Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) (26 page)

Chapter 35

“H
OW COULD YOU,
F
ATHER?”
H
ANNAH
R
ANSDELL SOBBED.

“I told you, I
didn't
,” her father insisted firmly. “If Mr. Olson did as you have said, he
had
to be acting alone.”

“Why?” Hannah demanded. “Why did he act alone? Why did he act
at all
? What did
he
have to gain? It was
you
who benefitted from . . .”

Hannah's tirade was interrupted by the front door of the bank swinging wide.

“You should remember to lock your door at night,” Virgil Stocker said as he entered the room with four other men.

Hannah stared in astonishment. Bladen Cole had been disarmed, and Edward J. Olson was pointing the bounty hunter's gun around the room.

“What's going on?” Hannah demanded, looking at Cole.

“They will want you to believe that this is going to be a bank holdup,” Cole said. “But it's really a continuation of what started at the Blaine house . . .”

“Shut up!” Olson demanded angrily.

“Actually, I'm sad to say that he's right,” Stocker said, looking at Ransdell.

“Virgil, can you
please
tell me what is going on here?” Isham Ransdell said. “This cannot be happening . . . This is
madness
.”

“Mr. Cole here has developed a fantastic theory, which is very nearly spot-on,” Stocker said, pacing the floor dramatically. The tall attorney, with years of courtroom experience, was skilled at the art of dominating a room with his presence. “He has deduced that the four of us owned land with the right of inheritance flowing to surviving partners . . . and that the purpose of the unfortunate shootings was to get that inheritance flowing to
you
.”

“You can't be saying . . .” Ransdell sputtered.

“I'm afraid so,” Stocker interrupted, feigning sadness. “The three of you . . . Blaine, Phillips, and
yourself
 . . . were supposed to die that night. Because I was injured, and you were
not there
 . . . and finally because
your
man Olson served as my intermediary with the Porter boys, Mr. Cole deduced that the guilt lay with
you
, not me, between the two of us who survived.”

“I can't believe this,” the banker said angrily. “Are you now intending to kill
me
?”

“Unfortunately, I must admit that tonight, your time has come,” Stocker said, dramatically waving his hand. As a lawyer, he loved to pontificate with a theatrical flourish. “I had intended for your death to occur earlier this evening at the Gallatin House, in front of a room full of witnesses, but alas, poor Widow Blaine sucked down the oysters which were poisoned for
you
.”

“You killed her
too
?” Ransdell said in disbelief.

“If it is any consolation, neither she nor Mrs. Phillips were
supposed
to die as part of this plan,” Stocker said with a shrug. “Things just got a little out of hand.”

“You weren't
supposed
to die either, missy,” Olson said, smiling at Hannah.

“What are you going to do with us?” she demanded.

“As Mr. Cole has said, there is going to be a stickup tonight,” Olson explained. “He has decided to take the opportunity of the bank vault being opened to pay his bounty . . . to well, empty that vault of cash, and disappear into the darkness.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Cole will murder the banker and his daughter in the process,” Stocker interjected. “But,
fortunately
, the quick-thinking Mr. Olson will save the day . . . or the night, if you will . . . by killing this bounty hunter–turned–bank robber.”

“What happens to us?” Jimmy Goode asked.

“Shot in the cross-fire, of course,” Stocker said with a dismissive wave of his thespian hand.

“I'll be damned if I'll be a sitting duck,” Goode shouted, bolting for the door.

“
Stop!
” Olson demanded, impulsively firing a shot into the darkness through the open door.

Even as he was feeling the buck of the .45 in his hand, Olson felt the body slam of Bladen Cole, jumping him from behind. The bounty hunter picked the moment of his distraction to send him crashing to the floor.

Virgil Stocker, meanwhile, took this same moment of distraction to do what he had come to do. Taking out his own gun, he aimed not at the bounty hunter, but at his former partner.

The wiry man with a narrow string tie and white sideburns looked back at the man with the scarred face, with whom he had dined as a friend that very evening.

Through Isham Ransdell's mind had run the humiliation of having lost the trust and respect of his only child, and
now
he was about to lose his
life
to an erstwhile friend who now eyed him over the top of a Smith & Wesson Model 3 with a businesslike “no hard feelings” expression on his face.

As Isham Ransdell stared into that scarred face, Virgil Stocker's head suddenly jerked sideways with a violent twist.

Isham looked then at his daughter and at the derringer in her hand.

*   *   *

B
LADEN
C
OLE'S GUN SLIPPED FROM
O
LSON'S GRIP AS HE
fell to the floor. It bounced and cartwheeled across the polished surface, with both Cole and Gideon Porter scrambling after it.

Its trajectory had sent it flying toward Porter, practically as though fate wished to hand it to him.

He grabbed it, pulling it away from Cole's grasp by a mere split second.

Porter raised the gun and was working his forefinger into the trigger guard, when a sudden blast sent him toppling backward.

Bladen Cole looked up at Hannah Ransdell and at the derringer in her hand.

Epilogue

N
OBODY, NOT EVEN
J
IMMY
G
OODE HIMSELF, KNEW WHY
he had chosen to run to find the acting sheriff at the undertaker's office instead of hightailing it to parts unknown.

Some said it was because he was the witless oaf who had
always
been called “good-for-nothing Jimmy Goode” and wouldn't have known where to
find
parts unknown.

Some said that it was because he was tired of living in the turbulent shadow of Gideon Porter and would do anything to get that terrible monster off his back.

Still others theorized that he was so exhausted, so spent, and so wasted by the experience of the previous weeks that he just could not go on.

Marcus Johnson, meanwhile, had heard the shots before Jimmy Goode found him, and had arrived at the Gallatin City Bank and Trust in time to hear the dying admissions of Virgil Stocker. The attorney had told the whole story as his onetime friend, Isham Ransdell, knelt over him, staring in disbelief. He told it in the form of an apology, and there were tears in his eyes when he took his last breath.

Those who were there interpreted his words as expressing not an apology for his terrible scheme, but only his sorrow that it had failed.

The only thing in Gideon Porter's eyes when he took
his
last breath was the reflection of an angry woman with an over-and-under Remington in her gloved hand.

Nobody shed a tear when the Porter boys were buried in a single unmarked grave. Their mother having long since died of a broken heart, there was not a soul in Gallatin City who would ever miss them.

Edward J. Olson was tried and convicted in the space of two days and was taken to the county seat to await the hangman.

Jimmy Goode got twenty years for his part in the whole affair. He might have gotten the noose, such was the mood of the jury pool in Gallatin City, but he did not.

Some say that his neck was saved by folks feeling pity for his limp and useless hand. Some say that it was because of his having gone for the sheriff that night.

Still others insist that it was because he was the witless oaf who had always been called “good-for-nothing” Jimmy Goode, and therefore, nobody ever took him seriously.

*   *   *

H
ANNAH
R
ANSDELL WALKED DOWN
M
AIN
S
TREET, BOUND
for the post office.

The snow had piled up considerably over the past few weeks, and she had to maneuver through the narrow paths that had been shoveled.

During those weeks, she had also been maneuvering through the narrow path of her relationship with her father. Saving his life had gone a long way toward rebuilding the relationship they once had, but only time would heal
all
the wounds inflicted by the penetrating distrust she had expressed that terrible night, if indeed they
ever
healed.

For Isham Ransdell, the memory of having a man considered to be a friend betray him so horrifically was a nightmare. Yet this nightmare was a mere trifle when compared to his having seen his own daughter, his little girl, say and—worse still—
believe
those things about him.

It was enough to make him yearn to have been one of those cold bodies on the floor of the parlor at the Blaine home on that
other
terrible night.

With the railroad coming, and him the sole surviving partner, he would sooner rather than later be a very, very rich man, but he would have gladly traded it all for a chance to sit down just once more with John Blaine and Dawson Phillips, or to have his relationship with his daughter back.

Stepping through the snow, Hannah passed the Gallatin House and the Gallatin City General Mercantile, the place that was still referred to as Mr. Blaine's store. She had been back to the Mercantile, long since stripped of the funereal black bunting, but she had not had an occasion to set foot in the Gallatin House since she had come back from her sojourn to Sixteen Mile Creek. She passed the building that once had held Virgil Stocker's second-story law office. Workers were carrying furniture out to load it on a wagon. She wondered who would be moving in.

She passed the intersection of Main Street and Cottonwood where she had parted company with Bladen Cole for the last time.

He had lingered in Gallatin City for a few days after collecting his reward money. They had spent some time together, and these were hours in which her heart had soared. She had finally indulged her secret desire to touch his black whiskers, and her secret passion to taste his lips. Even now, her mind returned often and happily to the memories of that time.

But they had parted. It was in his nature to be on the move, not staying long in any one place.

For a brief and fiery moment, born out of feelings kindled on that night on the hilltop near the mouth of Sixteen Mile Creek, she had imagined that same wanderlust to be in
her nature
as well. She had made up her mind that when Bladen Cole moved on, when he rode out toward far horizons on the roan, she and Hestia would be at their side.

She had decided that she would not
ask
, but that she would simply
tell
him: “Mr. Cole, you may ride anywhere you like, but you will
not
ride alone.” In her replaying of this in her daydreams, he had replied with many diverse comments, but he had
never
said no.

If this fire for the vagabond life had been in her nature, as indeed it
may
have been, it was extinguished by her father's tears, when she finally took back all that she had said to him that night, and when he had tearfully taken her in his arms.

She had never, ever before, or ever since, seen him cry.

No, her place was
not
beyond the far horizon.

As she thought about it later, she realized that the bounty hunter also recognized this, and with more sadness than he would admit to. They were each bound by their nature. Just as he knew that he must go on, he knew that she was bound to stay. She was still part of the world she had known before all of this happened.

When he said good-bye, she did not tell him that he would not ride alone. Nor did she ask where he was headed.

That night, her pillow grew soggy from her tears, a wetness she longed to be transformed into the sweat of his passion mixed with her own, but she awoke knowing that she was where she needed to be.

Hannah reached the post office, chatting briefly with a few of the regulars as she waited in the short line. As menial as it was, there was something comforting about the post office routine. It was
so
unlike the uncertainty and
wild exhilaration
of life on the trail.

When she returned to the bank, her father was in a good mood, which was gradually becoming more and more common as time went on. Time was, indeed, beginning its healing process.

As she was taking off her coat, he made an offhand comment about her being his “right-hand girl.”

She froze for a moment with a lump in her throat. He had no idea of how she perceived the irony of this characterization, but that did not matter. It mattered only that he had articulated it, and this made her happier than almost anything he might have said at that moment.

Wounds would heal. She
now
knew this.

Hannah went to her desk and was sorting the mail when out dropped a letter hand-addressed to “Miss Hannah Ransdell, in care of the Gallatin City Bank and Trust Company.”

It was postmarked Denver, and the return address was headed with the name, “Mr. Dawson Phillips, Jr.”