Dead Man's Hand (Caden Chronicles, The) (5 page)

T
hings were
not
okay at the O.K. Corral. For one, my eyewitness to the graveyard attack on Boot Hill was late. For another, the rain had temporarily washed out our buffalo hunt. Fine by me—I’d have more time to talk to Annie. Only problem was, after checking the stalls, blacksmith shop, and tack room, the only people I found were grumbling guests arguing about whether we should attend a cowboy poetry reading in the tanner’s shop or take a ride on the Big Sky train. While the crowd bickered, I wandered up the drive to the guardhouse to chat with the security guard.

“Well now let me see,” said Wyatt Earp, making room for me in his small guardhouse. “Yesterday afternoon. At my age, it’s hard to remember back that far.”

He sat in a wooden swivel chair wearing a tawny leather vest, green shirt faded to the color of okra, and black jeans. He’d hooked a pair of Tony Lama boots on the edge of his tiny desk and locked his hands behind his downy white head while he gazed up at the ceiling.

“Stepped away to reset the security system ‘bout the time you folks pulled up. That’s why I wasn’t here when you arrived.”

He rubbed his forehead with the pad of his thumb as if trying to conjure up a memory. The cramped room smelled of burned coffee. A bow-hunting magazine lay open on his small desk.

“A coyote must’ve jumped the fence and set it off,” Earp continued, pointing to the flashing green light on the security panel. “I couldn’t have been gone more than fifteen minutes.”

“You sure? No chance you were gone longer?”

“Oh sure. Anything’s possible. But the marshal, he gets upset if he calls up here and no one answers. That time of the day I wasn’t too worried. Weren’t expecting but the one vehicle—yours. And your mom had called to say you were running late. Good thing she phoned too. I’d ‘bout decided to lock up for the evening and walk down for dinner.”

I glanced at his empty holster. This was the thing I remembered from our arrival; how when he’d dismounted and approached our car I’d thought it odd that a security guard would be wearing a holster but not a gun.

“Where’s your sidearm?”

“Loaned it to Jess. Called yesterday afternoon asking if he could borrow mine. Told me to leave it on a nail in the first stall of the barn. He’d pick it up there.”

“Did he say why?”

“Misplaced his. Not the first time it’s happened. Jess tends to forget things. Not that I have any room to talk. Anyhow, I knew he’d need it for that scene in the saloon last night. Hard to gun down that hayseed farmer without a piece.”

“Except that it wasn’t loaded,” I replied. This make-believe gunfight business was definitely getting on my nerves.

“You’re right there,” Earp said. “Mine never is anyway. Not with anything but blanks. Doesn’t mean it can’t shoot real bullets though. But I don’t have a permit to carry a loaded sidearm. Got a hunting license but that’s for shooting coyotes and prairie dogs and such. Fact is, no one in Deadwood carries a loaded weapon but the marshal and his deputy. They’re the only real sworn peace officers. The rest of us just have these for show.”

“So you left your gun in Lazy Jack’s at what time?”

Wyatt Earp swirled his coffee and frowned. “Let’s see. You folks got here a little before six. Jess called maybe a couple hours earlier. If I had to make a guess, I’d say I walked down to the barn and dropped it off around four thirty. Maybe a tad earlier.”

“Was there anyone with you while you reset the alarm?” This was the question I’d been waiting to ask. If someone could verify his story, my list of suspects became smaller, though I doubted Wyatt Earp was the killer. He was definitely rounder and shorter than the man I’d seen in the graveyard.

He shook his head. “Never is. We run a thin staff here. Didn’t used to be that way. Few years back I had an assistant, but not anymore.”

“So no one can verify where you were just before we arrived?”

A smile creased Wyatt’s lips. “Reckon not. ‘Course if you’re thinkin’ I was at Lazy Jack’s right ‘fore you pulled up, then my Marge would have to be some kind of fast racehorse. See, for me to ride from here to that barn and shoot someone, then get to the place where the fence needed fixing and back ‘fore you folks arrived would take close to forty-five minutes. And that wouldn’t even hardly give me time to hop off and restring the wire in that busted section.”

“So if I look at that fence I’ll find where you made the repair?”

“Take you there myself if you like. Course you’ll need a ride. Marge can’t carry the two of us. Can barely carry me. You can get yourself a horse and ride down there yourself. Have to have one of the hands go with you, though. Not supposed to let guests ride alone. ‘Cept for if they’re ridin’ a pony. Fall off a pony and we’d probably sue you for clumsiness.”

He smiled at his lame joke; I did not.

“That’s how come they make you sign those waivers. Bust a bone, it’s on you. Here, I’ll show you where the break was.”

Wyatt pulled a welcome map from the display case and circled a spot near a green area marked “nature preserve.”

“What you do is, ride back up this road about a quarter mile. You’ll come to a steer skull. The pair of horns points east. Head off that way and when you come to the ditch, follow it a quarter mile until you see a watering hole. Then turn south. You’ll see where the fence starts. When you get to a wide patch of sagebrush, you’ll find the new section. Shiny as a new nickel
that wire is.” Wyatt blew steam from his cup and sipped. “If you want to, we’ll ride out there now and take a look.”

“Maybe later.” He still had the same jolly smile, but I had a feeling my questions had put him on edge somewhat. “Who would benefit from Billy the Kid’s death?”

Earp shifted in his chair and looked out the window. “Been wondering when you’d get to that one. Given it some thought too. Can’t think of a soul unless it’s Jess. I know, sounds bad me saying that. What with what I just told you ‘bout my gun and all. But the two of them were up for the supporting role in the remake of
Rio Bravo
.”

“So it’s possible your gun
is
the murder weapon?”

“Hold on, partner. Didn’t say that. You asked me who stands to gain if something happened to Billy. I’m saying the two of them were both angling for the same role. Don’t mean Jess had anything to do with Bill’s death—assuming Bill
is
dead. Which I doubt. Takes a special kind of man to shoot someone. Least that’s what I hear.”

“Is the actor who plays Jesse James that kind of someone?”

“Jess? Don’t rightly know. Could be. He can be hotheaded sometimes. Got a reputation as a brawler. Been questioned about it a few times too. Involved in a few scuffles in bars. Last one led to an assault charge. Not sure how that turned out. But that don’t make him a murderer.”

“Have you asked him about your gun?”

“Didn’t see any reason to. You’re the only one who’s taken an interest in it. And like I said earlier, I only wear it for decoration. I figured Jess would return it once he found his. But eventually I will need it back. Lose that revolver and it comes
out of my paycheck. One like that, a replica of a .44 caliber Smith & Wesson Schofield would set me back a good piece of change.”

Wyatt folded his arms across his chest and studied me. I wondered if in another setting, like maybe in a hayloft with a grudge, he would be as friendly.

“You seem pretty certain Billy was killed,” said Earp. “You got any evidence to prove it? I mean, other than what you
think
you saw in the barn?”

The good ones are like that, feigning ignorance, stumbling over their story. They drop in facts here and there that the investigator probably already knows. When they see which way the questioning is going, they send the detective down a rabbit trail, feeding him bits of information that have no bearing on the case. Wyatt Earp seemed like the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland white rabbit, wiggling a white tail at me and watching to see if I’d follow.

“I get lots of practice putting pieces together,” I said at last. “I don’t always guess right, but I do more times than not.”

“But you don’t really have any evidence,” said Wyatt, erasing that grandfatherly smile. “I mean, fact is you’re just
playing
detective, aren’t you? This isn’t like a
real
crime in a
real
town where you could
really
get hurt if you got too close to the truth.”

I couldn’t tell if his words were a threat or a warning. Wyatt Earp didn’t strike me as a cold-blooded killer, but if I’d learned anything from studying true crime case files, it was that even the most seasoned law officer could become a killer.

“No, I’ve never actually been in the room with a murderer,” I said.

“Don’t look so disappointed, partner. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll get the chance.”

I pulled on my jacket. “I better get back to the corral before Mom and Dad wonder what happened to me.”

Earp asked, “Buffalo roundup still on?”

“Too wet. They’re talking about either doing the train ride or the cowboy poetry reading.”

“Shame. A lot of folks say the buffalo hunt is the best part of their vacation. Takes you right by the Native American burial grounds. ‘Course the train does too, but it doesn’t stop. You know they say it’s haunted, right?”

“The train?” I asked.

“Native American mounds. People swear they’ve seen campfires snuffed out, trees rustling even when there’s no wind, animals acting strange. Hard to know what goes on up there once that phantom fog rolls in. Covers the ground every place ‘cept over the grave mounds themselves. Now, if you really want to investigate spooks and such, that’s where I’d be spending my time.”

I thanked Wyatt Earp, exited the guardhouse, and walked back toward the O.K. Corral. As I passed Tex’s Tannery Depot, I pictured the old man in his comfy little security booth with his Tony Lama leather boots propped up on the desk, cup of coffee in his hand, and smug smile at having sent that “young whippersnapper detective” down a bunny trail.

The train whistle blew. Mom, Dad, and Wendy had already boarded while I had interviewed Earp. I jogged toward the
train station, reaching the loading platform just as the last guest boarded the Big Sky. I stepped aboard and snagged a seat in the last row of the passenger car next to the window. Moments later the train lurched and pulled away from the station, ushering in the start of the great Reading Railroad train ride. Near the front of the car a rawhide-tough cowboy rose from his seat, opened a small hardback book, and began reading a ballad by poet Donn Taylor. Wendy squealed with delight. I groaned.

Compromise is a killer, and the best way to ruin a good time is to include someone like me who has no appreciation for sonnets, bonnets, and prairie-home prose. But, as I was about to discover, there are worse things than being trapped on a train with a poetry-reading cowboy.

T
he Big Sky rambled along over hill and dale as the train’s tracks traced the curves and dips of a winding creek. Outside my window, elk grazed in misty meadows and prairie dogs scurried across grassy fields before disappearing into their burrows. Inside, I thought of Annie.

The business in the graveyard at Boot Hill left me rattled, and it wasn’t just that I’d almost had my skull caved in by a shovel. That was scary enough, but the way Annie reacted when we reached her horse and then the dream … Was my grizzly nightmare a premonition? A warning of trouble to come? Or was it (like Mom was always telling me) the result of downing junk food just before bedtime? I couldn’t imagine
that a fistful of M&M’s and Skittles could ignite such gruesome thoughts, but
something
had tripped my imaginary security fence and awakened me.

Then there was Annie’s mysterious absence at the not so O.K. Corral.

On we choo-choo-chugged toward Rattlesnake Gulch and Twilight Tunnel. Gold curtain tassels swayed; steel wheels vibrated beneath my sneakers. Closing my eyes, I immediately thought of Annie. I slouched in my seat and rested my head against the worn leather cushion. I like planes okay. They’re fun on takeoff and landings—unless there’s ice on the wings and runway, which there is sometimes where we live. But there’s something personal about a train. Maybe it’s the rocking motion and the constant drone of the locomotive’s engine. On a deeper, subconscious level, maybe riding a train takes me back to before I was born and was jostling around in my mother’s belly and hearing muffled voices but not caring because I didn’t know the dangers that lay just beyond the walls of my protective bubble.

I think about this sort of stuff when I’d rather not think about what’s really bothering me, and right then I didn’t want to think about Annie and Billy the Kid’s killer.

But I did anyway.

My conversation with Wyatt Earp concerned me. His explanation for why he’d been away from his post seemed too convenient. Without an eyewitness to verify his whereabouts during the murder, he could have been anywhere, including the barn. He didn’t
look
like a murderer, but I’d studied enough real murders to know cold-blooded killers rarely look
dangerous. They’re schoolteachers and youth pastors and stay-at-home-moms who flip out under pressure. Wyatt Earp might have been fixing the fence. Or he might have been fixing it so Bill Bell never took another breath. I wouldn’t know for certain until I learned more about Earp’s needs. Find his motive and I might have the killer.

Then there was Marshal Buckleberry. Even though he’d deputized me, he hadn’t shown any real interest in taking the murder seriously. I had the impression that for him, the killing of Billy the Kid and my infatuation with the murder was a joke: some extracurricular activity meant to keep my parents happy and me occupied. What better cover than to say he let a kid detective investigate the crime and found no evidence of a murder?

The door swung open next to me. I peeked out and saw Dad enter the passenger car.

“We missed you this morning at breakfast,” he announced, taking the seat beside me. “Everything okay?”

I told him I wasn’t interested in sitting around listening to people debate how they were going to spend their vacation, especially since I had a murder to solve.

“So you still think that scene you saw in the hayloft was real and not just two actors practicing?”

“I know it, Dad. No one can stare at the ceiling that long without blinking.”

“Okay. Just wanted to make sure our vacation isn’t boring you.”

“It’s a lot more exciting than I expected. Thanks for going to bat for me with the marshal.”

“Just keep in mind, Nick. He’s doing you a favor. Don’t do anything that’ll give him or me a reason to regret this.”

Mom and Wendy sat in front of Dad and me. Other passengers were still filtering in and getting settled. At the front of the car the conductor pulled out a small leather book and began reading. I slumped against the window, enduring a ballad about a black crow. The track had veered away from the creek and begun a long, curving climb up the mountain. Below my window a muddy river wound its way through a deep gorge. The train’s whistle rebounded off canyon walls, giving the experience a nostalgic flavor.

After polite applause, the conductor introduced our next lecturer: a “rip-snorting, hard-charging, straight-shooting cow-poke comic named Quick Draw Guffaw.”

I took this as my cue to stretch my legs and wander the train, checking out the dining car (vending machines), gambling car (small booths set up for bingo), and restroom car (Gunslingers, Miss Kitty). Tour completed, I returned to my seat.

“Since many of you are unfamiliar with the ways and history of these parts,” Guffaw announced, “I’d like to give a full and inaccurate accounting of the significant historic events that shaped the Old West.”

Dad nudged me with his elbow. “You listening, Nick?”

I nodded, even though my mind was still on the case. And on the Bible in my room. I wanted to ask Dad if he and Mom had found a Bible marked up with verses about ghosts but decided against it. I figured the less I said about the scary scripture, the easier it would be for me to determine if they were clues to the killer.

Guffaw, wearing white pants, vest, and coat, stood erect, one hand resting on the doorway for balance, the other clasping an unlit cigar. “Years ago in a galaxy far, far away, during a time when writers such as Mark Twain, John Steinbeck, and Louis L’Amour wrote descriptive and sometimes boring novels about the harsh environment settlers faced on the great American frontier, buffalo roamed and ranged and left large pie-shaped piles, all-natural organic fertilizer, on the messy plains. This made tracking, hunting, and killing buffalo easy. You only needed to follow the smell.”

I sat up, smiling. Dad, too.

“Whole states, many of which hadn’t even been invented yet, scrambled to accommodate the buffalo; not to mention those notoriously wily varmints, politicians.”

Dad leaned over. “Better than the poetry reading?”

“Definitely. And way better than the history lectures I got in civics class.”

Wendy turned and glared. “Would you two hush? I can’t hear.”

“Within this rustic, rustbelt political landscape,” Guffaw continued, “young male and female deer and antelope frolicked and fawned all over each other to such a degree that parents often forbade these rambunctious couples from seeing each other outside of school. This led to such great works of literature as
Romeo and Joliet
, from which we get the classic line: ‘Romeo, Romeo, where art thou commuter train to Chicago, oh Romeo?’”

I saw the side of Mom’s face and her furrowed brow. Leaning forward I explained that the city of Joliet was the fourth
largest city in the state of Illinois, located just forty-five miles southwest of Chicago. She brightened once she caught on to the punch line.

“Meanwhile in the Old West, displaced residents from Manhattan’s Upper West Side sat around campfires singing folk songs and wearing mink stoles and listening to really bad harmonica music.”

The Big Sky turned away from the river and gorge and chugged toward a series of chimney-shaped outcroppings. Goats stood on rocky slopes eyeing the train as it passed. Just for fun I glanced around to see if Annie had snuck aboard without me noticing, but I didn’t see her.

“Such was the era of western exploration. A period in American history unlike any before it. And hopefully never to be seen again. This was America’s first ‘lost generation.’ A term normally ascribed to uneducated and unemployable teens, but which fit these hearty folks due to the fact that no one, not even the renowned explorers Huey Lewis and the Dave Clark candy bar, had a clue what they were doing or where they were going since the GPS and highway maps hadn’t been invented yet. What am I saying? HIGHWAYS HADN’T BEEN INVENTED. In fact, the 75-watt GE lightbulb was just a flicker in the eye of the American inventor ‘Tommy Boy’ Edison.”

I could tell the comic was feeding off the audience’s energy, holding the pause just long enough to draw the listeners forward in their seats. There’s a skill to holding a crowd’s attention. Last semester we studied the technique in drama class. Not that I was any good at acting or wanted to be in a play.
But the course was an easy A because it focused primarily on technique and if there was one thing I’m good at, it’s analyzing facts and memorizing technique. That’s one reason all this detective stuff is so much fun for me.

I nudged Dad. “I need to get up and move around.”

“But this guy’s a hoot. Don’t tell me you’re bored.”

“Oh, no. He’s way better than the poetry guy. But I’m tired of sitting.”

No further explanation needed. Dad understood, even if Mom didn’t.

The one time I’d mentioned to my father how hard it was for me to sit still, he’d shared how when he was a boy he suffered from what Grandmamma Caden called “fidgety pants.”

“You probably got it from me, Nick. Not that I’m an expert on ADD or anything. Your mom’s the one who keeps up with all these childhood syndromes. But I almost flunked ninth grade because I couldn’t stay seated. Teacher kept threatening to tie me into my chair. Part of it was because I was bored and spent too much time daydreaming. Now it’s not so bad. Only flares up when I’m sitting in a sales meeting or listening to your sister recite those poems she writes,” he’d said, winking.

He swung his legs and I slid out, mirroring the comic cowboy’s posture by taking a position at the rear of the car.

“Bushwhackers, desperados, and hornswagglers roamed, ranged, and terrified the settlers of the Old West, ruling the Bad Lands from the Dakotas to Duluth, adding a mystical aura to U.S. social studies classes. Tracking these lawless men was easy. You only needed to follow the smell. The indigenous people—Indians, so named in honor of a country clear on the
other side of the globe—found themselves rounded up and shuttled onto tour buses where they spent days, sometimes months, visiting scenic national monuments like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and Frank Stoeber’s giant ball of twine in Cawker City, Kansas. As often happens during such tours, the buses broke down, leaving the group stranded in desolate areas. The marooned passengers called such places Death Valley, Broken Bow, and Cleveland. Miles from civilization and out of cell phone range, these resolute Native Americans began walking along a path known as the Trail of Tears—so called because of the scorching hot desert sand and the fact that the very last pair of moccasins in all of the United States was at that very moment in history on the feet of a guy named James Fenimore Gary Cooper, a famous American author who would later write a poem that would become mandatory reading in all U.S. literature classes, but at the time was struggling to find a publisher due to Cooper’s insistence that the title remain,
The Last of the Moccasins
.”

The train’s side-to-side rocking lessened, and I noticed we’d begun to slow. Holding onto the back of Dad’s seat, I leaned toward the window and peered out. A hand-lettered sign warned that we’d reached HOLE IN THE WALL JUNCTION: HOME TO BROWN BARES (
Not another misspelling
.) AND BLACK BART. The shudder of steel wheels braking brought the Big Sky to a halt, and steam billowed outside our windows. Quick Draw Guffaw announced that we’d reached the halfway point of our ride and he would be taking a break while the engine took on water. Passengers were free to disembark and have their picture taken with him in front of the locomotive.

I filed out with the others and found myself standing near the base of an old mining camp. Rusty picks, sifting pans, and wooden flues lay scattered about the ground. A rocky stream sliced through the camp and disappeared into a gully choked with scrub trees and sagebrush. Sheer rock walls towered above the russet peaks. Fractured clouds left wide patches of blue poking through gray. While others lined up to have their pictures taken in front of the cowcatcher, I headed in the opposite direction and caught not a cow, but a break in the case.

Annie rode toward us on her black mare. Had it not been for her reddish-blonde ponytail bouncing off her shoulders I might have mistaken her for Black Bart, with her black hat sitting snugly on her head, front brim flattened by wind and speed, black pants, shirt, and leather vest.

I stood in the middle of the tracks behind the caboose, arms folded across my chest, head slightly cocked, giving her my best John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Val Kilmer stance. I hoped to appear indifferent, but honestly I was relieved. I feared something had happened to her.

Tugging on the reins, she brought her horse to a stop and dismounted.

“Oversleep?” I said dryly.

“Needed to take care of some things.”

“You could’ve left a message with someone at the corral. I waited a long time.”

“I said I was busy, okay? You’re not my mom, you know.”

Taking the reins, she walked her horse up the tracks and let it drink from the rocky stream.

“Just saying, meeting at the corral was your idea, not mine.”

She pushed the hat back on her head and wiped her brow with the back of her riding glove. When she did, I noticed the saffron bruise just below her hairline.

I stepped toward her to get a better look. “Did you get walloped?”

“Did I get what?”

“Looks like you ran into a tree,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the contusion. “Or a fist.”

“I … fell off my horse.”

She pushed my hand away and ruffled her bangs.

Leaning closer I replied, “Face first and on your head?”

“Hey, look. It’s not like you’re an expert on horseback riding, okay? The buckle on my saddle broke and I slipped off. End of story.”

“Sure, whatever. So who was it, really?”

She stared upwards with a look of surprise. “I told you! Nobody. I fell.”

“I meant, who did we see last night in the graveyard. You said you’d tell me.”

“I, ah … was mistaken.”

“Oh, come on. You know exactly who it was.”