A Knife in the Heart. William W. Johnstone
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room, “none. And most of my deputies have wounded or killed few felons. The West is changing. Lawlessness is on the decline. Maybe by the time you boys have been graduated from the Abraham Lincoln Academy, you won’t have need of as many marshals, sheriffs, and constables as we have today.”
“Or prisons,” a boy sang out without raising his hand.
Fallon straightened. “Or prisons,” he said. “Absolutely. Especially prisons.”
He waited. “Any more questions for Marshal Fallon?” the headmaster asked.
Fallon was about to thank the boys for their attention and praise their questions when a small, dark-skinned boy in the left rear corner raised a timid hand. The headmaster appeared not to notice, because he started to tell the class to thank the marshal and show their appreciation by . . .
Fallon cut him off, “Excuse me, sir, but I think we have one more inquiry.” He pointed at the small boy. “Go ahead, son.”
The boy lowered his hand, swallowed, slowly rose, but kept his head down. Fallon noticed Dietrich tensing. The boy’s suit didn’t fit as well as the others’, and his shoes weren’t shined to a shining buff. He looked to be part, maybe all, Mexican, maybe half-Indian or something like that.
“Yes?” Fallon prompted.
“Could you . . . help . . . my Papa?” Fallon barely heard the lad.
He did hear Dietrich. “Carlos!”
Fallon raised his hand. “It’s all right, Mr. Dietrich.” Some of the students began sniggering, but Fallon cleared his throat, and that silenced the entire room.
“He is in prison,” young Carlos said. Tears began rolling down his cheeks. The headmaster started for the boy, and so did the other teacher with a ruler that Fallon knew had smacked many a knuckle. But Fallon cut them off, and moved fast—spend enough time behind prison walls, and you knew how to beat a guard to a spot—and knelt on the floor. “Go on, son,” he said, and looked back to make sure the adults came no closer.
“Which prison?” Fallon asked. “Laramie?”
“Yes,” the boy whispered.
Fallon waited.
The boy wiped his nose and whispered. “His name is Carlos. Like me. Carlos Pablo Diego the Fourth. I am Carlos Pablo Diego the Fifth.”
“All right,” Fallon said. “Tell me about your papa.”
The boy sniffed again. “He has been in the prison for tres years. Three. They said he stole a horse, but, señor marshal, he did not steal a horse. He is a good man. Can you help him, por favor?”
Fallon put both hands on the kid’s shoulder, squeezed them, and said, “I’ll see what I can do, Carlos.” He guided the boy back into the desk, stared at the adults until they moved back to their respective guard towers, and began patting his pockets for a pencil and paper, but all he could find was the envelope with Helen’s check. He sighed.
“Anybody got a pencil?” he asked.
The blond know-it-all at the front quickly jutted a finely sharpened pencil toward Fallon, who took it with a thank-you and wrote the prisoner’s name on the envelope and the words: LARAMIE PRISON. HORSE THIEF. The pencil was returned, and Fallon found his hat.
“Any more questions?” The headmaster’s tone let the boys know that if they asked anything, heads would roll.
After the unison Thank you, Marshal Fallon, and clapping hands, the teachers escorted the boys out of the room to another classroom, and the headmaster came to Fallon.
“I’m sorry about Carlos Diego, Marshal. He’s one of our charity cases.”
“Is he an orphan?”
“No,” Hendricks said. “His mother has four other kids. She washes clothes at the laundry behind the Inter-Ocean Hotel. Cooks breakfast at the café on Thirteenth. Still couldn’t afford to send her son to our school, but we like to do good deeds, and we’ve never had a Mexican in the Academy before. Wanted to give it a try. See if we couldn’t straighten him out before he follows in his papa’s boots. Kid couldn’t speak more than three words of English till we got him here a year ago.”
“I see.” Fallon slipped the envelope into his coat pocket and stared hard at Hendricks, the Methodist with the hard-shell nature of a Baptist, and a headmaster with an iron rule. “He speaks pretty good English now.”
“Yes, well, I happen to head our English department. But believe me, he was a challenge.” Hendricks tried to smile. “Anyway, Marshal, I’m sorry the little boy asked such an improper question for your visit. Besides, well, I’m sure every prisoner in Laramie says he is innocent.”
Fallon placed his hat on his head and waited until Hendricks looked him squarely in the eye. Which did not last as soon as Fallon told him: “Well, Mr. Hendricks, sometimes an innocent man gets put in prison, you know.”
He spit the gall out of his mouth and into the trashcan by the door before seeing himself out of the Abraham Lincoln Academy.
CHAPTER SIX
“Stop here, driver.” Sitting in the back of the surrey, Fallon happened to see the Stockgrowers’ bank as the hack clopped down the stone-paved street, another sign of Cheyenne’s prosperity. There was a time when Fallon prided himself on his memory—a key attribute when you’re a lawman in the Indian Territory, or a prisoner anywhere—but those instincts had faded during his years making speeches and signing his name on countless documents stuck behind a desk.
The driver pulled on the reins to stop the mule.
“I remembered I need to drop something off at the bank,” he explained to the old black man and fished out some coins. “Here you go, sir.”
“Wouldye like me ta wait fer ye, Marshal?”
“No need, my friend. I can walk to the courthouse from here. Thank you, and have a good day.”
The driver looked at the coins, and beamed, “Thank ye kindly, Marshal.”
Fallon stepped down, pulled his hat tight, and saw a man wearing a rain slicker leaning against the column of a saloon, one arm tucked inside the orange-colored material, smoking a cigarette. Fallon looked up. Not a cloud in the sky, but it had sprinkled some last night, and the cowboy did stand in front of a saloon that had not closed its doors, legend had it, for twelve and three-quarter years. Turning to cross the street, he looked back at the cowboy once more, and then waited for a buggy and a farm wagon to pass.
The hitching rail in front of the Stockgrowers was full, and another cowhand worked on the cinch of his Appaloosa gelding at the far right. He wore a linen duster, more common this time of year than a rain slicker. As Fallon started across the street, he saw another man, this one working a pocketknife on his fingernails as he leaned against the wall in the alcove of the bank. He wore a long frock coat, trail-worn from too many years either during the winter or rolled up behind a saddle.
Maybe he was a Texan, because anyone who had spent time in Wyoming wouldn’t consider this cold. Fallon glanced back at the dude in the slicker as his boots clipped on the stones. He studied the rest of the street. It was a slow time of year and a slow time of day. But the bank was doing booming business.
All right, Fallon told himself. The federal and state employees had been paid. Probably some ranchers had paid their cowboys, too. But how many cowboys do you know that save any money? And how many would have an account at the Stockgrowers? A linen duster . . . that made sense? A frock coat or a rain slicker? Those could be used to hide a shotgun. Or a rifle. And even the greenest cowboy didn’t take that long to cinch up a saddle. The man cursed, tried the latigo again.
Drunk. Fallon decided that would explain it. Left his horse at the bank because the rail was full in front of the saloon last night when he rode in. No. No, not if he’s a cowboy. A cowboy wouldn’t walk across