Hidden Agendas

the more urgent 'baby! baby! baby!' mating call.

Jay reined Buck up in front of the sheriff's office. A gray-whiskered old man sat on a wooden chair, whittling on a big stick with a jackknife. He looked like a miner, with a leather vest over a grubby red-and-black checkered shirt, tan once-upon-a-time canvas pants, and black boots.

The saddle gave out a leathery creak as Jay put all his weight into the left stirrup and dismounted. He wrapped Buck's reins around the horizontal hitching post.

The old man spat a foul-looking brown stream at a lizard scurrying along the boardwalk looking no doubt for shade. Missed him by two feet.

'Missed ‘im, damn,' the old man said. He had a voice that sounded as if it had been soaked in a barrel of whiskey, then pickled in heavy brine, and then left out in the desert for thirty or forty years.

Jay nodded at the old man and started for the door. His boots clumped on the boardwalk.

'You lookin for the shurf, he ain't around,' the old man said.

Jay stopped. 'Where would I find him?'

'Boot Hill!' The old man cackled until the laugh turned into a wheeze, then a cough. He spat more tobacco juice, but the lizard was already well out of range. 'Damn, missed ‘im.'

'There a deputy around?'

'Yep — planted right next to the shurf!' This brought on another round of cackling, wheezing, and coughing.

Must have been sitting here praying for a stranger so he could say that.

When he managed to get his breath back, the old man said, 'The Thompson Brothers came to stick up the bank three days back. I ‘spect you bein' a marshal, you know who they are. They kilt two tellers, the shurf, and the deppity. Shurf got one of ‘em, and Old Lady Tullis blowed ‘nother one off n his horse as they were ridin' out, cut him down with that old 12-gauge coachgun she keeps behind the counter o' her cantina. Course that left three of ‘em still ridin' hellbent for leather, but they didn't get no money and they ain't likely to come back to this town real soon, nosiree Bob!'

'What's your name, old-timer?'

'Folks ‘round here call me Gabby.'

I can't imagine why. 'Well, Gabby, I'm trackin' down some shysters from back East. Bad hombres.'

'Ain't been no tinhorns stop off here lately,' Gabby said. 'Maybe some passin' through on the stage. Wells Fargo office's down't'other end o' town.' He pointed with the stick he'd been carving on. 'Past the whorehouse there.'

'I'm obliged, Gabby.'

Jay walked back to Buck, mounted, and walked the horse toward the Wells Fargo office. He nodded again at Gabby. Of course, the old man could be a firewall. Might be the sheriff was snoozin' in his office, his feet propped up on his desk or in a cell bunk. Or maybe he was havin' a drink at the cantina or the La Belle, and Gabby had been posted there to stop any strangers lookin' to talk to the local law. Jay would check out the stagecoach office, check with the telegrapher — he saw the telegraph poles so he knew the town was wired — and if he didn't get anything there, he would circle back and bypass Gabby to be sure he was tellin' the truth.

Jay smiled. Who would have ever thought of a firewall as a tobacco-chewing, lyin' old fart who looked like a forty-niner?

Jay was almost to the Wells Fargo depot when a big, swarthy, black-haired man with a drooping handlebar mustache and a pair of holstered guns stepped out into the street in front of him. 'Hold up there, pard.'

There was a definite air of menace about the man, who wore a black suit over his boiled white shirt and tie, and a derby hat instead of a cowboy hat.

Jay looked at the man. The guns he wore weren't Colt.45 Peacemakers like Jay's; they looked like Smith & Wesson Schofield.44's, top-loaders with seven-inch barrels. Powerful and accurate, damn fine weapons, but slow from the holster. When it came to fast draws, size mattered. Shorter was better…

Jay dismounted and led his horse to another hitching post, this one next to the whorehouse. Four horses were already there. There were three large windows on the second story of the big house, and three or four pretty women in colorful petticoats and underwear leaned out of the open windows to look down at the two men in the street. Jay tipped his hat to the women. 'Afternoon, ladies,' he called out.

The women tittered. One of them waved. 'Come on up, Marshal!'

Jay grinned, then turned back to face the man in the derby hat. He moved away from his horse so Buck wouldn't be directly behind him. 'What can I do for you, amigo?' Jay said.

'Fact is, I don't like lawmen. I think mebbe you need to turn around and head back where you came from.' The big man cleared his coat back from his holstered revolvers. 'It would be good for your health.'

'You got a name?' Jay said.

'Name is Bartholomew Dupree. Folks call me Black Bart,' the man said.

Well, of course they do.

Jay dropped his hand next to the butt of his Colt. 'Sorry, Bart, I got business at the stage depot. Why don't you just stand aside and let me pass?'

'Can't do that, Marshal.' He waggled his fingers, loosening them.

Definitely a firewall, and a tough one. So Jay was on the right track; his quarry had passed this way. And he wasn't about to give up because there was a roadblock. Lonesome Jay Gridley hadn't gotten to where he was by accident. He was the best.

'Make your play then,' Jay said.

Bart went for his guns. He was fast — but Jay was faster. The.45 spoke a hair before the twin.44's, a throaty roar, belches of thick white smoke erupting around tongues of orange fire. Speckles of unburned propellant stung Jay's hand. He recocked the big single-action revolver, but it wasn't necessary. Bart dropped to one knee, guns falling from his suddenly nerveless fingers, then toppled to one side. Dust splashed from the street, joining the stink of black powder smoke.

Jay uncocked, then holstered his gun and walked over to where Bart lay on his side in the dirt. Got him right between the eyes, Jay noted with satisfaction.

Teach you to mess with Lonesome Jay. Pard.

He thought he heard music coming from the saloon behind him, a kind of echoing wah-wah- wah sound that was more synthesizer than upright piano. He grinned. Too many Eastwood movies when he'd been a kid.

A dark-haired man in a gray banker's suit and steel-rimmed spectacles came out of the arcade next to the house of ill repute and walked to where Jay stood looking down at the corpse. 'Perhaps you might have need of my services, friend?' He tendered a business card. 'Peter Honigstock, Attorney-at-Law,' it said.

Jay turned so his marshal's badge was visible to the lawyer. 'Nope. Just the undertaker.'

'Ah,' Honigstock said.

He turned back, nodded at the soiled doves in the whorehouse, then headed for the stage depot. And after that, he was gonna mosey on back to the sheriff's office and have a few words with old Gabby. The lyin' bastard.

Chapter Nine

Tuesday, December 21st, 3:25 p.m. Washington, D.C.

In his study at home, John Howard leaned back in his chair, looked away from the terrain maps of the Pacific Northwest and glanced at his watch. He realized he was going to have to leave for the airport to pick up Nadine's mother in about five minutes. The idea of fighting rush hour traffic made him feel even more tired than he already felt, which was plenty tired enough.

He didn't know what the problem was, or why he was so worn out lately. He couldn't get a pump working the weights, was winded so bad after a couple miles into his usual run he had to slow down almost to a walk. And he wasn't sleeping real well either — dropping off early, tossing and turning all night, then waking up tired and