Several men near the front of the room shouted curses and scrambled for cover as the pellets shredded the air like enraged bumblebees. Several bits of shot shattered a lit bracket lamp on the center post, and fire rained down with the kerosene like the breath of a low-flying dragon.
Whoosh!
Pistols popped. Men screamed and whooped. The deputy at the front of the room, blood trickling down from his grooved temple, gained his feet and bull-charged the black man, stretching the shotgun straight out from his belly.
The shotgun’s blast rocked the room, but Kong didn’t look to see if the man had hit his mark. The room was fast filling with smoke and flames, and the Chinaman found himself in a headlong dive toward his daughter. Li Mei had dropped her tray of glasses, and crouched down behind an overturned chair, clamping her hands to her ears. Kong hooked his left arm around her shoulders, and threw her to the floor as several stray pistol shots smashed the chair she’d been crouched behind.
Covering his daughter’s body with his own, Kong reached up and pulled a table down before them, shielding them from the spanging, ricocheting bullets. He lowered his cheek to Li Mei’s and held it there, feeling the girl sob and shake beneath him, while the whoops and pistol shots continued for what seemed an eternity.
As the smoke grew thicker, Li Mei began to convulse and cough. Kong ripped the bandanna from around his neck, and held it over the girl’s mouth and nose. When the gunfire died, he lifted a glance over the table. The flames leapt across the floor to lick at the rafters. Vague human shapes flickered through the smoke.
Above the fire’s roar, a man shouted, “You have enough now, Mr. Constable, sir? No? Well, here then.” Two more shots ripped above the fire’s hum and crackle. “Have a couple more!”
Boots thumped.
A man cursed in a pinched, pained voice.
“Come on, boys, let’s get the hell outta here!”
Kong looked to his left and behind. The fire had streaked along the bar toward the back door, but he and Li Mei could make it if they went now.
“Come, daughter,” he yelled in English, the language that, to the Chinaman’s chagrin, his daughter understood the best. “We must go.” He rose and pulled the girl to her feet. “Keep the cloth over your mouth!”
He turned toward the door and began pulling Li Mei along behind. Suddenly, the girl’s arm slipped out of his hand.
“Li Mei!” the Chinaman cried, turning.
A man stood before him, crouched over Li Mei, who’d dropped to one knee. “Oh, no, you don’t, ye greasy cockroach! This girl’s comin’ with me!”
As the man jerked Li Mei brusquely to her feet, the girl screamed and fought. The man, whose curly blond hair poked out from beneath his shabby bowler, held fast to Li Mei’s arm and raised a cocked pistol toward Kong.
“No!”
The girl’s scream was drowned out by the pistol’s roar. Fire burned in the Chinaman’s temple as he staggered backward and fell, his back hitting the floor with a thunderous boom.
He lay staring at the smoky ceiling, his limbs going heavy and numb, cannons booming in his head. He gritted his teeth.
Li Mei.
He lifted his head from the floor, blinked several times. Into the broiling smoke, the blond hard case retreated, heading for the front of the fire-filled room, dragging Li Mei along behind him.
6
CUNO MASSEY HAULED the four dead hard cases away from Columbine in the back of a buckboard wagon that he borrowed from the livery barn. When he figured he was far enough away from the town that the stench wouldn’t pester the girls at Miss Mundy’s, he dumped the four carcasses without ceremony into a deep ravine.
Only the cooling evening breeze said a few words. The only thing covering the makeshift grave was the fast-approaching shadows bleeding out from the western rimrocks.
Flies buzzed. Magpies lighted on rocks above the carrion, scrutinizing the corpses, their tiny, black eyes bulging with expectation.
Cuno took a long pull from his canteen. He returned the cork to the spout and peered once more into the ravine. The naked hard case with the long, blond locks lay twisted atop two of the three other dead men, skinny legs scissored, arms stretched straight out from his shoulders. The man’s bloody mouth still shaped a surprised O. The third body had snugged up to a boulder as though to a comely whore; one of the magpies had already lighted on his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” Cuno told the skinny gent with the long blond hair, sleeving sweat from his brow. “Your brother will be along soon.”
Cuno spat into the cleft, snugged his hat down tight, and headed back to the wagon.
When he’d returned the buckboard to the livery barn, he dragged Wade Scanlon’s coffin to a quiet place behind Parker’s barn, and began digging a grave by the light of a bull’s-eye lantern. While he dug, Parker came out and played his fiddle—quiet, mournful tunes blending with the strains of the night breeze sliding over the Rockies.
Cuno and the old man lowered the coffin and filled in the hole. The last rays of the sun had retreated, and full night had closed down—cool, dark, and star-sprinkled.
Parker recited the Lord’s Prayer, holding his fiddle under his arm, his bow hanging straight down at his side, chin tipped to his chest. When the old man was finished, Cuno donned his hat and stared at the mounded grave. His jaw tightened.
He and Wade Scanlon had met in a Denver saloon after Cuno had moved out West from Nebraska. Because he had only one leg, Scanlon couldn’t find work besides sweeping out saloons and mucking out livery barns. Flush with poker winnings, he partnered up with Cuno, and in ten months, they’d become best friends.
Now, Cuno set Scanlon’s weather-battered hat down on his grave. He picked up Scanlon’s crutch and broke it over his knee. Tossing it into the brush, he said, “You won’t be needing that anymore, Wade. Wherever you are, I know you got both legs again.”
He put in place the cross he’d fashioned from two pine branches and rawhide, then grabbed the shovel and started back toward the saloon.
Serenity Parker’s voice rose behind him. “Miss Lara’s waitin’ fer ya, over to Miss Mundy’s. There’s a bottle on the bar. It’s for you and her.”
“Thanks,” Cuno said, walking away. “Not tonight.”
He grabbed his camping gear from the barn, where his wagon was parked, his mules milling in the side corral, then walked out to the creek and built a small fire in an aspen grove. He stripped down, waded into the creek, and bathed the sweat and grime from his broad-shouldered, slim-hipped body.
He found a deep pool between two boulders, and sat down to let the chill water rush over him, then waded back to shore. He lay down naked on his bedroll, letting the cool air dry him. Propped on one shoulder, he filled a tin cup with coffee and rolled a smoke.
Resting his head against a tree, bare ankles crossed, he smoked and stared at the stars beyond the nodding limbs of an aspen.
Death had hit him so many times—his parents, his stepmother, his beautiful young wife, July, and their unborn child. Puzzling how it affected him now. Not so much sorrow as a hollowed-out feeling. Emptiness. Like an old corncob still swaying on a reedlike stock, all the kernels long since eaten by crows.
He was only twenty-three years old….
He took a deep drag from the quirley, tipped his head back to blow smoke at the stars.
Wade gone now too. His only friend. The loss of Wade’s freight meant Cuno wouldn’t take in enough profit to buy more goods for another haul. He’d have to sell his wagon and his other two mules just to stake himself through the winter.
It was either that or hire out his gun. An unappealing prospect, but maybe that’s what was waiting for him. God knows he’d killed enough men with the .45 he’d been given by the old pistoleer, Charlie Dodge, who himself had been crippled during a lead swap.
Charlie had taught Cuno how to shoot when Cuno had begun fogging the trail of his father and stepmother’s killers, Anderson and Spoon. Charlie had done a goo
d job. Cuno had killed both men, and the others who’d then come after Cuno, including bounty killers and would-be pistoleers seeking reputations of their own.
No, he couldn’t go back to that. It didn’t matter how good he’d become at it, how used to it. Killing to avoid death was no way to live. Once he’d settled this current score, and avenged Wade, he’d hang up his guns for good.
He tapped ashes from the quirley. Shit, he’d probably be mucking out barn stalls come December, the very work old Wade himself had been running from.
A twig snapped. Cuno dropped the coffee cup and grabbed his .45 snugged in the holster coiled to his right. A second after the cup had dropped with a ping, the smell of scorched java rising, he flicked the Colt’s hammer back and aimed the gun in the direction from which the sound had come.
“It’s me.”
Cuno released the hammer, canted the Colt’s barrel up, and draped a corner of his bedroll across his naked crotch. Not that Lara hadn’t seen him naked before. He’d shared her bed over at Miss Mundy’s his first time through Columbine, and all four times since. No particular reason why he slept with whores; he could have had his pick of single, respectable women in Denver. Maybe lying with whores didn’t seem quite so much like cheating on July.
Now, holding a wrapper closed at her throat with one hand, the girl stepped out of the shadows—a lithe figure with a pale, heart-shaped face, blond hair piled loosely atop her head. “What’re you bein’ so standoffish about tonight?”
“When I’m feelin’ this ornery, I ain’t fit company.” He set the gun aside. “No offense.”
“You shouldn’t be alone. You just lost a friend.”
She lifted the wrapper’s hem above her bare knees and sat down beside him, curling her slender legs beneath her hip and leaning on her hand. The wrapper spread open, revealing nearly all of one pale breast, a tiny mole showing at the top of her cleavage.
“All the more reason,” he said.
She glanced at the creek, then turned her face back toward his. Her voice was quiet, shy. “I don’t mind telling you, Cuno, I sure have treasured your trips through Columbine. I’ve taken a shine to you, in fact. If you want me to go, I’ll go. But if you want me to stay, I wouldn’t take any money for it tonight.” She held his gaze. “Or any night, comes to that.”
He rose to a kneeling position, wrapping the blanket around his waist, knotting it behind his back, and poured a cup of coffee for them both. He handed one to the girl, who took it, staring up at him.
“I reckon this’ll be my last time through.”
She dropped her eyes as she held the cup in both hands in her lap. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Cuno sat down against the tree and crossed his ankles. “You know, Miss Lara, if there was a girl I’d be ready to settle down with again, she’d be you.”
Her eyes flickered hopefully in the firelight. “You’d settle down with a whore?”
He leaned toward her, resting on his elbow, letting the blanket fall away from his waist. He placed his hands gently against her face, caressed her cheek with his fingers, relishing the soft, supple skin. “I’d settle down with you.”
He meant it.
“The time ain’t right, I reckon.”
He shook his head.
“Because you’re going after the men who killed Wade?”
“That,” Cuno said, “and because I don’t know what lies ahead after that. If there is an afterward.”
“How does anybody know what lies ahead?”
“It’s not just that.”
She glanced at the .45 snugged in his holster. “You gonna take it up again? Shootin’?”
“How’d you know I ever did?”
“No one could have taken those four gunnies down the way you did less’n they was practiced at it.”
Cuno pulled his hand away from her face. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have nothin’ to be sorry about. No more than I do. I just wish we could be together, that’s all. I been at this trade for two years, since my parents were killed in a stage holdup, and no man has ever treated me half as gentle as you.” She leaned toward him, kissed him gently; her lips were soft and sweet. “Made me feel as good as you.”
He took her in his arms, lifted her onto his lap, kissing her and running his hands up and down her back, pressing her close. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He pushed her gently back, unbuttoned the wrapper, and slid it down her arms, both erect nipples popping free, the pale, pear-shaped breasts glowing umber in the firelight.
He leaned down, kissed each breast, then kissed her lips again while gently turning onto his left side, sliding her beneath him. She opened her legs for him and, entering her, he leaned on his outstretched arms, his big, red-brown hands splayed out on either side of her head. The cords and heavy muscles in his arms stretched taut.
She raised her knees to his sides. Her fingers caressed his shoulders, raising gooseflesh, as he plunged down deep inside her.
“Ohhhh,” she cooed. “Ah! Gawd!”
Cuno woke the next morning before first light, the dawn a purple glow in the east. Lara lay curled beside him, her face buried in his armpit, one bare leg curled over his right thigh. Her soft, moist breath tickled slightly, stirred his loins for a moment.
No time for that.
He swung the blankets off him, slid quietly away from her, stood, covered her pale, curled body with the blanket, and dressed. He washed his face in the river, a bracing wash of cold mountain water, numbing his vague, nagging desire. He turned back to her still curled beneath his heavy, striped Indian blankets that they’d needed when it had turned cold last night.
He had to get moving, get an early start. He was far enough behind Wade’s killers as it was. If his freight hadn’t been due in Welcome by Saturday, he’d have rented a fast horse, completed his grisly business, and ridden back for the wagon later.
He walked back to Lara, crouched down, and lifted her into his arms. She moaned, and her eyelids fluttered. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her cheek against his shoulder, and went back to sleep.
Cuno carried her around the fire and through the trees toward the yard, the damp grass and sage crackling softly beneath his tread. As he walked past the livery barn, he stopped and turned to Serenity Parker standing outside his saloon, the sashed window dimly lit on either side of him. Smoke wafted from the saloon’s tin chimney pipe, smelling like eggs, pork, and coffee.
“Breakfast?” Parker said quietly.
Cuno shook his head. “No time.”
“Beware of Long Draw,” Parker warned. “Bad place these days. Road agents and such.”
Cuno nodded and continued to the brothel’s overgrown yard, mounted the steps, and pushed inside. The cloying smell of whiskey and tobacco smoke followed him through the dark, quiet parlor, where one girl slept on a fainting couch, and up the stairs, the carpeted planks creaking beneath his boots. From somewhere came a man’s low voice and a girl’s quiet laughter. One of the customers already up, charming one of the girls.
The hall was dark, but Cuno saw Lara’s bedroom door standing ajar on the other side of the cuckoo clock. Inside the small room, he crouched with the girl in his arms, pulled the sheet and blankets back, and gentled her onto the bed.
She sighed and pressed her cheek to the pillow, rolling onto her side, facing Cuno, and bringing her knees toward her chest. As he raised the blankets, he saw her toes flex and curl.
“Are you going?” she whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t go. Stay here with me.”
He kissed her cheek, pressed his forehead to hers. He stayed there for a moment, taking a deep breath, smelling the warm, peach smell of the girl. He’d like to remember it for later, when things got ugly again. You needed something like the smell of a woman, or the image of a sun-dappled creek with mayflies hatching, to maintain sanity when the shit started flying.
So that you remembered there were other things in life
besides death and killing.
He kissed her once more, squeezed her shoulder, and moved to the door. He stopped, plucked a piece of silver from his front pocket, began to set it on the dresser, and stopped. He turned back to Lara breathing softly under the blankets, the window behind her turning pale.
He returned the silver to his pocket, went out, and quietly closed the door.
7
CUNO LET HIMSELF out of Miss Mundy’s and headed for the livery barn. It was still dark, but the horses and mules were scuffling around the corral, knowing it was getting close to chow time. Cuno walked around behind the barn, retrieved his camping gear from the creek, then walked back to the barn. He was opening the small front door when he turned toward Serenity Parker’s saloon and paused.
The windows were dark. A CLOSED sign hung in the right front window. The old man must’ve decided to take the day off and go fishing.
Cuno continued into the barn, tossed his gear into the wagon box, behind the driver’s seat, then went out to fetch his mules. A half hour later, he was moving along the gently sloping wagon road west of Columbine, watching his shadow angling out ahead of him along the rocky ground, the copper sun rising from the sage of the eastern flats behind him. On his left, Columbine Creek gurgled in its steep cut, sheathed in willows and aspens, pines and cedars studding the canyon’s boulder-strewn walls rising to either side of the lumbering wagon.
Around ten, the sun heated up, reflecting off the canyon walls, and Cuno slipped out of his denim jacket, tossed it into the box behind him. He was about to reach into his grub sack for some biscuits when a shadow flicked in the corner of his right eye, up high on a towering scarp. A rifle barked, the shot plunking into the seat a foot from Cuno’s right thigh.
The mule spooked to the right of the trail, and the wagon’s right front wheel slammed between two low boulders, giving a wooden crunch. The mule brayed as another rifle shot spanged off one of the boulders. The animal put its head down to lunge ahead, but the wagon held fast.
Cuno grabbed his rifle, jacked a round into the chamber, aimed at the scarp’s crest, and fired. The man there ducked down behind a cedar as Cuno’s .44 slug kicked up dirt just below the tree.
.45-Caliber Deathtrap Page 5
