Gold laid the Murcott, his gun-belt and the dismantled shovel on the chair. Then undressed to the extent of removing his hat, frock coat and boots before he got under the bedcovers. The window remained fully opened, but no sounds loud enough to disturb his rest intruded into the room.
Instead, it was a woman.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE did not hear the tentative knocking on the door, nor the gentle opening and closing of it. Followed by the padding of bare feet to the side of the bed. Her regular breathing as she stood in the moonlit, night-cooled room looking down at his head on the pillow for several seconds.
Then, very softly: ‘Barnaby. Barnaby Gold.’
He was sleeping the sleep of the contented. And she had to reach out a nervous hand, to touch his shoulder then call his given name again before his eyes snapped open. He blinked several times, disorientated in the first moments of waking. Not recognising her because she had her back to the window.
‘It’s me, Francis Dalton.’
‘Goddammit to hell,’ he murmured, and pulled himself up into a sitting posture, his back resting against the head of the bed. He fisted the grit of sleep from his eyes, ‘Something wrong, Mrs Dalton?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing. I’m sorry to disturb you.’
‘Then why did you, lady?’
She was dressed in the same way as when he had last seen her in the immediate aftermath of the killings. With a long, dark coat draped over her shoulders. Clutching it together at her breasts, the lower front veered open to reveal a white nightgown. But her head-hugging, short hair was no longer dishevelled from sleeping. She had brushed it and it had a sheen in the moonlight.
She drew erect and tense at his curt, flatly-put query. Blurted softly: ‘I meant there’s nothing wrong for you, Barnaby. But me, I... I need help.’
He reached into his coat, draped over the chair to get the box of cheroots and matches. He lit one and on a stream of smoke asked: ‘Help?’
‘You’ll be leaving town tomorrow?’
‘If that’s when Sheriff Polk comes back, Mrs Dalton.’
‘He’s expected.’
‘Okay.’
‘So it has to be tonight.’
‘It does?’
‘Oh God, yes.’
‘What?’
‘Make love to me, Barnaby.’
She had been gazing directly into his face. But now she dropped her head to stare at both her hands clutching at the front of her coat
‘You want to pinch me, Mrs Dalton.’
‘What?’ She continued to hold the attitude of shame.
‘If I’m not dreaming this, that’ll be less painful than testing it with the lighted end of this cheroot.’
Now she forced her head half-up, to stare at his face with the tops of her eyes. There was a greater tension in her voice.
‘Annie told me how it was with you. She tells me how it is with any new man who pays to use her. Oh, God, this sounds awful. But you have to understand. Arnie’s a fine husband in so many ways. But when we’re in bed, he’s ... he’s so totally selfish.’
She shook her head. ‘No, it may not be like that. He can’t help himself, perhaps. It’s over so quickly for him.’
‘I don’t want to hear this, lady.’
‘Please, just so you’ll understand. At first, when we were married, I always told him it was good for me. I thought he’d get better. Make it so that I could get—’
‘I can’t help you, Mrs Dalton.’ His green eyes glinted in the moonlight and his tone was far colder than the night air entering through the same open window.
‘Just so I can know what it’s like,’ she blurted. ‘Just the once in my life. In a town like this there’s no chance for me to... with any of the men who live here.’
‘Best you leave this room now.’
‘I’ve never before. Not once with any of those other men Annie told me about. But when I first saw you downstairs ... when I brought you your meal ... you struck something inside me, Barnaby. Then when she told me. Said how you treated her up here. Her a whore.’
His eyes were accustomed to the low level of light now. He saw her pale face in the frame of jet black hair: knew that her dark eyes which were spilling tears down her cheeks would be expressing the same mixture of desperate pleading that sounded in her whispering voice.
‘I’ll give you two choices, Mrs Dalton.’
He sucked on the cheroot and in the red glow of the burning tobacco glimpsed the sudden eagerness, on the brink of high excitement, with which she looked at him.
‘Yes?’
‘You can go to the door, open it, go through it and close it behind you. Or I can open and close it for you. And in between, toss you through by the scruff of your neck.’
A sob escaped her throat. He drew hard against the cheroot again and in this period of brighter light he saw she looked on the verge of venting a string of curses at him.
But then she whirled around and went to the door. Instead of opening it though, she halted, jerked the coat off her shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Then with a fast, fluid movement, pulled the nightgown up over her head, dropped it on top of the coat and turned to face the watching man on the bed.
Her naked body was a match for her face. Lean and angular, a world removed from the full-blown, obvious sexuality of Anne Kruger’s looks and figure. Slim-waisted and narrow-hipped, the belly flat and the thighs slender. The small breasts were firmly conical even while she was standing, her back pressed to the door. The area of the nipples small in the diameter of their darkness but large to the extent of her readiness to be taken. Just as the triangular marking of her sex was almost diminutive, but very bushy.
‘Annie has more of everything,’ she said softly after allowing a silence during which Barnaby Gold surveyed her nakedness. ‘But she’s been used so many times. Only one man has had me, and all he’s ever done is prepare me for...’
She let her voice trail away, and her look of challenge was replaced by one of breathless expectancy while she watched him slowly turn back the bedcovers and swing his feet to the floor. Stand up and crush out the cheroot on the wall. Check that all the sparks were out before he started to come toward her.
Then she held out her arms to him, her lips parted and she ran the tip of her tongue along between her teeth.
‘I promise you, you won’t be sorry, Barnaby.’ She closed her eyes and vented a soft sigh as he moved between her outstretched arms.
‘Okay, Mrs Dalton.’
‘Fran.’
She interlocked her fingers at the nape of his neck. And her flesh trembled when he stooped to hook one arm behind her knees as the other went around her back. Then she moaned and pushed her face into the crook of his neck when he lifted her smoothly and easily off her feet.
‘Treat me like the woman I know I am, Barnaby,’ she whispered, her warm breath on his ear. ‘Make me feel the way a woman is supposed to when she gives herself to a man.’
He started to carry her toward the bed.
‘Oh, how I’ve longed for a moment like this, my darling.’
He stopped and leaned forward slightly.
‘You have to let go from around my neck now, lady.’
‘Oh, yes. Anything. I’ll do anything you ask me to, Barnaby.’
She freed her hold on him. And he let her go. It was too far to fall. She started a gasp of alarmed surprise. Then vented a short scream as her naked flesh hit the night-cooled, scummy water in the hipbath. The sound short-lived, because the coldness of the water took her breath away.
Barnaby Gold came erect after holding down his hand to keep the back of her head from banging against the rim of the tub.
‘You evil monster!’ she rasped at him.
After staring up at him in rage: venting her anger in a whisper when she saw his warning finger pressed to his lips. Then she struggled to get out of the water, but he dropped on to his haunches and held her down with a hand under the surface, splayed on her
belly.
‘I am what I am, lady.’
She bit back on a snarling retort. Asked simply: ‘Why?’
‘It’s the way I’m made.’
She shook her head. ‘Why did you do this to me?’ Anger got the better of puzzlement. ‘You’re nothing like the man Annie thinks you are. Can’t you handle two women in one night?’
‘Not when one of them’s married, lady.’
‘That’s no damn excuse.’
He nodded. ‘Not an excuse. A reason.’ He stood up. ‘Best you dry off now and go back to your husband. If he wants anything, guess you’ll be glad it’ll be over fast’
He went to the bed and sat on it. Watched her while she got from the tub, towelled herself vigorously and put on her sparse clothing. Bitter resentment was inscribed deeply into the flesh of her face and showed in her every move. Then, when she was ready to leave, a different brand of pleading was directed toward Barnaby Gold.
‘You won’t mention this to Arnie?’
‘Best for him if he never knows. Or only finds out after you’re dead, Mrs Dalton.’
She looked hard at him, trying to read what lay behind his deadpan expression and flat tone. Then said suddenly: ‘You were married. And she cheated on you.’
‘Just go, Mrs Dalton.’
She opened the door. ‘And she’s the reason you are what you are.’
He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘No, lady. She’s the reason why I have to kill some men before I can be what I want to be.’
‘What’s that?’
‘In Europe.’
She seemed about to ask another question. But from the way he sat on the edge of the bed, peering across the room and out through the window, his profile hard-set, she decided against it. Was about to close the door on him.
‘Mrs Dalton?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do something for me?’
‘Why the hell should I?’
‘Part of the service here.’
‘What?’
‘Go get the whore and send her to me.’
‘Whoring won’t get you over losing a woman you loved as much as your wife.’
‘It’ll ease the feeling I’ve got from seeing and holding you stark naked, lady,’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHERIFF Floyd Polk was a big man in build. Three inches taller than six feet and weighing close to two hundred and fifty pounds. He was in his mid-forties and maturely good-looking with liquid brown eyes and a full and generous mouth: his lined and tanned complexion emphasised by a full head of slicked down, whitening hair that showed just an occasional strand of black.
He was dressed in blue denim pants, a brown shirt with white piping on it, red kerchief with white polka dots and a brown Stetson. Despite the trail dust clinging to his outfit, the clothing looked newly purchased. As did the gun-belt with an etched Remington .44 in the right hip holster.
The pinto gelding he rode and the saddle he rode in were past their prime, but well cared for.
Barnaby Gold watched Bacall’s lawman ride down the north trail a little after sunrise: standing at the open window in the process of getting dressed while Anne Kruger continued to sleep soundly in the bullet-holed bed, her naked body covered by blankets.
The lone rider, who looked pleasantly weary from a long but not arduous trip, did a double-take at the mound of the fresh grave before fording the creek. Then briefly surveyed the saloon’s shattered window: but gave no indication that he was aware of being watched from above as he moved on by, down the deserted curve of the street, the five-pointed bright metal star pinned to his left breast pocket glinting in the early sunlight.
He dismounted just beyond the church and went from sight between it and the house next door.
Gold finished dressing and then went out through the window, along the balcony and down the stairs at the creek side of the hotel, wearing his gun-belt but leaving the Murcott in the room. By the time he was seated in the rocker from which he had fired the shotgun a few hours earlier, the sheriff had opened the front door and two windows to rid his house of the stuffiness from being empty for a lengthy period. Gold lit his first cheroot of the day and waited patiently as smoke began to wisp from the house chimney.
It was perhaps fifteen minutes before Polk reappeared on the street, his clothing brushed free of dust and carrying a large mug of steaming coffee. To cross diagonally toward the law office and gaolhouse.
Gold set out on a converging course and Polk was turning a key in the lock of the door when his caller reached him.
‘You opening up for business, Sheriff Polk?’
‘My job lasts twenty-four hours in a day if it’s necessary, son. Leave the door open, will you.’
The office was small and functional. A desk with a comfortable chair in back of it and a hard-seated, straight-backed one in front. A small table with a freestanding closet next to it against one wall. A rifle rack with six Winchesters padlocked in place across from this. A one-piece metal door with a spy-hole in it which gave on to the gaol section of the building. No clutter and just a thin coating of dust on everything, this having gained entry along with the stuffy air via ill-fitting windows and the crack around the door.
Polk set down his mug on the desk, dropped loose-limbed into the chair behind it and indicated his visitor should take the other one in front. Then he began to sip his coffee noisily, eyeing Gold expectantly over the rim of the mug. Until he noticed the ash on Gold’s cheroot was growing long. When he drew open a drawer, took out a burn-stained tin can lid and pushed it across the desk.
‘Appreciate it.’
‘No trouble, son. Way I like it to be in this town.’
‘How far does your jurisdiction extend, sheriff?’
From another drawer, he took out a large sheet of paper, folded several times. Gave Gold the chore of unfolding it to see it was a three foot by four foot map of the area around Bacall. With a heavy red pencil line marking the boundaries of Polk’s authority. A strip of terrain much longer than it was broad, limited to the west by the Colorado, the high points of the Mohave Mountains to the east and the Bacall Creek to the north. His domain spread far enough southward to encompass all the homesteads worked by the mountain people from Tennessee.
Gold refolded the map and pushed it back across the desk. ‘There was a lot of trouble during yesterday and last night.’
A nod. ‘It goes with your kind, son.’
‘My kind?’
‘Don’t play the innocent with me. The ordinary man doesn’t wear the kind of rig you got slung around your middle, son.’
‘I came here to tell you about the trouble, sheriff.’
‘I’m listening.’
Barnaby Gold told him. Giving him an even-voiced catalogue of the killings since he discovered the carelessly buried corpses of Virgil and Mary-Ann Engel.
When Polk had finished his coffee and did not have the big mug to hide behind, his face was seen to be as impassive as that of the black-clad young man he was listening to.
Then: ‘This Clinton Davis and the two men you buried on the far side of the creek? Just personal, you say. So as lawmen hereabouts I can just forget them three are dead and in the ground.’
Gold clicked his tongue and crushed out what remained of his cheroot in the lid. ‘Pro gunslingers, sheriff. Hired by a family in west Texas called the Channons. To find me and kill me. There’ll be more. Which is why I want this trouble with the homesteaders cleared up.’
‘Reckon I can understand that. But first I’ll need to be sure about the three men you buried, son.’
‘Okay.’
‘Can’t just take your word about the way they died. Talk to the Daltons and Annie about the shoot-out at the hotel. Then take a ride down to the Wolfe place. Because if you didn’t shoot down two men in self-defence and that Clinton Davis didn’t die the way you told it...’ He shrugged his broad, expensively clothed shoulders. ‘Well, son, I’ll be forced to conclude you lied about the rest
of it.’
The two men gazed into each other’s eyes fixedly.
‘You get my drift, son?’
‘When you can’t sweep trouble under the carpet, you sell it down the river, Sheriff?’
Another shrug. ‘A man can only be hanged once. And it seems to me, it don’t matter who does the lousy job.’
Gold got to his feet. ‘Appreciate you being such a good listener, sheriff.’
‘Make one stipulation, though.’
‘Uh?’
‘I need to be sure the man is guilty of a hanging crime.’
Gold nodded and turned to leave the office.
‘Son?’
The younger man halted on the threshold and looked back over his shoulder.
‘You best remain in town until I’ve completed my investigation. Because if you don’t, I may have to consider flight as an admission of guilt. And even if I or the hillbillies don’t catch up with you, some sheriff or bounty hunter will. After I’ve telegraphed a wanted flyer on you. All right?’
‘All right.’
Barnaby Gold stepped out on to the sun-bright street and smelled the woodsmoke from many chimneys in the warm air.
He turned to walk down the curving slope, heading for the commercial section of Bacall, his good-looking face offering no clue to how he felt about the attitude of Sheriff Floyd Polk.
It was still very early and none of the stores were open so he went on by. And the aromas of cooking food and bubbling coffee began to permeate the smoke-tainted atmosphere as he took his lone walk to the southern end of the street.
Moving between the tree-shaded houses with their picket-fenced gardens in this section of town, he sensed eyes watching his progress. And paid them no heed.
He crossed the town limit under the overhead sign and came to a halt. Stood for several minutes gazing implacably out along the trail that snaked down the high ground into the valley, where lived a group of people who took care of their own trouble.
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