by Ford Fargo
“I think you're glad to see me, too,” she said.
“More than you know.”
“Oh—” Jessica giggled. “I doubt that.”
Laird put an arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the foyer and the winding staircase that led up to the second floor where the girls' rooms were located. He looked back at his companion and said, “I'll see you later, Ira.”
Ira nodded somewhat gloomily and said, “I'll be here.” Laird was going off to have his fun, and he was stuck waiting for Marcelline. The wait might well be worth it, but it still bothered him.
One of the other girls approached him when Laird and Jessica were gone. She was a brunette, pretty enough but already developing the hardness around her eyes and mouth that all whores got if they stayed in the business long enough. With some it didn't really take very long.
“I'd be glad to go upstairs with you, Mister Breedlove,” she offered.
Ira shook his head. “No, that's all right . . .” His voice trailed off as he couldn't recall her name.
“Susan.”
“That's right. Susan. I'll wait for Marcelline.”
“She don't have . . . I mean, she doesn't have anything I don't have, Mister Breedlove.”
Other than breeding and class, or at least what passed for same in such an environment, thought Ira. Still, he put a polite smile on his face as he shook his head and said, “I don't think so, but thank you anyway.”
Susan was about to say something else, opening her mouth and revealing teeth that were starting to go bad, when Thaddeus bustled into the parlor carrying a silver tray with a snifter of cognac on it.
“You run along and leave Mister Ira alone,” he told the brown-haired whore sharply. Susan glared daggers at him but turned and sashayed back to the divan where she joined two other girls in waiting for the next customer.
Thaddeus handed the snifter to Ira.
“There you go, sir,” he said.
“Thanks.” Ira took a coin from his coat pocket and tossed it to the servant, who plucked it deftly from the air. Thaddeus, Marcelline had told Ira once, was a runaway slave from Louisiana who had made his way upriver to St. Louis and pretended to be a freedman. He had phony manumission papers he had gotten hold of somehow, and since he was able to read, a skill not many blacks had, he had taught himself how to speak like an educated man, too. Ira wasn't sure how Thaddeus had wound up working for Rose Delacroix, the woman who owned the Birdcage, nor did he care.
The butler tucked the coin away, held the silver tray at his side, and nodded. “I shall inform you as soon as Miss Marcelline is available, sir,” he said.
Ira nodded, and Thaddeus turned and left the parlor. Ira took a sip of the cognac and appreciated the liquor's fine, smooth bite. Marcelline had introduced him to cognac, and there was nothing to compare with it in the saloons of Wolf Creek.
The whores out there in the settlement on the Kansas plains didn't compare, either. Out there a man had to settle for rotgut whiskey that might well have been brewed with rattlesnake heads and black powder in it, along with plain-faced or even downright ugly soiled doves who pulled up their skirts and lay there as unresponsive as a sack of flour while a man took care of his business. That was fine for a young cowboy who only cared about losing his innocence, but Ira preferred a woman who was more skilled in the amatory arts.
From time to time, Ira thought that a man who opened a saloon providing good liquor and a better class of prostitute would make a lot of money in a place like Wolf Creek. He had toyed with the idea of doing just that when his father finally made him come home.
But the reality of the situation was that cognac and women like Marcelline would be wasted on the denizens of Wolf Creek. They were too crude to fully appreciate either one. If he ever opened a saloon, he would give those frontiersmen exactly what they deserved, no more, no less.
The best things in life, he would save for himself.
Susan was at his elbow again, he realized as he sipped the liquor. “Marcelline's gonna—going to be upstairs for quite a while, I'll bet,” the brunette said. “That fella who went with her was bellowing about how he'd been saving up his lovin' for a long, long time.”
Ira was irritated because he knew Susan was just trying to cajole him into giving her his business, instead of Marcelline. “I don't mind waiting,” he snapped, even though he did mind. He minded a lot.
“She might even need to take a bath when she's done with him,” Susan went on. “He stunk to high heaven. Of course, you might not care about that.”
Ira knew he shouldn't give in to his curiosity, but he asked, “What sort of man was he?” Gentlemen patronized the Birdcage, for the most part, but the brothel wouldn't turn away any man who had the money to afford the price.
“He was a big man, with a beard and long, tangled hair,” Susan said. “He wore buckskins and a hat with a brim out to here.” She indicated the dimensions of the wide brim with her hands. “He had a pair of revolvers stuck behind his belt, and the biggest knife I've ever seen in a sheath with fringe on it.”
“Sounds like a fur trapper,” Ira commented. That was a dying business, but he had seen some of the old mountain men from time to time, both back in Wolf Creek and here in St. Louis. Actually, they were more common here in St. Louis because the fur companies had their headquarters here and the trappers would bring in loads of pelts to sell.
Susan said, “I think he must have been. He stank of death, I know that.”
That was a dramatic thing to say, thought Ira. He didn't know whether to believe Susan or not. She was capable of making up this yarn on the spot, just to try to steal a customer from Marcelline. More than likely, the gent who'd taken Marcelline upstairs was some mild-mannered businessman.
That thought had just crossed Ira's mind when a gravelly voice roared like a wounded grizzly bear, “Come back here, you damned whore!”
All eyes in the parlor turned toward the foyer as a frightened scream followed hard on the heels of the angry bellow. A young woman with long blond hair streaming down her back fled down the staircase, as naked as the day she was born. Close behind her loomed a massive figure, giving chase.
The man towered several inches over six feet and had shoulders seemingly as broad as an ax handle. He was bare from the waist up, revealing a thickly muscled chest covered with a rusty red pelt. His beard and the tangled thatch of hair on his head were the same rusty shade. He wore only a pair of buckskin trousers and had a piece of rope tied around his waist as a belt. A fringed sheath hung from that rope, and the bone handle of a knife jutted up from it.
Ira started toward the foyer. He knew the blonde; in fact, she was the one he was waiting for. His lips formed the name Marcelline.
She was almost at the bottom of the stairs when her pursuer caught her. His ham-like hand reached out and grabbed Marcelline's long hair. She cried out again as he jerked back. Her feet went out from under her and she fell on the stairs, landing heavily.
“Marcelline!” Ira shouted as he reached the arched door between the parlor and the foyer.
The big man's head turned toward him. The lips under that forest of red hair curved in a cruel smile. “Stay back, you damned dandy,” the man said, “or I'll twist your head right off your shoulders. They call me Cougar, and it's my night to howl!”
Marcelline's tumble had stunned her. She moaned weakly as the giant trapper wrapped his fingers around her arm and hauled her to her feet as if she were weightless. She muttered, “No—no—”
“I done bought and paid for your time, gal,” Cougar said. “You'll do whatever I want with no complaints. A whore ain't got no business bein' so dadblasted persnickety!”
Ira's pulse hammered inside his skull. He wanted to help Marcelline, but the brute that had hold of her was huge and clearly vicious. Didn't Rose Delacroix employ men to deal with situations like this?
Thaddeus appeared through a door on the other side of the foyer and pointed a sawed-off shotgun at Cougar. “Re
lease the young woman!” he ordered. “If you don't, I'll have no choice but to fire.”
Cougar's eyes, set deep in pits of leathery gristle, opened wider for a second. No man could stare down the twin barrels of a shotgun without feeling some fear. But then it went away and he laughed.
“Go ahead and shoot,” he taunted Thaddeus. “But if you pull them triggers, you'll splatter the whore all over these stairs, too.”
Ira's hope for Marcelline's rescue fell as he realized the trapper was right. The buckshot would be equally deadly to her.
As it turned out, though, Thaddeus was just trying to delay Cougar until help arrived. A big man in wool trousers and a homespun shirt came running up behind him, and another man about the same size appeared at the top of the stairs. They were the Birdcage's real bodyguards and bouncers.
The man at the top of the stairs carried a leather, shot-filled sap. The other clutched a short, stout club. They charged at Cougar from both directions at the same time.
Cougar dealt with the closer threat by shoving Marcelline bodily into the man below him on the stairs. They collided, their feet tangled, and they went down in a welter of flailing limbs. Cougar turned to meet the charge of the man coming from above. Moving with surprising speed for a man of his bulk, the trapper bent at the waist as the bouncer swung the sap at his head. The blow missed him, and he drove himself up a step, lowering a shoulder and ramming it into the mid-section of the off-balance bouncer.
With a roar of effort, Cougar straightened and lifted the man off his feet. Twisting, the trapper levered the bouncer up and over the banister that ran along the edge of the curving staircase. The man let out a yell of alarm that was cut off sharply as he crashed down on his back, landing on the foyer's hardwood floor.
The first bouncer thrust Marcelline's nude, limp form off of him and struggled to get his feet under him again. Just as he came upright, Cougar pivoted toward him and kicked him in the face. The trapper's feet were bare, but that didn't make much difference. Ira thought the sole of Cougar's foot looked to be as thick as if it were made of boot leather.
The kick sent the bouncer flying backward. Thaddeus scrambled to get out of the way, but he was too late. The bouncer rammed into him and knocked him off his feet. As Thaddeus sat down hard, the shotgun in his hands went off with a deafening boom. The double load of buckshot chewed a gaping hole in the fancy, flowery wallpaper and the wall boards underneath. If anybody had been on the other side of that wall, they had probably caught some of the buckshot, too, Ira thought.
Susan and the other whores in the parlor had scattered, not wanting to be anywhere near this trouble. Nor was there any sign of the whores who were upstairs when the ruckus broke out, or of their customers. They didn't want any part of what was going on. The two bouncers appeared to be either unconscious or dead, and Thaddeus couldn't be expected to stop a monster like Cougar.
That left Ira.
He was no brawler, and Cougar had several inches and fifty or sixty pounds on him. He wouldn't stand a chance and he knew it.
He took a step forward, anyway, as Cougar grabbed one of Marcelline's bare ankles and started dragging her up the stairs.
Ira's foot bumped against something that rolled on the floor. He glanced down and saw the bludgeon that the second bouncer had carried. The man had dropped it when Cougar kicked him in the face and knocked him out.
Ira didn't think about what he was doing. He stooped, snatched up the club, and charged across the foyer. He yelled incoherently as he started up the stairs.
Cougar dropped Marcelline's leg, said, “All right, you damned fool,” and leaped over her to tackle Ira, who held the club in both hands and brought it down on Cougar's back as hard as he could. The trapper didn't even seem to feel the blow. He slammed Ira against the wall along the staircase with bone-jarring force. Ira's vision spun crazily. He smashed the club against Cougar's head.
As they both rebounded from the wall, Cougar tripped over Marcelline's sprawled form. Since both of his long, brawny arms were wrapped around Ira's torso, when Cougar fell, Ira went with him. They toppled down the stairs.
Thankfully, the fall was a relatively short one. When they hit the floor at the base of the stairs, the impact jolted them apart. Ira already felt like Cougar had almost squeezed him in two. His ribs ached, and his lungs cried out for air. He rolled onto his side and gasped a couple of breaths before he started trying to fight his way back to his feet.
He never had a chance to get up. Cougar's thick-fingered hands grabbed the back of his coat and lifted him into the air like a doll. Ira yelled as Cougar carried him into the parlor, raised him even higher, and flung him onto one of the tables. The spindly legs snapped under his weight and collapsed, dumping him on the rug among the debris of the broken table.
“I'm gonna stomp you until your guts come out your ears,” Cougar said in his gravelly voice. To Ira's stunned brain, the words sounded like they were coming from far, far away, but he heard them clearly enough to understand them. And judging from everything he had seen so far, Cougar was more than capable of making good on that threat.
Knowing that his life was in danger, Ira forced his muscles to work. He grabbed one of the broken table legs, rolled over, and thrust up with it. The jagged end went into Cougar's groin. The trapper howled in pain.
Ira didn't have enough strength behind the thrust to make it penetrate very far, though. It hurt Cougar and enraged him even more, but it didn't come anywhere close to incapacitating him. Cougar swatted the table leg aside.
“Just for that, I'm gonna make you pay, boy,” he said as he reached for the bone handle of his knife and dragged the weapon out of its sheath. Ira had never seen a bigger, more sinister blade in his life. Cougar continued, “This here is a Arkansas Toothpick, and I'm gonna use it to peel ever' bit of skin off you. You'll be screamin' and beggin' for me to kill you afore I'm done with you.”
Frozen with horror, Ira didn't doubt that one bit.
But as Cougar held the knife in his right hand and reached for Ira with his left, something loomed up behind the trapper, rising into the air and then coming down with shattering force on Cougar's head. At the last second, Ira recognized the object as the top of the broken table. It cracked into two pieces as the blow landed with enough impact to drive Cougar to his knees.
Ira caught a glimpse of Laird Jenkins standing there and knew that his friend had struck the blow with the table, saving him—at least for the moment. But Cougar was still conscious and still a deadly threat, even on his knees. Ira drew his legs up and kicked, driving both heels into Cougar's fur-matted chest. The trapper went over backward. The Arkansas Toothpick slipped from his hand.
Ira lunged, got his fingers around the knife's handle, and lifted it. He had used knives before, but never one this heavy. The weapon had superb balance, though, which helped Ira lift it. He planted a knee in Cougar's stomach and brought the tip of the blade to rest on the big man's throat under the jutting beard.
“Don't!” Cougar croaked. “I give—”
Ira rammed down with the knife. It was razor-sharp and glided into Cougar's neck. Ira felt a second of resistance as the blade struck Cougar's spine, but it sliced on through and didn't stop until the point embedded itself in the hardwood floor. With a grotesque, gurgling sigh, Cougar’s arms and legs splayed out and he went limp.
In the silence that followed, Laird said, “You killed him. He was trying to surrender.”
Ira didn't look up. He kept on staring into Cougar's dead eyes. Sweat dripped from Ira's face. One of the drops fell into Cougar's left eye. He didn't blink.
“Of course I killed him,” Ira said. “You think I wanted a crazy animal like that walking around holding a grudge against me?”
For a second, Laird didn't say anything. Then he chuckled and said, “You've been listening when I talk, haven't you? You recognized that the moment had come to end it.”
Ira didn't respond to that. He wrenched the knife free from the floor and pull
ed it out of the dead man's neck. He stood up, a little shaky on his feet but growing stronger, and bent down to wipe the bloody blade on one leg of Cougar's buckskin trousers. Ira hesitated, then cut the rope belt around the trapper's waist and pulled the fringed sheath from it.
“Souvenir?” Laird asked dryly.
“I figure I earned it.” Ira looked at his friend. “Thanks for saving my life, by the way.”
Laird shrugged. “It goes against the grain to risk my own life to help someone else, but hell—it seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“I won't forget it,” Ira promised. He looked over at Thaddeus, who was still sitting down but had scooted back against the foyer wall. “Am I going to have trouble with the law over this?”
Thaddeus swallowed and shook his head. “No, sir. We'll clean everything up, and once those two worthless cretins come to, they'll dispose of the body. I don't think anyone is likely to miss the late—gentleman.”
“And you'll look after Marcelline?”
Thaddeus looked over at the blonde, who was curled up on the stairs, moaning. “We'll attend to any injuries she has, Mister Breedlove,” the butler promised. “You can be assured of that.”
Ira nodded and said, “Thanks.” He tucked the Arkansas Toothpick under his coat. “Let's get out of here.”
Laird said, “You don't want to—”
“Not in the mood anymore.”
“I can't say as I blame you.” As they started for the door, Laird took a cheroot from his vest pocket and put it in his mouth at a jaunty angle. “I finished with Jessica, you know. Before I came downstairs to see what all the commotion was about, I mean.”
“I guess it's a good thing for me you don't give a damn about satisfying a woman, only yourself,” Ira said as they went out into the night.
Laird laughed as they walked back to the carriage that had brought them to the Birdcage.
* * *
Ira could still hear that laughter in his head as he sat in the little office off the main room of the Wolf's Den, sipping cognac. He reached down to his left hip and let his fingers brush over the bone handle of the Arkansas Toothpick he had used to kill Cougar that night. He had killed other men with that blade since then, when he had to, but that one had been special.
