Ironhorse

by Robert B. Parker

  Doc Meyer reacted like a skunk sprayed him in the face. He held up his lantern, looking at Virgil. We could see his face clearer now. His nose and cheeks was a spiderweb of broken blood vessels, and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked Virgil up and down like he was looking at a painting in a museum. He shook his head and opened the door.

  “Oh, good goddamn, no rest for the wicked, no goddamn rest . . . come in, officers, come on in. The only thing worse than card cheats is goddamn lawmen.”

  Virgil looked at me and smiled, and we followed him inside. Doc Meyer dragged his slippers across the floor as he ambled back to a cluttered desk next to his dentist chair. He set the lantern on a stack of books and flopped down in his squeaky chair behind his desk. There was a skull sitting on the desk with a silver tooth that caught a piece of light when Doc Meyer turned up the gas on the lantern. He leaned over and opened the bottom desk drawer and pulled out a whiskey bottle. He bit the cork, spit it on the desk, and took a swig. He took a second swig before leaning over and picking up a white piece of cloth from a small trash canister. He unfolded the cloth and laid it on the desk next to the lantern. Inside the cloth were pieces of bloody flesh. For effect, he pointed at the pieces of the flesh with a scalpel. He figured since we were providing him some unpleasantness he would return the favor and give us a bloody little show.

  “That’s all that was left of his helix, antihelical fold, and concha.”

  Doc Meyer leaned back in his chair, holding the scalpel between the thumb and first finger of his hand, smiling at us with a liquored-up look on his face.

  “The bottom part, the external auditory meatus, antitragus, and lobe, he got to keep, though I’m certain his hearing will be impaired in that ear. Something tells me, though, his well-being is of no goddamn concern of yours.”

  “How long ago was he here?” I said.

  “Two hours,” Doc Meyer said, “give or take.”

  “Do you know if he is still here,” I said, “in Half Moon?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Who was he with?” Virgil said.

  Doc Meyer took another swig off the whiskey bottle. He belched and swiveled the palm of his hand over the bottle top to remove his saliva and offered us a pull. We declined.

  “There were three other miscreants with him,” Doc Meyer said. “I was walking up to my office here when they arrived. They were kind of like the two of you, rather obnoxious and demanding.”

  “Mounted?” Virgil said.

  Doc Meyer shook his head.

  “I did not see any horses, no.”

  Doc Meyer folded the ear pieces back up in the cloth and held it above the trash canister.

  “Shall I dispose of these pieces, or were you thinking souvenir?”

  “We appreciate your time,” I said.

  Doc Meyer leaned to his side slightly and released gas as he opened his hand and let the cloth drop to the trash.

  “Good of you to stop by,” he said as I followed Virgil out the door.

  51

  WE STOOD ON the boardwalk in front of Doc Meyer’s office. Virgil puffed on his cigar, thinking. A buckboard came around the corner from the east and stopped. Two tired-looking miners jumped from the bed, grabbed their gear, and entered a boardinghouse. The buckboard moved on west and turned north at the corner of Full Moon Street.

  “What do you allow, Everett?”

  “Vince and the others did not stable the horses with the livery, that much we know . . . could be long gone.”

  Virgil glanced back through the office window as Doc Meyer turned out his desk lamp and we started up the boardwalk toward Hotel Ark.

  “But,” I said, “they don’t feel any threat from this town.”

  “No, don’t think they do.”

  “And on pure speculation, I don’t think they hightailed it out tonight, either.”

  “Don’t?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “Nope. Don’t think I would, considering the circumstances.”

  “Circumstances being?”

  “First circumstance being they lost some of their hands tonight. That being the case, fellows of this ilk got no way of dealing with those kinds of feelings, other than drinking and busting a nut.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Next circumstance, they would not be expecting us here in Half Moon Junction, so they won’t be skittish.”

  “No, they won’t,” Virgil said.

  “Far as they know, we are near a hundred miles from here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Don’t think they would have the gall or stupidity to check in to a hotel, though.”

  “But maybe,” Virgil said.

  “Next circumstance is, they got money.”

  “They do.”

  “If they stayed,” I said, “I think bedding down with whores would be their most astute move.”

  “Seems prospect,” Virgil said.

  “Don’t you imagine?”

  “I do,” Virgil said. “That’d be my summation as well, considering the circumstances.”

  A mangy cur stepped out of the shadows from between two buildings in front of us and stopped. He looked at us for a moment and moved on slowly across the street. He sniffed at something, then disappeared behind a rotted section of siding on a blacksmith’s shop. We continued walking until we got to the corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon and stopped.

  “They might have picketed the horses outside of town, hidden in a stand of trees or someplace,” I said, “and come back in on foot.”

  “Sounds right,” Virgil said. “Come back, gamble a bit, buy a piece for the evening.”

  “Probably too lazy, though, considering,” I said. “Been a wearying day for those boys, with all the commotion they’ve had to go through. First, the expectant excitement of the robbery, followed by the shooting and friends dying off. Vince having his helix and concha pieces wrapped in a napkin and sitting at the bottom of a trash bucket in the drunk dentist’s office. They’re going to be in need of some comfort, some mothering, a basic hankering for food, drink, and women. Plus, they got dollars and dimes they stole from the people on the train burning a hole in the bottom of their pocket.”

  Bugs were circling the gas lantern again near where we stood across from Hotel Ark on the southeast corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon Streets. Virgil stood with his thumbs in his vest pockets puffing on his cigar, thinking. He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. He looked back to the south and to the north.

  “We got four blocks with alleys,” he said. “I’ll look around the backside outskirts, all the way around. You do the center alleys. We meet back here, thirty minutes.”

  I looked at my watch.

  “We see something,” Virgil said. “We come back here. Put together a go-to-it plan.”

  52

  I WALKED SOUTH on Full Moon Street and came to a single-story building on my left with an opening between it and the two-story building next to it. I moved through the opening and walked toward the rear of the buildings. When I got to the back of the buildings I started walking the narrow turns of the alley passage. A few lamps were burning, but for the most part it was dark. Right away, I came upon three horses stalled in a small pen that backed up to a surveying company. Straightaway I could tell they were not our horses. All three were big plow horses. I walked around the pen and came to an empty side alley that connected to Half Moon Street. I walked the narrow alley path to the street and looked around. The street was empty except for the mangy cur Virgil and I had seen before. He was startled to see me. He stopped, looked at me, and walked off slow-like. In a moment, he was gone into the shadows. I turned and came back through the side alley.

  Sitting at the top of a dark stairwell, a woman with her back to me was smoking a cigarette. She did not see me as I turned and started back to the east. Up ahead of me, a horse blew and a hoof pawed at the ground. I moved up slowly, and somewhere ahead of me in t
he shadows, a man coughed.

  I stopped, stayed back, listened for a moment, and moved on slowly around the corner. He coughed again. The sound of the cough was coming from inside the outhouse. Whoever was inside had a lamp. There was light streaking out through the cracks between the boards. The dust the horse was pawing up drifted through the shafts of light as I waited. After a moment, the door opened and an old man came out carrying the lamp. He had a thick book under his arm that looked like a Bible.

  I thought to myself, There might be an inkling of sanctimony in Half Moon Junction after all. He walked slowly up a set of stairs and ducked inside a rickety tenement quarters, closing the door behind him. I moved on and came to the horse I had heard pawing and blowing. It was a lonesome old gray horse that was trying to loosen up the ground he was standing on. I scratched his nose for a second and kept walking until I came to an opening between two buildings that led me out to Quarter Moon Street.

  It was late enough of the evening now; there was no one moving about. I crossed the empty street and walked through a dark divide between two small houses. After about thirty feet I cleared the narrow passage between the houses and found myself on the rear section of buildings that faced both Half and Three Quarter Moon Street.

  As I walked on, the buildings started to thin out, and after a short ways I was on the backside of the livery stable just shy of the miners’ yard. I turned and walked between the livery stable and a Chinese laundry, where steam rose from the back half of the building. The Chinese were inside working, talking loudly, as I made my way past their shop and back to Half Moon Street. I heard a pop, followed by another pop. I heard a third pop and realized the sound was a muffled gunshot. The sound came from the west. I started running west on Half Moon Street, past the whorehouse church and past Pete’s Place. When I got to the corner of Quarter Moon Street, a young man wearing underwear came running out from between two buildings and headed in my direction. He was bleeding. He had a gun in his hand and was looking back over his shoulder as he was on the run. He did not realize he was running directly at me in the dark street. I stood stock-still and pointed my long-barrel Colt at him.

  “Stop,” I said.

  When he saw me he raised his pistol at me, and I shot him.

  He staggered and tried to shoot again, and I shot him again. He dropped his gun, walked a half-circle, and fell to his knees. He stayed on his knees for a moment, looking around. He moaned and toppled over onto his side. I moved quickly up to the boardwalk and into the shadows. I reloaded and with my back to the boards of a dry-goods store moved toward the opening where the young man had come running out to the street. I looked around the corner of the dry-goods store and could not see anything but dark.

  “That you, Everett?” Virgil called from the alley.

  “It is.”

  “You shoot the fellow in his undergarments?”

  “I did.”

  “Coming to ya!” Virgil said.

  I stepped off the boardwalk, looking down the dark alley. A sharp, short, high-pitched whistle rang out, followed by a “Get up,” and looming out of the dark came Virgil, riding Cortez at a quick pace toward me. He had my bony dark-headed roan and two other horses in tow.

  53

  “YOU’RE CINCHED, SWING UP!” Virgil said.

  “Where are the others?” I said as I swung up on the back of the roan.

  “Drunk,” Virgil said. “Commingling with a wild bunch of whores, but if they heard the shots, they’re getting their wits about ’em . . . this way.”

  Virgil and I took off south at a clip. Virgil rode fast, pulling one horse, and I was behind him, pulling the other. We quickly skirted around and came up on the backside of the west end of town. Virgil slowed and pulled up short behind an outbuilding and dismounted. He pointed to the backside of a white house.

  “That house there,” Virgil said. “They’re in the front parlor, don’t appear they heard nothing.”

  I dismounted. We tied the horses behind the outbuilding and moved closer on foot.

  “I came to the end of the street,” Virgil said. “Heard music. I stayed in the dark, got up on the porch and looked inside. They were dancing, singing. One of the women was sawing on a fiddle, another beating a piano. The windows were fogged over. Men singing, but all I could see was the whores doing the music and dancing about naked.”

  “Just like we figured,” I said.

  “Is,” Virgil said. “Didn’t see men, though. Then I got a glimpse of the back of a man sitting on a sofa between two whores. He had a white bandage wrapped around his head.”

  “Vince.”

  “Damn straight Vince; not anybody else wrapped up like that.”

  “You didn’t see any others?”

  Virgil shook his head.

  “Just Vince, but I heard the others. They are in there,” Virgil said. “I got off the porch, walked to the back of the building, but I did not see the horses. I thought, like we talked about, they must have hobbled, or picketed somewhere. Then I heard a horse flapping his lips. I followed the sound, walked around that water shed there, and on the backside found the horses. They were saddled, loose cinches, and had their bridles hanging over their saddles.”

  “You figured you’d just get them.”

  “I did. I could hardly hear the music from there, but they were still carrying on. I figured since it was dark and them boys being occupied with the whores, I’d move off with the horses.”

  A big wagon pulled by six mules passed behind us. We watched until it moved on past us.

  “I gathered up the horses,” Virgil said, “walked off, back that way. I was halfway down the alley, headed toward the street, but was interrupted by the bandito in his undergarments with his quick-draw rig strapped on his hip.”

  “He followed you?”

  “No. He was there in the alley, retching up a gullet of turned whiskey. He looked up as I was walking by, wiping his mouth. He looked at the horses. It took him a moment to figure out one of the horses was a horse he’d previously been riding. He stepped back, quick-like, and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was taking my horse, taking my deputy’s horse, too, and while I was at it, taking his horse and one other to boot. He told me if I took another step he’d have to shoot me. I took another step. He pulled, and I shot him in the collarbone. He took off like a pheasant. I was between him and the whores’ place, so he went through the alley there toward where you were. I would have shot him again, but I had my hands full with the horses. He shot two wild shots at me as he was on the run down the alley. A moment or two later, you shot him.”

  We moved up near the clothesline behind the whorehouse, where the horses had been picketed. We found a secure place and kept watch on the backside of the whorehouse.

  “Don’t see anybody,” I said.

  “Front parlor is where they are.”

  “Maybe they’re putting the pieces together,” I said. “Just moving slow.”

  “Might be. The undergarment fellow was firmly liquored up. No doubt they’re all a flush lot.”

  “They can’t see where the horses were picketed from where they are in the house there,” I said.

  “No, they can’t.”

  “Dumb of them.”

  “It was,” Virgil said.

  “Pussy will do that to a man.”

  “It will.”

  “Make a man do dumb things.”

  “It does.”

  “Like what they have done here tonight.”

  “Yep,” Virgil said.

  “Mix it with sour mash and whatever smidgen of smarts they had left, slips sideways, right out of the saddle.”

  “Lookie here?” Virgil pointed.

  A door opened from the front parlor. There was now light spilling into the back room. We could hear the music from the parlor and could see someone moving inside.

  “Sounds like they’re still at it,” I said.

  “Does.”

  “They didn’t hear the shots.”

>   “Don’t seem so,” Virgil said.

  “They got no idea.”

  “Nope.”

  “Unless it’s a trap.”

  Virgil shook his head.

  “No,” Virgil said. “They got no seesaw for that.”

  The back door opened.

  “Here we go,” Virgil said.

  A strong-looking, smaller man stepped out onto the porch.

  54

  HE STAGGERED AS he fumbled with the buttons below the buckle of his gun-belt then positioned himself next to the porch rail and relieved himself. Like the other young man I shot dead in the street, he was wearing his underwear, hat, boots and hip rig. He swayed a bit as he went about his business off the side of the porch. He looked down, watching himself, then jerked his head up, looked about at nothing in particular, and hollered.

  “Rex! You fuck!”

  He looked back down for a moment. Then he turned a bit, looking about, and took an unsteady step. He stabilized and continued to empty himself.

  “. . . the fuck you go, boy?”

  He looked down again, watching himself some more. Then looked up again, looking about.

  “Rex!”

  He finished relieving himself and put his instrument away. He swayed and leaned on the rail with both of his arms. He looked to his left.

  “Rex! The fuck!”

  He looked right.

  “Boy! Where the fuck you go?”

  He took a step back and a step over. He walked down the steps of the porch. He pulled up on his leather rig, snugging it up, and took a few wobbly steps away from the white house and stopped. He turned and turned again.

  “Hey! You drunk fucker! Where’d you go!”

  He looked toward the watershed.

  “He’s gonna come,” Virgil said.

  He did just that. He started walking toward the shed. We waited, and after a moment we heard him laugh as he got closer.

  “Boy?”

  He walked around the shed. I let him get a step past me, and I snatched him. I gathered him up quick and got his arms behind his back. Virgil took his pistol. He tried to resist. Virgil told him to settle, but he didn’t. Virgil slapped him hard a few times, and he went slack in my arms. I pulled him over, propped him up on the back wall of the shed. Virgil lodged his handkerchief into his mouth.