The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Slash shook his head as he plucked his black hat off a wall peg. “Not this time. The way I figure it, he didn’t have some wet-behind-the-ears lacky deputy handy, so he decided to send me an’ Pecos. That’s all right. As long as the check don’t bounce. Me, I’m ready for a nice, peaceful ride in the country, anyways. Maybe do a little fishin’ up around the North Platte. Haven’t done that in years.”

  “Yeah, I reckon this is just a little vacation for me an’ Slash.”

  Pecos followed Myra back through the side door and into the cabin. Myra was carrying the empty plates of her and Pecos both. “We’ll just have to take that load of dry goods up to Del Porter in Jamestown after we get back next week,” Pecos continued, stretching and yawning, the ill effects of last night apparently lingering in the big man’s bones.

  “Want me to send a telegram to let Porter know about the delay, Pecos?” Myra asked, helpfully.

  “Would you mind, darlin’?”

  The pretty brown-eyed girl, gifted with a thick head of pretty auburn curls, beamed up at the big, gray-blond ex-outlaw. “I’d love to. Anything I can do to help out. You know that, Pecos.”

  “Thanks, darlin’.” Pecos pecked her cheek again, and Slash thought the girl was going to squirm out of the red calico prairie dress she wore.

  The two men said their goodbyes, both ex-outlaws hugging both women, for the four were like a family, after all, then headed out of the cabin through the side door, heading for the barn and their horses. They’d been instructed to ride up to Cheyenne to pick up the federal jail wagon from the barn behind the courthouse.

  “Hey,” Jay called from the side porch. “I know it’s an easy job. Leastways, it sounds like one. But you know how you two manage to get yourselves into trouble no matter what?”

  Both men, halfway to the barn, stopped and turned to her, grinning guiltily.

  They glanced at each other. Then Slash said, chuckling, “I reckon we do, at that, sweetheart.”

  Jaycee Breckenridge planted her fists on her shapely hips and canted her head to one side, fixing them both with a pleading scowl. “Please, don’t!”

  * * *

  “So . . . what do you think about that girl?” Slash asked Pecos an hour later as, astride their well-traveled mounts, they followed the Union Pacific rails north toward Cheyenne. The Front Range of the Rocky Mountains lumped boldly up on their left.

  “What girl?”

  “What girl?” Slash said with a caustic grunt. “Myra! Who the hell you suppose I’m talkin’ about?”

  “I don’t know—I thought maybe you were referring to one of Jay’s girls.” Jay wrangled a stable of pretty doxies over at the Thousand Delights, and Pecos regularly partook of the lovely ladies’ delights, although Slash refrained for obvious reasons—namely, because he was fixing to marry the madam.

  “No, I’m not referring to one of Jay’s girls. I know what you think of them. It’s obvious every time you walk into the saloon and they tumble all over you, and you blush up like an Arizona sunset.” Slash chuckled, wagging his head. “No, it’s Myra, I’m talkin’ about, you fool!”

  Pecos scowled at him from beneath his tan Stetson. “Well, what about her?”

  “Can’t you see she’s done tumbled for you?”

  “Tumbled?” Pecos frowned, pensive, disbelieving. “For me?”

  “Yes, for you.” Slash stared at him in exasperation. “You mean you really haven’t seen it? The way she looks at you and fawns all over you? Not like Jay’s girls, but like a girl who has rightly and truly, make-no-mistake tumbled for you?”

  “Pshaw!” Pecos said. “We’re just pals, Myra an’ me. Just like Myra an’ you!”

  Slash shook his head again. “Boy, here I thought I was the stupid one when it came to women.” He gave a caustic laugh as he stared straight ahead at the blond prairie rising gradually toward where Cheyenne was laid out amidst haystack buttes to the north.

  Pecos continued staring at him skeptically as they rode along the two-track maintenance trail hugging the shiny iron rails. Slash rode a rangy Appaloosa, while Pecos straddled a buckskin big enough, seventeen hands high, to carry his bulk. “Stop insultin’ me an’ chew it up a little finer for me, will you, Slash—before I haul you out of your saddle and kick the stuffing out of both ends of you!”

  Slash sighed. “Myra’s gone for you.” He spoke more slowly, enunciating each word carefully. “She has fallen head-overheels, bloomers-over-her-head in love with you, you dunderheaded polecat!”

  “Nah.”

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Pecos turned his head forward, staring off to the north, but he wasn’t doing much seeing, only thinking.

  They rode along in silence for close to ten minutes before Pecos turned to his partner riding beside him again and said, “Well . . . that just purely breaks my heart, Slash.”

  He looked genuinely pained. In fact, Slash wouldn’t have put it past the big, tender-hearted galoot to let out a sob or two. Pecos had been known to bawl and even wail over women in the past, but mostly only over those who, having soured on his outlaw ways, kicked him to the curb.

  “It purely breaks my heart, it does,” he insisted.

  “The point here, Pecos, is what are you gonna do so’s you don’t break her heart?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Pecos said. He thought again for a time, then said, “I’m way too old for her. I mean . . . I sorta see her like a younger sister or . . . even a daughter. She wouldn’t want nothin’ to do with an old man like me. Not really.”

  “You better let her down easy, or you’re gonna have Jay on your behind. She feels right protective about Myra.”

  “Yeah, I know . . . I know,” Pecos said, scowling miserably over his buckskin’s head at the northern horizon.

  “Well, you got some time to think about it.” Slash gave a dry chuckle as he put his Appy into a trot. The ugly sprawl of Cheyenne bisected by two sets of railroad lines had begun to show itself on the fawn plain ahead, cradled by tall bluffs. “I gotta hand it to you, partner—you sure have a knack for getting yourself into women trouble!”

  Booting his own mount into a faster pace, Pecos yelled ahead at Slash, instructing his dark-haired partner to do something physically impossible to himself.

  Slash only laughed.

  CHAPTER 5

  A half hour later, the two former cutthroats crossed the Union Pacific tracks at Union Station and made their way down the clogged and muddy mire of Sixteenth Street, which served as Cheyenne’s main drag.

  They wended their way between traffic-ensnarled freight teams and ranch and farm wagons, and the foot traffic of blanket Indians and Chinamen leftover from the track-laying days, and passed the big Rollins House Hotel on the right side of the street.

  The Cheyenne–Black Hills Stage was just then parked out front of the hotel, and there must have been a good dozen men and women piling onto it, and even a dog.

  Several mustached men in bowler hats and cheap suits—likely drummers or gamblers—were taking seats on the roof, leaving the more comfortable seats inside the carriage to the ladies, though Slash silently opined that when it came to stagecoach travel, the words comfortable and seats should never be uttered in the same sentence.

  He’d stick to his trusty Appaloosa, which he hadn’t named, knowing that only debutantes and fools named horses, whereas Pecos, the gentle giant, had given his buckskin the unimaginative handle of Buck.

  The Laramie County Courthouse sat three doors down, on the same side of the street, from the hotel. It was a large, square building constructed of native stone, and both the U.S. flag as well as the Wyoming territorial guidon rippled on a pole in the gravelly front yard in which only bits of sage and prickly pear grew. A broad wooden front porch ran the length of the building’s front wall. Sheriff Hank Covington sat out in the yard fronting the porch, to the right of the veranda’s stone steps.

  The famous Wyoming lawman sat on a straight
-backed, leather-bottomed chair, holding a quirley in one hand and a stone mug of coffee in the other. He had one long, broadcloth-clad leg crossed over the other one, and he was staring up the street to the north, sort of squinting against the light.

  “Hidy-ho, there, Sheriff,” Slash said as he and Pecos reined their mounts up to one of the two rod-iron hitchracks fronting the courthouse, flanked by stock tanks.

  Covington didn’t turn to face the newcomers. He just kept staring up the street as though at something with great fascination. He didn’t wear a hat, and his silver-streaked black hair lay flat against his head. It glistened with barber’s oil. He wore a thick, bushy mustache of the same color as his hair. His face was of the weather-beaten, red texture of men who’d spent their younger years in the great outdoors, which Slash knew that Covington had, for the man had worked on ranches for most of his life, after fighting as a soldier of some renown in the Indian wars before buying his own spread near Laramie.

  “I say there, Sheriff Covington,” Slash repeated, a little louder this time.

  Still, Covington didn’t turn to face the newcomers. He just sat with the quirley in one hand, holding his coffee mug on his knee with his other hand, staring up the street to the north. His five-pointed sheriff ’s star, pinned to his brown wool vest, glinted in the sunlight.

  Slash and Pecos looked at each other curiously.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Slash silently opined. “The poor old guy must have gone deaf, likely from all the shooting he’d done and been around, all the Indian war whoops he’d listened to up in the Black Hills country in the years before Custer got separated from his topknot in the Greasy Grass.”

  Slash waved his hand out to the left, hoping to catch the sheriff ’s eye. He raised his voice to a yell: “Hey there, Sheriff Covington! It’s Slash an’ . . . er, I mean it’s, uh, James Braddock an’ Melvin Baker. We’re here to pick up the—”

  “It’s out back,” Covington responded while keeping his gaze up the street to the north. The man lifted his coffee cup to his lips and sipped, then swallowed, worked his lips around a little, and returned the cup to his knee.

  Slash and Pecos shared another curious glance.

  Pecos hiked a shoulder. Slash did, as well.

  Still deeply puzzled by the sheriff’s demeanor, Slash reined his Appy out away from the hitching post and gigged it on down the street to the north. Pecos did the same with his buckskin. Both men, glancing curiously over their shoulders at Sheriff Covington, who kept his gaze fixed on something up the street beyond and over the former cutthroats now, turned their horses to ride down along the courthouse’s north side to the rear.

  “What you suppose that was all about?” Pecos asked.

  “Hell if I know.”

  A long, low barn and a small corral flanked the courthouse, as well as its two two-seater privies. The barn stood beside a woodshed. What was of even more interest to Slash, however, were the three men standing around out front of the barn’s two open doors. They all wore suits or parts of suits, and had deputy U.S. marshal badges pinned to their shirts or wool vests.

  One, standing to the left of the doors, was tall and lean and sandy-haired, with a dome-like forehead.

  The second one, standing near the right door, with his hands in the pockets of his broadcloth trousers, was short, stocky, and red haired. His face was a mess of tiny brown freckles.

  The third, leaning back against the right door, was easily the largest of the three. He must have been Pecos’s size, around six-six, but a little beefier than Pecos, with a prominent gut bulging out his fancy brocade vest. Red suspenders climbed up over his broad shoulders. He was as bald as an egg, and he wore a natty handlebar mustache with waxed ends.

  Slash, being a former cutthroat, recognized all three men, though he’d never met any of them personally. He knew of them because as a man who had tried to stay ahead of such men for the better part of the past thirty years, he’d always felt it was in his best interest to get to know who the western lawmen were, to be able to recognize them on sight. Thus, either by hook or by crook, he’d come to know the first man—that lean one with the dome-like forehead—as Deputy U.S. Marshal Wendell Powell.

  The second one, the stocky, freckle-faced one standing by the right door with his hands in his pockets and a mocking grin stretching his lips back from his crooked teeth, was Deputy U.S. Marshal Gaylord Thomas.

  The big bruiser in the brocade vest and stylish if overly dandified mustache was Deputy U.S. Marshal George Wade.

  All three, of course, worked for Luther T. Bleed-Em-So Bledsoe. The first two were somewhere in their forties, while Wade was around Slash’s and Pecos’s age. All three men, Slash knew, had an office in the courthouse, rubbing elbows with Sheriff Covington and Covington’s four deputies.

  Slash reined his horse up in front of the barn. Pecos reined his buckskin to the right of Slash. Slash and Pecos shared another dubious glance; then Slash leaned forward, resting hisleft arm on his saddle horn, and shaped a coyote grin with one half of his mouth. “Hidy, fellas. Fancy seein’ all three of you here. You’ve come to help us hitch the horses to the jail wagon, have you? Well, then, let me thank you in advance for your help.”

  “Help?” Pecos gave a wry chuff and glanced at Slash. “Help, hell. Why don’t we go on over to Mrs. Ray’s Canary Café and get us some lunch while they do the dirty work? I mean, since they’re here an’ all . . .”

  “That’s a good idea,” Slash said, keeping his grinning gaze on the three lawmen standing pugnaciously before them. “I do love Mrs. Ray’s chili. Best you’ll find this far from Texas, in my humble estimation.”

  “Right you are, Slash,” Pecos said. “Right you are.”

  “You think you two are pretty damn smart, don’t you?” asked the deep-voiced, broad-chested, bald-headed George Wade, taking two steps forward and swinging his arms at his sides. He wasn’t wearing a gun rig. Nor a hat. In fact, Slash realized now that none of these three lawmen wore a gun rig or a hat.

  Also, they had their shirtsleeves rolled up to their elbows. As though they’d prepared themselves to get down to a job of work. Rough work. Rough and tumble work, perhaps.

  Pecos turned to Slash. “You know what I think, Slash?”

  “What’s that, Pecos?”

  “I think these three fine, upstanding keepers of the peace have met us out here to stomp us around a bit.”

  “No!” Slash feigned disbelief. “Why would they do something like that to two such well-bred innocent fellers like ourselves?”

  “Like I said,” George Wade said, a little louder this time, glaring up at the two former cutthroats, “you two think you’re pretty damn smart—don’t you?”

  “You worked it pretty well,” added Wendell Powell, narrowing his deep-set, angry eyes beneath his bulging forehead. “Had the law on your trail for damn near thirty years—then poof!” He raised his hand, opening it suddenly, then letting it fall. “One stroke of the pen by none other than the U.S. President, and it’s all wiped out.”

  “Not only is it wiped out,” said the stocky, freckle-faced Gaylord Thomas, “but ole Bleed-Em-So awards you with commissions.”

  “Unofficial commissions,” Wade put in, his angry flush rising from his clean-shaven cheeks into his egg-like head, “but commissions just the same. He threw you in with us—fellas who been keeping our noses clean for a good long time while we put men like you away in the federal pen or, better yet”—he shaped a cold smile, lifting his ostentatious mustache with its thin, waxed ends—“dropped you through a gallows floor.”

  “Just makes my neck sore thinkin’ about it!” Slash quipped. “Don’t it you, Pecos?”

  Pecos winced and massaged his neck with his hand.

  “All in all,” Slash said, smiling at the three men glaring up at him, “yeah, I reckon we are purty smart. Even Pecos is smart in that way, I guess, if in few others.”

  “Thanks, Slash,” Pecos said, glowering at him.

  “Well,
you ain’t gonna get past us without takin’ a lickin’,” Wade said, thumping his big left fist into the palm of his right hand and gritting his teeth with every blow. “That, at the very least, you will get.”

  “Yeah,” Powell said. “Nothin’ like a long pull in the ole jail wagon with sore ribs.” He grinned sadistically and glanced at his two cohorts, who chuckled.

  “The jail wagon’s in there, I take it?” Slash asked, lifting his chin to indicate the shadowy interior of the barn behind the three marshals.

  “It’s in there, all right,” Wade said. “It’s waitin’ on you to hitch it up and head north.”

  “We won’t overly delay you,” Thomas assured them, taking two steps forward, then stopping, spreading his feet a little more than shoulder width apart, and planting his fists on his hips. “Wouldn’t want you late pickin’ up Talon Chaney.”

  He and the others snickered through their teeth.

  “That right there oughta be punishment enough,” Wade said, then spread his mustached mouth again in a delighted grin. “But it ain’t. No, sir. We want to add our own.”

  “So let’s stop wastin’ time,” Powell said, raising his fists and assuming a fighter’s crouch, moving around, shifting his feet, feinting from side to side. “Climb down from those saddles and take your medicine, cutthroats!”

  Slash looked at Pecos. Pecos looked back at him, one brow arched.

  “Jesus, fellas,” Slash said, turning back to his and Pecos’s three would-be assailants, “I’m startin’ to feel a whole lot smarter than I did even before we rode back here.”

  The three deputies looked around at each other, puzzled.

  “Why’s that?” Wade said, squinting one eye.

  “Because you three are gonna hitch two horses to the jail wagon for me an’ Pecos,” Slash said. “All we’re gonna do is sit right here an’ watch. I might even have me a cigarette.”

  Again, the deputies looked at each other. Suddenly, they broke into laughter.

  Laughing, Wade said, “Now, how in the hell do you think that’s gonna happen?”