The better-dressed of the two young men accompanying the mail-order brides was walking toward the saloon.
Beside Kirkwood, Lew Shelby breathed, “That son of a bitch is Chance Jensen. I haven’t forgotten what happened back in Fort Worth. He’s mine.” Shelby looked around at the other men in the alley. “Anybody want to argue about that?”
With a note of amusement in his voice, Henry Baylor said, “I don’t believe you’ll have any takers, Lew. Since you have a score to settle with the youngster, feel free to go about doing it.”
“I’ll come with you, Lew,” Prewitt volunteered.
“You reckon I’m gonna need help with one man?” Shelby asked, bristling with resentment.
Prewitt said, “No, I just figured I’d take my rifle and keep an eye on everybody else in the place to make sure they don’t interfere while you deal with Jensen.”
“Oh. Well then, thanks, Prewitt.”
In a flat voice, the Kiowa said, “I will kill the other one. I almost did, in their hotel room back in Fort Worth, and that failure tastes bitter in my mouth.”
“An excellent idea as well,” Baylor agreed. “Loomis, why don’t you and I accompany our Indian friend? Those ladies will probably need firm hands to control them while their protector is taken care of.”
Loomis laughed in the shadows. “I like the sound of that.”
Kirkwood spoke up. “What about Leon and myself?”
“Leon’s job is to keep you safe, Ripley,” Baylor said. “And yours is to pay us the agreed-upon price when we deliver Miss Sheridan to you.”
“You’ll get your money, don’t worry about that,” Kirkwood snapped. “But I’m a part of this—”
“Let us do our job,” Baylor insisted.
“And let’s get on with it,” Shelby said with a growling rumble of impatience in his voice. “Those Jensen boys have needed killing for a week now. It’s past time we blow ’em both to hell.”
* * *
After the general store, the Devil Horse Saloon was the second-largest building in Cross Plains. It was well-furnished for a saloon in a small crossroads settlement, with a genuine hardwood bar complete with brass foot rail and a big mirror behind the bar. Wagon-wheel chandeliers with oil lamps hung over the tables that filled most of the room.
Most of those tables were for customers to sit at while drinking, but a couple were topped with green felt. There were no roulette wheels or faro layouts. The only games would be played with cards. That was all right with Chance Jensen, since he was most comfortable with the pasteboards.
One of the poker tables had a game going, but Chance went to the bar first, figuring he would get a drink and feel out the situation. The establishment wasn’t very busy, since it was a weeknight. Half a dozen cowboys stood at the bar nursing beers. Four of the tables were occupied by an assortment of hombres who looked like local businessmen. Chance pegged the three men playing a leisurely game of poker as a couple ranchers and maybe the local undertaker, judging by his black suit and sober demeanor.
The man behind the bar also wore a dark suit and had a thin black mustache. His hair was plastered down, except for a strand that had escaped and curled over his forehead. He gave Chance a non-committal nod and said. “Welcome to the Devil Horse Saloon.”
Chance noticed something he hadn’t seen in his first glance around the room. In addition to the mirror behind the bar was a painting of a magnificent black horse in full galloping stride. He knew that had to be the animal for whom the saloon was named.
“Fine-looking horse,” he commented with a nod toward the painting.
“Thank you,” the man behind the bar replied. “The best friend I ever had. If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to have a good horse, I’m sure you can understand the feeling.”
Chance thought about his gelding. The two of them had been down a lot of trails together. He nodded. “I sure do.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’ll have a beer. My name is Chance Jensen, by the way.”
“John O’Donnell,” the man said with another nod. He drew the beer and set the mug in front of Chance. “You’re new to Cross Plains, so the first one is on the house.”
“I’m obliged to you, Mr. O’Donnell.” Chance sipped the beer. It was cool and tasted good, so he found it quite satisfactory.
“Are you just passing through or have you come to stay?”
“Passing through, although it looks like this is a nice little settlement.”
One of the cowboys farther along the bar said, “I seen this fella when he rode in, Mr. O’Donnell. He’s with that wagon full of women we was talkin’ about earlier.”
O’Donnell cocked a dark eyebrow and repeated, “A wagon full of women? Are you thinking about opening a sporting house somewhere in the vicinity, my friend?”
The question took Chance by surprise. He actually felt himself blushing a little, which didn’t happen often, at the thought of the five ladies working in a sporting house. Lorena might have done such a thing in the past, but even she had put that behind her now.
He shook his head. “No, sir. Those ladies are, well, ladies. My brother and I are escorting them to San Angelo to deliver them to their prospective husbands.”
“Mail-order brides? Well, what do you know?” O’Donnell laughed. “I’m not sure we’ve ever had such pass through Cross Plains before. I suppose it’s true what they say about there being a first time for everything.”
Chance drank some more of his beer and nodded. “Yes, sir, I expect you’re right. But at the moment I’m interested in playing a little poker, and it won’t be my first time for that.”
O’Donnell chuckled again. “It just so happens there’s a game going on. The man in the black suit is Jacob Dawson, the undertaker here in Cross Plains. Charles Patton and Tom Cameron both own spreads here in the area.”
Chance was glad that his guesses about the men playing cards had been confirmed. Being able to read your opponents and tell something about them just by looking always helped when it came to poker. “They won’t mind a stranger sitting in on their game?”
“They play each other so often, I’m sure they’ll regard it as a welcome challenge.” O’Donnell paused, then added, “You should be aware that games at the Devil Horse are friendly and honest.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Chance picked up his beer and walked toward the table where the men had just concluded a hand.
The undertaker, Dawson, was raking in the pot. As Chance stopped at the table, the three men looked up and gave him friendly nods.
“Gentlemen. If you don’t have any objection, I’d like to sit in on your game for a while. My name is Chance Jensen.”
“Are you a tinhorn gambler, young Jensen?” Dawson asked bluntly.
“No, sir. Just a man who enjoys a friendly game of cards.”
“In that case, I’d say sit down and join us.” Dawson glanced at the two ranchers. “Is that all right with you?”
One of them, a white-haired man with a weathered, deeply tanned face, grinned. “Fresh blood’s always good for a game, son.” He waved at the empty chair. “Sit down and we’ll deal you in.”
“The game’s five-card stud,” the other cattleman said.
“Sounds fine to me,” Chance said as he pulled out the chair. He was about to sit when he heard the batwings at the saloon’s front door squeal slightly as someone came in. He glanced over his shoulder.
Lew Shelby and the dour hardcase called Prewitt had just stepped into the room. Shelby’s hand, clawlike in readiness, hung over the butt of his gun, and it was obvious he was about to draw.
* * *
In the shadows under the cottonwoods, Ace sat down with his back against the wagon’s left front wheel. From there he had a good view of the Devil Horse Saloon, which was located diagonally across the street from the general store. He figured he would sit there and wait for Chance to come back before he turned in.
Through the wheel, Ace fe
lt the wagon shift a little as the women moved around inside it, getting ready for bed. He heard the small sounds that went with the movements but didn’t allow himself to think about how the ladies were clothed, or unclothed as the case might be.
The wagon shifted some more, followed by the faint thumps of feet hitting the ground as one of the women stepped down from the tailgate. “Ace?” a familiar voice said softly.
“Over here, Miss Lorena,” he told her.
She walked along beside the wagon until she reached the front wheels. Ace started to get to his feet, but she waved him back down. “Land’s sake, you don’t have to stand up for me. I don’t have any interest in formal things like that.”
“Doc Monday raised Chance and me to be gentlemen. He figured our mother would have wanted it that way.”
Some light from the buildings filtered into the shadows underneath the cottonwoods, enough for Ace to see that Lorena wore a robe over whatever nightclothes she had on under it.
She gathered the robe around her legs and said, “I’m going to sit down next to you.” She wasn’t asking his permission, just informing him what she was about to do.
They hadn’t been acquainted all that long, but he knew already it wouldn’t do any good to argue with her. He reached up to help her as she settled herself on the ground beside him.
“What do you know about your mother?” she went on.
“Not much. I’m pretty sure her name was Lettie, but I don’t know where she was from or what she was like. Or how she wound up with Doc.”
“But he’s not your father.”
“Nope. Well, Chance and I have debated about it, but we both finally decided that he’s not. We don’t know if we’re bastards, to be plain-spoken about it, or if our ma was really married to a man called Jensen. But that’s our name. We’ve never had any real doubt about that.”
“For goodness’ sake, why didn’t this Doc Monday just tell you about your parents? It seems to me like you deserve to know.”
“I reckon Doc’s got his reasons. We used to pester him about it when we were younger, before we figured out that it didn’t do any good.”
They sat there in silence for a moment before Lorena said, “You called me Miss Lorena again. I thought we had talked about that.”
“Sure. Just old habits are hard to break, I guess. I’ll try not to do it again.”
“Well, it’s not like it’s a big problem or anything.” Without seeming to, she shifted closer to him. Her shoulder pressed lightly against his. It was more of a companionable touch than a passionate one. “Mighty nice night tonight.”
“It is,” Ace agreed. “I thought I’d sit up until Chance gets back from his poker game.”
“You mind the company?”
Ace thought about it, but only for a second. “Nope. I’m happy to sit here with you.”
“Well, hell. I guess being friends is better than being nothing at all.”
They sat there quietly again, then Ace asked, “What do you know about the man you’re supposed to marry?”
“He’s a doctor. Lawrence Madison. I’ll be Lorena Madison.”
“A fine name. I hope the two of you are very happy.”
“So do I. He’s . . . an older man. We won’t have any children.”
“Because of his age?”
“I can’t,” she said bluntly. “So it seemed like a good match. I won’t be depriving some younger man of a family.”
“I don’t reckon anybody could regard being married to you as deprived.”
“That’s a nice thing to say, but you’d be surprised. You’re still pretty young, Ace.”
“You’re not that much older than me,” he said.
“It’s not the years, necessarily, that measure such things.”
Ace might have continued the conversation, but at that moment, his and Chance’s horses nickered softly and tossed their heads. Ace tensed immediately. He could tell from the horses’ reaction that someone was probably sneaking around over there.
“Get back in the wagon,” he snapped at Lorena as he started to his feet.
“What—”
Ace was up, hand reaching for his gun. He peered intently into the shadows where the horses were picketed but didn’t see anything moving except the animals. He had just closed his fingers around the butt of his Colt when a scuff of boot leather on the ground behind him warned him.
Ace whirled and brought the gun out, but he was too late. Something whistled out of the darkness and crashed into his head, sending him spinning into an oblivion deeper than the shadows under any trees.
The last thing he was aware of as he spiraled into blackness was the sharp crack of a shot.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Chance’s hair-trigger instincts took over as soon as he spotted Lew Shelby and recognized the threat the gunman represented. He threw himself away from the table where the three older men sat, hoping to draw any shots away from them. At the same time, his hand flashed toward the Smith & Wesson .38 under his coat.
He wasn’t fast enough.
Shelby already had his feet set and his revolver came out smooth and fast.
Chance was moving fast as flame spurted from the muzzle of Shelby’s gun. The slug smacked into the top of an empty table and gouged a long furrow in it.
Chance grabbed the edge of that table with his left hand and overturned it. He yanked his gun from its holster as he dropped into a crouch behind the meager cover.
Shelby fired again. The bullet thudded into the wood but didn’t go all the way through. Chance thrust his gun around the table and snapped a return shot at the gunfighter.
Shelby wasn’t standing still, either. He glided to his left as Chance fired. The bullet whipped past his ear and would have struck Prewitt if he hadn’t already moved.
Prewitt had a rifle in his hands and swung it from side to side as he menaced everyone else in the saloon and yelled, “Nobody move!”
He hadn’t counted on the sort of man John O’Donnell was. The saloonkeeper reached under the bar and came up with a long-barreled Remington revolver.
Prewitt saw the weapon and tried to bring his Winchester to bear on the saloon owner. O’Donnell’s thumb was already on the Remington’s hammer. Coolly, he pulled it back and squeezed the trigger. The Remington and the Winchester blasted at the same instant.
The rifle round blazed past O’Donnell and shattered the mirror behind him into a million pieces. O’Donnell’s shot was more accurate. It slammed into the upper right side of Prewitt’s chest and knocked the man back a step. He struggled to stay on his feet and hang on to the rifle.
It didn’t matter. The next instant several more guns thundered out a deadly volley. The guns were in the hands of the cowboys who’d been drinking peacefully at the bar. All of them were armed, a fact that Shelby and Prewitt should have taken into consideration before charging in there with killing on their minds.
Across the room, Shelby had taken cover at one end of an old piano that no one had been playing. Nor was it likely that anyone ever would again, because two shots from Chance’s gun struck it and raised a racket that could hardly be called melodic.
The two ranchers who’d been playing poker were packing irons as well, and like the punchers at the bar, they weren’t the sort to stand by helplessly when trouble broke out. They pulled out their guns and opened fire on Shelby. Bullets slammed into the wall above his head.
With hot lead suddenly coming at him from more than one direction, Shelby realized how badly he had miscalculated. He threw one last shot in Chance’s direction, then turned and lunged toward the saloon’s front window to the right of the entrance.
Chance got one more shot off and saw Shelby’s black hat fly into the air, but he didn’t know if his bullet had knocked the headgear off. Shelby threw himself at the glass and crashed through it to land on the saloon’s narrow porch.
Chance knew his gun was empty, but something else loomed even larger in his mind. If Shelby and Prewitt were in
Cross Plains, Baylor, Loomis, and the Kiowa almost certainly were, too. Ace and the ladies were probably in danger right that very minute.
Chance leaped to his feet, abandoning the cover of the overturned table, and dashed toward the entrance, thumbing fresh cartridges into the .38 as he ran.
* * *
Because Ace had been moving, the blow that knocked him out was just a glancing one. He came to his senses quickly.
Pain roared in his head, but he ignored it as he forced himself to roll over and open his eyes. He saw a couple shadowy figures swaying back and forth as they struggled. One of them probably was Lorena, since she had been with him, but he couldn’t make out who the other person was.
Then someone else leaped toward him. A stray beam of light reflected off a knife blade plunging at him.
Both of Ace’s hands shot up. His left closed around the wrist of the hand wielding the knife and stopped it before the blade reached him. His right caught hold of a man’s muscular neck.
With a convulsive effort, Ace rolled again and heaved the attacker to the side. The man crashed into the wagon wheel where Ace had been sitting only moments earlier.
Still somewhat muddled from the blow to the head, Ace had been fighting back mostly from instinct. He scrambled to his feet in time to see the man he had just thrown aside surge up and slash at him again with the knife.
Ace caught a glimpse of the man’s face as he ducked under the blade. His attacker was the Kiowa, which meant Lew Shelby and the others had to be close by. It would be one of them who was struggling with Lorena.
Ace hooked a left into the Kiowa’s midsection. The Indian grunted, but the punch didn’t slow him down. He backhanded the knife at Ace, who jerked out of the way just in time to keep the blade from ripping open his chest. He had to give ground as the Kiowa continued slashing at him.
Fighting for his life, Ace was only vaguely aware of gunshots coming from somewhere in Cross Plains, not too far away. He thought of Chance in the saloon, but there was no time to check on him or go to his aid. It was all Ace could do to stay out of the way of that deadly, flashing blade in the Kiowa’s hand.
“Enough!”
Ride the Savage Land Page 21