The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

The man carried her forward—likely through the door and into the cabin or whatever form of shelter it was. If it was a cabin, it was one with a low door, because she felt him duck and crouch a little as he carried her through it. Her left shoulder knocked against something solid—the doorframe, probably—scraping her flesh through the sack. She grunted miserably through the gag.

  The man crouched forward. Jay slid off his shoulder to the floor with a bang!

  Jay grunted and cursed sharply through the gag, though again it sounded like a strangling cat. Stars of pain flashed behind her eyes. One of the men laughed and said, “Jesus, Sully!”

  The other man laughed then, too.

  There was a loud wooden scraping sound. Then what sounded like more hinges squawked. Another bang ! as something hard struck the floor, making the whole cabin (or whatever this place was) leap around Jay.

  Jay thought, What in God’s name are these two devils up to?

  The question came in the form of a kick to her side.

  She rolled to her left. Suddenly, the floor was gone. She dropped like a rock.

  She landed on something hard. Bells clanged in her ears. A hot bayonet of pain was driven through the back of her head and into her shoulders. No, she thought. Stay awake! Stay awake!

  But then the gauzy black tar of sleep overtook her, though not before she heard something slam above her and she realized that she’d just been dropped, bound and gagged, into a cellar.

  Buried alive.

  CHAPTER 26

  A shrill cry plucked Glenn Larsen from a shallow sleep.

  He sat up, heart pounding, and said, “Tiffanie?”

  Instantly, however, the current state of his being came back to him. He remembered it all, knew where he was—camped in a grove of pines near a sandy ravine, on his way to Denver.

  “No,” Jenny Claymore’s voice said softly in the darkness. “It was just me, Glenn. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Larsen turned to where she lay on the other side of the cold, dark ashes of their fire. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, relieved only by starlight flickering above the gently swaying crowns of the pines, he saw her sitting up and staring into the darkness, as he was.

  “It’s all right,” he said quietly. “Are you all right, Jenny?”

  “I had a dream. A nightmare. I’m all right now.”

  “Right.”

  “Are you all right, Glenn?”

  Larsen drew a breath, looked around. Slash and Pecos were not in the camp. They were off keeping watch from a good distance away. The jail wagon containing the killers was parked with the horses to the north of the camp. For a short, blissful second, after Larsen had heard Jenny call out, he’d imagined that Tiffanie was still alive. And that maybe there was something he could do to save her. What a warm, sweet, promising feeling it had been. Gone now.

  “Yeah,” Larsen lied. “I’m all right.”

  “Yeah.” Jenny gave a soft, ironic chuckle. “Me too.”

  “You thirsty?” Larsen asked her. “I have a canteen over here.”

  She didn’t respond for a few seconds, then said, “Yeah, I guess I could use a sip or two . . . if you have some to spare.”

  “Plenty.”

  They’d stopped earlier to fill several canteens at a shallow stream earlier in the afternoon. The water was nowhere near sweet, but it was wet. Larsen rose from his blankets and picked up his canteen, as well as his tin cup. He picked up the flask sitting there, as well. Slash had offered him the ex-outlaw’s own private traveling flask to help with the pain in his battered bones. Larsen had never been much of a drinking man, but he had cottoned to the firewater’s pain-relieving properties.

  He walked around the fire to where Jenny now sat back against a pine. It was a chilly, high-desert night, and she’d pulled two blankets up to her neck.

  “Do you have a cup?” Larsen asked her. “Yes, here.”

  Larsen took her cup, half-filled it with water, the surface of which shone in the starlight. He held up the flask. “Any of this?”

  She smiled, shrugged. “Why not? Just a little.”

  Larsen added a splash of bust-head to the water. He gave her the cup, then poured a little water and whiskey into his own. The truth was, he wasn’t thirsty, and he doubted that Jenny was, either. He’d just wanted an excuse to join her over here on this side of the cold fire. He didn’t feel like lying over there alone anymore, feeling restless and assaulted with half-formed nightmare images of the night the killers had burned Dry Fork.

  “Well,” Larsen said, touching his cup to hers and chuckling.

  “Cheers.”

  She snorted a laugh of her own and said, “Cheers.” They each sipped, then just sat staring into the darkness.

  Larsen turned to Jenny and said, haltingly, “Would . . . you like to . . . talk about it? The nightmare, I mean.”

  Jenny looked at him, pursed her lips, and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” She looked down at her cup and then at him again. “What about you?”

  He thought about it. Then he shook his head. “Wouldn’t help, I guess, would it?”

  “I don’t think so.” She sighed and stared at the cold, gray fire ashes. “As I was riding along today in the wagon, I kept wondering if life will ever look right to me again. Like it once was. Will I ever be happy again instead of... miserable? Frightened?”

  “Yeah,” Larsen said, raising one knee and resting an arm on it. “Me too. I can’t imagine it. I knew Tiffanie for such a short time, but—this might sound stupid—but I really did feel like I knew her all of my life.”

  “That doesn’t sound stupid at all, Glenn.” Jenny set her cup down, snaked both of her arms around his, and pressed her forehead against his shoulder. “I know how much she meant to you. I also know how much you meant to her. We were friends, you know?” She smiled up at him. “She told me all about this handsome young man who rode into Dry Fork and stole her heart. She knew it right away—that you were the one for her. The moment you walked into her father’s mercantile asking for saddle soap . . . and a job.”

  Glenn smiled, felt his cheeks warm with embarrassment. “I didn’t get the job.”

  “No, but you got the girl.”

  He turned his smile on Jenny. “She told you all that, did she?”

  “She certainly did.”

  Larsen drew a deep breath, feeling the air flutter in his throat. “I miss her.” His voice threatened to crack.

  Jenny pressed her forehead to his shoulder again. “I know. But you’re lucky. It never got old or turned bad. You’ll have pleasant memories.”

  “Sorry, Jenny. I mean about . . . you know . . . Malcolm. . .” He could hardly bring himself to utter the man’s name.

  “Malcolm,” Jenny said darkly. “Yes, good ole Dave Malcolm.” Malcolm was a businessman from Kansas City who’d bought a ranch north of Dry Fork. He didn’t spend a lot of time on the ranch, preferring to remain in Kansas City, but he’d spent several months on the spread the previous summer. He’d spotted Jenny in town one day, looking at dresses for the coming school year, and he’d introduced himself and even bought her a dress against her protestations. Larsen had heard this from Tiffanie. He’d also heard that the rancher, who was a good ten years older than Jenny but quite dashing and well-educated, had become quite smitten with the pretty young teacher. Jenny had become quite enamored of Malcolm. What young woman of paltry means living in a rooming house with two miserly old spinsters wouldn’t tumble for such a handsome flatterer? They’d struck up a whirlwind romance, Malcolm even inviting Jenny out to his ranch on occasion.

  Eventually, the man got down on one knee in the drawing room of Jenny’s rooming house and asked Jenny for her hand in marriage. After a week’s deliberation and against her own better judgment, Jenny had told him yes. She wasn’t getting any younger and the West was not filled with Dave Malcolms—at least, not for young women like Jenny. Late in the summer, Malcolm went back to Kansas City to “get his business affairs in order”—in p
reparation for the wedding. It was merely the tedious preamble, he assured her, to the long fantasy of their lives together. He’d told Jenny he’d send for her soon.

  But he’d never sent for her.

  In fact, she never heard from him again. Whom she did hear from was the man’s wife.

  Yes, all along, Malcolm had had a wife in Kansas City. Apparently, the wife had learned of her husband’s dalliance in Dry Fork from the wife of one of Malcolm’s business partners, and she’d taken the man to task for his indiscretion. She’d also written Jenny a threatening letter, calling her a “devious, opportunistic whore and slattern” and threatening that if Jenny ever saw her husband again, Mrs. Malcolm would see that she was fired from her job and never allowed to teach again. She’d be, to quote the letter, which Jenny had read verbatim to Tiffanie, “cleaning outhouses and scrubbing male offal from saloon spittoons and thunder mugs for the rest of her short, pathetic life!”

  “Yeah, good ole Malcolm,” Larsen said. “The man oughta be thrashed for what he did to you.”

  “Enough about him,” Jenny said with a sigh. “I have enough other miseries at the moment.”

  “Yeah.” Larsen picked up a rock and tossed it into the brush, wincing at the pain the sudden movement had kicked up in his ribs. “What a damn fool I was!”

  “What?” Jenny turned back to him, frowning. “No, you did what you had to do.”

  “My mistake was ever taking on that job in the first place. I wasn’t a lawman. Hell, I was a thirty-a-month-and-found cowpuncher. I had no business wearing that badge.”

  “That’s not true, Glenn. No two men could be expected to win against three demons like those in that cage. You did your best. It’s not your fault what happened. I won’t let you blame yourself, Glenn. I simply won’t let you do it.”

  Despite the teacher’s words, self-revulsion continued to flare inside of the young former lawman. Tears of rage and sorrow dribbled down his cheeks. “The town thought I was protectin’ it. Tiffanie thought I was protecting her. I should have been. Instead, she’s gone and—”

  “No, I won’t listen to this anymore. Look at me, Glenn.” Jenny had placed her hands on Larsen’s face. Now she turned his head toward hers and stared into his eyes from inches away. A sheen of tears glistened in her own eyes as she said, “Tiffanie is dead. The town is gone. What happened was not your fault. It was evil. We have to put all of that behind us now and move on with our lives. It’s going to be hard, Glenn, but I know we can do it. We have to. Do you understand?”

  Larsen stared back at her, his eyes two miniature, night-black lakes shimmering with reflected starlight. He placed his hands on her arms, drew her gently toward him. He slid his head closer to Jenny’s. Keeping her hands pressed to his cheeks, Jenny slid her head closer to his. Their lips touched.

  Their mouths came together.

  Larsen wrapped his arms around Jenny. She wrapped her arms around him, returning his kiss with desperate abandon.

  Larsen’s heart felt as light as a spring kite. God, she felt so warm and tender and supple in his arms!

  Suddenly, the town and Tiffanie were gone. Larsen’s pain and misery fell by the wayside. There was only him and Jenny Claymore. They kissed each other hungrily, rubbing, caressing, moaning, sobbing—the last two souls alive in the vast, empty universe.

  A gun blasted, casting them back into the burning pits of hell.

  * * *

  Ten minutes earlier, Slash was standing at the far northern edge of the camp, fifty feet out from where they’d built the fire. He was smoking a cigarette, concealing the coal in the palm of his hand. His Winchester was cradled in his arms.

  The camp was on a hill. It was protected on its southern flank by the deep wash. The hill dropped away on three sides. Ponderosas spiked the hill, offering relative cover and concealment. It was the best place that Slash and Pecos had been able to find to camp for the night. There was no perfect place out here in this mostly wide-open, gently rolling country. Especially with a pack of bloodthirsty wolves on their trail.

  They’d done the best they could. They shouldn’t have built afire, but they’d both felt it was worth the risk of the killers spotting the flames to get some hot food and coffee down both Larsen and the young schoolteacher. It had been a long, hard day of travel for them both, and they’d needed sustenance and comfort now at the end of that day.

  Besides, there was no way to truly hide the jail wagon. There was no way to travel inconspicuously with the racket the foul contraption kicked up and with as slowly as it rolled along. The killers had followed them easily. They hadn’t shown themselves after their initial appearance on the knoll, but Slash knew they were following them. They were laying back, keeping out of sight, letting the menace of their presence work on their quarry, frying their nerves. Also, they were probably waiting for the other members of their gang to arrive.

  Then they’d likely effect an all-out assault.

  The killers knew where Slash and Pecos’s party was camped, all right. The fire hadn’t added to the threat.

  Now Slash stood with his back to a ponderosa, the quirley smoldering in the cupped palm of his left hand down low by his side. He was watching a slender shadow move toward him up the hill from below.

  CHAPTER 27

  Had the stalker smelled Slash’s cigarette?

  Probably. That’s all right. If a man or men were near enough to smell cigarette smoke, they were near enough that they needed to die.

  Keeping his eyes on the moving shadow, Slash raised the cigarette in his cupped hand. He took a deep drag, blew the smoke out ahead of him, down the slope and toward the shadow angling toward him. He dropped to one knee and flicked the cigarette out away from him.

  The quirley hit the ground with a light thump, sparking.

  Almost instantly, a rifle flashed and wailed. The flash and the wail came a second time, both bullets tearing up forest duff near where the cigarette had landed. Slash snapped his Winchester to his shoulder, dragged the hammer back, aimed at where he’d just seen the two flashes, and hurled three rounds quickly.

  He thought he heard a grunt, but because of his own echoing blasts he couldn’t be sure. Instinctively, he threw himself to his left. He hit the ground and rolled twice. He rolled a third time when another rifle opened up, cleaving the air with two bullets where he’d knelt a moment before.

  He rolled onto his belly, cocked the Winchester quickly, and aimed and fired from his prone position.

  A man cursed. Unmistakable even against the rolling echoes of his own report.

  Slash’s target fired again. The bullet hammered a tree to Slash’s left. Slash triggered two more rounds at the flash. Silence and darkness followed on the heels of the violent crashing sounds and the bright flashes that still flickered on Slash’s retinas—quieter, darker than before.

  A man dropped to the ground with a crunching thud and a grunt of expelled air.

  Again, Slash rolled to his left. He crabbed behind another pine and heaved himself onto his knees. He racked another cartridge into the Winchester’s action and peered out around the tree’s right side, waiting.

  Running footsteps sounded up the hill behind him.

  He whipped around quickly and said, “Name yourself!” The running stopped. “Don’t shoot, it’s Glenn!”

  Slash thought he could see Larsen’s shadow. “Stay where you are.”

  “What’s going on?” the young man asked, keeping his voice down. “Are they here?”

  “Some. I don’t know how many. Do you have a gun?”

  “Of course.”

  “Go back to the teacher. Stay with her.”

  “What about Pecos?”

  “He won’t give away his position till light and we can see how many are out there. Now get back up that hill and keep your head down. Don’t leave Jenny!”

  “All right, all right.”

  Slash cursed and turned his attention back to the slope below him. At any moment he might hear movement or gunfi
re, and he had to be ready. He had to assume other killers were on the lurk out here and were just waiting for targets. He knew that’s what Pecos was thinking over on his end of the camp, to the southwest. He’d stayed where he was because he knew the killers might have the camp surrounded and were waiting to move in from the perimeter, shooting.

  He and Slash would have to stay in place, holding their cautious vigils until the killers moved on them or until dawn, whichever came first. Silently, Slash cursed and settled in for the wait. The ground was cold and hard beneath his knees. He lowered himself to his butt and drew his knees up, keeping the Winchester low so starlight wouldn’t reflect off the barrel.

  He was getting too old for this low-down, dirty business. He’d spent nights like this on the run from posses—long, slow, weary nights in lonely camps in the middle of nowhere, waiting for an ambush. He’d thought he’d left those days behind when he’d hung up his outlaw hat. Old Luther T. Bledsoe sure got the drop on him and Pecos. They could either ride for him or hang. Slash and Pecos might have been better off hanging. Bledsoe gave the two ex-cutthroats all the worst, most dangerous assignments. Why hang them when he could torture them slowly? Slash knew the old, pushchair-bound marshal was getting back at them in the best way he could come up with. Slash couldn’t really blame him. After all, it was Slash’s own bullet that had put him in that chair....

  Bledsoe was probably right now having a good laugh in his sleep, imagining what was happening out here.

  Starting out, the job had looked like a summer dance in an old barn by the river. But that was before Slash and Pecos had known the full extent of the situation. Before they’d ridden into a sacked town full of burned buildings and dead people....

  Slash had to give a quiet chuckle at that, shaking his head.

  He glanced over the shoulder of the hill to his left, where the three lobos likely slumped in the jail wagon, waiting and watching eagerly for their pards to spring them. Slash had known a lot of bad men in his time on the wild frontier, but he’d never met any as bad as those three. He had them cowed for now. They were quiet as church mice and didn’t even look at Jenny anymore. They knew Slash was watching, waiting for another excuse to open up the jail wagon door, pull one out, and kick the stuffing out of him.