Strong Suspicions (Emmett Strong Westerns Book 2)

by GP Hutchinson

  Jarvis glanced down at his walnut-gripped Remington revolver.

  “Hope I’m not outta line askin’,” the bantam, Lum Walsh, said, “but who’d you hire? Who’re we supposed to back up?”

  They had reached the corral. McIntosh put a foot on the bottom rail, grasped the top one, and paused to admire his prized stallion—a tall, healthy horse with a glossy black coat and white points. The animal pranced and tossed its head.

  “Ever heard of the only fast gun with three trigger fingers?” he asked. He glanced at Lum and saw the raised eyebrows.

  “You got Ned Cage?” Lum asked, amazement in his voice.

  “So you know the story.”

  “I don’t,” Jarvis said. “Three trigger fingers? How’s that work?”

  McIntosh thrust his jaw toward Lum and said, “Go on. Tell him.”

  Lum wiggled both index fingers. “Ned Cage can shoot with either hand. Lots of gunslicks can. But not like Ned Cage. Ain’t nobody as quick or true.”

  Jarvis shrugged. “So what about the third trigger finger? What’s he do—shoot with his thumb or somethin’?”

  Lum shook his head. “In his pocket, on a silver chain, Ned Cage carries the preserved trigger finger of the toughest hombre he ever gunned down—Arizona Jack Jamison.”

  “Damn!” Jarvis said. “Ned Cage killed Jack Jamison?”

  “Yup. Killed him cold. And folks say it wasn’t even a contest.”

  Jarvis tugged at his goatee, stared with incredulity, and whistled softly between his teeth. “Ned Cage beat Arizona Jack Jamison.”

  “That’s why I hired him,” McIntosh said. “Don’t care if I have to sell off my most profitable sportin’ house to pay Cage’s fee. I don’t want anybody less than the best to send that damn Texan up the flume.”

  “When’s he comin’?” Lum asked.

  McIntosh shoved off from the corral fence and began to drift toward the gate. “Later this week. We’ll all have supper together—talk over the details. I want you boys to listen and listen close—learn what Ned Cage expects of you. Maybe somethin’, maybe nothin’. You may end up doin’ gun work with him, or you may just serve as witnesses.”

  “What if he don’t like bein’ watched?” Jarvis tiptoed around a prairie pie. “You know, takes it like as if you don’t trust him or somethin’?”

  McIntosh drew a cigar from his suit coat pocket. “He’ll have to like it. It’ll be part of the contract. I’ll be payin’ him plenty enough.”

  Lum cleared his throat. “Pardon me sayin’, but killers with his reputation usually don’t negotiate. They work on their own terms, if you know what I mean, sir.”

  McIntosh cocked his head. “Lum Walsh, you underestimate my powers of persuasion. And my resources.”

  Lum met McIntosh’s stare. After a long moment, he said, “Yes, sir. Perhaps I did. My apologies.”

  “Cuttin’ off Arizona Jack Jamison’s trigger finger, carryin’ it around in his pocket—he didn’t do that for proof of the kill. There was plenty enough witnesses to testify that Ned Cage indeed shot Jack Jamison and cut off his trigger finger.”

  “What’d he do it for, then?” Jarvis asked.

  “Word is he’s superstitious,” Lum said.

  McIntosh waved his cigar hand at Lum. “Not superstitious. They say he has some sort of beliefs about the supernatural. Believes that with Jack Jamison’s trigger finger in his pocket, he’s as fast and true as the two of ’em put together.”

  Jarvis went bug eyed. “Damn! That’d be fast.”

  “And deadly,” Lum said.

  McIntosh opened the corral gate, stepped inside, and closed it behind him. “You boys be ready, then. You leave accordin’ to Mr. Cage’s schedule. Maybe the day after he gets here.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Warm as it was, the front door of the El Paso marshal’s office stood open. With a good view of the street outside, Marshal Alonzo Perry was already on his feet before the rider in the dusty, gray sack coat had swung down from the saddle. “Jack VanDorn,” he hailed from just inside the doorway. “How the deuce are you, my friend?”

  VanDorn grinned beneath his bushy mustache. He pulled off his pinch-crowned hat, ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair, and answered, “Better, now that I’m back in Texas.”

  “I reckon you are. Crossin’ down into Mexico to take care of business like that—be enough to make me a bit skittish. You get him?” Perry clapped the veteran Texas Ranger on the shoulder as he stepped inside.

  The ranger shook his head and sighed. “Came real close, but in the end, he gave me the slip—this time.”

  Perry chuckled. “That’s the style. You’ll get him next time. Have a seat.” He motioned toward a wood-framed chair with a woven straw seat.

  “I’ll stand for a bit, if it’s all the same to you.” He tossed a nod toward his horse outside. “Done enough sittin’ for a little while.”

  “Coffee?” Perry headed for the big pot on the stove in the corner.

  “Sure.” VanDorn leaned against the wall.

  “I know you just walked in the door, but I’m afraid I need to bring up a matter of concern before I buy you lunch.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yep.” Perry glanced out the doorway. “Good. Just in time.”

  Deputy Warren Livingston cleared the threshold and pulled off his Stetson. He stopped short when he saw the Texas Ranger. “Mr. VanDorn, good to see you again, sir.”

  VanDorn extended a hand and gave a cordial grin. “Deputy.”

  The deputy looked sheepish as he shook the ranger’s hand.

  “I was just about to tell Mr. VanDorn about our excitement this morning, Warren,” Perry said. “Your timing is perfect. When I get to that part, you can tell him what you told me.”

  “Yes, sir,” the deputy said, taking a spot near the heavy door that led back to the jail cells.

  As Jack VanDorn blew on his coffee, Marshal Perry began to recount the tale of the robbery of Wild Hog Saloon owner, Franklin Taft, and his lookout man, Clive Mackey, on their way to the bank that morning—at least, as he had received the story from the victims and the three witnesses they had brought along.

  “So the claim is,” VanDorn said, “that the three fellas who took away one of Mr. Taft’s girls at gunpoint yesterday are the same ones who robbed him this morning.”

  “That’s the claim,” Perry said. “However…” He gestured toward his deputy. “Warren, here, believes there’s something odd about the whole matter.”

  VanDorn turned his gaze to the deputy.

  “Go on, Warren,” Perry said. “Tell Mr. VanDorn what you told me.”

  “Well, sir,” the deputy said, “Mr. Taft and his man, Clive Mackey, said it was an Englishman that first came in to negotiate to get Miss Geneve—that’s the calico queen—to relieve Miss Geneve of her responsibilities down at the saloon. Taft and Mackey said there was a Mexican with him, only the Mexican wasn’t dressed Mexican—just plain range clothes and a black gun rig. Well, when things got heated, them two left. But they came right back, this time with a fella named Strong.”

  VanDorn cocked his head ever so slightly.

  “This Strong fella led the other two in fast, and before you know it, they was negotiatin’ with pistols drawn and Strong doin’ most of the talkin’.”

  “What’d this gent named Strong look like?” the Texas Ranger asked. “According to the saloon owner and his lookout?”

  The deputy glanced Perry’s way, as though looking for his boss’s permission to continue. “Just like a Texas Ranger named Strong that I met a little over a month ago—a Texas Ranger that came through town with a sorta Mexican-lookin’ fella and another friend that talked with an English accent.”

  VanDorn nodded. “About yay high?” He held his hand at a point a little under six feet. “Brown hair? No mustache or b
eard?”

  “That’d be about right,” the deputy said. “You know him, sir?”

  “Could be.”

  “Is he a real Texas Ranger? Or was I hornswoggled when they came through back in March?”

  VanDorn planted a boot on the seat of the chair right next to him, resting his arm across his thigh. He stroked his mustache with the other hand. “If we’re indeed talkin’ about the same man—Emmett Strong—he’s a good friend of mine. And, yes, a fellow Texas Ranger. And Emmett Strong usually does travel with a Texian, a fella named Juan Carlos Galvez—Juanito. That would be his brother-in-law—another fine Texas Ranger, I might add. Don’t know anything about any Englishman.”

  Perry crossed his arms. “Wouldn’t happen to know whether Mr. Strong passed through El Paso back in March, like Warren said?”

  “Last I heard,” VanDorn said, “Emmett Strong was chasin’ down his brother’s murderer—a saddle bum named Blaylock. You may have read about the assassination. Strong’s brother was a state senator.”

  “That’d be him,” Warren said. “Asked me whether we’d gotten a telegram about this Blaylock fella he was chasin’.”

  Perry blew out a long exhalation. “So we’ve got an accusation that a Texas Ranger committed armed robbery right here in El Paso this morning.”

  Warren, brows furrowed, shook his head. “Somethin’s not right.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” VanDorn said, standing up straight again.

  “We can’t just disregard the charges,” Perry said. “Taft and Mackey had witnesses—two that claim to have seen Strong and his friends escaping with the cashbox. They were clamorin’ for me to get up a posse this mornin’ and give chase.”

  VanDorn picked up his coffee mug from the corner of the marshal’s desk. “No need to disregard anything. I’ll go catch up with ’em. I’m sure Emmett and Juanito’ll be more’n willing to come on back with me to clear matters up.”

  “I’d be much obliged, Jack. Want me to ride along?”

  “No need. I’d stake my badge on what I know about Emmett Strong. He wouldn’t rob a man—any man. Ever.”

  Jack’s confidence should have set Perry at ease, but the story Taft and Mackey had related to him that morning couldn’t have been entirely fabricated. “So if Strong and his boys didn’t rob Taft,” he said, “then what do you s’pose is goin’ on here?”

  VanDorn was quiet for a moment. “What do either one of you know about this calico queen?”

  Perry rubbed his chin. “Other than that she’s pretty as a hell, and that she plied her trade at the Wild Hog before Taft ever gained title to the place, nothin’—besides what Taft and his witnesses claimed.”

  “She was real pretty,” the deputy said, blushing right away.

  The corner of VanDorn’s mouth turned up. After a pause, he said, “I’m bettin’ there’s a story behind the story.”

  “Yeah?” Perry thumbed the stack of wanted dodgers that lay on his desk.

  “How well do you know the witnesses?”

  “Seen ’em all. Don’t know that I’ve ever spoke with any of ’em. El Paso’s a growin’ town.”

  “Yes, it is.” VanDorn glanced out the door. “I’d keep an eye on ’em.”

  Warren shifted his slim frame. “You want us to bring ’em in for questionin’?”

  VanDorn shook his head. “Don’t wanna do anything to make ’em decide to play things more careful than they otherwise would. Just watch ’em—see if anybody does any unusual spending, that sort of thing.”

  Despite Jack’s cocksure conviction that his Ranger compadres couldn’t have done what the witnesses said they had, a nagging idea stuck like a cactus thorn in the back of Perry’s mind. Could the witnesses have been telling the truth after all? Had the affair over the girl Geneve sent things off in a bad direction?

  “Jack,” Perry asked, “you’re dead certain your man Strong couldn’t have done this? Couldn’t have been provoked? Couldn’t have motives of his own?”

  “Look”—VanDorn raised his hands—“if Emmett Strong has somehow gone renegade on us, I will bring him to justice. Meanwhile, don’t you let that saloon owner up the street there bamboozle you.”

  Perry nodded, still mulling things over.

  “Now about that lunch you mentioned…” Jack grinned.

  Fairly certain that there’d be no simple explanation to this whole affair, Perry picked up his hat and gestured toward the door. “I’ll buy. Just don’t you dally too long and let your ranger friends vamoose altogether.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Do you think I look all right?” Li asked Emmett as she paused at the gate out near the street. She smoothed the skirt of her brand-new, emerald-green dress. Her hair was braided and pinned up in the back.

  Emmett smiled. “Enchanting.”

  Li returned a shy smile.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her looking less self-assured. And he had seen her through some hair-raising situations—some involving gunplay. He knew she wanted to make a good impression. She’d said she didn’t want to hold him back in San Antonio society. Personally, he couldn’t care less about San Antonio society. He only felt that he owed it to his brother Eli’s young widow to pay his respects, to answer any questions she might have about the fate of her husband’s—his brother’s—murderer, and to make it plain that he would not be the man to care for her in the absence of that brother.

  Emmett could appreciate Li’s anxiety. The setting was intimidating. After Eli’s death, Nan Morrison Strong had moved in with her parents once again—Mr. and Mrs. Travis Morrison, a wealthy bank president and his wife. Their imposing two-story, limestone Dignowity Hill home, with its broad lawn, overlooked downtown San Antonio the same way its rumbumptious owner looked down his nose at most of the city’s inhabitants. Somehow, Eli had felt right at home here. Emmett never had, both on account of the Morrisons’ station in San Antonio society and owing to Nan’s tendency to be overly familiar with him.

  Peering into his wife’s eyes, Emmett said, “I’m proud of you, Li. Thank you for coming along.”

  “Proud of me?” Her smile was tentative.

  “Couldn’t be prouder.”

  He opened the gate for her then guided her hand to the crook of his arm before proceeding up the walkway.

  A generously proportioned Negro maid opened the front door for Emmett and Li. After a polite greeting spoken from beneath curiously raised eyebrows, the housekeeper led the couple to a grand parlor furnished with a number of exquisitely upholstered settees and chairs, several Duncan Phyfe–style tables, and a collection of unique and elegant lamps.

  Li breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly.

  Emmett took her hand. “You’re lovely,” he whispered.

  She smiled then stepped aside to admire a particularly interesting crystal lamp.

  Just then, with a rustle of her fashionably striped skirts, Nan swept into the room. She picked up speed as she crossed the carpet and threw her arms around Emmett’s neck.

  He stiffened.

  “Oh, Emmett, you have no idea how desperately I’ve waited for you to come back.”

  “How are you, Nan?” he asked.

  “So much better now that you’re here.” She pushed herself back but kept her hands on his shoulders. “Let me just look at you for a moment.” She smiled broadly, her clear-blue eyes aglow.

  Smiling back politely, he said, “Nan, I’d like—”

  “You’re as handsome as ever, Emmett Strong,” she interrupted.

  Stunned that Nan had not yet given the slightest acknowledgement of Li’s presence, Emmett glanced at his wife and found that, although she wore a slight frown, a smile played at the corner of her mouth.

  “Nan, I’d like you to meet—”

  Again Nan cut him short. “Oh, you’ve brought your maid along, Emmett. How sweet of
you.” Stepping back to inspect Li as though she had only just now realized that she was in the room, she said, “Well, isn’t she something?”

  “Nan—”

  “Although I have no idea why you’d have brought her along—”

  “Nan—”

  “I’m sure we can find something for her to do in the kitchen.”

  “Will you listen to me, Nan?” Emmett pulled away from his sister-in-law and wrapped his arm around Li’s shoulders.

  Li met his gaze for just a blink before looking back at Nan.

  “This is not my maid,” Emmett said firmly.

  Nan’s effusive smile disappeared. “Then I’m afraid I’m at a loss. If she’s not your maid, just what is she then?

  “Her name is Li. She’s my wife.”

  Nan’s eyes widened. She put a hand to her mouth.

  “How do you do?” Li said.

  Thrusting her palm forward, Nan glowered at Emmett. “How could you? How dare you?”

  “How could I what?” he said. “Get married? How dare I what?”

  “You know good and well what.”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. Why don’t you tell me—tell us?” Emmett actually had a pretty fair idea of what her objections were. Nan, no doubt, wanted to have him waiting for her to decide whether or not the two of them would be a couple. And she was, in all likelihood, incensed that not only had Emmett not allowed her to hold such sway over him, but he’d given that prerogative to a woman who wasn’t even white.

  But he wouldn’t let her rude behavior toward Li slide so easily. He wouldn’t voice Nan’s protestations for her. She’d have to find her own words.

  “How could you dishonor your poor, deceased wife by marrying—what is she?—some Chinese girl? If the two of you are even properly married.” Nan cut her eyes at Li before glaring again at Emmett.

  “We are properly married, though if I ever thought we shouldn’t marry, it was mainly because I feared Li might have to face this very kind of insulting treatment.” Deep down, he wanted to step in front of his wife to shield her from Nan. But he didn’t want to communicate to either woman that he was in any way ashamed of Li.