by Lukens, Mark
David just nodded as he put his hat back on and drew the string up underneath his chin.
“You ready?”
The boy nodded again.
“Just follow me,” Jed said, and he was off and running, darting out of the alley and down the wood-planked walkway. At least the porch roof protected them a little from the sandstorm.
Lightning struck somewhere close by, a flash seen out of the corner of Jed’s eye. Thunder rumbled two seconds later, the ground shaking.
Their boots thudded on the walkway as Jed reached the double doors of the hotel. The doors had glass panels in them with the words MOODY’S HOTEL AND SALOON painted in fancy script on them.
Jed turned the brass doorknob and pushed the door open, the wind catching the door as he did so, fighting him. He held the door open so David could dart inside along with a scattering of sand and a blast of cold air. He slammed the door shut on the howling wind.
The hotel lobby served as the establishment’s saloon. It was a big room with a set of stairs running up the wall to Jed’s left. The set of stairs turned sharply at a landing and then continued on up to a balcony that ran across the second story of the saloon. No one was up on the balcony right now, but there were doors that led to hotel rooms up there. Another hallway disappeared around the corner to the left at the top of the stairs.
A slim woman in a green dress played a piano that was shoved up against the wall on the left side of the room by the stairs. She stopped playing for a moment when Jed and David entered the saloon. Even from the front doors of the saloon, Jed could tell the woman was attractive. She had red hair—but not a fiery red like Dobbs’ hair had been—her hair was more like a strawberry blond. She smiled at Jed and David, and then she began playing the piano again.
Between the stairs to the left and the massive bar to the right, there were half a dozen tables. Only two of the tables were occupied. A cowboy or ranch hand sat at the table closer to Jed and David; he was tall and lean, his skin tanned from years under the Arizona sun. And from the way he was drooped in his chair, Jed was sure the young man was drunk. A bottle sat on the table in front of him, most of its contents gone. The bottle didn’t have a label—probably some homemade hooch that the owner of this saloon had concocted; probably watered-down whiskey cut with God knew what to cut costs and increase profits.
A woman, most likely the hotel’s prostitute, hovered beside the cowboy. She wore a revealing dress and fishnet stockings. Her blond hair was pulled up into a bun, held there by a long wooden pick. Jed guessed that the woman was probably helping the cowboy with his bottle of whiskey as she tried to coax him upstairs so she could part him from more of his wages.
The back of the saloon underneath the balcony and upstairs rooms looked smaller and darker because of the lower ceiling. There were a few tables back there and an older Navajo sat at one of them. Right behind the man was a window, the world outside almost as dark as night from the storm. The Navajo man didn’t look up as Jed and David entered; he seemed to be concentrating on a bowl of stew in front of him. He wore layers of clothing and a big coat dotted with different colored patches. He had a dirty white bandana wrapped around his forehead with a black felt hat over that. An eagle feather poked out of the hatband. His long hair flowed down over the shoulders of his multi-colored coat.
Jed stomped his boots on the wood floor near the door where he stood, taking his hat off again and brushing the sand off as best he could.
Once again David mimicked Jed’s actions, swatting at his clothes with his hat and then stomping his boots on the floor.
“Take a seat over there,” Jed whispered to David, pointing at a table closer to the piano and farther away from the drunk cowboy and the prostitute.
As David walked towards the table, the prostitute watched him, smiling at him and giving him a small wave of her fingers. David glanced at the woman and then he sat down at the table. The woman leaned down towards the cowboy and whispered something in his ear. They both laughed. Jed was sure the woman had made some kind of obscene comment, or perhaps an Indian joke.
Jed turned his attention to the bar at the other side of the saloon; it was a mahogany behemoth, running from the windows that looked out onto the street all the way to a potbellied stove with its exhaust piped into the wall. Two doors were tucked underneath the balcony above, leading to rooms built in that far corner of the saloon. There were a few barstools in front of the bar, but all three men at the bar chose to stand there—two of the men stood close to each other by the windows. Both of them turned and faced Jed. The two men were dressed like businessmen, both in their early to mid-forties. One man was stick-thin and balding; the other man had a full head of dark hair and a protruding belly.
A lone man stood at the other end of the bar with his back to Jed. He never turned around to look at Jed. He leaned on the bar with one foot propped up on the brass foot rail that ran the length of the bar. Jed didn’t like the way the man was standing, relaxed but tense at the same time. And he didn’t like the pistols that the man wore low on his hips like a gunfighter, pearl handles sticking up out of the holsters. The man’s clothes looked new and expensive. Jed caught the man’s reflection in the mirrors behind the bar, but the man kept his head down, his black hat pulled low.
Three large mirrors made up most of the wall behind the bar, each mirror held against the wall in a network of ornately carved wood frames. On each side of the wall of mirrors were two wall sconces, both lit, both attached to the wall amid garish wallpaper that would have looked more at home in a New York City hotel rather than a dusty Arizona town. Shelves to the right of the mirrors held bottles of liquor, and there were more bottles and glasses lined up on the counter in front of the mirrors. To the left of the mirrors were some wooden cubbyholes for correspondence and keys to the rooms upstairs.
The other wood-planked walls in the saloon not covered with the ugly wallpaper were decorated with framed photos and paintings. A stuffed buck’s head with a huge rack of antlers was fastened to the wall just below the balcony, and on another wall there was a rattlesnake skin stretched out and mounted to a wood plaque. A massive chandelier of oil lamps hung from the high ceiling above the main part of the saloon.
“We don’t usually let children in here,” the larger of the two businessmen said in an Irish accent as Jed approached the bar after hanging his coat on the coatrack. “But I’ll make an exception on account of the storm.”
“Much obliged,” Jed said to the man he assumed was the owner. He stepped up to the bar in a spot that was equal distance between the lone man and the two businessmen. He shifted his gaze to the mirror, focusing on the lone man’s reflection, but the man still kept his head down, the brim of his hat hiding part of his face as he cradled a shot glass in his hands.
Jed knew that man, but from where?
“Hell of a storm,” the thin man at the end of the bar next to the saloon owner said with a lilting, singsong Swedish accent. The man’s skin was ghostly pale which made his sapphire blue eyes stand out even more. The hair that he had left looked bleached white.
“Yes it is,” Jed replied.
“That storm came out of nowhere,” the Swede said.
The barkeep approached Jed from behind the bar with a customer-friendly smile underneath his gigantic walrus mustache. He was dressed in a crisp white button-down shirt and a red bowtie, his uniform another attempt at trying to pretend this place was a high-class establishment and not a dusty saloon in a dead-end town. “What’ll it be?” the barkeep asked, his mustache moving as he spoke like it was a small living creature attached to his upper lip.
“Whiskey,” Jed said, tapping two fingers on the battered and dented bar top, where battle scars from countless drunken patrons and bar fights covered the mahogany. “Not that house brand. I’ll take some from that bottle over there.” Jed pointed at one of the bottles on the shelves in front of the third mirror.
The barkeep hesitated for a moment.
Jed pulled out a
coin from his pocket, and then he pulled out his U.S. Marshal badge from his shirt pocket and pinned it to his shirt.
“Yes, marshal. Right away.” The barkeep dashed over to get the bottle and a shot glass.
Jed glanced at the young man to his left, gauging his reaction now that he knew a lawman was in the saloon. But the man stayed relaxed, still cradling the empty shot glass in front of him on the bar top, moving it around in a small, slow circle.
The barkeep poured Jed a shot of whiskey.
Jed downed the shot and tapped the bar for another drink.
The barkeep poured another one.
Jed drank the second shot slowly. He could already feel the warmth of the whiskey spreading in his gut, his nerves calming just a bit. He realized that he was very hungry, and he was sure David was hungry, too.
The Irishman moved down the bar to Jed, proffering a hand in greeting. “A U.S. Marshal, I see. Glad to make your acquaintance.”
Jed gave the man’s hand a shake—the man’s grip was firm and dry.
“My name’s Allen Moody,” the Irishman said. “I’m the owner of this fine establishment.”
“Jed Cartwright. What’s on the menu today, Mr. Moody?”
The Irishman broke into a grin, showing good teeth for a man his age. “Please. Just call me Moody. Everybody just calls me Moody.”
“What have you got on the menu today, Moody?” Jed looked to the barkeep for an answer if Moody wasn’t going to provide one.
“We have lamb stew in the pot,” the barkeep said.
“You got bread and butter to go with the stew?” Jed asked.
“Yessir,” the bartender replied with most of his smile hidden under his gigantic mustache.
“Karl’s wife made the bread,” Moody said, hitching a thumb back towards the thin Swede who was nursing a drink in front of him. “That’s Karl Andersson. He’s from Sweden. Owns the general store if you’ll be needing anything.”
“I’ll take two bowls of that stew,” Jed told the barkeep. “Two hunks of bread to go with it. You got any buttermilk for the kid?”
“Sorry,” the barkeep said, swallowing hard. “No buttermilk. We’ve got coffee, tea, and beer from the keg.”
Beer was out of the question, and Jed was sure David was probably tired of coffee by now. “Give me a cup of tea for the kid.”
“Right away, sir.”
“Where you headed, marshal?” Moody asked. Jed could tell the man was dying to ask him why he was traveling through a sandstorm with a Navajo kid, but he didn’t.
“Smith Junction.”
“Well, if you need to stay the night, I’ve got plenty of rooms available.”
“Good to know.”
“Rose could draw you a bath if you like,” Moody said and looked over at the woman who was still hovering beside the cowboy.
“We’re going to wait the storm out,” Jed said as he watched the barkeep ladle stew into two bowls. But Jed’s eyes kept shifting to the young man at the other end of the bar who had barely moved a muscle so far. The man made no attempt to meet Jed’s eyes.
“If you change your mind—” Moody said.
“You’ll be the first to know.”
“That’s Esmerelda playing the piano,” Moody said.
Jed didn’t bother glancing behind him at the woman at the piano. “She plays mighty fine.”
“She tells fortunes, too,” Karl said, leaning towards them, slurring his words even more.
Jed looked at Moody beside him. “You’ve introduced nearly everyone here. What about this fella at the other end of the bar here?”
Moody swallowed and smiled. “Oh, he’s just a man passing through. Taking shelter from the storm, like you.”
Jed kept his eyes on the mirror, watching the man’s reflection, waiting for him to make a move. “I know who he is.”
Before the man could even turn, Jed had his gun drawn and aimed at him. “Yes, I know who you are, Sanchez.”
CHAPTER 11
For the second time in the span of a few minutes, the piano playing stopped.
Sanchez turned towards Jed, but he froze with his hands down by his guns, only inches away from grabbing the pearl handles of his pistols when he saw that Jed had already drawn his Colt.
“Don’t do it,” Jed warned.
“What the hell are you doing?” Moody yelled from behind Jed. Karl had retreated away from the bar, knocking a barstool back, its legs scraping against the wood floor.
“This man is Juan Carlos Sanchez,” Jed announced. “He’s wanted for a murder in Smith Junction.”
“That was self-defense,” Sanchez answered. He stared at Jed, his body still tense, ready to strike like a rattlesnake.
Now that Jed saw Sanchez’s face, he realized that the man was much younger than he’d thought, maybe barely twenty-one or twenty-two years old. Jed knew he had to be careful—Sanchez would be fast even though Jed had the jump on him.
“Tell it to the judge,” Jed said as he kept his Colt aimed at him. “My job isn’t to try you, just to bring you in.”
Everyone watched them. The barkeep had moved as far back behind the bar as he could, ready to duck down when the shooting started.
For just a moment Jed was sure Sanchez was going to go for his gun, sure that he would be the sixth man he’d faced who would rather go out shooting than take that walk up the gallows steps.
But Sanchez remained still.
“You listen closely, Sanchez,” Jed said. “I want you to unbuckle your gun belts with your left hand.”
Sanchez waited a few seconds, staring at Jed. And Jed could feel the man searching his eyes, searching for a weakness, for an opening. But then Sanchez moved his left hand slowly to his belt buckle and loosened it. The gun belt, holsters, and pistols dropped to the wood floor in a crash among the sawdust and tobacco stains.
“You’re doing the right thing, Sanchez. Now take five steps back away from your guns and keep your hands up.”
Sanchez’s mouth was a straight line underneath his thin mustache. He backed up three steps, keeping his hands up in front of him in a half-hearted surrendering gesture.
Jed kept his Colt .45 aimed at Sanchez—he couldn’t relax now; Sanchez might have another pistol tucked away on him, even a two-shot Derringer.
“Moody, you got any rope?”
“Uh . . .”
“Rope.”
“Yes. I think there might be some in the storeroom.”
“Good. I need you to get me a few lengths of it.”
Jed didn’t see Moody nod at the barkeep, but a few seconds later the man with the walrus mustache bolted out from behind the bar and kept close to the wall and wood-burning stove as he made his way towards the two rooms. He ducked inside the room to the left, leaving the door wide open.
“You’re making a mistake,” Sanchez told Jed. “I shot that man in self-defense. He drew on me. I was just protecting myself.”
“I’m sorry if that’s true,” Jed said. “Like I said, you’ll have to tell that to the judge.”
“I’m certain I’ll stand a fair chance in front of a judge in Smith Junction,” Sanchez said sarcastically.
Jed didn’t answer, and Sanchez gave up on his pleas, seeing it wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
The barkeep was back with a few lengths of rope.
“You got any other pistols on you?” Jed asked Sanchez.
Sanchez gave a slight shake of his head.
“Turn around,” Jed said as he walked towards him, scooting Sanchez’s guns back even farther away on the floor with his foot. “Get down on your knees with your hands behind your back.”
Sanchez hesitated for another moment, but then did as Jed instructed.
Jed fished out the pair of handcuffs from his jacket pocket with his left hand and snapped a cuff on Sanchez’s right wrist while still holding his pistol aimed at the man, and then he cuffed the other wrist, shackling his hands together behind his back. Jed holstered his weapon. “Get on your fee
t.”
Sanchez stood up. Jed patted Sanchez down quickly, but the man had no other weapons on him.
“Go and sit in that chair over there.” Jed pointed at the closest table.
The cowboy sat up straight now at the next table with Rose right behind him, watching everything with wide eyes, sobering up a little. Esmerelda had turned around on the piano stool, watching. Even the Navajo in the back room was watching.
Sanchez plopped down in the chair, and Jed adjusted his arms so that they were behind the back of the chair, Sanchez winced a little as Jed forced his arms there.
“The rope,” he told the barkeep.
The barkeep snapped out of his daze and looked down at the coil of rope in his hands like he’d forgotten about it. He hurried over to Jed and handed it to him.
Jed used part of the rope to tie the chain of Sanchez’s handcuffs to the spindles at the back of the chair, and then he used the rest of the rope to tie Sanchez’s ankles together. He stood up and stared at Sanchez.
Moody rushed into action now that Sanchez was tied to the chair. He picked up Sanchez’s gun belt and pistols from the floor. “I’ll lock these in my office.”
Jed nodded at Moody and watched him head to the other doorway to the right of the storeroom where the barkeep had gotten the rope.
“You got a sheriff in this town?” Jed asked the barkeep.
“No,” the barkeep answered. “Not anymore.”
“A lot of people left after the mines around here dried up,” Karl offered. “Sheriff left, too.”
“You got a sheriff’s office with a jail cell?” Jed asked.
“Yes,” Moody answered as he came out of his office, walking towards Jed, taking over the conversation.
Jed figured he could put Sanchez in the jail cell if he had to stay the night, but he wasn’t walking him anywhere through that storm out there.
“I’ll take one more whiskey and those bowls of stew I ordered,” Jed told the barkeep.
The barkeep had remained at the end of the bar, still frozen for a moment. He jumped at Jed’s command, seemingly eager to do something. “Right away, marshal.”
