A Good Day for a Massacre

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

Cobb carried Hattie for what Hattie judged was a hundred feet or so. She gritted her teeth against the swollen heart in her forehead, feeling crusty blood on her cheek, where it had run down from the gash in her temple.

  Someone followed her and Cobb. Hattie could hear footsteps, hear someone breathing behind her. It sounded like a woman breathing—Gerta. Cobb clomped up ten or eleven steps to a porch, then gave a grunt and jerked to one side as he opened a door, which groaned on its hinges.

  He stepped into a house, which smelled of old cooking and leather and damp wool and the pine smoke of a fire, and swung Hattie down off his shoulder. Hattie’s stomach rose into her throat as she dropped several feet onto a hard, wooden surface with a jolt.

  “Oh!”

  It felt like a table beneath her.

  “What we got here?”

  A hand grabbed the sack and pulled it off Hattie’s head. The hand grabbed some of her hair, too, pulling. “Oww!”

  An old man’s face pushed up close to Hattie’s. He was maybe in his sixties. He had little hair on the top of his head. The horseshoe of lusterless brown hair around the sides of his head hung, long and scraggly and unwashed, nearly to his shoulders.

  His face was long and angular. It bore a thin, patchy beard flecked with gray. The old man’s eyes were brown and severely slanted. They were mantled by heavy gray brows that slanted over them like furry caterpillars, giving him a vaguely Satanic look. The eyes themselves beneath those slanted brows were strangely boyish. They were penetrating in their intensity, and they owned a raw intelligence. Possibly a diabolical intelligence, but intelligence just the same.

  Those intelligent eyes set in that raw, savage face made the older man appear even more menacing.

  The old man—“Daddy,” as Gerta had called him—wore a linsey-woolsey tunic under a smoke-stained buckskin vest lined with wool and baggy canvas trousers. The trouser cuffs were stuffed into the high tops of old cavalry boots. He was lean and bony. He wore a bowie knife on one hip, a big ivory-handled pistol on his other hip, positioned for the cross-draw in a soft leather holster on which had been sewn a small Texas flag.

  There were only two other people in the room, both flanking Daddy. One was Gerta. The other was a tall, broad-shouldered man with dull eyes and a thick handlebar mustache. That had to be Cobb. Several other men, a half dozen or more, were peering into the house through the two large windows, one on each side of the door, which Gerta had kicked closed.

  Leaning forward at the waist, Daddy studied Hattie closely, as though he were trying to peer through her eyes, each one in turn, all the way to her soul. He reached out and touched a finger to the dried blood that had run down the left side of her face.

  “That’s a nasty goose egg on your forehead there, princess.”

  Hattie grimaced and pulled her head back from the man’s touch.

  He quirked a little smile. “Who are you, princess?”

  “I don’t understand why I’m bein’ treated this way,” Hattie said in a pinched, terrified voice that she really didn’t have to feign. She felt as though she were a rabbit who’d just found herself invited to a rattlesnake party.

  How these rattlesnakes had gotten onto her, and why they’d brought her here, she had no idea. She had a feeling she was about to find out.

  “You were brought here, princess,” Gerta said in her toneless, menacing voice, “because we reco’nized you in the Honeysuckle last night.” She glanced at the old man. “Me an’ the boys stopped in for a drink.” Turning back to Hattie, she continued with, “We seen you in Tin Cup. You boarded the stage with the preacher. That makes you a Pinkerton, on account of they was all Pinkerton agents who boarded that stage.”

  Hattie stared at the woman, aghast.

  She vaguely remembered seeing Gerta and the other three men who’d brought Hattie here in the saloon last night. She hadn’t served them. They’d been standing at the bar. She’d had no reason to pay them much attention. Now, as she studied Gerta and the old man in turn, she tried to feign innocence, but she knew that her eyes were likely expressing only shock and deep dismay.

  How had they found her out? If they knew about her, did they know about Slash and Pecos, then, as well?

  The question must have been in Hattie’s eyes.

  Gerta answered it for her. “It don’t take all that much money to turn a Pinkerton agent.”

  “Who . . . ?” Hattie found herself asking on a thin exhalation.

  “The preacher,” said Cobb. He grinned, showing tobacco-rimmed teeth. His eyes glittered like a snake’s mesmerizing a cottontail.

  “Glen Howell?” That was the tall field agent from Denver whom Hattie had been partnered with. She’d been assured that Howell was as pure as the day was long. “But . . . but . . . you killed him, too!”

  “He shouldn’ta gone trustin’ no stage robbers!” Gerta said with mock castigation. “I reckon the gold we promised him clouded his judgment.” She threw her head back and cackled loudly at the ceiling.

  Daddy turned to Cobb and then to Gerta. “You sure she’s a Pink? She sure don’t look like a Pink.”

  Gerta said, smiling, “Well, Daddy, I doubt you’ve ever seen a Pink before in your whole life—now, have you? Ad-mit it!”

  “No, no,” Daddy allowed, “I reckon I haven’t. U.S. marshals an’ Texas Rangers aplenty, but never a Pinkerton.” He turned back to Hattie. “I didn’t know they had ’em this purty, though.”

  He reached out and slid a thick tangle of hair back from Hattie’s cheek, and whistled. “She sure is purty! Just like Christmas mornin’.” He turned to frown over his shoulder at Gerta. “Why’d you bring her here? Why didn’t you just kill her? I don’t wanna have nothin’ to do with killin’ this girl. I’ve done enough killin’ in my years on the ole owlhoot trail, but I never could kill a woman. Leastways, not such a purty one. Look at them button eyes! I’d just as soon you took care of it before you got here, honey.”

  “Hell, if she didn’t die in the stage, she must have nine lives. Or so thick a hide that a forty-five round can’t pierce it. I peppered that coach—I sure did.” Gerta grimaced, perplexed. “How did you survive that, little girl?”

  Hattie said nothing. She just sat there at the end of the long, timber eating table, glaring her hatred at Gerta. She remembered the rat-tat-tat of the savage gun, the bullets blasting through the panels of the coach, as though the Concord had been no more substantial than a matchbox. She remembered hearing the screams of the other Pinkerton agents beneath the shrill screams she heard spewing from her own throat.

  She remembered the blood. All the blood, flying everywhere . . .

  Gerta looked at Daddy. “We were informed in Honeysuckle that she rode in with two old gents. I mean, not as old as you, Daddy, but older’n Cobb, anyways.”

  “Two older gents, eh?” Daddy was still leaning forward, raking Hattie up and down and sideways with his weirdly scrutinizing gaze, but his words were directed at Gerta. “Who are they? Where are they? You kill ’em?”

  “Ingram had ’em locked up in his jail, but he let ’em go last night. I don’t know why. He didn’t seem to know why, either. Old-timer’s disease, I guess. According to old Anders at the livery barn, they split town.” Gerta stepped up beside Daddy and cast her angry scowl at Hattie. “Who were they—the men you rode to town with? More Pinkertons?”

  Hattie shook her head. “No. Just two old fellas I threw in with along the trail.”

  “You a whore?” Daddy asked Hattie with a lascivious grin.

  Cobb smiled.

  “No, I’m not a whore,” Hattie indignantly declared, closing her arms on her chest. “We were just friends. I was riding alone, so I threw in with them, that’s all. They were good to me.”

  She spat that last sentence out like an incrimination against her captors.

  “Any sign of Hogue and the others in town?” Daddy asked Gerta.

  “Nope.” Gerta popped her lips as she spoke the single word, brandishing it, shaking her head, k
eeping her insinuating gaze on Hattie.

  Daddy worked his lips as he turned to Hattie again. “You kill Hogue, Drew Handy, Wild Pete, an’ the two Injuns?”

  “Who’re they?” Hattie asked, feigning ignorance. The men Daddy had named were likely the ones the two former cutthroats had killed in the dugout saloon, on their way to Honeysuckle. The men Gerta, Cobb, and the rest of the gang had left behind to clean their trail of possible trackers.

  They hadn’t done such a good job, though, Hattie proudly, silently declared to herself. Slash and Pecos had taken them down hard.

  “You didn’t kill Hogue, Drew Handy, Wild Pete, an’ the two Injuns,” Gerta told Hattie. “At least, not alone.”

  “I told you—I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  Daddy swept his right hand up quickly, drawing it back behind his shoulder. He started to swing it forward toward Hattie. Hattie jerked her head back and to one side, her hair tumbling over her face. As Daddy’s hand started flying toward Hattie, he grabbed it with his left as though to hold it back.

  “Ohhh, you . . . ohhhh!” Daddy bellowed, grinding his right fist against his left hand. “I don’t wanna have to hurt you, girl, but I will. I will—yes, sir—less’n I get some honest answers from you!”

  “Don’t!” Hattie cried. “Stop! Leave me alone. I was only doing my job!”

  It was finally Cobb’s turn to speak. Making his jaws and eyes hard, he stepped forward and said, “Who killed Hogue, Drew Handy, Wild Pete, an’ the two Injuns?”

  Hattie leaned back, her hair obscuring her face, and closed her eyes. She was trying to calm herself down while preparing for the worst. The very worst.

  Whatever these killers did to her, she would not tell them about Slash and Pecos. She didn’t know where her two partners were. She had no idea why they’d ended up in the jail in Honeysuckle last night. All she could do was guess that they’d gotten themselves into trouble in the town’s other watering hole and had found themselves in the hoosegow.

  Not so strange for two former cutthroats, she supposed.

  Where they were now, she had no idea.

  They were, however, her only chance. Having seen how well they’d handled themselves against the five gang members in the dugout saloon, they were her pretty good chance—if they knew where she was.

  Which they likely didn’t since she didn’t know where they were.

  She probably didn’t have much time left, anyway. Judging by the anger she saw in the three sets of eyes glaring at her, here where she sat, wrists and ankles tied, at the end of the table, her goose was likely cooked.

  Panic threatened to overwhelm her. She drew a slow, deep breath, trying to hold it at bay. She remembered her Pinkerton training. Handle every situation, even the bad situations, the way you eat an apple—one bite at a time. Keep your mind clear and moving logically toward solving the problem at hand.

  “You heard Cobb,” Gerta said loudly, puffing up her big lumpy chest with anger. “Who killed our men?” She grabbed Hattie’s chin and squeezed it painfully. “The two old fellas you rode into Honeysuckle with?”

  “Who else?” Cobb said tightly. “Sure wasn’t her. Not all five, anyways.”

  “Who?” Gerta said, squeezing Hattie’s chin until tears streamed down the young Pink’s eyes.

  Hattie squeezed her eyes closed and kept her mouth shut. She wouldn’t give these killers the benefit of knowing one more thing. Even if it got her killed.

  “Who else?” Daddy said. He shoved Gerta’s hand away from Hattie’s chin. “Can’t you see you’re hurtin’ the girl? Looks like you already done hurt her enough, the poor child.”

  “Poor child?” Gerta laughed at the old man. “Oh, Daddy—you an’ your big heart. She’s a Pink! And she knows who those two older men are, and where they are, an’ I’m gonna get it out of her if I have to cut her toes an’ fingers off to do it!”

  “Now, now, now,” Daddy said, placing his hands on Gerta’s shoulders. “You just calm down, honey. You’ll do nothing of the kind. Yes, I do believe this girl knows who them fellas are, an’ where they are. But now that we got her”—he canted his head toward Hattie—“I got me a feelin’ we’ll know where they are soon enough. Because they’ll be here . . . lookin’ fer her.”

  “You think they’ll track her here?”

  “I got a feelin’ they’re here already, honey-child. Here . . . or at the mine.”

  “Yes,” Gerta said, nodding, her cheeks drawn and pale. “The mine . . .”

  Daddy turned to Cobb. “Who we got up at the mine?”

  “Kentucky Dade and Giff Cheshire.”

  “Good men,” Daddy said, “but they might need help. Take a half-dozen more up there. Keep the rest here. Tell ’em to stay on their toes. Tell ’em to be ready for trouble.” He narrowed one eye and gave a coyote grin. “Have one of ’em man the Gatlin’ gun in the barn.”

  “You got it, Mister Greenleaf,” Cobb said, and hurried out of the house.

  “You think they’ll come here, Daddy?” Gerta asked the old man.

  Daddy turned to Hattie. “Yes, I do.” He gave the young Pink’s chin an affectionate squeeze and smiled knowingly. “Yes, I do, indeed.”

  CHAPTER 35

  “What’s the matter?” asked Kentucky Dade, laughing. “You two look like you just seen a ghost!”

  Pecos rose slowly, slowly raising his hands palms out.

  “I’ll be damned,” Slash said, also raising his hands and staring nervously at the Winchester Dade was aiming in both shaking hands.

  “Did you like my performance?”

  “I gotta admit—it was purty damn good,” allowed Pecos.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Slash said. “You, uh . . . you must’ve growed up in some traveling theater outfit. You sure did look dead to me.”

  “Nah,” Dade said, his voice raspy and pinched with the pain of the dozen or so widely scattered buckshot pellets in his chest and neck. Blood bibbed his shirt. He must have lost a whole quart on the climb from the saloon to the mine. “I feel like I got a good two, three minutes left. I’m gonna put ’em to good use!”

  “Why don’t you set that rifle down so we can talk about this?”

  “About what?” Dade said. “You stealin’ my gold? Our gold—Mister Greenleaf’s and all the rest of the boys and Gerta’s.”

  “Mister Greenleaf ?” Slash looked at Pecos.

  Pecos narrowed his eyes, studying the name for a few seconds, then looking in surprise at Dade. “John Greenleaf?”

  “That’d be the one.”

  “Damn,” Pecos said to Slash. “I thought he was dead.”

  “I thought he died in the Texas state pen,” Slash added.

  The notorious Texas outlaw John Greenleaf had been running off his leash way back before the War Between the States. He’d paused to fight on the side of the Confederacy, and when he returned to Texas to find that carpetbaggers had moved in, buying up ranches for back taxes, he took right up where he’d left off—robbing stagecoaches and banks and then trains, and also killing willy-nilly, like a rabid wolf, since the war had inspired in him a great desire for further bloodshed.

  Slash and Pecos had run into the notorious Greenleaf—a queer and dangerous sort of fellow, as Slash remembered—and part of his old gang in Mexico a time or two. They’d played poker together, visited the señoritas together, though they’d otherwise stayed clear of the unpredictable old rapscallion, who was known to kill men for petty grievances and sundry imagined reasons.

  Nigh on twenty years ago, the Texas Rangers had caught up with Greenleaf, who must have been in his forties even then. They’d killed most of his gang, wounded Greenleaf himself, and thrown him in the state pen, where Slash and Pecos had both assumed, apparently incorrectly, that he’d died.

  What had distinguished the old thief and killer was that he’d raised a child—a girl, if Slash remembered correctly—on the outlaw trail. The girl had been storied for her ugliness and dangerousness, as well as a queer and merc
urial nature that she’d come by honestly, given who her father was. She’d spent some time in prison, as well, but not nearly as much as old Greenleaf had.

  “Downright surprising to hear that old thief’s name again,” Slash opined. “After all these years . . .”

  “I can’t believe he ain’t dead,” Pecos said.

  “He probably thinks you two old goats are dead, too.”

  Slash and Pecos shared an offended scowl, then gazed curiously at the man holding the quivering long gun on them.

  “I know who you two are,” Dade said, still giving a coyote grin. “Slash Braddock an’ the Pecos River Kid. Before my very eyes!” He chuckled with glee. “Took you killin’ me to recognize you, I reckon. The infamous Snake River Marauders!” He coughed up some blood, spat it to one side, and shook his head as if to clear it. “Reckon I should be honored.”

  “Or,” Slash suggested, “you could just put the rifle down and we could swap big windies . . .”

  “No time. I’m dyin’ . . . you kilt me . . . an’ I’m takin’ you two green-fanged devils along with me to powwow with Saint Pete.”

  Slash said, “Don’t expect us to put in a good word for you.”

  Dade grinned down the Winchester’s barrel, drawing a breath, trying to steady his shaking hands. “Which one of you wants it first?”

  “He does,” Slash and Pecos said at the same time, canting their heads toward each other.

  The rifle thundered.

  Slash and Pecos jerked with starts.

  They blinked in hang-jawed shock. Slash looked down at himself. Not seeing any bullet holes, he started to turn toward Pecos, who’d started to turn toward him at the same time.

  Kentucky Dade made a strangling sound.

  They turned toward him. He wore a shocked look. The rifle was sagging in his arms. Fresh blood—fresher than the stuff Pecos had spilled—welled from the bloodred bib of his shirt front.

  Dade opened his mouth as though to speak, but then the rifle dropped from his hands to the mine floor. His knees buckled, and then he crumpled atop the rifle.

  Slash stared toward where a new figure was silhouetted against the gray light of the open mine door. The figure walked slowly toward him and Pecos. The figure had a rifle in its hands, aimed straight out from the person’s right hip. Batwing chaps flapped against the person’s legs, and spurs rang softly, echoing off the mine’s stone walls.