Yakima stared after the coach, jade eyes riveted on the rear luggage boot until the coach turned onto a left fork in the main street, which became a trail at the edge of town, and disappeared, the creaking and clattering of the stage wheels and the thunder of the team’s hooves dwindling quickly.
Dust sifted. A collie dog sniffed the recently gouged furrows in the well-churned dust of the street and then got distracted by a cat poking its head out of an alley mouth and gave chase.
“Bad damn luck.” This from Bart English himself, who stood with his big fists on his hips as he stared after the coach. He was a large man—taller than Yakima by a good three inches—with long, frizzy gray hair tumbling down from his shabby bowler hat, and wearing a long leather apron.
“What’s bad damn luck?”
“Startin’ out with a cracked felloe,” English said, still staring after the coach. “That’s bad damn luck, startin’ a run that way. They had to limp back so’s I could fix it. That means two more bad things is gonna happen before they make their destination.”
Yakima continued staring northeast, as did the blacksmith. He’d only half heard what the man had said. He was thinking about the face he’d seen in the window, wondering if it had been her, whoever the hell she was. She’d insisted they not exchange names, though they’d exchanged everything else a man and a woman possibly could in the line shack he’d shared last night with Trudy.
“Ah, hell!”
Yakima looked at Bart English. The man was scowling at him, big fists still on his hips.
“What?” Yakima said.
“Not you!”
“Why the hell not me?”
“Yakima, goddamn it, I was in the Longhorn the night Neumiller and his deputies threw you out. They rode you of town and told you not to come back or they’d throw your half-breed ass in the hoosegow and mail the key to God!”
Yakima raised his hands palm out. “That was a simple misunderstanding. Your Mr. Andrews said I was cheatin’ because he didn’t want to pay up the money I’d won that night playin’ cards. Well, I was drinking the devil’s nectar that night—and of course that part is my fault. I know better than to do that, especially when there’s pretty women and dishonest mucky-mucks hovering around—and I took offense at the man’s demeanor, not to mention him callin’ me a cheater. And then when he started wagging that little popper around in my face . . . Say, did they ever get that derringer dug out of his nose?”
“They did, but it took some doin’,” the blacksmith said, unable to choke back a delighted chuckle. “Took the doc and his wife and a Chinese assistant to dig his nose out of his cheek and sew it back together. The whole town heard Andrews’s howls till pret’ near dawn, and the doc says that nose will always be about the size of a wheel hub.”
“At least they got the gun out of it. Nice little popper.”
The blacksmith wiped the grin off his broad, bearded face and scowled up at the half-breed. “Damn it, Yakima, Andrews runs the Big Horn County Bank, and he’s got more friends than the whores over at the Silk Slipper. Sheriff Neumiller is one of ’em. Now, you’d best head back out to Shackleford’s ranch an’ stay there.”
“Me and Shackleford ain’t friends no more.”
“Oh, boy.”
Yakima swung down from his saddle, tossed his reins to the blacksmith, and grabbed his saddlebags. “Wolf here needs a new front shoe. Forge me one, will you, Bart, while I head over to the general store and lay in some trail supplies?”
“Yakima, if Neumiller sees you—!”
“Check the other shoes, too, Bart.” Yakima hitched his shell belt higher on his lean hips as he strode toward the mercantile. “Got a few days’ travel ahead.”
The blacksmith grunted his disapproval as Yakima continued across the side street. He mounted the wooden steps rising to the mercantile’s porch and paused to glance once more toward the northeast, where the stage was just now climbing the shoulder of a bluff. White smoke drifting from a near chimney slightly obscured it. It was about the size of his thumbnail from this distance, the brown team pulling the red-and-gold stage that shone in the weak morning sunlight. Distantly, Yakima heard the snaps of the blacksnake poppers as the jehu flicked the whip over the team’s back.
He felt the urge to inquire about her, to at least find out her name. But he wouldn’t. A half-breed—especially one who’d been shepherded out of town by the local law—could only cause folks to question her reputation. The only ranch within twenty miles of the line shack, however, was the Chain Link owned by Wild Bill Mendenhour and his son, whose name Yakima couldn’t remember. She was likely from there.
No point in thinking about her anymore. The reason they’d had such a good time together was that they hadn’t known anything about each other, and that’s the way it would stay. He’d likely never see her again, but he’d keep her memory in a quiet corner of his mind for revisiting on lonely nights stitched with distant wolf howls and the crackling of his coffee fire.
He mounted the porch and walked into the mercantile, causing the bell over the door to rattle. “Shit, what the hell are you doin’ back here, Yakima?” said the mercantiler, Curt Findlay. “I done thought—”
“Yeah, I know, you thought I was run out of town on a rail. But I’m back for trail supplies. I’m hopin’ I can sneak in and out without Neumiller gettin’ his back up, so the faster you can fill this order for me . . .” Yakima walked to the back of the shop, where Findlay was arranging canned goods on a high shelf with a long pole that bore a hook and a steel hand on the end of it, and set his order on the counter, beside a large glass pickle jar filled with rock candy. Beside the list scribbled on lined note paper, he set his saddlebags.
“Neumiller’s gonna boil over like an old black pot if he sees me doin’ business with you,” Findlay said, scowling over the counter as he set down his pole. He was stocky, with a big gut pushing out his apron, and his face was as pockmarked as a coffee can used for target practice.
“Come on,” Yakima said. “Where the hell am I supposed to get supplies? I just rode in to do a little business. I’ll be ridin’ out again in twenty minutes.”
“Where you headin’?”
“North.”
“Why?”
“Why the hell are you askin’?”
“Because I’m curious—that’s why,” the mercantiler said, picking up the grocery list and smoothing it against his bulbous, rock-hard gut. “And because I don’t have to do business with you, Henry!”
“Belle Fourche.”
“No shit?” said Findlay, studying the list. “That’s where the stage is headed. Damn near the end of the line. It’ll return once more, and then that’s the end of stage travel in these parts for the season.”
As he started shuffling around the store, filling the order, Yakima almost asked him about the woman but caught himself. He spent the next ten minutes, while Findlay stuffed the possibles into his saddlebag pouches, sucking on a chunk of rock candy and otherwise keeping his mouth shut. When the order was filled, he paid the man, draped the saddlebags over his shoulder, pinched his hat brim, and walked out.
He was halfway across the side street, heading for the blacksmith shop from which the clangs of English’s hammer rose sharply, when he spied movement across the main street on his right and ahead about forty yards. A wiry little man with a long, hawkish nose under a floppy canvas hat brim was hurrying along the boardwalk toward Yakima, who cursed. Lewis! Behind his former partner was none other than Sheriff Neumiller in his brown suit and bowler hat and with his sheriff’s badge pinned to his left lapel, twin Colts tied low on his thighs.
“There he is!” Lewis shouted, pointing. “There he is right now. I told you I followed him to town! Arrest the half-breed son of a bitch, Sheriff!”
Lewis hung back as Neumiller left the boardwalk and walked toward Yakima
, canting his head to one side, his handlebar mustaches blowing in the chill morning breeze. Both hands were touching the walnut grips of his Colts.
“Arrest me?” Yakima said. “On what charge?”
Neumiller stopped a few feet away from Yakima, the sheriff’s brown eyes hard, his pale, freckled face set in a scowl. He jerked a thumb toward Lewis remaining safely behind a hitch rack near the boardwalk on the far side of the street. “This man says you stole a cache of gold from him and raped his daughter.”
Chapter 9
“He does, does he?” Yakima glared at Lewis standing behind the hitch rack, grinning.
Sheriff Neumiller said tautly, “You’d best ease those saddlebags to the ground, Henry. And I’ll be taking the six-shooter.” Keeping one hand on one of his own Colts, he extended his hand toward Yakima, palm up. “Nice an’ slow.”
“I didn’t rape his daughter, Neumiller. In fact, it was closer to the other way around.”
“That’s a damn lie an’ he knows it!” Lewis yelled, pointing a long, crooked finger. “My Trudy wouldn’t lie with no Injun!”
Yakima kept his narrowed eye on the sheriff. “And the gold in these saddlebags doesn’t belong to either one of us—Lewis or me. And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna turn it over to you to give to him.”
“I’ll be damned if you’re not.” Neumiller glanced over Yakima’s shoulder. There was the quick, loud, metallic rasp of a cartridge being levered into a rifle breech.
Yakima glanced behind him. One of Neumiller’s four deputies stood crouched behind a hitch rack off the near front corner of the mercantile, aiming down the Winchester he had propped over the rack’s crossbar.
Yakima turned forward and saw two more deputies taking up positions on either side of the street, the one on the left with a rifle, the one on the right holding a double-barreled shotgun in his crossed arms and grinning. The one on the left, standing in front of the Wolfville Drug Emporium, loudly cocked his rifle and aimed with squint-eyed menace from behind the rear wheel of a parked stylish black buggy.
A young woman wearing a cream rabbit hat, from which blond sausage curls dangled toward her slender shoulders, stood in the drugstore’s open door behind the deputy, staring wide-eyed. An older woman drew the young one back inside the drugstore and slammed the door. A CLOSED sign jounced in the door’s curtained windowpane.
The deputy standing behind the buggy wheel grinned, his sandy mustache pushing up hard against his broad, sunburned nose. “Let me drop the hammer on him, Sheriff. We got no time for muckin’ around with this half-breed.”
Behind Yakima, the second deputy piped up with “We escorted him out of town once, Sheriff. I see no reason to do it a second time. ’Specially if he soiled a white girl.”
“Shut up—all of you,” Neumiller drawled. “The judge’ll decide the half-breed’s fate. I hate to spend the money feedin’ you, Henry, but I’m gonna have to jail you till the circuit judge rides through again in two, three weeks. Now, with two slow fingers, slide that pistol out of your holster and set it gently in my hand.” He gave a foxy smile.
Yakima glanced once more at Lewis smiling jeeringly behind the hitch rack, then let the saddlebags drop to the ground. Dust blew up around them. He unsnapped the keeper thong from over his Colt’s hammer and, using two fingers, pulled it out of the holster and dropped it into the sheriff’s hand.
The sheriff stepped back, and, aiming Yakima’s own gun at him, canted his head toward the sheriff’s stone office building standing a half block up the street on the right. “Move.”
As Yakima started walking up the street, Lewis ducked under the hitch rack and ran toward the saddlebags. Neumiller placed an open hand on Lewis’s chest. “Leave it, Shackleford. Judge Vining will decide what happened to your daughter, and he’ll decide the fate of the gold, as well.”
As Lewis scowled his disappointment, Neumiller looked at the deputy now walking up from the mercantile. “Larry, bring the bags to my office.”
“You got it, Sheriff.”
As Neumiller fell into step behind Yakima, Lewis ran hop-skipping up to the sheriff and said, “That gold’s mine, Sheriff. I think I oughta be able to take it back to my ranch with me right now. Why, it’s my word against a damn dog-eater’s!”
“Forget it,” Neumiller said.
“Nice try, Lewis,” Yakima said. “You lyin’ son of a bitch.” To the sheriff, he said, “There’s a letter in them bags along with the gold that’ll help prove who that gold belongs to, Neumiller.”
“That’s Sheriff Neumiller to you, breed!” the man said, stepping in front of Yakima to open the door of his office. “And I’ll give the judge both the gold and the letter, and he’ll decide. Now get in there and shut up.” He slanted a cautious eye around the street. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry than you and Shackleford’s fallin’-out.”
The man’s wariness made Yakima wonder what that was. As he stepped through the open door, he cast his own cautious glance toward the other side of the street.
“Move!” Neumiller said, ramming a fist against his back and sending the half-breed stumbling into the small office lit by a potbellied stove in the middle of the room. Yakima ground his teeth against his rage. It took a powerful act of will to keep from swinging around and smashing his right heel against the man’s face. He knew he could do it. And he could likely take the three deputies just now moving toward the office, too, before they even knew what had happened to their boss.
On the other hand, the one carrying the gut shredder looked as though he enjoyed using it. . . .
His name was Hannibal Howe, and he stood filling up the doorway with that shotgun in the crook of his arm. Neumiller grabbed a ring of keys off a roof support post near the smoking woodstove and opened the middle of the three cells lined up along the building’s rear wall. He stepped aside, waved Yakima in, then closed the door and turned the key in the lock.
Yakima glanced behind him to see Lewis standing outside on the rotted boardwalk fronting the place, staring through the window over the sheriff’s cluttered rolltop desk. Another deputy was walking toward the office behind Lewis, holding his Winchester on one shoulder and puffing a long cheroot while flicking lint or maybe tobacco flecks off the front of his black frock coat.
As Neumiller glared through the bars at Yakima, he said, “Make yourself at home, Henry. You’ll be here awhile, I ’spect.”
Yakima looked behind him once more in time to see the deputy walking toward Lewis stumble forward. At least, Yakima thought the man had stumbled forward. But he didn’t catch himself, and at the same time that his knees hit the ground, there was a loud crack from the far side of the street.
Yakima lifted his gaze to see a man with a rifle hunkered atop the harness shop, smoke wafting around his Winchester’s barrel as he pumped another shell into the chamber. Lewis turned around quickly, as did Neumiller, yelling, “What . . . ?”
There was a plink as a bullet hammered the window. Neumiller screamed and flew back against Yakima’s cell. He caromed off the doors and dropped to the floor a few feet in front of it, grunting and groaning and clutching his upper right chest from which blood oozed thickly. Outside, several rifles were popping and men were shouting and screaming.
Another deputy ran toward the jailhouse’s open door, twisting around to trigger his rifle. He was only six feet from the door when one slug punched through his chest at the same time another hammered the side of his head.
Blood flew as he rose off his feet and, dropping his rifle, piled up, quivering, on the boardwalk fronting the open door with a heavy thud of breaking bones and cracking wood. Hannibal Howe had turned around with his gut shredder, facing the street and shouting, “Where are they, goddamn it. Where—?”
More rifles thundered.
Howe was blown into the office near Neumiller with two gushing holes in his chest.
He tried to sit up, but another shot blew off the top of his head. He tossed the shotgun to his left and it piled up against the wall in front of the door.
There were several more shots as Yakima, crouching and gripping the bars of the locked door in front of him, stared in disbelief out the open door and the broken window, unable to see much more now than wafting powder smoke. He looked down at Neumiller, who lay flat on his back about three feet in front of Yakima’s cell.
The man was pale, breathing hard, lifting his hatless head to stare out the door. Yakima’s pistol lay around the man’s boots, near the ring of keys.
Hearing foot thuds and men’s voices growing louder outside, Yakima dropped to his knees and stuck his arm through the cell door, trying to stretch his hand out for the key ring. No good. He was several feet short.
“Neumiller,” Yakima said. “Toss me them keys.”
The man merely grunted as blood continued to pump out of his chest. He laid his head back against the floor and stared up at the ceiling.
“Neumiller,” Yakima said again, more insistently, “hand me the damn keys!”
Neumiller shook his head slightly, though Yakima couldn’t tell if it was in response to his demand or a death spasm. His chest continued to rise and fall sharply.
Yakima looked out the door, glimpsed a man walking toward the jailhouse holding a Winchester on his hip, a tan duster buffeting about his buckskin-clad legs. Meanwhile, a girl was screaming shrilly on the other side of the street. A couple of men in dusters were hauling a kicking and screaming girl into the drugstore while another woman screamed inside the place. There were hoof thuds as horses approached the jailhouse, and through the broken window, from his kneeling position, the half-breed saw several bouncing, hatted heads of oncoming riders.
A cold stone was growing colder in the pit of his gut. This wasn’t how he wanted to die—unarmed in a cage.
He reached for the pistol protruding from Neumiller’s right holster, but he could get his hand to within only three inches of the walnut grips, and that was with nearly ripping his shoulder from its socket. Outside, horses blew and stomped. Spurs chinged.
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