Ambush at Shadow Valley (18 page)

From another stuffed packing crate Soto lifted a bag of baking soda, a thermometer, a large glass separating funnel, a glass flask and glass measuring beakers. ‘‘When the ice arrives we will need water that has been boiled free of salts and minerals,'' he said to Clarimonde. Raising a finger for emphasis, he added, ‘‘It must be pure, cooled and sealed, for our purposes.''

She said with slight reluctance, ‘‘Do you want me to boil it?''

Soto chuckled. ‘‘Of course I want you to boil it. Are you afraid of boiling water?''

‘‘No, I just meant, what if I don't get it boiled pure, the way you said it has to be?''

‘‘Let me worry about that,'' Soto said. ‘‘Do as I tell you, and stop being so afraid.''

‘‘I will,'' Clarimonde said, noting all the while that he seemed to enjoy knowing that she was frightened of this powerful and dangerous knowledge of his. ‘‘Should I go do it now?''

Soto looked at her in disgust. ‘‘Yes, do it now! Do it and keep your mouth shut to everyone. No one needs to know how to do this but me.''

‘‘I—I wouldn't know what to tell anybody if I tried to,'' Clarimonde said, standing and turning toward the barn door.

‘‘Yes,'' Soto said to himself as she left, ‘‘stupidity is the thing I admire most about a whore.''

On her way to the house in the moonlight, Clarimonde heard a team of horses pulling a buckboard wagon along the path toward the front yard. From the front porch she heard one of the men call out to the others inside, ‘‘Flannery's back with the ice! Everybody get out here. Let's lend them a hand.''

‘‘It's about time,'' another voice called out. ‘‘We expected you three hours ago."

Clarimonde hurried forward and stopped in time to see Flannery and the other two men jump down from the wagon. Behind the wagon stood their horses, which they had picked up in Rusty Nail on their return trip through town. ‘‘We thought we were being followed,'' said Flannery, ‘‘so we made some moves for caution's sake.''

‘‘How did it go?'' a voice asked.

‘‘Smooth as virgin's lace.'' Flannery grinned in the moonlit night.

‘‘Smooth, ha,'' said Cruzan, he and Carver jumping down from the wagon. ‘‘We've traveled by horseback, train, handcar and buckboard! I'm dizzy from it.''

‘‘You were dizzy to start,'' Flannery called out, walking back, untying his horse.

‘‘But did you get the ice?'' Beck called out from the porch, stepping down, already noting the large blocks, the quilted insulated covers, as he stepped forward.

‘‘We most certainly did,'' said Flannery, leading his horse forward, reaching over into the buckboard and throwing back the wet covers. ‘‘It's nearly half the size we started out with, but there it is.'' He slapped a hand on a dripping ice block, causing water to spray in every direction.

Seeing Clarimonde standing nearby looking on, Beck asked her, ‘‘Well, ma'am, will this be enough to do the job?'' Having decided that she knew nothing about the process, he watched her expression to see how she would handle the answer.

Coolly, she managed to look him squarely in the eyes and say, ‘‘If it's not, I suppose we'll have to get some more, won't we?''

Beck liked the way she handled it. He smiled. ‘‘Yes, ma'am, I suppose we will, now that we know Flannery has such a knack for getting it.''

Soto had heard the buckboard rolling toward the yard and walked over from the barn. Stepping in beside Clarimonde, he looked at her, then at Beck, then at the large blocks of ice.

‘‘Is that going to be enough?'' Beck asked, gesturing a hand toward the buckboard.

Before answering Beck, Soto looked at Clarimonde and said, ‘‘Get inside and get the water boiling.'' Then looking back at Beck, he said without answering him, ‘‘Get it to the barn and get it into the ground. As soon as I finish setting things up and the water cools, we'll start making the first batch.''

‘‘Tonight?'' Beck asked, considering the darkness inside the barn. ‘‘By lamplight?''

‘‘Yes, by lamplight,'' Soto said smugly. ‘‘I could do this with my eyes closed if I wanted to.'' He stared after Clarimonde as she hurried away up onto the porch and into the house. Then he turned without another word to Beck and walked away.

Stepping in beside Beck, Kirkpatrick said quietly, ‘‘He thinks a lot of himself, doesn't he?''

‘‘Yeah,'' Beck replied, watching Soto walk toward the barn. ‘‘Much more than I'm starting to.''

‘‘What about this woman?'' Kirkpatrick asked. ‘‘Is he holding her against her will?''

‘‘I believe he is,'' said Beck. ‘‘But she'll never say so. He's got her too scared. She doesn't know whom to trust.''

‘‘What are we going to do about her then?'' asked the Tall Texan. ‘‘We can't risk her running away while we're in the midst of this big job.''

‘‘She's not going to run away,'' Beck said. ‘‘She knows it's not in her best interest. I've felt her out. This woman knows how to take care of herself.''

‘‘I hope you know what you're talking about, Memphis,'' said Kirkpatrick.

"So do I, T," said Beck, watching Clarimonde fade from the moonlight into the purple darkness. A few seconds after the barn door closed, he raised a hand, rubbed the back of his neck and looked all around the hill-encircled land.

‘‘What is it, Memphis?'' the Tall Texan asked. ‘‘You look like something's got you spooked.''

‘‘I don't know what it is,'' Beck said. ‘‘All evening I've had a feeling we're being watched from somewhere far off. Didn't feel it before tonight. Then all of sudden there it was.''

‘‘We've got ourselves well guarded here,'' said Kirkpatrick. ‘‘There's nobody going to slip in here on us without our knowing it.''

Beck shook off the feeling. ‘‘You're right. I must be more strung tight about this big job than I thought.'' They turned toward the house, yet his eyes still searched the dark purple horizon.

Chapter 15

Beck and the men looked down at the large blocks of ice in the hole in the barn floor. The blocks had been wrapped in their insulated quilt covers, and in turn covered with a thick layer of fresh straw. A few yards away the center of the barn floor had been raked and swept and covered with blankets to keep down dust. A five-foot-long wooden workbench had been set up, Soto's equipment and supplies sitting atop it.

‘‘That's all we can do here,'' Beck said as he and the others rolled their wet shirtsleeves down and buttoned their cuffs. Gesturing toward Soto, who stood bowed over two buckets of chipped ice and a bucket of the boiled, cooled water atop the workbench, he said quietly, ‘‘We best get out of here, so our genius can work.'' A few feet from Soto, Clarimonde stood watching Soto intently, ready at any moment to turn her face away as if fearing he might look around at her.

‘‘Now we're ready,'' Soto said, hearing the barn door close behind Beck and the men. Clarimonde watched intently as he took two glass laboratory measuring beakers from one of the buckets of chipped ice and set them on the bench. One beaker contained what Clarimonde, not standing close enough to read the measurement on the side of the beaker, could only determine to be three fingers of sulfuric acid. The other beaker contained half as much nitric acid. Soto had set the beakers in one bucket of ice to cool before mixing them together.

‘‘Come closer and watch how I stir this together, very slowly, very carefully,'' Soto said to her. ‘‘When I get everything mixed together, your job will be to keep everything stirring for the next two hours.''

Clarimonde only nodded, stepping in closer. She watched him slowly pour the two acids together into a glass flask sitting half-submerged in the other bucket of ice. When the two were in the flask he stuck the glass thermometer in it and said, ‘‘This mix grows warm, but it will cool quickly. When it reaches the right temperature, we mix in the glycerin.''

Clarimonde didn't dare ask what that temperature would be and alert him that she might be trying to learn the process herself. Instead she kept a secretive eye on the thermometer. Moments later, when Soto raised it, read it and said, ‘‘There, that is cool enough,'' Clarimonde could only note that the temperature was somewhere under the fifty degree mark. ‘‘Now,'' he said, ‘‘I add the glycerin, slowly.''

She watched as he added the heavy, syruplike glycerin to the acid mixture, committing every detail she could to memory, knowing that anything she missed she could never ask about. She had to learn the process on her own or not at all.

‘‘Now, we wait,'' he said, after several minutes of blending the glycerin into the acid mixture. Carefully, he pulled the flask up out of the ice and set it on the bench. Putting the thermometer down into the flask, he stepped back, rubbing his hands together, and said with what she read as a cruel smile, ‘‘The complicated part is done. You'll be doing most of the mixing now.''

Clarimonde didn't respond. She was ready. She could do this, she told herself.

A half hour after he'd mixed in the glycerin, Soto stepped back to the bench and examined the milky mixture closely. ‘‘Pour the water into the funnel,'' he said over his shoulder to Clarimonde.

‘‘Done,'' she said, when the last of the water had been poured.

‘‘Now, carefully pour the mixture into it,'' Soto said, watching the milky substance of acids and glycerin without facing her. . . .

While the two worked deep into the night, on the front porch, Beck and the Tall Texan stared now and then at the light glowing through the cracks in the barn walls. The rest of the men had given up over the past two hours and gone inside to bed. After a while, Kirkpatrick sighed and took the last swig of rye from a whiskey bottle. ‘‘Does it always take this long to make nitro?''

‘‘How would I know?'' Beck replied, his eyes going back to the image of a silhouette passing back and forth through the light inside the barn. ‘‘How long has it been?''

Kirkpatrick checked his pocket watch, then shoved it back down inside his vest pocket. ‘‘More than four hours. I didn't know anything took this long to make.''

Beck started to answer, but his attention went instead to the barn door opening and closing. The two stood up, watching the pale, grainy image of Clarimonde walk toward them in the moonlight.

‘‘May I get some coffee?'' she asked upon stopping at the edge of the porch.

‘‘Of course you can,'' said Beck. Before he could turn to Kirkpatrick, the Tall Texan had already turned toward the door. ‘‘It's going to be stout.''

‘‘Stout will do,'' said Clarimonde.

Beck noted a difference in her voice. It sounded stronger, more confident—the voice of a woman taking the reins, he thought. As Kirkpatrick stepped inside the house, he asked her, ‘‘How is it going out there?''

‘‘It's finished,'' she said, a certain amount of relief coming to her voice. ‘‘Suelo said to tell you we'll test some of it first thing in the morning.''

‘‘That's great news,'' said Beck. His tone lowered as he asked, ‘‘And how are you?''

‘‘I'm fine, thanks,'' she answered cordially, in the same manner anyone would have replied.

‘‘I see,'' Beck said, understanding that she was not going to take a chance at saying the wrong thing. Deciding not to push the matter, he said, ‘‘Then, I suppose we'll see just how good you and Suelo Soto both are at this come morning.''

‘‘Yes, we'll see,'' she said.

The front door opened and closed, and Kirkpatrick stepped out, carrying a hot coffeepot, a rag wrapped around the handle. ‘‘Watch it, ma'am. This is hot,'' he said, handing the pot to her carefully. ‘‘Take a good grip on the handle here.'' He held the pot around for her to take from him.

‘‘I've got a good grip on it,'' Clarimonde said, her eyes moving across Beck's as she spoke.

Beck smiled, getting her message. He touched his fingers to his hat brim toward her and said, ‘‘Night, ma'am,'' and he and Kirkpatrick watched her turn and walk away in the moonlight.

‘‘Well, that's good news,'' said Kirkpatrick.

‘‘Yes, good news indeed,'' said Beck. ‘‘I think I'll turn in now, see what tomorrow brings us.''

At dawn, Denver Modale, owner of the Big Diamond tent saloon, pulled his gallowses up over his thick shoulders and stepped out of the privy. He'd walked across the littered alleyway behind the big tent and started to step inside when a hand reached out of nowhere, grabbed his collar and slung him to the ground.

‘‘Whoa! Don't shoot!'' Modale cried out, looking up the open bore of Davis Dinsmore's cocked Colt, two inches from his nose. ‘‘I've got no money on me! I swear I don't!''

‘‘Shut up, Denver, you pig! It's not a robbery,'' said Dinsmore, tipping his hat up enough for the saloon owner to get a better look at his beard-stubbled face.

‘‘Damn it, Davis,'' Modale said, almost wishing it were a robber instead of his former brother-in-law. ‘‘Why'd you knock me down like this? Are you crazy?'' He started to get back on his feet, but Dinsmore's dirty boot pressed hard onto his chest, holding him down.

‘‘Not so fast, Denver,'' said Dinsmore. ‘‘We want some information. I'm hoping you're not going to make us beat it out of you.''

‘‘Not if I can help it,'' said Modale. ‘‘I've got nothing to hide and nobody to hide it from. Ask what you will.'' Lying back beneath the Dinsmore boot, he saw Neil Deavers step into view. ‘‘Detective Deavers?'' he asked, looking surprised and puzzled. ‘‘You're working with Davis Dinsmore?''