Diablo (A Piccaddilly Publishing Western Book 6)

by Robbins, David

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Silver Dollar was on Hell Street, a block east of the Applejack. Noted for a huge chandelier that had been brought in all the way from Philadelphia, it was the Applejack’s chief rival for the honor of being the most elite establishment of its kind in all of Diablo.

  Lee slowed at the sight of its ornate front doors. Perspiration caked his body, and his shirt clung to him like a second skin. The exertion had taken a toll on his left shoulder, which lanced with pangs every few steps. He was in no shape for a gunfight, but the thought of Jim Hays lying in a pool of spreading crimson fueled the anger that had brought him this far and now carried him through the doors like a battering ram, spilling him into the smoky den of rowdies and hardcases.

  The two doors smashed into their adjoining walls, causing every head in the saloon to swing toward the entrance. Men and women gaped at the pale, grim apparition in their midst, and everyone there saw the right hand poised like a claw above the pearl-handled Colt.

  A beak-nosed prospector at a card table squalled, “What in hell do you think you’re doin’, mister?”

  “Shut up, you drunken jackass!” called out someone else. “That there is Lee Scurlock.”

  A deathly hush claimed the forty or fifty occupants of the room. To a man, they were riveted in place as the southerner stalked warily forward like a panther entering a den of jackals. A lean bartender, petrified in the act of lifting a glass, blanched when the Tennessean swung toward him.

  “You!” Lee roared, his voice thick with menace. “An hombre in a black coat and a straw hat came in here a few minutes ago. Where is he?”

  The bartender’s mouth moved, but it was a full ten seconds before he could be coherent. “I don’t know who you mean, mister. I’ve been busy tendin’ bar.”

  Lee surveyed the room, probing the corners, the tables, the stairs to the second floor where the doves entertained in private. Men and women recoiled from his predatory glare as if it were a rapier. Halfway across, he spotted a patch of black among a group huddled near the east end of the bar. Wheeling, Lee pointed with his left hand, wincing at a spasm that seared his shoulder.

  “You there! The one in the black coat!”

  Patrons scrambled to the right and left, exposing a big bear of a man in a baggy black coat and a ratty straw hat. He slowly turned, a bristly beard and bushy brows adding to his bearish countenance. No weapon was apparent. “Are you talkin’ to me, cub?” he challenged.

  Lee’s cry was a verbal blade cleaving the air like a thunderclap. “You’re the one who just shot Jim Hays, you mangy son of a bitch!”

  The man was not intimidated. Leaning back against the bar, glass in hand, he said mockingly, “Not me, cub. I’ve been here all night.”

  Incensed, Lee coiled to draw. “You’re a filthy liar!” he fumed. “Now let’s see how you do against someone who’s armed!”

  Grinning, the man took a swallow of whiskey, then said, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, cub. And as you can plainly see, I don’t have a gun on me. So if you slap leather, you’ll be shootin’ an unarmed man yourself.”

  Uncertainty pierced Lee’s fury like a pin pricking a bubble. He was nearly positive he had the killer, but what if he was wrong? He couldn’t gun the man down without due cause, not now that he had been appointed a deputy. “I’m taking you to the new marshal,” he announced. “Set down that glass, real slow, and let’s go.”

  The brutish bear lost his cockiness. “Like hell you are. If the marshal wants to arrest me, he can do it his own self. I don’t have to go with you.”

  “I’m one of his deputies,” Lee disclosed.

  “Is that so? Then where’s your badge?”

  Lee had left it back in his room. He had no proof that he was who he claimed, but he was not letting that stop him. “I’m taking you to Evers, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  “Not much, Mary Jane,” the other responded, and with the quickness of an Apache he flung the glass at the Tennessean’s head even as he dived to the right and produced a pistol as if by magic.

  Lee threw himself to one side, his right hand doing magic of its own. His first shot was a fraction of a heartbeat after the killer’s. Lead zipped past his ear so close that it nearly took off skin.

  The man in the black coat grunted, buckled, and rolled under a table. Prone, he fired twice without taking aim.

  Lee hurtled under a table himself as bedlam erupted. Women were screaming. Men were yelling. Everyone in the Silver Dollar sought cover, some flying out the door, others cowering against the walls.

  Rolling out from under the table, Lee pivoted, aiming at the spot where the murderer had been. But the man in the coat was gone, scrambling toward a side door like an oversized salamander. Lee fixed a hasty bead. As he was about to shoot, a panicked customer ran between them.

  Growling like a wild beast, the bearded man upended a table, threw a chair. He was doing all he could to spur the bystanders into creating enough confusion for him to escape. A dove who blundered in front of him was seized and spun around. Using her as a living shield, the man backed toward the door.

  Lee could not get a clear shot. He stepped to the right, danced to the left. The front sight settled on the man’s head, but the killer quickly jerked back and pressed his own revolver against the dove’s temple.

  “Shoot, and this bitch dies!”

  The people nearest the side door were doing everything in their power to get out of the bearish brute’s path. Some were kicking chairs and tables over, others clawing across the upended furniture like four-legged crabs, while still others were clambering over the bar. A woman tripped, then screamed when several others trampled her. She was boosted to her feet by a man who literally threw her onto the counter.

  Lee, meanwhile, angled to the left, his arm rock steady, the hammer of his Colt cocked, his trigger finger caressing the trigger. All he craved was a clear shot. Just one! But the milling crowd and the terrified dove in the killer’s grip thwarted him again and again.

  The man was within a few strides of the door. He turned to get his bearings, and in doing so, his left shoulder poked out from behind his human shield.

  In the blink of an eye, Lee fired. The slug jolted the murderer backward, spinning him half around, making him lose his grip on the woman. She skipped against the bar, tripped over her own feet, and shrieked loud enough to shatter the chandelier.

  Lee methodically cocked the Colt again.

  The killer tottered, recovered, faced him. Livid with rabid spite, he bellowed, “For Oscar!” and brought up his gun.

  With a calculated precision that was breathtaking to behold, Lee emptied his pistol into the murderer’s chest, the shots cracking in cadence, the bullets smacking into the man’s sternum within a hair of one another. As the echoes of the last blast resounded throughout the saloon, the man in the black coat oozed to the floor, his glazing eyes wide, his face waxen.

  Lee promptly reloaded. It hit him what he had done, and he wanted to shoot himself. Now he would never learn why the man had gunned down Allison’s father.

  Frowning, Lee crossed to the body and dropped to his left knee. The man’s pockets held cigars, matches, a folding knife, a fob watch, and, of special interest, a thick roll of bills. Lee was amazed at the sum. Four hundred and ninety-four dollars, more than many people earned in a year. He rose, turning just as Vint Evers and Ike Shannon burst into the Silver Dollar.

  The gambler took one look at the riddled corpse and glanced angrily at Lee. “Damn! I figured you had more sense than this.”

  “I tried to take him alive,” Lee said.

  “He sure did,” chimed in one of the bystanders, which set half a dozen to wagging their tongues all at once, relating what they had witnessed.

  Vint Evers listened for a bit, enough to get the gist, then held up his right hand for silence. They immediately quieted. “I reckon Ike owes you an apology, Lee,” he drawled. “But I surely do wish you’d waite
d for us.”

  “I didn’t want to chance him getting away,” Lee said, which was only part of the reason he had taken out after the murderer as he did. And a small part, at that. Mainly, bloodlust was to blame. He’d been so consumed by fury that he had not been thinking straight.

  The Texan hunkered and examined the killer. “Anyone know this hombre?” he asked loudly.

  A grizzled prospector edged forward. “I knew ’im, Marshal. Not real well, but we did share drinks on occasion.”

  Vint waited for the prospector to say more, but the man fidgeted and gnawed on his lower lip. “Well? Cat got your tongue, old-timer?”

  “Oh. His name was Joe Neff. He used to have a claim ’bout a quarter of a mile from mine, but it didn’t pan out and he gave up a month or so ago. Been down on his luck ever since.”

  Lee extended the thick wad of bills and mentioned how much it was. “I found it on Neff. His luck couldn’t have been all that bad.”

  Evers held the money in his left palm. “Mighty strange,” he commented. Then again, he mused, maybe it wasn’t. “Could be that someone paid Neff to kill Jim Hays. Question is, who?”

  Lee remembered the night he had been shot. Was there a link? Had the same party who paid Neff also paid Meers and those other miners to ambush a Bar K rider?

  Rising slowly, the Texan pocketed the money, then told Shannon, “I’d be obliged if you’d stay and take charge of cleanin’ up this mess. Have four men cart Neff to the undertakers.”

  “Where will you be?” Ike asked, disguising his worry. He did not like to leave his friend’s back unprotected for long spells.

  Vint hitched at his gunbelt. “Walkin’ our young friend back,” he said, and led the southerner toward the doors.

  The prospector who had been so helpful suddenly snapped his fingers. “Say, there’s one more thing, Marshal.”

  Both the Texan and the Tennessean stopped.

  “It’s awful queer how Neff said Oscar’s name before he pulled his persuader on Scurlock,” the man said.

  “Oscar?” Evers repeated.

  “Yep. ‘For Oscar!’ Neff hollered. He must’ve been talkin’ about poor Oscar Dieter.”

  Again Vint figured the man would go into detail. Again he had to prod him with a verbal spur.

  “Sorry. I thought you would’ve heard. Oscar hit a rich vein three months ago. Somebody killed him one night and stuffed his body into a ravine, but a dog stumbled on it. We all put the blame on the cowboys, but we never had no proof.”

  “And Dieter was murdered three months ago, you say?” Evers said, perplexed. What possible link could there be between the dead miner and Jim Hays that would make Neff want Hays dead?

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Much obliged.”

  The night air was pleasantly cool on Lee’s brow. The throngs in the street were going on about their business as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As far as they were concerned, it was just another in an endless string of shootings, hardly worth a second thought.

  “I’m sorry about Jim Hays,” Vint Evers said as they headed for the Delony place. “He’s a decent gent. And Ike told me that you’re keen on his daughter.”

  “I aim to marry her,” Lee stated, surprising himself even more than the Texan. Until that very moment, he had not realized he truly intended to.

  “I’m right pleased to hear it,” Vint said sincerely. “I have high hopes of throwin’ a loop over a certain fine filly one day soon, myself.”

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “I haven’t had a chance to properly thank you for agreein’ to wear a badge,” Evers continued. “I admit that I’ll need all the help I can get. Tonight is just a taste of things to come, Lee. There’ll be a right smart of trouble hereabouts before this is settled.”

  “Diablo Junction has seen bloodshed before,” Lee noted absently, preoccupied by concern for Jim and Allison.

  “Sure enough, but a few diggers and drunks here and there ain’t nothin’ compared to the blood spillin’ to come. Whoever is behind all this is gettin’ bolder and bolder as time goes by.” Evers sighed. He had seen it all before, in other wild and woolly towns. “The fuse has been lit. It won’t be long now before the powder keg goes up, with us caught smack in the middle.”

  Most of the crowd was gone from in front of the Delony residence.

  The Texan halted at the gate. “This is as far as I go. Ike and me will nose around some, see if we can learn who’s to blame for Jim. If you need us for anything, anything at all, give a yell.”

  Lee offered his hand and shook warmly. He had found a genuine friend in the lanky lawman, and from that moment their bond was cemented. “That works both ways.”

  Bob Delony stood on the porch, head bowed, eyes glistening. “Doc Franklyn is still working on Jim,” he said as Lee came up. “I tried to lend a hand, but I couldn’t take all that blood and the sight of Jim being cut open.”

  “Where’s Allison?” Lee asked.

  “Upstairs with my wife. She wanted to stay in the kitchen and watch, but Doc wouldn’t hear of it. He shooed her out. Ethel went along to comfort her.”

  Lee resisted an impulse to dash inside. It would only distract Franklyn. Besides, he reasoned, Mrs. Delony was probably better at this sort of thing. Still, it was hard for him to do.

  “What about the man who shot Jim?”

  “Dead,” Lee said, and let it go at that.

  Waiting was terrible. Every sound from within caused Lee to stiffen. At one point a fluttering moan made his heart grow heavy with foreboding. From where he stood at the edge of the porch, he could see a light in an upstairs window.

  It must have been an hour later that the door creaked open and Doc Franklyn shuffled out, his hands and arms and the front of his white shirt soaked scarlet, his features haggard. Leaning on the rail, he said softly, “I tried. God, how I tried! But there is only so much a person can do.”

  Lee wanted to speak, but his tongue seemed twice as thick as it should be.

  Delony put a hand on the sawbones’ shoulder. “He’s gone, then?”

  Franklyn nodded. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. I know how much you cared for him.”

  Upstairs was someone who cared even more. A piercing wail rent the house, a cry torn from the very depths of a soul in abject torment. Without a word, drawn to Allison’s cry as instinctively as a moth to a flame, Lee Scurlock whirled, hurrying to the side of the woman he loved.

  ~*~

  Vint Evers decided to look in on Nelly before he joined Ike Shannon. Two days had gone by since he saw her last, two bitter days in which he had waged intense war with his own conscience.

  He should have seen her every day. Several times a day, in fact. That was the right thing to do. But he could not bear to watch her in the company of other men, not knowing how she felt about him, not when he had to endure the haunted look in her eyes.

  It wasn’t so bad when she was sharing drinks. At the bar most men treated her politely enough. But when she was whisked over by the piano to dance, when the customers took to pawing her and treating her as if she were beef on the hoof, it was all he could do not to fill the bastards with lead.

  Worst of all was the knowledge that he had let her down. He had failed her in the worst way a man could ever fail a woman.

  Nelly loved him. She wanted him to save her from the sordid life she led. Instead, he allowed Frank Lowe to ride roughshod over her. All because the law was on Lowe’s side.

  Now, girding himself, Vint strode into the saloon and sidled to the left so his back was to the wall. It was a habit of his, a precaution to keep from being backshot. Far too many skulking cowards infested the world.

  Right away Vint spotted a halo of golden hair. Nelly was by the bar, sharing drinks with a greasy drummer who frankly ogled her body between gulps.

  Nelly Rosell saw the lawman at the same moment that he saw her. Hope soared within her, hope that at long last he had come to do what she had prayed he would do every
day since that night they spent together.

  “You must excuse me a moment,” Nelly told the drummer, and hastened toward the Texan without waiting for approval. She did not care if Lowe noticed. Let him browbeat her later. He could rant all he wanted so long as he did not lay a finger on her.

  Vint wanted to go to her, to take her into his arms and assure her that everything would turn out all right. But he was rooted in place by fiery spikes that tore at his innards like the claws of a cougar.

  Nelly was almost to him when the lawman blanched. “Is something wrong?” she asked, dreading that he no longer shared their mutual affection. Why else had he taken to stopping by less and less?

  “No,” Vint lied, his tone betraying him. “I just came by to make sure you were all right.” So much more needed to be said, but he could not bring himself to say it. The feeling that he had failed her was almost too agonizing to bear.

  Hanging on his every word, his every gesture, Nelly glimpsed something in his eyes, something she could not quite place. For a moment she thought it might be fear, but the notion was silly. Vint Evers had never been afraid of anything, ever.

  Yet if not fear, then what? Nelly clasped her hands, her anxiety mounting. Could it be that he had changed his mind? That he wanted to tell her but he feared hurting her feelings?

  Vint mentally cursed himself for being a jackass. Nelly was upset. That was plain. He should say something to soothe her. But as he opened his mouth, someone else spoke.

  “Marshal! Fancy seeing you here! You haven’t been around much of late.”

  Frank Lowe swaggered over, his two beefy shadows at his heels. Smoothing his oiled mustache with a flip of a finger, he added, “I was beginning to think you weren’t as fond of my establishment as you used to be.”

  Lowe’s sneer made Vint’s head swim red. His temples pounded. His fingers twitched. He came so close to shooting the man dead in cold blood that it took a supreme effort of will not to. He knew that if he lingered a few seconds longer, he might lose control. Accordingly, he wheeled and stalked out into the night.