Dead Reckoning (16 page)

He was only three or four days behind the Church of the Weeping Virgin and closing ground fast. The pilgrims seemed to be moving at a pretty good clip for a party afoot, but Charlie had been riding hard, swapping for fresh horseflesh at every mining town. The roads up here were mere ledges carved out of mountainsides, but they tended to channel most travelers through the same passes, down the same valleys. The church had been easy to follow. With one more fresh mount, Charlie would be on them.

Lordy, but May was going to be surprised to see him. She was likely to piss herself. He would make her regret running away when he caught her.

The only problem was that Charlie was nearly broke. He didn't have enough money left from the “Denver Job,” as he had come to think of it, to purchase a fresh mount plus the supplies he would need to push into the wilderness. Frisco was his last chance to get outfitted.

He stepped through the open door of the saloon and returned the suspicious gazes of the men who sat hunched over their drinks. It was a shotgun-style frame building—narrow where it fronted the street, running deep under a low ceiling. Two windows allowed a little grime-filtered daylight into the front of the saloon, but the back seemed dark as a bear cave, the bartender having not yet lit the coal-oil lamps.

A pair of townsmen broke their conversation to watch Charlie walk past their table at the window. They wore garters on their white sleeves. He strode the narrow path between the long rough-sawn bar and the two-seater tables against the wall. None had more than a single man sitting at it—dirty miners, most of them. Beyond the bar, calls and raises slowly circled a big table in a torpid poker game. Behind the big table, a back door led to a small dark space of some kind.

Charlie found a single high stool at the end of the bar and sat with his back to the poker game where he could watch the front door, drink, and plan his next job. He slapped a three-dollar Indian-head gold piece against the bar. “Give me a bottle of your slowest-sippin' whiskey. I've got time to kill.”

“You come to the right place,” the bartender said. “We've kilt more time here than Congress.” He plucked the coin from the bar as he lay a glass in front of the stranger. “You must have come up from below with that government coin.”

Charlie nodded, noticed where the bartender threw the three-dollar piece. “Kansas.”

The bartender chortled as he poured the stranger's first drink for him. “Come to get rich off the diggin's?”

Charlie shrugged. “One way or the other.”

As dusk came on, the saloon man lit the lanterns, and new customers sifted in off the rutted street. A comforting hum began to chase the tense afternoon silence from the room. Every now and then, Charlie noticed the bartender cutting notches into pieces of board that he kept stacked under the bar. He didn't know why and didn't really care.

After dark, he inquired about a privy, and the bartender pointed to the back door beyond the poker game. The door led to a small dark landing at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The stairs led to the saloon owner's room, he guessed. He turned the other way, went outside, and found the outhouse.

Returning to the saloon, Charlie found his stool taken, so he stood at the bar and watched men swap gold dust for drinks, the bartender measuring each purchase on a set of scales.

This saloon couldn't be old, Charlie Holt mused, for the paint had yet to peel anywhere in the whole town of Frisco. But the ceiling was already smoke stained, the walls whiskey spattered, the floor heel gritted. He wondered if he would be the first to rob the place.

He had already figured out how he would do it. The bartender-owner lived upstairs, he had learned, and usually closed his doors around dawn to catch some shuteye. Charlie would leave by the back door some time tonight, as if he were going to visit the outhouse again. But instead, he would go upstairs and wait for the tired barman. He would use his gun barrel on the bartender's head. He would have just enough time to raid the till, buy his supplies, and get back on the trail of his wretched runaway wife before somebody found the bartender bound and gagged.

“What?” the bartender said sharply, turning to a small tarnished mirror behind the bar. “Have I got lice on my head or somethin'?” He began searching his scalp for vermin.

Charlie poured another glass of whiskey, realizing he had been staring at the bald spot on the bartender's head—the spot he would split open with his pistol barrel. “Maybe just a nit,” he said. Someday when the name of Charlie Holt was known all over these mountains, this bartender would entertain his customers by showing them the scar the outlaw scribed on his head.

“Block and tackle.” The voice came like gravel slung from a prospecting pan.

Charlie glanced to his right, found an ancient miner there, dirt clinging to his shirt where it had stuck to sweaty places. The old man had dusted his clothes of everything that would shake loose, washed his hands and his white-bearded face. He smiled as his burled hand took a brimful glass from the bartender, and his face wrinkled like a map of the bad lands.

This fellow was a regular here, Charlie thought. The bartender didn't take any money or dust from him, just made a notch in a board with a pocketknife. The board had the name
BILLINGS
written on it in pencil.

“Block and tackle?” Charlie said as the prospector took his first drink.

The old man grinned. “Make you walk a block and tackle anything.” He thrust his open palm toward the stranger. “Jules Billings.”

“Charlie Holt,” he said shaking the hand.

As the night wore on, they got vaguely acquainted, the bartender adding notches to Jules's wooden bar tab. By midnight, Charlie's bottle was half full and Billings was misty eyed.

“Prospectin' up here?” the old-timer asked.

Charlie scoffed. “Don't know the first damn thing about it.”

“Tell you what”—Jules Billings was feeling the magnanimity of drink—“you can come to work for me till you learn the trade.”

The outlaw Charlie Holt chuckled. “Learn prospectin' from a man who pays for his drinks with notches on a stick?”

Jules looked over both shoulders and leaned toward the stranger to speak low. “Boggs don't know it yet, but I'll settle my tab with him tomorrow. Ol' Jules Billings pays his debts.”

“With what?”

“I finally hit a good one, Charlie,” he said, as if they were old friends. “Filed the claim on it today. Sure, I've had some strikes play out on me before, but this one's wide as a gate. I worked it three days to make sure. Washed more than a hundred dollars' worth of dust a day with just a pan and a shovel.”

“No shit?” Charlie said. “Gold dust?”

The prospector grinned and hoisted his right leg. He lifted his trouser leg over his boot top and made out as if scratching an itch on his calf. “What do you think of that? It's plumb full of gold dust.”

Stuck into the top of the rawhide-laced boot, lashed tight against the prospector's leg, Charlie saw, was a small drawstring pouch bulging with its contents. He grinned out of one side of his mouth. “Boss,” the outlaw said, “I'm with you.”

“Let's go somewhere we can talk over terms,” Jules said. “Hell, I might make you a partner if you'll carry your half.”

Charlie grabbed his bottle by the neck. “Where do you want to go?”

“There's a quiet little whorehouse on the edge of town,” he said. “Hell, half the business deals in town get cinched there.” He tossed his head at Boggs, pulled his hat down on his brow, and stepped back from the bar.

“Let's go out the back,” Charlie suggested. “I need to visit that privy.”

Jules Billings shrugged, gestured toward the back door, and fell in behind Charlie. This was more than the old man had hoped for. After so many false mother lodes, his reputation as a prospector was such that he could scarcely hire an employee, much less get one to throw in with him on shares. He knew when he came to town that he was going to have to find a greenhorn so new to these diggings that he had never heard of Jules Billings's dubious reputation.

This Charlie Holt is perfect, he thought, grinning as he peeked at the poker hands around the big table. The man has calluses on his hands—no stranger to hard work. He said he was broke, needing a stake. He'll settle for a quarter interest, sure. Hell, that'll make Charlie Holt richer than just about anybody in town. Except for me, that is.

He felt a blast of glory surge through him as the cold night air filled his lungs. He thought of his claim again—the best he had seen since California in forty-nine. This secret had been roiling in him for days, now stirred by the stout drink. He slammed the door behind him, leapt from the wooden steps, and pushed a wolf song up his throat.

“What the hell?” the outlaw said, startled, reaching for his pistol.

Jules laughed. “Tonight's my night to howl, Charlie.” His head fell back and he took in the field of stars above, so bright through the thin air of the moonless mountain night.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “I thought you'd gone loco.” His heart was pounding like a monster's.

“Just feelin' close to God. Like the song says: ‘I once was lost, but now am found.'”

“Which way is that outhouse?”

“Over yonder,” Jules said, pointing.

“Lead the way, will you? I don't know this place.”

“Come on, I'll get you downwind of it, then you'll find it easy enough.” He laughed as he strode down the slope toward a little draw.

Charlie Holt's hand was still on his pistol grip, and now he eased the weapon quietly from the stiff leather holster. He had to step quick to come close behind the old prospector. The man began to whistle. Perfect. The poor idiot had no idea. Charlie's chest burned like a furnace as he reached for Jules Billings's hat brim, his pistol hand already swinging overhead like a windmill blade.

The cold air and the blue steel struck Jules's head together as he tried to turn, and he fell to his knees. The outlaw struck him again, grunting with the effort he put into the blow, feeling the body give under the impact, hearing the sick thud that gave him such twisted satisfaction. The old miner fell on his side, unconscious.

Charlie Holt put his pistol back in the holster, drew it again, pointed it at his victim, shook his head, put the pistol back in the holster. He turned toward the back door of the saloon, then back to Jules Billings, his whole body shaking with a nameless fury. He knelt and clawed at the pants leg. No, not yet. Not here. Hide the body first.

He dragged Billings across the rocky ground to the brush that fringed the edge of the draw. Pulling the limp body behind the bushes, he collapsed and began yanking at the right pants leg. Hiking it above the boot top, he felt the pouch, groped at it until it came free. The weight was like a trophy in his hand, and he smiled.

But now what? His chest was burning as if he had run a mile at full sprint. What was he going to do with Billings? What if the prospector came around before Charlie could get his supplies in the morning? Damn, he hadn't thought about that! Maybe he should have stuck to the saloon plan. Hell, maybe he should have just broken into a store and stolen his supplies.

He looked down at Jules Billings. Tie him up? No rope. Gag him? With what? “Shit,” the outlaw said.

Jules Billings groaned. A leg moved.

The outlaw Charlie Holt jumped back, pulled his pistol. No, don't shoot, he thought. Damn, what was he going to do?

The back door of the saloon opened, and a trio of laughing young men poured out. Billings groaned loud, put a hand to his head. He was trying to sit up!

Charlie's pistol came down hard on the miner's head as he heard the three men hooting. He struck old Jules again. Again, and again. He paused, then lay three more crushing licks across the battered head.

He looked toward the saloon, saw the three men standing in a row, urinating. They laughed, then set up a chorus to rival the wildest pack of timber wolves in the mountains. Old Jules Billings had been wrong. It was not his night to howl.

Twenty-one

As far as Carrol Moncrief knew, he was the first and only preacher to have ever set foot in Frisco, Colorado. He enjoyed a monopoly here, and never did he need it more than today. As he trotted his tired horse into town, he found himself hoping for a prayer meeting, a funeral, a shotgun wedding—any excuse he might find to pass his hat.

It was not Sunday, so only a few miners were in town from their claims, and fewer would likely be in a frame of mind to worship. It was not even Wednesday, on which evening the Frisco Christian Society met in the vacant second story of the newspaper office. It was Thursday noon, and Frisco lay as fallow for the gleanings of a circuit preacher as it would all week.

“Now, Carrol,” he said, admonishing himself. “The Lord will provide.”

He rode first to the general store of Edgar Dreyer, who served as the town's undertaker by virtue of the fact that he sold pine coffins. Carrol might have simply asked Dreyer for credit, except that he already owed the man nearly a hundred dollars. He had planned to repay Dreyer with part of the five hundred the Church of the Weeping Virgin had promised him, but Dee Hassard had destroyed even that intention.

“Howdy, Edgar,” he said, stepping into the general store.

“Carrol! Goddamn, it's good to see you.”

The preacher winced. “Now, Edgar, you promised me you'd work on your language.”

Dreyer gritted his teeth. “Shit,” he said, then clapped his hand over his mouth, his face bug-eyed. He turned to a slate behind his counter, and with a piece of chalk rock made two hash marks, one on either side of a dividing line. “Well, that's only three blasphemies and a half a dozen profanities so far today. I'm under the average, Carrol. That tally board you give me helps.”

“Try a little harder, Edgar. Learn to say ‘fiddlesticks' or ‘dagnabbit' or somethin' that ain't so offensive.” He glanced around the empty store. “How's business?”