Leadville (24 page)

That didn’t make sense to me. “Why wouldn’t Bane alert Vrable?”

“Maybe ’cuz he’s tryin’ to get her back,” Sharp offered.

“That’d be my guess,” McAllen kept his voice low. “Vrable surely told him to stay away, and Bane’s probably not ready to admit failure … so he’ll look around town a bit and try to locate her. Bane doesn’t need to stay occupied long: the ore shipment leaves at four tomorrow morning.”

“Four?”

“Security. We want to be long gone before the town even wakes up. If Bane spends the day looking for Maggie, my plan may still work.”

“Ya feel like sharin’ yer plan?” Sharp asked impatiently.

McAllen looked irritated—never a good sign. “Jeff, why the hell do you think we’re meeting? Losing Red changes things. We need to all play from the same sheet music … and before I finish this beer, ’cuz I gotta get my team ready.”

“Are we part of your plans?” I asked, confused.

“Of course, what’d you think?”

“That with Maggie safe, you’d rely on your Pinkertons.”

“I wish I could. Vrable may have bribed one of my men, so I haven’t said a word to either of them. They think it’s routine guard duty. It doesn’t matter anyway; when the robbery starts, if they’re loyal, they’ll follow my orders. If they don’t, I’ll kill them.”

“Only two men?” Sharp asked.

“Three counting myself. Same as Vrable’s team of Wells Fargo agents. Normal security detail of six. Besides the roadmen, Vrable may have one of my men and probably both of his in on the robbery. It’s gonna be hard to sort out the loyal men from the bandits.” He looked at me. “I tried recruiting Masterson to help you boys, but he has his hands full with the Rio Grande mischief.”

“What about the teamster?” I asked. “If I were Vrable, that’s the first one I’d bribe.”

“Good thinkin’, Steve. Control the wagon, and you control the fight. Instead of using the bullwhip, the teamster could pull up and let the wagon get surrounded.”

“What’s Vrable tellin’ ya to do once the robbery starts?”

“Order my men to drop their guns. Vrable says he’ll do the same for his agents. The shooting will probably start as soon as my men’s guns hit the ground.”

“What’s our job?” I asked.

“I want you to leave this morning and scout out the terrain along the shipment route. Pick out the likely spot as best you can. Red would’ve been better, but you’ll do fine. Stay within two or three hours of Leadville. That’ll position you on the road after daybreak. I think it will be close to town so Vrable can bring the ore back to Leadville. He bought a played-out mine a year ago, so I figure he’ll pretend to find a new vein and claim that the stolen silver has been freshly dug out of his own mine.”

“Smart,” Sharp said. “Once he’s deposited most of it in a bank, he can use the remainder to salt the mine. With healthy production records an’ showin’s, he can sell his worthless mine at top dollar. In some ways, ya gotta admire the man.”

“Bullshit!” McAllen exclaimed. “There ain’t nothing to admire. He’s a confidence man, that’s all. I’ll see him dead or behind bars. Then you can go visit him and see how smart he is.”

Neither of us responded, so McAllen continued. “You’re staying the night, so bring appropriate gear.” He looked at each of us to make sure we were listening. “I need you to ambush the ambushers.”

“What about your team?” I asked.

“If you can kill the roadmen or pin them down, my team’ll take care of Vrable’s men.” Another look between us. “Can you handle it?”

Jeff and I looked at each other and then nodded to McAllen. “I need to buy a horse before we can leave,” I said.

McAllen gave me a puzzled look. “A horse? Why?”

“Someone poisoned Chestnut last night.”

McAllen looked even more puzzled and then said in an unsure voice, “Bane?”

“I suspect Mrs. Bolton.”

“Red could have talked,” McAllen mused. “If he did, Bane might’ve done it to draw you out so he can get you to tell him where Maggie is.”

“Red didn’t talk,” Sharp said immediately. McAllen gave him a hard look, so he explained. “Red understood Bane’s nature. He would’ve fought to the death.”

McAllen pondered that a minute and then asked, “Steve, can you put Mrs. Bolton aside until this is over?”

“This isn’t over until she’s taken care of, but, yes, I can wait until after tomorrow.”

That seemed to satisfy McAllen. I didn’t mind waiting a couple of days because I didn’t know what I was going to do. If I could tie her into Vrable’s plot, maybe I could get her thrown behind bars. Somehow, that didn’t feel like a satisfactory answer. The woman was malicious as hell and probably crazy. She had attacked me with hired guns, tried to enlist Bat Masterson to shoot me down, sidled up to Vrable, and murdered Chestnut. Damn her. This was a personal feud, and I didn’t want impersonal revenge. Sending her to prison was not enough. A night in the wilderness would give me time to think, and I needed to approach this problem calmly.

“Joseph, any chance Bane’ll think of Twin Lakes?” Sharp’s question brought me back to our current predicament.

“Maybe, but he’ll search here first. The man acts more threatening than a starving mountain lion. He’ll have a hard enough time asking around Leadville. Even if he thinks of it, he’ll hesitate before going to the Inter-Laken. The man looks like an ogre, but he’s not stupid. He knows he’ll look like a buzzard in a canary cage at that hotel.” McAllen took another swallow of beer. “Did you see Maggie after the Schmidts cleaned her up?”

I said
yes
simultaneous with Sharp’s
yep
.

“Think Bane will recognize her?”

“Not from a distance. She looked like an eastern debutante,” I said. “I don’t believe the Schmidts would let him get close.”

McAllen looked into his beer a moment, and then he shook his head as if coming awake. “Doesn’t matter. I must proceed on the basis that Maggie is safe.”

Chapter 46

We made an excuse about checking a claim that had come up for sale and handed the store over to Mrs. Baker again. She actually seemed pleased. I remembered that she had been proud that she ran the haberdashery without interference from Mr. Cunningham. She was definitely an independent woman, and the thought occurred to me that she might bristle under my daily supervision. That shouldn’t be a problem. After this affair had run its course, I would either sell the store or let her run it.

We were on the trail in less than two hours. It helped that we had never gotten around to stowing our gear after our last foray into the mountains. We could have gotten off a half hour earlier, but I felt the liveryman owed me a bargain on a new horse. He didn’t agree. After some hard bartering, I bought a fine-looking horse at a slight discount from the original asking price. The horse was spirited and nervous, and I already regretted my choice.

“What are ya gonna name him?” Sharp asked as we rode down the trail that led to Denver.

I didn’t want to name him at all. This was not my strong and steady Chestnut and, at least at this point, I intended to sell him when I returned to town. Nothing felt right. My saddle felt different, and the gait didn’t feel right. When I looked down at his head and neck, the dark brown color seemed unnatural. To be fair, the horse also had no feel for me. Well, we’d see.

“Ya thinkin’ or ignorin’ me?” Sharp asked.

“Brown.”

“What?”

“I’m naming him Brown.”

“That’s an awful name.”

“So far, I think he’s an awful horse.”

“Steve, that’s a fine animal. Ya’ll get used to him.”

“I’m new to the frontier. I need a horse that knows more about the backcountry than me.”

Sharp laughed. “Well, that’s an easy mark to pass. I believe Brown just might have the edge.”

I wanted to change the subject. “Jeff, have you ever been robbed?”

“Yep, in South America. I was just twenty-two an’ sinless as all get out. Banditos grabbed my haul.” His face took on a faraway expression. “On a mountain road, just like this.”

“Did you fight?”

“Hell, no. The gold I carried wasn’t worth my life. I handed it over, just like they demanded.”

“Ever catch them?”

“Not to my knowledge, but that sort always ends up bad. Taught me a lesson, though. Always had good security after that.”

I remembered Belleville, Sharp’s Nevada mining operation. He had situated it deep in a canyon with natural fortifications and numerous guards. It struck me that Sharp seldom made the same mistake twice. I also realized that I couldn’t be on the trail with anyone more capable of handling the situation in front of us. Sharp must have sent dozens of shipments by wagon and knew how to protect them. Red might have been a better tracker, but Sharp had studied the threats to slow-moving ore wagons.

“What type of terrain will they pick?”

Sharp didn’t answer at first. Then he said carefully, “They’ve had lots of time to plan this, so they’ll have picked the best spot to surprise the caravan. The shipment leaves at four, an’ first light isn’t until around six, so between two to three hours out of Leadville makes sense. However, ore wagons move at a crawl—lots slower than a horse. We’ll start lookin’ an hour away from Leadville.”

“How many?”

No hesitation this time. “Vrable’s a careful man. Even though he has McAllen in his pocket, he’ll want too many rather than too few. Bad men come cheap, so my guess is six or seven. Maybe more.”

“Okay, the bandits rob the shipment, and the agents don’t put up a fight. Do they take the wagon? How does Vrable make sure they don’t keep the ore, and how does he keep ten or more men quiet after the robbery?”

“Ya gotta take those questions backwards to forwards. For this plan to work, the scheme has to remain secret, and the robbers can’t blackmail Vrable when he starts depositin’ the silver. Vrable and his men ain’t gonna throw down their guns—they’re gonna fight. The robbers are told to kill the Pinks, an’ the Wells Fargo agents kill the outlaws. Nobody expects the double cross. Everything neat and tidy.”

“It can’t go perfectly.”

“It can go good enough. There’s only two Wells Fargo agents other than Vrable, an’ I bet he’s confided in only one. The other won’t survive the gunfight. He can do it with one agent an’ the teamster. All that’s left is to drive the wagon to his mine an’ hide it. When he rides back into town, he’ll claim that there were more outlaws than corpses, an’ they hauled off the shipment. He’ll say they shot at them as they rode away, but there were too many.”

“McAllen?”

“Dead. Only safe way.”

“McAllen thinks Vrable wants to see him hang for the crime.”

“I know, but I don’t see it. Too complicated. Easier to put the blame on him when he’s dead.”

“What about those who return with him? Won’t they have a hold on him?”

“Probably partners in the mine scheme. My guess is that he’s worked with them before, an’ he hired them on as Wells Fargo agents. Unlike other criminals, confidence men have a strict code of honor. An’ if he’s bribed a Pinkerton, the poor bastard’ll get a surprise bullet as a final payment.”

“Bane?”

“Cash. Vrable’ll pay because he’s afraid of him, an’ he may want to use him again someday.”

“That’s a lot of shooting and a lot of dead men.”

“Three Pinks, six or seven outlaws. Yep. Lots of dead, but his story’ll hold unless they find the shipment.”

“Something bothers me. That shipment can’t be worth enough money to justify all the killing.”

“Forty, fifty thousand dollars. An’ he gets revenge on McAllen. More important, he’ll use the silver to get hundreds of thousands for that useless mine. It’s a confidence man’s dream
.

“You’ve been pondering this awhile, haven’t you?”

“Just figured out how I’d do it. But I got one fear.”

“What’s that?”

“Vrable’s smarter than me.”

Chapter 47

By my pocket watch, we found the ambush spot an hour and twenty minutes outside of Leadville. There was a sharp turn in the road and good cover from either side. Sharp and I dismounted and walked the entire ground. On the uphill slope were boulders with an unobstructed view of the road, and a ravine on the downhill side provided ample cover for shooters. The shipment convoy would be in a deadly cross fire.

“Shit.”

I looked at Sharp. “Bad, huh?”

“We’ll have to split up.” He pointed to either side of the road. “One on each side.” He shook his head. “Ya gotta get high in those boulders so ya can get a good line on both sides of the road. There’s no place for me to hide on this side where I can get a clear shot.” He shook his head again. “This is perfect for an ambush.”

“I go into the boulders?”

“Steve, yer the better shot. Take the men in the boulders an’ then shoot at the ones in the ravine. Ya gotta get me enough time to come up from behind after the shootin’ starts.”

“Makes sense. Let me go up there and see if I can find a spot where I have a clear line at both hiding places.”

After a short climb, I saw boot prints behind two boulders. Somebody had already scouted out this area. I looked up and saw the rock formations extending all the way up the hill. In ten minutes, I had found my spot about twenty yards further up the hill. Close enough for an easy shot but also dangerously close if I made the slightest noise. I couldn’t find my way in the dark, so I’d have to be in position by dusk and stay quiet. I shivered in anticipation of the cold.

After I climbed back down to the road, Sharp pointed and said, “See that tree?”

“Yes.”

“It’s half chopped down. They’re gonna finish it in the mornin’ so it blocks the road. They won’t see it until they make the bend.”

“I guess that confirms we got the right spot.”

“Oh, it’s the right spot alright. Did ya see that trail that led off the road ’bout a half mile back? I’m bettin’ it leads to Vrable’s mine. Gets ’em off the road real quick.”

“I found a good spot for me. How about you?”

Sharp glanced down the ravine. “Nope. I’ll have to stay in the thickets until the shootin’ starts. Not good. They can get off a couple shots before I can get a bead on ’em.”