Colorado Sam (17 page)

   “Now, hold on, Marshal,” Ira said. “I'm not funning you. Mrs. Tanner's not dead. She's badly wounded and the two men who shot her are still on the loose. I couldn't come up with any better idea for getting her safely out of Creede. If you'll step closer you'll see the air holes we drilled in the top of the coffin to keep her from suffocating.”

   Blue Arnett did just that, after which he braced the shotgun against his side with one arm, retrieved a wedge of molasses cured chewing tobacco from his pocket, pouched it in his cheek, and stood chewing and thinking, his gaze drifting from Ira to Nathan, and finally, to Burt Dawes.

   “Who's the one with no chin?”

   Burt Dawes bristled at the insult. Ira's slight shake of the head was the same as a verbal order for Burt to curb his temper. “Mr. Dawes is an associate of mine. He scrounges up information for me.” 

   “He got a badge like you?”

   “No, he's paid if what he learns is useful.”

   Blue Arnett chewed and thought. A healthy stream of brown tobacco juice warned a decision was forthcoming. “I don't know you from Adam, Westfall. But there ain't nobody, drunk or sober, could make up a story wild as one you're telling. So, it's most likely got to be true,” the marshal concluded, lowering the barrel of his shotgun.

   Ira pocketed his badge and said, “I thank you, Marshal. But we must still deal with the railroad.”

   Passengers were boarding the eight coaches behind the express car. The engine bell clanged. Blue Arnett waved his shotgun and a uniformed trainman came toward them. Even at a distance, Nathan instantly recognized the stiletto beard, immaculate uniform, and polished shoes of Amos Longworth. He had a sinking feeling their luck had finally run out, that was unless Blue Arnett was willing to buck the Denver and Rio Grande, something he'd vowed he wouldn't do. 

   Conductor Longworth recognized Sam and Nathan just as quickly, and his posture was straight and rigid as a fence post when he paused beside Blue Arnett. “Marshal, I've no time to waste on fruitless endeavors. I've no document stating that I'm to permit a coffin aboard my train. Do you?” 

   Nathan sighed. If Blue Arnett wasn't the most artful liar on God's green earth, it was back to Zhang's. 

   Maybe it was because the Marshal of Creede harbored a genuine dislike for Conductor Longworth. Maybe it was because above all else he took great pride in being a forceful man of the law. Either way, what followed made a giant cavity of Nathan's mouth. 

  Blue Arnett swelled like a stuffed bird, spat tobacco juice next to the conductor's highly polished shoes, and said, “Ain't got no paperwork. It's back at the office and there ain't no time to chase after it. The telegram I received from U. S. Marshal Kell Bryan states I'm to cooperate fully with Detective Ira Westfall of the St. Louis Police Department in a murder investigation. That's this gentleman here with the walrus moustache.”

   Conductor Longworth wasted no time dithering or fretting. “And exactly what do you want of the D&RG, Mister Westfall?”

   “I want this coffin to travel as far as Alamosa, along with Mr. Tanner, Mr. Dawes, and myself. Mr. Tanner and I will ride in the express car with the coffin. Mr. Dawes can ride in one of the passenger coaches.”

   “What about the dog?” 

   “He rides with his dead master's coffin. We'd have to shoot him otherwise.” 

   Amos Longworth wasn't slow on the draw. “Just who might the dead person be, Mr. Westfall?”

   “Mrs. Seth Tanner of Alamosa and the ST Ranch. She was murdered in Creede earlier today.”

   Longworth's widening eyes indicated he'd recognized the name. Nathan thought he saw a sympathetic expression flash across the conductor's features. “Marshal Arnett, I don't care two hoots about your supposed telegram. But I won't abide the murder of a woman. Fred,” Conductor Longworth shouted, “roll her back!”

   The door of the express slid open and the conductor consulted his Robinson railroad watch. “Mr. Westfall, you have five minutes to get your party aboard. That includes the dog. If you'll excuse me, other duties await.”

   Marshal Blue Arnett, scratching above his ear, stared after the conductor. “Well, Land of Goshen, it ain't true. There's a tad of warm blood in Amos Longworth. Damned if there ain't.”

   Amazed the touchy situation had worked entirely in their favor, Nathan helped Burt and Ira slide Alana's coffin into the express car. Fred, the chubby-faced, wide-bottomed clerk, accepted the presence of the coffin without a qualm, but was leery of Sam. It wasn't until the train was underway and Sam sought a corner and curled up to sleep that Fred stopped stammering and shaking.

   A few miles from the station, with the clerk writing atop his stool at the opposite end of the express car, Ira motioned to Nathan, and together they lifted the lid from the coffin. Nathan was alarmed at Alana's total lack of color. “Have we lost her?”

   Ira knelt beside the coffin and felt beneath Alana's jaw. “Lord God, what a woman,” he exclaimed. “She's with us. She's just sleeping.” 

   A squawk at the clerk's end of the car was followed by a meaty thud. When Nathan turned to look, he saw Fred sprawled on the floor beside his overturned stool.   The clerk had fainted dead away. 

   The express car swayed sideways and lurched forward and backward, a motion peculiar to Colorado's narrow gauge railroads. Then there was the jolt of stopping and starting at water towers and coaling stations every twelve miles. If the constant bouncing and jostling wasn't enough to keep a person awake, there was the clickety clack of the wheels crossing every single rail joint. Somehow Alana Birdsong, weakened by loss of blood and exhausted by her ordeal, slept through it all. Nathan and Ira eventually ceased checking her pulse every minute.

   Fred survived his fainting spell unharmed. The wide-bottomed clerk fired the oil heater at the center of the car, and was working on his stool again when Ira, his voice deliberately lowered, said to Nathan, “I want you to tell me everything you've learned about Roan Buckman and Eldon Payne since you arrived in Colorado, and we've plenty of time.”

   Nathan told everything, from dinner at the ST and his ride along Rock Creek with Heft Thomas to the ambush on the porch of Zhang's that very morning. Ira listened without interruption. When Nathan finished, he leaned against a wooden crate, and did some serious thinking. 

   “Nathan, we're up against a rough, dirty crowd. Whether it's the Buckman brothers, Corbin and Hobie, or Eldon Payne, they're in too deep to quit. The only weak link in the Buckman scheme is Eldon Payne. Unless he talks we don't have enough evidence to jail any of them, and I wouldn't put it past the Buckmans to shut   Eldon's mouth permanently. 

   “We'll be stopping at Del Norte and I'll send Constable Allred a telegram from there. He'll meet us with a wagon and team. I figure we can stay in Alamosa two or three days before folks start wondering why your aunts not being buried. Where can we put her up in Alamosa?” 

   “At the Imperial House. She maintains a room year round and Mr. Ming, her Chinese servant, is waiting for her there. You think we can trust Constable Allred?” Nathan inquired. 

   “Yes, I know Bulldog Jack from Chicago. He walked a beat in the saloon district before he was promoted to sergeant. He's tough, honest, and won't turn tail if there's shooting.”

   “When do you plan to meet with lawyer Abbott?”

   “While you're mourning your aunt at the hotel, Bulldog and I will prod Abbott into seeing the judge immediately, even if we have to roust him out of bed this evening.    The sooner we confront Eldon Payne the better, as I'm sure Corbin will wire Roan Buckman from Creede yet today. Hell's bells, for all we know both he and Hobie might be on this train.”  

   “Now wait a minute,” Nathan protested. “I'm not hiding behind a coffin while you sic the law on Eldon Payne and Roan Buckman. I'm not some young snot from St. Louis. Maybe Eldon Payne and Roan Buckman think that, but I'm not.”

   Nathan himself was surprised at his defiance of Ira. Ira had always given the orders and Nathan obeyed, without question. It had always been that way, whether they were practicing shooting on his father's farm or guarding the Tanner warehouse at night, a duty given Nathan by his father as part of his learning every aspect of the family business. He was glad he was sitting on the floor and not in a chair, for Ira might have otherwise heard his knees knocking.

   Ira took so long to respond it seemed the ex-copper was assessing Nathan inch by inch. “Nathan, I don't doubt your courage. I saw you drag your aunt to safety on the porch of Zhang's. It just appears to me that if you were overcome by grief you'd accompany the coffin to the hotel. Might look a little strange if you're seen gallivanting around town visiting an old lawyer with a retired policeman. Wouldn't you be with your aunt instead?”

   Nathan couldn't deny his normal place would be at the hotel, but where before he would have accepted a lesser, safer role in the fight against the Buckmans, that was no longer true. Much had fallen on his shoulders and he knew that if he left the settling of affairs with the Buckmans to others, he would forever question if he were his father's son. And where a few weeks ago he would have thought it crazy, he realized death was better than a lifetime of doubt.

   “I'll accompany the coffin to the hotel,” Nathan conceded. “Once you secure the court papers ordering an audit of the Payne Company, I want to be there when you hand them to Eldon Payne. I won't be left out, Mr. Westfall.”

   Ira Westfall's soft brown eyes shone, a brightening Nathan mistakenly attributed to excitement, for he'd no way of knowing how proud he'd just made an old copper from St. Louis. “All right, all right. I guess the son is the boss now,” Ira said with a deep laugh. “And if that's true, then it's time you started calling me Ira, don't you think?” 

   Nathan had longed for Ira Westfall's respect as much as he had his father's, and at first he sat breathless, overwhelmed by his good fortune. Then, before the silence became embarrassing, he managed a sharply voiced “Yes, sir!” that evoked yet a deeper laugh from the old copper. 

   A faint moan from the coffin broke in. Nathan looked inside. Alana Birdsong was pale as ever and her breathing very shallow. “She needs a doctor bad. We'll have to sneak Ellie Langston into the hotel somehow.”

   “Maybe that won't be necessary. Is she the only doctor in Alamosa?” 

   “I believe so.”

   Ira's head turned toward the front of the express car. “Fred, who's the coroner in Alamosa?”

   “That'd be Ellie Langston. Some don't like that much. I can't see it make's a whit's difference after you're dead.”

   Ira smiled and winked. “Most small places the local doctor serves as coroner. We can ask our dear doctor to come to the hotel and fill out a death certificate, which won't arouse any suspicions.”

   Nathan studied the moaning Alana. “I'd like to uncover her and check for fresh blood, but I'm afraid to disturb her.”

   Ira patted Nathan's arm. “We couldn't stop the bleeding and we might worsen her situation. I know it's frustrating. The only thing we can do is pray.”

   The engine's whistle blew, its bell clanged, steam blasted, and the train began to slow. “Del Norte, gentlemen,” Fred informed his passengers.

   The clerk rolled the door open for Ira to step down. Ira was gone but five minutes. Upon his return, the shivering Fred accepted a mail pouch passed to him by another D&RG employee and rolled the door closed again. With no one threatening his mistress, Sam mostly slept though the entire stop.  

   Ira lingered at the front of the express car with Fred as the train jerked into motion. The ex-copper proceeded to talk in low tones, and the clerk eventually did a lot of nodding. 

   Ira was happier than a dog chewing on a new bone when he rejoined Nathan. “Fred and I came to an agreement. He won't say anything about what's he's heard or seen after we leave the train.” 

   “He agreed to that just because you asked him to?”

   “Well, not exactly,” Ira admitted with an impish grin. “My threat that if he said a word he'd find himself clerking in the Lord's express car was what started his head bobbing.”

   The arrival of a coffin by train in Alamosa was common enough hardly a soul showed any interest, for which Nathan was thankful. The passengers disembarking were in a hurry to reach boarding houses, saloons, and private homes. The crowd on the station platform was preoccupied buying tickets for the night train to   Creede that was scheduled to depart in two hours. 

   Fred rolled open the express car door to reveal Jack Allred fisting the lines of a Schuttler ranch wagon.  The constable halted his team parallel to the express car with the wagon's tailgate slightly past the door. 

   Nathan peered inside the coffin where Alana's eyes blinked and remained open. Ira leaned close to her. “We're in Alamosa. We'll have you in bed at the Imperial House shortly. Don't you give out on me now, you hear?”

    At her nod, Ira and Nathan closed the lid on the coffin, warped it to the doorway, jumped down, and with the help of the constable, slid the wooden box from the express car and gingerly lowered it into the bed of the waiting wagon.

   “Where to Ira?”

   “Straight to the Imperial House, Bulldog.”

   Ira turned to Fred in the door of the express car and touched his lips with an upright finger. An earnest bobbing of the clerk's head ensued. “I'll think he'll stay quiet a day or so,” Ira said to Nathan. “After that it's too good a story not to at least tell his fellow employees.” 

   Ira gripped Nathan's elbow. “Keep your mackinaw unbuttoned in case you need to get at your pistol in a hurry.” 

   Ira rode on the driver's seat with Bulldog while Nathan and Sam sat in back with the coffin. Nathan was wondering what had become of Burt Dawes. Then he spotted him amongst the disembarking passengers. The levee rat paid the wagon no attention, nor did he try to catch it. He lingered behind searching the sea of faces for anyone resembling Corbin or Cousin Hobie. 

   The evening air was as cold as it had been at Creede. Owing to the lower elevation, the snow was four inches deep instead of eight. And much to the benefit of the wounded Alana, Alamosa's streets, lacking the constant, round the clock traffic of Creede's, were frozen solid. 

   At the intersection of Sixth and Hunt, the sight of electric lights burning within Payne Merchandise brought a smile to Nathan's lips. Eldon Payne was working late as usual. They would have no trouble locating him later in the evening. 

   The Imperial House, situated a half block north of Sixth on Hunt Street was a short drive for Constable Allred. Burt Dawes joined then as Nathan lowered the tailgate of the wagon. Together, the four men slid the coffin from the wagon, and each at a corner, mounted the steps and carried it into the lobby. “The room she keeps is on the ground floor down the hallway past the desk,” Nathan informed his fellow pall bearers. 

   The hotel clerk, cross-eyed and bald, swallowed his fear and loathing of Sam, hustled from behind the registration desk, and blocked the hallway. “Can't be no coffins brought into the hotel. Mr. Buckman would have my scalp.”

   Constable Allred's cheeks were suddenly the color of his name. “Mr. Buckman or no Mr. Buckman, you want to sleep a few nights in my jail, Olney? If we have to put this coffin down that's where you're bound. I'm on official business.”

   Swayed by the constable's threat and Sam's bared teeth, Olney scooted sideways, quickly putting the desk between himself and the huge dog. If his superiors questioned Olney later, Nathan suspected he would blame Sam as well as the constable for his allowing a coffin in the Imperial House. In the hallway, Nathan called out, “Mr. Ming, are you here?”

   A door cracked on their right and the slim Chinaman peeked out. Spying the coffin, he froze until he recognized Nathan. “We need your help, Mr. Ming. Mrs. Tanner's badly hurt and she needs Doc Ellie.”

   The Chinaman swept the door open and beckoned them inside. Compared to the room Nathan had occupied during his previous stay at the Imperial House, Alana Birdsong's permanent suite was lavishly furnished. Brass knobs surmounted the pillars of the white enameled iron bed covered by a quilt of alternate blue and white patches, and lace-trimmed pillows of blue satin. The white enameled dresser supported a beveled plate glass mirror of French extraction, and the splashboard and exterior of the three-drawer, hardwood commode on the opposite wall had been painted white to match the dresser's enamel finish. The room's final piece of furniture, a tall clothes armoire, was stocked with feminine attire ranging from walking suits, straw hats, fur coats, and parasols to sleeping gowns. The entire room was free of dust, spotlessly clean, and smelled vaguely of a lilac scent. 

   They managed to wedge the coffin far enough into the room to shut the hallway door. Without a moment's delay Ira and Nathan removed the lid. The expression on Mr. Ming's face was a mixture of relief and joy when Alana Birdsong smiled at him. “Place her on bed, please,” Ming requested. “I make ready for doctor.”

   Ira, Burt, and Nathan followed the same procedure in removing Alana as they had placing her in the coffin, one of them at her shoulders, one at her hips, and one at her feet. The second step, removing her from the Artic sleeping bag, proved a more delicate operation. Once Alana was prone on the bed, the three of them were ecstatic that no fresh blood stained her bandages.

   The next problem was what to do with the empty coffin, for the large wooden box filled the entire space between the bed and the door, and they couldn't subject it to public view, not without telling the world Alana was alive. Mr. Ming solved their dilemma by opening the door accessing his adjoining room. Turning the coffin on its side, they were able to relocate it without making use of the public hallway. Mr. Ming then urged them to “Bring, doctor, quick, quick,” and shooed everyone, including Sam, into the room with the coffin so he could tend his patient in private. 

   Ira Westfall then took charge. “Burt, you find the doctor. Bulldog, you and I will have a little chat with lawyer Abbott. Nathan, you and Sam keep watch here. The desk clerk will telephone the Buckmans, so lock the doors to both rooms and don't open up until one of us returns. Come along, Bulldog, we've no time to waste.”

   When Nathan went into Alana's suite to lock the hallway door Sam followed, and at the insistence of his patient, Mr. Ming relented and allowed the huge dog to take his normal station at the bottom of his mistress's bed. Alone in Ming's room, Nathan shed his cap and mackinaw, washed his face in the basin atop the unfinished pine commode, dried off with a coarse towel, and sank down on the Chinaman's narrow wooden bed, his drawn pistol beside him.