It was Hattie’s turn to be silent.
O’Hara wondered sourly what those lads back at the landing would say if they knew the truth of the matter: That he was no more a Pinkerton operative than were the Mulrooney Guards. That he had only been impersonating one toward his own ends, in this case and others since he had taken the railroad pass and letter of introduction off the chap in Saint Louis the previous year — the Pinkerton chap who’d foolishly believed he was taking O’Hara to jail. That he had wanted the missing pouches of gold for himself and Hattie. And that he, Fergus O’Hara, was the finest confidence man in these sovereign United States, come to Stockton, California, to have for a ride a banker who intended to cheat the government by buying up Indian land.
Well, those lads would never know any of this, because he had duped them all — brilliantly, as always. And for nothing. Nothing!
He moaned aloud, “Forty thousand in gold, Hattie. Forty thousand that I was holding in me hands, clutched fair to me black heart, when that rascal Chadwick burst in on me. Two more minutes, just two more minutes...”
“It was Providence,” she said. “You were never meant to have that gold, Fergus.”
“What d’ye mean? The field was white for the sickle—”
“Not a bit of that,” Hattie said. “And if you’ll be truthful with yourself, you’ll admit you enjoyed every minute of your play-acting of a detective; every minute of the explaining just now of your brilliant deductions.”
“I didn’t,” O’Hara lied weakly. “I hate detectives...”
“Bosh. I’m glad the gold went to its rightful owners, and you should be too because your heart is about as black as this sunny morning. You’ve only stolen from dishonest men in all the time I’ve known you. Why, if you had succeeded in filching the gold, you’d have begun despising yourself sooner than you realize — not only because it belongs to honest citizens but because you would have committed the crime on St. Patrick’s Day. If you stop to consider it, you wouldn’t commit any crime on St. Pat’s Day, now would you?”
O’Hara grumbled and glowered, but he was remembering his thoughts in Chadwick’s cabin, when he had held the gold in his hands — thoughts of the captain’s reputation and possible loss of position, and of the urgent need of the new branch bank in Stockton. He was not at all sure, now, that he would have kept the pouches if Chadwick had not burst in on him. He might well have returned them to the captain. Confound it, that was just what he would have done.
Hattie was right about St. Pat’s Day, too. He would not feel decent if he committed a crime on—
Abruptly, he stopped walking. Then he put down their luggage and said, “You wait here, me lady. There’s something that needs doing before we set off for Green Park.”
Before Hattie could speak, he was on his way through clattering wagons and carriages to where a towheaded boy was scuffling with a mongrel dog. He halted before the boy. “Now then, lad; how would ye like to have a dollar for twenty minutes good work?”
The boy’s eyes grew wide. “What do I have to do, mister?”
O’Hara removed from the inside pocket of his coat an expensive gold American Horologe watch, which happened to be in his possession as the result of a momentary lapse in good sense and fingers made nimble during his misspent youth in New Orleans. He extended it to the boy.
“Take this down to the Delta Star steamboat and look about for a tall gentleman with a mustache and a fine head of bushy hair, a newspaperman from Nevada. When ye’ve found him, give him the watch and tell him Mr. Fergus O’Hara came upon it, is returning it, and wishes him a happy St. Patrick’s Day.”
“What’s his name, mister?” the boy asked. “It’ll help me find him quicker.”
O’Hara could not seem to recall it, if he had ever heard it in the first place. He took the watch again, opened the hunting-style case, and saw that a name had been etched in flowing script on the dustcover. He handed the watch back to the boy.
“Clemens, it is,” O’Hara said then. “A Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens...”
The Desert Limited
Across the aisle and five seats ahead of where Quincannon and Sabina were sitting, Evan Gaunt sat looking out through the day coach’s dusty window. There was little enough to see outside the fast-moving Desert Limited except sun-blasted wasteland, but Gaunt seemed to find the emptiness absorbing. He also seemed perfectly comfortable, his expression one of tolerable boredom: a prosperous businessman, for all outward appearances, without a care or worry, much less a past history that included grand larceny, murder, and fugitive warrants in three western states.
“Hell and damn,” Quincannon muttered. “He’s been lounging there nice as you please for nearly forty minutes. What the devil is he planning?”
Sabina said, “He may not be planning anything, John.”
“Faugh. He’s trapped on this iron horse and he knows it.”
“He does if he recognized you, too. You’re positive he did?”
“I am, and no mistake. He caught me by surprise while I was talking to the conductor; I couldn’t turn away in time.”
“Still, you said it was eight years ago that you had your only run-in with him. And at that, you saw each other for less than two hours.”
“He’s changed little enough and so have I. A hard case like Gaunt never forgets a lawman’s face, any more than I do a felon’s. It’s one of the reasons he’s managed to evade capture as long as he has.”
“Well, what can he be planning?” Sabina said. She was leaning close, her mouth only a few inches from Quincannon’s ear, so their voices wouldn’t carry to nearby passengers. Ordinarily the nearness of her fine body and the warmth of her breath on his skin would have been a powerful distraction; such intimacy was all too seldom permitted. But the combination of desert heat, the noisy coach, and Evan Gaunt made him only peripherally aware of her charms. “There are no stops between Needles and Barstow; Gaunt must know that. And if he tries to jump for it while we’re traveling at this speed, his chances of survival are slim to none. The only sensible thing he can do is to wait until we slow for Barstow and then jump and run.”
“Is it? He can’t hope to escape that way. Barstow is too small and the surroundings too open. He saw me talking to Mr. Bridges; it’s likely he also saw the Needles station agent running for his office. If so, it’s plain to him that a wire has been sent to Barstow and the sheriff and a complement of deputies will be waiting. I was afraid he’d hopped back off then and there, those few minutes I lost track of him shortly afterward, but it would’ve been a foolish move and he isn’t the sort to panic. Even if he’d gotten clear of the train and the Needles yards, there are too many soldiers and Indian trackers at Fort Mojave.”
“I don’t see that Barstow is a much better choice for him. Unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Is he the kind to take a hostage?”
Quincannon shifted position on his seat. Even though this was October, usually one of the cooler months in the Mojave Desert, it was near-stifling in the coach; sweat oiled his skin, trickled through the brush of his freebooter’s beard. It was crowded, too, with nearly every seat occupied in this car and the other coaches. He noted again, as he had earlier, that at least a third of the passengers here were women and children.
He said slowly, “I wouldn’t put anything past Evan Gaunt. He might take a hostage, if he believed it was his only hope of freedom. But it’s more likely that he’ll try some sort of trick first. Tricks are the man’s stock-in-trade.”