Powder Keg by Ed Gorman

creek with steep banks, and Jen Chaney’s small farm.
    The year I worked for the Pinkertons I did a lot of railroad investigations. I’d forgotten the dubious pleasures of scrambling up boxcars and then walking along the top while the wind was doing everything it could to hurl you to the ground and smash your bones.
    Nothing.
    None of the men in the roundhouse were any help, either. They had everything battened down for the big storm. I counted two card games, one penny-pitching game, and a noisy arm-wrestling match among the leisure activities. The pipe tobacco and the coffee smelled damned good on a night like that. I hated to go back outside.
    There had been four of us looking—two deputieshad met us on our way out there—and since I hadn’t heard any sudden shouts I guessed they’d done as poorly as I had.
    The moon was a mean one. So icy-looking it made you even colder. But it showed everything up pretty good, which was bad for people trying to elude the law.
    The deputy named Dob—I can’t remember his last name—came tripping and stumbling and swearing and shouting and waving toward me. He was so out of breath when we caught up with each other, he put his hands on his knees and just held them there while his breathing threatened to rip his whole chest cavity apart. He sounded like a dog dying mean.
    And then he said, “Your friend, Mr. Ford.”
    “Daly? What about him?”
    He held up a hand. His panting wasn’t done. It almost sounded fatal then. His nose was running and the snot glowed green in the moonlight. His white face was raw red from the wind.
    “Dead.”
    “What?”
    “Dead. And I seen who killed him.”
    “Who?”
    More ragged breathing. “Mike. Chaney.”
    “Chaney? Why the hell would Chaney kill Daly?”
    He just shook his head.
    By now Nordberg and the other deputy were running toward us. They must have heard Dob there despite the wind.
    When they reached us, Dob, in torrents of breath, told them what he’d seen and we immediately set off.
    Next to the railroad tracks, Tom Daly lay face down while the wind played wild with his hair and clothes.
    I knelt down next to him on the off chance that he might still be alive. But I knew better.
    “And you’re sure it was Chaney?” Nordberg asked. Then he said what I’d said: “Why the hell would Mike kill Daly?”
    My knees cracked as I stood up. I had snot on my face now, too. I wiped the back of my glove across my nose.
    I had a mental picture of Susan opening the telegram I’d have to send her. The one telling her about her dead husband. She wasn’t the type who would scream or be dramatic in any way. She’d take the telegram and sit slowly down on a chair and then she’d lean her head back and close her eyes. And after a minute or two of absolute stillness, the lamplight would glisten on the soft slow tears making their way down her cheeks. There would be sobbing but that would come much later on.
    “Dob, you sure you couldn’t have made a mistake?” Nordberg was asking.
    “No, sir. The wind blew his cap off. I got a good look at him. It was Mike Chaney for sure.”
    “Mike Chaney,” Nordberg said, shaking his head encased in his buffalo parka hood. “Why the hell would he want to kill Daly?”
    He took his turn with the corpse. While he did that, I looked around everywhere for anything that might have been dropped on the ground. A couple of moonlit glints got me curious but they both turned out to be just rocks that had that fool’s-gold brilliance to them.
    Nordberg came over to me and said, “You can bet that’s where he went.”
    He pointed to the mountains. They had never looked larger or more imposing or more impregnable.
    “No sense going after him tonight. He’ll go high enough to get a good hiding place. We’ll wait for sunup.” He shook his head. “Now I got to go tell Jen.” He pinched his lips together before speaking. “This just isn’t like Mike Chaney.”
    He turned to his deputies. “One of you stay