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

“An old man? How old?”

“Past eighty.”

In those days, fifty was a respectable age. Russell waited. The man straightened his cravat, leaned comfortably against the hotel wall, and laid out his proposition.

“There are two families, brothers. The Vickerses and the Loves. Bad blood between them. With every coast-to-coast train worth taking down, it’s a standoff who gets in position first to rob it.”

“I know all that.”

“Last week, the Loves robbed the mail train out of Topeka. The law was on their tail, and they had half a dozen lookouts when they buried the gold. Meant to return for it that night. The Vickerses found it, dug it up, then turned Lem and Cleve Love in to Pinkerton.” The man smiled. “They did it to cut down the competition. You can imagine how that inflamed the feud.”

“So?” Russell watched him warily.

“Cage Vickers is the only one in his family who doesn’t steal. Some kind of throwback, maybe. Whatever his problem, he’s pure as a newborn. And,” he said, smiling, “he’s fallen for Tessa Love, he means to marry her.”

Russell turned away. This was of no interest to him. “I have a friend waiting.”

He was stopped cold, couldn’t move, he couldn’t touch his gun in the holster.

The stranger continued. “Neither family would allow him to marry Tessa. He’s decided to get rid of them all, to kill them all, including his own brothers. He tells himself they’re all without virtue, that he’d be doing the world a favor.”

Again Russell tried to move, but he was locked in a grip as tight as if he’d been turned to stone.

“When the next big gold shipment comes through out of California, heading east, Cage plans to set up both families to be caught red-handed when they try to stop the freight. Once they’re locked up and convicted—he’s hoping safe behind bars, on long sentences—he means to marry Tessa, leave this part of the country, and vanish.”

“Fine. Then the trains will all be mine.”

“I don’t want that, I’ve taken a lot of trouble manipulating the Midwestern railroads. Through the right people in Washington I’ve been able to infuriate every settler who thought he was going to buy railroad land for a dollar an acre, I’ve worked to increase the land prices, to foment a strike against the railroad that has escalated into a small civil war. It’s already cost the railroads a nice sum, and the public, enraged by the government railway, has turned to protecting the train robbers. No,” he said, smiling, “I like things just as I have them, I want no change, I don’t want the gangs stopped, I want Cage Vickers stopped. I don’t like his plan. I want Vickers brought down.”

“So do it, you’re the one with the power.” Trying again vainly to move his feet or to reach the butt of his gun though he doubted a bullet would faze the apparition.

“I can’t stop him, the stupid boy is totally pure, he can’t see me, can’t hear me, he’s beyond my influence.”

Russell scowled. “I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

“I can’t change events. I can only influence the players—some of them. There has to be a respectable amount of evil in a man before I can reach him.”

“Hell, I’m not killing Cage Vickers, if that’s what you want. And I’d be a fool to try to warn his brothers or the Loves. Any one of them would fill me full of holes.”

The visitor waited.

“I gather this bargain wouldn’t take effect until after I’d done the deed. That your protection of my life wouldn’t begin until I’d already risked my neck for you.”

“That is so. However, if you don’t stop Cage Vickers, I’ll take great pleasure, when the time of your death arrives, in seeing you suffer, eternally, in ways you can’t yet imagine.”

Russell said nothing.

“With the bargain I offer, you will have a long, pain-free, and profitable life, any kind of life you choose—youth and wealth and beautiful women, enviable power and superb health.

“You have only to stop Cage Vickers, see that none of the brothers are apprehended, and not go to the law yourself.

“If you refuse my bargain, I have within my power many creative ways to annoy and harass you for the remainder of your miserable life, runaway horses, train conductors who are fast and accurate and lust for blood, women who, once you have made love to them, feel an overwhelming desire to maim you as you lie sleeping beside them. Little things, Russell, accomplished through the minds of others, but oh, so effective.”

Russell remembered stories of multiple calamities that beset some men over an entire lifetime, innocent men saddled with strings of disasters that defied all laws of probability.

“If you work with me,” the dark spirit said, “you will know no sickness, no wound or pain, no bullet will ever touch you, you will not die of any cause until you are an old, old man and still healthy and vigorous. Even then, your death will be peaceful, no pain and no fear.”

“And in exchange,” Russell said, “I stop Cage Vickers from getting the Loves and the Vickerses arrested, so they can go on robbing trains. That seems simple enough.”

“That is the bargain.”

Russell was a born gambler, that’s what robbing the trains was all about. But he’d never played for stakes like these. “Under what circumstances,” he said softly, “would you consider that I had bested you?”

“Under no circumstances. If you do as I say, that won’t happen.”

“If Cage’s plan fails, if neither family takes the train down successfully and no one of either family is arrested, I would be free of you?”

“You would.”

“And you would uphold your bargain.”

He nodded.

“Would you throw in that Cage and Tessa marry anyway, and live long and happy lives together, without the ire or retribution of either family?”

“Why would I do that? I told you that my powers are limited. I can only influence, I can’t twist fate.”

Russell looked back at him and kept his thoughts locked tight inside himself. He received so penetrating a look in return that he had to fight to keep from glancing away. He stared at the stranger until suddenly the figure vanished. The stair and alley lay empty.

Russell stood in the alley shivering. And slowly considering his options.

His question had not been answered. He had no real promise from the stranger. He thought about that a long time, then at last he turned and made his way back up the stairs, to his lady friend.

8

The train bucked and slowed, waking Lee as the conductor hurried through calling out, “Centralia. Five minutes.” Straightening up, he watched out the window as the mailbags were heaved off. Two passengers descended from the car ahead, hurrying inside the long, red-roofed brick building, then almost at once they were pulling out again, the white peak of Mount Saint Helens towering bright, to his left, against the heavy gray sky, bringing half a dozen passengers rushing to Lee’s side of the train to look. But soon Lee slept again, only vaguely aware of the frequent hollow rumbles as the train crossed the railroad bridges that spanned Washington’s swift rivers. When the sour smell of caged chickens filled the train, passing through Winlock, he looked out at the long, ugly rows of wooden chicken houses and, beyond them, a tractor and trailer spreading chicken manure on the vegetable fields. Not a job he’d want, not mired in that smell all day.

Soon, dozing, he woke again when they skirted the Columbia, the river’s giant rafts of logs moving below him, down toward Lake Vancouver headed for the sawmills. How would it be to settle down here along the shore somewhere in a little shack, get some sort of job, maybe taking care of someone’s horses, forget his grand plans for a hefty robbery and for that life-sustaining nest egg? Forget his urge to take on the feds one last time, to outsmart them once and for good? Along the green of the marsh, the train’s approach sent restless flocks of shorebirds exploding up into the sour mist, sweeping away beneath low, heavy clouds. There’d be a twenty-minute stop at Portland, where Lee thought to get off and stretch his aching legs. Sitting too long stove him up like a stall-bound cowpony that was never let out to run.