The population had swelled to thirty-one with the arrival the night before of the Penultimate Players—the hotel could only accommodate fifteen, so the stagehands and junior males spent the night sleeping in their wagons. Actually the number was thirty-two, if you included Frank McQuethy, who showed up just before dawn and found himself a notch in the high rocks that looked down on the canyon and hotel. Frank settled in as the darkness slipped away, close enough to see faces in the street through the scope of his buffalo gun, unhitched the safety, and waited for the Chinaman to show.
Five wagons parked behind the hotel; one carrying cargo. Horses stabled around the side. People started to stir as first light licked the top of the boulders on the rim; workers tossing out slops, carrying in wood, firing up the kitchen; smoke rose from the stovepipe chimney. Buckskin Frank pulled his saddle blanket tight around his shoulders and tried to stop his teeth from chattering, wishing he was huddled in front of that fire down below with a hot cup of java in his hands. He was hungry, too, his stomach eating at him when he caught a phantom whiff of bacon on the breeze.
The desert had turned bitter cold on his ride. He couldn't shake it off the way he used to as a kid; this kind of cold lived in your bones. During the night, about halfway from Wickenburg, Frank had decided he was too old for this shit; maybe he should have headed for Sonora, after all. Despair swamped him; he couldn't count how many fine, clear mornings of his life he'd wasted in exactly this way, on the high ground, waiting for some unsuspecting fuckup to come out of a house or a cave or a teepee so Frank could pump a bullet through him; this sort of waiting led to the same morbid self-examination he'd just experienced five years of in the joint. No sir, this dry-gulching work did not fit him anymore; all he wanted at this time of the morning was a firm mattress and a warm pair of tits, and he kept himself awake with the thought that they might only be one shot away.
The first actors stumbled out of their wagons when the hotel rang the triangle for breakfast; the younger ones stretched and strutted and swaggered in that self-conscious, catlike way of people who were used to being noticed; even out here in the middle of East Jesus, hung over and pissing in the bushes, not even aware that Frank was watching, they acted like they were in front of an audience.
No Chinaman.
Half an hour passed; breakfast over, the stable hands walked out the horses, hitched them to the wagons, and the rest of the actors came out of the hotel. Frank studied each face carefully through the scope; four women, twelve men—all white— climbed into three of the wagons; one tall, fat, long-haired dude who acted like he was in charge took the reins of the one carrying what Frank guessed must be their scenery. The caravan seemed ready to roll but held up: the fifth wagon, smallest of the bunch, little more than a covered buckboard, remained empty.
Three last people walked out of the hotel; Frank inched forward, laid a finger on the trigger and glued his eye to the scope. A dark-haired woman—Christ, a real bright-eyed beauty—and a tall gangly man in a dark formal suit and between them a stooped figure with a long white beard in the queerest get up; a round furry hat, black suit, and heavy black coat. The two walked this old geezer between them to the last wagon and helped him climb into the back.
Something not right about this; Frank looked hard for details. Between the beard and the hat, Frank never got a clear look at the old man's face—there, as he stepped up into the back of the wagon and the coat moved, a dark stain on the side of his white shirt. Was that blood?
Should he take the chance? His finger tightened down on the trigger.
Think it through, Frank, said Molly's voice: You're still a convict and it ain't gonna help your case one iota to blow a hole through the wrong man in front of twenty witnesses. He eased back.
Raised voices. Frank swung the scope over; the long-haired blowhard jumped off the cargo wagon, waving his arms and screeching at the darkhaired woman; she gave him the business right back in his face. Frank couldn't hear the words this far away, but the tone of their voices reached him on the wind and Mr. Longhair was taking the worst of it. He finally tucked his tail between his legs and stomped back to his wagon, and the woman climbed into the back of the one where they'd stashed the old man. She had some spunk, this one.
The wagons began to roll out of the canyon and up the incline to the road leading west. The stable owner in Wick-enburg who'd rented them the wagons had told Frank the actors were headed to a religious settlement out in the desert, a place called The New City, twenty-five miles north-northwest of Skull Canyon. Place just went up in the last few years, wasn't even on the maps yet, but growing fast. Folks out there weren't Mormons and seemed to be Christian; beyond that the man wasn't exactly sure what they were: good customers anyway, paid on time. Seemed harmless enough, a little eccentric maybe; building some kind of castle out of stone quarried in the hills.
If they followed his instructions and didn't get themselves hopelessly lost in the desert—a big if—the posse wouldn't arrive in Skull Canyon until late afternoon; Frank couldn't wait that long. Maybe the Chinaman wasn't with this bunch, but instinct told Frank he should get a closer look at the old man in the back of that last wagon; these were actors, after all, and actors could do things with makeup.
He had another reason to trail after them that he wouldn't admit to himself; he wanted a closer look at the other person in the back of that wagon. That dark-haired gal had set his fool's heart tripping like a snare drum. And she looked enough like Molly to be her sister.
Frank worked the kinks out of his back, rode down to the hotel, and asked a few questions; no one had gotten a clear look at the old man. He looked like a Jew, one of them said; an Old World type like he'd seen back east. What he was doing with a theatrical company in the middle of the desert nobody could say; the man had some kind of high fever and they'd been told to stay clear. Once in the hotel, he never came out of his room.
The black-haired woman? A real looker. She was taking care of him; her and that skinny fella. Somebody said they heard her name was Eileen.
Was there a telegraph office where these actor folks were headed? Yes, sir. Frank left a sealed message for the hotel to give the posse; when they arrived, they were to wait for him in Skull Canyon until he wired with further instructions.
And if any of the posse inquired, he'd be obliged if they'd tell 'em Buckskin Frank had rode off to the northeast, toward Prescott.
Frank fed his horse, treated himself to a cold breakfast, and then set out on the dirt road heading west to The New City.
At eleven o'clock that night, when Doyle, Jack, and company arrived at the offices of Frederick Schwarzkirk, they found the door open and the two rooms vacated. No less than four detectives in the group—Jack, Doyle, Presto with his lawyerly eye for detail, and, in her own way, Walks Alone—pored over every inch of the place, while Innes and Lionel Stern stood watch outside in the hall.
The offices had been cleared out earlier that evening. Traces of burned paper in a trash can, a roll of telegraph tape in a drawer, the dusty outline of an object removed from the desk, snapped wirer running out the baseboard; a private telegraph wire had been installed, Jack concluded, hooking into the lines outside, an illegal tap.