Shirley Murphy: The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana

“All you have,” Randy said, “is the little transaction slip you get from the first bank, with the numbers of the traveler’s checks on it, to show the second bank.

“Two things are important at the second bank, the way you give your sob story, and the bank’s willingness to please without checking out your story. You have to be subtle. Honest and quiet, and not too quick with the charm.” Lee thought Sanderford, with that innocent face and big blue eyes, would have little trouble conning some young teller.

“I always pick large, busy banks in big cities,” Randy said. “They want your business, they’ll bend over backward to please the customer. If you need a few hundred bucks, that’s the way to do it.” The boy gave Lee an innocent smile. “Good idea, though, to have false ID. The second bank always wants to see something.” He shrugged. “I’ve never been questioned. Every time, I just walked out of there cool as you please with the cash in my hand.”

But Sanderford had been arrested and imprisoned for a different kind of forgery that, Randy said himself, was amateurish and stupid. He had been so intent on the convertible he had stolen that he had let his attempt to cash a simple forged check trap him, he said he never would have stolen the car in the first place if he hadn’t been drunk. Lee thought maybe if Sanderford left the booze alone he’d make a first-rate con man. But Lee didn’t like the kid. Sanderford was intelligent, very bright. But if he hated the world so much, why didn’t he give up the booze, knuckle down, and really milk the humanity he despised? Watching the baby-faced boy, Lee felt only disgust for him.

7

The rocking rhythm of the train and the stuffy heat of the car put Lee to sleep again in a luxury of malaise. He had no need to wake and hustle around, no prison job to go to, no lockdown time to think about, not even a set mealtime. He woke and ate his sandwich, and when the vendor came around, he bought another for later. He slept and woke as he chose, enjoying his freedom, looking out the window at the green pastures and at the long orchard rows fanning by so fast they dizzied him if he looked too long. Or looking down at the streets and into the windows of the small towns where the train crept through, or out at the boxcars crowded into the freight yards, and then as they gained speed once more he’d ease back, soothed by the green hills, or by the climb into the dark and wooded mountains, the train rocking and tilting, taking the narrow curves. He liked traveling, liked moving on, he liked the speed that made him feel suspended in time, with nothing to stop him or fret him.

Nothing except that sometimes when he woke he had dreamed dark dreams, would come awake planning crimes that were not his kind of brutality, actions against others that disgusted him, would wake to ugly suggestions and to the hoary presence that wouldn’t leave him alone, that was more real than any dream. But then sometimes he’d wake feeling easier and was aware of the prison cat beside him, lying warm and invisible on the seat next to him—nothing to see, the seat empty except for his sandwich wrapper and his spread-out newspapers. But the cat was there, curled next to him. Reaching into the empty space, Lee could feel his warmth, and when he could feel the rough, thick texture of the tomcat’s fur, and when he stroked the ghost cat, a gentle paw pulled his hand down closer, the big invisible tom enjoying the stroking just as much as he had in real life.

Lee told himself he imagined the cat, and that he’d imagined the dark presence in his dreams and in his cell that last night, told himself he had only imagined the evil in that puny little blue-eyed salesman. But he knew he had imagined none of it. He knew what he’d seen, that both the ghost cat and that chill shadow were more than real as they followed him onto the train.

He was happy to have the cat, he was good company, a friendly and comforting spirit to steady and embolden him. But he didn’t need his darker traveling companion. Spirit, haunt, whatever you’d name him, Lee knew it was the same unworldly presence that had tormented his grandpappy when Lee was a boy. He didn’t need this chill spirit that had made a bargain with old Russell Dobbs and for which Lee himself was now being prodded—being pushed toward the devil’s due, as some might call it, that the dark spirit seemed to think he deserved.

It was May of 1882 when Russell Dobbs, in the line of his work, relieved the Indiana Flyer of ten thousand dollars’ worth of gold bullion just north of Camrose, South Dakota. Stopping the train where it slowed at a curve, Russell boarded with his partner, Samil Hook. Samil was a little man, wiry, and a crack shot. Dobbs towered over him, muscular and rough shaven. Between them they took down the conductor and the four crew members, left them tied in the express car while they loaded eight canvas bags of gold bullion into a small spring wagon.

Leaving the train, the two men separated. Samil drove the wagon, keeping to the deep woods along a narrow timber trail to a cabin hidden in a stand of pine trees ten miles north of Agar. Russell didn’t worry that Samil would double-cross him, Samil feared Russell with a passion far more powerful than greed. Samil knew Russell wouldn’t kill a train man if he could avoid it, but that he would kill a friend who deceived him as casually as shooting a rabbit for his breakfast.

Leaving Samil and the wagon, Russell rode alone to Cliffordsville where he holed up in the Miner’s Hotel. The proprietress always took a keen pleasure in sheltering him. She would swear he had been there for better than a week. It was the next morning, early, one of the bartenders came to Mattie Lou’s door to tell Russell a gentleman, a stranger, was asking for him.

As far as Russell knew, no one but Mattie Lou had seen him slip in through the back entry, and Mattie Lou had told no one. He finished dressing, strapped on his gun belt, and went down the back stairs so as to come on the visitor from behind.

Halfway down, a man stood in the shadows of the landing. City clothes, fancy dark suit, embroidered cravat, soft black pigskin gloves—and the gleam of metal as his hand slipped inside his coat. Russell drew, fired twice point-blank, close enough to blow out the side of a barn.

The man didn’t fall.

Russell saw no wound, no blood. The stranger eased up the stairs never taking his eyes from Russell, his Colt .36 revolver fixed on Russell as steadily as his smile. Russell fired three more rounds, again hitting the man square in the belly. Again, he didn’t fall, didn’t jerk, didn’t seem to feel the impact.

“Perhaps by now, Russell, you have guessed who I am?”

Russell had seen his bullets enter a man and disappear into nowhere. Hadn’t seen them strike anything behind the man. He fired again knowing the impact should put the man down, knowing it wouldn’t. He looked toward the hotel lobby expecting that people would have heard the shots.

“No one can hear us, Russell.”

“What the hell are you?”

“I think you know what I am.”

Russell wasn’t a religious man. If the way he lived sent him to hell, so be it. But he sure hadn’t expected hell to come seeking him. “What do you want?”

“I want your help. In exchange, of course, I offer you a gift.”

Russell waited.

“I can give you freedom from death and injury, I can make you impervious to any wound including those caused by a knife or bullet.”

Russell had heard that old saw around a dozen campfires. But the man smiled. “Maybe you have heard it, Russell. This time, it’s no tall story. Freedom from sickness, too. From pain. From death by any weapon. Freedom to live in health until you are an old, old man.”