Ralph Compton The Man From Nowhere
Page 13
Chapter 25
Jacob Yearly’s cabin had afforded Oates, for the first time in his life, a measure of, if not happiness, then contentment. And he was reluctant to leave.
The old wagon was still there, and after a struggle during which he was kicked three times and bitten once, he hitched up the mustang to the traces and spent the rest of that day at Black Mountain cutting and loading lava rock.
He had no idea if the Mormon trader would be back, but if he did return, he’d expect to see a supply of cinder block.
That evening he bathed in the creek, then mended gear and worked around the place. After a supper of chili made with canned beef, beans and spices he’d found, he went to bed just after dark and slept soundly.
Next morning, still groggy from sleep, Oates sat on the stoop of the cabin door and drank coffee in the cool dawn air.
He saw the rider from far off.
Oates laid his cup on the stoop, went inside and buckled on his gun belt. He returned, sat once again and took up his cup.
As the rider came closer, Oates studied him, and was unimpressed.
He was a small, frail-looking man sitting a worn saddle on a moth-eaten, one-eared mule. The rider wore a high-button suit, a plug hat and looked uncomfortably hot in a celluloid collar and red-and-black striped tie. Chinless, he had a top lip that overhung a small, prissy mouth. Perched on a prominent, thin nose, very red at the tip, were a pair of pince-nez spectacles. As he rode up to the cabin, Oates saw that the little man’s eyes were pale green, the whites shot with a tracery of scarlet veins.
Hung from his saddle were a carpetbag and a rectangular leather case, carved with the initials PJP.
The man drew rein on the mule and smiled, revealing widely separated teeth the size and color of pinto beans. “Good day to you, sir,” he said. “A fine morning, is it not?”
Oates allowed that it was, then said, “Passing through?”
“Oh, deary me, yes. Passing through.”
“The Apaches are out. A thing you should have been told.”
“Not any longer. I was assured by an army officer in Alma that the cavalry have driven the savages out of the Gila and back into Arizona.”
“He should know.”
The little man sat back in the saddle. “My name is Peter Jasper Pickles, by the way. I travel in ladies’ undergarments of an intimate nature.” He patted the leather case. “My products tend to be of a practical rather than ornate nature. As Mrs. Pickles once told me, speaking of bloomers, ‘Peter Jasper, the costume of women should be suited to their wants and necessities. Bloomers should conduce in a trice to their health, comfort and usefulness. And while bloomers should also not fail to conduce to their personal adornment, they should make that end of secondary importance.’ ” Pickles bobbed his head. “A very wise woman, my wife, and quite the expert on ladies’ undergarments. Oh, deary me, yes.”
Oates saw no evidence on Pickles of a hideout gun and the man looked exactly what he claimed to be, a small, timid, henpecked drummer who traveled in practical, cotton bloomers.
“Something wicked this way comes . . .” but surely it couldn’t be Peter Jasper Pickles.
“Name’s Eddie Oates and I’ve got coffee on the stove,” Oates said.
“Thank you, Mr. Oates, but I don’t indulge.” He tapped his stomach. “Dyspepsia, you understand. Mrs. Pickles always says that the sovereign remedy for dyspepsia is three tablespoons of warm cow’s milk taken night and morning. As in all things, she is correct, for the milk sweetens my stomach and keeps the dreadful ailment at bay.”
“Where you headed, Pickles?” Oates asked.
“A town named Heartbreak. It’s to the east of here.”
“I’ve heard of the place, but I’ve never been there.”
Oates wondered if he should be heeding the alarm bell ringing in his head. “It’s a fair piece.”
Pickles smiled. “Everyone says exactly what you do, Mr. Oates, that they’ve heard of the town but never been there.” He tapped a forefinger to the side of his beaky nose. “But I’ve heard on good authority that the place is full of women, attracted by the lure of rich silver miners. Where there are females, there is a market for bloomers, Mr. Oates. And I go where the customers are.”
He leaned forward in the saddle, as if he were about to impart a great secret. “I’ve heard that many of the marriage-minded young ladies who flock to Heartbreak go partway by barge up the Gila River. If you’ll forgive a little salesman humor, the miners call the barges ‘the Fishing Fleet.’ ”
Pickles slapped his thigh and laughed, a thin, high-pitched wail. “I told that to Mrs. Pickles as a good joke, but somehow she failed to appreciate its drollery.”
Oates nodded and managed a smile. “Yeah, it’s funny.”
The little man lifted his hat, revealing a bald head thinly covered by strands of combed-over hair from just above his left ear. “Well, I have a long journey ahead of me and I must be on my way. It’s been wonderful talking to you, Mr. Oates.”
Pickles looked over Oates’ shoulder to the open cabin door. “That is, unless you have any ladies to home?”
“Nary a one,” Oates said, shaking his head. “I’m all by myself.”
“Ah, too bad.” Pickles swung his mule away. “Well, good day to you, sir.”
Suddenly Oates was chilled to the marrow of his bones. It had only been a fleeting glimpse, an impression he’d caught for just an instant.
He rose to his feet, looking after the man. What had he seen in Pickles’ face?
Chapter 26
Eddie Oates leaned on the corral fence in the bright morning light, looking at but not seeing the mustang. For its part, the little paint had retreated to a far corner, recalling the wagon and the hot, dusty misery of Black Mountain. It had no desire to go back there ever again.
But cutting into lava with pick and shovel was far from Oates’ mind. He was trying to visualize Pickles’ face again, the way it was for that instant. It was as though the man’s mask had slipped and . . .
No, it wasn’t that.
Then he remembered. It was his eyes. Slanted in his direction, for a single moment they’d gleamed green, feral, menacing, the untamed eyes of a dangerous hunting animal. They were the eyes of a man who could kill coldly and professionally, without hate.
Oates shook his head. He was being ridiculous. The little, inoffensive man sold bloomers, not his gun, if he even had a gun.
What was in the leather case?
The man had tapped the case when he spoke of his merchandise, but it was long and narrow. How were bloomers packed? Oates allowed that he was not an expert on women’s fixings, but surely they were folded and not rolled lengthwise.
Was it a rifle case, for a high-powered weapon?
P. J. Pickles, a sure-thing killer hired by Darlene McWilliams to get her money back and murder those responsible for its theft? Or Peter Jasper Pickles, drummer and expert on female garments of an intimate nature?
What was he?
Oates pushed away from the corral. He was being ridiculous. A bad dream about Jacob Yearly had him spooked, was all. Pickles was what he seemed, a traveling drummer.
Then he remembered the man’s eyes . . . and he wasn’t sure of anything.
His indecision made Oates remain close to the cabin that day, but he was careful to stay away from the door and window after the lamp was lit.
That night he slept with a gun close at hand, and he was awake before first light. He made a quick breakfast of canned meat and coffee, saddled the paint and was on the trail east just as dawn was breaking.
He had reached a decision in the night. If Pickles was really a hired killer, then he must warn Stella and the others. They were with the man who freed them from the siege at the cave, but if he was still alive, he might trust an inoffensive little man who sold bloomers for a living. He might even turn his back on him. . . .
Oates kicked the paint into a trot. He had already lost too much time by hanging around the
cabin yesterday and he cursed himself for being an indecisive fool.
He’d let Pickles lure him into a false sense of security. He’d heard it said that Billy the Kid was a harmless-looking fellow, and so were lawmen Bat Masterson and Texas John Slaughter. Small, quiet-spoken men, none of them seemed likely killers, but they were.
Around the saloons, Oates had often heard men talk of hired, sure-thing assassins and bounty hunters.
If Pickles was indeed one of those, his looks were deceiving. No doubt he depended on them as a cover when he rode into a place, killed someone and then quietly left.
There was nothing about the little man that would draw attention to him. In his guise as a bloomers drummer, he would make sure to stay away from saloons where rotgut whiskey often led to offense when none was intended and then to war talk and gunfire.
Men like Pickles did not seek fame or a reputation as gunfighters. He’d consider it the height of folly to engage a man in a gunfight when there was no profit in it. That was not good business. Manhunting was his profession and he’d be good at it.
The more he thought about it, the more Oates became convinced that Pickles was the nightmare Jacob Yearly had talked about in his dream.
“Something wicked this way comes. . . .”
And it came, not in the shape of a ferocious gunman, but in the guise of a small, dyspeptic drummer riding a one-eared flea-bait mule.
Oates rode alert in the saddle, his eyes constantly searching the trees and high, rocky ridges. The trail east from Black Mountain was becoming more familiar to him and wherever possible he kept close to the ponderosa pine and aspen forests where a man could find cover fast if he was put to it.
But when the day was just beginning to fade, Oates again entered unknown country, the pine-covered slope of Lookout Mountain rising just ahead of him. To the northeast lay the Sierra Cuchillo and to the west the waterless, desert badlands began.
Oates sat his horse and looked around him. He saw no evidence of a town.
Then something to the south caught his eye.
Behind a shallow ridge, smoke was rising straight as a string into the air, a smudge of black against the red and lilac sky.
Was that where Heartbreak lay?
Keeping the paint to a walk, Oates rode across a hundred yards of flat ground, then urged the mustang up the sage and piñon slope. At the top he drew rein and felt a pang of disappointment.
Below, next to a thin ribbon of creek, lay a ramshackle, unpainted shack and beside it a sorry corral, cobbled together by baling wire and whatever crooked rails were easily available. A shed that did duty as a barn was drunkenly lopsided and was supported by slanted poles. Muddy black pigs rooted close to the cabin and the grounds were dirty and unkempt, littered with discarded food cans and whiskey bottles. Even from his lofty perch on the ridge, Oates caught the vile stench of the place.
There were three horses in the corral, all of them good-quality animals.
It was a spot to avoid, but whoever lived there might know where he could find Heartbreak.
Oates came off the ridge and reined up outside the shack.
Suddenly a huge, bearded man with ugly, piggy eyes loomed in the doorway.
“What the hell do you want?” he said. His right hand was out of sight.
It was an unfriendly greeting to be sure, but Oates let it go. No one knew better than he that not everyone in the West was a paragon of hospitality.
“I’m looking for—”
“Be off with you,” the big man snapped. “There’s no bed and grub for you here.”
Oates opened his mouth to speak again, but stopped when a young Apache girl, carrying a water jug, brushed past the man and headed for the creek.
The girl, barely a teenager, was dressed in the Mexican fashion in a shirt and long skirt, a leather belt decorated with conchas around her slim waist. Her swollen, bruised face testified to a recent beating and she walked with a limp, favoring her left leg.
When Oates looked back to the door, two men were now standing there. The bigger man had stepped aside and next to him was a towheaded runt wearing a dirty undershirt and long johns. He’d buckled a Colt around his waist and had also strapped on an insolent grin.
“What’s the saddle tramp want?” he asked the big man.
“A bed an’ grub probably. I’ve told him to git, an’ he better git fast.”
The towhead stood on tiptoe and whispered something into the bearded man’s ear and Oates saw his expression change. He’d been surly before; now he looked sly.
“Dallas here has just reminded me of my bounden duty to be hospitable to strangers,” he said. “I most profoundly apologize. Why don’t you step down, Mister, and come inside, like you was visiting kinfolk?”
The towhead put space between him and the big man, and he grinned as he studied Oates thinking things over.
Oates had no illusions over what was going to happen. The Winchester under his knee, the Colt on his hip, his horse and saddle represented more than three months wages to trash like this. They were not about to let him ride out of here alive.
The Apache girl was returning to the cabin. When she heard what the big man said, the eyes she lifted to Oates were bright with alarm . . . and warning.
Oates remembered the horses in the corral. Was there a third man?
His skin crawling, he looked around him. There he saw it! A quick flicker of shadow behind the shack’s open window. It was there; then it was gone.
Playing his hand close to his chest, Oates smiled and said, “Thank you for the offer, but I got to be moving on. But if you could direct me to the town of Heartbreak, I’d be right obliged.”
Every nerve in his body tingling, Oates’ perceptions were sharpened, as if he were looking at the scene before him through the wrong end of a telescope.
He noticed a slight turn of the big man’s head toward the window, a subtle movement Oates might have missed a few moments before.
He drew and fired in the same instant, then fired again.
There was the sound of shattering glass. Then a man screamed, followed by a high-pitched, bubbling shriek that ended in a drawn-out wail.
“Damn you!” the towhead yelled. His hand was dropping for his gun, but he froze when he saw Oates’ Colt already covering him. The man’s fingers opened and his revolver dropped back into the leather.
“Hell, I never took ye for a draw fighter,” he said, his face incredulous. “You don’t hardly look the type.”
“Unbuckle the belt, let it fall, then step away from it,” said Oates.
The towhead did as he was told, studiously taking three sliding steps to his right. He looked up at Oates. “Inside,” he said, “I think ye done fer ol’ Meacham.”
“He had his chance,” Oates said.
The big bearded man was rooted to the spot. A Colt dangled from his right hand but he’d made no attempt to use it.
Oates looked at him. “Drop it.”
As the towhead had done earlier, he opened his fingers and let the gun drop as if it were suddenly red hot.
“Mister,” he said, “we was only funnin’ you. We took ye fer a pilgrim, like.” He turned to the man called Dallas. “Ain’t that the truth?”
“Truth, lie, I don’t think he’s gonna believe us anyhow, Jake,” Dallas said.
“Now we’re all acquainted,” Oates said, “I’d still like to know—”
He stopped as the Apache girl suddenly dived beside Jake and picked up the gun he’d dropped. She took a step back, looked into the man’s eyes, then fired into his crotch.
Jake screeched and fell to the ground. His knees drew up and he clutched at his bloody groin. After a while he sat up, and, as his kicking heels gouged runnels in the dust, he slipped his suspenders off his shoulders and dropped his pants.
He looked down and what he saw horrified him. It horrified Oates as well.
“Dallas,” Jake hollered, “the Apache bitch has done fer me. She’s blown it all away.”
Oates’ couldn’t muster much sympathy either. Stella had told him that a man can rape a whore. He can also rape an Indian girl.
“Dallas, you better get something to bandage what he’s got left. He’s bleeding like a stuck pig.”
The man shook his head. “Mister, he ain’t got nothing left.”
“Bandage him anyway.”
Dallas turned to go into the cabin, but Oates stopped him. “Use his shirt.”
Oates swung out of the saddle. The man inside the cabin was still unaccounted for.
The Apache girl stood next to him, her black eyes on Jake, who was rolling around, wailing, resisting Dallas’ attempts to staunch the flow of blood.
She turned to Oates. “Serves him right.” She spat in Jake’s direction. “Dirty, rutting pig!”
Oates smiled. “I guess you’re the one to know about that.”
He stepped toward the shack, but the girl stopped him. “I go. The one inside is just as bad as this one.”
Before he could object, the girl swept past him and walked into the cabin. Oates heard two shots, then a scream. A few moments later she appeared at the door, the smoking Colt at her side.
“He was still alive,” she said. “Now he’s dead.”
Dallas had heard enough. His face wild, he sprang to his feet and ran for the ridge.
The Apache girl sent a couple of bullets after him, but Dallas quickly disappeared over the rise. She shook her head. “He is not a warrior. There would have been no honor in killing him.”
Jake looked up at Oates, his face twisted in agony, his eyes pleading. “You ain’t just gonna ride away an’ leave me here.”
Oates shrugged. “Not much else I can do. You sure as hell can’t fork a bronc.”
“Take me inside.” Jake cast a fearful glance at the girl. “An’ don’t let that Apache bitch near me.”
“She sure don’t like you much, Jake. Look at her, seems like she cottons to cutting you up some.”