The next room he came to was much bigger than the first. Instead of the cot that had been in Kaylee’s space, there was an actual bed as well as a dented bathtub filled with cloudy water. What caught Deaugrey’s eye most, however, was the large post next to the tub that ran from floor to ceiling to prop up that section of the tent. Knowing the other man wasn’t far behind him, Deaugrey lowered his shoulder and charged at the post. The wooden support cracked and buckled, but didn’t give way on his first attempt.
Cringing with pain, Deaugrey spotted a wet, naked man and a woman wearing only filmy silk robes. “Why is there always someone nearby to witness my bad ideas?” Deaugrey grumbled. Since he’d come this far, he charged the post again. This time, the damaged support snapped all the way and brought a good portion of the tent down along with it. Deaugrey may have had an aching shoulder, but he’d gotten his bearings well enough to know which way to run this time around.
He exploded from the tent and into the narrow space between the cathouse and the neighboring saloon. Looking around in a daze, Deaugrey smirked when he saw the partially collapsed section of the cathouse tent. There was movement inside and Deaugrey reminded himself that there were several others in there apart from the one man he was worried about. Even as he thought about the women and their paying customers, Deaugrey contemplated firing a few shots into the tent just to tip the scales in his favor.
Whatever part of his ethics that had remained intact over the years kept him from shooting blindly into the tent. He gripped the .38 and thumbed back its hammer. His eyes sighted along the top of the barrel, waiting for even the slightest glimpse of the gunman’s cold eyes or dark clothes.
The saloon behind him had plenty of activity inside of it, but no sign of panic with regard to the dust he’d just kicked up. Yet another thing Deaugrey liked about this camp.
“Grey!” a familiar voice shouted from behind the saloon.
Deaugrey turned to look in that direction to find Nate circling around the back of the saloon while holding his Remington with a steady, straight arm. There was sharp authority in Nate’s tone when he barked, “Down!”
Every reflex in Deaugrey’s body told him to drop, which is precisely what he did. Before his chest could slam against the ground, two quick shots were fired. The first came from Nate and the second came from the front end of the cathouse. Deaugrey clamped his teeth together and gripped the earth with his free hand as if he were in danger of being cast off its surface and thrown into the sky.
More shots exploded back and forth, sending pieces of lead hissing over him. Suddenly, Deaugrey lost his reservations about firing blind and swung his arm back to point the .38 vaguely in the direction of the cathouse while pulling his trigger. The borrowed pistol bucked against his palm, adding an irregular voice to the staccato cracking of shots that came in more precise rhythms.
“Grey, get up, damn you!”
Deaugrey had never been happier to hear Nate’s voice. As soon as he propped himself up, he felt a callused hand grab his free arm and drag him along. Deaugrey allowed himself to be pulled up until he could stand on his own. Just as he got his bearings, he caught a glimpse of Nate’s angry face.
“Don’t stop shooting, you fool!” Sathow shouted.
That was the last thing Deaugrey heard for a while because Nate’s next shot was fired a might too close to his ears. In a strange way, the muffled quagmire of sound that filled Deaugrey’s head was comforting in comparison to what had come before. The gunshots sounded like distant thunder; soothing to him in the same way his own breaths had soothed him in the sanitariums when he’d defiantly starved himself to the point of passing out.
Soon, a ringing blared through his skull to replace the soothing roar. Deaugrey shouted something at Nate that neither man could understand. He extended his arm, pointed the .38 at the dead-eyed gunman who’d stepped into view and pulled his trigger repeatedly. One of their shots must have come close, because the gunman stepped out of sight once again.
Deaugrey pulled his trigger again, but the pistol no longer jerked within his grasp. He’d run out of ammunition somewhere along the way and hadn’t been able to hear when his shots had stopped coming.
Nate’s voice was just another dull roar amid the ringing and other roars. Rather than try to speak to him, Nate shoved Deaugrey aside while reloading his Remington. Nodding as if that would make all the difference, Deaugrey fumbled for the bullets fitted within the loops on the thin belt Frank had given him. The roar was fading away in his ears, which unfortunately made the ringing that much clearer.
Even though Deaugrey’s hands were becoming steadier with every passing second, he hadn’t completely reloaded the .38 by the time Nate walked far enough to see the front entrance of the cathouse. From where he stood, Deaugrey could only watch Nate shift into a sideways stance while raising his pistol to take careful aim. Nate’s voice made it through the ringing in Deaugrey’s ears somewhat, but not enough for him to understand why he lowered his arm and allowed the Remington to slip from his fingers.
“What are you doing?” Deaugrey shouted.
Nate scowled and clasped his fingers behind his head. He put up no resistance when the pair of scruffy miners carrying shotguns stepped up to him and kicked the pistol away. As Nate was saying something to one of the men, the other one cracked him in the back of the head with the shotgun’s stock.
By the time the men looked between the saloon and cathouse, Deaugrey was nowhere to be found.
16
Nagle, Missouri
Frank slept well that night. His rented room was tiny but its window allowed a cool breeze to drift through and fill it with the scent of the river. The fee for the room included breakfast, which wound up being griddle cakes, bacon and coffee. Pete didn’t poke his nose from his room until Frank had made his way through half of his stack of cakes. When the tracker saw him sitting at the breakfast table, he looked to the window, which was bright with the deep orange glow of morning, and then back to the table.
“It’s early,” Pete said.
“A man in my line of work gets into the habit of waking up early,” Frank replied cheerily.
“And enjoys it as well,” Pete grunted as he made his way over to the table and sat down. When the woman who owned the place greeted him, he responded with, “I’ll take what he’s having, with some more bacon.”
“Certainly,” she said. “Be right there.”
After Pete had filled a cup of coffee from the pot that had been left on the table, Frank said, “You weren’t expecting to find me down here yet.”
“Nope.”
“We’ve ridden together a few times, Pete. We should be able to trust each other.”
Pete stirred a cube of sugar into his coffee and stared quietly down into it. Eventually, he said, “It ain’t a matter of trust. It’s just . . . he ain’t only a knife maker.”
Frank smiled and got back to work on his breakfast. “I’ve pretty much gathered that on my own. Is this man is a good friend of yours?”
“No, but I’ve known him awhile,” Pete said.
The cook returned with Pete’s breakfast and set it down. Once she was happy that her work was done, she went back to the kitchen.
“I’ve got plenty of patience,” Frank said, “but my supply is running short. Tell me who this knife maker is so we can get on with what we’re here to do.”
“His name is Caster Grunwaldt. He . . .” Lowering his voice until it almost couldn’t be heard at all, Pete said, “He’s done some things he ain’t so proud of. Caster has been getting soft in his old age and he’s the sort who might just decide to repent once he gets a look at a preacher.”
“So . . . what’s the problem with that?”
“I was thinkin’ maybe you could just show yourself, but not be close enough to let him talk to you. Sort of . . . grease the wheels.”
“Why didn’t you
just come out and ask that before?” Frank said.
Pete shrugged and cut a portion of griddle cakes that looked almost too large to fit inside a human mouth. “Thought you might find such a thing disagreeable.”
Frank waved that off and chewed on his last strip of bacon. “I’ve had to do many disagreeable things in my time, and not all of them are because of Nate. If seeing me will rattle this Caster person enough to talk a bit more, then so be it. I think I could do even more good if I was close enough to put a few words in myself, though.”
“Guess I underestimated you.”
“You’re not the first to do that, my friend. Tell me some more about this man we’re going to meet.”
“He’s made weapons of all sorts,” Pete explained. “If you needed something that could kill a man in the best possible way, you went to Caster. If he didn’t have any in stock or know where to get them, he’d make the weapon for you himself.”
“Sounds like someone Nate would like to meet.”
The fork Pete pointed at Frank still had a bit of bacon on it when he said, “That’s another reason I was treading carefully on that matter. Caster’s trying to make good. He ain’t another one of us who’s just given in to what we are.”
“We do good work, Pete. You’re no criminal.”
A shadow fell over Pete’s face as he lowered his fork. “Caster ain’t cut out to work with Nate Sathow. He’s a might shaky in the head. Not as shaky as some men we both know, but he’s . . .”
“Haunted?” Frank offered.
“Yeah. Haunted by what he’s done. That being said, I don’t think he’s through doing it, either. Truth is, I don’t know quite what to think. That’s why I thought you’d be a good partner to have along when we talked to him. Perhaps we can shake something loose.”
“If there’s anything to come loose.”
“There is,” Pete said. “It ain’t just some coincidence that a killer like Pescaterro gets ahold of a knife made by someone as fluent in death as Caster.”
“What else is there, Pete? I know when someone is holding back from saying something important. Also, I’ve never seen you so uncomfortable.”
Pete stabbed a few more chunks of griddle cake, used them to sop up some syrup and chewed them down. Finally, he said, “I don’t know if we can trust him. He’s dangerous.”
And there it was. The hesitance in Pete’s tone, the sudden pensiveness, even the way he shifted his eyes away came from a little flame of guilt within Pete’s core. If anyone could spot that flame from a mile away, it was a preacher. “A man who makes the best guns would naturally be a fairly good shot,” Frank said. “For a man with the talents of your friend . . . I imagine his skills extend into some pretty exotic directions.”
“That’s right. I know Nate trusts you, but I ain’t never been right with him letting a man of the Lord ride along with us when we’re getting shot at. But on these jobs, Nate calls the shots. Now that it’s me callin’ a shot or two . . .”
“First of all,” Frank interrupted, “Nate doesn’t let me do anything. He’s damn lucky I offer my services, as are the rest of you. Second, we can’t do what we do by holding back. We work together or not at all. If we, as a people, could take anything beneficial from the War Between the States, that lesson is it.”
“All right then,” Pete said as he sat up straight and wiped his face with his napkin. “For this to go the way we want it to, I need to be certain you’ll go along with the plan and not step on my toes when I’m goin’ to work.”
“That sounds . . . ominous. I thought he was a friend of yours.”
“You’re the one that’s been callin’ him my friend,” Pete said. “I only mentioned that I know him.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’ve worked with Caster enough to know when he’s lying,” Pete said through a mouthful of breakfast. “I also know what it’ll take to push him into helping if he’s feeling uncooperative. What I need from you is—”
“Is to make my presence known as a man of God so I can appeal to this man’s sense of guilt for his past, but not assert myself so much that I get in the way of you breaking his spirit and possibly parts of his body,” Frank said. “Does that sound about right?”
Pete nodded. “It would also help if you didn’t try to do nothing like confuse him with spiritual talk or discuss ways he can repent and such.”
“I see how a preacher trying to save a lost soul might inconvenience our need to beat information out of somebody.”
“When you say it that way, it sounds downright savage.”
“Well then,” Frank said through a warmer smile, “at least we’re both finally seeing eye to eye. Let’s get this over with.”
17
Caster’s shop was a simple one, located near a sawmill and an easy walk to any raw materials a man of his profession might need. There was a blacksmith within sight of his shop, but not so close as to be considered a proper neighbor. Nagle itself was a small community filled with people who were mostly uninterested in meeting the gaze of two strangers walking through it, which suited Frank and Pete’s needs just fine.
On their way to the shop, Pete and Frank discussed how they would approach this weapon smith. It was fairly straightforward, but Pete was a stickler for sorting through any eventualities his fertile mind could produce. By the time Pete was ready to knock on the shop’s door, Frank felt like he’d already met with its owner three or four times in a row.
The shop was locked up tight. Every window was covered and, if he were alone that day, Frank might very well have been convinced the place was empty. He certainly wouldn’t have switched from knocking to kicking the door hard enough to rattle it within its frame. That was the path Pete decided to take, so Frank stood by and watched him go.
After a minute or two, the door’s latches were worked from the other side. Amid the rattle and clatter of the metal posts being pulled back, a grumbling voice could be heard. Frank recognized the language as German. Having a basic understanding of a language didn’t help him decipher the steady torrent of it that was accentuated by colorful gestures and what must have been some nasty requests.
When the door was finally opened, a short man with beady eyes peered out at them. Almost all of his hair was sprouting in a thick curtain covering his upper lip. Whatever grew from his scalp had been cut so short that it wouldn’t have made a serviceable brush. “What do you want?” he asked in an accent that reeked of dark beer and heavy breads.
“Hello, Caster. It’s Pete Meyer. Remember me?”
“Of course I do,” Caster replied in short, chopped words. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you about a knife.”
“There’s a general store in town.”
Pete grinned. “Not just a regular blade. One of your special orders. I got the money to pay for the job to be done right.”
Caster squinted past Pete to where Frank was standing. “Who’s he?”
“A friend. Can we come in or should I start laying out the details on your front porch?”
The door swung open, and Caster stepped aside. He was dressed in simple clothes that were clean, functional and not much else. The black trousers he wore had obviously been mended several times and went along nicely with the rumpled white shirt and dark gray vest that was buttoned most of the way up.
Pete led the way into a shop that was anything but what Frank had expected. Where the front of the store was tightly shut to any intrusion from the outside world, the back was open and embraced its natural surroundings with true vigor. Windows larger than doors lined the far wall, allowing every possible bit of sunlight to flood the wide-open workspace. The floors were immaculately clean. Both work benches had such a high degree of polish that they looked freshly made. Even the collection of tools hanging on the side wall and arranged on a long table had been assembled like a jigsaw puzz
le. Each and every piece came together in the most efficient way to make one glorious whole.
“What is this knife you need me to make?” Caster asked. “Probably one of my custom throwing blades?”
“I don’t know if it’s supposed to be thrown, tossed, dropped or used to butter a biscuit,” Pete said. “But yeah. It’s one of your fancy custom models.”
As he listened to Pete talk, Caster cringed at every word. Frank couldn’t help but notice that Pete was stringing more words together in an unusually messy way and now he saw why. Just listening to the prolonged patter of unnecessary syllables clearly raked Caster’s nerves.
“You are working for Nathan Sathow again, yes?”
“Yes indeed. What makes you pose that question?”
“Because you are still prattling on about nothing instead of buying something,” Caster snapped. “Ask your question and then be on your way.”
“Don’t get snippy with me,” Pete said.
“Why does that one keep staring at me?” Caster asked while staring pensively at the third man in the workshop.
Frank stepped forward with his hands clasped and a tranquil expression on his face, which was the pose he struck whenever he was with someone who expected to talk to a more traditional preacher. “Patience is a virtue, my friend.”
“Sathow has sunk to new lows,” Caster said, “if he has taken to recruiting priests to do his bidding.”
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