The Great West Detective Agency (13 page)

Lucas considered the matter from the Indian's standpoint. Turning in white men for robbing a stagecoach and killing three people held little promise of success. Most marshals would accuse the messenger of the crime because he was Indian—and in Good's case, a half-breed black Creek. That was a double reason to toss him in jail for the murders. And Good was right about the horses dying. The way stations were far enough apart and the station masters slothful enough not to scout out an overdue stage so that the yoked horses had no chance of survival. In that light, Good had performed a humanitarian act that saved a team of horses.

Good didn't simply release them, he suspected. Selling them to men able to feed and use them produced enough money to live off.

“Why do you think those men are Confederates?”

“What they said. The stagecoach driver was black.”

Lucas had no idea how a band of former CSA road agents had found themselves allied with Russian anarchists, but the single common interest was one he shared. Gold. Vera Zasulich had said Tovarich could lead them to hidden gold. He reconstructed what the woman had actually said and knew he was adding his own take to their conversation, but it was all that made sense. The Russians wanted the puppy because it could sniff out the gold. How anyone could train a dog, much less a puppy, to do this posed a great mystery to him, but if Vera believed it, he had to also.

She might be fanatical about overthrowing the government in her country, but she wasn't crazy when it came to knowing gold made that possible. It wasn't out of the question that she, Dmitri, and the others had come to Colorado to use the puppy dog to capture the gold for their cause. But the stew pot contained more than the Russians and the road agents. Amanda had come into the drama, along with Jubal Dunbar. It didn't take a dog's sensitive nose to sniff out the promise of gold. Any ambitious, greedy human could come to that point, too.

Lucas found himself with a twitching nose along with all the others. How much gold was at stake? Enough to allow Amanda to buy the services of a detective, enough for Vera to believe it paid for a revolution, enough to get road agents and corrupt politicians on the trail of hidden treasure.

“Ride faster.” The Creek snapped his reins and brought his horse to a canter, leaving Lucas behind.

“Why?” His question bounced unheeded off Good's back. He put heels to his horse's flanks to overtake his companion to repeat the question.

Lucas looked around. The clouds high on the mountaintops to their back showed no hint of a storm that would wash them all the way back to Denver. The night was quiet to the point of being worthy of a graveyard. The road stretched straight and abandoned in front of them. With a bit of imagination, he thought he saw the gaslight glow from Denver far ahead, but nowhere did he see a reason to risk having his horse step in an unseen prairie dog hole and break a leg.

“Hounds,” was all Good said.

“You mean the Russians will loose the pack of dogs when they find I'm gone?”

Good sped up.

Lucas bent over and brought his horse to a gallop. He hadn't spent all his life astride a horse as the Creek likely had, but he was a decent enough horseman to know the animal would die under him if he pushed it too hard. Galloping for a couple miles actually helped a horse. The horses left to their own devices in a pasture made up their own races, winners and losers. But carrying a human drove it into the ground fast.

He began to draw rein and slacken the headlong pace when he heard distant baying. Lucas twisted about in the saddle. Dogs. From behind. From the direction of the Russian camp. He remembered the wolfhounds and how the one had attacked him in the camp. Only luck had saved him back in Denver. Those dogs had scented his blood and had to remember him. He might have left behind something with his scent on it to get the dogs on his trail.

“Giddayup.” His horse flagged but kept running.

It took Lucas another mile toward Denver before he realized he rode along by himself. Good had disappeared.

He wished the dogs had, too. The yelping came closer. Were only the Russians with the pack or did the road agents join them in tracking him down? It wasn't something he wanted to find out.

Lucas reluctantly slowed to a quick walk to rest his horse before leaving the road and cutting across the prairie in the hope of confusing the dogs' sensitive noses. Without water anywhere to be found on the dry prairie, he had little chance of that. But he had to try. To fail was to be torn apart by the fierce dogs.

L
ucas slid from the saddle. His legs caved for a moment. It had been a while since he'd ridden so long, but he strode off, pulling the reluctant horse behind him through a prairie dog town. The starlight gave enough illumination for him to walk without breaking his own ankle. Guiding the horse took more effort since it tried to bolt and run often.

He didn't blame the animal one bit. The sound of barking dogs neared, but they were still along the road. He cut off at an angle, found an arroyo, and led the horse down a place where the wall had collapsed. The bottom of the dried bed was rocky and made riding difficult, but he urged the horse on until they found another break in the sandy bank. Another prairie dog town would cover the scent well. If the wolfhounds blundered into it, the smell from the small rodents would mask any passage and might even rouse some of the sleeping prairie dogs to pop up and give voice to warnings. That would further confuse the wolfhounds.

By the stars, Lucas read that he rode more northeast. This took him to the north of Denver. Only when he had successfully avoided the howling pack of slavering dogs and the quiet of the rocky plains settled around him to soothe his agitation did he turn to the town. It was well past dawn when he hitched the horse to the iron ring mounted on the wall of the Emerald City and he dragged himself in.

“Do you live here?” Lucas asked the barkeep. He collapsed into a chair and hiked his feet up to a table top as Lefty stared at him.

“You look like you was drug through a knothole backwards.”

“Give me a shot of whiskey, will you?” Lucas began emptying his pockets. He had lost some of the chips he had won, but the greenbacks were all there from the game where he had walked away thinking he was sitting on top of the world.

“Good that you can pay for it. Your deadbeat friends all try to stiff me.”

“I don't have any friends.”

Lefty snorted and dropped a half bottle in front of Lucas, then pointed.

“What about him?”

Lucas craned around and saw Little Otto coming down the steps at the side of the stage. Nothing had gone well for Lucas, being abandoned by Good somewhere out on the road to town while chased by a pack of vicious dogs, and now he had to give mute witness to Otto's continued happiness.

“Are you sleeping here now?” Lucas continued to rummage through his pockets. He touched the book he had taken from Vera Zasulich and dropped it onto the table.

“I'm not sleeping,” Little Otto said. He started to walk past, then slowed and stared at the book. “You remembered.”

“I want information,” Lucas said. “You wanted a copy of
Tom Sawyer.
”

“Where did you get it? No book dealer in town has a copy.”

“You don't tell me where you get your information.”

Little Otto pursed his lips, ran his fingers around the tattered edge of the book, then pulled back reluctantly.

“It's yours if you can tell me something about a gang of road agents. They held up a stagecoach, killed the black driver and two passengers.”

“Your requests are eclectic.”

“What's that mean?”

Little Otto scooped up the book, riffled through the pages, then tucked it away in a coat pocket. He settled down in a chair, put his hands on his knees, and leaned forward. His voice was so low Lucas missed what he said at first.

“Why are you whispering? There's no one to overhear.”

Little Otto glanced in Lefty's direction, scooted his chair closer, and continued to talk in the same hoarse whisper. That he didn't trust Lefty made Lucas wonder what trouble there might have been between them. It had to do with Carmela, he reckoned. In spite of himself, a small spark of hope blazed. If Lefty chased Little Otto off, that would mean that Carmela . . .

“Go talk to Gallatin. He can tell you what you want for the price of a drink.” His eyes darted to the bottle and back. “Maybe more than one drink.”

Lucas raked in the chips and bills he had spread across the table. He saw no reason to advertise how much money he had, especially if he tracked down Lester Gallatin. When he had been learning how to work the crowds for the Preacher, Gallatin had been an old hand. Away from the booze, there wasn't a swindler with a more engaging line or heartrending story of tragedy. But that had been a year ago. Gallatin had taken to the bottle and never bothered to sober up. What pain afflicted him lay beyond Lucas's understanding, and dealing with him now only added to the confusion.

“How did he come by this information?”

“He rode with unsavory men during the war.” Little Otto stood, smoothed his rumpled clothing, patted the pocket where he had placed the Twain book, and left. His gait was a trifle unsteady.

Lucas spat. Otto hadn't been drinking. His nocturnal activity with Carmela had left him sore, if not stiff.

“It won't last,” Lefty called to him. “It never does. She's off to a month-long engagement in San Francisco at the Palace in another week.”

“Why doesn't that make me feel any better?” Lucas stuffed the greenbacks into his pocket, then stacked the chips on the bar. “Take care of those for me, will you?”

Lefty swept them off the bar into a cigar box.

“It'll go against your bill.”

“I'm even with you.”

“For now. You'll hit a stretch of bad luck soon enough. All gamblers do.”

Lucas grumbled as he left, the whiskey bottle tucked under his arm. It would be the ultimate insult if Lady Luck abandoned him at the poker table. He had lost out to Little Otto, been attacked by ferocious dogs, lied to by Amanda Baldridge, and was being pursued by Dunbar's thugs. He had plenty of money and had considered dropping the hunt for Tovarich until he had the carrot of hidden gold dangled in front of him.

For so many people to be on the trail of that gold, it had to be real. Treasure maps were sold back East all the time to suckers. When he worked with the Preacher, he had been responsible for more than one himself, so he knew the tricks and come-ons, what enticed otherwise sensible people to uncontrollable greed, and what it took to get away before they realized how they had been swindled.

Lucas mounted and walked his tired horse through the morning streets until he got to the livery stable a few blocks from his boardinghouse. A disheveled man came out, squinted, one eye swelled shut from a losing fistfight, and asked, “You want me to give the horse a good cleaning?”

“Hello, Lester.” Lucas dismounted and handed over the reins.

“Ain't seen you in a spell, Lucas.” Gallatin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You stayin' out of trouble?”

“Never. You work here very long?”

“Since last Sunday. Not sure I like muckin' stables and curryin' horses all that much. Nowhere near as much fun as workin' the crowds like we used to. People's got class. Not like the ornery horses folks stable here. One of them bastards kicked me a couple days ago.” He rubbed his thigh. “That's why I'm limpin'.”

Lucas had a different explanation for the man's uneven gait and bloodshot eye, but he didn't say anything. Little Otto claimed the information he wanted could be wrested from Gallatin. Upsetting him with the truth would get him nowhere.

“I might be able to contribute a bit toward getting some medicine,” Lucas said, flashing a dollar bill. “In addition to whatever it costs for you to feed and curry my horse.”

Gallatin bent a little closer to the bill, turning his body into a question mark, as if unsure he saw it. For the man, money was a mirage disappearing in an alcoholic haze rather than a desert-induced heat. Lucas moved the dollar bill around. Gallatin followed it like a cat bobbing about to attack a bird. He finally took pity on his old companion and handed over the bill. A shaky hand snared it and made it vanish. Lucas saw that Gallatin's quickness remained from his pickpocketing days.

“You're doin' an ole friend a boon.”

“And that old friend can return the favor by telling me what you know about a stagecoach robbery. Driver and two passengers were killed by a gang of road agents.”

“I heard tell of such a thing,” Gallatin said cautiously. The change in how he stood alerted Lucas that getting the information he wanted might be more difficult. Gallatin's face reflected a fear out of place for a man working as a stable hand.

“Let's go sit and talk about it.” Lucas fetched the whiskey from his saddlebags and pulled the cork. He took a long pull, then passed the bottle to Gallatin. That was likely his last taste of the whiskey since the stable hand clutched the bottle with a feverish grip almost impossible to break. If it got him his information, fine. A half bottle of whiskey was a small enough price to pay for a clue as to where a mountain of gold was hidden.

They sat on overturned crates to the side of the stable door. Inside, restless horses kicked at their stalls. Lucas's horse pawed the ground, as if begging to be placed in one of those stalls, fed and watered, and left to sleep. He ignored the horse and concentrated on Gallatin.

“Good liquor.” Gallatin sipped at it, as if pacing himself. The second pull he took was longer. The third drained almost a quarter of the bottle as his willpower weakened. He belched, wiped his lips, and then held the bottle in both hands. The shakes Lucas had noticed vanished as if they had never existed. In spite of downing several shots of potent liquor, Gallatin approached normal.

“Who robbed the stage?”

“Are you a deputy now, Lucas? Never thought of you as a lawman, not after all we been through.”

“Those were the days,” Lucas said. “The Preacher's still working the yokels over around Larimer Square.”

“Heard tell that he was. Me and him, we had a falling-out six months back. He got all uppity and said things nobody ought to say to me. I took it personal.” Gallatin sucked at the bottle again, further lowering the level. He made no move to pass it back. After seeing how few teeth Gallatin had remaining, Lucas wasn't inclined to ask for more of the popskull.

“He has his way of working. It's kept him and the law far apart, except for that one time when he tried to swindle a federal deputy's wife.”

“The cookbook swindle,” Gallatin said. “I remember that. Promise of all them recipes.”

“From his grandma,” Lucas cut in.

“Yeah, handed down from his granny in the old country, but only the first page had a recipe. The rest of the book was blank pages. Nuthin' but foolscap all bound up real neat.”

“It took him a whale of an effort to get free of those charges. That deputy had it in for him since his woman was such a terrible cook and she had wanted to please him with something decent.”

“Those were the days,” Gallatin said, nodding in remembrance.

“How bad are the men who robbed the stage?”

“The worst. Leftover soldiers from the war.”

“Confederates,” Lucas said. “I know that much.”

“Well, sir, you ain't understandin' the half of it. Them's a guerrilla band that's been together since Second Manassas. They moved west of the Mississippi and kept raidin', callin' themselves soldiers but they wasn't no more than thieves and killers. The war ended. They kept on, only movin' farther west to keep ahead of wanted posters on their heads.”

“You have a name for any of them?”

“The leader was Thoreau's right-hand man.”

Lucas had heard that name but details slithered away just beyond true remembering. He said so.

“Judge Thoreau from Lawrence, Kansas.”

“I remember him now. A Reconstruction judge who got himself filled with lead down San Antonio way.”

“He hired Dennis Clifford and his bully boys as enforcers. Talk about odd fellows gettin' together, a Yankee judge and Southern guerrillas. They tore up the land for close to a year 'fore he got shot down. Nobody ever found who did the deed, but some think it was Clifford because he was bein' cheated out of most of the spoils. Others say the local folks finally got a bellyful of Thoreau. Whoever cut him down made it too hot for Clifford and his boys, so they drifted north, robbin' and killin' as they came.”