Dry road to nowhere, p.1
Dry Road to Nowhere, page 1
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DRY ROAD TO NOWHERE
The Frontier Overland Company
WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE AND J.A. JOHNSTONE
Pinnacle Books
Kensington Publishing Corporation
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Table of Contents
Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
Teaser chapter
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-5095-6
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CHAPTER 1
Tucker Cobb could feel the whiskey was starting to get to him and did not mind one bit. “I told you before and I’ll say it again, Butch. I’ll leave when I’m good and ready to leave, Butch, and not a moment sooner.”
His partner, Butch Keeling, stood beside him at the bar. He had pushed his empty glass away from him half an hour before and had not allowed Cobb to refill it since. “Our coachline hasn’t been exactly thriving since Hagen put the word against us. I hate seeing you throw away what little we have on a woman who doesn’t want to see you anymore. Jane’s moved on and so should you before you drive yourself crazier than you already are.”
Cobb closed his eyes. Jane Duprey. Just thinking about her gave him some small measure of comfort. He had not known how much she had come to mean to him until she shut him out of her heart. He had been a bachelor his entire life—content to roaming the open country without any real aim or purpose—until he had met her.
He had once prided himself in the fact that he had made it past forty without allowing a woman to get her hooks into him, but Jane had him hooked good and deep.
He had been a fool to allow her association with “King” Charles Hagen to come between them. He knew that now, but feared it was too late to remedy the situation. He had seen whatever affection die in her eyes that night when they quarreled in front of the hotel all those weeks ago. She had gone on to open the Longacre House since then and, by all accounts, it had been a success.
But no matter how much time Cobb spent waiting for her to come down to see him, she never did.
“We’ve got bigger concerns at the moment,” Butch went on. “We need to keep our wits about us if we have any hope of fighting off Hagen.”
Cobb’s mood darkened as he thought of Charles Hagen. The king of the Wyoming Territory. The industry titan’s hatred of them had spread far beyond Cobb’s love life. It had been several weeks since Cobb and Butch had refused Hagen’s offer to buy their Frontier Overland Company.
Business had been rough ever since. Hagen had already purchased or controlled most of the stagecoach lines in the territory. Cobb and Butch were among the last of the holdouts and were paying a heavy price for their independence. None of the respectable hotels in their part of the territory would recommend their stagecoach line to their guests. They pushed them to ride on Hagen-owned lines instead. Some even went as far as refusing to allow them to rent rooms while they were in towns along their route. The two men had been forced to stay in the haylofts of the same liveries where they kept their team of horses. Lately, some liveries had even begun to refuse their business out of fear of reprisals from Hagen. Cobb expected that number would only increase as Hagen’s vendetta against them spread.
Cobb tried not to think much about it, for when he did, he felt like he was on the edge of a high, steep cliff. “Sometimes I think we just should’ve sold out to him like everyone else.”
“Now I know you’re drunk.” Butch took the glass from Cobb’s hand and placed it on the bar. “We didn’t start this business because we liked working for other people. We started it because we wanted to be our own men, and we can’t live like that under Hagen’s thumb.”
“I’d say we’re already under his thumb,” Cobb said. “Look at the kind of trade we’ve got now. We’re lucky if we roll only half full and that’s on a good run. All we get are widows and drunks who can barely pay their fare. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve had to wash down the inside of that coach in the past few months.”
Butch was not so easily persuaded. “That’ll get better in time. Besides, we’ve managed to keep ourselves going by running freight, haven’t we? That’s helped some.”
“Barely.” Despite his present drunkenness, Cobb had not lost his head for business. “But there’s only so much our rig can hold. It’s only a matter of time before Hagen finds out what we’ve been doing and puts the stop to that, too.”
“Hagen might be a powerful man, but he ain’t God, Cobb. He’ll lose interest in us soon enough and things will get better.” Butch tried to ease his friend away from the bar. “Hell, they already are. We’ve got that big meeting with Colonel McBride in the morning, don’t we? He’s never been one who looked kindly on drunkenness. You’ll need your rest if you hope to be at your best for it. He’s trying to help us, and I think he will if we let him. He’s always done good by us and vice versa.”
But Cobb would not be moved. At six feet tall, he was bigger than Butch and weighed a solid thirty pounds heavier. He could easily see over the heads of the men drinking around them while scantily dressed women acted like they were hanging on their every word.
Cobb eyed the ornate wooden staircase in the middle of the place and the plush red carpet secured to the stairs by gleaming brass fittings. It was a staircase worthy of a queen. Worthy of a woman like Jane Duprey.
“She’s got to come down here sometime,” Cobb said, “and I aim to be standing right here when she does.”
Butch did not take his hand away from his partner’s arm. “Leave it alone, Cobb. You’re killing yourself over a train that’s already left the station. And no amount of whiskey or heartache will be enough to make it come back.”
It had not been too long ago that Cobb had been obsessed with concerns like time and reputation. About drumming up new business for their stagecoach line and keeping schedules. But all of that seemed silly to him now that he felt like he had a hole right through the middle of him. A hole that could only be filled one way and not by whiskey.
“Why won’t she see me, Butch? Why won’t she give me only a
Butch sighed as he pushed his hat further back on his head. “Which is probably why she won’t give it to you. Jane’s still mighty sore about you not trusting her like you should have and she’s making you pay for it. Some women get mad. Some yell and throw things. I’ve known one or two that liked to throw a punch when they were angry. You should count your blessings that Jane’s not that sort of gal.”
“She won’t even let me apologize. She won’t let me tell her how sorry I am.”
“Just give it time, Cobb. That’s the only thing that’ll work right now. Time and sleep.” He pulled on his partner’s arm. “Let’s go.”
Cobb remembered something his partner had told him when they had first returned to Laramie. “You said you saw her. What did she say?”
Butch pulled him away from the bar. “I already told it to you. Repeating it won’t do you any good, but I’ll do it if you start moving.”
Cobb let his partner pull him along, but was desperate for any attachment to her. Even a second-hand story he had heard a hundred times was better than being ignored like this. “Tell it to me again.”
Butch began to lead him through the men and sporting ladies toward the door. “She had me come upstairs to talk to her in her rooms. The place still smelled of drying paint and wallpaper paste. It’s done up in red velvet and fancy furnishings. I practically begged her to let you see her for a few minutes, even if it was down here with her customers, but she refused. She said your lack of faith in her wounded her deeply, and it’s best if you both forgot about each other. She said she’s got a new enterprise here and won’t change it on account of you or any other man living or dead.”
Cobb had heard all that before but hoped, with each retelling of it, that he might find some nugget of hope he could cling to in these darkest of times. “Did she sound angry when she said it?”
Butch politely pushed through a group of men in evening clothes as he said, “She sounded hurt more than anything. She doesn’t hate you, Cobb. She just doesn’t want to see you anymore, and you’ve got no choice but to take her at her word. You’ve been down here pining for her every night in the week since we got back, but she won’t come down to see you. That ought to tell you everything you need to know even though it’s not what you want to hear. It’s best if you do what you do best. Move on and leave the past behind you.”
But Cobb could not move on, not from her, which had been the devil of it. He had spent his life being careful to not allow himself to feel much in this world. Besides Butch, he had never bothered having many friends, much less business partners. The world was tough enough without the burden of being tied down to one person or place.
Butch had been different. They had formed a friendship somewhere along the many miles of cow trails between Texas and Nebraska. Jane had just been another pretty lady who had bought a ticket on their stagecoach to take her from North Branch to Laramie. He had not been looking for a woman to love then but had grown to love her anyway. He had not realized how much until he had been foolish enough to question her loyalty to him over “King” Charles Hagen.
Cobb glanced at the staircase again as Butch led him toward the exit, hoping he might catch a glimpse of her. But all he saw was one of her hostesses bringing a drunken customer up to one of the rooms above. His eyes filled with tears, and he looked away.
“We’ll be back in a week,” Butch assured him, as they cleared the crowd. “A week can be a long time when it comes to a woman’s temperament. Hanging around here won’t do you any good, but a few hours of sleep will. The colonel wants to see us bright and early in the morning, remember? And from the sounds of it, we might be looking at a decent payday for our troubles.”
But Cobb did not care about Colonel Louis McBride or paydays or reputation. He only cared about getting back in Jane’s good graces.
“Maybe you’re right,” Cobb said, though he didn’t believe it.
“Now you’re talking sense.” Butch pulled Cobb past him and gave him a hearty slap on the back. “Once we’re back on the road, you’ll be as good as new. I’m bound to think of another way I can talk Jane into seeing you again. You know I can be mighty persuasive when I put my mind to it.”
As they passed through the red drapes on their way to the front parlor, Cobb saw the doorman step out in front of them. He was a skinny man with bad skin and longish hair already going gray, though Cobb doubted he was much older than thirty yet. He had narrow, quick eyes that never settled on any one thing for long but did not miss much.
“Hold on, you two,” the doorman said, when they got closer. “I want to have a word with you.”
Butch urged Cobb to keep going. “We’ve had more than enough words for our liking for one night, mister. We’ve paid for our drinks and now we’ll be going on our way.”
But the doorman held his ground. “I told you to wait, so you’ll wait.”
Cobb tried the door, but it was locked. The emotion he had barely been able to tamp down began to rise within him. “Open this door.”
But the skinny man with bad skin did not. “Not until we get something straight. You two have been coming in here every night for the past week.”
“And paid for our drinks every time,” Butch said. “We didn’t even complain about how expensive they were, either.”
The man opened his hands as if revealing the parlor for the first time. “A place like this costs money and it doesn’t run on selling whiskey alone.”
“Whiskey’s all we were in the market for,” Cobb said. “Now open this door and leave us be.”
But the man made no effort to look for the key. “You leaving things be is why we’re having this conversation right now. You haven’t been too friendly to our hostesses. Haven’t shown them the least bit of interest. That hurts their feelings.”
“Not to mention your pocket,” Butch said. “We know what this place is and what you are. We don’t come here for that, so you’ll just have to take what we buy in whiskey.”
“Lots of places in town serve whiskey,” the man said. “So, if that’s all you’re here for, you can find that anywhere else in town. I can even recommend one or two saloons for you. But if that’s all you want, don’t come back in here. This here is what you might call a quality establishment, and I don’t like a couple of trail rats like you taking up valuable space that a couple of sporting men could put to better use.”
Butch tried to intervene, but Cobb squared up to the man. “This is your last chance to open that door before I start looking for the key.”
The doorman’s lips drew into a sneer. “You really don’t know who you’re talking to, do you, mister? I’m Lucien Clay and I run this place for Miss Jane.” He offered a slight shrug. “Well, Miss Jane’s true employer, anyway.”
Cobb’s left hand shot out and snatched Clay by the throat. He pushed the smaller man against the wall as he grabbed hold of the breast pocket of his jacket and tore it away. As a handkerchief fell to the floor, Cobb pulled off the pockets of the jacket. He had ruined the second pocket when a key dropped out.
Cobb kept squeezing Clay’s throat as he tried in vain to break the coachman’s grip. “Pick up that key, Butch, and let’s get out of here. Looks like we’ve worn out our welcome with Mr. Clay.”
Butch picked up the key, opened the lock, and threw the door open. “You’d best let him go now, Cobb.”
Cobb pulled Clay off the wall and hurled him out into the street. The doorman stumbled off the boardwalk and fell into the thoroughfare on his backside. Passersby gasped and moved back at the sight of the man splayed in the mud and mess on the ground.
Cobb moved outside and pointed down at Clay. “Let that be a lesson to you, boy. I come and go in here as I please. The next time you raise a hand to me, you’d better have some friends around who can back your play.”
Clay’s small eyes grew even smaller. “Next time? There won’t be a next time.”
In one swift motion, Clay rocked up onto a knee and pulled a knife from his boot before launching himself at his attacker.
