by Lila Bowen
Sam nodded, falling in line behind the girl. “Cities getting more citified. It’s worse, the farther east you go.”
“Then I’d rather stay west,” Rhett said gruffly.
Sam cocked his head. “Why are we going to the town at all, then? We don’t have to. We can go around.”
“Because there might be someone who can help me,” Winifred said, her voice sharp. “Or news of the railroad. People have their uses.”
Rhett had better reasons, but he didn’t say so. He felt just the barest bit of guilt, trotting into a town that gave the Shadow a bad twitch without mentioning it to his friends, but how would scaring them do anybody any good? He was a Ranger Scout. If he found trouble in a town, then he was doing his job, wasn’t he? Whatever awaited them, he could handle it. It was just a town.
Did he imagine he felt Sam’s eyes on his back? The twinge became a damn pang, and his belly flopped around like a fish.
“Sam, I got that feeling,” he said, way low.
“I feel it, too,” Winifred added.
The creak of leather told Rhett that Sam was checking his gun.
“Then I reckon we’ll be ready,” Sam said, sounding like a big damn hero. “But there’s something you need to know, Rhett.”
He’d never heard Sam’s voice get shaky like that, and he turned in the saddle to watch his friend. Sweet, affable Samuel Hennessy looked like he had a mortal pain, his mouth twisted up and his eyes wet and bluer than blue.
“What is it, Sam? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I wasn’t sure of it. Not until just now. You see how the hills come down on either side, up ahead?”
“Well, sure. You’d have to be blind to miss it.”
“That’s Bandera Pass, Rhett.”
Winifred inhaled softly.
Rhett plumbed his memory. “Bandera Pass. There was a Lobo fight. Rangers lost good men. Is that the right of it?”
Sam shivered. “Sure enough my blood is soaked into the ground up ahead. I took an arrow in the leg. There wasn’t a town here, back then. It was empty prairie. Lobos were digging farther into Javelina territory and attacking missionaries on their way to San Anton. They surprised us in the pass, and we routed ’em, but…well, if any place is haunted, I figure this one is.”
He didn’t stop his horse, but Rhett heard him draw his pistol. Rhett followed suit, finding he generally felt better about life when he was holding a weapon. Winifred didn’t carry a gun, but she did check the line holding Dan’s chestnut to her bay and test her own knife’s quickness, silently drawing it from a well-oiled sheath at her waist a few times.
A gasp drew Rhett’s attention down, and he found Earl naked and stepping close to his horse. “You feel that?” he asked.
Rhett nodded. “Something in the town up ahead. You going in as a donkey or a man?”
“Donkey all the way,” Earl said with a grin. “Nobody shoots a donkey.”
Seconds later, he was trotting at Puddin’s heels, innocent looking as could be.
The town rose in fits and starts around the scrub, playing hide-and-seek among the hills and little patches of trees. It still had that too-tall, gangly newness about it, like a rangy pup that hadn’t settled into its clumsy feet. And yet it didn’t seem a clean town. It lacked the tidiness of Burlesville or the infrequent use and barely rubbed boards of Reveille. But, then again, nor did it have the lived-in, sand-scrubbed look of a place like Gloomy Bluebird. Rhett couldn’t put his finger on what bothered him about the town, but he knew right away that he didn’t much like it and he had to ride into it anyway.
The trail they were on was becoming a road, tents and rough wooden stalls popping up crookedly on either side to sell soap and hatchets and used socks. Rhett pulled his hat down over his good eye and made his spine as straight as possible. Checking his friends, he found that Winifred had wrapped herself in a serape and pulled her hat down and that Sam couldn’t stop dashing at his eyes with a red handkerchief.
“Was it here, Sam?” he asked, real low.
“I reckon so. Right about here, they came down upon us, out of the sun.”
In that moment, Rhett wished there was something he could do for his friend, thump his back or hold his hand or give him half a roasted goddamn rabbit, anything at all. But he couldn’t, so he continued riding, because that was what Sam was doing, and they were both Rangers, and to do otherwise would’ve been damn shameful.
All the while, riding through the growing town, Rhett scanned the area for the source of his unease. It wasn’t a monster town, like Burlesville. He didn’t feel lots of monsters all over, just one big, concentrated tummy flop. Everyone he passed in the street was human. And uncomfortably curious. As Ragdoll high-stepped through the muck of the thoroughfare, Rhett began to gather that the trouble was situated where most trouble began: at the saloon. He hoped it was just a harem of harmless vampire whores asleep in a pile, drinking enough from the men at night to stay alive but not enough to cause any real damage or keep their victims from coming back tomorrow night for more of the same.
“Please, let it be vamp whores,” Rhett whispered under his breath, mainly because he knew damn well it wasn’t going to be anything that simple.
The hitching post in front of the saloon had enough room for his three horses to crowd around, so Rhett waved off the hostler’s boy and hopped off Ragdoll to tie her reins on the much-rubbed wood.
“You getting a drink, Rhett?” Sam asked, looking mighty confused.
Rhett shook his head. “I’m scouting. You and Winifred go on and see if they got a sawbones who can help her.”
“Ain’t you worried about going in alone?”
Glancing back with a rare grin, Rhett answered, “Lord, no, Sam. I got a vengeful donkey watching my back.”
Earl bared his teeth and switched his tail but stayed right next to Ragdoll and Puddin’ like he actually had some damn sense. Rhett watched as Sam scooted his horses in front of Winifred and hailed a passerby to ask after the sawbones. Once they were on their way, he checked his own gear as if going into a fight for his life. Guns, knives, hat. Licking the pad of his thumb, he scrubbed it over the star of his Ranger badge until it shone as much as a thing could shine under threatening cloud cover. With a pat on Ragdoll’s flank, he headed through the open door of the saloon. The sign overhead proclaimed it the buck’s head, a wide spread of antlers nailed above it with faded ribbons dangling limp from the tines.
Inside, the saloon was dozing, as all such places generally were in the afternoon before the dinner bell rang and the men had time to kill. A few disreputable looking fellers and human whores lounged, here and there, looking exhausted and drained and more like meat than people. A slight quiver told Rhett that the vamp whores he’d been expecting were upstairs doing whatever bloodsuckers did during the day, but a more frachetty quaking told him that the monster he truly sought was downstairs and nearby. He turned, boots sliding on scuffed wood, nose up like a dog scenting prey.
“Where are you, you bastard?” he murmured.
“Can I help you, stranger?” said a taciturn feller who’d popped up behind the bar.
Rhett eyed him, taking in the big belly and greasy hair. He was human and stank of rutting, like a goat. No, he damn well couldn’t help, as Rhett couldn’t flat out ask where a big, troublesome monster was hiding, just waiting to cause trouble.
“Looking for a meal,” Rhett said. “Maybe a drink.”
The feller snorted, looking Rhett up and down and spitting his lack of being impressed into the spittoon. “We got the latter but not the former. Hotel’s across the way and ain’t too weevily for supper. Saloon don’t get going until after dark, if you catch my meaning.”
Rhett nodded. It figured. The feller he wanted was most likely hid away and wouldn’t be out until after dark anyway.
“Thank you kindly,” he said, tipping his hat and heading back outside, as it didn’t pay to be on a barman’s bad side.
Just looking at the ho
tel, Rhett could taste bug parts between his teeth. He’d rather eat snake.
Checking that Earl was still keeping watch with the horses, he headed down the street to find Sam and Winifred. Their horses were parked outside a shabby little shack that gave him no hope on behalf of the girl’s foot. She was more likely to die of plague inside that door than she was to find respite, and the fact that she’d gone in anyway told him just how desperate she was.
The door burst open as he glared at it, and Sam stumbled out holding Winifred in his arms, a look of abject surprise on his fine features. A small buffalo barreled out after them holding a piss bucket threateningly.
“Gerrout!” the buffalo shouted, or maybe it was just a small man in a buffalo-skin coat. “Take your damn squaw with you. I don’t tend to animals.”
Rhett had his gun drawn and against a florid cheek in a heartbeat.
“You don’t want to talk to my friend like that,” he growled.
Something pressed against his belly. “You don’t want to threaten the only person in camp who can sew up what this knife can do to you, half-breed,” the buffalo breathed back.
“Rhett, come along,” Winifred said. “Not worth it. He doesn’t know anything.”
Rhett allowed himself a brief fantasy of shooting this feller’s head open like a ripe melon before he withdrew his pistol and rammed it home in his holster.
“Rude,” he muttered. “Rudest buffalo in the territory, I reckon.”
Without looking the doctor in the face, he turned on his heel and walked away, Sam and Winifred in his wake.
“Read the sign!” the feller shouted behind them. “No Injuns!”
“Good. Confine your dangerous negligence to white men,” Winifred said under her breath.
“I’d have shot him if I could’ve got to my gun,” Sam growled.
“We’ve got bigger worries than assholes,” Rhett said. “Won’t find the monster until after dark. If you got business to do, I reckon you’d best do it now.”
“You anticipating trouble?” Sam asked.
Rhett looked around the town, roiling with dangerous types, drunks, and folks giving their small group the side eye. “I always anticipate trouble, Sam. And I’m rarely disappointed.” Another twinge pinched his belly, and he grimaced but didn’t feel the unfortunate gush he expected. If he had to fight unknown monsters, he’d have preferred to do it as the one who drew blood instead of the one already leaking like a damn girl.
“Where are you going, Rhett?”
He looked at Winifred with a frown. “To find the damn ragman,” he said. “Might as well be prepared for what’s to come.”
It was, in his estimation, the dumbest use of money in Durango.
Little did he know that the night would bring only more blood, and not the kind he was expecting.
Chapter
8
Once the lamps were lit, Rhett figured he’d waited long damn enough and headed for the Buck’s Head. He wanted to go in alone, but Sam and Winifred wouldn’t let him. Even Earl had changed back into human form to join the posse, carefully hiding his red hair under a wide beaver hat the Rangers had given him.
“I feel as jumpy as a cat in a room full of rockers,” he muttered. “Don’t see why we’re here. If your task is to stop Trevisan, then dyin’ at some unknown monster’s hand in this two-horse town is a waste of your talents.”
“Well, I’m sorry I’m not willing to die on your timetable, donkey-boy. But a man’s destiny ain’t a damn stagecoach schedule. I need to do this before I can do that, so let’s go on and get this over with, shall we?”
Earl grinned. “A whiskey would not go amiss.”
Rhett’s eye cut sideways. “You ain’t a drunkard, are you?”
Holding his hand over his heart, Earl attempted solemnity. “Not yet, no. But there’s still time.”
“Fools, the lot of you,” Rhett muttered, mainly as a pretense to stand outside for ten more seconds before heading through the saloon door. His belly wobbled something awful, and not just because of the weevily cornbread they’d eaten at the hotel. “Let’s do it, then.”
He tromped into the saloon, followed by the clink of Sam’s spurs, the hollow clatter of Winifred’s crutch, and the Irishman’s fond sigh. The man behind the bar shot him a glance of warning but was too busy serving shots to bother saying anything. Earl caught sight of red hair at the bar and bellied up to drink with a man who gabbled in the same singsong tongue as him. Winifred settled at an empty table, and Sam, ever the gentleman, went to fetch her a cup of coffee and get a beer for himself.
Rhett wandered around the perimeter of the room as if looking for the prettiest whore, but really, he was following the different sort of wobbles to their sources. Half the whores were vamps, and half the whores were human, and of the two types of folks, the vamps looked at him with more warmth. It wasn’t until he’d done a complete loop that he realized the source of the most powerful wobble was behind a dark red curtain that led to another room. Putting a hand to the thick fabric, he came to the conclusion that in his experience, velvet meant trouble.
“That’s for the high rollers.”
It was the feller from the bar, appearing with one hand on the curtain and the other on the shotgun over his shoulder.
“How do you know I ain’t a high roller?” Rhett countered.
The man snorted. “If you were, you’d already be in there, fool. Now get on. Play a hand or two, if you think you’re good enough.”
Rhett contemplated just storming on through, but he was decent enough at cards and didn’t much like the idea of losing another eye in a bar fight, so he picked a table full of fellers who didn’t look too much like murdering curs and fetched some pennies out of his pocket. He’d gathered a bit of coin breaking broncs at the Double TK, and the Captain had paid him for his time as a Ranger, plus three months in advance to cover his scouting mission. Fortunately, no one at the table would believe a half-breed had access to that kind of cash. He made sure to lose a bit before scooping in the biggest kitty yet, once everyone else had taken him for a fool.
One of the nastier fellers pulled a knife, so Rhett tipped his hat, picked a new table, and played the same game there. Being sober, smart, and willing to lose a bit first meant that his gains were big—and unwelcome.
“C’mon, then, high roller,” the bar feller said, tugging at Rhett’s sleeve as he fleeced the third table of suckers out of their collected ten dollars. “You think you’re ready for what’s behind the curtain?”
Rhett pulled out a nickel and stuffed it in the barman’s breast pocket. “Thank you, my good man,” he said, mimicking something he’d heard a dandy say outside the hotel in Gloomy Bluebird once.
The barman just grunted and half escorted, half dragged Rhett toward the curtain. Rhett was deeply amused, not only by the man’s behavior, but also by the number of angry, grubby white faces glaring at him with murder in their red-tinted eyes. It was agreeable, pissing off so many folks at once when they’d been expecting to cheat him blind.
Well, blinder.
He spun, finding each of his friends in the room and offering them a cunning grin before he was shoved through the curtain.
On the other side, the air tasted decidedly different. The saloon at large was big and airy, the staircase and balcony festooned with loose women and the raw wood walls bristling with antlers. This room, however, was snug and low-ceilinged with forest-green wallpaper, the lamps warm and the curtains thick. Three neat tables sat in the center, a collection of divans and civilized wingback chairs clustered around the edges and draped with shadowy figures. Smoke swirled around the ceiling and wreathed the heads of several gamblers, some of whom sucked on peculiar contraptions displayed on the tables like blooming flowers of glass. The air was hazy and smelled exotic, and the pull of the monster settled around the room like a thick rug. No one paid Rhett the least bit of mind, and despite what the bartender had said about the exclusivity of the room, the high rollers’ cards la
y untouched on the tables, some showing their faces.
Rhett had no damn idea what was going on, and the smoke had already muddled his head.
“Welcome,” said a familiar voice, and Rhett spun with his hand on his gun to find the dark-clothed figure from his dream, just a-dripping with power.
“Who the hell are you?”
The bearlike man grinned with blocky white teeth and tipped his black hat. “Buck Greenwood, sole proprietor of this saloon and Buckhead city founder. And who the hell are you?”
Rhett’s back went stiff as his stomach did somersaults. “I reckon you already know,” he said through gritted teeth.
“No, I don’t believe we’ve met.” Buck settled back in a fancy wingback chair and held a pipe to his lips, the entire thing connected to the machinery in the center of the table. To Rhett, it looked like he was smoking a venomous snake, and the smoke that curled from his lips danced sinuously into the air and burned Rhett’s eye.
“I’m Rhett Walker. And I think you’re a liar.”
The feller—Buck—grinned and held the pipe out to Rhett. “All men are liars, Rhett Walker.” His eyes purposefully traveled down and up Rhett’s body, a dark eyebrow rising with the sort of punctuating irony that stuck in Rhett’s craw. “Care to share my peace pipe?”
“No, sir. I’d like to know what you are and if you mean any harm.”
Buck tossed down the pipe and leaned back, laughing. His suit was dark and impeccable, his watch chain glinting in the lamplight. A big man and broad in the shoulders, he seemed utterly at home in his skin, which, to Rhett’s thinking, made him right peculiar. His hair was dark and wavy, pulled back but struggling for freedom, and stubble darkened his jaw like a waiting storm. His eyes, now pinned on Rhett and more avid than they’d appeared before, were the light blue of a winter sky lined in eyelashes of funeral black.
“What I am. Well, and wouldn’t we all like to know that? All you need to remember is that I run this town, and if you want to leave my land in one piece, you and your friends had best accept my hospitality and pay your dues.” He looked past Rhett and motioned with his hand.