Lester Markley was late for their appointment.
Dodd was puzzled by his anxiety. Men of high office had been part of his life since he could remember. But as Elizabeth and he were waiting for their appointment with the Attorney General for the State of Nevada, he was as anxious as he could ever remember being.
It really had nothing to do with the man or his office. They had known one another since Dodd had been a boy. Most of the people who had become leaders of the state had been frequent visitors at the Forrest home. Lester was an especially good friend of Luke’s. It was the importance of the cause that had Dodd alternately sitting and pacing.
Elizabeth had prepared the brief. He had read it and it was of her usual quality. It petitioned the court to place a restraining order against the County of Ormsby, Travis Butler, William Thorn and Fred Zander, restraining them from preventing public scrutiny of all County records.
Dodd had been in correspondence with Henry Glenn. The state was only four years old. Henry knew the inner workings of the state legal system. He had been involved in its creation. He had been encouraged to run for the office of Attorney General but he’d had enough of high-powered law practice. The relative serenity of Lawton suited him just fine.
Henry had advised Dodd to go directly to Lester Markley. The suit had to be filed by the Attorney General himself. Lester had the know-how and the power to bring a State action without going through lower courts in Ormsby County. It was imperative that Thorn and his cohorts did not know of the suit and have opportunity to destroy or lose records.
Elizabeth was amused at Dodd’s uneasiness. “Settle down, Dodd. Things are going to be fine.”
“Elizabeth, if he won’t accept our case, all my clout will be gone and Thorn will go right back to business as usual. Children will suffer. This is very important to me.”
“Look, Dodd, I’ve worked with Lester Markley before. He knows my work. I believe he trusts me. I’m sure he would not think I would bring a case with no merit before him. I wrote the brief, Dodd. You read it. If you don’t have confidence in your lawyer, you’d better get Luther Morrison.” She leaned over and pecked Dodd lightly on the cheek.
Dodd smiled at her teasing. “Well, I certainly don’t want Luther Morrison doing that and from what Josh says, I don’t want him writing my briefs either. I’ll stick with you. But you do know, don’t you, that I would fire you as my attorney in a minute if I could convince you to become my wife?”
“Why can’t I be both?”
That comment both surprised and excited Dodd. “Are you saying that you will be my wife? Are you accepting my proposal?”
Elizabeth became pensive. Her pause seemed an eternity. “Yes, I am saying that I’ll be your wife, but not right now. All I can say now is that I do love you and I do want to become your wife but I have a sense that there is something I must do before I fully make that commitment. I can’t completely explain what I feel and I know it’s presumptuous to keep you in this state of suspense but that’s as much as I can tell you now.”
That was enough for Dodd. She had accepted his proposal of marriage. Right now he didn’t care about the when. He was so filled with elation that he forgot where he was. He took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. She returned the kiss in kind and it was in that position that Lester Markley found them when he returned from his lunch.
“It has always pleased me greatly to see a good relationship between lawyer and client but I do believe this is the first time I’ve seen any quite this good.”
Markley’s light banter put Dodd at ease. “My apologies, Sir, for this unseemly public display, but Miss Hatcher has just accepted my proposal of marriage.”
Markley chuckled. “I was feeling guilty for lingering so long over my lunch. I’m sorry I’m late but it looks as if my malingering may have contributed to this happy situation.”
Dodd vigorously shook his hand. “It did, indeed, Sir, and for that I will be forever in your debt.”
“And when is this blessed occasion?”
“She didn’t say when. She just said she would and that’s enough for me right now.”
As they entered Markley’s office, he made light, friendly conversation. He asked about Luke Forrest and Henry Glenn. He was so interested in chatting: “How’s John doing? Do they still call that boy, Scamper? Lord, he’s a man now. Scamper’s hardly a proper name for a man.”
Dodd responded but his anxiety returned. He knew that he was obsessed by this children’s issue thing but he could not help himself. It was more than an obsession. It was more like a calling from God. John was fine. Yes they still called him, Scamper, even though the man was almost fifty. Jared was fine. He’d adopted two boys. No, he hadn’t seen Matt since he returned from the east and, yes he thought they’d probably stay in Carson City after they were married.
Dodd finally had all the small talk he could take. He needed to know if Lester Markley would help them. “Sir, I don’t wish to be rude but we come on a matter of great importance to me. May we get to it, Sir?”
Markley, aware of his tendency to ramble when in the company of old acquaintances, laughed heartily. “I know, boy. I do have a problem. They teach lawyers how to talk but they don’t teach them how to quit talking. What can I do for you?”
Elizabeth presented the case in her usual well-prepared, eloquent and concise manner. They had Markley’s agreement in less than half an hour.
There was then about an hour of much more relaxed reminiscing, and when Dodd and Elizabeth finally made their goodbyes, Markley said, “You do know, Dodd, that you will be robbing the State of Nevada of one of its finest legal minds.”
“Perhaps you know, Sir, that I am also an attorney. I may not be as current as I should be in the law. I have been giving my time and energies to the practice of medicine but I am aware of no law that makes it illegal for a woman to be both an attorney and a wife.”
Lester Markley was amused at Dodd’s wit but Elizabeth was relieved. She had just had a very important question answered.
Bill Thorn was caught off guard. State officials had arrived unannounced and removed Fred Zander from his office, sealed all records and placed a twenty-four hour guard at the door to prevent Fred or anyone else from entering. Thorn had no chance to remove or destroy records. Luther Morrison, still feeling the sting of his firing thought he could get a reversal but that would take some time and prying eyes might have already gone over the incriminating records. Thorn was adamant. Dodd had to be killed now. There could be no more delays. Thorn knew it was a gamble but there was a chance that Dodd’s murder would distract the state officials and would frighten Elizabeth so that she would not pursue the issue. Of course, there was always the possibility that Dodd’s murder would cause the State to become more deeply involved but that was a chance he had to take. If he did nothing, everything would be lost. If he went ahead with the murder there was half a chance that things could go back to the way they were.
Pick Fillion would not budge. In fact he saw in Thorn a desperation so he upped the ante. He now demanded one thousand dollars up front and five hundred dollars a month. Thorn had to take desperate actions.
Thorn really did not like children and stayed away from them as much as he could. He had trafficked in children since he had established himself in Carson City but he always had someone else to actually handle the children. But this time he had to handle it himself. He disliked children so having to hold on to the boy was bad enough but this one stank. He smelled just like his daddy but Thorn had never had to wrestle Pick Fillion. Thorn thought he was going to vomit.
Levi wasn’t that big but he was a fighter. He had a lot of his daddy in him and a good bit of it was coming out of his mouth while he was scratching and kicking and squirming to get loose.
Profanity was much more common than prayer in a frontier mining town so it generally went unnoticed. Pick, however, had raised cursing to an art form. When you’d been cussed by Pick Fillion, you knew you’d been cussed. The boy didn’t have the Louisiana twang but he had the vocabulary and he had the volume. Thorn wrapped his arm around the boy’s head so that his forearm covered Levi’s mouth. It did muffle him but the little bastard bit like one of them Louisiana alligators. He still kicked and scratched and bit but he was at least quiet and Thorn was no longer afraid they’d attract attention. Thorn was bruised and bleeding but he had his leverage over Pick. Levi, however, didn’t know how close he came to getting himself strangled.
Thorn had never kidnapped a child before. There was no need. Indians, disease, runaways and whores supplied the orphanage, and the good people of New York City supplied the trains. Western Nevada folks were too busy scratching for a living to worry about orphans so if one or two or a dozen or a hundred of them disappeared, no one would have taken notice. If they had known what Thorn was doing, they’d probably have lynched him but nobody cared enough about children other than their own to even think about orphans. Until Dodd, that is, and now that Thorn had Levi, that problem would soon be solved.
Thorn took the boy to an abandoned mine in the mountains. No one would go there. He thought he might kill the boy before Levi finally had enough beating and quit fighting. Just to be safe, Thorn tied the boy’s hands behind his back, cut his clothes off, and scrubbed him with a coarse brush and strong lye soap. Levi could not fight back and the coarse bristles scratched through his skin and the lye soap burned in those scratches but Levi would not give Thorn the satisfaction of seeing him cry. The water from the mountain stream was icy cold but the boy felt like he was on fire. The buckets of creek water that were poured over him to rinse away the soap, cold as they were, felt like a balm.
It could get cold in the mountains at night, and although Thorn had no intention of ever giving the boy back to Pick, he didn’t want him to freeze to death or die of pneumonia. Levi Fillion was an aggravation here but he was money in San Francisco. Thorn had gotten a pair of bib overalls, a warm shirt, and a pair of boots from Quinlen. He put them on the boy and clamped a leg iron around his ankle, the other end of which was attached to a heavy piece of abandoned mining equipment. Thorn untied the boy’s hands and told him to yell all he wanted to. There was no one close enough to hear but he’d best keep his damn mouth shut if he wanted to eat. Levi knew there was no use in yelling. He still burned all over and he was angry, but all he could do now was be angry. He could not hit anyone. He could not run off as he often did hoping to worry his father. He could cuss and pull at the chain but he knew that was dumb. He wasn’t going to break that chain.
The anger waned as he accepted his situation. He soon discovered that he wished he had stayed angry. He had to admit something that he almost never allowed himself to admit. He was afraid. He sat on the cold, damp floor, leaned against the rock wall and did something else he almost never did. He cried.
Pick really hadn’t missed Levi. He’d been doing better but he still occasionally lost control and beat his children. Levi, frequently after he had been beaten, would run off for several days, vowing that he would never return, but he always did. Pick hadn’t beaten the boy recently but he thought Levi had probably convinced himself that he was mad about something and just left. He’d come back. He always did.
It was the scratches on Thorn’s face and the bruises on his legs that convinced Pick that Thorn had the boy. Even in his anger and fear for the boy, there was a touch of pride. Levi was a fighter like his daddy.
Thorn’s offer now was, “Kill him tonight and you get your boy back in one piece.”
“What about my money?”
“Ain’t no money no more, Pick. Dodd ain’t dead by midnight you get that little hellion’s head in a bucket.” As he walked away, Thorn called back over his shoulder, “If you want the rest of him, watch the sky for buzzards.”
Pick was stunned. He had come to realize that Thorn was a sick, evil man but he had not anticipated this. It never occurred to him that going along with the Forrests, stalling Thorn to give the Forrests time to get their legal and operational strategies in order would put his own son in danger. He did not blame the Forrests. It was he who had been dealing with Thorn. He knew the evil in the man. He should have foreseen that nothing was too bizarre, too cruel, if it contributed to Thorn’s ends.
But Pick was struggling with a stronger emotion, one that he had never really paid attention to before. He loved the boy. He didn’t know if he really had ever known that until now. The thought of his child, alone, frightened, in pain or perhaps even dead freed the melancholy that Pick had always suppressed with his anger. He didn’t know why but it had always been there—that sadness.
As a child he had seen things so differently than those around him. To him a crawfish was a marvel of nature. He knew that to most people it was something to eat. He pondered what happened to the life force when he slapped a mosquito. Everyone else just cursed the bite but the priest said that when a person dies his soul goes to heaven or hell or purgatory. Were life and the soul the same thing? Did they have heaven or hell or purgatory for mosquitoes? He would have loved to have contemplated the beauty and aroma of a flower, the mystery of the clouds, and the moods of the ocean. He would have loved to have known what was beyond the stars. He would have loved to have known what caused hurricanes. Even as a very young child he did not accept the priestly diatribe that it was God’s wrath. He felt even then that there must be a reason he could know, and he wanted to know. He would have loved to have known… it made no difference what… just to have known anything.
But he had neither the time nor the will to find out. Grinding poverty made schooling out of the question for a Fillion and the ridicule of his family and his peers over his curiosity and questions—of his wanting to know and be something other than what they knew and were—made him unwilling to search and think things out on his own. He knew there was more out there—much more—and the fact that he could not know even a small portion of it made him sad.
In Pick’s childhood environment sad people were weak people, so his sadness was masked by the anger that had been the defining characteristic of his person. He had let anger so rule him that it had pushed other emotions aside.
But there was no place for anger now. He could very well have lost a son—a son he didn’t even realize he loved until right now. He felt that love and he felt the sadness. In a strange sort of way, it felt good. Pick Fillion, despised town bully, child beater and drunkard whose entire adult agenda had been to protect his own ego was now thinking of someone else. He grieved and feared for his son. Lashing out in anger would do no good and, out of respect for the son he now knew he loved, would be completely inappropriate. This was not a time for anger. This was a time for sadness. Pick did the only thing he could do. He wept.
As soon as Pick had known about the plot to kill Dodd, Dodd had known. Had you asked him, Pick could not have explained his admiration for Dodd Forrest. Pick understood and respected power. It had been Dodd’s power that had beaten him. Pick may have been stronger but Dodd was more powerful because he knew more. For the first time in his life Pick fully understood that knowledge was power. This was what he had suspected as a young boy—the thing that drove him to want to know. Dodd Forrest had given a name and meaning to his sadness. Dodd had proven to him that he had been right as a child—knowledge is power.
And there had been that conversation outside Doc Bloom’s office that first day. Dodd made things clear to Pick but they had talked man to man. There was no condescension and none of the disdain in Dodd’s voice to which Pick was so accustomed. Pick sensed that Dodd had respected him as a man. He could not help himself. He respected and liked Dodd. Dodd had cared for his children when they were sick. If Pick had no money, it was always, “Pay me when you can.” And because Dodd was Dodd, Pick always did.
Originally Thorn had wanted Pick to bring him Dodd’s head as proof that the murder had been completed. Pick knew himself to be a lowlife but even he had not reached that level of degradation. He would not cut off a man’s head. Thorn then wanted Dodd’s right hand with that big ring on it. Pick’s response was, “You want to see him dead, you gonna see all of him. I might cut a man but I ain’t butcherin’ him like a damn hog.”
It was finally agreed that all of the conspirators, other than Thorn, would go back with Pick the day after the murder to verify Dodd’s death. Pick had originally so strongly insisted that only one go with him to the murder site that Butler, Quinlen and Morrison, skittish and suspicious from the start, were sure that, when he got them alone, he would kill them one by one. None would agree to be alone with Pick and they would not go the night of the murder. It had to be the day after the murder because all of them needed to be seen in town until the bars closed in the wee hours of the morning.
After they’d verified Dodd’s death, they would see that the body was soon found. When one lived in wild, rough frontier country a dead body was not an unusual sight. Folks became familiar with them, and got to know their characteristics. Anyone could tell a day-old corpse. Butler, Quinlen and Morrison, now made wary by Thorn’s attitude and threats, would make sure they were seen all over town during the time Dodd had to have been killed. Everyone would know that it couldn’t have been them. It really was a perfect plan. They all hated Thorn but they did have to give him that.
The original plan was that Thorn would wait in his office with the money. That had changed now. Thorn would still be in his office, but now only to tell Pick where he could find his boy.
The planned trap was really not complicated. It was quite simple. Several of Josh’s security men would be stationed in strategic locations. Pick would get the thugs, as they had taken to calling the conspirators, talking about the conspiracy. Get them to make incriminating statements in the hearing of the security men hidden along the route to the murder site. Dodd himself would greet them and have the pleasure of placing them under arrest. Butler, Quinlen and Morrison were weak men. They’d talk. Dodd, Josh and his security men would have no trouble implicating Thorn.
By noon, there was an air of mystery and fear in Carson City. Doctor Forrest had not arrived at the office that morning. He was not in his room. Mrs. Looney had heard someone at the door, she guessed about one o’clock, but she couldn’t hear well enough to recognize the voice. Josh made an appropriate show of concern but he had a major problem consoling Elizabeth. Elizabeth was not given to shows of emotion but her concern for this man she loved had her in tears most of the morning. She tried to go on with her work but she frequently gave way to bouts of sobbing.
Elizabeth had not been made privy to the plot. Dodd had not wanted her worried. She, of course, hadn’t been until now and she finally told Josh that she was sorry but she could not concentrate. She was going to help Thorn and his men search for Dodd.
Thorn also gave a good performance. While he tried to assure her that Dodd was probably just sitting with some very sick or badly injured patient, he did have two of his men asking questions and going to the homes of people who had been known to be sick or injured. Josh also was sure Dodd would be all right. Dodd, he assured her, could take care of himself and as a little boy had often wandered off by himself.
But the Dodd Elizabeth knew was so responsible and he had never kept anything from her. He would not just go off and not tell her. If he was with a very ill patient, she knew he would try to get word to her or Doc Bloom somehow.
Elizabeth was a strong, spirited woman. Josh began to believe that Dodd should have told her. Her anxiety would turn to ire when she learned that Dodd could have saved her all this worry. Elizabeth was not a truculent woman. She was, in fact, a real lady but when she was wronged, she left the offender with no doubt of her displeasure.
Dodd was hiding in one of the abandoned tunnels of the Forrest Silver Mine. Josh had wanted to take another look at that tunnel for some time. It had been abandoned before he became manager of that area. He thought that with the new techniques they were now using, it might be worth working again. He decided that it would be a good day to go up there and look around. He could also take Dodd something to eat.
Dodd heard him approaching was surprised and a little worried to see him. Had something gone wrong? Pick was supposed to bring the thugs. Josh explained his reason for being there. Dodd chided him gently, “Someone may have seen you.” But he welcomed the food. He had not eaten since the night before.
Josh wasn’t worried about being seen. “It’s my mine and I can come up here if I want. Don’t worry about me being seen. You have bigger things to worry about. You should have told her, little brother. I’ve got a feeling she’s going to chew you up and spit you out when she learns that you’re all right. You’ve got her in a regular tizzy. By the time she’s through with you, you may well end up wishing you had been killed.” Dodd smiled. He had seen the spirit in her. That was part of what he loved.
At about three in the afternoon all was ready. Pick Fillion gathered up Butler, Morrison and Quinlen. He led them through a rocky ravine toward an abandoned tunnel at the base of a rather steep mountainside. It was a difficult walk. It was an extremely hot day and the ravine was littered with loose rocks of various sizes that years of weathering had pulled from the mountain. Each of the men had stumbled several times and with each misstep their anger rose. The very nervous Travis Butler had fallen twice but while the other men were cursing Pick for his choice of locations, Travis stoically took the falls and bloody hands and elbows as part of his penance for being part of this horrible thing.
Pick had chosen his location well. There were many outcroppings and boulders large enough to hide a man and behind each, well within hearing range, was one of Josh Forrest’s security men. Pick did not have to prime the trio to get them to make incriminating statements. Morrison and Quinlen kept up a constant line of complaining chatter. “Why the hell you kill him here? How the hell we gonna make someone happen across the body?”
Pick assured Morrison that boys came out here to play frequently and there was no need to worry about that. The body would be found. Morrison still was not happy with Pick’s choice for the location. In fact he wasn’t happy about anything. He kept up a constant line of chatter about how he didn’t see why that damn Dodd Forrest hadn’t left town and taken that goddam woman with him. He was glad they’d killed Dodd but it was the damn woman who was the cause of all the trouble. If she wasn’t here, Dodd would never have come in the first place and he’d still have his job at the mine. Morrison wondered if Pick would kill her if Thorn couldn’t get her to quit practicing law. That damn Thorn didn’t know how tough this woman could be.
Quinlen fussed about how much he hated Thorn. Thorn planned the whole thing. Where the hell was he now? Why wasn’t he climbing over these damn rocks, sweating like a pig? Hell, he wasn’t sure they should have killed Dodd anyway. There was no way to stop the changes. The state would have their nose in everything now. “Killing Dodd,” he said “was a waste but I’m glad the son-of-a-bitch is dead anyway. I just wish we’d have gone ahead and killed Thorn too.”
Travis Butler said very little. His only comments were loud protestations that “We didn’t kill him.” whenever the comments of the other two included that pronoun when making reference to who had done the killing. Travis Butler was not at all sure that his negotiations with the Almighty were going well on this matter.
They entered the tunnel and stood catching their breath. There was an oil lantern hanging about twenty feet farther into the tunnel. Morrison gave Pick a cussing for leaving a lit lamp. “It’s a clue, you goddam fool.”
Pick reminded them that Thorn was going to do the investigation and that Thorn had planned the whole thing. He didn’t think that lamp would be a problem. Morrison had to agree but, God, he wished this mess was over. His agreement and his anxiety were more evidence that he and Thorn were involved in the conspiracy.
Pick moved them far enough from the entrance so that they could not see the mine security men picking their way along the trail they had just passed over. Travis Butler wanted to know if there was a lot of blood. He didn’t do too well with gruesome sights.
“Well, Travis, have a look. I’ve never really felt I was all that handsome but I don’t think you’d call me gruesome.”
It took no explanation. The three knew it was over. Dodd stepped into the light cast by the lantern. He wore on his chest a U.S. Marshall’s star. Lester Markley had arranged a temporary appointment for Dodd. There was obvious satisfaction in Dodd’s voice when he said, “Gentlemen, I’m placing you under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder.”
Morrison turned to flee. His escape was blocked by six Forrest Mining Company security men. He reached in his breast pocket and pulled out a derringer. There was a flurry of activity as the mine men moved to draw their guns but there was no need. Morrison put the tiny gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Bill Thorn had felt for some time that his control of Ormsby County would never be restored. He knew that his power was slipping away because it had happened several times before. At nineteen he had been a rather successful slave trader. He bought and sold niggers and thought no more of taking a pickaninny from his mama than he did of taking a calf from a cow. A bitch nigger brought more money if she didn’t have one on the tit or hanging on her apron strings. A pickaninny older than seven he could usually sell. The others he usually threw in the river. Folks weren’t speculating anymore. Most folks thought the South was gonna lose the war. There wouldn’t be no more slavery. Wasn’t no sense in feedin’ a nigger too young to work. You’d put all that money in them and never get no use from them. The damn Yankees’d take them away from you. To Bill Thorn drowning baby and apron-string niggers made sense. You drowned pups wasn’t no good to you, didn’t you? It was just good business to drown useless niggers. It was a dangerous but typically Thorn thing to do. It was money in Thorn’s pocket. That was really all he cared about. Even the white sheriff would have hung him if he’d found out but, hell, by then the war wasn’t goin’ good and folks had other things to worry about than little niggers.
By the time Bill was thirty, the war had ruined his business. People wouldn’t buy niggers they knew was gonna be took from them. He joined the Confederate army and was assigned as a guard at Andersonville. His slave trading experience stood him in good stead. He found that he had a real knack for cruelty toward the helpless. Further, he found that he enjoyed it immensely.
The defeat of the south enraged him. When he returned to his home, his parents were dead, killed by their own slaves whom they had brutalized, raped and otherwise dehumanized. Bill vowed vengeance, but because of his own vile deeds, he could safely take time to find only one—the ten-year-old daughter of a pair of their house niggers. He raped her and slowly cut her throat—reveling in the little girl’s terror and the agony he caused her.
The loss of the war had robbed him of his power, and the plantation that would have been his wealth had been divided up among the niggers by them damn carpetbaggers.
He hated niggers. He hated carpetbaggers. He hated everyone. There was nothing left for him in Mississippi, so as many other displaced southerners did, he headed west. He had found a degree of power and wealth in Nevada. He used his job as sheriff to go back into the people-selling business. Damn Yankees wouldn’t let you sell niggers no more but there was all these orphans. You couldn’t get a thousand or two like you could for a good nigger but the five hundred you got from a whore-buyer was all profit. Them orphans didn’t cost you nothin’. Sell four or five a year to the whore-buyers and the twenty-five that was his share for the let-out ones, he made a good living. The thirty a month he got for sheriffin’ was almost a joke but he took it.
But that was all gone now. There was nothing for him here anymore. The hell with Nevada. The hell with Ormsby County. The hell with Dodd Forrest. Thorn was glad he was dead. He only wished now that he had had the pleasure of doing the killing himself. He had started with nothing before. He could do it again but this time it would be easier. He had two thousand dollars in his pocket.
Thorn took Levi Fillion and headed for San Francisco.
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein