“Hey,” Cory said, “you’re the one who asked for the shortcut.” He gestured to the mountain. “That’s it.”
“Maybe you should have told me this before we split from the others.”
“And you would have changed your mind?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, you can change it now, Thomas,” Cory said. “I’m sure we can catch up to James and Berto.”
Thomas thought a moment, then said, “No.”
“So we’ll go on?”
“Yeah, why not?” Thomas asked. “You’ve made this ride before, haven’t you?”
“Well…”
Thomas looked at him. “You have, haven’t you?”
“Well, I have….”
“You want to explain that?”
“A few years ago I made the ride with, uh, two other men, but…uh, they didn’t make it.”
“What’s so hard?” Thomas asked. “It’s a mountain.”
“It’s not a clear path,” Cory said. “And it’s cold at the top…snowy.”
“Are you tryin’ to talk me out of this, Ralph?”
“No, Thomas,” Cory said, “I’m just tellin’ you it’s not going to be easy.”
“Okay,” Thomas said. “I understand that. I’ve got it. Not gonna be easy. Right.”
“Let’s get mounted up, then,” Cory said. “We have to get to a certain point and camp, so that when we do make it to the top, it’s early in the day, not late.”
“And how many days will it take?”
“That depends on conditions,” Cory said. “We got an early start this morning, but by the time we get to the base of the mountain, it will be late. We’ll have to camp there, camp again halfway up—”
“Okay, never mind,” Thomas said. “Let’s just get started.”
It took them two days to get to the base of the mountain and camp.
“Why don’t we start up? We’ve got plenty of daylight ahead of us,” Thomas said.
“It’s too late in the day,” Cory told him. “We’ll camp here and start up at first light.”
Thomas looked up. From his vantage point, the mountain didn’t look that steep.
“Don’t let it fool you, Thomas,” Cory said. “It’s gonna look a lot steeper when you’re lookin’ down.”
Thomas had noticed a week ago that Cory’s speech pattern was changing. He no longer sounded like “Ralph Cory,” the owner of a store in Vengeance Creek. His speech had become more western, and he sounded more like himself and James now.
“What?” Cory asked as they unsaddled their horses.
“I—uh, you’re just, uh, talkin’ kinda different.”
“When you take on a different name, you also take on a different way of talkin’, and of livin’,” Cory said. “Out here, I’m not tryin’ to fool anybody anymore.”
“It must be hard,” Thomas said, “always tryin’ to remember to be someone else.”
“You get used to it, after a while,” Cory said, “but it’s hard in the beginning.”
“You can go back, you know,” Thomas said. “After this is all over. My pa and us, we’re not gonna tell anybody. Berto won’t say nothin’ either.”
“I know,” Cory said. “I know that. It’s just somethin’ I’m gonna have to decide.”
Thomas suddenly turned and faced Cory. “Ralph,” he said, “are you…likin’ this?”
Cory stopped what he was doing, hung his head for a moment, then looked at the younger man.
“Yeah, Thomas,” he said, “yeah, I’m pretty sure I am…but it ain’t gonna last.”
“Whataya mean?”
“Before we’re done,” Cory said, “I’m gonna have to kill somebody. You know it, and I know it.”
“And that was the part you were tryin’ to get away from.”
Cory nodded.
“Ralph—”
“Forget it, Thomas,” Cory said. “Just forget it. I get the feelin’ that by the time this is done, we’re all gonna have some thinkin’ to do.”
59
As Thomas and Cory reached the base of their mountain, Cardwell and Jacks arrived in the town of Trinidad, not far north of the Colorado border.
“You know,” Jacks said, just as an observation, “we could head south into New Mexico, get lost there for a while.”
“I’m not givin’ up my bank, Simon,” Cardwell said. “I been wantin’ to hit this one for a long time, and now I’m gonna do it. After that, we could retire to New Mexico if we wanted to.”
Cardwell had been dangling that carrot in front of Jacks for days now. But the addition of Bart Durant to the mix was making Jacks unhappy. He hated Durant, and knew the man returned the feeling. The two would just as soon shoot each other as look at each other. There was going to have to be a lot of money involved to change that.
A helluva lot.
“Hey, wasn’t Bat Masterson the law here for a while?” Jacks asked.
“’Bout eight years ago, I think,” Cardwell said, “in 1882, but I don’t think he was even here a year.”
“Wonder where he is now?”
“Denver, I think,” Cardwell said, “but not wearin’ a badge.”
They rode into the center of town, which was bustling with activity. Folks were rushing to stores and the bank before closing time, and women were rushing home to get supper ready for their men and their families. Children were happy to be out of school and were enjoying their temporary freedom.
“Where’s Durant supposed to meet us?” Jacks asked.
“The Columbian Hotel.”
“Where’s that?”
Cardwell reined his horse to a halt and said, “Right there,” with a jerk of his chin.
The Columbian was on the corner of Main and Commercial, and had been built eleven years ago, in 1879.
“Looks expensive.”
“We can afford it.”
“We?” Jacks asked. “You think I’m payin’ for Durant’s room in that hotel—”
“Okay, okay,” Cardwell said, “it’ll come out of my end. You happy now?”
“Yeah, I’m happy.”
“Come on,” Cardwell said, “let’s get the horses cared for, and then we’ll find Durant and get this over with.”
“One hour,” Rigoberto Colon said, holding some of the dirt in his hand.
“We’re closin’ on them,” James said. “Damn. If Thomas and Ralph had stayed—”
“We cannot worry about that now,” Colon said, mounting up again. “We must decide what to do if we catch up to them.”
“There’s no question,” James said. “We’ll take ’em.”
Colon didn’t reply.
“You got another idea, Berto?”
“I was just thinkin’,
“About what?”
“They have changed direction.”
“Whataya mean?”
“They are going more east now, not so much north.”
