Bury the Hatchet Read online

  “She’s all done,” Emily Downs said as she stepped out from the cells carrying her medical bag. “The prisoner is healing quite nicely, for what it’s worth. Seems to have broken the fingers on his left hand somehow. Any idea how it happened?”

  Trammel fondly remembered rapping him on the hand with the pistol of his Colt when he threatened to talk about Adam not being a Hagen. “He tell you anything?”

  “No,” Emily admitted. “Claims he must’ve rolled over on them in his sleep.”

  Trammel was glad the Pinkerton man was keeping his silence. “Well, you can forget about Somerset’s problems for a bit, because I’ve got some news that should brighten your spirits for a change. Adam is awake, and it looks like it’s for good this time.”

  Emily clapped, and Hawkeye cheered before getting dizzy again.

  “His fever was so high,” Emily recalled, “I was worried he might never recover.”

  “He’s recovered just fine. I told him you’d be in to see him in a bit.” Trammel walked with her outside, but asked her to slow down as soon as they got clear of the jail.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Trammel was still bothered by what Hagen had said about his father. “You took care of Adam most of the time he was sick, didn’t you?”

  “Me and Mrs. Welch split the duties during the day, yes. Why?”

  “Do you remember if his father spent a lot of time in his room?”

  “He was there when the fever got high,” Emily told him. “He insisted on taking care of him, even when we couldn’t. It was quite a relief for us at the time. When the doctors went back to Laramie, care for Adam fell entirely on us.”

  Trammel winced. There may be something to Hagen’s concerns about his father and the ledger after all. “Yeah, I’m sure it was.”

  “Why do you look so sad, Buck?” Emily placed a hand on his arm. “Adam’s awake now. That’s good news. Why, even if he can’t use his arm, it looks like he’ll live and that’s a cause for happiness, isn’t it?” She frowned again. “I certainly hope you’re not allowing your petty differences about his other businesses dampen your enthusiasm for his well-being.”

  “Far from it,” he assured her. A part of him wanted to tell her everything Charles Hagen had told him about Adam not being his son. It would have been easier to share the knowledge with someone. But the secret was not his to share, not even with Adam, so it was his burden to bear alone. “He asked me to go to his office and get him some things.”

  “See?” She pecked Trammel on the cheek and went off on her way to tend to Adam. “He has only been awake for a few minutes and he’s already looking to get back to work. I bet he’ll be using that arm in no time!”

  But the sheriff’s smile faded as he watched her hurry to Hagen’s bedside. Because he was not just concerned about Adam Hagen’s arm. It was his ledger.

  And what it might mean if someone had searched the office for it.

  CHAPTER 21

  At the Pot of Gold, the bartender hovered near Trammel like a hummingbird as the sheriff used Hagen’s key to open the office door.

  “This is highly irregular,” Ben Springfield said. “I know you’re the sheriff and all, but I don’t like the idea of you going through his things without Mr. Adam Hagen hisself bein’ here.” It was almost as though he was afraid of what Trammel might find inside.

  Trammel felt his patience begin to fail him. “Who do you think gave me the key? Now get back behind the bar where you belong and quit causing trouble.” He waited until Springfield reluctantly went back to work before venturing into the office.

  Using only the long rectangle of light that filtered into the office from the bar outside, Trammel had no trouble seeing someone had been there since Adam had left it before the shooting.

  The chair behind the desk had been carelessly pulled aside. The items on the shelves had been hastily shoved aside during what could only be described as a frantic search for something. Papers Trammel remembered being arranged in a neat pile had been toppled over on the desk and spilled out onto the floor.

  It was obvious that someone had done a sloppy job of searching the place, probably because they did not care about getting caught. And they did not care if Hagen or anyone else found the mess. By then, it wouldn’t matter. Either Adam would be dead or the ledger would have been found. Either way, the need for secrecy would be over.

  But nothing was over as far as Trammel was concerned. Not until he knew if the ledger was safe.

  He struck a Lucifer and lit an oil lamp by the door, which cast a better light on Hagen’s ruined office.

  He shut the door to keep Springfield and the nosy saloon customers from seeing too much and began to move around to the back of Hagen’s desk. The more he looked, the worse the scene became. All of the drawers had been pulled out of the desk; their contents dumped onto the floor before the drawers were cast aside in a pile in a corner of the room. The large bottom drawer that looked like a door had been kicked in.

  Trammel bent and shined the lamp inside. The space was empty. No sign of the ledger. Even the bottle and glasses he knew Hagen kept there had been taken. It seemed odd to him that someone would steal a bottle of whiskey in the office of a saloon of all places. Maybe the thief or thieves had celebrated finding what they were looking for?

  As he imagined the desk would be the first place the thief had looked, he supposed the rest of the wreckage was a result of the frustration of not finding the ledger.

  He cast his lamp around the ruined office and saw no other signs of any disturbance. No signs of the whiskey bottle or the broken glasses, either.

  Trammel had investigated his share of robberies when he had been with the police in Manhattan and later with the Pinkerton Agency. He could not remember a case where thieves had done all of this damage just for a couple of swigs of whiskey.

  He could also not remember a time when the empty glasses and bottles hadn’t been found anywhere at the scene, either. Trammel swept his boot through the contents of the desk that had been scattered on the floor and listened for that brittle sound of glass being shifted.

  He heard nothing.

  He held the lamp beside the ruined bottom drawer to see if the glasses and bottle might’ve been broken when someone kicked in the drawer. But there was no sign of broken glass or spilled whiskey inside there, either.

  Who would set about ransacking an office, but not break the glasses and bottles inside the bottom drawer? Not even by accident?

  Trammel had the answer almost as soon as he asked the question. Someone who knew they would be there. Someone who knew enough to be careful not to break them. Someone who had been in the office before, perhaps many times.

  That ruled out Charles Hagen, but not someone else.

  Trammel locked the office door behind him and blew out the lamp. He would not need it where he was going.

  * * *

  Ben Springfield was back behind the bar leafing through the morning edition of the Blackstone Bugle. A few men were seated at the tables, playing cards and sipping beer. Springfield did not bother to look up from his paper when he heard Trammel stomping his way. “You done with your snoopin’, Sheriff?”

  Trammel snatched him by the collar and yanked him over the bar. The few patrons still in the saloon either scattered or kept their mouths shut as the big sheriff pinned Springfield against the bar.

  “Damn it, Trammel. You’ve got no cause to treat me like this.”

  “I’m going to ask you this one time,” the sheriff said. “I catch you lying, I take to backhanding you from one end of this bar to the other. Understand?”

  Wide-eyed in terror, Springfield nodded his head quickly.

  “Why did you tear apart Adam’s office?”

  “Someone did that? Why—”

  Trammel brought his big hand back to strike him, and Springfield began to shout, “Don’t hit me, damn it! I admit it! I did it!”

  Trammel lowered his hand. “That’s good, Ben. Now te
ll me why you did it.”

  “Because I had no reason not to,” Springfield said. “Everyone thought Hagen was going to die. What else was I supposed to do? Just wait until it actually happened before gettin’ what I’ve got comin’ to me? That lousy friend of yours drove me out of business. Hell, Sheriff, I used to own this place. Now I just work here with a measly cut of the profits, which don’t count them opium tents in the back. No, sir. He keeps what them Chinese fellas give him all to his ownself.”

  Trammel hadn’t been certain Springfield had robbed the office until that moment, but it made sense. He was the only one who probably had a key to the office or had enough time to get one made. He could have searched the office during off-hours when fewer people were around to notice what he was doing. There was no question in his mind that Springfield was behind it.

  No, another question was more important. The sheriff’s grip on Springfield’s collar tightened. “Who put you up to it? And don’t tell me you did it on your own. I won’t believe that and you know what happens then.”

  Springfield moaned as the sheriff had finally managed to hit the truth. Trammel’s right hand flinched backward and the bartender began to tell all that he knew.

  “John Bookman paid me to do it,” the bartender said quickly. “He showed up here one night around closin’ right after Hagen got shot. Don’t go askin’ me which night it was, because I don’t remember for certain. He told me he wanted me to let him inside. He figured I had some old keys lying around back from when I owned the place. But Mr. Hagen changed out the lock on the office door when he took over and never saw fit to give me a copy. He wanted to kick in the door, but I wouldn’t let him leave me with that mess. He said he’d come back with the key and get in there himself.”

  Trammel knew the answer to his own question. “But you had a key, didn’t you?”

  “Sure did,” Springfield admitted. “Had two made when Adam only wanted one. I couldn’t get in there when he was inside, but I went in there whenever he wasn’t around. Seein’ as how badly Bookman wanted in there, I knew there had to be something worthwhile in there and I didn’t want him finding it first.”

  Trammel had figured that had been the case. Bookman. Who works for King Charles. Adam had been right after all. It was not just a dream. They had been pumping him for information while he was recovering from the gunshot wound. He was fighting for his life and his arm, but all they cared about was that damnable ledger. Adam might not be Charles’s son, but he was still blood. He deserved better than that from an uncle and the only father he had ever known.

  The sheriff shook Springfield. “You broke into the office alone, didn’t you?”

  “Damned right I did,” he eagerly admitted. “Went in nice and gentlelike, so much so that Adam himself wouldn’t have known I was there. Even got the desk drawers open with a couple of hairpins from the girls upstairs so no one would know I was even there.”

  That explained quite a bit. “And all you found was the whiskey in the bottom drawer.”

  “Found plenty more than that,” Springfield said. “Not that any of it did me any good, on account of me never learnin’ how to read.”

  “That so?” Trammel snatched him hard by the collar. “Then why did I see you reading the newspaper on the bar just now?”

  “Leafin’ through it and readin’ it are two different things,” Springfield protested. “Ask anyone. I don’t know how to read. Hell, Denny Stack had to keep my books for me when I ran the place.”

  Too obvious a lie for a man like Springfield to make, Trammel released him with a shove. Keeping his focus on what had happened in the office, the sheriff said, “But you knew Adam kept whiskey in the bottom drawer of his desk.”

  “Yes, sir,” Springfield said, “and I’d be damned before I let John Bookman or anyone else have it. Adam raved how good it was, and as he was near death anyway, I took it for my ownself. Finest whiskey I ever tasted.”

  Trammel didn’t much care about the quality of Hagen’s taste in whiskey just then. He cared about the state of the office. “So that mess in there was created by Bookman when he searched it after you?”

  “Yes, sir. I begged him not to make a mess, but he told me that was my problem. He was awful forceful about it, but I don’t think he found what he was looking for, on account of him bein’ angry and trashin’ the place.”

  Trammel could imagine Bookman losing his temper like that. “Did he tell you what he was looking for?”

  “Kept sayin’ somethin’ about a ledger,” Springfield told him. “Said he needed to find it. I told him where they were but old Mr. Bookman still wasn’t satisfied. He was just kept getting’ angrier and angrier until he turned that room into a whirlwind of paper. Never saw a man get so angry without someone gettin’ dead right after.”

  “And why didn’t you clean it up?”

  “On account of Mr. Bookman telling me it wasn’t necessary to go through the fuss. He said Adam was nearer to death’s door than he was to living and that all of his possessions would belong to King Charles soon. We could worry about cleaning it up later. Until then, I was to keep the bar running and not tell anyone about what happened here.”

  That didn’t make any sense to Trammel. Adam had no love of his father and he doubted he would leave any of his properties to him in his will. “You’re absolutely sure you don’t know when this happened?”

  Springfield thought on it further. “About four days ago. Right after Adam went and got himself shot.”

  “And when did Bookman tell you he was going to be taking over Adam’s businesses?”

  “Said it would be about a week at the most before Adam died and things changed over to King Charles. I don’t know how he figured out that number, but he was so damned angry when he up and stormed out of here that he wasn’t of a mind to tell me more.”

  Trammel took a step back as the facts fell into place for him. Adam had been shot more than four days ago. A week could mean five days or seven, depending on the way a man wanted to look at it.

  Either way, the deadline Bookman had mentioned to Springfield was coming up soon if not already passed. Whatever he was planning to do must be close at hand.

  Adam Hagen was in more danger than he thought, especially now that he was alive.

  Trammel ignored the looks he drew from the patrons as he bolted from the Pot of Gold Saloon and along Main Street, back toward the Clifford Hotel.

  CHAPTER 22

  Trammel knew Adam was in trouble when he reached the hall to Hagen’s room and found the door half open. He pushed it all the way open and found John Bookman struggling to keep a pillow over Adam Hagen’s face. The wounded man was putting up the best fight he could, given that he was fighting off his attacker with one arm wrapped in bandages as Bookman put all of his weight on the pillow.

  From behind, Trammel fired a left hook around Bookman’s shoulder that connected with his jaw. He pulled him off Hagen and followed it up with a right cross that sent the ramrod stumbling backward until he crashed into the dresser.

  Bookman regained his balance and threw a quick roundhouse right that mostly hit Trammel’s shoulder and didn’t slow the big lawman down. He grabbed Bookman by the shirt and tossed him into the hallway.

  Bookman hit the wall hard enough to lose his balance and fall to the floor. Trammel closed the distance before Bookman could get to his feet. The ranch boss got to his knees and buried furious lefts and rights in Trammel’s chest and belly, but the sheriff used his elbows to block most of them.

  When Trammel did throw a punch, it was an uppercut that connected with Bookman’s jaw and snapped his head back. He landed hard on his backside and cried out from the pain. He reached for the gun on his hip, but Trammel stepped on his arm and pinned it to the floor. “That’s enough, Bookman.”

  The foreman roared as he tried to move Trammel’s leg, but found he did not have the strength to budge it.

  Trammel put more weight on the arm. “I said it’s over, damn it. Quit reachin
g for the gun and tell me who sent you and why.”

  “Why do you think, you idiot?” Bookman said through clenched teeth. “Not even you can be that dumb.”

  Trammel had an idea, but he needed Bookman to tell him first. He needed Adam to hear it, too, assuming he was still alive. “Tell me and I’ll let you get up. If not, you wake up in jail with a broken arm. Your choice.”

  Bookman laughed despite the pain. “I made my choice a long time ago. I chose Charles Hagen to be King Charles of the Wyoming Territory and I haven’t had a complaint since. Not you or his illegitimate nephew in there can ever make me regret that choice. Not one damned bit.”

  Trammel leaned hard on Bookman’s arm. “Shut up, damn you.”

  Bookman shouted through the pain. “You hear that, Adam? I was there the night you were pulled kicking and screaming into this world. I’m the one who tied the rope around your father’s neck—your real father—and gave him to the wolves after it was all over.”

  Bookman pointed with his free hand toward Hagen’s room and lowered his voice. “I should’ve done the same thing to him. That monster in there has been nothing but a disgrace to the family since the day he was born. I was ready to smother it back then if Mr. Hagen had let me, but he’d promised his sister he’d watch out for it. And all it has done is brought pain and misery to everyone who has tried to love it ever since. All you caught me doing tonight, Sheriff, was something I should’ve done thirty years ago.

  Trammel brought his boot across Bookman’s face, knocking the man out. The sheriff bent and took the gun from Bookman’s holster and the knife he kept in his boot. He patted him down, but failed to find any other weapons. He stood up when he heard what could only be described as whimpering coming from Hagen’s room and wondered if his stitches had come undone in his struggle with Bookman.

  He rushed into the room and dumped Bookman’s weapons in a chair by the bed before tending to his friend. He tucked the pillow back behind Adam’s head and a quick check of the bandages showed no new spots of blood.