Nathan Stark, Army Scout

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Larsen’s heart quickened as he turned to see a near door open. A girl, dressed in a thin cotton wrap, stepped into the hall; then seeing the two gun-wielding men before her, she stopped and gasped, her eyes widening.

  “What in holy blazes is goin’ on?” she said way too loudly. Her words echoed around the previously silent hall.

  “Shhh!” both Larsen and Two Whistles said at the same time, pressing fingers to their lips.

  The girl looked as though she’d been slapped.

  Larsen dipped his chin to indicate the door at the end of the hall. The girl turned her head to stare in that direction, then, appearing suddenly horrified, apparently remembering the three killers on the premises, stepped quickly back into her room and quietly closed her door.

  Larsen stared at the last door on the hall’s right side. He prayed it didn’t open. Somehow, he had to get those three killers out of the room without getting the doxies killed. If the killers learned that the law was on the way, they might use the girls as human shields. Or they might just start shooting, and the girls would die in the crossfire.

  Larsen couldn’t wait for a better time. There might not be a better time. He had to arrest the cutthroats as soon as possible. No citizen was safe as long as the three cold-blooded killers were running free. Now was the best time to take them down, when they were either still asleep or groggy.

  The two lawmen shared another fateful look, then resumed their slow, deliberative journey.

  Finally, they found themselves standing in front of the door at the end of the hall.

  Larsen tipped an ear to the panel. The only sounds issuing from inside the room were deep, sawing snores.

  He looked at Henry and arched a brow, silently asking, Too good to be true?

  The deputy gave a noncommittal shrug.

  Holding his rifle in his right hand, aiming it just above the knob, Larsen placed his other hand on the knob and turned it very slowly. He winced when the latching bolt retreated into the door with a click.

  A loud click. At least, to Larsen’s nervous ears it was loud.

  One of the three snoring men inside the room abruptly stopped snoring and groaned.

  Larsen’s heart thumped.

  He shoved the door open and stepped quickly inside and to the left. Henry stepped in behind him to pull up on his right side, aiming the shotgun straight out from his right shoulder. Inadvertently, Two Whistles kicked a bottle that had been lying on the floor in front of the door. The bottle went rolling loudly across the wooden floor to bounce off a leg of one of the four beds before the two lawmen.

  The bottle spun, making a whirring sound.

  Henry looked down at it, stone-faced.

  Larsen sucked a silent breath through his teeth, aiming his Winchester out from his right side.

  One of the three men, each occupying three of the four beds in the room, lifted his head from his pillow. He was a shaggy-headed man lying back down on a bed ahead and against the right wall. The man sat partway up, but he didn’t open his eyes. He merely groaned, then rolled onto this side, lay his head back down on his pillow, groaned once more, yawned, then resumed snoring softly.

  Henry glanced sheepishly at Larsen, who gave him a look of silent scolding.

  Returning his gaze to the three killers, Larsen looked them over.

  A vacant bed lay to his hard right. The other three beds were filled. The two girls lay in each of the two beds on Larsen’s left, each with one of the other two killers. The near girl appeared to be asleep, lying belly down beside a man with long coal-black braids and clad in a pair of threadbare long-handles. He also lay belly down. He and the girl were only partly covered by a twisted sheet.

  The man with the black braids would be the Cut-Head Sioux, Black Pot.

  The man beyond him, in the bed abutting the wall overlooking the street, was Talon Chaney himself. The second girl lay with Chaney, sort of wrapped in his thick arms. No sheet covered them. They were both naked. The girl was not asleep. Her blue eyes peered out through her tangled, tawny hair. They were bright and wide open, cast with terror and desperation. Silently, she begged Larsen and Two Whistles for help.

  Something told Larsen she hadn’t slept a wink all night.

  He couldn’t blame her. Not one bit.

  Chaney, who had close-cropped hair and a patchy beard on his blunt-nosed face, lay sort of spooned against the girl from behind, his thick, tattooed arms wrapped around her. His face was snugged up tight to the back of her head, his nose buried in her neck. With each resounding exhalation, the outlaw made the girl’s hair billow up around his nose and mouth.

  Larsen shifted his eyes to the right, to the third killer lying alone in the bed beside Chaney and the girl’s bed. That would be Hell-Raisin’ Frank Beecher—shaggy-headed, tall, hawk-nosed, crazy-eyed, and with a silver hoop ring dangling from his right ear.

  All three were sleeping like baby lambs.

  However, these three lambs had guns close to hand. In fact, the room resembled a small arsenal. At least two pistols apiece were buckled to each of the brass bed frames, within an easy reach of each killer. Sheathed bowie knives also hung from bed frames. Rifles—two Winchesters and a Henry—leaned against the walls, also close to each bed. Boxes of shells littered the room’s single dresser cluttered with women’s underfrillies.

  Three piles of tack were carelessly mounded here and there, including saddlebags likely stuffed with the money these three had taken off the Sundance stage.

  The room might have looked like an arsenal, but it reeked of a whore’s crib in which three drunken men who hadn’t bathed in a month of Sundays had been well entertained.

  Larsen chewed his lower lip. How were he and Two Whistles going to get the two girls out of here without arousing the three killers? Maybe he should try to get all of the weapons out of the room first....

  He nixed that idea. With so many guns and knives littering the room, it would take too long. Doubtless, one or more of the killers would wake up and begin the foofaraw. Larsen would try to get the girls out first. If the killers woke up in the process—well, then there would be trouble.

  One thing at a time.

  The marshal leaned close to Two Whistles and whispered very softly into the older man’s right ear, “Cover me. If one or more of them wakes up, blast ’em.”

  The old Ute gave a slow, single nod, keeping his eyes on the room.

  Larsen started forward, stopped, and turned back to Two Whistles to whisper in the man’s ear again: “But wait till I’m out of the way. And the girls, too.”

  Two Whistles gave a grim half smile.

  Larsen stepped forward. He walked past the girl asleep belly down on the bed with Black Pot. He crouched over the girl lying fully awake, eyes glazed with terror, beside Talon Chaney. He aimed his rifle at Chaney with his right hand and extended his left hand to the girl.

  “Come on,” he mouthed.

  The girl glanced at Chaney curled against her from behind.

  She looked at Larsen, beetling her brows, terrified to move.

  Larsen crouched lower and said into her left ear, his breath making her blond hair flutter a little, “If he grabs you, I’ll shoot ’im.” He rose slightly and waggled his fingers at her again.

  The girl drew a breath, steeling herself, then, sitting up, slowly lifted her left hand.

  Chaney groaned, muttered incoherently.

  The girl stopped and whipped her horrified eyes at the man beside her.

  “Keep comin’,” Larsen whispered.

  She turned to the lawman again. She continued to stretch her hand toward him, sitting up. Larsen closed his hand around hers and gently pulled her out of the bed. As she rose away from Chaney, the killer’s right arm slid down her side to the bed. He turned his face into his pillow and muttered, “Wh ... where you... goin’ ... sugar ... ?”

  The words were badly garbled. The killer was likely still drunk.

  Good.

  The girl rose, the long tendrils of h
er blond hair dancing across her slender, bare shoulders. Larsen stepped aside to let her pass behind him. As she padded on tiptoes out of the room, Larsen looked around at the three killers surrounding him.

  All three were still sawing logs.

  He glanced at Two Whistles aiming the shotgun into the room, gave an expression of “So far, so good,” then moved to the cot on which the other girl slept beside Black Pot.

  Larsen dropped to a knee beside the girl. The chubby brunette was snoring softly into her pillow.

  Larsen placed his hand on her right arm, which hung down over the side of the bed.

  Instantly, she lifted her head and opened her eyes, which were cast with the same terror as the other girl’s eyes, and said much too loudly, “Oh, God—please don’t hurt—”

  Gritting his teeth, Larsen clamped his right hand over her mouth.

  She stared over his hand at him, wide-eyed, the light of understanding gradually filling her gaze. Larsen looked over her at Black Pot. The man shifted a little but only grumbled into his pillow, then resumed snoring.

  He didn’t wake.

  Neither did the two other killers. Snores continued rising so loudly that they almost made the marshal’s ears ache. The stench in the room nearly made his ears water.

  To the brunette before him, Larsen whispered, “Very slowly, get up and leave the room.”

  She nodded quickly.

  Larsen pulled his hand away from her mouth.

  Glancing behind her at Black Pot, the girl slid her body, clad in a thin, torn gown, out of the bed. The bed squawked and jounced. Still, Black Pot snored deeply into his pillow.

  The girl placed her bare feet on the floor beside Larsen, glanced up at him with a look of extreme gratitude, then shook her hair back from her face and tiptoed past Two Whistles and out of the room.

  Larsen looked around at the three killers. He couldn’t believe his luck. They were still asleep.

  He still couldn’t believe his luck when, ten minutes later, he had placed his and his deputy’s handcuffs on all three killers, cuffing their hands behind their backs. None so much as stirred through the entire process.

  Still, they slept like baby lambs.

  Trussed up baby lambs. Only, baby lambs didn’t snore nearly as loudly as these three unconscious killers.

  Now all the two lawmen had to do was get them over to the jailhouse and turn the key on them. That shouldn’t be hard at all. All three men were defenseless. Chaney and Beecher were naked. Black Pot was clad in only threadbare longhandles.

  Larsen stepped back over to Two Whistles, who had been covering him with his Parker, and looked over his handiwork.

  The two lawmen smiled at each other in deep relief.

  CHAPTER 3

  “This soft life you two old cutthroats are living is gonna get you both killed!”

  The woman’s voice, albeit a familiar one, made Jimmy “Slash” Braddock sit bolt upright in the bed he’d been sound asleep in. “Huh ... wha... ?” he said, blinking sleepily, automatically waving a hand toward where he usually kept a pistol within an easy grab.

  His vision focused, and his heart warmed. He lowered his hand. A smile played across his lips as he stared into the jadegreen eyes of the woman he’d finally worked up enough gumption to propose to. He’d even done it sober, a fact that still amazed him.

  “Huh ... what... ?” Jaycee Breckenridge good-naturedly mocked him as she stared into Slash and his partner’s sleeping quarters at the rear of their freighting office, one hand on the pine plank door. She smiled that smile that made the whole universe want to dance. In fact, still half-asleep and mildly hungover, as usual, Slash’s middle-aged ticker was dancing a jig inside his rib cage.

  The ring on a finger of Jay’s hand holding open the door caught the morning light angling through a window behind Slash, and glinted like sunlight off a high mountain lake. That had been Slash’s dear mother’s wedding ring. Studded with diamonds and rubies, it must have cost his pa a pretty penny. Slash had given the ring to Jay to wear as an engagement ring until their wedding in the fall.

  “I’m cooking you boys up a good breakfast for the trail,” Jay said as Slash’s partner, Melvin Baker, who’d been known as “The Pecos River Kid” in their recent former outlaw days, stirred in his own bed on the other side of the braided rug from Slash.

  Slash preferred to be called Jimmy these days, though it was hard for him and his partner to remember to call each other by anything but their old outlaw monikers. They’d put their outlaw days behind them for keeps, and they’d just as soon no one in their adopted hometown of Camp Collins, Colorado, know of their dark history as bank and train robbers of some celebrity and more than a little disrepute.

  “Come on, Pecos,” Jay said. She also had trouble calling them by their given names, since she’d known them both during their outlaw years, had even been the common law wife of a man, the dearly departed and legendary Pistol Pete Johnson, from their own gang. “You boys are burnin’ daylight. Didn’t you say you were supposed to be on the trail headed to Dry Fork by eight o’clock? Well, it’s pushing toward seven thirty. Myra and I are cooking you up a nice, big breakfast for the trail.”

  “You are?” Slash said. Sniffing the air, he smelled the savory aroma of bacon and coffee. His empty belly stirred despite the overabundance of tangle-legs he and Pecos had indulged in last night, at the saloon Jay owned right here in Camp Collins—the House of a Thousand Delights.

  “We’ve been cooking and banging pots around for the past forty-five minutes,” Jay said, chuckling. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear us.”

  “So am I!” both Slash and Pecos said raspily at the same time, exchanging incriminating glances from either side of the braided rug.

  “Like I said,” Jay said, “this soft life you two old cutthroats have been living is going to get you killed one of these days, especially if you keep riding for that old reprobate Bledsoe.” She wagged her head, not liking their employer, Chief Marshal Luther T. Bledsoe, one bit.

  But, then, no one did like that old, pushchair-bound human coyote....

  “Hurry up, now,” Jay said. “Myra and I will be filling plates in three jangles of a doxie’s bell!”

  With that, she gave Slash a flirtatious wink, flashed him another one of her million-dollar smiles, and pulled the door closed.

  Slash leaned back on his elbows, staring at the door.

  Pecos gave a caustic chuckle. It was then that Slash realized his former partner-in-crime and current-partner-in lawdogging—yeah, lawdogging of all things!—was sneering at him from Pecos’s bed on the room’s other side.

  “What?” Slash grunted.

  “You two with all your mooncalf eyes.”

  It was then that Slash realized he’d been smiling at the closed door, though of course it hadn’t been the door he was smiling at but at Jay’s lovely visage still emblazoned on his retinas.

  “You’re just jealous,” Slash grouched as he tossed away his covers and dropped his stockinged feet to the floor. “You got your drawers in a bunch because you can’t have the woman you’re pinin’ after, because the woman you want is too good for you, not to mention far too good looking to give you a second look, ya big, ugly ape. Not to mention that she’s old Bleed-Em-So’s assistant.”

  “Bleed-Em-So” was the nickname given long ago to their employer, Luther T. Bledsoe, due to his uncompromising and ruthless law-dogging ways that weren’t often all that more upstanding than the ways of the outlaws he’d spent most of his adult life bringing to justice. In fact, Bledsoe had pretty much blackmailed Slash and Pecos into working for him—unofficially and off the record, taking on assignments the Chief Marshal deemed too dangerous for his bona fide deputy U.S. marshals. If the two former cutthroats hadn’t accepted the job he’d offered, after resigning from the train-robbing business, he’d more or less threatened to hang them.

  In exchange for their agreement to work for him, he’d offered them an amnesty—but one that would promp
tly be revoked if they ever crossed him or decided to stop working for him, which for all intents and purposes would amount to the same thing.

  The apple of Pecos’s eye was Bleed-Em-So’s assistant, Miss Abigail Langdon, a big-boned Viking queen of a gal with long lake-green eyes, like a cat’s eyes, and the thickest, goldest hair Slash had ever seen. She was a big gal, but no gal ever wore her size better or in a more beguiling, fairy-tale-like fashion. A fella with a good imagination could picture Miss Langdon with her golden locks in braids tumbling down from an iron helmet, her cheeks painted for war, her supple, shapely body clad in furs and leather, and with a shield in one hand, a war ax in the other.

  “If you made a play for that cat-eyed beauty, Bleed-Em-So would throw a necktie party in your honor and play cat’s cradle with your ugly head!” Slash laughed.

  “That ain’t true. You know he treats her like he would a favorite niece. Bleed-Em-So would want her to find a righteous, upstanding man to walk her down the aisle!” Pecos chuckled as he, too, tossed his covers back and dropped his long, longhandle-clad legs over the edge of his bed.

  “Hey, what’s your boot doing over here on my side of the room?” Slash picked up the boot in question and whipped it at his partner. It bounced with a thump off the big man’s right shoulder.

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, Pecos jerked his head up and tossed a lock of his long gray-blond hair back over his shoulder. He glared at the smaller-boned, darker of the two cutthroats and said, “Ow, dammit—that hurt!”

  “Oh, quit caterwauling, ya Nancy-boy!”

  Pecos rose up off the cot to his full six foot six inches and clenched his ham-sized fists at his sides, red-faced and ready to fight. “You do that again, I’m gonna take that boot and shove it up your—”

  Someone knocked loudly on their bedroom door, and yet another female voice yelled, “You two stop roughhousing in there and get out here! Didn’t Jay tell you we’re about to shovel up the grub?”

  This voice was a little higher pitched than that of Jaycee Breckenridge.

  That would belong to the young former outlaw girl who now pretty much ran the freighting business even when Slash and Pecos weren’t out risking life and limb for Chief Marshal Bledsoe—Myra Thompson. Myra was only in her early twenties, but she’d been around the block a time or two, had good business sense, and had a no-nonsense pragmatism to equal that of the most persnickety banker.