Роберт Паркер - Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack

Ruth Ann was running now, moving as fast as she could through the dense forest. The Comanche moon hanging directly above dimly lit her way through thick timber of pine, blackjack, birch, and maple.

There were no shoes on her bloody feet and what was left of her dress was ripped, soiled, and hanging off her bare shoulders. She was dirty, with leaves and sticks tangled in her auburn hair. She glanced back as she ran. She was terrified, her face tearstained, scratched, and bleeding, and her eyes were wide with fear and... then he awoke. It was not the first time Roger Wayne Messenger awoke from this vision, this nightmare of Ruth Ann running through the woods, and he was fairly certain it would not be his last.

Roger sat up a little and worked the ache from his back. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding. With the exception of the dampness he found in the corners of his eyes, the rye whiskey he consumed on the journey sucked his body of all its moisture. His mouth was so parched his lips were stuck together. He sat up and looked around at the dark landscape passing by. All of the other passengers were asleep. He wished he, too, was asleep, but sleep was something he had not been accustomed to for some time. He dug into his knapsack and found his canteen and drank and drank.

Roger was a big, lean, and strong man with thick, dark hair that was three inches long on the top and cropped tight to the sides of his head. He was normally clean-shaven around his sweeping thick mustache, but at the moment he was sporting three days of whiskers. He wore a brown herringbone suit that was usually pressed over a starched white shirt, but currently his attire was crumpled from days of neglect.

When Roger stepped off the morning train in Appaloosa, he snugged his brown wide-brim with rolled edges over his square forehead and walked into town. He stopped at S. Q. Johnson’s Grocery and bought a can of beans. He sat under the shade of the store’s overhang, opened the can with his army knife, and ate the beans using the blade. When he finished he went about the task he’d come to Appaloosa to accomplish.

He poked his head in the door of Cheever’s Saddle shop and asked the old-timer tanning a large hide for directions to his destination. Then he walked seven blocks, turned south on Main Street, and went two more blocks to the construction site.

It was an impressive building. Three stories tall and at least seventy-five feet wide, with a second-story covered porch that had five sets of glassed double doors across the balcony. To Roger’s untrained eye the structure appeared to be nearly complete, but the building was busy with construction workers.

Roger thought about just walking into the place, but decided he would watch for a while, watch and wait. He was good at watching and waiting; it was part of his job, and now that he was here, he was not in any hurry. Better to be patient. Better to wait.

He stood across the street, watching all the laborers going about their business. There were painters on scaffoldings painting a second coat of white and carpenters on the boardwalk, assembling wood pieces and going about other various tasks of measuring and sawing, remeasuring and resawing.

A team of mules pulling a flatbed stopped in front of the stairs leading up to the entrance with a load of hardwood. Roger rolled and lit a cigarette as he watched a few of the teamsters unload the flatbed and stack the shiny planks neatly on the boardwalk under a wide leaded-glass window.

He thought about the amount of money it must take for an impressive undertaking such as this. He had no idea, but then again, this line of business was something that Roger was just not all that familiar with.

Roger watched and waited. He moved off the boardwalk and found a comfortable spot in the narrow alley between an upholstery shop and a dry-goods store, where he had a good view of the goings-on across the street. His head was still throbbing and he felt a little dozy, but he remained alert by nipping on the second bottle of rye he had in his knapsack and rolling and smoking cigarettes. He had plenty of both.

At nearly ten-thirty a slender sorrel pulling a two-seater buggy with a covered backseat rounded the corner and stopped in front of the building. An older, portly man with bushy white muttonchops and wearing a flattop brushed beaver hat sat in the backseat. Next to him was an attractive young woman wearing a plum-colored dress with a high collar.

They remained under the shaded cover, looking at the building for a long while. Then the man worked his way butt first out of the buggy’s backseat.

Roger smiled to himself as he watched the round man struggle to get his chubby frame out of the backseat. When he was out of the buggy and standing, supporting his stance with the aid of a polished black cane, he removed his hat and wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. The young woman remained in the buggy. She leaned out and her eyes caught a little sunlight before she sat back in the shade of the buggy.

“Come back, pick me up by two o’clock,” he said to the driver, “two o’clock sharp.”

“Sir,” the driver said with a tip of his brim, and then clucked the sorrel and moved off down the street, with the young woman still aboard and leaving the portly man looking up to the building. He turned, walked a few steps toward the middle of the wide street, stopped, then turned and looked back up at the building.

It was obvious to Roger the man wanted to have a full view of the building, wanted to take in all its grandness. The way the man moved and held his chin high reminded Roger of his own grandfather’s survey after a day of stacking hay in the barn. But this man was no farmer. Roger thought by the way he stood with his fists on his hips holding back the sides of his coat, watching the workers with an appraising eye, that he must be the man with the money, the man in charge or the banker that loaned the business the money.

Then Roger saw him, the man that he had traveled two days on the train to locate. The man known in gambling parlors from New Orleans to San Francisco as Boston Bill Black.

Boston Bill came walking out of the building flanked by two smaller men. It’s not that the men by his side were in any way short or even below average in size, it was simply that Boston Bill was unusually tall. Not unlike Roger — Roger was tall, too — but he was a good hand shorter than Boston Bill. Boston Bill’s head barely cleared the top of the door as he walked out. He was wearing a fancy suit with a green vest that was adorned with a draping gold watch fob.

The tall gambling man that Roger had come searching for in Appaloosa was right here in front of him now. He was a strong, handsome-looking man with silver-streaked black hair and a black-as-coal mustache.

At the moment he had a huge smile on his face as he walked down the steps with his hand extended toward the portly man in the street. The two men with him stayed back behind him a few steps. They both wore dark suits, but they weren’t refined in any way, not like Boston Bill.

Roger could certainly determine that detail about the two men. It was part of his job to quickly assess people and he was good at assessing. He figured if it wasn’t for their long, dirty hair, they might pass for guardsmen, like Dickerson men or Pinkertons or Denver police, even. But hell, they were nothing, no-accounts. One of them was blond and pretty like a woman, Roger thought. The other had deep-set eyes with a scraggly beard. He was skinny and younger than the blond man and a little smaller.