by Tim Champlin
"Apparently, that bunch over there is hot on the trail of something, too," her brother added, pointing to a half-dozen miners shoveling dirt into buckets from a trench that ran directly under the corner of one of the Chinese wash houses. Mining law allowed anyone to pursue a vein of ore anywhere it led, and apparently this one led under the wooden structure that they had propped up on rocks and short, squared-off logs where several feet of earth had been scooped from under it. The men were taking turns carrying the buckets of ore about two hundred yards to their sluice box on the creek.
"If this summer proves to be as dry as the spring has been, those lower claims may not have enough water to wash out their gravel," Curt observed, squinting at the cloudless sky. "We haven't had any rain in over two weeks. We should be getting a lot of it this time of year, especially in these hills."
A hot wind was blowing down the gulch, kicking up the dust from all the hooves and wheels in Main Street. I could see the pines bowing and waving to the even stiffer breeze on the top of the ridge above town.
"Looks like Mortimer over there," Curt said, nodding toward a group of men diagonally across the street. Just as I looked, a figure detached itself from the group and started across the street toward us. I had to look closely to be sure it was Floyd Mortimer. He was no longer dressed as a flashy drummer. He wore dark, wrinkled pants stuffed into flat-heeled boots, a collarless white shirt, and a vest. His silver mane was covered by a low-crowned hat. There was nothing in his appearance that would make anyone look twice at him.
He came up into the shade beside us, took his hat off, and passed a hand across his forehead, wiping perspiration.
"Okay, the word is out. I've heard it around, and even spread it some myself. By now, most of the town knows the 'secret' about the big gold shipment that is supposed to go out tonight by wagon. Stoudt may have heard the story."
He paused as two men passed us on the walk.
"Yeah, I've heard some mention of it myself," I remarked.
"Now, all we have to do is plant the seed of phony information in Stoudt's mind. I've talked to K.J., and he's all excited about the idea. I've kept an eye on Stoudt for several weeks, and he's a man of unvarying habit. Every night about seven thirty, he goes into the Alhambra for two shots of whiskey and some small talk with his cronies. So, I'm almost positive he'll be there tonight. I've instructed K.J. to go in there selling his papers and interrupt this group, supposedly to sell newspapers, and then ask them if they've beard the news that didn't make the paper. Then he's to tell them that the gold shipment is phony, that it's just an elaborate trap."
"What makes you think they'll pay any attention to a kid?" Curt asked.
"Everybody in town knows K.J. And they also know that he gets wind of everything that's afoot. He's as reliable as any information they're likely to get from some other source. If they have some contact to verify this with, they'll be stumped, because K.J., Bundy, you four, and I are the only ones who know about this. I'm banking on the hunch that they'll still believe the kid has some inside information. If they ask him where he found out, he's to tell them he's sworn to secrecy about his sources. They wouldn't dare put any pressure on him for fear of calling attention to themselves."
"I sure hope this works," Curt said.
"If we're wrong about Stoudt, there'll be nothing to stop the gang from holding up the wagon."
"By the way, is there really gold on that wagon?"
"No. Only several locked express boxes full of rocks."
"What about the driver and guards? Do they know?"
"They think they're being well paid to take a load of gold bullion to Cheyenne."
"I'm hungry," Wiley said suddenly. "Why don't we go get some lunch and discuss the details."
We needed no urging.
CHAPTER 18
By 6:30 that evening we were all in our places, Curt and I and Cathy at the bar in the Alhambra, Wiley and Mortimer in the lobby of the Grand Central. Curt and I had tethered our two saddled horses to the hitching rail in front of the Alhambra, just in case they were needed.
Fortunately, the Alhambra was crowded. It was a big saloon and gambling hall, with an adjacent room, nearly as large, that served as a dance hail. The bar ran along the entire side of one room. By keeping our backs to the room, we could see what was going on behind us by way of the large, ornate mirror back of the bar. Boots propped on the brass rail, we studied the mirror over the tops of our beer mugs and waited.
At 7:10 by the big pendulum clock on the opposite wall, I spotted the bulky form of Major George Zimmer. I ducked my head and nudged Curt. He spotted him about the same time, and we leaned down low over the bar and watched Zimmer find his way to a vacant table, where he was shortly joined by another well-dressed man I didn't know. Curt and I had not removed our hats, so the light from the overhead lamps threw our faces partly in shadow.
Cathy was on the opposite side of Curt, and I saw him whisper something to her, and a minute later she unobtrusively headed for the bat-wing doors and disappeared into the night.
"I told her to go over to the Grand Central," Curt said to me, raising his voice slightly to make himself heard over the noise of the piano in the dance ball. "She doesn't really look like one of the women who work here, and I didn't want to take a chance on her being recognized by Zimmer."
Promptly at 7:30 Jacob Stoudt walked in, just as Mortimer had predicted he would. He walked straight to the table where Zimmer sat, signaling to a waiter as he went. The waiter apparently knew what he wanted, because he came immediately to the bar and said something to the bartender, who reached under the bar and brought out a bottle and three shot glasses and set them on the waiter's tray.
We ordered another beer and sipped and waited. At 7:40, K.J. wandered in, a small stack of papers under one arm. He wound his way through the crowd, hawking the news, laughing, waving at friendly faces. Very casually, he worked back to Stoudt's table, and we watched intently in the mirror as Stoudt gestured impatiently at the boy. But K.J. would not be brushed off so easily as he held up a paper and said something to the black-clad banker. I was dying to be able to hear the conversation. How convincing could a ten-year-old be? Maybe because the information was coming from such a source, it would be more believable.
"If I were a betting man, my money would be riding on K.J.," Curt muttered to me, not removing his eyes from the mirror.
Finally, as if to get rid of a pest, Stoudt dug into his pocket for a coin and bought a paper. Then K.J. glanced around, and I saw him lean in among the three men conspiratorially and say something. This seemed to catch Stoudt's attention. He straightened up perceptibly, and I could see him talking intently to the boy. But K.J. shrugged, backed away, and began to hawk his papers toward the next table.
Immediately, the three men leaned their heads together and began conferring earnestly. A minute or two later, Stoudt hurriedly got up without finishing his drink, picked up his hat, and left.
"Well, here we go," I whispered to Curt as we edged toward the door after his retreating figure.
"If he's in on it, he's sure taken the bait," Curt replied.
Outside, the wind was still blowing, and we had to pause to momentarily shield our eyes from the swirling dust and get accustomed to the darkness.
"Where'd he go? We can't afford to lose him."
"There he is."
A square of light from a door being opened across the street briefly revealed Stoudt's outline as he entered the lobby of the Grand Central.
"So far, so good. Let's go."
We hurried across the street, but only casually strolled into the lobby. Stoudt was nowhere to be seen, but I caught Mortimer's eye. Cathy and Wiley were seemingly intent on a game of checkers going on between two bewhiskered miners across the room. They glanced up and nodded to us. Mortimer motioned with his head, and we moved out of range of the desk clerk's hearing.
"Upstairs," he said quietly. "I'll bet it's room 204. Jason Thomas hasn't been out of that room all nig
ht. Let's go."
He motioned for Cathy and Wiley to stay where they were and then led the way to the stairs. The wooden building had only two floors, and part of the second was devoted to a parlor, the purpose of which I never knew. But the rest of the floor was partitioned off on either side of a main hail by wooden walls that reached only about eight feet above the floor, leaving a two-foot gap to the ceiling, so every noise could be heard from room to room. There was no one in the hall, and we walked as silently as possible on the bare floor to room 204, where we stopped on either side of the door and listened. We could hear a low hum of voices, apparently two men talking, but could not make out the words.
"… What? Are you sure? Where did—"
"Quiet, fool! Our voices carry over these walls!" This latter was the voice of Stoudt. Mortimer looked at us and nodded silently, as if to affirm his hunch had been right. The voices within subsided into an excited but indistinguishable mumble again, and we three pressed our ears closer to the thin pine boards. Too late, we heard the scuffing of a boot behind us. I jerked my head up and found myself staring into the big black muzzle of a forty-five.
"Fate is certainly kind to give me another chance at you two," George Zimmer said, grinning humorlessly in the dim light. In the few seconds of deadly silence that followed, the clicking of a hammer being drawn to full cock sounded even louder than the beating of my own heart in my ears. A sudden thrill of fear shot through me, and for a fleeting instant I gauged my chances of making a lunge at him in the semidarkness. But he had stopped more than six feet away, and I realized I would die before I reached him. My knees began to tremble from the unused surge of desperate energy.
"I wouldn't try that, Mr. Tierney," he said, correctly reading my thoughts. "It would give me the greatest of pleasure to gun you down where you stand. Another killing in this town wouldn't matter much. I could always say I caught you breaking into a room." Just then, the door of the room was jerked open and Stoudt glanced at all of us in surprise.
"Inside, all of you!" Zimmer hissed, motioning with the gun barrel.
Stoudt backed out of the way, and the three of us were shoved inside, Zimmer following and closing the door behind us.
"What's this?" Stoudt demanded angrily.
"Caught 'em listening outside the door," Zimmer answered.
Stoudt looked closely at the three of us. "Who are you?"
After a pause, Mortimer spoke. "We thought a friend of ours was in this room. But we heard voices and wanted to listen to be sure before we knocked."
"Lies!" Stoudt snapped.
"Clerk must have given us the wrong room number," I mumbled apologetically. "No need to draw a gun on us for an honest mistake." I was never a convincing liar, and this lame excuse sounded false in my own ears even before it was out of my mouth.
"How much did they hear?" Stoudt asked Zimmer, ignoring me.
"Don't rightly know. I came up on them just before you opened the door."
A bearded man I took to be Jason Thomas, alias Joe Grimes, came up behind us and slipped my Colt from its holster and did the same with Curt's. I could smell sweat and chewing tobacco as he passed close to me. Mortimer was not wearing a gun belt, so the outlaw patted his pockets deftly up and down and then reached inside the agent's vest and slipped a small, pearl-handled, nickel-plated revolver out of a holster under his arm. Thomas threw our guns on the bed, and the three of us were ordered to stand against the wall.
"The dark-headed one there is former Captain Curtis Wilder, who deserted my troop in the face of a court-martial for cowardice at Slim Buttes last fall," Zimmer sneered, keeping his gun leveled at us. "The one in the corduroy vest is Matthew Tierney, ex-reporter for a Chicago paper, who was with us and who helped Wilder escape." The veins stood out on his forehead at the memory, and the whiskey-burned cheeks and nose glowed even redder in the light of the lamp on the table by the window. "I don't know who this tall, white-headed gent is."
"He's a Wells Fargo agent," Stoudt said, his voice hard.
I glanced back at Zimmer. Cruelty and dissipation showed in Zimmer's face even more than I remembered from last year. Maybe with the external discipline of Army life removed, he was sliding downhill.
But this was only a passing thought as I fixed my eyes on Stoudt. We were in a desperate situation, and he was the one who appeared to be in command here. He pulled ever a chair and put one foot up on it. Leaning both elbows on his knee, he regarded us silently, apparently pondering his next move. His starched white shirt, black tie, and black suit gave him the look of a successful businessman—which he was. Btit the face was not that of a banker about to turn down a loan. His thick, dark hair shone in the lamplight; the heavy mustache hid his mouth completely. The dark eyes were narrow slits behind the spectacles. He stroked his square chin and stared down at the floor for a few moments while noises from the street below drifted in the open window.
He straightened up abruptly. "We'll have to get rid of them," he stated as matter-of-factly as if he were ordering someone to empty the cuspidors. "We can't take a chance on their testifying against us. There is too much at stake here. I remember these two from a stagecoach ride a few months back. I don't know what they're up to, but their curiosity has just proven to be fatal. We can't do it here." He turned to Zimmer. "Take them down the back stairs and out into the hills somewhere. If you've got an old score to settle, I imagine this is a job you'll enjoy."
Zimmer grinned.
"Jason, get out to the cavern, fast, and warn McCoy off. I hope we're not already too late to catch them."
"Right." Thomas grabbed his hat, cautiously opened the door, and then disappeared quickly.
"We've got some friends waiting for us in the lobby," Curt said. "If we're not back in a few minutes, they'll be up here looking for us."
A look of sudden concern crossed Stoudt's face, but he almost immediately relaxed. "You've been reading too many dime novels, my friend," he said.
"Take a look in the hall, just to be safe," he ordered Zimmer. Keeping his Colt leveled at us, Zimmer backed to the door and opened it a crack.
"All clear."
"Good. Get them out of here. It would be best if you could arrange it so their bodies are never found. I'll meet you back at the Alhambra. Remember, no matter how late it is, report to me there. The place is open all night."
I've never felt so helpless as I did at that moment. My palms were sweaty and my throat dry. I wondered where Wiley and Cathy were. Why hadn't they tried to warn us? But, then I realized that Zimmer had approached from the opposite end of the hallway. He had come up the back stairs from the dining room.
At least they weren't going to kill us here. We had a short reprieve. Maybe our chances of escaping or of overpowering Zimmer would be much better in the darkness outside. I glanced at Curt and Floyd. Their faces were grim and set. I wished there were some way I could communicate with them. We would just have to wait and hope for a chance. But we dared not wait too long.
"Where are your horses?" Zimmer asked.
"Down at the livery," I lied quickly.
"We're all going to take a quiet walk down the back stairs and go get them, and then take a little ride into the hills. You'll get your unloaded weapons back. If you should try anything between here and when we get out of town, I'll gun all three of you down and claim self-defense. Is that clear?"
"No," Stoudt said suddenly, overriding him. "Leave their guns here. Loaded or unloaded, I don't want to take the chance of their having weapons. If you have to shoot them in town, just make sure you kill them all and then run for it. If that should happen, I'll meet you later at the cavern." -
"Okay, let's go get those horses," Zimmer said.
"The livery isn't open this time of night," Mortimer reminded him, stalling.
"You will get your horses," Zimmer repeated, "and we'll ride out. Now, move!"
I was nearest the door, so I was the one who reached and opened it. Just as I swung it inward, I saw Cathy standing there with a
double-barreled shotgun pointed at my chest. Curt and Floyd were crowded close at my back, so for a moment we blocked the view of her from Zimmer behind us.
"Get down!" I shouted and flung Curt to one side.
Before we even hit the floor, the shotgun boomed not five feet from my head, and the lamp and the window behind it exploded in a shower of flame. There were cries of surprise and pain and curses, and then the deafening roar of a forty-five as Zimmer or Stoudt began firing back. Curt and I rolled and scrambled behind the bed. There was no hope of getting out the door, since that was where all the firing was directed. The small room was rapidly filling with powder smoke in the semidarkness. Then I realized that all the smoke wasn't from the guns. An eerie light was flickering across us, and it quickly grew brighter as flames licked up the curtains. I didn't know if anyone had been hit, and I didn't know where Mortimer was. Now I could hear a forty-five blasting from the hallway, and could see muzzle flashes beside the door casing. If that was Wiley and Cathy, they sure were making it hot for Zimmer and Stoudt, who were pinned down in here with us.
I put my mouth close to Curt's ear to make myself heard. "Our guns—on the bed. Let's get 'em."
I cautiously pushed myself up on one arm and reached onto the bed. A bullet ripped away part of the quilt next to my shoulder. The next instant, I was on the floor without the gun.
"We've got to get out of here," I panted to Curt.
"How?" he yelled back over the uproar.
I had no answer. The flames were blazing higher and were licking across the wooden ceiling while, from under the bed, I could see burning pieces of the gauze curtains dropping onto the pine floor as the fire spread.
There was a sudden lull in the shooting, but before I could venture a look, there was a rush of feet across the floor, and two figures burst out the door as Zimmer and Stoudt made a break for it. Five or six more shots followed quickly, and then the sound of running boots receded down the hallway toward the back stairs.