The Wicked Die Twice

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “We cleaned up well, partner.”

  “I think one or two might have gotten away on their horses, but they won’t be back. Not with as much lead they’re hauling. Probably won’t live to see the next sunrise.”

  “Well, I’ll be hanged.” Slash chuckled and lowered his Colts, depressing the hammers. “We got ’em.” He looked at Pecos, grinning delightedly. “I do believe we got ’em. We’re in the clear.”

  Pecos smiled and wagged his head in disbelief. “Looks like!”

  “If you weren’t so damn ugly, partner, I’d waltz over there and plant a big, wet kiss on your mouth!”

  “And get a bullet for your trouble!”

  A gun popped, muffled with distance. Both men turned toward the southeast.

  The gun popped again, then one more time. The reports echoed hollowly.

  Slash swung toward Pecos, his eyes suddenly sharp with apprehension. “Those shots came from our camp!”

  “Ah, hell!”

  Both men broke into a run across the wash, heading for their horses.

  CHAPTER 33

  Jenny sat very close to Glenn Larsen, staring into the flames of their small fire. She held a cup of coffee in her hands. She’d draped a blanket around her shoulders, against the night’s building chill. Larsen had an arm wrapped around her. He, too, stared into the fire, though she knew that his mind was with Slash and Pecos, as was hers.

  Occasionally, she glanced over at the jail wagon hunched menacingly in the darkness, just beyond the reach of the firelight. She could see the three dark figures inside, hunched like caged pumas. Now she saw the umber glow of a cigarette being drawn on, the pale wisps of smoke slithering into the air around the smoker’s head.

  She knew the prisoners’ eyes were on her. They were watching and waiting, hoping that Slash and Pecos did not come back. Hoping that their gang would come for them instead.

  And then . . .

  Jenny shuddered.

  Glenn turned to her. “Are you all right?”

  She drew her mouth corners down, nodded.

  “I know,” Larsen said softly, pressing his cheek to her temple. “I’m worried, too.”

  “Will we be able to outrun them?”

  “Yes.” Larsen spoke firmly. “We’ll do just as they said. If they’re not back by midnight, we’ll saddle up and ride south. We should make Cheyenne by midnight.”

  “On only one horse?”

  “It’ll be tough, but we can do it.”

  “They’ll run us down. They won’t let us escape. Not them . . .”

  Larsen squeezed her gently, drew her closer to him, said more firmly, “We’re gonna make it.”

  “Slash and Pecos . . .”

  “They’ll make it, too.”

  “They’re two against a dozen, Glenn.”

  “I know, but . . .” He snorted a wry laugh. “There’s just something about those two old cutthroats.”

  “If you two lovebirds could take a break from all your googoo talk, we could use some coffee over here. It’s a cold night.” That had been Frank Beecher. Jenny had become all too familiar with their individual voices.

  “Go to hell,” Glenn said. “You had your supper, now just smoke your cigarettes and keep your mouths shut, or I’ll come over there and give you the Slash treatment.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little early?” That was Black Pot.

  Larsen frowned curiously at Jenny, then turned to the jail wagon and said, “What?”

  “For you two to be gettin’ all cozy,” said Gabriel Black Pot in a mock admonishing tone. “Don’t you think it’s a little early for that? I mean, good Lord, Marshal, your wife—”

  Larsen stiffened and closed his right hand over the grips of Henry’s Colt. “Shut up about her! You shut up! If I hear one more word—”

  “Glenn, don’t!” Jenny reached up to place a calming hand on his cheek. “They’re just trying to get you riled. Don’t let them.” She turned to the jail wagon and raised her own voice with menace and felt oddly pleased as she did, feeling a little of the murderers’ own dark power. “In an hour or so, they’ll probably be dead. They’re not worth getting riled up about.”

  One of the killers cursed softly. She thought it was Chaney.

  Larsen relaxed. He turned to her. “I know. You’re right.” He lifted his cup to his mouth, then lowered it and looked into it, frowning. “I’m dry. Time for a fresh pot, I think.”

  “I could use some more,” Jenny agreed. “I’ll get—”

  “No.” Larsen placed a hand on her knee. “My turn. I’ll get the water. Just remember not to go near the wagon.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Larsen smiled, then rose stiffly, still aching from his sundry injuries. He grabbed the coffeepot, then tramped off into the darkness, heading into the dry wash east of the camp for water. Jenny sat back against the ponderosa before which she’d spread her blankets. Worry was a lion inside her. She was tired of the ache in her belly. It was like being stabbed and having the knife twisted.

  She stared over the fire’s flickering flames and the wavering tendrils of gray smoke, wondering, silently praying for Slash and Pecos’s success....

  Distantly, a gun belched. A fusillade of gunfire followed. Jenny gasped, tensed. She’d turned her head to stare toward the southwest but stopped when one of the outlaws cursed sharply, and said, “Ah . . . ah oh, say there—problem over here!”

  Jenny turned toward the wagon. Something glowed on the ground on the wagon’s right side, within roughly two feet of the wheeled jail. Gray smoke rose from the glow.

  Louder, Chaney said, “Oh, hello, li’l miss—need your help over here. I dropped my cigarette!”

  The glow grew. A couple of finger-size flames rose from the dark ground, sending more smoke into the darkness. The men were moving around in the wagon now, Beecher saying, “Good God, Talon—what the hell you tryin’ to do? Roast us in here?”

  “Damn!” exclaimed Black Pot, sliding back on his butt, away from the fire on the wagon’s east side. “Come on, girl—put the fire out before it grows any bigger! With the dry brush around here, it ain’t just gonna roast us. It’s gonna roast you an’ the young marshal, too!”

  Tethered nearby, the horses whickered edgily.

  Jenny rose, trembling, watching the flames grow before her eyes.

  “Get over here and put that fire out, dammit!” Talon Chaney wailed. “We ain’t gonna be the only ones burning alive, dammit!”

  Jenny’s heart kicked in her chest. She glanced behind her and into the wash. She couldn’t see Glenn. The stream was a good hundred yards away. He probably wouldn’t be back for another couple of minutes.

  She turned back to the fire. It had doubled in size over the last minute. Soon it would triple. The killers were right. A blaze out here, with all the dead fuel around to feed it, would turn into a raging dragon in no time.

  The prisoners were lurching around in the wagon, coughing and cursing and urging Jenny for help.

  She grabbed two blankets off the ground and strode quickly toward the blaze.

  “You fools!” she scolded them, looking at the wagon and then at the building fire, gauging the distance between the flames and the wagon. She couldn’t get too close to the wagon. The fire might be a trick. Still, it had to be doused.

  She stepped up to the east edge of the flames and whipped the blanket at them. She doused a couple, but she was too far east. She couldn’t get at them all. She stepped forward by inches, wanting to stay as far from the wagon as possible while still reaching the flames.

  Again, she whipped the blanket at the fire. She whipped again, again . . . again.

  She vaguely heard Glenn Larsen yell, “Jenny, no!”

  She pulled the blanket back once more, cocking her arm for another assault on the flames, but something had grabbed the blanket. Too late, she released it, realizing that one of the killers had reached through the bars and grabbed the end of it and had jerked it back toward him.

>   Now Jenny was falling toward the wagon over the ground the fire had charred and from which small flames still leapt.

  “Nooo!” she screamed, and fought to break her momentum as the dark wagon loomed before her.

  A hand grabbed her hair and viciously jerked her head against the wagon. Her scalp on fire with pain, she twisted around, putting her back to the wagon. A cold horror turned her belly to stone when she felt and smelled a thick, muscular, sweaty arm hook around her throat and slam her head and shoulders back against the bars.

  “Hi, little honey,” Talon Chaney hissed in her ear, his eyes red, like a demon’s eyes. “Miss me?”

  The cold horror inside of Jenny now froze her insides. She tried to scream, but the man had drawn his arm taut across her throat. She could barely breath, much less scream. Flames from the fire licked at her ankles. She could hear her own strangling sounds as she placed both her hands on the man’s bulging arm, trying to pry his grip loose to no avail. The man’s arm had the strength of iron, and she couldn’t work even a little slack in it.

  She leaned backward at an awkward angle, her butt only a couple feet off the ground. She hung there from the man’s arm, strangling, her vision dimming, her hearing muffled by the hammering of her heart inside her head. She looked straight out away from her to see Glenn Larsen run toward her, his eyes wide with horror and reflecting the orange light of the leaping flames.

  “Let her go!” he shouted, aiming his revolver at Chaney on one knee above where Jenny hung from the side of the wagon, struggling to keep her legs away from the flames, the stench of the burning brush making her eyes water.

  “Lower the gun or I’ll snap her neck!” Chaney shouted.

  As if to demonstrate, Chaney jerked Jenny’s head to one side. She gave a garbled wail, which died suddenly as her windpipe was pinched entirely off. She struggled weakly, her strength dying as her consciousness faded. The tension left her body, and she hung slack now from Chaney’s arm, staring up at the killer grinning over her now, face pressed up taut against the bars.

  She was totally helpless. Totally at the mercy of the crazed killer in the jail wagon.

  “No!” Larsen said. “Don’t hurt her! I’m lowering the gun! I’m lowering it!”

  “Get us out of here!” Beecher shouted.

  Black Pot yelled, “Hurry up, young lawman, or Talon’s gonna rip her head clean off her shoulders. He can do it, too. I seen him rip a head off a grown man my size. He’ll rip hers off in two rings of a doxie’s bell!”

  “I don’t have the key!”

  “Shoot the lock!”

  No, Jenny wanted to call to Glenn. Don’t do it. Don’t set them free. They’ll kill me, anyway, and they’ll kill you, too. But she had no strength to give voice to her pleas. Her vision was growing dimmer, fading slowly to black. She could barely hear what the men around her were saying beneath the thunder of her blood in her ears.

  She could sense Glenn’s terror and frustration. It was almost like their souls were already bonded through grief and misery. She knew he felt he had no choice but to shoot the lock in the door and set the killers free. He likely knew what would happen when he did, but he had no choice. By not doing so, Chaney would snap her neck like a kindling stick, and he couldn’t let it happen.

  He couldn’t lose another woman he loved so close on the heels of the first one.

  He’d lose Jenny, anyway. Still, he had to open the door.

  Don’t do it, Glenn. Please, don’t do it, Glenn. Let them kill me, then shoot them all!

  She flinched only slightly when she heard the shot. She felt the reverberation of the blast, as well as the bullet hammering into the door lock. There were two more blasts, two more sets of reverberations through the jail wagon’s bars.

  Suddenly, Chaney’s arm released Jenny’s neck. She felt her butt hit the ground. The violent jarring radiated all through her. She lay only one-quarter conscious for a time—she wasn’t sure how long. She was aware of shouting and a violent commotion around her. A hand grabbed her arm, jerked her into motion. She winced at the pain in her shoulder.

  Someone was dragging her.

  She rose from unconsciousness like lifting her head out of a dark lake, and saw Chaney dragging her by one arm. He was limping on his wounded leg, but he was laughing and hollering while the other two were milling wildly around the fire, kicking through gear, likely looking for a bottle.

  Jenny looked behind her. The fire was out, the charred brush only smoking. Only one man was slumped in the dark wagon now, obscured by smoke. She knew it was Glenn because she recognized the bereaved voice calling to her, “Jenny! I’m sorry, Jenny! I’m so sorry, Jenny! I should have shot you! I’m sorry, Jenny!”

  She returned her gaze to Chaney, who was just then dragging her into the firelight. A gun was wedged behind the waistband of his trousers, over his belly. She yearned for it but knew she had no chance at it. She was nearly as weak as a corpse.

  “Don’t use her all up, now, Talon,” Black Pot said, sitting back against a tree and tipping a bottle to his lips. “Save some for me an’ Hell-Raisin’ Frank!” He gave a loud, victorious whoop and drank.

  “The boys should be along soon,” said Beecher as Chaney released Jenny’s arm and she slumped beside the fire. “They might want some, too!”

  Chaney stood straddling Jenny, staring down at her with that devil’s grin on his face once more, his eyes still red with reflected firelight. “I make no promises.”

  He dropped to his knees and started to lower his head toward Jenny’s.

  She had no idea how a rock suddenly got into her right hand, but there it was. Not only that—and no one could have been more amazed than she herself at what happened next—but she found herself swinging the rock savagely up and to her left. It smacked against Talon Chaney’s left temple with a thudding crack!

  Chaney’s head jerked sharply to one side. He sagged backward on his knees.

  “Ouch!” he cried, reaching up with both hands, clamping them both over his head.

  When he pulled his hands away, saw the blood on them, he stared down at her again, another lusty smile flickering in his eyes and shaping itself on his mouth. “Why, you purty li’l devil!”

  He frowned as his gaze dropped to the Colt revolver in Jenny’s hands. She’d grabbed it out from behind his waistband. Again, she had no idea where she’d summoned the strength for such an action. Maybe it was the raw energy leeched from the horror of knowing that the misery she’d known before, while the town was burning and these three were savaging her in the smoky streets of Dry Fork, would be nothing compared to the horror she was about to experience if she didn’t do something impossible.

  She looked at her own right thumb cocking the Colt’s hammer. It was as if the thumb belonged to someone else entirely, a much calmer and stronger person whose soul had invaded her body, and she was merely watching this person cock the gun.

  Chaney’s smile grew brittle, and the red light left his eyes. They turned flat and dark with fear. “Hey, now, you silly little thing.” He reached for the gun in Jenny’s hands. “Give me that, you—”

  The gun bucked and roared. Flames blossomed from the barrel and spread to Chaney’s shirt. Instantly, Jenny smelled the sickening stench of gunpowder and burning flesh and scorched blood. Automatically, she fired again, and Chaney flopped backward against the ground, screaming, flames lapping at his shirt.

  Through her own wafting powder smoke, Jenny saw the other two killers bounding toward her, cursing and yelling. Jenny extended the pistol again . . . again cocked the weapon . . . and fired at Beecher, who stopped in his tracks and looked down in shock and horror at the hole in his belly, and started yowling.

  Black Pot lunged toward her on her right.

  Smoothly, coolly, almost with the abandon of a stone statue, Jenny turned and felt the Colt again leap in her hands, roaring, flames stabbing toward the big, dark head of Black Pot, which snapped back on the man’s shoulders as the bullet ripped into his for
ehead, two inches above the bridge of his long, broad nose. She watched without emotion as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell backward without breaking his fall.

  Slowly, purposefully, she pushed herself to her feet.

  Beecher was down on his knees, holding his arms over his bloody belly. He was glaring up at her, cursing her. Jenny smiled grimly at the man—though it was not really her smiling but this other much cooler, calmer, cold-blooded woman who had invaded her body—and raised the revolver. Her grin broadened as she drew the hammer back and aimed at the howling man’s head.

  “Nooo!” Beecher shouted.

  “Oh, yes,” Jenny said.

  The bullet caromed into his wide-open mouth and exited the back of his head, painting the ground behind him red. He fell back over his boot heels and lay kicking like a scarecrow in a windstorm.

  Jenny stepped back away from the fire. She looked at the three dead men. A strange serenity had fallen over her. She turned slowly to see Glenn Larsen staring at her through the bars of the jail wagon, a bar in each hand, his eyes wide in shock.

  Suddenly, the night spun. Vaguely, Jenny heard the rumble of hoof thuds.

  She started to turn, but then her head grew light, her knees week. They buckled and she fell into the arms of Slash Braddock. He gazed down at her, smiling reassuringly, closing his hand over the smoking Colt in her own hand, gently pulling it away from her, dropping it.

  Pecos galloped up behind him and leaped down from his buckskin’s back.

  “I got ya, darlin’,” Slash said. “I got ya, darlin’.” He picked her up in his arms, and she’d never felt so warm and secure before in her life. “All’s well. All’s well . . .”

  And she knew that finally it was.

  CHAPTER 34

  Cisco Walsh kicked the cabin door open and shoved Jay so hard through the opening that she ran stumbling inside, fell, and rolled up against the cabin’s back wall.

  “What do you want to do with this one?” asked the man behind Walsh, who held Myra over his left shoulder.