Friends and Enemies (13 page)

Guthrie Holter leaned way over the map, then whispered, “He's trying to force this Englishman to buy some worthless mining stock.”

“I'll confront him,” Robert replied softly. “You two back me up. But don't reveal yourselves until needed.”

Fortune swung out into the aisle, took three steps, then spun around near the man with the dirty bandanna.

“What's you name, mister?” Robert demanded.

“What in Hades's name difference is it to you?” the man growled, resting his hand on his revolver.

Robert leaned his hand on the back of the leather seat and kept his voice low. “I want to know what to put on my report.” He could smell stale whiskey and dried sweat.

The man rubbed his chin. “What report?”

Robert stood straight and glanced around at the other passengers. No one was looking their way. “I'm the train inspector. It's my job to file a report on sneak thieves, troublemakers, and solicitors who disturb the passengers.”

The man attempted to dismiss Fortune with a flip of his hand. “I ain't doin' nothin' wrong, so go torment someone else.”

Fortune glanced over at the thin man with black silk tie. His face was pale. “Did this ol' boy try to force you to buy worthless mining stock?”

The Englishman straightened his tie and sat with a stiff back. “He most certainly did. My word, he said he'd shoot me in the . . . eh, intestines if I didn't purchase five hundred dollars worth of stock.”

“He ain't telling the truth,” the other man protested. “You cain't trust them foreigners. I was merely offering him a deal where he could double his investment in six months. But if this is the thanks I get, I withdraw the offer.”

“What's your name?” Fortune demanded again.

The man folded his thick arms. “I ain't tellin' you nothin'.”

Fortune pointed toward the handbills posted in the front of the coach. “There's a sign up there that says ‘Absolutely no solicitation.' We will not have guests of the Elkhorn pestered by hucksters and drummers. I'll have to ask you to step to the back of the car.”

“You ain't goin' to get me to do nothin' . . .” The man jerked his revolver out of the holster.

Fortune clenched the man's ear and twisted it sharply with one hand as he plucked the gun away from the yelping man with the other.

All conversation in the coach ceased. People turned to gawk.

“My word,” the Englishman gasped as he scooted against the window, “I've heard of twitching horses but never seen it done on a man.”

Robert kept his back to the passengers. He slid the man's revolver into his coat pocket. “Sometimes there's not a wide distinction between man and beast,” he added. “We've got a few things to discuss on the platform between the cars, one of which is your name.” He motioned with his hand. “Step back there, please.”

“Well, let a man pull up his socks before I go trampin' around.” The man leaned over and reached for his boots.

Taite and Holter both shoved revolvers into the back of the man's head.

“You ain't goin' for that sneak gun are you?” Holter demanded.

The man sat straight up, his hands in the air. “My name's Oscar Puddin!” he shouted. “Who are them two?”

“My deputies,” Robert explained. “Take out the sneak gun and lay it on the floor, Mr. Puddin. Take it real slow because my deputies are new on the job and they are counting on getting to shoot someone today. I'd rather you didn't give them the opportunity.”

Puddin worked up a full sweat by the time he removed the .32 caliber snub-nosed revolver from his boot and laid it on the floor.

“Folks, I'm the railroad inspector,” Robert told the staring passengers. “This old boy was trying to extort some money. We just won't let that happen on this train. Did he get money from any of you?”

Everyone sat motionless.

“Go on about your business. My deputies and I have this under control. The Elkhorn is the safest railroad in the West. We take care of our folks. Go back to your visits and enjoy the trip.” He turned back to Puddin. “Now, if you'll just step out the back door.”

The man rose slowly off his seat. “What are you going to do to me?”

“You not only harassed a passenger, but you also pulled a firearm on a railroad inspector. So you forfeit your ticket and will be put off the train.”

“Where?”

Fortune leaned down and glanced out the window at the rumbling hillside. “Right here looks fine.”

“But the train's goin' forty miles an hour!”

“No, it's going twenty-four miles an hour and slows to around fifteen at the turns. All of which is something you should have taken into account before you tried to extort Mr. . . . eh, Mr. . . .”

“Chambers. Byron Chambers.” The Englishman tipped his bowler.

Fortune shoved his fingers into Puddin's greasy vest and pushed him toward the back door. Holter and Taite joined him in the aisle.

“But . . .” Puddin panicked. “Mr. Chambers, I apologize if I seemed a bit insistent in my salesmanship!” he called back.

Chambers straightened his tie. “My word, uh, yes. Apology is accepted.”

“See there, he accepted my apology.” Puddin stopped walking. “You cain't throw me off the train now.”

Robert shoved him toward the back door. “You still drew a gun on a railroad inspector.”

“But I didn't shoot no one!” he bellowed as he was shoved outside on the back platform.

A stiff summer breeze caused Fortune to shove down his hat as he stepped beside the man. The air had a dry, dusty taste and the rattle of steel wheels on steel rails forced the men to shout. The side of the hill was littered with tree stumps and granite boulders.

“If I let you get away with drawing a gun on us, then how many more will come along and do the same?” Fortune explained. “I think I should make an example of you, Mr. Puddin. Toss him off the train, boys.”

“Wait . . . wait . . . I don't want to be an example.”

“It's too late for that. If I don't, Mr. Puddin, as soon as we hit Deadwood, you'll go down to the badlands to a saloon like the Piedmont and start bragging about pullin' a gun on the railroad inspector, and the next thing I know we'll have every drifter and bummer in the badlands tryin' the same thing.”

“No sir . . . I won't. I'll . . . I'll leave Deadwood as soon as I get there. I won't tell nobody. The fall would break my back.”

“I reckon that would accomplish our purpose, wouldn't it?” Holter said.

“We can't take a chance, Puddin.” Taite poked his double-action Smith and Wesson in the man's ribs. “Over you go.”

“Wait! Put me off at the water tank. There's a water tank between here and Deadwood. It ain't two or three miles up the tracks.”

“You seem to know a lot about this line.”

“I've been on it before.”

“You caught me on a merciful day, Puddin. Handcuff him to the rail. He can ride back here.”

“I've got to ride outside?” the man protested.

“It's your choice . . . we can toss you out in the boulders or . . .”

“I'll ride back here.”

When they returned to the car, every eye was on them.

“Everything's taken care of, folks,” Robert explained. “The Elkhorn will not tolerate having its passengers beleaguered in any way. If you ever have anyone bother you with illegal, immoral, or inappropriate advances, please notify your conductor, who will relay the message to one of us.”

Two young men in army blue instantly scooted away from a blonde young lady and sat at near attention.

The three men returned to their seats. Once again the rumble of conversations matched the rattle of the wheels on the tracks.

Byron Chambers turned around. “My word, I'm certainly glad you didn't toss him on the rocks on my account.”

“You got business in Deadwood, Mr. Chambers?” Robert asked.

“I'm a chartered accountant for the Bank of Ottawa out of Toronto. We have an interest in the Broken Boulder Mine, and I've come to examine the accounts and ledgers.”

“I've never heard of the Broken Boulder.”

“That's one of the reasons I'm here. We haven't had a report in over six months, yet we've been sending systematic installments. It's located on the east rim of Spruce Canyon.”

“We're going to put Mr. Puddin off the train at the water tanks,” Robert explained. “But he might hike into Deadwood anyway. If I were you, I'd stay out of the badlands. If he meets you in a dark alley, he might figure he has a score to settle.”

“Exactly what do you mean by badlands?”

“The lower end of Deadwood is lined with saloons, dance halls, and brothels. No offense intended, but a man with a fancy silk suit hiking around down there after dark will be a mighty tempting target for sneak thieves and extortionists.”

“My word, I had no idea Deadwood was so philistine.”

Robert Fortune laughed. “I've never heard it called that before. But I reckon one man's promised land is another's philistine.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The only noise in the hardware store was the small brass bell that hung by a single bent lag bolt above the door. It signaled another entry. Robert's boots marked each step on the worn wooden floor as he ambled toward the back of the dimly lit store. A coatless Todd Fortune squatted down by the open door of the cast-iron woodstove.

“Just you, this morning, big brother?” Robert asked.

Todd leaned back on his haunches and rubbed his gray-flecked goatee. “Daddy's under the weather, Bobby. I took him some lemon-honey tea and told him to stay in bed.”

Robert patted the side of a lukewarm blue enamel coffeepot. “Daddy drinkin' lemon tea? Seems funny, doesn't it?”

“You know what seems really strange? That he and that bunch of his aren't around this stove. They pestered me every morning for the last ten years. Now, it's crazy. I miss them.” Todd struck a sulfur match on the side of the stove and held it under the crumpled newspaper and kindling. “I don't intend on being the senior Fortune in this clan for a long, long time.”

Robert studied his brother. “If you shaved your goatee and grew yourself a thick, drooping mustache, you'd look just like Daddy.”

“That's a sobering thought.”

Robert pulled a gray ceramic mug off the shelf but didn't pour any coffee in it. “Quiet Jim isn't coming down?”

“Nah, he telephoned earlier. Said he was just too worn out.”

“Quiet Jim's sort of giving up, isn't he?” Robert pondered.

“For years he planned on regaining his strength and walking out of that wheelchair. It's just not going to happen.” Todd stared across the store. “It's not fair. He got shot for hanging around with Fortunes.”

“He can still sing a pretty tune,” Robert added.

Todd stood and jammed his hands in his back pockets. “Bobby, remember that first night we rode into Deadwood on the freight wagon?”

“The old men had come out to rescue us from Doc Kabyo.”

“It was bitter cold and all we could hear was the squeaking of wheels and Quiet Jim's Christmas carols.” Todd scooted the coffeepot to the center of the stove. “Might have been the prettiest tunes I ever heard.”

Robert rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at his brother. “When is it our turn, big brother?”

The fire in the stove was starting to roar. Todd turned the damper down. “To sit around the stove and tell lies about the old days?”

“Do the years get faster the older we get? The last ten seemed to have slipped by in a flash.”

“Sammy was saying the same thing.” Todd turned up the gas lantern until the back of the store was well lit. “I figure we've got another ten to fifteen years before that happens.”

Robert shifted his holster, then sat down on a worn wooden bench, still holding an empty coffee cup. “By then the ‘flying fist of death' will take on mythic proportions.”

Todd poured himself a tin cup of coffee, took a sip, then sat it on the stove to warm up. “I imagine the fiction stories about these days will get even wilder. But I wish authors like Hawthorne Miller wouldn't use real names in their stories.”

“What?” Robert laughed. “You mean all those Stuart Brannon stories aren't true?”

Todd plucked up his coffee cup again. “Now, those are the only ones that just might be true. But, no matter how exaggerated we become, we'll never compete with the Texas Camp of '75.”

“Maybe that's the way it always is,” Robert suggested. “The past generation is always more adventuresome than the present.”

Todd stared down at his polished brown boots. “That might be, but our lives haven't exactly been boring. You were there at the Little Big Horn with Captain Benteen . . . and down on the border with General Crook. . . . I reckon it will be a long time before someone tops that.”

Robert sat on the bench with West Point posture. “Look at you, Todd. You came to the gulch in Christmas of '75 and stayed. There aren't ten men in town who have been here longer. You've captured the outlaws, confronted the Sioux, fought the fires, survived the diseases. It was a wild place when you and Rebekah said your vows. And now it's as tame as Omaha . . . well, maybe not Omaha.”

The ringing brass bell caused both men to stare back at the front door. With gray mustache drooping across freshly shaved chin and plaid four-in-hand tie hanging from a starched, collarless white shirt, Samuel Fortune pulled off his hat and moseyed toward them. “You two telling big windies back there?” he called out as he approached.

“Actually, we were,” Todd said.

The woodstove was rapidly warming the already stuffy air of the hardware store.

“Are we all going to turn out like the old man?” Sam prodded. He pulled off his suit coat and hung it on a peg full of white canvas clerk's aprons. He headed for the coffeepot, opened the lid, stuck his finger in the coffee, then grabbed a cup off the shelf. “Can't think of too much better example to follow.” He turned to Todd. “Is he still in bed?”

Todd nodded.

Sam brushed down his gray mustache with his fingers and glanced toward the stairway. “I think I'll go up and see him.”

“He just got to sleep, Sammy. Said he was awake most the night,” Todd added. “Daddy has a hard time breathing when he's lying down. Most nights he sleeps in that old leather chair.”

Sam plopped down on the bench. “I'll check on him later. It's 1891. You'd think with all the advances in medicine they'd have something to help him.” He turned to his younger brother. “What's your schedule for today, Bobby? You got to make the Rapid City train?”

“Nope. I've got Stillman Taite on the morning run. Guthrie Holter's on the afternoon.”

“I still haven't met Holter, but his sister was a firecracker. Not that I remember those things, of course.” Sam rubbed the creases at the corner of his eye. “You have the day off?”

Robert carried his empty mug to the stove, then filled it with boiling coffee. “There's always plenty of paperwork. It's just like the army; . . . they want three copies of everything.”

“Maybe you need to get yourself one of those typewriting machines,” Sam proposed.

Robert plopped back down on the bench. “I've got one setting there staring at me. I won't touch it. Afraid I'll break it. Some day I'll get a company clerk. He can use it.”

Todd parked himself next to the bolt bins and began to sort misplaced bolts. “Now you're beginning to sound like Sammy.”

Sam took a deep gulp of nearly boiling coffee. “Listen, boys. I figure the real key to success is to get into a business you know absolutely nothing about. I can't make the telephone system work, so I hire a technician. I can't connect the switchboard, so I hire an operator. I can't even keep the bills and income straight, so I hire a bookkeeper. There's not much left to do . . .”

Todd laughed. “But butter up some new customers and carry the money to the bank.”

“Seems almost sinful, don't it?” Samuel added. “This whole telephone exchange is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. The Lord's been good to me . . . better than I deserve.”

“That's the history of the Fortunes in the Black Hills,” Todd noted.

“Timing . . . or God's grace?” Sam mumbled.

“Both,” Todd said.

“Well, I do have a little work to do today,” Sam added. “I've got to go check on a route for a phone line. I got a mine up on the east rim of Spruce Canyon that wants to know what it would cost to run a phone line up there from Deadwood.”

“I met an Englishman on the train . . . well, he was from Toronto, actually,” Robert explained, “. . . who was going to check the books at a mine called the Broken Boulder. I never heard of it.”

Todd stopped sorting bolts, then wiped his hand off on a white canvas apron. “No one ever had any luck in Spruce Canyon. Remember ol' man Hacker and that Italian partner of his? They dug up there for years. That's exactly why I like the hardware business better than the mining business. We sell to those who strike it rich and we sell to those who go bust.”

“Well, they better have struck somethin'. A phone line won't be cheap.” Sam took another gulp of steaming coffee. “I've had a crew of Irishmen stringing a line from Elizabethtown to Doddsville, and it cost me four hundred dollars a mile.”

Robert set his empty mug on the bench next to him. “Irishmen?”

Sam waved his hand toward the street. “Pinched-nose Pete hired a crew of Irishmen to put the line in.”

Robert picked his teeth with his fingernail. “Did you have any trouble with them?”

“When they hit cliffs at Death Song Canyon they threatened to walk off if they didn't get a raise.”

“What were you payin' them?” Todd asked.

“Six dollars a day. But I had to go to seven-fifty while they were on the canyon.”

“Twelve-hour days?” Robert pressed.

“Ten-hour days,” Sam replied. “They had to rope themselves to stumps and boulders to keep from tumbling off the cliff.”

“That's better than miner's wages,” Todd remarked.

“I needed a crew, and that's what it cost. It's not like stringin' a line in Cheyenne. Anyway, what are all these questions about?”

The edge of the bench felt splintery as Robert ran his hand along it. “Jamie Sue came home from shoppin' yesterday, saying she met a neighbor lady at the store. Her name's Meggie Moraine, and she claims all the Irish in Deadwood, Central City, and Lead have been told that the Fortunes are Irish-haters and they should avoid our stores.”

Todd spun around, spilling coffee from his enameled cup. “Irish-haters?”

“Shoot, I paid them better than anyone in the Black Hills,” Samuel grumbled. “Are you sure you got the story straight?”

Robert shook his head. “That's the way it came to me.”

“Irish-haters . . .” Todd mumbled. “I can't believe that.”

“That's stupid,” Sam mumbled. “I married the most handsome Irish lady who ever came to South Dakota. That's not exactly hating the Irish. Someone's tellin' a lie.”

“This Mrs. Moraine said that Abby, being Protestant and not Catholic, didn't really count,” Robert explained.

Samuel paced in front of a shelf of drilling points. “Irish is Irish, isn't it?”

“Apparently not,” Robert responded.

“Obviously, it's a mistake,” Todd huffed.

“I'll try to talk to Mr. Moraine,” Robert offered. “He seems to be the one pushing this thing. Kind of strange, isn't it?”

“I've never been accused of hating anyone in my life,” Todd said.

Sammy grinned. “How about Ricardo Swartz?”

Robert broke out laughing. “Was he the one who lassoed the school outhouse?”

Samuel's hands waved as he talked. “He dallied it to the back of Mr. Tanner's milk wagon and turned over the privy with big brother still inside. It happened during recess while all the other kids were outside. Don't you remember?”

“I was too young,” Robert chuckled. “I was still at home and didn't get to see anything.”

“Well, all the girls saw everything!” Sammy grinned.

“OK . . .” Todd sighed. “So I did hate Ricardo Swartz. But I got over that.”

“How long did it take?”

“About twenty-five years . . .” Todd gulped down the last of his coffee. “Of course, that's only because Ricardo died in a shoot-out on the Rio Grande.” He glanced out at the morning shadows that darkened the street. “But, Irish-haters?”

“I'll talk to Pinch-Nosed Pete,” Samuel said. “Maybe he heard that line crew mention somethin'. But I can't figure how that translated into hating the Irish.”

The bell at the door jingled. A man with a thick, neatly trimmed dark mustache and deep set eyes strolled in. His cane had a brass cap, his top hat a crisp, silk shine. “I say, Mr. Fortune!”

A unison chorus of “yes” greeted him from the woodstove.

“Oh, my . . .”

Robert stepped forward. “Mr. Chambers, these are my brothers. Todd, Sammy . . . this is Mr. Byron Chambers, who is a chartered accountant from Toronto.”

“Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Chambers?” Todd offered.

“Eh, no . . .” the man strolled toward the iron woodstove. “Well, yes. Thank you.”

“Are you looking for me?” Robert asked as he handed the man a steaming cup.

“Actually, I don't know which Fortune I'm looking for. I need to know how to get out to the Broken Boulder Mine. No one at the Merchant's Hotel had ever heard of it.” Chambers took a dignified sip of coffee. His eyes widened, then watered. “They said I should come over here and ask one of the old geezers at the woodstove how to find it.” He covered his mouth with his hand as he coughed. “I must say, you are not at all as old as I expected.”

“Well, thank you,” Sammy grinned. “Actually, big brother Todd is close to eighty.”