The Loner: Seven Days to Die

by J. A. Johnstone

  “You mean because I’m Chinese? I worked here, for the original Rosarita. Before she died, she told me she wanted me to take over the place and keep her name on it. I thought if this was going to continue to be Rosarita’s, the woman who ran it should be known by that name, too.” She slipped the gun back into the hidden pocket in her dress and turned to a sidebar. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “No, thanks,” The Kid said.

  Rosarita picked up a decanter and poured a drink for herself into a squat crystal glass. She sipped it as she turned back to him.

  “You didn’t come here to ask me about my name. You wouldn’t have been so insistent about that. Ask what you came to find out.”

  “I’m looking for work,” he said. He had mentioned Bledsoe by name to the old man outside, which had been a mistake. He took a different tack with the woman.

  The almond-shaped eyes narrowed as she studied him. “I don’t hire men, except to keep things peaceful here in the house. You have the look of a man who would be a lot more capable of that than Brady…but I doubt if I could afford you.”

  “I’m not talking about working in a whorehouse. No offense.”

  She smiled coldly. “None taken. What are you talking about, then?”

  “I reckon you know. Gun work. Gehenna’s got a reputation as a wide-open town. I figured somebody around here might have need of my services. The madam of the best whorehouse in town generally knows all the men in town who have money.”

  She inclined her head in acknowledgment of that point.

  “I was hoping you could point me in the right direction,” The Kid went on.

  She came closer to him. Now that he had a better look at her, he saw she was older than he’d thought at first. Probably forty, although it was a well-preserved forty, especially for a woman who’d been in her line of work.

  “The man you want to see,” she said, “is Matthew Harrison. At least, that would be the case if he didn’t already have several perfectly capable gunmen working for him.”

  “Cragg and the others I saw leaving the place, after they’d gunned down those three men in your parlor?”

  “That’s right. I’m afraid if you showed up at Harrison’s and tried to take the place of any of them, you’d wind up as dead as those poor men downstairs.”

  “Maybe. But if Harrison’s the only one hiring around here…”

  Rosarita’s lips twisted bitterly. “It’s more than that. It’s only been a few weeks since he showed up, but in that time, Harrison has taken over almost everything in Gehenna. Nobody knows what happened to George Hopkins, who owned The Birdcage Saloon before Harrison took it over and renamed it after himself. All the other businesses have to pay him a share of their profits now, or else bad things happen to them that no one can explain…but everyone knows who’s behind them.” She tossed back the rest of her drink. “Why the hell am I telling you all this? If you did wind up working for Harrison, you could tell him I was trying to stir up sentiment against him.”

  The Kid smiled wryly. “It sounds to me like he doesn’t have any trouble doing that himself. I don’t see how a man can take over a whole town with only four gun-wolves, though.”

  “Oh, he has a dozen other men working for him. Cragg, Woods, Malone, and Dakota Pete are just the worst of the bunch.”

  Something else she said had caught The Kid’s interest. “You said Harrison’s only been here in town for a short time?”

  “A little over a month. That just goes to show you a lot can change in a hurry, if there are enough guns involved.”

  The Kid didn’t doubt that. “Do you know where he came from?”

  “No idea,” Rosarita said.

  “What does he look like?”

  The madam tilted her head to the side and frowned as she gazed at The Kid. “That’s it,” she murmured. “There’s something about you that seems familiar, and now I’ve finally figured out what it is. You look a little like him. Harrison, I mean. You’re younger, and he has a beard, but there’s a definite resemblance.”

  The Kid’s heart slugged heavily in his chest. With an effort, he kept his face under control so it didn’t reveal what he was feeling.

  Bledsoe was in Gehenna. For some unknown reason, he was calling himself Matthew Harrison, but everything else fit. He had seized power in the border town and surrounded himself with gunmen. Capturing him and taking him back to Hell Gate wasn’t going to be easy.

  But The Kid had never expected it to be easy. It was just one more challenge he would have to meet.

  He had the glimmering of an idea how he might be able to do it.

  The woman had moved closer to him, close enough she was able to lift a hand and rest her fingers lightly against his chest. She looked up at him with dark brown eyes and said, “You should stay away from Harrison’s place. You don’t need to get yourself killed.”

  “A man’s got to eat and have a place to stay.”

  “Stay here for a few days,” she suggested.

  “You’ve already got a bouncer.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t say I wanted to hire you.”

  “I don’t have enough money to afford to stay.”

  “You wouldn’t have to pay.” Her hand slid up to his shoulder and stole behind his neck. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek.

  “You said you don’t go with the customers.”

  “You wouldn’t be a customer if you weren’t paying,” she pointed out. She lifted her face to his and pressed her mouth against his lips. When she drew back a moment later, she whispered, “Damn it, I’ve always had a weakness for a young, handsome man…”

  It was tempting. He couldn’t deny that. Rosarita was quite a bit older than him, but she had a timeless beauty about her. It might be nice to take some comfort with her. It wouldn’t mean anything. Just some momentary pleasure to take the edge off what had been a rough few weeks.

  “Sorry,” The Kid said quietly as he took hold of her wrist and moved her hand from the back of his neck. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to pass.”

  Her face hardened. “The opportunity won’t come around again, you know.”

  “I know. There may be some cold, lonely nights when I regret the decision and call myself a damned fool. But that’s the way it is.”

  “You are a damned fool,” she said. “You’re going down there, aren’t you? You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “No, I’m going to see a man about a job.”

  “You men and your guns,” she said bitterly as she stepped back. “It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?”

  “Not always,” The Kid said. “But often enough.”

  “Then go. Go on, damn you. If you live, don’t come back here.” She turned away. “I don’t want to see you.”

  “Fine.” He paused at the door. “I’m obliged for the information, and sorry about what happened downstairs.”

  “It was none of your doing. It’ll happen again, as long as Harrison and his men are running things around here. And you…you’ll either be one of them, or you’ll be dead, soon enough.”

  There was a third option, The Kid thought, but he couldn’t explain that to her. Perhaps he could sometime in the future, if luck was with him.

  He went downstairs. The soiled doves had all disappeared. Brady and the undertaker were carrying out the corpses and loading them into the back of a wagon.

  The Kid stepped onto the boardwalk and turned in the direction Cragg and the other gunmen had gone earlier. His steps took him past the old man, who was sitting in the chair again and rubbing his fingers over the smooth wood of his guitar.

  “El Diablo walks the night,” Viejo said to The Kid’s back. “The man who wears Satan’s face.”

  The old man’s voice trailed off into a muttered prayer.

  Chapter 25

  The saloon stretched the length of an entire block and had two entrances, one at the corner and one down the boardwalk in the middle of the block. A fr
eshly painted sign hung from the awning and read: HARRISON’S SALOON—COLD BEER—GAMES OF CHANCE—DANCE HALL.

  It was a full-service establishment, The Kid thought with a faint smile as he studied it from across the street.

  Business was good. Men went in and out the batwinged entrance at the corner. The Kid looked through the big plate-glass front windows and saw a horseshoe-shaped bar in the center of the big room. To the right of the bar were tables where men sat and drank and flirted with the girls in short, spangled dresses who worked there. To the rear on the right was the open area where men could dance with the girls for a price. The player piano he had heard earlier was tucked into the corner. The tinny notes had stilled when the gunshots rang out down the street, but they were playing again.

  To the left were poker tables, along with faro and keno layouts and a roulette wheel. Past the gambling tables was a staircase that led to the second floor. The girls probably earned some of their pay up there, too.

  The room was brightly lit by oil-burning chandeliers decorated with cut glass. Overall, Harrison’s was a little bigger and a little fancier than a lot of frontier saloons, but it was still a saloon. The Kid knew even without stepping in there what it would smell like—whiskey, stale beer, tobacco smoke, cheap perfume, and hair pomade.

  To some men, that was the breath of life. Not to him. Being around that many people bothered him. He rode alone by choice, and for a good reason. He preferred the solitude of his grief.

  Life just didn’t seem to understand that. It kept dragging him into one mess after another. He would never be free of the current mess until he brought Bloody Ben Bledsoe—or Matthew Harrison as he was calling himself—to justice.

  The Kid started across the street, pausing to let a group of vaqueros on their way to the saloon get there first and push through the batwings ahead of him. He followed them in, knowing their wide-brimmed, steeple-crowned sombreros would shield him from immediate view.

  The Kid’s eyes quickly surveyed the room from one end to the other, before anyone got a good look at him.

  Alonzo Cragg and Dakota Pete stood at the bar, drinking. Clyde Woods, the gambler, was sitting at one of the poker tables, playing with several other men. The Kid didn’t see J.P. Malone. And he didn’t see anybody who looked the least bit like the face he saw, with or without a beard, looking out at him from the mirror when he shaved.

  Bledsoe might be back in the office, or he might be upstairs.

  One thing was certain: if he was at the saloon, a ruckus would draw him out.

  The Kid ambled over to the bar. He could pick a fight with one of Bledsoe’s top gun-wolves. If he survived, there was a chance Bledsoe might hire him to replace the dead man.

  There was just as good a chance if he killed, say, Dakota Pete, the rest of Bledsoe’s men would throw down on him. The Kid had plenty of confidence in his abilities, but he was realistic. He couldn’t outshoot a dozen professional killers. He would get lead in several of them, no doubt about that, but they would down him, too.

  There was no need to rush, he told himself. He was a long way from Hell Gate Prison, and none of the men who were after him knew where he was. He could afford to bide his time and wait for a better chance to work his way closer to Bledsoe.

  Standing not far from Cragg and Dakota Pete, he nodded to the bartender and ordered a beer. The apron drew it, slid the foaming mug across the hardwood, and said, “That’ll be four bits.”

  “For a beer?” The Kid asked with a surprised frown.

  “For the coldest, best beer you’ll find this side of Tucson, friend,” the bartender said. “Anyway, that’s the going rate, so take it or leave it.”

  The Kid pushed a couple of coins across the bar. “I’ll take it.” He picked up the beer and took a swallow of it. The bartender had overstated the case a little, but the beer wasn’t bad.

  From the corner of his eye, The Kid saw Dakota Pete nudge Cragg. The sullen gunman leaned back so he could look past his big companion. After a moment, Cragg picked up the bottle in front of him and splashed whiskey into a shot glass on the bar. He picked up the glass with his left hand and stepped away from the bar, turning toward The Kid.

  “Hey,” said Cragg, “aren’t you the hombre we saw a little while ago when we were coming out of the China gal’s whorehouse?”

  The Kid set his mug on the bar, turned to look at Cragg, and nodded. “I think so.”

  “You follow us up here, mister? You looking for trouble?”

  The Kid shook his head. “No. The madam said they were closed temporarily—something about having to haul out some corpses—so I figured it wouldn’t do me any good to wait around there. I came up here looking for a drink instead.”

  Cragg nodded, seeming to accept the explanation. He held out the glass. “Have one on me.”

  “Thanks. I don’t mind if I do.”

  The Kid reached for the glass.

  Cragg dropped it as his other hand flashed toward the gun on his hip.

  The Kid expected it. His eyes didn’t follow the falling glass, as Cragg had figured they would. Instead, The Kid took a fast step forward and threw a hard left that smashed into Cragg’s jaw just as the man’s gun started to clear leather.

  The powerful blow sent Cragg stumbling backwards into Dakota Pete, who instinctively grabbed him to keep him from falling. That occupied Pete’s hands long enough for The Kid to palm out his Colt and level it at both of them.

  “Don’t try reaching for your guns,” The Kid warned as he leaned against the bar. He thumbed back the hammer. “If the bartender or anybody else behind me gets the bright idea of walloping me over the head, my thumb’s coming off this hammer. At this range, there’s a good chance the slug will go clean through both of you.”

  Dakota Pete didn’t go for his gun. Neither did anyone else. They weren’t going to get mixed up in that when The Kid already had his gun cocked and aimed.

  The punch had made Cragg groggy for a moment, but with a shake of his head to clear away the cobwebs, he straightened and snarled at Dakota Pete, “Let go of me, you big Scandihoovian lummox.”

  “Sorry, Lonzo,” Pete rumbled. “I was just tryin’ to keep you from fallin’ down.”

  Cragg spread his feet a little, stiffened his back, and tugged his vest back into place as he glared at The Kid. “What’s the idea?” he demanded.

  “You tried to draw on me,” The Kid reminded him.

  “I was just seeing what you’re made of,” Cragg snapped.

  “Well, now you know.”

  “I wasn’t going to shoot.”

  “Didn’t have any way of knowing that,” The Kid drawled.

  “All right, all right.” Cragg’s gun had fallen to the sawdust-littered floor at his feet. “I’m going to pick up my iron now.”

  “Go ahead. Might be a good idea to do it careful-like, though.”

  Cragg bent and retrieved the revolver. He slid it into leather and then said, “You can lower that hammer now, cowboy. You’re making me a mite nervous. Your thumb could slip.”

  “It never has yet,” The Kid said. He carefully let the hammer down, lowering the gun until he held it at his side, but he didn’t holster it.

  “What’s your name?”

  He didn’t see any reason not to tell the truth. “They call me Kid Morgan.”

  Dakota Pete said, “I think I’ve heard of him, Lonzo. He’s supposed to be pretty fast.”

  “I’d say we saw that with our own eyes.” To The Kid, he said, “I’m Alonzo Cragg. This is Dakota Pete.”

  The Kid gave them a curt nod and said, “I’d be willing to bet you have quite a few friends in here, Cragg.”

  The gunman gave a minuscule shrug.

  “If any of them decide to make a try for me, they might get me,” The Kid went on, “but I’ll get you first. If I’m going to hell, you’ll be there to welcome me.”

  “Don’t be so damn touchy,” Cragg snapped. “I told you I wasn’t going to shoot you. Nobody’s going to bot
her you, Morgan.” He raised his voice a little so everyone in the saloon could hear him as he said it. “Now, how about I buy you a drink? For real this time.”

  “All right,” The Kid said. “You won’t mind if I don’t holster this shooting iron just yet?”

  “Suit yourself.” Cragg kicked aside the glass he had dropped and motioned for the bartender to bring a fresh one. He poured drinks for himself, Pete, and The Kid, who picked up his glass with his left hand.

  “You sure are a distrustful cuss,” Pete said.

  “It’s how I’ve lived this long,” The Kid told him.

  The three men drank. Around them, the atmosphere in the saloon slowly got back to normal after the tension that had gripped the room when it appeared guns might start to roar at any second.

  “What brings you to Gehenna?” Cragg asked as he started to pour a second round.

  “Same things that have taken me everywhere else I’ve been. A horse, and the need to earn some money.”

  “I hear some of the mines across the border in Mexico are hiring.”

  “I’m not a miner,” The Kid said.

  Cragg grunted. “No, I can see that.”

  “You know of anything else a man could do around here to earn some wages?” The Kid asked. Fate had presented him with an opportunity, and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by.

  Before Cragg could answer the question, The Kid heard a stirring in the crowd behind him. He had just started to turn when a man’s voice asked, “Who’s your new friend, Alonzo?”

  The Kid continued the turn, moving smoothly and unhurriedly as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He found himself looking straight into the face of the man he had come so far to find.

  Bloody Ben Bledsoe.

  Chapter 26

  It wasn’t exactly like looking into a mirror. There were some significant differences. Bledsoe’s eyes were set slightly closer together. His nose was a little broader, his jaw slightly more angular, although it was hard to be sure about that because of the close-cropped sandy beard.

  With the two of them standing together, no one except maybe blind Viejo would have any trouble telling them apart. If a person was only looking at one of them, however, it was understandable one might be mistaken for the other, The Kid thought.