Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man The Eyes of Texas

by William W. Johnstone

  “Oh, did I do that?” she asked. Then she answered herself. “No, you did it.”

  “Huh-uh, you are the one who aimed the pistol. All I did was help you squeeze off a shot. Now, try it again, without my help. Remember, just squeeze. That rock’s getting a little used up, try that one.” He pointed to another one; this one was sort of a blue green.

  “That one is too far away.”

  “Try it.”

  Annabelle aimed and squeezed. The gun went off in her hand, bucked up slightly, and, as before the strike of the bullet brought a spark and left a scar, right in the middle of the rock.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful!” Annabelle said.

  “Keep this up, and you’ll give Annie Oakley a run for her money,” Matt quipped.

  In town at the Pig Palace, Lila walked over to the table where Carter and Fletcher were drinking whiskey.

  “What about it, boys?” she asked, smiling as seductively as she could. “Would you like another visit like the one we had last week?”

  “What do you mean?” Fletcher asked.

  Lila leaned over, put her hand down, and let it rest on Fletcher’s crotch. “I mean when I had the two of you at the same time. I’ve never had such a good time since I’ve been on the line. I think I proved I was woman enough for you two boys. Now, are you two men enough to do it again?”

  “What are you going to charge us?” Carter asked.

  “Same thing I charged you last time. Five dollars.”

  “Wait a minute, you’re the one that asked us. I think we ought to get more of a bargain this time,” Carter said.

  “What about four dollars?” Lila suggested.

  “Four dollars? Yeah, let’s go,” Carter said, and he and Fletcher followed Lila up to her room.

  “Here’s your four dollars,” Carter said as soon as they got upstairs to Lila’s room. Carter was holding out two one-dollar bills, and Fletcher was also holding two one-dollar bills.

  “Huh-uh,” Lila said. “Four dollars ain’t goin’ to do it, honey. It’s goin’ to cost you one hundred dollars.”

  “One hundred dollars? Are you crazy? Hell, the most expensive whore I ever had only cost me ten dollars! You think we are goin’ to pay you a hundred dollars just to go to bed with you?”

  “That’s not what you’re payin’ for,” Lila said. She walked over to a chest of drawers and opened the top drawer, then pulled out two sheets of paper. She showed the papers to the two men.

  “What’s this?” Fletcher asked.

  “For me, it’s fifty dollars apiece from each of you,” Lila said. “For you, it’s your chance to stay out of jail.”

  “What the hell! Where’d you get these?” Carter asked.

  “It don’t matter where I got ’em, honey, the point is I got ’em,” Lila said. “And if you don’t give me one hundred dollars, I’ll give these to Mr. Durbin. I’m sure he would be willing to pay me somethin’ for ’em. After all, he stands to make three thousand dollars out of it.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Shady Rest wasn’t always like this, you know,” Annabelle told Matt as, after the shooting lesson, they sat for a while on the bank of Painted Rock Creek. The water was so clear in some places, that it was easy to see the pebbles that lay on the bottom some four feet deep, while in other places the stream broke into white froth where it tumbled over the large rocks.

  “When I first came here, it was a nice community, with good people. That’s why I invested everything I had in building my dress shop.”

  “What happened to the town?” Matt asked.

  “Jacob Bramley is what happened to it,” Annabelle said. “The trouble started when he arrived. He bought the Pig Palace and turned it into a gathering place for the absolute scum of the earth. Then, gradually, all of First Street became a den of inequity.

  “For a while it was tolerable, because the troubles stayed on First Street, and it was almost as if we were two separate towns, Plantation Row, and the rest of Shady Rest. But, as you have seen, the evil is beginning to spill off Plantation Row, and contaminate the rest of the town.

  “Well, I have too much invested here, in money, labor, and personal commitment, to let Bramley and the others take it away from me. I don’t intend to stand by and let that happen. I will fight them.”

  Matt was a good judge of character and had already decided that Annabelle was a woman with metal under the surface. He was seeing in her eyes now both fire and ice.

  “Annabelle, I know that you are disappointed that I refused to accept the position of city marshal,” Matt said. “But just because I didn’t accept the position doesn’t mean that I have no interest in the conditions here. It’s just as I said. As city marshal I would have my hands tied by rules, and regulations. I promise you that whoever the town selects as marshal will have my support.”

  “Whoever the marshal is will need your support,” Annabelle said. “Especially since Bramley now has his own law with Deputy Sheriff Durbin.” She set the words “deputy sheriff” apart, to show her disdain for the idea.

  “An outlaw with a badge is still an outlaw,” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Annabelle said. “That’s my thought exactly.”

  Annabelle reached up to put her hand on Matt’s cheek; then she kissed him. When she pulled away from him, her face held an expression that was halfway between laughter and embarrassment.

  “I think we should get back to town now,” she said. “It isn’t good for business for me to keep my shop so long closed.”

  “All right,” Matt said. Standing first, he reached down to help Annabelle up.

  Annabelle held her pistol out to look at it. “Now that I know how to shoot this, I’m going to have to get a holster,” she said.

  Back in the Pig Palace, Carter and Fletcher were standing at the foot of the bed in Lila’s room, looking down at the naked woman. Her head was turned to one side, and there were bruises on her neck.

  “I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t of done that,” Fletcher said.

  “What do you mean, maybe we shouldn’t have done it? We didn’t have no choice. She found out who we was. You seen them posters same as I did. She was goin’ to show ’em to Durbin if we didn’t come up with a hunnert dollars. You got fifty dollars left?”

  “No, not since we give that money to Mutt. Which we never did get back,” Fletcher said.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t have fifty dollars left either,” Carter said. “So, it’s like I said, we didn’t have no choice.”

  Carter picked up the wanted flyers Lila had shown them.

  “I wonder where the hell she got these. I didn’t even know there was any wanted flyers out on us. Hell, if we had known that, we could a’ changed our names just the way Mutt did. If we had changed our names, she wouldn’t a’ known who we was. I mean, there ain’t no description or nothin’ like that on ’em, there’s just our names.”

  “What are we goin’ to do with her now?” Fletcher asked.

  “We’re goin’ to hide the body.”

  “How? We can’t just take her downstairs. Maybe you ain’t never took no notice, but there ain’t no back way out of here. The only way out is through the bar.”

  “We aren’t goin’ to take her out,” Carter said. “We’re goin’ to leave her here.”

  “And do what? Hide her under the bed? She’ll be discovered, and once they find her, they’ll know we done it. I mean, there ain’t no one in the bar that don’t know we both come up her with her. Half the people in the bar seen us leave.”

  “We’ll put her there,” Carter said, pointing to big trunk.

  “Hell, she can’t fit in that trunk.”

  “We’ll make her fit.”

  “Yeah!” Fletcher said with a demonic chuckle. “Yeah, we’ll make her fit. That’ll be a good place to hide her.”

  “Come on, you’re goin’ to have to help.”

  “I tell you what, Bill, I don’t like the way she’s lookin’ at us,” Fletcher said. “I mean, look at
’er. It’s givin’ me the willies, I tell you.”

  “She ain’t lookin’ at us. She ain’t lookin’ at nothin’. She’s dead.”

  “Her eyes is open.”

  As Fletcher said, Lila’s eyes were open, bulging, and still reflecting the terror of her last few seconds of life.

  Carter opened the trunk, then lifted out several dresses, scarves, and shawls until the trunk was empty.

  “All right, let’s get her in there.”

  The two men lifted her from the bed.

  “Damn!” Fletcher said. “I didn’t have no idea she was this heavy.”

  It took some bending and twisting of legs and arms, but after a couple of tries, Carter and Fletcher managed to get her body stuffed down into the trunk. Once they had her in the trunk, they covered her up by putting the clothes and other articles back over her.

  “There,” Carter said as they closed the trunk. “Now, even if someone happened to open the trunk, they won’t see her unless they start emptying it.”

  “And more’n likely they ain’t nobody goin’ to do that until she starts in to stinkin’,” Fletcher added with a chuckle.

  “Let’s go have a drink.”

  “What? Are you serious? Don’t you think maybe we ought to get out of here?”

  “Not yet. Now we are going to go downstairs and ask the bartender where Lila is. After all, we gave her good money to go with us, but she never showed up.”

  “What do you mean she never . . .” Fletcher started; then he laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “She never showed up. That’s good. That’s real good.”

  “What do you mean, where is she?” Poke asked. “I thought I seen the three of you go up together.”

  “Yeah, you did see us go up together,” Carter said. “But when we got to the top of the stairs she told us to go on into her room and wait for a couple of minutes while she went out to the privy. And that’s what we done, only she didn’t come back.”

  “Maybe she come back when you two come back down here,” Poke suggested.

  “No, I don’t think so. You can go up and look for yourself, if you want to,” Carter said. “She ain’t there.”

  “I can’t leave the bar,” Poke said. “But Mr. Bramley is right over there, you can go talk to him.”

  Fletcher and Carter went over to a table where Bramley was playing a game of solitaire.

  “We got a bone to pick with you,” Carter said.

  Bramley played a red nine on a black ten before he looked up at the two men.

  “And what would that be?” he asked.

  “Me ’n Fletcher here paid one of your whores to go to bed with us, but she took the money ’n never showed up.”

  “Which means you owe us five dollars,” Fletcher said, adding a dollar to the price Lila had actually quoted to them.

  “Why would I owe you anything? Did you give the money to the whore?”

  “Yeah, we told you we did.”

  “Then she’s the one that owes you the five dollars.”

  “All the whores here work for you, don’t they?” Fletcher asked.

  Bramley sighed. “Which whore are you talking about?”

  “Lila. I don’t know her last name.”

  Bramley chuckled. “You don’t know her first name, either. Whores never use their real names. Why don’t you go on up to her room? More ’n likely she’s up there, now, waitin’ on you.”

  “No, she ain’t up there. She told us to wait in her room for her, which is what we done, but she never come.”

  “We? What do you mean? Both of you were waitin’ on her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At the same time?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we done once before, and she said she’d do it again.”

  “Well, if anyone would do something like that, it would be Lila, I reckon. Are you sure you were in the right room?”

  “Like I told you, we been with her before, so we know which room was hers. Besides which, you can ask Poke if you want to, he seen the three of us go up together, so he can prove we was with her. She said she was goin’ to use the privy and would be right back, only she didn’t never come back. We was in her room for sure. It’s the second room on the right at the top of the stairs. That’s her room, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s her room. All right, come on, we’ll go up and look together,” Bramley offered.

  “It won’t do no good. She ain’t there.”

  “Let’s look anyway.”

  Fletcher and Carter followed Bramley up the stairs. When they got to the door to Lila’s room, Bramley knocked.

  “Lila? Lila, are you in there? I got a couple of men here complaining that you took their money, but didn’t do anything for ’em.” Bramley knocked again. “Lila? Open the damn door!”

  “The door ain’t locked,” Fletcher said. “I know ’cause me ’n Carter was both was just in here.”

  Bramley opened the door and the three men stepped inside. The room was empty, and the bed made.

  “Damn,” Bramley said. “I wonder where she went.”

  “Is that all you’re goin’ to say?” Carter asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like we told you, we give her five dollars and we didn’t get nothin’ for it. I mean, that don’t look very good for your business, does it?”

  “All right. Come downstairs, I’ll give you your money back,” Bramley said. “I can always get the money from Lila when she finally does show.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much what we was thinkin’ too,” Carter said.

  Two days later Jake Bramley was playing solitaire at “his” table in the back of the saloon when Barb and Monica came over to speak to him. Barb was the younger of the two girls, but only marginally better looking. Both of them, though, realized that they were near the end of their effective lives as prostitutes, the Pig Palace being practically the last stop for them.

  The two women stood by the table for a long moment without speaking, until finally Bramley broke the silence.

  “Have you just come to watch me play Ole Sol? Or is there a purpose to the two of you standin’ there like a couple of moon-faced heifers?”

  “Mr. Bramley, me ’n Barb are worried about Lila,” Monica said.

  “What about her?”

  “Well, maybe you ain’t noticed, but there ain’t nobody seen her for two or three days. It ain’t like her to just run off like that.”

  “Have you checked down at Abby’s?” Bramley asked. “Maybe she’s gone back to workin’ there.”

  Barb shook her head. “No, she ain’t gone back there, I checked with some of the girls that work there. Besides which, you might remember, she and Abby had a big fallin’ out, which is why she come here to work in the first place.”

  Bramley was holding a card in his hand, looking at all the possible matches. “Shit!” he said in frustration, when he saw that he had no further plays in the game. He gathered up the cards, then looked up again at the two worried women.

  “What about the Crooked Branch, or Ace High? Have you checked with Foster, or Gimlin?”

  He laid the cards out for a new game.

  “No, sir, we ain’t checked with them, but we’ve asked some of the other girls,” Monica said. “I’m tellin’ you, Mr. Bramley, there ain’t nobody seen her in two or three days.”

  “If that bitch ran off and took my clothes with her I’m goin’ to have her ass,” Bramley said.

  Because he wanted the women who worked for him to dress a certain way, he bought all their clothes, though he was very specific in the arrangement he had with them. The women could wear the clothes as long as they worked for him. But if they left the Pig Palace for any reason, the clothes had to stay.

  “Mr. Bramley, I don’t think Lila would do that,” Barb said.

  “You don’t, huh? All right, go up to her room,” Bramley ordered. “Go through her trunk and take out all her clothes. Even if the bitch does come back now, she doesn’t work here, anymore. You t
wo can divide her clothes between you.”

  “Oh, I want the red one,” Barb said excitedly as they started back toward the stairs.

  Bramley was several cards into his new game when he heard the screams from upstairs.

  “What in the hell has gotten into them? What are they screaming about?” Bramley asked, irritably.

  “You want me to go find out?” Durbin asked. Even though Durbin now wore the badge of a deputy sheriff, he still spent most of his time in the Pig Palace Saloon, declaring it to be the “office of the deputy sheriff.” He also continued to draw, in addition to the salary of a deputy sheriff, the much more generous salary Bramley was paying him to provide security for the saloon.

  “Yes, go find out,” Bramley ordered.

  When Durbin reached the second floor he saw Barb and Monica standing in the hall, clinging to each other, their faces reflecting terror.

  “Mr. Bramley wants to know what the hell is wrong with you two,” Durbin said.

  Monica pointed toward the open door. “She’s in there,” she replied in a weak voice.

  “Who is in there?”

  “She is.”

  Realizing that, for some reason, the two women were too frightened to give him much information, Durbin went into the room. He saw dresses, scarves, and other items scattered around, but nothing else. The lid of the trunk was up, but because the lid had been opened from the other side of the trunk, it blocked his view down inside. He walked around to the other side to look into the trunk, and that was when he saw Lila’s nude body, her arms and legs twisted into a position that would allow her to fit into the confined space.

  Lila’s skin was a clammy bluish white, and her eyes were open and bulging almost out of their sockets. Durbin reached down into the trunk, lifted her body out, then lay it down on the bed. It was hard to pick her up and maneuver her because rigor mortis had set in, causing her arms and legs to remain in the contorted position in which Durbin found them.

  Leaving her twisted body on the bed, he went downstairs to inform Bramley.