Counterfeit Lawman

CHAPTER SIX

Ike drifted in a bubble, all alone, sound cut off, seeing only blurs moving in front of him. When a drunk collided with him and almost knocked him out of his chair, the bubble popped and he returned to the gritty reality of the Grand Palace Saloon. The music hadn’t improved, and the off-tempo clickety-click sounds from the direction of the stage warned him that the dancers weren’t even close to matching one another’s steps. They were as terrible dancers as the trumpet player was a musician.

His only thought was that it could be worse. A piano player with no skill at all belting out a tune would have added to the general noise.

He looked at the floor, where the drunk fought his own inebriation to stand. He flopped about like a fish pulled out of a stream and heaved up on the bank.

“Let me give you a hand, partner.”

Ike caught the man’s arm and yanked him up. At the same instant the drunk started to tumble back to the floor, Ike kicked a chair under him. The man threw up his hands and thrust out both legs and yelled, “Yippee!”

“Settle down, old-timer,” Ike ordered. He looked around. Nothing the man said or did was going to draw attention away from the stage show. “You can finish it for me.” He shoved his mug across the table. Only a rime of foam around the lip remained.

“You’re a good man, no matter what anybody says.” The drunk snatched up the mug and licked away the foam, smacked his lips and wiped his lips with his sleeve. “That wasn’t enough to sate my thirst. No, sir, it weren’t, but it’s a start.” He tried to focus his eyes on Ike and failed. “You buy a poor, down-on-his-luck cowboy a drink?”

“Why not?” Ike said. “But you’ve got to tell me something. Is there a bookstore anywhere near?”

“Books? Them things with words in ’em? I reckon so.” He waved his arms about and finally pointed. “Not five doors down the street. Goin’ west. East! Nope, I was right the first time. West.”

Ike slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t go anywhere, you hear?”

“No, sir, nowhere a’tall.”

Ike moved from the table heading for the swinging doors. He stopped when he saw a lanky, handsome man go to the center of the stage. The man was dressed to the nines and had an arrogance about him that made Ike want to punch him before he uttered a word.

“Gents,” the man onstage called, “if you’ll pass a hat and everybody generously contributes as much as they can, the Grand Palace Dancers will come back.” He stepped toward the crowd and said, as if confiding a secret, “The quicker you fill that hat, the sooner the ladies will return. They might not have time to get dressed all the way if you’re fast enough.”

A cheer went up, and a hat bobbed from one side of the crowd to the other. The man—he had to be the owner, Zachary—scooped out the money and stuffed it into his coat pockets.

Ike saw how so much coin and specie ruined the line, but he knew Zachary wasn’t concerned.

“Back, you prancing fillies, get on back out here, naked or not!”

Zachary rushed from the stage, the curtain went up, and the dancers, in various degrees of dishabille, pretended to be shocked and embarrassed. Ike doubted the dancers got a penny of the money the owner just collected. Disgusted, he left the Grand Palace. A small smile came to his lips as he wondered how long the drunk would wait for that beer.

“Not long enough to sober up,” he said to himself. Ike stepped into the street, got his bearings and hurried to the bookstore. The drunk had been accurate about his directions.

The bookstore owner was closing for the day. He looked up from wrestling a bookcase of dime novels that had been on the boardwalk into the store.

“You in the market for some fine literature, Mister?”

“I am,” Ike said. “You have any magazines telling about the exploits of a Federal marshal?”

“Got a few. Even a new one. This here’s a popular series.”

Isaac Scott wobbled and closed his eyes, hoping the dime novel would be gone when he again looked. It wasn’t.

“All about one of Judge Parker’s top lawmen.”

“Deputy Federal Marshal Augustus Yarrow,” Ike said. “He’s real? Not made up?”

“I can’t swear that every word in here’s the Gospel truth, but Deputy Yarrow is as real as a toothache.” He held up the dime novel, looked from the lurid cover to Ike and back. The bookseller shook his head. “You look a tad like him, but your mustache’s not thick enough. The drawing on the cover, at least makes the two of you look like brothers. That’s supposed to be a good likeness, but you never can tell.”

“No, no, I don’t look a thing like him,” Ike denied. “It’s the bad light.” The sun had long since set and gaslights hissed along the street, casting dancing shadows and turning details into murky swamps of gray.

“I don’t have any notion what the real Augustus Yarrow looks like. I don’t think the artist that drew this does, either, but it’s as good a likeness as a wanted poster. Yours for a dime.” The clerk held out the book.

Ike stood frozen, staring at the cover and the title, A Noose for the Banker.

“Heard tell Deputy Yarrow actually works like the character in the book. He doesn’t go after stagecoach robbers or Indian raiders. No, sir, he goes after a different breed of crook. This one tells how he brought a thieving bank president to justice. Last month was a tale about catching a stagecoach agent who’d rob passengers while they were eating at his way station.”

“The kind of lawman who goes after crooked railroad presidents, too?”

“Like that, sure,” the bookseller said. He thrust the book out impatiently. “I got to get home to the missus. You buying this or not?”

Ike fished around in his pocket and found a dime. He passed it over and almost dropped the book when the clerk tossed it to him.

“Much obliged. Enjoy that fine tale. Check back next month. There’s sure to be another story that’ll snap your suspenders.” The man pushed the bookcase inside and closed the door. The lock snapped shut with a grim finality that reminded Ike of the sound made when the jail cell door clicked shut behind him.

Ike swung around and sat on the bookstore step and studied the cover.

“It doesn’t look a thing like me.” Ike swallowed hard. “Or him. It doesn’t look anything like him.” He pulled out the wallet and opened it. The gaslight caught the brass badge and turned it into a small sun in the darkness.

Ike ran his fingers over the ridges and valleys in the metal. He traced out the words deputy united states federal marshal. A guilty glance around assured him no one saw him with the badge. He shut the wallet and took out the envelope again.

The flickering streetlight wasn’t as good as the dozen lamps in the Grand Palace, but he knew what the letter said. It was on District Judge Isaac Charles Parker’s letterhead for the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. It certified that Augustus Yarrow was empowered to perform any legal arrest for crimes committed in Indian Territory and to chase down miscreants committing such crimes anywhere they fled.

Ike touched the signature at the bottom of the warrant. It might have been a forgery. The man dead in the rail yard might have signed it himself as a hoax. The weight of the wallet and the Federal badge inside warned Ike not to put much faith in such a supposition.

Hanging Judge Parker’s chief enforcer was dead, and the San Antonio city marshal thought Isaac Scott was him, working undercover to arrest the head of the South Texas Central railroad.

“Why?” Ike felt a headache building that made his head feel like a keg of Giant Powder had been exploded inside his skull. Nothing made a lick of sense. “Why’s Parker sending his lawman to southern Texas? That’s way out of his jurisdiction.”

He glanced up. A man and a woman strolling along the boardwalk stared at him. They backed away, thinking he was a crazy man. Talking to himself qualified. Trying to figure out why Yarrow, a lawman noted for his undercover detective work, had been riding the rails and why he was even in Texas only made him crazier.

“I’m all right,” he said to the couple. This caused them to backpedal faster, go into the street and find their path on the far side. They whispered furiously, and the woman pointed at Ike.

A cold lump formed in his gut. He was less afraid that they’d report him to the marshal than he was that the lynch mob would discover he was no longer in the city jail. If Marshal Granger was right and the railroad president had hired the mob, that hinted that he knew Judge Parker’s enforcement officer was on his trail.

“In Texas? This is a long way from Arkansas. And from Indian Territory.”

He tucked the paper back into the envelope and slipped it into his coat pocket. The best thing he could do was clear out of town. Fast. Ike got to his feet and walked along the boardwalk, eyeing the horses tethered beside saloons and in front of stores just now closing up for the night. Stealing one guaranteed him a speedy exit from San Antonio. It also set a posse on his trail. Horse thieving was about the worst crime a man could commit.

Any horse he saw would be missed right away. That reduced the time he had to escape by hours. Chances were good whichever horse he stole wouldn’t be the fastest or the most likely to tolerate a new rider.

He patted his pocket and the wad of greenbacks there. He had coin; he had scrip. Buying a horse put him astride a way to dodge all the woe building around him.

“Only whoever I buy the horse from can identify me. Schofield was willing to spend a lot of money to lynch me.” The deputies who had dragged him to jail and Marshal Granger could identify him. “And Lily and her mother,” he added with some regret.

Staying anonymous aided him more than not buying a horse hindered him. There were other ways out of town. He wandered around until he found the Wells Fargo depot. A light burned inside, and a clerk pored over a ledger. Ike started in, then backed away. The stage schedule was posted on the outer wall. A quick look at it confirmed his suspicion. The next stage out of San Antonio wasn’t leaving until early morning. Not only did this increase his worries about staying in town overnight, but the stationmaster might have been given orders to be on the lookout for someone like him.

Ike stepped into shadows when a pair of men came strutting down the boardwalk. They were well-dressed. As their coats flapped about, he saw both wore pistols in shoulder rigs. Worse, light reflected off small brass badges pinned on their chests. He held his breath as they stepped into the stage depot.

“Hey, Ulrich, anybody askin’ to buy a ticket?”

“Tell Mr. Schofield,” the clerk replied, “that I’m not working for him. If he wants to know how many tickets I sell, he can come over and count the passengers himself.”

“I know why you got fired,” one of the railroad detectives said. “There’s a dollar in it for you if you see anybody like we described.”

“Lowlife traveling by himself, yeah, right, Murdoch. That describes most all my customers.”

“A silver dollar for your trouble,” the railroad bull said. “And that’s Mr. Murdoch to you.”

The clerk snorted in derision. Ike tried to press himself through the wall as Schofield’s detectives passed within a couple feet.

“Let’s ask over at the livery, then get a drink or two,” Murdoch said.

“Might be a bartender’s seen him,” said the other detective.

“I wish the boss’d given us a better description. I don’t see nuthin’ wrong with beatin’ it outta the marshal. He let him go, after all.”

“And he got a real good up-close look,” Murdoch said. “But you know what the boss said about gettin’ crossways of the marshal.”

The pair turned a corner at the next cross street, and their heated debate about dealing with Marshal Granger faded away. Only then did Ike let out his breath in a hard gasp. He bent over and put his hands on his knees to recover. Schofield set his hounds on the trail of the man Granger had let go. From the way Murdoch and his partner talked, the marshal wasn’t inclined to give any information to the railroad president. Whatever caused the bad blood between them had been to Ike’s benefit so far. So far.

He hesitated outside the Wells Fargo office. The clerk still worried over his columns of numbers and didn’t notice a chance to earn a silver dollar for reporting the suspicious “lowlife traveling by himself.” Ike spun and almost ran to get away. Horse thieving and the stagecoach were out of the question. With Murdoch and his cohort checking livery stables, buying a horse became more complicated, even if he wanted to risk being identified.

Riding shanks’ mare only got him sore feet. Ike considered being bold and buying a railroad ticket. Schofield might order his small army out across San Antonio and never think of such a thing. Ike wasn’t inclined to take the risk that the railroad agents hadn’t been alerted. They had more to lose than a silver-dollar reward if he slipped past them and their boss found out.

That didn’t mean riding from town wasn’t the way for him to get away. He had come to San Antonio hiding in a freight car. With Schofield’s men scattered around the city hunting for him, sneaking a ride ought to be easier. How many railroad bulls did Schofield pay?

Boldness favored his escape.

The closer he got to the rail yards, the less sure Ike became that this was a smart move. Gutsy, sure, but also desperate. Men like Schofield smelled desperation and capitalized on it in others.

Ike reeked of fear. He touched the six-shooter at his hip, then looked across the rail yards where Deputy Marshal Yarrow had been killed. The grinding of gears and the hiss of steam caused him to look at the roundhouse. Someone named Gregorio had been killed there. Death waited in every shadow, under every freight car, in the buildings—everywhere.

If death hid everywhere, and he knew it did, he had nothing to lose by dodging the railroad dicks and hiding until he came up with a plan to get away.

“I can only die once,” he said, but that prospect did nothing to reassure him. Ike dashed into the tangle of tracks, jumping over them and going deeper into the yard, where thrown switches turned entire trains away and set them on tracks leading to who knows where.

He dropped to his knees and tried to hide behind a switch as a man in a striped hat and the overalls of an engineer hurried along to jump into a locomotive cab. Ike heard the engineer barking orders to the stoker. An orange glow danced from the cab as the furnace door opened and coal began being shoveled into the fire to build a head of steam.

He had found his way out of town. This train was pulling out immediately. Ike left his worthless sanctuary behind the switch and hunted for a freight car door that hadn’t been sealed shut. Defeat met his every attempt. Finally, he came to a flatcar loaded with steel rails. Somewhere along the route this cargo was being sent to extend the rail system. Ike pulled himself onto the flatcar and pressed against the lengths of cold metal track.

A soft sigh escaped his lips. He was headed away from all his woes.

“I see you,” came a loud voice. “Get down. Now. You climb down right away. No one believes you’re a section of track.”

Ike jumped a foot when a hand clutched at his arm.

Caught!