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9
"He can't do much in a public eating place, surely?" Chantal sounded uncharacteristically nervous as she adjusted her hat in the mirror. It was not that she was afraid of Carlin – oh no! She was just conscious of Jess behind her, radiating dislike of her hair-style, not to mention the fancy hat. "This thing didn't travel very well. Does it look squashed?"
Jess gave it another look of loathing. "I can't tell. What was it supposed to look like?"
"You look fine!" Slim intervened hastily, although he couldn't help adding: "I don't suppose Carlin knows any more about hats than Jess does!"
"I wouldn't put anything past Carlin," Jess said gloomily. "You ready?"
Chantal bestowed a delightful smile on Slim, although their increasing familiarity with each other rendered it less effective than it might have been. She glared at Jess. "Are you suggesting that I go out to dine with this man looking anything less than thoroughly rich and sophisticated?" she demanded.
Jess heaved a sigh. "Don't let the role go to your head. The hat's bad enough!"
"Are you being deliberately aggravating?"
As sense of déjà vu struck Slim. Wasn't this where it all began? But Jess was insisting in his most innocent voice: "You're meant to be thoroughly irritated. I'm just bein' helpful. Saves you havin' to fake it."
"You're just getting your own back for having to wear a decent shirt for once!" she retorted. "Are you ready?" She looked him up and down critically, but could find no fault in the relatively clean and amazingly undamaged black pants and shirt he had on.
"As I'll ever be." Jess picked up his hat and turned to Slim, who was resisting an urge to tell the pair of them to stop procrastinating and get on with it. "We'll keep Carlin occupied and away from the fort as long as we can. I reckon Samson will be back in town by noon at the latest. He'll know how to contact everyone and what to do with the evidence we've got now."
"Chantal's our only witness," Slim reminded him unnecessarily. "Take care of her!"
"I'm her body-guard," Jess pointed out. "What else would I be doing?"
The only truthful answer was that he would be letting her take her own risks and together they'd deal with the consequences. Slim nobly refrained from saying so as Jess opened the door with exaggerated politeness and ushered Chantal out.
An unwelcome surprise greeted the pair as they strolled casually out of the hotel. Right in front of it, a buckboard was drawn up. And sitting in the driving seat of the buckboard, smiling like a genial wolverine, was Bud Carlin.
"Well, now …" His smile stretched ever further as he looked Chantal over. "My men certainly didn't exaggerate!"
Chantal was accustomed to fulsome compliments and to men more or less falling over themselves to court her. Well, nearly all of them, with a couple of notable exceptions: she realised then that what she like about Jess and now about Slim was that they just treated her with normal courtesy. No – Slim always did. Jess? Maybe, but it all depended …
He was being courteous now, putting a hand to her elbow as if to support her in this encounter and at the same time giving off a bodyguard's air of deference, boredom and a willingness to shoot anyone who came too close to her. It was infinitely preferable to Carlin's compliments.
"You certainly are a charming young lady!" Carlin jumped down and extended his hand. "I hope you'll ride up to my house with me and give me the pleasure of your company?"
Chantal's chin went up and she took a deliberate step back. "Do I know you?" she inquired in glacial tones.
Carlin's smile flickered. Ruthlessness and greed were vivid in his eyes in a split second. Then he laughed heartily and apparently genuinely. "You mean Harper didn't tell you about my invitation after all? Guess I can't blame him for wanting to keep you all to himself."
The irony of this was painful, but Chantal retorted coldly: "He's paid to keep people like you in your place!" After which she turned on Jess and demanded: "Is this the outlaw you mentioned?"
Jess nodded and Carlin barked out another laugh. "My dear young lady, I'm no outlaw. Just a free man going about his business."
"In that case, I'm not interested. You're just as boring as all my father's tedious friends!" She turned on her heel, wrenching herself free from Jess's hold, as if to go back into the hotel.
Jess scowled at Carlin and said: "Come clean. You ain't served your sentence. You're an outlaw and you're on the run."
Carlin sighed. "If you insist."
Chantal turned back and surveyed him up and down with critical eyes. "You still look like a businessman."
"So let me prove otherwise." He extended his hand again to help her into the buckboard. "I don't need to advertise who I am to the whole world." His voice dropped and he added softly: "Just to those who get in my way!"
There was no avoiding going with him. Jess stepped aside and Chantal allowed herself to be handed up into the seat as Carlin apologised genially: "I'm sure a young lady of your sophistication would prefer a buggy, but the track to my house is rough and this is safer."
"Safer is my business!" Jess elbowed him out of the way and hopped neatly up beside Chantal. He picked up the reins and tossed them to Carlin. "You drive. You know the trail."
If looks could kill, it was a fair bet that Jess would have fallen stone-dead from the wagon in that instant. But fortunately they didn't. Carlin just shrugged as he caught the reins and climbed up. In no time at all, they were being carried off to the one place neither of them had anticipated or ever wanted to enter again – at least, not until they could rescue those imprisoned children!
# # # # #
Left alone once more in the hotel room, a place he was beginning to get heartily sick of, Slim considered his options. The level of nocturnal activity involved in this investigation was giving him an unassuaged desire to sleep all the time, which he sternly suppressed. Although he was deeply thankful and happy that Jess had retrieved Chantal from the dark imprisonment of the fort, yet another night's alarms and excursions were not without a toll. It would have been easier to stay awake if he could do something active, but it would be unwise to wander about in the town and there was nowhere else he could be safely concealed except Samson's wagon. In the event, it was a good thing that this option was open to him.
He'd been dozing fitfully in the armchair, wondering if Carlin had worked out the real reason why Jess was in town and if so, what would happen. His heart was chilled by thoughts of how Carlin might take revenge if the truth were known. And he continued to be deeply concerned about Chantal, even if Jess appeared to take risks to her in his stride. Slim could not go down and find out what was happening in whichever saloon Carlin had chosen to entertain his guests in, but something intuitive told him that trouble was brewing.
It certainly was. At this juncture, he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock of the door. He knew it was not Jess returning, because they had agreed to signal each other, just in case. This was the surreptitious unlocking of the door which suggested that whoever it was had no right to be entering.
Slim dived out of the chair and rolled under the bed.
His new position served to confirm his opinion about the standard of housekeeping in the hotel. The dust was so thick he was going to be hard put not to sneeze his head off. He held his breath, peered at the narrow gap between the bedding and the floor, and listened hard.
Two pairs of scuffed boots were visible below the edge of the quilt, almost comical in the exaggerated carefulness with which they tiptoed across the boards. Their purpose was far from comic. Slim heard them moving round the room, obviously searching for something. What they hoped to find, he could not imagine, as the contents of the room were meagre indeed and they had been careful to make sure there was no trace of his presence.
"Most of this stuff's the girl's."
"No kiddin'? Typical woman!"
"Go through the saddle-bags – they must be Harper's."
There was the sound of the contents being dumped on the floor, over which one man commented: "Some fellas get all the luck. Fancy havin' to share a room with that broad!"
"Accordin' to Carlin, he can't stand the sight of her, so I guess he ain't takin' any advantage of it."
"More fool him!"
"When he could be havin' so much fun! Still, they'll both get proper entertainin' up at the fort."
The crude laughter which accompanied this statement made Slim's blood run cold. None of them had anticipated this move on Carlin's part and, since his whole enterprise was shrouded in secrecy, it did not bode well for Jess and Chantal to be transported into the middle of it.
"Anythin' to find?"
There was the sound of shuffling and of things being tipped back into the bags. "Nothin' here except spare ammo and socks."
"No papers? Nothin' to show he's still workin' for Sherman?"
"No."
"And nothin' to show Sherman's around here?"
"No. But Carlin reckons where you find one of the pair, the other won't be far away."
"Looks like he's wrong. He ain't gonna be pleased."
"He's damn difficult to please all the time!"
"I thought he'd got proof anyway?"
"Yeah. Guess he just wanted evidence that Harper's stupid enough to incriminate himself."
"Judgin' by his deputisin' in Laramie, crime ain't his thing anymore."
"No. That's what Carlin wanted …"
The voices faded into the corridor and the key turned once more in the lock. Slim remained perfectly still until he had mentally walked with the searchers down the stairs, across the lobby and into the street. Presumably they would go straight back to the fort to report to Carlin. He counted his way down the street to the Livery stables and gave them time to mount up and head out of town. Only then did he move.
It was a good job he was aiming to be taken for a down-at-the-heel drifter, as the grime now adhering to his person would have done justice to Jess in one of his less civilised moments. For good measure, Slim swept his hat under the bed a couple of times too, and rubbed his hands over his face. Nothing could now be further from his normal neat, workmanlike appearance – provided you didn't happen to notice that the hat was a very good quality, his clothes were all in one piece and his boots well heeled.
Despite these sartorial discrepancies, Slim was able to wander his way around to the Livery, keeping a close but surreptitious eye out for the searchers or at least for their boots which were the only things he had seen, or anyone else suspicious. After a while, he gave up on the 'suspicious' bit – the entire population of the town was dubious to an extreme. He simply kept himself to himself and proceeded on his way. No-one appeared to take the slightest notice of him, which said much for his acting skills but little for the observational accuracy of Carlin's men, given the clues right under their collective nose.
Samson was hard at work. A line of horses were tethered to the Livery corral and he was busy shoeing. Whatever the smithying provisions of a place, a travelling smith could always find work if he cut the price down – at least until the local one decided to run his opponent out of town. He looked up as Slim approached and brushed an arm over his sweating forehead.
"Hah! You've turned up at last, have you? Well, get working on the bellows and if you're hungover, too bad!"
It felt very public, but Slim soon realised he was being hidden in plain sight. No-one bothered with the smith's scruffy assistant as long as he kept the bellows going and the fire red hot. They worked until the line of horses had all been shod and the heat of early afternoon, even blanketed as it was by the thick cloud which had gathered once more, made them beat a retreat to the wagon.
Slim wanted nothing more than to stretch his weary arms and grab a cold drink. Instead he found himself shaking hands politely. He didn't feel particularly polite, but this mood, in his view, was no excuse for forgetting your manners. It was just that he still had ambivalent feelings about the two men who were seated in the wagon – and this despite it being the second time they had been an evident force for good in something he was involved in. It was just difficult, such a short time after the war, to find yourself beholden to your former enemies. And, of course, it was just as difficult because they knew Jess and had shared experiences with him which Slim had no part of.
Meeting Callum Harper always made him feel he was seeing double. Cal was slightly taller than Jess, but had the same wiry build, broad shoulders and slim hips. There was the same determined look about his jaw, the same lean features and the same thick, wavy hair. If it hadn't been for the fact that the hair was the colour of burnished copper and the eyes below it a shade of blue-green, they could have passed for twins. Cal, however, radiated calm confidence, whatever problems were besetting him, and it was impossible not to warm to his innate good humour and friendliness.
The other man was a more challenging proposition. To start with, his authority and command were natural and autocratic. His hawk-like face and dark, brilliant eyes spoke of a proud and independent heritage that did not suffer fools gladly. And with his long black hair caught back with a leather thong, Indian-fashion, his black buckskin clothing and the silver jewelry at his throat and wrists, Stewart Vincent St John Warwick looked like someone who was not going to make any concession to other people's opinions.
Cal leapt to his feet, making the wagon rock precariously. "Good to see you!" A beam of delight lit his features and his outstretched hand grabbed Slim's and pulled him into a warm hug. "One day we're goin' to meet when there ain't a crisis and we can just down a beer together."
Slim felt himself relax a little as he was released from Cal's infectious enthusiasm.
"I'm all for that!" Warwick agreed, as he too held out his hand. "But brandy. And the Wolf-cub can pay!"
His firm grip was brief and business-like, in contrast to Cal's greeting – but then you couldn't get two friends who were more opposite, unless, of course, you were looking at Jess and Slim himself. And Warwick was something else in his own right as well. Slim still could not bring himself to think of him by the familiar nickname which Jess and Cal used so casually, but the man's next words surprised him considerably.
"Your reconnaissance is excellent. When we're fully gathered, there'll be no difficulty following the information you've given us. You're a very accurate observer."
"Thanks," Slim muttered. Pulling himself into a more coherent frame of mind, he went on to relay briefly and succinctly what Chantal had discovered about the use of the children in the diamond mine. He concluded: "Everyone needs to know this. If we're not acting together, with a really accurate picture of the place and the situation, it could be a disaster instead of a rescue. Especially now."
"Why? What's happened?" Both men spoke together, but it was to Warwick that Slim replied.
"Carlin's taken Jess and Chantal up to the fort. He searched the hotel room and he suspects Jess is stringing him along about wanting to join the gang."
Warwick's black-wing brows drew together as he considered this new intelligence. "We can't take the fort by daylight and we're still under strength. We'll have to wait until evening when we're all gathered. I set dusk as the deadline."
"And we'll have to hope and pray that Jess can go on spinning Carlin a convincing line in lies!" Cal pointed out.
"Well, he's your cousin, so it should be no problem for him," Warwick told him with an unexpected grin. "But the girl …"
"Jess reckons she can look after herself," Slim put in, before adding grimly: "and she's shown plenty of determination and initiative so far!"
Both the other men had sympathetic expressions on their faces at this statement and Slim guessed that they had been at least partially dragooned into letting Chantal bring the message from them. Cal added, in an echo of Samson: "She'll need plenty around Jess." He didn't seem particularly bothered by this female entanglement of his cousin's. Slim wished he felt the same.
"And patience!" Warwick added dryly. "We'll all need that. All we can do now is sit here and wait."
It was true, but Slim longed for action. He felt he had spent far too much time sitting around and even more trying to catch up on sleep. And it would be all too easy for them to doze off in the close warmth of the wagon.