Dead Man's Return Page 7

  ‘John Allan was the only connection between us and them.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And they’d be interested in us because of. . . ‘ Leon let the word hanging so that Jim could complete the sentence.

  ‘Lumber,’ Jim said.

  Rosalie squinted in puzzlement. Now she held up a finger. “Hold that thought,” she said. She opened her saddlebag and pulled out bread and dry beef, cheeses, and a bottle of wine. The men looked at the food, then at one another. They both smiled. It was hungry work sitting in a camp waiting. Especially when your food was running low.

  Rosalie spread a cloth on the floor and placed the food on it.

  Once they were tucking into the fresh food Rosalie asked: ‘Lumber? What’s the connection?’

  ‘Leon spent ten years cutting down trees,’ Jim said. ‘Me, too.’

  ‘Guess how much we got paid?’ Leon said.

  ‘I’d guess nothing, if you were prisoners.’

  ‘You’d guess right,’ Leon said.

  ‘So you think the trees you cut down for nothing might have ended up in Beecher and Smith’s yard?’

  ‘Why not?’ Leon said. ‘Cheap wood. Very cheap wood for very rich men.’

  ‘But why would they want to kill someone over that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Leon said. He coughed and pulled a pained face.

  Rosalie looked at him. There was concern in her eyes. ‘I asked my sister something else, too. I asked her if she knew a good doctor in the city.’

  Chapter Eight

  Leon looked around in awe. Jim had been right – Austin was like something out of the future. It had been so long since he’d been in a city. In the years he’d been away, both on the trail and in the prison camp, it appeared that buildings had both multiplied and grown taller. There were so many streets it surely must be impossible to memorise where you were, or indeed where anyone else was. There were parks and fences, great mansions, not out on the plains, but right here in the middle of a town. Churches and hotels that stretched upwards like they were trying to touch the clouds. Up on a hill in the centre of Austin there was construction taking place of a great building that did indeed touch the clouds, albeit the autumn mist was low this morning. And the people, so many people. Walking, standing, sitting on benches, riding horses and ponies, being carried in buggies and in long open-topped coaches. There were crowds of people on the plank-walks – except they weren’t plank-walks, they were stone walkways – bustling in and out of doorways, buying and carrying, talking and laughing, debating, haggling, arguing. Young girls, old women, business men, children, folks wearing spectacles and carrying books, men wearing suits. There were a few trail hands too, but only a few.

  ‘I didn’t think anyone would recognize me,’ he said.

  ‘They won’t,’ Rosalie assured him.

  ‘But they’ll know I’m different. Look at them all. I stick out like a hornet stung me on the nose. They’re staring at me.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean they recognize you. Did you ever have your photograph taken?’

  ‘Photograph? Actually yes. A long time ago when I was arrested. There was a fellow that took my photograph. I remember thinking that it was strange. He never took anyone else’s, none of the other prisoners I was with. Just mine.’

  ‘I doubt anyone here is carrying around that picture.’

  ‘I was different then,’ Leon said. ‘Younger. I hadn’t been through . . . I hadn’t been through anything.’

  ‘Then no one will recognize you.’

  ‘I still think this is a bad idea.’

  But even as he spoke Leon felt the tickle in his chest that he knew in a few seconds would turn to a scratch, and then into a lung-squeezing pain. He coughed into his hand. There was more blood than there had been recently and he made to lean over and spit on the ground. But he noticed a pretty girl just to his left looking at him as if he was from China or somewhere. She was well-dressed and her hair was piled high and it glistened cleanly in the sun. Just by being himself he was attracting too much attention. He swallowed the blood instead, grimacing at the coppery taste and the thick consistency.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Rosalie asked.

  ‘I’m fine. I keep telling you all.’

  ‘You’re not fine. I saw you last night spitting out blood. I heard you coughing. And I heard you moan a few times, too. We’ll get something for you. My sister will take us to the doctor.’

  ‘And he’ll have a magic cure.’

  ‘It won’t be magic. But it’ll be something. We don’t want to lose you, Leon.’

  Jim Jackson had elected not to ride into the city with Rosalie and Leon. ‘It wasn’t that long ago that I was in Austin,’ he said. ‘I really don’t want to show my face there again. Not so soon.’ Instead, he’d said, he’d ride out and see how the land lay around Beecher and Smith’s yard. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking for,’ he said. ‘Maybe just an idea. Maybe something I’ll know when I see it.’ It was how he’d worked back in Prairie City, where Leon had been held in the prison leasing camp. He’d gone up there and he’d ridden around, waiting and searching for an idea to form, a way to break Leon out. And lo and behold an idea did form, and it worked, too.

  There’d be no harm in taking a casual look at Beecher and Smith’s operation.

  Jim found the railroad tracks before he found the trail. He pulled his horse to a halt and watched a lumber train smoking slowly southwards. The locomotive, a 2-8-0, pulled dozens of flatbed wagons, each piled high with raw timber. The smell of burning coal from the smokestack filled the air and the wheels rattled over the rails. It felt like an age before the brakeman’s wagon with the red light on the back disappeared from sight.

  ‘Lot of timber,’ Jim said to his horse.

  He squeezed his heels against her flanks and together they followed the tracks, until a mile or so later he picked up a hard-packed, wheel-rutted trail that crossed the rails, and then ran alongside them towards a distant cluster of buildings. It was a cluster that grew and grew as he approached, as did the fire and smoke, the noise of machinery and the smell of more burning coal.

  He arrived at a set of huge metal gates. The gates were open, not that they were designed for anything other than show. They weren’t connected to anything. One could have ridden around them just as easily as through them. The railroad tracks entered the site just along and to the right of the gates. Looking further out, it did appear that a line of barbed-wire marked some of the perimeter of the site.

  He rode around that perimeter, looking in at the vast workings, the steam engines, and the long platform from which cranes were unloading the logs the train had just brought in. The logs were floated down further into the site on water courses built behind and parallel to the platform. There was a cookhouse and several bunkhouses, a building that looked like a saloon, coal heaps and numerous fires, water tanks, and stables. As he rode leisurely around the perimeter, Jim spied a blacksmith. There was a huge office building made of bricks. He circled it all and on the far side rode up onto higher ground, where he sat looking down on the empire and wondered if his and Leon’s sweat and blood had paid for any of it.

  Washington was drinking. He’d been drinking since midday. He was standing by his office window looking out, a glass in his hand. A few minutes earlier he’d been looking at the map on the wall with the little blue pins that showed where their lumber camps were. There’d been a glass in his hand then, too.

  ‘Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it all,’ Smith said. ‘Just when you damn well think everything is finally good again.’ He lifted the glass to his lips, poured all of the whiskey into his mouth, and threw his head back violently as if swallowing a nasty potion.

  ‘What is it?’ Charles Beecher said, ‘Why so uptight?’

  Washington Smith turned. ‘Someone told Martha.’

  ‘Told Martha what?’ There was a hint of accusation in Smith’s voice that Beecher didn’t like.

  Smith walked over to
the sideboard and took his time pouring another drink. He turned and stood with his back resting against the sideboard. He sipped the whiskey and stared at Beecher.

  ‘What?’ Beecher said. The accusation was in Smith’s eyes now, as well as his voice. It was the same look he’d had when they’d been discussing killing Jack Anderson. The look of wanting someone dead.

  ‘Evelyn,’ Smith said. ‘Someone told Martha that Evelyn and I. . . .’ Smith shook his head and let the words hang.

  ‘That Evelyn and you are what?’ Beecher said.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m saying.’

  Now Beecher shook his head. It was going bad. Not the business. Far from it, the business was going well. But this – the two of them. They’d always been good together. Their ideas and thought processes aligned. But just recently it felt like the relationship was fractured, like cracks were appearing that if not dealt with might turn into huge fissures.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Beecher said. ‘Maybe you want it to be. I don’t know. But it wasn’t.’

  Smith took another sip of whiskey. Then he tilted the glass back and drank all the remainder in one go. He turned to the decanter on the sideboard and refilled the glass to the halfway point.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ Beecher said again. ‘Makes no difference to me what you get up to. Except maybe your drinking. You’re doing way too much of that.’

  With his back to Beecher. Smith said, ‘Who says I’m getting up to anything?’

  ‘Someone obviously has.’

  Smith turned.

  ‘If it wasn’t you, who was it?’

  ‘Lord if I know.’

  Smith continued to stare at Beecher. Then he sighed, drank another large shot of whiskey and said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m on edge. I don’t know why. Ever since we killed Anderson.’

  ‘We didn’t kill him.’

  ‘We had him killed. I had him killed. I kept on and on and eventually you agreed. And now we’ve done it and I . . . I don’t know, I wake up at night thinking about it.’

  ‘It’s done. It’s over.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. For good or bad.’

  Smith walked back over to the window. It faced out over the yard. He stared aimlessly at the activities below. A locomotive had not long pulled in. The engine still belched steam and smoke. Already his men were swarming over the wagons, un-belting this, looping straps over that, lifting the first of the logs. Elsewhere he could hear the faint screech of wood saws, deadened by the bricks and the thick wooden panelling in the office. The smell of something cooking crept in from somewhere. And over there, high up on the rise north of the site, was a lone rider sitting looking down at him.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Smith said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Come and take a look.’

  Beecher joined him at the window.

  ‘It’s no one,’ Beecher said. ‘Just a trail-hand stopping to take a look at the future.’

  ‘He’s not moved.’

  ‘Probably smoking a cigarette and resting his horse.’

  ‘I’ve a spyglass in that drawer over there.’

  ‘Ignore him.’

  ‘Please.’ The smell and slur of alcohol came from Smith’s mouth. It wasn’t the right time to argue.

  Beecher opened the drawer that Smith had pointed to. He brought the brass telescope over to Smith. Smith extended the telescope and looked at the distant man.

  ‘Anyone we know?’ Beecher said.

  ‘Here take a look.’

  Beecher took the telescope and studied the distant rider. It was hard to tell much about him at this distance. A few days of stubble on a weathered and bruised face, a square jaw, eyes shadowed by his hat, and an upright stance on a black horse.

  ‘Means nothing to me,’ Beecher said.

  ‘Like I said, I’m just edgy,’ Smith said. ‘But. . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Last week, for no reason other than we sent Abraham after him, I looked at the photograph of Anderson – Allan – call him what you will. I looked at the rest of them, too.’

  ‘You kept their photographs?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘There’s no way it could be one of them,’ Beecher said. ‘How would they know?’

  ‘Maybe if they got to Anderson before Abraham? That was the point, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You’re thinking too hard. We can’t even be sure that Anderson knew about us. In fact I doubt he did. You’re seeing ghosts where there aren’t any.’

  ‘Ghosts I can live with. It’s living men that are bothering me.’

  Smith took one last look at the distant rider. He squinted a little as if trying to memorise the man’s features, then he turned and walked over to the cabinet from where Beecher had taken the telescope. He opened another drawer and brought out a green leather-covered folder.

  Smith said, ‘You’re probably right. But humour me. Take a look.’

  The doctor’s name was Edward Koch. A short bald man with a great moustache, a beard trimmed to a point, and round wire-framed spectacles. He was dressed well and he laughed loudly. He spoke with a faint European accent and he was clearly fond of Roberta, who had accompanied Rosalie and Leon to Koch’s surgery.

  ‘The first thing to do, Mr Winters, is to avoid infecting the rest of us.’

  Koch smiled as he spoke, but there was a seriousness in his eyes. He handed Leon a very soft white folded handkerchief.

  ‘If you get the urge to cough, please cough into that. Outside – you look like an outside man to me – outside, your friends may very well be all right. But in an enclosed space we can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Is it catching?’ Roberta asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  The girls looked at one another and Leon said, ‘Perhaps this isn’t a good idea. Perhaps I should go.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Koch said. ‘If you want to cough or sneeze just use the handkerchief. Now, you know there’s no cure?’

  Leon looked at him.

  Koch smiled.

  ‘It doesn’t mean all is lost, my friend. There are things you can do if you want to live. Now listen closely.’

  ‘It could be him,’ Beecher said. ‘But there again that photograph could be any one of a thousand men in Austin. Especially days when they bring the cattle in.’

  The image had been printed on white paper that had become brittle and had cracked in the Texas heat. The cold eyes of a scared young man stared out from the photograph. But, yes, the shape of the jaw and the shoulders, it could have been that rider out there on the ridge.

  ‘I’m being a fool,’ Smith said. ‘But let’s ask the Greek to take a few men and bring him in. Let’s see the fellow close up.’

  ‘And if it turns out that it is him?’ Beecher asked, tapping the old photograph. He looked again at the picture. ‘This Jim Jackson. If it is him. What then?’

  Smith thought about this for a moment.

  ‘I’d say we wait and see first. I mean, what are the chances? But we never built all this up by not thinking things through. If it is him. If he’s here. Then. . .’ Smith shook his head.

  ‘Abraham?’ Beecher said.

  ‘The Greek,’ Smith said. ‘He’ll do it. He’s right here. Plus he’s a lot cheaper, too.’

  ‘Drink milk,’ Leon said. ‘Eat vegetables.’

  ‘And rest,’ Rosalie said.

  ‘One out of three ain’t bad,’ Leon said.

  Roberta looked at him with a quizzical expression.

  ‘I’ve been living off wild onions this last week,’ Leon said and winked.

  Roberta smiled. She liked this tall thin man. Partly, she guessed, because he wasn’t the one that Rosalie had chased after and had her fingers broken because of. She knew Leon Winters was one of the train robbers that Rosalie had asked her about all those months ago – the only one still alive aside from this Jim Jackson that Rosalie was besotted with. Leon was gracious and chivalrous, almost always smiling – j
ust happy to be alive and free – and it didn’t take a detective to figure out that he’d do pretty much anything for Rosalie.

  They were walking along Cypress Avenue, slowly wending their way back to Roberta’s house. She’d promised them a good meal. They both looked like they needed it.

  Rosalie said, ‘You need to head west, Leon. The mountains and the dry air. That was the fourth thing.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without you.’ he said. ‘Or Jim.’

  ‘Then we’ll come, too.’

  Roberta felt a twinge of sadness. Rosalie was always turning up and then leaving. It must be wonderful to have such wanderlust and adventure in one’s bones, she thought. Such a carefree and weightless existence. No roots to hold you down. But was it really what Rosalie wanted? Was it really what was best for her? It certainly didn’t make life easy for a sister. But, she wondered, was it sadness or jealousy. Rosalie and Leon and Jim, they were all there for each other, and she wasn’t really part of it.

  Yet as they turned the corner she saw a man standing outside her house and the jealously vanished. She had her own someone, too.

  ‘Andrew’s here,’ she said to Rosalie. ‘I think you’ll get on well.’ She turned to Leon. ‘And he will find you immensely interesting, I should think.’

  ‘Why?’ Leon asked.

  ‘He’s a criminal lawyer. I’ve told him all about you.’

  It was almost meditative, Jim Jackson decided, although the thought didn’t arise until he came out of the dream he had been in. The autumn breeze was warm, but not hot. The sun was hidden behind wispy clouds that took the edge out of the heat. The wild grass smelled fresh and there was birdsong in the air. He could smell coal smoke, too, but it was far enough away for it to feel homely rather than industrial. He was well fed and the ride had been easy, slow and gentle for both him and the horse. There was no rush. He had all day, and although at first he had been worrying about Leon – his health, and the fact that he was venturing into the city – somewhere along the way the worries had vanished and Jim had found himself staring at all the tiny men scurrying about down there in the lumber yard, and his mind had wandered. He thought back to the timber he had set alight as a diversion in order to help Leon escape from the labour camp he was being held in. He thought back to the hundreds of tree-cutting sessions he’d been part of in his own prison. Day after day, month after month. For ten years. Cutting and sawing, dragging and trimming. Hauling heavy timbers along rutted and rocky trails, great ropes around skinny malnourished shoulders. He thought of the times back in Parker’s Crossing, New Mexico, where he had run to when first released. He thought of the dark days there when he took refuge in the bottle. And of the men he had killed there. He thought of the friends he still had there. He had saved that town and in the process he had saved himself.