Chapter 3
Jason had barely gone a hundred yards down Chestnut Street before he decided that he might as well have been on another planet. Leadville wasn't just different from the old Oro City he remembered as a ten year old boy, it was like comparing a peashooter to a shotgun.
The surrounding hills had always been peppered with shacks and staging around the mine shafts, with wide swaths cut through the trees in the endless need for wood. But now the hills on all sides were nothing but stumps and shacks, flimsy new growth of pine doomed to harvest in several years' time, and the hulking, clanking equipment that drummed the earth's wealth out of the ground into the waiting hands of millionaires and weary miners.
Two banks were within a stone's throw of where he stood, standing opposite each other on either side of Harrison Avenue so that a gifted spitter could hit one from the other. There were not only stores with the mining equipment and dry goods necessary and expected in such a boom town, but also French fashion temples, New York pastry bakers and diamond brokers. The entire outdoors was a din of music from the many saloons that dotted both sides of the street, and busy hammers, saws, and barking foremen indicated that many more buildings were on the way.
He'd been in many boom towns over the last several years, but he had never felt such excitement in the air. He got the sense from the people he passed on the street that this was a city that would never fade. He hoped that was the case. Far too many skeletons already dotted the West, the land ravaged and then abandoned, the vacant and hastily built structures silent reminders of the fickle nature of Man and his unceasing search for wealth.
He was jarred out of his thoughts by the rough shouldering of a careless passerby. He stared after the man in annoyance, but soon thought better of pursuing the matter. He had matters to attend to with little time to stand around and gawk slack-jawed like a tenderfoot tourist and take offense like a green outlaw itching for trouble.
His hand strayed to his vest pocket, and a brush of his fingers made the folded telegram crinkle in persistent reminder, but he shook his head.
Later, he thought, as Josh's request to look in on the horses again moved to the top of his mental list for the day.
The hotel's livery stable was down the street, and Jason found it more difficult to get there unimpeded than he would have guessed. The foot and horse traffic was thick, and the recent spate of early fall rains had peppered the dirt strip with muddy bogs, depending on the slope and level nature of the ground. Combined with the horse and other livestock manure, as well as the various mining operation palls that encircled the area, the city had a distinct aroma lacking in other, smaller boom towns. He had no idea just how many people had swarmed to this mountaintop mother lode, but from what he had already seen and smelled, he guessed it was well over fifteen thousand, if not pushing twenty.
He arrived at the stable and was greeted by the man Josh had described as squirrely. In the light of day the fellow looked like any stable groom Jason had dealt with over the years to no complaint. There was the weary air of a man forced to look at the butt-end of horses all day, when he wasn't being harassed by teeth and hooves from some of the more ornery customers.
"How do?" he said, tossing a crust of bread out into the street and smoothing his shaggy moustache free of crumbs. "Randall, was it?"
"Nichols," Jason corrected, "but Randall's who paid you last night. Just checking our horses. We'll be needing them fit as a fiddle for tomorrow or the day after."
"Well, it's got to be one or t'other," was the peeved reply. "I ain't running a hotel for critters to stay indefinitely."
"One day won't put you out, I imagine," Jason said, incredulous.
"Stables can only be built so quickly, and there's some already rumbling about the smell from so many. We're gettin' quality folks here now, even if they're the only ones who think so. I like to keep the horses coming in and out, if I can."
Jason shrugged, but he understood the man's point. "Well, I'll see what I can do, but Randall and I just came off a job and we're waiting for a wire about the next one. Count on two days, and sorry."
"Have it your way," he replied, shrugging as well. "Like I said, in-and-out would be great, but the money's the same in the end."
Jason laughed. "The same could be said for bounty hunting. Easy or dangerous, it's always the same reward. Capture a man in his sleep for five hundred, or take a bullet for five hundred."
The groom's face had become thoughtful, and he tapped his moustache in valiant recollection. Then, his eyes brightened. "Oh yes, the Billy Joe Henry gang. He got all of them, didn't he? I heard about that. A night-time shootout, I think it was."
"Not all of them," Jason said. "I got Billy Joe, Randall the others."
The man's assessing look wasn't encouraging. "Billy Joe was a right powerful type. He was here about a year ago and busted the town up good. When a fella does that, you tend never to forget him. No offense, Nichols, but you look like a tin horn compared to Billy Joe. How'd you manage to get the drop on him?"
Jason felt his pride prickling all along him. "I didn't get the drop," he replied stiffly. "We drew at the same time. I just happened to be slightly faster." And it was talk like yours which made me faster, Jason wanted to add, but thought better of it. He hadn't come here to argue.
The man realized he had needlessly insulted his customer and backed away with a falsely cheerful wave. "See you and Randall tomorrow, then!" he said, darting back into the stables.
Jason shook his head and turned, his hand already at his vest pocket. He fished out the telegram and read it through one more time, although he already had it memorized. He knew where he had to go, and he began his journey with a heavy heart.
As he navigated around wagons, riders, drunks and a determined, if not gifted, temperance band, the man at the livery stable returned to his thoughts. He supposed he should be used to such initial doubts on the faces of those who heard that he killed Billy Joe Henry, or that he was a bounty hunter at all. Jason had no illusions that he didn't meet peoples' expectations of a successful gunman. He was slight, gawky even, and was not nearly as consistently cool-headed as Josh Randall. Sometimes that was to his advantage. He'd been underestimated more than once.
His baptism into the profession, now that he thought about it, seemed to be a matter of dumb luck. Billy Joe Henry was a fast draw, one of the fastest, yet he hadn't been fast enough.
And all because Henry had taunted him from the darkness that he was young and stupid. Ever since, when he heard someone sneer "Peach Fuzz," he felt his fingers itch all over again. He knew he shouldn't have risen to Henry's bait, and maybe if he hadn't, Henry and his brothers would have been taken alive. Randall seemed to think so, even refusing all of the bounty money and letting him collect it instead so that he would always see the blood on it, blood that wouldn't have been there had Jason not solved the problem of being called a craven tinhorn with his gun.
Well, no matter, he thought, shrugging off the memories, jaw set stubbornly. Whether killed on a street or at the end of a judge's noose, they were all dead and rotting in their graves.
He noticed a crude street sign that had been tacked onto the end of a building at the intersection. Pleasant Street. Jason smiled despite himself. It was a respectable sort of name, something found in every rural town with neat picket fences and a church, yet it was also slyly descriptive of the businesses that were relegated to this quarter of a rowdy town like Leadville.
Business was brisk, he soon realized, though he had been in enough boom towns to know that the saloons and the brothels were always jumping with activity and flush with flushed customers. Several saloons were lined up alongside the other, some with the air of a house of ill repute, and the names themselves had him curious about the wares within: The Ruby, Wild Rose's, The Fashion, and The Red Light.
A silvery flash flew in front of him, and he looked down to see a coin laying in the dusty street. He bent down to retrieve it, and heard silvery laughter above him. Looking up, he saw a plumpish young woman swathed in a filmy gown sitting on the windowsill in the uppermost floor of Wild Rose's, one leg drawn up in an affected pose of sensual languor. Even from his position on the street below he could see she was pretty, with soft brown curls framing a face tinged with a healthy pink pallor.
"That's good for one," she called down. "As long as you want."
He looked down and saw that it wasn't a coin but rather a token with "Wild Rose's" stamped on side and "Good For 1" on the other.
"Mighty obliged," he said, tipping his hat to her in greeting and gratitude.
"Oh, you can do better than that, sweetheart," she purred. "I don't want your obligation."
Jason felt his face flush hot, snaking down his neck well past his collar and beyond. He had tossed off the careless comment to Josh that he was not averse to paying for a night's affection, and that was the truth, but if a woman was too direct it caught him entirely off-guard. He thought with some embarrassment that he was more level-headed when he had a gunman opposite him with a bullet marked for his gut.
He swallowed. "It'll have to do for now, miss," he said, disliking how thick his voice sounded. "You're mighty inviting, but I'm looking for someone in particular. At The Paradise. Know where that is, exactly? The letter I have says it should be here."
The woman's sly, insinuating tilt of head and shoulders fell away into miffed disappointment. "It's called The Red Light now, fella. New management."
He looked over at the brothel he had already passed and noticed that the sign looked brand new, the paint fresh and yet unmarred by the elements and stray bullets.
"Thank—" he began, turning back to the other woman, but a slammed window interrupted him and he saw that she had vanished in what he presumed was a huff. He gave the token in his hand another long look and held it up with a smile in case she was still watching him. He had every intention of redeeming it, if only to tell her he was grateful for the information.
His eyes settled on The Red Light, absorbing every detail. He was heartened by the overall condition of it. It wasn't as grand as some of the parlor houses he had seen from afar due to his unwillingness to part with so much of his money in one fell swoop, but it looked as respectable as a brothel could. In fact, all of the brothels on the street were of uniform good health on the outside. He was relieved to find his destination here, rather than one of the cribs on the edge of town where opium dens and worn, diseased whores in rented cots rubbed shoulders.
But the real test would be when he walked through the door. He fought a short, sharp wave of nausea that rocked his gut and shoved the Wild Rose token deep into his pocket, for the moment its promise forgotten. He wiped his hands on his pants, suddenly aware that his palms had broken out in a sweat.
"Come on, Nichols," he told himself. "What's scaring you? She sent for you, didn't she?"