Jay sighed and looked up at the sky, in which the first stars kindled brightly. “Pecos had a mother. In New Mexico. I don’t think she was worth much, but he had her, just the same. And the men who came in and out of her life for a time. I know he loved his mother very much. He told me one time. Slash never told me peanuts about himself. I learned what I learned about him from the women I knew on the line. Those who’d known him . . . had known his situation at home—back before he killed a man who killed one of the prostitutes who had unofficially adopted him. Then he cut out for the Wild West, and he’s been running off his leash out here ever since. Him an’ Pecos, who is the light tempering Slash’s darkness. They met down in Texas. In some bordello, of course. All these years ago now.”
She stopped and just stared at the stars for a time. Walsh stood beside her, staring skyward, as well.
Finally, he glanced over at her. “What are you going to do, Jay? About Slash, I mean.”
She thought about that as she stared at the stars growing brighter with each flicker. She glanced over at Walsh and said thoughtfully, firmly, “I’m going to give him some time. Not a lot. Because neither of us is getting any younger, and I’d as soon not die alone, with no one around to give my cheek one more kiss. No, I’m not going to wait on him forever. But I’m going to wait a little while longer.”
She smiled wistfully. “I owe him that much.”
Walsh drew a deep breath and gave a dubious half-smile. “Far be it from me to say this, but say it I will. I don’t think you owe him that much. Or is that my envy speaking again?” He smiled, shook his head. “Whatever is doing my talking for me, just know this, Jaycee Breckenridge.”
He closed his hands over her shoulder again, drew her toward him. “If that old cutthroat can’t muster up the courage to make an honest woman out of you, I’ll be waiting in the wings to do just that.”
Jay looked up at him in surprise, deeply touched. “Really, Cisco? You’d do that for me?”
“That, darling woman, is testament to how deeply I feel for you. I for one am not afraid to say it. I am also not so proud that I’d let pride stand in my way of one day placing a ring on your finger, facing a judge, saying ‘I do forevermore,’ and lifting your veil and kissing your tender lips.”
He gave a courtly bow and kissed her hand.
“My God, Cisco,” Jay said, sucking back a powerful wave of emotion, “I think I might have just swooned!”
“Don’t worry—I’m here to catch you when you fall.”
Jay frowned. “You said ‘when.’ Are you so certain?”
Walsh gave a regretful half-smile. “Unfortunately, I am.”
“Don’t be offended that I do hope you’re wrong.”
“Not at all.” Walsh smiled. “But only if you’ll join me for one drink before you start the wild part of your night in the Thousand Delights.”
“First one’s on me!”
Cisco turned sideways to her and crooked his arm. Jay hooked hers through his. They started back to the bustling heart of Fort Collins in the northern Colorado gloaming.
CHAPTER 18
“No, no, no, no, no!” Pecos bellowed as he watched the girl scoop her derringer off the rock. As she raised the gun and took aim, she lost the towel but she seemed more bent on blood now than modesty.
“You animal!” she shrieked, clicking the little popper’s hammer back and aiming down the stubby barrels.
“Slash, help me out here!” Pecos cried, stumbling back through the spruce branches.
The derringer’s top barrel blossomed rose flames and made a sound like a branch snapping. It was a good thing that Pecos tripped over a spruce root humping out of the ground or the bullet he felt pass through the air where his head had been a half a wink before likely would have drilled him a third eye.
As he hit the ground, the derringer cracked again. The second bullet drilled into the ground not three inches off his left ear.
“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Pecos shouted. “I can explain!”
As he pushed up onto his elbows, he widened his eyes in shock when he saw the girl running toward him, still as naked as the day she was born but a whole lot better filled out. She wasn’t wielding the derringer, however. She’d replaced the empty garter gun in her hands with a stout pine branch.
“I’ll show you what happens to lusty old dogs!”
She stopped before Pecos and swung the branch from behind her right shoulder. Before she could land the blow, Slash ran up from behind her and wrapped one arm around her chest. In the near darkness, he probably didn’t realize she was naked. But when he realized what he’d grabbed, a wide-eyed look of shock rolled over his lean, weathered features beneath the brim of his low-crowned, flat-brimmed black hat.
Still, he jerked up her arm holding the branch. He snatched the branch out of her hand, and tossed it away.
He lowered his other arm to her belly and lifted her up off her feet.
“Stop it!” she cried. “Let me go, you licentious desperado! You craven outlaw! You gutless coyote! You common cur! Let me goooo!”
“You want me to let you go?” Slash asked, holding the girl up off the ground while she writhed and kicked in his grasp.
“Let me go, or I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
“All right,” Slash said. “I’ll let you go!”
He stepped back, swung around, and tossed her into the stream. She hit the water with a scream and a thunderous splash.
Slash turned back to Pecos, chuckling. “There. That’ll teach her how to treat licentious desperados!”
Pecos climbed heavily to his feet, wincing and grunting against the various and sundry aches and pains that are naturally spawned when a man of his years and size hits the ground so unceremoniously. “What in the holy hell does lic . . . lic-en—”
“Licentious?” Slash asked, chuckling again. “Beats me. Leastways, that’s what I thought she said.” He frowned at his partner. “Say, what were you doing over here when the poor girl was trying to have a little privacy, anyways?”
Before Pecos could answer, a gurgling sound rose from the stream. It was followed by the sound of thrashing and chaotic splashing. Both men turned toward where the water slid between the low, rocky banks, reflecting the last light of day slowly filtering out of the early-evening sky.
“Where is she?” Slash said, scowling at the river.
“H . . . help!” the girl cried in a watery gasp.
Both men saw the struggling figure at the same time, about twenty feet downstream on their right and ten feet out from the bank.
Pecos pointed. “There she is! Lord o’ mercy—you’re drowning her, Slash!”
“Help!” the girl wailed, splashing and thrashing and desperately trying to keep her head above water. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . swimmmm!”
“Oh, fer cryin’ in the parson’s tea!”
Slash took off running downstream along the bank, while Pecos branched off toward the camp, yelling, “I’ll fetch a rope!”
Slash ran, swiping his hat off his head and shucking out of his leather vest, keeping his eyes on the silhouette of the girl thrashing in water that was a murky brown and green color in the fading light. She twisted and turned, stabbing at the water with her hands, gasping and crying and calling for help.
“Ain’t this just like you?” Slash berated himself, pausing at the edge of the bank to rip off his string tie so it wouldn’t get caught up on anything in the river and strangle him—though strangling would be no more than what he deserved. “First, you cripple a U.S. marshal, and now you’ve gone an’ drowned yourself a Pink!”
He whipped out of his shirt, kicked out of his boots, ran downstream a few more yards, then leaped off the bank and onto a tree angling partway into it, having fallen from his side of the water. He thrust his arms above his head and sprang off his heels, diving forward into the cold, dark stream.
He came up fast, shivering, and thrust his head above the water. The girl was twenty, maybe thirty
feet away from him. She appeared to be caught in the strong current out toward the center of the river. It had her fast, and it was taking her quickly toward the tributary’s meeting with the Taylor a mile or two beyond.
If she got that far, she’d be a goner, for this far up the canyon, the Taylor was a raging torrent.
Slash swam out toward the current. When he felt it grab him, he turned toward the girl and thrust his arms forward, swimming hard and fast, kicking his legs.
“Imagine that,” he grunted, swimming. “A Pinkerton detective who can’t swim. Hell, no one taught me how to swim. I learned by happenstance. Either you sink or you swim!” Louder, he yelled, “This ain’t some Chicago lawn party out here, honey!”
The current picked up as the stream narrowed between banks, closing like the jaws of a steel trap, so that the river became half as wide as it had been where the girl had gone in. Or where Slash had thrown her in, he silently amended to himself, with some chagrin.
Here, the current was faster, taking both the girl and Slash more quickly downstream toward the Taylor.
Slash gritted his teeth against the cold and swam as though his life depended on it. Which it likely did. If the pretty Pink drowned, Bleed-Em-So would likely hang him, with both the chief marshal and Allan Pinkerton smoking cigars as they watched the festive event from a doxy’s hotel balcony.
Slash swam until he thought his heart, frozen as it felt, would explode in his frozen chest. He narrowed the gap between him and the girl, the river glinting and gurgling around him. The Pink’s pretty head went under for a few seconds, and when she started to come back up, Slash grabbed her from one side and, sidling behind her, wrapped his arm around her chest and drew her close against him.
She gave a startled scream.
“Easy, easy,” Slash said. “It’s me, darlin’! I’m here to save your worthless, albeit lovely, hide!”
The stark fear in the girl’s eyes turned momentarily to disdain as she yelled, “Stop pawing me, you brigand!”
“I’m tryin’ to save your life, you silly thing!”
“You don’t need to grab me there!”
Slash was on the verge of letting her go altogether. But then his mind flashed on the imagined image of Bledsoe and Pinkerton enjoying his necktie party while newsboys hawked the local rag and middle-aged women from some civic sobriety society sold glasses of bittersweet lemonade, and he renewed his grip on the girl’s upper chest, trying to keep his male mind off what he was touching.
Hell, he was so cold he could barely feel anything, anyway.
What he did register was that she felt like an icicle. A lumpy, wet one.
As soon as he tightened his grip on her and drew her against him once more, the terror returned to her eyes, and she started fighting him. “Oh!” she cried. “Oh . . .” Her head went under briefly, and she bobbed up, spitting water. “Oh, I’m . . . I’m . . . I’m . . . drown—!”
“Stop fighting me, dammit!”
“Help! I’m—”
In her terror and raging panic, she rammed her elbow against Slash’s left cheek. As cold as he was, the pain was like a javelin shoved through both jaws, dazing him for a few precious seconds. Thrashing crazily, she drew him under with her, kicking and clawing him, and when he got both their heads above the river again, he spat water from his lips and said, “Sorry for this, darlin’—but it’s for your own damn good!”
Slash rammed his balled right fist into her left cheek.
Instantly, her eyes rolled up in their sockets, and she sagged back in the water.
Slash grabbed her and, holding her head above the water, began to stroke with his free arm toward shore.
“Slash—rope!” Pecos called.
It was too dark for Slash to see the rope until it hit the water. He saw the glint as it splashed, and then he saw its silhouette writhing like a snake just ahead of him. He let the current carry him and the unconscious girl forward, then reached out to grab the braided riata.
He twisted the wet leather in his fist and yelled, “Got ’er!”
The slack was taken up out of the rope, and Pecos began to pull Slash, with the girl’s back pressed hard against him, her head tilted back beneath his chin, toward shore. Slash merely treaded water, letting his partner do the work, wincing at the taut pressure in his right hand, where the riata bit into his skin.
Finally, he saw Pecos’s hatted silhouette against the dull, green-dark sky behind him, as he stood on the bank about four feet above the water. Pecos pulled with one hand and threw the slack leather out behind him. The river’s sandy, weedy bottom clawed against Slash’s feet, and with a relieved sigh, he regained his balance and walked up the shelving shoreline.
Pecos continued to pull the riata until Slash and the girl were snugged up against the mossy, brushy bank, the river now swirling around their knees.
“You all right, Slash?” Pecos said, hurrying over to the waterlogged pair.
“I . . . I think so.” When Slash had caught his breath, he grabbed the girl, pulled her over his shoulder, and extended his hand to Pecos, who grabbed it and pulled him up onto the bank. Slash glared at him. “No thanks to you!”
“What do you mean—no thanks to me? You’re the one who threw her in the river!”
With the girl slumped over his shoulder like a hundred-pound sack of potatoes, Slash walked in his soaked socks toward the fire flickering in the darkness, beyond a black fringe of screening trees. “I didn’t know she couldn’t swim. Doesn’t Pinkerton teach his operatives to swim, fer chrissakes?”
He glanced over his shoulder at Pecos, who was taking long strides to keep up with his soaked and shivering partner. “Besides, you were the one ogling her from the bushes, you depraved cuss!”
“I wasn’t ogling her! I was out scouting them thieves’ trail, just like I said I was gonna do—’cause you couldn’t track a hog across a muddy yard!—when I come back an’ heard somethin’ over by the river. I thought fer sure that gang must’ve sent a man or two back to turn us toe down an’ get us off their trail.”
Slash entered the camp and headed toward where the girl had piled her gear, which they’d retrieved from the area around the stage before they’d set out on the robbers’ trail. If she was joining the two ex-cutthroats on their hunt for the killers, which it looked like she was bound and determined to do, whether they wanted her to or not, she’d need some clean clothes and blankets.
Slash hurried past the small, crackling fire, saying, “Yeah, well, since it wasn’t them but her, you just decided to stand there and get you an eyeful while she bathed herself—that it?”
“That ain’t it at all!”
“Spread her blankets out there so I can lay her down!”
Slash stood, shivering, as he held the girl over his shoulder, while Pecos dropped to his knees and spread the Pink’s blankets out at the base of a fir tree roughly six feet from the fire. “When I seen it was her and not no bushwhackers,” Pecos said, “I . . . well, I . . . I reckon I just couldn’t . . . I couldn’t turn away.” He gave a sheepish scowl.
“See? What’d I tell you? You’re a mighty depraved soul, Pecos. When you get back to Fort Collins, I suggest you join a church. If any church will have you and risk getting struck by lightning the minute you walk through its doors, that is!”
“Ah, cut it out, Slash! You’re ridin’ me too hard for this. It was a human mistake! She’s a pretty girl, fer leapin’ hellcats!”
“Help me get her down there. As cold an’ stiff as I am, I’m liable to drop her.”
“Jesus, she ain’t movin’,” Pecos said, taking the girl by her shoulders and, with Slash holding her legs, easing her onto the spread blankets. “Are you sure you didn’t kill her?”
Kneeling to each side of the naked young Pinkerton agent, both men stared down at her. “Holy moly,” Slash said, raking a hand down his face in appreciation of the sight before him.
“See?” Pecos said. “What’d I tell you? Now you’re doin’ it, too!”
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“She certainly is an eyeful.”
“What’d I tell ya?”
“Stop starin’ at her, you old dog!” Slash got ahold of himself and, seeing that her bosoms were rising and falling as she breathed, which meant she was still kicking, he drew one of the blankets over her body and began rubbing her violently. “Help me here,” he ordered. “Grab that other blanket and let’s dry her and rub some blood back into her limbs.”
“All right, all right!”
“Don’t you go enjoying it!”
“I ain’t enjoying it one bit! I think you’re the one who’s enjoying it!”
“I am not!”
“You’d have gotten stuck there same as me, Slash! If it’d been you in my shoes.”
“Yeah . . . well . . . maybe,” Slash allowed, grudgingly, as he rubbed the girl’s left leg, watching all her parts jostling around beneath the blankets. Then he couldn’t help but chuckle in spite of his chagrin. “Boy, she sure caught you with your hand in the cookie jar, didn’t she?”
Rubbing the girl’s left arm brusquely, Pecos shook his head. “Boy, I’ll say she did.”
“Either one of them bullets hit home?”
“No, but not for her lack of tryin’!”
“Hey, look,” Slash said, “I think she’s comin’ around.”
CHAPTER 19
The girl moaned and shook her head.
Her lips fluttered. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, rolled onto her side, and coughed, spitting up water.
Slash and Pecos sat back, gazing down at her hopefully.
“How you doin’, darlin’?” Slash asked her.
She coughed up a little more water, then turned to look at the two middle-aged cutthroats staring down at her. She ran the back of her hand across her mouth, frowning as though it was taking her brain some time to get all its marbles back into their rightful pockets. The young Pinkerton’s brown eyes seemed to focus gradually, and then, gasping with a sudden realization, she cut her astonished, horrified gaze to each grinning man in turn. She lifted the blankets to stare down at her naked body.
A Good Day for a Massacre Page 14