“I’ll be needing a horse,” the outlaw said.
The men looked around at each other.
“I’ll get it,” Radigan said finally, shrugging into his plaid mackinaw and donning his beaver skin hat.
He went out into the wind.
Sartain poured himself a drink and sat back and watched as Donleavy brought the outlaw his clothes. He even brought him his coiled shell belt and six-shooter as well as his rifle, all of which he’d left upstairs.
Lazaro accepted the bundle and stepped into the shadows on the far side of the potbelly stove. Sartain saw his silhouette moving around over there. When the outlaw stepped out of the shadows, he was dressed. He wore a long duster over a wool-lined sheepskin vest and a high-crowned brown Stetson.
He had his silver pistol strapped to his waist. His rifle rested on his shoulder.
He looked around at the men still watching him edgily, and slipped a long, black cheroot from his vest pocket. He scraped a match to life on his cartridge belt and brought the flame to the cigar, puffing smoke.
He tossed the lit match onto the floor where the flames slowly died, and then rolled the cigar around between his lips, smoking and watching the men watching him from over by Sartain.
The Revenger merely sat back in his chair, boots crossed on the table before him, sipping his whiskey, and watching in mild amusement the scene before him.
Lazaro didn’t say anything. He just stood there, facing his former captors, dull-eyed, and smoking.
Hooves thudded outside. There was the clank of a bit against teeth. Radigan came in, red-faced and shivering. “Your horse is here, Mr. Lazaro.”
Sartain thought: Why don’t you give him Saunders’ daughter as a parting gift, just to make sure his feelings aren’t hurt?
“Gracias, señor,” Lazaro said, striding forward. “Then I guess it is time to bid you amigos adiós.”
As he stepped through the crowd, it parted for him.
Donleavy said, “Now, you’re gonna keep your promise, right? We won’t be seeing you here again?”
Lazaro had made it to the door.
Now he stepped back into the crowd and closed his hand around Donleavy’s chin, and shook his head. His fleshy cheeks wobbled.
He said in a tight, harsh voice, “Amigo, didn’t I tell you my word is bond? Are you adding insult to injury now by calling me a liar? On top of all the other indignities, I suffered here over the past several hours at your hands?”
“Hey, that was Sartain’s doin’,” Radigan urged, swallowing nervously and pointing at the Cajun. “Sartain’s and the girl’s. We had nothin’ to do with that, and you know it.”
Lazaro turned to Sartain. “Sí. I suspect that I and Señor Sartain and his comely accomplice will be meeting again someday.”
“Wouldn’t doubt it a bit,” The Revenger said, raising his shot glass in salute.
Lazaro pinched his hat brim to the group then turned and strode outside. In a few seconds, hooves thudded, and the outlaw was gone.
The wind whistled through the broken windows.
Chapter 17
When the outlaw’s hoof thuds had dwindled to silence, all the men in the saloon stood staring at the door. They stood like that for a long time. Sartain could read their thoughts.
Had they made a mistake?
Finally, George Saunders wiped his sweaty hands on his corduroy jacket, retrieved his hat and gloves and pistol from his table, and strode toward the front of the room. “I’m going home.”
“You don’t think any of us should stay?” asked Donleavy. “Just in case...”
“Don’t see no point,” Radigan replied. “We held up our end of the bargain. Lazaro’ll hold up his.”
He’d said it as though he didn’t really believe it, but just by saying it, he was making it true.
Sartain splashed more whiskey into his shot glass.
Doc Winter set his bowler on his head and grabbed his bear fur coat. “All right. I’m going home, too.”
Sartain sipped his whiskey and watched the others, one by one or two by two, head out into the night.
Finally, there was only Sartain, the Dundees, Mercy, Donleavy, and the town drunk left in the saloon. Donleavy was cleaning up the bar, whistling with much jubilation, as though he no longer had a care in the world.
Sartain looked at Cable Dundee. “You might as well head on home, too. No point in your staying when no one else is?”
“Aren’t you and her going to stay?” Dundee glanced at Mercy, who now sat back in her chair, her rifle across her lap, a resolute expression on her face despite the tears in her eyes.
“We’re not going anywhere until Lazaro’s dead,” The Revenger said. “You two run along. The odds just got a whole lot steeper.”
“If you’re stayin’,” Cable said, splashing whiskey into his glass, “then I’m stayin, too.” He turned to Jonathon. “But I’d like you to run on home, son. Hitch up the wagon and drive on out of here.”
Jonathan furled his brows in shock. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere without you, Pa. If you’re stayin’, I’m stayin’.”
Dundee shook his head. “Please, boy. Go on home, tend the farm. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Jonathan shook his head adamantly. “No, sir. Without you, Pa, I got nothin’. If somethin’ happens to you, it might as well happen to me.”
Dundee studied his boy with no little admiration in his eyes. He glanced at Sartain. “His ma and two lil sisters was killed in a flood a few years ago. Creek rose and swept them away when me and Jonathon was off selling stock in Lincoln.”
He turned back to his son and brusquely ran his hand across the top of Jonathan’s head. “You’re sixteen. Where I come from, that makes you a man. All right, we’re both in.” He gave the Cajun a grim smile. “You think we got a chance?”
“Four against one? Doubtful.”
“Five.” The voice carried from the top of the stairs.
Abner started moving down the steps, leaning hard against the young doxie, Clarabelle. She’d thrown more clothes on than the first time Sartain had seen her, and she’d brushed her hair.
“Kid, get back to bed,” Sartain said, but quickly amended with, “I meant, Deputy, get back to bed!”
“Been in bed way too long.”
“I told him he should stay in bed, but he wouldn’t listen,” Clarabelle said in a motherly tone. “I changed his bandages, though.” She shook her head as she helped the young man across the room to the front. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“I had too much sloshin’ around in me anyways.” Abner sagged into a chair. He looked drawn, thin, and even paler than before. He also looked feverish.
Sartain introduced him to the Dundees.
The Cajun also explained the situation. Listening, the young deputy sat back in his chair, shaking his head in awe of the town’s gullible ignorance.
“Well, they’ll be back,” Abner said. “And they’ll finish what they started.”
“Yep,” said Cable.
“Are we the only ones ready to stand against ‘em?”
“Yep,” said Sartain.
Dundee was rolling a quirley from his makings sack when he said, “I sure wish I had some of that dynamite I use every spring to blow out my stock ponds and to clear the trail out to the ranch when rocks roll down and block it. Damn!”
He closed the cigarette and licked it sealed.
Sartain glanced at him. “Where did you get that dynamite, Cable?”
Dundee scratched a match to life on a chair leg. As he brought the flame to the cigarette, he said, “Mercantile right here in...”
He stopped the match a foot from his face and looked dully at Sartain.
* * *
When they’d finished the preparations, Sartain went upstairs in the saloon to lie down for a badly needed catnap.
He was bone-deep tired.
He found he couldn’t sleep, however. Sleepy but unable to sleep. Enervation kept his blood humming through his veins.
A frustrating feeling.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. They stopped outside his room. There were two taps on his door.
“Come on in, but you better not be Lazaro.”
He smiled. He’d recognized the tread, so he wasn’t surprised to see Mercy standing by the door, her rifle in one hand, after he’d fumbled a lamp to life on the table beside his bed. She looked out at him from beneath the shading brim of her hat. He couldn’t see her eyes.
“They coming?” the Cajun inquired, dropping his stocking feet to the floor.
“No,” she said. “They’ll wait till it’s light. We got an hour.”
She leaned the rifle against the wall and moved toward the bed, kicking out of her boots.
“For what?” asked Sartain.
Her only reply was her fingers moving to the buttons on her shirt. In seconds the garment was lying on the floor. She doffed her hat and shook her head, tossing her hair beautifully, and flipped the hat onto the dresser. Her green eyes shone in the dim, flickering, umber light like the eyes of a cat waiting by a hole for a mouse.
The Cajun could feel the burning need in her.
Then he realized that it was what he needed, too.
Release.
He heaved himself to his feet and shucked out of his shirt, jeans, and long-handles. She did the same, quickly, breathing hard, and then they stood facing each other naked. She stepped closer, rose on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Sartain placed his hands on her slender arms, drew her closer, and he kissed her hungrily, passionately, entangling his tongue with hers. Meanwhile, her hands were working their magic between them, causing him to grind his toes into the throw rug beneath his feet.
“We’re going to kill them all, aren’t we Mike?” she whispered.
“We’re going to kill as many as we can, Mercy.”
“I want to kill Lazaro, at least...if none of the others!”
“You’ll get Lazaro. You’ll get the others.”
“I’m going to kill him for Pa and for Ma and for the ranch...and for me!”
“Ah, God...yeah...that’s right...you’re gonna kill him hard!”
“I’m going to blow his eyes out, shoot his manhood off, and I’m going to shoot both of his knees...”
“That’s the way to do it!”
“And then I’m gonna leave him to die slow, blind, and howling!”
“Slow, blind, and howling. Couldn’t do it better myself!”
“Oh, God,” Mercy cried.
* * *
Slow, blind, and howling.
Sartain smiled grimly at the girl’s blood-and-thunder phrasing as he perched on the pitched roof of a Lutheran church at the very southern edge of town, he pressed his cheek against the neck of his Winchester.
Couldn’t have put it better myself, and I’ve been doing this for years...
“Yep, she was about as wrongly named as any girl I’ve ever known,” he muttered aloud to himself, shivering as the morning breeze slithered under his coat to lay its cold hand across the back of his neck.
He stared out over the lip of the roof, toward where the gang had been camped in the distant line of trees yesterday afternoon. He hadn’t seen anything out there since he’d climbed up here, and he didn’t see anything now.
It was a cold, gray day. A fine snow continued to fall although it wasn’t amounting to much on the ground. The granules bounced off the shake shingles of the church roof and rolled, accumulating in the cracks.
He brushed his gloved fist across his runny nose, sniffed, and looked in a full circle around the town. There was very little cover within a good hundred yards of the town’s outskirts, so when the gang came, he’d see them coming no matter what direction they came from.
He looked at the roof behind him. Abner Fieldhouse was hunkered low behind the false façade of MILBRATH’S TONSORIAL PARLOR, lying as Sartain was on the east side of the pitched roof, peering in The Revenger’s direction. Sartain could see only the young man’s drawn, pale face beneath his hat, which he’d tied to his head with a gray wool muffler.
Poor kid thought the Cajun. He’d be dead by now if it weren't for his devotion to exacting revenge for his dead girl. In that way, he was no different than Sartain himself. Sartain too would be dead if he didn’t feel the absolute undeniable compulsion to continue seeking revenge for others who needed it as badly as he had but didn’t have the means to exact it.
In so doing, he was still exacting revenge for Jewell...
The Dundees were each perched on a roof to each side of the saloon. Cable stood peering out from behind the façade of HALLAM’S FEED STORE, directly across the main street from the church. He was squatting low and smoking a cigarette. Sartain could see the brim of his floppy-brimmed black hat and the end of his rifle barrel poking out from the façade’s southern edge.
Sartain couldn’t see Jonathon hunkered low on the roof of the TERRITORIAL LAND OFFICE, but he knew the boy was there, ready and waiting to follow his father into hell if need be.
Sartain couldn’t see Mercy, either, though he knew she was waiting in an alley nearby, ready to put their plan into motion.
Sartain looked at the detonating plunger box sitting on the roof beside him. The wooden handle was not yet raised. The fuse ran from the box to disappear over the side of the roof.
His heart picked up its pace as he studied the box.
He hoped like hell this worked. Anytime dynamite was involved, he was worried. But if Cable hadn’t mentioned the dynamite, they might not have the chance they currently have against the gang.
The slim chance, but still a chance.
Without it, they’d have had no chance at all. They’d have died right along with the rest of the town.
Of course, the barman, Donleavy, wasn’t at all happy with the plan, seeing as how it involved his saloon. He’d had little choice but to accept it since he was tied up in the rectory of the church under Sartain, a barber brush stuffed into his mouth.
Sartain turned to peer over his left shoulder at the saloon with its gaudy false façade rising high above the building proper. BILL DONLEAVY’S SPORTING PARLOR & BREWHOUSE sprawled across it in large, curvy red letters. It was a white-painted, wood-frame place with a large front porch. Aside from the windows, the gang had shot out, it was a damn nice setup, probably one of the nicest in western Nebraska Territory.
Sartain hoped he wouldn’t have to blow it up. If Donleavy and the other townsmen were right in their belief that Lazaro would keep his word, he wouldn’t have to.
The Cajun glanced again at the plunger box.
Apprehension trailed cold fingers along his spine. He’d worked with dynamite back during the war when he’d been blowing up supply trains and ammunition dumps behind enemy lines, and he knew what a mercurial beast Alfred Nobel’s nitro powder was. Sometimes it would blow, and sometimes it wouldn’t. There were so many factors involved, especially when you were using a plunger box that sported a handle attached to a serrated-tooth pinion that meshed with a small generator.
Pushing the handle down caused the generator to hiccup an electrical charge through the line attached to the bundled dynamite sticks. Sometimes that generator hiccupped, sometimes it didn’t. It didn’t take much to foul such a fragile piece of complicated machinery.
A little dampness would do it.
It was a cold, damp day.
Even if the box worked like it was supposed to, there could always be problems with the line through which the charge ran. It too could have gotten damp or rotted just enough to forestall the charge.
Or there could be problems with the dynamite to which the line was attached. The most hair-raising thing that the ex-Confederate guerilla fighter had learned about dynamite was that it blew as often as you didn’t want it to as you did want it to.
In Sartain’s considerable experience with the stuff, all had gone as planned with dynamite only about fifty percent of the time. Many of his brothers-in-arms had died bloody deaths due to the fickle nature of the black p
owder beast, either to its detonating or to its not detonating.
He hoped none did here.
Cold sweat trickled down his back as he considered their plan. It was risky, especially for Mercy, but he’d seen no other way. He just hoped the other folks in the town remained a safe distance away from the saloon this morning, as it appeared, they were going to. It was going on eight o’clock, but so far, he’d seen no one on the street except for a couple of stray dogs and a few chickens.
Possibly having spent a nervous night, maybe the townsfolk were going to lay low today, and pray they hadn’t made the mistake of their lives by releasing the Mexican killer and sticking their heads in the sand.
The thought had no sooner flitted across the Cajun’s mind than he spied movement along the street beyond the saloon.
Chapter 18
Bernie Burnfield had just stepped out of a break between buildings and was mounting the boardwalk of the shop just east of the saloon. He was fingering his chin whiskers and walking stiffly, tensely, like a man badly in need of a drink.
He was heading for the saloon.
Sartain muttered a cursed. He crawled to the front of the church’s roof and looked around the steeple jutting above him. He whistled sharply.
Burnfield stopped, turned toward him, frowning.
“Get on home, you old coot!” Sartain ordered, jerking his head sharply left.
Burnfield just stood there, studying him curiously, then glanced at the saloon as though seeing the beautiful bottles lined up on the back-bar shelf, just waiting for him. Beckoning to him, in fact...
Sartain cursed again. He snapped his rifle forward, loudly racked a shell into the chamber, and yelled as softly as he could while still being heard, “Get out of here, or I’ll drill you one!”
The old man hung his jaw, wheeled so quickly that he tripped over his own feet and almost fell, and, casting a quick, fearful glanced back over his shoulder, and ran into the alley from which he’d come.
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