The Loner: Crossfire

Chapter 7

Considering the hour, Conrad ate an early supper instead of a late lunch. The rest of the evening and the night that followed passed quietly. He couldn’t help wondering if Lorraine Eastman had managed to get on that eastbound train and leave Carson City, but he didn’t care enough to find out.

He and Arturo had been traveling light on their cross-country journey, but once he was in Carson City Conrad had bought more clothes, as well as the new Colt. Even so, he had only a couple small bags to take with him to the train station the next morning, and he carried them himself rather than have the hotel send them over. At one time in his life he had been accustomed to having servants take care of his every need, but now he was more self-sufficient.

He wasn’t surprised when Deputy Wallace strolled up to him while he was standing on the platform, waiting for the westbound train.

“Good morning, Mr. Browning.” Wallace touched a finger to the brim of his soft felt hat. “You didn’t have any more trouble after the last time I saw you yesterday, I trust?”

“Not a bit.” Conrad wasn’t going to mention the encounter with Lorraine Eastman at the hotel.

“No one tried to kill you? No shots were fired?”

Conrad shook his head. “It appears Monroe and his hired guns were the only ones after me.”

“The only ones here in Carson City, anyway.”

Conrad shrugged. “It’s hard to predict what a person will run into elsewhere, isn’t it?”

“Not always,” Wallace said. “For example, I predict that when you arrive in San Francisco, you’ll find yourself in more trouble. I did some checking, and that seems to happen all the time with you.”

“It’s not my idea,” Conrad snapped. “I just want to be left alone to go about my business.”

“From what I could tell, you have teams of lawyers in Boston, Denver, and San Francisco who take care of your business for you. Or were you referring to something else, Mr. Browning?” The deputy was digging, trying to find a reason for the violence that had occurred in his city.

Conrad wasn’t going to satisfy Wallace’s curiosity by spilling the story. “I’m leaving town, Deputy,” he said without answering Wallace’s question. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Fine,” Wallace said. “I won’t be sorry to see you go.”

With some apparently idle curiosity of his own, Conrad asked, “Say, did you ever find that woman who worked in Monroe’s office?”

Wallace made a sour face. “No, but we will. She’s still around somewhere. She couldn’t have gotten out of town without us knowing about it.”

Conrad would have been willing to bet the deputy was wrong about that ... but he kept that thought to himself.

The westbound train rolled into the station a few minutes later with clouds of smoke and steam puffing from the diamond-shaped stack of the big Baldwin locomotive. Conrad lifted a hand in farewell as he climbed aboard.

Wallace wasn’t sorry to see him go ... and Conrad wasn’t sorry to be putting Carson City behind him.

Conrad arrived in San Francisco that evening. The train had passed over the Sierra Nevadas and through some spectacularly beautiful scenery since he boarded it that morning, but he hadn’t paid attention to any of it. He’d spent the time thinking about what he would find when he reached the city by the bay. Would he step off the train and right into the gunsights of some other hired assassin who wanted to kill him?

At first glance, the only person waiting for him on the platform was the tall, burly Claudius Turnbuckle. The ruggedly-built lawyer with muttonchop side whiskers was a distinctive figure, immediately recognizable. Turnbuckle moved forward as Conrad came down the portable steps from the railroad car. He extended a hand, which Conrad gripped firmly. “Welcome back to San Francisco. Any problems during the last leg of the journey?”

Conrad shook his head. “No, nothing happened on the train except that I got pretty bored.”

“Yes, I can understand why you’d feel that way, what with no one shooting at you or anything.” Turnbuckle chuckled, then grew solemn. “Seriously, I’m glad you’re here, Conrad. You’re too much in the habit of going it alone.”

“I wasn’t actually alone,” Conrad pointed out. “Arturo’s been with me.”

“And Arturo’s a fine man, but you know what I mean. We have resources, Conrad. There’s no point in not taking advantage of them.”

“Tell me what you’ve found out.” Conrad had wired Turnbuckle from Carson City the previous evening, asking the lawyer to check up on the information from the note he had found in Monroe’s office.

Turnbuckle took Conrad’s arm and steered him toward the depot lobby. “I have a carriage waiting out front, and I’ll have someone bring your bags to the hotel. We can talk while we’re riding.”

As they moved through the station, Conrad noticed several well-dressed but nondescript men moving along with them. A second glance showed him how tough and capable they looked, and he realized they were bodyguards hired by Turnbuckle to make sure no ambush took place at the station. Conrad appreciated that, but at the same time worried about how effective he would be in carrying out his investigation if he had guardians tagging along with him everywhere he went.

“I booked a suite for you at the Palace Hotel,” Turnbuckle went on as he opened the door of a well-appointed carriage with gleaming brass trim and a team of fine black horses. Conrad climbed into the vehicle and took the rear seat. Turnbuckle followed and faced him, riding backward.

“What about D.L. and the Golden Gate?” Conrad asked as the carriage got underway.

“Do you have any idea how many Golden Gate this-that-and-the-others there are in this town? It’s a popular name. But I have men combing through the city directory and pounding the pavement, trying to find some connection between a Golden Gate and something with the initials D.L. It’s going to take a few days to cover all the possibilities.”

“D.L. is probably a person.”

“Probably, but not necessarily. Again, there are too many people in San Francisco to put our finger on the correct one right away.”

“I’m not complaining, Claudius. You don’t have to defend your efforts.”

Turnbuckle frowned. “I just want to do the best we can for you. You’ve been through so much.”

“Everyone has misfortune in their lives.” Conrad shrugged.

“Yes, but you’ve had more than your share.”

Conrad thought about some of the people he had met in his travels and wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed to him that tragedy, in one form or another, came to everyone sooner or later. The trick was being able to deal with it without letting it destroy you. Rebel’s death had driven him perilously close to such destruction. At times he still felt like he was teetering on the edge of a cliff, poised over a bottomless abyss that would swallow him completely. All it would take to send him over the brink was the slightest push ...

“So you don’t really have anything to report?”

“Not yet,” Turnbuckle said. “But we’re just getting started.”

Conrad nodded. “I appreciate that, I really do.”

“What you should do is take a few days to rest. You have the finest, most comfortable suite in the hotel. You should relax and enjoy it. Regain some strength. You’ve run into trouble everywhere you’ve gone ever since you started searching for the children. You need to get away from all that for a while and let us worry about carrying on the search.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Conrad leaned back against the sumptuous cushions. In truth, he had no intention of sitting back and doing nothing. Once, maybe, he could have done that, but no longer.

The carriage wheels rattled over the cobblestone pavement. Conrad felt the vehicle tilt as it started up one of San Francisco’s many steep hills. Suddenly the driver cried out in surprise and the carriage lurched to the side, then came to an abrupt stop.

“What in blazes are you doing?” the driver called to someone. “Move that thing!”

Turnbuckle leaned out the window. “What’s wrong, Harry?”

“Oh, some dunderhead driving a beer wagon pulled out right in front of us,” the driver explained. “Nearly ran into him, I did. And now he’s blocking the street.”

Alarm bells began to ring inside Conrad’s head. Wagons and carriages nearly ran together in the streets all the time, he supposed. That was one of the hazards of living in a big city. But his instincts told him there was something wrong.

“Are those bodyguards you hired following us?” he asked sharply.

For a second Turnbuckle looked like he was going to deny hiring any bodyguards, but then the lawyer said, “Yes, they’re supposed to be back there.”

The driver yelled, “Hey, what are you doing with that ax?” At the same time, a swift rush of hoofbeats sounded somewhere behind the carriage, and guns began to go off.

“Claudius, I think we’d better get out!” Conrad reached for the door.

“We’ll be safer in here!” Turnbuckle protested.

“I don’t think—” Conrad began, but the rest of what he was going to say was drowned out by the driver’s frightened yell and a sudden rumble like thunder.

Conrad rammed a shoulder against the door and popped it open. He half fell, half jumped to the street in time to see a huge mountain of beer barrels begin to roll off the big wagon that had blocked the carriage’s path, creating the thunderous sound. The first one flew off the wagon and slammed into the horses hitched to the carriage. The poor animals screamed in pain and went down under the impact.

A few weeks earlier, Conrad had witnessed an avalanche in the mountains on the border between Utah and Nevada. Right before him a small-scale avalanche was taking place on the San Francisco street, with beer barrels instead of boulders. The barrels continued to roll off the wagon. Some of them burst when they landed, spraying beer over the street, but most bounced and kept rolling. Conrad leaped aside from one that would have crushed him like a bug. From the corner of his eye he saw another barrel bounce high and then slam down on the carriage’s seat, cutting short the driver’s terrified scream.

“Claudius, come on!”

Turnbuckle scrambled out of the carriage as another barrel landed on the vehicle’s roof, splintering it. The lawyer slipped in the flood of beer washing down the street and would have fallen if Conrad hadn’t grabbed his arm and jerked him upright. They had to get out of the path of the barrels if they were going to survive.

The men who had sprung the trap had chosen a good spot for it. Buildings on both sides of the street were dark and shuttered for the night, and there were no alleys between them. There was nowhere for Conrad and Turnbuckle to go, and as more barrels rolled off the wagon and came bounding toward them, all they could do was turn and run.