The Searcher

by Len Levinson

  “Let’s do it, honey.”

  Stone felt himself going weak in the knees. She was right there, ready, and who knew where Marie was? And he needed it. He’d been alone for so long. He could have that wonderful thrill again.

  “Make up your mind,” she said. “I don’t have all night.”

  In a flash Stone’s mood changed. She was a prostitute, this was her job, she didn’t care about him at all beyond what he had in his pocket.

  He raised his hands to her shoulders and gently pushed her away. “Please put on your clothes,” he said.

  He sat on the chair and rolled a cigarette. She put on her dress sadly. “I do somethin’ wrong?” she asked like a guilty child.

  Stone looked at her and realized that’s what she was: a guilty child.

  “What do you charge?” Stone asked.

  “Four dollars.”

  Stone reached into his jeans, took out the coins, and handed them to her.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Buy your kids something on me.”

  She looked at him for a few moments, then stepped forward and kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

  She walked out of the room, and Stone smoked his cigarette, still inhaling her fragrance. If she hadn’t put him off, he would’ve gone through with it. That’s how close it had been.

  He realized his willpower wasn’t what he’d thought.

  Maybe one day he’d give in, and then it would never be the same with him and Marie. He looked at the bed in front of him, fluffy and white, and a deep exhaustion came over him, the result of insufficient sleep. This was the moment he’d been dreaming about while sitting atop his horse in the middle of nowhere. At last he’d sleep on a real bed.

  He took off his clothes, pulled a Colt out of a holster, blew out the lamp, and crawled into bed, the Colt in his right hand and his finger curled around the trigger.

  He let himself sink into the mattress, and it was like dropping through a cloud. No pebbles ground into his hip. His head was on a soft pillow instead of a hard saddle, and the sheets smelled sweet and clean, unlike the horsey smell of his saddle.

  His body went limp and in seconds he was asleep.

  There was a loud, insistent knock, and Stone woke suddenly out of a deep slumber, bringing his gun around and pointing it at the door.

  “John Stone—open up!”

  Stone got out of bed and opened the door. Standing before him was Chip Flanagan from the stable, greatly agitated. Flanagan entered the room and said, “Horses from the Rafter K’re in town. I was on my way home from work, and I saw ’em. They’re lookin’ for you. You better clear out of here. I got yer horse in back.”

  Stone got dressed quickly, strapped on his guns, and pulled on his boots. He put on his hat, threw the saddlebags over his shoulder, and walked to the door, opening it cautiously, peering into the corridor.

  It was darkness interlaced with rays of moonlight shining through the windows at the ends of the corridor. The stairwell glowed with light from the lobby downstairs. Stone turned to Flanagan behind him.

  “I’ll go first. You wait a few minutes, then go home. Thanks for your help.”

  Stone stepped into the corridor and walked softly to the stairs, descending them to the lobby, holding his pistols ready to fire. In the lobby a few well-dressed drunks lolled on upholstered chairs, and the clerk was behind his desk, writing something. Stone crossed the lobby, looking for ways to get to the back of the building without going outside. He saw several doors, and the clerk looked up, his eyes widening at the sight of the two guns in Stone’s hands.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Is there a back entrance?”

  “Over there.”

  Stone opened a door and passed down a long dark corridor lined with doors. Another door was at the end, and it had a small window. He looked outside and saw his horse tied to the rail, saddled and ready to go. Stone smiled and thought gratefully of Chip Flanagan. He opened the door and stepped outside.

  “That’s him!”

  The world around him exploded with gunfire, bullets crashing into the wooden structure of the building, splinters flying in the air. Stone slammed the door shut and ran down the corridor toward the lobby.

  He charged into the lobby just as a group of cowboys were entering the front door, guns in their hands.

  “Get him!”

  Stone fired four fast shots then ran for the stairs, leaping up several at a time as bullets whizzed around him and one hit the saddlebags full of coins on his shoulder, causing him to lose his balance. He spun around, fell to the stairs, and fired four shots at the cowboys rushing to the stairs below him.

  They dived for cover, and Stone vaulted up the stairs to the next landing. He paused, fired a few shots at the cowboys, then ran around and climbed the next flight of stairs to the third floor of the hotel.

  Behind him he could hear the boots of the cowboys scrambling to climb the stairs and kill him. Again he cursed his affection for clean sheets, hot baths, and dancing girls. I should’ve slept on the prairie, but like a damn fool, I had to come here.

  He came to the third floor, and it was a dark corridor with a window at each end. He tried all the doors on the corridor, and they were locked until he came to one near the end. The door opened. He stepped silently inside the room and smelled thick, alcoholic fumes. A stout man in his fifties wearing long underwear lay passed out drunk on the bed, snoring loudly. Stone locked the door and pressed his ear against it.

  He heard the cowboys from the Rafter K in the hallway.

  “Where the hell is he!” roared the voice of Dillon, ramrod of the brand.

  “He’s up here someplace!” somebody replied.

  “Find him!”

  Stone crossed the room to the window and looked down at a dark alley and the next building, which was only two stories high, with a peaked roof. He could jump out the window to the roof next door, but the roof looked awfully steep, and he might slide off.

  If only I had a rope. But his rope was affixed to his saddle. The drunk on the bed continued to snore, and Stone stepped back to the door, pressing his ear against it and listening.

  “He must’ve gone into one of these rooms!” somebody said.

  “Knock on all the doors!” Dillon replied. “If nobody answers, shoot out the locks! Don’t let the son of a bitch get away!”

  Stone stepped back from the door and looked at the roof across the way. It was a long jump, and he didn’t think he could make it. He realized he was trapped and broke out into a cold sweat.

  From the corridor he could hear cowboys pounding on doors with the butts of their guns, hollering, “Open up!” He heard shots and realized they were blowing away the locks on some of the doors. Stone thought of only one thing to do.

  He crawled underneath the bed and hastily reloaded both his Colts, then lay still and waited. The man snored in the bed above him, and Stone heard shots and a commotion in the corridor.

  “What’s the meaning of this!” shouted an indignant female voice.

  “Shut up and stand against that wall!”

  Stone knew they’d get to his room pretty soon. He’d gone through five years of war, and it looked as though he was going to get shot down in a hotel room on the frontier. He racked his brain and tried to think of something else to do, but there was nothing except try to get as many of them as possible.

  There was a knock on the door followed by, “Open up!”

  The drunk missed a beat in his snoring then resumed. The cowboy knocked again. Then a shot was fired and the door was kicked open. Light entered the room from the corridor, where one of the cowboys was carrying a lantern. The man on top of the bed continued to snore.

  “Look at this guy!” said the cowboy. “He’s so drunk he can’t hear nothin’.”

  “Look in the closet and underneath the bed,” said Dillon.

  Stone tensed and tightened his fingers around the triggers. He heard two sets of footsteps approaching. One set w
ent to the closet, and the other approached the bed. Stone looked at two boots in the light beside the bed. The ankles in the boots flexed and then a pair of knees appeared. Stone took aim with the gun in his right hand, and a second later a face looked at him sideways.

  Stone pulled the trigger of the gun, and the face cracked apart. Stone rolled out from underneath the bed and fired both his guns at the cowboys in the doorway as he jumped to his feet. He leapt over the bed as the drunken man still slept soundly on top of the bedspread, and then the cowboys got over their surprise.

  “Kill him!” hollered Dillon.

  There was only one place to go. Stone clenched his teeth, lowered his head, and dived toward the window as bullets slammed into the wall around him. He crashed through the glass and sailed through the air in a long parabola, landing with shards of glass on the roof of the house across the alley.

  He dug into the wooden shingles with his fingernails and the tips of his boots, slid down a few inches, and came to a stop. Turning around, he saw faces in the broken window above him. He raised his Colts and fired, and the faces disappeared.

  Taking a deep breath, he climbed up the side of the roof as a bullet struck the shingle a few inches from his left ear, and another bullet landed beside his left hip. Scrambling frantically, he made it to the top of the roof and lunged over.

  Bullets whacked into the roof, but now he was sheltered. Pausing, loading his Colts, he heard more bullets being fired, and then Dillon’s voice: “Git the son of a bitch!”

  Stone thought the shooting should’ve attracted the law by now. Climbing down the side of the roof, he came to the eave and looked to the ground. It was two stories down, nearly twenty feet, a long drop into a dark alley, but he had no place else to go.

  As a boy, he’d climbed trees and jumped off branches, but never at a distance like this. A man could break bones from this height, but a bullet would be far more lethal. All he could do was roll when he hit the ground to cushion the shock.

  He threw the saddlebags over the eave, then took a deep breath and jumped, his spurs gleaming in the light of the moon. He sailed through the air, his stomach rising into his throat, and floated toward the ground, passing windows and clapboard shingles on the wall across the way. He knew he had to be loose when he hit the ground, otherwise his thigh bones would burst through his hips, and he would be helpless before the men from the Rafter K.

  He looked down and saw the murky depths of the alley coming up fast. The saddlebags struck the ground, and Stone crashed down a second later with such force that the wind was knocked out of him. He opened his eyes and found himself lying on his back, both guns still in his hands.

  His ankles and knee bones hurt, and so did his rear end, but he didn’t think anything was broken. Getting to his feet, he threw the saddlebags over his shoulder and ran down the alley toward the street.

  It was deserted, and the music had stopped in the saloons. The townspeople were in hiding.

  “Where’s the sheriff!” Stone shouted.

  “Out of town!” somebody replied behind an open window.

  A crowd of cowboys spilled out of the Beverly Hotel, and Dillon, wearing his black leather frock coat, was in front of them. “There he is!” Dillon hollered. “Get him!”

  The cowboys took aim and fired, and Stone ducked back into the alley. He ran toward the backyard and turned left, hoping to make a run for his horse behind the Beverly Hotel. Bolting across the backyard of the next building, he came to the rear of the hotel, and the horse was there, guarded by two men.

  “Who’s there!” one of them demanded, peering into the night.

  Stone rushed toward him and opened fire. The cowboy saw Stone at the last moment, before he could take aim, and Stone’s bullets ripped into him. The other cowboy got off a wild shot before Stone drilled him in the lower abdomen, and the cowboy fell to the ground screaming, clutching his groin.

  Stone heard pounding footsteps behind him and spun around. A crowd of cowboys charged toward him through the alley. Stone dropped to one knee and fired both his guns, one after the other, aiming and firing into the cowboys caught in the narrow alleyway. They hollered and fell to the ground, some hit by bullets, some hiding from the rain of lead.

  Both of Stone’s guns went empty at the same time, and if he tried to climb onto his horse, they’d shoot him out of the saddle. He packed the guns into their holsters and jumped a four-foot fence, landing in the backyard of the next building. Cowboys from the Rafter K rushed toward the yard and opened fire. Bullets whistled all around Stone, and there was only one place to go. He ran toward the back of the building and hurled himself at the window, covering his face with his arms, and burst through the glass, becoming entangled in a thick brocade curtain, falling to the floor in a heap.

  He tore the curtain away and found himself in a small library with shelves of books on all the walls and a desk with a chair in front of it. He pulled open the door and charged down a dark corridor that led to the front of the building.

  He came to the huge front room, and over the fireplace was a rifle. He plucked it down and looked at it in the moonlight streaming through the window. It was a Henry, and he hoped it was loaded. He jacked the lever twice, and a cartridge flew out of the chamber. Loading it back into the slot, he lay the rifle on a chair then thumbed cartridges into his Colts.

  It was a helluva time for the sheriff to be out of town. Stone looked out the window and realized his only hope was to steal a horse and ride it as hard as he could.

  “Drop your guns!”

  Stone looked up and saw a bald-headed, short man in a robe pointing a double-barreled shotgun at him.

  “A group of drunken cowboys are after me,” Stone said, “and the sheriff is out of town.”

  Just then they heard movement and voices coming from the backyard through the broken window.

  “He went in here!” somebody shouted.

  The man took a step forward and looked at Stone’s face. “Hide in that closet,” he said. “I won’t give you away.”

  Stone moved in long swift strides toward the closet and stepped inside, while the man opened the front door a crack. The closet contained coats, and some gave off the fragrance of women’s perfume. Stone moved into the folds of fabric, holding the rifle aimed at the door. The first cowboy who opened it would die, and then it would be down and dirty to the bitter end.

  The cowboys entered the building through the broken rear window, and Stone could hear them moving cautiously down the corridor. This was the first time he’d stopped since Flanagan woke him up, and he was gasping for breath, his face covered with perspiration and his shirt sticking to his skin.

  The cowboys crowded into the main living room on the other side of the door.

  “Where is he?” one of them asked.

  “Went out the front door.” the man replied. “Headed across the street.”

  “Now wait a minute,” another voice said. “I was standin’ outside, and I didn’t see anybody come out.”

  Then came Dillon’s voice: “Search the building.”

  “Now just a minute,” the man said. “You can’t just walk in here and do whatever you want.”

  “Shut up!” said Dillon.

  Stone held the barrel of the Henry pointed at the door, his finger tight around the trigger and rivulets of perspiration on his face. He heard footsteps moving throughout the main floor of the building, climbing the stairs. One set of footsteps approached the door of the closet, and Stone got ready. The doorknob twisted, the door opened, and Stone fired at the cowboy standing in front of him.

  The bullet struck the cowboy in the chest, and Stone charged out of the closet, jumped over the falling cowboy, took two huge bounding leaps as bullets were fired wildly at him, and crashed through the living room window, landing on the boardwalk outside.

  A hitching post was directly in front of him, but unfortunately no horses were tied there. No horses were across the street, either, but many horses were tied to hitchin
g rails near the hotels and saloons in the center of town. “I’ve got to get a horse,” he muttered and then heard gunshots behind him. A bullet stuck the saddlebags full of coins over his shoulders, knocking him off balance. He fell to the ground, rolled over, and lay on his stomach in the middle of the street, raising the rifle to his shoulder. He lined up the sights on one of the cowboys running for cover, squeezed the trigger, and the rifle bucked against his shoulder. A cloud of smoke rose in the air, and the cowboy fell onto his face.

  Bullets kicked into the ground all around Stone as he lay in the street firing back. The cowboys shot guns at him, but the rifle was the more accurate weapon at that distance. Stone aimed at the opening in an alley, and when a cowboy hat showed, he aimed at the eye underneath and pulled the trigger. The cowboy screamed and fell sideways out of the alley.

  “Get him from the other side!” Dillon shouted.

  Stone was in the wide open and knew he was in danger of being caught in a crossfire. He looked longingly at the horses in front of the saloons, but they were a long way off. The alleyway behind him was closer. Maybe he could get into it and find a horse back there.

  He jumped to his feet and ran to the alley quickly, and the cowboys fired at him, but it was dark and he moved perpendicular to them, presenting a difficult target. He heard their bullets and felt dirt kicked into his face, but then he was in the alley running toward the rear of the buildings.

  He came to the end of the alley, and no cowboys were there, but neither were any horses. He decided to continue heading away from the center of town. Running to the next row of houses, he noticed a red light in the window of a two-story building.

  He ran toward the door beside the window, glancing over his shoulder, but no cowboys came after him; they were wary now that he had a rifle. Rushing toward the door, he opened it and stepped inside a small, dark, smoke-filled room filled with cowboys and whores kissing and squirming against each other. He knew at a glance it wasn’t the best whorehouse in town.

  A heavyset prostitute wearing a red low-cut dress walked toward him, holding a glass of whiskey. “What can I do for you, cowboy?”