For Jackson, Evalinda’s joy at Spanish Monte’s victory was poison added to the gall of losing the race to me. He stayed away from us for the rest of the afternoon, but he joined us while we were drinking at the Happy Hunting Ground after the nightly show.
“You certainly get the breaks when it comes to drawing jockeys,” was his opening gun.
“It’s the knowledge of horseflesh that counts,” I told him. “You can’t expect an Ohio man to come up to a Marylander in that respect. Have a snort, Dick?”
He had already had several snorts, and somewhere in the course of them he had convinced himself that he had lost the race because of ill luck. “No, I’m buying, Baltimore.” He called to Short-fuse and then turned back to us. “I’ve really got a faster horse than you.”
“I noticed that this afternoon,” I goaded him.
“You pulled the better rider out of the hat, and you know it.” Making sure he had Evalinda’s attention, he drew out his bank roll and slapped it on the bar. “If you’re not willing to admit it, we’ll trade jockeys, and I’ll bet Masthead walks away from your dray horse.”
Although Dick had lost a couple of hundred to me at the races, McQuinn had told me that he had done very well at faro the night before by betting against the fellow whose chips Blackfoot Terry was really after. “How much have you got there?” I demanded.
“Sixteen hundred.” He leaned across Evalinda and twitched his long nose at me in defiance. “Match it or eat crow.”
He had spoken loud enough for everybody at our end of the bar to hear, and the wager was big enough to win the attention of all. Evalinda was looking at me, too.
“You’re going to fade him, aren’t you, Baltimore?”
The bet was bigger than I was prepared to handle unless I wanted to risk having to sell my share of one of the Carruthers and Wheeler enterprises. Sam and I had extended our resources to the limit in order to help capitalize Dead Warrior’s long-needed reservoir and water-piping system, due to replace the water wagons which had so far supplied the town, and I couldn’t have put my hands on more than a few hundred. I thought Spanish Monte could win again, but I couldn’t afford to be wrong without losing out on matters which were a lot more important to me than a horse race.
To cover my hesitation, I slowly drank my whiskey and then the chaser. In doing so I was aware that Dick had a hand on one of Evalinda’s shoulders. Meanwhile he had stooped to peer at me over the other. To this nearness Miss deVere responded by biting him on the ear, shaking her head and growling.
There had been other signs that her devotion to the principle of monogamy had run its course as far as I was concerned. When I lowered my glass to the bar, I did it with a rap bespeaking decision.
“I won’t bet you money,” I said, talking loudly in my turn. “And as you’re challenging me, I’m the one to call the stakes. Put up your newspaper.”
The unexpectedness of the proposition gave him pause, but he promptly rallied. “That’s crawfishing, man. You can’t put up one of your own businesses without getting Sam Wheeler to come in with you. What would you bet against the War Whoop?”
The whole bar had quieted to listen. Betting was Dead Warrior’s favorite sport, and a wager which involved anything at once as valuable and as concrete as the plant of the daily newspaper which Dick now published had everyone agog. I pretended to pay no attention, however, while I removed Dick’s hand from the girl’s shoulder and drew her to me in sign of possession.
“You’ll have to give me boot,” I announced, “but I’ll bet you Evalinda for the rest of her stay in town.”
It was the only time that I ever saw either Dick or Evalinda mumchance. The former grabbed my hand to signify acceptance, as soon as he had recovered from his astonishment, but he couldn’t make himself heard above pandemonium.
With a whoop Short-fuse pulled a gun out from under the bar and fired it at the ceiling. Others imitated him or shouted applause, stamping and pounding each other on the back.
The wild delight over it was what won Evalinda both to acceptance of the bet and forgiveness of myself for risking such a prize. Here was a sensation which was rocking the town, and she herself was the core of it. After the first startled moment, she was beaming as though she had thought of the idea herself.
“Who’s going to hold the stakes?” she kept asking the prospectors who swarmed around to shake hands with her and offer almost tearful congratulations for her magnanimity in being a party to such a stunt.
The news spread swiftly to the other saloons, whose patrons had to hear the rumor confirmed through personal conversation with what was soon known as “the prettiest stack of chips in Arizona.” Evalinda had a wonderful evening, and I was not ill-content myself. We had had a fine frolic together, but she was ready to have another pair of trousers draped over the foot of her bed. Here was an out for both her and myself which would prevent a sour ending for a good time.
Insisting on looking after Spanish Monte personally the next day, I let him have all the water he wanted. It wouldn’t make him sick in a quarter race series, but I calculated that it would slow him down after the first heat. That attended to, I picked up Evalinda, complete with her baggage, depositing it and her at the finish line.
Sober, Dick wasn’t quite so sure that a reversal of form could be brought about by substituting one untrained Mexican boy for another. He feigned great confidence, however, and had a rig brought for the advertised purpose of carrying Evalinda to his quarters.
It was supposed to be a working day, but everybody — including the employees of the Dead Warrior, the Pan-Western and the several lesser mining companies — knocked off in the middle of the afternoon. There were loud cheers when Spanish Monte and Masthead walked to the post, louder ones when Dick and I took our stations at either side of Miss deVere’s baggage, and loudest of all when Sam Wheeler sat down in a chair I had provided. Those cheers were not for Sam himself, though, but for the occupant of his lap. Perched on it was Evalinda, in full traveling gear, with a sign pinned to her marked “stakes.”
Spanish Monte gave both Dick and myself a bad scare by taking the first two heats. The water awash in his bilges let Masthead edge him the third time, however, and in the last two races he lost by a length.
Jackson and I weren’t the only ones satisfied with the outcome. Had I won, the thing everybody was looking forward to — the actual transference of human property by wager — could not have taken place. Evalinda, too, would have been denied a dramatic moment. She was not, and she made the most of it.
“Good-by, my love,” she sobbed, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. “Hello, my love,” she next chortled, running into Dick’s waiting arms.
Because I had had to lose for everybody else to enjoy the occasion to the full, I emerged as the lion of a grateful town. After I showed up with a mourning band on my sleeve, my money wasn’t good in any saloon on Apache Street. For three days I was known as “Bet-a-gal Baltimore.” Then the first successful holdup of a bullion stage gave Dead Warrior something else to talk about.
For myself the event created a disturbing problem. Wells Fargo Express had the contract for seeing that the locally processed ingots reached markets on the Coast, but the Carruthers and Wheeler stage line had the contract for carrying all Wells Fargo shipments as far as Tucson.
After one would-be robber had been killed by the shotgun guard which Wells Fargo always supplied as cargo insurance, we had had no further trouble. I had in fact about convinced myself that I had been worrying without cause when I received the report of the theft from one of our drivers.
“Did you get much of a look at the men who did the job?” I asked him.
Jim Bolton only had one eye, but he was an experienced frontiersman, and I counted on him to see more with it at night than most men could with a pair. He straddled his bowlegs and shoved his hands in his hip pockets as he nodded.
“They picked a place where the road runs through a thick mesquite patch, but I see them pre
tty good, Baltimore. There was one regular-size fellow and one long, thin galoot. They rose up quiet in the shadow and had guns on us before we knowed where we was at. When the tall fellows says, ‘Light down, pardner,’ the Wells Fargo guard done it, and I think I would have, too.”
Because they were the only stage robbers of my acquaintance, I thought of the gang I had met near Shakespeare. None of them had been remarkably tall, but there was the possibility that such a recruit had replaced Pat Scanlan.
The latter shook his head, when I quizzed him. “I quit stage robbin’, because I wasn’t gettin’ no real fun out of it, and that’s the end of what I know about the business.”
“Well, have you any idea as to whether I’m dealing with old friends or new enemies?” I persisted. “If it’s Smith and his crowd, I won’t make any trouble for them if they’ll quit making it for me. Is that fair enough?”
“Why sure,” Pat agreed, “but you ain’t spreadin’ any news by tellin’ me about it. All I’m doin’ is workin’ for you and keepin’ my nose clean, and anyhow I’m only small change out here in the West. Look, Baltimore, if you really want to know what’s going on around here, you’re closer friends to big fish than you are to me. Why don’t you ask one of them?”
I was still pondering his meaning when another stage was held up. My driver on that occasion had been so frightened that he could tell me little, but the raging Wells Fargo guard had seen the two robbers before. The holdup had been marked by the same quiet efficiency as its forerunner, and once again a tall, thin fellow had acted as spokesman.
The deputy sheriff assigned to Dead Warrior organized a posse just as he had the first time. I was a member, but we didn’t get anything out of the ride besides fresh air and exercise. The trail was lost in the rocky fastnesses of a range to the southwest.
This greatly diverted Blackfoot Terry, with whom I had dinner upon my return. He chuckled at my rueful account of the way in which the tracks had vanished.
“It looks like a real lobo has moved into the country,” he commented. “Fred Andrews hasn’t got what it takes to track a plainsman of parts.”
It was then that I thought I understood Scanlan’s advice, and I decided to take it. “Who’s the lobo, Terry?”
The question took him by surprise, but he was ready for me in a moment. “Just in case I should be asked exactly that query, I’ve made it a point not to know.”
“There’s a grapevine running to all the gambling houses in the West,” I said. He was lighting his cigar, and I leaned forward to share the match. “You fellows know what happens in Laramie and Butte before Dick Jackson can get it by newspaper exchange. Could you change your tactics and make it a point to find out? This is important to me.”
“That fellow’s life is probably important to him,” McQuinn suggested, “and I’ve been chased by the law too often to be its willing finger man. Wells Fargo is the one that has to pay, so let them worry about it. How about a game of billiards before I start dealing?”
A couple of weeks had intervened between the first and second robberies. I let ten days go by before I brought the subject to Terry’s attention again.
“Have you heard the rumor that another gold shipment is due to go out in a couple of days?”
We were standing at the bar of a saloon called the Paradise Enow. He slipped a drink under his mustache before he replied.
“Some canary at Pan-Western or the Dead Warrior Company must like the sound of his own voice. You ought to find where the leak is and put your foot in his mouth.”
“I asked to have that leak sprung,” I told him.
McQuinn looked at me sideways but said nothing. “If that slick, tall boy doesn’t bite the first time, he will the next or the one after that,” I said. “It’ll cost me money, but he isn’t going to be able to snake potatoes out of the fire again without getting his fingers burned.”
“I’ll read about it in the War Whoop.” Terry flicked a dust particle from his otherwise immaculate black coat. “Is Wells Fargo sending a trouble shooter?”
“One’s promised, if there’s a recurrence.” I shrugged disgustedly. “These big companies are all alike; they spend money on everything but getting the job done. San Francisco will dispatch one detective who’ll need six months of education before he can find his way around Arizona. In the meantime the stages will have one shotgun guard, and if he’s killed they’ll give me another.”
“If they gave you more, you’d be crowded for passenger space,” my companion said.
“There won’t be any passengers on the bullion stages until I have a clear road,” I told him. “I’m carrying a coach load of shotgun toters, and any two highwaymen who think all they have to do is to stick up the man beside the driver aren’t going to live long enough to admit they made a mistake. Of course, I may not live, either. I’m going to drive.”
Following a minute of silence, Blackfoot Terry sighed. “I’ve tried to keep out of this, but I see I can’t. I wouldn’t want either one of you to get hurt.” There was a pause then while he balanced an eagle on the bar. “Keep your cannoneers home this time, and the gold, too. I’ll go along instead.”
The other two holdups had been made at lonely distances from Dead Warrior. I was therefore not yet fully on guard when we passed under a big cottonwood only a few miles from camp.
“Reach!” cried a man who had slipped down onto the roof of the coach behind us.
“Rein in,” McQuinn ordered. “I didn’t really think that was a panther stretched out on that branch. How are you, Ed?”
“Put up the rifle, Steve,” Ed called to the fellow who had materialized from shadow to menace us from the road. “We’ve been captured by Injuns, though I don’t know why yet. You ain’t got a drink on you, have you, Terry? I didn’t skin up the tree till I heard the creak of your axle when you swung around the bend yonder, but it’s pretty cold up there these nights.”
“Well, let’s start a council fire,” McQuinn said, as he climbed down to the road. “There’s kindling in the coach, and just for instance, I brought along a quart of pretty fair liquor, too.”
Even before the flames started beating the darkness back, I had determined that the tall, lean bandit was Ed Whittlesey, formerly sheriff of Borro County, New Mexico. “Sure, I remember Baltimore,” he said, while Terry was pulling the cork, “but I never knowed he was such a big operator. It looks like no matter which side of the law I’m taking a look at, the stage I see wheeling down the road belongs to him.”
McQuinn passed the bottle first to Steve Hawley, a lithe, quick-smiling plainsman who let Whittlesey speak for both. “Baltimore’s got the contract for carrying the bullion as far as Tucson,” the gambler said, “and furthermore he’s got the idea that it ought to get there.”
“Embarrassin’,” Ed murmured. He wiped the mouth of the bottle on his sleeve and took a good pull before he handed it to me. “What do you figger we should ought to do?”
“Well,” Terry said, “he’s ready to ride a shotgun army instead of passengers, so unless you and Steve get more men you wouldn’t have a chance. You made a couple of pretty good hauls, didn’t you?”
“Somebody did.” Whittlesey feigned wariness. “I ain’t talkin’.”
“He won’t peach.” Terry indicated me with one hand while reaching for the whiskey with the other. “He won’t, if you make a bargain to clear out, instead of making a damned fool of yourself by crowding your luck, that is.”
“You can’t do good at stud when everybody knows what your hole card is,” Whittlesey mused. “Is Baltimore a reliable fellow, Terry? I’d just as soon fight Wells Fargo right here as to have ’em on my tail, wavin’ extradition papers every time a man fixes to get dug in comfortably.”
“He’ll forget he ever saw you,” McQuinn promised. “And that goes for Steve, too, of course.”
“I’ll be seein’ you around some camp or other then,” Ed said, following an exchange of glances between Hawley and himself. “Maybe we’ll go jo
in the Texas Rangers for a while. We was talkin’ about it just the other day.”
Chapter 14
EARLY IN MARCH THE WIND blew the frost out of the mountains and into our bones. The temperatures didn’t get low by the standards of non-Arizonans, but we were used to still air and mildness. The strong nor’easter made itself at home in our summer-style buildings and brought the dust with it. Everybody walked around with hunched shoulders, fidgety and irritable.
It was to find an anodyne for the cruelty of the elements that a few of us convened in the Paradise Enow during hours normally dedicated to work. While we stood there, with little to say to each other, a prospector called Frank Fillmore rode his horse through the door.
“Hi, Sam; hi, Terry; hi, Dick; hi, Baltimore,” he said. “Give me a quick one, Pete.”
Tending bar there, Rogue River Pete looked disapproving. “Don’t you see that sign?” he challenged.
There was a piece of paper tacked on one of the walls which had a bearing on the case, and all of us turned to reread its message.
HORSES STRICTLY FORBIDDEN
UNLESS THEY’RE CASH CUSTOMERS,
WEAR DIAPERS OR CAN RECITE
THE LORD’S PRAYER IN APACHE.
“The son of a bitch ain’t ordered, and he ain’t got no pants on,” Pete pointed out. “How’s he on Injun talk?”
“I couldn’t leave him standin’ out there,” Frank explained. “He’s a stallion, and if I’d’ve wanted a geldin’ I’d’ve had a vet fix him. Freezin’ ’em off ain’t the right way.” While waiting for Pete to reach him his drink, Fillmore looked down from the saddle at me. “How’d you like to be mule skinnin’ in this weather, Baltimore?”
As I took pleasure in reflecting, I had not been on the driver’s seat of a freight wagon or a coach for quite a while. When not engrossed with other work connected with the Carruthers and Wheeler enterprises, I was preparing to defend our interests in a negligence-accident suit brought against us by a citizen of Tucson who claimed he found himself under the wheels of one of our vehicles while perfectly sober.
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