Pointing out the sour look the barkeep gave him wouldn’t convince Claudette of such a romantic connection. He looked at the empty stage and wondered how the world worked in such a strange fashion. He had put Little Otto and Carmela together, even as he wanted the singer for himself. Claudette ignored Lefty’s obvious glances while hanging on to Lucas’s arm as they made their way through the crowded Emerald City. Everyone sought another’s arms and ignored what was at hand. It made no sense.
And what of Amanda Baldridge? Did she share Dunbar’s bed to find her dog? Only, from everything he heard, piecing together all that happened and Little Otto’s snippets of rumor, the dog belonged to someone else. Amanda and Dunbar both sought Tovarich, but neither was the legitimate owner.
“Why would a puppy dog be worth so much?”
“You want a dog?” Claudette stared at him as if he had opened a new eye in the middle of his forehead. “I can give you something more to fill up your bed—all night long.”
“But you certainly would want a bone, my dear.”
“Damned right!”
From across the saloon, Lefty roared for her to get back to work. Claudette looked up at Lucas, then quickly, passionately kissed him before rushing back to work.
The taste of her lips on his was like a heady liquor. Her perfume was—not the scent he had noticed on whoever had tracked him earlier. The long cape hid the person’s body, but the longer he thought about it, the more certain he was that it had hidden a woman. A woman using a perfume that was familiar, but one which he could not identify. He had encountered it before, but where danced just beyond his ability to remember.
He stepped into the cold night and felt as if he had been slapped. Only his lips remained warm from the aftermath of Claudette’s kiss. He looked around. Denver was alive this night, and he felt the city’s energy flowing through him. Coming to decisions helped. He had only a slim chance with Carmela and had moved on with his affections, though Claudette was a stopgap. Neither of them had real emotions in the mix as they sought a moment’s respite from life.
His gambling had gone well, and he had more money in his pocket than at any time over the past year. Amanda’s contribution to his poke helped make that bulge even larger. He began walking aimlessly, his mind slipping off the tracks and running wild. Lucas appreciated such times. At the poker table, his intensity sometimes annoyed the other players, but he always gave his complete attention to the game. This was a mental holiday for him and allowed new thoughts to poke up that he might otherwise never encounter.
Not realizing where his steps led, he stopped and stared at the front of the Great West Detective Agency office. It was as deserted as the first time he had blundered inside, getting away from the outraged rancher and his hired hands. He turned to walk on, then saw an envelope thrust between the door and frame. Lucas looked around. The people in the street were all intent on some destination and paid him no heed. With a quick move, he took the envelope and held it up.
The envelope carried no address, but it wasn’t sealed. Moving under a gaslight, he pulled out the flap and peered inside at the letter inside. Again he looked around, but this time he hesitated and stared hard at a man and woman down the street, pressed together but not looking at each other. Their attention was focused on the plate glass window of a watch shop, closed at this time of night but perfect for watching those behind them without being too obvious.
Moving around the light, he saw that he could make out the couple’s shadowy faces, meaning they could also watch him. His hand moved to his pocket, but he had to push aside a couple dozen high-value poker chips before getting to his pistol. He stared at the two, trying to make out more details. They might be the man and the woman he had seen before in front of the detective agency office, but he didn’t think so, although the woman did most of the talking and the man only listened. The man was taller, as was the woman. Then they both walked away without so much as a backward glance in his direction.
Lucas pushed aside what was becoming a growing nervousness on his part. If he hadn’t gotten involved with Amanda Baldridge, he wouldn’t jump at every shadow or be suspicious of anyone even looking in his direction. That would teach him to fall under a lovely woman’s spell—and to take her considerable amount of money offered for an improbable job.
He held up the letter written in a crabbed, perfect hand. Every letter looked as if it had been drawn painstakingly. A quick scan of the page told of a telegram offering a job, a question of where the Great West Detective Agency staff was, and finally a resolution to persevere until personal contact had been made. The letter had been signed by Raymond and Felicia Northcott.
From running his finger over the cheap paper, he suspected this had been supplied by a lesser hotel. The ink had been smeared in places, showing the author lacked a roller blotter to prevent ink smudges. He pressed his finger into a word, then looked. Dry. The letter had been written sometime earlier. With deft moves, he replaced the letter in the envelope and the envelope in the door.
Trying to remain nonchalant, he went to the rear of the building and tried the back door. It remained locked, the way he’d left it when he had first sought refuge inside. Lucas dropped to his knees, fished out the slender picks, and quickly opened the door again. He stepped into the small storage room, then closed and locked the door behind him.
The office seemed mustier from being closed. This spurred him on, knowing he wasn’t going to be surprised by the detective agency’s owner. He stepped into the main office and hesitated, taking a deep whiff. The elusive scent he had detected when the mysterious woman had been spying on him matched that in the office. It was faint, more than a distant shout from over the horizon, but his sense of smell hadn’t been completely ruined by long nights in saloons filled with cigar smoke, the stench of spilled beer, and vomit mixed in with sawdust.
Somehow the Great West Detective Agency tied in with a woman spying on him.
He settled into the desk chair and began working on the locked desk drawers, hoping to find—what? Lucas had no good idea, but curiosity drove him to paw through files painstakingly compiled and with detailed reports. From what he could tell, one man had written all the reports. The owner of the agency worked alone. The volume of reports, though, suggested a reason why the Northcotts had been solicited. The agency was bursting with work, and the owner needed help running the office while he was in the field.
Lucas leaned back and considered that. In the field meant far afield or the office would have been opened in the past few days. He touched the pocket bulging with money. It hadn’t been that long ago he had taken money from Amanda to find her puppy—or someone’s puppy. He continued rooting around in the files, holding some sheets up to catch a slant of pale yellow illumination coming from the gaslight out in the street.
He let out a whoop when he discovered the owner’s signature on a report.
“So I am poaching business from Jacoby Runyon, agency operative.” Lucas chuckled to himself at the discovery, then sobered when he found a biography of the man. He had become expert listening to men’s tales and deciphering the lies from the truths. Those who spoke the loudest about their lives invented the most. This seemed truest of the war veterans, either of the Civil War or any of the innumerable Indian wars. The true participants had their voices muffled due to grave memories.
Lucas saw more missing from Runyon’s biography that hinted at a dire road to this Denver office, meandering through death and larceny of great proportion. He shoved the pages back into a file drawer as he wondered if Runyon would have taken Amanda’s money for what might have been a trivial chore. How long would it have taken a real detective to find the political connection with Jubal Dunbar? Lucas doubted even an expert detective like Runyon would have navigated through the turbid waters around Amanda any better than he had already.
He idly leafed through another file in the top right desk drawer, then re
ad it more carefully. The railroad down in Durango had been shut down due to recurring robberies with track blown up and railroad crews slaughtered, and Runyon had been hired to bring the criminals to justice. The huge amount of money already received showed that the railroad owners were willing to go to any length. That gave Lucas new insight into Jacoby Runyon. The man wasn’t to be crossed. Dunbar might have thugs working for him, but Runyon had the spine—and hard fists—to oppose them.
Lucas held up his own fist and smiled. He wasn’t a slouch when it came to bare knuckle fighting either. He had gone a few rounds with the best for a bet and had won. Relaxing his fist, he ran his sensitive fingers over his left cheek. The hard knot where a cheekbone had been broken and mended improperly was immediately obvious. Lucas knew it didn’t mar his good looks with an unsightly knob on his face, but more than one woman had stroked over his cheek and commented on it.
He had won a thousand dollars betting on himself by going six rounds with an up-and-coming fighter named John Sullivan. Sullivan had knocked him down five times, but he had always answered the bell for the next round. Lucas was glad the bet hadn’t required him to go a sixth or the bare knuckles fighter would have killed him. He touched the poorly mended cheekbone again as a reminder of his own limits.
Lucas closed the desk drawers and relocked them. The excursion into the office once more had satisfied his curiosity. Now he could keep Amanda’s money with a clear conscience. He wasn’t taking bread from a poor detective’s mouth. If anything, Jacoby Runyon was better heeled than most of the merchants in Denver, taking money from the richest men in America for dangerous commissions no one else could tackle.
He stood, sampled the air again, but no longer detected the scent. On impulse, Lucas went to the file cabinet and searched it as much for the source of the odor as anything else. He found a bank bag—empty—and not much else but dust and an all-pervading smell of old paper and ink.
Lucas considered leaving through the front door, then decided to retreat out the way he had come. The Northcotts’ letter wouldn’t be disturbed any more if he did that. He wished them luck getting the job Runyon had advertised with the agency. Neither of them struck him as detectives. Runyon needed office help, and the married couple would provide it, especially the woman.
At the back door, he hesitated. A tiny sound in the alley alerted him that something was wrong. It might be nothing more than cat-sized rats dining on garbage or a hungry coyote come to town to dine on those same giant rats. He slipped his pistol from his pocket and cocked it before opening the door.
A dark form slammed hard against the door and sent Lucas stumbling back. He fired point-blank and hit his target. But he didn’t stop a snarling, biting dog trying to rip out his throat. His second shot directly into the gaping, fang-filled mouth blew the top off the dog’s head and sent it reeling to die.
Lucas scrambled to his feet and found himself facing another large dog, sleek and slender and measured in hands high rather than inches. Two more shots crippled the dog. A big jump carried him over the snapping, crippled dog. He started to run and realized there were more than the two dogs he had shot.
A pack of gigantic wolfhounds coursed from the far end of the alley, intent on ripping him to shreds. His pistol carried seven rounds and he had expended four. Lucas jerked as sharp teeth snapped at his leg, sending him careening off balance out into the street and his death.
10
Lucas hit the ground, rolled onto his back, and kicked hard. Teeth sank into his ankle just above his boot top. He winced as pain knifed into his leg. He jerked back on the pistol’s blue-colored trigger and sent a round into the wolfhound’s head. To his surprise and panic, the bullet glanced off, leaving a bloody streak in the dog’s fur. It didn’t kill him or slow him down. It only infuriated him. Lips drawn back to show pearly white teeth, the dog leaped for Lucas’s throat in retaliation.
Another round fired without the man realizing it. And then he prepared to die with the dog’s jaws clamped firmly on his throat. He felt hot liquid running down his neck, and the smell of dog and fear and blood made his nostrils flare.
Heavy weight pinned him to the ground—but it was dead weight. Kicking, feeling his injured calf protest even this small movement, Lucas heaved the dog off his chest and sat up, waving his small pistol around. He vowed to swap it for a Colt Peacemaker. If .45-calibers of heavy lead didn’t stop a dog dead in its track when he shot it, nothing this side of a Sharps buffalo rifle would.
“Dead?” The word slipped from his lips. He tasted blood. As he ran his tongue over his lips, he realized he had bitten down hard on his own flesh. He spat, then stared at the dead dog. It had a deer horn–handled knife protruding from its side. The blade had sunk deeply through both lungs and maybe the heart, killing the dog instantly. He yanked the knife free, knowing he was down to a single round. Or had he fired all seven? Everything jumbled in his head.
He saw a half dozen wolfhounds snarling and snapping at the mouth of the alley, fighting over some prey. As the pack shifted position, he saw they fought for a large haunch of meat. It might have been beef or lamb. Whatever it was, the hounds thought it gave them more food than his trembling body would.
A light touch plucked the knife from his hand. He twisted about, his pistol coming to bear. Only a powerful hand pushed it out of line. He looked up into the middle of the man’s chest, then even farther up to a dark, impassive face. Tight braids of black hair flopped on either of the man’s shoulders.
Lucas struggled for words. A strong hand grabbed his arm and lifted him to his feet. By now he recognized his savior.
“Reckon we’re even,” he told the Indian he had saved a couple nights earlier.
“Still owe you ten dollars,” the man said. He shoved hard and sent Lucas stumbling along. With his bad leg, the gambler found running difficult, but he summoned up the stamina and ignored the pain.
Their hasty retreat drew unwanted attention along the slowly filling street. It was still a half hour until dawn, but the businesses had to prepare for their customers at the first light of day. Lucas heard a squishy sound as he hobbled along, looked back, and saw he was leaving bloody tracks. He slowed and began to fumble to pull off his boot, but his rescuer slipped an arm around his shoulder and lifted him off his feet as if he weighed only a few ounces.
“No time to stop.”
Lucas did his best to keep up with the quick pace set but quickly became light-headed. Before he fell, he was gently placed into a chair in front of a boarded-up store.
“Nobody’ll notice us here. Nobody’ll come to work,” he said. The dizziness robbed him of his usual facile thought. Everything that had happened in the past few minutes worked to confuse him.
“Do not take off boot. Your foot will swell.”
“And I won’t get it back on.” Lucas nodded. It felt as if something had come loose inside him. He cradled his head in his hands as he leaned forward. This cleared his mind after a few seconds and he sat upright. “My name’s Lucas Stanton.”
“I know.”
“That’s not the proper response,” Lucas said. “You’re supposed to answer ‘My name is,’ then you tell me what you’re called.”
“Good.”
“I’m happy it pleases you. What’s your name?” His anger further sharpened his senses. The pain in his left turned to a dull throb.
“Good.”
“You pulled my fat out of the fire. Thanks. You didn’t have to do it.” Lucas scowled. “You knew I was going to run afoul of the dogs, didn’t you?”
Fathomless dark eyes stared at him.
“Unless you carry a leg of some dead animal around with you all the time, you wouldn’t have been able to entice them away.” He saw no hint of emotion on the man’s broad face. Playing poker with him would be a pisser.
“Good.”
“What are you saying ‘good’ to now?”<
br />
“That is my name. Good.”
“Just Good?”
“Why do I need more?”
Lucas laughed at the logic. Why did any man need more than one name?
“It might keep you from getting confused with everyone else named Good.”
“No one else is Good.”
“Now that, sir, is something I will not dispute.”
The Indian looked at him curiously now.
“Why do you call me ‘sir’?”
“You deserve it. You are obviously better than I am at some things, such as keeping me alive.” Lucas used both hands to pull his leg around. The trouser leg had plastered itself to his flesh, but the blood had stopped oozing out. “It’s clotted. The wound’s not too serious, then, unless the dog had hydrophobia.”
“Dogs were all well tended, well trained.”
“Russian wolfhounds,” Lucas said, finally remembering enough of the attack to wonder how it was connected with Amanda’s lost puppy.
Good nodded once, then bent and used the tip of his sharp knife to cut through the cloth and expose Lucas’s bite. He poked about with the knife tip for a moment more, then sheathed it at his waist and drew out an Apache hoddentin bag. He opened it, took out a pinch of brown powder, and sprinkled it on the dog bite.
Lucas recoiled in pain.
“The dog didn’t kill me. Are you trying to finish the job?”
Hot lances ran up to his knee, through his hip, and into his groin until he was sure he was going to explode. Then the pain subsided. Good put away his medicine bag made from cured deer hide.
Lucas frowned. He recognized the medicine bag but had thought the man belonged to one of the Five Civilized Tribes. He was seldom wrong, but why would a Creek carry an Apache shaman’s fetish?
“Are you Apache? That’s an Apache medicine man’s symbol on the bag of—”
The Great West Detective Agency Page 9
