by Tim Champlin
But Boyd sat down, cross-legged on the floor, even neglecting to retrieve his flask. “I don’t think you’re going to get the reward for capturing those two convicts,” he said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because your posse has them in shackles, and they’re heading for Carson City right now.”
“What?” The enormity of this statement cut through the haze that was beginning to form over Buck’s caution. “How d’you know that?” Anger flared within him. This Boyd seemed entirely too sure of himself.
“Earlier today I ran into them several miles out that way.” He jerked his head toward the west. “I was here in Lodestar, and last night I slipped out and took the horses of my two ex-partners and their woman hostage so they couldn’t trail me. Strung their mounts together behind my pack mule and started for Virginia City. After a couple miles, I realized I didn’t have enough water to see me and the animals all the way to Virginia City.” He leaned his back against the wall and straightened his legs in front of him. “Heard some gunfire off in the distance. Yanked my field glasses and spotted Stepenaw and Savage with one horse, trying to fend off three riders coming up on them. It was no contest. Knew it had to be a posse who captured them—yours? I rode up and gave the three horses to the posse so they’d have enough animals to carry their two prisoners back to Carson. Stepenaw and Savage accused me of having some stolen gold, but I denied any knowledge of it, and then showed my letter of pardon from the governor.”
Buck silently struggled to absorb this. His reward gone—just like that—fallen into the hands of his stupid posse. What dumb luck!
“Then I headed back here with my mules to stock up on water before making another try for Virginia City,” Boyd added.
Buck didn’t know what to think. Here was a completely new turn of events. Maybe he could partner up with this man until they could both return to civilization. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Boyd said, “You lost the reward you were after.” It was not an accusation—only a statement of fact.
“Yeah.”
Boyd took a deep breath. “I know you’re a lawman and all…”
“Retired lawman,” Buck interrupted him.
“But, if you happen to be interested, I might have an idea that could benefit both of us.”
“What’s that?”
“I served four years in the state pen, so I figure I paid my debt to society. Four years of my life at hard labor ought to be worth something.”
“What’re you getting at?” Buck paused to glance across the street toward the church bell tower, but the shooter was not to be seen.
“I had no intention of touching any of that stolen gold from the robbery, but the way I look at it, I’m due some of it as pay for the time I served.”
Buck suddenly became all ears. “You know where it is?”
“Might, and I might not. But I first need your word you won’t double-cross me.”
“My word might not be worth a chaw o’ tobbaco.”
“Nevertheless, I have to trust you. You might say both of us are in a bind right now.”
Buck considered this. “You offering to split with me?”
“Might do, if I have your word.”
Partnering up with a criminal to share in stolen gold was hardly the way Buck Rankin had expected to end his career. But living on stolen money was better than surviving on handouts. He cringed at the vision of himself cadging drinks and begging on the street, until someone found his stiff carcass in an alleyway some icy morning. He would do whatever it took to avoid such a fate. After all, a man had to play the cards he was dealt, and this Boyd was dealing, when all other plans and schemes had failed. “Okay, you got my solemn word I won’t try to arrest you. I accept your offer to share. But tell me this… why you offering this to me? I have no reason to keep you, no authority to hold you prisoner, now that you been pardoned. Once you leave here you can take off and get the gold without sharing with anyone.”
“I didn’t want to give you one of my animals and be forced to accompany you back to Virginia City to get it back.”
“That’s not the reason.”
Boyd sighed. “You’re right. The fact is, I don’t know where the gold is.”
“So this is some pie-in-the-sky tale—one of those lost mine fables, where the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is just beyond your reach.” He snorted, disgusted he’d fallen for something that was obviously too good to be true, although he did remember newspaper accounts at the time of the trial mentioning the unrecovered ingots.
If Boyd took any offense at this outburst, he gave no indication of it. “Here’s how it came about,” he said. “When I came back here to Nightwind Canyon, where we’d stashed the gold a few years ago, it was gone—the cave was clean as a whistle, like there’d never been any gold in it at all. Then my two former partners showed up and accused me of hiding it from them. We got into it and… well, you don’t care about all that.” He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “The rock bottom truth of the matter is, I don’t have any idea where that gold got to. But now those two ex-partners of mine are on their way back to jail and out of the way.” He stood up and stretched. “I came back to Lodestar because I’m convinced the ingots are still here. Your posse found Stepenaw and Weasel carrying part of a gold ingot they claimed to have found near a cave where they’d held me prisoner. They accused me of dropping it there when I escaped with the rest of the stash.”
He paused, and Rankin tried to absorb all this quickly and decide if the man was telling the truth.
“And half of anything we find is yours if you’ll help me shake this old ghost town upside down until that gold falls out. If we don’t find it, then neither one of us is any worse off than we are now.”
Buck prided himself on being able to read men. He’d been fooled a time or two over the years by professional confidence men. Even though Denson Boyd seemed guileless, that didn’t mean he was. Buck knew the facts of the robbery to be true, but Boyd might be lying about everything else. Buck decided he had little to lose; he might as well take a chance. He tipped up the flask for another long swig as he made up his mind. Then he limped across to the man on the floor and thrust out his hand. “Done!” He handed Boyd’s Colt back to him. “Before we can start, we gotta figure out a way to get rid of those three across the street.”
TWENTY
The murmur of voices caused Charvein to glance down from his perch behind the balustrade that surrounded the bell tower. Lucy and Sandoval were conversing near the foot of the ladder. Charvein hadn’t heard him return. Sandoval, in his moccasins, moved with a feline fluidity that was virtually silent.
Charvein removed his hat and inched his eyes just above the edge of the bulwark. There was no sign of the two men across the street. He hoped the pair had escaped unseen out the back door of the empty building where they hid. He didn’t care about killing either one of them; he just wanted them gone. He’d fired to barely miss and put them on the defensive. Why the hell had Denson Boyd come back to Lodestar? And where were the three horses he’d stolen when he’d disappeared that night into the blowing dust?
Charvein crawfished to the trapdoor and slid his legs through the hole onto the top step of the homemade ladder. It felt good to stretch as he climbed down.
“What do you have for us?” he asked as Sandoval handed him a cloth sack.
“Tortillas and beans,” he said, then gestured toward two bulbous, wicker-encased bottles on the floor. “Water and wine.”
Charvein’s stomach growled at the aroma of the food, and he grinned.
“All the comforts of home. We can outlast a siege.” Even as he said it, he was hoping for a quick end to this standoff.
“Sí.” Sandoval nodded solemnly. “We have provisions, and they do not.”
Lucy hefted the big six-gun Sandoval had brought for her. “Do you have extra cartridges for this?” she asked as she flipped open the loading gate, half-cocked the hammer, and turned the cylinder to
be sure it was loaded. Charvein was relieved at her familiar ease with firearms; her father had taught her well.
“Si.” He produced a box of .45 cartridges from one of the inside pockets of his poncho. “I do not often need these when I am here alone,” he said. “But Lodestar has had much company lately.”
“We better keep watch on that building across the way,” Charvein said to Sandoval. “Take a peek around the door, but crawl up and keep your head on the floor. That way, if either of them is sighted in on the doorway, waiting to blow somebody’s head off as soon as it appears, he won’t see you soon enough.”
“Si.” Sandoval turned, but Lucy grabbed his arm. “Let me do it.”
Sandoval looked appealingly to Charvein, who nodded. “It’s okay.” He was secretly proud that she was finally becoming part of their team and wanted to share in the danger and responsibility. Maybe a real experience with fighting and peril would knock some of that medieval romantic nonsense out of her head.
Lucy dropped to her hands and knees and, holding the pistol, crawled to the tall open doorway, where she lay flat and eased her head around the edge. Five seconds later she pulled back and stood up. “No sign of them. The mules are gone, too—maybe gone around the bend at the end of the street.”
Charvein thought for a moment. “It’s about two o’clock,” he estimated. “What do you say we give them till dark to make a move. I’m guessing they’ll try to get us, or try to escape, by then. They won’t want to just sit over there all night in the dark, without food or water, wondering if we’re trying to sneak up on them.”
“And if darkness comes and they have done nothing—what then?” Sandoval asked.
Charvein bit his lip thoughtfully, not having a ready answer. “Let’s wait and see,” he said. “I’ll go back up to the bell tower and keep watch for a couple hours. Wrap a tortilla around some beans and give me a canteen, and I’ll be fine.”
“I can watch from up there, since I have a rifle,” Sandoval said, hefting the Henry.
“No offense, but I’m a better shot with a pistol than you are with a rifle,” Charvein replied, not mentioning his latest feat two nights before when he’d taken the head clean off a snake. “You two keep watch from down here.” He’d be cautious organizing their defense, since he wasn’t sure if Sandoval’s rage had cooled. If the men across the street came out, Charvein didn’t want Sandoval firing down on them like shooting fish in a tub, out of control with hate, possibly killing two men unnecessarily. Of course, Sandoval could do the same from down here, but it was just as likely they’d shoot him first.
“If they come out, shall we shoot?” Lucy asked.
“Yes, but only if they come out shooting. If they try to rush the church, shoot to kill,” Charvein said. “Otherwise, if they’re running away, let them go.”
“No, señor,” Sandoval said, shaking his head. “Is not a good idea. If they run away, they will hide somewhere else in town. It is like letting two rattlers loose in a dark room. We will not see them or know where they will strike.”
“If we leave them alone, they’ll find Boyd’s mules and leave,” Lucy said.
“No. Buck Rankin wants me. He would not go if we gave him the animals and mucho food and water.” He squatted on the floor and began laying out the small pot of beans and the tortillas.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Charvein said, resting a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He was unsure of the depth of hate between Rankin and Sandoval. He marveled that hate and love could spur human effort far beyond anything logical. And greed wasn’t far behind. “If I’m any judge, Boyd came back to Lodestar because he’s convinced the gold is still here someplace.”
“So neither of them really wants to escape from Lodestar, or from us,” Lucy said, thoughtfully.
“That’s what we have to assume, if we don’t want to be caught off guard,” Charvein said, accepting a tortilla from Sandoval. He shouldered a canteen and started up the ladder.
Ensconced behind the dried, splintery wood that enclosed the lower part of the bell tower, Charvein settled in to enjoy his meal. The old adage “Hunger makes the best sauce” popped into his mind as he devoured the simple beans and flat bread. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was; he could have easily eaten three of them. Finished and still hungry, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and gulped a few swallows of the warm, metallic-tasting canteen water. A feast fit for a king.
He leaned forward and put his eye to a gap in the warped wood. No sense exposing any part of himself to watch the building across the street. The forlorn structure appeared deserted. Charvein knew better. Only if he wanted to shoot would he have to rise above the rim of the waist-high barricade.
The church was built from slabs of native stone, but the bell tower was constructed of wood to avoid excessive weight. The cream-colored paint had long since been blistered and scoured off by the relentless sun and blowing sand. Traces of the original color survived only in protected cracks. Charvein looked up at the tarnished brass bell, its flared bottom three feet above his head. The bell was suspended from a thick oak beam supported on either end by the upright wooden frame of the tower. He idly speculated how long it would take before the weathered supports surrendered to the ravages of time and the elements. He hoped the heavy bell would stay in place for at least a few more hours. It had withstood years of winds that funneled into town through Nightwind Canyon and gusted off the vast playa. The wood had shrunk and cracked and weathered to a uniform gray, but still it stood, defiant, holding the weighty bell. Had it not been for the wind blowing the twin clappers against the bell, causing a mellow tolling, Charvein would never have been guided to Lodestar. He’d heard that bell in the night and staggered toward its sound, blinded and choking. Fate could turn on the smallest things.
He’d never seen a bell with twin clappers. These were identical, suspended six inches apart. He saw the marks of a hammer that had flattened the end of each into a rough circular shape. He guessed a bell rope had once been attached and dropped down the ladder so a sexton below could ring the Angelus or announce Mass to Lodestar. Yet, somehow, Lodestar didn’t strike him as having been a particularly religious place.
In spite of the danger, Charvein couldn’t keep up the intense vigil for long. The food, wine, and the silence made his tired body sag, and his thoughts began wandering to other things. What of his future when all this was over? He had few prospects—to be truthful, no prospects. The idea of continuing in some kind of law enforcement was distasteful. He’d thought he was done with that line of work when he’d resigned from being a railroad detective. But then he was caught up in tracking Boyd, in what he’d thought would be a routine job. Little did he know. Maybe he’d get his pay as a temporary deputy from the county and also the man whose gold he was trying to find. And there might even be a reward from Lucy’s relatives—provided he could return her, unharmed, to Carson City. He’d look for some kind of work that would tax his brain rather than his muscle and his guile. Leaving Virginia City seemed a good idea, since he had no interest in mining or storekeeping. Maybe move somewhere, like California, that had a milder climate. Make a fresh start.
A rifle shot shattered the stillness, and a bullet whanged off the brass bell overhead. The bell reverberated like a tuning fork. Heart pounding, Charvein flattened himself against the inside of the wooden bulwark. Colt in hand, he looked through the crack and saw smoke drifting from one of the broken windows. He waited. Maybe they were trying to scare him out so he’d expose himself to a clear shot.
“You all right?” Sandoval called.
“Yeah.” He crawled to the trapdoor at the head of the ladder. “Keep an eye on that window. If they start shooting again, return fire,” he said softly. Then he eased back to the base of the low barricade. He thought the wood was thick enough to stop a bullet.
Less than a minute later, two weapons opened up from across the street, the shots coming so fast they blended into a single roar that lasted several seconds. The bell
clanged madly as the lead slugs ricocheted off the brass. A sliver of wood or metal stung Charvein’s cheek. All he could do was crouch, arms over his head, and wait it out. The fusillade halted suddenly, but his ears continued to ring. Penetrating his partial deafness were the closer sounds of shots from below as Sandoval and Lucy returned fire.
“Marc! Marc! Are you hit?” Lucy’s voice quavered.
He crawled over to the opening. “No, just a scratch on the cheek. What about you?”
“They were shooting at the tower only,” Sandoval said, looking up from the bottom of the ladder.
“Trying to get me with a ricochet,” Charvein agreed. “Be sure to stay behind the wall down there.”
“Better come down,” Sandoval said.
“In a minute.” Gripping his Colt, Charvein crawled back into position. Whatever ambivalent feelings he’d had about Boyd and Rankin were long gone. They had no compunction about killing. He’d have to defend himself and his friends below by whatever means available.
Another shot exploded, and a bullet whanged off one of the clappers and hit the bell, deflecting straight down into the floor of the platform.
More shots rang out from below as Sandoval and Lucy fired back from the doorway.
Then came a lull in the firing. Charvein sat with his back to the low barricade, catching his breath. The westering sun slanted into the bell tower, picking out small details he hadn’t noticed before. The suspended clappers had been recently painted a dull brown. From a distance they blended with the dark, tarnished brass of the bell. Why would anyone paint them? They were obviously handmade—possibly iron replacements that could rust. What the direct sunlight highlighted were two gouge marks where bullets had slashed across the flattened ends of the clappers. The metal beneath was not iron. It gleamed a dull yellow, but Charvein was certain it wasn’t brass.
Time to get out of his exposed position. He thrust his gun hand up over the barricade and fired two quick shots in the direction of the enemy. Then he scuttled to the trapdoor and started down the ladder.
