The tired horse leapt off its rear hooves and bounded forward. As it lit out across the yard between the whorehouse and the barn, its right shoulder slammed into Whinnie. The graybeard flew sideways, bellowing and clawing at one of his .44s.
The others scrambled out of the way, yelling and cursing.
“Christalmighty, shoot that bitch!” ordered Cannady, holding his stallion’s reins in one hand and thumbing his Smith & Wesson’s hammer back.
Paxton knelt on the ground, trying to suck wind down his battered throat, so he didn’t see the girl gallop to the other end of the yard, kicking the horse’s ribs and screaming, her long, black hair whipping in the wind. When she saw only a corral, several wagons, and a high, shelving hill in her path, she turned the horse and raced back the way she’d come. She tried to skirt the milling gang members, several of whom were laughing by now, several more expounding angrily and aiming revolvers.
“Don’t shoot!” railed the big Negro, Ed Brown, as he bounded sideways, slamming his right fist into the palm of his left hand and throwing a shoulder against the racing roan’s left stirrup. “Might hit the horse!”
The horse and the girl screamed in unison. The horse stumbled sideways and, throwing the girl out over its left shoulder, fell hard and rolled. The stirrups flapped like the wings of a crazy bat. Dust, gravel, saddlebags, and bedroll flew.
The stallion lay on its side for a moment, blowing, its ribs expanding and contracting, as though in shock. Finally, the horse gained its feet with a groan, shook itself, the saddle falling beneath its belly, and trotted away.
Behind it, near the barn, the girl lay in a pile.
She was breathing sharply, groaning and trying to push herself up with her hands, but her head remained on the ground, her skirts bunch up around her butt, exposing her white bloomers, thin brown legs, white socks, and slippers.
Hushed silence.
Several of the men chuckled softly, like schoolboys after a prank.
“She dead?” growled Whinnie, shaking his frizzy, gray hair back from his hoop earrings as he moved toward her, both long-barreled Starr revolvers drawn. “I hope she ain’t, ’cause she’s got my name tattooed on her skinny ass now.”
Sunflower Paxton beat the old man over to Li Mei, and stood staring down at her. His chest rose and fell sharply, his fists balled at his thighs.
“Say what you want,” Ned Crockett said from the whorehouse’s front porch, onto which several men from inside had gathered to see what all the commotion was about. “The girl can ride!”
Snickers.
Paxton heard Whinnie click one of his hammers back. The blond firebrand wheeled, filling his hand so quickly with his own revolver that Whinnie stopped dead in his tracks, hang-jawed.
“Get the fuck back!” Paxton raged, crouched and swinging his Colt around the crowd of onlookers. “Get the fuck back!”
Whinnie stood frozen, gaping. Finally, he depressed his Starr’s hammer, lowered both revolvers, and stepped back. “Easy, boy.”
Paxton was breathing so sharply through his nose, his lips pinched tight, that you could have heard him on the other side of the creek. “She’s mine!”
The crowd fell silent. Inside, the piano was no longer playing. Silhouetted faces appeared in the windows.
“Boys, stand down,” Cannady ordered mildly.
Paxton took a deep breath, holstered his Colt, then reached down and jerked the girl to her feet. She sobbed and groaned, her hair hanging in her face, as Paxton half-dragged, half-carried her through the parting crowd and up the whorehouse’s broad front steps. Several men scrambled out of the doorway to let him pass.
Paxton pulled the girl inside and left the door hanging wide behind him.
“Well,” drawled Crockett, smoking a stogie on the front porch, “I reckon that girl’s about to learn a lesson.”
When Paxton and the Chink had disappeared upstairs and the horses were led away to the livery barn, the other men filed into the whorehouse, politely scraping their boots on the hemp mat before the front door, and doffing their hats.
Cannady turned to Crockett, who was smoking beside an awning post. “I don’t know about you, Ned, but I could use an ash-haulin’.”
“You come to the right place fer it. I heard the Heaven’s Bane is the place in these parts.”
As Crockett carefully mashed out the cigar against the post, saving it for later, Cannady headed for the front door, from which the clatter of piano music was again issuing—a jovial, Old World waltz. Girls laughed, and glasses clinked. Cannady was about to step over the threshold when a hand reached toward him, shoving him brusquely back.
A gruff voice spoke. “We don’t cotton to smelly Texicans around these parts…stinkin’ the place up.”
Cannady turned his head right. A man a couple of inches taller than Cannady stood beside the front door, nearly concealed by the shadows between the door and a tall window framed inside by pink curtains. The man was straight-backed and heavy-shouldered and wearing a high-crowned felt sombrero. A sandy mustache drooped over his broad mouth.
He must have seen Cannady’s jaws lock, felt the heat rise in Cannady’s cheeks. He chuckled affably, lightly punched the outlaw leader’s left shoulder. “Ah, smooth your neck hairs down, ye proddy ole bushwhacker. It’s Karl Burdette.”
Cannady stared at the man, chuffed, and relaxed his fists.
Burdette laughed softly, his yokelike shoulders shuddering behind his red-and-white checked shirt. His black neckerchief, pierced by a turquoise-studded pin and too small for his neck, appeared about to choke him.
Cannady stepped back, glanced at Crockett standing behind him, wary-eyed. “Ned, this is Karl ‘The Crocodile’ Burdette.”
“No shit?”
“Willie and Alfred’s brother. They done set up this whole bank thing in Sundance.”
“Burdette,” muttered Crockett thoughtfully, studying the broad-shouldered gent. “You weren’t the one that shot my cousin, Lloyd Petersen, is you? During that riverboat shindig in St. Pete?”
“Hell, no,” said Burdette, his sandy brows closing down over his deep, dark eyes. “That was my cousin, Ramsey. I done killed Ramsey near five years ago now, ’cause he sold me out to the federal law in Galveston and I done two years. I apologize if he wronged ye just the same, on account o’ he was family.”
“Where’s the others?” Cannady asked.
“Willie and Alfred’s in Sundance, playin’ like they’re sheriff’s deputies.” Burdette got a chuckle out of that. “I’m here with Case Oddfellow. You remember him from that Brazos job? We was supposed to meet you and your boys here, give you the lowdown. Case is upstairs gettin’ a French lesson. I already had me one and, jumpin’ Jehovah, do I recommend ’em!”
“Do believe I’ll find me a gal, if they ain’t all taken up by now,” said Crockett. “You boys can give me the lay o’ the land later, eh?”
“Sure thing, partner, but don’t go contractin’ no goat burn!” Cannady cautioned, clapping Crockett on the back. “I’d hate to have to cauterize your drippin’ pecker with a hot bowie knife!”
“No, you wouldn’t!” Crockett returned, tipping the gang leader’s hat over his eyes as he passed.
When the older man had gone inside, where the others were whooping like maverick studs in the springtime, Cannady turned to Burdette. “Let’s have a drink and talk it out. I want to know everything we got ahead of us in Sundance.”
“I already had enough to fill the steamer on one o’ them iron train engines,” said the tall Burdette, who looked more like a drover than a desperado, “but it wouldn’t be polite to make you drink alone.”
Inside, they ordered drinks at the bar—behind which two enchanting, eye-batting blondes dressed all in black were filling orders and parrying the drunken propositions of the miners and prospectors and Cannady’s gang of newcomers. The place was dark, lit by red or blue bracket lamps and coal-oil lanterns hanging from posts. Dark, smoke-shrouded shadows slid this way and that.
There were several open, cavelike rooms, all filled with intimate nooks and crannies, some of which were hidden behind curtained doors, with tables, chairs, and benches scattered everywhere. It took Cannady and Burdette a good five minutes to find a free table—and one that wasn’t missing a leg—near a doorway covered with a flour-sack curtain behind which Ed Brown was trying to convince a girl with a high voice that her rates were too steep. Over their heads angled a broad, open staircase. Men and working girls moved, hand in hand and staggeringly drunk, in a near-steady stream.
“What’s this about Willie and Alfred sportin’ badges?” Cannady asked, raising his voice to be heard above the din.
Burdette threw back his tequila shot, then took a long drink from his beer mug. “The sheriff o’ Sundance is an old mossy-horn. Dangerous son of a bitch, I heard tell. Burt Nielsen’s his name. Used to be a hide hunter and a market hunter for the railroad. Anyway, Case got wind that the man was advertisin’ fer deputies. Case got this wild hair up his ass to send Willie and Alfred up there to apply. Hell, they done deputied before, you know.” Burdette slapped the table and laughed. “Sure enough, they got the jobs! Our asses are covered.”
Cannady threw back one of his two whiskey shots and slowly set the glass on the table, studying on what he’d just been told. He nodded slowly. “They’ll get the drop on the sheriff and any other deputies, so we’ll only have to worry about any heroes on the street.”
“And guards from the mine,” Burdette said, licking beer foam from his giant, drooping mustache. “The way Case figured it, we’ll hit the bank as the loot’s bein’ transferred to this big, steel-frame wagon they been usin’ to haul the gold down the mountains to Camp Collins in the eastern foothills. That’s easiest. If we wait till the gold’s in that wagon, which is more or less a big goddamn bank vault on wheels, we’ll need a ton of Giant black powder to get to it…and probably blow ourselves to smithereens.”
“Still gonna hit on Saturday?”
Burdette shook his head. “Next Tuesday. Full week. They keep changin’ the schedule. That’s another good reason to have Willie and Alfred workin’ the inside. They’re privy to every schedule change as soon as it’s made. They and the sheriff and the two other deputies will be helpin’ the mine guards make the transfer from the bank to the hell wagon.”
“Hell wagon?”
“That’s what that big steel wagon’s come to be called by our fellow long riders,” said Burdette with a chuckle. “Because once that gold’s inside, it might as well be in hell for all the good it’s gonna do anybody tryin’ to get it out.”
“Clayton Cannady, you son of a bitch!”
Cannady turned his head. A handsome, medium-tall gent was walking toward him, a tan duster flapping about his whipcord trousers and revealing a pearl-gripped Colt in a shoulder holster. Case Oddfellow smiled, showing a full set of perfect white teeth, a raven’s wing of wavy hair flopping across his forehead. He moseyed up and stuck his hand out to Cannady.
“Had a French lesson yet?” he shouted above the unceasing noise. “They do ’em good around here!”
“Not yet,” Cannady said. “But since Karl’s done filled me in on Sundance, I reckon—”
Two pistol pops sounded somewhere above Cannady’s head. A girl screamed—a long, shrill, bewitching exclamation of gut-wrenching terror.
The whorehouse din softened only slightly.
The pistol popped two more times, and a man shouted. The words were badly garbled, as if the man was yelling around a mouthful of rocks.
Cannady made out the words “Fuckin’ bitch whore, I’ll see you in holy hell!”
The din died to a low murmur.
“Shit,” Cannady said, standing heavily after the hard ride and his two whiskey shots. “Think I recognize that voice.”
He hitched up his gun belt, cursed again, and made for the stairs.
9
AS CANNADY CLIMBED the stairs, the girl screamed again. Again, the pistol barked, and the bullet clanged sharply off metal.
Cannady chuckled dryly and hurried his pace. Nothing like shootin’ up a whorehouse to draw attention to the whole gang.
Several half-clad men and girls were standing around the second-story hall, casting agitated glances at the closed, plank-board door at the hall’s far end. The hall was so dark, lit only by flickering lamplight angling through a couple of open doors to the right and left, that Cannady didn’t see Ed Brown till he’d nearly passed the man.
“Sounds like Paxton.” Naked save for his feathered black hat, Brown wheezed a soft laugh. “Let me know if ye need any help.” He turned back into the room, in which Cannady glimpsed a pair of naked female legs and a woman’s bare ass on a bed, and closed the door behind him.
Cannady stopped at the door behind which the shots had been fired. Now only soft whimpers sounded, like those of a small dog, and a wooden scratching, as if rats were chewing the curtains.
Cannady tapped the door. “Paxton, what the fuck is goin’ on in there, boy? You tryin’ to alert Judge Bean over to Fort Smith?”
Paxton sobbed. There was a wooden thump and another scratch. Cannady drew his pistol, threw the door open, and peered into the shadows cast by a single candle flickering in a shot glass. Naked, Paxton knelt on the other side of the small room, his left cheek pressed to a stout wooden cabinet.
His chest rose and fell sharply. Sweat shone on his pale back. His right arm was covered with blood. So was his cheek and shoulder, Cannady saw as his eyes adjusted. He also saw the hilt and handle of the knife protruding from Paxton’s face. Apparently, the blade had gone through Paxton’s face, pinning his head to the bureau.
One of Paxton’s Colt Navies lay in a spray of blood near his right foot, not far from a wooden water bucket, a bedsheet that had been twisted, soaked, and knotted into a deadly whip, and strewn clothes.
His face carved with incredulity, Cannady stepped into the room. He stopped when Paxton, grunting and cursing, lifted his second Navy in his left hand, then, keeping his left cheek pressed snug against the cabinet, extended the gun toward the bed and fired.
Though he’d seen it coming, Cannady jumped at the loud report, his nostrils peppered with powder smoke.
“Paxton, ye crazy—”
Candlelight flickered off the smooth, obsidian handle of the knife embedded in Paxton’s right jaw. Every movement evoked a cry or a muffled curse or both.
Again, Paxton fired toward the bed, the bullet sparking off the brass frame and embedding itself in the wall beyond with a crisp smack. Cannady heard the girl’s sobs, but he couldn’t see her. Probably under the bed.
“Christ!”
The outlaw leader moved forward, grabbed Paxton’s pistol as the man raised it once more, jerked it from his hand, and flung it against the far wall. He took his own pistol in his left hand, wrapped his right hand around the knife’s black handle, and gave it a jerk. It wouldn’t come.
Paxton slapped a hand to the cabinet and bellowed like a poleaxed bull.
Reasserting his grip on the knife’s handle, Cannady propped his left boot against the cabinet and pulled again.
Paxton’s scream seared Cannady’s eardrums as the knife sprang free of wood and flesh in a blood spray. Paxton fell back against the armoire, arms flapping like a crazed bird’s wings, eyelids fluttering before staying closed.
His head slumped to the floor, and he lay still.
Cannady inspected the bloody knife. He’d never seen a handle so black. Some wood he’d never seen. The blade was long, thin, and serrated, the very tip hooked to make removal not only excruciating but deadly.
“Shit,” Cannady grunted, bemused.
He became aware of breathing and shuffling behind him, and turned to the door. Several half-clad gang members were peering into the room, keeping their feet planted in the hall as if afraid to enter a werewolf’s den.
Cannady canted his head toward Paxton. “Tend him.” He turned to the bed. His dark gums and brown teeth shone between
his spread lips as he grabbed the bed frame, pulled it brusquely out from the wall, and aimed his pistol at the gap.
The girl cowered on her knees, head in her hands. Feeling the bed pulled away, she jerked her head up, her pale, oval face horrified, cheeks slick with tears.
“Come on, honey,” Cannady said, depressing his pistol’s hammer and dropping the gun in its sheath. He bent down, grabbed the girl’s arm, and slung her over his shoulder as if she weighed little more than a feather pillow. She shuddered and made a keening sound as he headed for the door.
“You deserve a man like yourself,” Cannady said, pushing into the hall. “And you done found him.”
An hour after sunup the next morning, Cuno Massey and Serenity Parker rode into a small, unnamed crossroads settlement situated in the V between two sun-dappled creeks. The sounds of picks and chisels hammering rock rose from the upper slopes, and an occasional dynamite blast echoed, scaring waxwings from the pine trees.
A young bearded man in a flat-brimmed, low-crowned leather hat and high, laced boots stood knee-deep in the southern fork, swirling a partly submerged pan while a golden retriever splashed from bank to bank, chasing invisible ducks.
As Massey steered his wagon toward the chinked-log blacksmith barn on their right, loud voices rose from the big canvas and wood structure, a board shingle announcing MERCANTILE, on their left. The mercantile’s double doors burst open and four big men in long coats appeared on the broad front stoop, carrying a small, round-faced, black-haired gent between them like a battering ram.
The four saddle horses tied to the hitch rack gave a start, sidling away, as the four men swung the diminutive gent forward and back, counting the swings.
“Five!”
They catapulted the little gent a good fifteen feet straight out from the boardwalk, his body a blur as it arced over the street before Cuno’s wagon. It plopped belly-down in mud left by a passing shower.
There was no splash. Just a dull, wet plop.
.45-Caliber Deathtrap Page 7