Bullets Over Bedlam

by Peter Brandvold

  As the man dragged a second body toward the door, he stopped and regarded Hawk with beetled brows. “You could lend me a hand, ’stead of sittin’ there swillin’ my whiskey!”

  Hawk had crossed his boots on a chair. Now he removed them and stood. “You gave the skunks sanctuary. Endure the stench.” He grabbed his rifle and the money-stuffed saddlebags from the table. “I’m going to bed.”

  He picked up the beer mug, turned, and headed for the stairs. Behind him, the barman cursed and continued dragging the dead Mexican toward the door.

  As Hawk mounted the second-story landing, he saw the girl still sitting where he’d left her, head in her hands. She was no longer sobbing. She just sat there. Hawk chuffed, opened the door of the first room on the left, went inside, and closed the door softly behind him.

  Five hours later, Hawk opened the door and stepped into the hall, a long, slender Lobo Negro cigar protruding from between his lips. He carried his Henry in his right hand, the saddlebags draped over his left shoulder. His sheepskin vest was buttoned halfway up his chest, and his revolvers rode high on his hips. The thick, dark-brown hair hanging down from his broad-brimmed black hat was damp from the water he’d brushed through it with his hands.

  Hawk glanced to his left, where the sashed window at the end of the hall shone with milky blue light. The girl was gone. Nielsen’s body was gone, too, and the blood scrubbed up, but a large smudge remained. It looked like oil in the murky light.

  Hawk descended the stairs to the main room. The bartender sat at one of the three remaining tables, crouched over a plate, forking eggs and side pork into his mouth. A lamp burned on the bar, but the room was mostly in shadow.

  “The place looks damn near civilized,” Hawk said as he fired his cigar from the lamp cylinder.

  The bartender shoved another forkful into his mouth and slid his chair back. He gestured to the chair across from him. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

  Drawing on the Lobo Negro, Hawk watched the barman disappear through a curtained doorway behind the bar. Hawk blew out a long smoke plume, sauntered over to the table, slung the saddlebags and rifle over a chair, and sat down.

  Presently, the barman reappeared, a steaming tin plate in one hand, a steaming stone mug in the other. He set both before Hawk. The plate was piled with scrambled eggs, two fatty chunks of side pork, and toast still smoking from the range top, basted with butter. The coffee looked rich and black.

  Hawk arched a brow at the barman smiling across the table at him. “I’m gonna have to wreck your place more often.”

  The barman snickered and shook a shock of stringy hair back from his left eye. As Hawk picked up his fork and dug into the eggs, the barman reached into his left breast pocket and flipped Hawk’s copper star onto the table. Hawk glanced at it, then at the barman smiling at him like the cat that ate the canary.

  “Found that when I was cleanin’ up.”

  “Obliged.” Hawk picked up the badge, ran his thumb across the engraved words, “Deputy U.S. Marshal,” then stuffed it into his own shirt pocket and returned to his food.

  He’d eaten half when the barman finished his own plate and, taking his mug in both hands, leaned back in his chair. “For a cut of that lucre—a very small cut—you won’t have nothin’ to worry about.”

  Hawk stopped his fork halfway to his mouth, glanced across the table. The barman hooded his eyes knowingly. “I won’t say a word about you takin’ those boys down without givin’ ’em a chance to give themselves up first.”

  “I’m not worried about it.” Hawk shoved the fork into his mouth, then took up his knife and cut off a chunk of side pork. The barman continued staring at him, squeezing his coffee mug in his dark hands.

  Finally, the man leaned forward in his chair as if, though he and Hawk were probably the only two people within thirty square miles, he might be overheard. “Be a sport. That’s a lot of money.” He glanced at the bulging pouches to his right. “You’re gonna take a cut. Give me a little . . . for wreckin’ my place if nothin’ else.”

  “You have six good mustangs in your barn, and you took the guns off the bodies, didn’t you?” Hawk stared at him. “And probably a couple hundred dollars from their pockets?”

  The man’s cheeks balled. “But, shit, that’s a lot of lucre!”

  Hawk chewed a hunk of side pork and sipped his coffee. “It’s going back to Cartridge Springs. Every penny.”

  The barman glared, mouth half-open. “Bullshit!”

  “Every penny.”

  When Hawk finished his plate, he threw back the last of his coffee and picked his cold cigar up from the table. Standing and slinging the saddlebags over his shoulder and taking the Henry in his right hand, he moved to the bar and relit the cheroot at the lamp.

  “Obliged for the breakfast,” he told the barman as he strode toward the door, puffing smoke.

  Behind Hawk, the barman’s chair scraped across the puncheons. “Hey, wait a damn minute!”

  Hawk grabbed his oilskin off a wall hook and kept moving through the door, down the porch steps, and across the soggy yard. Behind him, the barman’s raspy, Irish-accented voice rose. “You’re that crazy lawman from the Plains, ain’t ye? The one that went loco when some outlaw hanged your boy—”

  Hawk stopped and half-turned, his shaggy dark brows mantling his ice-green eyes.

  The barman grinned, his stringy hair shading his face. “Sure as shit.”

  Hawk hefted his rifle and continued toward the barn. “Hey!” the barman shouted. “They’s been people lookin’ fer you!”

  Hawk continued walking, boots crunching softly in the damp gravel. He stared at the dark barn looming in the cool, gray dawn, the sky lightening behind it. But in his mind’s eye, young Jubal hung from a cottonwood tree atop a high hill . . . his small, plump body swinging in the lashing rain while lightning danced around him.

  “No!” Hawk had shouted.

  But he’d been too late. By the time he’d cut him down, the boy was dead. And Three-Fingers Ned Meade was riding down the other side of the hill, him and his gang disappearing in the stormy darkness.

  Hawk jerked the left door open and disappeared inside, leaving the door half-open behind him. Ten minutes later, the door flew wide and Hawk reappeared from the barn’s inner shadows, leading his saddled grulla. His rifle was in his saddle boot, and his oilskin was wrapped around his bedroll.

  The fiery grulla pranced and tossed its head, eager to hit the trail.

  The barman was still standing on the porch, one hand on an awning post. “There’s been a man around, lookin’ fer you.”

  Hawk had grabbed the saddle horn and had turned out a stirrup. He stopped and stretched a glance toward the roadhouse, the bulky barman silhouetted against the open front door.

  “That ain’t news to me.”

  “This one wasn’t no bounty hunter. A lawman, he was.” The barman traced a small circle on his chest and stretched his lips back from his teeth. “Big copper star, just like yours.”

  “He have a handle?”

  “Flagg. Had six others with him, all wearin’ stars. Said they had a warrant from four Territorial governors. A death warrant. Made out just for you.” The barman rose up on the toes of his worn, low-heeled boots, his grin showing wider. “Said it was my duty as a U.S. citizen to report any encounter I might have with this man they was lookin’ for . . . this Gideon Henry Hawk. Vigilante lawman from the Plains.”

  Hawk turned, grabbed his saddle horn, toed a stirrup, and swung into the saddle. He neck-reined the grulla toward the roadhouse. The barman stared at Hawk riding toward him, the smile slowly fading from the Irishman’s thin, chapped lips. He removed his hand from the awning post and took a single, slow step back.

  Hawk turned the grulla sideways to the porch and favored the man with a level stare. “If Flagg comes through here again, tell him to go home.” He shook his head. “I don’t cotton to killing lawmen, but any man running up my backside dies, lawman or no.”


  Hawk slapped his holster, a blur of fluid movement. Then the Colt was in his hand, cocked and shoulder high, aimed at the roadhouse.

  The barman screamed, crossing his arms in front of his face and bolting straight back.

  The Colt barked, echoing around the morning-quiet yard.

  The barman tripped over his own feet, falling hard on his rump. Rolling his fear-bright eyes around in their sockets, he slowly lowered his hands. To his right, in the far corner of the open roadhouse door, a large rat lay in two bloody halves.

  He turned to Hawk. The big lawman was riding away from him, heading for the eastern trail and the saddleback ridge, broad shoulders sloping under the sheepskin vest.

  “Best not leave your door open,” Hawk called over his right shoulder. “Or next thing, you’ll be giving sanctuary to rats.”

  Three days later, under cover of darkness, Hawk rode into the foothills town of Cartridge Springs, a ranching burg in the central Territory. It was Saturday, and ranch hands were whooping it up along the main street, gas lamps and fire-brands illuminating the false-fronted saloons and hotels like dance halls in hell.

  Hawk asked one of the pie-eyed drovers stumbling across the street where he would find the bank president’s home. Five minutes later, he dismounted his grulla at the dark south end of the village, under a sprawling cottonwood.

  The breeze rustled the leaves, and crickets chirped. In the distance, a dog yipped at coyotes yammering in the hills.

  Ground-tying the horse, Hawk slung the saddlebags stuffed with greenbacks over his shoulder and crept through the shadows before a large stone house with a well-tended yard surrounded by a white picket fence.

  Several windows were lit, and a piano pattered inside. It didn’t sound like the banker was pining overmuch for his daughter.

  Quietly, eyeing the curtained first-story windows, Hawk turned through the gate, strode up the brick walk, and mounted the porch. He dropped the saddlebags on a wicker rocking chair, rapped twice on the door, then turned and strode out of the yard, latching the gate and mounting his horse.

  When he rode back to the main drag, he stabled the grulla and, his saddlebags over his shoulder and his rifle in his hand, went looking for the quietest hotel in town.

  He found it on a side street—two stories of sun-blistered pine, only three horses and a mule tethered to the hitch rack, and two middle-aged men in conservative suits sipping beers on the porch. The place was as dark as a funeral parlor, only one downstairs window softly lit.

  As Hawk strode toward a spot at the hitch rack between a horse and a mule, he stopped suddenly, then wheeled, raising his rifle one-handed. His neck hairs were prickling, as though someone were watching him . . . following him.

  His gaze swept the opposite side of the street, where a few shanties and a couple of wood-frame shops hunkered in the sage and broom grass, starlight smeared in their windows. Hawk eyed a rain barrel near the left front corner of one shanty. A sudden wind gust swept dirt along the street. Behind the hovels, a cat moaned.

  Otherwise, nothing moved. The only sound was the cat, the muffled din of the reveling ranch hands, and the desultory voices of the two men on the hotel stoop.

  Inside, Hawk asked the white-haired gent behind the desk for a room and signed the register.

  “For only one extra dollar, I’ll send a girl up.”

  Hawk squinted at the bug-eyed oldster in his crisp white shirt and hand-knit vest, a bow tie snugged against the old man’s turkey neck.

  The night clerk shrugged, and his swivel chair squeaked. “I gotta compete with the hotels on Main. I can send for a girl from Miss De Voe’s across the way. Like I said, it’s only one extra dollar, and I hear tell those gals really know their work.” He closed a moth-wing lid over one bulging blue eye. “Not a one over eighteen!”

  Hawk plucked the key from the register book. “Next time.”

  He mounted the stairs at the rear of the lobby, found his room, washed, undressed, climbed into the brass-framed bed, blew out the lamp, and let his head sink back on the pillow.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he opened his eyes. He’d heard something.

  The lamp was lit, casting soft yellow light and shadows. Warm, sweet breath pushed against his face. He jerked his head back, snapped a hand toward his gun belt coiled over a bedpost, clawed the Russian from the holster, and clicked the hammer back.

  A woman laughed and leapt back from the bed. “Easy, lover! It’s me, Saradee Jones.”

  She laughed again. When Hawk’s eyes focused, he saw the heart-shaped face framed in billowing, copper-colored hair.

  The heart-stopping, high-breasted, round-hipped body, clad in only a dusty trail hat and a flimsy chemise . . .

  4.

  NIGHT VISITOR

  HAWK blinked at the gorgeous, near-naked woman standing before his bed, her full red lips stretched back from her teeth, blue eyes flashing devilishly in the lamplight.

  He had to be dreaming. His senses were as keen as a cougar’s. No one could sneak into his room, light a lamp, and undress without him hearing.

  Saradee Jones stepped toward the bed, putting her bare feet down softly, gently shoving his cocked pistol aside with the back of her left hand and then sitting down beside him, making the bedsprings squawk. She’d been reading his mind. Her tone was vaguely cajoling.

  “You must’ve been riding hard, last few days. Didn’t think I could sneak into your room, much less light a lamp while you snored like a drunken sailor.” She leaned down and kissed his cheek. “You’re getting careless, Mr. Hawk.”

  Hawk pushed her back with one hand, aimed the cocked Russian at her with the other. “What the hell are you doing here?” He scowled, brows beetling. “How in the hell did you get in here?”

  “Skeleton key.” She hefted her magnificent breasts. “The old man downstairs went soft as fresh cow plop when I thrust these in his face.”

  “I told you next time I saw you, I’d kill you.”

  Chuckling, she leaned forward, her left hand nudging his pistol up into the deep crease between her breasts. The sheer chemise drew taut against the orbs, revealing their fullness and roundness, each separately defined, the nipples jutting against the fabric. She ran her fingertips along the gun’s barrel, then down along his hand and wrist, tickling him with her nails. “Why don’t you fire?”

  Hawk glared at her, his trigger finger tensing.

  He should shoot her. Her death would be no loss. She was a thief and a killer, her gang having wiped out nearly an entire detachment of an army payroll guard before Hawk had tracked her to Mexico last year. Everywhere she went, she piled up the bodies of men who fell prey to her charms.

  A priestess as dark and cunning as Lorelei, she was more depraved than she was beautiful.

  Hawk swallowed, eased the tension in his trigger finger.

  But there was no denying that she was beautiful . . . and the most alluring, sensuous creature he’d ever known. As much as he wanted to squeeze the Russian’s trigger, something stopped him.

  His heart drummed in his ears.

  He raised the barrel, depressed the hammer, set the revolver on the dresser beside the bed, and grabbed her arms, pulling her to him harshly. He kissed her. She drew back slightly, keeping her forehead pressed to his, stretching her lips back from her teeth, chuckling.

  “I knew you couldn’t do it!”

  He brought his right hand up and wrapped his fingers around her neck. He stared into her eyes, the pupils contracting slightly with fear as the color rose in her cheeks.

  He bunched his lips, his own cheeks flushing with anger, but then he loosened his grip and pulled her down toward him. She sucked a breath, closed her lips over her teeth, and, groaning, threw her arms around him, mashing her mouth down on his.

  He reached behind her, took the back of the chemise in his hands, and ripped it with one, passionate thrust. He flung the garment to the floor, rose up on his elbows, and rolled Saradee over onto her back.
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br />   She cried out in ecstasy as he rose up on his hands and thrust himself between her legs. He stopped, stared bemusedly down at her. She moaned and wrapped her ankles around his back, bouncing her butt. “Please . . . please . . .”

  He squeezed her breast with his right hand, leaned down, and closed his mouth over hers, kissing her savagely as he rose up then thrust down once more.

  She convulsed and bucked beneath him, locking her ankles behind his back and sucking his tongue more deeply into her.

  He placed his fists on either side of her head, leaning on his arms and pummeling her with his hips until the bedsprings sounded like a steam engine on a fast downgrade.

  Later, he lay back on his pillow, one hand behind his head. Saradee lay naked beside him, resting her head on his shoulder, combing the auburn hair on his chest with her fingers, her breasts feeling soft and warm against his side.

  “You got no cause to look so sour,” she said, glancing into his pensive green eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I have as much cause to kill you as you, me.”

  “How the hell do you figure that?”

  She curled her lip and gave a couple of his chest hairs a tug. “You used me, you bastard. Pretended to throw in with me and my boys. You stole back the payroll money, foiled our attempt to take the Mexican gold, and . . . hmmm, hmmm, what else? Oh, yes, now I remember . . . you killed off my entire gang!”

  “Butchers, all. Including you.”

  “Don’t be uppity. You’re not exactly an altar boy.” She snugged her cheek against his neck, ran her hand, fingers splayed, across his flat belly, stretching the tips of her fingers below his waist. “You and I could raise hob, if we threw in together.”

  Hawk chuffed. “Forget it.”

  She ran the hand lower and canted her eyes up toward his. “We could have all kinds of fun . . . make a ton of money. I’ve got a new gang startin’ up. Old friends, you might say. Those boys could use a ramrod to give ’em some direction. I could use a good ramrod, my ownself.” Her hand tightened around him. “Come on, Hawk. You’re more like me than you think. You could have shot me a few minutes ago. Instead . . . well . . . you know . . .”