The young woman at the piano spoke up. “They didn’t start it, Marshal Dixon. McLaren and his friends did.”
“That’s a damn lie,” McLaren said.
The brunette’s face flushed angrily and she took a step forward.
The marshal told her, “You’d best just stay out of it, Miss Dupree.”
Chance nodded toward the blonde saloon girl. “McLaren was roughing up that young lady, Marshal. My brother and I wouldn’t have stepped in otherwise.”
McLaren sneered. “There you go with that lady business again. You see any ladies in here, Marshal?”
Dixon didn’t answer that.
McLaren went on. “Anyway, I didn’t hear Dolly complainin’ about the way I was treatin’ her. Did you need somebody to protect you, Dolly?”
The blonde swallowed hard. “I . . . I guess it was all right . . . What you did, I mean, Pete. I know you wouldn’t really hurt me.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t.” McLaren cupped a hand under her chin. “You’re my gal, ain’t you?”
“I—Sure I am, Pete.”
A disgusted look crossed Chance’s face. Ace felt the same way. Even though the girl called Dolly hadn’t liked the way McLaren was holding her on his lap, she was still smitten with the handsome young hardcase. Both Jensen brothers could tell that by the look in her eyes.
“Muller, who threw the first punch?” Marshal Dixon asked the saloonkeeper.
Muller didn’t look happy about it, but he couldn’t very well refuse to answer the lawman’s question. Besides, there were plenty of witnesses who had seen the same thing he had. “That young fella there did”—Muller pointed to Chance—“but McLaren provoked him by insulting Fontana.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dixon said. “Nobody appointed these two the defenders of fair womanhood.” He jerked the barrels of the Greener to motion Ace and Chance toward the entrance. “You two are gonna spend your first night in Lone Pine in the calaboose.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Ace was tempted to make some other sarcastic comment about what a peaceful place Lone Pine was as the cell door clanged shut behind them a short time later, but he didn’t. For one thing, he didn’t blame Chance for the predicament they were in. Pete McLaren was such an obnoxious son of a gun Ace knew he would have taken a punch at the varmint sooner or later if Chance hadn’t beaten him to it.
Anyway, it wasn’t Lone Pine’s fault. The Jensen brothers seemed to carry trouble with them, wherever they went.
In the aisle between the iron-barred cells, two to a side in the stone-walled cell block behind the marshal’s office, Dixon tucked the shotgun under his left arm. “For what it’s worth, boys, Pete McLaren’s a scoundrel, and he and his friends would be locked up right now, too, if I had my druthers.”
“You’re the law in this town,” Chance said with a bitter edge in his voice. “Can’t you lock up whoever you want to?”
“Not without cause. You haven’t denied that you threw the first punch.”
Chance gripped the bars and scowled.
Ace said, “We regret our part in the trouble, Marshal, but I’ve got to tell you . . . in the same situation, I reckon we’d do the same thing again.”
Dixon’s wrinkled face creased even more as he smiled. “I don’t doubt it for a second. You young fellas got that look about you. When the Good Lord made you, He didn’t put any backup in you, did he?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Ace said.
“What happens now?” Chance asked.
“You two cool your heels in there overnight. In the morning, there’ll be a little hearing, and I reckon Judge Ordway will assess disturbing the peace fines on both of you, along with damages for what happened to Hank Muller’s saloon. Pay up and you’ll be free to go.”
“That may be a problem,” Ace said. “We don’t have a lot of money.”
Dixon shrugged. “Then you’ll be guests of the town for the next thirty days, unless I miss my guess.”
Chance groaned, went over to the bunk bolted to the wall, and sank down on one end of it. “Thirty days behind bars,” he said miserably. “I don’t know if I can stand it.”
Ace sat down at the other end of the bunk. “We may not have any choice. I figured you’d win enough playing poker for us to replenish our supplies before we rode on.”
“Yeah, that was my plan, too.”
Dixon said, “I’ve found it doesn’t pay to make too many plans. Life’s always got some surprises in store.”
Ace couldn’t argue with that.
* * *
Marshal Hoyt Dixon was sitting at his desk in the office a short time later, using a thumb to pack tobacco in his pipe, when his night deputy Miguel Soriano came in.
“Everything’s quiet in town, Marshal,” Miguel reported. “I hear there was a ruckus at the Melodian. I would have given you a hand, but I was clear at the other end of town. Didn’t hear any gunfire.” He was a stocky young man whose dark hair and eyes and olive skin testified to his Spanish heritage.
In Lone Pine, the gringo settlers and the descendants of the families that had been there since the territory was part of Mexico . . . and Spain before that . . . got along well, mostly.
“There wasn’t any,” Dixon said. “Just a bunch of young fools beating on each other.” He scratched a kitchen match on the sole of his boot and used it to light the pipe. When he had puffed it into life, he leaned back in the chair and inclined his head toward the cell block door. “Got a couple of ’em looked up back there. Young fellow named Jensen, who threw the first punch, and his brother.”
“Rumor had it Pete McLaren was mixed up in it, too,” Miguel said with a frown.
Dixon nodded solemnly. “He was. And when you get right down to the nub, it was McLaren who started it by manhandling Dolly Redding and then insulting Miss Dupree’s singing.”
The deputy’s frown turned into an angry glare. “I’ll bet Dolly stuck up for Pete, though, didn’t she?”
“She did. You didn’t expect any different, did you?”
Miguel let out a disgusted snort and shook his head.
Dixon had wondered before if Miguel was a mite sweet on Dolly. It was possible. He spent a considerable amount of time at the Melodian when he wasn’t on duty. Hank Muller had half a dozen girls working for him, and it could have been any one of them who had caught the deputy’s eye.
Or maybe Miguel just liked the whiskey Muller served. It was the best in town, after all.
Dixon smoked for a moment in silence, then shoved up from the chair. “I reckon I’m going home, now that you’ve made the rounds. I don’t think those two back yonder will give you any trouble. To tell you the truth, even though I had to lock ’em up, they strike me as decent lads. Just a mite too hotheaded and rambunctious for their own good.”
“That describes a lot of people.” Miguel smiled. “It used to describe me until you sort of took me under your wing, Marshal.”
“I’d say you’re still a work in progress, Deputy,” Dixon commented dryly. He left the office, smoke from the pipe wreathing his head as he stepped out onto the boardwalk.
* * *
In a private room at the Melodian, Pete McLaren threw back the whiskey in his glass and grimaced as the fiery liquor stung his lips where Chance Jensen’s fist had split them. “I’m gonna get even with those two sons o’ bitches if it’s the last thing I do,” he vowed.
“They’re locked up and you ain’t,” Lew Merritt said as he poured a drink from the rapidly emptying bottle of Who-hit-John they had brought with them. He rubbed his chest. “Anyway, I’m the one who got kicked. Feels like a mule kicked me and stove in some of my ribs.”
“You wouldn’t be able to bitch so much if you had busted ribs,” Vic Russell said with a grin.
The other two men at the table, Larry Dunn and Perry Severs, chuckled at Russell’s gibe.
All five of them had a bit of a glow from the booze they had already consumed, but they weren’t finished with their drinking, not by
a long shot. McLaren picked up the bottle, drained the last few drops into his glass, then stood up. A little shaky on his feet as he walked over to the door, he told himself it was from the whiskey, not from the way he’d been hit by that Jensen bastard.
The room didn’t have any furnishings except the table and chairs where they had been sitting and an old sofa against one wall. An oil lamp sat on a shelf and cast its flickering glow, which barely reached the corners. Hank Muller sometimes held private, high-stakes poker games back there. When McLaren had announced that he and his friends were going to be using the room for a while, Muller hadn’t objected. The saloonkeeper had figured there had already been enough trouble for one night.
McLaren jerked open the door and looked around the smoky room. Dolly stood next to a table where several burly, bearded miners sat. She was smiling as she talked to them.
And that annoyed McLaren. “Dolly,” he called. “Get your pretty little rump in here. And bring another bottle with you when you come.”
She abandoned the miners without hesitation. That made McLaren feel a little better. She might bitch and moan about the way he treated her—that was just second nature for women, he had always found—but she still came whenever he called her.
She’d keep it up if she knew what was good for her.
He left the door open a few inches and went back to the table. Severs had gotten out a greasy pack of cards he carried around and started shuffling them. “Deal you in, Pete?”
“I got better things to do than play cards with you coyotes.” McLaren picked up his glass and drained the little bit of whiskey that was in it.
Dolly came in carrying a fresh bottle.
He held the glass out to her and ordered, “Top that off, then leave the bottle on the table.”
“Sure, Pete.” She did what he’d said, then looked at him and asked, “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” He caught hold of her hand with his free hand and dragged her toward the sofa. “C’mon over here with me.”
“Pete”—she tugged away from him in a futile effort to escape his grip—“I’m still working.”
“You really think Muller’s gonna complain if you stay in here for a while?” McLaren laughed. “Hell, he’s lucky every stick of furniture out there didn’t get busted up, and he knows it.”
“But all your friends are here—”
“They’re playin’ poker. They ain’t gonna be payin’ a lick of attention to us.” He raised his voice. “Ain’t that right, boys?”
Mutters of agreement came from the men, none of whom lifted his gaze from the cards Severs had dealt.
McLaren guzzled down the whiskey, then threw the glass across the room. Dolly gasped as it shattered against the wall. McLaren fell back on the sofa and pulled her with him. She sprawled across his lap.
He put a hand behind her head, buried his fingers in the thick, curly blond hair, and kissed her. He was none too gentle about it, and when he took his mouth away from her, she gasped again.
“When Pete McLaren kisses ’em, they stay kissed, by God.” McLaren was happy. He’d had a good fight but had dodged jail for a change, he was pleasantly drunk, and he had a pretty girl in his lap, powerless to stop him from doing anything he wanted to her. Life was good.
Almost.
Back in the foggy chambers of his brain, a desire for revenge on those two strangers still smoldered. They had meddled in his fun, and they had to pay the price for that. Everybody else in Lone Pine knew better than mess with him, and the Jensen brothers had to learn that lesson, too.
He ran a hand over the soft, rounded curves of Dolly’s body, relishing the warmth of her flesh.
She swatted ineffectually at him. “Pete, please don’t,” she whispered. “Those other fellas can see—”
“I told you they’re not payin’ any attention to us. And you don’t have some tinhorn saddle tramp to come to your defense like some knight in shinin’ armor, now do you? Bet you liked that, didn’t you?” He closed his hand harder on her. “You liked havin’ some handsome stranger willin’ to fight for you, didn’t you?”
“No, Pete. I . . . I never even thought he was handsome. I didn’t really look at him—”
“Might as well not have. All he was interested in was that Fontana Dupree. Why would anybody look at a calico cat like you whenever she’s around?”
“You . . . you like to look at me, Pete.”
“That’s because I know what you are and how to treat you. And you like it, don’t you?” He squeezed hard again. “Don’t you?”
“I . . . guess I do.”
“Kiss me and prove it.”
She leaned in and brought her lips to his, and it was easier, not as rough.
That was how you broke a woman, McLaren thought. Hard and then soft, over and over again until she didn’t have any will of her own left, just a hunger to please. He knew Dolly would do any damn thing he told her to, whether the other fellas were in the room or not.
He kept getting distracted, though, by thoughts of Ace and Chance Jensen and the grudge he carried against them. He brushed his lips against Dolly’s ear and whispered, “You know those fellas who wanted to help you? I’m gonna make those sons of bitches wish they’d never been born.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hey, Marshal!” Chance yelled as he gripped the cell door’s bars. “You out there, Marshal?”
The cell block door swung open. The young man who came from the office wasn’t Marshal Hoyt Dixon, though. “What’s all the commotion back here?” His hand rested on the butt of his holstered revolver. A badge was pinned to his flannel shirt.
“You must be the night deputy,” Ace said from where he was sitting on the bunk.
“That’s right. Miguel Soriano’s my name, and I like for this jail to be nice and peaceful at night. That means not a lot of carrying-on.”
“We had to get your attention some way,” Chance said. “We have an intolerable, inhumane situation here.”
Deputy Soriano frowned. “And that would be . . . ?”
“There’s only one bunk in this cell, and it’s too narrow for more than one person. I’m fond of my brother, you understand, but not to that extent.”
Ace said, “I suggested we flip a coin for the bunk and the loser could sleep on the floor, but Chance pointed out there are three other empty cells in here, each with its own bunk, so it seems reasonable to move one of us.”
The deputy’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “This is some sort of trick. You fellas are trying to break out of here.”
“Not at all,” Ace said. “We’ll give you our word on that, if you’d like.”
Miguel’s frown didn’t go away, but he rubbed his blunt chin as he thought about the suggestion. After a moment he said, “The marshal told me he figured you two were decent sorts.”
“That didn’t stop him from arresting us,” Chance said.
“Marshal Dixon follows the law. According to that, you fellas started that fight in the Melodian. It wouldn’t matter to the marshal if he liked you or not.”
Ace said, “Yeah, he explained all that. But doesn’t it sound to you like he’d trust us enough to let one of us move to another cell?”
Miguel mulled over the idea for another minute or so, then said, “I’ll get the keys. But I’ll tell you right now, try anything funny and I’ll shoot.”
Chance held up both hands, palms out. “No tricks. You have our word on that.”
Miguel went back into the office, then returned a moment later with a ring of keys in his left hand. He unlocked the cell directly across the aisle and opened the door, then drew his gun with his right hand and pointed it at the Jensen brothers standing at the bars. “Both of you back up as far as you can.” His thumb was looped over the hammer of the Colt. “All the way against the wall beside the bunk.”
They backed away from the door.
Satisfied, Miguel stuck one of the keys in the lock and turned it. “Now one of you—and I don’t care which one—
can come out. Make up your mind who’s moving, though. If both of you take a step, I’m liable to start shooting.”
“Take it easy, Deputy,” Ace said. “I’ll change cells. That all right with you, Chance?”
“Sure. It doesn’t really make any difference.”
Keeping his hands in plain sight and not making any sudden moves, Ace went to the cell door, swung it open, and stepped directly across the aisle into the opposite cell.
“Close it,” Miguel ordered.
Ace did so, putting himself securely behind bars again.
Miguel pushed shut the door of what had just become Chance’s cell and removed the key from the lock.
“See, no trouble,” Ace said. “We don’t want to give anybody an excuse to keep us locked up any longer than necessary.”
“Pay the fine the judge hands down in the morning and you’ll be free to go.”
Chance sighed and shook his head. “Easier said than done.”
* * *
It wasn’t the first night the Jensen brothers had spent behind bars, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. The mattress on the bunk was thin and hard, and the lone blanket in each cell was scratchy. Neither of them could completely forget that iron bars stood between them and their freedom, and that chafed at their spirits.
Eventually they slept, and when Ace woke up the next morning, he smelled the enticing aroma of coffee brewing. Judging by that, it was good coffee, too.
A tall, lantern-jawed man with a loose-jointed gait ambled into the cell block carrying a tray. A badge was pinned to the black vest he wore over a collarless white shirt. “Mornin’, boys,” he greeted the prisoners with a friendly grin. “Got some breakfast here for you from the Lone Pine Café. You’re in for a treat. That ol’ Scandahoovian who runs it rustles up some mighty good grub.”
“You must be the marshal’s other deputy,” Ace said as he moved to the door.
Across the aisle, a fuzzy-haired Chance was sitting up, yawning and rubbing his face as he tried to come fully awake.
“Yes, sir, that’s me,” the newcomer said. “Norm Sutherland’s the name. When I took over for him this mornin’, Miguel, I mean Deputy Soriano, told me about splittin’ the two of you up. Seemed like a good idea to me. No need for crowdin’ when we ain’t got an excess o’ guests.”
Twelve Dead Men Page 3
