The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  He was one of them. He was here to spring his kill-crazy partners. For that the man would either be taken to Denver for trial, or he would die. Larsen would not allow those killers of his wife and of Henry and of the entire town of Dry Fork to be set free so they could continue their plundering, pillaging, and raping like a band of savage, sword-wielding barbarians from the Dark Ages.

  Ahead, Larsen’s quarry suddenly dropped out of sight. It was as though the ground had swallowed him. Larsen saw only the man’s sifting tan dust. The young marshal stared straight out over the horse’s poll, looking for the man ahead of him. Doing so, he didn’t see the sudden drop-off until too late. The horse gave a shrill whinny as the ground suddenly disappeared beneath it, and the horse and rider were tumbling down into a canyon.

  Larsen cursed and kicked free of his stirrups.

  The horse gave another terrified scream as it and Larsen plunged toward the incline ten feet beneath them. The horse struck first and rolled, kicking up the chalky alkali dust that rose like a clinging white blanket. Larsen hit the incline a quarter second later and rolled down the steep hill. He was vaguely aware of the horse rolling to his right. He was more aware of the crackle of guns, of bullets striking the slope around him.

  Trap, he thought. I rode right into their trap like some shaggy-headed, bucktoothed army recruit fresh out of Jefferson Barracks.

  He and the roan struck the bottom of a sandy wash at the same time. Giving another exasperated whinny, the horse rose, dust and sand streaming off it and billowing around it. The saddle now hung beneath it, as did Larsen’s sheathed carbine, well out of reach. As the horse ran off down the wash to the west, seemingly unhurt but only frightened, Larsen rolled up against a hummock in the wash’s center. He’d taken a brief glance ahead of him, had seen at least three shooters triggering rifles at him from the bank on the wash’s far side, maybe fifty yards away.

  Too close. Too damn close.

  On the other hand, since he had only his revolver now, they were too far away for him to be able to return fire with much accuracy.

  And his ribs were barking at him loudly, causing him to grind his back molars and suck sharp, painful breaths through gritted teeth.

  “Damn fool move, Glenn,” he berated himself, keeping his head down as more bullets hammered the top of the hummock. “Damn fool move! You’re not thinking clearly!”

  His physical pain and his mental agony had clouded his mind. He could not get Tiffanie’s screams out of his head. For Chrissakes, they’d just started a life together! They’d intended to raise a big family and grow old together! And they would have, too, if not for those savages, just like the ones throwing lead at him now!

  He fumbled Henry’s Colt from the holster on his right leg, glad that it hadn’t fallen out during his tumble. Pressing his back against the hummock, he cocked the revolver and waited for a gap in the shooting so he could return fire. If he could take out one of his ambushers, possibly two, he might have a chance of getting out of the mess he’d gotten himself into.

  When the gap he was looking for came, he half turned, leveled the Colt over the top of the hummock, picked out a target, and fired. He saw through his billowing powder smoke that he’d missed cleanly, for the man had seen his move and pulled his head back behind some brush fringing the lip of the wash. Besides, Larsen’s ribs ached too badly for him to adequately steady his shooting hand.

  They resumed triggering lead at him. As they did, he crabbed to the northeast side of the hummock and dared a look around the edge. He winced when he saw the ambushers spreading out. One dropped quickly down the ravine’s bank, landed flat-footed on the bed of the wash, and before Larsen could draw a bead on him, dove behind a rock about six feet out from the wash’s bank. The man was to Larsen’s left. Glenn could tell now from the sounds of the continuing gunfire from the other two men that they were moving to the southwest. Soon, they too would drop into the wash and continue firing, pinning him down, until they’d surrounded him and turned him into a sieve.

  He pressed his back against the side of the hummock, rested the Colt in his lap.

  Odd how he felt no fear. In fact, what was he feeling exactly as the bullets kept coming toward him, spanging off rocks, plowing into the top of the hummock within inches of his head, blowing sand in his hair?

  Relief?

  His torment would soon be over. He hadn’t gotten the three killers to Denver, but that was all right. Maybe the two former outlaws, Braddock and Baker, would. They’d have to beat tall odds, but maybe they could do it. If not, well . . . Larsen would no longer care because he’d be dead. If there really was a Heaven, like all the sky pilots talked about, he’d join his beloved Tiffanie there. Maybe Henry, too. He could apologize to both of them for the stupid, tragic mistake he’d made, hauling the three killers alive to his jail when he could so easily have shot them all as they’d slept and saved the lives of most of the town....

  Larsen frowned curiously as the gunfire tapered off. At least, the near shots did. They were replaced by the reports of more distant rifles. A man on the wash’s bank howled. There was the thud of a man dropping to the ground.

  “Benji, we got trouble—pull out!” another man shouted from the lip of the wash somewhere to the west.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?” came Benji’s reply. Benji must be the ambusher who’d dropped into the wash with Larsen and was hunkered behind the rock.

  “Two are shootin’ from the northern ridge!” the first man shouted. “Fall back! Fall back!”

  Larsen had seen it by then—puffs of smoke rising from the ridge behind him—the ridge over which he’d ridden the roan so carelessly, so stupidly, right into the killers’ trap. The bullets weren’t landing near him. The shooters up there had to be Braddock and Baker. In fact, squinting his swollen eyes, he could see Braddock’s black hat just above the barrel of the rifle on the ridge to Larsen’s left, and the high-crowned cream Stetson over the barrel of Baker’s Colt’s revolving rifle to the young marshal’s right. The two men were spaced about fifty yards apart and really giving Larsen’s attackers hell.

  “Hold up, Duke!” Benji yelled. “Cover me, dammit!”

  Larsen turned his head to peer around the left side of his covering hummock. Benji just then bounded up from behind his boulder and ran back toward the ravine’s bank. He was a short, stocky man with dark skin and shaggy black hair. He’d just reached the bank when Larsen angled his Colt around the hummock, cocked the piece, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

  The Colt barked and bucked.

  Benji howled a curse and, half turning toward Larsen, grabbed his right leg. The young marshal’s bullet had plowed into the back of it. Gritting his teeth, revealing several gaps in his smile, Benji started to raise the Henry rifle in his hands. Larsen clicked back the Colt’s hammer, aimed again, and triggered that second round through Benji’s chest, just above the open, skin-exposing V of his partly unbuttoned, pin-striped shirt.

  Benji flew backward against the bank. He grunted and groaned as he slid down the face of the bank to sit on his butt at the bottom of the sandy wash. He stared wide-eyed at Larsen, his dark brown eyes glazed with shock. He looked down at the blood bubbling up from the hole in his chest. He brushed at it with one gloved hand. That hand flopped down to his side.

  The shooting had stopped. Larsen could hear the fast thuds of a galloping horse dwindling quickly to the south. One of the three shooters had gotten away.

  Larsen glowered against his misery as he heaved himself to his feet. He stumbled over to where Benji sat, dying.

  “How many of you are there?” Larsen asked, raising the Colt and aiming it at the dying man’s forehead. “How many have come?”

  Benji’s eyes were slow to focus on the young man aiming the Colt at him. A faintly mocking smile pulled at the corners of his wide, thick-lipped mouth inside a dusty, shaggy black beard. “Oh,” he wheezed out. “Oh . . . they’ll all be here . . . soon. We protect . . . our . . . own s-see?”

>   He broadened his jeering smile at Larsen.

  “G-good . . . luck,” the man added.

  The young marshal drilled a finishing round through the man’s forehead.

  He lowered the gun and turned to stare at the opposite ridge. He could see neither of his two benefactors. As he began making his slow way back across the ravine, heading for the other side, hoof thuds rose on his left. Slash was trotting up the wash on his Appaloosa, trailing Larsen’s roan. Slash had reset the saddle and scabbard. He rode up to the young lawman and glared down at him.

  “That was some kind of a damn tinhorn move!”

  “I know,” Larsen said weakly, already feeling the fool. “I know it was.”

  “If you want to kill yourself—that’s one thing. But I had to leave the wagon to help bail you out of this jam you were in. I had to leave Jenny alone with the wagon and those killers. There was a good chance that other killers were waiting for just that to happen, so they’d have a clear path to the wagon . . . and Jenny.”

  Slash snapped the words out angrily, lashing Larsen with them.

  The young marshal felt doubly stupid and guilty.

  Slash fairly leaped out of his saddle, unsheathed one of his pretty stag-butted Colts, pressed the barrel to Larsen’s forehead, and cocked it. “If you don’t want to live, kid, just give me the word and I’ll remedy the situation for you!”

  Larsen stared back at the man’s enraged, dark eyes. He moved his lips but couldn’t form words. He wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Do you want to live?” Slash asked him.

  “Huh?”

  “Do you want to live? Simple enough question.”

  Larsen thought about it. He remembered how relieved he’d felt only a few minutes ago when the killers had been closing in on him. Oddly, that feeling was gone. He’d been happy to see Slash and Pecos sending lead down on his attackers. While he’d been prepared to die, he realized now that he was happy to still be alive.

  How could that be? She was gone. Their house and their future . . . their town . . . were gone. Henry was gone. But he, Glenn Larsen, was happy to be alive.

  “Yes,” he said with some chagrin now, staring back at Slash, nodding. “Yes . . . I want to live.”

  “All right.” Slash pulled the gun away from Larsen’s head, depressed the hammer. “Whenever you feel like giving up the ghost again, let me know and we’ll cut you loose. No more risking my life or his or the girl’s or our chances of getting those killers to Cheyenne. All right?”

  Larsen drew a breath. “All right.”

  “All right.” Slash shoved the roan’s reins at Larsen and swung up onto his Appaloosa’s back. “I sent Pecos back to the wagon, to make sure that wasn’t part of the trap. Believe me, he’s gonna get his own tongue-lashing. He shouldn’t have taken that bait, either. I’m gonna hustle back there to make sure everything’s all right. I don’t hear gunfire, so that makes me feel better.”

  Before he could put the steel to the Appy’s flanks, Larsen said, “Slash?”

  The former outlaw turned back to him, frowning impatiently.

  “Thanks for saving my fool hide.”

  Slash stared back at him. The old outlaw’s gaze softened. Finally, a faint smile drew up his mouth corners. He winked, then turned forward and spurred the Appaloosa up the ridge.

  CHAPTER 23

  That night in the Thousand Delights, Jay set a labeled whiskey bottle on a green baize gambling table in the Wolf Den gambling room and said, “Gentlemen—a bottle of my best bourbon on the house!”

  A low roar of appreciation rose from the table of seven poker-playing horse buyers from Omaha. The rotund one with the pinky ring and nicely tailored cream suit, said, “Why, Miss Breckenridge, to what do we owe the honor?”

  Thick smoke from his Cuban stogie obscured his large, immaculately coifed and bearded head.

  “Your patronage, of course,” Jay said, flashing her best winning smile, though the man’s eyes, she could tell, were mostly on her corset. “You gentlemen have been visiting here in Camp Collins for a week now, and I wanted to show my appreciation for your business. I do hope that on your next horse-buying expedition to these parts, you’ll again consider allowing me and the Thousand Delights to offer you shelter, food, drink, and . . .”

  She glanced at the young doxie, Bernadette, who was sitting on the knee of one of the other gamblers—a tall, thin man named Schultz who was just then dealing out another hand of Jackpots.

  “And anything else you need to keep you happy, warm, and well satisfied.”

  The men roared their drunken laughter, exhaled their cigar smoke, and broke into the labeled bottle as they continued their game. Jay glanced once more at the doxie. Her long, creamy arms wrapped around Schultz’s thin neck, Bernadette grinned and flashed her all-is-well signal with a single, slow blink of her pretty blue eyes.

  Jay nodded, then turned and wended her way through the rollicking Saturday night crowd to the bar and to the coffee cup she’d left there. Her place at the bar was well established, and the clientele always left that gap free halfway down the bar’s east side from the stairway at the back of the room, as though it were the throne of a well-regarded—possibly even a little feared?—queen.

  After all, Jaycee Breckenridge was, indeed, the queen of her domain.

  As she plucked her long, slender black Spanish cheroot from the cut glass ashtray and brought it to her lips, the night barman glanced her way and then walked down the bar to her. He plucked a piece of folded notepaper from the pocket of his red silk vest and set in on the bar between Jay’s coffee cup and the ashtray.

  “Someone slipped me this note for you earlier, Miss Breckenridge.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Jay took a drag off the cheroot, sent the plume out high against the backbar, then picked up the notepaper and opened it.

  Jay,

  Please visit me at the freight yard when you can break free. I need to talk to you. I will be up all night. I would go to the Thousand Delights, but I don’t think we should be seen together.

  Urgently,

  Myra

  “Oh, no,” Jay heard herself say, quickly folding the note closed.

  “Trouble?”

  Jay gave a start as she turned to see Cisco Walsh standing beside her, on her right. Her heart hiccupped, raced. She closed her hand over the note and stared in shock to see the town marshal standing just inches away from her. She’d done such a good job of avoiding him for the past three days that for some silly reason she’d thought she’d continue to do so. Her not running into him here had been due in no smart part to sheer luck, she did not doubt.

  But now here he was in his fine clothes and neatly trimmed and oiled hair and mustache, smiling handsomely down at her, his eyes on her hand clenching the note. He furled his brows as he returned his brown-eyed gaze to her eyes and said, “I hope it’s not bad news. From your expression, however, I’m judging it could be better . . . ?”

  “Cisco.”

  Walsh smiled broadly. “How’ve you been, Jay? It’s been a while. If I didn’t know better, I’d wager you were avoiding ole Cisco.” He smiled again, his eyes burning holes through her own. She flushed, trying to keep her composure. No wilting lily, however, she summoned back her outrage at the man and said, “You won’t get away with it, Cisco. I won’t let you.”

  His smile in place, he said, “Buy you a drink?”

  “Go to hell. Let me buy you one.” She looked at the barman, the only one still working now after midnight though the place was still doing a hopping business, it being Saturday night. “Burt, a brandy for the marshal. That Spanish one.”

  “Ah, the Spanish one,” Walsh said. “You and I have a history with that brandy—don’t we, Jay?”

  “How long has it been going on, Cisco?”

  “How long has what been going on?”

  “How long have you been straddling both sides of the law? Here you showed so much disdain for Slash and Pecos. At least they we
re honest about who they were!”

  “Oh, I don’t know. A few years.” Walsh raised the glass of brandy Burt had just poured for him. He sniffed the rim, took a sip, then licked the end of his damp mustache.

  “Where did it start? Here? Abilene? Surely not as far back as Hayes . . . ?”

  “Hayes, Kansas.”

  “That early?” Jay asked with an incredulous chuff. “That was almost twenty years ago.”

  “Oh, it was just little things. A little graft here and there. A few dollars now and then to look the other way when the cowhand of some wealthy rancher didn’t want to spare him from roundup after he’d busted up a saloon. Maybe fifty bucks on occasion to forget to check the roulette wheel for a gaff. That sort of thing.” Walsh sipped the brandy again. “Everybody does it, Jay. Sooner or later.”

  “You know, Cisco, I guess I’d have a little more understanding if you hadn’t been such an insufferable hypocrite about it. You always made me feel so low for running, as you called it, with Pete Johnson and Slash and Pecos. You made me feel like some kind of . . . of . . . ten-cent whore or cheaper. You acted as though if I’d thrown in with you, you’d have reformed me, made me respectable, shown me a better, more upstanding way to live. And now I find it was all bull—”

  “Easy, Jay,” Cisco said, reaching over and wrapping his left hand around her right wrist and squeezing. He kept smiling, though the smile had grown stiff. “Your voice is rising, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  She looked down at his hand wrapped around her wrist. The dream . . . nightmare . . . came back to her. Her anger was tempered by apprehension.