And that, the shooter thought, as he began to roll a cigarette, was God's own honest truth.
Chapter 1
The hotel room had one small window facing on an alleyway, but J.D. Blaze still loved the view. His wife Kate sat astride him in their rented bed, as naked as she had been on her first birthday, but with considerably more impressive curves. Blaze loved the rapt expression on her face, the swaying of her breasts above him as she started to accelerate, turning the slow trot to a canter, working toward an all-out gallop.
Nowhere else I'd rather be, Blaze thought, then tried to shift his focus from the warm, wet place where they were joined, striving to make it last, before he burst inside her like a Roman candle going off.
First, Blaze tried thinking of the job they'd just completed, running down the Grayling brothers for the Central Pacific Railroad. There were five Graylings in the holdup gang—or had been, until yesterday. Now three of them were dead, the last two wounded, waiting for their trial to find out if they'd hang or spend the next few decades in Nevada's state prison at Carson City.
J.D. and Kate had spent the night in Sparks, Nevada, ready to collect their payment in the morning from the railroad man who'd hired them. In the meantime, they'd been making sparks themselves, likely disturbing any neighbors in the two adjoining rooms, though no one had complained so far.
Kate had increased her pace, and J.D. urged his thoughts away from her, the way her muscles clutched and tugged at him. He tried to take it back five years, to when he'd first met Kate and saved her life, then nearly wound up being lynched for it. They'd married two days later and had never spent a night apart since then—remarkable, he thought, considering the life they led.
J.D. and Kate were—and, to his knowledge, had always been—the West's sole pair of married guns for hire. Not outlaws or assassins, but beyond those limits, if the job was legal and it met their needs financially, they would go anywhere that danger beckoned for a price. So far, they'd worked for banking syndicates, town councils, wealthy private parties—and of course, as with the Grayling gang, for railroads. When they weren't working, they lived wherever fate had dropped them between jobs.
Like Sparks.
It wasn't much to look at, situated five miles east of Reno, where the Comstock Lode had spawned a boomtown on the fringe of the Sierra Nevada range. Their Grayling hunt had ended there, and while they could have spent the night in Reno, close to restaurants, saloons, even a kind of theater, the railroad man who'd hired them specified a final meet in Sparks, where they had run the gang to ground.
No problem, they'd agreed, since he was paying for their meals and room, such as it was. Central Pacific money owned the small hotel in Sparks, the town's only café, and likely all the rest of it, to boot. Again, Blaze didn't care, as long as some of that cash ended up with him and Kate.
God knew they'd earned it.
"God! Oh, God!"
Her husky voice brought J.D. back to here and now. His pelvis rose to meet her thrusts, possessed by a mind of its own—or by Kate's mind, perhaps. By her need.
"Oh, God!"
Kate wasn't praying. Neither of them were religious types, and J.D. sure as hell wasn't concerned about salvation at the moment. Some folks needed church to put their minds at ease on Sunday, after what they'd done all week to screw their fellow man. Others relied on parables and platitudes telling them how to live, how they should feel, what they should do and think. Blaze did his best to treat them with respect, but didn't have much need for parsons, other than at funerals and weddings.
Even then...
A justice of the peace had done the honors when he married Kate, and they'd already "sinned" to beat the band, by Bible standards, when they made it legal. Since that day, nothing about how they had lived was likely to amuse a preacher, but it worked for them.
And that was all that mattered, in the end.
If they were happy and contented, it was no one's business but their own.
"Almost," she told him, pumping with her hips to emphasize it. "Almost there!"
J.D. could have been there and gone already, maybe back asleep by now, but he took pride in satisfying Kate. She hadn't been his first, by any means, but he had taken vows that she would be his last, and J.D. took them seriously.
If he hadn't, there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind that Kate would have refreshed his memory, emphatically and painfully.
This way was better, by a long shot.
And he was about to shoot, as Kate leaned over him, bracing her hands against the bed's headboard, riding him toward the finish line. He breasts were inches from his face, and Blaze reached up to cup them, craned his neck to flick one rigid nipple, then the other, with his tongue. Kate moaned and arched her back, making it easier for him. He suckled like a baby on his first day in the world, reaching around to clutch her buttocks as they thrust and rocked.
They would be waking up he neighbors now, if early daylight hadn't done it, with their headboard knocking rhythmically against the wall. J.D. was far past caring whether someone else got mad over the racket they were making. Maybe they'd be jealous, headachy from liquor drunk the night before, or suffering insomnia. Blaze didn't care unless they started knocking back.
"Almost," Kate gasped. "I'm...I'm..."
She didn't have to tell him when it hit her. Wave on wave of pleasure rocked her, while her body closed around him like a fist, milking. He bucked against her, gasping, filling her for the third time since they had checked into the room. A long, quivering moment, then Kate fell against him, limp and gasping, J. D. still inside her.
That was when the knocking started.
Kate giggled against his bare chest. Said, "We woke somebody up."
"Eavesdroppers," J.D. answered, laughing with her.
"All right, you can stop!" Kate told the wall behind their headboard, smiling even though she sounded serious.
The knocking didn't stop, and J.D. realized it wasn't coming from the wall.
"Jesus," Kate hissed. "You think they called the manager?"
More rapping on the door to their hotel room, and a mostly-male voice called out through the paneling, "Mr. and Mrs. Blaze?"
"I don't think that's the clerk," Kate said.
"Could be a new one from last night," J.D. surmised.
"Or might not be."
"You think so?"
Five Graylings were accounted for, but there had been a few stray hangers-on who'd scattered when the final showdown came in Sparks. Had one or more of them returned already, looking for revenge?
"Who's that?" J.D. demanded.
"Western Union, sir."
His eyes met Kate's and saw doubt mirroring his own. "They work this early?" she inquired, still whispering.
He shrugged, a pleasant motion with his wife naked on top of him, but J.D. couldn't think about that now.
"We'd best uncouple," he advised, and Kate rolled off of him, her warmth gone from him in a heartbeat, as she stretched up for her gunbelt, hanging from the bedpost on her side. J.D. leaned in the opposite direction, found his Colt .44-40 dangling from the other bedpost, and removed it from its cross-draw holster.
"Ready?" he asked Kate.
"Not for receiving company."
"Oh, right. Cover the door, while I put on my pants."
"Got it," she said, raising the rumpled sheet to cover most of J.D.'s favorite things.
The knocking started up again. The same voice called, "Hello?"
"Hang on!" J.D. snapped back. "You caught me short."
"Yessir. Sorry."
Only silence in the outer hallway now, as J.D. slipped his trousers on and padded barefoot to the door. He stood off-center from it, trusting that the wall was thicker and more solid than the door, if someone tracked his steps and started shooting through it. Even hit, unless they killed him outright, he could still return fire. Kate would also do her part, and more, in any scrap.
J.D. unlocked their door from the inside, guessed that would b
e the signal for a fusillade of shots if there were gunmen waiting in the hallway. Nothing happened, though, and when he dared to breathe again, he turned the doorknob, jerked the door open, and swung around to meet their morning caller in a crouch, his Colt aimed at the stranger's face.
Blaze didn't know the boy or young man standing there, the color draining from his acne-sprinkled face. He could have been sixteen or twenty-one, no sign that he had started shaving yet, beyond some sandy peach fuzz on his upper lip. The round cap that he wore had "Western Union" printed on it, just above the bill.
Almost convinced, but still taking no chances, J.D. pushed the stranger back and followed him, peering both ways along the empty corridor. His eyes came back to frame he messenger's pale face and Blaze lowered his gun.
"Sorry. Can't be too careful."
"No-n-no, sir!" Holding out a flimsy Western Union envelope.
Blaze took it, thought about tipping the kid, then settled for, "You'd better run along."
"Yessir."
He didn't run, exactly, but the last time Blaze had seen someone walking that fast, he had some urgent business with a privy.
Once he'd shut and locked the door, J.D. gave Kate the envelope. She let the sheet drop from her breasts, set down her Colt, and slit the paper with her thumbnail, taking out a telegram that had been folded over once, lengthways.
J.D. sat down beside her, mattress dipping with his weight, and read the message silently while Kate read it aloud.
REQUIRE YOUR SERVICES IF PRICE AMENABLE STOP EIGHT DEAD & SHERIFF BAFFLED STOP URGENT THAT WE DISCUSS STOP SHALL EXPECT YOU SOONEST RENO REGENCY – H. KOCH, GBSCL
Eight dead. Nothing on how, why, where. J.D. knew that Western Union charged its senders by the word, but there was such a thing as being too damned cheap.
"What's 'GBSCL'?" he asked.
"I'm guessing the Great Basin Stage Coach Line.," Kate said.
"Okay. The Regency was Reno's top hotel, the last I heard."
"With running water."
"So, this Cock travels in style."
Kate smiled at that. "And so does yours. Be careful when we meet him, though. I've seen people get touchy when their names are mispronounced."
"You want to meet him, then?"
"'If price amenable'," she quoted from the telegram.
"'Eight dead'," he echoed back at her.
"I'd say it's worth a five-mile ride, to see what it's about."
"Okay. But if it stinks..."
"We keep on riding."
"Fair enough. What do you think he means by 'soonest'?"
"Soon as we can get there, obviously."
"Right. But we still have to get our pay from Chadwell, for the Graylings."
"Over breakfast."
J.D. checked the window's morning light against his pocket watch, on the nightstand. "The telegrams start early, here in Sparks."
"I think they run around the clock, most everywhere."
"We've got an hour yet," he said, "before we're due across the street."
"You want to wire back that we'll be in Reno later on today?"
"When we go down to breakfast."
"So, ten minutes there," she said, smiling. "That still leaves fifty, give or take. Whatever shall we do?"
"I like that give and take idea," J.D. replied, already peeling off his pants.
Chapter 2
They gave and took some more, then dressed and went downstairs, out through the hotel's lobby and along the only street in Sparks to find the Western Union office. There was no sign of the pimply kid when they walked in. A short, balding telegrapher took down their message and transmitted it to Reno while they waited to confirm it had gone through.
From there, they strolled on to the Sparks Café, where Damon Chadwell waited for them at a window table, three chairs still unoccupied. They sat across from him, said nothing till the waitress had arrived to take their orders for the "miner's breakfast" and black coffee.
"Not eating?" J.D. asked the railroad fixer.
"I'm an early riser," Chadwell answered.
"So's J.D.," Kate said, squeezing his thigh under the table.
"We were hoping you could bring more of the Graylings in alive," Chadwell remarked.
"Two out of five's not bad, considering," J.D. replied. "They're out of circulation, either way."
"That's true. But now, some people may think you were hired to hunt them down."
"We were," Kate said.
"Of course. A fine distinction, I suppose, but never mind." He reached inside his suit jacket, withdrew a slender envelope, and set it on the table's no-man's land. "Five thousand, as agreed."
A thousand bucks per head.
J.D. opened the envelope, which Chadwell hadn't sealed, and counted ten five hundred-dollar bills. He slid the envelope across to Kate, who made it disappear.
"Our business is concluded, yes?" Chadwell inquired.
"Looks like," Kate said.
"I'll leave you to your breakfast, then."
"Not chatty," Kate observed, when he was gone.
"It's just as well," J.D. replied. "I didn't like him much."
"We like his money, though."
"There's that."
The waitress brought their meal: fried eggs, hemmed in by sausage, ham, potatoes, and mushrooms. Both hungry from their overnight exertions, they began to wolf it down and cleaned their plates in something close to record time. J.D. left greenbacks on the table, and they went to settle up at the hotel, before their walk down to he livery.
J.D. rode a brindle gelding, Kate a palomino mare whose color nearly matched her own blond hair, tied back most days into a ponytail. They left Sparks, riding westward, five miles and a bit to go before they reached the Regency Hotel in downtown Reno. Both knew where it stood, but neither one had ever set foot in the lobby.
Five miles can be covered at a trot in half an hour, but they stretched it out to forty minutes, no reason to push it, when the desert was already heating up, pitiless sun climbing its sluggish way toward noon. If "H. Koch" squabbled over that amount of time, it was an easy call to turn around and leave him.
Going where?
They could decide that when they got there.
The road from Sparks to Reno ran through open desert, which was true of every road throughout Nevada, till a rider came to mountains, heading east or west out of the state. By noon, the sun would be too hot for rattlesnakes to prowl abroad, and there had been no trouble with the Washoe Indians for fifteen years or more.
They reached the Reno Regency at half-past ten and tied their horses at a water trough, out front. J.D. eyed the hotel's façade and asked his wife, "You think we're fit to go in there?"
"I am," Kate said, without a moment's hesitation. "As for you..."
"Yeah, yeah. Come on."
A doorman in a quasi-military uniform welcomed them to the Regency. Inside, large ceiling fans helped cool the spacious lobby. Kate led J.D. to the registration desk, staffed by a portly man in morning dress, whose gold pince-nez made him look down his nose at everyone he met.
"May I help you?" he asked, stiffly.
"Meeting a guest by invitation," Kate replied, and handed him the telegram.
He read it, gave it back, and told her, "Mr. Koch is presently in the salon. Beyond the staircase, to your left."
"So, Kuck it is," she told J.D., when they were on their way.
"Too bad. I liked 'Cock' better."
"So did I," she said, straightfaced.
They found and entered the salon, a sitting room of sorts with deep, leather-upholstered easy chairs paired off, each set sharing a table large enough to hold a pair of whiskey glasses and an ashtray. Just inside the door, a younger copy of the man they'd spoken to out front stepped out to block their passage, blinking when he saw their pistols.
"May I help you?"
"If you know a guest named Koch," Kate said, pronouncing it correctly. "He's expecting us."
"Of course, ma'am. If you'd follo
w me?"
Instead of waiting for an answer, he took off across the room, leading them to a corner where three easy chairs had been arranged. At their approach, a man rose from the middle chair to greet them, standing ramrod straight in a gray business suit, accented with a red bowtie.
"That's all," he told the hotel's man, and made a little whisking gesture with his right hand, as if brushing specks of dust away. "Mr. and Mrs. Blaze?"
Kate answered, "Mr. Koch?" matching his bland, disinterested tone.
"Indeed. Hiram, to friends and family. Please, sit. Refreshments?"
"Just the job," J.D. replied.
"Of course. To start, I am chief of security for the Great Basin Stage Coach Lines."
"Must keep you busy," Kate allowed.
"This week, especially. I don't suppose you've heard about the massacre in White Pine County?"
"No," J.D. agreed. "But in our telegram, you said eight people dead."
"Correct, six passengers and two of our employees. Horrible. If you had seen the bodies—"
"Did you?" Kate inquired.
Koch nodded. "They were held, at my request, while I came out from Sacramento."
J.D. frowned. "Kept them on ice for you, did they?"
"For all the good it did. As I said, it was horrible. The mutilation—"
"Hostiles?" Kate asked. "If it's Indians you're after, you should try the army."
"Indians?" Koch shook his head. "No, they were shot. Repeatedly, beyond all need or reason. The entire coach was demolished. Lord, they even killed the team."
"Sounds like a mob," J.D. suggested.
"Difficult to say. At least one hundred fifty shots were fired, based on the wounds and damage to the coach, but no spent cartridges were found."
J.D. was doing the arithmetic. "Rule out repeating rifles that eject their brass. A hundred rounds means seventeen revolvers, minimum, with no one stopping to reload and dump the shells."
"Or one gun," Koch replied, "spitting a hundred rounds in rapid fire."
"A Gatling?" Kate was visibly surprised.
"I'm theorizing now," Koch said. "The local sheriff noted wagon tracks beside the road where this occurred. A Gatling gun inside a wagon—"
Blaze! Western Series: Six Adult Western Novels Page 40