“Yeah, but you ain’t got bones like I do. I ever tell you about the time a bunch of trappers I was with got jumped by a passel o’ Blackfeet up in Montana?”
“I don’t think so,” Bill said as he sat down behind the desk. “We’ve only known each other less than a week. I reckon you’ve got a lot of stories I haven’t heard yet.”
“Oh, a whole heap of ’em,” Flint agreed. “But if you keep me on as deputy, I’ll get around to all of ’em.”
“You want the job permanent-like?”
That surprised Bill. He had figured that a fiddle-footed old pelican like Flint would move on as soon as the threat from the Pawnee was over.
Instead Flint scratched his bearded jaw and said, “I been givin’ it some thought. You might not know it to look at me, but I ain’t as young as I used to be. Fella gets to be my age, he starts to think about settlin’ down instead of driftin’ around like I been doin’ for so many years.”
“I’d have to talk to Mayor Fleming and the town council,” Bill said. “I knew with all this Indian problem goin’ on, nobody would mind me deputizing you, but they’d have to agree if I was to hire you permanent. They’re the ones that would be paying your wages.”
“I don’t care that much about the wages. I’d just like to have a roof over my head and some grub. That Scandahoovian woman over to the café is a mighty fine cook. Ain’t been but a few days, but I’ve already gotten fond of the grub she and her husband dish up.”
“I’ll talk to the mayor and the council when this is all over,” Bill promised.
“If I’m still alive, you mean. If I ain’t, then it don’t really matter, does it?”
“You’ll be alive,” Bill said. “We still don’t know if the Pawnee are anywhere within two hundred miles of here.”
Flint rubbed his shoulder again. “Somethin’ is,” he said. “Somethin’ bad.”
Starting out, Alvera Stanley had run Miss Alvera’s Academy for Young Ladies in Wichita. That was her first house after toiling in one as a soiled dove for almost a decade, a hell of a long run for a whore. Wiser than some, she had steered clear of whiskey and laudanum and maintained her looks.
Because of that, she had been popular with the customers, and she had squirreled away her share of the money she made. She had a nice little nest egg when it came time to go out on her own and establish her own house.
It had been successful, too, but Alvera found herself restless. She moved on to Abilene, and most of the girls who worked for her had accompanied her because she treated them well.
From Abilene she had gone to Dodge City and done well there, as well. Dodge was still a booming place. She could have stayed and continued to make good money there.
But then one of her regular customers had died, and a lawyer came to call on her with the shocking news that the man had left her a house he owned in a small town to the southwest called Redemption.
Alvera knew a little about Redemption from talking to the man, who was a widower. There was no house of ill repute in the settlement, which was why he had to come to Dodge to take care of his needs along that line.
He’d had other needs, too, such as sitting and drinking brandy and talking with an attractive redheaded woman who still had some of the bloom on the rose. Friendship, if you would, and Alvera had been glad to provide that, free of charge…as long as he paid for the other things he did in the house, of course.
She hadn’t been angling for a damned thing, and no one was more surprised than she was when the lawyer showed up and told her about her inheritance.
But when she stopped and thought about moving to Redemption to claim her legacy, the idea had a definite appeal. The owner of the town’s lone saloon had a few girls working for him, but they were hardly of the same class as the ones Alvera could provide. It would be a smaller operation, so she would take only the cream of the crop with her, the best whores she had.
She probably wouldn’t have to pay off the local law, either, she had thought.
She’d been wrong about that—really wrong—but those days were over now. That young cowboy from Texas wore the marshal’s badge now, and he seemed as honest and upright as the day is long.
Good-looking, too, with that rugged but handsome face and long brown hair. Alvera had overheard some of her girls talking about how they wished the marshal would come and visit them from time to time.
That seemed pretty unlikely, though, considering that Bill Harvey was still newly married to the Monroe girl. There might come a time when he would stray, but not anytime soon.
And quite possibly not at all, Alvera sensed. She had a good feel for that sort of thing, and the marshal didn’t strike her as the kind of man who would step out on his wife.
Mainly it was peaceful in Redemption…or at least it had been lately, until the threat of being massacred by savages cropped up. Like everybody else in town these days, Alvera kept loaded weapons close at hand, including a rifle and a shotgun.
She knew how to use them, too. Any hostile who tried to bust in here would get a load of buckshot in his painted face.
Meanwhile, life went on, and that meant customers visiting the house on the edge of town, including the three who were coming down the stairs from the second floor now.
Tonight was their first visit, and Alvera hadn’t liked the looks of them as soon as she saw them.
The first man, the one who seemed like their nominal leader, was a gunman. You could tell that by looking at him. Not bad-looking, with that dark hair under his tipped-back Stetson, but he had a cruel mouth and even meaner eyes.
The other two might be trouble as well. The big, hulking one had the look of a man who liked to hurt women, and the fancy-dressed one reminded Alvera of a fox, the kind of man you wouldn’t turn your back on because he was so cunning and untrustworthy.
But she hadn’t had any excuse to turn them away. It wasn’t like she was shut down for the duration of the Indian threat. She had taken their money, they had picked out their girls, and as far as she knew everything had gone just fine upstairs. There hadn’t been any ruckus.
Now they were finished, and Alvera greeted them with a smile and said, “Would you gentlemen care for a glass of brandy before you go?”
The dark-haired gunman returned the smile. “Don’t mind if I do, Miss Alvera.”
It didn’t surprise her that he knew her name. Most people in Redemption did, although some of them wouldn’t have admitted it. She didn’t ask for his name, and he didn’t offer it.
None of the three men did, which was another reason she thought they might be trouble. Maybe they were wanted by the law. That wouldn’t surprise her a bit.
As long as they behaved themselves here, though, that was all she cared about. She poured four glasses of brandy, put them on a silver tray, and carried them over to the sofa where the big man and the dandy sat. The gunman had settled down in an armchair.
“To your health, gentlemen,” she said when all of them had drinks in their hands, including her.
“And to yours, ma’am,” the gunman said.
They drank.
“And to the Indians staying far away from Redemption,” the man went on. “Are you as worried about them as everyone else in town, Miss Alvera?”
“I’m worried,” she admitted. “Aren’t you?”
The man shrugged. “My friends and I haven’t had any run-ins with the Pawnee. They don’t have anything against us.”
“I don’t think they’re going to care about that,” Alvera said. “If they raid the town, they won’t be in any mood to talk. The fact that you’re white is all they’ll care about.”
“Maybe we should leave now, while we still can.”
“That’s up to you. It’s nearly a day’s ride to Dodge. I wouldn’t start out to make a trip like that with a Pawnee war party on the loose.”
“Well, I said maybe.” The man drank the rest of his brandy. “Chances are, we’ll stay right here. After all, the townspeople seem ready to defen
d themselves, and you’ve got a good marshal, don’t you?”
“Bill Harvey’s a nice young fella, and he did all right when outlaws raided the town a while back, but from what I hear he’s never fought Indians before.”
The blond dandy asked, “What about the deputy?”
“That old man?” Alvera shook her head. “I don’t know a thing about him. He’s new in town, hadn’t been here long at all when Bill deputized him. He claims to have a lot of experience, but who knows? He might be just an old windbag.”
The gunman stood up and handed Alvera his empty glass.
“Finish your drinks, boys,” he said. “We’d better be going.” He grinned, but it didn’t make his mouth any less cruel, Alvera noted. “There are guards all over town at night. Wouldn’t want to make any of them think we’re redskins and get them all trigger-happy.”
“I won’t let out no war whoops,” the big man said with a bit of unexpected humor.
A minute later the three men were gone. Alvera went upstairs to talk to the girls who had been with them, just to make sure there hadn’t been any problems she didn’t know about. The girls didn’t report anything out of the ordinary.
Despite that, Alvera couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. She knew men—hell, that was about all she did know!—and those three still struck her as trouble.
But with the possibility of a bunch of bloodthirsty savages about to attack the town at any minute, it was probably foolish to worry about something that might be just an unfounded hunch.
“All right, Jake, how long are we going to stay here?” Luther Macauley asked as they walked away from the whorehouse.
“Why don’t we just go ahead and hit the bank?” Oscar Kipp suggested. “In a little place like this, the safe probably ain’t any stronger than a crackerbox.”
Fraker said, “You really think it would be a good idea to rob the bank when everybody in town is walking around with a gun, just achin’ to shoot at something?” He shook his head. “We’d never make it out alive.”
“So what do we do?” Macauley said. “We’ve been here for three days. We need to get back to the rest of the boys and move on, if we’re not going to pull a job here.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t going to pull a job,” Fraker snapped. “What’s going to happen if the Indians show up?”
“All hell’s gonna break loose, that’s what’s gonna happen,” Kipp rumbled.
“Exactly. Which means that everybody will be too busy to pay any attention to what might be happening at the bank. The townspeople and the Pawnee will be so caught up with killing each other, they’ll never see what’s going on.”
Macauley chuckled. “Now I get it. But won’t we be running the risk of the Indians killing us, too, Jake?”
“We’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Fraker said.
“So for now—”
“We wait and hope the redskins show up,” Fraker said. “They’re going to help make us rich men.”
Chapter 17
Bill woke up to the sound of someone pounding on the front door of the Monroe house. It was a warm night, and he had thrown the sheet off and lay there in the bottoms of his long underwear.
As he sat up, he looked over at Eden lying next to him. Her nightgown was hiked up almost to her hips, and under other circumstances her bare legs would’ve been mighty tempting.
But Bill reached for the gun on the nightstand instead of his wife’s warm flesh. It was a hell of a thing, being marshal.
The knocking woke Eden, too. She sat up with a gasp and said, “Bill…?”
He was already on his feet beside the bed, his Colt gripped in his right hand. “I’m right here,” he told her.
“What is that?”
“Somebody knocking on the door.”
“At this time of night? Who in the world—Oh, my God. Do you think the Indians are coming?”
“Don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.”
He hurried across the room and stepped out into the second-floor hallway.
Perry Monroe’s sleep had been disturbed, too. He emerged from his room in a long nightshirt, carrying a shotgun.
“Bill?”
“Here, Mr. Monroe,” Bill told him. “Don’t shoot.”
“You think it’s the Indians?” Monroe asked, just like Eden had.
“People say they don’t attack at night.” From the looks of the thick darkness outside, the hour was after midnight. “I never put much stock in that myself.”
The two of them went downstairs, Bill taking the lead. As he approached the front door, he tightened his grip on the Colt and called through the panel, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Bill,” Josiah Hartnett’s voice came back.
Hartnett was on guard duty tonight, Bill recalled. In fact, he was supposed to be on top of the newspaper office right now. Something must have happened to make him abandon his post.
Bill jerked the door open and asked, “What is it?”
The liveryman’s bulky form loomed on the porch. “One of the outriders came in,” he reported. “He heard hoofbeats. Sounds like a big bunch of riders approaching town from the west.”
Bill bit back a curse. “Did he get a look at them? Is he sure it’s the Pawnee war party?”
Hartnett shook his head. “No, he lit out as soon as he heard them coming. But who else could it be?”
“The cavalry coming back, maybe,” Monroe suggested.
But they couldn’t count on that. Bill thought hard about what they should do next.
“Gather up all the volunteers,” he told Hartnett. “I want most of ’em behind the barrel barricades at the western end of town. Not all of them, though. If it’s the Pawnee coming, they could try to trick us and circle around, hit us from a direction we’re not expectin’. Have the rest of the men spread out around town.”
Hartnett nodded. “I’ll do it. Should I ring the fire bell to roust out everybody in town?”
“Good idea,” Bill said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get boots and pants on.”
“So will I,” Monroe said.
The two of them turned away from the door as Hartnett started running back toward Main Street. Eden waited at the bottom of the stairs, wearing a robe now and holding it tightly closed at her neck.
“I heard what Josiah said. The Indians are here.”
“We don’t know that,” Bill told her, “but I sure don’t see what else it could be.” He turned to his father-in-law. “Mr. Monroe, I want you to stay here with Eden. If there’s trouble, I need to know that you’re lookin’ out for her.”
Eden didn’t give her father time to respond. She said, “I’m coming downtown with you, Bill.”
“I don’t think—”
“Have you forgotten how I helped out in that last trouble? I can take care of myself, and you know it.”
Bill had to admit she could handle a rifle, and it might be better if he kept her close by so he would know she was safe.
Or at least as safe as anyone in Redemption could be tonight with that galloping danger heading toward them.
“All right,” he said with a curt nod. “We’ll all get dressed as quick as we can.”
They hurried upstairs. It didn’t take long to throw on some clothes, but even that few minutes made Bill’s nerves stretch tighter. He found himself listening for the gunfire and shouting that would mean the town was under attack.
Instead, all he heard was the clangor of the fire bell as Josiah Hartnett rang it. That would bring everybody out of their homes and businesses.
Eden pulled a simple gray dress over her head, slipped on some shoes, and took a Winchester and a box of shells out of the closet while Bill strapped on his Colt. He started to take the rifle from her, but she shook her head.
“There’s another one downstairs,” she said. “I’m taking this one.”
Even under these nerve-wracking circumstances, her grit and determination brought a smile to Bill’s f
ace.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Perry Monroe had dressed even faster and was waiting for them in the foyer. Bill paused just long enough to pick up the Winchester he had leaned in the corner a couple of days earlier.
Then the three of them headed downtown to see what was going to happen.
Jacob Fraker, Luther Macauley, and Oscar Kipp had returned to Smoot’s Saloon after their visit to the whorehouse on the edge of town.
Fred Smoot rented out rooms upstairs, not just to men who wanted to dally with the girls who worked for him, but to hombres who needed a place to stay, as well. The three outlaws had taken rooms there, and it was a good thing they had.
Redemption was crowded right now because all the teamsters and bullwhackers who worked for Gus Meade’s freight line were still in town, too, along with their boss. All the rooms in the one hotel and the three boardinghouses were occupied.
Fraker heard the swift rataplan of galloping hoofbeats in the street, but the other two didn’t seem to notice. They had drunk quite a bit this evening and were still otherwise sated from their visit to the soiled doves.
Fraker wondered who was in such a big hurry. It couldn’t be because of anything good, he thought…although it might work to the advantage of him and his partners.
A few minutes later when the fire bell that hung in front of the town hall began to clang, Fraker knew something momentous was about to happen.
Macauley and Kipp couldn’t miss that racket. They jerked their heads up, and Kipp nearly knocked over the half-empty mug of beer that sat on the table in front of him.
“Indians!” Macauley said. “It has to be!”
“This is it,” Kipp said. “We gonna head for the bank, Jake?”
Fraker said, “Take it easy, you two. We need to find out exactly what’s goin’ on first.”
The other men in the saloon were already heading for the door. The first one to get there slapped the batwings aside and ran out into the night, followed closely by the others.
Several of the men had drawn their guns already, and Fraker wouldn’t be surprised if they started shooting at shadows.
“Ed, get my shotgun!” Smoot told the bartender. The aproned man reached under the bar and bought out a sawed-off Greener. It would be a fearsome weapon at close range but not much good otherwise.
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