Wild Justice by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

As we slowed for a crossing, the climbing sun broke through a dirty scrim of cloud and fell full on a white frame building with a steeple. Mrs. Blackthorne directed me to signal for a stop. I traded my old duck traveling coat for the Prince Albert I’d packed in my valise and we attended the Sunday service at the Grace Lutheran Church.

I was overdressed, as it turned out. The village was a farming community, and clean overalls under a rusty tailcoat was the male uniform. The women in print dresses cut glances at the widow, but the curiosity was directed more toward the lavender and lace she wore than who she was: The only newspaper, The Weekly Democrat, occupied a storefront down the street; its latest number had probably run before the Judge’s death was announced, so the existence of the funeral train hadn’t preceded it there.

The church was the only place of worship in that two-block arrangement of mercantile, barber shop, livery, blacksmith, and post office, but my companion was the tolerant sort: Apart from an occasional tightening of the lips, scorn for rituals foreign to Presbyterian didn’t manifest itself. Several of the hymns were familiar to us both. She had a strong, clear voice, unclogged and unroughened by years of use. The minister, white-haired, horse-faced, and clean-shaven, delivered a brief sermon from St. Luke, regarding the Lord’s forty-day sabbatical in the wilderness, which drew a quiet smile from Mrs. Blackthorne, and I suppose from myself, although I took care to conceal it, not knowing if the Judge had told her I’d shared her reference to the passage the day they’d arrived in Helena, or if she’d consider it a violation of the marital code.

When the ceremony was over we joined the queue greeting the minister at the door. When the lady laid her gloved hand in his palm, he remarked that hers was a new face in the congregation.

“Beatrice Blackthorne, Reverend. I enjoyed your sermon.”

His expression didn’t change, but his eyes went alight. “I thought perhaps it was you,” he said. “That would make this gentleman Mr. Murdock?”

That came as a surprise, in view of the general apathy regarding the strangers in the community’s midst. I said, “It would make me Mr. Murdock. I’m not sure about the gentleman part.”

“A boy asked me to give you this message. He didn’t know the man who gave it to him.”

He drew a fold of paper from under his robe and put it in my hand.

“Go with God,” he said.

“I always do,” said the lady.

I waited until we were outside and the crowd was thinning before opening it. Mrs. Blackthorne clutched her wrap at her throat, watching me read.

It was scribbled in pencil, in a script barely legible:

I am in the livery. Come alone, and make sure no one sees you go inside.

H. Rossleigh

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