by Jon Sharpe
Fargo nodded. ‘‘And I’ll finish up the night.’’ He wondered if he would have a chance to spend some more time with Belinda tonight. Even if he did, it would probably be early enough so that it wouldn’t interfere with him standing guard duty.
During dinner, Grayson and Houck had a lengthy, animated discussion about the hot springs in the area. Houck was a good businessman, too, and saw the potential in the situation right away. If he built another hotel adjacent to the springs themselves, just outside of town, Grayson’s stagecoaches could make the place their regular stop in Paso Robles. Travelers could spend the night there and have a soak in the healing springs before continuing on their journey. It would be a beneficial arrangement for both men.
After dinner, Belinda drew Angie aside and said, ‘‘I think some of my dresses would fit you, dear. Why don’t you come upstairs with me and we’ll see about finding you something nicer to wear than that patched old dress?’’
‘‘You sure you wouldn’t mind, ma’am?’’
‘‘Of course not,’’ Belinda replied with a smile. ‘‘Come along with me.’’
They disappeared up the stairs to the hotel’s second floor. Jimmy leaned over and said to Sandy, ‘‘I don’t hardly see how Miss Angie could get any prettier than she already is.’’
Sandy just grumbled and scowled. ‘‘Romance!’’ he muttered under his breath in disgust.
Fargo smiled and left the hotel, walking out back to check on the coach and the horses. A couple of hostlers were still working in the stable, so he didn’t think Stoddard would try to steal or damage the coach until later in the night, if indeed Stoddard tried anything at this point.
Sandy followed him and caught up to him as Fargo was standing at the corral fence with a booted foot propped on the bottom rail.
‘‘Lord, that youngster’s in there moonin’ over that gal,’’ Sandy complained. ‘‘He can’t wait for her to come back down so he can see what she looks like dressed in some o’ Miss Grayson’s clothes.’’ He spat on the ground. ‘‘O’ course, you can’t help but feel a mite sorry for the gal. She’s had a heap o’ trouble in her life. Told me about some of it this afternoon whilst she was ridin’ up top with me.’’
‘‘Did she say what happened to her face?’’ Fargo asked.
‘‘She got a pot o’ boilin’ water dumped on her by accident, some years back when she was still a kid. Lucky it just missed her left eye, or she’d’ve prob’ly been blinded in that one. Her folks never did treat her the same after that, even though it weren’t her fault. I reckon they was worried she’d never find a husband to take her off their hands, lookin’ like that.’’
‘‘She looks just fine,’’ Fargo said, ‘‘scar or no scar.’’
Sandy grunted. ‘‘Yeah, Jimmy sure as hell seems to think so. He’s gone plumb loco over her. Asked me a while ago if I thought she’d marry up with him, if he was to ask.’’
‘‘Only one way for him to find out.’’
‘‘Yeah, but why’d he want to go and do a thing like that for? Hell, he might as well be puttin’ his own head in the noose—’’
No doubt Sandy would have gone on complaining for a while, but the sudden sound of a scream cutting through the night silenced him. He and Fargo both whirled around, well aware that the scream had come from the hotel.
And Fargo thought he recognized the voice of the woman who had let out that terrified cry.
Belinda Grayson.
10
Fargo and Sandy broke into a run toward the hotel, the Trailsman’s longer legs outdistancing the shorter jehu. His Colt was already in his hand as he charged into the building and headed up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time.
Belinda hadn’t screamed again, but that might not be a good thing. She might have fallen silent because something had silenced her.
Sandy was still huffing and puffing up the stairs when Fargo reached the second-floor landing. He grasped the banister with his free hand to help swing himself around. The corridor was crowded with folks who had heard the cry and come out of their rooms to see what was going on. They got out of the way in a hurry when they saw the grim-faced Fargo coming toward them with the big gun in his hand.
The door of Belinda’s room was jerked open before Fargo got there. To his great relief, he saw Belinda and Angie in the doorway, clutching at each other, white-faced with fright as they tried to get out of the room. They stopped and Belinda exclaimed, ‘‘Skye!’’
Fargo ran his gaze over both young women. As far as he could see, they were unharmed. Angie was wearingone of Belinda’s gowns and looked very nice in it, despite being scared.
‘‘Are you two all right?’’ Fargo asked as he came up to them.
Belinda nodded and said, ‘‘Yes, just . . . just frightened. We saw . . .’’ She swallowed, unable to go on for a moment.
‘‘It was awful,’’ Angie put in. ‘‘Just awful.’’
‘‘What?’’ Fargo prodded.
Belinda said, ‘‘A ghost.’’
Fargo’s eyes narrowed. He might have expected her to say a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them.
‘‘A ghost?’’ he repeated.
Belinda and Angie both nodded. ‘‘It was outside the window of my room, hanging in midair and . . . and glowing.’’
‘‘It was a man’s face,’’ Angie added. ‘‘The spookiest thing I ever saw.’’
She had become more talkative as the day went on, as familiarity with her new companions overcame her ingrained shyness, and now the words bubbled out of her.
‘‘His face was lit up and he gave out this terrible moan and I never saw anything like it in all my borned days! Me and Miss Grayson were so scared we grabbed on to each other, and she let out a yell, and then we stood there too scared to move for a minute.’’
‘‘What happened to the ghost?’’ Fargo asked.
Belinda and Angie looked at each other. ‘‘I—I don’t know,’’ Belinda admitted. ‘‘It must have disappeared when I screamed.’’
Angie shook her head. ‘‘I was so shook up I never noticed when it vanished.’’
Sandy had come up behind Fargo, along with Jimmy, Grayson, and Houck, who had still been downstairstalking when Belinda screamed. The hotel owner declared, ‘‘There are no ghosts in this place. I just built it last year, and nobody’s died here. I’d appreciate it if you folks wouldn’t go around sayin’ that it’s haunted, because that’ll be mighty bad for my business.’’
Fargo didn’t really care about Houck’s business. He just wanted to get to the bottom of this incident.
‘‘You said this so-called ghost was a man. What did he look like?’’
‘‘Well . . .’’ Belinda hesitated. ‘‘He wasn’t young. He had a bald head.’’
Like a padre with a tonsure, Fargo thought.
‘‘And he looked really sad,’’ Angie said. ‘‘Like something terrible had happened.’’
They were describing Father Tomás, the padre from San Buenaventura that the old hostler had told Fargo about a couple of mornings earlier. Fargo might have believed that the young women had been seeing things because of that ghost story . . . if not for the fact that he hadn’t told Belinda about it, and Angie hadn’t even been with them at the time.
‘‘Let me take a look,’’ Fargo said as he stepped into the room. He started toward the window. The curtains were pushed back.
‘‘Be careful, Skye,’’ Belinda said.
He looked back at her. ‘‘Were these curtains open when you first saw whatever it was?’’
‘‘It was a ghost,’’ Angie muttered.
Belinda said, ‘‘No, they were closed, but they’re thin enough so that I noticed the glow through them. I went over and pushed them back like they are now.’’
Fargo nodded. The window was closed. With his free hand, he grasped it and raised it. He stuck his head out for a moment, then pulled it back in.
‘‘Well, there’s your answer,’’ he said.
Belinda took a couple of tentative steps closer to the window. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘There’s a balcony out there.’’
‘‘Yeah, there is,’’ Houck put in.
‘‘Somebody had to be standing on it and peeking in the window,’’ Fargo said.
Belinda thought about that, frowned, and shook her head. ‘‘That doesn’t explain why he was glowing, or how he disappeared like that.’’
‘‘All he had to do to disappear was duck down and walk away,’’ Fargo pointed out. ‘‘He could have climbed over the railing around the balcony and dropped to the street without any trouble.’’
‘‘What about the way he looked?’’
Fargo didn’t have an answer for that one.
Grayson asked, ‘‘Did this man threaten you in any way, Belinda? I’m thinking that he could have been someone who’s working for Stoddard.’’
‘‘No, he didn’t do anything except stand there and look . . . mournful, like he had lost his best friend.’’
‘‘Sounds like a haint to me,’’ Sandy said, ignoring the glare that Houck sent in his direction. The hotel man turned and started shooing people back to their rooms, telling them that there was nothing to see, nothing to worry about.
‘‘Whatever happened, it seems to be over,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘I reckon we can all get back to what we were doing.’’
‘‘I’m not sleeping in here by myself tonight,’’ Belinda declared. ‘‘Not after that.’’
‘‘I could stay with you, miss,’’ Angie offered. ‘‘I’d be glad to help out, after all you folks have done for me.’’
Belinda smiled and hugged the younger girl. ‘‘Thank you, Angie. I’ll take you up on that, if you’re sure you don’t mind.’’
‘‘No, ma’am.’’
There went any chance of him and Belinda getting together again tonight, Fargo thought. But after being spooked like that, she probably wouldn’t have been in much of a mood for lovemaking, anyway.
Besides, he planned to do a little prowling around himself tonight.
Ghost hunting, he reckoned it could be called.
Fargo didn’t tell anyone except Sandy about Father Tomás and the story he had heard from the hostler at San Buenaventura. He waited until they were alone in the stable, making a last check on the horses, before he brought it up.
When Fargo was finished, Sandy scratched his beard and said, ‘‘Yeah, now that I think about it, I’ve heard o’ that old yarn, too. But it’s just a legend. Ain’t really nothin’ to it.’’
‘‘I imagine the part about the stolen treasure is true,’’ Fargo said.
‘‘Yeah, but I don’t reckon I believe in haints and spirits and such-like. Anyway, even if the ghost o’ that old padre is still wanderin’ around San Buenaventura, what would he be doin’ all the way up here sneakin’ a peek at them gals?’’
‘‘I don’t know, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s connected with Stoddard somehow.’’
‘‘You gonna tell anybody else about this here Father Tomás?’’
Fargo shook his head. ‘‘Not just yet. The ladies would just be more convinced than ever that they saw a real ghost.’’
‘‘Maybe they did,’’ Sandy muttered. ‘‘I ain’t sayin’ I believe in such things, mind you, but ever’ so often you run across somethin’ that just can’t be explained.’’
‘‘ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,than are dreamt of in your philosophy’,’’ Fargo quoted.
‘‘Huh? Who’s this Horatio fella?’’
Fargo shook his head. ‘‘Never mind. You’re still taking the first watch?’’
‘‘Yeah.’’ Sandy hefted the double-barreled shotgun he carried. ‘‘If any haints come around botherin’ me, I’ll give ’em a buckshot welcome.’’
‘‘That goes for Stoddard and his men, too, I hope.’’
‘‘Damn tootin’.’’
Fargo walked back to the hotel, leaving Sandy in the stable. To his surprise, when he went in the back door of the building he found Belinda Grayson waiting for him.
‘‘I have to talk to you, Skye.’’
He glanced toward the second floor. ‘‘You left Angie up there by herself?’’
‘‘The poor dear was worn-out. She went right to sleep, even after that scare we had.’’ Belinda’s forehead creased in a solemn frown. ‘‘That’s what I want to talk to you about. We saw something odd at San Buenaventura, remember? I want to know if there’s a connection between what we saw at the mission there and what happened tonight.’’
Fargo could tell from the stubborn look on her face that she wasn’t going to accept any evasive answers he might give her. Since there was no point in even trying to deceive her, he nodded and said, ‘‘Maybe. The old man at that stable told me a story. . . .’’
Belinda waited. Fargo launched into the story of Father Tomás and the pirate Bouchard and the stolen treasure. As he talked, Belinda’s expression became one of amazement.
‘‘That’s it!’’ she said when he was finished. ‘‘That has to be the answer. The man Angie and I saw looked like he could have been a priest. I mean, we didn’t see anything but his face, so I don’t know if he was wearing a priest’s robe, but he had that sort of mournful air about him. He had to be the ghost of Father Tomás!’’
‘‘Just one thing wrong with that,’’ Fargo said.
‘‘What?’’
‘‘You have to believe in ghosts to accept that idea.’’
‘‘Oh.’’ She frowned again. ‘‘Well, yes, that’s true, I suppose. But do you have a more reasonable explanation, Skye?’’
‘‘You saw one of Stoddard’s men spying on you.’’
‘‘Why would anyone do that?’’ She blushed a little. ‘‘Other than the most obvious reason, I mean.’’
Fargo had been thinking about it, and now he said, ‘‘Maybe he wanted to be sure which room you were staying in, so that they can try to kidnap you again.’’
Belinda’s eyes widened. ‘‘Do you think that’s possible?’’
‘‘From what I’ve seen so far of Stoddard and the varmints who work for him, I wouldn’t put much of anything past them.’’
‘‘Neither would I. Oh, dear Lord! I left Angie up there all alone. They might grab her thinking that she’s me!’’
That was a legitimate worry, Fargo thought. He took hold of Belinda’s arm and said, ‘‘Let’s go make sure she’s still all right.’’
To their relief, Angie was sleeping soundly when Belinda eased the door of the room open a few moments later, and the two of them looked in on her.
‘‘I’ll find Houck and see what we can do about switching you ladies to another room,’’ Fargo said. ‘‘Wait here, but don’t doze off.’’
‘‘Not much chance of that,’’ Belinda said. ‘‘Not after everything that’s happened tonight.’’
‘‘Yell if anything odd happens.’’
‘‘You can count on it, Skye.’’
Belinda went in to wake up Angie and tell her they were going to change rooms while Fargo went in search of the hotel owner. He found Houck downstairs, still talking business with Arthur Grayson. When Fargo explained the situation, both men thought it would be a good idea to put Belinda and Angie in a different room.
It didn’t take long to accomplish that. When it was done, everyone settled down for the night except Fargo, who stepped outside again briefly. A wind was blowing in from the sea, scudding clouds across the moon. It was a wild sky, Fargo thought as he looked up at it, the sort of sky you would see on a night when anything could happen.
He halfway expected to see the spectral figure of a long-dead padre floating through the darkness.
But there was nothing unusual stirring around the hotel, and after a few minutes he went back inside. No ghosts haunted his sleep that night.
The next morning at breakfast, Belinda and Angie reported no more ghostly visitations. It had been quiet in the stable, too,
as no one attempted to bother the coach or the horses.
In a way, that lack of activity on Stoddard’s part concerned Fargo. Two more days of travel would see the coach arriving in San Francisco. Fargo was sure that Stoddard would strike before they arrived in the city by the bay, and when the blow finally came, it was liable to be a particularly vicious one.
Angie looked good in another of Belinda’s dresses, and Fargo was surprised to see that her long blond hair had been brushed until it shone and then pulled back behind her head in a flattering arrangement. That made her scarred cheek more visible, but she was so slender and graceful that no one paid much attention to that imperfection. Jimmy certainly didn’t. He was staring at her with such open admiration that it seemed to be all he could do to keep his eyes in his head.
The coach was rolling again not long after sunup, with Houck standing in front of the hotel waving farewell to the pilgrims.
As they continued northward, the valley began to narrow as the mountains closed in from both sides. The terrain was marshy in places, and Fargo didn’t care for it. He liked higher ground and more wide-open spaces. The air here was sticky and abuzz with insects. The Ovaro flicked his ears and swatted his tail in annoyance as the bugs swarmed around him.
The travelers stopped for their midday meal in the town of Salinas, then pressed on. Fargo had planned for them to spend the night in Soledad, but they were making such good time that they might reach San Juan Bautista, he decided. Remembering the maps he had studied in Grayson’s hotel room in Los Angeles and his previous trips through this area, he knew that soon they would be coming to a fork in the Old Mission Trail. One way, to the right, led to San Juan Bautista. To the left was San Carlos Borroméo de Carmelo, right on the coast with the town of Monterey nearby. The terrain was much more rugged in that direction, so he intended to bear right and go through San Juan Bautista.
Once the marshes were behind them and they had passed the turnoff for Monterey, the valley grew even more narrow and trees began to close in on either side of the trail. Riding about two hundred yards ahead of the coach, Fargo felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle as some instinct kicked in to warn him. They were headed straight into what might be a prime spot for an ambush.