Chapter Twenty-Four
Ryan had spent a quiet night in the Palace Hotel, Leadville, waking once at the sound of a drunk noisily puking in the room next door. And once he thought that someone tried to turn the handle on his door, but the bolt was secure.
He woke early with the first shafts of dawn light breaking through the jagged tears in the thin curtains. As was his usual practice in most places, Ryan hadn’t undressed, contenting himself with taking off his combat boots and unbelting his pants. He rested the Steyr by the side of the window, the big SIG-Sauer P-226 in its habitual location, tucked under his pillow.
He peered into the deserted dining room of the Palace, disturbing a gray rat that was busily gnawing at a cooked pork chop. Another rodent was lapping at a saucer of ketchup that stood on one of the dusty tables.
“Rain check time,” Ryan muttered easing the sling of the rifle on his shoulder and walking out into the cool fresh morning.
An oil lamp already glowed outside Carl and Joanna’s place and he went in, sniffing appreciatively at the scent of fresh-baked bread and frying bacon.
Carl greeted him from the swing door through to the kitchen. “The best of good mornings,” he called. “See that we cleared away the mess left by those cold hearts?”
“Yeah. Must’ve taken all night.”
Joanna appeared from inside a walk-in closet, holding a string of sausages, smiling at Ryan. “Didn’t take all night, did it?” she asked her husband. “We were in bed by four-thirty.”
Ryan sat at a round table by the window. A couple of miners were the only other diners, and they barely looked up at him from their breakfast of well-done steaks with eggs, grits and hash browns. A steaming jug of coffee stood on the checked cloth in the center of their table.
“I’ll have what they’re having,” Ryan said. “But I’d like the steak done less well than that.”
“I’ll just carry it very quickly through a warm room,” Carl said with a smile.
WHEN THE FOOD ARRIVED, it was piled high on the plate, the four eggs, sunny-side up, glistening gold.
“I put on three or four of the sausages and a few rashers of the bacon,” Joanna called. “Looked to me like a man about to hit the trail again.”
“Yeah.”
He turned to Carl. “Never got around to asking you last night. I’m due to meet up with some friends. Wondered if they’d passed through here in the last day or so.”
“We get lots of folks through here, brother.”
“You wouldn’t have missed them. Tall woman with the reddest hair you ever saw. Teenager with snow hair and ruby eyes. Old-timer in knee boots. And a small guy with glasses, wearing a battered fedora and carrying a shotgun and an Uzi.”
“Sounds like I’d know them if I’d seen them anyplace,” Carl said. “But I don’t. Any message if they pass through here in the next few days?”
“Yeah. I’m Ryan Cawdor. Heading back north a ways, then cutting east over the tops. Down onto the trail above Breckenridge, if all goes well. Then up the pass to Fairplay. If they haven’t caught up with me, I’ll wait for them there.”
Carl nodded. “Heard a lot of talk of trouble that way. This gang of norms and muties. Can you believe that? Been a load of chilling and burning. None of the miners or trappers or hunters go that way alone now. Stay together in armed groups.” He paused. “If at all.”
“Woman with red hair’s my” He hesitated, not sure of the right word. “She’s my partner. She was reared up in Harmony and wants to visit again. Hasn’t been there for years.”
Carl smiled. “We’ve seen folks from there, every once in a while. Could be the gang’s active that way.”
“I figured that. No hard news?”
The man shook his head. “No. Used to be a wise woman up there, years ago. Never met her. Man I saw most was the same name as me. Carl.”
“Carl Lanning?” Ryan asked, dredging the name from the back of his memory.