“A drifter? Then it wasn’t Grissom?”
“Grissom? No, he’s a whole lot of things, but I don’t think he has it in him to kill a man.”
“No,” said Emma, looking across the street at the two men leaning against the hitch rail. “But he’d sure as hell hire it done.”
For once, Louisa had nothing to say. Then the two men, seeing eye contact had been made, crossed the street, cutting them off.
“Good evening to you, ladies.” The runty dark man, Raoul Vollo, swaggered forward around the front of them, while the taller man, whom Emma knew only as Rummler, cut a tight circle behind. Cinda danced as the man ran a hand along her side.
“Get out of the way,” said Emma, snarling the words low and menacing. But the smaller man stepped in close, just in front of her. He was her height and his dark, rheumy eyes stared into hers. When he spoke, his voice slipped out like soft cloth rasping over stone, snagging along the way. “I don’t think that is any way to talk to a man as important as me. Do you, Rummler?”
The stink of sweat and whiskey and spent tobacco clung to him, wafted off Vollo’s rank buckskins, and when he opened his mouth, the pungent tang of spoiled food clouded at her. Emma saw dark teeth that in a few short years would become blackened nubs, then be pulled out altogether.
“Now, what I want to know, chica, is when you are going to sell that ranch of yours? After all, you are a woman, and from what I can see, a fine one in all the right places. But what’s a woman like you going to do out there with nothing but a few skinny head of beeves and horses? And with that crazy old man wobbling around the place, and two dead men too!” He wheezed out a rasping laugh that forced Emma’s teeth tight together.
Rummler had made his way around the nervous roan and now stood behind Louisa. “Why so nervous, darlin’?” When he spoke, the woman tensed, startled, but he grabbed her roughly around the waist.
“No!” she screamed, pulling free and swinging the lantern in a high arc. Rummler had little time to defend himself before the lantern slammed down on his shoulder, spraying glass and flame over his flannel shirt and vest, along his neck and up the side of his head.
“Oh! You witch!” Rummler whipped in a circle, his long arms flailing as if he were engaged in a drunken dance. Since the lantern was made of tin, little fuel oil spilled on him.
“Help me, Vollo!” he screamed.
Vollo let go of Cinda’s halter and beat what few weak flames there were with his hat.
Emma grabbed Louisa’s hand and tugged Cinda’s reins, and the three of them ran down the street toward the crowd, Louisa holding the wreckage of her lantern.
“Curse that nasty man!” hissed Louisa, holding her battered lamp aloft. “That was my best lantern.”
They heard Rummler’s shouts alternating between curses and murderous oaths directed at them. Only when the women neared the crowd did they look back.
Vollo had Rummler bent over the watering trough on the other side of the street, and scooped water out of it with Rummler’s hat. The taller man’s jigging had slowed, but he danced side to side as each cold splash dumped over him.
As soon as they drew close to the crowd, the townsfolks’ shouts died down as, one by one, they turned their attention to Emma. Concern and sadness marked each face, and Emma found she could not look any of them in the eye, for fear she might break down. She knew her uncle had been fond of the town, and as one of its earliest citizens of the region, he’d felt a justified pride in the place, pleased and proud of what part he had done in helping it grow. The school, the town hall, the saloons, the bank, two churches, all of it. And here they all are, she thought. Looking at me with pity because I lost my father and my uncle, and Lord knows how many of them knew my uncle had taken out a loan to keep the spread floating. How long could she keep it afloat herself, now that it was just she and Arliss? She pushed the thought out of her mind and tied Cinda’s reins to the rail out in front of the jail.
It was Ross Dakin who spoke first. He was one of Arliss’s drinking friends. The two old codgers got together once every few weeks to play cards for matchsticks and insult each other. “We’re so sorry, Emma,” he said, lowering his eyes and shaking his head. He folded his work-hardened hands atop the handle of his three-tine hay fork. “We’re fixing to string up that killer. Marshal can’t hold him in there forever. Too many of us and only one of him. We’ll get him out here. We’ll make it right—you wait and see.”
This seemed to once again spark the fire of anger in the crowd. It began as nods of heads and mumbles, and soon became shouts of affirmation and anger that spread among the crowd like a prairie fire through dry grass.
Several men held aloft loops of new and used hemp rope, lariats, rifles, and fists. She wanted to thank them somehow, wanted to show them she appreciated their anger, that she felt it too, but something about this crowd, the raw rage on their faces, almost seemed like a game to them. After all, did they really know her uncle? What right did they have to feel this much anger?
* * *
Emma stroked Cinda’s nose. The loud crowd made the horse sidestep, trying to keep them all in sight, but they were too close and on both sides of her. Emma untied the horse and led her down to the next rail at the fringes of the crowd.
Louisa stepped up beside Emma, stroking Cinda’s neck. “I’ll watch her until you come out. Don’t worry.”
“Thanks, Louisa.” Emma looked back up the street toward where they had come, but didn’t see Vollo or Rummler.
“They went into the Lucky Shot,” said Louisa, nodding toward the saloon near where the men had been. “They won’t be out tonight. Not under their own steam anyway,” she said, her mouth the only thing smiling.
“Just the same, are you going to be okay tonight?”
The older woman nodded. “More than likely. Those two are gutless. Besides, I have a shotgun I keep by the bed.”
“Good. But I’m going to tell the marshal anyway. Those vermin should be locked up. No one’s safe since Grissom brought them here.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Marshal Hart, I have taken the liberty of informing the crowd outside that Payton Farraday has been the unfortunate victim of a savage murder, and that the man responsible has been apprehended by you. I told them that he is an itinerant killer who then had the gall to show up here pawning the dead man’s gun.” The fat man inclined his head toward the door and smirked. “As you can hear, they are suitably incensed. I daresay they are keen on hanging the man. Whatever shall we do?”
“‘We,’ Grissom? You got a mouse in your pocket?” The marshal rattled the dented enamel coffeepot, found it empty, and slammed it back on the stove.
“What has got you all bunched and puckered?” Grissom leaned back as if he were stretching his back because of some fat man’s ache, his enormous belly arching outward, his pudgy pink hands balled behind his back. He wore most of his smirk.
The marshal sighed and flopped down into his chair behind the desk, rubbing his cut knuckles with a cupped hand. “The last thing I need is a vigilante crowd out there. Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, I am the law around here and you are the mayor of this half-a-horse town, and that’s all there is to it. And besides, don’t you think announcing a thing like that was a little premature?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then lowered his voice and resumed speaking, quieter and in a more clipped tone. “I mean, Grissom, that we only have a pistol in our possession. The word of those two fools who work for you could land you in my jail. You want that?”
“But they assured me—”
“Yeah, and I don’t doubt that they did the job, but no one’s supposed to know that until someone discovers the body, right?”
Grissom smiled. “A trifling detail, Marshal. It will all burst open w
ide very soon.”
“You better hope so, Grissom. Elsewise, you’ll be spending a lot more time here in the jailhouse.”
Grissom moved with a speed that astonished the big lawman. He bent low over the desk, his oily pink face inches from the marshal’s. “You think that’s what I am, eh? An idiot? I thought we had come to an agreement of sorts. Now I see that I was incorrect.”
They stared like that, the words quivering between them like a sunken arrow. Finally, in a low voice, the lawman said, “I am tensed up because your boys failed.”
“No, on the contrary,” said Grissom, standing upright. “They succeeded well, I should think. When they rode into town smiling, I knew my troubles were nearly over. And my plans could have been even closer to fruition had the drunk you arrested happened to have died of gunshot wounds sustained while resisting capture.”
He wore no smirk, just stood there sweating, his broad forehead and his wide, whisker-free pink face staring at the marshal. The seated man could not meet his stare.
“I presume he is not dead. Otherwise you would be parading him outside by now. You have enough of the peacock in you, Hart, for that.”
“I’ll tell you why, ’cause it ain’t right. It ain’t lawful. Not while there’s cause to believe he’s innocent. At least in the eyes of the town.”
“Oh, this is rich, Marshal. Rich, especially coming from you. But tell me, why must the pangs of justice twinge within you now, of all times?”
Again, the lawman could not meet the mayor’s gaze.
“Oh, don’t tell me you think he might be useful to you. Perhaps in usurping me somehow, hmm? That is what you want, after all, isn’t it?”
A log shifted inside the potbellied stove, clunked against the firebox.
“Cold in here, Marshal. I was you, I’d warm things up a bit. Put another log on the fire, so to speak.”
The big lawman stood up, his chair squawking on the wood floor. “That a threat, Grissom?”
But neither man got a chance to say more, because the door flung inward. Escorted on a wave of sudden shouts and angry oaths, Emma Farraday strode wearing an old patched sheepskin barn coat and no hat on her head.
The marshal came around the desk and closed the door, touched her arm lightly, and escorted her into the midst of the room. “Emma, I was going to ride out to see you, soon as I was able. . . . You’ve heard, then.”
“Where is he? Where is the devil? They said you had him here.”
“He’s here, but I had to subdue him, Emma. He’s passed out in a cell back there.” He nodded toward the big wooden door with the inset bar window at the back of the room. “He’s a drunk, looking for whiskey money, I suspect, nothing more.”
“I’d like to know how you found out, Marshal. We only just found Uncle Payton ourselves.”
“I am afraid that is my fault, dear girl,” said Grissom, trying to look despondent. “I spoke too soon, perhaps. You see, a man came into town—”
“Grissom, who’s the marshal here?” Hart glared at the fat businessman.
“Somebody better tell me what is going on.” Emma looked at each of them in turn. “My uncle has been killed and I want to know why—and I want to know how you found out so soon. I barely rode into town before everybody on the street was telling me how sorry they were.” The woman’s top lip curled as if she were about to growl like a dog.
She turned her gaze fully on the fat man. “And then those two bums who work for him, Vollo and Rummler, actually smiled when they told me how sorry they were to hear about it.” Her gaze never left Grissom’s face. “They also tried to manhandle Louisa Penny.”
“What? Is she okay?” The marshal’s nostrils flexed wide, his brow creased.
“Yes, she’s fine. I can’t say the same for Rummler. She smacked him with her lantern, singed him up a bit.”
Grissom pooched out his lower lip. “I am sorry to hear all this, Miss Farraday. As men in my employ, they will naturally be reprimanded in the harshest terms.”
“Great. Fat lot that will do. But I am curious, Grissom, about what they said to me.”
“Oh, what was that, my dear?”
“Well, when they weren’t attacking us, they smiled, walked around my horse, and asked me when I figured I was aiming to sell up, move out. Being a woman and all, one of them said. Me being a woman, I guess he figured there’s no way I can run a ranch half as competently as a man.”
“My dear,” said Grissom, his head canted to the side, a resigned look of pity in his eyes.
“Don’t call me that. Ever. In fact, don’t even talk to me.”
“Fine, fine. But I will say this last thing.” He caught her hard-eyed stare. “To the room, naturally. They are an uncouth pair, Vollo and Rummler, I’ll grant you. But their hearts were in the right place. After all, running a ranch alone is no way to live. In fact, it’s a sure way to bankruptcy.”
“I am not alone. I have Arliss Tibbs. Next to my uncle and father, he’s one of the most capable men I know of.”
Grissom snorted, covered his smirking mouth with a hand. “Begging your pardon, Miss Farraday, but Tibbs is hardly a paragon of manhood. He’s a broken-down old man whose best days surpassed him long before you were even born.”
“We are through talking.”
“I shall keep that in mind.”
“Grissom, get out of here.” The marshal grabbed the fat man by the scruff of his suit coat and walked him to the door. The marshal lowered his voice, whispered to the fat man, “You are a low caliber of a man, Grissom, standing here and trading licks with a girl whose uncle was just murdered.”
“Unhand me, damn you. Or else. And you know what I’m referring to.”
“Shut up!” the marshal barked, and propelled the fat mayor out the door. The activity roused the crowd’s ire, and a fresh wave of shouts and oaths filled the lantern-lit street.
Before Emma could ask him what that exchange meant, he said, “Would you like Luke Slater to attend to Payton’s . . . needs, Emma?”
The girl, her eyes rimmed red, turned her gaze on him. “What? No. Payton was my uncle and Arliss’s friend. We’ll tend him at home. Just like we did for Daddy. Then I’ll bury him up back, beside Daddy. They were nearly inseparable as brothers when they were both alive, so I figure now it’ll be the same.”
“Yes, I’d guess your father would want it that way. They both would.”
“Are you going to tell me just what is going on? Who did you arrest for killing my uncle, and how did you know he was dead?”
The marshal scratched above his ear. “Like Grissom was going to say, Glendon Taggart come to me a few hours ago, all hot and lathered. Seems a mangy old drunken drifter on a near-dead horse rode in this afternoon, had nothing but an old pistol. He sold it to Glendon for five dollars, then went and got drunk with the money. But Taggart noticed ‘P.F.’ on the butt of the handgrips, your uncle’s initials. Seems he recognized it as your uncle’s gun. So he brung it to me for a look-see. And he was right. It was Payton’s Colt Navy—had it since the war. I’d recognize it anywhere.” He picked up the gun from the desktop, handed it to Emma.
Emma hefted the pistol. “Yes, this is definitely Uncle Payton’s. He loved this old thing. Polished it all the time.”
Marshal Hart smiled. “Yeah, I told him I don’t know how many times that he ought to get himself a decent new rig.” He patted his own hip gun and smiled. “True to Farraday form, he did the exact opposite of what I suggested. But the gun suited him.”
“Didn’t do him much good, though, did it?”
“No, no, I reckon it didn’t at that.”
Emma let the lawman lift the gun from her hands and put it back on the desk. “Marshal, how did you—”
“How did I know Payton was dead? I didn’t. Hoped somehow this man had just taken it fr
om him, but then the man confessed when I went to the Ringing Belle to question him about the pistol. He was already half in the bag and working on getting himself all the way in. I reckon that’s why he was so belligerent.”
“Then he killed my uncle for money?”
“That’d be my guess. But who knows what goes on in the mind of a drunkard?”
They were quiet for a few moments, and then the marshal said, “If you want anything, Emma. I don’t have much, never have, being a lawman and all, but I’m sure I could arrange credit for you at the bank, something like that to get you by.”
She looked at him, alert again, as if he had suggested she strip down for him right then and there. “I will not take credit. My daddy never did, Uncle Payton never did, and I sure won’t. Especially not from a bank owned by that fat sorry excuse of a man Grissom.”
“Now, Emma. Before you go spoutin’ off about Grissom—and I’m not saying I like him any more than anybody else around here—you might want to reconsider what you thought you knew about your uncle’s dealings with the man.”
“What do you mean?”
Hart sighed. “Well, way I heard it, your uncle had borrowed a good bit of money last spring to keep your place floating.”
It sickened Emma to hear it, but it confirmed what Louisa had told her, and even what Arliss had hinted at. But it was just too early after his death to go learning confusing things about her uncle. “My uncle Payton never would borrow from a bank, and especially not from a bank owned by Bentley Grissom. You must have heard wrong, Marshal.”
He stared at her a long moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess I must have at that. Besides, I only mentioned you going to the bank because I know it’s been rough and all, lately.”
“The only thing I want from you, Marshal Hart, is to see him. The murderer.”
“Emma, like I said, he’s not conscious. Between the knock I had to give him on the head and the booze he’d been into at the Ringin’ Belle, well, he’s in no shape for visitors.”
Ralph Compton Tucker's Reckoning (9781101607770) Page 5