The Loner: Seven Days to Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  They built a tiny fire, cooked biscuits and bacon, and heated up some leftover beans. The Kid knew he could wait until he rode into Gehenna and get a real meal, but that didn’t seem fair, so he ate the same trail grub as his companions.

  The sky turned a darker blue, then purple and black by stages. Stars winked into existence. The moon was still down but would rise later.

  Drake let the fire burn down to embers before he said, “I reckon it’s late enough for you to start into town, Kid.”

  The Kid downed the last of the coffee in his cup. “I was thinking the same thing. Do you have any idea where I should start looking for Bledsoe? Any place he ever mentioned where he liked to spend time?”

  “He talked about a cathouse called Rosarita’s.” With mocking courtesy, Drake added, “Begging your pardon for being crude, Miss Fletcher.”

  “Think nothing of it, Mr. Drake,” Jillian said. “I was about to suggest that Mr. Morgan begin his search wherever there are whores and whiskey, since those are the things men care the most about.”

  The Kid chuckled. That steel was definitely showing through.

  “Got any advice?” he asked Drake as he saddled one of the fresher horses.

  “Yeah. Don’t get yourself killed first thing. In other words, stay out of trouble that doesn’t concern us.”

  “You think I’m liable to run into anything like that?”

  “In Gehenna?” Drake grunted. “I’d say the odds are pretty good. Or pretty bad, depending on how you look at it.”

  The Kid finished tightening the cinches. “I’ll steer clear of any ruckuses that break out. I’m just looking for Bledsoe, that’s all.”

  Drake nodded. “That’s right.” He held out a hand. “Good luck, Kid.”

  The Kid wasn’t fond of shaking hands with a cold-blooded murderer…but his own hands weren’t all that clean, he told himself. For better or worse, Drake was his partner for the time being. He gripped Drake’s hand and shook.

  When he turned to Jillian, she put her arms around him and hugged him before he could stop her. “Be careful, Kid,” she urged. “Don’t let anything happen to you.”

  He knew her words weren’t motivated solely by concern for his safety. If he got himself killed, she would be alone, hundreds of miles from her home—such as it was—with a ruthless outlaw for her only company.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he told her as he gave her an awkward pat on the back. “I may be back out here tonight. If I can’t make it, I’ll be back by tomorrow night at the latest.”

  As gently as possible, he disengaged himself from Jillian’s arms and mounted up. Without looking back, he rode out of the little hollow and headed toward Gehenna, which was a scattering of yellow lights in the vast darkness along the border.

  He began to hear music before he reached the settlement. Loud, raucous, and discordant, it was a blending of melodies from several different sources. He heard the tinny notes of a player piano from a saloon and the strumming of a guitar from a cantina. There was even a woman singing somewhere in a screechy, off-key voice.

  As the music—if it could be called that—drifted to his ears, an assortment of aromas tickled his nose as a nocturnal breeze kicked up from the southwest. He smelled meat cooking, spiced with peppers and mesquite smoke, but an undercurrent of decay and horseshit lay beneath it. He could have sworn he smelled whiskey and unwashed human flesh, too, but that was probably just his imagination.

  The Kid tugged the brim of his hat down lower over his face as he reached the eastern end of the street. He kept the horse moving at a slow, deliberate walk, as if he were just a drifting cowpoke, not going anyplace in particular and in no hurry to get there.

  A stocky Mexican in a big straw sombrero sat on the driver’s seat of a wagon parked in front of a general store while two more men loaded supplies into the back of it. The Kid veered his horse closer to the wagon and gave the driver a curt nod.

  “Evening, amigo,” he said, drawling the words out of the corner of his mouth. “You know where I can find a place called Rosarita’s?”

  “Sí, señor.” The man pointed up the street. “In the next block, on the right.”

  The Kid nodded again. “Much obliged.” He heeled the horse into motion.

  Rosarita’s was where the guitar music came from, he discovered as he rode up to the place. It was a two-story adobe structure, one of the largest buildings in town. A balcony with a wooden railing hung over the boardwalk in front.

  The guitar player was an old man who sat in a ladderback chair tipped back against the front of the building. He strummed the strings with a skill that surprised The Kid. Knobby fingers danced nimbly, coaxing an elaborate melody out of the battered old instrument. The man nodded his head in time with the music and looked at nothing.

  He couldn’t look at anything, The Kid realized, because he was blind.

  The hitch rails in front of the whorehouse were crowded. The Kid studied the rigs on the horses through narrowed eyes. Some of the saddles were American, the sort of functional rigs favored by working cowboys. Others were fancier, decorated with fringe and silver ornaments. Those would belong to the vaqueros from the other side of the border.

  The Kid found an empty spot, swung down, and looped the horse’s reins around the rail. He went up the two steps to the boardwalk and started past the old blind guitarist.

  The man stopped playing and turned his head toward the sound of The Kid’s footsteps. “Don’t, señor,” he said in a voice cracked and scraped raw by the years.

  The Kid paused and was about to ask him why when a terrific slam of gun-thunder suddenly erupted inside Rosarita’s.

  Chapter 23

  The Kid stepped back and his hand went to the butt of the holstered Colt on his hip. He was ready to hook and draw if any of the shots came his way.

  The roaring volley lasted only a few seconds, then an echoing silence fell over the night. The shots had quieted everything else in Gehenna, too.

  There was movement in the whorehouse. A man stepped up to the doorway and brushed aside the beaded curtain. He wore a flat-crowned black hat, a black vest, and leather wrist cuffs over a white shirt, and black whipcord trousers. His clean-shaven face looked like it had been whittled out of hardwood.

  As he stepped out, he spotted The Kid standing on the porch and froze. “Looking for trouble, friend?” the man rasped.

  The Kid shook his head and moved his hand away from his gun. “Not hardly.” He hated to do anything that smacked of backing down, but he had come too far, risked too much, to get mixed up right away in a gunfight.

  The man chuckled. “That’s the smart answer.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at The Kid. “Do I know you?”

  “I don’t think so. I just rode into town about a minute ago. Never been here before.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve been lots of other places…but I reckon you just look a little like somebody I know.” The man turned his head and added over his shoulder, “Let’s go.”

  Three men followed him out of the whorehouse and down the steps to the horses lined up at the hitch rails. One was a lean, hatchet-faced man in range clothes, one was a dandy with the long, slim fingers of a gambler, and the last man out the door was huge and had long blond hair and a beard. He reminded The Kid of pictures he had seen in books about Vikings. That is, if Vikings had worn fringed buckskins.

  All of them eyed The Kid coldly as they passed him. He knew he was looking at a band of killers.

  The four men mounted up and galloped off. The Kid didn’t see where they went, but the pounding hoofbeats stopped after only a moment, so he knew they hadn’t left Gehenna. They had only gone to one of the other buildings.

  Inside Rosarita’s, a woman began to wail piteously.

  “They are gone, no?” the old blind guitarist asked.

  “They’re gone,” The Kid confirmed.

  “You are fortunate that they already vented their killing rage, amigo. If you had gone inside, you might be dead, to
o.”

  “Or some of them might be,” The Kid said.

  The old man’s leathery face added some more wrinkles as he smiled. “Ho, ho! You have the fire in your belly, no?”

  “I don’t run away from a fight.” The Kid paused. “You knew hell was about to break loose in there, didn’t you?”

  The old man didn’t say anything, just inclined his head to show his agreement with what The Kid said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because I cannot see, you mean? When the eyes go, the other senses strengthen to take their place. I heard the angry words and knew that Señor Cragg and his friends would have to spill blood.”

  “You were playing the guitar. How could you hear that?”

  The old man’s narrow shoulders rose and fell. “As I said, my other senses are stronger since the clouds came over my eyes.”

  “Cragg was the first one who came out?”

  “Sí. Alonzo Cragg. You have heard of him?”

  The name was vaguely familiar to The Kid. Cragg was a gunman and outlaw, rumored to be fast on the draw.

  Evidently the rumors had some basis in fact.

  “I’ve heard of him. What about the other three?”

  “J.P. Malone, a man with a face like an ax. Clyde Woods, with the fancy clothes and the face of a man who seldom sees the sun. And the big one, the young giant, I know only as Dakota Pete.”

  “That’s them, all right,” The Kid said. “How do you know what they look like?”

  “I have asked people to describe them to me. I know what many of the people in this town look like.” The old man smiled again. “I know what the girls who work in Rosarita’s look like, and I know the soft warmth of their breasts because from time to time they take pity on an old blind fool who can play the guitar.”

  The Kid grunted. “What’s your name, old-timer?”

  “They call me only Viejo. I had another name once, but it no longer matters.”

  Viejo… Old Man. It fit, all right, The Kid thought.

  The wailing inside had increased, with several women joining in the cries of grief. Even though Viejo couldn’t see him, The Kid nodded toward the door and asked, “What happened in there?”

  “What happens all too often now. Men argued, and men died.”

  “The argument was over a woman?”

  “What else? Although if it had not been that, it would have been something else. Men such as Cragg seek any excuse to spill blood. Death is like air and wine to them.”

  “Where did they go? It didn’t sound like they went very far.”

  Viejo shook his head. “Not far. To Señor Harrison’s saloon.”

  “Who’s Harrison?”

  “Cragg and the others work for him. They enforce his will on the town.”

  So this man Harrison had the settlement under his thumb. That was good to know, The Kid thought, but it didn’t answer the question that had brought him there.

  “What about a man called Bledsoe? Is he here in Gehenna?”

  “A friend of yours, amigo?”

  “I’ve never met him,” The Kid said, “but I need to talk to him.”

  Viejo sighed. “Regretfully, I cannot help you. I know nothing of this hombre Bledsoe.”

  The Kid’s spirits sank a little. The old-timer seemed to know everybody and everything about Gehenna. If he said Bledsoe wasn’t there, it was a strong possibility the fugitive from Hell Gate had never made it that far.

  Something could have happened to Bledsoe on the way, or he could have simply decided to go somewhere else, despite what he had told Carl Drake. Either way, it meant the long trip from New Mexico had been for nothing.

  It was too soon to give up, The Kid told himself, regardless of what the old man said. According to Drake, Bledsoe had been a regular customer at Rosarita’s. He ought to at least go inside and ask around.

  The Kid took a step toward the doorway, then stopped again as Viejo said, “Señor, please…”

  “What is it?” The Kid dug in a pocket for one of the coins they had found in the saddlebags of the dead outlaws. “I can give you something—”

  “No, señor. I want for nothing. My songs and my words I give freely. Only…a small boon, if you would.”

  “If I can,” The Kid said.

  “I would like to touch your face and let my fingers see you as only they can.”

  The Kid grimaced. He didn’t like the idea of the old-timer pawing at his face. But he supposed it was a small enough favor to grant. “All right,” he said.

  Viejo set the guitar aside and stood up. He moved closer to The Kid. He was a head shorter, but he reached up and unerringly touched The Kid’s cheek with his fingertips. His hand was dry and scaly, like the skin of a lizard, as he moved it across the younger man’s features.

  Viejo’s eyes began to widen. “Madre de Dios!” he breathed. He passed his hand across The Kid’s eyes, then suddenly jerked it back. “El Diablo!” he said. “You…you have the face of Satan himself!”

  “That’s the first time anybody’s ever said that about me.”

  “You…you should leave this place. Nothing good can come of you being here.”

  “Sorry, old-timer. I won’t be riding out until I’m good and ready. I’ve got business to take care of here in Gehenna.”

  “The Devil’s business!”

  “Maybe,” The Kid said, as he stepped past the old man, who was making the sign of the cross with a trembling hand, and went into the whorehouse.

  Chapter 24

  Women were still carrying on in the parlor in which The Kid found himself. Three of them were on their knees next to the bullet-riddled corpses of three men, two Mexicans and one American. The Kid wondered if they were from one of those mule trains Drake had mentioned that carried ore from the mines in Mexico to the railroad in Tucson.

  The mourning women were all Mexican, as were the others who stood around watching. They wore silk robes and not much else.

  One of the wailing women climbed to her feet and threw herself at a man who stood by with a worried frown on his face. She began beating at his chest and cursing him in Spanish. She lapsed into English as she demanded, “Why did you not stop them? Why?”

  The man was fat and middle-aged, with thinning brown hair and a brush of a mustache. He said, “How could I stop them? If I’d got in the middle of that, Harrison’s butchers would’ve cut me down, too!”

  The Kid pegged the man as the whorehouse’s bouncer, whose job was to handle customers who got too drunk or started being too rough with the soiled doves. Interfering with professional gunmen like Cragg and the others would be beyond his capabilities.

  The woman was too grief-stricken to accept that. She kept beating at the man’s chest. He stood there and took it until a voice spoke sharply from a staircase leading to the second floor.

  “That’s enough, Julietta.”

  The woman stopped hitting the man. She stepped back, covered her face with her hands, and continued sobbing.

  “Brady, have you sent for the undertaker?” the woman on the stairs asked.

  The fat man nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I sure did. He ought to be here soon.”

  “Good. The ladies will be able to gain control of themselves easier once the bodies are out of here.” She turned her head to look at The Kid. No one else in the room seemed to have noticed him as he stood just inside the doorway. “Who are you?”

  She seemed to be in charge, which probably meant she was Rosarita. The Kid kept the surprise he felt off his face as he looked up at her. She didn’t look like any Rosarita he would have expected. She was in her thirties, he guessed, and sleekly beautiful in a red gown that hugged her body.

  She was also Chinese, or at least part Chinese, with smooth golden skin, almond-shaped eyes, and a mass of lustrous black hair piled high on her head.

  The Kid lifted a finger to the brim of his hat. “I don’t mean to intrude, ma’am. I figured to do a little business, but I got here just as the ruckus broke out
.”

  He deliberately made himself sound like a cowboy. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by revealing his true background and education.

  The woman regarded him solemnly and said, “You’re lucky you didn’t arrive a little earlier. You might have gotten in the way of a stray bullet.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I can’t argue with that.”

  “Come back later,” she said with a dismissive gesture. “We’re closed for the time being.” She nodded toward the dead men, as if their presence was reason enough for her decree.

  “Actually, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if that’s all right. I could come upstairs—”

  “I don’t go with the customers,” she snapped.

  “But you are Rosarita?”

  “That’s the name I use now, yes. What business is that of yours?”

  “I’m looking for someone you probably used to know.”

  She sighed. “You’re going to be persistent, aren’t you?”

  Brady asked, “You want me to run this fella off, ma’am?”

  “I doubt if you could,” Rosarita said. “He doesn’t look like he would run off easily.” She lifted a hand to motion to The Kid. “All right. Come on. But I warn you”—her hand moved again and it held a small pistol that seemed to have materialized by magic—“if you’re looking for trouble, you’ll regret it.”

  The Kid shook his head. “No trouble, ma’am. You have my word on that.” He moved past Brady and started up the stairs.

  Rosarita kept the pistol in her hand as she turned and led the way to a bedroom furnished with a heavy four-poster bed and a low, leather sofa. It was more than the madam’s bedroom. It was also her office, as evidenced by the big roll-top desk with several ledgers sitting open on it.

  “Leave the door open,” Rosarita said as she turned to face him again. “What do you want?”

  As anxious as he was to find out about Bledsoe, The Kid satisfied another curious itch first. “How did you come to be called Rosarita?”