Part I – The Disappearance

Chapter 1 – Where is He? I had been waiting in Colorado Springs for four days longer than I should have, and now I was anxious. My name's Bart Maverick, and I'm what passes as a professional poker player. You might call me a gambler; that's not a term I use. Gambling is when you wager money or something else of value on an outcome or an event in the hopes of winning more than you wagered. Poker, when played properly, is a science, an event involving skill, mathematical odds, and the ability to remember cards and read people's faces and tells. Sometimes even a little luck is involved, but not required.

I come from a whole family of poker players, including my father, uncle, cousin and older brother Bret, who is the man that was now four days overdue. We'd been traveling separately for a while, and when I got a telegram in Michigan City asking me to meet Brother Bret in Colorado Springs, I didn't hesitate. I sent back a wire that said, 'Coming.' That was three weeks ago. He was supposed to be here on Monday; it was now Friday afternoon and there was no sign of him.

This had happened once or twice before over the years; one of us was supposed to meet the other one and we were delayed for one reason or another – usually a poker game, a jail cell, or a woman. Poker games eventually ended, we got released from jail and put on the next stage, or the woman decided we wasn't worth cryin' over. In my case there was no woman cryin' anywhere – I had a woman named Doralice Donovan who was more than happy to see me anytime I got back to Texas or sent for her, wherever I was. We had a good thing goin', and it seemed to suit both of us.

Brother Bret, however, hadn't gotten tied up with a woman for any length of time since . . . well, not seriously since Althea Taylor had chosen one of his good friends over him. I'd worried on more than one occasion if she'd left some kind of permanent damage in her wake, but I think he was just being overly-cautious. Least that's what I hoped.

It wasn't like big brother to get that tied up in a poker game when he was supposed to meet me; same thing with a woman. If he was in a jail cell there wasn't much that I could do about it; all I had to go on was where he sent the telegram from – Provo, Utah. Considering it was the home to Mormons and anti-gambling, I would have thought that was just a stagecoach stopover for Bret. So I sent a wire to the next place he would have come across on his trip – Price, Utah. Got an answer a few hours later from the telegraph office there – the stage had passed through days ago, with a man on it matching my brother's general description.

Next large town was Moab, then Montrose, Colorado, then Hidden Hills. Each town wired back that there was, indeed, a man traveling under the name of Bret Maverick in each of those places. But the next stop on the route came up empty – Gunnison. That seems to be where the trail went cold. When the stage had stopped overnight in Gunnison, no Bret Maverick, or any other kind of Maverick, registered at the one hotel in town. There was, however, a Mr. Joseph that checked in. A Mr. Breton Joseph.

Something had changed. When either of us was in trouble, or being followed, we started using our first and middle names instead of our last name as a signal that something was wrong. Mr. Joseph boarded the stage the next morning in Gunnison, but there was no Mr. Joseph in Salinda the day after. Now, my brother Bret is a big man, six foot two, maybe three inches, and solid muscle. Someone who physically looks imposing, even if he tries to stay out of trouble. Not the kind of man who could easily slip in and out of town without being noticed. So I had to assume one of two things – either he'd deliberately disappeared between Gunnison and Salinda, or someone had forced him off the stage. Either choice was not encouraging.

There was only one solution, and that was to ride out to see which one it was for myself. Since I'd left Noble back in Texas on this trip, I was forced to buy a horse from the livery and make preparations to leave. First thing Saturday morning I was headed for Salinda, Colorado and, I hoped, my brother. If he wasn't there, the search was on, and I wouldn't give up until I'd found him.