The Great West Detective Agency

by Jackson Lowry

  “Dunbar?”

  “I thought you knew him. Jubal Dunbar.”

  He became even more curious about the Russians and their mission when he realized her ignorance was not feigned. He had thought Tovarich was the thread binding Vera with Amanda and Dunbar.

  “What is your role?”

  “To bring nothing but success to the venture,” he said. “I hadn’t been told that my job was going to be so pleasant dealing with a lovely lady such as yourself.” He saw a flash of irritation pass as Vera looked at him more closely. Charm still had a place in keeping him alive.

  “I am sorry I sent the dogs against you in Denver. You should have gotten to us.”

  “I had another job to deal with. Bankers and the like,” he said vaguely.

  “Bankers, pah! They are in league with those in power.”

  “Tell me how you would deal with them.”

  Lucas found the woman sitting beside him, her leg pressing into his. Her perfume was thicker but not overpowering. Or not as overpowering as Vera’s sheer presence. She was a strong, vital woman, and he had not realized how the gypsy—or Cossack?—dress suited her by emphasizing her hidden curves. She moved so she half faced him. Her lips parted slightly, and her eyes closed as if she wanted him to kiss her. He bent forward, only to check himself as she rocked back and pulled a book from her jacket.

  “It is all here,” she said breathlessly, waving the book around. “Only by taking the land from the czar and giving it to the serfs can Mother Russia prosper. Under the thumb of Czar Alexander, we will suffer and eventually perish. In here, in Catechism of a Revolutionary, is our plan.”

  Lucas glanced at the book in Russian. It could have been a book on dog breeding for all he knew, but the pages were dog-eared and the lettering on the cover had worn off from being studied so intently.

  “That’s something you wrote?”

  “No, no, I am not a political theorist,” she said, moving closer to thrust the book into his hands. “Mikhail Bukanin is a genius, a master, and the one we of the Narodniki look to for inspiration. The czar has failed to make agrarian reform and continues to enslave the serfs. We will seize the farmland from him and put it into the hands of all citizens.”

  “Not the farmers?”

  “Everyone will own the land. They will work the land for the good of all, not for only the nobility. The power of the state will be crushed, and we will all live in harmony without the tax collectors stealing from us.”

  “That’s a mighty lofty goal. Of course, you need money for it.”

  “The gold will spark the revolution. We will not fail!”

  Lucas took the book thrust into his hands although he could never read it, even if he wanted to.

  “Do you have any other books? In English?”

  Vera laughed. It started out as a robust laugh but built into something almost loco.

  “I have many such books by your cleverest writers. The Innocents Abroad tells me much of your country and how you think.” Her lip curled into a sneer. “We will free Russia of the imperial yoke, then do the same with yours.”

  “It’ll take more gold than either of us have got,” he said, trying to ease out a bit more information about the gold. That sounded promising, but he still saw no connection between Vera and Amanda. Asking outright if Amanda had stolen one of the hound mistress’s dogs felt wrong. He still edged along a brink of a very deep abyss. Vera Zasulich might easily nudge him over the edge at any instant as she went from rational to crazy.

  “There is plenty to go around, but you know that.”

  “Do you have that Twain book you mentioned?”

  “In my wagon.” She looked at him like the wolfhound had earlier, and he wondered what he had gotten himself into. He trailed her to the central wagon. She stepped up and pulled the door open wide. “Is this what you wanted to see?”

  He shifted his gaze from the book in her hand to her. She had contrived to open the neck of her blouse.

  “I’ll trade you.”

  “What do you want to trade?”

  “This book for the one in your hand.”

  He stepped closer. Her scent filled his nostrils and proved almost as intoxicating as the tarantula juice Lefty served at the Emerald City. Their bodies touched lightly, but for Lucas it was electric. Vera was wild and sometimes insane, and he couldn’t help wondering if that carried over to more amorous activities.

  She plucked the book from his hand and tossed it into the wagon. Her arms circled his neck and pulled him forward so his face was buried in the open neck of her blouse. His lips pressed against warm flesh. Before he could take advantage of this artificial height difference, the pounding of horses’ hooves sounded. She shoved him to one side, forcing him to sit heavily on the step.

  “Take the book. Do it.” She vaulted over him and walked briskly, head high and shoulders back, toward the fire.

  Lucas picked up the book she had dropped and looked at it.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “What are the odds?” He tucked the book into a pocket already crowded with poker chips and money, settled his Colt New Line to come to his grip quicker without rummaging through everything, and then got his feet under him.

  “Is he the one?” The question boomed, deep and bass, across the camp.

  Vera and the newcomer exchanged increasingly shrill words in Russian. Lucas considered his chances of walking away to be slim now as the other men poked their heads from their wagons. Every one of them hefted a rifle or a six-shooter, and all looked from the man arguing with Vera to Lucas.

  Boldness had gotten him this far. He walked to where the woman stood a little behind the tall, broad-shouldered man. Lucas sized up their relationship immediately. It wouldn’t do to boast that he was with Vera.

  “Good evening,” Lucas said. For good measure he made the secret sign. If Vera was a revolutionary and a member of a secret anarchist group, this had to be the leader. If nothing else, the sign had to pour oil on the turbulent water swirling around now.

  The man looked to Vera and fired off a chain of more Russian. Lucas didn’t have to speak the language to know that little of it was complimentary.

  “He is one of us, Dmitri,” she replied in English for Lucas’s benefit. “He is here to help us find the treasure trove.”

  Lucas fought to keep his face a mask at those words. He had intended to slip away as quickly as he could, but this verified what he had suspected. The Russians were hunting for hidden gold, and Vera wasn’t the starry-eyed sort to go looking for fool’s gold. The scars on Dmitri’s face, crisscrossing like poorly harrowed farmland, showed he wasn’t likely to fall for any tall tale. So many Americans back East bought a treasure map thinking it would give them untold wealth. All it did was open the door for a lot of misery and an empty pocket. Dmitri, Vera, and the others lacked the trust required to buy such a fraudulent map. They were here in Colorado because the chances of finding gold—lots of it to finance their revolution—were good.

  “I have never seen you before,” Dmitri said.

  “I’ve never seen you either. That doesn’t mean we’re not after the same thing.”

  “You work for him.”

  Lucas hesitated, not knowing if he should deny it. He had no idea to whom Dmitri referred.

  That pause brought the others moving in. Lucas found himself at the center of a circle of guns pointed at him.

  “Look,” he said, desperation growing.

  Sweat beaded on his forehead, forcing him to choose between wiping it away or going for his pistol. He did neither. One would have betrayed his bluff. The other would have brought a dozen ounces of lead ripping through his body.

  “We’re both hunting for the same thing,” Lucas went on. “Tovarich—”

  He had not expected the reaction he got. Dmitri reached out and took him by the throat, massive
hands squeezing down hard and forcing Lucas to his knees. He fumbled for his pistol, but the world turned blacker by the instant as the life was choked out of him.

  12

  “Dmitri, stop! Don’t kill him!”

  The words came through a gathering fog, but the pressure on his throat lessened. Lucas struggled to wrap his finger around the trigger of his pistol, though in some distant part of his brain he wondered if firing while the Colt was still in his pocket wouldn’t put him more at risk than Dmitri.

  A rapid burst of Russian produced a complete slackening around his neck. He gasped, choked, and rolled away to get free. Vera put her arm around him and brought him to a sitting position on the ground. He looked up at the hulking Dmitri. All he could see was the man’s fierce black beard, the blazing eyes, the set to his mouth.

  “He did not mean to kill you.”

  “Thanks for saving me,” Lucas said. He got to his feet and sucked in a deep breath to steady himself. “Why’d you choke me?”

  “You stole Tovarich!”

  The Russian’s roar forced Lucas back a step. He wanted to go for his gun, then knew that was suicidal. Not only would the bullet not slow Dmitri if he charged like the bull that he was, but the others around held their weapons ready to cut him down. Only Vera showed him any charity.

  “Where is the dog?” Vera spoke softly, almost seductively, but her fingers cut into his shoulder like a bear’s claw. “The bitch took our dog. Tovarich should be with his litter mates.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Feigning ignorance gave him time to recover, but it did nothing to get him out of his predicament. He looked past the circle of Russian anarchists hoping to see Good charging down on them. The rescue didn’t happen. He couldn’t blame the Creek, but that didn’t make him feel any better.

  “You know the dog’s name. You know what happened to the dog. Who are you?”

  Lucas flashed her the secret sign again, but she backed away and spoke to Dmitri. Lucas tried to understand the argument between the two of them and came to the sorry conclusion they were at odds on how to kill him. Dmitri clenched his fists and waved them about while Vera refused to look back at him, as if she felt guilty about allowing him to be ripped apart.

  “Vera, I want nothing less than you do. I don’t know where the dog is, and I don’t know who stole it, but I will find out if you give me more to go on.”

  She pushed Dmitri away, then came to Lucas, smiling insincerely. His years at the poker table and working confidence schemes made her intent obvious. Try as she might, she wasn’t going to fool him. So he had to fool her.

  “Who is he?” Dmitri tried to push past Vera, but she brushed him off. Lucas wondered who was in charge in this camp. The huge man could crush her without even noticing, yet she held some sway.

  “Beauty and brains,” Lucas said softly. “Beauty and brains against muscles and stupidity.”

  “Come with me.” Vera steered him away. “Do not let Dmitri hear such things.”

  “That I think you are both beautiful and smart? You’re the leader, aren’t you?”

  “Dmitri is. I am what you might call a political operative.”

  “What’s that?” Lucas had no real curiosity. He only wanted to keep breathing another minute or two.

  “I teach the others our philosophy and keep them focused on our task.”

  “If you want to teach me, I’ll be happy to learn.”

  She shot him a cold look. Trying to romance her would get him nowhere. He seemed to be having great luck with cards and none with women. Carmela had taken up with Little Otto, and Amanda was always just beyond his reach and likely in bed with Jubal Dunbar, in more ways than one.

  “Into my wagon,” she said, pushing him ahead of her.

  He went willingly because it got him away from Dmitri’s angry stare. Dmitri and Vera were a team in all ways. She philosophized and he acted. Brains and brawn. That combination kept tumbling like a rock going downhill as he stepped up into the wagon. Vera pulled the door shut behind her.

  “Why do you hunt for the dog?” Her demand was punctuated by a tapping foot and arms crossed over her chest.

  “You know why,” Lucas said, playing for time. “How did you lose the dog?”

  “I never had it. It was stolen from Gregor before he arrived in Denver.”

  “What’s he got to say for himself?”

  “Nothing!” Vera stepped toward him, her fists as menacing as Dmitri’s. “He was killed for the dog.”

  “Where was he coming from?”

  “You know nothing of this, but you know the dog’s name. How is that?”

  “I only want to help the cause. You must get the dog back to overthrow the czar.” He saw this did nothing to soothe her mounting rage at him. “What was Gregor to you?”

  “My brother. Of all men, I trusted him most. Dmitri found him dead on the road from Cheyenne. How do you know of Tovarich?”

  “Do you trust Dmitri not to have killed your brother?”

  “Dmitri is a simple soul. He does not think so deeply, and he knows better than to double-cross me in this. His entire family was murdered by Czar Alexander. Without the dog, without the uprising, the nobles will continue grinding the serfs under their heel!”

  Lucas didn’t care for the polemic he received, but it kept Vera from returning to the question she so persistently asked. If he told her of his connection with Amanda—whom Vera was likely referring to as “the bitch”—he doubted he would see the dawn. No matter how he turned everything over in his head, all that made sense was Amanda killing Gregor to steal the puppy. Then she had somehow lost the dog and had thrown in with Dunbar to regain it. But the Russians sought the dog, too.

  Who had it? And why was Tovarich so important? The mention of vast quantities of gold kept him interested, but not to the extent that he would risk his life.

  Lucas grunted as Vera punched him in the belly. He hadn’t expected the blow and took a step back. He caught his heel and sat down heavily on the narrow bed. From here he looked up into her brown eyes. Brown eyes were supposed to be chocolate and soft and all the things that he loved most in a woman. All he saw were tombstones in this woman’s eyes. He couldn’t read the name on those grave markers but it had to be his.

  “I am good with a knife. Once, a tax collector for the czar took three days to die. He screamed in pain until his voice became too hoarse. He choked to death on his own blood when he bit his tongue.”

  “We can work together to get the dog. Whoever killed Gregor stole it. Tell me about what was found around the body.”

  “You sound like a detective.”

  “I . . . you caught me coming out of the Great West Detective Agency back in Denver. I was just leaving the office.”

  “You are a detective?”

  “What was the condition of your brother’s body?”

  “He was almost naked. His clothing had been cut off and shredded. No strip was longer than a few inches. All his belongings had been rummaged.”

  “How was he killed? Was he shot?”

  “His throat was slashed. Twice.” She ran her thumb from left to right on her own throat, then worked back across more slowly.

  Lucas tried to imagine small, lovely Amanda Baldridge using a knife to savagely open a new mouth across a Russian throat. She might have been lying to him about ownership of the dog, but murdering anyone in such a fashion seemed unlikely. If he had to guess, she would use poison or perhaps even put a bullet into the back of a man’s head, but to slit a man’s throat made no sense. Amanda would want information, and a man drowning in his own blood wasn’t going to utter more than a gurgle or two before dying.

  Killer, possibly, but Amanda was above all else pragmatic. When she hadn’t been able to locate Tovarich on her own, she had sought disinterested help. A Denver detective knew not
hing about the dog’s history or importance—or that men were dying to recover it. Lucas wondered how many others she had out searching for Tovarich.

  The question boiled up and escaped his lips before he could stop himself.

  “How is Tovarich the key to finding the gold? Can he sniff it out?”

  Vera puffed up like an angry alley cat’s tail and reached for one of the knives at her belt.

  “You don’t know?”

  Lucas saw no reason to deny it. He shook his head, not daring to say another word. She was as edgy as a rotted tooth, and anything he did only made the matter worse.

  Before she could whip out a knife and force Lucas to defend himself, the thunder of hooves coming from the direction of Denver caused Dmitri to bellow a warning in Russian. Vera looked from Lucas to a Cossack at the wagon door. The rapid, staccato exchange caused the woman to hop down the steps. Outside, she looked into the wagon at Lucas.

  “You will stay here until I return.” She slammed the door. He heard a lock hasp clicking into place.

  Lucas didn’t bother testing the door or the lock imprisoning him. A quick survey of the wagon’s interior convinced him that was the sturdiest part of the wagon. He ran his fingers over the back wall until he found a crack. It afforded him a limited view of the area around the campfire. Two mounted men were in view talking to Dmitri. Vera joined him, her hand resting on a knife. The exchange between them was in English, but Lucas couldn’t make out much more than the fact that a tenuous truce existed between the riders and the Russians.

  A tapping on the wagon floor caused him to leave his peephole. He located another crack in the floorboard and found himself staring into a dark eye. Good rapped again, then whispered, “Leave now. Bad men have come to camp.”

  “You’re just figuring that out?” Lucas sat back and wondered what Good considered “bad.” If the Russians didn’t provoke him to such a description, the newcomers had to be extraordinary.

  Extraordinary and known to the Creek.

  “Help me break open the flooring,” Lucas said. The sounds of the men outside sent a thrill of fear up his spine. They were arguing. He knew if his presence ever got tossed into the pot, both sides would have a common enemy to unite against, and he would be dead the instant the lock on the door opened.