Free Powder Keg by Ed Gorman

lot of nights. A lot of regrets, I guess.”
    For the first time, he laughed about something.
    “I’m an innocent man, Mr. Ford. I ain’t ever killed a man or made time with a married woman. I sleep like a baby.” Then, and it was almost as if he was faking, his head lolled to the side and his eyes closed for a moment. He jerked back up out of his sudden sleep. “I’m too tired to do it now. You come back before you leave for the mountains in the morning. And I’ll have a map all drawn for you and everything.”
    “I appreciate that very much.”
    “I’m fallin’ asleep—”
    And indeed he was.
    Before I could even get to the door, the old man was snoring.

Chapter 17
    W ind woke me only moments before the knocking. Dark door, dark window, cold floor as I tore my gun from the holster and said, “Who is it?”
    “Jen.”
    What the hell time was it? What the hell was she doing there? Was there any possibility that this was a dream?
    “Hurry up,” she said.
    I thought of something pretty damned ungentlemanly to say but I obeyed her siren call, anyway.
    You could easily mistake her for a bear what with the parka and bulky butternuts she wore with a layer or two of long johns underneath.
    She came in, shut the door. “Get the lamp lit. We need to hurry.”
    “What the hell’s going on? What time is it, anyway?”
    “What the hell’s going on is that Connelly and Pepper left about ten o’clock last night for the mountains. And the time is four o’clock.”
    She didn’t wait for me to turn up the lamp. She didit herself. Meanwhile, I went to the window. The snow was churning pretty thick and already hinting at the fury to come.
    “I’m just worried about their head start. I wasn’t sleeping very much, anyway, worrying about Mike. So I got up to put on some coffee and then just decided to come and get you before it got real bad. Then the livery man—he sleeps right on the premises, the colored man does—told me that Connelly and Pepper had left about ten last night. And while I was there, I got you a horse.”
    “Do I get to go down the hall and wash up a little?”
    “If you hurry.”
    “Yes, Commander.”
    “He’s my brother.”
    “I know that, Jen. It’s just that I’m never the happy sort in the morning, especially not when it’s four in the morning.”
    “I’ll try and remember that.”
    Any other time I might have taken that as a romantic clue. Standing there in long johns, cold feet and a full bladder, I knew better.
    “Five minutes is about all we can spare, Noah. We really need to get going.”
    I forced myself to remember she was in a panic about her brother. I took ten minutes. She didn’t look happy.
     
    Soon as we were mounted up, both my saddlebags bloated with various things she thought I’d need for the trek, I told her about Chuck Gage.
    “He said he’d draw me a map. But he wanted to get some sleep first.”
    She had to shout at me, the wind was so wild. “We’ll have to wake him up.”
    At that rate, we’d have the whole town awake by four-thirty.
     
    We ground-tied our horses and walked up to Chuck Gage’s place. Smoke in the chimney was the only sign that anybody was inside.
    Jen knocked.
    “He sleeps a lot. I think all those years in the mountains finally took their toll. You can only have so many run-ins with death before you just start to fold up. Mike and I have an uncle like that. He was an old man before he was thirty-five.”
    She glanced at the door, then knocked again.
    “I hope he worked up that map for us.”
    “Knock a little louder this time.”
    “Now who’s giving the orders?”
    “He might not hear us in this wind.”
    “For around here, this isn’t much of a wind at all.”
    This time, she knocked with her fist, clublike, instead of just her knuckles. The door swung inward.
    “Chuck? Chuck, are you in there?”
    She didn’t wait for an answer.
    “I wonder if he’s all right,” she said, as she heaved the door inside.
    No moon, no