Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) Read online

  “Three days’ ride, I figure,” Blake said. “Gotta have enough provisions to go up and back.”

  Clark disagreed. “I reckon four.”

  His partner admonished him “That’s ’cause you’re a lazy sonuvabitch. Anyhow, I don’t reckon on havin’ to ride all the way to Copperopolis.”

  “You reckon they left by now?”

  “Yeah . . . I figure they must have,” Blake affirmed.

  “One of ’em’s wounded, though,” Clark cautioned.

  Hannah wondered who they might be describing. She remembered having heard once of a place called Copperopolis, but she could not recall where it was.

  “They’re not coming very fast if one of ’em’s wounded,” Clark continued.

  “I figure we should get to ’em somewhere there on Sixteen Mile Creek,” Blake said.

  “We gotta . . . There’s too much traffic comin’ down from Diamond City once you get as far as the Missouri.”

  “You figure we gotta kill ’em all?”

  Blake’s question was not the sort one should be discussing in public in the afternoon, but the whiskey provided at the Big Horn Saloon, even with its presale watering down, had loosened his tongue considerably.

  Far from being appalled by talk of murder, Hannah was only gripped by stronger yearnings of curiosity. Had they had more of their wits about them, they would have seen her craning her neck to hear them.

  “Olson said that there is no way the Porter boys can show up alive in Gallatin City,” Clark asserted. “Olson said there’s no way they can be allowed to point fingers at them who can’t have fingers pointed at them.”

  “What about the bounty hunter?”

  “Guess he probably knows what Olson don’t want told. I guess he’s gotta get himself killed too.”

  From this exchange Hannah recoiled.

  Talk of murder was one thing when it was in the abstract, like the plot of a dime novel, but quite another when the intended victims were the bounty hunter and the Porter boys.

  * * *

  HANNAH RANSDELL SAT AT HER DESK, STARING AT THE notes she kept in her bottom drawer. Her head was spinning. After the conversation she had overheard the day before at the Gallatin City General Mercantile and Dry Goods, she could concentrate on nothing but her secret project.

  She had found and followed the paper trail of the acquisition, and she had seen how the death of any member of the foursome would benefit his partners. She had calculated the value and confirmed that it would increase—if not eightfold as Richard Wells had estimated—at least many times.

  Hannah had discovered that her father’s net worth had at least doubled as a result of the murders. Had this been by coincidence or design?

  She had dreaded the unthinkable hypothesis of her father’s involvement in eliminating his partners on the eve of their jointly held land doubling and doubling in value, and then doubling again.

  She had held out hope that it was all mere coincidence, despite the pronouncements of her overactive imagination. There had been no real and true reason to believe otherwise, despite the way it might appear.

  That is, until she heard of her father’s right-hand man ordering the deaths of the men who could point their fingers at Isham Ransdell himself. Lyle Blake and Joe Clark would kill the Porter boys and the bounty hunter, and with this, the fingers would never be pointed.

  Her father.

  Could it be?

  How could he be involved in this?

  Her own father.

  “Hannah, what’s wrong?” Isham Ransdell said as he came into the bank. “You don’t look well.”

  She had gone to her room before dinner the night before and had left the house before him this morning. He had thought her to be ill, but in reality, she could no longer look him in the face without breaking into tears.

  “I’m not,” she stammered, “I’m not feeling well . . . May I go home?”

  “Yes, of course,” the banker said.

  Once on the street, Hannah walked uncertainly in the direction of her home.

  What should she do?

  Conventional wisdom told her that murders and murder plots should be reported to the sheriff—but he was dead, gunned down by the same killers who had doubled the value of her father’s land.

  There was Deputy—Acting Sheriff—Marcus Johnson, but he was on light duty, recovering from wounds suffered in the same shootout that killed the sheriff. She could tell him, but what evidence did she have to offer?

  None.

  In the hierarchy of Gallatin City, what was the place of the daughter who accused her father of ordering brutal killings, and who did so without evidence?

  What should she do?

  What could she do?

  She walked aimlessly, tossing the facts over in her mind and replaying the sequence of events.

  Suddenly, it dawned on her.

  She realized what she could do. She realized who she could tell. There was one man she could tell—the only survivor among the Big Four of the brutal assault on the Blaine home!

  * * *

  “IS MR. STOCKER IN?” HANNAH ASKED THE CLERK IN Virgil Stocker’s law office.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No . . .”

  Declining to go away and come back in an hour, she waited in the chair offered, watching the hands on the clock grind slowly around its face.

  An hour passed, and then the better part of another.

  “Mr. Stocker will see you now.”

  Finally.

  The scarring on Virgil Stocker’s face was still ugly, red and not fully healed. Hannah felt pity for a man likely to be disfigured permanently. She had seen him only a time or two since the murders, and then only at a distance, so the sight of the injury was jarring.

  “Good morning, Miss Ransdell, how are you?” He smiled, standing up behind his desk as she entered his office.

  “How are you?” Hannah asked, looking at his face. “Are your injuries healing?”

  “As good as can be expected, I suppose,” he shrugged. “How is your father?”

  With the mention of her father, she could not hold back the tears. The attorney leaped up to pour her a tumbler of water, which she accepted gratefully.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said when she had regained her composure well enough to talk.

  “Of course.”

  “I have come to you on a grave matter.”

  “What is it?” Stocker asked sympathetically.

  “It’s about my father . . .” she said, breaking once again into tears.

  “Is he all right?”

  “I believe that he may have been involved,” Hannah said between sobs. “I think that he may have been behind what the Porter boys did that night.”

  “That’s impossible,” Stocker said forcefully. “I’ve known Isham Ransdell for more than fifteen years . . .”

  “I’ve known Isham Ransdell for twenty-five years,” Hannah interrupted. “Nobody can be sadder about this than me.”

  “What makes you think that it was he?”

  “The will . . . Mr. Phillips’s will . . . I learned that with this land that the partners purchased . . . the partners had right of inheritance.”

  “That’s correct,” Stocker nodded.

  “I’ve learned that when the railroad reaches Gallatin City, the land will be worth about eight times its original value.”

  “It is certainly true that the value will increase as the railroad approaches,” Stocker said thoughtfully. “But the fact that an investment pays off is no motive for murder.”

  “But the right of inheritance?” Hannah replied.

  “Miss Ransdell, you have a superb head for calculation . . . for putting two and two together wi
th respect to the value of the property to the railroad . . . but by your reasoning . . . by the inheritance issue . . . I too would have had a motive for the killings.”

  “But you were hurt . . . and my father wasn’t there.”

  “Yes, but that’s just circumstantial . . .”

  “That’s what I thought . . . until . . .”

  “Until?”

  “Until I saw my father’s right-hand man . . . Edward J. Olson . . . with Lyle Blake and Joe Clark . . .”

  “I see,” Stocker said. “They’re not exactly the most upstanding citizens around these parts . . . but this is still what we would call ‘circumstantial’ in the eyes of the law.”

  “Until I overheard Blake and Clark in Blaine’s store,” she said, dabbing at the tears on her cheeks with her handkerchief.

  “What did . . . ?”

  “Edward J. Olson has ordered them to go kill the Porter boys.”

  “Why would he?”

  “So they can’t point their fingers at my father.”

  “I think you’re just jumping to conclusions,” the attorney said sympathetically. “I’m sure that it’s all a big misunderstanding. Your father couldn’t possibly . . .”

  “I just wish I could get away,” Hannah said.

  “Yes,” Stocker agreed. “A change of scenery can always do wonders for a person’s mood. Do you have anywhere . . . ?”

  “I have a friend down in Bozeman who has wanted me to see her new baby,” Hannah replied. “The child must be nearly walking by now.”

  “That sounds like a wise course indeed,” Stocker said. “While you’re gone, I’ll look into the matter. I’m sure that there is an explanation, and I’ll find it. Everything will be back to normal by the time you return.”

  Hannah Ransdell thanked Virgil Stocker and took her leave.

  Yes, a change of scenery was called for.

  Visiting Rebecca and the baby would be a welcome delight. However, under the present circumstances, when a mystery so vexing had to be resolved, she questioned whether she should, indeed whether she could, pamper herself with an activity carried out purely in the indulgence of her own pleasure.

  As she went to the stage company office to purchase a ticket on the afternoon coach for Bozeman, the wheels were turning in her mind. She knew that she needed to keep her attention on the task at hand.

  Instead of returning to the bank, she went home to pack her bag.

  As usual, she set the table for dinner, but she set it for one. She left a note for her father on the dining room table, explaining that she was going out of town for a week to visit Rebecca, whom she had not seen in some time. She knew that he knew that it was not like her to go off on a whim like this, but men generally thought of women as impetuous, so she was merely fulfilling a stereotype. Hannah scorned the idea of filling the pigeonhole of the inexplicably impulsive girl, but rationalized that there was no harm in using the stereotype to her advantage. Certainly, she should be allowed to use every means at her disposal in the furtherance of the task at hand—that being the resolution of the conundrum that continued to haunt her at every turn.

  Yes, a change of scenery was called for.

  Chapter 23

  LOOKING OVER HIS SHOULDER AS HE RODE, BLADEN COLE watched the rider in the blue coat grow smaller and smaller and finally disappear in the soft haze of gently drifting snowflakes.

  He hoped that he had imparted good counsel to Joshua Morgan. He was not accustomed to the practice of giving advice in matters of the heart, and he was therefore unsure that telling a man to bet his future on a woman was something he was qualified to do.

  Selfishly, he was relieved to have the sheriff out of his way. Even if Morgan did an about-face the moment he returned to Copperopolis, he would still be two days behind. Cole would never see him again.

  Thankfully, the bickering between Gideon Porter and Jimmy Goode had slackened. They were exhausted after a short night and their uncomfortable sleeping arrangements. Cole reckoned that Goode might even fall asleep in his saddle if given half a chance.

  By early afternoon, they were within sight of Sixteen Mile Creek, snaking between patches of ponderosa in the valley beyond. Here and there, the smoke from a prospector’s cabin rose into the windless sky. Random snowflakes still fell like feathers escaping from a pillow. It was as though the sky really did not want to snow but a few flakes had slipped through the crevices in the pillowcase of low-hanging clouds.

  Hoping to avoid as many of the cabins as possible, Cole left the trail. He knew that once they reached Sixteen Mile Creek it would not be hard to find it again.

  Nor was he especially worried about a chance encounter with a prospector. Whereas a bounty hunter and his prisoners might raise an eyebrow elsewhere, here this fact would only convince the prospectors that they were merely passing through and not here to cast an avaricious gaze upon anyone’s claim.

  As he rejoined the trail on the banks of the creek, Cole was pleased to see that no one had ridden this way since the snow had begun falling early in the morning. They passed a place where a man was panning for gold. He had his gear stacked near where he was working, with his rifle at the ready.

  Cole waved.

  The man waved back with uncertain hesitancy and watched the three riders only long enough to be sure that they were not claim jumpers, before returning to work. Even all these years after the big strike at Confederate Gulch, everyone panning gold on Sixteen Mile Creek was certain that the next pan of gravel would be his ticket to El Dorado.

  As it was growing dark, they saw another man at work on a sandbar that paralleled a stream entering Sixteen Mile Creek from the opposite side.

  The man hailed them, raising his voice loud enough to carry across the sound and distance of the creek. “Howdy, strangers.”

  “Hello,” Cole returned with a wave.

  “Say there,” shouted the man, “I hate to bother you . . . but could I trouble y’all for a hand?”

  “What did you say?” Cole asked.

  “I could sure use a bit of help from you men,” he repeated. “My sluice got drug too far into the creek and I need a hand gettin’ it back.”

  Cole surveyed the scene. At first glance, it appeared as though the man had turned one bank of the side stream into a junk yard. All manner of boxes, pipes, and other stuff was scattered along it from where the man stood to a shack that lay about a hundred feet upstream. Two large dogs wandered about, looking idly at the man. Cole could see a sluice box that was about twelve feet from shore and sitting at an angle.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he shouted back to the man. His mind told him to expect a trap, but his instincts told him that this was not one.

  “I ain’t goin’ in that goddamn water barefoot,” Gideon Porter snarled angrily, having overheard the conversation.

  “Oh, shut up,” Cole said, more annoyed than angry.

  “Some sonuvabitch gave my boots to a goddamn Indian.”

  “Shut up, Porter. You’re not barefoot.”

  “Moccasins ain’t no damn good in a stream.”

  Cole sent the two prisoners to ford Sixteen Mile Creek first and followed behind them as was his custom.

  “Looks like you’re ridin’ with a couple of captives there, mister,” the man said when he saw that Porter and Goode were chained to their saddles.

  “Yep,” Cole said, confirming the obvious.

  “You a lawman?” the man asked.

  “He’s a goddamn bounty hunter,” Porter answered before Cole could say anything.

  “I’ll be danged to hell,” the man said, looking at Cole.

  “I’m just like you,” Cole added. “I’m just trying to scratch out a living.”

  He then ordered the two men to dismount and stand next to the horses to whose saddles they were
chained. The two dogs barked vigorously until the man hurled obscenities at them, whereupon they slunk away to eye the proceedings from a distance.

  With Porter and Goode in a position in which an escape attempt would be awkward to the extreme, Cole directed his attention to the prospector.

  “Name’s Walz . . . Jake Walz,” he said, extending his hand. He was an older man. He looked about sixty, though he may have been a younger man who had weathered to that appearance.

  “Bladen Cole. These here are Porter and Goode. They got a date with the law down in Gallatin City.”

  “I won’t ask why,” Walz said. “Ain’t in my nature to pry into somebody else’s business.”

  “What do you need done?” Cole asked, looking at the sluice box.

  “The current done moved my box out of this here channel next to the shore and out onto yonder bar.”

  “I see . . . and you need to have it dragged back in the channel here.”

  “Yes, sir . . . I been trying to get it back. Workin’ at it for more than a week. I had debated callin’ out for help as I done with you, but . . . I’d be mighty obliged if you could help me.”

  “Let’s figure the best way to do this,” Cole said, studying the problem as presented. “You got a horse?”

  “No, sir,” Walz said with a degree of sadness. “I did have, but I had to sell her off. All I got’s the dogs.”

  By his tone, he did not hold his canine companions in high esteem.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Cole said sympathetically. Apparently, prospecting did not afford the steady income that would allow a man the luxury of keeping livestock. “Guess we could use mine.”

  Walz waded into the frigid water to attach a rope to one end of the sluice box, while Cole anchored the rope to his saddle horn. The roan then pulled the sluice a few feet through the stream.

  By repeating this process several times with the rope attached to various places on the cumbersome contraption, they were finally able to reposition it to the prospector’s satisfaction.

  When they were at last through, the sky was dark and snowflakes were falling heavier than before.