Fatal Elixir Read online

Blacke slapped a hand onto the arm of his wheelchair.

  “Goddammit, Asa. You’ve already admitted I’m brave and smart. Why don’t you go the whole hog and admit I’m honest, too.”

  “I never said you wasn’t honest.”

  Blacke was going to bellow, then thought better of it. He spoke very quietly and earnestly, as though to a child.

  “Then, if I’m honest, you can depend on me keeping my word, can’t you?”

  Harlan smiled a little. “Yeah, I guess I can at that. All right, then. There’s not only you here, you know. Muller’s got a wife and a son here in town. That’s why I said it was only natural for him to be heading this way. If you had a wife and a son you hadn’t seen for six years, and the man who kept you from seeing them, all in the same town, wouldn’t you want to go there?”

  “Who are they?” Blacke asked.

  “Well, hell, Blacke, you’re the guy who kept him from seeing them.”

  “I know that.” Blacke’s voice was still quiet. “Who are the wife and son?”

  “Oh, it’s the dressmaker, out north of the station on Railroad Street. Goes by the name of Mrs. Murdo. The son’s called Buck.”

  4

  THE NEXT DAY, FRIDAY, dawned even more glorious than the day before, the earth ever softer and greener, the sky blue, and the air filled with soft warm breezes. It was a terrific morning for a horseback ride, so I had decided to take one.

  I have been riding since childhood, eastern style. My father, Colonel Bogardus Booker, is an instructor at West Point, and he began preparing me for a military career nearly as soon as I could walk. Unfortunately for him, by the time I was old enough to start a military career, I felt as if I’d already had one. Things were still strained between us.

  But my father’s training had cured me of something else, the need to prove my manhood by mastering a “spirited” horse. To me, the prancing, dancing, pawing, and rearing constitute nothing more or less than an engraved invitation to a broken neck.

  My idea of a proper mount approximates an armchair with legs, and a horse of Blacke’s, an eight-year-old mare named Posy, suited me fine. She would walk along at a respectable clip, and would canter or even gallop if you urged her strongly enough, but to see her standing in the stable, you would wonder whether to ride her or to have her embalmed, unless you could see her jaws move contentedly at some hay.

  That morning, Posy and I were clopping along toward Bellevue. Bellevue was an incongruous gabled mansion placed on a corner of Lucius Jenkins’s vast ranch, far from any place the sights or smells of the raising of cattle could be expected to reach.

  Jenkins had built the place to please his wife, Martha, a large, handsome woman with henna-red hair who had been a dance-hall girl when Jenkins had married her, and was now the undisputed social queen of northeast Wyoming.

  Jenkins was possibly the richest man in the entire territory. He ran cattle and sheep (an unheard-of—practically sacrilegious—combination in this part of the country), grew winter wheat and sugar beets and horseradish, and anything that would thrive during the short growing season of the northern plains, and had started mining iron ore and coal.

  I thought he was a financial genius. It was very unlikely that the bottom could drop out of all these markets simultaneously; his wealth and power were protected from all sides.

  Jenkins was bald, and lately (since his wife had read something in a magazine to the effect that it was the coming thing back east) clean-shaven. He was of medium height, slim but not at all fragile looking. His happiness did not appear to match his wealth—to me he looked like a man constantly struggling to swallow something sour. Perhaps it was the high-collared Sunday suit his wife made him wear all the time. Perhaps it was the frequency with which he lost to Lobo Blacke during their twice-weekly checkers matches.

  Perhaps he saved that sour look for me because he suspected (correctly) that I was friendlier with his daughter than he’d like.

  Lobo Blacke was convinced that Lucius Jenkins was a genius of a different kind, as well.

  Years ago, Jenkins, too, had been a federal marshal, a cool and shrewd mind who originated many of the tricks that later made a legend of Lobo Blacke. Just the kind of cool, shrewd mind that could plan huge and successful robberies after he married an ambitious woman and turned in his marshal’s badge.

  That much was suspicion. What was fact was that Jenkins had bought land and livestock, made improvements, built a mansion, without ever borrowing a penny.

  From the earmarks of the crime he was investigating when he was shot; from the fact that he had begun to grow suspicious of his old friend; and from the strange, half-hostile, half-solicitous way Jenkins had behaved toward Blacke since the ambush, Blacke had come to the conclusion that Jenkins had set the ambush that crippled him.

  He had come to Le Four, and was constantly searching for evidence that would send his old partner to the gallows.

  Jenkins was aware of this; neither would talk of it to the other. The continuing cat-and-mouse game was fascinating to watch, especially since it was sometimes hard to tell which was the cat.

  So there Blacke sat, in a town owned almost entirely by his friend-turned-enemy, armored only by his status as a beloved legend of the West, his owning of a newspaper, and his wits.

  And it was the wits that had sent me out here.

  AFTER ASA HARLAN HAD left, Blacke wheeled himself into his private office and closed the door. I perched on the edge of his desk and let him talk.

  “We have to find out about that woman, Booker,” he said.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing already.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She’s read my stories.”

  “Oh?”

  I told him how I’d named my looking-glass figure of Paul Muller “Buck Murdo” when I’d fictionalized his exploits.

  “Now,” I said, “it may be coincidence that she’s going by the name of Murdo and calling her son Buck, but I don’t believe it.”

  Blacke rubbed his chin. “I don’t either,” he said. “Although I suspect it’s more likely Muller was the one who read your work.”

  “You really think so?” I said.

  He looked at me. “Yes, I really think so. God, Booker, you’re vainer than he is. He’s just the sort to enjoy having a character made after him, and you’re popping your buttons because a Real Life Western Outlaw might have read your books.”

  “Popping my buttons,” I said with dignity, “is overstating the case somewhat. As I know, and you have pointed out, western dime novels, including mine, are such total balderdash that I’m continually amazed anybody with any real knowledge of the West ever reads them.”

  “Merton Mayhew soaks them up like a sponge.”

  “I know. He asked me to write to New York for back numbers so he could read my work. The other day he solemnly told me his three favorite writers were Shakespeare, Edward FitzGerald, and me.”

  “I’ve heard of Shakespeare.”

  “Oh. You’d like FitzGerald. Especially his translation of the Iliad. He has a way of depicting the ancient Greeks in such a way—”

  “How does this happen? I’m trying to discuss strategy to catch one, maybe two killers, and we wind up discussing the ancient Greeks.”

  He’d started it, but I really wanted to discuss catching a murderer or two, so I simply apologized and asked him to go on.

  Blacke harrumphed. “All right, then. Harlan told us why he thinks—if you can call what goes on in that bony head of his thinking—that Muller will be heading back here. I’ll tell you why I thought he wouldn’t be.”

  “You said ‘thought.’ Does that mean you’ve changed your mind about it?”

  “Let’s just say, with the family in the picture, I’m not as sure as I was.”

  “I ought to go have a talk with Mrs. Murdo, once I know a little more about her.”

  “Good idea. But how does Harlan know this Mrs. Murdo is Paul Muller’s wife? Do you think she showed up in town,
dropped by the sheriff’s office, and told him?”

  “Mmmmm. It doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

  “You bet your behind it doesn’t. Harlan found out the way everything that sticks in his head gets in there. Lucius Jenkins told him.”

  “And Jenkins knows because he used to plan jobs for Muller. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m getting at. Muller made a lot of money and a big rep pulling some of the best-planned jobs I’ve ever heard of. I told Harlan he was smart, and I know he was—smart enough to carry out to perfection the plans of somebody brilliant like Lucius Jenkins.

  “And ruthless enough to tie up the loose ends, after.”

  Blacke went on to tell me about Muller’s last job, the one he went to jail for. Dressed in business suits, Muller and Dakota Larry Preston went in the bank, got the manager, pulled guns on him, and got him to empty the vault into ash barrels, where the money was covered with ashes and trash. Meanwhile, Nig Jackson, a Negro outlaw recruited specially for this job, had waylaid the bank’s porter and shown up for work in the man’s uniform. He quite calmly rolled the barrels out to the front, where Bernie Spackett drove up in the ashman’s cart, which he had stolen that very morning. Bank president, staff, and customers lined up, no shots fired, Muller and Preston strolled out the front door with smiles on their faces.

  “Jackson and Spackett turned up dead—Preston shot them. Muller always tried to get somebody else to do his dirty work, got it from Lucius, I guess.” Blacke leaned back in the wheelchair. “I never would have gotten Muller except for the fact that I caught up with Dakota Larry pulling a job on his own, and he wanted to talk to save himself from the rope.”

  “Did he?” I asked.

  “Well, yes and no. He killed another prisoner in the county jail waiting for his trial, so he swung anyway.”

  “I love a happy ending.”

  Blacke squinted at me. “Booker, you are a sick bastard sometimes.” He harrumphed, then coughed.

  “Coming down with a cold,” he said. “I hate that.”

  “Well, don’t try any Ozono when the medicine show comes to town, or Dr. Mayhew will never speak to you again.”

  “Actually, I was just going to have Mrs. Sundberg make up some soup and some hot whiskey punch.” Mrs. Sundberg was Blacke’s cook and housekeeper. She could boil a brick and have it come out tender and delicious.

  “Anyway, with what Dakota Larry told me,” Blacke went on, “I was able to catch up to Muller and get him convicted of the robbery, at least. He got fifteen years. Served six, so far.

  “But Muller never talked. It was like the cat had his tongue, and his whole throat and down to the lungs. It was easy to see he was covering up for somebody.”

  “And you wanted to know who.”

  Blacke nodded. “It was about that time my thoughts started drifting in my old friend’s direction, as a matter of fact.”

  “All right,” I said. “Fine. But why does that make you think Muller would be riding away from here? Seems to me he’d want to latch up again and go back into business.”

  “No. Lucius wouldn’t have that. He’s too respectable and too rich.”

  “Or Martha’s too respectable.”

  “You’re learning, Booker. Lucius doesn’t give a hang what anybody thinks, but that jumped-up wife of his lives and breathes for what everybody thinks. I think shooting me, or having me shot, was the last criminal thing Lucius did.”

  “He blew a wounded man’s head off last winter.”

  Blacke waved it away. “He was protecting you from being shot in the back. Or he made it look that way in front of a hundred witnesses.”

  Blacke coughed again. “I’m convinced there was some sort of deal on. Lucius says to Muller, ‘I know about the wife and the kid. If you keep your mouth shut and stay away from me, they’ll be well provided for. If you don’t, well, who knows what might happen?’ ”

  Now I nodded. It was pure speculation, but it made sense. But then, I thought, the presence of Mrs. Murdo and son in the shadow of Bellevue, so to speak, set them up as perfect hostages for Jenkins to use to keep Muller away. I said as much to Blacke.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “But family ties are strong. Lots stronger than revenge. I left Missouri in ’60 to join the Union and haven’t been back since, but I still miss it, even though my ma and pa are dead. If I had a son waiting for me back there, I would have gotten there crawling.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was reflecting that my father seemed to have gotten along without me very well during our long separations during my childhood, and he never seemed all that thrilled on those occasions when we would be reunited.

  “So he might be coming here,” Blacke said. “I don’t say it’s likely, I just say he might. And no matter what, maybe we can use the wife and kid to somehow get some evidence on Lucius Jenkins.”

  I took a quick breath through my nose.

  “What’s the matter?” Blacke demanded.

  “Nothing. It’s just that I’d hesitate to put a woman and boy in danger, no matter who the husband and father were.”

  “Dammit, Booker, did I say anything about putting them in danger?”

  “No. But then, you sent me out into a gunfight when I’d been here less than a week.”

  “So? You won, didn’t you? You did what I told you, and you won.”

  “Yes. I did win. Thank you.”

  “All right, then. Let’s just find out as much as we can find out before we get all huffy about anything. I’m not fixing to put anybody in danger.”

  “Not even me?”

  “Ah, well, you. You’re a grown man. You can always say no, can’t you?”

  “You only say that because you think I never will. I might surprise you someday.”

  “With all the warning you’ve given me? Nah.” Blacke clapped his hands together. “Come on. Miller could steal a horse and be here day after tomorrow, if he rides hard. Let’s get to work.”

  SO THERE I WAS, working.

  I fixed Posy to the hitching post and walked up the front steps of Bellevue.

  A butler in livery opened the door. His name was Pierre. At least that’s what Martha Jenkins called him. He was a Chippewa from eastern Manitoba, and he’d learned his English from French-Canadian fur trappers. Martha Jenkins had been enchanted with his accent when she’d first heard it, had taken him out of the canoe and into a warm house. If he had to wear a monkey suit and be polite to strangers in return for a comfortable living, that was fine with Pierre.

  I was the only person in town in a position to do so, but I never had the heart to tell Martha Jenkins that Pierre’s accent was farther removed from the accents of Paris than the accent of Five Points in Manhattan is from Park Avenue.

  Since no one was looking, Pierre had a smile for me as he took my duster and hung it up.

  “Good morning, Monsieur Booker. I will tell Madame dat you are ’ere. But I dunno if she will ’ave time to see you. She is watching the maids packing ’er.”

  Martha Jenkins was going on a trip. That was interesting.

  “Actually, I am here to visit mademoiselle.”

  “She is packing also. But I will tell dem you are ’ere.”

  5

  IN MY PRIVATE THOUGHTS, I called Abigail Jenkins the Princess of the Prairie. Despite her small size, there was something regal in her bearing, and her dark eyes could flash wittily, imperiously, or (as I had come to know) passionately.

  She swept down the stairs and came up to me.

  “Mr. Booker,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise. I was afraid I wasn’t going to have an opportunity to say good-bye.”

  She gave me her soft hand, expecting it to be kissed. I obliged. It made her smile. If Pierre hadn’t been within earshot, she would have laughed out loud. It was her way of parodying her mother, who had developed the assumption that hand-kissing was the ultimate in sophisticated relations between the sexes.

  “I was out for a ri
de and thought I might just drop in. I had no idea you were going anywhere.”

  “Neither did I, before Father told us last night. We’re going to New York!”

  “You’ll like it,” I said. “And New York will love you.”

  “You’re too kind, Mr. Booker. Come, let us sit in my father’s study and discuss it.”

  “I shall write it up for the Witness. I warn you, our readers will be devastated to learn that the town will be without you, Miss Jenkins.”

  She stood aside at the door of the study in order to let me open it for her. Once inside, she stood on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around my neck, and kissed me hard, for a long time.

  When we came apart, she still stood with her arms around me.

  “Hello,” she breathed.

  “Hello,” I said back. “What’s going on?”

  “After years of Mother’s nagging, Father is sending her and me to New York. The owner of a shipping firm with whom he does a lot of business has a daughter about my age, and we are to stay with them.”

  “For how long?”

  “At least six months. But it’s open-ended. Six months in New York! This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “I think I should feel insulted.”

  She laughed low in her throat, a low, wanton sound that made my spine tingle.

  “Next to you, dear, dear Mr. Booker. Next to you, of course. I do wish you could come with me, and be my guide. Despite my father’s wealth, I am just a country girl, after all.”

  “You’ll do fine,” I said. “And I’d just be in the way. You’ll take New York by storm.”

  “But I will miss you,” she insisted.

  “I’m flattered. But it’s not as if you were in love with me, or anything.”

  “Or you with me. But I do find you a fascinating man, Mr. Booker, in a number of ways.”

  “Flattered again,” I said.

  It was true. Neither Abigail Jenkins nor I was in love with the other, but we were compatible. In addition to occasional (and quite wonderful) physical intimacy, I was the one man in town of anything like the proper age who wasn’t in fear of her father or in awe of his wealth. With me, Abigail could be herself, a very intelligent, uninhibited, and lively young woman who looked on the mores of the town and her mother’s airs with a wry cynicism that bordered on, but did not quite cross over into, contempt.