The Loner: Seven Days to Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  Woods muttered, “How would anyone ever know?”

  Instead of taking offense at the thinly veiled insult, Pete chuckled and said, “Yeah.”

  Bledsoe shoved the bottle over to him. “Help yourself.” To The Kid, he went on, “I’ve been talking to Clyde and J.P. here about you joining us, Morgan. They’re not opposed to the idea.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” The Kid said dryly. “I was worrying about that very thing.”

  Malone’s already thin lips tightened even more. He started to lean forward and opened his mouth to say something, but Bledsoe silenced him by moving a finger.

  “I like for my men to get along,” Bledsoe said. “We have enough enemies around here without fighting each other.”

  “You seem to be Gehenna’s leading citizen. I wouldn’t think you’d have any enemies.”

  “You know better than that, Morgan,” Bledsoe chided. “No man is given power. He has to seize it. And you can’t seize power without taking it away from someone else. That makes enemies.”

  The Kid nodded. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Bledsoe clasped his hands together in front of him. “Right now, the people around here are like cattle at the start of a drive. It’s not that hard to prod and poke them into going in the direction you want them to go. They don’t want to suffer any. They don’t even want to be inconvenienced. But just like a cattle drive, the longer things go on, the harder they’re going to be to control. They’re going to ask themselves why they’re plodding along peacefully to the slaughterhouse. When that starts to happen, some of them will try to stampede.” Bledsoe’s voice hardened. “That’s when we show them again who’s really in charge, whatever it takes.”

  The Kid nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Of course I’m right. What do you say, Morgan? You want to sign on to help us keep things in line? The job pays a hundred dollars a month, but in the long run, there’ll be an opportunity for all of us to make a lot more than that.”

  The Kid glanced at Malone and Woods and asked, “No hard feelings about what happened to Cragg?”

  “Cragg made his own choice,” Bledsoe said, “and my men only have hard feelings if and when I say they do. I’m willing to move on.”

  “In that case…I say the job’s too good to pass up. You’ve got a deal, Mr. Harrison.”

  Bledsoe sat back in his chair, smiling. “Fine. You won’t regret this, Morgan.”

  No, The Kid thought, I won’t regret it at all when you’re hog-tied and on your way back to Hell Gate Prison to get what’s coming to you.

  Chapter 28

  Even after he had agreed to work for Bledsoe and settled the evening’s business, The Kid didn’t drink much, only one more beer. He pled weariness, which wasn’t actually a lie, and said that if it was all right and his new boss didn’t need him for anything, he was ready to turn in.

  “Sure,” Bledsoe replied with a nod. “You want one of the girls to go upstairs with you?”

  “Maybe another time,” The Kid said. “Tonight I’m just interested in sleep.”

  Bledsoe shrugged. “Whatever you want. Some men like to be with a woman after a killing.”

  “Not me,” The Kid said.

  “Well, any time you want one of them, just say the word. Men who work for me don’t have to pay. The same is true down at Rosarita’s.”

  “Like at the livery stable?”

  “Something like that, yes,” Bledsoe said with a smile. “The fact of the matter is, your money’s not good for anything in this town from here on out, Morgan—which means your wages are profit, free and clear.”

  “That’s a good arrangement.”

  “My men seem to think so.” Bledsoe looked at Dakota Pete. “Take Morgan upstairs and show him the empty room at the end of the hall, Pete. He can bunk there.”

  “Sure, boss.”

  The Kid and Pete stood up.

  “One more thing,” Bledsoe went on. “Make sure somebody else knows where you are at all times. If there’s trouble, any time of the night or day, I don’t want to have to run around trying to find you. You’re always on the job, understand?”

  The Kid nodded. “Sure. For the next seven or eight hours, I’ll be in that room upstairs.”

  “Good. Remember that.”

  As they started up the stairs, The Kid asked Pete, “This isn’t Cragg’s room I’m taking, is it?”

  Pete shook his head. “Naw. Somebody’ll have to clean Lonzo’s gear outta his room. Probably J.P. They was closer friends than Lonzo and Clyde.”

  “I wouldn’t want to take the room of a man I’d just killed.”

  “Well, that’s just plumb thoughtful of you, Kid.”

  Pete took him to a small room at the end of the second-floor hallway. An iron bedstead with a bare straw-tick mattress on it filled up most of the floor space, leaving only enough room for a tiny table with an oil lamp on it and a single chair. A folded sheet and blanket were on the bed.

  The Kid picked up the bedding and saw a brown stain on the mattress. “What happened to the fellow who used to have this room?” he asked.

  Pete rubbed his bearded jaw and looked uncomfortable. “Well, he, uh, got one of the gals who works here mad at him ’cause of somethin’ he said or did. I don’t know exactly what. She snuck in here one night whilst he was sleepin’ and stuck him with a knife. That woke him up, of course, so he grabbed his gun and shot her ’fore he fell back in the bed and died. She made it back out into the hall and died there. Real shame. She was pretty.”

  “What about the man?”

  “Oh, I didn’t know him too well. It was just a few days after we’d all come to Gehenna. I reckon he was all right, but I ain’t shed no tears over him.”

  The Kid nodded. It was the same sort of casually violent, tragic story that had been repeated over and over again on the frontier. A lot of people seemed to have little regard for life, their own or anyone else’s.

  After saying good night to Pete, The Kid put the sheet and blanket on the bed. It wouldn’t be the first time he had slept in a place where blood had been spilled.

  He propped the chair under the doorknob, then unbuckled his gunbelt and hung it over one of the bedposts so the butt of his revolver stuck up from the holster within easy reach.

  After stripping down to the bottom half of a pair of long underwear, he blew out the lamp and stretched out on top of the bedding. It was a warm night, and the curtain over the open window barely stirred in a faint breeze.

  After a few moments of lying there staring up at the darkened ceiling, The Kid sat up and swung his legs out of bed. He stood up, went to the window, and pushed the curtain aside so he could look out into the night.

  There was no balcony outside the window, no easy way to reach it from the ground. He had forgotten to check earlier, and he chided himself for overlooking it. The logical part of his brain said that a man simply couldn’t be vigilant every waking moment. It wasn’t possible. But a man who lived by the gun had to be.

  Like a wild animal, when he slept he had to den up in a place where no predators could get to him. In Gehenna, the predators were all two-legged, starting with Bloody Ben Bledsoe.

  The window faced east. Somewhere out in the vast Arizona darkness he was looking at, Carl Drake and Jillian Fletcher waited for him. He hoped they were all right…and that Drake could be trusted with the beautiful young woman. He wished he could have gotten back to the camp.

  Drake had been locked up in Hell Gate Prison, too. He might decide to get back at Jonas Fletcher by taking out his hatred on the warden’s daughter. If that happened, sooner or later The Kid would kill Drake. Simple as that.

  When the Kid rode into Gehenna he hadn’t expected to be working a few hours later, for the very man he had come to find. Fate had taken a hand in the game very quickly, and The Kid knew he couldn’t afford to pass up the chance that had been given him.

  He would feel better about things, though, when he could see with his own eyes that Ji
llian was still all right. With a sigh, he let the curtain fall closed and went back to lie down on the bed.

  It was quite a while before he went to sleep.

  When The Kid went downstairs the next morning, he found Bledsoe and the man’s inner circle of gun-wolves sitting at the same table where they’d been the night before, but they were eating breakfast instead of drinking.

  Bledsoe waved him over. He said, “Join us, Morgan,” and he motioned to the bartender, who evidently was serving as the waiter.

  The man brought a cup of coffee to The Kid and told him that he’d have some food for him in a few minutes.

  Bledsoe drank from his own coffee cup and asked The Kid, “Are you ready to get to work this morning?”

  The Kid nodded. “Sure. What’s the job?”

  “The fellow who runs the blacksmith shop has gotten reluctant to pay the share of profits he owes me. He says he can’t afford it. I’m going to send Dakota here to remind him that he can’t afford not to pay up. I like to have two men handling these little jobs, just in case.”

  “I won’t have no trouble with him, boss,” Pete insisted.

  “I know that,” Bledsoe said, “but I still want to send Morgan with you.”

  Pete nodded reluctantly. “Sure. Whatever you say, Mr. Harrison.”

  “That’s right. Whatever I say, goes.”

  The ham, eggs, and hashed brown potatoes the bartender brought to The Kid were surprisingly good. He commented, “You must have a real kitchen back there, and somebody who knows his way around it.”

  Bledsoe shook his head. “No, there’s a café in the next block that supplies all our meals. You can stop in there any time you want.”

  “And eat for no charge?” The Kid asked with a wolfish grin.

  “Exactly. You’re getting the idea, Morgan.”

  The Kid had the idea, all right. Bledsoe, in his false identity as saloon owner Matthew Harrison, was really running Gehenna like a tin-plated little dictator. He ruled the settlement with an iron fist and hired guns.

  Even if he hadn’t needed to take Bledsoe back to New Mexico to clear his name, he would have enjoyed busting up the man’s party and breaking Bledsoe’s grip on the town.

  After what had happened to Rebel, The Kid sometimes had his doubts about the whole concept of justice, but he knew what was going on there wasn’t right.

  While The Kid was eating, Clyde Woods toyed with a deck of cards. From time to time he glanced at J.P. Malone.

  The Kid saw those glances and knew he couldn’t afford to trust the two men. They had been closer to Alonzo Cragg than anyone else in town, and he had a hunch sooner or later they would try to avenge their friend.

  They would be careful about it, though. They wouldn’t want to get on their employer’s bad side. After all, Bledsoe had hired The Kid and promised him there were no hard feelings.

  If they could work things out so some sort of fatal “accident” happened to him, The Kid didn’t doubt for a second that Woods and Malone would do such a thing.

  When they were all finished with breakfast, Bledsoe said to The Kid and Pete, “All right, the two of you can go see that blacksmith now. Don’t come back until things are settled with him.”

  “You bet, boss,” Pete said with a nod of his shaggy head. He pushed his chair back and stood up.

  The Kid did likewise, knowing it was a test of sorts. He wanted to make good on it, wanted Bledsoe to trust him…making it much easier when the time came to make his move.

  He could feel Woods and Malone still watching him as he and Pete left the saloon. If the opportunity presented itself, they just might make an attempt against him right away.

  “The blacksmith shop’s down yonder,” Pete said, pointing to the western end of town. “The fella’s name is Bonham. He’s pretty big.”

  Blacksmiths usually were, thought The Kid. It was a job that required a lot of strength.

  “Not as big as me, though,” Pete added with a touch of pride in his voice.

  As they approached the squat, open-fronted blacksmith shop, The Kid heard a hammer ringing against an anvil. It was a familiar sound, comforting in a way because it smacked of normalcy, something that was probably in short supply those days in Gehenna.

  The sound stopped short, as they came up to the building. A red glow came from the open door of the forge and heat washed from it.

  The man who stood behind the anvil holding a short-handled sledgehammer wasn’t wearing a shirt, although a thick leather apron covered his bare chest. Thick black hair curled out from under the apron. His head was covered with a thatch of the same sort of hair, and a beard jutted from his jaw. He was a little shorter than Dakota Pete, but his shoulders were just as broad and bulged with muscle in the same way.

  Light and dark, The Kid thought. Pete and the blacksmith were almost like opposite sides of the same coin.

  “Hey, Bonham,” Pete began, “Mr. Harrison sent us to have a talk with you—”

  The blacksmith interrupted with a rumbling roar of anger. He lunged around the anvil, raised the hammer, and rushed toward Pete with the tool held high, poised to descend with bone-crushing force.

  Chapter 29

  The Kid’s first instinct was to draw his gun and put a slug through the blacksmith’s leg, knocking Bonham down before he could smash Pete’s skull with the hammer. But Bonham was just an honest working man defending what was his own, The Kid reminded himself.

  Pete reacted quickly to the danger. He twisted to the side with surprising agility for such a big man, ducking out of the way as the hammer came down. The blow missed him and left Bonham off balance.

  The next second, Pete tackled the blacksmith, driving him backward and lifting him off his feet in an amazing display of strength. It was like two of the legendary Titans of old engaging in mythological combat. Both men crashed to the ground in front of the anvil.

  The Kid was a little surprised that the earth didn’t shake under his feet from the impact of the massive bodies.

  Bonham swung the hammer at Pete again, but Pete jerked his left hand up and grabbed the blacksmith’s wrist in time to keep the blow from landing. The long, corded muscles in his arm bunched like steel cables under the buckskin shirt as he strained to keep Bonham from braining him.

  At the same time, Pete’s right hand darted at Bonham’s throat and closed around it. The fingers dug into the flesh under the thick black beard.

  Bonham’s eyes widened grotesquely. He pounded at Pete’s head with his free hand, but Pete just drew his neck down and hunched his shoulders so he was able to shrug off the blows.

  A man riding by on the street reined his horse to a stop and stared at the ruckus for a moment, then abruptly kicked his mount into a run and took off, shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight at the blacksmith shop!”

  Even with the town in a grip of an outlaw tyrant, people still reacted to a fight going on, The Kid thought. He moved around, circling so he could get a better view of what was going on.

  Bonham changed his tactics and used his free hand to gouge at Pete’s eyes. Pete twisted his head away from the clawing fingers, causing his grip on Bonham’s wrist to slip.

  The hammer thudded against Pete’s shoulder. The blow didn’t have much force behind it, but the hammer weighed enough to make it hurt. Pete howled in pain.

  Bonham heaved up from the ground, arching his back as he toppled Pete off him. The two men rolled over and over as they wrestled and punched at each other. A small cloud of dust rose around them.

  The Kid spotted the hammer lying on the ground and realized Bonham must have dropped it. He darted forward and grabbed the hammer, intending to sling it out of reach so that the blacksmith couldn’t get his hands on it again.

  The Kid grunted with effort as he lifted the hammer. It weighed more than he’d thought. He had to grab hold of the handle with both hands and pivot with his body to sling it into the back of the shop, past the forge.

  Bonham had wielded the hammer almost like it wa
s a toy.

  As The Kid turned back toward the combatants, he saw they had struggled to their knees. They continued to slug away at each other, absorbing terrific punishment even as they dealt it out.

  The Kid thought about slipping his gun from its holster, coming up behind Bonham, and walloping the blacksmith. But it seemed like a cowardly thing to do, and something inside him rebelled against it.

  Maybe Pete would win the fight, he told himself as he continued to watch.

  He wasn’t the only spectator. A crowd was gathering in the street in front of the blacksmith shop. Some of the men yelled encouragement to Bonham as they danced around excitedly.

  Even though Pete was slightly bigger than Bonham, his punches lacked the piledriver force of the blacksmith’s blows. The Kid saw Pete’s arms begin to sag slightly. He was moving slower, too. The epic battle was taking its toll on him.

  Finally, Pete failed to block one of Bonham’s huge, knobby fists. It crashed into his jaw and sent him sprawling on his back, stunned.

  Bonham heaved himself upright and started to swing around slowly toward The Kid.

  The Kid had considered lacing his fingers together and using both hands as a club to land a devastating blow on Bonham. Unfortunately, hitting the blacksmith in the jaw would be like punching that anvil, and even if he succeeded in knocking Bonham down, he would probably break every knuckle in his hands in the process.

  And knocking Bonham down was not the same as knocking him out…so, against his best instincts, as Bonham turned, The Kid drew his gun, stepped up, and slammed the Colt into the side of the blacksmith’s head as hard as he could.

  Bonham’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. His knees folded, dropping him to the ground. As Bonham swayed for a second, The Kid stepped out of the way. Bonham toppled forward, landed facedown in the dirt, and didn’t move.

  The Kid glanced toward the street and saw the hostile looks on the faces of the crowd. He didn’t care. He wasn’t in Gehenna to win friends. He wanted to take Bledsoe back to Hell Gate and clear his name. Any good he did the citizens of Gehenna was just coincidental, he told himself. “Break it up,” he snapped, sounding like Bledsoe had the night before. “Go on about your business.”