Chapter Twelve
Sam had ridden past the First Territorial Bank of Montana a hundred times over the years without once going inside, because bounty hunters dealt in cash, and Sam Cooper dealt with banks the way he dealt with rattlesnakes, by giving them a wide berth and keeping his hand on his gun.
He tied the mare to the hitching post out front and pushed through the door. A clerk at the entrance, a young fellow with pomade in his hair and a collar so starched it could have stood up on its own, glanced at the gun belt and stiffened in his chair.
"Mornin'. I'm lookin' to speak with whoever handles property accounts 'round here. Got a question about a debt owin' on a homestead east of town. Montgomery's the name on the paper."
The clerk directed him to a back office, where a man named Pruitt sat behind a desk piled with ledgers.
Pruitt had the build of a man who'd eaten well for forty years and the eyes of a man who'd made other people pay for it.
He pulled the Montgomery file without enthusiasm, licking his thumb before turning pages in a ledger that looked older than Sam.
"Montgomery, Charlotte. Widow of Henry Montgomery, deceased 1866.
Original loan issued in 1858 for the sum of forty dollars, secured against the property for construction materials.
" Pruitt ran his finger down a column of figures.
"Payments received intermittently following the death of the borrower.
Balance outstanding, inclusive of accumulated interest at twelve percent per annum compounded quarterly…
one hundred and twenty-seven dollars. Fifty cents. "
Sam leaned back in his chair. Twelve percent per annum.
Compounded quarterly. The original loan had been forty dollars, which Henry Montgomery could have paid off in two or three good seasons.
But a dead man stopped making payments and interest at twelve percent compounded quarterly did what it always did; it ate the debt alive and then started on the bones.
Mrs. Montgomery had been shoveling against a tide for fourteen years, putting in a few dollars here and there while the balance grew faster than she could fill it.
The bank had let it run because the bank held the property as collateral, and property only appreciated.
They'd collect either way, in cash or in land. They'd probably prefer the land.
"How much time she got left to settle up?"
Pruitt closed the ledger. "End of the month. The notice has been served. If the balance remains outstanding, we'll initiate proceedings to seize the property per territorial statute."
"There any give in the terms? Payment by installments, reduced settlement, anythin' of that sort?"
"Mr. Cooper, the bank has shown considerable forbearance. Mrs. Montgomery has had fourteen years to address this obligation. Our position is firm. Payment in full by month's end, or the property reverts."
Sam stood up. He'd gotten what he came for, and sitting in this office any longer would only increase his desire to knock Pruitt's ledger off the desk and tell him exactly what he reckoned about banks that charged twelve percent compounded quarterly to widows living alone in the territory.
He kept that particular opinion behind his teeth because it wouldn't help Mrs. Montgomery, and because assaulting a banker, however justified, tended to complicate a man's legal standing.
"Much obliged for your time, Mr. Pruitt."
"Of course. And Mr. Cooper, the bank bears no ill will toward Mrs. Montgomery. This is simply a matter of—"
Sam closed the door on his way out. He'd heard enough about what the bank bore and what it didn't.
***
Foster sat at his desk in the sheriff's office, working through a stack of circulars while his coffee went cold beside him.
He looked up when Sam pushed through the door.
Good man, Foster. Steady. Principled in a way that bordered on rigid sometimes, but Sam preferred rigid to crooked, and he'd worked with enough lawmen to know the difference.
"Sam. Mornin'. What brings you in?"
"I come to ask after any strangers passed through town of late. Drifters, new faces. Anybody askin' questions or actin' peculiar."
Foster leaned back, considering.
"Had a few fellows pass through for the flea market. Peddlers, mostly. Couple of miners headin' north toward the claims. Nobody that raised my hackles particular." He tilted his head. "This here about anybody in particular?"
"Amos Wilkes."
The name landed on Foster's desk between them.
The sheriff's expression shifted, a subtle tightening around his eyes, because Foster had heard the name before.
Sam had mentioned it twice over the years, once drunk in the saloon and once sober in this very office.
Foster had listened both times with the careful attention of a man cataloging information he might need later.
"I ain't had no confirmed sighting of Wilkes in this territory, Sam. No circulars, no reports, nothin' from the marshal's office. You got reason to believe he's near?"
"I spotted a man last week who put me in mind of him. Could've been nobody. Could've been my mind playin' its tricks on me again. I figured I'd ask."
"I'll keep my eyes peeled and my ear to the ground.
If anything comes across my desk, you'll be the first to hear tell of it.
" Foster picked up his coffee and grimaced at the temperature.
"But Sam, don't go chasin' shadows on your own.
If Wilkes is in the territory, that's a matter for the law. You hear me?"
"I hear you, Sheriff."
He stepped outside before Foster could expand on the subject, because Foster's lectures about jurisdiction and proper channels required more patience than Sam had brought to town this morning.
Main Street had filled up since he'd arrived.
The flea market drew folks from surrounding homesteads and ranches, crowding the boardwalks with tables and carts and makeshift displays.
A man sold leather goods from the back of a wagon while a woman offered eggs and butter from behind a plank balanced on two sawhorses.
Children wove between the adults, chasing a dog that had stolen a strip of jerky from a vendor.
Sam stepped off the boardwalk to let a group of women pass, his eyes sweeping the crowd out of habit, cataloging faces and positions and exits the way a bounty hunter did in a busy space without deciding to; the thing that kept a man alive in places where wanted men might recognize him before he recognized them.
A figure moved through the crowd about forty yards ahead, heading east along the far side of the street.
Medium height, lean build, dark hat pulled low.
The man walked with purpose, weaving through the market traffic without pausing at any stall, without looking at any goods, without engaging with a single person.
The walk of a man crossing a space he wanted to leave behind.
Sam's hand dropped to the Colt while his pulse picked up.
He stepped into the street and followed, threading through a cluster of people gathered around a table of canned goods, keeping the dark hat in view over the heads of the crowd.
The man turned left at the corner of the assayer's office.
Sam quickened his pace and reached the corner in about ten strides.
The side street sat empty. A stack of lumber leaned against one building beside a rain barrel, and a dog sniffed at a pile of refuse near the back door of the saloon, but the man with the dark hat had gone. Around the next corner, through a doorway, into the air itself for all Sam could tell.
He stood in the empty street with his hand on his gun, his blood running hot, scanning every doorway and window and shadow for movement.
The flea market noise carried from Main Street behind him, cheerful and distant—the sound of normal people doing normal things while Sam Cooper chased ghosts through alleyways.
Twenty years of this. Twenty years of seeing Amos Wilkes in every stranger with dark eyes and a broken nose.
At what point did the obsession stop being vigilance and start being madness?
He'd asked himself that question a hundred times, in a hundred towns, standing in a hundred empty streets after the man he'd followed turned out to be nobody.
The answer never came. The question kept asking itself.
The ghost kept grinning at him from behind every unfamiliar face.
He holstered the Colt and walked back to Main Street, head down, because he'd used up his tolerance for people about twenty minutes ago.
"Mr. Cooper! Well, I'll be. Sam Cooper, hold up a minute!"
A broad man in a flour-dusted apron intercepted him near the bakery, stepping directly into his path with the cheerful obliviousness of a person who'd never once considered that the man he'd accosted might prefer to be left alone. Gunderson, the baker. Made decent sourdough, terrible conversation.
"Mornin', Mr. Gunderson."
"I ain't seen you 'round in a coon's age, Sam! Where you been keepin' yourself? You still out chasin' desperadoes all over creation?"
"Here and there. I been around."
"Well, listen here, I don't know if word reached you yet, but the annual town fair's comin' up end of the month.
Gonna be a big to-do this year." He produced a folded handbill from his apron pocket and pressed it into Sam's hand before Sam could object.
"You ought to rent yourself a stall! Bring that sister of yours along.
It draws right good crowds; folks come from all over the valley.
Food, games, dancin', the whole blessed shebang.
Do you a world of good to get out and mingle some. "
Sam took the handbill because Gunderson had shoved it into his hand and refusing would require more conversation than accepting. "I'll think on it."
"You do that! Tell Miss Cooper I said howdy, would you?"