Chapter Thirteen
By unspoken consensus the decision seemed to have been left to K. John. He was, after all—in their eyes, at least—one of the organizers of the breakout from the Double O Saloon. Not liking the responsibility, he nevertheless fell to the task with vigor. Mentally counting heads and horses, he decided that they had enough to make do.
‘OK, boys,’ he said to the gathered cowboys. ‘You don’t have the time to pick your partners for the ball. Grab your ponies and find a woman. There’s four of you—strike out in four different directions. Now!’
Eric Styles, no doubt wishing to remain near Barbara, hesitated. The other men followed K. John’s hasty instructions. K. John made his way to where Flower, bewildered, was still trying to hold forth. Arnie Brewster and Carl West had both already taken hold of a different saloon girl and were heading them toward the door. The girls’ faces were wearing different levels of surprise and concern, but they were accustomed to being grabbed and ordered around and at least these men seemed to be moving with sure intent.
‘What’s happening here?’ Flower demanded as she rushed to K. John, her own eyes wide with startled unease.
‘We’re dispersing,’ K. John said, as if he himself had no doubts about the wisdom of their actions. ‘Willit’s men are on the way.’
Gloria was beside them now, listening anxiously along with the girl named Theresa who had asked for nothing more than a horse earlier. ‘You take one of these girls with you,’ K. John said to Flower. ‘The other can ride double with me.’
‘No,’ Flower said, without pause to think. ‘Gloria—take my horse and you and Theresa get out of here. I’m riding with my man.’
‘You might be sorry about your choice,’ K. John told Flower as they mounted his red roan, she riding behind him.
‘Why?’ Flower asked, her voice seeming muffled, far distant in the night as she spoke to his back.
‘Because I’m planning on heading back to Crossroads and the Double O. There’s nothing more to be done out here for anyone.’
‘That’s twice the reason to ride with you,’ Flower said. ‘I think we still owe it to my father and to Emerson Masters to see this through.’
Neither of them mentioned the way Flower had spoken up when she had made her intention to ride with K. John clear to the others. What had she meant by that? Was he truly ‘her man’?
K. John did not dwell on it as they circled wide of the trail out of town where he thought he saw a man or two heading toward Nazareth Road, and headed back toward Crossroads through the warm, unsettled night.
‘Where do you think they’ll all head?’ Flower asked, still thinking of the girls.
‘Well, those boys all being Barbara’s cowhands, I think Miss Casey is going to end up with a few uninvited guests on this night.’
‘She’ll be sorry she ever offered to help.’
‘I imagine so. It’s not the worst place the girls could end up. Barbara has a few more hands to help out.’
‘And to maybe get themselves shot over something they had no part in,’ Flower said.
‘I don’t think Willit would willingly try to attack that ranch even if he suspects his girls have been taken there—and there’s no reason he should.’
‘Where is Clyde Willit? We don’t even know that.’
‘That’s what I intend to find out,’ K. John answered. ‘I find myself leaning more toward your father’s and Justine’s way of thinking. It was stupid to ever think that this could have been done without spilling blood.’
‘You can’t be thinking of finding Willit and gunning him down yourself!’ Flower said, her horror plain.
‘I don’t plan anything like that. I won’t have the choice. As soon as Willit lays eyes on me, he’ll want my hide. He’ll know who was behind this.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure,’ K. John replied. ‘Which means I’ll never be able to leave Crossroads alive so long as Willit has the strength to pull a trigger, or someone who can do it for him.’
‘And you’re riding back to town!’
‘Where else can I go? Let’s end it now! For all we know Tremaine and Justine already have finished it.’
‘Or gotten themselves killed!’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ K. John said as they reached the town limits.
He guided his roan up Main Street, noticing the activity in town which was combined with a peculiar silence. Men were grimly preparing for some battle; there was no time for the hell raising for which the Double O was famous. These men, not so hastily organized as the first of Willit’s troops, were determined to do their job. Probably, a reward had been offered for K. John and the return of the girls. K. John mentally apologized to Barbara Casey for delivering trouble to her door. The number of the men who seemed to be gathering were easily enough to overwhelm Barbara’s small crew. It was time to put a crimp in their plans.
‘Where would they have gone?’ Flower asked, meaning her father and Justine Masters.
‘I don’t know. It depends on whether they actually tried to attack Willit and how they fared.’ Either or both could be dead, K. John knew, but rather than voicing his thoughts, he suggested, ‘Let’s try your father’s hotel room first.’
He felt her grip on him tighten. Flower was hardly a stupid woman; she knew as well as he that her father’s grudge against Clyde Willit could have resulted in his death.
The roan, now tired, dragged its hoofs toward the hotel as uptown there was still more activity. The men of Crossroads were preparing for a night of blood sport. At the hotel Flower jumped down nimbly, although her heart was far from light. She was expecting the worst. K. John swung heavily from the saddle, loosely hitched the roan and followed her into the hotel lobby.
As they crossed the room no one seemed interested in their arrival. The door to Tremaine’s room was slightly open. There was no light within. Flower hesitated for a fraction of a second before she swung the door in.
There he sat, froglike in his appearance against the unmade bed, his shirtfront bloody, his hand gripping an open bottle of whiskey. Warren Tremaine looked up without expression, his eyes glossy and hard as if they had been removed, polished and placed back in his skull.
‘Put that bottle down!’ Flower ordered. ‘You know what you promised me. You don’t need a crutch.’
It was hard for her to get through that little speech. When K. John had lighted the lamp again it was obvious that there was an unchecked flow of blood from Tremaine’s shoulder and that his face was sagged down as if weighted by invisible sorrows. K. John took charge.
‘Get that shirt off and let me have a look,’ he told the old man, gently.
‘I didn’t think you two would be back.’
‘Well, here we are. Can you get that shirt off yourself, or do you need a little help?’
‘A little help wouldn’t be amiss,’ the old man admitted.
‘I assume you haven’t seen a doctor.’
‘I was afraid he’d be followed over here.’
‘What happened?’ K. John asked as he gently peeled the bloodstained shirt from Tremaine’s scrawny chest.
‘About what you warned us against,’ Tremaine said. ‘When Barbara’s boys started that shooting ruckus, me and the girl slipped into the back where Willit has his office. Justine meant business, and so did I.’ He winced as K. John finished separating his shirt from the scabbing wound.
‘Go on,’ Flower said.
‘Someone—that one they call Hammond—laughed out loud as we burst in. He just grabbed Justine’s rifle and tossed it aside. Behind his desk Willit rose with a nasty little smile and plugged me while I was looking toward Justine. My nerves just went numb and I couldn’t hold my own rifle any longer. The pain was terrific.’
Flower, listening, winced in sympathy.
‘They told me “Run, old man!” and I realized that’s exactly what I am—a useless, old man.’ His head bowed. ‘And I ran,’ he said, ‘bleeding
like a stuck hog with no weapon—I just ran.’
‘What happened to Justine?’ K. John asked, throwing Tremaine’s bloody shirt aside.
‘Her, I don’t know,’ Tremaine said, with shame. ‘Last I remember seeing her she was sitting on the floor of Willit’s office, legs splayed.’
‘You couldn’t have done any more,’ K. John forced himself to say although he felt like scolding Tremaine for his irrational decision.
‘Now what?’ Flower asked as K. John washed her father’s wound with lye soap and water. The old man had passed out—from loss of blood or his intake of liquor, there was no saying which. ‘We have to go after Justine again?’
‘It looks like it. He’ll force the girl to marry him if she has to be carried bound hands and feet to the altar.’
After K. John tended to Tremaine’s wound as well as possible, Flower helped him place her father into the bed. Full of regret, she said, ‘Taking that job at the Oxhead wasn’t the most brilliant thing either of us has ever done.’
‘No, but we did. And it’s still not finished.’ K. John stood up, hands on hips, looking down at Tremaine, whose mouth was slack, eyelids fluttering.
‘What are you going to do?’ Flower asked.
‘The only thing I can think of. Willit’s riders are all pulling out of town. I’m going to the Double O again. Willit has to be stopped. Everyone else was right: there’s only one way to stop the man—with a bullet.’
‘K. John, please, don’t! You can be stopped the same way, you know.’
‘I know,’ K. John said. ‘You can stay here and watch your father in the meantime.’
‘I am in this too, K. John,’ she said stepping nearer, those dark green eyes looking up. ‘This is no time for me to be quitting on the job.’
‘Maybe it is,’ he said, carefully.
‘Maybe it is,’ she responded, ‘but I won’t.’
‘You are a hard-headed woman, Flower Tremaine.’
‘Am I not? Let’s get going.’
‘You know, Flower,’ he said, holding her up briefly, ‘that promise you made to Emerson Masters—no one could expect you to follow it this far.’
‘I expect it of myself. What about you, K. John?’
‘I think that you expect it of me,’ he answered.
In the lobby K. John asked her. ‘Have you any money left?’
‘Some.’ She fished in the pocket of her jeans and showed K. John. ‘Six dollars in folding money plus the fifty-dollar gold piece I was saving for escape money.’
‘Escape ... from what?’
‘From everything, if it just got to be too much.’
K. John nodded. ‘Let me have the six dollars. Keep your escape money. You still might need it.’
K. John, knowing the way of hotels, walked to the desk where a lazy-looking man with sagging jowls stood. ‘Sir?’ the clerk asked, looking up with unhappy eyes.
‘I’m thinking of a pistol,’ K. John said, leaning on the counter.
‘Not again! No more taking a man’s pistol in lieu of his unpaid hotel bill.’
‘No, sir. I want to buy one—I’m sure you have a few back there.’
More than one cowboy had come to town, gotten drunk and forgotten to set aside some money for his hotel bed, K. John knew. The only way out was to pawn their pistols and promise to come back to redeem them.
‘Buy one?’ the fat man’s eyebrows drew together.
‘Yes, show me what you’ve got.’
‘For two dollars,’ the man said, ‘I can let you have this.’ Placing a rusty piece on the counter, he smiled hopefully at K. John.
‘No wonder the man didn’t come back for that one,’ K. John said, disparagingly. ‘What else have you? I have six dollars to spend.’
Returning to Flower with an acceptable .44 Colt in his possession, he gave it to her. ‘If you insist on going along, I thought you’d feel better with this in your hand.’
‘Now I’m a quick-draw artist!’
‘Nothing of the sort. Just wave it around if necessary. The sight of a gun can be pretty intimidating.’
‘What if they aren’t the sort to be intimidated?’ Flower asked, uncertainly examining the Colt in her hand.
‘Then it’ll be up to me. Come on; let’s get going before I lose my own nerve.’
Stepping out into the night, now oddly silent since most of the Double O riders seemed to have gone, they started directly toward the saloon, K. John leaving his horse behind. One way or another he did not think he’d be needing it again on this night.
The walk seemed long to the Double O. Every moving shadow caused K. John’s heart to skip. No man walks willingly to his death.
They finally reached the door, opened it and scuffed their way across the dead-appearing saloon. There were few able-bodied men inside: perhaps a dozen. Most of these were clustered around the roulette wheel where still men played, jibed and groaned at a losing spin of the wheel. Besides these there were a few who looked as if they would have to be uprooted by force from their chairs, and were too old or drunk to care about running around trying to round up a bunch of runaway females.
Behind the bar Charlie still served drinks. When he caught sight of K. John, saw the deadly intent in his eyes, Charlie’s hand dropped below the bar toward where his shotgun was kept. Seeing Flower directly behind K. John also carrying a pistol, Charlie’s hand fell away from his weapon. He turned to polish his glasses, which needed none of it, and slightly inclined his head toward the back room.
K. John glanced at Flower, his mouth tightly set, and taking one last deep breath strode toward Clyde Willit’s office. K. John swung open the door and stood there, gun drawn, startling the tall Willit, who stood behind his desk in shirtsleeves. His Smith & Wesson revolver lay on the desktop in front of him.
‘Where’s the girl?’ K. John asked, deliberately cocking the Colt.
‘Which one? Landis, is it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I wondered when we’d finally meet. What girl is it you’re looking for? I’m sorry to tell you that I’m temporarily short of that particular commodity.’
‘Justine Masters,’ the voice behind K. John said. ‘We’re responsible for her, and we want her returned.’
‘Oh,’ Willit said with an amused smile. ‘Little Flower—you’ve come back again! What’s that big gun in your hand for? You want Justine? I do too, but she’s vanished again—after a little squabble.’ He touched his cheek where four lines of crimson were visible. ‘If you want to sit down and wait, I’m sure that I’ll have her back shortly.’
‘No,’ K. John said, stepping forward. There was determination on his face now as he said, ‘You’re through in this town, Willit. It didn’t have to be that way, but you’ve pushed it to that point. You’re through, and I’m finishing you.’
‘I’m not alone, Landis,’ Clyde Willit said.
‘You seldom are. Who is it, that low-life Hammond? The mood I’m in now it would be a pleasure to see him. What’s he doing? Hiding under your desk?’
‘Damn you, Landis!’ Hammond’s voice exploded as he appeared from an inner room. ‘I’ll show you “hiding”! You should have taken your warnings.’
K. John, who had been expecting it, triggered off and his bullet caught Hammond in the chest, driving him back against the wall. Now with a panicked expression on his handsome face, Clyde Willit lunged toward his revolver. He snatched it from the desktop as K. John switched his sights in the saloonkeeper’s direction. Willit might have been the first to trigger off, but from beside K. John a second pistol was fired and, after a moment’s standing there, shocked disbelief on his face, Willit slid slowly to the floor, fingers clawing at the desk.
K. John whirled to find Flower. Her face ashen, staring at the dying Willit, her Colt curling smoke.
‘I was just waving it to frighten him,’ Flower said in a miserable voice.
Apparently, she had waved it in the right way. K. John heard Willit’s body thump to the floor, felt
Flower’s nearness as she rushed into his arms. ‘What have we done, K. John?’ Flower murmured, clinging to him.
And what exactly had they accomplished with all of their running about? The saloon girls were still lost, homeless. Justine Masters had gone missing again. K. John pushed away from Flower, who was trembling violently.
‘Let’s finish our job. We have to find Justine and get her back to the Oxhead again.’
It was not that K. John was so eager to do the job, but he knew that it would distract Flower from her present sorry state of mind if she were given something to accomplish.
‘All right,’ Flower said. She stepped back, sniffling. She rubbed the heels of her hands against her forehead, nodding. ‘Let’s do that before the Double O riders get back bringing more bad news.’
They walked back into the saloon where all was silent. Men stared at them with wondering faces, questions they dared not ask. Charlie still stood motionless behind the bar. As K. John watched him the big man’s face went red, and he lifted his shotgun to his shoulder. K. John had no time to cry out; he pushed Flower to one side, then hit the floor himself as the double-twelve shotgun thundered across the room.
No buckshot tagged K. John, nor had it been intended for him. Looking back at the sound, K. John saw the body of a man thump against wood as it slid down along the staircase. He was already bandaged across a bare torso. Halfway down the flight of stairs, the body stopped its slide. All motion had ceased for him. He had been waiting at the head of the stairs, rifle at the ready. K. John looked his thanks at Charlie, who shrugged and muttered:
‘A man’s got to choose his side sometimes.’
K. John walked to the bloody body of the fallen man, kneeling briefly beside him.
‘Who was he?’ Flower asked in a wavering whisper.
‘Bean,’ K. John said, rising from the staircase. ‘His name was Bean. I once gave him his life back. It seems he didn’t value it all that much.’
‘There has to be an end to this!’ Flower said, finding her voice at last. She was not hysterical, exactly, but she waved her hands in an overwrought way and her eyes seemed a little wild to K. John.
Crossroads (A Piccadilly Publishing Western Book 8) Page 11