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  And that was probably the first time Fallon ever thought, and certainly the first time he ever said in public: “Only my friends call me Hank.”

  The examination resumed. Fallon had forgotten most of the sparring and the way Chris Ehrlander twisted Fallon’s statements around, wrung them, strung them, repeated them, rephrased them, and pretty much twisted everything around until Fallon himself had little idea what the jury must have been hearing.

  Even the district attorney appeared more than just a little frustrated and confused when he sprang out of his seat to try a redirect.

  Well, it didn’t surprise Fallon, or the prosecutor, and certainly not Judge Parker when the jury, after deliberating maybe six or seven minutes, came back into the courtroom and issued a verdict of not guilty.

  What did surprise Fallon was that evening, when Chris Ehrlander showed up, smiled, and bought Fallon a draft beer. Fallon and a few other lawmen had gathered at the Cherokee Saloon to drink a beer or two and raise a ruckus about the injustice of having so many pettifogging lawyers earning a living in Fort Smith at the expense of federal lawmen who risked their lives . . . for nothing.

  “No offense, Hank . . . I mean . . . Deputy Fallon.” Ehrlander slid the mug toward Fallon. The other deputy marshals at the table stared. Fallon figured a couple of them had put their hands on the butts of their revolvers and were considering the wisdom of shooting this particular pettifogging lawyer dead.

  “Good business for you,” Fallon said. He stared at the drink.

  The lawyer sipped his whiskey and looked over the thick tumbler.

  “My client is not a wealthy man. It wasn’t that profitable for me.”

  “It will be.”

  The attorney cocked his head. He grinned a little, curious, and asked, “How so?”

  Fallon shrugged. “When I arrest him again for running whiskey in the Nations. He’ll have to pay you again.”

  “And again,” said Deke Benson.

  “And again,” said Bob Thornton.

  “An’ again,” said Bass Reeves.

  Ehrlander sipped. “You boys might be onto something.”

  “Unless we just shoot the man dead,” Deke Benson said.

  “Then you might find yourself in need of my services.”

  The lawmen drank in silence. Reeves was the first to leave. Benson and Thornton followed him after they’d downed their drinks, leaving Fallon alone with the grinning lawyer.

  “Well,” Ehrlander said after an uncomfortable silence. “Again. It wasn’t personal. Just my job. You have my genuine respect for what you do. I just get paid to represent my clients to the best of my ability.”

  Fallon stared at his drink, didn’t say anything, and sat there a long time after the attorney had pushed his way through the batwing doors and hailed a hack to carry him home.

  “You all right, Hank?”

  Looking up, surprised at the new voice, Fallon found the prosecuting attorney standing to his right. He was on his fifth or sixth rye whiskey by that time, and he had trouble standing up, so Fallon nodded at one of the vacant chairs.

  The solicitor sank into the chair, spilled a finger of rye over his unbuttoned vest, wiped it off with his necktie, and shook his head. “He’s one cocksure feller.”

  “No argument from me,” Fallon said.

  “And you know what really makes me hot underneath the collar?”

  Fallon finished his beer, wondering if it was proper for him to be drinking the beer Chris Ehrlander had bought for him. He did not answer the solicitor, knowing that the lawyer, himself a pettifogging attorney who had come to Fort Smith to make his fortune, would answer no matter how Fallon responded.

  “It’s this: If I got myself arrested, if I needed a lawyer in this town, that’s the jackal I’d want to defend me. And I’d pay him anything he asked.”

  It was also Chris Ehrlander that Judge Parker recommended to Fallon when the judge had told Fallon that he might want to start studying law himself, that he had all it took to be a good lawyer.

  “Like Ehrlander?” Fallon had said with disgust.

  “No. You’d never be the lawyer Chris is. But you’d be a fine one, son—especially if you learned from Chris Ehrlander.”

  So Fallon had. He had spent evenings reading Blackstone with the young man. They had spent a few evenings with Fallon’s family. In front of Rachel and Renee, Chris Ehrlander was as polite and kind as Judge Parker when the judge wasn’t sitting on the bench. He was charming. He made both Rachel and Renee laugh, and sometimes, he left a smile planted on Fallon’s face.

  Ehrlander always looked after Rachel and Renee when Fallon was riding across Indian Territory, for weeks, sometimes months. Fallon’s wife always had a nice story to say about the lawyer whenever Fallon was back home, and the damnedest thing about all of that was how Fallon never felt jealous. Sometimes he even found himself thinking how nice it was to have a friend like that quick-witted lawyer.

  So when the walls came tumbling down on Harry Fallon, when he found himself sent into that dungeon of a jail at Fort Smith, awaiting to be tried for a crime he did not commit, Chris Ehrlander was back in Fallon’s corner.

  The way it seemed—all these years later—how Fallon remembered it, anyway, was that Ehrlander had done his best. But the evidence seemed to stack up against Fallon. The witnesses said that Harry Fallon sure looked like the man they had seen. He rode a horse like the one Fallon rode. The weapons he used were like those Fallon was known to carry. And the wallet he had dropped had Fallon’s initials engraved into the leather. Even Fallon had to admit on the stand that was his wallet, but he swore he had lost it . . . sometime. He couldn’t recall when. He had it. Then, out in the Nations, he realized that he no longer had it.

  To which Chris Ehrlander ranted and raved and said how everything that pointed to Harry Fallon’s guilt was purely circumstantial. He urged the jury to acquit.

  They didn’t. Parker threw the book at Fallon.

  Chris Ehrlander swore to Fallon that he would right this injustice, that Fallon would be freed. That Ehrlander would work until Fallon was free and back with his wife and daughter.

  That stopped, though, as far as Fallon figured, when Ehrlander sent him the telegraph that said Rachel and Renee were . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Dead,” Fallon said aloud in the darkened cesspool of a bunkhouse.

  Dead. His wife and daughter were dead, and the man who had sworn to protect them, the lawyer who said he would never stop fighting for Fallon . . . here he was. Fighting for a plantation owner and cold-blooded killer. Fighting for a man with pockets much deeper than a dozen deputy marshals.

  It all made sense now to Fallon. Chris Ehrlander could easily have slipped Fallon’s wallet out of his coat pocket. Ehrlander’s closing arguments and his cross-examinations, now that Fallon thought more clearly, didn’t have that same savage attack as the attorney had used in other cases that Fallon had witnessed. And Ehrlander had always had this strange look in his eyes when he stared at Fallon’s wife.

  Fallon had just been too blinded by the man’s charm and his ability with words, to see it all back then.

  A lifetime in Joliet made a man see a whole lot differently, though, and Fallon saw Ehrlander for what he was.

  “Snake in the grass,” Fallon said with contempt. “I’m going to kill that cottonmouth snake.”

  * * *

  He didn’t remember sleeping, but knew he must have dozed for the clanging of the bell and pounding on the door caused him to open his eyes. His fists were clenched tightly, and he wondered if he had slept that way. Fallon swung his legs off the bunk as the guards opened the door and began yelling that daylight was being wasted—although the only light shining came from the torches and lanterns the men held.

  The shoes slipped back on, he found his hat and slipped his right hand into the pocket of his trousers, feeling the reassuring handle of the knife he had stolen yesterday.

  “C’mon,” a guard shouted to
the lollygaggers behind Fallon. “Get movin’ or I’ll ship your arses back to Huntsville.”

  A deal, Fallon thought, that most of the inmates would be glad to take. The Walls were tougher than hell, but this plantation was hell, pure hell, maybe even worse than hell.

  Dawn had broken by the time they had finished the meager breakfast of hominy, hardtack, and coffee, and gotten the wagons harnessed and tools loaded for another day of misery in Justice’s cane fields. Fallon stared at the whitewashed stone and wooden mansion that Justice called home. The buggy was gone. Fallon did not see the Colonel, but it likely was far too early in the morning for a man like Justice to be rising from bed. And Chris Ehrlander? Fallon figured he had driven back to . . . Natchitoches? Shreveport? Baton Rouge? New Orleans?

  That information would have to wait. Fallon climbed into the back of the nearest wagon, made room for other hands, and before long they were on their way back to backbreaking labor.

  “Work hard, boys!” the sergeant yelled at them as they moved into the fields. “Get as much done before the sun gets too hot. That’s the way to cut cane.”

  No one listened to the guard, of course. Why should they? Maybe if they were working for themselves, maybe if they got paid a decent wage and were fed something fit to eat, they would work fast before the sun got too high, the temperature began to burn like a blast furnace, and the humidity thickened into a wet, stinking wall. But what was the point in working like an ant in the brief coolness when the guards would keep them in the fields through noon, the worst of the afternoon, and not bring them back to the stinking bunkhouse until after the sun was down?

  He had a new supervisor this morning, but that suited Fallon well enough. The man’s name was something French-sounding, but everyone called him Eyeballs because his spectacles were so big, his gray eyes appeared to be bulging out of their sockets. He also spoke in such a thick Cajun accent, few people could understand what he was saying. But that meant few people ever talked to him, asked him any questions, and from the brief time Fallon had seen him, he didn’t like to talk to anyone, either. Fallon had heard that Eyeballs had eighteen months left to do on a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for some kind of disagreement at a livery stable in Marshall. If the stories were right, Eyeballs owned at least part of the livery, or he had worked there for a long time.

  At the first break, Fallon saw Eyeballs’s eyes appear to be straining underneath the lenses as Fallon rolled a cigarette. He looked up, as though noticing Eyeballs for the first time, shrugged, and handed him the smoke. That had been Fallon’s plan all along, for all those years in Joliet had taught him the power of tobacco. When the big man was smoking, smiling, and leaning back with a contented look, Fallon tossed him the rest of the Bull Durham and the papers as well.

  Eyeballs sat up straighter, and Fallon shrugged. “There’s not much left anyway. And smoking just makes this kiln even hotter.”

  Eyeballs grabbed the makings, stuck them in his knapsack, and said something that sounded like Smoking-cools-you-off, but Fallon couldn’t be certain of the translation.

  On the second break, after Fallon had deposited a few armfuls of cut cane, he wiped his face and neck with his bandanna, which he had to wring out, and waited until Eyeballs had finished rolling another smoke.

  “Careful,” Fallon said, and winked. “Like I said. There ain’t much tobacco left.”

  “Don’t-use-much-flakes-in-my-smokes-you-see-so-I-get-more-out-of-a-sack-than-most-folks-do-so-you-don’t-need-to-worry-about-me-do-you-want-one-I-can-roll-for-you-it-be-good-tobacco-not-Injun-stuff-I-usually-have-to-smoke-and-the-papers-mmmmmm-good-tasting-to-me-not-like-the-corn-husks-I-usually-have-to-use-myself.”

  Fallon had to run that through his mind three or four times before he thought he understood most of what the Cajun had said.

  “Keep it,” Fallon said. “You use all the tobacco for yourself. It’s too hot to smoke.”

  Eyeballs said something else. Fallon nodded. “I know. It’s never too hot for you to smoke but it is for me.” At least, he thought that was what Eyeballs had been saying.

  Fallon removed his hat, fanned himself, and decided to take a chance. Maybe nobody talked to Eyeballs because they couldn’t understand what all he was saying. Maybe Eyeballs was taciturn because no one talked to him. Perhaps he liked to talk.

  “Did you see that buggy yesterday? The one in front of the Colonel’s house?”

  Eyeballs scowled.

  “Fancy rig,” Fallon said.

  The Cajun removed the cigarette, blew out of his nostrils, and pointed a tobacco-stained finger at Fallon. He said something. Fallon tilted his head and wet his lips. Eyeballs repeated what he had said, a little slower, but still too hard for Fallon to make it out.

  “No-steal-no-wagon.”

  Now Fallon smiled as his head shook. “Eyeballs, I’m not out to steal that buggy. I’m not looking to escape. Try that, they’ll add to my sentence. I want to be the perfect prisoner.”

  The man’s big head shook.

  “You-come-here-it-be-no-time-before-you-escape-or-you-die-that-is-how-things-go-at-Colonel-Justice-farm-you-bet-and-I-know-it-always-happens-you-see-I-know-you-see.”

  Fallon rubbed his shoulders.

  “Nice-buggy-though.”

  That much Fallon could translate. “That’s what I thought. But I guess Colonel Justice can afford one that pricey.”

  “No-no-that-isn’t-buggy-for-the-colonel-it-belong-to-his-secretary-his-partner.”

  Fallon apologized, but asked Eyeballs to repeat what he had just said. The Cajun obliged Fallon, spoke slower, tried to enunciate the words individually, and though that made it harder for Fallon to understand, he thought he got enough of it.

  “His partner? I thought Justice owned all of this himself.”

  “He-does-he-does-not-partner-on-farm-but-in-town.”

  The guards were looking over from their seats in the shade. Fallon knew he’d have to get back to work, and he drank a ladle of hot water, nodded at Eyeballs, and returned to the cane.

  At his midday break, he wasted no time.

  “So that was Justice’s partner’s buggy?”

  It took a while before Eyeballs remembered the earlier conversation. This time, his head just bobbed an affirmative.

  “Well, Justice has good taste in buggies.”

  “Not-Justice-buggy-no-I-tell-you-it-belongs-to-his-partner-his-secreatary-his-attorney-and-it-not-that-fine-a-buggy-at-all-not-really-I-had-many-better-that-I-rent-out-in-Marshall-before-all-this-trouble-that-buggy-it-be-nice-but-you-can-buy-one-for-eighty-ninety-dollars-the-one-I-rent-in-Marshall-it-cost-me-one-hundred-and-seventy-five-dollars-Grade-A-buggy-Got-from-Columbus-Ohio-rent-to-new-brides-new-grooms-congressmen-governor-senator-railroad-presidents-big-deal-big-money.”

  “I see.” Fallon saw. He just wasn’t sure if he heard everything.

  He filled the ladle and handed it to Eyeballs, who took it, drank greedily, and wiped his mouth. Talking that fast, and that harshly, had to work up a man’s thirst.

  “Well, who owns that buggy, then?”

  “Big-lawyer-man-name-Charles-Chambliss-Christopher-some-name-like-that. . .” He stopped, and enunciated the last name. “Herr-land-der.”

  Fallon shrugged. He took the ladle. Drank more awful water himself, wiped his brow, dropped the ladle into the pail, ran his fingers through his hair, pulled the hat back on his head, and returned to the cane field.

  He had not been mistaken. It was Chris Ehrlander.

  There were other questions he thought about asking, but decided not to push his luck. Besides, if the guards saw that Eyeballs loved to talk so much, they might ask him questions themselves, and some of the guards were Louisiana natives. They wouldn’t have so much trouble understanding everything the Cajun had to say.

  The buggy was back when they were hauled back to the plantation’s main compound, but Chris Ehrlander and Colonel Justice were nowhere to be seen. Which meant Ehrlander was in town, at least most likely, as Eyeballs
had told Fallon. Fallon debated his chances of sneaking out of the bunkhouse, making his way to Justice’s home, then cutting the murdering cur’s throat. But only after Chris Ehrlander, that backstabbing, murdering swine, saw Fallon’s face. Fallon wanted to make sure the pettifogging lawyer saw who was sending his soul to hell. Then, maybe, before the guards could cut down Fallon, he might be able to slice Justice’s throat.

  It was something to think about.

  He woke that night with a start, sweating. The sweat wasn’t that unusual because of the stifling temperatures in an overcrowded bunkhouse. But the dream? Fallon could not remember the last time he had dreamed, or at least remembered what he had been dreaming. But this one was so damned clear.

  The problem was this: it hadn’t been a dream. Not exactly. Dreams were exaggerations. They were made up. They weren’t exactly history. But this one . . . it had been like . . . Fallon stopped to wipe away sweat—he had been transported back in time. He was reliving something that had happened, but it wasn’t as though his entire life was passing before his eyes. It was just one brief moment.

  They had sat in the café about five blocks from their home. The place served the most wretched chili Fallon had ever tasted, but the biscuits were pretty good and the pecan pie excellent. Fallon sat next to his little daughter, who was playing with her food more than eating it, while Chris Ehrlander sat next to Fallon, across from him, enjoying tea and supper.

  “You can’t blame me this time, Hank,” Ehrlander said with a smile. “I wasn’t representing Sean Crites.”

  Fallon smiled, though he was in what his wife always called ill humor.

  “I’m not blaming him.”

  “Blaming the jury?” Ehrlander asked.

  Fallon’s wife frowned. She never cared much for when Fallon talked about work, especially in front of a daughter too young to understand.

  Fallon shrugged. “It just gets under my skin. I risk my life. The court lets this vermin go.”

  “But this wasn’t because of something you did, Hank,” Ehrlander said. “It’s because the jury didn’t think he robbed that stagecoach. The evidence wasn’t there. Was it?”