pockets for a pencil and paper, but all he could find was the envelope with Helen’s check. He sighed.
“Anybody got a pencil?” he asked.
The blond know-it-all at the front quickly jutted a finely sharpened pencil toward Fallon, who took it with a thank-you and wrote the prisoner’s name on the envelope and the words: LARAMIE PRISON. HORSE THIEF. The pencil was returned, and Fallon found his hat.
“Any more questions?” The headmaster’s tone let the boys know that if they asked anything, heads would roll.
After the unison Thank you, Marshal Fallon, and clapping hands, the teachers escorted the boys out of the room to another classroom, and the headmaster came to Fallon.
“I’m sorry about Carlos Diego, Marshal. He’s one of our charity cases.”
“Is he an orphan?”
“No,” Hendricks said. “His mother has four other kids. She washes clothes at the laundry behind the Inter-Ocean Hotel. Cooks breakfast at the café on Thirteenth. Still couldn’t afford to send her son to our school, but we like to do good deeds, and we’ve never had a Mexican in the Academy before. Wanted to give it a try. See if we couldn’t straighten him out before he follows in his papa’s boots. Kid couldn’t speak more than three words of English till we got him here a year ago.”
“I see.” Fallon slipped the envelope into his coat pocket and stared hard at Hendricks, the Methodist with the hard-shell nature of a Baptist, and a headmaster with an iron rule. “He speaks pretty good English now.”
“Yes, well, I happen to head our English department. But believe me, he was a challenge.” Hendricks tried to smile. “Anyway, Marshal, I’m sorry the little boy asked such an improper question for your visit. Besides, well, I’m sure every prisoner in Laramie says he is innocent.”
Fallon placed his hat on his head and waited until Hendricks looked him squarely in the eye. Which did not last as soon as Fallon told him: “Well, Mr. Hendricks, sometimes an innocent man gets put in prison, you know.”
He spit the gall out of his mouth and into the trashcan by the door before seeing himself out of the Abraham Lincoln Academy.
CHAPTER SIX
“Stop here, driver.” Sitting in the back of the surrey, Fallon happened to see the Stockgrowers’ bank as the hack clopped down the stone-paved street, another sign of Cheyenne’s prosperity. There was a time when Fallon prided himself on his memory—a key attribute when you’re a lawman in the Indian Territory, or a prisoner anywhere—but those instincts had faded during his years making speeches and signing his name on countless documents stuck behind a desk.
The driver pulled on the reins to stop the mule.
“I remembered I need to drop something off at the bank,” he explained to the old black man and fished out some coins. “Here you go, sir.”
“Wouldye like me ta wait fer ye, Marshal?”
“No need, my friend. I can walk to the courthouse from here. Thank you, and have a good day.”
The driver looked at the coins, and beamed, “Thank ye kindly, Marshal.”
Fallon stepped down, pulled his hat tight, and saw a man wearing a rain slicker leaning against the column of a saloon, one arm tucked inside the orange-colored material, smoking a cigarette. Fallon looked up. Not a cloud in the sky, but it had sprinkled some last night, and the cowboy did stand in front of a saloon that had not closed its doors, legend had it, for twelve and three-quarter years. Turning to cross the street, he looked back at the cowboy once more, and then waited for a buggy and a farm wagon to pass.
The hitching rail in front of the Stockgrowers was full, and another cowhand worked on the cinch of his Appaloosa gelding at the far right. He wore a linen duster, more common this time of year than a rain slicker. As Fallon started across the street, he saw another man, this one working a pocketknife on his fingernails as he leaned against the wall in the alcove of the bank. He wore a long frock coat, trail-worn from too many years either during the winter or rolled up behind a saddle.
Maybe he was a Texan, because anyone who had spent time in Wyoming wouldn’t consider this cold. Fallon glanced back at the dude in the slicker as his boots clipped on the stones. He studied the rest of the street. It was a slow time of year and a slow time of day. But the bank was doing booming business.
All right, Fallon told himself. The federal and state employees had been paid. Probably some ranchers had paid their cowboys, too. But how many cowboys do you know that save any money? And how many would have an account at the Stockgrowers? A linen duster . . . that made sense? A frock coat or a rain slicker? Those could be used to hide a shotgun. Or a rifle. And even the greenest cowboy didn’t take that long to cinch up a saddle. The man cursed, tried the latigo again.
Drunk. Fallon decided that would explain it. Left his horse at the bank because the rail was full in front of the saloon last night when he rode in. No. No, not if he’s a cowboy. A cowboy wouldn’t walk across a street. He would have found a rail at the apothecary . . . or the hotel . . . or most likely left the Appaloosa in the livery at the corner. And that horse was too well-blooded for a thirty-a-month waddie to own.
Fallon reached the boardwalk, looked down the street from the bank. Empty. His mind raced. One man with the horses. Another near the bank door. A third across the street with a rifle. Five horses tethered to the rail. Three men outside. Three in the bank. The fellow across the street would have his horse closer, and Fallon spied a brown Thoroughbred at the end of the hitching rail in front of the saloon.
His eyes raced up and down both boardwalks. Naturally, there wasn’t one Cheyenne policeman to be seen.
You’re getting too damned suspicious in your old age, he told himself. Jesse James was dead. The two surviving Younger brothers were behind the iron in Minnesota. One Dalton was in Lansing, and his brothers and the other gang members were all buried in Coffeyville. And that Hole in the Wall Bunch would never even try to rob a bank in Cheyenne. It was too damned big.
He waited for a gray-haired woman to stop and enter the bakery. The boardwalk on this side now empty for two blocks, Fallon turned back and headed past the hitching rail. The fellow stopped fidgeting with the saddle and let his right hand disappear inside his duster. Fallon just noticed the buckle to a belt that undoubtedly held a holster, or likely more than one. He noticed the scabbards of three of the saddles to the mounts tethered to the rail were empty.
Then Fallon stepped into the alcove and reached for the handle to the door.
“Hey, pops,” the man in the frock coat said with a smile and holding out the cigar he held in his left hand. “Can I bother you for a light?”
The man at the hitching rail stepped away from the horse, one hand still underneath the duster.
“I don’t smoke,” Fallon said.
“I do.” The man clamped the cigar with his teeth, and held out a box of matches in the fingers of his left hand. His right hand remained underneath the heavy coat. “Light my cigar, old man.”
Old man? Fallon didn’t care for that. He might have been old enough to be this punk’s daddy, but that didn’t make Harry Fallon old.
“Light it, bub, or dance,” the man said. And
