Counterfeit Lawman

CHAPTER TWO

He heard voices, distant voices, all yammering at the same time. He opened his eyes, but only darkness greeted him. He settled back, aware of pain in his skull. That preacher man, Reverend Lawrence, the one his ma always dragged him to church to hear on Sunday, never said Heaven was anything like this. If he had to endure such pain for an eternity, maybe catching a ride on the train counted as a bigger sin than he’d thought.

There wasn’t any way possible that he had crossed through the Pearly Gates, not feeling like this.

Cheating Penrose out of his money by not paying seemed picayune now, but welshing on a debt must pile up worse than cheating the train company out of a ticket. What other sins had he committed in his life? There were so many, but he’d thought they were all minor—or even needful.

Ike stirred a little, feeling cinders under his hands. He lay on a bed of the clinkers. They cut into his elbows, too. The sun was warm on his face, but opening his eyes again gave the same view. Nothing. Darkness.

“Blind,” he moaned out. “I’m going to spend the rest of eternity blind as a bat.”

He yelped when water crashed into his face. He sputtered and turned away before another tidal wave threatened to drown him. If he had entertained the slightest thought this was Heaven, the deluge dispelled it. Ike wanted to protest, to argue about the Covenant of the Rainbow and demand to know why it was being disregarded. The water had to be part of a second great flood.

For another frightening instant, he thought he was cursed to see only clinkers and dirt. His numbed brain finally alerted him to how water had washed away blinding blood from his eyes. On his side he got a worm’s-eye view of the world.

Ike cried out, almost in relief at realizing he was still alive, when grasping hands yanked him to his feet. For a moment his knees buckled. Someone cursing up a storm held him upright until he recovered some strength in his legs. A few quick swipes across his eyes showed his problem. A bullet had run the width of his forehead and caused a veritable spring runoff of blood past his eyebrows and into his eyes, effectively blinding him. Ike pressed his forearm against the wound until the skin puckered and the wound began to clot over.

It took a few more seconds to realize he stood in the middle of a circle. All the men around him had their six-shooters drawn and pointed with deadly intent. He raised his hands to surrender, then saw only a couple had their weapons trained on him. Mostly they threatened each other. It made no sense.

“There’s a dead man in the roundhouse,” came a gruff voice behind him. “Somebody upped and shot him.”

“His name’s Gregorio. This here outlaw gunned him down, pure and simple.”

“You saw the crime?”

Ike turned slowly. The man behind him wore a shining silver badge pinned on his vest. Two men, obviously his deputies, flanked him. Not a one of the lawmen had their six-guns trained on him.

“I did. With my own eyes.”

“That’s right, Marshal. Mr. Kinchloe, he was chasin’ this skunk down and seen the whole thing.”

“Shut up, Smitty. I can tell my own story.” Kinchloe growled like a bear poked during hibernation. It wasn’t a good sound and boded ill for anyone daring to torment him further.

Ike got a better look at the men and put faces to the boots he had seen stalking back and forth as they hunted for him. He wished he hadn’t. Kinchloe obviously led the gang of railroad bulls through sheer meanness. He had a small gold shield pinned to his lapel. Smitty and two others showed off their badges by thrusting out their chests, as if this impressed the marshal one little bit.

Ike turned back to the marshal. The lawman had control, no matter what Kinchloe said. The only way he was giving up his power was if a new gunfight started. He might go down as the railroad dicks opened up with the weapons they held at the ready, but he showed no fear of that. His deputies were hopping around like fleas on a griddle, but they stood their ground beside their boss.

Ike considered the lack of lead flying to be a chance to live a bit longer and wonder what Heaven was really like, only from here on Earth and not floating around on some cloud.

“I never cut down nobody,” Ike started.

“Shut up.” The marshal held up the six-shooter Ike had taken from the dead man under the freight car. Ike instinctively looked in that direction. A hand draped over the rail warned that the corpse hadn’t been found. If the marshal spotted it, Ike was likely to be charged with another murder. “Is this your piece?” The lawman shook it in the air, making Ike increasingly uneasy. The weapon had ridden in a woebegone holster that had fallen apart. Whatever condition the pistol was in, such waving about now might cause an accidental discharge.

Ike’s mouth turned to cotton. The only answer he managed was a small nod.

“Mr. Kinchloe, is this the gun you saw him kill Gregorio with?”

“I told you it was, Marshal. You turn him over to me. In my capacity as chief detective for the South Texas Central Rail Company, I’ll take him into custody and—”

“This here gun’s not been fired in a month of Sundays.”

The marshal’s declaration stopped Kinchloe in mid-tirade.

“I saw it with my own eyes.” The railroad bull’s voice crackled and sparked with menace now. “He’s ours, Marshal Granger.”

“Not been fired, so he’s not the one who killed Gregorio. A pity about him.” Granger looked past the circle of detectives to the roundhouse. “Gregorio was a fine, upstanding man. Could never see what kept him in Schofield’s employ.” Granger cleared his throat, spat and said in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “That’s Mr. Schofield, I mean.”

“Mr. Schofield,” Kinchloe echoed, as if speaking the name of royalty.

“You go tell your boss that I’m holding on to this varmint until I can clear up details about how Gregorio died.” Granger stepped back a pace. His deputies moved forward. One held a scattergun; the other lifted his six-shooter and aimed it somewhere between Kinchloe and Smitty. Granger jerked his head to one side, silently ordering Ike to move.

The tension in the air reminded him of the way the world felt before a fierce summer lightning storm. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and his flesh tingled as if fuzzy-legged spiders crawled up and down his spine. If he didn’t obey the marshal immediately, the STC railroad cops would make the decision to keep him from the clutches of the law.

Running behind a moving train, a wire noose around his neck, didn’t appeal to him. Whatever the marshal had in store was better than losing his head and flopping around on the prairie like . . . like a chicken with its head cut off.

“Right away, sir,” he said, stepping past Marshal Granger.

The instant he came shoulder to shoulder with the deputies, all hell broke loose. Ike instinctively dived forward. His imagination soared even higher than his fear at that instant. He had never been in the army, but this had to be what full-scale battle was like. Lead zinged overhead and kept him pressed to the ground. He turned his head sideways, his cheek picking up cinders and soot.

He stared directly at the dead man under the freight car. Neither the railroad bulls nor the legitimate lawmen had found that body yet. They had argued over the dead man in the roundhouse. The best Ike could figure, Kinchloe or one of his henchmen had taken that man’s life. Smitty had claimed the murder, but it didn’t take a genius to see that the man was a liar out to curry favor with their boss.

Schofield? That was the name the marshal mentioned.

Ike knew he would follow Gregorio into a grave if he didn’t clear out fast.

As distasteful as it was, he rolled toward the tracks, got under the boxcar and crushed down on the corpse. He kept rolling until he came out on the far side of the freight car. Gunfire died down back where he had started, replaced now by angry shouts and louder curses. Whatever had happened, someone triggered a shot that set off a tiny skirmish. It died down all too fast for Ike’s liking.

He put his head down and ran for his life. Trains rolled along the sidings, and he jumped over switches in his vain attempt to get out of the rail yard. If anything, he got so turned around he might as well have been running inside the roundhouse.

A yell behind him warned he was about to be captured again. He had no idea what mayhem he caused, but he grabbed a switch, kicked off the safety clamp and heaved. The switch ground metallically, moving tracks to shunt an incoming engine with a long line of cars behind it onto a new siding. He jumped over the tracks just as the engine chugged past, cutting off any attempt of the men after him to get a decent shot.

Ike veered again when good sense warned him about jumping onto the train and trying to ride away on it. The locomotive vented a long, loud whistle and spilled the steam in its boiler. Clouds of white vapor soared upward. If he had tried to hide on that train, he’d have been found in a few minutes as it stood motionless on the tracks.

He kept his head down and sprinted for an open warehouse door. He whirled around and slammed the door shut behind him, then pressed his back against a cool wall as he gasped to regain his breath. Sweat poured down his body. Worse, the graze on his forehead took to oozing blood again. Tiny rivulets trickled down into his eyes and burned like fire. He pressed his bloodied hand against the wound to stanch the flow.

Outside the massive building—a major warehouse from the look of row after row of crates stacked to the rafters—more gunshots sounded. As before, new orders shouted by both Kinchloe and Granger collided and conflicted until the shooting stopped.

They’d settle their differences too soon for him to escape back the way he came. Ike stumbled forward into the depths of the warehouse, weaving between the mountains of freight stored here.

Loud voices came from ahead. He spun and started to retrace his steps. The echo of men’s boots against the floor in that direction warned him he was caught between a rock and a hard place. He might bluff his way past the men ahead. There wasn’t any way they knew a thing about the dustup he had caused outside. But if they slowed him down, just a bit, the men coming on his trail would have an easy time capturing him.

Worst of all, whoever followed him didn’t matter. It might be the law or the cinder dicks. Either way he was going to end up in a world of trouble.

He looked around frantically, wishing he had the six-shooter the marshal had taken from him. Shooting his way out of the pickle he found himself in wasn’t too bright if he faced a dozen men, but a few shots in their direction might scatter them.

His hands were empty, and the stolen gun had been taken from him. Ike felt as if his head was going to split apart. If only some clever plan to escape rather than blinding pain rattled around inside his skull.

“I should never have stolen his papers and money and gun,” he bemoaned. “This trouble is my due for all the crimes I’ve committed.” But it wasn’t all his fault. His brief traveling companion had been the reason men had died. Gregorio had been the one he sought out, and Kinchloe or one of his henchmen had gunned him down rather than let the two palaver.

There wasn’t anything he could change about the men’s unfortunate deaths. A quick look around finally gave him a glimmer of hope. He flexed his fingers, then jumped high.

His fingers curled around the splintery edge of the crate. With a mighty pull, he hoisted himself up in time to flop forward as a trio of warehouse workers stalked along the route where he had just walked. Peering over the edge gave Ike a clear view as the freight handlers stopped and spoke with the ones that had blocked his way forward.

“Got ’em chained down so’s they won’t run off. Ain’t that what the foreman ast for?”

Ike heard laughter and a few crude remarks that made no sense.

“Let’s go tell him all about it. Do you think he might share a nip from that bottle he keeps in his desk drawer?”

“We’re not talkin’ ’bout the same lout. Herk’d never share a drop with the likes of us, no matter how good a job we did.”

“I saw Herkimer spill a drop on his desk. I swear he fell face forward and lapped up the whiskey like a cat lickin’ up cream.”

“That’s nuthin’,” piped up another worker. “I saw him try to stuff his tongue all the way into an empty bottle when he thought there was a drop of rye he’d missed.”

Ike watched as five men followed the winding path between piles of crates back in the direction he’d come. Just lying about and listening, he was discovering more about the men working for the STC Rail Company than he ever wanted to know. The sooner he cleared out, the better. There wasn’t a one of them who would give him a break.

It was bad enough running afoul of Kinchloe and Smitty. Herkimer and the man who sounded like the big boss, Schofield, weren’t sounding likable enough to meet. He touched his throat as if feeling a wire noose cutting into his flesh. Herkimer might be a drunk, but Schofield sent ripples of fear through the vicious railroad bulls. That was definitely a man to avoid.

He came to his knees, then stood, testing his balance atop the pile of crates. He wobbled as he jumped from one stack to the next, but that came from his head threatening to split apart at any instant. The gunshot to his forehead had left him woozy and more than a little giddy. The crates were stable enough, if only he chose the biggest of them to use as his aerial highway.

Making his way toward streaming daylight at the far end of the warehouse, Ike began jumping faster and faster from one precarious perch to the next. Fresh air, or as fresh as air in a rail yard could be, laden with coal dust and noxious sulfur fumes, blew into his face. As he approached the far end of the building, he saw the huge barnlike doors swung wide open to let in the breeze. Outside along the tracks, a man pumped hard to make a handcar almost sail along a spur line. If Ike reached that set of tracks and another handcar, he’d pump like there was no tomorrow and get away before Kinchloe or the marshal or anyone meaning to ventilate his hide knew he was gone.

It didn’t even matter where he headed. North would be good, or south. Retracing his route to Houston wasn’t a good idea, but maybe Penrose had moved on to tormenting other people. There wasn’t any reason to keep hunting for Isaac Scott more than a day or two. For the piddling amount owed him, that’d divert up too much of his small army of cutthroats and thieves to be profitable. Ike had heard Penrose say more than once that time was the only commodity—and that it had to be used wisely to collect even more money.

Ike made a final jump to the top of a crate but landed crooked. He twisted his leg under him and sank down. Rubbing the strained leg helped, but it also gave him a chance to see what lay below. The crates had been moved around to form a small alcove. Two women secured in the makeshift prison rattled their chains and bickered.

He wondered if everyone in San Antonio argued incessantly or if he had blundered onto a pocket of humanity that delighted in it.

“You should never have trusted him,” the older one declared. She made a dramatic motion with her arm, as if ready to launch into a soliloquy. “His eyes were teensy. Hidden in pits like a pig. Never trust anyone who squints all the time when they aren’t in the bright sun, though the Texas sun is especially bright and might cause permanent squinting.”

“Mama, be quiet. What’s done is done. He offered a big enough reward and here we are.” She held up a slender wrist to show off the chain binding her.

Even if she hadn’t called the older woman “mama,” Ike would have guessed they were related. Both had auburn hair. The sunlight sneaking past the crates caught the daughter’s tresses and turned it into spun copper. They wore similar clothing, as if they belonged to some group. Light green dresses with pert white linen aprons shifted as they moved, making whispering sounds that reminded him of wind in the pines.

The daughter pushed her hair back with both hands in frustration and looked up. Eyes as green as a new spring locked with his. Ike felt inferior. He knew his muddy brown eyes carried no sparkle, no shimmer of merriment or even intelligence. Worse, his clothing was as decrepit as the meanest vagrant. He had to smile just a little at that. He was that vagrant. He had ridden the rails to get here and was filthy from the knocking about.

The younger woman had a pale oval face that tugged at his heartstrings. She reminded him of a love lost too long ago to another man, but this wasn’t Philomena. If anything, she was prettier. Her bow-shaped lips parted slightly, then she waved frantically to him and called, “Mister, Mister! Please help us! They’re holding us against our will.”

“Who?” Ike felt silly. He sounded like a barn owl, but taking in the two women while listening with half an ear for Kinchloe and his thugs to show up divided his attention.

“That terrible man at the Grand Palace over on Alamo Street, that’s who. He—”

“Oh, be quiet, daughter.” The older woman shushed her and stood. She held out her arms. Both wrists were secured with the chains. “We only wanted our money.”

“We took what was ours!”

“I told you to hush, girl,” the mother said harshly. “Let me talk to him.”

“Keep your voices down. There are railroad bulls everywhere.” Ike grew increasingly uneasy at this exchange. Neither woman seemed to care if their captors overheard.

The two exchanged a quick glance, then the young one said cagily, “Looking for you, are they?”

“At least I’m not chained up.” Ike grinned now. “It might be interesting being chained with the two of you.”

“No!” they both blurted. Then the daughter recovered. “You’re joshing us, aren’t you? Get us free.”

“It sounds as if you stole money from the owner of the Grand Palace.”

“Mr. Zachary refused to pay us what he had promised. We packed the house night after night. He owed us what we took from the till.” The young girl saw nothing wrong with this bit of frontier justice. Truth to tell, Ike agreed. The law seldom saw things in terms of what was right as often as it did according to who paid the biggest bribes.

Ike moved around, hung over the edge of the crate and balanced for a moment. He tried to find a secure place to wedge his toes between the lower crates and failed. He thrashed about and then dropped hard. He landed in a crouch, looking up at the two women.

From this angle, their hair turned fiery red. Both sets of emerald eyes fixed imploringly on him. There wasn’t any way he could deny them their freedom.

He duckwalked to the post where they were secured. The railroad tie had been driven into the floor and metal bolts screwed into the wood to hold the ends of the chains.

“Did the saloon owner chain you up?”

“We were stopped from loading our stage equipment on a train bound out of town. He had warned the ticket agent we’d try to get away and had offered a hefty reward. Two of the most obnoxious railroad employees aboard the train—”

“One was the conductor,” cut in the older woman.

“They bodily threw us off the train, unloaded our scenery and costumes and brought us here.” The daughter crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her foot as she remembered with increasing anger how they had been mistreated.

“The conductor went on and on about how a huge reward had been offered. I doubt that. He said it only as a salve for his conscience that he turned two fine, upstanding ladies over to the likes of that swine! Mr. Zachary is far too stingy a man to offer much of a reward.”

“He wants to sell us to Mexican slavers,” declared the daughter. “They’ll steal us away into Mexico, and we’ll never be seen again.” She made a face. “And I don’t even like tequila.”

Ike had to laugh at that. If what the redhead said was true, being forced to drink tequila instead of Kentucky bourbon was the least of their worries.

He put both hands atop the railroad tie and leaned on it, thinking what to do.

“So? Are you going to save us?” The mother’s tone told where her daughter had gotten her crazy notions. But then they said they were actresses with scenery and costumes and a show to entertain a rowdy saloon crowd. That explained their every quirk.

Ike gripped the creosote-soaked tie and pulled hard. When it gave just an inch, he reversed direction. Wood creaked as it began to splinter. A final pull toward him broke off the railroad tie about a third of the way up from the ground. It crashed to the warehouse floor.

“That’s a start.” The daughter held up her still-manacled wrists. Sturdy locks fastened the chains.

Ike tugged on the chain. The woman resisted at first, then let him reel her in closer. He positioned the lock on the splintery top of the tie, still sunk into the floor. With a quick lift and a powerful downward smash, he used the broken-off wood as a mallet. The lock shattered into a half-dozen pieces. She placed her other chained wrist on the crude anvil. Ike had to pound a bit more to break this lock, but he didn’t mind. The woman rubbed up against him like an affectionate feline to position the chains and lock.

He started to tell her how good she smelled. A trace of lilac lingered in her hair. Then he bit back the compliment. Her only likely response would be to remind him how awful he smelled.

“Next.” He reared back and let her mother sashay over into position. Both women knew how to keep his attention, but then they made their living playing out roles in front of crowded rooms filled with cowboys off the ranch.

Two quick blows broke the locks on her chains. She rubbed her wrists, then saw him watching. She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers just a little.

“Would you like to get the circulation flowing in my hands again? You can massage my wrists.”

“Mama, please,” her daughter snapped. “We’re still in a serious situation.”

“You’re right, Lily.” She graced Ike with a wink and then slipped out of the alcove.

He followed. Both women tried to move a ten-foot-tall roll of canvas.

“Don’t just stand there, help us,” Lily said. She wrapped her slender arms around the thick column and tried to lift it. Ike had no idea what it weighed, but it was far more than the women could handle. It was bulky enough that he had no chance of moving it by himself, either.

“What is that thing?” He rested his hand on the rough canvas.

“It is our cyclorama,” the mother said. “It’s a vital part of our act. Leaving behind our costumes will be a great loss, but the scenery behind us as we act is what sets us apart from all the other performers.”

“I’d disagree with that,” Ike said softly, not expecting them to overhear.

“What do you mean by that?” Lily snapped at him, her balled hands on her hips and green eyes flashing angrily.

“Oh, Lily, he meant our beauty is second to none, and we hardly need such scenery. Isn’t that right, sir?”

“Yeah, that,” Ike said.

“You’re wrong, of course. We need the set. The cyclorama allows us to change costumes as the scenery unfurls behind us. It is quite spectacular.”

“Like you,” Ike got out.

“Are you smitten or besotted? No, don’t tell me. Just help me!” Lily tried once more to move the cyclorama.

He started to help, then froze. Loud voices came from the direction where he had entered the warehouse. Before he had a chance to tell the women to run, four men slithered around the stacked freight and spotted them.

For an instant, they all stood stock-still, staring at one another. Then the four freight handlers let out a shout and rushed forward.