Colter's Path (9781101604830) (24 page)

“He was in a humor to talk, I suppose, because he told me that he recognized the voice as belonging to an Irishman who had visited with Wilberforce Sadler behind closed doors. Varney hadn't been privy to the meeting, but he was so curious about this man that he slipped into a closet nearby that had one thin wall, the other side of which was part of the wall of Wilberforce's office. In there he was able to hear enough conversation between Wilberforce and the Irishman to let him know that
something very bad was being worked up between them. Something involving McSwain.”

Jedd frowned in thought. “It had to relate to the troubles of Bledsoe College. Right?”

“Indeed. Varney told me that Wilberforce was talking to the Irishman about the theft of something from the coffers of Bledsoe College. Wilberforce wanted whatever it was to be retrieved from the thief—McSwain, it would seem—and returned. Varney took that to mean returned to Bledsoe College, no doubt then to be absorbed, along with the other assets of Bledsoe, into East Tennessee University.”

“This Irishman, then, was being hired by Wilberforce, whether as an individual or on behalf of the board of Bledsoe College, to find McSwain, and retrieve whatever McSwain stole.”

“That was Varney's understanding.”

Jedd took a seat on a nearby rock, resting his still-healing ankle. “Crozier, whatever arrangement Wilberforce made with this Irishman surely must have been a lucrative one, if we are to believe it was his voice we heard making music out on the plains that night. Because that would mean he was sufficiently motivated to follow McSwain all the way across the country to complete his assignment.”

“Yes. So either Wilberforce had promised him a high level of pay indeed, or…”

Jedd saw where Bellingham was leading. “Or whatever McSwain had was so valuable that it was worth traversing a whole nation to get his hands on. Because once he got it, he could keep it for himself.”

“Exactly,” Bellingham said. “You and I are thinking along the same lines, Jedd. But the big question becomes, what is it that McSwain took? It had to be highly valuable, portable, and small enough to fit…” Bellingham paused, looking at Jedd.

Jedd completed the thought. “Small enough to fit inside a dead cat.”

Bellingham gave a vigorous nod. “Meaning there was far more than just sentiment at work when McSwain
kept that stuffed cat of his in hand nearly every minute. He was protecting his treasure.

“He ended up giving that cat away…. Did you know that, Jedd? Right in there just about the time you and Treemont got shot beside that creek. McSwain gave the cat to an ailing little girl in that emigrant camp that set up right beside ours.”

“I didn't know about that, no. But I can tell you this: the way he was clinging to that cat, he must have taken out what he'd hid inside it and stashed it somewhere else. Otherwise he'd never have given it up. Know what I'm thinking?”

“Gold? Jewels?”

“You and me think just alike, Crozier. Jewels…almost has to be. Something that can be very small but still very valuable. Something that could be hid inside a stuffed dead critter.”

“Or a drinking man's flask.”

Jedd's querying look led Bellingham to expound a little. “You remember that flask Ben Scarlett was so proud of, and then it went missing? Well, it went missing right at the same time McSwain gave away Cicero to that little girl. So I think McSwain took that flask, popped his diamonds or whatever they were down the spout, then either kept the flask on him in a pocket from then on or kept it hidden in his wagon.”

“That's as good a theory as any, I reckon.”

“Oh…Jedd, one more thing about that Irishman. Something good to know that might help you identify him if he shows up in these parts. He has a notched ear. Like somebody cut him with a knife or something. Ferkus Varney saw it when the man came to see Wilberforce.”

Something about that rang an alarm in Jedd's mind, but it took him a couple of minutes of thought to remember where he'd run across a notch-eared man before.

It had been that evening at McSwain's house on Addington Street in Knoxville. The night Ben Scarlett had gotten caught nosing around in the rubbish behind the
house, and had surprised an armed man, who had fled. Jedd recalled that Ben had said the fellow spoke no words—a measure to keep his accent from being heard, maybe?—and that he'd possessed a notched ear.

McSwain indeed had been in danger that night, Jedd could see. He was grateful that old Notchy apparently had not made a second visit to the house after Jedd and Ben were gone from it. If he had, McSwain would probably not be alive today.

Jedd and Bellingham had another drink, and Jedd moved the conversation to other subjects: California statehood, the speed with which wilderness could become a small town, then a town not so small, and the steadily improving mechanics of placer mining and the inevitable development of new mining technologies.

“You think McSwain has gone to see his daughter, Jedd?” Bellingham asked as conversation finally began to wane.

“No idea, Crozier. It wouldn't surprise me. I know he's fretted over her a good deal. Didn't like her husband.”

“I'm trying to remember the name of the town they live in here….”

“Bowater.”

“I've heard of it. Never been there, but heard of it.”

“I've not been there, either. I expect that may not hold true much longer.”

“You're going to go see her, Jedd?”

“I think I will. I've come a mighty long way, after all, and it was her being out here that was a big part of the reason for it.”

“What will her husband think, you knocking on their door?”

“I think that when he sees me, he'll wish he'd treated her better, if what I've been hearing about his sorry ways proves to be true. Which I hope it ain't. As much as I wish she'd never married that coot, and as much as I wish the marriage would just kind of wash away like mud off a slick rock, I don't want to think it's because she's been mistreated by her own husband. I'd rather him just strangle
to death on his cup of coffee, or something. Get out of the way convenient-like and easy.”

“Nothing's ever easy, Jedd.”

“I know. Hey, where is Zeb McSwain living now that he's in California? You got any idea?”

Bellingham shrugged and shook his head. “Nobody seems to know. He pulled away from everybody else and just vanished off on his own, sort of like he did on the way here when he was hiding out in his wagon most of the time.”

“Yeah. And I'm not sure how he got away with all that hiding out as well as he did. Not pulling his own weight and all. Just letting himself be hauled along like a piece of baggage. How did he get away with it?”

Bellingham said, “I think it was because Wilberforce was glad to have him out of sight and out of mind. He didn't want him along on the journey at all, you know. It was Witherspoon, not Wilberforce, who agreed to let McSwain buy his way into the journey.”

The conversation made another shift, Bellingham inquiring about just what had happened to Treemont Dalton. Jedd told him the sad story and fell into a quiet reverie. Bellingham could see that his welcome was beginning to wear out and knew it was time to leave and find his way to the nearest semblance of a hotel. But he hated to depart from Jedd's place with the mood so somber.

Bellingham helped himself to a little more whiskey; Jedd did the same. To brighten the atmosphere, Bellingham raised his cup. “To California, and Scarlett's Luck, and Emma, and the memory of Treemont Dalton. A fine man.”

“Hear, hear!” They drank.

That night, Jedd Colter sat upright in his bed and stared into the corner of his cabin, mind racing.

He hadn't dreamed, but something had arisen in his mind. A memory, one that returned with the clarity of a mountain stream the moment it poured into his semiconsciousness.
It hit his mind with enough force to waken him.

“I know him,” Jedd said to the empty cabin. “I know old Notch-ear sure as the world. I fought the son of a bitch, in Missouri. Calahan's Beer Garden. I remember it well.”

Clear the memory was, but not pleasant. Few memories were that derived from Jedd's days as a bare-fisted fighter when he was about twenty years of age. He associated those days mostly with pain, sweat, and blood, with a grating roar in the ears that came partly from the howling, violence-loving crowd around him and partly from the ringing of his skull by his opponent's fist. He remembered the smell of chalk dust and tobacco smoke, the stink of his own sweat and his opponents', and the even-worse stink of the sweaty crowd encircling the pugilists. These memories raised little nostalgia in him. He'd been glad to put fighting behind when that time came. He was happy to let most of the memories of those days fade.

The memory of his bout with notch-eared Declan Finnegan was one of the worst of them. He'd lost that fight. Jedd Colter usually won his matches, but that one had gone badly. He would never forget the power of the jolt of Finnegan's right fist, jarring his jawbone and knocking a tooth loose inside his head. He'd awakened on the filthy floor of Calahan's Beer Garden with that liberated tooth swimming around in a mouthful of his own blood. He spat it out as he got up, and a saloon girl had fainted at the sight of blood washing down his chin like a red waterfall.

Jedd cupped his hands behind his head and leaned back against the wide, pit-sawed, on-its-side plank that served as a headboard on his homemade bunk. He relived the fight with Declan Finnegan and pondered the oddity of having run across the man again after all these years, even if only indirectly.

Just another verification of his narrowing funnel theory, he supposed.

At the time he'd been set up to fight Finnegan, he'd
known nothing of the man except his reputation as a fighter who would do whatever it took to win. “Watch him close,” Treemont had warned him. “Old Irish there has been known to sneak a metal slug into his fist so he can break jawbones easier. So I've heard.”

There had been no hidden metal slugs during Jedd's fight with the Irishman, but he'd gone down hard nonetheless, having carelessly given the fighter an opening when a pretty saloon girl had blown a kiss Jedd's way and distracted him for less than a second. When he'd come around again, spitting blood and a knocked-out tooth, he'd made a pledge to himself to steer clear of Finnegan in the future.

In terms of fighting, he'd kept that pledge completely. But it appeared likely that it had been Finnegan who was outside McSwain's Knoxville home that night…. Finnegan with a gun in his possession, a threat to McSwain. Why? Who had put him there? Would the board of trustees of a respected college actually do such a drastic thing as hire an assassin? Actually try to do in a collegiate president under their hire?

Not just a president, though. A president who apparently had stolen from his own college, stolen at a significant level.

Sitting there in the darkness, Jedd decided it was time to find McSwain and, if he could, finally get to the bottom of this thing. It was impossible for him not to care about McSwain and what might happen to him, considering McSwain's support of Jedd and the simple fact that he was Emma's father.

Jedd decided he'd just have to see Emma, too. He owed it to himself, particularly after traversing the entire country to be where she was. If her husband didn't like him coming by, the scoundrel would simply have to deal with it.

Jedd lay back down and rolled over. He closed his eyes, but it was an hour before he slept again.

San Francisco

T
he man sat back on the outdoor bench and appreciated the shade of the awning above him. The awning was attached to a slightly fire-damaged and abandoned dry goods store and extended out over the wide boardwalk that had become a place of business for the man kneeling at the first man's feet.

“And how did you come into the knowledge of the boot-making trade, might I ask?” the first man said. He was a lean fellow, fair skin but weathered, and appeared to be bald, or mostly so, because he wore a scarf tight around his head and showing no evidence of a padding of hair between the cloth and his flesh. One of his ears had a triangular piece missing from it, cut out as neatly as if a surgeon had removed it or a tailor had taken a pair of good scissors to it.

The kneeling man, who was studying the reading on the tape measure he'd just wrapped around the other man's foot at the highest point of his arch, said, “It was family training, sir. My uncle was the best boot maker in Knoxville, Tennessee, in his day, and he taught me all I
know. Well, most of it. What he didn't teach me, experience did. I've made many a boot for many a foot in my time, and I believe that when the final product is on your own feet, you'll see the benefit of that experience.”

“Confidence!” the boot maker's customer said. “I like that in a man! Knoxville, did you say?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the other. “That's where I come from. Me and my brother, Rollie, we both traveled from there to here, and been in San Francisco just shy of three months now. We'd probably have come sooner if it hadn't been for needing to take care of our mother, who was old and ailing. It was after she passed on that we were free to leave Knoxville.”

“Aye, aye,” the other man said. “I've been to, and left, Knoxville myself. It was from the Knoxville area that I set out just last year to come here.”

“You ain't a-foolin' me, sir?”

“Not a bit of it, Ollie. Not a bit.”

“Well, I'll be! They say it's a small world, and I reckon it must be.”

“Aye, and smaller yet it will become as the years go by, my good man.”

“Sir, I hope you don't mind me saying that, from the sound of your speaking, I'd never have guessed you for a Tennessee man.”

“Oh no. I was in that state only briefly. On business, shall we say? Where I come from is a long way indeed from Knoxville in Tennessee. I'm an Irishman, friend Ollie. I spent my youth in the old country and came to America to build both future and fortune.”