CHAPTER 22
Mackey sat in the chair next to the head door of the railcar and watched John, Van Dorn’s butler and cook, fuss over his employer.
He watched John tie a large napkin around Van Dorn’s neck before the wealthy man picked up the spoon to tuck into his soup. Pea soup. The smell and color of it, combined with the movement of the train, all served to turn Mackey’s stomach.
The spoon trembled in Van Dorn’s hand, and he gently set it back down on the desk. He told John to leave them. The butler frowned at Mackey on his way out of the railcar. He knew the frown wasn’t directed at him. It was because of his employer’s condition.
Now that they were alone, Van Dorn finally looked at the marshal. “Do you really need to sit that far away?” His voice was weak. “It’s only the two of us in here. Why don’t you sit closer so we can speak more comfortably?”
“No reason for us to speak at all,” Mackey said. “Mr. Rice wants you protected. I can do that better by guarding this door and having a clear view of the rear door behind you.”
Mr. Van Dorn’s frown deepened. “There’s no reason why this needs to be so unpleasant, Marshal.”
“No reason for it to be pleasant, either” Mackey countered, “especially after what you’ve unleashed on my town.”
“Forgive me,” Van Dorn said. “I suppose you’re right. Success and prosperity are bitter pills for a town to swallow.”
“Nothing wrong with either of those things,” Mackey said. “I’m talking about James Grant.”
“Ah, there it is.” The millionaire smiled, showing teeth that were as yellow and crooked as some Mackey had seen in the mouths of the Hancock family. “The green-eyed monster of myth finally rears its ugly head. Your jealousy of Mr. Grant’s success is beneath you, Marshal.”
“No jealousy,” Mackey told him. “Just resentful as hell about all of the trouble he’s caused since he got here. Resentful of you for letting him do it.”
“I’ve heard this sort of nonsense before.” Van Dorn pulled on his bib until the knot opened and he tossed it on the desk in disgust. He looked out the window at the blur of Montana countryside as the train sped along. “Progress is always difficult, Marshal, especially on the native born of a place. Just ask the savages who sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch. Or ask the Sioux or the Apache about their resentment of our manifest destiny. Given your experiences, I shouldn’t think I would need to remind you about them.”
“Comanche, too,” Mackey added. “But the Sioux call themselves Lakota. ‘Sioux’ is an Algonquin term meaning ‘enemy.’”
“Call them what you will,” Van Dorn said. “I call them history. Recent history perhaps, but history just the same. And it is the winners who write history, Marshal. I’m surprised the Hero of Adobe Flats needs to be reminded of this.”
Mackey had never accepted that term and resented Van Dorn for using it.
The millionaire went on. “The past is an enemy that needs to be conquered if the present is to triumph. America has always been a nation of the future, about that land just beyond the horizon. That next obstacle that needs to be overcome.”
He grabbed his bib from the desk and tried to fold it properly despite his shaking hands. “People like James Grant understand that the past, no matter how quaint and comfortable it may be in our memory, only hinders progress. He is a man who understands that change is inevitable and is willing to do whatever it takes to see to it that said change occurs.”
“By building up a town and ruining it in the process?” Mackey asked.
“Pulling down a few old, ramshackle buildings that were about to fall down anyway is hardly destroying a town, Marshal.”
“But leading bands of criminals looking to feed off what he has built does destroy it,” Mackey said. “No one in town minds progress. My father and his friends didn’t just wander in to the wilderness to start Dover Station on a whim. They knew life would be hard, but the risks were worth it. They don’t resent Mr. Rice or you for making the town better, but they do resent you for giving Grant a free hand to do whatever he wants.”
Van Dorn tucked a withered hand under his chin and looked out the window again. With the natural light hitting his pale skin, his hand looked almost transparent. He had never been a robust man, but Mackey could see his health had failed a great deal since he had first come to Montana.
Or since James Grant came to Dover Station.
That made Mackey think of something. “It could be said James Grant has even ruined you, sir.”
“Rumors,” Van Dorn murmured. “Scandalous innuendo. Rubbish and nothing more. Successful men are always the objects of such rebuke if they dare to rise above the rabble. Look at what happened to you when you returned home from the army. I’ve heard all of the stories about you and the fetching Campbell widow who chased you all the way out here only to find you had married another.”
Van Dorn caught himself and stuck a bony finger in the air as if he had just remembered something. “Forgive me. Unlike your slander against James Grant, the rumors about you were actually true.”
Mackey refused to take the bait. “Every bit as true as the rumors about Grant. You’re either too blind or too busy to see it.”
“Then why haven’t you brought him before a judge?” Van Dorn countered. “Probably because you haven’t the slightest bit of evidence against him, which is why Mr. Grant is free to serve the good people of Dover Station and you are simply a bitter, forgotten young man.”
“Just because I don’t have any proof doesn’t mean Grant is innocent,” Mackey told him. “And any man who has gotten as rich as you have should know that.”
Van Dorn scoffed and went back to looking out the window while his soup continued to get cold. Mackey could not understand how a man’s health could fail so much in only a few months.
Unless it had help.
“When did you start getting sick, Mr. Van Dorn?”
“I don’t see how that is any of your concern.” He looked at his hand, which shook despite his obvious attempt to control it. “I’m just not feeling particularly well at the moment, nothing more.”
But Mackey wouldn’t let it go. “In fact, you haven’t been in good health since you got to Montana, have you?”
Van Dorn kept looking out the window. “I know what this is. You can’t question James Grant in a courtroom, so you’re turning your frustration on me. Well, you can just forget it. I refuse to be interrogated on my own train car.”
But as the pieces began falling into place, Mackey was certain. “I think we’re talking about a matter of life or death, Mr. Van Dorn. Your life and death.”
Van Dorn glared at him from across the room. The man may have appeared weak and gaunt, but he still had a fire burning somewhere within him. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Then answer my question. Did you get sick after you came to Montana or after James Grant came to work for you?”
Van Dorn folded his bony, quaking hands across his stomach. “Damn you, Marshal.”
That was the answer Mackey had been looking for. “It was after, wasn’t it?”
Van Dorn looked out the window again and brought a trembling hand to his mouth.
He was not angry. He was frightened. And he had asked himself these questions already.
Mackey got up out of his chair and began to approach Van Dorn’s desk. “You started feeling sick after Grant came to work for, and you’ve been slowly getting sicker ever since, haven’t you? How bad is it?”
Van Dorn gestured toward the window. “It’s the infernal air out here, I tell you. There’s no character to it. No buildings or people to absorb it and filter it like in a large city. Nothing to keep the impurities of nature from my lungs. Country living has never held much appeal to me, and now I see my constitution is simply ill suited for this climate.”
But Mackey ignored his defense. This was too important. “Did you start getting sick before or after Grant hired your servant?”
“Grant didn’t hire John,” Van Dorn snapped. “I brought him out here from New York after—” He looked back out the window again.
Mackey finished the sentence for him. “After you already started feeling sick. Isn’t that what you were going to say? That’s why you sent for him, isn’t it?”
Van Dorn responded with silence.
Mackey knew the harder he pushed him, the more likely Van Dorn would ignore him. He would have to go at him another way. “I’m only asking questions you’ve already asked yourself, sir. Or should have.”
Van Dorn finally looked at him. “I began feeling much better when John prepared my meals,” Van Dorn admitted. “I had even stopped taking the elixir Mr. Grant had been giving me to improve my health. But when my headaches became so unbearable, I began to feel worse. That elixir proved to be invaluable to me. I don’t think I could have lived out here this long without it.”
Mackey knew there was something more going on here than Van Dorn had allowed himself to believe. “Did you ever have Doc Ridley take a look at you?”
“You would have known if he had,” Van Dorn said. “So would the rest of the town. The man is an insufferable gossip.”
Mackey took that as a no. “Did any other doctors look at you? Maybe one who worked for the railroad?”
“There was no need,” Van Dorn insisted. “I abhor doctors, and my health suffered from the climate. Nothing more. That’s why I’m heading back to Manhattan where I belong.”
“Was going back your idea?” Mackey asked. “Or did James Grant tell you that, too?”
Again, Silas Van Dorn’s silence said it all.
“I believe there’s a doctor on board this train,” Mackey said. “I’m going to bring him back here so he can examine you. We’re going to get to the bottom of what’s wrong with you once and for all.”
“How dare you treat me like a child on my own railroad!” Van Dorn glared up at him with all of the menace a sick man could muster. “You will do no such thing. I forbid it! Get out of my car this instant!”
But Mackey held his ground. “Mr. Rice practically ordered me on this train to keep you alive, Van Dorn. Not just from bullets and bandits, but from everything that might kill you. The doctor is going to examine you right now if I have to hold you down while he does it. And you’re going to answer every one of his questions truthfully or your butler will.”
Van Dorn broke off the glare and looked down at his desk, defeated. “He would, too. He’s been worried.”
“Sounds like he’s had reason.”
Much of the fire that had burned in the wealthy man had gone out. “It’s this damnable climate, I tell you.”
But Mackey knew it was much worse than that.
* * *
Mackey and Lagrange stood up when Van Dorn’s butler, John, and Dr. Eric Goodman from the Great Northwestern Railway stepped out from Mr. Van Dorn’s bedroom and quietly closed the door behind them.
The butler lowered himself into a chair. He looked almost as bad as his employer.
Lagrange asked the doctor, “What did you find out, Eric?”
“I’m afraid it’s not good news,” Dr. Goodman said.
John stifled a sob and buried his face in his hands.
Mackey knew that couldn’t be a good sign. “What is it?”
“His condition hasn’t been caused by the harsh Montana climate, but from a rather nasty addiction to opium.”
“Opium?” Lagrange said. “Are you sure?”
“No,” Dr. Goodman admitted, “but based on what John has told me, combined with the patient’s recollection, I would say that someone was giving Mr. Van Dorn regular doses of opium seemingly without his knowledge. My guess is that it’s most likely laudanum in his daily tea or coffee. It’s normally given to help women with their monthly pains or to babies to quiet colic, but it is also regularly abused by people of all classes of society.”
Mackey was not surprised. He had seen his share of dope fiends in towns that had sprung up in the various posts he had been assigned to in the cavalry. He knew the signs and should have seen them in Van Dorn this morning.
Now he understood why Grant kept Van Dorn locked away in that dingy house for months at a time. He didn’t want anyone to see how much Van Dorn had failed. He didn’t want anyone to see that Van Dorn had lost complete control over his own life.
“He’s hooked, isn’t he?” Mackey asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Dr. Goodman said. “To the point where eliminating it from his system may prove enough of a shock to be fatal.” He looked back at the butler. “I was quite surprised John didn’t bring any laudanum for his employer on this trip. But when I saw the look on his face, I realized—”
“I didn’t know,” the butler sobbed.
“You took care of him every single day,” Lagrange said. “If you didn’t know, it’s because you didn’t want to know.”
“I never would’ve allowed him to use that poison. The man doesn’t even drink spirits and only smokes a pipe on the rarest of occasions. If I had known what Grant was doing to him, I would have put a stop to it immediately.”
“You might’ve tried,” Mackey said. “But its claws were too deep into him then.”
John continued, “Mr. Van Dorn told me his condition was due to a poor response to the elements. Of course, I asked permission to allow Doctor Ridley to examine him, but he said Mr. Grant was handling the matter. I even had the doctor come to the house one afternoon, but Mr. Van Dorn refused to see him. The man was only on the other side of the door and he wouldn’t agree to see him.”
“Mr. Van Dorn mentioned getting headaches,” Dr. Goodman said. “That is a primary symptom of withdrawal, akin to the headache one receives the next morning from imbibing in too much alcohol the night before. The effects can be quite severe, so I can understand why Mr. Van Dorn would want to avoid them at all costs. It’s easier to take whatever elixir James Grant provided rather than face the pain. He may not have realized he was addicted at first, but after a while, the body knows.”
Mackey imagined that was why Van Dorn had stopped arguing. Mackey had hit too close to home. He had uncovered Van Dorn and Grant’s secret. The dirtiest secret of all.
His addiction. The addiction James Grant had given him.
James Grant hadn’t just assumed control of Dover Station when Mr. Van Dorn left town. He had been in control for much longer than that, only now, it was out in the open. And no one could stop him anytime soon.
No one, Mackey knew, except him.
“I don’t care about what’s been done to him before,” the marshal said. “I care about how he is now and how he’ll be for the rest of the trip back.”
“In his present state,” Dr. Goodman explained, “he won’t be in good spirits. He’s already going through massive withdrawal symptoms, which explains his gaunt appearance and involuntary spasms. But I’ve given him a dose of laudanum to help him rest. There are sanitariums he can go to back east to treat his addiction if he chooses. But if he maintains his current course, he will most certainly die by the end of the year. The drug has already robbed him of his appetite, which only serves to make him weaker. For now, the only way to ensure his health is to continue giving him regular doses of the same drug responsible for his ruin.”
Dr. Goodman looked again at John, the butler. “Do you have any idea how he consumed it? Many people inject it into their veins, but I saw no such marks on his person.”
“Mr. Grant must have added it to his afternoon or evening tea,” John said. “It’s the only meal I never prepared for him. And I never saw any bottles in his room or in his pockets like the one you used today.”
Mackey gestured toward the doctor’s medical bag. “Show me.”
Goodman dug out a bottle of laudanum from his bag and handed it to the marshal. “As I said, it has valid medicinal purposes, but only in controlled doses and not for a prolonged period of time. I’m afraid Mr. Van Dorn’s dependency is at a level where he must continue to receive regular doses of laudanum or his body will react violently. Were he in a better physical state, I would be confident he could weather the storm of withdrawal. But given his weakness, I simply don’t think his system could stand the shock.”
Mackey held the brown bottle up to the light. “It’s almost full.”
“I only gave him a small dose,” Goodman said. “Just enough to calm his nerves.”
Mackey made sure the cork was firmly in place before pocketing it. “Good, because we’re going to need to give him a whole lot more of this before the night is through.”