A Good Day for a Massacre

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Lisa, give me that.” Ingram set his coffee cup down and wrapped his big hands around the shotgun.

  “No, Pa!”

  “Give it here, dammit, before that cannon goes off an’ we got one hell of a mess to clean up!”

  Slash and Pecos stepped back from the cell door, flinching, before Red Ingram had finally wrestled the big double-bore out of his daughter’s hands without detonating either barrel. Lisa looked up at the old man, face flushed with fury, her hat on the floor, her thick hair lying in tangles down the side of her head and on her shoulders.

  “Pa, you ain’t gonna get nowhere coddling those two old cutthroats!”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll have ’em on a diet of bread an’ water pronto!”

  “Now you’re just makin’ fun!” Lisa shot back at him, rage flashing in her eyes. “You never wanted to arrest ’em in the first place.”

  Red glanced at Slash and Pecos sheepishly. “Well, hell . . . they got federal bounties on their heads. Let the feds handle ’em. I don’t get paid enough to hold two cutthroats as mean an’ nasty as Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid.”

  “We’ll take that as a compliment,” Slash said, dryly. He didn’t want to mention that he and Pecos had both received pardons from none other than the president himself. He wasn’t sure why, but something held him back. He’d show those cards only when absolutely necessary.

  To his daughter, Red said, “You go make your last rounds now, Lisa. Then head on home to bed. I’ll stay here and sleep in my chair, keep an eye on these two curly wolves. Maybe see if I can’t pry a little more information out of ’em.”

  Lisa scooped her hat off the floor and glanced at her father sidelong. “You’re not gonna let ’em go—are ya, Pa?”

  “Oh, hell, no. Not since you went and arrested ’em. I’ll send a rider over to Aspen bright an’ early tomorrow morning, have him send a telegram to Denver. I’ll have the chief marshal send a couple of deputies for these two raggedy-assed owlhoots. They’ll be doin’ the midair two-step inside of two weeks.” Red placed a hand behind his head, pantomiming a rope, and made violent strangling sounds, sticking out his tongue and puffing out his cheeks.

  Lisa smiled joyfully. “You promise?”

  Red placed a tender hand on the girl’s cheek and beamed down at her. “Would I lie to my purtiest daughter?”

  “I’m your only daughter.”

  “Oh, that’s right—I’m so old I forget!” Red laughed. “Run along now, girl. I’ll watch ’em tonight. You can watch ’em tomorrow night. You know I sleep better sittin’ up in a chair, anyways.”

  “All right, Poppa.” Lisa glanced once more in disdain at the two incarcerated cutthroats, then placed her Greener in the rack by the door, blew her adoring father a kiss with her hand, and left.

  “That’s quite the deputy you got there, Red,” Pecos said, staring at the door through which Lisa had disappeared. The soft thumps of her footsteps dwindled off down the street.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Red said, pouring himself another cup of coffee.

  When he’d set the pot back on the stove, he took a sip, then looked at his two prisoners again. “If you ain’t here for the Spanish Bit gold, what are you here for?”

  “We never even heard of the Spanish Bit until your deputy mentioned it,” Slash lied.

  “Yeah, what is the Spanish Bit, anyways?” Pecos asked, making the question sound innocent enough, though that was the question burning in both his and Slash’s minds.

  Red took another sip of his coffee and eyed both prisoners suspiciously. “Gold mine. The first one in the area, and the last one. The only one left. When the poor quality of the gold in this area, not to mention the scarcity of it, drove everyone else out, the Spanish Bit remained. A big mine connected to a big ranch. They send gold out of these mountains once every couple of months. They send it with a whole passel of heavily armed guards. So far . . . no one has been fool enough to make a play for it. Let me warn you fellas that even back in your heyday, the Spanish Bit gold would have been out of your league.”

  “No point in gettin’ nasty, Red,” Slash said.

  “Hell, we’d like as not have made a play for it back in our prime,” Pecos countered, “but seein’ as how we don’t have a gang anymore, and we’re old—leastways, Slash is old—it’s probably a mite out of our reach. You’re right.”

  Slash turned to the town marshal. “Come on, Red. You know we’re not here for the Spanish Bit gold. We’re just coolin’ our heels, that’s all. Why don’t you let us go? We’re not worth the trouble. I know it’ll hurt your daughter’s feelin’s all to hell—seein’ as how she’s countin’ on seein’ the feds play cat’s cradle with our necks an’ all—but maybe, to make it up to her, you could buy her a pony instead.”

  All three men had a good laugh at that.

  Pecos wiped tears of humor from his eyes and said, “Open the door, Red. It’ll be our secret.”

  “I don’t know, boys,” Red said, stepping back and studying the floor as though for a course of action. “I’m gonna have to ponder on it. I’ll sleep on it an’ get back to you in the mornin’. What I should do is exactly what I said—send for the marshals. But seein’ as how you’re no longer runnin’ with your gang, an’ you’re damn near as old as I am—”

  “Hold on, now,” Slash said. “I don’t think we’re that—”

  Slash elbowed him hard, cutting him off.

  Slash drew a mouth corner down.

  “. . . and likely not even worth the expense of a trial and a hangin’,” Red continued from where Slash had interrupted him, “I’ll study on it overnight and get back to you tomorrow.”

  He yawned and set his empty coffee cup on his desk. “I’ll be hanged!” he said, stretching. “It ain’t all that late, but I’m sooo tired, I reckon I’m gonna fold my old bones back into this chair and pick up where I left off when you boys an’ my daughter so rudely interrupted me.”

  Pecos yawned. “I think I’m about ready to head that way myself.”

  He sagged down onto one of the cell’s two cots and tossed his hat onto the floor.

  “I reckon I might as well, too, then,” Slash said. He sat down, kicked out of his boots, lay down on the cot, rested his head on the flat, musty pillow that smelled of too many other men’s sweat, and drew the single wool blanket up to his chin.

  “ ’Night, fellas,” Red said, and blew out the lamp.

  “’Night, Red,” Pecos said.

  “Yeah, g’night, Red.” Slash yawned, squirmed around on the unfamiliar cot, getting comfortable, and closed his eyes.

  The night was so quiet, even here at the heart of town, that Slash and Pecos both felt themselves slip right off into deep sleep despite the uncertainty of their futures. The night was less than restful, however.

  Slash woke up after what he thought wasn’t much over an hour of shut-eye to Red’s raucous snoring. Slash had shared camp with some loud woodcutters before, but Red had those old roarers beat by double and maybe even three times. The town marshal of Honeysuckle snored so loudly he made the floor shudder. He sounded like a dragon sitting right outside the cell door, getting ramped up to burn another village.

  “Jumpin’ Jehosophat, Red,” Slash yelled, “stuff a sock in your mouth!”

  Red stopped snoring long enough for Slash to fall back asleep, only to be awakened not much later by Pecos yelling, “Slash, for godsakes, roll your skinny-assed carcass over! You’re snorin’ even louder than Red was!”

  Slash hadn’t been back asleep for more than another half hour before Pecos started bringing the building down with his own snoring. He and Red both yelled at him to turn over. When Pecos hauled his big body over, making the cot creak dangerously, and lay facedown, merciful silence once more fell over the jailhouse.

  But not for long.

  All night, the three unfettered snorers played round-robin, trying to get at least one and sometimes two of the others to wake up and try another position. Slash
was almost glad to see the gray wash of dawn in the jailhouse’s lone front window. Red Ingram woke himself up with another crow-like snore and lowered his feet to the floor. He rose creakily, snorting and hacking phlegm into the sandbox beside his desk.

  “Ah, God,” he said. “Ah, God . . .”

  He tramped, sort of wobbling on his hips, out away from his desk, his boots drumming on the hard-packed earthen floor. He snagged a key ring off a ceiling support post by the cold woodstove and jabbed a key into the cell door’s lock. He twisted the key and swung open the door. He beckoned broadly, still wobbling like a landed sailor after months at sea, and hacked more phlegm from his lungs.

  “Out,” he croaked, swinging his arm again, as though hazing cattle through a chute, and jerked his chin toward the office’s front door. “Out with ya both. Go on—haul your freight!”

  “What’s goin’ on?” Pecos asked. He’d been half-asleep when the door had squawked open. Now he lifted his head from his pillow, blinking.

  Slash stomped into his boots and scooped his hat off the floor. “Ain’t sure, but I think we’re gettin’ the bum’s rush.”

  “Out—both of ya!” Red croaked again, blinking his sleepy eyes. “Get out! Out! I ain’t a young man. I can’t afford another night’s sleep like that one. A man my age needs quality shut-eye, by God!”

  “All right, all right, Red,” Pecos said. “Just let me get my boots on!”

  “Out! Out! Out!”

  “Hurry, partner,” Slash said, “before he changes his mind.

  “Out now an’ to hell with both your cutthroat hides!” Red bellowed.

  Stomping into his second boot, Pecos glanced at Slash and said, “I don’t think he’s gonna change his mind. It looks like he’s plumb tired o’ the both of us.”

  “Well, let’s pull foot before his wildcat daughter shows up for work,” Slash said, hurrying out of the cell and tramping toward the office door. “I for one am right allergic to twelve-gauge buck!”

  “Out of here and out of town!” Red yelled as Pecos, setting his hat on his head, hurried to catch up to Slash. “Out of town right now. Before sunrise! Don’t dally, an’ don’t show your faces in Honeysuckle again or you’ll be settlin’ up with my daughter and her double-bore!”

  Tucking his shirttails into his pants, Pecos jogged to catch up to Slash. Falling into step beside the shorter man, he said, “What do you think of that?”

  “I think you an’ your snorin’ wore out your welcome. Mine, too, I guess.”

  “My snorin’?” Pecos laughed without mirth. “Hell, I thought you an’ ole Red was gonna bring the house down!”

  “Oh, shut up!”

  “Why didn’t you draw the derringer? I know you still had it.”

  “Oh, I would have if it came to that. But first I wanted to hear more about the Spanish Bit. I wanted to hear a little more about Red and his wild-assed daughter, too.”

  “You think they’re legit?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Well, what’re we gonna do now?”

  “What can we do?” Slash said. “I reckon we’d best hightail it out of town unless we want to face Lisa Ingram again an’ that twelve-gauge she’s so damned fond of.”

  “But . . . but what about the gold?”

  Slash stopped in front of the hotel. “I said we’re leavin’ town. We’re not givin’ up on the gold. No—not by a long shot. Let’s fetch our gear from room ten—if old Syvertson hasn’t already hocked it, that is—an’ take a ride deeper into the mountains, see if we can’t locate the Spanish Bit Ranch and Gold Mine.”

  Slash turned to start up the steps of the hotel’s front veranda.

  Behind him, Pecos said, “You think we’re gonna find stolen gold at a gold mine?”

  “I know it don’t make sense,” Slash said, trying the hotel’s front door.

  Locked.

  He glanced at Pecos and said, “It don’t make sense now, but I’ll be damned if it won’t soon.”

  “If we live till soon,” Pecos grumbled, glancing warily back in the direction of the stone jailhouse. Another thought occurred to him. “What about Hattie?”

  “What about her?”

  “We can’t just leave her in town all alone.”

  “Ah, hell,” Slash said. “That purty little Pink can take care of herself.”

  Slash rapped loudly on the hotel’s front door.

  CHAPTER 31

  Two hours earlier, Hattie had awakened with a start.

  At first, she couldn’t remember where she was. The room around her, cloaked in the shadows of the predawn darkness, resembled a room in some fragmented dream, like the nonsensical dreams she often had just before waking.

  The room was small, barely larger than a broom closet. She could see the flowered wallpaper and the dresser on her left.

  She also saw the skimpy outfit lying on top of it, where she’d left it last night after the saloon had closed just after midnight. It all came back to her—the stolen gold, the town, the job, and the Honeysuckle Saloon and Dance Hall.

  She also remembered the noise she’d heard in her sleep, which had awakened her. The faint chirp of a floorboard. She peered toward the door standing three feet from the foot of her bed. She looked at the crack between the door and the floor. An eerie blue light shone dimly in the crack. The light was broken by a single dark blob, as though someone were standing there, just outside the door, the person’s feet blocking the light.

  Hattie could almost feel the man standing there. At the moment, she couldn’t hear him, but the prickling of the fine hairs across the back of her neck, and a chill in her belly, told the young Pinkerton detective that a man was there, sure enough.

  She thought she could hear him breathing. She thought she could also hear a slight creak in the door, as though the man were pressing his weight against it.

  Hattie’s belly grew colder.

  Her blood quickened through her veins.

  “I know you’re out there,” she said softly, so that only the man in the hall could hear. “Go away, or I’ll yell for Mister Hicks!”

  The door creaked faintly again. It was joined by a faint snicking sound, like the soft brush of cloth against wood. The man was pressing himself up against the door.

  Hattie thought she could even smell him now—a sickly sweet, unwashed man smell.

  Her heart thudding, she tossed her covers aside and dropped her feet to the floor. She grabbed a robe off a chair back and pulled it on. She slid her feet into rabbit-skin slippers, then slid her derringer out from beneath the corset and bustier on the dresser.

  Slowly, quietly, she walked to the door. Her heart was really beating now. It beat so hard, rapping against her ribs, that it ached.

  She drew a deep breath and pressed an ear to the door. She winced when a floorboard gave a faint chirp beneath her left foot. On the other side of the door, another floorboard squawked. The door creaked as though from the sudden removal of the man’s weight.

  “Hello?” Hattie said, staring at the door. “You go away, or I’ll—”

  Quickly, she twisted the key in the lock, then turned the doorknob. She opened the door a crack, half expecting the man to shove the door wide and throw himself on top of her. Ready for such a move, she raised the derringer in her right hand and pressed her thumb against the hammer, ready to draw it back and fire.

  But no one stood before her.

  The floor chirped to her left. She whipped her head that way in time to glimpse a man—or a person, anyway—turn the hall corner and head for the stairs.

  “Hey!” Hattie rasped, angrily.

  The only response was a clipped, high-pitched, mocking chuckle.

  Squeezing the derringer in her right hand, Hattie hurried down the hall to her left. She glanced down the stairs in time to see a man’s silhouette turn the corner at the bottom and disappear, boots or shoes thudding softly. There was another soft, mocking chuckle.

  Hattie frowned down the carpeted steps, heart no longer
racing as fast as before, a deep suspicion tempering her fear. “Who in the . . . ?”

  Probably one of her customers from the previous night. Maybe he’d spent the night up here, with either Lilly or Iris. He was maybe still drunk and, knowing which room belonged to Hattie, who had recently become known in these environs as “Rose,” had decided to have a little fun. She should probably let it . . . and him . . . go.

  But she was a true-blue Pinkerton. Her curiosity would not yield. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the man had had more on his mind than merely pulling an impish joke on an attractive saloon girl. And, anyway, who did he think he was, trying to frighten her like that?

  Hattie hurried down the stairs, her slippers nearly soundless on the carpeted steps, her robe winging out to both sides, as did her hair, which she’d given only a cursory brushing after retiring to her room. She’d been so tired after all those hours on her feet, and so sore from being pinched and grabbed all night, that she’d fallen right to sleep.

  She gained the bottom of the stairs and made the sharp turn around the newel post on her right. She headed down the short hall toward the saloon’s back door, which was open a crack. The man had gone out that way and had not latched the door behind him. She stepped up to it, shoved it open a foot, and stuck her head out.

  She looked both ways along the rear of the saloon. She heard another mocking laugh and jerked her head forward to peer straight out ahead of her. The man stood half behind a shed about fifty feet straight out beyond her, peering with one eye back toward her. The half of his mouth that she could see was twisted in a mocking grin.

  He pulled his head back behind the shed, and once again he was gone.

  Hattie ground her back teeth and bounded forward. As she moved out away from the hotel’s rear door, she realized her mistake. She’d let herself get flanked. She heard at least one person, possibly two, move up from behind her. They must have been standing to each side of the hotel, hidden. There was a strained grunt, and as Hattie began to whip around, raising the Dderringer, a burlap bag was pulled down over her head and shoulders, slamming her arm down.