Gwen had learned to take a lot from some people, but she was not the kind of woman who would let herself be pushed to the floor and have a fat finger waved in her face. She came up and slapped Kirk Van Patten hard across the cheek.
The blow stunned the man.
She cursed him, told him to get out of her room and that when he was sober he could come and apologize and maybe—but no promises would be guaranteed—just maybe she would give him another chance.
Kirk Van Patten, gentleman that he was, slammed his fist into her stomach. She gasped, fell to her knees, bent over, and vomited on the floor. The next thing she knew, the drunken rancher and state representative was dragging her to the bed in her hotel room. He jerked her up by her hair, shoved her onto the bed, and pressed his body against hers. His breath stank of beef, whiskey, and cigarettes. He put his hand on her throat and pressed hard until she thought she would die.
“You won’t be the first witch I killed,” he told her. He spit in her face. He laughed. He slapped her until her nose and lips bled. And when he stood, still grinning, the fine, upstanding Kirk Van Patten began to unbutton his britches.
“No,” he said after a moment’s thought. “No.” He laughed. “You deserve something special.”
His right hand moved and he reached inside his coat. He pulled out a pocketknife, which he opened, and ran his thumb across the blade.
“Let’s see how many customers you get at your faro layout after your nose has been cut off.” He laughed again. “That’s what Apache bucks do to their squaws when they find they’ve been unfaithful.”
“Kirk,” she whispered, pleading, begging, and hating herself for being such a coward, but she was in a great deal of pain, and the crazy eyes of Kirk Van Patten let her know that he really meant to disfigure her. Possibly even kill her.
Gwen’s right hand fell toward her pillow. It disappeared briefly under the pillow, and when it came out, it held the . 41-caliber Remington over-and-under derringer. “Get out, Kirk.” She cocked the pistol. “Get out before I kill you.”
He spit into her face. “You ain’t got the guts, child. And now you’re really going to get it. Nobody pulls a pistol on me. You’re gonna hurt more than you thought you could ever hurt. And when I’m done with you, ain’t nobody, not even a leper, would want to be caught in bed with a crone like you.”
He changed his grip on the knife, took it by the handle, raised it over his head, and was about to bring it down into her chest.
She shot him in his privates.
When he spun around and screamed and gripped his crotch, she put the second .41-caliber slug into the back of his head.
She hadn’t meant to. She had wanted to shoot him in the heart, let him see it coming, but he had twisted as he fell, and she was hurting, and not thinking properly, and she was terrified of what he might do.
Her lawyer pleaded self-defense. The way Gwen thought, it was self-defense. If she had not killed Kirk Van Patten, she would have been buried in what passed for a Boot Hill.
The twelve jurors, all men, all men who feared and/or idolized Kirk Van Patten, had not seen it as self-defense. They convicted Gwen of murder in the first degree and sentenced her to hang.
The judges in the appeals process brought up one indisputable fact. According to the undertaker, Kirk Van Patten had been killed by a single shot to the back of his head. Yeah, he might have died, eventually, from the bullet in his groin, but he was killed by a shot from behind. It was quite hard to find for an acquittal of a murder charge when the deceased was killed by a bullet fired at close range and into the back of a man’s head.
The door to the station opened, and in walked another businessman. He saw the handcuffs on Gwen Stanhope, stared, and found the deputy. The man walked to Glenn Reed and handed him a business card. “Sheriff, I am Alvin J. Griffin the Fourth, editor and publisher of the Herald Leader here in Purgatory City.”
Glenn Reed shook the hand of the journalist and told him his name, but added that he was not the sheriff, just a deputy.
“We do not see many women with handcuffs, Deputy Reed,” Alvin Griffin said with a beaming, pleasant smile. “So perhaps you can tell me what crime she has been charged with?”
“She ain’t just charged,” Deputy Reed said. “She’s been tried. She’s been convicted. She busted out only to get caught again—”
“Illegally,” she told the newspaperman.
“Well,” Deputy Reed said, “that may be so, but you’re here, and you’re in my custody, and you’re gonna swing in El Paso when we get there.”
“Do you mean she’s a murderess?”
“I mean to tell you,” Reed told Griffin, “that you don’t turn your back on a woman like this. She’ll slit your throat.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “I didn’t slit his throat,” she told the journalist.
“No,” Reed said. “She simply blew his head clean off.”
“That’s not true.” She had shot the fiend with a derringer, a lady’s hideaway gun. She had not used a double-barreled shotgun with buckshot or a rifle in a heavy caliber.
“All right. I guess you’re right,” the deputy said. “She just shot him in his testicles and then put a bullet through his brains. She’s one hard customer, Mr. Griffin.”
“Fascinating,” the editor said. “And she’s hanging in El Paso.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Charles Van Patten might have something else in mind,” Gwen told the newspaper editor.
“Like what?” the journalist asked.
“Like killing me before I ever get to El Paso,” Gwen told him.
“I’ve heard that name before,” Griffin said.
“Don’t listen to nothing my prisoner has to say,” Deputy Reed said. “She’s a . . . a . . .”
“A jackal?” the newspaperman suggested.
“Well . . . it’s . . . umm. Well, you see . . .” Reed sighed. “I don’t exactly know what that there word means.”
Griffin did not have a chance to define the word.
The door flung open and a Mexican youth, who could not have been older than twelve, yelled, “The stagecoach! It come! It now come!”
“Get up.” Deputy Glenn Reed kicked Gwen’s shoes.
She stood, refusing to give the lawman the pleasure of seeing how much his kick had hurt. The newspaper editor and publisher stood, too, and made his way to the door.
Glenn Reed put his right hand on the butt of his holstered revolver and said, “Don’t you try getting away from me, woman.”
Her head shook in disgust, and she followed the journalist out of the adobe hut and into the sun. The dust rose thick and furious as she saw the team of mules and heard the popping of the whip and the curses of the driver. She had to turn her head to keep from being blinded by the dust as the wagon skidded to a stop.
“Purgatory City!” she heard the driver call out. “All out for Purgatory City.” He set the brake. “You can stretch your legs, folks, but don’t run off, because we’ll be leaving here as soon as they change the teams.”
The door squeaked open, and two men leaped out and began dusting off their clothes. The newspaper editor walked over to the driver and the shotgun guard to ask about any news, the two men who had jumped off went into the station, probably for coffee.
The deputy shoved Gwen from behind. “Let’s get aboard.”
She moved to the stage, climbed into the wagon, and saw a timid-looking man in a black suit sitting in the front bench, his back pressing against the driver’s side of the stagecoach. He was pale as a ghost, and was craning his head so he could look through the window facing the street. When Gwen cleared her throat, the little man practically jumped out of his skin.
“Didn’t mean to give you a fright,” she said, and moved to the rear bench.
Glenn Reed came in with his revolver halfway out of the holster. The man in black went rigid, except for his arms, which pulled the two obnoxiously colored carpetbags on his lap closer to his stomach an
d chest.
“Don’t talk to the prisoner,” the deputy warned the timid man.
“P-pris-n-ner?” he stammered.
Gwen Stanhope rattled her wrist bracelets. “That would be me.”
“Oh,” he said. “My.”
When the two other men returned to the stagecoach, Glenn Reed gave them a similar speech. “No talking to the prisoner. She’s a hard customer. I’ll stop anyone who I think is trying to rob the hangman of his duty.”
“Hangman?” the timid man said.
“I said no talking to the prisoner,” Reed said.
“There won’t be much conversing to anyone,” said the red-bearded man in the plaid suit. “Once we start rolling west.”
“Lessen you want a mouth filled with Texas dust,” said the potbellied man in tan trousers and a blue brocade vest.
Glenn Reed sat beside Gwen Stanhope, but kept his right hand on the butt of his revolver, which was halfway out of the holster.
The door opened again, and the timid man and Deputy Reed almost wet their britches. The guard, a man with a drooping yellow mustache, buckskin jacket, and curly hair that touched his shoulders, butted the shotgun’s stock on the floor of the coach and smiled.
“Folks, there was a telegraph waiting for us.” He stopped as a voice sounded behind him, and he stepped away to allow the newspaperman to climb into the coach. He moved to the front bench, and the man in black pulled his carpetbags even tighter.
The shotgun guard returned to his position. “Mr. Griffin, this might interest you.”
The newspaper editor leaned forward.
“The commander at Fort Spalding sent a telegraph warning that the Apaches under Holy Shirt are acting up again. Another party of those red devils have come up from across the Mexican border. Maybe to join Holy Shirt, who’s preaching big medicine. Maybe just to rob, rape, and butcher their own way. Anyway, some scouts and a couple of patrols have reported seeing plenty of sign. The company here will refund any tickets for anyone who don’t want to risk their hide and hair. It’s a far piece to El Paso, folks, and once we start rolling, we ain’t stopping except to change the teams. So if you want to be safe, now’s the time to step off this Concord.” He nodded at Gwen Stanhope. “Ma’am.”
“She don’t got a say, Rourke,” the deputy told the guard.
“But you do,” the guard said.
“She’s going to El Paso.”
Gwen’s head shook and she laughed. “A hangman’s noose or the Apaches? Not much difference, I reckon.”
“You don’t know Apaches,” Rourke said.
“She’s going,” Reed told him.
The guard’s head shook. “And the rest of you folks?”
The newspaper editor scribbled quickly on the back of an envelope. Taking notes, Gwen figured, on whatever paper he had handy.
The man with the carpetbags said, “I . . . well . . . my . . . business in . . .El Paso . . . it . . . just won’t . . . wait.”
“You folks certain?” Rourke asked.
“Dead certain,” said the man with the red beard.
“Must you say dead ?” whined the one with the big belly.
The guard turned his head and spit into the dust. He lifted his shotgun, shouldered the big weapon, and shook his head before he looked up at the driver’s bench. “Petey, they’re all bound and determined to ride with us.”
“It’s their funeral,” the driver said. “We’re burnin’ daylight, Rourke. Haul your buttocks up here before I leave your sorry hide behind.”
The door was closed, and the wagon leaned and squeaked and then righted itself on its suspension as Rourke climbed into the driver’s box and settled onto the bench to the driver’s right. The brake was released, the whip popped, and Petey began cursing the mules as the Concord pulled out of Purgatory City.
“Are you covering the Indian uprising?” the man with the potbelly asked Griffin.
“My newspaper covers all the news,” the editor said. “That’s why our circulation is the largest between San Antonio and El Paso.”
“I see,” the potbellied man said.
“Are you covering the hanging, too?” asked the one with the red beard.
“The hanging of a woman will be news indeed.” Griffin smiled at Gwen Stanhope. “It’s just a pity that it must be on a bright, charming and beautiful woman such as you.”
“No talking to the prisoner,” the deputy said, “even for a member of the working press.”
The stagecoach hit a hole or ran over a log or slapped across a boulder. Rourke cursed Petey outside, and the man in black bounced up and dropped one of the ugly carpetbags at his feet. The one with the red beard reached down to pick it up.
The man in black shrieked like a baby. “Don’t you touch that! It’s mine!”
The man with the red beard straightened and glared at the timid man. “Then you pick it up yourself, bucko.”
The pale man grabbed the handle to the grip with his left hand as the red-bearded man added, “After you apologize.”
The timid man gripped the handle tighter and kept his right arm securely over the other hideous bag as he glanced at the man with the red beard. “I . . .” he started. “It . . . I . . . well . . . this . . .”
“Just say you’re sorry for your hot temper,” the one with the potbelly said. “So Nelse can forget that you slighted him and we can save all our fighting for when the Apaches hit our stagecoach and try to kill us all.”
“I wish you’d shut up about the Apaches,” Glenn Reed said.
The stagecoach rounded a corner. Outside, in the driver’s box, Rourke was screaming at Petey to watch the road, and Petey was yelling at the guard to keep his eye out for Apaches and let Petey do the driving.
“How many miles do we have before we get El Paso?” asked the man with the two ugly carpetbags.
“Depends on the roads,” answered the man with the red beard.
“And the Apaches,” added the one with the fat belly.
“Let’s just everyone shut the blazes up,” Glenn Reed said.
“This is going to be one long ride,” the newspaperman said.
Gwen Stanhope stopped listening to the useless conversation. She just looked at those two carpetbags that the man in the black woolen suit gripped like the cases held life itself. What, she wondered, would possess a man to keep such a grip on such hideous luggage? A gun? Glenn Reed had shackled her wrists in front of her. She’d be able to get a gun cocked, aimed, and have the trigger pulled before he knew he was dead.
But then she’d have to kill everyone else riding for El Paso, and that couldn’t very well happen, which made her smile as she thought again.
Nobody lives forever.
CHAPTER NINE
Billy Hawkin kicked open the door to the private parlor and suite on the top floor of Miss Matilda’s House of the Divine. The chirpy let out a scream as she sat upright in her bed.
Raising the lantern in his left hand, and leveling the Colt .45 in his right, he saw clearly by the dim, flickering yellow light from the lantern that the prostitute was in bed alone.
“Where the hell is he?” Billy demanded.
“Who?”
“The guy who paid you!” he snapped.
Behind him, Galloway stepped inside the room. Galloway carried a double-barreled shotgun, and he moved toward the bed. The chirpy pulled the covers up to cover her unmentionables.
“You mean that pale little feller?” she asked.
Galloway dropped to his knees and peered under the bed. Then he stood, jerked open the door to the armoire, and trained the shotgun’s barrels on the chirpy’s shoes, purses, some black stockings, her pills and bottles of laudanum, and a small suitcase.
“Who else?” demanded Billy.
“He ain’t here,” the girl said, and watched as Galloway kicked over a chair and looked behind the changing curtain, moved to the window, drew the curtain, and looked onto the pitched roof.
“He was with you!” Billy said.
“Well, yeah.”
Galloway turned, shook his head, and butted the stock of the shotgun on the bed. He sighed heavily, and turned his eyes to the chirpy.
“What happened to the thief ?” Billy roared.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He said he was thirsty. Maybe.” Her head shook. “I don’t know exactly what he said. But I went downstairs to fetch him some more brandy, and when I got back upstairs, he was gone.”
“Gone?” Billy Hawkin swore. “You didn’t tell Matilda?”
“No.” She lowered the covers and gave him a stare that could match he one he was trying to give her.
“Why not?”
“Because he left enough money for the rest of the night.”
“Then you could have entertained more customers and made a killing tonight. You expect me to believe you’d—”
“You can believe anything you want to believe, Billy Hawkin. What I saw was enough money and a nice note that meant I could catch up on my sleep. And that’s something girls in my line of work don’t often get to do. You understand what I’m saying to you, Billy Hawkin? That’s all that interested me. Getting some shut-eye. Which is what I was doing until you barged in here and scared six months off my life.”
He swore, kicked at something on the floor, or maybe just his shadow, and carried the lantern to the window and stared outside.
“He ain’t there, Billy,” Galloway said.
“Why don’t you let me find that out for myself ?”
“Fine,” Galloway said. “You do that. And why don’t you let me find your brother?”
“No!” Billy sang out in a voice that was filled with terror. He inhaled quickly, held the breath the longest time, and finally let it out. “Not yet, Galloway,” he said softly, and tried to paint a smile across his face, but that failed miserably and he looked again into the blackness at the roof. “What did he write in that note?” he shot out.
“It’s none of your business.”
“Let me see it,” he bellowed, turning and shoving the .45’s barrel in front of the chirpy’s nose.
The prostitute swore, slid over toward the nightstand, and pulled a crumpled yellow slip of paper out of the ashtray. “Here!” She shoved the paper directly at him. “Read it your ownself.”
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