by Natalie Dean
However, when a wily codger like old Abel Townsend and a cold-blooded brute like Augustus Jameson joined forces, there was no telling what might be going on.
Chapter 20
Night, July 7, 1852, Knox Mills
Mary-Lee had left in a temper. Her father had insisted that she go. He was bait, he said. And that meant that she had to get gone. When she protested that she didn’t want to leave him on his own, he had just smiled. “I’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this, pet,” he had said.
He had been certain that nightfall would bring his brother to the house. Something was planned, he told her. He could feel it in the air. His instincts had kept him alive through the years, and they were never wrong. However, if she were at the cabin, he couldn’t rely on his wits because he’d be worried about her safety. Augustus would take advantage of that, and they both might end up dead.
In the end, that was what had persuaded her to don her blue hat, as her father told her to do, and saddle up Bette and ride to Piper Walker’s house. It wasn’t in her nature to be docile or obedient, and she was angry that she’d had no other option.
Piper Walker’s needle flew in and out of the infant garment that she was sewing. “You can’t do anything,” she pointed out. “You’re safe here. If you go back to your house, you’ll ride roughshod over whatever your father is planning to do. If you go into town, you’ll be a hindrance to Jack and Benjamin and Carson.”
“How do you manage to remain so calm?” Mary-Lee demanded.
“I married Jack, knowing what he is,” Piper said. “If I couldn’t handle that, then I had no business marrying him. Of course,” she admitted as her needle rested, “I wasn’t in love with him when I married him. Love makes it more of a challenge.”
“I wish I didn’t love Benjamin!” Mary-Lee burst out.
“You don’t mean that,” Piper responded, taking up her needle. “Love, hard as it is, is better. Would you rather have married Lance Townsend?”
Mary-Lee shuddered. “Lord, no.”
“There’s your answer. Take the blessing that God has given you in a husband who has your heart and accept the risks that love brings with it.”
“I’m better at taking risks for myself.”
“I suspect that you are,” Piper smiled kindly. “Why don’t you make us a pot of tea? I think it will be a long night, and neither of us is likely to rest until we know what’s going on with our men.”
How could she be so calm, Mary-Lee railed inside her mind as she followed Piper’s suggestion to brew a pot of tea. As if tea would ease the terrible fear inside her that something dreadful was poised to happen. Had she found her father only to lose him at the hands of the brother who had sought his death all these years in order to claim those cursed deeds? And what of Benjamin, who sensed there would be trouble and had joined Jack in town so that Carson Harlow would not have to face that trouble on his own?
If she’d just handed over the deeds when she first rode out to the camp, none of this would be happening now, Mary-Lee thought, as the tea kettle began to boil, emitting its eerily, piercing reminder that the water was ready.
“Thank you for brewing the tea,” Piper said, appearing in the entrance to the kitchen. “Let’s sit in here and drink our tea. Jack had no notion of how a woman wants her kitchen to look, so he let me plan it, and I find it a very comforting room.” She reached into the cupboard and brought out two delicate china cups and saucers. “He ordered these for me. They came from England. It was very sweet of him. He wanted to make sure that I would feel at home in Texas. I like my tea just as it comes from the leaves, but with a bit of honey and cinnamon. What about you?”
“Black,” Mary-Lee said.
Piper smiled. “Excellent. What about honey?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
“Not even cinnamon? It adds a wonderful flavor.”
“No,” Mary-Lee said, gritting her teeth. “Nothing.”
As Piper scooped out a teaspoon of honey from the honeycomb on the table, Mary-Lee saw that her hand was shaking. She was just as frightened as Mary-Lee, but she was trying to hide it with conversation about things that didn’t matter.
Mary-Lee felt ashamed that she could have thought Piper unfeeling. She ought to have realized that Jack Walker’s wife loved him. However, she was brave enough to carry on despite her fear.
“I believe I will try cinnamon,” Mary-Lee said, keeping her voice even.
Her eyes met Piper’s gaze, and for a brief moment, the two women revealed their true emotions, saying nothing but hiding nothing either.
“I think you’ll find it very soothing,” Piper said, as she added a dash of cinnamon to Mary-Lee’s cup of tea.
* * *
It was just as well that the ladies were maintaining their façade of tranquility because the town of Knox Mills was anything but tranquil. The brawl had been contained and the brawlers arrested, but with the cell already occupied, Jack was unwilling to add to the crowding, especially since it would mean opening the cell door. Binding the arrested men by their hands, he and Carson, with the help of Abe Winslow, herded them into the mayor’s office and tied them to chairs.
“You can’t keep us here,” one of the men said accusingly.
“I have to keep you somewhere, and the jail is already full,” Jack replied, giving the knot an extra tug to make sure it was taut.
“Seems like you can’t keep order in town,” another one of the men said. “Maybe Lance Townsend is right and it’s time for a change in Knox Mills.”
Jack pulled the knot tighter. The man protested. Jack, who had been kneeling as he fastened the rope binding the man to the chair, stood up. “When you’re a citizen of Knox Mills,” he said, “then you can tell me how you think the law needs to be run in Knox Mills. But you’re just a paid thug, brought into town to stir up trouble, and when you’re done here, you’ll go somewhere else and do the same thing. In the meantime, Judge Drury is going to have his hands full tomorrow with a full docket.”
“You think I’m afraid of a judge?”
“You ought to be,” Jack answered. “He’s going to be in a hurry. That means he’ll make sure there’s a rope in the courtroom. Saves time when he’s sentencing. Mayor Winslow, do you have anything to gag these men?”
Abe did. Jack and Carson gagged the men with bandanas. “I reckon we’re done here,” Jack said, bending over the lamp to blow out the light.
“Hey! You leavin’ us in the dark?”
“I am,” Jack replied urbanely. “Mayor, if you have the key in hand, I reckon we can lock these gentlemen in for the night.”
The door locked behind them, Jack, Carson, and the mayor began a stroll through the town. Jack knew that it was important to let the townspeople see that matters were in hand and that the law was being enforced.
“You think those men will try to escape?” Abe asked.
“They can try,” Jack smiled. “But I know how to tie a knot.”
“Did you think they’d have tried to use the flame from the lamp to get out of their bonds?” Carson asked.
“That, and try to set the office on fire so that someone would come in and they’d be free. I think we’ll keep an eye on the place through the night, just in case someone comes by. Abe, can you round up Elmer and Custis? I’d like a watch put here and the jail. Carson and I can handle it, but just in case old Abel has something in mind before the judge comes, I want to make sure these boys stay locked up. I’d hate for Judge Drury to come to town and not have anyone show up in court.”
Despite his jesting tone, Jack Walker was serious. It was going to be a long night. Abe Winslow went off to round up the men who’d been deputized for the raid on the camp. Carson and Jack continued to stroll down the street.
“Marshal,” called out Leo Bessner, standing outside his saloon. “Looks like we had a little more excitement tonight than we expected.”
“Everything’s under control, Leo,” Jack assured him.
“What got
everything stirred up?” Leo wanted to know. Leo was a businessman, and while he was unruffled by fights taking place inside his saloon, he knew how to handle them when he could apply his own rules to the situation. But as a businessman, he didn’t care for disruption in the town. It was bad for business.
“Oh, the usual,” Jack said.
“Townsends?” Leo inquired. Leo didn’t owe any favors to the Townsends; he’d bought his saloon with money he’d earned prospecting, not with a loan from the bank. “Aren’t they behind everything?”
“We’ll see what Judge Drury thinks,” Jack answered.
Leo nodded. “Reckon there’ll be a full house for the trial,” he said.
“Better make sure you have plenty of whiskey on hand,” Carson advised. “There’s nothing like a court trial to make men thirsty.”
Leo grinned. “You can have a drink on the house, Deputy,” he said.
Carson smiled. “Lemonade’s my drink,” he answered.
“Lemonade?” Leo scoffed. “What kind of drink is that for a lawman?”
Carson’s smile never wavered. “Just don’t have a head for it,” he said glibly. “One drink and there I am, howling at the moon.”
Leo shook his head. “You look like the kind of man who could drain a bottle dry.”
“Sarsaparilla, maybe.”
The lawmen continued down the street. The town had quieted down, although noise and music continued to come out of the saloons. Except for the saloons, the businesses were dark. But Carson knew that darkness was no guarantee that nothing was going on. Working the night shift had taught him that vice found a home in the darkness, and he’d learned to keep his eyes keen and his ears alert for the sounds of trouble.
“I’ve noticed,” Jack’s voice broke in on his thoughts, “that you’re not a drinker.”
“No,” Carson said. “I suppose that must seem peculiar.”
Jack shook his head. The streets of the town were dusty; it hadn’t rained for a while, and the dirt was covering his boots. He’d have to polish them when he got home.
“Not to me,” Jack said. “I like a drink, but I don’t fancy working with a drunkard. It’s nothing to me if your drink is lemonade.”
Something about the still night made Carson feel safer in sharing a confidence. “My pa was a drunk,” he said. “A mean drunk. He beat my ma when he was drunk. Beat us kids, too, until I was big enough to stop him. I vowed I wouldn’t drink. I don’t want to be like him.”
“Then you won’t be,” Jack said, sounding as if he were sure. “Sometimes, just the thought of being like our fathers is enough to make us walk the straight and narrow.”
“You, too?”
“My father isn’t a drinker, but he’s not a kind man,” Jack said slowly, striving to find the words that would explain his troubled relationship with his father. “He’s one who owns people.”
“Slaves?”
“No. . . his children. He doesn’t know how to let them make their own decisions.” Jack wasn’t going to reveal just how manipulative his father had been. He was happily married to Piper now, and it didn’t matter anymore that matrimony had come about because his father had given him no choice. “All I can do is be different when my own child is born. That’s all any man can do. Know where the weaknesses are and shore yourself up against them.”
“How do you know?”
Jack’s teeth flashed white in a grin. “You already know. And if you don’t, you can count on a woman to tell you.”
“I’m not fixing on getting married,” Carson declared.
“Every man says that,” Jack told him. “Then a woman comes along and all of a sudden, he can’t stop thinking about a home and a family.”
Carson laughed. “The family, I’m all right with that. It’s the wife that I’m not so eager for.”
“Can’t have one without the other.”
“Well, I can,” Carson said with an exaggerated Texas drawl, “but it might be a trifle troublesome. Deputying and diapering don’t mix. So I reckon I’ll just stay a bachelor.”
Chapter 21
Midnight, July 8, 1852, Knox Mills, Texas
The moon was bright and full, a brilliant golden orb casting light from a black velvet sky above. Benjamin wished it was a cloudy night so that he didn’t need to fear being detected. He didn’t know how many men were on the porch, and until he knew what he was facing, he couldn’t risk leaving his hiding place behind the azalea bush.
The brothers were still talking inside. Benjamin was thankful that the night was warm enough for the window to remain open. Or perhaps, given the tone of the conversation, neither had given any thought to the windows. The acrimony between them was apparent, although Aurelius’s tone never altered from its amiable inflection, despite the barbed comments he made in response to Augustus’s prodding.
“I can stay here all night,” Augustus said. “Sooner or later, that girl of yours is going to come home and so is that husband of hers. We’ll be waiting.”
“Deputy Graves knows how to take care of himself.”
“One on one, maybe. I’ve got three men outside waiting for him.”
Benjamin heard that response. Three men. Too many for him to tackle alone.
“How many men did Lance Townsend have,” Aurelius inquired smoothly, “when they showed up with guns to try to frighten Mary-Lee? From what I hear, my son-in-law drove them off.”
“This is different,” Augustus said. “My men have their leader with them. That rabble had no one.”
“I suppose Lance Townsend was too much of a coward to show himself.”
“He’s not a coward,” Augustus argued. “He’s a fire eater, that’s his problem. He doesn’t think things through; he just sets them in motion and then waits for his uncle to fix what went wrong. When he’s mayor, now, things will be different.”
“You think the citizens of this town will elect him mayor? He’s in jail.”
“He’ll be found innocent. Not that it matters,” Augustus said.
“Because no matter who gets the most votes,” Aurelius deduced, “Lance Townsend will win?”
Benjamin’s eyes narrowed. So that was the way it was going to work. The whiskey, the campaigning, the promises, they were just window dressing. The Townsends would find a way to make sure that, no matter what, their candidate ended up with the votes he needed to win.
That wasn’t going to happen, Benjamin vowed. Knox Mills would have a fair election. When he let Jack and Abe know what was planned, they’d be able to maneuver things so that the votes were counted by impartial members of the council. Unless, Benjamin realized with a sinking feeling, the Townsends already owned the council members. Was that possible?
Mary-Lee suspected that the Townsends had a connection with the bank trustees who provided private information on their clients in exchange for favors. If the Townsends had wrested control of the local leaders to the point where an election meant nothing because the winning candidate had been chosen before a single vote was cast, there were grave problems in the town.
He had been crouched behind the bush long enough for his muscles to feel the strain. Moving slowly, with painful, deliberate moves, Benjamin began to inch his way out of concealment. It was nighttime, and any noise would likely be attributed to an animal moving about. He needed to get into the parlor so that Mary-Lee’s father had backup. But how?
* * *
In town, the night was casting its spell over the streets. Quiet, even from the saloons, was dominating. Carson and Jack made another patrol around the town, checking in at the mayor’s office and the jail to confirm that the prisoners were still safely contained. Several other men had joined the others standing guard. It was apparent, although no one said anything, that there was general concern about what could happen if the members of the Townsend and Jameson gangs had the opportunity to escape.
“Looks like things are under control here,” Jack commented to Abe Winslow. “I think Carson and I are going to take a ride ou
t to the Graves’ place and see if everything is all right.”
“You think there’s trouble?”
“With the Townsends, there’s always trouble. And Augustus Jameson is no fool. He’s somewhere, the king spider weaving the strands of the web.”
Abe nodded. “We’re handling things here, and we’ve got reinforcements coming in a couple of hours.”
“Better get some rest; you’ve had a long day.”
Abe just nodded. “I’ll sleep when this lot is taken care of. Judge Drury is going to have a long day of his own coming. You think we can nail them?”
“We’ll sure try. Disturbing the peace isn’t much of a sentence though. We need to prove that this was a planned strategy to cause trouble. I think that we’ve clipped Lance Townsend’s wings by getting him jailed; Knox Mills citizens won’t vote for a mayor who’s done jail time. This town is made up of people who came here from somewhere else, and they brought their notions of the law with them.”
A brief smile flickered on Abe’s sober face, then vanished as quickly as it appeared. “I’m from Indiana,” he said.
“Lots of laws in Indiana,” Jack said.
As Carson and Jack headed back to their horses, Carson said, “You think Texas is going to settle down to be like Indiana?”
“Eventually, but not overnight. Good people live here, and they don’t want the likes of the Townsends to make the decisions.”
“I’ve heard that some of the leading citizens of Knox Mills are hand-in-glove with the Townsends.”
“I’ve heard that too. I believe it. We’ll fight our battles one at a time. It’s a slow process. Gradually, we’ll get to the ones who pull the strings. Texas has a different sense of liberty than the rest of the country. Texans don’t forget that they fought for their independence against Mexico and they were a country for a time. It’s not easy to curb that. I’m not even sure it should be curbed. But good people have to be the ones who make the decisions. If I’ve learned anything since becoming a U.S. marshal, it’s that the most important thing we do is guarantee the rights of the ordinary citizen to live his life within the boundaries of the law. Honest folks want that, criminals don’t.”