Chapter Eighteen
With the match out, shadows suddenly cloaked the room. Some light penetrated from the hallway, but the wall sconce containing an oil lamp was all the way down at the other end of the corridor. John Henry saw a flash of movement to his right as the woman darted in that direction.
Surely she didn’t think she could get past him with his blocking the door the way he was. As he twisted to intercept her, though, he saw that she had fooled him. Just as he had thrown his hat to draw the fire of the bushwhackers in the wagon, she had tossed something to distract him, too. As it slapped across his arm, he realized it was his saddlebags.
The next instant something slammed into his left shoulder and shattered with a crash. The chamber pot from under the bed, he thought. He was glad he hadn’t used it earlier.
The impact from the heavy ceramic pot staggered him a little and made him take a step back. She barreled into him a split-second later and knocked him even more off balance. She couldn’t weigh much, but she was moving fast. To his amazement, John Henry realized that she was about to slip past him.
His left hand shot out and grabbed the collar of her traveling dress. Despite his upbringing, he wasn’t inclined to worry too much about being gentle with an intruder in his room, male or female. She let out a soft cry of alarm as he pulled her back and heaved her toward the bed. He put enough strength into it that her feet completely left the floor. She landed on her back, lying across the mattress, and bounced a little.
John Henry stepped into the room, heeled the door closed behind him, and pulled out a match of his own. He squinted against the glare as he snapped it to life.
Sophie Clearwater lay there on his bed, her breasts made more prominent by the way she was lying on her back and breathing heavily. She started to roll to the side, but John Henry pointed the Colt at her and said, “Nope.”
She settled back, propped up on her elbows, and glared at him.
“You wouldn’t shoot an innocent woman,” she said.
“No, I probably wouldn’t,” he agreed. “Know where I can find one around here?”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Except break into my room.”
“I didn’t break into anything,” she insisted. “The clerk let me in.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because I told him I was your wife!”
“In that case, you’re in the right place, lying in my bed like that, I suppose,” John Henry said. “You’re a little overdressed for the setting, though.”
When he took a step toward her, she gasped and said, “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Wouldn’t dare claim my husbandly privileges, you mean?” he said. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Mrs. Sixkiller.”
“It’s Miss Clearwater!”
“Not if you’re my wife, it’s not.”
“Fine, damn it,” she said. “So I lied. I never claimed I didn’t.”
“And I have a feeling you were searching my saddlebags when I came in,” he went on. “That’s why you had them in your hand and were able to throw them at me. You must have been disappointed when you didn’t find anything except the same stuff that was in my carpetbag on the train. Why in blazes are you so determined to rob me, anyway?”
She sniffed in disdain and said, “I wasn’t trying to rob you. I have better things to do than that.”
“Then what are you after, and what are you doing here in Purgatory? Did you follow me here?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped.
John Henry’s brain worked swiftly. He said, “If you’re not trying to rob me, and if you didn’t follow me here, which means you were already on your way to Purgatory when we met on the train, that leaves only one answer: You’re trying to find out who I am and what I’m doing here. Am I right?”
He saw by the sudden flash of reaction in her eyes that he had reasoned it out correctly. But why would she be interested in his identity and his reasons for coming to Purgatory?
“I don’t have to talk to you,” she said. “Call the law on me if you want. I don’t care. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
John Henry thought about what a waste of time it would be to turn her over to Marshal Henry Hinkle. Besides, he wanted answers, and if he turned her in, he wouldn’t get any.
“Go ahead and sit up,” he told her. “Just don’t try anything.”
“What would you do, throw me across the room again?”
“The way you landed on the bed, you didn’t hurt anything,” he pointed out.
“Did you know for sure that was how I was going to land?”
As a matter of fact, he hadn’t. He’d just been trying to stop her from getting away. It was luck that made her fall harmlessly across the bed.
He didn’t admit that. As she sat up, he said, “Just tell me why you’re so determined to search my gear, and maybe I’ll let you go.”
She sighed and said, “Look, I’m a thief, all right? I might as well admit it. I use my good looks to distract men, and I sneak around and steal. But I haven’t stolen anything from you, so you’ve got to let me go.”
John Henry waggled the gun in his hand.
“I don’t think I have to do anything right now.”
“Well, if you’re going to force yourself on me, go ahead and get it over with.”
“Nobody said anything about that.” John Henry was still thinking fast, considering everything he knew about the situation here in Purgatory, and he decided to take what might turn out to be a blind shot. “Just like nobody said anything about $75,000 in gold bullion, either, but I think we both know about it.”
Maybe she was just one hell of an actress, but from the way Sophie’s jaw dropped, John Henry thought he had taken her completely by surprise. Despite the gun he still had pointed at her, she came to her feet.
“How did you . . . You know about the gold?”
“Of course, I do, and so do you.”
Now they were getting somewhere, he thought.
Sophie stubbornly shook her head, though, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You just admitted that you did.”
“I did no such thing. This is mining country. Of course, there’s gold around here.” She laughed. “But $75,000 worth of bullion. That’s ridiculous. Nobody would ever put that much gold in one place. That’s just asking for it to be stolen.”
“But if you could put together a shipment of that size and get it safely into the hands of Wells Fargo’s, that would be better than losing a lot of smaller shipments, wouldn’t it? Bigger risk, bigger reward.”
She looked like she was about to argue with him some more, but abruptly she changed her mind.
“Fine,” she snapped. “You know about the gold. But that doesn’t mean you can horn in on it.”
“You’ve got your sights set on it?” John Henry asked.
“Of course! If I could get my hands on that bullion it would be the biggest haul of my life! No more lifting wallets or . . . or the other things I’ve had to do to get by.”
“So why get me involved?” he said. “Why were you so determined to find out who I am?”
“Because I thought you might be after the same thing. And I was right! You wouldn’t even know about the gold if you weren’t planning to steal it.”
There was another way he’d know about it, he thought: if he’d been sent here to protect it. But he wasn’t going to admit that to Sophie.
“That doesn’t explain why you thought I might be after the gold,” he said.
“Look. I have my sources on the railroad. When I heard about the gold, I was able to find out who had tickets for Lordsburg, since that’s the closest stop to Purgatory. I figured it would be a good idea to find out as much as I could about them. I don’t need the competition. You were the only one I wasn’t able to pin down and peg as harmless. And then when you actually showed up here in Purgatory, I knew I was right to be suspicious of you.”
“How’d you find out about the gold in the first place?”
“I have sources in other places besides the railroad,” she said, being deliberately mysterious about it.
According to what Jason True had told Judge Parker in his letter, the only ones who knew about the planned massive gold shipment were the three mine owners and officials of the Wells Fargo Express Company. The mine owners were here in Purgatory, so that meant Sophie must have learned about the shipment from somebody who worked for Wells Fargo. It would be a good idea for the company to ferret out that indiscreet employee . . . but that could be dealt with after the gold was safely on its way to the mint in Denver.
“Look, I’m the only one who’s giving away any information here,” Sophie went on. “You still haven’t told me who you are and exactly what you’re planning, or how you found out about the gold, for that matter. Don’t you think turnabout is fair play?”
“Not as long as I’m holding the gun, I don’t,” John Henry said. He was busy trying to figure out what to do about this adventuress and would-be gold thief. Her presence was something he hadn’t expected, and it was a complication he didn’t really need, since he already had a gang of bloodthirsty outlaws to deal with.
He could reveal who he really was and arrest her, but then what would he do with her? There was a jail here in Purgatory where he could lock her up, but he didn’t really trust Marshal Hinkle to keep her behind bars. Besides, what would there be to stop her from telling anybody who would listen that he was a deputy United States marshal? That was something he was trying to avoid for the time being.
An idea occurred to him. It was risky, but it was really the only thing he could do.
“I don’t believe in telling anybody my plans unless I’m sure I can trust them,” he went on. “And there’s only one way I know I can trust you, Sophie.”
“Fine,” she said. She reached for the top button on her traveling outfit.
“That’s not what I meant,” John Henry said quickly.
She lowered her hands and said, “Oh.” John Henry thought she sounded a little disappointed. “What did you mean, then?”
“I was suggesting that you and I should throw in together. There’s a whole gang besides us after that gold, you know.”
“The Gilmore gang,” she said. “I’ve heard about them. And I’ve also heard that you’ve tangled with them a couple of times already.”
John Henry shrugged.
“We’re going to have to swipe it out from under their noses. We’ll have a better chance of doing that if we’re working together, rather than against each other, as well. And a two-way split would be better than getting nothing at all.”
“Who said it would be a two-way split?” Sophie asked.
John Henry frowned and asked, “What do you mean?”
The door opened behind him, and a familiar voice said, “The lady means she already has a partner. Don’t move, mister, or I’ll blow your head off.”