The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “What’s funny?” Myra said, arching a brow at her.

  “You and Delbert Thayer.”

  “Believe me, there is no me and Delbert Thayer. There is just Delbert Thayer, who comes dragging his heels over here from time to time, though I have given him absolutely no reason to do so.”

  “You’re beautiful and he’s in love with you,” Jay said, reaching up to tuck a lock of unruly curls behind the girl’s left ear. “You can’t blame him for that.”

  “He’s a young fool. He’ll never make a man. McGuire made him deputy because McGuire’s his uncle and Delbert’s mother made him do it. McGuire lets him sweep out the office and tend the horses and occasionally collect county taxes, little more.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Jay was back to pondering her own situation. “I don’t know how to do it, but somehow we have to stop that robbery, Myra. I . . . and now you . . . are the only ones who know about it. The people of Camp Collins need to know who . . . and what . . . Cisco Walsh really is.”

  “Much easier said than done,” Myra said with a sigh. She leaned forward and placed her hand on Jay’s. “I’ll talk to Delbert. He’s not as dumb as he looks, and if he can help me out, he’ll tumble all over himself trying. He might have an idea how we can stop that stage robbery.”

  Jay studied her, thinking. She could wire the Chief Marshal in Denver, but it would likely take him a couple of days to send a man or two over this way. Also, ole Bleed-Em-So might figure it’s out of his federal jurisdiction.

  Hell, since he knew her own outlaw history, he might not even believe her.

  “All right,” Jay said, nodding slowly. “What other choice do we have?”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Do you want another card?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you want another card?”

  Pecos looked down at the cards in his hands. He and Slash were sitting in Carlisle’s, sipping whiskey. Outside, a storm was brewing, so they’d decided to cool their heels overnight here in the burned-out town of Dry Fork.

  “Nah.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “Give yourself one, then.”

  “All right, I will.” Slash snorted with amusement and hit himself. He looked at Pecos sitting on the other side of the table, staring into the heavy shadows at the room’s rear. “What do you have?”

  “Huh?”

  Slash gave another snort. It was a disgusted one this time. “What do you have?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let me see.” Slash reached across the table and looked at his partner’s cards. He glared at Pecos. “For a man who’s not payin’ much attention to poker, you sure filled out a nice hand for yourself!”

  His straight wouldn’t beat Pecos’s full house. He slapped his own cards on the table. “I ain’t gonna play cards with you if you’re gonna win without even payin’ attention, dammit!”

  “Look at her over there.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Look at her.”

  Pecos’s gaze was on the only citizen aside from Stanley Donovan that he and Slash had found still alive in Dry Fork. After they’d ridden back into town with the jail wagon and their three kill-crazy prisoners, they’d found her sitting on Carlisle’s porch steps. She hadn’t said a word when Slash and Pecos had pulled the jail wagon up in front of the saloon. She’d been beaten, obviously. Cuts marred her otherwise pretty, brown-eyed face. Her dark blue dress was badly torn, almost ripped off her body. Her thick, long brown hair was badly disheveled, with dirt, leaves, and weed seeds clinging to it.

  She’d tried to run when she’d seen the prisoners, but Pecos had run her down, calmed her, and gotten her to go into Carlisle’s, since that was about the only reasonable shelter left standing. She’d needed a roof over her head, for the storm had been brewing even then. She hadn’t said a word then, and she still hadn’t. She just sat alone at her table, a blanket wrapped around her otherwise bare shoulders. She sat staring down expressionlessly at the shot of whiskey and cup of coffee Pecos had set before her, having brewed a pot of mud on the saloon’s potbelly stove.

  While Pecos had tended the woman, Slash had dragged the four bodies out of the saloon, laying the aproned man and the doxie, as well as the two dead gang members, out in the back alley flanking the place. He didn’t know what else to do with them. The rest of the dead folks in the town were still laying out exposed, and there was nothing to be done about that.

  Slash and Pecos couldn’t take the time and expend the energy that would be needed to gather them all and bury them. They’d have to let nature run its course, which, regrettably, meant leaving the dead citizens of Dry Fork to the predators. The killers deserved nothing better, but the innocent citizens did.

  “What about her?” Slash said.

  “She looks miserable. Poor gal.”

  “She’ll come around.”

  “What do you suppose they done to her?”

  Slash scowled across the table at him, through the smoke rising from his cigarette. “You know what they done to her.”

  Pecos turned in his chair to glare out the saloon doors at the jail wagon parked in the street, where they’d left it. Since the livery barn was gone, Slash had hobbled both geldings and his and Slash’s horses in the lot beside Carlisle’s, where they’d have a little shelter from the storm. The prisoners sat slumped in the wagon’s steel cage, the wind blowing their hair, lifting street dust up around them as the storm settled over the town.

  “I feel like going over there and shooting all three. Shooting them down like hydrophobic curs.”

  “Don’t cheat the hangman, Pecos,” Slash said, blowing a plume of smoke into the air. “He’s gotta eat, too.”

  “Still, though,” Pecos grumbled, “what’s the point?”

  “Like I said . . .”

  “Yeah, I know what you said,” Pecos said. “Hangman’s gotta eat, too.”

  “You wanna play another hand?”

  “No, I’m not in the mood for cards. How can you be?”

  “What do you mean?” Slash asked.

  “The whole damn town—well, most of it, anyway—is dead! Buildings burned.” Pecos looked at the young woman still staring down at her whiskey. She didn’t appear to have touched either of her drinks. “Women savaged . . .”

  “Hey, where’s Donovan?”

  “I seen him tryin’ to run down a horse when we were pulling back into town. I think he wanted to get a long, long way away from those three out there.” Pecos hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the jail wagon. “He’s probably to the next county by now.”

  Slash sucked on his quirley, blew out another smoke plume.

  “Nothin’ really gets to you, does it?” Pecos said, giving Slash a hard, critical look. “I mean, a whole town has been sacked and you just sit there, playin’ cards, smokin’ your quirley, and drinkin’ your whiskey.”

  Slash raised his shot glass. “Whiskey helps cut the smell.” He threw back the last of the shot and poured out another one.

  “A whole town burned, murdered,” Pecos said, wagging his head slowly as he stared at the table.

  “Here,” Slash said. “Have some more whiskey. Make you feel better.” He refilled his partner’s glass.

  Pecos gave him another hard stare and said with a sigh, “You’re cold, Slash.”

  “Not really,” Slash said. “Just used to it.”

  “Hey, you in there!” Talon Chaney shouted from the jail wagon. “You gotta bring us in outta the rain. It’s startin’ to come down hard out here!”

  Slash and Pecos shared a chuckle.

  Slash grabbed his shot glass and rose from his chair. “I’m gonna go out and enjoy the rain. I always did enjoy a summer storm.”

  He sauntered out the batwings and stood on the covered porch. The rain was coming down hard. It looked like a gauzy curtain dropping at an angle over the black mounded ruins of the town. It was as dark as dusk. Lightning sparked in the swollen bellies of cloud the color of bruised plum
bs.

  “Yeah, this is a good one,” Slash said above the hammering rain and crashing thunder, smiling out into the street.

  “Come on!” Chaney bellowed. He and his two fellow prisoners slumped against the onslaught, the rain thrashing them, pouring off their heads and shoulders. “This ain’t right! At least take us into the jail!”

  “You’re gonna stay right where you are!” Pecos yelled back at the man. He’d come out to stand beside Slash, his whiskey glass in his hand. “Maybe it’ll wash your sins away. I don’t think so, but it’s worth a try!” He chuckled.

  Slash stepped over to his left and slumped into one of the several chairs arranged haphazardly around the porch, where they’d been occupied by the town’s loafers in happier times. Before Talon Chaney et al. rode into town. “Yes, sir,” he said, smiling at the storm. “I do like me a summer storm.”

  Pecos sat in a chair beside him, turning it around to face him, then leaning forward and crossing his big arms across the back of it. “Slash, what’re we gonna do about that poor girl inside?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we’re pullin’ out tomorrow, correct?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We can’t just leave her here. Not in the state she’s in.”

  Slash looked into the street again, this time with a pensive expression.

  “I’ll go with you.”

  The unfamiliar female voice behind them jerked them both around.

  The young woman stood just outside the batwings, staring down at them. She held the blanket, shawl-like, around her shoulders.

  “Good Lord!” Pecos rose from his chair. “Here, here, little lady. Come over here and sit down.”

  She stood where she was and said again, “I’ll go with you. You’re going to Denver, right?” She must have overheard them talking. “I’ll go with you to Denver. That’s where I’m from. I don’t have anyone there anymore, but at least it’s home.” She gazed out into the street at the jail wagon and hardened her jaws, as well as her eyes. It’s . . . it’s better than this.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say it is,” Pecos said.

  “They’ll be comin’ with us, too,” Slash warned the young woman, whom he figured to be in her early to mid-twenties. She didn’t look as pale as she had before. In fact, she even seemed to have some color in her naturally pale cheeks.

  She stared at the jail wagon and said tonelessly, “I got nowhere else to go.” She turned to Pecos, then to Slash, and said in a hard, demanding, frightened tone, “You’ll keep them in there? You’ll keep them caged? You won’t ever let them out?”

  “No, ma’am,” Pecos said. “They won’t be gettin’ out of that cage till they’re in Denver. My word’s bond on that. You can ride along with us. It won’t be a comfortable trip, but we’ll keep you safe, all right.” He gestured at the chair. “Come over here and sit down.”

  She looked at the chair, drew a breath, then walked over and sat in it.

  “What’s your name?” Slash asked.

  Staring out at the rain, she said again in her low, flat voice, “Jenny. Jenny Claymore.”

  “I’m Sla—er, I mean, I’m Jimmy. This big, ugly critter is Melvin.”

  “Jimmy and Melvin,” she said. It wasn’t a question. It was as though she were trying out the names on her tongue. She turned to them and with that bland expression again, she said, “Not Slash and Pecos?” She arched one brow skeptically.

  Slash looked at Pecos. Pecos looked at Slash.

  Smiling sheepishly, Pecos said, “We left them Slash an’ Pecos days behind. You can call us Jimmy an’ Melvin.”

  “Now you drive the U.S. marshal’s jail wagon . . . ?”

  “We do, indeed,” Slash said, dragging out his makings pouch to roll another cigarette. “We’ve moved up in the world, me an’ Melvin have.”

  “Melvin and I have,” Jenny Claymore said.

  Slash glanced at her, the drawstring of his makings sack in his teeth. “Huh?”

  “I am . . . was . . . the schoolteacher here in town. Melvin and I have moved up in the world.”

  “Oh,” Slash said, glancing at Pecos again. “Well, Miss Jenny, since you’re already back to work, you must be feelin’ better.”

  “No,” she said flatly, staring out through the rain and the storm-battered cage in the street. “After what those animals did to me . . . to this town . . . I don’t think I’ll ever feel better again.”

  “Here.” Slash held out his shot glass to her. “Drink that. Make you feel better.”

  She took the glass and threw back the entire shot. She lowered her chin, squeezed her eyes closed, swallowed, and shook her head. She leaned forward to slam the glass down on the floor at her bare feet. Raising her head, she ran her hand across her mouth, then rubbed the hand dry on what remained of her dress.

  She whipped her head to Slash. “Didn’t do a thing.”

  Slash grimaced at her. He reached tentatively out toward the girl, not sure he should be making this intimate gesture after all she’d been through, but deciding to go through with it anyway, though it made him feel awkward and uncomfortable. He placed his hand on her shoulder, gave it a light squeeze.

  “Give it time, Jenny.”

  He jerked with a start when she turned to him suddenly. He thought she was going to slap him, punch him, tell him to get the hell away from her. But she did no such thing. Her face crumpling, she sobbed, grabbed his arm, and squeezing it desperately with both hands, pressed her head against his shoulder. She wailed an animal-like wail that lifted the short hairs on the back of Slash’s neck. He sat frozen in his chair, looking down at the girl bawling as she ground her face into his bicep.

  He sat stiffly, tensely, not sure what to do, what to say.

  He looked up at Pecos leaning back against the front of Carlisle’s, and silently asked his partner for help.

  Pecos smiled at him, as though to say: “All’s well, Slash. Just ride it out.”

  Jenny lifted her head sharply and with a terrified gasp when one of the prisoners gave a loud whoop above the roar of the storm. The other two whooped and howled, as well, and then Talon Chaney shouted, “Well, hello there, Marshal! Ain’t seen you in a while!”

  Slash rose from his chair. Pecos pushed off the wall. He and Pecos shared a conferring glance, then walked up to the top of the porch steps, staring out into the street. A figure was moving toward Carlisle’s from their right. The man moved slowly inside the buffeting gray curtain of rain. He walked with his arms hanging straight down at his sides, as though they were too heavy to lift. As he walked, he dragged the toes of his boots, and his knees bent precariously with each step, as though the strain of each step threatened to send him sprawling into the muddy street.

  Something shiny shone on his shirt.

  Jenny gasped and slapped her hand to her mouth. “Marshal Larsen,” she said in a plaintive, tragic voice.

  The man approaching Carlisle’s and the jail wagon in which the prisoners yipped and yowled like moon-crazed coyotes took one more halting step before he fell forward into the mud and lay in the street as though dead.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Whoa!”

  Slash hurried down Carlisle’s steps and ran into the muddy street that had nearly become a river. Lightning forked over the burned-out town. Thunder crashed like cymbals. The rain lashing at him, instantly drenching him and sluicing off the brim of his black Stetson, Slash dropped to a knee beside the man who’d fallen in the street.

  Beneath the storm he could hear the three human coyotes yipping and yowling in the jail wagon.

  Pecos knelt on the other side of the fallen man and said, “Is he dead?”

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Let’s get him into the saloon.”

  Slash grabbed the man’s left arm, Pecos grabbed the man’s right arm, and they pulled him up out of the mud. Immediately, the man began moving his head and muttering. He’d been badly beaten, his eyes swollen nearly shut, and his lips had been smashed a
nd cut. Dried blood was caked on them, mixed with the mud of the street.

  The former cutthroats each draped an arm of the beaten man around their necks and half led, half dragged him up the saloon steps. Slash could hear him groaning, grunting. Jenny Claymore held one of the batwings open as she stared in horror at the poor, beaten man whom Slash and Pecos led across the porch. Slash stepped through the open left door as Pecos bulled through the right one.

  “Let’s get him into a chair,” Pecos said.

  They led him over to their own table. Pecos kicked out a chair, and he and Slash eased the man into it. Slash retrieved a glass from the bar and splashed whiskey into it. He held it up to the beaten man in the chair.

  “Here, son. Take a sip of that.” He thought the whiskey would bring him around.

  The man opened his swollen eyes to slits. He looked like a large, drowned rat, though Slash suspected he was fine to look at under all that mud and bruising. Slash figured he was in his late twenties. He was clean-shaven with short dark brown hair, and he wore a store-bought, three-piece suit. The mud-caked, five-pointed star pinned to his vest had the words TOWN MARSHAL engraved on it, though Slash could barely read the words for the mud.

  The man raised his muddy right hand. He seemed to have trouble getting it to the glass, so Slash shoved the glass into it. The man closed his thumb and fingers around the glass, brought it to his lips, and sipped. He sipped again, again, and again, and then threw back the rest of the shot and swallowed.

  He gritted his teeth, shook his head.

  “Christ, she’s dead!” he wailed, throwing his head back.

  “Who’s dead, son?” Pecos asked.

  The young man lowered his head and sobbed.

  “His wife,” said Jenny Claymore, standing before the young town marshal, between Slash and Pecos. “He must mean his wife—Tiffanie.”

  The man sobbed for a couple of minutes while Slash and Pecos and Jenny Claymore stood looking down at him, helpless. Finally, the young marshal brushed his sleeve across his battered mouth and turned to stare out the window to his left, at the jail wagon obscured by the heavy wedding veils of falling rain.