CHAPTER 7

THE clerk was a different fellow than the one on duty during the night, and knew nothing. And no, the night clerk there before him hadn’t seen any kind of chase. If he had, he’d have been talking about it when he left this morning, Gunnison was assured. The night clerk was like that—the kind to talk. Most likely, if anything of the sort had happened, the night clerk had been asleep on the job and missed it. He was like that, too—the kind to sleep on the job.

Gunnison had every intention of questioning each person who had been lodged on his floor the night before, but to his misfortune, all but one—an overweight woman of society with a snobbish attitude—had checked out.

He tried to question the woman about the ruckus of the night before, but she claimed to know nothing of it. Gunnison sensed two things: she had indeed heard it despite what she said today, and she, like Kempson initially, blamed him for it, assuming he was the male involved. Unlike Kempson, she was not willing to be persuaded otherwise.

Gunnison was left in a quandary. He’d been eager to abandon Leadville, but now he felt he couldn’t. A woman might be in danger … a woman who claimed to be Brady Kenton’s daughter.

It didn’t seem a likely claim, but what if … what if?

Gunnison sat down on a chair on the porch and thought things over. He could put this behind him, go ahead and leave. He could remain in Leadville and try to find out what happened to Rachel Frye. Or he could take the best of both options, tell the local law about what had happened, and leave the matter of Rachel Frye and her phantom antagonist in hands other than his own.

The latter was the most appealing idea, because it let him shift the responsibility for Rachel Frye’s welfare, thereby assuaging some of his guilty feelings over abandoning this town while she might be in trouble. Not all the guilty feelings, though. The vague chance that she really could be Kenton’s daughter made Rachel Frye much more than one more troubled woman in one more western town.

Gunnison headed out to find a policeman.

The search took him in memory back to an earlier Leadville policeman he’d known. Old Clance Sullivan! He’d never known a fellow more thoroughly Irish. The memory of Sullivan and the adventure Gunnison and Kenton had shared in this sky-level town brought an unexpected burst of sentimentality to Gunnison … and a new round of worry about Brady Kenton and his recent personal deterioration.

Gunnison’s earlier irritation with Kenton was beginning to fall away, though he hardly noticed.

Gunnison walked for ten minutes and saw no sign of a policeman. He wryly began to consider committing a public crime in hopes of drawing one out.

Tired of depending on chance, he headed for a nearby apothecary shop to ask where the nearest outpost of the town law might be.

The shop was cool, shadowy, pleasant, and was filled with the fragrance of coffee brewing on a little stove in the back. Gunnison paused simply to enjoy the place for a moment, then looked around for a clerk.

“Hello? Anybody here?”

No reply. He walked farther inside. “Looking for a clerk! Anyone around?”

A door into a back office and storage area stood open, and through it Gunnison saw another open door, leading to the area behind the store. He could see as well the corner of a privy. That explained it. The clerk had vacated the store momentarily for an outhouse visit.

Gunnison quickly moved through the office and out the back door. He loitered about the back lot, waiting for the man to emerge from the outhouse.

After a few minutes went by, he began to doubt the man was in the outhouse at all. He went to the outhouse door, knocked tentatively, and received no answer. He opened the door. Empty.

Why would anyone simply abandon an open store in midday, not even bothering to close the doors or hang a sign?

Gunnison’s curiosity was mildly aroused, but this wasn’t a matter that concerned him. He turned to head back up the alley to the street and continue his search for a policeman, but just as he did, someone called to him.

“Hello, sir!” a man’s voice said. Gunnison saw a hefty fellow, very out of breath and sweaty, plodding toward him from behind the next store building. “Sorry … if you were looking for … me … in the store. Whew! I’m plain ole wore out! Not used … to running.”

Gunnison eyed the man’s red and dripping face. “Are you all right, sir?”

“Fine … fine. Just tired. Too fat, I am. My wife tells me … all the time I’m too fat … for my own good, and she’s likely right. Certainly I’m too fat … to be chasing down a wife-beater … like I have been.”

“A wife-beater?”

“Yeah, yeah … poor old gal! The old boy seemed to want to pound the very life out of her! I heard them out here in the back, and stuck my head out to see what the commotion was.” The man paused a couple of moments to catch his breath. “There they were, the woman cringing and the man with a big old stick in his hand. Now, I know there are them who say that a wife is a man’s possession and that he has the right to discipline what’s his, but I reckon I’m a little different in my thinking. I don’t believe in beating your wife, no sir.”

“Neither do I,” Gunnison replied. “But how do you know it was his wife?”

“Well … I guess I don’t. I just assumed it was.”

“What did this woman look like?”

“Slender, sandy-haired, maybe thirty years old … hard to say how old she was. She looked like she’d been around the mill a few times, if you know what I mean.”

“Did you hear her speak?”

“Heard her screech. Why are you asking?”

“I might know who it is … but if so, then she’d have a British accent.”

“I don’t think there are accents when it comes to screeching.”

“What about the man? Did he have an accent?”

“He never said a word, other than calling me a damned fool for interfering. He might have talked with an accent, but I really couldn’t say. It’s hard to tell when somebody’s shouting.”

“Well, then, what color was the woman’s dress?”

“Blue, I think. Yes, blue. Kind of on the lighter side.”

Gunnison nodded. Rachel Frye’s dirty and ragged dress had been light blue. “Did she get away from the man?”

“I think so … to be truthful, I couldn’t tell for sure. She went one way and he went another. But after I left, I suppose he could have chased her down again. By that point I’d done all I could and came back here.”

“Tell me where you saw them last.”

“You aren’t going looking for them, are you?”

“I am. Please tell me! It’s important.”

The man explained as best he could to a nonresident how to find the place where he’d finally abandoned his chase. Gunnison thanked him and headed off in that direction as fast as he could go.

But as he did, Gunnison wondered why he was doing this.

Although really he knew why: the idea of standing by while a woman was abused was something he would not tolerate. Especially one he knew, at least a little.

Even though Rachel had merely whisked in and out of his life like a cloud of dust on a breeze, he felt he knew her to some measure, and that she was therefore to a degree his special responsibility.

If some scoundrel was hurting Rachel, he’d have Alex Gunnison to face because of it.

*   *   *

He soon found the area the shopkeeper had described, and realized he’d been here during his previous Leadville sojourn. Not far from here had stood a billiard parlor that had burned. The area had changed a lot, but still had enough of its old landmarks to help him get his bearings.

But he didn’t see Rachel or her pursuer. Probably they’d gone a long way from here by now. He hoped she’d gotten away from him.

Gunnison stood there helpless and out of breath. He looked all around, wondering where she had gone, then sighed and knew he had to give up.

He headed for the street, frustrated in his helplessness. He couldn’t explain the mystery of Rachel Frye, but he instinctively felt a deep sympathy for her. He hoped it hadn’t been she the shopkeeper saw being beaten. He hoped she escaped whoever was pursuing her.

Gunnison stopped, turning. He’d heard something …

It was unmistakable. A woman’s outcries, a man’s grunted curses, the sound of something brutally thudding on flesh …

Gunnison ran back the way he’d come, leaped a fence, dodged around an outbuilding, avoided the bite of a frightened dog whose sleep he interrupted by stepping on its tail, then vaulted another fence.

There she was in a little empty, weedy grove along a back street, kneeling with her arms over her head to protect herself from the blows being rained down upon her by a burly, dark-bearded man with a stick in his hand. He cursed her with each blow, and she let out cries of terror and pain at every impact.