The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  “Forget it, McAllister!” said the third man. “We done drew matchsticks, and I got seconds, remember?”

  “Kiss my behind, Stacy! You rigged it, remember that?”

  Stacy laughed.

  Sarah struggled fiercely, beating Drew’s back hysterically and with shocking futility. He didn’t so much as stagger as he opened the door to the Manghams’ storage rooms and strode on into the makeshift parlor and kitchen where the Manghams often ate their lunches.

  A curtained doorway separated the small, crudely appointed kitchen and parlor from the storage area. It was dark now at midday with no lanterns lit but with only the curtains drawn back from over a couple of small north windows.

  Halfway through the parlor, Drew stopped suddenly. “You want down?”

  He leaned forward and to one side, releasing Sarah.

  “There you go!”

  She rolled off the man’s shoulder. Even though there was a worn braided rug on the parlor floor, the floor came up to slam her hard about the back of her head and her shoulders. Her breath slammed from her lungs.

  The violent landing stunned her. She tried to suck in another breath but felt as though a giant was sitting on her chest.

  Drew stared down at her from beneath the brim of his battered tan hat. His face was gaunt. His lower jaws hung loosely in it, almost as though it were unattached. He had a gold front tooth. Sarah wanted to scramble away from him, but she couldn’t draw a breath. She was helpless, incapacitated.

  She wheezed as she tried in vain to draw a breath.

  “Don’t worry,” Drew said as he unbuckled his cartridge belt and let it drop to the floor behind him with a thud. “You just got the wind knocked out of you. You’ll get it back in a minute.”

  Sarah got some of it back just then. She turned away from the man who was pulling his pants down his legs and tried to crawl away. Her limbs felt heavy, and her ears were ringing. She could feel the reverberations of the other two men’s footsteps in the floor beneath her hands and knees.

  She was crawling away, heading in the general direction of the tiny kitchen and the rear door that opened off it. She didn’t make it six feet before his hands grabbed her feet and jerked her violently back. Drew rolled her over brutally, grinned down at her. The gold tooth winked insinuatingly.

  “You be nice, now,” he said commandingly, “and I’ll be nice. All right?”

  “Let me go!” Sarah said, still having trouble working air over her tangled up vocal cords.

  She was also having trouble believing what was happening.

  Had three men really entered the store and attacked her in broad daylight? Just a few minutes ago, she’d been counting change into Mrs. Farmington’s hand. A minute after that, she’d talked to her father, and then he’d left to have his mid-morning coffee over at the restaurant, probably with Joe Diamond, who ran a freighting business, and Melvin St. John, a mine owner and the president of the Silver City Town Council.

  Now she stared down in shock and disbelief as the gaunt-faced, snake-eyed man called Drew, who still had his hat on, leaned down to kiss her.

  She tried to scuttle back away from him, the rug painfully raking her, but he grabbed her legs and pulled her back toward him again.

  She winced as the rug burned her, a hot, stinging sensation that sent a shudder through every inch of her.

  “No!” she cried, desperately trying to fight him off, flailing her fists at him, the blows merely glancing off his shoulders. She was sobbing now, horrified.

  “I told you, Miss Mangham,” Drew said testily, grabbing her wrists, “you be nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. Okay? Can we do that or are you gonna make me mad?”

  “Let me go!” she cried, then tipped her head back to scream, “Marshal Tuck—”

  Drew slammed the back of his hand across her right cheek, cutting off the scream and throwing her hard against the floor. The room spun.

  She must have partly lost consciousness. Time seemed to have passed unnoticed when she realized what was happening to her.

  “Oh, my God!” she screamed aloud, and bawled, sobs racking her. “Noooooo!”

  Chapter 4

  Sartain woke from a nap and rolled over on the canopied bed. The leather springs squawked beneath his weight.

  He turned to see that he was the only one in the bed and that the covers had been thrown back from the other side. He turned his head in the other direction to see the girl, Emmanuelle, sitting at her dressing table, slowly, luxuriously brushing her long, thick brown hair.

  She brushed it from the inside out, sort of flipping it back in the air behind her.

  She sat facing the table and the mirror, legs crossed, the black wrap pulled taut against her chest. She looked at Sartain in the mirror atop the table and smiled. “Bon jour, mon ami endormi.”

  Sartain knew enough French, albeit more Creole than pure, to know that she’d welcomed her “sleepy friend” to the afternoon. He glanced at the room’s single window, over which a gauzy pale curtain was drawn and through which the soft light of afternoon angled.

  Sartain ran a big hand down his face and smacked his lips, then tossed the covers back and dropped his bare feet to the floor. He yawned. “That was a nap. Boy, was it.” He yawned again. “I think you turned every muscle in this big ole body to warm mud, girl.”

  “I missed you,” she said in the mirror as she brushed her hair, tilting her head slightly and smiling one of those subtly radiant smiles of hers that grabbed a man in the nether regions. “I was jealous of any woman who might have visited you in your dreams.”

  “Don’t worry,” the Cajun said, getting to his feet and walking over to her, “I slept so hard I don’t think I dreamed about anything, much less any woman.” He leaned down and wrapped his arms around her. “But if I had dreamt, I would have dreamt of you, Emmanuelle.” He nuzzled her neck. “You’re special.”

  She set the brush down and reached up and behind her to wrap her arms around his neck. He slid his head around in front of her and kissed her. When he pulled away, she regarded him speculatively for a time one brown eye nearly crossing. “You are Mike Sartain, The Revenger,” she said.

  Sartain frowned.

  “Oui,” said Emmanuelle. “I have heard of you. You are in the newspapers sometimes, non? I have heard men speak of you. Especially certain...lawmen...who pass through Silver City from time to time and visit me.”

  “Ah.”

  Sartain straightened. He didn’t like that he’d acquired a reputation because it made it all the harder to follow his calling. But then, it would have been silly to think that after all the soldiers he’d killed—those who’d raped and murdered Jewel and shot her grandfather—and the other men he’d gone on to kill for those unable to do the deed themselves, he wouldn’t have acquired a reputation. He’d considered changing his name but nixed the idea. No hiding behind an alias for him.

  He just had to stay on his toes, which would have been a good idea even had he not become infamous. There were several bounties on his head, as well as an “unofficial” government sanction order, which was nothing more than a death warrant signed by the President of the United States.

  The Cajun walked over to the washstand and dropped the sponge into the water. As he washed, Emmanuelle came over and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

  “I think it is a noble what you do, Mike,” she said and pressed her lips to his back. “I admire you for helping those who can’t help themselves.”

  “Someone’s gotta do it.”

  “Oui,” Emmanuelle said. “Life is unjust at times. The law is often...impuissant. Impotent.”

  “You can say that again.”

  Emmanuelle sat on the bed and crossed her pretty legs as he dressed.

  “Are you here to help someone in Silver City, Mike?”

  “I thought I was,” The Revenger said, stepping into his denims. “Turned out I was wrong. Not everyone understands what I do.” Remembering Brian Mangham soured his mood. For some
reason, he felt a pang of guilt for having turned the man down. For a rich man, Mangham had seemed vulnerable and pathetic, somehow.

  “That’s probably for the best. Things are complicated here. They may seem simple, mon cher, but that is the trick. Not everyone is as they seem.”

  “Which means Silver City is no different from any other place with a population of over, say, two.” Sartain kissed her forehead. “Let’s change the subject. It’s been a wonderful day, and I just wanna let my mind linger over it while I fetch me a drink and a big steak dinner then find a nice bed of warm hay near my horse.”

  “You can come back here.” Emmanuelle shook her crossed leg. “It is a slow time of the year, and most men around here can’t afford me.”

  “I’m afraid I fall into that category, darlin’.”

  Sartain checked the double-barreled derringer he always kept in his left vest pocket, attached by a gold chain to the dented Waterbury timepiece stowed in the opposite pocket. He wrapped his shell belt, LeMat, and Bowie knife around his waist.

  “Darn shame, too. I was just startin’ to enjoy myself.”

  “Irma might extend some credit,” she teased in a lilting singsong.

  “Don’t tempt me.” Sartain crouched to peck the girl’s ripe lips. “I’d best be movin’ on, but I’ll be back again sometime. You can count on that.”

  “You’d better!” she called to him as he walked to the door.

  He donned his hat, cast her a parting wink over his shoulder, and left the room.

  * * *

  Sartain walked out onto the hurdy-gurdy house’s front porch and fished out of his shirt pocket what he’d saved of the Cuban stogie he’d been given by Brian Mangham. He didn’t like the associations that went along with the expensive cigar, but he wasn’t one to waste a good smoke.

  As he poked the stogie into his mouth, he plucked a lucifer from his vest pocket. He was about to scrape the match to life on the porch rail but stopped when he saw the girl he assumed was Mangham’s daughter wrestling a corrugated tin washtub bristling with mining implements toward the mercantile’s open door.

  She was moving the porch-displayed inventory indoors in preparation for closing the shop for the day.

  A comely young lady, Sartain silently opined. Probably early twenties. She filled out her dress well, but there was a primness to the set of her lips, the soul in revolt against the body. Again, he moved the match toward the porch rail. The girl gave a yowl. It was followed by a dull thud. The Cajun stretched his gaze toward the mercantile once more.

  The girl had fallen, picks, shovels, and rakes tumbling down around her.

  “Crap!” Sartain said, flipping the unlit match away.

  He stuffed the cigar back into his pocket as he ran down the brothel’s steps and across the street, angling toward the mercantile. He dodged a horseback rider, then took the mercantile’s porch steps three at a time, reaching the girl just as Brian Mangham came out of the store in shirtsleeves, frowning curiously, a pencil in one hand and a ledger in the other.

  “Good Lord, Sarah!” the old man said. “I thought I heard a commotion out here. What happened?”

  Sartain dropped down beside her. She lay back on the porch floor, wincing and sort of writhing.

  “Oh, I was just clumsy, Poppa. I didn’t realize how heavy that tub of picks and shovels was.” Her voice was pinched. “I should have left it for Scott.”

  “Sarah!” This from the younger man striding out of the mercantile behind Mangham, wearing a green visor and sleeve garters, a pencil tucked behind his ear. His hands were ink-stained. Sandy-haired and freckle-faced, he appeared to be in his mid to late twenties. A family resemblance to the girl and old Mangham was obvious in the nose and the set of his eyes. “What on earth happened?”

  He squatted on the other side of Sarah from Sartain. She winced again and drew her right knee toward her belly as though she were more seriously injured than she appeared. Sartain was surprised to see that her lower lip was split and that her right eye was slightly discolored. He hadn’t noticed the marks when he’d seen her in the mercantile earlier that day.

  “Oh, I’m fine, Scott. I’m fine. I was just being silly again. I should have called for you to help me with the washtub. I didn’t realize how heavy it was. Got my clumsy feet tangled.”

  Sartain said, “Are you sure you’re all right, Miss Mangham?”

  She glanced at him, flushed briefly, sheepishly, and glanced away. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  Mangham said, “She got that split lip and black eye earlier. Told me she ran into the farm wagon we have hanging from the ceiling inside the mercantile. Hanging too low, obviously. Scott, we’re going to have to take that damn thing down tomorrow so neither your sister nor anyone else runs into it.”

  “Come on, Sarah,” Scott said. He was a clean-shaven young man with sensitive eyes and a refined demeanor. “Let me help you to your feet.”

  As Scott took the young lady’s arm and began helping her off the porch floor, Sarah winced again, her cheeks turning pale. She was definitely in pain.

  “Are you sure you didn’t break an ankle, Miss Mangham? Crack a rib? You don’t look so good. Maybe I should run and fetch a sawbones for you.”

  The girl turned to him, testy-eyed. “Thank you, whoever you are, but I assure you I don’t need a doctor. And I no longer require your assistance either.”

  Laughter sounded from across the street. Sartain turned to see four men standing outside a small log building called Berrigan’s Ale Bucket, gazing toward the mercantile.

  One of the men wore a star on his buckskin shirt. The others were similarly dressed in rough trail gear, complete with six-shooters bristling from holsters. The group was slightly obscured by the late afternoon shadows and wisps of blue smoke billowing down from the brick chimney jutting from the saloon’s ceiling.

  “Who are those men with Marshal Tucker?” Scott asked. “And what are they laughing at?”

  The town marshal turned away with a sheepish air, placing a hand on an arm of one of the other three men, encouraging him to turn him away as well. The man angrily jerked his arm out of the town marshal’s grip but turned and headed into the suds house.

  One by one, the others, still chuckling, turned away from the mercantile and followed the lawman into the saloon, batwings flapping into place behind them.

  Sartain glanced at Sarah Mangham. She was staring toward the saloon. Her eyes were hard, inscrutable. Her cheeks were again flushed, her pink lips pursed. The afternoon breeze brushed her dark-blond hair back from her cheeks as she continued to stare with what Sartain read as raw fury.

  He knew something about that emotion.

  “Do you know those men, Miss Mangham?” Sartain asked, curious.

  That broke her trance-like state. She turned to him with the same annoyed air as before and said sharply, “No, of course, I don’t.”

  “I don’t know what they or the marshal thinks is so funny about a young lady taking a tumble,” Brian Mangham said, “but Dan Tucker has never been known for his manners.” He took his daughter’s arm. “Come on, dear. Let’s get you inside. Scott and I will finish the closing chores for you. I think you’d better go in and lie down.”

  “Yes,” Sarah said, letting the old man lead her into the mercantile. “Perhaps I’d better. I must have hit my head when I fell. I’m a little dizzy.”

  When they were alone on the porch, Scott turned to Sartain with a curious air. “Who are you?”

  “Me?” The Revenger said, shrugging. “Nobody.”

  He drifted down the mercantile’s porch steps and strolled up the street, digging the half-smoked stogie out of his shirt pocket again. As he lit the cigar, he glanced at Berrigan’s Ale Bucket, hearing what sounded like the same four men laughing inside.

  Chapter 5

  Sartain checked on his buckskin stallion, Boss, then found an eatery where a loquacious Chinaman fried him a steak that all by itself filled one entire serving platter.

  T
he big Cajun devoured the steak, a heaping portion of gravy-drenched mashed potatoes, and a sizable portion of green beans. He followed the main meal up with two slices of pumpkin pie buried in freshly whipped buttery cream.

  He left the eatery after shaking the talkative Chinaman’s hand and loosening his belts. A few minutes later, he found himself in the Gila River Saloon & Gambling Parlor sitting alone with a fresh bottle of whiskey. The place didn’t serve his favorite bourbon, Sam Clay, but few out-of-the-way places did. The whiskey wasn’t half-bad. At least it had a label, and that was an oddity this far out in the tall and uncut.

  The Revenger didn’t drink alone long. Several burly miners came in a half-hour after he did and enticed him into a game of stud poker. He hadn’t much liked the way his thoughts had turned while drinking alone, swerving as they had to the feeble and befuddled old Mangham and the man’s daughter, who Sartain could have sworn had run into something more on the order of the back of a man’s hand than any farm supply wagon hanging from the mercantile ceiling.

  Sartain didn’t want to think about the Manghams’ problems tonight. He’d turned down the old man’s request for help and that was that. Besides, Mangham was a man who could pay for help.

  Sartain enjoyed the low-stakes poker. He enjoyed the boisterous banter of his fellow card players even more. Three were Irishmen, and two were Germans, all big, wild-eyed, bearded men who loved to drink and, apparently, love and eat and pan for gold and silver.

  In that order.

  The more they drank, the more they quipped and told long, windy tales that they’d obviously relayed before, judging by the reactions of the other listeners. But Sartain hadn’t heard the stories, and he found them entertaining if not entirely believable, especially the one an Irishman told about getting caught in a cyclone while buffalo hunting along the Republican River in Colorado and waking up the next day in a roofless barn in Nebraska to two pretty blonde-headed barefoot Norwegian immigrant girls nursing him back to health with fresh milk from their cow.