might have caught more than a glimpse of her. And a few minutes later, as he encountered the four ruffians in the alley, he likely thought it had been one of those men who had been following him.
She watched the man deal with the men and his behavior intrigued her further. He did not show fear, only the calmness that comes from a healthy dose of self-assurance. By then she was on a rooftop above the confrontation below, two buildings south of them, and could easily hear the entire conversation. It confirmed her suspicions: he was here because of Malachi.
When the man turned away from the intersection and started back the way he had come, Shaniah followed him, this time from the rooftops. As far as she knew, this soldier walking in the streets below her was the only human who had survived an encounter with Malachi. He was following Malachi’s trail as well. So she would follow him.
She had nothing to lose.
Chapter Sixteen
James Declan was a rounded oak tree of a man. Medium height and close to three hundred pounds: solid. His hands were the size of frying pans and his face was round and puffy, his bright white hair sitting on his head like a small bush. He had a thick mustache planted in the middle of his face, which always looked as if it were ready to explode in a display of his volcanic temper. He sat at a table near the window in the main dining room of the Oriental Hotel, waiting for Jonas Hollister to arrive and growing angrier with each passing moment.
Declan was self-made in every way. Most of his money had come from cattle. He’d started as a drover on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, bringing beeves up from Texas and into Denver. He wasn’t like most cowhands, who collected wages at the end of a drive and blew them all on whores and gambling. He was smart and took his money to the bank. After a few years of drives he had a small stake, and one thing about Declan, he saw the future. Denver was going to grow, no question. Colorado would become a state and once it did and the railroads came, Denver would be the next big boomtown of the many boomtowns on the American move westward.
He started buying land far outside of Denver, where it was still cheap. He found good water and grazing land and then he stopped driving cattle and started buying them. He’d ride out to meet the herds before they got to the city railheads and offer the trail boss a few dollars for a few of the scrawniest, mangiest cows in the herd. Knowing they wouldn’t get top dollar for their scrubs in Denver, the bosses usually complied and when Declan led the cattle onto his well-watered grassland, they prospered. Nature took its course, and in a few years, for very little money, he was able to grow his herd to several hundred, then thousand head. He sold off his mature beef, used the money to buy more land and before long he was one of the wealthiest landowners in the territory.
Then had come the silver strike. It had been pure luck. Found on the land of a small rancher he’d run off years ago, it was at the time the second richest strike in history. Combined with his land and cattle, the silver made Declan one of the wealthiest men in America.
Declan though, was dishonest by nature. There wasn’t a moment or defining event in his life that turned him that way, it’s just how he was. He had come out of the womb a cheat. He pressured smaller ranchers, keeping them from their water rights, even burning them out if necessary. He had brought many a smaller rancher to the brink of ruin, then swooped in with a cash offer of ten percent, or less, of the full value of his land or herd.
When he’d found Slater, he’d managed to remove himself from the dirtier, rougher stuff and clean up his image somewhat. He was loathed in the ranching community, but as the years went by, found his money more than welcome in political circles. When he helped get the governor elected, he was appointed Colorado’s first senator when Colorado entered the Union in 1876.
Now he sat cooling his heels, waiting for some goddamn army reject named Hollister to show up at a meeting where Hollister had set the time, place, and agenda. Declan didn’t like that, he didn’t like it at all. Senator James Declan established the parameters and made the rules, and by God, heads would roll over this when he got back to Washington.
Slater was sequestered in the coat-check room, just to the left of the entrance to the dining room. Just in case this Hollister needed to be taught a lesson, although the senator had to admit he didn’t like what he’d heard from Slater; how the man had gotten a clean jump on him in the street the other night. With Slater that never had happened, and the thought that it had was nibbling away at a corner of Declan’s thoughts. Just one more thing to make him uneasy.
He had intended for his hired thug to drag the man to his Denver mansion if it was necessary, but Slater said it was like Hollister had eyes in the back of his head. They didn’t have a chance to even get close before he skinned his smoke wagon, and from then on, he was in charge. Declan knew Pinkerton by reputation, and when all this trouble started at Torson City, he used his contacts and found out what Pinkerton was up to. There were no secrets in Washington, and he’d found out when the great detective (nothing more than a highly paid thug, in Declan’s opinion) had gotten Hollister out of Leavenworth.
The tiny white hairs were standing up in the back of Declan’s neck and he didn’t know why, though he blamed his goddamn son James Junior and his wild stories. The boy had been nothing but a disappointment to him practically since the day he was born. Then he had come back from his latest venture, running a mining claim in Torson City, with a ridiculous fable about creatures who had killed everyone and drunk their blood. Declan had been angry beyond anything he had ever experienced, and thought for certain he would kill the boy. If it weren’t for his wife and Slater’s intervention, he might have.
A posse had been sent to the camp immediately after young James had staggered back into Denver, delirious and half mad with thirst. He’d told the local sheriff his story before Declan or Slater could get hold of him and word started to spread. When the posse returned from the camp, they reported some blood and signs of a struggle, but no bodies, and nothing that would corroborate James’s story.
It was a wild tale, and Declan had immediately discounted it when he’d first heard about it. He tried shaking young James out of it. It had to be Indians, probably Utes, or else a group of rogue bandits who preyed on mining camps. But when Slater came back and reported to him what he’d seen, Declan began to worry.
Now all the boy did was stay in his room at the mansion. The servants brought him food and emptied his chamber pot and he spent most of his time curled on his bed blathering on and on about blood-drinking savages. James never changed his version of events. The sheriff or one of his deputies had no doubt repeated it, the news spread further, and people began to talk and worry. If Declan didn’t get a lid on this fast, it would be a full-fledged panic.
Through it all, Declan had refused to believe any of it. But now this Hollister was in town, brought here by Pinkerton on a fancy train the likes of which no one had ever seen. And Jonas Hollister had told a similar story to what young James had reported and it had gotten him court-martialed and sent to prison four years ago. Things were starting to add up in a way Declan didn’t like. And then there were the little hairs on the back of his neck, still standing on end. Why was that? He felt like he was no longer the one in charge of things. Ridiculous. Senator James Declan was always in charge.
Restless and out of sorts, he checked his pocket watch. It was ten minutes past nine and Hollister still wasn’t here. He pounded his fist on the table and the china coffee cup jumped in its saucer and splashed a dark stain on the tablecloth. He was about to stand and leave, when Hollister strode into the dining room. Declan had requested a seat near the window and asked the maitre de to keep the tables around them clear so they could talk in private. The room was nearly empty, with only a few tables occupied, as most diners had finished their breakfasts long ago.
Hollister approached the table and sat down in a chair across from the senator, ignoring his outstretched hand. The lack of the handshake further rattled Declan, and he felt an overwhelming urge to throttle Hollister, but he noticed the two nickel-plated, pearl-handled Colts at his waist and the look on his face, which said an attempted thrashing would be a truly bad idea.
“You must be Hollister.”
“I am.”
“You’re late.”
Hollister shrugged.
“Are you always late?”
