dressing only for the self-portrait Pratt was trying to paint. So Drinkwalter waited quietly, knowing that the game needed to be played out.
The sheriff saw only Pratt’s shadow, but he knew the county attorney would be dressed in a three-piece suit, gold watch fob strung across the vest. Pratt had three suits. He alternated the gray and the blue wool suits workdays and wore a black suit to church on Sunday. Which suit would he be wearing today, gray or blue? Drinkwalter bet on the blue—even money.
The sheriff’s attention drifted to a calendar hanging on the east wall. Tuesday. Fifteen minutes and the Commerce Club would be staging its noon meeting at the Stockman. Pratt, perennial president, was beginning to fidget. Pratt was a man of habit, and he didn’t like his schedule interrupted. He scratched wide, jagged lines on the sheet of paper.
“I really don’t know what I can do,” he said, elaborately, pulling his hunter-cover watch from his vest and studying it intently.
“You could do your job.”
The comment elicited another flurry of doodling at the desk, and Drinkwalter continued. “The man broke into Nelly’s with such force that he knocked Jezzie unconscious. Doc sewed up her cheek, but she’ll likely have a scar there for the rest of her life.”
“Well, we can’t flaw a man for being in a hurry to get into Nelly’s, now can we?” Pratt laughed, a little nervous laugh.
“The last time he visited the house, he so terrified Nelly that she’s been under Doc’s care ever since.”
“No law on the books about frightening people, is there? If there was a law like that, we’d have to ban Edgar Allan Poe, wouldn’t we?”
Pratt looked at his watch again. “Sheriff, I’ve really got to be going. I can’t waste any more time here. …”
“Doing your job. Is that it? You can’t waste any more time here doing your job?”
“Now look here, Sheriff, I serve the people of—”
“He killed a woman in Billings, and probably Glendive and who knows where else. If we don’t stop him, he will kill another. We’ve got to stop him.”
Pratt leaned forward in his chair, his face lost in the light streaming in from the window.
“That’s not true. We don’t know he killed that woman in Billings or Glendive or anywhere else. We just know that Big Jim Thompson thinks he did.”
Pratt leaned back, hooking his thumbs in his suspenders and taking on a professorial air. “If your friend Thompson had any evidence, he could have presented it to the Yellowstone County attorney and asked that the case be prosecuted.”
“He didn’t have that evidence, Frank. Galt has never even been charged with one of those offenses. As far as the State of Montana and I are concerned, Frank, he is as pure as the driven snow.”
Pratt shook his head. “What do you want me to do: haul Nelly’s whores in here and have them testify against an Eagles Nest businessman? What kind of a message would that be? The reputation of this city is more important than one whore being frightened and another taking a little rap on the cheek.”
“Eight stitches. That’s more than a little rap.”
“Whatever,” Pratt said, dismissing Drinkwalter with a wave of his hand.
Drinkwalter sagged back in his chair.
Pratt continued, “There’s another point here that you haven’t thought about in your zest to persecute this newcomer. Nelly operates her business at the largess of this community. This is no longer the Wild West, Sheriff. The good people of Eagles Nest turn a blind eye to Nelly’s. But if something should happen that brings that woman into the limelight, there will be a hue and cry to shut her establishment down.”
“While you and I might not avail ourselves of the services she offers, she does fill a need within this community. Shutting her down could loose the beast in the men who frequent that place. Our women wouldn’t be safe. Now, you wouldn’t want that to happen would you?”
Drinkwalter cleared his throat, willing his voice to be level and reasonable. “Jim, this man took a woman out of her office job in Billings and put her on the street as a whore. He let men use her body for whatever they wanted, and he kept the money. Whenever he felt like it, he would beat her up so she would know that he was in full control, that she was nothing more than an animal with no freedom.”
“And when she became so
desperate that she decided to run, he took a knife to her. No man could do to her what he did with that knife. Jack Galt isn’t human, Jim. He started that way, but he is pure evil now. If you don’t do something to stop him, he will do the same thing to some woman in our town. How do you suppose they’ll feel then when they find out you knew Galt is a killer and you did nothing?”
Pratt leaned across his desk. “You have no evidence that he has done anything wrong, Frank. So get off his back. It’s the law, Frank.”
“There is a higher law, Jim, and the penalty is much higher for those who break that law or refuse to enforce it.”
“I’m a student of earthly law,” Pratt said. “That’s what I deal with. I have to leave the higher law to people like you. But I will tell you this, Frank Drinkwalter: The law works both ways. So far as the law is concerned, Jack Galt is a model citizen. You seem bent on harassing that man. Rumors are rumors, Frank, and the law is the law.
“Now, I’ve enjoyed our little chat, but I have more important things to do. The Commerce Club is meeting. We will be discussing means of attracting more businesses to this community. We will also appoint someone to approach Mr. Galt, to ask him to join our efforts.”
“I hope I’ve made myself perfectly clear.”
Pratt rose from his desk, donned his hat, and strode out without so much as a look back. Frank Drinkwalter rose slowly from his chair. His eyes squinted almost shut. The law is the law, but there are more ways to access it than through strutting little popinjays.
Jack Galt stood at the forge, shaping a pair of heavy hinges for a rancher. The rancher wanted hinges heavy enough to hold a pole gate. The old man had planted the ends of two heavy logs on either side of the road leading to his ranch house, and then hoisted a third on top. The bark had been stripped off the logs, and he burned his brand into the top log, a sign that he owned the ranch and everything on it. Nobody else would build a monument for the rancher, so he was doing it himself.
Galt was shaping the red-hot metal with his hammer: one tap for the metal, and two for the anvil. Establish a rhythm that beats in your soul, Shorty Gildner had said. Gildner knew everything there was to know about blacksmithing, but he knew nothing about Jack Galt’s soul. Still, he taught Galt rhythm, and how to fashion hinges and horseshoes.
The rhythm was running through Galt: tap … tap, tap … tap … tap, tap. The metal strap was taking shape, and Galt shoved it back into the coals to collect heat.
Forges’s fires had long since burned any sweat from Galt. The heat and the smoke from fires had left his skin tough and dark as tanned leather.
Tap … tap, tap … tap … tap, tap. The beat of the hammer drove consciousness from Galt’s mind. He was melded to its heat and the smell of burning coal and coke and the ring of the hammer on anvil and heat-softened metal. The work stripped him of his mind, leaving him in a blissful state of unconsciousness. Work was sanctuary from thoughts about those times when … tap … tap, tap, clatter.
Galt shook his head. He had broken his rhythm, allowed those thoughts to break into his work. He couldn’t do that. He had to have asylum, one place where he could hide from … what had happened before. Remember, now, what Gildner said about the beat that rings into a man’s soul. Remember the beat in the nerves and muscles and use it to drive away those thoughts.
Tap … tap, tap … tap … tap, tap.
Jack Galt didn’t hear the click of boot heels against the ash-and oil-stained floor so much as sensed that someone entered the smithy through the shaft of light that represented the door on the west side of the building.
Set that rhythm until it beats into your soul, Galt sang to himself. Let that rhythm ring in the hollowness of his chest where the soul resides.
“Galt.”
The words came soft, but strangely insistent. It was the sheriff, and that meant bad news. Galt bristled.
“Galt.”
“That’s my name.”
“I’ve got a restraining order for you.”
Galt hid his eyes from the sheriff, but they glowed red with the heat of the coals and the indignation of having to deal with people who protected themselves with paper.
“I’m busy. You can put it on the table over there.”
“No, I can hand it to you, and you can take it.”
The sheriff stepped up behind Galt, and Galt wondered what it would feel like to take the red-hot hinge strap and plunge it into the sheriff’s face. The sheriff had no power of his own, only the power given him. Jack Galt could brand the sheriff for his weakness, the hinge strap burning its way through the skin and the muscle and the bone of Frank Drinkwalter’s face.
Galt reached into the fire with his tongs. The hinge was hot now, just right for a branding.
“Hold it.”
The words were no louder than they had been before, but an edge hung on them, sharp and fine.
Galt stepped back from the forge as though he had been burned by the hinge glowing red in the coals, and the sheriff stepped forward to meet him. Galt turned to face the sheriff, hiding from his memories behind his flat, dead eyes.
The sheriff’s eyes were cold, too, but life burned in them, and resolve.
“You are a slow learner, Galt. I told you that it stops here, and you didn’t listen. You went out to Nelly’s and frightened that poor woman half to death.”
“I have a restraining order. Judge Smythe has ordered you not to come within a quarter mile of Nelly Frobisher’s place. He says if you set foot inside that quarter-mile limit, he will put you in jail for six months for contempt of court, and put a five-mile restraining order in place. Eagles Nest will be off limits, everywhere in Eagles Nest, including this shop. You’ll have to move on, Galt, and nothing could please me more than that.”
Drinkwalter gestured over his shoulder into the darkness of one corner. “The restraining order applies to you, too, Leaks.”
Drinkwalter stared into Galt’s eyes, flat and dead as a snake’s eyes. “It stops here, Galt.”
Drinkwalter pushed the restraining order toward Galt. Galt stared at the sheriff a moment longer, and then he took the papers.
The sheriff turned to leave, disappearing into the darkness of the smithy for a moment before reappearing in the shaft of light. He turned, stared at the dark shape silhouetted by the red glow from the forge.
Galt listened to the sheriff’s footsteps retreating north toward town, his face as cold and hard as his anvil.
Leaks stepped from the darkness of his corner.
“What are we gonna do, Jack?” he whined. “No more Nelly’s. We won’t have any women at all. I don’t think I can go very long without a whore. It’s just not fair. I didn’t do nothing there. It ain’t fair that they should keep me away from Nelly’s, too.”
Galt’s words came in a hiss. “Maybe we’ll open a house of our own.”
Leaks grinned. “And then I could go there anytime I want, and they’ll do anything I want for free.”
“We would have to get a woman. What about that Beulah at Nelly’s?”
“Uh, no, I don’t think she would do that. You know she won’t have anything to do with me. She says she’d rather mate with a snake than—”
“Whore ought to know her place.”
“Yes, she ought to. She shouldn’t ought to take a shotgun to her customers the way she did.”
Galt nodded. “Anyone you know who might make a good whore?”
“Well, there’s that washerwoman. She’s pretty enough, but she’s got that boy of hers.”
“How old is he?”
“How the hell should I know? I see him with the sheriff every now and then.”
“With the sheriff?” A grin crossed Galt’s face. “We’ll have to look into that, Mr. Donnan. We’ll have to look into that.”
17
Mac stepped through the Depot door and into the rush of Sparks Pierson’s words.
“I’ll tell you, Mac, if I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a hundred times. The people of
Eagles Nest are pure gold. They just shine. They’d build the sheriff and his bride a castle if they had the means to do it.”
“First I talked to Mort Jenkins at First International Bank of Eagles Nest. When I told him what was going on, he slapped his desk so hard everyone in the bank looked up. He said Drinkwalter had asked him about that quarter section west of town.”
“Bank got stuck on a bad note for it. The land isn’t worth much, most of it a hill too steep to graze or farm. But there is a little vale about halfway up the hill and a spring there. I’ve been there. With the Yellowstone at your feet and the Beartooths on the horizon, it’s about the prettiest place around.”
“Jenkins said he was going to give the land to Frank for next to nothing anyway, so he’d throw it in the pot for free. Said he owed Frank for stopping a robbery. Not a shot was fired. Nobody was hurt. Most of the customers didn’t even know it was being robbed. So Jenkins said he would pitch in the land.”
“Went over and talked to Sal Salbador, and he said he’d let the lumber and supplies go for ten percent of cost. Said that was the least he could do after all the sheriff had done for him.”
“Pete Pfeister at the Absaloka Saloon said he could round up a hundred men at a moment’s notice. Said that many and more owed the sheriff a day or two of hard work.”
Pierson was beaming. “Pure gold these people, pure gold. Oh, and Jenkins’s wife started in on the women, and they’re planning a shindig like this town has never seen. They’ve already picked out the plans for the house. You run a bit of gossip past that bunch, and they’d see it a dozen different ways. But they sifted through the plans and came up with a dream house. They all fell in love with it.”
Sparks cocked his head and stared down at Mac.
“You know how it is that you can look at something a dozen different times and see the same thing, and the next time the shadows or the light is different, and it changes?”
Mac nodded, remembering how the patch of sego lilies had transformed the Keyser Creek pasture.
“Well,” Sparks continued. “I’ve seen Major Stilson a dozen different ways and didn’t like any of the views very much. Struts around like the sun rose and set on him, gimping once in a while with his old war wounds when there were ladies present. He has four-flusher written all over him. But he was standing there when I was talking to Sal Salbador about the lumber. He said he would put in the foundation so it would be cured and ready to go by the time the house raising started. He said he would be pleased to do that for the sheriff.”