West of the Law

Chapter 3

McBride left the station and crossed the street, picking his way through a noisy throng of bearded, profane miners, townspeople hurrying about their business with downcast eyes, lawyers and land speculators in black broadcloth, a few booted and spurred punchers astride wiry cow ponies and a scattering of Chinese who chattered incessantly in a tongue nobody else could understand.

The saloons were roaring, interior oil lamps’ hazy halos of orange light lost in a fog of blue cigar smoke. Men bellowed, made loud and bold by whiskey, and the sudden, strident laughter of hard-eyed women rang false, chiming wild like cracked crystal bells.

The town was booming, bursting at the seams, its sea of lights holding back the night. The hour was yet early and High Hopes was just hitting its stride, a seething, shifting mass of humanity eagerly seeking to commit one or all of the seven deadly sins in a place where such transgressions came easy, but never cheap.

For his part, born and raised amid the swarming squalor of Hell’s Kitchen, McBride felt right at home and forced a path for himself by elbowing his way through the crowd to the lobby of the Killeen Hotel.

A prominent sign on the wall opposite the door read:

The majority of our rooms are without transoms, ventilation being obtained by the use of adjustable windows. Guests may therefore lie down to peaceful slumbers undisturbed by apprehensions of getting their heads blown off or having their valuables lifted by burglars.

—The Management.

Smiling, McBride signed the register as John Smith, apparently a common name in those parts, since the disinterested desk clerk didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Then he climbed the stairs to his room on the second floor.

As the man at the station had promised, the room was clean. The bed had fresh sheets and there was a pitcher of water and a basin on a small table. The dresser had a mirror, a rare luxury in the West, and there was a pine clothes closet. Lace curtains hung in the room’s only window and an oil lamp stood on the bed stand.

McBride closed the curtains, lit the lamp, then unpacked his few belongings—shirts, socks and a supply of celluloid collars. He took off his high-buttoned coat and sat on the bed, hearing it creak under his weight. He broke open the Smith & Wesson, ejected the shells and thoroughly cleaned and oiled the gun before he reloaded and slid it back into the shoulder holster. The .38 had been a considerable investment on McBride’s part, almost a month’s salary, and he lavished much more care on the revolver than he did on himself.

A restlessness in him, McBride stepped to the window. He pushed back the curtain, raised the window a few inches and looked outside. A hollow moon was rising and the night was hot, heat lightning flashing to the west over the Spanish Peaks, an electric-blue radiance throbbing in the dark sky. The air smelled of dust, horse dung, cigar smoke and sweat. Pianos played in the saloons, their competing tunes tangling in a calamitous cacophony of jangled notes that fluttered aimlessly in the air like stricken moths.

He was about to close the window and walk away when McBride’s attention was attracted to a freight wagon drawn by a couple of sturdy Morgans that had just pulled up at the entrance to the shadowed alley beside the Golden Garter. Normally, he would have glanced at the wagon, then dismissed it from his mind. But there was something different, even sinister about this one. An iron cage had been built into the bed, and in the uncertain light McBride thought he could make out the huddled shapes of several women.

The driver, a tall, heavy man with a red beard that spilled over his chest, jumped down from the box. He was joined by a smaller man carrying a Henry rifle, his thin cheeks pooled with shadow. The red-bearded man, a miner, judging by his battered hat, plaid shirt and mule-eared boots, held a coiled bullwhip in his right hand. He stepped to the back of the wagon, clanked a key in a lock and opened the door of the cage.

McBride watched the man motion with the whip, and a tiny woman rose and crouched hesitantly at the door. Red Beard cursed, then angrily waved the whip again, and the woman dropped lightly to the ground. Now that McBride could see her better, he realized that this was not a grown woman but a young, slight girl in her early teens. She was Chinese and her round face held a mix of fear and apprehension.

Red Beard swore again, motioning with his whip, and three more girls joined the first. They were just as young, just as slight and equally frightened. The big miner made another irritable motion with the whip, pointing it toward the alley. The four girls clung to one another and, their long, blue-black hair gleaming in the light of the oil lamps outside the saloon, shuffled into the alley. Red Beard and the man with the rifle followed. Soon they were swallowed by darkness and McBride could see them no more.

He closed the window, letting the curtain fall back into place, and as he stepped away he shed his shoulder rig. He slid the gun from the leather, placed it on the stand by the bed and stretched out, staring at the ceiling.

What he had just witnessed disturbed him deeply. The oldest of the Chinese girls had looked to be about fourteen and the three others were even younger. There was no doubt in McBride’s mind that the girls, children really, had been terrified, cowed into obedience by abuse they’d already suffered. Maybe Red Beard did more with that bullwhip than use it as a pointer.

John McBride swore, telling himself angrily that the fate of four Chinese girls was no concern of his. His orders from Inspector Byrnes—and they had been orders—were to lose himself in the Western lands, lie low and wait until told that it was safe to return to New York. He was young, not yet thirty, and he could resume his police career where he left off. With hard work and a bit of luck he might well end up as an inspector of detectives himself. It was possible. More than possible, it was very likely.

Yes, he was still a law officer. But in New York, not here, not in this wooden shantytown in the middle of nowhere. What happened in High Hopes was hardly his business. Hadn’t the railroad clerk told him that the way to stay alive in the town was to see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, like the three Chinese monkeys?

McBride shook his head in irritation. Now, why did he have to go and think about the Chinese again, even if it was only monkeys? He undid his tie and celluloid collar and laid them on the bed stand with his watch. Then he heeled off one of his elastic-sided ankle boots but had to sit up and remove the other. Wiggling his toes in his socks, he blew out the oil lamp, stretched out on the bed again and closed his eyes.

But sleep would not come to him.

No matter how hard he tried to clear his racing mind, the scared faces of the girls kept coming back to haunt him and an iron fist twisted his heart in his chest.

Outside the boisterous town was as noisy as ever, the saloons going full blast and the street still crowded with people, and once he heard a flurry of shots followed by a woman’s scream. Whatever had happened, a killing or some drunken rooster shooting at the moon, High Hopes ignored it and the free-spending miners led the festivities as before.

Tired as he was from his long journey west, McBride gave up the unequal struggle. There would be no sleep until the dawning sun told the town it was time to turn off the lamps and seek the blankets. McBride rose and padded in his stocking feet across the floor to the window. The cage was gone, but now there was something else to attract his interest—a woman.

A woman like no other he’d ever seen.

She stood on the boardwalk outside the saloon, and even in the darkness her beauty burned like a flame. Thick auburn hair was piled high on her head and she wore a low-cut dress of vivid red silk. A thin ribbon of the same color encircled her slim neck, and her shoulders were bare, revealing the swell of her breasts and the deep, shadowed V of cleavage. Her face was oval in shape, and her eyes were large and set wide apart, her lips full, scarlet and inviting.

She was, McBride decided, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Even back in New York, a city renowned for its exquisite women, she would have stood out from the rest.

Like a rose among thorns, McBride thought, pleased that he could still wax poetic, despite the life he’d led, a life where nothing had come easy and the pursuit of criminals and the probing of their often terrible deeds had calloused his soul. In that moment, in a single, blinding flash of realization, he knew he must have this woman, that somehow, some way, she must be his.

There were ominous signs to be read, but blinded by the woman’s breathtaking beauty, McBride did not read them. He would pursue the woman in the red dress clean, with no predetermined notions or conditions.

He was new to the West and did not know that among the Sioux, Cheyenne and many other Indian tribes, red is the color of conflict, wounds and violent death.

He did not know it then, but it was a thing he was destined to learn.

Two men stood with the woman, close enough to her that they shaped up to be at least acquaintances. The man at her elbow was tall and as big as McBride himself, but much more handsome in a cheap, flashy way. He sported a thick mane of yellow hair, obviously pomaded, and a trimmed, full mustache calculated to set female hearts aflutter. He was dressed in a well-cut suit of gray broadcloth and a diamond stickpin glittered in his cravat. Whoever he was, self-assured and relaxed even in the company of a beautiful woman, the man projected an image of wealth and raw, arrogant power.

Beside him, his face lost in shadow under a wide-brimmed hat, stood a smaller man that McBride decided could be only Hack Burns. He wore two guns in crossed belts, hung low on his hips, but unlike the bigger man, he was not in the least relaxed. McBride saw his head slowly turn this way and that with the icy menace of a cobra as he studied faces in the passing crowd. There was a readiness about Burns that reminded McBride of a tensed spring about to violently uncoil. He had seen the gunman’s like before, back in the Four Corners, sudden, cold-eyed men who would kill for money without emotion or a pang of conscience.

McBride made up his mind that he wanted no part of Hack Burns. Not then, not ever.

He stepped away from the window, lit the oil lamp, then sat on the bed and pulled on his boots. He rose and slipped his suspenders over his shoulders. The night was hot and he decided to forgo his coat and collar. A glance in the mirror told him that he badly needed a shave. He rasped a hand over his lean cheeks, but decided the razor could wait. Right now he had to see the woman again— up close and personal.

John McBride slipped his gun into his right pants pocket, settled his plug hat on his head and left the hotel . . . stepping into a roaring night streaked with lamplight.