Sandra’s room was smaller than Buckhorn’s room at the hotel, and the bed wasn’t as fancy. But it looked comfortable enough. The only other pieces of furniture were a table with a basin of water and an oil lamp on it and a ladderback chair.
“You can hang your gunbelt on the chair,” Sandra told him as she closed the door behind them. “Lay your clothes there, too.”
Using his foot, Buckhorn pushed the chair closer to the bed while he unbuckled his gunbelt. He hung it over the chair’s back so that the butt of the Colt would be handy, then took off his coat and carefully hung it over the back of the chair as well.
Sandra went around to the other side of the bed. As her fingers went to the cloth belt of the dressing gown, she said, “You don’t like to be very far away from your gun, do you?”
“No, I prefer to keep living,” Buckhorn said.
“You’re not in any danger here.”
“There’s no guarantee of that, here or anywhere else in the world.”
She took off the gown and tossed it on the foot of the bed. The short, thin shift she wore underneath it didn’t leave much to the imagination.
“Seems to me that wouldn’t be a very pleasant way to live,” she commented.
“Maybe not, but it beats the alternative.”
Buckhorn had untied his string tie. He draped it over the coat, then added his vest and shirt as he peeled them off. He turned his back to Sandra and sat down on the edge of the bed to take off his boots.
The mattress shifted under him, too violently to be just the result of her climbing into bed. He looked back in time to see her lunging across the bed at him with a knife in her upraised hand, ready to plunge the blade into his back.
Buckhorn twisted around and flung up his left arm. The knife’s keen edge scraped across his forearm, barely breaking the skin before Buckhorn’s arm struck hers and knocked it aside.
Her momentum carried her body into his with enough force that the collision knocked him off his precarious perch at the edge of the mattress. He fell to the floor, landing on a threadbare rug lying next to the bed.
Sandra sprawled on top of him. She jerked the knife back for another thrust, but before she could launch it Buckhorn closed his left hand around her right wrist. She was no match for his strength. The knife couldn’t budge.
With her left hand, she clawed at his face, the fingers hooked like talons as they sought his eyes. Buckhorn turned his head to the side, felt her nails rake his cheek.
He reached up, grabbed her by the neck, and rolled over. He was bigger and stronger, and she had no choice but to go with him. He wound up on top with her pinned to the floor. A twist of her wrist forced her to let go of the knife.
As soon as it hit the floor, Buckhorn swatted at the handle and sent it spinning out of reach of either of them. He was furious and didn’t want to be tempted to grab it and use it on her.
Instead he straddled her belly and held down both of her arms. She tried to lift her legs and kick at his back, but she couldn’t get enough leverage to do any real damage. He glared down at her and rasped, “What the hell was that all about?”
She didn’t answer, except to snarl and spit in his face.
“I’ll give you that one,” Buckhorn said. “Next time you’re going to get smacked, and smacked hard. Why’d you try to kill me? You wanted to rob me? Damn, girl, I haven’t even collected any wages yet from Conroy!”
“You killed him,” she said. Her voice trembled with rage. “You shot Chet.”
The answer surprised Buckhorn. He frowned and said, “Chet Farley?”
“Did you gun down anybody else like a dog tonight?”
“Farley brought it on himself,” Buckhorn said. “He was about to shoot Conroy.”
“Maybe the son of a bitch deserved it! You ever think of that?” She writhed and bucked, trying to get loose from Buckhorn’s grip, but he didn’t let go. Sandra sagged back against the rug, panting. Tears glittered in her eyes. “It was all that bastard Madison’s fault, anyway,” she said miserably.
“Now that’s interesting,” Buckhorn said. “If I let you up, you think you can settle down enough to tell me about it?”
“Tell you about Chet . . . and Madison?”
“That’s right.”
“I . . . I . . . maybe. I suppose.”
Buckhorn let go of her right wrist. When she didn’t try to punch him or claw him, he let go of the left one as well. He rose to his feet and stood over her for a second. One rounded, pink-tipped breast had escaped from the shift. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care, because she didn’t try to cover herself.
He reached a hand toward her. After a moment she lifted her hand and took it.
Buckhorn hauled her upright. She was solidly built and weighed more than he would have thought, but it still didn’t take any great effort to get her on her feet.
He stood between her and the knife and wondered if she had any other weapons hidden. It didn’t seem likely, considering how little she was wearing. He figured the knife must have been under the mattress on the other side of the bed.
She was still crying a little, soundlessly. She said in a surly voice, “I could use a drink.”
“Unless you’ve got a bottle up here, that’s too damned bad. Tell me about Farley and Madison.”
“It was all Madison’s fault! He’d been ragging on Chet for days, joking about how that tinhorn Hemmings had been cheating him. Chet didn’t believe him at first, but Madison convinced him. That made Chet really mad.”
“I suppose Farley told you all about this while he was visiting you here.”
She finally sniffled a little, unable to hold in the sound.
“I was Chet’s favorite. He always asked for me. He’d even wait if I was with another customer. And I liked him, too. He treated me nicer than some of those other sons of bitches who work for Conroy and Thornton.”
Buckhorn said, “Miss Quinn must have the same attitude as all the other merchants in town. She does business with both sides in the competition.”
“Why not? All men are the same, regardless of who they work for. Bastards.”
Buckhorn steered the conversation back to what they’d been talking about. “So you think Madison prodded Farley into shooting that gambler.”
“I know damn well he did. I’m not sure why, unless it was pure meanness.”
Buckhorn could make a guess, based on the hint Madison had dropped earlier, so he asked, “Had Farley been talking to you about getting his hands on some money in the future?”
Sandra frowned and said, “How did you know that? He said he was going to be making more from this deal than he thought, and that when it was over maybe we’d leave Crater City together and go somewhere else. You know, start over, both of us.” She sighed. “I know it probably never would’ve happened—men always talk bigger than what they can really do—but now there’s no chance of it. He’s dead.”
“I don’t know, maybe he would have followed through on it. He had his eye set on replacing Madison as the head of Conroy’s gun-crew.”
Sandra used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes and said, “Really?”
“I think there’s a good chance of it.”
“That would explain why Madison kept trying to push him into doing something stupid. He . . . he knew how hotheaded Chet was. He wanted a good excuse to gun him down.”
“Yeah—but then I happened to be there and saved him the trouble.”
Sandra nodded.
“You may have pulled the trigger, but like I said, it was Madison’s fault.” Her hands clenched into fists as a shudder went through her. “That bastard. I’ll—”
“You won’t do anything,” Buckhorn said.
“What?”
“Just leave it be.”
“But what happened to Chet . . . it wasn’t fair.”
“Not much in this life is,” Buckhorn told her. “You stay away from Madison. We’re working on the same side right now, but I’ve got a hu
nch we’ll tangle sooner or later.”
“Then he’ll kill you, too. He’s fast . . . Chet said Madison is the fastest he’d ever seen.”
“Somebody’s always faster,” Buckhorn said. He reached for his shirt.
“Wait a minute. You don’t still want to . . .”
Buckhorn laughed humorlessly and said, “Nearly getting a knife stuck in my back has ruined the mood somehow. I reckon I’m just a hopeless romantic.”
CHAPTER 7
Because of everything that had happened, Buckhorn’s visit to Miss Quinn’s Boarding House for Young Ladies hadn’t taken the edge off his restlessness the way he’d hoped it would, but he went back to the hotel anyway and turned in.
As expected, it took him a while to doze off. That was common. Any time he closed his eyes and tried to relax, memories crowded into his head. He just had to wait for them to get tired of tormenting him and go away.
When they finally did, he went to sleep.
He was in the hotel dining room early the next morning, lingering over a third cup of coffee after finishing a plate of fried eggs, hash browns, bacon, and flapjacks, when Yancy Madison came into the room from the lobby. He spotted Buckhorn and headed in that direction.
“You got a head start on me,” Madison said.
“I didn’t know when you’d be down, so I figured I might as well go ahead and eat.”
The waiter who had brought Buckhorn’s food set a full cup of coffee in front of Madison and said, “Your usual will be out in a minute, Mr. Madison.”
“Thanks, Fred.” When the waiter was gone, Madison sipped the hot coffee, nodded appreciatively, and then said to Buckhorn, “You ready to get to work?”
“Just tell me where.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll ride out to the survey camp with you. We’ll relieve the men who are on duty there and let them come back to town. More men will go out there this evening to take over, so we won’t be spending the night.”
“How does the proposed route for the spur line run?”
“Are you familiar with this region?”
“A little,” Buckhorn said.
Madison leaned forward slightly and used a fingertip to trace the route on the tablecloth between them.
“It runs due north from the Southern Pacific at Fletcher’s Crossing, then angles northwest through Gunsight Canyon. That’s one way through the Mesteños. The other way is a few miles west—Mulehead Pass.”
Buckhorn nodded and said, “Both of those places sound familiar. I think I’ve been through Gunsight Canyon.”
“It’s farther that way, but the twenty miles from the canyon to Crater City goes over easier terrain. Mulehead Pass is a straighter shot, but there are badlands between here and there that have to be crossed.”
“So I suppose Conroy plans to bring his line through Gunsight Canyon.”
“That’s right. Thornton’s going to come through Mulehead Pass. That means steeper grades, along with the badlands on this side of the pass. He’s going to trade ten miles of track for a lot harder construction job.”
“Which route do you think is best?”
Madison chuckled and said, “I’m not paid to think. I’m paid to keep the boss’s surveyors safe. I guess I hope Conroy wins in the long run, but I get paid either way, and so do you.”
“Seems like the practical way to look at it,” Buckhorn admitted.
The waiter brought Madison’s breakfast, which was similar to the meal Buckhorn had just eaten except that Madison had biscuits and gravy instead of flapjacks. Buckhorn nursed his coffee while the other man ate.
“How far have the surveyors gotten?” Buckhorn asked.
“They’re working in Gunsight Canyon now,” Madison replied. “So they’re just about a third of the way.”
“Have Thornton’s men been giving them trouble all along?”
“No, that just started a couple of weeks ago.”
“That’s when Conroy hired you?”
Madison shook his head and said, “No, I’ve been working for him for a while. Me and a few other boys.”
“Including Farley?”
“Yeah, Chet and I signed on about the same time.” Madison grunted. “Maybe that’s why it galled him a little that Mr. Conroy put me in charge.”
Buckhorn didn’t say anything about what the blond whore at Miss Quinn’s had told him the night before. Instead he asked, “In charge of what?”
“Doing whatever needs to be done,” Madison replied with a smile. “Keeping the lid on here in town, mostly.”
“I thought everybody got along in Crater City, that men from both camps are welcome here.”
Madison shrugged and said, “That’s true as far as it goes. But the real reason there’s a truce is that we’re here to see that nobody breaks it.”
“Thornton has men in town, too,” Buckhorn said. “I spotted them in the Irish Rose last night. It was pretty easy to tell that you and your friends had one side of the room, and they had the other.” Buckhorn paused. “They all stayed out of it when I shot Farley.”
“Why should they care if one of us goes down? Although at the time, none of us were really sure who you were. I’m surprised Ernie Gratton didn’t buy you a drink and offer you a job.”
“Ernie Gratton,” Buckhorn repeated. His eyes narrowed slightly. “I’ve heard the name. Heard he got shot to pieces in a range war up in the Dakota Territory, though.”
Madison swallowed a bite of eggs and nodded.
“He did. But he lived. He’s Thornton’s top gun—as long as he can stay alive, anyway. Those wounds left him with a cough he can’t shake. That may kill him before a bullet ever does.”
“Lunger, eh?”
“Yeah.” Madison pointed his fork at Buckhorn. “Don’t ever underestimate him, though. He’s still almost as fast as he ever was. Faster than most.”
“Faster than you?”
Madison laughed and said, “Not on his best day.”
They left the hotel a short time later and walked toward the livery stable. Some of the men they passed on the street smiled and nodded to Madison, but despite their apparent friendliness, Buckhorn saw nervousness in their eyes. They reminded him of men trying to be friendly with a big dog that had a reputation for biting when the mood struck him.
He had seen men smile at him with the same scared look in their eyes.
“Sol, you have our horses ready?” Madison asked as they walked into the stable.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Madison, they’re ready to go,” the one-eyed proprietor answered.
Madison glanced over at Buckhorn and explained, “I sent word to Sol that we’d be needing our mounts as soon as we finished breakfast.”
Madison’s horse was a big black, the sort of fancy, high-strung animal that had speed but not a lot of sand. The horse certainly looked impressive, though. Madison’s saddle was the same way, gleaming leather decorated with shiny silver conchos.
They mounted up and rode east along the wagon road that led to El Paso, and soon enough they came to the crater Woodrow had described to Buckhorn in the café the night before. Buckhorn slowed to take a look at it.
“That’s really something, isn’t it?” Madison said. “Looks like somebody took a giant hammer and hit the planet a good lick right there.”
“Like he was trying to swat a bug,” Buckhorn murmured. “Sometimes I figure that’s all we amount to, just a bunch of bugs crawling around on a ball of dirt.”
Madison threw back his head and laughed.
“Well, hell, you’re a cheerful cuss this morning, aren’t you?”
Buckhorn didn’t say anything, just jogged his horse on past the crater.
A little farther on, they left the wagon road and followed a smaller trail southeast. It led through rolling, sage-covered, mesquite-dotted terrain broken up by occasional rocky outcroppings. In the distance, a low range of mountains bulked against the horizon.
Buckhorn knew those were the Mesteños. They ran for a good fifty
miles, roughly east and west, and although they wouldn’t present too big of an obstacle for a man on horseback, there were only two good ways through them for a railroad line, Gunsight Canyon and Mulehead Pass. From this far away, he couldn’t spot either one.
The land became flatter and more arid, the vegetation sparser. The higher the sun rose in the sky, the hotter it got. In the middle of summer, this part of the territory baked in the heat. That was still several months away, thankfully, so Buckhorn would probably be gone, one way or another, before then.
It was the middle of the morning before Madison pointed and said, “You can see the canyon from here.”
Buckhorn picked out the narrow opening between towering rock walls and asked, “How long is it?”
“A couple of miles. There’s no stream running through it, like there is in a lot of mountain canyons. It’s like the range just split there for some reason.”
There was some welcome shade inside the canyon. It was a couple of hundred yards wide, with boulders scattered around that had toppled from the soaring walls at some time in the past. Clumps of trees grew here and there as well.
The two men had ridden about a mile when Buckhorn spotted a wagon with a team of mules hitched to it parked up ahead. Several men were moving around the wagon, taking some equipment out or putting some in, Buckhorn wasn’t sure which.
A couple of saddle horses were picketed a few yards away, grazing on the hardy grass that grew in the rocky ground. Two men stood with the horses. As Buckhorn and Madison approached, one of them walked out to meet them, carrying a rifle.
The man’s hat was thumbed back and he wore a cocky grin on his sunburned face.
“Howdy, Yancy,” he called to Madison as the two newcomers reined in.
“Hello, Jimmy,” Madison replied. “Any trouble since last night?”
“Nope. Ain’t seen hide nor hair of any of Thornton’s men.” Jimmy looked at Buckhorn. “Who’s this?”
“Joe Buckhorn. He’s with us now.”
Jimmy nodded and said, “Howdy, Joe. Good to meet you.” He seemed like the sort of man who was instantly friends with everybody he ran into. Buckhorn noted, however, that the grips of his revolver showed signs of plenty of use. He handled the Winchester like he was well acquainted with it, too.
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