Death Valley Drifter, page 21
No, two women, Quinn thought as they neared, two doubled up on a horse.
“Could be bandits or else Juáristas escorting a noble lady to the same place we’re going,” Zebulon said. “They make pilgrimages to the missions here on behalf of the churches the new boys busted up.”
The dust, handkerchiefs, and shawl made it impossible to identify the features of the riders, even as they neared.
“Watch what happens,” Zebulon said.
“What?”
“They ain’t gonna stop. Once had a rogue wolf running toward me on the plains. A missus, which can be ferocious. I didn’t want to shoot, case she had cubs, so I rode toward her, and she ran toward me, and we came closer and closer and closer until we met—and one just eyed the other and continued on, like clouds that looked like they were gonna crash and release lightning but didn’t.” Zebulon realized he still had slippery quail grease on his hands and wiped them dry on his pants. “They’ll do the same. I feel it.”
As the column approached, Quinn began to feel as if Zebulon was right. The riders were about a hundred feet to the north and showed no sign of slowing or veering toward the two men. The man on point, nearer to them than the woman, looked over and nodded, indicating he had no business with them and would pass by. Zebulon nodded back.
Sitting behind the campfire, Quinn watched as the riders swept past at a proud, steady pace. None of the others looked over.
“They’re a well-trained group,” Quinn hazarded.
“Yeah, especially for guerrilla fighters.”
Quinn’s hands were idle though it was a false posture; he yearned to have a knife in each hand, ready and strong instead of relaxed and vulnerable. He was about to try to get up, just to move, when his eyes caught a figure he knew, a face that looked toward him, a rider who was decidedly unlike the others. Their eyes locked for just a moment, but that was enough. Quinn saw the clothes, the hair—his gaze narrowed, he drew breath through his nose, and his lips opened soundlessly.
“Must be the lady’s son or little brother or something,” Zebulon said as the boy rode past.
Quinn remained on the ground until the column had passed. Then he rose slowly. “Zebulon, we have to mount. Now.”
The frontiersman looked back at the knife fighter. “What is it?”
“I know that boy,” Quinn said. “And he definitely does not belong out here.”
Quinn was on his feet. Zebulon rose and offered a steadying hand, but Quinn motioned him off. The knife fighter remained as he was until he was steady, until he was sure his head would not throb him back to the ground. Then he walked toward his horse.
“Who is he?” Zebulon asked.
“He’s a clever boy who, I pray, is clever enough not to say if he recognized me.”
“Do you know how you know him?”
“You know him, too, I would think,” Quinn said. “Douglas Smith, of the station outside the desert. And one of those women must have been his mother, Jane.”
“They been to our place once, never range even to Apple Town. What would they be doing out here?”
“Exactly,” Quinn replied. “I’ve got an unhappy feeling that what Bill Beaudine did not want to tell me about just rode past.”
* * *
* * *
THE SMALL HAND of Douglas Smith tightened on his sharpened stick. It sat on his thigh, pointing outward, directing his angry thoughts at the man leading the column. But his mind was not on Captain Dupré. It was on the man he had seen sitting on the prairie by the campfire.
It was Hank. Douglas had seen him—he had felt the man—and Hank had seen him. He knew it.
Douglas’ heart swelled with joy and hope, not only because Hank was alive but because he knew that the man would rescue him. He knew that because in the fast glimpse he’d had he saw what looked like the glittering beads of a sheath.
Hank had his knife.
The boy did not know if his mother had seen Hank. She was on the wrong side of the column, and because she was sitting up front, most of her face was bundled against the dirt. Being a man, Douglas could just spit it out like the French soldier holding him.
That was not all Douglas had seen. He had recognized the man who was with Hank. That was actually the figure he had seen first, standing with his familiar mustache and gray hair like a mane. It was Zebulon Moore, owner of the Oak Ridge way station. Lieutenant Martins and Hank had been headed northwest to the old coach stop. Maybe Zeb was the one who had rescued Hank, and he came west with the younger man to get him where he was going.
As his mother would have said, God looked after His own, and the Smiths, without a pa, were His own.
Douglas wished he could whoop for joy or ride up and share the news with his ma, but he had learned a good lesson back at the cabin: to keep his mouth closed like a barn door and his secrets inside. He would not even tell his mother. This was his special secret. His, as the man of the house, to guard.
No longer concerned about anything, not even the smell of the man who was holding him, Douglas looked toward the west with a psalm in the back of his throat, one of his mother’s favorites. He did not know the number but he knew the words of thanksgiving: God is a nurturing Shepherd who knows just what you need. . . .
* * *
* * *
BEAUDINE WAS GLAD that Aggie was with him. When he had seen the two men riding by, his impulse was to go out, learn if they were the assassins, and shoot them from their saddles.
Except, as she reminded him, the two men had not done anything yet. Nothing for which he had any proof.
“A loose-fitting coat possibly concealing a shoulder holster—that is not a crime,” she cautioned. “Even the letters you took implicate only one person, Maria Allende.”
Beaudine had taught her well, and Aggie was right. With new clothes and a few days’ growth of beard, the men could be someone else. He had not studied the horses closely enough to know if these steeds were the same.
“Thanks for moving my horse,” Beaudine said as the men rode from view and he turned from the window. The Pinkerton man was moving quickly to finish dressing, having come from the bedroom with just his trousers and bare feet. He was also thinking out loud.
“There’s nothing up here but Truckee, and that’s the direction they headed,” he said as he pulled on his shirt. “If they meant to make San Francisco, they were being a mite leisurely about it.”
“Very true,” Aggie said. “But since we don’t know, we’re going to have to track them from a distance, and carefully.”
“At night,” Beaudine said.
“You still want me to go?”
“If you’re game. I’d’ve slept through their visit and missed them entirely if not for you.” He kissed her once his boots were on.
“Get your horse,” she said. “I’ll pack food, meet you out front.”
Beaudine was angry at himself for having slept so long, however much he had needed it. He had trained himself to do without sleep, but then he had been on the flatlands or in the mountains, not with Aggie. Being with her made him feel for Quinn and the loss he must have experienced. She was a remarkable woman.
Thinking about Quinn made Beaudine wonder how and where the man was. He was also unhappy that he had no idea where the third and fourth members of the Confederate party might be. One of them might have dropped one off behind to protect their rear. Or to link up with the fourth member of the unit and the French soldiers who were supposed to support the mission, if needed.
Follow the men. That’s my only play, he told himself. That, and pray that they are Martins and Voight.
Retrieving the lockbox and slipping from his pocket to his lapel his badge—a silver shield that read PINKERTON NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY—he put those concerns from his mind as he went around to the side of the cottage.
The townsfolk were out doing their gardening in the cooler late afternoon, and there were smiles and flung salutes from people Beaudine did not know. They might have been mostly deserters and traitors, but they were sociable.
Aggie returned, wearing a high-crowned hat with a wide brim to keep the setting sun from her eyes and the wind from her long hair. She was mounted moments after he had walked his horse to the street. There were a canvas bag of food and two full deerskins swinging from the saddle. She handed one to Beaudine as he rode up beside her.
“You got more than your derringer?” he asked.
She nodded toward his horse, where there was a rifle in the scabbard and a .44 in his holster. “Whichever one of those you’re not using.”
Beaudine grinned, then urged his horse ahead. Aggie was right with him, her tawny riding skirt and matching blouse fluttering around her, a shawl tied to her waist for the cooler mountain passage. The two men were already well clear of the town. If they turned and saw a man and a woman, they’d have no reason to suspect they were being followed. And if the men were concerned, that meant they were those Beaudine was looking for.
And it occurred to him then that maybe this was not a good plan at all.
He reared up.
“What’s wrong?” Aggie asked, stopping.
“Our intelligence said the French soldiers were on hand to attack in force if force was needed,” Beaudine said. “What if these boys cooked up something else? They lost the letters, but they still might have a plan for getting on board the train, not the boat. And the train goes through Truckee on the way to San Francisco.”
Aggie looked ahead. “The way they’re going will get them there by midnight,” she said.
“We have to get there before them,” he said. “We’ll have to go through the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.”
“At night?”
“Even Pinkerton can’t make the sun stand still.”
Aggie was neither surprised nor afraid, just challenged. She understood the business the same as he did.
“That’ll be the other direction,” she said, turning her horse around and starting out. “You coming?”
A moment later, Beaudine was galloping toward her, loving the woman all the more.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE TRAIN, WHICH had been due at one a.m., was late by several hours. It was now closing in on dawn, and there was not a hint of rumbling along the tracks or a headlight and steam around the bend.
Goodman Martins sat on a bench and closed his eyes on the track side of the long wood depot. He was kept company by another gentleman who, he said, was awaiting the arrival of the president, whose armies had saved the nation. That was not something Martins cared to hear.
Every now and then, Martins would get up, look, and listen for the train. Voight was watching for anyone who might have been looking for them. It was more tedious than the prairie crossing from Apple Town, and that had been dull.
But the quiet ride, partly in the late-summer dark, had given Martins time to rehearse what he was going to say to the guards on the train. He was convinced it would get him and Voight inside, and that was all he needed. His wartime training would do the rest.
Franklin Voight was on the other side of the building, pacing. The light of two large lanterns showed the dark storefronts of what little of Truckee there was to see. It was not much: two homes, their windows lit; an occasional child and a dog; a pedestrian now and then. The small white-haired trainman James Grand—excited for the impending arrival of the Civil War hero and American president Ulysses Grant—could not stop practicing what he would say if his eminence got off to stretch his legs.
“The town has only been in existence since eighteen sixty-three, when it was called Gray’s Station after Joseph Gray, who had a roadhouse on the old Trans-Sierra wagon trail,” he said, fast and sure. “Our blacksmith, Sam Coburn—who would be honored to meet you, Mr. President, sir—is still around, which is why our town was renamed Coburn’s Station after three years. When the Central Pacific Railroad came through, they renamed us Truckee to pacify the local Paiute, whose chief was Tru-ki-zo.”
Unlike Martins, Voight listened to the man; it was something to do.
There were a few people inside the depot, all seated, eager to meet the president. Some were eating picnic basket food they had brought, expecting the delay. Buggies sat outside, horses were hitched to a rail, and there was a general quiet upon the place. On the opposite side of the tracks were the water tower and the train works for repairs. It had been busier earlier when a two-man crew was making ready to water the locomotive. Now there was nothing to do but wait.
The sun and the train arrived at almost the same time.
Almost at once, the trainman rang a bell to alert the sleeping town that Mr. Grant was finally arriving. The people in the depot rose up from their torpor, the man awaiting Grant jumped to his feet, and the citizens of Truckee began slowly to arrive like pigeons to seed.
Voight took a last look through the crowd, saw nothing suspicious, and went to join Martins.
The wooden platform shook as the headlight came round a turn. The whistle blew shrill but proud, ivory-colored steam poured into the sky, and the crew on the other side of the tracks was up and ready. The president was not scheduled to stay very long, and they did not want to be responsible for any delay.
The trainman came around back, fixing his hat and tie, his heart thumping. He smiled broadly when blacksmith Coburn arrived with his wife and apprentice. Red, white, and blue banners were draped beneath the windows of the two cars, and they danced in the bursts of steam from below. Military guards were stationed at the front doors of the two cars, on both sides, with two men in the caboose.
The train slowed with a grating cry, sparks leaping, the engineer leaning out the window with a tired smile.
“Ya made it!” the trainman shouted.
“Rocks on the tracks back at the tunnel,” the engineer shouted back as they pulled in. “That was the whole of our problems.”
“I’m sure the president understood!”
“I hear he was asleep most of it.”
The engineer made a tipping motion with his left hand. Grand thought it disrespectful and wagged a finger at the man.
The giant black engine groaned to a stop as more citizens arrived at the station. Grand urged them to keep back, since the president—if he was awake—would need room to breathe.
Martins stood near the locomotive, where Voight joined him.
“This is going to be easier than I anticipated,” Martins said. “If he comes out, we address him directly. If not, we’ll wait until they are ready to go and then confront the guard. He can’t afford to turn us away . . . and there won’t be time to take it up the chain of command.”
There were at least two dozen people clustered in a semicircle around the first car. There was a sense of import, there were the buzz of voices and the slosh of water pouring into the water compartment behind the locomotive, and finally one guard, then another, with stoic expressions and searching eyes, stepped from the railcar, armed with rifles, and gently urged the crowd not to press forward.
Martins and Voight stood on the periphery as the trainman and Coburn wormed their way to the front of the throng. When the stocky figure of Ulysses Grant appeared on the steps, smiling and waving a thick hand with a thick cigar, general applause rose along with cheers from people grateful for his achievements, which, by extension, included this great railroad.
“Good citizens,” he said, “I am humbled by your reception and grateful that I can actually see you, since all the reporters and their blamed flash powder are in San Francisco.”
There was general laughter as the trainman presented the blacksmith and his guests and the crowd moved in a little against the unyielding guards and droplets of water splashed upon those at the fringes of the growing multitude.
“We had better get to the guard,” Martins told Voight as more people arrived behind them.
While the president shook a few nearby hands and smiled at the ladies and children, the two men shouldered their way through the crush. They drew annoyed looks from those they pushed aside, and they made quiet apologies.
“Excuse me. This is important,” Martins droned softly but firmly. “The president may be at risk.”
The two men finally reached one of the sentries, a man of some thirty years who scowled at them from beneath his thick mustache, and his rifle held diagonally across his chest, he used it as a barricade to keep the men from breaking through.
“Officer, I bring news for the president,” Martins said. “From the Pinkerton men.”
The guard’s gray eyes looked at the man, who was lit only by the light spilling from the inside of the train, the new sun being on the other side of the depot. The soldier was quietly sniffing; his second responsibility as a sentry, after first stopping a man, was to determine whether the person was drunk. This one was not.
“Your hands, sir,” the officer said. “Let me see them.”
Martins raised them, as did Voight his own. The eyes of the two Confederates were looking past the sentry. The spray had stopped, the water chute having been swung from the train, and there was no doubt that the train’s departure was imminent.
The sentry turned to call his superior, a major who was standing behind the president. His about-face was met instead by the wife of Mr. Coburn and the blacksmith’s apprentice.
The eyes of Bill Beaudine and Aggie-Rose Sanchez looked past the officer and met those of Goodman Martins and Franklin Voight. The certainty of recognition fell first across the face of the Pinkerton man, then tightened the expression of the Confederate lieutenant. From the bottom of his eye, Martins saw the man flip back the label of his jacket, which had been turned over, to reveal his badge.
