The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  “That’s right,” Maragon said, staring at Sartain but speaking to Green. “If you can prove he was cheating, you did have the right to shoot him.”

  “But that bastard with the Henry shot me anyway!”

  Sartain flared his nostrils at the man, but he kept his voice pitched low with soft-spoken menace as he said, “If you don’t stop your caterwauling, you’re going to get another one.” He aimed the Henry at Green. “Now, where would you like it?”

  Green screamed and flopped onto his back, holding his hands in front of his face as though to shield himself from a bullet.

  Maragon closed both his hands over the balcony rail before him. He was dressed in a red velvet robe with what appeared a marten fur collar. He looked well-bred and flush, but he also looked badly hungover. “Mister, who are you?”

  The Revenger let the Henry droop toward the floor, although he remained ready to bring it into action if he needed to. “Sartain. Mike Sartain. I’d like a word with you, Maragon.”

  Maragon studied him, his bushy, dark-brown brows beetled with incredulity. “Ah, shit,” he said, recognizing the tall stranger with the Henry repeating rifle. “The stinking Revenger!”

  Mutters rippled through the crowd.

  “Well, that’s not my full given name,” Sartain said. “But I reckon it’ll do.” And true enough, given his doings of the last few days . . .

  “Who you looking for, for bloody cryin’ in the King’s bleedin’ beer?”

  “No one here.” Sartain scrutinized the room once more, narrowing one eye. “At least, I don’t think it’s anyone in this room. Could be wrong.”

  All eyes were on him now. They’d heard of him, of course. Most folks had—at least those who’d spent more than a few months on the frontier. Word of his trail of death had spread fast, and it continued to spread. One day, someone would backtrack those stories to his doorstep, wherever that happened to be at the time, and his trail of death would end with his own.

  For some reason, the idea didn’t frighten him in the least. In fact, maybe an end to his compulsion would be a welcome relief.

  “See that door over there?” Maragon asked.

  Sartain followed his gaze to a door at the top of the carpeted stairs that ran up the room’s left wall.

  “I’ll meet you in there in three minutes.” Maragon looked around the main drinking hall. “Billy, Worm! Tend Teagarden and clean up the blood. Someone get Green over to that old, drunk sawbones. Tell the sot to send me the bill.” The mine/saloon/dancehall-owner smiled devilishly, his eyes slanting up at the outside corners so that his pale, craggy face resembled that of an English satyr. “I’ll be taking it out of Green’s pay.”

  Green didn’t respond to this. Sitting up now, he merely cupped his hand over his shoulder and gave Sartain the hairy eyeball, though when The Revenger looked at him, he wrinkled his nose and averted his eyes.

  Maragon swung around, his robe billowing out around him, disappeared into his room, and slammed the door behind him. Sartain’s eyes swept the room once more. Seeing no one who looked like they’d try to avenge Green, he depressed the Henry’s hammer, set the rifle on his shoulder, and climbed the staircase to the door Maragon had indicated. He gave the door a single, perfunctory knock with the back of his left hand, opened it, and stepped inside.

  Closing the door behind him, he found himself in a large, ornate office with a rug so deep he felt he was stepping in mud, and a large desk that appeared made out of cherry or maybe some rare wood from Europe. The size of a large ore dray, its legs were carved so that they almost looked like moose antlers. File cabinets and wooden shelves surrounded the desk, as did a deep, leather sofa and a fireplace, cold at the moment.

  A brass clock, also likely imported, ticked on a wall above a glassed-in humidor the size of a small china cabinet. Sartain’s mouth watered. The room smelled of expensive leather and tobacco soaked in port or brandy and maybe rum. He couldn’t help himself. He walked over to the cabinet and stared through the glass at the several open boxes of cigars the size of dynamite sticks and ranging in color from coffee brown to butterscotch.

  Footsteps sounded. The room was open to the right, beyond the fireplace, and now Maragon walked through the opening and into the office, running pale arthritic fingers through thick, wavy dark-brown hair that was graying at the temples.

  “Help yourself,” he said. “Take two. Hell, take a third one for the road.”

  “Who said I was going anywhere?”

  Maragon sighed and flopped into the red leather chair behind the massive desk. Sartain had been right about the man—he was, indeed, blue around his eyes, beneath which bags the size of tobacco sacks sagged. “Look, Sartain, I got enough problems without having a crazy vigilante raising hob with my miners.”

  Sartain pulled open the cabinet door and took Maragon up on his offer of three cigars. He chose a trio with paper wrappers labeled in Spanish, slipped two into his shirt pocket, and took the third over to the guest chair with him. He sank into the chair before Maragon’s desk, and the mine owner slid a cutter and a wooden matchbox toward him.

  “I’m not here for your miners,” Sartain said, clipping the end off the cigar. “At least, not if none of ’em stole your gold.”

  “My gold?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” Sartain touched a leaping match flame to the cigar and slowly rolled the cigar in the flame, drawing the aromatic smoke and blowing it out the side of his mouth and his nostrils. The cigar tasted of old book leather and applewood, and possibly well-aged bourbon. “Damn, that’s good!”

  “It should be. It cost a pretty penny. You say you’re here about my gold? Who sent you? I already have a Pinkerton—”

  “You must be doin’ all right for yourself, Maragon,” Sartain said, leaning back in the chair and blowing a plume of the rich smoke into the well-appointed room. He noticed an oil painting hanging on the wall to his left. Sartain was no art connoisseur, but it looked like an original to his untrained eyes. It also looked old and expensive.

  “I do all right,” Maragon said grumpily. “At least, I did at one time. Losin’ that strongbox hasn’t helped any. Look, Sartain, I may appear eighty, but I’m only forty-five. Born and raised in East London. Fought my way up from the street and through the ranks of a shipping company. Married the boss’s daughter. Got sent by the boss out here in the middle of the Western frontier to run his stupid gold mine. Bought this place as an investment. Frolicked with a whore I shouldn’t have. My wife is young and beautiful. Oh, bloody hell, how beautiful she is! Just the same, I like a Negro girl now and then, and I poked the wrong one and ended up with Old Joe. Poked a half-breed Apache girl—just couldn’t resist the girl’s big black eyes—and promptly came down with a case of the morning dew. I’ve also contracted consumption. And to top it all off, my wife has kicked me out of the house—that house right over there!”

  He turned his chair to look out the window over the couch and beside the clock. “You saw it when you rode into town. You couldn’t miss it.”

  “Couldn’t miss the woman in the open gable, neither. If that’s your wife, good Lord, man—what’s wrong with you? Contracting both syphilis and gonorrhea so you can’t sleep in your own bed?”

  Sartain couldn’t help chuckling at the sad irony of Maragon’s life.

  “I appreciate your sympathy.”

  Again, Sartain shook his head.

  Chapter 13

  The mine owner flushed with anger.

  “I’m a fish out of water, for chrissakes! I’m a million miles from home. Of course, Mathilda came with me, but she tends to be a little stuffy if you get my drift. I’m a man whose blood has always run hot. When I landed out here, I thought the least I could do was let my hair down a bit.”

  Maragon rose and grabbed a bottle of Spanish brandy and two tumblers off a filing cabinet. “Anyway, back to my gold.” He splashed brandy into both tumblers, slid one to Sartain, sipped from the other one, and sagged back into his chair. “Wh
y are you after it? I’ve posted no reward. I have a Pinkerton out there now, sniffing around the mountains for it. Haven’t heard from him in several days, so I’m hopefully assuming he’s on to something.”

  “I’m sniffing around for that strongbox as a private favor to Belle Higgins from Silverthorne.”

  “Belle Higgins?”

  “Sheriff Higgins’s daughter.”

  “Oh.”

  Maragon downed half his brandy in a single knock. He set the tumbler down and hastily refilled it. He looked like a man who’d found water again after a long time wandering parched in the desert. “Christ, I try to stay off the stuff. Doesn’t mix well with the tincture of mercury I take for the pony drip. ‘A night in the arms of Venus leads to a lifetime on Mercury,’ as they say.”

  He lifted his glass to Sartain, smiled drunkenly over it, and knocked half of the brandy back. He sighed and smacked his lips. “There are worse ways to die than drunk. Anyway, Belle Higgins wants you to find her father. That it?”

  “Pretty much. She thinks possibly his deputy, Jasper Garvey, killed her father and made off with the gold.”

  “Or her father might have made off with it,” Maragon pointed out. “I never really trusted that man. Of course, in my business, it’s hard—as well as foolhardy—to trust anyone.”

  “The rumors that Higgins stole the gold himself, either alone or in cahoots with Garvey, have made their way to Belle. And she doesn’t like it. She wants me to sniff out the truth.”

  Maragon nodded, fiddling with his half-empty glass on the desk. “Well, hell,” he said, raising the glass in a salute of sorts. “The more, the merrier.” He slammed that drink back as well.

  He was racked by a brief but violent coughing fit, wiped his mouth with a blood-spotted handkerchief that he produced from his robe, and leveled a rheumy-eyed gaze at Sartain. “If you can find that strongbox, Mr. Revenger, I will fortify the reward Miss Belle Higgins has offered you for doing so with another thousand.”

  Sartain sipped his brandy, followed it up with another puff from the tasty cigar, blowing the smoke in a slender plume over Maragon’s head. “The cigars and the brandy will do me. I don’t do what I do for money.”

  “Why turn down a thousand dollars?”

  “Because I don’t like being tied to it.”

  Maragon arched a brow over a bloodshot eye. “Or to anything?”

  “Or to anything.”

  “You just live to kill then, I take it? Like what all the newspapers have said about you?”

  “To kill those who need killin’, Maragon. For those who can’t do the killin’ themselves.”

  Maragon studied him, quirking his mouth-corners up from beneath his bushy mustache. “You’re insane, aren’t you, Sartain? You must be.”

  “Most likely. The nice thing about bein’ insane, though, is you’re always the last to know.” Sartain finished the brandy and waved his hand over his glass when Maragon extended the bottle toward him.

  “Well, shit,” said the mine owner. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’d like to know if you suspect anyone other than Higgins and Garvey, and I’d also like to know which route they took down the mountain when they lit out with the gold.”

  Maragon sighed and stared at the bottle, considering whether to have another drink. He turned to look out the window toward his house and cursed. He picked up the bottle, refilled his tumbler, and again extended the bottle to Sartain, who again waved it off.

  “For all I know, my wife had it stolen.” Maragon chuckled. “Wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “To ruin me both financially and in the eyes of her father so the old bastard would see fit to let her divorce me. Oh, he knows about the Cupid’s itch, but I suspect the old boy is carrying one or two of those afflictions himself.” Maragon turned his chair slightly to take another brooding look toward his house. “No, I would not put it past my dear Mathilda. As cunning as she is beautiful.”

  Sartain studied his cigar. He’d thought his visit with Maragon would narrow the parameters of his search effort. Instead, he was finding them widening. At least he could probably learn which trail the gold had been lost on. He repeated the question to the unhealthy, unhappy, mine owner.

  “They took the Old Ute Trail. Leastways, that’s what all the men around here call it. It’s the northern trail. Meets up with the Weaver’s Meadow Trail about two miles northeast of Silverthorne.”

  Sartain had seen where the trails intersected down in the valley.

  “Well, that explains why I saw no sign on the southern trail.”

  “It does indeed.” Maragon frowned and directed his gaze to the bandage wrapped around Sartain’s forehead, beneath his hat. “Say there, can’t help wondering what happened?”

  “Someone tried to give me a pill I couldn’t swallow. First in Silverthorne, then on the trail up here. Fortunately, my bacon was pulled out of the fire by a pretty young blonde who happened to be out roaming the mountains.”

  “Crazy Mary.” Maragon smiled.

  “You know her, I take it.”

  “Everyone in these parts does. Keeps to herself despite the fact every miner on my roll would like to . . . uh . . . take a roll with the gal. As far as I know, she hasn’t tumbled for a one of ’em. Most unattached girls in this neck of the mountains end up here workin’ for me. I once invited her to try her hand at the fine art of love-for-pay, and she told me she’d rather lie with a bobcat than a man any day of the week.”

  Maragon chuckled. “What does that leave her, women?” He laughed again. “Keeps to herself up on Ute Ridge in her family’s old mine shack. Doesn’t show herself around here much, but I hear she rides down to Silverthorne fairly often.” He sipped his drink. “Odd girl.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “What she needs is a good poke, if you’re askin’ me. I wouldn’t mind bein’ the one to give it to her, neither.”

  Sartain felt the warmth of anger rise beneath his collar. He liked Mary, crazy or not, and it graveled him to hear her talked about in Maragon’s off-hand but likely customarily insulting fashion.

  Having got what he needed from the man, Sartain peeled the coal off his cigar and rolled it into the ashtray. He stuffed the half-smoked stogie into his shirt pocket for later and rose from his chair. “Obliged for the information. I’ll check the trail out tomorrow.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here, Sartain. I have plenty of rooms, plenty of beautiful women. They’ll come downstairs in an hour or so, around five. Considering that your endeavor here in the Sangre de Cristos might very well benefit me, the night as well as the girl—or girls, if you prefer—will be free of charge.”

  “No, thanks. I shot one of your miners. Miners are a close fraternity. I’m likely to get a bullet in the back while I’m enjoyin’ your girl . . . or girls. Thanks anyway.” Sartain donned his hat, strode to the door, and picked up his rifle.

  “Where will you stay, then?” Maragon asked, perplexed. “This is the only hotel on the mountain. The rest of the shacks around here are bunkhouses for my miners.”

  “I’ll find a place out in the high and rocky,” Sartain said, pinching his hat to the man. “My horse and I prefer it out there.”

  He went down and bought a bottle at the bar, watching his back in the bar mirror. His preferred drink was Sam Clay, brewed in the green hills of Kentucky, but he’d nearly gone through his cache, and he didn’t even bother to ask for it here.

  He bought a bottle of brandy, figuring the bottom-shelf Who Hit John here was probably concocted in a washtub out in one of the barns, with a shovelful of mule shit for flavor.

  A swamper scowled up at him from where he was scrubbing Green’s blood off the floor, though it appeared to Sartain that he was only making the stain larger. The Revenger touched his hat brim to the man and headed outside. He dropped his bottle into a saddlebag, slid his rifle into its scabbard, and stepped up into his saddle.

  As he pa
ssed Maragon’s flashy house, a woman’s English-accented voice said, “You down there!”

  Sartain checked Boss and stared up at the open gable. Maragon’s wife, Mathilda, stared down at him.

  “You down where?” Sartain asked.

  She widened her dark-brown eyes in anger. “You down there.”

  “Oh, me down here. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “I just did.”

  “You’re right,” Sartain joked, doffing his hat and smiling up at her. “You did. I’m just the contrary sort.”

  “You make a lot of noise for a stranger just riding into a place.”

  She must have meant the report of his Henry earlier. “Yes, ma’am, I do have that tendency.”

  She scowled and touched her temple. “Your head. Does it hurt?”

  “What, this? Nah. I’ve hurt myself worse shavin’ of a mornin’, Mrs. Maragon.”

  “You’re The Revenger.”

  “Word spreads fast.”

  “Faster than a wildfire. Especially after you just ride into a place and shoot a man.”

  “Well, in my defense, he needed shootin’.”

  “Where are you headed, Mr. Sartain?”

  “For the high and rocky.”

  She frowned. God, she was a piece of work. She must have been around twenty-five, and had a face that could have been carved out of ivory by a master craftsman fashioning the likeness of a goddess straight out of a gilded cloud. Sartain wasn’t accustomed to having his heart flutter like a boy’s with a schoolyard crush, but it was doing that now. It made him feel light-headed as if the street was rising and falling like slow ocean waves around him.

  “Whatever that means,” she said.

  “It means I’m headin’ out to set up camp for the night.”

  “No need to do that. I have plenty of room here. My husband is no longer allowed on the premises, and it’s just myself and my housekeepers, Lyle and Edna.”