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One of the shots ripped the head off the first snake so that it landed like a chunk of heavy rope across Doc Harper’s chest. Another shot caught the second snake somewhere near its tail, enough to slam it off course, and it landed in a frenzy and turned on itself to slash at the source of its pain.

  Impossible shooting? If a man was using bullets. But when I carried in town, I’d taken to the habit of loading with cartridges that sprayed chunks of lead no bigger than unground pepper, a trick that guaranteed accuracy at close range and, as the lead lost all power more than a stone’s throw away, cut down on the amount of innocent bystanders who might take a stray bullet. Here, all I’d needed was fast shooting and to place those shoots within a foot of the snakes.

  No one else knew that, though, and in the shocked silence that followed those blasts, I earned my own share of hallelujah’s from the crowd behind me.

  Brother Lewis spent no time in praise. He swung a hand downward to his belt.

  “Nope,” I said as I spun to level my Colt at his chest. “I’ve got two shots left. You’re a bigger target than those snakes. Slower too. Unless you’re anxious to shake hands with Saint Peter, I’d advise against anything stupid.”

  Less than twenty minutes later, Brother Lewis was in Laramie’s one-cell jail, the back portion of the marshal’s office.

  Early the next morning, when I returned to make coffee and check on my latest prisoner, I immediately began to feel sorry for myself and the problem I’d put upon my shoulders. Not only was I subject to Brother Lewis’s considerable talents of verbal abuse, I was still searching for an appropriate charge to lay.

  Has any man ever faced a judge for throwing snakes?

  Unfortunately, those problems became minor in a big hurry.

  Before my coffee had finished brewing, Laramie’s newly elected mayor busted through the doors of my office to inform me that two men had been found dead in the vaults of Laramie’s most prosperous bank.

  The mayor’s bank.

  Chapter 2

  “Didn’t you hear me right?” Mayor Crawford sputtered. “I told you clearly that I opened the vault this morning to find two men dead inside. And money gone!”

  I nodded. But didn’t let that stop me from finishing what I’d begun before he’d taken five minutes to repeat the same message a dozen different ways. I rubbed the inside of my coffee mug with a clean rag, inspected it, and blew it free of imaginary dust.

  “Then do something! There’s money gone!” Mayor Charles William George Benedict Crawford — a short man in a wide frock coat and a top hat, and fat enough to carry a couple of more names — was almost childish in his frustration at my apparent lack of concern. His was the fat that covers more softness beneath, and he wobbled as he shook, his thick lips pouty, fists clenched at his sides. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he soon stamped the floor in anger.

  Brother Lewis had moved to the cell bars, and listened with sullen interest. Outside of that cell, my office was hardly big enough for a man to pace twice before turning. Brother Lewis had no choice but to hear. It didn’t bother me. His silence was a relief after all of his unkindly oration.

  I stepped over to the potbelly stove in the center of the office, and with the rag to protect my fingers from getting singed, I lifted the coffee pot lid to check the contents.

  “Either of those dead man named Lazarus?” I asked.

  Mayor Crawford glared at me. Not effectively. His cheeks, blotched with growing red, puffed outward and gave him an appearance that matched the face of a hissing goose.

  I said nothing to deflate those cheeks. He could not know that during our first meeting a week earlier I’d decided any man who insists on letting you immediately know all four of his given names is a man in love with himself, petty power and the sound of his voice. He hadn’t proved otherwise in our meetings since, and a man like that needs straightening, or every encounter down the road gets more difficult.

  I set the lid back into place and repeated myself. “Either of those men named Lazarus?”

  “Calhoun and Nichols,” he huffed. “Why would you ask if —”

  “Because short of putting them to bed with a pick and shovel, there’s not much to do before my coffee’s finished brewing.”

  “What about the money! Do something! You’re the marshal!”

  “One who ain’t even tasted his first coffee of the day. Five minutes won’t make much difference to the whereabouts of the money.” I faced Mayor Crawford squarely. “Go on back to the bank. Ask those dead boys if they mind that I take another few minutes to get there. Unless they answer yes, I’ll be along when I’m ready.”

  He removed his top hat and shook it at me with one hand and pointed at the jail cell with the other. “You’re mighty big for your britches considering that only a few months back this town had you behind those bars on murder charges.”

  “Town council,” I said calmly, “wrote me a letter of commendation for ridding this town of the marshal before me. That letter’s in the same drawer as the letter of pardon from the territory governor.”

  “Some folks wonder about you Keaton —”

  “They’ll have a good excuse when I kick your butt out of this office.”

  “I’m the newly elected mayor. You can’t talk that way to me.”

  “Not when you’re out of earshot.” I sighed at his lack of movement. “And that was advice.”

  Mayor Crawford slammed his hat on his head and tugged on the brim with both hands to make sure it was secure. He turned on his heel to prepare for a grand departure.

  “Mayor?” Brother Lewis called. “Mayor?” He lowered his voice. “You’d be just the one to correct this grave injustice. Order my release and your reward awaits you in higher places.”

  Mayor Crawford slammed the door so hard behind him that it popped open again.

  I set my mug down on my desk, moved to the door and shut it so that I could reach for my hat and holster where both hung on a long nail. Hat in place, holster cinched, I returned to the potbelly stove and lifted the coffee pot.

  “Take coffee?” I asked Brother Lewis.

  Brother Lewis mumbled he did.

  I found another mug, and handed it to the man. In daylight, the skin of his face seemed gray and dead.

  “Anytime you want more,” I said as I poured. “Just ask.”

  He raised his eyebrows in surprise at my courtesy. What he didn’t know was that I figured getting coffee into his mouth appeared the fastest way to shut him up.

  I poured my own coffee then set the pot back. Cup in hand, I moved to the door. I wasn’t looking forward to my visit to the bank.

  ***********************

  Aside from establishing the tone of our working relationship, I had another reason for insisting to Mayor Crawford that I wait for my coffee.

  I wanted a comforting distraction when I first viewed those dead men. I’d seen my share over the years, as violence and sudden death were no strangers to Laramie or the rest of the territories, but long ago I’d held my brother as he’d coughed blood and died in my arms after a gun fight. Since then I’d known — with my soul, which is a knowledge much deeper than any knowledge of the mind — the damage and pain a bullet brings. In short, the sight of a man’s blood hits me hard. Puts my dying brother back in my arms. brings he churning horror and disbelief back to my stomach.

  So that’s how I stood in the doorway of the steel vault. Hat low over my eyes. Coffee mug at my mouth. And doing my utmost to keep my hand from trembling as I slowly tilted coffee into my throat. Any excuse not to react.

  The vault was deep enough that it needed two oil lamps to light the interior, even with the morning sunlight now streaming through the front windows of the bank. I guessed it to be roughly the same size as my office. That’s where any similarities ended.

  Unlike my office, no worn desk sat to one side beneath a cracked window. Instead, there was a wall of deposit boxes. On the other side, no racks stood to hold rifles. Instead, here, metal shelving held v
arious bundles of bank notes and small, closed boxes of various sizes.

  In the center there was no potbelly stove, but a man, dead.

  The man there was on his back, arms sprawled at awkward angles, revolver clutched in his right hand. His hat off and crushed beneath his head, showing the white of his forehead against short-cropped dark hair. He was dressed as a cowboy; boots with spurs, dusty jeans, leather vest, checked flannel shirt. His gray and black beard was matted with blood, blood that had pooled from a hole torn into his throat and formed a black puddle on the wood floor.

  At my feet, as if he’d been facing the cowboy to be knocked backwards into the vault door, then fallen face first toward the cowboy, was the second man. Not a cowboy, he wore dark blue, pin-striped pants. His shirt back was starched white, except for a jagged circle of dried blood, and in the center of that stain was the star-shaped exit wound of a bullet that had already ripped through ribs and lung before smashing past the spine and out through the cloth. A revolver lay on the floor beside him. And like the cowboy, blood pooled beneath him, sticky with the print of a bootheel.

  I didn’t know the man on his back and had little urge to turn the other over to see his face. I drank more coffee, glad for how it burned my throat.

  When I felt my stomach settle, I tried my voice.

  “Crawford, you mentioned their names.”

  “That’s Mayor Crawford.” His hot breath washed my ear. He had moved up to stand behind me, on his tiptoes, craning to look past my shoulder.

  I was glad for any reason to turn away from the dead men. Glad to replace weakness with anger. I drained my coffee and faced the mayor.

  “Crawford,” I said as quietly as a man can speak. I lifted his top hat and dropped it on the floor. His slicked hair glistened. My chin almost touched the pastiness of his sweating forehead. “One’s dressed to work here. The other, dressed to be in debt here. Sort them out for me. Quick.”

  He flinched. Stepped away. Spoke in rapid bursts.

  “Bob Nichols. Owns…owned a ranch west of here. The Rocking N spread. We held a big mortgage on it. And Lorne Calhoun. Vice president of the bank.”

  “Calhoun always carry a gun?”

  Crawford shook his head. “He must have grabbed it from where we had one hid in a safety deposit box. In case someone did try something like this.”

  I studied Crawford without really looking at him. My thoughts were on the dead men.

  This was an unusual situation for a marshal. We’re called on to settle drunks, shoot stray dogs, settle disputes and occasionally try to stop robberies in progress or begin pursuit when we’re late. Most of the action required within the realm of our duties, while sometimes difficult, is clearcut. A man dies; someone is holding a gun with a hot barrel nearby. Or there’s a dozen witness to point out which direction the murderer left. In short, marshaling has no resemblance to what Pinkerton men do for a living, which is to ferret out secrets and piece them together for a semblance of truth. For a marshal, the truth is usually there in is happening before his eyes.

  These bank vault deaths, however, put me in a difficult position. Laramie had no Pinkerton man. And no one else in the public domain for this duty to fall upon. As marshal, I had no choice but to begin unraveling what had led the two men to their deaths. It was nothing I had experience with, and I hoped it was as simple as it appeared: that the men had shot each other.

  Unfortunately, not too long back, someone had tried to arrange my death to appear the same way. From the git go, I’d wouldn’t be able to ignore that possibility here. And there was the fact that money had disappeared. Which would indicate a third party was involved, whether he arranged the murder, or ran from it— unless one of these two had hidden money earlier and come back to finish the job, only to be interrupted by death.

  I felt like a dog circling for its own tail.

  Where to start?

  Mayor Crawford was babbling something at me.

  I stared through him again. “Crawford, you should understand a couple of things,” I said. “For this race, I am the town’s horse. I wear a badge and take a salary. But I’m the kind of horse that runs harder without the whip.”

  He shut his mouth.

  “We’re going to close the bank down,” I said.

  “But customer deposits —”

  “We’re going to close the bank down. I’m going to sit you at a desk, and you’re going to answer every question I have.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until I can’t think of any more questions to ask. And then we’ll start over.”

  Chapter 3

  The bank interior was built with a small open area in front of the two teller’s wickets which were set side by side. Behind those wickets were two other desks, stacked with papers. Past that, in the corner, with an outside window to overlook Main street and another window to the inside that let him watch employees and customers, was Crawford’s office.

  He had a huge oak desk that filled most of his office and a comfortable padded leather chair. Opposite his desk was a coat rack and three narrow chairs.

  I moved to sit behind Crawford’s desk. Made him take the uncomfortable straight-backed chair on the other side where folks sat when they had to beg him for a loan.

  He cringed as I reached for a writing instrument set neatly beside a short pile of documents.

  “That’s a fountain pen,” he said quickly. “Latest thing out of New York. Very expensive. It takes special care not to —”

  I splotched dark blue on the polish of his desk. “High-strung, all right. Where’s paper?”

  I admit I was pushing him hard. Taking his chair. Messing his desk. I wanted Crawford on edge. If he had anything to hide, he’d find it more difficult flustered. While I didn’t know he had anything to hide, it was his bank, he had found the men, and new as I was to this process, I didn’t figure it would hurt to be a thorough as possible. Which was also why I’d decided to make notes of anything pertinent to the deaths of these men.

  “Paper?” I repeated, and began to shuffle through the documents stacked so neatly on his desk.

  Crawford wheezed as he struggled to get his body out from the confines of that narrow chair. After securing me some lined paper, he grunted his way back into it.

  “Bob Nichols,” I said slowly as I wrote the name on the pad. “He owe money here? He behind in payments? How much land did he own free title?”

  Crawford sputtered. “That’s confidential to bank matters!”

  I set the pen down, and leaned forward. “Let’s put our guns on the table, Crawford. Money missing, and, yes, I’ll get around to asking how much. Two men murdered. And a cold trail. I’ll be throwing this badge around mighty hard to find out where that trail leads. And the less you answer, the more it’ll look like you’re at the end of that trail.”

  His eyes widened, a considerable feat, lost as they were in the fat of his face. “You’re not suggesting I had anything to do with this!”

  Probably not. It took guts to kill. But it wouldn’t hurt to continue to pressure him. “I’m suggesting you’re the first person anyone would investigate.”

  Crawford sagged, another considerable feat given that his body always seemed as low to the earth as possible.

  “Nichols had a year left to prove up his homestead,” Crawford said in a quiet voice. “We loaned him some money against that. He also held notes on a thousand head of cattle, but he expected to ship this week. He was behind a couple months, but promised to make good with his cattle profit.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  Crawford shrugged. “Didn’t matter. We had all of the notes secured, on cattle or on the land he filed for homstead claim. One way or the other, we’d get it back.”

  I took satisfaction in blotching another ink puddle plainly within Crawford’s view. It wasn’t much punishment for the banker’s coldheartedness, but it was immediate, and you take justice where you can, no matter how small.

  I studied Crawfor
d’s twitching face. While it made no sense to steal money from himself, Crawford might have had any number of hidden reasons for arranging these deaths. One reason came to mind easily.

  “The Nichols crew any good?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Will the Rocking N run without him? Will his payments still be made?”

  Crawford shrugged again. A man could learn to hate that shrug, especially if a man owed this bank money.

  “Crawford, what I’m asking is if it would be worth killing Nichols to be able to foreclose.”

  His face grew puce. “How dare you—”

  “It’s a question folks will be asking among themselves. Clear it now. If you can.”

  My hard accusation was like a slap across his face. He lost all bluff. “I…I’m not sure if he had a good crew. I hadn’t given any thought to what any of this means…and now you’re saying folks might believe I killed my own employee…”

  Loud rapping sounded on the glass of the door that led into the bank.

  “Sign’s up, isn’t it?” I said. “Posted that the bank is closed till further notice?”

  Crawford nodded. Without the energy to speak, he was sunk in misery, and against my will, I had my first stirrings of sympathy for the man.

  The rapping grew louder.

  “Find a place to get comfortable,” I suggested. “I’ll tend to the door.”

  The shadow outside the opaque glass showed the impatient visitor to be tall. Even with that warning, Doc Harper in his brown suit was the last person I expected to see when I pulled the door open. We hadn’t met before; he was known for keeping to himself. Yet if he was here to thank me for saving his life, I needed to put effort into being polite.

  “Doc Harper, what brings you this way?” I asked pleasantly.

  He brushed past me and scanned the interior of the bank.

  “You fool,” he said after a moment. “I hope you didn’t already move the bodies. Lorne Calhoun was a good man.”

  It’d been a long time since I’d been called a fool. Often I’d deserved it, but my size was enough that folks either decided against saying it, or said it where I couldn’t hear. From Doc Harper, it didn’t come out as an insult but abruptly honest, as if moving the bodies might indeed be the act of a fool. I was surprised to be aware of quick gladness that Doc Harper did not have that reason to call me a fool.