And he was enjoying this reprieve from his four mangy charges in the jail wagon more than he could have imagined . . .
“Cuno . . . Cuno . . . Jesus Christ . . . why torture me so . . . ?”
She drew his head down and twisted her own around. Wisps of sweat-damp hair were pasted to her flushed cheeks. Her eyes were grave. She parted her moist lips before giving a little, animal-like grunt and closing her mouth over his, ramming her tongue halfway down his throat and groaning.
At the same time, the volcano inside Cuno’s loins finally blew its top.
The girl’s face tightened and her mouth drew wide, and she chortled deep in her chest as Cuno rammed against her rump once more, harder than before, and froze there on the tips of his toes, powerful legs straight, chin aimed nearly straight up at the dark, wainscoted ceiling as he spasmed amidst the final, feral throes of their union.
He grunted as he gave a final thrust. The headboard knocked against the wall.
“Ahhhh,” the girl moaned and let her head fall facedown against the mattress, as though she’d been mortally wounded in an attack of screaming Utes.
In the hall outside the room, there was the groan of a floorboard straining under a heavy foot.
Cuno had been about to pull away from the girl, but he held still now, staring at the vertical planks of the wall before him. Ulalia wiggled her butt and gave a luxurious, satisfied sigh.
“Shh.”
She frowned, turned her face to one side. “What is it?”
Cuno continued straining his ears, picking up a slight tap on the other side of the wall.
“Your uncle,” Cuno said quietly. “He don’t harbor no ill feelings about . . .” In light of his realization about the girl’s profession, he assumed the old man’s earlier admonition hadn’t precluded a healthy romp.
“Of course not.” Ulalia chuckled huskily. “We are Cossacks. We women as well as the men have extraordinary desires.”
Cuno pulled away from her, and she grumbled in protest as she rolled around on the pillow she’d placed beneath her hips. Cuno slid his .45 from the holster hanging from the bedpost, shuffled quietly out of the bed, and padded barefoot to the door. He tipped his head against the varnished pine panel, listening.
Another tap sounded. Then another. A board squawked slightly, and he thought he detected a strained, raspy breath.
He looked down.
Two oblong shadows angled under the door from the other side.
Cuno glanced toward the bed. Ulalia lay on one hip, facing him, her rumpled hair framing her face still flushed from lovemaking. Her full, pale breasts rose and fell heavily while her smooth, soft belly expanded and contracted.
“Don’t move,” Cuno whispered in the sudden, heavy silence that had filled the room after the second storm’s passing.
He stepped to the far side of the door, in case the sport in the hall triggered shots through the door panels. Gooseflesh rose across the backs of his shoulders, and he squeezed the .45’s ivory grips as he held the revolver straight down by his side.
Had Oldenberg caught up to him? Damn foolish, taking time to carouse. Here he stood in a candlelit room, naked as the day he was born, while Oldenberg’s men were likely combing the town for him.
There was a slight chirping sound. He glanced at the porcelain doorknob. It was turning slowly.
Cuno raised the gun, pressed his shoulder against the wall, and gestured to Ulalia. The comely Russian dropped facedown on the bed and drew the covers up over her hair.
The door latch clicked. Cuno watched the door open slowly in front of him, the hinges squeaking softly.
When the door was open a foot, the barrel of a pistol slid through the crack, a foot above the knob. When the entire gun was inside the room, as well as the gloved hand wrapped around the cocked Schofield’s walnut grips, the door began opening wider.
Cuno stepped forward and rammed his right shoulder against the door panels.
A shrill cry sounded as the door slammed into the wrist of the hand holding the gun. The hand opened, the gun fell with a thud, and Cuno jerked the door open to reveal a wiry, long-faced kid stumbling back and groaning, his pimpled face with wide-set eyes creased with pain.
He had ears so large that they looked like hands clamped against both sides of his head, the lobes hanging like fleshy pendulums.
As the big-eared kid stumbled back against the opposite wall, he screamed, “Son of a bitch broke my wrist!” and fumbled for a second gun wedged behind his cartridge belt, over his belly.
Never feeling as naked as he felt standing in that doorway without a stitch on, Cuno extended his Colt and fired. The kid screamed again savagely as, lowering the old Remington he’d just brought up when Cuno’s slug had taken him through his belly, he jerked sideways and dropped to a knee.
Raging like an ox in an abattoir and holding the Remington over his belly, the kid heaved himself back to his feet and ran stumbling toward the stairs opening off the hall’s right side.
“Gawddammit!” His shout echoed loudly as he dropped to both knees at the top of the stairs and jerked his head back toward Cuno. “Why don’t nothin’ never work out right for me?”
The Remington flashed in the dawn-like light from a nearby window, the maw angling toward Cuno, beneath the kid’s gritted teeth and fury-bright eyes.
Cuno paused as he moved toward the kid, and fired another round.
The slug plunked into the kid’s left temple, twisting him around and throwing him back against a stout rail post. Cuno thumbed back his Colt’s hammer once more as he stood staring at his attacker through the wafting powder smoke.
The kid hung up against the post behind him, eyes blinking rapidly. He dropped the Remington to the hall floor, and sighed as though deeply tired. His legs jerked. His eyelids froze open, eyes staring opaquely. He slid left, tumbling down the stairs and out of sight, the rumbling thumps of his fall making the floor quiver beneath Cuno’s bare feet.
There was a pause as the kid hit the second-floor landing. Then the cacophony continued, albeit more quietly, as the corpse continued rolling on down toward the main saloon hall until it hit the bottom floor with a final, resounding boom.
17
COVERING HIS NAKED privates with his free hand, holding his cocked Colt straight out before him, Cuno bounded down the steps on his bare feet. He paused on the second-story landing, looking into the hall on both sides, expecting rifles and pistols to blossom in the stormy shadows.
Nothing moved in the near-vacant building that had no doubt hopped every day and night during the height of the boom. There was only the sound of rain dripping off the eaves outside.
Cuno continued down the stairs. The jug-eared kid lay at the bottom in a ragged, rumpled heap—still, silent, and bleeding, his neck tipped at a weird angle. Ulalia’s Uncle Tolstoy was on one knee beside the body, leaning on a long-barreled, double-bore shotgun. The man’s thick, silver mustache shown against his dark, angular face as he stared up toward Cuno.
The slap of bare feet sounded on the stairs. Cuno turned to see Ulalia, clad in a short, red satin shift, pad down the stairs behind him, one hand on the banister, hair bouncing on her shoulders. Brows arched, she shuttled her gaze between Cuno and the dead man at the bottom of the stairs.
Uncle Tolstoy shook his head gravely at Cuno. “He no friend of your like he tole?”
“Nope.” Holding his gun out, slightly crouched, Cuno looked around the room.
Tolstoy’s companions had apparently left, returned to their cabins and maybe their women. The young freighter stretched his gaze out the gray windows at the front and sides of the deep room. “He the only one here?”
“Da.” The old Russian nodded and straightened his bowed legs. “Him the only one rode in town. I seen from window. What his beef with you, hah?”
Cuno continued on down the stairs and stepped across the kid’s body, the sightless eyes gleaming dully up in the vagrant light. “He was after the men in the jail wagon I hav
e parked in your shed yonder.”
Continuing to hold his hand across his privates, feeling foolish but wanting to see how many others lay waiting for him outside before he took the time to get dressed, Cuno padded toward the front of the saloon’s main hall.
He looked out the three front windows and peered over the batwings. There was nothing but the forlorn, abandoned buildings of the mostly deserted town hunkering wetly in the dripping aftermath of the storm. Cuno could make out no hoofprints in the puddle-pocked street before the saloon.
That didn’t mean no more men were out there, hidden behind rain barrels or hunkered inside the nearby shacks, possibly in the gully through which the enervated creek was churning. But the town looked and felt as abandoned as when Cuno had first ridden in.
Had the jug-eared kid been alone?
Cuno had to make sure. But first he had to find some clothes to wear until his own were dry.
As he made his way back to the rear of the room, Tolstoy was going through the dead man’s pockets, grunting disapprovingly at the few coins and single crumpled paper dollar he found in a pocket. He was handing a tarnished pocket watch up to Ulalia, standing barefoot on the bottom step, when Cuno came up.
“There a back door to this place?” Cuno asked.
Tolstoy stopped counting the dead kid’s coins to tip his head back and look up at Cuno as though he hadn’t quite heard what he’d said.
Ulalia shook the pocket watch and held it up to her ear. “We keep it barred when we’re not hauling in wood.” She seemed oddly unperturbed by the attack and the killing, as though such dustups were part and parcel of life in Petersburg—or had been before most everyone had left.
Maybe it was a welcome break from the recent boredom, Cuno speculated vaguely. He himself could have done without it. But then, he was damn lucky it had just been the kid . . . so far.
Cuno looked around once more, listening. When he turned toward the stairs, he saw that Ulalia’s eyes had dropped to his red dong peeking out from behind his hand. She chuckled. “If you’re going to fight, my blond Cossack, you better get some clothes on first.”
She dropped the watch on the kid’s lifeless chest. “Come.”
She turned and headed back up the stairs and, in spite of nearly having been greased for the proverbial frying pan only a few minutes ago, Cuno enjoyed the view as the red satin shift, trimmed with black velvet, drifted up to reveal the shifting twin ovals of her smooth bottom, and the naked backs of her full but well-turned thighs.
As he followed her back to her room, continuing to look around for more attackers, he wondered if he should offer payment for her services. Then again, he didn’t want to offend her. Here was where his lack of experience caused undue perplexity, and he had enough problems with his four prisoners and likely a dozen swollen creeks in the back country between here and Crow Feather.
He’d just drop a few coins on the dresser on his way out.
Ulalia rummaged around her own room and another room down the hall, until she’d come up with an armful of men’s clothes—longhandles, faded and slightly torn denim jeans, and a heavy gray workshirt that appeared large enough for his burly frame. She even found a neckerchief, as well, but he left the kerchief on the bed, as she’d assured him the Indian girl was drying his own duds before a hot fire even as they spoke, and that they’d be ready in another hour.
Cuno couldn’t help wondering where the clothes had come from. Why wouldn’t the men who’d worn them into the saloon have worn them out? But he had enough on his mind without looking a gift horse in the mouth. No sooner had he stepped into his boots, which had been gently dried in front of the downstairs hearth, than he donned his hat and headed outside.
It had occurred to him that the kid had possibly only been a diversion while others sprang the four prisoners from the stable. So it was with a palpable lightening of his chest that he saw the padlock still looped through the handles of the stable doors.
“Avery, that you?” Frank Blackburn’s cautious query echoed in the musty shadows as Cuno turned the key in the padlock. He didn’t think he’d ever feel relieved to hear the pugnacious little bastard’s voice again, but relieved he was.
Blackburn and the others obviously were not relieved to see him, however.
As Cuno threw the doors open, Simms sagged against the bars, lower jaw sagging. “Ah, shit!”
Cuno closed the doors behind him and moved into the shadows relieved by the blue-gray light angling through several sashed windows.
“Let me guess,” drawled Colorado Bob through the bars, blinking his snaky, crestfallen eyes. “You’ve added another notch to your pistol grips.”
“Don’t see the kid’s big ears hanging off his belt.” Blackburn slumped down against the cage’s far wall with a sigh. “If I was you, Widow Maker, I woulda taken them ears. You coulda preserved ’em in vinegar and sold peeks for quarters on any street corner in Denver.”
Cuno peered over a stable halfway down the alley’s right side. A saddled blue roan looked at him over its right shoulder, twitching its ears and waving its tail. A local’s horse, obviously.
“At least he had both of his ears.” Cuno, having grabbed his rifle from his saddle sheath, stepped into the stall of the saddled horse. He intended to follow his jug-eared would-be assassin’s back trail for a ways, to make sure no one else was out here. Faster to take the already saddled horse than to waste time saddling Renegade.
“Hear that, Fuego?” Colorado Bob chuckled as Cuno grabbed the roan’s reins. “Widow Maker’s makin’ fun of your condition.”
Cuno backed the horse out of the stall and glanced at the jail wagon.
Fuego, sitting in his customary place against the cage’s front wall, hacked phlegm from his throat, then turned his head to spit it through the bars. He muttered something so softly in Spanish that Cuno couldn’t have made it out even if he’d understood the tongue. He doubted the half-breed was praying for Cuno’s continued good health.
“Easy, easy,” he told the horse as it bobbed its head restlessly, wary of the stranger.
He led the gelding back through the open doors and into the weedy lot fronting the stable.
As he threw the doors closed behind him, Simms yelled, “Hey, we’re hungry, ya son of a bitch!”
The doors thudded closed, rocking the stable’s front wall. Holding his Winchester in one hand, Cuno swung into the leather and reined the jittery mount back toward the main trail, the roan’s hooves splashing up water around the stirrups.
Though more rain had fallen since the kid had ridden into town, his water-filled tracks still shone in the muddy caliche. Cuno racked a shell into the Winchester’s breech one-handed as he put the horse up the trail rising and twisting up out of the canyon’s west end.
The sky was clearing, and the sun was peeking out between high, ragged clouds, when Cuno checked the roan down suddenly. He lowered the Winchester over the horse’s head and rose up in the saddle.
A body lay belly down along the left side of the trail, parallel to it, head on the downslope, boots on the upslope. The water had dug shallow troughs to either side, and chunks of clay and stones had washed up against the man’s arms and legs and against the base of his chin, damming up against his open lips and mustache.
His hat lay farther off the trail and a gaping hole shone in the back of his head, blood and white flecks of brain and bone congealing in his thin brown hair. More of the same viscera had spewed off into the rocks and grass and against a bullet-pocked pine trunk.
Cuno looked around warily, then quickly slid off the roan’s back. Holding the reins in one hand and the rifle in the other, he crouched over the dead man and turned him over.
Cuno’s mouth quirked up on one side. The man’s right eye socket was a grisly mess of liver-colored blood flecked with lice-like bits of brain tissue. The other eyelid rested lightly shut, as though the man were only dozing.
Cuno straightened slowly, swinging his head this way and that. His gaze held
on the opposite side of the trail. Hefting the rifle, he crossed the trail and tramped into the brush, stopping before a dense chokecherry thicket over which another dead man lay, back down, legs and arms dangling across the gray, spindly branches, as though he’d been dropped from the sky.
His upside-down head faced Cuno. One bullet had bored a clean hole through his cheek. Cuno couldn’t see it from this angle, but apparently the man had taken another slug through the top of his head. Blood as thick as molasses webbed down from his scalp, pooling in the wet yellow grass beneath.
His eyes were wide and bloodshot. His thin, mustached lips were drawn far back from his teeth, in a perpetual agonized scream.
Cuno sucked air between his two front teeth. “Christ.”
Both this man and the one by the trail were well-armed. Cuno had seen enough cutthroats to know these two fit the bill. Oldenberg’s men, without a doubt. But how had they ended up dead?
He scoured the trail and saw where four horses had held up amidst a mess of scuffed sand, dirt, and blood, and one horse—the kid’s, from the hoofprints—had ridden on down canyon toward Petersburg. Straightening after examining the blood-washed trail, he heard a whinny from down the northern slope. The roan answered, rippling its withers.
Cuno walked to the edge of the steep slope and peered down into scattered pines and deadfall. A quarter mile away, two saddled horses—a buckskin and an Appaloosa—stood at the base of the far canyon wall, facing each other as though conferring upon a serious dilemma.
They were swishing their tails. The Appy turned toward Cuno, lifted another whinny, and shook its head belliger ently.
“I’ll be damned.”
Cuno mounted the roan and gigged the horse down the steep bank and gently sloping meadow. Not far from the two horses, he found the third body—another cutthroat deader than last year’s Christmas goose.
This one had been shot through the mouth. The bullet had exited the back of his neck. He was rolled up against the boulder he’d apparently fallen against, judging by the blood smear, and upon which he’d apparently cracked his head open. He lay in a twisted heap, one knee up, one arm bent behind him, his chin pointed at the eastern horizon. Blood dribbled down his scalp and into his eyes. More thick, half-congealed blood flowed from his mouth like oil from a spring.
.45-Caliber Widow Maker Page 14