A Good Man (61 page)

He shifts off the bed to prevent the blood creeping into the mattress from soaking his trousers, and stares woodenly at Case, wondering if his rest has been disturbed by Priest’s death throes. It doesn’t appear to have been. Dunne takes the corpse by the hair, drags it outside, and pitches it onto a snowbank.

He realizes the time has rolled round to change his patient’s cold compress. Before he does that, he fastidiously wipes his sticky fingers on his trouser seat. When he touches the forehead with the moist cloth, Case’s eyes flicker open, and recognize him for the first time.

“You,” he says.

“Yes,” says Dunne soothingly. “No need for worry. I’ll get you through this.” The look he gives him is almost fond. Dunne is remembering when Bishop Wilson had come to Stipendiary Magistrate McMicken and asked his old friend to investigate the gossip surrounding the death of his son, gossip that claimed Wesley Case should be held responsible for it. McMicken had obliged him by sending his best bloodhound, Michael Dunne, to nose around, find out what he could. And he had turned up a soldier, Sergeant Jimson, who had been witness to Captain Case’s villainy. But then, suddenly, McMicken had told him to let the matter drop. Despite the stench of wrongdoing, the bloodhound had been asked to pretend that he smelled nothing and to leave the dead cat lying under the floorboards.

Dunne had had no doubts that Case’s father, a man with close connections to the government, must have whispered a little something in the Stipendiary Magistrate’s ear. A bagman tipped the political scales more easily than a bishop. At the time he had resented Mr. Edwin Case’s interference, but now he’s grateful for it. Without it, this man wouldn’t be his to profit from.

Case’s eyelids flutter, close. His chest resumes a tortured rasing, the sound of a file being drawn against metal.
Steam
, Dunne thinks.
That’ll help
. He puts a kettle to boil on the stove.

He would prefer not to go and put out Toomey’s fire. There are other things he’d rather do. Scrub the filth off him. See to the health of this man who is worth twenty-five thousand dollars. Collins deserves none of the loot. He lost any claim to it by recruiting idiots unfit for the task. The money belongs to Michael Dunne now. He feels a little dazed, a little tired, but the thought of the ransom heartens him, bolsters his will as he waits a little for his strength to return before he steps back into the moonlight to remove the last obstacle to his peace of mind.

No matter whether he finds Wesley dead or alive, Joe means to see Dunne dead before the night is over, to close those pale, shallow eyes that have no more life in them than two saucers of stale water. Dunne is careful and cautious but maybe the same can’t be said of the other three. Men who get themselves involved in a crazy man’s plots are likely to be reckless and loose in all their habits. Maybe he’ll find them drunk, celebrating the capture, or careless in some other way that can be turned to advantage. He can’t count on it, but right now he needs a hopeful thought.

When Joe reaches the stream Betsy Eberhardt had wriggled down on his handkerchief, he casts about for signs of the captors’ passage, and discovers wagon tracks on the bank. Before going on, he cuts pine branches and lays them out on the ground in an arrow. If he doesn’t succeed in freeing Case and it happens to snow, as it looks it might, he doesn’t want a posse to give up the pursuit with the lame excuse that the trail had been blotted out. He will lead the lawmen by their noses so they do not shirk their duty; Case must have a second chance to be rescued if he fails in the attempt.

And this is how he continues to proceed, dismounting at intervals to mark the way at unexpected twists and turns. It slows his progress but he wants to leave no room for any confusion as to where to find Dunne and his crew.

After a long period of sitting silent, Ada asks Hathaway to see the map drawn on the handkerchief. She spreads it out on her lap, her forefinger hovering above the cloth, repeatedly tracing the lines and symbols of the crude drawing. Uncomfortably, Peregrine watches her do this, not daring to speak, wondering if this is a prelude to a case of hysterics. At last, Ada looks up at him, her face set. “McMullen is wrong,” she says. “We need the law.” She thrusts the handkerchief into his hand. “Take this to the sheriff. Tell him what has happened. Give him every detail. And see to it he gets moving.”

This is not what he had expected, this sudden show of decision. “But Mr. McMullen said to wait three hours before going to the sheriff. He was most definite on that point,” says Hathaway. “He must have his reasons.”

“He was mistaken in his reasons. This needs to be rectified. There’s no more time to waste. Don’t delay. Go!”

And Hathaway does as he is told.

Left alone, Ada’s mind whirls even faster, her apprehension mounting. She paces the room, thinking of how it is like a man to run so straight at a problem that he blindly runs by other considerations. Joe would not let her accompany him, but if he succeeds in rescuing Wesley, how is he going to get him back to Helena without a conveyance? Pack him out on the back of his horse? Without blankets? It would be a death sentence. And if she had not been in such a jangled state of mind she could have prevailed on him to take the cutter, which would make a serviceable ambulance.

She finds herself at the window looking up at a huge walleyed moon, imagines it staring down into the narrow chasm that holds the town of Helena captive within its steep sides, searching her out.

Go on
, she urges herself.
Go on. Plunge
.

And plunge she does, goes flying about the room, tearing blankets from the bed, rolling them into a bundle, tossing a small bottle of brandy into her purse to warm and invigorate Wesley. The bottle makes an ominous chink. Fearing it has broken, she fumbles her hand inside the reticule and finds the bottle is still intact, encounters the small hard object it had struck. The chilly, slippery feel of the nickel causes her to pull back her hand. Grabbing the bedding, she hurries to the stable, has the liveryman hitch the team and light the lamps on the cutter. Soon she is away, guided by the map she has burned into her mind.

It has taken Dunne longer than he supposed to gather himself. He is not sure, but he thinks he may have even dozed off for a brief time. Now the night air feels colder than it did before, gives him a feverish shiver. As he closes in on Toomey’s fire, he composes his face to look friendly and agreeable. But then he recalls Priest’s horror when he saw him. He must not make that mistake again. He must not reveal himself in the light. He must coax Toomey to come to him, to come into the dark. Dunne’s arms are crossed behind him, the knives clutched in his hands; his chest angles forward like an old man walking into a strong wind. A procession of broken cloud troops across the face of the moon. Intermittently, the clearing lightens and darkens with its movement. Ahead of him, the bonfire is twisting up a whirlwind of white smoke beaded with flying embers. Toomey’s back is to him, the crackle of the fire, the pop and sizzle of resin filling his ears. Dunne stops a few yards short of where the light of the fire madly quavers on the snow. “You!” he shouts.

Toomey starts like a hare. “What the hell you doing, creeping up on me like that!”

“Come here. I want to talk to you.”

“If you want to talk to me, come here yourself. I ain’t yours to order about.”

Dunne makes out Toomey’s Henry repeater slanted over a log, five or six steps away from its owner. A pack of cloud closes on the moon, the light fails, and Toomey cranes his neck to better see the target of his belligerence.

An image flashes into his mind of a boy sitting on a chair, facing him.
Take his picture
, he thinks.

He lets the surgical knives fall soundlessly into the snow behind his back, draws the long-barrelled Schofield out of his coat pocket. In the dim light of the cloud-shadowed clearing, he finds it no easy job to set the bead at the end of the barrel on his target.

“What are you doing, Dunne?” says Toomey.

Just as an eddy of wind folds Toomey in smoke, obscuring him, Dunne fires. Like a corpse bursting the bounds of its shroud, Toomey comes tearing out of the smoky billows. “Figgis!” he screams. “Figgis! Priest! Priest!”

Dunne is between him and the cabin, so Toomey veers to the right, heading for cover in the bulrushes that hem the slough. Dunne follows without haste. The moon has slid out from behind the clouds. Now when he lifts his pistol and aims it, the bead on the end of the barrel glistens in the moonlight bright as a candlewick. Dunne walks ten paces and fires, walks another ten and fires again. The second bullet catches Toomey just at the edge of the bulrushes, sends him floundering into them, his passage marked by thrashing cattails. Dunne fires into the agitation until the bulrushes go still. Cautiously, he steps over the trampled stalks and finds the wounded man lying flat on his back. Dunne stands looking down at what he has accomplished.

All at once, it begins to snow; flakes briefly hover above Toomey’s face. Dunne watches them drift and settle on his brow; their cold touch seems to prompt him to stir. “You cocksucker,” Toomey spits. “You traitor. You Judas.”

Dunne wrinkles his forehead as if the accusation is incomprehensible to him. “Remember, it was you fellows threw me out. I only got one vote. What else you expect me to do?” But the stupidity stamped on Toomey’s face tells him there’s no reasoning with the man. So he thumbs back the hammer of his revolver and proceeds to conclude his argument.

Although Ada had committed the map to memory, when she picked up the first of McMullen’s trail markers in the bouncing light of the cutter’s lanterns, she felt as if she could hear Joe giving her a kind and encouraging word. The arrow directed her across the stream like a pointing finger. Without a moment’s hesitation, she urged the team into the low water, the runners of the cutter scraping on the gravel bottom, the sound of hooves splashing, and then the sleigh was bucking and jolting up the opposite bank. She paused a moment for her heart to still, watched the steam lifting off the legs of the team, and then gave them a slap with the reins, sent them into a brisk trot.