.45-Caliber Deathtrap

by Peter Brandvold

Her hand slid over his leg and inside his thigh, pressing against the denim. His head spun. For a minute, there were two Glorys. The brandy had set a fire inside him. His heart pounded, and his desire raged.

  He wet his lips with his tongue. “I…uh…reckon I could stay for a little while.” He lowered his head to her breasts, ran his tongue over each nipple for a long time before, breathing hard, she stood and removed her corset and wrapper.

  He sat back against the settee, sipping his brandy and enjoying the warm, womblike feeling of the liquor and the soft blue and umber light and the beautiful woman standing before him naked, nipples jutting from her heavy breasts. She reached up to unpin her hair, let it billow like silk about her shoulders.

  Then she knelt between his knees, unbuckled his pistol belt, opened his pants, and tugged them down his legs. When the pants and boots were off and cast away like debris, she smiled up at him smokily, lowered her head to his crotch, caressed his naked thighs with her fingernails, and closed her lips over his swollen member.

  It wasn’t until they were both naked in bed, and she was straddling him, throwing her head back on her shoulders as her body convulsed with rapture, that he realized he wasn’t just drunk. He’d been drugged.

  He lifted his head, his eyes rolling around in their sockets. He squinted as he tried to focus on only one of the three Glorys crying out in ecstasy atop him.

  His voice sounded slurred and faraway even to his own ears. “What…was in…that…brandy?”

  She’d frozen with her head thrown back on her shoulders, her hair hanging straight down, wisping against his thighs. Now she lowered her gaze to his, and her eyes became pinched with sorrow. She crouched over him, cupping her hands over his ears.

  “I slipped you a drug, you big, stubborn idiot.”

  He tried to frown, but he didn’t have even that much control of his body. He lay limp beneath her. “Why?”

  She kissed his cheek and stared into his eyes. Tears dribbled down her smooth cheeks. “Cuno, I’ve thrown in with the men you’re after!”

  She dropped her head to his chest, sobbing.

  Cuno tried to push up on his elbows, but a second later he was out like a blown lamp.

  21

  GLORY WASHED HER face, pinned up her hair, and threw a heavy robe around her shoulders. She walked to the door of her room and glanced back at Cuno stretched out on the bed. She’d drawn the covers up to his chin. His chest rose and fell regularly as he slept.

  She studied him for a time, her face drawn, then went out and, closing the door behind her, gathered the robe taut about her waist and moved languidly down the stairs to the bar.

  The din of revelry rose around her, the tobacco smoke so thick she could barely breathe. As she moved around the chairs and tables and outstretched boots, someone grabbed her robe from behind. “Come on, Glory, park it on ole Chris’s knee!”

  Automatically turning on the practiced charm, Glory wheeled, grinning. “Chris, you incorrigible old mossy-horn—keep your hands to yourself. I’m done booked up fer tonight!” She leaned down and pecked the grizzled cheek. “Get here early tomorrow.” She winked and turned away.

  As Chris laughed behind her, admiring her ass through the robe, she strode across the saloon and poked her head into the gambling room in which Case Oddfellow, Clayton Cannady, and the two “deputies” played poker with three of Cannady’s firebrands and two Irish prospectors.

  Apparently, Case was letting the prospectors win for the time being. The weathered, bearded rock pickers appeared happy as pigs at breakfast, laughing raucously and slapping each other on the back as their eyes danced behind the smoke from the expensive cigars jutting from their rotten teeth.

  Soon, when the rock breakers had taken a few more pulls from their bottle, Case would be dropping cards from his shirt cuffs and from under his hat, and dealing from the bottom of the deck. All the while, he’d be snickering with Cannady sitting to his right.

  The miners would leave the table crestfallen, drunk, and fleeced.

  “Willie! Alfred!” Glory called, cupping her hands around her mouth to yell above the roar.

  When the two “deputies” looked at her through the billowing smoke, frowning, Glory canted her head back, beckoning.

  “What is it, Glory?” Case asked. They were between hands, and the handsome Oddfellow was relaxing in his chair, lighting a long Mexican cheroot, puffing smoke from a corner of his mouth. His thick, black hair was combed straight back on his head.

  “Little fracas upstairs,” Glory called. “Nothin’ our two lawmen can’t handle.”

  Willie and Alfred, both dressed in shabby suits with soiled hats and deputy stars pinned to their shirts, glanced at Oddfellow. Case shrugged and canted his head toward Glory.

  Grimacing with annoyance, Willie and Alfred reluctantly gained their feet. Alfred scratched his thin gray beard and threw back his shot glass, then looped his sawed-off shotgun over his shoulder and headed for Glory waiting in the doorway.

  “You know, Miss Glory,” Willie said, keeping his voice down so the townsmen and miners couldn’t hear, “we ain’t really lawmen. That was just our little charade hereabouts.” He was a full head shorter than Alfred, with mean, close-set eyes and a purple birthmark sprayed across his pitted right temple. Glory recoiled from his breath, which smelled like beer and chicken liver.

  “You’re in luck,” Glory raked out through a sneer. “I don’t need lawmen, just errand boys.”

  She wheeled haughtily and, Willie and Alfred following with indignant expressions, headed back up the stairs and down the hall to her room. She threw the door open and stepped inside. She looked at Cuno, still unconscious on the bed.

  As Willie and Alfred shuffled into the room, Glory crossed her arms on her breasts and kept her haughty gaze on Cuno. “Haul him off to the jail and lock him up. Keep a quilt over him.” She began gathering his clothes and boots from the floor. “Take these…and his gun. Make sure he can’t get at the gun till he’s out of the cell.”

  Alfred said, “What’s this about, Miss Glory? He cause trouble?”

  “He’s an old friend,” Glory said, shoving Cuno’s clothes into Alfred’s arms. “He’s figured out what we’re up to. I want him locked up so he doesn’t get hurt.” Her eyes sharpened. “Make sure he isn’t hurt!”

  The two men shared a skeptical glance. Willie sighed and reached for Cuno’s left arm, grumbling, “Whatever you say, Miss Glory.”

  “Take him down the back stairs, and no word of this to any of the others.”

  Pulling Cuno’s unconscious, quilt-shrouded bulk over his shoulder and grunting with the effort, Willie cursed and turned toward the door. “Whatever you say, Miss Glory…”

  Willie went out with Cuno and, with the freighter’s clothes, boots, and cartridge belt in his arms and casting Glory an uncertain look, Alfred followed him.

  Glory closed the door and stared at it, lips pooched out. Finally, she balled her fist and ran it against the cracked panel, then wheeled and flopped down on the bed, sobbing.

  In the dank darkness, Cuno opened his eyes.

  For a minute, he thought he was back in the flooded mine pit. But a cot was beneath him, and on top of him was a quilt.

  He was shivering. The quilt gave little protection from the cold seeping through the barred window no larger than a shoe box in the mortared stone wall high above his head.

  His skull ached sharply, as if a little man were inside, chipping away with a miniature pick. His mouth tasted foul. His brain was even foggier than before. The aftereffects of some drug or herb Glory had slipped into his brandy.

  Glory.

  Last night.

  “Cuno, I’ve thrown in with the men you’re after!”

  Cuno’s lip curled angrily and he pushed up on his elbows. “Stupid bitch.”

  In the darkness before him, a barred door. Bars to either side, glistening faintly in the stray light. Beyond the door, the main office of the jail. He couldn’t see much but a few hulking
shadows in the darkness. No sounds but the soft rustle of the chill breeze filtering through the barred window slot.

  He must be alone in the jailhouse.

  Unguarded.

  Enraged and feeling stupid at having let himself be seduced and betrayed, he clambered off the squeaking, iron-framed cot and padded barefoot to the door. He curled his fingers around the bars, then pushed against them, straining his forearms, and pulled back.

  There wasn’t an ounce of give. The iron lock held fast.

  The jailhouse was typical of those in most mining camps—crudely, stoutly constructed. The outlaws had left no guards because they knew no one could escape the place—at least, not without a shovel or a file.

  Cuno stood naked, skin prickling at the cold air swirling off the stone walls, staring into the office shadows. He squeezed the bars and gritted his teeth.

  Wheeling suddenly, he moved to the opposite wall, grabbed the window ledge, pulled himself up, and peered through the narrow slot. Beyond the stout stone wall was a dark alley, the wind shepherding trash along the ground. Ahead and right, a privy, its door banging softly in the breeze.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Anyone out there?”

  His voice boomeranged back to echo around the cell. He released his fingers, dropped to the floor. Even if someone had heard, no one was going to let a prisoner out of jail—even if they knew it was Cannady’s men who’d put him here.

  Goddamn Glory!

  Cuno rubbed his hands together, chilled to the bone. His clothes had been thrown onto the floor beside the cot. Reaching down, he grabbed the longhandles and began dressing. When he was finished, his shirt buttoned to his throat, he wrapped the quilt around his shoulders and sat at the edge of the cot, considering his options.

  The floor lightened, gaining definition, as the dawn seeped through the window. The breeze gentled. The smell of cook fires drifted into the cell.

  The light gave the office beyond the cell more details. Cuno’s gun belt was coiled atop a filing cabinet, twelve feet away. He stared at the gun as if to will it to him.

  No way to get to it.

  Outside, a rumbling sounded, growing louder, like a drumroll. Trace chains jangled and hooves clomped. A wagon was approaching the jailhouse.

  Cuno stared out the office’s single window, left of the door. There was no shade or curtain over it. The wagon appeared—a large, square contraption drawn by a six-horse team.

  Two men sat in the box, one driving, one holding a double-barreled shotgun. Both burly, red-faced men were decked out in blue uniforms with leather-billed hats and high, black boots. It passed so quickly it was hard to be sure, but Cuno could have sworn the wagon was all iron.

  Then he remembered that the wagon the local mine used to shuttle its ore from the town bank to the railhead on the eastern plains was an all-iron, steel-riveted beast called the Hell Wagon. The armored vehicle was impossible to bust into without a hundred pounds of dynamite. Four Pinkerton agents rode inside, armed with repeating rifles and sawed-off shotguns.

  Cuno pricked his ears as he heard the driver halt the team in front of the mine-owned bank down the street. Knowing the Hell Wagon’s reputation for impregnability, Cannady was no doubt going to hit the guards as they transferred the strongbox from the bank to the wagon.

  Cuno squeezed the bars, stared out the window at the dim, vacant street and the closed shops beyond.

  A dark, slender figure stepped before the window. The man turned to the jailhouse and peered inside, cupping his hands around his eyes.

  Cuno’s heart leapt. “Kong!”

  The Chinaman’s voice was muffled by the glass. “Cuno?”

  “Get me outta here!”

  The sentence was punctuated by two sharp rifle reports. Kong jerked and turned to look toward the bank. Someone shouted. A fusillade broke out amidst yells and screams, the gunfire echoing around the street. Clanging barks rose as slugs bounced off the Hell Wagon.

  Cuno pulled at the cell door in frustration. “Kong!”

  Kong cast another edgy glance into the office, then ran to the door. “It locked!”

  “Kick it in!”

  Between the door’s vertical planks, Kong’s shadow jostled. The door shuddered as the Chinaman kicked it.

  “Harder!” Cuno shouted as the angry bursts of gunfire continued up the street. “Put some muscle into it!”

  Kong kicked the door twice more. It didn’t budge.

  “The window!” Cuno shouted.

  The Chinaman scurried to the window, rammed his elbow through it. The glass clattered and fell in shards. With his coat sleeve, Kong rubbed the shards from the edges of the frame, then hoisted himself through, getting his foot caught on the ledge and tumbling down the wall and hitting his right shoulder on the floor.

  Cuno looked down at him. “Look in the desk for the keys!”

  Wincing, the Chinaman pushed himself to his feet and ran to the desk, favoring his right shoulder. He opened one of the drawers, glanced inside, then opened the one beneath it. He returned his gaze to the top drawer, reached in with one hand, rummaged around, and pulled out a ring and two keys.

  Cuno extended a hand through the bars. “Hurry!”

  Kong slapped the ring into Cuno’s hand. After trying the first key in the lock, he tried the second. The latch clicked. Cuno pushed the door open.

  Outside, the shooting was growing more sporadic. Men whooped victoriously. Horses whinnied and screamed.

  Cuno grabbed his gun off the filing cabinet, and strapped it around his waist. He ran to the gun rack on the office’s right wall, where the three rifles were secured with a padlock and chain. He opened the padlock with a key from the ring, tossed the ring into a corner, grabbed a repeater from the rack, and levered a round into the breech.

  The earthen floor shook as something big and fast bounded back toward the jail.

  Cuno cursed.

  The bastards had taken the gold and were lighting a shuck in the Hell Wagon.

  22

  CUNO CHECKED ALL three rifles in the rack. Only two were loaded. Taking one of the loaded rifles in his left hand, he grabbed the other in his right and sprang toward the open door.

  “Give me rifle!” Kong shouted behind him.

  Cuno hesitated, then turned and tossed the Winchester to the Chinaman, who caught it one-handed, deftly lowered the rifle to his side, and opened the breech to check the loads himself.

  It appeared that the Indian bow and arrow wasn’t the only weapon the Chinaman knew his way around.

  Cuno dashed outside as the wagon streaked past the jail—a large black shadow bounding off to Cuno’s left behind six screaming horses tossing their heads at the diminishing gunfire.

  Two horseback riders galloped out front of the wagon while six more followed behind it. Two of them wore tin stars on their chests.

  In the street before the bank, four blue-uniformed figures slumped, blood glistening in the growing morning light. The wagon guards and driver.

  As the six riders approached the jailhouse from the right, Cuno bolted into the street, stopped, spread his feet, and raised the Winchester.

  “Look out!” one of the deputies screamed.

  Cuno fired.

  He levered the rifle and fired repeatedly, watching through his powder smoke as the .44 slugs tore through tunics and dusters, punched into thighs and faces and arms, tearing away chunks of flesh and bone, spraying blood.

  One slug drilled a tin star to exit out the small of the man’s back, ricochet off the street, and plunk through a window of the millinery shop.

  Horses reared, screamed, plunged. The riders yelled in agony, windmilling from their saddles. Terrified by the fusillade, five of the six horses shook their heads and continued forward at full gallop. The sixth, a claybank, tumbled head over heels, its own limbs entangled with those of its rider. Dust wafted as if a twister had run through town.

  The wounded men were still rolling in the street when Cuno turned to peer after the wagon. For s
ome reason, it had stopped two blocks away. Enraged exclamations rose, sounding hollow between the two rows of false-fronted buildings.

  Kong could finish off the six men in the street—if there were any to finish.

  Cuno sprinted forward through the gun smoke and sifting dust, the horse that had somersaulted now giving an indignant whinny and gaining its feet to his right. The saddle had fallen down its right side. Its rider lay twisted horribly in the middle of the street, bleeding from his mouth and ears.

  As a final insult, the horse set one foot down in the man’s gut. The man convulsed, farting and grunting loudly as air spurted from his lungs. Frightened by the man’s reaction, the horse shook its head, turned uncertainly, and cantered off down an alley.

  Ahead, someone shouted, “Get that fucking heap outta the goddamn street, you old bastard!”

  A shotgun boomed and a man grunted. A pistol popped, the slug thwapping into solid wood planking.

  “That one there’s for Wade!” a familiar voice shouted from the same area.

  Another man cursed. “The old bastard’s got a shotgun!”

  As if in reply, the voice of Serenity Parker roared, “And here’s another one fer ole Wade!”

  Ka-boooom!

  Running along the boardwalk, Cuno was thirty feet from the wagon when the driver jerked back in his seat, then fell heavily down the vehicle’s left side. He smacked the iron-shod wheel with a muffled thud, painting the rim bright red, and hit the street on his side.

  Cuno stopped and stared.

  In front of the fiddle-footing six-horse hitch, Serenity Parker sat the driver’s box of Cuno’s big Murphy freight wagon. The oldster had pulled the wagon into the path of the Hell Wagon, the Murphy’s box directly in front of the horses. The wizened graybeard had broken his double-barreled Greener open and was flipping out the spent wads.

  “Old man, get down!” Cuno shouted as the two lead riders swung their horses around, heading back toward the Hell Wagon.

  Cuno bolted forward, but stopped when he heard the squawk of iron hinges. He turned to the wagon.