A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose #2)(60)

“He’s out back. He’s hanging from a tree.”

I won’t say I didn’t flinch.

“That old bitch hung him,” Harriet said in an empty voice. “Her and her son. They made some of the colored men help.”

“Where is the son?”

“Holden Ballard is in his bed upstairs.” Harriet’s face began to look firmer, more like herself. “I managed to wound him pretty bad before they locked me up. I had a knife in my stocking. I hope he dies of it.”

“What is this all about?” Eli said, as he came up the steps. He was walking like a man who’d been carrying a heavy weight up a steep mountain.

“She hired us to watch everyone on the train,” Harriet said, nodding toward the body.

Well, at least now I knew where Iron Hand had come in.

“She had heard through some of her connections… Ballards have fingers in every pie… that Russians were shipping something to Sally that would make Dixie erupt like a volcano. Mrs. Ballard hasn’t been right in the head since her daughter died. We knew that when we took the job, but our employer really wanted to be hand in hand with the Ballards.”

“So you looked the passengers over and fixed on us,” I said.

“Of course. Gun team, at least two well-known shooters and the old man with the ax. And your buddy Rogelio. He told us where you were staying every time. Where is he?”

“Dead,” I said.

“I figured.”

“So was it you who stole the chest from Jake and killed him?”

“No. That was your little buddy Sarah Byrne.”

“But why?”

“She was broke and banged up from her last job. She didn’t want to go stay with her sister. She thought the crate was valuable. And it was.” Harriet laughed, kind of bitter. “She thought Jake was unconscious, and she went to slip it away from him, and he woke up, and she killed him in a panic.”

“What did she do with the chest?”

“She told us she wrapped it in a tablecloth from the dining car and carried it to town with her. Some woman who came out to see the wreck gave her a lift.”

“How do you know all this?”

“She looked from hotel to hotel until she found us. She figured Iron Hand was a big deal; she could get money from us and be on her way. She was figuring that all the trains out of town wouldn’t run again for a while. We all got stuck here in Sally. In nowhere. A town the Ballards rule. And since Mrs. Ballard called her friends in town about fifteen minutes ago, we need to get the hell out of here,” Harriet said.

“What about the man upstairs? Ballard?”

“He can rot for all I care.” Harriet made a face. “They summoned us to the house last night, sent a car and a driver. We couldn’t very well say no. One of the waitresses in town had called Mrs. Ballard, told her she’d seen us all eating together. You and Eli, me and Travis, and Rogelio. She had some questions about our loyalty.”

“And once you got out here?”

“We didn’t expect what we walked into.” It was clear Harriet was disgusted with herself. “Right when we came in, the old bitch got a big guy, white guy named Phelps, and a couple of his cronies, to pin us down. He’s—he was—her overseer. And our friend Sarah Byrne was holding a gun on us.”

“Where is Phelps?”

“Dead. Travis killed him with a knife he’d hidden in his boot.”

“So that’s why they hung Travis?”

Harriet nodded. “And they were going to do the same to me, or worse, after I stuck Holden. I want to go cut Travis down.”

“You said we got to get out of here now,” I pointed out.

Harriet looked like she wanted to argue, but at last she nodded again. I handed her her guns, and she was really glad to see them. I was tightening my gun belt around me as Eli began to look more aware.

“Sarah?” Eli asked. I was glad to hear him join the conversation, look livelier.

“I think she’s run. She’s not in the house, that I could see or hear. I plan on finding her.” Harriet didn’t have any expression at all in her voice. For the first time, I found her a little scary.

I heard engines. “They’re coming,” I said. “Let’s get in the car.”

“I don’t think that will work. They see us trying to leave, they’re going to block the driveway.” Eli looked grim.

“Son of a bitch,” said Harriet. “We’ve got to run.”

“I have to get the chest,” Eli said.

“You can’t.” Harriet was all but yelling. “You’ve got to come back to get it. We don’t have time!”

So we ran.





CHAPTER TWENTY


I caught a glimpse of Travis’s body hanging from a tree branch as we sped past the brick terrace, a flowerbed, a white birdbath, a line of bushes before the white cabins, empty now. There were signs of work that had been dropped in favor of flight; a basket of wet laundry, a bowl of peas. The black people we had seen on the way here had hastened away. They’d been warned by the man riding the horse. They’d fled to town. I hoped they’d gotten there safely.

I hoped we would, too.

I should have set fire to the house, I thought suddenly. Would have slowed ’em down. Too late. Maybe they’d search the house, find the Ballard son that Harriet had knifed, spend time getting help for him.