Around the Kordovskaya place, the cloying smell of incense and opium lingered. A stout elderly woman in a gray dress split wood in the backyard, near a chicken pen.
Just beyond, Raven put ol’ Dusty across a bridge traversing the arroyo and across a sage-stippled flat toward the hill that was actually two hills, partly forested and with a notch separating them. To Raven, who knew something of geology, the hill appeared to be a volcanic dyke, a spine of rock thrust up eons ago by volcanic activity in the area and which had partly resulted in the entire Sawatch Range itself.
It was lowest on the nearer side, and a short wall of sandstone, like a dinosaur spine, ran along the crest. Raven stopped at the bottom of the dyke and looked back past Mrs. Kordovskaya’s place toward the heart of town. The Sawatch House was nearly straight north of the hill, although from here, she could see only the highest part of the steeply pitched roof and stone chimneys.
Raven rode the steeldust around behind the bluff, out of sight from town, and swung down from the saddle. Now she was between the dyke and a high, densely forested ridge rising about a hundred yards farther south. Morning birds were chirping and flitting about the brush and the piñon pines and sandstone boulders scattered along the side of the bluff.
Raven swung down from the saddle, tied Dusty to a gnarled piñon, and followed a meandering path up the side of the bluff. As she climbed, she looked around for boot prints but saw only deer and occasional coyote tracks and droppings and the bleached-out skull of some small mammal.
She followed the trail around several boulder snags, climbing higher into where the short, spindly pines grew denser near the top. At the top itself—a narrow ridge of near-grassless sand and rock littered with more deer sign—Raven stopped to catch her breath, fists on her hips.
She stared toward the heart of Wendigo.
The sky was lighter now, a pale blue, and the shadows had thinned considerably. The morning light was beginning to be reflected in some of the rooftops and on the eastern sides of canvas tent shacks. Gray smoke ribboned from chimneys. From her vantage atop the bluff, Raven was not surprised to see the third-story windows of the Sawatch House Hotel and Saloon.
Including the window of Sheriff Goodthunder’s room, which had a large, jagged-edged hole in it.
The window was the size of her thumbnail from this distance. But a good shooter with a long-range rifle and a spyglass could make the shot. He’d have to be awfully good, though.
Raven, shivering a little as the morning air chilled the sweat she’d worked up climbing the hill, began to look around. She scoured the top of the ridge for nearly twenty minutes before she found what she was looking for: a long metallic cartridge casing lying in a hollow among large rocks about fifteen yards to the left of where she’d first gained the ridge.
On one knee, she picked up the cartridge and studied it. It was new, hadn’t been there long. It was a fifty-caliber. In front of where Raven had found it was a root angling out of a nest of rocks. The root would have made a good rest for the barrel of the buffalo rifle as it was aimed at Goodthunder’s window. The rocks would have been good cover, shielding the rifle’s flash.
Raven closed her hand around the brass casing.
Shooters who could fire a long gun accurately from this distance at night were few and far between. He had to be a professional, one in a thousand.
Her thoughts drifted back to the previous evening and the man Goodthunder had spoken to in the saloon. The sheriff had been in a sour mood afterward.
Why?
Could the man the sheriff had spoken to, Kane, have come out here and killed him from long distance? If Kane was a regulator, like Goodthunder had said—and he’d certainly had the snake eyes of a cold-blooded killer for hire—Kane might very well be the man Raven and Haskell were looking for.
Goodthunder had said Kane was merely patrolling the freight trails, on the lookout for the killer or killers. But Goodthunder could very well have been lying. Kane might have been working for one of the local freight companies that Goodthunder himself was also conspiring with to run the others out of business.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a local lawman had turned outlaw. And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time an outlaw had locked horns with his comrades. Had Goodthunder gotten crossways with whoever was responsible for the killings, and was that why he was now dead?
Raven slipped the cartridge casing into her pocket and walked back to where the deer path rose to the top of the bluff. Deep in thought, she followed the switchbacking trail down the steep slope. As she passed between two rocky outcroppings forming a narrow corridor and came out on the other end, someone grabbed her right arm and swung her around.
A man laughed, and suddenly, a cold mouth ensconced in spiky beard stubble closed over hers, while a strong arm slithered around her shoulders. Before Raven had time to start fighting, something small, round, and hard was rammed into her belly.
There was the ratcheting click of a gun hammer being cocked as the man shoved his tongue between her lips, snickering through his nose.
22
Slashing down with her right hand, Raven heaved herself forward against Kane, pushing him away and then putting all her strength behind her right knee, which she buried in his groin. The tall, thin man gave a squeaky grunt and lurched back, stumbling and dropping the Colt, which fortunately did not go off.
As the regulator dropped to his knees, crossing his wrists on his crotch—thank God men had such a vulnerable area ripe for exploitation by those they targeted for harassment!—Raven picked up the pistol and smashed the point of the butt across his right temple.
Kane grunted and fell back and sideways, lifting his hands from his crotch to the six-inch gash she’d carved in his temple. The killer lay on his side, knees raised to his crotch, cursing and grunting and holding his head in his hands. Raven held the cocked pistol on him, her heart hammering her breastbone, the heat of fury burning in her cheeks. She didn’t say anything. At the moment, he seemed in so much pain that she doubted she’d have gotten a response.
Gradually, though, after he’d risen to his hands and knees and hung his miserable head for a time, his curses and his moaning and groaning tapered off. Finally, he rolled onto his butt, raised his knees slightly, and reached into his black frock coat.
“Uh-uh,” Raven said, narrowing her right eye and planting a bead on the pale skin of his forehead. He’d lost his hat. In fact, he’d squashed it during his writhing.
Angrily, the killer said, “I’m reaching for a handkerchief.”
“You pull out anything else, I’m going to shoot you through your right eye.”
He blinked at her. His eyes were purple, the whites more yellow than white. Finally, he reached into his coat and pulled out a blue handkerchief and dabbed it at the bloody gash in his left temple, which had formed a thin river of blood down that side of his face.
While he did, Raven reached forward and pulled his second Colt out of its holster on his left thigh and tossed if off down the hill with an angry grunt. She followed it up with the one inside his jacket, seated in a shoulder holster under his left arm.
“If you have any more on you, go ahead and pull them.” Raven glared down at him, her eyes hard and challenging.
As Kane pressed the handkerchief against his forehead and continued to breathe hard, his mustached lips pulled back from his teeth in a painful grimace, he looked her up and down and shook his head.
“You’re a purty one, ain’t ya?” the regulator said. “A purty fuckin’ bitch.”
Raven slid the Colt slightly to one side, steadied it, and fired. Kane’s pendulous left earlobe disappeared, leaving a ragged edge that was soon oozing blood. The shot had come as unexpectedly to the gunman as had the balling and braining. It knocked him back slightly.
As he sat up again, his face registering his shock and utter discombobulation, he m
oved the handkerchief to his ear. His eyes watering from the apparent pain, he probed the bloody ear with his fingers. His eyes grew brighter when he realized that he was now missing an ounce or two of flesh.
“Any more compliments?” Raven asked him.
Kane gritted his teeth in anger and then, holding the handkerchief to his ear, shook his head. “Nah, that well’s run dry.”
“How fortunate. Now, why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re doing up here—I mean, aside from stealing a kiss?” Raven reached into her jacket pocket and showed him the cartridge she’d found. “Come back to retrieve something you left up here last night?”
Kane looked at the long cartridge resting in the palm of her hand. The brass reflected the sun’s buttery-salmon glow as it poked its head up between two eastern ridges.
Kane winced as he shifted his weight and pinched his trousers away from his tender balls. “You find that up here?”
“Surprised?”
“I didn’t leave it here.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Nope, not me, sister.”
“What reason would I have for giving a man who just tried to rape me the benefit of the doubt?”
“’Cause I didn’t do it.” Kane pulled the handkerchief away from his ear and looked at the blood. “I followed you up here.”
“Why?”
“To find out who you are and what you were looking for.” Kane grinned sheepishly out one side of his thin-lipped mouth beneath his ostentatious longhorn mustache, which had more gray than brown in it. His oiled hair was still mostly brown, and it lay flat against his head, parted neatly on one side. “Figured while I was here, I might as well steal a kiss.”
“Was it worth it?”
Kane hiked a noncommittal shoulder. His snakelike eyes strayed to her breasts pushing out the white muslin blouse. He left them there long enough to make sure she knew what he was looking at.
He set the handkerchief aside. The blood on his forehead and ear had clotted, although he looked a mess. He appeared to be regaining what little color he had, however, but he was still straining for his dignity.
“Mind if I get up?”
“Yes.”
“Look, if you wanna fetch Goodthunder, go ahead and fetch him. In case he didn’t tell you, him and me been workin’ together.”
“He told me that just before he died.”
Kane stared at her. For several seconds, his expression did not change, and then he turned his head slightly to one side and narrowed a skeptical eye. “Chew that a little finer, and spit it out slower.”
Raven lowered the pistol and sat down on a rock about seven feet from Kane, on the uphill side of the trail. “He’s lying dead in his room, which is where I left him last night after a bullet fired from this shell broke out his window and removed a goodly portion of what few brains he had.”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
To Raven’s disappointment, Kane looked genuinely surprised. Still, she felt compelled to probe him further. “Do you own a Sharps rifle, Mr. Kane?”
The regulator shook his head and pulled his meerschaum pipe out of the breast pocket of his coat. Digging deeper, he pulled out a small, brass matchbox monogrammed with the letters G and L.
“I don’t own a Sharps. Never have owned a Sharps. And I didn’t kill Goodthunder.” He tripped the little latch on the case, opened the lid, and plucked out a stove match. “And since I’m no longer inclined to unwrap your precious gifts, why don’t you put my hogleg away? Or at least let the hammer down. You’re makin’ me nervous.”
She raised the cocked Colt about halfway out from her shoulder. “You’re in no position to make requests, you cowardly son of a bitch. I thought you were a regulator. A girl kicked you in the balls, took your gun away, and beat you over the head with it. So keep your mouth shut when you’re answering questions, unless you want your other ear shot off.”
Kane stared at her over the smoking porcelain bowl of his meerschaum, as though at a mountain lion that had just walked into his hotel room. “You’re no whore,” he said softly, half to himself. “At least, you’re no whore who’d work around here, lettin’ miners bend you over beer barrels an’ such.”
Ignoring the comment, Raven said, “What made Goodthunder look so down in the dumps after his visit with you last night?”
Kane puffed his pipe, still eyeing her like the proverbial feline intruder. “I told him about a wagon of Geist’s and Judith’s goin’ over a cliff earlier that afternoon. Two wagons, in fact. Loaded with ore from the North Star. The first one ran off the trail because someone had loosened its king bolt. The other went over because they were on an especially narrow part of the trail, and the team of the second wagon spooked. There were two men on each wagon—one ridin’ shotgun, looking out for the bastard with the Big Fifty. That makes four more dead. Twenty mules, as each wagon had a ten-mule hitch. And a whole lot of gold ore that’ll be damn near impossible to retrieve.”
“What’s a king bolt?”
“Connects the main body of the wagon to the front axle and the steering joint.”
Raven considered the information. “So without it, the wagon separates from the axle and from the team pulling it. Very nasty. How do you know that’s what happened?”
“The canyon the wagons dropped into wasn’t very steep, just steep enough so that the men and mules were pummeled to pulp and powder when the hundred tons of raw ore fell on them. I climbed into the canyon. There was enough of the first wagon visible that I could see it had fallen in two parts, the team a good distance away from it.”
“So maybe the man with the cannon has changed his methods.”
“Either that, or he has someone workin’ with him who isn’t so handy with a cannon,” Kane said, studying her dubiously as he continued puffing the meerschaum. “Can I ask a question now? I mean, I won’t if it’s gonna cost me another ear!”
Raven depressed the Colt’s hammer. “Only if you stop staring at my breasts.”
“That ain’t an easy chore.”
Raven narrowed an eye.
“All right, all right. Who are you? I know you’re not who you told Goodthunder you are. Oh, you might be a dove, but you got too much class to open a brothel here. Especially when there’s already three whores to every miner and freighter. You were right about Goodthunder. He didn’t have near enough sense. Especially when it came to women.”
“Oh, and I suppose you do?”
Ignoring the insult, Kane continued, “I’m thinkin’ you were brought in by someone to further put a whipsaw to things. Who might that be? I mean, I figure if you are, I’m likely dead anyways, so you might as well go ahead and tell me. Who is it? Is it Geist? He’s the only one who has the money to bring in a bird like you to rile Goodthunder and put a burr in Judith’s bonnet.”
“Geist?” Raven frowned, genuinely shocked. “I thought he and Judith O’Brien were in business together? Why would he sabotage one of his own shipments?”
Kane hesitated, apparently wondering how much he should say. He blew a plume of pipe smoke and said, “I figured maybe he found out about Judith and Goodthunder. Maybe he wanted ’em both out, and the easiest way to do that would be to scare Judith into selling her part of the businesses to him for cheap. Then she and Goodthunder could go off together, like I believe they were plannin’ to do eventually, anyway. A mining camp is only really lucrative the first years. The smart ones like Judith pull out and let the others take the loss.”
“Geist would suffer a loss like that? The loss of contracts?”
“For a while,” Kane said, shrugging a shoulder. “Who knows? That was just my guess. You tell me.”
Raven grimaced. “It seems I’m as ignorant as you are, Mr. Kane—at least, concerning the matter at hand.”
“You sure about that?” Kane was still skeptical.
; Ignoring him again, Raven said, “What’s your piece of all this?”
“I’ll lay my cards out on the table, if you do the same.”
“Sure,” she said, having no intention of telling him who she really was.
“Goodthunder brought me in at the request of Judith and Geist. Me an’ Goodthunder were once in, uh, business together, you might call it. Over in the Indian Nations.” Kane smiled lopsidedly and blew smoke out through his nose.
He appeared to wait for Raven to say something. When she didn’t, he looked a little nonplussed but added, “They both wanted someone to hunt the killer and put an end to all the killin’ and sabotage. They were worried about being run out of business. Or so they said. But I still ain’t convinced it ain’t one or the other after the other one, if you get my drift.”
“What about this Pink Cheatum character? Could he be responsible for hiring the killer? Or killers?”
“He’d be my second guess after Geist. He’s the only one so far who hasn’t lost any men or wagons—beside the Redwines, I mean.”
“Who are the Redwines?”
“Small outfit. A sister-and-brother team, Teddy and Burt Redwine. Their father was part of it, too, but he died of a heart attack three years ago. Redwine Freighting has only two wagons, one dimwitted mule skinner besides Burt, who’s a drunkard, and maybe twenty-five mules. Very small for this country. They mostly service the smaller mines—two or three runs a week—but it’s no secret that Teddy wants to build up the business to rival Geist, whom she has no love for.”
“Teddy?”
“Theodora Redwine.”
Raven nodded slowly. “What doesn’t she like about Geist?”
“Teddy and Burt’s old man was one of the first prospectors in the area. They found the gold, but Geist came in and ran them out, bought up all the claims around them and finally bought theirs, too, from their old man, Everett Redwine. Everett was an old mountain man. Old and stove-up and without business savvy. From what I’ve heard, talkin’ to men around here, old Redwine had had enough of these mountains and wanted to take the money and take his daughter down to Denver and have her marry up proper.”
High and Wild Page 17