Colter's Path (9781101604830)

by Judd, Cameron

“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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  As 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.”

  Paco laughed the laugh of an imbecile, nodding broadly.

  As a sideline enterprise at his big camp store in Bowater, Stanley Wickham had established a stage line to run between seven of the larger mining camps in the district. In one of the coaches of his own line, he made his journey back to Bowater after the ugly and unpleasant meeting just concluded with the unwashed outlaw named Turner. They had met in a thicket in the middle of a remote, wide meadow, away from any camp or residence, insurance for Wickham against anyone hearing or seeing him with such unsavory characters. What he was doing required the utmost secrecy and the most wrenching rejection of human morality and decency Wickham could imagine. He’d never have thought he had it in him to arrange for the kidnapping and short-term imprisonment of his own wife. It would be a horrific experience for her, but if the former Texan criminal named Turner could be trusted to keep his word and not let Emma be hurt, molested, or—heaven forbid it—swept away by accident with the usual flow of human traffic that passed through the place she would be held, she should come through without harm.

  Besides, Wickham told himself alone in his stagecoach, Emma was no weakling. She was strong. He said it aloud: “Strong!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” the stage driver called down to his passenger.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Wickham said. “I sneezed, that’s all.”

  Wickham did not plan to return home tonight. There was another meeting to be carried out, this one with a man less unpleasant than Turner, but likely just as criminal. Wickham had found him through the guidance of people he knew who were accustomed to dealing with such types of folk, and he was counting on him to fill in a crucial missing piece of the puzzle Wickham was being called upon to solve. If he was lucky, the task was already done.

  He
had to find Zebulon McSwain. He knew his father-in-law was in California—McSwain had told Emma that much on his own, through a letter she’d received weeks before. But where in California? Wickham was at a loss as to how to find him in such a growing, amorphous society, where the wilderness sprouted new mining camps and towns like an untended Georgia garden patch sprouting summer weeds. McSwain could be anywhere.

  The man Wickham had finally settled upon to find McSwain came highly recommended. Peter Coggin had come to California from St. Louis, where he’d earned a name for himself as a locator of missing persons and a retier of broken interpersonal cords. Like so many, he’d come to the golden frontier to leave behind his former ways of life and business, but had drifted back toward older ways when gold proved more elusive than the promoters back East had promised. Wickham had hired Coggin and impressed on him the urgency of locating McSwain quickly, though he’d not told the detective the reason for the urgency.

  It made him chuckle blackly to imagine how it would have been if he had told Coggin what he was up to. “Mr. Coggin, it is crucial that you find where my father-in-law is quickly, because I have only a few days to complete the process of having my own wife kidnapped by a gang of ruffians accustomed to catching and selling women like livestock, generally shipping them off to places they never return from. Nothing like that is going to happen to my Emma, I’ve been promised, but still, I must have her out of the way for now so I can let her father know he must deliver to me the endowed diamonds he stole from a college in Tennessee…diamonds I can pretend to use to pay off the ‘kidnappers’ while in reality keeping them for myself so I can join my business partner in setting up a string of mining camp stores that will put us among the richest men in California. Oh, and then, of course, I will run for governor and win, and my wife will never know it was actually her own husband who had her stolen away and penned like an animal, to be used as bait to draw out her father.”

  He’d told nothing of that sort to Coggin, of course. He’d instead told Coggin that it was his wife who was so eager to find McSwain, because McSwain was an ill man and was pridefully but unwisely trying to live on his own. The Wickhams were ready to take him in and provide him the best of care and comfort, and see him through his illness. So please do hurry, Mr. Coggin. Find him quickly so we can go to him.

  Coggin was a punctual man and was already awaiting Wickham at the little saloon located behind a dance hall, where they’d agreed to meet. The broad grin on Coggin’s rounded face as Wickham approached him encouraged Wickham mightily.

  “Good luck?”

  “Good luck. It isn’t difficult, generally, to find a man if he hangs his name out on a shingle in a busy city. Mr. McSwain has opened a school of sorts in San Francisco, teaching uneducated adults to read, as best I can tell. Odd line of work.”

  “He’s an odd man. Many academics are.”

  “Oh, I do know that, sir. I do. I’ve dealt with many of them in various cases over the years.”

  “San Francisco. I’d hoped he might be closer than that. Maybe holed up in one of the nearby mining camps. Did you see him?”

  “I saw a man exit the door of his building and lock it behind him, so I presume that was McSwain. He did not appear to be ill from what was visible.”

  “It’s a condition of the pancreas. Not a particularly visible ailment.”

  “I see. So what now? Will you visit him?”

  “I have more work for you.” Wickham reached beneath his waistcoat and pulled a sealed envelope from an inner pocket. “I wish you to deliver this to Mr. McSwain in two days’ time. No sooner and no later. Two days’ time. I am not inclined to explain why…. A personal, family matter is involved in the timing.”

  “I understand. I respect the need for privacy on the part of my clients, including some degree of privacy in regards to what I myself know. All I ask is that you assure me that, in delivering this and following your timing, I am not unwittingly being involved in any criminal activity.”

  Wickham, a good liar at all times and a decent actor when he had to be, managed to look both shocked and amused at the same moment. He threw back his head and laughed. “Criminal? Oh, sir, certainly not. I am simply handling this in accord with my wife’s wishes, and certain preparations she is making to receive her father into the bosom of our home.”

  “It is fine of both her and you, Mr. Wickham, to perform this kindness for her father. I commend you for it. And certainly I will put the letter in Mr. McSwain’s hands at precisely the time you have told me to. Will I need to wait for him to read it in case he wishes to send back a response to you, for me to deliver?”

  This was a question Wickham had not anticipated and therefore he had no ready answer. He answered off the cuff. “I think not. I believe that when he reads that letter he will come to us on his own, very promptly indeed.”

  “Shall I accompany him?”

  “No, sir. Once you have put that envelope into his hands, what we need of you will have been accomplished.”

  “Very good, sir. Now, the matter of my payment…”

  Wickham brought out a snap-top pocket purse, filled with carefully weighed and measured gold dust. Coggin accepted it with a smile, put the envelope into a coat pocket, and took his leave of Wickham.

  Wickham bought himself rum and sat back, letting himself relax as much as possible, the first time he’d even tried to do so since his tense meeting with Wilberforce Sadler.

  He had changed his immediate plan. He would go home tonight and be with his wife, because the kidnapping would happen the next evening and it seemed right to be with her tonight and try to give her a cheerful evening before life turned decidedly uncheerful for her for a period of time. It was all planned and timed, and he hoped to the high heavens that nothing went wrong. He’d never been involved in anything more important, or more dangerous, than this. It racked his nerves.

  And, unfitting as it was to do it, Wickham prayed. Dear God, do not let her be hurt. Whatever may come, please do not let her be hurt.

  He ordered another drink and checked his watch to make sure he did not fail to be at the right place, at the right time, to meet his coach and driver for the journey back to Bowater and home.

  In the night, he rolled over and saw her beside him, sleeping soundly, quietly, her face a beautiful sculpture of nature in the moonlight through the window. He almost, almost reached out to touch her, but drew his hand back.

  If he touched her, he might weaken, feel pity for her, and decide to spare her from what was ahead. And if he did that, there would be no diamonds from her father, no business venture with Wilberforce Sadler, no massive volume of wealth, fame, and power. No coming day when he would settle his backside into the chair of the governor of this new state of California.

  He could not abide that, so he did not touch her. He let her sleep and hoped her dreams would be good ones this night, because at this time the next night, the nightmares would be upon her. Not as dreams, but reality.

  Could he do it? Could he really go through with the process he had already started rolling?

  He rolled over, turning his back to her. Yes, he could do it. Because he had to do it.

  He had to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Do you know the definition of ‘fool,’ ma’am?” the man named Turner asked the woman who cowered in the corner of the covered log pen, her face encased in a cotton sack so she could see nothing. A piece of cord cinched the sack in tightly around her neck. With her ability to breathe already greatly limited by the sack, the tightness of the cord rendered it nearly impossible.

  Emma McSwain Wickham made no reply, which angered Turner. Though he was too tall to stand up fully in the low-topped, cabinlike structure, he worked his way closer to her. She cringed back from him. He laughed and commented upon her fear.

  “I believe you think I’m going to strike you for your rudeness in not answering a simple question,” he said in a mocking, scathing tone. “Well, I am not a man content to leave exp
ectations unfulfilled.” With that he drove a fist into her jaw, rocking her head back hard against the log wall, making her cry out in shock and pain. The blow had been rendered all the worse because she had not been able to see it coming, to know where it would land.

  “Well, my dear Emma—you don’t mind me calling you Emma, do you? Certainly with what transpired between us last night, we should be free to speak as the most intimate kind of friends, eh?—perhaps now you might be inclined to be a little more responsive and a little less rude.”

  “Please…please…,” she managed to say with what little voice and breath she could find beneath the tightness of the neck-encircling cord. Her wrists were bound together, and those bonds were linked by a second cord to her similarly tied ankles. It was short enough that she would be limited to a bent-over posture even if she managed to get on her feet. So far, since being thrown into this log prison the prior afternoon, she had not dared try to get up, anyway.

  “Please, did you say? What a polite word, ‘please’! Very well, then, if you want another, you may have it, since you asked so nicely.” And he hit her again, and laughed. She sobbed beneath the masking cloth.

  “I am an accommodating host, am I not?” Turner said. She sobbed again. He gave her another blow, this time on her shoulder, but harder. “I asked you a question, Emma.”

  “Y…yes,” she murmured.

  “Yes what?”

  “You are…an accommodating host.”

  “Ah, now, that’s how two friends should interact,” Turner said. “An open, ready dialogue, answering each other’s questions politely. Eh? But there is still one question you have not answered. My first one. How does one define a fool?”

  “I don’t know…sir,” she replied, so softly she could barely be heard.

  “Oh my, how badly this land needs improvement in education! Not to know the definition of ‘fool’…my, my.” He paused and sighed overloudly, like a bad stage actor. Then went on. “A fool, my dear, is a man who would hire a criminal captor and broker of women to seize and hold his own wife, yet expect that such a man will be true to his promises regarding what he will and will not reveal to her. In short, Emma, a fool is defined as your own husband.”