Colorado Clash

13

Pushing through the batwings Fargo saw how crowded the Gold Mine saloon was. The long bar was packed as were the tables. On the surface this might have been nothing more than one of those nights when a large number of men decided to spend a little time drinking before going home to their families and supper. But that would have meant a jovial mood among most of the drinkers and the mood here was anything but jovial. The sure sign of this was how none of the drinkers paid any attention to any of the saloon girls. Usually they’d be joshing with them or flirting with them. A few of them would be going upstairs to partake of their services.

But not tonight. Tonight there would be only one topic of conversation. And that would be Ned Lenihan.

When the bartender saw Fargo, he shouted, “Here’s the man who brought him in!”

A few dozen shouts went up in the smoky air. A couple of men near Fargo patted him on the back. Admiration and appreciation shone in every eye. Fargo was the man of the hour.

By the time he reached the bar, the bartender had his schooner ready for him. Two men parted to make room for him. The bartender said, “This town owes you a debt of gratitude, Mr. Fargo.”

“Well, time will tell.”

“Well, you got him, didn’t you?”

“We’ll have to see.”

The conversations around him stopped. Men wanted to hear what Fargo was saying. And Fargo wanted to be heard. Though law and order had come to a good part of the frontier, the people of Cawthorne had lived through a frightening month. Three of their own young men dead. And the lingering and ever-increasing suspicion that Ned Lenihan, one of the most trusted people in the entire town, was behind it all. The rage would be setting in just about now. Fargo had seen it too many times. One or two of the men would start stirring up the others, suggesting that they had the right to take the law into their own hands. Suggesting that maybe even Tom Cain himself would throw in with them. Suggesting that since Ned Lenihan had killed some of their own—that they had the right to kill Lenihan themselves, to hell with judges and juries. At first most of the men would disagree. They would rightly see these men as hotheads, as troublemakers. But one by one and then two by two and then in larger numbers the other men would give in to their own anger, the alcohol consumed only making it easier to do so, and what had been unthinkable a few hours ago would now seem like the absolute right thing to do.

“You don’t sound real sure about Lenihan, Fargo,” the bartender said.

“I’m not. He might be guilty and he might not.”

“Well, you arrested him, didn’t you?” The man was chunky but powerful-looking with angry dark eyes and a black beard. “That’s good enough for me. Far as I’m concerned he’s the one who killed my cousin Clete.”

“This is Dave Teale, Fargo. He’s only a shirttail kin of Clete but he makes it sound like they was brothers.”

The men around him laughed.

“You think it’s funny, do you?” There was real peril in his voice—peril for the bartender. And the bartender knew it. He moved back a few steps. Dave Teale had the floor. “You arrest a man and you’re not sure he’s guilty? Meaning what—that you could let him go?”

“That’s how it works sometimes. You arrest a man but then later you find out he wasn’t guilty so you let him go.”

“Well, I say he’s guilty.” He shouted at all the men in the saloon, men now paying close attention because they thought there might be a fight about to happen. And who wanted to turn down a good old fight?

In every town, burg, city there were Dave Teales. Hell, even in Washington, D.C., there were Dave Teales. Men who weren’t satisfied unless they were rattling sabers and stirring up trouble. Here was a man who was Clete Byrnes’ shirttail kin—if that—and he was talking like the boy had been his blood brother. And the men listening to him, genuinely angry over the events of the past weeks but also bored and looking for relief from their everyday lives, heard in Teale the voice of the righteous and reasonable. A man was arrested therefore the man was guilty. Later, after more alcohol had been consumed, Teale would push for his real purpose—to demand that Cain let Teale and his men take care of Lenihan themselves. In every town, burg, city there were Dave Teales.

Since Teale had been addressing the men, Fargo took a turn at it. “Maybe Teale here’s right. Maybe Lenihan is guilty. But he’s behind bars and you can bet that Cain won’t let him go. So there’s nothing to worry about. If you think Lenihan is guilty then you can rest easy because there won’t be any more killings. You and your families can rest easy.”

The men were still sober enough that Fargo won them to his side—temporarily at least. He could see in their faces that his words had made sense to them. For now, anyway, they realized that the situation was well in hand. But a long night was ahead and Fargo wondered how long they’d stay reasonable.

Teale shook his head. “It ain’t right. Why should he draw even one more breath when them three boys are dead?”

“Well, if you’re right, Teale, I imagine Lenihan won’t be drawing a breath as soon as his trial’s over.”

“Trial? You sound like you’re on his side, Fargo.”

“Teale, you’re starting to piss me off.”

Teale snorted his disdain for the Trailsman but he didn’t say anything.

Fargo looked directly at Teale. “I’ll be headed back this way real soon and I don’t want to see you trying to start any trouble. You hear me?”

To emphasize his point he thumped Teale on the chest with his knuckles. Then he nodded to the bartender and left.

The words came in torrents, in gushes. And they were good words, fine words, the best words since O’Malley had been working in Chicago before he turned into a human whiskey bottle. He sat at his wobbly desk in his cell-like hotel room, a lantern at hand, his pen scratching out a steady rhythm. He had within reach not a whiskey bottle but a cup of steaming coffee. His moment had come at last and he wanted nothing to spoil it.

The story began with the revelation of the killer’s name. After that was a recap of everything that had taken place over the past weeks. He noted how Lenihan was set up by whispers as the guilty man. The story read like a piece concocted by Edgar Allan Poe.

There in the golden glow of the lantern a rebirth was taking place. Maybe he’d be drinking again very soon. Maybe the old ways were just too difficult to change. What would the world look like through sober eyes? he wondered. He smiled to himself. Maybe it would be like staring directly into the sun—blinding him. He’d always told himself that in the bottle was truth. Maybe he’d been wrong—maybe in the bottle were lies, self lies.

He laughed out loud. Hell, here he was carrying on when he didn’t know if he could go as long as eight hours without a drink and he was planning a dry future for himself.

He sat back in his chair and looked at the pages in front of him. He felt pride. The same kind of pride he’d had as a young man getting scoops in Chicago.

He was so absorbed in reading his words that he didn’t hear the door open behind him. Wasn’t aware of another presence in the room until the killer had taken two steps across the threshold.

Then, shocked, O’Malley turned and met the eyes of the person he’d been writing about. They seemed to gleam in the shadows beyond the glow of the lantern.

“You dropped something when you paid me a visit.”

O’Malley was unarmed. No reason to carry a gun when he was in his own room. Unarmed—and there could be only one reason the killer had come here.

The killer came up to the edge of the light. He held a business card in his hand. The card identified the paper and the owner Parrish. Parrish didn’t think enough of O’Malley to have his name printed on them.

“I doubt it was Parrish who was there. So that leaves you.”

O’Malley’s eyes began searching the darkness for some way to avoid the inevitable. The killer had not yet shown a gun but it was certain he had one. Inevitable. What could O’Malley do? All he could think of was diving at the killer’s legs, surprising him, knocking him over and then running to the door and the hall and shouting for help. There were people around at this hour. People with guns. People who might not care for him but who would protect him on general principle.

But the body had been abused for so long, what if he tried to make a dive and did nothing more than land at the killer’s feet? His situation would be hopeless then. But then, he thought, what was it now?

“How did you figure it out?”

“I saw you one day and got curious. How you handled something.” What was the point of pretending anymore?

“How I handled what?”

So O’Malley told him. How the killer’s behavior had made him curious about the break-in at the woman’s house. How the man had watched the woman.

And then how O’Malley had begun studying the man every chance he got. In the old days when he’d worked on the big-city papers he’d begun making a study of people arrested for crimes. A lot of them would never be suspected. Nice normal ordinary people. Or so they seemed. But at their trials O’Malley began to see what they’d kept hidden about themselves. And how clever their masks were.

“I’m impressed, O’Malley. I figured you were just one more drunken reporter. It seems your kind always like the bottle too much. But you must be a lot smarter than I realized. How long have you suspected me?”

“Ever since the break-in. But I wasn’t sure and I couldn’t prove it. I didn’t have any real evidence until I found that box under your couch. It’s kind of funny, keeping all those things of hers. Sort of sad, too.”

“Shut up. I don’t want you talking about her. Somebody like you shouldn’t even mention her name.”

He’s crazy, O’Malley thought. He’s crazy as a loon.

“I want the box, O’Malley.”

“I imagine you do. But I can’t give it to you. I’ve already given it to Fargo.”

“Fargo? You’re lying.”

O’Malley supposed it was a pretty pathetic lie. The box was sitting on the nightstand by his bed. The darkness hid it.

The killer brushed past him then. The room was so small that he was able to reach the bed and the nightstand in seconds. His harsh laugh told O’Malley that he’d found the box.

“So Fargo has it, huh?”

O’Malley was turning around in his chair as the killer cinched on his black leather gloves and stepped forward. O’Malley didn’t even have a chance of defending himself. The killer’s hands were so powerful that they snapped the trachea instantly. There was no problem then in finishing the job.

After he was sure O’Malley was dead, Deputy Pete Rule tucked the box under his arm and hurried from O’Malley’s hotel room.