A Wolf in the Fold

Chapter 21

Phil Tanner kindled the stove at my request. I was being polite as could be, and it puzzled him. But there was no need to rush. Thanks to his mother’s greed, we had the place to ourselves.

While he got the stove going, I made a circuit of the kitchen. I took a butcher knife off a counter and placed it in a drawer. I also peered into the pantry. Then I sat in a chair with my back to a wall and my boots propped on the table. My spurs scraped the wood, but I didn’t care. I had the Remington in my lap.

“There,” Phil said, rising. He was nervous. He kept glancing at me as if he expected me to riddle him with lead. “What would you have me do now?”

“Bacon and eggs strike my fancy.” I had seen both in the pantry. “Reckon you can handle that?”

“I don’t do much of my own cooking, but yes, I think I can manage.” He stepped to the pantry door.

“No tricks,” I warned.

“No tricks,” Phil repeated. He was not in there long. When he came out, he had the bacon and a bowl of eggs. He walked stiffly to the counter and set them down. “How do you want your eggs?”

“I’ve always been partial to scrambled.”

“How many?”

“Eight should do me. With six strips of bacon. Toast. And coffee.”

He resented having to do it, but he set about preparing my meal with studied care. I sensed he was afraid to make a mistake. I did not tell him that killing, or the prospect of killing, sometimes made me hungry.

“I’ve heard of you, you know,” he said as he laid the bacon strips in a pan. “You’re downright famous.”

I allowed as how there was some gossip about me in saloons and such, but I wouldn’t go that far. “Wild Bill was famous. Billy the Kid was famous. Jesse James was famous. Compared to them I’m nobody.”

“They say you’ve killed upwards of fifty people. Is that true?”

“Folks exaggerate.” I set the Remington on the table with a loud thunk and he jumped and glanced around. “I’d like some soup, too. How about if you put on a big pot of water to boil.”

“Soup with bacon and eggs?”

“I like to eat soup with every meal,” I said, ladling it on.

The pot he selected was not nearly large enough.

“Bigger than that,” I said. “The biggest damn pot in this whole damn kitchen.”

After some clanging and clinking, he brought over the largest pot I had ever seen. “Will this do?”

“Nicely,” I said.

When people are nervous, they talk a lot. He was no exception. “Don’t take this wrong, but I’m surprised the law hasn’t caught up with you yet.”

“I’ll share a secret,” I responded. “The law in one state can’t do much if you make it across the border into another state before they can catch you.”

“But how about when you return to states where warrants have been issued for your arrest?”

“You sneak in and sneak out.” I made a show of stretching. “So long as you’re not wanted where you live, you’re safe enough.”

“But what if the other states find out where that is?” Phil brought up. “Can’t they have you arrested and brought back?”

“Sometimes. It helps if you have a judge or two in your pocket.” I considered it a necessary expense.

Phil had avoided the subject he really wanted to bring up for as long as he could. Now he coughed and said, “It was my mother who shot you, not me.”

“I was there, remember?”

“All I’m saying is that she hired you and she shot you, so if you should be mad at anyone, it should be her.”

Disgust welled up in me, but I tempered it with, “You love your mother that much, do you?”

“Tolerate her, is more like it.” Phil began cracking eggs. “You’ve seen how she is. Could you love a woman like that?”

“She gave birth to you.”

“So? From as far back as I can remember, she’s treated me as if I can’t pull up my britches without her help. She treated my father the same way. Now he’s dead, thanks to her.” Phil was building a head of steam. “She’s never satisfied, that woman. We have a prosperous ranch, or it would be if she didn’t spend money faster than we make it. Until the silver came along, we were lucky to break even most years.”

“You don’t live in a sod house,” I reminded him.

“Sure, we live high on the hog, mainly because of her. She always has to have the best. The best clothes. The best furniture. The best buggy. None of that comes cheap. I haven’t even mentioned her jewelry.”

I had noticed that Gertrude was partial to necklaces and bracelets, some studded with diamonds.

“You make it sound as if I should love her just because she’s my mother. But a parent has to earn love, just like everyone else, and my mother hasn’t earned mine. To be perfectly frank, Mr. Stark, I loathe her. I loathe her with every fiber of my being.”

Inwardly, I smiled. He had a flair, I’ll grant him that. I was curious how far he would take it.

“She is to blame for you sitting there holding that revolver on me,” Phil said while fluffing the yolks and whites. “If anyone deserves to die, it’s her, not me.”

“You think so, do you?”

Phil turned, his face alight with hope. “I know so. Which is why I want to make you an offer.”

“How do you mean?” As if I could not guess.

“How would you like ten thousand dollars?”

“My fee is a thousand.”

“But surely you wouldn’t mind making ten times that amount? No one in their right mind would. All you have to do to earn it is kill my mother.”

There. He had gotten it out. I pretended to ponder.

“No one need ever know. It would just be between you and me.” Phil’s enthusiasm was a wonder to behold. “I’ll pay you half in advance and half when she is six feet under.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? What do you have to lose? You’re planning to kill her anyway, aren’t you? For what she did to the Butchers? Then why not get paid for doing it? It makes sense to me.”

“You have that much money handy?”

Phil thought he had me. He showed more teeth than a politician giving a speech. “No, but I can get it in, say, a week to ten days. What do you say?”

“Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money,” I admitted. “But with your mother dead, you’ll have the ranch and the silver all to yourself.”

That gave him pause. “So?”

“So you stand to be able to pay me a great deal more than ten thousand.” I let him consider that a few moments. “Killing her would be the greatest favor anyone ever did for you. It should be worth a lot.”

“How much?” Phil bleakly asked.

I pulled an amount out of thin air. “Fifty thousand would suit me. I could retire on that much.” Which was true.

Phil appeared to have swallowed a cactus. He blinked and sputtered, “Fifty thousand it is, then. Under the same terms. Half in advance and the rest when my mother is in her coffin.”

“Be sure you don’t burn my meal,” I said.

“What?” Phil turned back to the stove, and swore. He darted to a cupboard for a plate and filled it to overflowing with the eggs and sizzling strips of bacon. He brought them over, then scurried to fill a cup to the brim with hot coffee.

“Don’t forget my toast.”

“What about the soup?” Phil asked, nodding at the large pot. The water wasn’t boiling yet.

“Let it heat up more,” I said. I slid the Remington into my holster and motioned for him to sit across from me. He was being so reasonable, I couldn’t see him trying to jump me.

As carefully as if he were sitting on broken glass, Phil eased down in the chair. “I must say, you are not at all how I expected.”

“Is that so?” I said with my mouth crammed with eggs.

“My mother made it sound as if you were a coldhearted cutthroat who could never be trusted. But she was willing to spend money anyway to hire you. She would do anything to get her hands on that silver.”

He had blundered and did not realize it. I swallowed and remarked, “So she talked it over with you before she hired me?”

Phil sat back. “Why, yes, I suppose she did, at that. Although she did not give me a say in whether we did. It was her decision and hers alone. Just as it was her decision and hers alone to shoot you in the back, giving you no chance to defend yourself. Despicable. Truly despicable.”

“That she shot me in the back or that she didn’t kill me?”

His laugh was more akin to a bark. “I’m glad she failed. Her mistake is my gain. If she had shot you in the head, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

I forked a piece of bacon into my mouth. It was thick with fat and dripping with juice, exactly how I liked it.

“May I ask you a question?” Phil ventured.

Absorbed in the bacon, I grunted.

“How will you do it? Kill her, I mean? Will it be quick and painless or will she suffer? Were it me, I would stake her out like the Comanches do and skin her alive.”

“Your own mother?” I said. And to think, he had the gall to call me coldhearted! Talk about a kettle calling a pot black.

“What difference does that make? You’ve killed women, haven’t you? Mother said you had. That’s why she sought you out in particular. She said that only someone as ruthless as you were reputed to be could kill someone as nice as Hannah Butcher, or as sweet as her daughters, Sissy and Daisy.”

Suddenly I lost my appetite. I considered jamming the fork into one of his eyes but stuck with my original notion.

“I could never murder anyone but my mother,” Phil blathered on. “I hate her that much.”

“I try to keep my personal feelings out of my work,” I said. Although, since the attack on the cabin, that wasn’t true.

“How much longer will you keep at it? Your work, I mean?”

“None of your business,” I growled. I was tired of playacting, tired of toying with him like a cat toyed with a mouse.

Alarm furrowed Phil’s features. “Why are you mad? Is it something I said? If so, I apologize.”

“I don’t know what gave you that idea.” I stood and walked to the stove. The water in the pot was beginning to bubble. Another minute or two and it would be hot enough.

“Good. We should be friends, the two of us. We are partners, after all, in the sense that we are plotting a crime together.”

I touched the pot handles. They were wood, not metal, and posed no problem.

Phil did not know when to shut up. “I wish I could see her face when you do it. Would you let me? I would be willing to pay extra for the privilege. A hundred dollars, just to see her face. No! Make it a thousand!” He laughed viciously. “Won’t she be surprised? I daresay it will be the shock of her life.”

“Death usually is,” I said. The water was boiling nicely.

“What an exciting life you must live. Vastly more exciting than being a nursemaid to a bunch of cows.”

“It has been kind of exciting around here of late,” I mentioned as I lifted the pot a few inches.

“Hasn’t it, though? It will almost be a shame to have everything back to normal. Maybe then those Texas Rangers will stop snooping around. They worry me. Do they worry you?”

I walked toward the table holding the pot in front of me. Some sloshed over the rim and nearly splashed my hand.

“What are you doing? I thought you wanted soup.”

“I’ve changed my mind.” I set the pot on the floor near his chair. Placing my hands on my hips, I bent down to give the impression I was peering into the water.

“What in the world are you doing?” Phil leaned toward the pot. “What do you see in there?”

“Boiled Tanner,” I said. In a twinkling I had the Remington out and struck him over the head. He crumpled, but I caught him before he fell flat. He was dazed but not out. Sliding a leg under his chest to hold him steady, I shoved the Remington into my holster to free both hands. Then I moved behind him, let him slump to his knees, gripped both his wrists, and bent his arms as far back as they would go.

The pain revived him. “That hurts!” he shrieked. “What are you doing? We had an arrangement.”

I started to force his face toward the pot.

“Wait! No! You can’t!” Phil struggled, but I had a knee between his shoulder blades, and the leverage. “What about the money? Kill me and you won’t get it!”

“You offered me a thousand to watch your mother die,” I said. “I’m giving up a lot of money to see you do the same.”

Phil bucked and twisted but could not break my grip. “Why?” he wailed. “In God’s name, tell me why!”

I told the truth for once. “This is for Daisy.”

His screams filled the kitchen. They filled the house. They went on for a long, long time.