Colter's Path (9781101604830) (31 page)

Squire studied Ben but did not recognize anything familiar in him.

“I'm pleased to see you again, Squire. Sorry about your sister, though.” Ben paused. “Hey, son, why were you looking for a lawman? Is there trouble?”

“Maybe. I don't know. I was down by Winnie's grave this morning, laying some pretty leaves on it for her, Winnie always having been partial to pretty leaves. And I heard a woman screaming up beyond a ridgetop nearby. Sounded dreadful. I climbed up a path there to
see, and…well, I need to tell a lawman about it, I think.”

“Come on. We're going to go find Jedd Colter, you and me. He's the law now that Rand Blalock's leg is busted. I know that very ridge you're talking about, I think, and I suspect you're right about there being trouble up there. Jedd will know what to do. He'll deal with it.”

It was a most unexpected reunion. Ben found Jedd finishing a plate of beans outside his little cabin, and at the same time, found none other than Zebulon McSwain and Crozier Bellingham with him. Also another fellow, twenty-some-odd years old, if Ben had to guess. He didn't know this one.

When Bellingham and McSwain saw Ben, greetings were hearty, though McSwain seemed to be quite burdened over something. When he laid eyes on Ben's young companion, the look of burden bearing became one of confusion.

“You're the Napier boy, I think?”

“I am, Mr. McSwain. The one whose sister you gave your cat to. That was mighty nice of you, sir. That cat cheered her in her last days.”

“I…I saw her grave by the roadside. I'm quite sorry little Winnie was lost to your family. And I'd come to feel a certain closeness to her myself. It was to see her grave that I traveled to this area. Someone had told me of seeing a girl's grave by the roadside, and remembered the name was Winnie, and that a cat's grave was beside hers. The last name he didn't recall, so I was compelled to come see for myself if it was the Winnie I knew. I regret that it was.”

Jedd glanced over and saw that Bellingham was scribbling furiously in a notepad. He smiled at the feeling of familiarity the sight roused in him.

The man who was a stranger to Ben walked up and introduced himself. “Tom Buckle, Mr. Scarlett. I'm pleased to meet the man who managed to find gold by washing out a pair of peed-in britches.”

“I'm pleased to know you, Mr. Buckle.”

“Call me Tom. You'll be seeing me more around here. I'm Jedd's new deputy. Been doing the same duty over in Bowater, but since Jedd's boss was knocked out of commission and Jedd advanced to the full town marshal's role, he's asked me to work for him, and I've accepted. I'll be moving to Scarlett's Luck in the next little while.”

“I wish you well. Welcome to our town.”

“To hear that from the very man whose name the town carries means much to me. Thank you, Ben.”

Ben turned to McSwain. “How did you come to be here today?” he asked.

“I've been to my daughter's house, over in Bowater. I was called there by a man sent by my son-in-law, who gave me very distressing news. Emma has been taken.”

“Taken?”

“Kidnapped. She is being held for a high ransom that Stanley, her husband, claims inability to pay. He has asked me to pay it in his place.”

“Can you do it? I guess I'm asking, do you have the means?”

“It happens that I do. How I came by it is something about which I can hold no pride. But have the means I do, and I am ready to pay that ransom if it is necessary. But I was not willing to do it without talking it through with Jedd. Stanley was quite insistent that I not leave his home and that I begin taking steps to immediately obtain the diam—uh, to obtain the resources in my possession, which at the moment are safely locked away in a vault in San Francisco. There was something odd in it all, though, something that set me on edge and made me insist upon speaking to Jedd about it first. The fact that he insisted on being the one to whom I should present the ransom, rather than me giving it directly to whomever has Emma…that worried me.”

“Me as well,” Jedd said.

McSwain nodded. “That is why I insisted on coming to Jedd before making any major actions. I trust Jedd's judgment on such matters.”

Jedd said, “And my judgment is that before anybody starts handing over ransom payments to somebody like Stanley Wickham, who I think is about as trustworthy as a riverboat gambler—and I'm aware I may be misjudging him because of Emma—there is a place that merits a look first. A place that could be relevant to any situation involving a missing woman in this area. You know the area I'm thinking of, Ben, if you'll put your mind to it.”

Ben frowned. “The ridge…the one I told you about, where there's cabins with no doors?”

Jedd nodded, then spoke. “I went to that place, Ben, and Tom here went with me for a part of the way. There was cause to believe that those odd little cabins were put there to serve as pens for bears caught for the bull and bear fights, but a closer look showed there'd been human beings kept there, too, and recent. I found a woman's comb inside one of those cabins. And in more than one of them there were droppings that were not of bears. Looked to be human spoor.”

“But nobody there when you were looking around?”

“Obviously not. I doubt I'd be here and alive today if there had been. But here's the crux of it all: there's strong rumors in these parts that somebody has been using that place as a holding spot for women being sold abroad for evil purposes, sold to bad men of wealth and power. A well-established operation, the rumors have it, going back well before California became part of the United States. So when a woman goes missing, as Emma has, you have to consider at least the possibility that she's gotten snared into that particular net. God, I hope not, but I think another look at that valley is called for.” Jedd turned to Bellingham. “A question for you, Crozier. You are a man who spends his time asking questions, listening to answers, and listening as well to what's going on around you. Since you've been in California, have you heard much rumor regarding the enslavement and sale of women through Mexico by land and the California bays and ports by sea?”

“I've heard it talked of frequently,” Bellingham said. “And lately, more such talk than when we first arrived.”

“Do you take the talk seriously?”

“I must admit that I do. There is a ring of grim truth about it, and such a prevalence of it, that I have to believe there may be at least some truth there.” He paused. “I can say one thing with confidence: such a trafficking does go on. It exists. Whether this valley with its cabins is part of it, I have no idea. But the trafficking is real. It occurs.”

“Yes, it does,” Tom Buckle said.

“I'm going to go with you, Jedd,” Ben said abruptly. “I ain't no lawman, but I'll go, if it would help anybody caught up in such a bad snare as that one.”

“I appreciate that, Ben. But it ain't the place or situation for you.”

Ben looked down at his ragged, liquor-ravaged form and nodded sadly. “I ain't much count to nobody, I don't reckon.”

“Don't forget why you brought me here, Mr. Scarlett,” young Napier cut in. He'd been so quiet that he'd almost faded into the background.

Ben's face came alive again as remembrance struck. “That's right! Jedd, considering all that's going on here right now, and what you're about to do, you need to hear what Squire here has to say. He was visiting his sister's grave over at the base of that ridge, where the trail is—”

“I know the spot,” Jedd said.

“—and he heard something. Sent a chill through me when he told me of it. It must have chilled him, too, because he was looking for a lawman when he found me. He saw I was wearing this….” Ben pulled back the long sash of the wrongly tied cravat and yanked Blalock's badge from his vest and handed it to Jedd. “Found that on the street where Marshal Blalock's horse died on him.”

Jedd pocketed the badge and turned to Squire. “Talk to me, son.”

Squire told his tale of the woman's scream from somewhere beyond the top of the ridge. When the brief story was done, Jedd looked at his new deputy. “Tom Buckle, welcome to the first day of your new job. And this time
I'm afraid you'll have to not back off from going into that valley with me, no matter how hurtful it might be as regards your late sister.”

Buckle looked Jedd in the eye. “I'd not miss it, not this time. I'll go in her memory, and for the sake of this man's daughter…and the woman who should have been yours.”

“Hear, hear!” McSwain said. “Jedd, if Emma is up there, you find her, and you bring her back…to both of us. And I'd like to come with you while you do. I'm no lawman and I know I'm no more likely than our friend Ben here to be of true help, but she's my daughter, Jedd. And if she's been taken by such rabble as that, I have to be there.”

Jedd replied, “I've said here that I think we are obliged to take a new look at that valley, but as regards Emma, I actually doubt she's there, Zeb. She's missing, but there's been a ransom demand. And the kind of folk rumored to be holding prisoners up in that little basin valley don't take women to hold them for ransom. They steal women to sell them. If they had Emma, there never would have been a call for ransom.”

McSwain nodded. “I'm not sure there really has been an authentic call for ransom, Jedd. The only mention of ransom that's been made was made by Stanley Wickham. He had no letter, no note to show me. Only his word that such a demand has been made.”

“Wait…are you hinting that you believe Wickham would have his own wife kidnapped to try to get money out of you, Zeb?”

“I would not put it past him. The man is a snake and I never should have stood by while Emma married him. I have tried to make my peace with the notion of him as her husband, but there are alarms that sound in my mind every time the mere thought of the man passes through it.”

“I'm the same way about that, Zeb,” Jedd said. “But all that to the side, I think it's best you stay here with Ben, for now. Squire, has your family settled in these climes?”

“My father has a mining claim about three miles from here.”

“Maybe you'd best get home, then.”

“I'll…I'll wait with Mr. Scarlett and Mr. McSwain. I want to know how this all turns out.”

Jedd nodded, then to Bellingham said: “Crozier, you're keeping silent. I'm hoping you don't have a notion that you'll be going along with us on this. If we find somebody up there, it probably won't turn out to be a good time or place for note-taking.”

“You will talk to me afterward, though? This could provide an important theme and bit of plot for my novel.”

“Talking about that novel openly now, I see?” Jedd observed.

“No reason not to.”

“I'll talk to you at any length you want after this is through.”

“Then I'll stay put here with the others.”

“Good man, Crozier.”

Jedd and Buckle armed themselves, and Jedd removed his deputy's badge and handed it to Buckle. Then he put the marshal's badge previously worn by Blalock on his own chest.

“Jedd Colter, town marshal,” he said. “I never would have thought it.”

“I hope you don't find her in that place, Jedd,” McSwain said. “But if you do, bring her back.”

“You can count on it, Zeb. Deputy Buckle, let's go.”

“Yes, sir, Marshal Colter.”

T
here was time to plan, that much she had to admit. Penned up as she was, there was nowhere she could go and little she could do, so she spent much of her time studying her claustrophobic prison, trying to identify weaknesses, possible escape avenues….

And it all came down to one thing: to escape this place she had to have a knife. With a knife she could cut her bonds, and with a knife she could, just maybe, work the blade up through a gap and pin the tip into the sliding wooden bar that held the trapdoor entrance-exit closed. She could work the bar free of its holders and push the door up and open. And simply climb out.

If she had a knife. And there was no knife in this little place. She'd already scanned each crevice, each gap, each corner, in the wild hope that, somehow, someone at some past time had left a knife, a broken blade, even a piece of broken glass, that she might be able to reach and use. Nothing. That hope was fading.

And there was no new hope rising to replace it. Without a way to cut her hands free, there was no hope. None at all. She would be here until they took her to the next place, wherever that place would be. A port, a dock, a wagon rolling toward Mexico…or maybe just another
wooded valley filled with cabin prisons. She could not know.

She stared out through the biggest gap between two logs and pondered the fact that only a hand's width of wood separated her from the outer world. That, and a few strands of twined fiber. If she could just…if she could just…she could not even finish the thought, because there simply was nothing she could “just” do.

The bar moved and the door lifted open, and Turner was there. He knelt, smiling at her in a way that sickened her. “You amaze me,” he said. “In a situation such as this, yet you still remain as beautiful as any woman could be. Unwashed, unkempt…but beautiful. That's a rarity, you know, a woman who can maintain her beauty through such hard circumstances.”

“Are you really going to…to send me away? To some strange man somewhere else?”

“This is my trade, my dear. My life. It's what I do…send women off to strange men somewhere else, in exchange for the money they pay me.”

“But you are wasting me. Wasting me on a stranger! Why do that? I could be…I could be
yours
!” And somehow, she made herself smile at him.

He seemed surprised, actually struck wordless a few moments. Was the woman beginning to lose her mind through the effects of deprivation and worry? He'd been at this dark game long enough to have seen it happen before, with others, this shifting of the captor from enemy to friend. He'd never allowed it to go far, though he had used it to his own advantage sometimes.