.45-Caliber Desperado

by Peter Brandvold

  “Yes,” she said, her brown eyes acquiring a buoyant whiskey sheen, “and an enterprising businesswoman.”

  “Is it time for that strongbox to be pullin’ through town?”

  Pensive lines cut through her forehead as she looked toward a corner of the room before returning her gaze to the lawman. “Yes. I think so, Spurr.”

  Spurr nodded and stared at a rain-streaked window. The storm continued to hammer the roof. When lightning pealed, Josie would lift her head from the couch and look around as though afraid the walls would cave in on her. June absently stroked the cat’s fur that had curled a little, looking more shaggy, as it dried.

  “Oh, Spurr,” June said, frowning at him with concern. “If the gang is here to rob the stage, you can’t go up against them alone!”

  Spurr thought it over as he stared at the window. He wished to hell he’d gotten a telegraph off to Hackberry Creek before the de Cava gang had cut the wire. Being the veteran desperado he was, de Cava probably knew that stage’s timetable. That had to be what he was waiting for.

  Spurr took another sip of the delicious whiskey, and despite the perplexity of his situation, he enjoyed the burn in his throat and belly, the limbering warmth it spread through his flinty old arteries. “Times like these, I’ve learned to eat the apple one bite at a time,” he said as much to himself as to June.

  “Maybe it won’t make it,” she said, following the old lawman’s gaze to the moisture-streaked window. “All the washes between here and Las Cruces are bound to be flooded. The stage will probably be holed up at a relay station for several days, until the water goes down.” She sighed, gave the cat one last pat, and rose, smoothing her dress against the backs of her thighs. “Speaking of eating, I don’t want my roast to dry out. Shall we?”

  “Ma’am,” Spurr said, rising to his feet and grinning, though the stage was riding heavy on his mind, “if it tastes as good as it smells, I’ll race you into the kitchen!”

  “It’s not going anywhere. Let’s just walk, Spurr.” She extended her hand to him with a warm smile. He took it, pressed his lips to it tenderly, and hand in hand, the two strode off to the kitchen and the beckoning smell of the roast.

  Spurr couldn’t remember when he’d last enjoyed a meal as much as he enjoyed the one cooked by June Dickinson.

  The pot roast, fresh garden beans, and mashed potatoes and rich, dark cream gravy were a joy to behold, so much better than café fare he’d become accustomed to; they padded out the old lawman’s hollow belly deliciously. The follow-up peach pie and whipped cream were fresh and sweet, the coffee hot and black.

  Best of all, however, was the companionship of this beautiful woman. They’d known each other only a few hours, but Spurr felt nearly as comfortable around her now as he did with his dear Abilene, and he felt no guilt in Abilene’s regard.

  He did not belong to Abilene, nor did she belong to him. They both knew that life was as mercurial as mountain weather, and there were no guarantees they would ever see each other again. Abilene was likely taking comfort where she could find it; she would expect Spurr to do the same.

  He dropped his fork on his empty dessert plate and took his last sip of coffee, regarding June sitting across from him warmly. “That was truly a delight the size of the entire frontier, Miss June. I do thank you for it.”

  “It was my pleasure, Spurr. How ’bout another piece of pie?”

  Spurr sat back in his chair. “Couldn’t hold another forkful.”

  “How ’bout another cup of coffee with some added elixir?” June held up the whiskey bottle and looked at him alluringly. “Help you sleep . . .”

  Spurr held up his stone mug. “Don’t mind if I do!”

  Later, after a long, leisurely conversation and when they’d politely and somewhat shyly bid each other good night, Spurr drifted off to his room while June disappeared into the one beside his room upstairs, leaving her own larger and more comfortable bed to her patient. Spurr closed his door and turned to the window in which lightning still flashed while thunder ravished the heavens. He ran his hands through his long, thinning hair, knowing a keen frustration.

  The night seemed incomplete. And he didn’t think it was only his own goatish hungers that made it seem so, either.

  He lit a lamp and crawled into bed. He could hear June moving around in the room next door. He heard the faint chink of her lantern’s chimney as she lowered the wick in the room next to his, and the gentle complaint of the bed’s leather springs.

  Finally, the sounds stopped, and then there was only the boisterous clamor of the storm.

  Spurr sighed. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

  “Spurr?” June’s voice was like a tonic. He snapped his eyes open.

  “Yes, June?”

  “If you need anything over there,” she said, pausing to clear her throat, “you know where I am.”

  Spurr wrinkled his brows as he stared up at the ceiling lit only by lightning flashes. Shadows of tree branches shunted this way and that across the wainscoting rising in peaks above the bed. He replayed the woman’s message in his head, and a slow smile shaped itself on his craggy face.

  Two minutes later, he tapped his knuckles lightly against her door and winced. What if her message had not been the invitation he’d taken it for?

  On the other side of the door, June chuckled. “Get in here, you. But you better not be wearing your hat and six-gun!”

  Spurr laughed and went in.

  27

  CAMILLA’S LEFT BREAST bulged tenderly out from beneath her arm as she lay in the deep, soft bed in their second-story room in the Diamondback Hotel.

  Pale light touched it softly. Cuno lowered his head and kissed the vanilla orb.

  Camilla groaned and moved a little but kept her head pressed against the inside of her other arm, which was curled atop her pillow. She breathed slowly, deeply, drifting back into the depths of sleep made more inviting by the all-night tempest that had put a chill in the air and left a broad, wet stain on the peaked ceiling above the bed. The wind must have blown some shingles off and let the water in.

  Cuno lifted his head from Camilla’s back, and dropped his feet to the floor. He groaned a little at the burn in his left arm. The limb felt tight and hard, and it throbbed as though a rat had eaten into it during the long, stormy night and was nibbling away at the bone.

  The purple skin of his forearm bulged; a sickly yellow color outlined both puncture wounds in the middle of the swell. Despite the soreness, he was damned lucky. Apparently, only a little venom had been fired into his system, making him about half as sick as he would have been had the viper not spent its poison on a rabbit or gopher before sinking its teeth into Cuno. He was a little queasy and lightheaded, but otherwise he felt all right.

  He hoped he wouldn’t have to ride today, but if he had to, he could.

  Now he tramped barefoot over to the room’s single window and swept the flour-sack curtain aside with his right hand. He looked out over the shake-shingled and darkly wet roof angling over the saloon’s front gallery into the street. Puddles lay everywhere, and long wheel ruts were overflowing with water.

  The mud was six inches deep. Roof shingles and newspapers and other bits of windblown trash and tumbleweeds littered the mud.

  The sky was the color of greasy rags; it hung low over the false facades west of the hotel. The wind had died, and a moody silence had descended in its wake. A fine mist quietly beaded against the window that had a long jagged crack in it. There was no movement on the street except a single wet dog trotting along the street’s opposite side with its head and tail down, splashing through the puddles.

  Cuno picked up his battered timepiece and saw that it was nine thirty. He’d slept in after a fitful night with his stinging, burning arm.

  He was a light sleeper, and he’d heard no sounds coming from the hall, so most of the gang must still be asleep. They’d had a long, wild night downstairs with two whores and much whiskey and cards. Cuno and Camilla had
holed up here together, Camilla fetching food and beer and tending his arm before they’d made love, then fallen asleep together despite the booming voices from the saloon hall below.

  Now he could hear several sets of snores pushing through the walls around him as he dressed quietly, letting the girl sleep. He grabbed his hat and Winchester, stepped out into the hall, and pulled the door closed quietly behind him.

  Downstairs, he found Frank Skinner sitting alone at a table in the hall’s deep shadows. The wiley, sinewy, old train robber sat hunched over an oblong plate of eggs, bacon, and fried potatoes. He was wearing a long, wool coat and had a Spencer carbine on the table in front of him.

  The only other person in the saloon was the beefy bartender, who had a long, straggly mustache drooping down both sides of his thin-lipped mouth. He was chopping up a roast while eyeing Cuno cautiously, dropping the small chunks of meat into an iron stew pot on the bar beside him. His face looked haggard, the skin around his eyes sagging, the eyes themselves bloodshot. He hadn’t had much sleep after a doubtless harried night.

  As Cuno stepped off the staircase’s last step, Skinner, chewing, glanced over his shoulder at him. The train robber stopped chewing to grin, then began chewing again as he said, “I was snakebit once, and I begged my brother Earl to blow my head off with his shotgun.”

  He shook his head and swallowed his mouthful of food. “I was sure we’d seen the last of you yesterday. Or figured I’d have to finish you off today so’s you didn’t hold us up any.”

  Cuno strode over to the bar. “Sorry to disappoint you, Frank.”

  “I ain’t disappointed. We’re gonna need all the guns we got to pull this next job and then get down deep into Mexico. And, in case you ain’t noticed, we’re startin’ to run a little short.”

  “Give me a beer,” Cuno told the barman. “Break three eggs into it.”

  He turned and rested his elbows against the edge of the bar, facing Skinner who’d continued to hungrily scoop food into his mouth. Since busting out of the hellhole of the Arkansas River Federal Pen, Cuno had had the same inclination—to eat and keep eating until he burst like a blood-sucking deer tick. In the pen, if Castle hadn’t wanted you to eat, you didn’t eat. Only, this morning Cuno wasn’t hungry. He’d get his appetite back when the last of the venon had made its way from his belly.

  The barman sullenly set his beer with three eggs in it atop the bar. Cuno flipped a dime onto the counter, then took the beer over to Skinner’s table.

  He set his rifle on the table near Skinner’s carbine, removed a chair from on top of the table, which was the position all the other chairs in the saloon were in, and straddled it. He sipped the foam off the top of the beer.

  “What’s the next job?” he asked.

  Skinner was swabbing yolk from his plate with three large chunks of potato. He rolled his eyes over to the bar, where the apron had resumed chopping the roast and tossing the chunks into the pot. He had a stack of washed and topped carrots beside his cutting board.

  Keeping his voice low, Skinner said, “Stagecoach. Mateo said the Gila Transport Company hauls a strongbox through here and occasionally moneyed passengers—wealthy businessmen—from Las Cruces to the mines in the mountains. Sounds like Snowflake is boomin’ sorta the way Diamondback was a few years ago, and speculators are movin’ in to, you know”—the old train robber grinned—“speculate. No doubt with their pockets full.”

  “When’s it due?”

  “Noon. Keeps a rigid schedule in these parts.”

  “What about the rain?”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why Mateo and his fellers are sleepin’ in. It likely won’t make it till the washes empty out. I was restless, so I got up early and rode out, and there’s a wide creek about three miles south of town, on the road from Las Cruces. That won’t be passable for a day or two, and who knows how the washes look farther south.”

  Skinner shook his head and shoved a wedge of yolk-soaked toast into his mouth. “Nah, it won’t make it today. Maybe tomorrow, even the next day. Or . . .” He shrugged and clapped crumbs from his hands as he sat back in his chair. “Maybe the next day after that.”

  “You think it’s safe—us holin’ up here that long?”

  “Mateo cut the telegraph wires, so if any of the fine citizens of Diamondback decided to shout for help against the owlhoots holed up in their fine hotel, they couldn’t do it. But I’m gonna suggest to Mateo we ride out and meet the stage at the flooded wash. No use waitin’ around here. Just settin’ ourselves up for another ambush. Besides, the whores ain’t much good.”

  Skinner looked edgy. He likely had enough warrants and bounties on his head that he’d have to spend the rest of his life in Mexico. Cuno knew how he felt.

  The young freighter wasn’t thirsty for the beer, but he figured it would take some of the burn out of his arm, so he guzzled a good third of it and felt one of the eggs slide down his throat and into his belly. The beer was, indeed, soothing. And the egg was instantly nourishing.

  He felt better. But he didn’t like the pensive cast to Skinner’s gaze. The man was an experienced robber, and Cuno knew not to take the man’s moods lightly.

  “What’s the matter, Frank? You don’t like the setup?”

  Skinner pursed his lips and slid his plate to one side, absently brushing crumbs from the table and onto the floor that still looked damp from a recent mopping. “I know we need this job, as it’s likely our last chance at good money before we hit the border, but I sense our gates closin’ on us fast.”

  “Brouschard ever show?”

  “Nope.”

  Cuno couldn’t work up much sympathy for Mateo’s pugnacious first lieutenant. “That the reason you’re worried?”

  Skinner lounged back in his chair, shoulders tilted to one side, his hat tipped back off his forehead to show a wedge of gray-flecked hair combed back from a pronounced widow’s peak. “We got men on our trail. Maybe not many, but in this age of the telegraph, we could have ’em ahead of us, too. And there’s a goddamn cavalry outpost just south of here, on Hackberry Creek. It ain’t much. I’ve been through there a time or two in the past; it’s a rat-infested little cracker box outfitted with kids and old drunks. But they got a group, just the same.”

  Skinner leaned forward suddenly. “And in case you haven’t noticed, our ranks are thinned. That was a crackbrained move Mateo made, holin’ up in that little railroad camp for that long. When you’re on the run, you run. That’s the definition of runnin’, see?”

  “Them bounty hunters whipsawed us.”

  “If not for you and the chiquita, kid, we’d all be dead.” Skinner stared at Cuno across the table, and a bemused light shone in his frosty blue eyes. “You take to this kind o’ livin’, haven’t ya? I never figured you for a career criminal, but maybe I had you figured wrong.”

  “Do yourself a favor and don’t try to figure me. I’ve stopped tryin’ to figure myself.” Cuno polished off the beer and the last egg and sleeved the hoppy malt from his mouth. “But I agree with you—I’d like to get to Mexico. But I’m gonna need some cash soon, so I’m willin’ to risk waitin’ for the stage.”

  “Well, I reckon Mateo is, too. And it’s his dance, so I reckon he calls it.” Skinner sighed and snapped his fingers for the barman to bring him another beer and a shot of whiskey. “Join me?” he asked Cuno.

  “Nah, I’m gonna go out and stretch my legs, get my strength back.” Cuno slid his chair back, and rose, stretching, wincing at the tight knot in his left forearm.

  “All right, kid. See ya later. I know I’ll feel a whole lot better when we’re down in Mexico.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” Cuno said, grabbing his rifle off the table and heading for the front door. “With a few coins in my pocket.”

  “If Mateo’s right about this stage,” Skinner called, “it’ll be more than a little, and you’ll be knowin’ you’re in the right profession, after all.”

  Cuno glanced back at him. The bartender had just set a fresh
beer and whiskey shot in front of Skinner. He was nervously rubbing his hands on his apron. Skinner arched a brow at the man and said, “But all that’ll stay under this roof here—won’t it, pard?”

  He grinned malevolently. The barman swallowed and shambled on back to the bar.

  Cuno opened the door and went out into the soggy morning, lifting the collar of his denim jacket against the damp chill, looking around the gray, sodden town. A fine mist was still falling from a cottony sky. There were a few people out now—mostly shopkeepers sweeping tumbleweeds from their stoops or setting planks out in the street in front of their businesses on which potential customers could scrape the mud from their boots.

  Aside from those three or four proprietors, the town looked as though it had been abandoned during the windy deluge. All that told Cuno that citizens remained was the smoke curling over and around the rooftops, emanating from both the north and the south side of town, where private dwellings and whores’ cribs were arranged amongst stock pens and corrals and hay barns.

  He walked down off the porch and into the street, his boots sinking heel-deep in the mud. Shouldering his Winchester, he walked westward along the street, his boots making sucking sounds in the mud, splashing in the puddles too numerous to be avoided.

  When he’d walked a block and a half, he stopped in front of the stage relay station identified by the Gila Transport Company sign running along the roofline of the gallery. It was a shabby log building with a red dirt roof. It was rectangular, and its logs were silver with age. Likely, it had been the first building here, when Diamondback was only a relay station, before color showed in the Organ Mountains to the west.

  Blue smoke curled from the tin chimney pipe. The front door was open, and an old woman with gray hair drawn back from her forehead and wrapped in a taut bun was sweeping dirt out the open doorway onto the porch where there were several wicker chairs and a sandbox spotted with chewing tobacco and cigarette stubs.

  Three crows sat on the pole rail running along the right end of the porch, preening and digging mites from under their wings, one cocking its head to see what the old woman swept out.