“What do you mean?”
“Here I am in your bed . . . and we can’t even . . . do anything.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” John Henry told her. “We can do this.”
He leaned closer to her and pressed his lips to her forehead. She closed her eyes and sighed, and he sat there and held her hand until she fell into a deep, natural sleep this time.
* * *
Marshal Henry Hinkle was at the desk in his office the next morning, sitting there sipping a cup of coffee from the pot on the stove, when the door opened and a middle-aged man with a brown brush of a mustache strode in like the place belonged to him.
Dislike made Hinkle frown as he set his cup down and stood up.
“Sheriff Stone,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“This whole county’s my bailiwick, ain’t it?” Sheriff Elmer Stone asked. “Part of my job to come check on the outlyin’ settlements from time to time.”
Hinkle didn’t think it was a coincidence that his fellow lawman had shown up in Purgatory just now, when rumors were flying fast and furiously about the big gold shipment being put together by the three mine owners. Stone was a politician; if something important was going on, he wanted to be on hand for it. That might mean a few extra votes for him when it came time to run for re-election.
There had been a time when Hinkle planned to oppose Stone in that campaign. Lately, though, he’d been leaning toward the opinion that it wasn’t worth it. He had his sights set on something bigger than being sheriff of some backwater county in New Mexico Territory.
“Well, if there’s anything I can do to help you, just let me know,” Hinkle said, but the surly tone of his voice made it clear the offer wasn’t exactly sincere. As far as he was concerned, the sooner Sheriff Stone went back to the county seat, the better.
“I could do with a cup of that coffee I smell,” Stone said.
Hinkle nodded toward the stove.
“Help yourself. It was made fresh this morning.”
“Much obliged.” Stone went to the stove, took a cup from the shelf next to it, and used the thick leather pot holder to grip the handle as he poured. He took a sip of the steaming black brew and nodded. “Just the way I like it. Strong enough to get up and walk around on its own hind legs.”
Hinkle wanted to tell the man not to use that folksy humor on him. It wouldn’t work the same way it would on the stupid voters. But he didn’t say anything as he sat down again.
“I hear tell you’ve been havin’ some trouble down here,” Stone went on.
Hinkle shook his head and said, “Not so’s you’d notice.”
“Really? From what I hear, you’ve got outlaws runnin’ roughshod over the populace and gunfights in the streets.”
“It’s not that unusual to have a ruckus break out from time to time,” Hinkle said defensively. “I’ll bet you have them in the county seat, too.”
“Well, now and then. Any time a gunfighter rides in, though, me and my deputies make sure he rides on pretty quick-like.”
“You think we’ve got a gunfighter here in Purgatory?”
“Man called Sixkiller. You know him?”
“We’ve met,” Hinkle admitted.
“And he’s killed a couple men since he’s been here, hasn’t he?”
Obviously, the sheriff had someone in the settlement who fed him information about what was happening here. Hinkle wasn’t really surprised. A good politician had to have a whole network of spies if he was going to hang on to power.
“I investigated that shooting,” Hinkle snapped. “It was a clear case of self-defense. Sixkiller was ambushed, and he defended himself. That’s all there was to it.”
“Yeah, but can you really consider it self-defense when one of the fellas involved is a gunslinger? Seems to me he should’ve been jailed, or at least told to move on.”
“I won’t roust somebody and throw them out of town when they haven’t broken the law,” Hinkle said.
“Especially when it’s somebody who might not take kindly to the effort and fight back, eh?”
Hinkle felt his face warming with anger. He knew Stone was referring to his reputation for cowardice.
Maybe it was true that he went out of his way to avoid trouble sometimes, but there was a good reason for that. He couldn’t do anybody any good if he was dead, now could he? So staying alive meant he was a better lawman. That was the way he’d always seen it, anyway.
Still, he couldn’t completely contain his anger. He said, “I don’t appreciate what you’re insinuating, Sheriff.”
Stone grunted.
“I’m not insinuatin’ anything, Marshal. I’m outright sayin’—”
What Stone was saying went unspoken, because at that moment the office door opened again. Royal Bouchard hurried in, an upset expression on his handsome face. He stopped short at the sight of Sheriff Stone, then gave an abrupt nod and said, “Good. Both lawmen here at the same time.”
Hinkle put his hands on the desk and shoved himself to his feet.
“What’s this all about, Bouchard?” he demanded. “It better be important for you to interrupt a meeting between me and the sheriff.”
“How about murder?” Bouchard said. “Is that important enough for you, Marshal?”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Murder?” Hinkle repeated. That wasn’t something he wanted to hear. “What are you talking about?”
Bouchard lifted a hand and rubbed it over his face. He heaved a sigh.
“One of my girls,” he said. “Della Turner. She disappeared last night. I went looking for her this morning and found her in the alley between Pratt’s Hardware and the apothecary shop. She . . . she’d been shot in the back.”
“Good Lord,” Hinkle said. “She was dead?”
“Dead as could be,” Bouchard replied with a nod. He had a haggard look about him now, as if the strain of the grim discovery was catching up to him.
Stone said, “You’re Bouchard, aren’t you? Own the Silver Spur?”
“That’s right, Sheriff,” the saloon keeper replied with a curt nod.
“And this dead girl worked for you?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Bouchard asked with barely controlled impatience.
“So she was a—”
“She was a human being, Sheriff,” Bouchard said. His voice had a hard edge to it.
“Well, sure,” Stone said. “But you know how it is with these gals. They go into an alley with some lowlife cowboy or miner, pert’ near anything can happen to ’em. Maybe she tried to rob whoever it was that shot her.” The sheriff shrugged. “No way in hell to find out who done it or what really happened.”
“That’s my decision to make, Sheriff, since it happened here in town,” Hinkle said. “I give you my word, Mr. Bouchard, that I’ll make a thorough investigation of the matter.”
Bouchard grimaced.
“The same way you make a thorough investigation of every other crime that takes place in this town, Marshal? You’ll excuse me if I don’t hold my breath waiting for you to catch the murderer.”
Hinkle flushed angrily again.
“If that’s the way you feel,” he said, “then why did you come to me in the first place?”
Bouchard shrugged and said, “I thought I ought to report what happened, even though I didn’t really expect it to do any good.”
“Well, you’ve reported it,” Hinkle snapped. “I’ll handle things from here. Where’s the body now?”
“Down at the undertaker’s. Don’t worry, Marshal, I’ll be paying for the burial. The town won’t be out any money on a dead whore.”
“That’s not what I was worried about. I’m . . . sorry, Bouchard. Sorry for your loss.”
Bouchard sighed and nodded slowly.
“Thanks for that, anyway,” he said. “If there’s any way I can help you find out who killed her . . .”
“I’ll let you know,” Hinkle said.
Bouchard nodded again and
went out of the office.
When the saloon keeper was gone, Stone asked, “You’re not really gonna try to find out who killed that saloon girl, are you, Hinkle?”
“Like you said, it’d be next thing to impossible,” the marshal admitted. “Bouchard was upset, though. It didn’t hurt anything to tell him that I’d try.”
“No, I reckon not.”
For a politician, Stone had been pretty callous about the girl’s death just then, Hinkle thought. He supposed that Stone didn’t consider the feelings of a saloon owner important enough to worry about. Besides, whores couldn’t vote to start with, since they were female, and drunkards usually didn’t bother. Stone probably liked to confine his glad-handing and politicking to the more respectable elements of the citizenry.
Hinkle was convinced that he could beat the sheriff if he were to run against Stone in the next election. Right now, he would keep that plan in reserve, in case the other things he had in the works didn’t pan out. But if they did . . .
Well, why would a man as rich as he was going to be even want to be sheriff, anyway?
* * *
When the quiet tap sounded on the door, John Henry stood up from the chair beside the bed and drew his gun. He waited. Two more discreet taps against the panel came, then a pause, then a final one.
John Henry didn’t holster his gun, but he relaxed slightly. It was unlikely that anyone would duplicate by accident the signal he had worked out with Royal Bouchard a short time earlier, when he had filled in Bouchard on what had happened and explained the plan to him. When he opened the door and saw Bouchard standing there, the saloon keeper nodded.
“It’s done,” he said. “Not only did I report Della’s death to Marshal Hinkle, but Sheriff Stone happened to be there to hear about it, too.”
“Della’s death,” said the woman sitting up in the bed with pillows propped behind her back. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
John Henry closed the door and grinned at her.
“Neither do I,” he said, “but this way is better than if it was the real thing.”
Della returned the smile and said, “You won’t get any argument from me about that.”
Bouchard took out a cigar and offered it to John Henry, who shook his head. Putting the cheroot in his mouth instead, Bouchard said around it, “I’ve made arrangements with Cy Shuster, the undertaker. He’s going to weight down an empty coffin and bury it later this morning. There won’t be much fuss about it. Meade and some of the girls and I will be the only ones there, I’ll wager. But folks will see us headed for Boot Hill, and they’ll know what’s going on. It won’t take long for the news to reach Gilmore, if it hasn’t already.”
“This fella Shuster, can we trust him?” John Henry asked.
Bouchard grunted.
“Cy would say that up was down and the moon was green if you paid him enough. Not only that, but I happen to be aware of a few . . . indiscretions, shall we say? . . . on his part that he wouldn’t want getting back to his wife, so I think he’ll go the extra mile to make sure he doesn’t do anything to annoy me.”
“So in other words, you’re paying him off and blackmailing him at the same time,” John Henry said.
Bouchard rolled the cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other.
“I’ve always liked to cover all my bets,” he said. He smiled at Della. “You look like you’re feeling better this morning.”
“Thanks to John Henry, I am,” she agreed. There was quite a bit of color in her cheeks again, and she was wearing a silk robe that Bouchard had brought her. “I think he did as good a job of tending to this wound as any doctor could have. Probably a lot better than what some of those old quacks I’ve seen would have done.”
“I’ve patched up a few bullet wounds in my time,” John Henry said.
“He went down to the dining room and got me something to eat earlier, too,” Della went on. “They must have thought you were starving when you got that much food on a tray and brought it back upstairs with you.”
“I’m just a growing boy,” John Henry said dryly. “Got a big healthy appetite.”
“For some things, anyway,” Della said.
“That’s enough talk like that,” Bouchard said. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do now.”
“You and your people are going to that so-called burial,” John Henry said, “and then your part in all this is done.”
Bouchard frowned.
“I want to help out all I can,” he insisted. “I have a score to settle with those buzzards who hurt Della.” He cleared his throat. “No one mistreats one of my girls and gets away with it.”
“You’ve done enough already, or at least you will have once the burying is done,” John Henry said. “We’ve already run a risk by having you come up here a couple of times. That might be enough to make Gilmore suspicious. We want him and all of his men to believe that Della isn’t a threat to their plans anymore.”
“All right,” Bouchard said with obvious reluctance. “But if there’s anything else you need, don’t hesitate to call on me, any time of the day or night.”
“I won’t,” John Henry promised.
Bouchard went over to the bed and reached down to pat Della’s shoulder.
“You get some rest now,” he told her gruffly. “That’s the best way for you to start getting well.”
“Don’t worry, Royal,” she said. “I’ll be back earning money for you in no time.”
“Hmmph,” he said. “I wasn’t worried about that.” He reached inside his coat. “Here, there’s one more thing I can do.” He brought out a two-shot, over-and-under derringer and pressed it into her hand. “Take this, just in case there’s any trouble and you need to defend yourself. It’s saved my bacon a few times.”
Della looked at John Henry and asked, “Do you think I should?”
“It wouldn’t hurt,” he told her. “You’re safe as long as nobody but us knows you’re here, but it never hurts to be ready for trouble.”
Della nodded. She slipped the derringer underneath one of the pillows at her side.
“You know how to use that, don’t you?” John Henry asked.
“Of course I do.”
“Ever shot anybody before?”
She fixed him with a level gaze and said, “Don’t ask questions you don’t really want the answers to.”
John Henry returned the look for a second and then nodded.
“Fine, we’ll leave it at that. Thanks again, Royal.”
“Any time,” Bouchard said. He smiled at Della again and left the room.
“That fella likes you,” John Henry told her when Bouchard was gone.
“I know. We’ve always gotten along well.”
“No, I mean he really likes you.”
She made a face and shook her head.
“He may think he does, but he doesn’t, not really. No man really feels like that about a girl like me.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“He knows about the life I’ve led,” she insisted. “How could he ever forget that?”
“Maybe that’s the only kind of man who could.”
That made her frown in thought. After a moment, she mused, “He does know all about me....” Then her expression hardened. “I don’t want to think about this now. I just want to stay alive and settle the score with Morton and McCallum. With what they did, on top of the way Rudd and Logan treated me before, I’ve got a real grudge against that whole gang.”
“I don’t blame you,” John Henry said.
* * *
Late that morning, he watched from the window of the hotel room as Cy Shuster’s hearse, pulled by a team of six black horses, rolled past on Main Street, heading for the cemetery at the edge of town. Royal Bouchard, the bartender called Meade, several of the women from the Silver Spur who were dressed less provocatively than usual for the occasion, and a handful of men John Henry didn’t know followed along on foot.
“Well, ho
w about it?” Della asked from the bed. “Am I getting quite a send-off?”
“There’s a decent group of mourners,” John Henry told her. “Looks like some of your customers have turned out, too.”
“Oh, I’d like to see that! I’d like to know which of them decided to risk their reputation by going to a whore’s funeral. But I guess I’d better not come to the window and look out, had I?”
“That would sort of defeat the purpose of all this trouble we’re going to,” John Henry drawled. He let the curtain fall closed and turned away from the window.
“What now?” Della asked.
“Now we wait,” he said.
That’s what they did for the rest of the day. John Henry went downstairs and up the street to the Red Top for lunch. He didn’t like leaving Della alone in the room, but he had to act like everything was normal and she insisted that she wasn’t hungry after the big breakfast he had brought her. She had the derringer, but her greatest safety lay in the fact that no one knew she was there except him and Bouchard.
He was on his way back to the hotel when Mayor Cravens came up to him.
“Mr. Sixkiller,” the banker said, “do we still have an agreement? You’ll be helping to protect the gold while it’s in my bank?”
“That’s the deal,” John Henry said.
Cravens leaned closer to him and said in a conspiratorial tone, “Then be ready tomorrow. The first load of bullion will be here by mid-morning. I’ll expect you at the bank then.”
“So soon, eh?” John Henry said, as if he hadn’t already been told the schedule by Jason True. He nodded and went on, “All right, Mayor. I’ll be there.”
“Excellent! Thank you, Mr. Sixkiller.”
As John Henry walked the rest of the way to the hotel, he thought about what Della had learned by eavesdropping on Morton and McCallum the night before. Gilmore and his gang planned to strike just as the final load arrived. That was pretty smart. The guards wouldn’t have had time to settle into their positions around the bank, and a third of the bullion would already be loaded and ready to go. If a surprise attack wiped out the guards, Gilmore and his men could go into the bank while the rest of the citizens were lying low, trying to stay out of the line of fire, and force either Cravens or Harley Smoot to open the safe. Then they could load the gold onto some more wagons and drive away with the entire shipment.
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