Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) (18 page)

“But the right of inheritance?” Hannah replied.

“Miss Ransdell, you have a superb head for calculation . . . for putting two and two together with respect to the value of the property to the railroad . . . but by your reasoning . . . by the inheritance issue . . .
I too
would have had a motive for the killings.”

“But you were hurt . . . and my father
wasn't there
.”

“Yes, but that's just circumstantial . . .”

“That's what I thought . . . until . . .”

“Until?”

“Until I saw my father's right-hand man . . . Edward J. Olson . . . with Lyle Blake and Joe Clark . . .”

“I see,” Stocker said. “They're not exactly the most upstanding citizens around these parts . . . but this is still what we would call ‘circumstantial' in the eyes of the law.”

“Until I overheard Blake and Clark in Blaine's store,” she said, dabbing at the tears on her cheeks with her handkerchief.

“What did . . . ?”

“Edward J. Olson has ordered them to go
kill
the Porter boys.”

“Why would he?”

“So they can't point their fingers at
my father
.”

“I think you're just jumping to conclusions,” the attorney said sympathetically. “I'm sure that it's all a big misunderstanding. Your father couldn't possibly . . .”

“I just wish I could get away,” Hannah said.

“Yes,” Stocker agreed. “A change of scenery can always do wonders for a person's mood. Do you have anywhere . . . ?”

“I have a friend down in Bozeman who has wanted me to see her new baby,” Hannah replied. “The child must be nearly walking by now.”

“That sounds like a wise course indeed,” Stocker said. “While you're gone, I'll look into the matter. I'm sure that there is an explanation, and I'll find it. Everything will be back to normal by the time you return.”

Hannah Ransdell thanked Virgil Stocker and took her leave.

Yes, a change of scenery
was
called for.

Visiting Rebecca and the baby would be a welcome delight. However, under the present circumstances, when a mystery so vexing had to be resolved, she questioned whether she should, indeed whether she
could
, pamper herself with an activity carried out purely in the indulgence of her own pleasure.

As she went to the stage company office to purchase a ticket on the afternoon coach for Bozeman, the wheels were turning in her mind. She knew that she needed to keep her attention on the task at hand.

Instead of returning to the bank, she went home to pack her bag.

As usual, she set the table for dinner, but she set it for one. She left a note for her father on the dining room table, explaining that she was going out of town for a week to visit Rebecca, whom she had not seen in some time. She knew that he knew that it was not like her to go off on a whim like this, but men generally thought of women as impetuous, so she was merely fulfilling a stereotype. Hannah scorned the idea of filling the pigeonhole of the inexplicably impulsive girl, but rationalized that there was no harm in using the stereotype to her advantage. Certainly, she should be allowed to use every means at her disposal in the furtherance of the task at hand—that being the resolution of the conundrum that continued to haunt her at every turn.

Yes, a change of scenery
was
called for.

Chapter 23

L
OOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER AS HE RODE,
B
LADEN
C
OLE
watched the rider in the blue coat grow smaller and smaller and finally disappear in the soft haze of gently drifting snowflakes.

He hoped that he had imparted good counsel to Joshua Morgan. He was not accustomed to the practice of giving advice in matters of the heart, and he was therefore unsure that telling a man to bet his future on a woman was something he was qualified to do.

Selfishly, he was relieved to have the sheriff out of his way. Even if Morgan did an about-face the moment he returned to Copperopolis, he would still be two days behind. Cole would never see him again.

Thankfully, the bickering between Gideon Porter and Jimmy Goode had slackened. They were exhausted after a short night and their uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. Cole reckoned that Goode might even fall asleep in his saddle if given half a chance.

By early afternoon, they were within sight of Sixteen Mile Creek, snaking between patches of ponderosa in the valley beyond. Here and there, the smoke from a prospector's cabin rose into the windless sky. Random snowflakes still fell like feathers escaping from a pillow. It was as though the sky really did not want to snow but a few flakes had slipped through the crevices in the pillowcase of low-hanging clouds.

Hoping to avoid as many of the cabins as possible, Cole left the trail. He knew that once they reached Sixteen Mile Creek it would not be hard to find it again.

Nor was he especially worried about a chance encounter with a prospector. Whereas a bounty hunter and his prisoners might raise an eyebrow elsewhere, here this fact would only convince the prospectors that they were merely passing through and not here to cast an avaricious gaze upon anyone's claim.

As he rejoined the trail on the banks of the creek, Cole was pleased to see that no one had ridden this way since the snow had begun falling early in the morning. They passed a place where a man was panning for gold. He had his gear stacked near where he was working, with his rifle at the ready.

Cole waved.

The man waved back with uncertain hesitancy and watched the three riders only long enough to be sure that they were not claim jumpers, before returning to work. Even all these years after the big strike at Confederate Gulch, everyone panning gold on Sixteen Mile Creek was certain that the next pan of gravel would be his ticket to El Dorado.

As it was growing dark, they saw another man at work on a sandbar that paralleled a stream entering Sixteen Mile Creek from the opposite side.

The man hailed them, raising his voice loud enough to carry across the sound and distance of the creek. “Howdy, strangers.”

“Hello,” Cole returned with a wave.

“Say there,” shouted the man, “I hate to bother you . . . but could I trouble y'all for a hand?”

“What did you say?” Cole asked.

“I could sure use a bit of help from you men,” he repeated. “My sluice got drug too far into the creek and I need a hand gettin' it back.”

Cole surveyed the scene. At first glance, it appeared as though the man had turned one bank of the side stream into a junk yard. All manner of boxes, pipes, and other stuff was scattered along it from where the man stood to a shack that lay about a hundred feet upstream. Two large dogs wandered about, looking idly at the man. Cole could see a sluice box that was about twelve feet from shore and sitting at an angle.

“I'll see what I can do,” he shouted back to the man. His mind told him to expect a trap, but his instincts told him that this was not one.

“I ain't goin' in that goddamn water barefoot,” Gideon Porter snarled angrily, having overheard the conversation.

“Oh, shut up,” Cole said, more annoyed than angry.

“Some sonuvabitch gave my boots to a goddamn Indian.”

“Shut up, Porter. You're not barefoot.”

“Moccasins ain't no damn good in a stream.”

Cole sent the two prisoners to ford Sixteen Mile Creek first and followed behind them as was his custom.

“Looks like you're ridin' with a couple of captives there, mister,” the man said when he saw that Porter and Goode were chained to their saddles.

“Yep,” Cole said, confirming the obvious.

“You a lawman?” the man asked.

“He's a goddamn
bounty hunter
,” Porter answered before Cole could say anything.

“I'll be danged to hell,” the man said, looking at Cole.

“I'm just like you,” Cole added. “I'm just trying to scratch out a living.”

He then ordered the two men to dismount and stand next to the horses to whose saddles they were chained. The two dogs barked vigorously until the man hurled obscenities at them, whereupon they slunk away to eye the proceedings from a distance.

With Porter and Goode in a position in which an escape attempt would be awkward to the extreme, Cole directed his attention to the prospector.

“Name's Walz . . . Jake Walz,” he said, extending his hand. He was an older man. He looked about sixty, though he may have been a younger man who had weathered to that appearance.

“Bladen Cole. These here are Porter and Goode. They got a date with the law down in Gallatin City.”

“I won't ask why,” Walz said. “Ain't in my nature to pry into somebody else's business.”

“What do you need done?” Cole asked, looking at the sluice box.

“The current done moved my box out of this here channel next to the shore and out onto yonder bar.”

“I see . . . and you need to have it dragged back in the channel here.”

“Yes, sir . . . I been trying to get it back. Workin' at it for more than a week. I had debated callin' out for help as I done with you, but . . . I'd be mighty obliged if you could help me.”

“Let's figure the best way to do this,” Cole said, studying the problem as presented. “You got a horse?”

“No, sir,” Walz said with a degree of sadness. “I did have, but I had to sell her off. All I got's the dogs.”

By his tone, he did not hold his canine companions in high esteem.

“Sorry to hear that,” Cole said sympathetically. Apparently, prospecting did not afford the steady income that would allow a man the luxury of keeping livestock. “Guess we could use mine.”

Walz waded into the frigid water to attach a rope to one end of the sluice box, while Cole anchored the rope to his saddle horn. The roan then pulled the sluice a few feet through the stream.

By repeating this process several times with the rope attached to various places on the cumbersome contraption, they were finally able to reposition it to the prospector's satisfaction.

When they were at last through, the sky was dark and snowflakes were falling heavier than before.

“Since its gotten too dark to travel, and since I've helped you out here, I was wondering if we could make camp up yonder in that clearing above your house?” Cole asked.

“Well . . .” Walz said thoughtfully as he stood on the shore shivering in his wet clothes.

He obviously prided himself on living alone. Most men in his profession tended to become hermits over time, regardless of whether they had any proclivity in that direction before taking up backwoods prospecting,

“Well . . . I reckon that would be all right . . . but I don't have no grub to offer.”

“That's fine,” Cole said. “We got our own . . . probably even extra that we can share with you.”

The man smiled at that possibility and scurried up the hill to his hovel to dry himself.

Cole was pleased at the bartering he had done. The dried meat was easily worth a campsite off the main trail along Sixteen Mile Creek, guarded by two dogs. However lazy they were, they were unafraid to bark at strangers.

Having set up camp in a place sheltered by a dense stand of tall cottonwoods, Cole took his prisoners down to Walz's house, carrying some dried buffalo meat that had been part of Cole's gift from O-mis-tai-po-kah and his people.

Walz welcomed them into his home, which was warmed by a fire in an ancient stove as potbellied as its owner. The house had the strong odor of having long been shared with the dogs, but at least it was dry.

“Nice place you got here,” Cole lied. “How long you been out here?”

“Since '69 . . . I came up from Confederate Gulch in '69,” he said. “Mighty nice of you to share provisions with me.”

“Mighty obliged for a place to camp.”

“I ain't had buffalo jerky in years. There used to be an Indian fella came through trading it, but I haven't seen him in . . . I can't remember when. I get me a couple deer every now and then . . . an elk maybe . . . put in a patch of onions and taters every year.”

“You got a regular farm up here,” Cole observed.

“Where'd you get this meat?” Walz asked.

“From the Blackfeet.”

“Whatcha doin' up in Blackfeet country?”

“Doin' a little hunting.”

“Get anything?”

“Yup.”

“What's it like up there? I've heard tell those redskins up there are truly untamed creatures.”

“Depends on who's writing the definition of ‘tame.'”

“Well, I reckon if you can come back with your scalp intact, that's sayin' a lot.”

“Reckon.”

“He had him a little squaw up there,” Gideon Porter interjected. “Didn't you, bounty hunter?”

“You didn't say you was a ‘squaw man.'” Walz smiled lasciviously.

“Ain't a squaw man,” Cole corrected, scowling at Porter. “I was takin' her back to her place after roundin' up some horses.”

“How
are
their squaws?” Walz queried.

“Wouldn't know,” Cole said.

“He shot my little brother for wantin' to find out,” Porter said.

“Your brother got himself shot for tryin' to cut up her face.”

Walz looked at Porter in disgust. Even to a recluse who had lived beyond the edge of civilization for a decade, the deliberate disfigurement of a woman's face was viewed with revulsion.

“The placers are still pretty active up this way,” Cole said, changing the subject.

“People do all right.” Walz nodded.

“That's good to hear.”

“You thinkin' about it, Mr. Cole?”

“I don't have the patience,” Cole said with a smile. “I don't like to be too long in any one place. That takes a special kind of man to put in all the years required.”

“I don't reckon to be here forever, myself,” said the man who had worked this obviously marginal claim for a decade. “I fancy myself as kind of a wanderer.”

“I see,” Cole said, wanting to laugh at the irony.

“I've got my sights set on some place warmer . . . like down in Arizona Territory.”

“I've heard of some pretty good strikes down there all right. How long you reckon you got on this claim?”

“Are you sure you ain't lookin' to nose in here?” Walz asked suspiciously.

“Absolutely not,” Cole assured him. “I like it warmer myself.”

“Ain't in my nature to pry into somebody else's business . . . but I suspect you do move around a lot in your line of work,” the prospector observed.

“Yep . . . Colorado . . . Wyoming . . . Like I said, I've developed a way of livin' that doesn't allow for staying around one place too long. I tried it down in Colorado and found out it didn't suit me.”

“That's me too,” the old man said thoughtfully. “I'm sure lookin' forward to gettin' a move-on myself.”

“So long as you don't nose in on the bounty huntin' business.”

“
What?
”

“That was a joke,” Cole said. “I was just funnin' y'all . . . I would no more expect you to get into
my
line of work than I would expect me to get into
yours
.”

“I see,” the prospector said tentatively, before breaking into a broad smile. “Listen . . . can I let you in on something?” Walz asked in a hushed voice, dramatically leaning close so that Porter and Goode could not hear his words.

“Shoot,” Cole whispered back.

“I'm gonna be outta here by fall.”

“Fall's just past.”

“I mean
next
fall.”

“Oh.”

“One more spring,” Walz said confidently. “One more spring is all it's gonna take. You know how a placer works, Mr. Cole?”

“Well, I guess not exactly,” he replied, sensing that a good story was about to unfold.

“A placer gets its gold from the mother lode.”

“Like the one out in California?”

“Yep. It's the mother that keeps the placers populated . . . year after year after year. Every spring there's more color . . . new gold in the placer. Next spring is gonna be the
one
 . . . The mother is gonna give up
so much of her color
that it will put the Gulch to shame. I can
feel it in my bones
. I know it. I can see all the signs . . .”