CHAPTER 29
Albert Hesketh sat very still, his hands resting on the table. After a moment, he spoke. “Thank you. Yes, indeed, thank you very much.”
The young man with the fifty dollars disappeared, and the waiter came over, a burly man with a bulging stomach and a mustache. “Here! Where’d he go? That one never paid his bit!”
Hesketh put a coin on the table. Beside it he put a twenty-dollar gold piece, but on this he kept one hand. “I need a man with a fast horse. I’ve twenty dollars that says you can find one.”
“I know the man. Give me the twenty.”
“When I have spoken to him. Have him here, now.”
“To hell with you! I’ll do no such a damn—” The waiter stopped. “All right, then.”
He sipped his wine, ignoring the loud talk and bustle around him, trying to ignore the body odors and the coarse talk. His wine was half-finished when a slovenly, bearded man in a slouch hat dropped down at the table.
Hesketh looked at him with cool distaste. “I want a man who can beat the Pony’s time to Virginia City.”
“Can’t be done.”
“I have one hundred dollars that says it can.”
“Cost me half that for horses. I can get Pony horses but I’ll have to pay station-tenders.”
“All right. I will pay fifty expense money now. You will get your hundred when the message is delivered.”
The man in the slouch hat rubbed his nose, looked at Hesketh, obviously a prosperous man. “Who do I say the message is from?”
“You will say nothing. You will answer no questions and ask none. I like,” he added, “a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut.” He paused a moment. “I do not recall anyone who talked of my affairs on more than one occasion.”
On a sheet of paper from a notebook he drew a rough diagram. “You will find the man at this cabin. His name is Waggoner. It is possible he will not have your money in his cabin, but he knows where to get it.”
When the man had gone, he finished his wine. Marcus Zetsev had put up part of the money for Hesketh to gain control of the Solomon. If something happened to Hesketh, Marcus would get that stock, and evidently Marcus had been doing some thinking. It was easy to deal with crooks, because you knew they would always try to steal from you, unless they were afraid of you.
Should he take the stage? Should he depend on Waggoner? Yet if he did not take it, Zetsev would have somebody to move against him, and this time he would not be warned.
He would take the stage, but he would take precautions, and he would be armed. Also, there would be women aboard, and road agents were notoriously shy about offending women. You could kill a man, but if one so much as made a too-familiar remark to a woman, you could be hung.
Hesketh knew about Jacob. He was never around where thugs and outlaws might be found. When the Vigilantes started hunting for the bad ones, Jacob might well be one of the Vigilantes. Nobody seemed to know him or just what he looked like, but there were those who knew how to get in touch with him.
Albert Hesketh did not like killing when he had to do it himself, but there were times—
* * *
—
Marcus Zetsev kept a holster riveted to the side of his swivel chair. In that holster there was a .36-calibre Remington. The chair was always behind the desk, and very few of those who came and went in the office were aware of the holster and the pistol. A man had to stand close and look over the top of the roll-top desk to see it, and then only if the chair was turned just so.
The streets were dark and silent. Further north some of the rougher drinking establishments were filled with music and boisterous talk, and on the walks outside men gathered and talked.
Albert Hesketh, dressed in the rough clothes of a pioneer, walked down the street and turned toward the warehouse and office of the chandlery. The street was empty, as he had expected and hoped. There was the merest light from the office window, and he had to feel his way up the few steps. At the door he turned the knob. As expected, it was locked.
Now much would depend upon chance, and he did not like chance. He rapped very lightly. There was no response, so he rapped louder.
Inside something stirred, and he saw someone coming along the passage toward him, holding a lantern. He had not considered the lantern, and he did not want a fire, although—
“Who’s there?” It was Zetsev’s voice.
“Marcus? It’s Hesketh. Something has come up!”
There was a long moment of hesitation, then a rattle of the bar being taken down and the knob turned. Marcus lifted the lantern and peered into his face. “What’s happened?” he demanded, making no move to open the door. Obviously he was disturbed by Hesketh’s arrival.
“I’ve found where the shares are, but I need your help. Look, don’t hesitate. It means millions for us, but we’ve got to act quickly.”
He might have brought the gun from the chair or he might have another.
The door opened wider and Zetsev stepped back to let him come in. It was not at all what Hesketh wanted, but he stayed close to the door, hoping Marcus would precede him. He made no such move, and reluctantly Hesketh stepped in.
Zetsev walked rapidly toward the office, his coat hanging loosely from his shoulders. Hesketh let the knife he carried up his sleeve fall into his hand. Inside the office he spoke, “Marcus!” He glanced from side to side; then in a hoarse whisper, he said, “We’ve got them, Marcus! We’ve got the shares! Look—”
With his left hand he reached into his inside coat pocket and drew out a sheaf of papers. Inadvertently, expectantly, Marcus Zetsev stepped forward, and Hesketh stabbed sharply upward with the knife.
The point went in below the rib cage and drove to the hilt. Zetsev’s eyes bulged, and his mouth dropped open, but using the same hand that held the papers, Hesketh seized Zetsev’s right sleeve and jerked him closer. Then he stabbed him again, driving the blade in a little higher and harder.
Their eyes were only inches apart. Zetsev’s mouth worked as his lips tried to form a sound, but nothing came. Coolly, Hesketh shoved him against the desk and stabbed him twice in the throat, then dropped him to the floor.
The safe was open as he had expected, and he went to it, scarcely more than a large strongbox, and leafed through the contents. He found what he wanted, pocketed it, and glanced down once more at Marcus Zetsev. Bending down he wiped his knife clean on Marcus’s shirt. Then he went to the door.
He lifted the bar and stepped outside and came face to face with four men.
They were, he was sure, members of the Sydney Ducks or the “Hounds,” gangs of thugs who raided, robbed, and often set fires in the city to give themselves a chance to loot. Large sections of San Francisco had been burned in such fires on several occasions.
He paused, one hand still on the doorknob, half wishing he had taken the pistol from the chair inside. “If you’re looking for loot,” he said quietly, “help yourselves, the door is open.”
“Who’re you?”
He was already walking away. One of them started after him, calling, “Hey! You!” He continued to walk, turned a corner, and walked more swiftly. When he had gone a block he crossed the street and ran, then slowed up, seeing a rig. He hired it and returned to the hotel by a side entrance.
He examined his clothes but noted with satisfaction there were no spots of blood.
Once more he examined the papers. He had successfully brought away all record of his arrangements with Marcus, and Marcus himself was dead.
For a moment he thought with misgivings of the sallow-faced young man. Would he suspect? And what of the Hounds? The four men met at the door? No doubt they had ignored the body and stripped the place of everything of value. Their depredations were so known and this would be so typical, no other explanation would be sought.
Marcus, so far as he kn
ew, had no relatives. Even if some should appear, it would not matter now.
Jacob would be looking for a businessman, hence he would go dressed in the rough clothes of a pioneer or miner, and he would be armed.
Albert Hesketh washed his hands and got ready for bed. If he thought of Marcus at all it was simply as a problem disposed of.
Suddenly he found himself thinking of Grita Redaway, and not as someone to steal from but as a woman, as a beautiful woman, not as sexually exciting, but as a part of the frame, of the setting he wanted for himself. He wished to be rich, powerful, and envied, and he wished to have the best of everything. And the best of everything was, he believed, no more than he deserved.
He had never thought to ask why he deserved anything. It was enough that he felt he did. His ego was walled, shielded, and guarded.
Once in his bed he slept soundly.
* * *
—
When morning came, a spatter of rain was falling and the harbor was obscured by mist. From her little balcony Grita looked for the last time over the view she had come to love. “I will miss it, Mr. Clyde,” she said. He paused, holding her luggage in his hands. “We must play this town again.”
“We will. Manfred’s waiting below, Miss Redaway. We had better go.”
“I’ll be along.” She lingered, and he went out, drawing the door shut behind him.
Quickly, she went to her hiding place and drew out her father’s wallet. For an instant, she was worried.
Now it could no longer be hidden. She had it all with her. Whoever wanted those papers must realize that when she left San Francisco she would take the papers with her, and the shares. Still, Manfred was along, and Dane Clyde as well as several other members of the company. Others had already gone on before.
When their rig dropped them at the stage station the first person she saw was Albert Hesketh, yet he was so altered in appearance that she did not at first recognize him.
He smiled. “I am dressed as many of us do on the Comstock,” he explained. “Actually, these rough clothes are easier for travel.”
“Of course,” she agreed, but was puzzled nonetheless. Hesketh had always seemed a dapper, overly neat man and one who seemed to think much of how he appeared to others. In these clothes he looked strangely out of place.
The spatter of rain turned into a steady drizzle that lasted through the day. The heavy coach creaked and groaned on its way, bumping over stones and rough places in the road.
Manfred was on one side of her and Mary sat across from her. There was a bulky, heavy man in a brown suit beside her, a man with mutton-chop whiskers and a mustache. Hesketh sat beside him and soon gave every appearance of being asleep. Dane Clyde was riding atop the stage and there were others inside and on top, how many she did not know.
Several times they stopped to change horses, and at one stage-stop, as they hitched the horses, she said to Manfred, “I am a little worried.”
He glanced at her. He was a sharp, intelligent man who had traveled a great deal. “What is it?”
“Whatever they wanted from me in San Francisco they must know I am carrying now.”
“I had thought of that.”
“Nevertheless, if there is trouble, stay out of it. I want no one hurt because of me.”
“We will see when the time comes.”
A new passenger joined them there, a tall, clerical-looking man with sandy hair and thick sandy brows. He was neatly dressed in a hand-me-down suit still carrying the creases from the shelf. He was, she suspected, about thirty years old. He carried a small carpetbag and got quickly into the coach, ignoring them all.
From time to time others joined them. She had begun to wish she had taken the steamer to Sacramento.
“We will be here all night, ma’am,” the driver said. “That there ho-tel is respectable and entertains lady guests.”
“I thought the stages went right on through? Although I will admit the rest will do me good.”
“All of us, ma’am. Yes, we do usually go through, but there’s been some flooding and I won’t chance those roads in the dark. I want to see what I’m gettin’ into!”
She looked around. Hesketh had disappeared. So had the heavy man in the brown suit and the sandy-haired newcomer.
This was Sacramento. This was the town that letter had come from so long ago. Somebody here had owed her father money and it was invested, perhaps right here in town.
Manfred sat beside her at supper. “If there is trouble,” he suggested, “it will be between here and Placerville, or after we leave there. Some of it is very rough country.”
“You’ve been here before?”
He pointed toward the east. “My parents died over there,” he said quietly, “not far from where we are going.”
“Mine did not get that far,” she said. “They were killed in Missouri, before they ever got started.”
Manfred gave her an odd look. “Oh? I had no idea. I thought you were French.”
“I went to school in Paris, but I am an American.” She gestured around. “This is where we were coming. California was our dream.”
“Mine, too. I wish my folks could have seen it.”
Alone in her room, she wondered. Why that odd look? Simply because he had believed she came from France? Or was there some other reason?
CHAPTER 30
At daylight, putting the last finishing touches to her hair, Grita looked around at Mary. “Have you a pistol?” she asked.
Mary Tucker looked up, surprised. “I do, Miss Redaway. I keep it by me.”
“Can you use it?”
Mary smiled. “At home in Indiana there was little enough on the table and my pa worked in town. I had no brothers, so if we had meat the shooting was up to me. I kept meat on the table until I was fourteen, when the cholera took my family.”
“Keep the gun where you can get it, then. I think we may have trouble.”
“I will that. Is it after you they are?”
“It is. Or something I have.”
“You seem very sure of yourself, ma’am.” The Irish girl looked at her, smiling. “You’d think you’d been caring for yourself as I have.”
Grita nodded. “I have, in a somewhat different world. When did you get into the theater, Mary?”
“When I lost them all I took a job for some people in Pittsburgh. The young man there, where I was maid, he was forever talking of the theater, and having folks to dinner from the theater. He didn’t like girls much, he didn’t, but he was nice and we talked a lot. One day I was speaking of one of the ladies who had been to dinner, and not knowing her name, I did an imitation of her that set him laughing.
“At supper a few nights later he told a man to look at me. ‘She’s the one you need,’ he said. ‘She will do the part better than anyone.’
“So they had me down to the theater to play a housemaid, a pert, snippy one, and they liked me. So here I am, four years older and an actress. ’Tis never rich and famous I’ll be, but ’tis better than scrubbing floors.”
“Do you never regret the farm?”
“I do. One day I’ll put by enough to buy one, to own one of my own.” She picked up her valise. “And you, miss? What will you do?”
“Who knows? Have you been in love, Mary?”
“Twice, I thought I was. Each time I came to my sense in time, thanks be to God. And you, miss?”
“No, not yet. There were some gentlemen I knew, very elegant gentlemen, too, but they were not for me. The trouble is, Mary, I’m like a lot of others. I don’t know what I want.”
“Who does, until you see him? And then you’re like to be wrong.”
Grita spoke suddenly, and without thinking. “I shall buy a ranch, Mary, and raise horses. I like the theater, and it’s a challenge. There’s no end to how good one can get, but none of u
s are good enough.”
“It’s good to hear them laugh.”
“Yes, it is, but the crowd’s a fickle beast. At least, that’s what an old actor I knew often said, and I agree. Some actresses think the people love them, and that’s nonsense. They love the roles you play or the way you play them, but not you. Tomorrow it can be another.”
It was cold and damp when they reached the coach, and nobody was talking. The heavy man in the brown suit bobbed his head at them, but the sandy-haired one looked at nobody, he just waited.
They were seated before Manfred appeared. He got into the stage without a word and sat back against the cushions. He and the two girls were seated in the very back of the stage, facing forward and looking at the backs of three passengers who rode the center seat. Beyond them were three who faced toward the rear. One of these was Hesketh.
The driver’s whip cracked like a pistol shot, and the stage started with a lunge.
“There’s been some flooding,” someone said. “The river’s up across the road in places. We may have to take some other route.”
“ ‘Other’ route?” The voice was grim. “What other route?”
“There are trails.” That was the man in the brown suit. “I’ve heard it said.”
* * *
—
Waggoner heard the horse coming up the road and had a hunch. He rolled off his bunk and glanced out the window. Something passed between his cabin and the lights of the mine some distance away. A rider, no doubt. He hitched up his pants and slipped his suspenders over his shoulders. Then he belted on his gun, which had been lying on a chair close to the bed. He got out a cigar and lighted it. He smoked them rarely, but kept a few on hand.
The horse’s hoofbeats slowed and stopped. The only other sound was the rhythmic pound of the stamp-mills and compressors. Occasionally, when a door opened somewhere down on the street, he caught a bit of tin-panny music from a saloon or dance hall.
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