“You knew we’d head out here.” Pecos was grinning shrewdly at the man. “That’s why you turned us loose. You opened that cell door so we could ride out here, an’ then Greenleaf’s men would take care of us . . .” He cut a quick, conferring glance at Slash.
Ingram chuckled. “That’s right, Pecos. That’s right. I figured I wouldn’t have to kill you. Greenleaf would do that. But now . . .” He glanced around at all the dead men lying around them. “Now . . . I reckon I do.” He returned his gaze to his daughter. “I found the dead men up on the mountain. I found the gold. Near made my ticker stop, seein’ all that color sittin’ right there, just inside the cave, no lock on the door. Free an’ easy! Ripe for the takin’! So I hurried back to town. Fetched them mules back to the mine, an’ . . .”
“So, you weren’t too worried about your daughter, then, were you, Red?” Slash accused him sourly.
“Lisa can take care o’ herself,” Ingram barked. “I knew that! It’s for her I went to the trouble. So . . . I wrestled the gold onto them mules . . . me an’ my bad knee . . . first the empty boxes . . . then one ingot at a time.”
“How’d you know we’d take care of Greenleaf?” Slash asked.
“Oh, I never figured you would. I figured you’d distract him long enough for me to get the gold and hide it till I could find Lisa and high-tail it out of these mountains.”
Slash gave a dubious snort. “We did you a hell of a favor.”
Red looked around at the dead men, grinning. “Thanks, fellas.”
“You had a long night,” Pecos observed.
“Shut up, Pecos! Stop lookin’ at me like I’m crazy!”
“You’re crazy, all right, Pa,” Lisa said sadly, slowly shaking her head. “You’re crazier’n a tree full of owls . . . if you think I’m gonna help you steal that gold. If you think I’m gonna take part in any of your crazy plan.”
She stared at her father in disbelief. “Do you really think I’m gonna stand by and let you kill Slash an’ Pecos”—she cut a quick, fleeting glance at Hattie—“an’ her, even . . . and then just climb up on my horse and ride out of here with you and your blood money? You really think we’re gonna live happily ever after . . . in San Francisco . . . together? On stolen blood money, Pa?”
Ingram studied her, his own brows furled curiously, his eyes nearly hidden below them, behind his rectangular, gold-framed spectacles that glittered now as the sun swept up and over the eastern ridge where the mine lay. The morning light washed into the valley like liquid gold.
Songbirds piped, oblivious to the carnage here, the sadness.
“Daughter . . . daughter,” Ingram said, his voice thick and breaking subtly, “I . . . I did this for you! I want you to have a better life, see? I want us both to have a better life, Lisa!”
Lisa just stared at him, her face pale beneath her tan. “Pa . . . ,” she said, “oh, Pa . . .”
Slowly, she moved toward him.
Ingram looked at Slash. He looked at Hattie, and then he switched his gaze to Pecos. Tears washed over his eyes, behind his glasses. They began to roll down his cheeks.
He loosed a phlegmy sob as he lowered his gaze to his saddle horn. “Lisa, dammit, we never had a damn thing!” He pounded the horn with his fist. “All I done all my life . . . leastways, fer most of it . . . was chase outlaws for pennies and pisswater! They always had the good life, those cutthroats did!”
He cast a quick, accusing glance at Slash and Pecos.
“Me . . . us,” Red continued, “we always lived in hovels, scrambling to make a livin’. Look at the kind of life I’ve given my purty daughter! She runs around these mountains with a gun on her leg and her hair uncombed, like a child raised by wolves!”
“Pa . . .” Lisa stopped beside Ingram’s horse, on the left side, and extended her hands to her father. “All I ever wanted was a good, peaceable life with you, Pa. Livin’ life the right way . . . with you . . . a lawman I was proud of. That’s all I wanted. That’s all I still want.”
Red lifted his chin and bellowed out a sob. “Ah, hell!” He drew a breath, then leaned forward, swung his right leg over his horse’s rear. As he stepped down to the ground, his left knee buckled, and he flopped down on his butt.
Lisa fell to a knee beside him. “Pa! Oh, Pa!”
Slash stepped forward to help, but Pecos, still on the ground, grabbed his right pant leg and shook his head. Slash looked at Red and Lisa. They were huddled together now, Lisa’s arm around the old man’s neck. They were sobbing quietly together. They didn’t need any help right now from Slash or anyone else.
“I’m sorry, darlin’,” Red said through his tears. “I’m truly sorry. What a damn fool I am!”
“It’s okay, Pa,” Lisa said. “We’ll make it right. We’ll make everything right!”
Slash had a feeling they would, at that.
He turned to Hattie, who stood gazing sadly down at the old lawman and his daughter/deputy. “How are you doin’, darlin’?” Slash took Hattie’s hands in his own, looked at her skinned and bloody wrists, and sucked a sharp breath.
“I’m fine. A little sore is all.”
Slash glanced behind her, saw the two bodies piled up in the house, just inside the front door. “Oh, jeepers,” he said, looking down at her again with concern.
“I’m fine, Slash.” Hattie cut her gaze between them, her eyes welling with tears of relief. “I sure am glad to see you two old cutthroats, though—I’ll tell you that!”
Pecos whistled his surprise. “Who’da thought?”
Hattie kissed Slash right square on the mouth, then wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her left cheek taut against his chest. Flushing, Slash glanced at Pecos, who arched an ironic brow at him.
Slash shrugged, flushing, then pressed his cheek to the head of the girl in his arms.
EPILOGUE
“Don’t really hurt all that bad,” Pecos said, three weeks later as they rode into Fort Collins aboard their big Pittsburgh freighter.
The wagon clattered emptily behind the two mules the ex-cutthroats had found not far from where they’d left the wagon east of Tin Cup. The mules had gotten a little wild over the month they’d been on their own in the Sawatch Range, so it had taken Slash and Pecos a while to run them down. Once they had, the rangy beasts had taken quickly again to the hames and harnesses, the straps and buckles, not to mention to their feed sacks filled with parched corn.
“What don’t hurt that bad?” Slash asked, rocking with the freighter’s pitch and sway. “Your shoulder?”
“No, my heart. It don’t really hurt all that bad—you know, from turnin’ all that gold over to ole Bleed-Em-So at Union Station.”
“Oh, that. Well . . .”
Pecos glanced at Slash sitting beside him in the driver’s seat, steering the team through the town’s midday traffic under a glaring Colorado sun. “Does yours?”
Slash snorted a caustic laugh. “To tell you the truth, I got one hell of a chill, watchin’ them Pinkertons and Wells Fargo detectives load that gold into the express car. I was as cold as a Dakota winter, but I was sweatin’ like a butcher in the dog days of a Missouri summer!”
They’d taken their leave of Miss Hattie Friendly in Denver, as well. But, with them doing what they did for the chief marshal, and Hattie working for the Denver Pinkertons, they had a feeling they’d see the lovely young Pink again soon.
“Yeah,” Pecos allowed, shrugging a guilty shoulder and turning his head forward to stare over the mules’ twitching ears. “I gotta admit—I did feel so sick there for a few minutes, I thought I was gonna lose my lunch.”
He laughed and spat over the side of the wagon.
“You know what was worth it, though?”
“What’s that?”
“The look on ole Bleed-Em-So’s face when he seen us ride up to Union Station with both them strongboxes in the bed of our wagon. He turned as white as you did after I jerked your shoulder back in place.”
Pecos laughed again. �
��You know—I really do think he was halfways hopin’ we’d cut an’ run with it!”
“That old devil is just waitin’ for us to mess up on one of his jobs, so he can either turn the key on us once an’ for all or kick us out with a cold shovel.”
“Or hang us.”
“Throw us our own necktie party.”
“He can’t stand it that we’re walkin’ the straight an’ narrow!”
They had a good laugh over that.
After their laughter had dwindled, Slash glanced at Pecos uneasily, and said, “How long do you think we can hold out?”
Pecos frowned at him. “Huh?”
“You know—how long you think we can keep resisting temptation? He’s gonna keep makin’ it harder an’ harder on us—you know that, don’t you? The jobs are gonna keep getting’ tougher an’ tougher, too. You can bet the ranch on that. One way or another, that old devil is gonna have his revenge.”
Pecos raked a thumbnail down his cheek, scowling as he pondered the thought.
But then, as Slash turned the wagon into the freight yard, Pecos thumbed his hat back off his forehead and smiled. “Say, now . . . look at that.”
“Look at what?”
“That. Them. Lookee there, Slash. I do believe we got us a pair of lovely women waitin’ for us. Don’t that beat all?”
Slash drew back on the mules’ reins, slowing the wagon to a stop. He stared straight ahead toward the freight yard office. Jaycee Breckenridge’s sleek chaise buggy sat at an angle before it, her handsome cream gelding standing in the traces.
Jaycee herself sat in a chair on the office’s small front porch, beyond the wagon. Beside her sat Myra Thompson. They each held a saucer and a teacup on their laps, but now, seeing Slash and Pecos sitting in the big freight wagon just inside the yard, Myra rose smiling from her chair, taking her cup and saucer in one hand and pointing with the other hand and saying something to Jay.
Yesterday, Slash had sent Myra a telegram from Denver, informing her that they were safe and sound, and that they’d be home by noon the following day. Myra must have told Jay. Now, here both women were—waiting for the two cutthroats on the freight office porch.
Slash stared at Jaycee, still sitting in her chair. Jay’s gaze met Slash’s. She wore a copper-colored silk and taffeta gown trimmed with white lace. The gown matched the thick tresses of copper red hair tumbling down from a spruce green picture hat trimmed with an ostrich plume. Jay wore long, stylish, spruce-green gloves, and she held a beaded reticule on her lap, beside her teacup.
Jay stared across the yard at Slash, her expression serious, vaguely curious, as though, even from this distance, she was trying to plumb the man’s soul with her eyes.
Slash stared back at her, feeling his heart quicken and his lips shape a slow smile.
Jay smiled, then, too, and rose from her chair.
Myra set her teacup and saucer down on the porch rail and came down the steps, holding the hem of her wool skirt above her black, high-heeled boots. She stepped out around Jay’s horse and stopped, staring toward Slash and Pecos, shading her eyes from the noon sun with her hand.
She beckoned broadly and cocked her head to one side, her own brown-eyed gaze glued to Pecos. “Well?” she called. “What’re you two cutthroats waiting for? You have a couple of ladies waiting for you over here!”
Pecos turned to Slash. “Yeah, Slash—what are we old cutthroats waitin’ for?”
Slash drew a deep breath, felt his heart flutter a little, nervously. He released the breath slowly. “I don’t know about you, partner,” he said, “but this devil ain’t old. In fact, I feel younger’n I’ve felt in years!”
Slash shook the ribbons over the mules’ backs and rattled on into the yard.
Keep reading for a special excerpt of the next thrilling Western
adventure from bestselling authors
WILLIAM W. and J. A. JOHNSTONE.
PRAY FOR DEATH
A WILL TANNER, U.S. DEPUTY MARSHAL WESTERN
U.S. Marshal Will Tanner is a man of the law, not a gun for hire. Except when a friend’s in danger and needs the Tanner brand of help that comes out the barrel of a gun.
There’s serious trouble brewing in the Choctaw nation, and it goes by the name of Tiny McGhee. This small-time cattle rustler is expanding his brand by brewing batches of whiskey in the Choctaw territory of Muddy
Boggy Creek. Tiny and his partner have also turned the illegal brewery into a robber’s roost for outlaws, cutthroats, and killers of every bent. Local lawman Jim Little Eagle is under attack and outgunned.
But when he sends a wire to Fort Smith asking for backup and U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Tanner shows up, Little Eagle knows they’re in for one hell of a bloodbath. If anyone can drive those murdering devils to their knees and saying their prayers, it’s Will Tanner.
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CHAPTER 1
Jim Little Eagle reined his paint gelding to a halt on the bank of Muddy Boggy Creek about fifty yards upstream of the log building bearing the crudely lettered sign that identified it as MAMA’S KITCHEN. The Choctaw policeman had been watching the comings and goings of the typical clientele of the dining room and gambling hall just recently built three miles outside of town. And from what he had observed, there was no doubt that the owner, a man calling himself Tiny McGee, was selling whiskey and employing a prostitute as well. Jim figured it was time to remind McGee that it was illegal to sell whiskey in the Nations. There was little doubt in Jim’s mind that the recent complaints from the merchants in town were caused by patrons of Mama’s Kitchen. On more than one occasion in the past week, three white drifters had amused themselves by racing their horses through the center of town, firing their firearms and scaring the people. He was not confident that his visit to Mama’s Kitchen would stop the harassment of the citizens of Atoka, because his authority was limited to the policing of the Indian population. He knew that McGee knew this, as all outlaws did, but he felt it his duty to give him notice, anyway.
Inside the log building, Bob Atkins and Stump Grissom sat talking to Tiny McGee at one of the four small tables. A door that led to several rooms in the back of the building opened and Bob’s brother Raymond came out, pretending to stagger as he hitched up his trousers and buckled his belt. His antics caused a round of guffaws from the table and a loud response from Bob. “I swear, Raymond, damned if I don’t believe Mama’s Baby done wore you out!”
Coming out behind him, Ida Simpson commented, “Don’t pay no attention to him. He’s as rutty as a bull in matin’ season.” A working girl with signs of wear, but uncertain age, Ida had adopted the name of Baby because it was so appropriate for Mama’s Kitchen. Although Mama’s was, in effect, a saloon, there was a kitchen, and Tiny did sell meals. His cook was a well-traveled woman named Etta Grise, now too old to do the work Baby did. Tiny hoped the name of his establishment might disguise his actual business interests. His plan was to make Boggy Town, the name already given to it by outlaws, a separate little town where outlaws on the run could hole up. And, so far, he had not been visited by any deputy marshals out of Fort Smith.
“I expect Baby’s up to givin’ you a ride now, Stump,” Raymond japed as he sat down at the table.
“Not me,” Stump responded. “I ain’t thinkin’ ’bout nothin’ but supper right now.” He was about to say more but stopped when he realized everyone was looking past him toward the door. He turned then to see what had captured their attention.
“Well, well,” Tiny said, “if it ain’t Jim Little Eagle.” He sneered openly at the Choctaw policeman standing in the doorway, his rifle cradled in his arms. “What brings you down to Boggy Town? Course, I expect you know I don’t serve no Injuns in here.”
“I think you sell whiskey to Indians out your back door,” Jim answered him. “I come to give you notice that it is illegal to sell whiskey in the Nations, to white man or Indian. I think you already know this. I don’t wan
t to put any more drunken Indians in my jail. I think you better stop selling whiskey.”
“Damned if he ain’t mighty uppity for an Injun,” Bob said. “You gonna let him talk to you like that?”
Tiny laughed. “He’s the local Choctaw policeman. He knows damn well he ain’t got no say-so about anything a white man does.” He sneered at Little Eagle. “Ain’t that right, Jim?”
“I think you would be wise to take my warning and stop selling whiskey,” Jim insisted. “Maybe it would be best if you move your business someplace else. Atoka is a peaceful town.”
“This ain’t Atoka, this is Boggy Town, and I got as much right to be here as any of them stores in town,” Tiny said. “Maybe it’d be best if you take your Injun ass outta here before somebody’s gun goes off accidentally.” His warning prompted the other three at the table to push their chairs back, preparing for a possible shooting.
With no change in the solemn expression on his face to reveal his frustration, Jim Little Eagle replied, “That would be an unfortunate thing to happen, because my rifle fires by itself when accidents happen. And you are such a big target, white man, you would be hard to miss.” When Stump Grissom started to react, Jim whipped his rifle around, ready to fire.
“Let him go, Stump,” Tiny warned. “You shoot one of them Injun policemen and there’ll be a whole slew of deputy marshals down here.” He looked back at Jim. “All right, you’ve said your piece, so get on outta here and let us get back to mindin’ our own business.”
Knowing there was nothing he could legally do to close the saloon, Jim backed out the door. With a keen eye still on the door, he climbed on his horse and rode away. He had at least accomplished one thing by making the visit. He verified the suspicion he had that Tiny McGee was operating a saloon. There had been no attempt to hide the whiskey bottle in the middle of the table. He would now notify the marshal in Fort Smith.
A Good Day for a Massacre Page 32