Brian Garfield (12 page)

Today to Pack's relief Finnegan was nowhere in evidence. He hadn't been in town for several days; possibly he was on a hunting or stock-stealing trek. The sun shone bright, the breeze was good, the day was festive and the town was blessed by the absence not only of Finnegan but also of young Riley Luffsey and one or two others among Finnegan's wild Irish friends.

So the shooting today was desultory and did no harm; it only contributed a fewscore balls to the lead mine upstream.

*    *    *

Mrs. Reuter—muscular ranch woman—was helping an injured passenger down from the train. For a moment Pack thought with alarm that one of the roisterers must have aimed too low. Mrs. Reuter was pressing a cloth to a bloody streak at the side of the passenger's neck—a bullet blaze by the look of it. The man kept jerking his head away from the cloth and stout Mrs. Reuter said brusquely, “Stop making such a fuss. I never heard anyone go on so about a little gunshot wound.”

Struggling, the conductor with the aid of two passengers manhandled a huge youth down the steps from the vestibule of a passenger car. The conductor said, “Who's in authority here?”

Someone pointed to Pack.

“I guess I am,” Pack admitted, inasmuch as he was the Medoran who possessed the key to the jail.

The conductor's captive heaved and lunged in frantic determination to get free of the grasp of the three big men around him. The conductor held the back of his collar; each straining passenger gripped one of the demented prisoner's arms.

A curious crowd gathered. “Now, what's all this?” Pack said.

“Damn to hell Lunatic,” said the passenger with the neck wound. He took the cloth away from Mrs. Reuter and examined its bloodstains accusingly.

The Lunatic—a child six feet tall, two hundred pounds or more, shaggy, filthy, dressed in rags—made inarticulate sounds: he howled like a wolf in a trap. Yet his eyes appeared to know a profound secret: Pack thought he looked as if he had seen the inside of his dreams…. He lurched about, carrying three men with him, wearing the furious scowl of a child denied a toy.

The conductor said, “He took this gentleman's revolver. Seemed to think it was a toy. Shot up my train.”

“Not to mention my neck,” said the passenger irritably.

Pack said, “Any other casualties?”

“No,” said the conductor. “By God's grace and through no fault of the Lunatic here.”

“How'd he get on the train?”

“Don't know.”

“Where'd he get aboard?”

“Don't know.”

“No one's claimed him?”

“No. Hell—would you?”

“Can he talk?”

“Not that I know of. Just howling and growling.”

Someone in the crowd said petulantly, “I don't know why he should be our responsibility.”

“I can't have him on my train, that's all I know.”

Pack turned to the injured passenger. “Now, you'll have to go back and see the sheriff in Mandan if you want to press charges—”

“Not if I have to stay in this Dakota place.” The passenger swatted Mrs. Reuter's ministrations away, turned and climbed back aboard the train. His parting words were, “I wash my hands of the matter.”

Mrs. Reuter yelled up at the train, “You are welcome!” and strode away toward town.

Pack said to the conductor, “Now, look here, I don't know if we legally can—”

That was when the Lunatic flung his head down and bit the hand of the passenger who held his right arm.

The passenger yelped and leaped back, loosing his hold.

The Lunatic, one arm freed, flailed with mighty strength—broke loose and butted his way through the surprised crowd and ran with an oafish thudding stride toward town. His cry sang as if from a coyote drunk on the moon.

The bitten passenger cried, “What if he's got hydrophobia?”

If there was a reply Pack did not hear it. He was running full speed, giving chase. Behind him the crowd came thundering.

Ahead the Lunatic disappeared among the buildings of Medora.

Assuredly the Lunatic would not continue to elude capture for very long. And indeed it was only a few moments before he was sighted lumbering up over the railroad embankment, heading for the river flats to the south. The crowd, baying like Huidekoper's pack of wolfhounds, gave happy chase. The race had become a game.

Pack, winded, let the others take up the baton. He stopped, hands on knees, chest heaving, trying to get breath.

From a distance he had a glimpse of the Marquis De Morès riding his horse across the tracks. For a brief instant he was reminded of the promised dinner interview. Next week perhaps? That assuredly would sell newspapers. (Masthead: “The
Cow Boy
is not published for fun, but for $2 per year. Arthur T. Packard, Prop.”)

Shortly thereafter the Lunatic ran back into town, arms and legs pounding with energetic desperation. He seemed to have the stamina of a locomotive. The pursuers lagged quite far behind; some had dropped out altogether.

Expressing keen displeasure under his breath Pack took up the chase once again.

Joe Ferris and Swede Nelson had not deserted their posts on the porch of Swede's store. As Pack loped by he heard Joe Ferris's call: “He's around behind the store.”

“Help me turn him,” Pack gasped, and skittered around the corner. In the edge of his vision he had a glimpse of Joe Ferris vaulting the porch rail and dashing around the far side of the building.

They caught the Lunatic between them. Joe Ferris threatened him with a lofted baseball bat. The Lunatic threw himself flat on his back behind the store and commenced to suck great gasps into his cavernous chest.

“Don't get too close,” Pack said. “He bites.”

They stood warily above the Lunatic. A few others came in sight and stopped. There was a hush of uncertainty; then a sound—something Pack didn't hear, but it made Joe Ferris wheel with an abruptness that betrayed his trigger-poised nerves.

Jerry Paddock strutted into sight. His eyes flicked around, quick as a terrier's, surveying them and the prone Lunatic with shrewd and aggressive contempt.

Jerry Paddock didn't say a word but his malignant presence was enough to erase whatever amusement had graced the moment. Pack watched him resentfully.

Paddock, who had cloaked himself in a kind of seedy elegance since he'd met the Marquis, was wearing a black vested suit, its image spoiled by the grime around his celluloid collar and the unkempt shaggy droop of his dark goatee and stringy mandarin mustache, which accentuated the hatchet sharpness of his features.

Jerry Paddock tended to keep his own counsel. Everybody knew him but he probably had no friends; no one seemed to like him. He had no particular coterie or faction. Yet still he dominated the community—largely by means of fear.

Pack had no idea how much truth, if any, there was in the rumors that Jerry Paddock was the direct cause of at least five of the stones and crosses on Graveyard Butte. He did know that he had never heard Paddock make any effort to deny the rumors, and he suspected that Paddock himself probably was responsible for having started some of them.

Jerry Paddock enjoyed alarming people. It pleased him to have a reputation as a villain. When he stroked his beard the gesture had a sinister deliberation; did he rehearse it before a mirror?

Joe Ferris looked down at the panting Lunatic. He said to Pack, “You got him. What you want to do with him?”

“Well—”

Jerry Paddock said in his sandpaper voice, “Shoot him or hang him. Put him in the bone orchard.”

Pack ignored the villain's suggestion. He looked around at the men, seeking a majority sentiment, but found mainly bewilderment in their faces.

Swede Nelson glared at Jerry Paddock and said, “You've got no call to lynch him. He ain't done a crime.”

Glancing into the Lunatic's eyes Pack again caught an elusive glimpse of some secret intelligence. It was curiosity as much as anything that made him say to Joe Ferris, “Let's lock him in the Bastille.”

“Then what'll we do with the drunks?”

“Chain them in the open. The weather's mild enough.”

Jerry Paddock removed a snap-lid watch from his vest pocket, opened it and held it out to the limit of its chain, squinting at it. “Who's going to look after him, then?”

“Not you, Jerry,” said Pack, “that's for certain.”

“Bet your bottom,” Jerry Paddock agreed. “You caught him. He's yours. Do what you want. But you're a fool if you don't put him out of his misery.” He closed the watch, dropped it into its pocket and swung away with an abrupt snap of his skeletal shoulders.

When the villain was gone Joe Ferris put his bleak glance on Pack. Joe said, “He may be right. You might do the boy a favor by hanging him.”

“Now, I don't imagine anybody wants to hang anybody.”

“I know. I wouldn't either.” Joe grinned. “Got yourself a tiger by the tail, Pack.”

“At least help me get him to the jail.”

The Bastille was a windowless shack of railroad-tie logs, eight feet by ten feet, built by the army for some now-forgotten purpose and employed lately to contain citizens who ventured so far from sobriety that they became unable to distinguish between inanimate revolver targets and human ones. The Bastille had been christened by Pack the first time he had incarcerated Redhead Finnegan in it and watched with satisfaction while Luffsey and three others gave up after a half hour's vain attempts to breach it.

The crowd watched them lock up the Lunatic. Swede said, “I could get it something to eat, I guess. What do you think it eats?”

“Human ears and rusty nails, I imagine,” said Pack. He gave the padlock key to Swede. “Don't let him jump you.”

“What are we going to
do
with it, Pack?”

“Hell,” Pack said, “I wouldn't know. Let's think about it another time.”

And so, for a time, the Lunatic became a resident of Medora town.

Sunday. Madame la Marquise had come by, riding sidesaddle, and had spent three minutes as a spectator to the baseball game. That had been twenty minutes ago but Pack's cheeks were still hot.

Pack windmilled his arm, flicked a twist at the last instant and hurled the stitched leather underarm. The pitch was a distracted simulation of the curve ball for which he'd been infamous on the University of Michigan team; it was no good. Joe Ferris swung his bat and there was the crack of ball against wood and when the projectile hurtled above Pack's head he lost it in the sun and missed his catch.

There was a boastful display of partisan allegiances: seventeen players and threescore picnicking Sunday-afternoon spectators yelled derision or encouragement.

Pack felt redoubled heat in his cheeks. What a fool to let the mere sight of the lady Medora transform him into a tanglefooted child.

The centerfielder pursued the bouncing leather with enthusiasm. Pack turned steadily on his heel to watch while Joe Ferris reached third base, cast a quick eye at the fielder and made his dash for home. His short legs pumped like locomotive pistons.

Near the left-field boundary at the stockyard fence a fight commenced among spectators—some of the De Morès butchers and stock wranglers. They'd been drinking beer all afternoon and there'd been a great deal of noise from that quarter and the outbreak of a fight did not take Pack by surprise.

Boots pounding clay, Joe Ferris made it home ahead of the fielder's inadequate throw. Bob Roberts the saloonkeeper, Umpire by common consent, called in his loud precise basso, “Runner is safe!”

Joe Ferris beamed. Pack tried to put on a sportsmanlike smile. His Cow Boys were losing to Joe's Bad Landers 14—31 and it was the seventh inning—an utter disgrace: he rued the day he'd introduced the baseball craze to Medora town.

The game had gone awry in the moment of Madame's appearance. Shaded under her huge white sugar-loaf sombrero she'd sat smiling at the players. On the high perch of her sidesaddle, with boots demurely concealed by the rich folds of her long skirt, she had contrived magically to appear both stately and as tiny as a doll. Her delicate aristocratic dignity had imposed a hush on these rough men. They'd removed their hats in respect and smiled like angels.

That had been two innings ago. It was as if the scent of her delicate perfume lingered in Pack's nostrils.

The leather rolled to his feet and he scooped it up. At the fence the fight petered out. There must have been one or two good blows; one man was bleeding at the nose; but it was all right because the combatants were helping each other to their feet and their friends were laughing.

Pack swiveled with ill grace to face the next batter. Altogether it had not been an auspicious day, ever since he'd looked in the mirror and realized that the attempt to sprout a full beard was becoming a humiliation.

He scowled at the batter and began to wind up but that was when Swede Nelson ran hollering onto the field, waving his plump arms in frantic despair.

“God help me, boys, they've gone and cleaned me out!”

Pack looked around the store and pronounced, “Now, you've been ransacked for certain.”

Desolate devastated perdition. Debris on the shelves. Broken scraps of furnishings and glass, a menace underfoot—evidence of the thieves' haste.

They must have spilled liniment—or emptied it deliberately: the floor was stained and the smell sickening.

Swede's face had gone bright pink. “And they emptied the stockroom in back.”

Joe Ferris planted his fists akimbo. “Last night?”

“No, I slept here armed all night. Had to be this morning while I was at circuit tent service.”

Joe Ferris sneezed. “I don't suppose Jerry Paddock was in church.”

Swede said, “I didn't see him.”

“Now Jerry Paddock can double his prices till you get restocked. Prob'ly take weeks.”

Swede said in a gentle sad voice, “I'd have bested him in a fair competition.”