CHAPTER 14
Jaycee Breckenridge clutched the pearl-gripped,. 32-caliber Colt Rainmaker to her breast and ran her thumb across the hammer. She pricked her ears to listen for sounds in the hallway outside the closed door of her third-floor suite.
So far this morning, the House of a Thousand Delights had been quiet, as it was most mornings. But a minute ago, she’d looked out the window to see Cisco Walsh making his way toward the saloon from the opposite side of the street, weaving through Camp Collins’s early-morning traffic and puffing a fat cigar. He’d disappeared from the view from her window, and when he had—when she knew that he was mounting the front porch steps on his way inside the saloon/brothel/gambling parlor—she’d found herself hurrying over to her armoire and pulling out the small wooden drawer in which she kept the Rainmaker.
Now she sat in a brocade armchair by her unlit fireplace, clad in only her nightgown and velvet auburn robe, clutching the snub-nosed popper to her breasts. She could feel her heart beating against the pistol as she remembered the conversation, almost word for word, she’d overheard the night before through the billiard room door:
“That team will be hauling eighty thousand dollars in bullion, Walsh, and—”
“I know how much it will be carrying, Hall. I just don’t want your men to—”
“Like I said, we’ll all be there to make sure everything goes off without a—”
“At Horsetooth Station?”
“Yes, that’s where I said we’d meet. We’ll get back to you on the exact night. Now, look, Marshal, if you’re getting cold feet, let me remind you of a little problem in your past. One that likely would not—”
That was when Hall’s voice had stopped abruptly, as though someone on the other side of the door, realizing they were being overheard, had waved him to silence.
Jay wondered—had, in fact, wondered all through the long, sleepless night—if Walsh and Hall knew that she’d overheard their nefarious plans. They must have. She remembered how her hand had shaken when she’d set the brandy bottle on the table, and how when she’d looked at Walsh, he’d been looking at her shaking hand.
Why else would she have been shaking—unless she had just heard that Walsh had thrown in with a plan to rob eighty thousand dollars in bullion routed from one of the mountain mines through Camp Collins and probably to the railroad several miles east? Cisco Walsh—the handsome, dashing, brash, and upstanding western lawman himself!
Jay wondered how long he’d been riding on both sides of the law.
She wondered if he knew that Jay was now privy to his secret. She wondered what he would do about it if he was, which he most certainly was. Would he try to kill her? Try to have her killed?
And what was she going to do to foil his robbery scheme? It had to be foiled. Not that Jay held herself up as some great upstanding citizen. After all, she’d once run with outlaws herself. But she couldn’t allow that bullion to be robbed. She was a part of the legitimate business community here now, and she had to do her part to maintain law and order. Since she was likely the only one who knew about it, and of Walsh’s betrayal to the citizens of Camp Collins, she felt the weight of her responsibility....
Boots sounded on the stairs.
Clomp! Clomp! Clomp!
Slow, steady, echoing thuds. Each one followed by the trilling of a spur. It was almost as though he was trying to sound menacing. Trying to put the fear of God into her . . .
Almost?
Maybe that’s exactly what he was doing. For it most surely was Walsh on the stairs. He usually paid her a visit in the morning at the Thousand Delights. But never this early and never upstairs, in her room. Since she worked late, she usually slept in and didn’t go down for breakfast until ten or eleven. Sometimes Walsh would join her in the dining room off the saloon. Not every morning, but maybe once or twice a week.
He’d come early this morning, however and he was coming all the way up to her room because he was eager to find out if Jay really had overheard that telling conversation. He’d probably gotten as little sleep as Jay herself had, wondering what she knew. Wondering what she would do with the information if she did, indeed, know . . .
Boots thumped in the hallway, growing louder.
Spurs rang.
Her hands shaking slightly, Jay flicked open the Rainmaker’s loading gate and checked the cylinder, turning it slowly, quietly, not wanting the faint clicks to be heard in the hall. When she saw that brass resided in each chamber, Jay flicked the loading gate closed. She gasped when the thudding stopped in the hall outside her door.
She gasped again, nearly dropping the pistol, when three light taps sounded on her door. Cisco Walsh’s voice: “Jay?”
She drew a breath to calm herself. “Y-Yes?”
“Are you up?”
She paused, her mind working. “Just up. I haven’t bathed yet, Cisco. What can I help you with?” Did her voice sound several octaves higher than usual, or did it just seem that way to her?
There was a discomfiting pause followed by his menacingly quiet, even voice: “Can I come in, Jay? I’d like a word.”
A scream rose inside Jay’s head. She looked down at her hand holding the Rainmaker. It was shaking. She closed her left hand over it, squeezing, trying to formulate a response. She could not let him into her room. That might be a big mistake. Maybe the biggest mistake of her life.
Maybe he was reading her mind, because before she could respond, he said, as though trying a different tactic, “I was wondering if you’d join me for breakfast.”
Um . . . “It’s a little early for me, Cisco. And I haven’t bathed yet.” She tried to think. She didn’t want to see him today. She wasn’t sure what she would say. She needed time to compose herself . . . to come up with a plan . . .
She was just too damn nervous!
“I have a rather busy day ahead, in fact,” she said, speaking a little too quickly, though she couldn’t get herself to slow down. “Perhaps later in the week . . . ?”
A pause. A long pause.
Then, Cisco’s voice sounding a bit miffed: “Perhaps.”
A floorboard in the hall squeaked. Footsteps thudded, dwindling, as the town marshal walked off toward the stairs.
Jay let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Resting the revolver on her right thigh, she sank back in the chair, relief washing over her. It was a short-lived relief. As she heard Cisco’s boots retreating down the stairs, echoing in the quiet building, Jay’s heart picked up its rushed beating again.
What was she going to do about the robbery? Somehow, she had to stop it.
How?
Walsh was the law here in town—the man she would normally go to in such a situation. But he was the man who’d caused the situation. One of them, anyway.
Should she go to one of his deputies?
No. If he was planning the robbery, one or all of his three deputies might be in on it, as well. Possibly not, but it was not a risk she could take. If she wasn’t careful, she was liable to get herself killed. She wasn’t sure if Cisco was capable of murdering her to keep the robbery secret, but then she hadn’t thought him capable of robbing a stagecoach, either.
Cisco Walsh—the brash, legendary, upstanding western lawman!
He and Jason Hall, a widely respected rancher, were planning to rob eighty thousand dollars from one of the local mines.
Why?
Never mind that. They were, that’s all.
And Jay had to do something to stop it.
She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. She so wished that Slash and Pecos weren’t out on one of Bledsoe’s assignments. She needed Slash here with her. He would help her figure out what to do.
Maybe she should contact the Chief Marshal in Denver. Perhaps the county sheriff . . . ? Maybe she should walk over to the courthouse this morning and get the whole troublesome issue off her chest.
The more her mind swirled and her palms sweat, she realized that she needed someone to talk to. She had few close friends, however. Jay was a good businesswoman, but her business interests hadn’t left time for cultivating personal relationships with anyone except Slash, who’d been a friend of hers for many, many years. And Cisco, of course. He’d been an old friend, too. One whom she’d just learned was not really who she’d thought he was . . .
Her heart thudded at the whole improbable, confounding notion.
One face rose from the murk of her muddied thinking. Myra.
Next to Slash and Pecos, Myra Thompson was her closest friend even though Myra was years younger. Jay saw a lot of her younger self in the pretty, savvy young ex-outlaw girl....
Myra was street-smart, wise beyond her years. She might have some ideas about what Jay should do with the devastating information she knew about Walsh and Hall, whether she should go to the sheriff or the marshal . . .
Jay herself was a little wary of all lawmen due, of course, in no small part to her own shady past.
Having decided what she would do first, she flung away her robe and dressed in a simple, salmon-colored day frock. She gave her hair a quick brushing, leaving it down so she could wear a hat, then grabbed the felt topper she wore around town, to give her some protection from the merciless Colorado sun. She shrugged into a brown leather vest, pulled on a pair of kid riding gloves, and moved to the door.
She stopped, looked back at where she’d left the revolver on the brocade armchair. Should she take the weapon? She shook her head. Too heavy and cumbersome. Opting for the Lady Derringer she kept in her underwear drawer, she retrieved the silver-washed, over-and-under popper, which didn’t weigh much over a pound, and stuck it into her right vest pocket. It hardly made a bulge; not one that most people would notice, anyway. She doubted that Walsh or Hall would accost her on the street, but Jay wasn’t one for taking chances. There was much about Walsh she didn’t know. How could she be certain he wouldn’t send some skulking brigand to drag her off and murder her?
She strode to the door again, opened it slowly, and poked her head into the hall. It was quiet and empty. No sign of the marshal. No sign of anyone, for that matter. Good.
She stepped into the hall, locked the door, pocketed the key, and headed off toward the hall’s west end, where there was a door to a hidden rear stairway mostly used by housekeepers and Jay’s sporting girls when they didn’t want to be seen coming and going from their rooms. She dropped quietly down the stairs, glad to see none of the girls or housekeepers on it, preferring not to be seen leaving the Thousand Delights this time of the day, which was rare for her. She didn’t want to appear furtive and arouse suspicion, or to have to parry questions.
The stairs let out into the kitchen, but the saloon’s back door was only a few feet away. A couple of cooks were working at the range, but they had their backs to Jay, so she managed to slip out of the building without being seen.
“Good morning, Randall,” she said to the young man who tended the Thousand Delight’s feed barn and corral during the day. “Would you mind hitching the mare to my buggy for me, please?”
The young man had been tending the horses of two of Jay’s overnight guests, a couple of cattle buyers from Chicago who were likely still asleep upstairs with their respective girls. He turned to Jay with a curious expression, which Jay countered immediately with: “And let’s keep my little outing this morning just between you and me—shall we, Randall?”
She knew the young man to be the gossip rival of any women’s quilting party, though she couldn’t blame him. He no doubt got quite lonely working back here most of the day alone, only seeing customers briefly as they came and went.
“Oh, yes, ma’am—of course, Miss Jay. I won’t say nothin’ to no one.” Randall ran a big, thick, dirty hand down the front of his pin-striped overalls that bulged over his considerable belly. He frowned at his pretty boss from beneath the floppy brim of his shapeless black hat, looking troubled. “I won’t tell . . . er, I mean . . .”
Jay frowned. “You won’t what, Randall?”
“I won’t tell . . . I won’t tell . . . um . . .”
Jay felt her frown grow more severe. “You won’t tell who what, Randall?”
“Um . . . well . . . the marshal was back here a few minutes ago. He . . . um . . .” Randall toed a fresh horse apple.
Apprehension placed a cold hand against the small of Jay’s back. “He what? Perhaps he asked you to let him know if I went anywhere today . . . ?”
Her heart thudded.
“Yes, ma’am,” Randall said, looking sheepishly down at the scuffed toes of his boots. “He did do that, ma’am. He told me not to tell, but since you’re my boss an’all . . .” Again, he let his voice trail off as he continued to toe the apple, looking severely consternated.
Jay caught her breath, then said, “Thank you for telling me, Randall. Please don’t do what the marshal asked you to do, all right? I can’t tell you why. I just don’t want you to do it. If he returns and asks you whether I left, please tell him no. Will you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re the lady I work for, so . . .”
“Right. I hate to ask you to lie, but under the circumstances it’s important that you do. Now, please hitch the mare to my buggy. I’m in a hurry.”
“Right away, ma’am!”
As Randall grabbed a rope with which to capture the mare in the rear paddock, Jay turned to face the barn’s open doors, pressing her hand over her fast-beating heart.