The Assassin (Isaac Bell 8)

He drained the second cup and hurried off. “Back to the salt mines. See you tomorrow.”

Mrs. McCloud put another sugar bowl on the counter and hid the one from which she had sweetened the old man’s coffee.

“Make sure you wash the spoon.”

Mrs. McCloud looked up. The man in the old-fashioned frock coat and fancy trilby hat was back, furtive and cold-eyed as a steerer who sends clients to a shyster lawyer.

“What’s in it?” she asked.

“What do you care?”

She glanced up Fulton for another glimpse of the tall old man’s top hat bobbing slowly through the crowd that thronged the sidewalk. A street car blocked her view. “I couldn’t care less.”

Heading back to the office, Averell Comstock was surprised when he had to stop and rest halfway there, pale and trembling.

—

Isaac Bell and Texas Walt Hatfield looked for the assassin’s shooting hide on the roof behind the Toppling Derrick saloon’s false front. They agreed that the sight lines were there, an easy shot three hundred yards to the Clarion’s side window. With the roar of drinkers below celebrating new riches, it was doubtful anyone in the saloon would hear a shot, much less do anything about it. No other building looked down on the roof, ensuring privacy and time to draw a bead and wait.

Bell walked the perimeter. The roof sloped slightly to allow rainwater to spill off into a gutter. He saw a golden glint in the gutter, knelt down, pulled from the grit and hardened sediment that lined the wooden trough an empty cartridge shell.

“A wildcat,” said Bell, showing it to Hatfield. A standard factory-made Savage .303 brass case had been reshaped to accommodate customized powder and bullet loads for greater range and impact.

“Man’s loading his own,” said Hatfield.

“I’d expect that for his accuracy,” said Bell. A great marksman, which the assassin surely was, would use the so-called wildcat in conjunction with a finely machined chamber and a custom-made barrel. “But I’m surprised he didn’t scoop it up before he ran. It’s a heck of a telltale.”

“Maybe he knew he missed,” said Hatfield. “Got rattled.”

“Maybe . . . Odd, though. The .303 is made for the Savage 99.”

“Fine weapon. Though a mite light.”

“I wonder why he uses such a light gun. That 1903 Springfield would be more accurate.”

“But heavier.”

“His kill in Kansas was nearly seven hundred yards.”

“A man looks like a flyspeck at that range.”

“That’s why I assumed a Springfield.”

“Do you suppose he’s a little feller?” Hatfield wondered.

“Too small to hold a more accurate heavy gun? Might explain why he has to improve the Savage cartridge. Probably smithed his rifle to a farewell, too.” Bell pocketed the cartridge. “O.K. Let’s see where he went.”

Hatfield had been raised by Comanche Indians and was an expert tracker. Prowling the tar roof, he spotted a minute imprint of the corner of a bootheel, and found it repeated several yards into an alley. Step-by-step, mark by barely decipherable mark, in crusted mud, oil-soaked earth, and dried manure, they followed the sniper’s escape route down alleys and over a railroad track and into a stable’s corral, where they lost the trail in hoofprints.

“Mounted up here and rode off.”

The stable hands were vaqueros too old and lame to quit their jobs to get rich in the oil fields. Walt Hatfield addressed them in Spanish and translated for Bell. Two men had left quickly on horses they had boarded in the stable and had ordered saddled up an hour earlier.

“Two men?”

“One big, one little.”

“Were they carrying rifles?”