Powder Keg (6 page)

T
he gray hair misled me. Chaney’s sister was outside the small house, scraping frost off the front window that was golden thanks to the lamp inside.

When she turned around at hearing our footsteps, the face was so young I wondered if she was wearing a gray wig.

She wore a sheepskin coat, gloves. In the lamplight, the cherry-tinted cold cheeks looked like those of a youngster building a snowman. You couldn’t say she was a beauty but there was a vivid quality to her face that was almost better than beauty. The dark eyes were especially alert and alive, even in the face-battering wind.

She waited for us. She didn’t step forward even an inch. The way she held herself, so rigid, it was as if she knew it was bad and was preparing herself for news that would be like a physical assault.

“Evening, Jen,” Nordberg said. He sounded tense. He hadn’t been exaggerating about needing moral support.

She nodded, said nothing, looked at me briefly, then back to him.

“We go inside?”

Since the sheriff hadn’t said anything about her being a mute, I assumed she could talk. But she sure was spare with her words. She led us inside to a home that was as spare with furnishings as she was with words. There was a formidable four-shelf bookcase packed with various sizes of books, a horsehair couch, and a pair of rocking chairs with Indian blankets over the backs of them.

She served us coffee. She took the couch. We took the chairs. We’d been as silent as she was.

“Jen, I’m afraid I might have some—”

“Just say it, Sheriff. Did those two federal men kill him?”

“No. He isn’t dead, Jen.”

She had taken her coat off. She wore a black flannel shirt and dungarees. The stiffness went out of her body as the sigh escaped her lips.

“He isn’t dead, but somebody else is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There was another man killed tonight, Tom Daly.” He pointed to me. “This is Noah Ford, a federal man who’s helping me.” He paused. “My deputy claims he saw Mike running away from the dead man tonight.”

She glanced at me and then back at Nordberg. Her face held me. There was that prairie woman sweetness mixed with that prairie woman hardness. She’d be sweet or hard depending on the circumstances.

“Mike isn’t a killer.”

“Well, not normally—” Nordberg obviously realized he’d put it wrong.

“Sheriff, are you trying to tell me that you seriously think Mike killed Tom Daly?”

“I’m just telling you what I know so far.” He sounded apologetic, almost embarrassed.

“Tom Daly was trying to help us. He came out here and introduced himself and tried to warn me about that pair—what’s their names?—Connelly and Pepper. He said that he was going to have Mr. Ford here come and talk to me, too. He wanted to make sure that if they went looking for Mike up in the mountains that Mr. Ford would be along. He said he was going to meet him at the café and ask him to do it.”

Nordberg set his coffee cup down on the wooden floor. “I have to ask you some questions, Jen.”

She put her hand to her forehead as if she suddenly had a bad headache. Her body sagged now. “You’re going to ask me if he’s here, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I have to, Jen.”

“Well, he isn’t.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

Just then the wind kicked up hard. Easy to imagine a little box of a house like that being picked up and tumbled along the flats as if caught up in a tornado. The entire house shook.

“About an hour and a half ago.”

Nordberg sighed. “By rights, you should have told him to turn himself in.”

“I tried. Tom Daly was getting him some supplies from the general store and they were going to meet after the supper hour. I can’t buy supplies because everybody’d know who I was getting them for.”

“How long was Mike here?”

“Not long. Maybe half an hour. He stayed in the shed in the back. Most of the time he talked to Tom.”

“You think he headed into the mountains?”

“Wouldn’t you?” she snapped. “Everybody thinking that you murdered somebody? Wouldn’t you head for the mountains?”

“I need to go out and look around. See if he might be hiding.”

“I remember the day when my word was good enough.” She shook her head. “When Mike’s word was good enough.”

“It’s different now, Jen. It’s murder.”

“You don’t know he did it.”

“No, I don’t. But I have to do my job.” He picked up his Stetson from the floor. “I’m just doing my job here, Jen,” he said again.

“You think Mr. Ford could stay and talk to me while you’re looking around?”

I’d been about to stand up.

“That all right with you?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He nodded to us and then walked to the door. He had to push hard on it to get it closed tight.

The wind came wicked against the front window. She looked up as if someone had knocked on her front door.

“Maybe my prayers’ll be answered.”

“Wind?”

“Wind and snow. The kind of blizzard that’ll keep those bounty men from going into the mountains.”

“Daly was a good man.”

“He said the same thing about you. Said not to judge federal men by those other two.”

“Connelly and Pepper.”

“I can’t seem to remember their names. Probably because I even hate to say them out loud.” Then: “They’ll go after Mike in the morning, won’t they?”

“Yeah. If the weather allows it.”

She folded her hands in a kind of prayerful way. Said nothing. Then: “They’ll kill him now, won’t they?” She didn’t look up at me.

“Not necessarily.”

Now she looked up. “You don’t need to lie to me, Mr. Ford. Right now I’m sort of weak because I just heard about Tom Daly. But I’m strong. I know what they’ll be up to tomorrow. Flannery wants him dead and Flannery always gets his way around here.”

“His wife was friendly with Mike before she married Flannery? Is that how it works?”

She actually laughed. “Well, that’s a very delicate way to put it. ‘Was friendly.’ My brother is such a tomcat he was denounced from the altar of the Methodist church one Sunday morning. Not by name, but everybody knew who he was talking about. And I’m not making any excuses for Mike, either. He’d see married women if there weren’t any single women around. He even came between me and my best friend, Loretta DeMeer. I was uncomfortable when she started seeing him. Neither of them told me. Loretta and I don’t speak much anymore. He isn’t a saint by a long shot. So, yes, the short answer to your question is, there is still plenty of tension between Flannery and my brother. Mike wouldn’t ever admit it but he may still have been seeing Laura once in a while on the sly.”

I remembered the hard harsh way Flannery had treated his wife, and right in front of me. You push on a woman that way, she just might push back sometime.

A frown on that vivid, pretty face.

“Laura—this is a terrible thing to say, and you probably won’t like me after I say it—but most people can’t see past that beautiful face of hers. They think she’s this innocent little woman. But the way she went back and forth between Mike and Flannery—

“I even felt sorry for Flannery. In the beginning, anyway. Before he got so hateful about Mike and Laura being together. But a lot of it was her fault. She wanted his money but she didn’t want him. And she wanted Mike but she didn’t want to live on a farm. That was his big dream. Having a farm. So she went back and forth between them. She could never quite let go of Flannery. So Mike finally just walked away from her. Wouldn’t have anything to do with her. She used to come here and sit where you’re sitting and cry her eyes out. She wanted me to help her get Mike back. But he wouldn’t go back. And then he started seeing a lot of other women. Then she finally married Flannery.”

“Did Flannery and Mike ever have it out?”

“No. I was afraid Flannery might hire somebody to beat up on Mike. He’s been known to do that before.”

I finished my coffee.

“So you think Laura really loves Mike?”

“Yes. That’s the funny thing. She does love him. But then she looks at Flannery’s mansion and fancy carriages and his trips to Europe—any woman could get her head turned that way.”

“You could?”

She had a nice gentle smile.

“Not me, but Flannery’s a nice-looking man. And he can be very charming.”

The wind washed again against the window; invisible tide storming in. After it spent itself, she said: “Some people think Mike’s a killer. But this is where I’m going to start telling you about all the good things he’s done in his life. The people he’s helped. How he never started a fight. I’m not saying he wouldn’t fight back and give as good as he got—or better. But I’m just about positive he never started a fight in his life. And the only gun he owned was an old rifle that belonged to our dad. And Mike only used it when he went hunting, when times were lean and we needed meat for the table.”

“Never owned any other kind of firearm?”

“Never.”

“Then he doesn’t have one up there in the mountains?”

She set her jaw. The start of anger was in those eyes. Intelligent dark eyes.

“Yeah, he has one up there. I bought him a Navy Colt and a Winchester last week when Connelly and Pepper came to town.” The flash anger again. “Are you trying to tell me you wouldn’t be armed in a situation like that?”

“I’m not saying anything at all, Jen. I’m just trying to understand the situation here.”

“If I had any money, I’d pay you to go tomorrow morning in the mountains.”

I’d been thinking about that. But instead of an
swering her directly, I said, “Do you have any idea where your brother might hide tonight?”

“I don’t. But I know somebody who does. An old man named Chuck Gage. His shed is right behind the Lutheran church. He works there and they give him meals and the shed. My brother went to see him tonight. Chuck knows the mountains better than anybody in the valley.”

Nordberg was on the steps outside.

She said: “You go visit Chuck by yourself. Don’t say anything to the sheriff.”

Nordberg came inside and said, “Well, if he’s around here, I couldn’t find him. You about ready to go, Mr. Ford?”

The rocker creaked as I left it. I’d gotten pretty comfortable sitting in it.

“You see him, Jen, you’re bound by the law to tell me.”

“I know.”

“I know you won’t.” He smiled at her. “But I have to say things like that so I’ll remember I’m a sheriff.”

She came over to us and said, “I would tell you, Sheriff. Now I would. I don’t want those federal men to get him. They’ll kill him.”

I thought of the deal I’d made with them. They wouldn’t kill him and I wouldn’t turn in a letter that didn’t exist. They wouldn’t have any trouble killing me if they didn’t want that letter to find its way into my boss’s hands. If it existed.

She gave me a look that said we shared a secret named Chuck Gage. I nodded to her so she’d know I was going to keep that secret.

“Well, goodnight,” she said from the doorway as we angled forward into the wind. It was strong enough by then to force you backward if you didn’t move deliberately.

Nordberg and I tried to talk a few times but it was pointless. The wind stole our words.

W
hen Harry Connelly came through his hotel room door, he saw me sitting in the darkness in a chair with my .44 aimed directly at his chest.

I’d gone there after I’d checked on Chuck Gage. He hadn’t been home. I decided I’d make sure that Connelly understood that our deal was still on. He wouldn’t kill Mike Chaney in exchange for me not mailing a letter that didn’t exist.

“Life is just full of surprises,” he said, not wanting to give me the pleasure of seeing that he might be just a bit nervous. “My best friend sitting there pretending that he’d like to shoot me.”

“I just wanted to check up on you and Pepper. Make sure you are still going to honor the deal we made.”

“I need to get my prophylactics, Noah. You’ll excuse me if I go over to my drawer. I hate the ones they have at the whorehouses. I always bring my own.”

“Good for you. Now answer my question.”

He went to the bureau, pulled out a cigar box, set it on the bureau top and opened the box. He held up
two little packs. “The women, they really go for these, Noah.”

“You use them when you and Pepper double up on a rape, do you?” They always liked to brag about those when the wine was down to dregs and the lamps to flickers.

He tucked the prophylactics into his coat pocket. “Noah, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a low opinion of us.”

He replaced the box in the drawer, the drawer in the bureau. “I’m meeting Mr. Pepper in just a few minutes.”

“Remind him of our deal.”

“You’ll have to show me this famous letter of yours sometime, Noah. I must be getting as cynical as you are but I don’t think I actually believe there is such a letter.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

He walked to the door. “Turn the covers back for me before you leave, Noah. I’ll probably be too drunk to do it when I get back here tonight. We’ve all got an early start in the morning, don’t we?” He adjusted his bowler. “We have to find the bad man, don’t we?”

C
huck Gage, the former mountain man who lived in a shed behind the Lutheran church, sounded groggy after I knocked. He came to the door saying “Jes’ a danged minute, jes’ a danged minute.” He turned out to be a scruffy man in red long johns worn under a pair of dungarees held up by the widest suspenders I’d ever seen.

“Chuck Gage?”

“And who’d be askin’?”

“My name’s Noah Ford. Jen Chaney told me you might help me with some questions about the mountains.”

He shook his head.

“I should start chargin’ you fellas.”

“Which fellas would that be?”

“All you fellas want to go up into the mountains and find Chaney.” Then: “I should invite you in. Do as much for you as I did for them.”

Couple things right off about the comfortable one-room shack. The potbellied stove kept it nice and warm; the floor was wood and not packed earth; and
the air smelled pleasantly of pipe tobacco, a scent I associate with my grandfather.

He had a comfortable-looking daybed with a handsome multicolored quilt for sleeping and two rocking chairs that looked handmade.

I stood facing him and said, “Man named Pepper come to see you?”

“Yeah. I didn’t like him much.”

“Not many people do.”

“I had to help him because he was a federal man but I didn’t help him much. I made sure I didn’t.” He flung his bony arm in the direction of a rocking chair. “Sit, sit.”

I sat. “I got the impression from Jen that you might have told her brother where he could hide.”

“And what would your interest be in this?”

“I’m a federal man, too. But I want to make sure that Chaney doesn’t get killed.”

“A federal man? Then you know them other two.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t trust ’em.”

“Neither do I.”

He lighted his corncob pipe with knobby hands.

The pipe tobacco scent reminded me of when my granddad would sit next to my bed and smoke his pipe and tell me bedtime stories. It’s funny how you can revert to childhood so fast sometimes. My granddad had died a long time ago but I could remember the timbre and cadence of his voice. If there was a heaven, that would be the first sound I’d hear, the music of that old man’s voice.

I said, “You know where Chaney is?”

“No. I’ve got a general idea. Told him I didn’t
want to know exactly because then nobody could beat it out of me. But I have an idea of where he
probably
is. I spent most of my life up in them mountains. Be a blind fool if I didn’t know where the best spots would be for hiding.”

“I need to find him first.”

He studied me long enough to make me uncomfortable.

“You ain’t a bounty hunter on the side, are you? I’ve heard how federal boys file them reports. They catch the bad man then get some friend of theirs to claim that he caught the fella. The check goes to the friend and he splits it with the federal man.”

“I’m not a bounty hunter.”

“I didn’t think so. Those fellas are always agitated. I used to be that way about pussy. I’d come down from the mountains three, four times a year and the minute I was around women—and I didn’t care if they were ugly or pretty or skinny or fat or white or colored—I’d be so agitated I could barely control myself. But I always had to pay for pussy. No decent woman would want me. I could take five hot baths a day and I’d still smell like a mountain man. At least that’s what all the decent women told me.”

He sat back, rocked some more.

“But what these bounty boys is agitated about is money and the chance to kill somebody all legal-like. The money’s nice, too, and they sure do want it. But what really works them up is hunting the man. So they get all worked up—it’s just like havin’ a hard-on and no woman around—and the only way they can get settled is to kill somebody. That’s why they kill each other
so often. Can’t find nobody else and most lawmen don’t give a damn about a bounty man getting killed. He probably figures ‘good riddance.’” He paused. “But you ain’t a bounty man so why you want him? And it ain’t your case—leastways, Pepper said it was his and Connelly’s—so what’s your interest?”

“A friend of mine got killed tonight. The one everybody’s blaming Mike Chaney for. But I don’t think he did it.”

“Who you after then?”

“Connelly and Pepper. That’s where I’ll start.”

He grinned. “Then you’re all right by me.”

He set to rocking back and forth again. Smoking his pipe. The wind damned near knocked the shed over several times. God alone knew what held it up. He didn’t seem to notice. He had his pipe and his stove and his rocking chair. He was almost serene.

“You ever meet Chaney?”

“Nope.”

“I known him since he was a little boy. He was one of the nicest, kindest little boys I ever knew. And when he growed up, he was just the same way. And when he robbed banks, it was only Flannery banks because the Flannerys were dirty dealin’ all the farmers and ranchers, not even givin’ them any time at all to pay off their mortgages.”

“Yeah, I know all that. Maybe he was right to do that, maybe he wasn’t. My concern is that he’s also a killer.”

“That’s the part that don’t figure. He was the one who’d always step between and stop a fight, not start one. I seen him handle himself all right a couple times
he had to. But killin’ somebody—that just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Then I’m your best bet, Mr. Gage. You give me a map showing me where you think I’ll find him—just the general area—and I promise you I’ll do everything I can to bring him down that mountain alive.”

He rocked some more. Stared straight at the stove door as if he could see images on it.

You had to be a little bit envious of Chaney. Having friends so loyal they’d hide him. Having friends so loyal they spoke of him as if he were not simply a legend but a saintly legend.

He yawned. “This is way past my sleepin’ time.”

“Sorry.”

“When you figure on leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

He yawned.

“Stove gets me that sleepy. Never fails. Some nights I’m too lazy to even get up out of this old rocker. I just sleep in it all night.”

“Wish I could sleep like that. Have a hard time with it a lot of nights. A lot of regrets, I guess.”

For the first time, he laughed about something.

“I’m an innocent man, Mr. Ford. I ain’t ever killed a man or made time with a married woman. I sleep like a baby.” Then, and it was almost as if he was faking, his head lolled to the side and his eyes closed for a moment. He jerked back up out of his sudden sleep. “I’m too tired to do it now. You come back before you leave for the mountains in the morning. And I’ll have a map all drawn for you and everything.”

“I appreciate that very much.”

“I’m fallin’ asleep—”

And indeed he was.

Before I could even get to the door, the old man was snoring.