Lassiter couldn’t make out what the first man said.
“Oh shit, Mapes,” the drinker said. “Ain’t nobody coming through this way. What you’re saying is a lot of bullcrap. For Christ’s sake, take a snort...”
The other guard shook his head.
“The hell with you then,” the bottle-toter jeered. “That just leaves more for me.”
The bottle was tilted again and there was the sound of coughing followed by a stupid laugh. “Damn! If that awful slop don’t taste great on a chilly night. Feels like horse piss going down and don’t I love it.”
Lassiter heard the man called Mapes say, “Crazy son of a bitch! Caulfield catches you drinking he’ll kill you for sure. Me too, you dumb bastard!”
The other man, with all that whiskey in him, started to laugh.
Mapes leaned over and tried to grab the bottle out of his hand. The drunk pulled away and started guzzling again. Then Mapes got hold of the bottle and they tussled sitting down.
Lassiter came at them in a fast run, the heavy Bowie knife in his hand. The big man, Mapes, heard him coming and tried to turn. His mouth opened wide to yell. Nothing came out but a gob of blood as Lassiter chopped him across the Adam’s apple with the side of the blade. “What... ?” the drunk started to say, grabbing furiously for his rifle. His fingers were closing on the barrel when Lassiter clamped his hand over his mouth and buried the knife in his heart. The drunk died with a gurgle.
The first man had struggled to his feet. Lassiter could hear the wheezing sound of blood and air coming from the gaping neck wound. Dying though he was, the first man tried to run, a lot faster than Lassiter would have thought possible. He was almost out of the gully before Lassiter threw the heavy knife into his back. The big man pitched forward and died without a struggle.
Killing the two guards had taken less than a minute. It had been easy, but how many drunken guards could he hope to find? In the dim light, Lassiter saw that his shirt was soaked in blood. He rubbed a handful of dirt over it. The drunk’s bottle still lay where it had fallen. Lassiter figured it had three good swallows in it. He finished the bottle and laid it down without a sound. Horse piss was a good name for it sure enough. The name didn’t matter. It was whiskey and that’s what he needed.
There was no way to hide the dead guards, and there wasn’t time. There probably wasn’t any point. Lassiter reached the mouth of the gully at a fast, crouching run. Even though he couldn’t see them Lassiter knew there were men on the rooftops and at the upstairs windows. If they hadn’t spotted the two killings in the gully they might not spot him when he made his run for it.
Once out of the gully, Lassiter knew he had to cross the open space in one fast dash. All he could hope for was to run fast and not make any noise.
With the Colt in his hand, Lassiter started to run for the shadow of the nearest building, some kind of freight warehouse. Every yard of ground he covered was like the last. He braced himself for the thud of bullets against his flesh. The music from the McDade Paradise sounded crazily in his ears while he ran. Down the street somewhere a man’s voice called out. Here it comes, he thought. But nothing happened. He ran faster. The shadow of the warehouse was dead ahead. Just a few more yards. Lassiter reached the shadows, his breath hissing through his teeth.
He lay there in the dirt, listening, and still nothing happened. He was inside McDade, inside Caulfield’s ring of gunmen. After his breathing slowed down and the muscles in his legs stopped twitching, he started off around the side of the warehouse. Once he heard a man cough at an upstairs window. Sliding through a narrow place between two buildings he came face to face with a skinny cat. The cat spat its hate at him and disappeared.
An inch, a foot, a yard at a time, Lassiter edged closer and closer to Major Caulfield’s bank. Twenty minutes later, he was behind the bank. The window of Caulfield’s office was barred and shuttered. There was no back way out of the bank, something he hadn’t thought about. There were two barred windows on the second floor facing out onto the balcony that ran around the entire building.
This was the only way in. Wedging his gun hard into the holster, he started to climb one of the wooden pillars that supported the balcony. He swung himself over the balcony rail and crouched there, listening. There were lights in that part of the building. If he guessed right Caulfield would be in his office, with the woman.
The bars on the windows were heavy iron set into the mortar at top and bottom. He tested the bars with a strong pull. They held firm. He took out the heavy Bowie and started to work. It was slow and hard because he had to do it without making any noise. Sweat beaded his forehead in spite of the night chill. He hoped to hell no attack came before he finished. Shifting the knife to his other hand, he kept digging.
Chapter Twelve
The mortar wasn’t more than a few years old and the heavy bars were set in tight. The Bowie was the best Lassiter could get but at the pace he had to dig progress was slow. Time was running out and he had to control the urge to dig faster. No matter how he worked, there would be time for only one bar. It would be a tight squeeze. Once or twice the big blade slipped and clanged against the base of the bar. He held his breath, expecting the sound to bring men running. But nothing happened.
After thirty minutes of digging the bar still held firm in its socket. After the last of the dead guard’s whiskey stopped burning in his gut, he kept wanting a drink of water. The darkness gave him cover, but it made it hard to see what he was doing. He cursed and kept going, thinking this was the hardest he had worked for a long time. More than hour after he’d started to work he felt the bar shift a little. He pulled hard and it shifted a little more. The sweat was running into his eyes and he stopped to wipe it off. The hand that held the knife was starting to get sore. He flexed his fingers and kept rooting at the base of the bar.
It was starting to come free. He pulled at the bar and it broke away from its mooring with a crunch. It was still locked in tight at the top. There wasn’t time to work on that. Lassiter took a grip low down on the bar and started to heave, steady and slow. He increased the pressure, hoping to hell the goddam thing didn’t slip and break the window when it tore loose. A small chunk of mortar came loose. It hit him on the foot and rattled off onto the wooden balcony. He got the bar out and laid it down carefully where it wouldn’t roll around.
Slipping the window catch was easy. The desert heat had dried out the raw lumber, shrinking it so much that the point of the knife slipped through easily and pushed back the catch. He raised the window and began the work of getting through the narrow space between the bars. Lassiter was lean and wiry but he carried nearly two hundred pounds on his tall frame. With the gunbelt on there was no chance. Quickly he unbuckled it. He reached it through the window and laid it down on the floor inside. He kept the Colt in his hand. Damn! He forgot to take off his hat. He put the hat in after the gunbelt.
Getting his shoulders through was the real problem. No matter how he worked it, there had to be a moment when he’d be stuck hard between the bars. If, for some reason, they came upon him then, they could take their time about killing him. The mean little Irishman would like that. He’d be sure to come up with all kinds of down-home sayings before he set the two Mexicans to work. Lassiter wondered if stuck like that he’d be able to kill himself with the Colt. It was about the best he could hope for.
He tried it with the vest on. It just wouldn’t work. Too tight. He took it off and pushed his head through the space in the bars. An arm and part of his shoulder went through. He reached for the floor and found it. He sucked in his belly and tortured his body through the narrow space. Easy, man, he told himself. It was the kind of spot Lassiter hated to be in more than any other. The kind of spot where he didn’t have a fighting chance. The hand still outside the window held the gun. That was a mistake. Damn! The whole thing was a mistake...
An inch at a time, his big frame slithered through the window. The bars were made of rough cast-iron and the sharp edges t
ore through his shirt, putting weals in his chest and back. He was almost through when he heard footsteps coming through the alley that ran from the main street around to the back of the bank. They weren’t coming quiet and they weren’t coming fast. That could mean they weren’t looking for him. It could mean that It didn’t have to. Lassiter stayed rock still, feeling like an oversized target, stuck half in, half out the window. If they had a light and they happened to look up...
It sounded like two men. Lassiter could tell by the voice that one of them was his one-day chief deputy Lloyd Ketchell. Lassiter didn’t know the other man’s voice. Probably one of the other “deputies.” Ketchell was talking in a hoarse whisper. Lassiter wondered why in hell he had to whisper. That would be the policeman in him coming out. He knew that Ketchell, even more than the Irishman, wouldn’t give him a chance.
They stopped under the balcony. A match flared as one of them put fire to a smoke. It wasn’t Ketchell. “Douse that, you halfwit,” he heard Ketchell rasp. The match flared brighter, then went out abruptly.
Lassiter heard the other man complain, “Well, he ain’t here, is he. Sheriff? Seems the Irishman is getting jumpy. Why he ain’t but one man, this Lassiter. My money says he’s in his grave with Danvers’ pet nigger dancing on it.”
“Shut your goddam mouth,” Ketchell snapped, sounding more nerved-up than a tough, man-killing ex-policeman should have been. “If you’re so frigging sure he ain’t out here someplace, start looking through that pile of lumber over there. Hell, man, go and do it. I’ll cover you. See you get a decent burial if he is there.”
Ketchell broke out with a creaking laugh, trying to appear a lot tougher than he was feeling.
“Go on, loudmouth,” Ketchell ordered. Lassiter heard him thumb back the hammer on a shotgun. That would be Lloyd Ketchell’s kind of gun.
“Shit!” the loudmouth said, but he did what he was told.
Most of Lassiter’s weight was on the arm holding him steady in the window. Now it was starting to shake with fatigue spasms. The goddam thing had been broken in two places years before and it didn’t always work right when it was supposed to. It wasn’t his gun arm, but it was his arm and he needed it. He sure as hell needed it now.
He listened while the man with Ketchell clumped around between the piles of lumber behind the bank. He thanked something or other that the man was scared enough to make a quick job of it.
“Check those barrels too,” Ketchell commanded.
Lassiter cursed Ketchell silently, cursed his goddamned white-haired mother, cursed his whole ancestry. The miserable arm was starting to shake and quiver. He cursed McDade and Socorro County and the Irishman and the fat saloon keeper in El Paso who started all this. He cursed the dead man Wesley Boone and the whole of New Mexico. He cursed everything he could think of to deaden the pain in his arm.
There was more noise and the man came back to where Ketchell was standing under the balcony. “Well, he ain’t here, just like I told you,” the man said, sounding less scared.
Ketchell cleared his throat and spat. “He ain’t here it means he’s someplace else. Him or the nigger and I’d just as soon meet one or the other. Because, Deputy, somebody sure as hell knifed those two guards on Boot Hill. Now we’ll go check down the street and you can be brave some more...”
Lassiter listened to the boot heels walking away in the darkness.
He got through the window and stood there in the stuffy room rubbing some blood back into the arm. It still hurt like hell. He cursed the bleary-eyed bone-setter who’d worked years before. He was tired and his lips stuck together with thirst. The arm didn’t hurt so bad now, just enough to add to the mean feeling.
He buckled on the gunbelt, checked his gun and holstered it. He almost cursed out loud when he tested the Bowie with his thumb. It would take a lot of honing to get it back the way he liked a knife to be. He put the knife back in his belt.
The room was blacker than the inside of a preacher’s hat. Now that he was inside he thought he heard the faint murmur of voices downstairs. He hadn’t heard them before or else they hadn’t been saying anything. Downstairs a heavy door opened and closed, and there were other, louder voices. Could be Sheriff Ketchell coming to make his report to the Irishman. Sheriff Ketchell! Lassiter’s mouth twisted in a sour smile. Lassiter didn’t have much use for any kind of lawman, even the so-called honest Johns, and you couldn’t call Lloyd Ketchell that. By Christ, he’d make the son of a bitch earn his pay.
The door downstairs opened and closed again. Then the street door opened and closed. Unless he had it all figured wrong, that would leave only the two Mex bodyguards watching over the Irishman. On a night like this they’d be sticking real close. Lassiter didn’t know this for sure. There could be other gunmen down there. But he didn’t think so. The two sombrero-wearing greasers were Caulfield’s personal guns. They looked like they knew their job.
Lassiter started for the door he couldn’t see on the other side of the room. He did it, not moving his feet more than an inch at a time. The room seemed to be full of trunks and boxes. Twice he had to stop and start inching in another direction. Getting across ten feet of floor took him ten minutes. ‘ He felt along the wall for the door and found it. Just then he realized that the goddam thing might be locked from the outside. It was a flimsy pine and he could knock a hole in it with one kick. That would get him out all right. It put him under the two Mexican guns.
He turned the doorknob and the door opened. By pressing down hard, putting pressure on the hinges, he hoped to stop it from squeaking. It didn’t. There was a dim light burning in the upstairs hallway. There were three other doors leading off the hallway. Bedrooms, he figured. One of the doors was open and the room was dark. They could be waiting for him in there. There was no way of knowing.
Lassiter blessed the Irishman’s fancy tastes. The hallway was covered with thick red carpet that ran all the way downstairs. He didn’t know the layout of the bank. If it was laid out the way he thought, the Irishman’s office would be directly at the foot of the stairs, back of the tellers’ cages. Outside the Major’s door was where the two greasers usually stood guard.
The carpet killed all sound as he walked carefully to the top of the stairs. Flat against the wall, he looked down. Instead of two Mexicans there was one, looking bored and sleepy, the Winchester crooked carelessly in his arm. That meant the other Mex Was inside. One Mex identified callers, the other let them in. It was a better situation than he’d hoped for. If he could get the first Mex, the one outside, then it might just be possible to get into the Irishman’s office without getting killed.
He knew he could get the Mexican if he went at him in a rush. That would make the kind of noise he didn’t want. If the point of the Bowie hadn’t been blunted, by all that digging, he could have put it through the greaser’s neck. It was an easy throw from the top of the stairs. But even a fast throw with a well-pointed knife could make a lot of noise. There wouldn’t be time to get to the dead man before he fell.
Lassiter dug into his pocket for a coin. The Mex was staring at the floor, humming some kind of weepy Spanish tune. Lassiter aimed carefully and tossed the coin into the teller’s cage that fronted the door to the Irishman’s office. It fell with a loud clatter but not loud enough to be heard through the thick door. The Mexican jumped at the sound. He cocked the Winchester and pointed it in the direction of the sound. He looked upstairs where Lassiter was flat against the wall.
The Mexican cursed in Spanish. With a suspicious scowl on his greasy face, he started toward the first teller’s cage. He opened the door and looked in, poking in the dim light with the rifle. Lassiter heard another Spanish oath as the Mex spotted the coin on the floor and stooped to pick it up. Moving fast on the carpeted stairs, Lassiter was down the stairs and crouched down beside the teller’s cage before the Mexican had finished putting the coin in his pocket.
The Mexican was smiling and muttering to himself when he came out of the cage. The knife point was
too blunt to go through his neck from behind. Lassiter clamped his hand over the Mexican’s mouth and used the edge of the Bowie to cut his throat. Once, twice, he slashed the long knife blade across the Mexican’s skinny neck, cutting in deep, deep as the edge would go. Blood gushed from the severed jugular and Lassiter held the Mex tight until he died. It didn’t take long.
He laid the guard’s Winchester on top of the sombrero. Then he dragged the dead man into the teller’s cage and put him on the floor. He picked up the rifle and swapped the sombrero for his own hat. The hat stank of sweat. The Winchester was clean and new. He didn’t feel like he had a lot of time left.
Lassiter knew enough Spanish to get by. He didn’t know if he was good enough with the lingo to sound like a real Mexican. This was where he’d have the opportunity to find out. The sombrero and the dim light in the hallway would be some sort of help. He dug a bullet out of his gunbelt and put it in his mouth. Then he rapped on the office door with the muzzle of the Winchester and mumbled something in Spanish.
The voices inside the office stopped and the peephole snapped open. The Mexican inside said something and Lassiter got some of it. He answered back something about “Senor Lassiter,” giving the name Lassiter a dragged-out Mexican intonation, keeping the sombrero down over his face. The guard inside cursed him for a mumbler and threw back the heavy bolt. The Mexican’s face was framed in eight inches of open door. Lassiter caved it in with a savage blow of the rifle butt. At the same time he threw his weight full against the door and sent it crashing back on its hinges.
Caulfield dropped his brandy glass on top of his desk. Ellen Longley was sitting on a sofa fanning herself. The Irishman’s mouth opened. Ellen Longley didn’t move. The Irishman tried to move until Lassiter brought up the Winchester.
“Lassiter,” the Irishman said finally.
The Mexican on the floor cursed and tried to get up. Lassiter kicked him twice in the side of the head. He didn’t make another move after that.
High Lonesome Page 9
