Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(41)
Jimmy looked around him. “It ain’t raining.”
“And in the time it took you to look, I got my own gun out. Know the difference between us, son?”
“You killed more men than me?”
“I’m sober and you’re drunk. Not equal ground for a gunfight; trust me on that.”
“I ain’t scared of you none!”
“It’s not the man you need to be scared of, son, it’s his gun.” Steeldust Jack stepped down off the plank walkway and tossed his cigar aside. “You got two choices, son: either you take your best shot here and now, or you tell me what I want to know.”
Jimmy Miller lowered his Colt just a little. “What is it you want to know?”
“Who you and those other boys are working for. Who sent you onto that Indian land.”
The Colt started back up. “Nobody. We was looking for who killed our friend is all.”
“Man who got himself mangled, you mean. What was his name again?”
Jimmy searched his drunken mind for the answer. “Can’t say.”
“Must’ve been a really good friend, then.”
Only then did the kid realize Steeldust Jack had drawn closer to him, close enough to make out his features through the flickering firelight behind the nearest windows.
“Think I’m close enough for you to shoot now, son? Here’s your choices: either start talking or start shooting. There isn’t a third, and only the first leaves you alive. Second means I’ll be the last thing you’ll ever see.”
The gun was shaking in Jimmy’s hand now, and he promised himself he’d never take another drink, not even one. Not when it left him sick to his stomach and the world too wobbly to shoot.
“He just got in tonight,” Jimmy said finally.
“Who?”
“The man we work for. I guess, anyway. I didn’t meet him, didn’t even see him. Just heard his name.”
“And what would that be?”
“Rockafella. Something like that.”
*
Jack Strong was having breakfast in the hotel restaurant when Curly Bill Brocius entered ahead of the men the Ranger recalled from the Comanche reservation, and a few more he didn’t. Nine in total, ten including Jimmy Miller, who clung sheepishly behind some of the brutes whose smell reached the Ranger long before their presence.
Steeldust Jack sipped his coffee and went back to work on his plate, which was piled with scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and biscuits swimming in gravy. He pretended not to notice the presence of the ten gunmen until a well-dressed, mustachioed man who looked younger than his years slid through the makeshift tunnel they formed. He was thinner and shorter than Steeldust Jack had expected of someone with his notoriety and growing power.
The Ranger hitched back the long coat he hadn’t shed, to make sure the handle of his Colt was in easy range, never missing a beat with his eggs. He glimpsed John D. Rockefeller coming his way, the gunmen falling into step behind him.
“My associates tell me there was some trouble on an Indian reservation yesterday that’s claimed my interest, Ranger.”
Steeldust Jack looked up, waited to swallow his mouthful before responding. “Your associates tell you they were the cause of it?”
“On the contrary, they informed me one of their number was found murdered and they were merely trying to ascertain more about his killing.”
“They tell you the man’s body was found outside the reservation proper and, in the wake of ascertaining this, they trespassed on sovereign land?”
“They didn’t have to. I’m well aware of the law.” Rockefeller pulled back the chair across from Jack Strong. “You mind if I sit down?”
Steeldust Jack gestured for him to take the chair, snatching a bite of a biscuit and stuffing another forkful of eggs into his mouth.
“I have great respect for your organization and the entire state of Texas,” Rockefeller said, pushing his chair back under the table and signaling for a cup of coffee. “And I apologize if any man in my service treated you or the Texas Rangers with any modicum of disrespect.”
“Small amount,” Jack Strong said, laying his own coffee back down.
“Pardon me?”
“Definition of the word modicum. It means ‘small amount.’”
“You must be a well-read man.”
“I do my share, Mr. Rockefeller. Know a bit about history, too. Like how you used your riches and family name to avoid service in the Civil War.”
Rockefeller bristled, not noticing as the barman set a steaming mug of coffee down before him. “My shipping business was the sole means of support for my mother and younger siblings. My joining the army would have doomed it and them.”
“Lots of men buried off battlefields were the sole means of support for their families, too. How do you suppose those families are getting by now? But that’s not the point, Mr. Rockefeller. The point is you didn’t just sit out the war, you profited off it, when shipping down the Mississippi became one of the war’s first casualties. All of a sudden, the shipment of Midwestern crops was pushed eastward—through Cleveland, sir, where you just happened to be based. At the same time, there was a load of government contracts for food, clothes, and guns, and I hear told pretty much all of it went through that port up in those parts you pretty much controlled.”