The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  He heard the killers’ laughter as they’d disrespected and murdered her.

  And he saw growing larger before him, as he approached the barred wagon, the faces of the killers curling their lips and narrowing their eyes at him. Making light of him and of what they had done.

  As Larsen came to a stop six feet from the wagon, a vague unease passed over the killers’ eyes. Chaney was the only one with a faint smile still curling one side of his mouth. And now the outlaw’s mouth straightened as the dark-eyed devil known as Black Pot elbowed him, alerting the gang leader to possible trouble. They each in turn glanced at the Colt Lightning holstered in the black leather holster on Larsen’s right leg.

  “What were you smiling about?” he choked out through a knot of tightly bound emotion residing just south of his vocal cords. He had his chin down, eyes wide, and he could feel several veins throbbing in his forehead.

  “What’s that?” asked Frank Beecher.

  “You heard me,” Larsen said. “What were you smiling about?”

  He shuttled his gaze back and forth across them. All three stared back at him, their eyes now stonily defiant. Finally, Chaney let out a chuckle. He turned to grin at Black Pot, who smiled then, too.

  Larsen couldn’t help himself. Suddenly, Two Whistles’s Colt was in his hand. He raised it, hearing the three clicks as his thumb drew the hammer back. His hand shook. He steadied it with the other one, dripped his chin again, and narrowed one eye as he aimed down the barrel at Chaney’s head.

  “Hold on now!” Chaney said, holding up his hands, palms out. “Just hold on, now, Marshal.” He looked around Larsen toward Carlisle’s and said, “Trouble over here! You two better get this young marshal back on his leash. He’s actin’ crazy!”

  Larsen heard two sets of footsteps and knew the two former outlaws, Braddock and Baker, were moving toward him.

  “I have to do it,” Larsen yelled at the two men moving toward him from behind, squeezing the revolver so tightly he could hear the handle cracking. “I can’t help myself! Why should they live after what they did to my wife . . . to Henry . . . ?”

  Braddock moved up on his left and stopped.

  Baker moved up on his right and stopped.

  Mildly, Braddock said, “You do what you have to.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Larsen glanced at Braddock out of the corner of his eye and furled his left brow. “Huh?”

  “Go ahead,” Baker said on his other side. “If anyone has the right to send these three ugly polecats to hell, it’s you, Marshal.” A slight pause, then in Baker’s deep, resonant voice and slow western drawl: “Go ahead.”

  Larsen felt a smile curl his own lips as he aimed down the Colt’s barrel at Chaney.

  “Hey, now!” the outlaw protested, holding his hands straight up above his shoulders. “You can’t shoot a jailed prisoner. It’s against the law!”

  “You’re gonna die,” Larsen told him. “You smiled. You mocked my wife. You mocked what you did to her. I saw what you did to Henry. Why should you live? Give me one good reason!” His voice cracked at the end of the exclamation.

  All three killers looked anxious now. All three held their hands up in supplication. Chaney’s eyes were wide and bright with fear, his face mottled red and floury white.

  Larsen began to pull back against the Colt’s trigger. It was a satisfying feeling. Relief was coming....

  A hand rose up from right beside him. A pale female hand. The hand closed down over Two Whistles’s revolver, pushed it back down to Larsen’s side. He turned to see Jenny Claymore standing just off his right shoulder, regarding him with an expression of concern mixed with her own horror and grief.

  She shook her head, sniffed. A tear rolled down from her left eye.

  “That’s who they are.” She tossed her head toward the wagon. “It’s not who you are.”

  “Ah, hell!” Larsen lowered his head and sobbed.

  Jenny pressed tight against him, wrapped her arms around him, hugging him, rocking him gently in her arms.

  * * *

  “Ready to go?” Pecos asked Larsen and Jenny Claymore an hour later.

  He was leading two saddled horses toward Carlisle’s—his own buckskin and a horse he’d caught and saddled for Larsen—a big roan gelding that must have broken out of one of the barns or corrals during the fire.

  Slash was still inspecting the jail wagon’s hitch. He’d harnessed the two geldings to the wagon and tied his own Appaloosa to the back. His rifle lay on the driver’s seat. He’d stashed the saddlebags containing the killers’ stolen loot beneath the seat. The gold and certificates would be returned to their rightful owners after the jail wagon party reached Cheyenne. Jenny had stowed several bags of trail beneath the seat, as well—enough for the three-day ride back to Cheyenne, where they’d abandon the wagon and catch the train for Denver.

  While Slash and Pecos had readied the horses, Larsen and the young schoolteacher had waited together on Carlisle’s front steps. Jenny had packed a carpetbag; it rested beside her left thigh. She and the young marshal sat close together, legs touching, quietly lending comfort to each other in this time of incomprehensible tragedy for both of them. They looked badly battered, but Larsen’s face was in worse shape than the girl. Both of his eyes were badly swollen, and his lips were cracked and occasionally oozing fresh blood, which he brushed away with his sleeves. His own carbine leaned against his left leg; his bullet-crowned hat was on his head. It was large and black, like a crown of mourning.

  Larsen nodded. “Ready.”

  He winced as he tried to rise, dropped back down to the step.

  “You sure?” Pecos asked the young man, whose ribs must be grieving him miserably.

  “Yep.” Larsen grunted as he heaved himself to his feet.

  Jenny rose to stand beside him, looking up at him. “Are you sure, Glenn? We can stay here. I’ll stay with you . . . until you’re ready to travel. We don’t have to leave now.”

  Larsen looked from the young woman to the jail wagon. The previous anger passed over his swollen eyes once more, his bruised cheeks flushing, and he turned back to her. “I have to.”

  She heaved a breath, nodded. “All right.” Larsen touched her arm. “Can you?”

  Jenny nodded. “Yes, I’m not in that much pain. At least, my body isn’t in that much pain.”

  Larsen pursed his lips. “Yeah . . .”

  He took the roan’s reins from Pecos and turned to the horse. Slash had walked over from the wagon, and now he picked up Jenny’s bag from the step. He took her arm and led her over to the wheeled jail.

  As he did, Pecos swung up onto Buck’s back and rode over to the wagon. He gave the three killers a cold, dark look, silently cautioning them against saying anything to the girl they’d savaged. The three outlaws just stared up at the big man blankly, with customary subtle defiance and vague mocking. No doubt in deference to what Slash had done to Beecher’s ear, they kept as silent as church mice as Slash helped the young woman up onto the wagon’s seat. The seat was padded with leather, but Slash had further softened it for the girl’s comfort with a folded quilt from Carlisle’s.

  Slash walked around the front of the team and climbed onto the seat beside Jenny, who sat stiffly, staring straight ahead, her hands in her lap, her carpetbag at her feet. Slash released the brake and turned to Pecos, who was riding up beside him.

  “Ready,” Slash said.

  “All right,” said Pecos. “I’ll ride ahead, hold the point, and swing off the trail now and then to make sure we’re not bein’ shadowed.”

  “Good.” Slash narrowed one eye as he turned to look up the street to the east, where Larsen sat the roan, silently waiting, looking straight off to the east, wary of the killers’ gang making an appearance. “He gonna be all right, you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Pecos said, and nudged his buckskin ahead. “I reckon we’ll just have to see.”

  He booted Buck ahead. As Slash gigged the two geldings and the wagon on
down the street, Pecos rode up beside Larsen and stopped. “Why don’t I ride point and you ride drag? That way we can keep a better eye on things—front and back.”

  “Do you think they’ll come?” Larsen wanted to know. “The rest of the gang, I mean.”

  Pecos shrugged. “I reckon it depends on how valuable they see them three back there. I can’t imagine they’d risk their own lives to spring Chaney and the others, but, then . . .”

  “Maybe they’re just as bad as Chaney and the others.”

  “There you have it. Some of these outlaw gangs are powerful loyal to each other.”

  Larsen gave a grim smile and glanced at Slash pulling the wagon up behind him and Pecos. “I reckon you two would know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you?”

  Pecos gave a sheepish shrug. “Anyways, if they come, I doubt they’ll be shy, so we’d best know they’re comin’ before they get here . . . if you get my drift.”

  “I get it.” Larsen reined his horse away from Pecos and the oncoming wagon. “Drag it is.”

  “Stop and rest as often as you need to,” Pecos said as he booted Buck on ahead.

  “I won’t need to,” Larsen fired back.

  “Determined young feller,” Pecos said to himself as he pulled away from Larsen and the wagon. He just hoped the young lawman didn’t pass out and tumble out of his saddle, because he sure looked like he could.

  As Pecos trotted Buck eastward, the burned town dropped away behind him, and the open prairie spread out before him—a gently rolling desert of short, fawn-colored grass, widely scattered ponderosa pines, prickly pear, bitterbrush, and sage. The smell of the sage on the warm morning breeze was a relief after the death and burn stench of the town.

  Looking around, Pecos could see for a long way. Out here, men would have to crawl nearly a mile to sneak up on him and his party. The two-track trail they were following meandered off ahead, narrowing and foreshortening into the distance as it became one silver line snaking off toward a distant jog of low hills. A mile or more away, it disappeared over those hills backed up against the bright horizon that shimmered like water.

  The wagon rattled behind Pecos, its heavy, iron-shod wheels thundering over chuckholes. Occasionally, Pecos glanced behind to see Slash and the young woman sitting side by side. Slash leaned forward, elbows on his knees, keeping a light hold on the reins. His black hat hid his eyes. The girl sat to his right—straight-backed and grim-faced, staring straight ahead.

  Behind them, the motley trio of killers slumped back against the bars, shaking and grimacing against the roughness of the ride.

  Twenty minutes later, Pecos topped the line of hills. He stopped and looked around at the mottled gray, green, and brown landscape falling away beyond him in all directions. Occasional rocky outcroppings rose from the prairie, and stone dykes slanted like the backs of half-buried dinosaurs.

  Nothing living moved out there. Not even a coyote or a jackrabbit. Occasionally the wind lifted a dust devil, swirled it for a time, then dropped it.

  Pecos started down the hill, heading toward a scattering of boulders a hundred yards beyond the hill. He’d just reached level ground and was rounding a bend through the rocks when he saw two horseback riders sitting on the trail ahead of him, another hundred yards beyond.

  “Whoa,” he said, pulling back on Buck’s reins.

  He raised his left hand, palm out, and he heard the wagon’s incessant clattering dwindle to silence, as Slash said quietly, “Whoa, whoa, hosses . . .”

  Pecos glanced back at his partner. Slash was staring beyond Pecos.

  “Who do you suppose they are?”

  Jenny sat even more rigidly when her own eyes found the two riders.

  Beyond the wagon, Larsen said, “What’re we stopping for?”

  When neither Pecos nor Slash said anything, he galloped up from behind the wagon and drew to a halt beside Pecos. By now, he’d seen the two riders. He and Pecos blinked against the dust catching up to them.

  “Two from the gang?” Larsen asked Pecos.

  “That’s be my wager, the way they’re just sittin’ there.”

  Both riders appeared to be holding rifles across the bows of their saddles. One turned to the other one. Pecos thought he could see his mouth move as he said something. Then they each raised their rifles in one hand and triggered shots at the sky. They gave a whoop and a holler, and then reined their horses sharply off opposite sides of the trail, and batted their heels against the mounts’ ribs. They were bounding into fast gallops—one to the northeast, the other to the southwest.

  Pecos cursed and turned to Slash. “I’m going after one o’ them coyotes! Keep the wagon here!”

  Pecos spurred Buck into an instant gallop up the trail and then angled off to the northeast, after one of the two fleeing riders.

  “Hold on, dammit!” Slash bellowed behind him.

  “I’ll go after the other one!” Larsen shouted. Beneath the rataplan of Buck’s hooves, Pecos heard Larsen’s horse whicker, followed by the thunder of the roan’s galloping hooves.

  “Hold on,” Slash called again. “It’s probably a trap, you two dunderheads!”

  Pecos barely heard and was only vaguely listening to the last of his partner’s admonition. If these two were part of the gang, it was best to thin their ranks as soon as they could, before the others joined them. The rider was about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of Pecos, but Buck was chewing up the ground at a nice clip, gradually closing the gap.

  Ahead, horse and rider dashed off across the prairie, trailing a ribbon of tan dust. Occasionally, the rider turned to glance back over his shoulder as though making sure Pecos was following. Horse and rider rose up the near side of a rocky dyke, then disappeared down the other side.

  Pecos galloped to the bottom of the dyke, and stopped.

  The fleeing rider’s dust was still sifting. An eerie silence settled over Pecos and Buck. Pecos stared at the crest of the sandstone dyke. He did not hear the beat of hooves beyond it.

  He swung down from the buckskin’s back, shucked his Colt’s revolving rifle from its scabbard, and adjusted the leather lanyard from which his Richards double-barrel hung barrel down behind his back.

  “Stay, Buck.”

  Pecos walked forward, up the dyke. The closer he drew to the crest the lower he crouched until he dropped to his knees, tossed his hat down, and crabbed to within a few feet of the top. He lifted his head to peer down the other side.

  Nothing but fawn desert beyond a dry wash sheathed in scrub.

  He was sliding his gaze to his right and along the middle distance when something moved to his left. He turned back to it, saw the hatted head and the rifle of the man crouched behind a rock topping the next rise beyond the one Pecos was on. Pecos pulled his head down, catching only a brief glimpse of smoke and flames stabbing from the rifle’s barrel.

  The crash of the rifle vaulted, echoing.

  The bullet ripped up gravel in front of Pecos and a few inches to his right.

  He lifted his head for another look, pulled it down again when he saw the rifle aimed at him.

  There were two more blasts, the bullets slamming into the dyke with screeching wails.

  Pecos held his head down, expecting another blast or two.

  When none came, he lifted his head, as well as his own rifle. He aimed down the barrel, drawing the hammer back, ready to fire. He stared at the rock from behind which his ambusher had fired at him. The man did not reappear. At least, he didn’t reappear from behind the rock.

  Hooves thudded distantly.

  A few seconds later, the horse and rider bounded up a rise beyond the rise from which the man had flung lead a minute ago. This rise was higher than the one before.

  Pecos aimed the Colt at the man’s back, raising it to allow for the man’s climb while also trying to compensate for windage. It would be a hard shot from this distance of probably two hundred yards and with the horse and rider jouncing as they galloped up the ridge, slanting slightl
y to the right. The man glanced back over his right shoulder as Pecos pulled the Colt’s trigger.

  The bullet plumed dust just off the right rear hoof of the fleeing rider’s horse. The man jerked his head back forward.

  Pecos cursed, snapped the hammer back again. He aimed, fired.

  A second and a half later, the bullet tore up dirt off the horse’s left rear hoof.

  Again, Pecos cursed. He fired two more rounds, both falling short of the fleeing rider. Then the man topped the rise and disappeared down the far side.

  Guns crackled to the south.

  Pecos turned his head to see two riders galloping hard about five and four hundred yards, respectively, away from Pecos’s position. One was pursuing the other. It was Larsen pursuing the second gang member. Pecos watched as the fleeing rider triggered a pistol back toward Larsen, who rode low in the saddle, keeping his head below the head of the roan.

  Larsen was bound and determined. Despite the lead the man he was pursuing was triggering at him, he did not waver but kept after his quarry in a straight line across the desert. The man he was chasing suddenly dropped into what appeared a shallow canyon, out of sight.

  “No,” Pecos told Larsen. “Stop, now. Stop!”

  But the Dry Fork town marshal kept going until he’d dropped into the canyon and out of Pecos’s sight. For a short, eerie time, silence. Like a held breath.

  Guns thundered—several of them, triggered fast and with determination. A wicked barrage.

  A horse whinnied shrilly.

  “Ah, hell!” Pecos heaved himself to his feet and ran down the dyke toward Buck.

  They’d caught the young marshal in an ambush!

  CHAPTER 22

  Glenn Larsen booted his roan into a ground-eating gallop straight south across the Wyoming desert.

  The man he was chasing had swung his own mount from the west to the south, and Larsen felt himself and the roan closing on him gradually. Larsen hunkered low in the saddle. He’d lost his hat in the chase, and his hair blew around his head in the hot wind. His ribs cried out against his crouched position and against the jarring of the hard ride, but the young marshal only gritted his teeth and endured it. The man he was chasing was among the gang of the three killers in the jail wagon. He’d helped rob the stage, rape the female passengers, murdered the men, and driven the stage and team off a cliff and into a canyon.