CHAPTER 25

Roy Ramsey, underpaid and overburdened town marshal of Culvertown, Colorado, fell back into his chair heavily, making it creak. He threw his hands upward and shook his head.

“Tell me, Jim,” he said to James Ramsey, his brother, who held no official capacity but helped fill in for Roy when he was out of town. “How is it that I can go to Scallonville for two days and come back and find the whole town gone to hell?”

“It’s amazing, Roy. I’ll grant you that.”

“Tell me if I’ve got this straight: there were two dead up in the Livingston house, including Livingston himself.”

“That’s right.”

“Shot to death.”

“Yes. It looks to me like they shot each other.”

“Who was the other one?”

“Stranger in town. I don’t know that we’ll ever find out.”

“Where are they now?”

“In the undertaker parlor, stinking to high heaven. We got to get them buried fast.”

“I’ll take a look at them. But I’ll probably not be able to figure out anything more than you did.”

“We need some big-city police folks looking at this one.”

“Well, we ain’t got none of them. I’ll look at them and we’ll bury them. Hell, I never liked old Livingston much anyway.”

“Why would anybody shoot him, though?”

“A dozen reasons. Attempted robbery, probably. You know the stories about him stashing money everywhere.”

“There was some sign that a woman had been there. I found a hairpin and a woman’s brush up in one of the bedrooms.”

“Not surprising. It wouldn’t be the first time old Jack had a woman. You know he had a big love affair going with the mayor’s wife for a long time. But he would see her over in Caylee in an old house he fixed up. He thought nobody else knew about it, but everybody did. Including the mayor, but he didn’t care. He had a woman of his own visiting him while his wife was visiting Jack.”

“Maybe the woman he had up there lately had a husband who wasn’t so go-along about all that kind of thing.”

“Maybe.”

“Are you going to investigate it?”

“Hell, no. I can’t bring ’em back to life, can I? I figure they must have had a reason for shooting each other. That’s good enough for me. Besides, if I solve the murder, what good is it? There’s nobody left alive for the district attorney to prosecute.”

“What about the first two dead men?”

“No witnesses. Two highway robbers … nothing there worth looking into, either. Whoever killed them did the world a favor.” He shook his head and gave a wry laugh. “Damn, I can’t believe this. Two dead men on the road as I leave town, and two more dead men when I come back.”

“That ain’t all. There could be a third one.”

“What? Who?”

“Another stranger. A young man. He was found stabbed in an alley, nearly dead. He should rightly have been dead six times over, given the shape he’s in, but he’s still alive, or was the last time I checked. Not conscious, though. He’s up at Doc Asheman’s. The doc swears he’s going to make sure this one comes through alive. Sort of a personal mission.”

“No clue who stabbed him?”

“Not a one.”

“Anybody identified this stranger?”

“Tell you the truth, I ain’t tried. What am I going to do? Line up everybody in town and have them file by?”

“Reckon not. Well, if he lives, he can tell us who did it. If not, he’s just corpse number five in a week unusually rich with them.”

*   *   *

Billy Connery opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

Still alive, he thought. I can’t believe it. Still alive.

Alive, but so weak he could not move, and his throat slashed so that he could not speak.

Billy Connery had no memory of the stabbing beyond its initial moments. The throat cutting in particular was absent from his mind, for which he was thankful. He figured he had been unconscious when it happened.

He said a prayer of gratitude every time a drawn-in breath made his throat burn. It had always been his belief that a slashed throat meant death. Apparently McCurden just hadn’t cut quite deep enough.

But his stab wounds had done enough damage to leave Connery incapable of doing anything but lying here, worrying about what McCurden had done.

He’d talked about Kenton, and that was frightening. As best Connery could figure it, McCurden was probably an agent for Kevington.

Connery suffered in a frustration he was too weak even to show on his face. He had to get his strength back, had to get up to the Livingston mansion.

If only he’d done it when he had the chance.

*   *   *

As the sun edged toward the mountaintops to the west, Dr. David Kevington stood in a window on the second floor of the Culvertown Hotel and looked out across a scene of squalor that reconfirmed to him every hatred and prejudice he possessed regarding Americans. In Kevington’s view, Victoria was the only worthwhile colonial product. And nothing less than Victoria could have made him visit this miserable nation again.

He scanned the dirty street below, the buildings that seemed even dirtier with their peeling paint and layers of hoof-splashed mud extending more than a yard up their fronts. And most were false fronts, which Kevington found irksome and typically American. The entire American culture was in his mind something of a false front, something pretending to be much bigger and grander than it was.

Damn them all. He wished he could fetch back his Victoria, head back to England, and leave the entire North American continent in flames. He’d never fulfill that fantasy … but one he would fulfill. He’d not leave this rubbish heap of a country until Brady Kenton was dead.

And if Victoria refused to come with him willingly, then he would leave her dead as well. Painful as it would be, he would do it. He would not be mocked. He would not be denied.

Kevington lifted his eyes and gazed at the looming Livingston mansion. From his pocket he pulled the copy of the telegram McCurden had sent:

K. AND V. FOUND CULVERTOWN, COLORADO. ENTER CULVERTOWN HOTEL AND AWAIT WORD.

Well, here he was, but so far there was no visit from McCurden, no word from McCurden. Curse him for the fool he was! His message had been inadequate. He should have given some indication of how to contact him. But if in the end McCurden delivered what his telegram promised, Kevington was prepared to be quite forgiving.

He saw Bartholomew Graham striding across the street toward the hotel. Graham was an interesting man to observe: tall and wide and muscled and bearded, he looked somewhat like a cleaned-up but still unshorn mountain man. Graham’s looks were almost stereotypical of the American frontier, and Kevington had found it amusing to watch the reactions of Americans the first time they heard Graham speak in a voice rich with the dialect of his native Essex. Graham might look like an American frontiersman, but he was British to the core and proud of it.

He was also heartless, smart, and willing to do whatever Kevington paid him to do, and those were key reasons Kevington had brought him along from England to help with the great chase. An additional reason was Graham’s four years of roaming in the American West, hiring out his gun to whoever paid the highest and had the fewest scruples.

Kevington was awaiting at the door of the room when Graham came lumbering up the stairs.

“Anything?” Kevington asked.

“Not one bloody clue,” Graham replied. “Nothing solid, anyway.”

“Damn!” Kevington exclaimed, stepping aside as Graham entered the room and threw himself down on a chair. Kevington closed the door. “Where the devil could McCurden be?”

“He may be dead.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There’s apparently been an epidemic of violent death in this town of late. So go the stories in the pubs, in any case. Two highwaymen shot dead on the road into town and two other dead men in the big mansion up on the hill.”

“Who were these men?”

“The two highwaymen were a pair known to plague the region, haunting the roads to several towns and camps. One of the dead men in the mansion was the man who owned the dwelling … quite an eccentric, it seems. The other, though, was a stranger to folks here. It could be our own McCurden.”

“Or anyone else. It had better not be McCurden. If he’s gone, then it will be hard indeed to learn what he found.”

“The dead man could have been Kenton, too.”

“He could have been Paul the Apostle for all we know. More than likely he was just a burglar who was confronted by the owner of the house, and both of them wound up dead.”

“I’m sorry I’ve got nothing more to tell you,” Graham said, pulling a pipe and pouch from his pocket and beginning to prepare a smoke. “Perhaps the others will do better.”

“Perhaps they will,” said Kevington, looking out the window again. “They’re coming this way now … and they’ve got a boy with them.”