This Gun for Hire (28 page)

“Never met until we were standing in line waiting to hear about a job.”

“Experience?”

“Worked in and around the Leadville mines for a couple of years. Had my own crew for a time, but frankly, I am better at taking orders than giving them. Did not like having my orders questioned.” He turned his thumb in on himself
and tapped his barrel chest. “People expect a fight from me on account of my size, but I’d rather use my head.”

Kittredge merely nodded. He turned to Castro. “You?”

“Worked mostly for the railroad. There are still a lot of spurs to be built in these mountains. That’s what I was doing.” He shrugged. “Heard about Stonechurch Mining when I was working up around Reidsville. Thought I would look into it.”

Kittredge looked them over again. “You heard what I was telling Mrs. Stonechurch?” When they both nodded, he continued. “Then you understand the situation. I am looking for volunteers to open the crates in storage and see what we can use and what we have to destroy before it destroys us. Either of you interested in doing that?”

Marcus White carelessly shrugged his broad shoulders. “Why not?” He lifted his hands and wiggled all ten of his digits. “I probably have more of these than I need.”

*   *   *

Calico lowered her Colt and regarded her target with disgust. The empty bourbon bottle that Quill had set out for her remained precisely where he’d placed it. The stump it was standing on had not fared so well. The bark was splintered and ragged. The tree behind it and another slightly to the left also bore witness to the fact that her aim was not what it had been.

She looked askance at Quill. He was leaning against the thick, furrowed bark of a Douglas fir, arms folded, hipshot, and one ankle crossing the other. “Well?” she asked. “You’re thinking it. You might as well say it.”

“If you know what I am thinking, I am going to save my breath. Are you done?”

The Colt was an anchor pulling on every one of the joints in her arm. Her wrist, elbow, and shoulder all ached. She felt the strain in the muscles of her upper arm and neck. Her fingers were stiff, partly with cold, partly because she had pushed herself far past her endurance. Quill had suggested
after twenty minutes that she stop, and her response had been to roundly ignore him. He did not make the suggestion a second time. In fact, he spoke very little after that. She did not blame him.

She had not fared any better with the Winchester. The recoil of the rifle’s butt made her arm judder. After firing it only a few times, she knew she had to return it to the scabbard.

Frustration made her muscles tense. “I want to have a tantrum. I want to scream and cry and stamp my feet.”

“Do you think it would help? I’m asking because, frankly, you look bone deep mean and you still have that gun in your hand.”

She turned toward him and shook her head slowly, regretfully. “I don’t think I can lift it one more time.”

“I see that it would put a strain on you, but I am in a provoking frame of mind right now, and even though you haven’t come close but two or three times to hitting that bottle, you did real well with the stump. Since I am a fair size bigger—”

“And with a whole lot less sense.”

“That, too. I guess you’d be able to hit something on me if you felt you had to.”

“I guess that’d be true.”

“Uh-huh. So why don’t you let me take your gun for you? That would be in the interest of self-preservation. Mine. Not yours.”

Calico breathed in and nodded slowly as she exhaled. “I suppose that would be all right.” She did not try to raise her arm. “You will have to—”

Quill pushed away from the tree. “I’ve got it. This first.” He removed her gun belt before he took the Colt out of her hand. He walked over to his horse, laid the belt over the saddle, and slipped the Colt into the holster. When he returned to her side, he slipped his arm under hers and gestured to the stump. “Come on. You can sit a spell. There’s no shame in that. You need to rest your arm before we ride back. I want to make sure you can handle the reins.”

She opened her mouth to argue, thought better of it, and
fell into step beside him. “I did not expect to be as fast or as accurate as I was, but I did not expect to embarrass myself.”

“I suppose how you think about it depends on your vantage point. I thought you did yourself proud right up until the moment your stubborn self got in the way of your sensible self.”

“Oh, so that’s what happened.”

“Looked like it from where I was standing.” Quill released Calico when they reached the stump. He swept the bottle aside and offered her the seat. “Do you want a drink?”

She leaned over and looked at the bottle lying on its side. It was indeed empty.

Quill laughed and showed her the flask he had been carrying inside his coat. “Here. Did you think I would risk a good bottle of bourbon on the chance you
wouldn’t
hit it? That would have been insulting to you and a crime against the bourbon.”

She arched an eyebrow and held out a hand for the flask. He uncapped it for her before he gave it over. Raising it to her lips, she asked, “When do you think we can come out again?”

“That’s a different question than asking me when I think you will be ready.”

Calico tipped the flask and took a good swallow. Her eyes watered. She handed back the flask and swiped at her eyes as she caught her breath. “All right. When do you think I will be ready?”

“What are you willing to do to prepare yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Beatrice has some ideas about exercises that will strengthen your arm, and she would like the opportunity to help you.”

“When did she say that?”

“She didn’t. Ann did.” He held up a hand when Calico would have interrupted. “Hear me out. Ann was informative, and she reminded me that I bear some responsibility for Beatrice not coming forward. Understandably, my insistence
that I be the only one to look after you made her reluctant to broach the subject with either one of us. It has also been true that when she asks you about your arm, you have a tendency to dismiss it as nothing. It is not nothing, and you are your own worst enemy there.”

Calico recognized the truth of that. “What does she want me to do?”

“Ann wasn’t specific. I don’t know if she knows precisely what Beatrice would recommend, but Ann also reminded me that her aunt did much more than ply Leonard Stonechurch with healing teas. His legs were crushed in the accident, and he never drew an easy breath after he was rescued. Ann says that once his bones knit, Beatrice exercised his legs for him. She did something to help him improve the strength of his lungs. Beatrice Stonechurch might look fragile, but she is tenacious. She refused to let him waste away in bed.”

Calico glanced at her injured arm and raised it experimentally. Deep fatigue had set in the muscles. She set her hand in her lap to support it. “Should I speak to her?”

“I think so. At least listen to what she has to say. Calico, I was watching you shoot. Your problem with accuracy this afternoon was never your eye. It was your strength. Your stance, your concentration, your awareness of your surroundings, all of that came as naturally to you as breathing. You struggled with your grip first, then holding your weapon steady, and finally with your own irritation.”

She sighed heavily. “I don’t think I could have hit the proverbial broad side of a barn.”

He grinned. “You were considerably better than that.” He took a drink and slipped the flask inside his coat. “We should be getting back. I told Ramsey to give us a few hours before he raised the alarm.”

“Wait. Aren’t you going to shoot?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Don’t you practice?”

He shrugged. “Not much.” He did think about that. “Not ever.”

“Are you that good?”

“It’s that boring.”

She could only shake her head. “Show me what you can do.” She leaned over and picked up the bottle. Standing, she placed it on the stump.

Quill protested as she started walking away. “I shot Amos Bennett in the leg. Remember that?”

She turned and said cheekily, “I remember that you told Joe Pepper you were aiming for Amos’s
other
leg. I want to see if that’s true.” Then she kept on walking.

Quill took his position in the tramped circle of snow that Calico had occupied and unbuttoned his long coat. He swept it back on the right side to reveal his Colt. He unstrapped it before he looked over at her. She had stepped several feet to the side but had not retreated to the tree. “Do you want me to draw and shoot, or shoot with my gun already out?”

“You do whatever makes you—”

Quill drew his gun, fired. The bottle jumped and shattered.

“—think you can hit the target,” she said slowly.

“I pulled that a little to the left,” he said, holstering his weapon. “Maybe I should do some target practice.”

Calico was still staring at the shards of broken glass glinting on the surface of the snow while Quill was already heading for their horses. “Stop right there, Mr. Quill McKenna.”

He stopped, turned, his features impassive. “Yes?”

Calico’s green eyes narrowed. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“I was in the Army, remember?”

“I knew soldiers who did not know the butt of a gun from the barrel, so that is an inadequate explanation.”

“My father taught me,” he said. “When he wasn’t preparing sermons or ministering to the wicked and the ill, he liked to be outdoors. He hunted to put meat on the table, and he took Israel and me with him when we were old enough to carry a rifle.” He shrugged. “That’s it. No different than how you learned.”

Calico did not try to hide the fact that she was still suspicious. “Maybe. Maybe not. If you don’t practice, how did you come to be that good?”

“I don’t know that I am that good.”

“I know what I saw, and I know how to judge it. You are exactly that good.”

Quill was silent, thinking. After a few moments, he said, “Well, my father called it a preternatural bent. It was not a compliment. He didn’t trust that my talent wasn’t the devil’s doing, and he was certain I would come to grief for having it.”

“And your brother? Does Israel have the same bent?”

“No, but he’s done his best to prove that you can come to grief without it.” He smiled wryly. “If my father ever saw the irony there, he’s never said as much.”

Calico walked up to him, raised herself slightly on her toes, and kissed him on the mouth. “I appreciate the irony, and I am in awe of your gift. If I thought for a moment that I could be the shot you are, I might be envious, but what you can do is something extraordinary.”

“It’s probably a little important that I’m good at it, Calico, but it’s still only shooting.”

“What was it you said to me not so very long ago? Oh, yes. ‘I suppose how you think about things depends on your vantage point.’ Well, from where I’m standing, it’s a mighty fine thing that you can do. It’s just a guess, you understand, but I’m thinking with that kind of aim, you’ve probably spared more lives than you’ve taken.”

Quill did not respond to that. What he said was, “Let’s go home.”

It was not home, of course, but in a way that Calico could neither quite define nor wanted to dwell on, it was beginning to feel something like that.

Nick Whitfield and Chick Tatters had a week’s pay in their pockets and gave in to the urge to take a decent meal in a restaurant instead of stealing scraps from what was thrown out of one. Their choices were limited, but they settled on Bartholow’s Eatery because it had a large front window with a good view of the street. They took a table close to it but not directly beside it. There was no point in making themselves the object of passing glances.

They both ordered chicken and dumplings, a side of carrots, and asked for extra bread and beer. When the waitress was gone, Whit eyed Chick’s half-empty glass and reminded him to go easy.

“I know you like it,” said Whit. “But I can’t say that I’ve ever seen it like you back. A commotion like the one you caused in Reidsville could have powerful ramifications if it happens here.”

“You mean like we won’t get paid real money.”

“That’s one. There are others.” Whit’s eyes darted toward a corner at the rear of the restaurant and waited for Chick to follow his gaze. When he did, he said, “That’s the town lawman sitting there. Hobbes, I believe is his name. He was
pointed out to me this afternoon when we were shufflin’ those cases around.”

Chick nodded. “Good to know, but I don’t have any plans to start a ruckus.” He chuckled. “Especially not one with a man carrying a stick. Lordy, whatever would I do?”

“You never have plans. It just sorta happens—that’s what I’ve been noticing.” He lowered his voice until it reached its most menacing pitch. “And you better not have your gun tucked in the back of your trousers. We talked about that. No weapons. Not yet.”

Chick picked up his glass and sipped his beer as dainty-like as a debutante. He put out a pinkie just to piss with his friend.

Whit’s menace faded, replaced by a genial smile. “Tonight while you’re sleeping, I’m going to break that finger.”

Uncertain, but alarmed now, Chick pulled his pinkie back. “C’mon, Nick, there ain’t no cause to do that. I was only having some fun with you. And I ain’t carrying.”

Whitfield placed his large hands flat on the table as he leaned forward. He spoke softly. “Call me that again, and I will do more than break your finger. You understand?”

Chick Tatters’s narrow face drained of color. He did not nod. He did not move.

“Well?”

Whispering, Chick said, “I forget your name.”

“Jesus Christ.” When he saw Chick frown, he said, “That’s not my name, you idiot. I’m Marcus White.”

“Right. Yeah, I remember now.”

“I just told it to you.”

“Uh-huh.”

Whit itched to grab Chick by the throat, but he leaned back and snagged a thick slice of warm bread instead. Still speaking quietly so his deep, rumbling voice did not carry beyond their table, he said, “How the hell did you come up with Rocky?”

“How’d you think? We’re in the middle of the mountains.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Your parents name you Rocky, or is that a sobriquet?”

“I don’t know about that sober part, but I figure my parents named me Simon Peter Castro, and called me Rocky on account of Simon Peter being the rock and all. That’s from the Bible.”

“Amazing,” Whit said under his breath. “No other word for it.”

“Astonishing,” Chick said helpfully. “That’d be what you call a cinnamon.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s leave it at amazing.”

“Sure, Marcus.” He grinned. “See?” And feeling confident with his memory, he raised his glass and asked for another beer.

Nick Whitfield turned his chair a few degrees so he was no longer squarely facing his partner. It was not widely known that he and Chick Tatters were distantly related through their mothers’ side of the family. Their familial connection rarely came up in conversation, and when it did, it was because Chick raised it, usually harking back to some incident in their childhood. Back then, long before Whit had grown into his oversized hands and feet and filled out the promise of his large-boned frame, it was Chick who had been the leader of their kinship boys gang, and Chick who had used his fists to great effect defending Whit from his tormentors. The head blows Chick had received in those early years of acting as the defender had gradually taken their toll, leaving him a couple of bullets shy of a full load.

Whit reminded himself of that now. There was no denying that he had an obligation to Chick Tatters, but there was also no denying that some days were harder than others to live up to it.

Chick followed Whit’s example and turned his chair an equal number of degrees toward the window. He was more comfortable with the lawman at his back anyway. There was no way of knowing if there was a wanted notice with his face on it posted in the constable’s office.

“Well, look there, Marcus,” said Chick. He started to
raise his hand to point, thought better of it, and lowered again. He wrapped his fingers around his glass of beer, figuring they were safer with something to occupy them. “That’s her, ain’t it?”

Whitfield murmured agreement. He had noticed the pair of women walking along the opposite side of the street before Chick had. He would have been happier if Chick had not seen them. It was bound to lead to a conversation that he would rather have take place elsewhere. It was hard to turn Chick once he had the bit between his teeth.

“Seems kind of provincial.”

“Providential,” said Whit. “That’d be another cinnamon.”

“How about that.” He nodded, impressed. “So what do you want to do? It’s like she’s teasing us.”

Whitfield shook his shaggy head. “Teasing us? Think. She doesn’t know we’re here. The two of them are probably going into that shop over there. The one with the gown in the window. See how their steps are slowing?” Even as he was speaking, the women were making a turn toward the shop’s door. A moment later, they were inside.

“Gone,” said Chick. “Feels like a missed opportunity.”

“To do what?”

Chick shrugged. “Shoot one, take the other.”

“On Main Street. In the daylight. In front of more witnesses than I can count on my fingers. That does not sound workable to me. This is why you are not supposed to have a gun.”

“I don’t. I swear. I was considering what might have been. Anyway, it’s not Main Street. They call it Ann Street. You know, after her. I saw a signpost.”

Whit sighed. He was glad for the interruption of their waitress bringing plates of hot food and another beer for Chick. He thanked her and slid his chair closer to the table. “She puts me a little in mind of my Rosalie.” He tapped his jacket pocket where he kept his sister’s photograph.

“There’s a resemblance,” said Chick and immediately changed the subject. “Have you thought about how hard this is going to be?”

“It’s timing.”

“Hmm. Hey, you should call me Rocky more often. Get used to it.” He picked up his fork and speared a dumpling. “Probably would help me get used to it, too.”

“All right, Rocky. I can do that.”

Chick grinned and tried not to stare at the hand Whit still had over the photograph. He plopped the dumpling in his mouth and then spoke around it. “I have to tell you, Marcus, I am not real fond of this job.”

“It’s a little late, don’t you think, to be saying that? You could have spoken up weeks ago.”

“Huh? We only got moved to Kittredge’s crew yesterday.”

Whit’s features cleared as he realized which job Chick was talking about.

“That’s right. Dynamite, Marcus. We are working with dynamite. Crates and crates of it. Must be thousands of sticks. When’s the last time you touched dynamite before yesterday?”

“I’d have to say it was when we opened that safe on the express mail car between Omaha and Fort Kearney.”

“That’s what I’m remembering, and that was a ways back. And come to think of it, how come I wasn’t invited to join you at the bank in Bailey?”

“No one was. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision when I was passing through.” He forked some chicken. “Do I have to remind you that there were consequences? That’s why my likeness was on the posters. You can bet it wasn’t because of that Falls Hollow whore. Anyway, it turned out to be a good thing. I needed you to break me out of jail.”

“Amos helped,” Chick said.

“I told you, Amos had a piece in me getting caught, but I blame myself, too. I was feeling pretty good about what I’d done on my own, and hubris was my downfall. I said something about it, and then so did he. That was wrong. I should never have trusted him the way I do you.”

“That’s ’cause we’re kin.”

“Probably is.”

The truth of that settled over them and they ate in silence for a time. It was Chick who finally broke it.

“Still, don’t like working with Hercules,” he said, sopping up gravy with a chunk of bread. “Especially what that Kittredge fella has us doing now. You know how dangerous it is, don’t you? Those nitro crystals.” He lifted his hands, palms out, fingers spread, and parted them slowly. “Boom. We could be dead before we get to what we came for.”

“Then we will have to be careful, won’t we?”

Chick lowered his hands. “Real careful.” He jerked his chin toward the shop across the way. “What do you think they’re doing in there that takes so long?”

Whit made a beak with his hand and opened and closed it several times. “They’re women,” he said. “Only two ways I know to shut them up.” He closed his hand into a fist and gave it a shake. “One’s like this.”

“What’s the other?”

“Eight hard inches of what I’ve got between my legs.”

“So you
are
carrying your gun.”

Too astonished to speak, Whitfield stared at Chick for a long moment before his laughter boomed as hard and loud as a nitro crystal explosion.

*   *   *

Calico and Beatrice shared a sofa in the front parlor while Ann sat across from them in one of the chairs. Ann was reading, or mostly pretending to. She had no particular interest in the exercises that her aunt was showing Miss Nash. She was reflecting back on an interesting encounter at the livery when she had been introduced to a gentle mare named Daisy and a gentler young man named Boone Abbot, who worked in the livery grooming and feeding the animals and mucking the stalls.

Ann knew she must have seen Boone Abbot around Stonechurch before, but she could not remember a particular time or place or a single pleasantry they might have exchanged. Until he was standing beside her while she was tentatively stroking Daisy’s nose, he had not existed in her world, not even in her imagination. She blamed the dime
novels for that. It was precisely as Miss Nash had warned her: too many scoundrels and too few good men.

Was Boone Abbot a good man? she wondered. He seemed as if he might be. He was not shy, but he spoke quietly, and when he saw she was as skittish around him as she was around Daisy, he kept a respectful distance. At first he even talked to her through Daisy, and his voice drew her in so that she was the one who stepped closer. She did not mind when Daisy began to nuzzle her, and she did not notice when Miss Nash walked away, and she could not clearly recall when she joined the conversation Boone was having with Daisy, yet all of that had happened.

He was tall and straight and had an easy smile that reminded her of Quill McKenna. Similarity ended there. Boone Abbot had hair the color of a polished chestnut and eyes that closely matched it. He had a narrow face and a nose that was a shade too big for it. The bump on the bridge gave it distinction. She must have stared at it, she thought, because he rubbed it now and then with his knuckle, and she wondered if he was self-conscious. He should not have been. She thought he was very fine. Very fine indeed.

It was only when he was escorting her back to Miss Nash that she realized Boone Abbot walked with a slightly uneven gait. She wondered about it, but she did not ask. It did not change how she thought of him. It was as unimportant to her as the bump on his nose.

Beatrice was demonstrating how Calico should rotate her arm in small and large circles when Ann said, “Why have I never met Boone Abbot before?”

Both women turned to look at her. Beatrice’s features evidenced some surprise, while Calico’s evidenced mild interest.

“Well, I don’t know,” said Beatrice. “Boone’s always been around. He is Abigail and James Abbot’s third son, but their fourth child. He has an older sister and a younger one, and then there are more boys. I believe there are seven children in all. Hardy family. No deaths to the usual diseases that
afflict so many during childhood.” She took Calico’s wrist and raised it, encouraging her to start the clockwise circles. “Are you saying you met Boone Abbot?” she asked. “Or was it a rhetorical question, dear?”

“I met him. Miss Nash introduced us.”

Beatrice looked askance at Calico and received verification that this was true. She raised her eyebrows a fraction. “Tell me about it. I should like to hear how that came about.”

Ann said, “Miss Nash recently pointed out to me that while I am able to employ all the requisite social graces in my home, I am neither comfortable nor confident outside of it.”

“That is simply not true,” Beatrice said stoutly. “You have beautiful manners. Everyone says so.”

“Aunt Beatrice,” said Ann. “I know you say that as a kindness, but Miss Nash is right. I say very little when we are out.”

“Perhaps that is because I say too much. Is that it? Have I done you wrong?”

“No. Not at all. And Miss Nash never suggested that you did. The point is that she realized that I should have lessons outside of the classroom.”

“Shooting? Have we returned to that?”

When Ann did not respond, Calico realized she was looking to her for help. She stopped rotating her arm. “This has nothing at all to do with those lessons, but if you hope we are done with them because of my unfortunate accident, I am afraid you are mistaken. This is something else entirely. Ann has been practicing conversing with me as if I were Mrs. Neeley-Brown or Mrs. Birden or Mr. Zimmer from the laundry. She would like to step forward instead of hanging back, and she would like to know more about the people she passes and never sees. She wants to be more like you in that regard, Beatrice. Ann admires the way you can speak to anyone and that you know something about everyone.”