by Jake Logan
“You were my employee, Miss Gerardo, nothing more.”
Killian hated the sight of the tears flowing unabashedly down the woman’s cheeks. However had she come to the faulty conclusion that he loved her? He had never given her an instant’s thought, much less thought of her in that way.
Without another word, Amy turned and left.
“I should go too,” Ruth said, pushing away from the table. “Thank you for the fine meal.”
“Don’t go, Mrs. Jeter. Please, Ruth, there is so much I need to know.”
“Perhaps later, when I am better able to talk of some things, I’ll contact you.”
“No,” Killian said, laying the small derringer on the table. “There won’t be any need for you to find me later. You’re going with me now.” Killian felt a small surge of desire for the woman when she sat down, frightened and looking smaller than before. This was the woman Jeter had taken as a wife. Killian would find out why, and what qualities Jeter had valued in her company as his wife.
“You’re going to kill me,” Ruth said in a flat voice. “All the years I was married to a cold-blooded killer, I never felt in danger. Not for my life.”
“He held you captive. He was away, robbing stagecoaches and banks most of the time. How could you fear him while he was gone?”
“You’ll never know,” Ruth said, defiance coming into her voice. She glared at him. “You can keep me prisoner for a million years and you won’t learn one more thing.”
“A million years is a long time,” Killian agreed, beginning to enjoy their byplay again. “I think you will tell me all I want to know in a much shorter time. And I assure you, your prison this time will be gilded. Only the finest food, decent surroundings—”
“It’ll still be a prison.”
Killian looked out the window of the restaurant and saw Slocum riding slowly down the street, heading east out of town. His chance to get the watch would disappear with the drifter unless he acted quickly.
“Come along. I have no way to keep you from running off other than to threaten you. Believe me, Mrs. Jeter, I have no desire to hurt you. Quite the contrary. I find you an interesting, exciting woman.”
“Exciting? Because I was married to a man you are totally obsessed with?”
“The matter is too complex to explain in a few short minutes. We will have all the time in the world to explore this,” Killian said. He gestured with the small pistol.
“You won’t kill me. You want what I can tell you.”
Ruth gasped when he grabbed her arm and swung her about as she got out of the chair. He rammed the derringer hard into her ribs.
“I can seriously injure you. Bullets to your legs so you can’t walk. A blow to your throat so you can’t talk until it heals. I have time. You don’t.”
He steered her out the door into the hot, dusty street. Slocum had disappeared, taking the road leading to the northeast. Killian wondered whether the drifter had lied to Ruth or to Amy. From what he had seen, Slocum had lied to Amy, and she had been too foolish to know.
“Get into the buckboard,” he said, clinging to Ruth’s arm. She struggled a little, but not so much that he couldn’t control her. “We’ve got to follow Mr. Slocum and relieve him of both the horse and your husband’s watch.”
“I might have been wrong. It must have been John’s watch that Les stole.”
“It was something Jeter held and carried and possessed. I must possess it too.”
“Everything Les had you want?” Ruth swallowed hard. He enjoyed the look of desolation on her plain face.
“Everything,” he told her. “Absolutely everything. I’m willing to wait. I am a patient man.”
“A million years won’t be enough.”
He shoved her forward, then herded her up into the driver’s box. Killian quickly followed, making sure she sat on his left side so he could put the derringer into his right coat pocket where it was readily accessible but far from her grasping hands. He was sure she would attempt to escape somehow. The gun would provide the speediest way of getting away, and he intended to deny her that route because it was more interesting to see where her ingenuity took her.
If it took her anywhere at all. Had the years with Jeter numbed her will? Killian intended to find out.
“You’ve got a coffin in the rear,” Ruth said. “I-is it Les?”
“Of course it is. I had planned a spectacular trial and even more eventful burial ceremony. Pictures would have been taken. I was robbed of the trial, and somehow the town isn’t too inclined to turn out to bury a man left dangling from an oak tree by a lynch mob. No matter that Jeter was the premier outlaw of this decade.”
“You’re crazy as a hoot owl,” Ruth said.
Killian laughed as he snapped the reins and got the team pulling. He had paid the stableman more than enough to loosen the shoe on Jeter’s stallion. How long it took before Slocum discovered that his horse was unable to continue on his futile flight away from his destiny remained to be seen, but Killian had supplies for a week or longer tucked alongside the coffin.
They rattled over the desert and took the road that led out of town past the cemetery. Killian commented on it.
“Bury Les,” said Ruth. “He was no good, but he deserves to be buried. Bury him and leave John alone.”
“Leave your paramour alone? The two of you were quite the item, weren’t you? Behind your husband’s back? Or did he care? I must find out all these little tidbits.” Killian laughed and urged the team to greater speed because he had seen not only the signpost pointing to the small San Esteban cemetery, but also a man examining the right front hoof of his horse.
“John!” Ruth stood and yelled. “John!”
Killian grabbed her and savagely pulled her back down beside him.
“Warn him and I’ll kill him. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“You don’t have the balls to kill a man.”
Killian chuckled. The sound quieted Ruth. But Killian started thinking about what she had said. He wasn’t a murderer. That would make him no better than Lester Jeter. He was a collector, a connoisseur, a man devoted to completions and discoveries.
“Having trouble, Mr. Slocum?” he called. Killian saw how Slocum’s hand went for the six-shooter holstered at his left hip. Only men used to drawing and firing while on horseback slung their pistols in this fashion. The cavalry officers carried theirs awkwardly, with butts forward on their right hips. The cross-draw holster was a superior solution. He had to ask Ruth why her husband had not also worn a cross-draw holster.
“Got a loose shoe,” Slocum said.
“You should have checked before you set out on the trail for El Paso,” Killian said. He halted his wagon beside Slocum and reached into the bed.
Slocum looked at him sharply.
“How’d you know I was heading to El Paso?”
“Mrs. Jeter told me.”
“John, I—”
Slocum turned toward her and gave Killian the chance he needed. He gripped the work-slickened handle of the shovel he had bought in town from the undertaker and swung it around and down as hard as he could. The flat metal blade struck Slocum squarely on the top of the head. He collapsed without uttering a sound.
“John!” Ruth jumped to the ground and knelt beside him. “I didn’t know. I had no idea what he intended to do.”
“Hush, my dear,” Killian said jovially. “If you don’t want your Mr. Slocum roughed up, you can drag him to the rear of the wagon for me.”
Killian went around and began prying open the coffin. The lid popped up to let him stare at the decaying body of the outlaw. He smiled. He knew exactly what to do. Grunting, Killian twisted the coffin and got it onto its side so that Jeter’s body tumbled out into the back of the wagon. Then he turned the coffin back upright.
“Get him sitting up,” Killian said. She struggled with Slocum and did as ordered. Together the two of them got the limp Slocum up and into the coffin.
“Wh-what are yo
u going to do?” Ruth stared at her husband’s body. “Les was already in his coffin.”
“My coffin,” Killian corrected. “I bought it for him. I’ve decided it would make a better prison for Slocum, so he won’t try to stop me. Get into the wagon.”
“Where are you going?”
“A ways,” Killian said. “A very short distance and then you won’t have to worry about Mr. Slocum anymore.”
Ruth reluctantly obeyed. Killian got the wagon moving down the road to the cemetery. A grin split his face when he saw the fresh grave site that O’Dell had opened for Jeter. A different occupant would be spending eternity under a few feet of dirt.
“Help me get the coffin down,” he told Ruth. She looked at the grave and then at Killian. She shook her head.
“You’re a monster. I won’t do it!”
He took one step forward and swung from the shoulder. The impact of his fist with her chin jarred all the way along his arm, but the punch had the desired effect. Ruth caught the blow on the tip of her chin and went down in a heap, knocked out. Killian strained as he slid the heavily laden coffin to the edge of the wagon bed, then let it fall. The lid popped open again, showing Slocum inside.
“I’ll wager you never thought you’d be buried in such style,” Killian said, fishing around in Slocum’s pockets until he found the watch. Killian pulled it away and slipped it into his own pocket. He slammed the coffin lid, wishing he had nails to secure it. Dragging the coffin to the edge of the grave proved easier than he had thought due to the dry ground. He pushed the coffin in, righted it, and then made certain the lid was closed before beginning his shoveling. Shovelful after shovelful of dirt descended to the top of the coffin until it disappeared. Working in the hot sun caused Killian to expend more effort than he wanted, but he still hummed an off-key tune to himself.
Eventually he had mostly filled the grave. Killian peeled his sweat-soaked clothes away from his body and wiped his forehead.
“That’s good enough,” Killian said, tossing the shovel into the grave. “I hope you appreciate all I’ve done for you, Slocum. I’ll be certain you are given your due in my book.”
Killian wiped off his hands and went to the rear of the wagon, where Jeter’s body was exposed to the burning sun.
“Should I mummify you or just find a decent taxidermist? You’d be the premier item in my display either way. Who cares about guns and hats when I have the original?” Killian laughed as he wrapped a canvas cover around the outlaw’s corpse. A pedestal holding the stuffed and mounted outlaw would be perfect! He knew the precise manner of presentation for it too, with Jeter’s hat on his head and a hand resting on his six-shooter. It would be a museum piece that would draw scholars from around the world!
He finished wrapping the corpse, then checked to be certain Ruth was still breathing. She would make the ideal tour guide. Killian would turn his entire house into a museum, and she would be another beguiling attraction to amaze and amuse the scholars studying Jeter’s criminal career.
Killian snapped the reins and got his team pulling. He could hardly wait to return home, find out all the details of Jeter’s life from Ruth for his biography, and then begin to work on the display. There would be nothing to rival Ambrose Killian’s Museum of the Life and Times of Lester Evan Jeter, Texas Outlaw!
27
“San Esteban,” Slocum whispered. “I was on the stagecoach from San Antonio and . . .” The top of his head sent knives of pain into him every time he moved, but he kept moving, even banging the sides of the coffin. The pain helped him focus until a name formed on his lips and tasted like acid.
“Killian! You son of a bitch. You put me in a coffin.”
Slocum went crazy again thrashing around, banging hard, and then settled down when the air began to turn stuffy. He was killing himself inch by inch. Slocum settled down, aware that the pain in his head refused to die down.
He listened hard and heard nothing. Rolling onto his belly, he arched up and tried to force the coffin lid away. He couldn’t budge it at all. He flopped facedown, gasping with effort. Sweat stung his eyes, and he felt more than a little rising panic again.
“You will get out of this,” Slocum said so loudly that it echoed inside the coffin. “You will.” But he had the sinking feeling that he was lying to himself. So much dirt had been piled on top of the coffin lid that he couldn’t budge it the smallest fraction.
He lay still, mind racing. The only improvement came in the way his head didn’t hurt quite as much. Slocum felt his lungs beginning to burn, but he could ignore that. For a while. The darkness wore on him, but he never stopped trying to come up with a way to escape. Some cemeteries ran a pull cord down into the coffin, so if the interred was actually alive he could ring a bell aboveground. But Slocum knew nothing of the sort had been done for him—for Jeter. That thought began gnawing away at him. He wasn’t even in a properly marked grave. Everyone would think Les Jeter had been laid to rest here, not John Slocum. He wasn’t sure why that bothered him, but it did.
He had lived through the war and more gunfights and scrapes than he could remember, and he was going to die in another man’s coffin.
Despair washed over him, making him consider wrestling his six-shooter from its holster and using it on himself. He worked to get his hand up to the six-gun and curled his fingers around the butt, then stopped.
Something was different. It took him a few seconds to realize what it was. The same sound of dirt falling was being repeated above him—but he could never hear a spadeful of dirt falling atop six feet of dirt. Someone was digging him out!
“Here! I’m still alive. Down here!” He shouted until he was hoarse, and the air turned so foul he could only choke and cough.
Then he was choking and coughing for a different reason. The coffin lid was yanked open and sand cascaded down over him.
“John! Are you dead?”
He pushed up like a stretching cat, the dirt cascading off his back in a small dust storm. Slocum shook himself off and then cocked his six-shooter as he turned.
“Amy?” Of all the people he had expected to dig him out of his grave, Amy Gerardo was about the most unlikely.
“John, I’m so glad you’re not dead. I saw Ambrose burying you, but I couldn’t do anything about that. He took my pistol. I don’t know when, but he did and I couldn’t stop him and—”
“Hush up,” Slocum said. He slid his six-gun back into his holster and stood, shook again, and got more dirt off him, but what thrilled him was the harsh, dry, heated desert air. It filled his lungs and sent life roaring through his arteries again.
“I’m sorry, John. I’m just so glad I got to you in time.” She looked at her blistered, bleeding hands. “I never knew it was such hard work digging up a grave.”
“Get used to it,” Slocum said harshly, climbing out of the hole. “You’re going to need to dig one for Killian.”
“Please, John, he didn’t mean anything by this. It’s just that he’s so wrapped up in getting everything Jeter ever owned that he’s lost all his common sense.”
Slocum pressed his hand against his vest pocket. He was right. Killian had taken the watch.
“Where’d he go with her?”
“Her? He’s got Ruth Jeter with him?”
Slocum saw the shock on the small woman’s face.
“When they rode up in his wagon, she rode beside him. She wasn’t with him willingly. Where are they headed?”
“His house. Where else?” Amy turned in a full circle as if she might see Killian with her own eyes. “He still has the body with him.”
“Jeter’s?”
“Who else? This is Jeter’s coffin. He was in it coming out from town, but I saw him burying you and—”
“You didn’t see Ruth Jeter?”
“No. Maybe she’s not with him,” Amy said hopefully.
Slocum knew better. Ruth had probably tried to stop Killian from burying him, and had been tied up and put into the back of the wagon—alongsi
de her dead husband.
“Will your horse get me to wherever Killian went?” Slocum saw that the mare pulling Amy’s carriage was already lathered.
“You’re not going to leave me behind, John,” Amy said hotly. “I saved you. You owe me this. And I know where the house is.”
“I can find it.”
“Together,” she insisted. “We can get there faster, even with a tired horse, than you can get there hunting for it.”
“You drive,” Slocum said, climbing into the carriage. He wanted to sit and feel the sun against his face and stretch his muscles after his ordeal.
And he wanted to think about how he would dispatch Ambrose Killian.
“Stay here,” Slocum said when they drove within view of the sprawling Spanish-style hacienda.
“No, John, you know I’m the only one who can talk to him. I can make him see how wrong he’s been.”
Slocum had spent the last few days chaffing at the delay, but Amy’s horse worked as hard as it could. If they had pushed any harder they would have killed the mare. But those extra days had given Slocum the time to think of all the myriad ways to make Killian suffer. Added to this was what the man must be doing to Ruth Jeter.
“Stay here,” Slocum said. “He’s dangerous, and you said you two didn’t part on good terms.”
“He wanted her,” Amy said, her face suddenly hard and her words cold. “After all I’ve done for him, he wanted her only because Jeter had possessed her.”
Slocum jumped down from the carriage and drew his six-shooter. The exterior of the house was high-walled adobe brick enclosing an inner courtyard. The rooms were sandwiched in a square between the courtyard and the outer wall. The main entry was closed by a heavy wood door that might withstand a battering ram, but he knew there had to be other ways in. If he had to, he could drive the carriage up and scale the wall.
“The back way,” Amy said, sagging under the necessity of telling Slocum everything. “There’s a door leading to the kitchen that’s not as heavily barred.”