Deadman's Revenge (The Deadman Series Book 3) Page 13

  He smiled as he sat at his desk but within moments, his smile fell flat. What’s wrong with me? he wondered. I should be riding high on my success, not wallowing in the muck! Nevertheless, life as a respectable business-owner was starting to pall. All the shiny trappings of wealth were just that… trappings, and as time wore on, he felt more and more like a fraud.

  He was smart enough to know that a mogul must remain aloof—far above his cronies—or he risked being-taken advantage of. Still, he was lonesome. He missed some of his pals—long dead now—that he had hung around with on the docks in Seattle. It was rough company but it was his… and valid.

  This charade was taking a toll, both on his nerves and his feelings of self-worth. There were eighteen men in his employ now, and each one of them either, stuttered in fear when he spoke to them, or gazed at him out of the corners of their cold, calculating eyes. Much the way, he acknowledged, he used to assess his old boss (and new namesake), Patrick Donnelly. At least Patrick had a couple of friends… Freddie Marston and Dan O’Reilly. He, himself, had no one.

  The society he had so desperately sought, here in Billings, finally welcomed him in to their circles. But, like nervous deer in the presence of a predator, they kept him at a distance; showing through the disdain of a lifted eyebrow or a chill shoulder that they knew him for what he really was… a wolf in sheep’s clothing… a crook and a low-life dressed up in fancy clothes.

  He couldn’t even enjoy his beautiful new home. Although his staff was impeccable and did everything he asked them to do, they were not capable of making him feel that he belonged there. He would climb into his giant, four-poster bed and lie awake at night with beads of nervous sweat soaking the snowy, white sheets. Anxiety and doubt colored his dreams with a dark brush and he would inevitably flee to the only place that felt like home—The Little Haymaker Saloon.

  Glancing over at the bed in the corner of his office, he felt the weariness of sleepless nights press down on his shoulders. He was tired… morose, and there was a long night ahead of him. Loosening the tie around his neck, he walked to the door and stepped out onto the balcony. Staring down at young Joey Landraith, Allen made a special gesture.

  Nodding in acknowledgement, Joey finished serving up drinks and made his way upstairs to the whore’s quarters. There was one whore, in particular, that O’Donnell fancied. She was tall and willowy with long, black hair and bright blue eyes. She was older than the other girls were but still beautiful and quite athletic.

  Knocking on Lilly’s door, Joey stepped inside the threshold and gave her the boss’ orders. Lilly nodded in weary resignation. She would rather screw every stinking cowboy and drunk in the state than have to suffer O’Donnell’s attentions. For one thing, he always had to make a rape out of their love-sessions although she gave freely of herself.

  For another, after he finished with her sexually, he would always turn her over on her belly and whip her backside, all while he muttering, “That’s what you get, Maggie”, or “Serves you right, Mags!”

  Lilly didn’t mind a little roll playing, but the boss’ spankings were harsh and… who in Hell was this Maggie, woman? Sighing, and knowing that she had, long ago, sown what she reaped now, Lilly got up from her bed, dabbed rosewater behind her ears and between her breasts and made her way around the balcony, to Allen’s office.

  ~

  Six hundred and fifty miles away, Roy Smithers and Dicky McNulty started tracking their friend, Matthew Wilcox. It was not easy, as Matthew had backtracked many times over the last few months.

  First, he headed toward Colville and an old miner’s cabin he had inherited. Then, he left there and headed back to Spokane where he had boarded a train and traveled on to Seattle. There was no telling what he had done there but the records indicated that the marshal had left the Seattle area within a couple of days and come back to Spokane.

  There was a two-week delay, and then Matthew was on the move again… this time to Walla Walla, State Prison. As far as Roy could tell, that was where Matthew eventually ended up, although by now he could be anywhere.

  Nodding in understanding, the sheriff could see why Matthew had gone to the state pen. The prison was a good place to track down an outlaw. God knew he and Matthew had put at least a hundred crooks in there themselves.

  But, where was he now… and what about this ridiculous arrest warrant? Roy pulled the warrant from his coat pocket and stared at the bottom of the page. Sometimes, the origin of an issue was typed on the bottom of the page, but not this time. Glaring in frustration, he jumped a little when Dicky said, “What should we do now, boss?”

  Roy stared at the diminutive man by his side. Matthew had picked Dicky up like a stray puppy, seven years ago in the town of Wenatchee. He was just a kid of twenty then, and timid because of a severe stutter, but he had grown into a fine deputy over the years. He could shoot the eye out of a bullfrog, and had an unerring knack of tracking down any lost thing—whether it be friend or foe.

  Dicky had grown to love his friend and mentor, Matthew Wilcox, and he adored Matthew’s family as well. He had truly suffered when Matthew’s wife, Iris, was murdered. When he first saw Marshal Wilcox’ arrest warrant, he had turned red as a beet and his brown eyes blazed as hot as coals. “I’ll be damned if he di…di…did!”

  Roy hadn’t heard that stutter in years, which just went to show how upset and appalled Dicky was. Now, looking down at his deputy, Roy said. “We will go to Walla Walla. I have no way of knowing if Matthew’s still there but that’s where our trails leads, so we have to follow it.”

  Two days later, once Roy brought in some replacements and made sure that the town of Granville was safe during his absence, he and Dicky boarded a train to Walla Walla, Washington.

  Chapter 17

  Arrested!

  Matthew could see the stockyards on the outskirts of Walla Walla, Washington in the near distance. Finally, I’ve made it! he thought, with a rueful smile. After running into Dr. Talbot and finding the one real clue he needed in his search for Iris’ killer, he had decided to backtrack to Patty’s place.

  Although the doctor seemed stout enough, Matthew couldn’t abide the thought of him having to walk the seventeen miles to the pig farm (dragging a spooky donkey), when the two of them could take turns riding Lincoln. Not only did he feel the need to repay the doctor’s kindness, Matthew wanted to make sure Patty was still okay and getting the best possible care for her injury.

  The two men had made good time and after installing Talbot in Patty’s guest room, and hugging her goodbye once more, Matthew left again. It was quite late in the day when he rode into town, more like evening than afternoon. Matthew was weary and in need of a bath and a good night’s sleep so he found a hotel and ordered a bath tub brought up to his room.

  Matthew inspected himself in the mirror and he didn’t like what he saw. His hair was clear down to his shoulders and his gray-speckled beard was wild and overgrown. There were shadows under his eyes and he had apparently, lost weight. He glared at his own gaunt reflection. I need to take better care of myself, he thought. I still have a long way to go, tracking down Iris’s murderer and once I do, I need to be strong—not skinny as an old wolf and weak with nerves and lack of sleep.

  He took a long bath, shaved his beard off and donned clean clothes. Then, he went downstairs and, after dropping off his dirty clothes to be laundered, sat down in the hotel’s restaurant for dinner.

  He finished his meal and made his way slowly upstairs to his bed. Then, he slept over nine hours—a fact that truly amazed him when he awoke the following morning. Always a somewhat restless sleeper, Matthew understood that he must have been weary to the bone. Since he was just a boy, the marshal had slept with one ear listening and one eye open. The devastating events of his youth had forced him into a life-long state of hyper-vigilance.

  Last night though, his body had said, “Enough!” Shaking his head, and realizing that he felt better than he had in months, Matthew looked up when there was a
light tap at the door.

  When he opened it, Matthew saw a brown, paper-wrapped parcel on the floor. Good… he thought, my clean clothes. Taking the parcel back into his room, Matthew nodded in satisfaction. His tattered, dress shirt was white again and sweet smelling. His wool pants had been mended and his socks were clean as well, and rolled into small bundles.

  Getting dressed was a pleasure and he took some care in brushing the dust and dirt off his boots and hat. Finally, because he was going to the prison under the auspices of the state marshal’s service, Matthew spit on his star and rubbed it into a shine before pinning it on the lapel of his coat. Finally, he headed downstairs for breakfast.

  Looking out the window, he saw that snow was falling and Matthew realized, with a start, that was December 14th. His momentary sense of well-being diminished as he recalled Iris’ joy at Christmas-time. She had made a habit of sending him and Chance out every year to find the best Christmas tree, and she spent hours decorating the house and even the barn in boughs of holly and wreaths of evergreens.

  She would spend months ordering the best presents she could find for her friends and family and the kitchen was always filled with the warm smell of Yule cakes, venison pie, and mince, warm apple cider and fig pudding. She embraced her husband and children with all the joy in her heart, and made a point of filling her home with any orphans she could find over the holidays.

  Iris and the other members of her church choir would ride a sleigh from farm to farm distributing small gifts and food baskets to the poorer citizens around the Granville area, and singing Christmas carols. He remembered seeing her run up to him in excitement one day, her cheeks pink from the chilly air, her large brown eyes bright with laughter and her lips… as warm and sweet as honey when he bent his head and kissed her…

  As Matthew stood, still as a statue and lost in his own memories, he didn’t see the two sets of calculating eyes that moved from him to the arrest warrant on the table they shared. One man was the prison warden and the other, a Walla Walla city deputy. This particular deputy met with the warden once every week to go over the latest warrants issued in the state of Washington.

  It behooved the warden to know who the latest outlaws were, how much danger they posed to the general population of his prison and when he might expect them to darken his doorway. This latest batch of warrants were nothing out of the ordinary—except for one… a state marshal, named Matthew Wilcox.

  They were, frankly, amazed that the man was standing right in front of them where the chill, white light from the window illuminated his handsome face like a beacon. Matthew Wilcox didn’t look or act, like a criminal. In fact, he seemed to be completely oblivious to anything but his own, dark thoughts. The proof was right there, though, in black and white on the pile of arrest warrants, and the deputy slowly reached down to unsnap the pistol in his holster.

  He was of the mind to take the marshal in, right this minute, but the warden (older and wiser than his companion) put a hand out and shook his head whispering, “No, Smitty… not here! There are too many people!”

  Deputy Wynn Smith looked around and couldn’t help but agree. The dining room was filled with customers, and the warrant said, in bold letters, that this marshal was considered Highly Dangerous! The last thing he wanted to do was get into a gun-battle, with the hard-looking man… especially in a crowded place like this!

  “What should we do?” he asked.

  The warden, whose name was Samuel Albright, said, “There is a telephone at the concierge desk. Let me go and make a call. I’ll have this place surrounded in no time. We can take him out on the street.” He stood up, just as Matthew took a step away from the window and headed into the restaurant.

  The deputy watched as the marshal tipped his hat to the warden, and then sat down at a nearby table. That man has a set of cajones, he thought and then realized that he must have been staring when Matthew Wilcox caught his eye and smiled. “Good morning, can I help you?”

  Smitty started and said, “Excuse me! No sir… you just looked familiar to me for a minute, but I see I was mistaken.”

  The marshal gazed into his eyes for a moment and then said, “Well, have a nice day, Deputy.” Then he turned to the busy waiter who had just come to his table with an order pad in his hand.

  Smitty turned away, shaking with delayed nerves. That is one cool customer! he thought with resentment. The warrant said that Wilcox was a rapist and a murderer, but he was just sitting there—as big as you please! There was a special burden the lawmen in Walla Walla carried, and that was dealing, off and on, with some of the worst scum in the whole state.

  The one thing they all had in common, the deputy mused, was their absolute disrespect of the law and total disregard for the men who enforced it. Just looking into Wilcox’ cold, green eyes made his blood turn to jelly and his trigger-finger itch!

  The warden returned then and said, “Well, Deputy, shall we go?”

  Smitty nodded and stood up from the table. Catching Matthew’s eye once more, the deputy tipped his hat, and gave a slight wink of scorn. The marshal blinked in surprise but looked toward the waiter who had just arrived with his breakfast.

  Matthew wondered what that was about but he was so hungry, he fell to his eggs and ham with gusto and forgot all about the deputy’s strange gesture. Watching through the frosty windows as the deputy and the older gentleman spoke to another deputy out on the street, Matthew didn’t see the five other lawmen who were taking positions up and down the busy thoroughfare.

  It wasn’t until later, after he had finished his meal, grabbed his bags and paid his hotel bill that Matthew understood the deputy’s sardonic wink. He had just stepped out onto the boardwalk in front of the hotel with his bag in one hand and a few dollars in the other (for the stable man who had housed his horse overnight), when he heard a man shout, “Matthew Wilcox, we have you surrounded! Drop your gun belt and put your hands in the air. You are under arrest!”

  Chapter 18

  Behind Bars

  Four days had passed since Matthew was arrested. After he dropped his gun-belt and put his hands in the air, the deputies who surrounded him kicked him in the back of his knees, dropping him onto the street’s cobblestones. Additional boots stepped on his back then, hard-pinning him to the ground, as rough and inquisitive hands frisked his body for additional weapons.

  Finally, after cuffing his hands together behind his back, Matthew was hauled upright. He stood facing a crowd of curious by-standers, some of whom stared into his eyes with the feral demeanor of hungry coyotes as gigantic snowflakes drifted from low clouds like elaborate, lace doilies.

  The sheriff, a rotund man of middle years, announced in a loud and somewhat pompous voice that Matthew was wanted for the rape and murder of Hildy Hanson and the cold-blooded killing of Miles Atkinson and four of his hired hands. Matthew felt like protesting his innocence, but he knew that officers were known, sometimes, to use an outlaw’s verbal proclamations as fodder; twisting the crook’s words into a rope—until a braid of lies and half-truths was long enough to use as a noose.

  Matthew allowed himself to be marched down the middle of the street toward the jailhouse. A crowd of citizens, all of whom seemed to think that this public arrest was an excuse for a party parade, accompanied Marshal Wilcox and his arresting officers. Even as he was pushed and prodded by the over-zealous lawmen, Matthew thought about whom to contact, once the dust settled and he was firmly ensconced behind bars. And he wondered, am I being set up… and, if so, by whom?

  Should he reach out to Patty, or… had she been the one who let her grief turn sour with anger and hatred? Some people could not settle their losses until justice balanced the scales, whether the scales tipped fairly—or not. Still, and Matthew shook his head in a swirl of confusion, he had just talked to her yesterday afternoon. She was weary with pain and sorrow, but she had seemed genuinely happy to see him, again.

  She was also badly, wounded. The bullet might have been a clean through and
through… but it was still a serious injury, which would take time to heal. This meant that even if she was on his side, getting her in to town to testify on his behalf might be out of the question.

  Did the laconic sheriff out of Victory, Washington turn the table on him? If so, Matthew figured he must really be off in his appraisal of people, for he would have sworn on a stack of bibles that the lawman was on the up and up. Or—and this seemed the most likely explanation—someone with a grudge and a lot of power and (more importantly) money, from Atkinson’s camp had come forward and sworn false testimony against him.

  I could call Roy, he thought, but discounted that notion as well. Roy had better things to do than chase after a missing Marshal. Besides, he really didn’t want his old friend to take his eyes off the town of Granville and, more importantly, his son Chance and his daughter, Abby.

  Maybe I could call on Marshal Adams… Matthew thought. He knew that his boss was upset with him for leaving his duties without forewarning, but he also felt he could depend on his old boss as a character witness, if nothing else.

  The crowd that followed them suddenly turned ugly as Matthew heard the words, “Rapist! That man should hang, right here and right now!”

  The town sheriff, Bill McCrady, called out, “You all just hold yer horses! This man will be tried by a jury of his peers!”

  “Screw that Sheriff! I heard he’s a US Marshal… the way it goes around here is, he’ll get let off with a slap on the wrist, and you know it!” A short man with an outlandish handlebar mustache stood closest to the deputies surrounding Matthew. His close-set eyes simmered with anger, and Matthew noticed that he held a small notepad in his hands. Something in this town’s past had raised the journalist’s ire and the little man was using Matthew’s arrest to fuel some sort of personal agenda.

  Still, it was unprofessional conduct and served to fan the flames of the unruly mass of people around them. The unbiased press! Matthew thought in disgust, and then ducked as some sort of missile sailed past his head and landed with a splat on the hat of one of the deputies who clutched his left arm.