Lookout Hill (9781101606735)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

  “Bad Sharlo Bering…?” Bellibar cocked his head slightly. “I’ve heard of you.”

  “Yeah?” said Berring, his chest puffing a little. He and Moran looked almost relieved. But then Bellibar returned to the matter at hand.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he said to Moran. “Drag him away yourselves, both of you hurry back here and buy me a drink.”

  “You’ve heard of Lookout Hill?” Moran asked, not letting the newcomer’s words affect him.

  “Yep,” said Bellibar, “that’s where I’m headed, looking to ride with the Cady brothers, Bert and Fletcher.”

  “That’s who we ride for,” Moran said bluntly. “What do you say now?”

  “I say in that case, you can both hurry back and buy me two drinks,” Bellibar said.

  Bad Sharlo bristled; Moran stopped him with a look.

  “Can’t you see he’s just scouring us both down?” He looked at Bellibar and said, “You’re a crazy sumbitch, ain’t you?”

  “And then some,” Bellibar replied with the same flat expression.

  Chapter 10

  At a makeshift bar, Bellibar and the two gunmen stood tossing back tequila from wooden cups. An empty bowl and a food-smeared spoon stood at Bellibar’s elbow, flies circling above scraps of goat gristle and bean sauce. An hour earlier Bellibar had handed the reins to the roan and the other two horses to a Mexican stable boy. When the boy brought the horses back rested, watered and grained, he hitched them to the iron posts out in front of the tent cantina.

  The boy’s eyes grew wide as he crossed the dirt floor to the bar, watching two half-naked prostitutes roll and kick and brawl in the dirt beside an overturned table, their bare breasts bobbing and bouncing freely, glistening with sweat. Above the women’s screams and curses, the mariachis played vigorously in a low swirl of cigar and pipe smoke.

  “Don’t try to tell me you two mullets live this good all the time,” Bellibar said, raising his half-full cup of tequila as if in a toast.

  “You ain’t seen nothing,” Moran replied above the music, screaming and laughter. “Wait ’til tonight when everybody starts getting rowdy.”

  Bellibar turned to the young stable boy, who couldn’t pull his eyes away from the two naked fighters. A shredded skirt rose in the air; onlookers hooted and whistled and clapped.

  “Don’t be watching them,” Bellibar warned the boy, tapping his shoulder sharply with a gold coin. “It’ll make your bed wet.”

  “I have no bed, señor,” said the boy. He looked up long enough to take the coin and close his fist around it.

  Bellibar grinned.

  “Oh…in that case, have at it,” he said, gesturing the boy toward the fighting women.

  But instead of looking back toward the battling women, the boy slid a look past Moran and Bering and motioned for Bellibar to lean down closer to him.

  “Yeah, what?” Bellibar said, stooping to ear level, in order to hear and be heard above the din of place.

  “You said to tell you anything I hear about someone coming to town behind you?” the boy reminded him. He held his hand out to Bellibar.

  “Yep, what have you got for me?” said Bellibar, fishing in his trouser pocket for another coin.

  “The soldados de mercenaries from Pettigo Mining are in town.”

  Mercenary soldiers…Bellibar gave a cautious look toward the front of the tent.

  “Where are they?” he asked quietly.

  “They are at the librea barn. They will be coming here soon, señor,” the boy said in a whisper. “Someone has told them what happened to the man in red, I think.”

  Bellibar handed him the coin.

  “Gracias, kid,” he said. He started to straighten up but stopped when he saw the boy had more to say.

  “Should I also warn your amigos?” he asked, clasping the gold coins in his fist in a manner that implied more coins could be coming his way.

  “Well, you see, kid,” Bellibar said, “we’re not what you call amigos. We’re not even what you call compañeros, these fellows and me.” He chuckled a little and added, “The fact is, I don’t even know these plug-looking sons a’ bitches. Never laid eyes on them until I arrived in town a few hours ago.”

  “I see,” the boy said. He lowered his fist and his expectations, but asked anyway, “I will still warn them, if you want me to.”

  “I don’t know….” Bellibar clucked his cheek, seeming to struggle with the matter. “They’re having such a good time. I hate to piss on their campfire.” He fished another coin from his pocket and slipped it to the boy. “Why don’t you ease out front and lead my horses around back for me—hitch them loose, por favor?”

  “Sí, hitch them loose,” the boy repeated, smiling at the third coin in his palm. “This I will do.” He walked out the fly without turning another glance toward the female combatants.

  “Damn, pard,” Moran said to Bellibar, “you’re palavering with that stable boy and missing all the fun.” He nodded at a low cloud of dust in the center of the dirt floor where the two women had fought their way up onto their knees. The crowd remained seated, but they’d drawn their chairs in a circle around the women. Music still blared. Fists waved money in the air; wagers were made. A knife appeared as if out of nowhere in one woman’s hand. The crowd roared. The other woman grabbed her wrist and the two grappled and fell back to the dirt.

  “It’s like this all the time?” Bellibar grinned.

  “It never stops!” Bad Sharlo screamed with laughter.

  “It’s like dying, going to Mejico heaven!” said Moran, waving his cup, tequila slopping over the edge of it.

  “All right, I’m going to live here from now on, that’s all there is to it,” Bellibar said in another toast. He licked his thumb, stuck it in a bowl of salt and put it in his mouth. He threw back a swig of tequila, stuck his thumb in the salt again and swallowed one more shot.

  “I’ve got to choke a lizard,” he said. “Don’t let these gals stop fighting until I get back—I mean it.” He pointed a finger and wagged it at the two gunmen as he moved away toward the rear of the tent.

  “He’s not such a bad sort, as it turns out,” Moran said to Bad Sharlo, the two of them watching bleary-eyed as Bellibar left the tent.

  In the town livery barn across the street and a block down from the ragged tent cantina, Dale Pettigo stood with five of his father’s hired gunmen. He smoked a black cigar he held between the fingers of tan-colored riding gloves. A pale blond mustache drooped above his thin lips, and blond hair spiked out from under his wide, flat-crowned plainsman’s hat. He wore a brown duster buttoned up to his throat, hiding a new tooled-leather holster tucked up under his left arm. A cutout slot in his duster allowed his right hand to slip inside and grasp the bone handles of a fully engraved Colt .45 if needed.

  Ashes fell from the blunt tip of Dale Pettigo’s cigar and landed on the body in the red pin-striped suit.

  “No finely schooled accountant deserves to die this way,” said a burly, red-faced gunman standing across the body from the young Pettigo.

  Dale Pettigo raised sharp eyes to the man and said in a dry, critical voice, “How does a finely schooled accountant deserve to die, Denver? You tell all of us, for future reference.”

  Denver Jennings felt pressed; he slid red, bloodshot eyes over the other men gathered round the body. He gave a shrug, a rifle propped back over his broad shoulder.

  “All’s I’m saying is not like this.” He nodded down at the bloody pin-striped suit, the ragged half-missing right foot. “He died too young.”

  “Harold Wartler was a simpering, milk-sucking house dog who just had to run with the hounds now and then,” Dale Pettigo concluded. He looked from one stoic face to another. “Save all your words of praise and condolences for my father. He thought the world of this fool—I didn’t. I always thought he’d rub a man’s leg, to be honest about it.”

  “I don’t know what to make of that,” said a rough-faced older gunman named Dodge Peterson. “But he l
iked playing the stage role of a rake and a gambler. Look at him,” he added in disgust to Denver Jennings. “A man wears a suit like that, how long should he expect to live?”

  “It’s a rake’s garb he’s wearing, and that’s a fact of it,” said a former Pinkerton agent named Gus “Shady” Quinn. “Rubbing a man’s leg, I don’t know….”

  “That was just a figure of speech,” said Pettigo. “The poor bastard.” He shook his head in disgust, staring down at the dead man’s red-striped suit.

  “What say you about the dear departed, Foot?” a former assassin named Newton Ridge asked a half-breed Cheyenne, Clayton “Cold Foot” Cain. Cold Foot stood a step back from the others, eyeing the body in the dirt more closely.

  “He’s dead,” said the half-breed with finality, his deep voice sounding like a single clap of thunder from within a deep cave.

  Pettigo and the men gave a dark chuckle under their breath, staring down at the body with the half-breed.

  “Can’t argue with Cold Foot,” Pettigo said. He turned his head only an inch and spit in the dirt beside the dead man’s bloody foot. “Damned degenerate. He couldn’t just play the tables like any man might. He had to pretend himself to be some kind of slick-eyed gambling man.” He paused, then added, “But that’ll make no never mind to my father. He’s going to want the men who did this swinging from a pole.” He took the rifle from over his shoulder and levered a round into its chamber. “Let’s get to it.”

  The men rallied around him and started toward the barn door. But they stopped at the sight of two more Pettigo gunmen walking toward the barn, their rifles guiding Bobby Hugh Bellibar along in front of them.

  “Hold up,” said Dale Pettigo. “Let’s see what Tiggs and the Russian have brought us.”

  When the guards arrived at the open barn doors, Leonard Tiggs, a squat, powerfully built Canadian, couldn’t resist poking his gun barrel in Bellibar’s back and sending him stumbling inside the barn.

  “Here’s one for you, boss,” he said to Pettigo in a proud tone.

  Bellibar instinctively turned facing Tiggs, his fists clenched, ready to do battle. But he froze at the sight of all the rifles and pistols cocking toward him.

  “Easy, hombre,” Pettigo warned him. He half turned and called out to the Mexican stable boy, “Hey, pissant, is this one of the hombres?”

  The boy leaned a hay fork against a stall and hurried to the doorway. His eyes widened when he looked up and saw Bellibar staring down at him. He saw a trickle of blood at the corner of Bellibar’s lips.

  “Oh no, Señor Pettigo!” the boy said. “This is not one of the killers. This is a good man. He was just going into the cantina when the shooting started.”

  Dale Pettigo puffed on his cigar and turned his cold blue eyes to Tiggs.

  “He was leaving the tent in one hell of a hurry, boss,” Tiggs offered. He carried Bellibar’s Colt and the big Remington shoved down behind his belt. Beside him, Cherzi the Russian carried Bellibar’s rifle he’d pulled from his saddle boot. “His horse is tied out back there,” said Tiggs. He jerked his head toward the stable boy. “He had the kid here leave them there for him, he claims.”

  Dale Pettigo’s eyes went back to the stable boy. The rest of the gunmen stood gathered around Pettigo.

  “Pissant…?” Pettigo queried to the boy above his thick cigar.

  “Sí, it is true that I took the horses there for him,” said the boy. “But he is a good hombre, this man—not a killer.”

  Tiggs started to say something, but Pettigo stopped him with a raised hand. Then he turned his eyes to Bellibar.

  “So you were just heading into the tent when our accountant got shot?” he asked, looking Bellibar up and down, noting his empty holster and the wrinkled oily spot on his shirt where the Remington had stood at his waist.

  “Your accountant…,” Bellibar said, bemused.

  “Answer Mr. Pettigo’s question, saddle tramp,” said Tiggs, giving Bellibar a sharp poke with his rifle barrel.

  Bellibar stiffened and grunted but refused to show any pain from the blow. He stared at Pettigo, his jaw clenched, showing he wasn’t going to answer under this kind of abusive treatment.

  “That’ll be enough of that, Tiggs,” Pettigo warned the squat gunman. He looked back at Bellibar.

  “Yeah, I was going inside,” Bellibar replied now that his silent demand had been met. “I heard four shots, saw your accountant there stumble out with three bullets in his chest.”

  “What about his foot?” Pettigo asked.

  “He couldn’t get his Thunderer up,” said Bellibar, “but that didn’t keep him from pulling the trigger.”

  “He shot himself?” said Pettigo.

  “Yep,” said Bellibar, “over and over, the same foot.” He stifled an evil little grin. “It was hard to tell which he would run out of first, bullets or toes—”

  “Watch your mouth, saddle tramp,” Tiggs warned, cutting him off. “That man was one of us.”

  “Oh?” said Bellibar. “So you own a suit like that?” He gestured over at the dead man on the dirt floor.

  “Why, you lousy—” Tiggs gripped his rifle tight with both hands, keeping himself in check.

  “Stand down, Tiggs,” Dale Pettigo warned the powerful Canadian gunman. He turned back to Bellibar and asked, “What happened to the back of our man’s head?”

  “While he was still jerking, wiggling some, one of them smacked his head with a smithing hammer,” said Bellibar, liking the way a couple of the men winced at the thought of it. “I hope I never hear such a terrible sound again in my life.”

  “But you went on inside and drank with the men who did it,” Dale Pettigo reminded him.

  “That I did,” said Bellibar, “for the purpose of keeping them rounded up until some arm of authority, like yourselves here, come along.” He paused and stared at Pettigo in silence for a moment, then said, “Can I be honest?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering,” Pettigo countered. He blew a stream of cigar smoke beneath a raised and skeptical brow.

  Bellibar ignored the veiled insult.

  “The fact is,” he said, “when I left the tent, I was on my way here, to warn you. This young man told me you were here.”

  “Is that true, pissant?” Pettigo asked the stable boy.

  “Sí, it is,” the boy replied.

  “So, if I wanted to be a real turd, I could’ve told those mullets about you and sent them running,” said Bellibar, “but I didn’t.” He stared at Pettigo, his jaw firmly set. “You want to know why?”

  “Tell me,” Pettigo said with a curious look.

  Bellibar looked all around at the rough faces, at the drawn guns. This was his kind of place—his kind of people. He’d fit in here, given a little room to make space for himself. Sure, he might have to pistol-whip the Canadian, maybe maim one or two of the others, kill one if he had to. But that was only natural. He took a deep breath. Here goes….

  “Because I rode up here looking for gun work. I heard that Pettigo-American Mining needs some real professionals here in the hill country.”

  “Professionals…?” Pettigo gave him another quick once-over and shook his head slowly. “Not hiring,” he said bluntly.

  “Not hiring?” Bellibar stared at him in disbelief.

  “You heard me: I’m full up,” Pettigo said. “I’ve got work for hire.”

  “Not even for a man who’ll walk into that tent, no gun, knife or nothing else, and kill them two mullets for you, in, say…five minutes flat?”

  The men chuffed, all except Pettigo. He stared at the seedy gunman through a rise of cigar smoke.

  “Five minutes, huh?” he said.

  “Yep, I’ll say five,” Bellibar replied. Thinking it over for a moment, he added, “Maybe six…but I doubt it.” He looked all around, seeing both laughter and scorn in the eyes of the gunmen.

  Pettigo looked at Tiggs and the Russian and asked, “Who’s got the back of the tent covered?”

  “We left
Hayworth Benton there with his ten-gauge,” said Tiggs. “Nobody’s getting past him.”

  “Good,” said Pettigo. He turned back to Bellibar and said, “Take as much as ten if you need it. I never like to rush a professional when he’s working.”

  Chapter 11

  Bobby Hugh Bellibar walked into the tent through the rear fly dusting his hands together. Bad Sharlo Bering and Harvey Moran turned to him with bloodshot eyes, each of them smoking brown dope-laced cigars. The two young women fought on, but one lay naked and prostrate on the dirt floor, a fallen knife inches from her hand. Only her toes and fingertips struggled to right herself back up onto her feet. Thick red welts crisscrossed her from where the other woman had broken a chair across her back. Now the other woman stood back with one of the broken chair legs in hand.

  “Stay down, puta,” she warned in a rasping voice. Blood ran down from her swollen right eye. A four-inch knife cut bled down her left side; teeth prints bled down her left thigh.

  Looking over at the woman in passing, Bellibar clasped both hands together as if in regret.

  “Please don’t tell me I missed the best part,” he said in a mock sorrowful voice.

  “Sorry to say, but, yes, you did,” said Moran. He licked salt from the back of his hand. “But there wasn’t as much cutting went on as you might think.” He sighed a little. “Like everything else, these hill country gals are becoming more and more civilized. They’ve gotten a little too tame for my taste.”

  “And for my taster as well,” said Bad Sharlo. He commented to Bellibar, “Damn, pard, what took you so long? I’ve never seen a lizard so huge it takes this long to choke it down.”

  Moran and Bellibar just stared at him.

  Sharlo’s drunken face turned painfully red as he caught what he’d said and tried to fix it.

  “Not that I ever wanted to see one that huge,” he said. “Or that I even want to see one, of any size…far as all that goes.” He winced at what he’d said. “What I mean to say is—”

  “Jesus! Let it go, Sharlo,” said Moran in disgust. He shook his head and turned back to Bellibar. “What’s happened to your guns?” he asked, gesturing a nod at Bellibar’s empty holster and the place where he’d carried the big Remington behind his belt.