hurriedly by a child’s hand, one dressed in rags and sewn-together bits of uniform and filth-caked blankets.
After a short stay in a Confederate hospital, Cabe was mustered back into the 2 ^ nd Arkansas which was merged with Bragg’s Army of Tennessee. Cabe saw action at Murfreesboro, was under General Joe Johnston’s ill- fated attempt to relieve the Union siege of Vicksburg. And, afterwards…Chickamauga, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign. He was badly wounded by shrapnel during the Carolinas Campaign, but survived to stand with his brothers when the Army of Tennessee surrendered in North Carolina in April, 1865.
After the war he drove steers from Texas up to Kansas, worked as a nightherder, a railroad detective, and rode shotgun on a bullion stage into California. He took up bounty hunting not long after.
But for all he had seen, all he had done, the horrors of war and the living nightmares of Camp Douglas, one event still overshadowed all else…his capture in Morgan’s Woods following the Battle of Pea Ridge.
And his first meeting with Jackson Dirker.
The man who would become his own personal bogeyman and haunt his dreams for years and, very often, his waking moments.
11
The job of county sheriff was not an easy one.
Jackson Dirker kept busy seven days a week, very often putting in fifteen-hour days. Besides enforcing law and order in the county-no easy feat with wild boomtowns like Whisper Lake and Frisco under his jurisdiction-Dirker was also charged with the upkeep of the county jail, serving court orders, and maintaining order in police court. He spent several days a week giving evidence at trials, arranging prisoner transfers, overseeing his deputies, and charging through the mountain of paperwork all this entailed. He was also something of a fire inspector, health inspector, and sanitation commissioner. He was called in to settle disputes between the mining companies and the local army of independent prospectors, townsfolk and immigrants populations, Indians and Mormon enclaves. He was part soldier and part diplomat, part clerk and part regulator.
He was everything and all to the folks of Beaver County.
When good things happened, he was the last one to know. But when the shit rained down, he was expected to be the first on the scene with the biggest shovel.
But for all its trouble, the position was also quite lucrative.
As a high-ranking county official appointed by the territorial governor himself, Dirker was also the county’s chief tax collector. And he kept 10% of everything he brought in, which was quite a bit. He also collected licensing fees from saloons, brothels, and gambling houses. This, along, with dispensing county contracts for new roads and bridges, brought Dirker upwards of $30,000 a year.
He also owned the St. James Hostelry, which in itself was a fairly profitable venture. But he had nothing to do with that. His wife, Janice, ran the entire enterprise. From the purchase of the hotel some four years before to its renovation and operation, Janice was completely in charge.
For Jackson Dirker was a busy man.
He spent more time these days pouring over arrest records and selling the property of tax delinquents than running down fugitives-these tasks he dispensed to his deputies more often than not-but there were still things he liked to keep his hand in. Things the people expected of him.
Things that were simply too dirty to pass down to his deputies.
And these were the things that haunted Dirker.
Because when he threw it all together in his mind, mixed it up like some foul stew, the stink of it all made him wince. So he slid it to the back burner where the smell wasn’t so bad and simply brooded over it.
Because, in his thinking, Whisper Lake was a cauldron that was getting ready to boil over. And when that happened, a lot of people were going to get burned.
There was the vigilante problem. Dirker didn’t know who they were-though he had certain suspicions-but he had no doubt they existed. Some vigilance committee that had formed to harass the local Mormons. The townsfolk blamed the Mormons anytime anything went wrong. And with all the disappearances out in the hills and the savage slaughter of no less than a dozen miners so far, people were scared. Dirker understood that. But to put the blame on the Mormons when those murders were clearly the work of a marauding dog or wolf pack was ridiculous. Dirker had put bounties on the animals and as far as the missing people went, shit, this was mining country. People came and went by the hundreds each month.
The real criminals here were the vigilantes.
And what they were doing was stirring up a mess of trouble. For already there was talk of Mormon militias out seeking revenge. The Mormons were building themselves a town up on the Beaver River and people seemed to see this as evidence that the Mormons were up to no good. Again, ridiculous. As county sheriff, Dirker found them by far to be the easiest group to manage. He had much more trouble with the gentiles. The mines had brought in squatters and immigrants and outlaws. Shootings and knifings were commonplace and not a one of those incidents had ever involved the Mormons.
They were insular, isolationist, but God-fearing and law-abiding from what Dirker had seen in these past five years as county sheriff.
But, for some reason, people just couldn’t swallow that.
Maybe it was because they hated anything they didn’t understand or maybe it was because of Deliverance, another Mormon town about four miles outside of Whisper Lake. Something had happened there, something had gone bad, it was said, and the town had gone bad with it. There were crazy rumors of devil-worship and witchcraft and even the Mormons themselves shunned the place. Dirker figured Deliverance had merely splintered from the teachings of Joseph Smith and become perhaps more puritanical and offbeat, but all those stories were nonsense.
He himself hadn’t been over to Deliverance in months and months.
Last time was when he’d provided an escort for a federal prisoner wagon passing through Beaver County. They’d stopped in Deliverance to water their horses. The place was very clannish, very odd, but the people were peaceable enough, if not exactly friendly.
No, the Mormons and Deliverance were just another symptom of the cancer that was eating away the heart of Whisper Lake. Vigilantes. Mormon militias. Outlaws. Immigrants. Crazy miners. Weird animal attacks. Yes, it was all building and it was going to blow.
And into this steaming stew had come Tyler Cabe hunting his deranged maniac.
That gave Dirker another headache.
He didn’t need another killer stirring up the population. And he sure as hell didn’t need Cabe constantly baiting him and rubbing the war in his face. If it kept on, there was going to be trouble. And although Dirker was a fair man and an honest one, he fully realized he could only be pushed so far.
And if Cabe kept pushing, there could only be one outcome.
God help him, if he made a nuisance of himself.
With all this bubbling away in his brain and making his temples throb, Dirker poured himself a cup of coffee. As he brought the tin cup to his lips, the door opened and the wind blew in, scattering papers from his desk.
Pete Slade stood there in the doorway, water dripping from the brim of his pinch-crowned hat.
“ Shut that damn door,” Dirker told him, maybe a little more harshly than intended.
Slade did.
He was Dirker’s undersheriff. Whereas Henry Wilcox was big and fleshy, Slade was long and lank, a mustache just as thick as a grooming brush sprouting from beneath his nose. It completely covered his mouth. Slade was a dependable man and a tough one. He regularly hunted down horse thieves and gunmen single-handedly in the mountains.
And right then he looked scared, looked weary…looked something.
“ Sheriff,” he managed and that voice was filled with dread. “Sheriff…we got us a murder.”
Dirker stared at him, wondering why a simple killing had him so spooked to the point of being physically ill. But, deep down, he knew it would be nothing simple.
“ Bad?” he said.
