by Jake Logan
“The damn freight agent’s over in his office.”
“Agent for the Turner Haulage Company?”
“None other than. They’s supposed to begin shipments any time now, but I ain’t seen evidence they did anything more ’n open an office and have a layabout poke his head out now and then and leer at the womenfolk.”
“Is that the only spot where such a message might be?”
“Don’t know and don’t much care,” the marshal said, his attention drifting from her to a fight that spilled out of a saloon down the street. Two men grappled and tried to hit each other, but both were too drunk to do much more than roll about in the mud like pigs in a wallow.
The lawman left without another word. Molly heaved a sigh of relief that they had avoided a run-in with the badge-toting meddler.
“Let’s get over to the freight office,” she said. “Might be the colonel wants the racers to take one of his wagons to the next stop.”
“Where’d that be?”
Molly heaved a sigh, then said, “I don’t know. We’ll have to study a map to see, won’t we?”
Harry groused the entire way to the freight office. Molly saw what the marshal had meant about the agent being a layabout. He had pulled two chairs together behind the counter, sat in one and propped his feet up in the other, and was taking a nap.
“It’s nine in the goddamn morning,” bellowed Harry. “You shouldn’t be asleep at this time of day!”
The agent stirred, scratched himself, and only then did he force up one droopy eyelid. He looked more like a hound dog than a human, and Molly expected his tongue to loll out at any instant. Instead, he dropped heavy feet to the floor, grunted as he stood, and leaned against the counter.
“You two wantin’ to put somethin’ on a freight wagon? Won’t be here for another couple weeks, not one from St. Louis.”
“What of one leaving here for points west?” Molly asked.
“You two ain’t with the race, are you? Well, I’ll be damned,” he said when Harry nodded glumly. “You’re the first ones. How about that?”
“Yes, how about that? Is there a message for us and the other racers?”
“Well, of course, dearie, there surely is.” The man dived behind the counter and pulled out a stack of envelopes. He licked his thumb, peeled off the top one, and pushed it across the counter to Molly. She made no effort to pick it up.
“What about him? He’s a racer, too.” She eyed the remaining stack of envelopes.
“Can’t the two of you share? I was told to be frugal passing these out.”
“Frugal?” Harry started to grab for the man’s throat, but Molly caught her brother’s wrist and forced it down to the envelope on the counter.
“That one’s yours,” she said forcefully. She fished about and found a gold key and held it up. To the clerk, she said, “This is what you needed to see to deliver the message, isn’t it? We each have our own key.”
“I reckon so. I kinda forgot what they told me.” The agent licked his thumb and peeled off a second envelope and passed it to Molly. She took it, graced him with a smile, and backed away.
“Wait a second,” the agent said. “I seen your key. Where’s his?”
“Go on back to sleep, why don’t you?” Molly said. She had all their keys and wasn’t about to hand one to her brother unless it was necessary.
“Others will be a-comin’ soon, won’t they?”
Molly eyed the remaining envelopes, and wondered if it was worth the effort to shoot the agent and take them. As the idea built, a shadow passed across the floor and fell on the counter between her and the freight agent. A quick glance confirmed that the marshal had followed them and stood outside in the morning sun, watching them like hawks.
“We can only hope no one else will find your lovely town,” Molly said. She looped her arm in Harry’s and pulled him away and into the morning. She bowed slightly in the marshal’s direction, smiled, and walked on, head high as if nothing in the world was wrong.
They came to a restaurant, and she remembered how hungry she was. She steered Harry inside.
“We got to keep moving, sis. You saw the way that lawman eyed us. He’s thinkin’ up charges. I know it.”
“Of course he is, but the same argument works with him that did with the freighter.”
“Huh? What argument?”
“The less trouble they cause us, the faster we’re out of their hair.”
“Don’t know about that,” Harry said. “The marshal didn’t have much more than a fringe above his ears. Bald as an egg’s my guess.”
She ordered for both of them and sent the waiter scurrying away to fetch some coffee. Holding the envelope up to the light pouring through the single plate glass window in the front of the café, she tried to read the message inside. The paper was too heavy to allow that.
“Just get on and open it. There’s no need to be all sneaky, sis.”
“If I can read what’s inside without opening the envelope, we can see if all the messages still in the agent’s hands are identical.”
“Oh.”
She opened the envelope, and quickly scanned the few terse lines.
“The stagecoach goes to a town named Clarkesville over in Kansas. The directions say to go there.”
Harry fumbled and tore the end off his envelope, blew into it, and drew out the folded sheet.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head. “This is completely different. Says to get on the train at Moberly and go to Brunswick. What are we going to do?”
Molly considered how many other possibilities there were in a big stack of envelopes. All might be different or they could have the only two messages.
“We are going to eat our breakfast,” she said, her mind working on the problem of multiple messages. “Afterward, we shall see to the matter of differing clues.”
Harry chattered on about this and that, but Molly ignored him. Occasionally, she looked out into the street and craned her neck a bit to see what foot traffic went into the Turner Haulage Company office. There was such a small amount that she realized the clerk could sleep most of the day and never be disturbed.
“Finish your eggs,” she told Harry. She pushed her plate away, dabbed at her lips with her napkin, and finally decided on their course of action. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Which way are we going?”
“That depends on what’s in the remainder of the envelopes.”
“We’re gonna steal them?”
“We are. Go to the general store and buy a dozen envelopes of this kind.” She drew the edge of the envelope from her purse and showed him, then quickly stuffed it back. Molly stood and said, “Pay the waiter. When you get the envelopes, join me down the street.”
Harry sputtered at being ordered around, but then he always did. She considered taking their keys and pressing on herself, but seeing two different destinations in the instructions worried her. It might not matter in the long run, if the colonel brought all the racers together at a single point some distance away from the strongbox with the gold, but she dared not take that risk. Too much money rode on getting to the finish line first—with as many of the keys as possible.
She walked slowly down the street, eyeing the livery stable and the corral behind it. Harry would be a few minutes, giving her time to ask questions.
“Good morning,” she said to the stable boy. He was fresh from work and covered with muck from the stalls. Her nose twitched at the stench, but she smiled sweetly and tried not to look at him in a fashion showing any distaste at all.
“Ma’am, you want the owner? He’s inside. I kin fetch him for you.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” she said. “I wanted to know about those horses in your corral. I’m in the market, but am embarrassed to make an offer since I have so little money. Are any of the horses for sale?”
“None of them, ma’am. What all we had for sale was sold this past week.”
“Draft horses?”
&
nbsp; “All the stock from the new freight office. Said they wanted stronger horses, but the ones they had was plenty big enough to haul a good-sized wagon.”
“The Turner Haulage Company? That freighter?”
“Them’s the ones. Hardly got started and they sold their animals. Only a couple wagon loads was brung in from St. Louis. Nuthin’ I know was sent on to Clarkesville, but that don’t matter.”
“Why not?”
“The stagecoach runs often ’nuff. Can’t send freight on the stage, but most other things get sent that way.”
“The stage leaves regularly?”
“Every single day at noon,” he said. “Look, I don’t know anybody with horses to sell, but my boss does. He knows ’bout ever’thing.”
“Thanks, I’ll pursue other routes.” She left the stable boy chewing his lip, wondering what she’d meant by that. He finally gave up the hard work of thinking, and went back to moving a wheelbarrow load of muck from the stable to a pile beyond the corral.
“There you are. I looked everywhere for you,” Harry said, running over to her. “This was the best I could do matching the envelopes. They sold them to the agent from the colonel’s company, but had only a half dozen left.”
“Seal them.”
“What do I put inside?” Harry frowned.
“Nothing.” She took the stack of envelopes, made certain they were sealed properly, then handed them back. “I’ll cause a ruckus outside the freight office. You know where the clerk put the others. Take them all and put these in their place.”
“There aren’t as many. Maybe I ought to leave a couple to make it look right.”
“Maybe we can use the fifty thousand dollars to buy you some common sense,” she said. “It won’t matter. The clerk’s not paying much attention. Let the next ones along find the empty envelopes.”
“You want I should destroy them?”
“Not until we’ve read the contents,” Molly said, heaving a deep sigh. Harry was getting stupider by the day. She studied his furrowed face and waited until understanding bloomed. Without another word, she walked down the center of the muddy street, looking for a decent diversion that would draw people out, including the freight agent.
She found her mark, made certain Harry had moved around behind the freight office, and then went to a man who was cursing as he dealt with a broken belly strap on his saddle. His horse shied away, and he finally swung the saddle off and around. Molly’s timing was perfect. She collided with the man and crashed into him, knocking him backward with his saddle between them.
As he fell, she kicked up her legs and sent her skirt flying to expose legs and more. The harder the man struggled to get up, the harder she fought to keep him down. Then she began shouting.
“How dare you! Take advantage of a woman, will you!” She slapped him, then shoved and sent him tumbling back.
“Lady, you bumped into me. I didn’t do anything.”
“How dare you make a suggestion like that?” She lit into him, clawing and hitting like a wildcat. Molly let him grab one wrist and hold her at bay so a crowd would gather.
“You finally got yourself a filly, Curtis. Now you gotta break her!” shouted someone in the crowd. Other catcalls flustered the man. Molly kept fighting. When she didn’t see the agent come out to join in, she played her trump card.
Nimble fingers pulled Curtis’s six-shooter from his holster. She fired a round through the freight company’s glass window. The instant the pistol discharged, she dropped it, backed away, and cried loudly at being so victimized.
The agent boiled out and looked around in time to see Curtis picking up his six-gun. Molly pointed, then backed off and let the two of them create an even bigger ruckus. Harry slipped out the door, his hand over his coat pocket to let her know he had finished stealing the race instructions and substituting the empty envelopes.
She cursed him under her breath. He ought to have retreated out back the way he had entered to keep anyone from seeing him.
By the time the Benedict marshal showed up, Molly and Harry had torn open the stolen instructions and read them.
“What do we do now, sis?”
“You take the horses and ride for a railhead and go on to Denver. I’ll go to Clarkesville on the stage and follow the new message there.” Again, she wished she could get the gold key from her brother, but they had to cover their bets. He might find his way to the gold and need the key.
“See you when we get the gold,” Harry Ibbotson said.
Molly kissed her brother on the cheek and went to purchase a stagecoach ticket.
15
“We can both ride, John. You don’t have to walk,” Zoe said.
Slocum plodded along resolutely, not bothering to answer. His horse had pulled up lame a mile back, and he had to watch it carefully as it picked its way along the muddy track they followed, to be sure it didn’t hurt its leg further.
His luck had gone like this for the past few days. Being caught in the rain with Zoe had been the pinnacle, and it had all been downhill after that. They had ridden into Benedict in their quest for the next set of instructions on where to go. The colonel’s envelopes had been emptied somehow, and Slocum wasn’t sure the freight agent hadn’t had a hand in doing that.
“Stupidity,” he muttered.
“What’s that?” Zoe bent over and reached out a hand to brush his shoulder. “You’re not stupid, John. Or did you mean me for wanting to keep going?”
“The agent back in Benedict,” he said. “Never think a man is a crook if there’s a chance he’s only stupid.”
“He didn’t seem too clever a fellow,” Zoe said.
“He let them steal the instructions from under his nose.”
“From the sound of the furor Molly Ibbotson created out in the street, how can you blame him for rushing out? She shot out the window and exposed herself and got the men fighting. By the time the marshal broke up the fight, a herd of buffalo could have run through the freight office and not been seen.”
Slocum walked along glumly. Everything she said was true.
“We’re not stupid, though,” said Zoe. “We figured out where she is headed.”
“That wasn’t hard,” Slocum said. He had asked after Molly and been told by a half dozen men that she had bought a ticket on the stagecoach to Clarkesville, Kansas. What happened to Harry was a complete mystery, but the men all agreed her brother had not been on the stage with her. If he had, those men would have been envying him.
“Why’d they separate? The waiter at the restaurant said she treated her brother like a small child, and that he resented it.”
“The waiter said he would have resented being treated like that. Harry Ibbotson might not have noticed.”
“True, but Harry disappeared from town. She must have sent him off, because he wouldn’t have gone on his own.”
“Two sets of instructions,” Slocum said. “That’s the only answer. He took their horses and rode somewhere else while she followed a second set of directions.”
“What if there had been three?”
“Only Molly would know that,” Slocum said. He shook his head as he thought on it. “There were only two, or if there were more, she chose the most likely destinations. The colonel is splitting up the racers, but I think the clues will all funnel back to a single location before the final run for the gold.”
“That seems sensible,” Zoe said.
“She’ll beat us to Clarkesville by a day or more,” he said. The bitterness he felt boiled up. If he swapped places with Zoe, he could be in the town not long after Molly and find out what she already knew—where to look for the next instructions. He took a deep breath and tried to settle his chaotic thoughts. Letting Molly get to him like this was foolish. The colonel had planned every turn of this race to garner the most publicity.
“I see smoke rising ahead,” Zoe said from her vantage point astride her horse.
Slocum saw the smoke gently curling upward not long after. From the
number of smokestacks spewing out smoke above the town, it was smaller than even Benedict.
“How’s he going to make a dollar bringing his freight to a nothing of a town like this?” Slocum asked.
“The colonel? I don’t know,” Zoe admitted. “The financial situation is hardly optimal for beginning a business of such magnitude. Going off the silver standard, which Congress made law earlier this year, has caused more than one business to go belly up.”
“Gold is better,” Slocum said. “I’d rather have a twenty-dollar gold piece in my pocket than twenty cartwheels.”
“It caused all manner of financial woe,” Zoe said. “I spoke with an editor on Mr. Zelnicoff’s staff who said the whole country was going to be in serious trouble soon.”
Slocum hardly listened. He didn’t need more than a rifle and a countryside filled with game to survive. Let the banks crash and the railroads go bankrupt. None of that mattered if he could bag a deer now and then, or lose himself in the high mountains where he could live well for years. Financial shenanigans only mattered to those who trusted banks.
None of that would matter if he had $50,000 in gold weighing down his saddlebags.
“How much money do you have left?” she asked.
The question took him by surprise.
“Not that much,” he admitted.
“I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, too,” Zoe said. “I need to send a telegram to my editor and get an advance on my travel fees. When I receive it, then we can continue after your Miss Ibbotson.”
“She’s not my Miss Ibbotson,” Slocum said, more forcefully than he intended. It rankled that Molly had left him to die in that hole back in the ghost town. She might have been kidnapped along with her brother but at some point they had escaped and picked up the scent of Colonel Turner’s gold again, leaving him to his own fate.
“You know what I mean,” said Zoe. “She employed you to rescue her brother.”
