“You really think his friends would’ve let us take him without a fight?”
“There are enough of us we could’ve done it. We’ve got ’em outnumbered.”
“Yeah. And some of us would’ve gotten killed, too, more than likely. I had another idea as soon as I heard about that rendezvous. There’ll be a whole mess of people around then. We’ll find a way to cut Wallace out of the bunch, get him away from his friends, and turn him over to Ducharme before anybody else even knows what’s happenin’. If we’re smart about it, we might be able to earn our money without anybody having to get shot for it . . . except Breckinridge Wallace.”
Harding grinned and said, “There’s a good reason you’re in charge of this bunch, Powell. You’re better at thinkin’ than the rest of us.”
“It’s kept me alive this long,” Powell said.
When they had heard the shooting and gone to investigate, they’d had no idea they were going to run into the man they were looking for so soon after reaching the valley. They had been on Wallace’s trail for weeks, ever since leaving St. Louis.
Luckily folks tended to remember a giant young man with flaming red hair.
The trail had led here, and now Powell and his companions even knew where Wallace’s camp was. That was the payoff for picking a side and plunging into the battle. Powell’s instincts had been reliable once again.
Now all he had to do was convince Otto Ducharme that the smart thing was to wait and use the rendezvous as a cover for their activities, rather than go after Wallace right away.
He and Harding gathered up the other men, who reacted much as Harding had when they found out that their quarry was right there on the other side of the creek, several hundred yards away. Powell explained his plan again and none of them argued with him, but he could tell that some of the men weren’t too happy about the decision.
They were cunning, but in a way they were simpleminded, as well. They thought the best option was always to smash straight ahead and grab what you wanted, killing anybody who got in your way.
Ducharme was liable to feel the same—but there was only one way to find out.
They had left the German merchant about half a mile away with a couple of guards. It didn’t take long to get back to where Ducharme waited, sitting on the wagon parked under some trees.
“Well?” Ducharme asked sharply when Powell and the others had ridden up and reined in. “What did you find? What was all that shooting about?”
Ducharme’s always beefy face turned an even darker, mottled shade of red as Powell explained. The gunman knew that his employer was about to explode with rage as he heard that his son’s killer was so close by— and not only had Powell failed to capture him, he had actually helped save Breckinridge Wallace’s life.
When Powell finished, though, and Ducharme finally spoke, it wasn’t in a roar. Instead, in a quiet, carefully controlled voice, Ducharme asked, “Why did you not bring my son’s killer to me, Herr Powell?”
“Because there’s a better way,” Powell answered without hesitation.
“It was my son who was murdered by this man. It is my right to choose how he should die. I thought you understood that.”
“I do understand,” Powell said. “But if we’d tried to grab him, Wallace would have put up a fight, and so would his friends. If we wait until that rendezvous we heard about, we can grab him and get him away from there without anybody bein’ the wiser about what happened to him. Think about it, Mr. Ducharme . . . you can take Wallace out miles from anybody else, where nobody can hear him yellin’, and you can do whatever you want to him. You can make your revenge last as long as you want.” Powell paused and let an evil grin spread over his rugged face. “How does that sound to you, boss?”
Ducharme’s face was still flushed and he was breathing hard, but maybe not from anger now, thought Powell. Maybe it was because he was thinking about what Powell had just said.
“Yes,” Ducharme finally said. “You are smarter than I gave you credit for, Herr Powell. That is exactly the way Breckinridge Wallace should die: slowly, agonizingly, and all alone.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Dulcy Harris held her hands clasped in her lap and rocked back and forth a little on the seat beside Jed Humphries as the man drove the lead wagon in the little caravan.
The vehicle that had overturned the day before had been the lead wagon, but now it was relegated to the back of the line because its axle was bent slightly and caused it to jerk and wobble because one of the wheels wasn’t straight. Mahone had promised they would repair it when they reached the rendezvous site, but he didn’t want to take the time to do the work now.
“If we delay too long, that bastard Finch might beat us to the spot,” Mahone had said while the group was camped the previous night. “I’m not gonna let him steal a march on me again, damn it.”
Not many maps of this region even existed, but Mahone had gotten hold of one that he claimed was accurate. On it he had picked out a site on a big S-curve of a creek that he said would be perfect for them to set up during the rendezvous. That was the spot he wanted to beat Nicodemus Finch to.
And that desire to get the best of Finch was why he had driven them all so hard to get here, risking life and limb in the process. Finch was Tom Mahone’s archenemy and always would be, until one or both of them was dead.
One time, Dulcy had asked Mahone about that. They’d both had a little too much brandy that night, she supposed, and she had felt a mellow affection for the man who wasn’t there at other times.
Most of the time she had regarded him simply as her employer, and not a particularly friendly or pleasant one, at that. This had been at a trading post Mahone owned at the time back in Missouri, when Nicodemus Finch had owned a rival post a mile away.
“Ah, hell, all that damn mess goes back too far,” Mahone had said. “Finch and me are blood kin. We’ve knowed each other nearly all our blamed lives.”
“I’ll bet the trouble between you started over a woman, didn’t it?” Dulcy had asked.
The hour was late and they were sitting at a rough-hewn table in the tavern attached to the trading post after the place had closed down for the night. Dulcy had only been working for him a few months, after the fever that had taken both her husband and their daughter.
The only way to live with pain like that, she had discovered, was to wall yourself off from it. The squalid existence she had chosen for herself did a good job of dulling everything until the grief didn’t bite so hard anymore.
“I reckon that was part of it,” Mahone had said in answer to her question. “There was a gal . . . Eula Mae was her name . . . and she told me she loved me. But then, out of the blue, she said she was gonna marry that damn runt Finch. I might’ve been able to live with that, even though it would’a been hellacious hard, if Finch hadn’t gone and burned the boat we was partners in.”
“Burned your boat?” Dulcy had exclaimed in surprise. “Why in the world would he do that?”
“Because he’s the craziest son of a bitch the Good Lord ever put on this green earth!” Mahone had leaned forward with an intense look on his face. “Sometimes these fits’ll come on him, and he’ll hop around and cackle like a chicken. Other times he’ll start spoutin’ nonsense, just a bunch of crazy words I swear he makes up. There’s never any tellin’ what he might do next.” Mahone threw back the rest of the drink he had in his hand. “I should’ve put a pistol ball through his brain when I had the chance. It’d have been a mercy killin’. I’d have been puttin’ the rest of the world out of its misery at havin’ him around!”
“And the two of you have been competing with each other ever since?”
“Yeah. Every time I try some new business, here comes Finch, showin’ up to ruin everything. I haven’t had the best luck, and he’s been the worst of it!” Mahone had gotten to his feet then and jerked his head toward the sleeping quarters in the back. “Come on. I’m tired of talkin’ about the little varmint.”
; Dulcy had gone with him, of course. None of the girls who worked for him dared turn him down when he demanded their company, but in truth Dulcy hadn’t really minded all that much. Mahone was quite a bit older than her, but at the time he’d still been a vital, energetic man, able to make her forget her sorrow for a while. That was before the sickness had struck him down and left him with weak, withered legs.
The sickness hadn’t done anything to blunt his anger and greed and hatred of Nicodemus Finch, though. Those things were as strong as ever.
Dulcy had stayed with him because there was really nothing else she wanted to do with her life, other than get to the end of it. Back in the early days of her mourning, she had thought about hurrying that end along so she could be reunited with the ones she’d lost. She knew they wouldn’t want that, though, and gradually that desire had left her.
Now, from time to time, she felt some unexpected stirrings inside her. A sense of longing, maybe, for a real life again, something in which to find some joy.
It was too late for that, though. The morass of her existence these past few years had seen to that.
Beside her on the wagon seat, Humphries said, “Those tracks worry me. Somebody else brought wagons in here not long ago. You reckon it was Finch?”
“Not necessarily,” Dulcy said. “I don’t know much about these rendezvouses, but don’t a bunch of fur traders usually show up for them? The wagons could belong to some of them.”
“I hope so,” Humphries said with a worried frown. “If Finch beat him here, the boss is liable to have a fit.”
That was true, thought Dulcy. And it was certainly possible that Finch had beaten them to the valley. Mahone had heard that his old enemy was putting together an outfit to come here, and that was what had prompted him to do the same thing.
Mahone always made it sound like Finch followed his lead and showed up to compete with and ruin whatever business venture he’d attempted. Dulcy would have been willing to bet that plenty of times it had been the other way around.
Humphries spat tobacco to the side and said, “Sure is pretty country.”
Dulcy agreed with that, as well. The broad, green valley with its fast-flowing creeks and stands of towering pines was indeed beautiful between the flanking ranges of snowcapped peaks. This was the farthest west she had ever been, and the farthest from civilization, too. It frightened her, in a way, being so far from anywhere, but at least there were people around.
Interesting people, too, she thought, briefly remembering that big, redheaded young man who had helped them the day before. Breckinridge Wallace was good-looking in a rugged way, but there had been something else about him that intrigued Dulcy . . .
“Oh Lord,” Humphries said, hauling back on the team’s reins and breaking into what might have been a pleasant reverie for Dulcy if it had been allowed to continue. “Look over yonder, across the creek. Is that . . . ?”
A number of wagons were parked on the other side of the creek, on a broad point of land formed by the stream’s curving course. Tents had been set up, as well, and people were moving around, including some women. Dulcy saw sunlight flash on fair hair.
She also saw a short, scrawny, billy goat–bearded man in filthy buckskins standing at the edge of the creek. As she watched, he grabbed his own hat off his head, flung it to the ground, and started stomping on it, leaping up and down and waving his arms as he spewed forth a torrent of unintelligible but obviously outraged gibberish.
“Yes,” Dulcy said, dreading what was bound to happen now. “That’s Nicodemus Finch.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Annabelle Walters heard Nicodemus yelling and jabbering and knew something had happened. Only one thing could get him that worked up, Annie knew.
Black Tom Mahone had arrived.
All the members of Finch’s group had expected that to happen. For two men who hated each other so vehemently, each kept track of what the other was doing with the unwavering intensity of jealous lovers.
If Finch moved his base of operations from one place to another, Mahone knew it. If Mahone started some new business venture, Finch was aware of it.
They were never apart for long. Something always drew them back together. Hate was just as strong a passion as love.
Annie had been just about to go inside one of the tents when Nicodemus started acting crazy. She paused, and while she was standing there watching his display out at the head of the point, Francesca emerged from the tent and said, “What in the world is he carrying on about now?”
Annie pointed at the group of wagons approaching on the other side of the creek.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Black Tom is here, unless I miss my guess.”
Francesca sighed disgustedly.
“Why can’t that man and his harlots leave us alone?” she said.
That was pretty rich, Francesca referring to Mahone’s girls as harlots, Annie thought wryly. They were all in the same line of work, after all. None of them had been at it for very long, but that didn’t change what they were. Sisters under the skin, so to speak.
A year ago, Annie never would have dreamed she would wind up being a whore, let alone one that was brought out here into the middle of the wilderness to service a bunch of dirty, smelly mountain men who reeked of beaver carcasses.
A year ago she had been Annabelle Walters, the pampered daughter of a plantation owner from Alabama. That was before her father had lost everything gambling, including the family’s ancestral home, and had taken the easy way out by pressing a pistol to his head and putting a ball through his brain.
Annabelle’s mother had died six weeks later, too stunned by her sudden change in circumstances to carry on. That had left Annabelle, barely nineteen years old and with absolutely no skills other than flirting and looking pretty, to care for four younger brothers and sisters.
What the hell else was she supposed to do other than sell herself? she had asked herself many times.
She had saved her money until she was able to take her brothers and sisters to Mobile, where she shamed an aunt and uncle into taking them in and promising to raise them. The money that Annabelle had given them had helped persuade them to do the right thing.
Annabelle herself couldn’t stay, though. She was already too tainted. Her aunt had put her foot down about that.
Annabelle hadn’t put up much of an argument. In truth, she didn’t want to stay with her relatives. If a new life had been forced upon her—and it had—then it only made sense to turn her back on her old life and get on as best she could.
That was how she’d come to be in New Orleans, and after that on a riverboat plying the stately waters of the Mississippi, and then in a house in St. Louis, where Nicodemus Finch had found her and bought her from the madam, adding her to the group of girls he was putting together for a journey he planned to make to the mountains.
“What’s your name, gal?” he had asked her, and when she told him Annabelle—because she had never given up her true name, unlike so many of the women in her profession—he had grinned and said, “Annie Belle. That’s a mighty pretty name to go with a mighty pretty gal.”
So he had introduced her to the others as Annie Belle and she hadn’t corrected him, so the name had stuck and was soon shortened to Annie. That was fine with her. Maybe it was even a good idea, she decided. Maybe stubbornly calling herself Annabelle had been clinging to the last vestige of who she had been before.
For all intents and purposes, Annabelle Walters, the plantation owner’s daughter, was as dead as her poor father.
Annie the whore was alive and in the middle of the wilderness, with trouble about to break out.
Finch finally bent and picked up his muddy, battered hat from the ground where he had been dancing on it in rage. He turned and rushed toward the wagons.
“Get your guns! Get your guns!” he yelled to the men who worked for him. “We got to shoot us some snakes!”
Caleb Moffit, who was Finch’s unofficial second-in-
command, came up to him and said, “Boss, we can’t start shooting at Mahone’s bunch. They’ll shoot back at us.”
“What of it?” Finch demanded with a wild-eyed stare. “That’s what a war is, ain’t it?”
“Some of the girls are liable to get hurt.”
“It’s a war! They knowed the job might get dangerous when they signed on with me!”
Annie didn’t recall anybody actually “signing on” with Finch. She and the other girls had just been told that they were working for him now, and they were going to the mountains for some sort of fur trappers’ get-together. They hadn’t been given any choice in the matter, and they sure hadn’t been warned that it might be dangerous.
But the life of a soiled dove was never without its dangers, so what was the point of worrying about it?
“Are you sure those wagons belong to Mahone?” Moffit asked. “Did you see him?”
“No, but who else could they belong to? They’re his, I tell you! It’s gotta be that sassafrassin’ bungle-bender!”
“They’re stoppin’ over there. Let’s walk out to the point and make sure,” Moffit suggested.
“I can’t start shootin’ at ’em?”
“Not yet,” Moffit said, trying as usual to be the voice of reason.
“All right,” Finch said with a sigh. “But mark my words, it’s that burr-butted musharoo!”
“Where are you going?” Francesca asked Annie as the blonde started to follow Finch and Moffit.
“I want to see what’s going to happen,” Annie said.
“You’ll get shot once all hell breaks loose, that’s what’s going to happen.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Annie said.
She wasn’t the only one who followed Finch out onto the point. Gilbert and Jackson went along, too, and so did several other of the girls. Francesca hung back with a look of derision on her face.
The Irish girl Siobhan came up beside Annie and asked, “What do you think’s going to happen?” Her voice was a mixture of fear and excitement.
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