The Shut Mouth Society (The Best Thrillers Book 1) Read online

  Also by James D. Best

  The Steve Dancy Tales

  The Shopkeeper

  Leadville

  Murder at Thumb Butte

  The Return

  Jenny’s Revenge

  Crossing the Animas

  No Peace

  Other Novels

  Tempest at Dawn

  The Shut Mouth Society

  Deluge

  The Templar Reprisals

  Nonfiction

  Principled Action

  The Digital Organization

  Write Great Fiction

  Collaborative Works

  Wanted, A Western Story Collection

  Wanted II, A Western Story Collection

  Miracles and Massacres

  Being George Washington

  Praise for James D. Best Books

  “The James Best books … are about the best new western series to come along since Larry McMurtry.” True West Magazine

  “You’ll find yourself lost in the book—the fast pace keeps it interesting.” Maritza Barone, Woman’s Day

  “James D. Best has written at least six books. I read them and enjoyed them immensely.” Gary Clothier, Star Democrat

  “This is a fast-paced tale with an interesting hero … you’ll certainly find enough twists and turns to provide an entertaining and exciting story.” Western Writers of America

  “A lively, old-fashioned style Western—clever, entertaining, and full of period references to give it authenticity. Best paces his stories so well readers will find it difficult to put down.” Diane Scearce, Nashville Examiner

  “A great book; I do hope that The Shopkeeper gets the readership it richly deserves.” Simon Barrett, Blogger News Network

  “Once again, Best has penned a fine read.” Roundup Magazine

  “I loved it! The story is told in such a classic, smooth tone—it’s really fast paced throughout.” Jonathon Lyons, Lyons Literary

  “James D. Best is arguably one of the best writers of westerns.” Alan Caruba, Bookviews

  “They are just excellent reading.” Holgerson’s Book and Bookstore

  “This is a compelling narrative and as good as the best of classic westerns. James D. Best is a name to remember.” Saline River Chronicle

  “The writing is clear and straightforward with plenty of action attached. For an entertaining read, The Shopkeeper draws high marks.” T. Akery, ’Bout Books

  “Great stories, interesting and diverse characters and plenty of action! I have enjoyed every one of them. I can't wait for the next one and hope it comes soon!” Larry Winget, NYT/WSJ bestselling author

  “The Steve Dancy series is as good as they come.” Roundup Magazine

  “Best's writing style is a romp, and he nails the dialogue. Two thumbs up!” Leadville Laurel, Leadville Literary League

  “[Tempest at Dawn is] the best novel EVER on the U.S. Constitution.” Larry Schweikart, professor of history and author A Patriot’s History of the United States and a dozen other history books

  “If you want to know the truth about the character of those gentlemen and you want to learn about the evolution of one of the greatest documents ever created by man---the Constitution of the United States---relax in your bed, favorite chair or recliner, and enjoy.”

  Allen Ball, Beaufort Observer

  “Thanks to James Best’s masterpiece, Tempest at Dawn, I felt like the 56th delegate at the Constitutional Convention. Vivid narrative and expressive dialogue.” Michael E. Newton, author The Path to Tyranny, Angry Mobs and the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton.

  “The novel captures the real drama that ensued behind closed doors as they hammered out what is now the oldest living constitution and the foundation of the nation. Read it for its historical value. Read it for its dramatic value. But read it!” Alan Caruba, Bookviews

  “The Shut Mouth Society is a fast-moving, well-written novel.” David M. Kinchen, Huntington News

  “The author has done an excellent job of building the story.” Book Advice

  “The Shut Mouth Society is the kind of book I like best. The novel has everything from intrigue and murder to romance.” Faith Friese Nelson, A Writer’s Journal

  “Best makes Deluge a compelling—indeed frightening—story. This is a highly recommended natural disaster thriller, written with acute attention to reality and little, if any, needless melodramatics.” Jack Rochchester, The Fictional Cafe

  The Shutmouth Society

  A Best Thriller

  James D. Best

  Queen Beach Publishing

  Copyright © 2008 James D. Best

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Wayne Best

  International Standard Book Number: 978-1-60494-012-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007941144

  ASIN : B001AYT70E

  Published by Queen Beach Publishing

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Diane

  Contents

  Also by James D. Best

  Praise for James D. Best Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  The Templar Reprisals

  Deluge Sample Chapter

  Acknowledgments

  Thank You

  Prologue

  New York City

  Monday, February 27, 1860

  Amos Cummings cursed his editor.

  He hated this assignment. Beyond career objections, it caused him to miss a rare opportunity to take his soon-to-be fiancée to dinner. When he had chosen journalism as a profes
sion, he had had no idea that it would consume so many evenings.

  As an abolitionist, he had wanted to influence public opinion, and he had believed that Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune would give him an elevated platform. Instead, Greeley had assigned him to cover Thurlow Weed and his political machine. Years of gritty local politics had made Cummings a cynic. Nowadays he was more concerned with starting a family than with changing the country.

  This morning, he had asked Greeley for a new assignment: anything different from his old beat. As he climbed aboard the horse-drawn streetcar that would take him up Broadway, he knew haranguing his editor had been a mistake.

  Although the packed streetcar rattled and clanged, Cummings thought he overheard one of the other passengers mention Abraham Lincoln. Considering the hour, many of the people on this trolley were probably also heading to the Cooper Union. Tonight’s speaker—and his assignment—was this Abraham Lincoln.

  Cummings could not pick up the thread of the conversation. Just as well. He did not need to hear the banter of someone who would pay an exorbitant twenty-five cents to listen to a commonplace politician from some prairie state. Abraham Lincoln had earned a modicum of fame during his debates with Senator Stephen Douglas two years ago, but he had lost that race. Cummings could not see the fledgling Republican Party nominating a loser. How had this rough-hewn storyteller wangled an invitation to a lecture series meant to expose serious candidates to the New York political elite?

  The Cooper Union was ablaze with gaslights when Cummings stepped off the trolley. Greeley had reserved him a seat in the front row, so he could hear clearly and report on Lincoln’s address. Still in a foul mood, Cummings merged with the crowd and meandered down the stairs to the Great Hall in the basement. As the crowd jostled him, he noticed that tonight there seemed to be a heightened sense of energy and excitement. The audience would surely be disappointed. Homespun yarns might draw crowds in the bucolic West, but New York City demanded a more elevated style of speech making.

  After some salutations with fellow journalists and friends, Cummings took his seat at the side of the auditorium. The hall buzzed with conversations and greetings, and Cummings estimated the crowd at about four hundred, leaving a quarter of the seats empty. Most of the important Republicans in this overwhelmingly Democratic city had bought tickets, but after some rough calculations, he guessed the promoters would be lucky to break even.

  The windowless Great Hall felt like a church, with its sixteen massive columns and vaulted ceiling. Red leather swivel chairs rose from front to rear at a slight incline, so everyone could see over people seated in front of them. One hundred and sixty-eight gaslights in crystal chandeliers bounced light off the mirrors that lined both walls to make the room bright as day. The illumination may have been a modern miracle, but the constant hiss from burners sometimes made it difficult to hear a soft-spoken speaker.

  In a few minutes, Abraham Lincoln and his hosts emerged from behind a curtain and sat on chairs lined up across the stage. Cummings heard a muted gasp as this gangly, disheveled, and ill-dressed being walked onto the stage with the strangest gait he had ever seen. Lincoln walked with a slouch and took each step with the flat of his foot instead of the heel. When he sat, he wrapped his enormously long legs around the chair and assumed a glum expression that seemed to promise a fire-and-brimstone sermon instead of one of his well-known humorous talks. Cummings looked around and saw dismay on other faces.

  Lincoln had provided typeset copies of his speech to the major newspapers, but Cummings had been in a snit, so he had not bothered to read it before leaving the Tribune building. He arranged the text on his lap and made sure his four sharpened pencils were handy in his side pocket. Hopefully, he would need to make few notes and be able to submit his story to the night editor before midnight.

  After the introduction, Lincoln walked to the podium with one pant leg caught about two inches above his shoe. He seemed a pathetic creature and, as he began to speak, nothing altered this first impression. He laid his foolscap notes on the gold-tasseled podium and held his hands behind his back. He spoke in a high-pitched monotone voice and made few gestures of note. As Lincoln spoke, Cummings used his finger to follow the text, but he did not bother to note the minor alterations from the typeset copy.

  Senator Douglas, more than any other man, had raised the specter of slavery in the territories north of the Mason-Dixon Line, by claiming that the Founding Fathers believed the federal government held no authority to restrict slavery in the territories. Lincoln, presenting a scholarly review of the voting records of the Constitution’s thirty-nine signers, showed that twenty-one of them had voted for bills restricting slavery in territories, and sixteen had left no record. Only two supported the Douglas contention.

  Cummings had let the pencil slip onto his lap. He realized that he had been captured by Lincoln’s words. His grammar and diction were flawless, and he artfully used repetition to drive home his points and add levity without resorting to his famed countrified stories.

  About five minutes into the speech, Cummings saw a startling transformation. Lincoln made faces, threw his head, and modulated his voice to captivate the audience. When he mimicked the Douglas stentorian style, he not only succeeded in mocking the “little giant,” but caused his audience to laugh uproariously and stomp their feet with abandon.

  His speech had started slow, but as it picked up momentum, the energy in the hall lifted until the excited audience waited on the edge of their seats for the next opportunity to clap, yell, and bang out a rhythm with their shoes. Lincoln gave them plenty of opportunities.

  Cummings watched Lincoln accentuate his great height by lifting himself on his toes and throwing his arms wide open. “Will you meet us then on the question of whether our principles wrong your region? Do you accept the challenge?” Lincoln snapped back down on his heels, and the Great Hall joined him in shouting, “No!”

  “Then you must believe our principles so wrong as to demand condemnation without a moment’s consideration.”

  Cummings looked around as Lincoln waited for the applause and cheering to subside. With wonder, he realized that these jaded New Yorkers liked the man.

  Lincoln again used his voice and mannerisms to mock Senator Douglas. “Some of you are for the ‘gur-reat pur-rinciple’ that if one man would enslave another, no third man should object, fantastically called Popular Sovereignty by the gur-reat Senator Douglas.”

  Now laughter mixed with applause. Lincoln waited again. When he resumed, he directly addressed the South.

  “We hear that you will not abide the election of a Republican president! In that event, you say you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!”

  Laughter.

  “That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you and then you will be a murderer!” The sudden shift of laughter to prolonged applause told Cummings that Lincoln had command of this audience.

  “What the robber demands of me—my money—is my own; and I have a clear right to keep it; but my vote is also my own; and the threat of death to me to extort my money and the threat to destroy the Union to extort my vote can scarcely be distinguished.”

  Lincoln smoothly slid into his concluding argument. “What will convince slaveholders that we do not threaten their property? This and this only: cease to call slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. Silence alone will not be tolerated—we must place ourselves avowedly with them. We must suppress all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

  “If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it, are wrong and should be swept away. Holding, as th
ey do, that slavery is morally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand full recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing.

  “All they ask, we can grant, if we think slavery right. All we ask, they can grant if they think it wrong.” He paused dramatically. “Right and wrong is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.”

  Lincoln held for a couple beats to punctuate his point.

  “Thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield? Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this?”

  The hall burst with repeated shouts of “No! No!”

  “Let us not grope for some middle ground between right and wrong. Let us not search in vain for a policy of ‘don’t care’ on a question about which we ‘do care.’ Nor let us be frightened by threats of destruction to the government.”

  Prolonged applause kept Lincoln silent for several minutes. Cummings looked down at his typeset copy of the speech and saw that Lincoln had only one more sentence. With perfect timing, he delivered it with all the energy he could muster.

  “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it!”

  When Lincoln stepped back from the podium, the Cooper Union Great Hall exploded with noise and motion. Everybody stood. The staid New York audience cheered, clapped, and stomped their feet. Many waved handkerchiefs and hats. Cummings had tried to remain professional throughout the raucous speech, but he abandoned propriety and rose to his feet to clap and cheer with everyone else. The approbation continued so long that Lincoln began to look embarrassed. The bouncing noise seemed to grow on itself, until Cummings thought it had hit a crescendo, and then it grew even louder. The audience reaction told Cummings that he was witnessing the dawning of a new political force.

  Cummings grabbed his papers from the floor where they had fallen and swiveled to exit the hall. A colleague from the Herald grabbed his elbow. “What do you think?” he yelled above the din.