Читать книгу A Knife in the Heart - William W. Johnstone - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

Situated on the high, rolling plains of southern Wyoming, Cheyenne was a nice city, although it had taken Fallon a while to get accustomed to a land where trees came hard to find. He still remembered the shade and thickness of the woods around Fort Smith—similar to his boyhood stomping grounds of Gads Hill in southern Missouri. But the city of Cheyenne itself was remarkable. The Union Pacific Railroad connected it with East and West; it had industry, cattle, the Army at Fort D. A. Russell. Mansions could be found, for once a Western man or woman found wealth, he or she saw no reason not to flaunt it. Railroad workers, cowboys, and soldiers on payday could make things difficult for the local lawmen, but drunks and brawlers were not the business of a federal lawman.

Lawman? Fallon didn’t feel much like a peace officer these days. A United States marshal didn’t enforce the law. That’s what all the deputies he hired were for, which had been the case back in Arkansas and the Indian Territory when Judge Isaac Parker and the U.S. marshal for the Western District of Arkansas including the Indian Territory had hired a green kid, onetime cowboy and hell-raiser named Harry Fallon as a deputy marshal. In those days, Fallon risked his life to bring in whiskey runners, bank and train robbers, and more murderers than you’d find in the slums of New York or Chicago.

Keeping law and order was for young men, unmarried men mostly. Being the top lawman in the district, Fallon knew that a U.S. marshal was appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. His job required kissing babies, making speeches, and every now and then talking to the U.S. attorney, taking federal judges out to supper, and on the rare occasion, saying howdy and how ya doin’? to the deputies who risked their lives chasing men who had broken federal—not local—laws.

After making his family breakfast, then shaving and attempting to make himself presentable, Fallon left their home in pressed white shirt with four-ply linen collar, dress suspenders from Montgomery Ward & Co., a sateen Windsor tie of angled black and white stripes, and tailor-made suit of navy blue worsted wool, complete with a monogrammed gray silk handkerchief poking out of the breast coat pocket, and a solid gold watch stuck in the pocket of his matching vest. The whole rig had cost him what he made in a month herding cattle. His hat was a dark cream with what the hatmaker called a “velvety finish,” six-and-a-half-inch crown, creased in the side and dented on the top, with three-and-half-inch curled and trimmed brim, with leather band.

The only thing he really liked were the boots, the old Coffeyville style he had worn as a cowboy and deputy marshal, although these had been made by a saddlemaker near the depot. They fit like a glove. Even had spur ridges on the heels, although Fallon couldn’t remember the last time he had been on the back of a horse. He walked from his home to the office, unless the snow came down hard and he could hire a hack to take him wherever he needed to go in town. Or the train if, for some rare reason, he needed to travel to Laramie, Rock Springs, or Washington, D.C.

Removing his hat when he stepped inside the office, he climbed the stairs to the second floor of the federal courthouse and made his way down the hall, turning in to the office.

“Good morning, Helen,” he told the secretary, and moved to the coffeepot on the stove.

“Hank,” she said. Only Fallon’s friends called him Hank, and Helen was a good friend. “How was your weekend?”

“Fine,” he lied. Filled a cup, turned, held the pot toward her. Grinning, she lifted her steaming mug, saying, “I beat you to it.”

He hung his hat on the rack by the door.

“There’s no need for that, Hank,” Helen said.

He sipped coffee. She was a good-looking woman, not as beautiful as Christina, and Helen would make a fine U.S. marshal herself. Probably could, since Wyoming had granted women suffrage decades earlier. Helen did the paperwork, kept track of the schedules, and even helped some of the deputies with arrest reports and requests for warrants. Fallon would be lost without her.

“What am I doing today?” Fallon asked.

“Speaking to the Abraham Lincoln Academy.” That was the all-male private school on the Union Mercantile Block for mostly wealthy kids, although they always brought in a few poor boys, so they would look better, especially if the poor kid could play good baseball. “Watch your language. The headmaster is a Methodist.”

“Do I have time to finish my coffee?”

She held up the newspaper in her other hand. “You even have time to read the Daily Sun-Leader.”

An hour and a half later, Helen straightened Fallon’s tie and handkerchief, dropped the newspaper in the trash, stepped back, and asked, “Can you do me a favor?”

“Probably, if it’s legal.”

She handed him an envelope. “Deposit my check for me.”

He took the brown envelope with his left hand, looked at it suspiciously, and said, “It’s payday?”

“Already. End of the month. I put yours on your desk. Did you just read the paper?” She frowned. “Tell me you did work on what you’re going to tell those future lawmen at the academy.”

“I saw the envelope,” Fallon said. Last month, his check had remained on the desk two weeks after it had been issued, until Christina asked for some shopping money, and he realized . . . well . . . it was hard to explain to women, even men, who had never been in prison. They didn’t let you have money in the pen. Men bartered with tobacco, or illegal whiskey, a handmade weapon, something to read—for those who weren’t illiterate.

Helen shook her head. “Stockgrowers’ National Bank,” she told him as he slipped the envelope into the inside pocket of his fancy coat. “You remember where it is?”

Fallon nodded. “I’ve done this for you . . . how many times?”

“Usually, though you have forgotten a time or two.”

“Well,” he said. “That’s because I’m not used to people trusting me with their money. I am an ex-convict.”

“My understanding is that you were pardoned.”

“Yes.” He patted his coat. “But we can be led astray.”

“I’ll see you after your speech.” Helen walked back to her desk. “Give them heck, Hank.”

* * *

This was another thing hard to get used to. Back in Fallon’s day, school was a McGuffey’s Reader and a paddle with holes cut in the hindquarters-hitting part. Most of the boys didn’t wear shoes in the spring and fall, because most of them didn’t have shoes except during winter. Typically, there would be two or three empty seats, for some of the boys wanted to go fishing or squirrel hunting or to hang from the ties over the trestle and see who would drop into the river last when the train rumbled by. During spring planting or fall harvest, more desks would be empty, because the boys had to work.

At the Abraham Lincoln Academy, the boys were dressed in smaller versions of Grand Army of the Republic dress suits, sitting ramrod straight, heads up, paying strict attention. Usually, a Harry Fallon speech would put half the audience to sleep, and Fallon always wished he were asleep, too. But not here. The headmaster and his two teachers stood at attention, rarely blinking, and the teachers held rulers as though sabers at arms.

Eventually, Fallon finished his talk, and asked if anyone had a question.

A hand shot up from the blond boy with big ears on the front row. Once Fallon nodded to him, the boy stood, cleared his throat, and asked, “How does one become a United States marshal, sir?” He promptly sat down.