the Iron Marshall (1979) (23 page)

"What's happening must have started just about the time you people got together and planned to bring money in here to pay off the cattle drivers, and I don't know whose idea it was ... Maybe it started in two or three places, but I do know there's one person who not only wanted all the money, but was a bitter, vengeful person along with it.

"They think they've won. They have the money, or think they do, and only one thing remains. That's to kill the man who caused them so much trouble, and somebody has figured out a way of doing it without risk." "Without risk? You?" Josh exclaimed. "That's crazy! Why, I've seen you in action and there isn't a man-" "That's right," Shanaghy said quietly, "so ... " Mrs. Carpenter was walking up the street toward them.

Chapter
Twenty.

She was neatly dressed in a fashionable black traveling dress, with a small bonnet perched on her head. In her hand she carried a handbag. "You've got to be crazy!" Greenwood said. "Why-!" "The story is around that I killed her husband. She is a bereaved wife. Who else could kill a man, in this country, and get away with it? Even have the blessing of most of the townspeople?"

"You mean she was in on it?"

"Maybe not from the beginning, but you can just bet most of the planning was hers. And right now, if she kills me, she can board that train and ride off a wealthy woman, sharing with no one but her brother." "But they have the gold!"

"Maybe, but I doubt it. I don't believe the gold ever left the train." She was walking up to them now and she had slipped her hand inside her bag. She stopped. Her thin, rather pretty face was drawn in suddenly hard lines. "Marshal, you are an evil man! You murdered my husband! You killed him and then tried to burn the-" "Mrs. Carpenter," Shanaghy said. "Sure, ma'am, and you're too late. It's all over. We know what was done and how it was done, and we know that you yourself killed your husband, and that it was you who closed the doors and set the barn afire.

"It was you, with your brother, who planned to steal all that gold." Her eyes tightened at the corners, as did her mouth. "I have no idea what you are talking about, and-" "Mrs. Carpenter, I have no desire to be rough with a woman-even one who has murdered her husband and probably others as well. So please ... Do not try to take that gun from your purse, because I-" Her hand started to come out from the handbag, but almost casually Shanaghy slapped the purse from her hand with his left and then brought his right hand up under the barrel, twisting it up and away. It was let go or have a broken finger, and Mrs. Carpenter let go. Shanaghy passed the gun to Judge McBane. "It is all over, Mrs. Carpenter, all over. None of it worked." She was very cool. The hardness became only a shadow in her eyes, covered by amused contempt. "You're such a little man, Marshal, so pleased with yourself, taking a gun away from a woman. Mr. Holstrum will testify-" "Holstrum is dead," Shanaghy said.

McBane turned his head sharply and Josh was staring. "Or if he is not, I shall be very surprised. You see, Mrs. Carpenter, some of the others were thinking just as you were. Once outside of town Holstrum was no longer needed, so why share with him? I am betting they killed him somewhere between his ranch and that little station thirty miles east where they planned to rejoin the train." He smiled. "Rejoin it with what they thought was the gold."

"You mean they don't have it?" Greenwood exclaimed. "As I said, it never left the train. What they took off at the water tank were some boxes prepared for the purpose. Mrs. Carpenter's brother, as station agent, had connived to get the manifest changed. The boxes that actually contained the money were being shipped right back to Kansas City ... where Mrs. Carpenter would pick them up."

"You mean they have already been shipped back?" "My guess is that they went west last night, and that they will be on the evening train when we board it."

Mrs. Carpenter stood stock-still, her hands clasping her purse, staring off into space. Yet, while there might be some shock at being frustrated, at having all her carefully laid plans go sky-high, Shanaghy had an idea her mind was working swiftly toward some sort of a solution.

"I'd like to go home now," she said suddenly.

Shanaghy shook his head. "You're not thinking clearly, Mrs. Carpenter. You are under arrest. But something which you should be thinking of now is your friends, if you can call them that."

She merely looked at him.

"If they have not already discovered that they do not have the gold, they will discover it very soon. They will also suspect what has happened, and when they do I would imagine they would be looking for you. "Of course, your plans were to be on the train going east by now, and so safely away. But you are not going east, and neither are they." He paused. "So I shall lock you up until we return." She looked her contempt. "Will you shackle me to the hitching-rail as you did those others?"

He shook his head. "No, Mrs. Carpenter. Holstrum has a storeroom where we can leave you until we return, which will not be long." In the distance, a train whistled. "Greenwood, would you lock her up? And stay here, if you will. Vince Patterson and his boys should be riding in today and they will want some drinks. Get hold of Vince and tell him what has happened. Tell him everything."

They walked to the station. The train whistled again, still far off. Josh reached into his pocket. "By the way, this letter was in your box at the hotel. I seen it there after we checked the clerk's body ... You know, Dandy Drako? I figured you'd be wantin' it."

Shanaghy glanced at it. He recognized the handwriting. The letter was from John Morrissey. But there was no time to read it now. That could wait for a more leisurely time. He put the letter in his shirt pocket. For the first time he took a look at himself. His shirt was badly torn. His face felt stiff and sore from several punches he had taken. He did not even remember them. You never did, at times like that, except maybe the very hard ones. The train was coming down the track and the agent came out to the platform. He looked at them, stopped and started to go back inside. "Don't do it," Shanaghy said in a conversational tone of voice. The agent looked at him. His tongue touched his lips. He was trying to make up his mind, and Tom Shanaghy was remembering that the man had a gun ... probably back inside.

"He means it, Burt," Josh Lundy said. "If I were you 1 wouldn't try."

"What's wrong? I don't know what's going on."

"You just come with us. You'll learn."

"Come with you? Leave my post, here? I can't do that, and you can't make me. I-" "You won't be gone long, not this time." Shanaghy smiled "Someday we will have to sit down and you can tell me about your sister. She's an interesting lady." "Helen? You mean Mrs. Carpenter?"

"I do."

"I've no idea what you're talking about, Marshal. Look, I've got to go in there and clear some messages and also let them know this train's gone through." "Later. Right now we're just going down the track a little ways to meet some of your friends. If they haven't discovered the double-cross you two have pulled off, they'll be wanting to load those boxes off the pack animals they have. If they have discovered the cross, they'll be hunting you and your sister." Burt's face had taken on a sickly expression. "Marshal, 1 don't know what you're talking about."

"You do know." Shanaghy watched the train pull in. "Search him and take him aboard," he told Josh. "I'll just walk along and check the engineer." The engineer was a different man from before, a burly fellov* with white hair and a florid face.

"My name is Shanaghy," Tom said, "and I'm marshal here There's been a little trouble and some of us are going to rid' down the track with you. About thirty miles down the track there will be some men waiting at that little way station, some men and probably one woman. Stop the train and then get down on the floor. There may be a little lead flying."

Once seated on the train, Shanaghy looked over at Josh. "Tell me what you see as we come up to the station," he suggested. "I want to have a little talk with Burt, here." Tom glanced over at Judge McBane. "Judge? Would you like to join me? Maybe if we can ask this man the right questions we can keep him alive." "Keep me alive?" Burt started up and Shanaghy pushed him back down into his seat. "What do you mean?"

Shanaghy smiled. "Now, see here! You and your sister double-crossed your partners. You don't expect them to like it, do you? You've been playing with some pretty rough company, Burt, and now that the bottom has fallen out of your plans, they are going to think it was you ... they will know it was you. "They will be waiting at the station right ahead of us, but if you talk fast and give us everything you know we may be able to save you." "I don't need to be saved!" Burt protested. "I've nothing to-" "Then you won't mind getting off at the next station to meet George and Pin? They'll be there, you know."

"The train's not stopping," Burt protested. "You can't pull that on me. I sent the orders."

"Of course, you did. I just changed them. I know that you and your sister expected to be on this train, and you expected it to fly right by, leaving your old friends standing on the platform. That was the idea, wasn't it? You'd have the gold and they would just have several small but heavy boxes. "Well, that isn't the way it's going to happen. We are going to stop there, but just long enough to put you off."

Burt was sweating, his brow was beaded with it. His face had taken on an even more sickly look, and his eyes seemed unusually large. "Marshal, you can't do that! You can't put me off! Why, that would be murder!" "Like what your sister Helen did to her husband, you mean? Like what your associates have done with Holstrum?"

"Holstrum? He's dead?"

"Well, we don't know, but he left with them and with that woman he was sweet on, but I'm betting they decided once they had the loot that they didn't need him anymore. I hope I'm wrong. But you know how it is. They'll be thinking just like your sister and you ... who wanted it all."

"Where is she?"

"We have her ... " Shanaghy took out his big silver watch. "Well, it won't be long now. Josh, you see anything yet?"

"Too soon."

Shanaghy got up. "Judge, talk to this man, will you? We've got maybe twenty miles to go, and if he doesn't tell us anything by the time we get there I'm going to just drop him off at the next station. You talk some sense into him if you can while I go along up to the baggage car." Only three passengers rode in the only other passenger car and Shanaghy walked through, opening the door into the baggage car. The expressman looked startled when Shanaghy walked in, then relieved when he glimpsed the badge. "Something I can do for you, Officer?" Shanaghy glanced around, unsure of what to look for beyond an approximate capacity. "Your heaviest shipment," he said, "I'd like to see that." "Heaviest?" the expressman looked thoughtful. "We have several heavy ones. Right there"-he indicated several solidly built boxes-"those are the heaviest ones." "Where were they loaded?"

He shrugged. "They were here when I took over from the other man," he said. He glanced at the labels tied on the boxes. "Kansas City," he said, "to H. R. Carpenter. It's stenciled on the boxes, too."

"It's a stolen shipment," Shanaghy said. "If you check your records you will see that such a shipment was directed to Greenwood, Holstrum & Carpenter yesterday. The weights will be the same."

"You taking this one?"

"We are, in the name of the above parties. I will sign for it. Judge McBane is with me."

"I don't know whether I can do that, Marshal. Maybe we-"

"Leave it to us. And one more thing, when the train stops don't open your doors under any circumstances. If I were you I'd lie down on the floor behind those boxes and stay there until we pull out of the station." "There'll be shooting?"

"Unless I miss my guess there will be some, but we will be doing our share."

The train was slowing. Swiftly, Shanaghy ran back through the cars. Josh was at the door with a Winchester. There was another man beside him. "This here's Joel Strong. He was on the train, and when he found out what was happening he wanted a piece of the action."

"I remember him. He was speaking to the judge here on my first morning in town.

All right, consider yourself a deputy."

He walked over to McBane. "Well, Burt," he said, "have you anything to say?"

"He's said it," McBane replied. "We have all we need." The train was slowing down for its stop at the station. Shanaghy took his gun from the holster and checked the chambers once more. Then the other gun. George ... George would be good with a gun, he knew that. Pin McBride would, also. McBride was the man who made him jump from the moving train. If it could be done without shooting, well and good ... But Shanaghy did not believe it could.

McBane stood beside him. "It began with Greenwood and Holstrum when they went to Kansas City to arrange for the shipment of gold. The blonde woman, I do not have her name straight, was at dinner with friends, and she heard of these men who had come into the bank, and of the gold shipment they had arranged. She was a girl who had once been wealthy and wanted to be again, and the idea came to her. She had seen George a time or two, knew he was a gambler and worse, and she got the hostler in a stable to bring him to her.

"She's a very cold, assured young woman," McBane said. "She apparently knew exactly what she was about and believed she could take care of herself. Deliberately, she arranged to meet Holstrum and played up to him. She agreed to come to his town and see it, and when she arrived there she began at once to talk of the pleasant places in Chicago and New York, and what could be done if they only had the money.