“Damn!” she said, more loudly than she had intended.
“I heard something about a posse formed during the night,” Jimmy said. “Maybe Alf was in on that.”
“A posse? For what?”
“One of Senora Soto’s girls was murdered.”
She tried not to betray her interest, but Jimmy knew her background, so there was little reason to hide it from him. “Do you know who?”
“Daisie, I heard.”
Sadie stood before the locked door. At the name, her spine stiffened, and she pictured, just for an instant, the bottle of laudanum in the pantry. “That’s a shame,” she said. She had never liked Daisie, not for an instant. She hadn’t wished her ill, certainly not dead. But they had never been friends, or anything close to it.
“Anyplace else you’d like to shop, ma’am?” Jimmy asked.
“Perhaps the general store will have some of what I need.”
“Worth a try,” he said. Greavey’s general store was on the other side of the street, so she had to scoop up her skirts again. Jimmy offered his hand to help her off the boardwalk. They had to wait for a couple of mounted men to ride down the street, then for a wagon drawn by two weary-looking mules. Its wheels threw mud clots behind it, but at least the usual clouds of dust didn’t rise up.
Greavey’s was open, and Jimmy held the door wide for her. As she stepped through the doorway, she met Alexandra Harrell, the banker’s wife, coming the other way. “Good day, Mrs. Harrell,” Sadie said brightly. “How are you?”
“Well enough,” Mrs. Harrell said. Her voice was tight, the words clipped. She pushed through the door without a second glance at Sadie, or any thanks for Jimmy.
“Pleasant woman,” Jimmy said when she was gone. “Real friendly type, isn’t she?”
“Her husband owns the bank, so she thinks she’s the Queen of England.”
The shopkeeper came around the counter toward her, all smiles. His name was Will, she remembered, Will Greavey. “Mrs. Cuttrell,” he said. “What a pleasure! What can I do for you today?”
“I wanted some food, Will, but the grocery’s closed.”
“Well, let me see your list, if you have one. I don’t keep as much on hand as Alf does, but I’ve got my sources.”
She did have a list, and she handed it to him, first clutching his arm for several long moments and holding his gaze with her own. “See what you can do, please. I’d be happy to bring more of my business here, if I can. Mr. Maier is not the most pleasant individual. And not nearly so handsome.”
“Give me a few minutes, ma’am,” Will said. “I think I can make some headway on this.”
“Very well,” Sadie said. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Lieutenant McKenna?”
“I’m at your disposal, Mrs. Cuttrell,” Jimmy said.
Ascertaining that Will wasn’t looking, she grabbed Jimmy’s behind and squeezed tight. “You certainly are,” she said softly.
She and Jimmy went outside to wait in the gentle breeze blowing out of the southeast. While they stood there, sheltered from the sun by an overhang, one of Senora Soto’s former girls walked past. Cassandra was a big woman, as tall as most men and twice Sadie’s weight. Some men liked that, Sadie knew. She couldn’t for the life of her understand why. To her, Cassandra just seemed sloppy, but she was popular and had earned more than many in the Soto stable, before moving on to another house.
She showed Sadie a wide, toothy grin and ran her fingers through her curly red hair. “Why, Sadie! I haven’t seen you in an age. How’re things?”
“Cassandra,” Sadie said without enthusiasm. “I hope you’re well.”
“You know me, Sadie. Nothing slows me down.”
Jimmy eyed Cassandra, and Sadie caught him looking. “Good-bye, Cassandra,” Sadie said, turning back toward the store. “Do you suppose Will is finished with that list yet?”
Cassandra took the hint. She kept going toward whatever her destination was. Jimmy opened the door again, and ushered Sadie through. “Like that, do you?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Not as much as I like you.”
“Don’t ever forget it, then.”
“Not a chance.”
“Will,” Sadie called. “How’s that list coming?”
* * *
Jasper Montclair stood in the shade of a covered walkway and looked out across the street. He saw a boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, wander out into the middle of the road, and he saw a horse coming, and for an instant wondered if he should do something. When he had been about that age, he’d seen a fast-moving coach strike an occasional playmate of his. It had knocked the boy into the corner of a building. The impact had opened the boy’s skull and he had fallen like a bag of sand, if sand could leak blood and gore all over a city street. Since then, he had always been nervous about boys in proximity to wagons or vehicles of any kind.
But the boy made it across safely, so Montclair went back to watching the big one, the redhead who worked out of a saloon rather grandly called the Palladium, half a block down Maiden Lane. She strutted across the road and stepped up onto the boardwalk and then stopped and chatted with Mrs. Cuttrell. She moved with an energy and grace that Montclair found intriguing. She carried the weight well, and every time he had seen her, she appeared to be enjoying life. She laughed a lot, and heartily. But she reeked of cheap perfume and smoke, from living and working in and above a saloon.
But the other one, the colonel’s wife—there was a woman to be reckoned with. The redhead was a soiled dove, and destined to remain one. Sadie Cuttrell had remade herself, through nothing but determination and sheer force of will. She had left one life behind and created another that she liked better. She was formidable in spirit, too stubborn to accept anything less than perfect victory, bright and willful and so very lovely.
He would need a woman like that on his arm, once he had seized everything else he had his eye on. Sadie Cuttrell was the most beautiful woman in the county, by far. In the entire territory, perhaps. When people saw Jasper Montclair with her, they would know they had met their betters.
Her past didn’t bother him, and if it troubled her, he could always make her forget it. Such a thing was simple to do, a child’s trick.
He watched her dismiss the whore and sweep back inside the general store. The fawning lieutenant held the door for her, then followed her in. He was like a lost puppy, determined not to lose sight of whoever had last given him a morsel. Montclair caught the scent of Sadie’s sex on him, and his dried sweat on her. That was an interesting bit of information, one he might be able to use. Passing through the doorway, she looked back at the lieutenant and spoke a few words. Montclair waited until her breath wafted across the street and inhaled deeply. Laudanum. Also good to know.
Montclair climbed into the seat of his buckboard. The lieutenant would not be a problem. The colonel, perhaps slightly stickier, but not a real worry.
He cast one more look at the redhead as she sashayed down the boardwalk, caught a last glimpse of Sadie Cuttrell through the store’s window, and urged his draft horses on. He had much to do, and ever less time to get it done.
Chapter Eight
None of the men had anticipated a midnight ride out of town, so by daylight they were all weary, soaked to the bone, chafed and uncomfortable. It had been slow going at first, trying to cut sign in the darkness and the downpour, with lanterns and torches, which the rain often doused, their only sources of illumination. Marshal Turville and Tucker Bringloe took turns dismounting to study the ground every time the trail became obscured, which was often.
An hour or so before the sun’s first glimmer in the east, Tuck’s hands started to shake. He was cold, but it was more than that. His throat was dry and he knew what he needed to calm the shakes. Most nights, he would be sleeping off a drunk at this time, and the sound sleep prompted by drink would get him through until morning’s light, or someone kicking him out of a doorway or an alley, woke him. Upon awakening, his first thought would be t
he next drink.
But on this predawn morning, on horseback and surrounded by men he didn’t know, one of whom was the town marshal, he had no idea where that next drink might come from. The fact that he hadn’t been allowed to sleep meant his usual craving had taken on new urgency, and the shakes that might have been disguised by unconsciousness were growing progressively worse. When he got off the horse, it was harder and harder to climb back into the saddle. His foot slipped from the stirrup, and one time he threw his leg atop the animal only to pitch over backward into the mud. The other men roared laughter, and Tuck managed to force out a few halfhearted chuckles. Being the object of laughter was nothing new. He made another attempt and this time got into the saddle, shaking more than ever, his clothing weighted down by water and mud until it felt like he carried another man on his back.
He tried to stay on the horse and let the marshal do the tracking after that.
As the day stretched on, the July sun hammered down on them. Already hot, it would be hotter still in the afternoon unless the clouds returned to block its rays. And if they did, then the rain might come back, too. July, Tuck reflected, was no time to be out of doors in the Arizona territory. Especially without a hat.
The main advantage of the sun, as Tuck saw it, was that as it baked the earth, the hoofprints of their quarry’s mount were sealed as if intentionally imprinted. What had made tracking almost impossible now made it easy. Having made better progress for a while, when the men complained of bone-weariness and hunger, Marshal Turville called for a short break to stretch, rest, and eat.
Tuck’s guts went into spasms. His head throbbed with every pulse of his heart, and he was soaked in sweat that chilled him from the inside, even as his clothes dried and stiffened in the sun. Alf Maier, the grocer, passed him a biscuit he had brought, cold and dry, and he tried to eat it, but gave up after two bites. For a few minutes, he was sure he would vomit, and he started to leave the circle of men to find a private place. But then he saw Ralph Hendershott tip a flask to his mouth.
At once, the rest of it was forgotten—the nausea, the cramps, the urge to lose what little food he had consumed over the past hours. That dull silver flask promised deliverance. Tuck stepped up to where Hendershott sat, back against a boulder, a spreading mesquite offering some modicum of shade. “Share a little of that?”
“Precious little to begin with,” Hendershott said. He owned the livery stable in Carmichael, along with a partner named Charlie Darlington. Both had been in the saloon, or upstairs from it, when Daisie had been killed, and both had been roped into joining the posse. “I need to share what I got with Charlie.”
Tuck’s hand dropped to the gun Turville had provided him, ensconced in a similarly acquired holster. Would he really shoot a man for a drink? He wasn’t sure what the answer to that question might be. If he did, in front of these men, including Hendershott’s business partner, he’d never live to reach the flask. Still, that wasn’t an altogether unpleasant proposition.
The marshal took the matter out of his hands. “Pour that out, Ralph,” he said. “Now. Anybody else carryin’ liquor, dump it into the dirt. We won’t have any drinkin’ on his posse, nor fightin’. Is that clear?”
“Hank, you can’t make a man give up his liquor,” Hendershott said.
Turville slid his rifle from its scabbard on his saddle. “Watch me.”
“Ach,” Maier said. His German accent was as thick as if he had just stepped off the boat, and Tuck sometimes could barely understand him. He wore thick glasses, and walked like the ground was burning his feet. “The girl was only a whore. Once the word spreads, there will be five more just like her on the next stage.”
“She was a whore that you were particularly fond of, as I recall,” Turville said. “And she spent money in your store. She lived in our town. If’n we don’t go after her killer, who will? Who’ll he kill next?”
“He rode out of town straightaway. Whoever he kills next is not your concern.”
“We let it go this time, what’s to say he won’t come back? Figger our women are easy pickin’s.”
“Hank’s right, Alf,” Darlington said. He was a wiry, bandy-legged guy who Tuck thought was wound too tight for this. Whenever guns started going off, he didn’t want Darlington behind him. “We got to do this, whore or no.”
“Bringloe didn’t even know her, and he’s here,” Turville said.
“He is not losing business every hour he is away from town. He is a drunkard who goes where he’s told. Especially if there is a chance of a dollar in it. Or a drink.”
“Neither one for him this time,” Turville replied. “Ralph, pour that stuff onto the ground. You, too, Alf, I know you got a flask on you. In five seconds I’m comin’ to take ’em away myself.”
Hendershott gave an exaggerated sigh, took a final swig, and upended his flask. With fierce longing, Tuck watched the liquid soak into the dirt. Maier tugged his from a saddlebag and poured it out. Even Piet Vander Tuig, the cowhand Tuck had first seen with the big redhead in his lap, had a little bottle on him. The other men in the posse, Winston and Nickles, stood quietly and watched without letting on whether they had any to dump. Tuck smelled all the liquor as it splashed against the earth and ran off in little rivulets. He breathed deeply and took his hand off the gun and turned away from the sight, feeling like his legs would give out at any moment. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a drink so much.
No, that wasn’t true. He could hardly remember ever not wanting a drink, even though booze had not ruled him until these last several years. Since he had left behind the war that still raged. And even then, it had taken time to really catch hold of his innards. Now it refused to let go. He was shaking again, sweating, red-faced. He stepped away from the circle of men, put some dense mesquite and creosote bushes between them and him, and dropped to his knees, then lower, to hands and knees. A tear leaked from his right eye, cut a track down his dust-covered cheek, and dropped to the ground. If it had been booze, he would have put his face in the dirt and licked it up. Knowing that about himself filled him with sorrow and rage and shame, and made him wonder again if drawing on Hendershott might not have led to the best outcome.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
Tuck started at the sudden voice, then lowered his bottom to the ground and slowly turned. Hank Turville stood there, limned by the sun, his shadow falling over Tuck. He knew he cut a pathetic figure, sitting in the dirt with tear tracks on his face. “Guess I might not be everything you hoped, huh?”
“I did that for you, Bringloe. Making those men dump out the sauce. I know what you are, and what you’re goin’ through.”
“You do?”
“Not the way you do, mebbe. I got my own problems, I reckon, but that’s never been one of ’em. I’ve seen it, plenty, though. You arrest enough drunks, in time you see everything. I ain’t judgin’ you, mister. I know you got a problem. I know you might could be a problem. But I also know you got a hell of an eye. If you hadn’t been half-drunk, I wouldn’t’a had to get off my horse all night, ’cause you woulda spotted every sign there was to see.”
“I’ve always been a decent tracker,” Tuck admitted. That was an understatement. Hunting or at war, others had always looked to him when a trail went cold, and more times than not he’d been able to find it again. But that had been a long time ago, on the other side of the bottle. That had been a different Tucker Bringloe, one who had deserved to wear the uniform of the Union Army.
“That’s why I want you sharp. We don’t know how hard the trail’s gonna be, or how long we’ll be at it, or what we’ll find at its end. You might hate me by the time we’re done, Bringloe. All I know, you might hate me already.”
“You wouldn’t be far wrong, Marshal.”
“I don’t care if you do. I got a feelin’ about you. I think you’re mebbe a better man than you do. Figger you can’t see much beyond your own reflection in a bottle. I see a little deeper’n that.”
“There anything
there to be seen?”
“An army officer. Wrong army, but still. And I reckon you were worth somethin’ before that, too. Can be again, most like.”
Tuck didn’t feel like that, now. He felt like all he was doing was sucking up air that somebody more useful could have been breathing. “That’s open to debate.”
“One thing I can’t stand is anyone feelin’ sorry for himself, Bringloe. I don’t want to see any of that. I want you sober and paying attention, because if we’re gonna find this killer, I reckon it’ll be you that makes it happen.”
“Don’t see that I have much choice, about the sober.”
“You could always ride back to Carmichael.”
“And you wouldn’t shoot me in the back before I got five steps away? Or hang me when you got back?”
“I didn’t say that, did I?”
“Don’t think you have to.”
Turville extended a hand toward him. Tuck took it and let the marshal help him to his feet. “We’ve wasted enough time,” Turville said. He lowered his voice a notch. “I’m puttin’ a lot of faith in you, mister. Don’t let me down.”
Tuck almost tossed off some smart remark, but he held his tongue. Walking with the marshal back to join the others, he tried to remember the last time anyone had counted on him for anything. During the war, he guessed. Had to be. After that he had been alone, riding ever westward, keeping his own company. Starting to drink to chase away the memories and the nightmares, and finding, almost to his horror, that it worked. Finding that it took more drink, always more, to keep them at bay. Anybody who had bet on him during those years would have been sorely disappointed.
Chances were, Hank Turville would be, too.
Deadlands--Thunder Moon Rising Page 5
