by Cameron Judd
CHAPTER 26
KENTON exited the door onto the street. He noted a policeman going around a nearby corner, but the policeman did not see him. Kenton realized how conspicuous he was walking on a dark street carrying a lighted lamp. But it didn’t matter now. Gunnison might be in danger and that was much more important than whether he himself was caught.
He actually almost hailed the policeman, but cut off at the last moment. No policeman would listen to him right now. He’d simply be hauled summarily back to the station and jailed, the matter of Gunnison ignored.
The blood led Kenton into an alley. He traveled down it, expecting to encounter a fallen body at any moment.
Around the rear of the building, Kenton did find a body, lying crumpled on the ground. He saw right away that it was not Gunnison, though, and felt great relief.
But since this was not Gunnison, it must surely be the burglar. And it must have been Gunnison who had injured him.
Kenton knelt and examined the man. He was still breathing, but weakly.
“Mister, can you hear me?”
The man made no reply, only moaned softly.
Kenton gently rolled him over. The man groaned again. The front of his shirt was drenched in blood. His face was wide and fleshy, his eyes pinched shut. By the light of the lamp, Kenton could see that the man was very pale. In his day Kenton had seen enough men die to realize that this man was barely hanging on.
“I’ll try to get help,” Kenton said. “Hold on, hold on as hard as you can, and maybe we can still save you.”
But even as he finished speaking, Kenton saw something change in the man’s face. The fellow let out a weak, faltering breath, and grew still. Kenton sighed and stood. There was nothing to be done for this man now.
So once again the sole issue became Alex Gunnison. Where was he? If he had stabbed this man and fled the room, had he done so simply because he had panicked, or because he himself was injured and seeking assistance?
Kenton stepped across the body and advanced farther up the alley. He heard something in the vicinity of a storage building that was surrounded by stacks of empty boxes, casks, and assorted rubbish.
“Gunnison? Is it you?”
Something stirred, something too big to be a dog or a rat.
Kenton watched as a figure rose before him. Someone had been hiding behind the rubbish.
“Ma’am?” Kenton said to the woman standing before him. “Are you all right?”
The burning lamp still sat back in the alley near the fallen body, but it cast enough light even at this distance to let Kenton vaguely make out the woman’s features. The light played over his own face as well, and as so often happened, he found himself recognized.
“Mr. Kenton, sir?” she said, stepping forward.
She advanced, and he saw her clearly for the first time. As the lamplight revealed her face, Kenton gasped and stepped back, actually feeling faint.
He was looking into a face that was the very image of his lost Victoria.
* * *
Alex Gunnison couldn’t guess what would happen now. Kenton had done some crazy things in his time, but never anything like walking out of a police station.
The ramifications of this occurrence were many-layered. All the work he and Kenton had done in making up the missed assignments was certainly for nothing now. Gunnison knew his father too well to believe he would put up with having Kenton publicly embarrass the Illustrated American in this manner. It was one thing to be a little eccentric, a very different thing to be a fugitive and accused criminal. Gunnison could only hope that Kenton had a very good reason for pulling a stunt like this.
The question was, where had Brady Kenton gone? Denver wasn’t Kenton’s city. He didn’t know its every hiding place and back alley. Gunnison could only guess that Kenton had headed back to the rented room.
The room! Gunnison had forgotten for the moment that Rachel Frye was there! If Kenton did go back to the room, he would stumble upon her without a clue as to who she was or why she was there. Gunnison couldn’t guess how she would react to encountering Kenton, the man she had searched for over so many miles. Would she know him? What if she really was dangerous, and attacked Kenton?
Gunnison turned to go back to the room.
“Pardon me, sir.”
Gunnison wheeled very quickly, startled. Approaching him was the same man he had mistaken for Jessup Best a few minutes earlier. The fellow obviously had followed him.
Gunnison noticed for the first time the man slightly favored his right leg. He also noted the fellow had the look of a lawman about him. He’d always been able to spot them. This was worrisome, under the circumstances.
“Sorry to be calling you down, friend,” the man said as he strode up. “I almost didn’t do it, but if you don’t mind, there’s a question I need to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
“When we spoke earlier on the street, you called me Mr. Best.”
“Yes, sir. You bear a strong resemblance to a man by that name whom I met in Leadville,” Gunnison replied.
“Well, in that case, I pity the poor devil,” the man said, grinning. “I regret that anybody else has had these looks inflicted upon them.”
Gunnison gave the obligatory chuckle, but he was in a hurry and had no time for idle talk. “Is there anything else you need to ask me?”
“Yes, sir, there is. Would you tell me the first name of the Best fellow you knew?”
“Jessup. Jessup Best.”
The stranger raised his thick eyebrows. “I thought that was the name you called. You knew Jessup Best?”
“I met him once, and had some conversation with him. He told me he might come to Denver, so when I saw you, I thought maybe he had shown up. You resemble him.”
This all seemed rather straightforward stuff to Gunnison, but the stranger was looking at him as if it were all very confusing.
“When did you meet this man?”
“A few days ago, in Leadville.”
“Tell me something about what he looked like, if you don’t mind.”
“Why are you asking? And who are you?”
“I ask your pardon, sir,” the ever-polite stranger said, touching his hat. “My name is Turner, Frank Turner. And the reason I’m asking these questions is that I knew Jessup Best very well. But the one you met can’t be the same man.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the Jessup Best I knew has been dead for nearly a year.”
Fine. So there was a coincidence of names. It happened all the time. There seemed to be no other reason to continue the conversation, and Gunnison was eager to get about his own rather urgent business. He started to turn and walk away, adding one last comment: “The Jessup Best I met is a Texas Ranger.”
“What?”
Gunnison stopped and repeated what he had said.
“Well, Mr.…”
“Gunnison. Alex Gunnison.”
“We’ve got quite a mystery on our hands, Mr. Gunnison. There’s only been one Jessup Best in the Texas Rangers, and that’s the man I knew. He’s dead, Mr. Gunnison. I know it for a fact. I was there. I took a bullet through the leg on the same occasion.”
“There has to be another Jessup Best in the Rangers. I met him days ago, and he certainly wasn’t dead.”
“I’m a Texas Ranger myself, sir. I tell you beyond any question that there’s only been one Jessup Best among the Rangers, and he’s dead and gone. The man you met was an imposter. How did he persuade you that he was a Ranger?”
“I had no reason to doubt him.”
“He must have looked a lot like me, else you wouldn’t have mistaken me for him.”
“He did. The way you walk, dress, talk … it’s all the same.” Gunnison paused, then asked, “Mr. Turner, come to think of it, how can I know that you are actually a Texas Ranger?”
Turner pulled back his duster and revealed a badge pinned to his shirt. Gunnison leaned over to examine it. Straightening, he said, “You’
re some distance out of your normal jurisdiction, Ranger Turner.”
“That’s a fact. Let’s go have a drink together and let me talk to you about that, and a few other matters. I think it may be very important, maybe even providential, that we’ve run into one another. I have a notion I might know who this ‘Jessup Best’ you met really is.”
Gunnison was intrigued, but under the circumstances he couldn’t accept the invitation, not right away. “There’s something that I have to do right now,” he said. “Maybe I can meet you later?”
“Fine. I’ll be at the police station.”
“The police station … are you on special assignment with the Denver police, or something?”
“No. I’m separated from the Rangers for the time being. Kind of a forced vacation. But I’ve got a cousin, Henry Turner, up here on the local police force. I came to visit him, just to get away from Texas for a spell. I spend a lot of time at the station with him. Lack of anything better to do.”
Gunnison wasn’t eager to go back to the police station. Someone there might figure out he was Kenton’s partner and try to hold him. “Can we meet somewhere else?” He hoped Turner wouldn’t ask him why.
“There’s a bar on the next corner. Jericho Tavern. I’ll head that way in an hour or so. If you show up, I’ll see you.”
“Fair enough. I do want to talk to you, if the circumstances will allow it.”
“I’ll see you there.”
Frank Turner touched the brim of his hat again, nodding, and turned and limped off toward the police station. Gunnison watched him go for a moment, then headed in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER 27
KENTON had no doubt that the young lady before him was, if not his own daughter, at least that of Victoria. Her face was the image of Victoria’s as it had been when he married her.
“You’re Rachel Frye?”
“Yes.”
For a few moments, Kenton could only stare at her. Then he said, “Alex told me that you say you … are my daughter.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am sure that I am.”
Kenton could hardly get out the next question. “Your mother’s name is Victoria?”
“Yes. My real mother … not the mother who raised me.”
“Is Victoria still alive?”
“She is still alive.”
A great wave of emotion came over Kenton, and he stumbled to the nearest wall, leaned against it, and wept like a child. He had just learned the answer to a question that had haunted him most of his adult life. He didn’t yet know the details, but the mere news that Victoria still lived was all by itself too overwhelming to take.
He regained control of his emotions with a great effort, and turned to face Rachel. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Oh, don’t be sorry. I understand,” she said. She smiled at him. “I was hoping you would be a tender man.”
Kenton had a million questions for Rachel, but could not ask them now. Both of them were in a dire situation. Kenton nodded toward the body on the ground. “Did you kill him?”
“I had to. He attacked me. I didn’t want to kill him, only to make him leave me alone.”
“You were in my room?”
“Yes … Mr. Gunnison had let me in. I had gone to sleep. This man came in, and awakened me, but when he saw me, he came toward me. I don’t know where Mr. Gunnison was … he was gone. I could tell that the man who had come in was going to…” She shuddered and was unable to finish the sentence. “I found a knife, and I defended myself with it. I cut him many times, but he kept on coming at me. I ran away, out of the building, but he followed me … he followed me with blood running all down him.”
Some of Gunnison’s warnings about this woman returned to Kenton’s mind, causing a moment of wariness. He didn’t really know her, after all. This story of attack and self-defense could be a contrivance; perhaps she had murdered this man cold-bloodedly, as she had supposedly killed the family in Texas.
But caution could not live long in the light of that astonishing similarity to his lost Victoria. He could not see her as dangerous even when he tried.
“We have a problem,” Kenton said. “There are policemen crawling all over this town right now, looking for me. If they find me with you, there’ll be questions, and maybe trouble. Especially when they find this body.”
Tears flooded her eyes and she was trembling. “I’ve never caused the death of anyone before,” she said. “I feel bad about it … I feel guilty. He was going to hurt me, but I still feel so guilty.”
She certainly didn’t sound to Kenton like the hardened killer Gunnison had warned him she was. “You did what you had to do. Now, though, we need to find a place to hide, and a way out of Denver as quickly as possible,” Kenton said her.
“I’m accustomed to hiding,” she replied. “And to running.”
“Good,” Kenton said.
He cocked his head at the sound of a train whistle in the distance. A late run was arriving at the Denver station.
“Have you ever ridden the rails—without a ticket?” he asked her.
“More than once.”
“Are you up to doing it tonight?”
“I’ll do whatever I need to do, whenever I must.”
Kenton smiled at her. “I like that spirit,” he said. “It’s the spirit of a survivor.”
She smiled back, and he felt a sudden deepening affection for her. It truly was like looking at the face of Victoria again, a face he had seen in his dreams, and subtly drawn into his artwork, for more years than he could count.
“We must make our way to the train station,” he told her. “And we have to do it without being seen.”
“I’m ready.”
Kenton nodded. Right now he wanted to flee this city and come to know this young Englishwoman’s story.
But what about Gunnison? How could he let him know what had happened and where he was going? He didn’t even know where Gunnison was at the moment.
He thought of a way to get word to Gunnison … not a certain way, but the best he could come up with just now.
He knelt and without explanation picked up a stone, dropping it into his pocket.
They heard the sound of movement up on the street. Kenton quickly extinguished the light, took her by the arm and pulled her back in the opposite direction.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We’re literally a stone’s throw from fleeing Denver. There’s very, very much I want to talk to you about.”
They moved along the rear of a row of buildings, vanishing into the darkness.
* * *
The rail station was dark and substantially empty. It spread across the broad, flat area, with a high fence built around it. Kenton and Rachel hid behind a small shed at the edge of the rail yard, looking across the expanse.
“We’re safe for now,” Kenton said. “But I don’t see any trains that would be good to stow away upon.”
“I don’t think I much care what happens now,” she said. “I’m satisfied just to have been able to find you, my own father.”
“Rachel, I must speak frankly. I don’t see how it is possible that I could be your father,” Kenton said. “Victoria was not with child when we last parted. I see her image in your face, but surely your father must be another man.”
Rachel shook her head firmly. “No. She was with child when you last saw her. But she didn’t know it herself.”
“There’s so much I have to learn from you,” Kenton said.
“I’m eager to tell you,” she replied. “I can tell you now, if you want.”
“Tell me how she survived the train crash. Was she taken away by David Kevington?”
“Yes. He was on the train with her during the crash, but he lived. So did Victoria, and her sister, as well, as I understand it. Dr. Kevington took Victoria away in the midst of the confusion. The fire was so bad, the bodies so badly destroyed, that everyone presumed she was among the dead. That, at least, is what I was told.”
“Who to
ld you this?”
“Molly Frye. The woman who raised me. The woman I always believed was my mother.”
“So Victoria didn’t raise you?”
“No. I was raised by a scullery maid.”
Kenton looked across the rail yard. A black man was sweeping the long, roofed porch of a nearby building. Other figures moved among the train cars and in and out of the various buildings. Now was not the time to enter one of the freight cars.
“Tell me what you can of your story,” Kenton said. “I think we’ll be here a while.”
“It’s a long tale,” she said. “You must understand that it’s something I’ve learned only because others have told me. There are some things I don’t fully know myself. Some things I’ve had to guess at, the best I can.”
Kenton said, “At least you’ve known something. I’ve known nothing all. All these years I’ve had to wonder and pose questions, with no one to give me answers.”
She took a deep breath, and began to speak. Though her voice carried the inflections of working-class London, she was easy to understand and spoke in a voice that was pleasant to Kenton’s ear. It, like her face, reminded him of Victoria.
“I’ve lived most of my life as Rachel Frye,” she said. “To my knowledge, I was nothing more than the daughter of Jack and Molly Frye, servants in the household of Dr. David Kevington, a skilled and moneyed English surgeon. I always stood in awe of Dr. Kevington, partly because he had about him a manner that seemed superior and beyond anything I could ever be. And partly because I knew he had lived for many years in the United States, studying in this country’s best medical schools, and teaching there, as well.
“It made me jealous of him. I’d always felt a strong fascination with the United States, you see, which was something I couldn’t quite account for, and which, oddly, seemed to upset my mother. She didn’t like it when I would talk about wanting to visit America someday. She told me I had no place in America, that my home and my heritage was England. Now I see that I have an attraction to this country because my true origins are here. By blood I am an American, certainly on the side of my mother, and almost certainly on that of my father.”