Coyote

by Rhonda Roberts

  Hector studied Rosita’s still exposed rear end. He looked distinctly interested.

  The governor gave a deep chuckle. ‘Yep, you wouldn’t know it to look at her, but that woman can shoot as good as any man.’ He winked at Hector. ‘I took her out hunting with me last spring. You know … to keep me nice and cosy. And blab-damn it, but she took the eye out of a polecat at twenty paces … hahaha.’

  Hector surveyed the dancer with even greater interest — as though polecat hunting turned him on.

  The governor noticed Hector noticing Rosita.

  The dancers finished up their last high kicks, the orchestra ground to a spluttering halt and the velvet curtains snapped closed again.

  Thank God!

  ‘So you’re interested in our lovely Rosita, my boy? I’ll set it up,’ promised the governor. He caught the sleazy owner’s eye, pointed to Hector and then mouthed, ‘Rosita.’

  The owner nodded and escorted Hector away.

  I moved over into the empty chair next to the governor so I could get a better view of Hector and his shoulder bag. He ascended a staircase at the far end of the room.

  I was panting to see what was in that shoulder bag — and I damned well wasn’t waiting around for Hector to come back down. I needed a tactic that’d get me onto that upper floor too.

  Loitering outside the room while Hector was playing hide the salami wasn’t going to cut it.

  37

  TOO MANY PRICKLES

  I was trying to wring a reasonable excuse out of my aching head — one that’d get me upstairs and next to Hector’s bag — when the orchestra struck up again. This time it was a slower, sophisticated tune, more sensual than the previous frantic can-can number.

  The curtains parted to reveal a brassy blonde woman in a simple yellow dress that clung to her lush round curves like the peel on a banana. She was lying across a black satin chaise longue. The cowboys, crowded in front of the stage, simultaneously let out plaintive howls not unlike the coyotes I’d listened to last night.

  The fiddler began another solo … this time he was obviously strangling a cat he had hidden in his violin case.

  I grimaced. Did I really need an excuse to go up those stairs after Hector?

  The brassy blonde woman ignored the howling cowboys, now pressed against the stage and reaching for the singer with grasping hands, to fix her eyes on our table. Her hawk-like look said she knew we were the real target audience and that she was ready to take aim and fire.

  The governor murmured, ‘Juno.’

  Juno rose like a slightly portly swan taking flight, to sashay down the runway. She gazed down at our table as she swayed past. At the very end of it she let out one seductive, ‘Hallo, boys.’

  They roared a variety of obscenely inventive responses … then she made a U-turn back to us.

  Juno sank down to the runway to lounge seductively next to our table, her surprisingly short but well-curved legs displayed to maximum advantage.

  I ignored her, half rising to make for the stairs.

  Unfortunately, before I could make good my escape, Juno honed in on me like a launched missile seeking its rendezvous. I was the youngest male at the table and sitting in the guest of honour’s seat — next to the governor.

  Juno had obviously been ordered to give Hector Kershaw a good time.

  The governor was displeased at her mistake, but the music was too loud for him to be heard.

  She ignored him to lean down and stroke my face. She whispered, ‘This one is for you, honey.’ Then she burst into song.

  Or tried to burst into song anyway. Obviously her rounded figure made up for her flatter notes.

  She was half singing, half yelling right into my ear.

  Juno belted out how weary she was of inadequate lovers, how men bored her, how no one could satisfy her tired … soul.

  The boys just loved it, each one of them sure, no doubt, he was the right one to relieve her … er … Weltschmerz.

  I tried to rise from my seat again so I could get up those bloody stairs, but Juno grabbed onto my neck for grim death. I managed to prise one hand off when — realising she was losing her prime target — Juno slid from the stage and right onto my lap. She landed with a heavy thump.

  All the men at the table gave me heartfelt looks of sympathy.

  Then it turned into a World Championship Wrestling match. Juno was determined to keep me seated … and I was equally determined to get up. She decided to delay my bid for freedom by undressing me, all the while singing about how she was done with men. She’d just managed to untie the bandana around my neck and had started on the top buttons of my shirt when I grabbed her hands and pinned them behind her. She leant in to lick my neck with a soft pink cat’s tongue.

  I didn’t know which was worse — the noise she was emitting or her groping me.

  The men thought it was a great joke.

  I tried to wrangle Juno off my lap and onto the governor’s, but she was remarkably resistant. She just latched onto the bandoliers crossed over my chest, for better leverage.

  She used a pause in the song to try to plant a big kiss on my squirming face. I held her off by wedging my elbow into her chest and pushing.

  The woman sure was determined to give me a good time!

  I was in the process of, once again, prising her arms from around my neck, when she was wrenched backwards by one shoulder and dumped on the floor …

  A pock-faced, ginger-haired gunfighter with sullen eyes, backed by his three similarly inclined goons, stood over me, legs akimbo.

  His eyes were as green as jealousy could make them.

  A pearl-handled pistol hung on his right hip, his hand over it ready to draw. His backup already had their own pistols out — all the better to shoot anyone foolhardy enough to intervene.

  ‘Johnny Starr,’ muttered the horrified governor next to me. ‘I thought they hanged you in Los Alamos this morning?’

  Juno staggered up and tried to entwine her arms around the gunman’s brawny shoulders. ‘Please, Johnny, don’t do this — not again … Please!’

  ‘You little bitch, you never learn!’ He pushed her away. ‘This is your own fault. I warned you to never touch the customers — or I’d kill them!’

  I grimaced. Of course he did.

  My modified guns were at least fifty feet away, carefully tucked up in that damned cloakroom. I scanned around. No one, not even the governor’s guards, were going to come to my aid any time soon.

  The governor was carefully inching away from me.

  I was on my own against four gunmen, three of whom already had their pistols drawn. My bulletproof vest wasn’t gonna save me this time.

  Juno threw herself on the gunfighter one more time, begging, pleading …

  I eyed the terrified governor. I needed an equaliser. His heavy bullwhip was still attached to his now quivering belt.

  Juno was hanging onto Johnny Starr’s arm for all she was worth … Good girl!

  I snatched the bullwhip from the governor’s belt and stood, the chair falling back behind me. I snaked the whip out ready for a strike.

  Starr’s backup had been watching Juno beg with smirking pleasure. Now the nearest one brought his pistol around to take aim.

  Behind me the governor and his men evacuated our table, each of their chairs hitting the floor with a resounding boom.

  Racing his bullet, I flicked the whip straight into the goon’s face and then dived to the left.

  The bullet twanged past my head. The whiplash snapped my attacker’s head back in agony. The blood pouring out of a zigzag cut running from forehead to nose to chin blinded him. He screamed, dropping his weapon to clutch his face.

  Like an ebbing tide, the crowd surged away from me to line the walls.

  The other two goons had their guns up and were taking aim to fire.

  I aikido-dived between them, rolling on the floor past and beyond them. I came up, my lash ready, and snapped it around the wrist of the shorter one, whipping his g
un hand straight down. His pistol exploded into life, and a bullet sheered through his own foot.

  He crumpled to the floor, yowling with pain.

  The third goon rounded on me just as Starr bashed a screaming Juno away with the butt of his pistol. She fell into the other man, then slumped to the floor, moaning.

  While the two men were distracted, I flicked my whip into the chandelier above us. It caught and held.

  I swung up and boots-first into Johnny Starr’s stomach. He grunted heavily and slammed backwards onto the governor’s table. His pistol fell to the floor.

  I swung back and crashed into the third goon, but he was ready for me and I just glanced off.

  The whip was caught on the chandelier, so I dropped into a karate stance. Desperate, I snapped a front kick into the goon’s gun hand … just as he fired.

  The bullet hit the ceiling and the gun hit the floor.

  I snapped another kick straight into his chest. My boot made a hollow crunching sound on his ribs … which broke. He flew backwards to land on top of the roulette wheel. He curled over, groaning.

  I spun round to see Starr, now under the table with one hand stretched out to grasp his pistol.

  I started running, but there was no way I could get under that table in time …

  I stood over it instead, and hacked down with the side of my outstretched right hand. As I swung, I bellowed an almighty kiai! A Japanese battle cry used to gather my internal energy, my ki, and direct it with maximum force.

  As the blade of my hand hit the table, fragments flew out and up. I crunched down through the heavy wood, breaking the table into splintered halves.

  The gun fighter’s shocked face appeared below me. He was on his back, cringing in terror.

  Before he could recover, I grabbed Johnny Starr’s ginger hair and hauled him up and away from his gun. I gave him one sharp uppercut to the jaw and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. His limp body tumbled backwards and down.

  I grabbed up the pistol and whirled in a crouch, ready to take on the next attacker.

  But there were none.

  The silent men lining the walls flinched at my sharp movement.

  They stood there stunned, their mouths hanging open.

  Their eyes went from me to the broken table and then back again.

  With the martial glint gone from my eyes, everyone surged away from the walls for a debrief.

  The governor stood next to me, staring up like an overawed fan. He was covered in sweat and puffing like a steam train. ‘I don’t know what you just did, son, but your reputation doesn’t do you justice.’

  38

  THE DIARY

  The governor’s men dragged Starr and his boys out. They watched me with big eyes as they went, not game to say a single word in case I decided to finish the job they’d started.

  Juno was being tended by one of the can-can dancers. The governor, concerned that his favourite may be permanently scarred, had wanted to send for Dr Pelletier, the same butcher I’d watched examine the dead and dying victims of an Apache attack. But Juno had put her foot down and insisted that they send for Brother Buenaventura instead. I’d seconded her choice. If she wasn’t hurt enough now, that unsanitary sawbones would guarantee she’d be in much worse condition before he left her side.

  The friar had arrived at a run, an old leather bag clutched in one sunburnt hand. He took Juno gently in hand, examining her wounds and soothing her worries. She heaved a sigh of relief and surrendered to his ministrations.

  Before the governor could stop me, I ran straight for the staircase, taking it three steps at a time. I reached the top to stare down a corridor of closed doors. I started wrenching them open. Screams, foul language and too much hairy nakedness greeted me, but there was no Hector in sight.

  I’d made it halfway down the corridor when the sleazy gambling hall owner arrived, panting. ‘Any chance you’ll come work for me, Mr Eriksen? It’s mayhem here every time the cowboys come in from roundup and I could sure use a man who would —’

  ‘Where’s Hector Kershaw?’ I spat out.

  ‘Er …’ The owner dithered, afraid to answer but equally afraid to displease me.

  ‘Why is this a difficult question?’ I barked. ‘Just tell me which room he’s in!’

  The sleazy owner shook his oily curls. ‘But he’s not here, Mr Eriksen.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ This couldn’t be true! I grabbed him by the collar. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Eriksen,’ spluttered the owner. ‘I saw him leave just before Johnny Starr started shooting up the place …’

  I dropped his collar but I was too riled up to believe him. I felt like I was about to burst into flame with frustration. How could Hector Kershaw — and that damned shoulder bag — slip through my fingers one more time?

  I eyed the sleazy owner with suspicion; he could be just trying to keep me from disturbing the governor’s pet boy-banker. ‘Where’s Rosita’s room?’ I demanded. My tone made it clear I wasn’t going to be put off.

  The owner, now pale as his shirt, just pointed one wavering finger at a closed door at the far end of the corridor.

  I ripped it open and came to an abrupt halt in the doorway.

  The room was a total wreck. There were overturned chairs. One lay smashed against the wall. The curtains had been wrenched completely off the window. The bedclothes were all in a tangled heap on the floor. The mattress had been half pulled off the bed frame and slashed repeatedly with something sharp enough to allow the stuffing to spill out.

  There was blood sprayed across the slashed mattress … It looked like a wild animal had ripped Rosita’s room apart.

  ‘What the hell happened here?’ I bellowed. I stalked into the room.

  The sleazoid owner followed me in. He stared around the trashed room in shock.

  A naked woman lay unconscious on the floor, her legs pinned under the slashed mattress.

  It was Rosita.

  Her face was a mask of red. There was blood pooling on the floor around her.

  One of the chorus girls peeped in the doorway then started screaming. The rest of the can-can chorus pushed into the room.

  There were blackened bruises around Rosita’s neck … finger marks.

  She had been slashed repeatedly, in the face …

  I knelt beside her and began to staunch the blood flow with one of the bed sheets — it was all I had. The wounds were deep; flesh was hanging off her left cheek in strips … the knife must’ve been razor-sharp.

  A growl surged up from my belly and erupted out my throat. ‘Who did this?’ I bellowed to no one and everyone.

  No one answered.

  The dancers crowded in around the unconscious girl. One of them, a thickset redhead, nudged the owner. ‘You have to do something! You have to get the doctor.’

  The owner just stared at her, aghast. ‘We can’t — the governor won’t want this to get out —’

  ‘You cruel bastard!’ yelled the redheaded dancer. ‘Then I’m gonna get Brother Buenaventura. He’s still downstairs with Juno.’ Before the owner could stop her she took off, skirts flying.

  I eyed the sleazy owner. ‘Did Hector do this?’ I spat out.

  The owner was unsure of how to respond — Hector Kershaw was the governor’s new pet after all. ‘Er … I don’t know …’

  A blonde dancer knelt next to me and whispered, ‘It had to be that Boston banker’s kid … he was the last one in here, I’m certain.’ When she saw the answering snarl on my face, she said, ‘Don’t let him get away with this!’ She leant in and took over tending to Rosita.

  I surged up to grab the owner by the throat, pulling him up onto his tiptoes and shoving him back against the wall. ‘I’ll only ask this one more time — where did Hector Kershaw go?’

  He started gibbering. He swore he had no idea … that he’d only passed Kershaw on his way out the front door …

  Brother Buenaventura burst through the dancers still crowded around th
e doorway. He had his leather bag in one hand. He saw Rosita and dropped to her side. ‘Rosita, my child, what has happened to you?’ He took fresh white cloths out of his bag, dosed them with brown drops from a bottle that smelt of aniseed and began to tend the wounds.

  At his gentle touch Rosita awoke, moaning with pain. She focused on me with big fearful eyes.

  I tried to soften my expression. ‘Did Hector Kershaw do this to you, Rosita?’ I asked softly.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered with a raw, croaky voice. She touched her bruised throat with one hand and then coughed up a clot of blood. She carefully wiped it off her lips with the back of her wrist.

  ‘What happened, Rosita?’ asked Buenaventura.

  ‘He said …’ Her voice broke. One of the dancers knelt and put a glass of brown liquid, probably whiskey, to her dry lips. She drank, then coughed, wincing at the pain. ‘Kershaw said he was going to teach me a lesson.’

  The friar shook his head in bemused confusion. ‘But why such a lesson, my child?’

  Rosita gazed up into the friar’s kind, compassionate eyes, as though transported to the confessional. She gulped. ‘Hector was dozing, you know, after …’ Shame streaked across her eyes.

  ‘Go on, my child,’ urged the friar.

  ‘I was just looking in his bag, Brother. I was curious because he’d held onto it so tight. But all that was in there was a diary.’

  Brother Buenaventura narrowed his old brown eyes with interest. So this was how Coyote Jack found out about Hector’s diary — his old friend, Brother Buenaventura, told him.

  Rosita trembled at the memory, tears slipping down her bloodied cheeks. ‘It was terrible, the things he’d written, what he’d done … there were drawings …’ She clamped her white lips shut, as though to seal them. ‘But I mustn’t tell anyone … not even you, Brother. Kershaw said he’d come back and finish the job if I did.’

  I stood up.

  Stuff the diary! I was going to find Kershaw and choke his dirty little secrets out of him.

  39