Ape man, p.1
Ape Man, page 1
APE MAN
Doc Beck Westerns Book 8
SARAH ELISABETH SAWYER
CONTENTS
Free Novel
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Author’s Note
Also by Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer
About the Author
***Get a free novel***
It’s 1892, Indian Territory. A war is brewing in the Choctaw Nation as two political parties fight out issues of old and new ways. Caught in the middle is eighteen-year-old Ruth Ann Teller, a Choctaw who doesn’t want to see her family harmed.
In a small but booming pre-statehood town, her brother owns a controversial newspaper, the Choctaw Tribune. Ruth Ann wants to help spread the word about critical issues but there is danger for a female reporter on all fronts—socially, politically, even physically.
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PROLOGUE
There was just the right amount of light in the dark interior of the ringmaster’s wagon as Calvin Blackthorn poured another shot of whiskey for his drinking companion. Will Flit was the sideshow manager, and Calvin wanted him nice and drunk before he killed him.
Flit accepted the shot glass and raised it in a toast at Calvin. “To the next town.”
With the usual salute, Flit downed the drink and smacked his lips. He was still dressed in his gray suit and orange vest, though he’d ripped his tie loose right after the show ended. A slender and careless man, he would present no challenge.
There was a long night ahead, but Calvin had waited two years to exact this revenge, and there was no need to hurry now. Everything would be set in motion this night, though it would be far from over for days yet.
Calvin Blackthorn was a patient man. Very patient. And few men could match his imposing six-foot four height that drew ladies of the circus to watch him lift the strongman’s weights each morning.
Will Flit clunked his glass on the table, then wagged his finger at Calvin. “You’ve been with us what, three weeks now? I’ve never seen audiences so taken with the man in the stovepipe hat. You’re good for the Donovan Brothers Circus.”
Calvin tipped the whiskey bottle to fill his own glass and Flit’s again. He spoke softly. “And don’t forget the sideshow. You’re the best manager for our most popular exhibit.”
Flit snorted, bringing the glass to his puffy lips. “That part’s not so hard. It’s only half man, half ape.”
He chuckled into his glass before taking a sip, then downed the whole shot.
Calvin smiled congenially. Just keep drinking and talking, Flit. You’re making this easy.
Calvin brought his drink to his mouth to pretend he was drinking equally. But one shot was enough for him, unlike some men who needed several to bolster their courage for what he was about to do.
It was past 1AM, but most of the circus camp was just settling down for the night. They’d spent the last two hours packing for the move to the next town. They only stayed in most places for one performance. Small Wyoming towns weren’t unlike all the other towns before and the ones ahead, with pockets barely deep enough to support a struggling circus.
Calvin’s fake résumé fit in well with the hodgepodge of strange souls and shady characters that made up the Donovan Brothers Circus. He’d never been part of a circus, but who checked references? Certainly not the circus manager, Allen Jones, who was desperate for a ringmaster after his disappeared three weeks ago. Calvin was even able to influence Jones to add an upcoming stop for the circus—Centennial Ridge.
Calvin appreciated how things happened so conveniently. Of course, they would. He was the one who made them happen.
Flit was even more foolish than the circus manager. He had a big mouth, too. Calvin hadn’t liked him from the moment they met and hearing him talk about the ape man tonight left him with no regret in his plan to take Will Flit’s life.
The man set his tumbler on the table and stretched his arms wide in the tight space of the wood-encased wagon that had become Calvin’s home when he joined the circus. Part kitchen, part bedroom, part parlor. All hate.
Flit rubbed his eyes. “Reckon I’ll turn in, be a big show tomorrow in Cheyenne. The two-day stays are better than one. Gives a fellow time to meet the local ladies.”
Calvin stayed slouched in his chair, holding his shot glass by the rim. “You ought to take the ape man with you. He draws attention everywhere he goes.”
Flit snorted. “That’s not what I had in mind. Wouldn’t take that half-man anywhere. His days of living life and enjoying the company of ladies are long gone.”
Calvin slowly nodded, lowering his glass to the table and setting it down silently.
Yes, the ape man’s days of living life were long over. So were Will Flit’s, a fact the drunk man didn’t yet know.
Flit planted his hands on his knees and pushed to his feet, partly doubled over, groaning from fatigue and strain on his body that spent too many years traveling dusty roads. Those days were over.
He stretched wide again, fingertips nearly touching the sides of the narrow ringmaster wagon. He puffed out a smelly breath and lifted his glass in final salute.
“To the Donovan Brothers Circus, a poorly named caravan that doesn’t contain any brothers.”
Calvin Blackthorn rose and clicked glasses with his victim.
“So they say.”
He let Flit down his shot glass, then Calvin tipped his head in another salute. “Like you said, to the next town. Cheyenne.”
And the town after that, and the town after that. Then, to the final leg of Calvin’s vengeance quest: Centennial Ridge, Wyoming, and the famed Doc Beck.
CHAPTER 1
The mahogany grandfather clock struck, its clang echoing down the gilded hallways of the Wyoming state capitol building. The metallic sound of the pendulum nearly sent Doctor Rebekah LaRoche out of her skin.
Instead, she calmed herself by twisting her reticule straps tight around her gloved hands, cutting off the circulation in her fingers.
The clock struck again, a total of ten times. After the echo died away, she relaxed and her fingers started tingling.
Just Jimmy, seated in the chair next to her outside Senator Jeffrey Harris’ office, leaned toward her. “You all right, Miss Rebekah?”
Jimmy hadn’t spoken above a whisper since they entered the capitol building in Cheyenne. The rotunda alone scared him half to death. It was painted in trompe l’oeil style, to “fool the eye.” From the third floor, the checkerboard floors created a three-dimensional illusion in the open center. Rebekah had to hold onto his skinny arm to steady him.
While Rebekah was grateful to give Jimmy the educational opportunity of visiting the capitol, she could hardly hold herself together with his constant worry. But he was truly trying to help.
She let out a slow breath, releasing the hold on her reticule in favor of tightening a pin in her hat.
“I am a little nervous, Jimmy. Senator Harris promised to meet us early so we could prepare for the governor’s arrival.”
“Want me to knock again?”
Rebekah shook her head. Her pins couldn’t hold her hat any tighter, nor could the state capitol squeeze her heart tighter. There was no one in Senator Harris’s office, not even his assistant.
They’d arrived at 9:30AM. After a twenty minute wait her uncle, Doctor Robert T. McKinnon, had finally departed to try and find someone who knew something.
But now it was 10AM, their designated meeting time with the Nebraskan governor. Rebekah and Jimmy still sat alone outside the senator’s office. Rebekah only hoped the closed door of the office wasn’t foreshadowing a closed door on her return to the Omaha Indian Reservation.
Her recent incident with Cord and Ella Johnson landed in newspapers, and all reported wildly different stories about what ended in a deadly encounter. None of the stories were front page, but not all were favorable, either.
Jimmy, dressed in the only suit he’d ever owned, began talking again, still in a whisper. He was attempting to distract her, but she was afraid of being distracted. She needed her wits and focus like never before.
“Miss Rebekah, I’m sure excited about Pastor Wharton planning my baptism before cold weather sets in. I’m just hoping some of the boys from the ranch will join me. Think they will? Ma’am?”
Rebekah murmured, “Perhaps, Jimmy.”
“I’m grateful Doc McKinnon is letting us do it at Omaha Lake. Is it true that you named his biggest lake on the ranch when you were a kid?”
“Yes.”
“Say, when were you baptized, Miss Rebekah?”
Rebekah began wrapping the straps of the reticule around her gloved fingers one by one. “I believe I was baptized as a child on the reservation. I cannot recall at the moment.”
The memory tried to settle in her mind, but she shooed it away. This wasn’t the time for sentiments.
Jimmy intertwined his long fingers in his lap, staring at them. “Must’ve been tough for you, ma’am, growing up on a reservation. Like being a prisoner or something.”
Rebekah forced her eyes away from the hallway and looked at Jimmy. But she wasn’t really looking at him. She was seeing beyond him to the verdant meadows and breathtaking sunsets of her homeland.
“On the contrary, Jimmy. I had a good childhood. Surrounded by family and Omaha elders. I went to school in the winter, and out on the prairies in the summers to learn my peoples’ lifeways. It was…quite wonderful.”
“Then how come you never talk about it?”
The meadows in Rebekah’s memory faded, replaced by an ominous thundercloud. “Because it’s all gone.”
Jimmy quickly stood, shattering the vision fully. She followed his line of sight to see Doctor McKinnon striding toward them, a young man at his side. Rebekah recognized the man as Stanley Cook, Senator Harris’s assistant.
At last. Her wait was nearly over.
Yet the intensity on Stanley Cook’s face left Rebekah giving her reticule one last twist as she stood. The assistant skipped greetings as he went straight to the door, a key ring jingling.
He muttered, “I don’t understand why the senator hasn’t come for you. He sent me downstairs in case the governor arrived early. We certainly don’t want to miss greeting the governor.”
Stanley Cook fumbled the key when he tried to insert it in the lock. He took a quick breath and inserted it again. The sheen of sweat on his brow and his shallow breathing was evidence of high stress. Was the senator such a hard man? That didn’t bode well for Rebekah’s quest.
The fact that the door was locked made Rebekah wonder if the senator was inside. Perhaps he had gone to a lounge.
The tumblers gave way and Stanley Cook pushed the door open.
Doctor McKinnon followed the assistant inside, Rebekah behind them, hesitant because the room was dark. Stanley Cook turned up the gas lamp to reveal his desk in the reception room.
He crossed the room and rapped soundly on the other door—the senator’s office. No sunlight streamed in the reception room. The curtains were drawn on the only window.
Stanley Cook put his hand on the doorknob, hesitated, then rapped on the door again. “Senator Harris? Doctor McKinnon and Doctor LaRoche here to see you.”
No response. Stanley Cook opened the unlocked door. That room, too, was dark. He crossed the room, heading toward the senator’s desk and the unlit lamp on it.
He’d almost reached the desk when he stumbled, took a step back, then released a strangled cry.
Doctor McKinnon hurried into the dark room, Rebekah close behind him. When he halted, she sidestepped to see what he and Stanley Cook were staring at. Jimmy came to her side and let out a mixed gasp and gulp.
“Gracious, Doc Beck, is he…”
Doctor McKinnon knelt on the floor beside the still form of Senator Jeffrey Harris.
Rebekah slowly lowered down beside her uncle Robert, who gazed at the man he considered a friend.
Senator Harris lay face down, blood soaking the cowhide rug that covered the space in front of his desk. Rebekah reached out steady fingers and pressed them against the senator’s neck, though she already knew the answer.
She closed her eyes, swallowed, and lowered her hand.
“He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 2
For an hour, Rebekah remained still, seated in Stanley Cook’s reception room. The hands on the gold-faced wall clock ticked off minutes that no longer mattered.
Senator Jeffrey Harris was dead and no one understood how or why.
In and out came multiple professionals—Cheyenne city doctors, state senators, assistants, and newspaper reporters. The town marshal was there along with two of his deputies to corral the people flowing around what he dubbed “a hideous crime scene.”
Jimmy wandered between the senator’s office and the reception room until Doctor McKinnon finally asked him to sit with Rebekah.
Jimmy fidgeted and mumbled to her about how sorry he was, and how bad he felt for the senator’s family, which was primarily two adult children in college back east.
Rebekah couldn’t respond, trying to capture the thoughts pinging in her mind—sorrow for the death of a respected man, and how suddenly her opportunity to return home was lost.
With the word assassination, well-meaning acquaintances whisked the governor onto a train back to Nebraska. Rebekah hadn’t even seen the man who could help her return to the Omaha Indian Reservation.
She closed her eyes. Jimmy patted her arm. “It’ll be all right, Miss Rebekah. The Good Lord can still make a way.”
His words caused her to smile as she opened her eyes and squeezed Jimmy’s hand in return.
“You always know just the right thing to say, Jimmy.”
He blushed. “Well, not always, ma’am. But I know the truth because I’ve lived it.”
The town marshal, George Phillips, appeared from the office, a piece of paper in hand as he glanced around. Behind him came orderlies who carried a stretcher with a blanket-covered body. Senator Jeffrey Harris.
Marshal Phillips pointed at Rebekah with the paper he held.
“Are you Doc Beck?”
Rebekah nodded and rose slowly. Senator Harris likely had a note with her western nickname on his desk. Doctor McKinnon emerged from the office, hands in his pockets and eyes sorrowful.
He intercepted the marshal’s next question. “What did you find, George?”
The marshal sighed and handed the paper to Doctor McKinnon, then spoke to Rebekah. “There’s a busted window latch in there. Likely how the killer got in and out, though it beats me how he could’ve done it before Jeffrey—Senator Harris—got his pistol out. But it was this note tucked in his shirt pocket that’s really got me stumped.”
Doctor McKinnon was frowning as he studied the paper. Rebekah stepped forward, holding her hand out. Doctor McKinnon hesitated then handed the note to her, meeting her eyes with his gray ones, more confused now than grieved.
Rebekah took the paper and scanned the typed note:
Doc Beck is hazardous to one’s health.
A chill swept Rebekah from head to toe. Her hands began to shake, though whether from anger or grief, she couldn’t say. Senator Jeffrey Harris was dead because of her—how could that possibly be?
CHAPTER 3
The sound of a horse trotting up the gravel road leading to Doctor McKinnon’s ranch house caused Rebekah to lift her eyes from the book she was reading. Actually, she wasn’t reading, only staring at the pages by the lamplight in the parlor.
Laramie Jones came to his feet, hand resting on the butt of his six-gun as he crossed the room to look out the front window. His actions were calm, precise, but Rebekah still felt her heart jitter.
After Marshal Phillips questioned Doctor McKinnon, Rebekah, and Jimmy about their business with Senator Harris, Doctor McKinnon rushed them to the train depot where they barely caught the westbound out of Cheyenne, back to Centennial Ridge. Both he and Jimmy were alert, watching every move of every passenger in the train car.
Now that Rebekah was safe in the ranch house, Doctor McKinnon was still not taking chances. He assigned Laramie Jones to be Rebekah’s guard until the killer was caught. Steve Bowers was now temporary foreman of the ranch, with Lucky Saunders as deputy foreman, and Jimmy head wrangler for now. Jimmy objected, wanting to take his place at Rebekah’s other side.
But no harm would come to her as long as Laramie was there. Rebekah knew this, yet still reached for her pepperbox laying on the table by the lamp.
Laramie tipped back the curtain with two fingers to peer out into the yard in front of the house. Some of the hands had staked torches around to keep the house illuminated through the night. Laramie wasn’t the only one on guard. Rebekah couldn’t be safer inside Fort Knox.
