Outlaw Train (4 page)

Two days later, a broadly built, tall man with a mustache that hung half an inch over his lip and crawled over both sides of his leathery face rode into Wiles on a huge roan horse. On the man’s vest was a badge, tarnished so that it blended in with the vest’s leather and was hardly visible past ten feet away.

He turned down an alleyway and crossed over to Montague Street. There he paused, slumping in the saddle, and admired the most remarkable edifice in the little Kansas town: a three-story, gleaming white structure with a front porch worthy of a state capitol building. The man tipped back his hat and studied the building from bottom to top, noting the way the letters on the sign identifying the building stood out brightly in the sunlight.

The sign read:

MONTAGUE’S EMPORIUM

Fine Clothing, Dry Goods

Hardware, Notions, and Domestic Products for All Purposes

Founder and Proprietor: Campbell Montague

A figure strode from the boardwalk fronting the building and neared the man on horseback. “Good evening, Sheriff Crowe,” said the newcomer, Clara Ashworth.

Her voice startled him. He looked down at her sharply, his hand actually moving spasmodically in the direction of the Remington holstered high on his right hip. But he caught himself, relaxed, and smiled down on her.

“Good day, ma’am. Mrs. Ashworth, if I remember correctly? Wife of Howard Ashworth from down at the bank?”

“Indeed, Sheriff,” she said, extending up her hand to let him gently shake it. “It is a pleasure to see the leading peace officer of our county making a visit to town. Nothing is amiss, I hope?”

“Just here on business, ma’am. Hoping to locate your town marshal to help me conduct it.”

She rolled her eyes to the clouds above. “Oh my, sir, don’t get me to talking on
that
subject! Our town marshal is someone you will not find. Marshal Keely has not graced our town with his presence for lo these many weeks now. We’ve been making do for law enforcement with our young deputy, Mr. Cable, while awaiting Marshal Keely’s overdue return.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m aware that Ben went away eastward to visit his kin owing to the death of his father. It’s Mr. Cable I’ve come to find.”

“Perhaps he is at his office, then.”

“I’m on my way over there. Just crossed over through the alley there to take a look at the emporium here. Remarkable that such a place exists in a town such as Wiles.”

Mrs. Ashworth frowned. “‘A town such as Wiles.’ What is the meaning of that phrase, sir? It seemed to have an overtone of insult…and given that I am a descendant of James Wiles, whose name this county and town bears, I cannot let such a comment pass without asking for clarification.”

Sheriff Harvey Crowe inwardly cursed at himself for having forgotten the uppity nature of this woman. He deplored having to pander to her prideful manner, but the fact was that her husband had been a strong supporter of his first bid for county sheriff years ago, and he felt a certain obligation.

“Ma’am, I was merely talking about the fine nature of the store in relation to the size of the town. No reference intended to any perceived deficiency in your town’s quality.”
Like hell
, he mentally added. Crowe had never liked this town, largely because of the social pretentiousness of some of its residents, foremost among them Mrs. Clara Ashworth.

“I accept your apology, then,” she said, although he’d apologized for nothing.

He held his tongue.

Clara inflated with pompousness. “In my own view, the fact that Mr. Montague chose our town for his notable establishment is indicative that he is insightful enough to recognize quality and potential when he sees it. He could have built his emporium anywhere he pleased. Wichita. Denver. Chicago. But he chose Wiles, Kansas.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve talked to him about that. He told me that he wanted to find a place where he could live out his later years peaceful and all, and where
that idiot nephew of his wouldn’t be picked on as much as he would be in a big city.”

A look of disgust passed across the woman’s face. “Oh, yes…that nephew…the only negative aspect I can find regarding this institution’s presence in our town. It’s a public embarrassment to have that drooling fool out here sweeping these steps and singing in that horrible voice of his, day after day. I’m quite sure it turns away customers and drives people away from one of the commercial areas of our town, yet Mr. Montague allows it to go on.”

“I don’t think Mr. Montague cares as much about drawing customers as he does about having something to occupy his time and give his nephew something to do,” Crowe answered.

“Well, if that is so, then I am surprised at the success he has had in life. As Howard always says, a man of business must be unaffected by sentiment. Opening such a massive business as a pastime and working opportunity for an idiot boy…that is hardly sound business reasoning.”

Crowe touched the front brim of his hat. “I have to move on, ma’am. Have yourself a pleasant—” He cut off abruptly, having glanced up at the upper front portion of the emporium building, where a window overlooked the street.

“What do you see, Sheriff?” Mrs. Ashworth asked.

“I…I’m not sure, ma’am,” he said. “Trick of the light on the window glass, probably. As I was saying, have a pleasant day.”

He took his leave of Clara Ashworth, glad to do so. When he was away from her, the woman looked
up at the high window of the emporium, squinted, shrugged, and moved on.

Dewitt Stamps was dozing at the jailer’s desk when his unexpected visitor showed up at his office door. He came awake at the sound of the knock, stood so fast he bumped over his chair, and brushed down his rumpled hair and clothing as he called, “Hang on! Be right there!”

He was not pleased to see County Sheriff Harvey Crowe on the other side of the door. More than once he’d had encounters with the hard-edged lawman during his drinking days, and he didn’t anticipate that Crowe would be the kind to believe he’d really changed.

Crowe immediately fulfilled Dewitt’s expectation. “Well, Stamps, I see the tales are really true,” he said, flinty eyes boring into the disheveled jailer. Crowe scanned Dewitt up and down. “They’ve hired an egg-sucking dog to guard the henhouse. Hell, you look like you just woke up, man. Does the acting marshal know you’ve been snoozing on the job?”

“I’m wide awake, Sheriff. You want to come in?”

Crowe grunted and entered, giving Dewitt a sniff as he did so. “Well, you don’t smell like whiskey, anyway, so that’s good.”

“I’ve give up the stuff,” Dewitt said proudly. “The good Lord runs my life now.”

“Yeah, I heard somewhere you’d gone religious on us, Stamps,” Crowe replied. “Good for you, then. Hope it sticks.”

“Four years now,” Dewitt said.

Crowe gave a dismissive shake of the head. “For most I’ve known, being a drunk is a lifetime matter. You got plenty of time and opportunity to fall off that wagon, Dewitt.”

“I won’t. I’m riding that wagon from here on out. Lord’s wagon.”

“We’ll see. I hope you’re right. But even the Lord’s wagon hits bumps that can jar a man off his seat sometimes. Hey, where’s the town marshal?”

“Ben’s been gone off to Kentucky now for a good while,” Dewitt said. “I thought you knew that.”

“I
do
know that,” Crowe returned with irritation. “I’m asking for Luke, not Ben. Acting Marshal Cable.”

“Well, I ain’t sure where Luke is just now,” said Dewitt. “Probably out making some rounds. He does that most of the time if he ain’t here in the office.”

“Well, I guess I’m going to have to track him down, then,” Crowe growled. “If he comes back in here in the next little while, you tell him I’m looking for him. If I don’t find him I’ll check back here and see if he’s come back.”

“I’ll do it, Sheriff. Is there something wrong?”

“Mostly just something strange. I got a wire this morning from over near the Doggett community. You know Charlie Bays, who’s got that little ranch out that way? Well, one of Charlie’s boys, the one with the big knot on the side of his head that looks like a brown egg growing hair, has found a leg out by the railroad track.”

Dewitt paled. “A leg? Like a cut-off leg?”

“Exactly. Leg, still in a trouser leg, boot still on the foot. Lying there beside the tracks.”

“Oh my,” muttered Dewitt, slumping weakly back toward his chair at the desk. “Oh
my
!”

“You look a little green, Stamps. This kind of thing make you squeamish?”

“It’s just that…that…you know what I’m thinking about.”

“Yep. You’re thinking back on all the times you passed out drunk by the railroad tracks, and how some of them times you probably had a leg or an arm lying over the rail, and how but for the grace of God and good luck you never were lying there like that when the train actually came along. You’re thinking how easy it could have been your leg somebody was finding by the railroad.”

Dewitt nodded weakly, staring at the top of the desk.

“That’s what it’ll prove to be, you know,” Crowe said. “Some old drunk’s leg. Some poor guzzling bastard who had the ill fortune to pass out while he was walking the tracks and drinking. What is it about you drunks that makes you walk on railroad tracks, anyhow? It’s always that way with you people…moth to the flame. Moth to the flame. Every drunk I’ve ever known ends up passed out along a railroad track sometime or another, when he could just as easy have walked up a road or a footpath instead of a railroad track.” Crowe paused, cleared his throat, and began speaking in a mocking, higherpitched voice. “Oh, I’m so drunk I’m going to fall over and pass out any second now…I think I’ll run down and straddle the railroad tracks.” Then Crowe laughed derisively.

Dewitt had nothing to say.

Crowe found a chair in the corner and dragged it over near the desk. Dewitt did a poor job of disguising his displeasure at this. Crowe was not pleasant company to have close at hand. Too many memories of past arrests.

“I wonder if Wilton Brand is in town?” Crowe said. “If he is, it might be worth taking him along, too, him being coroner.”

“Why you need a coroner for just a leg? A leg ain’t a dead man.”

“No. But Wilton knows how to read the flesh, so to speak. He can probably tell me how long ago that leg got cut off, how big a man it belonged to, all that kind of thing.”

“He’s probably over at his shop.”

“I’ll find him. Meantime, you keep an eye out for Luke. I want to take him with me, too.”

“Why you want Luke? He ain’t got no authority over in Doggett. He’s just the marshal here in Wiles.”

“He’s also deputized to work with me in the county, just like I help him out here in town. Cooperation, Dewitt. Helps us both. And besides, I have a funny feeling about this whole thing. Charlie Bays says that he don’t believe that leg was cut off by a train, even though it was lying beside the tracks and the first thing you think of in that kind of situation is that it had to be a train accident.”

“Why’s Charlie think otherwise?”

“Something about the way it looks, I guess. That’s why I want the coroner with me. He ought to be able to render a good judgment.”

Dewitt said, “I’m glad I ain’t no coroner. I ain’t good with dead things and blood and such.”

“Nobody’s ‘good with’ that kind of thing, Dewitt. But when something’s your job, you learn to deal with it. So you want to come along, too?”

Dewitt shook his head firmly. “No, sir. I was told by Luke to mind the jail office and keep an eye on our prisoner. That’s what I’m going to do. My job here is deputy jailer, not deputy cut-off-leg looker.”

“Who you got back there? Anybody I know?”

“Stu Curtis.”

“Drunk as usual?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hopeless case.”

“No, sir. Ain’t no hopeless cases. I’m proof of that.”

“Time will tell. Though I’ll admit to you, Dewitt, that four years off the bottle is right impressive, given how you used to be.”

“Power of the Lord, Sheriff. That’s all it is.”

Crowe wasn’t listening. He’d just spotted someone across the street, and headed out the door without another word to Dewitt.

The person he’d spotted was the local physician, Dr. Bill Artemus, who had retired from medicine in Boston, headed west to settle into a private, relaxed life in a small Kansas town, and there had found himself busier than he’d been in the city. Sheriff Crowe called him down, crossed the street to him, and talked to him animatedly while Dewitt Stamps, standing by his desk, watched it all through the jail office window. When Crowe walked off, the aged but nimble doctor went with him. They headed toward Cross Street, where Coroner Wilton Brand maintained his furniture shop at the
times he wasn’t dealing with the dead of Wiles County.

“Going to go see that leg, the whole gang of them, I guess,” Dewitt muttered aloud to himself. Then he shuddered, hoping he’d never have to go look at such a gruesome thing in the course of his humble law enforcement duties.

Dewitt was about to sit down again when he noticed Crowe grinning and waving at someone down the street. Dewitt shifted his angle of view and saw that the person Crowe had seen was Luke Cable.

“Going to have a regular parade to go out to Charlie Bays’s ranch,” Dewitt said to himself, then sat down.

The severed leg had been moved into Charlie Bays’s shed by the time the delegation from Wiles got to the Bays Ranch at Doggett. Because of his hounds, Charlie Bays explained. Had to move it for fear of the dogs treating it like found food. Funny thing, though, he added: the dogs that had sniffed the leg out in the first place had not seemed nearly as interested in it as canines normally would be.

“Maybe they just weren’t hungry,” Luke speculated with a shrug as he followed Sheriff Crowe toward the shed. At the door he paused and took a deep breath, expecting that the smell of the leg might be hard to tolerate, depending on how long it had been severed.

The air in the shed, though, smelled only slightly musty. No smell of decay at all. Evidence, Luke figured, that the leg had not been long separated from its former possessor.

When he saw the limb, however, he rethought that notion. The leg was lying on a rugged shed table, bare, Bays having slipped off the trouser leg that had apparently been cut off with it.

The boot, worn and dirty, was still on the foot. The flesh of the leg was quite pale, somewhat hirsute
but lacking freckles, blemishes, and the like. The violence of dismemberment had not marred the leg in any very noticeable way.

Coroner Wilton Brand moved to the severed, thigh portion of the leg, leaned over, and examined the cut flesh closely. He waved Dr. Artemus over. “Take a look, Bill. You see what I see?”

The aging physician joined the coroner. Both men looked intently at the leg. Artemus spoke first. “I’ll be! I do see it!”

“What is it?” Crowe asked.

“This leg was not cut off by a train wheel,” the doctor said.

Brand jumped in. “And beyond that, it was not severed from the body of a living man.”

“What?” Crowe moved around to join Brand and Artemus at the wound end of the severed limb.

“Wilton, you’re right,” Dr. Artemus said. “I’d not even noticed that.” He probed the exposed, cut muscle with his finger, causing Crowe to shudder and pull back reflexively. “Very strange,” Artemus said. “Almost like…I don’t know…leather. Or jerked meat. This is embalming beyond any degree I’ve ever encountered before. This leg is essentially…mummified.”

Wilton Brand nodded. “The very word that came to my mind, too. That might explain the lack of great interest on the part of the dogs. The flesh has been altered enough to have a scent that puts them off rather than appeals to them.”

Crowe spoke. “Before we wander too far afield, gentlemen, let’s get back to the first thing you said.
How do you know this was not cut off beneath a train, especially considering that the leg was found beside the tracks?”

“Two reasons, the first being that this leg has been heavily embalmed, and in a manner quite uncommon. Second, there’s the nature of the cut. The edges of the sever wound are sharp and precise,” said the doctor. “And I see no evidence of the kind of massive pinching and crushing that would have been caused by train wheels. It appears to me that this leg was removed in a much more surgical fashion. And look…see the bone? See how cleanly and neatly it is cut? And there are marks visible on it that appear consistent with those left by a surgical bone saw.”

Crowe frowned. “So somebody cut the leg off a mummified dead man, cut his trouser leg off, too, and slid the leg back into it, boot and all, and laid it beside a railroad track on a Kansas flatland so it would look like it had been cut off by a train at the same time. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Odd as it may seem, that is the evidence that my eye sees.”

“And mine,” said Brand.

Crowe turned to Charlie Bays. “Nobody actually saw the accident or whatever it was that resulted in this leg being where it was, right, Charlie? Nobody ever saw somebody actually getting his leg pinched off under a train wheel?”

“That’s right.”

“But you still think it was cut off by a passing train.”

“I did…but now these men have raised my doubts,” the rancher replied. “It just don’t look…well, messed up enough to have been cut off by train wheels.”

“It’s the mummification that mystifies me,” said Brand. “I’m no undertaker, just a coroner, but I think I can tell you authoritatively that dead flesh is not commonly preserved in this kind of state. The leathery condition of the internal flesh…I can’t account for it. This leg was preserved by uncommon, highly expert means.”

Crowe shook his head and spoke to Luke. “See why I wanted you here, Luke? This whole situation is so damn strange that I wanted somebody else along to understand it, too.”

Luke scuffed his foot in the dirt. “ ‘Understand’ isn’t the right word in this case,” he said. “This just has me perplexed.”

“What do you want me to do with this leg?” asked Bays. “My Franny is all worked up about it being out here in our shed. She wants it gone, and truth is so do I.”

Luke turned to Wilton Brand. “Wilton, it ain’t a corpse, but it’s part of one. Could you as coroner take charge of it for now? Keep it stored? If it’s mummified, it ought not to decay on you, at least not very fast.”

“I’ll put it in the morgue,” he said, referring to what was in fact little more than a small barn with a tightly enclosed room he used as a coroner’s facility and short-term morgue. It stood on the edge of town, near his home and on his property, and he leased it
to the county for a dollar a year. “I want to study it, anyway, to see if I can figure out some of how that thing got into that preserved state. I’ll bring in Mr. Edgar from the undertaking parlor and see what he has to say.”

“Thank you, Wilton,” Crowe said. “I suspect that leg may prove to be evidence in a crime.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Luke said. “You’re thinking that whoever cut off that leg and put it out where it was found was trying to make it appear that it had been cut off by a passing train. Which means they were trying to disguise what really happened.”

“Right. If the intention wasn’t deception, why include the trouser leg? Why leave the boot on the foot? The goal was to make what had happened seem obvious. But in this case, the ‘obvious’ isn’t actually obvious, if you take the time to look closely.”

“Now, I guess, all we need to do is find a mummified dead man hopping around town because he’s missing his left leg,” Luke said, grinning.

“Wilton, fetch up that leg,” Crowe said. “Charlie, we’ll take our leave of you now. And you can tell Franny she won’t have to hesitate to come out to her shed anymore.”

The battered coffeepot steaming on the stove in Luke Cable’s office filled the entire jail with a strong but delicious coffee aroma. Luke, Dewitt, Harvey Crowe, and Wilton Brand sat lazily about the room, cups in hand, talking over what had just gone on.

Dewitt, having not been part of the group that traveled to the ranch, was full of questions.

“So how can they be so sure it wasn’t a train that cut the leg off?” he asked for the third time.

Crowe rolled his eyes in exasperation, so Luke fielded the question this time. “It’s because of how it was cut,” he said. “Think about it, Dewitt…even though it’s not pleasant thinking. If a train cuts off a man’s leg, that’s going to mash the wound area right considerable, and crush through the bone. Not very neat work. But this leg was sliced as neat and clean as if some surgeon had worked on it. And the bone looked sawed. Not crushed, but sawed.”

“Another thing, too,” Brand added. “And I didn’t think about this until we were riding back. That leg was severed about as high up as you could cut off a leg. Nigh up to the hip, and straight across. I can’t figure how a man could lie on a railroad track and get his leg cut off at that particular angle without losing more of himself than just that one leg. Not if he’d just chanced to pass out and fall down. You’d pretty much have to lie crossways on the track to lose your leg at that straight of an angle, and if you were doing that, the other leg would be cut off, too. But they only found the one leg. That alone to me is evidence that somebody placed that leg there after it had already been surgically removed from a corpse. A corpse, by the way, that had been embalmed in some manner unknown to the science of undertaking.”

“Strangest thing I’ve ever run across,” Crowe said.

“I wonder if that leg was throwed off the train by somebody riding on it,” Dewitt said.

Crowe rolled his eyes again. It was his habit to perceive and treat anything said by Dewitt Stamps as derision-worthy. “Riding the train, or the leg?” he said, then laughed heartily.

“Sheriff, come on now,” Luke said, reflexively slipping into a defensive attitude toward Dewitt.

“Well, it was just how he phrased it,” the sheriff replied.

“We all know what he meant, and I think Dewitt has a point,” Luke said. “This is a small community. Somebody loses a limb around here, people would know. And I doubt there’s a lot of mummified corpses lying around, either. I’d say odds are high that somebody passing through on the train disposed of that leg, figuring everybody would think exactly what we first thought…that somebody lost the leg underneath the train.”

“Makes a man wonder what’s going on, what the real story is,” Crowe said. He sipped his coffee. “Hell, this town is full of mysteries, if you look close enough. Like who the devil was it I saw looking out of that upper window of the emporium earlier today? I was out in the street talking to old Mrs. Selfrighteous Ashworth. I looked up at that high window on the front of the emporium, and there was somebody looking out. I thought it was old Montague at first, for it was a man’s face and looked like his, but this fellow had a full white beard, and Montague is clean-shaved.”

“It probably
was
Montague,” Luke said. “The
‘beard’ part was probably just light shining on the glass.”

“I don’t think so,” said Crowe. “I’m putting a few years behind me, no question of that, but my eyes are still strong.”

“Anybody can be fooled by shadows and reflections,” Luke said. “I’m not aware of anybody living at the emporium except for Montague himself and his nephew Macky. You know any different than that, Dewitt?”

Crowe spoke first. “Hell, as much as Dewitt has drunk over the years, he’s probably seen Jesus Christ and Moses working down at the saddle shop while the prophet Isaiah pees in the outhouse out back.”

Dewitt ignored the jibe and answered Luke. “I ain’t aware of anybody but them two living at the emporium, either. Mr. Montague’s got his big house in behind the emporium, and Macky’s room is off to the side. But nobody lives in that upper part. Up where that window is, there’s nothing but a big old storage attic. I know. I was up there once, carrying something up for Mr. Montague.”

“My eyes are good. I seen what I seen,” Crowe said.

“Good Lord, I know what
I’m
seeing right now!” said Wilton Brand. He was half raised out of his chair, propping himself so he had a better view out the window. “Look at that, gents! You
ever
seen a woman hauling around such a pair?”

Every man in the room, save Dewitt, was at the window in a moment. Dewitt closed his eyes and seemed to be praying silently. He knew who they were looking at. Had to be the same woman, Katrina
whoever-she-was, who’d come down the stairs at the hotel that morning he’d had the conversation with Jimmy Wills over in the Gable House. Wanting to avoid the sin of lust, Dewitt knew better than to let himself look out that window.

The other men clearly had no similar scruples. They stared and commented lewdly and stayed so fixed on what they were watching that Dewitt could tell the moment the woman went out of sight. They all moved as one back to their chairs, shaking their heads as if they’d just witnessed an awesome marvel of nature.

Wilton Brand, known by all as a lecherous soul, could hardly keep from stirring out of his seat. He grinned at Crowe. “Tell you what, Sheriff, if I was a lawman, I’d find cause to investigate that there woman! Just for the chance to look at her!”

“I never knew you to need a pretext for looking at a woman, Wilton,” Crowe replied.

“You’re right about that, my friend!” declared Brand.

“Well, the law might
have
good reason to look into what that woman’s doing,” said Dewitt.

“How so?” asked Luke.

Dewitt hesitated. “I hate to talk about such things, not knowing for sure. A man’s accusations ought to be firm, you know.”

Crowe sighed loudly. “Ah, hell, Dewitt, quit fretting over every little thing and say what you got to say.”

Dewitt nodded. “All right, then. A while back I was over in the lobby of the Gable House, morning hours, just reading my Bible. Jimmy Wills had been
up night clerking and said that all through the night, there was men coming in and going up to see that woman. Katrina…Katrina…”

“Haus, I think,” Luke said.

“Yeah. Anyway, Jimmy had it figured she was selling herself up in her room, you know.”

“Well, if she is, she’s got a good product for drawing customers,” said Wilton Brand. “Lord, I might find myself paying a visit to her myself, if I can do it without Lawman Luke here catching me!”

Luke tried to keep the conversation more maturely focused. “Is she really whoring herself, Dewitt?”

“That’s what Jimmy said. That’s all I know. I never saw none of it happening myself. Just saw her come down the stairs and go out onto the street, that’s all.”

“Well, all joking aside here, if she’s using the hotel for the practice of prostitution, I intend to see that brought to an end. Ain’t going to happen in
my
town!”

Crowe snorted with laughter. “Luke, boy, who do you think you’re fooling here? There’s always been soiled doves in Wiles County, and in Wiles itself. I’ve locked a few of them up from time to time, but the fact is there ain’t much gain in trying to halt that kind of thing. It’s been around as long as there’s been people, and it ain’t likely to go away.”

“Not without the power of God,” threw in Dewitt, to Crowe’s obvious annoyance.

“Well, I can’t sit back and let it go if I’ve been told about it,” Luke responded. “That would be negligence of my duty.”

“Do what you got to do, then,” Crowe said. “I, for one, am an officer of the law who prefers to spend his time fighting crimes that actually hurt people.”