“You want to cross the street?” Call asked.
“You got second thoughts about using that gun?”
“No.”
“Then hell no. Not gonna raise any suspicions by making a detour. The mining office is just up ahead.”
Call thought precaution was wiser than being forced to shoot up the town, but Brady was in charge, and Call kept pace with him. Lamplight spilled out of the saloon’s swinging doors, briefly illuminating their approach. Call supposed they were all miners, though his reasoning was simply that most men in the town worked in the mine and that they bore a resemblance to John Spellman, his traveling companion on the first few legs of his journey. Like Spellman, they wore dungarees, flannel shirts, and sported untrimmed beards that lay against their chests.
Call was aware of how closely he and Brady were being watched. He kept his eyes most particularly on the miner with his hands in his pockets. The man didn’t move, nor did his companions. Call nodded to them as he passed, his shotgun in clear view. Brady grunted at them. It might have been a greeting, Call thought, or a curse. Whatever it was, the miners didn’t return the sentiment and Brady and Call kept walking.
Call looked over his shoulder once, but the men remained as they were. The smell of liquor had been strong on them. Call figured they were pickled in place and no real threat even if they foolishly decided to try a holdup.
“This is it,” said Brady, hefting the strongbox once again under his arm.
Call couldn’t make out any sign to indicate they’d reached the mining office, but he had no reason to doubt Brady. The upper floor of the frame building was dark. Call would have hesitated to disturb Ramsey Stonechurch at this late hour. Brady showed no such reluctance, he noticed, but then the driver had experience dealing with the man some called Ramses or the Pharaoh with an unpleasantness mostly born of envy. It was said that Ramsey Stonechurch did not merely run the mining operation. He ruled it.
Call followed Brady up the outside stairs to the secondstory and lowered his shotgun while he waited behind the driver for someone to open the door. He expected to get his first look at Ramsey Stonechurch when the door finally opened. Instead, it was a woman in a nightgown and robe and she was bouncing a child in the crook of one arm and holding an oil lamp in the other.
“Brady!” She greeted him warmly as she stepped back and invited the driver in. She thrust the lamp at him. “Take this. Put the box over there.” She nodded toward the table and then turned her attention to the man still standing on the landing. “You must be Brady’s shotgun for the drive. You’re new.”
“Just a substitute, ma’am. McCall Landry.”
“Come in, Mr. Landry, but please rest your shotgun in the corner. I’m Maud Stonechurch. Ramsey’s wife.” She looked down at the child in her arms. “This is our daughter Ann. She’s fussing tonight. Another tooth coming in, I think.”
Call nodded politely. He’d had some experience with teething babies in his youth, but it had been a long time since he’d been around one. “Have you tried dipping a washcloth in cold water and rubbing it against her gums? She might chew on it, but that will relieve the pressure.”
“A cold washcloth,” Maud repeated thoughtfully. “No. The women I asked suggested a whiskey finger rubbed against her gums would do the trick, but right now I’m thinking two fingers of whiskey might serve me better.”
Call set his shotgun in the corner of the kitchen as directed and held out his hands, palms up. “May I?”
Maud Stonechurch did not hesitate. Relieved, she gave over her daughter to a man who, for all intents and purposes, was a stranger. She was feeling that desperate. “I’ll soak a cloth.”
Call cradled the child in one arm and bounced her gently while he made little clicking noises that caught her attention so that she stared at him wide-eyed.
Watching this as he set the strongbox and lamp on thetable, Brady made his opinion clear. “Christ,” he said under his breath. More loudly he said, “What next?”
Call shrugged. The movement jostled Ann enough to cause her discomfort, and she opened her mouth to howl just as her mother arrived with a damp, cold washcloth that had one corner twisted into a cone. Maud slipped a bit of it into her daughter’s mouth and Ann clamped down hard and began to suck.
“How old is she?” asked Call.
“A year this month. She usually sleeps through the night but the new tooth has been troublesome.”
Brady cleared his throat.
Maud didn’t look at him, but she did respond to the pointed bid for attention. “I haven’t forgotten you, Brady. I’m going to wake my husband now since you’re here on his business and Ann is in capable hands.”
“I’d appreciate it, ma’am.”
“Sit,” she said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You look dead on your feet. You, too, Mr. Landry, not because you look as if you’re about to fold like Brady here, but because Ann might sleep if you’re down.” She thrust her delicate chin in the direction of a rocker that was situated near the stove.
“If it’s all the same, Mrs. Stonechurch, I’ve had my fill of sitting and rocking on the stage. I’m fine standing.”
“As you like,” she said. She bent to kiss her daughter’s forehead before she left the room.
Brady shook his head again. “You’re something else, Landry.”
“Call. Not Landry.”
