CHAPTER 8

By the time the train carrying Billy Connery toward Colorado had left Missouri, the excitement of travel and adventure had given way to worry.

Connery sat by the window, staring out at the passing landscape, trying to figure out just how he’d go about locating Brady Kenton. His destination was Culvertown, one of the many Colorado mountain communities that had made the transition from mining camp to town. Though Connery had never been to Culvertown itself, he’d traveled once before in the Rockies and knew what to expect: a rough-and-ready town with a narrow main street, a few good brick edifices mixed with plenty of structures made of lumber, and with the mountains all around scarred from mining and covered over with rough miners’ huts like pox scabs on a sick patient. And since Culvertown was still an active mining center, the population probably would be large and fluid, people coming and going literally by the day.

How would he start to locate Brady Kenton in such a place? And come to think of it, how would he manage to make inquiries without looking like he was a candidate for an asylum? Pardon me, sir, but I’m looking for the celebrity journalist Brady Kenton.… Yes, I know you read all about his death.… Yes, it was a sad thing. You haven’t by chance seen the late Mr. Kenton on the streets recently, have you?

Oh, well. He’d figure out a way. He pulled the envelope from his pocket and studied the drawing on the back of it. As an illustrator himself, he found it impossible not to be both admiring and envious of Kenton’s skill. With only a few strokes of a pencil he could capture depth, character, the play of light and shadow. Someday I’ll be as good as that, Connery promised himself.

As nervous as this whole undertaking made him, there was one aspect of it that he looked forward to very much: he would get to actually meet Brady Kenton, the man whose work had inspired him to become an illustrator himself. He’d wept when he learned of Kenton’s “death,” it having been a goal of his to someday meet the man.

Now he’d get to fulfill that goal … if he could find Kenton.

He could only hope that his reception would not be hostile. Having gone into hiding, Kenton would probably not be pleased to be found.

*   *   *

Connery was asleep when the train finally pulled into the station where he was to disembark. He lifted his head, tipped back the bowler hat he’d pulled low across his brows, and blinked a few times until his vision cleared. He’d been sleeping soundly, dreaming about Ireland, reliving a boyhood conversation he’d had with his grandfather, who was now laid away these several years beneath the green Irish sod.

Connery adjusted his hat, picked up his bag, and secretly patted his pocket to make sure the roll of bills he’d been provided by Alex Gunnison was still there. Alex had funded this assignment informally, avoiding an official expense report and simply forwarding Connery cash from one of the Illustrated American accounts. Gunnison was not about to go on record as having assigned someone to go search for a dead man.

Connery departed the train and took a deep breath of fresh mountain air … as fresh, anyway, as the air can be beside a smoking train in a mining town rich with belching chimneys. After having resided on a train since St. Louis, it felt tremendously good to stretch his legs and move about.

The first order of business was food, and he found this in the nearest restaurant. Eating at a table by a window, he watched people pass and tried to spot a place where he could obtain a horse. He was not yet at Culvertown. It lay high in the mountains, not yet touched by a railroad spur, though one was even now being constructed.

To reach Culvertown, Connery would have to either catch a coach or rent a horse and saddle. Gunnison had suggested the latter, in that having a horse would give Connery freedom of movement in and around Culvertown. If Kenton was hiding, he might be in some old miner’s cabin out in the mountains somewhere.

After fifteen minutes of striding around the town, Connery located a livery and shopped for a rental horse. He encountered an unpleasant surprise: the proprietor of the livery apparently had no use for Irishmen, and Connery had enough of a brogue to mark him as one. When the man refused to lower the price to anything approaching reasonable, Connery stormed off in a huff and spent another thirty minutes looking for another livery.

This time he put on his best flat American accent and quickly took possession of a fine roan at a reasonable cost. The horse came with assurances that it was a horse accustomed to the thin air of the mountains and would serve him well as he headed up to the higher altitudes around Culvertown. The saddle was old but comfortable to both horse and rider and for a little extra came equipped with a rifle sleeve. Connery strapped his bag on the back of the saddle, thanked and tipped the liveryman, and rode out onto the sunny street.

One more stop awaited before he began the last leg of his journey. He rode to the nearest gun shop and purchased a used Winchester rifle and a new Colt pistol, with a shoulder holster for the latter and ammunition for both weapons. He felt very extravagant, spending so much in one day, but Gunnison had given him clear instructions to do all these things and not worry about the cost. The Illustrated American could afford it, and it was important that Connery be well armed and well mounted.

There were two other men in the gun shop when Connery made his purchases. They were examining rifles in a glass case, seemingly paying little heed to Connery, but when he pulled out his roll of bills he did get the feeling that they noticed it. He promised himself to be more careful in the future about showing the amount of money he had on him.

He left the gun shop and slid his Winchester into the saddle boot. A perfect fit. Connery swung into the saddle and rode to the next corner, pausing long enough to inspect a pole on which various slabs had been nailed, with arrows pointing in the directions of other towns in the vicinity. He found the indicator for Culvertown and rode off in that direction.

He did not notice that the pair in the gun shop had emerged and watched his departure. After he rounded the corner and was out of sight, they glanced at each other, speaking quickly and low, and trotted off to a nearby hitching post where their own mounts waited.