Dead Man's Money

by Ken Hodgson

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

Catching A Murderous Monster Ain't Going To Be Cheap. . . In Oklahoma Indian Territory just over the Kansas line, settlers are losing their heads. Literally, that is. Decapitated bodies are turning up and businessman Cyrus Warwick, who's aiming to make this town bigger than Dodge City, wants it to stop--bad for business, he says. It's bad for his only daughter too: she's the next victim of this "Monster of Osage." Warwick's $20,000 bounty goes up. . . . and all hell breaks loose. Asa Cain, Hardcase The good, the bad, and the just plain trigger-happy come looking to claim the bounty, and up goes the body count. But it's not Wyatt Earp or Doc Watson picking up the killer's trail--it's the bloodiest bounty hunter of them all, Asa Cain, and his undertaker partner Cemetery John. But what's at the end of this trail is something even Asa Cain never imagined in his darkest dreams . . . "Hodgson is a gift to western writing."-- Roundup "A first-rate writer." --Dale L. Walker, past president, Western Writers of America

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

“Well, get to looking!” the sheriff roared. “Her head’s got to be around here someplace.”

Sheriff Emil Quackenbush chewed worriedly on the dead stub of a long nine cigar as he stared down at the bloody, headless corpse of a young woman. Incidents such as this would definitely not bode well for him come election time.

“These killings have gone from plain bad to real bad.” Blue Hand, his deputy, gave a head shake toward the posse. “Which direction do you think we oughtta go?”

“I wouldn’t bother looking too hard for her head,” Dr. Sedgemiller said, wheezing as he forced his bulk up the small hill to where the dead girl lay. “We sure never found any of those other people’s heads. And those two men down by the creek have theirs missing too. Add in the five other bodies that have turned up without their heads, and it’s no surprise that this fiend has finally gotten around to killing a woman. We’re not dealing with an outlaw here, or even a human being. Only a monster would kill like this.”

Emil flashed the doctor an angry look. “Now don’t go scaring folks more than necessary. There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for absconding with their heads. There has to be.”

The petulant doctor bent over and examined the headless woman’s body. “Ripped right off her shoulders by brute force, or possibly chopped off with a dull ax. It’s the same method that was used on the men. Whatever is removing their heads doesn’t bother to employ finesse—or a sharp knife.”

“This feller down here’s Jake Armbruster, the stage driver,” Sim Eby hollered leaning over one of the two bodies that lay alongside the rippling waters of Boggy Creek. “He’s been in my saloon a bunch of times wearing this same pair of dirty Levi’s that has the seat patched with wagon canvas. Even without his noggin attached, I’m sure it’s him.”

“Then the other man is most likely the shotgun guard,” Emil snorted. “I’d reckon he should’ve been a tad better at his job. Guards change more often than a whore takes a bath. Root around in his pockets and see if you can find something with his name on it. I’d like to put more on his headboard than just the date he got killed in my jurisdiction.”

Blue Hand spoke up. “Cyrus is gonna be plenty mad about the stage being attacked like this. When the thing came creaking into town without nobody on board, blood all over it, an’ a door ripped off, I’d say that was reason enough to send someone out to tell him what happened.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff acknowledged with a sigh. “And I’m sure he’ll be mad as a peeled rattler. You can bet Cyrus’ll be in my office when I get back to remind me that Henrietta is his town and folks getting killed hereabouts is bad for business.”

“How they’re getting dead is a concern,” Dr. Sedgemiller added. “Most places are plagued with normal outlaws that just rob stages, not rip the stage and the people apart, then go away and leave the money behind.”

“There’s still money in these men’s pockets,” Sim Eby said. “Just like the others. This beats all I’ve ever seen.”

Blue Hand rubbed a finger along his thin mustache. He had been raised by the Osage, but his father was of Spanish origin. The deputy was inordinately proud of being capable of growing even a small amount of hair on his face. “I do not know which to fear more, this killer who takes heads, or Cyrus Warwick. I would think Mr. Warwick. He pays my wages.”

Sheriff Quackenbush sighed. Both Blue Hand and he had reason for concern about Cyrus Orman Warwick. The man had somehow made a huge fortune after the war. There were rumblings that he had been a carpetbagger and had become wealthy by loaning money at exorbitant interest rates. No matter how he had come by this wealth, Warwick was the sole reason for the existence of Henrietta, Kansas, and the driving force that was causing it to boom.

Within a year or two, by 1878 at the latest, the denizens of Henrietta were certain their town on the edge of Indian Territory would outstrip Abilene, Wichita, and Dodge City as the cattle-shipping headquarters of the West. It was perfectly situated closer to Texas, where most cattle drives originated. With the railroad that Cyrus had worked so hard for already being built to Kansas City, growth was assured.

Sim Eby’s two saloons, the Purple Sage and Drover’s Rest, were busy twenty-four hours a day. Mattie Rose, madam of the town’s only whorehouse, had the best opportunity to count people, as nearly all residents were men. Mattie claimed the population of Henrietta was up to twelve hundred souls with new arrivals showing up daily. All arrived safely, with their heads and money intact. That is, unless they ventured across Indian Territory to the south.

The sheriff spit out the stub of his cigar as his anger grew. He wasn’t about to lose a hundred-dollar-a-month job without putting up a good fight. “Boys, I’m going to kill whoever’s doing this. I’ll hang ’em right in the middle of town so folks can see it ain’t no monster. This whole thing’s likely been set up to scare folks away. My guess is some grouches from Dodge City or maybe Abilene’s behind this to keep our town from growing.”

“You could be right,” Dr. Sedgemiller said. “But I sure as hell wish you’d explain to me how it was made to look like these folks’ heads were ripped off their bodies.”

“Well, all I can think of—”

Emil’s reply was cut off by Sim Eby, who came from behind a thicket of bushes carrying a blood-soaked reticule. “Dang if we’re not in for it now. This is the dead lady’s purse. I took a peek inside and it sure looks like that might be Cyrus’s only daughter, the one he named the town after. There’s a passel of letters and stuff addressed to Henrietta Warwick.”

“She’s back in Chicago attending college,” Dr. Sedgemiller said with a hint of uncertainty. “It can’t be her.”

The sheriff grabbed the reticule and pored over its contents. Every member of the posse waited in stone silence for the outcome.

“Damn it!” Emil swore. “Her diary’s in here. She wrote how much she was looking forward to surprising her father, Cyrus, by making this trip. That girl’s Henrietta Warwick. There’s no doubt about it.”

“I’m glad I’m only the deputy,” Blue Hand said to the sheriff. “I wouldn’t want to be the one to give Warwick this news.”

Emil Quackenbush flipped a lock of red hair from his forehead. “A cyclone’s fixin’ to hit the outhouse, that’s for certain. But it’s my job and I’m heading to do it.” He fixed his gaze on the doctor. “Try to get her cleaned up and in a coffin before Cyrus gets a look at her. I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Sedgemiller said. “And I don’t envy your task.”

“Nope,” Emil said walking to his horse. “All I’m certain of is that Henrietta was correct when she wrote that her pappy would be surprised to have her show up.”

The sheriff’s office and all government buildings, including an imposing two-story courthouse, post office, ten-cell jail, and a gallows designed to hang six at once, were assembled in a square at the center of town. All had been constructed of the finest white oak lumber available. As was its founder, the town of Henrietta, Kansas, had been formed of stern material.

Cyrus Warwick had refused Emil’s offer of a chair, and stood as straight as the thick wood wall behind him when the sheriff told of finding his only daughter’s body. The sheriff was not at all surprised when the lean, white-haired ranch owner showed no outward emotion. No one in Henrietta had ever seen other than a perpetual scowl on his leathery face.

“Are you certain the body is that of Henrietta?” Cyrus asked coldly.

Emil nodded. “As sure as anyone can be without having a head to look at.” He slid the bloody reticule across the top of his desk. “Her diary and several letters from you are in there. That’s what I’m basing my identification on.”

Warwick reached out, grabbed the reticule, and thumbed through its contents with all the sentiment of a banker counting money. “Considering the fact that this is my daughter’s purse and that she occasionally acted impetuously, I believe the dead girl you found is likely to be Henrietta.”

“I’m sorry.”

Cyrus Warwick’s eyes drew down to mere slits. “Not nearly so sorry as you will be if you fail to bring her killer to justice. I have been increasingly concerned about your lack of ability to do your job. Having a murderer loose in the area is bad for the town and bad for business. I will take measures, Quackenbush, of this you may be assured.”

“Whoever’s been killing those folks and now your sweet daughter, I plan to hang them on that new gallows you built. I am going to do that right soon after we figure out whose neck needs snapping.”

“That, Sheriff, is something I intend to give you a lot of help with. Money is the only god people worship. I learned this many years ago. With Henrietta joining my wife in death, all I have left is my town. It will be Henrietta’s legacy and I damn well will not sit idly by and let it be destroyed. Be it a monster, as some believe, outlaws, a madman, or those out to cause me ruin who killed my only child, I will be the instrument of their death. They have unleashed a wind. Now let them reap a whirlwind.”

Emil took a cigar from his drawer, thought better of it, and laid it on his desk unlit. “Blue Hand and I won’t rest until this fiend is captured.”

“If you had been a competent lawman, Sheriff Quackenbush, my daughter would still be alive. I will not impose on the city charter, but if I were you, I would not bother to seek reelection. In the meanwhile, I am going to have posters printed—several thousand of them—offering a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for the killer of my daughter. I will make it payable dead or alive. This should be sufficient inducement for justice to prevail.”

“Don’t do that, sir.” Emil’s reply came so quick and sharp it surprised even him. “It would be a terrible decision.”

Cyrus Warwick’s only show of feeling was a small cold cackle. “You do not understand what drives men. I do. This is why you work for a mere pittance while I am wealthy. The posters will be out and broadcast for hundreds of miles distant by this time tomorrow.”

The sheriff shrugged, grabbed up the cigar, and lit it. He felt as if he were carrying on a conversation with a chunk of granite.

“Henrietta’s body,” Warwick said, spinning to leave. “I assume Dr. Sedgemiller has been entrusted with it?”

“Yes, sir,” Emil replied. Seconds later, he was staring at a closed door.

The sheriff sighed with relief to have Warwick gone. It came as no surprise that his job would be over come fall. The problem was, Emil Quakenbush was a man of pride. And he had no more idea now who was killing people south of town than when the first headless body had been found on Christmas Day of last year.

That was over five months ago. The number of dead found in the vicinity of Boggy Creek, including Henrietta Warwick, stood at eight. This figure did not include the dozen or so inquiries he had received about missing travelers. Emil held little doubt many of those would eventually be found quite dead.

What puzzled the sheriff most of all was that none of the victims had been robbed. All of their horses had eventually turned up, either still saddled or hooked to a stagecoach. The posses he’d sent out had even brought back a good half-dozen horses that didn’t belong to anyone in town or any of the victims. This added to his concern for those still missing.

And there was that terrible stench where the bodies had been found. It was best described as a cross between rotting meat and a skunk. Some people claimed to have seen a huge, hairy beast moving through the shadowy trees, like a ghost. Many more had heard bloodcurdling screams on a moonlit night.

Emil Quackenbush dismissed these stories as springing from an overactive imagination. Yet nothing about these murders fit anything he had learned about the dark side of human behavior during his ten years of being a lawman in various Western towns.

Travelers getting themselves killed and robbed wasn’t uncommon. Most always the criminals quickly spent their ill-gotten gains in the nearest saloon or whorehouse making them easy to track down. Being a sheriff was a lot easier when crooks had the decency to act like crooks.

A twenty-thousand-dollar reward would bring a ramshackle parade of bounty hunters that would be far worse than what people had begun calling “the Monster of the Osage.”

Emil knew that soon bodies would begin to be brought in by men claiming they had killed the man or men responsible for the crimes and demanding the reward. Most of these deceased would be innocent of everything except for looking like they might be worth twenty thousand dollars dead.

Emil grabbed a writing pad, took a stub of pencil from his shirt pocket, and began composing a squib to telegraph. If bounty hunters were coming to the Osage country, they might as well include the bloodiest one on the frontier. A man who supposedly had killed over two hundred men along with his own bank-robbing mother for bounty money.

The very name of Asa Cain had a tendency to strike fear into the hearts of the vilest criminals. It was a real plus that Emil knew Asa. With any decent luck, he might even get a nice slice of Warwick’s reward money. That would make being out of work a lot more palatable.

Feeling happier now that he had a goal, the burly sheriff smiled. He stroked his red beard with one hand as he polished off the telegram. Hopefully in a week or so, Asa Cain would be here. Then some real killing could commence.

“Dag-nab it, Cemetery John,” Wilburn Deevers fumed. “I’m here to tell you that you’re gonna have to bury that whore. My wife, Mildred, and a passel of churchwomen are claiming she’s beginning to scare the kids.”

The silver-haired, muscular ex-buffalo soldier folded over the corner of a page in a dime novel he had been reading and regarded the sheriff across the expanse of his walnut desk. “I’ve just got her laid out in the front window to show how good that new embalming equipment I got from Germany works. Shucks, she’s been there for nearly two weeks and ain’t even drawing flies.”

Wilburn shot a glance at the pretty, rail-thin blond girl inside an ornate coffin. Cemetery John had propped the head of the coffin on a pair of chairs giving anyone who passed the undertaker’s parlor a grand view of the deceased. “Mildred says it ain’t normal, not burying dead people. And you changing her eyes from one color to another would likely scare hell outta most folks, let alone kids.”

“Real eyeballs shrivel up in a hurry.” Cemetery John lit a cigar and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “If I hadn’t put those glass peepers in, she’d really look spooky. Maybe I oughtta have changed them around after dark, but I was just trying to make her look better. I’ve got a whole box of glass eyes. You want to see ’em?”

“No,” Wilburn answered quickly. “What I want you to do is plant her.”

“Poor li’l gal. It’s a shame she had to take an overdose of laudanum just because some cowboy didn’t come back like he’d promised. I reckon being a whore’s a tad rougher work than most of us think.”

“I suppose you’re right there. I’d say she’s not quite twenty years old.”

“Anybody find out her real name yet? There’s reasons other than not getting paid for the embalming that I’m using her for advertising. Putting her working name on a headboard wouldn’t be a great idea. Polly Goodpoke would give those churchwomen a real bee in their bonnet.”

“Baptists and Methodists can go on the warpath quicker than the Comanche and be meaner to boot. Just carve the name Polly on the board and put her in the ground. I’ll get Sam Livermore to pay you fifty dollars, same as for anyone who winds up dead and broke in Wolf Springs, Texas.”

“I’ll get on it,” Cemetery John said with a sigh of resignation. “Here I go and buy me an undertaking parlor, stock a supply of good-quality buryin’ boxes, order in the latest embalming supplies to make my customers look good for the Second Coming, and how do the good citizens thank me? By not dying. I reckon it might’ve been a good idea to have gone around and ask folks how they were feeling before I went and spent all that money.”

“You’re still a deputy. I’ll admit it ain’t much, but we both make a living.”

“I’d rather be subjected to handling money. It wouldn’t be right for me to get married until I can afford to do it.”

“You’re sure determined to marry up with that new blacksmith, ain’t you? Once you get set on a course, you hold on like a bulldog with lockjaw. I’ll give you that much.”

“Bessie’s a sweet lady. I can’t have her pounding iron and shoeing horses after we tie the knot. Folks would talk. All my business needs is more people dying and then we would have a good living without her having to work.”

Wilburn Deevers took a deep breath. Cemetery John could be exasperating, but he was reliable as sunrise. Deevers couldn’t understand what his deputy saw in Bessie Coggins, a woman fifty pounds heavier than he was who spent the day beating iron with a hammer while spitting tobacco juice. Someone had once said love was blind. Whoever had said that knew their elbow from a hole in the ground.

Then Wilburn remembered the main reason he had come to the undertaking parlor. Mildred’s harping about the dead whore had made him lose focus.

“A telegram came in for Asa Cain. Tate Webster dropped the message by the office instead of delivering it to the Rara Avis. He’s still skittish about going around a man who’d kill his own mother. The telegraph’s from a sheriff by the name of Emil Quackenbush up in Kansas. Seems I recollect that name from somewhere.”

Cemetery John cocked an eyebrow and took a drag on his long nine cigar. “You should. He was with me when we brought Asa’s ma in to collect Governor Davis’s reward money.”

“Yeah.” Deevers twisted his boot on the plank floor. “Now I remember. The fellow was short, wide, redheaded, and didn’t stay around long. That was a bad time for me and I’m glad it’s over. I reckon I’d have quit my job before I’d hung that lady. Terrible how things worked out for Asa.”

“He’s sure been working hard at drinking Soak Malone’s saloon plumb dry ever since he got back to town.” Cemetery John shook his head sadly. “I reckon him having to plug his ma must’ve upset him more than a tad.”

Deevers snorted. “It’s a fact that he ain’t acting normal. My guess is our bounty hunter friend will be dead before the end of the year if he don’t sober up. Fridley Newlin tells me Asa drinks a full quart of Old Crow before the sun’s full up. After that, he gets right serious about his drinking.”

“I’ll go with you back to your office and take that telegram over to Asa. He’s generally amenable to my visiting. Tate is right about him being rather surly these days. Leastwise, he generally just sets by himself, sips his whiskey, and ain’t no bother. As long as no one gets loony enough to provoke him, I’d venture he won’t kill nobody.”

“We all hope that don’t happen. Asa Cain’s been a good friend for a lot of y. . .