Outlaw Train (6 page)

A skittering at the rail on the east side of the staircase made Luke turn his head just in time to see a small, familiar figure come over the handrail. This was Oliver Wicks, one of the most unusual individuals in Wiles, and possessor of a unique heritage.

“‘Ello, Luke!” Oliver said in a decidedly British accent, winking and grinning in a worldly way that belied his young age of twelve years. Then, typical of him, he darted up the stairs and slid through the open front door of the big store with the silent ease of a shadow dancing across a wall.

Luke shook his head in mild amusement. He knew young Oliver well enough to know what was probably luring him inside the emporium. Youthful though Oliver was, he was sufficiently precocious to appreciate feminine beauty as much as an older lad would. The scoundrel of a boy was sneaking into the emporium to ogle Katrina Haus.

Katrina Haus. Something about the woman unnerved Luke and filled him with suspicion. That whole “communication with the dead” business in particular. Why did that nag at him so? He was struggling to make a mental connection he couldn’t complete.

It came to Luke that the arrival of Oliver Wicks might be fortuitous. Oliver was a boy of insatiable curiosity, interested in the goings-on of the town, whether his business or not. And because of a quirk in his heritage and upbringing, he had ways of finding answers that often evaded those in the adult world. More than once Luke had taken advantage of information Oliver had provided him. At least three minor local crimes had been solved partially because of intelligence provided by the alwayssnooping boy.

The quirk in Oliver’s heritage was the background of his widower father, a native Englishman named Philip Wicks. Wicks, a busy and talented carpenter in Wiles, was known across the county for his agility in clambering about on the framing lumber of unfinished houses. He had applied his athleticism in a different manner in younger days back in England.

Philip Wicks had been a “second-story man,” breaking into and robbing homes by employment of superior climbing ability. The criminal career he’d pursued as a young London man had grown out of his childhood activity as a “climbing boy” and “budge,” a lad who was able to clamber into houses and the like and open them on the sneak to allow burglars to enter after dark. Rumors around Wiles had it that he’d left England to avoid prosecution that would have put him into incarceration for much of his life. Luke had heard the stories but had no interest in old crimes committed in a distant country. As long as Wicks remained a law-abiding citizen of Kansas, the law of Wiles would leave him alone.

Luke had never seen evidence that Wicks had continued any criminality on this side of the Atlantic, but one remnant of his past was obvious: his son, Oliver, had inherited his father’s climbing skills, love of high places, and interest in the world of rooftops, balconies, and rails. Every citizen of the town was accustomed to seeing young Oliver balancing like a circus athlete on hitch rails, swinging like a monkey from rafters, tightroping his way dangerously down the ridgelines of high roofs, or leaping across deep alleyways from one rooftop to the next.

Most of the townfolk took an accommodating attitude toward “Oliver the Climbing Boy,” as he was usually designated. He was an oddity, a conversation piece, a sort of town mascot made all the more interesting by the trace of British accent he’d picked up from his father.

But there were some in the town who held a low view of Oliver Wicks. They saw him not as a colorful and unusual point of personality in their town, but as a misbehaving and potentially dangerous boy driven by base and criminal impulses.

“After all, Deputy,” Clara Ashworth had once said to him, “the boy has been caught looking in windows. And not windows anyone could look through, but ones only he can reach. He watches people, that vile creature does. Watches them through windows they never would imagine anyone could reach. God only knows what that boy has seen!”

There was some exaggeration in her accusations, Luke realized…but only some. Oliver indeed had been caught looking into second- or third-floor windows,
twice at Gable House Hotel and once at the house of Bill and Beatrice Parmalee, who lived between Wiles and the little outlying community of Doggett. Beatrice had accused the boy of attempting to watch her change clothes, but no one had believed that. The woman weighed well over two hundred pounds and had a face and shape fit for a grizzly. Even the most lewd-minded boy would hardly wish to inflict upon himself the sight of her in a state of undress.

Luke had believed that the real reason for Oliver’s peeping in that instance was not Beatrice, but the fine collection of rifles and shotguns Bill Parmalee had on private display in the upper room into which Oliver had been caught peering. It was a collection worth seeing, and everyone who knew Oliver knew he loved guns and had already begun his own collection. Once questioning of Oliver vindicated Luke’s theory, all that came of that peeping incident for Oliver was a good scolding from Ben Keely, a milder one from Luke, and a hide-tanning from Oliver’s father. Luke’s only serious worry about that entire incident was that Oliver might have been eyeing the guns in anticipation of stealing one or more of them, but that never happened. Bill Parmalee retained all his guns, and Beatrice retained, and even seemingly coddled, her conviction that she had been victimized as an object of boyish lust.

Luke headed up the stairs toward the emporium door. Then he remembered something and turned back toward Macky, who was just finishing his sweeping. “Macky, could I ask you about something?”

“Yeah, Luke. Yeah.”

“Upstairs, up in the attic above the store…is there somebody staying up there these days?”

Macky’s face drained of color. His eyes darted and he swallowed hard, seemingly unable for the moment to form words.

“What’s wrong, Macky? Did I ask something I shouldn’t have?”

“They…they…they ain’t nobody up there, Luke! Ain’t
nobody
! That’s where we store things and such that we got to get out of the way. Why you think they’d be somebody up there?”

“Sheriff Crowe saw somebody looking out of the window up there. Seemed pretty sure about it. Man with a beard, he said.”

Macky shook his head violently, eyes squeezed closed. “No. No. No.”

“Why are you speaking so…
firm
about it, Macky?”

Macky moved close to Luke and spoke in a tense whisper. “I don’t want to get in trouble…not supposed to talk about it, Luke.”

“Your uncle?”

“I told you…ain’t
nobody
up there! No uncle, no nobody! Why you think my uncle’s up there? What uncle?”

“What I meant was, is it your uncle Campbell you’ll be in trouble with if he catches you talking about this?”

Macky slowly nodded. “Yeah.”

“All right, then, Macky. We don’t want to get you in trouble. So we won’t talk about this.”

Macky smiled, relieved. “You a good one, Luke!”

Luke smiled back reassuringly and patted Macky’s shoulder. “It’s good to help each other out,” he said.

Luke proceeded on up the stairs and into the building. As always when he entered Montague’s Emporium, Luke marveled that such a fine business existed in such a small and humble town. As general stores went, this compared to most as a mansion to a shed. Tall, broadly constructed, lined with shelves high enough that it required mounting a ladder to reach their tops. And on those shelves was an array of merchandise ranging from basic farm and ranch tools through ladies’ sewing notions and fabrics, all kinds of guns and munitions for the menfolk, plus saddles and other tack gear. There were socks and leggings, canvas work trousers, and dresses fit for weddings. Shoes, boots, fencing supplies, leather goods, broaches, snoods, chairs, saws, lamps, candles, axes, saws, billiard tables, rope, chain, buckles, canned food items, cured hams, sacks of feed, tablets, and pencils…and out back, in a pen, chickens, turkeys, and ducks. The fowl were, like the front steps and porch, largely the responsibility of Macky, and he cared for his birds with devotion. He’d been known to softheartedly set some of them free at times, creating a small but noticeable population of free-ranging domestic fowl on the streets of Wiles.

Luke heard the muffled voice of Campbell Montague coming from the rear of the store, where he kept a large but simply furnished office. As Luke made his way in that direction, he rounded the end of a shelf and stopped.

Atop one of the rolling ladders used to access
high-shelf items, Oliver Wicks was perched, peering through the partially open glass transom above the office door of Campbell Montague. Luke opened his mouth to accost the boy, but Oliver noticed him and gestured for silence. Oliver’s brashness angered Luke, but before he could speak, Katrina Haus’s voice came through the closed door at an unexpected volume, the voice of a woman upset.

The door of Montague’s office flew open and Katrina emerged in a rush, pretty face twisted in seeming anger and perhaps fear. She pushed past Luke, jostling him into the ladder, which in turn jostled Oliver at its top. Montague came out after her, slowly, saying, “Ma’am…ma’am, please do not be angered at me…there are reasons you cannot know for my hesitation…” Then he stopped, seemed to deflate a little, and leaned back against the frame of the door. His gray old eyes lifted to Luke.

“Hello, Marshal Cable.”

“Hello, sir.” Then, up to Oliver, “Boy, come down from Mr. Montague’s ladder!”

Only as Oliver came down did the merchant notice him. “Well, son, I didn’t realize you were there! Best not to climb those ladders without me knowing. I’d feel responsible if somebody fell and got hurt.”

Oliver grinned. “I’m the most steady-footed fellow in all this county, sir, in this state! I can very nearly climb a straight wall if I have to, and run from one end of this town to the other without ever leaving the rooftops! And ne’er a slip or fall, ever!”

“He’s telling you straight on that, sir,” Luke said. “This boy is an ape, a monkey. He was taught to
climb by his father, who back in England was…well, never mind that.”

“A climbing boy and second-story man, a budge, a burglar’s assistant,” Montague said, nodding. “Yes. I’ve heard that tale. I find it remarkable and laudable that Mr. Wicks has so thoroughly reformed himself and become quite the productive citizen. Your father is the finest carpenter I know, son. I’ve made use of his skills in this very edifice. Those shelves behind you…he made them.”

“I know,” Oliver said. “And he did work for you up in your attic not long ago.”

“Uh…yes. So he did.”

“Well, that’s interesting, and might answer a question I’ve been puzzling over,” Luke said. “Somebody told me recently that they’d seen somebody looking out of that attic window at the front of the store. Man with a beard. And since Oliver’s daddy wears a beard and was working up there, maybe that’s who they saw.”

Montague still had the smile he kept on his face almost perpetually for the sake of the buying public, but it seemed to Luke that it faltered now. Luke remembered Macky’s panicky reaction and reluctance to address the issue of the attic’s possible occupancy, and wondered just what this delicacy was all about.

Montague, seeming to want to shift the subject, turned to Oliver, leaned down a little, and said, “And, young man, what were you needing to get from the top shelf up there?”

“Oh, sir, I don’t need a thing,” Oliver said. “I was just up there for a better view.”

Montague looked perplexed. “Nothing to see from up there except the same thing you see from down here. Same shelves, same walls.”

“Oh, there was something to see a minute ago that ain’t here to see now.”

Montague still looked confused. Luke nudged out a foot and kicked Oliver’s ankle just hard enough to hurt.

“One moment, please,” said Montague in a suddenly choked voice, disappearing back into his office. As soon as the door clicked shut, loud explosions of coughing erupted on the other side, coughing to make it sound as if the victim might expel his own lungs. Luke frowned at Oliver.

“Lord, that’s a bad cough he’s got. He been that way long?”

“Just lately,” the boy replied. “Last four, five times I’ve been in here, I heard him coughing like he has the consumption.”

“I hope it’s not that.” On the other side of the door, the coughing continued, but a little less intensely and a little slower. “You and me got something to talk about while we’ve got a private moment here,” Luke said to Oliver. “I think you know what it is.”

“Yeah, I know. You’re mad at me for looking at that woman while she was in there talking to old Montague.”

“First off, a boy your age ought not call him ‘old Montague.’ It’s disrespectful. Second off, you’re right. You shouldn’t have been peeping and listening in to a private conversation. And you ought not to be following any woman around just to look at her in a lusting, bad way. You know all this already.”

“I do know. Sorry. She’s just so pretty, that’s all.”

“You’ve got yourself in an odd and bad pattern, Oliver. You’ve become known as the boy who spends his time climbing on the rails and rooftops…but that’s just the odd part, not the bad part. The bad part is this thing of you peeping at people through windows. Women in particular. There are folks in this town who believe you might be the kind to grow up and be a danger to women. Do you know what I’m getting at here?”

“Yeah. I know.” Oliver’s face was a portrait of dejection. His eyes shifted toward the door of the emporium again and again, a boy ready to bolt.

“I have half a mind to let you spend a little time in my jail, Oliver, young though you are. I’d lock you up and turn Dewitt loose on you. You know what he’d do?”

“Preach religion at me.”

“That’s right! Preach it at you right through the bars. And you know Dewitt: he wouldn’t let up. No matter how much you wanted him to. He’d shove Bible at you hard and steady until you were praying to God that he’d go away. You want to spend a couple of days like that, Oliver?”

“No. Bloody hell, no!”

On the other side of the door, Campbell Montague seemed to be regaining some control of his cough. He still hacked loudly and wetly, but the explosions were less violent and steady.