Day of Reckoning

by William W. Johnstone

  Sawyer snorted. “Drifters, eh?”

  “Let’s just say we haven’t found any place we want to settle down in yet.”

  “Lone Pine’s peaceful enough these days . . . most of the time.”

  “Meaning some of the time it’s not?” Chance asked.

  “Bein’ respectable and law-abidin’ don’t sit well with some people. Steer clear o’ Pete McLaren and his bunch, and you’ll be fine.”

  “Where do they usually hang out, so we can avoid them?” Ace said.

  “Harry Muller’s Melodian Saloon.” Sawyer pointed. “Two blocks up, on the far corner.”

  “Is it the biggest and best saloon in Lone Pine?” Chance wanted to know.

  “Welll . . . I reckon most folks’d say so.”

  “But there are other saloons in town,” Ace said.

  “Yeah, three or four.”

  “Then if we want to wet our whistles, we won’t have any trouble finding someplace to do it. If you’ll show us the stalls where you’ll be keeping our horses, we’ll take them in and unsaddle them, Mr. Sawyer.”

  “No need to do that. I got a couple hostlers who’ll take care of it. Just get any gear you want off of ’em. We’ll take good care of the critters for you.”

  Ace and Chance took their saddlebags off the horses and draped them over their shoulders, then pulled Winchesters from sheaths strapped under the saddle fenders.

  Ace considered the state of their finances, then said, “How about a hotel? Maybe not the best in town, but decent enough to stay in.”

  “The Territorial House,” Sawyer answered without hesitation. “Next block, this side of the street.”

  “We’re obliged to you.”

  Ace and Chance walked up the street to the hotel, which turned out to be a two-story, whitewashed frame building with a balcony along the front of the second floor. They stepped up onto the boardwalk and went into a lobby with a threadbare rug on the floor and a little dust gathered in the corners. An elderly man with white hair, a bristly white mustache, and hands that trembled a little checked them in.

  “Mr. Sawyer down at the livery stable recommended your place,” Ace commented as he slid a silver dollar across the counter while Chance signed the registration book for them. It was actually cheaper for them to stay here than it was to keep their horses at the livery stable.

  “That old Reb?” the hotel man said. Ace didn’t know if he was the owner or just a clerk. “I’m surprised he sent any trade my way. I was a Union man.” He drew himself up straighter. “Colonel in the 12th Illinois infantry. Colonel Charles Howden.”

  “Mr. Sawyer said he came out here to New Mexico before the war.”

  “Yes, and then he went off and fought in the Battle of Glorietta Pass for the Confederates. Forgot to mention that, didn’t he?”

  “It’s been quite a while since the war ended, Mr. Howden,” Chance pointed out.

  “Colonel Howden, if you please.”

  “Of course, Colonel,” Ace said. “If we could, uh, get the key to our room . . .”

  “Certainly.” Howden took a key from the rack and handed it to Ace. “Room Twelve, on the second floor. I hope you enjoy your stay, Mister . . .” He looked at the registration book and read their names upside down, a talent most people who worked in hotels acquired. “Jensen.”

  This time the name didn’t seem to mean anything.

  The brothers went upstairs, left their saddlebags and rifles in Room Twelve—which, like the lobby, showed signs of wear and was a little dusty—and then came back down and strolled out onto the boardwalk in front of the hotel.

  “Reckon it’s late enough in the day we could find some place to get supper,” Ace said.

  “We could,” Chance said, “but think how much better supper would taste if we had a drink first.”

  “You weren’t thinking about that Melodian Saloon Mr. Sawyer mentioned, were you?”

  “He said it was the biggest and best in Lone Pine,” Chance replied with a smile, “and it’s right over there.”

  He pointed diagonally across the street toward the building on the far corner.

  “I’m going to have a hard time talking you out of this, aren’t I?”

  “More than likely,” Chance agreed. “Anyway, that troublemaker the old-timer mentioned—what was his name, McLaren?—he’s probably not even there right now.”

  Chapter Two

  Pete McLaren laughed and said, “Shoot, Dolly, you might as well stop tryin’ to get away. You know I like it when you put up a little fight.”

  The blonde put her hands against Pete’s chest and pushed as she tried to squirm off his lap. He just tightened the arm around her waist, put his other hand behind her neck, and pulled her head down to his so he could press his mouth against hers.

  Dolly Redding let out a muffled squeal and tried even harder to get away for a few seconds.

  Then she sighed, wrapped her arms around Pete’s neck, and returned the kiss with passionate urgency.

  He let that continue for a minute or so and then pulled his head away and laughed raucously.

  “You see, fellas, I told you this little hellcat couldn’t resist me for long!”

  The four other men at the table in the Melodian Saloon joined in Pete McLaren’s laughter. Like Pete, they were all young, in their twenties, and dressed like cowboys, although the lack of calluses on their hands indicated they hadn’t had riding jobs lately. Exactly how they got the money they spent here and in other saloons was open to debate, although nobody was going to question it too much if they knew what was good for them.

  Dolly pouted and said, “Pete, you shouldn’t make sport of me. Just ’cause I work in a saloon don’t mean you shouldn’t treat me like a lady!”

  “Nobody’s ever gonna accuse you of bein’ a lady, Dolly, but hell, if I wanted a lady, I’d be chasin’ after that Fontana Dupree. I like my gals, well, a little on the trashy side. Like you.”

  That provoked more gales of laughter from Pete’s friends. Dolly just looked embarrassed as a blush spread across her face. She didn’t deny what Pete had said about her, though.

  To tell the truth, Dolly Redding was a good-looking young woman, and she hadn’t worked in saloons long enough to acquire the hard mouth and the suspicious lines around her eyes that most doves displayed. She still had a faint flush of... well, innocence would be stretching it too far, but maybe remembered innocence would describe it.

  Some of her thick, curly blond hair had fallen in front of her face while Pete was kissing her. She tossed her head to throw it back and told him, “I’m just sayin’ you should treat me a little better, that’s all. Maybe I ain’t a lady now, but I might be someday if I work hard enough at it.”

  “Oh, you work hard at what you do, I’ll give you credit for that,” Pete said with a leer on his handsome young face. The other men at the table thought that was hilarious, too.

  The commotion in the corner drew a few disapproving frowns from the saloon’s other patrons. The hour was early, not even suppertime yet, so the Melodian was only about half full.

  A burly, bald man in a gray suit leaned on the bar where he stood at the far end of the hardwood. He glared at the table where Pete McLaren and his friends were working on their second bottle of whiskey since they’d come in an hour or so earlier.

  A young woman with light brown hair framing a face of sultry beauty came out of a door at the end of the bar and paused beside the bald man. The silk gown she wore wasn’t exactly church-going garb, but it was more decorous than the short, low-cut, spangled get-ups worn by Dolly Redding and the other girls who delivered drinks in the Melodian.

  “What’s wrong, Hank?” the brunette murmured.

  “Ah, it’s just that blasted McLaren kid and his pards again,” Hank Muller said as he continued to scowl. “I hate to see Dolly gettin’ mauled like that.”

  “It sort of comes with the territory, doesn’t it?”

  Muller looked sharply at her. “I make no bones about w
hat goes on here,” he said. “The girls know what’s expected of ’em, and they don’t kick about it. Pete McLaren’s too rough about it, though. Too sure of himself. Ah, hell, Fontana, maybe I just don’t like the kid and the rest of that bunch.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Fontana Dupree said. “Want me to try to distract them?”

  “Well . . . I don’t suppose it’d hurt anything to try.”

  Fontana smiled and nodded. She left the bar and walked over to a piano sitting next to a small stage in the back of the barroom. At a table close by the piano, a small man with thinning fair hair sat reading a copy of the Police Gazette. An unlit store-bought cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth, bobbing slightly as he hummed to himself and studied the etchings of scantily clad women in the magazine.

  Fontana put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on, Orrie, it’s time to get to work.”

  Quickly, he closed the Police Gazette and sat up straighter.

  “Uh, sorry, Miss Dupree. I didn’t figure we’d be starting this early—”

  “It’s all right,” Fontana told him. “How about some Stephen Foster?”

  “Sure.” Orrie stood up from the table and went to a stool in front of the piano. He put his fingers on the keys and looked up at Fontana as she took her place beside the instrument. When she nodded, he began to play, and a moment after the notes began to emerge, crisp and pure, she started singing a sad, sentimental ballad in a voice even more lovely than Orrie’s playing.

  * * *

  Chance Jensen stopped in his tracks and said, “I think I’m in love.”

  He and Ace had just pushed through the batwings and stepped through the corner entrance into the Melodian. Ace almost bumped into his brother when Chance halted so abruptly.

  He moved aside so he could look past Chance. He heard the singing, and judging by Chance’s intent, love-struck expression, Ace figured he was staring at the singer.

  She was worth looking at, Ace thought, slim and lovely in a dark blue gown. Creamy skin and features that compelled a man to look at them twice in appreciation. A small beauty mark near the corner of the young woman’s mouth gave her character and didn’t detract at all from her prettiness.

  “She sings like a . . . a nightingale,” Chance said.

  “Just how many nightingales have you heard singing?” Ace asked.

  “Well, then . . . a mockingbird. Only prettier.”

  “She is prettier than any mockingbird I’ve ever seen,” Ace admitted.

  “That’s not what I—Ah, just shut up and let me look at her and listen to her.”

  That didn’t seem like such a bad idea to Ace, but he and Chance had been in their saddles for quite a few miles today and he wouldn’t mind sitting down. An empty table stood not far away, so Ace took hold of Chance’s arm and urged him toward it.

  “Come on. You can see and hear her just as well from over here.”

  Chance didn’t argue. He went with Ace without taking his eyes off the young woman standing beside the piano in the back of the room.

  Ace was more interested in taking in all their surroundings, however, not just one small part of them. As they sat down, he let his gaze travel around the saloon. Checking for trouble like that was just a habit he had gotten into. The Jensen brothers might be young, but they had run into more than their share of ruckuses.

  Most of the customers in the saloon appeared to be either townies, cowboys from some of the spreads to the east, or miners from diggings up in the hills.

  A group of men at one table caught Ace’s eye, though. They wore range clothes, but they had a certain indefinable hardbitten air about them that set them apart from the usual breed of puncher. For one thing, they all wore gunbelts and holstered revolvers.

  So did he and Chance, Ace reminded himself. That didn’t mean there was anything wrong with them, just that sometimes they needed to be armed.

  The bunch at the other table, though, was loud and boisterous even though the young woman at the piano was singing. One of them had a blond saloon girl on his lap and was pawing at her as he laughed. She looked a little uncomfortable, but she wasn’t trying to get away from him.

  The racket had started to annoy Chance. He frowned and said, “Don’t those fellows know you’re supposed to shut up and be quiet when a lady’s singing? How can they not be in awe of such a beautiful voice?”

  “They’ve probably guzzled down enough rotgut they don’t care,” Ace said.

  “I don’t care how drunk they are, they need to pipe down.”

  “Maybe so, but it’s not our job to make ’em do it.”

  Chance looked like he wanted to argue some more, but he sighed and turned his attention back to the young woman. From time to time, however, Ace saw him cast an irritated glance toward the table across the room.

  Chance wasn’t the only one whose nerves those hombres were getting on, Ace realized a moment later. A bald, broad-shouldered man standing at the bar was glaring at the rowdies, too. He caught the blonde’s eye, lifted a hand, and used his thumb to point at the table where Ace and Chance sat.

  That had to be the boss. Crackerjack Sawyer had mentioned the saloonkeeper’s name, and after a moment Ace recalled it: Hank Muller.

  The blonde finally managed to wriggle free of the man who had her on his lap. She said something to him and stepped back quickly out of his reach when he tried to snag her again. Picking up a tray from an empty table nearby, she hurried across the room toward the Jensen brothers, looking relieved and worried at the same time.

  As she came up to the table, she put a smile on her face, but Ace could tell it took an effort. “Hello, boys,” she said, trying to sound bright and cheerful but not quite managing it. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Beer for both of us,” Ace said. That was all they could really afford, and besides, neither of them was much of a heavy drinker, although Chance had cultivated a fondness for fine wine when they had enough dinero for it.

  The blonde nodded and said, “I’ll be right—”

  A heavy footstep sounded behind her and she let out a little gasp as a man’s hand grabbed her shoulder. He hauled her around, revealing himself to be the hombre from whose lap she had escaped.

  “You’ll get right back over to our table where you belong,” he said as he gave her a shove in that direction, “and if these saddle tramps don’t like it, that’s just too damn bad!”