Good, Miller thought. That meant they were comfortable enough to spend the night. Though it won’t be just the night they’ll be spending...
He chuckled through his teeth at that as he entered Bobcat Jack’s.
“What the hell you laughin’ at?” L.Q. Bonner asked him. “You gettin’ as soft in your head as Henry Thompson?”
“Diddle yourself.”
The other two—Luke Grisby and Kentucky Haskell—were there as well, standing around a table near the two Flores brothers, punching shells into rifles.
Kentucky Haskell looked as though he’d just awakened from a nap. His thin blond hair was mussed, and his eyes were pink-rimmed. He stifled a yawn as, thumbing .44 shells into his top-break Schofield revolver, he gave Miller a pugnacious look and said, “What the hell’s all this about, Hy? Some blonde-headed woman rides into town and you get your drawers in a twist...”
Miller looked at Grisby. “Didn’t you tell him?”
“I told him. He don’t believe me.”
“It’s her,” Miller told Haskell. “Lawton’s woman. From the train. She’s here.” He pointed toward one of the windows left of the door. “Over there, to be exact—at Mrs. Thompson’s place.”
“What the hell would that woman be doin’ here?” Bonner asked, incredulous, resting his loaded carbine on his shoulder and rolling a half-smoked quirley around between his lips, blowing smoke out his nose. “Guessin’ she didn’t like Lawton keepin’ her all to himself and wants to give the rest of us a try.”
He grinned around the quirley.
“We can’t afford to be stupid about this.” Miller set the crumpled wanted circular on the table and smoothed it out until the steely-eyed countenance of Mike Sartain stared up at him, beneath the words: $4000 DEAD OR ALIVE. “This here is who she’s got sidin’ her.”
“Who’s that?” asked Grisby.
“The crazy son of a buck everybody calls ‘The Revenger.’”
“Damn, really?” said Bonner.
“Four thousand dollars,” Haskell said, running a thick finger across the dodger. “Dead or alive.” He laughed as he chambered a bullet into his carbine’s action. “That makes it easy!”
“I don’t think it’s gonna be easy,” Miller said. “The bastard’s been able to avoid the jug for several years now, despite all manner of lawmen and bounty hunters foggin’ his trail. Like I said, let’s not get stupid about this. We gotta expect him to put up one hell of a fight. Besides...”
Miller let his voice trail off as he stared down at the menacing likeness on the wrinkled circular.
“Besides what?” Grisby asked.
“Besides,” Miller said, glancing at the men around him. “Since he’s with that trollop from the train, he’s likely here to hunt us.”
The men glanced around at each other.
Grisby stood holding his broken-open, double-barreled shotgun in his arms. “Maybe we oughta let him come to us, then.”
They all glanced around at each other again, anxiously.
“Bullcrap,” Haskell said. He was fully awake now. He ran a hand back through his mussed hair and donned his hat. He picked up the rifle he’d just loaded and looked at Miller. “I say we go to him. Bring the fight to him. Kill him now...and show that stupid doxie she shoulda stayed home countin’ her lucky stars she’s still alive.”
“I agree,” Grisby said, nodding.
“Me, too,” Bonner agreed.
“All right,” Miller said, buoyed by the other’s men steel. His heart quickened.
He had a feeling they were about to face a wildcat of a man, but he pushed back against his hesitation and thought instead of the girl whose charms Lute Lawton had hoarded back in Colorado. He remembered hearing Lawton’s grunts and the woman’s cries emanating from the shrubs, and he knew a moment’s arousal.
“All right,” Miller said again, calmly, drawing a breath and looking at each man in turn. “Let’s go. Follow my lead. But make damn sure you don’t shoot the woman, understand?”
Bonner chuckled. “That’s for sure. Don’t kill the woman, fer chrissakes!”
He shouldered his rifle and headed for the door. The others followed him outside and spread out around him as he stood staring at the three-story hotel on the other side of the street.
It was a neat white clapboard building with spruce-green shutters and gingerbread trim. There were three wicker rocking chairs on the broad front verandah, and a water barrel with a steel spout used to catch rain running off the roof. Mrs. Thompson was of the waist-not want-not breed.
The prim building was identified by the single word HOTEL painted on a sign that jutted into the street on two whitewashed poles, but everyone called the place Mrs. Thompson’s. Mildred Thompson had been running the place alone for the past six years since her husband Billy had died after being hit by a stray bullet fired when three drifters had gotten into a dustup in one of the town’s saloons. Poor Billy had merely been ambling back to his privy with a newspaper at midday when the bullet had ended his journey near the root cellar.
Miller quietly slid a shell into his Winchester’s breach, set the hammer to half-cock, then stepped down off the boardwalk. As he crossed the street, the other three men stepped into line behind him, walking single file.
Miller raked his gaze across the hotel’s curtained windows then mounted the front porch. He paused to look through the curtained glass pane in the front door, then, seeing only Mrs. Thompson herself inside, pushed on into the lobby.
The elderly woman was sorting mail into the pigeonholes behind the front desk that sat on scrolled wooden pedestals. She was in her early sixties, though her hair, pinned into a prim roll atop her wrinkled head, was coal-black, though a little grizzled. Her ears were abnormally large, and her eyes were set too wide apart beneath a single, bushy black brow. In these ways, she resembled her son, an idiot since birth whom Miller had caught peeping through the bedroom windows of several young women in recent months, though Mrs. Thompson had stubbornly denied that her dear Henry was capable of such prurient misdeeds.
The incidents had made Miller’s and the old woman’s relationship rocky at best. Now as she turned to see the deputy and his friends walk into her lobby sparsely bedecked with a couple of potted palms and a single brass spittoon, her face flushed and her eyes narrowed hotly.
“Well, Deputy Miller, if you think I am going to entertain anymore lies spread about my Henry by the young harlots of this town, you’re sorely—”
“Stow it, Mrs. Thompson,” Miller said, keeping his voice low. “And don’t squawk but very quietly, under your breath, convey to me the room number or numbers of the man and the woman who walked in here a few minutes ago.”
Mrs. Thompson blinked her disdain. “Why?”
“I told you to keep your voice down. One more squawk out of you, and I will pistol whip you. And the next time I catch Henry jacking off outside of Kendra Wilkins’s bedroom window when she’s enjoying her nightly ablutions, I’ll pistol whip him, too, before I throw him in the jug where he’ll remain till his hair turns gray.”
Behind him, Bonner and Grisby grunted chuckles.
Mrs. Thompson opened her mouth wide in shock but said nothing.
Miller leaned toward her across the desk. “Now, nice and quiet-like, which rooms?”
She drew a deep breath, held it, then said quietly, her taut jaws quivering, “Two and five.”
“Which in which?”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. Thompson placed her reading glasses on her nose and glanced down at the register open before her. “The woman signed her name under Room Two, the man, Mister Smith, under Room Five.”
“Muchas gracias, señora,” Miller whispered, grinning and pinching his hat brim to the old woman.
Miller headed for the stairs just beyond the desk. He glanced over his shoulders at the others, all taut-faced now, and reminded them all with a look to be Apache-quiet. Walking on the balls of his boots, he climbed the stairs, taking them one step at a time
and wincing when the risers occasionally gave a faint complaint beneath him or beneath the others coming up behind him.
As Miller gained the second-floor landing and moved into the hall lit by a couple of smoky bracket lamps, he pointed his rifle straight out before him and ratcheted the hammer back to full cock.
Behind him, he heard the quiet clicks of the other men cocking their weapons. A flowered purple and burgundy carpet runner helped muffle the quartet’s boots. So did the clock on the wall, its wooden pendulums drolly knocking off the seconds.
Miller stopped in front of room two, on the hall’s right side. He had to know for sure which room Sartain and the woman had each claimed. He drew a calming breath then tapped lightly on the door’s upper panel.
“What is it?” came a woman’s voice from inside.
Miller cleared his throat, injected the ingratiating tone of a ten-cent-an-hour lackey into it. “Missus Thompson just sent me up to see if you’re comfortable, ma’am.”
“Oh, yes. Quite comfortable. Thank you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Miller moved slowly, quietly on down the hall to Room Five, which was on the hall’s opposite side from Room Two. He tapped on it, then stepped back. The others flanked him to both sides, crouched over their rifles or, in the case of Grisby, over his double-barreled shotgun, which had both hammers eared back.
Miller stared at the scraped and scratched walnut door.
Silence.
He tapped again, said, “Mister Smith? Missus Thompson sent me up to make sure you’re pleased with the amenities, Mister Smith.”
There was a click back down the hall to Miller’s left. He glanced in that direction to see a big man step out of the woman’s room.
There was a bright flash as a gun exploded like the crack of doom.
Lead pellets showered Miller and the other three men, tearing through their clothes and into their skin like the razor-edged tines of a hot fork.
Miller’s left hand went numb as several pellets plunged bone deep. He screamed and dropped his rifle as he twisted around and fell back against the door. The others were twisting, falling, cursing and yelling, also dropping their weapons. As Miller slid down the door of room five, he reached for the Smith & Wesson on his right hip.
There was another flash and a sharp crack!
Miller screamed as a bullet tore through the back of his right hand, ripping the Smithy out of it and tossing the gun off down the hall.
“Ohhh!” Miller cried, cradling both bloody hands to his chest. “Jesus Christ...what the...”
He let the sentence dwindle to wheezing silence as he watched the silhouette of the big man stride toward him and the others piled up around him, howling.
The approaching man’s big LeMat was smoking in his right hand.
Chapter 12
Sartain stared over the smoking barrel of his big LeMat as he drew up before the buckshot-peppered men writhing on the hall floor, smearing the carpet runner with blood.
They were cursing and grunting and trying to regain their feet. As one of the four climbed to his hands and knees—he was the biggest of the bunch, a very fat man—Sartain kicked him back down to the floor.
“All right, listen up,” The Revenger said. “Here’s how this is going to work.”
The one wearing the deputy sheriff’s star leaned back against the door to room five and glared up at Sartain. “You’re a bast—!”
Sartain buried his right boot in the deputy’s gut. “I don’t know who my ma was, but your guess is probably right in line. However, that don’t make it polite to say so!”
The deputy was jackknifed over his belly, trying in vain to draw a breath.
“Ah, hell, I need a doctor!” yowled one of the others, who smelled like hot iron and a smithy’s bellows. “I’m torn up bad!”
Sartain crouched over each writhing, cursing man in turn, disarming them, tossing their rifles and six-shooters down the hall. He turned toward Miss Rosen’s room. She stood just outside the open door. She held her pocket pistol straight down by her right leg.
Sartain pinched his hat brim to her. “They’re all yours. Come on over here and make your peace.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” asked the fat man, who was still wearing his bar tender’s apron.
Sartain stomped the man’s pudgy hand hard against the floor with his boot heel. The barman roared and slapped the floor with his other hand.
As Olivia Rosen approached, Sartain stepped aside, giving her room. She brushed past him to stare gravely down at the four men who were looking up at her now, incredulity carving deep creases across their foreheads.
The one with the star glanced at the pistol in her fist and said, “What’s...what’s this about? Listen, lady, we’re real sorry about your boy, but we had nothin’ to do with that. That was Lute. We didn’t do nothin’ to you at all. That was all Lute too, and you know it!”
A muscle in Olivia’s cheek twitched as she continued to stare down at the four.
Finally, she said in a low, even voice filled with menace, her jaws hard, “No, you didn’t kill Edgar personally. None of you. But you run with the man who did. That makes you just as guilty in my eyes as Lute Lawton himself. Lawton will eventually pay for his sins. It just happens that you’re going to pay for yours first.”
“Crap, we didn’t do nothin’ to you!” cried the blond-headed gent, pressing a hand against his bloody left side. Some of the buckshot had torn into his right cheek, and rivulets of blood were dribbling down each tiny, painful-looking wound.
“No, but you didn’t do anything to stop Lawton from savaging me for three nights in a row. Not counting when he first took me off the train. Instead of allowing me to say good-bye to my boy, he dragged me off the train while the rest of you cheered him on.”
“Not me!” the deputy cried. “I didn’t!”
Olivia turned to him coldly. “And you would have each taken me, too, if Lawton had allowed it.”
“No!” the deputy cried. “That ain’t how I operate!”
“Look at you.” Olivia smiled grimly and shook her head in disgust. “When you’re backed into a corner, you show yourselves for who you truly are. Sniveling worms. Rats scuttling from a torchlight.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” bellowed the blacksmith. “What the hell do you want, lady? You want us to tell you we’re sorry? All right, we’re sorry!”
“Killin’ us ain’t gonna bring your boy back!” yelled the deputy.
“No,” Olivia agreed. “But it will make both Edgar and me rest easier of a cold winter’s night.” She aimed the .41 at Miller’s head.
The deputy screamed and raised his bloody hands to his face as though to shield himself from a bullet.
“Tell us where we’ll find Lawton,” she said.
“Why should I?” yelled the deputy.
“If you tell us where we’ll find Lawton, I’ll think about sparing you.”
The deputy kept his hands raised. He glanced around at the other three men around him. Holding his hands shoulder high, the fat man shrugged. The deputy glanced at Sartain, who remained expressionless.
The deputy’s bloody features acquired a sheepish cast as he replied, “Alkali. Up the trail another two day’s ride. He’s got him a ranch by Dugout Creek. His old family ranch.”
“Thank you.” Olivia smiled grimly as she narrowed her right eye, aiming down the pistol’s short barrel.
The deputy’s eyes snapped wide in shock. “Hold on. You said you’d spare us!”
“I said I’d think about it. I’ve thought about it.”
The gun popped.
The others screamed and lurched forward, awkwardly trying to flee.
Pop! Pop! Pop-Pop!
After the smoke cleared in the dingy hall, Sartain saw all four men lying dead.
One of them broke wind. Another man’s throat gurgled.
The deputy tapped his boot heels on the floor as his eyes rolled back in his head.
There was the soft thud of a boot behind Sartain. He whipped around, clicking his LeMat’s hammer back. A thin, old man was just then gaining the top of the stairs. He wore a bullet-crowned brown hat, a long, tangled beard, and a sheriff’s star on his leather vest.
He had a gun in his arthritic hand.
“Sheath it, Pop,” Sartain warned.
The old man turned squarely toward Sartain and Olivia Rosen, squinting into the shadowy hall where the gun smoke was still settling, and the four men lay dead.
“Crap on a stick,” the old sheriff said raspily. “What the hell’s all this about?”
Sartain drew a breath to speak, but Olivia Rosen stopped him with, “I’m Olivia Rosen. These men are part of the Lute Lawton Bunch who robbed the train that my son and I were on. My boy ended up dead, and I ended up...tormented.”
The old man nodded slowly, working his jaws. “I see.” He slid his gaze to Sartain. “Who’re you?”
Sartain didn’t say anything. He just stared at the old lawman stonily. The old lawman looked Sartain slowly up and down.
“Never mind,” he said. He holstered his pistol, turned slowly, and drifted off down the hall.
As he disappeared from sight, Mrs. Thompson’s voice rose from the lobby below. “What do you intend to do about the shooting in my place, Sheriff Sandborn?”
“I, uh...I’m gonna fetch the gravedigger,” the old man said beneath the thudding of his boots on the lobby floor.
A door opened and closed with a click.
“Useless old fool!” intoned Mrs. Thompson.
Shoes thudded angrily on the stairs. The old woman appeared at the top of the staircase, turned, and slapped her hand to her pillowy bosom in shock as she stared down the hall. Sartain and Olivia Rosen strode toward her. She canted her head to see beyond them.
“What is the meaning of this?” the woman asked. “I told you in no uncertain terms that under no circumstances would there be any shooting, drinking, or coupling amongst the unmarried in my place of business!”
The Revenger Page 122
