Shadow Walker

by J. R. Roberts

  “First of all, I know you lied to me the last time I was in here,” Clint told him.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “About someone breaking into Alicia’s room? The door was in fine shape. Nobody broke into anything.”

  “The owner could have fixed it,” Holling said quickly.

  “The owner was too lazy to notice she was even missing.”

  Holling shrugged a few times, but that wasn’t enough to convince Clint. “It’s like you said before. I’m the one losing money here.”

  “Perhaps.” Clint settled back into his chair, but didn’t let the intensity in his eyes falter in the slightest. “How much did the Indian pay you?”

  “W-what?”

  “The Indian,” Clint repeated. “You know . . . the one who traveled with that tall fellow?”

  Holling didn’t move. In fact, he kept so still that he looked almost unnatural. The longer he stayed that way, the more it seemed he wanted to crawl under the table and hide. When Holling let out his breath and swallowed another, the knot in his stomach was almost big enough for Clint to see.

  “Th-those two aren’t . . . I mean . . . I never met those two until a few weeks ago.”

  Even though he knew he had to maintain the appearance that he knew exactly where the conversation was going, Clint still had to fight awfully hard to keep from smiling. “Go on.”

  Sensing that his battle had just been lost, Holling let out a breath that seemed to empty his lungs completely. In fact, it even seemed to empty the rest of his body and leave nothing but a shriveled husk. Slouching forward, Holling closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to them. “I didn’t even have a damn choice, you know. That asshole Coltraine came in saying he was gonna kill all my girls if I didn’t give him at least one.”

  “He’d kill all the women working here?” Clint asked in disbelief.

  “Yeah! Can you believe it? Deplete all my stock just to prove a point! And from the things I’ve heard about him, he’d do it.”

  It took all of Clint’s strength to keep from knocking Holling out of his boots when he heard the man refer to women as stock. He didn’t try too hard to cover up the distaste he felt, since the gleam in his eyes was doing wonders to loosen Holling’s tongue.

  “Alicia’d been giving me grief for a while,” Holling said. “All this talk about wanting me to hire her sister for odd jobs, but not try to get even more money out of her. It’s like she owned this place or something.”

  “Who’s Coltraine?”

  “He’s a bad piece of work. I know some fellas in Wichita who lost every damn one of their whores to him. The ones that didn’t come along easy were cut up and booted out in the middle of nowhere. By the time he came around again, the others were more than willing to deal with him.”

  “Why not stand up to him?” Clint asked. “Surely this can’t be the first time anyone tried to hone in on someone else’s territory.”

  “Coltraine’s the worst kind of killer. And even if a man could afford the sort of gunman it would take to go against him, there’s still the Indians to deal with.”

  Clint gritted his teeth and looked around the room. Although the guards were pulling themselves together and settling into their positions, they weren’t ready to make another move yet. Sensing that situation could change at any moment, Clint put a bit of impatience into his voice when he asked, “Why does Coltraine take the women?”

  “Hell if I know. I never sat down to chat with the man.”

  “Where does he take them?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but the Injun with him was Crow. They rode toward the north nearly every time they left town, so you can add them numbers together.”

  “You’re sure he was Crow?”

  “Yeah. I seen more’n my share when I was a trapper.”

  “All right, then. Now that we seem to be getting along so well, why don’t we take our friendship to new heights?”

  Holling scowled suspiciously at Clint and then looked around as if someone were playing a trick on him. Finally, he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I want to find this Coltraine and you could only benefit if I do. In fact, several men in your line of work in this area could probably benefit if I tracked that man down. If what you say is true, I’ll be putting him straight out of business.”

  Slowly, Holling’s face shifted from suspicion to elation. “If someone like yourself couldn’t do it, no one could. The law sure don’t seem to give a damn.”

  “And I won’t even need any of your men to help me,” Clint added.

  Holling’s eyes narrowed and he asked, “So what do you need?”

  “All I need is for you to forget about this meeting in case anyone comes around asking about it.” Letting the friendly smile drop right off his face, Clint added, “If you set up an ambush just to prove yourself to your boys, I’ll come for you as soon as I’m done with them. If you get angry and decide to smack around some of the other girls unfortunate enough to work here, I’ll pay you a visit when I come back.”

  Clint leaned forward slightly while staring into Holling’s eyes as if he were glaring straight down into the man’s soul. “In fact, if some nasty accident was to happen to me, your competition or your employees, I’ll figure you’re behind it and come for you.”

  “So what the hell am I supposed to do?” Holling squealed.

  “Keep your nose clean and watch out for the girls who work for you. It may sound like a lot, but there’s plenty of other men who do a real good job of it every day.”

  Clint smirked once more, which gave not one bit of comfort to Holling. As he stood up from his chair, Clint turned and looked to find all of the gunmen standing at various spots waiting for the signal from their boss. It didn’t take much to see that they were all positioned with the knowledge that Clint would have to walk past every one of them if he intended on getting through the front door.

  Tipping his hat to them, Clint walked between the card tables and toward one of the closer gunmen. Clint’s face was cold as a wall of ice, which was more than enough to freeze the gunman in his boots until some more of his friends were able to help.

  Clint had no intention of waiting around that long and he had no intention of walking through the front door. At least, he wasn’t going to use the front door that everyone else used.

  Most people might have forgotten about the other door leading into the Cherry Blossom, just as they’d probably forgotten the place had actually once been two storefronts, with nothing more than a wall or two separating them. The construction was shoddy and chunks of those walls still remained. The other door might have been nailed shut, but that job was poorly done as well.

  Clint pushed the door open hard enough to dislodge the nails. Plumes of brown dust spewed from the hinges amid a series of ear-splitting creaks. It was the only resistance Clint got as he left the Cherry Blossom.

  TWELVE

  The next morning, Clint woke up to the sound of someone’s knuckles pounding against his door. His hand reflexively went for the Colt stashed under his pillow and he was aiming the gun before his eyes had fully focused.

  As if sensing the gun pointed at the door, the person knocking on the other side of it stopped and spoke in a gruff voice. “I know you’re in there, Clint.”

  Recognizing Sal’s voice, Clint lowered the gun and walked over to the door. He opened it carefully until he could get a look outside. Sal was alone, but he stormed inside as if he had an entire posse behind him.

  “Just what the hell have you been up to?” Sal growled as he stomped through the doorway.

  “Good morning, Sal,” Clint said.

  Sal looked at the gun in Clint’s hand, but didn’t seem concerned by it in the least. “Last time I checked, the worst thing you woke up with was Jasmine.”

  “Sounds like you’re jealous.”

  For one of the few times since Clint had met the big man, Sal grinned. “Yeah. Me and every other cowboy
who struts in here thinking she’s on the menu like the other girls.”

  “Jasmine runs your business pretty well. I wouldn’t take the chance of upsetting her if she heard you talking like that.”

  Sal waved those words off as if he were swatting a horse’s rump. “Eh, you’re the fool if you think she doesn’t know the torture she puts my customers through when she struts through here and refuses all the offers she gets.”

  “Is that why you almost knocked my door off its hinges?”

  “No,” Sal said as he tried to work himself back up into the lather he’d had a few moments ago. “I wanted to ask you what in the hell you thought you were doing by riling up Holling the way you did.”

  Pulling on his shirt, Clint began gathering up his things as he asked, “Did I upset him?”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You know goddamn well what you did. We had a nice little truce going. Since we don’t exactly have the sympathetic ear of the law around here, that’s about all that separates me and him from a shooting war.”

  “There’s not going to be a war. Just settle down.”

  “And where the hell do you think you’re going?” Sal asked as if he’d only just noticed what Clint was doing. “Looks like you’re clearing out.”

  “I am.”

  “So you just shake up the hornet’s nest and ride away? That’s perfect.”

  “Do you even know about the girl who came here the other day crying about her missing sister?”

  Sal’s face lost some of its anger and he nodded. “Yeah. I heard.”

  “I’m going to track down that missing girl. Something tells me there’ll be others.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “What can you tell me about Coltraine and his Indian friends?”

  “I can tell you that you don’t want to be messing with them. They’re cold-blooded killers, Clint, and there’s lots of ’em. You’d do well to stay here and fix the mess you’ve already got.”

  “There’s no mess,” Clint said. “Holling won’t make a move because he’s a coward and because it would be bad for business. He’ll sit on his fat ass until he’s got no other choice and you must know that just as well as I do.”

  Sal shrugged. “Holling may be easy to handle, but Coltraine and the men he rides with sure as hell ain’t.”

  “What do you know of them?” Clint asked.

  “Not a lot. I don’t have a damn thing to do with their kind.”

  “I’ve heard that’s a dangerous position to take.”

  Sal chuckled once and said, “That’s why I got to try and get help from the likes of you whenever I can.”

  “Do you know where they go? Where they meet up? Where they come from? Anything at all?”

  Taking another step into the small room, Sal dropped a hand on Clint’s shoulder that felt more like a thick cut of beef. “I told you I don’t have anything to do with them and that’s the way it is. Now, you’ve done more than enough to make up for the money I loaned you. In fact, you did a hell of a lot more and I thank you for it.”

  “You run a nice place,” Clint said. “The free beer was worth it.”

  “Then take some free advice, as well. Stay away from Coltraine. Some say he’s got a whole tribe of redskins backing him up and I’ve heard nothing to dispute it. I may not be a fancy gunfighter, but I know you’re the sort of man who dives into a fight and tries to figure his way out later. Someday you may just dive into something that you can’t figure your way out of.”

  THIRTEEN

  Even though Sal didn’t have much to say regarding Coltraine, he was still more helpful than Holling. As Clint prepared to leave, Sal recounted the times Coltraine had come to pay him a visit. His story was similar to Holling’s in most regards, except for the part where a girl was handed over as a quick way to get Coltraine to leave him alone. While Holling had looked on that as a cost of doing business, Sal considered it a filthy shame.

  When Clint was ready to leave, Sal made sure he was well supplied with everything from food to blankets. In addition to all of that, he stopped Clint from leaving by taking hold of Eclipse’s reins outside of Tad’s.

  “Here,” Sal said as he thrust a thick fist up toward Clint. “Take this.”

  The moment Clint saw the money poking out from between Sal’s fingers, he shook his head. “No need for that. We’re square.”

  “Go on. You can work it off when you come back.”

  Tugging on Eclipse’s reins, he got the black Darley Arabian moving away from Sal. “There’s a bank along the way that’s got enough to keep me going for a while, but thanks for the offer.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you go there to pay off yer goddamn debt?” Sal shouted as Clint rode away.

  “Because,” Clint replied as he twisted in his saddle to look over his shoulder, “I probably would have just spent my time in your place anyhow. Give my best to Jasmine.”

  Sal shook his head and waved dismissively. Even though Clint couldn’t hear him, he knew well enough that the big man would be muttering to himself for a while.

  Clint’s intention had been to rest up and head out after a hearty breakfast and a talk with Sal, but since his schedule had been upended a bit, he rode out of Markton earlier than planned. One of the things that Sal’s and Holling’s stories had in common was the fact that Coltraine and the others he brought along with him usually arrived from the north and headed back that way when they left. While Clint fully intended on following that lead, he turned west as soon as he put Markton behind him.

  He rode for a mile or two before finally spotting what he’d been looking for. The old farmhouse was so small that it practically blended in with every other shape on the horizon. Clint watched carefully as he approached, but saw no sign of life anywhere near the house. Even so, he brought Eclipse to a stop in front of the house and watched it from the saddle.

  “It’s Clint,” he announced in a voice that shouldn’t have carried too far. “Anyone hear me?”

  One of the shutters was nudged open by the barrel of a rifle. A woman’s face peered out from within the house and didn’t relax until she got a good look at Clint for herself. Only then did Jill lower the rifle. “Stay right there and I’ll let you in,” she said.

  “Don’t bother,” Clint replied. “I only came along to make sure you two got here all right.”

  Jill nodded. “We did. Kaylee’s in here, cleaning up a bit. This was her pappy’s house, so she knows where there’s still some things we can use around here.”

  “Do you have enough food for a few days?”

  “Maybe even a week. How long will we need to stay here?”

  “Does anyone know you’re the one taking Kaylee under your wing?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Is Holling one of them?” Clint asked.

  “No! The only ones who know about her wouldn’t want to hurt her. The rest don’t even care.”

  “Just so long as you know you can trust them.”

  Shaking her head, Jill told him, “Every last one of the girls consoled her just like every last one of them is helping us now. And it’s not just the girls at the billiard hall. Alicia’s friends from the Blossom are helping, too. They’re even taking up a collection to get Kaylee out of here if there’s too much trouble.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. She might want to take them up on that offer.”

  “Why?” Jill asked as her face darkened. “Is there going to be more trouble?”

  Clint saw Kaylee peeking out from another window. He gave her a wink and said, “I’ll just have to see what I can do.”

  FOURTEEN

  Clint rode west and headed for a wide pass he knew would cut all the way through the mountains. The place he was headed for was a good-sized town named Silver City. It was one of the many mining towns to benefit from a lucky strike, and one of the few to prosper after the miners had taken all they could find.

  Off the top of his head, Clint could think of at least half a dozen mo
re Silver Cities across the country, which made this one an ideal place for him to plant his own bit of silver. Rather than go to a stream or cave to dig it up, however, Clint rode into town and went to the Silver City Savings and Loan.

  It was late afternoon when he arrived and the place was fairly quiet. When he walked into the little bank, Clint noticed more than a few tellers eyeing the gun at his side. Before they could get the wrong idea of why he was there, Clint said, “I’d like to make a withdrawal from my account.”

  Judging by the uncomfortable shifting of the skinny man behind the thin iron bars, those words weren’t exactly calming. He relaxed once Clint went through the motions of withdrawing his money from a legitimate account. When he tipped his hat to conclude his business, Clint had money in his pocket and the bank hadn’t been robbed, so everyone was happy.

  Clint’s next stop was a place a little ways down the street from the saloon where he normally drank when in town. The place was called the Peacock’s Feather and was made up to be an elegant social club. None of the locals were fooled by the airs of propriety, however, since the women who conducted business there were usually wearing nothing more than a lacy slip and boots laced up to their knees.

  Walking into the place, Clint was immediately enveloped in perfumed air from the three girls who happened to be available at the moment.

  “You’re the best thing we’ve seen in a long time,” purred a busty brunette. “How about we curl up and get to know each other?”

  “First, I’d like to see whoever owns this place,” Clint said.

  The brunette didn’t even flinch as she continued to rub her hands along Clint’s chest.

  One of the other girls had dark hair as well, but a more slender figure. “You just got here and you’ve already got a complaint?” she asked.

  Clint laughed and spread his arms so he could drape them over both of the ladies who’d spoken to him. “Right about now, I doubt I could think of a complaint if my life depended on it. I just need to speak to someone who might know about a man who might’ve come around trying to cut out a piece of this place for himself.”