“Seen a party of men north of here,” I volunteered. “Look to be huntin’ somebody.”
The horse they traded me was a short-coupled black with some Morgan blood, and a good horse by any man’s standards. Riding out of their camp, I came upon the place where she had left the gold hidden while making her horse trade. She had loaded up, pack saddles and gold, and lit out as if the heel-flies were after her. Likely knowing she’d lost time, she wanted to get on with it.
Now I thought of Fort Union … she was headed for Fort Union. There were soldiers there, and she would be safe. The difficulty was that there would be a lot of questions asked about a young girl traveling across the country with all that gold.
But her tracks led right by the Fort, and by then I was actually within sight of her from time to time. I had no idea whether she had seen me, but if she had she knew she was headed for a showdown. I still wanted to know who had killed Harry Mims—shot in the back, at close range. Of the lone rider I had seen nothing in all this time. Nor had I seen anything of the others.
Suddenly I knew exactly where she was going. She was headed for Loma Parda.
The little town on the Mora Biver was rough and bloody, a resort for the soldiers at Fort Union, and for any number of drifters, male and female. They knew me at Loma Parda, but for her to ride into Loma with gold was like a lamb going to visit a lot of hungry wolves.
15
When she reached the town I was no more than four or five miles behind her, but there was simply nothing I could do. By the time I got to the town her horses were turned into a corral and Penelope had disappeared. It seemed the last person she wanted to see was me.
Avoiding the saloon, where I knew Penelope would not be, I went to a Mexican eating place down the street from Baca’s. It was an off hour, and they were glad to see me. They knew me there, and the woman who came to wait on table shook her head when she saw me and said, “Senor Nolan, what do you do to yourself? You are tired!”
Glancing around, I saw myself in the mirror, a big, rough, bearded man who needed a shave, a bath, a haircut, and new clothes. He also needed about three nights of sleep.
“Senora,” I said, “have you seen a girl—a girl with several horses?”
“Ah? It is a girl now? Si, I see her. She rode in today, only a little while ago.”
“Where is she? Where did she go?”
“Go? Where did she go?”
“Go? Where can you go in Loma Parda? She did not go, she is here.”
“Where?”
The senora shrugged. “Here … somewhere. How should I know?”
From where I sat I could look down the street and see anyone who moved, so I ordered a meal and stayed there, eating and drinking coffee and trying to stay awake.
There was not much out there in the street at this hour. In a little while the town would wake up, the soldiers would come in in one of the rigs that carried them over from the Fort, or they would hike, as many preferred to do. The town would be wide open. It was a town where killing was the order of the day, where the idea of gold would set the place afire. And somewhere in the town was Penelope, and three hundred pounds of gold.
Where did I fit in, anyway? I had given her a chance to get away, given Mims the same chance; but he was dead, murdered. And Penelope had not wasted any time looking for me, nor left any sign for me. And she had come here, to the least likely place. I couldn’t even imagine her knowing of this place.
Rightfully, a piece of that gold was mine. I was the one who’d found it, I got it out of there, and now here I sat with about four dollars in my pocket and a nasty scar on my scalp to show for all I’d been through.
And then for the first time I remembered the money I’d been paid for guiding Loomis and Penelope. Fifty dollars …
I wasn’t broke, then. Fifty dollars was nigh onto two months’ pay for a cowhand, and I’d known a few who had worked for less. While I sat there thinking about it, I saw Noble Bishop ride into the street. Jacob Loomis was with him, and Ralph and Sylvie Karnes. They come riding up the street, looking right and left, dusty and beat-looking, their eyes hot with the fire that only gold can light.
They did not see me sitting there, and if they went to the corral the big black horse would not be familiar to them.
But where was Penelope, and where was that gold?
And then I started to get really mad.
I’d been riding my fool head off, a good man had been killed and a couple of others less than good, and all for what? So one big-eyed girl could walk off with the lot, a girl with no more claim to it than any one of us. What if Nathan Hume was a relative? The gold had been buried for years, and without me she would never have had it.
I got up from the table so fast I almost upset it, dropped a half-dollar beside my plate, and started for the door.
The senora ran after me. “Wait a minute, senor! Your change!”
“Keep it. Feed me sometime when I come in here broke.”
It was hot outside in the late afternoon sun, but I did not care. I strode up the street and pushed open the batwing doors of Baca’s saloon. Baca himself was standing at the bar, and I saw his eyes turn to me, narrowing slightly.
“Baca,” I said abruptly, “there’s a girl in town who came in this afternoon, and she’s hiding out somewhere. You know everything that happens in this town—I want that girl, and I want her quick!”
“I am sorry. I—”
“Baca, I’m Nolan Sackett. You know me.”
He hesitated. Within call he might have fifteen, twenty tough men. If he called them I was in for one hell of a fight. But right then I didn’t care, and I think he realized it.
“She’s down at Slanting Annie’s. Not her crib—her cabin. You take your own chances. She’s got a gun, and I hear she’s ready to use it.”
“She won’t use it on me.” But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure.
I walked outside. The sun’s glare hit my eyes like a fist, and I stood blinking. The anger was still in me, and I wanted only to see Penelope and know the truth. I had fought for her, helped her escape, found the gold for her—and then she had gone off on her own.
Mims was dead. Had she killed him? How else could anyone have come up on him? These thoughts went through my head, but in the back of my mind I didn’t want to believe it.
Slanting Annie’s cabin was under the cottonwoods on the edge of town. I walked down the dusty street, wishing I had a horse. No cowhand worthy of the name ever walked far on a street if he could avoid it, but there was no time to get a horse and the distance was short. All the time I knew that Bishop and the others were in town and would be hunting the girl, and me as well.
Annie herself came to the door. Slanting Annie had worked in a dozen western towns, and I had known her in both Fort Griffin and Dodge.
“Annie, I want to see Penelope Hume.”
“She isn’t here, Nolan.”
“Annie,” I said roughly, “you know better than to tell me something like that. I know she’s here, and she’d better know that Loomis, Bishop, and all of them are in town.”
“Let him come in,” Penelope’s voice said.
Annie stepped aside and I came into the shadowed room and removed my hat. Penelope was wearing a gray traveling outfit of some kind, and she was actually beautiful. I hadn’t realized before just how beautiful she was, although I figured her for a mighty pretty girl.
“Mr. Sackett, I thought you were dead!”
“Like Mims, you mean?”
“Poor Uncle Harry … he never had a chance. Flinch did it.”
“Flinch?”
Now, why hadn’t I thought of him? There was Injun enough in him to be able to close in on a man without his knowing it.
“You expect me to believe that?” I said.
“Of course I do. You can’t believe I would kill that fine old man!”