The veteran sharpshooter swallowed and set his hand back up on the table, near the other one.
“Good Christ,” muttered the man sitting beside him, looking down at the bullet hole in the table with a sour expression, as though it were a snake coiled to strike.
“Yes, sir,” Sartain said, aiming the smoking Henry from his right hip. “If that hit anything important, it would have stung like hell. Don’t worry, though—I got fifteen more in this sixteen-shooter. Enough to shoot all of you fellas once and some of you twice, if I’d need to, which I wouldn’t.”
The barman looked at the hole in the card player’s table. Then he glowered at Sartain. “Why don’t you just turn Leach loose and ride on out of here—eh, bucko? Then the trouble would be over. Scrum’s got two of your bullets in him. That’s bloody well enough of this nonsense!”
“He’s not dead,” Sartain said. “So it’s not enough.”
“Scrum’s related to everyone in this room except Salma there,” said the man wearing the federal hat, jerking his chin to indicate the scantily clad girl still standing at the back of the room, her brown eyes wide and shiny with nerves. “And we ain’t gonna let you kill him.”
“You got no choice,” Sartain said, curling his upper lip with a devilish grin. “If my heart weren’t so large, all you dumbasses would be dead by now or close enough to it that the undertaker would be dancin’ a jig. Scrum Wallace would be dead, too.”
“Well, what the hell is this all about, then, for cryin’ in the preacher’s ale?” the barman wanted to know, hammering his spatula angrily on the bar top. “You gonna kill us all, you big-talkin’ Johnny Reb, or you gonna just stand there makin’ threats?”
Sartain said, “I’d just as soon not have to kill you. That’s not why I’m here. I came over here to talk some sense into your fool heads. If you turn Scrum Wallace over to me at the jail, as I’m the law here in town now until further notice”—he tapped a finger against the badge on his vest—“I’ll turn Leach back over to you... with this badge here returned to him. And then, after Scrum Wallace finally pays for his sins, I’ll ride on out of here. If you boys behave yourselves, you’ll never have to look at my handsome Cajun mug ever again.”
The men in the room all glanced at each other. A few wore ever-so-vaguely sheepish expressions, as though they might be thinking about the proposal.
The barman just kept glaring at Sartain, his lower jaw jutting. The Revenger had sized the man up as an uncle to Scrum. He probably needed killing as much as Scrum did, but the Cajun was willing to let the man live as long as he turned his nephew in to receive his just deserts.
“You don’t have to answer now,” Sartain said. “Take some time to think it over. I’ll give you twenty-four hours. However, if any of you tinhorns tries bushwhacking me again like you did last night, this truce will be over. I’ll kill every one of you, and then I’ll kill Scrum like I’m gonna do anyway.”
Sartain grinned and pinched his hat brim to the room. “Good day, fellas. Think it over. I got a feelin’ you’ll come to the right decision.”
Chapter 16
Keeping the Henry trained on the room, the Cajun backed through the batwings and into the street.
As he did, horse hooves clomped to his left. He glanced over to see two horseback riders moving toward him from the west edge of town. The shapes looked familiar. One was a man’s, the other a woman’s. The man rode ahead of the woman, leading her grullo by a lead line attached to a hackamore.
The woman had red-blond hair. She was dressed in a worn, brown and cream gingham dress. Black shoes showed beneath the hem. Maggie Chance rode with her back straight, her hands behind her back. Everett rode with his old Spencer carbine resting across the pommel of his saddle.
Sartain glanced once more at the saloon behind him, making sure none of its occupants was poking a rifle over the batwings at him. He walked out into the street to meet the Chances.
“What the hell’s going on here, Everett?” he asked as Chance kept riding, passing him, heading east along the street.
Maggie followed him on the grullo, regarding Sartain almost wistfully.
“Maggie?” Sartain said. “What the hell’s...?”
As she rode silently past him, he saw that her hands had been handcuffed behind her.
Sartain poked his hat brim off his forehead as he strode after them. Chance pulled his piebald up to the town marshal’s office. Sartain caught up to him just as he was swinging heavily down from his saddle. Chance looked tired, worried, his fleshy features drawn. The sun had blistered his broad, pudgy nose.
The rancher tied the two horses to the hitch rack. He looked at the badge on Sartain’s chest, and he gave a half-hearted smile. “We got us a new marshal in Gold Dust, I see. How’d that happen, Mike?”
Sartain gazed up at Maggie, who stared stiffly ahead at the stone building before her, though she didn’t appear to be seeing much of anything. She wore a very faint smile on her rich, dark-red lips. The upper lip wore a small gash, and it was swollen. Her left eye was slightly discolored. Her hair was piled loosely and pinned atop her head, several stray strands caressing her cheeks in the warm morning breeze.
“Leach had a little accident,” the Cajun said absently, sliding his questioning gaze back to Everett. “You better have one hell of a good reason for this, mister.”
Chance sighed and shook his head. “She tried to kill me last night. Sliced into my back, and then, when I turned around in bed, she tried to cut my throat. I woke at the last second and grabbed her wrist, or I’d have bled out by now. I thrashed at her—didn’t mean to hit her—but have you ever had a knife this close to your throat, Mike?”
He held his thumb and index finger a quarter of an inch apart.
He sighed again, shrugged, and looked sadly at his wife. “I didn’t know what else to do, Mike. I can’t go on livin’ like this, not knowin’ when she’s gonna make another try for me. I thought I’d bring her into town, lock her up for a time. Maybe get Clara La Corte to take a look at her, though there ain’t nothin’ wrong with her physically. It’s all in her head. Maybe the preacher...”
Sartain stepped up close to Maggie and placed his hand on the saddle horn. “Is this all true?”
“Yes,” the woman said blandly.
“I’ve got a cut back to prove it,” Chance added, wincing as canted his head toward his left shoulder. “I’m gonna need a stitch or two, I’m afraid.”
Sartain said, “Why don’t you go on over to the doc’s office, Everett? I’ll see to Maggie.”
Chance looked at her again sadly, speculatively. “What’s got into you, honey? Why’d you do me like that? You can’t really think I killed our boys? Do you? Do you really?” His voice cracked on the last word, and a sheen of tears shone in his eyes.
Maggie stared at him blankly, her mouth corners raised ever so slightly, in a vague, far-away smile.
Chance stared back at her as if awaiting a response. When he did not get one, he shook his head, gave the handcuff key to Sartain, shouldered his Spencer, and began walking back in the direction of Clara La Corte’s office. Several of the men from the Occidental had come out to stand on the gallery, looking around speculatively.
The beefy gent in the barman’s apron said, “Finally gonna lock up that demon woman of yours, eh, Chance?”
Chance muttered something in response that Sartain couldn’t hear. It didn’t sound friendly.
The Cajun gazed up at Maggie, who said with flat, menacing certainty, “Don’t trust him, Mike. Don’t trust him as far as you can throw him.”
Sartain reached up and unlocked her handcuffs. When her arms were free, he pulled her out of the saddle and set her on the ground before him.
“Did you stab him?”
“Yes. Are you going to lock me up?”
Sartain sighed. “What else can I do?”
Maggie nodded. Sartain gestured at the jailhouse’s front door, and Maggie walked to it. Sartain stepped around her and threw
the door open. He grabbed the keys off a spike that had been driven into a stout ceiling support post and led the woman to the far left cell, two cells away from where Leach slumbered on a cot, one boot on the floor, one arm thrown over his forehead.
“What happened to him?” Maggie asked as she stepped into her cell.
“I shot him.”
“Any particular reason?”
“He was going to shoot me. Apparently, he took it personally, my wanting to kill Scrum Wallace.”
“Ah,” Maggie said when Sartain had closed and locked the door. “You have a lot on your plate, Mike.”
“Maggie, tell me what happened.”
“Just what Everett said. I tried to kill him. I had every intention of doing so. I decided to do it after you left, because I knew you didn’t believe me. That you believed Everett. I knew then that it was up to me, and that if I didn’t do it, more people would die.”
Maggie wrapped her hands around the bars of her cell door. “More people will die, Mike. I guarantee it. Now that he’s through hurting everyone out on the ranch, he will bring his madness to town. He’s kill-crazy.”
“If you’re so sure he’s gone mad, Maggie, what do you think caused it?”
She glanced down and tucked her bottom lip beneath her upper lip, thinking. “Do you remember Warrior Gulch, Mike?”
“The wash we crossed on the way to your ranch? Yeah, I remember it. Who could forget those two skeletons lying there together?”
“Then you might also remember that I told you that many of the local Mexicans believe the gulch is cursed. That’s why most of the bodies were never bothered by scavengers, carrion-eaters, or by most folks from the area. The Mexican folks as well as the animals knew to stay away. Some think that the battle that was fought there unleashed the demon spirit of one of the Apaches who was killed there—a shaman warrior named Or-ay-li-no-nooo. In the Lipan Apache language it means ‘black spirit’ or ‘black god.’”
“All right, I’m with you so far,” Sartain said. “Local superstition. I could tell you some hoo-doo stories from my neck of the bayou country. What’s that have to do with Everett?”
“Many of the Mexicans around here, whose families have been here for generations and who have lived amongst the Apaches for as many generations and know the Apache language and folklore, believe the shaman’s spirit will haunt the gulch until it can find a home in another man or beast. Anyone—man or animal—who visits that area will be infected with the dark, malicious spirit of Or-ay-li-no-nooo.”
Sartain stared at her skeptically through the bars, waiting. He knew what she was going to say before she said it, but he let her say it anyway.
“Everett is the only man I know who has visited the gulch. He looted the bodies of the dead soldiers and the Apaches a few years after the battle occurred. He and another young man from a neighboring ranch got drunk on sour mash and dared themselves to venture into the wash and take what valuables they could find—mostly coins, guns, ammunition, and knives. Mostly, they did it for the thrill.”
She waited, staring through the bars at Sartain as though to stamp the words into him with her copper-eyed gaze.
“Okay...” said the Cajun.
“Everett confessed this to me a couple of years after we were married. He started to believe that he might have been infected by the black god’s spirit. He told me he was having abnormal thoughts. Dark thoughts. Evil thoughts about doing horrible things for no apparent reason, but because he just felt compelled by something inside him, something he’d never known before he and Wendell Aimes wandered into the gulch.
“He started to believe this after Wendell came to Gold Dust one night, murdered several of the sporting girls in a whorehouse, and burned the place to the ground with several more girls locked inside. A posse caught Wendell and hanged him. And after that, Everett started to believe they’d both become infected by the evil shaman’s dark spirit.
“I didn’t believe it at first. I tried to assure him it wasn’t true. He was a good, kind man. But then, after he told me about his own suspicions about himself, I saw changes in him. They were very subtle and gradual. It was like a dark cloud hovered over him. He grew angry more easily, and I’d see a strange light in his eyes at times.”
Maggie paused. Her eyes became wet as she stared at Sartain. “And then... the boys started to die in tragic ways. I continued to see that strange, unsettling light in Everett’s eyes. One night, after Ephraim burned in the privy, I awakened to hear my husband speaking—no, chanting—some strange tongue, likely Apache, in his sleep.”
“Why didn’t you leave?” Sartain asked her.
“Because by then we were caring for old Howard, whose mind was quickly leaving him. I couldn’t abandon Howard to his son, who I knew by then to have been infected by the spirit of the evil shaman. Instead, I plotted ways to kill Everett. I was biding my time, gathering my courage, weighing my options.” Maggie opened and closed her hands around the bars. “Then I read a newspaper article about a man known as the Revenger. A man who helped in such matters as killing for folks who couldn’t do the killing themselves...”
Sartain stared back at Maggie, pondering what he’d just heard. It was too much to take in all at once. She’d seemed so sane, telling it. Yet didn’t most insane people—if they were really all-the-way loco—didn’t they all believe what their insane minds were telling them and seem sane when telling about it?
Sartain didn’t know. He’d only brushed elbows with a few truly insane people in New Orleans—street people, mostly. Drunks living in alleys or abandoned warehouses. Whores or jakes whose brains had been eaten out by syphilis—or Cupid’s itch, as it was often called. But most of them had seemed insane, speaking gibberish. Here was a woman who, by looking at her and talking with her, you’d think as sane as the sanest person on earth.
Until you heard her tell her story...
“Let’s say I believe you, Maggie,” Sartain said, hearing the bewilderment in his own voice. “What do you propose I do about it? Just go out there and shoot him down in the street?”
“You’d better,” Maggie said. “You’d better do just that before he starts killing people here in town, Mike.”
As if to punctuate the woman’s warning, a shrill, horrified scream rose from outside the jailhouse.
Everett was with Clara...
Sartain wheeled and ran to the door.
Chapter 17
Sartain ran into the street and angled east toward Clara’s office. As he ran, the scream came again.
Several men came out of the Occidental, some wielding carbines. Sartain palmed his LeMat and aimed it at the four men on the Occidental’s front gallery. They got the message and lowered their weapons.
“Go on back inside!” Sartain shouted.
He ran past the Occidental and was nearly to the pretty young medico’s office when another scream came vaulting out of the gap between the furniture store and the barbershop beside it. The shrill cry lifted the hair on the back of Sartain’s neck.
As he dashed past the drug store, he saw Everett Chance bound out of the doctor’s office and onto the landing atop the stairs.
“Put the gun down, Chance!” Sartain shouted.
He frowned when Clara came out behind Chance, both of them staring into the alley between the furniture store and the barbershop. The Cajun followed their gazes.
The Mexican whore whom Sartain had seen step out of the room in which Scrum Wallace was mending in the Occidental now stood in the alley, lurching back as though something had hold of her ankle. White bandages were scattered on the ground around her. She held her hands to the side of her head as she continued to leap and jerk, struggling with something Sartain couldn’t see, and finally screamed once more.
“Hold on, honey!” Chance shouted, aiming his Remington over the side of the stair rail.
The man’s pistol roared twice. He raised the smoking barrel.
“Got him!” he said.
The girl stepped
back, tripped, and fell on her rump in the dirt.
Frowning incredulously, glancing warily up at Chance grinning down at him, Sartain walked into the gap between the buildings. He was very much aware that Chance still had his pistol out.
Then he saw the large rattler lying in a bloody pile a few feet away from the groaning whore.
Sartain holstered his LeMat and ran over to the girl, dropping to a knee beside her. “You bit, sweetheart?”
She had her blue skirt raised above her knees, and that seemed to be what she was inspecting herself for now. She ran her hands down her plump, brown legs and shook her head. “I don’t think...”
Clara and Chance walked up behind him. Chance was holstering his Remington. “She bit?”
Sartain closely scrutinized both the girl’s legs. Clara did, as well.
“I don’t see any bite marks,” the medico said, running her hand down the whore’s right shin. “Do you feel any pain, Esmeralda?”
The whore shook her head.
“He must have struck but only caught her dress,” Chance said. “When I first seen it, I thought for sure it’d bit her.”
Sartain lifted the hem of the girl’s torn skirt. “It must have gotten its fangs caught in the fabric.” He smiled at the whore. “Close one.”
“Si,” the girl said with a relieved sigh. “Cristo—I was very frightened.”
“She’d just left my office with more bandages for Wallace,” Clara said as she helped Esmeralda pick up the bandages scattered around them.
When Clara took Esmeralda back up her office for a fresh batch of clean bandages, Chance followed Sartain out of the alley. He said, “Say, Mike, what was all that about... you tellin’ me to drop my gun?”
Sartain’s ears warmed a little with chagrin. “Just force of habit, I reckon,” he said with what he intended to be a reassuring grin, feeling a little silly for having halfway believed Maggie’s story. “When I see a man with his gun out, I reckon I just naturally think it’s intended for me.”
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