by Cameron Judd
“Are you hungry, sir?”
“Mighty hungry, son. I’m sorry to be bothering you…”
“Sir, I can’t share this food here with you, but…”
A few moments later, the man was walking away, bubbling over with thanks, clutching the money Gunnison had given him. Gunnison watched to make sure he headed not for a saloon but for a cafe. He did.
Gunnison grinned and resumed his journey to the hotel.
Sometimes the best feeling a man could have was to help out his fellow man. Gunnison had double cause to feel good tonight, then. He’d helped first a lonely Englishwoman, and now a pitiful old vagrant.
Saint Gunnison. Brady Kenton would be proud.
* * *
He knew something was wrong as soon as he reached the landing on his floor. Pausing, he looked down the hall. It was dark down where his room was, but it looked as if the door might not be fully closed—and he’d left it locked.
Gunnison hesitated, then set the tray down in the hall, quietly, and reached beneath his jacket. No one else was in the hall; there was no noise from his room.
He drew his pistol and advanced slowly toward the door of his room.
It was open, slightly. Gunnison’s heart began to hammer quite hard. He edged down the hall, pistol ready, paused near the door, then wheeled around, pushing the door open the rest of the way with his foot, the pistol held level and ready to fire.
She was gone. The bed was empty. He glanced around, used the mirror to see the parts of the room he couldn’t see otherwise.
She wasn’t hidden under the bed or behind the wardrobe. She had left entirely—and, interestingly, had not taken any of his possessions when she did.
Gunnison holstered his pistol, frowning, concerned.
Why had she fled? Especially considering that she was weak, sick, hungry … and food was on its way?
No way to know. Maybe she really was insane and had fled for no good reason. Maybe there really was a man pursuing her, and she’d been found and forced to run.
Gunnison examined the lock and latch. It was undamaged. Nobody had kicked this door open; she had opened it from the inside.
Gunnison went back out to the hallway and picked up the tray of food. He carried it back to the room and set it on the table. Maybe she would return momentarily.
But she didn’t return. Gunnison eventually took the tray back outside, onto the street. It didn’t take long to find a vagrant; there were plenty of them in Leadville.
“Here you go, friend. Enjoy your meal.” The man was devouring the food with the vigor of a starved mongrel as Gunnison went back up to his room. He extinguished the light, undressed, and went to bed, feeling depressed and oddly worried about Rachel Frye, a virtual stranger to him, yet someone who had managed in mere moments to engage his sympathies. He hoped she was all right.
Gunnison fell asleep wondering if she really could be Brady Kenton’s daughter.
CHAPTER 6
GUNNISON awakened early the next morning, eager to get up and away from Leadville. He couldn’t stop thinking of his home and his wife.
But first there was breakfast to be had. He left the hotel and went toward the nearest restaurant, looking for flapjacks and coffee.
Gunnison was on his second cup when another man entered the cafe. He seemed familiar, but Gunnison couldn’t immediately place him.
Ah, yes. It was the man who had spoken to him in the hallway of the hotel, while Rachel shrank back into the shadows. Gunnison smiled and nodded a greeting at him.
To his surprise, the man looked at him coldly and seated himself at his table so his back was turned to Gunnison. Gunnison frowned, sipping his coffee and wondering what he’d done to offend the man. It both troubled and annoyed him.
Gunnison paid his bill and was about to leave, but a burst of resolve came over him. He’d find out just what had caused this stranger to be so unfriendly all at once.
He turned and walked over to the man’s table. By now the fellow was busy with ham and eggs, and glanced darkly up at Gunnison only once before focusing his attention on his plate again.
“Pardon me, sir,” Gunnison said. “A word, if I may.”
The man still didn’t look up. “Suit yourself,” he said.
“I’ve always been told that the gentlemanly thing to do is to look at those to whom you’re speaking,” Gunnison replied.
The man did look up, sharply. “I agree—if both parties in the conversation are gentlemen.”
That made Gunnison angry, but more than that, perplexed. “That’s quite an unexpected thing to say to a man you spoke to with seemingly the greatest respect only last night.”
“That’s because at the time I spoke to you, I wasn’t aware of certain aspects of your behavior.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The man glared at Gunnison. “I make no claim that I’m a candidate for canonization, Mr. Gunnison, but I do see myself as a moral man. One who believes in faithfulness within marriage.”
“What are you driving at, sir?”
“Need you ask? You, Mr. Gunnison, are a married man. You said so yourself in your speech—which, let me say now, I didn’t enjoy nearly as much as I told you I did. I was simply trying to be polite to you because you’d been so ill-received and I felt sorry for you.”
“I am a married man. And a faithful one.”
“Faithful! Keep in mind, sir, that my room was next to yours. I heard the fighting and shouting, you and some female most certainly not your wife, shouting and cursing, going at it like cats and dogs—no doubt having gone at it like rabbits before that. Or perhaps she was a lady and refused you, and that was the reason for the row.”
Gunnison could have justly struck the man across the face for those comments, but the content of what was said had caught his attention. “Wait a minute—there was fighting in my room?”
“Why, you know there was! I could hear you right in the middle of it!”
“No, sir. If you heard a man in my room, it wasn’t me. If I may, sir, I’d like the opportunity to sit down here and clarify something that you have misperceived, quite honestly, I assume.”
“Well, I don’t … I’m not really sure I … oh, suit yourself.”
Gunnison pulled back the chair opposite the man and sat down. “There was indeed a woman in my room last night, but not for what most would assume—as you have—were inappropriate reasons. She had come to me in hopes of finding out how to contact Brady Kenton, and I saw that she was hungry and ill. When she nearly fainted, I took her into the room to let her lie down, while I left to buy her food. When I came back, the door to the room had been opened, a couple of things were askew, and she was gone. But I knew nothing of a fight. I swear that to you, before God.”
The frowning man fidgeted. “Pardon me for saying so, but your story sounds suspect, Mr. Gunnison, and I’d disbelieve it in most circumstances … but I did see that woman at the back of the hallway when I came up, and know that you are telling the truth when you say she seemed ill. In fact, I’d noticed the same woman in the crowd while you spoke. She was very ill at ease, looking around, almost distraught. She seemed to be afraid.”
“She was afraid. She told me that there is a man who has been hounding her. She’s been fleeing from him here, while trying to find Brady Kenton at the same time. That’s her tale, anyway.”
“I saw no man giving her any heed when she was listening to you speak.”
“I never saw her from the stage. I was too busy suffering the woes of an unwelcome speaker to notice any particular person.”
The man paused, thinking, then drew a deep breath and thrust his hand across the table. “Mr. Gunnison, I owe you an apology, and I hope that you’ll shake my hand in acceptance of it. My name is Timothy Kempson; I’m a wholesaler of dry-goods supplies, from Cleveland.”
Gunnison shook the hand. “I understand your misperception of the situation, Mr. Kempson. If I’d heard what you did, I’d have perceived it the same way. But a
ll that’s to the side now. At the moment I’m worried about this poor woman.” Gunnison confided to Kempson his suspicion that she was delusional, running from a man who perhaps did not even exist.
“Well, the man I heard in that room, and out in the hallway immediately after, certainly did exist. I assumed it to be you, of course.”
“A voice like mine, then? Someone about my age?”
“About your age, perhaps … but now that I listen to you more closely, in fact, the voice was quite different. More like her voice, in its way of speaking, anyway.”
“An English accent, you mean, like hers?”
“Oh, is that it? Yes! I detected she had an odd way of speaking, but couldn’t account for it exactly.” Kempson actually blushed. “The truth is, Mr. Gunnison, I’m not a much traveled man. This Leadville trip is the first time I’ve been out of Cleveland in fifteen years. I’m embarrassed to tell you that I’d never heard an English accent before. Never met an Englishman or Englishwoman in my life, or if I did, I didn’t know it.”
“Did the man you heard have an accent just like hers, then?”
“Well, with the yelling and all, it’s hard to tell much about accents … but yes. I’d say it was the same accent.”
“Interesting,” Gunnison said. “Then her phantom pursuer—if that’s who he was—is probably also from England.”
“I wonder where she is now?” Kempson said. “She seemed to be very upset, to say the least. Lord, I feel a fool for making such a foul accusation against you. I can generally tell when a man is telling the truth and simply making excuses—and you’re telling the truth.”
“Yes, I am. And I wonder what became of her, too.”
“Did she ever say who is after her?”
“No. I had little opportunity to have much conversation with her. When I came back and found her gone, I assumed she’d simply left. There were a couple of things knocked over, but I didn’t consider the possibility of a fight. The door had been opened, not kicked in, and I’d left it locked. Why would she have opened it to a man she was scared to death of?”
“Maybe she thought it was you, returning with food.”
“Maybe … or maybe she had detected he was coming, and had opened the door to let herself out so she could run. I did think I saw her looking out the window after I went out onto the street. Maybe she saw him out there, too, and decided to run, but got cut off by him in the hall before she could get out of the building.”
“All I know is, there was a man and a woman, screeching and yelling and cursing at each other in the doorway and then in the hall. Well, the man was doing all the cursing.”
“Might he have carried her off? Or did she get away from him?”
Kempson recollected a couple of moments. “Couldn’t tell for sure … but it seems to me they both left on foot, running, her ahead of him. He could have caught her.”
“You didn’t look to see?”
“Yes, but it happened fast. By the time I got my head out the door, they were gone. A couple of others on the floor also took a look, but they were even later at it than me.”
Gunnison felt quite disturbed. Maybe he, like Kempson, has misperceived a few things. Maybe Rachel Frye was neither criminal nor insane. Her male antagonist certainly didn’t appear to be imaginary.
Maybe her claim to be Brady Kenton’s daughter wasn’t a figment, either.
“Mr. Kempson, sir, thank you for your information,” Gunnison said, standing. “I intend to thank you by paying for your breakfast.”
“Why, sir, there’s no need for—”
But Gunnison was already at the counter, laying out money. He gave Kempson a wave and final nod, and headed out the door and back to the hotel.
CHAPTER 7
THE clerk was a different fellow than the one on duty during the night, and knew nothing. And no, the night clerk there before him hadn’t seen any kind of chase. If he had, he’d have been talking about it when he left this morning, Gunnison was assured. The night clerk was like that—the kind to talk. Most likely, if anything of the sort had happened, the night clerk had been asleep on the job and missed it. He was like that, too—the kind to sleep on the job.
Gunnison had every intention of questioning each person who had been lodged on his floor the night before, but to his misfortune, all but one—an overweight woman of society with a snobbish attitude—had checked out.
He tried to question the woman about the ruckus of the night before, but she claimed to know nothing of it. Gunnison sensed two things: she had indeed heard it despite what she said today, and she, like Kempson initially, blamed him for it, assuming he was the male involved. Unlike Kempson, she was not willing to be persuaded otherwise.
Gunnison was left in a quandary. He’d been eager to abandon Leadville, but now he felt he couldn’t. A woman might be in danger … a woman who claimed to be Brady Kenton’s daughter.
It didn’t seem a likely claim, but what if … what if?
Gunnison sat down on a chair on the porch and thought things over. He could put this behind him, go ahead and leave. He could remain in Leadville and try to find out what happened to Rachel Frye. Or he could take the best of both options, tell the local law about what had happened, and leave the matter of Rachel Frye and her phantom antagonist in hands other than his own.
The latter was the most appealing idea, because it let him shift the responsibility for Rachel Frye’s welfare, thereby assuaging some of his guilty feelings over abandoning this town while she might be in trouble. Not all the guilty feelings, though. The vague chance that she really could be Kenton’s daughter made Rachel Frye much more than one more troubled woman in one more western town.
Gunnison headed out to find a policeman.
The search took him in memory back to an earlier Leadville policeman he’d known. Old Clance Sullivan! He’d never known a fellow more thoroughly Irish. The memory of Sullivan and the adventure Gunnison and Kenton had shared in this sky-level town brought an unexpected burst of sentimentality to Gunnison … and a new round of worry about Brady Kenton and his recent personal deterioration.
Gunnison’s earlier irritation with Kenton was beginning to fall away, though he hardly noticed.
Gunnison walked for ten minutes and saw no sign of a policeman. He wryly began to consider committing a public crime in hopes of drawing one out.
Tired of depending on chance, he headed for a nearby apothecary shop to ask where the nearest outpost of the town law might be.
The shop was cool, shadowy, pleasant, and was filled with the fragrance of coffee brewing on a little stove in the back. Gunnison paused simply to enjoy the place for a moment, then looked around for a clerk.
“Hello? Anybody here?”
No reply. He walked farther inside. “Looking for a clerk! Anyone around?”
A door into a back office and storage area stood open, and through it Gunnison saw another open door, leading to the area behind the store. He could see as well the corner of a privy. That explained it. The clerk had vacated the store momentarily for an outhouse visit.
Gunnison quickly moved through the office and out the back door. He loitered about the back lot, waiting for the man to emerge from the outhouse.
After a few minutes went by, he began to doubt the man was in the outhouse at all. He went to the outhouse door, knocked tentatively, and received no answer. He opened the door. Empty.
Why would anyone simply abandon an open store in midday, not even bothering to close the doors or hang a sign?
Gunnison’s curiosity was mildly aroused, but this wasn’t a matter that concerned him. He turned to head back up the alley to the street and continue his search for a policeman, but just as he did, someone called to him.
“Hello, sir!” a man’s voice said. Gunnison saw a hefty fellow, very out of breath and sweaty, plodding toward him from behind the next store building. “Sorry … if you were looking for … me … in the store. Whew! I’m plain ole wore out! Not used … to running.”
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Gunnison eyed the man’s red and dripping face. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Fine … fine. Just tired. Too fat, I am. My wife tells me … all the time I’m too fat … for my own good, and she’s likely right. Certainly I’m too fat … to be chasing down a wife-beater … like I have been.”
“A wife-beater?”
“Yeah, yeah … poor old gal! The old boy seemed to want to pound the very life out of her! I heard them out here in the back, and stuck my head out to see what the commotion was.” The man paused a couple of moments to catch his breath. “There they were, the woman cringing and the man with a big old stick in his hand. Now, I know there are them who say that a wife is a man’s possession and that he has the right to discipline what’s his, but I reckon I’m a little different in my thinking. I don’t believe in beating your wife, no sir.”
“Neither do I,” Gunnison replied. “But how do you know it was his wife?”
“Well … I guess I don’t. I just assumed it was.”
“What did this woman look like?”
“Slender, sandy-haired, maybe thirty years old … hard to say how old she was. She looked like she’d been around the mill a few times, if you know what I mean.”
“Did you hear her speak?”
“Heard her screech. Why are you asking?”
“I might know who it is … but if so, then she’d have a British accent.”
“I don’t think there are accents when it comes to screeching.”
“What about the man? Did he have an accent?”
“He never said a word, other than calling me a damned fool for interfering. He might have talked with an accent, but I really couldn’t say. It’s hard to tell when somebody’s shouting.”
“Well, then, what color was the woman’s dress?”
“Blue, I think. Yes, blue. Kind of on the lighter side.”
Gunnison nodded. Rachel Frye’s dirty and ragged dress had been light blue. “Did she get away from the man?”
“I think so … to be truthful, I couldn’t tell for sure. She went one way and he went another. But after I left, I suppose he could have chased her down again. By that point I’d done all I could and came back here.”