On the Trail of the Truth

by Michael Phillips

  Derrick half turned and spotted me out of the corner of his eye.

  “I should have known you were somewhere close by, Cornelia!” he exclaimed. “Gentlemen,” he said to the rest of the men sitting at the table, “this is my good luck companion, Cornelia Hollister. Whenever she’s around, I win!” Then glancing back at me, he added, “Cornelia, these two fellas are the men I was telling you about that work for the senator and are supposed to keep me in line.” He threw me a quick wink, as much as to say that in spite of their rough appearance, he wasn’t worried about them. “And this young buck just got in from the big city,” he said, indicating the young man sitting next to him.

  “Meet Rob Flaridy.”

  It was all I could manage to keep from stumbling over my feet and gasping in amazement! I’m sure the shock must have shown on my face. I must say, if he was as surprised to see me as I was him, Robin hid his reaction better than I did mine.

  “Charmed,” he said, half rising from his chair and tipping his familiar cap with a smile. I knew he enjoyed my discomfort.

  “Sit down . . . sit down, Cornelia!” said Derrick. “Bring me some more good luck!”

  “I . . . I really can’t stay,” I fumbled. “I was just . . . I thought I’d find out how your article was going. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “No interruption at all!” he said boisterously. Now that I was close to him I could tell he’d been drinking, although he wasn’t really drunk. “I’m half done, Hollister . . . the election’s practically in the bag! I’m just having a little break with my friends here! By tomorrow at this time I’ll be on my way to San Francisco, and the boys here will be on their way overland with a copy of everything I’ve found for the senator’s use in the East.”

  “You have a loose tongue,” growled the man with the beard.

  “Relax. Miss Hollister’s on our side!”

  In spite of his expensive suit, the expression on the other man’s face was anything but friendly. “You just keep your mouth shut and your hand busy, and get those papers copied out for us! We’re a day behind schedule as it is.”

  I couldn’t help but notice that both the strangers had rifles leaning against their chairs. The man with the beard also wore a gun belt. The other eyed me with a questioning look.

  I turned to leave.

  “You come back around tonight, Cornelia,” said Derrick. “I’ll be right here at this table, and I’ll be ready for another dose of your good luck.”

  I nodded sort of noncommittally.

  “And maybe by then I’ll be rid of these two brutes,” he added, gesturing across the table, “and we can have some fun!”

  I left the saloon without looking at Robin again.

  I walked straight across the street into the dry goods store and pretended to look around. I kept close to the window with one eye on the swinging doors of the Lucky Sluice. In about twenty minutes the two men came out and walked up the sidewalk toward the north end of town. Five minutes later Robin emerged. He stopped, looked up and down, then started in the opposite direction, crossed the dirt street to the side I was on, and continued on toward the first hotel I had gone into when I’d got into Sonora.

  I watched for another minute or two to make sure Derrick wasn’t coming out. I didn’t want him to see me chasing down the street after Robin. But finally I figured he’d gone back upstairs to his room. I left the store and walked southward as quickly as I could without attracting attention. I saw Robin up ahead of me, sauntering along slowly. I went out into the street so my boots wouldn’t make a pounding noise on the wood walkway, and started running after him. I caught up with him just as he was passing a narrow alleyway that ran along the near side of the hotel.

  Before he saw me coming, I ran alongside him and gave him a hard shove sideways into the alley and behind the building. He lost his balance and let out an exclamation, while he struggled to get back his footing. I jumped behind the edge of the wall after him, and grabbed him before he could yell.

  “What are you doing here?” I exclaimed as loudly as I dared without attracting attention.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” he retorted. “And get your hands off me!” I hardly realized that I had hold of his coat and had pushed him up against the building.

  I relaxed and took a step back.

  “I am here because Mr. Kemble sent me,” I said.

  “As am I.”

  “He sent you?”

  “How can I put this delicately, Corrie?” he said, finally cracking a meaningful grin. “He wasn’t sure a girl of your tender years could—shall we say—handle such an important assignment. So he sent me along to make sure you didn’t foul it up.”

  “Foul it up?” I cried, getting angry. “You’re the one who’s going to foul it up. I’ve practically got Gregory’s whole story!”

  “Ah, but I know that he’s in room fourteen, and I know where those other two men are staying, and I know their whole scheme.”

  “How long have you been tracking him?” I asked.

  “Couple weeks.”

  “Kemble told me he had someone on this but that it dried up and they lost Gregory’s trail.”

  “Well, that was unfortunate. He eluded me for a while, but then Kemble told me to follow you up here and see what you turned up, and to move back in if I could. Experience, you know,” he said with a superior smile. “He felt even if you did track down Gregory, I’d be better able to get what we need in the end.”

  “Why, that conniving rascal!” I said. “He gave me all that runaround about me being the perfect one for the story and about the election and truth all hanging in the balance, and all the time he was just using me! And you’re trying to tell me that I was just a decoy so that you could get the story in the end?”

  “The truth is sometimes painful, Corrie,” said Robin, still smiling with that look of superiority.

  I turned away and strode off a few steps deeper into the alley. I felt like crying and screaming all at once!

  But if I was going to prove that I could compete with men like Mr. Kemble and Mister Robin T. O’Flaridy, I couldn’t do either. I couldn’t give in to all the female emotionalism flooding through me right then. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t go over and punch Robin in the nose. Somehow I had to see this thing through, and prove that I was made of stronger stuff than either of them might think.

  I took a deep breath, then turned back around.

  “So it has been you following Derrick recently,” I said calmly. “And you were on our trail down to Big Oak Flat yesterday.”

  “And you’ve got to admit I did a pretty good job too,” said Robin. “Neither of you saw me, did you?”

  I shook my head. “But Derrick knew somebody was back there.”

  “Nah, he knew nothing. He was guessing.”

  “Don’t be too cocky, Robin,” I said. “If you’re not careful you could put your foot right in the middle of it and get us both killed.”

  “What could go wrong?”

  “Plenty. You just watch your step. We’re too close. I don’t even want to think what those two men might do if they catch us or if they find out we know each other.”

  “They’ll never find out a thing!”

  “Just watch your step. Both of our names have been in print recently. It wouldn’t take much and we’d be in way over our heads.”

  “I tell you, you worry too much, Hollister.”

  “And maybe it’ll be my worrying that’ll get you through this,” I replied. “Where you staying?”

  “Right here,” he said, indicating the hotel.

  “Well, I’m in the boardinghouse down the street. Which is where I’m going now—I’ve got to do some thinking. You stay out of trouble!”

  In reply, he only flashed another smile of unconcerned indifference.

  As I left the alley and walked off alone down the street, it hardly occurred to me how much everything had changed. I wasn’t afraid of Robin anymore, as I had been
in San Francisco. In fact, I’d acted as if I were the older and more experienced one of the team.

  And for better or worse, I suppose that’s what we were now, at least for a couple more days—a team. Something inside me told me it was up to me if we were going to get out of this in one piece. Robin was too cocky for his own good.

  Chapter 47

  Discovery and Betrayal

  I didn’t see either Robin O’Flaridy or Derrick Gregory for the rest of the afternoon. I spent three hours finishing writing down what I’d learned.

  I didn’t really know what to do next. But I had to get my hands on Derrick’s batch of papers before those other two men headed east with them. If I waited too long to figure out some plan, Robin might louse it up and get us both into a heap of trouble.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, I went outside. I had to do something. I’d been praying and thinking all afternoon, but without any ideas coming to me.

  I wandered up the street toward Robin’s hotel. I went inside and walked up to the counter.

  “Do you know if Rob Flaridy’s in?” I asked the man called Fence.

  “Left an hour or two back, Miss.”

  “Alone?”

  “Couple of men with him. They’d been lookin’ fer him earlier.”

  “Friends of his?” I said.

  “Didn’t look too friendly to me,” said Fence. “Looked to me they was takin’ Flaridy against his will. But I don’t ask no questions. You get too curious in this town, Miss, an’ it’s a good way t’ git yerself a plot o’ ground out in the cemetery.”

  I went back out into the street and walked back in the direction of the Lucky Sluice.

  I approached the saloon on the wood walkway, but the instant I reached it and started to push one of the swinging doors open, I froze. Over the top of it I saw Robin seated at a table, his hands tied behind his back, with the three other men standing facing him, asking questions and talking among themselves. It was obvious in a second they’d discovered he was trying to foil their scheme. But how much they knew, I couldn’t tell.

  I backed up quickly so they wouldn’t see me in the doorway, leaned against the wall, and strained my ears to hear through the door just to my right.

  They were speaking softly to avoid attracting attention, but because they were so close to the door I could hear them clearly. It was still early. The saloon was nearly empty, and the piano player hadn’t started.

  “I say we take him out and put a slug through his head right now,” said the man with the beard.

  “No, no, Jake—too messy,” said the other friend of Derrick’s. “There are certain rules to be observed, even in our business. No, we’ll wait till we’re set to leave town, then there’ll be no tracing us.”

  “I don’t like it,” I heard Derrick mutter. “I knew there was somebody trailing me!” He swore a couple of times, giving Robin a cuff on the side of the head. “But I never thought they’d send someone the likes of you after me!”

  “Who’s in it with ya, kid?” asked the bearded man, grabbing Robin’s shirt around his neck and giving it a yank. “Tell us, an’ maybe we’ll go easy on ya!”

  “Please . . . please! I don’t know anything about what you’re doing. They just told me to follow you, that’s all, but I didn’t find out anything. Please . . . let me go . . . I’ll never say a word to anybody.”

  While he was whining, the nicely dressed man was apparently rummaging through his clothes.

  “Well, look at this!” he said. “We shoulda searched him when we first found him snooping around your room, Gregory. It would have saved us the trouble of trying to beat the information out of him. His name’s not Flaridy at all, but O’Flaridy—Robin O’Flaridy . . . and he works for the Alta.”

  “I should have known!” said Derrick. “Kemble’s rag. They sent him here to kibosh the story! They’ve been backing Fremont from the beginning!”

  “Look,” pleaded Robin in a forlorn tone, “you caught me red-handed, and you know I’ve got nothing that can hurt you. Let me go, and you go your way and do whatever you want about the election, and I’ll never say a word. You can trust me to—”

  “Shut up, ya whimpering brat!” shouted the bearded man. I heard the back of his hand slap across Robin’s face, and he cried out in pain.

  “Wait a minute!” said the man in the suit, snapping his fingers as if he was thinking. “Wait . . . it’s coming to me . . . Derrick, that girl you were so friendly with—the one you said brought you good luck.”

  “Yeah, what about her?”

  “What’d you say her name was?”

  “Hollister.”

  “Her first name, you idiot!”

  “Cornelia . . . Cornelia Hollister. But what has she—”

  “You are a bigger fool than I thought!” the man said spitefully. “I knew there was something familiar about her name the minute you said it! Blast, why didn’t I think harder—don’t you know who she is?”

  “Yeah, she’s just some miner’s kid from around here who wants to be a writer.”

  “And you thought you’d give her a few pointers, eh?”

  “I didn’t see any harm in—”

  “You lunkhead, she is a writer. And she doesn’t need any pointers from you! She writes for the Alta, too! The name Corrie Hollister mean anything to you?”

  Derrick shrugged.

  “You dolt! She wrote a big pro-Fremont piece just a couple of weeks back. She’s a friend of Fremont’s wife! She’s in it with this snivelling little creature here!”

  “That’s impossible—she’s just a kid!” cried Derrick in disbelief.

  “Impossible, huh? I saw that look in her eyes. She was watching and listening to a lot more than you thought.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “The senator will love to hear this. What did you tell her, Gregory?”

  I could hear Derrick sitting down and letting out a bitter sigh. “She was with me all day yesterday. I told her everything. She was there for the Savage interview.”

  “Well, you know what you got to do, Gregory,” said the bearded man viciously. “The senator don’t like mistakes like this. You make a mess, then you clean it up—that’s what he always says.”

  “Yeah . . . yeah, I know,” sighed Derrick. “I kinda liked the kid too, and she did seem to bring me luck at cards.”

  “Yeah, she brought you luck all right. Bad luck! She’s got to be eliminated, along with this trash here!” snarled the man in the suit. “Jake’ll do the boy, but you’ve got to pull the trigger on the Hollister girl, Gregory! Otherwise the senator won’t know if he can trust you in the future.”

  “I know,” sighed Derrick. “You don’t have to tell me. I know the senator as well as you do. If we let these two survive, he’d be after me next.”

  “Where’s the girl?” the suited man asked Robin.

  I’ll have to say this much for him, he didn’t give me away immediately.

  The next sound I heard was a blow to the side of the head. I was terrified! My first thought was to flee. But something held me back. I had to find out all I could. I looked around the corner, just in time to see Robin crashing to the floor. The terrible-looking man grabbed roughly at him and raised his fist to smack him again. “The man asked you a question!” he yelled. “Where is she?”

  “You’ll . . . you’ll let me go if I tell you?” whimpered Robin. His mouth and forehead were bleeding. “I don’t know anything . . . it’s her you want, not me.”

  “Yeah, okay—you win, kid,” said the suit-man. “Take it easy, Jake—let him loose.” They set him back down in the chair.

  “Okay, you got a deal, O’Flaridy. You tell us where she is, and we’ll let you go.”

  “She’s . . . she’s staying at a boardinghouse—down the side street from my hotel.”

  I leaned back against the wall in disbelief. He had betrayed me!

  But I didn’t have time to stop to consider the implications. Immediately I heard the sounds of ch
airs being pushed aside and boots on the wood floor walking my way.

  I turned and ran, darting into the alleyway, running alongside the edge of the saloon. I hurried into the darkened passage, and ducked quickly down behind some big oak beer kegs sitting by the back door. A few seconds later I heard the three men pass by along the sidewalk, dragging Robin along with them.

  “We’ll take O’Flaridy out back of the livery and tie and gag him,” the suited man was saying. “You finish what you got to do, Gregory, and later you go down to that boardinghouse and sweet-talk that Hollister kid into coming out for a walk with you. We’ll grab her and stash her with the kid.”

  “Hey, you promised to let me go!” cried Robin. “I told you what you wanted to know.”

  I couldn’t hear what they said back to him, because by now they were too far down the street. But the man with the beard let out a huge laugh that sounded full of glee and evil intent at the same time.

  I waited a few minutes after they had passed, inched out to the edge of the alley, looked both ways to be sure it was clear, then I darted across the street and made my way back to Mrs. Nason’s through the back streets and alleys and over a few fences. I knew it was dangerous to go back there after what had been said. But I had to risk it.

  Chapter 48

  A Risky Plan

  I gathered my things quickly and stuffed them into my bag.

  I’d already paid for the night’s lodging, but I thought it best to slip out and not tell anyone at the house. The less they knew, the less chance Derrick would have of finding me.

  Dusk was just settling as I sneaked out my window and down the back stairs outside the house. I could still hear workmen’s voices inside the Nasons’ barn, so I crept out behind it, sat down in the grass and waited. It gave me time to collect myself, catch my breath, and rest. I was hungry, but food would have to wait! I had to spend my time thinking of a plan, not my stomach.