The Great West Detective Agency

by Jackson Lowry

  “I don’t see anyone on your trail.”

  “Them’s cagey men. Shadows, ghosts! Animals, I swear. Not a one of ’em’s got a human feeling in his breast. All they talk of is killin’, past, present, and future. Them boastin’ on the number of soldiers they are gonna kill when they invade Nicaragua bothers me most. The others might be lies. But the looks on their faces when they get to talkin’ of cuttin’ down men when they get to Nicaragua—”

  “Lester, forget that for now. I know Clifford wants to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. He needs financial backing to do that. Did they talk about that?”

  “Heard a hint of some gold comin’ their way real soon. Never figgered what they meant, though. Them boys are cheap. Made me buy ’em a round and never returned the favor. Had to buy my own tarantula juice.”

  “Where are they holed up?”

  “Can’t say for certain sure, Lucas, but I think they got an old house south of Colfax, away from all them rich folks’ houses. They mighta been lyin’ to mislead me, but I don’t think so. No reason, and I never asked. I was just listenin’ real hard.”

  “Don’t worry about that. What are Clifford’s plans?” Lucas had little hope that the mercenaries had dropped any hint about the gold in front of a recruit who couldn’t hold his liquor.

  “Like they was sayin’, he’s expectin’ to come into a mountain of gold. That’s what one of ’em said. ‘The general’s gonna find a mountain of gold.’ That was his precise utterance. I asked what he meant, but they clammed up and wouldn’t say another word. I thought that was kinda suspect, but askin’ too many questions might’ve got my throat cut.”

  “You did fine, Lester.”

  Lucas despaired of finding Amanda now. He already knew where the filibusters made their headquarters after trailing Clifford there. An overheard comment about a million dollars whetted his own appetite but he was building fantasies of how grateful Amanda would be when he came riding up and saved her. Lacking either a white charger or shining armor became an increasing problem, especially when his only ally was the drunken Lester Gallatin.

  “You wanted me to listen on any secrets about a dog. I heard one, though it don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

  Lucas knew that Clifford still hunted for the dog, so his men hardly knew where the animal could be found. That was the purpose of torturing the information from Amanda.

  “Anything you heard would help,” he said, not expecting real details.

  “They said that Dunbar had the bitch buried, so they might as well make that her grave. Don’t know what it means.”

  “The bitch?”

  “Gotta mean a dog since none of them’s a woman. I can’t imagine why they’d say a thing like that about Mrs. Dunbar. From all I heard, she’s kinda sickly and never leaves her bedroom.”

  “The bitch,” Lucas said, smiling a little. “Could they have meant Amanda Baldridge?”

  Gallatin shrugged. The act of shaking his head caused things to come loose inside. He moaned and clutched his temples with both hands.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick. That was awful firewater they served up.”

  “Take care of yourself.” Lucas stepped away as Gallatin began retching out the contents of his tormented belly. The smell turned his own stomach, so he hurried out into the night.

  Dawn would be on the way in less than an hour, but Gallatin had given him a clue. The filibusters might have been spewing nonsense, but it made sense. Dunbar hadn’t had long to stash Amanda far from his house, not given the brief time between his carriage reaching his home and Lucas arriving. Dunbar wouldn’t lock up Amanda inside the house—and the real clue lay in “grave.”

  Feeling that time worked against him, Lucas ran back to Dunbar’s house, reaching there just as the sun poked above the plains and sent rays racing to warm the Front Range. The servants in the house began their chores, but he ignored them and went straight for the carriage house. The door creaked open to let in the new day’s light.

  He froze when he heard nails tearing out of wood, followed by hard hammering as if someone knocked on a door. Toward the rear of the carriage house he saw a trapdoor rise a few inches and then collapse. Nails pulling from wood sounded louder and then the trapdoor slammed open with a loud crash that caused him to jump. A mop of dark hair poked up, paused, then rose.

  Lucas moved to hide behind the carriage as Amanda forced her way through the small opening to a root cellar. Underneath the carriage he saw her torn dress and filthy shoes. The sight of a well-turned ankle almost made him go to her aid. Instead, he moved toward the rear of the carriage house as she went to the door and stood silhouetted by the rising sun. She looked like she had been rode hard and put away wet. Her hair rivaled any bird’s nest, the underclothing she still wore was ripped and dirty, and she rubbed at minor cuts and scratches on her arms.

  After the brief hesitation, she darted away. Lucas counted to ten and went after her. He had misjudged how fast she could run, and run she did. She was all the way down the street before she made a quick turn and vanished from view. In spite of being bone tired, Lucas lit out after her, running as hard as he could. His legs ached and the wind came in fiery stabs through his lungs. Having the stamina to play poker for thirty-six hours straight did not properly speak to real physical endurance. He had walked all over Denver that night, danced away from Dunbar’s thugs and with the lovely Amanda, and now had to chase the woman running for her life.

  He put his head down and doggedly kept loping along until she came into view again. She dodged down another street. This time he slowed and caught his breath since the street stretched far to the west. All too soon, she cut south again, heading down toward the old settlement along Cherry Creek where the first Denver pioneers had huddled against fierce blizzards and occasional Arapaho attacks.

  Another twenty minutes of increasingly circuitous roads that were hardly more than ruts brought him to a shack that would fall down when the first winter winds blew against it. He suspected the walls were sturdier than they appeared—this building had withstood the rigors of weather for a long time and would still be standing long after newer structures in Denver had tumbled.

  Lucas tore out running when Amanda screamed. He skidded to a halt and pressed his back against the weathered planking. The Colt came to his hand easily. He waited for another sound to give him a hint as to what he was bulling his way into, but all he heard were low, muffled curses. Then came the sound of flesh striking something hard. Twisting about, he pressed his face against the wall and peered through a crack.

  The darkness almost defeated his spying. His eye gradually adapted to the interior light. Amanda pounded her fist against the only furniture in the room, a table that trembled with every blow. She spun about and grabbed for her head as if she was hurt, but Lucas had seen this gesture before. She was furious.

  Another loud, unladylike curse cut through the air. He moved around to find a better view, then spotted two men coming down the path for the shack. Not even realizing it, he lifted his pistol and triggered a round. For a .22, the range was extreme, but it served its purpose. The slug whined past Dunbar’s henchmen. They dived in different directions, throwing themselves flat on the ground.

  He got off another shot, which accomplished nothing but relieved the tension he felt. Lucas looked through a knothole into the shack and saw the door swing open. For an instant Amanda stood there, then ran off. He called to her but his warning was drowned out by the thunder of a pair of .45s. Both of Dunbar’s men had unlimbered their side arms and fired steadily into the cabin.

  Lucas crouched, braced his wrist against the corner of the shack, and waited for the perfect shot. He might not have the killing power of either of those attacking, but a small piece of lead rattling around in a belly or taking off a kneecap worked as well for his purpose as killing them.

  He never got the chance to fire. Both men scra
mbled up and crossed the path, using the shack to hide themselves. Waiting for them to come around, one on either side, heightened Lucas’s senses. Every sound, every odor, every flash of light keyed him up that much more.

  They never came after him.

  He duck walked around and saw that they had seen Amanda and gone after her. Chances were good they thought she had fired on them. Standing slowly, he saw that it was impossible to overtake them. Amanda ran for her life and gave the men the chase of their lives. The best he could do was shoot them in the back, but he doubted he could ever catch up or even narrow the distance enough for another shot.

  Pistol tucked back into his pocket, he started to leave, then pivoted and went into the shack. Amanda had come here for a reason. His nose wrinkled at the smell coming from a pile of dog excrement in the corner of the room. If that hadn’t been proof enough that Amanda had chained Tovarich here, the chewed leather leash told the true story. The dog had gnawed his way free. That was the reason for her anger. She had rescued the wolfhound from the ratter, only to lose him again.

  Lucas coughed and gasped. As he sucked in a breath, he recognized the strange perfume Amanda used. The same that she shared with Vera Zasulich. If he wanted to find the dog and learn where a million dollars in gold was hidden, he had to go to the Russian revolutionaries’ camp.

  Getting rich was proving more deadly by the minute.

  19

  Lucas almost drew his pistol. He had fired it a couple times already. What did it matter if he fired it again into the belly of the man lurking across the street from his boardinghouse? It had been too long since he had stretched out on the too small bed and gotten even a rocky night’s sleep on the hard mattress. Dunbar kept a constant watch on the room. A single shot could eliminate that. Lucas was tired enough to consider committing cold-blooded murder, although that wasn’t his style.

  Forming what words to say to the watcher got him nowhere. Nothing he could say would be adequate. This was a trap he would never talk himself out of. The smallish man did not know what he looked like—Lucas had never seen the man before. Even if he decoyed the man away, it would be only minutes before he realized he had been tricked and return to find his quarry asleep on the bed in the room at the rear of the house.

  All such notions fled when a second man came up and spoke with the man lounging across the street. Lucas remembered seeing this one before. The first man left, turning over his watch to one who knew better than to be duped by the very man he sought.

  Lucas’s shoulders sagged as he retraced his steps and mingled with the crowds going about their daily business. Gallatin might provide him with a stall where he could sleep, but that held dangers to both of them if Clifford’s men spied on the stable hand. Lucas had no illusions about how good an actor Gallatin was. The filibusters had to suspect he wasn’t a down-and-out guerrilla hunting for a new army.

  “Actors,” Lucas said to himself. Returning to the Emerald City held a certain appeal, especially since Carmela’s departure was imminent.

  But Lefty avoided trouble at all costs. Just by asking for a place to curl up and sleep screamed danger to the saloon and everyone in it. Lucas wished he had slept there when he wasn’t in such dire straits. That would make such a request now seem more innocent.

  Hardly knowing it, he wound through the streets and came into the alley behind the Great West Detective Agency. Opening the door faster now than if he’d used a key, he slipped into the back room. He looked into the office. Finding Amanda there would have given him a real surprise. She had lost the dog again and needed help finding it, if she had dodged Dunbar’s henchmen.

  But she wasn’t there.

  Lucas spread out the blanket on the back room floor and lay down. Before he had stared at the cracked ceiling, imagining all manner of things. This time he slept like a dead man, awakening sometime in the afternoon with his belly grumbling for food. He stretched and felt better for the few hours of sleep.

  A rattling of the front door sent him scuttling on hands and knees to look out. A ragamuffin tapped insistently on the glass and held up a paper.

  The boy had spotted him. Rather than send the newsy away with possible gossip on his lips, Lucas went to the door, fumbled it open, and found a paper thrust into his hands.

  “You ain’t the usual guy.” The dirty boy, all of ten, spoke accusingly. He tugged at his ratty checkered cap and thrust out his chin.

  “Mr. Runyon’s not here right now.”

  “He always buys a paper. You’re gonna buy a paper, ain’t ya, mister? When he gets back, he’ll want to know all the news. He always does. He’s a detective and keeps a close eye on goings-on in town.” The boy winked broadly. “I keep a sharp eye out for him, and he pays me if I see anything he might make a dollar off. You a new detective?”

  The determined look and the peppering of questions further convinced Lucas the only way to rid himself of the capitalistic brat was to pay him off. He fished about in his pocket and found a quarter.

  The coin disappeared along with the boy. Lucas sighed and closed the door. Before he could toss the paper into a corner, an article below the fold caught his eye. He sat at the desk with the newspaper spread out before him so he could read the smeary print one line at a time and not miss a single word.

  When he’d finished the article about a train wreck down in Durango, he read it again. He rocked back and shook his head sadly.

  “Our paths will never cross now, Mr. Runyon.” He glanced a final time at the article detailing how a Mr. Jacoby Runyon of Denver had been one of seven killed when a narrow gauge train derailed, the act of road agents intent on robbing the mail car.

  Lucas went to the file cabinet and leafed through the folders until he found one with the railroad’s name on it. On the top of the papers in the file lay a contract hiring the Great West Detective Agency, Jacoby Runyon primary detective, to bring to justice a gang of outlaws terrorizing the entire region of southwestern Colorado. Lucas let out a low whistle when he saw how much the detective was to be paid for his work, whether he brought the outlaws to justice or simply drove them off. Being a detective paid better than he would have thought.

  He closed the file and leafed through other papers, stopping at one that had BILL OF SALE bannered across the top. Holding it up so the sunlight made the fine print easier to read, he quickly saw this was proof that Runyon had purchased the company from one Lawrence Duckworth. Lucas ran his finger over the signatures and smiled. At the desk he pushed aside the newspaper and carefully examined the way the bill of sale had been written.

  Only a fool signed a legal document in pencil. He used his lock pick to open the desk drawer and took out a pencil. Next to it a spirit gum eraser begged to be applied to the bill of sale. Lucas had watched the Preacher forge documents of various kinds, but none of the techniques he had witnessed were needed here. A quick swipe of the eraser removed Duckworth’s name. He signed his own in ink, with a flourish, then realized more had to be done. As it stood, the sold to and bought by were reversed.

  Correcting this required the used of a straight razor he found in the back room, a few minutes application of the steel to the printed words, and then a careful replication of the print style by hand. The ink didn’t match well and his hand was a trifle shaky, but at first glance, he had just become the owner of the Great West Detective Agency, as sold to him by a deceased man.

  Lucas felt a glow of pride at his skill. Dealing cards required manual dexterity. Forgery pushed the limits of that ability and added in a steady hand and more than a touch of audacity. He had no desire to own the agency, but the forgery had taken his mind off other, deadlier matters. He pushed the fraudulent bill of sale aside and scoured the newspaper for any hint as to Jubal Dunbar’s plans. The man wasn’t even mentioned, although a lengthy article about the gala the night before graced the social column.

  He had to laugh when a single line to
ld of a disturbance at the dance when a vagrant had intruded, intent on a free meal and some booze. Without a more detailed description, he reckoned another might have crashed the festivities, but he doubted it. He was the vagrant and the mention of food reminded him that he had yet to eat.

  As he stood to go find a decent meal, he saw two figures fill the doorway, vying to be the first inside. He touched his pocket, then continued the movement to smooth out his vest.

  “The agency isn’t open.”

  “The door was unlocked,” the woman said sharply. “We have come in response to your ad.” She held up a newspaper turning yellow with age.

  “The position is no longer open.”

  “What? You’ve hired someone else? That’s not possible. We have come by repeatedly and have seen no one in the office.” The man looked to his wife, as if he needed her approval for such a bold statement.

  They were the couple Lucas had seen loitering about, arguing over whether to pursue this position or try something else.

  “I am Mrs. Northcott,” the hatchet-faced woman said. Her left hand made a chopping motion, using her right palm as a cutting block. Lucas doubted she even realized she made the gesture. “This is my husband, Mr. Northcott.”

  “Felicia and Raymond,” he said timidly. She silenced him with a harsh look. Her dark eyes bored into his very soul until he fell silent.

  Lucas sized them up quickly. Felicia Northcott wore a plain gray dress. It might have been the same he had seen her wearing earlier, but small differences told him that an examination of her wardrobe would reveal nothing but this color. It fit her personality. Or rather, it dictated the personality of her husband. She stood for a moment and glared at Raymond, who finally realized she was waiting for him to hold the chair for her. She sank down and folded her bony fingers in her lap before fixing her death skull gaze on Lucas.