Buena Vista was little more than a serried double row of scattered shacks interspersed with the occasional stone building paralleling a wide, muddy street that rose sharply toward the north. It hardly lived up to its name. The sidewalks and the street itself were crowded, and outside every store great bundles of wash pans, shovels, picks, ropes, and other necessaries of the mining life rattled like dented cowbells in the soft afternoon breeze. Over the whole place hung the suppressed clamor of a dozen different accents and the indefinable hum, the almost tangible fever, that is never very far from a gold camp.
Up every canyon, along every dribbling creek and runoff that fed the Arkansas, otherwise sane men grubbed in the filthy mud for as many hours a day as there was light, more than happy if those backbreaking hours yielded them an ounce of glinting particles of worthless metal—but worthless metal for which men would willingly kill, gladly cheat, happily lie, cheerfully steal, recklessly die. And if those same backbreaking hours yielded them nothing but rotted boots and rheumatic limbs, why, they buckled to and grinned and bore it, and got down to the same job again the next day, dreaming, as they all dreamed of The Big Strike. They sustained the bleakness of their everyday lives with legends—legends in which Striking It Heavy was the happy ending, legends born in a millrace on the south fork of the American River in California, risen again a hundred times in different forms in Arizona and New Mexico and Utah and Nevada and right here in Colorado. The legends survived defeat, despair, disappointment. Someone, somewhere was going to Strike It Heavy sometime. Nobody ever remembered that James Marshall never made a cent out of the gold field he discovered. Men who were not bitten by the gold lust never understood it.
Angel found the office of the town marshal at the northern end of the town, a simple frame cabin with a shingle outside that proclaimed its function. He led Kuden in, and the German stood sullenly behind him, head down as the marshal, a short, rotund man of perhaps fifty, got up from behind a littered roll top desk, pushed the swing door in the low railing which divided the room in half, and came forward with an inquiring look on his face. ‘Well, boys,’ he said, ‘What’s your trouble?’
‘No trouble, Marshal,’ Angel said. The marshal’s handshake was firm, and belied his apparently soft appearance. Angel never made the mistake of equating the fact of a man’s stoutness with sloppiness or flabbiness: one of the toughest fist fights he’d ever been in his life was with a short, tubby man who’d worn steel-rimmed spectacles and who had fought with a ferocity and strength that was all the more effective because it had been so unexpected. This marshal could well be another such, he thought: policing a town as tough as Buena Vista was likely to be on a Saturday night, even though the real tide of violence had now swept on to newer, rawer camps, would not be a cakewalk. He gave his name to the lawman, and showed him his identification.
‘Department of Justice, is it?’ the marshal said. ‘Well now.’
He looked at Kuden, who was looking at Frank Angel, with a new light in his eyes.
‘Well, bucko,’ the marshal said to Kuden. ‘You got mixed up with the right bunch this time, didn’t you?’ He turned to give Angel back the badge and the commission. ‘My name’s Hedley,’ he announced. ‘Gwyn Hedley.’
‘From Wales?’ Angel guessed.
‘Originally,’ Hedley admitted.
‘You been up here long?’
‘Long enough, boyo,’ Hedley said. ‘Long enough. Now, what do you need?’
‘Two things,’ Angel said. ‘One, I want this character put away someplace and kept there until he’s well enough to travel.’
‘No problem,’ Hedley said. ‘What’s number two?’
‘I’m looking for three men who probably went through town late last night or very early this morning,’ Angel said. ‘The names are Chris Falco, Gil Curtis, and Buddy McLennon. Falco’s a big man, well-built, with gray hair on both sides of his head that looks like it’s been painted on. Curtis is medium height, dark-haired. McLennon’s slim, almost girlish-looking. It’s just faintly possible they’re still in town, but I doubt it.’
‘It won’t take us long to check,’ Hedley said firmly. ‘You want to wait here?’
‘No,’ Angel said. ‘If you can take the prisoner off my hands, I might go get a hot meal. I haven’t eaten properly for a couple of days.’
‘I’ll do better than that, boyo,’ Hedley said. ‘Come with me while I tuck your little baby away safe, and I’ll show you a good place to eat. We can check on your three others at the same time.’
‘Bueno,’ Angel said. ‘Where’s your hoosegow?’
‘Right on down the street, next to the Lucky Strike,’ Hedley said. ‘You must’ve passed it as you came on up.’
Angel nodded, remembering the solid-looking stone building on the left hand side of the street. He gave Kuden a shove to get the man started, and Kuden limped out on to the sidewalk. He had no fight left in him: Angel’s gunpowder ploy had removed the starch, and he had told his tormentor everything he wanted to know. Kuden had nothing left to fight for, and even less to fight with. They trooped down the hill.
‘What’s the charge on this one?’ Hedley asked on the way.
‘Murder, first degree,’ Angel said.
‘And his name?’
‘Kuden, Hans Kuden.’ Angel spelled it for the marshal who crossed the street now and banged on the heavy wooden door of the squat stone building next to the saloon. His deputy, a dour-looking individual with a drooping mustache, a slat-thin, stooped body, and a face that looked as if it had never smiled since infancy, opened up with much sliding of bolts and rattling of keys.
‘Who you expectin’, Ike?’ Hedley said. ‘Quantrill’s Raiders?’
‘Never know,’ Ike said lugubriously. ‘No point takin’ chances.’
‘Brung you a prisoner,’ Hedley said, motioning Angel to follow him inside.
‘Jim-dandy,’ Ike said, with the tone of someone discovering he has just lost his wallet.
‘You speak German?’ Angel asked Ike. The deputy looked at him as if Angel had asked whether he made a habit of molesting small girls.
‘You what?’ he barked.
‘Just wondered,’ Angel said, and stood back as Ike pushed Kuden none too gently through a heavy steel door and into a corridor, along which were set four barred cells. He swung the door of one of them open, and Kuden slunk in like a whipped dog.
‘I’ll arrange for an escort to come collect him,’ Angel told Hedley. ‘In the meanwhile, he could use a doctor to look at his leg.’
‘What happened to him?’ Hedley asked.
‘He got shot,’ Angel said, and Hedley let the matter be. It didn’t seem like Angel had any intention of discussing the matter further.
‘I’ll get the doctor to call over and tend to him,’ he promised. ‘Ike, I’m going to grab a bite to eat.’
‘Fine,’ Ike said, sliding back into his bentwood chair and picking up his Police Gazette.
‘I’ll be back in about an hour,’ Hedley continued. ‘Spell you then.’
‘Fine,’ Ike said, without lifting his eyes from the magazine.
‘By the way, I just heard the world’s comin’ to an end at midnight,’ Hedley remarked casually, with a grin at Angel.
‘Fine,’ Ike said.
They walked back up the street together. Several times, Hedley stopped to talk to people: some miners he met coming out of a saloon, a storekeeper sweeping the dust out of his place on to the sidewalk whence it would blow back in again, a man sitting on a bench outside a cabin. He stopped and asked questions of a trio of spangled saloon girls switching their rumps along the sidewalk on their way to work in the Lucky Strike. They giggled as they answered, their eyes on the tall figure of Frank Angel. By the time they had reached the top of the street, Angel reckoned Hedley had talked with eight or nine separate sets of people. They all treated him with deference, Angel noted. Now they were back almost opposite the marshal’s office, and Hedley jerked a thumb at a frame building, one-story, and as long as a barn, upon the apex of whose roof was a sign that read: Home Cooking. Steaks a specialty. Home Cooking.
‘Place is run by a guy called Home, Bill Home,’ Hedley explained. ‘We never minded the pun much, but we give him a bad time every now and then about his spelling.’
The place was half-empty. It was still a little early for the crowds who’d fill the place after dark. There was a smell of fresh bread, coffee, food cooking, and the inescapable mining-town smell of sweaty feet. The waitress was a buxom woman with bright red cheeks and an Irish accent.
‘We’ll have a couple of your best steaks, Maggie,’ Hedley said.
‘Coffee?’
‘You bet.’
‘Want the coffee now?’
‘Sure.’
‘Comin’ up,’ Maggie said, bustling away.
‘Nice kid,’ Hedley said, startling Angel for a moment. Maggie was some way past being a kid, but then he realized that Hedley was old enough to call most people kids. Maggie pushed through the swing doors into the kitchen in back. Cooking smells wafted in.
‘Now as to your men,’ Hedley said. Angel leaned forward.
‘They’re here?’
‘No such luck,’ Hedley said. They left around mid-morning, far as I can make out.’
‘Damn!’ Angel ground out. Six or seven hours start would put them already on the far side of Trout Creek Pass, well on the way to South Park. He said as much, but Hedley shook his head.
‘Not likely, boyo,’ he said. ‘I talked to some miners just came down from Fairplay. They tell me it’s raining like hell higher up, might even snow before morning. That being the case, I’d say they was probably already hunkered down someplace doing their best not to freeze solid. It’s sartin sure they won’t be making over four or five miles an hour even if they’re on the move. I’d hazard a guess they might make it up to Fairplay, then stick it out there until it’s fit to travel.’
‘You reckon I might catch up on them?’
‘Could be, you set out tomorrow morning with fine weather, you’ll make it twice as fast up there as they did.’
Just at that moment, Maggie came bustling up with their coffee, and before they were halfway through the steaming brew, brought their meals. On each plate, completely concealing the ‘Willow Pattern’ design, was an inch-thick steak, a fried egg sitting on it. At one side of the steak was a heap of pan-browned potatoes and on the other a helping of canned beans. After the manner of men who spend much of their time outdoors, the marshal and his visitor wasted no more time talking, but fell to with a will. Hungry as he was, however, Hedley was still eating when Angel pushed away his emptied plate with a sigh and leaned back in the ladderback chair.
‘Peaches or pie?’ Maggie said as she picked up the plates.
They both chose pie, and Angel asked the marshal a question.
‘Fairplay?’ he replied. ‘It’s up above Trout Creek Pass. Lies at about ten thousand feet, and cold as a witch’s tit this time of the year. Used to be a camp up there in ’59 called Tarryall. Miners there ran off anyone who tried to join them, so the newcomers told ’em they oughta rechristen the place Graball. They pushed on up the South Platte and found gold in the gravel bars up there. Town just growed up alongside the river. Settled, now. They got a nice little white Presbyterian church, a two-story courthouse made out of red sandstone. You going up there after this Falco?’
‘You better believe it,’ Angel told him. ‘It would be kind of nice to catch up with them in Fairplay.’
‘How come?’ Hadley wanted to know.
‘Well,’ Angel said. ‘It has a nice ironic ring to it.’
~*~
Chris Falco had stayed alive the best part of forty years by always making sure all his bets were coppered. A man who coppered his bets was one who bet on every horse, calculating the odds so that there were precious few ways he could lose—and Falco had learned early in a colorful life that it was the best way to ensure survival. And survival was his strongest suit. He’d come west with his father, an incurable optimist who always believed he was going to find gold where everyone else had already looked, a beat-up, half-starved, rootless old prospector, but as tough as whang leather. Chris Falco had taken every beating the old man gave him—and there were plenty—without a whimper until he was sixteen and grown tall and broad. Then Carter Falco took a switch to his son once too often, and Chris damned near killed him. He lit out fast from his home near Springfield and ended up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he got a job as a bouncer in a Clark Street bordello. The madam had taken a fancy to him, dressed him well, and given him money to spend. She introduced him to some of her more important clients, one of whom was Danny Johnson, a ward boss in the Seventh District. Pretty soon Chris had a well-paid job as Danny’s bodyguard and enforcer, and Falco did a hell of a job. Nobody ever got charges against him that would stick and on the few occasions he was busted, Danny Johnson put the fix in and Chris was back on the street. Then one day somebody laid for Danny Johnson as he was coming out of the Golden Slipper on the corner of Maple and Divine, blowing him up with cool precision, leaving Falco crawling around in a pool of his own blood. The style of the execution left nobody in any doubt about who was behind it, and Falco knew better than to take on the Italians for anything as futile as revenge. He moved across the river, where he had a few connections, heading into Kansas. There were plenty of things for a sharp guy to get into. The herds were coming up from Texas, and there was a demand for men who knew all the tricks Chris had learned. He did some work with the cards, one of the easiest ways there was to strip marks; hustled a little, doing some pimping when things got slack—anything for a dishonest buck. His business became one of surviving, of being around, waiting for the big one to walk in through the door, fly over the transom, drop out of a pocket. Willowfield saw him and offered him what he wanted on a plate. All he’d ever hoped for was to get next to one big heist, and just as he had always known it would, it walked in through the door. He had no intention of letting it walk out.
Just the same, he mistrusted complicated plans like the one the fat man had cooked up to deal with the law. It relied on too many imponderables, and there was no way of coppering the bets, as he had already found out. This Angel, for instance—nobody had expected anything like him. The kind of law they had expected, not to say counted on, was the kind the U.S. marshals dished out. U.S. marshals were usually fiftyish, slowed-up hangers-on of whatever political machine was in power. They tended to be beer drinkers with hanging guts who had long since grown averse to hard riding in rough backcountry. When the occasion or the necessity to do so arose, they hired ‘deputies’ who were usually down-at-heel bounty hunters or would-be gunfighters anxious to carve a notch on their carbine butt. Nobody mourned when a bounty hunter was missing, or some gun nut wound up face down in some nameless gully. That had been the caliber of pursuit they had expected, not a man who could ride straight under the sights of three carbines and not only come out alive but take out two of his ambushers.
Falco had no intention of letting Angel run him to earth. He didn’t really figure that Kuden would have a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping Angel, and he made his plans on that basis. It came as no surprise at all to him when Curtis galloped into Buena Vista on a lathered horse and confirmed it.
He’d left Curtis on a high bluff overlooking the trail up the canyon of the Arkansas with a pair of good army field-glasses and the best of the horses. He and McLennon pushed on ahead into Buena Vista to get some supplies, rest the horses, maybe grab a couple of quick drinks.
So now, as they headed on up the mountain trail out of Buena Vista, Falco turned the options over in his mind, unhappy with the picture they presented. It was bad enough that Angel was still coming, but worse news that he had taken Kuden prisoner.
That would mean Kuden had spilled, Falco thought. No point hoping otherwise: act on the premise that the worst has happened. That means he knows what Kuden knows, the original plan. He grinned like a wolf. Nobody knew he’d changed that some. Angel would also know the route they planned to take, and he could do one of two things. Change the route, or take the one Kuden would have told Angel about, and then turn that knowledge against Angel. He decided on the latter.
By now, however, he had a healthy respect for Mister Frank Angel, and when he explained his plan to the others, he set up everything so that once more, his bet on survival was coppered.
In Buena Vista, he’d made himself conspicuous, so that a dozen people or more around town would remember him. He’d gone bareheaded so that the men he’d jostled in front of in the store would recall him. He had criticized the quality of the liquor in the Lucky Strike. He had suggested some particularly vile sexual activities to one of the saloon girls. He smiled in remembering that: no way she would forget him. All in all, he laid a trail that an infant would have had trouble missing, knowing that it would bring Angel out after them, hell bent into the flat emptinesses of South Park. The trail led ever upward into the mountains, cresting at Trout Creek. At Trout Creek Pass they would kill Angel.