Dakota Kill and the Romantics

by Peter Brandvold

Talbot laughed at the girl’s innocent delight. “Well, I’d like to tell you I was trying to rescue a damsel from a horde of Arab slave traders, but it was really a lot less interesting than that.”

  Suzanne smiled delightfully. “Let me be the judge.”

  Talbot told her the story of the fat businessman and the Chinese boy and the two ruffians who’d tried to clean his clock. Suzanne listened, wide-eyed. When he finished she said sincerely, “What a valiant man! Did you hear that, Harrison?”

  “Yes, valiant. Hold still, Mr. Talbot; I’m just about done here.”

  “You’re an adventurer, then, Mr. Talbot,” Suzanne said admiringly.

  “I reckon I had an adventure or two,” Talbot allowed. “But I’m going home now, to Dakota, and I plan to stay there. I’ve had my fill of knockin’ about. Once a shitkicker, always a shitkicker, I reckon. Pardon my French.”

  “Dakota! Well, that’s where we’re headed. Where abouts, Mr. Talbot?”

  “A little town called Canaan, on the Canaan Bench. My older brother has a ranch thereabouts.”

  Dr. Long was taping a bandage to Talbot’s back. “I appreciate this, Doctor,” Talbot said. “I was getting tired of that wet apron wrapped around my chest.”

  “I think you’ll find this considerably more agreeable,” Harrison said. “You can slip into your clothes again, if you’d like.”

  Suzanne frowned thoughtfully. “My father’s place is on the Canaan Bench, and Canaan is…” Suddenly her eyes widened. “My gosh, that’s only a two-hour ride from where we live!”

  “Is that right?” Talbot said, sitting up and reaching for his clothes.

  “Yes.” Her smile widened, and her eyes flashed. “We’re practically neighbors!”

  She got up, retrieved a china cup from the tray the porter had set on the trestle table in the middle of the car, handed it to Talbot, and filled it from a silver pot. Turning to the doctor, who stood rolling down the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, she said, “Would you like a cup, Harrison?”

  “No, I think I’ll go smoke and leave you two to your hometown chatter,” he said dryly.

  When he’d donned his broadcloth jacket and his heavy bear coat and hat and left, Suzanne turned from the door with a mischievous flair. “He’s jealous, you know?”

  Talbot frowned, opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

  “Oh, not of you, of me. He’s … he’s one of those— couldn’t you tell?”

  Talbot raised his eyebrows. “One of those?”

  “Yes. I do love Harrison dearly—he’s the best friend a girl could ever have—but he’s quite irrevocably … one of those.” In two light-footed strides she’d fallen onto the couch beside Talbot, smoothing her skirt beneath her, turning to the side and gracefully crossing her long, coltish legs. “When you had your shirt off, I thought he was going to start foaming at the mouth—elegantly, of course.”

  A curl slipped from behind her ear and fell gently along her cheek. Talbot stared at it, fighting the urge to smooth it back behind the delicate ear. Her smell was fresh and subtle, like the rain in Chihuahua. Her eyes softened, as if reading his mind.

  “To tell you the truth,” she said breathily, “I didn’t blame him one bit. You cut a handsome figure, Mr. Talbot.” Her lips stretched back, revealing all those perfect teeth, faintly gleaming.

  “Mark,” he said, coloring a little at her candor. He was surprised that a girl of her station could be so forward.

  “Mark,” she said, lowering her eyes, turning suddenly girlish and shy.

  Talbot’s heart tom-tommed in his chest, and he could feel the sweat pop out on his forehead. The girl was like a drug, a tonic washing over him. His head fairly swam, and he wondered for a moment if he weren’t dreaming.

  Of its own accord, Talbot’s hand rose from his knee. Slowly it traversed the space between him and Suzanne and rested on her chin, cupping it gently in his first two fingers. Lifting it, he leaned toward her. Her head tilted back, offering her slightly parted lips.

  Suddenly the car jerked and slowed, and they fell back against the couch. Suzanne sat up and turned to look out the windows. “Oh, my goodness—we’re finally stopping!” she said with cheer.

  “Great,” Talbot said wryly, dazed from the attempted kiss.

  The girl seemed to have forgotten all about it. She knelt on the sofa, cleared the steam from the window with her hand, and watched the first few cabins and shanties slide by as the wheels clattered on the iron seams. The car slowed, shuddering as the brakes worked against the locomotive’s giant wheels.

  Suzanne read the sign attached to the station house. “Wibaux.”

  “Wibaux?” Talbot said with surprise, turning to see for himself. “That’s where I switch to the branch line.”

  “Oh, Mark, no—I stay on until Big Draw!” Suzanne exclaimed, swinging her eyes to him. “We were just starting to get acquainted!”

  I’ll say we were, Talbot thought. Reaching for his war bag and awkwardly gaining his feet, he laughed mirthlessly and wagged his head. “You sure made the time fly, Miss Magnusson.”

  “Oh, fudge, Mark,” she lamented, pursing her lips in a pout. “Promise me you’ll look me up … once we’re both home and settled? I want to hear all about your adventures. They sound so … so … romantic.” Her voice had become a resonant purr.

  “It’s far from that, but I’ll tell you about it,” he promised. As he moved out the door, Suzanne was on his heels. The train had nearly stopped, its couplings clamoring like thunder, steam fogging the windows.

  “Promise?… Oh, no you won’t! Before you even think of me again, the local girls will be pounding on your door.”

  Talbot laughed. He jumped down from the car and turned to her, standing between the cars with both hands on the rail, her breath visible in the cold air. He knew that if anyone was going to have suitors knocking their door down, it would be she.

  “No local girl could hold a candle to you, Suzanne. I’ll look you up. You can be sure of that.”

  He tipped his head and returned her smile, laughing heartily. “Thanks for everything. Say good-bye to Harrison for me.”

  “I will. Travel safe … until we meet again.”

  Talbot turned to walk down the platform. He turned back to her, still watching him like a lovelorn heroine from a British romance. “If I’m going to look you up, I’ll need the handle for your father’s ranch.”

  “Oh … it’s the Double X,” she said.

  “The Double X,” Talbot echoed. He hadn’t heard of it, but he supposed a lot of new outfits had moved in since he’d left. “I’ll find it.”

  He waved, hefted his war bag over his shoulder, and strode toward the station house to await the branch line that would carry him on the last leg of his journey home.

  CHAPTER 6

  TEX MADSEN WAS a tall, rail-thin cowpoke with dull, deep-sunk eyes and a walrus mustache. He was only twenty-nine years old, but climbing the stairs of the Powder Horn Hotel in Canaan, he wheezed like a geezer. He cursed as his weak lungs constricted, stopping on the landing to catch his breath.

  He leaned against the wall as a loud coughing fit gripped him. The paroxysm raked his insides like sandpaper. When it subsided, Tex lifted his head, wiped his nose and mouth, and peered grimly at the blood-laced fluids soiling his handkerchief.

  “I knew I shoulda stayed in Texas,” he mumbled, continuing down the narrow hall between closed doors. “Cold like this ain’t natural. It’s … it’s taken my youth.”

  Tex had been stricken with the virus nearly a month ago, and being sent out into the subzero weather to round up some gunslick wasn’t going to help him get over it. Hell’s bells, he’d probably end up like old Yancy Kellogg, the old Double X hostler who’d died of pneumonia last winter and whose body was ravaged by mice and owls as it awaited a spring burial in the barn loft.

  Cursing the ranch foreman who’d sent him out in this chilblain weather, Tex stopped at room 15 and knocked, stifling another cough.
/>   “Who is it?” came a Spanish-accented voice.

  Sniffing, Tex leaned toward the door. “Tex Madsen. I’m supposed to show you out to the Double X. If you’re Mr. del Toro, that is.”

  “Sí,” Del Toro grumbled. “Give me a minute.”

  You can have the whole goddamn morning for all I care, Tex said to himself. It wasn’t exactly steamy in the hotel, but he was in no hurry to go back outside where he could hear the brittle wind howling. His cheeks and toes were still numb. His head and back were chill with fever.

  Tex was waiting with his back against the wall when the door opened and a blond girl stepped out. Her face was puffy with sleep, her hair and dress disheveled. Tex didn’t know her name, but he’d seen her working in the saloon downstairs. Not bad-looking for a soiled dove in these parts. She softly latched the door behind her, paying no attention to Tex, and drifted down the hall, her short red dress swishing against her legs.

  Tex gave a fragile grin and turned back to the door as it opened again. Another blond poked her head out and looked around. A beret hung loose in her hair. Bigger than the first girl and rawboned, she scrutinized Tex dully, gave a little smile, stepped out, and shut the door behind her. Smoothing her dress, she whined at a tear and headed for the stairs.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Tex muttered wonderingly.

  He waited another five minutes, noting the feeling returning to his toes. He couldn’t believe it when the door opened again and another girl slipped out, carrying two empty whiskey bottles and three water glasses. She was not wearing a dress, but had wrapped a sheet around herself. A brunette with a pretty, round face, she looked haunted and struggled awkwardly with her load while holding the sheet closed at her bosom. When she saw Tex she gave a start, her grip on the sheet loosening, giving Tex a momentary shot of her chafed, red-mottled breasts.

  Tongue-tied, Tex tried a smile and fingered the rim of his big Stetson.

  Stiffly the girl marched up to Tex. Fire sparked in her eyes. “That man is an animal,” she hissed, then scurried down the hall, tripping on the sheet. Tex heard the crash of a bottle; it clattered as it rolled down the stairs.

  The door opened once again. Tex turned to it, expecting to see another rumpled girl, but this time a tall, straight-backed, lean-faced Mexican man stood before him. The man’s gray coat appeared to be wolf hide, and the nickel-plated pistols he wore strapped to a wide cartridge belt were Colts with mother-of-pearl grips—butts forward, holsters bent back and tied to the man’s thighs.

  The pistols were probably the finest Tex had ever seen, but it was the man’s lake-blue eyes in the long, narrow face, its hollows filled with shadows, that held the Texan’s attention. The eyes looked both humorous and menacing, flashing like blue glass in a muddy stream. Tex felt the skin behind his ears prick as the man sized him up, chewing on a thin black cheroot.

  “Don’t let her fool you—she loved every minute of it,” the man said, grinning with his eyes.

  The comment caught Tex off guard. “Pardon me?”

  “The girl calls me an animal, but she never once asked me to stop.” The man’s lips parted around the unlit cigar, showing little square teeth, slightly discolored.

  Tex turned to look down the hall, as though the girl were still there. “Oh … oh, sure,” he said.

  “Have you ever spent a night with three women, amigo?”

  Tex laughed. “Who? Me? Nah.”

  “You should try it. It is the closest thing to heaven a man will experience on earth. Light?”

  Tex dug inside his coat for a lucifer, scratched it on the door frame, and lit the man’s cigar, careful not to betray his anger. He didn’t like playing servant to some uppity greaser, no matter how many men the gunman had slain, no matter how many women he’d diddled in one night.

  When the cigar was lit, the gunman turned into the room, picked up his war bag and rifle, and tossed them to Tex. Then he picked up his saddle and started down the hall, leaving the door hanging wide behind him.

  Tex stood there, grappling with his sudden burden and silently cursing the man. He peered into the room, where the bed stood in complete disarray, the mattress hanging off, the sheets and quilts twisted and strewn. The dresser had been pulled out from the wall, and its mirror was shattered. A tattered dress lay on the floor.

  Tex shook his head slowly, not knowing what to make of the Mexican gunman.

  Three women in one night? Tex thought, starting down the stairs. A man like that could do some damage around here.

  * * *

  The gunman rode beside Tex on the snow-covered wagon road, on the black stallion Tex had led to town for him, and never uttered a word. Tex decided the man was either too uppity or ornery for idle banter, and that was just fine with Tex, who was too cold and feverish for conversation.

  “The boss and the others are waitin’ for ya inside,” he told the man when they’d passed through the front gate of the sprawling Double X headquarters. “I’ll take your horse into the barn.”

  The man did not reply, but sat staring at the three-story terra-cotta mansion with its cylindrical towers, arched windows, balconies, and ornate woodwork. From the look on his face, Tex figured the man hadn’t been expecting to see such an elaborate hacienda this far off the beaten path.

  His eyes played along the wide verandah to the carved oak door, in which the Double X brand had been burned, and up past the massive gable, with its deep-set window to the great stone chimney. Smoke lifted and was torn away on the wind.

  One sleigh and a saddle horse stood before the verandah, the shaggy horses turning their drooping heads and twitching their ears at Tex and the gunman, clouds of breath jetting from their nostrils. Finally the man dismounted and handed Tex his reins. Wordlessly he walked up the wide steps, and the big door opened as though of its own accord.

  Leading the stallion toward the barn and looking over his shoulder, Tex watched the gunman enter the house, the door closing behind him.

  “There she blows, boys,” Tex mumbled darkly, turning away. “There she, sure as shit, blows.”

  * * *

  King Magnusson was sitting in the stuffed leather chair behind his desk, hands laced behind his head. His foreman, Rag Donnelly, and his business partner, Bernard Troutman, president of the First Stockman’s Bank in Big Draw, had joined him in his den, and were sitting on the couch against the wall, to Magnusson’s right.

  The banker’s beaver hat sat between him and Donnelly on the overstuffed cushions. They were drinking coffee and cognac and chatting easily, waiting for their meeting to start.

  Magnusson was a tall, lean man in his late fifties, with hard, weathered features and thick, wavy blond hair combed back from a slight widow’s peak. His eyes were blue; his friends said they had an amiable cast. His enemies called them the eyes of a liar, calculated to take your mind off the knife he was about to stick in your back.

  Minnie McDougal, the housekeeper, was bending before the visitors, offering coffee and cognac from a silver tray. A hot fire sparked in the enormous stone hearth to Magnusson’s left, filling the room with the smell of pine.

  Magnusson lifted a coffee cup and saucer from the tray Minnie offered him now, declining more cognac—he wanted to stay clear this afternoon—and turned his eyes to his visitors. Minnie left the tray and returned to her chores.

  “So when’s this man supposed to get here, King?” Troutman asked. His red hair was matted and his pale, freckled cheeks were still mottled from the cold.

  “At one o’clock, but who knows how badly drifted the road from Canaan is. It blew all night, and it’s still blowin’.”

  “Why in hell did he take the train to Canaan? That’s way the hell north—a two-hour ride in good weather.”

  Magnusson shrugged. “It’s enemy territory,” he said. “Said he wanted to check it out while he was still anonymous. Sounds like a good idea, if you ask me. Tells me the man knows what he’s about.”

  The nervous Troutman didn’t seem to be listening to
Magnusson’s explanation, but forming his next question. “How much did we agree he was worth?”

  Magnusson suppressed a scowl. “We’ve been all over this, Bernie. Six thousand now—today—and another six when the job’s done.”

  “How do we know when the job’s done?”

  “We’ll know.”

  “And how do we know if he’s caught he won’t sing?”

  The foreman, Donnelly, turned his cool wrangler’s eyes to the banker. “Calm down now, Mr. Troutman—before you start giving me the jitters.” He turned the smile to Magnusson, who dropped his eyes and plucked a long nine from the cigar box on his desk.

  Biting the end off his cigar, Magnusson said, “He comes highly recommended. I can’t say by whom, but…” He let his voice trail off and sat quietly smoking and listening to the clock.

  A thought occurred to him and he turned to Donnelly. “How many beeves did you say Jack Thom was trying to get away with the other day?”

  Donnelly shook his head. “I didn’t see it. Randall and Shelby Green said they saw him hazing five off toward the Rinski place.”

  Magnusson’s eyes grew dark, and he shook his head. “That arrogant son of a bitch.”

  “Shelby also said he saw several of our brands in Grover Nixon’s pens—right there at his headquarters!”

  Magnusson puffed and stared off into space.

  Troutman piped up thoughtfully. “Well, the army came in and sided with them, so now they think they can do whatever they goddamn well please.”

  “Not for long,” Magnusson said, darkly wistful. “Not for too goddamn much—”

  He was stopped short by a tap on the study door.

  “Come,” Magnusson called.

  The door opened. Minnie McDougal reappeared, nervously feigning a pleasant smile. Something had disturbed her. “There’s a gentleman here to see you, sir.”

  “Send him in, Minnie.”

  She threw the door wide to let Del Toro step past her. The smile vanishing, she left, closing the door behind her.

  “Mr. Del Toro!” Magnusson said buoyantly, standing and moving around his desk. “I’m so happy to see you made it. How was your train ride?”