Power in the Blood by Greg Matthews
He began to quake, as if the air suddenly had turned cold, and he could not stop. His flesh vibrated on his bones, his teeth clattered uncontrollably, and he voided his bowels of a hot slime. He could not keep from moaning low and long; every breath he took into himself he let escape as a moan or sigh, and his hands clasped at each other with a grip so weak with fear his fingers slid constantly from their fellows in an unconscious washing motion he was unable to stop.
At last rubble began cascading nearby, and he saw a beam of light brighter than the sun come lancing through into his chamber. Slade vomited and turned his eyes from the carbide flame, and dared not look into the furthest corner, at the stones piled there, for fear they did not hide his secret as well as he hoped.
“I see him!” yelled a voice, but Slade could no more understand it than he could have a foreign tongue. The voice called more words back into the tunnel, and more rubble was loosened. Slade faced the streaming light through latticed fingers, and rose clumsily to meet the figure that came sliding down into his hole.
“Me …,” he said, as the figure stood and approached him. “There’s only me.… Nobody else, just me …”
The bathhouse was honored to wash him clean. He was given new clothing and boots and a new hat, all finer than he was accustomed to. He ate like a king, but would drink only water, and would say of his ordeal only that he remembered nothing, nothing at all after the timbers broke and the tunnel came crashing in from above. He learned he had been trapped sixteen days and nights. Newspaper reporters asked if faith in God had saved him, and Slade nodded. He was four hours out of the ground, and life was good until a well-dressed man disturbed his meal at Molly’s Eating House by sitting at the table without asking permission. Slade disliked him for that, and took his time answering the question, “Would you care to meet your employer? He certainly would like to meet you.”
Slade was fairly certain he had never been inside so fine a carriage before. It carried him up the eastern slope of Glory Hole and deposited him outside the mahogany doors of Elk House. The well-dressed man escorted him into the presence of Leo Brannan, of whom Slade knew precisely nothing. He certainly was not an impressive fellow to look at, and he appeared even more ill at ease than his guest.
“Please sit down, Mr. Slade. A man in your position must not feel quite able to stand for long. Please, sit.”
Slade listened while Leo Brannan offered his congratulations over the timely rescue and the remarkable fortitude displayed by one of his men. “I have in mind a small ceremony, Mr. Slade, scheduled for tomorrow if you feel able to manage it, that will celebrate, or consolidate if you will, the joy every person in Glory Hole feels at your liberation from darkness and despair. The town square would be an appropriate venue, I think, don’t you, Price?”
“A perfect setting,” agreed the well-dressed man.
“Do you feel yourself capable of attending, so short a time after your ordeal, Mr. Slade?”
Slade nodded. He had noticed at last that the man talking to him had one blue eye and one brown eye, a combination Slade thought fascinating. Leo Brannan reached into his jacket and produced a hundred dollar bill. This was passed to Price, who passed it to Slade. “You are indeed a stout fellow, and it’s my wish that you take this small offering to use as you please. There can of course be no true compensation for your suffering, but this may go some small way toward easing your return to the world.”
Slade fingered the note. He had never seen one before.
“Maybe you’d like to thank Mr. Brannan,” hinted Price.
“Thank you.”
“Good day to you, Mr. Slade, and also good luck, although you probably have no need of that commodity at the moment.”
Slade pocketed the money and stood. He let Price open the door for him. Slade began walking down the wood-paneled hall, retracing his steps toward the front door, keeping Price a step or so behind, just to let him know he didn’t care for him. He wondered, as he walked, what he should do with the one hundred dollars. Turning a corner into the main corridor, he saw an extraordinarily large vase of delicate blue color, almost as tall as a man. Standing beside it was a young girl whose face bore a large stain, her left eye lost in a half-mask of blue much deeper than that of the vase.
Rowland Price did nothing to stop Slade’s descent onto the plush carpeting, but stared at the man as he lay twitching on his back. Price had himself found young Miss Brannan’s face a shock on first arriving at Elk House to act as personal secretary to Leo Brannan and liaison between him and the Praetorians, but he thought a reaction such as Slade’s was excessive.
The fit ended as quickly as it had begun, and Price assisted the man to his feet. “Mr. Slade, are you quite sure you’re ready for Mr. Brannan’s proposal? I know I could persuade him to postpone the celebration a day or two.”
Slade shrugged him off and looked around. Price saw that Omie was gone, as if she never had been there. He had been warned in Denver that the girl was strange, and was under instruction to assess any potential embarrassment to her stepfather once Brannan entered public life as leader of the Praetorians.
Slade began walking again, this time with less swagger. Price assumed the fall was a result of not having slept since being freed from the mine. The man was remarkably tough, but there was something behind his eyes Price disliked, some other entity besides that of a brave miner.
On the drive back down to Glory Hole, Price suggested to Slade that he take himself to bed and recover fully for the next day’s gala occasion. Slade ignored him. Price thought it ironic that such a boorish individual was about to receive public approbation as a hero.
“I’m told they haven’t yet found your other partner, Slade. They found Shoupe on the way through. Where was McCaulay, do you know?”
“With Shoupe.”
“That whole area has been explored, all the rubble taken out, but no McCaulay. They’re continuing to search. Mr. Brannan has promised both the widows a company funeral for their men, so he’ll be found.”
“I want to walk.”
“Pardon me?”
“Let me out.”
“You prefer to walk?”
“Stop and let me out.”
“You need to stretch your legs, is that it?”
Price hammered on the carriage roof. A small door behind the driver’s box opened. “Yessir?”
“Stop here, please.”
When Slade stepped down, Price closed the door and said, “I know where you live. The carriage will be sent for you a little before noon tomorrow.”
Slade nodded, then watched the carriage continue descending the road to town. When it passed around a curve he began leaping down the mountainside as fast as the slope and his diminished strength would allow, his new boots kicking up dirt and cinders from the denuded earth. At the bottom he waited by the railroad tracks for a short while until one of the three daily coal trains passed by, returning its empty cars to Durango. He hid behind low brush as the locomotive steamed by, then ran alongside the train until he could grab hold and swing himself aboard one of the cars. Knowing he might be seen riding on the platform, Slade climbed inside the open clanking steel box. His new clothing was instantly blackened by coal dust.
He had known from the moment he saw the girl in Brannan’s big house that they would find the body of McCaulay. She was connected somehow with his time buried in the mine, he could not remember why, but her face with its inky blot around the left eye saw through him, Slade could tell. He had to get away while he could, before they dug up McCaulay, or the girl spoke to someone in the big house, and they came to capture him and hang him. He could not allow that to happen. He had done nothing wrong. They could search for him all they wanted, but they wouldn’t find him, now that he was moving again. It had ended that way before, with Slade being carried away to safety from the scene of some tragedy he had not caused, an accident of some kind for which he would be blamed anyway. It was not fair that he was not permitted to remember the detai
Slade knew the empty cars were taken to Leadville, but from there he was uncertain of their direction. It made little difference, really, so long as he was able to keep heading away from the Grand Mogul mine and what had happened there. The air was cold but his new coat was warm. He would ride the car as far as circumstance allowed, then disappear with his hundred dollars into another state, another life.
33
During the first month Drew rode with Lodi, no one was killed. The gang successfully robbed two banks and one stage. Shots had been fired, but none found their mark. Wealthier by more than seven thousand dollars, Lodi decided they should rest up in a place he knew, a cabin deep in the mountains, inaccessible to anyone unfamiliar with its hidden approaches.
Drew admired the man who had rescued him from jail, but did not like him. Lodi was not a man who encouraged friendship from his followers so much as he required loyalty, unquestioning and unstinted. Drew managed to act the role of grateful acolyte without undue strain on his pride, but he could not warm to Lodi as he did to Clarence Dustey. Nate Haggin was not without friendliness, when Drew had been accepted as a functioning member of the gang, but Clarence, a compulsive talker once his confidence was won, found in Drew a listener with endless patience and little criticism.
Drew learned from Clarence more than any man had a right to know about another, including intimate descriptions of Clarence’s three marriages to women unaware of each other’s existence. He had a wife in Montana, another in Utah and a third in Grand Junction, Colorado. His fourth wife he did not count, since she had been seventy-eight when he married her in Missouri as a favor to a friend who wanted his mother worn to death in the marital bed so the friend might inherit her reputed wealth, some of which was supposed to come Clarence’s way once he had sent Minnie Rourke to her reward in heaven. He had entered upon matrimony in that instance, he assured Drew, not only for the benefit of himself and his friend, but for the sake of the widow Rourke, a decent old soul who should have been granted surcease from earthly toil by way of cupid’s arrow, but had taken that arrow in her teeth instead, and worn Clarence’s manufactured passion to a nub. Clarence had fled Missouri when his wrinkled wife began demanding more attention after dark than Clarence was accustomed to paying women a third Minnie’s age. “She was a hellion between the sheets, more’n a woman that old had a right to be, you ask me about it. Could be she was a witch even, I don’t know, but I never went back to find out, not this boy. I lost a good friend on account of that woman.”
“How do you support the other three, Clarence?”
“Well, I don’t, not regular, but they’re all good workers themselves, so the kids don’t starve.”
“How many?”
“Be eight of ’em when Mae drops around next July. She’s the one in Utah. Lodi says I can go see her pretty soon, take her some cash if I got any left by then.”
“You won’t spend any up here, Clarence.”
“No, but here to Utah’s a fair stretch, with temptation along the way. By God, I just better be good if she’s gonna get some. I never hit any one of ’em, but I tipped my hat to temptation a considerable number of times in between getting hitched. That’s where the money goes, boy.”
“How does Lodi spend his?”
“I never asked. He’s a sinner, same as me, and Nate too, but not near so much. I believe Lodi, he’d put it in a bank if he could just find one that’s robber-proof. That ain’t his name, by the way. He’s from Lodi, Wisconsin, he told me one time, but that’s all he told. Where you from, Bones?”
“New York State.”
“I never went further east than Saint Louis, myself. Nate, I believe he’s been to New York, only he don’t talk about it, or anything else much. This outfit never did have anyone in it that’s willing to talk.”
Drew’s share of the robbery proceeds came to less than a thousand dollars, since he was considered an apprentice. He was tempted, while they lazed around the cabin waiting for time to pass, to saddle up and ride away before harm came to himself or anyone who might get in Lodi’s way during the course of a holdup. This idea seldom lasted longer than five minutes. Working with a gang had not been his plan, but his efforts alone had brought such poor results, he was not driven to leave his teachers until he had learned more of their technique. When he had a substantial bankroll of his own he would quit, without asking Lodi first. Lodi had reminded Drew several times of his debt, and seemed the kind of individual who would not be inclined to accept nonpayment; a dangerous man to cross, was Drew’s cautious assessment, and he planned to take his leave of Lodi only if he should chance upon an opportunity to do so without risk.
The weather forced Lodi’s men into closer fraternity than any of them, with the exception of Clarence, had any liking for. A blizzard late in February kept them snowed in for several days, their only opportunity for relief from the cabin’s smoky air the occasional trip to a latrine hole nearby, or to ensure that their horses were safe in the stable.
When the skies cleared, Drew was ordered to fetch oats and supplies from White Cloud, a town about nine miles away. Nate Haggin would accompany him, and they would take another two horses to serve as pack animals. Drew understood that Nate was to be his partner on the trip, rather than Clarence, because Nate was capable of shooting him should he attempt to absent himself indefinitely. He was not permitted to take any money other than the amount necessary for their purchases. No warning was given, nor needed, to let Drew know he was still serving a term of probation in Lodi’s eyes.
On the ride to town Nate kept his horse a few paces behind Drew’s, even when the trail was wide enough to permit riding side by side. The insinuation was so clear it began to irritate Drew.
“How long does it take before Lodi trusts a man?”
“Depends on the man. A year, maybe, for some. Lodi’s a careful feller is all. He’s got his own way of doing things, and you better do it like he says or be answerable for it, so I’m doing like he said. Don’t take no offense.”
“How many years have you been riding with him?”
“Three. Men that rode longer with Lodi are all dead now. Lodi, he’s never been winged, even. Got a charm from a nigger woman tied around his ankle, keeps him from harm, they say. I expect every man’s got to die, but Lodi don’t intend for it to happen anytime soon.”
In White Cloud, Drew purchased all the necessary supplies while Nate busied himself in the saloon. Drew joined him there after loading the horses and hitching them outside. Another snowstorm was advancing on the town, darkening the sky as Drew entered, and the lamps over the bar caused the glasses lined up there to twinkle and shine in a way that made him instantly thirsty, eager to linger and make conversation, even with so untalkative a man as Nate Haggin.
Nate had a bottle before him at a corner table, a quarter of its contents already gone. Drew pulled out a chair and sat. “More snow coming,” he said, noting that Nate had been companionable enough to provide a second glass.
“Figures,” said Nate. “I ain’t gonna pour it for you.”
Drew tipped whiskey into his glass and drank it down.
“You get everything?”
“I did, and there’s money left over.”
“We’ll lose it here, then.”
“You want to try for home while there’s light?”
“No, and it ain’t what I’d call home. They won’t be expecting us back till tomorrow anyway.”
“Then I’ll go put the horses in the livery stable.”
“After you drunk another drink you can do that. You the kind that’s got to be taking care of business right this exact minute, Bones?”
“I believe I am. Does that cause you pain?”
“I see enough of it, it might.”
Drew poured himself another drink, aware of
“Why so?”
“On account of he’s a deputy marshal or detective or some such. I seen him a year or two back, poking around after us when we done the bank in Monte Vista. He’s the one. Name’s Torrence. He’s a Pinkerton, I remember now.”
“Think he’s watching out for us?”
“Naw, most likely come around here to make sure his granny got her liquor supply all right. Listen, fool, he’s gone over to the stove to get warm, and he’s pertending not to look this way, but now and then he does, so it’s him all right, and I figure he knows me for who I am, only he don’t know you. Shame you went and sat down here like you done, Bones. You coulda stalked him like he’s doing to me. Well, he’s seen us together now, so you’re in this thing deep as me. This feller, he’s a mean one, I heard, so you and me together, we’re gonna have to kill him dead before too long, see.”
“Why not just leave and lose him in the dark?”
“Because with snow coming on like you said, he’d track us easy, dark or not. Better get used to the notion there’ll be blood before we make it back to the others, you hear me? You got the stomach for what we need to do, Bones?”
“Surely.”
“Surely, shit. You better not fade out on me now. He’s here to get my hide and yours too now, so don’t be letting him, is all I’m saying. You do what I tell you and we’ll take them supplies back like we planned, and the Pinkertons, they’ll have to recruit theirselves another detective man, because this one here won’t be around by sunrise.”