The Whipping Boy (45 page)

Leonard held out a hand as if to steady him. “Calm down, Jake. Schoot was killed where he lives, at night. You don't kill teachers or preachers, and he was both. He worked for the Presbyterians for almost twenty years. He was sleeping in his own bed. Tom's a half-breed with no family and no pull in the tribe.”

Jake's face flushed with anger.

Leonard got up and walked over to the window. “I can see I shouldn't have brought this up, but now that I have, let me finish. I'm working my way to the touchy part.”

Jake felt another gorge of anger rising. “What touchy part?”

“The undelivered bribe that Tom brought back. We handed it over to Judge Parker.”

Jake blinked at him.

“You were out of commission. We had to decide what to do. We ended up in Tahlequah the other night—do you remember? You got out of the buggy and fell down in the mud, so you probably don't, but it took every trick this old scoundrel could muster to get the lighthorse to put Ernest in the hoosegow, even though he was a babbling wreck by the time we got there.”

“I remember some of it. Where is he now?”

“He's in jail here. Parker brought him over, but he wouldn't have if Tom and I hadn't given him that delivery packet. Over two thousand dollars in cash and a letter in Ernest's hand bribing a federal judge was a pretty good something to show him. Ernest just might end up being Parker's last case, Jake.”

“How's that?”

“Parker's sick. I didn't notice it the first time, but he's got that look in his eye.”

Jake's brain was working better now, and he didn't like the conclusions he was reaching. “Tom's in trouble. That what you're telling me?”

“This thing could play out a lot of different ways when all the guilty parties start pointing their fingers at everybody else. But Tom wanted to turn over the packet. Day before yesterday, he dumped the money and the letter onto Parker's desk himself. Parker read it. You should have seen him when he read that letter. I thought his white hair would catch on fire.”

“What'd it say?” Jake asked flatly.

“There was a case before Crilley which tested the right of a white holder of improvements on Indian land to alienate mineral rights. That's what it came down to.”

“You mean sell the right to drill for oil?”

Leonard nodded.

“To who?”

“To an oil company headquartered in Pennsylvania. The ‘contribution' to Crilley was for him to come to a favorable decision on that and to remain generally friendly toward Ernest Dekker, and it said so in the letter. It was Tuesday noon when we went to see Parker. That afternoon Dr. Eldon of St. John's Hospital sent over his report describing the upper torso of Miss Samantha King: ‘Severely and mercilessly beaten by a cutting whip,' it read. That did it. You'd have thought that report was being read by half of the town before it was even in Parker's hands. All the gophers started running for their holes.”

“What do you mean?” Jake grumbled.

“Before closing time Tuesday, they started trying to cut their losses at the bank. Chief Teller Bradley was fired by Chairman Shelby White. Yesterday, White put on a great show of outrage in the newspaper. He said that he ‘suspected' the teller to be engaged in a ‘highly speculative scheme that endangered the assets of the bank.' And today—” Leonard brought another newspaper out of his pocket and held it up.

 

WHITE RESIGNS BRADLEY ACCUSES HIM OF BEING IN CHARGE OTHER LOCAL MEN INVOLVED IN LAND SCHEME DAWES COMMISSION LAWYERS MAY BE IMPLICATED

 

Leonard grinned. “All over town they've got out the soap. I've never seen so much hand-washing at one time among the better class of people.”

Jake again hazarded to stand up, and it took a minute to get his sea legs. He started to dress. “Where's Tom now?”

“Probably back to visit Miss King again. He's been watching over both of you. That's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Something's going on between Tom and that woman.”

Jake felt like a hog on ice. His head would only turn slightly, and his right arm didn't want to raise more than shoulder-high. He looked at himself in his glass and decided that with two black eyes, at least he'd better shave.

“He's gone to visit her several times,” Leonard went on. “He comes back here every time looking as if he had the measles.”

“He's in love. Haven't you ever seen that?” Jake stropped his razor on the belt hanging down from the cabinet. He used the bowl of water already there to make up a handful of soap.

Leonard fell into a meditation while Jake wielded his razor. After a while he said, “Do you still believe that Ernest or one of his shooters killed old man Dekker?”

Jake shaved his throat, not answering.

“You know, I have a feeling that may be one of the things on Tom's mind.”

Jake looked at him in the mirror.

Leonard shook his head. “It doesn't quite make sense. Forty thousand dollars or thereabouts gets burned in his fireplace downstairs, but he dies in his bedroom upstairs in a way that either was—or was made to look like—suicide.”

“Burned in his fireplace?” Jake squinted at him through the glass.

“That's right. Tom found the ashes when we were still running around over here worrying about what to do about you. He told Haskell and me on the way to Park Hill. I went over and looked yesterday. He was right.”

Jake continued staring into the mirror for a minute, thinking about Sam's description of going to see Ralph and getting thrown out. She'd said that she had no idea where the money was. “So who did it?”

“I'll answer your question with another question,” Leonard said. “Can you imagine old Ralph burning his life savings?”

“No. But I couldn't imagine him losing the store to his son. And I couldn't imagine Samantha King being his daughter, either.”

After Jake washed his face in the bowl, Leonard added, “Samantha visited him that night.”

“You must have talked to her since we've been back.”

“I went by the hospital yesterday.” Leonard looked puzzled. “She really didn't act as if she was trying to hide anything.”

Jake dried off his face and found a hat. “Want to go visit her again?”

“I have one more thing to tell you. Parker asked me—and Tom—to come to his office this afternoon at two-thirty. I got the message less than an hour ago.”

“Does Tom know?”

“Not yet.”

“And you think he's going to ask whether Tom was involved in this thing at the academy?”

Leonard sighed. “Seems a good possibility.”

“Why didn't he ask him when he gave over the packet?”

“He was too interested in the letter itself.”

Jake finished getting himself together, and the two of them went looking for Tom. The horse lot and stable Jake used was unusual in that there was seldom anyone there tending it, and the people who patronized it occasionally used each other's rigs without asking, so Jake wasn't alarmed at the absence of the mules and wagon. Leonard couldn't saddle a horse with one arm in a sling, so Jake did them both, although certain muscles in his shoulder and neck severely objected.

Belle Grove neighborhood was the fashionable section of town, with two- and three-story Victorian and Baroque houses, but Eldon's lying-in hospital was an older, modest, one-story cottage behind a wrought-iron fence. Jake found the doctor, a friendly, unbusy-acting man, in exactly the same place he'd found him the last time he'd seen him—sitting on the front steps smoking a pipe.

“She scabbed up pretty nice. I think she ducked the lockjaw.”

“Lockjaw?” Jake was alarmed.

“I was watching for it. That whip had steel studs on it. She'll have some scars. She doesn't have her color back yet. I don't know whether she ought to be leaving so early.”

“She left?”

“She and the young man tore out of here a few minutes ago.”

“Did they say where?”

“I believe they headed toward the avenue.”

Jake made it onto his horse in a fury of shoulder pain and galloped toward the avenue. The horse was a good saddler, but Leonard was on a snuffy little plowhorse that didn't like hurrying, and he was going all over the street behind, his injured arm flapping like a helpless wing. He was trying to say something to Jake, but Jake couldn't hear it.

At the avenue, Jake looked both ways. It was busy with wagons and people, but no sign of the mule wagon. Leonard rode up beside him, yelling, “Take it easy! Fall from that horse and your head might just decide it's time to cash in the chips.”

With his horse snorting and whirling around, Jake surveyed every direction and galloped across to the store, and all the way around it, with Leonard following along, scolding him the whole way. Dekker Hardware was silent and abandoned. He rode back to the base of the avenue. There he saw them, on the long bridge to the Indian Nation, just past the midpoint. As he rode up to them, he saw that the wagon was stopped. Sam sat quietly next to Tom, her green eyes wet with tears.

“What's going on? You two going fishing?” Jake said to Tom.

Neither of them was quite able to muster a smile.

“You doing better, Sam?”

Still no answer.

Tom glanced at Jake. “I was going to send you a letter and money for the mules,” he said stiffly.

“I don't care about that. Where're you two going?”

They glanced at each other, as if both of them were confused.

“Just gonna leave without a word?”

Tom stared ahead. Sam looked at Jake sorrowfully.

“Talk to me, for pete's sake!”

Sam finally answered, “I'm not going anywhere, Jake. I'm making a stand here. I'm serious about going into business. Tom says he won't be stopped. He came to the hospital to say goodbye and I couldn't let him go. I rode with him this far. Now we're just talking. He says he has to move on.”

Jake saw how bleak they both were. He leaned on his saddle horn and tried to collect himself. “Okay,” he said, holding up both hands. “I'm not trying to interfere with anybody. All I'm trying to do is find out the deal.” He could see that Tom wanted to talk but couldn't, or didn't know how.

Leonard rode up behind him, puffing and wheezing as badly as the plowhorse he was riding. He took in the situation, threw Jake a look, and rode back twenty yards, out of hearing.

Sam abruptly got down from the wagon and went over and leaned on the railing, and Tom got off but remained by the wagon. Below them the river shone in the midday sun. Jake got down from his horse. Sam's cuts had been dressed with something that smelled like turpentine, and her unpinned hair came down all the way to her elbows. Tom was wearing the buckskin Jake had bought him, along with a wide headband. They were a wild-looking two.

Sam blinked at Jake through tears.

“The doctor doesn't think you—”

“Oh, don't say it. I can't stand another minute of you caring for me.” She put a hand over her eyes. “
Both
of you! All my life, I couldn't find a decent man and suddenly
two
of the bastards show up at once!” She flung her hand disgustedly in the direction of Leonard. “Hell, they're coming out of the woodwork!”

Tom gave Jake another worried glance, and Jake now understood that she hadn't told him everything. Sam looked at Jake and seemed to read his expression.

Jake decided to sit down. He leaned against the bridge railing.

Sam composed herself. She stared out on the silent river for a full minute. It was very quiet out here, and cold, with only one other cart on the bridge, headed toward them from the Indian side. The mules were already half asleep, their nostrils gently steaming. Sam finally spoke. “I thought I wanted to get back the thirty thousand dollars that he owed her. I planned it. But when I went to see him, it all went wrong. I intended just to get the money from him.”

“What happened?”

“He offered me five hundred dollars.” She looked away in shame.

Jake could just see it. The sly old man trying to buy his way out at the cheapest price.

She shook her head. “I hated him when he did that, Jake. I hated him bad.”

“How'd you get him upstairs.”

“I didn't get him upstairs. He got himself upstairs.”

“You shot him, though?”

“I didn't shoot him. Oh, I was ready to. I would have if he hadn't given me the money. That's why he changed his mind and suddenly remembered where it was. It was in his basement. He knew I was dead serious. I made him get his money and stand there and watch while I burned it. I didn't have to kill him. I did something worse. I showed him what he was worth and left him with it.”

“So he did kill himself,” Jake said—a statement rather than a question. He was thinking of the horror the old man must have felt, knowing that this was the daughter he wouldn't claim.
What he was worth
. . .

Jake got up. He gently took Sam's hand. “Sam, it was his doing. He made his own bed.” He gestured at Leonard to come over.

Leonard did so, with one hand on his stomach and a wary look.

“Leonard, I'm asking you to do something that might be a little difficult.”

“Yes?”

“Can you talk Judge Parker out of this thing? Can you convince him that it's unnecessary to talk to Tom?” He looked at him pleadingly.
Come on, Leonard, I know you can
.

Leonard thought aloud: “Well, Tom and I went to Judge Parker twice on our own accounts. We handed him the evidence. And he does know that Tom lost his job. I think it would seem normal enough for a young man out of work to move on . . .” Leonard's uncertain look became a grin, and he glanced at all of them. “They don't call me the man with the golden tongue for nothing.”

Jake walked around the wagon and stood beside Tom. “Son, you go on. Trade those damn mules in and get yourself some decent horses. You got any money?”