Power in the Blood (112 page)

“It wasn’t anything you did or didn’t do. It couldn’t have worked out, not with Mama there, and Lodi.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“He would’ve called you out sooner or later, and killed you.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“He would, and you know it. That’s why I wanted you to bring me back to town. You can keep going with me if you want. You don’t have to go back.”

“Everything I own is back there. Go where?”

“You don’t own a thing that can’t be replaced in a general store. Anywhere, that’s where I’d go. Do you want to?”

Drew thought about it. Once again, it was Fay directing the course of events; she was the pushingest woman he’d come across since Vanda Gentles back in Galveston. Her offer was a tempting one, but he felt he couldn’t simply leave the outfit that way, without any kind of explanation. Of course, everyone would figure out what had happened in any case, if he did what Fay wanted. He could picture their faces, imagine their comments. Nate would say, “She opened it, he sniffed it, he followed her.” Lodi would say nothing, but would be scornful of a man who abandoned his partners for a piece of tail. Levon would agree with Nate, but think to himself what a cute piece of tail Fay had been. Ellen, he imagined, would be furious, but at the same time hardly surprised.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Don’t think too long or you’ll bust a vein in your head. What do you need to think about? Either you want to come with me and live like a regular man does, or you stay with that bunch and get shot out of the saddle somewhere.”

“Let me alone for two minutes, will you?”

“Two minutes, sure, I’ll give you two minutes.”

When those minutes had elapsed, she said again, “Well?”

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you’re sorry, all right. You’re the sorriest man I ever met. Couldn’t even make up his own mind for once. Now I know what kind of man I almost got tied up with. You’re a real disappointment to me.”

Drew was glad she had become angry rather than tearful; it made his refusal easier to stand by. They drove on in rigid silence, and dust rose in a low cloud behind the turning wheels as Drew followed his own wagon ruts of three days ago.

He set down her bag outside the stage-line office. Fay picked it up and said, “One last time. Do you want to come with me or not?”

If she had given him time to consider another chance he might have succumbed, but the way she presented it to him, with contempt ready to flood her eyes, made him refuse again, this time without hesitation. Fay went inside. Drew turned the buckboard and drove slowly out of town, feeling miserable and used. He hadn’t understood what went on in Fay’s mind, and now he never would. It was all over, and he supposed he should have felt grateful not to have ended up a traitor to his partners. He most likely would have ended up firmly beneath her thumb anyway, a strong-willed woman like that.

No one referred to Fay on his return, and Drew was grateful for the lack of open sympathy granted him, since that made it easier to pretend he felt nothing at all over Fay’s departure.

After a supper marked by a distinct absence of talk, Drew went outside. Nate strolled over to him. “She was a whore anyway,” he said, and Drew punched him in the mouth. They fell to the dust in a stalemated scuffle that carried them both across to the cabin, and Lodi and Levon had to come out and separate them.

“I’ll kill you …!” growled Nate. “See if I don’t.…”

“Cool off, the both of you,” Lodi said. “Bones, make yourself scarce for an hour or two, why don’t you.”

Drew picked up his hat and went to the ledge pathway. He wanted to see if the blanket was still up there where Fay had placed it, and it was. He flung himself down and watched the sky turning dark. It had been at around this same time yesterday that she gave herself to him, right there where he now lay alone and in pain. He couldn’t understand any of it. Drew fell asleep there, still puzzled.

When he woke up, the evening had become night, cool and black. The moon’s curved edge hung low in the sky, and Drew found himself shivering. He stood and beat his arms back and forth to warm himself, wondering what time it was. Standing there, he could see across the flats he had admired with Fay, and on those flats several torches burned. Drew studied them for a moment before realizing their meaning. Men were coming for them: lawmen with guns, following the wheel ruts he had laid down for them four times in three days. That was why Fay wanted to be driven back to Cortez, so the ruts would be that much deeper, that much easier to see by torchlight. They wouldn’t have come in the day, but Fay had given them a trail to follow. Sick at heart, Drew flung himself down the path and raced for the cabins.

Lodi was still awake and dressed. He sent Drew to wake everyone else while he went up to the ledge, where Drew joined him minutes later. The torches were noticeably closer.

“It was her,” Lodi said.

“It was her,” Drew agreed.

“Well, it won’t work, not if they think we’re snoring. I expect they’ll want to put riflemen all around us in darkness, then open fire or parley come morning. They’re in for a big disappointment. I wonder if she sold us to Pinkertons or federals.”

“She offered me a way out, if I’d come with her.”

“And you turned it down. Don’t worry, Bones; you’ll live to tell the tale.”

Inside twenty minutes everyone was packed and mounted. Ellen sat nervously on their quietest horse; she had not ridden in more than fifteen years. “Stay together and stay quiet,” Lodi said, and they began winding their way in single file up the same narrow pathway to the top of the Rim. Once there, they could all see the torches below, flickering like fireflies. “Figure she ain’t a whore now?” Nate whispered, but Drew ignored him.

The night was too dark for hard riding over unfamiliar ground. They walked the horses along the sweeping ledge for its entire length, then descended its sloping far side, cutting off their view of the torches. On open ground they could travel faster. Ellen clung to her saddle horn as they galloped north for a half hour, then they eased their pace to spare the horses. Pursuit would not begin till morning, with the discovery of the empty cabins. Levon predicted they would be at Bigelow’s ranch by early afternoon if nobody’s horse threw a shoe. Bigelow was one of Lodi’s comrades in crime, trading horses and cattle back and forth between the world of legitimate commerce and his more remunerative dealings with Lodi’s outfit.

“Ellen, you still in one piece?”

“Just about. Who put an ax handle under my saddle?”

They laughed, and were still laughing when the first shots came from their left. Drew felt the impact of a bullet entering his mare’s shoulder, and she began sinking beneath him. He jumped clear before she fell, and looked around to see who might boost him behind his saddle for a getaway. Nate’s horse was almost on top of him. Drew readied himself to jump up, but Nate rode past at a full gallop, his face fixed on Drew’s as he swept by, and Drew was left alone, the sound of receding hoofbeats coming to him through a cloud of dust. Gunshots were still whistling by, so Drew fell to the ground behind his fallen mare, yanked his Winchester from its scabbard and began crawling away. The mare was still alive and suffering, but to put a bullet into her head would let the attackers know he had not been picked up and taken along with Lodi and the rest.

The law had been smarter than anticipated, had set an ambush along the only escape route in case the party approaching from Cortez was seen. Drew had been the one to tell Fay about Lodi’s back door, and now he was paying for his loose mouth. Nate had been right about Fay, but Drew would still call him out, if they ever met again, over the way Nate had made no attempt to pick him up. It was a worse betrayal than Fay’s, because even if they had never liked each other, they had ridden together.

Soon he heard voices, and stopped his crawling through the sagebrush. The voices came from several directions, and Drew wondered if he had somehow turned himself around. He could be sure of nothing at ground level, and so raised his head carefully to see if some avenue of escape might present itself. If he could learn where the hunters stood, he might be able to wriggle through between them in the dark.

“Hold it there. You drop that gun.”

The voice was calm, unhurried. Drew did as he was told.

“Be real still now. Hey! Over here! I got me one!”

More figures came toward Drew and his captor. A man who appeared to be in charge asked him, “What’s your name?”

“Lodi,” said Drew.

48

With more money in her hand than she had thought it possible for one person to carry unaided, Zoe found a kind of courage. She had intended to flee the state, flee the country eventually, to ensure the safety of herself and Omie. But the money changed that. The audacity and ease with which it had been obtained gave her confidence, and following close behind that came defiance. Riding out of Denver aboard a first-class car, Zoe felt a robber’s surge of gratitude for an easy getaway, and then the heady rush of belief that similar crimes could be committed with impunity.

She fought these impulses, knowing them for the aftermath of danger they were, a false excitement threatening to carry her beyond prudence. She had Omie to think of. Actually, it had been Omie who made the feat possible. Omie was a kind of armor, a shield against ill fortune, uniquely potent. Had there really been any risk in their venture to take what rightfully was Zoe’s?

“Does anyone in this car recognize us?”

“No, Mama.”

Zoe wore her false arm sling, and Omie’s face was hidden again by the veil. Their appearance had attracted some attention at the station, veils being uncommon in the wardrobe of children, but Zoe had anticipated this by knotting a black scarf around Omie’s arm, making her a mourner. Omie said all was well, so Zoe could relax, if her humming bloodstream would allow it.

They changed trains several times, riding through the night, and all of the following day, choosing the next section of their railroad escape arbitrarily, Zoe allowing Omie veto over whatever decision she made at each changeover. They zigged and zagged on rails, heading south by west in awkward increments. Eventually they stepped off their latest train at a small town in northern Arizona. Omie declared the place safe to rest in, and they took themselves to a hotel for some much-needed food and a room in which to be themselves.

Zoe ordered all available newspapers to be delivered to their room next morning, and scanned them for articles relating to the theft of so much money from the Denver National Bank and Trust. There was no mention of any such deed, and she asked herself if this was because it had not been considered a theft, since the money was in effect her annulment settlement, or if Leo had ordered the bank manager to tell no one when the incident was reported to him. That seemed the more likely scenario.

She read the newspapers in haste, and overlooked completely a small article concerning the discovery of a man wandering in from desolate country several days before, a man unable or unwilling to give his name, who credited his rescue from the rigors of the desert—bearing nothing in his arms but a sawed-off shotgun—to the timely intercession of his guardian angel. The story was barely fifteen lines of type, and Zoe’s anxious gaze swept across it in a trice, in pursuit of news closer to her own interests.

Worn out with traveling, the inner ferment caused by their success fading now, Zoe began to wonder what her next step might be. Flight beyond Leo’s reach no longer held the same appeal. She had bested his killer and his banker, thanks to Omie, and it would have seemed like quitting to give in now by sneaking away to foreign shores. Leo was not so all-powerful as many thought him. Who knew him better than Zoe? He was a pathetic figure, really, a straw man, all of his strength stemming from his position rather than his person. Should she and Omie be afraid of him to the extent that they must run as far as possible to be free of his influence? Should they instead try to make some kind of peace with him, on equal terms? She did not know; nor did Omie, for whom all the options were meaningless.

The tall man had been visiting her again of late, requiring her help, it seemed to Omie, although she could not recall with any detail the exact circumstances of his visitations and requests. She had been of use to him in some unfathomable way as they both passed through a landscape of redness and heat, and that pleased her, but the tall man’s needs had to be set aside now in favor of her own and Mama’s. Together they had done something bad, even if the money they stole was Mama’s anyway, and Omie wanted to forget such things as theft and the tall man for a while, and concentrate her attention on the one rag doll Zoe had allowed her to retain.

His handcuffs were kept tight despite his requests to have them loosened a notch or two. The train ride across Colorado to Glory Hole was going to test his patience. Drew was escorted by four federal marshals and a host of deputies, all crowded into one private car provided free of charge by Leo Brannan. Lodi had stolen from him, so Leo was determined that the court which tried him should convene in Glory Hole. Drew understood from casual conversation between the lawmen that Leo Brannan would have to fight the state government for that privilege, since Leadville was the official county seat, not Glory Hole, even if Lodi’s infamous payroll robbery had actually occurred nearer to the latter.

He had not expected his deception to be swallowed so easily. Drew was at least ten years younger than Lodi, and although he had regrown his beard, there really wasn’t much of a resemblance. He suspected no one wanted to question his identity too closely, since the capture of Lodi was of greater importance, so far as newspaper headlines were concerned, than the capture of one of his men. Awaiting transportation in Cortez, Drew had expected a visit from Fay, who could have told his captors they had a much smaller fish than they thought, but Fay had not come, and Drew continued his deception, more from mischievousness than anything else. It helped him to know that the men surrounding him, the men who would not allow him a little comfort, were being made fools of.