The Wicked Die Twice Page 12

  How?

  Walsh was the law here in town—the man she would normally go to in such a situation. But he was the man who’d caused the situation. One of them, anyway.

  Should she go to one of his deputies?

  No. If he was planning the robbery, one or all of his three deputies might be in on it, as well. Possibly not, but it was not a risk she could take. If she wasn’t careful, she was liable to get herself killed. She wasn’t sure if Cisco was capable of murdering her to keep the robbery secret, but then she hadn’t thought him capable of robbing a stagecoach, either.

  Cisco Walsh—the brash, legendary, upstanding western lawman!

  He and Jason Hall, a widely respected rancher, were planning to rob eighty thousand dollars from one of the local mines.

  Why?

  Never mind that. They were, that’s all.

  And Jay had to do something to stop it.

  She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. She so wished that Slash and Pecos weren’t out on one of Bledsoe’s assignments. She needed Slash here with her. He would help her figure out what to do.

  Maybe she should contact the Chief Marshal in Denver. Perhaps the county sheriff . . . ? Maybe she should walk over to the courthouse this morning and get the whole troublesome issue off her chest.

  The more her mind swirled and her palms sweat, she realized that she needed someone to talk to. She had few close friends, however. Jay was a good businesswoman, but her business interests hadn’t left time for cultivating personal relationships with anyone except Slash, who’d been a friend of hers for many, many years. And Cisco, of course. He’d been an old friend, too. One whom she’d just learned was not really who she’d thought he was . . .

  Her heart thudded at the whole improbable, confounding notion.

  One face rose from the murk of her muddied thinking. Myra.

  Next to Slash and Pecos, Myra Thompson was her closest friend even though Myra was years younger. Jay saw a lot of her younger self in the pretty, savvy young ex-outlaw girl....

  Myra was street-smart, wise beyond her years. She might have some ideas about what Jay should do with the devastating information she knew about Walsh and Hall, whether she should go to the sheriff or the marshal . . .

  Jay herself was a little wary of all lawmen due, of course, in no small part to her own shady past.

  Having decided what she would do first, she flung away her robe and dressed in a simple, salmon-colored day frock. She gave her hair a quick brushing, leaving it down so she could wear a hat, then grabbed the felt topper she wore around town, to give her some protection from the merciless Colorado sun. She shrugged into a brown leather vest, pulled on a pair of kid riding gloves, and moved to the door.

  She stopped, looked back at where she’d left the revolver on the brocade armchair. Should she take the weapon? She shook her head. Too heavy and cumbersome. Opting for the Lady Derringer she kept in her underwear drawer, she retrieved the silver-washed, over-and-under popper, which didn’t weigh much over a pound, and stuck it into her right vest pocket. It hardly made a bulge; not one that most people would notice, anyway. She doubted that Walsh or Hall would accost her on the street, but Jay wasn’t one for taking chances. There was much about Walsh she didn’t know. How could she be certain he wouldn’t send some skulking brigand to drag her off and murder her?

  She strode to the door again, opened it slowly, and poked her head into the hall. It was quiet and empty. No sign of the marshal. No sign of anyone, for that matter. Good.

  She stepped into the hall, locked the door, pocketed the key, and headed off toward the hall’s west end, where there was a door to a hidden rear stairway mostly used by housekeepers and Jay’s sporting girls when they didn’t want to be seen coming and going from their rooms. She dropped quietly down the stairs, glad to see none of the girls or housekeepers on it, preferring not to be seen leaving the Thousand Delights this time of the day, which was rare for her. She didn’t want to appear furtive and arouse suspicion, or to have to parry questions.

  The stairs let out into the kitchen, but the saloon’s back door was only a few feet away. A couple of cooks were working at the range, but they had their backs to Jay, so she managed to slip out of the building without being seen.

  “Good morning, Randall,” she said to the young man who tended the Thousand Delight’s feed barn and corral during the day. “Would you mind hitching the mare to my buggy for me, please?”

  The young man had been tending the horses of two of Jay’s overnight guests, a couple of cattle buyers from Chicago who were likely still asleep upstairs with their respective girls. He turned to Jay with a curious expression, which Jay countered immediately with: “And let’s keep my little outing this morning just between you and me—shall we, Randall?”

  She knew the young man to be the gossip rival of any women’s quilting party, though she couldn’t blame him. He no doubt got quite lonely working back here most of the day alone, only seeing customers briefly as they came and went.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am—of course, Miss Jay. I won’t say nothin’ to no one.” Randall ran a big, thick, dirty hand down the front of his pin-striped overalls that bulged over his considerable belly. He frowned at his pretty boss from beneath the floppy brim of his shapeless black hat, looking troubled. “I won’t tell . . . er, I mean . . .”

  Jay frowned. “You won’t what, Randall?”

  “I won’t tell . . . I won’t tell . . . um . . .”

  Jay felt her frown grow more severe. “You won’t tell who what, Randall?”

  “Um . . . well . . . the marshal was back here a few minutes ago. He . . . um . . .” Randall toed a fresh horse apple.

  Apprehension placed a cold hand against the small of Jay’s back. “He what? Perhaps he asked you to let him know if I went anywhere today . . . ?”

  Her heart thudded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Randall said, looking sheepishly down at the scuffed toes of his boots. “He did do that, ma’am. He told me not to tell, but since you’re my boss an’all . . .” Again, he let his voice trail off as he continued to toe the apple, looking severely consternated.

  Jay caught her breath, then said, “Thank you for telling me, Randall. Please don’t do what the marshal asked you to do, all right? I can’t tell you why. I just don’t want you to do it. If he returns and asks you whether I left, please tell him no. Will you do that?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re the lady I work for, so . . .”

  “Right. I hate to ask you to lie, but under the circumstances it’s important that you do. Now, please hitch the mare to my buggy. I’m in a hurry.”

  “Right away, ma’am!”

  As Randall grabbed a rope with which to capture the mare in the rear paddock, Jay turned to face the barn’s open doors, pressing her hand over her fast-beating heart.

  CHAPTER 15

  Jay took the most circumspect route possible between the House of a Thousand Delights saloon to Slash and Pecos’s livery yard. For reasons that were now obvious after her conversation with Randall, she didn’t want Walsh and his deputies to see her.

  She took a backstreet from the saloon and drove east for nearly a mile before swinging across the main trail, near the now-abandoned army outpost, and heading north of town, approaching the livery yard on the town’s northeast side from its rear.

  She parked the buggy behind the main barn. The two hostlers were giving the barn a new roof, removing the old shakes and replacing them with new ones. Jay strode up along the barn’s northeast side, looking for Myra but also peering north, making sure she hadn’t been followed. She didn’t like the fearful knot she’d been feeling in the pit of her stomach ever since she’d inadvertently eavesdropped on Walsh and Hall. She didn’t like having to keep looking behind her back, wondering if her life was in danger.

  “Jay?”

  She swung around with a start. She’d been gazing north while she’d walked, not realizing that she’d reached the front of the barn. Myra stood
in front of the barn’s open doors. A big mule stood behind her. She had her back to the mule and was holding the big beast’s left front hoof up between her denim-clad legs. She held a hoof file in both gloved hands while gazing at Jay expectantly, brows arched in surprise.

  “Oh, Lord!” Jay said with a relieved chuff, slapping a hand to her chest. “You gave me a start!”

  “You gave me one, too!” Myra laughed a little nervously, then opened her knees to release the mule’s hoof, which dropped to the ground with a thud. Straightening, she swiped her bare arm across her sweaty forehead—the sleeves of her checked work shirt were rolled up to her elbows—and said, “Where did you come from, anyway?”

  “Behind the barn.”

  “Oh.” Myra leaned forward a little to stare along the side of the barn toward the rear. She gave Jay a dubious look. “What were you doing back there?”

  “Hiding.”

  Myra jerked her head back skeptically. “Huh?”

  Jay stared toward Camp Collins proper, to the south. The heart of the town lay roughly a half mile from the livery yard. She didn’t see anyone close around except Myra and the two hostlers pounding their hammers up on the barn’s roof. A farm wagon bounced along a near street, a straw-hatted man in the driver’s seat, a brown dog sitting beside him. That was the only movement on this side of town. “I didn’t want Cisco Walsh or any of his deputies to see me.”

  “Why not?” Myra said with a laugh.

  Jay stepped forward and squeezed Myra’s left forearm. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I think Cisco might be out to kill me.” There, she’d said the words aloud for the first time, and a swell of emotion rose inside of her. She gave a single, involuntary sob, then clamped the back of her hand over her mouth.

  Myra gaped at her. “Jay, you’re serious!”

  Paranoid, Jay looked around once more, then up at the two men working on the barn. One glanced at her skeptically. She canted her head toward the main cabin and freight office to her left. “Myra, can we . . . ?”

  “Oh, sure, sure. Let’s go over to the office.”

  She returned the hoof file to the barn, then walked back up past the mule standing obediently in place.

  “What about him?” Jay said, canting her head at the sleepy-eyed mule.

  “That’s old Mordecai,” Myra said, starting toward the office. “He won’t stray far from the hay crib. He’ll probably just stand there and sleep in the sun. I’ll get back to him later.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Jay said as she and Myra walked toward the office in the intensifying morning sunlight. She glanced at the two men on the barn. “You keep yourself busy over here, don’t you, Myra?”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot to do, and Emil Becker didn’t keep the place in great repair. That barn’s been leaking for years, I’m sure.” Becker was the old man whom Slash and Pecos had bought the business from. “There’s too much work for the hostlers, so I help out with the mules when I can. I like taking breaks from the account books, which Becker didn’t leave in much better shape than his buildings, and Slash and Pecos—”

  “Aren’t much better, I’m sure,” Jay finished for her.

  Myra said with a chuckle, “I suppose bank robbers don’t have much need for accounting skills.”

  “Yeah, all they did with their loot was split it up and flee to Mexico.”

  They both laughed, but Jay heard the tightness in her own mirth.

  As she and Myra mounted the office’s front stoop, Myra said, “Would you like some milk? I bought some fresh from Mr. Sunday just an hour ago and stowed it away in the springhouse. Should be nice and cool by now.”

  Jay shrugged. “That sounds good.” She hadn’t had breakfast yet. She was too nervous to be hungry, but she thought the milk might do her some good.

  “Why don’t you wait out here, and I’ll fetch it from the springhouse?”

  Jay grabbed Myra before the girl could turn away. “Myra, do you think we could go inside?” She cast another nervous glance toward town.

  “Oh, sure,” Myra said, casting her own skeptical glance toward town. “Sure, we can. Go on in and I’ll fetch the milk.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  While Myra stepped off the stoop and walked around the office to the springhouse behind it, Jay stepped through the office’s front door. There was a desk in here and several tables cluttered with account books and other office paraphernalia. Emil Becker had hung hides and animal skulls on the walls, as well as horseshoes and a pair of snowshoes that he likely used during his winter freight-hauling treks into the snowy mountains. Myra had done her best to clean the place out, but her main order of business had been getting the accounts in order for Slash and Pecos, who had brought in their own brand of chaos, which she, too, had to juggle.

  Though they’d both wanted the freighting business to be their main employment now that they were getting too old for robbing trains anymore, it had turned out to be more of a front for the unofficial lawdogging they were doing for Chief Marshal Bledsoe.

  Jay pulled a chair out from the planks that served as a table running along the front of the room, beneath the window, and sank into it with a sigh. Boots thumped on the stoop, and Myra came with a glass bottle filled with creamy milk nearly as yellow as whipped butter. She set the bottle on the table near Jay.

  “I have a couple of clean glasses in here,” Myra said, and disappeared into the addition off the shack’s east side, which was her private living quarters. She came back with two glasses and set them down near the bottle. “Hot out there already,” she said, and popped the cork on the bottle. “I was ready for a break.”

  She glanced at Jay. Jay sat staring through the window before her, frowning.

  “Here’s your milk,” Myra said, sliding the glass she’d just filled toward Jay.

  Jay placed her hand on the glass but left it on the table. She continued to stare out the window. “Thank you.”

  Myra filled the second glass, then retrieved the chair behind her paperand ledge-littered desk. She pulled it up beside Jay and sank into it, studying Jay closely.

  She took a couple of sips of the milk, then set the glass back down on the table.

  “All right,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Why would the town marshal be out to kill you, Jay?”

  “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?” Jay gave a dry chuckle and glanced at the young, brown-haired woman sitting beside her, regarding her skeptically. “Just hearing you say it makes me question my own sanity. But here’s the thing, Myra.” Jay turned around to face the younger woman. She placed her hands on the girl’s knees. Keeping her voice low and secretive, she said, “I overheard a conversation between Cisco Walsh and Jason Hall last night, around midnight, in the Thousand Delights. I think they plan to rob a gold shipment at Horsetooth Station.”

  “When?”

  Jay flinched with surprise. “What?”

  “When do they plan to rob the stage?” Myra took another sip of her milk, then rested the glass in her lap. She regarded Jay seriously.

  “You believe me?”

  “Of course. Why would you make something like that up? I know you’re not crazy. And I know how men are. Even lawmen. Walsh certainly wouldn’t be the first crooked town marshal I’ve ever run into.” Again, she sipped her milk, then brushed the mustache away with her hand.

  Jay sank back in her chair, vaguely relieved that the girl believed her. Myra’s believing her so quickly and easily was a little troublesome, though, too. That meant that Jay was, indeed, probably right. That she hadn’t overheard wrong or been confused.

  Walsh and Hall really were going to rob a gold run from one of the mines.

  Now she had no choice but to do something about it.

  “I don’t know when,” Jay said. “Some night this week is all they said. That’s the problem. All I’m certain of is where—at Horsetooth Station.”

  “What’re you going to do?” Myra asked.

 
Such a simple, direct question. But there it was.

  “I don’t know.” Jay looked around at the cluttered, roughhewn office and at the door flanking Myra’s desk that led back to the ex-cutthroats’ personal quarters. “I sure wish Slash and Pecos were here, though. I’ll tell you that.”

  “I reckon what we need to find out is when this robbery is supposed to take place.”

  “Yes, but how?” Jay said.

  “Right . . .”

  Jay sipped her milk and pondered the problem. “Or, maybe . . .”

  “Or what?” Myra asked.

  “We could turn it over to the sheriff, let him take care of it.”

  “The sheriff isn’t in town,” Myra said, running a thumbnail around the milky rim of her glass.

  Jay frowned at her. “How do you know?”

  “Delbert told me.”

  “Delbert?”

  “Delbert Thayer. One of Matt McGuire’s deputies.” Matt McGuire was the Larimer County Sheriff.

  “Is that the . . . the . . . young man I’ve seen mooning around after you . . . ?”

  Jay had seen a tall, skinny young man following Myra around the freight yard while she’d been doing her chores, his hat in his hands, or perched atop a corral, snapping lucifer matches to life on his thumbnail. Jay had thought she’d seen a badge on the young man’s shirt.

  “One and the same,” Myra said with a weary sigh. “I met him in the post office and he’s been doggin’ my heels ever since. Wants me to go on a picnic or some such, as though I had time for such foolishness.” She shook her head full of auburn curls in disgust. “Anyways, he told me the sheriff is away at some convention of mucky-mucks down in Santa Fe. While he’s gone, he’s seein’ some sawbones down there about an ache he’s been having in his belly. Won’t be back for a while. So it’s just Delbert and McGuire’s two other deputies—both dumb as posts and useless as gophers, if you ask me—holding down the fort. Er, the courthouse, leastways . . .”

  Jay chuckled as she stared at the girl. Myra was as pretty as they came, and it amused Jay that she had no time for the opposite sex. At least, none her age. It was the big, lumbering, and much older Pecos she’d set her hat for. In that way, as in so many other ways, Myra reminded Jay of herself back when she’d fallen for the mossy-horned old hoorawer, Pistol Pete Johnson. . . .