by Robert Knott
When we stopped at the sheriff’s office we were met by one of Stringer’s old jailers.
“He another one?” the old jailer said as he stepped off the boardwalk, looking at Skillman.
“He is,” I said.
“Got a cozy room for you,” he said. “Right next to one of your good friends.”
Within a matter of moments we had Skillman off his horse and into the office.
We walked Skillman through the office leading to the cells. Skillman stopped when he saw a young man with curly dark hair and a scruffy beard lying on his bunk, looking at him.
“Dobbin,” Skillman said.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Dobbin said as he glared at Skillman. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
The jailer opened the door next to Dobbin’s cell.
“Dick fucking Skillman,” he said.
Dobbin groaned a bit as he sat up. It was clear to see he was wrapped with bandages under a shirt draped over his shoulders, and by the expression on his face he appeared to be not just in pain but also red-faced angry.
“You left me,” Dobbin said through his teeth.
Skillman said nothing as the jailers opened the cell next to Dobbin and escorted Skillman inside.
Dobbin shook his head. “The three of you, you fucking left me,” he said.
Skillman didn’t say anything.
“That cat that dragged your sorry ass in here also got your lying tongue, did it?” Dobbin said.
“Shut your mouth, boy.”
Dobbin shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Don’t think so.”
“Do like I tell you.”
“Or what, you sack of shit?” Dobbin said. “You goddamn left me. You, the nigger, and the old man, you left me.”
I pulled the key out of my pocket and turned Skillman around to remove his cuffs.
“Got nothing to say?” Dobbin said.
“What’d you expect?” Skillman said.
Skillman stared at me as I took the cuffs off him and backed out, leaving him in the cell.
Dobbin looked to me.
“He was the one that killed those two at the sawmill,” Dobbin said. “It was him.”
Skillman swiveled his head slowly and deliberately toward Dobbin.
“You are a goddamn liar,” Skillman said, then looked back to me. “He’s a goddamn liar.”
“We’ll see to it we get you back to Cibola first chance and get things sorted out,” I said, then looked to Dobbin. “The both of you, we’ll get you back to where you started and where you will end.”
I closed the bars and the old jailer locked the door as Dobbin moved closer to the bars separating his cell from Skillman’s cell.
“You are a murdering piece of shit,” Dobbin said.
Skillman glared at him.
“I’m no squealing pig,” he said.
“Fuck you.”
“You was the one that fucked up, kid,” Skillman said.
“Looks like I was not the only one,” Dobbin said.
“Two is dead ’cause of you.”
“And two more is soon to be dead ’cause of you,” Dobbin said. “Me and the no-good fucking dumb-ass murdering asshole I’m this moment looking directly at.”
“You two are sure two peas in a pod,” the old jailer said. “Might want to give it a rest, otherwise I might have to knock you both around some so you have something to really rant and rave about.”
I glanced at Virgil and we moved off and shut the hall door to the cells, leaving the two wounded escapees to their discording banter.
“What now?” Deputy Hart said to Virgil.
“First order is to check with the wire office and find out if the telegraph line to Cibola has been fixed.”
30
The rain continued to fall. It was steady and solid, and the streets of Yaqui were turning into one big puddle. From boardwalk to boardwalk Virgil and I made our way over to one of Yaqui’s best and most popular eating establishments, the Altamont Steak House.
We hung our hats and slickers at the entrance, took a seat, and ordered us each a steak and fried potatoes. The waiter was pouring us each a second glass of wine when Deputies Flower and Hart entered. We looked up as they removed their soaked hats and came walking over to our table.
“Still nothing from Wingate or Cibola regarding the wire, sir,” Hart said.
Virgil looked at me and shook his head.
“Damn,” I said. “You think that it would be back up by now.”
Virgil nodded.
“But there was something that happened to a couple of prospectors this afternoon that you should know about,” Flower said.
“Which is?” Virgil said.
“They reported to one of the deputies on duty while we were gone that they were held up by a gang,” Flower said.
“A gang?” I said.
“They say what kind of gang?” Virgil said.
“Not that we know of,” Flower said.
“What else did they allow?” Virgil said.
“We’ve not talked to them, not personally,” Flower said. “Figured we’d let the two of you know.”
“You know when this was?” I said.
“No, sir,” Flower said.
“All we know is what we heard,” Hart said. “They came to the office and reported that they were robbed.”
“And where are these prospectors?” Virgil said.
“Deputy said they are staying over at the livery stables,” Hart said.
“You want us to find them and bring them to talk with you,” Flower said.
Virgil shook his head.
“No,” he said. “We’ll have a talk with them after we have our supper here.”
The deputies nodded.
“What would you like for us to do now?” Hart said.
“You fellas had anything to eat yet?”
They looked to each other and shook their heads from side to side in tandem.
“No, sir,” they said.
Virgil looked to the waiter and pointed to Hart and Flower.
“Bring these boys same as us,” he said, then looked back to the deputies. “Hang your slickers and get a seat.”
The two nodded, said thank you, then did as Virgil asked.
—
After supper the four of us walked over to the livery and found the prospectors camped out in one of the back stalls with their mules.
They were drinking whiskey from a jug and playing cards on top of a crate when we walked up. Both of them looked as if they’d never had a bath in their lives. They were missing teeth, chewed huge wads of tobacco, and looked nearly identical except one had whiter hair than the other.
“You the boys that got held up?” I said.
They looked up, squinting at us.
“Who wants to know?” the younger one said.
I showed them my badge.
The four of us moved into the stall and spread out in front of them as they looked up at us.
“Too little, too late,” the older one said.
“For?” I said.
“Him and me,” he said, “was robbed.”
“We heard,” I said.
“By who?” Virgil said.
“Mean sumbitches,” the younger man said. “We don’t know who or where they come from.”
“We never seen them around here before,” the older man said.
“We pretty much know everybody around these parts. When we first laid eyes on them I told Dudley—I’m Theodore, this here is my brother Dudley—I told him shit howdy, get fucking ready, and sure enough I was right.”
Dudley nodded.
“How many?”
“There was two of them at first,” Dudley said.
“Then one more come up behind us,” his brother said. “And fucking robbed us.”
Virgil looked to me.
“So there was three of them?” I said.
“That’s right,” Theodore said. “And I damn near shot their asses,
too.”
31
“Oh, bullshit, Theodore,” Dudley said.
“I did,” his brother said.
“You did no such thing.”
“I did.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Dudley said.
“Well, I told him,” Theodore said. “I should have shot the sonsabitches as they was riding off.”
“Damn good thing he didn’t try,” Dudley said. “You old fool. You’d gone for that carbine, we’d be fucking dead.”
“Bullshit.” Theodore said as he pointed to his skinny white-eared mule. “I had it right there in the scabbard tucked under the off side of Lily’s pannier. They did not see it. Otherwise, they would have took it. I could have got to it.”
“Where this happen?” Virgil said.
“’Bout twenty mile this side of Montezuma,” Dudley said. “We’d just come down earlier this morning when we ran into them.”
“From where?” I said.
“I can’t tell you that,” Theodore said. “We have our places that we can’t let just anybody know about.”
“Our places, shit,” Dudley said. “They are the goddamn law.”
“So.”
“You seriously think these lawmen are gonna go out there and pan us out?”
“You’re the one that always tells me to keep my mouth shut,” Theodore said.
“For good goddamn reason,” Dudley said.
“Well, listen to you,” Theodore said.
“You say near Montezuma,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” Dudley said. “Give or take.”
“Were they headed that way?” I said. “Toward Montezuma?”
The brothers looked at each other and shook their heads from side to side like puppets.
“Could be,” Dudley said.
“Do you think for any reason that was their destination?” I said.
The brothers looked at each other again.
“No idea about that,” Dudley said.
“What’d they take you for?” Virgil said.
“Shit, not much,” Dudley said.
“Not much, hell,” Theodore said. “All the money we had. Sixteen dollars. I should have shot ’em.”
“Them boys had that look,” Dudley said. “Like they’d cut you down just for the hell of it but they just wanted money. They didn’t go through our shit or nothing.”
“And we got nothing of value in our belongings,” Theodore said, shaking his head completely unconvincingly. “Nothing at all, not one thing, no gold or nothing, only thing of value is that carbine of mine and they left it alone.”
“Tell us about the men,” Virgil said.
The brothers looked at each other.
“They were mounted?” I said.
“Oh, yeah,” Dudley said. “They were.”
“And they had guns?” Virgil said.
“Damn sure did,” Theodore said. “Pointed right at us.”
“They all had guns?” I said.
The brothers nodded.
“They did,” Dudley said.
“Some men escaped out of Cibola that we are after, and it sounds as if these men might have been them. Any reason you think it might have been them, you notice any prison clothes, anything like that?”
“No,” Dudley said.
“What’d they look like?”
“Shit,” Theodore said as he looked to Dudley.
“Average dumb-looking robbers,” Theodore said. “They was just skinny fellas . . .”
“All but one,” Dudley said.
Theodore nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “The one that come up from behind.”
“He was kind of big, strong-looking,” Dudley said. “No hat and bald as a goddamn baby.”
Virgil looked at me.
“Ravenscroft,” I said.
“I could have picked off each of the sonsabitches.”
“Will you shut up? We’re lucky to be alive.”
32
We left Dudley and Theodore and walked by the stalls toward the front of the livery.
“Montezuma’s the real fancy place near Las Vegas, ain’t it?” Flower said.
“Largest hotel west of the Mississippi,” Hart said. “That’s what I heard.”
“Never been there,” Flower said.
“Me neither,” Hart said.
“You think they’d go to the Montezuma?” Flower said as we neared the wide front door of the stables.
“Could,” I said.
“Fancy damn place for escaped convicts,” Hart said.
“I heard President Arthur went there,” Flower said. “And Hays and Grant, too.”
“Montezuma takes money like anyplace else,” Virgil said.
“No telling who else they might have robbed besides the prospectors,” I said.
“But then again, they could go anyplace,” Hart said.
“They could at that,” Virgil said.
“That they could,” I said.
We stopped at the door, looking out at the rain. The liveryman that we’d talked to when we first entered was sitting in the office reading a newspaper. He looked up and nodded a bit.
“What now?” Flower said.
Virgil waited a second, then looked to the deputies who were both looking at him expectantly.
“For now, let’s get our animals squared away, then you boys get yourselves dried out and rested,” he said. “Then we’ll see you at the office in the early morning and go from there.”
“We gonna ride to Montezuma?” Hart said.
Virgil looked out for a moment, then looked to Hart and Flower.
“Don’t know,” Virgil said. “Right now Everett and me need to do some communicating at the wire office. Then we’ll see you boys in the morning.”
“They got wire to there, to the Montezuma?” Hart said.
“Good chance,” I said.
Virgil said, “We’ll see what we can find out.”
“Okay,” Flower said.
Hart and Flower turned up the collars on their slickers, and we watched them as they hurried off into the rain.
“Good fellas,” Virgil said.
“Boys,” I said.
“They are.”
Virgil and I stayed out of the rain, watching it come down for a bit, then we moved on across town to the Western Union. We learned that the Montezuma indeed did have wire service, but the communication with them proved little to nothing. The hotel was crowded at the moment because of a territory political symposium, and there was no way to determine if three of the hundreds of guests might be the three men we were looking for.
We subsequently sent a wire to the Las Vegas sheriff’s office, alerting them about the three escapees, and heard back that they had received a previous alert from Stringer’s office with detailed descriptions and had been keeping sharp eyes out for them. We next sent a wire to Appaloosa to see if there had been any new details regarding the prison break or if there was any new information regarding the man that had fled from the shootout at Meserole’s saloon and learned there was nothing new to report on either front. Last, we tried to contact the prison, but still there was no connection.
Virgil and I walked to the Rawlings Hotel. It was the nicest hotel and the oldest, sort of like the Boston House in Appaloosa but bigger, and with a larger saloon. We booked us each a room, then settled in to the bar, where an older Negro fella was playing the piano. The place was fairly empty. There was a corner table with some men in suits sitting with a few saloon ladies, and at the far end of the bar sat two other dapper-looking older fellows having a lively liquor-fueled discussion.
“Two whiskeys,” I said.
“And let me have one of those cigars you have there,” Virgil said to the bartender as he pointed to an open box behind the bar.
“You bet,” said the barkeep.
He poured us each a whiskey, then removed a cigar from the box.
He clipped the end with a brass tip cutter and handed it to Virgil. Then he struck a
fat match, cupped his hand over the flame, and held it out over the bar. After Virgil got the cigar going good, the bartender shook the flame out and moved on down the rail.
We drank some whiskey and listened to the piano for a little while, thinking about our options. Like the deputies had mentioned, the Montezuma was the largest hotel in the west, maybe in the whole United States. With more than four hundred rooms, built by railroad tycoons on the Gallinas Creek north of Las Vegas, Montezuma was a hot-springs destination for the wealthy who could afford the lavish accommodations.
“We, of course, could ride up there to Montezuma and not find them,” I said.
Virgil nodded.
“Got to go someplace, though,” I said.
“We do,” Virgil said.
“If it’s running,” I said. “Maybe we take the train to Vegas. Be quicker.”
Virgil nodded as he puffed on his cigar.
“Excuse me,” I said to the bartender as he came walking by. “You wouldn’t happen to have a train schedule back there, would you?”
The bartender turned and plucked out a printed schedule from an upright menu box and handed it over the bar to me.
“Much appreciated,” I said.
“What you see there is pretty much what you get,” the bartender said. “Amazes me how they can stay on time . . . The way of the world, I guess.”
He walked off as I read the schedule.
“Leaves here at seven,” I said. “Arrives Vegas, two in the afternoon.”
“Take us the whole day and then some if we were to ride,” Virgil said.
“The way of the world,” I said.
33
Late in the evening, Driggs watched the princess sleeping as he dressed. He had been curious about her pretty teeth, her pearly white teeth that pushed forward ever so slightly. He thought the little overbite was a sensuous part of her appeal. She was in every way a beautiful woman, and her teeth, with that slight protrusion, made her even more alluring. He had wondered before if it was because she had sucked her thumb as a child. Now, however, he was sure as he watched her with her thumb tucked softly into her mouth as she slept. Baby, he thought. He looked at her softness and youth and saw that even now, she was still not much more than a child, only a third his age. But she was by no means young in her actions and feelings. He took a swig from the bottle, then sat and rolled a few cigarettes as he gazed at her sucking her thumb. She was an old soul, he knew.