Lone Star 05 (5 page)

“This town is not to our liking,” he said to Jessie. “And it will not like us. It is a feeling deep inside me. As your father used to say, trouble is brewing.”

Jessie had to smile, despite Ki's gravity. To hear him repeat Alex Starbuck's very American language, and capture the dead man's tone and manner, made her again realize how close the two, Ki and her father, had been. But her amusement was short-lived. She did not doubt Ki's warning; she had come to trust his instincts implicitly.

The town itself looked harmless enough, giving no hint of danger. It was a rude, ramshackle assembly of false-fronted buildings of sawed lumber along the wide main street, with smaller structures strung out here and there on several rutted side streets that crisscrossed haphazardly. It did not possess the staid symmetry of Salt Lake City, the Latter-Day Saint capital, or even the more businesslike setup of Provo.

Jessie counted no more than three dozen buildings altogether, many of these crude homes, the rest for commercial, religious, and civil purposes. Few people were on the streets, and fewer horses and wagons. Altogether, Skyler added up to a rather forlorn, dilapidated town—and she wondered what held it together.

The pair kept their horses closely reined as they rode side by side, looking for the local jailhouse. To those townspeople who were out, they looked to be the strangest strangers who had ridden by in a long while. Jessie in her denim jeans that hugged her shapely legs, atop the big gray, was a sight never beheld and probably never imagined by the men in these parts. And Ki, who elicited stares and whispers wherever he went, his long black hair hanging down to his shoulders, sat easily erect in his saddle, looking straight ahead.

They found no building bearing the designation they sought, and turned back to the stone courthouse, where they secured their mounts and went inside.

A sullen young man behind a tilting desk inside the house of justice told them that prisoners were kept downstairs in the cellar, the most secure area in the building. He then asked them what their business might be.

“We're here to visit the prisoner named Thomas Starbuck,” Jessie said.

“And who are you?” the young man asked, his lips curling. He peered at them through small, black, close-set eyes.

“My name is Jessica Starbuck, and this is Ki. Word has it that the prisoner may be related to me. As possible next of kin, I certainly have the right to speak to him.”

“Sure is a popular fellow, that Starbuck kid,” the young man muttered. “Never had so many people asking after a prisoner before.”

“What people?” queried Jessie.

“Oh, people from all over the place. Including one U.S. marshal man,” he sneered. “And one funny-talking gent with money—wanted to pay me. Then them bounty hunters, along with two more—folks say they're detectives. Don't like the looks of it, all the questions. Who is the kid anyway but some murderer—that's what I hear. And tried to rob a place here in town. We'll likely be stringing him up afore long anyhow.”

“I don't have time to waste here with you,” Jessie said, her temper rising. Already she sensed there was more trouble here than she had bargained for. But she was growing impatient. “Just summon the law, boy, and I'll deal with him.”

The young man shuffled away like a kicked cur and returned a moment later with a squat, big-bellied man. A drooping mustache hid his lips, but not his many chins. His grease-stained cotton shirt sported a tarnished brass star. He appeared to be the local marshal.

“I'm the law here, young missy. What can I do for you?” His thumbs hooked inside his belt, he shot a glance around Jessie at Ki, indicating bewilderment and distrust at what he saw. Clearly, he was a man not used to disturbance of his quiet routine.

Jessie repeated her request to the marshal. He claimed he'd never received her telegraph message. She pressed him.

“Well...I don't know,” the lawman allowed. “People around claiming all sorts of things concerning this Starbuck boy. Relatives coming out of the woodwork, federal marshals and manhunters. Don't know as why the young killer ought not to be kept locked away from everybody. Including so-called kin.” He narrowed his brown eyes suspiciously. “You say you're related to him. Got any proof of that, missy?”

She sighed in exasperation. Damn these petty star-toters and their pretensions. “I can't know anything for sure until I speak with him, Marshal. And I don't have any proof of who I am. What about you? Can you prove who
you
are?”

The rotund lawman's eyes went blank. He didn't know what to make of this pretty girl with the fiery hair and the queer Chinaman behind her who hadn't spoken a word. He scratched at his chin with dirty fingernails and then said, “Look here, if anyone is to ask questions, it'll be me.” His barrel chest puffed out. “Now let's just say your request is denied—until I know who you are and what you want. Like I say, too many folks sniffing around this here courthouse as it is, and I don't like it.”

With that he turned and went back to his office, his pants hanging low on his fat behind and dragging over his boots.

Jessie said, “Let's get out of here, Ki.” And without a glance at the mean-looking young man who smiled smugly at her, she strode outside. She was fuming, angry at herself for being bested by a small-minded marshal, and angry at the boy who sat in that jail cell and was complicating her life.

She and Ki, after boarding their animals and seeing that they'd be fed and cared for, went to the Skyler Inn and Hostelry, where they took rooms and washed up. In her quarters, Jessie brushed her hair and took stock of the situation. It wasn‘t, as Ki had warned her, to her liking.

In a sense, the stubborn marshal had been right. What proof did she have that she was related to Thomas Starbuck? Or that she had any business at all with him? What irked her most was the marshal's and the sullen deputy's statements that there were a number of people in town with an interest in the prisoner. How was that possible? And who could they be? Then, remembering Elkin's recounting of the kid's many crimes—the number of people he had robbed and killed—she resigned herself to the probability of competition.

She scrubbed her face at the washbasin to cleanse away the trail grit and fatigue, and toweled it dry. In the yellowed, cracked mirror above the bureau she saw the healthy bloom return to her cheeks. She then brushed her hair again with vigorous strokes, and it came back to life in a coppery luster. A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts as she buttoned up her blouse.

“Who is it?” she called, lifting her pistol off the bed and standing away from the door. This was a practice of long standing, after a trail of surprises had taught her to be prepared for anything.

“Scott,” came back a low, gravelly voice. “Deputy U.S. Marshal Ulysses Scott. I'd appreciate a word with you, Miss Starbuck.”

Jessie opened the door and admitted a tall, silver-haired man who carried a battered Stetson in his large brown hands. He was armed with a pair of holstered Colt Peacemakers strapped securely over his black pants, and as he stepped in, his big roweled Mexican spurs tinkled softly. They were the only adornments he wore; otherwise he had the look of a plain, tall boot.

He showed her his badge and she put down the gun and shook his hand, feeling the strength there.

“Good to meet you,” she said. “What can I do for you, Marshal Scott?”

The man's long face was drawn and deeply lined. The creases spoke of many skirmishes in a long war against crime that he had somehow survived. His blue eyes were clear and open. And he stood slightly stooped, his long legs set well apart. “Hate to bother you like this, ma‘am,” he drawled. “But I hear that you've been asking about that there boy locked up in the jail. And your name being the same as his, I figured you might be a blood relative and could tell me about him. My job, ma'am, is to keep him alive and away from a hanging tree until he can be brung to a trial. Where at, I don't know; but when my boss wires me where to take him, I mean to ride out. Don't look forward to it.”

Scott spoke slowly and evenly, and he worked the hat around in his callused hands as if he wanted to crush it to death. Jessie could see that he was uncomfortable being in a woman's room. Yet she sensed that he would not harm her in the least. In fact, she liked the lawman's shy, shambling manner.

“There's all sorts of people want to claim the boy's hide, ‘cause there's all sorts of rewards,” Scott said. “By some accounts, the bounties add up to over four thousand dollars. A pretty hefty sum.”

Jessie agreed. “So who are these people?”

Scott explained. One Nevada bank had sent a pair of private detectives; their names were Hodges and Monkston. They weren't too discreet, but they hadn't caused any trouble yet. The marshal had counted three bounty hunters—named Fagan, McKittrick, and Hill. They had all ridden to Skyler separately, but now were rooming together at a cheap hotel. The first two had “hardcase” stamped all over them, but young Hill was different, didn't seem to belong with the others. And there was a smooth-talking foreign man who was throwing around a lot of money and powwowing with the local leaders to persuade them to turn the prisoner over to him.

This last man especially piqued Jessie's interest. “What's his name?”

“Goes by the handle Mueller. Talks real good English, but with a foreign sound to it. Dresses right smart too—a real dandy. He even tried to bribe me to use my influence to help him get the kid out of jail.”

An interesting cast of characters, she mused. And this Mueller—was he listed in her father's diary? She'd have to look him up. It was too much of a coincidence to have a boy claiming to be a Starbuck in the town jail and a man who was possibly a representative of the cartel also in Skyler.

“And who are the local leaders Mr. Mueller is trying to persuade?”

“Well, this here town, like most all of Utah, is Mormon,” the marshal explained. “Folks in these parts are funny about regular government—they run their own, and they run it in their own way, which don't always agree with the Constitution of the United States and suchlike. Anyhow, this particular town is controlled by a feller named Joshua Carpenter. Everybody from the town marshal on down take orders from him. He don't take no opposition from nobody. Says he takes his orders from Upstairs, if you know what I mean. One of these hellfire-and-brimstone fellers—but the people look up to him. He is a damned fine organizer, and I wouldn't want to cross him if I didn't have to. All in all, he runs a tight ship here. And anyone who wants to see the prisoner has to go through him first.”

“Sort of a king, is he?” Jessie said. “Then I'll have to be on my best behavior for His Majesty Mr. Carpenter.”

She was only half joking. She'd run into these town dictators before. Some were better than others, but mostly they were cut from the same cloth—stubborn, autocratic, dead sure they knew what was right for their towns and their people. But each man had a peculiar weakness, and she meant to find out what Carpenter's was.

“Can you take me to him?” she asked Scott.

The deputy marshal liked this girl's spunk. “Sure, miss. If that's what you want. But I'm warning you, he's not easy to talk to.”

 

 

Carpenter ran the town from his home, a rudely constructed but solid structure on Zion Avenue. From the outside it looked no different from any of the other unpainted houses in Skyler, and inside it sorely needed the hand of a woman, which it lacked despite the fact that Carpenter possessed five wives. It looked as if they were too busy quarreling with each other and spanking the howling children to pay much attention to the interior decor. In the cluttered front room, rifles competed with pots and pans and dusty needlepoint samplers for space on the walls. A puncheon table stretched across the floor, sagging under the weight of books, papers, a tin plate of a half-eaten meal, and a heavy old cap-and-ball pistol.

Joshua Carpenter himself was an imposing figure. Of average height, he nonetheless had wide, powerful shoulders and a chest as big around as a water barrel; his hairy forearms were tree-trunk thick, and his legs, too, bulged with muscle and tension. The perpetual scowl on his face was intensified by the great shocks of salt-and-pepper hair that shot out of his head and chin, marking him as a prophet. He was lame in his right foot and walked with the aid of a walnut staff. But that did not diminish his awesome personality, nor his authority. His blazing black eyes made certain of that, eyes that could pin you down in your chair and never let you up.

Jessie Starbuck, as she stood before Joshua Carpenter for the first time, sized him up as a formidable opponent in any fight—or a valuable ally if he chose to be. She would have to tread carefully but firmly, she decided. A man like Carpenter respected power, whether it be God's or another man's. The fact that she was a woman would hurt her cause, she knew; but if she could overcome that particular handicap, she might persuade him to help her get at the truth.

She noticed one of the samplers hanging crookedly from a nail on the wall. It reminded the visitor that “Vengeance is Mine, Saith the Lord.”

“Mr. Carpenter,” Scott began, working that weathered hat like dough in his big hands, “this here is Miss Jessica Starbuck, come all the way from—”

“Starbuck!” he boomed. “Are you kin to that young killer we have locked up in the jail?” His dark eyes bored into her, demanding an answer.

Jessie was startled by the power of his bass voice. Clearly he was used to catching strangers off guard and assuming immediate authority in any situation. But she wasn't about to allow him to intimidate her.