“I’m not a cold-blooded killer, Miss La Corte. I kill for a reason.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Sartain. Word is going around. You’re the one they call the Revenger. Wanted in nearly every territory on the frontier. You killed many soldiers because they killed your woman and unborn child, and now you kill for others who cannot kill for themselves. How odd that after all your killing you still have a heart.”
Sartain only shrugged.
“Or maybe you really don’t. Maybe you only wish to believe you do, because you don’t wish to believe you’re as bad as the men you kill. You somehow hold yourself above reproach because you have a conscience. You believe you’re somehow better than the men you hunt.”
Clara shook her head slowly, holding his gaze with a hard one of her own. “But you aren’t. You can’t be. Otherwise, you would hang up that big pistol of yours. What’s more, you would ride out of here because a woman asked you to, because she doesn’t want any more of the innocent citizens of her town killed by you or by the men you are here to kill.”
Sartain picked up his glass. His hand shook. Brandy sloshed over the rim and onto the table.
He threw back the rest of the liquor and then, feeling as though his heart were fairly exploding with rage and frustration, he flung the glass against the door. It thudded with the sound of a pistol shot and shattered.
Clara gave a clipped yell and lowered her head, raising her hands to her ears. She swept her hair back from her eyes and stared up at him. Trembling, Sartain stood and walked around the table to her. He drew her up by her shoulders.
Beneath his rage, passion thundered. It pierced his loins like the blade of a dull bayonet.
She stared at him fearfully in the lamplight. Her ripe upper lip trembled slightly. He placed his hands on her cheeks. She shook her head violently. “No!”
Sartain released her. She stumbled back against the wall, kicking her chair. She leaned there, half falling against the wall, hands splayed against it on either side of her, staring at him like a deer knowing that a hunter’s sights were lined up on her.
She glanced down at his crotch. Her eyes widened. Her tongue flicked against her upper lip. A sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.
“Oh, god,” she whispered. “Oh, god, forgive me!”
She pushed herself off the wall and into his arms.
Chapter 14
Later, the Spanish beauty snuggled against him, the two of them naked on the bed, not even covered by the sheet. The air blowing through the window was fresh and a little cool, but they were still sweating from the passion of their coupling.
The Revenger had taken her twice in a half hour. She’d not only been receptive but demanding, desperate, as though she hadn’t had a man in a long, long time, and her body was fairly exploding with natural desire. That part had reminded him of Maggie Chance. But while Clara had responded to his every touch and had demonstrated her ability at curling a man’s toes, something told him she, unlike Maggie, was relatively inexperienced.
“That was... rather impetuous,” she said softly, raking her fingers through the thick hair curling on the broad, bulging slabs of his chest.
“Regrets?”
Clara glanced up at him, one eye partly covered by a mussed lock of her hair. She nodded. “How could a woman regret anything so... satisfying? I only wonder... what is in me that a man like you could arouse such passion?”
“You mean because I’m a killer?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the killer you were making love with.”
She smiled pensively as she continued to rake her fingers across his chest. “Who, then? Just a handsome, blue-eyed Cajun from the bayous?”
Sartain’s left arm was wrapped around her, his hand cupping the side of her left breast, his thumb slowly sliding across her petal-soft nipple. He shrugged. “Whatever you prefer.”
“Okay,” she said, groaning a little at his ministrations and planting her lips against his chest. Her lips were almost hot as she kissed him, her saliva warm as butter melting on a skillet.
He felt the tug of arousal once more. She seemed to sense it and slid her hand down his belly.
He groaned.
“Hold on,” he said, ten minutes later.
Her hand stopped moving on him. “What is it?”
Sartain pushed up onto his elbows. He stared at the door. The lamp had almost gone out, casting a flickering, red-brown light across the mostly dark room.
She turned to the door as well.
Faintly, a floorboard creaked in the hall. When she jerked her head back to him, he placed a finger against his lips. He pushed her down onto the bed beside him, reached out, and slowly slid his LeMat from its holster hanging from the bedpost on his right.
“Stay very quiet,” he whispered.
A floorboard in the hall creaked again, a little more loudly than the first one. Sartain looked at the floor in front of the door. The boards there bowed slightly downward. Sartain raised the LeMat and quietly flicked the lever to engage the twelve-gauge shotgun shell in the stout tube beneath the main barrel.
He waited, ears pricked, listening intently.
Just outside the door, there was the soft click of a gun hammer being cocked.
Sartain aimed the LeMat at the door. He was in an awkward position, but he managed to steady the gun. He could take no chances on Clara being hurt by an ambusher’s blast.
He squeezed the LeMat’s trigger.
The heavy pistol flashed and roared.
Clara jerked with a start and a clipped, involuntary scream. In the hall, a man yelped. Boots thudded as the would-be attacker stumbled away from the door. There was another thud as the attacker struck the wall on the far side of the hall, yet another when he hit the floor, groaning.
Downstairs, Pops’s dog began barking angrily.
“I’ll be damned!” yelled another man in the hall.
Boots thudded loudly. Sartain felt the floor reverberating beneath the bed.
“Let’s get them out of here, Frank!” came another man’s voice in the hall, above the groaning of the man who’d taken at least part of Sartain’s blast.
The Revenger had leaped out of bed. Two long strides took him to the door, which he threw open, extending the cocked LeMat into the hall. As he’d thought, one man was down. He lay at the base of the wall on the other side of the corridor, holding a hand to the side of his chest.
Two more men disappeared around the hall’s far right corner. Their boots echoed loudly on the stairs.
“What the hell is goin’ on in here?” yelled Pops Pepper from below, the old man’s scratchy voice nearly drowned out by Spider’s wild barking and the thudding of the two fleeing bushwhackers.
Sartain looked down at the man on the floor. It was Lyle Leach. He gritted his teeth as he writhed, holding his right hand to his bloody chest.
Blood oozed from between his fingers and dribbled onto the floor. He slid his left hand out from under him and stretched it toward the cocked carbine lying about three feet away from him.
“Leach, you stupid son of a bitch,” Sartain said, planting a barefoot on the Winchester and sliding it off down the hall. He reached down and pulled Leach’s pistol from its holster and sent that skidding down the hall, as well.
“Oh, my god,” Clara said behind Sartain. He turned to see her peering over his shoulder, covering herself discreetly with a sheet.
“Nah, it’s just the Gold Dust town marshal.” Sartain depressed the LeMat’s hammer and extended it to Clara. “Here—hold that for me, will ya, darlin’?”
The Cajun pulled the wailing, grimacing Leach to his feet. The man stood, leaning against the wall, holding both hands to his bloody chest now and cursing. Sartain grabbed the man’s Winchester and held it on him, waving the barrel toward the stairs.
“Get movin’, you stupid bastard.” Fury was a hot iron inside him. “One wrong move and I’ll drill you again—this time for keeps!”
&
nbsp; “Go to hell, you crazy son of Satan!” bellowed Leach. “I’m the marshal here! You shot me through a door! Through a door!”
“I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you to shoot first, Marshal. Now, get down the stairs, or I’ll push you down ’em.”
At the top of the stairs, Leach stopped and turned toward Sartain. “Now, you just hold on!”
His eyes widened, and his mouth opened even wider as Sartain rammed the butt of the man’s own gun against Leach’s chest, throwing him down the stairs. Leach struck the steps about four steps from the top and tumbled unceremoniously, screaming all the way to the bottom.
Pops Pepper, clad in a sleeping gown and nightcap, held a lamp high in his right hand. The light fluttered over Leach writhing at the bottom of the stairs, wailing.
Spider had been barking, but when the dog saw Leach rolling violently toward him, the dog had wheeled and run out the front door and into the night, yipping.
Sartain moved down the stairs.
“You boys are a mite loud this evenin’,” Pops said, gumming the words. He hadn’t put his teeth in. “Me—I keep strict rules. No rifle fire after midnight.”
“I shot him with a pistol, Pops,” Sartain said, prodding Leach with the Winchester’s barrel.
Pops shook his head as he stared down at Leach. “You opened a mighty big hole in him—I’ll give you that.”
“Get the hell up, Leach,” Sartain ordered.
Leach cursed. He was almost sobbing.
When Sartain finally got the shot-up marshal on his feet, he hazed him out of the hotel and prodded him down the street toward the town marshal’s office. Leach held both arms across his chest, his head down. He was dragging one foot slightly. “I think you busted my ankle on top of everything else, you crazy bastard!”
Sartain stared toward the Occidental. The building was eerily dark and silent. He looked around, ready for another onslaught from the other two men who’d been with Leach.
“Who was sidin’ ya?” Sartain asked the marshal as they approached the stone jailhouse. “If you could call that sidin’.” He chucked caustically.
Leach only cursed him again.
Sartain prodded the marshal up the steps to his own office. The front door, constructed of bowed, unpainted vertical planks, was unlocked. A lamp glowed on a roll-top desk to the left. Four cells were lined up along the back wall. Sartain used the Winchester barrel to shove Leach across the earthen-floored room, which was as cool and dank as a root cellar, and into the cell farthest right.
“You can’t arrest me,” Leach snarled, glaring at the Cajun, and pressed a bloody finger to his bloody badge. “I’m the marshal. That’s my job!”
“You’re not the marshal any longer, Leach.” Sartain plucked the badge from the man’s bloody shirt and tossed it against the front wall. “This citizen has done fired your worthless, bushwhacking ass.”
“You ain’t even a citizen of Gold Dust!”
Sartain slammed the cell door closed and was about to respond to Leach when soft footsteps rose behind him. He wheeled, leveling the Winchester.
“It’s me, it’s me!” Clara stepped slowly into the room, holding her left hand up, palm out. Her hair was still a mess. She’d donned her skirt and Sartain’s shirt in lieu of the blouse and camisole the Cajun had ripped from her body.
She must have retrieved her medical kit from her office because she held it in her right hand.
“What kind of a lady are you, Doc?” Leach said, sagging onto the edge of the cot. “Cavortin’ with killers...”
Ignoring the bushwhacker, Clara looked Sartain up and down, then arched a brow. “Uh... Mike, you’re not wearing any clothes.”
Sartain looked down at himself. It was like having a pail of cold water thrown on him. He’d been vaguely aware of his bare feet as he’d prodded Leach over here from the hotel, but his heart had been racing so quickly, he’d somehow shut out the fact that he was as naked as he’d been when he and Clara had tussled.
“So I’m not,” the Cajun said, holding the stock of his rifle over his crotch and backing slowly toward the door. Pops Pepper stood there, holding his lantern in one hand, his old Colt in his other hand. “Pops, would you make sure your former marshal doesn’t go anywhere, and that no one breaks him out of that cell? I’ll be back after I’ve donned my duds.”
“Sure, sure,” Pepper said, raising his pistol and stepping into the jailhouse as Sartain moved out of it. “Be glad to.” He held an arthritic hand to the side of his mouth and yelled to the retreating Sartain in a hoarse whisper, “Say, your dick’s still wet!”
He cackled.
Chapter 15
The false dawn was a pale wash in the east when Clara finally finished plucking the twenty-odd pellets out of Leach’s upper right chest and sewing him up. His ankle was only sprained, but she wrapped a taut bandage around it and then left the outlaw marshal, groaning and moaning on the cell cot, as she stepped out of the cell and closed the door.
She’d fed her patient half a bottle of whiskey in an attempt to quell the pain, so Leach was as drunk as an Irish gandy-dancer on Saturday night in Abilene. But, while drunk, he was obviously still in pain. That was all right with Sartain. If Leach had had his way, he likely would have drilled both him and Clara through that hotel room door.
“I’ll give you your shirt back tomorrow,” Clara told the Revenger, who sat in Leach’s swivel chair, facing his prisoner with his Henry rifle resting across his thighs. “Thanks for... an eventful night.” She gave a wry smile.
“Any time, darlin’,” said the Cajun, returning her smile with a wink. She looked beautiful standing there before him, her hair still mussed from their lovemaking, one side hooked behind her ear.
She looked at the badge he’d pinned to his pinto vest.
“You’ve promoted yourself.”
“Yeah, I’m movin’ up in the world.”
She arched a skeptical brow.
“Just until my work here is finished, anyway,” he said, hiking a shoulder.
“I’m sure that won’t take too long.” Holding her medical kit in both hands before her, she glanced into Leach’s cell. “You clean up right well, Mike.”
“Thank you, honey. I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She turned to the door, but he stopped her with: “Been meanin’ to ask you—how’s Scrum Wallace?”
“Miraculously, on the mend.”
“How long before he’s on his feet?”
“A few days, maybe.”
Sartain pursed his lips, nodding.
Clara opened the door, went out, and closed the door behind her.
Sartain went outside and sat on a bench to the right of the door. He rolled a cigarette and smoked it, his rifle resting across his thighs.
He watched the dawn wash over the town, lifting shadows. The Occidental Saloon seemed to be drawn gradually by a deft painter’s brush down the street to his left. When the rising sun had burnished the shabby watering hole burnt copper, and he could see shadows moving around behind the windows, he rose from the bench and shouldered the Henry.
He dropped down into the street and started walking toward the saloon where Scrum was recuperating. He kept a close eye on the Occidental’s dirty windows as he mounted the small front gallery. His boots clomped loudly on the gallery’s rough wooden boards. He pushed through the batwings, stepped to the left, so he wouldn’t be outlined against the bright morning light, and loudly racked a shell into the rifle’s breech.
There were eight or nine men in the dingy place, most sitting at tables playing cards. Two were standing at the bar to Sartain’s right and down the room a ways. One had just been biting into a thick ham, egg, and cheese sandwich when Sartain had cocked the rifle, and now, turning to see the Revenger standing with his back to the front wall, the man convulsed violently, blowing the food onto the bar before him.
Part of the mouthful ended up in his beer, where it foamed.
The man beside him, who’d also turned tow
ard the newcomer, jerked with a start. “Holy horse fritters!” He reached for the carbine on the bar beside him but stayed his movement, knowing that if he did not, he’d likely receive a .44 caliber chunk of lead for his indiscretion.
Several of the others had started to rise from their chairs, but now they were easing back down, faces flushed. One man dropped his cigarette in his lap and yowled, brushing the coals away. The door at the back of the room opened, and a plump, round-faced, young Mexican woman in a sleeveless blouse and ruffled, blue skirt with ornate red stitching came into the main room.
When her eyes found the Revenger, she stopped in her tracks. She was barefoot. Her long, straight, dark-brown hair hung down past her exposed shoulders. She held a porcelain wash pan in her hands, mounded with bloody bandages.
A fat man with long, gray hair and thick, gray muttonchops and wearing an apron stood behind the bar, tending a range on which coffee boiled and bacon fried. He turned away from the bacon and regarded Sartain with mean, angry eyes, pointing his spatula, from which hot grease dribbled. “What the hell are you doing here? You get out! Get out of my place!” He spoke with a slight Irish accent.
“Shut up,” Sartain said with a weary air. “Anyone makes any sudden moves gets drilled. Hell, I could drill all of ya before a single one of you fools could clear leather.” He chuckled at the men’s carelessness. They hadn’t been expecting a visit from the man they’d been gunning for.
A man sitting at a table near the bar with three other men, playing poker, had lowered his hand beneath the table while sitting stiffly in his chair and keeping his gaze on Sartain. He wore a buckskin shirt and an ancient, battered Union army hat bearing the flying eagle insignia of Berdan’s Sharpshooters.
Sartain blew a round into the table fronting the man, scattering coins and playing cards.
“Get your hand back up on the table, bluebelly,” Sartain raked out as he pumped a fresh round into his Henry’s breech. “I would hate to have to shoot one of Berdan’s Confederate-killin’ finest when so few of you made it out of the war upright.”
The Revenger Page 45