Thornton grabbed the bottle and headed for the stairs. Around him, the girls and Sykes worked dutifully, keeping their eyes downcast. Except for the sounds of Sykes sweeping up the glass and the girls scrubbing the blood, the room was silent. The tension was drawn tight as razor wire.
Thornton stopped beside Kansas Jen, whose red-blond hair hung down both sides of her face, covering her freckled cheeks. Her flannel housecoat and bare feet were blood-splattered, as were her hands grinding the brush against the stained puncheons.
"Jen," Thornton said.
The girl gave a start, jerking her head up, peering at Thornton through her hair. "Yes, Mr. Thornton?"
The other girls snapped enervated looks at him. The swish of Sykes's broom stopped abruptly. The room was as silent as a sarcophagus.
Thornton waited a second, staring stone-faced at Kansas Jen. He gave a sadistic chuckle. He moved his right shoe ahead and to the right, tapping the toe on the floor. "Missed a spot."
"Oh, for godsakes, Mr. Thornton!" the girl whined.
Laughing, feeling as though he'd retrieved some of his former authority, Thornton clutched his whiskey bottle by the neck and mounted the stairs.
Now he'd fetch back the rest from Faith.
Chapter Five
At the top of the stairs, Thornton stopped and looked at the doors on both sides of the hall, light from a half-dozen bracket lamps shuddering across the pine slabs. Behind the second door on his right, deep snores rose, tinkling the red mantles over the lamps.
Bardoul was holed up in his usual room.
Thornton moved down the hall to room 9, Faith's room. He took a deep breath, again putting his anger on a short leash, and placed a hand on the doorknob.
He tried turning it. Locked.
He cleared his throat, canted his head toward the gilded number 9 and the tuft of dried wildflowers that hung there. "Faith?"
He waited. On the other side of the door, silence.
The odd thing about Faith—one of the odd things—was that she'd somehow managed to draw invisible boundaries for herself, no small feat with Thornton, who treated his employees little better than slaves.
But when Faith's door was locked, or when she quietly demanded a rare night to herself or decided to take dinner to her room rather than dine with the other girls and Thornton, Thornton found himself respecting her wishes.
He rationalized his acquiescence by reminding himself that she was his most valuable whore. Actually, it probably wouldn't have mattered had she earned next to nothing.
Faith—if she had another name, she'd never mentioned it—was inexplicably different from the other girls, and Thornton was under her spell. The difference couldn't be attributed to her beauty alone.
And now, with a tooth-grinding amalgam of fury and chagrin, the roadhouse proprietor removed his hand from her doorknob and ambled away. Better to confront her in the morning, anyway, when the passions of the evening had dissipated and he could think through the situation with a clear head.
If she really had slept with the breed, he'd have to figure out a creative way to punish her.
Thornton turned left down the branching hall and stopped at his own door. He fumbled his keys from his pocket, paused to pop the cork from the bottle, took a long drink. He smacked his lips, swallowed, and made several unsuccessful attempts at poking the key into the lock. When he finally got the door open, he stumbled into his large bedroom/office, took another pull from the bottle, then cursed loudly and slammed the door behind him.
When the door opened again, yellow morning light angled through the dust-streaked window at the east end of the hall. A wind had risen during the night; it was still banging around the roadhouse, rattling windows and bracket lamps, shuttling chill autumn drafts, and pelting the walls with sand and tumbleweeds.
Thornton stood in the doorway, feeling a little wobbly, his buzzard-like physique clad in sweat-stained long underwear and a faded red robe hanging open to reveal a bulbous paunch below a hollow, bony chest. His hair and goatee were mussed, his eyes red and rheumy.
On the dresser on the far side of the room, the whiskey bottle stood empty beside an ashtray overflowing with slender black cigar butts. A water glass lay broken on the floor beneath it. Against the right wall, his broad bed was a mess of strewn and twisted covers.
Thornton looked down the hall to his left. His voice rose like the sound of heavy water pouring around boulders. "That lousy fucking bitch betrayed me."
He slipped his hand into the deep right pocket of his robe and walked along the hall. He took the corner too sharp, rammed his right shoulder into the wall. The blow staggered him slightly, but his face did not lose its stony expression. Like a zombie, Thornton set his right foot down and continued to room 9.
Not bothering to knock, he twisted the doorknob, was vaguely startled when it turned easily, and the door opened. He thrust it back against the wall and moved forward.
On the floor before him, Faith knelt over a bloodstain, a scrub brush in her hand, a tub of soapy water to her right. She wore a flowered, lime yellow wrapper over a corset and pantaloons. She was barefoot, and a hand-rolled cigarette protruded from her lips.
When the door opened, she turned toward Thornton with a start. She frowned up at him, blinking against the curling cigarette smoke and the blond bangs in her eyes, her straw-colored hair pulled into a loose braid behind her head. Her cheeks were puffy and red, her eyelids pink, as though she'd spent a restless night herself.
"Bill...?"
The words welled up from him like pressurized water from a pipe, echoing like thunder around the room. "Did you diddle that dog-eater?"
She removed the cigarette from her mouth and scrunched up her eyes. "What?"
"Answer me—did you?”
"What are you talking about?"
"You heard me, bitch!" He staggered forward, spread his feet, and dropped his chin with menace. "Did you diddle the breed?"
The girl's eyes flashed like steel. She rose slowly, her voice bitter. "What if I did?"
"What if you did! What if you did!” Thornton stepped toward her, removing his right hand from his pocket. His fingers clasped an open, bone-handled razor. Light from the window behind her flashed across the blade. "Come here, bitch. I'm takin' you downstairs. Gonna show the others what I do to cheatin' whores!"
"Get away from me, Bill. You're drunk!"
"I said come here, bitch, or I'll cut you right here!” Thornton bolted toward her, wrapped his left hand around her neck. His left foot slipped in the blood and water, and he fell back against the dresser, knocking over perfume bottles and a lantern. A tortoiseshell comb hit the floor. Thornton's lips snapped back from his gritted teeth. "Damn you!"
Faith spun away from him, nearly falling onto her bed and grabbing a post. "You're crazy drunk, Bill. I didn't sleep with Yakima. I don't know what you're talking about. Now get out of my room!"
"Givin' it to that dog-eater for free, were ya? Or maybe you were just keepin' it all for yourself." Spittle flew from Thornton's swollen lips. He crouched before her, like an attack dog. "I gave you extra room here. I gave you privileges. And this is how you pay me back?"
"What privileges?" Faith screamed, bending forward at the waist, her own eyes flashing fire. "I'm a slave here, like all the others!"
"Come here!" Thornton shouted, lunging toward her once more.
Faith wheeled toward the door. Thornton grabbed her arm and threw her back against the wall. He swung his left hand behind his right shoulder, slung it back, the knuckles smashing the girl's mouth.
Faith screamed as blood from her split lips splashed her cheeks. She turned to the right and dropped to her knees, cupping her mouth with both hands, sobbing and cursing.
Growling like an enraged bear, Thornton grabbed a handful of her hair, jerked her head back and up. He pushed his face down close to hers, his eyes wide with animal fury. He lifted his right hand. The blade of the razor winked in the window light.
"This is
what we do to cheatin' whores in these parts, Faith. See how you like this!"
He shoved the razor toward her mouth, carefully lining up the blade for a clean slice across her upper lip.
Faith jerked away. "No!"
Thornton's wet left foot slipped out from under him. He half turned and fell against the wall, grunting and cursing, both feet skidding as though the puncheons were ice. They pitched as Thornton's back hit the wall, and he piled up at the base of it, raging and clutching the razor.
Faith scrambled to her right, gained her feet, and leapt Thornton's outstretched legs on her way to the door. The madhouse proprietor grabbed her left ankle, tripping her.
"Where you goin', you mangy bitch?"
She hit the floor with a groan, hands slapping the puncheons. She lay there for a moment, head up, eyes closed, as though dazed.
Thornton grunted as he got his legs beneath him. Glancing up, he saw two of the other girls poking their heads around the doorframe—the Cajun girl, Nettie, and Kansas Jen, who slapped a hand to her breast.
"Oh, my God, Mr. Thornton!"
Thornton laughed. "You girls got here just in time to see what happens to cheatin' whores." He rose and staggered toward Faith, stretched belly down on the floor, to the left of the bloodstain. "Demonstration time, Faith."
Out the corner of his eye, Thornton saw several other faces hovering behind Nettie and Jen. He laughed again as he held the razor up for the others to see.
"Sharpened just this morning," he bragged, flicking his thumb across the blade and contriving an expression of mock pain. "And it is indeed sharp!"
The girls shuffled around on bare or slippered feet, several sucking air through their teeth.
"Shit," said Claire, a rangy Mormon from Salt Lake, holding a cup of coffee in her hand. Her tone wasn't entirely regretful. "If you cut her face, Bill, she'll never work again."
"Give the girl a cigar," Thornton grinned.
Chuckling, he dropped to his knees between Faith's legs and grabbed the back of her head with his right hand. He jerked her head up and had started turning her around to face him when she suddenly turned of her own accord, rising onto her butt.
Thornton arched his right brow and his pulse quickened.
The girl's eyes were slitted and her lips were pursed. He looked down. Her right hand was wrapped around the pearl grips of a silver-plated derringer.
"Demonstration time, you pig," Faith spat, clicking the single-shot's hammer back.
Thornton's lower jaw dropped in horror. He was about to shout a protest when the peashooter cracked. Smoke wafted around Faith's fist, the tang of cordite instantly assaulting Thornton's nostrils. He wasn't sure if it was the smell that made him nauseated or the sudden cold burn in his right side.
As Faith kicked away from him, Thornton looked down. There was a small, ragged hole in the left flap of his duster. Gray smoke wisped like worms around the hole. He jerked the flap away, and his heart thudded when he saw the blood oozing from a matching hole in his undershirt.
His right hand opened, and the razor tumbled to the floor. His eyes wide with amazement, he looked up at Faith as she calmly but quickly removed the derringer's spent shell and replaced it with a fresh one from the small box on her night table.
"Bitch shot me."
Faith flicked the derringer closed and aimed it in the general direction of the girls filling the doorway. They were either half-dressed or, in the Mexican Carmella's case, wearing only pantaloons and a blue night sock, her bare brown breasts partially covered by a goose-pimpled arm.
Faith heard a trill in her own voice as she waved the pistol. "Any of you have a quarrel with what I just did?"
They lurched back as a group, all eyes flicking to the derringer's silver barrel.
Claire looked at Thornton, who'd fallen onto his back, yowling and cursing while clutching his bloody side. Her cup was tipped, coffee sloshing over the rim. Turning her gaze back to the whore with the wheat-colored hair, she said, "You best light a shuck, Faith."
Beneath the wind, the sound of an approaching wagon rose from the yard below Faith's window.
Claire's brown eyes snapped wide. "That'll be Willie and the hostlers!"
Kansas Jen was staring down at Thornton, her features stiff with shock. "Is he gonna die?"
"I just winged the bastard," said Faith, opening a wardrobe and hastily shoving clothes into a carpetbag. "If one of you wanna stop gawkin' and shove a rag into the bullet hole, he'll be all right... after I'm long gone from here!"
"She shot him," murmured Kansas Jen as the wind wracked the house and a horse whinnied outside. "She shot Mr. Thornton."
"Shut up!" Claire said, wheeling toward Jen. "Carmella, Nettie—don't just stand there. Tend the man!"
"I'm gonna kill you, bitch!" Thornton snarled through taut jaws, trying to sit up while holding a fist to the bullet hole in his side. "I'm gonna gut you like a fish and hang you from the barn eaves!" He threw his head back, his eyes bulging from their sockets. "Willieeeeee!"
"Shut up, Bill!" Faith said, wheeling toward him and aiming the derringer. "If you don't shut up, I'll drill one through your eye!"
Thornton's gaze flicked to the derringer, and he closed his mouth. As Carmella and Nettie edged toward him, frightened of the man and repelled by the blood, Faith turned back to the wardrobe. Reaching inside, she scooped up a hide sack filled with coins and dropped it into her carpetbag.
Willie's deep voice rose from the stairwell. "Mr. Thornton?"
Claire squeezed Faith's arm. "Will you go?”
Faith threw a last pair of underwear and a frayed leather hat into the carpetbag, stepped into shoes without bothering to lace them, and turned toward Thornton. He lay on his back, the two grimacing girls working on him, his head lifted to peer with mute rage at Faith. His lips were pursed and his nostrils flared as he breathed, his chest rising and falling sharply.
"Mr. Thornton?" Willie called again.
"Faith," Claire wheezed, "go!"
Boots pounded the stairs, echoing.
Faith kept her derringer aimed at Thornton as she moved to the door and peered left. As the boots continued pounding on the stairs, Willie's massive shadow grew on the wall.
Claire sidled up to Faith. "Take the back stairs. I'll stall him."
"No," Faith said, pushing Claire back with her left hand, keeping an eye on the hall. "They'll blame you later. Stay here."
With that, clutching the carpetbag in one hand, pistol in the other, Faith bolted out of the room and turned right along the hall.
"Good luck!" Claire whispered behind her.
Faith turned the corner just as Willie gained the top of the stairs. Voices and footsteps rose behind her as she opened the outside door at the end of the hall.
Clicking the door shut, she heard Thornton shouting something she couldn't make out, followed by "Get that bitch!"
Faith jerked with a start. Hefting the carpetbag and squeezing the derringer, she started down the unpainted staircase that dropped to the yard on the roadhouse's east side. The wind caught her wrapper and blew it around her like gossamer wings, sucked her breath from her lungs and pelted her face with grit.
Halfway down, her right shoe hit a loose plank. Suddenly she was rolling down the stairs, the derringer flying out of her hand, the carpetbag bouncing along before her.
With a groan, she landed in a pile at the bottom of the steps. She looked around, dazed, the misery in her right knee and her left ankle overshadowing the multiple other aches and pains. Her carpetbag was wedged between the stairs and the railing, about six steps up.
The scrapes and bruises numbed by terror, she flung herself toward the bag, lashing out with her right hand. The door at the top of the stairs flew open. Willie bolted out so fast he nearly flew over the railing. Turning toward her, he stopped and raked the revolver from his holster.
His voice was pitched with sadistic glee. "Hold it right there, missy!"
Thumbing the revolver's hammer back, he
aimed down the stairs.
Faith squeezed her eyes closed and wrapped her fingers around the carpetbag's leather handle. She jerked toward the railing as the pistol cracked. The bullet sliced the air a half inch from her right temple, barking into the dust at the bottom of the stairs.
"Goddamn it!" Faith cried, pulling the bag off the step and heaving herself to her feet. She was no longer aware of the barking cuts and scrapes as she sprinted awkwardly in the heeled leather shoes along the roadhouse's east wall, the carpetbag flapping against her right thigh. She ground her teeth, awaiting another shot from Willie.
Crack!
The bullet puffed dust to Faith's left.
Willie's voice boomed above the wind. "Goddamn it, girl, don't you run from me!"
P-shtank!
The bullet ricocheted off a rock as Faith darted around the corner of the roadhouse. Hearing Willie running behind her, she paused at the corner, staring at the two hitchracks fronting the stoop, her stomach sinking and her pounding heart climbing into her throat.
She'd vaguely hoped she would find a saddled horse tied to the hitchrack, but there were only the rein-polished hitchracks and the stock tanks, the hay-littered water rippled by the wind. The wagon Willie and the hostlers had used to haul off the dead men was parked before the barn, the tongue drooping to the ground. The horses had been put away.
Casting a glance over her right shoulder, Faith cursed, her heart beating faster. She turned to the barn creaking in the wind and shrouded with blown dust. One of the two big front doors was open and knocking against the frame. Behind her, a boot kicked a stone. Faith bounded forward and ran toward the barn.
"Faith, where the hell do you think you're going?"
Her stomach tightened at Thornton's voice. He must have followed her down the outside stairs. A gun popped twice, blowing up dust and gravel on either side of her running feet. She tripped over her wrapper's hem and sprawled in the dirt, losing one shoe but somehow managing to hold on to the carpetbag.
She twisted her head around to peer behind her. Thornton stood at the corner of the roadhouse, Willie beside him. One hand clutching his bloody side, Thornton extended Willie's revolver straight out from his shoulder, squinting as he aimed down the barrel at Faith.
The Lonely Breed : A Western Fiction Classic (Yakima Henry Book 1) Page 4