Colter's Path (9781101604830) (28 page)

“What'd we stop for?” asked Tom Buckle.

Jedd started to tell Buckle that perhaps he knew the story behind the cat buried beside the little girl's grave after all. But he shut up even before he started, realizing telling the tale wouldn't be worth the effort, just a distraction from what they had come here for.

“Well, at least finish what you were telling me before. The college president and so on.”

“His name is McSwain. His daughter married a man named Wickham, and they live in Bowater, of all places. Your own mining town.”

Buckle gaped at Jedd. “Stanley Wickham?”

“That's the man. You know him?”

“I know who he is! Everyone for miles around knows Stanley Wickham. He's a merchant of mining and dry goods and has the best house in Bowater, though it isn't much to look at. Something of a hodgepodge. Wickham's wife, though…now, there is beauty to any man's eyes! Did I hear you say you almost married her?”

“I did. But it…it didn't happen.”

“I must say it's your loss, then, because Stanley Wickham is the envy of every man in a dozen different mining camps for his wife's beauty. Here we are in a state with not enough women to fill a teacup, and who but a mouse of a man like Stanley Wickham has the finest one in several states?”

“Life ain't fair, Buckle.”

“No, it's not. And what makes it worse in Wickham's case is that he seemingly doesn't appreciate what he has. The man is reputed to have climbed into the nests of many a soiled dove. A woman like he has deserves better than that. Sorry even to tell you that, Jedd.”

“I already knew. To tell you the truth, Buckle, I have every notion of seeing Emma when I can. It's most of what drew me to California. I've got to see her and know how she is. If her husband is hurting her, I will not stand by and let it go on.”

“I can't fault that, Jedd. But to change the subject a moment…we've reached the fork of the trail.”

Jedd looked down the trail branch he had not taken
before. “Shall we ride down to that valley, assuming we find it?” Jedd asked Buckle.

“I'm inclined to stay on foot. Easier to stay quiet, low, and out of sight on foot. Why don't we hobble the horses here and come back for them later?”

“I think that's a good notion, Tom.”

They went on, more tense now, wondering how much truth there might be in the rumor they were chasing. Jedd asked Buckle a question that had been bumping around the back of his mind for several minutes now. “Tom, why did you have to buttonhole me, a deputy marshal from another town, to help you do this? Why did your own marshal not come with you?”

“Well, Jedd, because he is occupied more with his mining than his work for the law. I often feel that I was hired to do his duties for him while he gathers up his flakes and dust and guards his claim.”

“Like we talked about, life ain't fair.”

“No.”

They went on. Jedd, experienced at reading landscapes, could tell from a subtle difference in light, breeze, and atmosphere that they were approaching a depression in the hilly land. The valley of cabins, most likely.

A few paces on, Buckle said, “Jedd, you asked why my marshal did not come with me. I'll ask the same question back to you.”

“My marshal, man name of Rand Blalock, doesn't know about any of this, doesn't know I'm out here today. It was me who Ben Scarlett talked to about it, Blalock not being there to hear it. So I came on alone, in case it turned out to be nothing. And also because I wasn't certain just what I would do…whether I would come up here or go on to Bowater to find Emma.”

“Jedd.” Buckle had stopped in his tracks and pointed ahead. “A cabin. Just one. You see it?”

Jedd looked and shook his head. “No. I see at least five of them.”

He was right, though it took Buckle much longer to see them. “So it's true,” he said.

“At least about there being cabins in this valley, yes.
And Ben was right about the cabins…something missing.”

“I think I see. No windows. No doors.”

“But some missing chinking here and there…to let air through, I guess.”

They stood silent for more than a minute. There was no sound at all but a light breeze.

“Do you think anyone is down there?” Buckle asked.

“I don't think so. Let's go down, quietly, and see.”

Buckle drew back, nervous. “There might be someone guarding the place, if there are people in any of those cabins.”

Jedd shook his head. “What I smell isn't the scent of humans.”

Buckle sniffed the air. “I don't smell anything.”

“It comes from spending enough time hunting, tracking, trapping. And from being a Colter. They say that, in the earlier days of my family, Joshua Colter could smell the scent of deer long before he could see them. And do the same with people.”

“So, if those cabins don't hold people, then what?”

“Ever heard of bull and bear fights, Buckle?”

“Ayuh. Saw one once. Fearsome bloody thing, ayuh, is a bull and bear fight.”

“Well, I think those cabins are maybe there to hold bears captured for use in bull and bear fights. That's what I smell. Bear spoor.”

“No women held here, then? Just bears for the fights?”

“That's what I'd bet we'll find. I'm going down to look. If there's ever been people held here, I'll be able to tell. But I have to say, Tom, even though I know the kinds of things you talked about really happen, women and girls being captured and hauled off to be misused by bad men in other places, I doubt it happens much compared to most things. I think it's more likely there's something not quite that devilish going on here.”

To Jedd's surprise, Buckle's eyes filled with water again. He frowned, tears brimming over. “It may not be as uncommon as most would think,” he said, his voice
quaking a little. “And don't think that it can only happen somewhere else.”

“Tom, what's going on with you? Is there something about all this that cuts close to the heart with you? Did you maybe know a woman who—”

“I can't do it, Jedd. I can't. I thought if I had somebody with me, I could get through it. But I was wrong. If we go down there and find that there have been women held here after all, I…I don't know what will happen. I don't think I could bear being there, knowing…”

“Knowing that somebody who matters to you was hurt in a place like this…if this proves to be that kind of place. Am I right?”

Buckle nodded fast and couldn't look at Jedd any longer. His eyes and face were wet now. “You aren't the only one who has lost a beloved woman, Jedd,” he said. “In my case it was my sister. Taken from us too young, and in circumstances no woman should ever have to face, anywhere, anytime. The kind that the rumors say might prevail in that valley there.”

“I'm sorry for whatever happened, and whoever it happened to. You needn't go down there with me, Tom. I'll take a look and then I can tell you.”

“I'm not going to wait. I'm going to go on back home, Jedd. I don't even want to know what you find, not today. You can look me up and tell me sometime later.”

It was clear to Jedd that, whatever had happened to Tom Buckle's lost sister, it had had a devastating effect. The man was wrecked, shaking now as if the California day had just gone as cold as a Canadian winter. Buckle's tears came hard, but this time Jedd had no impulse at all to laugh at his grimacing expression.

“Go on, if you need to, Tom. I'll get with you another day and we'll talk some more. As much or as little as you want to.”

Buckle nodded and managed to pull himself together a bit. His emotions settled enough for the tears to stop.

Jedd shook Buckle's hand and began trudging down into the valley. Ten steps down, Buckle called to him, “Wait just a second.” He trotted down and joined Jedd.

“What is it, Tom? Have you changed your mind?”

“No, just wanted to ask you something. When I first saw you today, the first thing that caught my eye was the sun glinting on your badge, which is what drew my interest. The second thing was the man beside you. I saw him while you were at a distance, but when you reached the place I was, you were alone. Where did he go?”

Jedd gazed in amazement at Tom Buckle. “There was no one riding with me today. I've been alone since I rode out of Scarlett's Luck.”

“Oh no, there was a man there. To the left of you, and then you both were out of sight behind the trees a few moments, and when you came back into view and were close to me, he was gone.”

“It's a mystery, then. I can't explain it,” Jedd said. He glanced to his left and mentally added, But maybe you can, Treemont.

A
s Jedd walked down into the valley, his nose told him that his early assessment was likely to prove correct. The faint but musky scent of bear spoor increased the closer he grew to the first log structure. He was soon close enough to see that the cabin had no roof designed to shed water. A rain would simply pour in between the logs—more evidence that this was a structure intended to pen an animal, not hold a human. The roof was made in two sections, side by side, the larger of them spiked down onto the top run of logs, the other lying like an upward- and outward-opening trapdoor, hinged on one side to the top of the wall, meaning the cabin's only real entrance doubled as a section of its roof.

Jedd peered between two unchinked logs and determined that the structure was uninhabited at the moment. He clambered up one side and with effort lifted back the trapdoor entrance, letting it swing down against the outer wall. He dropped inside the cabin.

No question about it…. A bear, or maybe more than one, had been held here sometime in the past two or three months. The smell remained strong to a nose as sensitive and experience-trained as Jedd's, and he found
hair snagged in the bark of the logs and plenty of bear droppings on the earthen floor.

He climbed out, closed down the door, and moved on to the next cabin, where he repeated the same kind of exploration and found the same results. No evidence was there of anything but use of the structure for the captivity of bears. Confident now that he would be able to give a reassuring report to Tom Buckle the next time he saw him, Jedd moved on to the third log structure and entered in the same manner.

In the shadowed interior, he saw something. Kneeling, he plucked thick hair of a bear from a splinter on one of the logs. He rolled it between thumb and forefinger, then tossed it aside. On the ground he saw droppings and examined them. Bear.

He saw more hair, caught like the previous bit in the rough splinters of the log. He plucked it out as before, pinching it idly between his fingers. He was about to toss it to the earth when he glanced more closely at it, and froze. He brought it to his nose, sniffed it. Then something on the ground near his knee also caught his attention, and he picked that up.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he whispered. “Dear God above.”

Three days later, Stanley Wickham found himself looking at a gnarled, calloused hand he would be expected to shake within a few moments, an act that would seal and close a grim and wicked deal. The idea of touching that hand, and agreeing to that which he himself had just put forward to be done, made him feel as if his gorge could rise and erupt.

Had he really fallen this far? Lost this much of his integrity and decency?

He didn't like to admit it, but he knew the answer was yes. His future depended on the plans he and Wilberforce Sadler had made, and those plans in turn depended on him getting those diamonds of Zeb McSwain's into his hand. And in order to clasp those diamonds, his hand had first to grasp that of the steel-eyed man before him, and ugly things had to be done.

Wickham would not seal this arrangement, though, until certain matters were firmly established. “You do understand that she cannot,
cannot
, know my involvement in this,” he said. “No matter what happens, no matter what is asked or demanded or attempted by her or anyone else, she cannot know.
Must
not. Ever.”

“Understood, sir, understood. I've told you a dozen times already, eh? You're not dealing with fools here.”

“If I repeat myself, it is for emphasis. She cannot, must not, ever know.”

“She will not.”

“Equally important is the fact that she must never be placed in authentic danger, or be allowed to fall into the hands of anyone who might believe her to be one of the other slatterns who might be in that place, on their way to…uh, adventures abroad.”

“I will see to it myself, Mr. Wickham. She will not be allowed to become part of the common flow of that particular river.”

“I will hold you to that, Turner.”

“I would expect nothing else, eh?”

“Repeat to me those conditions I have emphasized to you.”

“There is no need. I know your expectations and will fulfill them.”

“Repeat the conditions!”

“Very well. She must not know you are the one who hired us to take her, and she must not be harmed or allowed to be taken away with the other women of the pens. She cannot be allowed to become what my associates and I usually term as, eh, ‘product.'”

Wickham nodded. “Yes. And you will see to these conditions yourself. Not delegate them to others who might not exercise the full diligence.”

“I will see to them myself.” With that, the man named Turner reached out and grasped Wickham's hand and without waiting for the latter's cooperation, pumped it with vigor. He smiled a greenish tan, yellowish smile. Though Turner dressed well in overly formal clothing, his decaying teeth belied his attempts to play
the sophisticate, the urbane man of business and culture.

When Wickham had left, Turner spoke to an ugly confederate beside him, a heavyset Mexican man who made no pretensions to elegance at all. “Oh yes, Paco. I will see to her myself. Several times, I will see to her with an intensity with which she has never been seen to before, if I judge her husband rightly. It will be nothing she will soon forget, my friend.” Then he laughed, hard and loud. And added: “Fear not, amigo. You, too, will have your chance to ‘see to' this woman. She is a beauty, a great beauty. You will like her.”