Ragtime Cowboys (22 page)

“Vernon Dillard,” Siringo said. “Your sheriff. At about five bucks a pound I'd say he's overpaid. No wonder he weren't much help after the eel come to pay his respects.”

Someone knocked on the door. Charmian took off her glasses. “Becky?”

It was her voice on the other side. “Aunt Eliza said those men are back. May I come in?”

Charmian looked at the detectives. Hammett grinned. “I won't be the one to try to keep her out.”

Siringo got up and opened the door. Jack London's daughter wore a plain blouse and a skirt that left her calves exposed. The old Pinkerton would never get used to seeing women parading around half-naked.

“I've been out walking,” she said. “I saw the taxi drive up. I don't suppose you've brought another murderer with you?”

“We're trying to break the habit.”

She scowled at Hammett. “Why are you always grinning like a monkey?”

“You should see me when you're not around. I'm a regular sourpuss.”

“Come in, Becky. Shut the door.”

“Are you sure? It's always so stuffy in here.”

“I'm very sure. These men have something to tell you and I'd rather it stayed in this room.”

“But there's just Aunt Eliza.”

“Who is a fine woman on whose face you can read her every thought. Please do as I ask.”

She did, and noticed Hammett's bandages for the first time. “Have you been in a fight?”

“Yes, miss, with the Southern Pacific Railroad. The S.P. won.” His face was pale despite the smile.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“I've seen more than my share, thank you.”

“When was the last time you changed the dressings?”

“I keep forgetting.”

“Charmian, where is the first-aid kit?”

“In the kitchen, dear. Are you very much in pain, Mr. Hammett?”

“He'll live,” Siringo said. “If you could die of a busted pin, I'd be six feet down in Texas.”

“I wasn't asking you, Mr. Siringo.”

Hammett said, “It can wait.”

Siringo got up and held his chair for the girl. She sat with her back straight, her knees together, and her hands folded in her lap, her head cocked in a listening position. Her expression changed only once during the narrative, when Hammett described what had happened to him aboard the train. She clasped a hand to her mouth, but stayed silent until she'd been told everything her stepmother had.

“You left the money?”

Siringo nodded. “I won't say I weren't tempted. It's my opinion that cash was all Kennedy's, to prime the pump. Just because it came from his walking-around fund don't mean he wouldn't make me repay every cent with a piece of my hide.”

“He's yellow, Mr. Siringo is,” Hammett said. “And crooked as a roulette wheel.”

“I think you're both marvelous,” Charmian said. “Becky will see to Mr. Hammett's injuries and then we'll discuss what comes next.”

Becky sprang to her feet and took Hammett's elbow. He offered no resistance; Siringo thought he leaned a little more heavily on her than warranted as they went out.

“You've trimmed your moustache, Mr. Siringo,” Charmian said. “It becomes you.”

“Much obliged. I always look better when I'm not supposed to be me.”

“Charlie O'Casey. Peter Collins. I don't know how you both keep track of who you are at any given moment.”

“Don't forget Horn and Tarkington. It's getting so when somebody calls me by my real name I look around to see who he's talking to.”

“I can't blame you for taking precautions. These are dangerous men. There have been two attempts at murder, and may be more.”

“I take heart that they keep missing.”

She shook her head. For a homely woman she was uncommonly handsome. “I'm calling off this investigation. I'd rather let the ranch go than be responsible for your deaths.”

“That's what they said in Colorado, when a puma that got too old to chase down wild game started going down into the local town and making supper out of the citizens. Instead of sending somebody after it and maybe getting him killed, they slaughtered a pig a day and left it at the town limits at sundown. The theory was the cat would fill up on pork and leave the folks alone.”

“It's a reasonable assumption.”

“See, that was the problem. Killers don't reason. Them pigs was just appetizers. The town lost ten more from the population before all the men in good health rode up into the mountains with Winchesters. That puma's hide is still hanging in the lobby of the hotel there, and nobody's been ate since. You give a killer what he wants, he just goes on doing what he's been till you skin him and nail him to a wall.”

“But this isn't your fight. Your lives are worth so much more than five hundred dollars apiece.”

He smiled.

“I can't speak for Hammett, but I ain't doing it for just the money.”

He watched her, expecting surprise or disappointment or loathing or maybe something encouraging. She smiled back.

“I guessed that, Mr. Siringo. I'm a grown woman and then some. I've gone through great loss, and learned from the experience. I fell in love once. It was wonderful and horrible and all things in between. I couldn't go through that again. But thank you for making a middle-aged woman feel once again like a desirable schoolgirl.”

“We aim to please,” he said after a moment.

She was still smiling. “I thought it was ‘We never sleep.'”

“Oh, I catch plenty of winks off the job.”

“Now you'll have your chance. I can't allow you to risk your life for something that can never be. That's why I'm ending this.”

“I respect what you're saying. You got all the answers. You just need to ask yourself one question.”

“Just one?”

“What would Jack do?”

*   *   *

Seated in a brightly lit kitchen with a pump-up gas stove, white-enamel sink, and an icebox big enough to chill a side of beef all at once, Hammett watched Becky London bathe his foot with warm water from a basin and pat it dry in her lap. The toes were blistered and peeling, but the new skin was radiantly pink. She inspected the damage from all angles with a frown of concentration.

“You're lucky,” she said. “I don't know how you escaped infection.”

“I medicate internally.” He went on watching as she retrieved a roll of gauze, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and surgical scissors from a white tin box with a red cross painted on the lid. “Where'd you learn to be a nurse?”

“Charmian's the expert. She tended Daddy every time he took a spill and looked after him at the—at the end. She insisted on teaching me everything she knew. ‘Men wrestle bears and fight wars, women patch them up afterward. That won't change just because we have the vote.' Her words.” She snipped dead skin from his foot.

“You really do like her, don't you?”

“Daddy loved her. How could I not?”

“I guess she isn't one of those wicked stepmothers you read about.”

“That would be my mother. I love her, but Daddy put up with a lot, before and after the divorce. I spend as little time with her and my sister as possible. They enjoy being miserable.”

“Runs in the family. Sometimes I think a smile would starve to death on that pretty face of yours.”

“I smile when I'm happy.”

“I've got something to look forward to, then.”

She used the applicator from the bottle of mild astringent to disinfect the wound, changing the subject along with the treatment. “You're a foolish man. Two stubborn women are nothing to lose your life over.”

“I'm only doing it for one. I like Charmian, but I don't stick my neck out just for people I like.”

“Are you saying you love me?”

“I don't know yet. You can want a new car bad enough to lose sleep thinking about it, but you don't know it's a good match till you drive it a hundred miles.”

“Your opinion of my sex is why you've never seen me smile. A woman isn't an automobile.”

“I only just said it.”

“You didn't have to. In any case, you're promised to someone else.”

“Siringo told you?”

“That wasn't necessary. I'm Jack London's daughter, Mr. Hammett. I don't have to see the hobbles to know when a horse is someone else's property.”

“It's okay I'm a horse, but not you're a car?”

“You spoke of all women. I spoke of one man.”

“Siringo'd say you didn't inherit Jack's bump of adventure.”

“That wouldn't be an adventure.”

“Sin, then. I read some of his books, and I read about him. I know which sins bothered him and which didn't. Ouch! Jesus!”

She'd begun winding gauze around his foot, and suddenly jerked it tight.

“Next I'm going to look at your head. There's a hole in it I'm sure. Get yourself killed if you want, but don't do it for my sake. Handsome men are bad for the heart.”

“Your father was a handsome man.”

“Exactly my point.”

 

PART FOUR

MEN IN THE
MOON

He solved the mystery a little sooner.

—Jack London, on the death of a friend

 

28

They reconvened in the den. Hammett, his foot still smarting from the wrenched bandage, sat this time at the desk. The others stood. Charmian had sent the disapproving Eliza Shepard to town on an overnight errand.

“I still think we should abandon our course,” Charmian said, “but Mr. Siringo has agreed to abide by your decision, Becky. The ranch is yours too. I was wrong to consider letting it go to Clanahan without asking you.”

“Thank you. I—”

“Hang on,” Siringo said. “This is about more than just real estate, or selling illegal goods. Kennedy means to control this country, and he ain't above hiring murderers to get what he wants. If we don't stop him here, history won't thank us.”

“History's hooey.”

“That's mighty enlightening, Mr. Hammett,” Siringo said, “but maybe you'd care to go on for those of us who missed a class or two.”

“What I'm saying is let's not pump the job up so big we can't see around it. Kennedy's just a politician, same as Clanahan, and when you get down to it Mike Feeney, may he rest in peace. How many hands he's got doesn't count. You take out the head and the hands go with it.”

“Are you suggesting assassination?” Becky's voice was almost inaudible.

Hammett shook his head.

“Mr. Siringo and I had our fill of that when we were with Pinkerton. It's why we left. I say we go to Kennedy and tell him the jig's up.” He looked at Siringo. “You said yourself he isn't much for bluffing. He'll back off when he sees his plans are known. If he doesn't, we'll threaten to send his notebook to a Republican paper.”

“We can't go to Frisco and leave this place wide open.”

“We did before.”

“Then we didn't have something Kennedy wants back. It won't take him long to match Charlie O'Casey to Charles A. Siringo.”

“We'll manage,” Charmian said. “We have the laborers.”

“Oh, they can swing a sledge and snag a man's hat on a pitchfork, but they need to get in range first. Mr. Edgar Edison Lanyard'll pick 'em off with his long gun before they do.”

“We'll send a wire,” Hammett said.

“He'll never get it. Don't forget we agreed Clanahan probably owns the local Western Union office and the telephone switchboard too. He won't let anything go through to stop his payday. We'd just be telling him where he can send the eel.”

“Kennedy will figure that out when he finds out his notebook's missing.”

“Why save him time?”

Hammett had been sitting with his injured leg stretched out before him. Now he drew it back. “It doesn't matter one way or the other.”

“Says who?”

“Says the man who knows the sound of a two-year-old Dodge when he hears it.”

Siringo heard it then: the rataplan of pistons approaching the house. He turned and parted the window curtains.

“Could be worse,” he said.

Charmian went to the window. “It's Vernon Dillard.”

Siringo unstrapped the Winchester and levered a cartridge into the chamber. The noise made her spin around. “What are you doing? He's the sheriff!”

“Just a precaution, in case he forgot. You and Becky go out on the front porch and keep him busy. If he asks for us, you ain't seen us.”

“Where will you be?”

“Attic. Better field of fire.”

Hammett took out his .38 and inspected the cylinder. “I'll watch from the window.”

Becky said, “You won't kill him in cold blood!”

“You've got me mixed up with someone else. I've never killed a man in my life.”

“Me neither.”

Everyone stared at Siringo.

“That I know of,” he said. “A lot of us slung plenty of lead in the old days. We couldn't always keep track of where it all went. I ain't fixing to find out now, but that's up to Dullard.”

“Dillard,” Charmian said.

“Potato, po-tah-to,” said Hammett.

*   *   *

A trapdoor led into the attic from the pantry next to the kitchen, with a ladder leaning on the wall nearby. He slung the carbine from his shoulder by its strap and climbed up.

*   *   *

“Brothers, you have allowed a spy to enter your ranks, and he now sits within reach of my hand. He'll never leave this hall alive. You know your duty.”

He felt the Colt under his coat, the bowie stuck in his belt, a cold trickle of sweat marching down his spine.

Before he could get to either weapon, the men with the miners' union searched him as a new member, found a union account book, and noticed a leaf missing. He'd cut it out and sent it to Pinkerton headquarters.