“I won’t.”
“Don’t.” Nick stepped through the door and started to pull it shut.
“Nick, wait!”
The door stopped.
Arlen nodded at the kid. “You know he’s got a sister?”
“So?”
“Well, ah … she came to town with him on what they call a vacation. Got herself a chaperon and everything, but now she’s.…”
“Take care of it.”
“Huh?”
“God dammit, take care of it. Just make sure the kid’s not found for a few more days.” Nick slammed the door shut, the musical jingle of his spurs quickly fading down the hall.
Arlen sucked in a deep breath, then moved to the window. He stared down at the street until Nick appeared and turned west toward the Union Pacific depot. Lifting his eyes to the early spring night, Arlen smiled to himself and whispered: “You cocky son-of-a-bitch. I hope they hang you.” Then he pulled the curtains closed and turned away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Buck’s hopes flagged at the International’s front doors as he peered in over the top. The crowd looked even larger than the night before, and he knew his chances of finding Mase’s killer were growing slim. He would be leaving for Montana before sunup tomorrow. That left only tonight to sort out a riddle not even the town’s sheriff had been able to unravel.
Buck pushed through the swinging doors. The press at the bar was so tight he didn’t even try to find a spot, settling instead for a warm beer purchased from a sweating waiter who wove through the crowd with a tray of drinks held above his head. He took the mug to the east wall, where there were no games of chance and where the crowd was thinner and not nearly as raucous. Propping his shoulders against the gaudily flocked wallpaper, he let his eyes roam the big main room, looking for Sally Hayes. Tom Ashley was working the near end of the bar. Buck couldn’t see him, but he could hear him above the din of the crowd, loudly impatient as he tried to keep up with the demand for liquor. Nearly an hour passed before Buck spied Sally coming down the stairs with a young dandy in a checked suit and a narrow-brimmed bowler.
Buck had always considered Sally coarse and unattractive, but those who knew her said she had her charms. Several of them stopped to watch her descent from the second-floor cribs, the upper shelf of her breasts jiggling above the scooped neckline of her dress with every downward step. Sally’s dusty blonde hair was gray at the roots, done up in tight curls that added width to a narrow face and a too-sharp chin. Rouge gave her cheeks a ruddy glow; mixed with theater grease, it also added a full, sensual cupid’s bow to her lips. Her figure was full and fleshy in a way most men appreciated, and most women didn’t.
Leaving his empty mug on the floor, Buck moved to intercept her. She was standing on tiptoe in a vain attempt to catch the bartender’s eye when he caught up. Stepping close, he said: “Miss Hayes.”
She graced him with a dismissing look until his greeting registered in her mind. “Miss Hayes? Honey, where the hell have you been?” Then she recognized him and her smile quickly deflated. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you. I’m a friend of Mason Campbell.”
“I know who you are, and, if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll scream.”
She didn’t have to. She’d spoken loudly enough to draw the attention of several nearby men. One of them, maybe four or five inches taller than Buck and at least sixty pounds heavier, lurched around drunkenly. “This pissant botherin’ you, Sally?”
“Oh, Christ,” Sally groaned, rolling her eyes. She looked at Buck. “I’ll tell you what, honey … you slip in there and buy me a whiskey and I’ll talk with you until it’s gone. How’s that?”
“I’ll buy you a bottle if we can talk right now. But not here. Some place quiet.”
“Uhn-uh. I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you without I get paid.”
“All right.” Fishing a $2 note from his pocket, Buck slipped it unobtrusively into her hand. “Let’s at least go over by the wall where it’s quieter.”
Sally followed warily, leaving the larger man who had been willing to gallop to her rescue looking confused and angry. “What do you want?” she asked when they’d stopped.
“I want to know who killed Mase.”
“So does Sam Dunbar, but, like I told him, Mase didn’t come upstairs that night.”
“But you saw him?”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Mebbe, but I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t recognize any of the men he was playing cards with, either.”
“What did they look like?”
“Like men. Ain’t much difference between ’em after a while.” Her gaze flitted away briefly, then came back. “Look, Mase was just another customer, and none too gentle, if you catch my drift.” When Buck frowned and said he didn’t, Sally laughed harshly. “You ain’t much smarter than one of them mules you stare into the ass of all day, are you, honey? Your friend liked it rough, liked to use his fists when he was upstairs with one of the girls. Liked to use his fists on me, too, but I charged him extra for it, which only made him meaner. Now, if you can’t figure that out, you’re too young to be in here.”
“I don’t believe that,” Buck said sharply. “Mase treated women with respect.”
“Honey, why don’t you go back to the tit for a while? You ain’t growed up enough for this crowd.” She started to slip away but Buck grabbed her elbow. Jerking free, Sally blazed: “You keep your shitty paws off me, muleskinner!”
Around her, men turned to look. Among them was the tall, gut-heavy man who’d offered his assistance earlier. Pushing forward, he said: “You want me to haul this little pissant outside and teach him some manners, Sally?”
“I don’t care what you do with him,” she replied coldly, turning her back on both of them.
Buck started after her but the big man stepped in his path. “Hold ort, short stuff,” he snarled. “You ’n’ me.…”
Buck hit him—hard. Bringing his fist up from the waist, he put everything he had into the swing. The larger man took the blow solidly on the chin and his head snapped back, teeth clicking shut with a sound like breaking glass. Blood spurted from his lower lip and his eyes seemed to cross briefly, before rolling up under his lids. Then he toppled over backward, knees and spine as rigid as tree trunks.
“Timmmber!” someone yelled, and the crowd broke into laughter. When it died, they turned away, their interest gone.
Buck stepped over the fallen man to follow Sally, then decided she’d told him everything she was going to. He wasn’t sure what to do then. He was on the verge of going off in search of Sheriff Dunbar when he felt a tug on his sleeve and turned. “Lotty!” he exclaimed.
Lotty Beals smiled up shyly. She was a small woman with short dark hair and doe-like eyes, and for a while, before Buck had been introduced to Dulce, she had been his favorite from among the whores who worked at The Muleskinner’s Retreat. He hadn’t known she’d shifted her business to the International, although he supposed that, in the world of prostitution, the larger saloon just across the street from the Central Pacific Depot made more sense than a teamsters’ hang-out on a gloomy side avenue.
“Hi, Buck,” Lotty said, acting genuinely glad to see him. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
“Of course I remember you. I.…” He stopped, lifting his hands in a vaguely embarrassed manner.
“It’s all right, really. Mase told me you’d started seeing a respectable girl. It’s nice you remembered me, though.” Then her smile vanished and she cast a nervous glance into the crowd. “I know what you’re looking for, and I think I can help.”
“How?”
“I heard some things that night, when Mase was killed. Buck, Sally was there, in the alley but out of sight. There was another man there, too, but I don’t know who he was or why he wanted to kill your friend. At first I thought it was robbery, and that Sally was part of it, but everyone says Mase wasn’t robbed, and Sally’s been acting awfully scared lately.”
“Scared of what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see who shot Mase?”
“No, but I’ve seen some things since then. I’ve just been …”—that look into the crowd again, like a frightened child—“afraid to talk to anyone. Even Sheriff Dunbar. I don’t trust him, Buck, but I trust you.” She hesitated, then blurted: “We can’t talk here.”
“Then where?”
“Upstairs.” Her eyes looked suddenly large and solemn. “You don’t have to do anything … upstairs I mean. Unless you want to.”
“I’ll come upstairs, but just to talk.”
After another quick peek over her shoulder, Lotty said: “I’ll go up first, then you come up in a couple minutes, so that it won’t look like we’re together.” She touched his hand lightly, smiled, then hurried away.
Buck watched her climb the stairs. She held her skirt away from her knees, and in the smoky light, her creamy white stockings shone dully. When he turned away, he saw the waiter he’d bought his beer from coming toward him. Pointing at the big man sprawled unconscious on the floor, the waiter said—“Did you do that?”—as if scolding a dog.
Buck laughed. “He asked me what a mule kicked like. I showed him.”
“Next time, take it outside,” the waiter ordered, then tucked the empty tray under his arm, grabbed the big man by his ankles, and dragged him into a corner where nobody would trip over him.
Buck waited a few minutes, then pushed through the crowd to the stairs. He was almost to the top when he heard a woman scream. Taking the rest of the steps three at a time, he rounded the corner into the large central room at the head of the stairs where the whores conducted the financial end of their business, before taking their clients to a crib down the hall. He saw Sally lunging at Lotty with a polished stiletto in her hand. Lotty screamed again as the blade pierced her breast. She staggered back against a piano where an elderly piano player with a shiny baldhead scrambled to get out of the way. Sally followed closely, her face ugly with rage as she forced the slim blade all the way in. Then she yanked it free and plunged it in once more.
A choked cry was ripped from Buck’s throat as he rushed forward. He didn’t see the International’s upstairs bouncer, a big black man with arms and legs as thick as newel posts, charging into the fray like a maddened bull. The bouncer crashed into Buck from the side and sent him stumbling. As Buck struggled to keep his balance, a shot roared from the door to the balcony that extended over the International’s verandah. The bullet slammed into the wall a few inches above Buck’s head, gouging a hole in the plaster.
Buck threw himself to the floor just as a second shot rang out. He figured the bullet was meant for him, but it was Sally whose strangled grunt rose painfully on the heels of the pistol’s blast. Buck rolled onto his side, palming his Colt. A third bullet tore into the carpet in front of him, just before he snapped a round at a lean, shadowy figure crouched at the balcony door, but the Colt’s report was drowned out by the deafening bellow of a double-barreled shotgun, wielded by the bald piano player.
Powder smoke filled the room; at the balcony door, buckshot had ripped away a large section of the jamb. The opening itself was empty, though—Sally’s assassin having already fled.
Buck scrambled to his feet. The bouncer was down on one knee in the middle of the room, a snub-nosed .44 cap-and-ball revolver gripped tightly in one huge paw. The piano player stood with his back to the wall, looking pale and shaken; both barrels of his shotgun trickled smoke. Sally lay on the floor near the bouncer, a bullet hole above her right eye. Lotty lay a few feet away, Sally’s stiletto hilt-deep in her chest.
“God damn,” the bouncer hissed, staggering to his feet.
Buck holstered his Colt, then raised both hands shoulder high to show that he wasn’t a threat.
Turning to the piano player, the bouncer said: “Sweet Jesus, Gene, what happened?”
Leaving the two saloon employees to sort out the details. Buck moved to the balcony door. He drew his Colt before poking his head past the splintered jamb, but the deck was empty. Keeping his thumb over the hammer, he slipped outside.
The balcony spanned the breadth of the saloon facing Front Street. It was sixty feet long but barely eight wide. A low white railing surrounded the outer edge. There was a single window on Buck’s right, several more on his left, but no other doors and no outside stairs.
Buck edged over to the solitary window on his right. It was closed, but a lamp burned inside. When he tapped lightly on the glass with the muzzle of his pistol, the bedsprings squeaked noisily. A man wearing only his hat lifted the sash. “Whazz all th’ shootin’?”
“Did you see someone run past here?” Buck asked.
“Yeah, coup’la seconds ’go. Whazz all th’ shootin’?”
“Go back to bed,” Buck advised, moving on. He sidled up to the railing on the west end of the balcony and peered around the corner, into the alley—the same alley where Mase had been gunned down only a few days before. He didn’t see anyone, but there wasn’t much light to see by; at ground level, it was dark enough to hide a dozen gunmen. Still, Buck knew he couldn’t wait there forever. The odds were that whoever had shot Sally was still running.
Holstering his Colt, Buck stepped gingerly over the railing. There was a rain barrel below him, fastened to the saloon by a twist of wire. Grasping the bottom crosspiece of the railing, Buck carefully lowered himself until he could feel the barrel’s rim under his feet. Then, releasing his hold on the railing, he stepped away from the barrel and dropped to the ground, drawing his Colt as he straightened.
His breathing was shallow as he made his way down the alley. At the far end he came to a large, weedy lot, littered with empty tins and broken bottles. Beyond that was a pasture where several yearling Holsteins grazed. The rear of the Oxbow Billiards Hall, a bullwhackers’ joint, blocked escape to the east. To the west was another empty lot behind the general store, then an abandoned wagon yard, given up the year before for a larger facility across town. Several small, dilapidated vehicles sat behind the stables, waiting to be sold or parted out. Surrounding them was a network of corrals and runways—a jungle of shadows, rife with hiding places.
Buck moved instinctively in that direction, but hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when he heard the sharp, metallic chatter of a pistol being cocked behind him. He froze, not even sneaking a peek over his shoulder.
“That’s real smart, sonny,” a man said. “Now go ahead and drop that hogleg, or I swear I’ll blow a hole in you big enough to run a wagon tongue through.”
Buck let the Colt drop, then eased around as the figure of a stocky man with a drawn revolver emerged from the shadows of the International’s rear door. At first Buck didn’t recognize him. Then a piece of moonlight glinted off the nickel-plated star pinned to his chest and Buck exhaled loudly. He started to lower his hands, but Sam Dunbar barked for him to keep them high.
“I’m Buck McCready,” Buck said, “I’m not the one you’re after.”
“You just keep reaching for them stars till I tell you not to.”
“You’re letting whoever shot Sally Hayes get away.”
“You’ve got an active mouth for someone staring into the business end of a Forty-Five. You ought to rein it in a bit, before it gets you in more trouble than you already are.”
Buck glanced once more at the sheriffs pistol. It was one of the new Army Colt models that had been introduced the year before, and still somewhat of a rarity outside of military circles. But it was pointed at his belly, the hammer eared back and the muzzle yawning big as a water spout, and Buck reached silently higher.
“That’s better,” Dunbar said, pleased. “I like a man who knows when to shut his trap. Kick that hogleg over here where I can reach it.”
Buck placed the toe of his boot behind his .44 and scooted it across the grass. Dunbar picked it up, held the muzzle to his nose, and sniffed loudly. “This don’t bode in your favor,” the sheriff said, tucking Buck
’s Colt behind his belt. “It’s been fired.”
“It wasn’t me who shot her.”
“Shot who?”
“Sally Hayes. Haven’t you heard?”
“You just answer the questions, sonny. I’ll ask them.”
At the lawman’s prodding, Buck related the events he’d witnessed upstairs, omitting only his own involvement that evening with Sally and Lotty.
Finally Dunbar said: “That’s enough. Let’s go back and talk to the bouncer and piano player.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Come on, McCready. You ride point.”
They returned to the saloon, climbing the back stairs to the central foyer where the two women had been killed. Buck expected the place to be filled with gawkers, but there was only the bouncer, the piano player, Tom Ashley, and a couple of working girls. The bodies of Sally and Lotty had been taken away, although the carpet was still stained where they had bled. Everyone looked at Buck when he stepped through the door, but only Ashley continued to stare at him after Dunbar entered the room.
“What’s been going on up here, Tom?” the sheriff asked mildly.
“Nothin’ to get worked up over. Couple gals got into a brawl.” “McCready thinks they’re dead.”
“What’s he doin’ here, anyway?” Ashley demanded.
“He’s here because I told him to be here. When I want him somewhere else, I’ll tell him to go there.”
“Just seems like he’s always pokin’ around, askin’ too damn’ many questions.”
“About what?” Dunbar inquired, but Ashley abruptly changed the subject.
“Yeah, there was a fight. That god-damn’ Sally knifed Lotty over some argument been brewin’ between ’em a couple days now, then someone shot Sally.” He glared at Buck. “Might ’a’ been him.”
Dunbar looked at the piano player. “What about it, Gene? Did young McCready here shoot Sally?”
“No, sir. Whoever shot Sally did so from over there.” He indicated the door to the balcony, its frame riddled and torn. “This fella”—he nodded at Buck, then to the door leading to the main room downstairs—“was standing right about there when the shooting started.”
The Long Hitch Page 6
