The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits Volume 1 (The Mammoth Book Series)

by Mike Ashley

  The past few days had been good ones for Johnson. He’d ended the week with a handful of gold nuggets that would bring several thousand dollars. Ben decided he’d have to stick closer to him if he meant to earn his pay. This was especially true at the Sunday whiskey party, which attracted the sort of motley crowd usually found around the poker table at the Golden Nugget. When Ben came upon Yancy Booth sipping whiskey with Tess’s friend Mary he even felt compelled to ask, “Who’s at the poker game this afternoon?”

  Yancy gave an unamused laugh. “When I left, Pete Waters was sittin’ in with that crybaby Grogan and a couple of strangers.”

  “Where’d Grogan get the money? I thought you wiped him out the other night.”

  “Who knows? He probably panned some gold dust out of the river.”

  Toward evening, the party started growing boisterous. Race Johnson had gone into a shack with one of the girls and Ben figured he had to stay to see him safely back to their room at the Golden Nugget.

  Unfortunately, the noise attracted a pair of Mounted Police, who rode up on horseback. The older of the two wore sergeant’s stripes and Ben guessed correctly that he was the Sergeant Baxter he’d been hearing about.

  “You there!” the Mountie shouted, getting down from his horse and motioning to Ben. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before – what’s your name?”

  “Ben Snow.”

  “I’m Sergeant Baxter. Where are you from?”

  “The States. San Francisco, most recently.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Third week in June.”

  The sergeant took out a notebook. “Let me have your gun.”

  “I – ”

  “Let me have it – I’m not in the habit of asking twice!”

  Baxter’s weathered face was one that meant business, and he had another Mountie backing him up. Ben shrugged and handed over his revolver.

  The sergeant checked to see that it was fully loaded, then made a note of the serial number and Ben’s name. “What’s that for?” Ben asked.

  “My own private gun-registration system. With this many people around, all carrying weapons, I need some way to keep the peace. This helps a little.” He handed the six-shooter back. “Carrying anything else? A boot Derringer, maybe?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Keep your nose clean, Mr. Snow, and you won’t have any trouble from me.”

  Baxter walked away, leading his horse, no doubt seeking other unfamiliar faces.

  Ben found Race Johnson just coming out of the shack. “Good party,” Race commented with a grin. “A nice way to relax on a Sunday.”

  “I got stopped by that Mountie – Baxter.”

  “I heard he’s been around. They patrol up the river, too. I guess no one can complain. It’s a pretty open town.”

  Ben sometimes thought it was the lure of adventure, of open gambling and sex, that brought Johnson north as much as the promise of gold. He’d told Ben once that he came from a wealthy family. It was Ben’s mention of the endless poker game at the Golden Nugget that finally drew Race in as a participant. His gold-hunting luck continued good by day, and perhaps he thought some of it would rub off on the evening game. Ben sat in with him on Tuesday and Wednesday of that week, watching him draw reasonably good cards and win a few nuggets and some cash from the other players.

  On Thursday, the stakes went up with the appearance of Yancy Booth for the first time that week. No one knew exactly where he’d been since Sunday’s party. Some said he’d fallen in love with one of the girls in Paradise Alley, but no one took that too seriously. In any event he was back, and his presence was immediately reflected in the amount of money riding on each pot. Race and Ben were in the game that night, along with Grogan and the bartender, Pete Waters. Tess wasn’t around, but her friend Mary perched on a bar stool to watch. And even Sam Wellman came out of his office a couple of times when the table became especially noisy – or quiet – with excitement.

  Race started out in a bad mood, having himself had a run-in with Sergeant Baxter. But he got over it when he was dealt three aces and won a fair-sized pot. The action continued like that for a couple of hours. Ben noticed that Yancy was losing heavily, but didn’t think much of it until the man’s mood started turning sour. He began slamming his hand on the table and tossing his cards haphazardly. Ben hadn’t seen this side of him before, and it hardly seemed in keeping with his reputation as a professional gambler.

  Once at the end of a hand, he came close to accusing Race of having cheated and Ben tensed for possible trouble. But Wellman was standing nearby and managed to quiet him.

  “If one of you goes for a gun, you’re both outa here – and I mean it. I’m not gonna have the Mounties close me up at the peak of the summer business.”

  Yancy calmed down until Grogan made the mistake of laughing gleefully when he bluffed him out with a pair of fives. The gambler’s eyes hardened to slits and his hand twitched toward his coat, but then he seemed to relax and gain control of himself. That was why Ben was taken off guard a few hands later when Yancy suddenly sprang to his feet.

  “That’s the last time you deal yourself an ace from the bottom of the deck!” he shouted at Race, and in a flash he pulled a small Derringer from beneath his coat.

  Ben moved fast, but Race was faster. His six-shooter was in his hand and firing before Ben could draw. Yancy Booth spun to one side like a dancer and went down. Mary started screaming from her bar stool and Sam Wellman ran out of his office, gun drawn.

  Ben sat there feeling like a fool. He’d traveled to the end of the world as the bodyguard for a man who was a faster draw than he was.

  Sam Wellman and Pete Waters quickly carried the body away, but Sergeant Baxter and another Mountie arrived on the scene and took Race into custody. Grogan and Ben were told they’d be needed as witnesses.

  “That means don’t try to leave town,” Baxter explained. “There’s noplace you can run to around here.”

  Wellman told Ben that Race would be held in the local jail until a traveling judge – a circuit rider – arrived the following week for the arraignment. The trial would follow soon after, and if he was found guilty Race would be sent down to the larger jail at Whitehorse to serve his sentence.

  Ben visited his employer in jail the following morning. “I should have shot him, not you. That’s what you were paying me for.”

  “Hell, don’t let it worry you,” Race said. “It’s a clear case of self-defense. Once the judge hears the testimony, he’ll toss it out of court.”

  “I hope so,” Ben said, but he didn’t feel half as confident as Race. This was a strange part of the world, and the people up here were no friends of theirs.

  The day was cloudy, with a chill in the air to add to his depression. He left the jail and decided a visit to Tess might cheer him up. Crossing the rope bridge to Paradise Alley, he could see little activity among the shacks. The men had gone out to pan for gold and the women were sleeping late.

  Tess heard his knocking and came to the door, wrapping a fuzzy pink robe around her. “Come on in,” she said.

  “Sorry to wake you up.”

  She yawned. “I had a late night. Want some breakfast?”

  “What are you making?”

  “Bacon and eggs.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  He watched her start a fire in the wood stove. They talked about the weather, and then Tess said, “I hear Yancy got himself killed again last night.”

  “Again?”

  Her back was to him as she started to fry the bacon and eggs in a large iron pan. “I don’t know. Forget it.”

  “Tell me. You must have meant something by it.”

  “No, it’s just that the same thing happened last fall, about a month after I got here. Yancy got into a fight with a guy at Sam’s poker game and the guy shot him. Killed him, so the story went at the time. But it was all hushed up and the fellow who did it got spirited out of town. A couple of weeks later Yancy r
eappeared, good as new. He told me it had only been a flesh wound and he’d just been hiding out till things blew over.”

  “I never heard of a victim hiding out. Did you see the shooting?”

  “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “Most of them have moved on, I think. No, one’s still here – that fellow Grogan. I’m pretty sure he was in on the game.”

  “How about Sam Wellman and Pete Waters?”

  “Well, sure. I think Pete was working that night.”

  “Thanks,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Don’t you want your bacon and eggs?”

  “Another time. Thanks, Tess.”

  He found Grogan down along a shallow part of the river, panning for gold dust in an area that must have been tried by every miner in Dawson. “How’s your luck?” Ben called to the shaggy-haired man.

  “Found myself a little dust. Not worth mentioning. Guess I’ll have to move upriver.”

  “If you’ve got a minute, I’d like to ask you about Yancy Booth.”

  Grogan was immediately on guard. “What about him? He’s dead. That’s all I know.”

  “I hear tell something like this happened before. Everyone thought he was dead and he staged an amazing resurrection.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “You were there when it happened, Grogan. You saw the whole thing.”

  “I don’t know. I got a bad memory.”

  “What do you owe to any of them? I saw Yancy beat you out of every cent you had in the world last week.”

  “That was last week.”

  Ben took a small nugget of gold from his pocket. It was one that Race Johnson had given him as his pay so far. “How about if I break off half of this for you? It’ll get you started again and you can tell everyone you panned it out of the river.”

  Grogan glanced around to make sure no one was watching them. “Yeah. I could tell you about it,” he agreed in a voice that was almost a whisper.

  Ben picked up Grogan’s small hammer and carefully placed the nugget against a rock before hitting it. The split was irregular and he gave Grogan the smaller half. The shaggy man didn’t complain. “Now start talking.”

  “They set it up to fleece this guy who was new to Dawson. Yancy pretended to be shot and they carried him out.”

  “Sam Wellman was in on it?”

  “I don’t know. But Pete Waters was. He helped carry the body out. They got some money out of the mark and sent him on his way. Then when it was safe, Yancy turned up alive.”

  “If the mark shot him, how come he lived?”

  Grogan shrugged.

  “It was a trick of some sort. I don’t know how they worked it.”

  “All right. Thanks.”

  “You won’t say I told you?”

  “Don’t worry, Grogan.”

  He hadn’t told Ben much more than Tess had, except for his implication of the bartender. Still, the confirmation of her story was worth the portion of the nugget he’d paid Grogan. His next stop was the jail, where he found Sergeant Baxter laboriously filling out a stack of government forms.

  “The job is getting to be all paperwork,” he grumbled. “What can I do for you today, Mr. Snow?”

  “You have a good memory for names.”

  Baxter smiled. “It’s my business.”

  “I came about the shooting of Yancy Booth.”

  “Yes, Race Johnson is a friend of yours, isn’t he? You’ve been here to see him.”

  “I’m trying to free him.”

  “Don’t try too hard or I’ll have you in the next cell.”

  “I understand Yancy was shot last fall, same as this, only he didn’t really die. I was thinking maybe he didn’t die this time, either.”

  Baxter got to his feet and buttoned the collar of his red uniform jacket. “Let’s go see. He’s over in the icehouse.”

  He led Ben out the back door of the jail and across a narrow street, adjusting his hat as they went. “I’ve never been here,” Ben said.

  Sergeant Baxter unlocked the door of a building on the river bank. “They cut up ice from the river during the winter and store it here for use in the summer, just like in the big cities. I find it makes a good morgue for unclaimed bodies.”

  “Booth had no family?”

  “None that I know of.” Baxter led the way past piles of ice blocks covered with a light coating of sawdust. The temperature must have been twenty degrees cooler than outside. “If no one claims him by next week, we’ll bury him in potter’s field.”

  They stopped before a rough wooden coffin and the sergeant lifted the lid.

  “Look for yourself.”

  It was Yancy Booth and he’d never be any deader. The naked body was partly wrapped in a winding sheet, but Ben could see the twin wounds near the heart from Race’s bullets. “He’s dead, all right,” Ben agreed. “Are those powder burns around the wounds?”

  “Not really. More a powder residue. Black powder leaves a slight residue up to about six feet away. I’d guess these shots were fired from a distance of around four feet.”

  “That’s about right,” Ben agreed. “It was a clear case of self-defense.”

  “The courts will rule on that.”

  “And Race stays in jail till they do?”

  “That’s right,” the Mountie told him, stepping aside to let Ben precede him out of the icehouse. “I’m not in the habit of turning gunmen loose to do more shooting.”

  Ben left the jail without seeing Race again. His hope of discovering Yancy was still alive had been dashed. There seemed to be no hope left unless Grogan was right about the bartender’s involvement. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was the only one Ben had.

  He searched all afternoon for Pete Waters without finding him. Mary said she thought he’d gone prospecting with some of the others up along the Klondike River. That could mean anything. They might decide to camp out overnight or for a month.

  Back at the Golden Nugget, the poker game was still in progress. It would take more than a shooting to end it. Sam Wellman was sitting in, dealing a hand of stud to three strangers. “Is Pete working tonight?” Ben asked him.

  “He’s supposed to, but I haven’t seen him. If he doesn’t show up soon, I’ll have to take over myself.”

  It was getting dark when Ben decided to call on Tess over in Paradise Alley. There was nothing to be gained by waiting any longer for Waters.

  He’d started across the rope bridge in the dusk when a voice called out behind him.

  “Snow! Ben Snow!”

  Ben turned and saw a shadowy figure barely visible at the end of the bridge.

  “Who is it?” he called back.

  “Pete Waters – I hear you been lookin’ for me!”

  “That’s right, I have!” Ben started back toward shore, the bridge swaying a bit underfoot.

  “Well, you found me – or I found you!”

  There was the sudden flare and boom of a shotgun. Ben felt the rope railing come loose in his hand as the spray of buckshot parted its strands. He was drawing his gun when the second barrel discharged and he went off the bridge, still clutching the loose rope railing.

  By some miracle, the rope swung him back toward shore, and when his feet hit the water he was almost to dry land. He fell forward onto the river bank, trying not to reveal his location in the darkness. Some twenty feet above him, he heard Waters break open the shotgun to reload it.

  Suddenly there was a shout from the opposite shore. “Ben! Ben, are you hurt?”

  He recognized Tess’s voice calling out of the darkness, but he dared not reveal his position by answering her. She had seen him crossing in the dusk, seen him falling, and now she was hoping he was alive. The bridge above him hung at an awkward angle without one of its rope supports, and outlined against the night sky he saw her venture out a few feet, still calling his name.

  Ben heard the shotgun snapped shut and cocked. He scrambled up on the river bank, shouting, “Go back
, Tess! It’s Waters and he has a shotgun!”

  The bartender fired down at his voice and Ben heard the chatter of buckshot striking the rocks around him. He realized suddenly that his arm was bleeding, either from the first shot or the fall.

  “Ben!” Tess yelled again.

  The bartender’s shotgun boomed, but this time there was the crack of a pistol at almost the same instant. Ben saw Waters stagger onto the bridge and fall, his body caught by the rope support as the shotgun slipped from his grip to splash into the river below.

  “You can come up now!” Sergeant Baxter shouted down to Ben. “It’s all over!”

  An hour later, when Ben’s flesh wounds had been tended to by Tess and Mary, he sat in Sam Wellman’s office at the Golden Nugget and tried to explain what had happened. Wellman and the girls were there, along with Sergeant Baxter, who’d promised to free Race Johnson if Ben convinced him of his innocence. Ben called Grogan in from the poker game to bolster his case, and the man repeated what he’d told Ben.

  “Why didn’t you come forward with this before?” Sergeant Baxter wanted to know.

  “Because I was afraid of Waters and Yancy. If they’re both dead, they can’t hurt me now.”

  “You claim the two of them were extorting money from prospectors by pretending Yancy was dead?”

  “That’s right. Yancy wore a metal pan full of sawdust under his shirt. Pete Waters doctored the bullets somehow, removing some of their powder, so when they were fired at Yancy’s chest they just thudded into the sawdust. Yancy pretended to be dead and the mark got arrested. Then, when he paid Waters enough money, Yancy staged an amazing recovery.”

  “That’s what happened last fall,” Wellman admitted. “But I never connected it with this week’s shooting.”

  “I hear they pulled the same trick in Whitehorse before they came here,” Grogan said.

  But Baxter shook his head.