Montana Revenge Page 11

  “I would, but I don’t have the funds to pay them. You know what they want for pay?”

  Herschel shook his head.

  “Fifty a month, twenty-five percent of the fines, and a house to live in is what the last one asked me for.” McKay continued pacing the office.

  “What can you afford?”

  He stopped, looked back, and scowled. “Thirty, maybe.”

  “Land’s sake, what do you pay Dave Allen?”

  “Oh, he gets twenty percent of the fines. But I can’t pay fifty and give the new man part of the fines.” McKay shut his eyes and shook his head. “No way.”

  “My deputies get forty-five and expenses.”

  “I can’t afford that much. But we’ve got to stop this bad publicity,” McKay said, getting back to his original complaint.

  “You better speak to Ennis Stokes. He’s the one making the sensational news out of little or nothing. Well, we did have a man shot, but I am satisfied no charges will be filed over it. Figure there’s enough witnesses to say it was self-defense. Both men were armed.”

  “What if Stokes won’t quit?”

  “I guess you’ll have to kill him and tell God he died.”

  “Oh, my, Baker, your solution sounds terrible.”

  “Then you think of a better one.”

  Shaking his finger in Herschel’s direction, McKay gave him a sour look. “Just remember, Herschel Baker, if the rails don’t come to Billings, it could be your fault.”

  “I’ll remember. I have things to see about.”

  “Well, I’ll go speak to Jim Townsend at the Herald, maybe he’ll listen.”

  Phil appeared in the doorway with a frown as if needing him.

  “What is it?” Herschel asked.

  “Them Ralstons are downstairs and want to talk to you.”

  “Oh, dear God, more trouble in our city,” McKay said, looked at the square tin ceiling tiles, and then swept out the doorway.

  Herschel shook his head after the mayor’s dramatic retreat. Then he spoke to his deputy. “You go down and tell Bert and his tribe I’ll talk to them in my office.”

  “What if they won’t come upstairs?”

  “Act like we expect them to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Herschel cleared his desk and considered what they’d want from him. No doubt they were there over the death of the eldest son, Tucker. He looked up when the hard-eyed patriarch of the family came storming in the office door like a sore-toed bear. Behind him came two whiskerless boys in their late teens, dressed in ragged clothing, and a fat girl about eighteen or nineteen years old wearing a scarf tied under her chin and a too-tight dress.

  “Hello, Bert. Have a chair.”

  “I’ll stand. What are you doing about Tucker’s murder?”

  “That’s a case for my office.” He looked up hard at the defiant-faced man with his arms folded over a wash-frazzled shirt, wearing stained pants that needed washing.

  “By Gawd, I’ll handle it myself.”

  “Ease off. I’m holding an inquest. Let justice work.”

  “I’ll let justice work all right.” His dark eyes narrowed and his whisker-bristled mouth disappeared in a straight line. “I ain’t letting that sumbitch Kirk—”

  Herschel rose and glared across the desk. “Listen to me, this eye-for-an-eye business is over in this county. I’ll fill Deer Lodge Penitentiary with all of you if you even lift a finger.”

  “Like hell you will!”

  “Bert, don’t try me.” They were face-to-face and only the desk separated them. “I’ve been up there, took a prisoner up there. You don’t want to rot up in that prison for murder.”

  The two boys, Farrel and Jimmy, frowned at each other. The pie-faced girl looked upset and ready to pull her father back.

  “I’m going to find that smart-mouthed bastard and kill him.”

  Herschel straightened and narrowed his gaze at the man. “No. Take that boy’s body home and pray for him and your own soul.”

  “Pa, he ain’t going to help us.” About to cry, the girl pulled on his sleeve.

  “Hush up, Wanda.” He jerked her hand off his arm and whirled back. “Baker, you better ship that boy’s killer up there to that prison, so’s I can’t get my hands on him.”

  “Bert, I ain’t saying it again. Let the law handle it.”

  “You ain’t telling me nothing—”

  “Pa. Pa,” Wanda pleaded. “He’ll lock you up. He done told you so.”

  “Anything happens to him and I’ll know who did it, Bert.” Herschel felt his heart pounding under his rib cage. What was he going to do with this madman? “Which one of you is Farrel?”

  The dark-eyed boy with his chin covered in fine peach fuzz gave him a snotty look. “I am.”

  “Who hung Billy Hanks?” Herschel demanded.

  Blinking his weak eyes, Farrel drew his head back as if insulted. “How the hell should I know?”

  “You boys were there.”

  Bert tried to intercede and moved to block Herschel’s view of the boys. “They never—”

  Herschel cut off Bert’s protest. “Did you three boys hang him?”

  Farrel began to shake his head and his eyes widened. “No, we never—”

  “Don’t tell him a gawdamn thing!” Bert shouted, and waved his hands at the boys to shut them up.

  “Pa! Pa! We got to get out of here,” the girl screamed, and pulled on the old man’s arm.

  “I want to know everything you boys know about the hanging,” Herschel said, and came around the desk.

  “We never done it,” Jimmy, the youngest, shouted in defense of his brother. “I swear we never.”

  “Gawdamnit, Baker—”

  “Hold it right there,” Phil ordered from the doorway, armed with a shotgun.

  Wanda began screaming. “He’s gonna kill us! No! No!”

  “Everyone sit down. You boys get chairs from over there and pull them up here,” Herschel ordered.

  Tears ran down Wanda’s full face and streaked the road dust on her red cheeks. Bert glared, but he sat down, his arms folded and a defiant look pressed on his face. The boys pulled up chairs warily, eyeing both Herschel and his gun-bearing deputy in the process.

  “Now one by one, I want your stories on that night of the hanging. Wanda, go first.”

  She looked at Bert for what to do. In surrender, Bert nodded and she snuffed her nose.

  “We went to the dance. And when it was over, we slept on the ground. Pa got us up before sunup and we drove home. Nothing more.” She shook her head and her green eyes darted from side to side like a trapped animal.

  “Why so early?”

  She shrugged, not looking at him. “I don’t know.”

  “Come up here and print your name on this paper.” He set the pencil and paper on the desktop.

  She looked for an answer, and finally Bert said, “Go ahead, we ain’t got nothing to hide.”

  Wary-eyed, she scooted off the chair, pulled the dress down over her soggy figure, and took the pencil. Her writing wasn’t smooth, but she wrote her name.

  “That what you wanted?” She looked pained behind her sparse, wet lashes.

  “Print ‘horse rustler,’” Herschel said, keeping an eye on the others.

  She shook her head and then had to get the stringy hair back from her face. “I can’t spell that.”

  “Print what you think it looks like.”

  At last, in surrender, she shrugged, scratched her belly through the dress, then bent over to write something on the page.

  “What the hell is this for?” Bert asked, moving to the front of his chair to try and see her writing.

  “Best I can do,” she said, raising up and looking hard at it.

  Herschel ignored the old man, thanked her, and could barely read the words—HOASE RUSTER. “You’re next,” he said to Bert.

  Bert rose, picked up the pencil, and scrawled his name on the paper. Then he looked up at Herschel. “I can’t do no better
than she did.”

  “Fine. Print it.”

  “I don’t know where this is going—” He had one hand on the table supporting him. “All us writing our names and then ‘hoss rustler’ on this page. We ain’t signing no damn confession, are we?”

  “Bert, when I accuse someone, I’ll do it loud and clear.”

  “Can’t never tell,” he mumbled, and copied her bad spelling of the two words. Then he slapped the pencil down on the desk. “There.” And he dropped back in the chair.

  “Farrel, you’re next.”

  The boy of perhaps seventeen stepped up and blinked at the page. “Hell, that ain’t how you spell it.”

  “Spell it yourself, then, smart-ass,” Bert said, and folded his arms over his chest.

  “I sure can.” Farrel signed his name and then wrote— HOIRSE RUSTELER.

  When Herschel nodded for Jimmy to come up, he stood and looked all around like a cat in a room full of rockers, expecting any moment to have his tail stomped on. He walked to the desk and scrawled his name under the others. Beside his signature, he carefully printed—HORSE RUSTLER.

  “I’m sorry about Tucker being shot,” Herschel said. “But more killing only breeds more killing. I won’t put up with that. Let the law work. Do any of you know who hung Hanks?”

  Subdued-acting, they shook their heads. Then Bert looked him hard in the eye. “Us Ralstons never done it.”

  Herschel acknowledged his reply with a nod. “Do any of you know anything to help me?”

  “You need to talk to them Mannons,” Farrel said as they got up to leave.

  “Shut up, Farrel,” Bert hissed. “You don’t know a gawdamn thing.”

  “Wait,” Herschel said. “Why see them?”

  “He don’t know nothing,” the old man growled.

  “I ain’t so sure of that, Bert. What is it about the Mannons makes you think I need to talk to them?”

  “It was their hoss he stole.”

  “What else?”

  “Old Man Mannon wouldn’t let his wife, Nora, come to none of them dances ’cause he didn’t want her dancing with Billy Hanks. You know she’s lots younger than that old man.” Farrel’s thumbs were hooked in the gun belt around his waist as he smugly rocked from his heel to his toe on his run-down boots.

  Herschel nodded, slowly digesting the notion. “Thank you.”

  Bert pursed his lips and rose. “All right, you handle the law part, but I don’t like it.”

  “I understand. Lots in this world we don’t like. I’m sorry this happened, but more killings don’t make it right.”

  After they left, Herschel went to the open window to reflect. Nora Mannon. An attractive woman in her twenties, light brown hair cut in shoulder-length curls, nice figure, and a handsome face with high cheekbones and blue eyes that sparkled. He’d even danced with her himself before she became Rath’s wife. How long had that been? Four years—the first summer he came to Montana. She married Rath, who was a widower, the next spring. Herschel hadn’t seen her in ages, and it sounded like the reason for that was Rath’s jealousy. In the street below, he saw the Ralstons mount up and heard the old man’s voice giving orders. Wanda sat on the spring seat and drove the buckboard team with the fresh-wood coffin in back.

  “What next?” Phil asked, coming back unarmed.

  “Art’s gone today to tell the Crowley girl about her father. Thanks for the backup, it was getting heated in here.”

  “I could see that. When you going to set up the coroner’s inquest?”

  “I’ll decide that when I can get word to Berry Kirk to get in here.”

  “Want me to send him a letter?”

  “Will he get it?” Herschel looked back at him and smiled.

  “Yes, I’ll have one of his friends deliver it.”

  Herschel went back to sit at his desk and motioned for Phil to join him. “What do you know about Berry Kirk?”

  “His folks have a ranch over east. I always thought he was rich. But they’re a small outfit. In fact, last year, his pa got in a big fight with some reps from the big outfits at roundup over ownership of some brindle cow. The Kirks and that Cross bunch are all cousins. When the argument started, they jumped in to back Stone Kirk against the big outfits. It was tense up there even after that whole roundup.”

  “Berry prides himself on being a fist fighter, too?”

  “Yeah, that, too.” Phil sat straddle-legged in the chair and looked at his hands in his lap.

  Herschel ran his tongue along his molars thinking back to the store incident. “The other day he beat up Wayne Farr in a fight over Kirk talking to Wayne’s sister.”

  “Don’t surprise me none. He’s short-tempered all right.”

  “You better send Kirk that letter to come in here. I’m going to the house for lunch today. Marsha has some fresh strawberries from the garden and shortcake for dessert today.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “Find you a good wife.” Herschel put on his hat and strapped on his gun belt.

  “I’m working on that. Maybe after Kate teaches me how to dance, I’ll be able to find one.”

  “You may do that. After lunch, I may ride up and check with Barley. See if he knows anything else.” Herschel paused. “That roundup business with Kirk—Hanks wasn’t involved in that, was he?”

  In deep concentration, Phil scratched in front of his ear. “I can’t recall him being there.”

  “Fine. I should be back to town by dark.”

  “You be careful. That back-shooter about got you last time.”

  Herschel left the office, nodding to himself. Missed by a few inches was all. Enough to sober him to the fact someone wanted him dead. Who’d wanted Billy Hanks dead? They might be the same person or persons.

  The thought of ripe strawberries made him walk faster. He felt like a lucky man to have such a hardworking wife and family. And a young’un on the way.

  FOURTEEN

  HE spent most of the ride over to Barley’s using his tongue to pick strawberry pits out of his teeth. On the rise, he drew up in time to listen to the clack of a mowing machine. Barley was laying down some early hay. A fine team of spanking grays proudly put their shoulders to the collars pulling it. Barley waved at Herschel from the far side. Herschel rode down to the open gate and crossed the mowed grass with some small white wildflowers entwined in the mat of fresh-cut material.

  “Starting early,” he said when his deputy reined the team up before him and put the mower out of gear.

  “Oh, I wanted to be sure the mower worked. What’s up?” the lanky man asked, stepping off the iron seat.

  “Well, Berry Kirk and Tucker Ralston got into a fight yesterday in the Yellowstone and that broke into a brawl. Tucker’s dead. Old Man Ralston is on a tear, but I may have him settled for a day or so. Looked like a case of self-defense to me.”

  “What over?”

  “I think over Billy Hanks’s death. That was the word I got. No one is saying much.” Dismounted, Herschel swept up a stem of grass and began to chew on the sweet stalk.

  Busy killdeer ran about chasing insects upset by the mowing. Their cries carried as the team caught their breath. The rich aroma of fresh-cut hay hung in his nostrils. He’d miss putting feed up this year. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a lawman. He kept hitting his head against a brick wall on the lynching.

  “Nora Mannon,” he said, letting his thoughts spill out.

  Barley took off his sweat-stained felt hat and scratched his thin hair. “Don’t see her much since she married Rath.”

  “I haven’t seen her three times, I guess, since then.”

  “Why?” Barley reset the hat on his head. “What’s she got to do with Hanks being hung?”

  “Farrel Ralston said Rath never brought her to the dances so she couldn’t dance with Billy.” Herschel studied the rolling hills beyond. Was there a connection?

  “A man of fifty marries a good-looking woman in her early twenties. I might lock her up, too.” Barley chuckl
ed. “Heavens, I worry about Heart leaving me.”

  “Nora had a baby boy?”

  “I think so. He must be up walking by now.”

  Herschel discarded the stem. “Strange, I haven’t thought about her in years.”

  “Lots of talk. How that wasn’t Rath’s son.”

  “What do you think?”

  “If something gnaws on a man long enough, he’s liable to do some crazy things. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t saying her and Billy did a thing wrong, or that the boy fathered her son, but we better look closer at them.”

  “Hard to do. Rath plays a close hand.”

  “We need to separate those boys from him.” Barley took off his hat, blinked in the bright sun, and scratched behind his left ear. “That old man’s tougher than rocks. He’s probably part Injun, and you ain’t getting nothing out of him about the deal. Those younger boys—they might talk.” He set the hat back in place.

  Herschel nodded. “I think you’re right.”

  “Any word on those stage robbers?”

  “Ford and that old man? No, they ran off south somewhere, may be in Texas by now.”

  “We’ve got another problem. Couple of horses have been stolen up here lately. I don’t have any leads, but I suspect they’re taking them up into Canada. They may be hiding them up in the Missouri Breaks until they get a buyer up there.”

  “You get word, let me know and we’ll run up there. I need a little good news.”

  “They tell me that Herald has been nailing your hide to the wall.” Barley chuckled and shook his head in surrender. “Can’t please folks. Last year, the big outfits were running over this country; they never wrote nothing bad about them doing that.”

  “This year, those big outfits can’t even afford cowboys with the winter kill-off.”

  “Ah, I bet they’ve sent buyers to South America looking for more steers to eat this grass.”

  Herschel nodded. “Yeah, they probably have.”

  “And you know what? Monkeys, parrots, and palm trees ain’t surviving a Montana winter. Those cattle they get out of deep in Mexico have never seen a frost.” Barley acted dismayed over the notion. Then he looked up and his blue eyes sparkled. “Where were we? Oh, horse rustlers and the Mannons.”