"As I'll ever be," she said.
And that was good enough for him.
They rushed the alley's exit, burst out from it crouching, faced in opposite directions, rump to rump. Nobody fired on them, but Kate spotted a southbound runner, headed toward the Truckee, warning J.D., "There he goes."
They started in pursuit, seeing a pistol in the runner's hand that ruled out any possibility they were chasing the wrong man. Their quarry didn't turn, no chance to glimpse his face, but he was clearly bent on fleeing from a bungled job. Warning or attempted murder, it had failed in either case.
The guy was fifty yards ahead of them and making tracks. They couldn't judge his age, but he was obviously spry and vigorous, strides eating up the ground in front of him. If he kept on that way, there was a chance that they could lose him yet.
"To hell with this," Kate said, and stopped dead in her tracks. J.D. swerved to avoid colliding with her as she raised her pistol in a dueling stance, cocked it, and fired a single shot after the running man.
Down range, the runner stumbled, caught himself with one hand going down, and bounced back up again, spinning around to fire back at his two pursuers. Kate ducked, while J.D. veered around behind a scrawny sycamore not large enough to cover him. The shooter didn't fire another shot, but used the time he'd bought to take off running once again.
"I think you missed him, baby."
"Yeah. Don't rub it in."
The chase resumed, Kate first off the blocks, J.D. gaining with his longer legs. Despite his almost-fall, the shooter showed no sign of being injured, wasn't limping, and he left no trail of blood behind. If anything, it seemed to J.D. that the guy was running faster since he'd seen they could shoot back.
"I should've brought my Winchester," he groused.
"To meet the Widow Jolley?" Kate replied through labored breathing. "Not the best idea you ever had."
"Better than running miles around Reno, after this prick."
"I grant you that. Now save your breath!"
They ran another hundred yards, and J.D. heard the river now, bearing water from Lake Tahoe and Sierra snows to Pyramid Lake on the Paiute reservation, thirty miles northeast of Reno. Soon, the shooter would be running out of road and he would have to make a choice: jump in and swim, or stand and fight.
Before he had to make that choice, however, fate or something like it took a hand. A horse-drawn buggy with an old man and a small child in the driver's seat, maybe his grandchild, lurched out of a side street, nearly trampling the runner flat. He skidded to a halt but fell and scraped his palms trying to save it, as he had the first time. This try ended with his pistol spinning free from bloodied fingers, sliding underneath the buggy, which the old man stopped with one of its rear wheels atop the six-gun's cylinder.
"Got him!" Kate said, and started forward, J.D. on her heels, but the runner wasn't finished yet.
Reaching beneath his coat, he drew a Bowie knife, bright sunlight flashing from its twelve-inch blade. He leaped aboard the buggy, clubbed its driver with the pommel, and tossed his limp form to the ground. Snatching up the child, their quarry turned to face J.D. and Kate, his blade under the youngster's chin.
"No closer!" he demanded. "We'll be driving out of here, right now. You try'n stop me, this kid gets a carving like your Christmas turkey."
"Don't do anything they'll hang you for," Kate cautioned him.
"Too late. I got nothin' to lose."
"Why don't you give up, then?" asked J.D.
"Cause I ain't an idjit. Now, set down them guns."
"Like hell I will," Kate muttered, barely loud enough for J.D.'s ears, but she appeared to follow orders, stooping down as if she meant to ground her Colt. J.D. did likewise, scowling at the man who held the Bowie, waiting for his wife to make her play.
It came abruptly, without warning. Just before she would have set the pistol down, Kate launched into a forward somersault, head over heels, and came up in a crouch, her Colt stiff-armed in front of her. She fired without seeming to aim, and J.D. grimaced as the shot rang out, waiting to see it strike.
It took the gunman's left knee, inches from the young boy's dangling feet, blood spraying from the shattered joint. The one-time runner screamed and dropped his human shield, before he toppled from the driver's seat and dropped from sight behind the buggy, landing with a ragged, gurgling scream.
J.D. and Kate circled the buggy, one at either end, and found their quarry where he'd fallen—with the Bowie knife protruding from his chest. Three inches of the blade's bright twelve were visible, the other nine embedded in his chest. There was no blood to speak of from the knife wound, plugged with steel, but any gunfighter could tell you that it must have pierced a lung, and likely gashed the heart.
Kate knelt beside the dying man and clutched his chin with her left hand. "Who are you?" she demanded.
"Nobody."
"Why'd you try to kill us?"
"Duty," he gasped back at her, expelling crimson mist.
"Whose duty?"
"To my father."
"Who killed Norval Jolley?"
"Got what he had coming."
Then, his eyes glassed over and he shuddered, coughing blood. Kate drew her hand back to avoid the scarlet deluge.
"Shit! He's gone."
"And so'll you be," said a voice behind them, "if you don't lay down them pistols, nice and slow."
* * *
Reno's police chief was a fat man, six feet tall and probably five feet around. He didn't wear a gunbelt, possibly because he couldn't find one that would fit him, but the officers who joined him for the questioning carried revolvers, sawed-off shotguns, and a Spencer carbine packing seven .56-caliber rounds.
The chief—one Luther Maddox—had decided not to lock them up after he read the note that Hiram Koch had written on his business card. That didn't spare them from interrogation, though, beginning with the reason for their trip to Reno, carrying on through the nearly accidental death of an as-yet-unnamed assassin.
"Just a fluke, I guess," Chief Maddox said, "that he fell down and stabbed hisself."
"A lucky accident, I'd call it," Kate replied.
"How's that?"
"He meant to cut the little boy," J.D. broke in. "You might call that poetic justice."
"I might call it shooting up the town."
"You got a law in Reno against self-defense, Chief?"
"What we got is a police force. Once he made the try on you and missed, the right thing woulda been to let us handle it."
"Funny, I didn't see you anywhere around," Kate said.
"We got a lot of ground to cover, I admit," Maddox replied. "But we're around."
"And by the time we found you, he'd have gotten clean away. We wouldn't even know which way he went."
The chief changed tacks. "You two have quite the reputation. Two days since you bagged the Grayling brothers—"
"One day," Kate corrected. "But who's counting?"
"Trouble seems to follow you around like flies behind a honey wagon."
"And we always clean it up," said J.D.
"Which, I say again, is not your job."
"That's where you're wrong," Kate said. "We've been retained to learn who killed eight people on a stage in White Pine County, two days back."
"That's way to hell and gone out east of here," said Maddox.
"But the only victim from Nevada lived right here, in Reno," J.D. said.
"That Norval Jolley."
"Right. And we'd just finished talking to his widow when the fireworks started."
"Just coincidence?"
"I wouldn't bet on that," Kate said.
"So, what's your notion?"
"Someone wants us off the job," said J.D. "Either scared, or toes up."
"And you think this character who stuck himself came out from White Pine, just to deal with you all?"
"We've already told you we don't know him," Kate replied. "Identify him, and you should be close to learning where he haile
d from."
"We don't like this kinda thing in Reno, people shootin' up the streets."
"We don't like people shooting at us anywhere," said J.D.
"Comes with the territory, though, I guess. Bein' hired guns and all."
"You plan on charging us with something, Chief?" Kate asked. "Or is this just your idea of how to pass an afternoon?"
Maddox was getting red-faced, building up a head of steam. "I ask the questions here!"
"Well, if you've got some that we haven't answered yet, let's hear them," J.D. said.
He seemed about to come up dry, then Maddox asked, "You plan on stayin' hereabouts much longer?"
"Not a minute longer than we have to," Kate assured him.
"That's good news," the chief replied, "for all concerned. If someone's gonna kill ya, try'n let 'em do it in some other jurisdiction."
J.D. rose and said, "We aim to please. Now, how about our irons?"
Outside, in waning afternoon, Kate said, "I don't think Porky likes us much."
"What's not to like?" asked J.D.
"All a matter of perspective, I suppose."
"I'd say we're done in Reno, either way."
"Wish we could trace that shooter, though."
"He had a funny way of talking, even for a man about to meet his maker. All that stuff about his duty."
"Are you onto something?" Kate inquired.
"I wouldn't go that far, but who talks most about their duty?" Without waiting J.D. answered his own question. "Soldiers and religious folk."
"And lawmen," Kate suggested.
"Right. Except he didn't have a badge, and Big Chief Maddox would have recognized a local cop or deputy."
"Okay. A soldier or religious fellow, then."
"Or some of both," mused J.D.
"Meaning what?"
"I'm not sure, yet."
"Are you back to the Mormon thing again?"
"You know their history? The persecutions they've endured, the wars they've fought—including one with the United States."
"I couldn't quote you any details," Kate admitted.
"They can be ferocious, if they think their creed's been threatened."
"What religion can't?"
"Okay, but most have never organized an army to rebel against the U.S. government."
"Are we talking Mormons, now, or the Confederacy?"
"Have you heard of Danites?"
"Sure, but—"
"But nothing. You remember Porter Rockwell."
"Used to be a U.S. marshal, out of Utah."
"And a Danite," J.D. said. "Word is that he tried to kill Missouri's governor for driving Mormons out, back in the 1830s."
"Word from who?"
"It gets around."
"So, gossip. And you think the guy who tried for us this morning was a Danite?"
"All I'm saying is, it's possible."
"You don't mind if I wait until we have some proof?"
"Not as long as you keep both eyes open, in the meantime."
"That's a given. So, what next?"
"We'll get a room in town tonight, then take off in the morning."
"Take off where?" Kate asked, eyeing her mate suspiciously.
J.D. smiled back at her and said, "We need to see a man about a Gatling gun."
Chapter 5
The road to Carson City wound for thirty miles through mountains covered in fragrant bristlecone pine and blue spruce, past streams and rivulets rushing to feed Lake Tahoe. It was cooler there, at altitude, than on the desert flats below, but would be heating up as morning passed.
J.D. and Kate had eaten breakfast at their small hotel—no match for Reno's Regency, but clean enough, and with a decent cook—before they started south from town at nine o'clock. So far, they had the road all to themselves, except for deer that burst from cover every couple miles along the way, stopping to stare before they panicked, white tails raised like small surrender flags as they escaped.
Before they'd settled down to sleep, J.D. had briefed Kate on his background with the man they planned to see in Carson City, Isaac Grantham. J.D. had been drifting in the war's wake, having found himself a year too young to join the Union Army, when he met Grantham in Silver City, not so far away. Grantham was selling "army surplus" weapons, sometimes stolen, to the highest bidder in a region where both white and red men needed guns. He might have crossed the line by selling arms to hostiles—J.D. wasn't rightly clear on that, even today—but when a mob of drunken miners tried to lynch him for it, without anything resembling a trial, J.D. had intervened and helped him slip away.
"You had no use for vigilantes, even then," Kate said, reminding J.D. of the night they'd met, five years before.
"I don't mind hanging someone, if they've got it coming," he'd replied. "But it should all be legal and above board."
He'd told Kate of the month he spent with Grantham, moving crates of muskets and repeating rifles, pistols, sabers—anything one man could use to kill another—while he kept expecting bluecoats or a U.S. marshal to appear and drag them off in bracelets to the calaboose.
"You were a gun-runner!" Kate teased him, lying naked next to J.D. in their sagging bed, until he'd stopped her with a kiss and things got fuzzy for an hour or so. Later, when they were winded, he'd resumed the story.
He and Grantham hadn't been arrested, and he'd only seen the weapons dealer sell one carbine to a red man. That had been a miner, hoping to defend his stake against white claim-jumpers, an act of bravery which, J.D. later heard, had been the death of him. J.D. had parted company with Grantham when he got tired of staying in one place too long and lit out on the road that led him, after many other twists and turns, to one Kate Aragon, now Mrs. Blaze. Neither J.D. nor Grantham had been much for writing letters, but as J.D. traveled through the West, he'd picked up whispers of the dealer's name in dives from San Francisco to Los Angeles, eastward as far as Tombstone, Santa Fe, and Denver.
"So, he's still in business," sleepy-sounding Kate had summarized, head nestled in the crook of J.D.'s arm.
"Far as I know, and dealing from the same place, in a warehouse he converted with a storefront. Last I heard, he sold all kinds of normal irons to people off the street and kept the special stuff in back, for customers with deeper pockets."
"Special stuff like Gatling guns?"
"And other things. They're legal," he'd reminded her. "Just too expensive for most people, and too cumbersome to haul around."
"Who needs one, anyway?"
"Aside from army units and the men we're looking for? Some prisons keep one, for emergencies. I heard the Pinkertons have two or three, for guarding special trains. Some of the larger Texas ranches are supposed to have them, for defense against hostiles and border trash. I also heard about one mining company that has an armored wagon for its shipments, with a Gatling up on top."
"Boys and their toys."
"These toys mean business. They can cut a dozen men to pieces in the time it takes to turn a crank handle."
"I'd call that too much power for a man to hold."
"It's just a tool," J.D. replied. "What flows from that depends entirely on who's using it."
"But it was only made for one thing: killing people by the dozens. Nobody goes hunting with a Gatling gun. No farmer uses it to guard his cornfield or tomato patch."
"It's progress," J.D. had responded, slipping toward the void of sleep. "But if you're still het up about it in the morning, talk to Isaac. Maybe you can charm him out of selling them."
And now, mid-afternoon of day two on the case, they were approaching Carson City, named for an adjacent river, which was named, in turn, for mountain man and scout Christopher Carson, "Kit" to nearly everyone who'd known him while he lived. J.D. had met him once, in passing, at some kind of do in Colorado. Two months later, Carson's wife had died delivering their eighth child, and the frontier hero pined away without her, passing one month later, at the age of fifty-eight.
"What do you plan on telling your
old buddy?" Kate asked J.D., as they got their first glimpse of Nevada's capital city.
"Just the facts. He's not in any trouble, if he sold the gun we're looking for. And if he didn't, he may know who did."
"You think he'd give them up?"
J.D. could only shrug at that. "Don't know, but at the moment, it's the only lead that I can think of."
Carson City wasn't large, compared to some state capitals, but it was growing. Government facilities aside, it was a main hub for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, population more than tripled since the first head count was done in 1860. Some three thousand citizens were banking on the city's future being bright and prosperous.
And one of them sold guns.
J.D. rode through the streets as if he'd been there yesterday, remembering his way around from back before he'd met Kate and his life had changed. He recognized a brothel, standing two blocks from the home of the state legislature, but the painted ladies lounging on its balcony were new to him.
Those days are gone, he thought, and didn't mind a bit.
Isaac Grantham's gun shop and warehouse stood on the west side of town, overshadowed by the Carson Range. It had a hitching post and water trough out front, no horses waiting for their owners at the moment, and a sign hung on the door told Kate and J.D. that the place was CLOSED.
J.D. checked his pocket watch against the business hours posted by the shop's front door and said, "Should still be open for another hour."
"Trouble?" Kate asked.
"No reason why he can't close early if he wants to, but he lives around in back, or did, last time I saw him."
"Lead on, lover."
J.D. stepped down from his saddle, tied his gelding to the hitching post, and waited while his wife went through the same routine. No one appeared to notice them as they stepped off the street, into an alleyway north of the gun shop, walking toward the rear. Arriving there, they found another door, this one marked PRIVATE, but it stood ajar, a wedge of darkness visible within.
"I don't like this," Kate said.
"Me, neither." J.D. drew his Colt and cocked it, reaching out to give the door a gentle push. It swung inward on well-oiled hinges, gliding back until it stopped against a wall. Sunlight revealed a smallish entryway, with tarpaulins suspended from the ceiling, cutting off their view of anything beyond.
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