Chapter 15
The Kid spent the next two weeks in Copperhead Springs while Riley Cumberland got back on his feet. The county sheriff, who was as upset about the whole situation as Constance had predicted, assigned a deputy full-time to the settlement while Cumberland was recuperating, but The Kid wanted to keep an eye on things himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the sheriff, but the man was obviously skeptical of some of the claims made against Harlan Levesy.
The arrival of a special investigator from the state capital, prompted by a wire to the governor from Claudius Turnbuckle, went a long way toward settling things down. The Browning financial interests held stock in the railroad, a number of banks, and a couple meat packing plants, and The Kid didn’t feel the least bit guilty about wielding that influence when it was necessary.
The investigator talked to just about everyone in town. When he was finished, he let the sheriff know his report to the governor would state it was his opinion the citizens of Copperhead Springs had acted in self-defense and had been perfectly justified in taking action against Harlan Levesy. It was hard to argue with that.
The Kid also sent a wire to Tate’s daughter Bertha Edwards in Wichita. He wanted to let her know where her father was and that he was alive and well.
The woman’s response was a curt, perfunctory thank you, which caused The Kid to frown slightly as he read it. He knew it was almost impossible to tell what someone was feeling from words printed on a telegraph flimsy, but he’d expected a more excited and relieved response from her.
As for the former marshal himself, true to Doc Franklin’s prediction, he was up and around in a couple days after suffering that minor wound. He split his time between the Trailblazer and the marshal’s office. Constance had given him a room on the saloon’s second floor for sleeping, and she or one of her bartenders kept an eye on him all the time he wasn’t with The Kid. The arrangement worked out well. Tate didn’t have a chance to go wandering off again.
While they were all in the saloon one evening, The Kid broached the idea of taking Tate back to his daughter’s home in Wichita.
“Wichita?” Tate repeated with a frown. “Why would I want to go to Wichita?”
“Because that’s where you live, Jared,” Constance said.
Tate shook his head. “No, I live here in Copperhead Springs,” he insisted. “I’m the marshal here.”
“We’ve talked about this before,” Constance said with a visible effort to remain patient. “You’re not the marshal here anymore. You live in Wichita with your daughter.”
“Bertha? Why, she’s just a little girl.”
Constance sighed. “You’ve just got to trust me, honey. It’ll be better for everybody if you let The Kid here take you home.”
Tate got a stubborn look on his face. Most of the time he was friendly and willing to go along with whatever people said, but when he was challenged too much, he dug in his heels and wouldn’t budge.
“We’ll talk about it later, Marshal.” The Kid had seen the look before and knew it wouldn’t do any good to continue the discussion. In half an hour, Tate would have no memory of it, and might be in a more receptive mood.
Still in a huff, Tate got up and went over to the bar to talk to one of the bartenders. The Kid and Constance watched him go. She sighed again.
“This is liable to turn into a problem,” The Kid said. “I can’t very well hogtie him, put him on a horse, and take him back to Wichita against his will.”
“I know. Even though that would be the best thing for him.” Constance shook her head. “Going home, I mean. Not the hogtying part.”
The Kid took a sip of beer from the mug in front of him. “You know, I’ve been wondering. It’s pretty obvious you and the marshal were, well, more than just friends. But I haven’t heard anything about him being married, and that daughter of his had to come from somewhere. You’re not . . . ?”
“Bertha’s mama?” Constance stared across the table at him and then snorted. “Good Lord, no.”
“Well, then?”
“You’re asking me to dredge up a lot of ancient history and gossip about it, Kid. Funny, you didn’t strike me as the type.”
“Indulge me,” The Kid said with a shrug. “Maybe it’ll help me figure out a way to talk Jared into going back to Wichita without giving trouble about it.”
“All right, all right. But I think you really just want to hear the juicy parts.”
The Kid chuckled.
“Jared was married when he came here to Copperhead Springs to take the job as marshal. Brought a wife and a little girl with him. The wife’s name was Priscilla, and although I hate to speak ill of the dead, the name suited her. She was a little priss, sure enough.”
“So the marshal’s a widower?”
“I’ll get to that,” Constance said. “You’re the one who insisted on hearing this story, so just shut up and let me tell it my own way.”
The Kid smiled and lifted his beer mug in a signal for her to go on.
“I can’t even rightly blame Priscilla for being the way she was. Jared had dragged her all over the Great Plains, from one little cow town to another, while he was working as a lawman. Almost any woman was going to get tired of living like that.”
“You probably wouldn’t have,” The Kid said, thinking of the way she had wielded that shotgun during the battle.
Constance snorted again. “I said almost any woman. I never claimed to fit in with the rest of the herd. Anyway, almost as soon as they got here, you could tell there was trouble between ’em, but I never heard Jared say a bad word about Priscilla. The same wasn’t true the other way around. And the girl . . . well, she was in a bad spot, I guess, and eventually she had to pick a side. She picked her mama.”
The Kid nodded slowly. “I guess in a situation like that it’s not surprising Jared turned to somebody else for a little comfort.”
Constance’s eyes suddenly burned with anger as she slapped a hand down on the table so sharply it made the other people in the room look around. She leaned forward and said fiercely, “Don’t you ever say that again . . . or even think it. Jared Tate was my friend, yes, but he never laid a hand on me, never said anything the least bit improper, while his wife was still alive. He’d have staked himself to an anthill before he’d do something like that.”
“Sorry,” The Kid murmured. “I just figured—”
“Well, don’t. Jared’s an honorable man. Always has been and always will be, no matter . . . no matter what else has been taken away from him.”
The other people in the saloon had gone back to their drinking and gambling. The Kid let silence hang between him and Constance for a moment, then said, “I guess something must have happened to Mrs. Tate. Did she get sick?”
“Something happened, all right,” Constance said grimly. “Brick Cantrell came to town.”
The Kid’s eyebrows rose. “Cantrell? The army deserter and outlaw the marshal captured?”
“That’s right. You’ve heard about how Cantrell’s bunch raided Copperhead Springs. What I didn’t tell you was Priscilla Tate was hit by one of the bullets flying around during the fight.”
“So when Jared led the posse after Cantrell, he was avenging his wife, too.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t know it at the time. He knew she was hurt, but she was still alive when he rode out after Cantrell.” Constance sighed. “Some folks thought badly of him for that, I reckon, but for Jared it was just a matter of having a job to do. Besides, he didn’t know she wasn’t going to pull through. She took a turn for the worse after he left with the posse.”
Constance paused and looked down at the table as if gathering her thoughts . . . or her will to go on. “Priscilla was out of her head from the fever a lot of the time. I sat with her quite a bit. Wasn’t much anybody could do for her once the poison started spreading through her body except keep her cool and hope she could fight it off. She raved about how it was all Jared’s fault. She said some other things, too—”
Again Constance had to stop, and when she went on, she was looking at The Kid solemnly. “I swear, if you ever breathe a word of this to Jared or to anybody else, I’ll hunt you down and make you sorry you were ever born, Kid. I mean it. Especially don’t tell Jared.”
“Not a word,” The Kid promised. “Swear to God.”
“He won’t be able to spare you from my wrath if you go to blabbing.” She breathed out another sigh. “Anyway, while Priscilla was out of her head, she said some things that made me wonder if, well, if Jared was really Bertha’s daddy. Nothing I could be sure about, mind you. You can never really be sure about the ravings of somebody who’s dying like that. But she said enough to make me wonder.
“It didn’t really change anything, of course. Jared didn’t know. He loved the girl like she was his own, and hell, maybe she is. I was the only one who knew, and I wasn’t going to say anything. Priscilla’s fever finally broke, there at the last, but it was too late. She was too weak, and she slipped away. By the time Jared got back with Cantrell, she was already buried. Despite all the trouble between them, I think he nearly broke, then. But he still had his duty. He delivered Cantrell to Fort Hays himself.”
“He remembers that. I’ve heard him talking about it. But he never said anything to me about his wife dying about the same time.”
“Maybe there are some memories where it’s a blessing to have them drift away from you,” Constance said. “That’s why I don’t want you bringing up any of this with Jared. No point in stirring up a lot of old pain.”
The Kid sipped his beer and nodded. “You’re right about that.”
“After all that,” Constance continued, “after a year or so had passed . . . well, like I said, Jared and I had always been friendly. That was when he turned to me for a little comfort, as you put it, Kid, but to tell the truth, I reckon he was comforting me as much as I was comforting him. You might not guess it to look at me, but it’s never been easy being the big, brassy saloonkeeper. In the minds of a lot of people I’m not much better than a whore. Maybe what I did with Jared just confirmed that, but it never felt that way to me.”
“I’m sure it never did to him, either.”
Her voice took on a brisk, more businesslike tone. “Jared started sending Bertha back to Wichita during the summers to visit with some of Priscilla’s relatives. During one of those trips, when she was almost grown, she met a boy, and when she went back the next summer he was waiting for her with a ring. They settled down there. He’s a clerk in some lawyer’s office. Jared stayed on here. He told me he’d decided Copperhead Springs was the last place he was going to wear a lawman’s badge.” She sighed. “He was right about that. A few more years went by and it started getting obvious he wasn’t quite the man he used to be. It was a while before any of us realized how bad it had really gotten. It wasn’t until he ran out in the street and started shooting one day, yelling that the Cantrell gang was attacking.”
“And there were no outlaws,” The Kid guessed.
“Not a one,” Constance replied with a shake of her head. “Jared had taken on Riley Cumberland as a deputy, sort of as a favor to Bert since the two of them were friends and Riley was a pretty shiftless kid. Bert was afraid he might go off and become an outlaw if he didn’t have something to keep him on the straight and narrow. Once we got Jared calmed down after that little shooting spree—and nobody was hurt, thank God—the town council got together and asked Riley to take over as marshal. Plenty people doubted the kind of job he’d do, but give him credit, he’s been a good lawman for us.”
“Other than knuckling under to Harlan Levesy.”
Constance grimaced. “He was in a bad spot. One man couldn’t do anything against all those gunnies.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at The Kid. “Although you sort of did, didn’t you?”
“I had a lot of help. The rest of the town deserves more credit than I do.”
“Most of them would still be cowering in their beds every time the Broken Spoke hands came around, if not for you,” she said bluntly. “They never would have backed Riley’s play like that, and he knew it. He tried to keep it the best way he could so the fewest people got hurt.”
“That’s about all he could do,” The Kid agreed. “How’d you talk Jared into going to live with his daughter in Wichita?”
“It wasn’t easy, I can tell you that. I wound up having to take him myself. I’d do it again, but I’m too old for a trip like that. Besides, I don’t know if I could stand it again. That’s why . . .”
“That’s why you asked me to do it,” The Kid said.
“Yeah. If that makes me a bad person—”
“It doesn’t.”
Constance placed her hands flat on the table. “Well, that’s the story. Good enough gossip for you?”
“More like tragedy in some respects,” The Kid said.
“Life usually is.” She nodded toward the bar. “Here he comes.”
Jared ambled back over to the table carrying a mug of beer. He sat down next to Constance. “What have you two been talking about?”
She smiled at him. “I was just telling The Kid about how I got a letter from Bertha saying she sure would like for you to come for a visit, Jared.”
“Bertha,” Tate mused. For a second The Kid thought he didn’t even remember the name, but then he went on. “It has been a long time since I’ve seen her and Tim. I really ought to pay them a visit.”