Dead Man Walking Read online

  ‘I was just doing what any man would do,’ Jim said.

  From a carriage further along Jim saw the woman he had been sitting opposite climb out of the train – she came out backwards, and she was talking to someone who was following her. A moment later the two businessmen, looking hot and dishevelled, appeared. They were carrying the trail-hand who had been shot. The trail-hand wasn’t making a sound.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Higgs said. ‘You were very brave. Not many men would have done what you did. In fact we need more men like you. Yes sir, indeed. It’s something to think about.’

  ‘Like lightning, that’s what they said,’ Frank Stokes said. ‘The ones that saw him said he drew that Colt like lightning.’

  ‘There you go,’ Higgs said. ‘I’m already thinking about something for a man like you. I have an idea brewing.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ Jim said, knowing that it wasn’t true; people just recalled what they wanted to recall rather than the truth. He hadn’t had to draw his gun. He’d had it ready in his hand. ‘But there’s a couple of fellows along there have got a man needs looking after badly.’ He nodded towards the businessmen. As he did so he saw the woman glance in his direction. She smiled, but it was a thin smile, as if her world had turned into something that she had never imagined. ‘There may be another one on the train, too. They need a doctor. And there’s two fellows need arresting and two more needs burying.’

  ‘The doctor is on his way. The marshal’s here. It’s all in hand.’

  ‘Well, I figure those folks can use all the help they can get right now. I appreciate your thanks, but please, those fellows along there need you more than I do.’

  ‘No, no. It’s all in hand, really,’ Higgs said. But he did turn to Entwhistle and asked him to go and check if there was anything more he could do. He turned back to Jim. ‘Now we need to thank you properly, Mr Flanders. Where are you staying?’

  It wasn’t something Jim had thought about yet, and he told Higgs as much.

  ‘Well, I’d have loved to have the company put you up in the Driskell. That place was a sight to behold. You take a look up on Brazos Street. You’ll be impressed. Alas, it’s closed just at the moment. Prices were way too high for a town like this one. But l’ll tell you what, you check into the Washington, just up from the Driskell. Tell them Maxwell Higgs sent you and that the Houston and Texas Central will collect the bill. I’ll come and find you later – there are more than a few gentlemen in this town will want to shake your hand and, I suspect, there might be a job offer or two for a man like you. I mean, I didn’t ask, what do you do? What brings you to Austin, Mr Flanders?’

  ‘I’m looking for someone, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, tell me his name. I know most everybody, and if I don’t know then I know the men to ask.’

  ‘Let’s talk about that later,’ Jim Jackson said.

  ‘Yes, let’s do that,’ Higgs said, and held out his hand again. ‘Like lightning, eh?’

  The girl was in a buggy with another young woman. The two of them looked remarkably alike.

  Jim Jackson nudged his horse alongside the buggy. The girl driving gave him a look worse than many a man who’d pointed a gun his way.

  He held up a hand, the reins resting between his thumb and fingers, to indicate peace.

  ‘I just wanted to check you were all right, ma’am,’ he said to the girl who had been in the railway carriage with him. ‘I’m sorry it happened, and I’m sorry you had to see it.’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘It’s not for you to be sorry,’ she said. She glanced at the woman driving the buggy. ‘This is the man I was telling you about, Roberta. The one in the train.’

  Roberta looked at him coldly, suspicion in her eyes.

  He said, ‘I wished I could’ve been there in Kansas.’

  She opened her mouth to say something, but then snapped it shut. She said, ‘How did you know—’

  ‘You two look so alike. I figured you were sisters. Your sister here – I’m sorry, I don’t think I ever got your name?’

  ‘Rosalie,’ she said. Her smile was warmer than her sister’s, and now had less of the strain that had been showing when she had descended from the train a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Rosalie told me you had been robbed on a train.’

  ‘Yes . . . It doesn’t feel safe anywhere anymore.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re both OK.’

  ‘I didn’t get your name,’ Rosalie said.

  He smiled at her and said, ‘Jim Jackson’.

  It didn’t occur to him to lie to her the way he had lied to Frank Stokes earlier.

  ‘Well, thank you, Jim Jackson,’ she said. Her sister flicked the buggy reins and they moved off.

  Jim watched them go and then he lightly pressed his heels into his horse’s flanks and followed them slowly, deeper into Austin.

  It was a cow town. But it was bigger and wider and it had more squares and more streets crossing more avenues than any cow town he had ever seen before. It had more white picket fences, too. That was the first thing that grabbed him, once he had ridden past the cattle compounds and the corrals around the railway station and started heading into town. The log fences gave way to picket fences, and beyond them were more picket fences. Always white, too. The buildings behind the picket fences were neat, and most had wide porches, grass and trees in the yards. Further ahead, in the distance on a slight rise, he could see a huge construction project taking place. There were cranes, great wooden and metal beasts, and he determined to take a closer look later. He rode deeper into town and the wooden houses gave way to brick, and they started to grow additional stories. There was a church on a corner (Saint David’s, according to the sign) that was more impressive than any building he had seen in a dozen years. It had towers; parts of it looked like a castle and other parts looked like a great cathedral from Europe.

  He passed numerous stables and saloons. There were telegraph poles and wires strung alongside several of the streets. Horses grazed in some squares, pretty women with children ate their evening picnics in others. He rode randomly, turning left and right, not worried about getting lost as he had nowhere in mind to go. At one point he came across several fire blackened buildings and a little further on, not far from where the mighty new building was being constructed, he came across the charred remains of another great building – this one no longer so fine. Pillars still stood, but much of the building that they had once fronted was burned out or knocked down.

  Further on were more saloons and stores and hotels and barbers and he was sure he’d passed more than one sheriff’s office. The boardwalks were crowded towards the centre of town where the majority of saloons were located. He heard piano music and laughter, people shouting and singing. In the street were horses and wagons, dogs and water troughs. Boxes and barrels and cases were piled high on the boardwalks. The smell of smoke and cooking meat reminded him that he hadn’t eaten for a while.

  He turned a corner and discovered the Driscoll Hotel. The junction it lorded over was bigger than any corner he could recall. Even back in his eastern days when he had walked the prettiest and richest girl in town along the widest avenues of Clark County, Illinois, there’d been nothing like this. He wondered what Jennifer-Anne would have made of Austin, Texas. She’d have liked it, he figured. Although it was just a cow town it had a little class to it. But maybe not enough class, he thought, looking up at the Driscoll. Despite the ornamental roof and the towers and the vast balconies, the doors were closed and the windows shuttered. It was bigger than the church that had impressed him so much a few minutes earlier and it filled a whole block. Yet it looked sad, dusty and empty, as if it had been a little too ambitious for the town where it had been built.

  He wondered if he’d ever see Jennifer-Anne again – she was the reason he’d come west. You couldn’t marry the richest girl in Clark County unless you had some money yourself. She’d insisted that money didn’t matter, but deep down he knew tha
t her father and indeed her whole family would have disowned her had she married a nobody like him. He hadn’t wanted her to suffer that way. So he’d asked Jennifer to give him a year and he’d headed west. He was going to make his fortune. Instead he ended up in hell.

  He pushed the thoughts from his mind. He’d long trained himself not to think of Jennifer. It was the only way to survive.

  Higgs had told him the Washington Hotel was just along from the Driscoll. So he turned and took a different street. The sun was getting lower now, casting long shadows. He’d find a stable, then a hotel and then a steak. In that order. But he wouldn’t go near the Washington Hotel. He had no intention of being found here in Texas by anyone in authority.

  He’d survived hell and had come out the other side. But back in New Mexico he’d discovered that going through that suffering – ten years in the Texas convict leasing system – had not been down to his bad luck. He’d been set up. Sure, he’d been a train robber. He didn’t deny that. But he never shot anyone and he always treated everyone respectfully. At his trial, when he was being sentenced for the murder of a Texas Ranger who had happened to be on the train they were robbing, one witness, a girl, had told the jury that it hadn’t been the gentleman that had done the killing.

  Such testimony stood for nothing. He had been sentenced to ten years in the system and it had nearly killed him. And Texas, or rather an evil prison guard called Webster T. Ellington on behalf of Texas, had sworn that if Jackson ever set foot in the state again, this time they really would kill him.

  Yet here he was.

  He’d been given a lead back in New Mexico about who it was that had set him up. He had a name and a place.

  But before he sought revenge he had to check on his old friends. The hell he had been through . . . it was almost too much for a man to bear. If any of them were still living through it he was going to get them out. He owed them that. And together they would take that revenge.

  It was here in Austin that the prison records were kept that would lead him to his old friends.

  But first: stables, a hotel, and a steak.

  Chapter Three

  In a prison lumber camp a hundred miles north of Austin, Webster T. Ellington said to a young guard who was still learning the ropes, ‘You see that feller, there? The tall one.’

  ‘The one limping,’ the guard, whose name was Billy Burke, said.

  Ellington said, ‘That’s not a limp. That’s a dead man’s walk.’

  They were standing by the gate. The sun was setting beyond the prisoners’ huts and the sky was streaked with red, orange and purple. Crickets were chirping loudly from the long grass alongside the fence. There was a faint smell of decomposition in the air – the creek on the far side of the camp was going stagnant with the lack of rain. The young guard gripped his shotgun tightly as the prisoners made their way from the washroom back to their huts.

  ‘You going to kill him?’ Billy Burke said.

  ‘Nope. Not allowed to.’

  ‘Not allowed to?’

  Ellington spat tobacco juice on the ground.

  ‘Nope. They want him dead, but I’m not allowed to kill him.’

  Billy said, ‘Sounds confusing, if you want my opinion.’

  ‘Nope and nope,’ Ellington said. ‘I mean, it ain’t confusing and I don’t need your opinion. But he needs to die soon. Fact is, if he were a black man then I’d take him out to the creek and shoot him. Tell ’em all he was running away. That would be the end of it. But that feller there, Winters is his name, he’s got a family probably. There are records. You know what I mean?’

  Billy nodded.

  ‘If he dies – when he dies – it’s got to be above board. There’ll be an investigation, most likely. Witness statements, the lot. If he runs and I shoot him, then that’ll be OK. If he catches his death working night and day, rain and shine, that’ll be all right. If he gets into a fight and someone strangles him . . . You understand?’

  ‘But none of that has happened yet?’

  ‘Nope. And it needs to soon. See, his time is coming up.’

  ‘He’s due to be released?’

  ‘Another six months. And I can’t let it happen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I had one in a camp way over west. Same thing.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Ellington spat on the ground. ‘He got released. I got the blame.’

  ‘The blame?’

  ‘Yep. They demoted me. I was a captain back then. They told me he should never have been released. But that was nothing to do with me. He got ten years. He did ten years. The governor released him. But they said he should have been long dead.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  Ellington shrugged. ‘Damned if I know. Government, maybe. But they had the power to strip me of my rank and send me to one rat-hole camp after another. Wife gave up on me. She’s somewhere else these days. Said enough was enough. Just because he didn’t have the good grace to die.’

  ‘And you weren’t allowed to kill him?’

  ‘Now you’re getting it. Sonofabitch was young. He didn’t look tough. He wasn’t tough. He used to cry like a baby whenever I gave him the bat.’

  ‘The bat?’

  ‘I’ll show you later. He used to weep for his mother. I worked him harder than any two men. He took it all. He was like a ghost when I was done. Couldn’t string two words together and couldn’t stop shaking. He was like a starving and whipped wet dog. But he survived and they released him, and they took it out on me. I suspect he’s dead now. Can’t imagine he lasted a single night outside the camp.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Jackson. Jim Jackson was his name.’

  In the Rio Grande Steakhouse, just off Brazos Street, Maxwell Higgs forked a piece of tender, rare-done, Texas beef into his mouth, chewed a while, washed it down with red wine, and said, ‘Daniel Flanders. I’ll bet you five dollars to a dime that’s not his real name.’

  Opposite him at the table sat Ben Adams, Houston and Texas railroad trouble-shooter. Adams was a bearded man, of medium height, who always seemed to give the impression of being taller than he was. He had a team of men who would ride trains looking out for the passengers, making sure there was no trouble. The men tended to have violent backgrounds. Standing up to train robbers and bandits wasn’t a job for shrinking violets. Adams himself had been a sheriff in Abilene and had tracked and killed cattle rustlers down by the border and over in San Antonio. He had a reputation as both a fist-fighter and a knife-fighter and had done a year in Huntsville for blinding a man in one eye during a fight over a card game. He was annoyed that this latest robbery had taken place on a train where he never had a man stationed.

  ‘Why so?’ Adams said. He was a man of few words, and softly spoken when he did speak – unless he became riled, when the volume of his voice never changed, but the tone became hard and sharp. Like flint, Maxwell Higgs had once remarked to a colleague when talking about Ben Adams. They’d just witnessed the softly spoken man tearing a strip off one of his men. The man was shaking afterwards, yet Adams’ voice had hardly risen above a whisper.

  Higgs reached down on to the floor and came up with a battered hardback book. He placed it on the table. The book had a brown cover with gold embossed writing on it.

  ‘One of Marion’s.’

  ‘I see,’ Adams said.

  ‘Daniel Defoe. Moll Flanders,’ Higgs said. ‘You’re not telling me that was a coincidence?’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything. You’re telling me. A lot of folks call themselves by made-up names,’ Adams said. ‘In fact I’d say more than half of the folks I come into contact with are known by something other than their birth name.’

  ‘And the people you come into contact generally have a reason for not wanting folks to know who they really are.’

  Higgs ate another chunk of steak and sipped some more wine.

  ‘You think he’s hiding something?’ Adams asked.

  ‘I know
he’s hiding something. The fellow was a hero. He could be basking in glory. But instead of that he’s giving us a false name and has disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Bet you another five dollars to a dime that if we walk down to the Washington after we’ve finished up here he won’t have booked in there. I told him the Railroad would pay. Why would a man turn down a free hotel room for as long as he’s here?’

  ‘Maybe you’re wrong.’

  ‘Maybe I am. But we can check it out later. He was as fast as lightning, too. That’s what they said.’

  ‘A gunman.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean to say he’s here to do something wrong.’

  ‘Nope. All I’m saying, the reason I called you over here, is that I figure something’s up with the fellow. Figured you might be interested.’

  ‘Oh I am. And I thank you.’

  ‘You’ll look into it?’

  Adams nodded, then lifted his own glass and drank. He wiped his lips. ‘Tell me again what this Defoe fellow looks like.’

  Fifty miles west of Austin, Texas, a small farmhouse stood at the edge of a copse of live oaks. The farmhouse faced several acres that hadn’t been worked in years and were getting swallowed by tangled weeds and grass. At the farmhouse window, dirty with dust and grease, Red Kelly drank whiskey straight from the bottle, stared at the distant prairie, and swore again.

  ‘Son of a bitch killed Little Joe,’ he said.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Callum Short said. Callum had been the one holding the horses over by the tree line when the train robbery had taken place.

  ‘I heard shooting inside the carriage along from where I was. Four shots, I swear. That fellow I saw, the tall one with the gun, he had that look in his eyes. Ringo was dead. I saw him on the floor. He’d been shot in the face. That fellow, I should have shot him, but some boys and Wes was between him and me.’ Red took another long drink of whiskey. ‘Sonofabitch.’