Turpin eyed a blonde who was walking by at that moment and said, “You know, I just might do that.”
Locke continued to watch the three men play cards, while others eventually tired of it and turned their attention to other things. A blond saloon girl came up to him and stood in front of him. She sucked in her tummy and stuck out her impressive chest and smiled. Her breasts were almost balloonlike and incredibly pale. She succeeded in attracting his attention away from the three men because of her pretty face and impressive physique.
“My name is Katy,” she said. “Do you see anything you like?”
“Quite a bit,” he said. It was hard not to see quite a bit, since she was showing almost all she had.
“Can I interest you in a trip upstairs?” she asked.
He looked down at the inch of beer remaining in his mug and considered it. What else did he really have to do except stare at the three men? It had been a long time between women for him—and a long time since he had one who looked like this.
“Why not?” he said. He tossed off the rest of the beer, put his arm around her shoulders, and walked upstairs with her.
Katy wasted no time once they were in her room. She divested herself of her clothing, revealing her opulence in all its glory. She was more than a handful everywhere he looked and touched, her flesh pliant and warm, her mouth eager and wet.
She undressed him slowly, and he was just hanging his gun belt on the bedpost when the door was kicked open and two men rushed into the room, guns in hand.
Locke pushed Katy away, hoping to get her out of the line of fire, and drew his gun from his holster. The two men fired as he was moving, and their shots went into the wall and the pillows. As he hit the floor, he fired three times in quick succession, and it was by dint of his experience and reflexes that all three shots struck home.
One man dropped like a stone, while the other—hit twice—was propelled out the door and into the hall.
Locke got to his feet quickly and moved to the first man. He kicked the man’s fallen gun across the room, then leaned over to see if he was dead. Satisfied that he was, he stepped out into the hall, where doors had opened, people were peering out, and others were coming up the stairs from the saloon. He kicked the man’s gun down the hall, leaned over, and made doubly sure he was dead. Unmindful of the fact that he was naked and still semi-tumescent, he called out, “Somebody get the sheriff.”
He turned to go back into his room and found that a woman in the room across from him was peeking out, taking in his nude form with unabashed admiration. Behind her on her bed was a naked fat man with whom she had been doing business.
“Ma’am,” he said, and stepped back into the room.
He looked around for Katy and found her on the floor. Apparently, he hadn’t shoved her far enough away from the action, or someone’s shot had gone wild. Either way, a bullet had perforated her opulent flesh, and her blood was starkly red in contrast to her pale skin.
Since he didn’t know yet if she had set him up or was an innocent victim, he reserved feeling sorry for her until he found out for sure. He gathered up his clothes and got dressed to meet with Sheriff Maddox, who was not going to be happy.
THIRTY-FOUR
“I’m not happy, Locke!” Maddox said.
The hall had been cleared of people, and Maddox had several men from the saloon remove the bodies of the men. Katy’s body was still on the floor of her room.
“I’m not real happy about this, either, Sheriff,” Locke said.
“You think the girl was in on it?” Maddox asked.
“Sheriff,” Locke said, “I’m not even sure what ‘it’ was. This could have been two men trying to make a name for themselves, or it could have been about the payroll.”
“You don’t even have the payroll yet.”
“Maybe they figured Cooper would have to collect it alone, and he’d be easier pickings without me.”
“Well, I don’t know either one of those men,” the lawman said. “They’re not local. My bet would be they recognized you and wanted to make a name.”
“And the girl?”
Maddox rubbed his jaw and stared down at her.
“Katy sure was something, wasn’t she?” he asked.
“I never quite found out.”
After they’d removed Katy’s body, they found fifty dollars secreted in her dress. Since Locke had not given her any money, both he and the sheriff assumed that the two men had paid her to lure Locke up to her room.
“Maybe,” Maddox said across his desk, “she didn’t know they were going to kill you.”
Sitting opposite him, Locke said, “Or that they’d end up killing her, actually.”
“You don’t think a shot from your gun might have done it?”
“I fired three times,” Locke said. “Check the bodies before you start measuring me for a cell.”
“I should put you in a cell, just for your own good,” Maddox said. “Your friend, too.”
“Shit,” Locke said, jumping to his feet.
“What?”
“If this was about the payroll, somebody will probably try for Cooper, too,” Locke said.
“Hey, wait—” Maddox said, but Locke had already gone out the door on the run. Maddox sighed, got up, and followed at a more sedate pace.
Locke got to the hotel and found it quiet and peaceful. The desk clerk looked up at him as he burst through the door.
“Is something wrong, sir?”
“Has anyone come in here in the past half hour?”
“No, sir,” the young clerk said. “No one.”
“You have a back door?”
“Yes, sir, but it’s kept locked.”
“Check it for me, will you?”
“Well … of course.”
While Locke was waiting for the clerk to return, the sheriff entered the lobby behind him.
“Looks quiet.”
“I’m having the clerk check the back door.”
“Why don’t you go up and check on Cooper?” Maddox said. “I’ll wait for the clerk.”
“Good idea.”
Locke went upstairs and found the hall as quiet as the lobby. He went to his door and opened it with the key.
“Coop, something happened that—”
He stopped short when he realized the room was empty.
“Damn it, Coop!”
THIRTY-FIVE
When Locke got to the lobby, Maddox was waiting with the clerk, leaning on the desk.
“Well?” Maddox asked. “Did you wake the old boy up?”
“The old boy’s not in the room,” Locke said.
“Maybe he went back to the whorehouse,” the lawman said. “I better get over there and see if he’s causing any more trouble.”
“He didn’t cause trouble the first time,” Locke said, “but go ahead, suit yourself.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’ll check the other saloons in town.”
“There’s three more,” Maddox said, “but none as big as Lucky Lil’s.”
“I just hope he stayed away from there,” Locke said. “That fella he cold-cocked is there with his friends.”
“I’ll check there, too,” Maddox said.
“Okay, thanks.”
“Come by my office in a little while,” Maddox said, “and we’ll see who found him.”
“Thanks.”
Locke didn’t have long to look. The first saloon he stopped in was a little place called Little Annie’s. Idly, he wondered why all the saloons in town seemed to be named after women.
Cooper was sitting at a table in the all but empty saloon, staring down at a glass of whiskey. There was only one other man in the place, and he had his head down on the table, much the way Locke had first found Cooper in Turnback Creek.
Locke walked over and sat down opposite Cooper.
“Hey, John,” Cooper said without looking up.
“Coop.”
“In case you’re wonderin’,”
the older man said, “this is the first one I ordered.”
“You didn’t drink it.”
“No.”
“Not yet?”
Cooper looked up from the drink and at his friend. “No, not at all. I was going to, though. I thought I could come out, have one, and go back to the room, and you’d never know.”
“So, what stopped you?”
Cooper reached down and pushed the whiskey over to Locke’s side of the table.
“I knew if I drank this one, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”
“That’s good, Coop,” Locke said. “That’s real good.”
“Yeah.”
Both men stared at the whiskey, and then Locke picked it up, carried it over to the other occupied table, and put it down next to the slumbering man. It would be a nice surprise for him when he woke up.
“I heard some commotion,” Cooper said when Locke returned.
“Yeah, that was me,” Locke said. “Come on, I’ll tell you about it on the way back to the hotel …”
Locke finished his story before they reached the hotel.
“Jesus,” Cooper said. “We’re sittin’ ducks here.”
“Yeah, we are,” Locke said. “Whether they were after the payroll or just reputation hunting, we are.”
“Maybe we ought to camp outside of town, wait for the train up the tracks some. That clerk can send a message for them to stop and unload the gold there.”
“Nah,” Locke said. “Out in the middle of nowhere, we’d have less cover than we do here. By the way, let’s stop at the sheriff’s office.”
“What for?” Cooper asked. “You said you weren’t in trouble.”
“He’s out looking for you, too,” Locke said. “Thought you might be causing more trouble at the whorehouse.”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault!”
“I told him that. Let’s just put his mind at ease, huh?”
They changed direction and headed for the lawman’s office.
When they entered, they saw Maddox sitting behind his desk, drinking coffee.
“You found him,” he said.
“Yeah, at Little Annie’s.”
“Figured you’d find him,” Maddox said, “when I saw he wasn’t at Pretty Polly’s or at Lucky Lil’s.”
“Why are all the places here named after women?” Cooper asked.
“Are they?” Maddox replied. “Yeah, I guess they are. I hadn’t ever noticed before. What’re you boys gonna do now?”
“Turn in,” Locke said. “Might be safer just to stay in our room.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Maddox said. “You might want to set yerself up some kind of warning system, though. Just in case somebody else gets it into their head to come at you.”
“That’s good advice, Sheriff,” Locke said. “We’ll take it. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Maddox said. “Word I get on the train is that it’ll be here tomorrow evening. You plannin’ on movin’ right out?”
“No,” Locke said. “We made other arrangements.”
He told Maddox about renting the livery for the night and spending the night there with the gold.
“I’ll come by from time to time to check on you,” Maddox said when Locke was done.
“Fine,” Locke said. “We’ll move out at first light the next morning.”
“You’ll be on your own, then.”
“Figured we were on our own now,” Locke said. “Obliged to you for taking an interest.”
“Just tryin’ to keep things quiet in my town.”
Locke and Cooper both wished the man a good night and left.
When they got to their room, they were removing their boots when Cooper asked, “You ever wonder how the sheriff knew that the payroll shipment was gonna be in gold?”
“Yeah,” Locke said. “I wondered that right off.”
Cooper looked at Locke over his shoulder. “Think he might be plannin’ somethin’?” he asked. “Maybe he sent those two after you.”
“Could be,” Locke said. “I just figured from the start that we’d suspect everybody.”
“That sounds like a good way to figure.”
THIRTY-SIX
They set some warning signs around the room—a pitcher on the window sill, a chair in front of the door—and then turned in. The night went by uneventfully, and Locke awoke before Cooper. He just wasn’t used to going to bed that early. His eyes popped open even more when the sun started creeping in through the window. He got out of bed without waking Cooper, got dressed, and crept out the door. He decided to see if there was anyplace in town he could get an early breakfast.
In the lobby, he found the same young clerk from the night before and asked him about breakfast.
“Our dining room won’t be open for half an hour,” the man said, “but there’s a place around the corner that would be open now. It’s small, but the food’s good.”
“Thanks, I’ll try that. If my friend comes down, would you tell him where I am?”
“Certainly.”
Locke nodded and went out the door.
There was a knock on the door of the general store, which wasn’t ready to open for another hour yet. Cal Nieves, who opened every morning, went to the door and found Del Morgan there.
“What’s goin’ on, Del?” Nieves said.
“Did you hear what happened last night?” Morgan asked. “Somebody tried to kill John Locke.”
“Where did that happen?”
“Lucky Lil’s,” Morgan said. “The way I heard it, one of the girls, Katy, was paid to take Locke upstairs, and then two men with guns broke in and tried to kill him.”
“What happened?”
“They killed Katy, he killed them. He’s the only one who walked away from it.”
“Do you think it was about the payroll?”
“I don’t know,” Morgan said. “It might just be someone who recognized him and wanted to make a name for themselves.”
“Any idea who the men were?”
“Strangers.”
Nieves and Morgan both leaned against the counter, deep in thought.
“Del, are you thinkin’ we should move our timetable up?” Nieves finally asked.
“I don’t see how we can,” Morgan said. “We can’t do nothin’ until the payroll actually gets here.”
“I can’t help thinkin’ it would have been good for us if Locke had been killed,” Nieves said. “Then we’d only have that old marshal to deal with.”
“Well, it didn’t happen, so we’ll never know what would have happened if Locke was killed.”
“Unless somebody kills him.”
Morgan stood up straight. “I ain’t no murderer, Cal.”
“Del,” Nieves said, “this was your idea. Do you really think we’re gonna be able to take that payroll from these two men without shots bein’ fired? Without somebody getting killed?”
“I thought if they saw they were outnumbered, they’d give it up.”
“These men don’t have reputations for giving up,” Nieves pointed out. “You and me convinced the others to go along with that, Del. We can’t just give it up.”
“I don’t want to give it up.”
“Then you better be ready to kill somebody.”
“Not in cold blood!” Morgan said. “I ain’t about to ambush somebody or back-shoot them.”
“But if you have to shoot to kill to get the payroll?”
Morgan hesitated, then said, “If it comes to that, I will.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Dale Cooper appeared at the café around the corner from the hotel while Locke was eating his breakfast.
“Mornin’,” he said, sitting across from him. When the waiter came over, he pointed at Locke’s plate of steak and eggs. “I’ll have the same.”
“Comin’ up, sir.”
“You slept well,” Locke said.
“I slept the sleep of the just,” Cooper said. “Resisting that whiskey was good for me last night.”
“And it helped that no one tried to kill us.”
“That’s always helpful.”
“Any ideas about what we should do today?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah, I had one,” Locke said. “I think we should stay together and stay in one place today.”
“Like where?”
“The train station.”
Cooper shrugged. “That’s good for me. We’ll sit around, talk, smoke, maybe you’ll even think up an answer to the question I asked you.”
“What question?”
“The one about what you’d do with all that gold.”
Locke put his fork down and sat back. “I told you, I don’t think about stuff like that,” Locke said. “I’m happy with who I am, Coop. That much money would change me.”
“Change,” Cooper said, shaking his head. “I sure could use some change about now.”
The waiter came and put a plate of steak and eggs in front of him, then withdrew.
“It doesn’t do any good to think like that,” Locke said. “You want to change your life, deliver this gold, and then go do it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Cooper replied. “You’re young.”
“I’m younger than you,” Locke said, “but that doesn’t make me a young man.”
“Oh, yeah? Gimme back ten years—the last ten years—and I’ll show you what I’d do with it.”
“Do something with the next ten, Coop,” Locke said. “That makes more sense.”
“Yeah,” Cooper said. “Maybe …”
They ate the rest of their breakfast in silence, Cooper cleaning his plate like a man who had never had a drinking problem.
“I guess we should check out of the hotel and take our gear to the train station,” Cooper said when he was done. “Along with the buckboard.”
“Yeah,” Locke said.” We can go right from there to the livery.”
“I was thinkin’,” Cooper said. “We got to get on the trail sometime, why not just do it? Stayin’ in town one more night, that just gives somebody another chance to try for us—whatever their reason.”
Locke thought a moment, then nodded. “You might be right about that—unless the train comes in after dark.”
Turnback Creek (Widowmaker) Page 10
