by Joe Slade
She chuckled mirthlessly. ‘Better close your eyes, Sonny.’
Three
Maggie felt something warm splash across her face but she was beyond caring. She closed her eyes and gave in at last to the darkness, hardly feeling the impact as she fell forward in to the mud.
Consciousness returned slowly, fragments of dreams and reality mingling in confusion. She sensed warmth, softness beneath her back, and blankets covering her. The smell of coffee reached out to her like an old friend. She moved, whimpering as the pain hit her. It was different than before. Duller. More of an ache.
She tried to sit up but something was holding her. Walt! Walt was holding her down! She screamed, flying in to a blind panic, struggling to catch her breath as she remembered the feel of him on top of her.
‘Easy, Maggie. Easy.’
‘Get off me. Get off me!’
‘It’s me, Maggie. It’s Rick Talbot. You’re safe now.’
The weight lifted from her but immediately a hand grabbed her by the arm. She yanked loose and lunged, falling, landing on her knees with a sickening crunch, one hand outstretched but unable to save her. It was then she noticed her right arm bound against her body, which was naked from the waist up. She grabbed the blanket, dragging it to her as she tried to dodge around him.
He refused to let her pass. ‘Maggie, you need to calm down.’
Weak and hurting, with no place to go, she curled into a ball, taking the only refuge left to her. Minutes passed. She could feel him beside her but he didn’t speak and he didn’t touch her. Gradually her breathing returned to normal, her heart beating to a fast steady rhythm that brought with it an element of reason. She opened her eyes and peeked at him through the bend of her arm.
He smiled but it was a grotesque gesture. One eye was swollen shut and dried blood caked his split lips. The front of his shirt and vest were stained crimson.
Some of the animosity she wanted to feel towards him gave way to sympathy.
‘Do I look that bad?’ he asked.
She eased herself into a sitting position, using the edge of the bed to support her back but being careful not to put any weight on her shoulders. Fearfully, she looked around the cabin, unwilling to believe they were alone, but it looked the same as it always did. Chairs were tucked under the table, coffee was boiling on the stove, pots and pans hung from nails driven into the wall. There was no trace that the other men had ever been there.
‘Did you tidy up the place?’
He nodded. ‘It was a bit of a mess. You always keep it looking nice and I thought maybe if you woke up to something familiar …’
‘There was a fight?’ she asked, recalling the sounds she had heard.
He got to his feet and crossed to the stove where he poured coffee into two dented mugs. He handed one across to her before taking a seat at the table. As he cradled the drink between his hands, head hung low between his shoulders, she noticed bruising and grazes over his knuckles.
‘Tell me what happened,’ she prompted.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I wanted to help you but … Walt would have killed me there and then. I didn’t have a choice.’
She opened her mouth to refute his claim but he carried on speaking.
‘When I came back in for my gun, the others jumped me. I managed to get a shot into Clem and … you know the rest.’
Unbidden the scene played out in her mind but there was a blank. She had to know one thing if she was ever to sleep peacefully again.
‘What happened to Sonny?’ she asked.
‘He’s dead.’
‘It was you I saw standing behind him?’
‘Who else could it have been?’
In the heat of the moment she had been certain it was Frank’s ghost come to rescue her. In the cold light of day, Rick’s version of events sounded more likely. He had saved her life, and she was grateful, but it didn’t undo the fact that he had left her to the mercy of a rapist. It was going to take more than a mumbled apology and an admission that he had shot a man in the back to earn her trust.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
He pulled a silver plated half-face watch from his vest pocket. ‘Almost seven.’
She looked towards the shuttered window, feeling confused by the light she saw streaking in through the warped boards. ‘Seven at night?’
‘Seven in the morning. You’ve been asleep for nearly a day.’
She struggled to her feet, a sense of urgency overriding pain and modesty. ‘We have to get out of here. Now!’
‘You need to rest. You lost a lot of blood and I didn’t have anything to stitch the wound. There’s just a couple of old shirts holding you together.’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Bull Braddock and Milt Harris are on their way here. If they find us with those bodies, we’re dead.’
‘I don’t understand. Who are they?’
She opened the trunk at the foot of the bed and searched its contents. She tossed aside a woolen dress and an old wool shawl but pulled out Frank’s spare pants and a couple of shirts.
‘What are you doing?’ Rick asked.
‘Looking for something to wear. I can’t ride into a town looking like this.’
She threw one of the shirts to him and shrugged into the other. It came down to her thighs but there was nothing to be done about it now. Next, she held a pair of brown canvas pants up to her waist.
‘Find me a length of rope, will you?’
‘What for?’
Awkwardly, she struggled into the pants. They came up almost to her armpits and a look of understanding crossed Rick’s face. Without a word, he went outside and came back a few minutes later with a length of rawhide.
‘Will this do?’
Without waiting for her answer, he tied it around her then knotted the shirttails together at her waist and stood back to view his handiwork. The close attention bothered her more than it had before. When Frank was alive, she had enjoyed knowing that Rick noticed her but now she squirmed under the unwanted attention.
She pushed past him and grabbed a flour sack from a peg driven into the wall. She emptied the contents on to the table.
Rick chuckled. ‘Hidden in plain sight. Walt thought he had searched this place high and low for Frank’s gun and there it was all the time.’
‘Frank was no fool. He didn’t want it falling in to the wrong hands.’
Rick fastened the rig around her hips.
‘Do you know how to use it?’ he asked.
‘You handle me again without an invitation, you’ll find out.’
He stepped back. ‘I-I’m sorry, Maggie. I thought … of course after what happened I guess ...’
She waved his apology aside. ‘You need to saddle the horses—all of them,’ she ordered. ‘What did you do with the bodies?’
He watched her as she packed sugar, coffee and other essential items into the empty flour sack.
‘Rick!’ She almost reached out and slapped him. ‘What did you do with the bodies?’
‘I wrapped them in blankets and put them behind the lean-to. Why?’
‘You need to tie them over their saddles.’
‘We’re taking them with us? Why?’
She nodded absentmindedly as she considered what else they should take from the cabin. ‘Because we can’t leave any trace of what happened here for Braddock and Harris to find.’
Still he seemed reluctant to move.
She paused in her machinations to wonder how a man with so little nerve had come to be part of the O’Bannen gang. Frank hadn’t said much about it when he introduced him, just that he would be worth his weight in gold someday. If Frank had faith then maybe she should.
‘Bull Braddock and Milt Harris used to run with Frank in the early days,’ she said. ‘Frank told me they had a disagreement and parted ways. They hadn’t spoken in years. I heard Walt and Sonny talking, saying how they were coming here. Something about unfinished business.’
Rick shrugged. ‘So? We tell them what happened. They go home.’
‘Are you that naïve? Walt was Bull Braddock’s nephew. So, unless you want to die a horrible death, you’ll do exactly as I say.’ She hustled him out of the door. ‘And bring me Walt’s boots.’
Four
Bull Braddock rolled out of the saddle and dropped to his knees where he stared at the churned up ground. A big man in height and girth, wearing a heavy buffalo hide coat, the movement made him breathless and it was a moment before he spoke.
‘You seein’ what I’m seein’, Milt?’
Milt Harris didn’t bother to dismount. Equally as well built as his partner, he was a man of few words and sparing of his actions.
‘Uh huh. What do you make of it?’ Milt asked.
‘Five riders, leaving not coming.’
Braddock tapped his gold incisor with his forefinger as he examined the tracks in more detail. They were fresh, maybe only an hour old, he judged, since the rain had held off in that time. He gathered the reins of his big black horse and started forward. Higher up where the ground sloped more sharply, the evidence had started to wash away but it was clear to see where the riders had come from. The rain could destroy tracks but it couldn’t repair the damage a horse’s hoofs did to the landscape.
‘Do you think Walt double crossed us?’ Harris asked, as his pale hooded eyes surveyed the landscape.
‘He wouldn’t have the guts. Let’s ride on and see what we find.’
Braddock led the way, pushing his reluctant horse on as the trail became steeper, the pines denser, the path less defined. It had been fifteen or sixteen years since he had been to the place. He had never liked it. The isolation wasn’t for him. He had never understood why Frank bothered with it, until Walt told him Frank had a wife hidden away up here.
He felt his groin stir as he thought about her. Walt had said she was young with blonde hair and blue eyes, ripe as a fresh peach. It was just the way Braddock liked them. And she was Frank’s. That was an added bonus. Once his business with Frank was done, Bull was looking forward to taking her. Maybe he would make Frank watch before he killed him.
He cursed as a branch whipped at his hat, almost taking it off. It seemed there was no end to the trees that plucked at his clothes and kept him bent low in the saddle, and then he burst out into a small clearing.
‘Son-of-a-bitch,’ Harris grumbled, pulling foliage from the neck of his slicker as he popped out a few paces behind his partner. ‘I always hated this place. It looks like he fixed it up some since we was last here.’
Braddock’s dark gaze took in the cabin with its front porch, the lean-to, and a small corral big enough for four or five horses. The door was closed, as were the shutters. No smoke lifted from the chimney. Lastly, he noted the freshly dug grave and a scowl twisted his wide slash of a mouth.
‘Hello, the house,’ he shouted.
Nothing stirred and he hadn’t expected it to. He stepped down and splashed towards the cabin, hand on his holstered gun. Behind him, Harris sat his horse, his finger resting on the trigger of the Winchester held across the saddle.
‘You seeing anything?’ Harris asked.
‘Nothing I like.’
Braddock bent at the waist and trailed his fingers through the puddles that formed in the churned up mud. They had a coppery glint about them.
‘Blood,’ he said, his gaze roving the porch as he stepped up to the door. He ran his fingers down the frame. They came away red tinged. ‘Somebody’s tried to hide it but a man’s insides have a habit of splattering.’
He pulled his gun from its holster and thumbed back the hammer.
‘Walt, are you in there?’
Still no answer.
He stood to one side, pushed open the door and peered in. A dark stain that seeped into the otherwise scrubbed boards of the floor was the first thing he noticed then spots of blood on the table legs. Everything else was neat as a pin, the way only a woman could keep a place. So, where was she? Going to the fire in the stone chimney, he hovered his hand over the ashes. Cold. He dug in to the remains, sifting them between his fingers.
He heard Milt moving around outside. ‘You find anything?’
‘Maybe.’
They met on the porch. ‘What do you think happened?’ Milt asked.
‘There was a scuffle, that’s clear enough.’ He pointed towards the grave across the yard. ‘Somebody died. The rest pulled out.’
Harris gestured towards the lean-to. ‘Looks to me like they were hauling something when they left. I count five different sets of hoof prints but only two sets of boots.’
‘Gold maybe?’ Braddock asked.
Milt shrugged.
‘Then let’s find out what happened,’ Braddock said, stamping back inside.
Like a mad man, he tipped over the table, knocked aside the chairs, and tore down the blanket that separated the bed from the rest of the room.
Harris stood in the doorway, a grin on his pale face. ‘What about that trunk? Did you look in there yet?’
Braddock’s big hands yanked open the lid. There were clothes inside. He pulled them out, tossing them aside until he reached a plain woolen dress. This he pressed against his face and sniffed, immediately feeling his ardor rise as the musky scent of a woman flooded his senses. He could picture her, naked, legs spread, begging for him to take her.
‘Do you need a few minutes?’ Harris asked.
Braddock threw the dress down and adjusted his pants. ‘It’ll wait. Let’s eat. A chase always makes me hungry.’
Five
Two days later, in the dead of night, Maggie O’Bannen and Rick Talbot reached Shaw’s Creek Crossing. Maggie had sent Rick in alone earlier in the day to look the place over while she stayed with the decomposing corpses and rested in the shade of a cottonwood grove. The journey out of the hills had been harder on her than she thought it would be and Rick’s constant look of concern did nothing to bolster her spirits.
When he had returned, Rick had described the place as rundown. In Maggie’s opinion, that description was an exaggeration. Even in the meager light cast by a waning crescent moon that fleeted in and out between dark clouds, she could see that a man on a fast horse could ride through it without fear of missing a thing. Yes, it had a main street lined with false front business premises, and numerous side streets, but the whole place looked forlorn and forgotten.
The sign at the town’s limit had been altered several times judging by the flaking paint but now it read: Population 49. Someone had scratched through the number and carved 46 beneath it. The sight of numerous empty buildings and empty lots made even that meager figure seem unlikely.
‘You say it’s got a hotel?’ she asked, not even trying to hide her skepticism.
‘A saloon with a few rooms upstairs. All the comforts a travelling man—or woman might need.’
She ignored his ill contrived attempt to lift her spirits. Their brief time together in the saddle had shown him to be an eternal optimist, intent on finding something good in every situation. He either didn’t appreciate the danger they were in, didn’t care, or was just downright annoying. She hadn’t been able to decide.
‘And the nearest law office is twenty miles east in Flitwick?’ she asked, determined to plough on.
‘That’s what I heard.’
A dog ran barking from behind a pile of trash at the mouth of an alley. It took one look at the macabre cavalcade and skulked off. Maggie reined away into the shadows and held her breath, her eyes and ears alert for any sign that their arrival had been noticed. When nothing else stirred, Rick started forward again, leading the string of horses and their festering loads onward.
Maggie held back and let them pass. As the last one drew away, she pulled her bandanna down and tried not to breathe deeply. It had been pulled up over her nose, filtering the stench of the bodies and it only took a few seconds for the sickening smell to invade. Quickly, she mopped her forehead and cheeks, the back of her ne
ck and the hollow of her throat. The fabric came away sodden. She was hot, too hot, and the constant pulsating ache in her shoulder had been draining her will since early morning.
She shrugged it off. There was no time to worry about it now. As soon as they dumped the bodies, she could rest, rebuild her strength and decide on her next course of action. For now, she heeled the horse forward, clinging to the saddle with her one good hand as the gentle movement threatened to unseat her.
She caught up with Rick as he drew to a stop behind a large squat building that smelled of sawn wood.
‘Are you all right, Maggie?’
Again she ignored his concern. Until they disposed of the bodies and made good their escape, her wellbeing counted for nothing.
‘This is the place?’ she asked as she squinted into the darkness.
Rick slipped from the saddle and started to untie the horses. ‘According to the sign out front it’s a furniture store but I guess business must be slow in a place like this and the owner doubles as the undertaker.’
‘Sometimes I tend the living too when there’s a need for it.’
Maggie jumped as a voice issued from the shadows close beside her. She heard a match strike, blinked against the glare of a flame as it flared to life. When her vision returned to normal she saw the glow of a cigarette before she saw the stark white face behind it. It seemed more like an apparition than a living person. She dropped the reins and drew the Schofield holstered at her waist.
‘Show yourself,’ she ordered.
‘Why?’ the man asked. ‘Do you intend to shoot me?’
‘So I can see you.’
‘Seems to me you coming in the middle of the night kind of negates the need for a formal introduction, don’t you think?’
Despite the cynicism, he stepped forward, but the moon disappearing behind another cloud thwarted her attempts to get a better look at him. All she could make out was his shape as he walked along the string of horses. He was tall, well over six feet, and thin with broad shoulders, stooped. An old man? Maybe, but no less dangerous.