Sartain sighed and looked at the dead man lying belly down on the floor before him. “I reckon I’m the man who went and bloodied up your nice place. Let me get him out of here, and then I’ll buy you a drink.” He smiled. “By way of apology.”
She just stared at him dubiously, as though she thought she might know him from somewhere but was having trouble recollecting his name.
“I reckon I’d best go check on your friend,” she said quietly.
She turned slowly, still frowning thoughtfully, and headed for the stairs.
* * *
Sartain dragged the dead man out into the rain and left him in a break between the saloon and the next building, an old barbershop, to the west. The rain had let up, but the ground was too wet to dig a grave. He’d bury the body when he could. If the coyotes got to him first—well, they had to eat, too.
Or maybe whoever had taken the first body would take this one, too...
He checked on the horses, making sure they had plenty of water and that the stable roof wasn’t leaking overmuch, and then returned to the saloon. Dixie McKee stood in the open doorway, smoking a long, thin cigar and sipping tequila from a shot glass.
“How’s the younker?” Sartain asked as he climbed up onto the gallery.
“Hard to tell. He might make it if I can keep his fever down. I’ve placed cold cloths on his forehead. This cold spell helps.” She stepped back and indicated a table on which an open bottle stood. “Drink?”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Sartain slacked into a chair at the table. “Join me? I’m buyin’.”
She straddled a chair across from him, crossing her arms on the chair back and regarding him with that same wistful look as before. He splashed tequila into her glass and lifted it, turning the glass between her fingers.
“I got no complaints about what you did to Chick Beacham, but you’ve piled up some trouble for yourself, Mr. Sartain.”
“I tend to do that.” Sartain threw back the shot and then refilled his glass.
She threw back hers as well, and he refilled her glass too. She had a smoky look in her eyes. Her hair was slightly disheveled, hanging along the sides of her face. One lock was curled up against her left cheek.
“He’d been a friend of yours, I take it?” he prodded her.
“At one time. Not much of one. But it’s hard to find good friends around here.”
“Who’d you say he killed? A Pierson boy?”
“He was hired to kill the Pierson boy’s father. That’s what Chick does when he doesn’t have anything else going. He hires out his guns. The Pierson boy got in the way of the bullet. It was the boy he killed. An eleven-year-old boy. Chick won’t own up to it, but everyone knows he did it. I think it unnerved him. That’s why he took to bank robbing instead.”
“What do you think he has to do with me or the kid upstairs getting ambushed?”
Dixie sighed as she leveled an inscrutable gaze on the Cajun, turning her mouth corners down. She let the question hang in the air a long time, staring at the man who’d asked it. Then she threw her tequila back, took a deep drag off her cigarillo, and blew the smoke at the rafters.
“I’m going to bed.”
“Is that how you’re gonna answer that question?”
“I don’t know who you are.”
“Just a drifter who rode into town looking for water and almost got a bullet for my trouble. The kid got one for his too, and that’s why I’m here. The only reason why I’m here.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“You’re saying I should leave?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Dixie rose from her chair and stood staring down at him with that smoky look in her eyes again. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. “But you can spend the night upstairs if you’ve a mind.” She blinked. “Third door down the hall on the right.”
“What do I owe you for the drinks and the room?”
She’d started walking to the stairs. Now she stopped and glanced over her left shoulder at him. Her hair partly shaded her face. “Not a damn thing. In fact, I’m the one owes you.”
She continued walking toward the stairs. She had a proud, languid, lovely walk. The seat of her jeans was like two hands caressing her. Her hair jostled down her back as she gained the stairs and started up the steps.
“Lock up before you come to bed, will you?” she said and disappeared up to the second story.
Sartain poured himself another drink and started building a quirley. His fingers stopped working. He glanced up thoughtfully from the wheat paper troughed between his fingers.
The third door on the right was her room.
Chapter 6
Sartain stopped at the third door on the right. He canted his head toward the panel, pricking his ears to listen.
Nothing.
He turned the knob. The latch clicked. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
She sat in a brocade-upholstered armchair with her back to him, one long bare leg crossed on the other. Her bare foot was nearly buried in a thick wine-red Oriental rug trimmed with long gilt wheat stems. A fire snapped in a small hearth to Sartain’s left, pushing a soothing heat into the room, pressing back the chill of the dark mountain night.
Dixie sat facing an oval-shaped floor mirror in a swivel frame. She was brushing her hair, which she’d pulled over her left shoulder. It shimmered in the light from the fire and from several candles guttering around the crudely but comfortably furnished room.
Her back was long and slender, tapering to broadening pale hips and long, creamy legs.
Her eyes found him in the mirror. She smiled coyly. As he closed the door and turned the key in the lock, she said, “I know who you are. It just came to me a moment ago.”
She’d paused in brushing her hair, but now she resumed the slow, even strokes, the soft raking sounds mixing with the hissing of candles whose flames were licking wax.
The room was touched with a light, subtle female musk—a cross between cherry blossoms and sage on a damp, late-summer breeze. The aroma nibbled at the edges of Sartain’s consciousness, increasing his desire for the erotic creature in the mirror.
“All right,” was all he said, hanging his hat on a peg.
He ran his hands through his thick, curly hair and moved forward. She stopped brushing her hair to look up at him in the mirror. He stopped just behind her, leaned forward, wrapped his arms around her.
He nuzzled her neck, then nibbled her right ear.
In the mirror, she closed her eyes and leaned her head to one side, groaning softly.
Into her ear, he whispered, “Want me to go bed down with the horses?”
Keeping her eyes closed, head canted to one side, she said in a soft singsong, “Don’t...you...dare...”
* * *
“Just what I needed. I’m obliged, Miss Dixie,” he said after he’d caught his breath, leaning his back against the tarnished brass frame of the bed.
She rolled toward him, hooked a leg over his, and pressed her lips to his belly.
“The least I could do for a dying man,” she said, kissing him.
The Cajun ran a big hand through his hair, luxuriously scrubbing his scalp. “I feel just fine.”
She kissed him again, her hair fluttering around her face pressed to his belly, caressing him softly. “You should have killed him, Mike.”
“I thought I got the point across.”
“There’s no getting your point across to a man like Chick Beacham. He thinks he owns these mountains. He’ll be back.”
Sartain slid her hair back from her face. “I dig you a deeper hole, did I?”
“No deeper than before.” Dixie looked up at him, stretching her lips back as she laughed huskily. “Besides, I doubt he’ll be feelin’ plucky enough to come back here any time soon, strutting around demanding free drinks and hugs from the proprietor.”
“That’s kind of what I was thinking,” Sartain said. “Thought the bed rest might give him time to ruminate, mayb
e make some adjustments to the path he’s on.”
“Where did you learn how to do that, Mike?”
“Hmm?”
She looked up at him again. Her cheeks were beautifully flushed, eyelids heavy. “To do the things you did to me just now?” She frowned as though deeply befuddled. “To make me feel the way I just did...so many times...”
Sartain reached for his makings sack, which, during a breather, he’d fetched from his pants pocket. He’d also draped his cartridge belt over a front bedpost so his LeMat and Bowie knife were within easy reach.
“I was taught by the best pleasure girls in the country, maybe in the world.” Sartain troughed a wheat paper between his index finger and thumb and slowly dribbled the chopped tobacco into the fold. “French Quarter, New Orleans. Those ladies not only raised me—I was an orphan, alone on the streets and docks—but they raised me to appreciate the finer things in life.”
“I’m mighty beholdin’ to those ladies.” She shaped a sad expression. “Only problem is, who’s going to take your place when you’re gone, one way or another?”
Sartain poked the quirley into his mouth and rolled it, sealing it. “How come you’re alone out here, Dixie? Where’s that family you mentioned?”
“I was the youngest. Ma and Pa are dead. The boys long ago ran away from Pa’s diggings, never to be seen or heard from again. I doctored Pa until just last year. He was out of his head, turned back into a child. I even had to put rubber pants on him. Had to tie a rope around him to keep him around the cabin while I did chores or he’d wander off.
“I made enough sewing for folks and digging up good color from an old creek bed to pay the taxes on this place. The town died, but there’s still enough folks around who require a shot of whiskey now and then. Drifters like yourself pull through, needin’ a pillow to rest their heads on for a night or two, a stable for their horses. I get by.”
“But you don’t have a man. A girl like you, hot-blooded and alive in all the best ways, needs a man. Same as a man needs a woman.” Sartain always drifted back into his slow, Cajun drawl at such slow, luxurious times, and he did so now.
“Don’t I know it!”
She snapped her head up suddenly. “Good heavens. I’d best check on your partner!”
“Uh, he’s not my partner,” Sartain said half-heartedly, not really caring about correcting her when he saw the comely figure she made dashing out of bed naked as a jaybird and fumbling around in an armoire for a night wrap.
She paused at the door, blew him a kiss, and went out.
Sartain lay back on the bed. He sighed. He was exhausted. A hell of a lot had happened in one day. And he’d only stopped here for water.
He’d been pondering the missing bushwhacker for a good twenty minutes when he heard voices through the wall to his left. Dixie was speaking quietly but urgently. Sometimes her voice rose sharply and then, as though catching herself, she lowered it but resumed speaking.
Who was she speaking to so covertly?
The boy?
Suspicion edged away the tendrils of sleep that had started to nibble at the edges of The Revenger’s consciousness. He rose from the bed. Not bothering with clothes but sliding the LeMat from its holster, he moved to the door, opened it quietly, and stepped down the hall on the balls of his bare feet.
He stopped at the boy’s door and shoved an ear up close until he could hear the young man moaning. His bed squawked as he thrashed.
“Told ya,” the kid said. “Told ya...I’d be rich someday...sure enough. You never believed me, Homer...”
“Where?” Dixie said in a low, urgent tone. “Where is it, Dewey?”
“That whiskey...I never tasted such as that. I’d best go easy, or my pa...he’ll strap me good if he smells it on my breath.”
“Dewey,” Dixie said, “the gold. Where is the gold, Dewey?” She pitched her voice with sweetness. “I’ll help you find it, Dewey. And then we can be friends.”
“You’ll know I found it when I come back wearin’ a new pair of boots an’...an’ one of them beaver hats!” The kid chuckled through a groan as he continued to thrash around on the bed.
“Dammit!” Dixie said.
Bare footsteps sounded on the other side of the door from Sartain. She was moving toward him. He started to turn away and retreated to Dixie’s room when Dixie said, “What was that, Dewey?”
A floorboard squawked. She must have been returning to the bed.
“Dewey, honey?” she said sweetly. Sartain imagined her caressing the hair back from the young man’s forehead, and he stifled the urge to chuckle. “What did you just say?”
More thrashing.
“The Mexican,” the kid said.
“What Mexican, honey?” Dixie asked.
Silence save for the light squawking of the leather springs on the kid’s bed.
“Oh, lordy, look at the lightnin’! We’d best get these beeves to lower pastures, Homer, or we’re gonna be poppin’ like Mexican firecrackers!”
Dixie cursed under her breath.
A floorboard squawked again as she padded toward the door.
Sartain cursed under his breath and, gritting his teeth, retreated to her room. He managed to get her door closed and latched as he heard the kid’s door groan open and then click shut. When she came into the room, the Cajun was lying on his back under the bedcovers, eyes closed, hands folded on his belly.
“Mike?” she called to him quietly from the door.
He opened his eyes, blinking as though he’d been asleep. He raked a hand down his face and feigned a yawn. “How’s the kid?”
She stared at him, one eyebrow arched suspiciously.
“You all right?” he asked her, smacking his lips.
Finally, she smiled and shrugged out of her wrap. She crawled into the bed and spooned her cool, supple body against his, pressing her lips to his shoulder.
“He’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll see to that.”
Chapter 7
Dixie was up at first light, wanting another go-round.
Sartain could have slept a little longer, but he felt obliged to the gal. She’d given him a room and a corral for his horse, and she was doctoring the younker on his behalf, though after last night, he suspected it was more on her own behalf.
On behalf of whatever gold the kid had been talking about in his fever dream. Likely, there wasn’t any gold except in said dream, but Dixie was a lonely girl, and likely as desperate for wealth as she was for human affection.
The affection the big Cajun could give her.
Gold was another thing altogether.
When they were through with another bout of gentle, soothing, early-morning coupling, Dixie kissed Sartain tenderly, tugged his ears, and gave herself a quick sponge bath while the Cajun watched. He’d always enjoyed watching a woman bathe. It reminded him of his not-so-innocent childhood when his foster “mothers” had bathed casually before him, sometimes two or three together.
He supposed that until the day he left this Earth, there would always be something special and homey and nostalgic about the sound of dripping water accompanied by a woman’s soft humming.
When Dixie went out to check on the kid and then start her day, preparing for Saturday night, the saloon’s busiest night of the few nights it was open, Sartain took a quick sponge bath of his own using her water. That was another thing that made him nostalgic—bathing in a woman’s used bathwater. There was something profoundly intimate about that, and somehow reassuring, although he supposed his brain wasn’t quite glued together the way most men were—most men with traditional upbringings, that was.
He dressed leisurely, taking his time knotting his neckerchief, brushing the dust from his pinto vest before shrugging into it. He checked his weapons—the pearl-gripped, gold-plated over-and-under derringer, his Bowie knife, and the big LeMat—making sure all were sound and clean and loaded and ready for action. If he’d learned one thing after riding into Hard Winter, he’d learned he needed to be r
eady for action as long as he cared to stay.
He thought he’d stay at least the weekend. There were a few things he felt he needed to get to the bottom of before leaving.
By way of doing that, he thought he’d saddle Boss and take a ride around the outlying countryside. He knew from having ridden through this neck of the San Juans in the past that these mountains were rich in history. He was curious about their recent history. Namely, recent trouble that might have compelled a total stranger to try to blow his head off with a .38-40 Winchester while he’d innocently winched water up from a well.
Maybe while riding through these forested slopes, he’d kick something up. Possibly lure out whoever had dragged the dead bushwhacker’s body away.
When he went downstairs, lighting a half-smoked cheroot, Dixie offered to cook him breakfast, but he declined. He thought that while riding through the mountains, where the creeks teemed with trout, he’d take a break, drown a few worms, and maybe, if he was lucky, fry himself a couple of Rocky Mountain cutthroat he’d wash down with Arbuckle’s.
He hadn’t had a fresh pan-fried trout in a month of Sundays, and that was one of his favorite meals. Also, the smell of wood smoke and food had been known to lure in answers to pressing questions.
It was still dawn when he walked outside, leisurely smoking the cheroot, enjoying the peppery smoke in his lungs and the lightness in his head. Like a cup of coffee, there was nothing like that first cheroot of the day. The coffee would have to wait until he’d gotten some riding in, but by damn, he was enjoying his cigar.
He’d spent a night with a comely lass in a comfortable bed, and he was enjoying a Mexican cigar. Despite nearly meeting his maker yesterday afternoon, life was good.
But then he remembered the dead man he’d cached between the hotel and the barbershop. He was half-hoping Earl would be gone and thus save him some digging.
Nope.
He was there, all right, just as Sartain had left him, pudgy hands crossed on his bulging belly. He was grinning as though in mockery of the work he would cause the man who’d shot him.
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