Anderson was fifteen feet from the door when the latch clicked. The door opened a foot, closed again with a resounding slam. A half second later, it opened two feet and a naked girl bolted out, running and screaming, “Noooo!”
Anderson hunched his shoulders and leveled his shotgun, freezing as the girl ran toward him, her red face crumpled with horror. “Help me!”
A man’s voice raked through the gap in the cabin door. “Goddamnit!”
Anderson pressed his index finger against his two-bore’s left trigger, but stopped short of squeezing. If he’d fired the barn blaster, he’d surely have cut the blonde—Llewellyn’s middle girl—in two. She ran around behind him, sobbing, “They shot Poppa and they’re gonna kill us too!”
Anderson glowered with annoyance as the girl gripped his shirt, as if trying to position him between her and the hard cases.
“Stop that now, damnit, gir—!”
He clipped the sentence as a man stepped out of the cabin holding a long-barreled revolver in one hand. He held the other hand to his mouth, his lips closed over the knuckle of that index finger.
He was a broad-shouldered hombre with a weathered Stetson shading one good eye, the right one appearing strangely pale. A small red-and-green tattoo of some sort had been scratched into his right cheek, just above his thin, black beard.
“Bitch bit me!” he protested.
The other prospectors froze behind Anderson, who could hear their frightened grunts and breathless exclamations to his right and left flanks.
The tattooed gent looked over Anderson’s right shoulder, his face pinched with anger as he shook his pistol straight out at the end of his arm. “You’ll pay for that, you fucking whore!”
The girl clutched Anderson’s shirt, pinching some skin along with it, cowering, shifting her weight from one bare foot to the other. “Please don’t let him kill me!”
Another man had stepped out beside the first—slightly shorter and dressed in a black frock and whipcord trousers. A tan duster hung to his calves, both sides pulled back from a fancy brace of silver-plated pistols.
“What the hell happened, Cannady?”
“Shut up, Case!” Cannady barked, glaring at the girl hidden behind Anderson. “Bitch bit me and lit out. It was so dark, I couldn’t see a thing.”
Ignoring Cannady, the man called Case raised up on his boot toes and, sweeping his deep-set eyes across the small crowd gathered before him, grinned. He’d left both pistols in their holsters and appeared in no hurry to remove them.
Somehow, Anderson took vague comfort in that…in spite of the girl cowering behind him, pinching his bruised back. The shock of the two renegades’ abrupt appearance had caused him to lower his shotgun’s barrel, and for some reason the gun suddenly weighed a ton.
“Hidy, gents!” Case said in greeting. “How y’all doin’ this evenin’?” In the dark cabin behind him, another girl sobbed. He turned sharply. “You shut up in there! Don’t wanna have to tell you again.”
The sobbing stopped abruptly, as if a hand had been clapped across the girl’s open mouth.
Annoyed by the blonde behind him using him as a shield, Anderson turned around, grabbed her bare arm, and gave her a shove. “Get away!”
The girl fell in the dirt, crying, her full breasts jiggling.
Anderson swung back, raising the shotgun slightly, narrowing his eyes at the two men on the cabin’s porch. “Where’s the rest of you sons o’ bitches?”
He’d remembered the face of the man who’d dragged him—the tattooed face of the man standing left of the handsome, black-clad hard case. Anderson’s bowels burned with fury.
He’d blow his kneecaps off, kill him slow!
“They’re just over there,” said Cannady, canting his head toward Anderson’s left.
“Shee-it!” Anderson recognized the voice of Lloyd Talbot, heard the scuffs as the other prospectors jerked to the right.
On the east side of the cabin, at the edge of the yard, just under a dozen hard cases stood facing Anderson and the other prospectors. Their eyes glistened coldy in the fire’s dying light. None of the renegades held a pistol or a rifle, but their hands hung down over their holsters, like coiled snakes ready to strike.
The only one smiling was the black man, his black hat tipped over his eyes, pink lips curled back from two rows of chipped, marble teeth. He made no sound, but his heavy shoulders jerked with silent laughter.
“Sure enough,” said Cannady with glee, as if introducing old friends whom the prospectors hadn’t seen in a while. “There’s old Ned and Whinnie and Lobo, and the big ole cowpoke Crocodile Burdette. And then there’s grinnin’ Brown and Germany Sale, and…ah, hell…those names don’t mean nothin’ to you, do they?”
“Nah,” said the handsome gent standing beside Cannady. “They’s just the names o’ the men’s gonna kill you—that’s all.”
Anderson swallowed, squeezed his shotgun so tight he felt as though blood were about to surge out from under his fingernails. Behind him, the others shuffled their feet and swallowed loudly. Anderson thought he could hear their hearts pounding, but then, he couldn’t hear much of anything above the thunder of his own.
“You…you had no right to do what ye done!” he heard himself say, as if his own voice were speaking of its own accord from the bottom of a deep well.
“Yes, we did,” said Cannady with a reasonable smile.
“Sure we did,” said the handsome gent beside him.
Both replies took Anderson aback. He glanced behind, was relieved to see the others still back there, shuttling glances between the two groups of renegades.
Anderson turned back to Cannady, cocked his head to one side. “How’s that?”
The handsome gent tipped his chin up, chuckling. “’Cause we could!”
Cannady looked pleasantly surprised at the handsome man’s response. “Yeah.” He laughed. “Yeah, that’s it. We had every right to do what we done…’cause we felt like it!”
Anderson stared at him, the prospector’s blood boiling. He gritted his teeth so hard he could hear his molars crack.
“Bastards!” He raised the shotgun and fired, the boom echoing above the pounding of his own heart.
He watched in disbelief as the pellets blew a tub-sized hole in the cabin door, where the two renegades had been standing before. Seeing him raise the shotgun, they’d leapt to either side. The handsome man clawed iron so fast that his gloved hand was a blur above his black, silver-trimmed holster.
Anderson saw flames blossom before the handsome gent’s right hip. The prospector felt merely a heavy, wet sensation in his chest as he thumbed back the shotgun’s second hammer. But when he began aiming the two-bore toward the cabin, he realized he was in trouble.
The gun suddenly weighed even more than before.
It sagged in his arms as, hearing gun blasts and seeing smoke rising before him left and right, he glanced down. Blood frothed like a fountain from his chest, gushing down his denim shirt and over his belly to his crotch.
Muffled screams rose behind Anderson as he dropped the shotgun and, legs turning to water, dropped to his knees.
He sagged onto his hip and elbow, turned his head slowly to his right. On her knees, the naked blonde had opened her mouth and eyes wide. While Anderson could hear little but the blasts of gunfire, he knew she was screaming, holding her hands out before her as if to shield herself from the bullets.
It didn’t do any good. She’d already taken one through her left breast, an inch above the nipple.
And now, as Anderson watched, his vision dimming as his own life ebbed, several more bullets plunked into her chest and face, spraying blood and throwing her straight back away from Anderson, her hair, arms, and legs windmilling before she hit the ground on her back.
Beyond her, most of Anderson’s compatriots were down, rolling, awash in blood, and screaming.
Only Finn McGraw stood, arms and legs bloody, firing his old Zuave carbine toward the right. Aiming the old C
onfederate rifle like the good Reb sharpshooter he’d been.
Anderson didn’t know what happened after that. His head sagged back against the ground. His eyes rolled into his head. His torn heart stopped.
His arms and legs shook for a time before McGraw fell over them in a bloody heap.
Then it was McGraw whose death spasms wracked his stocky frame for a time, before both prospectors lay limp in death, one atop the other.
15
“AFTERNOON, LADIES,” CUNO Massey said, pinching his hat brim and squinting against the wagon dust catching up to him.
He, Serenity Parker, and the Chinaman, Kong, had just pulled up to the big, sprawling, unpainted barracks that was the Heaven’s Bane Whorehouse, Saloon, and Gambling Parlor. Spread out upon the raised front stoop before them, a dozen or so girls lounged about the wicker chairs, bar stools, and porch rail, taking the cool, clear afternoon air. One of them played with a frisky, red retriever pup in her lap, the dog trying to chew her earrings.
Blackbirds were lined up on one of the roof’s several peaks, taking in the strangers with black-eyed interest, occasionally giving an inquiring caw.
“Hidy,” said a small blonde sitting the railing in only her pantaloons and low-cut chemise, one arm on a rail post as she regarded the three newcomers over her left shoulder. “You boys stoppin’ early for the day?”
Serenity Parker wheezed a chuckle and ran a gloved hand across his sunburned nose. “She’s purty as a speckled pup!”
The oldster meant the compliment only for Cuno’s ears, but the blonde had heard him. She turned her head to him, her smile growing. “Well, thank you, sir. You look like a man needin’ a special dance—the mattress kind.” She winked.
Serenity wheezed another, louder laugh, coloring up like a desert sunset. “Honey, I’m afraid you’d stop this old heart!”
Several of the girls laughed. On the other side of Serenity, Kong found nothing to laugh at. He stared at the girls with grim purpose, his anxiety showing in his wide, brown eyes, in the veins standing out on his forehead.
“Actually, we ain’t here for rompin’, ladies. We’re lookin’ for a Chinese girl.” Cuno canted his head toward Kong. “This man’s daughter. We were told she rode here with a gang two nights back.”
A haggard-looking brunette, leaning against the front wall near the door and smoking a long, black cheroot, blew smoke and chuckled huskily. “I’ll say she did. Rode off with ’em too, after running a pigsticker through one man’s jaws.”
“Right here,” said the blonde on the railing, placing a long, pale finger low against her cheek, right about where her jaws hinged. “Pinned to a wardrobe till one of his friends worked him free.”
“Gave the girl a good workin’ over too,” said the brunette, gazing through her windblown hair at Kong. “I’m sorry, mister. There’s no tellin’ what’s happened to her by now.”
Breathing sharply, Kong rose in his seat like a slow-blowing volcano. He clenched his fists at his sides. “Where is this sonuv’bitch Li Mei stab? Where is?”
All the girls looked at him wistfully. The brunette glanced at Cuno, who sat the wagon, the ribbons in his hands, saying nothing.
The brunette lifted the corners of her thin mouth slightly and shuttled her glance back to Kong. “He’s upstairs. Room at the end of the hall. He’s been in so much pain, carryin’ on so crazy, breakin’ things, we had to sedate him with laudanum and whiskey.” The corners of her mouth rose still higher. “And a few other things.”
Kong turned to Cuno. “We stop here for while.” It wasn’t a question. The Chinaman pressed his hide-wrapped skinning knife against his belt, as if securing it. He climbed down the other side of the wagon, walked around the mules, and mounted the porch steps. He strode purposefully past the whores, though his moccasins barely made a sound on the unpainted porch planks, and entered the Heaven’s Bane by one of its two front doors, leaving the door standing wide open behind him.
The retriever pup had eyed Kong’s moccasins devilishly. Now the pup leapt from the whore’s lap and, its toenails ticking across the planks, ran floppy-eared into the saloon behind the Chinaman.
“Dan-ny!” called the whore. Droopy-eyed, she gave a disgusted chuff, then took a long sip from her whiskey glass and sat back in her chair, lifting her face to the sun.
The blond whore regarded Cuno and Serenity with smoky eyes. “You boys want a drink or a poke while you’re waitin’?”
“Speakin’ for myself,” Cuno said, wrapping the reins around the brake handle, “I was wonderin’ if you gals might have a fast horse in your stable. One I could rent for a few days.”
The blonde shrugged and deferred to the tired-looking brunette. “Most of our horses are buggy nags, but every once in a while our humble abode becomes a man’s final restin’ place…if you get my drift. You might be able to find one or two spry orphans out in the corral yonder. We got a hostler out there somewhere—Kimbal Logan—but he’s probably fishin’ this time of the day. Help yourself. Leave a dollar or two so Kimbal can buy him a new braid o’ chaw.”
Cuno pinched his hat brim. “Obliged.”
He turned to Serenity, staring up at him curiously. “I’m gonna ride ahead, see if I can fetch Kong’s daughter. I got a feelin’ time’s runnin’ out for her. You take over the wagon. I’ll trail back when I’ve found her.”
“How’re you gonna get her back…with all them hard cases swarmin’ around her?”
Cuno jumped down from the wagon. A cry sounded through the second story’s open windows—shrill with anguish and unendurable pain.
A moment later, the retriever pup appeared, bolting out the main doors, slipping on the boards as it turned sharply and leapt into the lap of the whore it had left. The dog whimpered and buried its head in the girl’s bosom. The other whores regarded the pup darkly, shuttling their gazes to the yawning front doors as another muffled, anguished cry echoed around inside.
“Oh, Jesus—not again! Help!”
Cuno turned his gaze back to Serenity. “I’ll figure that out when I catch up to ’em.” He rummaged around in the wagon box for his war bag and bedroll, then grabbed his rifle and headed for the stables flanking the house. “Keep Kong with you.”
“You sure you know what you’re doin’?” Serenity yelled behind him.
Cuno didn’t turn around as he mounted the hill toward the corral and stables. “No.”
Cuno chose the only one of the three riding horses in the corral that looked like it still remembered what a saddle was and hadn’t been spoiled by oats and long, lazy days following the buggy mares around with its proverbial hat in its hands. The blaze-faced roan was high-stepping and long-legged enough for fast travel, but its broad chest bespoke a good set of lungs as well.
Cuno rigged the horse with a worn but adequate saddle he found in the tack room, then gigged the horse around to the front of the whorehouse, halting beside the wagon. Inside, the wounded hard case was bawling and sobbing like an injured child. At times the voice sounded like that of an enraged, wounded mountain lion.
The bemused whores sat in fascinated silence, drinking and smoking. The pup was cowering on the floor, its head in its paws, between two slippered feet.
“He still at it?” Cuno asked Serenity.
Tugging anxiously on his beard, the old man turned to Cuno. “What do you think he’s doin’ to him in there?”
“Whatever it is, I wish he’d teach me the trick. It’d come in handy once I run down the leader of those butchering renegades.”
As the wails and whines turned to pants and then to a slowly rising squeal, Cuno ground his heels against the roan’s flanks. He galloped down the hill and out of the yard, crossing the creek on the wooden bridge, then swerving back onto the main trail toward Sundance.
He soon found the roan was indeed fast as well as a stayer as he and the horse whipped through one canyon and over one pass after another, taking the switchbacks with their heads down, barely slowing for the turns, stopping only
for short blows at ridge crests, or for water, or to let an ore wagon or a prospector’s supply wagon pass.
The roan was nearly as much horse as Cuno’s own paint, Renegade, which he’d left in his own wagon barn in Denver.
He rode hard the first afternoon out from Heaven’s Bane, and camped in a hollow along a creek feeding into the St. Vrain River. Up at false dawn and not bothering with coffee, but only some jerky and dry biscuits, he and the horse galloped over the long, sloping shoulder of Taylor Mountain.
By one o’clock that afternoon, he trotted into a clearing in which a handful of makeshift tents and cabins sat on the north bank of the St. Vrain River.
Cloud shadows scudded. Hammer blows rang out as two stoop-shouldered, gray-haired men erected a shanty wall in a small aspen copse. Several others swirled pans in the river shallows, while a handful of women scrubbed clothes along the shore.
As Cuno rode toward the women, they cast him furtive, fearful glances. A stocky, plain-faced, middle-aged woman with dull red hair falling from her soiled poke bonnet stepped out from the crowd to meet him.
“Just ride on, mister,” she said, gritting her teeth and dipping her chin with anger. “We don’t want no more trouble!”
Behind her, five other women of various ages seemed to cower as they sidestepped toward the river, holding hands. A few glanced at Cuno warily, then turned to mutter with the others.
Cuno tipped his hat back off his forehead. “I take it the Clayton Cannady bunch has been through here.”
The woman looked at him skeptically, flicked a lock of lusterless red hair from her face. “They sacked our camp, killed a good three quarters of our men, threw ’em in the river like trash. Killed two girls. Took another one for their pleasure.” Balling her wet apron in her freckled fists, the woman stared up at Cuno, her eyes flickering around his chest as if looking for something. “You law?”
Cuno shook his head. “I’m on Cannady’s trail just the same, though. I aim to kill him and the rest of his horde.”
“He run roughshod over your camp too?”
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