The work began to go quicker because he had created some room. He could wiggle the slices of wood back and forth and remove them easier. Even so, hollowing out the area around the nails was a long, tedious task. Luke estimated it was well after midnight before he succeeded in exposing the nails that held the hasp to the wall.
During the time he had been working, he’d had to pause several times when the guard roused from sleep and came over to stand next to the door and listen for any sounds coming from inside the tack room.
During those intervals, Luke had backed away from the door and forced his breathing to be slow, deep, and regular, as if he were sound asleep.
Each time, the guard had gone back to his stool, satisfied that the prisoner wasn’t up to any mischief.
Asleep again, the guard’s head tilted far forward.
He was liable to wake up with a crick in his neck, Luke thought. But if everything went the way he wanted it to, a crick in the neck would be the least of the guard’s worries.
Luke turned the latch carefully so that it didn’t make any noise. As he held it tight, he put his other hand flat against the door where the lock was and began to push with a firm, steady pressure.
He knew if he rammed the door with his shoulder, the hasp would probably pull free, but the racket would rouse the guard. If possible, he wanted to get the door open quietly and have a chance to jump the guard and disarm him without any shots being fired.
The nails were held in place only by the outer wall of the tack room. With a slight squeal, they began to come loose as Luke pushed against them. The door moved a little. He hung on to the latch so it wouldn’t fly open when the nails came completely out of the wall.
Metal screeched against wood again. Across the center aisle, the guard muttered something and shifted around, but he didn’t appear to awaken. Luke paused in his effort and waited for the man to settle back down.
After a minute or two, he resumed pushing again and could see the nails sliding through the holes in the wall. Steady, steady, he thought.
The nails pulled loose and the door moved despite Luke’s grip on the latch. The nails fell from the holes in the metal plate, but the small thudding sounds weren’t loud enough to disturb the guard. He continued sleeping as Luke pushed the door open enough for him to step out of the tack room.
Luke gripped the knife as he cat-footed forward. The edge was pretty dull and the point was blunted somewhat, but it was the only weapon he had. With enough force behind it, it would still penetrate flesh.
The lantern was still burning, but its reservoir was almost empty. The light flickered and dimmed. Maybe even in his sleep, the guard sensed that. He grunted, made a flapping sound with his lips that was half snore, half mumble, and started to lift his head.
Luke had closed half the distance between them. As the guard’s eyes flew open, Luke leaped toward him.
As the guard brought up the shotgun, Luke’s left hand closed around the barrels and wrenched them toward the ceiling. With his right hand, he drove the knife at the man’s chest.
Although half asleep, the guard twisted aside instinctively.
The thrust still landed, but it took him high on the left side, just under his shoulder, rather than in the heart as Luke intended. The man yelled in pain and surged up off the stool, lowering his head and bulling into Luke with enough force to knock him backward off his feet.
As he fell, he shoved the shotgun out to the side. He didn’t want it trapped between them in case it went off.
In fact, he didn’t want it to go off at all. A shotgun blast would draw way too much unwelcome attention in Pine City. Harmon and the rest of his men were right down the street at the hotel, and Luke was sure they would rattle their hocks to investigate if they heard a shot from the livery stable.
Luke twisted the shotgun back and forth to prevent the guard from finding the trigger.
On top as they struggled, the guard tried to drive his knee into Luke’s groin. Luke barely got out of the way of the crippling blow, taking it on his thigh, instead. He had lost his grip on the knife, which was still lodged in the guard’s shoulder.
Pain made the guard fight like a madman. He smashed a punch into Luke’s face with his left fist, then tried to get that hand around Luke’s neck. His movements were fumbling, no doubt hampered by his injury. Luke knocked the man’s arm aside and shot a punch up between them that caught the guard under the chin and rocked his head back.
The guard lost his grip on the shotgun. Luke still had hold of the barrels, but the weapon wouldn’t do him much good at such close quarters. The guard wasn’t going to give him a chance to turn it around.
The best thing to do was get the gun away where neither of them could use it. Luke slung it across the aisle and hoped being jarred around wouldn’t cause it to fire.
As the shotgun slid away, the last of the oil burned away in the lantern. Darkness suddenly dropped down over the stable like a shroud.
The deadly struggle continued in the impenetrable gloom. Since Luke’s left hand was now free, he used it to throw a couple punches where he thought the guard’s head was. Both blows landed, but neither was solid enough to stun him.
The guard brought his knee up again. The vicious blow missed Luke’s groin but landed in his belly with enough force to make Luke sick.
Luke ignored it and bucked up from the ground, throwing the guard off. As the man rolled away, Luke leaped after him, guided by hearing and instinct. He landed on the man’s back and clubbed a punch to the back of his head.
He remembered the reins he had put in his pocket earlier. He grabbed them, shook them out, and whipped them around the man’s neck from behind. Taking hold of the reins with both hands, he planted a knee in the small of the man’s back and heaved. The leather lines cut deeply into the man’s neck, shutting off his air.
The guard thrashed and bucked, but Luke clung to him for dear life, keeping him pinned to the ground as he put more and more pressure on the man’s windpipe. The guard clawed at the reins, but they had sunk too deeply into his flesh for him to get his fingers under. Little whimpering noises were all he could get out through his tortured throat.
It took only a minute or two for the guard to die, although it seemed longer than that. Finally, he slumped as all his muscles went limp in death. Luke smelled the stench as the man’s bowels evacuated. He kept the pressure on the guard’s neck for a good two minutes longer, just to be sure.
When there was no doubt that the guard was dead, Luke pushed himself wearily to his feet. He left the reins where they were, embedded in the dead man’s throat. Bending, he found the holstered revolver on the man’s hip and slid it out of its holster.
Feeling around in the darkness, he located the shotgun. As he straightened with the Greener in his hands, he felt better than he had in quite a while.
Now that he was armed again, he could take the fight to his enemies. Sure, he was still greatly outnumbered, but at the moment, he didn’t really care. The pulse pounding inside his head might as well have been a drumbeat urging him to war.
Dave Harmon was the key, he sensed. If he could get his hands on the cattle baron, Harmon’s men wouldn’t be able to move against him. Luke headed to the hotel.
McCluskey and Delia were there, too, he recalled.
Might as well round them all up, he thought with a grim smile.
CHAPTER 32
McCluskey tilted his head back and let whiskey gurgle from the bottle into his mouth. It was a bottle of what was supposedly the finest stuff in Pine City, according to Harmon, but McCluskey thought he’d had better.
Still, the liquor was pretty smooth and kindled a nice warm fire in his belly. He took another drink.
The lamp on the bedside table was turned very low, so the corners of the spacious hotel room were in shadow. The yellow glow spread over the bed, revealing the shape of Delia curled up under the sheet, asleep after their lovemaking.
McCluskey sat in a wing chair across from t
he bed. He set the bottle aside, picked up the cigar smoldering in an ashtray on the table beside him and savored another few puffs on it. The cigar was a good one, another gift from Dave Harmon.
The rancher was treating them almost like royalty, but McCluskey didn’t believe for a second that the man really felt that way. His only interest lay in turning things to his own advantage. McCluskey understood that attitude. He felt the same way.
He didn’t trust Harmon. The rancher had spared their lives, but he had the power and that mercy could disappear at any second, with no warning.
McCluskey didn’t like that. Whenever he worked with anybody else, he was used to running things.
As he drank Harmon’s whiskey and smoked his cigar, he wondered how hard it would be to take over Harmon’s outfit. He had managed pretty well with Derek Burroughs’ gang—at least until the riverboat had steamed right into Luke Jensen’s dynamite trap.
Thinking about Jensen put a frown on McCluskey’s face. He put the cigar back in the ashtray and reached for the bottle again.
Harmon shouldn’t have double-crossed him about Jensen. There was no good reason to keep the bounty hunter alive. He had a good mind to go down to the livery stable and put a bullet in Jensen’s head.
He took another drink.
But there were two good reasons he didn’t do that—the pair of strongboxes still resting in the back of the wagon parked behind the hotel with several of Harmon’s men guarding it.
After everything that had happened, the gold ought to belong to him, McCluskey thought. All of it, not just a share. With that much money, he and Delia could head for Mexico, disappear south of the border, and never come back.
Of course, he would tire of Delia sooner or later— but the good thing about Mexico was that there were plenty of lithe, eager, brown-skinned beauties to replace her.
She stirred in the bed, which made McCluskey wonder if she knew somehow that he was thinking about her. She sat up and stretched, the sheet falling away to reveal her surprisingly lush nudity.
Maybe once they got to Mexico he’d keep her around longer than he had thought, McCluskey mused.
“What are you doing awake?” she asked him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Just thinking about something.”
“Those strongboxes full of gold?”
McCluskey chuckled. “How did you know?”
“Because I was dreaming about them.” She pushed the sheet back, stood up, and went over to him. As she draped herself across his lap, she took the bottle out of his hand and drank some of the whiskey. “All that gold ought to belong to us,” she said as she gave the bottle back to him.
“You don’t want to go in partners with Harmon?”
Delia snorted contemptuously. “Partners, hell. He’s the boss, and he’ll always be the boss. That’s the kind of man he is.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” McCluskey agreed.
“Besides, I saw the way he was looking at me. Sooner or later, he’s going to expect me to come to his bed, Frank.”
McCluskey didn’t say what he was thinking, which was that he didn’t care nearly as much about that as he did about the gold.
Delia evidently mistook his silence, because she went on. “I know, I know. That shouldn’t bother me. But that’s just it, Frank. Ever since I met you, I haven’t been what I was. You changed me. I don’t want to be with anybody but you. I’ll play up to a man if I have to, for us to get what we want, but other than that I’m your woman and your woman alone from here on out.”
She was loco, all right, McCluskey thought, but undeniably useful. He drew her closer to him and kissed her. She responded eagerly, squirming on his lap.
McCluskey drew back. “If we can get our hands on that gold, we can go someplace nobody’ll ever find us. We’ll be together from now on.”
“Yes, yes,” Delia panted. “I like the sound of that.”
“But our only way out of here with those strongboxes is if we take Harmon with us as a hostage. Otherwise, his men will come after us. They’ll be afraid to, though, as long as his life is in our hands.”
“What about when we’re safe?”
“Then we kill him,” McCluskey said. “If we don’t, that old man would likely hunt us to the ends of the earth to get even.”
Delia nodded. “Yes, he would. When are we going to do it?”
“No time like now.” McCluskey stood up, not so gently setting Delia on her feet. “It’s the middle of the night. He and his men think they’re safe in Pine City, so most of them are probably sound asleep.” He slapped her bare rump and made her squeal and jump a little. “Get some clothes on. Those strongboxes are just waiting for us!”
Before leaving the livery stable, Luke went through the dead guard’s pockets and found six more shotgun shells. It was a distasteful task, but he felt better for having the extra ammunition.
With a man on guard inside the barn, it was doubtful Harmon would have posted another one outside, but Luke couldn’t rule out that possibility. He left the place by the smaller rear door, slipping into the alley behind the barn.
Moving like a phantom through the shadows, he made his way around the building, back to a spot where he could look along Pine City’s main street. Lights burned in the hotel lobby and the saloon, but the rest of the businesses were dark, long since closed for the night.
He didn’t see anyone moving along the boardwalks.
He took a couple steps to cross the street to the hotel when one of the big double doors on the front of the barn scraped open.
Luke whirled in that direction, bringing the shotgun to bear. An icy finger raked down his spine. He wasn’t afraid of many things in this world, but he knew good and well the guard he’d left in the barn was dead.
The man couldn’t have gotten up and walked and opened that door.
Luke managed not to pull the shotgun’s triggers, but it wasn’t easy. He was glad he did, though, as the man-shaped shadow stepped out of the barn.
The shadowed man thrust his hands in the air and exclaimed in a harsh whisper, “Don’t shoot!”
“Silas?” Luke lowered the gun.
The liveryman was breathing hard from sudden fear as he moved closer. “Lord, I thought you was gonna blow me in half!”
“I almost did,” Luke said as he motioned Silas back into the thicker shadows next to the barn and went with him. “What are you doing here? Were you inside when I was fighting with Harmon’s man?”
“No, sir. I just got here a couple minutes ago. I came because Tillie and Miz Walton and Mr. McGill were all worried about you. I was, too. Seemed like you might’ve had time to escape by now, so I decided to come and see.” Silas swallowed. “But when I went inside and struck a match, all I found was that dead fella.”
“I managed to get out not long ago,” Luke explained. “You say you were with your wife and Mrs. Walton and Ben McGill?”
“Yes, sir. Them and some others from here in town are gathered at the café, waitin’ to see what’s gonna happen.”
“You mean waiting to see whether or not I’m going to kill Dave Harmon for them?” Luke asked.
Silas sounded a little angry as he replied, “That ain’t exactly the way it is. All the menfolks have got guns. If we heard shootin’, we were gonna come help you. Figured we’d take Harmon’s men by surprise that way.”
Luke had to admit that strategically, it wasn’t a bad plan. His escape would serve as a distraction, giving the townspeople more of a chance against Harmon’s hired killers.
“But if I didn’t get out, you’d just go on knuckling under to him.”
“We’re not gunfighters, Mr. Jensen,” Silas said. “And most of us got families. Can’t expect us to go up against those gun-wolves without much chance of winnin’. We figure if anything’ll swing the balance toward us, it’s havin’ somebody like you on our side.”
Luke nodded in the darkness and clapped a hand on Silas’s brawny shoulder. “I know. And I’m sor
ry I sounded a little testy there. What do you say we try to get Harmon’s boot off this town’s neck?”
“That’s all we want,” Silas said. “Just a chance to get on with our lives in peace.”
“All right. Can you tell me where Harmon and his men are right now?”
“Harmon’s in the hotel, as far as I know. He’s got his own suite there, down at the end of the hall on the second floor. Probably some of his men are there, too. But some of ’em are still in the saloon. I had a look as I was comin’ down here a few minutes ago. I think they got themselves an all-night poker game goin’ on.”
“What about Marshal Kent?”
Silas shook his head. “Lawman or not, he ain’t gonna help us.”
“I’m not expecting him to. I just want to know where he is so I can keep an eye out for him.”
“He ain’t married. He sleeps in the room back of his office. That’s where he is now, I reckon.”
“He doesn’t have any night deputies?”
“Naw. Never been a need for any. Folks around here know that if they cause too much trouble, they’ll answer to Harmon. He’s the real law in Pine City. He’s judge, jury—and executioner.”
“He’s killed people?” Luke asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Silas said. “Had it done, anyway. How do you think Miz Georgia got to be a widow?”
That took Luke a little by surprise. “Harmon had her husband killed?”
“That’s right. Tom Walton got hisself elected mayor and tried to do somethin’ about the way Harmon was runnin’ things around here. Harmon had some of his men jump poor Tom one night and beat him to death. Thing is, Miz Georgia don’t know that. Harmon’s men tossed the body in my corral with a bad horse I had at the time. They tried to make it look like Tom had gone in there for some reason and that hoss killed him. That’s what Miz Georgia believes. But I’ve seen men who got kicked and trampled to death by a horse, and I can tell the difference. Tom Walton died at the hands of men, not some horse.”
As far as Luke was concerned, that made Dave Harmon just as much a murderer as his men. Since Luke had been in Pine City, the only ones who’d been killed were members of Derek Burroughs’ outlaw gang. The law wouldn’t see their deaths as a crime. Even Harmon’s attempt to hang on to the gold might not get him in much trouble with outside authorities if any ever showed up. He could always claim that he hadn’t known the gold was stolen, and no one around here would dare to dispute him.
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