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  THE HIDER

  By Loren D. Estleman

  A Dimension W Western

  Dimension W is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright © 2013 by Loren D. Estleman

  Cover Design by R. Kent Rasmussen

  Copy-edited by: Anita Lorene Smith

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Photo and biographical profile by Deborah Morgan

  Since the appearance of his first novel in 1976, Loren D. Estleman has written nearly 70 books and hundreds of short stories and articles. Among those books: Writing the Popular Novel, from Writer’s Digest Books; the second in a new series featuring Estleman’s Los Angeles film detective, Valentino (Alone, featuring Greta Garbo, December 2009); Burning Midnight (the 22nd Amos Walker novel, June 2012); Roy & Lillie: A Love Story (between a reprobate Old West judge and a celebrated British beauty, August 2010); The Confessions of Al Capone (his largest project to date, October 2012); and a novel about hanging judge Isaac Parker, The Branch and the Scaffold (April 2009). There are several short stories in the hopper, and proposals for future novels in both the mystery and historical western genres. He recently finished writing the 23rd installment in the Amos Walker P.I. series, and is currently working on another standalone novel.

  Estleman has received fan letters from such notables as John D. MacDonald, The Amazing Kreskin, Mel Tormé, and Steve Forbes. He has acquired a loyal cult readership across the United States and in Europe, and his work has appeared in 23 languages.

  An authority on both criminal history and the American West, Estleman has been called the most critically acclaimed author of his generation. He has been nominated for the National Book Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award.

  He has received twenty national writing awards: the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement from Western Writers of America, The Barry Award from Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, four Shamuses from the Private Eye Writers of America, five Spurs from the Western Writers of America, two American Mystery Awards from Mystery Scene Magazine, Outstanding Western Writer, 1985, from Popular Fiction Monthly, two Stirrup Awards for outstanding articles in the Western Writers of America magazine, The Roundup, and three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. In 1987, the Michigan Foundation of the Arts presented him with its award for literature. In 1997, the Michigan Library Association named him the recipient of the Michigan Author’s Award. In 2007, Nicotine Kiss was named a Notable Book by the Library of Michigan.

  In 1993, Estleman was Guest of Honor at the Southwest Mystery Convention in Austin, Texas. He was Honored Guest at Eyecon ’99 (Private Eye Writers of America Convention), held in St. Louis in July of that year. In June 2001, he was Guest of Honor (the first American chosen) at the Bloody Words Convention in Toronto, Canada.

  He has been a judge for many literary honors, including the prestigious Hopwood Award given by the University of Michigan. He has written book reviews for many newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, and in 1988 he covered the filming of Lonesome Dove for TV Guide.

  He’s worked hard to get where he is, beginning in the unheated upstairs of the 1867 Michigan farmhouse where he was raised. His fondest childhood memory is that of curling up in his robe with a mug of hot chocolate in front of the television to enjoy such grand western series as Maverick and Gunsmoke.

  When he was fifteen years old, he sent out his first short story for publication. Over the next eight years, he collected 160 rejections. He attributes his tenacity to ego, and he’s earned that, too. He and his brown-bag lunch commuted to Eastern Michigan University to cut expenses after his father was disabled and his mother went to work to support the family.

  Estleman often says he’s not a fast writer. He is, however, consistent, spending an average of six hours a day at his typewriter. He polishes as he goes, consuming a prodigious amount of cheap typing paper; a process he refers to as “writing for the wastebasket.”

  His favorite writers—and those who have inspired his work—include Jack London, Edgar Allan Poe, W. Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, and Edith Wharton.

  A sought-after speaker and a veteran journalist of police-beat news, Estleman graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Journalism. On April 27, 2002, EMU presented him with an honorary doctorate in letters. He left the job market in 1980 to write full time. He lives in Michigan.

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  To my brother Charles,

  for support long overlooked

  THE HIDER

  Chapter One

  I met him the week we declared war on Spain. It was the day President McKinley ordered Commodore Dewey to go to the Philippines and take the Spaniards to task for the treacherous and unprovoked sinking of the warship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15. The newspapers back east were full of proposed candidates for an elite squad of soldiers, the likes of heavyweight prizefighters Bob Fitzsimmons and James J. Corbett, that would panic the enemy on sight and send them scattering for cover. One suggested that Buffalo Bill Cody take charge of a company of six hundred Sioux Indians and scalp his way to Santiago. It was because of all this excitement that you didn’t read in the papers about the spring a youth and an old man struck out across Oregon in search of something that everyone said no longer existed. Nevertheless it happened, and you’re reading about it now.

  The first time I saw him, he was astride that enormous mule of his, slowly making his way down the steep incline that led past my doorway. Looking back on it, I guess I saw him that way more often than on foot in the short time I knew him. He rode easily, ramrod-straight but loose, letting his free right arm sway with the motion of the mule. It was the biggest mule I had ever seen; it stood a good hand higher than my father’s bay, and the upper part of each of its forelegs was as big around as one of my thighs. Of course, I was only eighteen years old at the time, and not as big as I was going to get, but that was still a big animal.

  I was pumping water into the wooden trough alongside the porch when I heard him coming, and paused to watch. At first glance, I thought the mule was lop-eared, but as it moved closer I could see that one of its ears had been chewed in half. I say “chewed” because that’s what it looked like, all ragged and torn and rimmed with scar tissue, as if some starving predator that was too weak to find anything better had grabbed hold of it and worried it in two. That, together with the rope-thick scars that crisscrossed the beast’s muscular flanks, made it a formidable sight.

  But it wasn’t the mule, big as it was, that first caught my attention. I didn’t really appreciate the singular appearance of the animal until I could tear my eyes from the man. He was rail-thin, clad in filthy buckskins and high-topped boots, the toes of which were curled and the soles worn so thin that it must have hurt him to walk over rocky ground. His face, what I could see of it beneath the broad-brimmed campaign hat, was old and bo
ny, and covered with skin the color and texture of his buckskin shirt. There was something about the beak of a nose that would have made me peg him for a preacher if it weren’t for his eyes. A preacher’s eyes usually look past you, but he had the kind that burn through to the back of your head. I suppose some people, once they have read this piece, will be inclined to put down that fiery glow as a sign of madness, but that wasn’t the way it struck me then. It still isn’t.

  He had a bedroll strapped to the back of his saddle, and, as he drew near, I could see that it was wrapped in a heavy fur cloak of some kind. The scarred butt of a rifle protruded from the saddle’s weathered scabbard. Aside from that, he carried no other gun that I could see. That wasn’t strange in itself; by that spring of 1898 there were fewer and fewer people in Oregon who packed side arms. The only reason I make note of it is that it just naturally seemed that a man like that would carry a revolver. In the days to come, I was to find out a lot about him that didn’t fit.

  He didn’t speak until he had reined to a halt in front of the watering trough.

  “Afternoon.” It was a dry, dust-caked voice, straight from the trail.

  I didn’t reply to the greeting. Actually it was a god-awful hot day, the kind that blurs your vision and leaves you bone-tired even if you haven’t done anything all day but sit. “The Devil’s holiday,” Pa used to call it, when he was sober enough to notice the weather. But then, the stranger hadn’t said what kind of afternoon it was.

  “Something I can do for you, mister?” I said.

  “Nothing special.” He wasn’t looking at me; instead, he passed his eyes around the parched yard, seemingly appraising the place. For a moment I wondered if he were a buyer, and my heart leaped. But his next words brought me back to earth with a thud. “My mule appears thirsty. Wonder if you could spare him a drink.”

  I shrugged, trying to hide my disappointment. “Why not? As long as you fill it up when he’s through. That’s the house rule.”

  “Fair enough.” He swung down from the saddle in one quick, easy motion. That surprised me. I had him figured at about fifty-five or sixty years old, and would have expected him to be a lot stiffer. You never can tell where old men are concerned. He was even taller on foot than he appeared while astride the mule. I guessed him to be around six feet or more, which would have made him a giant in just about any town in the West. Somewhere along the line, people have gotten the notion that all westerners back then were tall. This just wasn’t true. In all the time I spent on the prairie, which when you add it all up is considerable, I don’t think I met five men who were over five foot ten with their high-heeled western boots on. I read somewhere that Pat Garrett was six four, but I don’t credit it. You can’t believe anything you read these days, unless it’s in the New York World. But I’m getting off the track.

  I noticed as he adjusted the gear on the mule’s broad back that the stranger wore two knives on his belt, both on the right side, and that one was sort of teardrop-shaped, with the narrow part up toward the handle and the curved part pointing downward. I couldn’t see much use in a knife without a point, but I wasn’t about to ask him why he wore such a seemingly worthless item. I was ashamed to show my ignorance in those days. Anyway, the other knife seemed right enough. He took the beast by the bridle and led it to the trough, where it drank eagerly.

  “That sure is a big mule, mister.”

  He turned toward me and stretched. I thought his arms would never end. “I reckon so,” he grunted. “His pa was the best cutting horse on the King Ranch.”

  “Those are mighty fine qualifications,” I said appreciatively. Even as far north as Oregon, stories were told of Richard King’s spread outside of Corpus Christi. It was the biggest ranch north of the Rio Grande, or at least it had been at one time. Nobody in those parts had heard much about it in over ten years. “Yes, sir,” I repeated, “that is one big animal. What do you call him?”

  “Mule.”

  “ ‘Mule?’ Doesn’t he have a name?”

  He shook his head contemptuously. “Pure foolishness to give a animal a name. He ain’t people. I just call him mule. He comes when he hears it.”

  I began to see that there was something more to this stranger than dust and buckskins.

  “Pretty fair plot of ground,” he said, running his eyes over the yard and house once again. I don’t know what gave him that impression. The closest thing that ground had to soil was a fine yellow dust, pounded into a surface that held more than a passing resemblance to solid rock. The only life it supported was an occasional clump of sparse brown grass, and that just barely. If he’d meant the house, he was even farther off; there was certainly nothing in that weather-beaten shack that would inspire an artist, even a bad one. The picket fence, a relic of my mother’s first happy days on the farm, had fallen into a sad state of repair since her stormy departure nine years before.

  I didn’t mention any of this. “I suppose so,” I lied.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me now. It won’t be my place much longer.”

  The burning embers settled on me. “Bank?”

  I shook my head. “No, my pa paid off the mortgage years ago. That was before—” I broke off. Pa’s condition after Ma left was none of his business. “I’m hoping to sell it to take care of some debts.”

  “Your pa’s?”

  “Yes,” I said, before I could think.

  “When’d he die?”

  I sought not to reply, but the steady glare of those eyes broke me down. “Last month. Consumption.” Well, at least I could still lie.

  He nodded. As he did so, a little dust worked loose from the brim of his hat and floated to the ground. For a long moment we were silent, and I could hear the mule sucking water from the trough. The stranger had taken his eyes from me and was watching the horizon, as people do sometimes when they can’t think of anything to say. But I got the idea he was watching for another reason. I didn’t know why, because the horizon was no longer likely to spew up trouble—at least not the kind this man was undoubtedly used to. It was kind of eerie, the two of us not speaking and gazing out over the open land as if we were expecting a great feathered band of heathen Indians to come galloping and hallooing out of nowhere, their tomahawks itching for our scalps. I decided to break the silence.

  “Mister,” I said, “if you want to fill up your canteen, there’s plenty to spare.”

  He kept his eyes on the horizon. “Thanks.”

  I reached up and felt the fur cloak that sheltered the bedroll behind the stranger’s saddle. It was like thick leather, covered with little clots of coarse hair. It felt like horsehide, but no horse ever had hair like that. I asked him what it was.

  He eyed me suspiciously. “How old are you, boy?”

  I hadn’t expected a reaction like that. “Eighteen,” I answered. “Why?”

  “That explains it.” His eyes softened somewhat. “That there’s a buffalo robe, son. I reckon you’re too young to know buffalo when you see it.”

  “Bison,” I said, half aloud.

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘bison.’ That’s the proper name. I learned that when I went to school.”

  He didn’t answer. I had the feeling that he considered my argument beneath notice. I felt very, very young.

  The mule stopped drinking and backed up a couple of steps. I focused on this as a means of relieving my discomfort. “How come he stopped?” I asked, incredulously. “The trough’s still half full. I never saw a horse or a mule that would stop drinking while there was water left.”

  “You seen one now, boy.” He unstrung the canteen from his saddle horn and dipped it into the water. It made a gurgling sound and filled right up. Tipping it up, he downed a gulp, then filled it to the top and screwed on the cap. “There a town near here?” he asked.

  “If you can call it that,” I replied. “Just down the road about a mile.”

  “Has it got a name?”

  “Citadel.”

  “What
kind of name is that?”

  I explained it to him as best I could. According to what my teacher had told me when I was still in school, a Spanish explorer who had undergone a good deal of grief to get there had named the place Ciudadelo del Diablo, or the Devil’s Citadel. When a mission was established there twenty years later, however, the Devil was dropped from the name and it became simply Citadel. For some reason this story amused the stranger, because when it was finished he did something that surprised me. He smiled.

  It was as if he had shrugged off the last twenty years of living. He didn’t have many teeth, and at least a third of the ones he did have were gold, but the change was miraculous. “The Devil’s Citadel, is it?” he said. “I reckon there’s a good reason for it being named that.”

  The smile vanished as quickly as it had come, but while it was there, it added something to his character that I wouldn’t have believed existed had it not happened. He removed his hat and passed his sleeve across his forehead. His hair, brushed straight back from his forehead, was as thick as any I’d ever seen, and blinding white. The contrast between that and the walnut-brown of his features was startling. He was like one of those paintings you sometimes see of old westerners painted by young easterners. I was surprised to see that a man like that actually existed.

  He replaced the hat, and, with it, his solemnity. “Yeah,” he said, more to himself than to me, “I got to pick me up a new pack donkey. Mine pulled up lame two days back. Had to shoot him.” He lapsed into silence again. I could tell something was on his mind.

  “Boy,” he said at last, “I ask this question a lot, and I don’t often ask it without causing some kind of stir. All I want from you is a answer, yes or no.”

  “If I know the answer, mister, I’ll do my best to oblige.” I was flattered. I had the feeling that I was going to be let in on a rare confidence, and I wondered what it was about me that affected this close-mouthed man in such a fashion.

  He scanned the horizon again briefly, then settled his gaze on me. “Have you caught sight of a big brown buffalo hereabouts?”