Chapter Twenty-Four

 

 

Ryan had spent a quiet night in the Palace Hotel, Leadville, waking once at the sound of a drunk noisily puking in the room next door. And once he thought that someone tried to turn the handle on his door, but the bolt was secure.

 

He woke early with the first shafts of dawn light breaking through the jagged tears in the thin curtains. As was his usual practice in most places, Ryan hadn't undressed, contenting himself with taking off his combat boots and unbelting his pants. He rested the Steyr by the side of the window, the big SIG-Sauer P-226 in its habitual location, tucked under his pillow.

 

He peered into the deserted dining room of the Palace, disturbing a gray rat that was busily gnawing at a cooked pork chop. Another rodent was lapping at a saucer of ketchup that stood on one of the dusty tables.

 

"Rain check time," Ryan muttered easing the sling of the rifle on his shoulder and walking out into the cool fresh morning.

 

An oil lamp already glowed outside Carl and Joanna's place and he went in, sniffing appreciatively at the scent of fresh-baked bread and frying bacon.

 

Carl greeted him from the swing door through to the kitchen. "The best of good mornings," he called. "See that we cleared away the mess left by those cold hearts?"

 

"Yeah. Must've taken all night."

 

Joanna appeared from inside a walk-in closet, holding a string of sausages, smiling at Ryan. "Didn't take all night, did it?" she asked her husband. "We were in bed by four-thirty."

 

Ryan sat at a round table by the window. A couple of miners were the only other diners, and they barely looked up at him from their breakfast of well-done steaks with eggs, grits and hash browns. A steaming jug of coffee stood on the checked cloth in the center of their table.

 

"I'll have what they're having," Ryan said. "But I'd like the steak done less well than that."

 

"I'll just carry it very quickly through a warm room," Carl said with a smile.

 

 

 

WHEN THE FOOD ARRIVED, it was piled high on the plate, the four eggs, sunny-side up, glistening gold.

 

"I put on three or four of the sausages and a few rashers of the bacon," Joanna called. "Looked to me like a man about to hit the trail again."

 

"Yeah."

 

He turned to Carl. "Never got around to asking you last night. I'm due to meet up with some friends. Wondered if they'd passed through here in the last day or so."

 

"We get lots of folks through here, brother."

 

"You wouldn't have missed them. Tall woman with the reddest hair you ever saw. Teenager with snow hair and ruby eyes. Old-timer in knee boots. And a small guy with glasses, wearing a battered fedora and carrying a shotgun and an Uzi."

 

"Sounds like I'd know them if I'd seen them anyplace," Carl said. "But I don't. Any message if they pass through here in the next few days?"

 

"Yeah. I'm Ryan Cawdor. Heading back north a ways, then cutting east over the tops. Down onto the trail above Breckenridge, if all goes well. Then up the pass to Fairplay. If they haven't caught up with me, I'll wait for them there."

 

Carl nodded. "Heard a lot of talk of trouble that way. This gang of norms and muties. Can you believe that? Been a load of chilling and burning. None of the miners or trappers or hunters go that way alone now. Stay together in armed groups." He paused. "If at all."

 

"Woman with red hair's my" He hesitated, not sure of the right word. "She's my partner. She was reared up in Harmony and wants to visit again. Hasn't been there for years."

 

Carl smiled. "We've seen folks from there, every once in a while. Could be the gang's active that way."

 

"I figured that. No hard news?"

 

The man shook his head. "No. Used to be a wise woman up there, years ago. Never met her. Man I saw most was the same name as me. Carl."

 

"Carl Lanning?" Ryan asked, dredging the name from the back of his memory.

 

"Yeah. Blacksmith like his father before him. Decent kind of a man, but a few nails short of a horseshoe, if you get my meaning, brother."

 

"Yeah." He finished his second cup of coffee and sighed appreciatively. "Best be hitting the trail. Thanks again. To both of you. For everything."

 

"Take care," Joanna called from the kitchen. "Y'all come back and see us, y'hear?"

 

 

 

THERE HAD BEEN FROST during the night, and Ryan's boot heels rang out on the road bed as he walked back through Leadville, heading north for a while.

 

The same young lad with the round moony face was painting the gate he'd been working on the previous day, and he gave Ryan a wave and a broad smile.

 

"Lords, but I know you, mister."

 

"You told me how to get to the Palace Hotel."

 

"Right, I did. Where you headin' now, mister? Nothing that way but snow and mountains. Why, yes, s-u-n spells snow."

 

Ryan grinned, touched by the lad's good nature. "I'll take care. You have a good day now."

 

Another wave of the hand and he walked on, past a ruined building, reaching the point where the highway forked.

 

It was a lovely morning, bright and crisp, and he whistled to himself, stepping out in time to the music, a rousing old marching tune.

 

A recently erected wooden sign pointed left to Redcliff and the interstate, right to Climax and the pass east.

 

As he turned right, he segued smoothly into, "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," breaking into song as the road climbed. " 'She wore it for her lover who was far, far away.' "

 

 

 

RYAN HAD THE DETAILS of the map firmly in his head, and he knew that he would soon have to strike off right, toward the east, and hope to find his way into the next valley across. That would then bring him up to Fairplay.

 

Before leaving Carl and Joanna's eatery Ryan had bought some food for the journey a couple of crusty new-baked rolls, filled with egg, salted beef and tomato, a thick slice of some deliriously moist walnut bread and some small peaches, with a flask of fresh milk.

 

He stopped and sat on a ridge of bare rock, enjoying the warmth of the sun, eating lunch, admiring the beauty of the mountains that circled him. It had been easy walking, despite the elevation of eleven thousand feet.

 

A large crow, its feathers so shiny black they shone blue-green, had perched on a rock a few paces away from him. It watched the man with its head on one side, yellow beak ajar, button-bright eyes staring intently at him.

 

Ryan broke off a corner of one of the rolls and flicked it underhanded at the bird, which hopped sideways and effortlessly caught it. Throwing back its head, it then pecked urgently at a few spilled crumbs.

 

"You must be the bird when people talk about a distance being as the crow flies," Ryan said.

 

The crow saw there was no more free lunch coming, and it flapped ponderously away, giving out a melancholy cawing sound as it circled a hundred feet above Ryan, eventually flying off toward the south.

 

 

 

THERE WASN'T MUCH LEFT of Climax. A few stone chimneys still stood, and a couple of pack-rat cabins, thrown together from the ruins of other, grander buildings. There was little sign of life.

 

As Ryan passed the last of the wretched dwellings, a half-naked barefoot child of indeterminate sex ran outside, holding a stone as big as its fist. The child heaved it toward Ryan with an expression of such extreme malevolence that he recoiled and half drew the SIG-Sauer. But the rock fell short of him, rolling into a narrow gully.

 

"Fuck away, outlander," the child screeched, giving him the finger.

 

Ryan returned the gesture. "Yeah, and your mama too," he snarled, lifting the dark eye patch to reveal the raw, weeping socket. He looked so frightening that the child started to bawl and ran back into the hut.

 

The incident kept Ryan in good spirits, and he walked at a fast clip toward the cutoff to the east.

 

 

 

RYAN ENCOUNTERED a fair amount of snow as he plodded on, finding it harder going. A dusting lay over everything, including the narrow, winding trail, as well as larger and deeper pockets in the shadows where the sun never shone.

 

He kept checking the trail, trying to see whether Krysty and the others might have looped around him, possibly avoiding Leadville in the night. But it had rained within the past twenty-four hours, and it had been heavy enough to wash away anything except deep wag ruts from the highway.

 

He walked on through the afternoon, feeling relief as he crossed the highest point of the ridge and began to descend slowly, with the valley that was his destination opening before him like a magnificent flower.

 

There was no sign of life anywhere around him, except for the prolific marmots that kept popping up from burrows as he passed, standing on hind legs like large prairie dogs, and the birds, mainly crows and some blue-breasted jays, that wheeled high above him.

 

The sun was already out of sight behind him when he smelled the bitterness of smoke.

 

 

 

THE SUN WAS creeping behind the mountains that lay to the west as the companions entered the outskirts of Leadville. The township seemed deserted except for a tall, chubby teenager who was painting the hinges of a big five-barred gate.

 

"Hi, there, strangers," he called out.

 

"Hi," Krysty replied, walking off the blacktop toward him. "You wouldn't have seen a tall man with one eye passing this way, would you?" She covered her left eye with her hand to try to show the soft-faced boy what she meant.

 

"Lords, yes!" A broad smile spread almost from ear to ear. "One eye, lady. Sad eye, lady."

 

"When did you see him?"

 

He looked worried. "Now, I don't remember times and days and months all that good. But I think it was this same day we got now. He spoke to me, real kind. Went off that way." He pointed behind them.

 

"Real kind," J.B. said, hearing the conversation. "Doesn't sound much like Ryan."

 

"The retard sure it was Ryan?" Jak asked.

 

"Don't call him that," Mildred snapped. "Like saying someone's a crip."

 

"Tall with black hair. Carrying a rifle over his shoulder. And one eye."

 

The boy nodded eagerly. "Lords, yes. Sure as sunshine it was him."

 

Krysty patted him on the arm and he blushed deep crimson with delight. "Thanks a bunch," she said. "You've been really helpful to us."

 

 

 

WHEN THEY FOUND Carl and Joanna's Diner there was even more information for them.

 

While they shared an enormous fish pie, made from fresh salmon and covered in golden-brown pastry, with fluffy whipped potatoes and buttered carrots, Carl told them what he could about Ryan's time in Leadville and the message he had left behind.

 

A young blond woman with heavily made-up eyes was sitting at a nearby table, listening to the account.

 

"There was blood and brains all over," she said, interrupting at the point where Carl had reached the three would-be killers. "Prettiest whirly patterns you ever saw." She spoke slowly, quietly and hesitantly, as though she were a long-term jolt user. She pointed at Doc's cane. "My daddy got a walking stick near as pretty as that."

 

Carl pointed to his forehead with a circling motion. "Long gone," he said quietly.

 

"And he left a message?" Krysty asked.

 

"Sure." Carl folded his hands in front of him, like a child about to recite a lesson that he'd memorized. "He was going to cross over the high country between the two passes. Down onto the trail above Breckenridge. And"

 

Joanna had come out of the kitchen with a jug of creamy white sauce. "And he was going up to Fairplay and he'd wait for you there," she said. "That was all."

 

Krysty felt as though a great weight had been lifted from her heart. Ryan had obviously been to the school and been happy enough to leave Dean there. Now he was on the way up to Harmony, just part of a day ahead of them. And he had successfully survived a vicious attack on him.

 

"We'll stay the night here in Leadville," she said. "And get going after him in the morning. When do you think we'd catch up with him?"

 

"Take the better part of two days to reach Fairplay," Carl told her.

 

"Mebbe longer," Joanna added, looking significantly at Doc.

 

"Make no mistake. There may be a little snow on the roof, madam," he replied. "But I can assure you that a fire still glows deep in my belly."

 

She laughed. "Sure admit you can put away the food all right. Leave a space for the baked apples with cloves and cinnamon sugar, won't you?"

 

"Indeed I will." He stood and bowed to her, oblivious of the large trailing linen napkin that dangled from his collar. "And I should say that you are a genius among cooks, Joanna." He kissed the tips of his fingers to her.

 

She snorted with amusement and flounced delightedly back into the kitchen.

 

 

 

THEY TOOK TWO ROOMS at the Palace Hotel, ready to start soon after dawn, though everyone agreed that breaking their fasts at the diner was an essential prelude to the day.

 

The night was quiet and uneventful, though heavy clouds were gathering toward the north.