Murder in Dogleg City (9 page)

She sniffed the air haughtily. “Sir, I
am a Methodist!”

Sam leaned forward, studying the
woman’s face. Even from this distance he could tell that her eyes
were glazed. She was chasing the dragon, all right.

“
Was his shirt all the way
off?” Sam asked.

“
Of course!”

“
The bastard!” Sam
said.

“
Marshal!” she
gasped.

“
Why, I bet he was
perspiring—so heavily that his body shimmered, and his trousers
dripped!”

She fanned herself. “Oh
my!”

“
And this took place in
his stable, am I correct?”

“
Of course!”

“
Then, dear lady, how
could you have known about it?”

“
Because—because—oh!”

Sam leaned forward. “Fear not, madam,”
he said. “I’ll take a hand in this, indeed I shall.”

“
What will you
do?”

“
I’ll shoot him if I have
to. But I think a stern talking to will suffice.”

“
I—thank you,
Marshal.”

“
No need to thank me, it
is my job. And in fact, you have stung my conscience, Mrs.
Pettigrew, by pointing out as you did how prodigal I have been in
my duties. As soon as I straighten this renegade wrangler out, I’ll
find something else productive to put my hand to—in fact, I might
just get ambitious and take actions to stamp out the wicked opium
trade that is going on in this city, under our very noses, and
expose the criminals who are encouraging those godless Celestials
by purchasing their vile wares. Thank you, madam, for inspiring
me.”

“
I really must be going,
Marshal,” Edith Pettigrew said, and bustled away.

“
That woman is cracked in
the head,” John Hix said.

“
At the very
least.”

“
Marshal—I shouldn’t be
spreading tales, but most ever’body knows she sends that poor
afflicted boy Dickie Dildine down to the Red Chamber to buy her
dope. Or, when he ain’t around, that one-armed drunk.”

Sam nodded. “She hasn’t been pestering
either of them lately, that I can tell. She must have some new way
of procuring what she needs. And that’s good, in my opinion. She
has no business getting either of those poor souls mixed up in her
antics.”

“
Are you really gonna
close Soo Chow down, like you told her?”

“
Hell, no. There’s no law
against opium, any more than there is against whiskey or walking
around in a stable with your shirt off. Besides, I wouldn’t want to
cut her off. I’d be tempted to buy her supply out of my own salary,
if I had to—if she’s this annoying on dope, I’d hate to see what
she’s like without it.”

Sam leaned back. “Carry on, John. The
dens of Satan are calling my name.”

John grinned. “Yes sir,
Marshal.”

* * *

Sam stepped out of the barber shop. He
paused a moment, looking up and down the street. He liked to be
aware of his surroundings, a habit he had picked up as a cavalry
officer. He had certainly not picked it up while growing up in his
hometown of Danville, Illinois—there was nothing to see there but
corn, and nothing to hear but his lawyer father’s boring
platitudes.

He turned right and headed west down
South Street. He intended to start his rounds, as he usually did,
at the Eldorado. He planned to ask around about the mysterious
Laird Jenkins, the fellow who’d gotten himself shot in the back
while taking a piss outside Asa’s Saloon. Quint had done a thorough
job earlier in the day, but there were certain townspeople who
might open up more to the city marshal with the deadly reputation
than to his straight-arrow deputy. And since it was now late
afternoon, there might be more folks up and about who had seen
Jenkins than there had been when Quint did his
questioning.

The Eldorado was the most upscale
drinking establishment in Wolf Creek. Its South Street location was
on the border between the “respectable” part of town and the rowdy
neighborhood called Dogleg City that had sprung up in the last
couple of years, since the railroad arrived. It was the sort of
place that local businessmen, or those passing through on the AT
& SF, could feel safe frequenting, sipping a drink on cushioned
barstools or doing a little gambling without the fear of being
murdered if they won two hands in a row, or robbed as soon as they
got out the door.

A handbill pasted on the
front door advertised that the Du Pree Players would be returning
next weekend. That was another marker of the sort of place Virgil
Calhoun ran; Howard Du Pree and his troupe made a circuit through
southern Kansas, appearing in Wolf Creek every month or so. They
performed comedy skits, song and dance routines, and excerpts from
Shakespeare. They didn’t get booked in Dogleg City; Sam sometimes
mused about how amusing it might be to see them do
Hamlet
or
Julius Caesar
at the
Wolf’s Den. It would be the first time they’d done the murder
scenes with audience participation.

Sam opened the door and stepped
inside. The house gambler—and bouncer, on the rare occasion one was
required—sat at the lonely poker table, waiting for the gamblers to
wake up and start stirring. The faro and monte stations—the
Eldorado only ran three tables—sat empty. The dealer, Tom
Scroggins, was a rough-looking character with long black hair and a
grizzled goatee—one could argue he was an unkempt version of the
marshal, at least in appearance.

“
Looks like the place is
getting a slow start today, eh, Tom?” Sam said as he walked
past.

Scroggins shrugged. “It’s okay,
Marshal. I’m a bit of a slow starter myself, anyhow.”

Sam chuckled. “Things’ll pick up when
the dance hall girls get started. A little flash of female leg gets
folks’ blood flowing.”

The piano player had arrived, and was
limbering his fingers up at the keyboard. Sven Larson was the best
piano man in town; Sam didn’t bother asking him any questions, the
Minnesotan got completely lost in his music once he got started,
and would not likely have noticed if the whole place collapsed
around his ears.

Instead, he bellied up to the bar and
ordered a beer. Head bartender Robert Sutton set a foamy mug before
him. The marshal and Sutton got along quite well, being fellow
Illinois escapees. The bartender—a thin man around sixty with a
snow white beard and a toothy grin—hailed from Urbana, and had
spent the war years as a guard at the Rock Island prison camp.
Affable as he was, he had no compunction about using the shotgun
hidden behind the bar if it were necessary. Gardner joked that
having a bartender named Robert at the Eldorado, when there was a
bartender named Rob at the Lucky Break, was far too confusing for
the simple folk of Wolf Creek, so the marshal sometimes referred to
them as Smilin’ Bob and Burly Rob.

“
How’s that leg doing,
Sam?” Smilin’ Bob Sutton asked.

The marshal set his mug down. “The doc
says it’s coming along well. I shouldn’t need this walking stick
for long, now that I’m finally on my feet—but it’s so dandy and
handy, I may just make it a permanent part of my arsenal. Joseph
Nash does good work.”

“
Hey, that’s a beaut,”
Sutton said. “Can I see it?”

Sam handed it over and the bartender
appraised it with an approving smile.

“
Say, Bob,” the marshal
said. “I guess you heard about the fellow who got shot down in
Cribtown last night.”

Sutton nodded. “Quint was asking about
him this morning. I really can’t tell you much—he just came in here
a few times in the early evening, had a couple of drinks and moved
on.”

“
I hear he was a bit of a
talker.”

Sutton shook his head. “Not so’s I’d
notice, not in here. I’d say this was where he started his
evening’s festivities, and he hadn’t drunk enough yet to loosen his
tongue till somewhere farther down the line.”

Sam nodded. “If you don’t mind, I’m
going to pester your customers about him just the same.”

Sutton handed the cane back. “Sure
thing, Sam.”

There weren’t that many customers to
pester, not at this hour. Sam knew most of them—and they proved as
unhelpful as Sutton—but then a man entered who was a stranger to
him. He was in his forties, wearing a cheap, rumpled suit and a
dusty bowler. He carried a leather case. The man headed straight to
the bar, and Sam excused himself from the conversation he was
having with a local cattleman to go join him.

“
Robert,” the man said to
the bartender, “has Mister Calhoun come in yet?”

Sutton shook his head. “Afraid not. He
should be along soon, though.”

The man seemed disappointed. “Do you
know if he’s given any thought to my offer?”

Sutton smiled. “I’m just the hired
help, you’ll have to ask him about that.”

Sam approached the man. “Virgil keeps
the hours of a raccoon,” he said, “much like the rest of us. My
name is Sam Gardner, I’m the marshal around here.”

“
Have I done something,
Marshal?”

Sam smiled. “Not that I’m aware of. I
just like to make new acquaintances.”

“
Oh,” the man said, but he
did not seem relieved. “My name is Malchius Offerman.” He offered
his hand, and the marshal shook it.

“
Mister Offerman is a
whiskey drummer,” Sutton offered. “He’s trying to convince Virgil
to change suppliers.”

“
I thought I knew all the
whiskey drummers who come through,” Sam said, and then added, “I
like whiskey, you see.”

Offerman nodded. “I’m new,” he said.
“Well, not new to the trade, just new to this territory. I replaced
Lester Weatherby.”

“
Weatherby,” Sam said, and
thought a moment. “Oh, yes. He was on that stagecoach that the
Kiowas hit a few weeks back.”

The drummer nodded again. “I hear he
quit and moved back East.”

“
A good place for him,
from what I saw,” Sam said. “Well, I wish you luck with
Virgil.”

“
Thank you,
Marshal.”

“
Long as I have you here,
I wonder if I could ask you a question.”

“
Why, certainly. I always
like to be helpful to the law.”

“
There’s a fellow that has
been making the rounds of the saloons the last few nights—Laird
Jenkins. Dressed like a cattle drover, had a pock-marked
face.”

Offerman nodded. “Why, yes,” he said.
“I remember the man. We spoke last night, very briefly, at the
Lucky Break. Is he in some sort of trouble?”

“
His troubles are pretty
much over. Somebody shot him in the back down in Cribtown last
night.”

“
Oh, my,” Offerman said.
“That’s terrible. I have been warned not to go down there too late
at night, I hear it is crawling with cutthroats and robbers. No
offense, Marshal, you can’t be everywhere at once, I
suppose.”

“
He wasn’t robbed,” Sam
said, “that’s the peculiar part. He had a pocket full of cash when
we found him.”

“
Perhaps he offended
someone?”

“
Perhaps,” Sam said. “May
I ask what you talked about with him?”

“
Nothing, really,”
Offerman said, “we barely spoke. He was rather far along in his
cups, I’m afraid, and was soliciting my opinion about keno. I told
him I was unfamiliar with the game. That was about the extent of
it, apart from some drunken mumbling I couldn’t
decipher.”

Sam nodded. “Thanks for your time,
Mister Offerman. Bob, I believe I’ll amble over to the Wolf’s Den
and see how they’ve been getting along today without my presence—I
expect I’ll be back after supper. Good day, gentlemen.”

Sam headed south on Third Street,
tapping the boardwalk jauntily with his walking stick as he went.
He walked past Li Wong’s laundry shop, and caught a glimpse of Li’s
beautiful daughter Jing Jing through the window. The marshal
generally ignored the Chinese unless they were causing trouble—they
were sort of in the background, from his perspective, rather like
squirrels—but he could definitely see why so many of the men in
town were panting after her. If Soo Chow ever did manage to recruit
her for his stable, the marshal would make a point of giving her a
try.

He turned left onto Grant Street,
which the mostly-Texan cowboys preferred to call “Useless S.
Grant.” Let them have their sour grapes, Sam figured, everyone
knows who won the war and was sitting in the White House. He passed
the artist, Reginald de Courcey, headed back to his studio—brushes
and canvas under his arm—no doubt from one of his frequent
sketching and painting expeditions in the countryside.

“
Hello, Marshal,” the
artist said amiably in his proper English accent. “Warm enough for
you?”

“
I suppose it’ll do,” Sam
said. “How’s business?”

“
A little slow right
now—but I’m using the downtime to paint some landscapes that I
suspect I can get a pretty penny for the next time I get to
Wichita. Have a good evening!”

“
Same to you.”

The Wolf’s Den was geographically not
that far from the Eldorado, but it was worlds away. Everything
about it felt different, even in the late afternoon. Where Tom
Scroggins was friendly, and pleasant company on a slow evening,
Breedlove’s house gambler Preston Vance radiated a taciturn,
antisocial aura. Three or four toughs lounged around the bar at
night, ready at a moment’s notice to subdue any serious
troublemakers—one of them, a drifter named Wesley Quaid, was
already present. Instead of Sven Larson’s jaunty piano, the young
Texan Roscoe Parsons played Mexican tunes on a guitar.