Cutthroats

by William W. Johnstone

  Bang!

  “Die!”

  Bang!

  “Die!”

  Bang! Bang!

  Pecos froze in his tracks. His heart leaped into his throat.

  “Ah, crap,” he said aloud to himself. “Slash!”

  He swung around and started running back toward the stairs. A door opened behind him.

  A familiar voice said, “Howdy, Pecos—how you doin’, old pard?”

  Again, Pecos froze in his tracks.

  The shooting continued from below. One floor down, men shouted and cursed as they scrambled to avoid the lead storm.

  “What’s wrong, brother?” Sanchez said behind Pecos in a hard, cold, Spanish-accented voice. “Don you wanna come in for a dreenk?”

  “Sure, sure,” Pecos said, his heart battering the backside of his sternum. “Let’s do that. Why don’t I come in an’ we’ll have—”

  Pecos started to wheel, but knowing what was coming, he hurled his big two-hundred-plus-pound bulk against the wall beside him. Before him, Sanchez fired two quick rounds, both stitching the air where Pecos had been standing a half a second before, and hammering the stair rail twenty feet behind Pecos now.

  Sanchez swung his six-shooter toward where Pecos crouched low against the wall and snarled through gritted teeth as he hurled another round, this one tearing into the wall six inches in front of Pecos’s broad nose. As Sanchez clicked his six-gun’s hammer back, he saw the two large, round, black maws of Pecos’s cannon level on him, and yelled, “No—wait!” knowing he’d be just a hair too late with his own next bullet.

  He was right.

  Pecos tripped one of the sawed-off’s rabbit ear triggers and watched as the long-haired, scar-faced Sanchez was picked up off his feet and hurled out the window behind him, his high, caroming wail dwindling quickly as he flew down, down, down toward the cross street, glass raining along behind him.

  “Jesus Christ!” a man shouted in the cross street below.

  Pecos slid his gaze toward the left. The girl stood in the open doorway of the room Sanchez had hustled her into. She stared at Pecos wide-eyed, then turned to look at the blown-out window. Some of the glass remaining in the frame was speckled with dark-red blood. Some of the blood dripped from the shards to the floor.

  The girl clamped a hand over her wide-open mouth in shock.

  She looked all right. Just frightened. She was still wearing her dress, which meant the goatish Sanchez hadn’t gotten too far along with her.

  Suddenly, Pecos realized that the shooting had stopped in the saloon below.

  He swung around and ran toward the stairs, yelling, “Slash!”

  * * *

  Five minutes earlier, Slash had sat watching Pecos climb the stairs at the back of the saloon. As the big cutthroat turned at the top of the stairs, disappearing into the hall, Slash took a sip of his beer, which he found uncommonly malty and delicious for this neck of the high and rocky.

  Wiping the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand, he cast another furtive glance toward the poker players.

  Arnell Squires, alias the Pecos River Kid, was just then slamming his cards down with an angry scowl and saying something to a man sitting across the table from him and to his right. Slash couldn’t hear what Squires said, but he could tell by the angry look on the outlaw’s face, it wasn’t pleasant.

  Just then a big, barrel-shaped figure stepped between Slash and Squires, obliterating Slash’s view of his former cutthroat cohort for a good three or four seconds. The big, barrel-shaped man clad in greasy overalls was not only big, he was extremely slow moving. When he finally passed, Slash saw that Arnell Squires was no longer seated, playing cards.

  Squires was now standing and aiming a cocked six-shooter out over the poker table and grinning like a lunatic at Slash. He was also aiming the pistol.

  “Die, you old devil!” Squires bellowed from across the room.

  Slash threw himself straight back in his chair, he and the chair hitting the floor as Squires’s Schofield roared. The crowd parted between Slash and the shooter, not terribly unlike the parting of the Red Sea but probably with even more noise and violence, men hurling themselves to each side, dropping drinks and cigarettes and cigars and turning over chairs and tables in their haste to avoid a bad case of lead poisoning.

  “Die!” Squires bellowed as another bullet plunked into the floor about six inches from Slash’s body, which he was rolling feverishly to avoid being turned into a sieve.

  “Die!” Squires bellowed again, as another bullet smashed into the top of the table Slash had just rolled under.

  “Die!” Another round chewed through the table to graze Slash’s left hand and the outside of that shoulder.

  He rolled out from beneath the table, both fists filled with iron.

  He didn’t know how he managed to do it, for he never could have performed such a nimble, effortless maneuver had he not been drunk, showing off for a girl, or had his life not been imperiled and electricity fairly popping and snapping in his blood. No, he didn’t know how he did it, but he rolled up smoothly onto his knees, snapping his boot heels down under his butt and hoisting himself to a half crouch, shooting, both Colts bucking in his hands.

  Squires loosed a womanish scream as he stood in place, dropping his Colt on the poker table and jerking as though struck by the same lightning bolt that was sparking fire in Slash’s blood.

  As Slash stopped shooting, Arnell Squires continued to jerk, blood gushing out of him, head thrown far back on his shoulders, a death snarl stretching his lips and causing the chords of sinew to stand out like ropes from his neck.

  Finally, he dropped his chin. He leveled his face at Slash. He looked drunk as he stared almost blandly at his killer. A weird light of merriment flashed in his eyes, and then he gave a girlish giggle, twirled around as though he were performing a pirouette, and dropped to his knees.

  He knelt there for about five seconds.

  He said, “Oh, damn—I’m dead, aren’t I?” and fell face first to the floor.

  The room was suddenly as quiet as an empty cave.

  Half the men in the room were on the floor, cowering under tables or against walls.

  Slowly, one of the bartenders lifted his head above the bar and turned his wide eyes to stare in shock at the dead man lying belly down on the floor. One of the cowpunchers who’d been playing poker with Squires crawled out from beneath the table he’d been cowering under to stare in disbelief at the dead outlaw. He held his high-crowned hat in his hands as, kneeling there beside Squires, he said to no one in particular: “Jee-Jeepers—the Pecos River Kid is . . . is . . . dead!”

  He glanced around the room, chuckling nervously, eyes wide and filled with disbelief.

  “Dead, all right,” said a little man who’d been playing poker with “Pecos.” He moved out away from the wall to stare down at Squires. He appeared strangely boyish but with a broad-brimmed black hat and a clean-shaven face aside from a thick black mustache. “The Pecos River Kid is dead.”

  There was something odd about his voice, as well. But, then, the West was populated with human oddities.

  A stocky, gray-haired man in a three-piece business suit said, “Are you sure it’s the Kid? I heard the Pecos River Kid was a big, beefy gent.” He looked around, frowning. “With long blond hair and blue eyes.”

  “Nope,” said the little man who’d been playing poker with Squires. “That’s the Pecos River Kid, all right. I’d recognize him anywhere.” He turned his vaguely familiar eyes toward Slash. “You killed the Pecos River Kid, mister. Congratulations!”

  Slash frowned at the little man, wondering where he’d seen him before. Distracted by sudden thunder at the back of the room, he turned to see the actual Pecos running down the stairs from the second floor, yelling, “Slash!”

  Pecos stopped when he picked his partner out of the crowd.

  “He dead?” asked one of the two bartenders, turning toward Pecos standing on the stairs, midway between the
first and second floors.

  Frowning uncertainly, Pecos turned toward the barman. He hesitated for a second, then, remembering the aliases, said, “Yeah. Yeah . . . Slash Braddock is dead. He’s, uh . . .” The big cutthroat continued dropping slowly down the stairs. “He’s lyin’ dead in the street.”

  As he strode across the floor toward Slash, he looked toward where Arnell Squires lay dead under the mounted grizzly head. Haltingly, he asked, “The Pecos River Kid—he dead, too?”

  “Deader’n hell,” Slash said, stifling a dry chuckle.

  Just then the crowd, recovering from the shock of the lead swap, lifted a low roar as the men in the room began exclaiming as they converged on the body of the “Pecos River Kid” lying dead under the grizzly head.

  “I want his boots!” yelled one man, crouching over Squires’s body.

  “I got his hat! I got the Kid’s hat!” shouted another, smiling like a happy boy around a Christmas tree as he held Squires’s hat aloft. “Look here, Davey,” he yelled to another man on the far side of the room. “I got the Pecos River Kid’s felt topper!”

  “Get out of the way—I want that damn ring on his finger!” cried another gent, one of many now dropping like vultures over the fresh carrion of Arnell Squires.

  “I git dibs on that ring, dammit!” retorted another man. “He done cheated me out of a hundred and twenty dollars! Give me that goddamn ring!”

  As Pecos approached Slash, a foxy smile twisting his mouth, Slash looked around for the little man who’d appeared so familiar but whose face the outlaw could not place, try as he might. His eyes sweeping the raucous crowd fighting over Arnell Squires, Slash spotted the little man, clad in wool trousers, plaid wool shirt, and suspenders just then pushing out through the batwings.

  “Hey,” Slash called, and started toward the doors.

  Just then someone shouted, “Slash Braddock! That’s whose guns I want!”

  And then a good half dozen men or more dashed toward the batwings, blocking Slash’s way.

  When Slash finally made it out the doors, the little man was gone.

  “Who you lookin’ for?” Pecos asked, moving up behind his partner.

  Frowning, Slash shook his head. “I’ll be damned if I know.”

  CHAPTER 26

  “What’s got your neck in a hump?” Pecos asked Slash later, after the two cutthroats had ridden out of Morrisville as their dead counterparts were still being pillaged and plundered and stripped as naked as proverbial jaybirds. “We done just escaped eternity one more time, my friend.”

  The big blond scowled and shook his head. “I wonder who got Arnell’s boots. As I remember, he had one hell of a nice pair of boots—with fine red stitching all over ’em.” He glanced at Slash. “Didn’t he get those boots down in Mexico a couple of years ago?”

  Pecos gazed at Slash riding just off his left stirrup.

  “Yeah, yeah, I think so,” Slash said, distracted. He’d only half heard the question.

  “I wish I’d gotten my hands on those boots,” Pecos said, riding easily in his saddle. “I doubt they would have fit me. I think Arnell had little feet. Wasn’t Roy always teasin’ him, sayin’ Arnell had little-girl’s feet. Purty, too. Hah!” Pecos chuckled, then grew thoughtful, speculative once more. “Still, that was some fine footwear!”

  He turned to Slash. “Don’t you think, partner?”

  Slash looked at him. “Don’t I think what?”

  “All right,” Pecos said in frustration. “I’ll ask it again. What’s got your neck in such a hump? You ain’t been listenin’ to a word I been sayin’. Not that that’s all that unusual, but . . .”

  Slash glanced back along the trail they’d been following southwest through the San Juan Mountains. Having climbed a low divide, they were now dropping down into the broad valley on the other side and through which the Animas River twisted and turned, lifting a low, steady roar in the pines to their left. Towering stone ridges, like gothic cathedrals and English castles, and scalloped with tufts of spruce, firs, and tamaracks, jutted high over both sides of the valley, which was fragrant with the piney, winey smell of the high mountains and whose air was refreshingly cool even now in the midafternoon.

  Slash wasn’t thinking about the peaceful, picturesque surroundings, however. Pecos was right. He had his neck in a hump. It had been that way ever since they’d dropped over the first ridge out of Morrisville.

  Now he turned to his partner and said, “You know that itchy feeling I get down my right leg? The one that usually means we’re bein’ shadowed?”

  “Yeah, I remember you fussin’ about it.”

  “Well, my right leg is itchin’ somethin’ awful right now. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I had a whole nest of chiggers chewin’ away at me under my trousers and inside my longhandles.”

  Pecos glanced behind him, scowling toward the top of the last hill. “That’s good to know.”

  “Why?”

  “You know that low buzzing I get in my ears whenever I think someone’s slogging along our back trail?”

  “Yeah.”

  “If I was wearin’ a bonnet, there’d have to be a bee in it for all the caterwaulin’ inside my head!”

  “That tears it,” Slash said, pulling back on his Appy’s reins and turning sideways to the trail. Gazing back toward that last hill, which was stippled with rocks and tall firs, he said, “I think someone’s been shadowin’ us ever since we left Morrisville.”

  “I done looked behind us several times,” Pecos said, deep lines cutting across his forehead, “and I ain’t seen a thing. I thought it was just my imagination even though, as you know, I ain’t never had much of one.”

  “Yeah, I was thinkin’ the same thing.”

  “About my imagination?”

  “No, about us bein’ shadowed, you dunderhead!” Slash swung down from his saddle, tossed Pecos the reins, and shucked his Yellowboy repeater from his saddle boot. “Wait here with the horses. If someone is behind us and we ain’t both just all too ready for the Sisters of Christian Charity Home for the Old and Feeble, I’ll spot the son of a buck!”

  Slash pumped a cartridge into the Yellowboy’s breech, off-cocked the hammer, and strode back up the hill along the narrow, meandering, rock-pocked horse trail he and Pecos had been following. When he was near the top, he doffed his hat and rose up onto the toes of his boots, gazing back down the hill’s other side, toward the long, broad, open valley they’d just traversed.

  Seeing nothing, he got down on hands and knees, crawled a little closer to the top of the hill, then stopped and took a long, sweeping gaze out across the valley.

  It was all open ground before him for a good four, five hundred yards. There was little to no cover. About the only thing that grew out there, between low, fir-clad mountain ridges to either side, was short grass and low-growing mountain sage.

  Slash took another long, slow look, sweeping his gaze from the far northern ridge on his left to the southern ridge on his right, separated by at least two miles. Between those ridges was only the sage. Slash’s eyes were still keen. At least, he thought they were; he had to admit he’d never had them checked by a professional. All he knew was that he could still bring down a deer with his Yellowboy from a good hundred to a hundred and fifty yards without any problem, and hit the beast where he intended.

  You didn’t get any more professional than that.

  If someone were out there, he’d have seen him. But he didn’t see a damn thing except a hawk riding the thermals high over the valley, a ragged-edged speck against the faultless arch of cobalt sky. The hawk was likely hunting for mice or jackrabbits.

  Slash crawled backward several yards down the slope, then rose, grunting his grievances against the aches and pains his roll across the saloon floor had inflicted on his joints. Fleet he might have been, but he’d be paying for that brisk maneuver for several days, likely waking up in the dark of night for sips of whiskey to ease his discomfort.

  Old age wasn’t f
or sissies....

  He set his hat on his head and walked down to where Pecos sat his buckskin, frowning curiously toward him.

  “Nothin’, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  “Shoulda taken your spyglass.”

  Slash pointed at his eyes. “You know I got a hawk’s peepers.”

  Pecos gave a snort and tossed the Appy’s reins to Slash, who toed a stirrup. “Maybe we’re ready for that charity home, after all.”

  “Hmmm,” Pecos said, casting another frustrated scowl along their back trail. “Damn peculiar.”

  When they were riding again, angling close to the splashing river on their left, Slash turned to Pecos. “Did you see that little, peculiar-lookin’ fella in the Lucky Lady? He was playin’ poker with Sanchez and Squires, and he seemed really damn sure—I mean, bonded sure—that Arnell Squires was you. He also seemed determined to convince the others he was you.”

  Pecos shook his head. He’d pulled his makings out of his shirt pocket and was building a smoke as they rode. “Didn’t see him. What was peculiar about him?”

  Slash winced, unable to put his finger on what had made the little man stick out in his mind—beyond the fact the little man had seemed so determined that Squires was Pecos. “Hell if I know!”

  They rode a few more paces and then Slash looked at Pecos again. “Hey,” he said.

  Pecos ceased rolling his quirley closed to cast a skeptical glance at Slash. “Hey, what?”

  Slash checked his Appy down again and scowled over at his partner. “What in the hell are we doing out here, Pecos?”

  Pecos finished closing the cigarette, then stopped his own mount, turning it to face Slash and the Appy. “I get your drift,” he said, turning his mouth corners down. “We done killed Sanchez and Squires. They’re the ones who took over the gang after they pulled that stunt on us back at Doña Flores’s place.”

  “We cut the head off the snake,” Slash said. “The Snake River Marauders don’t have a leader no more. Who’d take over for Loco and Arnell? Snook Dodge? Billy Pinto? Kansas City Dave?”