Frontier Lawyer Read online

  MURDER WILL OUT–

  Governor Tellegen’s eyes opened. “You’ve kept silent for twenty years, Mr. McCandless?”

  “Yes, but I can’t any longer. If I want to save my boy, I have to tell what I know. I’m sure you’d welcome a chance to destroy the power of Joel Tilley in this territory, Governor.”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Well, you give me my boy’s life and I’ll give you Tilley’s!”

  “Do you realize you’ll be leaving yourself open to severe reprisals?” Tellegen asked.

  “They’ll be reprisals against me, not against my family. I’ll get only what I deserve.”

  “I can’t interfere with the trial, Mr. McCandless, but if the verdict goes against your son— I’ll pardon him!”

  FRONTIER

  LAWYER

  Lawrence L. Blaine

  Copyright, ©, 1961, by Pocket Books, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Frontier Lawyer

  1.

  AN ICY WIND had been blowing in from Canada for days now, turning the ground to rock, bringing winter to the whole Territory of New Mexico. It was going to be a long, bleak winter. Everyone could see that. Summer had been brutally hot, and now the other side of the coin was uppermost with a vengeance.

  Shortly after dawn, in the small, lively city that was San Carlos in the closing decade of the last century, a burly, heavy-set figure made his way uncertainly toward the red brick building that faced the old plaza. He was Jake Kilgore, attorney-at-law, and nobody hated the cold weather more than he. Kentucky-born, an inhabitant of the Territory for the last two decades, he lacked the Northerner’s fatalistic attitude toward bitterly cold weather. He despised it, pure and simple, and the thought that two or three months of it were still ahead filled him with despair.

  He peered through the plate-glass window on which the name of the firm was lettered in gold leaf: JAKE KILGORE, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. After a moment, he kicked open the door, and blinked owlishly into the empty room. Lying on his secretary’s desk was a pile of memoranda typed during the night. Kilgore shuddered.

  He ran a furry tongue over the inside of his gums, nodded thoughtfully, and made a beeline through the inner office to the privy in the back yard. After an interlude of meditation in the morning chill, he returned to a leather chair which stood, imperious and high-buttoned, beside a rolltop desk of many pigeonholes. He stuck a pair of dusty boots in a lower drawer and almost instantly was deep in slumber. Beyond the window, the sun inched up into the sky, the frozen earth began to thaw, a mission bell tolled in the older quarter of the city, and precisely on the half hour Kilgore opened his eyes, completely refreshed. He swung about as the door opened. He found himself staring at the implacable, ruggedly ugly face of his spinster secretary, Sarah Hilleboe.

  “I swear, Kilgore, I don’t see where you find the brass to get into this condition the night before a case,” said Sarah Hilleboe in a discouraged voice. “Aside from constituting a standing insult to the dignity of the court, I’ll bet your head’s no more orderly than the inside of a slaughterhouse. How can you expect to make a decent argument this morning?” With a gesture of impatience, she ran up the shade and threw the window open to the bitter breeze.

  “Would you give me pneumonia, Sarah?”

  “This place could stand some fresh air in the morning!”

  “The temperature is under twenty. Fit only for Eskimos,” Kilgore growled.

  “It’ll clear your brain,” she retorted. “Carousing the night before a case—”

  Kilgore fixed narrowed, reddish eyes on the woman. “Sarah, I was at my post of duty,” he said solemnly, scratching his deep, powerful chest. “In a few hours I might have to pick a jury in a case where there’s lots of feeling against my client. The saloonkeeper’s no bargain, and people tend to feel he was a mite rough on the old man. Under the circumstances, it’s been my legal obligation to influence public opinion—and if the call takes me to the Cantina Royale, why, that’s where I aim to turn up. Aside from all that, Ben Weingarten kept drawing all night to inside straights, and I couldn’t pass up the chance to share the wealth of the dry-goods trade.”

  It was hopeless. Sarah gave up. “Understand once and for all, Kilgore,” she said strongly, “I don’t give a damn where you spend your nights, or how, just so long as it isn’t Laurie Morgan’s sporting house. Now you better clean up that mess before a client shows,” she added. Returning to her post of duty, she began to type the finishing touches of a fancy cover for the legal brief she had done the night before.

  A small shed in the yard served as a washroom for the law firm and its employees. Kilgore laid out a cake of yellow soap and went to work on the thick stubble sprouting from his pugnacious chin. A cock was crowing on a distant dung heap, and the shrill, defiant sound touched a responsive chord in the Kilgore temperament, but he was more interested in the tough-looking face that stared back from the mirror.

  “By God!” he murmured admiringly. “Kilgore ain’t pretty, but he’s sure formidable! That’s a lawyer’s face in those silvery depths—and a deadly eye that’s qualified to hypnotize the most recalcitrant jury and strike terror in the heart of the most audacious witness! Kilgore,” he went on appreciatively, “just remember that you’re in your prime. You may not be the greatest trial lawyer in the whole damn country, but you sure look the part!”

  And indeed it was a bold and striking head that had provoked the outburst of rhetoric. He drew the straight razor across bold, prominent features, flushed and handsome. A thick mane of lustrous black hair sprang boldly from a low, broad forehead, now wrinkled with the effort of concentration. His heavy brows were like thickets, casting into shadows the small, deep-set eyes which could in moments of anger flame like rubies. It was a powerful face, defiant with latent wrath, and altogether suited to the purposes of his profession.

  The razor was scraping at a jutting larynx—that resonant voice box famed throughout the Territory—when there was a tap at the door. Kilgore drew a towel about a hairy chest and stared out at Sarah.

  “Waiting room is filling up, Kilgore. Young man to see you. Name of Clem Erskine. Just got off the stage, and he looks kind of peaked and hungry.”

  “What’s his trouble?”

  “No trouble. He’s looking for a job. Got a letter of introduction from Joe Anslinger.”

  Kilgore reluctantly drew his attention from the mirror. “What’s the boy look like?”

  “Mournful, serious. Kind of eager, I guess.” Sarah considered the matter further. “Raggedy, too. But dress him up and he could make an asset to the firm.”

  “Or a shill,” Kilgore grunted. “Let him wait in the office, Sarah. Mebbe we could use a good spittoon cleaner. From the looks of that item, it’s been seriously neglected by that damn Mexican. Is that brief done?”

  “I finished it last night. Want to read it before you submit that memorandum to the court?”

  “Why should I?”

  “It might have mistakes.”

  “I dictated it myself. You transcribed. You’ve got my confidence, Sarah.” Kilgore paused. “Still and all, you might let this boy go over the text while I finish this shaving. It’d give me something to question him on.”

  Sarah Hilleboe lingered. “They’s someone else waiting.”

  “Yeah! Who?”

  “Laurie Morgan.”

  Kilgore frowned. Laurie ran a sporting house up in Santa Fe, and Kilgore considered himself a friend of hers. From time to time he went to Laurie’s place for consolation when the world was too much with him. But there had been a fuss last month, when Kilgore, in his cups, smashed up some furniture and insulted a couple of the girls, and he hadn’t seen Laurie since. He wondered what had brought her to San Carlos, to his of
fice. He had made good the damage, hadn’t he? He had apologized most handsomely when he sobered up. Laurie could be vindictive at times, but he didn’t think she was here to tax him with last month’s fracas. But why else would she have come?

  “Laurie, hey?” he repeated. “And no idea why?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I’ll tell you this, Kilgore. She looks mighty nervous.”

  “Let her wait. She’s got plenty of time.” He dipped his head over the basin and poured a pitcher of cold pump water over his head. “I’ll see that Erskine boy in a minute,” he said.

  When Kilgore returned to his office, he found a travel-worn young man at the window reading a legal brief. The sun picked out the lines of a square, pleasant face that seemed thoughtful and intelligent. The boy was completely absorbed in the typescript he was reading.

  “You Erskine?” Kilgore demanded.

  The brief was lowered. “Yes, sir.”

  Kilgore flopped into his chair and favored the visitor with a penetrating stare. “Well, sit down!” he growled. Clem Erskine had a raw-boned and diffident air as he sank into the wooden chair and faced the older man. The lines of his face were dark and thoughtful. A lock of yellow hair tumbled rebelliously over a round, high forehead.

  “Tired?” grunted Kilgore.

  Erskine nodded. “Some, sir.”

  “How far did you come?”

  “All the way from Leadville,” said Erskine, and added, “sir.” He shrugged. “I picked up the stage at Sweetwater. I had the middle seat all the way down, and I was hanging from that center strap, and my back is almost broke.” Kilgore remained silent. “I’m not complaining, Mr. Kilgore, about anything except the cold. I near froze before I got to San Carlos.” He broke off uncomfortably under the probe of the lawyer’s searching eyes.

  “That stage line ought to be abolished,” Kilgore agreed finally, with no trace of a smile. “One of these days Dan McCandless will put the railroad through and these relics of barbarism will retreat into the unmourned past. Or mebbe he won’t.” The lawyer leaned back and stretched a pair of gaudy galluses. “You know why the woolly West has bred a race of superior men? Simple. The weather and the cooking kills off the weaklings. Only the supermen survive.” Kilgore lit his first cigar for the morning—harbinger of many yet to come. “I gather you want to be a lawyer?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Kilgore.”

  “I won’t ask why,” said Kilgore grimly, “because it’s an irrational desire, not subject to explanation. Either you’d feed me some highfalutin lies, or you’d give me the debased truth, neither of which would mean a damn thing.” He pointed a cigar. “You think you got the makings?”

  “If I didn’t think so, Mr. Kilgore, I’d have stayed in Leadville and tried my hand at prospecting. I’m willing to work, and I think I’ve got a fair understanding of the profession.”

  “It’s a tough business.”

  “I know.”

  Kilgore puffed meditatively until the office was filled with a rank smell. The younger man’s face was drawn in thin, sensitive lines, but a dogged, obstinate twist about the strong mouth was a recommendation. A pair of gray eyes were alert and intelligent.

  “You read that brief?” Kilgore asked.

  Erskine nodded.

  “What’s your opinion?”

  “The law says a bartender’s obliged to eject anyone who’s drunk and disorderly on his premises. This old man had a gun and he was dangerous. It wasn’t your client’s fault that the old man fell and broke his leg after he was ejected.”

  “Around here they don’t like my client too much, because he’s tight with credit,” Kilgore said. “The other side claims he used unnecessary force on a harmless old man in his seventies. What’s your answer?”

  Erskine shook his head. “Right at that moment the old man wasn’t harmless. And everyone admits he fell down himself. There just isn’t ground for a complaint except if you’re sentimentally involved.”

  Kilgore grinned. “Exactly. It don’t matter that the defendant is a son of a bitch and the complainant a friendly old geezer. The law’s the law, and we can’t go awarding damages against folks we don’t like.” Kilgore took a puff and said, “Let me give you another proposition in legal ethics, Erskine. About ten years ago I had a call from the lockup where this prospective client was languishing in the toils. We’ve got a police force, you know, but the culprit had been picked up in the hills, so that made the offense the sheriff’s case. Mike Duer had been freshly elected on a reform ticket, and he was hot then—hotter’n a cheap mail-order pistol. I don’t care for Duer, nor him for me, but I’ve always made it a point to be polite with him, just in case I might have to turn my back on him some night in a dark alley. Also, it’s important in this business to keep on a talking basis with sheriffs in general.

  “Well, Duer was kind enough to advise that this was one case I wouldn’t take. Aside from being hopeless, it was too smelly, he said, even for Kilgore. This was a case of parricide—the fiendish killing of an old man by his degenerate son. I gathered that the prisoner had been wandering around town proclaiming that he had killed his daddy back in the hills with an ax. Duer took him into custody and got a complete confession. Or so he claimed. He told me the case was so ironclad the criminal was yelling for Kilgore—the only lawyer in the whole damn territory that could save his miserable neck. Naturally I was interested.”

  Abruptly Sarah Hilleboe opened the door and looked in. “Kilgore, I think you ought to see Laurie,” she said in worried tones. “She’s getting awful itchy out there.”

  “Tell her to hold her water,” said Kilgore calmly. “Just now I’m tied up with this young man.”

  Sarah sniffed, and slammed the door. Kilgore resumed his story. “Well, I never saw a more miserable, scrofulous, slack-jawed, vacant-eyed, trembling example of humanity at its worst. However, it was my duty to question him, and I did, and I put it straight without even first casually discussing the ancient doctrine of self-defense. I don’t like to put a thought in a client’s head unless the man’s intelligent and reliable enough to handle it, which this one wasn’t.

  “He said, ‘Counselor, I just can’t lie to your face. That is the ax that killed the old man, and this is the hand that done it!’

  “Disgusted though I was, I asked his motive. He said, ‘Fact is, the old man was sickly and I just didn’t think it would pay to carry him through the winter.’ Then he asked me to represent him in court. Now, Erskine, here is my question,” said Kilgore, pointing his cigar. “Assuming that the man can pay an adequate fee, is he entitled to a lawyer, and would you take the case?”

  The younger man had been following with intense concentration. As the final question was put, he relaxed in visible relief. “Why, Mr. Kilgore,” he said reproachfully, “I don’t think there’s any two ways about it. That exact case came up in Kentucky in 1847 and it got consideration from the American Bar Association when the Canon of Ethics was formulated. They said it was an extreme example, but every man is entitled to legal representation, even that one. In fact, the more guilty a man seems to be, the more he needs skilled help. I can give you the citation if you let me think on it a moment.” Erskine paused. “In fact, I suspect you’re giving me a reported case and not one of your own.”

  “Oh, it was my case, all right,” Kilgore said, grinning at the thrust. “Question is, how far do you go in defending him?”

  “I’d do everything in my power,” said Erskine earnestly. “A lawyer who can’t think that way has no business hangin’ up a shingle.”

  “Even where the client personally confesses full guilt in unmistakable language?”

  “Mr. Kilgore, a confession don’t necessarily mean a thing. I would examine a confession with the utmost suspicion unless I knew the circumstances under which it was made. I say that a lawyer’s job is to defend.”

  “You seem to be all worked up about this,” said Kilgore curiously.

  “I am.”

  “Why?”


  “Because I’ve got a criminal record up in Colorado, Mr. Kilgore, where I wouldn’t stand a chance of getting admitted to the bar,” said the young man simply. “That’s why Mr. Anslinger gave me this letter of introduction. He felt sure you’d be sympathetic to my problem.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Kilgore listened to the steady pounding of hoofs in the street.

  “So you’re a jailbird?” he growled finally.

  “I’ve done time,” Erskine admitted.

  “And you expect—”

  “I was only sixteen when I fell in with this thief,” Erskine interrupted. “I was charged with stealing an overcoat from the Hotel Carleton.”

  Kilgore resumed smoking. “A petty thing to do.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Erskine humbly.

  “What was the coat worth?”

  “Five dollars.”

  “How much time did you get?”

  “One year in the state pen.”

  “What was the name of the judge?”

  “Duquesne,” Erskine said bitterly. “Forrest Duquesne!”

  Kilgore nodded thoughtfully at the rancorous tone. “I heard all about Duquesne. He’s a miserable son of a bitch. But I’ve got one question to ask. Did you actually steal that overcoat?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Did you tell that to the court?”

  “I never had the chance, Mr. Kilgore. I pleaded guilty.”

  “You what?” Kilgore bellowed.

  Erskine drew back at the passionate shout. “I—I told the court I was guilty,” he faltered.

  “You just told me you were innocent!” Kilgore stormed, leaping to his feet. “Now you admit you stood up in court and confessed to theft. Boy!” he went on in a deadly whisper, “are you trying to insult my intelligence?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Were you trying to insult the intelligence of that court?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Or to flout justice?”

  “God damn it, Mr. Kilgore,” said Erskine, rising hotly, “I didn’t come down here to face these kind of tactics. I can explain—”