“Oh, my God!”
“It ain’t what ya think!” Pecos said.
“Rest assured,” Slash said, holding up his hands, “your virtue is intact. As is ours. We was just gettin’ the blood goin’ again in all your purty parts.”
“All my purty parts?”
“Real helpful, Slash!” Pecos castigated his partner.
“Well, hell, there’s no denying she ain’t hard to look at.” Slash chuckled dryly. “You know that most of all, ya shameless, peeping scalawag!”
“Get away from me!” the girl shrieked, holding the blankets down tautly against her chest and making sure nothing was showing down along the rest of her as she sat up and curled her legs beneath her. “Go on—get away. Shoo! Shoo!”
“Shoo? Shoo?” Slash said, indignant. “Listen, darlin’—we just saved your life. Hell, I risked my life to save yours!”
“You hit me!” She probed at her left cheek with a finger.
“It was for your own damn good, honey. I barely tapped you. You just got a bone china jaw, is all.”
“First you throw me into the river and then you swim out and attack me!”
“Attack?”
The pretty, waterlogged Pink shuttled her incriminating gaze to Pecos. “And you were ogling me while I toweled off after bathing. That’s what started this whole thing. I remember it all quite clearly!”
“Ah, hell!” Pecos said. “Believe what you wanna believe. I’m tired of this. I’m hungry and thirsty.”
“Yes, I’m sure that ogling a lady as she enjoys her private ablutions will make a scalawag such as yourself quite hungry.” She raised her knees and rested her forehead on them. “Oh, God—here I find myself ambushed and badly battered, splattered with the blood of my own colleagues. The gold we planned so hard to keep safe is stolen out from under the noses of the two doddering cutthroats that Chief Marshal Bledsoe, for some ungodly reason known only to him, assigned to protect it . . .”
“Hey!” Slash objected. “There ain’t nothin’ doddering about this cutthroat!”
“And then I’m ogled by the notorious varmint known as the Pecos River Kid, only to nearly be drowned and savagely attacked by the vile and infamous brigand Slash Braddock!”
“Infamous?” Slash said. “Yeah, I’ll take infamous.”
“After I am finally fished out of the river in which I nearly drowned, I wake up butt-naked with the same two criminals hovering over me like a couple of snarling ogres. Who knows what they did while I was at death’s doorstep!”
“Well, I know what I did,” Pecos said, pouring soaked beans into a pot. “And it wasn’t nearly as much fun as what you’re talkin’ about.”
The girl lifted her chin and stared in anguish at the stars. “God hates me!”
She put her head down against her knees again and sobbed.
Slash had swaddled himself in his wool soogan and was kneeling by the fire, letting its warmth wrap around him and begin to push out the chill that had penetrated his very marrow. He’d also produced a bottle from his bag. He glanced at Pecos, who was stirring the beans.
Pecos sighed. “Poor girl. Her heart’s done been broken.” To the girl, he said, “I do apologize for my part in it, honey. You’re right, I am a varmint. A lusty old varmint. I’ll be shoveling coal soon, no doubt.” He tasted the beans, then continued stirring the pot. “I do cook a good pot of beans, though.”
Slash went over, dropped to a knee beside the pretty Pinkerton, and offered his bottle. “Here—have you a coupla pulls of that. You’re just cold, is all. Cold and hungry, most like. The whiskey’ll work on the chill, and Pecos’s beans—if they don’t kill you—will satisfy your hunger.”
“I cook better beans than you do, Slash. You don’t put enough bacon in.” To the girl, Pecos added, “Slash is tighter’n the bark on a tree. He don’t add enough bacon. Bacon—and a whole fletch of the right kind of bacon—is the key to a good pot of beans.”
He glanced at his partner and sealed his conviction with a resolute dip of his chin.
The Pink lifted her head from her knees. She wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of each hand in turn and looked at the bottle in Slash’s hand. “I don’t imbibe.”
“No better time to start.”
Shivering, she looked at the unlabeled bottle again. She grabbed the forty-rod, looked at it, made a little face, then tipped it back and swallowed. She jerked the bottle down and, eyes bulging and lips twisting, her cheeks becoming first stony pale then sunset red, she coughed, choked, and scowled at Slash. “My God!” She could barely speak. “That’s just awful!”
“He buys cheap whiskey, Slash does,” Pecos said. “Everything about him is cheap.”
“It grows on you,” Slash told the Pinkerton.
Slash took the bottle back and started to rise. He stopped when the girl grabbed the bottle out of his hand and threw back another couple of swallows. She gagged and coughed, and scrubbed her hand across her mouth. This time her cheeks didn’t turn pale but stayed red with the flush of warm blood.
“Awful!” she croaked. “But . . . you’re right. It does fight the cold.”
“Here.” Slash plucked a bullet-dented tin cup, charred from many remote fires in countless hidden coulees across the western frontier, and splashed a couple of fingers of the busthead into it. He held the cup out to the girl. “Have a cup of your own. That bullet crease is compliments of Bill Tilghman his ownself.”
The girl glanced dubiously at the dent. “All right,” she said. “If you insist.”
“Oh, I do. Doctor Slash’s orders.”
Slash winked at her, then went back and hunkered down close to the fire. He threw back several more shots of the whiskey and knelt there, shivering. Pecos grabbed the bottle out of his hand and splashed whiskey into his own cup before thrusting the bottle back to Slash.
Pecos filled a bowl of beans for himself, set the pot on a rock beside the fire, then sat back against his saddle, his cup of whiskey on the ground beside him, the bowl of beans steaming in his gloved hands. “Beans are ready anytime you want ’em. Slash can get his own, but I’ll serve yours to you personally, young lady, in grand style.”
He winked at her. He’d be damned if he didn’t think she blushed a little.
After a time, staring into her cup, she said, “What on earth are we gonna do about that gold?” She had wriggled over to sit back against the bole of the fir tree, the blankets wrapped tightly around her, not showing so much as a square half-inch of her flesh.
“What are we gonna do about the gold?” Slash said, taking another pull from the bottle and giving another spasming shiver as a fresh chill rolled through him. “We’re gonna get it back. That’s what we’re gonna do about the gold.”
“Got no choice,” Pecos said, scooping beans into his mouth as though he wasn’t likely to see more beans till the next harvest. “Me an’ Slash can’t go back to Denver without that gold. If we do, we’ll likely be greeted by a necktie party complete with a four-piece band. Ole Bleed-Em-So will hang us fer sure, and cheer on our midair two-steps.”
“This wouldn’t have happened if you two old outlaws hadn’t let the gold get stolen right out from under your noses!” the girl scolded, glaring at each man in turn.
That climbed Slash’s hump. He rose and pointed the bottle at her, returning her fiery gaze. “Listen here, little sister—we didn’t let that gold get stolen out from under our noses. We had to leave it to go rescue you from certain death on that mountain, since you and your Pinkerton pals all went singin’ and dancin’ into that forty-five caliber Gatling gun hell storm!”
“Sort of lucky we did, though, too, Slash,” Pecos pointed out. “If we hadn’t heard that machine gun and stayed with the wagon, we likely would have ended up like her colleagues.”
After Slash, Pecos, and the pretty Pinkerton, Hattie, had unhitched and turned loose the mules of the wagon, intending to return for them later, and started out after the robbers, they’d come upon the place wher
e part of the gang had been lying in ambush, waiting for the wagon. That spot had been only about two hundred yards farther down the trail that Slash and Pecos had been following.
The place had been marked by the number of man and horse tracks they’d spied around two nests of rocks, one on each side of the trail. Pecos had found a bullet one of the bushwhackers had dropped, and Slash had found a still-warm quirley stub.
“And you’d likely still be wandering around up there—a little girl lost and alone in the big, cruel world.” Slash jerked his chin to indicate the mountain, now out of sight, on which she and the other operatives had been ambushed.
“Little girl lost and alone, my foot!” Hattie snorted a caustic laugh. “I haven’t been lost since I was eight years old. I can take care of myself just fine. I always have and I always will. What I want to know”—she cast each man another accusatory glare—“is how in the world did those killers find out about our plan? They had to have found out about it from someone.”
“What are you insinuatin’, you little—”
“Slash!” Pecos scolded his fiery partner. He turned to Hattie and frowned. “Yeah, what are you insinuating, Miss Hattie?”
The girl crossed her arms on her chest and wrinkled one nostril. “Isn’t it clear? I think you two old cutthroats might be in with that gang. I think maybe, just maybe, you’re intending on meeting up with them somewhere farther on down the trail to cash in on your cut of that hundred thousand dollars.”
“Why, you little—”
“Slash!”
Slash had started toward the girl, balling his left fist down low by his side. He was holding the bottle in his right hand. He stopped and glared down at her. “That’s a rotten thing to say to two men who rescued your purty butt!”
“I will thank you to not comment on any of my body parts forevermore hereafter! That you saw them all horrifies me no end!” She gave a groaning air of deep frustration and embarrassment. “Go ahead and kill me right here and now. Go on—cut my throat and get it over with!”
“What are you talking about?” Pecos asked.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with you?” Slash said. “Your time in the river freeze your brain?”
“I suspect that when you meet up with your cohorts, you’ll kill me. Or at least try to kill me. Since I’ll be badly outnumbered, I will no doubt have very little chance against you. Rest assured, I do not intend to abandon the trail, however. I don’t care how many you are in number, I am going to do everything in my power to retrieve that gold for Mister Pinkerton!”
“Believe me, little sister,” Slash said, laughing caustically as he sat on a rock near the fire and rearranged his blankets around his shoulders. “If we really were in with that bunch, we sure as holy sin and taxes wouldn’t have kept you alive this long!”
“That’s no way to talk to the girl, Slash. She’s alone out here with us, and we got us reputations as cutthroats, for sure. I can understand her suspicions.” Pecos turned to where she sat against the fir tree, her arms crossed defiantly on her chest. “While I can’t convince you of our innocence, Miss Hattie, I can only try to assure you that you’re safe with me an’ Slash, and we’re gonna do everything in our power to get back that gold. We got our pride, me an’ Slash do.”
“We also don’t want Bledsoe to play cat’s cradle with our heads.”
“That, too,” Pecos said. “Whatever you think of us, I think one thing all three of us should do is try to get along and work together. The robbers are at least a dozen in number, all told, and they’re doin’ a pretty good job of covering their trail. I don’t know where they’re goin’. I would have thought Mexico. Instead, they circled around to the north, and now here we’re following the Taylor west, more or less—upstream toward the Gunnison.” He shook his head. “Don’t make sense. But there it is. It’s going to take three pairs of eyes to keep trackin’ ’em, an’ like I said before, Slash can’t track a hog across a stock pen.”
“Oh, shut up about that!” Slash turned to the girl to explain himself. “I never had to track men before this. I was always runnin’ from men like us—an’ doin’ a very good job of it, I might add!”
“Well, I can track,” Hattie said. “I’m rather good at it, in fact. I grew up in Arizona, and my father and I often had to track Apaches or border rapscallions who rustled our horses. I’m also very savvy, and I am a very light sleeper. So if either one of you cutthroats decides he’s going to sneak up on me in the night and cut my throat, you’ll get a bullet for your trouble!”
With that, she reached into a carpetbag and pulled out a big, ivory-gripped horse pistol. The revolver was so big and long-barreled, it made the girl’s hand look like a doll’s hand.
“That’s one hell of a big hogleg, honey,” Slash chuckled, lifting the bottle to his lips once more. “Can you hit anything with it?”
“Just try me,” the girl said, narrowing one eye and spinning the big popper on her finger. She set the big Remington down beside her and looked imperiously at Pecos. “Now, I’ll be served some beans, I think.”
Slash snorted.
CHAPTER 20
Slash’s sleep was shattered by an ear-ringing cacophony the likes of which he couldn’t remember being assaulted by before.
If he had ever encountered such a tooth-shattering din, he would have remembered the hullabaloo itself as well as his murdering of the culprit.
Opening his eyes and discovering the instigator, it took every ounce of willpower in his body and soul from clawing one of his pretty Colts from its holster and shooting the pretty Pinkerton who stood over him and Pecos, rapping a spoon against the underside of the empty bean pot.
“Up and at ’em,” the girl said beneath her ceaseless hammering of the spoon against the pot. “We got owlhoots to chase, and the sun is on the rise!”
“Stop!” Pecos cried, clamping his arms over his ears. “Stop! Stop! Oh, God—please stop that racket!”
The girl continued to hammer away at the pot, an arrogant little smile quirking both corners of her plump, pink mouth.
“You heard him!” Slash bellowed, shoving up on his elbows and stretching his lips back from his teeth. “Stop that infernal noise or I’m going to shoot you, little girl, and feed you to the crows!”
The girl stopped, lowered both the spoon and the pot, and arched a cool brow. “Are you both good and awake?”
“We’re awake!” Pecos bellowed. “Good Lord, you little polecat—how could we not be?”
Slash chuckled. “Now, Pecos, that’s downright ungentlemanly—callin’ the young Pink names like that!”
“You had it right, Slash,” Pecos said. “I think we shoulda left her in the river.”
“The man’s right touchy about his sleep,” Slash told the Pink, who continued to stand between him and Pecos as though threatening a resumption of the assault.
Despite her arrogance and downright nastiness, Slash had to admit she was a sight to behold, standing there with her chestnut hair freshly brushed and spilling across her shoulders. She wore a cream blouse under a leather jacket, and a dark wool skirt with a wide brown belt behind which resided her big Remington. On her feet were high-heeled black riding boots. A wool hat hung down her back by a braided horsehair thong.
She might be as wicked as an April witch, but she was a pretty girl with all the right curves in all the right places. He didn’t know if she looked better naked or dressed. He decided the former, though the latter was a close second.
“You two owlhoots have had plenty of sleep.” Hattie canted her head to the east. “The sun’s on the rise.”
Slash looked in that direction. Only a faint gray wash of very early dawn shone in a small V of eastern sky peeking up between craggy mountain ridges, beyond the darkly silhouetted forest shrouding the river. The water had made a steady, constant humming whisper all night long. There was nothing like the sound of running water, especially running mountain water, for some reason, that made for a deep, dreamless sleep.
That and the cold, high-altitude air and the shimmering stars that had appeared close enough to reach out and grab. Slash had stirred a couple of times during the night, only to tumble back into that clinging somnolence, wishing it would swallow him forever.
The night’s slumber was slow to release the dark-haired former cutthroat, but he knew from the way the girl was staring at him, pot and spoon still in her hands, that if he rested his head back against his saddle again, he’d likely get better than what she’d given him before. His ears couldn’t take it.
“Ah, hell!” Slash flung his covers aside and yowled as he started the slow climb to his feet, his old joints, assaulted by not only the cold ground but his time in the frigid river, popping like miniature dynamite sticks.
Twenty minutes later, after a breakfast of hot coffee and cold beans, the trio struck camp and saddled up, Hattie starting the day’s ride with Pecos, sitting atop his bedroll and saddlebags behind him.
They picked up the killers’ trail where Pecos had scouted it last night and rode almost straight west along another tributary of the Taylor River. By evening, they’d left the tributary and headed northwest up into the Elk Mountains, where it was cool and windy, and where rain and hail soaked and pummeled them late in the afternoon.
The brief but powerful storm effectively wiped out the ragged bits of the killers’ trail they’d been following. It was a glum trio who camped that night in a nest of rocks along the side of a granite ridge, enduring a cold, wet sleep, then waking to frost on the ground and ice-glazed rain puddles the next morning.
There was only one trail out here, aside from game trails and the fading traces of old Indian hunting trails, and they followed this main trail for lack of anything else to follow. The gang had been following this trail the day before, so there was no reason to believe they hadn’t continued following it toward wherever in hell they were going.
A Good Day for a Massacre Page 15