High and Wild (9 page)

He let his voice trail off when he saw Haskell, who was ejecting his last spent cartridge and levering a fresh one into the Yellowboy's action. The robber at the other end of the car—a short, stocky
hombre
with incredibly long pewter-colored hair hanging down from beneath his mask and his weather-battered, sun-faded Stetson—began to raise the pistol in his hand toward the Pinkerton.

Haskell raised his rifle and shouted, “Give it up, or give up the ghost, friend. Most of your pards are already dancin' with the devil!”

Bear drew a bead on the outlaw's lumpy chest.

The hardcase lowered his pistol, turned quickly to his left, and pulled the middle-aged woman in the widow's weeds out of the seat she'd been cowering in. Haskell heard the woman's chicken scream a shrill alarm, and then the woman herself was screaming and flopping her arms wildly, pleading for her life.

“Drop the rifle, or I'll send this bitch to her old man!” the stocky outlaw shouted from behind his flour-sack mask.

Haskell triggered the Yellowboy.

The stocky hardcase's head snapped back as the .44 slug tore into his left temple and blew out the back of his head to paint the window of the door behind him with blood, brains, and bone. The man dropped his pistol unfired as he stumbled back against the bloody door and tore it off its hinges before he and the door hit the car's front platform.

“Look out, Mister!” a raspy voice shouted amid the bawling and general hubbub. “Behind you!”

Haskell started to turn his head just as he felt something cold, round, and hard press against his right ear. There was the ominous, ratcheting click of a gun hammer being cocked.

A man nearly Haskell's height stood behind him, grinning through the mouth hole of his mask. Both eyes were frosty blue and bright with cunning, the whites liberally stitched with red.

In a heavy Mexican accent, the man said, “
Amigo
, I hope you are a friend of
Jesús
, because you are about to veezit him.”

His mouth opened suddenly, forming a perfect O in the mask hole. Both eyes widened, and the light in them grew from cunning to incredulous. The pistol dropped from his hand to hit the floor near Haskell's right boot. As Bear turned toward the masked Mexican, his would-be assailant gave a groan through his wide-open mouth and dropped to his knees. He reached up toward his neck with one hand and then fell belly-down on the floor, quivering.

Haskell looked around. There was only the crowd, most of them filling the center aisle as they high-tailed it for the coach's back door.

Haskell frowned. “Who . . .?”

He dropped his gaze to the dead man.

The slender ivory handle of a knife—judging by its size, a stiletto—protruded from the back of the Mexican's neck.

Haskell checked to make sure no more robbers were near. When he saw only the horrified passengers, he dropped to a knee beside the dead Mexican and lowered his head to get a better look at the knife handle.

The slim ivory grip was inset with the delicate carving of a black bird in flight.

A raven.

The flat end of the handle, which formed a perfect circle, was inset with a silver R.

Haskell looked around. He turned toward where the old widow had been sitting. She was gone. So was her chicken.

He looked around some more. Nearly all of the coach passengers had left the car. The train was slowing, having come to the bottom of the pass and the engineer likely having heard the gunfire. Since Haskell hadn't seen the conductor, he figured the man was probably lying dead in one of the other coach cars.

As he himself nearly lay dead right here.

He regarded the dead Mexican again and then looked around once more, his thick beard spreading in a knowing grin.

9

I
n Colorado Springs, at
the foot of Pikes Peak, Haskell spent the night gambling and drinking before bedding down in a locally famous, if not infamous, bordello appropriately called Garden of the Goddesses, located on the trail out toward the Garden of the Gods, that jaw-dropping wonderland of nature-carved sandstone monuments a few miles northwest of Colorado Springs proper.

Bear figured he'd best have his sap bled off—what little Raven had left him—before the long ride into the mountains. The playful young octoroon who'd acquired the honor had done a right serviceable job, although any girl would have trouble living up to the night the big Pinkerton had spent with his beguiling colleague in the Larimer Hotel.

Miss Raven York even gave the lovely Sonoma a run for her money.

At dawn's first wash the next morning, he rented a horse stout enough to carry a man his size without blowing out both lungs and breaking its legs and headed west through the Garden of the Gods and a couple of fledgling but raucous mining towns. When he had Pikes Peak well out of the way to the south, he swung west and started the slow climb toward the Continental Divide.

He was glad to leave the summer behind him. With every passing mile that he climbed higher into early autumn, he felt the air gradually cooling and freshening. Pine resin and cedar perfumed the often sharp breeze sifting down from the snow-mantled peeks spreading out ahead and to both sides.

He'd ridden through this country many times before, but those rugged monoliths, with their sawtooth ridges pocked with woolly-looking late-summer ermine and the granite peeking through here and there above the timberline, never failed to make him feel dizzy with childlike joy at the eternal magic and mystery of earthly creation.

Someday, when he was old, he'd live up there among those towering peaks drained by chill, rollicking streams, far from the madding crowd. With just a dog or two, a mule, maybe a pet raccoon, and picks and shovels and gold-panning gear. Nothing else. Just that. A cabin, of course. A woman might be nice, but he knew from experience that women got on a fella's nerves right fast. And he, despite his charm and wit, somehow always managed to get on women's nerves, too.

Imagine that!

He chuckled at the notion. Then, just because there was no one else around to think him
loco
, he threw his head back and guffawed. He guffawed louder, enjoying the lingering, slowly receding echoes of his own voice and then bellowing with genuine laughter at the fool he was, riding a big horse through the piney mountains and yelling like an old mountain man who'd long since grown soft in his thinker box.

Or maybe he himself had gone soft in his head. Crazier'n a tree full of owls.

The war and all, his estrangement from his family . . .

Oh, well. Mostly, he made a good time of it, and he had a knack for curling a girl's toes, that was for sure!

He bellowed again, leaning far back in his saddle and causing the big black to twitch its ears at the crazy Texan in its saddle.

His first night on the trail from Colorado Springs, Bear stayed in an Overland Stage swing station and played cards by the light of an old bull's-eye lantern with the one-eyed station agent, Pete Fitzsimmons, while the old agent's wife snored raucously beyond a blanket curtain.

The Pinkerton climbed even higher the next day, crossed the Divide, wearing his shaggy bear coat with its collar raised, and made camp along the Arkansas River.

He fished for his supper while sipping Sam Clay bourbon from the bottle and smoking a fresh Cleopatra and pan-fried two red-throated trout with salt and butter and a sprinkle of wild sage.

He washed down the fish with coffee liberally laced with his prized Sam Clay and watched the night descend, black as the inside of a glove. His breath plumed on the chill, still air. The river chuckled over rocks concealed in darkness behind him.

Coyotes yammered. When they stopped, a lone wolf took over the night's entertainment with a wild, lonely dirge. The stars kindled to life, appearing so close that Haskell imagined he could hear the cracking and popping of their individual conflagrations.

Late in the night, he was awakened by the shrill cry of a hunting mountain lion. He looked around, pulled his Yellowboy close, slid his hat back down over his eyes, and let sleep pull him back down into its warm, cradling arms.

The next day, in the mid-afternoon, he reined the black to a halt at the lip of a steep ridge and stared into the vast canyon below. The chasm was egg-shaped and carpeted in green grass so tall that it curled back on itself. It was threaded by a curling stream lined with mountain willows and sage. It was both an elk park and a beaver meadow, with several dams forming dark pools reflecting the westering sun.

Beyond this park and a little higher on the gradually rising bench that rolled up against a vast pine and fir forest toward shouldering, snow-capped peeks, lay a town.

Wendigo.

The town was dwarfed by the size of the canyon and the monoliths rising beyond it, beyond the gently rising forest. But after Haskell had inspected the settlement closely, he was satisfied that it was no jerkwater or mere stage stop. It was Wendigo, all right, a boisterous gold and silver boomtown here in the heart of the Sawatch Range, a hundred miles nearly straight south of Leadville.

The Pinkerton consulted a relatively recent government map he carried in his saddlebags, and then, satisfied that he hadn't gotten off on a wrong trail, he stuffed the map back into a pocket of his coat, clucked to the black, and started down the trail that switchbacked through towering pines and tamaracks. The loamy, resiny smell of forest duff rose all around him. Small forest birds piped, and squirrels chittered angrily. An occasional pinecone dropped with a dull thud.

Far up in the cobalt sky, a hunting hawk gave its ratcheting cry.

Nearly a half hour later, horse and rider reached the bottom of the ridge, where the fresh, mineral smell of a narrow, clear-as-glass stream rose. While the black gelding drew water from a slender pool, Haskell watched a rainbow trout flick-and-pause among the pale, polished rocks, its sides sparkling like sequins on a cheap whore's scanty frock.

Wendigo was far larger than it had appeared from a half-mile away. It was also noisier and smellier and teeming with men of every size, shape, and color. Most were dressed in skins and firs of various types, and as Haskell put the black along the broad main street between tent shacks, log cabins, and false-fronted business establishments, he heard at least three languages other than English: German, French, and what he thought was either Swedish or Norwegian.

As he continued along the street, he saw several Chinamen with their hair in queues but dressed similarly to the others, and a swarthy little gent was selling corked brown bottles out of a wagon whose canvas top read, “Dr. Luigi Baliani's Love Potions & Snake Oil.”

Girls dressed like pretty, multicolored birds called from balconies of a half-dozen gaudily painted establishments on both sides of the street. As much as Haskell didn't want to, he passed them all—even after one of the painted ladies called to him in a thick French accent, “Hey, big man on the black horse, if you let me suck your cock, I'll let you play with my titties!”—and reined up in front of easily the largest and most resplendent establishment in town.

The Sawatch House Hotel and Saloon.

Haskell had learned from experience that if you wanted to find someone who'd gone missing under suspicious circumstances, as Malcolm Briar most likely had, you didn't just burst into town asking around about the man. Or even about the other man, the detective who'd disappeared, Calvin Wexler.

No, sirree, what you did was get the attention of everybody in town as quickly as possible, usually by slipping a bee under their bonnets. That way, no one had time to get suspicious of your intentions, because they were too busy getting their backs in a hump.

Then, when they were good and distracted by anger, you started prodding them a little here and there, until you began eking out information, sort of like pulling a single thread until the entire garment became unraveled.

Or, as the saying went, stir the honey pot, and the biggest chunks of shit float to the top. It was not a foolproof method of operation, and it was often dangerous, might even prove deadly someday, but it was Haskell's own method, and it was as effective as anything ol' Allan himself had come up with.

You couldn't go swimming without getting wet, by God!

Bear chuckled.

Sitting the black, he stared up at the three-story building before him. The hotel sat alone on its lot, which was a good three times larger than any of the others Haskell had seen so far. All the windows had colored shutters, each shutter a different color. There was gingerbread trim along the eaves of the peaked, shake-shingled roof, and a long balcony with a rod-iron rail decorated with gold leaves ran across the second story. On the first story was a broad gallery painted pink, with stout spruce-green roof support posts.

The broad gallery had two sets of broad front steps. Flanking it were two sets of doors. The one to the left was marked “Dining Room.” The one to the right was marked “Saloon.”

All in all, the Sawatch was quite the fancy-pants place, and it had the look of a real money mill, but at this time of the day, mid-afternoon, the combination hotel and saloon appeared relatively still and quiet—at least, in contrast to the rollicking town around it.

The general hubbub of Wendigo was set against the regular thumping-grinding of what Haskell knew to be stamping mills likely situated somewhere on the town's other side, near where the freight wagons would haul the raw ore down from the mines higher in the mountains to the northwest.

The thumping of the processing mills was so violent that when he dismounted, Haskell could feel the tremor through his boots. He loosened the black's saddle cinch, so the horse could stand easy, and he slipped the bit from the mount's teeth, so it could drink from the stock tank conveniently provided.

And with an appreciative pat to the horse's sleek neck, Haskell started up the broad stone porch steps on the gallery's right side, beneath the saloon doors.

Halfway up, he stopped. A white shingle trimmed in varnished oak was set against the support post before him, admonishing in fine green script: “All visitors, please scrape all soiling from your boots before entering. Snuff chewers, take care to use the spittoons provided. Thank you.—The House.”

Haskell said, “Soilings?” He looked at the black gelding eyeing him skeptically. “Do they mean shit, you think?”

The horse twitched an ear.

Haskell regarded the sign once more. His lips spread into an evil grin, and one eye narrowed, looking down at his prized boots.

“Sorry, my lovelies,” he said. “Duty calls.”

With a fateful sigh but also a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, Bear looked into the street, found just what he was looking for, and set his left boot down in the heart of it. He didn't have the courage to look at what he was doing to the precious footwear, handmade by Felipe Rivera himself, but he knew he'd done the job right when he felt a clinging warmth ensconce his left foot. The vinegary stench momentarily took his breath.

He wrinkled his nose against the smell as he tramped up the porch steps, crossed the gallery, and pushed through the scrolled oak batwings with bucking broncos carved into the middle of each.

The room before him was as grand as a ballroom, with burgundy carpeting running from the left wall to within six feet of the bar on the right, where a stretch of darkly varnished oak caught the reflection of the brass footrail.

The tables were round or square, stoutly but elegantly hewn of fine wood. A large brass-and-crystal chandelier hung over the room, which was twice the size of your average barn, and the gleaming zinc-topped bar itself was flanked by a back bar as splendid as any Haskell had seen in Leadville. And he was pretty damn sure that he'd seen every bar in that rollicking mining town north of here that was sort of a work-in-progress of Bear's millionaire acquaintances, Horace and Baby Doe Tabor.

Dropping down three steps to the sunken drinking hall and striding across the thick burgundy carpet, he grinned through his shaggy beard at the liveried bartender who'd been stocking the back bar shelves. The bartender glanced at Haskell, looked away, then snapped his startled gaze back to the big man in the brown slouch hat, black vest, and blue chambray bib-front shirt, with two big pistols shell-belted around his waist and the cuffs of his tight gray tweed trousers stuffed into the tops of his black, red-stitched boots.

It was on Bear's boots that the barman's eyes settled and widened.

“Friend, I've traveled far, and I've worked up one powerful thirst,” Bear announced in his booming, jovial baritone, which fairly rocketed around the cavernous room, his thumping boots and rattling spurs keeping the beat. “I'll have a drink of your best bourbon—Sam Clay from Kentucky, if you have it—and keep the nectar runnin'!”