The food and coffee were good. The plump, middle-aged Valencia obviously took care of the house while Cribbins rustled grub for the rest of the outfit. She did a fine job of it.
John Henry and Mallette made small talk. Lottie would get back to the plan she and Simon Garrett were carrying out when she was good and ready. John Henry didn’t see any need to rush her and maybe make her suspicious.
That moment came after supper, after Valencia had filled snifters from a cut-crystal decanter of brandy and passed them around the table. Lottie lifted hers. “To revenge.”
“To revenge,” Garrett echoed.
John Henry and Mallette lifted their glasses, but didn’t say anything.
After everyone drank, Lottie looked over at John Henry. “Are you sure you’re interested in joining up with us, John? You didn’t know Henry. You don’t have any personal reason to risk your life avenging him.”
“I like the setup you have here, from what I’ve seen of it so far. Looks like a good deal in the long run for a man like me. I’d say that helping you out now would be a good investment for my future.”
Garrett snorted contemptuously. “Most men in our line of work don’t think past the next job. Hell, they don’t think past the next bottle of whiskey or the next woman.”
Lottie took another sip of her brandy. “John’s not a common outlaw. You can tell that just by talking to him.”
“Oh, I’m on the wrong side of the law, you can be sure of that.” John Henry was aware that Garrett was frowning again, probably because of Lottie’s flattery of him.
It was like she was trying to stir up trouble . . . which was entirely possible. One way to judge a man was to see how he reacted when things went wrong.
“How about you, Nick?” Lottie asked the gambler. “Are you interested in staying with us for a while?”
“Well, I was sort of planning to move on to California sooner or later,” Mallette said. “I’ve always heard about the Barbary Coast in San Francisco. I think I’d like to see it for myself and try my luck in the saloons and gambling halls there. But I suppose that can wait. I don’t mind lending a hand here for the time being, if you think I can be of help.”
“You’re the sort of man who’d make a good spy. Not in Kiowa City, of course, because you’re already known as a fugitive there. But later, when our bigger plans get started. Information is going to be important to us.”
Mallette grinned. “Tongues wag over a game of cards. That’s a good place to pick up rumors about money shipments and payrolls and the sort of things you’d need to know.”
“You’re a thinking man, too,” Lottie said. “I like that.”
“Thinking’s fine,” Garrett snapped, “but sooner or later this business comes down to fighting.”
“From what I saw in the bunkhouse, John can handle that part of it just fine. And if he gunned down Jimmy Deverill, he’s good with that part, too.”
John Henry just sipped his brandy. His goal in getting himself arrested had been to bust out of jail and then infiltrate the gang responsible for the murders of Charles Houston and Lucas Winslow so he could stop them from wiping out the rest of the jury and Judge Doolittle. So far it seemed to be working, but he still had to be careful.
“Of course we can’t let just anyone join up with us, you know,” Lottie went on. “You might be planning to double-cross us. You might even be working for the law.”
Mallette said, “No offense, ma’am, but you couldn’t be more wrong about that. Even before I got that trumped-up murder charge levied against me, I was usually walking on the shady side of the street. And John here, well, from the sound of it, he’s been mixed up in even more things than I have, or that fellow Deverill wouldn’t have thrown down on him.”
“I believe you, Nick. But still, just for my own piece of mind, I’d like to be sure.”
She nodded to Garrett, who scraped his chair back and stood up. An unpleasant smile played around the corners of the outlaw’s mouth. He walked over to the front door and opened it. “Bring him in.”
John Henry’s fingers tightened on the brandy snifter. Whatever these two were up to, it couldn’t be good.
It was even worse than he expected. Two of the gang came into the room, dragging an unconscious man between them. Two more followed with drawn guns.
John Henry set his drink down and rose to his feet, turning toward the newcomers. He fought to keep his face from revealing the bleak anger that flooded through him.
The two men dropped their unconscious burden on the floor practically at John Henry’s feet. The round, bland face of Deputy Carl Baird, now battered and bloody, stared up at him.
Baird was out cold, but he was still alive. John Henry was able to make out the ragged rising and falling of the star packer’s chest.
“If you’re as far on the wrong side of the law as you claim, John,” Lottie said coolly from the head of the table, “then you won’t mind putting a bullet through this deputy’s brain.”
Chapter Twelve
“My God!” Nick Mallette exclaimed as he leaped to his feet. “That’s Carl Baird, one of the deputies from Kiowa City.”
“I know,” Lottie said. “A couple of our men jumped him after he got separated from the posse Sheriff Rasmussen brought out to search for you and John. They thought he might turn out to be useful, so they brought him back here.”
John Henry rested his hand on the butt of his Colt. “I don’t know. He seemed pretty harmless to me, but if you want him dead—”
“No!” Mallette cried. “Damn it, John. I already had to stop you from cutting his throat—”
“What did you say?” Garrett broke in.
“When we broke out of jail, Carl was the deputy John jumped,” Mallette explained. “He wanted to go ahead and kill him then. He was going to . . . to cut his throat.”
“Then he shouldn’t mind killing him now,” Lottie said calmly.
John Henry started again to draw his gun. “I don’t mind. It’s liable to get your floor a little messy, though.”
“Wait, wait!” Mallette said. “Baird always treated me decent. I’d hate to see him killed for no good reason.”
“Oh, the hell with this.” John Henry’s gun came out of leather. He pointed it at Baird’s head and eared back the hammer.
Mallette took a quick step toward him and grabbed his wrist. John Henry let the gambler force the gun up, away from Baird, but he turned sharply toward Mallette. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m sorry, John. I . . . I just think it would be a mistake to kill the deputy.” Mallette licked his lips and went on hurriedly. “We might be able to get more use out of him later on.”
“How do you figure that?” Garrett’s voice dripped with disdain.
“Well . . . I know you said the law can’t get to you here, Miss Dalmas, but what if that happened sometime despite all your precautions? You might need a hostage, and the deputy would be a good one.”
“Are you saying we should keep him prisoner here?” Lottie asked.
“That makes sense to me. There’s really no point in killing him.”
“What about to prove that John really wants to be one of us? Wouldn’t that be a good reason?”
“He’s already come within a whisker of killing the deputy twice! That ought to be proof enough, shouldn’t it?”
“And you’ve stopped me twice,” John Henry said coldly. “You’ve laid hands on me, too. I don’t cotton to that, and I won’t forget it, either.”
Mallette let go of John Henry’s wrist and stepped back. “I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, to any of you. But I just think it would be smarter to keep Deputy Baird alive for the time being.”
A tense silence stretched for several seconds. Finally, Lottie said, “I suppose you might have a point, Nick.”
Garrett disagreed. “If we keep that damned lawman alive, we’ll have to feed him and keep a guard on him all the time. I say it’s too much trouble.”
“We can afford the provisions, and some of the men could use something to do, to keep them out of trouble,” Lottie said. “Put your gun up, John.”
“Are you sure?” John Henry asked. “He helped Rasmussen get the drop on me in the saloon. The way I see it, I’ve got a score to settle with the varmint.”
“There might be a better time to settle it.”
“Fine,” John Henry said grumpily. He lowered the revolver’s hammer and pouched the iron. “But when that time comes, I want to be the one who sends him over the divide.”
“Third time is the charm,” Lottie said with a smile. She flicked a hand at Baird’s unconscious form. “Get him out of here. Lock him up in the smokehouse. That’ll make a good prison for him.”
John Henry continued glaring at Mallette as two outlaws picked Baird up and dragged him out. The other two gunmen went with them.
That had been a close call and had almost ruined everything, John Henry thought. But thanks to Mallette’s reaction, John Henry’s pose as an outlaw and gun-wolf was still intact. If Mallette hadn’t spoken up the way he had, the past few minutes might have gone considerably differently.
Lottie said, “Why don’t we all sit down and finish our brandy, gentlemen?”
Garrett held her chair for her again.
“When will you be making another move in your plan?” John Henry asked.
“Are you eager for action, John?”
He shrugged. “I’ve never been much of one for sitting around and doing nothing.”
“Be patient,” Lottie advised him. “Some things can’t be rushed. Vengeance is one of them. But when the time comes, you’ll be part of it.”
John Henry nodded. He had to be satisfied with that, at least for the moment. He hoped it wouldn’t be too long before there would be new developments, though.
He was used to living on the knife edge of danger, but this one was pretty damned sharp.
* * *
Simon Garrett stood on the front porch of the main house smoking a cigar and watching the two new men go back to the bunkhouse. From time to time his jaw clenched and his teeth clamped down hard on the cylinder of tightly rolled tobacco. Without taking off the glove, he used his right hand to massage the left hand.
“Hurting tonight?” Lottie asked from behind him.
He turned his head to look over his shoulder. Most of the lamps in the house had been blown out. Only a faint glow came through the open door to silhouette her sleek body in the thin silk wrapper she wore.
“It’s fine,” Garrett said. “No worse than it always is.”
“Pain can be a helpful reminder of what we have to do.”
“I suppose.” Garrett paused. “I could have done without having to show it off to those two strangers.”
Lottie didn’t apologize. The notorious Flame never did. “They’re not strangers now. They’re allies.”
Garrett snorted. “Mallette’s a weakling. He’ll never be any good to us.”
“You never know about things like that. Anyway, he came in with Saxon, and I didn’t want to risk losing him.”
“It didn’t seem to me like they’re that close.”
“But why take a chance? It doesn’t cost us anything to let Mallette live for a while, just like that deputy.”
Garrett puffed on the cigar and blew out a cloud of smoke that was silver in the moonlight. “I don’t see why you’re so bound and determined to bring Saxon into the bunch. Sure, he must be fast on the draw if he downed Deverill, but plenty of men are good with a gun. I’m pretty fast myself.”
“He’s insurance,” Lottie said.
“Insurance? Against what?”
“Deverill was probably the most dangerous man on Carson’s payroll,” she explained. “That means if Carson decides to double-cross us later on, we’ll have a better chance of stopping him.”
“Carson’s not going to double-cross us. When he was here earlier, he seemed satisfied with the way things are going.”
“What about once he’s gotten what he wants and doesn’t need us anymore?” Lottie asked. “He might be satisfied with the way things work out and still betray us.”
“He’d be a damned fool to do that. The whole thing would come back on him as bad or worse than it does on us. Hell, it was all his idea!”
“He thinks it was his idea.” Lottie’s voice was steely. “I would have gone after Doolittle and the others, anyway. They deserve to die for what they did to Henry.” Her words took on a tone of dry amusement. “Getting Carson to pay us for settling the score is just a bonus.”
Garrett flicked the cigar butt into the yard in front of the ranch house. “Maybe so,” he said, but didn’t sound completely convinced.
Lottie put a hand on his arm. “Stop worrying and come on to bed, Simon. I haven’t steered you wrong yet, have I? Everything will work out fine. If you’re worried about Saxon, we’ll keep an eye on him and take care of him at the first sign of trouble. And when we don’t need him anymore . . . we’ll get rid of him just like Mallette. Simple as that.”
“Can’t be soon enough to suit me.” Garrett turned and took Lottie into his arms.
Chapter Thirteen
The next few days were tense ones for John Henry. There wasn’t much to do on the Silver Skull Ranch. He stood a couple turns on guard duty at the head of the trail, near the giant rock formation that looked so much like a human skull from a distance.
Other than that, he hung around the bunkhouse, getting to know the other members of the gang and subtly pumping them for information about the plan Lottie Dalmas and Simon Garrett had hatched to avenge Henry Garrett.
The problem was that the men didn’t know much and cared even less. Lottie and Garrett had promised them a big payoff in the long run, and for the time being they had whiskey and cards to pass the time, along with an occasional train robbery to keep some loot flowing. It was pretty much all they cared about. They just followed orders when the time came.
The mention of a big payoff intrigued John Henry. He couldn’t see how murdering the members of the jury that had convicted Henry Garrett, along with the judge who had presided over the trial, was going to profit the outlaws anything. That question just added to his sense that more was going on than he knew about.
Garrett came to him one morning. “Saddle up your horse, Saxon. You’ll be riding out to the ravine today to keep an eye on it.”
“All right,” John Henry replied with a nod. He had been wanting to take a look at that ravine, so he was fine with the job. “Anybody else going along?”
“Yeah, I’ll send a couple of other men, too. Anybody in particular you want to work with?”
John Henry shook his head. “That’s up to you. It doesn’t really matter to me.”
“Fine. Be ready to ride in ten minutes.”
John Henry found Mallette in the bunkhouse and told him he was riding out to the ravine.
“I wish I could come with you, John.” Mallette looked around the room and lowered his voice. “I get the feeling most of these fellas still don’t like me much.”
“Go find Garrett and ask him if you can come along,” John Henry suggested.
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” Mallette hurried out.
John Henry went to the barn and saddled Iron Heart. He was leading the big gray outside when Mallette approached and shook his head.
“Garrett said he’d already given the job to a couple other men and wanted me to stay here at the ranch. I’ve got a bad feeling about this, John.”
“You’ll be fine,” John Henry said. “Just stay out of everybody’s way.”
“I’ll try.” Mallette paused. “I’m glad you haven’t held a grudge against me for what happened the other day.”
“You mean that business with the deputy?” John Henry shrugged. “You helped me out when it came to escaping from that jail, Nick, and I helped you. That made us pards. I’m not going to forget that. Just don’t lay hands on me again.”
“I won’t
,” Mallette promised. “Be careful out there at the ravine, John. I don’t really trust Garrett.”
John Henry smiled. “I’ve lived this long by not really trusting anybody.”
A few minutes later he rode northwest with a couple outlaws named Purcell and Byrne, who had handled the duty before and knew the trail to use. It didn’t take long to reach the ravine where three more members of the gang were waiting for them.
The men going off duty waved and rode past them toward the ranch.
Purcell reined in and told John Henry, “We divide the ground into three sections and ride back and forth along the ravine. Since you’re new, Saxon, we’ll give you the middle section and make it easy for you. Ride a couple miles northeast, then turn around, come back here, and ride a couple miles southwest. Four miles, back and forth, with this rendezvous as the center point. Got it?”
“Sounds simple enough,” John Henry said. “What am I looking for?”
“Anybody trying to get across that ravine. If they do, you stop ’em.”
“Has anybody ever done that?”
“Not while I’ve been around here,” Purcell admitted. “But it could happen one of these days, and the Flame doesn’t like to take any chances.”
“The Flame of the Prairie,” John Henry mused. “That’s what I heard somebody call her the other day.”
“Never you mind about that. Just do your job.”
John Henry nodded. “Sure. How long do I stay out here?”
“Until we come back and get you.”
John Henry nodded again. Purcell and Byrne rode off, vanishing in opposite directions along the giant slash in the earth.
John Henry walked Iron Heart along the rim, studying the ravine to his left. He wasn’t sure what had formed it. While he knew something about geology, he was far from an expert on the subject.
The ravine was at least fifty feet deep and maybe half that distance wide. It ran fairly straight, almost as if a giant pair of hands had dug in its thumbs and split the earth open along here, like peeling an orange.
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