Cutthroats

by William W. Johnstone

  “When they left you that day . . . the morning in the whorehouse by the Arkansas River,” he said slowly, his voice occasionally trembling with emotion, “they robbed the bank in La Junta.”

  “We figured that’s where they were headed, all right,” Pecos said. “That was the job we had planned.”

  Bledsoe stared hard-eyed at the big cutthroat. “Do you know they murdered three tellers in cold blood that day?”

  “No,” Slash said, shaking his head defiantly. “That ain’t true. It can’t be true. We were never cold-blooded killers.”

  “It’s true,” said Bledsoe. He ground his back teeth as he glared down at the glass in his hand. “They shot the tellers for fun. They shot up the place for fun, and set fire to it, and left the bank laughing. As they rode out of town, they killed two more people on the street. Innocent bystanders. And then they plucked a girl, only fourteen years old, from her father’s buckboard wagon in front of the La Junta Mercantile.”

  Bledsoe squeezed his eyes shut as though clearing a vexing vision from his retinas. When he opened them again, he threw back the rest of his tequila, then stared with even more piercing intensity at his empty glass.

  Miss Langdon glanced at her boss and then, as though sensing he couldn’t continue, said, “They took that poor child off on the trail with them. The posse found her later.” She placed a comforting hand on the chief marshal’s shoulder. “Her clothes had been ripped off. She’d been savaged. Multiple times. And she’d been badly beaten.”

  “She lived for three days,” Bledsoe said, “though she never regained consciousness. She died in her mother’s arms.”

  Slash sat ramrod straight in his chair, staring at the chief marshal in disbelief. At the same time, he did believe it. He’d suspected that something similar might happen if Loco Sanchez and Arnell Squires ever took the gang’s reins, as both he and Pecos had sensed they’d been planning to do for a couple of years, believing the wolf pack might do better—or at least have more fun—with their muzzles off.

  Slash had suspected the gang would grow more savage. But not so soon.

  Not this soon.

  Killing in cold blood had been the best way for any gang member to get themselves kicked out of the gang and kicked out with a cold shovel—dead.

  Slash and Pecos had taken that extreme measure a few times. Now, it appears, they should have taken it at least two more times....

  “I’ll be damned,” Pecos said, half to himself. “Sanchez an’ Squires.”

  “Wait,” Slash said to Bledsoe. “You said it was personal.”

  “Oh, it is.” Bledsoe lifted his gaze to Slash’s. The old marshal’s eyes were gimlet-hard but his voice was low and soft. “That poor raped and murdered child was Grace Vanderhall, my granddaughter.”

  * * *

  Later that night, Pecos strummed the mandolin that the oldest of the three dead Mexicans had unwittingly bequeathed him, while Slash and Justianna danced closely, hand in hand, turning slow circles in the near-dark saloon.

  A fire cracked and popped in the potbelly stove, holding the chilly night at bay. The storm had returned as storms often did in the late summer mountains, but not with as much vigor as before. Rain drummed a steady, even rhythm on the roof. The thunder rumbled softly, as though from far away, and lightning flashed occasionally from behind distant peaks.

  It was a quiet, moody night. A lonely night. The story of Bledsoe’s dead granddaughter remained in the shadowy room as though the ghost of the poor raped and murdered girl haunted the place.

  Slash and Pecos had watched from the saloon’s front veranda as the old chief marshal and Miss Langdon had rattled off in the marshal’s fancy carriage, wheels splashing in the puddles pocking the muddy yard. They’d been accompanied by the three deputy U.S. marshals who’d cast Slash and Pecos incredulous, vaguely sneering glances over their shoulders as they’d trotted onto the trail heading north toward Saguache, following the marshal’s carriage driven by a large, mustached Chinaman in a three-piece suit and a top hat, who’d apparently remained outside with the horses, sheltered by the covered buggy.

  When the visitors were gone, Justianna served Slash and Pecos heaping plates of beans and steak from what remained of a butchered cow hanging in her father’s keeper shed behind the saloon. The girl seemed relieved to have the two older men remain with her at this lonely place in the mountains, after the terrifying dustup that had left Tio and the other Mexicans dead. Her father and brother would not return from their hunting trip until the next day. Tio and the other two pistoleros lay at the bottom of a nearby ravine to which the deputies had dragged them, kicking dirt and rocks over their bodies.

  Occasionally, Slash could hear the snarls and angry yips of wolves fighting over the carcasses now as the rain continued. He heard the savage skirmishes over the soft, inelegant strumming of his partner’s big, untutored fingers manipulating the mandolin strings.

  Pecos sat tipped back in his chair, holding the instrument up high across his chest, boots crossed on the table before him and on which Bledsoe’s men had piled the cutthroats’ weapons—Slash’s prized Colt .44s, bowie knife, and Winchester Yellowboy repeater. Pecos’s big Russian was snugged down in its holster around which the shell belt was coiled. It lay between the blond outlaw’s twelve-gauge Richards coach gun and his Colt revolving rifle. Both men’s hideout weapons were there, as well—everything piled like armaments gleaned from a bloody field of battle, which Slash supposed they were in a way.

  That battlefield was about to get bloodier. . . .

  He closed his eyes now as he held Justianna close against him, trying to stop thinking about the large task he and Pecos faced. Tonight, he just wanted to rest and enjoy the rain and this pretty senorita in his arms, and the dissonant strumming of Pecos’s fingers on the mandolin. There would be time, starting tomorrow, when he could think of the distasteful duty that lay before them—the stalking and killing of every man in their old gang.

  Of course, they’d accepted the job. They’d been given their freedom in exchange for it. They’d been paid to do it. But beyond that, they felt obligated to do it. The gang—their gang, the Snake River Marauders—had gone bad. They were running like a plague on the land. They were a pack of rabid wolves, and they needed to be run down and killed before any more innocents, like Bledsoe’s granddaughter, fell victim to their fangs and claws.

  According to a report in Miss Langdon’s valise, only a couple of days ago Sanchez and Squires had shot two deputy U.S. marshals up near the mountain town of Morrisville. So it was toward the southwestern San Juans that Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid would head tomorrow at first light, their guns cleaned and loaded and ready to kill.

  Tonight, however, there was only the rain, the distant thunder, the pretty, frightened, young, heartbroken senorita in Slash’s arms....

  When Pecos’s fingers chomped down too hard on a string, making the instrument squeal, Slash chuckled and stopped. He looked down at Justianna, who stood with her cheek pressed against his chest, her bare feet planted atop his boots. He pecked the girl’s cheek, slid a lock of hair back away from her left eye, and brushed his thumb across her dimpled chin.

  “I do believe I’m gonna sit down, young one,” he said. “I’m beat. Think I’ll have one more drink and a smoke, listen to the rain for a while, and head on up to bed. We’ll be pulling out early, Pecos an’ me.”

  “You are going after your old gang?” the girl asked in her Spanish-accented voice.

  “Sí.”

  “The men who killed the old gringo’s granddaughter?”

  She’d heard everything from behind the bar.

  “That’s right.”

  “I wish you well, Slash.” Justianna reached up and placed a hand against his cheek. “If you wish . . .” She slid her eyes to a curtained doorway flanking the bar and which likely led to a few small, crudely appointed bedrooms, including her own.

  Slash chuckled quietly, smiling down at the pretty senorita with
the large, round, dark eyes. “I’d take you up on that offer—if I could shave off about twenty-five years or you could pack that many on.”

  “I am done with young men,” the girl said in a quiet snit. “I prefer the older, more mature ones.”

  “Well, while I might be older, I’m not sure how mature I am. Besides, didn’t I tell you to stay away from cutthroats?” Slash brushed his thumb across her cheek, marveling at the smoothness of her warm, supple skin.

  She smiled prettily, cheeks dimpling. “Think of the stories I could tell my grandchildren. Uh . . . when they were older, of course!” The girl chuckled, showing a rare, earthy character. “Besides, lying with you tonight,” she added, her eyes beseeching, “I would sleep better.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll take that as a compliment,” Slash added with a snort. He shook his head. “You go on back, get a good night’s sleep. Pecos and I’ll sleep in the barn with our horses. We’re used to it.”

  “You can sleep in here. Papa’s room is free. He won’t be back till late tomorrow. He and my brother rode high into the mountains on an elk hunt.”

  Slash shook his head. “Wouldn’t be proper.”

  Justianna looked up at him, frowning and pooching out her lips.

  Slash kissed her cheek again. “Thanks for putting an arch in this old stallion’s tail, though you’ve probably guaranteed me a restless sleep to boot.”

  “Good!” Smiling, she squeezed his hand and turned toward the curtained doorway. “In case you change your mind, I will leave a lamp burning on the bar.” She glanced at where Pecos had quit torturing the mandolin and was taking apart his rifle to clean it, setting each piece on a white handkerchief. “Good night, Pecos!”

  “Good night, darlin’!” the blond outlaw said around the quirley sagging from between his lips.

  Slash walked over to the table, kicked out a chair across from his partner, and sat down. He splashed tequila into his empty shot glass and began building a quirley from the bag of makings Bledsoe had left them, an added benefit of their agreement to work as hired killers for the old renegade marshal.

  As he sprinkled the Durham into the wheat paper troughed between the first two fingers of his right hand, he caught Pecos grinning across the table at him.

  “What?” Slash asked, frowning.

  “That pretty li’l senorita done tumbled for ole Slash!”

  “Of course she did. It’s about time one tumbles for me instead of you.”

  “They all tumble for you, you handsome old catamount,” Pecos said, carefully oiling his rifle’s cylinder. “It’s that dark hair and dark eyes. And your ornery disposition. They make you seem dangerous. Women—they like a man with a little danger in him. The problem with you is you don’t reciprocate the feelin’.”

  “ ‘Reciprocate’?” Slash said, scowling. “What the hell is ‘reciprocate’?”

  “I got it from a book that schoolteacher read to me last winter down in Phoenix. It means to return the favor. You’d know that if you’d spark a book-readin’ woman once in a while instead of just bouncin’ from parlor girl to parlor girl.”

  “I got better things to do than to spend the winter chasin’ old-maid schoolteachers.” Slash grinned suddenly. “Or the chief marshal’s purty Viking secretary . . .”

  Pecos flushed. “Ah, hell.”

  “I thought I was gonna have to restrain that gal, keep her from crawlin’ over the table right into your lap! There was somethin’ goin’ on between you two. I seen it right off, an’ so did she!”

  Slash laughed.

  Pecos brushed a fist across his nose in embarrassment. Then he looked at his partner. “What you got to do that’s better than chasing a good lady around of a winter, Slash?”

  “Oh, shut up, will you!” Slash scratched a lucifer to life on the table, touched the flame to the cigarette, and drew the rich smoke deep into his lungs. He didn’t want to think about women tonight.

  Blowing out a lungful of the invigorating smoke, he set to work taking apart his own weapons and placing each piece carefully onto neckerchiefs he’d spread out upon the table. Soon, he was lost in the task and feeling good again after all that had happened over the past several days.

  He’d just taken all his weapons apart and had started cleaning them and lubricating each part carefully from a tin of bear grease, when Pecos shot a startled look across the table at him.

  Slash frowned. “What is—?”

  Then he heard it beneath the steady drumming of the rain on the roof—hoofbeats.

  Two or three horses entered the yard at fast trots.

  Slash looked down at his .44s, the Yellowboy, and his. 41-caliber pocket gun spread out in pieces before him. He looked over at Pecos’s weapons. All of his were in pieces, as well. Between the two of them they did not have a single working weapon—aside from Slash’s bowie knife, of course, but the blade was of little use against men wielding cold steel.

  And whoever was riding into the yard sounded in a hurry—maybe to get out of the rain, maybe for a more nefarious reason.

  Both cutthroats cursed at the same time and immediately went to work assembling one gun apiece—Slash, one of his .44s, and Pecos, his big Russian.

  Meanwhile, the hoof thuds grew louder just outside the batwings. A horse blew and shook its head, rattling the bit in its teeth. A man said something in a deep, raspy voice. Another answered, though Slash couldn’t hear what either man said because of the rain’s steady drumming.

  Boots made sucking sounds in the mud.

  Slash worked quickly, furiously snapping the parts of his pistol back into place.

  “Damn!” Pecos said when, working too quickly, he dropped his Russian’s cylinder onto the table. It rolled. Slash caught it and flipped it to him. Pecos caught it and quickly snapped it into place.

  Spurs rang on the wooden steps and boots thumped on the veranda.

  A man’s large, hatted head appeared over the batwings, silhouetted against the stormy night. The batwings parted, and the man stepped into the room. He was followed by two others, the batwings squawking on their unoiled springs, then clattering back into place behind the three.

  The trio spread out in a line fronting the door, the rain showing silver in the dark, stormy night behind them.

  All three wore rain slickers, the rainwater streaming off them to the floor. They were an unwashed, raggedy-heeled lot—all three bearded, two enormously fat, one skinny and a full head taller than the two fat ones. Two held carbines. The third held a long-barreled, double-bore shotgun. The saloon’s wan lamplight touched the nubs of their cheeks beneath their dripping hat brims, leaving their eyes in darkness.

  The larger of the two fat men, standing in the middle of the trio, held his shotgun up high across his thick chest. “You two Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid?”

  His voice sounded like low thunder.

  “Who wants to know?” asked Pecos tentatively.

  The fat man in the middle of the group pulled down his shotgun, bellowing, “Tiny Wade and Buck Dawson—that’s who!”

  Slash and Pecos both grabbed the pistols they’d barely gotten put back together and loaded before the three newcomers had pushed in out of the storm. But they wouldn’t get the pistols raised and cocked before Fat Man went to work with his gut-shredder.

  They both recognized that grim fact at the same time.

  “Holy crap—look at the size of that barn-blaster, Slash!” Pecos bellowed as he bounded straight up out of his chair and launched himself over a table straight ahead of him.

  “I seen it!” Slash returned, leaping up out of his own chair, twisting around sharply to his right, and bounding off his boot heels.

  At the same time, Fat Man’s shotgun thundered, turning the seat of the chair Slash had just vacated not a full second before to little more than feather sticks and splinters. Slash dove over a table to his right, dropping his shoulder into the edge of it so that as he hit the floor on the other side of it, it crashed down at an angle and jut
ted up before him like a shield.

  An inadequate shield, however.

  As the two other men went to work with their carbines, two bullets . . . then three . . . then four bullets plowed quarter-sized holes through the table, thumping into the floor on either side of where Slash crouched, cocking back his Colt’s hammer.

  The shotgun roared again, but that second barrel must have been meant for Pecos, because it was two more rifle rounds that crashed through Slash’s table, one chunk of hot lead carving a stinging line across the outside of the cutthroat’s neck.

  “Damn!” Pecos yowled above the cacophony. “These fellers mean business, Slash!”

  “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, you dunderhead!” Slash returned, wincing as yet another blue whistler sizzled the air a cat’s whisker to the right of his right ear.

  “No reason for insults!” Pecos shouted.

  “Hah! Hah!” bellowed one of Slash’s and Pecos’s would-be executioners. “Like shootin’ rats in a privy, boys!”

  Slash had a feeling the voice had belonged to Fat Man. As Slash edged a look with one eye around the side of his overturned table, he saw the two others firing their carbines toward him and Pecos. Fat Man tossed his barn-blaster onto a nearby table, shoved the flaps of his oiled leather coat back behind his womanishly stout hips, and clawed two hoglegs from their holsters.

  Slash knew he couldn’t let Fat Man join the fray with those six-shooters. Slash and Pecos had merely been lucky that they hadn’t yet caught a bad case of lead poisoning. If Fat Man started in with his two smoke wagons, the odds against the two middle-aged cutthroats would be way too tall.

  As another bullet tore through Slash’s table, closely joining three other tightly patterned holes, Slash loosed an exasperated roar and punched his .44 barrel first through the ruined table, glad the bullet-pocked wood gave as easily as he’d expected. He crouched to peer over the .44’s barrel through the hole that was about twice as large as his fist, and began shooting.