"I want men watching the three main roads out of the Rockies," Brendan McKinley commanded. "The moment they spot Richard Mellon or Henry's party, I want one man riding back here with a report, and the others tailing them. I want to know where they make camp."
"Yes, sir," the steward, Elendt, said, and hurried out of the room.
Even if Henry was just a hired gun, Brendan would make him suffer. He had a knot of cold fury in his gut, and he needed a target for his rage.
Hmph, wants to take a train, does he? Brendan mused. First, we'll let him get acquainted with a prison cell. Then we'll have him brought out for a nice, long chat. We'll teach this country bumpkin what the real world is like. The tuition, of course, will be his 20-year-old body and soul. Either that, or he can spend the rest of his short life as a fugitive.
A cruel, satisfying smile touched his lips. It might even save him a few thousand dollars in bounty money.
But it's better to deal with him quickly, he corrected himself. A little less torture. We don't want the Sinclair family intervening before we're done.
Henry's party moved slowly. The last eighteen miles of the mountain road still held a half-dozen good ambush sites. In truth, nearly the entire road was a potential deathtrap.
They finally emerged from the Rocky Mountains just after 3 PM. Fifteen miles of open plains lay between them and the city of Denver.
A few small shops catering to mountain folk dotted the roadside. Henry's party rode past without stopping.
As they did, a local merchant caravan took notice. Two of their riders broke off and galloped toward the city, while the rest of the caravan—a wagon and three riders—fell in behind Henry's group, following them at a distance.
Though the danger of an ambush was much lower on the plains, Henry still had Charles and Owen scout ahead.
The weather was beautiful. The sky was a brilliant, high-plains blue, with only a few wisps of white cloud. A gentle breeze blew across the prairie.
Denver had been founded in 1858, during a gold rush. Now, it was known as the "Queen City of the Plains."
As they entered the city limits, Henry felt a strange sense of temporal vertigo. Zhang Tianyuan, in his past life, had been to Denver. He remembered the magnificent State Capitol building, its dome gilded with gold leaf. Now, as he rode through the same streets, that building was nowhere to be seen. In its place were dusty, low-slung wooden structures.
The city of his memory was a clean, modern metropolis. The city he rode through now was a dirty, chaotic frontier town. The main thoroughfare, Colfax Avenue, was not a paved, 26-mile-long boulevard, but a three-mile stretch of red dirt, choked with the dust kicked up by countless horses and wagons. The air was thick with the smell of manure.
He even remembered a funny historical tidbit: in this era, a bachelor's worth was judged by the cleanliness of his trouser cuffs. Dirty cuffs meant you couldn't afford a carriage and were a low-class charlatan trying to fake your way into high society.
The two carriages in his party had long since closed their windows against the dust. They made their way toward the famous 16th Street, the city's burgeoning commercial district. Union Station was still under construction, but the street was already lined with two and three-story wooden buildings.
The grandest of them was the three-story, reddish-brown Aston Hotel.
Richard Mellon formally invited Henry and his entire party to stay at the Mellon family's Denver estate. After a brief discussion with Linda, Henry accepted.
Half an hour earlier, Brendan McKinley had received the report from his scout. Richard Mellon had joined forces with Henry's party. All thirty-seven of the guards—his and Mellon's—were gone. And yet, Richard was riding alongside Henry, laughing and talking, not looking at all like a captive.
The situation was completely baffling. Brendan decided to invite the Mellons to dinner. He had to find out what was going on before he made his next move.
What Brendan didn't know was that his scout was a professional. After delivering his report, the man had gone straight to the black market and sold the same intelligence.
In a small office in the city's east end, the man who ran the Denver black market, a handsome, blonde-haired man named Daisler, received the news.
He considered it for a moment, then called over one of his subordinates.
"Track this Henry's party. Find out where they're staying. Then, offer that location as an update to every assassin and outlaw who comes asking about the bounty. Price it at ten dollars. I want a steady stream of killers knocking on his door."