by Max O'Hara
Russell stood over the diminutive Powderhorn, clenching his fists threateningly.
Stockburn buckled his six-shooters around his waist, tied the thong of the right-hand holster to that thigh, and said, “I’m not going anywhere till my job here is done and the men who massacred the Hell’s Jaw rail crew—and whoever hired them to do so—are either behind bars or six feet under.” He walked up to the big-gutted lawman and gave him the same look Russell had given Powderhorn. “Despite your threats, you fat old tin star!”
“Damn!” intoned Ivy, slapping her hands on the chair arms again.
Stockburn wheeled toward Lori, gestured at the door, then followed her out. Powderhorn came up behind them and drew the door closed with a click of the latching bolt.
“Thanks, Lori . . . Mr. Powderhorn.” Wolf extended his hand to the attorney, who shook it. His hand was small and a little moist, but his grip was firm. “How much do I owe you for your services?”
“Not a dime. Lori’s father keeps me on retainer for just such shenanigans, and to get his men out of jail on weekends when they’ve stomped a little too high and hard with their tails up.” He glanced at Lori with an ironic smile. “Besides, I’m very glad to hear that you took down two of Hennessey’s very worst attack dogs. Phil Bergson and Miles Miller were pariahs.”
“If only you’d taken down Keith McCafferty, as well,” Lori said, crossing her arms on her chest.
McCafferty must have been the attack dog with the bungstarter.
“Maybe next time,” Stockburn said. “In the meantime, I believe I’ll have a shot of whiskey and sleep off this, um, hangover courtesy of Sonny.” He touched two fingers to the lump on his temple, and winced.
“Good-night, Mister Stockburn,” Powderhorn said, giving his chin a cordial dip. “Sleep well and . . . oh, watch your back. Hennessey will no doubt replace those two deceased attack dogs with fresh ones right soon.”
“Thanks again, Powderhorn.”
The attorney pinched the brim of his crisp derby to Lori then turned and ambled off along the boardwalks, darker under the awnings where the light of a waxing moon couldn’t find them. It being late in the year, the sun set early.
Stockburn thought it was probably around ten or ten-thirty, but it was good dark. The only lights were from a few sundry watering holes he could see up the street in both directions, where clumps of horses tied to hitchrails stood in silhouette against lamplight washing out from windows.
He and Lori were on a side street he didn’t recognize.
“Where in blazes are we?” he asked his lovely companion.
“We’re taking a short cut. Have you checked into the hotel, Wolf?”
“I have.” Securing a room and stowing his gear in it was the first thing he’d done after leaving the train station.
Lori hugged his arm again, intimately, as though she and he were old lovers, and began leading him west along the boardwalk, walking very close to him so that he could feel her curves and the heat of her body against his own.
At least, he thought they were heading west, but he wasn’t sure. Wild Horse seemed bigger at night, darker. It being a weeknight, it was also relatively quiet. The only sounds were night birds and the tinny, faraway patter of a saloon piano, the distant barking of a dog.
“Right this way,” Lori said.
Stockburn walked along beside her. “Thanks again for your help.”
“My pleasure. Hennessey is an evil man. Vile. He gobbles up smaller businesses just because he can and because he wants full control of the town. My father hates him.”
“I can see why. Seemed pretty broken up about his son, though.”
“I’m sure he saw a lot of himself in Riley, and vice versa. Riley was like a mad dog his father had sicced on the county, just to remind everyone who Kreg himself really was . . . what he was capable of . . . and to keep them nervous.”
“How long has Hennessey been here?”
“Most of his life. I think he came from back East. Way early on, I mean, when he was very young. He was an outlaw. Rustler, mostly. Distilled and sold whiskey and rifles to the Indians. Punched cows for a few outfits, market hunter. Mostly, he rode the long coulees. Spent a few years in jail, got out, and made money through evil ways. Claim jumping in the mountains, I heard. Stagecoach holdups. He bought a saloon here in town, then another . . . and then he built the Wind River, Wild Horse’s crown jewel. A black diamond is how I see it.”
They’d turned the side street corner and were walking past the Wind River Saloon & Gambling Hall now. It occupied two corner lots. The entrance was on the corner, behind a dozen or so saddled horses tethered out front.
The big plate-glass windows on each side of the front door were painted umber by inside lamplight. Shadows swayed against it. There was the low roar of conversation and occasional bursts of raucous laughter.
Shadows moved intimately behind the drawn curtains of the second-story windows, beneath the garishly painted false façade looming over Wild Horse’s main drag that could be seen, Stockburn knew, from a long way away. It was one of the first signs he’d seen upon leaving the train station.
Gold lettering set against a dark green background backed by cobalt sky. At least, earlier it had been backed by that deep blue Wyoming sky. Now that blue had been replaced by a broad wash of flickering stars.
Lori didn’t say anything more until they’d entered the Territorial, nodded at the desk clerk, and climbed the broad carpeted stairs to the second floor. Stockburn stopped at his door, gave the girl’s chin an affectionate nudge, and said, “Good-night, Lori. Thanks again.”
Lori glanced at the door, then arched a brow as she looked up at him with a strange beseeching in her gaze. “Let me in . . . ?”
“Uh . . .” Wolf glanced up and down the hall lit by a couple of bracket lamps. Allowing a young woman into his room without benefit of chaperone was nowhere even close to proper.
“Don’t worry, the hotel’s almost empty. No one will know.”
“All right.” Stockburn really just wanted a few shots of whiskey and to go to bed, but the girl seemed sad, out of sorts.
He dug the key out of his pocket, unlocked and opened the door. He followed her inside, closed the door, and pegged his hat on the wall.
He walked over to the big, canopied bed and sat down on it, leaning forward, probing the goose egg with his fingers while brushing his other hand through the thick thatch of gray hair.
“Where’s your whiskey?”
“In the war bag there.” Wolf gestured to the canvas bag on the room’s small table, near the door and a mirrored chest of drawers.
Lori retrieved the bottle from the bag. There were two water glasses overturned on the table. She splashed two fingers of whiskey into each.
“A drinkin’ gal, eh?”
“I’m my father’s daughter.”
Smiling coyly, Lori walked over to the bed to give Stockburn his drink. She returned to the table for her own glass and the flask. Stockburn threw back both fingers of his whiskey, put his head down, and held his glass out for more.
“That helps,” he said with a ragged sigh.
Her smile in place, Lori poured more whiskey into his glass and sat down beside him. Very close. So that their legs were snugged up against each other. Stockburn frowned at her speculatively.
“I just need a friend, Wolf,” Lori said, taking a healthy pull from her own glass. “You’re a friend, aren’t you? After all, you saved my life. Don’t the Indians think that when you save someone’s life you become as close to that person as a relative . . . and that person is beholden to you forever?”
“Some do. But you’re not beholden to me in any way, Lori.”
“I know. At least, I don’t mean like that.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I just don’t know what I’m doing back here, Wolf.”
“I thought you did know.”
“I don’t. Maybe I was too impulsive. Nothing good has come of my return so far. You had to ris
k your life to save mine and got a target painted on your back for your trouble.”
She glanced up at him regretfully. “I’m afraid Hennessey won’t let this go. He’ll kill you. And it will be my fault.”
CHAPTER 8
“No one’s gonna kill the old Wolf of the Rails,” Wolf quipped. “Don’t you know I got eyes in the back of my head?”
“Really? Then how did that idiot deputy of Russell’s sneak up on you to give you that nasty tattoo?”
“Ah.” Wolf warmed with embarrassment and hardened his jaws as he probed the goose egg on his temple again. “That.”
“Yes, that.” Lori looked up at him askance, concern in her eyes. “Does it hurt miserably?”
“I’ve endured worse.”
“I’m so sorry!” She rose from the bed. “I’m being selfish. Here you are in terrible pain, and you’d just like to be left to your whiskey and a good-night’s sleep. I’ll leave now and see you in the—”
Despite his wanting to do just what she’d intuited, Stockburn grabbed her hand and pulled her back down beside him. “Hold on, there, little gal. Suppose you tell me what’s got you so sad.”
She slid up against him once more and looked up at him from over his shoulder again. “Do I seem sad?”
Wolf wrapped his arm around her, gave her an affectionate squeeze. “Very. And I got a feelin’ it’s about more than that little hydrophobic rat, Riley Hennessey.”
Lori stretched her lips back from her teeth then lowered her gaze to the floor. She seemed to ponder for a time, then said, “Have you ever wanted something more than anything but felt the whole world was in cahoots against you, to make sure that object of your desire never becomes yours?”
“Why, yes. Yes, I have.”
That seemed to surprise the girl. “Really?”
“When I was a boy, the Cheyenne raided my family’s farm in western Kansas. They murdered my parents and kidnapped my eight-year-old sister, Emily. I got knocked on the head, left for dead. I knew the Cheyenne had taken Emily, because I’d seen a brave pull her up, kicking and screaming, over his horse, just before I took a club to the head. When I came to my senses, and as I buried my poor dead murdered parents, I vowed not to rest until I found Emily.”
Stockburn sipped his whiskey, thought back to that miserable, haunted time. “Years passed. I mean, many, many years during which I felt just like you do now. That the stars had lined up against me to keep me from ever seeing my little sister again.”
“Did you find her, Wolf?”
“Yes, I did. Just last year. She’s a beautiful woman, almost thirty now, with a young half-Sioux boy named Pete. They live together on a ranch in Dakota. Emily changed her name to Melissa Ann.
“She gained her freedom from the band of Sioux that had taken her in trade from the Cheyenne who’d first captured her, when her warrior husband was killed in battle. She took her boy to Bismarck and worked in a hotel, and mended clothes at night. In Bismarck, she caught the eye of a prominent rancher, Thornburg, her senior by a good twenty years. He was a good man, good to her son despite his being a half-breed. He set them both up well, on a very nice spread up there in Dakota. She runs it herself now with a sure hand, Emily does.”
Wolf stopped, smiled. “I should say, Melissa Ann does.”
“That’s a heckuva story, Wolf.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Do you see her often, Melissa Ann?”
“I haven’t seen her since last summer, but we exchange letters regularly. I plan to pay her and Pete a visit again, though, real soon.” Stockburn gave Lori another reassuring squeeze. “See? Things work out sometimes. Even when the odds seemed stacked unbelievably high against us. Till last year, I hadn’t seen my sister in twenty-one years.”
Lori smiled up at him. She brushed a tear from her cheek then sat up straighter and pressed her lips to his jaw. “Thank you for that. I feel encouraged.”
She rose. “With that, I will bid you adieu, sir.” She set her empty glass on the table then flounced to the door, opened it with a flourish, turned back to him, smiled again winningly, and said, “Sweet dreams, Mister Wolf of the Rails.”
“Good-night, Lori.”
She gave a parting curtsy and left.
“Ravishing creature,” Stockburn said, and tossed back the last of his whiskey. But he had to admit he was relieved she was gone. His head was splitting, and the pillow beckoned. He had a lot to do tomorrow, and he needed a few hours’ sleep.
Still, he couldn’t help wondering what it was that had called the girl back home after she’d left for school only a month ago. Whatever it was, it certainly had her considerably troubled. Apparently, there was something she wanted but couldn’t have.
Hmm.
Oh, well—no concern of Stockburn’s. He had enough on his plate dealing with the massacre of the rail-laying crew.
Wolf sat on the bed to kick out of his boots. He rose and removed his six-guns and looped them around the bed’s upper right post in case he needed to make a quick grab during the night. A situation not unheard of in his past, more’s the pity.
He skinned out of his shirt, hung it over a chair back, then went to the marble-topped washstand. He opened his longhandle top and peeled it down his arms to his lean waist, laying his upper torso bare.
He splashed tepid water from the washbowl onto his face and used a cake of soft soap to lather his face and torso. He scrubbed the soap and grit from his body with a wet cloth and had just finished drying with a towel when a knock sounded on his door—two quick playful taps followed by a third.
He frowned at the door.
“Lori?”
“Guess again.” It was a girl’s voice. He couldn’t place it.
Could be a trap laid by Hennessey.
He walked over to the front of the bed, slid a Peacemaker from its holster, and held it straight down against his side. His thumb caressed the hammer as he made his way back to the door. With his left hand, he turned the key in the lock, turned the knob, and pulled the door open quickly, clicking the Peacemaker’s hammer back.
The girl gasped, eyes widening. The blonde from the jailhouse. The marshal’s daughter, Ivy. She was the only one in the hall.
She splayed her fingers across her chest, over where her unbuttoned shirt formed an inviting V, the nose of the V showing the dark mouth of her cleavage. “Scared me! I’ll be hanged if that ain’t a big gun!”
Wolf depressed the hammer and raised the barrel. “What’re you doing here?”
The blonde’s eyes roamed across his bare chest, the nubs of her cheeks flushing. “I thought we should have a little chat before you get all entangled with Miss Fancy Britches McCrae and she goes filling your head with a bunch of nonsense.”
“What kind of nonsense?”
“Let me in and I’ll tell you.”
“Can’t it wait for tomorrow, Ivy? I have one whale of a headache, and I was just getting ready for bed.”
She smiled as her eyes strayed to his exposed chest again. “I see that. I won’t be long. I promise. Besides.” She grimaced and glanced down at her right foot on which she wore a boy’s sized stockman’s boot. “I hurt my foot on the stairs. Twisted my ankle. I need to get off it for a spell.”
“Oh, sure, sure,” Stockburn said, not sure if the irony was plain in his voice. “I guess you’d best come in and take a load off.”
“Thank you,” she said, as Wolf stepped back and she limped through the door, smiling.
Stockburn closed the door and shoved his hands through the sleeves of his longhandle top, raising it up over his chest and covering himself. Now he knew how women felt about being ogled. “Take a seat.”
“How ’bout here?” Ivy limped over to the bed and sat on the edge of it, where Stockburn and Lori had been sitting a few moments ago.
Stockburn gave a wry chuff as he walked over to the table and splashed more whiskey into his glass. “Does your father know you’re here?”
“What do you think? Can I
have some of that?” She glanced at the flask and then at the second glass on the table. “I can use Miss Fancy Britches’ glass. I’m sure she doesn’t have any germs. No, not a McCrae.”
Stockburn sighed and poured a finger of whiskey into the second glass. “How’d you know she was here?”
“If she wasn’t here, whose glass is that?”
“You’re a shrewd one, Miss Ivy,” Stockburn said, walking over to the bed and handing the girl the glass.
She was pretty in a tomboyish way, but in a dress, with her hair done up, maybe a little paint on her lips, she would have caused a riot in any male crowd. Her face was tan, her eyes lilac blue. Her straight hair, hanging well past her shoulders, was the gold of late-summer wheat.
“A girl has to be shrewd around here or she gets taken advantage of. It’s called survival.”
“You live with your father?”
“He lives with me!” She laughed. It was a husky laugh. Then she winced and looked down at her right foot. “Mind if I take my boot off? I should take a peek at my foot. Might need to pay a call on the sawbones though he’s likely upstairs with one of Hennessey’s whores.”
“Be my guest,” Wolf said with another weary sigh as he slacked into one of the two chairs at the table.
She took a sip of the whiskey and swallowed like it was nothing stronger than lemonade. She set the glass on the table by the bed then leaned back on her hands and used the toe of her left boot to maneuver out of the right one. She grimaced, cheeks coloring, and gave Stockburn a plaintive look.
“A little help . . . ?”
Wolf chuckled.
He set his glass down, rose from his chair, then dropped to a knee in front of Ivy. He felt like her man in waiting. But, then, he had a feeling that’s how every man in Miss Ivy’s orbit felt. She was like Lori McCrae in that way, but in only that one way.
He took the sole of the boot in his left hand, wrapped his other hand around the heel, and tugged.
Ivy sucked air through gritted teeth.
“Hurt?”
“A little gentler, please, big fella . . . ?”
“Sorry.” Stockburn tried again.