“You don’t have fifty-six rounds for that Sharps of yours.”
“Parmelee, I got a hundred caps, a bullet mold, and a half pound of powder. I can find lead in most any place: Fort Caspar; one of the telegraph stations; a stage stop on the Overland Trail; Fort Bridger; Virginia Dale; even Sweetwater Station or Camp Brown.”
“Same problem with the Spencer rifle,” Parmelee said, looking thoughtful. “Carried one during the war. Even then sometimes supply didn’t have cartridges where you needed ’em. Heard that Sherman carried whole wagons full so’s he’d have enough for that march through Georgia.”
“Notice you don’t carry one now.”
Parmelee stared from under his hat brim. “I got a Henry with fifty-six cartridges.”
“Twenty-eight. Half of them’s mine.”
“You got a Sharps. You can find powder and lead anywhere.”
Billy grinned and tossed him the cartridge. “There, I give you that one. Makes twenty-nine you got now.”
“We come out of these hills, End-of-the-Tracks is just yonder in the flats. You ever been to End-of-the-Tracks? It’s a whole town they set out for the railroad workers. Saloons, stores, whores, gambling, hot-cooked food. Then, when the rails move on so far, they pick it up. Even the boardwalks. Haul it another twenty or so miles down the line and set it all back up again.”
“So why are you figuring we need to go there?”
Parmelee gave him a flat look across the fire. “Money. Or you got something hid out I don’t know about?”
Billy nodded thoughtfully. Parmelee had been a right fine traveling companion. He didn’t ask prying questions. Didn’t offer much about himself. His only explanation for the hanging party was that the Virginia City vigilantes had heard he’d raped two women in Colorado. Then he’d dryly admitted he’d never been made a Freemason. It being well-known that the vigilance committee was run out of the local blue lodge.
Riding cross-country as they had, Billy had shot most of the meals, using his flour and salt sparingly for biscuits. But that was mostly gone now. Even then, he’d never hinted that he had money hidden away in the lining of his buffalo coat. The heavy coat now rode folded atop the packsaddle, looking like anything but a bank.
“How do you figure to get money?” Billy asked as he tossed another pine branch onto the fire.
“My considered opinion of you, Billy Hancock, is that you’re a man who don’t mind busting a few heads if it will advance your cause in the world. In this case, getting us enough of a stake to see us back to Denver.”
“And how’s this supposed to work?”
Parmelee studied him across the fire. “At End-of-the-Tracks the gambling hells are big tents. The games run all night. Latrines are dug out back. The play works for one night. I go in and keep watch, playing occasionally at the tables. You wait in the darkness out by the jakes. When I spot a winner, he’ll have to piss eventually. I follow him out, which is your sign to step up behind him. As he’s draining his johnson, you sap him. Meanwhile, I’m back inside where I can be seen. You tug his sorry hide into the dark, bind and gag him, and relieve him of the cash. A couple of hours before dawn, we’re off down the rails where we don’t leave tracks. When we find some rocky ridge, we cut away across country.”
“The railroad just lets folks get away with this? Ride in, break heads, rob, and ride out?”
Parmelee grinned through his beard. “I used to be a provost. I know how they think. They’ll figure first that it was someone in End-of-the-Tracks. One of the locals who knows the layout. Most likely a johnny who lost at the tables, owes someone, and needs money fast to pay off. That two strangers rode in from Montana, gave it to four or five guys in the neck, and rode out for Denver in the same night? Sure, possible, but that’s pretty far-fetched.”
“What’s in Denver?” Billy resettled himself, glancing over his shoulder to where Locomotive cropped the short high-country grasses.
“Payback for a whore.”
“This is the one you said stole your house?”
“Her and her backers.” Parmelee finished his stitching and inspected it in the firelight. “I’ve listened to you talking in your sleep, Billy Hancock. I know you don’t have no special love for whores.”
Billy ground his teeth, studying Parmelee through slitted eyes, but the older man didn’t seem to want to make anything of it.
Parmelee stood, pulling on his trousers, threading his belt through the loops. “Can’t say there’d be much money in it, but if you wanted to follow along, maybe lend a hand, I’d be obliged.” He shot a look at Billy. “You ever heard of the Meadowlark?”
Billy had wondered when it was going to come up again. Said, “Well, of course, you fool. We been listening to ’em since before Bozeman.”
His heart was skipping.
“Not the bird. The killer.”
“The one you asked about clear back in Fort Benton?”
“George Nichols. You ever heard of him?”
“Mining speculator. Rich. I hear a lot of people don’t like him, but I don’t hear why?”
Parmelee reseated himself. “That deserter I shot? The one the vigilantes was talking about? That was his whore I took. He was a gambler. Thick as thieves with George Nichols. Now, here’s the interesting part: no sooner was Bret Anderson buried, than I hear that George is bedding his whore. Supposedly he gives her four thousand for the fuck, and she uses it to pay a note I owe on my parlor house in Denver. Then, somehow, she ends up running my parlor house.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Billy realized he was nervously chewing his lips and made himself stop. “What’s it got
