Chapter 17
The stocky, bald, apron-clad man with a bushy, upswept mustache and a face as red as a prairie sunset looked Louisa up and down from behind the rough-hewn bar in the Territorial Hotel’s large but crudely appointed saloon.
His brown eyes sparkled. “Hello, there.” He frowned a little when he saw the welt on Louisa’s right cheek and the swelling cut on the left corner of her lower lip. “Looks like you got taken to the woodshed.”
“I’d like a cup of tea and a rag.”
“Tea and a rag,” the barkeep said, deep lines of consternation cutting across his red forehead, beneath his egg-shaped bald dome. “I got whiskey an’ beer. Might be able to scrounge up a bottle of tequila, but . . .”
Louisa grabbed the rag wadded up on the bar to her right, snugged up against a gallon jar of pickled pigs’ feet. “Just the rag, then.”
She swung around and headed back out onto the Territorial’s small front porch. It was nearly completely dark. The snow was moaning and groaning around the small prairie settlement hugging the spur line tracks. The snow was still falling though not heavily.
Mainly, it was cold. Bitterly cold.
The chill wind bit at Louisa’s torn lip as she walked over to a covered rain barrel that sat on a corner of the porch. She removed the lid, punched a hole in the ice with a stick provided for that purpose, then dipped the rag into the cold, slushy water. She wrung out the rag then headed back into the saloon, ignoring the lusty stares of the half-dozen men seated at various tables around the place, near the horseshoe bar that ran halfway into the middle of the room from the rear.
A narrow stairs ran up the rear wall, off the bar’s rear end, to the hotel’s second story. The howling wind made the hotel’s spindly wood-frame walls creek and groan. The Vengeance Queen could also hear other sounds. These issued from the second floor. They were sounds you’d hear in any cheap parlor house.
A couple of the men sitting around the saloon chuckled as they lifted their eyes to the ceiling above their heads. Louisa kicked out a chair at the table she’d chosen when she’d first entered the place, after stabling her horses and the dead outlaws for the night in the only livery barn in town. She’d hid the saddlebags, bulging with the loot that she and Lou had taken off the dead outlaws, in the barn, as well. Her bedroll, saddlebags, and Winchester were piled on a chair to her right, the rifle positioned for an easy grab from its scabbard.
She was about to take a seat but stopped when she saw Edgar Clayton sitting at a round table on the other side of a large potbelly stove. She hadn’t recognized the man without his hat and scarf, both of which were on the table before him, near a whiskey bottle, a half-full shot glass, and schooner of dark ale. His hair was so thin on top that the pink top of his head shone through it. His small, round spectacles sagged on his long nose.
He stared back at Louisa. His pale blue eyes were dull, almost vacant. Suddenly, he smiled, lifting his gray-speckled beard, and raised his shot glass in salute.
Louisa said, “Any sign of your friend?”
“Ramsay Willis is no friend of mine,” Clayton said, the smile abruptly disappearing, and sipped his whiskey. “But in answer to your question—no. He’s out there somewhere, though. I assure you. He’s waiting on the train, no doubt. Thinks he can flee his sins, escape my wrath.”
Again, Clayton sipped from his shot glass then frowned at Louisa curiously. “What happened? You fall off your horse, Miss Bonaventure?”
Ignoring the question, Louisa sat down in her chair and pressed the cold cloth to her cheek. She probed her torn lip with her other hand then pressed the cold cloth to it. She pulled the cloth away and saw blood. She turned the wadded cloth around and held the cleaner side against her cheek.
Meanwhile, the barman, looking grumpy, brought a steaming mug of tea to her.
“Had to scour the pantry for that,” he said.
“How much do I owe you?”
He spread his hands and gave a tolerant smile. “On the house.”
“I’ll take a room.”
“They’re filling up fast on account of the storm.” The apron glanced around at the other men in the saloon. “Likely be more now that night’s fallen. Too cold for even the most seasoned grub-line rider to camp out. More folks might be comin’ in for the train. You can have room six. Two dollars an’ fifty cents. We’ll settle up in the morning. Fetch the key from the bar when you’re ready to go up. Name’s Morris Tutwiler. I own this heap.”
He glanced around and sighed.
Grumbling, Tutwiler started to turn away but turned back around when Louisa asked: “Who’s upstairs, Mr. Tutwiler?” Still holding the cloth to her cheek, she glanced at the general area of the ceiling from which the sounds were coming.
The bartender glanced at the ceiling. “That?” He shook his head, gave a fleeting grimace. “Believe me—you don’t want to know.”
Tutwiler turned away with his heavy paunch and his broad, apron-clad hips, and headed back around behind the bar.
Holding the cloth to her cheek, Louisa raised the tea to her lips, blew on it, and, wincing at the pain of the cut, took a quick sip. Staring through the steam lifting from the stone mug, she saw yet another man gazing at her.
This man was a soldier with a captain’s bars on the shoulders of his dark blue tunic. He was a handsome man in his early thirties with thick black hair curling over his ears and a thick, dragoon-style mustache. He was a little pale, and his eyes were cobalt blue. He was playing poker with three other men, somewhat older than he and dressed in the store-bought suits of traveling drummers.
Having caught Louisa’s gaze, the captain cast her a warm, friendly smile. There didn’t appear to be any leering lust in the man’s eyes, but maybe he was just better than most men at disguising it.
She did not return the smile. She took another sip of the hot tea and looked away from him. She was in no mood to parry unwanted advances.
Louisa sat with her back to the wall, facing the bar ahead and on her left, the stove and Clayton about ten feet straight ahead of her. The door at the front of the room was ahead and on her right.
Now as she heard it open, she turned her gaze to it, her right hand tingling in anticipation of the possible need to reach for the Winchester. Her hand stopped tingling when a slender, female figure in a blue wool coat, wool hat, red muffler, and matching red knit mittens came in and closed the door behind her. Shivering, she stamped snow from her boots. The redhead from Jiggs’s place loosened the muffler, removed the hat, and shook out her long, thick red hair that contrasted sharply with the delicate paleness of her face.
Just then the woman on the second story gave a long, shuddering cry.
The men in the room snorted and chuckled sheepishly.
“That’s enough to make a fella wanna take his turn up there,” said one of the drummers playing cards with the soldier.
“You’d better not try it,” warned the bartender, Tutwiler, who was stirring a pot of stew bubbling on the stove near Louisa. He glanced around the room. “Anyone who wants some of this, it’s ready. Beans and bacon. You put enough salt on it, you might be able to choke it down. Bowls are on the bar. Dime apiece.” Anticipating objections, he threw up a thick arm and said, “A man’s gotta make a livin’!”
He dropped the spoon into the stewpot and walked back around behind the bar.
Toni glanced at Louisa. They held each other’s gazes for a moment then Toni, holding her hat in one hand, her red mittens in the other, walked past the stove toward the bar.
As she passed Louisa’s table, the Vengeance Queen said, “Did you find the banker?”
Toni stopped. She didn’t look at Louisa but only straight toward the back of the room, and nodded. “Hitched. He and his new wife aren’t in the market for a housekeeper just now but I can check back in a few months. She’s in the family way.” Toni shrugged. “That’s the way my luck runs sometimes.”
“That’s the way it runs for most of us.”
&nbs
p; “Thank you for those words of wisdom, Miss Bonaventure,” Toni snapped out bitterly.
She continued toward the bar, where she ordered a bottle then, clutching the glass by the neck, walked to the back of the room and climbed the stairs to the second story, where she must have secured a room earlier, before she’d gone off looking for the banker and while Louisa was cleaning the rats out of the train depot.
Another woman came down the stairs just as Toni was going up. They brushed shoulders though neither looked at the other. The second woman had long, dark brown hair with a white streak running through it, and a knotted scar at the outside edge of her left eyebrow. Her hair was badly mussed. All she wore was a striped blanket wrapped loosely about her body, angling down low enough on one side to reveal her left shoulder.
It was obvious that she wore nothing beneath the blanket.
She wasn’t a pretty woman, but she wasn’t ugly, either. There was a feral hardness about her face, even now with her cheeks flushed. She appeared in her late twenties, but the lines spoking out from her eyes and etched around her mouth bespoke the roughness of those years, of burning the candle at both ends. Her eyes were darkly smug, and thin, colorless lips were stretched in a catlike grin.
She held a long-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver down low in her right hand, along her right leg. She held the gun casually, almost as though it were as much a part of her person as the several rings Louisa could see on her fingers.
She might leave a room without her clothes, but never without a gun.
She dropped to the bottom of the stairs and padded barefoot to the bar.
“Hello, Morris—how are you?” she asked as she set the pistol atop the bar then leaned forward, ever the coquette, well aware that all eyes in the room were directed her way. Her thick, dark brown hair fluffed against her cheeks, concealing her face from the sides. The white streak ran down over her left ear.
The fact that she was being watched seemed to delight her while also embarrassing her, making her feel shy.
“What can I get you, Sweets?” Tutwiler asked with a tolerant air, setting his big, red fists on the edge of the bar.
“Another bottle of your best.” Sweets glanced toward the stove then turned back to the barman, who was dusting off the bottle he’d just pulled down off a high back bar shelf. “Are the beans ready?”
“The beans are ready.”
“We’d like a couple of bowls delivered to our room.”
“I don’t got no room service, Sweets,” said the barman with a resolute shake of his bald head, staring obstinately down at the bar.
Sweets threw her head back and laughed. She grabbed the bottle off the bar and in the process nearly lost the blanket. She laughed again.
“Tonight you have room service, Morris!” she announced, her laughing voice pitched with subtle warning.
She adjusted the blanket about her shoulders and started padding back toward the stairs, the bottle in the hand holding the blanket closed at her chest, the Smith & Wesson in her other hand hanging low at her side. “We’ll settle up with you in the morning.”
As Sweets padded back up the stairs, Louisa realized that someone else had entered the hotel via the front door, which the man was just then closing carefully against the wind and blowing snow. He was a tall man in a dark blue wool coat to which the snow was sticking, mottling it white. His collar had been raised against the storm but now as he turned to the room, he jerked it down. He removed his hat and batted the weathered cream Stetson against his wool trousers, the cuffs of which were shoved into the tops of mule-eared, black leather boots.
A town marshal’s badge was pinned to his coat.
He was a blond man with a fair, weathered-pink, clean-shaven face with high, tapering cheekbones. At least, what little hair he had was blond. The hair was confined to a band running around the sides of his head, leaving the crown as bald as Tutwiler’s.
The lawman looked around the room. His gaze settled on Louisa, and he turned his head slightly to one side, scrutinizing the Vengeance Queen from a distance, frowning.
Louisa turned away and sipped her tea.
She had no time for lawmen.
It was as though her aversion summoned the man. Out the corner of her eye, she watched him walk toward her. He stopped at her table, stared down at her. He smelled smoky and cold.
“You an’ me,” he said tightly, tossing his wet hat onto her table. “We gotta talk.”
Chapter 18
“Forgive me, but I’m feeling rather antisocial at the moment.” Louisa dabbed at her torn lip with the cloth that was no longer cold, only wet.
The lawman pulled out a chair and sat down by his hat. He leaned forward, arms on the table. “I’m Del Rainy, town marshal.”
Louisa set the rag down on the table and sipped her tea.
“I know who you are,” Rainy said.
Louisa didn’t say anything but only blew on her tea and sipped, staring off toward the stairs at the rear of the room.
“I know who you are,” Rainy said again. “I seen you ride to the livery barn with them five men tied over their horses. I’d heard the shooting over at the depot. I checked out the depot.”
Louisa turned to him now, blankly. “Did you introduce yourself to your new depot agent?”
“You go to hell,” Rainy said in frustration. “I know who you are, I’m sayin’!”
Louisa sipped her tea again. “Good for you. I’m still feeling rather private, so if you’ll excuse me, Marshal.”
“Look, you can’t just ride into my town throwing your weight around, Miss Bonaventure. I know who you are. I know your reputation, and I don’t care. I’m the lawman here.” Rainy poked himself in the chest. “You follow the laws here in Sundown just like everyone else. I don’t doubt those fellas over to the train station gave you that split lip and swollen cheek, but in Sundown, I’m the law!”
Louisa looked at him again. “Are you saying that when they dragged me into your depot agent’s sleeping quarters, I should have excused myself to come fetch you?”
She sipped her tea.
Rainy flushed a little. He stared at the Vengeance Queen, his eyes hard.
“Why are you here?”
“For the train.”
“Who’re the men in the livery barn?”
“They’re from the Gritch Hatchley bunch.”
“Damn!” Rainy gritted his teeth and slammed his right fist into his left hand, looking around. He pondered the situation for a moment then turned back to Louisa. “Them two upstairs—the woman and the half-breed. They’re part of that bunch, aren’t they? You followed ’em here.”
“I’m here to catch the train.”
“Damn!” Rainy slammed his fist into his palm again. “I knew it. I recognized ’em. I was here when they come in yesterday. I seen their faces on wanted dodgers over to my office. The sheriff wired me last week the Hatchley bunch might be headed this way and to keep my eyes open.”
“Forget about them, Marshal Rainy.”
“What? Oh.” Rainy smiled, nodded slowly. “I see. You want to take them down yourself, that it? Them two up there”—he pointed at the ceiling—“both have good money on their heads. You want it all for yourself.”
“It is what I do for a living,” Louisa said. “And if you’ll forgive me for bragging, I do it rather well.”
“Good money for each.” Rainy sank back in his chair, his eyes glazing dreamily. “That would be one nice stake, I bet. How much we talkin’, exactly?”
“You’re a lawman. That makes you ineligible to receive the bounty.”
Rainy looked at her. “You know that ain’t true. Lawmen can take a bounty just like any civilian bounty hunter can.” The marshal smiled, his eyes dropping to Louisa’s open coat. “Just like any bounty huntress can.” He smiled. “You sure are purty. Just like I heard. In a few minutes, I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Leave those two to me, Rainy.” Again, Louisa pressed the cloth to her cheek and stared towa
rd the stairs at the back of the room. “Muy bad folks up there.”
“They’re up there together, ain’t they?” Rainy said. “That’s what Morris said is all they been doin’ since they rode into town yesterday, takin’ a little time now and then for a meal.”
“Leave them to me, Rainy.”
The marshal’s eyes hardened and his tapering cheeks flushed. He leaned toward Louisa. “This is my town. I’m the law here. I enforce the laws here in my town.” He slid his chair back, rose. “You got the five in the barn. Them two upstairs is mine. They’re each worth a thousand, at least. Just the stake I need to get me the hell out of here.”
Absently, as though mostly to himself, he rubbed his jaw and added, “Don’t know what I was thinkin’, comin’ up here in the first place. Me, a farmer! Got crowded out by the cattlemen so now I’m a town marshal makin’ twenty-five dollars a month and havin’ to sit here takin’ grief from a female bounty hunter.”
Rainy shrugged out of his wet wool coat, hung it over the back of his chair. He set his hat on his head, released the keeper thong from over the hammer of the Colt Army on his right hip, and turned toward the back of the room.
“You stay there an’ sip your tea, purty girl. I’ll buy you a real drink later.” Rainy grinned and winked at her.
He strode down the long room toward the stairs. As he passed the bar, Tutwiler said, “Where you goin’ Del?”
“Haul me down a bottle of the good stuff, Morris.” Rainy continued toward the stairs.
“Don’t go up there, Del.”
“Haul me down a bottle of the good stuff. Pop the cork, pour it up.” Rainy mounted the stairs, one hand on the banister, and began climbing. “I’ll be down in three shakes of a pig’s tail.”
“I’m all out of the good stuff!”
All eyes in the room were on Rainy. When he’d gained the top of the stairs and stepped into the second-floor hall, several men muttered darkly. One chuckled. Clayton turned to Louisa and raised his freshly refilled shot glass, smiling behind his little spectacles, and said, “Here’s to the good marshal.”
Blood at Sundown Page 14
