The Dead Town

by J. R. Roberts

  “We’ll pay,” Clint said.

  “Then I’ll be here, and your animals will be ready.”

  “Thanks.”

  “When we tell Gloria, she’s gonna wanna head right out,” Deadly said.

  “She’ll listen to me,” Clint said, “but I think Lastings and the kid should stay behind.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re liable to get killed when we catch up to the gang,” Clint said, “or get us killed.”

  “What about Gloria?”

  “The woman can shoot,” Clint said. “That’s more than I know about Lastings and Caleb’s abilities with a gun. I say we leave them here.”

  “Well . . . I guess that’s okay,” Deadly said. “Three against four, and I got the Gunsmith as one of my three. Sounds even.”

  “Even?” Clint said. “Let’s hope not.”

  They headed for the door, but Clint stopped short.

  “Hey, Mr. Lilly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is there any law in Ludlow?”

  “Is there?” Lilly said. “Sheriff’s Nelson Quinn. Nels owns two of the whorehouses himself.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Clint knocked on the door of the room Gloria was sharing with the little girl.

  “Oh, hello, Clint,” Gloria said, cracking the door. “She’s asleep.”

  “Step out into the hall then,” Clint said.

  She did, and closed the door behind her, leaving it cracked a bit so she could hear.

  “Did you get her name yet?”

  “First name. Sally.”

  “Her last name’s Karch. The sheriff’s going to send out a burial party in the morning.”

  “That’s good. Does she have any family in town?” Gloria asked.

  “No.”

  “Maybe a friend that can take Sally?”

  “No friends. They kept to themselves.”

  “What’s gonna happen to the girl?”

  “I don’t know, Gloria. Look, we have to leave in the morning.”

  “To go where?”

  “A town called Ludlow.”

  “Is that where they are?”

  “It’s our best bet,” he said. “The sheriff and I have decided to leave Lastings and Caleb behind. We don’t know how they’ll react in a firefight. I don’t want to get killed looking out for them.”

  “So just you, me, and the sheriff?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and just between you and me, I’m not so sure about him either.”

  “You and me then.”

  He nodded, and said, “Unless you want to stay behind with the girl.’

  “No,” she said, “I’m goin’.”

  “Caleb and Lastings can look out for her until we get back.”

  “Are we comin’ back here?”

  “Well, I thought you’d want to, to see to it that someone takes the girl in.”

  “Well, yeah, I could do that.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to get something to eat and then turn in.”

  “Can you bring somethin’ for me and Sally? We can eat in the room.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Gloria,” the child’s voice called from the room. There was a touch of panic in her tone.

  “She’s awake. I gotta go.”

  Gloria went back inside, and Clint went back down to the lobby. Caleb was still there.

  “Where’s Lastings?”

  “I dunno, Clint,” Caleb said.

  “Well, come on, kid, let’s go get something to eat. I want to talk to you.”

  Deadly had gone to his room for a while. He said he’d eat on his own.

  “Hey, great. I’m starving.”

  “So am I.”

  “What about Gloria?”

  “We’ll bring something back for her and the girl.”

  “Whatja wanna talk to me about?” Caleb asked as they went out the door.

  “Let’s wait until we’re sitting down in a restaurant.”

  He put his arm around the kid.

  Over steaks Clint told Caleb that he and Deadly and Gloria would be going to Ludlow in the morning, but that Caleb would not be going with them.

  “Why not?”

  “Let me put it to you this way,” Clint said. “I don’t want you to get killed, and I don’t want to get killed watching out for you.”

  “I can shoot,” the boy said.

  “Maybe you can,” Clint said, “but I don’t have the time to find out.”

  “What about Lastings?” he asked.

  “He’s staying behind, too.”

  “But Gloria’s going?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’ll think I’m a coward.”

  “Not at all,” Clint said. “In fact, Caleb, she probably won’t think about you at all.”

  “What?”

  “She’s got a lot of other things on her mind, Caleb,” Clint said. “You have to forget about her.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Caleb said. “She’s your girl, right?”

  “She’s nobody’s girl, kid,” Clint said. “Believe me, she doesn’t have time for that.”

  “Will you be comin’ back here?”

  “Yes,” Clint said. “Gloria’s going to want to check on Sally.”

  “Sally?”

  “The little girl.”

  “Oh.”

  “In fact,” Clint said, “If you really want to do something for Gloria, you’ll make sure Sally is safe while we’re gone.”

  “Babysit, you mean?” Caleb was appalled.

  “Don’t think of it that way,” Clint said. “Come on, eat up. Whatever you end up doing tomorrow, we’re going to have to get an early start.”

  When Clint and Caleb got back to the hotel, he sent the boy to his room. He got Lastings’s room number from the clerk, but when he knocked there was no answer. He was going to have to tell him in the morning that he wasn’t going to Ludlow, land of the whorehouses.

  Clint thought about knocking on Deadly’s door, but then remembered he was supposed to bring Gloria and Sally some food. So he left the hotel again. He’d drop off their food and then retire to his own room and bed. With any luck this would all end tomorrow.

  FORTY-TWO

  Deadly knocked on Clint’s door before first light.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he suggested.

  “Lilly might not be at the livery.”

  “So what? We’ll wake him up.”

  “I never got a chance to talk to Lastings to tell him he’s not coming.”

  “Did you talk to the kid?”

  “Yes, him I got to.”

  “Let him tell Lastings. Come on, I’ll go to the livery and you get Gloria.”

  “She’ll have to get Caleb to watch Sally.”

  “Who’s Sally?”

  “The little girl.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Deadly said. “Okay, well, let’s get movin’.”

  “All right,” Clint said, “I’m with you.”

  Since Clint was already dressed, he only had to strap on his gun, fetch his rifle and saddlebags, and walk down the hall to Gloria’s room.

  When Clint and Gloria got to the livery, Deadly had their horses saddled.

  “Ready to go?” Deadly asked Gloria.

  “I’m ready.”

  He handed her the reins of her horse and mounted his own.

  Clint took Eclipse’s reins and mounted him. Deadly took off at a trot and Gloria followed. Clint knew that once they cleared town, they’d have to move fast. They wanted to cover the whole sixty miles as quickly as they could.

  At some point, since he had the superior horse, he figured to ride on ahead and get to Ludlow well ahead of Deadly and Gloria.

  And he had plans.

  In Ludlow, Lyle Pettigrew made sure he did not go to the same whorehouse as his brother and his cousins. For one thing, Joe was likely to raise hell there, and he didn’t want to hear it. Also, he didn’t want his cousins and brother to know where to find him when they got themselv
es into trouble.

  In fact, he so didn’t want them to be able to find him that he decided to spend the night at the whorehouse and not his hotel room.

  He woke to the snoring of the whore whose bed he was sharing. She was a pale, big-busted blonde in her thirties, which was basically why he had picked her. A lot of the others were younger—some still in their teens. He wanted to be with a woman, not a girl.

  However, he didn’t like snoring women.

  She was lying on her belly, her bare butt visible because she had kicked off the bedclothes.

  “Stop snorin’, damn it!” he snapped, and slapped her ass soundly, leaving a red handprint behind.

  She screamed and came awake, but she didn’t react physically. She turned her head to look at him.

  “Honey,” she said, “you ain’t one of them that likes to do it in the mornin’, are ya?”

  “I ain’t as a rule, but if you turn over, you could convince me.”

  “Well, I ain’t gonna turn over.” He’d already paid her, so she had no qualms about sending him off without a morning poke.

  Of course, Lyle being a Pettigrew, he had other ideas . . .

  Late in the afternoon Lyle walked into the Cloverdale Saloon and found his brother and cousins sitting there among the other patrons. He sat down with them.

  “Joe, get me a beer, will ya?” he asked.

  “Sure, Lyle.”

  “Sleepin’ late, Lyle?” Deacon asked.

  “Actually, I woke up early, but I been busy since then,” he said. “Seems my whore didn’t figure I was paid up till mornin’.”

  “Whatja do to her, Lyle?” Joe asked, hurrying back with the beer so he wouldn’t miss any of the story.

  “Well, Joe,” he said, using the glass to make wet circles on the table, “I guess I found out that I’m as crazy as any of you are.”

  “You done for her, Lyle?” Joe asked, gleefully. “You done for the whore?”

  “Let’s just say she won’t be makin’ any money for a while,” Lyle said, drinking from his mug.

  “I busted mine up some,” Joe said, “but I didn’t kill ’er.”

  “We gonna have ta leave town, Lyle?” Nutty asked.

  Lyle looked across the table at his cousin, then said, “You, Nutty. I thought it was a toss-up between you and Joe who was the craziest, but it ain’t. Turns out none of you is crazier than me.”

  “We’re all crazy, Lyle,” Joe said, grabbing his beer. “That’s what makes this family fun.”

  “We gonna wait for the sheriff, Lyle?” Deacon asked. “He’s bound to come after what we did to our whores. This town really likes its whores.”

  “And the sheriff owns a couple of the houses,” Joe pointed out.

  “Yeah, we’ll wait,” Lyle said. “I been tryin’ to keep you boys under control all these months, but today I lost control, so we’re all in the same boat, ain’t we? So we’ll wait for the sheriff, and after we take care of him, we’ll pick this town clean.”

  “And burn it to the ground?”

  “And burn it to the ground.”

  Sheriff Nelson Quinn knew he had to do something. He couldn’t afford to let someone tear up a couple of his girls, and some from another house, and let them get away with it.

  He didn’t have a deputy. Ludlow wasn’t a big town, but there was never much law keeping to do. It had a specialty, and men came for that. They weren’t usually looking for trouble.

  This bunch was different. This bunch he’d have to send packing.

  He grabbed a rifle from his gun rack and headed for the saloon.

  When the sheriff entered, Joe saw him and nudged Lyle underneath the table.

  “He’s here,” Joe said.

  “You boys know what to do,” Lyle said. “You crazy sons of bitches.”

  The sheriff looked around, spotted them at their table, and started over. He’d hardly gotten his mouth open, or his hands unhooked from his belt, when all four Pettigrews rose, drew, and fired. They kept firing into his body long after he was on the floor, dead. By the time they stopped firing, the saloon had emptied out.

  “Now what?” Joe asked Lyle.

  “Now we pick it clean.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Clint got to Ludlow late in the afternoon. Deadly and Gloria would be along in half an hour, maybe an hour. At first they’d tried to match Eclipse’s pace, but in the end they had fallen back. They probably also had to stop to rest their mounts.

  Clint rode into Ludlow and stopped at the sheriff’s office. No one was there. He left, and had stopped just outside to figure his next move when he heard the shots.

  Lyle watched from the street as his brother and cousins looted the town. They started by raiding the whorehouses, taking all the money they were holding. The first one, owned by the sheriff, tried to resist, until the madam was told that Sheriff Nelson Quinn was dead.

  The piano player was shot and killed in another house.

  As Lyle watched Joe, Deacon, and Nutty enter the last of the whorehouses, he saw some of the girls come out onto the second-floor balcony. He drew his gun and fired up at them, driving them back inside.

  “Back inside,” he shouted, “like the rest of the scared rabbits in this town!”

  It was true. Once the Pettigrews had started shooting and looting, the streets were abandoned. The people were all inside with their doors locked, waiting to see if they were going to be next.

  Clint walked toward the sound of the shots, and stopped in front of a store where a man and woman were staring out the window. He knocked on the door and the man cracked it a bit to talk to him.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Bunch of fellers are shootin’ up the town, lootin’ the whorehouses. We got to stay inside to protect our property.” The man was holding a rifle, but he didn’t seem very comfortable with it.

  “This town got a telegraph key?” Clint asked.

  “No.”

  “How about a bank?”

  “Oh yeah, we got a bank.”

  “Only one?”

  “Just one.”

  “Okay then,” Clint said. “Stay inside.”

  “Mister?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They killed the sheriff earlier today,” the man said. “Shot him down like a dog. He never had a chance.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Clint said. “Inside.”

  Clint had two ideas. One, just go to the bank and wait. The second idea was to sneak a peek at whatever the Pettigrews were doing at the moment, and pick his spot. Maybe he could isolate them and take them one at a time.

  He heard another shot and decided to see what was going on.

  Deacon and Nutty came out of the whorehouse with their hands full.

  “Where’s Joe?” Lyle demanded, although he thought he knew.

  “Spotted a little gal in there he liked,” Nutty said. “He took her to her room for a little fun.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Want me to go get ’im?” Nutty asked.

  “Naw,” Lyle said, “he’ll be ass-kickin’ crazy by now. He might take a shot at you. We’ll let him finish and meet him at the bank.”

  “The bank!” Nutty said, his eyes shining.

  “Put that stuff in your saddlebags and let’s get movin’,” Lyle said. They had their horses with them so when they were finished with the town they could ride out without delay.

  Clint had secreted himself across the street and listened to the conversation. He knew that one Pettigrew was still in the house. That would work for him.

  He waited until the three men left the area, then ran across the street and into the house. Immediately, he could hear a girl screaming from upstairs.

  A woman who had to be the madam turned on him and glared. She had a black eye that was swollen half-shut.

  “What did you forget?” she demanded. “You wanna hit me in my other eye?”

  “I’m not with the gang, ma’am, I’m here to help.”

  The woma
n didn’t waste any time.

  “Well then, help her,” she said, “before he kills her.”

  “What room?”

  “Four!” she shouted as he started up the stairs.

  He ran down the hall to room four, drew his gun, and then entered. He slammed the door open. A man was on the bed, naked, and Clint could see the kicking legs of a girl beneath him.

  The man heard the door slam open and turned to look over his shoulder.

  “Who are you?”

  “The man who’s going to stop you, Pettigrew. Which one are you?”

  “Mister,” Joe said, annoyed, “get out of here.” He turned his attention to the girl.

  The man was naked, so there was nothing else for Clint to grab but the hair on his head. Luckily, it was pretty shaggy.

  He grabbed a handful and pulled with all his might. Off balance, the big man tumbled to the floor. The girl on the bed began taking big gulps of air, as if Pettigrew had been choking her.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to her. “Get out of here.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. She grabbed her clothes and ran into the hall.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man on the floor asked.

  “Which one are you?” Clint asked again, pointing his gun at him.

  “Which what?”

  “Pettigrew.”

  “Oh, I’m Joe.”

  Joe stole a glance at his gun, hanging on the bedpost.

  “Go ahead, try for it,” Clint invited.

  “You’re making a mistake, you know,” Joe said. “My brother and cousins will be lookin’ for me.”

  “That’s fine,” Clint said. “I’ll be ready for them.”

  “They’ll kill you.”

  A look at the gun again.

  “You keep looking at it,” Clint said. “Go ahead.”

  “I ain’t stupid. Who are you, anyway?”

  “My name’s Clint Adams. I’m part of the posse that’s been tracking you from Cold Creek.”

  “Cold Creek? We killed that sheriff.”

  “Yeah, well, the sheriff from Bedford put a posse together.”