Cold Corpse, Hot Trail

by Peter Brandvold

“You have no right to hold me here, Lieutenant! Unlock this goddamn cuff!”

  In a nearby room, someone groaned. A voice called out from below.

  Primrose gained his feet and aimed his revolver at Flagg, the lieutenant’s own face now flushed with fury. “You’re gonna bring the whole place down on us. Shut up!” He flicked the Colt’s hammer back.

  Flagg glared up at him. His cracked lips shaped a sneer. “Look at yourself, soldier. He’s turning you into what he is—a cold-blooded killer.”

  “I haven’t killed you yet.”

  Flagg laughed without mirth. “No, but you’re going to . . . as soon as he does. My blood’ll be on your hands, same as his.”

  “He’s not going to kill you. He’s assured me that when our work is done here, he’ll turn you loose.”

  “And you believe that vigilante?” Flagg shook his head. His temple was marred by the blue goose egg from Hawk’s pistol barrel. “He has no intention of letting me live. He knows I’ll be after him again.”

  Primrose lowered the gun slightly. “I won’t let him.”

  “You’ll have no choice. Anyone who gets in Hawk’s kill-crazy way gets turned toe-down right quick, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  When Primrose said nothing, Flagg added, “Look at yourself, Lieutenant. He’s got you believin’, just like him, that the end justifies the means. If you don’t turn me loose, that money you’re so intent on bringin’ back to your dear old father-in-law will be awash in the blood of a deputy U.S. marshal!” Flagg shook his head and smiled savagely. “I guarantee it, Primrose. That bastard’s going to kill me, sure as he’s got me chained to this blasted bed!”

  His face cast in troubled thought, the lieutenant lowered the pistol to his thigh. “If I let you go, will you leave the village, head back to the States, and cause no more trouble here?”

  “Trouble?” Flagg chuffed, then chuckled. “Christ, yes! I know when I’ve been beat. I’ll head back to Arizona, rest up, and take him down somewhere on the other side of the border.”

  Flagg studied the younger man’s thoughtful countenance. “Don’t worry, your dark secret’s good with me. I won’t mention anything to Devereaux.”

  Primrose cursed under his breath, turned, set his pistol on the dresser, and picked up the handcuff key. He walked to the bed, poked the key in the lock, and turned it. The cuff clicked and opened, and Flagg pulled his hand away, rubbed the wrist with the other hand.

  “Thanks. Maybe you’re a tad smarter than I’d given you credit for.” The marshal stood a bit unsteadily, crouched over his saddlebags, and removed his cartridge belt. He wrapped the belt around his waist, loaded his revolver, then donned his hat and hefted his saddlebags over his shoulder.

  “Remember, Marshal, you gave me your word you’d leave the village.”

  Flagg chuckled and pulled the door open. “Tell the son of a bitch good-bye for me, will you?” He looked up and down the dark hall, turned back to Primrose, and winked. “And tell him we’ll be seeing each other again soon!”

  With that, he went out, leaving the door standing wide behind him. Hearing the marshal’s boots on the outside steps, Primrose closed the door and stared at it for a long time before collapsing onto the bed.

  A few minutes after leaving Hawk, Saradee tossed her hair out from her neck and threw her head back on her shoulders. She sang as she rode:The needle’s eye doth supply

  The thread that runs so true,

  And many a man have I let pass,

  Because I thought of you.

  And many a dark and stormy night

  I walked these mountains through;

  I’d stub my toe and down I’d go

  Because I thought of you.

  When Saradee got back to El Molina and turned the nag back over to the livery barn, she started toward the Mountain Lion Tavern, heading through a dark, trash-strewn alley. The town had quieted considerably since she and her friend—Christ, she didn’t even know his name!—had headed out to the federale camp.

  Two Mexicans stepped out of the shadows before her, knife blades gleaming in their fists. One of them, his drink-glistening eyes shifting back and forth between Saradee’s eyes and her breasts, said something in sneering Spanish. The other man laughed and lunged toward her.

  Saradee made short work of the two drunks, her pistols cracking sharply, the echoes absorbed by the mud and adobe walls rising on both sides.

  Her gun smoke billowing in the darkness, she was about to step over the two dead men when an idea spoke to her.

  She crouched and slipped a razor-sharp stiletto from the death grip of one of the would-be attackers. A minute later, she dropped the man’s bloody ear in her neckerchief, and folded the neckerchief away in her pocket. Whistling softly the song she’d sung on her way into town, Saradee continued to the Mountain Lion.

  The sweet-musty fragrance of marijuana rose from the dark patio upon which only a few man-shaped silhouettes slumped in the darkness. Inside, a skinny boy in burlap rags was scrubbing Waylon’s blood into the warped pine floorboards. Of the six men inside, three belonged to Saradee’s own gang. Two others looked like Mex miners, the third a crowlike, addlepated beggar muttering into his empty stone tankard.

  “Whiskey,” Saradee told the barman sweeping lazily behind the bar. “Something a little better than the poison you usually serve.”

  The barman just stared at her, uncomprehending. Too tired to dicker, she settled for the first bottle the man set on the bar. She tossed him a couple coins, popped the bottle’s cork, and moseyed over to the table where the two men from her group sat. J. J. Beaver Killer was playing solitaire, and Jimbo Walsh was cleaning his pepperbox revolver, the pieces of which he’d placed on a blue neckerchief atop the table. Between the men were several empty shot glasses. Watching Saradee come over, Walsh grinned knowingly.

  “Have you some fun tonight, Boss?”

  She stopped before their table and took a long slug of the whiskey. “Where’s Waylon?”

  “Upstairs with a bottle. Turkey cleaned him up, straightened his nose while me and Dog-Tail held him down. You know they don’t even have a sawbones in this town?” Walsh shook his head, then held the revolver to his right ear, listened intently to the click as he slowly thumbed back the hammer. “This is one uncivilized race. Makes our Injuns look like learned men from Yale.”

  He’d said this last while staring at the half-Cheyenne across from him, but Beaver Killer ignored him. The big Indian peeled a soiled pasteboard from the deck in his thick left hand, laid it on a six of clubs as the ribbons tied to the ends of his braids swished about the table.

  Beaver Killer looked up at Saradee. “You ain’t goin’ up there, is ye, Boss?”

  Saradee shrugged and splashed whiskey into one of the Indian’s empty shot glasses. Splashing some into one near Walsh’s revolver parts, she curled her lip in a sneer. “I got Waylon eatin’ out of my corset.”

  She turned and headed for the stairs.

  Walsh called. “How we gonna play it . . . day after tomorrow?”

  Saradee hesitated. She’d already figured how she was going to play it—or not play it. How her men and Waylon’s played it, she no longer cared. She curled her lip again, and her blue eyes glittered devilishly. “As soon as you get your hands on one of them gold bars, pick out one of Waylon’s boys or one of them greasers, and just start shootin’.”

  With that, grinning as she thought of her men and Waylon’s and the greasers cutting each other down while they scurried about the gold bars spilled like jackstraws around the train wreckage, she turned and climbed the stairs.

  She stopped before the door of the room that she and Waylon had rented earlier, and knocked twice. “Waylon, honey?”

  She turned the knob, pushed the door two feet open, and peeked inside. The room was lit by one dim lantern on a stand beside the bed. Waylon sat atop the bed, his head and shoulders resting against the headboard. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His face was crisscrossed with heavy bandages, on
e of which held his broken, lumpy nose in place. His eyes, big and purple as ripe plums, were swollen nearly shut. His lips were swollen too, and blood trickled from one of the open cuts, dribbling slowly down his chin. The blood glistened in the lantern light.

  Slowly, as if the movement were a strain, Waylon turned his head toward the door. The lantern light found what little of his eyes showed between the puffy lids. They glittered like small metal filings.

  Saradee stepped into the room and closed the door. “How we doin’, sugar?”

  Kilroy stared at her. In his left hand, he held a whiskey bottle. On the bed near his right lay one of his shiny Remingtons. His hand closed over the gun’s ivory grips, and he picked up the revolver and aimed it at Saradee, thumbing back the hammer.

  “Puta bitch.”

  “What?”

  “I’m gonna kill you right where you stand.”

  Saradee frowned. “Why?”

  “You set me up to fight that big son of a bitch when you knew I’d drank half the tequila in El Molina. Then you left with him.” He moved his head a little, stared down the barrel.

  “Waylon—honey, sweetheart—don’t be silly. That son of a bitch was starin’ at my tits half the night, and I was tired of it. I wanted you to punish him for me. You know—like a man is supposed to do for his woman. In my own juiced state, I didn’t realize that you too were three sheets to the wind.”

  Kilroy held the gun steady, aimed at her head. His face was a dark checkerboard around the white, blood-spotted bandages.

  “Here—I’ve got a little present for you,” Saradee said, reaching into her pocket.

  Kilroy’s gun hand tensed. She stopped, then, moving more slowly, reached her left hand into a pocket of her canvas trousers that bagged on her lithe frame while still, somehow, revealing her delectable curves. Her breasts swelled against the calico blouse she’d stolen from the miner she’d killed.

  Out came her hand with the folded neckerchief. Moving toward the bed, she slowly lifted the folds of the blood-stained cloth, then crouched down before Kilroy, extending her open left hand in which the severed ear lay—blood- and dirt-streaked, with several fine brown hairs angling out from its edges.

  “The bastard ain’t hearing so good down in hell,” she said. “Thought you might want to dry this and wear it around your neck.”

  Kilroy looked up from the ear. He breathed through his mouth, his chest rising and falling sharply. His slitted eyes were puzzled.

  “Stabbed him three times in the heart, gave him to the liveryman’s hogs.” She shrugged and set the ear and neckerchief on the stand beside the lamp. “Just my way of sayin’ I was sorry for hornswogglin’ you into a fight when you was drunk.” She kept her eyes downcast but threw her shoulders back, pushing out her breasts. She made her voice small with contrition. “I hope you’ll forgive me, honey.”

  Kilroy stared up at her, his slitted eyes roaming that incredible body. Finally, he cursed through his sore teeth and depressed the Remington’s hammer. Leaning the bottle against his side, he swept the covers back with his right hand, revealing the lower half of his body clad in long underwear. “Get in here.”

  Hawk got back to Reyes’s hotel only a few minutes after Saradee returned to her and Kilroy’s room over the Mountain Lion. He unlocked the door of his room, unholstered his Russian, and stepped inside.

  Holding the door open, he raked his gaze around. A nearly expired candle offered as much shadow as light.

  Primrose was the only one here. The lieutenant lay on the bed, hands behind his head. He stared up at Hawk, pushed up on his elbows.

  “Did you find the money?”

  Hawk nodded, holstered the Russian.

  Primrose sat up, his voice excited. “You did?”

  “Located it. We’ll get it day after tomorrow.”

  Hawk tossed his hat onto a hook by the door and walked to the washstand. He tipped water from the pitcher into the tin basin, splashed water on his face.

  Behind him, Primrose said with chagrin, “You, uh, gonna ask about Flagg?”

  “I figured you’d let him go.” Hawk removed his shirt and neckerchief, and scooped water over his neck. He tipped his head back to work the kinks out. “To tell you the truth, I was getting bored with his conversation.”

  “What happens between you two must be between just the two of you. I want no part of it.” Primrose paused, then added haltingly, “He’s going to try and kill you again.”

  Hawk toweled his face. “I know.”

  Primrose studied him, brows ridged. “That doesn’t really trouble you, does it? You don’t fear death . . . care not whether you live or die.”

  Hawk tossed the towel across a chair and began removing his cartridge belt. He stopped and stared at the wall. “We all gotta die, Lieutenant.”

  23.

  THE TRUCE

  SOMEONE rammed their fist against a door—three hard thumps. Each was a lightning bolt lancing Kilroy’s brain. His eyes snapped wide. Or as wide as he could get them in his current condition. The cuts and bruises, not to mention his broken nose, made him feel as though he were wearing a plaster mask lined on the inside with sharpened steel spikes.

  “Boss, the greasers are here!” yelled Turkey McDade on the other side of the wood. “They said you agreed to take a morning ride with ’em.”

  Kilroy groaned. It took him several seconds to climb his way up from the excruciating pain in his face and head, and to locate the place in his brain that controlled his voice. His mouth tasted as though a scorpion had crawled inside and died only after giving his tongue several sharp stings. “Shit.”

  “You okay, Boss?”

  Kilroy groaned, spat. “Tell ’em I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Boots thumped off down the hall. The vibration in the floor caused an empty whiskey bottle to fall off the other side of the bed and to hit the floor with a glassy thump.

  It rolled around the warped floor for a few seconds before another groan sounded from inside the room. Down around Kilroy’s crotch, something moved beneath the blankets. Awkwardly, he threw the covers back to reveal Saradee’s head and shoulders, her hair shining in the full light angling through the deep-set windows flanking the bed.

  Outside, birds chirped and wagons clattered. A horse whinnied.

  Saradee lay facedown on Kilroy’s bare belly. She was naked, and her hair was fanned out across her shoulders and his hips. Her back angled down to her flaring hips and pert, round butt. In her right hand, she held one of her silver-plated .45s down near Waylon’s right knee.

  Probably practiced her French on him last night while holding the damn six-shooter, only resisting the temptation to shoot off his manhood because his men were near.

  The nastiest puta down here couldn’t hold a candle to Saradee.

  Kilroy reached down, grabbed the revolver from her limp hand, and lightly tapped the barrel against her head. “Get up. Federales, remember? We’re ridin’ out with ’em to the train bridge.”

  She groaned and turned over. “Huh?”

  “We’re ridin’ out with the federales—and I use that term loosely—to make sure they don’t pull anything funny settin’ those dynamite charges.”

  She rolled onto her back, her bare breasts flattening slightly across her chest, and pressed a hand to her temple, wincing against the hangover. Even in that position, those orbs were still full, round, and magnificent.

  “I’ll wait here,” she said, smacking her lips. “You can tell me about it.”

  Kilroy got up and, feeling as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to his face, stooped to pick up his balbriggans. Imagining the trainload of gold bars took some of the sting away. He couldn’t quite fathom being as rich as the revolucionarios’ gold would make him—if he lived to get his hands on it, that is—but he was willing to take a shot at the train anyway. It seemed that the greasers had the technicalities mostly worked out; they just needed more shooters.

  “Sure . . . you stay and sleep,” he told
Saradee, and chuckled.

  He was pulling on his jeans when Saradee’s eyes snapped wide. She wanted nothing to do with the gold, but if she didn’t ride out with the gang, they might get suspicious and foil her plans to abscond with the payroll loot.

  She stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Reckon I’d better see to my own interests,” she said through a yawn. “Wouldn’t want you and the greasers throwin’ in against me.” She dropped her long legs over the side of the bed and stretched catlike. Rising, she kissed Waylon’s nose, enjoying his pained yelp, and began gathering her strewn clothes.

  Ten minutes later, they descended the Mountain Lion’s stairs, both moving stiffly, Kilroy looking like the sole survivor of a stagecoach’s plummet from a thousand-foot cliff. He hadn’t had time to freshen his bandages, and they now showed as much red as white. His snuff-brown hat, the crown pancaked in the Colorado style, was tipped back on his head as if to ease the strain on his nose.

  As the two crossed toward the front of the room, past the tables upon which the chairs were upended for sweeping, and past the floorboards stained brown from Kilroy’s spilled blood, the outlaw paused at the bar to order a fresh bottle. He popped the cork as he and Saradee walked outside, where the federales sat their horses before the patio, left of Saradee’s and Kilroy’s own gang. The north-of-the-border bandits sat their own mounts with stiff expressions on their hungover countenances, sliding sneering looks at their Mexican counterparts, as if barely able to stomach sharing the same street.

  The federales returned the looks with even more bitter expressions of their own.

  Kilroy tipped back the bottle, taking a long pull. Instantly, the invisible nails piercing his nose and cheekbones dulled enough to lighten the red pain-veil over his eyes.

  He followed Saradee into the square, where Major Valverde intoned, “Señor Waylon and the magnificent Saradee, how good it is to see you both this lovely morn—!”

  Feeling his face warm with embarrassment and keeping his eyes down, Kilroy walked passed the major’s tall, cream stallion, heading for the riderless horse beside that of Turkey McDade.