There was a curtained doorway at the back wall, to the left of the range. The curtain was fluttering ever so slightly, probably from a draft, for the building wasn’t very tight, but maybe someone had moved it.
Again, Raven called, “Hello,” but was met with the same silence. As she walked toward the curtained doorway, she said, “Mr. Shirley, it’s Raven York. I thought I’d wait here for the stage, maybe ask . . .”
She let her voice trail off. Obviously, the man wasn’t here. Still, her curiosity compelled her to slide the curtain back and stare down the dark hall before her. The door only a couple of feet down the hall on her left was partway open. She opened it farther and glanced in.
It was a crudely furnished office, just a small desk with an unlit lamp on it, a chair, and a single filing cabinet. On the chair sat a woman’s beaded reticule. On the desk lay a long, rectangular book and an ashtray that had been fashioned from a cut-down airtight tin. A couple of cigarettes and a slender black cigar had been stubbed out inside the tin. The cigar was still sending up a thin tendril of gray smoke.
Someone had been here only a few minutes ago.
Raven moved back into the hall. At the end of it, beyond three more curtained doorways on either side, likely a sleeping area for the passengers, maybe a storage area, lay a simple plank door. A gray line of daylight ran along the door’s left side.
Raven walked to it. The door hadn’t been latched. Whoever had been in the building and smoking the cigar had left in a hurry about the same time Raven had entered the place.
She slid her Colt Lightning from its holster and clicked the hammer back. Slowly, she opened the door, peering cautiously out, wary of an ambush. When she had the door wide, she stepped out and looked all around.
Behind the place was a two-hole privy. The barn and corrals were off to the right. The hostler was no longer inside the corral, and neither were the horses. He must have taken them into the barn, out of the wind.
Ahead and to the right of the privy was a woodshed with three open sides. To the right of that was what appeared to be a stable. It had probably belonged to the small gray cabin just beyond it, though, obviously, no one lived in the cabin now, as the roof had fallen in. Weeds and cactus had grown up around the stable.
Raven kept her eyes on the stable because she had just now heard a sound coming from it. It might have been the wind, which was tossing screens of dirt and trash to the east, but she didn’t think so.
She glanced to her left and right, and then, holding the cocked pistol straight out in front of her and drawing her hat down tight by its front brim, she walked ahead and to the right of the stage-station house. She took her time, glancing around, squinting against the blowing dust, wondering who’d been inside the station house and why he’d left in such a hurry after Raven had arrived.
Duke Shirley?
Why would he feel the need to vacate his own station?
The stable’s rear wall faced the west, the direction from which Raven was approaching. Beyond, she could see a corral on the other side of it.
As she neared the structure, which was crudely constructed of small cottonwood poles nailed horizontally to a plank frame, she heard what sounded like voices. A girl’s laugh was abruptly clipped, and a man’s voice rose. There were scuffling sounds, and then the girl laughed once more. Again, the laugh was muffled, as though someone had clamped a hand over the girl’s mouth.
Raven knew from her own experience what she was hearing. But curiosity, maybe even voyeurism, drove her to the stable’s rear wall. Now she could hear grunting from both the man and the woman, and as she stooped to look between two of the weathered-gray cottonwood branches, Raven’s suspicions were confirmed.
Duke Shirley and a girl were inside the stable. Shirley was fully clothed, except that he had the fly of his broadcloth trousers open, and he was driving his fully erect, red cock in and out of the girl, who was bent forward across a steel-banded barrel. The girl’s dress was bunched up around her waist. It had been pulled off her shoulders, laying her breasts bare. Her underwear was in a pile around her ankles.
Her arms were stretched forward across the barrel, and she thrust her round, pale, freckled ass toward Shirley as he drove in and out of her from behind so savagely that his hair flopped into his eyes. He gritted his teeth and grunted like an animal. The girl lifted her head, tossed her long, thick, rust-red hair out of her eyes, and groaned deep in her throat.
“Shut up, God damn it, Verlaine, I ain’t gonna tell you again!” Shirley said in a loud whisper, continuing to fuck the girl.
“S-sorry, fer chrissakes, Duke!” the girl complained, groaning more softly now as Shirley drove her against the barrel. “It just—oh, God—it just feels so good . . . after workin’ in that musty old station house!”
Shirley chuckled between grunts.
Raven backed away from the stable. So Shirley was throwing the wood to the girl who cooked for the stage passengers and provided a clean place for them to sleep on overnight trips. It figured.
Raven had pegged the man as a lecherous coyote the first time he’d ogled her. And then, last night, in his house with his wife and two babies only a few feet away, he’d imagined Raven sitting there in his office, stripped naked and likely bent across his desk, fucking her, too, doggie-style. She’d read such nastiness in the goatish man’s eyes and oily smile.
Such behavior in men was nothing knew to Raven. They were all lusty bastards. Haskell was one of them, though at least he was honest about screwing any woman who caught his eye. He’d never promised Raven anything, and she’d returned the favor. And she doubted that Bear ever promised anything to the women he screwed or ever did anything untoward to get them out of their bloomers.
Raven had to admit that finding herself under the big man’s spell, she’d shed her own bloomers quite willingly . . .
But Duke Shirley was an unfaithful husband and father. A liar and a cheat. Raven wondered if Penny had any idea. As she headed back to the station house, she felt a hard burn of anger deep in her belly. She no longer felt much sympathy for Duke Shirley. Let the robbers rob him blind. But then, they’d also be robbing the man’s wife and children blind.
For that reason and because she’d been instructed to do so by Mr. Pinkerton, Raven had no choice but to do everything she could to stop them.
Men . . .
She was nearly to the rear door of the station house when something moved in the corner of her right eye. She stopped and turned to stare off toward a clump of willows beyond the privy and the woodshed. There were only the willows themselves being thrashed by the wind.
But her eyes hadn’t played tricks on her. She’d seen something more significant move out there.
Wariness touched her as she switched direction and walked toward the willows. Slowly, she unsheathed the Colt Lightning and held it out in front of her, caressing the hammer with her thumb as she strode between the privy and the woodshed.
Gaining the willows, she slowed.
The willows lined a shallow ravine that she hadn’t seen from the cabin. The ravine paralleled the station yard, but then, twenty yards to Raven’s right, it swung sharply northward, carving its way between two low, prickly-pear-studded buttes.
Raven stepped through the willows and into the ravine. She stopped as her eyes scanned the ground. Fresh boot prints appeared in the ravine’s chalky soil, here where the wind took longer to obscure them. They were fresh, maybe only a minute or two old.
Raven’s heartbeat increased.
She’d been right. She had seen someone move. He’d headed down the ravine to Raven’s right and then followed the cut to the north.
Just as Raven started to follow the ravine’s curve toward the buttes, a young woman stepped out from behind a boulder along the wash’s right side. She wore a cream-colored, lace-edged cotton blouse cut and embroidered in the Mexican style. It was
cut low enough to leave her shoulders exposed and her breasts bare nearly to her nipples.
Obviously, she wore nothing beneath it.
Around her waist, she wore a brightly colored sash embroidered with flowers. Her black leather slacks were shoved down into the tops of her black boots adorned with silver tips and spurs.
Her dark brown hair, pulled back by a red bandana, spilled in curls about her shoulders.
Raven had seen the beautiful, dark-eyed brunette before, but she couldn’t remember where. Just as she did remember—she’d been on Haskell’s lap in the Spotted Horse Watering Trough—a man stepped out into the wash. He stopped beside the brunette and turned to face Raven. He wore a long duster, and the duster blew out behind him in the wind, revealing the two pistols holstered on his lean hips.
His face was a maze of long, knotted scars.
And then two more stepped out from behind the boulder. Tall, unshaven men in high-crowned hats, dusters, and billowing neckerchiefs, they were three of the four hombres who had been playing cards in the saloon earlier.
They stared sharp-eyed at Raven, canting their heads to one side, vaguely sneering. All three hooked their thumbs behind their cartridge belts.
“Hey, there, Pinkerton lady,” the first man said, and quirked his mouth corners.
Raven aimed her pistol at the man’s chest, shifting her weight from one boot to the other, raking her eyes across the men and the young woman lined up before her. “What’re you doing out here?” Apprehension was a cold finger poking her back. “Where’s the fourth . . .?”
Raven heard the crunch of a boot setting down in sand and gravel behind her a second too late. Before she could even start to turn around, two beefy arms snaked around her from behind. She smelled man sweat and whiskey. A large, thick hand was closed over her mouth and nose, while the other arm wrapped around her waist, picking her up off her feet.
The man gave a jubilant howl.
Raven triggered the Lightning into the air, but then she dropped the pistol as she desperately tried to pry the man’s big hand off her mouth and nose, before he suffocated her.
But trying to remove that hand from her face was like trying to lift a boulder. It wasn’t coming.
And then, as the big man held her about two feet off the ground, keeping his hand snugged against her nose and mouth, blocking off her wind, everything grew fuzzy and gray before turning completely black.
28
Haskell woke the next morning with his cock feeling like a side of tough beef that had been hammered into submission for the stew pot by a semidemented cook.
He sat up in bed, fisting sleep from his eyes. He could no longer hear the wind, only the soft snores of the girl lying belly-down beside him, one leg hooked over his right one. Through Dulcy’s upstairs room’s single window, he could see that dawn was just beginning to spread a gray glow across the eastern horizon.
The air was refreshingly cool and damp, so different from before the rain, when it had had the texture of rough sandpaper, drying the eyes and nose and lungs. He hoped the washes weren’t flooded to the point of making travel impossible. He had to get back to Spotted Horse and see if the stage had made it in unharassed and generally get to the work that had brought him here.
He threw the sheet aside and looked down at his badly abused manhood. At least, it was still there, and he couldn’t see any blood. As he remembered all the times that he and the girl had fucked each other silly and raw the afternoon and evening before, it even started to stir.
He’d swear the girl was half mountain lion, with the teeth, claws, and tooth-gnashing snarls to prove it.
Bear shook his head to rid his mind of the pesky albeit sexy rememberings and gently slid his leg from beneath Dulcy’s. The girl groaned, turned her head a little, whimpered, and went back to snoring.
He took a moment to admire her pale back and the curve of breast bulging out from beneath her right arm, flattened against the sheets. Then, feeling his cock stir again painfully, he rose and began dressing. He took his time, moving slowly because of stiffness and the chafing she’d given his cock and balls and arms and even his legs and ass—she’d seemed to enjoy digging her fingernails into his buttocks as she’d blown him.
All the while as he dressed and strapped his guns on and slid his bowie knife into his boot, she didn’t stir.
She just continued to snore rhythmically into her pillow.
Bear donned his hat, went to the door that stood open to the narrow, dark hall, pinched the brim to the sleeping girl, and stole out and down the creaky stairs. Going through the immaculate kitchen, touched with the gray of dawn shadows, he felt a lonely pang for Dulcy. She had one hell of a hearty sexual appetite, but he doubted she’d ever marry.
Deep down, just as he himself was, she was a solitary soul. And it seemed that some man had done her wrong enough in the past to turn her against them all for the rest of her life.
Bear couldn’t blame her, he thought, as he opened the door and stepped out onto the stoop. “We are a low-down, depraved, and stupid lot,” he whispered, clicking the door latch closed behind him.
He winced as he adjusted his fly across his aching cock, then moved gingerly down the porch steps and headed across the soggy yard to the barn, the mud squawking beneath his boots. Halfway to the barn, he stopped and turned to face the north, the direction in which the little boneyard lay.
He’d heard something over that way. A muffled bark or squawk. Likely a coyote trying to get at the relatively fresh meat of Danny Stoveville.
Haskell continued into the barn, fed and watered the black, and then rigged the horse to the rented wagon. He mounted up and drove the wagon out into the yard. As he climbed down to close the barn doors, he heard a chortling bark again from the direction of the Stoveville family cemetery.
Staring that way, he scowled.
Coyotes?
Then he remembered the buzzards that had been sitting on the lightning-topped cedar at the edge of the bench the cemetery was on. Curiosity poked at him.
He went over to the wagon, set the brake, and slid his Winchester out of its saddle boot. Leaving the scabbard on the leather-padded seat, he shouldered the rifle, patted the black’s hip, and walked out away from the barn, heading north across the muddy yard.
He crossed the wash and started up the trail to the cemetery but stopped when he realized that the squawks and high-pitched barks were not coming from the hill. They seemed to be issuing from the right side of it.
He moved off the trail and walked around the base of the slope. Now he could hear what sounded like a dozen hens roosting, along with the occasional barks and screechy cries of what could only be buzzards. And then he saw the ragged-winged, bald-headed carrion eaters cavorting around something about fifty yards ahead, in some sparse brush and shrubs with limbs like strap iron, on the other side of two spindly cedars.
Haskell walked toward the milling birds.
There were maybe twelve of them, and they were having a raucous time, hopping and skipping around, getting into territorial skirmishes, and just generally being buzzards. Determined to find out what they were fighting over, the big man rushed the bone cleaners, not yelling, because he didn’t want to awaken Dulcy, but stomping loudly and holding his rifle and arm out threateningly.
Some of the buzzards took ungainly flight, beating their ragged, black wings, while others merely hopped away before turning and raising their wings like geese, as though preparing to use them as weapons.
One of the birds, resembling a withered, bald, hook-nosed old man with flat, coppery eyes, held its ground, chortling and barking like a rabid dog, until Haskell batted the hellion away with his rifle butt. And then he wrinkled his nose against the sickly-sweet stench and looked down at what the birds had been tussling over.
A body had been dug up by mountain lions or coyotes, judging by the tracks. Loose s
and and gravel and a few rocks lay near the man clad in wool and corduroy and a shirt that had at one time been white though now it was blood-crusted and dirt-stained. There wasn’t enough of a face left to know much more than that the carcass had once been a man with a mustache.
His mouth was set in a perpetual grimace; his eyes had been eaten out of their sockets.
But the five-pointed tin star clinging by a thread to the vest of the poor hombre’s badly soiled and torn coat lapel indicated that Haskell was most likely looking at what remained of Jeff Myers, the town marshal of Spotted Horse who’d ridden out here to investigate the stage robberies.
And had promptly disappeared.
Loud voices rose from the direction of the ranch yard.
Haskell wheeled, quickly pumping a cartridge into his Yellowboy’s chamber as hooves hammered, growing louder. A rider appeared, galloping toward him, long brown duster blowing out behind him in the wind.
“I got him!” the man shouted. “He’s over here!”
The man palmed a six-shooter as he batted his boots against his horse’s flanks. The mount lunged toward Haskell, sixty yards away and closing fast.
“You got me?” Haskell growled, graveled by having had the wool pulled over his eyes by Dulcy Stoveville and finding the marshal lying dead out here for the predators to eat.
He raised the Winchester to his shoulder, drew a quick bead on his assailant’s chest, and fired. He wrinkled his nostrils in satisfaction as the rider rolled backward off his galloping horse’s rump with a scream and hit the ground with a bone-crunching thump.
“Uh-uh,” Haskell said, ejecting the spent, smoking cartridge and seating a fresh one. “I don’t think so. I got you, amigo!”
More shouts rose from the direction of the ranch yard. Apparently, Dulcy’s gang had gathered here and found his wagon. Haskell stepped aside as the hardcase’s horse galloped toward him. Bear grabbed the reins trailing along the ground. He jerked on the reins, half-stopping the horse, which gave an anxious whinny as it nearly fell, and leaped into its saddle.
Wild to the Bone Page 21
