Reilly's Luck (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

by Louis L'Amour

  Val had a distinct feeling of disappointment, but he only said, “I hope she hasn’t gone far. I think the man who shot at me may still be around.”

  “She went to Melissa Winslow’s place. They have a small outfit about a few hours’ ride from here. He’s English.” She added, “Mel is a Virginia girl who went to school in London. That was where she met David.”

  He was in no mood for riding, nor for looking over the ranch. After breakfast he sat on the veranda and looked out over the valley, mentally reviewing his situation. Nothing about it looked particularly favorable.

  He should have faced Pike in Tascosa. He should have forced him to draw, and killed him. As it was, the man was free to shoot whenever he chose, and Val must be on guard every hour of the day and night. That Pike would ride on out of the country he did not believe for one moment. The man was vindictive, and dangerous. He would wait….The worst of it was, he might be trapped by one of the Bucklins, forcing them into a shoot-out.

  Throughout the day, Val worked the fingers of his right hand. They were limber enough, but the shoulder was stiff, and there was no ease in his movements, and no speed. Meanwhile, he could not help but notice how well kept the ranch was. The buildings had been painted, the gates all worked easily, and what stock he could see was in good shape.

  A third of this was his, but though he had provided the money that made the difference, there was here no work of his hands, no planning of his brain. This was the work of others, for which he could take no credit.

  He shifted in his chair. He was nothing but an aimless drifter; he was not even as much as Will had been, who was a gambler, admitted it, and enjoyed it—enjoyed it, at least, until he met Princess Louise.

  What had become of her? And of Prince Pavel? At the thought of Pavel he felt coldness take hold of him. He would never forget that day on the outskirts of Innsbruck when Pavel had tried to whip Will Reilly.

  Yet in the end it was Pavel who had triumphed. His money and his hatred had reached where he could not, dared not. Henry Sonnenberg was only the tool. The killer was Pavel.

  “I think I will go to Europe,” he said aloud.

  “Boston will be disappointed, Val,” Betsy said. She had come up to him quietly. “Why to Europe?”

  “I’ve some unfinished business over there,” he said. “There’s a man I must see.”

  “You haven’t told me how you liked your part of the house,” she said. “We spent a lot of time planning it, thinking about it.”

  He was ashamed. “I’ve been preoccupied,” he said. “Will you show me through?”

  He struggled to his feet, swung his stiff leg around and limped after her.

  There were three rooms in the east wing of the house—a small but comfortable living room, a bedroom, and a bath. The walls of the living room, which he had not entered until now, were lined with books. He crossed the room to look at them.

  “You were always reading,” Betsy said, “and you mentioned several of the books you liked, and sometimes when you wrote to us you mentioned what you were doing, so we asked Mel and David to help us.”

  He saw there Scott’s Marmion, Volney’s Ruins of Empire, The Life of Sir Walter Scott, by Lockhart, Hypatia, by Kingsley…and there were works by Plato, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, Spinoza, and Voltaire, and a shelf of the poets.

  “You must thank Mrs. Winslow for me,” he said. “And I want to thank you and Boston.”

  It was an easy, comfortable room, unlike the crowded, overdone rooms of so many eastern homes he had seen. It was closer in style to the rather bare rooms of the Spanish ranchos in California.

  When Betsy had gone into the other part of the house, Val browsed through the books, taking them one by one from the shelves. A few of them he had read, most of them he had not, but all were books he had wanted to read.

  He heard the door from the veranda open, and took a book from the shelf, turning as he did so.

  Thurston Pike was standing there, gun in hand. “Got my horse right here,” he said, “an’ I’m goin’ to kill you, mister, an’ nobody the wiser.”

  As he finished speaking, he fired, and the impact of the bullet, fired at a distance of not more than a dozen feet, knocked Val back against the bookshelves, but he drew from his waistband as he fell back, and fired as his shoulders braced against the bookshelves. He felt the impact of another bullet, but Pike was going down as Val shot the second time.

  The door burst open and Betsy stood there, a rifle in her hands. Thurston Pike was on his back in the doorway, half in, and half out.

  Val was staring at the book in his hand. He had taken it from a shelf, had turned, and the thick, leather-bound book had taken both bullets, aimed directly at his heart. Neither bullet had gone more than two-thirds of the way through the book.

  He glanced at the title. It was Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. “You know, Bets,” he said, “I was never able to get through this book myself.”

  CHAPTER 20

  MYRA FOSSETT SAT behind her desk and looked across at Mr. Pinkerton. “You have news for me?”

  “Yes…from several sources. First, the young man, Mr. Valentine Darrant. He is now in Texas, and we discover he is part owner of a ranch there. It comprises some sixty thousand acres of range land.”

  “They own this land?”

  “No, ma’am, actually it is government land, but they own the water holes. You understand this gives them—”

  “I do understand. I know all about water holes and water rights, Mr. Pinkerton. What else?”

  “There was an attempt to kill him by a gunman, a notorious killer named Thurston Pike. He did not succeed.”

  “What happened? Get to the point, please.”

  “Young Mr. Darrant was surprised in his library by the killer. Pike seems to have fired twice, Mr. Darrant also. Mr. Darrant’s bullets found their mark.”

  Pike, was it? She remembered him, remembered him as a customer of one of her girls far away in Idaho. He had been a tough, dangerous man even then. Evidently her son could take care of himself.

  “What led to the fight?”

  “We checked into that. It seems Mr. Darrant was reared by a gambler, a man named Will Reilly.”

  Of course. Will Reilly had been a friend of Van’s, but no friend of hers. She felt a little pang when she thought of him, for Will Reilly was the one man who had really interested her. As a matter of fact, she hated men; she used them and got rid of them, but Will had never so much as given her the time of day.

  Pinkerton had turned a leaf in his notebook. “This Reilly was the target of a reward offer…not by the law, by some private party.” Pinkerton looked up at her as he said this, and she smiled cynically.

  “Don’t worry yourself. I know nothing of that.”

  “Of course. I did not for the moment—”

  “You’re a damned liar, Pinkerton. Now get on with it.”

  “There were three men—Thurston Pike, Chip Hardesty, and Henry Sonnenberg. They ambushed him, caught him coming out of a lighted door.”

  He paused. “The first two are no longer with us. Mr. Darrant seems to have killed them both.”

  “And Sonnenberg?”

  “I know a good deal of him in another connection, and we have him on our wanted list. He killed a Wells Fargo guard a year or two ago, and there have been other—”

  “I know about him. He is an outlaw, a paid killer. Who hired him?”

  “That’s the odd part. Some jackleg lawyer from here in town named Avery Simpson offered the money. I don’t know who it was who wanted Reilly killed. I suppose it was some gambling trouble. Men who live like that—”

  “You have talked to Simpson?”

  “No, but—”

  “Leave him to me.” She stood up, indicating the interview was over.

  “There’s one thing more…” />
  She waited, impatient to be rid of him.

  “That man, Van Clevern. He was killed in a fall from a horse.”

  “Too bad.”

  She turned away sharply, her irritation showing, but he remained where he was, his eyes on her face. “I know you told us you were no longer interested in him, but one of my operatives…well, it tied in with Mr. Darrant—”

  “Yes?”

  “Van Clevern, shortly before he was killed, directed his family to mail a certain box—without opening it—to Valentine Darrant.”

  Myra took up a pen and turned it in her fingers. She was aware that Pinkerton was watching her, but she had to think. Such a box would certainly contain papers…what else could it be? And what papers would he be likely to be sending to Val? Something about Val’s mother.

  He might have written it all down, there at the last, leaving it up to Val to do with it as he wished.

  “This box…Val Darrant has it?”

  “No. It has been forwarded to a bank in Colorado to hold for him. Apparently they expect him soon because of some investments they have been handling for him.”

  There was still time then. She took the report from Pinkerton and watched him leave, but her mind was working swiftly. That box, described as a small metal chest or bond box, undoubtedly contained Van Clevern’s signed statement. With that statement they would have no trouble finding the evidence needed for a conviction, and Myra Fossett would be on trial for murder.

  Even if, by some chance, she was able to gain an acquittal, her whole life would have been exposed. She would be ruined….

  She picked up the report. The box had been shipped, but only just now. If she wanted to get the box she must act at once.

  A train holdup was too difficult to arrange, but after the train there would be the stage, and then the bank. She knew a dozen men who could handle either affair, but the name that came to her mind at once was Sonnenberg.

  Sonnenberg would have reason to want to get Val out of the way. He was a tough man, and as she knew from the old days, he was an experienced yeggman who knew all the tricks of cracking safes.

  For a long time she sat at her desk, considering the problem, but her thoughts returned again and again to Val.

  She had a son. What, after all, did that mean? She had given birth to a child she had never wanted, by a man she had never loved, and the child had failed to serve its purpose. At the time it had seemed the quickest road to money, a lot of money. Now she had the money, from another source, and the child had turned up again and might deprive her of it.

  What was he like? She had, of course, no feeling of love for him. Love was not only a matter of blood and flesh, it developed from holding a child, caring for it, answering its need for protection. There had never been any of that. He would have different ideas from hers, different feelings…he might even be a weakling, like Van.

  She had passed him that day in Bricker’s outer office, or so she believed. If that was indeed Val, he was a handsome young man, and anybody who could take Hardesty and Thurston Pike in gun battles was certainly no weakling.

  Myra got up and went to the window. It was raining, and she watched a hansom cab go by the door, the lamps thrusting narrow beams of light before them. She remembered nights like this when she was a child…remembered her father lighting the carriage lamps and carrying her out so she would not get her slippers wet, nor the hem of her long skirt. How old was she then? Twelve?

  She had never gone back, and she had not written. No doubt they believed she was dead, and surely they would never dream that she was the Myra Fossett who controlled mills, mines, and railroads.

  Of course, if her son got that box and chose to expose her, they would know…everyone would know. No doubt he hated her, and once the box was in his hands he could blackmail her for every cent she possessed. That he might not choose to do so never entered her mind.

  Avery Simpson had never met Myra Fossett, but he had heard of her, and he smelled money. But he was cautious. He knew who her attorneys were, and he also knew they would not want any dealings with him.

  She received him in the library, seated behind her desk. He had grown fat, and was almost unkempt. The woman he saw was not what he expected.

  She was very handsome, slender, with a splendid figure, and if there was gray in her hair, he could not see it. She motioned him to a chair and took up a single sheet of paper that lay on the desk.

  “You are Avery Simpson. You were involved in the Carnes-Wales business.”

  He was startled. His connection with that, his hiring of thugs for the company, had never appeared in the papers or the trial proceedings.

  Before he could protest, she continued. “You were also concerned with the payoff in the Sterling case.”

  He jumped up. “Now see here!”

  “Sit down!” Her tone was sharp. “You’re a cheap, blackleg lawyer, and I could list a dozen cases which, if they were known, could get you disbarred. Now listen to me. If you give me honest answers I will pay you for your time, not as much as you think it is worth, but more than I think it’s worth. Are you going to listen, or do I have you thrown out of here and then give all this to the press?”

  He sat there, shaking and frightened. Nobody could know all that…yet she did. He had best play this very easy.

  “You hired the murder of Will Reilly.”

  He started to protest, but she brushed him aside impatiently. “I suppose you know that Hardesty and Pike are dead?”

  He had not known. He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. Hardesty and Pike dead! “How—?”

  “They were killed in gun battles by Reilly’s nephew. Do you remember him?”

  “But he was only a boy!”

  “They grow up very fast out west, they tell me,” she said grimly. “He knows about you, doesn’t he?”

  The boy had been in the room when Will Reilly had forced him to write those letters. Simpson shifted uncomfortably. That was far away in the West. It was true he sometimes worried about Sonnenberg, but—

  “That boy was back east a few weeks ago,” Myra said, “and he has been asking questions.”

  Avery Simpson felt as if he was going to be sick. He tried to sit up straighter, his jowls quivering. Back east? Then he was not safe, not even here.

  “Who paid for Reilly’s murder?” The question was shot at him, suddenly, without warning.

  “It was Prince—” He stopped. “I can’t tell you that.”

  Myra Fossett had dealt with men too long and on too intimate terms not to know about such men as Avery Simpson. “Simpson,” she said coldly, “and even as I say it I know it is not your true name”—she saw him cringe a little at that—“I did not ask you here to make conversation. You tell me what you know, and no damned nonsense. If you don’t,” she smiled at him, “I will tell Henry Sonnenberg where to find you.”

  He stared at her. Who was she? How could she know about him?

  After a moment she said, “Now tell me. And tell me all about it.”

  Avery Simpson dug into his pocket for a cigar. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Not if it will help your memory,” she said; “but get on with it. I have better things to do than sit here talking to you.”

  Prince Pavel had not told anyone his reasons for wanting Will Reilly killed. He had told neither the go-between who put him in touch with Simpson, nor had he told Simpson; but Avery Simpson, drinking in a pub one night, had mentioned the scars on the face of Prince Pavel, and was told the story of the man he had tried to horsewhip.

  After Simpson had gone, Myra Fossett found herself smiling. The idea, she said to herself, of anybody trying to horsewhip Will Reilly!

  She was grimly amused, but her thoughts began to toy with the information she had acquired, and what it might do for her.

  Her business
was doing well, but there were many doors which were still closed to her, doors that could be opened by such a name as Prince Pavel…or by any other prince, she told herself cynically.

  He had wanted to make a rich marriage for Princess Louise. Had he succeeded? What, exactly, was his financial situation at the moment? He might be someone she could use.

  He was obviously a good hater, and she liked that, but he was also a fool, for no man in his right mind could look into those cool green eyes of Will Reilly’s and still fancy they could have him whipped. Killed, perhaps, but not whipped. She had known other men of his kind, men you had to shoot to stop, for their pride and their courage was such that they could not be broken.

  She considered the several plans that had been lying in the dark and secret drawers of her mind, plans that awaited the right knowledge of the right people, or their assistance, but all of those people lay beyond walls she had not been able to breach. But with a captive prince…

  Her thoughts returned to her son. It was with a feeling of irritation that she realized she had thought of him thus. He was a stranger, by accident her son, with whom she had nothing in common. And at this juncture he was an outright danger to her, and to all she had planned and accomplished.

  Avery Simpson had provided her with a handle for the manipulation of a prince, or the possibility of it. The first thing was to ascertain the financial standing of Prince Pavel, and of the Princess Louise, if she was still around. If the prince was gambling, as Simpson had implied, he would probably need money.

  She glanced at her watch. She had been invited to dinner at the Harcorts’, and there was just time to make it. At such times she missed Van.

  Though she had no use for men, yet there were times when a woman needed an escort, and Van had always been there; and even when drinking his manners had been perfect. She could have used him now.

  At the Harcorts’ there would be a number of fashionable people, including men with far-reaching business connections. It was at such parties that she had made most of the contacts she had developed and used. Men who were drinking often explained things to a beautiful woman who was a good listener, telling her of stock deals and financial arrangements in which their wives were rarely interested. It was true that some of them had grown cautious after their casual boasting had cost them money. For Myra not only knew how to get information, she knew how to use it.