The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  He and Dorian tossed their reins over a hitch rack and walked onto the platform. Sartain tried the front door. Locked. The curtain was drawn across the glass pane in the top of the door, but a sign scrawled in pencil hung in the window:

  CLOSED TILL THE STORM BLOWS OVER

  Sartain and Dorian shared a glance.

  “The depot agent and everyone else is likely over at the Sundance,” Sartain said.

  “That the big red building yonder?”

  “One and the same.”

  They mounted up and rode on through the heart of Sundance, meandering around shanties and stock pens, occasional barns, corrals, and privies. An old woman was coming out of one badly leaning privy as they passed. Still pulling up her drawers and letting her dress fall back into place, she turned to the two strangers with a start, her long, grizzled gray hair and cream apron blowing in the wind.

  “Ja, you scart me!” she scolded in a thick German accent, pooching out her lips. She was a hefty lady in her sixties, with stout hips and large breasts sagging inside her layered wool clothes.

  “Pardon us, ma’am,” Sartain said, pinching his hat brim to her.

  “You go to the Sundance?” she asked, holding her hair in place with one hand, her apron down with the other.

  “You got it!” Sartain had to raise his voice to be heard above the wind. “Join us?”

  She scowled at him, then at Dorian, not seeing the humor in the invitation. She returned her glare to the Cajun. “You tell Arnie Becker to get his ass to home this instant or I come for him with the shotgun. He is my husband. At least, that’s what the paper says, anyways. You send him home, tell him his wife forbids him to spend every last nickel they have on drink. You tell him that, ja? You tell him to come home, or I come for him with the shotgun and blow his damn head off!”

  “Arnie Becker,” Sartain said, glancing at Dorian, who bit her upper lip to keep from laughing. “I’ll tell him to get his ass home if he knows what’s good for him!”

  “Ja, you do that!” the old woman said, spitting a wad of chaw to one side, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, and trudging heavily off toward the square shack ahead of her. The shanty, no larger than a buggy shed, was flanked by a pile of split wood and a chopping block into which an ax had been sunk, handle up.

  As she reached the door, the woman swung around suddenly and stared at Dorian. She slid her gaze to the Cajun. “Who’s that you got wit you?”

  “Me?” said Dorian, smiling brightly. “Why, I’m Dorian Rasmussen, ma’am. How do you do!”

  The old woman scowled at the pretty blonde, moving her lips as though talking to herself. Her eyes flicked toward the riderless horse, Scanlon’s coyote dun, flanking the two newcomers. Her heavy, sagging cheeks flushing slightly, she swung around, jerked open the shack’s back door, and bolted into the cabin.

  Sartain heard the scrapes and thuds of a locking bar being dropped into steel brackets.

  He glanced at Dorian. The girl shrugged.

  “I reckon folks get a little crazy out here,” the Cajun opined.

  Sartain glanced once more at Dorian and then gigged Boss on eastward, pulling up a few minutes later in front of the sprawling, red mess known as the Sundance. The broad, towering false façade creaked and groaned in the wind that was steadily growing in venom. More snow was coming down, large flakes that stung the eyes and cheeks and were beginning to dust the previous snow like down from a torn feather pillow.

  Sartain turned to Dorian and said, “We’d best stable the horses pronto before this storm explodes. There’s a barn around back, and it’s free to customers of the Sundance.”

  “That’s us!” Dorian said and spurred her fine pinto after Sartain and the buckskin. Scanlon’s coyote dun trotted after them, whickering.

  They galloped down the Sundance’s east side to the wood-frame barn at the back of the place and to which a large corral was attached. The timbers of the barn groaned in the wind, and a shake shingle came hurling at Sartain, who ducked just in time to keep his nose from being sheered from his face.

  “Yep, A real corker!” the Cajun said, chuckling.

  They dismounted, opened the heavy double doors, and led their horses as well as Scanlon’s inside. The barn was warm and fragrant with all the usual smells. A lit lantern hanging from a ceiling support post cast a watery light.

  Sartain saw through an open door a bullet-shaped potbelly stove. He remembered that a fulltime liveryman lived out here, in the lean-to addition—a big half-breed named Hector Lee Wallace with whom Sartain had shared several drinks when he’d previously passed through Sundance.

  Wallace was half-Sioux, half-Irish. At times he displayed the stone-faced, pent-up hostility of the former, and at other times, the jovial, drunken banter of the latter. When he was both Sioux and Irishman together, it was best to head for the nearest door, for nothing good would follow.

  Thus, the half-breed had been confined to the barn though Sartain knew that he wasn’t always alone. Once, when fetching his horse one early afternoon, the Cajun had glimpsed through the partly open door a pretty, young Chippewa doxie who occasionally worked at the Sundance servicing the big, bearded half-breed on his cot near the ticking potbelly stove. The pleasure girl had been humming what had sounded like some Indian ceremonial chant while Hector Lee Wallace had grunted like a tracklayer in the mid-day summer heat.

  “Hector!” Sartain called for the man now.

  “Who’s Hector?” Dorian asked.

  “Liveryman.” Sartain called for the man once more, then, shrugging, he began unsaddling his mount.

  Dorian did the same. They piled the tack on stall partitions and rubbed the mounts down with scraps of burlap. When the Cajun was finished with Boss, he tended Scanlon’s mount and then stabled the horse in its own stall next to Boss. Only three of the barn’s ten or so stalls were occupied, so there was plenty to go around.

  Later, he’d try to sell the dead outlaw’s horse and tack to Wallace.

  Since he didn’t charge for revenge, which was more of a religion for him than an occupation, he was always on the scout for an extra buck here and there.

  Sartain patted the gelding’s neck, figuring he should be able to rake in a good twenty dollars for the horse. That would provide a few meals for himself and Boss and buy him a few bottles of Sam Clay and other trail necessities.

  He stepped into the barn alley, closing and latching the stall door behind him.

  He looked around the dimly lit, musty barn. “Dorian?”

  No reply but the wind sawing at the barn’s eaves and trying to push in through the cracks between the vertical pine boards comprising its frame. He called the girl’s name again.

  Again, no reply.

  He walked toward the front of the barn where they’d unsaddled the horses. He looked at the closed doors that groaned against the wind pushing hard against them. Had she gone outside?

  Tobacco smoke touched his nostrils.

  He followed the scent to the small doorway ahead of him and to the left. The doorway was lit a guttering umber by a small fire. Silhouetted against it was Dorian standing naked in the doorway, leaning against the frame, one knee bent forward. She stood in dark contrast to the red light radiating behind her, but Sartain could tell she wasn’t wearing a stitch.

  She lifted a cigarette to her lips, inhaled, and blew the smoke out into the barn.

  The Revenger’s lust-thick voice raked roughly across his vocal cords. “Well, now. What do we have here?”

  Chapter 9

  “Comfortable bed in here,” Dorian said. “An open bottle, some jerky, and tobacco with rolling papers. Even warm water on the stove.” She hiked a shoulder as she blew out another plume of cigarette smoke. “I don’t know. It’s as though someone had invited us here, Mike.”

  Sartain chuckled as he moved forward, the girl’s splendid body clarifying before him. His heart thudded. My god, what a creature.

  “I feel itchy all over,” Dorian said. “Must be
the heat from that stove after the long, cold ride...and the memory of last night. Kept remembering you...me...all the way here.”

  “Must be catching.” Sartain grunted, leaning forward to lightly kiss her tender lips. “I’m startin’ to feel it, too.” He nuzzled her neck. “And I reckon I’m in no hurry for the company of others.”

  “No,” Dorian said, taking his hand and leading him into the small lean-to room carpeted with several buffalo and wildcat rugs, “I think we’re all we need...for the next couple of hours, anyway.”

  She sank onto the large cot abutting one wall. It was mounded with animal skins, and there were two thick pillows covered with burlap. Sartain doffed his hat and shrugged out of his coat, glancing out the open door behind him.

  “Hope ole Hec Wallace don’t mind. But, under the circumstances,” the Cajun added with a smile, feasting his eyes on the girl stretching her body out on the cot before him, “I think he’ll understand. Especially if I toss him a couple of silver dollars.”

  He removed his gun and knife and skinned out of his clothes, tossing them onto a chair near a small, two-plank table on which was a bottle, a tobacco sack, and a small pile of jerky on a tin plate. There was an unopened tomato tin, as well. It looked as though Hec Wallace had been about to settle in for the evening but had gotten called out into the storm. Maybe he was tending the hotel guests.

  Sartain hoped he’d be a while.

  “Oh, God, Mike! Where did you come from, anyway?”

  Sartain nibbled her left earlobe. She scrubbed her hands through his thick, curly hair.

  “Oh, God. I’ve needed you so bad!”

  “Not many men out where you live, I take it?” he asked, running his lips across her jaw and lips as he moved to her other ear.

  Her breathing strained, she said, “There was a boy...once...but oh, so long ago I forgot what it was like!” Her cat-like eyes slightly crossed as a mesmerizing smile lifted her mouth corners. “Now…it’s all coming…back…to me…”

  Later, he rose and went to the table. He studied Hec’s bottle on the table, sniffed the lip. He set it back down with a reproving grunt and then walked back out into the barn.

  “Mike, where you going?” Dorian called desperately behind him.

  He returned to the room with his saddlebags and rifle. He set the rifle on the table, draped the saddlebags over his chair. He pulled out his bottle, held it up to the girl with a wink, and then half-filled two of Wallace’s relatively clean tin coffee cups.

  Dorian rolled toward him, raising her knees toward her belly and resting her head on the heel of one hand while placing her other hand on the cot where Sartain had been lying, as though she were caressing his chest.

  “Just what the doctor ordered for such a night,” she said.

  “Yeah,” the Cajun said, glancing at the closed door once more. “Wonder where ole Hector is.”

  As if to punctuate the statement, a howl rose in the late afternoon's windy distance. He frowned as he stared at the door, a cold finger tickling the underside of his belly.

  “What is it? You gonna give me that whiskey or hold the cup all night?”

  He’d barely been able to hear the girl above another wind gust hammering the barn and pelting it with snow.

  “You didn’t hear that?”

  “The wind? Yeah, I heard it, all right. If that Hector fella ain’t back by now, he’s probably not coming back tonight. Maybe he’s holed up in the hotel with a girl. Every man should have him a girl on a night like tonight.”

  She ground her fingers into the cot where Sartain had been lying and pressed her legs together.

  “I think I heard that beastly howl again.”

  Dorian sat up suddenly, drawing the skins up to partially cover her chest as she stared out the window to The Revenger’s left. “You did?”

  “Yeah.” Sartain glanced at her. “You didn’t?”

  She shook her head slowly, lips parted apprehensively. Then she smiled. “Just the wind,” she said. “Not even that critter would be out on a night like this. He’s probably got him a big furry gal in a warm cave somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” Sartain said, rising from the chair, keeping his ears pricked, unable to quell the tension inside him. “Maybe.”

  He gave Dorian the whiskey and crawled in beside her. She sipped her whiskey then set the cup down on a shelf above the cot. Sartain sipped his own whiskey.

  “Mike,” Dorian spoke as they lay slowly sipping the bourbon from their cups and enjoying the fire’s warmth in the little, well-furnished room.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “I’d like to spend my whole life like this.” She placed her hand against the side of his face. “With a man like you.”

  He held her hand to his lips, kissed it tenderly. “I’d get on your nerves after a while. Every man gets on every woman’s nerves after a while. It’s one o’ them nasty truths about life. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough...unfortunately.”

  He didn’t think he’d ever gotten on Jewel’s nerves. She certainly hadn’t gotten on his. But, then, they hadn’t had much time together.

  “You could never get on my nerves, Mike.”

  “Dorian, I do thank you for sayin’ so.”

  “No. I mean, you really wouldn’t.”

  Sartain leaned forward and pecked her nose.

  “Let’s throw in together, you and me,” Dorian said. “You don’t have nobody, right? Leastways, no one that’s alive. And I don’t...I don’t have anyone, neither.”

  “You’re just lonely. I know. I been there. You’ll find the right one soon, and you won’t be lonely anymore.” Sartain kissed her chin. “And you won’t feel desperate enough to want to throw in with an old scalawag like me.”

  Dorian’s eyes narrowed slightly. He thought anger passed over them like a fleeting cloud, but then she smiled, brushed her lips across his.

  “We could have a good time together, Mr. Scalawag. A real good time, if you catch my drift. We could find us a little ranch down in New Mexico, and—”

  “Dorian, Dorian, hold on,” Sartain said, placing his left hand against her right cheek and brushing his thumb across her chin. “You know the life I live. It’s a wild-assed, unbridled kind of life! I got men after me—lawmen, bounty hunters, and every kind in between. I have to keep moving. Even if I didn’t want to keep doing what I do, I could never settle down. When I settle down, I’ll die.”

  She stared at him, her eyes suddenly sad and far away, incredulous.

  Outside, beneath the bellowing wind, another howl came caroming out of the storm. Sartain rolled away from Dorian and dropped his feet to the floor.

  “There it is again!” he said, rising. “That tears it!”

  “I didn’t hear nothin’,” Dorian said in a pinched up, little girl's voice, rolling onto her back, lifting the covers to her chin, and staring at the ceiling.

  “It’s followed us—I know it has!”

  Sartain was glad to feel fury burn away his fear of the beast. He didn’t like fear. Never had, though he’d endured a bellyful during the war. Whatever it was that had stolen into his camp and taken his prisoner as well as Elaine Rafferty’s hope to see Scanlon hang over her dead husband’s grave, was like a nightmare that would not let him go.

  The beast was outside. It had probably been lured to the town by the storm, maybe looking for food and shelter.

  Sartain would see about that...

  He grabbed his clothes and dressed. He sat on the cot to pull his boots on and glanced over his shoulder at Dorian, who’d fallen suddenly silent. She stared sullenly at the low ceiling. Sartain didn’t know what to say to the girl.

  Had she really thought that she and he had a future together?

  The notion was too crazy to be believed. But she must have. That’s how desperately lonely she’d obviously become, living with only her father out on the prairie. Guilt plucked at him. He’d taken her for a woman. But she was really just a girl in a woman’s body. He shouldn’t have made
love with her. He felt sad for her, ashamed that he’d inadvertently led her on, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

  “I’ll stoke the stove for you,” he said, feeding a couple of chunks of split cedar to the potbelly stove. “There you go. That’ll keep you warm till I get back.” He gave her a wink. “Don’t drink all the bourbon while I’m gone, okay?”

  She didn’t look at him but merely kept her sad gaze on the ceiling as she steepled her hands over her belly, atop the heavy bedcovers.

  Sartain winced at the girl’s sudden mood change. He pulled his gloves on and then donned his hat and grabbed his Henry. He glanced over his shoulder once more at the listless girl and went out just as the beast gave another bizarre, lonely, angry, hungry howl.

  Chapter 10

  Sartain tramped through the six or seven inches of fresh snow to the back of the barn. He pressed his back against the rear wall, pumping a cartridge into the Henry’s breach and wincing against the driving snow, staring off through a jostling curtain of white.

  There didn’t appear much back here but open ground. A hay wagon lay just ahead and to Sartain’s left, drooping tongue buried in the newly fallen snow. There were a couple of other farm implements, maybe a rake, but Sartain couldn’t tell what they were. There was too much snow, and more was coming down fast, obscuring his view.

  No, there didn’t seem to be much back here, but that didn’t mean much. The Cajun couldn’t see farther than twenty or thirty feet.

  The howl rose again. It was like a voice calling out of a stormy sea. The voice of a monster. A lonely, angry monster relegated to the frigid depths but yearning to come landward.

  “What the hell do you want?” the Cajun bit out as he began moving straight out away from the barn. “What are you?”

  A bear wouldn’t be out in this.