The little gunfighter grinned. ‘‘John McBride, I have the feeling you’d make a mighty bad enemy.’’
‘‘Believe it,’’ McBride said. He did not smile.
Together they cut down the girl’s body, an unpleasant task that had to be done, and laid her out as gently as they could on a pile of timbers. Despite the recent rain the wood was tinder-dry. Prescott used the pack rat’s nest for kindling and the old roof beams readily caught fire. When the timbers were blazing fiercely, sending up a thick column of gray smoke, they stepped back and watched the cabin burn.
‘‘We should say some words,’’ Prescott said. ‘‘What god would that little Celestial gal pray to?’’
‘‘The same god we pray to, I imagine. He might have a different name in China, that’s all.’’
‘‘Well, I don’t know any of the words anyhow,’’ Prescott said. ‘‘The times I watched men get buried, a preacher always read from the Book. Them was a heap of words and not something a man can easily recollect.’’
‘‘If we knew the words, we’d say them, Luke. I’d guess right about now the little Chinese girl knows that.’’
After the fire had died away to ashes, Prescott rounded up his horse and McBride reluctantly climbed onto the bony back of the mustang. As the sun dropped lower in the sky and their shadows grew long, they rode out of the meadow and again followed the wagon trail.
The trail wound upward through stands of ponderosa and aspen, curving around huge out-croppings of granite rock that grew more numerous as they climbed higher and the air thinned. After an hour the sun was a dull crimson ball low above the western horizon, adrift in a sky the color of ancient jade. A stiff breeze had picked up, whispering wild stories to the aspen that set their leaves to trembling.
They came up on the water tower of the Union Pacific just as the day was shading into night and the trail petered out to nothing. The tower stood on a siding and close to it was a piled-high pyramid of sawn logs for the furnaces of the locomotives. A small shed with a padlocked door stood a ways from the track, a wooden wheelbarrow leaning against one of its walls.
‘‘There’s nobody home,’’ Prescott said, drawing rein on his horse, his eyes restlessly searching the shadowed, aspen-covered hills that rose on either side of the rails.
‘‘If Trask’s men take the Chinese girls and opium off the trains here, there could be another wagon trail that we’re not seeing,’’ McBride said.
‘‘Unless they load them up and head for High Hopes right away,’’ Prescott said.
‘‘We didn’t meet anybody on the trail,’’ McBride said. He groaned softly and shifted uncomfortably on the mustang. ‘‘That means whoever murdered the Chinese girl is still around.’’
‘‘Or she may have been dead longer than we reckoned. If that’s the case, her killers could have taken the wagon trail before us.’’
McBride nodded. ‘‘There’s still enough light for us to scout around and see if there’s another trail headed away from the siding.’’
Prescott found the trail a few minutes later, a narrow wagon road cut through the aspen that had been just out of sight behind the log pile. He called McBride over and pointed at the hill rising above him.
‘‘The trail cuts across the saddleback. It’s got to end up somewhere. I’m betting at a cabin or maybe a cave.’’
‘‘We’ll leave the horses here and go take a look,’’ McBride said. ‘‘I don’t want to be slip-sliding on the back of the mustang when the shooting starts.’’
Prescott glanced at McBride’s gun in the shoulder holster. ‘‘You as good with that self-cocker as I heard?’’
‘‘I don’t know what you heard, but I’d say I’m fair to middling.’’
‘‘If there’s more than two of Trask’s men, you might want to try real hard to do better.’’
McBride smiled. ‘‘I’ll try, Luke. Yes, I’ll try real hard.’’
He watched Prescott swing out of the saddle, briefly envied the man’s casual elegance, then clambered off the back of the mustang. He had not eaten since breakfast, and there hadn’t been much of that, and his stomach rumbled loudly as he and Prescott took to the wagon trail and climbed toward the gap of the hollow hill.
They drew the night around them like a cloak and became one with the darkness. Very near, an owl asked its question to the heedless wind, then demanded an answer again. Prescott, a horseman unused to walking, made his awkward way along the sunbaked clay of a wagon-wheel track. His spurs were chiming, bootheels thudding on dry pine needles. McBride was glad they were not facing Apache. The dime novel he’d read said the savages heard every sound, even the faintest whisper, and would suddenly come charging out of the dark whooping and hollering, waving their murderous tomahawks.
He remembered a line from the book that had struck him: ‘‘Many a lovely lass in the first blush of maidenhood they’ve undone, many a stalwart frontiersman they’ve murdered, many a poor old mother’s heart they’ve broken.’’
McBride nodded to himself. That was a haunting line, penned by a good writer. Someday he’d like to read—
‘‘The gap is just ahead,’’ Prescott said, interrupting his thoughts. ‘‘Keep your rifle up and ready.’’
They reached the crest of the gap and stopped, staring into the night. The moon was rising, but its light was dim, lying thin on the land. McBride could make out the slope of the hill falling away steeply from where he stood, and something else—the lights of a cabin hanging like lanterns in the darkness.
‘‘Just as I thought,’’ Prescott whispered. ‘‘They hold the girls here for a spell before taking them to High Hopes.’’
‘‘How can you be sure it’s Trask’s men?’’ McBride asked. ‘‘It could be railroaders.’’
‘‘I’m not sure. That’s why we’ll get closer and take a look around.’’
‘‘Then you’d better take off your spurs, Luke. You make more racket than church bells on Sunday morning.’’
Prescott grinned, his teeth flashing white in the gloom. ‘‘We ain’t going to no prayer meeting, that’s for sure.’’ He bent, unbuckled his spurs and set them atop a tree stump by the trail. ‘‘Ready?’’
‘‘I’m ready.’’
‘‘Then let’s take a stroll.’’
The sky was ablaze with stars and the ascending moon wore a halo as the two men made their way down the slope and onto the flat. A mist wreathed through the silver trunks of the aspen and twined like a great gray snake across the low grassland, soundless as a ghost.
Closer now, McBride could make out the shape of the cabin, even see the smoke from the chimney, tied into bowknots by the wind. The air smelled of trees and the tang of frying bacon and his mouth watered and his stomach rumbled the more.
He followed Prescott as the man, crouching low and keeping his distance, scuttled past the front of the cabin. Two windows showed to the front, rectangles of orange light in the gloom. From inside McBride heard a man laugh loud and harsh and thump a table with the flat of his hand.
To the right of the cabin was a smaller building, a windowless shed with a slanted roof. The door was locked shut by a heavy wooden bolt. Beyond the shed was a pole corral where four horses dozed, and pulled up next to it was a freight wagon. Behind the seat, a massive iron cage took up the entire bed.
Those were Trask’s men in the cabin all right. McBride tightened his grip on the Winchester as he took a knee beside Prescott. He pointed to the cabin and whispered, ‘‘Trask’s boys.’’
The gunfighter nodded. ‘‘Figgered that.’’ He rose to his feet. ‘‘Let’s go be sociable, just like we were visiting kinfolk.’’
Before McBride could protest, Prescott strode toward the cabin, his rifle hanging in his right hand. When he was twenty feet from the door he stopped and yelled, ‘‘Hello the cabin!’’
As McBride joined him he heard the scrape of a chair across a wood floor and a moment later the door swung open. A huge man stood silhouetted in the doorway
, what looked to be a shotgun in his hands. ‘‘What the hell do you want?’’
Firing from the hip, Prescott shot him in the belly.
Chapter 18
The man screamed and slammed against the door-frame. His knees buckled and as he started to go down, Prescott shot him again.
Learning nothing from the death of his partner, a second man appeared in the doorway, a Colt flaming in each hand. He was shooting blindly into the darkness, but he was outlined against the greasy yellow glow of kerosene lantern light.
Prescott fired, levered his rifle and fired again.
McBride saw a sudden arc of blood and brain fan above the man’s head. He staggered back out of sight, the staccato thump of his bootheels loud on the pine floor. A grinding crash of metal, then a wild yell from inside as burning logs scattered across the wood floor from the tipped stove.
McBride had been seeking a target. Now he found one. He fired at the lantern hanging just inside the cabin window. A miss. Cursing under his breath, he tossed the rifle aside and drew his Smith & Wesson. He raised the gun to eye level in both hands, aimed and fired again. The lamp exploded and instantly flames shot up behind the window.
A frantic voice came from somewhere near the smoke-filled doorway. ‘‘We’re done! We’re coming out.’’
‘‘Put your mitts up where I can see them,’’ Prescott yelled. ‘‘And make sure they’re empty.’’
Two men tumbled, coughing, out through the cabin door. The one to Prescott’s left was big and bearded, while the other was smaller and younger. The little gunfighter shot the bearded man and he went down shrieking, a bullet smashing into his breastbone a few inches below where his neck met his chest. Prescott fired again, this time a careful belly shot into the younger man.
‘‘I want that one!’’ Prescott hollered at McBride. ‘‘Let him be.’’
For his part, McBride had no intention of shooting. He was stunned by the suddenness of the violence and Prescott’s cool skill with a gun. He’d downed four men in less than a couple of minutes. Nothing McBride had ever experienced had prepared him for that, not even growing up on the tough streets or his years in the New York police, when he’d served with many hard men.
For the first time he appreciated what it had taken for Prescott to enter the top rank of gunfighters and become a named man. Looking around him at the dead men and the youngster screaming and slowly dying, he knew he wanted no part of it. For a few minutes there, Luke Prescott had teetered on the outer rim of madness and no one could have pulled him back from the precipice. McBride never wanted to find himself there. . . . Unless . . . he suddenly thought of Shannon and realized that Prescott’s bloody, insane road was one he might well have to soon travel himself.
The towheaded boy on the ground was speaking, looking up at Prescott with agonized, pleading eyes. ‘‘I’m gutshot. . . . Damn you, end it.’’
‘‘I will. But first I want to ask you a question, for my own satisfaction, like.’’
‘‘Then ask it and be damned to ye. My belly’s on fire.’’
Prescott got down on one knee beside the boy, who looked to be about seventeen or so. Behind Prescott the cabin blazed, sending smoke and flames into the sky, and he was outlined in fire.
‘‘Why did you hang the little Chinese gal?’’
‘‘I . . . I had no part in that. It was Dawson and the others who did it.’’
‘‘Charlie Dawson?’’
The boy bit back his pain until his lip bled. ‘‘Yeah, him an’ Hank Ross an’ Jess Worley.’’
Prescott spoke to McBride from the scarlet-streaked darkness. ‘‘A few years back Charlie Dawson rode with Sam Bass and that wild bunch down Austin way. He was the worst of them.’’
McBride made no answer as the boy yelped, ‘‘You’ve asked your question—now end it.’’
His voice level and matter-of-fact, Prescott said, ‘‘I’m still waiting for an answer. Why did Charlie hang the Celestial?’’
Again the boy bit back a scream. ‘‘She . . . she ran away. When we caught her, Charlie hung her as an example to the others. Made . . . made them look at it.’’
‘‘There are others?’’ McBride asked. ‘‘Where are they?’’
‘‘In the shed. Four . . . four of them.’’
McBride looked at the boy, then said to Prescott, ‘‘Is there anything we can do for him?’’
‘‘Sure there is.’’ The gunfighter rose to his feet, drew his Colt and shot the boy in the head. ‘‘That’s what we can do for him.’’
Prescott read the tightly knotted expression on McBride’s face, a mix of horror and disgust. He punched out the empty shell from the Colt and reloaded from his gun belt. When he spoke his voice was flat, without emotion.
‘‘John, we’re in a hard, merciless business. You want to take down Gamble Trask and so do I. You want to save your woman and so do I. But we can’t do it without killing, a lot of killing. Turning the other cheek is for preachers and them as don’t know any better. Now, you either make up your mind to the killing part or we say adios right here and now and go our own ways.’’
‘‘I’ve killed two men,’’ McBride said, ‘‘and at the time I understood the necessity for it. But you just shot a boy.’’
Prescott shrugged. ‘‘War prefers its victims young. But he was man-grown enough to carry a gun and ride with wild ones. He took his chances, but the deck was stacked against him, maybe from the day and hour he was born.’’ The gunfighter stepped closer to McBride. ‘‘We don’t have much time. If there are Celestials in the shack yonder, the fire could spread from the cabin and we’ll have more dead young ones on our hands.’’ He hesitated a moment, then: ‘‘Have you made up your mind?’’
‘‘I’ll go along with the killing if there’s no other way.’’
‘‘There is no other way. Our talking is done, John. From now until we come out on the other side, we let our guns speak for us.’’
‘‘Then that will be the way of it. Now let’s get those girls out of there,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Before they burn to death.’’
The cabin was an inferno of smoke and flame that tinged the sky red. Inside the corral, the horses were wild-eyed, trotting in circles, snorting, tossing their heads, terrified of a predator that was worse than any other. The shack was about ten paces from the burning cabin and when McBride reached the door the heat was intense. As a torrent of sparks cascaded around him, he slammed back the wooden bolt and opened the door.
It was dark inside, but the light from the blazing cabin splashed a triangle of flickering orange on the dirt floor, revealing a pair of slippered feet. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, McBride made out the shadowy shapes of four women cowering against the far wall. They made no attempt to get to their feet.
Prescott stepped beside him and took in the situation at a glance. ‘‘Out!’’ he yelled.
The frightened women clung closer together but did not move.
‘‘Out!’’ Prescott yelled again, to no effect. ‘‘What the hell is Chinese for ‘out’?’’ he demanded. Smoke was rapidly filling the shack and the heat was growing more intense. ‘‘Outee!’’ Prescott hollered.
‘‘Drag them out, Luke,’’ McBride said. ‘‘They won’t move by themselves.’’
The girls were tiny, small-boned and light as birds. McBride and Prescott lifted them one by one and carried them outside, well away from the cabin. A few minutes later the shack caught fire.
Made ragged by heat, the wind gusted, fanning the flames of both cabin and shack. Prescott turned the frantic horses out of the corral, trusting that they would not run long and far. He and McBride got on each side of the wagon and pushed it well away from sparks. When they returned, the girls were still sitting where they’d left them, faces blank, black eyes reflecting the flames of the fire but nothing else.
One by one, McBride pushed up the sleeves of the girls’ tunics and saw what he’d expected, the track marks of a needle, like insect bites
on their smooth skin.
He turned to Prescott.
‘‘I didn’t see any drugs in the shack, did you?’’
The man shook his head.
‘‘Probably burned up in the cabin.’’
‘‘You ever seen a heroin addict who can’t get the drug any longer?’’ McBride asked.
‘‘Can’t say as I have.’’
‘‘I did, a couple of times. It’s nasty. In a few hours we’re going to have our hands full with these women.’’
Luke Prescott laughed.
‘‘Women? They’re only children. What age do you make them out to be?’’
McBride took a knee and cupped his hand around the chin of one of the girls, lifting her face to the dying light of the cabin fire.
‘‘Twelve.’’ He moved to another. ‘‘About the same age.’’ Another. ‘‘Thirteen maybe.’’ He looked at the last girl awhile longer. ‘‘This one is older. Fifteen, I’d say.’’
‘‘Trask likes them young,’’ Prescott said, smiling without humor.
McBride remembered Hell’s Kitchen and the brothels of the Four Corners. ‘‘The men Trask sells them to like them young. It’s their business—they cater to perverts.’’ He turned bleak eyes to Prescott. ‘‘In some brothels I’ve known, a man can rape a girl, then beat her to death if that’s his inclination, just so long as he has the money to pay for it.’’
‘‘Glad I’ve always steered clear of big cities,’’ Prescott said. ‘‘I didn’t even know men like that existed.’’
McBride’s laugh was bitter. ‘‘They exist all right, and the men who supply them with what they want are just as bad.’’
‘‘Like Trask?’’
‘‘Just like Trask.’’ McBride was silent for a few moments as he studied the vacant faces of the four girls. Then he said, ‘‘Now we’ve got them, what do we do with them?’’
Prescott had been building a cigarette. Now his eyes lifted from tobacco and paper to McBride. ‘‘I’ve been studying on that. We can’t take them back to High Hopes, but I know a man who might shelter them for a spell, if you pay him enough.’’
Ralph Compton West of the Law Page 12
