For a long time, Gunnison’s sleep was dreamless, but then he began to imagine himself in the scene Kenton had sketched. His hands were bound behind his back, a rope around his neck. Beside him were other men similarly situated. He was standing on the back of a flatbed wagon beneath the burned-out hull of what had been a railroad bridge.
Below stood a group of butternut-clad rebel soldiers, at their head a man with an uplifted saber. His face was featureless, like the face in Kenton’s picture. He lifted the saber higher, then slashed it down, and the wagon beneath Gunnison’s feet moved.
Suddenly Gunnison was swinging, his breath painfully cut off. Struggling for air, he kicked and flailed, pulled at his bonds, but found himself unable to break them. Through reddening eyes he saw one of the rebels coming to him, a bucket of coal oil in his hand. Liquid splashed on him, then the faceless man approached, his feet for some reason echoing loudly as they pounded the earth, and in his hand was a torch—
Gunnison awoke with a barely stifled shout, his pillow wet with sweat.
They had slept most of the day, exhausted from the harrowing events of the previous night. Gunnison ached from the physical punishment he had endured and felt emotionally drained. The afternoon was waning when the two journalists left their quarters and found a café where they quietly ate. Afterward, they walked through Leadville’s crowded streets together, and for the first time Kenton opened up to Gunnison his wartime past and the background of his interest in Briggs Garrett.
“I knew Mickey Scarborough well in those days,” he said. “We served the Union together, along with Victor Starlin, though not as regular soldiers. Espionage, infiltration, and sabotage beyond enemy lines was our specialty. It was all very secretive, directed through confidential channels, and I suppose that’s most of the reason I have never told you about it. Confidentiality was pounded into us—we were never to reveal what we were doing, or for whom, no matter what the cost. Though we were directed by the government, officially we held no status, nothing to allow us to be traced. We knew that if we were captured, we were on our own, officially disavowed.
“Scarborough, Starlin, and I all had to deal with Briggs Garrett during the war. For Starlin and me, it was only one time, the time Garrett gave me this.” He rubbed the scar on his face. “For Scarborough, there were three encounters; he knew Garrett far better than I did. Garrett left a scar on Scarborough just as he did on me, but a different sort of scar. His voice.”
“So that’s the secret behind that voice of his!” Gunnison exclaimed. He had heard of Scarborough’s publicity device.
“Yes. His voice became like it was because at least once in his wretched life, Briggs Garrett failed to complete a lynching,” Kenton said. “Scarborough’s neck survived the snap, and Garrett was interrupted by the approach of a Union company before he could finish the task. But the noose had damaged Scarborough’s throat. His voice was different.” Kenton smiled faintly. “It was just like Scarborough to turn an injury to his advantage. But the fact is, Scarborough never forgave Garrett for what he did. It gave him a personal reason to see Garrett punished.”
“No wonder he was so startled when he saw, or thought he saw, Garrett in his audience,” Gunnison said.
“Yes, no wonder at all.” Kenton paused somberly before continuing. “Scarborough and I had many different tasks during the war, including a lot of work across the line in Tennessee and down into Georgia, always posing as Confederate soldiers, renegades, or sympathizers. It was dangerous work in a war-divided region, but my Victoria’s death was still fresh to me, and I frankly didn’t care much what happened to me.
“The three of us smuggled counterfeit Confederate currency through Cumberland Gap to help weaken the rebel economy, sabotaged railroads, intercepted telegraph messages, even put on butternut-and-gray and mingled in with Confederate troops to pick up intelligence.” Kenton chuckled. “Scarborough would even perform for rebel troops, posing as a traveling showman loyal to the South. Several times he and I came close to cashing in our chips, but we always pulled through.
“In those days, Garrett was a terror to Unionists on the Tennessee front. Led night riders, burned down farms and homes, murdered, assassinated. The South always officially disavowed him as a renegade, but intelligence showed he had ties to high-ranking leaders—he was, in effect, operating in a way similar to the way we ourselves operated, though he was far more vicious. He was an officially unofficial doer of the dirtiest jobs, the sort that didn’t fit well into standard military practice. Some of that goes on in any war, Alex, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
“Starlin, Scarborough, and I were assigned back in sixty-two to head into East Tennessee and give assistance to a group of Unionist locals who were planning to burn some key bridges and hamper supply routes for Confederate supply and troop trains. The men had burned two on their own already, getting attention from as high up as the Confederate secretary of war. One bridge burner had been captured and hanged already, and the others were in great fear because word had come that Briggs Garrett was vowing to punish all bridge burners. Threats from Garrett were fearful things. He would stop at nothing and seemed unrestrained by any human compassion. We had received fairly reliable reports that he had torched Unionists’ houses, knowing there were women and children inside and providing no opportunity for their escape.
“Starlin, Scarborough, and I joined the bridge burners, managed to destroy four more bridges without losing a man, and then came number five. We didn’t know it, but Garrett was nearby with a small force. Our intelligence had failed us, and we proceeded to destroy the bridge. Garrett caught Scarborough and me. Only Starlin got clear. There was a battle around the burning bridge, two of our men killed. Garrett himself laid open my cheek with his saber, and I put a saber wound diagonally across his chest. There was a lot of confusion. I got a look at his face only for a moment, a poor look at that. If I saw his face today I wouldn’t know it.
“Seven of our force were captured. Garrett executed them right there at the bridge. Hanged them, then doused them with coal oil and set them afire while they hung there. I’ve always hoped that none of them was still alive when Garrett set them all ablaze. God in heaven, a couple of those men were just boys, not even twenty years old.” Kenton paused, looking away a moment or two before continuing. “I had passed out in some brush after taking the saber cut and saw it all after I came to. I had no weapon left; if I had, I would have found a way to rid the world of Garrett right there, no matter what the cost. Scarborough had been wounded and was unconscious through it all, hidden with me.
“Garrett left the bodies there. Examples, I suppose. Scarborough recovered from his wound and after that was determined to bring down Garrett. He never succeeded. A year after the bridge-burner hangings, Garrett got his hands on Scarborough and attempted to hang him, as I’ve told you before. Scarborough survived it, with that damaged voice.
“Garrett disappeared soon after. When the war ended, Scarborough went back to the stage, touring mostly in the West. We kept in touch occasionally, and I saw him while I was in California—he was performing in San Francisco. Then I lost touch…until all this happened.”
“Ironic, in a way,” Gunnison said. “It seems Garrett finally got Scarborough after all, just by showing himself and, well, startling him to death. And there’s his other victim here, the one in the mine shaft.”
“Yes…if in fact it was Garrett who did it, and Garrett who Scarborough saw,” Kenton said.
“What are you saying?”
“That we still don’t have any solid proof it was Garrett who killed the man you and Lundy found, or that it was really Garrett in Scarborough’s audience.”
“You said yourself that Scarborough would be unlikely to make a mistake about something that close to him.”
“I know…but we have to consider every possibility. There might be something else going on here. There are so many questions. Take that corpse you found, for example. If Garrett is really alive, he surely is hiding his identity. Given that, why would he kill someone by his signature method, and then turn around and conceal the body? Garrett’s way of killing was deliberately designed for show—he wanted his victims seen, not hidden. And there’s still the question of why Garrett, if it was Garrett, would bother to haul you out of the shaft and dump you in Stillborn Alley rather than conveniently do you in. The pieces just don’t fit like they should.”
Silence followed, which was partly what made it so startling when gunfire abruptly erupted around the next corner. Shouts and screams followed. The crowded street began to clear. Kenton and Gunnison looked at each other in surprise, then Kenton said, “Lets go.”
They approached the corner, falling in behind a uniformed officer who had just emerged from a saloon ahead of them.