CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Undertaker A. Percival Helton could not believe the fortune he had been reaping. He laughed at his three former competitors in the business who had either died or moved to what they figured would be a more profitable town where men and women were older, thus more likely to bite the dust. Helton had stayed put, and, by thunder, he felt so happy that he had. Those fools—except the poor soul who had died—overlooked three important factors that no profitable undertaker should have—
Matt McCulloch.
Jed Breen.
Sean Keegan.
The bell above the door to his office caused Helton to mutter a high-pitched curse. By thunder, had not he just sent that fool errand boy off to the general store to pick up more nails and the cheapest wood to be had and charge it to Helton’s Undertaker, Coffins, & Funerals? Certainly that kid could not be back yet. He must have forgotten something.
Gosh darn it, Helton thought. He had three coffins to build.
“What is it now?” he squealed.
“You the undertaker?”
He lifted his head. Why, that wasn’t that fool boy. That was a man with a hard Texas accent. Maybe he was bringing in yet another customer. The sun always shown on a businessman who knew his business.
“Be right with you, sir. Have a seat. There are tissues handy if you need to cry, and an illustrated catalog of all our services.”
That might keep the bereaved busy for a few minutes. Helton laid the pliers on the table, pulled the rag out of his back pocket, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Confound it, this shouldn’t be taking so long.
He grabbed the tool again, gripping it tighter, and shoved open the corpse’s mouth. He found the tooth in the back, a big molar, and squeezed the pliers on that beautiful gold filling. He began tugging, twisting, trying his best to loosen the son of a gun. By thunder, there was just no sense in burying a man shot to hell like he was with gold in his mouth. Helton certainly did not expect any grieving family member to look into this gent’s mouth. No one had in all of Helton’s thirty-two years as an bona fide undertaker and mortician.
Helton put his left hand on the dead gunman’s shoulder, using it as a brace. Good, good, excellent. Rigor mortis had set in, so this victim remained stiff as a stone block. Now, if he could just get that danged old beautiful gold tooth to cooperate.
So attuned to his job, Helton failed to hear the tune the spurs with the jingle bobs played as the latest customer walked from the sitting parlor to the workroom, generally off limits to the bereaved family of the deceased. When the man grunted, A. Percival Helton panicked, and the pliers slipped, breaking off the top of an incisor—not that the gent on the table felt a thing.
Helton slipped off his tool, banged into the counter that held all his other accouterments, even knocked over a beacon of his own concoction of embalming fluid. An oath slipped from his mouth. Those ingredients did not come cheap in a remote burg like Purgatory City.
A. Percival Helton gave the big gent with the big mustache and a wicked scar over his left cheek the meanest look he could muster up.
“Beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Undertaker, but I got some boys of mine waitin’ outside and just need to ask you a few questions.”
Helton tried to remember this man was troubled, grieving, and, well, any man still breathing could be a paying customer. Customers paid a whole lot better than the county, and this stiff and the two others waiting to be ready for burial were county pays.
“Yes, of course.” Helton wiped his face. “Let’s go into the parlor and I can show you—”
“Here’s fine.”
The man suddenly didn’t look so upset by the loss of a loved one.
“Well . . .” Something about the gent’s posture told Helton that argument would be futile. He found a pencil and a pad, and said, “Is the person you wish to be taken care of male or female?”
“Male.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Oh, how sad. In the prime of life. I’m so sorry. And your relation to the dearly departed.”
“Cousin.”
“And where are . . . umm . . . your cousin’s . . . remains?”
The man straightened. “I figured you had him already.”
Helton looked up, then at the corpse who had so fiercely refused to give up a gold tooth, a corpse whose front tooth had been busted by Helton’s clumsiness—although he could blame it on this big Texan . . . with . . . a . . . big . . . pistol . . . on . . . his . . . hip.
“Well . . . I have . . . three new . . . um—”
“My cousin’s name is Lovely. Tom Lovely. But folks in this part of the state called him Tom Benteen. My name’s Hank Benteen. Brother Bob and Uncle Zach is waitin’ outside. I’d like to make all the arrangements—burial, tombstone, all that—afore some of your citizens recognize my kinfolk. Cause us to shoot up this dung heap of a town to pieces agin.”
Sweat poured down Helton’s forehead. His teeth clattered.
“Can I see poor Tom?” the killer asked.
“Well . . . you . . . see. . .”
“I see that you’re the undertaker,” Hank Benteen said as he stepped forward and pulled the short-barreled Colt from his holster. “The only one in town.”
Suddenly, A. Percival Helton prayed that that danged fool of a helper would come back through the front door and cause Hank Benteen to murder him so that he, unarmed, never-hurt-anyone-because-they-were-already-dead Percival Helton could escape before he was so foully murdered during the biggest undertaking bonanza of his career.
He dropped to his knees, sobbing, wailing, clasping his hands as though in prayer. He begged, screamed, and pleaded for mercy.
“Where’s my cousin, you snivelin’ pig?”
“He’s not here!”
“He’s dead. I gotta figure you boys hung him.”
“Yes, yes, they hanged him—I didn’t—I detest hangings, beheadings, all forms of execution. I detest prisons. No one should be incarcerated. I—”
“Where is he?”
“They . . . he . . . he . . . well. . .”
“Where?”
“Sean Keegan burned him, Mr. Benteen. He said it was a Viking funeral.” Helton fell onto the floor, curled in a fetal position, and continued to sob. “He hanged him. Keegan. The . . . Irishman . . . hanged him . . . and then . . . that’s why part of the courthouse is in ashes . . . he burned . . . burned the . . . whole gallows . . . with your . . . brother . . . still swinging from . . . the . . . gallows.”
“He was my cousin. Not my brother. But cousins is as thick as brothers when you’re a Benteen. You say . . . Keegan?”
“Sean Keegan. Oh, what a disgrace to the good name of Purgatory City.”
“Horse apples. Piss on your damned city.”
“Well . . . Keegan . . . you know . . . one of the so-called jackals our late newspaper editor and publisher called him. Sean Keegan. Used to wear the uniform of the United States Army.”
“And where might I find Keegan now?”
“He rode out. With Matt McCulloch.”
“The Texas Ranger?”
“Used to be. No more. Not in more than a year or so. They’re taking horses . . . mustangs . . . somewhere. Keegan joined McCulloch, some Indian and . . . the third jackal. B-b-b-Breen.”
“Breen. That miserable bounty-huntin’ swine.”
“Yes. They left earlier today.”
Helton felt relieved when he heard the hammer fall safely on the Colt, and then the revolver slide into the holster.
“All right. So it’s Keegan I want. Now . . . where are my brother’s remains?”
“Your . . . cousin’s . . . you mean—”
“I mean nothing. I tol’ you that Benteens are all brothers, cousins or not. He went by the name Tom Benteen, didn’t he, damn you?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. Benteen.”
“So where is he?”
“Well . . . he was burned.”
“There’s ashes then. Ashes that need buryin’.”
Percival Helton soiled his britches.
Hank Benteen squatted beside him, jerked the undertaker halfway up, and slammed him against the counter.
“You just left him there, didn’t you? You pipsqueak. You left him with the ashes of the gallows and even the damned rope they hung my cousin with.”
“Brother. Your bro—”
Hank Benteen slapped the cowardly undertaker savagely.
“You left him outside. All night. All day.”
“Yes . . . sir . . . but . . .”
Helton heard the spurs singing as Benteen rose then squatted back down. Opening his eyes, Helton saw the beaker in the killer’s right hand.
Benteen’s left hand grabbed Helton’s shirtfront and slammed him harder.
“Drink your juice, undertaker.”
“P-please. That’s got—”
Helton tried to remember the ingredients. Mercury. Arsenic. Some wax that would harden. And blue ink. A few other ingredients, but the first two were the ones that would kill him.
“No . . .” He choked, then felt the fluid entering his throat. He tried to spit it out, but Hank Benteen released his hold and slammed a fist into his stomach, causing Helton to spit out some embalming fluid before he had to suck in a deep breath. That caused him to suck down a lot of his own invention, his own concoction. He swallowed. Then without thinking had a second helping.
Over his gagging, convulsing, and spitting out blood, A. Percival Helton heard the spurs chiming as Hank Benteen walked away. He even heard the bell ring as the front door opened and closed.
He tried to spit out the fluid, but just spit out more blood. It just wasn’t right, he thought. Not with business so good. But at leas—he started to relax—he could see the silver lining. His teeth were perfect. Whoever worked on him would not have any gold fillings to dig out of his mouth.