by Peter Grant
“You ain’t figured out who might’ve done it?” his middle son asked.
“Nary an idea. Brad can’t talk proper with his jaw all wired up like that, so I had to ask around myself; but people don’t wanna talk to me. I reckon they think I ain’t so tough any more, after my place burned down like that. Well, now that everyone’s back, we’re gonna show ’em different! We’ll teach ’em to dance to our tune again!”
“Iffen you say so, Pa; but there’s only eight of us now, an’ like you said, Brad can’t do much, so that makes seven. How are we gonna set things right here, an’ also send some men to find out who killed Billy an’ the others? We need more gun hands.”
“Yeah, we do, but I can’t afford to hire ’em right now. I lost most o’ my ready cash in that fire.”
“Could it have been stolen, Pa? We didn’t find any o’ the long guns in your office, so they musta taken them. They coulda busted open the desk an’ taken your money too.”
“Yeah, I thought about that. That’s one more thing they’re gonna pay for, one o’ these days, soon as I find out who they were.”
“How long will it take to sell the hosses we brought back?”
“The brandin’ irons were in the house, an’ we ain’t found them yet under all the ashes. I got the boys lookin’ for them right now. Soon as we find ’em, we’ll re-brand the stock an’ sell it quick an’ cheap, then use that money to start lookin’.”
“I’ve got a better idea.” The voice was clipped, with an educated tone.
Bart looked up, then jumped to his feet. “Say, Mister Parsons! I didn’t know you was comin’ to town.”
“I wasn’t, until I got your telegraph message last week.” The tall, thin man sat down. His heavy black beard and hair seemed incongruous around his austere, agate-hard gray eyes. He glanced at Ben. “Get me a bottle of their best whisky, boy, and a clean glass; then leave your father and I alone to talk.” He laid a five-dollar gold coin on the table.
Ben opened his mouth to object, but a furious, smoldering look from his father silenced him. He picked up the coin and headed for the bar, shouldering aside a negro swamper who was mopping the floor nearby. The man staggered, looked annoyed for a moment, then shrugged and continued his cleaning, working slowly and deliberately. The two men sitting at the table disregarded him. A black servant was just part of the background, uneducated, ignorant, unimportant, as far as they were concerned.
“Was everything burned, including all your papers?” Parsons asked in a low voice.
Furlong mentally braced himself. He hadn’t mentioned the missing weapons in his telegraph message, nor the fact that his strongbox had been broken open before the fire. The lack of burned paper or ashes inside it indicated that all its contents must have been taken, too. This man would be angry enough to kill him, right here and right now, if he discovered that, and learned of everything that had been in the box, much of it contrary to his specific and direct orders. Bart had kept it as insurance against betrayal, but if Parsons ever found out…
“Yessir. The whole house burned. Warn’t nothin’ but embers an’ ashes left. They smelt o’ kerosene, so I reckon whoever did it doused everythin’ good before they fired it.”
“And you haven’t found out who they were?”
“No, sir. I ain’t got no idea.”
“I thought you had the town pretty well buffaloed, but it looks like at least one person wasn’t scared of you. Have you made any new enemies since I was here last?”
“Just Rosalva, an’ she ain’t worth worryin’ about.”
“Who is she?”
“She runs a cantina in the Mex quarter. Keeps a few whores, too. I used t’ go there now an’ again, but I hurt one o’ her gals an’ she turned against me. Won’t let me in there no more.”
They waited while Ben set a bottle and a glass on the table. The new arrival poured himself a drink and topped up Bart’s glass, while Ben headed for the batwing doors of the saloon. When they were alone again, he said, “I’ll have one of my men check out Rosalva, but it doesn’t sound like she’d be much of a threat.”
“How many men didja bring?”
“Just two, this trip.”
Bart restrained a sigh of relief. If this man had decided he was a loose end that needed to be cut off, he’d probably have brought enough men to kill him, and his sons, and everyone who worked for them. Only two sidekicks meant that he probably wasn’t mad at him… not yet, anyway.
Parsons continued, “I want to get to the bottom of this mess. I need to know who killed your son and the men with him, for a start. If that sort of vigilante justice spreads, it might endanger all of us. Next, I want to find out who burned down your place. Could the same people have been involved? Might your boy have told them enough, before he died, to make them come here looking for you?”
“I… I dunno, Mister Parsons.” Bart cursed inwardly. Will might, indeed, have been that cowardly and stupid, but he daren’t admit that to this man.
“I think you’ve worn out your welcome in these parts. I’ll take you and your boys back with me, and set you up somewhere else.”
“But what about the hosses my men just brought back?”
“Release them to run free. They’ll be handed in as strays, or someone else will steal them. Pay off your men. I only want you and your sons. The rest are just hired guns. We can get plenty more of them, anytime we want.”
“Ah… Mister Parsons, I’m damn near broke. That fire burned up most o’ my ready cash.”
“I’ll advance you the money to pay them off, and give you some spending money as well. Don’t worry, you’ll be earning more within the next few weeks. I’ve got plenty of leads lined up about where to find good horses and mules.”
Bart exhaled slowly. “That sounds real good to me. Thanks, boss.”
“Very well. Finish your drink, then let’s go. I’ll have Travis talk to this Rosalva woman while we head out to your ranch. We’ll pay off everybody, spend the night in the hotel here, and leave first thing in the morning. I’ll send Travis to the Divide to see if he can learn anything about who killed your son.”
Bart hesitated. “Brad’ll find it real hard to travel. His jaw’s broke. It’ll hurt real bad if he’s gonna get bounced around on a horse for a few days.”
“That’s his problem. I’m not leaving him behind. You have a small wagon at the farm, right?”
“Yeah.”
“What about its team?”
“Two mules.”
“All right. We’ll put a straw tick in the back for him, along with our food and gear. He should be able to travel like that.”
“Anything you say, Mister Parsons. You’re the boss.”
“Let’s go.” The visitor picked up his bottle of whisky, and they headed for the batwing doors.
The swamper finished mopping the section of floor, then took his bucket of water and walked towards the rear door. He closed it behind him, leaned his mop against the back wall of the saloon, and emptied the bucket, looking around to make sure he was unobserved; then he headed down the rear alley at a fast lope. Gideon would want to know about this as quickly as possible. He’d promised five dollars for worthwhile information about Bart Furlong; and the stranger named Parsons would interest him, too.
He grinned eagerly as a thought came to him. He’d tell Rosalva, too, even before he went to Gideon. If his warning panned out, he knew she’d let him have a meal, a bottle and a whore for free that night. She had her own ways of paying for information.
* * *
Walt sighed in frustration as he sat back in his chair. He ran his fingers through his hair distractedly.
“Is something wrong, dear?” Rose asked from her chair on the other side of the fireplace, looking up from the magazine she was reading.
“It’s these papers we took from that stock thief up at Fairplay. There are a lot of telegraph messages and letters that don’t make sense. Take this one: ‘Eighty bushels of corn at Buckskin Joe on 27th May’�
�that’s a telegraph message from last year. Or this one: ‘You can buy thirty bales of hay at Oro City on 14th September’—that’s a letter, also from last year.”
“Who are they from?”
“The telegraph messages are unsigned. The letters are signed with a single initial, but no name. ‘P’ is used more often than others.”
“Did they all come from the same place?”
“The letters don’t say where they’re from, and their envelopes are missing, so there’s no postmark. About half are in the same handwriting, with the rest in three or four different hands. About half of the telegraph messages are from Salida, and about a quarter from Denver. The rest are from all over the mining areas.”
“But they’re all addressed to Bart Furlong at Fairplay?”
“The letters don’t mention his name, but he had them all, so I guess so, yeah.”
“Is anything mentioned besides corn and hay?”
“Not in the score of messages and letters I’ve read so far.”
“What about when they were sent? How soon before the dates given in each one?”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll check.”
Silence fell for a few minutes, broken by the rustle of paper as Walt paged through the messages he’d already read. Rose set down her magazine and watched him, a small, loving smile on her lips.
At last Walt looked up. “The letters were written two to three weeks before the dates they mention. The telegraph messages are mostly about a week before those dates.”
“So, someone’s sending early warning of something by letter; but if they find out about it too close to the date for a letter to get through in time, they’re using the telegraph.”
“That fits.” Walt thought for a moment. “What if they aren’t talking about hay or corn at all, but about horses and mules? Furlong’s a stock thief. Are these telling him where he can lay his hands on animals?”
Rose sat bolt upright with excitement. “I think you’ve got it!”
“Yeah. If Furlong’s men could hit the shipments on the road, before they were delivered, they’d be able to steal the animals more easily than if they were in barns or corrals or stables. There’d be less people around, too—fewer witnesses.”
“Is there a letter or message in there telling of corn or hay at Colorado City, on the night we were hit?”
“I sorted them into date order, and started with the oldest messages. Let me try the other end, and see what the latest ones said.”
He turned over the pile of papers on the side table next to him, and began picking them up, one by one, and reading them. Almost at once he let out a shout of triumph. “You were right! Here’s a telegraph message from Salida, dated July 27th. ‘Seventy bushels of corn and some bales of hay at Colorado City on 2nd August’. That must have been our wagon train! The corn would mean mules, then, because we had a dozen six-mule wagons along; and the bales of hay must mean horses. We had about fifteen of them.”
“But who would have known when we would be there? How could they have found out?”
“Any of our teamsters might have talked about it in a saloon or eating house. For that matter, someone might have tried to hire our wagons, only to be told we’d be leaving soon. Whoever sent this wouldn’t need to know more than the date we planned to head out. It’s obvious we’d take two days to get from Denver to Colorado City, so they just had to add that to our departure date.”
“And you’ve no idea who sent that message?”
“None.” Walt looked thoughtfully at the pile of messages and letters. “Whoever’s behind this must have a lot of people looking for the information he needs. This is a slick operation, if ever I heard of one.”
Rose said hesitantly, “It might be worse than that. All those messages would be for places that Furlong and his men could reach from Fairplay, in time to steal the horses or mules. What about places further away? Does whoever’s behind this have other people doing the same thing as Furlong, in more distant towns and settlements?”
Walt grimaced. “I don’t think anyone’s ever suspected stock theft might be as organized as that. It sounds crazy… but you might just be right. Let me think for a minute.”
He sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers together, eyes focused on nothing as his thoughts churned. At last he said, “Here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to check through all these messages, and pick out a dozen that mention big numbers—lots of corn or hay. I’ll write to the sheriffs of those counties, and ask whether they had a big stock theft at the places, and on or near the date, mentioned in each message. If they did, that’ll confirm what we suspect.”
“And what if they do confirm it? What will you do then?”
“That’s the big question, love. I just don’t know. There may be enough evidence here to get an investigation started, but it’d have to be Territory-wide. Too many counties are involved to keep it local. Problem is, you know how crooked the politicians are in Denver. What if some of them are in on this? What if they’re protecting whoever’s behind it? They might tip him off about what we’ve found out.”
“Hmmm… We still have our account with Wells Fargo in Denver, don’t we?”
“We sure do.”
“They have their own detectives, to look into stage robberies, don’t they?”
“Yeah, or they sometimes hire outside detective agencies.”
“Would they tell us who they work with in the Territorial government? We could take our information to that person. If Wells Fargo trusts him, we should be able to do the same.”
“That’s a great idea! I know the chief detective of an agency they use in Denver. I’ll write to him, asking who I should talk to. I should have his reply by the time we hear from all the sheriffs.”
“There you are, then! What other documents were in that box?”
“Quite a lot. I haven’t started going through them in detail yet, but it looks like there are some share certificates, a couple of title deeds, some mining certificates, a few homestead claims, that sort of thing. There are a few envelopes addressed to a Mr. Parsons. They’re all in outer envelopes addressed to Bart Furlong, and postmarked within the last month. I reckon he was holding them for this Parsons, whoever he is. Maybe he was going to send a rider with them, or perhaps Parsons would send his own man to collect them.”
Rose suddenly looked thoughtful. “You said the letter ‘P’ was used to sign about half the letters, didn’t you?”
Walt looked at her for a long, wordless moment, then sighed. “Parsons, you think?”
“It could be.”
“You’re right again. I won’t rush this. I’ll do one thing at a time. Let me finish with this pile of letters and messages, then I’ll look at the rest. It’s going to take a couple of weeks to sort out everything, and get replies from those sheriffs and from Wells Fargo… then we’ll see what we’ve got.”
* * *
Next morning, Walt called Isom into his office. “How’d you like an independent job for a few weeks?”
“I’m up for whatever you want, boss.”
“Good. I need to send three ox-wagons up to Colorado City, to help those storekeepers move their buildings over to the new town. I also promised them a few strong men, to help take them down and put them up again. I’ve hired several local men to keep the transport yard clean, the stables swept, and the stock fed and watered. I fired those that didn’t shape up, so those that are left are good workers. They’re getting a flat twenty dollars a month here, but I’ll offer thirty and found to those willing to go to Colorado City, with a bonus when the job’s done. Pick three or four of them. You’ll leave tomorrow morning, and stay up there long enough to get the job done—I reckon two to three weeks. You’ll be in charge.”
“I’ll do it, boss. Shep’s finished the new fore-end for my carbine, so I’ll take it along and get in some practice.”
Walt grinned. “When Rose and I came out here in ’66, we packed two and a half thousand rounds of .44 rimfire
ammunition into our wagons in Leavenworth City. Between us all, we used less than eight hundred rounds getting here, including a lot we gave to a scout. I’ve been using up the rest ever since. I’ve still got about five hundred rounds of it. It’s getting old, so I’ll give it to you to burn up in target practice, and order fresh ammunition for my stocks.”
“Thanks, boss. What do I owe you for it?”
“Nothing. Like I said, it’s getting old. It was battered on wagons for months on end, then sat on shelves for years. I reckon it’s best used before it goes bad.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Like you say, de nada. Now, there’s something else.” He told Isom a little about his and Rose’s suspicions. “I won’t say more than that right now, because I’m still gathering evidence; but that attack on our wagons might have been part of something much bigger.
“When you get to Colorado City, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open. Find out whether anyone’s been asking questions about our wagons, or what happened that night, or whether some of us went after the thieves. If so, try to get names, or descriptions, or anything else that might help us identify who wanted to know. Send me a letter if you find out anything. If it’s real urgent, send one of your men on horseback, with a second horse to ride relay. He can make it from Colorado City to Pueblo in a day, if he rides all-out.”
“I’ll do that, boss. D’you think someone might try to hit our wagons there again?”
“I don’t think so this time, because I’m sending heavy freight wagons pulled by teams of oxen. We think all the thefts have been horses or mules. Still, someone might try to get a teamster drunk and ask him questions, so tell your people to be on their guard. If anyone asks questions, tell them to tell him to talk to you. I reckon you’ll know what to do.”
“I reckon I might, at that.”
“Try not to get blood on my wagons, will you?”
Isom guffawed. “I can allus use the bastards as moving targets, to practice with my new carbine.”
“That sounds about right.”