Читать книгу A Good Day for a Massacre - William W. Johnstone - Страница 13

CHAPTER 8

The willowy old chief marshal sagged back in his chair, thumbing his spectacles up his nose and entwining his hands once more behind his woolly head. “I got a job for you. Don’t let its simplicity spoil you.”

“A simple job,” Pecos said, smiling. “I like that.”

Bledsoe glanced at his assistant, who sat hunched over her desk, her back to the men. She appeared to be writing in one of the several legal pads surrounding her and her shot glass. Slash could hear the quick, unceasing sounds of her nib and the frequent clink as she dipped the pen into an inkwell.

“Do you have the file over there, Miss Langdon?” the chief marshal asked.

“Right here, Chief.” The gorgeous young woman plucked a manila folder off her desk and rose from her chair. She was a tall, big-boned young lady, a creature of the rocky fjords, yet she moved with the grace of a forest sprite. The air she displaced smelled of cherries and sage—just the right combination of sweet and spicy.

Slash heard Pecos draw a sharp breath as Miss Langdon leaned over the chief marshal’s desk to hand him the folder. Pecos squirmed a little in his chair. Slash elbowed him. Pecos glanced at him, scowling and flushing. Turning back toward her desk, Miss Langdon’s eyes met Pecos’s once more, and held.

Slash wasn’t sure, but he thought the beautiful Scandinavian quirked her mouth corners ever so slightly, appreciatively, before completing her turn toward her desk and sinking back into her chair, once again moving the air touched with the aromas of a springtime desert.

Bledsoe flipped through the file before him, holding one hand on his glasses as he skimmed the typed words.

“Yes, yes, all right,” the chief marshal said, closing the folder and tossing it aside. “Just needed to refresh my memory. As I said, don’t let the simplicity of this job spoil you. I thought of you for it since you’re in the freighting business and, after a year, seemed to be fairly handy at it.”

“Did I just hear a compliment?” Slash asked Pecos.

“Nah, couldn’t have been.”

Ignoring the cutthroats’ banter, Bledsoe leaned forward, elbows on his desk, hands steepled before him. “I want you to drive one of your freight wagons up to the mountain mining town of Tin Cup in the Sawatch Range, and haul a lode of gold bars from a mine up there, the Cloud Tickler, as it’s called—due to the high altitude in those parts—to Union Station in Denver. There the gold will be placed on a train to the federal mint in San Francisco.”

“Doesn’t the mine company usually have Wells Fargo haul the ore out of the mountains, Chief?” Slash asked, frowning.

“Of course, they do. Most mines up in that neck of the high-and-rocky ship their gold out by stagecoach. But there’s been a problem.”

“Robberies,” Pecos said.

“The Front Range Stage Company has been robbed so often that Wells Fargo refuses to haul gold for them anymore. Determined to catch the robbers but not wanting to risk losing another strongbox filled with gold, the mining company has instead hired undercover Pinkerton agents to ride the stage, guarding a dummy strongbox in hopes to catch the robbers red-handed once and for all, and get them out of their hair.”

Pecos was raking his thumb across the heel of his boot, which he had propped on his left knee. “Dummy strongbox, Chief?”

“You’ll be carryin’ the real one. You see, the Cloud Tickler isn’t taking any chances. They can’t afford to lose one more ounce of gold. So, while they’re gonna fill that stagecoach full of Pinkertons—there’ll even be a couple of Pinkertons in the driver’s boot, acting as driver and shotgun messenger—they’re not going to risk shipping the gold on that run. You’ll be shipping it in your freight wagon, in a hidden strongbox, taking a separate trail.”

“Just us?” Pecos asked, canting his head toward his partner. “Just me an’ Slash?”

“Just you two. If all goes as planned, no one will suspect that you two are anything but what you’ll be pretending to be—two freighters who drove a full load up to Tin Cup, picked up their pay, and are heading back out of the mountains to home sweet home.” Bledsoe paused, blinked, snapped his mouth slightly, adjusting his false teeth. His eyes shifted quickly between the pair. “Think you can handle that, boys?”

“I don’t know,” Slash said. “Somethin’ about this makes me a little uneasy. How much gold will we be hauling in our humble freighter?”

“Pretty damn close to a hundred thousand dollars’ worth.”

Slash and Pecos whistled at that.

Bledsoe said, “Gold prices are on the rise just now, and the Cloud Tickler is extracting some of the highest-grade ore in the Rockies at the moment. How long that will last is anyone’s guess, but right now it’s imperative they get their gold ingots out of those mountains and down to the train station in Denver.”

“Why don’t you throw a few guards in with us?” Pecos said. “If the company is mining that kind of color, surely they could afford it.”

Bledsoe took another sip of his tequila, extending one beringed pinky. He made sure the cutthroats knew it was right tasty stuff, smacking his lips and sighing as he returned the glass to his desk.

Again, he leaned forward and steepled his fingers before him. “Even the richest companies are tighter than the bark on a tree. The way they see it, that’s how they stay rich. They’re paying enough money for the Pinkertons they’ve hired to corral the stage robbers. They don’t see the need to waste any more on your run, which should go without a hitch if you both play it right and don’t go getting drunk and shooting your mouths off in the various and sundry bordellos up thataway!”

Now it was Slash’s turn to cloud up and rain. “You know we didn’t stay two steps ahead of you and the other federals as well as bounty hunters all those years by getting drunk and shooting our mouths off about our holdup plans in hurdy-gurdy houses, Chief Bleed-Em-So!”

Bledsoe sat back in his chair, chuckling delightedly at the reaction he’d evoked. “No, no, you’re right there, Slash. That’s partly why I’ve chosen you boys for the job. And why there’s no need to throw Pinkertons at you. Besides, if anyone were to see more than you two within several hundred yards of your freighter, they might get wise to the ploy. No, it’s better this way—just you two and a seemingly empty freight wagon. Only . . .” Bledsoe raised his brows to convey the gravity of the operation. “Only, you’ll be hauling around one hundred thousand dollars of high-grade gold.”

“Damn,” Pecos said.

“Yeah,” Slash said. “Damn!”

Bledsoe furled his brows and carved deep lines of casti-gation across his high, weathered, liver-spotted forehead. “Don’t you two old cutthroats go gettin’ any ideas, now, you hear?”

“Ideas?” Slash said. “About what?”

“About what?” Bledsoe mocked, widening his eyes.

“Ah, hell, Chief,” Pecos said. “You know we done mended our ways. Why, neither me nor Slash would ever consider runnin’ off with that gold.”

“No?” Bledsoe asked.

“Of course not!” Pecos cried.

The chief marshal jerked a crooked finger toward Slash. “Then why is he sweating?”

“What?” Pecos said.

“Look at him. He’s sweating.”

This nudged Miss Langdon’s mind out of the paperwork before her. She turned her head to frown over her shoulder toward Slash sitting on the other side of Pecos from her.

“I am not!” Slash said. He brushed his hand across his left cheek and looked at it. He’d be damned if he wasn’t sweating, after all. “Well, if I am, it’s because you got a fire goin’ on a warm night. Good Lord, man, who lights a fire out here in August?”

“This is a chilly night for August,” Miss Langdon said in her quiet, sonorous voice.

Bledsoe narrowed his eyes at Pecos. “You are, too.”

“I’m what?”

“Sweatin’!” Bledsoe pounded his fist on his desk. “Look at ya, both of ya sittin’ there sweatin’, fairly salivating at the thought of hightailing it all the way to Mexico with a hundred thousand dollars in high-grade gold!”

“Oh, hell!” Pecos said, quickly turning his head to Bledsoe’s pretty assistant and saying, “Uh . . . pardon my farm talk, Miss Langdon.”

She lowered her eyes and half-smiled, flushing in the flickering lamplight.

Turning to Bledsoe again, Pecos said, “You can’t make a dog not lick his chops at the smell of fresh beef. That don’t mean he’s gonna rise up on his hind feet and snag a T-bone off the cookin’ range.”

“My partner’s right for once in his life,” Slash said. “You can’t keep us from droolin’ over the thought of that much gold. Lord knows we tried for that much a time or two, but never even got close. But we’re not stupid enough to actually run off with the Cloud Tickler’s ingots. Of course, you’d run us down before we even got to Denver, and we’d be hangin’ from the gallows outside the Federal Building faster’n a judge could hammer his gavel. We know that. We’re not stupid despite how Pecos might look.”

Pecos gave him a frosty smile. “Thank you for so nobly rushing to my defense, partner.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Miss Langdon snorted, then turned around quickly and dug back into her paperwork, scribbling away with her ink pen.

“Rest assured you’d be run down, all right,” Bledsoe assured the cutthroats. “You wouldn’t get far. And, believe me, the deputy marshals who ran you down would have marching orders not to waste time taking you back to Denver, where you’d only waste more taxpayers’ dollars on a worthless court trial. They’d be under orders to hang you from the nearest tree and to leave you there, a feast for the buzzards and crows!”

Bledsoe pounded his desk once more. “Now get out of here. Miss Langdon and I still got a pile of work to plow through before we head back to the oversized stockyard perdition of Denver.”

“When are we due in Tin Cup?” Slash asked.

“As soon as you get there. The Pinkertons are en route even as we palaver. Here—take this.” Bledsoe tossed the manila folder over to Slash’s side of the desk. “That’s the file on the operation. The name of your contact in Tin Cup is in there. It’s a Pink—you know, one of Pinkerton’s female operatives. Make sure—let me repeat—make damn good and sure that file doesn’t leave your side. Once you know everything that’s in there, burn it.” He frowned suddenly, cutting his gaze between the two men. “Say . . . you two can read, can’t you?”

“Of course, we can read!” Slash said, chuckling his exasperation at the question as he flipped open the file. “Leastways, I can. I don’t know about—”

“I can read just fine!” Pecos growled, rising from his chair.

“Say, Chief?” Slash said, also gaining his feet. “You said we was supposed to haul a load of freight up to Tin Cup. To make us look genuine, I assume. What freight did you have in mind?”

Bledsoe shrugged and looked up impatiently. “I don’t know. Why don’t you just fill the back of your freight wagon with firewood or something like that? Tie a tarp over it so no one’s the wiser. Unload it once you get up there. And make sure no one sees what it really is, or your goose is cooked!”

Slash and Pecos shared a glance, shrugged.

“Nice palaverin’ with ya, Chief,” Slash said, donning his hat as he headed for the door.

Bledsoe only grumbled and muttered something incoherent as he picked up his own ink pen and began scribbling, holding his spectacles on his nose with one hand.

Pecos headed for the door behind Slash, turning toward Bledsoe’s pretty assistant and saying, “Just wanted to mention you look especially fine this evening, Miss Langdon.”

Miss Langdon looked up quickly, arching her brows over her lovely eyes in surprise. “Oh . . . well, uh . . . thank you, Mister Bak—”

Backing toward the door and holding his hat over his heart, Pecos said, “No, no—please, call me Melvin.”

“Oh . . . well, then, uh . . . thank you for that nice compliment, Melvin.”

“Be seein’ you now,” Pecos said.

“Good-bye,” Abigail Langdon said, giving a little wave.

Pecos backed out the door. Slash grabbed a chair and thrust it behind him, turning it sideways. Pecos backed into it, ramming it over on its side, then giving an indignant cry as he twisted around, tripping over it and falling to the floor with a booming thud.

Chuckling, Slash ran to the batwings.

Pecos rolled up on his side. He saw Miss Langdon standing in the open door to Bledsoe’s office, holding a hand over her mouth in deep dismay.

Pecos’s cheeks turned as hot as a branding iron. He swung his head toward where Slash was just then running through the batwings, and yelled, “Come back fer your whippin’, you black-hearted son of Satan!”