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eBook Category: Historical Fiction
eBook Description: Granbury, Texas, 1876: A flamboyant bartender named John St. Helen lies deathly ill. He summons his best friend to his bedside and begins to weave an incredible tale of murder, mystery, and historical deceit. And before his story is finished, John St. Helen will reveal the truth: that he is John Wilkes Booth, the Instrument of Darkness.

eBook Publisher: The Fiction Works, Published: Lake Tahoe, NV, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2002

9 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [202 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [170 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [163 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [554 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [184 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [161 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [220 KB] , hiebook (KML) [394 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [233 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [152 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [189 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [229 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [248 KB]
Words: 53450
Reading time: 152-213 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts...
~~~As You Like It~~~

Granbury, Texas--September, 1876

The note was lodged between the wall and a bottom corner of my message box, just beneath the lacquered shingle that proclaimed, Finis Bates, Attorney, and in my fatigue I nearly missed it.

"Come quick." it read tersely. "St. Helen is desperately ill, and he asks to see you."

The note was signed by Mrs. Grady, the woman who ran the boardinghouse over on Pearl Street where John St. Helen kept his lodgings. I reasoned she must have sent it over by her youngest son, Billy, owing partly to the odd locale--the highest an eight- year-old's arms could reach, no doubt--but mostly because I knew the dear widow rarely ventured out on her own, especially if she had boarders in residence. For someone whose very livelihood depended on a hostelry, she was an incredibly mistrusting soul.

I had just returned to Granbury after an arduous day in Glen Rose, where I had spent the entire day in court. A client of mine, a cattleman from southern Somervell County, had gotten himself into a rather nasty dispute with his neighbor over grazing boundaries. Being a man of significant wealth but disproportionate common sense--a not uncommon condition among many of his ilk, I am grieved to say--he had elected to arbitrate the matter with a Colt's revolver. A fellow rancher had nearly died, however, and it took all of my legal finagling to convince the judge that the entire affair was merely an exaggerated misunderstanding. Although he faced a two-year prison term, my client escaped with only a five-hundred-dollar fine, a sentence for which most rational men would have gleefully sung their lawyer's praises. But my reward was an immediate dismissal, along with a vehement warning to avoid future sojourns into Somervell County, especially if I wished to remain in decent health. Texas gratitude truly knew no bounds.

I crumpled the note and wearily tossed it aside, then started to go on in to a waiting and welcome bed. But something suddenly made me stop. St. Helen was my friend, and despite my exhaustion, I felt I should pay him at least a brief call. I did not believe for a moment that he was deathly ill, regardless of the note's urgency, for there was hardly a man in Granbury as robust and vigorous as John St. Helen. But it had been several weeks since I had last seen him, and his company might at least help to shake off the frustrated melancholy that had settled over me like the journey's dust.

I turned and trotted back down the steps that led to the rooms, both office and lodgings, that I kept above the Masonic Lodge there on Crockett Street. Granbury was nearly deserted, that close to sundown, and I shared the courthouse square with only a mongrel dog, a statue of General John Bell Hood, and a jovially whistling Negro workman. The black was busy hauling down the Lone Star flag, and I had to shake my head in genuine bemusement. Here it was nearly two years after Reconstruction had finally ended, and the Stars and Stripes had yet to make an official appearance above Hood County's brand-new stone edifice. The county, named for the aforementioned Texas Brigade warrior himself, teemed with Confederate veterans like a hound with fleas, and there were still many who refused to believe the Confederacy had truly died. I myself did not share their convictions, although, while merely a transplant to Texas from my native Tennessee, I fully understood the bitterness the war had left behind. Just like the terrible wounds inflicted by gun and saber, certain scars would never heal.

The Black Hawk Saloon, where John St. Helen worked as a bartender, stood at the corner of Crockett and Pearl, and I cast it a speculative glance as I passed by, recalling the first time the two of us had met nearly four years before. St. Helen had been a barkeep then, in fact, in his own tavern down in Glen Rose, and it was his profession which actually brought us together. St. Helen had bought a small saloon and dry goods store from a former Confederate soldier, who had neglected to tell the new owner that the whiskey and beer he profitably poured had been served without a state license. When the Austin authorities, Unionists all, finally caught the error, it was St. Helen who faced the threatened penalties. He came to me as an honest businessman, sincerely wanting to set the matter right. There was only one stipulation. St. Helen was unwilling, and almost vehemently so, to appear personally in a Yankee court of law.

I suppose I knew from that moment that there was something seriously wrong, some mysterious aspect of John St. Helen's past that he wanted desperately kept secret. Yet in all honesty, I cared very little. In my profession, especially during those terrible days of Reconstruction, I had yet to meet the man who hadn't had a skeleton or two hidden from the Unionists. The war had turned even the most saintly of souls into scalawags and misfits, at least from a Yankee perspective, and I knew better than to try and open such painful wounds. Whatever John St. Helen had done, or was running from, was his own affair. I was perfectly willing to accept his terms, as well as his dubious behavior. Especially as I truly came to know the man.