by J. R. WRIGHT
Katie was unaware, shocked the man had disappeared from her thoughts so soon after he’d passed. “Oh!”
“There wasn’t a single mourner …”
“Not one?” Her father had told her once: “Katie, live life with compassion or you’ll not be remembered once you’re gone.”
“Nope. That Presbyterian preacher, Dewey … Fratt, I think his name is, said a few words anyway. I think he read from the book, because he could think of nothing good to say. When Dewey said, ‘God rest his soul,’ I kinda expected it to thunder, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“You were there, Jake?”
“Yeah, but not to mourn … I just stopped by to see how deep the hole was.”
“Why would you want to know that?”
“I figured since everybody knew where Clyde was heading in the hereafter, they’d dig it extra deep to give him a head start.” Jake laughed at his own joke until drool dripped from the corners of his near toothless mouth, onto his shaggy grey beard, and tears skittered over the deep wrinkles of his cheeks.
“Now that wasn’t nice to say,” Katie said forlornly. “I’m sure there must have been somebody that loved Clyde at some point in his life.”
“Maybe his mother, for a moment, when he was still wet. But that was before Clyde slapped the midwife across the bare butt till she cried.” Jake continued with laughter.
Even Katie had to laugh at that one, but felt bad all the while she did it. “Poor Clyde.”
“Oh, he wasn’t poor,” Jake said. “Nosiree! The way I heard it Clyde Banyon had a lot of money stashed. Gold! It’s probably in that livery somewhere. Buried under the floor, maybe.”
“Jake, you can’t know that for sure!” Katie looked around the room to see who may have heard him and saw several paying close attention. “Even if he did have some … money, there must be heirs? Clyde must have family somewhere?”
“Well, if there are, he never told anybody. Some say Clyde was an outlaw, when he was younger. That’s where the gold came from, I madgine.”
Now, the outlaw part, Katie could believe. She flashed back to the three men that were with him the day he died. Come to think of it she couldn’t recall seeing them before … or since. Fellow outlaws maybe … And maybe they killed him … for the gold? It may be worth looking into, but where would she start? The livery? Now she wondered if anyone had reopened the place … or if it’d ever closed.
Katie noticed Jake had finished his whiskey. “Can I get you another?” she said and reached for the glass.
“Nope! I’m leaving,” he said, ran a boney hand over his hairy face and slid from the stool. “I think I’ll nose around over at that livery.”
“Is it open for business?”
“No. But it’s open. It can’t help but be. Somebody stole the big doors … and the hinges they hung on.”
Katie panned the room again and saw four men already on their feet and heading for the door. Oh, God! “Thank you!” she shouted as they filed through the door. Old Jake went next and the remainder of her customers followed him out. But she wasn’t alone long. A tall, suited, fiftyish man, wearing a Texas hat, came through the door moments later. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind who this person was.
“Good golly, you must be Katie Peck,” he said, marched toward her, hand outstretched. “I declare, if you aren’t just as pretty as you sounded on the telephone.”
Katie put on her best smile and touched at her hair before taking the big hand with her fingertips. “Mister Clampett?”
“That’s me.” He tipped his hat and briefly looked around. “I headed right over after speaking with your Mister Burke.”
“So Yancey is there in Terryville?”
“He is indeed … And I might add he sends his heartfelt greetings.”
“Greetings?” Katie said, confused.
“Well … I read people, Katie. There’s truly a book in the human face, if a person has the patience to search it out. When I mentioned your name as the one who sent me, I swear that man lit up like a fireworks display on the fourth of July.”
“He did?” Katie blushed a little.
“Yes, ma’am … I do believe he likes you a lot.” Of course, it was Katie’s face he was reading now. Telling her, surely, what she wanted to hear.
‘Oh, he’s good,’ Katie thought. But how much of what this man had said should she allow herself to believe? First off she doubted very much Yancey was in love with her … if that’s what he was intimating. At least not in the way he’d loved that old horse, Hank. He may like her, which she was certain he did. Love, however, was a bit overdone where Yancey was concerned. He probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word. “Are they treating Yancey okay there, Mister Clampett?”
“Better now that I insisted he be put in a private cell.”
“Oh my God! What happened?” Talk about reading faces, his suddenly looked distressed.
“Well, Terryville Prison …”
“Prison? So Yancey wasn’t in the county lockup?”
“No ma’am. Terryville is where they send the meanest and baddest, in Montana.”
“You haven’t told me what happened.”
“Well, they banged him up a bit. But he’ll recover nicely …”
“Banged him up? How?” Katie screamed and covered her mouth in anticipation.
“He sees real well out of the right eye … There are some marks …” He generally circled his face with a hand in an effort to lightly convey the damage, without having to put the horror of Yancey’s condition into words.
“Oh my God! No wonder his face lit up like the fourth of …”
“The good thing is, Katie, he’s safe now. I also insisted they remove the leg irons,” Woody said and reached out to touch her arm in an effort to console her. “You know, it didn’t help that the man that dropped him off listed him as a killer.”
“Killer … Accused, you mean?”
“Accused, yes … That’s what it should have said. Maybe it was just a mistake on the deputy’s part,” Clampett said, having come to the realization he wasn’t dealing with the average, ignorant of the law, yokel here. “I set them straight on that.”
“Who was the deputy?”
“His name is Kermit Striker.”
“Striker?” Katie said, outraged, and she began to pace up and down in back of the bar. Each time she passed where the shotgun was under the counter, she wanted to grab it, go directly across to the sheriff’s office and blow them all to kingdom come. “Can I see him?”
“No, ma’am … Not unless you’re family. And then it’s the first Sunday of the month, between noon and five.”
“Can you promise me he’ll be protected now … away from danger for the remainder of his time there, Mister Clampett?”
“I can. I know the warden personally. Mister Burke will never go back to general population. Even his meals will be delivered to the cell.”
Katie didn’t know what to think of that. “Wouldn’t that be like solitary confinement?”
“No, ma’am. He has a window in his cell. And he gets hourly trips to the bathroom, if needed.”
“It’s a shame an innocent man is treated that way.”
“Is he innocent, Miss Peck?”
Obviously, Woody Clampett hadn’t seen her ring … him calling her Miss … but she let it pass. “In the eyes of the law he is, until proven guilty. But Yancey is innocent, sir. I assure you of that.”
“Good! Then we should have no trouble obtaining his freedom.”
“How far is it to Terryville, Mister Clampett?”
“Forty miles, give or take. Why?”
“I was just wondering …”
“Wondering what … How I got to the prison, then to here, all before mid-afternoon?”
“Well, yeah …” That wasn’t the reason she’d asked, but now that he’d brought it up, how did he?
“Come with me, little lady.” He smiled broadly, reached a hand across the bar, guided her arou
nd it and on outside. There before them, just beyond the sidewalk, sat a shiny new two tone ivory and black Packard touring car. “She’ll safely do sixty on a well maintained gravel road,” Clampett said proudly.
Katie was impressed. It was so big … and beautiful. “I’m impressed,” she couldn’t help but say.
“Would you like a ride, Miss Peck?” He put on the infectious smile again.
“Oh, I couldn’t leave the tavern unattended,” she said. “Maybe next time.”
“Does that mean I’m hired, Miss Peck?”
“Of course, it does. I thought I made that clear on the telephone.”
“You surely did, but a gentleman always gives a lady an out, should she choose to take it.”
“You are the charmer, aren’t you, Mister Clampett?”
“Please call me Woody. I prefer that from friends. Shake?” He put out a hand.
Katie took it and the agreement was sealed. Clampett would get one hundred dollars for his services, from now on through the trial. Payment contingent upon acquittal. That’s how sure he was of the outcome.
CHAPTER NINE
“There ain’t much left of the livery,” a regular customer said, coming through the door. “If there’s a square foot that hasn’t been torn apart, or dug up, I’d like to know where it is.”
“Where’s the sheriff, Lester?” Katie said from the bar. “Why hasn’t he put a stop to it?”
“He’s over there … him and Striker. I think he’s hoping somebody will turn up something, so he can confiscate it.”
“That sounds like him,” Katie said, then got angry all over again about what Striker did at the prison. “Do you want a beer, Lester?”
“After what I have to tell you, I figure you’ll be giving me a free one.” He smiled broadly, exposing several areas where teeth were missing.
Lester was about Katie’s age, and occupied his time by doing odd jobs around town. She could never remember seeing the man clean — or even freshly scrubbed up — and surprisingly he had a wife. “You have information on who may have killed Clyde?”
“No. But I know who didn’t kill him.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.” Katie took a mug from a stack of them on the back bar and began drawing the beer.
“Well, the way I figure it, Clyde was dead a long time before they found him. I was one of the ones the sheriff called on to help carry him out. I know about rigger, and it takes a long time for a body to stiffen like that.”
“Clyde was in rigor mortis?”
“Stiffer than a cow’s tail in the dead of winter … I grabbed one once and it broke right off … frozen.”
“Oh God! Spare me, Lester!” Katie quaked with the thought. “How long is a long time?”
“I don’t know exactly, four or five hours, I guess. It took my mother that long, but she was in a warm house when she died two winters ago. I figure in that livery it would have come a little faster … maybe an hour less.”
“And what time was that … when you moved the body?”
“Around nine thirty …”
“Well, then Yancey couldn’t have done it,” Katie said, with glee in her tone. “He was in here until after dark. Not enough time.”
“Exactly,” Lester said with the toothless smile again. “I was here, remember?”
Actually, she didn’t. He wasn’t exactly one of those people that lit up the room with his presence. “Lester, I want you to write all that down … what you just told me … and sign it.” She dug in a drawer and found a tablet and pencil. “Here!” She put it before him on the bar.
“I don’t spell well,” Lester confessed. “Here, you write it … then I’ll sign.”
Katie took that to mean Lester was illiterate. “Okay,” she said, and took the pencil from him. “So, who all was there, when the body was removed, that can verify your story?”
With that, Lester perked up and rattled on for near a half hour. Katie took every word of it down, filling several sheets of paper. Lester then signed it: Lester Kingsley. Sort of. Katie, upon seeing the almost illegible signature, signed below it as witness, then got it into the safe, just as the evening crowd started coming through the door.
“After all that, I should get two beers,” Lester said.
“Lester, if you’ll tell that same story in court, I’ll give you ten beers. How’s that?”
“That’s a deal!” He tossed out a hand to shake on it.
“Deal!” Katie said, and took his mug for a refill. “Here’s another. You earned it.”
“All right! Thanks, Katie.” He smiled as if he’d just gotten away with something.
“And Lester, let’s keep this just between the two of us, okay?”
“How about Gracie … can I tell her?”
“Who’s Gracie?”
“My wife.”
“Oh, yes … No. Especially not her,” Katie said and went off to wait on the new arrivals. She’d just remembered Gracie was the daughter of Marta, the woman that ran the telephone office. Oh God! If that woman got ahold of it everyone in town would know in a matter of hours.
A half hour later Preston Ames came through the door. At this point, Katie, with a near full house, was busier than a one armed wallpaper hanger with crabs. No way was she going to take time out from her paying customers for him. Besides, she was afraid of what she might say, as furious as she still was about what happened to Yancey over at that prison in Terryville. The shotgun under the counter came to mind again.
“Katie!” Preston pushed his way through to the bar.
“I can’t talk right now, Sheriff. Maybe later, okay?” she said as pleasantly as possible.
“I saw Woody Clampett in town today,” Preston continued as if he hadn’t heard a word of what she’d just said. “He was in here, wasn’t he?”
“So? We get out-of-towners on a regular basis. Now that we have the automobile, people get around more,” she said while filling mugs at the tap and sliding them down the bar.
“Woody Clampett can smell a mark further than a coon dog can smell a skunk. He’s a hack, Katie. You don’t want him representing your friend Yancey Burke ... take my word on that!”
“Why should I take your word on anything, Sheriff?”
“You sound like you have something to say, Katie! If so spit it out, so all these good folks can hear it.”
“Okay, Sheriff,” she replied and went to be in front of him. “You promised me Yancey would be kept safe, where you moved him.”
“He is, Katie. I assure you, nobody can get to him where he is.”
Suddenly the normally loud tavern was stone silent.
“Nobody?” she shouted. “Then why is he lying on a bunk over in that Terryville prison with his face bashed in … Why, Sheriff?”
“Did Woody Clampett tell you that?”
“Are you calling him a liar?”
Everyone in the place then ganged around and watched as Preston Ames’ face turned beet red with rage.
“Is he, Sheriff?” somebody from behind said.
“Yeah! Is he, Sheriff?” others joined in until a low roar consumed the silence.
Finally Preston pushed his way through the crowd and out of the tavern, slamming the usually open door, this time of year, behind him.
At closing time, fearing retaliation, Katie took the shotgun as she left out the back. There would be no lantern to give her location away this night. But once underway it soon became evident she wasn’t alone. An automobile sat in the alleyway to her back … And another was at the intersection ahead, she noticed. Then to her right on the main street, she spotted three more. As she moved, they moved with her. It soon became evident she was getting an escort home. And with that realization, the usual spryness returned to her legs; the familiar spring that caused the dangling ringlets of her uplifted hair to dance as she walked went back into her steps.
Once she was home, shadowy figures, some noticeably with guns, surrounded the house. Then after the last lamp was extinguish
ed, she was lulled to sleep by the comforting sound of an occupied rocking chair, moving to and fro over squeaky boards on the front porch.
CHAPTER TEN
In the dead of night two men, with tin badges on their chests, exited the sheriff’s office, climbed into the Model T Ford with the white star on the door, and eased gently down the street. Eight blocks up it turned left onto the main road out of town and picked up speed. In twilight it returned, and now there were three that entered the office, one unmistakably in cuffs and leg chains.
Feeling better this morning, Katie came up the street at nine. She had every intention of having breakfast at the eatery and while there visit some with Helmer. He’d become so complacent with her competence in managing the tavern, she hardly saw him anymore. But first she would enter the tavern briefly to deposit the shotgun, concealed in the rolled blanket under arm.
No sooner had she entered, however, when Ralph Longley, from the hotel across the street, burst in behind her. Alarmed by the surprise intrusion she near had the shotgun from the blanket before hearing his familiar voice shout: “He’s back!”
“Oh! God! Ralph!” She tossed the heavy gun and blanket on the bar with a thud. “Who’s back?”
“Yancey! They brought him early this morning! I saw them from the hotel.”
At first a raw ache clutched her belly, followed closely by a faint rush of joy that progressively became more vibrant as milliseconds whirled by. Making her feet work when they didn’t want to, she shuffled toward the door, weak but determined. Why on earth had that happened now? Maybe she needed to re-examine her feelings for Yancey Burke — had they turned physical? So far in life, physical encounters with persons of the opposite sex hadn’t worked out too well for her.
“Are you all right?” Ralph came to her.
Katie deposited the keys to the tavern into his hand, lifted the frilly yellow dress, and dashed out to the street. Pausing only briefly to gauge the flow of traffic, she continued on, running until her eyes finally settled on the unpleasant face of Preston Ames, sitting behind his desk looking very shocked by her sudden appearance. “Where is he?” she shouted.