The Branch and the Scaffold by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman [Estleman, Loren D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Western, Historical
ISBN: 9780765315991
Publisher: Forge Books
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Marshal John Carroll noted that Judge Parker moaned and closed his eyes when the word came in of Belle Starr’s death. After deputies reported the details, he called for the detention of Edgar A. Watson, Belle’s son Ed, and Jim July.

“Your Honor, July was on his way to Fort Smith when it happened.”

“You of all people should know better than to underestimate these border raiders when it comes to hard riding. He could have doubled back, then dug in his spurs for town after the murder was done. Some men get to brooding over good advice from a woman when they’re let alone.”

For July’s part, when the news arrived he procured a fresh mount, lathered it up clear back to the Canadian, threw down on Watson, and brought him in to jail himself. But the man never faced trial. Neighbors declined to testify against him at his hearing, and communications with Florida failed to produce a warrant for murder or any other felony. The charge was dropped, and July’s action removed him from suspicion. No one was ever indicted in the death of Belle Starr.

Parker permitted himself a moment to remember a woman he would miss in his courtroom. Belle Starr had won the granite heart of Cole Younger, called Jesse James a hypocrite to his face, beaten justice in Fort Smith, yet withal maintained the outward appearance of a woman of culture; she’d read The Iliad in the earliest Latin translation, while Parker himself had struggled with Pope’s popular version in English, ridden the High Country in the pirate tradition of Mary Read and Jeanne de Belville, and very nearly had shot the best prosecutor in the United States out from under his hat in full view of the citizens of Sebastian County; she had romanced a Texas banker, it was said, and left him with a thirty-thousand-dollar shortage in his books; a male citizen of the Cherokee Nation had been forced at the point of her gun to retrieve her hat when it blew off her head, which action she explained was a lesson in good manners. Belle had had her troubles with her grown children, as who had not, and brought two of the Eighth District’s most infamous bandits to the hobble in Fort Smith. She had known how to reload at full gallop and which spoon to use when she stirred her tea. Parker’s world was a more orderly place without her, and so much more drab. He wept.

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