Firefly (57 page)

"I would like to have my rifle back now," he asked the temporary deputy.

"Leavin' so soon?"

"I must get back to my farm," Hans answered, bracing himself for a sarcastic reply.

"Me, I wouldn't miss this fer nuthin'," Lucas drawled.  He sorted through the weapons stacked against the wall behind him and found the battered Winchester Hans had duly checked earlier.  "Ain't been nuthin' this excitin' since Walt Noomer kilt his old man back in '79.  Plenty o' eyewitnesses that time; trial lasted damn near two weeks."

But Hans didn't wait around to hear that last sentence, nor the questions about the infamous Noomer trial that young Jenkins began to fire at Lucas.  Hans was already out the door and standing on the sun-blasted porch.

He thanked God for that ungodly sun.  Carter and the blacksmith's apprentice should by rights have been stationed outside, but the west-facing porch was an inferno once the sun passed its zenith.  That as much as the threat of a riot in the courtroom had brought them indoors.  Hans took a handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiped it across his forehead.

He scanned the single street, and saw no sign of life.  There were sounds coming from the Castle, but not a single living creature ventured out in the sun.  He regretted leaving his horse and wagon at the livery, but there was no time now for such thoughts.  Pushing that and a few others out of his mind, Hans descended the steps and walked around the corner of the hotel into the alley.  Here there was some shade at least, but with no breeze to stir the sultry air, he felt no relief.  That would come later.  He had no intention of remaining very long in the alley anyway.

*   *   *

"
Ja
, he iss a very good horse," the gnarled Swede agreed with Thaddeus Burton when the big man had paid the bill and taken possession of his strawberry roan again.  "I had one man offer me three hundred dollars for him, and almost I took it, but Dr. Morgan he tell me to keep horse for you."

Burton patted the animal's shoulder affectionately.

"Berry 'n' me's been through a lot, ain't we, old boy.  Looks like you took good care of him for me, too.  I figger that's worth at least fifty bucks to me."

Gus's old eyes brightened and his well-wrinkled face split with a wide, toothless grin.

"
Ja
, I figger so, too!" he laughed.

"Now, I'd be happy to take him off your hands right now, but I heard from the boy down at the depot that the Doc's in some kind o' trouble.  You got any idea what's going' on? I can't b'lieve Doc Morgan'd do anything to anybody."

Gus rubbed his chin.

"No, it don't seem right.  He iss a good man, yust like your horse."

"Then what're they sayin' he done?"

"That fella who works at the telegraph, you know, with the daughter that's the doctor's nurse?  Well, that fella, he says the doctor raped the daughter."

"Miss Julie?  No, you gotta be kiddin' me.  He wouldn't do nothin' like that, not to her."

He paused a moment, letting the severity of the situation sink in, for Gus quite plainly was not kidding.

"Okay, look.  You keep Berry here for me for a while longer." Burton slid a well cared for rifle from the scabbard on the saddle that hadn't been cinched tightly yet.  He took one look at the weapon and grinned again.  "I see you took care of more'n just my horse."

Gus shrugged.  "No sense letting it get ruined."

Burton laughed out loud and dug a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket.  When he flipped it, Gus stretched out a leathery hand and caught the coin easily.

"Thanks," Burton then said quietly.  "I may just need this little popgun.  Now, tell me where I kin find this kangaroo court."

*   *   *

Julie's lunch sat like a lump of misery in her stomach.  She had eaten it mechanically because she was famished and because she could not bear the stares of her father and of Hans through the meal, but she felt no better for it.  Katharine, she had noticed, seemed to feel the same way.

The only bright spot of the afternoon, if it could be called that, was that she no longer had Hans behind her.  She had no idea where he was, and though that worried her, she knew he could not harm anyone in the courtroom.  Lucas and Skip, the latter recovered completely from his horseshoe branding, kept a tight guard over all the firearms.  Only Ted Phillips and the deputies themselves wore guns.

Morgan himself seemed little concerned.  He held that same bundle of little pieces of paper as he walked slowly toward Wilhelm.  Julie wasted no time wondering what might be written on those notes; she could only pray this whole drama played itself out quickly and that there were no encores.

"If I may," Morgan began, addressing the entire court, not just Wilhelm, "I'd like to answer the question Judge Booth posed just before lunch.  I think he'll agree that this whole thing has come down to a matter of which witness is going to be believed.  Truth, unfortunately, is not going to make much difference.  Since both Mr. Hollstrom and I have said rather opposite things, one of us must, apparently, be lying.  He, and his daughter before him, were sworn to tell the truth, but that doesn't mean a tinker's dam if you don't believe them."

He riffled the papers in his hand slowly and stared at them for a moment or two.  The courtroom lapsed into anxious silence, disturbed only by the fluttering of fans and the rustle of drapes at the open windows where a slight breeze had finally come up.

"Mr. Hollstrom, you told the court this morning that you had made a deal with Hans Wallenmund regarding a financial settlement in exchange for your daughter marrying Hans.  I've already told you that Mr. Wallenmund had nothing to offer you.  Perhaps he misrepresented himself, perhaps he didn't, but that is not an issue today.  What is important, however, is your end of the bargain.  You did say that you agreed to give him cash as a dowry for your daughter, correct?"

"I did.  This is customary."

Morgan expected an outburst to follow, but Hollstrom seemed confused, or afraid, and so the physician went on quickly, before his accuser had time to think.

"And just where did you plan to get the money, Mr. Hollstrom?  It seems you don't even have enough to pay the local merchants.  Or did you plan to stall them until you could get enough money from your investment in Mr. Wallenmund's farm?"

Wilhelm's face turned an angry red, and the way he gripped the arms of the chair was enough to make Ted Phillips lower his hand a few inches toward the Colt revolver on his hip.

"I do not know what you are talking about," Wilhelm said in a voice quaking with fury.

"I am talking about these," Morgan answered, waving the fistful of papers.  "When Simon McCrory mentioned to me that you had a sizeable account at his store, I wondered if you owed anyone else in Plato.  I found out that you did."

One by one he laid the slips on the table in front of the judge, who could see that each was written in a different hand and signed by the proprietors of nearly every retail business in Plato.

"To Ezra Farnum you owe eight dollars and forty cents.  To Gus's livery, five dollars even.  To Taft's Butcher Shop, six dollars twenty-five cents.  To McCrory's General Store, forty-two dollars and eighty-seven cents, and you haven't even paid them for the dress material Julie bought and which she then repaid you for.  In fact, Mr. Hollstrom, you never paid for the telegram to bring the judge here."

Booth resorted to the gavel once more, but the crowd was more interested in hearing what else Morgan had to say, and what explanation Hollstrom would come up with.  Silence returned almost instantly.

But Hollstrom said nothing.

"You're a miser, aren't you?" Morgan accused quietly.  "You never part with a cent.  You didn't leave Minnesota because of your daughter's reputation; you left because you owed everybody money.  That's why you embezzled from the bank in Rinton, Indiana."  It was a guess, a wild yet calculated guess, but when Wilhelm's face went from red to purple and he made no reply, Morgan knew he had hit upon the truth.  Even a denial at this point would be too incriminating.

"Thank you, Mr. Hollstrom, I have no other questions."

"But you don't understand!"  Wilhelm wailed as Morgan turned his back to walk away.  "I had no choice."

"No choice?" Morgan echoed.  He spun on the balls of his feet and glared once more at the man he hated so much he could almost wish to kill him.  "You were ready to sell your daughter!  You would have sent me to prison, or worse, just so she would marry the man who had promised you part of his fortune.  Ha!  Both of you trying to defraud the other.  How appropriate, how
just
, except that she got caught in the middle."

Every eye, every ear, was trained on Morgan.  He had their complete attention.  Realizing somehow that his acquittal was practically guaranteed, Julie let the tears that welled up in her eyes overflow.

Perhaps it was a trick of the light filtered through those tears that made her notice the shadow at the window.  Or perhaps when she raised her hand to wipe them away she turned just enough and caught sight of the gun barrel resting on the windowsill.  She never had enough time to wonder what brought that horrible image into her line of vision; she only had time to react.

She screamed and leaped from her chair, ignoring Katharine's hand on her arm to restrain her.  Julie could not even think of a coherent warning, knew only that she had to draw someone's attention to the man at the window who leveled the barrel of his rifle on the sill.

"Julie, for God's sake--" Morgan gasped, and if he said any more, it was lost in the explosion of the gun.

Other women screamed as a second shot, more distant, echoed through the room, but Julie heard nothing at all.  Deafened by her own cry, she now saw only one man, and the red that stained the front of his faded blue shirt.

Pandemonium reigned all around them.  Ted Phillips shouted orders above the general hysteria.

"Nobody leaves this here courtroom!" the marshal bellowed, brandishing his revolver.  Then, calling to his deputies, "Lucas, you see nobody gets out, hear?  Skip, get out there and find out who the hell was in that alley.  Where in tarnation is Clark?"

A ruddy-faced man in white shirt and grey trousers held up with plaid suspenders pushed his way to the front of the crowd.

"I'm here, Marshal.  What can I do?"

"Go get a room ready for Del," Phillips ordered the owner of the Olympia House.  "And find some...some stuff to make bandages out of, I guess."

He looked at Julie, who had helped Morgan, despite his protests, to the nearest chair, the one she herself had left.

"It's only a flesh wound," he was telling her.

She had already torn the sleeve off to reveal the single jagged wound from which bright blood gushed in a steady river down his arm.  Remembering the night Thaddeus Burton had been brought to the surgery, she quickly wrapped the bloody cloth around Del's arm just above the wound and tied it as tightly as she could.  She had to keep him from bleeding to death first.

"The...the bullet didn't come out," she stammered, her teeth chattering even though sweat dripped down her forehead and into her eyes, to mix with the tears that wouldn't stop.  "I...I've got to...to get it out."

Clark Garroway had run from the room and now returned with a chambermaid and an armload of hotel towels.  The girl immediately dropped the towels and fled, her face pale, but Julie paid her no attention.  She grabbed a towel and began to clean away as much of the blood as she could.