Iron Ties (10 page)

Dance halls. Actresses.

Her hand balled into a fist against the doorframe. She said bitterly, almost to herself, “Nothing but trouble.” Unwanted, a vision arose of Mark, flush with winning at the Lone Star’s faro table. A blonde woman swinging herself onto his lap, stockinged legs flashing under a knee-length skirt, arm curled around his neck. The orchestra on the stage playing a fast version of “Little Brown Jug.”

“Inez.” Abe’s voice cut into her thoughts. “We’ve got expenses to cover. Bridgette. Sol. Now Taps. I don’t want to start buyin’ liquor on credit. And if you want to finish that fancy gamin’ room of yours upstairs, we gotta think about what’s gonna draw in the moneyed crowd this summer.”

She looked from the alley to Abe. His arms were crossed, his face tight.

“I’m just sayin’ let’s try them out, see how it goes. I listen to your ideas, like that buffalo, right? We’re partners, half ’n’ half.”

“Thirds.” She walked away from the door and faced him across the table. “It’s a partnership of thirds. Mark, me, and you. As Mark’s wife—” She stopped at Abe’s expression.

He spoke slowly. Deliberately. As if he wanted to be sure she heard every word he said. “I’m gonna let you reconsider playin’ that hand. If Mark were here, he’d see the sense of it. If you were thinkin’ straight—”

The passdoor flew open, and Bridgette burst into the kitchen.

Abe threw up an arm to keep from getting smacked in the face by the solid wood panel. Staccato hammering echoed from the barroom beyond.

Bridgette looked startled to find the kitchen occupied. Her gaze flitted over Abe and Inez, then zeroed in on the back door. “My lands! Who opened the door? It lets in all the flies!” She bustled to the back door and slammed it shut.

The temperature in the room ratcheted up a degree.

“Sol found a good Samaritan to give him a hand, seeing as there was no other help to be found.” She approached the pork and snapped a wave through the air. The flies scattered. “Now, Mrs. Stannert and Mr. Jackson, if we had one of those new doors, with those screens I keep hearing about, why we could get a nice bit of air in here and keep out the vermin.” She volleyed a look at the pair of them. “What are you two talking about that has you glowering like a pair of thunderclouds?”

Abe smoothed his mustache. Inez saw his shoulders ease down a bit, the tension flow out of his stance. “The act at the Opera House. We’re considerin’ havin’ them here to drum up business.”

“Michael, my eldest boy, says they’re very good.” Bridgette addressed herself and the cleaver to the pork. “He went to the opera just last Friday after he got off from his job at the smelter, that’s a good-paying job, it is. He couldn’t stop talking about them, the Mr. and Mrs. Fairplay. If they came here, we’d get quite a crowd.” She stopped chopping and looked up brightly. “Maybe Michael could help, if it doesn’t interfere with his job. He’d jump at the chance. I believe he has a bit of a case on the missus, the way he keeps talking about her.”

Inez threw up her hands. “Very well. We’ll talk with them tomorrow.” She brushed past Abe and said, “Sorry, Abe. It hasn’t been a good morning so far.”

He followed her out into the barroom. “You talk with Ayres?”

“I did. He says they cleared the tracks and found no bodies. Ayres thinks Susan was imbibing and not thinking right after that knock in the head. If that particular fabrication makes its way around town….” She shook her head, thinking of the shambles it would make of Susan’s reputation, and by extension, her business.

“Hell of a thing.” Abe stared at the State Street entrance. Sol’s helper had crowded up onto the ladder and now struggled to hold the mounted trophy on the level while Sol pounded nails into the wood frame.

Abe looked back at Inez, bleak. “Here’s the deal. Long as that damn thing of Chet’s is hanging up there, you’re gonna give those actors a fair shake. If we can strike a reasonable deal, we’ll do it. And if the lady actors get happy while quotin’ Shakespeare and decide to show an ankle or throw a wink or two to the customers, you’re gonna just smile and pour the beer.”

Inez blinked, taken aback by his intensity. “Abe—”

“I’m not gonna see our business go bust, just because you can’t put the past where it belongs.” He moved off to steady the ladder for the two men.

Struggling to contain her ire, Inez went behind the bar for her apron. As she tied the strings behind her, she glared at the mounted head. It was, she thought, starting to look more and more like Chet himself. Unkempt, moth-eaten around the ears, glazed eyes, yet, despite its patent silliness, dangerous.
Damn your hide, Chet. You’d better make yourself worth the trouble by bringing all your paying buddies next time you show up and drinking like there’s no tomorrow.

Chapter Seventeen

“So, what are we looking for?” asked Sands. He stood next to Inez at the top of the ridge, gazing out at the view. The Collegiate Peaks marched south, while the Sawatch Range faced them across the river and the valley beyond.

Inez kicked at the dirt, part experiment, part frustration. All she got for her efforts was a puff of dust and another scuff on her worn riding boots. “I’m not certain. I thought perhaps the marshal and the railroad men didn’t look up here. Susan insists shots came from above her. This is as above as it gets.”

“Unless you want to climb this.” Reverend Sands leaned against a jagged finger of rock, nearly twenty feet tall, standing sentinel at the ridgeline.

Inez shook her head, then put a gloved hand on the outcropping, curling her fingers around one of its many stone protuberances and ledges. “No need to hazard life and limb. Whoever was up here would’ve had a good view of everything going on below, right from this point.”

Inez peered down to the ledge, nearly sixty feet below. She could clearly see the rubble that had pounded the hovel and Susan’s camera to smithereens the previous week. Looking over toward the train trestle and the gulch, she noted that the shoulder of the gulch, where Susan had tied her horse and burro, was hidden from view.

“He could have watched the tracks, seen the whole episode unfold,” she said aloud. “He might not have known Susan was around. You can’t see the spot where she left her animals from here. And you certainly wouldn’t see it from the back trail to the ridgeline. So Susan would not have been visible until she ran from the shed.” Inez thought a moment, then added, “No, probably not even then. With rocks and dust flying everywhere, I’m sure he didn’t linger.”

Sands leaned forward, examining the debris. “A convenient landslide.”

“I thought the same thing. Perhaps we should look around the tracks. I don’t believe those dead men got up and walked away. Particularly from under a ton of rock.” She paused. “The gunman might have stood right here.”

She looked at the ground, willing it to give up some secret, a clue. The dust, stones, and pebbles remained mute. She scuffed the earth again, none too gently. For the first time, a small worm of doubt wiggled its way into her thoughts
. Susan did have quite a dreadful blow to her head. Could she have possibly imagined it? The crack of rockfall transformed into gunfire? A discussion between two men, changed into a deadly argument?

The reverend’s arms snaked around her waist pulling her back against him. Her wide-brimmed hat tipped forward over her face.

“What are you thinking?” His voice sounded close to her ear.

She tugged her hat off and crossed her arms over his. “I’m just trying to see what Susan heard. If that makes sense. It’s tempting to think that perhaps the marshal might be partly right. That she remembers some garbled version of what happened. But that doesn’t play.”

She shook her head, frustrated. “There
were
two horses. One ridden by a railroad man. The other, if Hollis is to be believed, was ridden by his business partner, Elijah Carter. So, if Carter and the railroad man weren’t killed, where are they? Why leave the horses? And why isn’t anyone looking for them?”

“But when the rockslide was cleared, they found no remains.”

“And only Susan, you, and I believe that two men died,” added Inez. Suddenly, she stiffened. Remembering. “There’s one other. Hollis. He asked why I was so interested in Elijah’s ‘final hours.’ Now, why would he have said that unless he believed Elijah dead? And if that’s the case, how did he know?”

She broke away and turned to Sands. A frown of concern, mirroring her own, marked his countenance.

“Oh pshaw.” Inez felt irritated, unbalanced. “This just doesn’t make sense!”

The wind picked up, loosening the pins in her hair, whipping stray strands into her face. She pulled the hairpins all out and laid them on a stone ledge, nearly at eye level. “I know. I sound ridiculous. What am I thinking…that Hollis had some hand in killing his business partner? They fought in the war together. At least, that’s what Hollis claims.” She scrunched her hair into an untidy knot and attacked it vigorously with the pins. “I must have said something to him earlier. When I brought back the horse. He is so unpleasant that I just try to wipe my conversations with him from my mind.”

Her fingers sought the last pin. It evaded her grasp and fell behind the ledge. “Pah!” Inez stripped off her glove and groped in the crack at the back of the ledge. It was just barely wide enough for her slender fingers. She felt the blunt points of the pin.

And then.

Something more.

“What’s this?” She squinched her fingers around it and, unable to hold it properly in the confined space, managed to roll it up the inside wall of the crack and out with her fingertips. Sun glinted on a slender metal tube held between thumb and forefinger. Cylindrical, no longer than a hairpin.

Sands sucked in his breath and took it from her. Carefully.

The identity of the object came to her, just as he spoke the words: “A blasting cap.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Many folks carry blasting caps for explosives with them,” said Sands, throwing the statement over his shoulder as they rode down Disappointment Gulch to the track. “Miners—”

His gray horse slipped slightly on the steep trail. The summer wind blew the plume of dust into Inez’s face just as she opened her mouth to respond.

“Prospectors,” he continued.

Fine-grained grit coated her teeth and tongue. Inez pulled a soft, worn handkerchief from the pocket of her long riding skirt and spat into it, letting her horse pick the best way down behind Sands.

“How many people do you think traveled this road in the past six months, coming up from Granite, Canon City, Colorado Springs, Pueblo? There’s been prospecting around here and in the gulch. Then there’re the railroad surveyors and grading crews. The graders might’ve used giant or black powder through here to make enough room for the siding and railroad bed. There were crews from the Atchison road here last year, then the Rio Grande—”

“Yes, yes.” She tucked the handkerchief into her pocket. “But you said yourself, what a convenient time for a rockfall.”

The reverend’s horse reached the level at last. “A casual remark. Didn’t think you’d take it as gospel, Inez.”

They skirted the kiln field and finally arrived at the tracks and siding.

Inez squinted up at the rock wall, spotting Susan’s ledge and the scarred section where rocks had peeled off.

“Stop here.” She brought Lucy to a halt.

Sands dismounted and approached. “Remind me. What are we looking for?”

“Anything that will verify Susan’s story.” She took his proffered hand, extracted her left foot from the sidesaddle stirrup, her right leg from around the horn, and slid to the ground. She led Lucy over to the gray while Sands surveyed the landscape.

“The marshal and the railroad crew have been over this ground,” he said. “What do you hope to find that they might have missed?”

“I don’t know. But I found that blasting cap. My luck seems good, so I’m not about to stop betting on it now. What time is it?”

Sands squinted up at the sun. “I’d guess about ten.” He pulled out his gold pocketwatch and flipped open the casing. “Close. Quarter after.”

“Good. We have an hour, easy. I need to be back by three, and I know you wanted to stop and see how the county poorhouse was coming along on our way back.” She caught the reverend’s resigned expression. “What?”

“Thought the plan included a picnic by the river.” He glanced toward the streambed beyond the tracks. The sun sparkled off the fast moving water, which did not look muddy for a change.

“All right. Let’s take half an hour to look around. You check south, and I’ll go north.”

It was a futile half hour. Inez walked a good fifty yards of track toward Leadville, exploring the ground on either side, while Sands paced off an equal distance in the opposite direction. Inez spied a jumbled pile of damaged wood ties, off to one side. She walked about the pile and finally clambered up on its lower reaches, hoping to find…
What? Bloodstains on the wood?

The nearby Arkansas River tumbled ceaselessly over rocks, chuckling at her frustration.

“Inez, those could shift in a minute. Best come down.” Sands stood below, horses’ reins gathered in one hand.

Swallowing her disappointment, Inez climbed down. “Did you find anything?”

Sands held up a perforated tin can. “A few more like it and the remains of a cooking fire.”

“Well, that’s more than I found.”

Sands threw the can onto the woodpile. “I remember seeing a good place for a picnic close to here.”

They took the access path that meandered along a gravel bench by the river. The rock cliffs pulled away from the river as they neared the mouth of the gulch. They passed the trestle bridge that carried the rails across the river and Braun’s abandoned beehive-shaped charcoal ovens, the tall timber that had fed them once now gone, replaced by a forest of stumps. A little further on, a small copse of slender trees appeared with a glint of green sward.

Sands had spied it as well. “Over there.” He pointed.

Inez unpacked the rolled blanket and carried it to the grass sheltered in the ring of trees and bushes. She shook out the blanket and smoothed it on the ground, then straightened up and looked around. The access path and rock ridge were hidden behind the trees. The ring was broken facing the river, giving her an unobstructed view of the water and the steep bank beyond.

On the other side of the bank ran the main road up and down the Arkansas Valley. The same road that delivered the multitudes hoping for new lives and a lucky break in Leadville, as well as the many who gave up and left, searching for a future a little less hard, a little less cold.

Sands brought the bundled luncheon to the blanket, took Inez’s hand, and pulled her down beside him. She sat against a tree and rearranged her riding skirt. Sands removed his hat and lay back, resting his head on Inez’s lap. “This is more like it.”

Inez rested her hand on the bundle. “Hungry?”

He smiled up at her. The sunlight made his eyes blaze a startling light blue, nearly electric in intensity. “Not for food.” He took her hand in his, and held it to his chest. “For your company. And a few quiet moments. ‘My soul thirsts for the Lord.’ Psalm 23.”

She wove her fingers with his, and tipped her head back against the tree trunk. The leaves hissed in the breeze, creating a random pattern of shifting shapes against the sky. She closed her eyes, listening to the river, feeling the weight of the reverend’s head, the comfort of their fingers twined together.

Maybe it was the way his eyes had suddenly looked so blue—like Mark’s eyes
.
Maybe it was the sound of the river—a melody and discourse no musical instrument by man could recreate. Whatever it was, the feeling of the moment stirred something in her memory.

A recollection, long discarded, long forgotten, surfaced.

Another river, another stand of trees. Inez’s back resting firm against a boulder. Mark, his head in her lap. Their hands entwined, resting on Mark’s chest, where she could feel his breath rise and fall. Warmth of sun on her face. Katydids whirring. Abe sat close by, the soft sound of riffling cards almost hidden by the river’s speech, as he practiced a particularly complicated false shuffle. Mark looking up at her, his electric blue eyes teasing and warm, then glancing over at Abe. “This is the life. No responsibilities. No worries.”

Abe grinned back, teeth flashing as his hands smoothly, automatically, maneuvered the deck. “No worries? Thought those cowboys in that last town were gonna hog-tie and brand you for takin’ their wages.”

“All’s fair in love—” Mark winked at Inez— “war, and poker. Besides, that’s why I like havin’ a pretty woman sittin’ at the table and shuffling the cards. Figured the boys wouldn’t get too rambunctious with a lady nearby.” He squeezed her hand, and his voice dropped, wrapping about her like a private embrace. “My own queen of diamonds. You did right well at that cowtown back there. Always said you had the magic touch with those hands.”

He raised her hand to his lips. His kiss warmed her skin and sent a tingling down to her toes.

Mark murmured, “When we get to San Francisco down the road, I’ll see you have a different diamond ring for every day of the week. But to get to San Francisco, we work together.” His voice rose in volume to include Abe, and he looked from Inez to Abe, tying the three of them together with his voice and his gaze. “Equal partners, three ways. Taking on new towns, new adventures, whatever waits round the bend.”

New adventures.

The memory vanished, the voices from long ago merging into the murmur of the stream.

Inez sighed, opened her eyes, and stared out at the riverbank, unseeing.

Was that why he disappeared last year? He’d had enough of being tied down. Exhausted wife. Sick baby. The business of running the saloon. Saw a chance to move on to greener pastures. No responsibilities. No worries.

She shook her head and tried to banish the twisting ache in her heart, the ache she’d thought she buried so deep that even giant powder couldn’t blast it out into the open ever again.

The reverend squeezed her hand. She looked down at him.

His eyes no longer shone brilliant blue, but had faded back to gray. “Penny for your thoughts, Inez.”

“They’re not worth even half of that.” She withdrew her hand and reached for the picnic bundle. “We should dive into the food or we’ll be eating from the saddle. It’s simple fare. Bread. Cheese. Pickles. Some hardboiled eggs.”

“‘Man eats the food of angels.’ Psalm 78. Simple is good.”

He offered her his flask. She paused in her efforts to saw the loaf of bread with his pocketknife, accepted it, took a sip, and grimaced. “Water.”

“What? It didn’t turn into wine? Must have lost my knack.”

She rescued her own flask, lying on the blanket where she’d tossed it earlier. “I know you don’t indulge. But since I have no qualms….” The brandy went down smooth, warming her nearly as much as his smile and the sun.

He took his knife back from her and began slicing the cheese. Inez noticed that he was doing a much neater job of it than her ragged slices of bread. He paused, pointing the knife at her flask. “Do you carry liquor in that as a rule?”

“Never know when the weather will turn. Or when it might be needed for medicinal purposes. It came in handy for Susan.” Susan’s battered face flashed through her mind, followed by the blasting cap, safely wrapped in a linen napkin and tucked in her saddlebag.

Inez finished a bite of bread and cheese. “I still think that blasting cap indicates the rockfall might have been set off deliberately. Surely those who know about such things could look up at the face and tell whether it was an act of nature or man.”

Sands reached for the pickles wrapped in waxed paper. “Have you been to see Casey yet?”

“Who?” Inez was lost for a moment. “Oh! The lawyer. I’ve had no time.”

“No time?”

“I would have gone this morning, but we’re here instead.”

A rustling overhead exploded into a flurry of chirping and screeching. A large bird arrowed into the sky, chased by two others not even a quarter its size.

“You make time to chase after Susan’s ghosts but not to take care of business.” His voice was neutral. Flat.

“I will make time. I promise you.” Her voice grew hard in return. She picked up a slice of cheese, rolled it between her fingers. It formed a small cylinder, nearly the size of the blasting cap. “What do you mean ‘Susan’s ghosts’? Her injuries are real. The blasting cap is real. I thought you believed her.”

“I’m not saying I disbelieve her. But nothing so far supports her story.”

“There are two men missing,” Inez persisted. “Elijah Carter and a railroader. And, just before Carter disappeared, he told one of the local constables he was looking for Ayres, but he wouldn’t say why.”

“I don’t know Carter’s business with the deputy federal marshal. But if it was confidential, I can see why he’d not confide it to the local law force. Hard to say what’s happened with Carter. He might just be out of town for a while, despite Hollis’ words. Then again, he might’ve had enough of Leadville and gone to Denver or points south, west, north, or east. He could’ve been on his way to see Ayres and met up with road agents and come to harm. At this point, we can only toss guesses into the air. As for the railroad man, Preston and I talked about that. He said since the Rio Grande started laying tracks up the valley, the construction crews lose two or three men a day. Guess they figure prospecting or mining is more profitable than spiking ties or gandy dancing.” Sands glanced at the sun. “We’d best get moving if you must be back by three.”

Inez rolled the picnic remains into the blanket and Sands loaded the bundle into her saddlebag. He walked Inez’s horse over, remarking, “I’m not saying I have all the answers. But I’ve noticed that you’re spending a lot of time on this matter.”

“Susan is my friend,” Inez rested her right hand on the sidesaddle seat and placed her right foot in his laced hands. “It’s not as if I’ve friends in plentiful supply. I stand by the ones I have.”

She straightened her right leg; Sands pushed her foot upward. Once Inez was settled in the saddle, Sands mounted his own gray and they rode through the brush to the road by the railroad tracks. Ahead was the bridge that would take them over the river to the main road.

The near white sheen of the bridge’s fresh-cut lumber made her think of Mr. Braun, his remark about the church pews, his abandoned charcoal enterprise—now behind them—and his lumber company, still ahead on the way to town. “So has Herr Braun convinced the church board to replace all the pews with wood from his mill?”

“It’s not what I entered the ministry for,” Sands grumbled, “to referee discussions over—”

A flash of red, trapped against the timbered piling of the bridge, caught Inez’s attention. The rest of his comment was lost to her.

She pulled up and hastily slid off Lucy, holding tight to the horn to keep from falling face first to the ground. “One moment,” she called out, then half skidded down the embankment to the bridge’s trestle at the water’s edge. The crumpled rag was caught between wood and gravel bedding. Inez gingerly retrieved it. A strip of cloth, in red, blue, and what she thought might have been white at one time. Neatly bound on one end, unraveled threads on the other.

She turned to Sands, clutching it in her hand, her heart thumping wildly. “It must be! Susan mentioned a piece of colored cloth.”

Sands looked at her oddly.

“She said it seemed to be important.” Inez examined it. “This is long enough to wrap around a neck, tuck into a shirt. And a star here, near one end.”

“Would you like me to go back for the tin can?”

Inez looked up, surprised. “What on earth for?”

“Susan didn’t say anything about sharpshooters taking pot shots at cans?”

“That is quite uncalled for. It’s entirely possible that this cloth was blown up the track by the wind.”

“Throw it away, Inez. You’re turning trash into clues. If we were to scour the road into Leadville, I daresay we’d find more rags ground into the dust, a lost hat or two, a glove, thrown horseshoes.” He urged the gray onto the bridge. “But if we do that, you’ll not get to town by three.”