The Secret of Lodestar Read online

  Under Fire

  “Down!” Charvein threw Lucy down while Sandoval jerked away to the other side. The window shattered and the lantern crashed against the wooden counter behind them, spewing flaming coal oil on the floor.

  “Oh, my God!” she screamed.

  Flames had splashed Sandoval’s poncho, and Charvein tackled him, smothering the fire before the flames could burn through the woven cloth.

  “I’m okay,” Sandoval gasped, pulling the smoking poncho off over his head.

  Lucy was cowering in the corner, pistol in one hand, eyes wide in the light of the flames that were licking up the counter and spreading across the floor.

  “Stay down!” Charvein yelled. “Don’t make a target.” The sudden brightness had blinded him, and he fired through the window with little hope of hitting anyone. He saw muzzle flashes from outside, and bullets smashed the remaining shards of glass that clung to the sash. By the time he and Sandoval returned fire, the flashes had moved, coming closer.

  THE SECRET

  OF LODESTAR

  Tim Champlin

  BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK

  The Berkley Publishing Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  THE SECRET OF LODESTAR

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley edition / March 2012

  Copyright © 2012 by John Michael Champlin.

  Cover illustration by Tyler Jacobson.

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

  Interior text design by Tiffany Estreicher.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  EISBN: 9781101560884

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  For Ellie, with love

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  ONE

  Boom!

  A big-bore rifle thundered across the baking silence.

  Marc Charvein snapped his head left. A puff of white smoke blossomed from the flank of the desert mountain. Suddenly his horse jerked and stumbled forward.

  He instinctively kicked his right boot clear of the stirrup, tucked his shoulder, and rolled away as nine hundred pounds of horse went down, thudding into the packed earth. Marc somersaulted, landing on his back, jarring his breath out. Head spinning from the impact, he scrambled up and dove behind his horse’s body as the rifle boomed again.

  The slug kicked dirt from the spot he’d just vacated. He peeked over the horse’s withers, toward the mountainside from where the shots originated. Nothing moved. The only sounds were his own heart slamming softly against his rib cage and a fitful desert wind whispering across the playa, chasing the echoes.

  The weathered face of the barren mountain swam in rising heat waves less than a mile away. The sun was too high to throw into relief the creases and gullies in the hillside, where a shooter might be hiding. And Marc couldn’t pinpoint where he’d seen the puff of smoke. Nearly twenty years had passed since he was last ambushed—by a war party of Apaches in New Mexico when he was a corporal in the Third Cavalry. But those Indians were not marksmen, and they attacked with an odd assortment of stolen rifles for which they had little ammunition.

  Blood trickled from his horse’s temple, indicating a fatal head wound. At least it had been mercifully quick. But had the bullet been intended for Marc? Apparently so, or the rifleman wouldn’t have fired again so quickly.

  From the sound of the shot, and its obvious distance, it had to be a .50-caliber from Denson Boyd’s long-barreled Sharps. Marc could visualize the man cursing his miss as he slid another long brass cartridge into the breech of the single-shot rifle, slamed home the shell with the lever, jerked the rifle to his shoulder, and fired without aiming through the vernier sight. The special Sharps was Boyd’s signature weapon, one he’d previously used to fend off pursuing posses. Four lawmen trying to close the gap on this man had felt the sting of the big slugs guided by an unerring eye—an eye which never seemed to sleep. More than one posse had decided the wiser course was to return to town with the tale they’d lost Denson Boyd and his gang in the desert mountains.

  This was the man Marc Charvein was now trailing—who’d spotted and dry-gulched him. Charvein had made it into the third day of his solo manhunt; he should have known to keep his distance. But he couldn’t drop too far back, for fear of losing his quarry altogether. And it was impossible to stay hidden while moving in this barren Nevada desert. Traveling at night, he could do well enough with moon and stars but risked passing Boyd, who would likely camp in some lonely canyon. And riding by day, his horse raised a dust plume that could be seen for miles. To avoid being spotted in open country, he could take
to the steep, rocky terrain. But there he’d lose time and run the risk of his horse falling and breaking a leg. So he compromised and rode along the base of the mountains, trying to keep pace with, but not overtake, Denson Boyd. Charvein wasn’t trying to catch up—only keep him in sight until Boyd could lead him to the cached loot.

  Perhaps Boyd had intended to kill the horse, to set his pursuer afoot in a waterless wilderness, miles from anywhere. After all, Boyd was now legally free and wouldn’t want to add murder—a hanging offense—to his lengthy record.

  Four years earlier—in June of 1881—Boyd and two others, Martin Stepenaw and Glen Savage, alias the Weasel, had held up a train just outside Gold Hill, Nevada, ambushed and wounded four guards, and blown open the express car, making off with $30,000 in gold ingots being shipped to the Carson City mint.

  Two months later they’d gotten drunk and careless in Virginia City. A woman faro dealer alerted the sheriff that Stepenaw had tried to pay her with slivers of metal hacked from a gold bar. He, Boyd, and Savage were arrested, and the damning evidence found on Stepenaw was part of a small ingot still bearing the “O” stamp of the Overstrike Mine. Put on trial with no hope of acquittal, the three were offered a reduced sentence if they’d reveal the location of the stolen treasure. They refused and were sentenced to twenty years in the state prison at Carson.

  Though rumored to be the ringleader, Boyd was released after only four years, through the intervention of one man—Ezra Pitney, owner of the stolen gold. It was a generally known secret that Pitney had sweetened the coffers of the governor’s upcoming campaign fund with a sizable contribution in return for the governor commuting Boyd’s sentence to time served.

  Marc Charvein lay pinned down, Colt in hand but no target in sight. He wondered why the governor had selected this member of the trio for release. Probably because Boyd was the smartest and meanest, and Ezra Pitney knew he’d head straight for the hidden gold. It figured. It also figured that Boyd would expect to be followed.

  Charvein wiped a gloved hand across his brow; the doeskin came away streaked with salt and grime. He ran his tongue over his dry, cracked lips.

  What now? He was in the open without even a clump of sage or a creosote bush to hide behind. Sucking in a breath of superheated air, he fervently cursed his luck. On the baking ground behind his dead horse, he regretted with all his soul that he’d ever taken Pitney’s offer to track this man and find the mine owner’s stolen gold.

  He fumbled for his nickel-plated pocket watch. Half past twelve. He forced himself to lie concealed another half hour. Was the shooter also patiently waiting, training his long buffalo gun on the dead horse, assuming Marc would rise up sooner or later and also become buzzard food? The thought made him sweat. He tried to put himself in Denson Boyd’s mind. If the ex-convict intended to retrieve the stolen gold—and surely that was the only reason for rushing out into this wilderness with a pack mule—then he had to discourage any pursuit. For all Boyd knew, Charvein was just another outlaw. If ever caught and tried for murder, Boyd could always claim self-defense. There were no witnesses. Who could say otherwise? It would be his word against a dead man’s. More likely, Marc Charvein would just vanish without a trace, vultures, wolves, and insects reducing his remains to scattered bones soon concealed by windblown dust and sand. He shivered at the image of his own demise.

  But a slow anger ignited. He resolved to take back the offensive. He would not be intimidated. Even though he was out of water, he still had plenty of life in him.

  In less than thirty minutes, the flies began to gather, buzzing in the stillness. He rolled onto his back and squinted at the brassy sky from under his bent hat brim. Far above, black vultures soared on rising thermals, drifting silently like charred pieces of paper blown aloft from a fire.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. All parties to this drama bided their time—the shooter, Charvein, and the vultures who waited for the man to abandon the dead horse or become food himself. Death was slow, but vultures were patient. Charvein smiled grimly. They were nature’s cleanup squad. It was just such as these that reinforced his belief in God—one part of nature balancing another.

  With thoughts like these, he entertained himself in a deliberate attempt to keep his mind off the man with the long-range rifle.

  He finally bellied up to the neck of his fallen horse, removed his hat, and raised one eye above the body, hoping the shooter wasn’t constantly alert, trigger finger ready. Marc wished for his field glasses to scan the gray hillside. But they lay, probably crushed, in the saddlebags beneath his dead horse. The silence was maddening. How much longer should he wait, ignoring his thirst and the sun that was sucking him dry? The only safe thing to do was wait until cover of darkness, but that was still many hours away.

  What would he do if he were in Boyd’s position? “Hell, if I’d been behind the wall four years, I’d just set any pursuer afoot, then move on. Let the desert finish the job,” he muttered to himself. Killing my horse, he thinks he’s killed me. He won’t waste any more time here; he’ll take off after that gold.

  He placed his hat on the barrel of his Colt and eased it above the animal’s body. He moved it around slightly, but it drew no fire. “The bastard’s gone,” he grunted. “Time for me to go, too.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, he crawled around to the other side of his horse. The body was bloating and the cinch was tight, so he took his sheath knife and slashed the webbing and the surcingle. Returning to the top of the saddle, he gripped the horn and the cantle, placed a foot on either side and tugged until his breath became raspy and sweat stung his eyes. “Damned stirrup is hanging it up.” He wiggled the saddle from side to side until he finally managed to drag it free from the soft dirt under the horse. The rifle in its scabbard was dirty but undamaged. The three-quart cloth-covered canteen was another matter. The neck, with the stopper inserted, had been broken off, spilling all the water.

  “Shit!” Charvein exploded. “Needed this more than the rifle.” But at least the container wasn’t crushed. He’d conserved that water, not drinking any for the last eighteen hours, only rinsing his mouth now and then before spitting it back into the metal canteen. He’d been down to three good swallows, so the loss was not great.

  He rummaged in the topside saddlebag, took out a rag, some oil and a cleaning rod, and gave the rifle a thorough cleaning. The new Colt Lightning pump used the same .44-40 cartridges as his revolver. He had two boxes of fifty cartridges each, plus what was in the magazine. He struggled to drag the rest of the saddlebags out from under the horse. They held a change of clothes and a few strips of beef jerky. He was hungry, but he left the jerky alone until he found some water; the dried beef would only serve to make him even thirstier.

  He stood and scanned the horizon, noting that he was in a wide valley between two low ranges of mountains that jutted up sharply like the broken teeth of a crosscut saw. Somewhere within those gun-sight notches and hidden canyons might be springs or seeps of water. But he couldn’t bet on it this time of year. The terrain matched hundreds of other places in Nevada. Rows of mountains ran mostly northwest to southeast, with wide, flat valleys between. And the distances were vast, dwarfing humans. There were not even any life-sustaining, moisture-hoarding barrel cactus or prickly pear such as those in the Sonoran Desert far to the south. Nevada was what he pictured the surface of the moon to be—lifeless rocks and jagged mountains and dust—plenty of dust—baked by a merciless sun. Even Indians avoided places like this that wouldn’t even sustain plants.

  He pulled out his watch and wound it out of habit. The only time that mattered here was daylight and dark and the long rhythms of nature.

  He slung the saddlebags over his left shoulder, hooked the strap of the empty canteen over his right, gripped the rifle, and started walking west by south. Instinct told him there would not be another ambush. Boyd, riding a mule and trailing another with a pack saddle, was likely several miles ahead by now, but going in which direction? Only God, or the
devil, knew.

  Charvein tried not to think of his predicament. Except for Boyd, there probably wasn’t another human within a hundred miles. He’d angle across toward the nearest range of mountains several miles distant, so he could slip into the canyons an hour or so before dark and hunt for water, possibly tracking prints of a coyote or some smaller desert critters to a seep or tank. Fresh-flowing streams were out of the question.

  It was a desperate gamble. He was far from being a tracker or skilled outdoorsman.

  Before him a waterless lake bed stretched for miles, streaked here and there with white deposits. The crusty surface was cracked into millions of pieces like a brown mosaic. A shimmering veil of heat made the distant mountains weave in some macabre dance. Wind devils spun across the surface, whirling dust hundreds of feet into the air in columns like small tornadoes. Charvein watched these whirlwinds. Some appeared to stand still; others moved slowly, gradually dissipating while others formed.

  This part of the world received only a few inches of rain a year, and often it came in two or three violent storms, hours apart.

  Marc wondered what this area looked like after one of those storms. Consistent with the nature of this land, the rain would not be a gentle soaker. Hard downpours with lightning and thunder—male rain—would transform the low-lying surface into a shimmering lake, several inches to a foot deep.

  But the dominant sun always returned to suck up the moisture. And what didn’t evaporate sank beneath the surface.

  The wind picked up, blowing directly into his face. Sand stung his exposed skin. He paused and removed the bandanna from his neck and tied it around his mouth and nose. Tugging down his hat brim, he bent his head and trudged on, the empty canteen banging against his hip, the rifle in one hand, saddlebags dragging at his left shoulder.

  The afternoon wore on. Dust coated him. His squinted eyes became irritated from grit. The wind gusted stronger, scouring the playa, throwing clouds of dust into the air. Using the pale disk of sun, he held his direction. But when it finally dropped behind the distant mountains and the atmosphere grew murkier with advancing nightfall, he could no longer be sure.