“I want you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.”
“I do not fear for my well-being in your protection. In fact, just the opposite.”
“I would keep you safe, and you would never starve. On those counts I can give my word. But short of that, I cannot promise you much in the way of high living, at least until I get things sorted.”
“You think I care about any of that?”
“Women don’t much like going backwards.”
“Love is always backwards. That’s half the fun.” She earns a smile out of me on that one and I give her hand a little squeeze. But then I break and cross to the window. I do not want to get used to her face, not until I know it will greet me with the dawn every morning until I die.
“You would give up your life, and your people, for a fella what cannot even read?”
Her eyes go serious. A stern finger rises to reprimand me. “Now listen here, Harlan. You may have the town fooled that you are some kind of simpleton, but not me. I see right through you. I look into your eyes and I see a man powerful intelligent. Why you or anyone else would ever believe anything to the contrary is beyond me.”
I stand before her, called on the carpet like a schoolboy, and I know that this is the way it will be between us, our deepest secrets laid bare.
“I mix my letters up, is all. And my numbers. Always have. Makes reading damn near impossible. Nothing wrong with my vision, though. I got the eyes of a hawk.”
“That you do. And lovely ones at that.” She turns away, unable to conceal a little smile.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Heavens, no. I only . . . well, your shyness about your affliction in endearing. I am confident, Harlan, that the only burden with which you are truly afflicted is the curse of being raised in this unenlightened, hayseed town. My own cousin suffered as a child from the very condition you have just described. His parents were at wit’s end over what to do. Then word came about a doctor, in San Francisco, no less, who had some bold new treatment. My young cousin was carted off to see him. He returned home a year later, his nose buried in a book. And do you know what became of him?”
“What?”
“He is a professor of literature at Harvard University.”
“No foolin’?”
“Honest injun.” And with that, we both bust up laughing. She puts her arm around me, letting her head fall against my shoulder.
“You make me smile, girl.”
“Please forgive me for what I am about to say . . . but I feel it was . . . divine providence that brought us here together.”
“God did not burn my place down. Men did.”
“I do not believe in coincidence. If there is a silver lining to be found in your tragic loss it is that I have been given the chance to make my true feelings known. As have you, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then we are decided. Mister Willis has sent for the coach the morning after next. We have until that time to make our escape. First to Santa Fe to handle your business and then off to San Francisco.”
“Slow down now. We cannot just hop on the train together, you and me. Can you ride?”
“Well, I won’t fall off, if that’s what you mean.”
“I’ll need to make provisions. We ride at night. That will take some planning, finding you the right horse and whatnot. Leave that to me. You do not talk to anyone until I come find you. We clear on that?”
“As a bell, Mister Two-Trees.” And then her mouth finds mine again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“The game broke an hour ago,” Merle says, sliding a warm beer across the bar to me. “I reckon the gambler’s back at the hotel, licking his wounds. It wasn’t his night.”
“You hear anybody lookin’ to unload a pony?” I ask.
“Not offhand, no. But tough times tend to put folks in a selling frame of mind.”
“Lost the mule in the fire. Need something that don’t spook.”
“I’ll keep an ear out.” Merle picks up his chamois and goes back to his polishing.
The Jewel has settled back into its usual rhythm—a handful of regulars getting a jump on the night’s drinking before the sun has even set. The door bangs open and closed again. I feel a sturdy figure move up behind me. I turn to see Big Jack. He removes his hat and nods to me.
“Harlan. I owe you an apology, speaking to you like I did last night. I feel just awful about it. Them folks what is blaming you for any of this are dang fools and I don’t care who knows it.”
“All right.”
Jack spies the empty stool next to me and lays his big doe eyes on me. “Mind if I sit?”
I slide over a hair and Jack plops himself down, relieved. Merle sets up the three shot glasses and uncorks the whiskey.
“Everybody’s friends again,” Merle says. The door bangs once more and purposeful footsteps click across the floor toward the bar, right for me. It is Bix, the Pinkerton second.
“Afternoon,” he says stiffly.
“To you too, sir,” Merle counters. “What can I get you?”
“It’s him I want,” Bix says, nodding at me. I look over from my stool without turning. “We’re putting a team together, governor’s orders. We’re going to hunt down LaForge, bring back the money before they have time to spend it. Dead or alive, his reign of terror’s over.”
“Tall order,” I say.
“Pinkertons doing this job on their own?” Merle asks.
“We got a need for one or two more, someone who knows them hills. Maybe could intercede if the Indians get squirrelly.”
“Captain send you in here with that?” I ask.
“Tell you the truth, he’s not crazy about it. So don’t make me beg.”
“You don’t have to. I wish you all the luck.”
“Look, this was my idea. I figured what better way for a man to clear his name of any involvement than to be part of the team what sets things right.”
“So, you come in here for my benefit?”
“Not entirely. Truth is . . .” Bix trails off, aware of listening ears. He bends down and barely whispers, “Without you, I don’t think we’ll ever find them.”
“Thank you all the same, but my days of charity are over. Sorry.”
Bix straightens again and clears his throat. “Job pays a hundred a day, plus a share of the reward on the Snowman and his gang, plus a percentage of the recovered loot.”
Her face comes to me, a flower in the soft morning light. We will need money.
“A share?” I ask.
“That’s the deal.”
“Where is the captain now?”
Bix steps aside and motions toward the door. I rise and follow him out, Merle and Big Jack tailing behind us.
Outside the Jewel awaits the full complement of armed Pinkerton men, nearly two dozen strong. In the middle, seated atop his horse and eyeing me suspect, is the captain.
“He’s in,” Bix says.
“He can tend the horses. We leave in an hour.” He starts his horse toward the jail and I stop him.
“Captain,” I say, allowing my voice to find its full weight. “If I ride it’s for an equal share. Same as any other man.”
The captain glances over his shoulder, but only far enough to catch Bix’s eye, not mine. The nod is barely perceptible. Bix spits in his hand and extends it my way. I slap my palm into his.
“Witnessed!” Merle adds, from the steps of the Jewel. But it is the captain who has the last word. He calls over his shoulder as he rides away.
“You defy my orders, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Casey comes around the corner of the jail, a stack of folded blankets under his arm. “Two per man,” he says, doling out a pair to each of the men in the staging area. A cold wind whistles down from the Sangres.
“What about for the horses?” I ask, taking the bundle from him.
“Well, you can always share.”
I cinch the blankets behind the saddle pack and pull
the rope taut. Storm hates the cold, and likes plunging his hoof into a snowdrift even less. But the slate gray sky to the east tells me the first frost is still a day or two away. So we have our window.
I take stock of the Pinkerton men as they load up with extra socks and enough ammunition to stop a train. Despite their surly grumblings, they retain the aura of professional lawmen, capable, as anyone can be, of the mission at hand. I put our odds at even money, which, short of enlisting the aid of the U.S. Cavalry, is as good as anyone could expect going up against the Snowman’s gang.
But the scale of advantage tips in LaForge’s favor when I do an honest headcount. With the captain and me, we are twenty, a large enough force to match nearly man for man with the outlaws’ numbers, but not so small that we will catch them by surprise. No matter what we do, the Snowman will see us coming. And so will the Dineh.
“Five minutes!” Bix cries, checking his watch against that of the captain as they make their way down the steps of the jail. I climb up on Storm and lead him over to the trough for a final drink. A small, pale figure steps out from the alley to my left, long enough for me to see her, and then retreats hastily to the safety of the shadows. It is Genevieve. I slip down from the saddle and disappear, undetected, into the alley.
“You should not be here,” I say.
“You were going to leave without saying good-bye.”
“I left word with Cookie. He’d have found you.”
“What about us?”
“Our plan has not changed. I have to do this first.”
“You speak like it is an errand to the Dry Goods. You most likely will get killed.”
“It is good money. We need it. And it is the right thing to do.”
“Is there anything I can say to make you stay?” Her eyes puddle with tears.
“This should not take more than two days, one way or the other. Can you stall Willis that long?”
“I’ll find a way. I will wait for you.”
“There is a chance . . . I will not come back.”
“I’ll just have to pray that you do.” She turns and walks quickly down the alley. I vow here beneath the Spirits and the White Man’s God that she will see me again.
Four minutes later, the team thunders through the center of town toward the west, dead-on into the sights of the big eye as it retreats behind the cragged peaks of the Sangres.
Our departure is void of pageantry. The curious glances of a few scattershot observers seem to convey a sense of irritation at the noise more than any aspirations that this solemn band of lawmen, of which I find myself a part, represents any hope of vengeance or restitution. That would require optimism—of which the bankrupted souls of the Bend are fresh out.
But there is one spectator who surveys our exodus with fitting reverence, as if he alone comprehends the gravity and complexity of our mission. Avery Willis.
He stands at the open window of his suite in his shirtsleeves, a cigar perched gently between his fingers. My eye catches his and he offers a gracious tip of his head. I return the salutation and resume my place in formation.
How small the town seems now. The buildings fly by until all that lies between the team and the chalky wasteland of open desert is Otis Chandler’s house. As we ride toward its fence, the front door bursts open and Chandler himself charges out, wailing with grief. In his arms he carries the rag doll body of a boy, maybe all of fifteen, dead.
“Whoa!” The captain shouts, shooting up his arm in an L-shaped position that stops the team on a dime.
“Look what they did to my boy!” As Chandler lumbers down the paving stones toward us, I see the mortal results of the child’s injuries. His head is sticky with dried blood where hair used to be and his face and neck bear the deep, plum-purple of violently ruptured veins. “Savages killed my boy!”
“What happened to him?” the captain demands.
“He never came home from the stables. I went looking, found him out by the hay yard. Oh, his poor mother. Forgive me, son. Dear Jesus, forgive me!”
Bix weaves his bay up next to me. “Who is that?” he asks.
“Stable boy.”
“Looks like they strangled him ’fore they took his scalp. See them dark bruises across his neck?”
“Yeah.”
Chandler crumples to his knees, choking out tears. A woman howls from inside the house, her unfettered grief drowning out the gentler sobs of small, frightened children.
“Your kind did this!” Chandler jabs a finger at me, spitting out the words. “Damn you all, damn every last red-faced one of you!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Caliche Bend fades from view like a distant, dying star. We cross the desert toward Heavendale, hoping to pick up the Snowman’s trail before sundown. The tight formation of horses slackens on the open tundra. I spot Delmer, the crank-gunner, struggling to keep up. The labored breath of his charcoal mare steams in the chilling air.
“She’s overloaded,” I say, pulling alongside.
“No shit,” he says. “The stand alone weighs thirty pounds, the barrels another fifty. Then I got a good six cases of munitions. This old nag didn’t bargain for that.”
“Headed uphill. Going to get a lot steeper too,” I warn him.
“You travel light,” he says, noticing my spartan load.
“I do not own much.”
“Say, take the tripod, will ya?” He starts to pick at the rope that holds the folding iron stand.
“I will not carry anything you point at Indians.”
Delmer sighs, his wiry shoulders slumping. “How ’bout the saddlebags then? Nothing but coffee and hardtack.”
“Give ’em here.” His thin arms begin to hoist the leather bags and I reach over and do the rest.
“Much obliged.”
Up ahead, Bix blows into his fist to keep warm. “Any sign, Captain?”
“We’ll pick it up,” Mulgrew says without turning. “Every man leaves a trace. I used to ferret out deserters on nothing more than a piss stain.”
The open desert gives a man time to think. Every passing mile groans from the weight of all that has transpired—a swirl of fire and screaming livestock and the ugly voices of a town betrayed. Even the beauty of her face as I remember it in the hotel light grows leaden with the thought of how I will care for her. I puzzle over each thought until I have whittled it down to the bone. And after a while there is nothing but the desert. But that’s when the new thoughts have time to peek out from their darkness. Sometimes the hardest puzzle to solve is the one you did not even know was there.
I fall in next to Bix. “Something sits wrong with me, Lieutenant.”
“What’s that?” he says.
“Snowman’s gang hit the bank in Agua Verde at eleven-thirty in the morning.”
“So?”
“What time they hit Heavendale?”
“Ten after twelve.”
“That’s forty minutes.”
“What’s your point?”
“Story is, Snowman does all the blasting himself, that right?”
“Well, any fella can hurl a stick of dynamite, rig up a booby trap and whatnot, but when it comes time for the precise stuff, it’s true, all reports say that LaForge handles the vaults directly.”
“Agua Verde to Heavendale is about fifteen miles as the crow flies. That’s a lot of ground to cover in forty minutes.”
“Hmm. Nearly impossible. Even at a full gallop he’d just make it.”
“And ain’t no horse gallop forty minutes.”
“Captain,” Bix says, trotting forward, “we need to stop.”
Bix draws an X in the sand. “This is Agua Verde,” he says. Then he scratches another X about a yard away. “Heavendale’s here.”
“How many men hit the first bank?” I ask.
“The boy counted six,” Mulgrew says, unsure where this is going and more than a little annoyed. The rank-and-file Pinkertons look on with modest interest, using the break to smoke or take some water for th
e horses.
“But by the time they got to Heavendale,” Bix says, “their numbers were three times that.”
“Makes sense,” the captain says. “Heavendale’s a bigger town with a bigger bank. You’d need men stationed outside, plus the ones in with the vault.”
“So where’d the other fellas come from, the extra twelve?” Bix asks.
“Could’ve been hiding out in Heavendale, waiting for LaForge to get there.”
“Could be,” Bix says. “But that still don’t explain how LaForge covered that ground. And the timeline don’t fit with the train schedule, so that’s out.”
“Look,” says the captain, growing frustrated, “he can tell us how he pulled off his magic trick when he’s standing on the gallows. All this speculation is wasting daylight. The move is to go the last place we know the Snowman was and pick up his scent there. That’s Heavendale.”
“Excuse me, Captain,” I say.
“What is it?”
“That display we witnessed around the jail last week, Snowman’s gang riding in circles like that, getting everybody riled up. How many riders you count?”
“Twenty souls exactly.”
“And how many hit the bank in Heavendale?”
“Seventeen, maybe eighteen, we’re getting conflicting reports.”
“Point is, less than twenty.”
“What are you getting at, Two-Trees?”
“There’s two, three men unaccounted for. I’m saying six men ride out from Agua Verde, full gallop. LaForge is one of them. Somewhere along the way, they stop. Change onto fresh horses. LaForge and those six carry on to Heavendale. Meanwhile, the two or three who are waiting lead the spent horses up into the Sangres to the meeting place.”
“Could two men corral six horses?” the captain asks.
“If they know what they’re doing, easy.”
“LaForge’s gang are all solid horsemen,” Bix says. “I have no doubt they could do it.”
Captain Mulgrew lets out a dissatisfied grunt more suited to a bull than a man. “You don’t just stand around with a half dozen horses and no one notice, even in the open desert. The train conductors would’ve seen something on the morning run. There’s hardly a tree trunk in this infernal wasteland, much less a hiding place smack in the middle that’s big enough for six goddamn horses.”
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