Lawless (43 page)

Hickok carried the same equipment he always carried to enforce the peace in Abilene: two .44 Colts strapped to his hips, a Bowie knife visible under his Prince Albert, a sawed-off shotgun in the crook of his elbow—plus, no doubt, the pair of .41 derringers he usually concealed somewhere on his person. He was a terrible walking arsenal. Many of the visiting Texans hated him for that, and for his service in the Yankee army.

He bent to examine the body that now stunk of its own released waste. That was the one thing Jeremiah loathed about death. The dirtiness.

“You killed him, uh?” Hickok murmured.

“Had to, Jim. He was waiting for me when I walked by. He was going to finish me if I didn’t get him first. He shot once—” A gesture toward the stricken horse lying in the esplanade. Its sobered owner was gazing at the animal with tears on his face. “Hit that pony.”

“What’d he shoot with? I don’t see any—oh, there it is.” The marshal walked back and picked up the Navy lying near Jeremiah’s feet; yards from where Timothy had fallen.

“You really had to drop him, did you?” Hickok asked.

Yes!

Hickok kept examining the Navy, turning it back and forth in his hand.

Jeremiah blurted a lie. “I never saw it fall, Jim. I swear.”

“Mmm. Is that a fact. You came damn close to hitting his back.” Hickok’s tone was faintly accusing. Jeremiah reacted angrily.

“I hit him fair! You know I’d never shoot a man in the back.”

“Even so”—the marshal nodded at the derringer in Jeremiah’s hand—“you broke the law. Killed a visitor, too. The town depends on the visitors.”

“Think I don’t know that? Christ!”

“Just laying the hand out for you. The Texans won’t like what happened. Neither will the council or the merchants. For your own protection I’d better take you down to the jailhouse awhile.”

So that was the verdict. Well, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the verdict of his own conscience. Now that the joy was gone, he was ashamed he’d killed Timothy when it wasn’t necessary.

And yet, in a way, it had been absolutely necessary. Of all men, Hickok should understand. Hickok had a reputation even more formidable than Jason Kane’s.

But Hickok also had a job to protect. And the advantage of being able to maintain his reputation through that job. As a police officer, he was allowed to kill people. Allowed and encouraged.

In his imagination, Jeremiah saw Timothy falling. At the moment he’d fired, it had made no difference that Timothy, was unarmed.
No
difference. He was frightened suddenly. What the hell was happening to him?

“Come along, Jason,” Hickok said in a mild voice. Jeremiah fell in step.

Many stared, but no one interfered because of Hickok’s weapons and reputation. He was said to have killed forty-three men, not counting Indians shot during his army scout service; Indians were never put in the same class as white men.

Hickok never disputed the total, either. It made splendid copy for the magazines that had turned him into a hero and a legend back East.

At the jail, Jeremiah explained that Timothy’s uncle, one Major T. T. Cutright, had attempted to steal a buffalo kill from him five years ago, and he’d shot Cutright and one of his helpers for it. He’d let Timothy go even though the boy had sworn revenge. This evening he’d nearly succeeded in getting it.

Hickok’s eyes were emotionless as he surveyed Jeremiah by the light of the lamps in the jail’s office area. At the end of the story, he asked, “The boy was with a crew still camped south of town?”

“He didn’t say. I presume he was.”

Hickok fingered his mustache a moment. “The crew will find out what happened. They’ll want your head. We’ll have more trouble. Council won’t like that.”

“Jesus, Jim, I thought you were my friend! Is that all you can say—the council won’t like it?”

Hickok looked at him and Jeremiah saw no trace of friendship. “It’s the truth. If you stay around, there are liable to be more killings. I can’t let personal feelings influence the way I judge a situation. Or the way I do my job.”

“Hell, you’re just afraid you’ll get fired if you take my side against the Texans. Everybody kisses their feet in this damn town.”

Hickok blinked his pale, almost sinister eyes. In a voice still devoid of emotion, he said, “I’ll act like you never made that remark, Jason.” He drew a breath. “You’ll have to hide out of here.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Hide out. Right away.”

“There are no more passenger trains tonight!”

“Buy a horse. Bribe your way aboard the midnight freight. I don’t care how you do it—just leave town.”

“But I’ll miss the rest of the season! I won’t have enough money to tide me through the winter.”

“Should have thought of that before you shot the boy. He was running. The position of his Colt said so. You didn’t need to break the law to save yourself. You’ve got till the sun comes up to get out of Abilene. You made your bed.”

In the cold tone and the pale eyes, there was no reprieve.

The thunderstorm broke just as the train of livestock cars pulled out at twelve fifteen. Jeremiah sat in the caboose, listening to the rain pelting the roof and the steers and cows lowing from the head end.

His clothes were soaked. Next morning’s beard was beginning to sprout. On the seat beside him lay a brown paper package: the bottle of gin he’d bought at the back door of the Old Fruit before Hickok marched him down to the stockyards siding. Two brakemen had accepted bribes of a gold dollar each to allow him to get aboard with his carpetbag.

One of the brakemen had dropped some kind of cheaply printed newspaper from his pocket as he went out to get the train under way. Jeremiah picked up the paper. The masthead read
Labor’s Beacon.
A crude engraving of a switchman’s lantern separated the two words. His mouth dropped open at what he saw directly below.

Gideon Kent, Editor-Publisher.

The train gathered speed. Lightning flared above the stock pens, a sea of tossing horns and terrified cattle. Jeremiah found himself knuckling his eyes as he examined the little four-page paper with sadness and envy. Some months ago, Boyle had written to say Gideon was busy organizing groups of workingmen so they’d stand up to their bosses. Gideon was a—a trade unionist, that was the term the Irishman had used.

But Jeremiah hadn’t heard about the little newspaper. Imagine! His very own brother, who’d hated books and school as a young man, writing something good enough to be published.

Well, didn’t that fit with the family motto that had originated back near the start of the century? His father had repeated the motto many times during Jeremiah’s boyhood.
Take a stand and make a mark.
The Kents always did that.

I’ve done it too. Only I’ve left gravestones.

Fifteen of them. With Timothy dead, he’d killed fifteen.

The rear door of the caboose crashed open. Rain splattered the floor as the two brakemen came in, complaining about the weather. No, there were three men, he saw. The last one, a bull-shouldered fellow in his fifties, hadn’t been bribed. He jabbed a thick brakeman’s club at Jeremiah.

“What the hell’s he doing on this tra—?”

Jeremiah’s motion was sure and smooth. He came to his feet, stepped over his carpetbag and snatched the club with his left hand. He hurled it away. Simultaneously, his right hand blurred across to his left hip and drew one of the Starrs he’d put on after leaving the town limits. He laid the muzzle against the big man’s throat.

“Traveling as far as you are, friend.”

Eyes frantic, the brakeman still tried to bluster. “The hell—the hell you are—”

The joy spread through Jeremiah like a warm liquid running in his bloodstream. “Want off, do you? Happy to oblige.”

He smiled and cocked the Starr with his thumb.

Thunder pealed. The caboose swayed. One of the other brakemen whispered to the man under the gun. “You damn fool, don’t you know who that is?”

“No, an’ I don’t give a shit.”

“Well, you better. This here’s Jason Kane.”

The brakeman’s face looked as if it had been greased. “K-Kane?” He could barely speak. “Oh—oh—Jesus—”

Jeremiah’s pleasure was almost unbearable. He wanted to prolong it.

“I’ll let you finish this run alive if you behave yourself—and if you thank me properly.”

He pressed the muzzle into the man’s throat so hard, the brakeman could only make choking noises.

“Let me hear you say it, you jackass.”

“Th-th-thank you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kane.”

“Th-thank you, Mr.—Mr. K-Kane.”

A chuckle. He whipped the Starr back so fast, the brake-man almost fainted.

After he’d holstered the gun, he dug down and found another gold piece. He passed it into the brakeman’s damp hand. “There. Same as your friends got for keeping their mouths shut. Now I’d be obliged if you’d let me rest and wet my whistle.”

“Sure—certainly—any-anything, Mr. Kane.” His voice childishly thin now, the bull-shouldered man stumbled to the stove at the head of the car and opened the iron door. Firelight gleamed on his sweating face. He chafed hands that still shook.

Jeremiah’s eyes looked sullen all at once—sullen and red in the light of the ceiling lanterns swaying back and forth. The joy was always so fleeting. But at least the guns
had
brought a luster to his name, just as Kola predicted.

He unwrapped the gin bottle, jammed the neck between his teeth and yanked the cork. He tilted the bottle and swilled a hot mouthful of the stuff. Some of it leaked between his lips. He couldn’t keep his mind off the prophecy. What if the rest of it came true? What if the power his name invoked began to fade as—how had Kola put it?
As swiftly as the light of a winter afternoon.

And what if he met death the way—

He could barely force himself to think it.

The way Kola said.
At the hand of one of his own family.

Who was the Kent who would kill him? And how would it happen? When? Where?

With a low, almost hurt cry, he wrenched his mind away from the terrible thoughts. He grew aware of his surroundings again. The brakemen gathered at the stove were staring at him as if he were a madman. He felt like laughing. He
was
a madman. At least he was starting to think like one. The questions kept battering his head like crazed, imprisoned birds trying to free themselves.

Who will it be?

When?

Where?

The brakemen were still watching. He let them feel the fury of his eyes. They quickly returned their attention to the open door of the stove. He raised the bottle and slopped down more gin. He realized he’d let the little newspaper fall. It lay beside his carpetbag. The toe of his left boot was resting on the front page. Resting squarely on Gideon’s name.

Was it Gideon?
His brother was going to kill him?

How?

How?

He wanted to scream that it wasn’t so. But he’d said Kola’s prophecy was false, and yet it kept coming true. He stared at the newspaper, terror-stricken, as the cattle train plunged on through the lightning-pierced dark toward an unseeable horizon.

W
HEN GIDEON REACHED
New York, he enjoyed a certain notoriety. He was a survivor of the Chicago holocaust—an articulate eyewitness to what many called the century’s greatest disaster. He was interviewed at length by a reporter Theophilus Payne sent to the office of the
Beacon.
He gave the reporter a good deal of material about Thomas Courtleigh and the disrupted W & P meeting, but he wasn’t surprised when none of it appeared in the published interview. Well, he’d take charge of Mr. Payne soon enough.

At home his stories of the fire earned him increased attention from Eleanor for a while. He was happy about that. He loved it when she came to his side in the evening, eager to hear him repeat dramatic parts of the tale. Carefully edited, of course, to screen out any references to Julia.

He began winding up the affairs of the
Beacon.
He composed a letter explaining his decision to those few readers who took the paper on a subscription basis. He didn’t immediately show the letter to Strelnik, though.

Relations with Margaret remained strained. They deteriorated even further the night he finally decided to discuss his plan to take a position on the
Union.
He thought that exchanging his current job for a more secure one would please his wife. It didn’t. She digested the news and then asked in a slurred voice, “Does this mean I’ll see more of you, or less?”

“About the same or a little less for a while.”

She wrinkled her nose; the expression was close to a sneer. “I thought so.”

She left the parlor, her path a meandering curve rather than a straight line. He’d detected the odor of wine again. He sat with his hands folded under his chin, brooding on what he could possibly do to make her happy.

In the following days, every attempt to be solicitous, or even polite, was met with some sharp remark on Margaret’s part. The theme of her anger or sarcasm was always the same. Ignoring the fact that he was doing what she had so long begged him to do, she scored him for being anxious to obtain a position that would keep him away from home for even longer periods. One night the accusation led to another bad quarrel, and he moved permanently into a separate bedroom.

He didn’t explain the move to Eleanor, who was old enough to notice that a change had taken place. He wanted to say something to her but he didn’t know how to approach her without making it seem as though he was speaking against Margaret.

He began to fix many of his own meals, and came and went without informing Margaret, except by notes left in the kitchen. It would all have been intolerable if he hadn’t had thoughts of Julia to sustain him.

Sometimes he believed the trouble at home had been visited on him as punishment for his infidelity. But in more rational moods, he reminded himself the universe didn’t operate quite so neatly, and that Margaret had begun her destructive campaign for dominance long before Julia had entered the picture.