“No, sir, it doesn’t,” Kyle said. “That’s more like the person I saw at the site of the train wreck.”
“But Marshal Cummins believes him to be a murderer,” Fremont said.
“He either believes it, or has reason to want others to believe it,” Kyle said.
“Does Marshal Cummins have everything under control?”
“Yes,” Kyle said. “If you call having the entire town under his thumb as being ‘under control.’”
“Under his thumb?”
“Governor, Marshal Cummins has six deputies to help him keep control.”
“Isn’t that a little excessive?” Governor Fremont asked.
“Excessive? Yes, and much more than a little excessive,” Kyle said. “If I had my way, that town would be cleaned up and Cummins would be gone.”
“You do have your way,” Governor Fremont replied.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am overturning the results of the trial,” Fremont said. “I am granting Matt Jensen a full and complete pardon. It would probably be better to have a new trial so he could be completely absolved—but in the meantime, the pardon will have to do. I also have something else I want you to look into.”
“What is that?”
Governor Fremont picked up a letter from his desk.
“This is a letter from a man named Ronald Jerome,” the governor said, handing it to Kyle. “He was my adjutant during the war, and he is a longtime friend. It seems his son disappeared in Purgatory.”
“Disappeared?”
“Yes. Apparently Jerome bought some property near Purgatory and his son, Cornelius, came out here to take possession of it. And while Cornelius posted a letter to his father every day of the trip, he did not do so on the day he was to have arrived in Purgatory. Would you look into that for me?”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
Fremont stroked his chin. “Based upon what you have just told me, and based upon the letter I received from Robert Dempster, I am now convinced that this man Cummins has no right to occupy the office of city marshal. Unfortunately, I have no authority to relieve him unless we can find him guilty of a felony. I’m going to give you that responsibility.”
“That is quite a responsibility,” Kyle said.
“I know that you can handle it. But first, I want you to find this man Matt Jensen, and inform him that he is no longer wanted for the murder of this man”—the governor checked a piece of paper—“Moe Gillis. I don’t want that hanging over his head much longer. When someone is wanted for murder, they are sometimes pressed into doing things they would not otherwise do. I think it is important that we notify him as quickly as we can.”
“I agree,” Kyle said. “I’m not exactly sure how we are going to do that, but I agree with you that it does need to be done.”
When Paco Bustamante rode into Choulic, he saw a small group of people standing in front of the hardware store. At first, he didn’t know what they were looking at, but then he saw a coffin, standing upright. Riding over toward it, he was startled to see that the coffin was occupied by a body.
The body was that of Emerson Bates.
There was a sign above the coffin.
This corpse was prepared by:
SEE ME
for all your undertaking needs.
“I think it is disgusting to put a body on display like that just to advertise your work,” a woman in the crowd said.
“Well, from what I heard, his throat was cut and he looked pretty bad. I reckon ole Cartwright is some pleased with his work,” a man answered.
“Besides which, didn’t nobody know where Bates came from, so it ain’t like he’s goin’ to have kin to complain,” another said.
One of the other men laughed. “And the only friend he had rode out of town butt-naked.”
Paco hung back as the men in the group told and retold, with great relish, the story of Cletus Odom leaping through a window on the second floor, then, without a stitch of clothes, riding out of town.
“I never thought of Odom as bein’ someone who would run from anyone,” another said. “Who was he runnin’ from?”
“He was runnin’ from the same person who killed Bates. His name was Cavanaugh.”
“Oh, yeah, I know who you are talkin’ about. Fact of it is, Cavanaugh is still in town, stayin’ over to the Homestead Hotel. He’s been askin’ a lot of questions. He’s trying to find the ones who wrecked that train a couple of weeks ago. I think he’s a lawman or somethin’.”
“He says he ain’t no lawman. He says he just wants revenge against the ones who wrecked the train and killed all those people.”
