C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
The night was warm and humid. Heat lightning flashed without sound in a starless sky as Hank Lowery walked along Front Street in the direction of the Drover's Rest Hotel. The air smelled of penned-up cattle, horse dung, crowded, sweating humanity, and the ever-present odors of spilled beer, overused outhouses, and vomit. The boardwalks and streets were still thronged. For the cowboys and sporting crowd, the night was young and getting younger.
His spurs chimed on the boardwalk as he walked closer to the hotel. After he passed the Bonnie Blue Pool & Dance Hall, the crush of people thinned and he found himself alone except for a drunk wearing a dark suit and necktie who buttoned up his pants as he stepped out of an alley and then lurched across the street.
The floor of the alley had been raised with dirt and then covered over with crushed rock, an attempt to prevent the mud of Front Street from entering when it rained. To the right stood the blank wall of a furniture warehouse and opposite it was a series of five shacks that shared adjoining walls. Lowery had been in enough cow towns to know those were the abodes of women who worked the line. They were too old, too plain, or too drunk or drugged to grace the saloons and dance halls. He'd been told that in San Francisco's Barbary Coast the average life expectancy of the Chinese girls who worked the line was two years, and he didn't think the white girls doing the same in Dodge would fare any better.
Lowery was about to walk on when a woman's piercing shriek knifed through the night, stopping him in his tracks. A moment later, another, just as loud, came from a girl down at one of the saloons. He recognized the difference. A drunk had probably grabbed the saloon girl as she'd sashayed by and she'd screamed. It often made a drunk feel good and was excellent for business. The first wasn't that kind of scream. It was a strangled cry of terror and pain and it came from one of the line shacks.
Instinctively, Hank Lowery's hand dropped for his gun. Then he remembered . . . oiled and wrapped in sailcloth, it lay in the bunkhouse back at the Kerrigan ranch. And there it would remain.
His boots crunched on gravel as he stepped slowly to the shacks. The first was dark. A dim oil lamp glowed in the second, but the third cabin's door was ajar. He detected the odor of whiskey and cigar smoke coming from inside.
“Anybody to home?” he called.
Silence.
A crowd of men roared in a nearby saloon. Above the din, a tinny piano and a banjo played “The Ballad of Jesse James,” a song that was all the rage in Dodge. From the second shack in the row a man grunted and an iron cot squealed.
Lowery pushed the door of the silent shack open with his foot and stepped inside . . . into a scene of horror.
A slender blond girl lay sprawled across a brass bed that took up half of the room. The front of her pale blue corset was stained red from the blood that ran from the huge bowie knife embedded between her pushed-up breasts. Her pretty face showed no fear or pain but bore a startled expression as though the knife in her chest had come as a complete surprise. Lowery leaned over the body and looked into the girl's wide-open brown eyes. He saw no sign of life. The girl's eyes were as dead as she was.
Gravel crunched and a woman's voice yelled, “Sarah! Are you all right, sugar?” A few moments later, she shouted, “Oh, my God!”
A tall, thin black woman stood in the doorway. She wore a gauzy pink robe cinched tight at the waist. Staring over her shoulder, his big hat tipped back on his head, stood a freckled puncher who looked to be all of fifteen.
“She's been stabbed,” Lowery said. “I found herâ”
The woman screamed and ran, the young drover right on her heels. Even in Dodge City a black woman and a white puncher running out of an alley yelling, “Murder! Murder!” was not a sight folks saw every day and it tended to attract attention. Within a couple minutes, the alley was crowded with onlookers. Several men dragged Lowery outside and slammed him against the wall of the warehouse.
A saloon girl shrieked and pointed, “Look at him! He's covered in blood!”
One ranny, drunker than most, tried to break through the cordon of men around Lowery. “Poor Sarah! Let me take a punch at him!”
“No,” said a big, bearded man in a plaid shirt. “Wait until Sheriff Hinkle gets here.”
George T. Hinkle arrived a few minutes later, a nondescript man in his mid-thirties who had no reputation as a man killer. He was more local politician than lawman and had defeated Bat Masterson in the election for sheriff. Bat was said to be good with a gun, was a sharp dresser, and cut a dash with the ladies. Hinkle, sour and businesslike, had none of Masterson's charm, but he did his difficult job well and kept the Texas cowboys in line.
Hinkle examined the body of the dead girl, took stock of Hank Lowery's bloodstained shirt, and summed matters up in his mind. “Why did you kill her? Sarah Hollis was only a two-dollar screw. What harm did she do you? Did she laugh at your little pecker pole?”
The crowd giggled.
Lowery said, “I didn't kill her. I heard a scream and that's how I found her. I never saw the girl before in my life.”
“You saw her once and that was enough,” Hinkle said. “Mister, I'm arresting you for the murder of Sarah Ann Hollis, a known prostitute of this city.” He stared into Lowery's eyes. “You'll get a fair trial and I'll supervise your hanging myself. I can't say fairer than that.” Always the politician, he turned to the crowd and said, “Can I say fairer than that?”
The eager throng, most of them half drunk, yelled, agreeing that fairer words had never been spoken.
One sentimental whore said to Lowery, “Did you have a good mother?”
Hinkle poked his shotgun into Lowery's belly. “Right, move. You're headed for the lockup.”
“Sheriff, I never touched that girl. You're making a big mistake,” Lowery said.
“I've made plenty of those in my time, but I never yet hung a man by mistake.”
* * *
The Dodge City jail was a small, timber building that was mostly used to house drunken revelers overnight. In the morning, they were hosed off and sent home. A rope hung across the room, dividing it. Several drunks snored on the jail floor behind the rope and a couple more hung over the rope, having suspended themselves by their armpits. A single, barred cell with an iron cot and a corncob mattress was reserved for more serious offenders.
Hinkle pushed Hank Lowery into the cell, slammed the cell door shut, and turned the key in the lock. “I guess I should know your name, huh?”
“Hank Lowery.”
The sheriff frowned and took time to light a cigar. “Where have I heard that name before.”
Lowery watched the blue smoke curl around the lawman's face, then said, “The Longdale Massacre.”
“Damn, that's right. You were the one. Two Colts, twelve shots, and twelve dead men I was told. How come you don't carry a gun?”
“Because I've already killed more than my share,” Lowery said, echoing what Frank Cobb had said to him.
“I'd say that. Twelve in one go is a fair number.” Hinkle said. “First time I've had somebody famous in my jail, and just so you know how proud that makes me, I'll bring you steak and eggs for breakfast.”
“I'm touched.”
“You should be. I don't do that for everybody.”
“Then maybe you could do me another favor, Sheriff.”
“Name it. Damn, it's going to be such an honor hanging you, Lowery. You being so important an' all.”
“There's a woman by the name of Mrs. Kate Kerrigan at the Drover's Rest Hotel. Would you tell her I'm here?”
“A sweetheart, huh?”
“No, my boss.”
Hinkle was surprised. “You got a woman boss?”
“She's quite a woman. And quite a boss.”
The sheriff nodded. “Well then, sure. Sure I'll tell her. She purty?”
“Kate is a rare beauty,” Lowery said. “Red hair and green eyes and skin like ivory.”
“Then I'll most certainly tell her.”
“I thought you might,” Lowery said.
* * *
He lay down on the smelly mattress, fell into restless sleep to the snores and mutterings of his fellow prisoners, and dreamed of clockwork men and the murder of young ladies of the night.
C
HAPTER
T
WELVE
Sheriff George T. Hinkle stood outside hotel room Number 17, adjusted his celluloid collar and tie, and tapped politely. A few moments passed. A key turned in the lock, the door swung inward, and Hinkle found himself looking into the black eye of a Colt .45.
“Do you always greet your gentlemen callers like this?” he asked.
“It depends on who's calling,” Kate Kerrigan said. “State your business.”
“Name's George Hinkle, Mrs. Kerrigan. I'm the sheriff of this town. Do you have a hired hand who calls himself Hank Lowery?”
“Yes I do,” Kate said, alarmed. “He's not in any trouble, is he?”
“The worst kind, ma'am. I arrested him this evening for the murder of the prostitute Sarah Ann Hollis.” As though he thought it important, he added, “She worked the line. That meansâ”
“I know what it means, Sheriff. You'd better come inside.” Kate opened the door farther.
Hinkle stepped into the room, removed his hat, and stood awkwardly just inside the doorway, acutely aware of the gorgeous flame-haired beauty who wore night attire of clinging silk yet seemed to be completely unaware of the effect she had on him.
Kate sat on the corner of the bed. “Tell me what happened, Sheriff.”
“Not much to tell, ma'am.” Hinkle turned his bowler in his hands and looked everywhere except at Kate.
“For heaven's sake, man, sit down. Have you never been in a woman's bedroom before?”
“Not a woman who looked like you, ma'am.”
“Then I'll do my best not to distract you, Sheriff. Now, please tell me what you allege Mr. Lowery did.”
“Ma'am, he was found bending over the dead girl's body,” Hinkle said. “And there was blood on his shirt and hands.”
“How was the girl killed?” Kate asked.
“She was stabbed, ma'am. A bowie knife in the chest between herâUh, I mean, a bowie knife in the chest, ma'am.”
Kate's eyes closed and then opened again. “Who saw him bending over the girl?”
“Two people. A woman of color by the name of Alva Cranley and a puncher called Godalming McGuire. They came to Sarah Hollis's shack after they heard her scream.”
Kate said, “Godalming?”
“The kid swears that's his given name, ma'am.”
“Did the witnesses see Hank Lowery stab the girl?”
“No ma'am. But they'll swear in court that Lowery was bending over her body, and him all covered in gore.”
Kate was silent for a few moments, then said, “Sheriff Hinkle, Hank Lowery is incapable of such a crime. He's a gentleman and not one to seek the company of fancy women.”
“Was he a gentleman when he killed all them folks in the Longdale Massacre? I wondered where I'd heard the name before, but then I remembered. Twelve men dead in as many seconds.”
“He was a young man avenging the murder of his brother,” Kate said. “I would expect him to do the same for me.”
“That may be the case, Mrs. Kerrigan, but I believe Lowery murdered Sarah Hollis for a reason I have not yet established. I plan to hang him, ma'am.”
“And I tell you again that Hank Lowery could not commit such a crime,” Kate said.
Hinkle rose to his feet. “Ma'am, when I was a boy there was a man in our town who was a church deacon, read his Bible every day, sheltered the poor, and fed the hungry. Everybody agreed he was a fine man and an upstanding member of the community. Well, one night something snapped inside him and he took a wood ax and murdered his wife, her elderly mother, and his three children. Then he cut his own throat.”
The sheriff stepped to the door. “What I mean by all that, Mrs. Kerrigan, is this. Any man is capable of murder, no matter who he is or what people think he is.”
“Can I see him?” Kate asked.
“Certainly ma'am. Any time between now and the hanging.”
“He won't hang, Sheriff Hinkle. I can assure you of that.”
“Whatever you say, Mrs. Kerrigan. Whatever you say.” Hinkle stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
* * *
“I never trusted him, Kate, and now you know why.” Frank Cobb tried the morning coffee and made a face. “Is there anyone in Dodge who knows how to make a decent cup of coffee?”
“The coffee is fine. Tobacco and whiskey have burned out your taste buds, Frank.” Kate set her cup on the saucer. She wore a tightly fitted sky blue dress with a bustle of the largest kind that had made the trip from the Kerrigan ranch carefully folded in a trunk behind the seat of the chuck wagon. Her red hair was swept up and pinned, set off by a tiny hat in the current fashion of the well-to-do Texas belles. “Though I will admit that I've tasted better. Jazmin Salas has spoiled us.”
Trace said, “Did the sheriff say why Hank murdered the girl, Ma?”
“Get this through your head, Trace, and you, too, Frank. Hank Lowery didn't murder anyone. Right now someone else is laughing up his sleeve, happy to let someone else take the blame.”
“You sound mighty certain, Kate,” Frank said, looking around the crowded hotel dining room. “When it comes to rannies like Hank Lowery, you can't be certain of anything.”
“As certain as a person can be,” Kate said. “I plan to talk to Hank this morning and ask him what happened. I'll go on from there.”
“We know what happened, Ma,” Trace said.
“All right then, I'll ask him how and why it happened,” Kate said.
Frank said, “Kate, you won't get a straight answer from Lowery. He's yet to tell the truth about the Longdale Massacre and the killing of old Levi Fry. Lies on top of lies, that's all you'll get.”
“Then how do you explain it, Frank?” Kate smiled and poured him more coffee. She was never more dangerous than when she was being nice.
Frank treaded warily. “Kate, I don't know why a man like Lowery would murder a woman. Such a question has never before entered into my thinking.”
“Well, let's go and find an answer to that question, shall we?” Kate turned to her son. “Trace, you're not going back with the chuck wagon. Now I may need your rifle right here in Dodge.”
Trace grinned. “Suits me fine, Ma.”
Despite the crowded dining room, Frank had spotted a tall, slender man he'd pegged as a prime example of arrogant gun bullies that had plagued the frontier the last two decades. Since the shootist was eating breakfast and minding his own business, Frank dismissed him and paid him no further attention.
When the man rose to his feet just as Kate left her chair, her silk dress rustling, Frank stepped beside her, putting himself between them. He was conscious of Trace at his side, relaxed and unaware, chewing on a half-eaten biscuit.
Sporting a wide-brimmed hat of a tan color, the tall man wore a beaded and fringed buckskin jacket that covered his hips, and under that a white shirt set off by the red puff tie at his throat. His checked pants were shoved into expensive leather boots adorned with yellow butterflies. Two ivory-handled Colts rode butt forward in a tooled gun rig that showed evidence of wear. A fastidiously trimmed imperial and long black hair cascading over his shoulders gave the man a rakish look. In all, he cut a handsome, dashing figure and he knew it.
As Kate attempted to step past him, the man stretched out a blocking arm and grabbed her by the upper arm. “Not so fast, little gal. I got five dollars burning a hole in my pocket. Catch my drift?”
Before Kate could speak, Frank said, “The lady is with me.”
The gunman turned his head slowly . . . slowly . . . taking his time. He stared at Frank like a man looking at cow dung on his boots as he's about to step into church. “Go away, cowboy.”
Frank didn't move. “I said, the lady is with me.”
“And she's my mother,” Trace said, his eyes angry.
As heads turned in their direction, the man grinned. “And what do you say, little lady?”
“I say get your dirty hand off me,” Kate said.
“Five dollars,” the gunman said. “Hell, that's more money than you make in a week.”
As Frank moved closer to Kate, the man made a bad mistakeâa serious mistake a less arrogant man would not have made. He said, “I told you to git, cowboy,” and he pushed Frank hard in the chest.
Frank Cobb had been around gunmen most of his life and he wasn't in the least bashful. His hand dropped to his revolver, and the Colt came up very fast and slammed into the man's head just above his left ear. As the buffalo went, Frank's was one of the best. The thud of blue steel against bone was heard all over the dining room. The gunman groaned and dropped like a felled oak, his eyes rolling in their sockets.
Frank bent, stripped off the man's gun belt, and hung it over his shoulder.
“Here, that won't do.” The hotel manager, a balding, harried-looking man named Featherstone stepped beside Frank and glanced at the unconscious man stretched out on the rug. “What happened here?”
“The . . . um . . . gentleman insulted Mrs. Kerrigan,” Frank said. “He offered her money to prostitute herself. As a Texas gentleman myself, I could not let such an insult stand.”
Featherstone knew Kate was a rancher, a guest of the hotel, and paying plenty for that privilege, but he hesitated a moment.
It wasn't until a respectable-looking man yelled, “The cowboy is right. He was defending the lady's honor,” that Featherstone made up his mind.
“That is an outrage, madam,” he said to Kate. “Such a thing has never happened in this hotel before and I assure you that it won't happen again.”
Kate decided to let the squirming manager off the hook. “These things happen in the best-run places. Mr. Featherstone, I am convinced that your management skills are perfectly adequate and I am prepared to testify to that fact, even to the Texas Cattlemen's Association.”
Featherstone, justifiably worried about the damage liquored-up and angry Texas cowboys might do to a hotel where one of their numberâa ladyâwas insulted and manhandled, gladly agreed to let the matter drop. He looked at the unconscious man and said to Trace, “Help me get him into a chair, young fellow.”
“He does look a tad poorly,” Trace said.
“Who is he?” Frank asked Featherstone, then stomped on the gunman's fancy Stetson and rammed the battered hat onto the groaning man's head.
“I don't know his name, but he goes by the Buckskin Kid,” the manager said. “He told one of my waiters that he's killed a dozen men.”
Frank smiled and nodded. “Rannies like this one are always a Kid of some kind and they've always killed a dozen men. When he comes to, tell him he can pick up his guns at my room.”
“Do you think he'll do that?” Featherstone looked worried. “I don't want a shooting scrape in my place.”
“He'll need to buy a revolver first, so I wouldn't worry about it too much,” Frank said. “He says he's got five dollars in his pocket and he can't buy a Colt in Dodge for that.”
“Frank, I hope you didn't hurt him too much,” Kate said. “That blow to the head made such a terrible clunk.”
“No, I didn't hurt him too much. Enough to get his attention was all.”
“Anyway, tonight I'll say a rosary for him, just to be sure,” Kate said.
Frank nodded. “That will make the Kid feel much better, I'm sure.”