Cutthroats

by William W. Johnstone

  “Of what?”

  Bledsoe sighed as he refilled Miss Langdon’s glass from the tequila bottle. He waved the bottle toward Slash and Pecos, but seeing that neither outlaw had touched their own shots, he splashed the liquor into his own empty glass, then returned the bottle to the table.

  “A few nice dresses . . . some jewelry, including a string of pearls that Miss Langdon personally picked out. Two thousand dollars . . .”

  “Full amnesty and a train ticket to San Francisco,” Miss Langdon added.

  Bledsoe frowned at the ceiling, tapping his index finger against his chin. “Let’s see—what day is it? August fourteenth. Hmmm . . . She’s likely arrived on the Barbary Coast by now, starting a new life for herself.”

  He saw the constipated looks on both Slash’s and Pecos’s faces and turned his mouth corners down. “Like I said, fellas, don’t judge her too harshly. It was not an easy thing for her to do. She felt guilty as hell. I mean, she’s known you both a long time.”

  “But she still did it,” Slash said tightly.

  Pecos turned to him, frowning angrily. “She double-crossed us.” He shook his head. “I never would have figured her for doin’ somethin’ like that. Never in a million years.”

  Slash cursed under his breath and threw his entire shot of tequila back.

  Miss Langdon reached across the table to refill the shot glass.

  She held the bottle out to Pecos, who quickly threw his shot back, as well. Bledsoe’s beguiling assistant refilled the big outlaw’s glass and then topped off the chief marshal’s glass, as well.

  Slash sat fuming for a while, his belly aching.

  Jay.

  It wasn’t so much anger as the pain of being betrayed by someone he trusted almost as much as he trusted Pecos.

  He turned his shot glass between his thumb and index finger, then shoved Jay from his mind and looked across the table at Bledsoe sitting back smugly in his chair, the grin of a Cheshire cat on his sagging, pallid face beneath his tumbleweed of cottony gray hair.

  “So why didn’t you hang us?”

  “You had us on the gallows, nooses around our necks,” Pecos said, scowling his befuddlement. “And who were the fellas who rode in to save us?”

  “Pinkertons,” Bledsoe said. “Undercover operatives. They didn’t want to show their faces. I chose them because they’re professionals. They knew how to ride in shooting and making it look like they were killing but without actually harming anyone. I’m glad my men here were good enough actors to sell the whole charade with no one getting hurt.”

  He smiled over at Gables, Waite, and Tabor, all three now sitting at a table near the batwings beyond which the rain was lightening, the mountain storm grumbling quietly as it moved on. Justianna had delivered a bottle and glasses to their table, as well.

  “Who all knew about the fiasco?” Slash asked Bledsoe.

  “My men, the Pinkertons, and Nelson’s men.”

  “The Saguache town marshal,” Slash said.

  “That’s right.”

  “What about Grimes?” Pecos said.

  “No, no. I couldn’t risk it. Doubted he’d be able to act his part. On the other hand, I was worried he might have a heart stroke.” Bledsoe sipped his tequila and chuckled as he set the glass back down. “He’s all right. Just a little shaken. I sent him a bottle of Spanish brandy and, uh, the best parlor girl in town.”

  He glanced over at Abigail Langdon, who smiled shrewdly, her cool gaze flicking toward Pecos once more before returning to the table. Again, Slash glanced at his partner. Pecos scowled at him, curling a nostril.

  Slash shook his head.

  “Let’s get down to brass tacks—shall we, gentlemen?” Bledsoe said.

  “Let’s do that,” Slash said. “Why in the hell did you go to all the work of setting that trap Jay helped you bait, arranging that necktie party for us in Saguache, and then at the last minute sending in that posse of Pinkertons to cut us down?” He chuckled drolly. “I swear you got you a future in Old West shows, Bleed-’Em-So!”

  “You’d be worthless to me dead,” Bledsoe said. “But I wanted to give you both a good scare. To show you what I could have done . . . and still could do . . . if you don’t accept my offer.”

  “What offer?” Pecos asked.

  “I want you to work for me.”

  Slash and Pecos just stared at him, another wave of befuddlement washing over them both.

  “Not in an official capacity,” said the chief marshal. “In an unofficial capacity, I want you to hunt down and kill the worst of your own lot. You see, you two know how your ilk thinks, how they move, where they move. What drives them. What they’re capable of. The worst of you are too elusive for my men. Too dangerous.”

  He glanced over at the three deputy U.S. marshals, all three of whom colored a little at the chief marshal’s antagonizing remark. Gables brought the cheroot to his lips and drew on it deeply.

  “You’re insane,” Slash said.

  Bledsoe grinned his toothy grin. “Be that as it may, I think it’s a prime idea. It even has the sanction of the president of the United States, who has allowed me to offer you both clemency if you accept employment under me as—”

  “Regulators,” Pecos finished for him.

  “Government assassins,” Slash said.

  “Yes, yes,” said Bledsoe, frowning as though with annoyance. “Call it what you want. There’s no official job description because there’s no contract, because officially you won’t even exist. At least, officially, neither the government nor I will know you . . . or acknowledge you as working for us.” He looked at each directly in turn. “But—if you do come to work for me, unofficially hunting down and killing the worst of your ilk, you yourselves will no longer be hunted men.”

  Slash and Pecos shared a skeptical glance.

  “That’s all?” Pecos asked. “That’s your whole offer?”

  “Not by a long shot.” Bledsoe smiled broadly again, fishy blue eyes glittering. “I will give you enough money for that freight company you’ve been ogling up in Camp Collins. Between jobs you do for me—two, possibly three a year—you can live like civilized men. Work like civilized men. Live quiet lives.”

  “If a leopard can change its spots.” Vern Gables smiled smugly as he blew out another long plume of cigar smoke.

  The other two men at his table smiled mockingly.

  “Understandably,” Bledsoe said, “my men’s pride has taken a hit, this plan being based, of course, on the proven fact of the limitations of their own abilities.”

  Bledsoe smiled condescendingly but did not look toward his deputies’ table.

  The deputies’ faces grew taut. Gables glared at Slash, who’d turned to look at him over his right shoulder. Slash smiled.

  Bledsoe returned his gaze to Slash and Pecos. “There will be no retainer between jobs. Between jobs you do for me, you’ll have to make your own living. However, for the jobs you do for me, you will be well paid.”

  “How much?” Pecos said.

  “A thousand dollars.”

  “Apiece?” Slash asked.

  “Of course.”

  Again, Slash glanced at Pecos, who pooched out his lips and raised his brows.

  Slash threw back his tequila, then refilled the glass himself. He folded his hands on the table and stared down at them, pondering.

  Finally, he sucked his upper lip and shook his head.

  “What is it?” Bledsoe asked.

  Slash sagged back in his chair with a sigh. “First off, you got us painted wrong. We ain’t killers. Robbers, thieves—yeah. But not killers.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bledsoe said, chuckling under his breath. “You’ve each killed your share and more. In fact”—he leaned forward, wincing and reaching around his skinny body with one clawlike hand—“I’m wearing your bullet in my back even as I sit here, Braddock!”

  “You know that wasn’t intentional,” Slash said. Then he smiled. “I was tryin’ to blow you
r head off.”

  “Ah-hah!” the chief marshal snarled.

  “But only because you was tryin’ to kill us!” Pecos said.

  “Aside from the fact that we ain’t killers,” Slash said, “is the fact that . . . that, well . . . we’re gettin’ on in years, and . . . well . . .” He raked a hand across the back of his neck in chagrin. “We lost our edge. There, I said it. But it ain’t somethin’ we both don’t know and haven’t already owned up to. That’s why we decided to retire from the long coulees.”

  “Yes, from the vantage of the train’s express car, it looked like you were retiring,” Bledsoe said ironically.

  The three deputies snorted with amusement.

  Miss Langdon didn’t really smile but her cheeks dimpled.

  “That was gonna be our last job,” Pecos said, squeezing his empty shot glass in his hand. “With the money we intended to take out of that car, we was gonna buy that freighting company.” He frowned suddenly at the chief marshal. “Say, how did you know about that?”

  “I have my ways,” Bledsoe said self-importantly.

  Slash hardened his jaws. “Jay.”

  “Christ!” Pecos said.

  “Oh, what are you talking about?” said Bledsoe, his eyes brightening again, again shaping that toothy smile. “You two might have lost a step or two, but you still got an edge. Look how you cleaned up in here! When you entered this place, you weren’t armed—am I right?”

  He looked at the Colts that Slash and Pecos had set on the table, near their right elbows.

  “That was luck,” Slash said, shifting around in his chair.

  “No, it wasn’t.” Bledsoe shook his head. “You still have most of the physical abilities you had twenty years ago. What you lost physically you’ve made up for in smarts, cunning, and clear-eyed knowledge of your own strengths and weaknesses. And of the ways of the world, particularly the frontier West. True, you’ve gotten careless, which is obvious by the somewhat more than embarrassing fact that you allowed Loco Sanchez and Arnell Squires and the rest of your gang to leave you behind at Doña Flores’s place down by the Arkansas River, the day they robbed the bank in La Junta.”

  Pecos bolted half out of his chair, stretching his bull neck and his big head across the table at the chief marshal. “Who told you that?”

  Bledsoe only smiled.

  “Jay,” Slash said, spitting out the name like a bad chunk of apple.

  “Damn her!” Pecos sagged back down in his chair. Turning to Slash, he said, “I’ll never trust another woman again!” He glanced quickly at Miss Langdon, blushing like that schoolboy again. “Uh . . . no offense, Miss, uh . . . Miss Langdon.”

  “None taken, Mr. Baker. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t trust you any farther than I could throw your big, smelly carcass uphill against a stiff wind.” She smiled devilishly and winked.

  Pecos’s blush deepened. Slash saw him lift his left arm a little and turn to that side to give his armpit a furtive sniff.

  Slash and Bledsoe chuckled. Pecos looked like he wished the floor would open up and swallow him.

  “You two are the right men for the job I need filled,” Bledsoe said after the moment of levity had passed. He was caressing the shotgun jutting straight up above the right arm of his chair. “You see, I thought Jack Penny’s gang could do it. Obviously, they couldn’t.”

  Slash studied him closely, suspiciously.

  “Penny?” Pecos said.

  “You devil,” Slash said, glaring at the chief marshal now. “You sent Penny.”

  Bledsoe smiled pridefully and lifted a shoulder.

  “You old devil,” Slash said again.

  Bledsoe’s grin broadened.

  “You sent Penny to kill us?” Pecos said.

  “If that’s how you want to look at it,” said old Bleed-’Em-So. “I’d prefer to see it as I was pitting Penny’s skills against yours.”

  “Whoever came out on top got the job,” Slash said. “That it?”

  “No, I sent them to kill you, all right.” Bledsoe laughed, slapping the table and laughing even louder. “But when you turned the tables on them, even after you were badly outgunned, I decided I’d been looking in the wrong direction. It was you two I should have gone after in the first place. Hell, you two are as good or better than Penny’s entire gang . . . may the good Lord have mercy on their souls!”

  He slapped the table and laughed again.

  When he finally sobered, he looked at each outlaw directly and said, “So . . . will you accept the job as well as the freight company you’ve been wanting?” He lifted his shot glass and smiled over the rim. “Or hang. It’s up to you.”

  Abigail Langdon reached into her valise and withdrew a fat manila envelope on which was penciled: “$3,000 CASH.”

  Slash looked at the envelope. His heart quickened. His head grew a little light. He lifted his gaze to old Bleed-’Em-So, looked the old devil straight in the eye, and said, “You SOB!”

  “You should be more grateful,” Miss Langdon chastised him gently, sliding the envelope of money a little farther across the table. “You’re getting everything you’ve wanted, Mr. Braddock. And your lives in the bargain.”

  “Bullcrap. Uh . . . pardon the French,” Slash quickly added for the young woman’s benefit.

  Miss Langdon sat back in her chair.

  To Bledsoe, Slash said, “We wanted to leave the long coulees. For good. Now you wanna keep us in ’em. Ridin’, shootin’ an such, likely gettin’ shot our ownselves. Only, we’ll be doing it for you this time. Just when we wanted to get clear of the flames, you wanna throw us back into the fire.”

  “And he really ain’t givin’ us much choice,” added Pecos, glancing at the enticing envelope, then sitting back in his chair and crossing his big arms on his chest.

  Bledsoe gave a sardonic grunt. “Who do you two old cutthroats think you are fooling?”

  Slash scowled at him, indignant.

  “You’d never be able to ride clear of those coulees. Not for good. Sure, if you had your way, you’d probably ride up to Camp Collins and buy that freight outfit. And you might even make a good show of living a peaceful, upstanding, hardworking life—for a year. No, maybe nine months. You might even join a church, heaven help us all! But then you’d both start to feel the itch. You know what I’m talking about. The itch of the career cutthroat.

  “You’d bust your asses delivering a few goods to some mining camps here and there in the mountains, getting paid peanuts compared to what you used to make for far easier work, and not having to negotiate those tight mountain roads with six-mule hitches. Then you’d start to get tired of doctoring those galls those hard wooden wagon seats flame up on your asses, and you’d eye the stagecoaches loaded with bullion being driven down out of those mountains, heading for Denver.

  “At some point, you’d look at each other and you’d say, ‘Hey, pardner, whadoyasay we give ‘er one more go-’round, take down one o’ them stagecoaches, pop the strongbox, and head for Mexico for just one more winter entangled in them warm senoritas young enough to be our granddaughters!”

  Miss Langdon fired another quick glance toward Pecos, sitting to Slash’s left, then lifted her shot glass, her hand shaking ever so slightly, and threw back the shot.

  Pecos grunted and shifted around, making his chair creak.

  Slash’s ears warmed. He lowered his gaze to the table in chagrin.

  The old cripple was right. He and Pecos would miss their old life, their outlaw ways. He hadn’t realized it before, but when he’d thought about how his next life would be—his next life as an upright businessman and productive member of the Camp Collins community—he’d felt a very small but tight knot in his belly. A knot of restlessness. The way an adventurous young boy feels in church.

  Fed by the tedium of an ordinary life, that knot would grow into a cancer until something very much like the picture old Bleed-’Em-So had just painted would come to pass.

  Slash looked at Pecos. The big cutthroat shrugged a
shoulder.

  Slash scooped the envelope off the table, opened it, and quickly counted the bank notes. He set the envelope down between him and Pecos, near the edge of the table, and threw back the shot glass that Miss Langdon had just refilled for him.

  “You’ll each get another thousand when your first job is complete,” said Bledsoe.

  “What’s the job?” Pecos asked him.

  Bledsoe wrapped his right hand around his sheathed shotgun, squeezing. He slammed his left fist onto the table, causing the glasses and the tequila bottle to jump. “Hunt down and kill every man in your old gang—the Snake River Marauders!”

  CHAPTER 22

  Slash and Pecos shook their heads, jaws hard with defiance.

  “Uh-uh,” they said in unison. “No way.”

  Bledsoe leaned forward in his chair, keeping one fist clenched atop the table, the other hand wrapped tightly around his shotgun. “I want them hunted down and murdered. Killed in cold blood. Each and every one of them. And you two are the only two for the job!”

  Slash widened his eyes in shock at the old man’s murderous fury. Raising his hands, palms out, he said, “Hold on there, Bleed-’Em-So! Hold on! What in the hell have the Snake River Marauders done to get your neck in such a hump? Hell, we never was nothin’ but bank, train, and stage robbers. The occasional moneyed hotel . . .”

  “That’s true,” Bledsoe said. “When you two were leading up that bunch, you mostly plundered. You killed . . . or crippled . . . very few and usually only those you were defending yourselves from. Including me, unfortunately.” His cheeks colored with fleeting anger. “But that isn’t how the Snake River Marauders are anymore. It seems when they turned out the two old bull-buff herd leaders, they turned their wolves loose. I know that personally.”

  “Personally?” Slash glanced at Pecos, then back at the crippled chief marshal. “How?”

  His right hand shaking as though with a palsy, Bledsoe lifted his shot glass over toward Miss Langdon. She replaced the tequila that Bledsoe had splashed out of the glass when he’d assaulted the table, and the chief marshal threw back half. With exaggerated gentleness, he set down the glass, glaring at it as though it had offended him in some way. He seemed to be suppressing an enormous rage.