A Good Man (57 page)

Case puts his arm around her, tries to draw her to him. Momentarily, she resists, but then permits her head to fall on his shoulder. She smells of limewater perfume, both astringent and sweet. “I think you thought very well,” he says. “Splendidly well. You are a champion thinker.”

“I was mad with worry. My weakness astounded me.” The cloth of his jacket muffles her voice. “Do you know how far behind I’ve fallen in my work because of you?” She pulls away from him and takes hold of one of her pupil’s papers. It trembles in her hand. “Multiplication of fractions,” she says. “I was in such a state – I made a botch of the lesson when I taught it. Every exercise is dreadful.”

“Give all the little buggers alpha plus. I have been rewarded beyond all expectations. Why shouldn’t they as well?” he says, and finally Ada smiles.

TWENTY-SIX

THE MEN FROM
the East whom Collins had promised Dunne finally arrived in Helena at the end of October: Declan Figgis, Conor Toomey, and Joseph Halligan – the one the other two call Priest. They all are Amerin born. This is the only thing about them that universally pleases Dunne. An Irish accent might be noticed and remembered.

Figgis is short, wiry, red haired, sprinkled with freckles, and looks to be in his twenties. Dunne would prefer an older man with a little seasoning. Toomey is middle aged, lantern jawed, and meaty. His knuckles are conspicuously scarred from collisions with other people’s teeth. Priest, as his nickname implies, has an ecclesiastical appearance and a floury complexion. Figgis, the most garrulous of the three, has volunteered that Halligan was once a priest but was defrocked for unspecified sins. Toomey, in his plodding way, corrected Figgis, saying that Halligan was never a real priest; he only did a short stint in a seminary. But ever since he was judged unsuitable for the church, Priest has been convinced that he is damned, which is a good thing. Feeling he has nothing to lose, he will stop at nothing. Both Toomey and Figgis are clearly terrified of Priest and defer to him, which annoys Dunne. After all, he, Michael Dunne, is the man Collins put in charge.

In the close quarters of Gobbler Johnson’s cabin, Dunne has noted the strengths and weaknesses of each man, meditated on how the tools he has in hand can best be used. Figgis is a gabbler, enthusiastic to get on with the job, maybe too enthusiastic. Since Dunne insists they are not yet ready to act, Figgis argues there is no reason why they can’t visit the saloons and cathouses of Helena, chafes at being marooned in the wilderness and denied all amusements.

Compared to Figgis, Toomey does what he is told without complaint. Of course, this may be because he is stupid and has no mind of his own. Dunne suspects if he wasn’t there to see that Toomey behaves, Figgis would twist him around his little finger.

Priest, on the other hand, is everything Dunne can ask for. When they first sat down to plan how to snatch Case, Priest’s first remark was,
Leave no witnesses
. For Dunne this poses a problem, not in principle, but because of Mrs. Tarr. If she were to see something, he’s not sure that the terrible Priest could be restrained. This means Case cannot be taken at Mrs. Tarr’s house, or anywhere near it, on the off chance she stumbles into a situation. She may have betrayed him, but Dunne can’t bear the idea of any harm coming to her. So Case needs to be seized on his ranch, which brings Joe McMullen into play, and Dunne knows of his reputation – push him at your peril. He can be a desperate customer. Things could go awry, shots be fired, a ruckus kicked up, which would bring unwanted attention down on them. Maybe even involve Mrs. Tarr, who lives so near to Case’s ranch.

Figgis refused to entertain the possibility of anything going wrong; he put all his faith in the luck of the Irish to bring the thing off. “Let’s just do it!” he kept repeating impatiently.

Finally Priest, who had sat silent and thoughtful while Dunne and Figgis quarrelled, stepped in. “No, Figgis, Mr. Dunne has identified a difficulty. That difficulty is McMullen. I will solve him.”

“What do you mean, solve him?” said Toomey, who constantly needed to have everything explained to him.

“I will execute him,” Priest answered with a serene tuck of his chin.

Dunne marvelled at Halligan’s choice of words. Execution sounded so apt, so efficient. But he needed to be sure. “It must be done quietly,” he said.

“Yes,” Priest said, “that goes without saying.” He got up, went to his bed, removed a carpet bag from under it, took an article from the bag, and brought it to the table. Reverentially, he unclasped a fine rosewood case. It held two large knives, one with a wicked curve to it, the other, long and straight as a bayonet. “Surgical knives for amputations,” Priest explained. “Plenty of weight to them but no loss of keenness. Sharp as scalpels. German manufacture. Look at the craftsmanship.” He stroked the scimitar-shaped instrument as if it were a woman’s thigh. “With this you can remove a limb, presto. This,” he said, touching the other blade, “is the style now preferred in Europe. The handle, you see, is metal. The knife can be boiled or placed in a carbolic bath after use. It is a much more hygienic item than the other.” He lowered the lid on his beauties. “One in each hand, I shall carve him to pieces instantaneous while he sleeps.” Priest raised his eyebrows to his listeners. No one said anything. “Now that matters are settled to everyone’s satisfaction, I think I will take a nap.”

And that is what he did, stretched himself out on his cot and went to sleep. Priest spends many hours dead to the world. Then the tranquil man he is during waking hours becomes another. He twitches, shivers, and groans in his sleep like a dog. Dunne half expects that one of these days he will bark and howl.

As far as Dunne is concerned, if a solution to McMullen has been found, it doesn’t mean the plan is watertight. Their ship could still take on water and sink. Figgis, Toomey, and Priest are city men who can’t ride worth a damn. They will need a wagon to transport them to Fort Benton and to get them and Case back to the cabin. Something unanticipated might happen – in matters like this it frequently does – and Dunne doesn’t fancy the idea of trying to escape pursuit in a slow, cumbersome buckboard. The wagon is a fly in the ointment. It worries him, and worry leads him to ask himself if there aren’t other things that he has overlooked. After a day of stewing, he tells the others he must go to Fort Benton to scout the situation one last time, to examine it for hitherto unforeseen dangers. He wants to
look for himself one last time. Just to be sure
. Figgis mutters something about an old woman, but Priest does not raise objections. So the small spark of mutiny goes out.

Fortunately, Dunne’s old room in the Stubhorn has not been let to a new tenant since he vacated it two months ago. He pays for three nights and receives a promise from Dooley that he and three friends can rent it for the following week; they don’t mind bunking on the floor. Those arrangements made, Dunne consults his pocket watch and notes it is now two-thirty; shortly, Mrs. Tarr’s pupils will be dismissed for the day. He does his best to suppress an urgent desire to catch a glimpse of her, but it overmasters him, sends him hurrying off to the mercantile that faces the school, where he takes up a post at the storefront window.

The children spill out the schoolhouse door at three o’clock sharp. A few minutes later, Mrs. Tarr emerges, wearing a grey redingote and a bright red tam-o’-shanter. The sight of her stops his breath, drives a nail in his heart. He watches her make her way across the road, gain the boardwalk. Dunne is so rapt that he doesn’t realize a store clerk has come behind him with an armful of canned goods to display in the window. “Beg pardon, I got to stack these peaches,” the clerk says, but Dunne doesn’t budge. Mrs. Tarr passes by so near to where he stands that, if a pane of glass didn’t intervene, he might brush her cheek with his fingertips. Then she is gone. The clerk says insinuatingly, “But I see you prefer a different kind of peach. She’s the talk of the town, that one.”

Dunne asks him what he means.

“Was in this week’s paper. Our schoolmarm is off soon to Helena to get hitched to that fellow Case.”

Seconds ago, Dunne had felt so close to her that he could have sworn the breath of their two souls were fogging this very windowpane. The clerk has to nudge him repeatedly to get him to shift from the spot.

Dunne goes to the office of the
Record
and buys the newspaper containing the wedding announcement. There it is in black and white, the date of the upcoming marriage, November 26. Several things become clear to him as he reads and rereads the announcement. The difficulties with the wagon are solved. They can take Case when he makes his wedding journey. Grab him a few miles outside Helena where there will be no one to raise an alarm or give chase. Then it is only a hop, skip, and jump to Gobbler’s cabin, a safe and easy trip by buckboard.

Dunne senses an unseen hand in all this, a hand offering Case up to him before that scoundrel can make Mrs. Tarr his wife. All is not lost. Michael Dunne can see to it that that dear lady is not forever taken from him.

After a long but jubilant ride, Dunne arrives in Helena, and when he gets back to the cabin discovers a girl there, a cockeyed, straddle-legged slut of fourteen. It seems that the minute he left to make his investigations in Fort Benton, Figgis and Toomey had disregarded his order to stay put and gone on a spree in Helena, went cavorting about in public with this rancid little whore blossom. If that weren’t bad enough, they had brought her home with them and have been sharing her favours. While the girl sobs on the bed, inconsolable because he has told her she’s going back to Helena
“immediate and direct,”
Dunne berates Priest.

“And you, why didn’t you stop these two addle-brains from going to town and making a goddamn spectacle of themselves?” he demands. “We ain’t advertising a circus.
We don’t want to be noticed.”
He stops himself there, remembering the girl. Little pitchers have big ears. But when he glances over, he sees she is too wrapped up in her weeping to have heard a word he said.

All Priest has to say is, “I spoke to the young Jezebel. I did my best to convince her she was dicing with damnation. But she refused to listen.”

Figgis cries, “You diddled her too!”

“Only when I saw how incorrigible she was,” says Priest. “There was nothing to spoil.”

So Dunne takes the rotten fruit back to Helena, to get her out of earshot before he divulges the change in plans to Figgis, Toomey, and Priest, to give them the good news that all that’s needed is to wait for Case to come traipsing down Mul Road and topple directly into their laps.

With the wedding a little more than three weeks off, Case throws himself into the ranch work that Joe had not been able to do on his own. McMullen offers no recriminations, simply turns a willing hand to whatever needs to be done. The cold sets in early and the long days they keep are often accompanied by wind and rain, sleet and snow. Case develops a dry, persistent cough, which concerns Ada, but he claims it is a result of shovelling barley, comes from the chaff and grain dust he is constantly breathing.

When Ada suggests that it might be better if they not make the trip to Helena, that they can just as easily be married in Fort Benton, he laughs and says, “Remember that you said you had no intention of being married in Fort Benton and being subjected to a shivaree, have a hundred drunks singing, beating pots, and snickering outside our door. I mean to see that doesn’t happen.”

Case knew what she had really been saying when they had had that conversation. If she could glide into the married state without drawing any more attention to herself, she might not have her job and pupils taken from her.

The day that Joe, Case, and Ada set out for Helena, the temperature hovers a few degrees below freezing. The sun is glassy-bright; the cutter carrying Ada and Case spanks briskly down Mullan Road, Joe behind it on his prettiest mount, a red roan that he calls “a horse fit to decorate a wedding party.” The journey passes pleasantly, with frequent stops at way stations so that the travellers can warm themselves, get a meal – or in Joe’s case, because he’s in a highly celebratory mood, have a dram. McMullen keeps urging Case to take a little “cough killer” with him, but Case only grins and says, “Marriage is a sober business, Joe.”

At the last stopping place before their destination, Joe bumps into three waddies laid off for the winter from a ranch in the Sun River country. They are headed to Helena to hibernate for the winter. One of them is an old acquaintance of McMullen’s, a man known as Vinegar Rufus. Joe joins Rufus and his friends up at the plank bar and they are soon all happy with who-hit-John. McMullen confides that the lady and gentleman eating steak and eggs by the stove are friends of his who are bound for Helena to get wed. The ranch hands immediately volunteer to accompany them, to usher the happy couple into town.

So Ada and Case embark on the last stage of their journey, ribald jokes and bawdy songs showering down on them like wedding rice.