by Max O'Hara
Elizabeth placed her hands on Lori’s shoulders and held the girl back away from her, gazing at her gravely. “The question is, though”—she canted her head to indicate her husband, Lori’s father who’d stomped away in a huff—“are you as tough as he is?”
Lori looked into the house, then returned her gaze to her mother and pulled her mouth corners down. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
She kissed her mother’s cheek, then strode across the threshold.
CHAPTER 14
As his calico gelding splashed across Dutch Joe Creek, Slim Sherman brushed his hand across his right cheek. He looked at the blood smeared across his palm and cursed.
Sherman, a tall man in his early forties, crouched low in the saddle, grunting against the burn of the bullet wound. The slug had ricocheted off the barrel of Sherman’s rifle and cut across his face.
A little higher and it would have taken out Sherman’s right eye. That would have meant Taps for Sherman. A regulator wasn’t much good without his shooting eye. He’d tried to shoot left-handed before, but it just hadn’t felt right and, though he’d practiced long and hard, he’d never got the hang of it. If he lost the use of his right arm or right eye, he’d have to go into another line of business, though that wouldn’t be easy for a man who knew only how to kill other men.
Usually from behind.
“Damn that big gray-haired son of Satan!” Sherman said sharply, gritting his teeth against the burn. “What a lucky damn shot! Hell!”
He crossed a small tributary of Dutch Joe then rode through some pines and cedars, the tall, blond grass brushing against his stirrups, and saw the old line shack he was currently calling home. No one had used the shack in years, so he’d had to fight it back from the brush and tree saplings not to mention the mice, the skunks that had lived under the floor, and even a coyote that had come and gone through a hole in one of the shutters.
It was a good, tight place, though, when all was said and done, and he’d hammered some corrugated tin over a hole in the shake-shingled roof. A nice place for a single man, a loner who didn’t mix well with others—who hated most people, in fact—and valued his solitude.
It was good he valued solitude. A man in Sherman’s line of work had to spend a lot of time alone. You show your mug around too much, you’re likely going to be recognized by a friend or family member of a man or men—maybe even one of the four women—you’d sent to their reward.
You were liable to get a bullet for your tomfoolery.
Sherman reined the calico up in front of the sun-bathed shack. Despite the burn in his cheek—it felt like a blacksmith had lain a glowing hot andiron against his face—he found himself smiling. Of course, he hadn’t been able to see his own naked backside, but he could see it in his mind’s eye the way Stockburn had likely seen it—his butt cheeks glowing in the sunshine atop that ridge, grinning mockingly down at the famed rail detective.
There was no insult quite like the insult of a man flashing another man his naked behind. Just nothing else like it. What could you say to that? There was no response equal to such an insult.
Stockburn had probably been as mad as a stick-teased rattlesnake, being exposed to Sherman’s behind like that. He might have sent a bullet across Sherman’s cheek—damn, it hurt like hell!—but he didn’t know that. The detective wouldn’t have been able to see Sherman’s face from that distance and position.
No, no—Stockburn didn’t know anything about the pain he’d inflicted. But he sure as hell had seen Sherman’s lewdly taunting gesture.
Hah!
He’d remember that for a long time, Stockburn would.
“What’s so funny?”
The voice so startled the regulator that he nearly tumbled from his saddle. He looked around quickly, automatically wrapping his right hand around the grips of his .44 Colt in the holster on his right hip.
He didn’t see anything until a hand rose from behind the half-rotted rail of the equally rotted front stoop of the cabin. A small, pale hand at the end of a slender arm clad in checked wool. A girl’s hand and arm. The voice had belonged to a girl, too, though that hadn’t taken any of the start out of Sherman’s reaction.
He did, however, leave the pistol in its holster while keeping his hand wrapped around the stag horn grips. “Who’s there?”
“Ivy.”
The pretty blonde rose from the fainting couch resting back against the line shack’s front wall. Don’t ask Sherman how anyone had hauled a fainting couch out here—and a fancy one, at that, if now badly worn and mouse-chewed—to this remote line cabin, which had likely been used on fall roundups by crews from various spreads in this neck of the mountains.
A pair of drunken cow punchers had probably stolen it out of a whorehouse.
“Russell,” she added, standing now, with a grin. She frowned suddenly. “What happened to your face?”
Suddenly self-conscious, Sherman frowned. “Never mind. What’re you doin’ out here? Your old man know you stray this far from the herd?”
“There’s a lot my old man doesn’t know about me. Not because I keep it from him, necessarily, but because he doesn’t want to know, because he knows there’s nothin’ he can do about it.”
She’d moved down off the porch and walked now to Sherman’s horse, staring up at him from over his right stirrup. “Come on in. We’d better get that cut cleaned up.”
“Who’s we?”
“You an’ me.” Ivy smiled. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you’re not happy to see me.” She gave him a leering, vulgar smile.
“I ain’t happy to see you. Not out here, girl. This is my secret haunt. I didn’t want no one to know about this place. Hell, I don’t want no one to know I’m even in the area. My reputation precedes me. What’d you say your name was—Ivy?”
“You don’t even remember my name?”
“Did you tell me? I forget. All I remember is you said you was Russell’s daughter.”
“Well, you weren’t all that unhappy to see me the other night.” Ivy Russell smiled again and reached up to place her pale hand on his thigh. “In Wild Horse.”
Sherman looked at the girl’s hand on his thigh. It was a pretty hand. Warm. It went with the pretty rest of her. He couldn’t feel much at the moment, however, except the galling burn in his cheek.
“Forget that. I was drunk. Shouldn’t have done it. I’m on a job, but even a professional’s gotta let his hair down from time to time.”
“Yeah, well, we let it down together—didn’t we?” She shot him that lewd smile again. “In grand fashion.”
Sherman should have known she was trouble. Ladies that aren’t trouble don’t frequent saloons. Especially not the little hole-in-the-wall whiskey trough and whores’ crib he’d patronized three nights ago, on a supply run to Wild Horse.
The pretty blonde in boy’s garb had been playing the piano and drinking whiskey from the bottle before she’d wandered over to his table. He’d been sitting most happily alone in a dark corner, playing a game of solitaire and nursing a bottle of cheap whiskey.
Sherman didn’t mind cheap whiskey. In fact, having been raised on busthead back in the hills of Tennessee back before the little dust-up between the states, he preferred it. His father and uncles had brewed it. Just as he was a man who got by very well on his own, Sherman was not a man of frivolous tastes.
Frivolous tastes led to trouble. Just as women led to trouble. He knew that.
Still, when this pretty daughter of the town marshal had beat him at poker and lured him upstairs to an empty room in that squalid hole at the edge of town—he’d had the impression he wasn’t the first man she’d led up there, either—he’d gone ready and willing.
What man wouldn’t? She filled out her blouse in comely style and put the right curves in her tight denims. Besides, there was added alluring danger in the fact she was the town marshal’s daughter.
What man—even a practical loner, a professional man, a killing machine—could resist s
omething like that?
He hadn’t.
Now, here she was again. But he was sober now. And hurting. And he didn’t want her here.
Clutching his cheek, Sherman swung down from his saddle. “How’d you find this place?”
“Followed you back the next morning,” Ivy said, tauntingly.
He scowled at her. “You did?”
“Yep.”
Sherman stared at her aghast, horrified by his own negligence. He couldn’t go around letting folks follow him. At least, not without his knowing about it. Embarrassing.
Downright humiliating.
His chagrin must have shone in his face, because, as she grabbed his arm and led him to the cabin, Ivy said, “Oh, don’t feel so bad about it. I’m good at following folks. Hell, I follow everyone who passes through town and is one bit interesting. I’d live such a dull life otherwise!”
They mounted the rotting two steps together. “I’ve never been caught yet, so don’t go beating yourself up about it. That looks bad. You’re lucky you didn’t lose that eye.”
“Tell me about it,” Sherman said as she ushered him into the cabin.
He tossed his hat onto a chair then reached for a whiskey bottle.
“No, no, no,” the girl said, slapping his shoulder. “You just take a seat. I’ll tend that cut. I’m good at that, too.”
“You’re good at a lot of things, aren’t you?”
“Indeed, I am!”
Sherman kicked a hide-bottom chair out from the small eating table cluttered with leavings from his previous meal, and sat down. “What’re you doing out here, anyways?”
“I wanted to find out how it went.”
Sherman scowled at her again. “How what went?”
“Mister Wolf of the Rails himself,” Ivy said, taking a tin pot out onto the porch for water from the rain barrel. Coming back in, she looked at him with eager expectance. “Did you get him?”
Sherman could only gaze at her, even more amazed and horrified than he was before, when he’d learned he’d let her shadow him out from town. Her—a girl only a few years out of pigtails!
Ivy set the pan on the table then picked up the unlabeled whiskey bottle. “Well—did you?”
“How did . . . how did . . . ?”
“Oh, never mind! I learn everything interesting that’s going on about Wild Horse sooner or later,” she added with gold flecks sparkling in her crystal blue eyes. “You needn’t feel bad about that, neither.”
She pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of her denims and poured a little whiskey onto it. She sopped a little water from the pot onto it, as well, then drew a chair up to the right side of Sherman and leaned toward him to begin cleaning his cheek.
“Hold on.” Sherman waved her off then grabbed the bottle and took three big pulls. Between pulls, he swallowed, drew a deep breath, then pulled again.
Finally, he set the bottle down and turned to her, exasperated but trying to keep his nerves on a short leash. Fear was not good for a man in his line of work. You couldn’t think straight when you were fearful.
A little fear was all right, but the kind of fear this girl evoked in his otherwise steely nerves—a heart-thumping, palm-sweating anxiousness—was off-putting.
If she knew, who else knew? Maybe a trap was being set.
Maybe Stockburn himself had known and that’s why he’d been so damned hard to perforate! Hell, maybe Stockburn had followed him here!
Sherman jerked a paranoid look at the open door. Nothing out there but his horse standing with his head lowered, sunlight, and breeze-brushed weeds. Birds flitted here and there about the pine boughs.
“What is it?” Ivy asked, following his gaze to the door.
“Close it.”
“Why? It’s kinda stinky in here. Let’s just—”
Sherman palmed his Colt and cocked it, aiming at the open door. “Close it!”
“All right, all right.” Ivy walked around the table to the door. She poked her head out, looked around cautiously, then closed the door and turned her curious gaze to Sherman. “You didn’t get him, didja?”
She smiled with subtle jeering.
Sherman depressed the Colt’s hammer and set the gun on the table. He felt blood rise in his face. “The Son of Satan must have nine lives. I never miss from that distance. Not with the Big Fifty. I never miss!” He took a pull from the bottle then slammed his fist down on the table.
“Maybe you were just nervous—him bein’ a big, capable fellow and all. The Wolf of the Rails himself! Maybe you were worried what would happen if you missed, and—well, you missed!”
Ivy laughed as she sank back down into her chair beside the regulator.
“I’m never nervous,” Sherman said, suddenly indignant. But had he been? “I never miss! And I’m not afraid of Wolf Stockburn!”
“Well, I would be, but all right, all right. Hold still now and let me clean that wound. Wow—it looks nasty. You might need a few stitches.”
“No stitches. Just clean the damn thing.”
“Hold still.”
“I am!”
“No, you’re not—you’re fidgeting around like a cat with a dog in the room!”
Was he? Yeah, he guessed he was. My God—he was nervous.
He forced himself to hold still and let the girl tend his wound. The water and whiskey burned. He took several pulls from the bottle. It did a good job of quelling the pain in his cheek that fired up with renewed energy every time the girl poked around at it with the damp cloth.
As she worked, Sherman kept his gaze skinned on the windows to each side of the door. The shutters were closed, but sunlight streamed through the cracks between the shutters’ planks. If a man moved around out there, Sherman should be able to see him.
The girl’s words echoed around inside Sherman’s head:
“Maybe you were just nervous—him bein’a big, capable fellow and all. The Wolf of the Rails himself! Maybe you were worried what would happen if you missed, and—well, you missed!”
Could she be right?
Sherman looked at her. She caught his eye as she dabbed at the wound. She smiled bashfully though there wasn’t a bashful bone in her body.
She looked into his eyes like she could see right through him. Like she could see the fear devils scuttling around inside his soul.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like how?”
“Like you’re lookin’ at me.”
“All right, all right.” She chuckled then set the cloth into the basin again then wrung it out.
“Don’t laugh, neither. I don’t like being laughed at.”
“I’m sorry,” Ivy said, sounding like she really meant it. She dabbed at the wound again, carefully, gently, tucking her lower lip under her two front teeth. “I didn’t mean to laugh. I just think you might be over-reacting a bit, is all.”
“Oh, you do, do you? Do you know how many men I’ve killed?”
“I’ve heard anywhere from between twenty and thirty.”
“You have? From who?”
“Pa.”
“How would he know?”
“You were involved in that land war down in Colorado, weren’t you? The one between the cattlemen and sheepmen down around Estes Park? Two, three years ago now?”
Sherman reached up and wrapped his hand around her hand holding the cloth. “How’d you know that?”
“Pa was down there at the time. He was a deputy town marshal in Camp Collins. Ran a saloon down there, too. I slung drinks for him even though I wasn’t more’n about thirteen. I wore a tight little dress right well even then, on account of how I filled out early, and Pa said I could wear it because it brought business in. I could do anything . . . as long as it brought business in.”
Sherman released her hand. “I bet you did. I bet you brought in the business.” He let his eyes roam down the front of her shirt.
Suddenly, he liked her being here. He liked her sitting so close to him that he could feel
the little puffs of her breath on his cheek, soothing the wound. He could feel the warmth of her body, sitting so close to him.
Suddenly, he was aware of her right leg pressed up against his left one.
He took another pull from the rotgut as she continued cleaning the wound, a faint little grin playing across her lips.
Yeah, he didn’t mind her being here so much now. Women were a distraction, but maybe a man needed a distraction now and then. A distraction besides whiskey, that was. Now he didn’t feel so worried about Stockburn. He felt some of his old pluck returning. He could handle Stockburn. His having missed the man with that fifty-caliber round had been a fluke.
Flukes happened. He’d get him next time.
So what if Stockburn did come after him?
He’d be ready. Good, good. Let him come. Then Slim Sherman would drill the legendary Wolf of the Rails through his heart. End the legend right then and there. Not like it was anything personal. He’d been paid to do a job, so he’d do it.
End the legend.
Sherman would be the legend then, wouldn’t he?
“Hey, you’re feelin’ better—ain’t ya?” Ivy said, smiling precociously as she stared into his eyes.
Sherman drank more whiskey. He wiped his mouth with his hand, smiled, and nodded. “Yeah.”
“I can tell.” She narrowed one eye in mock recrimination as she glanced at the bottle. “Is it me . . . or the who-hit-John?”
Sherman slid the bottle aside. Still smiling, feeling his blood warm with desire, he turned toward the girl, took the rag out of her hand, and dropped it into the basin. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and slid his face up close to hers. “I think it’s you.”
“Really?” she asked as though not believing it.
“Sure, sure, it’s you, honey.” Sherman smiled again, drew her a little closer, until he could feel her bosoms pressed again his chest.
She did not resist the way most women usually did at first. Most women, even the bought kind, were usually hesitant to be with him, his being a killer and all. That fact seemed to repel them.
That was all right. He didn’t mind. It wasn’t like he’d wanted to marry any of them.