Portraits

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Portraits Page 6

by Stef Ann Holm


  The silver-skinned fish was presented whole and decorated with slivers of green-and-yellow things Wyatt couldn’t identify. But the arrangement looked like something from a picture book, with a side bowl of fancy rice that had scrambled eggs in it. The food smelled appetizing enough, so he dug in.

  The fish was moist and flavorful, though he was still a little doubtful about the green-and-yellow shreds, so he pushed them off. The black beans had an odd texture, but were a welcome sight from flat boiled greens. The meal, though foreign to him, was much better than the Van Camp’s Boston baked pork and beans he’d grown weary of eating for the past month.

  As Wyatt ate, he periodically glanced at Tug. The boy was good-looking. Just like his mother and sister, only his coloring was fairer than the girl’s. His hair was a light brown and his eyes were hazel.

  Wyatt pondered the whereabouts of the boy’s father. It was very unlikely that it had been the embrace of a lover’s arms Leah had been basking in when Wyatt had first seen her. Now he assumed she was married, only she didn’t wear a wedding ring. But times had changed. A man couldn’t tell very much about a person just by looking at her anymore. It could be she was a widow. That, or her husband ran off. The latter unexplainably aroused anger in Wyatt.

  “How do you like the fish?” Leo drew up to Wyatt’s table with another cola.

  “It’s pretty good,” Wyatt replied after swallowing.

  “Of course it’s good.”

  Wyatt accepted the cola. “Thanks.” He took a satisfying drink, then asked, “Does that marshal take an evening round after his supper?”

  “The only thing Bean Scudder takes after his supper is a Bromo-Seltzer for his heartburn.”

  “So he stays home?”

  “Until nine the following morning.”

  Wyatt nodded. He was planning on setting up a camp at the outskirts of town and didn’t need a snoopy U.S. marshal tripping into his site in the middle of the night. “Does that deputy of his do anything?”

  “Moon?” Leo snorted. “Moon’s about as useful as Scudder. Neither one could shoot the center out of a quarter a foot away from them. It’s a good thing Eternity isn’t a wild, shoot ’em up town or we’d all be put to bed with a pick and shovel.” Leo’s eyes fell on Wyatt’s long-nosed revolver. “ ’Cept you. You look like you could defend yourself.”

  The bell rang, but Leo ignored it.

  Wyatt observed, “Your cook in there could defend himself with that cleaver.”

  A second peal sounded, followed by a series of ding-dings.

  Leo yelled something in what Wyatt assumed was the Chinese language. Then facing Wyatt again, he said, “Tu Yan cooks faster than I can keep up with. Don’t ever sneak up on him, he doesn’t speak a word of English.”

  “Why would I sneak up on him?”

  Grinning, Leo lifted his brows. “Because you’re thinking on that dishwasher job I’ve got posted in the window.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know how Scudder makes introductions and threats.” Leo tapped the ash from a fresh cigarette. “The job pays twenty dollars a month, plus meals. And in your case, seeing how you enjoy that Coca-Cola so much, those are included.”

  Leo walked off before Wyatt could speak. He had been thinking about the opening, but not because Bean had put the thought into his head. The truth was, Wyatt needed the money the job would pay. He’d worked in Boise City as a trench digger to buy July and the supplies that had gotten him to Colorado. But now those supplies were about gone, and he didn’t have the cash to buy replacements. Seeing as the only position available in Eternity was dishwasher, that meant employment at the Happy City Restaurant.

  Wyatt savored the last bites of his supper, eating slowly and without anyone breathing over his neck. The habit of wolfing down his food had been a hard one to break. But he’d succeeded in the past month in enjoying his meals and tasting every last flavor in them, even if it was pork and beans.

  As he wiped his mouth and set his napkin on his plate, Leah approached the table with her son. The boy still wore Wyatt’s boss of the plains Stetson that had seen better days. Both of Tug’s hands clamped the brim, keeping the crown anchored at the back of his head. Reluctance to give the hat up and even a faint shimmer of tears showed in Tug’s eyes. “I like this hat. It’s a man’s hat. Who wants a Roughrider Roy when they can have a real hat that smells like horse poop?”

  “Owen Edwin,” Leah scolded. “That language is unacceptable. You take this hat off and return it to Mr. Holloway. Right now.”

  Tug pouted but didn’t make a ready move. Wyatt’s gaze rose to Leah’s. Dismay lightened the brown of her eyes. It had been unfair of him to treat her with cool indifference. Who she was and what she did had no bearing, just as long as she didn’t point a camera at him. Still, that didn’t mean he wanted to socialize with her. He’d be polite, if and whenever they crossed paths. But he’d make sure he kept any subconscious thoughts of her intoxicating feel and the carnation fragrance on her skin from influencing the searing need that had been building within him.

  “I need my hat now, Tug,” Wyatt said, hoping that his subtle bid would influence Tug into giving up the Stetson without an argument with his mother.

  Tug didn’t say a word to him when he slid the hat off his head and handed it over. The brim was a little out of shape and rumpled, and the worn dent in the crown slightly crushed.

  “I ain’t got no hat and I ain’t got no spurs,” the boy said in a shaky voice to his ma. Tug swiped his rapidly blinking eyes with his scraped up knuckles as he battled with himself not to cry. “I’ll never be a cowboy for real.”

  Then Tug ran out of the restaurant and Wyatt watched him race down Main Street.

  “Excuse me.” Leah left Wyatt’s table, gathered her pocketbook and dashed off after her child. The daughter walked out slowly as if nothing amiss had happened, nibbling on a cookie Leo had given her.

  Leaning back in his chair, Wyatt couldn’t help feeling somewhat sorry for Leah Kirkland as she lifted her skirt and snowy petticoats to chase after her wayward boy. The two women sitting at the next table huddled their heads together and chattered like a pair of parakeets. He heard a few of the words: disgraceful, unruly, typical. They didn’t sit well with him. He knew what it was like to feel helpless about a set of circumstances. A man had to do the best he could, and he supposed it was the same for a woman.

  * * *

  Wyatt laid out his bedroll at the timberline cutting across the mountain just before the trees gave way to the brush and wildflowers. This high, and with the break of pine boughs to help conceal him, he’d felt safe in coaxing a low-burning fire to life.

  He’d lingered at the Happy City for a while, talking to Leo about the details of the job. Leo wasn’t open on Sunday, so he didn’t have to report for work tomorrow. Monday would be soon enough. First light, he was going over to the hardware store to buy the tools he needed. He hoped they’d save him from kitchen duty on Monday by digging up the money.

  The snap of the campfire pulled Wyatt’s thoughts in a different direction. Down the old path. He stared, mesmerized by the flames, thinking back . . . way back. To a time that was bygone and best forgotten. But he couldn’t. No matter how much he wanted to forget it, the past was always there. The doubt. The shame. Tonight, he saw himself in the fire. The way he used to be . . .

  3

  You may change the clothes; you cannot change the man.

  —Chinese proverb

  September 15, 1887

  Silverton, Colorado

  The smell of breakfast sizzling in a frying pan on the campfire did nothing to entice Harlen’s appetite. His stomach, sour from too much liquor the night before, made thinking about food impossible. He kept visualizing the young girl’s face. Seeing the accusation and pain in her eyes.

  Honest to God, Harlen had never killed another living soul in all his life. The double-barreled shotgun he carried in a saddle holster was mostly for show, because he avoide
d needless violence and never used that firearm in a shootout. When being pursued by peace officers while on horseback, he fired his Remington-Rider, a piece with an accuracy he knew, because hitting a rider was a last resort, and then he never aimed to kill.

  Yesterday was the first instance when a woman had been hit. And Harlen’s .44 could have been the cause of her death. Bullets had been flying every which way in the confusion. That had him spooked. He hadn’t been able to control his shots as much as he wanted to.

  “So it’s Mexico,” Thomas Jefferson said, dragging Harlen from his hellish thoughts.

  “Too many authorities know us up north. Down south is the only way.” Nate drew on a cigarette, the smoke mixing with his words.

  Manny sat on his haunches. “We’ll need traveling money.”

  “Silverton Miners Bank.” Colvin stirred leftover beans into the salt pork. Setting the bent spoon on a sooty containment rock that rimmed the fire, he stood. “We know the layout. Know who the manager is and what kind of pistol he keeps. Pierpont Farnham couldn’t hit a bull’s ass with a banjo. So we know we’re safe on that account.”

  Nate gazed at Harlen. “You’ve said two words at best this morning, Shepp. What’s on your mind?”

  Harlen popped off the top to his bottle of rye. Taking a slow drink that burned down to his navel, he licked the flavor from his lips. “We’ve got no choice but to rob that bank. We need the money.”

  “I heard tell two days ago their assets were up to sixty-thousand dollars,” Thomas Jefferson remarked. “That’d be twelve a piece. Enough to get us where we need to go.”

  Harlen nodded. He didn’t really want to talk about robbing the bank or forming a plan. He wanted to talk about the woman. Evaline. But in that regard, the Loco Boys weren’t like him. They didn’t see things the same way. The woman’s death was an unfortunate accident to them. And that was it. When they rode on, what had happened in Telluride was no longer their concern.

  Maybe they were right. Letting the incident eat away at him wasn’t going to change anything. What was done was done. There was nothing he could do. Hell, it may not even have been his bullet. Rounds had been coming from everyone. Could even have been a detective’s bullet that had hit Evaline Darling. Then Harlen wouldn’t have the guilt so strong on his shoulder. There was still the matter that, had he and the boys not been in that photography studio, the shootout wouldn’t have occurred. But he couldn’t keep going around with what had happened. It was over. Finished.

  Yet for all his coldhearted reasoning, Harlen couldn’t forget.

  Downing a long pull of the rye, Harlen’s voice grew raspy when he said without emotion, “Since we’re going to rob that bank, we’ll need a plan, boys.”

  * * *

  Silverton was framed to the south by the Sultan Mountains, had few trees lining the main street, and was built up with a moderate population of miners. Other businesses prospered, but the bank held the true wealth of the city. The brick institution was located next to the Grand Imperial Hotel.

  The Loco Boys had split up near the North Star mill. Thomas Jefferson and Manny posed as trail-weary cowboys with their dusty scarfs over their noses and mouths, riding ahead and checking for the whereabouts of the sheriff. Nate and Harlen rode across Main Street made up like saddle tramps. Colvin walked alongside their horses dressed in ragged clothing, wearing hobnailed shoes and carrying a sloppy-looking roll of ragged blankets. Inside was a concealed, ready rifle. Colvin was the insurance man in case anything went wrong. He was supposed to enter the bank and sit down to cover any unexpected emergencies. The only trouble was, on the way into Silverton he’d run into a skunk.

  Before Colvin could pick the weasel off with his Colt, he’d lost the fight but good. Old pretty boy Colvin Henkels smelled like month-old eggs left out in the scorching sun to rot.

  Dismounting, Harlen slip-tied Blue’s halter rope to the hitching post out front. He frowned over the stink brought on the breeze when the wind shifted. Colvin hovered near the bank entrance, his hat pulled down over his eyes. They all wore their hats low. Each man had altered his facial appearance, either by soot, scarves, clay mixed up to make their complexions darker, false scars, or temporary hair coloration from ashes. Whenever they pulled a job, they’d always worn disguises. There was only one time that came to Harlen’s mind when they hadn’t. That was in Montpelier, Idaho, some two years ago, when he and the boys had been drunk and feeling cocksure of themselves.

  Nate nodded to Harlen, and the two of them entered the building. The interior was small and poorly lit through the yellowed curtains, with just one male customer who departed on their entrance. An empty bank was a better bank to hold up. There were two teller cages, but only one of them was in use at this midhour of the day. A clerk and cashier stood at the wooden counter going over accounts. They lifted their visored heads when Harlen and Nate came in, but went on writing when Harlen moved for the table at the center of the room, produced his wallet, and began filling out a depository note.

  Glancing out of the corner of his eye, Harlen saw Pierpont Farnham at his desk in the enclosure. The man was preoccupied with stacks of ledgers, an ink pen and a tablet in which he scribbled figures. Snug in one of those desk drawers was a loaded pistol, though that thought didn’t trouble Harlen, because he knew Pierpont couldn’t hit a sitting target much less a moving one. And Harlen planned on moving out of the bank quickly.

  As soon as Colvin slipped inside, the room was filled with a god-awful smell. Harlen strode to the counter, cursing the bad timing of that skunk. The teller took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes behind the glass of his spectacles. The stench was so thick, they were all choking on the vapors coming off Colvin’s hole-riddled coat.

  “I’d like to make a deposit,” Harlen said over the teller’s cough. But as he began to slide his money across the polished surface, he paused. Then in a muted tone, he went on to say, “On second thought, I’d like all the money in the bank.”

  The teller and clerk looked at him as if he were joking.

  Harlen pulled the side of his coat back, calmly removed his Remington from its holster, and pointed it at the clerk’s head. “Make any sudden movements or noises, and we’ll shoot you down.”

  The two men gazed over Harlen’s shoulder. Harlen knew that Nate and Colvin were backing him up and there was no question as to who was in charge of the situation.

  “Be quick,” Harlen advised, “and no one will get hurt. I want the cage unlocked. Get the key from Farnham.”

  The teller went on shaky legs toward the manager’s desk and made the request without looking back.

  Farnham leaned past the teller’s middle and made eye contact with Harlen. Harlen’s menacing expression didn’t crack. The manager stood, taking from his desktop a ring full of keys that rattled when he walked.

  Nate had positioned himself by the cage door, and when it was unlocked, waved his gun at the manager and teller, signaling them to move them toward the far wall. “The vault. Unlock it,” he ordered, while Harlen dealt with the shaken clerk.

  “Everything in the till. Put it in here.” He took out two empty grain leather satchels that he’d tucked inside his coat. Opening the tops, he laid them on the counter.

  The clerk stuffed money into the bags, with trembling hands.

  Harlen yelled for Colvin to cover him while he entered the vault with Nate, who’d been carrying two satchels himself. They took piles of twenty-dollar gold pieces, five- and ten-dollar coins, and stacks of currency.

  Pierpoint, with eyes watering, sputtered his offense at Colvin’s rankness. “You smell like a polecat.”

  Colvin swore at Farnham, but it wasn’t enough to keep the manager quiet. Either he was stronger on brains than he was on his aim, or he was just plain stupid.

  “But a polecat is a sight better looking than you,” Farnham added with a wheeze.

  Harlen heard Colvin threaten to shoot Pierpont where he stood. That shut him up. Nate had taken almost all the leg
al tender there was in that vault. Harlen took up his two bulging satchels. Nate carted the other two to be given to Harlen for the ride out. It would have made more sense for Nate to keep his bags and not tax Harlen’s horse with the extra load. But a code with the Loco Boys was that their leader was in charge of the booty until they could get to a place where they could split the money among them. Everyone trusted Harlen, and they’d always operated this way.

  “In the vault, gentleman, and close the door.” Harlen’s directions were punctuated with the point of his gun.

  The three bankers shuffled into the gated vault with its bar doors and closed themselves off behind the iron. Nate threw the keys. They slid across the floor and hit the floorboards far from reach of the captives. As Harlen made his way to the exit walking backward, he spotted Colvin at the counter scribbling on what looked like a piece of paper, and leaving it behind. There wasn’t an opportunity to ask him about the note until the five of them were riding hard out of town.

  “What was that you left back there, Colvin?” Harlen shouted over the earth-pounding hooves of the horses.

  Colvin answered in a rush of defiant words. “No one calls Colvin Henkels a stinking, ugly polecat. I left those sons of bitches Darling’s photograph of us so they could see just how good-looking I really am. I wrote my name on the back.”

  “You did what?” Harlen roared.

  “Hell, we’ve never been caught before and it ain’t no secret what we look like. That man insulted me. I’m no ugly, smelling bum, and I take offense to anyone who calls me one.”

  Harlen’s nostrils flared with fury. “Colvin, you’ve just made a serious mistake in the name of arrogance.”

  But with a posse hot on their trail, Harlen couldn’t right the wrong. The portrait would be discovered, and so would their identities. Even though Colvin was right, it was no secret that Harlen Riley alias Harvey Shepp ran the Loco Boys. And everyone knew their names besides. But leaving a picture as a calling card was opening the door for blame. Now there was no denying it had been them stealing from that bank. They might as well have gone in without their disguises.

 

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