and They know your story and what You’ll be doing.
“There’s one other man I want You to meeteaat Con added, “but he doesn’t often come here. Tonight he has.
I heard he would be coming here tonight; once several years ago I helped him out of a tight corner.a man loomed UP over the table, and I looked up.
He was a big man, with hard, red-rimmed eyes.
He was unshaven and he was dressedearoughly, with food stains on his coat and vest. He WO-RE a gun and a badge.
Mart Duggan… Shell Tucker.” He stared at me, and I felt uncomfortable under those hot, rather cruel-looking eyes.
“Howdy,” he said briefly.
“Heard about You,” he added. “Round was em up if you’re of a mind to-you’ll have mo trouble from me.]” He glanced over at Con and a slow smile warmed his face. “Good to see you, Judy.
If this man is a friend of yours, He’s a friend of mine.” Turning abruptly, he walked across to the door and left.
“Mart Duggan,” Con said, “is the law in Leadville at the moment.
He’s about as friendly as a grizzly bear with a sore tooth. Hell shoot a man as quick as look at him, and he doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything on earth.” “He won’t help me either?” “No. But now he will stay off your back while you’re settling your affairs.” I stood up. It began to look as if I had it to do. I was all jumpy inside, and my mouth was dry, but it was all laid out for me. In this country a man did what he had to do, and if he wasn’t big enough for the job, he could always figure on a nice funeral if he died game.
“I’m going back to the Clarendon,” I said, “and change clothes.
Then I’m going to hunt until I find them.” Con Judy got up, too.
“Well both look,” he said. ‘I wouldn’t want you to face all three of them alone.” State Street was where the gamblers and the shady ladies were.
The Little Casino, the Odeon, the Bucket of Blood, the Bon Ton, and the Pioneer-we made them all.
We ran into Minnie Purdy, Frankie Page, and Salue Purple, some of the town’s leading madams, and we saw Soapy Smith, Charlie Tanner, and Broken-Nose Scatty, all well known around town. But we saw neither hide nor hair of Reese, Sites, or Heseltine.
At Madame Vestal’s place on State Street we took a table where we could watch the dancing. When the madame saw Con she walked over.
“How are you, Con? Are you going to stay around long?” ‘That depends, Belle. Sit down, won’t you?” She sat down and looked over at me. “You’ll be Shell Tucker. I’ve heard about you.” The?” “By this time,” Con Judy replied, ‘everybody in town has. When you’re looking for a man or men the story doesn’t take long .
especially on State Street.” “Bob Heseltine is a bad man, Tucker,” she said. ‘If I were you I’d forget it.” Well, I just looked at her for a moment, and then I said, comThank you, ma’am, but I have it to d.she studied me for a moment. “I like you, Tucker, and you have a good friend here in Con.
I’ll tell you this: Ruby Shaw was always friendly to Minnie Purdy.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said, and she moved on.
Con watched her go, thoughtfully. “nereis a strange woman, Shell.
Here they call her Madame Vestal, but once she was a mighty important woman, important in society, and even more important during the war.
“Her?” “She was Belle Siddons then, a noted spy, and a daring young woman.” Pa used to tell stories about her. I remembered them now, and looked after her, wondering. These last few days I’d met some people mighty different from anyrd ever met before-.
difff-rent in many ways.
And Belle Siddons, or Madame Vestal or whatever her name was, had been helpful.
Minnie Purdally might know where Ruby Shaw wasthe woman with Bob Heseltine-and where Ruby would be, there’d be Bob Heseltine close by.
I had my lead, my first good one.
“She would be likely to tell you anything, Shell,” Con said.
I shrugged. “Didn’t figure on it, but maybe if I keep my mouth shut and sort of scout around I can locate some sign.” So whilst Con Judy picked up with old acquaintances, I sat by and studied about Heseltine and the others. First off, they knew I was in town, for they’d shot at me.
Having tried once, they would surely try again.
that I had to take into account. All the time I was hunting them, they’d be hunting me.
Now you might think, in a town no bigger than Leadville, that it would be easy to find somebody, but as a matter of fact there were all those dives along State Street, and a lot of shacks and cabins around, and there were half a dozen clusters of buildings round about Leadville, each with its own name, and they might be holed up in any one of them.
There was Tintown, jacktown, Little Chicago, Malta, Finntown, and a dozen other places along the valley of the Arkansas, up Stray Horse Gulch or Evans Gulch. A man who wanted to stay hid could do it.
Would they all hole up in the same place? It was likely.
At the same time there’s gossip. With all the corners and goers in a boom town like Leadville, there’s to% and Ruby Shaw was a pretty woman, by most accounts, and pretty women are hard to keep out of sight.
It would be easier if it wasn’t for all those little communities around. There was no way a man could watch them all. But I had an idea that folks with money on their hands weren’t anxious to stay holed up. Nor did they worry much about me.
What they were running from more than from me was simply the knowledge theyd done wrong, and not wanting to be faced with it. Con Judy had done me a favor, too, by introducing me to the big men around town.
that was going to worry them some.
Their horses … it was easier for a man to hide himself than to hide his horse. They’d have to keep their horses close to hand, and the horses would have to be fed.
We went back to the Clarendon, and you can bet I kept an eye out for trouble, but there was none.
And then I had one of those breaks that come to a man if he’s keeping his eyes and ears open.
The lobby of the Clarendon had half a dozen people in it, and smelled of cigar smoke. Sitting on a leather settee was a man smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper.
There were a couple of others talking and sharing a brass spitoon.
Con Judy had gone upstairs to get some papers he wanted to discuss with a man in the lobby and I was just sort of idling about. All of a sudden a girl came out of the restaurant and crossed the lobby. She was a few years older than me, and blonde, maybe a little hard around the mouth and eyes, but a fine figure of a girl.
The man with the newspaper stood up suddenly and said, “Ruby Shawl How nice to see you here!
Why, the last time I saw you was in Fort Worth.” They stood talking for a minute, and then she went out.
Ruby Shaw.
I wasn’t more than a moment getting to the door.
She was down the street, almost to the corner. It looked as if she’d stopped to glance at a sign, because just then she started moving again, and I followed.
She never looked back even once, but when I glanced around I saw the man she had spoken to standing in the door looking after us.
For three blocks I followed her, moving carefully from door to door, and when she turned another corner I was only a few steps behind her.
At the corner I stopped, close against the buildings, and looked after her.
She paused in front of a building, looking up and down the street, and then she turned and entered a doorway.
For a moment I stood there, studying the street and the building.
It was two stories high, with a balcony along the front, and several windows as well as two doors on the ground floor. One of the doors, the one she had entered, I thought probably led to the upstairs.
Nobody else seemed to be on the street. It was still muddy from the rain but I could see a few dry spots where a man might cross without getting his boots too muddy. I did not want them caked with mud, for mud crunches under foot and makes one’s movements too loud.