'Suppose it doesn't,' said Doyle. 'I've never seen anything like what we saw in that room last night.'
She looked right at him again. 'Neither have I.'
'Mary, I—'
'My name is Walks Alone.'
Doyle nodded, appreciating the confidence he knew her disclosure conveyed. 'If there's anything I can do ...'
She shook her head. 'It's up to him now.'
Before he could ask her anything else, she led the two horses to Jack. Doyle watched her guide him slowly to his feet and up onto the horse. He did not look at her and still moved and responded to her touch like an obedient sleepwalker. Any thought taking place behind his clouded eyes remained obscure to observation. Doyle walked back toward the others.
Lionel Stern was the only stranger among them to horseback; they decided to put him on a large sedate gelding and let him bring up the rear. He was standing outside the corral, holding the reins out at arm's length, staring uneasily up at the animal.
'On principle,' Lionel said to Doyle as he passed, 'I'm against the idea of sitting on anything that's larger and stupider than I am.'
Innes had seen to the purchase and the packing of the mules and with Presto was now studying a map laid out across a rock.
'The old fellow inside said we'd find a road, about here, that's not on the map,' said Innes, drawing in an east-to-west line.
'What sort of road?'
'The nutters put,it in themselves; it's supposed to take us directly to their settlement,' said Presto.
'How long?' asked Doyle.
'If we ride straight through, perhaps late tonight.'
'What's this place, Skull Canyon?' asked Doyle.
'Stagecoach stop. We'll cut down through these hills and pick up the road ten miles west of it,' said Innes, very much at home in the world of maps and tactical options.
'The old man said that over the last few years, they've had a steady stream of people passing through on their way to The New City,' said Presto.
'Wide-eyed fanatics, the lot of them,' said Innes. 'He also told us they had five men come off a train and retain some horses early yesterday.'
'They answer splendidly to the description of Frederick Schwarzkirk and company,' said Presto, lowering his voice, with a glance at Walks Alone. 'Including one with a rather unmistakable solid-blue glass eye.'
Doyle s brow furrowed; he hadn't even considered that the attack on Walks Alone might be somehow connected to the league of thieves.
'Alarming,' he said.
'Yes,' said Presto, with a glance at Innes. 'We thought so, too.'
A loud crash from nearby; Lionel's saddlebags had fallen to the ground, and he was sitting upright on his horse, clutching the rear lip of the saddle, facing exactly backward.
'I may need a little help with this,' said Lionel.
Frank could see the House of Hope from the window of his second-floor hotel room. Neat lines of cigar ash had accumulated on the windowsill; he'd been watching the front door of the place for an hour, as he had promised Eileen he would do when she left for the theater.
Jacob had not returned from his appointment with Reverend Day. Eileen marched over there to look for him at six o'clock and was turned away; their meeting was still going on, a black shirt told her; they did not wish to be disturbed. Her instincts advised her differently and she returned to the hotel in a tizzy. Frank calmed her as best he could and gave his word he would find Jacob and meet her at the theater after the show.
Not that he didn't have enough to worry about. The Chinaman had been in their wagon all the way from Wickenburg, she'd told him, including that morning Frank had seen them in Skull Canyon; he'd had the killer square in his sights and let him off the hook. Now Chop-Chop was probably on the loose inside The New City—Kanazuchi was the man's name; he was some kind of priest, from Japan, not China—and if the rest of what Eileen had said was to be believed, both he and this Jacob fella had been drawn out here by a nightmare both men were having about that big black tower.
In the old days, that alone would have been enough to drive him back to drinking.
One part of his dilemma had turned crystal clear, however; if he planned on making any serious time with Eileen—and he did, more than ever, after talking to her—putting a bullet through this Japanese would knock his chances down to less than zero. Which amounted to as big a rock and as hard a place as Frank could ever remember finding himself between.
He looked at his watch sitting open on the sill: half past seven. The play was supposed to start at eight. He wanted to take a stroll around the House of Hope but needed to wait until dark. He wanted just as much, if not more, to see Eileen on the stage.
Another angle had been taking shape in the back of his: mind; it held out the prospect of a better outcome but carried a higher risk. He'd need his Henry rifle to pull it off and he'd more than likely get himself killed. Naturally that's the one he was leaning toward.
Frank put on his hat, walked out of the room, and peeked from the top of the stairs. Clarence and the nitwits still waited for him in the lobby. He tried doors along the hall until he found an open one, slipped out a window, shimmied down a rain gutter into the empty alley, and made his way to the intersection with Main Street; as evening came on, a large crowd of white shirts gathered outside the theater.
Seeing Eileen perform in this or any other show would have to wait. But it was about the best reason he could come up with for staying alive.
From the edge of the shantytown, Kanazuchi watched the last of the white shirts enter the theater. Torches burning in the brackets out front were beginning to work against the gathering dark. He waited five more minutes, then walked across' the empty street and down an alley toward the stables.
He had learned that Reverend Day lived in the adobe house across from the theater. This man would know the location of the underground temple and the books, of that much Kanazuchi felt certain; he was probably the man who had arranged the theft of the Kojiki.
Kanazuchi had waited hours for the Reverend to come out of the place the white shirts called the House of Hope; there had been no sign of him. The house was heavily protected, and its guards, all dressed in black, were more dangerous and better armed than the white shirts he had seen. To get inside, he would need the help of the Grass Cutter.
Curious: While watching from this vantage point, a short time after he began, Kanazuchi had witnessed a clear disruption in the white shirts' concentration, as if the control they moved under had suddenly lapsed. Some stopped dead in the street, others fell to their knees; a few appeared to be in severe pain. Minutes later, the control resumed and the white shirts instantly went on about their business as if nothing had happened.
No one approached as he entered the stable; the barn appeared to be empty. By the light of a single burning lantern, he entered the rear courtyard where the actors' wagons stood. He stopped and listened: no one there. Kanazuchi slowly parted the canvas on the back of the wagon he had ridden in and found himself staring down the barrel of a rifle.
'Eileen said not to kill you,' said the man kneeling inside.
The hammer already cocked; finger edging down on the trigger.
If I attack, the bullet will still strike, Kanazuchi realized.
'I don't want to,' said the man. 'But I will.'
Kanazuchi looked him in the eye. A serious man. He was good; nothing had given away his presence in the wagon. He knew how to hide and he undoubtedly knew how to kill.
'What do you want?' asked Kanazuchi.
