After taking a bit more time to scout the vicinity of the smokehouse while also watching the men who were guarding it, Pete made his way back to the Straight to the Eight. Deaugrey was at the same table and barely looked up to acknowledge Pete was there after being tapped on the shoulder.
“Just another hour or two,” was all Deaugrey said before shifting his intense gaze back to his cards.
Normally, Pete didn’t take kindly to being brushed off in such a casual manner. When dealing with Deaugrey Scott, however, it helped to set one’s expectations somewhat south of normal. Pete stepped up to the bar and waited for the tender to come to him.
“You get what you needed, friend?” the barkeep asked.
“Mostly. How’s he doing?” Pete asked while nodding over to Deaugrey’s table.
The barkeep looked over there as well. Shrugging, he said, “Seems to be doing well enough. The other players don’t seem too happy when they take a stretch or come over for drinks, so I guess that bodes well for your friend.”
“Speaking of drinks . . .”
“Your friend hasn’t had one that wasn’t at least half water since you left. I was about to start tapering it off even more in a few minutes.”
Pete watched Deaugrey for a few seconds, taking careful note of his manner and posture. Deaugrey seemed relaxed, but not overly so. When he spoke, his voice still boomed to its normal, aggravating bluster. “He’s fine the way he is,” Pete told the barkeep. Placing some money on the bar, he added, “This should cover the rest until the game is over. You’re doing a fine job.”
“Happy to be of service. Anything else you need? Something that’ll hit you harder than liquor? Maybe some company for the night?”
“I’ll let you know. You got any rum?”
“Part of a bottle. Don’t know how well it’s held up, though. There’s not much call for that particular poison around here. Only reason I have any was because one of the former—”
“I’ll have a glass,” Pete said sharply.
Knowing how to take a hint, the barkeep searched the bottles behind him without another word. When he found it, he pulled out the stopper, took a sniff, winced and poured some into a glass.
Pete reached for his drink and had a sip. He’d tasted better, but he’d certainly had a whole lot worse. After finding a comfortable spot where he could watch Deaugrey’s table without being jostled by too many other customers, the tracker settled in for a while.
Surprisingly enough, Deaugrey actually did realize Pete was sitting there the entire time. He came over to stand beside the tracker before Pete could finish his second glass of rum.
“How you holding up?” Pete asked.
Deaugrey let out a snorting laugh. “I was about to ask you the same thing. It’s not too often that you indulge in that piss water you like so much, but when you do it usually means a wild night.”
“That remains to be seen. I’ve gone to visit Nate.”
“Still just those same two morons standing watch over him?”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “But they’re armed morons.”
“Most morons tend to be armed,” Deaugrey said while slapping the bar to get the tender’s attention. “Answer me one thing. Do I have to stab you or him for bringing me the watered-down drinks?”
Pete looked at the barkeep who was squarely in Deaugrey’s sights before admitting, “That’d be me. I figured you’d want to stay sober for a while.”
Standing so he faced Pete head-on, Deaugrey held out both arms as if to embrace him and asked, “Do I look like a man who’s doing badly for himself?”
“No more than usual,” Pete said, which was part truth and part jab. Every time Deaugrey took a fall, whether it was being tossed into a cell or getting knocked onto his ass, he managed to pull himself together and rebuild. When Pete had met up with him this time around, Deaugrey had been dressed in something close to rags and riding a slope-backed mule. Now, not only was he wearing better clothes than before, but he’d somehow managed to get a new pair of boots as well.
“You’re supposed to be collecting money to buy Nate’s freedom, am I right?” Pete asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why are you spending so much on new clothes?”
Deaugrey daintily grabbed the lapels of a gray waistcoat and peeled it open to reveal a battered double rig holster strapped around his waist. Along with the .38 that Frank had lent him, he also carried what looked like a .44 Colt. “You mean these old things? These were kindly donated by some patrons of this establishment who have since seen fit to seek their pleasures elsewhere.”
“You mean you cleaned them out for everything they had.”
“Every dime, as well as some choice pieces of clothing, a pistol, these boots and a very nice pocket watch.”
“What about cash? How are you doing in that regard?”
“I think I’ve collected enough to take a good run at getting Nate out of that jail,” Deaugrey replied. “That is, unless you’ve already broken him out yourself?”
“Not quite, although I don’t think it would be too difficult. Has Frank shown up while I was away?”
“No. What have you two been up to while the rest of us were working so diligently?”
Pete ran through the broad strokes of what had happened while they were in Nagle. Although Deaugrey listened, it was difficult to tell whether he was truly paying attention or if some other kind of nonsense was running through his head.
“Sounds like Dog Ear has been busy since his most recent liberation,” Deaugrey said.
“Yeah, but it seems Nate has all but forgotten about him. He’s hung up on the notion of finding this Keyes person.”
“Ahh, yes. The prolific Abraham Keyes. Quite the sordid history with that one.”
“You knew about him already?” Pete asked.
“I read a good deal about his trial in the papers. It happened around the time I was tucked away in a hospital in Colorado. There wasn’t much to do there apart from read. Oh,” Deaugrey tossed in as if it was the punch line of a dirty joke, “and getting healed.”
“Nate thinks the two men watching that jail were bought and paid for by Keyes,” Pete said.
“Oh, most definitely they were. Seems many men in this very saloon have had run-ins with them two regulators. They’re for sale but don’t do much to earn their money. The man who donated his watch to my wardrobe mentioned there’s a third who is still out somewhere working a silver mine. He’s the killer of the three and, if that’s what Keyes paid for, he’ll get it as soon as that one returns.”
“Then we’ve got to get Nate out as quickly as possible.”
“I thought that was the plan all along.”
“Yer damn right it is.”
* * *
“What’s this for?” Ross asked.
The sun had become a memory in the time since Pete had paid his last visit, and there wasn’t much light shining on the regulator’s face. The torch a few yards from the old smokehouse was burning bright enough for Pete to see an expression of genuine bewilderment. Pete’s grip tightened on the wad of cash as he held it closer to Ross’s face and asked, “What the hell do you think it’s for? Ain’t this enough to pay my friend’s fine?”
“What fine?”
“Whatever it is I need to pay to get him out of there! This has got to be enough.”
“There isn’t a fine,” Ross said. “He’s staying in there for another day at least.”
“Why?”
Ross’s eyes darted back and forth, but found nothing to fix upon. “Because,” he reluctantly said, “that’s our orders.”
Pete’s hand tightened into a fist around the dollars he was holding, which he thumped against the other man’s chest. “Take this goddamn money and open that goddamn smokehouse.”
Shaking his head, Ross stepped back. “You’re gonna have to leave.”
“Yeah?” Shoving the money back into his pocket, Pete slapped that hand against the gun holstered at his side. “You wanna tell me one more time what I gotta do?”
“I thought you were a priest!”
“You’re gonna need a priest if you don’t—”
Since it was clear that things weren’t going to get any better from there, Deaugrey patted Pete on the shoulder and stepped in. “Obviously, you were paid to keep that man locked up. Am I right?”
“That, uh, doesn’t matter,” Ross stammered.
“I can see I’m dealing with someone who knows their job well and isn’t to be trifled with,” Deaugrey said in a voice that didn’t betray the first hint of sarcasm. “For that reason, we’re willing to hand over some additional compensation.” He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket, which also allowed him to show the guns he kept on his person. Flashing an additional hundred dollars, he said, “This is more than the job is worth, but you drive a hard bargain.”
Without hesitation, Ross shook his head. “I can’t. We, uhh, we can’t take that.”
“Then how about this?” Deaugrey asked as he dug out another twenty.
Ross looked around as if he had an audience surrounding him. All that could be seen at that late hour was the usual assortment of drunks, vagrants and tired miners shuffling to whichever tent contained their bed for the night. “Tell you what,” he said in a voice that could barely be heard. “Bring that back in two days. We’ll open the door and your friend can go.”
Smiling, Deaugrey stashed his money away and said, “There now. I imagine that was some of the easiest money you’ll ever make. We’ll be seeing you and your associate real soon.”
Several paces behind them, Ross’s stout partner glanced about a few times before realizing he was the associate that had just been mentioned.
When Deaugrey walked over to where Pete was waiting, the tracker was gnashing his teeth like a horse chewing on a bit. Still smiling, Deaugrey looked over his shoulder at the regulators who were holding a nervous conference about twenty yards away.
“What did they tell you?” Pete asked.
“He told me to come back in two days,” Deaugrey replied. “If we do that, Nate will be dead. I say we give it an hour, wait for them to get nice and tired, stroll back over there, knock them over the head, take their keys and escort Nate to freedom. After that, we have a nice plate of breakfast.”
“We can’t do that.”
“Why? I’m starving!”
“We gotta think about getting out of this camp as well as just getting Nate out of that box,” Pete told him. “These miners take care of their own. Them regulators may be idiots, but they gotta have some friends in this camp who’ll back their play. You see all these men standing and lying about?”
Deaugrey looked around to see the same drunks, vagrants and miners he’d seen before. The men’s dirty faces were every bit a part of the landscape as the rocks, tents and rich Missouri soil. “Yeah, I see them.”
“They’ve been glaring at us every time we so much as look at that smokehouse or them two who are guarding it. We make a move on those regulators and we’ll have trouble coming at us from all sides.”
“These aren’t bad men,” Deaugrey scoffed. “They’re tin panners.”
“They all got guns,” Pete said. “And if they all start shooting, at least one of them’s bound to hit something. We’ll only get one shot at getting all of us out of here before things get too messy, so we need to make it a good one.”
When Deaugrey looked around this time, he took special notice of all the dirty faces pointed back at him. They were in doorways, tent flaps, windows and shadows and they didn’t turn away until the pair had put some distance between themselves and the camp’s makeshift jail. “Even if we did get Nate out of there, we don’t have much of an idea of what Keyes has got brewing or what sort of meat grinder we’d be going into if we did find him.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”
“So we go it alone?”
Pete grinned. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that, either.”