by Gene Curry
~*~
A bucket of water was thrown in my face and I woke up with a yell. Fitch had another bucket ready and he used that too. I put my hand to my head and it came away with blood on it. I squinted with pain as Fitch helped me to my feet. He was the only other person in the room.
“Fetch a bandage,” he yelled at Laughing Woman, who was cursing me again.
It wasn’t much of a wound and I said the hell with a bandage.
“You better sit down,” Fitch said. “Jessie’s gone.”
“How long?” I sat down and drank the glass of rum he handed me.
“Nearly an hour. I could have brought you to sooner. I didn’t. I wanted her to get a start. The rest of us are fixing to follow her and help.”
I cursed him for a damn fool. “You clown,” I yelled, wincing at the sound of my own voice. “Jessie killed John and I’m going to prove it.”
Fitch’s mouth hung open. “Why would she want to do that? Where’s the profit in that?”
“John let her down, she thinks. That’s why she killed him. This gives her a chance to make a name for herself.”
Fitch took a long swallow from the bottle. “Christ!” he said.
“You helped ready John for burial, didn’t you?”
“That’s right.”
“Then you saw the bullet hole in his chest. Was it a small hole?”
“I didn’t look too hard.”
“Then we better look now. Did the bullet come out through his back?”
Fitch shook his head. “No, it didn’t. A Remington would come through all right, so it wasn’t a hole made by a big bore.”
I stood up unsteadily. “I’m going to dig out that bullet,” I said.
“Why don’t you just go after her, kill her?” Fitch’s face was dark with anger.
“I’ll find her,” I said, “but first I want to find that bullet.”
I took out my knife and tested the edge. Fitch turned his eyes away and I said he didn’t have to help. “Just watch so you can tell a court what you saw. I’m going to get Jessie hung if I can. If not... we’ll get it done some other way.”
It took some tough talk to get Laughing Woman out of the way. Fitch pushed her out and closed the door. John lay wax faced on the bed. The color had gone from his hands and the liver spots that come with old age stood out clearly against the pallid skin. I told Fitch to light the lamp and bring it close to the bed.
I got John’s shirt open. Like the coat it had been slit down the back to get it on. I turned him over and there was no hole in his back. The one in his chest, right over the heart was small. Fitch turned the same color as the corpse as I probed for the small caliber bullet. That took some doing but I found it. I washed the bullet and then my hands.
“There it is—a .38,” I said. “Don’t turn your head. Take a long hard look.”
“I see it.”
The bullet had been smacked out of shape by the impact, but it was obvious that it hadn’t been fired by a big Remington.
“Fix him up again, will you?” I asked Fitch.
Fitch nodded. “You want help going after her? Not a man here isn’t ready.”
“No,” I answered, “I brought her here so it’s up to me. I just hope I can get to her before she gets to Pardee.”
I was thinking of how it must have been when poor old John met Jessie on the road. John liked the girl and would have been glad to see her. He might even have asked her to change her mind and stay on at the ranch. And while they were still talking she put a bullet in his heart.
The beautiful, murderous bitch!
“She must be out of her head,” Fitch said as I opened the door.
“There’s a cure for that,” was all I said.
Fitch said, “I guess I was wrong about you all the time. When you first came here I thought John was going to give you my job. But even when I saw that wasn’t so, I had no use for you. They said you were a gambler and a gunfighter.”
“Mostly a gambler, Curly. It’s safer and a better way to pass the time.”
“No, let me finish. I had it in for you because all my life I’ve had to work hard. At times like a dog. Then in you ride from nowhere and stay in the big house, eat the best, drink the best. I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to say. I didn’t like you, is all. Somehow I figured you had plans to put something over on Mr. Wingate.”
“Such as what?”
“Nothing special—something. Anyhow, that’s what I was thinking and I apologize for it. You gave me some licking. I guess I had it coming.”
“I thought we were going to square off some day?”
“Not now,” Fitch said, “unless we meet a long way from here and do it for the pleasure of the thing. What about that girl? You think you’re going to find her?”
“Oh yes,” I said, “I’m going to find her. She has to pay for what she’s done. It wouldn’t be right if she didn’t. I warned her and kept on warning and still she went ahead. I can’t let her get away with it.”
Fitch said, “You better look sharp so she doesn’t kill you too.”
“Not if I see her first,” I said.
Chapter Thirteen
On my way back to Dade City I wondered how long and how far I would have to travel before I caught up with Jessie. It didn’t matter. I would take as much time as I needed—but I’d find her. By the time Fitch woke me up with cold water she had been gone an hour. Now it was close to an hour and a half—too late to hurry.
I didn’t hurry because she might be waiting for me under cover of darkness. She hadn’t killed me at the ranch because doing that wouldn’t fit too well with the crazy legend she was trying to build up around her name. Or maybe she didn’t want to kill me at all, for old times’ sake, because of those nights together in bed. It didn’t matter to me what she wanted to do. I would kill her—or die trying. There could be no other end to our peculiar love story.
I rode easy and I listened more than I looked because there wasn’t much to see. A couple of times I thought I heard something, but it turned out to be nothing at all. I kept going.
Five miles of flat country stretched out between the ranch and the boundary wire, not a good place for an ambush, and maybe that’s why she would choose it. Nothing happened by the time I got to the wire. The men on guard there said she had passed through and they gave me the time.
“She said she was going after Pardee,” one of the cowboys said with something like awe in his voice. “Imagine a girl doing that!”
“Just imagine,” I said.
About a mile past the wire the country was still level but crisscrossed with ravines. In a while I got close to the dip in the road where John had been murdered by my bed partner. I got off the road and came in from the side. I dismounted and climbed up into the rocks, but there was nobody getting set to shoot me. I rode on, thinking of John, thinking of Jessie and our nights together. None of the thoughts I had were pleasant.
Even then, riding out to kill her, I don’t think I really hated Jessie. She was crazy; that had to be it. Crazy and beautiful, always a dangerous combination in a woman. I knew it would be strange when I found her. We had been squaring off in different ways for a long time. It hadn’t really been a long time; it felt like eternity to me because somehow, in my bones, it would have to end badly. I sensed it the first day I ran across her in the desert, flat behind the dead pony. If only those two cowboys had been better shots. But I had killed them before they could kill her and men had died because of it—and soon more would die.
Darling Jessie! I thought bitterly.
I knew that most of Pardee’s men had already gone back to the ranch. All I could hope for now was that Pardee and the last few stragglers had gone too. It was one thing for Jessie to kill an old befuddled man and a few drunks. At the ranch, with all of them there, she would be sure to get killed, not a bad solution the more I considered it. But I wasn’t taking any chances that she might not be waiting for me in town.
I made fairly goo
d time getting there, but I didn’t ride straight in. From where I was, less than a mile out, I could see the lights of the town. I didn’t hear any shooting. I gave it a few minutes and still didn’t hear anything, and perhaps the shooting, if there had been any, was long over by now.
Keeping to the road, I turned off when I was about half a mile away. I rode out wide, circling the town, and started in from the south end. The main street was just a thin slash of light in the solid darkness that enveloped it. Nothing to see, nothing to hear.
I came in easy and there wasn’t a thing moving in the street, not even a horse hitched here and there. That gave me a bad feeling because even in the deadest town in the world you always saw a few horses. It was beginning to look as if everybody in Dade City had cleared out, and there could be only one reason for that—a lot of killing!
When I got close to the light I dismounted and tied my horse with a double hitch. There was more cover on the sidewalk, and more noise no matter how softly I walked, so I stayed in the packed dirt and sand of the street, the Winchester cocked and ready to fire.
My nerves jerked when suddenly the player piano in the saloon began to jangle, but there was something wrong with the tinny music—it was going too fast. It kept going faster and faster as I walked down the street, keeping as close to the sidewalk as I could. I was still walking when I saw the first dead man outside the saloon, and even at a distance I could see that his head had been blown away. A badge glinted on his chest, but he was too thin to be the sheriff.
I looked across the street and there was Sheriff Brimmer lying half in and out of the jail door. I didn’t have to guess what kind of weapon had been used to kill him. Jessie had used the shotgun to put the law out of action before she went about her other business.
The mechanical piano was racing madly, then suddenly it stopped with a grinding screech of its innards. I was moving again when a goddamned dog came yapping down the street. It was a small dog, the kind of stray you see in any town, but it was coming at me like a wolf. I stepped up on the sidewalk and got ready to bash its head in with the butt of the rifle.
Somebody in one of the front rooms over the saloon saved me the trouble. A window went up with a crash and a single blast from a shotgun blew the dog to mincemeat. It didn’t even scream when it died.
Jessie was on the rampage and no wonder the town had emptied out. I looked up and saw her shadow on most of the window shade as she moved back into the center of the room. Either she was talking to herself or there was somebody in there with her; I could hear her but couldn’t make out the words. Then, while I listened, she began to laugh. Jessie was enjoying herself; she laughed a lot. The laughing stopped and I heard the sound of a shotgun being snapped open, the rattle of an empty shot shell on the wooden floor.
I got as far as the dead deputy; a pistol was clutched in his hand, but it hadn’t done him any good. Close to the door now, I knew that Jessie was already downstairs. She hadn’t made a sound, yet I knew she was in there waiting for me.
Suddenly she called my name. “Saddler, is that you? Don’t get foxy with me. I know it’s you out there.”
I didn’t answer.
Jessie said, “Are you coming in or not? I guess you’re mad because I rapped you on the head. I could have killed you, but I didn’t. I had to do it, Saddler. You were getting in the way. Answer me, you bastard.”
Blown by the wind, a ball of tumble weed rattled down the sidewalk and was stopped by my legs. I reached down and moved it aside with the barrel of the Winchester. It rolled away.
I knew the twin hammers of the shotgun were already eared back. And all for me. Both barrels.
Jessie was getting mad. “I’m getting sick of this standoff, Saddler. Come on in or go to hell.”
I thought I heard her moving but wasn’t sure. I edged back a little more just to be sure: a double blast from a sawed-off fans out like a cloud of death, and even if the buckshot doesn’t get you a sharp splinter of wood will do the job just as well.
Next she said what was really on her mind and it wasn’t that much of a surprise. “The biggest ranch in the county is ready to be grabbed and it belongs to anybody strong enough to take it. That could be you and me, Saddler. That’s the reason I didn’t kill you when I had the chance. Think about it, you damn fool—but don’t take too long.”
I answered her from a safe place between the door and the window. “Why don’t you take it all for yourself, Jessie. You keep saying you don’t need help from anybody.”
It must have choked her to say it. “The two of us could do it. All right, I need help. I need your help. I told you before, we’re alike. You take what you want but you never went after anything big. This is the biggest chance you’ll ever get. Now stop all this sneaking around. Come in and we’ll have a drink and talk about it. No shooting and that’s a promise, word of honor.”
Oh, she was crazy all right. “You don’t have to make any promises,” I said. “I guess you could have killed me at that.”
“More than once, Saddler, but you’re still alive. Are you coming in?”
“Coming in,” I said.
I stomped my feet, then reached out and pushed the batwing doors with the muzzle of the rifle. A blast from one barrel of the shotgun blew the doors off their hinges and when I jerked the rifle back there were nicks in the barrel.
“So much for promises!” I yelled, waiting for the next blast.
Jessie yelled back, “I would have kept my word, but you didn’t keep yours. You didn’t think you could fool me with an old trick like that? Now what are you going to do?”
I wondered where she was standing. In the middle of the room? Behind the bar, where a rifle bullet wouldn’t get her too easily?
I gave her my answer about what I was going to do. “I’m going to kill you, Jessie. See you hang if I can. No glory, no big name, no legend—just you and the hangman and six feet of dirt in your pretty face. They won’t bury you with decent people. No mound, no gravestone, just a hole out in the desert.”
I hoped that would make her wild enough to get careless and come out shooting. It didn’t. There was a long silence, then I started again.
“Listen hard, Jessie,” I yelled. “I’m going to wait you out no matter how long it takes.” I wasn’t about to do any such thing. “Then I’m going to take you in and let a judge and jury send you where you belong— straight to hell! If that doesn’t suit you, come out and we’ll finish it right now. That’s the best chance you’ll get.”
Even that didn’t get her mad, and that wasn’t like my sweet Jessie with the hard blue eyes and the quick temper. “You’ll never get me into a court, Saddler,” she answered, then she screamed with fright when that damn piano started jangling again. But she recovered quickly enough and she fired one blast at the doorway before I could dive through.
I ran into the alley that went between the saloon and the general store. Wooden crates were stacked there and I climbed fast and got a grip on the balcony that fronted the saloon. I pulled myself up and over and in through an open window. The first thing I saw when I got inside was Vince Pardee lying dead in a blood-soaked bed. It looked like she had given him both barrels of the scattergun. His six-shooter was still in a gunbelt hung over the back of a chair.
I got to the end of the hall where it became a balcony that hung over the saloon, but Jessie was nowhere in sight. Then I heard a sound behind an upturned table and I let fly with three shots. The bullets ripped into the heavy table but didn’t go through. Then Jessie’s head bobbed up behind the shotgun and the twin barrels exploded at the same time. Buckshot tore through wood and plaster and I went crashing back against the wall, my eyes half-blinded with dust. Trying to sleeve the dirt out of my eyes I heard the shotgun snapping open, the hollow pop of new shells being loaded. I still couldn’t see when she fired a single blast that shattered a long section of the railing. I was flat on the floor and the blast did no damage to me. Still rubbing at my eyes, I waited for her to come running u
p the stairs to kill me with the other barrel.
Instead, she yelled something I couldn’t understand and made a break for the back door. I let her go; the way my eyes were I was glad to let her go. The back door banged open, but that didn’t mean she was gone because sweet little Jessie had more turns in her than a sidewinder.
I stayed where I was until I was able to see. That took minutes and still the only sound was the wind blowing the door back and forth on its rusty hinges.
Getting up slowly I edged back along the hallway. My eyes burned like hell and I washed them out with a pitcher of water I found in one of the rooms. On the floor one of Pardee’s men lay dead. The whole place stank of death and I shuddered in spite of myself. I was no stranger to sudden death but seldom had I seen anything as savage as this.
I knew she might still be waiting for me in the darkness outside the back door. No matter, I had to go down and take my chances against the scattergun. It was time—and past time—to put Jessie where she couldn’t do any more harm.
I figured the last man on Jessie’s list would be the judge who had issued the inciting to murder warrant against John Wingate. She had murdered old John so she could mete out ‘justice’ to the men who had nothing to do with his death. Once that was done her legend would be secure. I suppose that was how she thought of it. To allow the judge to live would leave the job unfinished.
The judge lived south of town on a few acres of land and that’s where I had to go. Before I went out into the dark I shot out the lights in the barroom and then the other storage room that led to the back door. I pitched a chair into the darkness and dived after it before it struck the ground.
Rolling away from where I landed I came up fast, holding the Winchester. Jessie’s shotgun boomed and flashed, one barrel at a time, one at where I landed, the other not far from where I was. If I had been a couple of feet to the left I would have been shredded and dead before I hit the ground.
Now it was my turn to attack and I drove her back before she had time to reload. She dodged behind a wagon and I heard the breech opening and closing. I stumbled over something just as she let loose both barrels. Snapping the rifle to my shoulder, I fired as fast as I could jack the lever. Then the pin dropped on empty. There was no time to thumb more shells into the Winchester, so I opened up with the Colt. That drove her out from the cover of the wagon and when I ran, keeping the bulk of the wagon between us, I could hear her boots crashing through a pile of broken bottles and empty cans in the alley that led back to the street. Just before she broke into the light the shotgun thundered again. I fired twice but the distance was too great for a six-gun, and I missed.