Dead Man's Trail (9781101606957)

by Leslie, Frank

  The mandolin player appeared to be one of them—a stocky, sharp-chinned Mexican with thick brown hair and fringed deerskin leggings tricked out with silver conchos, ivory-gripped bowie knives sheathed on both calves. He had what appeared to be a hawk tattooed on his broad forehead. Now, as he laughed and started playing the mandolin again, bobbing his head and stomping his foot, Yakima saw that he was missing his two front teeth.

  Yakima saw Claw Hendricks in his rose-colored glasses and top hat sitting on a couch against the back wall, a girl on his knee. Betajack sat on the opposite end of the couch from Hendricks. He appeared the only one not enjoying himself; he seemed to just be sitting there and staring toward the front, his hat on his knee, his lower jaw slack. He looked worn out, as would figure for a man his age.

  They all appeared well distracted by whiskey, women, and the mandolin player. A few were playing cards. They were not suspecting what Yakima intended—to walk in as casually as possible and to shoot as many as he could, including Betajack and Hendricks, and then to get the hell out of there before any of the survivors could get their guns out. He wouldn’t be able to get them all, but if he was cool and efficient about it, he could possibly deplete their numbers by half and essentially decapitate the gang by killing its two leaders.

  He started to rise and rack a fresh round into the Yellowboy’s breech but froze when, at the back of the room, he saw Betajack heave himself up from the couch. Yakima dropped back down to a knee and stared through a clear patch in the frosted window glass as Betajack donned his hat, bent slightly back on his hips, sticking one arm out, stretching, and moved his mouth, speaking to his partner. Hendricks said something in return to Betajack and then continued nuzzling the neck of the uninterested, bare-breasted girl on his knee.

  Betajack turned his head forward and Yakima heard him yell above the crowd’s low roar, “You men get to bed soon. We’re gonna get us an early start tomorrow, finish this thing once and for all!”

  Betajack donned his hat and walked to the stairs rising to the second-story rooms.

  Yakima squeezed the Winchester in his gloved hands. Damn. He blinked. Another thought occurred to him. Quickly, he leaped down the steps at the end of the porch and jogged into the alley between the saloon and the jailhouse. He slowed after kicking a can and stole up quietly to the rear of the place, edging a look around the corner.

  No one appeared out here. Rickety-looking stairs rose along the rear wall, with landings on both the second and third stories. Yakima walked over to the stairs and began climbing, pausing and wincing when a board squawked loudly beneath his weight. He didn’t use the rail because, it being wobbly, he was afraid he’d rip it off and cause a racket.

  Finally, he gained the second story and stepped through the unlocked door. Instantly, he pressed his back against the door and sucked a startled breath. Down the hall to his left, a thick figure turned from the hall into a room. The room’s door closed behind the figure with a thump and a click of the latch.

  Yakima took a breath, feeling optimistic. Could he have lucked into finding Betajack’s room this quickly? He hadn’t gotten a good look at the man heading to bed, but he had to bet it was old Betajack himself. Looking around, making sure he was now alone in the hall, he walked on the balls of his feet to the door that had just closed. Heart thudding, he stared down at the knob.

  If the old man had locked his door, Yakima would have to go back to his original plan. He wrapped his hand around the knob, twisted. It turned. The latch clicked. Yakima stepped quickly into the room and closed the door behind him.

  The old man had just sat down on the bed to kick out of his boots. He stared up at Yakima now, his eyes wide and rheumy, the domelike top of his head red and freckled under thin strands of gray hair combed from right to left. His face swelled between thick, roached muttonchops of the same color, and his eyes and nostrils flared with outrage.

  “Why . . . you . . . !”

  Yakima aimed the Winchester from his hip at the old man’s freckled forehead and clicked the hammer back. “You wanna die right here, right now, go ahead and yell.”

  Yakima stared at him, waiting. Part of him wanted the man to yell. On the other hand, killing only Betajack would likely not keep the rest of the gang from going after him and the stage. Hendricks would want revenge at least for making him and the other men look like fools, having crept in here under their noses.

  At the very least, taking Betajack would rock Hendricks back on his heels.

  “Isn’t that what you’re here for?” the old man said raspily, his chest rising and falling sharply. He’d removed his coat and was wearing a smoke-stained deerskin tunic over a heavy wool sweater and a thick, blue scarf.

  “Get your coat on.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me. We’re goin’ for a ride.”

  The old man showed his yellow teeth through an incredulous smile. “You crazy? I stomp my boot on the floor here, and you’ll have all the men from downstairs up here faster’n you can sneeze.”

  “Like I said, if you wanna die right here, right now, go ahead. If you wanna live, get your coat on.”

  The old man stared at him speculatively, the corner of his left eye twitching. Deep back in both eyes, Yakima saw a flicker of fear. Betajack was old, his older boy dead. But he wasn’t ready for that long ride over the last divide yet himself.

  The old man sighed. He heaved his big-bellied, broad-shouldered bulk off the bed and reached for his coat.

  Chapter 29

  Aiming the Yellowboy at Betajack’s belly that bulged behind his long buffalo coat, Yakima slowly opened the door. Boots and voices thundered from the direction of the stairs. He closed the door quickly, wincing, and looked at Betajack. The old man gave him a foxy grin.

  “You’re gonna die tonight, you dog-eatin’ son of a bitch.”

  “Maybe, but I’m takin’ you with me. Gut-shot.”

  Yakima waited until the voices and the footsteps had died. Opening the door again, he poked his head out into the hall. In the corner of his eye, he saw Betajack lurch toward him. The old man froze when Yakima smiled at him and glanced at the end of the Yellowboy’s barrel. Then he stepped aside, drew the door wide, and waved the barrel at the opening.

  Betajack stepped through. Yakima followed him out, drew the door closed behind him, and shoved the Yellowboy against the old man’s back, prodding him over to the outside door. He could hear a few men still celebrating downstairs though the mandolin player was now drunkenly raking out a mournful tune. A girl was saying, “Stop,” over and over again in a tired, pleading tone.

  As Yakima stepped in front of Betajack to open the outside door, a man’s voice rose from downstairs: “For chrissakes, can’t you see she’s had enough? Put that goddamn knife away, you crazy son of a bitch!”

  Boom! Boom!

  The explosions reverberated through the floor under Yakima’s moccasins. All was quiet for about two seconds, and then a girl screamed. There was the heavy thud of a body—that of the big barman, most likely—hitting the floor.

  Again, the girl screamed sharply. A man laughed.

  Betajack looked at Yakima and a smile stretched his lips with that dark, leering grin. Yakima hardened his jaw, pressed the Winchester’s barrel against the underside of the man’s chin, and pushed him out onto the landing. Betajack snarled and grunted painfully, tipping his head away from the rifle. Yakima gave him another savage prod, tearing the skin beneath his chin, until the old killer was stumbling, half falling down the stairs, holding on to the railing and causing it to wobble wildly. Yakima was sure it would fall off, but by now the killers inside were all too drunk or happy to pay much attention. He didn’t much care if Betajack fell over the side and broke his neck.

  He’d had enough of the man and his curly wolves.

  Once to the bottom of the stairs, Betajack
looked harried. He was breathing hard, his face swollen and red. Yakima could see that even in the darkness.

  Yakima poked the gun into his back to get him stumbling off down the alley behind the jailhouse. When he finally had the old man on the east end of town, he stopped suddenly. A horse stood before him, off in the shadows of a dark frame house, about thirty yards ahead. He could see starlight reflected in the horse’s eyes, the vapor of its breath jetting around its head. Something lay on the horse’s back. Then he remembered Sonny.

  Yakima placed his hand on the back of Betajack’s neck, forcing him to his knees.

  “Stay there.”

  Then he walked slowly toward the horse, holding his hands out placatingly. The horse snorted and nickered and started to turn away just as Yakima grabbed its reins. He led the horse over to where Betajack knelt, kicked Sonny’s boots out of the stirrup, and pulled the kid out of the saddle.

  Sonny hit the ground and lay still, head turned to one side. Blood oozed from the deep gash in his forehead that had turned pasty blue in death.

  Betajack looked at Yakima. “You’re a real tough son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  “I do all right. Climb up there.”

  “We’ll see how tough you are when my men come lookin’ for me.”

  Yakima grabbed him by the back of his neck again and thrust him against Sonny’s pinto. Cursing, Betajack grabbed the horn and swung heavily into the leather. Yakima led the horse slowly back and in a roundabout way to where Wolf waited across the main street from the saloon. Ten minutes later he and the outlaw leader were a quarter mile east of town, Yakima leading Betajack’s horse by its bridle reins.

  Betajack laughed as he clung to the horn with both hands. “You’re crazy. I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doin’, but if you think this is gonna keep my boys and Hendricks from comin’ after me, you’re dumber than you look.”

  Yakima didn’t say anything.

  “I asked you what you think you’re doin’,” Betajack repeated, louder.

  “Shut up,” Yakima said as he continued trotting Wolf along the trail that shone like blue-tinged quicksilver in the light of a rising quarter moon.

  “I’m your hostage—that it? Ha! You see, I just don’t care if I die, as long as the gutless son of a yellow-livered bitch dies with me!”

  It was easy for Yakima to see where the stage had swung off the trail’s right side and into the mouth of a narrow canyon. He followed the tracks through the canyon, knowing that it would be easy for Betajack’s men to follow, too. A quarter mile up the canyon, it doglegged to the east. The low, left sandstone wall disappeared, and lights appeared in a clearing.

  Yakima drew rein, staring straight ahead into the clearing backed by boulder-strewn escarpments. The lights came from the windows of what appeared a long, low shack sitting to the right of a darker, smaller shack. Yakima drew a breath to call out to the lit cabin, but a slug blasted into a rock just ahead and to his left. The rifle wail echoed loudly off the canyon’s rock walls.

  “Who the hell’s out there, goddamn it?” came Charlie Adlard’s shout. “One more step and I’ll send you to Glory!”

  “Stop shootin’, goddamn it—it’s Henry!”

  “Henry who?”

  “The Henry who’s gonna run that rifle up your ass if you shoot it again!”

  “Who you got with you?”

  “Betajack.”

  Yakima rode forward as a bulky, bandy-legged shadow moved out from behind a rock sheathed in cedars and junipers about fifty yards ahead and to the right. Adlard cradled his Winchester in his arms, and as Yakima jerked the outlaw leader’s horse along behind him, Adlard poked his hat brim off his forehead and said, “I must be gettin’ hard o’ hearin’. I thought you said that was Betajack.”

  “I did.”

  Adlard just stopped and stared, hang-jawed, as Yakima and old Betajack rode past him and on across the clearing and past a corral to the right, to the long building with the lit windows. As he approached the place, Yakima saw that it was a mud-brick bunkhouse with a brush-roofed veranda. Another man stood atop the veranda in front of the door framed by wanly lit windows, holding a rifle in one hand, smoking a cigarette with the other.

  Yakima recognized the spindly frame in the wool coat, watch cap, and scarf wound around the man’s neck. “Weatherford, it’s Yakima.”

  “Figured.” Elijah Weatherford walked up to the edge of the porch, blowing out a thick smoke plume and turning his head slightly to stare sidelong toward Yakima and his prisoner. “Who you got with you?”

  “Betajack.”

  Weatherford gave a raspy chuckle. “Say again?”

  Yakima swung down from Wolf’s back and stepped back as he aimed the rifle at the bulky outlaw. “Sit and light a spell.”

  When Betajack had climbed out of the saddle, breathing hard, his wrinkled face showing red in the light from the windows, Weatherford stepped back in shock. Yakima prodded Betajack up the porch steps. Weatherford backed up as though from a rabid bobcat but then lurched forward toward Yakima as the half-breed followed the outlaw onto the porch. “Good Lord, boy, what have you done?”

  “I hope bought us a little time.”

  Stopping in front of the door, Betajack turned a dark look at Yakima, who said, “Well, you been wantin’ to see the prosecutor.”

  Betajack flared his nostrils again in exasperation, then tripped the steel-and-leather latch and thrust the Z-frame, half-logged door open. Its hinge screeched. Yakima shoved Betajack over the threshold, followed him in, and then closed the door behind them.

  Yakima looked around. There was a lamp on the wooden table to his left. To his right was a potbellied stove. Glendolene and Mendenhour sat on a steamer trunk angled before it. The Rands sat on a couple of blankets on the floor nearer Yakima and Betajack while Lori O’Reilly sat in a chair beside it, facing the door, her arm still in its sling. They all looked cold and frightened and generally miserable. Now as they all turned to see Betajack, befuddlement wrinkled their foreheads.

  “Oh!” said Mrs. O’Reilly, staring at the outlaw leader as though at someone she knew she should know but couldn’t quite place.

  Mendenhour rose slowly, tensely from his perch on the steamer trunk, lower jaw hanging, eyes sparking brightly as he pointed a gloved hand at Betajack. “You!”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” the old outlaw said with brassy defiance, nodding his head. “How you doin’, Mr. Lawyer? You still pissin’ down your leg, are ya, you yellow-livered son of a bitch?”

  Mendenhour jerked his gaze at Yakima. “Henry, what in the hell is the meaning of this?”

  “Who is he?” asked Sally Rand, fear showing in her wide light brown eyes as she stared at the outlaw, pressing her fingers to her chin.

  Lori O’Reilly said in a thin, disbelieving voice, “The man who’s been . . . killing us. . . .”

  Mendenhour walked stiffly toward Betajack. Behind him, Glendolene rose from the steamer trunk, as well, as befuddled by the outlaw’s presence as everyone else in the room.

  “Figured ole Betajack here might be a ticket for our free passage the rest of the way to Belle Fourche.” Yakima shoved the man toward the far wall cast in shadow. “Go sit down over there. I’m gonna find some rope, tie you up.”

  Betajack held his ground, however, because Mendenhour stopped in front of him, glaring at his enemy. “You’re a cold-blooded killer,” he said.

  “And you’re yellow, Mendenhour. Oh, you can hang a man, sure—especially an innocent man—if you got the law behind you. But what about if the law ain’t behind you no more?” Betajack laughed raucously and poked a gnarled finger against Mendenhour’s chest. “Then you piss down your leg like a hind-tit calf!”

  Mendenhour’s face swelled and turned nearly as red as Betajack’s. “I will not stand here and be insulted b
y a cold-blooded killer and common stock thief. You’re the next Betajack I’ll hang, Floyd. As soon as—”

  “As soon as what?” Betajack barked, shoving his face right up against Mendenhour’s. “As soon as you swear in a couple more law dogs to back your play, or”—he glanced over the prosecutor’s shoulder at his wife standing on the other side of the room, looking stricken—“a hefty pair of balls?”

  Mendenhour clenched his fists at his sides, glaring down at Betajack, who stood about two inches shorter. “I could kill you for that.”

  “Why don’t you try? Hell, you got the breed here to back you.” Betajack grinned up at the man in open challenge.

  “All right, all right,” Yakima said, grabbing Betajack’s coat collar. “I didn’t bring him here to—”

  Just then Mendenhour gave an enraged snarl, jerked his hands up, and wrapped them around the old man’s wrinkled, corded neck, driving the outlaw back against the closed door. Betajack laughed, showing his teeth as he jerked both arms up to easily break the prosecutor’s hold. Then he wrapped his own hands around Mendenhour’s neck and drove him backward, the Rands scrambling to get out of their way.

  Yakima remained where he was. Somehow it seemed fitting that the two antagonists should get a shot at each other mano a mano, without Betajack having his gang behind him, without Mendenhour having Yakima and the other stage passengers to cower behind. He knew he should intervene. A better man would. But he felt a savage satisfaction in watching the two men going at it with their fists, snarling and mewling like a bear and a bobcat chained to the same rock sled.

  Suddenly, the two men were on the floor, punching and wrestling, boots clomping on the rotten floorboards, cursing and spitting and trying to gouge each other’s eyes with their fingers. Yakima looked around. The Rands and even Mrs. O’Reilly seemed to be sharing his satisfaction. Only Glendolene was not. She stared at him reprovingly. Finally, she walked over, glared up at him, and said, “You’ve made your point.”