The buckskin must have smelled the water. It lifted its head and snorted. “Sorry, boy,” Bear said. “Soon.” He patted the horse’s neck and regretted not carrying a third canteen.
He would have taken the stage, but one only passed this way once a week. He took a shorter route than a stage could have taken—one following an ancient Indian hunting trail. At least, he assumed it was a hunting trail, for in addition to the bones remaining from dead soldiers and Sioux warriors and their horses, many bison bones also littered the desert around him.
The sun was becoming a furnace. Sweat popped out on the lawman’s forehead and rolling down his cheeks and into his shirt. He rolled his sleeves up his forearms and tipped his hat brim low as the sun continued to climb and grow brassier and hotter.
He paused to give the horse a few sips of the remaining water, then mounted up again and followed the next broad, high-desert valley for another two-and-a-half-hours. Ahead, the Wind Rivers rose—furry green and wax-tipped—against the western sky. To the north, the Bighorns jutted like craggy ramparts. To the south swelled the Laramies.
He remembered feeling as small as a bug while riding through this country before. He felt the same way now, and hoped the buckskin didn’t throw a shoe. There were no Indians left to put him out of the misery of dying slow and hard and without water under a merciless sun.
It was with a slow sigh of relief that he rode into the little town of Diamondback in the mid-afternoon. He’d picked up the stage trail a half a mile back, and now the stage trail became the town’s main drag, cleaving the town in two from east to west.
As Haskell continued slowly into the dusty little wind-blown, sun-seared settlement, outlying shanties and stock pens dropped back on both sides of the trail.
Looking around, Haskell noticed several faces staring at him through dusty windows and over saloon batwings. A man in an apron was splitting wood in the gap between a grocery store and the Wyoming Cafe. When the man saw the stranger riding into town atop the lathered buckskin, he stopped splitting wood to stare. The hot, dry breeze ruffled his thick, gray-streaked brown hair and the waxed ends of his handlebar mustache.
Haskell pinched his hat brim to the man. The man just stared.
The lawman turned toward the Blind Pig Saloon on his right. A head suddenly dropped down beneath the batwings. Haskell could see the owner of the head’s bent knees beneath the doors. The man was peering through the batwing’s slats.
Haskell turned to his left again, and several faces pulled back from windows in Miss Yvette’s Slice of Heaven Sporting Parlor, a dilapidated board-and-batten structure that was gaudily painted in bright red and dark blue and sunset orange. A carving of a naked woman—naked save for ostrich feathers in her hair and a man’s hat across her snatch—was mounted on the face of the whorehouse’s second story, near where three half-naked young women were lounging on a balcony that looked ready to crash to the street below with the next stiff breeze. Haskell pinched his hat brim to the girls as the buckskin clomped on past.
One of the girls smiled. The one sitting next to her, a black girl, elbowed her in the ribs.
Haskell glanced at the moon-and-star badge pinned to his calico shirt. Apparently, Diamondback wasn’t all that happy to see a federal lawman ride into town. Unless everyone here was just shy, or half-loco, like the men he’d played poker with back at Fort Laramie. Or maybe they for some reason didn’t want a federal lawman poking around and asking questions about their deceased town marshal ...
Haskell followed a slight bend in the street, which ran gradually upward—for Diamondback had been built on the crest of a low mesa, with a rocky ridge rising to the north—toward the town marshal’s office. The local law office resembled a giant stone domino with a white-painted front porch, which stood on two-by-two foot square stilts about six feet above ground. The building’s stone basement, partly underground, served as the jail block. The jail block’s three front windows, just above ground, were all barred and covered with a fine, rusted iron mesh, to keep anyone from tossing a gun or anything else through the bars.
Haskell pulled his horse up to the North Star Saloon, which stood just west of the jailhouse. Its name was curious since the roughhewn, log and stone grog shop sat on the street’s south side. A brush ramada fronted the saloon, and he wanted to get the buckskin out of the sun. There was a filled stock trough there, as well. Dismounting, he turned to the saloon.
Here, too, faces pulled away from windows. A heavy silence poured out over the batwings from the saloon’s dark interior. There were only the sounds of the buckskin loudly drawing water and happily switching its tail as it did.
Haskell slid his Henry repeater from his saddle boot, and draped his saddlebags over his left shoulder. He turned to the saloon again, and said, “I got a dollar here for anyone who wants to stable my horse for me.”
Silence even thicker than before oozed out of the saloon.
“Al right—two dollars, then,” Haskell said, adding, “That’s a bottle of good whiskey.”
A few more seconds of silence and then footsteps sounded from inside the saloon. The steps grew louder, and then a craggy face beneath a cockeyed bowler hat appeared over the batwings.
The man glanced sheepishly behind him then, wiping his large, bony hands on the shabby jacket of his cheap suit, pushed through the batwings. He was a wizened old fellow though Haskell thought he probably looked older than his years. Longish, unkempt hair curled over his collar, and he had bags the size of half-filled tobacco sacks beneath his drink-bleary eyes.
He looked at Haskell then at the buckskin then back to Haskell again. “I’ll take your hoss over to the Bighorn if’n you pay up front ... uh, Marshal.” He squinted at the badge on Haskell’s broad chest.
The lawman reached into the pocket of his canvas trousers, and tossed a silver dollar up to the man on the saloon’s front porch. The man lifted a hand a good two seconds too late. The coin bounced off his chest and dropped to the porch floor.
“I’ll set the other one right here,” Haskell said, setting the second coin atop a post of the hitch rack fronting the saloon.
“Much obliged,” the drunkard said, stooping with a grunt to pluck the first coin off the floor.
“What’s your name?” Haskell asked him.
“Louis Bernard. Who’re you ... Marshal?”
“Bear Haskell.”
“You, uh ... you here to ... ?” Louis Bernard let his voice trail off, casting another sheepish glance behind him.
“Find the son of a bitch who killed your town marshal—you got it.” Haskell dipped his chin to emphasize his determination. “And I’m not gonna leave until I do.” He glanced into the shadowy saloon behind the drunkard. “I know that’ll likely put the good citizens of Diamondback at ease.”
Bernard gave a weak smile as he continued to fidget atop the porch.
“Take good care of my horse, Mister Bernard. I’ll check on him later.”
Haskell set the Henry on his shoulder, wheeled, and strode over to the jailhouse. He slowed his stride as he climbed the porch steps. A loud din was coming from inside the office—a man and a woman talking in strained voices, and a wooden thumping sound.
Haskell crossed the porch and tipped an ear to the door. A man’s grunts and a woman’s laughter sounded behind the door planks. Scowling, Haskell tripped the latch and threw the door wide, taking one step inside as he did.
He turned to his left, where Lou Cameron’s large desk sat near the far wall but facing the room, beneath a gun rack sporting three old-model rifles and a sawed-off shotgun. A man and a woman were on the desk, fucking.
The woman lay beneath the man, her skirt pulled up to her belly, the top of her dress pulled down to just below her cherry-tipped, alabaster breasts. The man’s denim trousers were pulled down to his boots. He wore a buckskin shirt. His bony ass rose and fell sharply as he hammered away between the girl’s spread knees. The girl’s large breasts jiggled as the young man pumped away at her.
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He was grunting and chuckling and the girl was moaning and laughing. The girl’s bare legs flapped against the young man’s sides. They both had their eyes squeezed shut. Now, apparently sensing a third party in the room, they both opened their eyes at the same time and jerked their heads toward the big lawman standing just inside the open doorway, the Henry resting on his shoulder.
Their eyes snapped wide in shock.
“What the fuck?” yelled the man, immediately pulling away from the girl, rolling off the far side of the desk. “You ever heard of knockin’, you big, ugly son of a bitch?”
“Town’s on fire,” Haskell said. “I figured you’d want to know pronto.”
“The town’s—what?” yowled the man, pulling his pants up but not before he took a step forward. He fell in a heap over his jeans. The girl said, “Oh!” The man—he was young, maybe twenty, if that—cursed again sharply as he heaved himself back to his feet and pulled up his pants. He shuffled to a window, shook a lock of his unruly sandy hair out of his left eye, and looked out.
“I don’t see no smoke,” said the kid, looking this way and that around the street. “If there’s a fire, how come nobody’s ringin’ the bell?”
“There’s no fire,” Haskell said. “I was just messin’ with you.”
The girl looked at the lawman. She was still sitting on Lou Cameron’s desk, and she still had her dress pulled up to expose her snatch and the top pulled down to show off her pretty, porcelain-white breasts. Her breasts were chafed. She was a cute, plump little blonde with a heart-shaped face and curly golden hair. When she laughed, she covered her mouth as though to hide the fact that she was missing an eyetooth.
The kid snapped a piqued look at Haskell. “You was what?”
“Messin’ with you. Sort of like you was doin’ with the girl, only from a distance.”
The girl laughed again and shuttled her delighted blue eyes between Haskell and the young man who Bear noticed was wearing a five-pointed star pinned to his brown leather vest. The kid turned an angry, taut-jawed look at her. “Will you stop laughin’, Marlene? He ain’t funny!”
“He’s kinda funny,” Marlene said, running her glittering blue eyes up at down Haskell’s frame, letting her gaze linger brazenly at his crotch. “He’s a big son of a bitch—I’ll give him that.” She looked at the badge on his shirt. “You a lawman?”
“Bear Haskell, deputy U.S. marshal. I’m here to find out who killed Lou Cameron.”
“Ah, shit,” the kid said. “That’s all we need—a federal badge-toter pokin’ his ugly head around here.”
“He ain’t ugly,” Marlene said, staring at Haskell as though mesmerized by the big lawman. “He ain’t ugly at all. And he’s a big son of a bitch, sure enough.” She chewed her bottom lip.
“Why, thank you, Marlene,” Haskell said, leaning his Henry repeater against the wall to his left. “You’re right pretty.”
“Thank you, Marshal.”
“Goddamnit!” the kid complained to Marlene.
“Who’re you?” Haskell asked him.
The kid had grabbed two holstered six shooters and a shell belt off a shelf and was wrapping the belt and guns around his lean waist. “Me? I’m ‘Big Deal’ Melvin LaBoy. Big Deal to you, pal!”
As he buckled the belt, he strode slowly toward Haskell, glaring with menace, spitting out his words through his gritted, crooked teeth.
“Big Deal, huh?” Haskell chuckled and shared a conspiratorial look with the girl. “I seen what you was ticklin’ Marlene with, and I’ve fished with bigger worms than that!”
Marlene laughed again, again covered her mouth.
“Goddamnit!” exclaimed Big Deal LaBoy. He snapped up his right six-shooter—a pretty Colt Lightning .44 with an ivory grip—and aimed it at Haskell from four feet away. “No one laughs at Big Deal? You got it, Mister? No one. Includin’ federal badge-toters. As a matter of fact, especially not federal badge-toters!”
Chapter Eight
“Hold on, now, Big Deal,” Haskell said, raising his hands. “You go shootin’ me, you’ll big a big deal, all right. A big deal doin’ big time in the big house if you’re not hangin’ from a big gallows!”
“I don’t like bein’ laughed at, see?” Big Deal complained, his smooth, youthful cheeks as red as two ripe apples.
“I understand.” Haskell whipped his left hand forward so quickly that the kid didn’t see it coming. Bear jerked the pistol out of the kid’s fist.
The kid yelped and grabbed his right hand. “Ow—goddamnit!”
“You okay, Big Deal?” Marlene asked, suddenly concerned. She climbed down off the desk, stuffing her breasts back into her skimpy dress.
“I apologize for laughing,” Haskell said, holding the kid’s pistol down low by his side. “I shouldn’t have teased you. I was out of line.” He genuinely regretted it. The kid obviously wore a large, very heavy mantle of pride on his slender shoulders. Haskell knew how it felt. He’d been young once, too.
“You all right, Big Deal?” Marlene asked the kid again. She stood beside him now. “Let me look at your hand.”
“It’s all right. I’ll live.” Big Deal cast a glowering look up at Haskell towering over him.
“What you two need is a drink.” Marlene walked over to a stout oak cabinet standing against the room’s back wall, near the potbelly Sherman stove and a box half-filled with kindling and split pine logs. A rocking chair that Haskell recognized as his old pal Cameron’s was there, too. Marlene half filled two water glasses with amber liquid from an unmarked bottle. She brought the glasses over and gave one to Haskell and the other one to Big Deal.
“There you go,” Marlene said. “Now, you boys drink to friendship and gettin’ along. I’ll be going. I can tell when there’s gonna be boring man-talk.” She shook her hair back, ran her hands through it, and looked coquettishly up at Bear. “If you need the services of an experienced courtesan,” she said, obviously enjoying pronouncing the word, “come look me up. I work over at Miss Yvette’s.”
“I saw it on my way into town,” Haskell said, raising his glass to the girl.
“Bye, then.” She winked at Haskell then pecked the still pouting Big Deal on his cheek, and left, humming.
“Down the river of no return,” Haskell said to Big Deal, and raised his glass. He took the entire half-filled glass down in two long swallows. “Oh, Jesus—did that hit the spot!”
Suddenly, he felt like a new man. One without the sundry aches and pains and sun- and windburn of a long ride through tough country. His brain was clear.
He stepped back and drew a deep breath as Big Deal tried to empty his glass in a similar fashion. The kid didn’t make it. He took one swallow, then two, his eyes growing bigger and more watery. The third swallow only went halfway down before coming back up and, leaning forward, the kid spat it onto the floor in a broad spray, convulsing.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, straightening his back and running a sleeve of his cream flannel shirt across his mouth. “How in the hell did you do that? That’s Marshal Cameron’s who-hit-John. Hell, I can taste the snake venom in it. I think one of the stingers on the scorpion Jester Whittle throws into the vat when he’s brewin’ the stuff is stuck in my throat!”
The kid cleared his throat loudly, worked his jaw, swallowed.
“What don’t kill you makes you stronger,” Haskell said, chuckling. He looked at the unlabeled bottle standing on the cabinet. “That ole Lou—he favored the bottom-shelf stuff, he purely did. Good thing, too, since he never made much money and what he did make slipped through his fingers like pounding rain from a summer storm. His words, not mine.”
“You friends of the marshal?”
“That’s right. We fought in the war together, came west together. Saw the elephant together a few times. I went into the U.S. marshals service after working for a couple of years for the Pinkertons, and ole Lou went into the saloon and whorehouse business in mining camps up in the Rockies. All of those ventures went bust and
then, somehow, Lou took to lawdogging on the local level.”
“The marshal never said too much about his past,” said Big Deal. “At least, he never told it to me.”
“You worked for him, I assume.”
“I was his deputy.”
Haskell looked at the town marshal’s badge on the kid’s vest. “So I reckon when Lou got bushwhacked, you got promoted.”
Big Deal’s eyes narrowed with renewed acrimony. “What are you sayin’? You think I killed him?”
Haskell went over and set his empty glass on the liquor cabinet. “Pull your horns in, Big Deal. You from around here?”
Big Deal shook his head. “New Mexico. I came up here four years ago to work at the Circle-Q, Mister Quimberly’s spread.” Big Deal palmed both of his pretty Bisleys, spun them on his fingers, and dropped them back into their oiled holsters. “I was a gun-for-hire. When the rich fellers had someone who needed killin’—rusters or nesters, say—around here everyone knew their answer was me. When Marshal Cameron needed a night deputy, he just naturally asked me first.”
“Oh, so, you come by that handle honestly, then.”
“What—you think I gave myself the nickname just because I like the sound of it? Listen here, Marshal Haskell, around here I am a big-fuckin’-deal, and don’t you forget it.” Big Deal poked his chest three times hard.
“You sure are proddy for such a big deal.”
Big Deal canted his head suspiciously to one side. “What’s that mean?”
Haskell gave an ironic chuff. “Tell me what you know about Lou’s murder.”
“How would I know anything?”
Haskell stared at him.
“You think I killed him, don’t ya? Just to get his badge!”
“Did you?”
“Hell, no!”
“All right, then,” Haskell said, not quite knowing what to make of the younker. “I believe you ... for now.”
“Well, good, then!”
Haskell had sauntered around the office, scoping everything out. He’d made his way over to Cameron’s desk upon which the kid had been diddling Marlene, and hiked a hip on the edge. “Tell me what you know about his murder.”
GUN TROUBLE AT DIAMONDBACK (Bear Haskell, U.S. Marshal Book 1) Page 6
