.45-Caliber Deathtrap (18 page)

CUNO CLIMBED OFF
the bed and opened the door, aiming his pistol at the fat belly of the man standing on the other side of the threshold.

He was a ratty, unshaven gent in a wool coat several sizes too small, with grizzled pewter-brown hair falling from a soiled derby hat sporting two bullet holes. He hadn't shaved in several days. He smelled like cheap tobacco, piss, whiskey, hay, and rancid sweat.

He wasn't wearing a gun. At least, not on the outside. Nevertheless, Cuno kept the Colt aimed at the man's hairy gut peering out from his soiled plaid vest and two open shirt buttons.

“Hey, hey!” the man complained. “No need for that. I'm doin' you a favor, bub.”

Cuno glanced up and down the dark hall. Cannady or one of the jackal's men might have seen him, Kong, and the girl ride into town, and set a trap. “I don't know any women in this burg, mister. You'd best drift.”

“Miss Glory says you do.” He grinned broadly, flashing tobacco-stained teeth.

“Glory?” It took a few seconds to cast the name up from his memory. “The only Glory I know is a sporting girl in Julesburg.”

“I think you'll be pleased to find she ain't no longer in Julesburg. A sportin' girl still, but she's workin' over to the Periwinkle now. And ain't you the lucky one—her clearin' her busy schedule for you and you alone this magnificent mountain eve!” The soiled Scot crooked a finger. “Follow me. You've been summoned.”

Cuno stared after the man, who'd turned to stride toward the stairs.

What the hell was Glory doing in Sundance?

Last time Cuno had seen her—if this was indeed the same curvaceous blonde—she and her two colleagues, Minnie and Frieda, had helped him out of a tight spot with Franklin Evans. Cuno had killed Evans's son while saving Minnie's life a couple of years ago, in a sporting house in Julesburg.

The senior Evans had sicced bounty hunters after Cuno, and the bounty hunters had killed July. Cuno had killed Evans, as well as the most formidable bounty hunter of all, Ruben Pacheca, at Evans's own ranch.

That had been two years ago….

“Come on, mate,” called the Scot from the top of the stairs. “No man keeps a girl like Miss Glory waitin'!”

Cuno grumbled, turned around, and grabbed his hat. He didn't have time for sporting girls—even one as bewitching as Miss Glory—but it wouldn't be polite to turn down her summons. She must have seen him ride into town earlier. He'd have a drink with her, then get on about his business of avenging Wade Scanlon.

Donning his hat and closing the door, he hitched his .45 high on his hip, and followed the aromatic messenger downstairs and outside.

Firebrands lit up the saloons like the smoking gates of hell. Out-of-tune piano music served as background for the raucous din of miners drinking, singing, gambling, arguing, or fighting over whores.

The street was jammed with foot traffic as the men wandered between saloons, drinks in their fists, cigarettes or cigars in their teeth, some with gaudily dressed and painted women on their arms. The women were as drunk as the miners, and just as foul. A few horseback riders tried to make their way through the crowd, several hazing the drunk miners out of their path with their hats or quirts.

As the Scot led Cuno past an alley mouth, Cuno saw three prospectors fighting over a bruised, bare-breasted girl crouched against a rain barrel and screaming at the prospectors in one of the Scandinavian tongues. Cuno and the Scot crossed the street, angling toward a narrow, three-story building knocked together out of pine planks and shake shingles.

The hovel looked like a Nebraska farmhouse with an extra story, but was listing to one side despite its recent construction. Firebrands burned on three of the four porch posts, lighting the large sign announcing
PERIWINKLE
, the word abutted on both sides with “Girls” written in flowing curlicues of pitch-black paint.

In the guttering torchlight, Cuno saw that the place was aptly named, for, excepting the sign, it was painted periwinkle blue from roofline to foundation.

He also saw that several of the men milling around the porch with girls on their knees were some of the same men he'd seen in Cannady's camp two nights ago.

Heart skipping a beat, he paused on the front step, staring at one of the men—a big black man dressed in black with a blue neckerchief, who laughed and bounced a young redhead, naked except for a broad-brimmed black hat and a pair of men's black boots, up and down on his knee. He didn't look at Cuno. Two of the others gave him a belligerent passing glance, then turned away.

Cuno took a slow, deep breath and followed the Scot through the open front door and into a small foyer, through a sitting room area that also boasted a bar and in which several more men flirted with naked or half-naked, feather-haired women. A midget in child-sized dungarees and with an enormous red nose played a fiddle while a lone couple danced, clapping their hands.

Cuno strode past a gambling room, then, spying a familiar face in the next room, paused before the door.

One of the men inside—with a scruffy beard, milky eye, and a green hummingbird tattooed on his cheek—fit the description that Serenity Parker had provided of Clayton Cannady himself. Playing poker with Cannady were several other obvious killers and two men wearing deputy sheriff stars.

“Pssst!”

Cuno looked ahead. The Scot was on a staircase, three steps up, leaning over the rail and beckoning. “Right this way to heaven, me laddie!”

Cuno doubted that. His heart was thumping irregularly and his hands were sweaty. He wished he had the Winchester rifle he'd lost in the flooded mine. Brushing a hand across the grips of his revolver, he continued ahead and up the stairs.

The second story was carpeted in blue rugs, with blue wallpaper and blue bracket lamps. The Scot tapped twice on a door on the hall's left side with a crack on the upper panel, as if a man had tried to put his fist through it.

All around rose the sounds of fornication—moaning, groaning, sighing, and squawking bedsprings. Deep laughter rose from one of the rooms. The burnt-molasses smell of opium hung heavy in the hall's musty air.

The door opened. Cuno stared over the Scotchman's right shoulder. The heart-shaped face that peered back at him was indeed the lovely Glory's. Her full, red lips quirked a smile, blue eyes flashing.

“Brought him on the double, Miss Glory. You were right—he needed a little coaxin'. Suspicious lad. But here he is.” The Scot hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, clearing his throat.

“That's the one, all right,” Glory said, her eyes again flicking to Cuno. She plucked a rolled bill from her ample bosom, the corset shoving up both creamy mounds high and proud, her nipples pushing at the taut, white satin. “There you are, Simon. Go and have a nice time.”

“Obliged, Miss Glory. Any time!” Squeezing the bill in his withered fist, Simon wheeled, gave Cuno a conspiratorial wink, and trotted back toward the stairs.

Glory regarded him bemusedly for a moment, her rich, tawny-blond hair piled atop her head, ringlets hanging down on both sides of her lightly rouged face. The room was dimly lit with blue and soft red lamplight, outlining her from behind, revealing the fact that she wore very little except the corset beneath her sheer, pale wrapper with its lace and puffed sleeves.

The wrapper was open, revealing bare thighs and flat belly. Her figure was as full-busted, round-hipped, and thin-wasted as Cuno remembered it. He remembered too the small, diamond-shaped birthmark two inches beneath her corset, under her right breast.

She smelled like talcum and sassafras.

Delectable. Instantly, primally alluring.

Cuno removed his hat and held her gaze. She drew the door wide and stepped back into the room.

“Won't you come in?”

“I reckon that's why I'm here.”

When he was in the room, she closed the door and threw herself into his arms, kissing him and flinging her arms around his back. She kissed him for a long time, breathing hard, running her hands across his shoulders. She pulled his head down and kissed the bandage. Finally, she slid her lips to his cheek, her breath warm and wet on his skin.

“It's so good to see you again, Cuno. When I saw you ride into town, I couldn't believe it was you.”

She stepped back, smiling, holding his hands lightly in hers, her chin dipped seductively.

Cuno shook his head, which was swimming from the girl's heartfelt kiss and no longer aching. “You are something else, Miss Glory. And a sight for these sore eyes.” He frowned. “What brought you to Sundance?”

“Work.” She shrugged. “There was another shooting in Roderick's place in Julesburg, and the sheriff shut us down. Frieda, Minnie, and I had to take work where we could. Minnie went to Denver, Frieda to Pueblo. I had a chance to come here. Couldn't turn down boomtown money.”

Still holding his hands, she slid her lips back from her white teeth and beamed up at him. “And you? What are you doing in this godforsaken town, Cuno Massey? And what did you do to your poor head?”

“Started out haulin' boomtown supplies from Denver. Ended up tracking men.”

“What men?”

“The men downstairs.”

She turned suddenly, the wrapper billowing out around her long, naked legs. She strode toward a settee against the far wall. Halfway there, she turned back to him, beetling her brows. “What men are you talking about?”

“I only recognized a few. A big black man is one. Another is a man named Clayton Cannady, the group's ramrod. Has a hummingbird tattooed on his cheek, beneath his blind left eye.” Cuno tossed his hat on the settee and sat down beside Glory. “They killed my partner, Wade Scanlon, a one-legged man—a
good
man—for sport.”

“That's
terrible.
”

“You know 'em?”

“Cannady? I don't think so. But so many gun wolves pass through here, Sundance bein' a boomtown and all. What else do you know about them?”

“I know they're here to rob a bank. I know they're downstairs right now in one of the gambling rooms, playing poker with a couple of deputy sheriffs.”

She pursed her lips with disapproval. “Deputies, eh?”

“That tell you something?”

She grabbed his hand in both of hers. “Cuno, the sheriff died of food poisoning three days ago. Two days before, two other deputies rode out after claim jumpers. They haven't been seen since.”

Cuno looked at her hands on his. “And the only two remaining lawmen are cavorting with killers.” He smiled. “Sounds like someone's been tidyin' up the place.” He ran a hand through his long, blond hair, flipping it out over his collar. “Gettin' ready for a bank robbery.”

“When?”

Cuno shook his head.

She placed her hands on his left thigh and gazed up at him anxiously. “You're not going to try and stop them, are you? If they're the bunch I saw ride in yesterday, there's a whole passel of 'em. I know how big and strong and good with a gun you are, Cuno Massey, but you're only
one
man.”

“That might be true.” Cuno grabbed his hat. “But I've got to do something. And there's no time like the present.”

He started to stand, but she grabbed his arm, pulling him back down. “No!”

“Miss Glory, I 'preciate your—”

She pressed a finger to his lips, stared beseechingly into his eyes. “At least have a drink with me before you go?”

Cuno chuffed.

Glory pooched her lips in a pout. “For old times' sake?”

Cuno chuffed again and sagged back onto the settee. “Never could say no to you or Minnie or Frieda. What is it with you girls anyway?”

Chuckling, Glory stood and walked over to a long dressing table littered with female accoutrements including gewgaws and small silver boxes and perfume bottles. A liquor bottle and three goblets stood amidst the debris. With her back to him, Glory uncorked the bottle, filled two glasses, and strode back toward Cuno, moving seductively, offering a lopsided grin. Her bare feet softly slapped the bare floor before reaching the carpet upon which the settee sat.

“Might have something to do with how well we bandaged all those wounds you're so prone to acquiring.”

Cuno remembered waking to Glory, Frieda, and Minnie tending him in a feather bed, more naked than clothed and kneeling around him like he was some god dropped from Valhalla. Watching Glory sit down beside him now, her breasts pushing up out of her corset as she leaned against him and crossed her legs, one bare foot nudging his boot, he knew a sweet, lingering pang of desire.

“Brandy all right?” she asked, extending the glass.

“Brandy'll do.” He took the glass and sipped, savored the fiery, pleasantly fruity liquid trickling down his throat and into his chest, warming his core. He looked into the glass, swirled it. “Good stuff.”

“I know you're a whiskey man, but I had it sent up just for you. Thought I'd try to broaden your horizons.”