were brothers. Ben was the oldest and biggest of the two boys. Benjamin had been named after Jacob’s son in the Bible, not after the statesman. Matt was named for the apostle, Matthew. Sonny Bateman was the town’s idiot.
“I don’t know if I’d put much stock in anything Sonny told me,” Ty finally said.
“Well, he was the one that sounded the alarm,” Ben said. “Sonny told us the man was tall and dressed all in black.”
Ty recalled the man he had seen on the trail yesterday. He was tall, had on a top hat, and he was darn sure riding this way, he thought.
“Did he know the man?”
“Nah, said he’d never seen him before,” Ben answered, as he raked some dirt onto a flame that had jumped to life. “Sonny said the man walked right up to him bigger’n Dallas and asked him where the schoolmarm lived.” Ty felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as Ben continued. “Sonny told us he was shaking in his boots and told him quick where Miss Beachem lived.”
“What happened next?” Ty asked.
“The man asked Sonny if Miss Beachem was the teacher from Missouri,” Ben said. “Sonny said he didn’t know. Said all he knew was Miss Beachem moved here last summer.”
“And?”
“The man walked over there.” Ben said pointing toward a stand of Spanish oaks west of where the school had stood. “Sonny said he climbed onboard a good-looking black stallion, and the last Sonny saw was him riding off into the dark toward Miss Beachem’s house. About then, Sonny saw the fire and ran for help.”
Matt added to his brother’s story. “We were plenty busy after we got here,” he said. “I guess we all knew there weren’t no way to save the building, but we had to give it a try.”
Ty nodded, keeping a tight lip. He knew that in time Ben and Matt would tell him all there was to know about the fire and Miss Beachem’s murder.
“When we were sure the fire wasn’t going to spread to the dry grass or the teacherage, we went looking for Sonny. I reckon most of us thought he’d started the fire.”
“Where did you find him?” Ty asked.
“He was over at his uncle Lon’s,” Ben answered. “The boy was scared to death.”
“He figured we’d accuse him of setting the fire,” Matt said. “I ain’t so sure Sonny’s as dumb as we all think. Well, anyway, when we got there, Lon came out and told us Sonny’s story.”
At first we all figured he was lying,” Ben interrupted.
“We did for a fact,” Matt continued. “We went over to Miss Beachem’s to ask her if she’d seen anyone wearing a top hat and all dressed in black. When we got there, she was deader’n a Christmas goose.”
Ty took a deep breath and asked, “How was she killed?”
“Someone cut her throat,” Matt and Ben said together.
“Are you sure it wasn’t Sonny who did all this?” Ty asked. “I mean, killed Miss Beachem and set the school on fire. Maybe he went over there and told her he was in love with her or something like that. Everybody in town knows he was in love with her. Not two weeks ago, she asked me to tell Sonny to stop following her.”
“I saw him last night,” Matt told Ty, “and I sure as shootin’ don’t think he had anything to do with Miss Beachem’s murder.”
“Well, I guess I’d better ride on over to her house and see what I can find,” Ty said. “You boys want to come along?”
Ty was sure they did, and he guessed they would follow him anyway, so he might as well make some use of them. Both men laid their firefighting tools down and fell in behind him as he led Blaze down the side street toward Miss Beachem’s small house. Dog jumped from his shady spot and led the trio, looking back every now and then to be sure he was going in the right direction.
“Where’s Miss Beachem’s body?” Ty asked. Ben and Matt shrugged their shoulders and shook their heads.
Miss Beachem’s house was a neat two-room clapboard structure about three hundred yards from the school. The town owned the small house. Everybody called it the teacherage, it having been built for Samuel Haywood, Utopia’s first teacher. Haywood had died the previous year from consumption, and the school board hired Miss Beachem. She had whitewashed the front of the house recently and always kept flowers growing in front of the picket fence, weather permitting.
Miss Beachem had moved to Utopia from Austin. Last winter, Lester Rainey told everyone around the potbellied stove in the back of the mercantile that he wished he was back in the first grade again, as they all cast a wishful eye on her trim waist and swinging skirt when she passed by. “I sure as the dickens would sit on the front row. Then I could whiff her every day,” he’d snickered. Everybody laughed until Miss Beachem looked their way.
Even Ty thought Miss Beachem was a handsome woman. She was a tall redhead in her mid-twenties. One day when Ty remarked that Miss Beachem seemed nice, Sarah quickly snapped, “Miss Beachem’s gaunt. She’s far too skinny.” From then on, Ty kept his thoughts about Miss Beachem to himself around Sarah.
Most of the womenfolk thought Miss Beachem should be replaced as the town schoolmarm. “Why, she don’t even go to church most Sundays,” Sarah’s mother said one Sunday after dinner. Ty knew things were loping downhill for Miss Beachem when Mrs. Thompson started to say things about her. It wasn’t her nature to be critical of anyone.
Ty knew most of the men in town thought Miss Beachem was doing a fine job teaching their young’uns. Since the school board was made up of men only, it had looked as if Miss Beachem’s job might be safe for another school year. That was before Miss Beachem’s throat had been cut from ear to ear.
“Why don’t you two check around the house for tracks? I’ll see if anyone’s in the house,” Ty said as he tied Blaze to a corner post. Suddenly everyone stopped doing whatever they were doing and listened.
“That’s gunfire,” Matt Franklin said.
“Sure enough,” Ben Franklin agreed.
Ty was already into his saddle, kicking Blaze into a hard run toward the sound of the gunshots. He guessed the shooting was somewhere on Main Street. By the time he arrived at the bank, Cornelius had crawled to the hitch rack. A smoking gun was still in his hand.
“He went that way!” Cornelius said, pointing up the wagon road to the north. “He’s headed toward Vanderpool on a black stallion.”
“Tell me what happened? How many men?” Ty asked.
“One, just one man,” Cornelius said, trying to stand then falling back to the street with a thud and a grunt. “He came into the bank and walked up to the teller’s cage like he owned the place,” Cornelius sighed. “He was a tall man with a top hat. He said he was a cattle buyer from San Antonio and asked me to cash a hundred-dollar bill.”
“Get on with it, Cornelius,” Ty said, turning to Ben Franklin and instructing him to get some men and horses. “I’ll need all the men I can get for a posse.”
Cornelius continued. “He said he had to pay off some hired hands, but something didn’t feel right. He didn’t look like a cattle buyer to me. I looked the bill over pretty darn carefully, and told him someone had pulled a fast one on him. His hundred dollars was counterfeit. A poor counterfeit at that. Any fool would have seen it was a fake.”
“What’d he do then?” Ty asked.
“Sonofabuck laughed, took the bill back, tucked it into his vest pocket, and told me, ‘I reckon it is.’ Then he drew his pistol and aimed it right between my eyes.”
“What kind of gun was it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a Remington, I’m not sure. He cocked the hammer and told me, ‘But this pistol