3

The rider reached the bedroom in several long bounds. Darting around the bed, he yanked the closet door open, crouched, and slipped inside. Long dresses filled half of it, and he slid behind them, leaving a gap so he could see out. He left the door open a couple of inches, enough that he could see the doorway and part of the bed.

None too soon.

Martha appeared. She was humming to herself. She crossed out of his line of vision, toward the chest of drawers. He heard a drawer scrape open. Whatever she was after didn’t take long to find. The drawer scraped again and she reappeared, about to depart. Unexpectedly, she glanced at the closet.

The rider held his breath. She might remember that the door had been closed and wonder why it was open. But no, after a few moments she walked out, humming softly as before.

The rider quietly let out his breath. The last thing he needed was to be caught. He prided himself on always getting away clean. Not that there hadn’t been a few times when he’d been lucky to make it out alive.

He stayed put several minutes, just to be safe. Finally easing out, he crept to the door. From downstairs came the clatter of pots.

On cat’s feet he descended and was out the front with Martha none the wiser. There was no sign of Sam. Hastening to the barn, he shoved the pouch into his saddlebags, brought Archibald out, and rode at a walk until he was sure he was out of earshot. Then he gigged Archibald to a trot, back to the hill and up it into the woods.

His packhorse was right where he’d left it, dozing. Climbing down, he unbuttoned the uniform shirt and eased his left arm from behind his back. The arm was a little stiff from being bent behind him for so long, and he flexed it and moved it up and down. Satisfied, he shoved it into the sleeve, untied the lead rope, and got out of there.

He had no doubt that if Sam Carson and his wife discovered the theft, Sam would be after him with a shotgun.

“Let him,” the rider said to Archibald, and grinned. “That was pretty slick, huh?”

The rider used his heels and held to a trot for about half a mile. That should be enough, he reckoned, that he could relax some, and he slowed.

The day was sunny and bright. Butterflies fluttered about a patch of wildflowers, and songbirds warbled.

“Yes, sir,” the rider happily declared. “Life is lookin’ good.”

It hadn’t always. In his mind’s eye he flashed back to when he was ten, to that horrible day when his ma died of the consumption that had slowly been killing her for years. His pa went to pieces and took to the bottle, sucking the bug juice down as if there would be no tomorrow. Which, in his pa’s case, turned out to be the truth. In less than a year his pa was dead, too.

The worst day of all was the day of his pa’s funeral. His aunts and uncles brought him home and sat in the parlor discussing what was to be done with him. They didn’t know he was eavesdropping, didn’t know how it crushed him to hear them say that none of them wanted to take him in. One uncle flat-out said he wasn’t their responsibility. An aunt said that she already had four kids and couldn’t afford to raise another. Another aunt, a spinster, said that she’d never wanted children, and wasn’t about to change her ways because “the black sheep of the family,”’ as she called his pa, had drunk himself to death.

The upshot was that they decided to put him in an orphanage.

Four years. That was how long he was stuck there. Four years of pure hell. Four years of being switched for the slightest infraction. Four years of barely enough to eat, of threadbare blankets in the cold of winter, of hand-me-down clothes that never fit, of shoes that were either too tight or too loose, of lights out at eight and always up at five, of scrubbing and sweeping and not being allowed to visit the outhouse without permission.

Was it any wonder he’d hated it? Was it any wonder that one day he decided enough was enough, and snuck out in the middle of the night? He hiked over ten miles to the city.

Chicago. He hadn’t known much about it at the time, except that there were an awful lot of people and it would be easy to lose himself amid the teeming throngs. Nearly three hundred thousand, he would learn, and growing by leaps and bounds.

It was a whole new world. A scary world. At first he scrounged in the trash and refuse bins in alleys for food. He slept in discarded crates, in empty houses, anywhere dry and somewhat safe.

In time he graduated from refuse to thievery. He’d swipe fruit from stalls, snatch clothes from street vendors. He learned that other urchins were adept at picking pockets, so he became adept at it, too. His early attempts were clumsy, and only his fleetness of foot spared him from winding up behind bars. He might not have improved much if he hadn’t made the acquaintance of Old Tom, who was a master at relieving others of their valuables. Old Tom taught him the most valuable trick of all. Being quick was fine, and having a light touch was dandy, but the true secret to being a successful pickpocket was what Old Tom called “the art of distraction.” Which was a highfalutin way of saying you bamboozled your victim.

A common method was to bump into someone, hard, and then, while saying how sorry you were, you patted and smoothed their clothes while relieving them of their purse.

His own favorite was to carry a jug of water around, and when he spotted a well-dressed mark, he’d intentionally walk into them just as he started to take a drink from the jug, spilling water all over.

Old Tom and some others were friendly enough, but the streets were a dangerous place. He wasn’t the only one scrabbling to stay alive. The city was packed with immigrants, many of them barely getting by. And then there were those without anywhere else to live, and no family, besides. Street urchins, they were called. Like wolves, many roamed in packs, and like wolves, they were fiercely protective of the streets they roamed.

Twice a pack had caught him unawares.

The first time, it was late at night, and he was in a part of the city he’d never explored before. He was searching for a place to sleep when, without warning, he was jumped. Over a dozen sprang out of the darkness, but only a few of the older ones came at him with clubs. That was what saved him. If all of them had attacked at once, he’d have been overwhelmed. As it was, he’d barely escaped. Twisting and dodging, he’d taken blows to the shoulder, chest and arms, and then he was through them and ran with all the speed he could muster. Howling and yelling, the pack gave chase, but in the dark he was able to slip away.

The next time was more serious.

He’d been in the city a couple of years. He knew it like the back of his hand, and grew overconfident. He’d decided to spend the night in a seldom-used shed at the stockyards. He had slept there before, and wasn’t expecting trouble.

Little did he know that a new gang had claimed the stockyards as their territory, and as he stepped up to the shack, he was suddenly ringed by boys bristling with knives and clubs.

Their leader waved a knife and demanded money, “or else.”

Every cent he had at the time, he’d come by the hard way. He decided he would be damned if he’d hand it over. He’d pretended to give in, nodding and saying, “Sure. Whatever you want.” He’d made as if to reach for his poke—and kicked the leader where it would hurt the most. Unfortunately, the leader had oysters made of lead and came at him in earnest, intent on relieving him of his life.

He’d tried to flee and been shoved back by some of those who ringed him. He would have died, then and there, but the leader toyed with him like a cat with a mouse. As it was, he was cut four times. Not deeply, not to where the cuts were life-threatening, but they hurt and they bled, and he was sure he was a goner.

In desperation he’d leaped at the older boy and gouged a fingernail into the boy’s eye. The gang leader shrieked and clutched at his face.

The next was hazy. Somehow, he wrenched on the leader’s arm and got hold of the bloody blade. He attacked the circle, swinging wildly, voicing savage cries. To his amazement, they gave way, and he’d fled into the night.

That was it for Chicago. He’d laid up for a week. By then he was healed enough to jump on a freight train headed west. He didn’t care where he ended up. One city was much like any other, or so he’d reckoned.

Kansas City proved him wrong. Compared to the hustle and bustle of Chicago, it was downright lackadaisical. The pace of life was a lot slower, the people a lot friendlier. That the population wasn’t much over thirty thousand might have had something to do with it.

He continued to ply his pickpocketing craft and took up gambling, in a small way. He made enough that instead of living on the street, he rented a room at a boardinghouse. He dressed better, and ate better, and might have stayed there forever if it hadn’t been for the Finch episode.

Oliver Wendall Finch was a leading citizen. A banker, he had made his first million by the time he was forty, or so the story went. Now past sixty, he indulged his one vice—bucking the tiger—every chance he could. Finch happened to frequent the same saloon—the Frontier House—that the rider did. Why, he never could figure out. With all the money Finch had, it made more sense for him to spend his time at one of the luxurious gambling palaces.

As curious as everyone else, he’d joined the onlookers watching Finch play one night, and noticed that Finch was a heavy cigar smoker. A lot of men were. There was nothing unusual in that. But it gave him an idea.

At any hour of the day or night, a person could find a hawker selling virtually anything under the sun. Cigars included. Hastening out, he’d scoured nearby streets, and as fate would have it, found an elderly man selling cigars. He offered to buy every one, plus the tray the old man carried them in. The old man was reluctant. He had to offer twice what the cigars would have fetched—on average, two for fifteen cents—and throw in another couple of dollars for the tray.

Then he posted himself outside the Frontier House, and waited. The moment Oliver Wendall Finch came through the batwings, he began bawling, “Cigars for sale! Get your cigars here! Finest quality!”

The truth was, he couldn’t tell a good cigar from a bad one if his life had depended on it. He was taking a gamble.

Finch stepped to a carriage and was about to climb on when he heard the cry and glanced over.

Hoping against hope, he hollered, “Cigars! Cigars! From five cents to twenty-five!”

Finch came over. “Twenty-five?” he said. “Let me see your selection, young man. What brands do you carry?”

He hadn’t bothered to find out. The important thing was to lure Finch close. And now, as Finch reached toward the tray, he pretended to stumble and upended it onto Finch’s legs and shoes.

“My word!” the great man had exclaimed. “Let me help you.”

Together, they bent and collected cigars. They were so close that Finch didn’t think anything of it when they bumped shoulders. So close, that his hand darted in and under Finch’s coat and out again without Finch being the wiser. They finished picking the cigars up. Finch examined a few, produced a coin from a pants pocket, and bought a couple.

He would never forget the feeling he had, watching the great man clatter off in the carriage, the great man’s wallet in his own jacket. The snatch had been flawless. Quickly setting the tray down, he hurried to his room at the boardinghouse to collect his belongings.

He didn’t look in the wallet until he was ready to leave. Seated on the bed, every nerve tingling, he opened it and counted the thick sheaf of bills. Six hundred and forty-three dollars. For him, a fortune.

Giddy with delight, rolling back and forth, he’d laughed until tears trickled from his eyes.

A knock on his door brought his glee to an end. His landlady said that a constable was there to see him.

He went out the window. His room was on the second floor. He dropped his bag, hung from the sill, and dropped. Fear lent wings to his feet, and the next morning, he bought a horse and took the road to Atchison, Kansas. He had a hankering to see Denver, but to get there he’d have to cross nearly six hundred miles of hostile-infested countryside. By his lonesome, he invited an early grave. So he sold the horse and bought a ticket on the Butterfield Overland Despatch. The man who sold him his ticket told him that the stage line might be shutting down soon because it couldn’t compete with the railroad.

That was a shame, because he enjoyed the trip. Relay stations at regular intervals were welcome breaks. The food was tolerable, and he got to see a lot of prairie country.

The other passengers talked a lot about Indians, but they didn’t see a single hostile the whole way.

Denver suited him down to his marrow. It used to be known as Denver City until it was picked as the new territorial capital. Thanks in large part to the Pikes Peak gold rush and a silver boom in the high country, Denver became a hub of commerce and travel. It also, he soon discovered, was a hub of corruption.

Saloons and sporting houses outnumbered churches twenty to one. Card sharps, confidence men, and ladies of ill repute thrived.

For a pickpocket, Denver was a feast of opportunity. But it wasn’t enough. He yearned for something more. Something that would reap the kind of money he’d gotten from Oliver Wendall Finch. He’d picked Finch’s pocket, sure, but he’d done it while impersonating a cigar hawker.

Impersonation. That was where the big money lay. To that end, he came up with a scheme to fleece several of Denver’s elite out of a lot of cash. He thought his brainstorm was brilliant.

He never expected to be lynched.