“That time of month, Doctor?” Doc said mockingly. “Or did you get out of your little bed the wrong side this morning? Must be some explanation for your being more ill-tempered than you usually are.”
“Enough,” Ryan said, “Best thing we can do is get across there quickly. Make a lot of noise about arriving to help put out the fire.”
DOC HAD BEEN RIGHT.
The whole block that had Ma’s Place at its center was razed to the ground, reduced to smoking ashes in less than a half hour, with only the half-dozen brick central chimneys standing at the center.
“Like Jennison Gravestones,” J.B. said. “What they called that sort of scene in the Civil War. After the man responsible for many of them. Specially around Kansas, bloody Kansas.”
Ryan and the others had weighed in with a will, working flat out once it became obvious that no power on earth could save the buildings.
“Probably that prevert let his fat catch fire one time too many,” said an old toothless woman, sucking on an empty corncob pipe. “Don’t see no sign neither of that poor little girl who worked for him. Probably both in the ruins.”
A few of the locals asked Ryan and the others what they were doing in Glenwood Springs, and received the stock answer that they’d been trading but their wag had fallen apart a couple of days earlier. Now they were stranded on foot, heading over the pass toward Leadville.
Was anyone, by chance, going that way?
The smoke-dark crowd of forty or fifty people considered the question.
“What did you want to go to that dead-alive crap-hole for, mister?” barked a trapper.
“Heard of a good school for my son,” Ryan answered, following Trader’s rule of telling the truth unless it seemed more convenient to lie.
“And we thought we might stop by Harmony, as well,” Krysty added.
“Be Nick Brody’s school,” one of the deer hunters said. “Heard it was good for book learnin’.”
“What we need,” Ryan said, smiling pleasantly. “Where exactly is it?”
The man scratched his soot-smeared nose. “Now, that’s a fair question. Not many folks go that way. Trails are all broke down. Doubt there’s a man or woman been beyond Leadvillewhat used to be Leadvillethese long months.”
His partner, a thin little man with a pocked face who looked as if someone had once made a hearty attempt to scalp him, nodded. “Even more true of Harmony. Bad things up there. Nobody takes the old high trail to Fairplay and beyond.”
“What kind of trouble?” Krysty asked.
“Bounties up there, so they said.” The man rubbed at his puckered forehead. “Gang of swift and evil bastards. But there’s only been whispers. Haven’t heard of anyone actually going all the way up to Harmony for like you said about going beyond Leadville, Ezekial. Not for months.”
A third man pushed to the front of the small crowd. He was extremely tall, and wrapped in a buffalo-hide jacket and pants that smelled as if they hadn’t been within a country mile of any sort of curing process. They were still caked with dried blood and reeked of urine and dung.
“The name’s Lemuel. I’m driving a mule team up to Leadville,” he said. “Got to deliver a piano to the old opera house up there. The Tabor place. Going in an hour or so. Aimed to eat at Ma’s, but I’ll have to pass on that.” He looked at Ryan. “Point is, I could take a couple of you folks up with me.”
“Only two of us?” Ryan queried.
Krysty tugged at his sleeve. “You and me. Got to get to Harmony, lover. Find out for sure whats going on up there. Mebbe some of my kin could be in danger. My mother”
Ryan ignored her, speaking instead to Lemuel. “Any other wags or teams we could hire?”
“Probably some around the ville that you could take if you wanted. Population’s dropping. Livery stable’s got animals going cheap.”
“Ryan!”
“What, lover?”
“If he’ll take two, then it has to be you and me. Find out what’s happening.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t make fighting sense. If there’s bad trouble in Harmony, we have to be together. Then we could need a fast run out of the place. Might not be time to get Dean up to this Brody school.”