“Then how do we know who the johnny is?” Danny asked.
“Ads in the classified under the heading ‘Meadowlark’ will be placed in several major newspapers at the first of each month. It will contain an address where a letter addressed to Danny Goodman can be picked up. The person with whom I leave the letter will demand a password. Danny will tell him or her ‘impetuous.’ Upon hearing the correct response, he will then be given the particulars on whomever the next target is.”
“And how do we communicate with you?” Billy asked.
“Through a classified Meadowlark ad giving the particulars of a place and time whereby I can be reached by telegraph.”
“Mr. Nichols, you’re asking a lot of us. ’Specially restricting our jobs to your business alone. You sure you got enough employment to keep us busy?”
“Count on it.” Nichols stirred his chili. “In fact, after you finish your meals, assuming you don’t scald your tonsils, there’s a man in Colorado City, Colorado, who needs to meet with an accident. If that could be attended to before the end of next month, I would be most delighted to add five hundred dollars to the thousand I will deposit in your names in the Kountze Brothers Bank in Denver City. Payable upon completion of the job.”
Billy grinned, gave Danny a nod, and picked up his spoon. “Why don’t you give us the details, Mr. Nichols? Colorado City ain’t but a week or so north of here. Reckon Danny and me can figger something out to take care of your problem.”
The chili was indeed hot. At the first spoonful, Billy expected his scalp was going to melt and slide off his skull. He figured this was how the food in hell burned a sinner’s mouth.
Looking at George Nichols, who continued to eat the stuff without breaking a sweat, Billy wondered if, indeed, he hadn’t just sold his soul to the devil incarnate.
71
April 13, 1866
Spring was coming slowly to the high Colorado Rockies. Glancing out the window, Sarah could see gray clouds; streamers of blowing snow trailed off the peaks to the north and west, and wreaths of white fell in hazy fingers across the valleys. Occasional flakes descended irregularly just beyond the porch.
Central City, just down the slope, was an ugly place. A collection of claptrap plank or log structures, shebangs, shanties, hovels, and tents packed wall to wall. Most of the privies hung out over the creek in back. The surrounding mountains had been logged of every stick of wood, leaving the slopes bare and eroded. Intermingled among the stumps were shacks, privies, prospect holes, waste and tailings piles, and the crisscrossing scars of roads.
Her yard—such as it was—had melted out last week for the first time, surprising her when a small flower bed emerged from the packed white coating of old snow.
Ezra Cummings—the man who’d lost the claim to Bret, along with six hundred dollars—had been a man of contrasts. She had practically had to shovel the two-room cabin out when Bret first brought her here. Beneath piles of empty tin cans and bottles, wooden crates, empty kegs of blasting powder, and a mouse-chewed rug, she had discovered a plank floor. Glass-pane windows looked out on the mountains. An expensive cookstove with built-in water heater stood against the back wall, and a high brass bed with a cotton-ticking mattress dominated the bedroom.
And now she’d discovered an honest-to-God flower bed.
Sarah bent to open the oven and remove the rolls with a hot pad. They’d risen to perfection and smelled divine. Bret would be so pleased as he dipped them into the juices leaking from the elk roast. It now simmered in the Dutch oven atop the stove.
She left the rolls to cool and stepped over to the small desk beside the window. Looking out, she was pleased to see the stack of firewood Johnny Doolan had delivered. It would last them another two months at least. Longer if the weather warmed.
Then she studied her accounts book. She’d taken seriously Bret’s promise to make her the banker. Paw had ensured that she learned sums and numbers by the time she was ten. And she had studied, figuring she would need it to run her fancy household when she married and moved to Little Rock.
That brought a wry smile to her lips. So here she was, mistress to a fancy gambler, living in a tight but small two-room cabin. Some four thousand and fifteen dollars were secreted in the tin box behind the foundation stone. Not bad for four months of labor on Bret’s part.
Since he’d won the cabin and claim in Denver, he’d changed his tactics.
“You’ve got to keep the game balanced,” Bret had told her one night after they’d exhausted each other’s bodies. “I never clean a mark out. I just take a percentage and let him walk away with something. Never leave them feeling like they been cheated or humiliated. That’s the true art of it. That way, they’ll always come back. And better yet, they’ll tell all their friends that you run a square game.”
“I heard you buy everybody a drink.”
“I always keep a bottle on the table. Half empty. That way they think I’ve got a head start on ’em and might be whiskey-headed already. If they sit down, and they’re flush, I’ll pour them a drink. Maybe two or three over the next hour.”
“But you don’t drink?”
“Only enough to look like I’m keeping up, and my cup’s mostly full of water.” He had shifted beside her, fingers playing through her hair. “Here’s the trick: if you can take a big chunk of a chucklehead’s money, and have him stagger away feeling happy, you’ll come out ahead every time.”
“So, are you the best gambler in Central City?”
“There’s others as good at reading the cards and remembering what’s been played, and what the odds are that a given card’s in the other fella’s
