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Vanity A Kel McKyer Story Jeremiah Healy |
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It was getting on toward sunset, with a full moon already rising above the reddening horizon, when Kel McKyer reined his walking horse to a full stop at the sign reading: VANITY, ARIZONA POP. 159
Kel glanced at the cluster of ramshackle town buildings maybe a hundred yards farther east. Whoever named this place had a sense of humor, all right. Still, Kel flicked the rawhide loop on his holster from over the hammer of his 1874 Colt Peacemaker. No reason to take chances on any town, especially one that was the butt of its own joke. *** Kel dismounted and tied his horse to the hitching rail in front of “HOTEL.” That was it: No other indication over the door, though both the dry goods store to the left of it and the saloon across the street had names to them, with the second’s sign reading: “BALDY’S.” While still in the saddle, Kel had weighed a beer or a whiskey--or both--as a higher priority than a hotel bed, but he’d camped out enough nights in a row that a room in hand seemed more important than a drink. Kel slung his saddlebags, laden with the weight of gold nuggets, over his left shoulder and climbed the three steps to the hotel’s entrance. Inside, a short man with dark, wiry hair and a beard to match stood at the rear edge of the front desk, talking in a language Kel didn’t understand to a young girl. She was maybe fourteen, and as pretty in an almost-woman way as the man was homely. Kel did catch her looking at him and smiling with white, even teeth before saying “Yah, Papa” at what seemed to be the end of their talk. Then the daughter smiled at Kel again and disappeared through an archway to the back. When she closed the door behind her, Kel caught a whiff of fresh biscuits and maybe venison. The short man moved to the center of his counter. “How can I help?” Kel pointed up the stairs. “Room for the night?” “Yah, sure.” Kel tapped the saddlebag resting against his left breast. “You have a safe where I could leave this?” “Yah,” gesturing below the desk, “here behind.” “I need a receipt?” “Why? I am Steinberg, owner, and I will remember you just fine.” Kel took an immediate liking to the man, but he also noticed the “why” and the “will” both came out with a “V,” instead of the “W” Kel expected. “You from Germany, maybe?” “Yah, yah,” Steinberg grinning from ear to ear with most of his teeth, all of them yellowed. “How do you guess?” Kel had sat with a German widow in the desert some months before, talking to her so she wouldn’t die alone. “Knew somebody from there once.” Steinberg nodded. “My daughter, Sarah, and I speak the Yiddish before. Like German language, only Jewish.” Kel tried to think if he’d ever heard of a Jewish person outside the Bible stories his mother had read to him. Steinberg swung the dusty register around so Kel could sign it, and Kel did the same with his even dustier saddlebags. “Heavy,” said the hotel owner, hefting the leather. “They are that.” Kel finished his writing as Steinberg, squatting behind the counter, closed a solid, metal door and spun a combination dial. “What your wife’s cooking smells awful good.” When hotel owner stood back up, he swiped a sleeve across his eyes, then turned to the kitchen door. “My Ruth is buried eleven years now.” Kel decided he was glad not to have mentioned the dying widow. Steinberg said, “My Sarah, she make the food for our guests.” “Many besides me?” Now the hotel owner pursed his lips. “A captain of the cavalry and his men. One soldier, a poor man with big scar through his face, waits for my Sarah at our back door, help her to carry their food to the stable.” Kel had been cavalry during Mr. Lincoln’s war and thought that odd. “The troopers are eating in the stable?” Steinberg winced now, leaned forward and whispered. “They are big black fellows. ‘Buffalo soldiers,’ our Sheriff Poteet call them.” Kel had heard that some units of freed slaves, led by white officers, were after Apache hostiles that had jumped a reservation nearby. “So, they sleep in the stable, too?” “Yah, yah.” Steinberg shook his head, obviously not happy with the arrangement. “Otherwise, our sheriff tell me, nobody ever eat or stay in my hotel again.” Kel thought himself and a lot of others had done major killing ten years back over that kind of thing, but, on the whole, he also thought Vanity’s sheriff was probably right. *** As Kel McKyer crossed the street to the saloon, he saw a cavalry officer with blonde hair under his headgear walking with a precise stride toward a black trooper who, despite the heat, was still in his blue tunic and trousers, the squarish constellation of buttons gleaming on his chest, just like his commander’s. The officer extended what from a distance looked like two bottles of whiskey to the soldier. The white man smiled as the black man took them, nodding--almost bowing--gratefully. Then an exchange of salutes, the officer turning precisely on his heel back toward Baldy’s. The soldier then quick-marched around the corner of the dry goods store and disappeared. Kel thought, the man might act like a stickler for pomp, but he looks after his troops. *** “And you would be, sir?” Kel looked at the blonde officer--from the bars on his shoulders, the captain that Steinberg had mentioned. Close up now, the man’s hair and mustache both were neatly trimmed. With the clean uniform, he gave off the air of a dandy. Kel nodded to the other two men sitting with the officer at the same saloon table. One looked early forties, full enough in the stomach that he might have been a little younger. The third man was pushing fifty, a more bushy mustache covering his lower lip. Kel noted a star on his shirt--probably making him Sheriff Poteet--but a shotgun instead of a revolver resting near the lawman’s right side. “McKyer’s my name.” The captain grinned. “And you’d have a Christian name, too, I’ll wager?” “Kel.” Now the cavalry officer frowned. “Short for?” “It’s not. Just ‘Kel.’” The fat man spoke next. “Captain Crane would much like to get up a poker game, but I told him I do not play with less than four men betting.” Slight Spanish lilt on his words. Kel nodded once and slowly, more in acknowledgment of a reasonable requirement than in agreement to participate. A quick scan of the saloon showed mostly prospectors down on their luck, probably nursing warm beers. Kel addressed the man with the badge. “Sheriff, would you be the fourth?” “Would be, but I don’t gamble.” Poteet nudged his fat companion. “Oswaldo here’s our mayor, so--as a politician--he’s always kind of ‘betting’ on something.” Then the lawman blinked a few times and squinted, like maybe he’d seen the newcomer before. Kel thought about another two-bit town named “Launcelot” and the poor loser he’d had to shoot in a card game. Kel wondered if there might not be a wanted poster out on him. “Thanks anyway, gentlemen, but I think I’d rather fill my head with whiskey than suits this evening.” Crane, clearly disappointed, shook his head and turned to the mayor. “Well, Oswaldo, I guess that leaves us two short still.” Then, from where exactly Kel couldn’t be sure, the cavalry officer produced a deck of cards and started shuffling with just his right hand, using fingernails to tent the cards before making them dive over and under each other. Kel thought, Well, at least once in your life you made a good decision about gambling. At the bar, a man with a shaved head and big arms said, “What’s your pleasure?” “Whiskey?” Baldy--he just had to be--inclined his eyebrows toward the three men at the table. “Captain there bought two bottles for his men--I wouldn’t let them in here, of course.” Kel tried for dry in his reply. “Of course.” “But, I still got a few bottles left.” Baldy brought one up and poured. “Madness,” Sheriff Poteet’s voice rose behind Kel. “Sending black savages after red ones, then giving the blacks the same whiskey stirs up the Apaches they’re supposed to be killing.” Kel turned with his drink. Crane caused the cards to dance again in his hand. “Our orders use ‘exterminate,’ actually.” Kel looked at the captain, thinking he’d done a neat job of deflecting the sheriff’s comment. But Kel still felt put off by the cavalry officer’s choice of words. “You mean, like...bugs?” Crane nodded. “Latest report from the Board of Indian Commissioners to President Grant. We are to ‘exterminate’ the Apache--Chiricahua, Rio Verde, Coyotero, no matter.” “Won’t be soon enough for me,” said Poteet. “I can’t count how many good folk’ve been lost to those devils.” Kel turned back to Baldy, who asked, “You staying in the Jew’s hotel?” Real friendly town. “Is there another one?” “No. Just going to tell you: Forget what you might of heard about them. Steinberg’s a good man.” So, Baldy was at peace with religious differences, if not racial ones. “Well,” the cavalry officer’s voice breaking the silence as a chair scraped back. “With no good prospect of a game, I believe I’ll make use of clean sheets and a soft bed. Gentlemen?” “Same here,” from the sheriff. Kel heard more than saw the men leave, though the mirror over the bar let him know they parted ways as soon as they were through the swinging doors. Then, from the table, “So, Mr. McKyer, come drink one with me?” Kel shrugged. What danger could a small-town mayor be? As he joined the fat man at the table and started to sit, Kel’s new friend spoke again. “Oswaldo Gonzalez.” They shook hands. The mayor settled some in his chair, making it creak. “And from where do you join us?” Truth’s as easy as a lie. “West. Dragon Wells.” “Ah,” Gonzalez nodded. “Outside Launcelot.” Kel sipped his whiskey, thought it wise to change the subject. “You been mayor here long?” Now Gonzalez sighed. “Long enough to witness the eyesight of our sheriff decline sorely.” Kel’s turn to nod. Explained Poteet carrying a shotgun: Not much aiming needed in using it. The mayor said, “In fact, his vision is now so gone, he has trouble reading even the wanted posters.” Kel stopped with the glass halfway to his lips, then cursed himself for probably giving something away by his reaction. “Might be he just has enough problems here.” “Possible,” Gonzalez continued, “but I have had the benefit of some schooling in the law, so I take an interest in its enforcement, including checking the circulars from time to time.” He paused. “I also heard from somebody in Launcelot that saw the shooting. Said a certain player did the righteous thing by just wounding the son of a bitch.” Kel mulled that. “Might we keep this between ourselves, Mr. Mayor?” “Certainly, Mr. McKyer. Another whiskey, though? On me?” Kel said, “Under the circumstances, I’d be much obliged if you’d let me buy us both one.” Oswaldo Gonzalez smiled and patted his stomach lightly, like the skin under his shirt was fragile. “In that case, by all means, do.” *** Kel and the mayor were more than halfway through their next drink when three reports cracked and echoed off the buildings outside. From the short spacing between them, Kel guessed handgun over rifle, and he was up and running while the third shot was still making its noise in the air. Once in the moonlight, Kel didn’t see anything threatening, but he nevertheless figured it might be safer to go through the hotel rather than run around the corner of the dry goods store and risk being outlined against a light-colored wall. After crossing the street and entering the hotel, Kel blew past Steinberg, who was himself already in the kitchen, running toward the back door, crying out, “Sarah, Sarah,” followed by words that had the guttural ring of the Yiddish German Kel had heard him speaking with his daughter. Once past Steinberg, Kel paused at the back door to the hotel, the stable across the alley producing black troopers, scrambling in uniforms or just undershirts and trousers, carbines in their hands. One without a tunic stood out, a scar nearly ripping his face from northwest to southeast. Kel thought, the soldier Steinberg said was helping his daughter with their food. “Over here,” from Kel’s left. He joined in the swell of troopers as they all approached a mixed-race sergeant--freckles on his face and burly as a blacksmith--in the opened, rear doorway of the dry goods store. He had a horse pistol out of its holster and in his right hand, the muzzle pointed down at the ground. You couldn’t help but have your nose tickled by the acrid gunpowder smell hanging in the still night air. “What happened?” said Kel. The sergeant, still in full uniform, inclined his head behind him. “Nobody goes inside until the captain gets here.” “Let me through. Damnit, let me through!” The troopers, maybe ten or twelve of them, separated like cattle around a moving tree for Sheriff Poteet, shotgun leveled, bulling his way forward. “What is going on?” The mayor’s voice from farther away. “Someone tell me, please?” Poteet reached the sergeant. “Stand aside, boy.” The black man stood his ground. “The name’s Wickes, sir. Sergeant Wickes, and I got my orders. Nobody--” The lawman slapped the butt of his shotgun into the sergeant’s ribs, and Wickes dropped to his knees, clutching the spot with his empty hand. Poteet stalked inside. Kel followed, saying quietly to the sergeant, “Don’t do anything foolish with that sidearm, all right?” A pained nod as Kel passed him. The sheriff, voice choking, said, “Oh, my dear God.” From behind him, Kel heard an anguished tone of “Sarah. My Sarah, where is she?” Kel was looking forward and thinking, Steinberg wouldn’t want to find her. Sarah lay on some burlap feed bags as makeshift bed and pillows. Her lovely hair lay splayed over one of the bags, her eyes open and visible as two white, shining pearls in the moonlight coming through the windows of the storeroom. Sarah’s left palm was open and oriented upward, the right one clenched into a fist. And her skirt was torn, her underthings the same, down to the flesh--and blood--showing between her legs. Kel drew even with the sheriff as this time Steinberg bolted past them and screamed at the sight of his daughter. He stumbled and sagged, finally hitting his knees and covering his daughter’s privates with a flap of her skirt. Then the hotel owner yanked her shoulders to his chest, cradling Sarah like he must have back when she was still a baby. Steinberg began wailing, and Kel could see Sarah’s face looked a light shade of blue, darker blue bruises around her lips and throat. “Jesus y Maria,” said Oswaldo Gonzalez from the doorway, the words coming out “Hey-soos e Mar-ree-ya,” but Kel knowing what he meant. Steinberg began to rock his daughter then, and her right hand opened. Kel caught a glint of something as it rolled lopsidedly along the floor toward his boots, like a child’s top after the spin from the string has tired itself out. Kel stooped and snatched the thing before the sheriff could react--or even see it, Kel imagined. He hefted it in his own palm, then held it up to the moonlight. Heavy, like a nugget of gold, and almost one-inch round. “A button,” said Kel. “From a cavalry tunic.” Captain Crane’s voice boomed from outside. “Make way, men. Make way.” Then Sergeant Wickes, from the doorway. “Captain, I tried to keep everybody out. Like you said, sir.” Sheriff Poteet turned to Kel. “Give me that button.” Kel did, and the lawman dropped it into his shirt pocket. Now Crane’s voice, close behind. “What in the world--Oh, no. No!” Kel turned, saw even the dandy officer in just an undershirtand trousers, suspenders down, holding an obviously drunk black trooper by the armpits to keep him vertical. Kel thought it might have been the one who got the whiskey bottles from Crane earlier. Poteet said to the captain. “Your boy here--” “--my ser-geant--” “--tried to keep us out. Said you’d ordered that. Why?” Crane closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. “Because this happened once before.” That’s when Kel McKyer realized that Steinberg was now just crying over his daughter. And that the drunken trooper had a button missing from his tunic, some tell-tale thread still attached to the cloth. *** “Savages, just like I said.” Kel looked at Sheriff Poteet, sitting behind his desk in the office that fronted the three cells to the back, his shotgun lying near some papers. The drunk trooper--so far, Crane had referred to him only as “Uggie”--was lying on the bunk in the first cell, still sleeping it off. Mayor Oswaldo Gonzalez and the cavalry officer occupied two other chairs, Kel staying on his feet. The captain shook his head. “When the earlier...attack occurred, we’d bedded down in a town also, smaller than this one, just passing through. I’d hoped then that it was only a coincidence, our being there, since there was no evidence any of my troopers were involved.” Gonzalez said, “I don’t think we can say that here.” “No,” Crane shaking his head and wringing his hands now, like he was trying to wash off a stubborn stain. “I told all my men: ‘If anything like this should happen again, fire three shots in the air and guard the spot.’” Kel thought Sergeant Wickes had done just about all that was possible there. “And this Uggie’s button was missing when you found him?” “Yes.” The captain now slumped back in his chair. “Even in this God-forsaken country, I’m a stickler for appearances.” Kel thought, There you go. “My system instills the kind of discipline any soldier needs, regardless of race. I’m certain Uggie had all the buttons on his tunic when I gave him the whiskey outside your saloon here.” That answered two questions for Kel, since he’d been pretty sure Uggie was the one who received the bottles and that he’d looked parade-ground sharp when he pivoted and marched away. Poteet said, “I don’t much like your ‘soldiers’ standing around outside my jail with their weapons.” Crane fixed a gaze on the lawman. “Uggie is one of their own, and I doubt there’s a single trooper under my command who hasn’t seen--or at least heard of--a lynching.” Then a knock that sounded kind of urgent, hammering the front door to the jail. Through the barred--and only window--in the sheriff’s office, Kel caught a flicker of light some distance down the street. Poteet closed his hand on the shotgun in front of him. “Come in.” Kel saw more lights on the street now. Irregular, and moving. Sergeant Wickes stuck his head around the door. “Captain, there be a bunch of mens coming this way.” Crane looked at the sheriff. “Trouble?” The sergeant said, “They’s a lot of them, and the onliest one that don’t have a torch or a gun, he carrying a rope.” *** Kel remembered the feeling from the war: the tension in the ranks just before the shooting started. Tension that enters your body like a cold ghost and sinks into your gut, making your hands shake so bad you stick them in your pockets, trying not to show the terror gripping you. Kel was now standing outside the sheriff’s front door, three steps above street level. Poteet had loaned Crane a rifle, and the mayor came up with a card-player’s derringer from somewhere in that stomach area of his. Not much good against a mob of thirty or more men, thought Kel, but at least Gonzalez’s heart was in the right place. The guy with the rope--noose already tied in it--spoke first. “We heared that Steinberg’s little girl was holding a button off one of these...‘buffalo soldiers.’” The sheriff spoke softly, his shotgun pointed straight down beside his right foot. “Go home, John.” “The man may be a Jew, but his daughter’s still white, and we can’t have that in this town.” “John,” said the mayor, a genuine edge of strength in his voice that Kel could admire. “All of you. Go home before you--” “The Steinberg girl ain’t going ‘home’ but to her grave, and we plan to deal with the bastard what done it.” Kel heard the click of a hammer from somewhere in the mob, then two or three more. “Last time,” said Poteet, Kel noticing the lawman’s shotgun muzzle coming up a mite. “Go home. Now.” As John of the Rope started to move forward, Kel heard Steinberg’s voice from the back of the mob. “Wait! Please, for me. Wait?” The mob parted for the stricken father the way the troopers had for Sheriff Poteet behind the dry goods store. When Steinberg got to the front, Kel could see the man’s eyes were red, and his face had aged ten years. The hotel owner said, “I can come up there?” Poteet hesitated, then nodded and shuffled aside. Steinberg climbed the three steps before turning to face the mob. “It is my daughter dead,” swiping his sleeve across his eyes, as he had earlier over his wife when Kel was registering, “so, I can talk?” John of the Rope swung his gaze quickly among the men behind him, then back to the raised sidewalk. “We’re listening, Steinberg.” The hotel owner closed his eyes once before opening them again. When my family is in the old country still, there were men like you. They thought the right thing was for to kill Jews. We call it ‘pogrom,’ the mob killing us. My wife is one, when my Sarah,” another swipe of his sleeve, “is just three years. We come here to America, escape pogroms. But now, my daughter is dead, and I see the same mob killing in you, men I know from this town to be good people.” Kel thought he might have just witnessed the best speech he’d ever heard. Steinberg snorted back tears. “I want justice for my Sarah, but not...,” he waved his hand now, “this.” John of the Rope seemed to back down a notch. “Sheriff, when’s the next judge due by on circuit?” “The truth? Not for a good three months. Maybe more.” In a command voice, Crane said, “My troopers and I can’t stay that long, and we won’t leave without our comrade.” John shook his head. “He’s not leaving ‘til Steinberg here gets his ‘justice.’” Mexican stand-off, thought Kel, at least for a while. Then he figured that a lot more people would be dying shortly. “May I suggest a compromise?” Kel thought the mayor might have spoken next, but it was the cavalry officer again. “Over drinks tonight in your saloon, I was told that Mr. Gonzalez here has some training as a lawyer.” The mayor said, “I studied some, but--” Crane cut him off. “And Mr. McKyer, you can read and write?” Uh-oh. “Well,” from the captain. If it would stave off a killing ground, Kel allowed as how he could. “And I, of course, as well. My men won’t stand for a lynching, nor a jury trial with many of you before us now sitting in the box, nor leaving our comrade behind. So, my compromise is this: The mayor acts as judge, I as prosecutor, and Mr. McKyer as our comrade’s defense counsel.” Some murmuring within the crowd. John said, “And if your ‘comrade’s’ found guilty,” lifting the noose to just under his own throat, “he hangs?” “Yes,” Crane’s answer both quick and firm. John lowered the rope. “Steinberg, can you live with that?” The hotel owner squinched his eyes shut, then opened them again, focusing on the cavalry officer. “And when happens this trial?” “First thing in the morning,” Captain Crane replied, and Kel could sense the tension go out of the air on both sides. “Dandy” or not, the man just saved Vanity from a bloodbath. *** “I won’t tell you things look good,” said Kel McKyer to the trooper on the bunk in the sheriff’s cell, trying to sit upright by using the wall behind him as support. “Because they don’t. But we’re going to have a trial for your life tomorrow, and I need to know what happened.” “Sir, I don’t recollect.” It came out, “Suh, I doan recollec’.” Kel pressed him. “What do you remember?” “Nothing.” “What do you mean, nothing?” “Sir, I mean nothing from nothing.” “Uggie, I saw you take the whiskey bottles from Captain Crane.” “That’s right, sir. And he tell me, ‘Uggie, you go hide one of these for your ownself.’” Kel shook his head. “Why would he do that?” “The captain done done it before, sir. One time, I saved him from this hostile about to put a knife in his back. And the captain, he never forget that.” Seemed possible to Kel, if not exactly likely. “So what did you do with each bottle, then?” “Like the captain say, I hide one for me, outside the stable. Then I bring the other in for the rest of the boys, and they start passing that bottle around.” Not hard to picture. “And after that?” “I tell Sergeant Wickes I got to take a piss--sorry, sir. That I was in need of the latrine.” “But instead you went for the other bottle?” “Yessir.” “And got drunk.” “Yessir.” Uggie exhaled noisily, a soured whiskey smell coming off his breath. “Yessir, that, too.” “You ever see the Steinberg girl?” “Only when her and Dudley brung us our food.” Kel remembered the hotel owner mentioning the scarred trooper, and Kel himself even seeing him behind the dry goods store, but “defense counsel” wanted to be sure. “Dudley?” “Yessir. The boy with the slash acrost most of his face.” Kel said, “And you never touched the girl.” “Never, sir. Never, my hand to the Lord, no. First I know of anything’s be when the captain pulled my drunk rump up from the ground outside the stable here.” Kel had gone to war with a lot of men. Whites only, but some of them immigrants who couldn’t hardly speak English. And he thought he’d learned something about the difference between a soldier lying and a soldier telling the truth. Kel believed Uggie’s version. “The attorney for the defense” also tried to see what could have happened. Unfortunately, though, the situation didn’t make any more sense to him than it had in the dry goods store. *** “Are, uh, counsel ready to proceed?” Captain Crane rose from behind his table in the saloon, so Kel McKyer did the same at his. Baldy had rigged a chair on the working side of the bar, allowing Mayor Oswaldo Gonzalez to sit in a judgely manner. Uggie was shackled hand and foot around the bar rail on the left. Another chair was put on the right to serve as a witness stand. And on the bar, in front of the “judge,” Sheriff Poteet had laid the tunic button he’d taken from his shirt pocket. There weren’t enough seats for all the town’s adult males, women and children excluded, of course, given the kind of case it was. And at first Poteet didn’t want any soldiers in the room, either. Then John of the Rope persuaded him that either the troopers would be in the room where they could be watched, or the troopers would be behind them, outside, armed and ready to shoot them in the back. So it became kind of what Kel remembered from the only two church weddings he’d ever attended. Friends of the bride on one side of the aisle, friends of the groom on the other. And everybody armed to the teeth, just like the night before, outside the jail. “Sergeant,” said Crane as Gonzalez waved Kel to sit back down. “Would you please take the stand?” Wickes did, his ribs still obviously hurting from the sheriff’s shotgun butt the night before. In fact, the soldier actually eyed the weapon lying across Poteet’s thighs as the lawman sat nearby the defendant. Kel listened as the mayor swore the sergeant as a witness, and Crane brought out the man’s full name and rank. “Sergeant, can you describe what you did last night after we arrived in town?” Kel heard nothing that surprised him. “Now,” said Crane, “once you had tended to the horses and found comfortable quarters for yourselves in the stable, what happened?” “The little miss and Dudley brung us food, sir.” The cavalry officer stuck his hands in his pants pockets, strolling kind of like an actor on stage. Kel wondered. Could Crane be scared, like you felt last night facing the mob and back in the war? “Good food?” “Real good, Captain. Deer meat, fresh biscuits.” “Did you see or hear anything...unusual?” “Nossir. We thanked her kindly. And a course I wouldn’t let our men drink from the whiskey bottle ‘til the little miss left.” “You said ‘bottle’ just now. As in only one?” “Yessir.” Crane turned to Kel. “Can we agree that I gave Uggie two bottles of whiskey?” Kel stayed seated. “We can, account of I saw you do it.” Crane nodded and turned back to his sergeant. “But Uggie brought only one bottle of whiskey into the stable.” “Yessir.” “And the troopers shared it?” “Yessir.” “Some more than others?” Hesitation. “Some.” “You?” “Nossir. I don’t never touch the demon rum.” Crane smiled. “Nor whiskey?” “No fire-water, no way.” Still in that theatrical stroll, Crane took his left hand from his pocket and waved toward the back of the room. “How about Trooper Dudley?” Wickes hesitated again. “He drunk some.” “More than most.” The sergeant seemed pained. “Yessir.” “And then what happened?” “Uggie say to me he have to use the latrine, sir. And Dudley, he say he want to sleep in the air, not in a horseshit--sorry, sir--a place that don’t smell real good.” “And you allowed both troopers to leave the stable.” “Yessir.” “Then what happened?” “After a time, Uggie didn’t come back, so I went looking for him.” Kel pricked up his ears, sensing a chance to ask a helpful question like sensing where good water might be in open country. Crane stopped walking. “And did you find him?” “Nossir.” “What did you find, Sergeant?” “I see the back door to the dry goods wasn’t closed right, and I figure, maybe Uggie be in there.” “Why would he do that?” Wickes squirmed in his chair, testing its strength the way the mayor had his own in the saloon the night before. “I don’t know, sir. I just see the door be open a bit, and so I went to look.” “And...?” The sergeant put his hand to his face, spoke through his fingers. “The little miss, sir. She was dead and...and violated, seemed to me.” Kel heard a muffled whimper from behind him. Steinberg, he guessed, given where they were in Wickes’s account. Crane stuck his left hand back in his pocket. His walk now was less stroll and more parade: In charge, strutting around like a banty rooster with his wings down. Kel decided the man had seen too much action with hostiles to have any courtroom scare him. The captain said, “What did you do then?” “What you told us to, anything ever happen again like in that other town. I come outside and fired three shots into the air.” Now Crane moved to the bench in front of the mayor. “May I show this witness the button in question?” “You may,” said Gonzalez. “Thank you.” Crane took his right hand out of his pocket and picked up the button, then turned and moved back to Wickes, extending his hand and its contents to the sergeant. “Do you recognize this item?” Wickes fumbled the exchange and had to fish the button from his lap. “Yessir.” “And what is it?” “Cavalry button.” Wickes held it up to his own chest. “From the front of the tunic, not the sleeve, account of it’s bigger.” “Sergeant, do you know what that button is made from?” “Brass, maybe?” “Not exactly.” The captain turned with a schoolteacher’s smile to the judge-for-a-day. “It’s called ‘gilding metal,’ and I’m told that small amounts of gold are actually bound to the buttons by a firing process.” Crane turned back to the sergeant. “Have you ever held an officer’s tunic button?” “Just yours, sir. Couple months back, when you asked me to have one of the mens sew it back on to your dress uniform.” “And an officer’s buttons are the same?” “Not yours, sir. The ones you wear be heavier.” “Because?” “I don’t rightly know, sir.” A third hesitation. “Maybe because they be real gold?” “Or, at least more gold, Sergeant.” Crane pocketed both hands again, striding slower now, then turning to Kel. “Mr. McKyer, can we agree that the Steinberg girl was holding that button in her hand when you arrived in the storeroom.” Kel said, “I saw it roll out on the floor after her father went to her.” “And what did you do with this button?” “The sheriff asked for it, and I gave it to him.” “Thank you,” said Crane to the mayor, retrieving the button from Wickes and placing it back on the bar. “No further questions.” “Mr. McKyer?” Gonzalez, from his makeshift bench. “You can cross-examine the witness.” Kel thought of tests, like back in grammar school, and he had to cough to clear his throat. “Meaning what?” “Meaning ask him questions, to help your client if you can.” Kel stood, cutting a look toward Uggie and not seeing any more hope in the black man’s face than Kel had in his own heart of hearts toward defending him. “Sergeant Wickes,” Kel playing the only card he’d been dealt, “you ever find out where Trooper Dudley was sleeping?” “Nossir.” “How come?” The hand to his face again. “The little miss, she...the way she was and all, I didn’t want to leave the poor child alone.” “Was Dudley one of the troopers who came a-running after you fired the shots?” “I seen him there.”
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