Troubleshooter

by Alan David

  ‘So you’re Asa Blaine’s boy,’ Yaro grunted, impatiently fiddling with his sixgun. ‘Hell, you don’t look like no chip off the old block!’ Half-lidded eyes gazed at Willard.

  ‘I don’t figure to spend the rest of my life working for the Railroad,’ Willard retorted with more spirit than he was feeling. ‘I got information to sell, if the price is right, and you need it, if all the stories I hear about you are true.’

  ‘What have you been hearing?’ An icy note laced Yaro’s tone. Suspicion showed in his face and his thin lips pulled tighter. The animal in him was barely restrained, and Willard caught his breath, filled with an instinctive fear. He was playing a dangerous game mixing with this killer. The man did not possess a single principle and could not be trusted. But right now he seemed to be the best ticket out of Buffalo Junction.

  ‘You’re here to put S & W out of business,’ Willard ventured.

  ‘S & W?’ cut in the other man, and Willard transferred his attention to Trig Forbes, a dark-haired killer.

  ‘South and West Railroad Company.’ There was a lump in Willard’s throat, but he fought against his fear, trying not to think that if Yaro blamed him for the hot reception then he would be dead within a few seconds. ‘We call it S & W around here.’

  Yaro came forward a couple of steps, moving with the effortless grace of a mountain lion. He lifted his gun slowly, making Willard flinch, then pressed the gaping black muzzle squarely against the tip of Willard’s nose, forcing his head back until it touched the rough boards at his back.

  ‘You’re standing on the brink of hell, Blaine. You better be straight. Nobody puts anything over on me and lives to brag about it. We got ourselves a deal. I already dropped hard cash into your hand. But I didn’t get what I came for. How come your Pa knew about me, Boy? And what was Chet Manning doing here when he was supposed to be in Mexico?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Willard was almost cross-eyed as he looked down at the barrel of the gun, and clenched his teeth as Yaro thrust the gun upwards slightly, bumping his head against the wall.

  ‘I expect a deal to be good when I make it,’ Yaro continued slowly. ‘I don’t like nasty surprises, see? Now you tell me if that dough is in the bank.’

  ‘It’s there all right, but it’s going out on the El Paso train in the morning.’

  ‘Then we’ll hit the train. They won’t be expecting it after what happened tonight, will they?’

  ‘I can’t say. I don’t know how much my father and Manning know. Someone must have blown the whistle on you.’

  ‘You said that already,’ Trig Forbes cut in. ‘You got a nasty habit of repeating yourself, Blaine.’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know everything. I did all that you asked. I want to see you succeed as much as you do. I can’t shake the dust of this place off my boots quick enough.’

  ‘Then you’re gonna have to do better than you already done, ain’t you?’ A harsh glitter came to Yaro’s dark eyes. ‘This is the only warning you’ll get. Something else goes wrong and I’ll blast your head off whether you know about it or not. That’s the kind of man I am. I don’t make mistakes and I don’t expect anyone else to, not when I’m paying them good dough for information. Where is your Pa at now?’

  ‘Went home.’ Willard could barely force the words out of his dry throat.

  ‘You sure, boy?’

  ‘He went in that direction.’

  ‘And Manning. Where’d he go?’

  ‘Rode out to end of track to warn them to be ready for trouble.’

  ‘Well he won’t be in time to stop some trouble, but this surely changes the situation considerable.’ Yaro removed his gun from Willard’s nose and holstered it with a deft movement. But his gaze did not leave Willard’s face and there seemed to be a hypnotic quality in his eyes. ‘Where’s the best place we can hit that train in the morning?’

  ‘Three mile grade eight miles south of town,’ Willard said promptly. ‘Freight train will be slowed down almost to walking pace. Should be easy to get aboard.’

  ‘Don’t try to tell me my job. You know how many guards will be aboard?’

  ‘I can’t say after what’s happened. Likely there’ll be a strong escort.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to take strong measures.’ Yaro smiled mirthlessly. ‘I’ll tell you what to do, Blaine. You make sure you find out before the train leaves in the morning just what the situation is. If they take special precautions with that freight then you wait till it is pulling out, then let yourself be seen at the depot taking off your hat and wiping your forehead. If you do that then the raid won’t take place, savvy? I don’t want no slip-up this time. If something does go wrong then you’ll be ready for planting on Boot Hill this time tomorrow. I’ll be in touch with you either way. Pick up all the news you can. If your Pa has got wind that I’ve been drafted in to start a war against S & W then I’ll need to know what his plans are. You better do your work properly or you won’t ever go East. Your direction will be straight down, and the trip will be very short — six feet. You know my contact and where he hangs out. He better hear from you pronto, with good information.’

  Before Willard could reply, Yaro turned on his heel and left quickly, making surprisingly little sound for such a big man.

  Trig Forbes glared at Willard for a moment before following. Willard heaved a long sigh of relief when he was finally alone. He wiped sweat from his forehead and found that his hands were shaking. His mouth was dry and there was fear in his mind. He had let himself in for a great deal more than he figured. Talk of big money had blinded him to the harsh realities of the situation, and he left the barn wearily, drained of inner strength.

  When he reached the street he paused and looked around, not wanting to go home. He was badly shaken by his encounter with Ben Yaro, and his contact with Netta had aroused him to fever pitch. Not even his fear could subdue that. His eyes glinted as he gazed towards the big saloon, but he knew that none of the girls would accommodate him. There were enough men around who did not need special treatment for them to want his custom. He was tempted to go home and finish what he had started with Netta; but if she cried out his father would be alerted. He knew that Asa had been keeping a close watch on him ever since Netta’s arrival, and the last thing he wanted was trouble with his father.

  Then he thought of Louise Judd, the school teacher. She lived alone in a shack behind the school, a spinster who had no social life. She was about thirty, a thin, dried-up woman who might be made to blossom. He grinned as he walked along the street, staying in the centre of the rutted thoroughfare, his boots making no sound in the thick dust. He passed the school and stepped into the alley beside it, pausing to check that he was not observed. With all the trouble earlier, the local law might still be on guard. But he saw nothing to make him suspicious and walked along the alley in total darkness, feeling his way along to the back lots. When he reached the rear corner of the school his pulses quickened, for there was lantern-light shining out of the teacher’s front window. She was still awake, probably reading, and Willard felt a tightening of his insides as anticipation began to swell through him.

  He had heard tales of how some of the local men had tried to make Louise Judd, but she shied away from all human contact, and Willard’s warped sexuality, which had already compelled him to kill three girls in his desire to experience the ultimate pleasure, was aroused by the thought of dominating her. He checked his surroundings once more before sneaking in against the front wall of the shack. There was a small hole in the curtains at the lighted window and he craned forward to peer through it into the big, one-room building.

  Louise Judd was lying in her bed, a lantern at her shoulder, reading avidly. The sight of her aroused some intangible throbbing of lust in his mind and he felt a growing tension in his chest. How could he get at her without creating a disturbance? Normally he planned such an incident with meticulous care, taking almost as much pleasure from his plotting as from the final confrontation. But Netta had inflamed him and
he needed to be released from the strait-jacket of his unnatural desires.

  For long moments he remained at the peep-hole, watching the boyish figure, his eyes glittering. Then the woman threw back her bed covers and arose, pulling on a robe and pushing her feet into slippers. He firmed his lips as she walked towards the door, and when she emerged and went around the other side of the shack he clenched his hands. She was going to the john. This was a heaven-sent opportunity and he could not resist it. He moved around to the door, which stood ajar, and entered the shack.

  For a few tense minutes he was filled with trepidation, for if his entrance had been witnessed then he would have a lot of explaining to do. But he reached under his jacket and took hold of the bone handle of the knife he always wore in a leather sheath on his belt. Drawing the weapon, he held it up. Lamplight glittered upon the naked steel. Pangs of anticipation wormed through his stomach and he pressed back against the wall. A moment later the door was pushed inwards and Louise Judd returned.

  Willard’s hand clamped over her nose and mouth as she dropped the bar on the inside of the door. Then the point of the knife was pressed against the side of her neck.

  ‘You make one squawk and I’ll cut your throat,’ Willard told her in a hoarse tone. ‘Don’t try to look around at me o you’ll wind up dead. Pull that robe up around your head and face and no peeking.’

  He released his hold upon her mouth and she drew a long, shuddering breath, but did as he ordered. He gazed at her hooded figure with growing passion and dug his fingers into her neck.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked in frightened tones. ‘I don’t have any money. If you’re a stranger here I’d better tell you that I am only the local school teacher.’

  ‘It ain’t money I’m after,’ he responded. ‘Just stay quiet and concentrate on keeping your face covered. If I see you getting a look at me then it’ll be the last you look at anyone.’ He paused, savouring his power over her. ‘You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ She could manage no more than a frightened whisper.

  He pushed her towards the bed, not letting go of her, and she uttered a gasp of fear as she sprawled across it. Willard gazed down at her, breathing rapidly, gripped by his own twisted passions.

  ‘I’m gonna whip you,’ he said through his teeth. ‘But you better not cry out. You make one sound and I’ll kill you.’

  As he spoke he unbuckled his leather belt and removed the sheath before putting away the knife. He reached across to the lantern and turned down the wick until the room was shrouded and dim. The figure on the bed neither moved nor spoke when he grasped the nightdress and ripped it apart, exposing the thin, unblemished body. She lay naked to the shoulders, the robe around her head, and Willard could feel his sanity receding as his desires began to dominate his mind.

  She cried out involuntarily when he began whipping her, but the sound was muffled by the robe and she did not continue. He paused, half-reaching for the knife, but when she lay mute and suffering he continued to belabour her, gasping as he raised long, angry welts upon her flesh. He used the leather part of the belt and laid it on heavily. She jerked convulsively while the sickening smack of leather meeting flesh filled the tense atmosphere. His face was flushed and he sweated profusely, reliving his first whipping in a recurrent nightmare. His unsatiated lusts of that long-past afternoon returned to him, filling the deepest corners of his mind and awakening those yearnings which Asa’s belt had trapped and distorted. ‘I’ve got you this time, Cousin,’ he gasped, his eyes glinting, ‘and there’s no one to stop me. I’m gonna have my way.’

  He dropped the belt, dimly aware of the woman’s muffled sobs, and grasped her quaking body, twisting at her small breasts with convulsive fingers. She uttered a faint cry and tried to pull the robe from her head but he dropped upon her like a hawk.

  ‘Don’t move!’ he ordered. ‘Don’t move or I’ll carve you like a Thanksgiving turkey.’

  She subsided again, half-fainting in terror. Willard pushed himself down on her in a frenzy of excited rage. He attacked her with all his strength, aroused by the whipping he had administered and the sight of her helpless debasement. She did not attempt to resist and he raged over her, forcing himself into her as he was swept along upon the crest of an ever-rising tide. But at the height of his passion, as he entered upon the threshold of a releasing climax, some, warped nerve cut out all sensation and he felt his appetites sweep away as if they had never been. Cursing vilely, he attacked her bestially in a last frantic burst of vigour until his strength failed.

  Anger followed and he dressed feverishly, feasting his eyes upon her maltreated body. When he was ready to leave, as dangerous as a bear disturbed in the mating season, he drew his knife, then paused for long moments while he deliberated upon her fate. But she did not move and he figured that she had suffocated under the robe or merely fainted. He did not bother to check but went to the door and stole away into the night, vowing that one day he would find a woman capable of making him respond — it was in the back of his mind that Netta was the female he sought.

  Chapter Four

  Breakfast for Netta next morning proved to be something of an ordeal, for when she went down to the big kitchen to help Aunt Polly prepare the meal she found Chet Manning seated at the table, drinking coffee. His hat lay on the floor under his chair and he sat easily in relaxed fashion, tall and broad-shouldered, with an air of vitality about him. He smiled at her, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight which came through the big window, and his dark eyes were steady, making her feel as if they could read her mind. His slicked-down hair glinted like polished cedar. But his battered face looked terribly painful, and she winced as she studied it while Aunt Polly was talking.

  ‘Chet, you quit taking such risks. You know I look upon you as my own son. You’re a good Railroader, like your father before you, and such men are hard to find.’

  ‘Go on with you, Aunt Polly. You say that to all Railroad men. I know you!’ He looked around at Netta. ‘Hi! You’re looking prettier than one of them girls in a mail-order catalogue. But you got a bruise on your face. How’d you come by that?’

  Aunt Polly turned from the hot stove, a small, thin woman of fifty whose careworn face was brown like a walnut. Her blue eyes regarded Netta’s features as she came forward to examine the red mark left by Willard’s hand.

  ‘Could be how you was sleeping,’ she commented. ‘Help me with the chores, Netta. Uncle Asa will be down in a moment and he’s in a hurry this morning.’

  Netta thought about Chet’s night-time mission, and glanced at the big sixshooter holstered on his right hip, which he did not remove even in the house. He was still eying her speculatively and she wondered if he had spotted her in the barn while saddling his horse. He would not have said anything to Uncle Asa if he had, she was certain, but she felt disconcerted by his unblinking gaze. His personality was so strong she could feel its intangible power from across the room. He was of a new breed, a race that had sprung from this New World of towering mountain ranges and great rivers. They evolved from the earth itself and were a part of the empty deserts and the great loneliness; governed by the natural forces around them; prey to the awe and tension which had arisen in the pioneers when they first confronted the new continent. Survival was their key-note, and that vital law filled them with a blind compulsion to dominate or destroy. Good or bad, they lived by the same inflexible rule, and the spirit which moved them was beyond Netta’s comprehension.

  She sensed that, outwardly, there was little difference between the good and the bad. Inwardly, there was merely a spark of decency in the good which made the difference. But they were all of the same mould, whether gamblers, hold-up men, rustlers and horse thieves, ranchers and cowpokes, or adventurers who loved action and excitement. Even men like Uncle Asa, who professed to follow the ways of the Lord, lacked gentleness because it could be mistaken for weakness, and they all had the courage of desperation despite the fear in them of the country that dwarfed and overwhe
lmed them, forcing home upon them the fact of their own mortality.

  ‘Netta,’ Aunt Polly reproved. ‘What’s gotten into you this morning, child? Come and give me a hand before Uncle Asa shows his face.’

  Netta stifled a sigh and turned to the stove. She heard footsteps on the stairs and hurriedly involved herself in the preparations for breakfast. She hoped it was not Willard coming down, and was relieved when Asa’s heavy voice boomed out a greeting to Chet.

  ‘Morning, Chet. You didn’t waste any time. You satisfied?’

  ‘We’re ready for trouble,’ Manning drawled, and explained the events which had taken place out at the construction camp. Blaine exploded in shock, but Manning continued, ‘I’ve sent out all the available gunhands and ordered extra guards to travel with the trains in our district. That’s the best I can do until we recruit more guns.’

  Netta glanced at her uncle. He was tremendously powerful, short in stature but not ungainly or awkward. His eyes were almost black, and shone from his weatherbeaten face with the holy fire of righteousness. He knew that his mission in life was to protect the area of the railroad placed in his care, and he and the men who worked under him were ready to die for their cause. Despite his tough exterior his face was homely and honest, his eyes shrewd and alert, and determination showed in his strong jaw. There was a sense of dedication about him, for he was a man whose job would help lay the foundation stones of law, order and civilisation, and he knew it.

  Willard put in an appearance as the meal was being served and Netta tried to avoid his intent gaze. She sat opposite Chet, her eyes downcast, filled with guilt because of her escapade during the night and afraid that Willard would mention it.

  But the conversation was monopolised by Asa, who was preoccupied with his own problems. ‘Willard, I want you to take the eight-thirty as far as Broken Rail. Stay there until you hear different from me.’