The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 35

Three months passed and during that time Oates and Nantan made four trips to Silver City. On his last visit he arranged for a brewer’s dray to deliver whiskey, beer and a French glass mirror to Rivette’s saloon. Oates and Sam Tatum had helped the gambler renovate the Sideboard, now renamed the Riverboat. And Rivette placed an optimistic painted sign outside the premises that promised patrons FINEST CIGARS, CORDIALS AND LIQUORS.

Stella took over the best gingerbread house in town, and she, Lorraine and Nellie imported furniture, carpets and bedding from Silver City. It took the better part of two months, but when the Golden Garter opened for business, all agreed that the place must rival the best cathouses in Denver or Dodge City.

Miners and even a few cowboys began to drift into Heartbreak and by their fourth month, Stella and Rivette saw their business pick up. The attractions also attracted the rougher, outlaw element, and several times Oates and the gambler were forced to run them out of town.

But, with paying customers at a premium, the high-rolling hard cases were usually told they could come back when they were prepared to act like gentlemen, and most did.

The lack of a proper eating house was a problem, but that was solved by the arrival of Hermann the German, his fat wife and two even fatter daughters.

By Oates’ estimate, Hermann Schmidt would skin out at around three hundred fifty pounds and his wife and daughters a few ounces less.

Schmidt said he was headed north to Socorro, where the Buffalo Soldiers stationed at Fort Craig would be a regular source of customers for his steaks, sausages and pies. He winked at Rivette and told him that he might also be able to find husbands among the officers for his daughters.

But when Schmidt saw that the restaurant in town had been abandoned more or less intact, he parked his wagon and declared that he was willing to make a trial of it.

The big German wanted to name his place the Aschaffenburg, but wiser heads prevailed and he agreed to change it to the more manageable Hermann’s Kitchen.

A steady stream of supply wagons now regularly blocked Heartbreak’s only street and the stagecoach drivers regularly stopped to allow passengers to sample tastier fare than Bill Daley’s fried elk and beans.

Fall came and went and Heartbreak prospered.

Stella hired three new girls, a man named Fallon took over the hotel and a second saloon opened. There was now a general store and talk of a ladies’ dress and hat shop arriving soon.

Sam Tatum found a new career, painting portraits of miners to send home to loved ones, for which they paid handsomely. Using Nellie as a model, Tatum also did naked lady pictures for Rivette’s saloon and the Golden Garter and was well on his way to becoming a well-to-do artist.

Oates and Nantan found a house on the outskirts of town and he made a living doing odd jobs around town and managed to stay away from the bottle.

In November, as winter cracked down hard across the high country, Nantan announced that she was pregnant. Stella and Lorraine were delighted and declared themselves aunts to the unborn they confidently predicted would be a girl. Nellie was unimpressed and told anyone who would listen that Nantan’s whole pregnancy thing was probably a false alarm.

After the first snow, many miners decided to winter in town and all twenty rooms in the Bon View were rented. It seemed that everyone was doing a booming business and Stella and Rivette, who were now constantly in each other’s company, were getting rich.

For his part, Oates felt out of place in a town he’d helped resurrect from the dead. His odd jobs did not earn him a lot of money and were getting fewer as winter arrived. Nantan needed a comfortable home to raise her child and a husband who could support her.

Oates owned his horse, saddle, guns and the dead man’s clothes he stood up in. There was not much there to build a future around, especially one that involved a wife and child.

As others prospered, Oates grew poorer, and he recognized a danger within himself. Self-pity seduces a man and soon he acts like a victim, a destructive emotion that Oates knew could take him by the ear and lead him to the whiskey bottle.

But one cold afternoon in early December, the attempted holdup of a Wells Fargo stage would be the first link in a chain of events that would change Eddie Oates’ life forever.

He was walking back to his house with a few things Nantan needed from the general store when the stage clattered to a stop outside the hotel. A bloody, wounded driver was up on the box, a dead passenger inside and grim old Ethan Savage, the shotgun guard, blistering the air with curses.

Oates looked up at the guard. “What happened, Ethan?” he asked.

“We was attacked just this side o’ Animas Peak, that’s what happened. Ol’ Charlie Grant here took a bullet in the arm an’ we lost a passenger when them eedjits started shooting at us as we lit out of there.”

A crowd had gathered and Grant was helped down from the box. The dead passenger, an elderly man in black broadcloth, was carried into the hotel.

“Recognize any of them, Ethan?” Oates asked.

“Oh yeah. Mash Halleck was one o’ them fer sure.” Savage spit a stream of tobacco juice over the side of the stage, then rubbed the back of his gloved hand across his mouth. “He was wearing a bandanna over the bottom of his face, but there’s no mistaking them eyes o’ his, cold like an ornery snake. I seen ol’ Mash up close too many times not to recognize him.”

“How many were there?”

“Four—Mash and three others.”

Suddenly Warren Rivette was at Oates’ elbow. “Can you tell us anything about the others, Ethan?”

“Well, if’n I was a bettin’ man like you, Rivette, I’d wager one o’ them was Mash’s son Clem. All I can tell you about t’other robbers was that one seemed young and well set up, riding a mighty pretty Palouse hoss, and the fourth man looked like a puncher.” The old man smiled. “I got a load of buckshot into him.”

Oates turned to Rivette. “Charlie McWilliams rides a Palouse horse.”

Rivette nodded. “Could be him all right.” To Savage he said, “What are you carrying that would make you a target for an outlaw like Halleck?”

“No strongbox this trip. The only money on this stage is what the passengers are carrying. I figure Mash was only huntin’ a road stake, sure enough.”

“You better see to the driver and your passengers, Ethan,” Rivette said.

“Any law around here yet?” Savage asked.

To Oates’ surprise, Rivette answered, “You’re looking at it.”

“The puncher shouldn’t be hard to find,” Savage said. “A man doesn’t ride far with two barrels o’ lead shot in his belly.”

After the guard had gone into the hotel, Oates looked at Rivette and smiled. “So we’re the law in Heartbreak, huh?”

“Seems like. We don’t want a posse of miners riding burros, no, and everybody else is either too old or too fat.” Rivette grinned. “Can you visualize Hermann the German on a horse?”

“No, I guess I can’t,” Oates said. He held up his packages. “I’ll take these home and meet you back here in ten minutes.” He looked at Rivette closely. “If it was Charlie McWilliams riding the Palouse, then something has happened at the Circle-T.”

Rivette nodded. “Yes, something bad for Darlene. I’m willing to bet the farm that she’s on the run again and looking for a stake.”

“But she has a war chest of twenty-five thousand dollars. Why would she need a road stake?”

“Tom Carson liked his poker and whiskey, but he was careful with a dollar. I guess he insisted Darlene put her money in a safe place, like Cornelius Baxter’s bank in Alma. With a Circle-T hanging posse on her trail, Darlene wouldn’t have time to make a withdrawal, and she’d know that Baxter would have questioned her and maybe smelled a rat or three.”

“You reckon she might come here?”

“Why not? Heartbreak is where her money is and we haven’t exactly made a secret about being here. Pete Pickles failed her, but Darlene has three fast guns backing her that won’t, or so she thinks.”

“Then we should stay right here in town.”

Rivette shook his head. “I know we’re not going to find Darlene, not with Mash Halleck riding scout for her. But if the cowboy old Ethan shot is still alive, I’d like to talk with him. Maybe we can get enough out of the man to keep Darlene in custody until we can get a United States marshal here.”

“It’s thin, Warren, mighty thin.”

“I’ll talk to some of the miners, ask them to keep an eye on Stella. They might not be good on a posse, but here in town they’ll be a handful for anybody.” He laid a hand on Oates’ shoulder. “Besides, worried father-to-be, we’ll be back by nightfall. I promise.”

The day was bitter cold and Nantan insisted that Oates wear the new fringed, gaily decorated blanket coat she’d made for him and a fur hat with earflaps that she tied under his chin.

She did not mention the dangers he might face, because that was not the way of Apache women, but she kissed him hard and long before he left to get his horse and meet up with Rivette.

As it happened the gambler was at the livery and when Oates stepped inside, he smiled as he looked him up and down. “Well, well, don’t you look a sight? Are you going to a wedding or a preaching?”

“It’s cold out. Nantan said I had to wear this stuff,” he said defensively. He looked over Rivette’s expensive sheepskin, fine leather gloves and carefully creased Stetson and couldn’t come up with anything damaging to say.

“Just joshing you, Eddie,” Rivette said, seeing the fleeting irritation in the other man’s eyes. “You look just fine.”

Oates saddled the paint and slid his rifle into the scabbard. Then, under a chill blue sky, he and Rivette rode out of Heartbreak and headed south.

The mountains and high ridges were bright with mantles of snow, and patches that had been herded by the wind lay in white arcs among the trees.

They crossed the Seco and Animas, the creek banks frosted with ice as delicate as Irish lace, and rode up on the scene of the attempted stage robbery.

Around them the mountains rose majestically against the clear sky. The rising wind was blowing directly from the north, tossing a few snowflakes, and it was growing noticeably colder.

Rivette was aware of the change in the weather, because he looked over at Animas Peak, his eyes searching, as if he expected to see something of interest. “If he doesn’t freeze to death, a gut-shot man can last longer in the cold and a north wind is rising,” he said. “If he’s still alive he might be close by. Darlene McWilliams isn’t the kind to slow herself down by taking along a dying puncher.”

Wheel ruts and horse tracks marked the stage route past the Animas foothills. He and Rivette scouted the area but saw no blood trail.

The gambler kneed his horse closer to the hills, his head lifted as he searched the mountain’s slope. Suddenly his mount started, then stood straight-legged as it scented something in the wind it did not like.

A rifle shot followed, and Rivette tumbled headlong out of the saddle.