The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  “Christ, no.”

  “What, then?”

  “I don’t see sex as something to barter with.”

  “I do. It’s all I have. I am not asking you to take me with you for free.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m going to do.” Sartain didn’t see how he could not take her with him, given her obvious passion for the hunt. “Now, you go back on over to your bedroll and lay down. We got a long ride ahead of us, and big work once we get where we’re going.”

  She continued to stare down at him. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. Not anymore. Not after Lawton. Not after the first time. After that, I went away. In my mind. I went away...”

  “Look, Miss Rosen,” Sartain said, pushing up on his elbows, “how many times do I have to...”

  He let his voice trail off as she let the blanket slip from her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath it.

  * * *

  One week later, Deputy County Sheriff Hy Miller slammed a rolled newspaper down on a table in Bobcat Jack’s Saloon in Willoughby, Kansas, and said, “Got him!”

  Miller lifted the newspaper, held up by one wing the fly he’d squashed, and said, “It’s officially spring when you kill your first fly.”

  “Gonna be a hot summer,” said Luke Grisby, who was sitting at a table flanking Miller, leaning over and quickly devouring a dented tin bowl of the chili that Grisby, who owned Bobcat Jack’s, had cooked last night and had heated up a few minutes ago for his lunch. “Hot and humid. And wet. I can feel it in my bones. I just hope we don’t get another cyclone like the one we got last year.”

  Grisby, a big, fat man with a round, fleshy face, gestured up and down with his fork held in his fist, and said, spitting chili onto the table before him, “Never thought I’d live to see a man and a horse and wagon flying past me on a stiff wind—the man yellin’ and the horse screamin’ like a banshee—but I did last June, by God!”

  Leaning back in his chair, carefully polishing his five-pointed deputy sheriff’s star with a red handkerchief, Miller laughed and shook his head.

  “Ain’t funny,” Grisby said. “Like somethin’ out of a nightmare, that was.”

  Miller was about to respond to that, but then he heard boots thumping on the boardwalk fronting the saloon and saw through the dirt-streaked front windows two Mexican drovers converge on the saloon’s front door.

  As the door opened and the Mexicans strode in, Miller pinned the badge to his shirt and said, “Another sure-fire sign of spring, Luke, is when the bean-eaters start comin’ to town. You know how the chili-chompers are. They hate the cold, so these two greasy, bean-eatin’ devils stay hunkered down in Old Man Halvorssen’s bunkhouse out to the Three Bell, playin’ grabby-pants with each other...when they ain’t sparkin’ old Halvorssen’s daughter, Lisa, that is!”

  Miller grinned and raised his shot glass in salute to the Mexicans, nodding affably and saying in an equally affable tone, “Well, if it ain’t the Flores brothers from down Old Mexico way. You boys get tired of playin’ grabby pants and decide to brave the cold weather and come to town, did ya?”

  Glancing out a dirty front window, Miller saw the Mexicans’ saddle horses standing tied to the hitch rack fronting the Bobcat. Both mounts had the Halvorssen brand blazed into their withers.

  Neither of the two Flores brothers seemed to know a lick of English despite having worked out at the Halvorssen ranch for the past two years and in the county for even longer. They grinned and waved at Miller, glancing at each man curiously but judging by the deputy sheriff’s tone that they’d been welcomed with open arms.

  They nodded deferentially and chuckled uncertainly as they strode back toward the bar.

  “Say, Tio,” Miller said, as the Mexicans passed his table, “I done heard Miss Lisa’s in the family way. You know, big belly.” He used his hands to indicate pregnancy. “That ain’t your bun in the oven, is it?”

  Tio stopped by Miller’s table, grinning and frowning, showing his teeth below his sweeping black mustache.

  Laughing, Miller said, “Tio, don’t tell me you and Lisa have been sneakin’ around behind Old Man Halvorssen’s back! Cavortin’ out in the icehouse or woodshed!”

  Tio glanced at his brother, Ignacio, who also stared curiously down at Miller, his ruddy cheeks dimpled with a tentative grin.

  “Or was it Ignacio? Ignacio, are you the one that made Lisa Halvorssen’s belly big?” Miller held his hands far out in front of his belly again. Miller smiled with phony admiration. “Why it was you, wasn’t it, you dirty, bean-eatin’, mother-diddlin’ Mexican dog!” Miller looked around the two Mexicans at Grisby, winking and laughing.

  Grisby was laughing so hard that Miller thought the fat man would fall out of his chair. “Knock it off, Hy,” Grisby said, holding his jiggling belly. “You’re gonna make me puke up my chili and bust a rib!”

  Miller rose from his chair, wrapped an arm around the neck of each Mexican, and escorted them toward the bar. “Whichever one of you put the bun in that little Halvorssen trollop’s oven owes me a drink. I been sparkin’ that uppity filly for years!”

  “Is she really knocked up?” asked Grisby.

  “That’s what I hear,” Miller said. “She ain’t been to town in a month of Sundays, so I suspect it’s true.” He looked from one stupidly grinning Mex to the other, and said, “I’d love to be a fly on the wall when Old Man Halvorssen sees the brown papoose his precious li’l Lisa squats out! I tell you, mi amigos, whichever of you bent that girl over the ole proverbial rain barrel better light a shuck back to ol’ Mejico before she gives birth, or there’ll be hell to pave and no hot pitch!”

  The deputy laughed raucously. His laughter was infectious, because both Mexicans laughed raucously, as well, slapping the bar top.

  Grisby thought the Mexicans laughing at the jokes told at their own expense was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and his laughing face was as pink as a mid-summer sunset.

  “Set ‘em both up,” Miller told Grisby, who’d ambled back behind the bar, nearly doubled over with laughter. The deputy patted the backs of the Flores brothers, and said, “Mi amigos, I do believe you owe me a drink for gettin’ to Lisa Halvorssen ahead of me.”

  He gave Grisby a wink. Grisby filled three shot glasses. Miller lifted his shot to his lips and said, “Thanks, partners. That’s right plumb of you!”

  Miller threw back the shot and, leaving the Mexicans looking confused as they paid for the three whiskey shots, the deputy sauntered back to his chair and grabbed his hat. It was time to head back to the office. He’d just started for the door when movement out in the street caught his eye.

  He swerved from his course to the door and stepped over to the window to the right of it.

  A man and a woman were just then riding into town, angling toward the hotel on the opposite side of the street.

  Chapter 10

  The stranger with the woman was a big son of a buck, thick curly, dark-brown hair hanging down from beneath his sand-colored Stetson trimmed with a snakeskin band. He had long sideburns but no mustache.

  He was big and broad-shouldered but rangy, wearing tight denims and a brown and white pinto vest over a blue chambray shirt. He wore a handsome pearl-gripped, silver-chased LeMat revolver strapped to his right thigh. A Henry repeating rifle jutted from his saddle sheath. The long gun was as eye-pleasing as the LeMat, with what appeared from Miller’s distance of forty yards to be a snake’s head carved into the walnut stock jutting over the rider’s right knee, within a fast, easy grab.

  The horse he rode was a handsome buckskin stallion with a spirited glint in its eyes.

  The woman was a pretty but dour-looking blonde. She wore a light denim jacket over a cream shirtwaist. A wool riding skirt flowed down over her stirrups to nearly the tops of her spurred, black half-boots. On her head was a man’s black felt hat. As the big man dismounted and helped the woman down from her saddle, she glanced in Miller’s direction, and the deputy stumbled back with a start.
/>   His heart thudded.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” Grisby said. The big apron was working demolishing a second bowl of chili while the Flores brothers crouched over the bar, sipping their drinks in silence.

  “Crap,” Miller said, canting his head this way and that, trying to get a better look at the woman as she and the big man stood between their horses, conversing.

  “Come here a minute,” beckoning Grisby.

  “What for?”

  “Just get your fat ass over here!”

  Grisby cursed as he heaved his bulk out of his chair and ambled over to where Miller stood looking out the window. “What the hell?”

  Miller jerked his chin toward the big man and the woman. The man was sliding his Henry repeater from his saddle sheath. The woman was looking around, turning her head from right to left, surveying the street in both directions.

  The warm spring breeze was blowing her hair around her sun-pinkened cheeks.

  “That woman there. Ain’t she...”

  “Holy crap.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Miller said, his blood quickening.

  Grisby turned to Miller. “What in holy blazes do you think she’s doing here?”

  Miller didn’t look at the apron. He kept his gaze on the street, shifting it now from the woman to the big gent, who’d just slipped his saddlebags and possibles sack and war bag off his buckskin’s back. “Who do you suppose he is?”

  Grisby stepped up closer to the dirty window, holding up a fat hand to shade the glare from his eyes. “I don’t recognize him.”

  “I seen him before,” Miller said.

  “Where?”

  Miller rubbed his hand across his chin, shaking his head. “I don’t remember. But I know I seen him. I think he’s a hired gun.”

  “Sure looks like one. Look at that big LeMat on his leg there. Look at that Henry. He keeps them weapons in prime shape. A regulator, I’ll bet.” Grisby turned to Miller. “You think they’re here for...us?”

  “What else would she be doing way out here?” Miller said, excitement growing in him.

  “Could be a coincidence, I reckon.”

  Miller kept his eyes on the big man in the pinto vest, who was just then walking up the steps of Mrs. Thompson’s hotel, following the blonde. The big man moved smoothly on his hips, swinging his shoulders a little—cat-like, his right hand draped casually over the pearl grip of the pretty but savage-looking LeMat.

  Miller heard the solid thuds of the man’s boots on the steps and the ringing of his spurs through the window.

  “Could be a coincidence,” Miller said. “Yeah, I reckon. How would she have tracked us...”

  But then the big man, gaining the top of the porch, swung around to stare straight across the street at Miller and Grisby staring at him from the front window of Bobcat Jack’s Saloon. Both Miller and Grisby flinched, taking faltering steps backward.

  “Crap!” Grisby said. “He seen us!”

  The big man stared coldly right into Hy Miller’s eyes. Miller held his gaze, fighting the impulse to look away. There was something unsettling in those deep-set, cobalt eyes partly shaded by the broad brim of the big man’s hat. But Miller forced himself to meet the big man’s stare head-on.

  The big man’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly, lines rising from their corners. His lips spread slightly in a wry grin. Then he set his rifle on his shoulder, swung around, and followed the woman into Mrs. Thompson’s Hotel.

  Miller turned Grisby. “Where’s Haskell?”

  Kentucky Haskell and Grisby had bought Bobcat Jack’s Saloon a couple of years ago. They ran the place together when they weren’t out west, robbing trains with Lute Lawton, whom they’d grown up with over by Wichita.

  They and most of the rest of the Bunch had all fought in the border wars together, during and after the War Between the States. They still hadn’t gotten the blood and thunder out of their systems, so they continued robbing trains in Colorado, New Mexico, and sometimes Utah, though they blew most of their loot on poker, busthead, and doxies in Leadville, Denver, and Cheyenne before returning to quieter lives in Kansas.

  “Haskell’s asleep upstairs. He works tonight.”

  “Wake him. I’m gonna fetch Bonner, and then I’m gonna head over to the office and look through the latest batch of wanted circulars. I know I seen that hombre’s face on a circular not too long ago. Let’s meet back here in a half-hour.”

  “Then what?”

  Miller had walked to the front door. Now he opened it and frowned back at Grisby. “What do you think?”

  Miller went out.

  He stopped by L.Q. Bonner’s blacksmith shop and told Bonner, who also rode with Lawton, about the newcomer and the girl, and about the planned meeting with Grisby and Kentucky Haskell at Bobcat Jack’s. Then Miller continued over to the sheriff’s office to find the county sheriff, Omar “Pop” Sandborn, sacked out in his overstuffed leather chair near the small parlor area in the office’s rear corner, near the potbelly stove.

  A mug of cold tea sat on the small, round table to the sheriff’s right. Pop’s cat, Ruben, lay belly down on the chair’s left arm. The cat had been sleeping, but when Miller walked in, Ruben lifted his head and studied the deputy with characteristic dispassion.

  Miller hurried over to the sheriff’s desk, which was spilling papers and tax ledgers and other clerical and legal documents—including marriage licenses, for Pop was also Justice of the Peace—from every nook and cranny. The whole mess owned a layer of cigar ash and stubs that Ruben had knocked out of the sheriff’s ashtrays when the cat had been rummaging through the desk’s pigeonholes looking for mice. The desk had accumulated nearly twenty years of filth, for that’s how long Pop had held office mainly because no one ever ran against him, and Miller doubted he’d ever once given the office a thorough cleaning or allowed anyone else to do it.

  “Christ, Pop,” Miller growled, opening and closing warped desk drawers, “why don’t you get some sort of organizational system here, fer chrissakes?”

  Pop awoke with a start. He startled Reuben, who rose to stand on the chair arm, arching his back and curling his tail. Pop blinked, slow to regain his wits, what few he had left after nearly seventy hard years, then snorted and hacked phlegm into the sandbox on the floor beside his chair.

  He patted down his tangled, gray, salt-and-pepper bib beard and then sat up a little, scowling at Miller, slow to recall who he was looking at.

  “What do you think you’re doin’, Deputy, goin’ through my desk?”

  Pop hardened his jaws in anger.

  “I’m lookin’ for that last batch of wanted dodgers we got in from the feds,” Miller said, slamming the desk’s lower right drawer and causing two cigar stubs to roll off onto the floor. “Christ, Pop! You really need an organizational system here!”

  “I got an organizational system!”

  “Oh, yeah?” Miller said, angry. “What is it?”

  “You’re too damn stupid to understand if I told you!” Pop shouted, though his voice was too weak and raspy to allow him much volume. Mainly, when riled, his warty nose just swelled and turned red, as did the bald top of his head. “The only reason you’re my deputy is that your pa an’ me been friends longer’n you been alive, and don’t you forget it, you worthless pile of dog crap! If it’s the last badge of wanted dodgers you’re lookin’ for, why didn’t you just ask me, you cork-headed pup? They’re under the flowerpot!”

  Pop pointed an arthritic, age-spotted finger toward the philodendron in the large clay pot sitting in the window above the desk.

  “What are they doin’ under the flowerpot?” Miller spat in disgust, pulling out the sheaf of papers from under the pot and shaking off the dirt crumbs.

  “Keepin’ the pot from rotting out the window frame. Thought I’d put ‘em to good use. When the hell have we ever gone through them circulars, anyway? We never get no federal outlaws out this way. Too damn hot and dry, and every damn woman out here fel
l outta the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down!”

  Miller cursed as he set the short stack of government documents onto the desk and began flipping through the dirty, moisture-stained, curling pages. He was halfway through the stack when he froze.

  He stared down, wide-eyed, at the circular before him. He lowered his head for a better look and ran his right index finger across the words written there as he read them, muttering them aloud to himself. When he was done, he slammed his fist down on the dodger, and turned to the sheriff, grinning.

  “We don’t get no federal outlaws out this way, huh, Pop?” Miller laughed in mockery. “Well, we got one now! And he’s got a four-thousand-dollar bounty on his head!”

  Miller didn’t add that the man known as The Revenger also had a good-looking woman with him, one Lute Lawton hadn’t allowed Miller or any of the rest of the gang any time with back when they’d all been on the trail together.

  Well, Lawton wasn’t here to prevent Miller from having her now. Once Sartain was snuggling with diamondbacks, that was, and Miller was waiting for the reward money to be sent from God knew where...

  “Who is it?” Pop said, pushing himself up out of his chair with effort.

  “Never mind, Pop.”

  Miller stuffed the dodger into his pocket. He walked over to the gun rack mounted to the wall over the potbelly stove and pulled down a Winchester. He grabbed a belt bristling with .44 cartridges off a peg and turned to the door. “You just hide an’ watch this worthless pile of dog dung do your job for you...just like I always do.”

  “Don’t you talk down to me, you mangy cur, or I’ll take you over my knee and quirt your ass red till smoke spews out your asshole!” the sheriff regaled his deputy though Miller didn’t hear the last of it because he’d already closed the office door and was heading back up the street toward Bobcat Jack’s.

  Chapter 11

  As Miller strode back toward Bobcat Jack’s, he saw Mrs. Thompson’s addlepated son, Henry, leading the mounts of The Revenger and the woman—Miller couldn’t remember her name if he’d ever known it—off toward the livery barn.