Iron Ties Part 36

"Haven't heard?" Delaney didn't sound the least bit sorry. "He's dead."

The universe shrank down until Delaney's eyes-black pools of malice-and his crooked smile filled it.

"You're lying." Her voice seemed to come from far away.

"Why would I lie? He was shot in the back a couple of days ago. Ask anyone working the Rio Grande, they'll tell you the same."

Couple of days ago.

The response she'd formulated to throw into Delaney's smirking face stuck in her throat.

All the questions she'd planned to ask Preston. All the apologies, explanations she'd planned to give, when she saw him again. All died inside her, unspoken.

"Wouldn't you know," he continued in a conversational tone. "The Holt kid's been missing ever since. Bets are, he pulled the trigger. That whole clan was trouble from the word go. Payroll guards, bulls.h.i.t. Didn't trust none of them. Roamin' around, stickin' their noses where they didn't belong. p.i.s.s-poor Missourians to a man. Good riddance."

The brandy dregs struck him straight on, drenching his hat, collar, and jacket.

"Get out!" said Inez. "Now."

Delaney took out his handkerchief and mopped his face, not taking his eyes from Inez.

Abe was suddenly beside her. "Think you heard the lady."

Delaney pushed off from the bar. "Where I'm from, ladies don't wear trousers and hang around with n.i.g.g.e.rs."

Abe seized Inez's arm, guessing correctly that she was ready to throw the snifter at the railroader. "Let him go, Mrs. Stannert. Man just wants to stir things up. Ain't worth the cost of the gla.s.sware or a bullet."

Once Delaney was gone, Abe eased his grasp and slid a gla.s.s of whiskey in front of her. "Mrs. Stannert, I'm thinkin' you need this."

She still gripped the empty gla.s.s. The aromatic fragrance of spilled brandy filled her head. She put the snifter down with extreme care, as if it could shatter more easily than the most fragile of dreams. "I need some air. For just a minute."

She headed for the Harrison Avenue door.

Outside, a surging ma.s.s of humanity crushed the streets and walkways. Civic and military organizations marched up and down Harrison, nearly obscured by clouds of dust.

Inez leaned against the plank exterior of the Silver Queen. She closed her eyes, turned her face skyward, and focused on her senses-touch, sound, taste. Anything that could counteract the surge of emotions threatening to engulf her. Heat of the sun on her face. Discordant music from bra.s.s bands, all practicing their separate tunes for General Grant's arrival. Shouting of orders. Solid beat of marching feet and hooves. Dust stinging the inner pa.s.sages of her nose. Thrumming of the boardwalk through the soles of her shoes.

The warmth on her face vanished. She opened her eyes to clouds across the sun.

A familiar voice at her elbow said, "Mrs. Stannert?"

Inez looked over at Terry O'Loughlin, tapping a white envelope against her lower lip.

Terry appeared relieved. "I'm glad I found you here. I have a message for you. And I wasn't certain about the propriety of...." She glanced at the saloon.

Inez pushed away from the wall. "I thought you were keeping Susan company at her studio."

"I was. But she closed the shop when she left with the railroad man."

"Railroad man?" Alarms went off in Inez's mind. "What railroad man?"

The blat of a sour trumpet drew Terry's attention to the street. She looked back at Inez, startled. "What? Oh. It's all right. Susan knew him. She introduced him as 'the professor.' Anyhow, he said there was some new evidence and Mr. Preston Holt wanted her to come down right away and take a look at the place where the accident had been. He said it was very important. I know she didn't want to miss the parade, but he promised to get her back by nightfall. I offered to go too, but the little dogcart he brought would only hold Susan and besides-"

"The professor?" Chills started at the base of Inez's neck and spread over her shoulders and down her arms like a contagion. "He said Preston Holt had questions? Now? Today?"

"Well, yes. Isn't that the Mr. Holt we met at the restaurant?"

"Miss O'Loughlin. Terry." Inez seized her hand. "Preston Holt is dead. He died several days ago."

Terry's mouth fell open. She looked down at the envelope in her hand. "I don't understand. The professor, he asked if I knew you and if I would deliver this." She thrust the envelope at Inez.

Inez seized the envelope and ripped it open so violently that the paper inside almost escaped. She gripped the single page: Mrs. Stannert, Heed these words carefully. It's my guess our journey has become clear to you, and we cannot take a chance of you telling others. Your friend is well. But, we travel a dangerous road. It's best for all if you keep your qualms to yourself. When we succeed, and you'll know when we do, your friend will return. If we are intercepted and our journey's cut short, pray for your friend's soul.

The note was unsigned, but Inez knew that tiny, cramped script as well as she knew her own.

Something is about to happen, and he thinks I know what it is. Something that impelled him to take Susan to guarantee my silence.What? What is it?

Her mind raced frantically, searching out connections she'd somehow missed.

What did she know for certain about Brodie Duncan? That his father was from Missouri. His mother from Tennessee. That he was in Tennessee at the war's end, went to Scotland for a time, and returned to Missouri to teach in the same small town where he'd been raised. That he knew the Holts and Eli and Lillian Carter. That he traveled out with Hiram and Reuben to Colorado, and was privy to Rio Grande business through his job. That he'd bought a prospector's kit, but took only the rope, pickaxes, and giant powder.

And she knew his destination, if that much of his story to Susan was true. A big "if," she had to admit. But it made sense that he'd tell Susan the truth of that so she would not raise an alarm on the journey. But if she becomes suspicious of his motives, what will he do to her? Kill her, no doubt.

Inez shoved her panic aside and forced herself to picture the view from Disappointment Gulch. The landscape opened before her, in her mind's eye. The main railroad track. The siding and cars. The abandoned charcoal kilns.

The trestle.

Certainty dawned like the white-hot morning sun.

"Oh my G.o.d!" Inez said aloud.

He's going to blow up the trestle and the incoming train. The train that's bringing General Grant to Leadville.

She fixed Terry with a hard stare. "I've got to go. Right now. Thank you, Miss O'Loughlin. And please, tell no one about this message. No one!"

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO.

Inez spotted the bend that heralded the approach to the gulch and the kilns, and pulled Lucy to a stop. Lucy's sides heaved, the near flat-out run from Malta having taken its toll on her.

Back at the saloon, she'd pulled Abe aside and thrust the crumpled note at him. "From the professor. He obviously doesn't know me very well or he'd never have sent this note to me. I will not sit here obediently, faint and trembling like some hysterical woman, while he rides off with Susan to....You know, I didn't see clearly what he was up to until this note. If he'd just snuck off to do his dirty work and left us alone....Unfortunately, he didn't spell out his plans or even sign the note. So it's going to be hard to convince anyone of the danger, based on what this note says."

She then provided Abe with the briefest of explanations, along with her ultimate destination.

"d.a.m.n, Inez. You can't go alone." Abe looked around the crowded bar. "I'll come with you."

"No! The note says he'll kill her if....Abe, I won't chance anything until Susan is safe. After that, I'll find a lawman to deal with him properly. Keep the note. Show it to no one but Reverend Sands, should he come by. But tell the reverend, we must be careful. For Susan's sake."

Inez had dashed upstairs to change into the same dusty men's clothes from the previous week. She grabbed her pocket revolver and, with only a moment's hesitation, the Sharps rifle and its box of linen-jacketed cartridges. I need something for distance. I doubt very much that, if I'm right, the professor will simply allow me to stroll up and stick my pistol in his back.

His back.

Preston Holt had been shot in the back.

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she scrubbed them away roughly.

Inez pushed Lucy hard down the oddly vacant road. Travelers and residents along the Arkansas Valley, she thought, most likely were gathered at the stations where Grant's train might stop. Every one of them no doubt hoping to get a glimpse of the great man or shake his hand.

But the folks in Malta and Leadville may not get that chance, if I'm right about the professor and no one stops him.

She clenched her teeth, the grit of dust grinding and drying her mouth, and pushed on. Lucy's hooves pounded in a beat that turned into a chant in her mind: Brodie Duncan. Brodie Duncan. Brodie Duncan.

Other thoughts clipped through her mind, making, breaking links, harmonizing or clashing like lines of music, the linkage of one note to the next, one small detail to the next.

The professor had taken the Whitworth rifle from under Preston's bunk-the very rifle Hiram had employed as a Confederate sharpshooter. But remembering the whispered conversation outside the bunk car, she was sure he'd retrieved it for someone else.

Reuben.

Hiram would have taught his son how to shoot, just as Hiram and Preston's father had taught them. A skill pa.s.sed on from father to son.

And did Hiram also bequeath his hatred of the North to his son?

Inez faltered.

Suppose Reuben is there? That it's not just the professor, but Reuben as well? I must be very careful. The stakes are so high. I must be sure of all the players, before I enter the game.

She remembered again Frisco Flo's comment that Reuben had a girl sweet on him. Inez thought back on the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl who shrank into the shadows when Reuben had entered the door behind her...and she bet she knew who the girl was.

And I'll bet that girl opened the window for him and the professor.

Why had he shot at her from the window? Because she'd thrown him out of the saloon? Because they'd figured out she had been hidden under the bunk when the professor had come for the gun? Or maybe they were afraid Susan had told her something about the deaths on the tracks, something that pointed back to them? And she had been asking lots of questions, circling around them, closing in.

It could be any of those, or some combination.

They probably wanted to get me out of the way.

And the professor had told Preston that Delaney was dead, that Reuben was to blame. A ruse to kill Preston.

He was getting too close. So who pulled the trigger? The professor? Or Reuben?

The part she couldn't figure was why Brodie Duncan was involved. There was something about him that rang true when he'd said, "It's not my war." He'd said not a word about Grant. The only general she'd heard him rail against was Palmer. Was Palmer on the train? The professor, with his position in the Rio Grande, would know. The invisible man-delivering missives, taking notes, walking a step behind the important men.

At the kilns, she stopped, dismounted, and listened. At first, all she heard was Lucy's labored breathing.

Suppose I'm wrong? Suppose he's somewhere else, that Susan is already dead.

Dread, dark as midnight, spread its wings inside her.

Pushing her fears aside, Inez laid a hand on Lucy's lathered coat and strained to listen.

Then she heard them. Men's voices. One shouting, one replying.

Two of them. The professor and Reuben?

She pulled Lucy around the cl.u.s.ter of kilns, looking for a place to tie her, and spied the dogcart and horse. Then, another horse as well.

Inez moved farther up Disappointment Gulch, to the very outskirts of the kiln field, and tried to tie Lucy to a crooked stump behind one of the towering, beehive shaped structures. Lucy snorted and pulled back, rolling her eyes. "Lucy!" she hissed, tugging on the reins. "Now's not the time." Then Inez became aware of the cloying sickly smell of rotting flesh.

In the westering sun, Inez saw the cloud of flies cl.u.s.tered around the mouth of the kiln, crawling through the cracks in the makeshift wood door blocking the entrance.

Holding her breath, expecting the worst, Inez grasped an edge of the door and pulled hard.

The door gave way. The dying sun picked out two misshapen lumps inside, blackened by charcoal dust, flies, and squirming vermin. Inez made out a hand, bloated, cracked, nearly eaten away except for a gold ring.

It was the only detail she gathered before turning away and vomiting on the dirt.

Wiping her mouth on her sleeve, she retrieved Lucy, who had backed away, and led her horse further up the gulch.

She pulled out Eli's Sharps rifle, thinking what pleasure it would give her to use it on the men who killed Eli and Preston, then moved toward the path up the side of the gulch.

Inez toiled up the short hill to the shoulder of the gulch where Susan had originally tied her horse and burro. If she was right, she'd see the professor and Reuben down by the riverbank, preparing the trestle for its destruction.

And I'll be above them, taking aim. Just like they did at Eli Carter.

At the top of the shoulder, she moved forward in a crouch, finally dropping to her belly at the sloping edge. She adjusted her slouch hat to shield her eyes. The sun rested on the peaks of the Sawatch Range across the Arkansas Valley. A bank of towering clouds hovered above, as if waiting for G.o.d's hand to push them down and crush the sun's fire against the peaks.

Down in the shadowed ravine of the river, she spotted a single figure, pacing on the bank. Revolver in hand. And a small campfire, smokeless, mostly coals and embers.

She shaded her eyes to be sure.

The professor.

Wearing a dark, military-style greatcoat, far too large for his frame. The greatcoat, she'd wager, off Preston Holt's back. A flash of anger seared her, quick as lightning. In its wake grew a steel cold resolve.

She opened the cartridge tin and set it to one side. The linen-shrouded bullets lined up like soldiers in the tin, waiting for their orders.

She poured the percussion caps into the top of the tin.

Loaded and readied the Sharps. Positioned a nearby flat-topped rock under the rifle barrel. Pulled the hammer back with her hand. Propped herself up on her elbows.

And waited.