Deadly Is the Night (27 page)

“You will be fine. We take marriage very seriously. We will help you in any way we can and even have a celebration for you.”

“Oh, Mr. Byrnes, how nice that will be.”

“Will your parents come from back east?”

“No. My mother thinks the Indians are cannibals out here. I tell her in my letters I see them all the time and not a one has bit me yet.”

Chet did all he could not to laugh until he cried. But he managed to hold it in. Later he found Val and told her. She laughed. “He is kinda strange, but I'll tell Cole what to expect.”

“He is a bookkeeper and, I think, a very good one. He is an easterner. But he isn't giving up his job and leaving even for the cannibals wrapped in blankets downtown.”

“Oh, that is so funny. He must never have told Cole that one. That paint pony you sent Rocky is a little large for him. But he rides it in a pen and tells me he's all right for now, but he needs a horse like you and Cole to ride next.”

“When he gets the paint under him and rides him, well, he can have one.”

“You have plenty of time.”

“Did you know that Ty has the Barbarossa horses? I bet he can cut out a shorter one and break him out for Rocky in, say, two years. He took this head-swinging, bucking gray horse that Ortega and JD sent to me and made him a horse I am proud to ride.”

“Why didn't I think about that?” she asked.

“I guess my sheep rider at the Verde will need one by then, too.”

“He can have his little pony.”

“Do that.”

Suppertime, the couple came back on horses, put them up, and joined the rest.

“Sorry we're late. We saw a bunch of elk, some deer, and one old black bear,” Fred said.

“Your mother know that you're back?” Chet asked her.

“I told her we might be late but I'm going to head that way after I eat. I did enjoy riding your horse today. Thanks. Someday I want one like him. Oh, did you have a job for Fred today?”

“No.”

“Good. He is a perfect gentleman. You know they aren't easy to find.”

“Good. He works for me and I expect that from my people.”

“I believe that. He told me his story and I see why he thinks you're special. My family does, too. Having a good job is important.”

“I am pleased with the both of you. I just didn't want to be criticized for supporting anything your mother did not approve of.”

“I swear we asked her and she said we could go riding.”

“No problem. I have a fatherly way about those I am responsible for.”

“I understand. Sometime I want to visit with your wife. We were there when things were kind of upsetting because of your housekeeper's death, so we didn't really visit.”

“Liz will enjoy talking to you. She will be coming up here shortly to join me, so stop over and talk to her.”

“Fred told me a lot about things that you and she taught him. I am impressed. But now I am going to have to ask you to excuse me. Mother will be wondering where I am.”

“Claire, if you miss breakfast, we're heading out right after, so thanks for talking to me.”

“Miss breakfast? No, I will be there.”

And she was gone. Chet decided she was pretty grown up and sure on her feet for what he thought was a backwoods tomboy. Wait until he told Liz. She'd smile at his discovery.

In four to five days he and his men would be at New Mexico and the games would start. He hoped the supplies came through and there were poles over there, along with the hardware, insulators, and some bolts. Too many things clouded his mind. He hoped he had not forgotten anything. Maybe Spencer would remember them.

Sleep did not come easy.

They were eating breakfast at six a.m. Harold's wife, Ann, stopped him at the line and took him aside. “I won't keep you long. I wanted you to know I approved of Fred and Claire going riding yesterday. She works as hard as any boy, and I have been very frank with her about a woman's place in life. I met Fred at your ranch. He is a gentleman. A girl like Claire, who lived in the wilderness, still needs to be courted, and I see this in Fred. I thank you for all your concern.”

“Ann, they are dear kids. I only worried you might not know it all.”

“I know you watch after him. I heard his story last night. He's lucky you found him. They are both good people. Now I only hope we can do right by you and keep you in poles.”

The next morning after Fred pecked Claire's cheek, he climbed up on the seat, unwrapped the Percheron reins, and drove the high-stepping horses for the main road. Heading out with his men and the packhorse, Chet waved to Rocky and Val.

The trip was uneventful. They crawled across northern Arizona and in four days were at the Gallup headquarters. The horses stabled, they walked two blocks to the hotel and secured rooms. They took baths, shaved, and changed clothes. A Chinese man took their clothes to be washed and ironed. Chet led them to the Mexican restaurant they liked and were busy eating when Hannagen showed up with his male secretary carrying his usual tablet and pencil.

“You are all already here. Good. May we join you?”

Chet waved the pretty girl over to take their order. “Fix him and his man up.”

“Thanks,” Hannagen said. “You have a good trip over here? I have gotten reports about your progress from our stage drivers.”

“We had no problems, and for us that is new and welcome. You have not met Miguel and Fred. You know Jesus and Spencer.”

“Good to meet all of you.”

“We are eating, then going to our rooms. We can be at your office in the morning.”

“We can start at eight if that works for you.”

“We will be there.”

The real business began to unfold in a large room of people in the morning. A man called Cash Armand was introduced as the supply person for the company. Chet then introduced his supervisor Spencer Horne for operations.

“We understand we have or will shortly have a thousand poles here. I set up a buying station at Center Point to get more. I am paying twenty-five cents apiece for them.”

Cash shook his head. “How come so cheap?”

“There are no jobs over there. People can make wages at that price. We have set a buying station there. That is where the others we have came from, but this buying station should get us more at a competitive cost.”

“Mr. Hannagen, we have some poles coming in a shipment that will cost a dollar here,” Armand said.

“How many did we buy?”

“Four hundred to start.”

“Stop that contract. We can blend that price in with the lesser costing ones.”

“Yes, sir. Chet Byrnes set up the stage stops at an unbelievably low cost. We are working as a team now. I know operating apart has been difficult but now we need to blend your procurement task and their construction efforts. He and his men get things done. Continue, Chet.”

“Our biggest concern is will there be enough bolts, insulators, and wire to keep us running once we start?”

“My access to rail now is at Bernalillo. I think I have the material coming and enough freighters to get it over here from there.”

“Remember once we start we can't afford, at that distance, to lose our supplies and then our help. Or pay them to sit on their butts.”

Cash nodded. “We will do the best we can here. I understand the past supervisor was being paid for you to fail.”

“Yes. But we made it in spite of his efforts.”

“Today, I would like, when this meeting is over, to go over our current supplies and what we lack to start,” Spencer said.

“Very good. We can.”

“I think we know what we have to do,” Hannagen said. “Chet, you and I need to talk about other matters. Spencer, since you will be construction supervisor, you and Cash get together. We need to get this show on the road shortly.”

In his large office, Hannagen and Chet sat down in leather chairs opposite each other.

“I have corresponded with Emerson about the matter of stagecoaches; I followed the course you suggested concerning having them in good repair before they were driven up here. We were going to start hauling passengers three times a week. But those stages are in Fort Worth undergoing costly repairs and I am paying drivers to sit around and feed horses in liveries at high prices. I must have bought a pile of junk or they are skinning us alive. What else do I need to do? I do have a man hired to get to the bottom of this repair business.”

“Get them out here. You said the railroad is to Bernalillo. Bring them there, load them and the horses on railcars to west Texas, then drive them over here.”

“I will do that. Thank you.”

“Anything else?”

“I have just met him of course, but this man Spencer sounds tough. I like Emerson but they are different people, aren't they? Will they be able to work together, do you think?”

“To run a construction crew you have to be like a ship's captain more so than a supervisor. That's why I took him off a project I had him working on, because I knew he could run this one.”

“Chet, I trust your judgment. I know you have spent hours working on all this, and I appreciate your efforts. I also know it will work thanks to your involvement. Next time I will ask you to buy the coaches.”

They shook hands. Sounded like they could start—his question was how weak were those links back to Bernalillo and their source of supply there.

After lunch they met the head surveyor who had already staked forty miles west. Hugh Yates and his assistants discussed what Spencer expected from them, and they were soon all talking on the same track.

There was a mountain of shiny number ten wire rolls stacked in the yards. It would roll out fast once they started. He also saw the glass insulators and the shiny bolts that would secure them to the posts.

“We need to drill them on the ground, attach the glass insulator to the post, and then set them so they face the right way each time,” Spencer said.

“I thought—” Cash started to say.

“We can do it twice as fast that way than have a man climbing a pole and trying to get enough room to drill up there.”

They went on and by the end of the tour Spencer thought they needed twice the material than what they had on hand to start. Chet backed him and they went back to eat supper and sleep on it. Next day they rode with the surveyor out to look at the first stretch.

Spencer liked his route. He later told Chet the man realized the road for servicing the line would be very important and while shortcuts saved money they would be more costly to work on the line and keep up.

Chet wrote his wife and told her he'd be glad when Spencer could run with it alone, but so far they were still setting things up and gathering supplies. Cole wrote him that the pole buying was really beginning to work. Wagons were lined up with poles and he had some freighters already hauling them back east. They had bought over three hundred poles and many more were coming.

Spencer told Cash and sent the word to Hannagen's office. They decided to build the first stretch to the New Mexico border at a distance of twenty miles to test everything. The route went down alongside a small river, and at Spencer's insistence they put it above the roadside in case of a flood. He'd seen big rains swell creeks and take out everything. The progress was slow but by the time they were ten miles along, their speed became much improved and the last half was done in a few days.

At the following meeting they decided to start the next stringing in ten days. Poles were arriving from Harold. A series of tents became the headquarters. They hired two hunters to test that system and they delivered the game. A tent for the two wives was set and two men assigned to move them. He sent a telegram to Liz to start in their direction from the ranch, but only take their time since it would be a long trip.

Meanwhile he received another letter, forwarded to him from the U.S. marshal in Utah, concerning the couple Theodore Danbury and Regina Porter who had run off with the bank money. The marshal thought that they might be headed through Holbrook for the Mormon settlements below there.

He spoke to his men at breakfast about their possible route. Spencer told Chet that if he needed to go look for the couple, he had his situation under control and would be all right without him there.

Chet, Jesus, Miguel, and Fred saddled up and rode to Holbrook. The new deputy sheriff, Joe McCarthy, had still not seen his predecessor who had run away after cashing that five-hundred-dollar bill. McCarthy had also not seen the pair they wanted in his town.

Jesus learned, in talking to some Hispanic people, that a six-foot-tall pretty woman and a dressed-up man had been there but had gone south. The foursome rode south checking along the way. At the freighter's stop, where they served such bad coffee and food, the freighter said he had seen the pair a week before when they stopped by.

Chet paid the woman who served the horrible coffee a dollar, and they left. Jesus had food and coffee for them in their own camp.

That night, Chet found a freighter going north who saw the couple a few days earlier on the road.

“Man, she's a real looker. Wears a veil but she's tall and looked like a bed full to me.” He pulled out his corncob pipe to laugh.

“They mention where they were going?” Chet asked.

“Tombstone is what I thought they said they were going to.”

“Thanks.”

“You be wanting her body, huh?”

“No. They robbed a bank in Utah.”

He pointed his pipe stem at his bib overalls. “She could rob me.”

Chet thanked him and left him to go back to his own camp. She probably could rob him. Silly man. She must be trouble is all he could think about her.

It was a helluva long ways to Tombstone from here. But the outlaws needed to be apprehended.

“Where did he think they'd go?” Fred asked.

“Tombstone.”

“We going there?”

“I plan to.”

Fred nodded. “I'm fine. Never been there.”

“Big place. Twelve thousand people live there,” Jesus said.

“Wow. That is big.”

They rode in and out of rain showers for the next two days. Hats soaked and slickers dripping, they reached a mining town in the mountains called Mogollon, boarded their horses, ate a café meal, and slept in hotel beds. Drug themselves out of bed the next morning, had breakfast, and rode on, a little more rested, down the spine of the mountains that ran on the New Mexico–Arizona border.

On the desert floor they rode west not learning much about the pair. It took three more days to reach Tombstone. They took baths and ate at Nelly Cashman's restaurant. Chet found Virgil Earp who said he had not seen the tall woman or her partner in any of the saloons.

Jesus took the photos to the
barrio
and found no one had seen them there. Two days of searching without a clue and Chet was ready to go back north. They had supper at Nellie's again and came out into the night.

A scruffy-looking cowboy stepped over in their way on the dark empty boardwalk, chewing on a toothpick. “Which one's Byrnes?”

“I am. What do you need?”

He looked around to be certain they were alone. “You want that Danbury sumbitch?”

“Yes. You know where he is?”

“Yeah. For fifty bucks I'll tell you where he's at.”

“How do you know that?”

“I knew him in Colorado. But I want the bitch traveling with him.”

Chet shook his head. “She's wanted, too. She will be arrested and charged with him on bank-stealing business.”

The man smiled. “What a waste. She'd bring a couple hundred bucks.”

“In the white slave business you mean?”

“Call it what you want, mister. She'd bring a lot of money.”

“She is a wanted criminal as is he. You telling me his location?”

“Yeah for a hundred bucks.”

“Twenty dollars.”

“You cheap bas—” That was all he got out; Miguel had him by the throat and against the wall with his gun stuck in his gut.

“You talking or dying?” his man asked him through clenched teeth.

“All right. All right. Give me twenty bucks. He's down at the Hart Ranch outside of Patagonia. Anyone can point you there.”

“Why there?”

“Hart's as big a crook as Danbury.”

“What's your name?”

“That isn't important.”

“It is to me,” Chet insisted.

“Cy Boyd. I work for Old Man Clanton.”

“Nice to know you. If you've lied to me I might have to have this money back and your hide.” He paid the man.

Boyd took the money, tucked it in his shirt, and left in a huff.

Chet and his men stood there a while longer discussing the information. Chet and Miguel went by Alhambra Saloon and spoke to Virgil about Hart in private.

“Hart has a helluva lot of money for such a small ranch is all I know.” Virgil smiled.

Chet and his man went on back to the hotel and met the other two. “We saddle up and ride down there tomorrow.”

They rode southwest and by afternoon came to the side road that had signs pointing to Hart's ranch. When they reached an overlook, Chet used his field glasses to scope the place. He handed them to Jesus. “Not many working ranches have a guard with a rifle out front.”