The letter ended there and Tom Shanaghy put it down with the others. It wasn’t much help except to indicate that Barrett had not anticipated trouble from Patterson that he couldn’t handle. What worried him was something he had apparently come upon in Kansas City, or something that led him to go there. What?
Shanaghy glanced through the packet of letters, but none of them seemed of consequence. They were from friends and business associates, but offered no clue to what might have been the trouble in Kansas City. There was one other note, another unfinished letter written by Barrett to somebody:
I shall not ride the cushions, as I did before. This time I’ll speak to a conductor I know and arrange to ride a caboose into town. That way I might arrive unseen …
Shanaghy put the letters down, and glanced at the notebook. Probably nothing there but he would have to see. The trouble was, he was hungry. He had been up since daylight and had put in a hard morning’s work at the smithy. Yet he sat still, thinking.
Tom Shanaghy had never considered himself a bright man. He had not even thought about it. He had survived in a hard, rough world along the Bowery and in the Five Points, and he supposed he was shrewd after a fashion. Most of his problems he had solved with his fists, but they did not help much now. Rig Barrett, now, how about him? Barrett was supposed to be here and was not. Yet he was the kind of man to keep appointments. Hence he was either here and hiding out somewhere, or he was not here. If he was not here, he must be unable to be here. And that meant he was either a prisoner, which was unlikely, injured or dead.
His gear had been on the train and in the gondola in which Shanaghy was riding. That meant he had either put the gear there himself, and had not followed it, or that the stuff had been thrown there by someone else. Of course, Barrett might have gotten on the train and, for some reason, gotten off again. But that was unlikely, because if he had arranged to travel by caboose he would have gone directly to it.
“The way it looks,” Shanaghy muttered, “is that Barrett was headed for the caboose when somebody laid one on him. Probably conked him on the noggin and then tossed his gear aboard a passing train, figuring to leave nothing that would name him when they found the body.”
That also looks, he told himself, as though Mr. Rig Barrett is not going to arrive in town, and that means whoever plans to pull something off is going to have mighty little trouble doing it.
There was a sharp rap on the door. Shanaghy got to his feet and opened it. Four men stood there and they all held guns. One of them was Holstrum. “They tell me,” the big storekeeper said, “that you have Rig Barrett’s shotgun.” Shanaghy glanced from one to the other. Nobody needed to tell him that he was in trouble. Just like Lundy had told him. He started to step forward and their guns lifted. One of them held a rope in his hand.
SEVEN
Tom Shanaghy was in trouble, but he had been in trouble before. He smiled, suddenly, thinking that he could remember few occasions when he had not been in trouble.
“That’s right,” he replied cheerfully, “I do have his shotgun. When he knew I was coming out here he said I might need it.”
That was a lie, of course, but what he needed now was to keep himself from being hung, and he gave them the most likely story. They had already suggested that he might be the man to take Rig’s place, so what better story than that Rig had actually sent him?
“Rig sent you? You know him?”
“Let’s put it this way. Rig Barrett isn’t here. I am. You need a man to take his place. I can do it. You want Drako fired, and I can do that, and will do it.” Shanaghy smiled again, at the thought. That, at least, he would enjoy doing.
“You mean to stop Vince Patterson?” Holstrum demanded. “You think you can?” “It isn’t Vince I’m worried about, gentlemen, nor was it Vince who worried Rig Barrett. Rig was quite sure he could talk to Vince and could reason with him. I mean to try the same thing.”
“If he wasn’t worried about Vince,” Holstrum demanded, “then what did worry him?”
Now he had him. Rig had gone to Kansas City because of some suspicion he had, yet what that was Shanaghy did not know. He reached for the first thing that came to mind, and the moment it shaped into words Shanaghy was sure he had hit upon it.
“What worried him,” Shanaghy paused, then suddenly decided to keep his mouth shut, “was something else entirely, but I am not free … I can’t betray his confidence. Yet have no fear now. I shall handle it.” Yet all the time Shanaghy kept in mind that eastbound train that would get him out of all this. Would it come in time? Would he be able to get away? Whatever else he had done, he had now made them unsure. So he spoke up with confidence. “Now, gentlemen, I am hungry. I want to eat and then get back to the smithy. But choose your time and if it is me you wish to be marshal here, let me know. I have work to do.”
They turned to go and suddenly an idea came to Shanaghy. He said to Holstrum, “You know something of the railroad operations here. Is it customary to have a railroad detective riding the trains?”
Holstrum shook his head. “Never heard of such a thing. There’s been no theft from freight cars, and we’ve had no goods lost.” When they were gone Shanaghy put his things together on the bed, then went down the stairs. This would be a good place to be away from if Rig Barrett did show up.
But that man who kicked him off the train? Just who was he? “Shanaghy,” he told himself, “you’ve come upon something. That was no railroad bull, that was somebody who wanted you off the train for fear of what you might see. And what might that have been, lad? What, indeed?” Whoever he was, Shanaghy owed him one, but the thought nagged him that something was going on of which he knew nothing. Could that man have been tied in with George and the mysterious lady?
Carpenter himself was in the restaurant when Shanaghy entered. “Wife’s sick,” he said, “I’m eatin’ out.” He waved a hand and Shanaghy joined him. “Right where we sit I killed a buffalo, only last spring. Skinned him out right on the spot. “Them times, there was nothing anywhere a man might look on but grass waving in the wind. Now Holstrum has him a corn crop growing, and my wife has a vegetable garden. I tell you, my friend, this will be a town to be proud of! “A few years ago some called this the Great American Desert. They just didn’t know soil! This here Kansas country will grow the finest corn, wheat and barley a man could wish for! You mark my words, one day this prairie where only buffalo ranged will feed half the world!
“We have been killing the buffalo. Magnificent as they are, a man must decide what his values are and you can grow no crops where buffalo range. There’s no fence will stop them.
“My folks came from Europe and never owned a bit of land to call their own. They were beholden to the lord of the manor for their living, yet before my old father died he owned more than the lord of the manor had. “You see a few poor shacks now, but give us time. We have been shipping buffalo hides and bones to the eastern markets, and now we’re beginning to ship beef. Give us a few years and we will be storing and shipping grain.” He lifted a finger at Tom. “Shanaghy, we need young men here, young men like you.”
“Like me?” Shanaghy’s grin was sour. “What do you know of me?” “All we need to know, all we will ever ask. You can do an honest day’s work and you take pride in what you do. No man who loves the working of iron as you do can be bad.”
Their food was brought and when the waiter had gone, Carpenter said, “The wheels you fitted for Drako? Beautiful! You’re a fine craftsman, Tom! A fine craftsman!”
Shanaghy felt himself flushing, and with pride, and embarrassment as well.
Nobody had called him a craftsman before, and he relished the term. “You take pride in your work. You have an eye for the color of red-hot iron such as only the true craftsman has.