GUN TROUBLE AT DIAMONDBACK (Bear Haskell, U.S. Marshal Book 1)

by Peter Brandvold

  Big Deal pinned the badge to his shirt. Instantly, renewed confidence blazed in his eyes, and his shoulders seemed suddenly straighter. A more natural pallor plumped his cheeks. “Marshal Haskell?”

  Haskell splashed whiskey into his coffee and stirred the mixture with a spoon. “Call me Bear.”

  “All right. Bear, I got to thinkin’ about somethin’ after you left the jailhouse.”

  Haskell blew on his coffee and whiskey, and took a sip. “What’s that?”

  “You was askin’ about the days leadin’ up to the marshal’s murder. If anything unusual had happened. I remembered somethin’.”

  Haskell took another sip of the bracing brew and set the mug down on the table. He looked at Big Deal with interest. “What did you remember?”

  “About three days before he died, he came and got me over to my boarding house, Mrs. Kramer’s place. I usually pulled the night shift but when the marshal had to leave town for one reason or another, he fetched me to man the office. He didn’t say much about where he was goin’, only that he had to ride out to Weeping Squaw Springs. The marshal rode out there and came back all jittery and short-tempered. I asked him what was wrong and he said, ‘Nothin’.’ Just like that. No, it was more like, ‘Nothin’—just you never mind Big Deal!’ Them was his exact words. So I didn’t mention it again.”

  Haskell sat back in his chair. Finally, a clue ...

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Big Deal touched a match to his quirley, lighting up, blowing the smoke out his nose. “You reckon his trip to Weeping Squaw Springs might have somethin’ to do with why he was killed?”

  “I don’t know,” Haskell said. “But I reckon it’s worth looking into, sure enough.”

  He had Big Deal draw him a map out to Weeping Squaw Springs on a piece of notepaper, and tucked the paper into his pocket. He’d ride out there first thing the next morning and see what he could find. Miss Marlene came down the stairs and sat at their table, smiling because Haskell and Big Deal appeared to have made such good friends.

  “Which one of you would like to take me upstairs?” Marlene asked, shuttling her gaze between the two men. “I reckon Big Deal got me feelin’ all frisky and frustrated, and there ain’t been much business yet today.” She squirmed around in her chair like there were ants on it.

  “I can’t,” Big Deal said, standing up. He finished off his sarsaparilla and stuck his quirley into one corner of his mouth. “I got me a full-time job, safe-guardin’ Diamondback till I can find me a deputy or two.”

  All business, Big Deal pinched his hat brim to Marlene and then to Haskell, and strode self-importantly across the parlor and out the door.

  Marlene placed a hand on Haskell’s right forearm, squeezed, and gave him a lusty smile. “How ‘bout you, big man? I bet you’d be like fuckin’ a mountain, and my pussy just feels so alive right now!”

  Chapter Eleven

  Fucking Miss Marlene was like fucking a very animated, very soft pillow.

  One that ran her fingernails lightly down his back while he fucked her, and entwined her ankles around his ass, and sighed very quietly but with such luxury and abandon that he could tell she was enjoying it. While Marlene’s body was soft, she was deliciously sexy, with a plump belly and breasts like filled bladder flasks—firm yet pliable, the nipples responding to his touch.

  In fact, every inch of the sweet, succulent whore seemed to respond to his touch, no matter where he caressed or kissed her. When he ran his hands along her thighs, which were pinned up against his sides, gooseflesh rippled across the smoothy, creamy flesh. Nibbling her earlobes made her entire body quiver. When he kissed her throat, she threw her head far back on her pillow, and groaned.

  Haskell didn’t normally go down on whores, because you just never knew where they’d been, but this girl was so sensual and alive and respondent that he would have eaten her right down to her core, just to find out her reaction. Only, he never got around to it. As soon as they were done on the bed, his shaft was hard again in a minute (in fact, he’d never really lost his erection after he’d climaxed), so he carried her over to the dresser, set her on top of it, spread her knees, and very gently and slowly fucked her while standing. She sat before him, running her hands through his hair and occasionally leaning forward to kiss his lips, his nose, his ears.

  She watched, smiling in delight, as his thick, ramrod-hard piston slid in and out of her. Occasionally, she slid her fingers down there to let them slide across the top of his love wand as he fucked her.

  “I’ve never been with a man this big,” she said, touching him again, leaning forward to whisper into his ear, “but don’t tell Big Deal I said that.”

  “It’ll be our secret,” Haskell said, chuckling, pulling her hair back from her face with both hands and gazing into her eyes, six inches from his own.

  He liked the way her copper irises glittered, the pupils appearing to expand and contract with the rhythm of his thrusts.

  “You sure are fun to fuck, Marlene,” he said, grunting softly.

  “Oh, Bear,” Marlene whispered, closing her eyes lightly and groaning. “Oh, Bear ... oh, Jesus ... ”

  Haskell increased his rhythm.

  When he came, he gripped both her plump ass cheeks and drew her taut against him, shuddering. She leaned back on her elbows, cupping her tits and mewling loudly.

  When he was finished spewing his come, he staggered back away from the whore, and said, “Sorry I came in you, Marlene. I intended to pull out, but ... I reckon I got distracted.” He sagged down onto the edge of the girl’s bed. “I hope you don’t have a mini-Bear in your oven.”

  “Not to worry,” Marlene said, sliding down off the dresser. Cupping her crotch with both hands, she walked bull-legged over to a washstand. “Miss Yvette has a secret French potion. It takes care of all that—even the menses, thank god!”

  When Marlene was done cleaning herself, she went downstairs for a pot of hot water, and returned to the room. Haskell lay back on the bed while the girl cleaned him with the hot water she’d tempered with cool in the basin, and cleaned him with a flannel cloth.

  “My, you’re impressive,” Marlene said, giggling as she eyed his now flaccid dong, gently running the flannel down it in a corkscrew motion. “Are you gonna be in town long, Bear?” She grinned up at him.

  “Just long enough to find out who killed my friend Lou Cameron,” Haskell said, propping his head on his elbow.

  “Oh, that’s right.” Marlene frowned.

  “Marlene?”

  “Yes, Bear?”

  “Do you have any idea who killed ole Lou?”

  “None whatsoever!” She must have realized she’d given the response a little too quickly. She tried to amend it with a softer, more off-hand, “None whatsoever, Bear.” She tried to give him a level look but she was trying too damn hard.

  Haskell sighed and lay his head back on his arm.

  Marlene giggled.

  Haskell lifted his head to look at her, and saw that his cock was hard again. “Now look what you did,” Haskell complained.

  “I think it likes me.” Marlene smiled lustily, showing her missing eyetooth, which Haskell found precious as hell. She lowered her face to his cock, pressed her lips to the underside of the bulging head. “Don’t worry. This one’s on the house.”

  She smiled sexily up at him and then closed her sexy pink mouth over the head of his cock and slid it down toward his belly.

  ~*~

  Nearly an hour later, well-fucked and fortified with coffee and whiskey, Haskell paid Marlene for her services, kissed her on the cheek, and stepped out into the cool, dark Diamondback night.

  He’d frolicked with Marlene longer than he’d intended. He’d figured that a half hour to an hour with the comely, talented dove would bleed off enough sap that he wouldn’t be tempted by the wiles of Lou Cameron’s infuriatingly ageless and tauntingly beautiful wife, Suellen. Marlene had been even more talented and alluring than he�
��d expected, however, and he’d spent nearly three hours with the girl. The late afternoon had turned to mid-evening, and his wallet was lighter by seven dollars and fifty cents, as Marlene’s going rate was two-fifty an hour.

  Well worth it, Haskell thought, taking a deep drag off the cool night air touched with the tang of pine smoke then strolling east along the street’s north side, habitually keeping to the shadows of the false-fronted business buildings. The shadows would conceal him from would-be bushwhackers. An ambush was always a threat for a man in his line of work and even more so now, what with the greeting he’d so far received from the Diamondback townsfolk.

  All except Marlene, that was. She’d treated him just fine. Suellen could greet him at the door of hers and Lou’s house on the southeast side of Diamondback in nothing but a smile and he wouldn’t be tempted. In fact, his dick would probably crawl up into his belly at the prospect of anymore hide-the-sausage this evening.

  Haskell grinned at the thought as he strolled along the street, noting the burning oil pots set out in front of Diamondback’s two saloons. From both places—one on either side of the street and three blocks apart from each other—came the low hum of conversation and the competing tinny patter of piano music. From the North Star, which sat just west of the jailhouse and which Haskell was walking up to now, Bear could hear a woman singing along with the piano.

  The smile faded from the lawman’s lips. The woman’s singing made him think of Suellen. Not just Suellen but his transgression with Suellen, after she’d become Lou’s wife. At the time, Lou had owned a couple of high-stakes gambling parlors in Amarillo, Texas. After Haskell had wrapped up an assignment down that way, he spent half a day and the early evening in one of Lou’s parlors, drinking on the house. He’d gotten pie-eyed drunk and lost a pile of money, so Lou told him to go on over to his and Suellen’s house—Lou would be along soon.

  That’s how it had happened.

  Lou had trusted Bear alone with his wife, and she’d seduced him when he’d been drunk. At least, that’s how he preferred to remember it.

  What a crazy damn night that had been.

  At first, Bear and Suellen had argued after Haskell had confronted her about her past and what he saw as her fraudulent intentions regarding Haskell’s old friend and war buddy. Bear had known Suellen before she’d met Cameron. She’d been the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner in Tennessee. The war had wiped out her family, so she’d come west to gather up some of the gold and silver that was said to be spilling out of the mountains and streams.

  When she’d found out there was damn little gold or silver, and how much work it took to retrieve what relatively little there was, she’d taken to singing and dancing and anything else to turn a dime. In her brief, turbulent time on the western frontier, Suellen had acquired the reputation of a charlatan—one who seduced wealthy men and abruptly dumped them after she’d squeezed everything she could out of them.

  In response to Haskell’s accusations, she’d accused Bear of being jealous of his old friend’s pretty wife, and had set out to prove it by seducing him.

  Try as he might, Haskell hadn’t been able to resist her charms. He’d been too damn drunk, and she’d been too damn charming and alluring. His rage had somehow weirdly turned to lust. Or maybe he’d vaguely thought that by allowing her to seduce him he would be proving his point. He’d practically ripped her clothes off her gorgeous olive body and mauled her.

  Now as he walked toward her and Lou’s house, he could hear her infuriating, mocking laughter as he’d banged her, nearly destroying hers and Lou’s bed in the process.

  Cameron wouldn’t have found out about that night if Haskell hadn’t told him. Lou had run into so much trouble at work that he hadn’t returned home until dawn, long after Haskell had run out of the place, breathless with shame, Suellen’s mocking laughter chasing him into the night. Guilt compelled him to confess his sins to his old friend. Cameron had done the worst thing he could have done in response to Haskell’s confession.

  He’d forgiven him.

  And he’d forgiven his pretty wife.

  Lou had said he wasn’t going to let one drunken debacle ruin his and Bear’s friendship or his marriage to the woman he loved. The war had taught him that friendship and life were far too precious to be discarded so easily. No, that night hadn’t ruined Haskell’s and Cameron’s friendship, but it had crippled it. How could it not have? While they’d gone through the motions of being friendly, an impenetrable self-consciousness and guardedness had hovered over their succeeding meetings, few as there’d been.

  “That damn woman,” Haskell said under his breath, then stopped walking.

  He’d heard something.

  There were a few trees and shrubs out here, at the very edge of Diamondback, near Diamondback Creek, which he could smell though he couldn’t see it. He wasn’t sure what he’d heard, but he’d heard something.

  He pricked his ears, listening.

  There it was again—behind him!

  He wheeled, sliding his Schofield from its holster and clicking the hammer back. What he’d heard had sounded like a boot kicking a small stone.

  Haskell stepped behind a cedar poking up on his left. It didn’t offer much cover, but if offered a little. He braced himself for a pistol flash and the crash of a round being hurled toward him. That didn’t come, however. What he did hear were more footsteps moving off to his left, as though someone had been moving up behind him but was now slipping wide around him, heading off toward the creek.

  Haskell wanted to call out, to ask who was shadowing him, but he didn’t want to give away his position.

  Gradually, the footsteps dwindled into the distance.

  Haskell looked around, listening. Hearing no more sounds and seeing no unnatural-looking shadows, he turned and continued on his way to where Cameron had built a small, neat frame house on a slight rise near the creek.

  Haskell remembered that during the day the house offered a sweeping view of the Laramie Mountains to the south and the Wind River Range to the west. It was quiet out here, to boot. Cameron had grown up on a farm in Pennsylvania, as Bear himself had though they hadn’t known each other before the war, and Lou had always preferred the peace and quiet of the country to the hubbub of the city. That’s why, after he’d lost his shirt in the drinking and gambling business, he’d decided to come here to Diamondback and serve as town marshal—Diamondback being a quiet town on the high Wyoming desert.

  The house appeared, a lamp in the kitchen window. He could see the white front porch now.

  Haskell quickened his step. Crunching footsteps moved toward him from ahead and on his left. Someone was heading right for him. Again, he snapped up the Schofield and cocked it.

  “Who’s there?” he said, not having to raise his voice much to be heard on this quiet, windless night. “Name yourself!”

  “I will if you will!” came a familiar voice.

  “Big Deal?”

  “That you, Bear?”

  The footsteps resumed. The kid’s silhouette took shape in the darkness. Big Deal stopped six feet away from Haskell. He had both his fancy pistols in his hands.

  “What’re you doing out here, Big Deal?”

  Big Deal kept both his Colt Lightnings aimed at Bear’s belly. “I was just checkin’ on Mrs. Cameron.”

  “Oh, you were?”

  “Yes, I was. She don’t like bein’ alone, especially this far out away from town. Sometimes the boys from town, when they get likkered up, sometimes they’ll pester her. Even did it when the marshal was alive. I kept a pretty close eye on the Camerons’ house at night, made sure none of the cowpunchers from any of the saloons was out here, creepin’ around, if you get my drift?”

  “Yeah, I understand. Holster those pistols, will you?”

  Big Deal looked down at the Lightnings in his hands. He gave a wry snort, twirled both pretty pieces on his fingers, and dropped them into their holsters. “They’re so much a part of me, I reckon I forgot
they was there!”

  Haskell holstered his Schofield and looked around. “Did you hear anyone else out here?”

  “Anyone else?” Big Deal shrugged. “No. Why? Did you?”

  “I thought I did. Comin’ up behind me.”

  “Hmmm. That’s funny. Maybe it was one of the ranch hands all likkered up and headin’ for Mrs. Cameron’s place.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Or maybe it was Big Deal coming up behind him then circling around, Haskell pondered.

  “That where you’re headed?”

  “Yep.”

  “You friends with Mrs. Cameron, are ya?”

  “I guess you could say that? Does that matter to you, Big Deal?”

  “Matter to me?” The shrug again. “Nah.”

  Haskell cocked his head to one side, frowning curiously. “Tell me, Big Deal—why is it that most folks in Diamondback don’t seem in all that big of a hurry to find Marshal Cameron’s killer?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Is that how they seem to you?”

  “Yeah. Leastways, seems like the Bennett bunch isn’t in any hurry. They damn near gave me the bum’s rush when I went over there for some cigars and forty-four shells.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re an odd group, them Bennetts. I reckon that’s all I have to say about them.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Say, are you gonna ride out to Weeping Squaw Springs tomorrow, Bear?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Need me to ride with you?”

  Haskell shook his head. “I’ll find the place from your map. You’d best stay here and watch over the town.”

  “I reckon I’d better, yeah.”

  Haskell jerked his chin at the house behind Big Deal. “Well, I’ll be headin’ on over to Mrs. Cameron’s now.”

  “Yeah, I guess I’d best get back to town, see if anyone’s bustin’ up the saloons or Miss Yvette’s place yet.”

  “See ya, Big Deal.”

  “See ya, Bear.”

  Big Deal nodded as he brushed past Haskell and headed back toward the heart of Diamondback. Haskell watched him go, wondering about the kid. Wondering about the whole damn town.