.45-Caliber Desperado

by Peter Brandvold

  “Poor puss,” Spurr said. “You got anywhere else to go?”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, louder than before. The wind seemed to be lightening slightly, judging by the diminished creaking in the whipsawed timbers of the telegrapher’s shack.

  The cat sat, curled its tail to one side, looked at the dead Constiner, and gave its head a quick shake of revulsion and fear.

  “You’ll get by,” Spurr said. “Someone from town’s likely to take you in. If not, hell, I’m sure there’s plenty of rats around here. Rats love a town.”

  He stepped around Constiner and moved to the door. He went out and then reached back inside for the door handle. Glancing at the cat again, he frowned. The cat was watching him. It looked desperate, frightened, worried.

  All alone in the cold, cold world.

  “Christ,” Spurr grumbled. He had far more worse things to worry about than a damn orphaned cat. Just the same, he moved around the dead man again and dropped to a knee beside the liver-colored puss. “If I pick you up, you won’t scratch me, will you?”

  Spurr removed his right glove and stuck his hand out toward the cat’s nose, giving the frightened little beast a whiff. Like most animals, cats could tell if they’d trust someone by smelling them. Spurr hoped the cat wouldn’t hold his gamey trail sweat and horse lather fetor against him.

  The cat was too preoccupied with the dead man on the floor to pay much attention to Spurr’s proffered hand, however. So Spurr reached around the cat carefully, slowly, and when he had his arm crooked around the beast, he picked it up and nestled it against his side.

  “There, there, now, pussy-puss,” Spurr said. “How ’bout if I see about findin’ you a home? I bet Mrs. Dickinson likes cats. Smart, purty women like cats, and she’s about as purty an’ smart as they come. If not, maybe Mrs. Winters, though she ain’t half so purty . . .”

  Sort of cradling the cat against his side and gripping his rifle in his left hand, Spurr left the shack and the dead man inside, closing and latching the door, then retraced his steps back in the direction from which he’d come.

  Rain started pelting him by the time he reached the bridge crossing the creek. Small, cold drops were hurled slantwise by the biting wind. The creek itself was far from a dry wash. The depth of the water had more than doubled since Spurr had first crossed, and small branches and bits of cactus were swirling down the tea-colored stream that caught and eddied around rocks and sage roots.

  “Holy shit in the nun’s privy, cat,” Spurr said, quickening his pace, “we’re in for a gully washer!”

  By the time he reached the Dickinson house, the sky had turned murky and the rain was hammering in earnest, turning the roads of Diamondback into veritable creeks, with the silver raindrops drilling into clay-colored puddles like small-caliber rifle fire. The wind had indeed lightened some, but its former ferocity was matched by the thunder and lightning of the fast-approaching storm.

  Thunderclaps sounded like near cannon fire, causing the earth to leap beneath Spurr’s soaked moccasins as he hurried up the nearly submerged cobbled walk to the Dickinson front gallery. Lightning lit the entire sky from horizon to horizon. During such flashes, Spurr could see low clouds being hurled every which way and not all that far above the Diamondback rooftops.

  He opened the screen door with the same hand with which he was holding his rifle, and held it open with his left foot. He didn’t have to open the inside door. It swung open, and June Dickinson was there, looking at him worriedly as she stepped back, drawing the door wide, her brown eyes sliding to the sodden cat in Spurr’s arm.

  “What on earth?”

  Spurr walked inside, and June closed the door behind him. He said, “Is this the telegrapher’s cat?”

  “Homer Constiner’s. Indeed. What’re you doing with it?”

  “Poor thing don’t have a home no more. Leastways, not the telegraph office.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him.

  Spurr set the cat down and, avoiding the woman’s gaze, leaned his rifle in the corner near the door. “I was hoping you could take him. They say you never have rats if—”

  “What’s happening, Spurr?” June’s voice was quietly insistent. “Who killed Homer?”

  Spurr sighed and held his hat down so it could drip onto the rug at his feet and not on the woman’s polished oak floor. “There’s a bunch in town, June.” He brushed rainwater from his brows with his wet shirtsleeve. “The de Cava bunch. Led by a border rat named Mateo de Cava. They sprung a prisoner from the Arkansas River Federal Pen up in Colorado, turned all the prisoners loose, and . . .”

  “And they’re why you and Sheriff Mason are here in Diamondback.”

  “That’s right. We followed them here.”

  “And they killed Homer Constiner.” June sounded as though she couldn’t believe what she was saying as, frowning in befuddlement, she bent down and picked up the wet cat. “Oh, poor dear Josie,” she cooed, holding the cat against her despite how wet it was. To Spurr, she said, “I’ll find Josie some milk. The sheriff is awake and has asked for you. He’s in my room, the door off the parlor.” She tossed her head at the doorway opposite the kitchen.

  Spurr held his arms out away from himself and grunted in frustration as he looked down at his wet, muddy moccasins. “I’ll get you a robe. We can dry your clothes out in front of the stove. I’ve stoked it for supper. Your bath is waiting for you upstairs when you’re ready.”

  She walked into the kitchen stroking the pathetic-looking cat. Spurr stared after her admiringly, not so concerned with her ass now but warmed by her generous heart. He’d figured she’d take in a homeless cat. After all, she’d sort of taken in his homeless, old ass hadn’t she?

  The world was a shitty place, he mused, as he stooped to unlace his moccasins. But here and there he ran into folks like June Dickinson; those were the people who kept his heart ticking—even a squawky old ticker like Spurr’s.

  Leaving his moccasins on the rug in front of the door, the old marshal tramped in his loose, wet socks through the parlor, pausing at the door flanking a potted palm on one side, a curio cabinet stuffed with trinkets of all shapes and sizes on the other.

  He knocked softly on the door. No answer. He knocked once more, harder.

  “Come in,” Mason said, raspy-voiced.

  Spurr went into the room that could only have been June’s own bedroom, for, though it was small, it was filled with rich, well-kept furniture and a canopied, four-poster bed, with many oval-framed photographs on the walls. Opposite the bed stood a large oak wardrobe carved with a trim of apples and bananas.

  Spurr closed the door behind him. Mason lay in the bed, covered in quilts and sheets, his head sunk deep in a crisp, white pillow that was likely stuffed with down. The sheriff was wearing a striped pajama top and, despite his shaggy beard and untrimmed dragoon mustache, looked almost like he belonged there. He didn’t look bad despite having taken a bullet. He had a little gray around the eyes, was all.

  “Where you been, Spurr?”

  “What do you mean, where I been?” Spurr asked as he stepped up to the bed, glancing around and finding June’s wedding photograph showing her in a veiled bridal gown and standing beside a seated man in a three-piece suit and holding a bowler hat on his knee. A neat young man with a dragoon mustache much like Mason’s. Neither, after the fashion of the times, showed much emotion in the daguerreotype. June had her hand on his forearm.

  “I thought maybe you got the notion to take off after that bunch alone,” Mason said. “Don’t leave here without me, Spurr. I’ll be up and around in no time, and I want to personally put that Massey firebrand behind bars again. Bastard fooled me . . . almost had me thinkin’ he didn’t belong there . . .”

  Mason coughed and clutched his side.

  “Rest easy, old son.” Spurr set a hand on the sheriff’s shoulder. He glanced at the window against which lightning flashed, silhouetting the hammering raindrops. “The gang’s holed up right here in Diamondback, and
from the look of this weather, they won’t be goin’ anywhere soon.”

  Mason glanced at Spurr sidelong, skeptical. “They’re here?”

  “Holed up in a hotel on the other side of town.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “They know we’re here?”

  Spurr remembered the girl he’d seen in the street. She’d likely told others in the gang about seeing an old lawman about, but he hoped they were all too involved in whores and whiskey to give a damn. Sooner or later, though, they’d come looking for the badge-toter. He had to be ready.

  “Yeah, I reckon they do. One does, anyway. But I doubt they’ll come lookin’ till the weather clears.”

  “If they come here . . .”

  “I know, I know.” Neither had to say what would happen. June’s life could be in danger. Mason would be trapped. “But you’re not goin’ anywhere for a while, so I reckon I’ll stay here and make sure they don’t come in and shoot your sorry ass.” Spurr gave a dry chuckle. “I sure would hate to bury you in all this rocky mud.”

  “The doctor,” Mason said, narrow an ironic eye at the old lawman standing over him, “is right purty. You don’t make a fool of yourself, now, hear? But you might put in a good word for me.”

  “Too late.” Spurr winked and glanced at the man’s pajama top. “She already seen ya naked.” He snorted and turned toward the door. “You sleep tight, heal your ass . . .”

  “Spurr?”

  The marshal turned. Mason gave him a penetrating look as he jerked his head toward a chair to Spurr’s left. On the chair were Mason’s clothes, his boots set neatly on the floor in front of it. His shell belt and pistol were draped over the chair back.

  “Hand over my six-shooter, will you? Couldn’t sleep knowin’ de Cava and Massey are that close, unless I had my hogleg under my pillow.”

  Spurr gave the man his gun, and Mason tucked it under his pillow, then rested his head back against it, shaping a slow, satisfied smile. “There, that’s better.”

  “’Night, Mason.”

  “’Night, Spurr.”

  Again, Spurr set his hand on the doorknob, poised to leave the room. Again, Mason stopped him.

  “What the hell is it this time?” Spurr said.

  The sheriff gave him another penetrating look. “Thanks for savin’ my ass.”

  “Ah, shit.” Spurr shambled on out of the room.

  26

  IN THE KITCHEN, June was checking a pot roast cooking in the iron range while the dead telegrapher’s cat, Josie, lay on a thick blanket that June had folded atop a chair, making a thick bed for the orphaned beast.

  The cat appeared considerably drier than when Spurr had brought it into the house; June must have run a blanket over it. The milk bowl was empty and the cat now sat crouching, yellow eyes staring at Spurr through the spools of the chair back, looking a little disoriented but also sated and relatively comfortable.

  June slid the roasting pan into the range, closed the squawky door, and glanced at Spurr standing in his stocking-feet in the doorway. “Good lord—you’re still dressed? Shuck out of those soggy clothes before you catch your death of cold! There’s a robe there,” she said, nodding toward the redand-brown plaid robe, frayed around the cuffs, hanging from a wooden peg near the kitchen doorway, beside another peg from which a pink apron hung. “Leave your clothes here. You can wear that upstairs to your bath. Hurry, now. I don’t need two sick men on the premises. I’ll bring some hot water up shortly.”

  “You want me to undress in front of you?”

  She crossed her arms impatiently. “Spurr, do you have any idea how many naked men I’ve seen?”

  “Oh, now, milady,” Spurr said with a wink and a lewd grin, “you ain’t seen this one!”

  June flushed but smiled in spite of herself, turning quickly away to busy herself at her cupboards. Chuckling, Spurr began shucking out of his wet clothes.

  Hell, if she didn’t mind, he sure didn’t. She certainly wouldn’t be the first woman to see him in his birthday suit. She kept her back to him, however, when, all but naked, he sat down to peel his wet balbriggans down his legs, then, dropping the garment over the chair he’d been sitting in, plucked the robe off its peg and pulled it on.

  “Much obliged, Miss June,” he said, donning his wet hat.

  She turned from her dry sink, and laughed. “Spurr, why the hat and six-gun? I guarantee you that there are no bad men in your room upstairs.”

  He looked down at the gun and shell belt he’d buckled around the outside of the robe, then lifted his eyes to the brim of his wet Stetson. He shrugged and grunted, “Old habits are hard to break, I reckon . . .”

  He pinched the hat brim to her, then headed on up the stairs where he found the spare bedroom with the faintly steaming bath in it. After he’d doffed the robe, sunk down in the tepid water, and begun soaping himself, June came in with a bucket of near-boiling water, and added it to the bath, being very businesslike about it and not blushing but politely averting her eyes from the sudsy bathwater.

  “Much obliged, Miss June.”

  “Don’t soak too long,” she said as she walked to the door, bouncing the empty wooden bucket against her leg. “Supper will be ready in an hour but I thought we’d have a drink first.”

  Spurr looked over his shoulder at her, incredulous. “You got whiskey?”

  “I have whiskey, Spurr,” she said, correcting his English and tucking a loose lock of her honey-blond hair behind her ear. “Of course, I do. What do I look like—a pious parson’s wife?”

  Spurr gave her the up and down, brashly enjoying her figure, and the look must have been answer enough for her, because she let a coy little smile play across her eyes before she turned away and left the room, drawing the door closed behind her.

  Spurr continued soaping himself, singing a bawdy song that was often nearly drowned by the thunder that hammered around the house like near cannon blasts. Lightning flickered in the room’s otherwise dark window, and silver rainwater sluiced off the roof overhang just beyond it. He continued to sing the bawdy Irish ballad as he rinsed himself off, then stepped out of the tub and dried with the soft, thick towel that June had set out on the bed.

  “Spurr, why did those men kill Homer Constiner?” she asked him after they’d each taken a seat across from each other in the parlor, near enough to Mason’s room that they could hear if the sheriff called out for June’s assistance.

  She’d poured them each a double shot of whiskey, cutting the hooch with water, and they held their glasses now, June on one end of a horsehair sofa, Spurr in a brocade-upholstered armchair. The old marshal still wore the luxuriously soft robe while his clothes dried over kitchen chairs positioned near the range.

  June had changed into a fresh dress—a cream one with brown checks and lace edges—though Spurr hadn’t seen anything wrong with the other one. They both clung to her wonderfully womanly form right nicely.

  Spurr turned his whiskey glass in his thick, callused brown hand, staring down at it. He was fairly salivating at the succulent aromas of the cooking roast that hung almost palpably in the air around him.

  “You don’t need to sugarcoat it for me,” the woman said, stroking the orphaned cat asleep on the sofa beside her, snugged against her thigh. “I wasn’t born on the frontier, but I’ve lived here nearly twenty years now. In fact, I came out here on the Oregon Trail, lost my parents during an Indian attack, and spent several frightening years on my own in rough-and-tumble gold camps in the northern Rockies. Before I met Richard, that is. I’ve been through a lot. So, tell me, what’s happening here in Diamondback?”

  “To be honest with you, I don’t know. All I know is me and Mason followed that bunch of curly wolves led by Mateo de Cava here. I figured they was just holin’ up till the weather passed, but now they went and killed Constiner and cut the telegraph wire. Seems to me they must be plannin’ to stay awhile, to do a thing like that, to make sure no one can use the telegraph t
o report their presence here. But, hell . . .” Spurr hiked a shoulder and took a sip of the whiskey, which was several notches above the grade of hooch he normally imbibed in. Smacking his lips and sucking his mustache, he said, “I just don’t know. There ain’t no bank in town here, is there?”

  June shook her head. “There hasn’t been a bank in Diamondback for well over a year. Lord knows there hasn’t been any money to put in it for longer than that.”

  “Any other businesses that might be a lucrative mark for trail dogs?”

  June shook her head and bunched her lips. “No. Oh, the mercantile used to do a nice business, but even that’s on its last legs. Soon, I’m sure the hotel and the other stores will close and all Diamondback will be is a ghost town with a stage relay station.”

  Spurr frowned and waited for an especially loud blast of thunder to wane before he said, “The relay station. When’s the stage pull through?”

  “Once a week. It’s due tomorrow, but I doubt it will make it in all this rain.”

  “What’s it carry?”

  “Passengers between Las Cruces and Snowflake, mostly. Drummers. Barbed-wire salesmen, speculators, cardsharps . . .”

  “No strongbox?”

  “Sometimes a strongbox for the Red Devil Mine up in . . .” June let her voice trail off as she widened her eyes at Spurr. “Yes, that’s it—isn’t it? Once a month the Gila Transport line hauls payroll money to Snowflake, to pay the men who work at the mine in greenbacks.”

  “Once a month?”

  “Yes. Regular as clockwork. Word gets around when the payroll goes through, of course, because it means the miners will likely head to Diamondback to spend their money. It’s even good news for me,” she added with a guilty flush, lifting her drink to her lips. “Invariably, they get into a fights and injure themselves.” She gave a dry chuckle. “And that means I have a little extra on Monday for buying coffee and fresh eggs at the mercantile.”

  “Why, Miss June, you are a caution,” Spurr chastised her.