by Chuck Tyrell
If Todd’s ears pricked up before, they fairly wagged in the air around his head now. “Gold? Your column’s guarding gold?”
Finn closed down. “Don’t know nothing about no gold,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
Todd squinted at Finn’s face again, then put his bonhomie expression on again. “Got plenty of coffee, Finn. Just take your own sweet time.” He poured more coffee into Finn’s cup. “Got plenty, now.” He went to put the pot back on the stove.
The coffee and the whiskey hit bottom. Finn had to pee. He left the half-full cup on the bar and went out and around to the side of the saloon and peed on the ground. As his bladder emptied, he decided to keep his own promise. He walked carefully to his horse, which stood patiently at the hitching rail beside Growley’s. Finn peered at the supplies tied on the mule. All there. All secure. He grinned. Nice honest town. Not like Diablo. In Diablo, good supplies like that would be gone five minutes after their owner left them tied to a hitching rail.
Finn undid the reins and the lead rope, clambered aboard his horse, and turned its head toward the Dent camp this side of the Rincon Mountains, just a little east of the San Pedro River, if a man could call such a trickle a river. The whiskey fire in his belly mellowed and he was tempted to sing. Maybe when he got far enough out of Alamo.
By the time he reached camp, he’d forgotten ever mentioning gold to Todd the bartender in the Alamo mining camp.
Chapter Seven
“Time to talk to Bob Paul again,” Stryker said. “The stink of this thing is starting to get more than a fellow can stand. Overpowering, as they say at Pinkerton’s.”
“People around don’t know me, Matt. I’m just another dude in a bowler hat and saggy brown sack coat. I’ll nose around while you clear things up with the sheriff.” Carpenter waited until Stryker nodded his consent, then disappeared into the crowd of onlookers.
Bob Paul carried a full-blown scowl on his big face as Stryker walked up to him. “Damn,” he said to nobody in particular, “just don’t make sense.”
“Hear Elrowe Hershey got left hanging,” Stryker said. “In a manner of speaking, that is.”
“Oh,” Paul seemed to register Stryker for the first time. “Yeah. You know him?”
“By reputation. Which says he owns part of the Old Dominion Mine.”
“That’s right. So why would he go and hang himself? Hmm? Why?”
“If he did.”
Paul’s eyes flicked to Stryker’s face and held there for a long moment. “Yeah. If he did.”
“Had a look?” Stryker said.
“Quick one.”
“Mind if I go up? Sometimes an extra pair of eyes helps . . . sometimes it don’t.” Stryker unfolded his blue bandana and wiped the tears from his cheek. “Don’t really like having to wipe my blasted face all the time, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And it don’t hamper my eye none.”
Paul gave a little nod. “Come on up. You’ve been a lawman long enough to know what to look for. Let’s have another gander.” He headed for the stairway to the second floor with his usual long stride. Stryker had to stretch his legs to keep up.
Taking the stairway two steps at a time looked natural when Bob Paul did it. Matt Stryker went up one step at a time. When he reached the second floor, Paul stood in the doorway to room 214.
Stryker moved slowly through the door, his eyes flicking from item to item in the room, no, rooms. Bedroom, dining room, sitting room. A suite. Probably the Royal’s best. Bigger than many people’s homes. No sign of a struggle, but that didn’t have to mean anything.
Hershey’s body lay on one side of the big bed with four posts. No overhead, but four posts. Two dressers in the bedroom, a commode, and a desk in the corner. “Took him down, then,” Stryker said.
“Seemed like the right thing to do for him,” Paul said. “He didn’t look very pretty, hanging there.”
Stryker held his hands up shoulder high, palms out. “Didn’t want to mess anything up on you.”
Paul’s expression softened a little. Not much, but a little. “Have at it, Stryker.”
Stryker first examined the rooms. The dead man wasn’t going anywhere. He opened each dresser drawer but found nothing. The commode offered no hints as to what happened either. Three pencils and a steel-nibbed pen on the desk, along with a thin pad of foolscap with ROYAL HOTEL TUCSON printed across the bottom.
Foolscap. Businessmen write a lot. Stryker picked up the pad. “Hotels’ve got about everything these days,” he said, almost to himself. He held the pad at a slant so light from the window glanced off it. “Someone’s written something on this pad. Who knows when.”
“No way to read it anyhow.” The scowl had not left Paul’s face. “Damn. A goldam dead man. Just what I don’t need, with election just ‘round the corner.”
Stryker picked up one of the pencils and rubbed its lead on the ball of his left index finger.
“What the Hell are you doing?” Paul said.
“Sometimes a man can read what someone wrote on a pad by rubbing pencil lead on it,” Stryker said. He rubbed his leaded index finger over the foolscap pad. He rubbed his finger with the pencil lead again, and transferred the graphite to the foolscap. Words began to appear. He repeated the process, and repeated it again. Finally, he held the pad out to Paul. “Does any of that make sense to you?”
Paul took the pad. Its top page was now mostly gray with graphite pencil lead. Where the heavy hand of the writer left indentations in the pad, lead had filled them, making words legible.
“It ain’t a letter,” Stryker said. “Looks more like a list. Maybe things to do.” He frowned as he swiped the tears from his cheek with his balled-up bandana. “Which might seem to say Elrowe Hershey didn’t plan on dying. Not right now, anyway.”
Paul examined the foolscap. “Horse. Food. Gun.” Paul paused. “Think Hershey was going somewhere. Somewhere no trains or stagecoaches travel?”
“Who knows? But that list says he planned on it.” Stryker pointed at a notation in the middle of the list. “Look at this. Alamo.”
“Why would he be thinking of San Antone?” Paul said.
“San Antone? That Alamo? I don’t think so.”
“I don’t neither.” Paul’s brow remained wrinkled.
“Where’s the original list? Hershey have it?”
Paul shook his head.
“Don’t that say someone was here?”
“Dunno. Could.”
“Well, for lack of something better, Me and Lige Carpenter’ll hie on over to Alamo. The one over this side of Hell’s Gate. Only way we can cut trail of the Dents is to hit that town, and others, until we find someone who’s seen them. I’ve found it useful when hunting men. Seems no one can stay away from food or drink for all that long. Five people cain’t last long without going into town.”
Bob Paul scrubbed at the carpet with a shiny boot toe. “You don’t figure Hershey done himself in, then.”
“Don’t reckon so.”
“Why’d he get killed?”
Stryker shrugged. “No way to tell. You know as well as me, Bob. Could be anything from adultery to jealousy to punishment.”
“Yeah. But how’d you know it wasn’t himself?”
“Take a good look, Bob. You’ve been around more than one dead man. You’ve been to more than one hanging, too, I reckon. Ever notice how the rope marks are after a hanging?” Stryker didn’t wait for an answer. “Rope usually comes across the hanged man’s throat above his Adam’s apple and up behind the ear on one side or the other.”
He stepped over and put a finger on the rope burn that ran horizontally around Hershey’s neck. “Somebody got Hershey from behind,” he said. “Choked him to death. And the burn goes below his Adam’s apple, see?” Then Stryker pointed at a torn nail on Hershey’s middle finger. “Looks like he hurt his own finger trying to get it under whatever they was choking him with.”
“Hmm. Makes a man think,” said Paul.
“Been thro
ugh his pockets?”
“How long you figure I’ve been a lawman?” Paul said.
“Figured so. You said he had no paper. Have anything else?”
“Not a thing. Not a single solitary thing. Not in his clothing, not in his carpetbag. And that bothers the Hell out of me.” The scowl came up on Bob Paul’s face again.
“Clerk see anybody? Others around see anything? How many guests on the second floor? You know, Bob, questions are coming a whole lot faster than answers, don’t you think?”
“I’ll say.” Bob Paul fingered the star-in-circle badge pinned to his vest. “Makes a man powerful curious. It truly does.”
“Here’s a question for you. Know a man named Neil Bascomb?”
“Neil Bascomb. Neil Bascomb.” Paul shook his head. “Never heard the name. Should I have?” Paul leaned against the door frame, his brows still furrowed.
“McCabe over at Ridges and Hale said Hershey was in to the station looking for the Globe City stage. Wondered why it was late. Wondered if a man name Neil Bascomb was on it, like he was supposed to be.”
“Sure would be glad if people would hang themselves without leaving lots of questions that can’t be answered.” Paul scrubbed his face with his hands. “We could call it a suicide and plant him. But then kin would start coming out of the woodwork asking more questions. Shee-it.”
“The man who rides with me, Lige Carpenter, he’s got more than a little smarts between his ears. He’s out nosing around. Might be good to listen to what he’s found out before him and me strike out for Alamo. Whattaya think?”
Paul’s eyes rested for a long time on Elrowe Hershey’s body. “Yeah. I’ll get this dead man over to the undertaker, then I’ll be ready to listen to Lige Carpenter. We’ll see just how good he is.”
Stryker clapped his hat back on his head. “Where at? Your office?”
“That’ll do. Gimme a couple of hours though. Gotta get this body done for.”
Stryker lifted a finger to the brim of his gray Stetson. “We’ll be there,” he said, and left the room. He naturally checked things to see if they were as they should be as he walked to the stairway landing.
Then, on his way past the lobby counter, Stryker took a chance. He paused in front of the clerk on duty. “I’m Matt Stryker, with Sheriff Paul. I wonder if you’d let me have a look at the registry. Need to know who was staying on the second floor.”
“That’s easy. I can tell you,” the clerk said. “Mr. Hershey was in 214, the suite room. Mr. and Mrs. Waite was in the small suite on the other end of the second floor, room 204.”
“Waite?”
“Yes, sir. Ronald Waite. Said him and the missus had just tied the knot.”
“Who else?”
“Only two other people, sir. William Bainbridge in 210 and Richard Cavanaugh in 203.”
“Rick Cavanaugh?”
The clerk checked the registry. “Yes, sir. Richard Cavanaugh. That’s what it says right here.”
“Is he still here?”
“No, sir. He checked out quite early this morning, sir.”
Stryker flipped the clerk a silver dollar. “Thanks for the help. What’d you say your name was?”
“I’m Marion Goldwater, sir.”
“Any relation to Michael Goldwater over to Ehrenberg?”
“He’s my uncle, sir.”
“Mighty good name, son. Take care of it,” Stryker said.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” The clerk stowed the cartwheel away and turned to help an elderly couple.
Stryker left the Royal Hotel, mounted Saif, and turned the horse’s head toward the courthouse. Carpenter’s dun was not at the hitching rail, but Stryker new he’d catch up when he had something to talk about. He’d just turned the corner onto Pennington when Carpenter and the dun trotted up.”
“Anything interesting?” Stryker said without looking at Carpenter.
“Some.”
They rode along Pennington in silence. Stryker figured Carpenter would talk when the time was right. About halfway down the block, Stryker said, “I volunteered you to talk to Bob Paul . . . well, you and me, anyway.”
“When?”
“Couple of hours from now.”
“Anyplace we can go?”
“Chez Bennie comes to mind.”
“Too many people there.”
“Golden Harbor?” Stryker said.
“What’s that?”
“White folks would call it an opium den. Got a good back room and the Celestial what owns it owes me.”
“Lead on,” Carpenter said.
Stryker went all the way to the end of Pennington and turned onto Meyer. The Golden Harbor stood in the middle of a cluster of Chinese businesses—two laundries, a noodle shop, a larger restaurant, and a smithy. “Hold up, Saif,” he said, and the Arabian stopped in front of the smithy. Stryker dismounted as a Chinese man of Herculean proportions came out, wiping his hands on his canvas apron.
“Good day to ya, Gueycee Wong,” Stryker said.
“Hello to you, too, Matt Stryker. What brings you to this sacred spot?” Wong grinned.
“Could you check the shoes on Saif, Gueycee? And maybe check Mr. Carpenter’s dun, too, while we’re in the Golden Harbor.”
“Can do, Matt Stryker. Can do.”
“He’s one of the best farriers I’ve ever seen,” Stryker said. “Our horses’ll be ready to go when we need them. He’ll put nosebags on them, too, full of good oats.”
“Who’d of known?” Carpenter sounded surprised.
“Celestials work hard, learn fast, get independent quick. Then they bring their families over, or they get a picture bride.” Stryker tapped on the door of the Golden Harbor.
The man who opened the door looked less than a hundred years old . . . maybe a day less. “Good day to you, Matthew Stryker,” he said. “Do you wish to avail yourself of our dreams and visions?”
“Hello, Harry. Like to use your back room for a few minutes, if that is alright with you.”
“Something secret, then?”
Stryker grimaced a smile as he wiped tears from his face with his crumpled bandana. “In a way, in a way.”
“This way, please.” Harry Wong led Stryker and Carpenter through a dark room filled with the sweetish smoke of burning opium and into a sparsely furnished room in the back. “As long as you wish, Matthew Stryker, the Golden Harbor is yours . . . almost.”
Carpenter and Stryker had hardly taken a seat in the ladder-back chairs set at a small round table when a young Chinese girl came in with a teapot and two handle-less porcelain cups on a carved and lacquered tray. She set the tray on the table, poured brown tea into the cups, and set one in front of each man. “This is oolong tea,” she said without a trace of a Chinese accent. “It is quite popular in China, I hear.”
“Thank you, Pearl,” Stryker said.
Pearl smile, gave a little bow, and left the room with a long, very non-Chinese stride.
“She don’t act Chinese,” Carpenter said.
“Born in California,” Stryker said. “I hear she speaks English a lot better than Chinese.” He raised his cup of tea. “Here’s mud in your eye, Lige Carpenter,” he said.
Carpenter raised his own cup. “If it ever rains,” he said. He sipped the tea. “Hmm. That goes down well. Not like coffee, mind you, but good.”
Stryker took the conversation to the subject at hand. “Tell me, Lige. You know anyone called Rick Cavanaugh?”
“Heard the name, why?”
“When I was at Rimrock, a gent called Rick Cavanaugh was trying to become king of the mountain at Diablo. Someone that knows said Rick Cavanaugh was just a moniker that a bushwhacker from Kansas took out here in the West.”
“You taking about Nate Cousins?”
Stryker’s ice blue eyes held Carpenter’s brown ones for more than a long moment. “Know him? He was on the Kansas border to the Nations, I hear.”
“He’s here now,” Carpenter said.
“I know. He
stayed on the second floor of the Royal the night Elrowe Hershey got killed. Signed in as Richard Cavanaugh.”
Carpenter nodded. “He’s riding with four gunsharps,” he said. “Ben Kilgallen, Marty Henshaw, Art Rennick, and . . . you’re not gonna like this . . . Garth Upton.”
“Why the army? And Upton ain’t no gunsharp.”
“That stage was carrying more than two hunnert fifty pounds of gold. The Dents got it, but Nate Cousins and all them gunsharps . . . and Upton . . . are gonna take that gold away from the Dents.”
“Why’d they kill Hershey?”
“Maybe to keep word of the gold from getting out? Secret shipment.”
“Could be. Could be.” Stryker wiped his cheek with one hand and lifted the porcelain cup with the other. “Anyway, that’s Bob Paul’s worry.” He poured more oolong tea and sipped. “How they planning on catching up to the Dents, do you know?”
Carpenter shook his head. “Nate Cousins is no dummy. But I don’t know how.”
“Guess we’ll just have to find the Dents and Molly Miller first, then.”
“How we gonna do that?”
Stryker grimaced a smile. “Who knows this country best?”
“Apaches?” Carpenter said.
“Yeah. Apaches.”
Chapter Eight
Matt Stryker rode after a man much like drovers on the Goodnight-Loving rode after beeves. No ground cloth other than his saddle blanket, no cover other than his black oilskin slicker. An octagonal barreled long ’76 Winchester in the saddle boot, chambered for .45-70 center-fire cartridges. At his side, a Remington Army ’76 in .45 caliber. His onside saddlebag held hardtack and jerked beef as trail rations, a pound bag of Arbuckle’s coffee, a little four-cup coffee pot, and a pair of handmade moccasins. In the offside saddlebag, ammunition—five boxes of twenty heavy ones for the Winchester, three boxes of smaller ones for the Remington, and fifty 12-guage shotgun shells, loaded with buckshot. Where a Texas drover would have a rawhide lariat coiled and tied to the saddle horn, Stryker carried a double-barreled Parker 12-gauge with its barrel shortened by six inches, hanging by a strap in the same place. He’d changed his wear, too. Instead of the usual gray Stetson, he wore a sand-colored kepi with a neck protector flap that hung to his shoulders. His shirt fit loosely with bloused long sleeves. It, too, was the color of desert sand. Instead of Saif, his big black Arabian stud, Stryker rode a palomino paint pony no more than fifteen hands high. Its white and tan coat gave the pony a near-perfect desert camouflage. Stryker wore round-toed rough-out Wellington boots with no spurs. Once his canvas trousers had been brown, but now showed faded spots and irregular patterns that would be nearly invisible among desert brush and cacti.
