Denver Strike Read online

  Finally, Robert Carthay escaped. He found Lomela and warned her; she told Tom Dulles, a Denver cop and her former lover. It was clear that Nek would stop at nothing to get Carthay back and make him sign over the papers. And Nek had the money and the hired gunmen to do it.

  Dulles realized that it was an extraordinary situation—and that it called for extraordinary measures.

  Like most of the cops in major cities around America, he had heard rumors of a lone auburn-haired stranger who feared nothing for he no longer had anything to lose.

  Dulles sent Lomela and her father to separate hiding places, then turned his attention to getting in touch with the world’s deadliest vigilante.

  Hawker was impossible to find. But by now he had such a complex network of sympathizers around the nation that it was just as impossible for people in need to remain beyond his hearing.

  The vigilante heard about Carthay and his plight. He was on a plane out of Miami the next day, bound for the Mile High City.

  “That’s the story your father told me two days ago in Denver,” Hawker said, finishing the mug of tea. “Tom Dulles brought him in to talk to me. It was a short meeting. Your father wore a big Western hat and glasses, a kind of disguise so he wouldn’t be recognized. Apparently Nek has spies everywhere. Money buys even the most unlikely spies. Dulles told me where your father was being hidden and where you were hiding. I decided that Nek was most likely to send his goons after you. If he got you and maybe killed one of your children, then he would have plenty of blackmail leverage on your father and his two partners.”

  The woman laughed softly. “You know what the really strange thing is? All those years after Bill Nek double-crossed him, my daddy still wouldn’t say anything bad about that man. My daddy was fierce loyal, and he just couldn’t bring himself to say anything bad about a man who had been a partner of his.”

  “Come to think of it,” said Hawker, “he didn’t have much bad to say about Nek two days ago when I met him.”

  “It’s not because Daddy likes Nek. Don’t think for a moment that’s the reason. He thinks Bill Nek is the lowest creature on earth. He double-crossed his partners way back when Jimmy Estes found that first vein of silver, and he’s spent his whole life double-crossing people. Daddy used to just sort of shake his head when folks would tell him that Nek was stealing, cheating—even killing—to get what he wanted. I really don’t think Daddy believed the stories. But he believes them now.”

  Hawker put his empty mug on the floor and settled back, looking into the fire. Outside, the wind had freshened. It moaned through the high peaks and rattled the windows. Hawker pulled the goose-down quilt up over his chest. “I’m glad you came and helped me,” he said. “I would have frozen to death out there.”

  “Don’t talk anymore,” Lomela said. “I’ll get some warm soup in you come morning. We need to build your strength back up. You’ll still be feverish for a while, so you best sleep here by the fire. If you need anything, just call out. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll hear you.”

  The vigilante let his head sink deeper into the pillow as he stared into the fire.

  Soon, he was asleep.

  four

  He awoke with his teeth chattering, sweat beading on his forehead, trembling uncontrollably.

  The fire was now just a mound of glowing embers. The cabin shifted in the wind, its timbers creaking. The moon had disappeared, leaving a silver halo above the snowy peaks to the west. Hawker knew it was very late.

  He threw back the blanket and found the wood-box. The plank floor was like ice beneath his feet. He knelt before the fire and fitted two sections of splintered wood into the coals before his back turned to water and his lungs began to labor in the thin air. He tried to catch himself, but couldn’t in time. He sprawled across the floor with a whoof.

  Then Lomela was beside him, clucking and cooing, scolding him for being up. She cradled his head in her lap and rubbed his hands briskly, trying to warm him. She wore a granny nightgown of brushed cotton, and Hawker pressed against her, colder than he had ever been.

  “You purely do have a fever. How long have you been shaking like this?”

  “I-I-I don-don-don’t know.”

  She pulled him back to the rug, hugged her body close to his, then dragged the blanket over the two of them. “Here, this ought to warm you. No, don’t say anything. Just go to sleep. That’s what I’m fixing to do.”

  Hawker awoke later. He didn’t know how much later. He was no longer shivering, but that was not the reason he had awakened. The woman was still beside him, her comfortable body fitted against his. Her leg was thrown over his thigh, and he was aware of a gentle warm pressure against his right knee. The woman’s left hand was moving in a circular motion over his bare back, while her right hand nuzzled the hair on his abdomen. There had been a subtle change in her body tone, some deep, primal change of which Hawker was aware on an animal level.

  He stirred against her, lifted one hand, and brushed the hot weight of her breast accidentally.

  Lomela’s moan was like a sob.

  He felt the gentle pressure against his knee increase, a pressure that grew hotter and damper with each second. Hawker touched his palm to the woman’s slowly writhing buttocks, sliding along the soft curvature of her waist and ribs. He wrapped her hair in his fist and pulled her face to his, surprised at the eagerness of her lips, the hunger of her tongue.

  “I’ve been so long without a man,” she whispered in long exhalation. “Don’t know what came over me. Being near you felt so good. But it ain’t fair, you being sick—”

  “I’m feeling better,” Hawker whispered back. “See?”

  Lomela’s laughter was more a feral growl. “You purely do feel healthy. Real healthy. I may feel a fool come morning, but right now I just don’t care. A woman shouldn’t have to go so long without having a man. Being without a man weakens a woman’s body, and it makes her soul go all hungry. That’s how I feel right now. Hungry.”

  Hawker watched as the woman stood abruptly and stripped the cotton gown over her head. It was the same ripe, earth-brown body he had seen that afternoon, but the firelight added subtleties of shape and texture that made her look even more desirable. Suddenly shy with the vigilante’s eyes hard on her, she gave a girlish shrug, “I know I ain’t much to look at anymore. Having babies puts some wear on a woman’s body. But what I got, Mr. Hawker, is all yours, yours to do as you want, any way you want. All I ask is that you treat me like a woman. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  Hawker took the woman by the shoulders and pulled her to him, sliding his hands down so they cupped her large, soft breasts. “For starters, how about calling me James?”

  Her head was thrown back, eyes slightly closed. “That surely does feel nice, James,” she moaned.

  Hawker lowered her breasts down onto his face, feeling the nipples flatten themselves against his eyes. Then he began to use his tongue on her, touching her nipples in slow rhythm to the pressure her hips made against his bare leg.

  He rolled her over then, and she pulled his lips to hers, hard, as her hands moved over his body and stripped away his underwear, and Hawker wrapped his fists in her long black hair as her legs spread wide and, with her small left hand, she found him and guided him into her, too anxious for any more touching or hugging, hungry, as she had said, for the feel of a man in her.

  Her face had gone soft and sluggish, her eyes closed, lips swollen, and she moaned in ecstasy with each thrust the vigilante made as the sweat from his forehead dripped down onto her face.

  His left arm, he noticed, had begun to bleed again.

  It was more than an hour before Hawker had time to do anything about it.

  When Hawker first awoke, he wasn’t so sure that it all hadn’t been a dream. But the quick, familiar kiss Lomela gave him told him it had been real enough.

  “How’s your fever, James?”

  “All gone, Lomela. How’s your fever?”

  She flashed a vampis
h smile. “Never better. I found me the sure cure for it last night”—her smile broadened—“but it’s only a temporary cure.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. My body’s happy, too—I think.” Grimacing humorously, Hawker got up and wrapped the blanket around himself as Lomela returned to the wood stove where thick slices of bacon and a half-dozen eggs were frying in the same black skillet. “Where are your kids?”

  The woman pointed with the spatula. “I sent my girl, Dolores, for a bucket of water. My oldest, K.D.—he’s nine—is out chopping me some more wood so I can finish your breakfast.”

  Hawker’s expression changed as he went quickly to the window. He pulled back the deerskin curtain. “How long have they been gone?”

  “’Bout five minutes.” The woman handed him a cup of very dark coffee as she asked quickly, “Don’t you see them out there?”

  Hawker dropped the curtain back, smiling. “I see them. They’re fine. Good-looking kids, too. I thought so yesterday, watching them through the binoculars.”

  The woman came into Hawker’s arms, smiling. “The way you watched me?”

  “I could have lied to you. I could have said I was a gentleman and turned away.”

  She slid her hand up under the blanket and held him in her fingers as she gave him a quick kiss. “I’m glad Tom Dulles didn’t send no gentleman to watch over us. Maybe that man really does still care about me.”

  Hawker found the clothes he had worn under the camouflaged jump suit: jeans, black crew-neck sweater, ankle-high climbing boots with Vibram soles. When he was dressed, he sat at the plank table while the woman served him the bacon and eggs. “You’re going to have to leave here with me, Lomela. You know that, don’t you? We’re going to have to leave today.”

  “I know. I’m kind of disappointed, too. I surely do like this cabin. It was kind of lonely the first week, but then the kids and me got to liking it. The air’s so pure and the mountains are so pretty—”

  “And Bill Nek’s men know exactly where it is. When those four goons don’t report back in, Nek is going to order another one of his hit squads up here to see what happened. I don’t want you and your kids waiting around to be questioned. While I’m taking care of my business up there on the mountainside this morning, you and your kids get packed. We’ll load your gear onto that Appaloosa mare and walk out. I’ve got a Land Cruiser hidden on a logging trail about three miles from here. I’ll drive you back to Denver, we’ll get in touch with Tom Dulles, and we’ll decide on a new hiding place for you.”

  As she took Hawker’s empty plate, she hesitated and looked at him closely. “But what will you do—after that, I mean?”

  “I’ve got to find where Nek is hiding Jimmy Estes and Chuck Phillips. I think that’s the key to this whole operation. That’s probably where Nek keeps most of his hired guns and most of his illegal munitions. When they took your father there, they made sure he was blindfolded. And when he escaped, it was dark, and they’d worn him half-crazy, so about all he can remember is that their hideout is in a deserted silver mine in a high valley not far from Leadville.”

  “There’s no shortage of high valleys around Leadville,” the woman said. “Finding one little played-out silver mine could take you months.”

  “I’ll stay however long I have to stay and do whatever I have to do to find them. We have a couple of things working in our favor. Nek has to keep your father and his two partners alive. If one of them dies, then the trust awards the remaining shares of stock to you—but in the form of a yearly allowance that would make it impossible for you to sell to anybody. Nek knows that. His lawyers have made sure he knows it. So Nek has to come up with some kind of leverage so strong that he can convince your father and his two partners to sell. I don’t doubt that he can do that, but it’ll take time. And with every hour that goes by, I’ll be that much closer to him and his gang.”

  “But why is it, you think, Mr. Nek wants my daddy’s mine so bad? He’s got all the money he could ever need. He’s got an estate in Denver as big as a castle—I’ve seen it from the road. And he’s got about a dozen condos in Aspen and Snowmass. Anything that man wants, he can afford to buy.”

  Hawker shrugged. “Maybe you just put your finger on it—part of it, at least. Maybe Nek doesn’t like the idea of his old partners having something he wants but can’t buy. Maybe it touches some of the old guilt he feels. Put yourself in his place. Fifty years ago, you cheat your three best friends out of a lot of money. You come up with some shoddy way to rationalize it: all’s fair in love and business, that sort of thing. Even so, the guilt is always there, always lingering just beneath the surface. So you go a little crazy, and you dedicate your whole life to making money, acquiring silver. You want to prove to yourself and everyone else that you really are the Silver King—not because of what you stole from your friends but because of your ability to accumulate a fortune. And didn’t Nek prove that, in a way? Compared with the wealth he’s amassed, that little bit he stole from his partners fifty years ago is really just a drop in the bucket. But your dad and the other two guys still remained broken-down old prospectors—in Nek’s eyes, anyway. Don’t you see how that could justify his actions in his own mind? He didn’t steal the money. He deserved it by virtue of being the only one of the four to be able to handle the money successfully. But then suddenly his old partners weren’t just broken-down old prospectors anymore. Nek got news that they had struck a deep vein—a vein that might rival the wealth of any of the mines he owns. Naturally, he wants it. He can’t allow the actions of his entire life to be proven wrong. He can’t let his old partners do better than he’s done.”

  The woman listened quietly. “I never thought about it like that before,” she said. “I just always pictured Mr. Nek as being a pure nasty mean man.”

  “Maybe he is,” Hawker said. “Hell, he probably is. Could be he just wants to corner the silver market—he wouldn’t be the first to try it. But one thing’s for sure: when Bill Nek wants something, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. Murder, kidnapping, whatever it takes. And when a man has as much money as he has, the only way to fight him is to use his own tactics. That’s just what I plan to do when I find his—”

  Hawker’s words were interrupted by a shrill scream—then another.

  Lomela dropped the pan she had been washing. “Dolores! My god, they’ve got my babies!”

  Hawker grabbed the Colt Commando from the corner and went crashing through the doorway outside. He got a quick glimpse of the black-haired girl being carried off toward the woods, kicking and screaming, over a man’s shoulder. The man was wearing a green coverall snowsuit. Then another man stepped into view and squeezed off two quick shots from a shotgun. Hawker dropped to the ground. At that distance, the pellets fell far short of him. The vigilante raised the Commando to fire, then reconsidered. There was too great a chance of hitting the girl—and he had no idea where the boy was.

  As he got to his feet, Lomela went running past him, screaming. Hawker grabbed her from behind and wrestled her to the ground. She had the strength of a bobcat, and it took him a few moments to subdue her.

  “Lomela! Listen to me! They want you to follow, don’t you understand? They want to take you hostage, too—”

  “But I want to be with my babies!” she cried.

  “Is it worth getting one of them, or even both of them killed? Until they have you, they have to take good care of those kids. But once they do have you, the kids are expendable. Understand?”

  The woman stopped struggling. She looked up into Hawker’s face, her eyes wide with sheer terror. “I’ll do what you say, James. I’ll do anything you say. But please—please get my little boy and girl back. You have to do that for me. You have to promise me—”

  Hawker was helping the woman to her feet, calming her as best he could. She grabbed him by the sweater and shook him. “Don’t just say you’ll do it! Promise that you will get my children back, damn it!”

  The vigilante stepped away, holding her at a
rm’s distance. “Do you know what you’re saying? Do you know what you’re asking me to do? If I go after those kids now, it’ll double the danger they’re in. And they’re already in enough danger.”

  “I can’t let that scum keep my children, James. Can’t you understand that? My kids are going to be scared out of their wits! It may change them for the rest of their lives. You have to get them back before it’s too late!”

  Hawker nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go after them on one condition.”

  “Anything. Anything at all. Just tell me what you want.”

  “I want you to stay by my side. I want you to do exactly what I tell you to do without question. Understand?”

  The woman nodded meekly.

  Hawker took a deep breath. His left arm was throbbing again and, after just that little bit of activity, he was already feeling weak. “Okay,” he said. “If you’ve got a saddle, stick it on that horse, and make it quick. We’ve got to catch them before they get to their vehicle. Did you hear the sound of any kind of motor this morning?”

  The woman shook her head immediately. “No, and I listened, too. Their truck or Jeep can’t be very close.”

  “Good,” said Hawker, returning to the cabin for the rest of his weaponry. “Let’s go.”

  five

  Hawker swung up onto the big Appaloosa mare and pulled Lomela onto the cantle behind him.

  “Are you sure you know how to ride?” the woman cried.

  “I know enough to know I’m not very good at it,” snapped Hawker, who did not like or trust horses. “Just shut up and hang on. And no matter what happens, don’t drop that canvas backpack.”

  “You already have the terrible-looking machine gun strapped to the saddle. Why do you need this backpack?”

  “Because that thing strapped to the saddle is an automatic rifle, not a machine gun, and I thought you weren’t going to ask any questions.”

  “But this backpack is so heavy—”

  “It’s heavy because of the grenades.”