Cutthroats

by William W. Johnstone

  As the .44 bucked, leaped, and roared, stabbing flames toward the two fat men and the string bean, Pecos joined the dustup from about ten feet straight out away from Slash, extending his Russian from over the top of his own shielding table.

  Both cutthroats’ pistols roared, smoke and flames streaking toward where the three newcomers stood, two shooting while Fat Man brought his own six-guns to bear. He didn’t get off a single shot before Slash and Pecos’s bullets chewed into him. More rounds found the flesh of the other two men, twisting one completely around and throwing him back out through the batwings, screaming.

  The third man dropped his rifle as one bullet punched a hole in his chest while another one shattered his cheekbone, making him look like he’d taken a tomato to the face. He flew backward, bounced off the wall, then dropped to his knees, screaming, while Slash finished him with a bullet to his forehead.

  He fell facedown to the floor and lay quivering.

  Fat Man had dropped to his knees, throwing his head back and yelling shrilly as blood pumped from two holes in his chest. He triggered one of his two pistols into the floor while raising the other one.

  “You devils!” he roared.

  Slash triggered his last round into Fat Man’s forehead. Pecos did the same thing, he and Slash giving the man two new eyes, though he’d have had a damned hard time seeing out of either one if he’d lived.

  Which he didn’t.

  He dropped forward with a loud death rattle and hit the floor with a heavy thud.

  Smoke wafted in the dull light and swaying shadows.

  Silence save for the rain once more descended upon the saloon.

  Slash lifted his head to peer over his shielding table. “You okay, Pecos?”

  “Fine as frog hair.” Lifting his head over his own table, Pecos turned toward Slash. “You?”

  “Fine as frog hair split four ways.”

  “They musta followed us out of Saguache,” Pecos said. “Buck an’ Tiny musta been mighty piss-burned when, layin’ up at the doctor’s place, they heard we’d cheated the hangman and split tail for the tall an’ uncut.”

  “Yeah. These was friends of theirs, apparently.”

  “Yeah,” Pecos said, grinning meaningfully. “Friends.”

  Slash snorted a laugh.

  Someone gasped.

  Slash and Pecos jerked their heads toward the back of the room. Justianna stood behind the bar wearing a wash-worn cotton nightgown and cream dusting cap. She held her hand over her mouth as she stared through the still-smoky air toward the two dead men lying near the batwings, the boots of the third dead man showing under the doors, toes pointed skyward.

  Lowering her hand from her mouth, the pretty senorita glanced from Pecos to Slash, and hissed, “Cutthroats—mierda! ”

  She threw up an exasperated arm, wheeled, and disappeared through the curtained doorway behind the bar.

  Slowly, wincing at the creaks in their bruised old bones, Slash and Pecos gained their feet.

  Pecos turned to Slash and said, “She’s got that right.”

  CHAPTER 23

  One week later, Slash and Pecos reined up in the pines at the edge of the little mining camp of Paris, Colorado Territory, which lay ten miles beyond the even smaller camp of Morrisville, high up in a mountain valley at nearly the rim of the Sawatch Range.

  It was in this direction that Slash and Pecos had been told by a couple of Morrisville residents that the Snake River Marauders had headed after shooting two U.S. marshals in a Morrisville saloon.

  In cold blood.

  The marshals had only been playing poker with several men from the gang, including Loco Sanchez and Arnell Squires. When the game had ended, Sanchez and Squires and two others whom the onlookers hadn’t been able to identify stood up and casually shot the marshals where they sat, laughing and howling like coyotes congregating on a moonlit ridge. The camp’s constable had been sitting at the same table, but he’d been so rattled by the sudden savagery of the killings that he’d frozen in his chair, unable to intervene.

  Which was probably just as well. If he had, he’d likely be lying six feet under the same boot hill cemetery as the two federals.

  In the wake of the killings, the gang had simply mounted up and rode off as though they were riding off to a church picnic on Sunday afternoon.

  Now Slash doffed his hat and ran a gloved hand through his sweaty, longish hair and took a good, long look at the main street of Paris stretching out before him—two blocks long and abutted on each side by log shacks and business establishments of various sizes. Smoke from noon cook fires unfurled from tin chimney pipes to billow out over the street, tanging the air with the smell of burning pine and cooked meat.

  “How do you wanna play this one, Slash?” Pecos said.

  Frowning curiously, Slash turned to his partner, who was staring at a humble log building sitting a hundred feet away, on the street’s right side, and which a hand-lettered shingle identified simply as BANK.

  “What’re you talkin’ about?” Slash said.

  Pecos cast him an annoyed look. He held his right hand over the grips of the Russian holstered over his belly, butt angled toward his right hip. “How you wanna play—”

  Pecos cut himself off. Removing his hand from his pistol’s butt, he flushed with chagrin. “Crap!”

  “That’s the second time you done that,” Slash told him.

  “I’ll be damned if old habits don’t die hard!” Still flushed with embarrassment, Pecos shook his head. But then he looked at the bank again. “I got me a feelin’, though, Slash, that that little bank is chock-full of gold bars. Filled to burstin’! Why, there’s probably enough gold locked up in there to . . .”

  He’d looked at his partner again, saw the disapproving cast to Slash’s dark-eyed gaze.

  “All right, all right. We’re here to track the Marauders. Okay. I get that.” Pecos grinned suddenly, the high-country sunlight dancing merrily in his blue eyes. “But, dammit all—don’t it tempt you just a little?”

  Slash looked at the bank. He felt the tingle in his fingers, heard the hum in his ears.

  Chuckling dryly, he gigged the Appy forward. “Come on!”

  He rode on past the bank, ignoring the prospect of those glittering ingots likely piled in a barred cage or a stout safe, awaiting shipment to the U.S. Mint in San Francisco, and reined up in front of a livery barn just beyond the bank. The barn’s doors were thrown open and a beefy, bearded gent in overalls was filing the left rear hoof of a sorrel gelding just inside.

  The sorrel whinnied a greeting at the newcomers.

  Slash’s Appy shook its head in kind, twitching its ears warmly and snorting.

  Horses were the most social of animals, including humans. At least, they were more social than Slash Braddock was, though that wasn’t saying much. They were probably more sentimental to boot. Slash hadn’t even given his horse a name, believing that only debutantes and fools named horses, whereas Pecos, the gentle giant, had given his buckskin the unimaginative handle of Buck.

  But it was a name, at least.

  “Hidy, old-timer,” Slash said, pinching his hat brim at the oldster, whose tangled gray beard hung nearly to his waist. A fly had gotten entangled inside the nasty mess, as though in a spiderweb, and appeared to have exhausted itself trying to find its way out. Apparently, the old-timer hadn’t noticed. But, then, he probably hadn’t noticed the eggs and chili staining the ancient bib beard, either—and several other foods Slash couldn’t identify.

  The old man looked up from his work, then dropped the horse’s hoof, which he’d been sandwiching between his knobby knees.

  “Happy midday to ya, gents!” he said, eyes sparkling at the prospect of business. He hooked a thumb to the shingles tacked to the second story of his barn. “The name’s Leif Olmstead, and I’m the proud owner of this heap.”

  He dipped his chin cordially, chuckling. “As you can see from the signs I painted my ownself, boarding is seventy-five cents a hoss, ten
cents extry if you want your animals grained, another five if you want ’em rubbed down. I’ll perform the task myself with fresh burlap”—he gave a dreamy smile—“and oh, I’ve got a sweet ’n’ gentle hand, I do. I can calm the most contrary of beasts—exceptin’ women of course. I don’t know any man alive who can calm a contrary woman! No, sir, don’t stable your woman with ole Leif Olmstead!”

  He laughed loudly, showing a mouthful of brown, cracked, or missing teeth.

  “Boy, ain’t that the truth?” Slash said, leaning forward against his saddle horn.

  “You can say that again,” Pecos chimed in, chuckling and shaking his head. “There sure ain’t no calmin’ a contrary woman, an’ there’s plenty o’ them to go around!”

  All three men had a good laugh over that, and then Slash said, “We’d take you up on the offer, Mr. Olmstead, but you see we ain’t here to stable our hosses. At least not yet. We might be pullin’ our picket pins in just a few minutes, if need be.”

  Olmstead frowned in disappointment, looking a little peeved that he’d been wasting time chinning with prospective customers when they weren’t prospective at all. “What you takin’ me away from my work for, then, if you don’t wanna stable your hosses? Like I said, I run this here livery barn, fer cryin’ on Calvary Hill! I don’t serve drinks an’ I ain’t a whorehouse!”

  “Easy, old-timer,” said Pecos, holding up a placating hand. “We was just wonderin’ if the Snake River Marauders rode through town in the past day or two, that’s all.”

  “We figure if anyone had seen ’em, you would, bein’ right here on the main drag, an’ all,” Slash added. “They mighta even stabled their hosses here . . . let you rub ’em down real gentle-like. . . .” He added that last with a smile meant to be endearing.

  The oldster was having none of it.

  His face clouded up like a stormy sky, turning white above his beard. He crouched to lift the gelding’s hoof and pin it between his knees. “Go ’way, now—I got work to do. Don’t got no time for palaverin’ about other folks’ business!”

  He resumed filing the hoof, the shavings joining the others strewn like tiny curled worms in the hay-strewn dirt of the open barn doors.

  Slash looked at Pecos, who returned the glance, arching a curious brow.

  The cutthroats reined their horses away from the barn and booted them on up the street, Pecos saying off Slash’s right stirrup, “Am I imaginin’ things, or did that gent get a little off his feed as soon as I mentioned the Marauders?”

  “Looked like he’d just taken a bite out of a wormy apple.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Here we go,” Slash said, his expression brightening.

  “What?”

  “If anyone’ll know about the Marauders passin’ through town, it’ll be these pretty young ladies of the line.”

  Slash angled his Appy over to the left side of the street, which was ankle-deep mud from the frequent afternoon downpours, toward where two young women, doubtless of the working variety, dolled up and as scantily clad as they were, milled on the timber-railed balcony of a two-story log cabin that boasted two red oil lamps mounted to either side of its halved-log, Z-frame front door, directly below the low-hanging balcony.

  “Slash, now, we got work to do, you randy ol’ mossy-horn!” Pecos cajoled his partner.

  “An’ workin’ is just what I’m doin’, partner!”

  One of the girls was a willowy redhead with curly hair and the other was a fleshy-bodied, flaxen blonde. The redhead was smoking a quirley and the blonde was caressing the liver-colored cat lounging on the balcony rail between the two girls, slowly curling and uncurling its tail and blinking luxuriously, enjoying both the attention and the warm beams of the high-noon sun bathing the high-mountain mining camp.

  As Slash and Pecos approached the parlor house, the redhead yelled to a dapper gent in a natty suit and bowler hat just then passing on the boardwalk beneath the balcony, a leather valise tucked under one arm, heading away from Slash and Pecos. “Hey, Wally!” the redhead called. “How come you ain’t been over to see me in a month of Sundays?”

  The dapper gent stopped and turned around, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he gazed up at the two doxies. He flushed a little, and said, “Why, Miss Grace—you know I done got married to June Carpenter last month!”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Grace said in a somber tone. “I reckon I done heard about that an’ just plain forgot. The banker’s daughter, huh? You have my condolences.”

  The dapper gent smiled weakly.

  The flaxen blonde leaned over the balcony rail, snorting with ribald laughter.

  Grace said, “In that case, you’ll be needing me more than ever in about two months, so you just remember where I am, Wally!”

  Wally’s blush deepened, and his smile grew strained. He pinched his hat brim to the two nymphs du pavé, then wheeled and continued on his way, quickening his step and holding his head down in shame while a nearby shopkeeper watched, grinning from his open front door.

  “The first one after ya come back’ll be on the house, Wally!” the redhead called, then shared a raucous laugh with the blonde before sticking her quirley between her lips and taking a deep drag.

  Stopping his horse beneath the balcony, Slash doffed his black hat and cast a broad smile up at the two girls leaning forward over the balcony rail. “Happy midday to you, ladies!”

  Both looked down at the two newcomers. The blonde kicked a bare foot out behind her while the redhead said, “Hey, look at these two, Shyla. Why, ain’t they handsome!”

  “Pshaw!” Pecos said, blushing. He might have been a hard-bitten outlaw, but there wasn’t a woman alive who couldn’t make him blush like a ten-year-old with his first crush.

  “Come on up,” said the blonde, Shyla. “Me an’ Grace’ll curl your toes for yas!”

  She turned toward the two strangers, grinning broadly and planting a fist on her full, matronly hip.

  “Now, ladies,” Slash said. “I am shocked! Truly, I am. How do you know that, not unlike your pal Wally, we ain’t married?”

  “You two ain’t under a yoke,” said Shyla. “I can tell. When you’re in our line of work, you can tell right off the difference between a man who’s married and one who ain’t.”

  “Oh?” said Pecos. “Pray tell!”

  “It’s easy. Married men have bowed shoulders. You know, like they’re under yoke. You fine-lookin’ gentlemen are sittin’ them nice ponies straight in the saddle.”

  “No, sir,” Grace said, shaking her head slowly and beaming down becomingly at the two cutthroats smiling back up at them. “You two don’t have no harpies or wailin’ babes back home in the cabin. You’re both free as the moon!” She stepped, beckoning. “Come on up. Me an’ Shyla play ya a little slap ’n’ tickle, though we promise there’ll be a whole lot more ticklin’ than slappin’!”

  She and Shyla snickered.

  The cat sat up and stretched.

  “Now, ladies,” Slash said, again feigning shock. “Can’t you see me an’ my partner here are old enough to be your . . . your, er . . . well, your slightly older brothers?”

  He glanced at Pecos, snickering.

  The doxie laughed, then Shyla sobered up and nodded, saying with mock seriousness, “We can indeed see that you’re both mature, upstandin’ adults. Me an’ Grace, though—we been baaad.”

  “Very bad!” said Grace.

  “Say it ain’t so!” returned Slash.

  “You know what I think?” said Shyla. “I think our two older brothers better come up here an’ take us over their knees!”

  “It’s no worse than what we deserve!” Grace added, turning to Shyla soberly.

  The two girls nodded in solemn agreement, then broke down in laughter.

  Pecos slapped his thigh and threw his head back, roaring.

  Slash laughed and shook his head.

  The two doxies leaned far out over the rail, tittering, giving their prospective customers a br
azen display of their low-cut, well-filled, lace-edged bodices.

  “What do you say, fellas?” Grace urged.

  “Now, now, ladies,” Slash said, still chuckling, “while you are both provoking my partner and I to indulge in unclean thoughts, we’re gonna have to save that slap ’n’ tickle for another time.”

  “Yeah, another time,” said Pecos. “Today, we just got a question for you.”

  “A question?” Shyla asked, frowning curiously. “A question about what? Grace an’ myself don’t know much about nothin’ . . . other than . . . well, other than the most important stuff in the whole wide world!”

  The doxies looked at each other and laughed again, raucously.

  Slash shared a dubious glance with Pecos. The dark-haired cutthroat was beginning to wonder if these two doves hadn’t been sucking on opium pipes.

  Slash waited for the doves to pipe down again before he said, “We was wonderin’ if you two seen or heard about . . . or maybe entertained . . . any of the Snake River Marauders who might’ve passed through town in the past day or two.”

  If only a few seconds ago the two girls had looked as though they’d been indulging in the midnight oil, it now appeared they’d been doused with buckets of cold water.

  Grace’s gaze grew hard, downright unfriendly. “You . . . friends . . . of . . . theirs . . . ?”

  “Friends?” Slash glanced at Pecos and shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Lawmen?” Shyla asked, arching her brows hopefully.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Pecos.

  “Let’s just say, we’re hunting the gang,” Slash said. “They passed through here, then, I take it?”

  Slash hadn’t realized until now that a third girl had been on the balcony. This one had been sitting in a chair behind Grace and Shyla. At first mention of the Marauders, she’d risen slowly from her chair and strode just as slowly over to the railing to stand beside Grace and scowl down at Slash and Pecos. She was a mulatto with short hair and striking green eyes.