Sathow's Sinners (22 page)

“You're spouting off about the law? Are you still waving around them stolen badges whenever the mood strikes you?”

“This ain't about me,” Nate said. “It's about you and Pescaterro. Dog Ear is already finished. That means it's your turn.”

Holding his arms out, Keyes declared, “I'm just a man doing his job, and this whole town stands to benefit.”

Nate shook his head. “I don't give a damn what you say or what you got cooking around here. I've already seen what you are. Anything after that doesn't matter. You should have been strung up a long time ago.”

“Then by all means—bring me to justice so I can say my piece to a judge.”

Nate stood tall and stared at Keyes until the other man's calm demeanor melted away.

*   *   *

“Got it!” Angelica said proudly. “It wasn't easy, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Turned out it was just a more complicated variance on a pattern used in the other Grunwaldt safe. Part of it was a jumbled version of his maker's mark and another part was—”

“Save it for when I buy you a drink,” Deaugrey said while rushing back to look over her shoulder. “What did you find?”

“More papers,” she said, handing them over so she could turn her attention back to the safe. “They mean anything to you?”

Deaugrey flipped through the folded bundle and quickly read through a few papers. “Why, yes,” he said as he selected a few to take from the bundle before handing the rest back to Angelica. “I believe they do. More importantly, I imagine I know someone who might be interested in knowing what we've discovered. Can you find your way out of here on your own?”

“I don't want to leave you here.”

“You're not leaving me. You're getting the rest of those papers away from this place. Now can you do it or not?”

She nodded and brushed her hand gently against Deaugrey's cheek as she passed him. “I've slipped out of tighter spots than this one. See you soon.”

“Yeah. Hopefully.”

*   *   *

“You think you're gonna walk away from this, Sathow?” Keyes roared. “You don't even know what you stumbled into!”

“You're still breathin',” Nate said. “That's all I need to know. The rest can work itself out.”

Keyes chuckled and looked around to find a half dozen of Anstel's men behind him.

“All of you,” Anstel shouted from the balcony. “Get back in here!”

“One moment, Preston,” Keyes said. “Just about through with this.”

“No, Abraham. Now!”

Nate smirked. “Sounds like you're in trouble again.”

Whether it was the grin or the sly remark that pushed Keyes past his limit would remain a mystery. He bared his teeth like an animal that had been backed into a corner and drew the .44 hanging at his hip.

With no wasted movements, Nate pulled his Remington and fired two quick shots.

Half of the other gunmen behind Keyes stood frozen in their tracks. Two of them reflexively tried to answer the gunshots using their own weapons, but were held in check by a short series of shots fired at the building from across the street. Their eyes went to the storefront opposite the Anstel & Joyner offices to find a single man stepping through the shop's front door. Pete held a Sharps rifle to his shoulder, its barrel still smoking and his finger on the trigger.

“Move away or fight,” Pete said. “Choose right now.”

All of the remaining gunmen made their choice known by moving into the building.

Keyes let out a shaky breath and dropped to one knee. Two crimson stains grew on his shirt, one at his heart and the other a few inches to the right of it. “I . . . already paid for what I did to . . . that marshal.”

“No,” Nate said. “But you're about to.”

The pistol fell from his hand a second before Keyes fell over.

W
hile the covered wagon may have been small, it was the best Frank could find on short notice that was within their means to purchase. Its function was to carry a small amount of supplies or possibly a load of hay which meant it was just right to hold one large outlaw wrapped in several lengths of rope with an old bandanna stuffed into his mouth. Frank had parked the wagon in a livery near the southern edge of town. Frank sat on a stool beside it with a shotgun resting across his lap and a Bible in his hands. When he heard a group of people pulling open the livery's door, he put one down so he could pick up the other.

The door swung open so Nate, Angelica, Pete and Deaugrey could stumble inside. Frank stood up with the shotgun still in his grasp. “How did everything go?” he asked. “What happened with Keyes?”

“I shot him,” Nate declared.

“You left four hours ago! It's almost five o'clock! Where have you been?”

“Celebrating,” Deaugrey replied in a way that sounded more like “shell-a-brating.”

Frank scowled at them, one by one. “Have you been drinking?”

“Yes,” Angelica said in a voice that had barely been touched by the influence of liquor. “Preston Anstel had some of the finest wine I've ever tasted.”

“His whiskey weren't too bad, either,” Deaugrey slurred.

“Someone tell me what happened.”

Nate took a quick look inside the covered wagon to find Pescaterro in there. Compared to the small size of the wagon, Dog Ear seemed even more like a giant than usual. “I called out Keyes and got him to overplay his hand. He thought he had a small posse behind him to back his play. He didn't and now he's dead.”

“And Mr. Anstel, along with all his hired guns, just let you kill him?” Frank asked.

Deaugrey stumbled forward. “He was more than willing to watch . . . to see . . . to let . . .”

“How much did he have to drink?” Frank asked while scowling at Deaugrey.

“At least triple the amount the rest of us did,” Nate replied.

Angelica patted Deaugrey on the shoulder, which was enough to force him to sit down on a pile of straw with his legs stretched in front of him. “I opened that safe and found a stash of papers inside,” she told Frank. “It turns out they were deeds and legal documents for the ownership of the Joplin Mercantile Company.”

“Good Lord,” Frank sighed. “Another company.”

“I never heard of it either,” Nate said. “What matters is that Preston Anstel had heard of it. Joplin Mercantile has been trying to get some of the money being brought in by the railroad expansions, but are third in line behind Anstel's company and Western Cartage.”

“So why would Preston Anstel have an interest in owning a company that's already being beaten by his own?”

“He doesn't,” Angelica told him. “He didn't even know about the papers. Preston didn't even know about the compartment in his safe or that it was a Grunwaldt. Keyes must have switched it out with one of the safes that were already in Anstel's office. Also, it was Keyes who'd signed those papers to gain controlling interest of Joplin Mercantile.”

“I was right about Keyes playing both sides against each other,” Nate explained. “Him and Pescaterro were in with the two leading companies so they could chip away at them both from the inside while keeping them at each other's throats. While Western Cartage was being set up to look like a bunch of heavily armed outlaws willing to burn this place to the ground to spring Dog Ear out of jail, Anstel was going to be exposed as a blackmailer in possession of all the dirt Keyes himself collected. Both companies would either be run out of town by the law or tear each other down, clearing the path for Joplin Mercantile to sweep up the profits once the railroad made their big expansion.”

“And Keyes is the owner of Joplin Mercantile,” Frank said.

“Not anymore. He's dead so it reverts back to Michael Jamieson, the founder of Joplin Mercantile, who was pushed out by a particularly nasty bit of blackmail used by Keyes.”

“Which is all now burnt to cinders after I dug it out of the papers that were hidden in that beautiful safe,” Angelica said.

“What was he being blackmailed with?” Frank asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Don't know. Don't care. My job was just to open the safe.”

“Which she did incredibly
well!
” Nate said as he planted a kiss onto Angelica's lips.

“So Keyes was hiding his documents in Anstel's own safe?” Frank asked.

“Not just any safe,” Angelica told him. “A Grunwaldt. If I hadn't already seen one exactly like it, I might have missed the panels hidden inside that thing. Anyone without a trained eye would have never noticed them. And the only reason I got the second compartment open is because I'm the best you're likely to find who isn't Grunwaldt himself. When it was time for Keyes to finish what he was doing, all he needed to do was go up to that office and get his papers. Until then, Anstel would do all the work of guarding them for him.”

“Not a bad way to go, actually,” Frank admitted. “Hopefully the town law finds this story interesting as well. I doubt we'll be able to avoid meeting up with them before leaving Joplin.”

“Already taken care of,” Pete said. “We scrounged up the sheriff after Keyes went down.”

“Any trouble with the company's hired guns?”

“It's funny how timid men like that get when they see the biggest and baddest of them gunned down right in front of them like a dog in the street. By the time I came back with the law, I believe Anstel was damn close to tears.”

“Quite a sight, really,” Angelica said.

Nate chuckled. “Don't feel too bad for him. He may have lost everything he had, but he was also the one doing his best to force another company out of business through intimidation and blackmail.”

“What about the owner of that other company?” Frank asked. “Western Cartage?”

Deaugrey sat with his back against a wall. “Sam Cavett. He's already in a jail cell after funding last night's fire. Of course, he says he didn't give any order to bust Dog Ear out of jail, but it don't really matter now. He's through in this town and every other.”

“I don't feel bad for any of those businessmen,” Angelica said. “It was quite a sight to see a man as imposing as Preston Anstel get worn down to a nub.”

Frank hooked his thumb back toward the wagon where Pescaterro was stewing in his own juices. “And this one?”

“He's ours for the taking,” Nate said. “After he got a look at everything in those safes and heard what witnesses said about me defending myself against Keyes, the acting sheriff was looking for a way to thank me for doing his job for him.”

“We're the ones that get to drag Dog Ear Pescaterro back to Kansas,” Frank pointed out. “I wouldn't exactly call that a reward.”

“Then you can forsake your cut of the money that's due to us and ask for a nice pat on the back instead.”

Frank waved that off and took the mostly empty bottle of whiskey from Nate's hand. After removing the cork, he sniffed the liquor and nodded in approval. “Rich men do have the best whiskey. Wait a second. This whiskey and that wine were given to you by Preston Anstel?”

“I said they were from Anstel's office,” Deaugrey corrected. “I never said he
gave
them to us.”

“Well then,” Frank declared as he raised the bottle, “here's to finally leaving a town without being chased out of it.”

None of the others were as happy about that as Frank. Finally, Nate said, “We're actually supposed to leave Joplin as soon as we can.”

“You mean . . . in the morning?”

“No. I mean now. The sheriff doesn't want to see any of our faces again.”

“Ain't that what happened after the last job you hired me for?” Pete asked.

Nate didn't have to think very long before saying, “Yep. More or less.”

Raising his bottle even higher, Frank said, “Then here's to consistency.”