by Ed Gorman
Because the temperature had dipped several degrees, most of the waiting passengers were inside the depot, on the benches close to the potbellied stove. The fog had discouraged them, too; a damp, thick, gritty fog. There weren't many people inside, mostly drummers on to the next burg, derbys down on their faces as they snored off weariness and whiskey.
She searched all the obvious places inside. Bailey wasn't in any of them. She described him to everybody she saw. Nobody had seen him. Not even the ticket seller recalled seeing him.
She'd been there fifteen, twenty minutes when the drunk came reeling in. She'd arrested him a few times. His name was Henry. He'd used so many aliases neither he nor the police were sure of his last name. He was mostly a small-time grifter preying on elderly folks. He was a decent-looking man but you couldn't tell it beneath the layers of grime and bar liquor.
He went over to the ticket window. Moments later, he was shouting at the ticket man. Anna went over.
"Where the hell is he?" Henry wanted to know.
"Where is who?" the ticket man said several times. "I don't know who you're talking about."
"That doctor."
"What doctor?" Anna said.
Henry turned awkwardly and glared at her. He looked to be near collapse, the final stages of this particular bender. He'd stay dry for a few months, working his grifts, and then do another bender again for five, six weeks. "You got no call to arrest me."
"I just want to talk to you."
"That's what you said las' time."
For a drunk, he had a good memory. She took his elbow, angled him away from the ticket window. "Who's the doctor you're looking for?"
"None of your damn business. I got rights, you know."
"You keep it up, Henry, and I will arrest you. Now who's the doctor?"
He needed a shave, two or three baths, and his dirty black suit needed all sorts of sewing. He glared silently at her as long as he could. Then he sighed and said, "Bailey.
"I thought so. Why're you looking for him?"
"He promished me five dollars." Five dollars would buy a lot of bad liquor.
"For what?"
"For buying his train ticket."
So that's how Bailey had worked it. He knew the police would be watching the depot. "Where'd you see him last?"
Henry nodded eastward. "Out by the baggage carts."
The plan was becoming obvious. Bailey had sent Henry in to buy a ticket. That's why nobody had seen Bailey. Then he'd wait till the very last minute and jump out of the shadows and board the train. He'd hide somewhere aboard until the train was thirty, forty miles down the line.
"Where was the ticket to?"
"Chicago."
A good place to get lost in, Anna thought.
"He said he'd pay you five dollars?"
"Yeah. But he only paid me two. Said that was all the cash he had on him. I went over and started drinkin' and the more I thought of it, the madder I got. So I come back here."
"I appreciate this, Henry."
"You see him, you tell him he owes me three dollars."
"I'll tell him, Henry. Don't worry."
Things were working out for Bailey. A heavy autumnal fog was even heavier, rolling in, snaking silver across everything. You couldn't see more than a yard or so in front of you.
She started making her way down the platform. She'd decided to use the Chief's Navy Colt, after all. She gripped it tight in her right hand.
She heard somebody walking toward her. She ducked behind an empty baggage cart, one as large as a small horse-drawn utility wagon. She raised the gun, ready to use it if necessary.
An older couple, the Mayples, appeared out of the fog. Selma Mayples had on the tiny straw hat with the merry red band she wore whenever she left the house. Stout Sam Mayples was carrying a small suitcase. Selma must be visiting her sick sister in Rock Island again.
After they passed, she resumed her search. She walked up and down the platform twice, searching in, under and around anything that looked even vaguely like a hiding place. She had no better luck outside than she'd had inside.
She was just about to give up when she heard a horse neigh somewhere in the gloom. The cabs. This late at night, there'd be only one cab working. But a couple of the drivers always left their cabs here. The livery was close by. They'd just walk their horses over in the morning and they'd be ready to go.
She found the shapes of three empty cabs down by the wagons. In the fog, the wagon beds resembled coffins. She had her gun drawn, ready.
Night sounds. Player piano music from a tavern somewhere. The rail-thrumming buzz of a distant train. Fog-muted conversation from inside the depot.
She walked up to the first wagon. Checked out the bed. Empty. Moved on to the second wagon. Also empty.
Was just moving to the third wagon, when he suddenly lurched from the murk—the smell of whiskey, the rustle of his wool suit—and brought the handle of his six-shooter down on the side of her head. But she'd just been turning away from him and so the impact of his blow lost most of its effectiveness.
Bailey made the mistake of trying to hit her a second time. He moved too far in and this time—despite the pain he'd inflicted—she was ready for him. He found himself facing the barrel of her Colt.
"Give me your gun."
He hesitated. Then she put the barrel of her weapon directly against his left eye and slowly eased back the trigger.
"For killing Anthea last night, and your wife Beatrice tonight."
She couldn't see him well enough to read his expression. But when she mentioned Beatrice, an animal cry seemed to stick in his throat. "Beatrice? Beatrice is dead?"
"Your gun."
He handed her the gun.
"The Chief wants to talk to you," Anna said.
"For what?"
"You don't know anything about it, of course?"
"My God. You're talking about my wife. I would never kill her."
She thought of Murchison saying essentially the same thing about his own wife's death. They were both apparently reading from the same bad play.
"I didn't kill her, Anna. I really didn't."
"We'll talk to the Chief about that."
She took his shoulder, turned him around so that he faced the depot. "We'll walk to the depot then take the alley over to the station. Just remember I have a gun."
"He must have done it."
"Who?"
"Kevin. He thought she loved him. She must've changed her mind and then he killed her. He was never satisfied with just seducing them. They had to fall in love with him, too." His words were bitter yet tired, the force of them fading in the fog. "The way he got Karen Hastings to fall in love with him. He thought that was such a conquest."
"Who's Karen Hastings?"
"You met her yesterday. At the theater. In Kevin's office."
"I thought her name was Remington."
"Oh—sorry. Hastings was the name she used at the theater. It was her maiden name."
"C'mon, now. Move."
"But I didn't do anything. I really didn't."
"You're part of an insurance fraud if nothing else."
She nudged him with the gun.
The tracks thrummed louder now. The train was approaching. Passengers were drifting to the platform, carrying carpetbags and suitcases and even a trunk or two. This late at night, and the fog so heavy, the festive air common to the depot was gone. The passengers just wanted to get on board and be gone. A couple of Mesquakie Indians shivered inside the colorful blankets they had wrapped around themselves.
And then Anna saw the woman they'd just been talking about, Karen Remington. She was just now hurrying out the depot door to the platform. She wore a vast picture hat that did a good job of concealing her face, as the Russian-style greatcoat concealed her figure. Anna wouldn't have recognized her but Bailey did. "Karen!"
The Remington woman swung her face away from Bailey and tried to hurry to the edge of the platform. Obviously, she didn't want to
be seen. Bailey started to reach out for her but Karen Remington raised her hand to keep him away.
And when Anna saw the large, pale hand—and the ring with the H on the large, pale hand—she remembered the indentation on the headboard in Anthea Murchison's hotel room. A ring had put that indentation in the headboard, probably when the hand was flung against the wood as the killer was wrestling with Anthea. A ring with the letter H on it. Karen Hastings Remington was the killer Anna was looking for.
* * *
It was dawn before Karen Remington told Anna and the Chief what had really happened. When Karen learned that Anthea was back in town, she was afraid that Anthea would steal Kevin back. So she killed her. Then when Kevin spurned her for Beatrice, she decided to end his life in an especially nasty way—kill the woman he loved, and see to it that he was hanged for that murder.
Anna used the new typewriter to pound out a confession for Karen Remington to sign. By this time, Karen's blustery husband was in the station making all sorts of threats to the Chief and talking about what an outrage it was to even suspect a woman of such high reputation of murder. He even summoned a few more of his firm's lawyers to come to the station and badger the Chief.
Anna reached home about noon. Mrs. Goldman fed her warm tomato soup and a cheese sandwich. Anna took the latest Nick Carter suspense story upstairs with her. She didn't get much further than the part where Nick disguised himself as a blind Chinese wise man so he could infiltrate the Tong gangs that had been plaguing the city.
Nick would have to wait. So would everything and everybody else. She slept.
The Victim
I suppose everybody in this part of the territory has a Jim Hornaday story to tell. See, you knew right away who I was talking about, didn't you? The gunfighter who accidentally killed a six-year-old girl during a gun battle in the middle of the street? Jim Hornaday. Wasn't his fault, really. The little girl had strayed out from the general store without anybody inside noticing her—and Homaday had just been shot in his gunhand, making his own shots go wild— so, when he fired. . . .
Well, like I said, the first couple shots went wild and those were the ones that killed the little girl. Hornaday managed to kill the other gunfighter too, but by then nobody cared much.
There was a wake for the girl, and Hornaday was there. And there was a funeral, and Hornaday was there, too. He even asked the parents if he could be at graveside and after some reluctance they agreed. They could see that Hor-naday was seriously aggrieved over what he'd done.
That was the last time I saw Jim Hornaday for five years, that day at the funeral of my first cousin, Charity McReady. I was fourteen years old on that chilly bright October morning and caught between grieving for Charity and keeping my eyes fixed on Hornaday, who was just about the most famous gunfighter the territory had ever produced. When I spent all those hours down by the creek practicing with my old Remington .36—so old it had paper cartridges instead of metal ones—that's who I always was in my mind's eye: Jim Hornaday, the gunfighter.
I killed my first man when I was nineteen. That statement is a lot more dramatic than the facts warrant. I was in a livery and saddling my mount in the back when I heard some commotion up front. A couple of drunken gamblers were arguing about the charges with the colored man who worked there. You could see they didn't much care about the money. They were just having a good time pushing the colored man back and forth between them. Whenever he'd fall down, dizzy from being shoved so hard, one of them would kick him in the ribs. For eleven in the morning, they'd had more than their fill of territory whiskey.
Now even though my father proudly wore the gray in the Civil War, I didn't hold with anybody being bullied, no matter what his color. I leaned down and helped the colored man to his feet. He was old and arthritic and scared. I brushed off his ragged sweater and then said to the gamblers, who were all fussed up in some kind of Edwardian-cut coats and golden silk vests, "You men pay him what you owe."
They laughed and I wasn't surprised. The baby face I have will always be with me. Even if I lived to be Gramp's age of eighty-six, there'll still be some boy in my pug nose and freckled cheeks. And my body wasn't any more imposing. I was short and still on the scrawny side for one thing and, for another, there was my limp, dating back to the time when I'd been training a cow pony that fell on me. I'd have the limp just as long as I'd have the baby face.
The taller of the two gamblers went for his Colt, worn gunfighter-low on his right hip, and before I could think about it in any conscious way, I was drawing down on him, and putting two bullets into his chest before he had a chance to put two in mine. As for his friend, I spun around and pushed my own Colt in his face. He dropped his gun.
I asked the colored man to go get the local law and he nodded but, before he left, he came over and said, nodding to the man dead at my feet, "I don't think you know who he is."
"I guess I don't."
"Ray Billings."
Took me really till the law came to really understand what I'd done. Ray Billings was a gunfighter mentioned just about as often as Jim Hornaday by the dreamy young boys and weary old lawmen who kept up on this sort of thing. The law, in the rotund shape of a town marshal who looked as if he were faster with a fork than a six-shooter, stared down at Billings and then looked up at me, smiling. "I do believe you're going to be famous, son. I do believe you are."
He was right.
Over the next six months I became somebody named Andy Donnelly, and not the Andy Donnelly I grew up being;—the one who'd liked to slide down the haystacks and fish in the fast blue creeks and dream about Marian Parke when he closed his eyes at night, Marian being the prettiest girl in our one-room school house. This new Andy Donnelly, the one that a bunch of hack journalists had created, was very different from the old one I'd known. According to the tales, the new Andy Donnelly had survived eleven gunfights (three was the true number), had escaped from six jails (when, in fact, I'd never been in a jail in my life), and was feared by the fastest guns in the territory, Jim Hornaday included.
All of this caught up with me in a town named Drago, where I had hoped nobody would know me. I was two hours past the DRAGO WELCOMES STRANGERS sign, and one hour on my hot dusty hotel bed, when a knock came and a female voice said, "I'd like to talk to you a minute, Mister Donnelly."
By now, I knew that a man with a reputation for gunfighting didn't dare answer a knock the normal way. Propped up against the back of the bed, I grabbed my Winchester, aimed it dead center at the door, and said, "Come in."
She was pretty enough in her city clothes of buff blue linen and taffeta, and her exorbitant picture hat with the fancy blue ribbon. She was wise enough to keep her hands in easy and steady sight.
"Say it plain."
"Say what plain, Mister Donnelly? I'm Patience Falkner, by the way."
"Say why you're looking for me. And say it plain."
She didn't hesitate. "Because," she said, all blue, blue eyes and yellow hair the color of September straw, "I want you to kill him."
"Him. Who's him?"
"Why, Jim Hornaday, of course. Isn't that why you came to Drago? Because you knew he was here? I mean, he killed your poor little cousin. You're not going to stand for that are you, an honorable man like yourself?"
I smiled. "You don't give a damn about my cousin. You're one of them."
"I think I've been insulted. 'One of them'. . . meaning what?"
"You damned well have been insulted," I said.
I swung my body and my Winchester off the bed, went over to the bureau where I poured water from a pitcher into a pan. The water was warm but I washed up anyway, face and neck, arms and hands. I grabbed one of two cotton work shirts and put it on.
"You know how old you look, Mister Donnelly?"
I turned, faced her, not wanting to hear about my baby face, a subject that had long ago sickened me. "What did he do to you? That's why you want me to kill him. Not for my little cousin . . . but for you. So what did he do to you,
anyway?"
"I don't think that's any of your business."
"You don't, huh?" I said, strapping on my holster and gun. "He shoot up your house last night or something, did he? Or maybe you think he cheated your little brother at cards ... or insulted your father at the saloon the other night. Last town I was in, somebody wanted me to draw down on this gunfighter because the gunny wouldn't pay his hotel bill. Turned out the guy who wanted to see me fight was the desk clerk at the hotel. . . figured I'd do his work for him." I shook my head. "Lots of people have lots of different reasons for us gunnies to shoot each other. Now, are you going to tell me your reason or not?"
I didn't make it easy for her. I slid on my flat-crowned hat and went out the door.
She followed me down the stairs, talking. "Well, I probably shouldn't tell you this but . . . well, he won't marry me. And he gave me his word and everything."
I smiled again. "And you want me to kill him for that?"
"Well, maybe my honor doesn't mean much to you," she said, out of breath as she tried to keep up with me descending the steps, "but it means a lot to me."
Down in the lobby, a lot of people were watching us. I said, "You're right about one thing, lady. Your honor doesn't mean one damn thing to me. Not one damn thing."
I walked away, leaving her there with the smirks and the sneers of the old codgers who sit all day long in the lobby, drifting on the sad and worn last days of their lives.
* * *
Patience Falkner wasn't the only one who told me that Jim Hornaday was in the town of Drago. There was the barber, the bootblack, the banker, and the twitchy little man at the billiard parlor—all just wanting me to know he was here, just in case I wanted to, well, you know, sort of draw down on him, as they all got nervously around to saying. Seems this fine town had never been the site of a major gunfight before and—just as Patience Falkner had her honor at stake—Drago had honor, too. They'd be right proud to bury whichever of us lost the gunfight. Right proud.