Rattlesnake Wells, Wyoming

by William W. Johnstone

  He also paid a visit to Curtis Pardee and his three nephews, the Macy brothers, thanking them once again for the pivotal role they’d played in helping turn the tide against the raiders. They seemed in generally good spirits, except for Vern, who was wrestling with his conscience some over having shot a man for the first time.

  “If it makes any difference,” Bob told him, “your shot likely saved my life. That hombre was bearing down on me pretty hard and I’d already missed with a shot of my own. Yours was dead-on, although even at that you only wounded him. I ended up killing him a little later on.

  “Now I don’t take shooting or killing a man lightly, but the thing is, some fellas out here on the frontier have turned so lowdown and bad—like a rabid dog—they don’t leave much choice but to be dealt with in a harsh way. It ain’t a pleasant thing, but it’s all a good man can do in order to keep the rabid ones from overtaking and infecting everything. Leastways, that’s the way I see it, and how I can live with doing the harsh dealing when I’ve had to.”

  “Those sound to me like some pretty smart words, Vern,” Pardee said to his nephew then swept his gaze over Peter and Lee as well. “Smart ones for you lads to hang on to also. The marshal here walks a good path and tells it like it is. You’d all be wise to pay attention.”

  All three brothers nodded their heads and Vern looked notably relieved of the burden that had been weighing on his mind. Bob hung around and visited a while longer before taking his leave to resume making his rounds.

  As he headed north up Gold Avenue, Pardee’s words weaved in and out through his thoughts. The marshal here walks a good path . . . Bob couldn’t help contrasting that assessment with the events that had played out in Texas those bygone years ago. His path had been right, the way he saw it. But was that always the same as good?

  He fought against letting his mind go in that direction again.

  He hadn’t proceeded much farther before he got some help in finding something else to focus on.

  Bob had reached the point near the end of the New Town row where the raiders had done most of their damage. To his right stretched the wreckage of tents that had consisted largely of cheap whore cribs. The blackened patch of ashes where the fire had broken out was roughly in the center.

  Some progress toward cleanup had been made, though there was still much to go. Here and there a few salvageable tents had been folded and set aside, presumably to be set back up at some point. Elsewhere, piles of rubble and tattered remnants were stacked, ready to be carted off and burned or maybe just dumped in a convenient gully.

  He walked over and stood at the edge of the fire circle for a minute. Traces of acrid smoke still hung in the air.

  Ready to turn away and start back down Gold Avenue, he heard a sound, a soft mewling noise. Like a kitten maybe. Slightly muffled, discordant. Maybe an injured kitten. The sound came again, lasting longer. More like a moan, almost a whimper.

  A human whimper, he decided, his brow furrowing, his pulse quickening. He went into a slight crouch, his right hand coming to rest on the grips of his revolver. He turned slowly in half a circle, trying to pinpoint where the sound had originated. “Hello? Is somebody there?” he called. “Are you hurt?”

  The whimper came again, and Bob was able to identify pretty closely where it came from. Moving quickly, he kicked his way through an area of wreckage where no clearing had yet been done. Flinging aside splintered tentpoles and pulling back torn, collapsed folds of canvas, he uncovered the source of the whimpering. In the gloom of late evening, he could tell it was a young woman. She was nearly nude, smudged with dirt, and curled in a fetal position. Her long dark hair covered her face.

  Squatting, Bob reached out and shook her shoulder. “Miss? Are you okay? I mean you no harm. I’m here to help.”

  She gave no response, except for another whimper as if she was in pain, although he could see no sign of injury. He looked around somewhat desperately. After all the damage caused by the raiders at that far end of the New Town row, he saw no sign of activity or evidence of anyone close by.

  He dug a lucifer from his pocket, struck it with his thumbnail, and held it high. In the illumination, he could see the girl was even younger than he’d thought, smooth-skinned and barely conscious, but he could still see no sign of injury. Brushing her silky black hair away from her face, looking for possible damage but finding none, he saw that she was Oriental.

  As he shook out the match, he concluded she must have been one of those working the cribs. That was unusual, given that most crib girls were older and pretty well worn, but it was the only explanation he could think of. No matter, she needed help and he had to see that she got it.

  Scooping one arm under the backs of her legs and the other under her shoulders, he lifted her up. She was incredibly light.

  Turning and picking his way carefully through the wreckage, he worked his way back out to the street and laid her gently into a good-sized, empty pushcart someone had apparently been using to haul away rubble. Pulling loose a section of torn tent canvas, he covered her with it. The girl moaned again and began shivering in the evening chill.

  Bob turned the cart around and pushed it toward Old Town and Dr. Tibbs’s office.

  Chapter 11

  “Hold on there, bub. What are you up to with that cart?”

  Bob had been so sure no one else was stirring on the wrecked end of town that the gruff voice, coming from behind him, gave him a start. He stopped and turned, his hand once again automatically drifting close to his gun.

  In the murkiness, he saw what he had missed before. Across the street from where he’d found the girl was an otherwise weedy, empty area where a collection of abandoned wagons had gathered. Gold seekers flocking in from various points had arrived in those rigs and then left them there. They took the horses or mules, whatever had pulled them that far, and either traded them for equipment or kept them for pack animals when they headed up into the high country to dig for their fortune. A lot of the wagons hadn’t arrived in very good shape to begin with. Some of the better ones got stripped for their lumber or hardware. A few remained mostly intact.

  In front of a pair of intact rigs—high-wheeled, with sizable hauling beds covered by tall canopies—stood the man who’d called out. A ways behind him stood a second man. Bob reckoned they must have been inside the wagons, out of sight, when he’d looked around. Maybe they’d had tents or shacks to stay in before the raiders did their trampling and wrecking.

  “My name’s Hatfield. I’m the marshal here in Rattlesnake Wells,” Bob said, hooking a thumb inside the front of his vest and pushing it forward so his badge could be seen more clearly. “I’ve come across an injured girl. I’m commandeering this cart to haul her to a doctor. I’ll see to it the cart gets brought back by morning.”

  The second man came forward in hurried steps. “You came across a girl, you say?” he asked anxiously.

  The first man, the one who’d halted Bob by calling out so gruffly, was a large specimen with sloping shoulders, a gut hanging heavily over his belt buckle, and a broad face dominated by a huge lump of nose that had seen extensive mashing and mauling. The second fellow was taller, skinnier, clad in a shabby swallowtail coat and dented bowler hat, with a narrow wedge of a face highlighted by a flamboyant handlebar mustache.

  Bob felt an immediate suspicion for their presence and their interest in what he was up to. Nevertheless, he adopted a civil tone to answer the skinny one’s question. “That’s right, a young girl. I found her just a few minutes ago, half buried in the rubble across the way. She must have got knocked unconscious during this morning‘s raid and laid there all day, unseen in the midst of all the damage. What I haven’t figured out yet is why nobody’s been looking for her or asking about her.”

  “I can enlighten you on that,” the skinny man was quick to say. “As a matter of fact, I assure you there have been questions asked and efforts made to find that poor child.”

  “By who?”

  “Wh
y, by me. And also my associate here.” The skinny man spread his hands. “Allow me to provide introductions. My name is Neely Pepper. My associate is Iron Lake Iverson. He was born in the Iron Lake region of upper Michigan, you see, and his parents loved the area so much and thought the name carried such strength that they named him after it.”

  “So what have you got to do with this girl?” Bob asked. “And if you were concerned about her being missing and were looking for her, why wasn’t I informed of the matter?”

  Neely Pepper licked his lips. “Well, I, er . . . To tell you the truth . . .”

  “We got a habit of takin’ care of our own problems,” Iverson explained bluntly. “We don’t believe in runnin’ to the law over every little thing.”

  “I’d hardly call the condition of this girl a little thing,” Bob said. “She could have died lying over there all day like that. The chill of the oncoming night was only going to make it worse. Yet you just quit looking?”

  Pepper’s mouth curved in a nervous, half-sheepish smile. “Shame on us, we sorta came to the conclusion that the little brat had run away. That’s why we gave up on the lookin’”

  “What is this girl to you, anyway?”

  Pepper’s eyes shifted around and Bob was certain he was forming a lie. “Why, we’re her, ah, caretakers. Her family met with a terrible tragedy and me and Iron, we’ve taken it on ourselves to see that she gets took care of. We ain’t on the best of times ourselves, but we mean to do all for her that we can.”

  “That sounds real kind and noble. But, that being the case, why would you figure she had tried to run away from you?” Bob said.

  Pepper licked his lips again. “You took a look at her, right? You must have seen she’s Oriental. She don’t hardly speak no English. She’s scared and confused ever since we . . . er, ever since the tragedy to her family. She don’t rightly know what to make of me and Iron yet, that we’re only to do good for her. She’s tried to bolt a time or two before. That’s why we thought she’d done it again—you know, out of fear and confusion after those raiders came rippin’ through and the fire broke out and all.”

  Behind Pepper, the marshal saw one of the wagons do some rocking and then a blurred face surrounded by a tangle of reddish curls looked out of the front opening of the canopy. The face, that of a middle-aged woman, appeared only briefly before popping back out of sight.

  Bob had a pretty good idea what was going on. “I still find it mighty curious that, if you truly cared about the well-being of this girl and she’d gone missing, you didn’t come directly to me or at least to the miners’ council about it so a proper search could have been mounted. We can talk about that more later. Right now I need to take this little gal—”

  “You don’t have to bother about takin’ that little gal nowhere, bub,” Iverson cut him off. “I done told you once that we got a habit of handlin’ our own problems. We’re obliged you found the girl, but now we’ll be relievin’ you of her, and we’ll see to it she gets took care of from here.” He took a step forward.

  Bob quickly held up a hand, signaling him not to take another. “No way in hell, bub. Neither of you are gonna get your slimy paws on this gal again. I got you figured out. You’re a couple bottom-rung pimps running crib whores. You’ve got more in those wagons, the usual mostly worn-out kind, I expect. Somehow you got your mitts on this fresh young one, too. I believe you that she probably doesn’t speak much English and it’s for damn sure she’d want to run away from what you’ve been putting her through. That ain’t gonna be a problem for her anymore, not if she lives. I’ll see to that.”

  Iverson showed yellow stumps of teeth in a wickedly suggestive smile. “Yeah, I bet you’d like to see to that little Chinkie real good, wouldn’t you?”

  “You shut your filthy mouth or I’ll rip your tongue out of your head,” Bob warned him.

  “Before you get too high and mighty, Marshal,” spoke up Pepper, “you might want to consider how that Chinkie has been our top draw by three or four times over ever since we got here. And not just from among these lowly dirt-grubbing, rock-chopping miners, either. Plenty of gentlemen from your more prestigious Old Town have found their way to her tent as well. Many of them more than once.”

  “That don’t change a damn thing,” Bob said.

  But a moment after he gave that reply, things did change. In his anger, he made the mistake of cutting his gaze to Pepper and concentrating on him, giving Iverson the opening to pull a surprise move.

  He yanked a snub-nosed, large-bore revolver from his pocket and aimed it at the marshal. “How about this, you meddlin’ damn law dog? Does this make a difference?” taunted the big man. “We been hearin’ all day about how you chased off the raiders and stopped a bank robbery and what an all-around rip-snorter marshal and gun hand you are. Are you good enough to draw and fire on me, just a lowly ol’ pimp, before I plug your nosy, trouble-makin’ ass?”

  “You pull that trigger, you fool, you’ll have the whole town down on you,” Bob told him. “And if I ain’t around to stop ’em, they’ll hang the both of you before the moon rises.”

  “By the time a shot draws anybody down to this trampled and burned end of the row,” Pepper said in a smug tone, “we’ll have that cart dragged out of the way and all they’ll find is you layin’ in the middle of the street. They’ll see us pilin’ out of our wagon, too—for the first time, they’ll think—and we’ll tell how we heard the shot and also the sound of horses tearin’ away fast. And then we’ll plant the notion that a couple of those cowardly damn raiders must have come back and laid in wait to ambush you. Who’ll be able to say any different?”

  Bob’s eyes narrowed and his voice dripped loathing as he said, “You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Hell, in that case what have I got to lose if I make a stab for my gun and try to get at least one of you on my way down? That’d throw a kink in your fancy yarn, wouldn’t it?”

  The smugness drained from Pepper’s face. “Damn it, Iron, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and—”

  The sharp crack of a rifle drowned out his words and in the same instant, the gun flew out of Iverson’s hand, torn away by a bullet. The big man fell instantly to his knees, his free hand clutching his shattered, bloody former gun hand as he issued a high-pitched squeal of pain. Pepper staggered back a step and a half, looking on in shock and fear.

  “Say the word, Marshal,” called a familiar voice from over in the tent ruins. “Me and the boys can whittle down the big one the rest of the way and do the same with Derby Hat, too, if you want. Elsewise, they’re yours to do with as you wish.”

  “Hold off any more shooting,” Bob said, heaving a sigh of relief. “They’re whipped, and they ain’t worth the waste of more good lead.”

  He walked toward the two pimps.

  As he reached Iverson, the blubbering giant held up his damaged hand. Two fingers were missing and thin lines of blood were squirting from the stumps. “M-my hand,” he wailed. “It’s ruined.”

  “It’ll match your face,” Bob said offhandedly as he moved past him. “Wrap it in something to stop the bleeding.”

  Reaching Pepper, the marshal said, “How about you? You got any hideaway guns you’re hankering to pull on me?”

  “No. No, I don’t. I swear,” Pepper assured him in a quavering voice.

  “Like I’d believe you,” Bob grunted. “Raise your hands. High, and hold them there.”

  Bob patted down the skinny man, unearthing a spring-blade knife tucked in the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back.

  “I forgot it was there. Honest to God, I—”

  “Shut up! Don’t use God’s name with your filthy mouth. As for the knife”—the marshal thumbed the button to make the blade flash out—“maybe I oughta stick it in your liver so you won’t forget it again.”

  Pepper’s chin trembled. “Please. You wouldn’t do that, would you? Please, Gahh . . . I mean, please don’t!”

  Bob leaned over and snapped the blade u
nder his boot heel. Straightening up, he tossed the broken pieces aside and jerked a thumb at Pepper. “Get over there with your partner. Help him with his hand. I don’t want him bleeding all over my street.”

  Chapter 12

  By then, Curtis Pardee and his nephews had converged on the scene. Coming from the tent ruins and carrying his Henry rifle, it was clear Pardee had been the one who’d fired the round that had disarmed Iverson. Peter came from the deep shadows back in among the discarded wagons. Vern and young Lee came walking up the street from the direction of the Pardee tent.

  “Once again I find myself deeply indebted to you fellas,” Bob said, sweeping his gaze over them. “How did you know I was in a pickle this time?”

  “After you left our place a little bit ago,” Pardee explained, “I stepped outside to have a pipe. I happened to look up the street just in time to see you loadin’ something into this cart. And then I saw these two jaspers step out and start jawin’ with you. Right away I got an itchy feelin’ they were stickin’ their noses in for some no good reason. You see, I had a set-to with this pair only a couple days ago when they cornered Vern and Peter and tried to interest ’em in their sinful business. Needless to say, I spotted ’em for what they was and what they were offerin’. I sent ’em packin’ mighty quick.

  “Anyway, when my itchy feelin’ told me they likely meant to make trouble for you, I grabbed my ol’ Henry and rousted the boys. I came up the back way over yonder, sorta like you did this mornin’, and sent Peter up the back way on the other side to come in behind those wagons. Told Vern and Lee to stand watch down the street and come a-runnin’ if things looked like they was gettin’ out of hand. Well, luckily it worked out okay.”

  Bob grinned. “Luckily for me, yeah. Thanks to you and your itchy feeling.”

  “So what are you gonna do with the varmints now?” Pardee wanted to know. “Throw ’em in the hoosegow?”