This Gun for Hire (6 page)

That was how Calico found them, slouched in their straight-backed chairs, legs extended, mouths full of cookie while they contemplated the one they had yet to eat as if it held the meaning of life. Perhaps it did, she reflected, giving Amos a little shove to propel him farther into the room. She remembered Mary Pepper’s gingersnaps as being very good indeed.

They both rose to their feet, but not before they shoved the cookie of contemplation into their mouths. That amused her. “I hope you saved at least one for me.”

“More than one. You got here in time. Who gave you trouble? Amos or Mrs. Fry?”

“Mrs. Fry. Tightfisted old whore.” She saw Joe and Quill exchange amused glances, but she let it go. Holding up Amos’s tether, she asked Joe, “Where do you want him?”

“We’ll put him with Chick. Whit might kill him. He’s in that kind of mood.” He smiled at Amos, who recoiled at this news. “You heard me right. You keep away from him because I can’t say how fast I’ll get there if he puts his hands on you.” He did not wait for Amos to confirm he understood. The truth was, Joe did not care. “I’ll get the keys.”

He walked to the door at the rear of his office, which led to the cells. He opened it with one hand and took down the ring of keys beside it with the other. “Give me the rope, Calico.” He tossed the keys to Quill. “We will take Amos in.”

“I can do it.”

“I know, but let us do it anyway. Whit wants to kill you, and I swear he is mad enough to squeeze through the bars to do it.”

“Thick neck. Skinny opening.” She put a hand to her throat and pretended to choke herself. “He would be strangled.”

“Probably, but you don’t want to provoke him. Trust me. You want him alive.” He waved Quill forward. “The rope?” Clearly pained, she gave it to him. “Have a cookie. Have several. You earned them.”

“I am going to dunk them in your whiskey,” she said sourly.

“Sounds awful, but you do as you like.” He watched Calico walk behind his desk and take up his chair before he told Quill to proceed. He made Amos follow and then brought up the rear, prodding his prisoner forward while keeping him on a short leash.

By Quill’s estimation, they were not gone more than two minutes, but it was much too long for Calico Nash to be left unattended at Joe Pepper’s desk. She was holding up Nick Whitfield’s wanted poster so the man’s flat eyes and dull expression were turned toward them. In contrast, her green eyes were as brilliant as polished emeralds, and her expression was infinitely colder than those stones.

Quill returned the key ring to its peg and let his hand fall to his side. The sheriff was the target of her animus, but it was rolling off her in waves and he could not help but catch the incoming tide given his proximity to Joe Pepper.

Joe closed the door behind him. “About that,” he said calmly. “I was going to tell you.”

“Uh-huh.”

He tipped his head sideways toward Quill. “Ask him.”

“Why would I believe anything he has to tell me?”

Quill said, “Because lying doesn’t come natural to me.”

“Right. I remember. You have to work real hard at it.”

Quill looked askance at Joe. He shrugged. “I tried.”

“Not yet you haven’t,” said Joe. “Go on. Tell her.”

Quill explained, “He showed me the poster after we got
here, and when I asked him if he intended to tell you about it, he was affronted.”

Calico’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “Affronted?”

“Insulted. Slighted. Offended.”

She pressed the fingers of her free hand to her temple. “I swear I do not know who deserves a bullet more.”

Joe raised one hand. “If I have a say, choose him. I’m telling you the truth, and he is just provoking.”

“He has a point,” Calico said, eyeing Quill. “I know what affronted means.”

“I figured you did, but, well, the sheriff’s right. I was being provoking.”

Her eyebrows lifted sharply enough to create tiny furrows across her forehead. She shook her head sorrowfully. “Lying
doesn’t
come natural to you.”

“See?”

Sighing, Calico tossed Whitfield’s reward notice aside. “All right, Joe. So you were going to tell me. Where do I have to take him to claim my money?”

“The reward was put up by the Jones and Prescott Bank in Bailey.”

“Park County. That’s not too far. I know the sheriff.”

Joe nodded. “I will send him a wire in the morning. Tell him to expect you in . . .” He paused, and Calico held up three fingers. “Three days, then. I will also send two deputies with you.”

“Not necessary,” she said.

Quill had the sense that it was more for form that she objected than out of any genuine resistance to the idea. To test his theory, he said, “I will go with you.”

That pulled her straight up in her chair, although she had not been precisely slump-shouldered. “No.” She said it firmly and in the manner of someone who would not brook discussion.

Quill was not sure if he was relieved or insulted. He decided what he felt was probably a little of both, a disquieting mix of emotion that made his belly clench, although he acknowledged it could have been hunger.

“Well, that’s that,” said Joe. “She doesn’t want you. Besides, you’re just passing through.”

“On his way to Stonechurch,” Calico told the sheriff.

“Lake County,” Joe said. “That’d take you opposite of Bailey.” He looked over at Calico, dismissing Quill. “I can give you Tom Hand, Buster Applegate, Christopher Byers, or Cooper Branch. Your pick.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I remember Chris having good aim and a long fuse. Still true?”

“Sure is. Buster’s about the same. Neither of them get riled much, and they will take their marching orders from you.”

“All right. They can come. What’s fair to give them?”

“The county’s paying them, so you don’t have to give them anything, but put forty in each man’s pocket and they will be as devoted to you as two old coon dogs.”

Calico wrinkled her freckled nose. “Maybe thirty would be better. I am fairly certain I do not want that much devotion. What about Amos and Chick? Is there a notice out for either of them?”

“No. Nothing like that’s come across my desk. In fact, Whit seemed surprised when I showed him the reward poster. I think he believed he had made a clean job of it. A heartbeat was about as long as it took for him to try to go after Chick, but my sense was that Chick was also surprised. That makes me think Amos might have turned on Whit, but then, maybe not. It’s hard to know what manner of thoughts go through the minds of miscreants like those three.” He went over to the chair where Quill had been sitting and put himself in it. “What did Doc Maine say about Amos? Surgery?”

“Already done. There was a lot of carrying on, but the doctor persevered. I think he enjoyed himself a little too much. I do not fault him precisely, but I know it gave me pause about ever letting him take a slug out of me.”

“Noted. Are you spending another night at the brothel?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Marisa was moving back into her room before I had Amos out. I thought I would go to the Hartford.”

“Why don’t you stay with Mary and me tonight? You will be comfortable there, and no one will bother you.” He was unaware that his eyes slid toward Quill until Calico followed the movement.

“He’s staying there?” She jabbed her finger in Quill’s direction. “You’re staying there?”

“Joe recommended it. He did not extend an invitation to stay with him and his wife.”

“You are still a stranger,” Joe said affably. “My wife would not like it.”

“Understandable,” said Quill.

Calico’s nostrils flared as she breathed in deeply. Her exhale was long and slow. “All right. Thank you, Joe. I am pleased that you asked, and I would like to see Mary again.”

“Then it’s settled. Do you mind holding down the fort while I find Tom Hand? It was my turn to spend the night, but he will understand when I tell him who is here.”

“Nick Whitfield is a prize,” she said.

Joe gave her an odd look. “I was talking about you.”

Quill would not have guessed that Calico Nash could be put to a blush, although she had the fair skin for it, but had he made a wager, he would have lost. Her fine, narrow face blossomed with rosy color.

And what he thought was,
Interesting
.

October 1888

Stonechurch, Colorado

“Have you tried talking to her?” asked Ramsey Stonechurch. “I told you yesterday to talk to her. You work for me. You recall that, don’t you?”

Quill waited a beat before he responded. It was not always clear when Ramsey required an answer and when he was asking a question in order to provide his own answer. This time the silence stretched long enough that Quill was moved to say, “I do recall it, sir.”

Ramsey threw up his hands, the picture of a man at his wit’s end. His shoulders already filled the breadth of the large burgundy leather chair behind his desk, but now they lifted and bunched, stretching his black wool jacket at the seams. His turned-out palms were broad and square and his thick-knuckled fingers were splayed wide. A tide of red rose above his stiff shirt collar and disappeared under a meticulously trimmed salt-and-pepper beard. The color returned, rising to his cheeks, his forehead, and then slipped under his dark hair,
visible only along the part line. He spoke slowly, stressing each word. “Then why the hell have you not done it?”

At the risk of stating the obvious and further inflaming his employer, Quill said, “She is your daughter, Mr. Stonechurch. I have no influence there. Ann would wonder why I’m interfering.”

“Here is my point,” Ramsey said, lowering his hands to the edge of his desk. He stood slowly, fingertips white against the dark walnut wood. When he was stiff-armed and leaning forward, he spoke again. “I am telling you to interfere. Do you understand? That is the nature of employer-employee relations. I pay you for services you provide for me.”

“I understand,” Quill said calmly. “Now will you please sit? If Ann walks in here and sees you this close to apoplexy, you will be supporting her primary reason for staying. Is that what you really want?” Ramsey remained still as stone for several long moments, putting Quill in mind of a gargoyle on the roof of a cathedral.

Ramsey’s eyes narrowed, but he relaxed his arms, shoulders, and sighing heavily, eased himself back into his chair. After a moment, he said, “I do not think the state of my health is Ann’s primary reason for staying.”

“Can we agree to disagree on that count?”

“Probably not. You know I find it unsettling when people do not agree with me.”

“Which is why you employ so many bootlickers.” Quill arched an eyebrow and regarded Ramsey candidly. “You hired me to challenge you. That is what you said you wanted, and I took you at your word. Being surrounded by toadies does not mean you are respected; it means you are the head toad.”

Quill noted that Ramsey’s color had been receding until the “head toad” remark. He watched it flare again, but he did not back down. “Pardon me,” he added. “It means you are the head toad, Mr. Stonechurch.”

Ramsey picked up a letter opener and slapped it rhythmically against the open palm of his other hand while he stared hard at Quill. “Was I drunk when I hired you?”

“Not so it showed.”

“Damn my tolerance.” He tossed the letter opener aside. It skittered to the edge of the desk and stopped just short of falling over the side. Ramsey leaned over and drew it back. He set it parallel to his blotter. “If you won’t speak to Ann, tell me what I can say to her that will persuade her to go east to school. She has her choice of colleges for women. Bryn Mawr. Vassar. Radcliffe. She wants nothing to do with any of them. Three years ago she talked of nothing else. She could not wait to leave Stonechurch. She has never been farther east than St. Louis. I was the one who had reservations then. Now that I want . . . no,
need
her to leave home, she will have none of it.” He stopped, shaking his head. “Her life is in danger because of me.”

“I understand.” And he did. Three days ago Ann had tumbled from the depot’s platform and onto the tracks as No. 486 was rolling in. She was immediately rescued by the miners crowding the platform, and her aunt had made a heroic leap to cover Ann’s body with her own, necessitating the rescue of her as well, but the question of
how
Ann had fallen had not been satisfactorily answered. Ann blamed herself, for in her mind, she had gotten tangled in her skirts and must have made a clumsy attempt to disengage. She had no recollection of being jostled, and neither her father nor Quill had suggested that she might have been pushed. Her aunt’s account of events was similarly unhelpful. It was an accident that was no accident at all. Quill knew it for what it was—a warning. And on this, he and Ramsey Stonechurch were of like minds.

As if he did not already know the answer, Quill asked, “What reason did she give you for wanting to stay?”

“Ach.” Ramsey waved a hand dismissively. “She insists no one can take care of me as well as she can. There is no reasoning with her. I pointed out that her aunt does very well by me, but she claimed that Beatrice has not taken my best interests to heart because my sister-in-law says nothing about my whiskey and cigars. Thank God, is what I said. Ann did not find that amusing. She marched off and has not spoken to me since. We argued after dinner.”

“When you asked for your whiskey and a cigar.”

Ramsey thrust his chin forward, unrepentant.

“You have no shame,” said Quill.

“Why should I? Dr. Pitman says there is no harm in it.”

“I would call him a quack, but what he is, is a toady.”

Ramsey’s dark eyes narrowed as he stared suspiciously at Quill. “Did you speak to Ann after all? That is very close to what she said, except she called Pitman a sycophant.”

“Your daughter has a better vocabulary than I do. I am not sure she will be improved by college.”

“Mother of God. Did you say
that
to her?”

“I told you, I didn’t talk to her, and she rarely approaches me for advice about you or anything else. I am fairly confident that she sees me as one of your sycophants. Probably the very worst of them since I am always nearby.”

“She should be used to lawyers dogging my footsteps.”

“Perhaps, but it does not mean she respects them for it, and you should keep in mind that I am not really your lawyer.”

“You could be.”

“No, I could not.”

“You choose not.”

“That’s right, and this is an old argument. An old, settled argument.”

Ramsey shrugged. “I don’t see the harm in mentioning it now and again.”

“The harm is that you will lower your guard as you become accustomed to me as a lawyer when you hired me as your bodyguard.”

A deeply skeptical grunt came from the back of Ramsey’s throat. “I think you are a better lawyer.”

“Perhaps, but I have no interest there, and since I am charged with protecting you, it is better if you keep that in mind.”

“Better for you, you mean.”

“Only in the sense that it makes my job a little easier if you also remain alert. The consequence of you failing to do so could make you dead.” Quill thought that Ramsey was going to raise a counterpoint after he mulled that over, so it
was a pleasant surprise when he offered no objection and returned to the subject of his daughter and her rebellion.

“I think my daughter imagines herself in love,” said Ramsey. “That’s why she will have no part in leaving.”

Quill had not expected that. He said nothing.

“Do not pretend that it had not occurred to you. You watch everything. Everyone. You must have observed her mooning about.”

“Mooning? Ann? No, I have not observed that.”

“Well, if that’s true, you should not admit it. It does not inspire confidence in your ability to protect me.”

“Your daughter is not trying to kill you.”

“She might if we argue again as we did last night.” Ramsey stroked his beard, thoughtful. “I want the name of the young man,” he said finally. “I want you to find him and put him here.” He pointed to the opposite side of his desk, directly in front of the chair where Quill sat. “Right here. In front of me. There will be a discussion.”

Quill shook his head. “No.”

“No?”

“I will not spy on your daughter.”

“Investigate, not spy.”

“Semantics. You will have to find someone else. I cannot protect you and follow her. Ann should go. Perhaps if you ask Mrs. Stonechurch what she knows.”

“I already asked Beatrice. She says there is no one, but then she would. My sister-in-law’s first order of business is to keep the peace.”

“Yes. I would agree.” It was what made Ramsey’s sister-in-law an excellent sycophant. He did not say so. The wiser course here was to keep that to himself. It was whispered about as fact that Beatrice Stonechurch occupied one of the only two warm spots in what the miners acknowledged was Ramsey Stonechurch’s stone cold heart. Ann Stonechurch resided in the other by virtue of being his daughter. Mrs. Stonechurch came to be there by accident, the one that had killed her husband, Ramsey’s younger brother. Ramsey did not accept responsibility for the collapse of the Number 3
mine that buried Leonard Stonechurch for two days and left him unable to walk or draw a deep breath without coughing blood, but that did not mean he did not grieve for his brother or not think the collapse had claimed the wrong Stonechurch. Quill had it from Ann that her father grieved the loss of his brother’s vitality, his humor, and most especially, his counsel, and it was during that time, when he saw Beatrice’s unwavering, selfless devotion to her husband, that his sister-in-law came to take up permanent residence in his heart. But, Ann had hastened to add, when her Uncle Leo died just short of a year after the accident, it had been her father who had retreated to his office and did not emerge from his work or his whiskey for a week, and her Aunt Beatrice who seemed to regard the passing as a relief.

Quill had more experience with suffering and death than Ann Stonechurch, but he refrained from telling her that her Aunt Beatrice probably
was
relieved. Any comment he could have made about people mourning differently would have seemed patronizing, and her motive for telling him any of it was to express her concern for her father’s health and not to cast aspersions on the aunt she loved dearly.

Ramsey snapped his fingers loudly enough to pull Quill’s attention. “That’s better,” he said when Quill’s blue-gray eyes refocused. “Now tell me what you were thinking.” He held up his hand when it appeared that Quill meant to object. “Do not deny it. You did not hear a word I said until I brought you out of your trance. That you can think so deeply that you are unaware of your surroundings is another thing that does not inspire confidence.”

“You were asking for a recommendation,” Quill said. “I heard you. I was thinking about Ann and how she has, from time to time, expressed concerns about you. I had not realized until now how long it’s been since she’s done that.”

“There is your proof that I am not the reason she won’t leave. I am no longer first in her affection. I knew it. I was right.”

“Maybe, and maybe she does not trust me to do right by you. No matter what you think, her concern is genuine.”

“I do not doubt that it is genuine. I am saying it is no longer primary. There’s a young man somewhere.”

“All right. But I stand by my decision not to be the one to find him. As it happens, I do have a recommendation.”

“Well? Out with it. I am supposed to be meeting with Raymond Garrison at the bank this morning. He does not like waiting, even for me.”

“Katherine Nash,” said Quill.

“Who is Katherine Nash?”

“I told you about her. The woman I met back in August when I was passing through Falls Hollow.”

“Mother of God. You mean Calico Nash? Calico Nash, the bounty hunter?” Ramsey’s brow creased. “Or is it huntress?”

“Hunter,” Quill said. “Bounty
hunter
. I am almost certain she will threaten to shoot you if you call her the other. She does that a lot. Threaten, that is.”

“She threatened you?”

“Several times.”

Ramsey was philosophical about it. He shrugged. “I wanted to kill you at least once today, and we are not yet at the noon hour.”

“There will be common ground, then.”

“Not so fast. I am not certain I want a female of her particular ilk around my daughter.”

“I am not sure she is of a particular ilk. She impressed me as one of no other kind. And we are in agreement that if Ann will not leave—for whatever reason—she requires protection in her own right.”

“Of course she does. But Calico Nash?”

Quill shrugged. “The decision is entirely up to you.”

“I am glad to learn you know it. As you said, Ann is my daughter.”

At that precise moment, the pocket doors to Ramsey’s office parted and the daughter under scrutiny and discussion walked in. She was small in stature, taking her height and delicate bone structure from her deceased mother, but her stride, her ramrod spine, and the determined set of her jaw
were all from her father. She marched up to his desk, laid a tri-folded piece of paper on the blotter in front of him, and waved an opened envelope under his nose. She withdrew the offending envelope and put it behind her back when Ramsey would have snatched it from her.

“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the paper.

“As if you did not know.”

“Well, I don’t. I would not have asked if I did. You know I can’t abide wasting my breath.”

The breadth of that untruth had Quill’s eyebrows climbing halfway to his widow’s peak. He knew he was fortunate neither Ramsey nor Ann spared him a glance because he could not have schooled his features quickly enough to avoid explaining himself. Anything he said would be seen as choosing sides, and in the end, blood being thicker, he would be the one they sided against. He could not do his job effectively if they pushed back at him. Ramsey alone was more than enough.

Ann Stonechurch had a pale, porcelain complexion that was made fairer by hair that was darker and thicker than her father’s. She flushed brilliantly, coming close to the color Ramsey had displayed during his earlier apoplectic fit. Behind her back, the envelope fluttered as her hand shook.

“Read it, Father,” she said. Her voice was tight, a little shrill. Absent was any hint of the melody that usually marked her tone. “And know I will have none of it.”