Staring in awe at Wildhorn’s lifeless lump on the street, Tierney neck reined his pinto around sharply, bellowing, “Fall back! Fall back!”
They’d likely expected him, a lone lawman, to hole up in the jailhouse with a rifle and take only potshots at them from windows while they burned him out or starved him out. Or waited until he’d chewed through his ammo. They hadn’t expected him to meet them head on and lay his rifle sights on their leader so unabashedly, and then to kill their best shooter outright.
Hawk continued firing the Henry, wounding two more before they’d gotten their horses on leashes and kicked them all back down Wyoming Street in a fog of broiling dust and a din of whinnying, frightened animals and pounding hooves. One of the three they’d left in the street behind him rolled onto his back and, cursing through gritted teeth, began slipping a big horse pistol from a shoulder sheath showing beneath the flap of his wolf coat.
Hawk fired his sixteenth and final round through the man’s heart, leaving him grinding his heels and spurs into the dirt as he died. Hawk tripped the lever near the end of the Henry’s octagonal barrel to open the loading sleeve. Tierney’s riders were a hundred yards away from him now and dwindling quickly into the eastern distance, obscured by a brown dust cloud touched with the salmon lances of the setting sun.
Quickly, heart thudding, knowing they might circle around him and give him a much harder time of it, Hawk slipped rimfire .44 cartridges down the loading sleeve until he had fifteen in the barrel and one in the breech. He stood in the middle of the street, where the dust and powder smoke continued to sift and waft, and stared after the gang, keeping his ears pricked in case they decided to split up and surround him.
At the far eastern end of the street, there was only dust and the darkening land beyond the town. Had they decided to call it a day? Tierney was likely losing too much blood to . . .
Wait.
Hawk strained his eyes as he peered down the vacant street. A figure appeared no bigger than a dust mote. It grew to the size of the tip of his little finger, and he could make out Tierney’s snowy hair hanging to the shoulders of his blue greatcoat.
The man held his cream’s reins high in one hand, and he turned a full circle as he shouted angrily, his voice sounding crisp and clear on the high, dry air: “Good folks of Trinity, if my son is not released by sundown tomorrow, I’ll burn the town to the ground! I’ll kill your men and rape your women! I’ll leave your children wandering the countryside as orph-annnzzzzz!”
The threat echoed over the tall false facades.
Tierney jerked his horse around once more, batted his boots against its flanks, and lunged away. In seconds, he was heading off down the curving eastern trail, his blue figure atop the cream mount diminishing quickly until it was swallowed by the piñon-studded knolls and hogbacks.
Hawk lowered his rifle. Up and down both sides of the street, men were moving cautiously out from the shops and saloons. Both the Laramie and the Four Aces were down that way, near the Poudre River House. The men shuttled weary glances after the gang and then to Hawk and back again.
Footsteps sounded behind Hawk and he turned his head to see Carson Tarwater strolling toward him, as much as a wooden-footed man could stroll. He wore his customary, bemused grin that set him apart from all others. His bowler hat and his lack of an apron said he’d closed up his tack and feed store for the day.
“That’s Blue Tierney—fire and brimstone fury. They say his pa was a Baptist preacher.” He clamped a Denver newspaper under his arm and stared down at the three dead men in the street.
“I’ll be damned,” Tarwater mused aloud, nodding at the dead regulator lying twisted on his side, tongue poking out from between the man’s scarred lips, long beard bent under his chin, his eyes wide and staring at the ground. “Tierney’s really got himself outfitted. Must be stealin’ horses from the bigger outfits around.”
Tarwater started past Hawk, stepping with a grunt over Wildhorn. “Believe I’ll see how cold they’re servin’ the beer over at the Four Aces.”
As he walked east, Hawk saw Reb Winter strolling west. The big odd-jobber was a block away and closing, giving Tarwater a shy nod, then lowering his gaze to the blood staining the street around the dead men. The deputy sheriff’s badge glinted on Reb’s coverall bib.
“Appreciate the warning, Reb.”
“Ah, it weren’t nothin’, Gid. A blind man coulda seen the dust cloud them boys was lifting. Holy shit—is that Jack Wildhorn?” Reb was aghast.
“That’s what I’m told.”
Hawk heard more footsteps behind him, and he turned to see Hy Booker and a young man about fourteen or fifteen, Booker’s sullen son, heading toward the fresh carrion. “Do me a favor, will you, Reb?”
“What’s that?”
“Mind the store. Don’t let anyone in. Or out.” Hawk clamped a hand on the big kid’s heavy shoulder. “You see any trouble, give me that three-shot signal again?”
“I’d be right happy to do that, Gid. I’m your deputy, now, remember?” Reb rose proudly on his boot toes. “Where you goin’?”
“I’m tired. Think I’ll take a bath and a catnap so I’m fresh for tonight and tomorrow.”
“Gid?”
Hawk had started walking east. Now he turned and looked back at the young man. “What’re you gonna do if Blue Tierney makes good on his threat?”
“It wouldn’t make much sense to burn the town till he gets his son out of the jail—now would it?”
Hawk winked at the younker and continued walking away. Reb stared after him, his normally optimistic gaze now cast with apprehension.
Hawk felt the eyes of half the town on him as he pushed through batwings of the Four Aces Saloon. The conversational din in the place could be heard in the street until all faces swung toward Hawk. Then most of the mouths stopped moving, and the silence settled so that a man could have heard a mouse scratching beneath the floorboards.
A craggy-faced oldster dressed in ragged prospector’s garb bunched his lips disapprovingly and pulled his weather-stained canvas hat down low on his forehead.
The dozen or so drinkers and gassers swung their gazes to track Hawk as their newly appointed sheriff walked over to the long, elaborate, L-shaped bar that ran along the saloon’s right wall. Carson Tarwater stood at the bar, his wooden foot propped on the brass rail that ran along the floor.
From the far side of the saloon, a man said in a hushed voice barely above a whisper, “He made fast work of them holdup men, but I’d like to see how he’s gonna handle this.”
“Shoulda steered clear o’ the Tierneys,” another man groused as the conversations around the saloon began rising gradually once more so that Hawk could clearly hear another man complain, “I don’t care who he is—you poke a stick at a wildcat like Blue Tierney, you’re gonna get bit. Gonna git the whole town bit!”
Tarwater turned to the last man who’d spoken—a stocky man sitting about ten feet from the bar and with his back to Tarwater and Hawk. “Yeah, hell, they were just a couple whores that got knocked around,” the councilman said with mild sarcasm, smiling at Hawk. “Ain’t that right, Arlin?”
The stocky gent glanced over his shoulder. His face flushed with chagrin as he slid his small eyes between Tarwater and Hawk. Then he jerked it back toward his tablemates and sort of hunkered down over his beer.
The bartender had come over to stand in front of Hawk, an expectant gleam in his eyes over which his mussed, dark brown hair hung at an angle so that the left eye was nearly hidden behind it.
“Bourbon,” Hawk said.
“Old Kentucky?”
“There another kind?”
The barman plucked a shot glass off the pyramid standing on a clean, white towel. He splashed bourbon from a bottle and slid the shot glass in front of Hawk. “On the house. I do appreciate what you’re doin’, Mr. Hawk.” He smiled grimly. “Though I got a feelin’ you ain’t gonna be amongst the living much longer. And most of us prob’ly ain’t, neither.�
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As the apron headed down the bar to serve a couple of punchers who’d just come in, Tarwater raised his beer. “To the beginning of the end of lawlessness in Trinity.”
Hawk arched a brow at him.
“Those were the words, roughly paraphrased, that Sheriff Stanley began his last speech with.”
“Here, here.” Hawk threw back half the bourbon shot.
He stood holding the glass on the bar in his hands, inspecting the room via the polished back bar mirror. There was a sparse crowd, but he knew from his experience in other towns that when there was pressing business to discuss, like the business of the three dead Tierney men in the street, a larger crowd even than usual for a Saturday night would soon be gathered. The gestures of the men in heated conversation around him were forceful, passionate, and as he watched he saw more than one head bob in his direction, indicating the subject of their discussion.
“What’re you gonna do, Hawk?”
He glanced at Tarwater regarding his dark visage in the mirror. Turning to the actual man, who then turned to him, Hawk said, “The carpenters promised to have the gallows built by the end of the day tomorrow. I intend to hang Brazos, Hostetler, and One-Eye as soon as the hangman gets here. I’m hoping he arrives on Monday’s train, though I haven’t heard back from him yet.”
He threw back the last of the shot.
“That’s a mighty deep creek you’re wading,” Tarwater said with a sigh.
“I’ve waded ’em before. But I’m not fool enough to believe I won’t need a hand crossing this one.” Hawk refilled his glass from the bourbon bottle, turned to Tarwater, and rested his right elbow on the zinc bar top. “Any lawman’s only as good as the town he’s protecting. How badly do you think these people want to see law and order brought to Trinity?”
Tarwater sipped his beer then licked foam off his clean upper lip. “Speaking for myself, I have an old English Enfield gathering dust in my broom closet. The British sent the damn things too late to help the Confederacy, but I’d hate to not put it to some good use.”
“I figured I could lean on you in a pinch, Tarwater.” Hawk glanced at the gradually growing crowd to his left. “How far would the rest of the town go to save their town, their families from Tierney’s riders?”
Tarwater looked over the men involved in passionate conversations. Some looked angry. Others afraid. The way they kept glancing at Hawk, he wasn’t sure he knew whom they were most angry at or afraid of—Hawk or Tierney.
Turning back to the Trinity sheriff, Tarwater said, “I suspect a few would grab their old army sabers and pitchforks. Hard to know for sure until someone started spreading the word to ’em, started ’em thinking about it, building their nerve.”
Hawk threw his entire second shot back and ran his sleeve across his mustache. He grabbed his rifle off the bar. “Start passing the word that they might be needed, will you? But only those who can shoot, and those willing to shoot to kill if I go down or if Tierney sets fire to the town, need consider it. I don’t want fence straddlers.”
Tarwater spread his lips and nodded. Then he furled a dubious brow. “Aren’t you afraid, Hawk?”
Hawk thought about that, probing his own heart. He was mildly surprised at what he found there. Both his brows wrinkled, and his eyes dropped uncertainly as he said, “Yeah.”
He turned and started heading for the batwings and the darkening night beyond. “Yeah, I reckon I am.” He chuckled as he pushed through the doors. “Imagine that.”
20.
“NO BLONDY”
AT the Poudre River House, Hawk ordered a bath and a bottle to be brought to his room, and then he went up and shucked out of his clothes. The Chinaman, Baozhai, brought both the bath and the bottle, and when he’d finished filling the tub, he regarded Hawk sitting in a chair by the window, clad in only a towel while prying the cork out of the fresh bourbon bottle.
“Where blondy? No blondy?” Looking disappointed, Baozhai raked his hands down his shoulders to indicate long hair.
“No blondy.” Hawk flipped the man a tip.
“No blondy—thas too bad!” The Chinaman shuffled off with two empty buckets, Indian moccasins rasping across the rug, and opened the hall door, laughing. “She settle you down good, huh?”
Laughing, he shuffled out of the room and closed the door behind him.
“Yeah,” Hawk grunted, dropping the towel. “She settle me down good.”
He stepped into the steaming tub. It was that cool, damp time of the year when the mountain weather penetrated the very marrow of your bones and took root there. As directed, Baozhai had made the bath hot enough to scald a chicken, and the hot liquid crawled slowly up Hawk’s lean, rugged frame as he eased himself into the tub.
The water bit like a dog’s sharp teeth until he’d let it settle over him; then it felt as welcoming as embryonic fluid, and he rested his head back and napped in it before waking, refreshed, and scrubbed himself clean with the long-handled scrub brush and unscented soap cake provided.
He’d climbed out of the tub and was just starting to shave in the mirror over the washstand when someone tapped on the door. Hawk dropped his freshly stropped, bone-handled straight razor into the porcelain basin, and grabbed his Russian .44 from its holster hanging from a bedpost.
“Who is it?”
Silence. Then, haltingly: “Miss Mitchell.”
Hawk dropped the Russian back into its holster, toweled the shaving cream from his face. He tightened the towel around his waist and opened the door.
She stood facing him in a form-fitting brown dress with a fur collar. Her freshly brushed hair was down, and she held the handle of an oilcloth-covered wicker basket hooked over one arm.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I came to check on you. I heard the shooting, of course, as did nearly everyone in the county, and”—she held up the basket from which emanated the succulent aromas of a home-cooked meal—“I had a feeling you probably hadn’t bothered with supper yet.”
Hawk took the basket. “Much obliged.”
He figured she’d leave, but when she stood there, averting her eyes from his bare torso, making no move to retreat down the hall, he pulled the door open wider and stepped back into the room.
“Come in.”
“I shouldn’t.” She glanced around him at the tub. “Obviously, you’re . . .”
“Come on in anyway, Regan.”
She looked around skeptically, then stepped haltingly into the room.
“Perhaps you could put some clothes on?”
Hawk gave a wry snort as he set the basket on the dresser. The room had come equipped with a privacy screen, and he’d grabbed his black denim trousers and was moving toward the screen when she said, “Wait.”
Hawk turned to her.
She’d moved over to the bed, and she slumped down to the edge of it now, wrapping one hand around the fingers of the other, and sort of twisting them, closing her front teeth down on her lower lip.
Hawk felt the back of his neck warm with blood. He tossed his pants onto a chair and walked over to her. She did not look up at him though he stood only a foot in front of her, until he reached out and lifted her chin with the first two fingers of his right hand.
Her eyes met his, her lips slightly parted. A flush had risen in her cheeks, and her breasts, half-revealed by the dress that was lower cut than any other that he’d seen her wearing, rose and fell heavily. Hawk dropped to his knees before her, leaned toward her, placing his hands on the edge of the mattress on either side of her, propping himself on his outstretched arms, and pressed his lips to hers.
She responded hungrily, running her hands up and down his arms that bulged with muscle and corded tendons, wrapping her arms around his waist, raking her fingers up and down his back. The tip of her tongue pressed against his lips, and he sucked at it, then mashed his own tongue against it, rising up and wrapping his hands around her slender back, drawing her even closer as he kissed her.
She groaned, digging her hands deeper into his back, her fingernails gouging the flesh just above his hips.
After a time, he pulled away from her, lowered his face to her corset, and pressed his lips to the valley between her breasts. Blood surged through him, and he lifted his head suddenly to begin unbuttoning her dress. It took both of them to remove her whalebone corset. When it was on the floor behind him, he brushed her hands away from the straps of her camisole and removed it himself, then slid her pantaloons and pink underpants down her long, slender legs, kissing the smooth flesh as he exposed it.
He lingered down there for a long time, until she was arching her back and keening like a wildcat in heat. Then he rose up off his knees, leaving his towel on the bed, and mounted her, silencing her mewling, desperate cries with his own mouth.
After an hour’s worth of scrambling around beneath the sheets, she’d somehow gotten on top of him, and Hawk lifted his head and shoulders to catch her as she sagged backward toward his ankles, sweaty and spent, her hair damp and disheveled. He eased her over to the other side of the bed, and she stared up at him as though through an opaque second lid.
A strand of hair was pasted to her cheek, the end touching the right corner of her mouth.
Hawk smoothed the hair back and kissed her long and tenderly. When he pulled his head back, she wrapped her arms around his neck, grunting and frowning impishly, trying to draw him back down to her.
“Hell, I gotta go,” he grunted, prying her hands off his neck, letting her arms fall back down to the rumpled bed. “I left Reb with the prisoners.”
“Tierney won’t be back tonight,” she said. “I heard you wounded him. He won’t send his men alone.”
“Just the same . . .” Hawk dropped his feet to the floor and started to rise.
“Gideon?”
He sat back down on the edge of the bed.
“I could love you, Gid.”
Gallows Express Page 16
