“What the hell?” Pecos said from where he lounged on the room’s single, brass-framed bed, inside a cloud of his own cigarette smoke.
“Ambush!” Slash cried, and hit the floor.
Pecos blew out the oil lamp on a table beside him. Judging by the heavy thud in the darkness, he too had thrown himself to the floor. “How many?” he yelled softly, his voice pinched with anxiety. “You see ’em?”
“Not yet!”
Slash clawed one of his own stag-butted .45s from its cross-draw holster on his left hip and lifted his head to edge a careful look out the window, which, he could see in the light from the street’s burning oil pots, sported a hole with weblike cracks spoking out around it.
“Harley Anders, you low-down, four-flushin’, dirty dog!” a man cried on the street somewhere below the second-floor room.
There was another thundering boom. Slash saw the flash of the gun straight off down a street that was a maze of shadows and flickering light from the oil pots and occasional torches and trash or cook fires. Slash couldn’t hear where that shot landed, but it didn’t appear to have struck anywhere near his and Slash’s room.
“What on earth . . . ?” Pecos had slid up to Slash’s left and was also peering cautiously out the window, a few inches above the sill.
The two men watched a figure stagger into the light of two guttering oil pots. He was mostly in silhouette, but Slash could see that he was a short, pudgy gent with long, gray hair. He wore no hat, only a shirt with suspenders and sleeve garters, and dark trousers stuffed into the high tops of mule-eared boots. He was holding a pistol down low in his right hand.
Light from the fires on both sides of the street glinted on the .45’s bluing.
That he was drunk there was no doubt. He was nearly dragging the toes of his boots, and his head was wobbling as though his neck were broke.
As he raised the .45 again, Slash started to raise his own Colt. He held fire when the drunk flashed off another shot, this one toward the street on his own left, to Slash’s right.
“Christalmighty,” Pecos said. “A nasty damn drunk with a bone to pick!”
“Looks that way.” Slash raised the window a few inches, and cool night air as well as clearer sounds from the street issued into the room.
“Harley Anders, you hear me, you black-hearted son of a three-legged cur?” The drunk’s .45 barked twice more, both bullets sailing into the front of a small saloon to his left and startling the six or seven horses tethered to the hitchrack there. One broke away from the rack, gave a shrill whinny, and ran off down the street and out of sight. “You owe me twenty-four dollars and twenty-six cents! I knowed you was markin’ them cards . . . and the whore was in on it . . . givin’ signals over my damn shoulder!”
The .45 flashed and barked again. There was the crashing sound of breaking glass and then the indignant yells and screams of men and women inside the saloon. There was also a shrill, agonized curse, telling Slash that the drunk’s bullet had struck flesh and bone somewhere inside the watering hole.
A man ran out of the saloon, the batwings clattering into place behind him before another man followed him out onto the narrow stoop fronting the place. “Elwyn Muskey—is that you, you drunken fool?” Slash thought he saw the telltale glint of a lawman’s star on the man’s vest, which he wore behind a long duster. There was an oil pot nearby, so Slash could see him fairly clearly, even from this distance of fifty yards or so.
The drunk had turned toward the saloon and stopped. Or had tried to stop. Drink had made him all loose joints and wobbly-headed. He was swinging his arms around, as well as the gun in his hand, as though to help him maintain balance. “Stay out of this, Reeves, or you’ll get what Harley’s gonna get!”
“Put that gun away or I’m haulin’ you in!”
“Haul this in, you scum-suckin’, badge-totin’ hornswoggler!” Muskey raised and aimed the .45, which flashed and popped.
The badge-toter on the saloon veranda cried and flew backward against the saloon wall to the right of the batwings. He crumpled and slid down the wall to the porch floor, cursing loudly.
The other man who’d barreled out of the saloon moved quickly down the veranda steps and into the street, sliding a pistol from a holster on his left thigh. “Now you’ve done it, Muskey!”
“This ain’t about you, Merle!” Muskey cried, tossing away his empty .45 and pulling another gun he’d had stuffed down inside the waistband of his pants.
“You shoot up my saloon, it sure as hell is about me!” The gun in Merle’s fist flashed and roared.
“Oh, you devil!” Muskey stumbled forward, extending his second gun and firing.
The two men walked toward each other, Muskey stumbling, Merle walking in a straight line, firing another round. The second round made Muskey flinch. He gave a grunt and staggered backward. He extended his pistol again.
It thundered, flames blossoming from the stout barrel.
Merle cursed as he triggered another round into Elwyn Muskey.
Muskey stumbled backward again, then dropped to his butt in the street.
Merle groaned and, clutching a hand to his belly, fell to his knees, his hat tumbling off a shoulder and into the dirt. He cursed again as he raised his revolver and fired another round into Muskey.
Muskey cursed again, maligning the saloon-owner’s bloodline, as he lifted his own gun and triggered yet another round into Merle, who promptly returned the favor . . . until both men’s gun hammers pinged benignly down onto firing pins and the two opponents lay in miserable heaps on the street, grunting and groaning and thrashing and cursing.
Meanwhile, a small crowd had pushed out onto the saloon’s veranda. One man broke away from the crowd and stepped down off the porch. He was a tall, thin man in a frock coat and bowler hat. He walked past the cursing and groaning Merle to stand over Muskey, who lay on his back with his legs curled beneath him.
He was wailing shrilly, flopping his arms and lifting his head.
The tall newcomer stared down at Muskey and said, “That was Matt Sullivan who cheated you at stud poker, Elwyn. Not me! And it was nine years ago in Abilene, you green-livered, prune-brained barrel-boarder!”
Harley Anders shucked a revolver from one of his own two holsters and emptied it into Elwyn Muskey. The drunkard’s body leaped violently with every round. By the time the sixth round had punched into Muskey’s crumpled body, his wails had died.
The echoes of Harley Anders’s hogleg chased each other around the eerily still mining camp until they dwindled away toward the stars. Silence fell, as dark and heavy as a burial shroud.
“Christ!” Anders holstered his empty pistol and stomped back into the saloon. “Now, where was I?”
Inside their dark room at the Palace Hotel, Slash and Pecos glanced at each other.
Shaking his head, Pecos whistled and said, “Well, now—wasn’t that a fine howdy-do?”
“There’s a minin’ camp for ya.”
“Yeah.”
Both men jerked as a soft knock sounded at their door.
CHAPTER 13
In the silence after the lead swap on the street, the soft knock had almost sounded like another .45 report.
Slash and Pecos jerked their heads toward the door, raising their pistols again and clicking back the hammers.
“What the hell?” Pecos grunted.
“Pinkertons, maybe.” Slash rose, depressing his pistol’s hammer but keeping the gun in his hand, barrel aimed at the door. “Light the lamp.”
When Pecos had gotten the lamp lit, Slash walked over to the door and tilted his head toward the panel. “Who is it?”
Someone cleared his voice—or was it her voice?—in the hall.
Keeping his Colt aimed straight out from his right hip, Slash opened the door a few inches and peered through the crack. A tall man and a woman of average height stood before him. The man wore a clerical collar and was holding a Bible. The woman was dressed all in black. Her severe wool dress was buttoned
clear to her throat. She wore a black bonnet that looked like crow wings. It was snugged securely to her chin by a black ribbon.
Slash glanced at Pecos. “Did you call a prayer meetin’?”
The woman hardened her jaws. They were pretty jaws. Her eyes were pretty, too, despite how flinty they’d become. “Mister Broaderick?” she said, tightly, turning her head to glance both ways along the hall. “Let us in.” She’d spaced the words out, enunciating each one angrily.
Slash shrugged and drew the door open. He stepped back as the pair walked into the room, moving softly. The man closed the door with care, latching it with a click that seemed to cause him pain.
“Um . . . that’s Braddock,” Slash told the woman.
He didn’t know if she’d heard or not, for the instant the door latched, she and the tall man in the clerical collar started hustling around the room. They looked in corners where the lamplight didn’t reach. While the woman dropped to her knees to look under the bed, the man opened a door to a small closet, peering around inside.
They scoured the walls with their gazes and sometimes their hands, running their fingers across the worn paper that was peeling at its seams in places. They took a good five or ten minutes, scouring the walls—apparently for peepholes, for Slash couldn’t think of anything else they might be suspicious of—and then wandered around the room, staring up at the low, wainscoted ceiling that was badly smudged with soot from the coal burner in the corner.
Finally, the woman turned to Slash and crossed her arms on her chest. “Mister Broaderick?”
“Braddock.”
She turned to Pecos. “Baker?”
“If you say so.” Pecos stood against the wall near the broken window, one stocking foot kicked back against the wall behind him, slowly building another quirley. His hat was off, and his thin hair hung down past his shoulders. His tweed suit coat hung over a chair back. He wore only his broadcloth trousers, white shirt, brown vest, and string tie. His pistol, of course, was thonged on his thigh. Both his and Slash’s rifles, and Pecos’s shotgun, leaned against the wall between him and Slash, who was dressed similarly to his partner only in dark whipcord trousers and a black leather vest over a red and black calico shirt with a black foulard tie. His low-crowned, broad-brimmed black hat was hooked over a bedpost. His black, square-toed boots stood against the wall by the door.
They’d been making themselves comfortable before the drunk had threatened their lives with the .45 slug through their window.
The woman wasn’t in a joking mood. “I’m asking you, sir. Is it Baker or isn’t it?”
“Don’t get your bloomers in a knot, darlin’,” Pecos said, poking the cigarette between his lips and scratching a match to life on his holster. “It is Baker, indeed. You can call me Melvin, if you want to.” He touched the flame of his lucifer to his cigarette, and Slash snorted as he watched his partner give the comely young, dark-haired, dark-eyed young lady the twice-over with his lusty gaze.
“Baker is fine.”
“And you are . . . ?” Slash asked her.
The tall man was about to speak, but the young woman cut him off with, “You don’t need our real names. This is the only time you’ll ever see us. Think of me, if you must think of me at all, as Operative One and him as Operative Two.”
The tall man glanced at Slash and threw his arms out with a sigh.
Keeping her voice just above a whisper and sliding her serious brown-eyed gaze between Slash and Pecos, Operative One said, “We are here to give you instructions for picking up the gold tomorrow morning at nine a.m. Not a second sooner or later.” Again, she slid her eyes between the two former cutthroats. “Understand?”
“Sure,” Slash said.
Operative One looked at him, blinked, and then a frown began carving lines around her eyes.
“What is it, Operative One?” Slash said, growing self-conscious.
“I’ve . . . I’ve seen you somewhere . . . before.”
“You have?” Slash and Pecos asked at the same time.
“Sure.” The lines around Operative One’s eyes grew even deeper. “Sure . . . I know . . . I have . . .”
“Where, Hattie?” asked Operative Two.
Operative One jerked a recriminating stare at her partner, and he wilted like a rose touched with frost. Turning quickly back to Slash, her eyes widening with recognition, Operative One, aka Hattie, said, “Oh, my God!” She clamped a hand over her wide-open mouth.
“What is it, Operative One?” Slash said. “Is my handsome mug givin’ you the fantods? Don’t feel bad. I do that to all the pretty women.”
He shared a sly grin with Pecos.
Ignoring the remark, or possibly not having heard it against the vexation inside her head, Operative One slowly lowered her hand from her mouth, then swiveled her head to slide her gaze from Slash to Pecos. She backed up a step, as though shrinking from a possible assault.
Keeping her eyes on Pecos, Operative One reached up with her left hand and grabbed the sleeve of Operative Two’s wool coat. “Oh, my God, Operative Two, do you know who these men are?”
“Braddock and Baker?”
Again, Operative One, or Hattie, clamped a hand over her astonished mouth. “This is Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid!” She was whispering, but her voice was so frantic that she gave the effect of shrieking.
Operative Two frowned skeptically as he looked at each man in turn. Then he laughed. “Oh, come on!” He gestured with his hand. “These two?”
“Hey!” Pecos said, indignant. “Why’s that so damn hard to believe?”
“Easy, partner,” Slash warned him.
“Why, Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid are young firebrands!” Operative Two laughed. “These men are . . . well, sorry, fellas . . . but they’re old!”
“That tears it!” Pecos flipped his quirley out the open window, then lunged for Operative Two. “I’ll show you how old I am!”
“Hold on!” Slash grabbed Pecos and shoved the taller man back against the wall. “Hold on, partner! Hold on!”
Pecos snarled and growled at the young Pinkerton like a stick-prodded wildcat.
Operative One was slowly shaking her pretty head. “It’s them, all right. I recognize them from their descriptions. When I first entered the agency, I was assigned to gather as much information as I could on these two . . . these two . . . cutthroats!” She thrust out her hand to indicate the two men. “Slippery, they were. Very slippery. And, because some folks saw them as likable, they’d give them shelter and make them even harder to run down.”
“All right, all right,” Slash said, holding up his hands palms out. “Guilty as charged, Operative One. Nevertheless, we ain’t wanted no more. Now we work—unofficially, you understand—for Chief Marshal Bledsoe. That’s why we’re here.”
“Killers!” Operative One raked out hoarsely between her plump, pink lips. “Killers—both!”
“Hey,” Pecos intoned, thrusting an accusing finger at her, “we never killed a single man that wasn’t out to kill us first!”
“Some of those men were merely doing their jobs!”
“So were we, sweetheart!” Pecos said, bending slightly forward at the waist and poking a thumb against his chest.
“All right, all right!” Operative Two stepped between Operative One and the two indignant cutthroats, holding up his arms in supplication. “I see we have a situation in need of defusing.” He turned to Pecos and said with a gentlemanly dip of his chin, “I do apologize, sir. I did not mean to give offense. I, too, have followed your careers and must admit to tendering you both a great deal of admiration for your considerable wiles and dodges, if not for your greed and occasional savagery.”
“There,” Pecos said, drawing a calming breath and giving his waistcoat a tug from the bottom. “That’s better.”
Operative One continued wagging her head in astonishment. “I had no idea we would be turning the gold over . . . for safekeeping . . . to known cutthroats!”
&
nbsp; “Take my word for it, honey,” Slash said. “You’re no more surprised than Pecos and I were when we heard the plan.”
“So you gentlemen now work for Chief Marshal Bledsoe,” Operative Two said.
“There you have it.”
Operative Two fingered his clerical collar. “I did think it odd when you seemed to just disappear roughly a year ago. I’d thought you were probably living the good life in Mexico or perhaps Hawaii. Maybe South America . . .”
“Well, here we are,” Pecos said, giving a dry chuckle. “An’ I know Slash an’ I . . . as well as old Bleed-Em-So hisself . . . would appreciate it no end if both you an’ Number One there kept it all under your hats. It’s supposed to be a secret, you understand.”
“And I know how you two can appreciate a secret,” Slash added with a wry grin.
“Boy, this really goes against the grain,” Operative One told Operative Two, puffing out her cheeks with a long, fateful exhalation. “I mean—turning gold over to two known cutthroats! How can we be sure they won’t abscond with it?”
“Age’ll keep us from stealing your gold,” Slash said. “Age and decrepitude.”
“Yeah, even though we ain’t all that old,” Pecos interjected, favoring the young Pink with a severe look.
Number Two turned to Number One and said, “Obviously, the chief marshal trusts these men. That means we must trust them, as well, Hat . . . er, I mean, Number One! Besides, once the gold is in their freight wagon”—he turned to Slash and Pecos with a not-so-vague look of warning—“it becomes their responsibility. Their heads will be on the chopping block—unless of course, gentlemen, the gold arrives safely in Denver.”
“That it will,” Slash said. “I know it goes against your Pinkerton fiber, but you can trust me an’ Pecos here. When we sign on to do a job, we see her through. Our word is bond, see?”
“Honor among thieves?” the haughty young woman asked, raising a skeptical brow.
“Yeah,” Pecos said. “You could call it that.”
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