Dead Reckoning (14 page)

“Oh, there's things you can only learn in the three days. It's a secret. I can't tell you. But you'll be exhausted by the time it's done, I'll warrant that!” The little woman laughed at May, her eyes sparkling.

They strode on, May listening apprehensively to the immigrant woman make sketchy hints about the nature of the initiation. She would get no sleep, she would be starved, and she would be broken down to tears before it was all over.

“Why would anybody want to do that?” she asked, and the woman only laughed at her. She suddenly felt a thousand miles from civilization, caught up in something she didn't want or understand. Clarence was the only hope she had, and Dee Hassard had given Clarence the ultimatum.

As they came around a giant fir tree at a crook in the trail, May looked over her shoulder, and when she turned back to the way ahead, she found Dee Hassard in her path. She gasped, instinctively shielding the infant in her arms from the red-haired prophet.

“He ain't comin' back, Sister May,” Hassard said.

She blushed. “Who do you mean?”

“You know. The kid from back east.” He looked disapprovingly at the baby in May's arms, noticed the mother standing nearby as the rest of the party trudged on around them. “Brother,” he said to a poorly clothed young man with several teeth missing, “carry this baby for this good mother. I want to talk with Sister May.”

Reluctantly, May gave up the child as the mother drifted on up the trail with the rest of the party.

“I don't expect to see Brother Clarence ever again. He packed all his things with him and rode his own horse out this morning.”

The tail end of the pilgrimage was coming around the bend in the trail now, shortly to leave May alone with the prophet.

“Did you see that in one of your visions?” she said, unable to mask her sarcasm.

Hassard smiled. This girl had seen and done more than she let on. “You don't believe in the Mount of the Snowy Cross?”

The last pilgrim, an old woman, limped around the crook in the trail, casting a parting glance at the pair—a fearful glance, it seemed to May—almost a warning.

“I don't know,” May said, feeling vulnerable. She began walking again, but Hassard grabbed her by the arm.

“Wait,” he said. “I want to talk to you about something.”

She pulled timidly away, but he refused to release her. “Turn me loose,” she said.

“Just a minute.” He smiled, tightened his grip. “I won't hurt you, Sister May. I just want to talk.”

She glanced down the back trail. No one was coming for her. Hassard was right. Clarence would never return. She was alone here with this stranger, deep in the forested mountains. The familiar fear surged all around her, the helplessness her aunt's husband had first introduced her to years ago.

“What do you want?” she said, her voice shaking.

“I want you to help me lead this rabble,” he replied, testing her like strange snow-drifted ground. “People think more of a man when he has a beautiful woman by his side.” He smiled, a thin expression of his power over her.

“They think enough of you already. You and your revelations. You don't need my help.”

Hassard turned her toward him, his hand still firmly grasping her arm. “I know what I need, Sister May. Now, you think about it. This church will be the richest thing in the mountains before it's all over.”

“I thought you were going to make them give all their money away.”

“I mean land rich. God's green earth possesses more value than man-made coin. These people need a female model they can look up to. I think you fit the mold, May. You'll have everything.”

“I don't know what you mean,” she said.

“You know exactly what I mean. Ol' Deacon Dee has been around, Sister May. Enough to recognize that you have, too.” He put another hand on her, crept his palms slowly up her arms, pulling her slightly closer to him.

May quivered, felt her disgust of the man being squeezed between them. Why did men like him always treat her this way? Damn him to think he could do this to her, lay his hands upon her, hold her here against his will! “All right, I'll think about it,” she said. “Just let me catch up with the others.”

“I will, May.” He showed her how strong he was, pulling her toward him until her palms pressed flat against his chest. “But you've got to make up your mind soon. I go out in the woods to say my prayers every night. If you decide you want the easiest life in these mountains, you come on out and join me there. If you don't, this wilderness could be a little hard on you.”

As his leer descended on her, she drew her face back, then turned her head sharply away. She thought she would burst with shame and hopelessness until she saw the figure rise from a dip in the trail downhill. “Clarence!”

Hassard glanced and felt his grip melt from her arms as she pulled away. He saw the antlers jostling, the broad body of the deer slung over the saddle. The hunter was leading his horse, grinning at May as she trotted to meet him. The Vermonter swept his hat from his head, its brim rolled in his hand.

“Damn!” Hassard muttered. He backed away as May reached the hunter. He stepped around the big fir in the crook of the trail. How had that kid managed to kill that deer? Sister May wouldn't be coming to join him in the woods tonight—he knew that. They meant trouble now—both of them.

Every scam he had ever had fail had failed because of a woman. Even that diamond field fiasco. He would never have gotten caught in Denver if he hadn't stopped at that whorehouse to gamble and fornicate.

Now Sister May had taken a peek under his prophet costume. How much would she tell young Philbrick? Damn those inviting eyes!

Eighteen

Carrol Moncrief stalked slowly down the street, his eyes searching for bits of shattered glass. This was the place to begin trailing Dee Hassard. Not so much as a reader of sign, but as a calculator of men.

The hooves of a hundred horses had broken this ground since Hassard knelt upon it. A thousand drunken miners, cowboys, and vagabonds had obliterated the tracks the swindler had made leaving this street. Still, this was the place to begin, where they had stood together, the swindler hoaxing the preacher, the preacher deceiving himself.

A shard of glass twinkled in the noonday glare, and Moncrief squatted to pinch it between two toughened digits. Once he found the first, others seemed to sprout all around him—like gems in Dee Hassard's ludicrous field of diamonds. This was where the whiskey bottle had rained down on them in pieces. Where Carrol had met his brother's murderer.

The question was why. Why had Hassard made himself known to Carrol that night? He had shown his face, given the preacher a firsthand sighting, a lead. Was Hassard simply so mean that he wanted to see the look on Carrol's face when he broke the news about Frank? Or was he clever?

Let's assume he's clever, Carrol thought. No, more than just clever. Sly. Treacherous to the point that he didn't mind getting on his knees in the sight of God and everybody else in order to draw a victim into a snare.

But which snare?

Hassard had wanted him to go back to Fairplay for some reason. Carrol rolled the jagged piece of glass between his fingers until a new facet glinted at him. Maybe he had been looking at this thing wrong. Maybe Hassard didn't want him in Fairplay so much as he just wanted him out of Denver.

Still, why?

Moncrief felt his fingers tightening with frustration until a sharp point cut through his thick skin. He flinched, flicked the shard of glass aside.

All right, let's start over, he thought. What does a confidence man want? He wants something you've got. Something valuable. He wants it so bad he's willing to work for it, and work hard. Most people don't realize that a swindler is not a lazy criminal. Deception is hard work. Hassard's motivation lay not with indolence, but in the taking—the actual theft by swindle. It gave him a perverse sense of mastery to so smoothly steal.

He strode slowly toward the board sidewalk, mulling it over, stopping only to let a buggy pass. What did he have that Hassard would want? Where would Hassard go to get it? He kicked the board sidewalk where he and Hassard had talked religion. What were the last words that had passed between them? He had asked Hassard to inform the Church of the Weeping Virgin that he would not be available to lead them over the mountains.

So what? It wasn't as if Hassard would actually do him that favor out of the goodness of his heart, for not even the hole where his heart should have been held any goodness.

What had ever happened to that bunch of fanatics, anyway? Whom had they hired to lead them over the mountains? Oh well, that wasn't his concern. He had to catch Hassard. But there were no leads. The man could be anywhere.

The coward had killed Frank in cold blood and all but boasted of it to Carrol's face.

He spat in the street and fought an urge to utter a cuss word that was whirring in his head like the wings of a locust. Investigating had been Frank's strength, never his own.

In his old days of lawlessness, Carrol Moncrief had shaken many a lawman and vigilante from his trail. It was so easily accomplished. Only Frank had succeeded in riding him down, jailing him, seeing him to the penitentiary.

He had hated Frank for it at the time. “You ain't no brother of mine,” he had told him. Now Carrol knew that he would have been dead and in hell by this time if Frank hadn't taken him down that hard reality road.

How had Frank done it? In those days no one could ride harder than the outlaw Carrol Moncrief. And yet his own brother had managed to bring him in. How? Simple enough. He made it more than a job. He made it personal. He just kept coming. That was what Carrol would have to do to catch this Dee Hassard, or whatever his real name was. Never quit, never stop thinking like a confidence man. Just keep coming.

He smacked his lips and looked at the sign on the saloon front. Parting the double doors, he stepped in, his eyes meeting those of the bartender almost instantly. “Remember me?” he said, his spurs singing loud against the board floor.

The bartender's quick glance lashed his shotgun under the bar, then returned to the preacher. “You've got sand in your craw to come back here after pullin' that hog leg on me.”

“Dry sand,” Carrol said, throwing a coin onto the bar.

“You think I'll pour you good whiskey?”

“One thing I've learned about bartenders,” Carrol said, hooking his heel on the foot rails. “You're forgivin' souls. I guess you've got to be when your best customers are drunks.” He smiled with genuine warmth.

The bartender smirked, reached for a bottle and glass. “You're the damnedest preacher I ever saw. I thought the Good Book was supposed to be against drink.”

“Against drunkenness, not drink. Jesus himself changed water to wine. Man's got to know when to quit, that's all.”

“I hope you don't aim to hang around here all day and go to preachin' again.”

Carrol took a sip and shook his head. “Just came to clear the cobwebs. I'm lookin' for somebody.”

“Who?” The bartender's eyes brightened, hoping he could help move the preacher on.

“A fellow named Dee Hassard. Little redheaded peckerwood was here last time I was.”

“Not the one you Christianized out there in the street?”

Carrol set his glass on the bar. “You remember him?”

“I heard the shot, like everybody else. Looked out the window to see what was goin' on. Saw that redheaded feller on his knees. You must have put the fear of God into that soul, Parson.”

“How's that?” Carrol was straightening, sensing a fresh turn in the trail.

“He up and joined that bunch of fanatics the next day. You know, the pilgrims goin' over the mountains. Came into town with some of 'em to swap their wagons for mules and burros. Hell, looked like they was joinin' him, instead of him joinin' them.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was ramroddin' the whole outfit. Had 'em sellin' wagons, furniture, all sorts of things. Later on I seen 'em leadin' a pack string back up toward Cherry Creek. That redheaded feller was on the lead mule.”

Carrol smiled and picked up his glass. “Friend,” he said, pausing to throw the last of the whiskey down his throat, “I'm sorry I ever pulled my pistol on you.” He faced the handful of men in the saloon, raising his hands as he turned. “Bless this saloon!” he cried, closing his eyes tight. “May God bring only health and prosperity to all who enter its portals!” He made his head tremble for emphasis. “May every jigger poured here cleanse the soul of he whose veins it courses! Amen!”

“You ain't gonna start preachin' to my customers again, are you?” the bartender asked as Carrol Moncrief strode long for the door.

“Nope.”

“Where you goin'?”

Carrol stopped at the door, his eyes flaring as they shot back across the barroom. “Over the mountains, brother bartender. I think it's time I went on a pilgrimage.”

Nineteen

The town was called Buena Vista, but the view did not look so good to Ramon. He hadn't seen one brown face since he arrived, nor heard a single word of Spanish—not even from Sister Petra. She had been murmuring that gibberish called English to virtually anyone who would listen.

The surrounding mountains were spectacles such as Ramon had never seen, hence the name of the bustling mining town. But the name was the only thing Spanish about this place. The peaks were not like the ones that rose above Guajolote. These were American mountains. Not Spanish, or Mexican. They didn't even seem like Indian mountains, though Petra had told him they belonged to the Utes. This was strange country—white man's domain—and he did not belong.

The people here gawked at him as if they had never seen a Mexican. Perhaps it was not Ramon, himself, so much as it was the trio—the boy, the nun, and the burro. It appeared to Ramon that word of them had spread since they arrived an hour ago, and now every soul in town wanted to get a look at the strange little party that sought the cross on the mountain.