Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell Read Free Page B

they’d lost the trail and given up after two days, returning to their claims.
    “I’d guess Arno’s halfway to Mexico now,” suggested Jasper Davis, a tall blond miner. “He and his partner took that gold and headed south.”
    “I reckon you could be right, Jasper,” allowed Johnny Barker. “If he were holed up around here, folks would have seen him for sure.”
    “I was riding down the trail from Grizzly Hill at about the time they were holding up the stage,” Jasper continued. “I suppose I’d have seen them if they went up that way.”
    “I just keep on wondering who his partner was,” a third man said. “Arno wasn’t bright enough to plan a robbery on his own. And he didn’t seem to have any good pals.”
    “I saw you and him drinking together one time,” Johnny said, looking at Jasper. “A couple of weeks ago, at Selby’s Hotel. Did he say anything about a partner?”
    The blond man frowned. “You know, now that you mention it, he did mention that he had a partner down Hangtown way, where he was mining before. He said something about him going prospecting and his partner following along after.”
    “Prospecting?” Johnny snorted. “Checking out the stage, more likely. Prospecting for a good time to rob it.”
    It was then that Max came down the dusty trail from Grizzly Hill, leading his mule. “Rallo,” he called to the men by the creek. “A man and a woman have been murdered up the trail a piece. Their little girl is lost in the mountains. I’m going to Selby’s barroom to gather a search party. Pass the word.”
    “A woman? Murdered?” Jasper said, but Max had already moved on, tugging on the mule’s lead. The men dressed and followed.
    Several buildings in Selby Flat offered lodgings for transient miners: a log cabin with a bunkroom had beds for a dollar a night; a large canvas tent provided space on a dirt floor for half that price. Selby’s Hotel, located at the center of the encampment, was the biggest and best of the miners’ hotels.
    Selby’s was a sprawling structure built of logs and roofed with thick brown canvas. It was a palatial establishment by the standards of the area. First-time visitors, stepping off the dusty (or muddy) path into Selby’s barroom, had been known to stop dead in their tracks, frozen in place by its unexpected opulence.
    The walls were hung with pale pink calico that had been printed with roses of every size and variety, ranging from delicate blossoms smaller than a baby’s thumb to cabbagelike blooms the size of a man’s head. The cloth draped elegantly around a massive mirror, brought all the way from New York to San Francisco by ship, and from San Francisco to Selby Flat on the back of a mule.
    Mrs. Selby took very good care of that mirror. Every morning she wiped away the dust and polished the glass. Then she polished the cut-glass decanters and the jars of brandied fruit that stood on the shelf in front of the mirror. The floor was dirt, of course, but that dirt was hard-packed and Mrs. Selby swept it each morning. The room was furnished with benches and tables constructed from rough-cut planks. Mrs. Selby had wanted nicer furniture, but she made do by draping the tables in bright red calico to hide the rough wood.
    By the time Max reached Selby’s, word had spread, and the room was crowded with men who wanted to know what had happened. When Mr. Selby called for quiet, Max stood by the grand mirror and described what he had found up by Grizzly Hill.
    Death was common enough in the mining camps. Men got drunk and fell in the creek and drowned. Men didn’t hear the warning rattle of a sidewinder, got snakebit, and died of the poison. Men got into fights and sometimes killed each other for gold. Mexicans killed white men and white men killed Mexicans and both killed Indians and Chinamen. A man’s murder was unfortunate, but nothing to make anyone hurry down the trail.
    A woman’s murder, however, was something else. There were few women in