Border Snakes

by Peter Brandvold

  The birdlike gent went downstairs and came back with another bucket of hot water and two cigars. He dumped the bucket over Hawk’s head and bent down to light one of the cigars for him.

  “You want me to send up some vittles?” he asked, straightening and waving out the match. “Might not be too safe for you on the street.”

  “No, thanks,” Hawk said. “I’ll be dining out this evening.”

  The old gent wagged his head, hefted his bucket, went out, and closed the door behind him. Hawk lounged back in the tub and puffed the cigar, feeling the trail fatigue begin to leech from his bones. Idly, his eyes swept the room as he listened to the distant sounds from the lawless town; they weren’t many or loud now, but they’d likely grow in number and volume once the sun went down.

  Maybe soon one or a couple of the cutthroats would get drunk enough, and/or the five hundred dollars would look attractive enough, that Hawk would learn something about Kid Reno. Once he found Reno, he’d probably find—

  Hawk’s eyes had drifted to his saddlebags on the sagging bed. One of the pouches had opened, and a small wooden horse had tumbled out. It leaned upright against the bag, the small, black carving flailing its carefully, precisely scaled hooves toward the darkening ceiling, its indigo mane ruffling in an invisible wind.

  The horse was so lifelike that for a moment Hawk thought he could hear the wild bugle shepherded on a sage-scented gust from the open prairie.

  Hawk’s eyes glazed slightly. A tear formed in the inside corner of the right one, down near his broad, wind-and-sun-blistered nose. In the last light angling through the room’s lone window, it glistened like liquid gold.

  Jubal hadn’t been good in school. In spite of Hawk’s and Linda’s efforts at tutoring the youngster nights at their kitchen table, his reading and math scores had remained low. The other kids had teased him, called him “Cork Head” and “the Marshal’s Moron.” Hawk didn’t know who felt worse—Jubal or Linda, who, tortured by their son’s travails, often cried herself to sleep at night in Hawk’s arms.

  But either in spite of his slow academic abilities or because of them, Jubal could look at a cabin or a tree or a hill when he and his father were out fishing, which they did together a lot, and go home and draw the setting effortlessly and perfectly, so that a photograph couldn’t have done the subject more justice than Jubal’s hand.

  He’d been just as good with wood.

  The rearing black stallion had been one of his last efforts before “Three Fingers” Ned Meade had lured the boy off the school playground and hanged him from the cottonwood atop that stormy hill . . . while Hawk had galloped up the hill howling and screaming only to arrive after Jubal’s neck had snapped, and his limbs in their little wool jacket and knickers hung slack toward the ground.

  Then Linda had hanged herself after the funeral, and Hawk’s life was over.

  He’d been half dead when Jubal was murdered.

  Linda’s suicide had finished him.

  Only, unlike his wife and son, he hadn’t been returned to the earth. Another man had arisen from Hawk’s ashes. A man who looked like Hawk, who talked and walked and rode like him. But one who hardly ever smiled, who was uncannily good with his guns, and whose green eyes burned like twin fires of jade.

  A hunter of hunters. A killer of killers.

  A lone, fearless, stalking wolf of the deserts, mountains, and plains . . .

  Hawk stared at the rearing horse. The lone tear dribbled down his cheek.

  Jubal.

  Hawk groaned, squeezed his eyes closed, and rested his head back against the tub.

  When would the memories ever stop haunting him? Would he ever find peace again like other men knew it, or must he die to attain such sanctuary?

  If so, he’d take one more man with him before he went. The one who’d killed Andrew Spurlock and turned the boy’s father, Gavin, into a vigilante like Hawk.

  Wilbur “Knife-Hand” Monjosa.

  Hawk slumped in the bath until the water turned cold.

  Then he hauled himself out, dried with a scrap of towel, and dressed in fresh balbriggans and socks from his saddlebags, and the black denims, blue shirt, and green silk neckerchief he’d had laundered by a Chinese couple in Alamosa.

  He used a brush on his black hat and his cracked bull-hide vest, then donned both, shouldered his Winchester, and left the hotel and the old birdlike gent snoring in a Windsor chair under the stairs.

  He found a tonsorial parlor and had to wait twenty minutes for a shave. The wait was fine. He read a paper while casting frequent, hopeful glances out the window, where the street turned dark and gradually more boisterous. He wanted that information. Surely someone who knew Kid Reno would give it up for five hundred greenbacks. When it came to money and women, there was little honor among killers.

  But, while several hard-looking passersby glanced through the window at him—by now, word of his exploits in the Dandy Dog had likely made it halfway around the county—no one came in or looked even somewhat eager to deliver the informational goods.

  An hour after he’d walked into the parlor, Hawk tramped out, rubbing a hand over his freshly shaven cheeks, his nose burning with the liquory, over-fragrant stench of the tonic the barber had doused him with before holding out his hand for payment. The barber glanced through the door glass at him skeptically, then, glancing quickly up and down the street, drew the “Closed” shade down over the door and extinguished his lamp.

  Hawk walked around, weaving through the milling crowd whose din was growing louder and more rowdy by the quarter hour. Piano or mandolin music sounded from most of the saloons now, and there was the frequent roar of laughter—women’s as well as men’s.

  A good distance from Hawk came the sound of a six-shooter fired twice in anger, and then a woman screamed in castigation. There were more arguments, more sporadic gunshots, and the smacks of fists against flesh.

  Hawk smiled as he strolled, sliding his eyes around. On his third walk around town, he turned into a café in the middle of the ever-growing maelstrom and ordered steak and tequila.

  When he finished, he strolled through the crowd again—several midsized groups of inebriated revelers of both sexes and several nationalities more or less clumped around Saguaro’s three saloons, a dingy little shack flanked with plank, tin-roofed cribs that passed for a brothel, and a couple of cantinas from which emanated the din of Spanish conversations and raucous mariachi bands.

  Hawk knew he was pushing his luck. At any time, he might feel the sharp gouge of knife in the back, or the piercing burn of a bullet. There was no law to deter such an assault, and his death would likely be seen as a justification for even more revelry.

  But while he kept his senses pricked, and watched the eyes sliding furtively toward him and then away, he knew no fear. Deep down inside himself, he dared anyone to try an assault. In fact, he welcomed one.

  Any death he caused here could be nothing but good.

  Around ten o’clock, deciding that if anyone wanted to talk to him, they’d know where to find him, he headed back toward the birdlike gent’s hotel, choosing a route through hog pens and chicken coops that would put him at the place’s back door. Since most folks likely knew where he’d landed a room, there was no point in taking unnecessary chances. An ambush would be easy to set up out here on the dark northern edge of Saguaro.

  He was just passing a low shack and a dilapidated corral when he stopped suddenly. He’d heard something—the faint snap of a small branch or the crunch of a stone under a furtive boot.

  Turning, he swept his eyes from left to right. The sky was tented with crisply glistening stars, but there was not yet a moon. Edges and flat surfaces were trimmed in silver, but there were more shadows than there was light.

  A gun flashed, followed a quarter second later by a pistol bark. The slug plowed across Hawk’s left shoulder and hammered the ground behind him.

  Jerking his Henry off his shoulder, he thumbed the hammer back and bolted toward the c
orral corner just ahead and right, and started firing.

  9.

  DORIS

  HE’D fired three times at the spot where the bush whacker’s gun had flashed. Another gun flashed and barked to the right of the first, and Hawk fired three quick slugs at the second shooter. He could hear the hollow barks of the two slugs chewing into wood and a groan.

  He held fire. As he stared into the shadows behind him, there sounded the clatter of a gun hitting the ground. It was followed by a louder, more solid thud.

  Hawk ejected the last spent cartridge, sent it smoking into the darkness behind him, and levered a fresh one. He waited, staring into the milky wash of moonlight and shadows. There were several small huts back there, as well as brush-sheathed boulders and a couple of stock pens.

  Hearing nothing more, Hawk stepped out from behind the dilapidated corral and tramped slowly back the way he’d come. He hadn’t walked far before he was standing over the first shooter, who was slumped against a stock tank, chin dipped to his chest. Blood shone darkly on his shirt, between the flaps of an open denim jacket, just beneath the tail of a knotted red bandanna. The dead man’s hat lay beside him, and his hair shone sandy and matted down in the moonlight, curling down over his collar.

  Hawk used his rifle barrel to lift the man’s chin. He didn’t recognize the raw, unshaven features. Letting the man’s chin dip back toward his chest, Hawk walked over to where the other man lay belly down against an empty chicken coop. Hawk’s rifle bullet had taken half the man’s head off and spewed it over the low, gray fence and into the dung-and-corncob-littered pen.

  Most of his face was intact, however. Hawk didn’t know this man, either, but he remembered the face from one of the saloons he’d visited earlier. The man had been playing poker, and by his sour, worried expression, he’d been in over his head, his coins slipping away like the sand in Father Time’s hourglass. Likely, he’d seen Hawk and remembered the five hundred dollars the Rogue Lawman had flashed around the Dandy Dog, and had summoned a friend to assist him in shadowing Hawk’s trail.

  Hawk gave a caustic grunt as he turned away from the dead men and continued toward the hotel, thumbing fresh cartridges into the Henry’s loading rod. He approached the rear of the building without further trouble, and tramped along the south side to the front veranda.

  All the windows of the hotel were lit, and the hum of conversations punctuated with laughter sounded from inside. Hawk kept his rifle on his shoulder as he pushed through the front door.

  A bracket lamp guttered on the wall to his left, another on the wall behind the desk. Also behind the desk was not the birdlike gent but, apparently, the birdlike gent’s replacement—a lanky younger man with long, straight blond hair and a sandy mustache and sideburns. He was kicked back in the Windsor chair, resting his head against the key boxes behind him, shabby boots crossed on the counter.

  There were a dozen key boxes, and there wasn’t a box left with a key in it. The place had filled up.

  Hearing men talking and laughing in the second story, and the thumps of boots in the creaky ceiling, Hawk turned to the stairs and stopped suddenly. One more step and he would have kicked the girl sitting on the second step up from the bottom.

  “Well, if it isn’t the five-hundred-dollar man,” the girl said in a slightly jeering tone.

  She was a small girl, and young, with dark brown hair cascading to her shoulders. It was a cool night, but her shabby dress was skimpy, and she had only a ratty cream sweater wrapped around her shoulders. Under the sweater was a light pink corset that tried to make her breasts look large. On her legs were black net stockings, and on her feet were pink, high-heeled shoes adorned with fake blue flowers.

  Hawk started to go around her, but she grabbed his pants leg and gazed up at him, faint beseeching in her eyes. “Need a woman?”

  “No.”

  Hawk lifted his left boot onto the step beside the girl, but she tightened her grip on his pants leg. “You wanna know about Kid Reno?”

  Hawk looked at her, frowning.

  “Well?” she said. He noticed that she had a faint bruise on the nub of her right cheek, and a small scar on her bottom lip.

  Hawk continued staring down at her, measuring her, trying to decipher the thoughts in her eyes. A sporting girl was as likely as anyone to know where the outlaw was hanging out. Maybe Reno liked them young and flat-chested. Hell, maybe this little waif with more hair on her head than tallow on her entire frame was his favorite.

  “You better not be hornswogglin’ me, girl.”

  “Take me to your room,” she said softly, flattening her hand out on Hawk’s thigh and slowly sliding it up toward his crotch. “And I’ll tell you what I know about Kid Reno.”

  Hawk pulled away and continued up the dark, narrow stairs. He could hear the clumsy clomping of the girl behind him and glanced back to see her climbing the steps, head lowered to watch her feet as she held her dress up with one hand and clutched her sweater with the other.

  Voices grew louder above him. As Hawk gained the second story, he turned to start down the narrow hall and stopped.

  Just outside the door of his room—the open door of his room—a man in longhandles, boots, and a shabby Stetson looked up at him. He’d been talking with his head turned toward Hawk’s open door, but had swung his head toward Hawk when he heard Hawk’s tread at the top of the stairs.

  The man held an uncorked bottle in his hand, and he hung both pale arms over his knees. His lower jaw dropped slightly, and a chagrined look washed over his eyes. His cheeks flushed behind their three-day growth of dark brown beard. Slowly, keeping his eyes on Hawk, he reached behind him with one hand and lightly rapped his knuckles against Hawk’s door.

  “Ahh . . . Pope . . . you best come on outta there.”

  “What?” came a man’s voice from inside Hawk’s room.

  “Come on out.”

  Hawk could see the man through the cracked door. The man said, “Why . . . ?” and let his voice trail off when he swiveled his head to look into the hall. He froze, and his eyes snapped wide. He’d been going through one of Hawk’s saddlebag pouches on Hawk’s bed, and cooking gear from both pouches and other possibles were bunched on the frayed top quilt.

  The man in the room scowled as Hawk stepped forward. He moved past the man sitting on the floor, who didn’t appear to be armed, and shoved the door wide with his Henry’s barrel. The man in the room was fully dressed in rough trail clothes, with a holstered Colt hanging from a low-slung shell belt. As Hawk approached him, hard-eyed, Henry extended from his hip, the man stepped back and raised his hands shoulder high.

  “Hold on now. . . .”

  “Find what you’re lookin’ for?”

  The man stammered, licked his chapped lips, his eyes darting around like hunted gophers.

  The man stammered some more. Then his eyes slid to the unarmed, half-dressed gent whom Hawk had half turned toward, keeping the gent in the field of his vision. “You were supposed to watch the goddamn door, Sanchez, you—”

  Hawk cut him off. “I asked you a question.”

  “Look,” Pope said wearily, shrugging. “We wasn’t lookin’ to rob ya. We was just curious, that’s all. Ain’t too many hombres go flashin’ five hundred dollars around the Dandy Dog, much less askin’ questions about fellas like . . .” Mentioning the name seemed difficult, troublesome. “Like . . . you know. . . .”

  “Kid Reno.”

  “Right,” Pope said, nodding.

  He looked at Sanchez, who stood in the doorway, chin dipped shamefully toward his chest. The girl stood behind Sanchez, back pressed to the hall’s opposite wall.

  “So, we was just curious, that’s all.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  Pope stared at Hawk, his fingers curled toward his palms. The skin between his eyes wrinkled. “No.”

  “Mighta been easier just to go ahead and ask me straight out than slinkin’ around like a couple of skunks in a springhouse.”r />
  Pope swallowed and tipped his head back, frowning as though something pained him terribly. “You . . . you a lawman, mister?”

  “Some might say so. Some wouldn’t.” Hawk waved his rifle toward the bed. “Now, if you wanna save yourself from getting drilled through the heart, which I have every right to do, you comin’ in here and messin’ up my things and all, you’ll put everything back nice and neat, the way you found it. Then you and Sanchez’ll go on back to your room and go nighty-nighty, and I won’t hear another peep out of you . . . or see your ugly faces ever again.”

  Pope went to the bed and, casting wary glances at Hawk who stood watching him statue still, the rifle aimed at Pope’s chest, started shoving Hawk’s possibles back into the saddle pouches. When he was done, Hawk ushered him and Sanchez out the door and watched until both men had hurried into a room down the hall.

  They closed and locked the door behind them, quietly arguing like an old married couple in the presence of strangers.

  Hawk lowered the Henry and turned his attention to the girl. She still stood on the other side of the hall, back to the wall, hands behind her, chin dipped shyly toward her corset. She had skin like ivory, with a few light freckles in her cleavage and across her shoulders, and her eyes were as brown as fresh-roasted coffee.

  “What’s your name?” Hawk asked her.

  “Doris Hoffman.”

  Hawk pulled back into the room. “Come on in, Doris Hoffman.”

  When the girl had clomped into the room, in shoes that Hawk judged were a size too large, Hawk lighted a lamp, closed the door, dropped his rifle on the bed, and moved to the washstand.

  “Glass of water?” he said, holding up a water glass.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Whiskey?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have a seat.”

  Hawk didn’t indicate where she should sit. There was a rickety, straight-back chair and the bed. She chose the bed, slowly lowering her rump to the edge, hands in her lap. She kept her brown eyes on Hawk and a wistful smile on her full, wide lips.