Maggie couldn’t help but laugh softly. “Fiddle-footed, Seymour. I’m sure he said fiddle-footed.”
“Oh. Yes, I believe he did. I suppose that makes a bit more sense. But at any rate, I know that the time will come when I have to maintain law and order in Sweet Apple by myself. I’m confident that by then I’ll be up to the job.”
“I hope that’s true, Seymour.” She slipped her arm through his as they started walking again. “You don’t know how much I hope that’s true.”
Her words made his heart swell. During his time in Texas, he had grown very fond of Miss Magdalena Elena Louisa O’Ryan. She was smart and pretty and very sweet. She was devoted to her job of educating the town’s youngsters—often whether they wanted to be educated or not—and Seymour found that quite admirable. Civilization brought education, and education brought progress of all sorts. The better educated people were, the less likely they would be to settle all their arguments and disputes with gunplay. Feuds such as the one between the Coltons and the Paxtons would cease to exist.
As if reading his mind, Maggie said, “You know, I’m sure there are people back East who are prone to violence, too.”
Seymour shook his head. “Not like there are out here,” he insisted. Continuing with the line of thought that had just been occupying his mind, he went on. “Take the Coltons and the Paxtons. These are two of the leading families in the entire area. They own successful ranches. Their children are educated. They’re not low-bred hooligans. And yet, if hostilities between them continue to escalate, there’s a good chance that soon they’ll be shooting at each other. Something like that would never happen back in New Jersey, where I come from. People are simply too civilized there to resort to such tactics.”
“Maybe you’re right, Seymour,” Maggie said with a sigh. She didn’t sound like she fully believed it.
Seymour did. No respectable Easterner would ever resort to violence to remove an obstacle from his path.
It just wasn’t done.
In Trenton, New Jersey, Cornelius Standish sat behind the big desk in his office, in the building that housed the Standish Dry Goods Company, and intently regarded the three men who stood before him.
Warren Welch was a fresh-faced young man with curly brown hair and a friendly expression. You had to look at his cold, snakelike eyes to know what sort of man he really was. Daniel McCracken was a redheaded, belligerent Irishman. Standish didn’t fully trust him, but he was said to be good at his job. Ed Stover was the tallest and the oldest of the three, a broad-shouldered man with a mostly bald head and a fringe of gray hair under his pushed-back derby.
All three men were associates of the late Wilford Grant, who had been hired by Standish to do a particular job—and who had failed miserably at that job. Grant, along with his cohort Spike Morelli, had paid for that failure with their lives, but that didn’t help Standish. He was still faced with the same problem he had sent Grant and Morelli to Texas to take care of for him.
McCracken pushed his jaw out and said in a surly voice, “I ain’t sure I’m carin’ for th’ job ye’ve proposed, Mr. Standish. Who in his right mind is goin’ t’ believe that we’re dry-goods salesmen?”
“No one will question it,” Standish snapped, “because I’ll be with you.”
Stover scratched at his bald pate with a blunt finger. “That worries me a little, Mr. Standish,” he said. “You comin’ along with us, I mean. No offense, but we can handle this without havin’ you lookin’ over our shoulders.”
Standish shook his head. “I made that mistake once already when I trusted Grant and Morelli. This time, I’m going to make sure that nephew of mine is out of the way.”
It was bad enough that Seymour owned half of the Standish Dry Goods Company, the company that had been built into a success by Cornelius and his brother, Seymour’s late father. Half of the profits that should have belonged to Cornelius now went into Seymour’s bank account, even though he was no longer here in New Jersey and had resigned his position as a salesman for the company.
The thing that was really goading Standish to take action against Seymour was the way the company was increasing its ties to the criminal element in Trenton and elsewhere in New Jersey and New York. One way to increase business was to make it difficult for your competitors to be successful. If it took beating up deliverymen or artificially inflating freight rates for everyone else or even seeing to it that a fire “accidentally” broke out at a rival company’s warehouse…well, that was just business. A smart man didn’t draw the line at whatever tactics were necessary. The only “line” that mattered was the one that showed a profit or loss in a ledger.
But Seymour—soft, gullible, innocent Seymour—wouldn’t understand that. If he ever found out about the way his uncle had the company branching out into legally questionable enterprises, he would cause a big stink and ruin everything. Cornelius Standish was sure of it.
Therefore, something had to be done about Seymour. Standish had thought that dispatching him to Sweet Apple, Texas, would take care of that. The place had a reputation for being one of the most dangerous settlements on the frontier. Standish had been certain that Seymour wouldn’t last a week there before one of the local badmen gunned him down.
That had almost happened, in fact, but somehow Seymour had survived. Not only survived, but apparently he was thriving in Sweet Apple, as unbelievable as that might be. Those idiots had even made him the town marshal, and now he was regarded as some sort of hero.
That wouldn’t last, Standish had vowed. He would see to that himself, with the help of the three men who now stood before him.
He continued. “Until I’ve had a chance to look the situation over and decide on the best plan of action, the three of you will pretend to be salesman who will be working the western part of Texas for the company. You shouldn’t have to actually sell anything because I don’t expect it to take very long to accomplish our real goal. Now, are all of you in…or not?”
Welch, McCracken, and Stover exchanged glances. They were brutal, uneducated men, but they were experienced enough and had enough natural cunning to know that if they backed out now, after Standish had revealed his plans to them, they would be putting their own lives in danger. Behind Cornelius Standish’s smooth, prosperous veneer was a man who was every bit as ruthless as they were.
“We’re in,” Welch said as he jerked his head in a curt nod. The other two agreed.
“Very well,” Standish said, keeping his face and voice expressionless so he wouldn’t reveal how pleased he was by their decision. “We’ll be leaving for Texas on the eleven o’clock train tomorrow morning.”
With their business concluded, the three men left Standish’s sanctum. When they were gone, Rebecca Jimmerson came in from the outer office. A beautiful young woman with sleek, honey-blond hair, Rebecca was Standish’s secretary—and his mistress. She asked, “Did they agree?”
“Of course. They’ll be well paid, and they know it. I’ll need you to go down to the train station and purchase four tickets on the eleven o’clock westbound.”
Rebecca came over to the desk and perched a trim hip on it so that she could lean closer to Standish. “Why don’t I purchase five tickets,” she suggested, “and make two of them for a sleeper?”
“You want to go?”
“I’ve never been to Texas,” Rebecca said. “In fact, I’ve never seen anything west of New Jersey.”
Standish shook his head. “From everything I’ve heard, Texas is a horrible place. You wouldn’t like it.”
“I was thinking that when your business was done there, we might go on to San Francisco for a week.” She touched his cheek with soft fingertips and murmured, “Wouldn’t you like to spend a week in San Francisco with me, Cornelius?”