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Of course, he’d fibbed a little when he told the Duffy woman he’d paid good money for the show tonight. Him and Rosie went way back, and whenever he was in town, she always let him have one of the boxes for free. Tonight, he had his favorite spot overlooking the right side of the stage.
He opened the door to the box and gestured for the Duffy woman to go inside, but she hesitated on the threshold.
“Two seats,” she said suspiciously. “How convenient. I suppose if I hadn’t come along, you’d have invited some other woman to keep you company.”
Tanner smirked. “Do I detect a hint of jealousy, Miss Duffy?”
A look of surprise flickered across the woman’s face, followed by an angry scowl. It was the prettiest scowl Tanner McBain had ever seen.
“Absolutely not!”
Tanner suppressed a chuckle. “The truth is, Miss Duffy, that other seat’s for my brother, Logan.”
“Oh? And where might Logan be?”
“Well ma’am, at the moment I believe he’s in the hotel enjoying the company of a couple of Rosie’s shady ladies.” Tanner enjoyed the sudden flush of red that filled Miss Duffy’s cheeks.
“I see,” she said, recovering her composure. “And you chose not to join him in this endeavor?”
“Nope. It was my job to earn us both some money down at the poker tables.”
“That seems like an unfair arrangement, Mr. McBain. You play the role of breadwinner while your brother gets to have all the fun.”
“Who says I ain’t having fun? Besides, Logan ain’t much good when it comes to playing cards. He’s better with a gun than I am, though. I guess you could call it division of labor. Now, are you going to have a seat, Miss Duffy, or am I going to have to drag you into that box kicking and screaming?”
The woman gave him another fiery look, but she stepped past him into the box and sat down. Tanner followed her in, shut the door behind him, and took the other chair. A hubbub of voices drifted up from below as the theater slowly filled up.
“I reckon we still got a few minutes before the show starts, Miss Duffy. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me a little more about this treasure you’re after.”
The woman hesitated again, and Tanner could almost hear the gears turning in her head as she decided how much to tell him. Whatever her game was, she was playing it close to the vest.
“I know the location of an ore deposit,” she said at last.
“Now hold on a second, ma’am. A minute ago you said treasure. Ore’s a different story.”
The woman flashed her turquoise eyes at him, and they seemed to almost sparkle in the dim light of the theater.
“Firestone ore,” she said in a hushed voice.
Now that really got his attention. Firestone. The stuff had been discovered about forty years ago when the first prospectors had started heading west. They’d come looking for silver and gold, but firestone was a whole lot more valuable than those shiny metals. A whole lot more useful too. A few small nuggets contained enough energy to power a locomotive across the entire continent and back again.
And that wasn’t all firestone was good for. Back east, the inventor and entrepreneur Joseph Coppelius had used the mineral’s vast power to create all sorts of wondrous machines, including airships that could fly between cities and humanoid automatons like the one that played the piano in Rosie’s saloon.
There were even rumors that firestone had somehow been responsible for the Occurrence.
A virgin deposit of firestone ore would be worth a small fortune. Of course, actually getting the stuff out of the ground would be a chore, and there was also the matter of transporting it back to civilization, but they could work those details out later.
“How’d you find out about this?” Tanner asked.
“My father. He was a rancher by trade, but he was an explorer at heart. He used to go riding off into the desert for days at a time. Sometimes when he came back, he’d bring some firestone with him. He never brought back much, but there was always enough to support us.”
While the Duffy woman was talking about her father, her face seemed to light up with joy and love, but suddenly her expression shifted to one of sadness.
“Shortly before my father passed away, he gave me a map drawn on an old piece of cowhide. It showed the location of the place where he got the firestone, and the trail he used to get there.”
“I hope you ain’t carrying that map on your person, Miss Duffy. A man less honest than myself might try to steal it from you and claim all that firestone for himself.”
She gave him a sly look from under the brim of her hat.
