Although Red Feather made no noise at all, Paul could see the Comanche’s face twist into a stern expression as he extended an arm toward him that became rigid as a spear. Paul obeyed the silent command and froze where he was. After having circled around to another side of the shacks, he couldn’t see what Red Feather was seeing, but could hear a change in the nearby guard’s breathing.
Slowly, Red Feather bent his knees to bring his entire body even closer to the ground. The arm he’d stretched toward Paul was now brought in to his belt so his hand could find one of the knives kept there.
The guard grumbled something about the cold, stomped his feet, and cleared his throat.
Red Feather had become motionless, standing at the edge of the guard’s field of vision. The only thing that kept the unknowing gunman alive was his apparent reluctance to look in the Comanche’s direction.
Paul heard a long sigh, followed by what he guessed was the sound of the guard’s hands slapping against his forearms or chest. There was a crunch of a set of shoulders resting against the side of one of the shacks, followed by a somewhat contented grunt. Red Feather was still crouching low in preparation to end the tired guard’s life. Without taking his eyes from his prey, the Comanche made a subtle movement with his hand that was akin to him shooing Paul away. Even after getting the signal, Paul was reluctant to move. His first couple of steps were agonizingly slow and when he got no reaction from either the guard or Red Feather, he took his next few at a quicker pace.
Each one of Paul’s nerves had risen to the surface of his skin. He could feel every imperfection of the ground beneath his boots and the touch of every bit of cold dust blown across his cheeks. When he reached the shack he’d set his sights upon, Paul swore he’d already been spotted by some other guard that he and Red Feather had missed. When he grabbed the handle of the back door, he would have bet anything that it was going to be locked. And when he pulled the door open, he found himself less than two yards away from a surprised young man wearing a butcher’s smock and a bandanna wrapped around his nose and mouth.
Without taking time to appreciate all the good luck that had brought him this far, Paul rushed into the cabin. He flung the door shut behind him with one hand while drawing the Schofield with the other. When he spoke, it was as though an animal had crawled into his skull and taken over his mouth. “Make one move I don’t like,” he snarled, “and I’ll burn you down.”
The man in the smock was taller than Paul, but lanky. Even with a good portion of his face covered, it was obvious he was much younger as well. His eyes were wide as saucers and his hands shook as he held them in front of his body without knowing what to do with them from there.
Since the young man looked to be on the verge of panic, Paul asked, “What’s your name?”
“B . . . Braden.”
“Step away from that table, Braden.”
The young man did as he was told, granting Paul a few moments to get a look at the interior of the shack. A single aisle went from the back door to the front door, covering a space that was roughly the size of a modest bedroom. Crates were stacked along one wall, many of which were soaked through with a dark fluid. Several narrow tables were lined up on the other side of the aisle, half of which were occupied by racks of glass vials and a few small burners. In the corner closest to where Paul was standing, a stove gave a small amount of heat and spewed most of the smoke it created out through a flimsy series of tin cylinders connected to a hole in the roof.
“What are you doing here, Braden?” Paul asked.
“Please . . . don’t shoot.”
“I won’t just as long as you do what you’re told. First, tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Just working. I’m here late because I’m new on the job.”
“You work for Territorial Mining?”
“That’s right,” Braden replied.
“And what’s going on in here?” Paul asked. “What is all this equipment?”
“This is where ore is tested to see how pure it is, what it is, even how much more of it there might be.”
“How can you tell all of that with a few pans and vials?”
Braden became nervous as he shook his head. “I’m still new to this. Mr. Quincy tells me what to do and I do it. When we find gold, I make sure it’s the real thing. There are different tests to do for silver and zinc and such. When it comes to the other tests, I just do what Quincy tells me to do.”
“And what’s the stench I smell?”
“There are some things cooking on the stove over there. Mr. Quincy makes some of his own compounds for tests and to mix up his own products.”
“What products?”
Braden shrugged. “He’s made soap for the men, solutions for the machines, even something to add to the water used for strip mining.”
“And what happens to what’s left over?” Paul asked as his grip tightened around the Schofield. “Waste and whatnot?”
“It—it’s tossed out. Dumped, I guess.”
“You . . . guess?” Paul snarled. He glared at the younger man with all of the anger that had been building inside him since he’d first seen his daughter lying in her sickbed. “You’re gonna have to do a lot better than that.”
As Braden sputtered to try to figure out what to say, a set of knuckles cracked roughly against the shack’s front door. Both men stood still and, as surely as he could read the intentions of his children before they acted up, Paul knew something was racing through young Braden’s mind. Before those troublesome thoughts could get very far, Paul held the Schofield up to the younger man’s eye level and thumbed back the hammer. “Don’t be stupid,” he whispered, “and you won’t get hurt.”
Braden nodded fiercely.
Although he only moved with a fraction of the grace he’d picked up from Red Feather, Paul managed to get close to the front door and even closer to Braden without making more than a few subtle squeaks in the floorboards. “See who’s out there,” Paul said quietly. “And then send him away.”
Braden approached the door, steeled himself, and then cautiously opened it. Before the door could swing too far inward, Paul stopped it with the edge of his boot.
“How much longer you got in there?” asked the man who’d knocked on the door.
“I’m almost done,” Braden replied.
“When you’re finished, bring some of Quincy’s powder over to the tents on the far west side. Some more men have taken ill and they need to be well enough to work tomorrow.”
“I’ll be over as fast as I can. If not,” Braden quickly added, “come on back and remind me.”
“Will do.”
Paul knew what signal the young man was trying to send, and judging by the lack of interest in the voice of the man outside, it wasn’t clearly received. Either way, Paul didn’t intend to be around if the man outside did come back after all. He couldn’t see much through the crack between the door and the frame, but Paul could hear the crunch of boots against cold ground as the man outside turned and walked away. Braden stood at the open door for a few seconds too long, so Paul gave him a gentle nudge with the barrel of the Schofield. His message was received much better than Braden’s, and the door was quickly shut.
“What was he talking about?” Paul asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You want to drag out this conversation or would you rather I leave as soon as possible? Tell me what that man was talking about just now.”
“You mean about the workers who got sick?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s . . . just what he said,” Braden explained. “Happens all the time.”
“What’s making them sick?”
Stepping away from the door thanks to a shove from Paul, Braden eyed the pistol in his hand. He might have been contemplating making a grab for it, but Paul kept the firearm back just f
ar enough to make it a difficult proposition at best. When his heel bumped against the crates stacked along one wall of the shack, Braden spoke as if his words were spilling out of him.
“Workers get sick all the time,” he said. “Sometimes from the cold. Sometimes from exposure.”
“What else?”
“Sometimes they just get too many chemicals in their water.”
Paul smiled. “Chemicals like the ones used in strip mining?”
“Or any of the others that are used around here,” Braden said while sweeping an arm to encompass the entire setup from the tables to the little stove. “Territorial Mining prides itself on using every advantage they can to be a better operation than anyone else. We dump the chemicals that are left over and the men carry it away in barrels. Every now and then the workers get some on their hands or skin and clean off in one of the troughs or washbasins around here. Some other fella might come along and drink that water or get it in his mouth or who knows what else.”
“When they get sick, what are the symptoms?”
Although Braden seemed grateful for not being shoved or threatened, he was mighty confused about this line of questioning. He still did his best to answer while edging his way closer to one stack of boxes. “They vomit. They get dizzy. They fall over.”
“What about a fever?” Paul asked. “Do they get a fever?”
“Sure they do. They get a fever if they’re forced to work in the mines or out in the elements for too long. Everybody knows that.”
“I’m talking about the men who get those chemicals in them. Do they get a fever as well?”
“Yeah. Why are you so concerned about all this? Are you sick?”
“What if I was? Would I need some of that powder the man who knocked on the door a moment ago was talking about?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
Braden was nearly overcome by a series of confused blinks. “Th . . . there’s some in that top crate over there.”
And then Paul did something he immediately regretted. He turned to look at the crates, giving Braden an opening to lunge at him.
Chapter 32
Paul’s first instinct was to twist his body away from the incoming attacker to prevent Braden from getting the Schofield away from him. If there was more room in that shack, he might have been able to dodge the younger man completely. Braden might have had youth on his side, but he was frightened and not much of a fighter. Even so, the momentum of his body colliding into Paul’s was enough to take Paul off balance and send him staggering into the narrow table behind him.
Whatever Braden had been working on before Paul came along was now splattered on the wall and floor amid the clatter of pans and tin cups. Glass vials on the table next to that one rattled together, but before they could be sent to the floor, Paul shoved Braden backward into a stack of crates. Those boxes splintered on impact, exposing a load of dirty rocks that had yet to be cleaned and tested. Braden reached out to grab one of the rocks and swing it at Paul’s head. Before the blow could land, Paul snapped his head forward to thump it into the other man’s face.
Reeling from the head butt, Braden closed his eyes as pain spiked through his face and blood dripped from a freshly opened cut above one eye. Even though he was feeling almost as much pain from the knock as the younger man, Paul steeled his expression and hoped he wasn’t bleeding even more than his opponent.
“Stand still,” Paul said.
Those words were intended to calm Braden down but had the complete opposite effect. Braden tried to pull away from Paul while reaching with both hands toward a small gap between two stacks of boxes. Paul shoved the younger man against the boxes one more time and then reached past him to grab the ax that had been hidden there.
“Is this what you wanted?” Paul asked in the same tone of voice he’d used when scolding his children. He could only wish someday that tone would elicit the same response in David or Abigail as it did in the man standing before him now.
Braden’s face turned whiter than the caps of the Rockies outside and his entire body shook. “No! Please!”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Y-yes, sir,” Braden said as he slid down to one knee. “Please . . . just don’t kill me.”
Paul had only been concerned with ending the fight before it got out of hand without bringing any guards in from the rest of the camp. Now he realized that he was looming over Braden with a pistol in one hand and an ax in the other. He no longer wondered why the younger man seemed ready to either soil himself or grovel on the floor like a whipped dog.
Paul took a step back and holstered the Schofield. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said.
Although the words were sinking in a bit, Braden’s eyes were still drawn to the ax.
Easing the ax down, Paul set it on the table behind him. “There,” he said. “Better?”
Reluctantly Braden nodded.
Seeing a hint of returning bravery in the young man’s eyes, Paul erased it by placing his hand on the Schofield’s grip. “I didn’t come in here to harm anyone, but I will if you force me to. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Now tell me about this powder that’s used to help cure the sick men.”
“It’s a medicine mixed up by Mr. Quincy,” Braden explained. “He stirs it into some sort of tea or something that’s boiled in water and he gives it to men suffering from drinking or breathing in too many of the chemicals around here. Depending on what the men drank or breathed in, different amounts of the powder are used. It doesn’t do anything for the men suffering from the elements, though.”
“Can you tell me how to mix it up?” Paul asked.
“I suppose, but it depends on the symptoms. That man that was knocking on the door came to me because I need to get a look at the sick men to mix up a batch of the medicine. Even then, I may have to wake Mr. Quincy so he can get it right. Otherwise it’ll just make them sicker.”
“What about for someone who’s had those symptoms you already told me about? The dizziness, fever, and all of that. What would you do for them?”
“I’d ask Mr. Quincy about it,” Braden replied.
“Is he a doctor?”
“I think so. He sure knows a lot about those chemicals and such.”
Paul could feel his time for talking without being interrupted again was growing short. He was concerned about that, but there were a couple of things that concerned him a great deal more. “What would you do in that situation if this Quincy fellow wasn’t around?”
“Do you know someone who’s sick? I can go talk to him about it if you like. I could say it’s on behalf of one of the men.”
“Just tell me,” Paul said without putting enough of an edge to his tone to force the younger man back into his shell. “You’ve obviously treated these men on your own more than once. What would you do in that situation?”
“I’d just mix up an extra-large dose of the remedy and hope for the best. If it’s not spit up right away or if there aren’t any convulsions, they should be on the right track.”
“All right. Now I want you to get me some of that powder and I won’t tolerate any more tricks. You understand?”
“Yes. How much do you need?”
Just to be on the safe side, Paul told him, “Enough for four men. You’ll also tell me exactly how to prepare it.”
“I need to go over to that crate at the front of the row. Okay?”
“That’s fine,” Paul said without taking his eyes off Braden.
The young man cautiously approached the crate he’d pointed to and opened it. Paul was just able to get a look inside as soon as the top came off. All he saw were burlap sacks the size of what were used to hold portions of sugar to be sold in stores like his back in Keystone Pass. Braden took one of the pouches and said, “There’s enough in here to make a goo
d-sized portion for half this camp.”
“I’ll take that and another sack.”
“Fine.” Braden removed the second sack and set both on the table. He then proceeded to tell Paul how to prepare the solution.
“I thought you said Quincy added something else as well,” Paul reminded him.
“Not every time,” Braden said. “Just in the worst cases.”
“What does he add?”
“Some kind of syrup or something. It’s a dark, thick liquid he keeps in small vials in his tent. You want me to go and get some?”
Paul did want Braden to get whatever might be needed to help his children. If he let the young man go, however, Paul would most likely call down the rest of the camp to attack him and Red Feather as well. After weighing his options, he said, “Just tell me where Quincy’s tent is.”
“I can show you.”
“You’ll tell me,” Paul said with enough ferocity to make Braden worry again.
“Please, mister. I don’t know who you are and won’t tell anyone you were here. Just take that medicine . . . take it all if you like . . . and I swear I won’t lift a finger to stop you.”
Paul tucked one small sack of powder into his jacket pocket and brought the other to his nose. He didn’t know exactly what the bitter scent was, but he knew it wasn’t sugar, flour, or anything else that was very common. “Sit down in between those stacks of crates,” he said while pocketing the second sack and waving the Schofield toward a narrow gap between the supplies piled against one wall.
Panic crept in around the edges of Braden’s face. After all the time he’d spent raising his son, Paul recognized it well enough.
The Dangerous Land Page 21
