The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Walsh moved heavily toward her, his eyes aflame with fury. “Stop, Jay. I’m warning you!”

  “He’s in cahoots with Jason Hall! Spread the word!”

  “Damn you, Jay!” Walsh bounded off on his boot heels. He lunged forward, wrapping both his hands around Jay’s throat and bulling her backward. The carpeted floor came up to strike her hard about the head and shoulders.

  Her ears rang.

  Her vision blurred.

  She blinked up at the blurry vision of Cisco Walsh straddling her on his knees, lips stretched back from his teeth, both hands wrapped around her neck, trying to choke the life out of her. He was doing a good job of it, too. It seemed that the harder Jay tried to wrestle the marshal’s hands from her neck, the deeper his thumbs dug into her throat, pinching off her wind.

  Her head swelled until she thought it would explode.

  From far away came pounding sounds. They grew louder and louder.

  “Jay!” someone yelled. A young woman’s voice. “Jay! Open up! Let us in!”

  Jay opened her eyes just as Walsh’s demon-like image evaporated before her. She sat up, drawing a deep breath, surprised that the air moved down her throat and into her lungs so easily. She blinked, still feeling panic rush through her. It began to diminish as she looked around and saw that she was in her bed in her suite upstairs at the Thousand Delights.

  She was not in the saloon.

  Cisco Walsh was nowhere to be found. She was alone. Safe in her own bed . . .

  . . . with someone pounding on her door.

  “Jay!” Myra Thompson yelled, whacking the door two more times, hard. “Please open the door!”

  “Coming,” Jay croaked out. She still felt as though she’d been strangled.

  As she threw her covers back and dropped her feet to the floor, she cleared her throat and yelled more clearly this time, “I’m coming, Myra! Everything’s fine! I’m coming!”

  The pounding stopped.

  Jay shrugged into a powder-blue housecoat. She stepped into her soft wool slippers. Tying the robe at her waist, she moved out of her bedroom and into the parlor of her suite. She unlocked and opened the door.

  Myra Thompson stood before her, eyes glassy with terror. She stepped forward and placed her hands on Jay’s shoulders, crying, “Jay! Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, Myra. I’m fine. I’m sorry—I was just—”

  “I was about to kick the door open,” said the tall young man whom Jay just now saw standing to Myra’s left and a little behind her. “I was gonna give it one big whack with my boot, tear it right on out of its frame!” He lifted his foot to display the boot of topic. “We figured you was bein’ murdered in there, ma’am . . . judgin’ by the awful sounds!”

  Jay shook her head, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry I worried you both. I was dreaming, though . . .” She turned to look into her suite, half expecting to see Cisco Walsh standing in a corner or disappearing behind one of the heavy velvet draperies hanging over the windows. “It still seems so real.”

  “I’m glad it was only a dream. And I’m glad you woke up when you did. I was about to have Delbert kick your door in!” Myra laughed.

  Jay saw several girls standing outside the doors to their rooms, staring toward her with concern. She held up her hands and said, “It’s all right, ladies. All is well. I was just having a dream, is all. Go back to bed.”

  Judging by the dim light in the hall, it was still early. At least, by doxie standards.

  “Glad to hear you’re all right, Miss Jay,” one of the girls said, then quietly closed her door.

  “Come in, come in,” Jay said, beckoning Myra and the tall young man into her suite. When they’d stepped inside, the young man holding his bowler hat in his hands and now looking rather bashful and uncomfortable, Jay closed the door and smiled up at him.

  She extended her hand. “You must be Delbert.”

  “That’s right, ma’am,” he said around a mouthful of prominent teeth, proudly giving Jay’s hand a resolute shake. “Deputy Sheriff Delbert Thayer at your service.” He glanced at Myra. “Miss Myra an’ me, we’re—”

  “Friends,” Myra finished for him a little too energetically, rising up and down on the balls of her scuffed, boy-size stockmen’s boots. She wore her customary workaday attire—blue jeans, cotton shirt, boots, and round-brimmed felt hat. She wore a denim jacket against the morning chill. Her curly auburn hair tumbled about her shoulders.

  Thayer was in his early twenties—a tall, gangling young man with buckteeth over which his lip stuck out, and a long-nosed, slightly coyote-like, but not unattractive face. Light brown freckles were splashed across his nose and cheeks. His sandy hair was very straight and thin, and he wore it down over his ears. It showed the line where his hat had been. He wore suit pants, a pin-striped, collarless shirt to which his deputy sheriff’s badge was pinned, and suspenders. An old-model Remington revolver was strapped to his right hip.

  He nervously turned his hat in his hands and said, “Miss Myra says you think the town marshal’s gonna hold up the stage!”

  “Shhh!” both women said, holding fingers to their lips and grimacing.

  “Oh,” the boy said, flushing a little and glancing at the door. “Sorry. I, uh . . . sometimes don’t realize how far my voice carries. It was a problem at home.”

  “That’s all right,” Jay said with a nervous chuckle. “I doubt anyone heard. It’s just that I want to go to pains to keep this as quiet as possible until we can figure out what to do about the, uh . . . the situation.”

  Especially after the horrible dream she’d just had. She couldn’t get the dream image of Cisco’s demonic face out of her head, nor the pain and suffocating feeling of his hands around her neck.

  “That’s what I’m here to help you do, ma’am,” Delbert said. “I came here on Myra’s request, and I stand here in an official capacity.”

  Jay frowned up at him. “Official capacity?”

  “That’s lawman talk,” Myra said with a weary sigh. “Del loves to speak the language. He means he’s here to offer advice.”

  “Official advice, Miss Myra,” Delbert said, frowning at her, vaguely indignant. “I’m a deputy. Says so right here.” He brushed his thumb across his badge. “I know what I’m doin’. Uncle . . . I mean, Sheriff McGuire . . . always says so. Why, just the other day, before he left town, he told me I got one heck of a bright future.” He glanced at Myra and a pink flush rose in his pale, freckled cheeks. “He told me I should find me a good woman an’ settle down because I was gonna be workin’ for him—”

  “All right, Del, all right!” Myra intoned. To Jay she whispered behind her hand, “He does like to go on, Delbert does.”

  “I do tend to go on,” Delbert allowed to Jay, “but I am good at what I do. Deputy work an’ such.”

  “Shall we have a seat?” Jay said, not sure that it had been such a good idea to bring the young man, who was obviously infatuated with Myra and still wet behind the ears, into the fold. But here he was now, so . . .

  Jay led the three into the parlor area of her suite. “Please . . . sit anywhere.”

  As she herself sat on one end of a couch abutting the wall to her bedroom, Myra took the smaller sofa on the other side of the coffee table from Jay. Delbert considered the armchair at the end of the coffee table, but then chose to sit on the small sofa with Myra, who drew her mouth corners down when she saw him coming. The young man flushed, slid a little closer to Myra, not quite touching her but almost, then set his hat on the table, folding his long arms across his skinny knees.

  “I’m sorry,” Jay said. “I would offer you coffee, but I always take mine downstairs.”

  “We’re fine, Jay.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Delbert said. “I’m fine. I don’t touch the stuff. The sheriff told me it’ll turn my hair black.” He grinned, showing his buckteeth, and snorted a laugh. His laughter sounded like a mule braying.

  Myra rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway . .
.” Delbert cleared his throat and looked at Jay. “Would you like to tell me exactly what you overheard, ma’am?”

  “Please, Delbert—call me Jay.”

  He grinned again. “Only if you’ll call me Del.”

  “Del, it is.” Jay leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and entwined her hands together. She related the conversation she’d overheard between Walsh and Hall as best she could remember, which she thought was pretty well, then arched a brow expectantly at the young sheriff ’s deputy sitting across from her.

  “By golly!” Del said. He whistled as he leaned back in the sofa and wagged his head from side to side in unabashed delight. “It sure enough sounds like hell’s about to pop an’—”

  “Shhh!” Jay and Myra beseeched him at the same time.

  Lowering his voice and flushing with embarrassment, Del said, “It sure enough sounds like just what you said—the marshal an’ Mr. Hall are fixin’ to rob a gold shipment!”

  “It does, indeed,” Jay said. “What do you propose we do about it?”

  “Hmmm.” Del scrunched up his face to gaze at the ceiling. He twisted his lower lip between his thumb and index finger and said, “I think what I’d best do is send an official telegram to Uncle . . . pardon me, I mean Sheriff McGuire in Santa Fe. He’ll be down there till next week, seein’ a sawbones about some aches an’ pains he’s been havin’. My ma says it’s all on account of Aunt Polly’s cooking, but—”

  “Del!” Myra snapped at him, giving his knee a whack with the back of her hand, cutting him off.

  “Oh! I’m sorry.” Del waggled his head around miserably. “How I do go on!”

  “How you do!” Myra cajoled him.

  “Here’s what I’m gonna do,” Del said, returning his serious, official gaze to Jay. “I’m gonna send a telegram to the sheriff. Sort of consult with him on the matter, don’t ya know. He’ll probably cable me right back, me bein’ one of his top deputies an’ all.”

  Again, Myra rolled her eyes. Jay suppressed a mirthful snort, not wanting to offend the young man.

  “I’ll tell him what you told me, and we’ll see what he says.”

  “All right,” Jay said. “I guess that’s as good a place to start as any.”

  “Oh,” Del said. “Do you know when this holdup’s supposed to take place?”

  “No,” Jay said. “All I know is that it’s going to happen this week, and it’s a shipment of eighty thousand dollars in gold bullion.”

  “All right, all right,” Delbert said, ponderingly. “If it’s a stagecoach, I sure hope it ain’t carrying passengers. Wouldn’t want any innocent bystanders hurt—you know, in the event of a lead swap after the authorities become involved in the matter.”

  “Lead swap?” Myra asked.

  “You know—a shoot-out. Not unexpected when we’re dealing with as much money as Miss Breckenridge says will be rollin’ out of them mountains. Men fixin’ to steal that amount tend to get reckless . . . downright savage in their veniality.”

  “Savage in their what?” both Jay and Myra asked at the same time.

  “Savage in their veniality,” the young deputy said, grinning proudly. “I got that out of the Police Gazette. I’m a regular subscriber, don’t ya know!”

  “Great,” Jay said, sitting back in the sofa, smiling but feeling crestfallen. “Just great.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Slash felt something warm against the side of his neck. A warm breath.

  He chuckled in his sleep, dreaming that he was in a warm doxie’s cozy bed. “That tickles, darlin’.”

  There was a soft snorting sound.

  “Go back to sleep, darlin’. Slash is too sleepy to play.”

  Something cold and rubbery touched his neck. That woke him, his eyes snapping wide, remembering instantly that he was not in a whorehouse but on the step of Carlisle’s in Dry Fork. He turned to his right . . . and stared into two cinnamon-colored eyes set close together atop a long, gray, black-tipped snout.

  The coyote’s pupils contracted. The bristled lips rose above sharp white teeth, including two impressive fangs.

  Slash jerked his head back and gave a shrill yell that he was immediately embarrassed by. It sounded womanish—girlish—even to his own ears.

  “I ain’t dead, you smelly, mangy, louse-infested vermin!”

  The coyote yipped with its own start, lunged backward, twisted around in a blur of quick motion, and leaped down off Carlisle’s steps and into the street. It bolted off to the east so fast as to resemble a large gray bullet, quickly disappearing in the murky gloom of a soaking wet dawn.

  Slash had been so startled by the nosy beast that he’d dropped his rifle, which he’d been holding across his thighs when he’d drifted into his nap maybe an hour or so ago. Now he bent to pick it up from a step below him, wincing as his stiff, old spine grieved him. It felt as though it would snap like dry kindling. This cold, wet weather didn’t set well in an old man’s bones.

  “What’s the matter, you old devil?” called one of the prisoners in the jail wagon. “That coyote think you was dead? Well, you’re gonna be dead. You’re gonna pay for makin’ us stay out here all night without even a blanket and no tendin’ for our wounds. That wasn’t the only coyote on the prowl last night. A good half-dozen of ’em circled this wagon several times, sniffin’ an’ snortin’ an’ growlin’ through the bars!”

  “Stop your caterwaulin’, Chaney,” Slash said, using his rifle as a cane with which to help hoist him to his feet.

  Behind him, a floorboard squawked, and Pecos said, “You all right, boss?”

  “I’m all right,” Slash said with a groan, planting a hand on his hip and leaning backward to stretch his spine. “Who screamed?”

  “Never mind.” Pecos snorted.

  “Coyote thought I was one of the dead citizens of Dry Fork,” Slash said. “You’d scream like a girl in pigtails, too, if you woke to see a coyote eyein’ you like breakfast.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Foul-smelling breath, too! Nasty!”

  “They probably been suppin’ on the town overnight.”

  “Yeah, I heard ’em.”

  “Come on in for a cup of coffee. I got a pot brewin’. Then I reckon we’d best hitch the horses to the wagon and start south.” Pecos turned and walked back into the saloon.

  Slash turned to the wagon. In the misty gray light he could see the three prisoners sitting on the wagon’s near side, glaring at him like hungry zoo animals.

  “I’ll be in shortly,” Slash yelled to Pecos. He moved down off the steps and started walking toward the wagon. “I’m gonna have me a little talk with the clientele.”

  “Just don’t cheat the hangman!” Pecos yelled back at him.

  “I know, I know,” Slash said, striding toward the wagon, his rifle on his shoulder. “Hangmen gotta eat, too.”

  “So do federal prisoners,” Hell-Raisin’ Frank Beecher said. He sat to the right of Talon Chaney, who sat between Beecher and Black Pot. “I believe you overlooked supper last night. How ’bout some breakfast?”

  “Yeah, how ’bout breakfast, you old toad!” said Black Pot, shoving his face into a gap between the bars. He had his hands wrapped taught around two of the iron bands.

  Slash jerked his rifle down off his shoulder and rammed the butt against Black Pot’s left-hand fingers. “Owww!” the half-breed yowled, jerking both hands back and clutching the injured one in the healthy one.

  “That there’s what I came out here to talk to you about,” Slash said, glancing from Black Pot to Chaney and Beecher, who both wisely removed their hands from the cage’s iron bands.

  The three looked like a trio of half-drowned rats. Their clothes were still wet from the downpour. Their hair was only starting to dry. Blood shone through the bandages wrapped around Beecher and Chaney’s leg wounds. They were tired, hungry, miserable, and madder than the proverbial old wet hen.

  “What’d you come out here to talk to us about?” Chaney asked through a searing glare. “Breakfa
st? I’ll have four eggs over easy, a pile of bacon, a mess of fried potatoes with onions, and six buckwheat cakes!”

  “You’ll get breakfast,” Slash said. “A meager one. But you’ll get breakfast . . . as long as you’re nice. You understand?”

  “As long as we’re nice?” Beecher laughed his effeminate laugh. “We’re outlaws, you old coyote. You’re taking us to Denver to hang us. How can you expect us to be nice?” He laughed through his teeth and slid his lunatic-bright eyes to his two compatriots to his left.

  “Because if you ain’t nice, you won’t be fed. You won’t get your slop bucket emptied, neither.” Slash looked at the wooden pale in the wagon’s far corner. “Now, see here,” the old ex-cutthroat added, “I want you to be on especially good behavior when that young schoolteacher comes out here.”

  “What young schoolteacher?” Chaney sneered.

  Slash glared back at him, suppressing the fire of rage burning behind his heart. “The one you so badly abused.” He drew adeep, calming breath. “But, then, you abused so many, you probably don’t remember.”

  Beecher turned to Chaney and snickered through his teeth.

  Chaney grinned.

  Black Pot snorted.

  “Now, she’s gonna be ridin’ along with us, see? In the wagon here.” Slash canted his head to the driver’s seat.

  “Who?” Black Pot said, still holding his injured hand. “The teacher is?”

  “That’s right. She wants to go to Denver. So we’re gonna take her there.”

  Beecher grinned and whistled, rubbing his hands together.

  Slash switched his gaze to the effeminate hell-raiser. “If any of you says anything off-color to her, or even looks at her in a way I don’t like, or does anything in general that I think might remotely offend her, I’m gonna . . .”