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  Cindy Boyce was standing just inside the shop, and she smiled as Meagan approached.

  “Miss Boyce,” Meagan said, returning the smile.

  “Please, call me Cindy. Everyone does,” the pretty redhead said.

  “All right, Cindy. What can I do for you?”

  “You always look so—so elegant,” Cindy said. “And I recall that you once said that you could make a dress for me.”

  “Yes, of course I can,” Meagan said.

  “And it wouldn’t bother your business if you made one for me? I mean, me working in a saloon and all. What would the rest of your customers think of that?”

  “What difference does it make what they think?” Meagan asked. “If you would like me to make a dress for you, I will be more than happy to do it.”

  Cindy clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, I just knew I could count on you.”

  “What kind of dress would you like?”

  “Something elegant,” Cindy said. “Something like—” She looked down into her reticule, then, with an expression of distress, started moving things around as if searching for something. “Oh dear.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I had a picture of what I wanted. You can make a dress from a picture, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had a picture—I thought I brought it with me. When do you close?”

  “I’m about to close now.”

  “Oh. I was about to go back to my room and get it and bring it to you. But, I have to be to work in just a few minutes. Oh, would you come with me and let me give it to you? I only live a couple of blocks from here. If you would come with me, I would have time to get back before I’m late for work.”

  “All right,” Meagan said. “If I have the picture to guide me, I can start drawing out a muslin pattern for it tonight.”

  “Wonderful!” Cindy said.

  “Let me just get my keys so I can lock up.”

  Meagan got her keys, then turned the CLOSED sign around just before she and Cindy stepped out of her shop onto the boardwalk out front. As Meagan was locking the door, she felt a prickly sensation as if someone was staring at her. Glancing toward the open space that separated the emporium from Fiddler’s Green, she saw Francis Schumacher leaning against the wall of the saloon, staring at her.

  “Mr. Schumacher?” Meagan asked.

  Schumacher touched the brim of his hat, then turned and moved quickly toward the alley behind.

  “That was rather frightening,” Cindy said.

  “It was certainly unusual,” Meagan agreed.

  Meagan and Cindy moved down Bowie Avenue toward Foley’s Lodging House, which was on Bowie halfway between Second and Third Streets. Cindy explained that her room was on the bottom floor at the rear of the building.

  “I don’t have much of a view,” she said. “My back window looks out onto the alley, but it is the only thing I can afford.”

  Meagan followed her into the building, and down the center hall to the door that led to Cindy’s room. Cindy unlocked it, then stepped inside.

  “Come on in,” she invited. “I’ll light a lantern and . . .” Cindy paused in midsentence, then gasped. “Who are you? What are you doing in my room?”

  Meagan felt strong arms grab her from behind, and before she could struggle, or even call out, a cloth with the cloying smell of chloroform was put over her nose and mouth. She felt a spinning, dizzying sensation, then nothing.

  The buckboard drove slowly south on Bowie Avenue. They’d chosen a road that was mostly residential so there were less people to see them, and even fewer who paid any attention to them. If they had paid attention, they would have seen two men in the driver’s seat, a pile of canvas in the back, and two more men on horseback, keeping pace with the buckboard.

  When Meagan regained consciousness it took her a moment to realize where she was. She could hear horses’ hooves and the sound of rolling wheels. She could also feel movement.

  All right, she was obviously lying in the back of a wagon of some sort, so she knew where she was, she just didn’t know why she was here.

  She was also bound and gagged! My God! What was happening to her? What was going on?

  Meagan started to gasp in panic, but as she did so, her head started spinning again, so she forced herself to breathe in slower, more controlled breaths.

  How did she get here?

  She tried to remember, but the last thing she could remember was closing her shop.

  Closing her shop and seeing former Deputy Schumacher standing just outside.

  Was he responsible for this?

  A little more memory was coming back to her now.

  Yes, she remembered. Cindy Boyce wanted her to make a dress, and Meagan had gone to Cindy’s room with her to see a picture of what she wanted. Cindy had called out in surprise and fear. Someone had been waiting in the room!

  That was the last thing Meagan could remember until she’d woken up in this vehicle, which she now believed, judging by its size, to be a buckboard.

  “Johnny, I think the woman is awake back here,” someone said.

  “Any chance of her gettin’ away?” another voice answered.

  “Ha! Ain’t a chance in hell.”

  “All right. Just keep an eye on her.”

  Meagan wanted to ask where they were going, and what they wanted with her, but she couldn’t speak because she was gagged.

  “What do you mean, they took her?” Deputy Pierce asked. “Who is it that got took, and who took her?”

  “It was Meagan Parker. You know her. She is the lady that owns the dress emporium,” Cindy said in a tearful voice. “She is the one that was taken, but I don’t know who it was that took her. And it’s all my fault,” she added with a sob.

  “Why is it your fault?”

  “I had her come down to my room to see a picture of the dress I wanted her to make. But when we got there, someone was already in my room. They held a cloth that was soaked in something over her face for a bit, and she passed out. Then they took her. They told me—oh, they told me . . .” Cindy gasped and raised her hand to her mouth.

  “They told you what?”

  “They told me if I said anything to anyone they would come back and kill me.”

  Cindy started crying, and Deputy Pierce put his arms around her and drew her close to comfort her.

  “You did the right thing, Cindy. Don’t worry about it,” Deputy Pierce said. “The marshal and I will keep an eye on you. Nobody is going to hurt you.”

  “Oh,” Cindy said. “There is one thing. I don’t know if it means anything or not but . . .”

  She let the sentence hang.

  “But what?”

  “There was a man hanging around outside Miss Parker’s shop when we came out. He was sort of hiding back in the shadows. I remember that he startled Miss Parker.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Yes, it was Francis Schumacher.”

  “How do you know it is Duff MacCallister?” Marshal Cline asked. He dropped three spoonfuls of sugar into his cup of coffee, stirred it for a moment, then looked back up at the man who was standing on the other side of his desk.

  “How do I know?” Reid replied. “I know because until he fired me. I used to work for the son of a bitch. That’s how I know.”

  “Well now, we do seem to have an interesting situation here,” Cline said. “Johnny Taylor and his men are, even now, trying to set up a trap for him. But here he is, right in the middle of Bordeaux.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Mr. Reid, one should never look a gift horse in the mouth,” Cline said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “As I said, Johnny is out trying to find him right now, but here he is, dropped into our laps.”

  “What does that have to do with a gift horse?”

  “I see it as an opportunity to make money,” Cline said. “I expect Johnny would give at least a thousand dollars to anyone who k
illed MacCallister.”

  “A thousand dollars? Where would someone like Johnny get a thousand dollars?”

  “Don’t you know? He is the one who robbed the bank down in Chugwater. They got away with over forty thousand dollars.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Reid said. “I’d almost forgot about that.”

  “So you can see why a thousand dollars wouldn’t be too much to ask for.”

  “I reckon not. But there’s somethin’ else you ain’t figured on,” Reid said.

  “What would that be?”

  “Duff MacCallister ain’t an easy man to deal with.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Cline said. “Did you see the way he was dressed when he come in here? He’s a fop if there ever was one.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, don’t let them clothes fool you. I ain’t never seen anyone as good with a gun as MacCallister is.”

  Back in the Red Eye Saloon, Duff was sitting at a table in the back of the saloon, writing out an order form. Carmody had not ordered any whiskey, and was very adamant that he had no intention of ordering any, but Duff, in playing out his role, insisted that he fill out an order form just to show Carmody what it would cost.

  He was taking quite a while because as he was sitting there supposedly working on the form, he was able to pick up quite a bit of the conversation from the others. The most talkative of the group were two men who were young, loud, and obnoxious. Their names, Duff had learned a bit earlier, were Creech and Phelps.

  “Where do you think they hid the money they got from that bank down in Chugwater?” Creech asked.

  “What do you mean, hid it?” Phelps asked.

  “I heard ’em talkin’ about it,” Creech said.

  “If they hid it, why would they be talkin’ about it? That seems like a dumb thing to do.”

  “Yeah, but Johnny and Clay Calhoun wasn’t the ones that was talkin’ about it, and they’re the only ones who really know where the money is.”

  “How do you know they’re the only ones who know?”

  “I know ’cause they are the only two left from the bunch of them that robbed the bank. The ones I heard talkin’ was Blunt, Thomas, and Harper. They’re thinkin’ they ought to get cut in on the money since the other ones is dead.”

  “Except for Johnny’s brother. He ain’t dead. He’s in jail down in Chugwater. That’s where Johnny and the others is now, back in Chugwater to see if they can’t figure out some way to get Emile out of jail.”

  Duff had already learned that Johnny and the others were no longer in town, so this particular piece of news wasn’t as interesting to him as was the news that the money was hidden somewhere. That was good news, actually. If the money was hidden somewhere, then that meant that most of it was probably still intact. And that meant that if he could find where the money was hidden, he could recover it for the bank.

  “That’s him, right there!” a man shouted. There was something familiar about the man’s voice, and as he looked toward the front door, he saw Simon Reid.

  “Reid?”

  “You’re worth a thousand dollars, MacCallister,” Reid said. “And I aim to collect.”

  Cline already had his pistol out, and even as Reid was talking, Cline pulled the trigger.

  The gun roared, but the bullet hit the samples case Duff had on the table, and one of the bottles burst, sending up a small shower of whiskey.

  Duff ran toward the bar, leaped up on it, belly down, then rolled himself over the bar and down behind it. Three more shots followed him, two crashing into the bar and the third hitting the mirror behind the bar, breaking it into shards that hung in place but distorted the image it was reflecting.

  At the first shot, Carmody, the bartender, had picked up the double-barreled Greener he kept behind the bar. Duff, who had his own pistol out now, pointed his gun at Carmody and shook his head. He made a motion for Carmody to put the shotgun down and, after Carmody did so, made a second motion telling Carmody to get out from behind the bar.

  Carmody put both hands up, then scooted out from the far end of the bar.

  “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he shouted.

  Creech suddenly appeared in the open space at the end of the bar. At first Duff thought Creech might just be curious, but then he saw a pistol in Creech’s hand. Creech raised the gun to shoot, but Duff put one well-placed shot in Creech’s forehead, and he fell back.

  “Son of a bitch! He kilt Creech!” Phelps shouted.

  Keeping low, Duff moved down toward the open end of the bar, picking up Carmody’s shotgun as he did so. Pausing when he reached the end of the bar, he looked back into the mirror, and though it was nothing now but half a dozen hanging shards, he was able to locate his adversaries, distorted though the images were. One was toward the back of the room, taking cover behind the iron stove, and two more were in the middle of the room. They had overturned several tables and were using the tables to build a barricade of sorts.

  Looking up, Duff saw that the two in the middle of the room had made the mistake of building their fort right under the big wagon wheel, from which hung a dozen gleaming lanterns. Raising the shotgun, Duff fired both barrels at the rope that raised and lowered the wagon wheel chandelier. He fired, the gun roared, and the wagon wheel dropped to the floor, right on top of the two men. The crash broke the chimneys of all the lanterns and, almost instantly, a large blaze leaped up from the middle of the floor.

  Marshal Cline and Simon Reid shouted out in fear and pain and, forgetting about their guns, rolled across the floor to get clear of the widening pool of fire that had leapt up when the lanterns broke and the kerosene spilled.

  “You son of a bitch!” Phelps shouted, leaping out from behind the stove with his gun blazing.

  Duff fired one time, and Phelps went down.

  Running from the saloon, Duff mounted Sky and rode out of town. There was no need to stay here any longer. He had already learned that Johnny and the others were gone.

  Up and down the street he could hear shouts of warning and excitement.

  “Fire! The saloon is on fire!”

  “Get the fire brigade out!”

  Someone started ringing a fire gong, and another fire gong picked it up. By the time Duff reached the south end of town, at least three of the warning gongs were being sounded. He stopped and looked back to make certain no one was following him.

  No one was following him. Nobody was even paying any attention to him. Instead, all were rushing toward the saloon, which was now totally engulfed, with flames leaping from the roof.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Meagan had no idea who had taken her, or why they had taken her, and she was on the edge of panic, fighting hard to maintain control. Because she was lying in the bottom of the wagon, and because it was dark, her vision was limited, but she did get a glance of the school just as they were leaving town so she knew they were going south. Because she couldn’t see the ground, she had no way of gauging how fast they were going, though it felt as if they were doing at least five miles an hour. She tried to estimate how long she had been in the wagon, so she could guess where they might be.

  She would have to stay alert, and try to escape if she saw any opportunity to do so. And if she couldn’t escape, she needed do something—anything—that might improve her situation.

  Her hands were tied in front, rather than behind her, and this did give her some range of motion. Her first thought was that she would try to slide off the back of the buckboard, but she put that idea aside when she realized that her feet were tied to the side of the carriage. If she tried to jump off, she would be dragged.

  She began to feel around inside the buckboard, then felt a small glimmer of hope, when she found a little bag of nails. Using the point of one of the nails, she tried to untie her wrists, but the rope was too high up on her wrists, and she couldn’t get to it. She thought about trying to use the nail to untie her feet, but that wasn’t successful either.

  Then she got an idea.

&n
bsp; Using the point of the nail, she managed to cut out a small piece of cloth from her dress. Then, pushing the nail through that small piece of cloth, she dropped it over the side of the buckboard, hoping, praying that the men who were riding alongside wouldn’t see it in the dark.

  Evidently, they did not see it for no one said anything to her. Approximately ten minutes later she threw out another little flag. The average person might miss such small markers, but she had every confidence that Duff would come looking for her, and an equal amount of confidence that he would not only see the little markers, but know what they were.

  “I don’t have any idea what happened to her,” Schumacher said.

  “You were hanging around just outside the emporium,” Marshal Ferrell challenged.

  “I was not hanging around outside the emporium.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Schumacher. You were seen there!” Marshal Ferrell said, angrily.

  “Marshal, her shop is right next to Fiddler’s Green. I had been in there most of the night, you can ask anyone. I’d been drinkin’ a lot, and there was a lot of tobacco smoke inside. I was gettin’ a headache so I come out for a breath of fresh air. That’s all.”

  “Throw him in a cell, Willie,” Marshal Ferrell said.

  “What? You can’t do that.”

  “Just watch me do it,” Marshal Ferrell said. “When you are ready to talk, let me know.”

  “Talk about what? I tell you, I don’t have anything to talk about!” Schumacher said.

  “Come on,” Deputy Pierce said. “You used to work here, you know where it is.”

  “This ain’t right, Willie,” Schumacher said. “I tell you, I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  Emile Taylor was asleep in his cell when Deputy Pierce brought Schumacher back to put him in the adjacent cell.

  “Here,” Emile said. “What’s all the noise about? A man can’t even sleep peaceable in his own jail cell around here.”