CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“A day’s ride to the Rio Bravo,” the Kiowa said. “I believe that Clay Kyle and his gunmen have already crossed.”
“Taking Jenny Calthrop with them,” Dan Caine said. The Kiowa answered with a shrug, and Dan said, “Where the hell are they headed?”
Clint Cooley replied to that question. “Somewhere deeper into Old Mexico where they can sell the girl, would be my guess.”
“Why such a long ride, way out of Kyle’s home range, to sell a young girl?” Dan said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and it doesn’t make sense.”
“Hey, newspaperman, what’s the going rate for a white girl in Mexico?” Cooley said.
Cornelius Massey shook his head. “That question is nothing my experience can answer,” he said. “I didn’t even know there was such a market for white women in Mexico.”
Estella Sweet said, “Holt, if I was for sale in Pete Doan’s store, how much would he ask for me?”
“Miss Estella, that’s a hell of a question to ask a man,” Holt Peters said. It was the first time he’d called himself a man, another sign that in his own mind he’d left his boyhood behind. The others noted it, Cooley smiled slightly, but no one commented on his new status.
“Take a guess,” Estella said. “Come on, don’t be shy, how much?”
“You won’t like my answer,” Holt said.
“Try me,” Estella said.
“All right, then. You know Steel Wagner?”
“Yes, I know him. He’s a top hand on the Rafter-T.”
“The very same,” Holt said. “One day I overheard him say to another cowboy in the store that if Pete Doan sold brides, he’d pay top dollar for Estella Sweet, four months’ wages for each tit and another four months’ pay for the rest.” Holt blushed. “Well, that’s what he said.”
Estella was unperturbed. Her face showed only slight amusement as she said, “Dan, how much does a top hand like Steel Wagner make a month?”
Dan Caine, wary of saying the wrong thing, managed, “I’d say forty a month.”
Estella said, “So let me count that up. Two tits . . . the rest . . . adds up to four hundred and eighty dollars.” She smiled. “Let’s call a spade a spade. Jenny is my friend, but she’s not near as pretty as me, so I’d say her going price in Old Mexico would be three hundred dollars. In pesos.”
Dan said, “Clint, what do you think?”
“Sounds about right,” Cooley said.
“Damn it all, why does nobody ever ask me stuff like that?” Fish Lee said. “I’ve spent some time in Old Mexico, you know.”
“Well, Fish, what do you think?” Dan said.
“Yeah, it sounds about right,” Fish Lee said. “So why would ol’ Clay cross hundreds of miles of wilderness and risk being jumped by Rangers and Apaches for three hundred lousy dollars? He could’ve headed back across the Brazos and sold the girl there.”
“He’s got something else in mind, that’s for sure,” Cooley said. “I’ve racked my brain, but I can’t even begin to figure what it is.”
“Seems like there’s something, all right,” Dan said. “But it doesn’t matter a damn. I’m still going after Kyle, and when I find him, I’ll hang him.”
“You mean when we find him, Deputy Caine,” Holt Peters said.
Dan nodded, smiling. “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
He and the others stood around the fire, finishing the last of the morning’s coffee. The new-aborning day was coming in clean and bright, and the air smelled of long grass and sage.
Lanky Lazarus Latchford left his stranded balloon and stepped beside Dan. “Good news,” he said. “The burner wasn’t as badly damaged as I thought. Me and Miss Prunella will have it fixed by dark.”
“And then what?” Dan said.
“Then we wait for a north wind and follow your trail. I’ll have my bombs ready and nice and handy.”
“We don’t know where Kyle is going,” Dan said. “You may have a time finding us.”
“Ah, I consulted Miss Prunella on that . . . oh wait, here she comes. I’ll let her speak for herself. Miss Prunella is as smart as a tree full of owls and I always say that she stores more facts in her head than a Montgomery Ward mail-order catalogue.” Latchford smiled. “She can recite Mr. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, in French, from memory, and that’s the truth, not just a little professorial humor there.”
Miss Prunella, a blue wildflower bloom in the brim of her pith helmet, a tin cup in her hand, stepped to the fire, hefted the pot, and then poured herself coffee. “Fine morning, isn’t it?” she said.
“Indeed, it is, my dear,” Latchford said. “Now think carefully . . . where would Clay Kyle go in Mexico?”
“Not just to sell a girl,” Miss Prunella said. “I doubted that from the git-go since they could kidnap pretty girls in Mexico and sell them. No, he’s after something else, something much more valuable, is Mr. Kyle.”
“Have you any idea what?” Latchford prompted. “Anything in all those newspapers and magazines you read?”
For a while, Miss Prunella screwed up her pretty little face in thought and then recited, “The Houston Post, January seventh, 1879, Page one, anchor story. Headline, uppercase, IS THERE GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS? Lowercase, italic, We hear that local prospector Ives Brentwood is once again off to the Sierra del Carmen in Old Mexico in search of the Lost Chinaman gold mine. This will be his fourth attempt to find the elusive pot of gold, said to have been first mined by Chinese railroad workers and then abandoned. Mr. Brentwood said that he’s convinced there is a fortune in fist-sized nuggets just lying around waiting to be found. So all we can do is admire his perseverance and pluck and wish him a hearty good luck!”
Miss Prunella said, “I never read any mention of Ives Brentwood and his quest again, and I can only surmise he perished in the mountains. My guess is that Kyle is in search of the Lost Chinaman.”
Cornelius Massey was stunned. “You memorized that from the paper.”
“Everything I read, I memorize,” Miss Prunella said. “I don’t know why this is so, but I do, so there it is.”
Massey searched his brain for obscurity and then said, “Have you read Mr. Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death?”
“Of course, she has,” Professor Latchford said, irritated. “Miss Prunella is very well read.”
The little woman smiled and said, “The Red Death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim were the pest ban that shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellowmen. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour . . .”
Massey clapped his hands and yelled, “That snapped my girdle! Miss Prunella, you have a rare gift.”
“That’s not what the nuns at the orphanage told me,” the little woman said. “They said dwarves are obstinate children and have magical powers like great strength, memorizing what they read, wearing cloaks of invisibility, and foretelling the future. And they said it all comes from the devil and they beat me. Not every day, just on most days.”
“I wish I’d been there. I’d have given those nuns a piece of my mind,” Massey said.
“I’m sure you would have, Cornelius,” Dan said. “Now it’s time to mount up. We got a river to cross.” He studied the Kiowa’s impassive face and said, “What about you, Indian. Will you stick?”
The Kiowa nodded. “Until the job is done, or you’re dead. Whatever comes first.”
“Well, if I turn up my toes any time soon, you can have all the money in my pockets,” Dan said. “You deserve it.”
“Ah, it is good. You will give up your life to pay me my due,” the Kiowa said.
“No, that ain’t exactly what I meant,” Dan said. “But I guess for now, it’s close enough.”
* * *
The Kiowa took point and soon lost himself in the distance. As Dan Caine and the others rode out, Clint Cooley looked behind him where Professor Latchford and Miss Prunella stood on either side of the balloon basket like mismatched bookends. He said to Dan, “You think we’ll see those two again this side of Thunder Creek?”
Dan smiled. “Who knows? They’d have to catch a north wind and steer straight for the mountains. Somehow I kinda doubt it.”
“Would you go up on one of those things?” Cooley said.
“You couldn’t pay me enough,” Dan said.
“I’d do it,” Holt Peters said. “I’d like to fly right over Thunder Creek and drop a pail of molasses on Sheriff Hurd’s head.”
“You don’t like him very much, kid, huh?” Cooley said.
“Mr. Doan said Chance Hurd was an outlaw and is still an outlaw. He takes stuff out of the store and never pays for it.”
“What kind of stuff ?” Cooley said.
“Anything he wants,” Holt said. “Once he took a brand new Greener hammerless from the gunrack and told Mr. Doan he’d pay him later. He never did.”
“I always wondered where he got the money to buy himself a new, eighty-dollar scattergun,” Dan said.
“Well now you know,” Holt said.
“Damned villain,” Dan said.