‘Can I relieve some of your trouble, mister?’ the girl said. She stood behind him having stepped out of a big tent, dressed in red, short and low, tiny goose bumps over her bare arms and legs.
‘Jenny Troup,’ Dan said, turning.
‘She ain’t working yet.’
‘I just want conversation.’
‘Mister, she got trouble you want no part of.’
‘I know who’s looking for her. I’m here to stop them.’
‘Let me entertain you ’til she gets back. I’m Cricket.’
‘Don’t have the time,’ he said.
Cricket appeared to shrivel a little as she glanced behind him. ‘She’s standing behind you with a big, nasty gun in her hand.’
‘Turn around slow,’ Jenny said. ‘Your hand drops and I’ll open a hole in you big enough a rat can crawl through.’
Cricket held her palms out. ‘Jenny, I’ll just go on out to a mesquite bush for a pee. You two won’t miss me.’
‘Go ahead,’ Jenny said. ‘Cowboy, I told you to turn around, slow.’
Dan turned, elbows pushing his ribs, hands out. ‘I just want to talk, Jenny.’
‘Start now.’
‘You told Sarah Deller about Monte Steep and the silver claim swindle.’
‘I never heard of Monte Steep.’
‘His phony name is Zack Deller. I just put Sarah on a train for Dodge City.’
‘She left him?’
‘After what you told her – and what was going to happen to the girls – she had no choice.’
‘Good for her.’
Jenny Troup lowered her Colt. She wore a revealing, pink saloon dress but there was nothing to her. Her dark hair hung straight past her shoulders – skinny arms and legs, triangle face with hollow cheeks and sunken, brown eyes.
‘I can get you out of this life,’ Dan said.
Her thin face twisted in contempt. ‘Sure you can. You know how many saddle tramps say that? They can take good care of me if I just open-up only for them. Make them my one and only. And they stand without a decent horse to ride or any kind of roof. I heard it all before. Who are you?’
‘Dan Quint.’
She frowned at him. ‘Deadly Dan Quint, the gunfighter?’
‘I’ve been called that.’
‘And you know Sarah Deller?’
Dan looked around at the tents. ‘Can we talk someplace?’
‘Yeah, my place.’ She led the way between canvas to the edge of them. Her small tent had no standing headroom. Inside was a cot and a table with a lantern. A sway-back gray horse with a torn saddle was tied up behind. ‘It ain’t luxurious but it’s dump cozy.’ He sat on a weathered, wooden box, she on the cot. Jenny pulled a whiskey bottle from under the cot. ‘I got a couple of glasses someplace.’ They too were under the cot along with a carpet bag. She poured and held out her glass. ‘Here’s looking up your address.’ She drank half the glass in one gulp. Afternoon sun winking in the tent entrance showed her face, about thirty, with few wrinkles, but with a bone-tired, worn out, hollow weariness.
Dan threw down a slug. The stuff resembled the smell of coyote piss. ‘You were the bookkeeper for Zack Deller on the claim sale.’
‘And his personal piece.’ She finished her glass and coughed. ‘Oliver wanted some too. When I told him, pay a dollar upstairs at the Deller Waterhole, he made sure Horace found out about the affair.’
‘Horace?’
‘My husband – he kicked me out, then went after Oliver, and got himself shot dead. He thought I was putting out to Oliver, the fool.’ She looked beyond the tent entrance, momentarily lost in memory. ‘So, anyway, you know how it goes. I’m a fresh widow. Zack says I got to be nicer to Oliver. I could tell the bloom was off any romance he felt for me. It follows a pattern – first you do it for love, then you do it for a few of your lover’s friends, then you do it for acquaintances, then you start getting small gifts, then some cash, and eventually you turn whore. Keep at it long enough and you’re down to a dollar a poke, saving enough to buy your own tent. I got a kid someplace, Trudy; I’d like to see her again – other people raising her.’ She fixed Dan with a stare. ‘And you’re going to take me away from all this?’
‘How did you fix the books, Jenny?’
She shrugged. ‘Not hard. I changed the names Jeremiah Dickers and William Lee to Zack Deller. Zack paid no money. Tore out the page and wrote on a new blank one. Zack arranged for Jeremiah to get a worthless copper claim in Aztec and told him to stay out of Yuma and Darion or else. Dickers had something over them was why he wasn’t killed – some hidden papers, he said. Will Lee was still coming out with his family and they figured to take care of him when he got here. He never made it. I didn’t find out until later that Ida and Sarah Collins wrote a receipt – with a duplicate.’
‘Will Lee had a daughter,’ Dan said. ‘She’s on her way. Jeremiah is dead, along with the gunfighter who threatened him.’ Dan put his hand on hers. ‘You know a killer is coming for you.’
‘Slipper sent him, Orville Riker – Oliver and Orville, what a pair. Guess Zack thinks I still know too much. Sarah was nice. She gave me some money.’
‘Where do you want to go, Jenny – someplace to start over?’
‘As what – another whore?’
‘As a widowed mother – think you can work as a bookkeeper again, maybe in Sacramento? Nobody needs to know about this. You’ll have enough to get settled.’
‘I don’t have money for the train ride or any life like that.’
‘We’ll get you outfitted, some decent clothes, help you get your daughter – where is she?’
‘Santa Fe.’
‘You can go to Sacramento from there.’
Jenny squinted at him. ‘How will I pull that off? Anybody can see I’m worn out as a rodeo bronc.’
‘You got a horse?’
She jerked her head. ‘The tired old gray I keep tied behind the tent here.’
‘We’ll get you healthy – make you eat good, get you ready, you can study the work.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Will’s daughter, Mandy Lee – and me. She’ll have the mine. We’ll get it done. Right now I got to get you away from these mines.’
She grimaced, doubt showing over her face. ‘I need money, Dan.’
‘I got fifty dollars for you. That’ll keep you for a week.’
‘Where?’
‘Aztec – it’s where they stuck Jeremiah Dickers. The tent is still there. I’ll kick out anybody nesting in it.’
Shaking her head, she said, ‘I don’t know, Dan. What about Orville Riker, the killer deputy Slipper is sending – and Oliver Ashby?’
‘They come looking for you, what they’ll get is me.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
In Yuma, Dan checked with Western Union. The wire was there. While Jenny waited in the buckboard, he rolled his own and lit up by Mesa with his elbows on the saddle. He felt a knot in his chest and a weakness to his knees, not knowing what was in the message. Dan unfolded the paper.
Dan
Roger and I reach Yuma Sunday a week. Stop. Western Pacific 2:35. Stop. He has plan.
Mandy
With gritted teeth, Dan crumpled the paper message to a tight ball. He squinted at the buckboard wheel and breathed a deep breath, then tossed the ball into the back of the wagon. She was bringing Roger. And Roger had a plan.
Jenny watched him closely. ‘Bad news?’ she asked.
‘Might be. Let’s get on to Aztec.’
Weather held good to Aztec. A couple of grizzled copper miners nested in Jeremiah Dickers’ tent with a chunky, granny whore called Sleepy Sue. They grumbled with threats but moved out peaceable enough, no gunfire necessary. Sleepy Sue asked to stay. Jenny was okay with that as long as they didn’t practice the trade. Sleepy Sue told them she figured to be retired anyway seeing as how she was toothless, old, fat and ugly, with a face as lumpy and puffed and gray as rain clouds. She did like the look of the frail Jenny though.
>
Dan reckoned the old whore liked Jenny’s fifty dollars more. He told her if she treated Jenny right and didn’t let the old miners back in the tent, she’d be taken care of. He gave her two five-dollar gold pieces on account. He let them keep Rowdy along with the tired gray.
Sleepy Sue acted as if she saw a sunny, bright future in the arrangement.
In the Darion Saloon, Dan waited at the bar, tossing down too many quarter whiskeys. He had heard the marshal was out at the ranch. He hoped that when they returned, Zack Deller – Monte Steep, would be with them. His mind churned and his belly knotted. He would deal with the polecats himself – without help, and without some damned plan.
Zack Deller stayed at the ranch. While the moon raised high, Marshal Slipper Hawthorne, Attorney Oliver Ashby and Deputy Orville Riker rode back into Darion.
As expected they went to the Deller Waterhole first, the higher-class saloon, asking around loudly, wanting to know where Jenny Troup got herself off to, and who took her there. Nobody knew where, but they knew who. And Dan stood with his boot on the brass rail across the road in the Darion Saloon, where pickaxe miners, drifter saddle tramps, dollar whores, low-life bums and watered whiskey waited.
Dan figured saloon drinkers didn’t know why the whore Jenny Troup had to be killed, just that she had done something to irritate the man who owned the town, and she had to go. Nobody crossed Zack Deller – except the latest word was his good-looking wife took her sweet little girls and got herself on a train out of Arizona – and that had to be enough to make a preacher piss on a stranger.
Dan reckoned he should have eaten something, while he watched through the batwing doors as two men came out and started across the street – Oliver and Orville. The marshal stayed behind. Drinkers knew what was coming. They gave Dan a five-foot space all around as they shuffled away. They wouldn’t leave because they didn’t want to miss any action. Stray bullets always hit somebody else.
Behind him, toward the end of the bar, the saloon keeper said, ‘You bust my mirror, you buy it.’
Dan waited some more, the thong off the hammer.
The pair stepped out of darkness to the boardwalk – the lawyer walked kind of dainty, the deputy stomped determinedly.
Oliver’s voice carried inside. ‘Damn it, we’re going to talk to the man, ask him what he did with her.’ His suit looked rumpled; his derby had cocked a little to one side. He squirmed to the bat wings. ‘He can’t tell us nothing if you shoot him dead.’
The lawyer’s sidekick clomped ahead, leaning into his boots with each stomp. ‘Ain’t gonna be much talk.’ His vest was food-stained but had a bright deputy star on it. The gray ten-gallon Stetson had frayed around the brim, a big, splashy pattern bandana almost covered his chest but not enough to hide the badge. The Peacemaker Colt .45 bounced with the step up. The eyes were dark slits.
He led the way, swinging through the doors.
‘Mr Quint,’ Ashby said. ‘We’re looking—’
‘No talk,’ Orville Riker said. He reached the centre of the room just as the .45 slug tore into his left eye. His ten-gallon hat jerked forward as his head snapped back. A second shot went through his heart.
The lawyer pulled a small revolver from inside his jacket and fired once as a bullet ripped into his stomach.
Dan felt a burning fire from the slug under his arm as it tore skin and chipped a rib bone. He fell back against the bar and dropped to one knee. He took his time and shot the attorney through the top of the head. Ashby’s revolver had already dropped to the floor.
Dan stood slowly and holstered the Peacemaker. He squeezed his right arm against his stinging side and looked around the saloon. Nobody moved much. He pushed away from the bar and stepped over the bleeding deputy to walk out the batwing doors, leaving them swinging behind him.
PART THREE
LOVE AND FRIENDS
Chapter Twenty-Seven
With a torn-strip, hotel pillow case tied tight, Dan made it to the doc in Yuma on Mesa. Other than removing bone fragments and sewing a few stitches and a new bandage wrap for the chipped rib, there wasn’t much the doc could do. He told Dan to stay in bed a few days.
Dan lasted in the Yuma hotel room until Saturday noon. After breakfast, he rode out to Aztec and the tent. Jenny and Sleepy Sue looked just fine. Somewhere in Aztec, they had found proper women’s clothes. They each had a bath, did things with each other’s hair, swept up the tent, and offered Dan fresh coffee made with real, ground coffee beans, no acorns or other nuts or berries. They listened while Dan recalled the Darion gunfight with the deputy and the lawyer. Jenny was pleased about the recently deceased lawyer, Oliver Ashby, but she felt sorry Dan got himself shot. Dan reckoned Jenny might pass for under thirty. Folks might take her for a bookkeeper. Sleepy Sue looked like a matronly old maid fussing over Jenny.
Dan was so impressed he told the ladies he was hitching the wagon. They’d be staying at the hotel in Yuma tonight. When the train got in Sunday, they’d all be heading out to Darion for one last bit of business before the move to Santa Fe. Jenny paced the tent, wringing her hands. She turned nervous about going back to Yuma. She thought anybody would easily know her for a whore. A few of the gents might even recognize her. Dan told her she looked like a bookkeeper and to keep thinking she looked like a bookkeeper.
When they were in Yuma, Dan got another room for the ladies, and rented a spare room for Mandy. Mr Farnsworth could take care of himself. Down in the stables he bought a gelding, figuring to hitch it and the tired gray to Jenny’s old buckboard. Mandy would ride Rowdy beside Mesa. The brilliant young lawyer would be in the wagon with the freshly-converted ladies if he didn’t care for riding horses.
Back in his hotel room, Dan Quint girded himself for another meeting with Mandy Lee.
The Western Pacific train squeaked and hissed into the Yuma station at 2:51 Sunday. Disembarking passengers brought with them the smell of cross-country travel. Only children appeared giggly – little girls apparently loved to scream. Adults showed themselves to be more determined than unhappy. A few traveled as a way of life. Their faces held life experience, days and nights with few surprises, yet rich in varied events. The train itself brought a life – the hot burning of steel wheels on steel ribbon tracks, cigar and pipe smoke of men, women’s perfume, leather suitcases, a different holster-leather smell coupled with oiled revolvers – coal fire to build up steam, steam hissing out and up the stack – a buzz of conversations from those who arrived and greeters – ladies in bustles, men with handlebar mustaches, beards and derbies – a few cowboys carrying saddles.
Jenny Troup and Sleepy Sue had been shopping and were unwrapping and packing in their hotel room. All they had purchased went into new carpet bags.
Dan had left them, and went to wait on the platform. He felt no real, physical flutter or tingle, he felt anticipation, as if jumping and waiting to land on something dark, not knowing what it was, whether it slanted or was soft or wet or hard as a train wheel. The feeling was not much different from stepping into a gunfight.
The couple emerged from the car and down train steps to the platform – a young couple – the man irritated, the lady searching. Dan looked at her and kept looking at her and liked looking at her, and knew he wanted her. She didn’t see him. They were little more than three arm’s-length away in a crowd.
Roger Farnsworth, dressed without a wrinkle, fresh shaved, tall and handsome with stovetop hat said, ‘With all the money the railroad makes you’d think they might be on time.’
‘Where is he?’ she said. She belonged in a store window for the latest fashion. She wore a dark-blue hooped dress, tight through the waist and bodice, white gloves, a funny hat – her green eyes searched, she used her gloved hand to shade her eyes against the glare of the sun, flawless skin, beautiful – an angel.
Dan felt his heart squeeze when he almost caught her gaze, then drop through a hangman’s trap door when Roger Farnsworth moved beside her. His arm circled her tiny waist and he pulled he
r tight against him in a gesture of possession. She didn’t resist until she locked eyes with Dan’s.
Her face brightened to a happy smile. ‘Dan,’ she said softly. ‘My Dan.’ She pulled away from the young man and with two steps had wrapped her arms around Dan’s neck and pushed against him.
She felt far too good. He held her outline tighter for longer than he felt he should. His rib offered some protest. When he released her, she clung for a few seconds longer, and that pleased him.
‘I have a room for you,’ he said to her.
Roger came forward grabbing his hand, ‘Good to see you again, Quint. We have much to discuss.’
‘Roger!’ Mandy said in irritation.
Roger ignored her, concentrating on Dan. ‘Did you locate Jenny Troup? You must understand she is the key.’
Now Dan kept his arm circled possessively around Mandy’s waist. ‘She’s waiting in a hotel room.’
‘Here?’ Roger stiffened. He blinked. ‘Here in town?’
‘Right here in downtown Yuma.’
‘But . . . but . . . I hope you haven’t messed everything up, Quint. You were just supposed to locate her. Just locate her. Let those who know these procedures take charge. My plan is to—’
Dan ignored him. He looked down at Mandy’s face. ‘Let’s go.’
Roger Farnsworth put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. ‘Now—’
Dan stiffened, and spun toward him, and said, ‘Don’t do that.’
Farnsworth jerked his hand back when he saw Dan’s eyes. ‘I’ve already made reservations – in fact I’ve made arrangements for a buggy too – for the ride to Darion.’
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