Gibson and Tomlin wore sheepish expressions when they returned to the cabin. Rose—fully dressed in a long blue dress that was pretty well faded—was at the stove and Reno was feeding pieces of the chair to the fire he had built in the fireplace.
Glancing over his shoulder at the two men, Reno caught their expressions and straightened up at once. “What’s wrong?”
“We planted Murdo back of the barn—like you said, Reno,” Tomlin said. “But we couldn’t find that fellow Murdo shot. He wasn’t in either of the barns.”
Reno looked over at Rose.
“Frank?” she said, looking at the two. “You couldn’t find him?”
“No, ma’am,” said Gibson.
She looked at Reno. “He’s probably run away,” Rose told him, planting a full pot of coffee down on the table. “I’ll bet he’s halfway to Silver City by now.” She shook her head. “Look at this place, Johnny. You should have heard what he told me he had up here. And I believed him, left Sal’s place and married the lying sonofabitch. Well, I don’t care if he’s dead or alive—just so’s I get out of this!”
Reno frowned. “You ain’t thinking of throwing in with us, are you, Rose?”
“Why not?”
“Not with my bunch. Never. Women only cause trouble.”
“Just until I get out of this godforsaken country, that’s all, Johnny.” She looked at him, her dark eyes glittering in the light of the fireplace. “Don’t forget. It can get pretty cold out there on the trail some nights—and I know how to keep a man warm, whichever gets the coldest. I figure I’ll be paying my way.” She looked at Tom and Wes. Their mouths were hanging open. “Ain’t that right, fellows?”
They looked hopefully—almost pleadingly—at Reno.
Reno shrugged. “Only until we reach Lawson—that’s halfway across Montana, Rose. A long ride.” That reminded Reno of something. He turned to the two men. “I don’t care which of you does it, but take a flatbed and go back for our saddles. Tonight.”
“I’ll go,” said Tom as the two of them started for their places at the table.
Rose glanced over Reno. “Which way you going?”
“Through the Absarokas into Montana territory. I figure best way’s through White Horn Pass.”
“If you’re not in a hurry.”
“As far as I know, there’s no one after us.”
“Then White Horn Pass.” She smiled. “But the nights get real cold up that high.”
Reno started for the table, the powerful aroma of the fresh coffee pulling him like a magnet. “Well—like you said—we got something to take care of that.”
She nodded and turned back to the stove, humming softly to herself, obviously elated at the prospect of getting out of this country—and possibly back to her former, more lucrative employment.
Reno thought of her husband then as he pulled a chair up to the rough table and reached for the coffee pot. She called him Frank and the poor sonofabitch was out there somewhere right now, probably bleeding to death as he agonized over the terrible things that were being done to his faithful wife by her cruel and inhuman captors.
Three
Wolf rode slowly into Silver City. Since before noon his thigh wound had forced him to let the black pick his own gait. As he rode, he kept his eye lidded to shield it from the glare of the late-afternoon sun. But ahead of him he saw all he needed to see. A weathered huddle of buildings crouched in the towering shadow of the Big Horns.
A plank bridge carried him over a creek into the town. For a while he rode beside empty single story frame houses, their curtainless windows coated with dust, before he came to the row of false-front buildings on both sides of the street that made up the town’s business district. Another road cut south out of the foothills to form an intersection ahead of him. On the four corners sat a hotel, a general store, and two large saloons. Across from the hotel Wolf saw the livery stable, and headed for it.
Easing his weary mount to a halt in front of the livery, Wolf dismounted carefully, favoring his thigh. An old man materialized out of the stable’s gloom, his cheek swollen with tobacco.
“Second stall back,” he told Wolf, loosing a black darter to the ground beside him.
Wolf gave the black a small drink at the street trough first, then led him into the stall, removed the saddle and the rest of his gear. Leaving the stable, he asked the hostler for the best hotel and was told there was only one, the Silver City Hotel across the street.
Carrying his blanket roll, saddlebags and rifle, Wolf walked across the hard-packed street and registered. There was a room with tubs on the first floor in back. After he had taken advantage of this luxury, he ate in the hotel’s cramped dining room, then drifted through the lobby into the hotel’s elaborate saloon.
Taking a seat at a table in the far corner, he kept his eye on the batwings as he sipped his beer. They were seldom still. From the look of the saloon’s customers, it was obvious that most of the men were working claims in the nearby mountains—or were on the dodge. Few cattlemen or nesters were in evidence.
Reno’s trail was more than a week old by this time and pretty cold. But it had led due West to this town and Wolf hoped to find out if Reno had swung south to his former haunts or continued on west. Reno might even have gone north, though Wolf doubted it. What he was hoping was that all that money had burnt a hole in his gang’s pockets and caused them to dig in for a while in this place. Its saloons seemed healthy enough and there was obviously no lack of poker tables or women. And if they had stayed they sure as hell would have left some kind of impression in the minds of the townspeople. But from the looks of those around him in the hotel saloon, he’d do a lot better if he kept his badge in his pocket.
Three bar girls strolled into the place, all of them obviously Mexican with their olive complexions, their dark, sorrowful eyes and long black hair down well past their shoulders. The saloon’s owner was too cheap to provide them with the usual red-spangled dresses, but their purpose was obvious enough. Soon they were disappearing in the direction of the hotel lobby with their customers. Their cribs were on the hotel’s first floor in back. Wolf had noticed them when he took his bath earlier.
They all seemed reasonably content with their lot, except for one of them, who kept strictly to business, which for her appeared to be waiting on the customers at the tables. But she was soon enough in demand. Taller than the others, with more meat on her bones, she seemed an irresistible attraction to the older, more grizzled patrons of the place. As the evening wore on and she found herself more and more manhandled, the proud, angry light in her eyes flared more openly.
At last, unable to witness the cuffing and the casual brutality the girl was being forced to endure, he paid his tab and returned to the hotel lobby. His thigh wound was throbbing painfully by this time and the dressing was warm with fresh blood. He was anxious to get up to his room where he could tend to it.
As he asked the desk clerk for his key, he heard a scuffle behind him and turned to see the tall waitress being hauled past the desk by two older men, their yellow teeth gleaming wolfishly through their tobacco-stained beards. A small fat man—the hotel owner—hustled out of the saloon after them and tried to talk the two men out of taking the girl upstairs with them.
But the two men would have none of it.
Both of them had obviously just ridden in from their claim. Their boots were heavy with mud, their faces and hands black from the sand and gravel they had panned that day. And they stank. The one closest to Ben was the tallest—a lean, raw-faced man with sick, furtive eyes.
“Now listen here, Carl,” he was telling the hotel owner, “we been steady customers this past year and we always pay up. We know what you’re doin’. You’re saving up this here Mex for yourself. Well, we’ll pay you double tonight. And all of it in gold dust. So leave us be!”
“That’s right, Carl,” said the shorter of the two, nodding vigorously. He was more unsteady on his feet than the taller one, but he held the girl�
��s wrist in a viselike grip.
“Why don’t you fellers go back and wait for Delores?” Carl suggested. “She’ll be back soon. This ain’t right, Slim!”
“No. We want Juanita. We been sizing her up for more’n a year now. And we is primed good and proper!” Slim’s eyes gleamed as he looked the girl up and down. Reaching over, he grabbed a fistful of her buttocks and squeezed. The girl made a tiny cry. The two men burst into laughter.
Wolf saw the hotel owner wavering. He was obviously unwilling to disappoint paying customers. On the other hand, he seemed to care a great deal for this girl and did not want these men to have her.
Wolf caught the girl’s eye and winked at her so that she would not mistake his intention and would know enough to go along. Then he moved toward her, a broad smile on his face.
“Hey, Juanita!” he cried, embracing the girl warmly. “I just got in. I told you I’d be here tonight. How come you’re with these two?”
“Hey, hold it right there, mister!” protested Slim. “Juanita’s with us!”
Ignoring Slim, Wolf continued to embrace the girl, whispering into her ear: “Go along! My name’s Wolf.”
Wolf stepped back from the girl. As he did so, she smiled brilliantly and tipped her head. “Wolf!” she cried. “Where you been, you son of a gun!”
Slim swore, grabbed Wolf’s right arm and spun him around. “Now, you listen here, you one-eyed varmint,” he snarled. “I ain’t gonna let—”
But that was as far as he got. Wolf backhanded Slim across the cheek, sending him reeling against the desk. His buddy released Juanita and took a step backward, clawing for his gun. But Wolf’s own six-gun was out well ahead of the half-soused miner. Before Sam could bring up his gun, Wolf brought his own down hard on the little man’s wrist, knocking his six-gun to the floor.
“Wolf!”
The cry came from the girl. Wolf whirled. Slim was charging him. Holstering his gun, Wolf ducked aside. The fellow reeled past him, turned and came at him again. Wolf stopped him with a stiff blow to his midsection, then measured carefully. As the tall man straightened to come at him once more, Wolf drove his right fist forward and around, catching the miner squarely on the point of his chin. He followed through so well that his arm was deep across his body as Slim hurtled back across the small lobby and into the saloon beyond. There was a shout from the saloon as Slim crashed backward into it, then a silence.
Wolf waited for Slim to reappear in the doorway. When he didn’t, Wolf turned back to the other miner. The man had sunk to the floor, holding onto his swollen wrist. His Colt was lying at his feet, but he made no effort to reach for it.
Wolf turned to the girl. “My room is at the head of the stairs,” he told her.
She turned and hurried up the stairs ahead of him. Without looking back at the miner or the owner, Wolf followed the girl up the stairs and into his room.
As soon as they were safely inside it, Juanita locked the door and turned to face Wolf, her face alive with gratitude. Wolf sank onto the edge of his bed, aware only of an infinite weariness. He had been riding since sunup that day and the only relaxation he had allowed himself in all that time was his bath and supper. Looking across the room at Juanita now, the absurdity of his situation almost caused him to laugh.
Juanita moved quickly across the room to him. He reached out and took her hand gently. “No, Juanita,” he told her. “Just stay here until the saloon clears out. Until those miners are gone, at least.”
She smiled in relief, though he knew she would have let him take her if he were so inclined. “Thank you,” she said. “Those two men are like animals. The other girls have told me about them. I did not want to go with them.” She shuddered involuntarily.
“Who are they?”
“Miners. They have a claim somewhere in the mountains, but it is well hidden. The tall one is Slim, the smaller one is called Sam.”
Wolf nodded. By this time his thigh wound was throbbing so violently that he was beginning to worry about it. When he had taken the bath, he had noticed how raw the area around the stitches was. The thought occurred to him now that they might have ripped out during the fight. He unbuttoned his Levi’s and pulled them off, exposing the blood-soaked dressing just below the cut-off long johns.
The moment Juanita saw the bloodied bandage, she uttered a small cry and dropped to one knee by the bedside; then slowly she began to unwind the dressing. Her fingers were deft and gentle and as soon as the bandage was removed, Wolf looked close. He felt better at once. Though much blood had oozed through the sutures, they appeared to be holding.
Juanita got to her feet. “I’ll be right back. You stay still,” she commanded.
Wolf nodded and lay back on the bed and watched her hurry from the room. In a surprisingly short time she was back with a pan of steaming water, fresh bandages and what looked like an enormous bar of yellow soap.
“I will clean it for you,” she told him, as she hurried across the room and placed the pan down on the floor beside the bed. “You will see. It is a very ugly wound, but I am very good at this. You will see.”
And she was. She did not hesitate to cause him pain as she cleansed the area around the wound, including the wound itself. The yellow soap stung, but that fact comforted him and when she rebandaged it, the bandage was firm, supportive—yet not unduly tight. Wolf stood up gingerly, testing his thigh by putting sudden weight on the left foot. It felt much better.
He sat back on the edge of the bed and smiled at the girl. “Very good,” he said. “It feels much better.”
Pleased, she nodded and began unbuttoning his shirt. In a moment she had undressed him completely. She uttered a barely audible gasp when she saw the scars that laced his chest, especially the deeply puckered one that had bent his left shoulder. But she said nothing as she pulled back the bedclothes and covered his nakedness. Then she pushed him gently onto the pillow.
“You rest now,” she told him. “I will be right back.”
She returned a moment later with another pan of water which she placed on the nightstand by the bed. Dropping a facecloth into it, she wrung it out and placed it on Wolf’s forehead. The sudden, blessed coolness of it made him realize that he did indeed have a slight fever.
He smiled at the relief the cool cloth gave him and closed his eye.
“Juanita,” he said, after a while, “I am looking for five men.”
She paused in the act of placing the cloth back onto his forehead. “Are you a lawman?” she asked.
He opened his eye and reached over to take her hand. “Yes, Juanita. And I want those men.”
She disengaged her hand from his and placed the damp cloth gently down on his forehead.
“I know of the men you seek,” she told him softly. “I will tell you all I know.”
He closed his eye and listened as she told him of the five men who had ridden into Silver City more than a week before. They had taken rooms in the hotel and proceeded to pay generously for whatever they wanted. One of them—a man called Murdo—played poker and faro almost around the clock and lost great amounts of money without complaint. The others had preferred to stay with a woman—all except their leader. He was a restless, surly man who did not seem to like the town.
“Johnny Reno?” Wolf prodded quietly, glancing at her.
The girl nodded. Yes, that was what she had heard them call him. She hated this one. He was a devil. She told of how he had burst into a room the last morning they were in the hotel and killed the man who had been with one of the girls. “The man this Reno killed was not such a good man,” she finished. “But he was kind to Delores and very generous.”
“They were bank robbers, Juanita. That is where they got all that money to be generous with.”
Juanita nodded, her large dark eyes thoughtful. “Si, we knew they must have stole all that money. But we hear of no robbery near here.”
Wolf nodded. “It was from a bank many miles from here—in another county.”
“An
d still you chase them?”
Wolf nodded and closed his eye. “Yes. Still I chase them. It was my fault Johnny Reno walked out of that bank alive.”
“You should not blame yourself. That Reno is a bad one. Besides, I see it in your eyes. You hate this Johnny Reno.”
Wolf frowned. Did he really? Was that what she saw in his eyes when he spoke of Johnny? He found it hard to believe.
“Johnny Reno is an old friend of mine,” he said to Juanita. “I hate what he has done, but I do not hate him—not yet. But I will see to it that he is brought in.”
“He is your friend, this Johnny Reno?” Juanita was astonished.
“Once he was, Juanita. A good friend. I saved his life and he helped me find one of those who had injured me.”
“I see.”
But she could not really understand, Wolf realized. Yet it did not matter to her. A moment later when she put away the cloth and kissed him lightly on the forehead, he closed his eye and dropped heedless into an exhausted sleep.
What sounded like a cannon going off under his bed brought him awake in an instant. He jumped out of bed, reaching for the six-gun he had placed under his pillow. But in the pale light of dawn filtering in through the window, he could see no one. The room was empty.
And then he heard the scuffle of footsteps outside his door, startled shouts, and the sound of a man crying out in rage. In one swift rush Wolf crossed the room and pulled open the door.
The hallway was thick with an acrid pall of gunsmoke and standing resolutely by his door—an overturned chair behind her—was Juanita, a recently fired Colt still clutched in her hand. In her tiny fist the six-gun looked positively enormous.
Wolf swung his gaze to the stairwell and was just in time to see Slim’s dirty face ducking below the floor level. On the wall above the landing there was a neat hole where Juanita’s bullet had gone. Since she had only shot once, Wolf knew she had not hit either Slim or his partner.
But it had sure as hell scared them off—and for that Wolf was grateful.
The Vengeance Seeker 4 Page 3
