CHAPTER 10
Mackey was glad to be so close to home before dark.
Although he had only been gone a few days, he was eager to get home to Katherine and to see Billy again. Norman’s coffee was good, but it didn’t compare to the fine brew Billy made on the jailhouse stove. And the hay of Arthur’s stall was a poor substitute for Katherine’s bed. Or Katherine herself.
He had Adair pick up her pace a bit as he rode along the main road to town, past the old JT Ranch that sprawled to his left and his right. It had been a thriving ranch when John Tyler had owned the place, but had doubled in size since it had been purchased by the Dover Station Company following the Darabont raid. Now the ranch had more cattle, horses, and men than ever before and, if the articles in the Record could be believed, they looked to grow even bigger in the years ahead.
Mackey was one of the few original residents of the town that did not mind the Dover Station Company’s success. He supported anything that benefited the only place he could truly call home.
But he despised James Grant’s desire to use the town’s ambition to mask his own crimes. He should have resented Silas Van Dorn for allowing it to happen but didn’t. Van Dorn was a New Yorker, a Manhattanite worst of all. He was accustomed to the pleasant comforts of Washington Square, not the harsh realities of Montana living. He barely left his home, preferring to allow James Grant to run his affairs for him. Grant had abused the privilege, but Van Dorn did not seem to notice or mind if he did.
Mr. Rice wanted them both replaced, but it was difficult to find qualified men who wanted the position. Grant and Van Dorn were a profitable pair, and Mr. Rice’s shareholders were reluctant to change simply because Rice didn’t like them. The notion that Grant had been behind several deaths in the territory meant little to them.
Mackey had spent enough time back east to know how they thought. Montana was still just a territory and such lawlessness was to be expected, even encouraged, in such a place. If a few people died in the process, so be it. Better it happen now than when they became a state and the laws actually meant something. Even then, they’d probably shrug at Grant’s deeds as long as the balance sheet was healthy. Mackey doubted even news of Grant’s alliance with the Hancock family would make much of a difference in their opinion of Grant.
Mackey didn’t resent the shareholders, either. They had a duty to make the company as wealthy as possible. He just wished they had more of a conscience while doing it.
Mackey rounded the main road into town that would ultimately become Front Street. The red brick of the Municipal Building dominated the left side of the approach to town while the simplicity of Cemetery Hill stood on the right.
He saw the outlines of the crooked tombstones that poked out from the ground like rotting tree stumps and the budding shrubs that lined the perimeter of the place.
He also saw a solitary man standing at one of the graves. That was odd, because no one ever went to the cemetery so late in the day. People preferred to visit their dead early in the morning or in the afternoon, not as night was about to fall. Mackey wondered what the man was doing up there. He wondered if he might be one of the Hancock men looking to take a shot at him as he rode into town.
But the closer he looked at the man, the more he realized there was something familiar about him. His face was in shadow, but his height and the way he carried himself reminded Mackey of someone he couldn’t place.
As he rode closer to the cemetery, he saw a dappled gray and a packhorse hitched to a tree stump at the side of the road. Both animals looked trail worn and in need of a week’s worth of care at the livery. The rifle boot on the saddle was empty.
Mackey hitched Adair to the rail at the base of the hill, away from the other animals. She was tired after the ride and today’s run-in with the Hancock family. It was best to keep her away from other animals.
He slowly walked up the hill to the cemetery. He chose to leave his Winchester behind. If the man was a simple mourner, he didn’t want to disturb his time with his loved one.
If he was more than that, Mackey figured the Peacemaker would be enough to handle the problem.
He stopped when he crested the hill and got a good look at the man standing beside a grave. It was Sim Halstead’s grave and, for a moment, Mackey wondered if the man might be Sim’s ghost.
He was the exact same size and shape as Mackey’s departed scout and friend. He was tall and thin, his head bowed in prayer, his long hands clasped atop the barrel of his rifle.
Then Mackey began to notice the differences. The tan skin and the wavy black hair. The cheekbones weren’t quite right, and the angle of the nose was not quite as sharp as Sim’s had been.
The mourner looked over at Mackey and appeared to recognize him, too.
“What’s the matter, Uncle Aaron? Don’t you recognize your own godson?”
Mackey knew that face or at least another version of it. It was not a ghost but flesh and blood. It was not Sim Halstead but his oldest son. “Jeremiah?”
Sim Halstead’s oldest boy smiled at his uncle. “Glad you remembered before you shot me.”
Mackey saw that the boy was as tall as him and maybe a good inch taller. He got his height from Sim and his bronze skin from the Mexican woman who had been Sim’s first wife.
He shook hands with the young man and found a firm grip. He hadn’t seen Jeremiah since his mother had died and his father had sent him to a missionary school. It was a better life for him than dragging him around from one fort to another in the Southwest.
“We tried to find you,” Mackey said, “but no one knew where you were. We sent letters to different places, but we never knew if they found you.”
“They found me.” He watched the young man’s eyes well up. “Found me at a good time, too. Found me at a time when I needed a home and figured I might have one here with you and Uncle Billy.” He looked down at the grave. “And my father.”
Tears streaked down Jeremiah’s cheeks, and Mackey quickly embraced him. His good friend’s oldest boy. His godson.
Jeremiah quickly grew embarrassed by his emotions and slowly pulled away. “Knowing he’s gone and actually seeing it are two different things.”
“I know.” Mackey decided to change the subject and take some of the sting out of the moment. “Couldn’t help but see your mounts are worn out. Where’d you ride in from?”
“Does it matter?” Jeremiah asked. “I’m here now, and that’s the point.”
Mackey decided it didn’t matter. Not here at his father’s graveside. And not yet, either. But he’d find out the truth in time and, when he did, he would probably be disappointed. The effects of a man’s deeds tended to hang on him long after he’d done them, and Jeremiah Halstead was no different. Mackey sensed he had seen some trouble in the years since he’d left missionary school, but now was not the time to ask him.
Jeremiah crossed himself after finishing a silent prayer and looked around. “Is Mackey’s Garden around here? Father told me a lot about it in his letters.”
Mackey smiled. “It’s just a section of the cemetery where the town buried paupers. Since most of the people who broke the law were drifters, that’s where they got planted. The town undertaker began planting the people I shot in one section on their own and took to calling it Mackey’s Garden because of all the plantings that took place.”
“Funny how a man can get a reputation just for doing his job.”
Mackey decided to change the subject. “Sounds like you know something about that.”
“I knocked around here and there after I got out of school. Didn’t my father tell you?”
Mackey realized Jeremiah had not seen Sim since Sim had been discharged from the army and came to Dover Station. A lot had happened since then. “Your father stopped talking after your stepmother and brother were killed.”
“He did? He never mentioned it in his letters.”
“Guess his silence was his way of mourning their loss,” Mackey said. “He never offered an explanation, and we never asked for one. We just accepted it for what it was, and that was it.”
Mackey remembered Sim’s last words, but as they were about his second family and not Jeremiah, he saw no reason to tell the young man that part. “We mostly communicated by him writing things down in a notebook he carried with him. Turned out not to be a problem. And your father always had an elegant hand.”
“I enjoyed his letters,” Jeremiah said as they walked around the graveyard. “He told me all about you and Dover Station and the home he had made here. He told me Billy was well. I’ve missed him, too. I’ve missed all of you from the fort, even though I was sent away when I was ten.”
“You weren’t sent away,” Mackey said. “Sim didn’t have any way of taking care of you, and dragging you around from one hellhole to another wouldn’t have been fair to you. Fort Concho? Adobe Flats? Fort Martin? I don’t know how I survived those places, and I was an officer.”
“The best one my dad ever served with,” Jeremiah told him. “Said he liked you because he caught you when you were green and he could rid you of all those damned fool notions about soldiering they put in your head at West Point.” Young Halstead held up his hands. “My father’s words, not mine.”
Mackey laughed. “Your daddy got his bad habits from my father when they served together in the war. But he taught me a lot and saved my life more times than I can count.”
“He knew you were grateful.” Jeremiah stopped talking, and an uneasy silence settled over them. “I’ve heard a lot of rumors about how my father died, Uncle Aaron, but I’d like to hear it from you since you were there.”
“I wasn’t there,” Mackey admitted. “That’s the problem.” He didn’t want to relive the Darabont matter, and he didn’t think Jeremiah needed to hear it. He painted the picture in the broadest strokes possible.
“Your daddy helped us defend the town from a group of men who attacked it. He helped us track down some hostages and lost his life in the process. But he killed the man who killed him, which was exactly the kind of end Sim would’ve wanted.”
Jeremiah seemed to accept it. “Sounds like he died the best way he could.”
Mackey tried to keep his throat from tightening. “That’s about the best anyone could hope for.”
They continued to walk among the crooked tombstones of the cemetery, passing through the area they called Mackey’s Garden without the marshal calling attention to it. He had never liked the name and did not encourage its usage. Or the reputation that came with it.
The wind on Cemetery Hill had grown still, and the echoes of hammering and sawing and shouting from the construction crews building the town’s future filtered up their way.
Mackey figured now would be as good a time as any to confirm a suspicion that had been growing since the first moment he saw Jeremiah. “When did you get out?”
“About a month ago.” Young Halstead frowned. “What gave it away?”
“You avoiding the question every time I asked it.” Mackey shrugged and toed the ground along the path. “Other things, I guess. Do this kind of work long enough, you tend to pick up on what people say and what they don’t say.”
“I suppose so.” Jeremiah looked at him. “Want to know what I was in for?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
Jeremiah looked back at his father’s grave. “Maybe someday I will.”
Mackey hated to ask the next question, but had to ask it. “You do your full stint? I’m only asking because I’m a federal now and if you escaped, there’ll be paper on you.”
“I’m free and clear,” Jeremiah told him. “No need to worry about anyone coming after me, either. I had nowhere else to go when I got out, so I figured I might as well come here. Don’t know how long I’ll stay. But given how you know about me now, I’ll move on in the morning if you want.”
“Haven’t seen your name on any wanted posters, Jeremiah. And I don’t have any warrants with your name on them, either. You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want as far as I’m concerned. Anyone who knew your father will feel the same way.”
Jeremiah kicked at some weeds that had taken root along the pathway. “I appreciate that, Uncle Aaron. I really do.”
“And I’d appreciate it if you’d quit calling me Uncle Aaron. Makes me feel like I ought to be in a rocking chair with a long beard pulling on a pipe. Just plain Aaron is fine with me.”
“Me, too.” Jeremiah grinned. “Makes me feel less like a kid. And as long as we’re settling names, I go by Jerry most of the time these days.”
“Jerry it is, then.” Mackey couldn’t understand why someone with a perfectly solid name like Jeremiah would want to be called Jerry, but it wasn’t his name, and it wasn’t his choice. “If I slip, you’ll remind me.”
“You’ve known me long enough to call me anything you’d like. Aaron.” It sounded like he had tacked on the name at the end as if he was trying it on for size.
“You picked a good time to come here.” Mackey looked around at the town he had left only a few days before. He tried to avoid looking at the gaudy behemoth that was the Municipal Building, but it was impossible to do so from this angle. It was also impossible to ignore that Dover Station was no longer the sleepy Montana town he had grown up in. Everywhere he looked, a new building was either going up or had just been completed. Iron buildings, too, not the cheap wooden structures that had dotted the town of his youth. Mr. Rice and his Dover Station Company had promised to make a permanent investment in the town, and Mackey was glad to see them making good on that promise. “The place has changed a lot, even since your old man was alive. Plenty of work to be had if you want it. Buildings going up all over the place, businesses going in them before the paint’s even dry. Guess you could say we’re a boomtown with no signs of slowing down.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d be able to take me on as a deputy, Aaron.”
Mackey stopped to look at the man. “You sure? With your background?”
“I was a lawman myself when I went to jail,” Jerry told him. “Got arrested for doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Kind of like a young captain I heard of who got drummed out of the army for keeping an Apache prisoner from getting beaten to death.”
Mackey didn’t know Sim had told him about that. “Your daddy wrote a lot in those letters.”
“I was too young to read them at the time, but I went through them when I got older. He lived quite a life. So have you and Billy.”
“It hasn’t been boring,” Mackey admitted. “Especially lately. But I don’t know about if I can take you on as a deputy. I’m not the law here in town anymore. A guy named Walter Underhill is the police chief now.”
“Police chief? Here?” Jerry looked around at the townscape. “Guess the place will grow into needing a real police force soon.”
Mackey nodded to the south, behind the Municipal Building, to where James Grant sought to expand the town even further. He had mapped out parcels along the newly named River Street, despite the fact that the river was little more than a creek at best and only during heavy rains.
“That redbrick building is the Municipal Building where the police and the mayor have their offices. Behind that is where they’re going to be building a sawmill to help the town’s logging trade. It’ll increase the town’s size by a good bit. Plenty of workers and people who feed off them, too. Should—”
Mackey stopped talking when he spotted Billy Sunday and Walter Underhill walking down River Street toward three new houses that had been built there in the past month or so.
And, judging from how Billy was walking, he was hurting.
And he had his hand near the Colt on his hip.
Mackey asked Jeremiah, “You mind if I tend to some business for a while?”
“Sure. Anything wrong? I can help.”
“I’ll be fine.” Mackey began walking down the hill toward his horse. “Why don’t you head over to a place called The Campbell Arms at the end of Front Street. Tell them who you are when you get there. I’ll meet you there when I can.”
“Miss Katherine Campbell,” Jerry called after him. “Dad told me about her.”
Mackey unhitched Adair. For a man who had not spoken for a decade, Sim was mighty chatty with a pen.