.45-Caliber Deathtrap (9 page)

The bones in the man's fist snapped like kindling.

“Ahhhh!”
the man roared, watching his hand dangling like a scrap of burlap, cracked bones showing through the hairy wrist. He dropped to his knees, face balled with pain, while he cursed and jabbed his left hand across his waist for the Colt Lightning holstered on his right hip.

Before the hard case could fumble the gun from the holster, Cuno stepped forward and brought his right knee up under the man's chin. There was a sharp clack of shattering teeth.

The man's head snapped back. Giving a clipped groan, he hit the floor on his back, spitting bits of broken teeth as his eyes fluttered closed. He lay still, the look of excruciating pain slitting his eyes and dimpling his cheeks.

“Jee-
sus
!” exclaimed the clerk, glancing over the counter at the fallen hard case.

To Cuno's left, another chair scraped back. Curses and the thunder of boot heels echoed. Cuno grabbed his .44 and, thumbing the hammer back, turned to aim the gun at the other three hard cases scrambling toward him.

Seeing the gun, they all froze in unison, hands on their own sheathed pistols.

The man with the deerskin cloak was closest to Cuno. He shifted his gaze from his fallen partner to the freighter, gritting his teeth. “You son of a bitch.”

Cuno angled the pistol barrel down.
Pop!
The slug drilled a ragged hole through the soft toe of the hard case's boot. He cursed and hopped on his other foot.

“
Owww!
Goddamn, you son of a
sow
!”

Cuno raised the pistol again, hammer cocked. While keeping the gun aimed at the three hard cases glaring at him from twelve feet away, Cuno addressed the clerk. “Any law around here?”

Lower jaw hanging, the clerk shook his head.

Cuno grunted and swept his gaze around the three standing hard cases. The one with the wounded foot stood on his good one, holding his other foot above the ground. Blood dribbled from the ragged hole in the toe, seeping into the hard-packed dirt.

“If you get a hankerin' to trail me, just remember there's more where this came from.”

He canted his head slightly toward the clerk. “Finish my order and tally it.”

While the clerk scrambled around behind the counter, then scuttled over to the oat bin near the smoking stove, Cuno glared at the three hard cases. He pointed his gun at the small square table about five feet to his left, where an empty bottle and shot glass sat. A cigar stub lay at the bottom of the glass.

“You boys set your pistol belts on that table, then back up to your own table and sit down.”

Reluctantly, still cursing under their breath and sliding skeptical glances at their fallen comrade, out like a blown wick, blood trickling out both corners of his mouth, they did as they'd been told. When they were all seated at their table, the clerk set Cuno's two sacks on the counter, and gave him the total for each order.

Cuno flipped several coins to the man, who caught them against his chest. The freighter grabbed the sacks by their necks, and threw them over his left shoulder. Keeping his cocked pistol aimed at the three hard cases sitting their chairs in the far rear corner, scowling at him, hands in their laps, he backed toward the door.

“Poke your noses out this door before I leave town, and I'll blow 'em off.”

With that, he turned and went out.

He angled across the rutted trail toward his wagon parked before the blacksmith shop, which was gushing black smoke from its chimney pipe. Serenity Parker and the blacksmith had the right front wheel off and leaning against the jacked-up wagon. They stood side by side, staring toward the mercantile with wary casts to their eyes.

The Chinaman sat on a pine stump left of the shop, under a wind-buffeted aspen. He'd cleaned his face. His wool coat lay across his lap, and he scrubbed at it with a rag.

Cuno walked over to the man, dropped the bag in his lap. “Came to a dollar forty-nine.”

The Chinaman stared down at the bag, placed a hand on it to make sure it was really there. He lifted his chin toward Cuno, upper lip curled with disbelief. As if jolted from a dream, he stood and stuck his right hand into a pocket of his dirty cotton trousers, pulled out several lint-peppered coins, and dropped them in Cuno's Gloved palm.

Cuno closed his fingers over the coins and nodded. “I wouldn't hang around here long. Your friends are a mite piss-burned.”

He pinched his hat brim at the Chinaman, turned, and strode off toward the wagon.

WHEN THE WAGON
had been repaired, Cuno and Serenity Parker followed the curving wagon trail up out of the valley and into the high spruce parks, where the creeks were narrow and swift and the air was a good ten degrees colder than down below.

Steel-blue rain clouds gathered after midday. As the wagon climbed higher, the rain turned to snow. There was little wind and the temperature didn't drop much below thirty, so there was no danger of exposure or blocked roads. The day ended early, however, the soft gray light dimming as though a giant lamp was turned down.

Cuno parked beside the south fork of Roaring Creek, just upriver from an old Ute burial scaffold from which old buckskins and beaded blankets hung like tattered ribbons, revealing what the hawks and eagles had left of the Indians' bleached bones.

Clad in a long duck coat and ancient Confederate cavalry hat, a red muffler wrapped around his scrawny neck, Serenity gathered wood for a fire while Cuno picketed the mules in the high bluestem by the creek. Cuno had removed his camping gear from the wagon box, along with the fresh Arbuckles, when a shadow flicked through the trees on the other side of the trail. He stopped, turned his head that way, breathing slowly through his mouth to listen.

Above the sound of the sifting snow and Serenity's wheezing and scuffling, weeds cracked softly, the falling snow somehow softening and clarifying even the slightest sounds. Snow crunched under small hooves—the double thuds of a mule deer bounding away from suspected danger.

Cuno walked to the front of the wagon, grabbed his Winchester from the driver's box, and glanced at Serenity, who'd just dropped a load of kindling near an old fire ring. “Be back in a bit.”

The old man—a scrawny, scarved, bearded visage in the failing light and slanting snow—turned toward him. “Where you off to?”

Cuno rammed a fresh round into the Winchester's breech and started across the trail to the aspen-stippled hill rising on the other side. “Meat.”

“I heard it,” Serenity said, breathing hard, his phlegmy voice clear in the still air. “Didn't think you did. Got good ears on ye, fer a pup.”

The old man chuckled softly and cracked a stick over his scrawny knee. Cuno climbed the low bank. He slanted through the aspens, finding a freshly rubbed sapling with bark bits littering the snow at its base. In the grainy snow only partially covering the fallen leaves were hoofprints and fresh urine dribbles. A buck then. A small one, judging by the size of the hoofprints. Cuno probably outweighed him. The deer had lost a tip off one of its front toes.

Cuno hefted the Winchester in his hands and continued up the bank. He left the trees behind and crossed a small clearing, the ground still pitching up on his right, toward a crest of scattered boulders and cedars barely seen through pines and the snow fog.

He descended a wooded trough in which a narrow, black freshet trickled amidst ice-crusted stones, and clambered up the other side. His boots slipped and slid in the slick, wet leaves and snow-mashed bluestem. He fell once, felt the icy sting of snow under his sleeve, then pushed quietly through some shagbush and into another clearing.

He stopped, slowly raised the Winchester.

Forty yards ahead, the buck stood nibbling leaves from a chokecherry shrub, jerking its head to rip the foliage from the limbs. A little buck with a big set of antlers. Cuno did outweigh him. The buck chewed, stopped, looked around, then began chewing again.

Cuno dropped to a knee and raised the rifle to his shoulder. He thumbed the hammer back, planted a bead on the animal's left front shoulder, then brought it back and up slightly. Cuno took a deep breath, held it, and began taking up the trigger slack.

The buck jerked suddenly, flinched, twisted slightly, moved forward several steps, froze, and dropped—a dun heap upon the white-dusted grass.

Cuno's eyes widened. He relaxed his trigger finger but kept the rifle snugged to his cheek as he looked around the clearing.

Heart beating rhythmically, his curiosity getting the better of him—deer didn't suddenly collapse when you were drawing a bead on them—he lowered the Winchester slightly but kept the hammer cocked. Carrying the rifle across his chest, swinging his wary gaze from left to right and back again, he made his way across the clearing. He winced at the crunch and rustle of his boots.

No movement to either side or behind. Just the slow, occasional breeze gusts nudging snow tufts from wet branches. A small cottontail scuttled through the snow to his left, disappeared in the brush.

Cuno approached the deer and stopped, looked down. The animal's eyes were glassy. Blood splotched the snow around its snout and soaked the fir over its right shoulder, around the four inches of feathered arrow protruding from its side.

Cuno crouched and again swept the clearing with his gaze. The shot had to have come from the buck's right. Cuno stared in that direction, but kept his rifle down by his knee.

He'd let the brave fetch his deer. He'd earned it. Cuno wanted no trouble with Indians. He couldn't just walk away, though. The shooter of that arrow was no doubt watching him from the evergreens on the other side of the clearing. You gave an Indian no reason to believe you weak-hearted. When the man showed himself, Cuno would give a curt nod to indicate his surrender of the other man's meat. Only then would he walk away.

When he'd crouched there for a couple of minutes, and nothing happened, he grabbed the end of the arrow, pulled it out of the deer. Blood dribbled from the strap-iron blade. The shaft was slender, painted black with pitch, and fletched with falcon feathers.

Something sharp prodded his back, pushing through his coat. He leapt forward and swung around, dropping the arrow and bringing the Winchester up. His assailant shuffled nimbly back and raised the nocked arrow as if to show Cuno what had prodded him.

The man standing before Cuno was short, thin, and bowlegged, with a dozen or so fine, black hairs drooping off his chin. He wore a deerskin hat with dangling earflaps, quilted hide coat, baggy duck trousers, and knee-high, fur-trimmed mocassins. He wasn't wearing gloves. The short bow he held in his stubby, brown hands was made of ash wood and sinew, with rabbit fur wrapped around each end to muffle the twang of the shot.

The man's deerskin hat rose to a peak, giving him an odd, gremlinlike appearance.

As Cuno stared, holding the Winchester taut but only chest-high, the barrel canted sensibly askance, the man let the bowstring creak back toward the bow. The nocked arrow sagged. White teeth shone within the dark circle of the hat. The man reached up with one hand, removed the hat from his head, lowered it to his side. As his smile grew wider, showing more small, square teeth, the outside corners of his slanted eyes drew up toward his temples.

The Chinaman from the mercantile.

Cuno grunted. “I'll be damned.”

“You want meat?” The man's voice was husky and deep. “You take.”

Cuno stared at the bow and the arrow, his curiosity about how the man had gotten his hands on such implements tempered with annoyance at having the meat shot out from under him. He glanced at the deer and shook his head. “It's yours.”

Cuno rested the Winchester over his shoulder and walked back the way he'd come.

Later that night, the snow stopped and the sky cleared, leaving high wisps of clouds smearing the light of a half-moon and dimming the stars. The air was damp and cold. The creek gurgled over the rocks. The fire felt good as Cuno and Parker, hunkered down in their heavy coats, washed their beans and biscuits down with strong, hot coffee.

“That's the problem with you young colts, you're slicker'n snot with a hogleg, but ye ain't worth spit with a long gun.”

Cuno was about to respond when he lifted his head suddenly. Quietly, he set his plate and fork on a rock in the fire ring and grabbed the Winchester leaning beside him. He snapped a shell into the breech. Parker snapped his eyes up and threw up a hand, palm out, beans dribbling into his beard.

“I was just joshin', son!”

“Quiet,” Cuno admonished, expressionless, staring over the oldster's right shoulder. He raised his voice. “Come in slow.”

Silence except for the fire's snaps and breathy gutter. Parker craned his head to follow Cuno's gaze into the shadows near the wagon. Behind Cuno, one of the mules brayed.

A diminutive figure materialized from the shadows—a small, bandy-legged man with a peaked hat and dangling earflaps. The Chinaman moved slowly into the firelight, the flames bringing out the pale yellow of his face. He bowed his head repeatedly, a cautious cast to his gaze. He carried some kind of pack on his back. The short bow was slung over one shoulder, and feathered arrows from the quiver poked up from behind one shoulder.

“I bring meat. We share, huh?” He shrugged the heavy pack off his shoulder. Not a pack, but the rolled hide of the little buck he'd shot, secured with rawhide straps. “Meat for fire?”

Cuno depressed the Winchester's trigger, leaned the rifle against the log beside him. He glanced at Parker. “Why not?”

The Chinaman shuttled his gaze between them, grinning, then dropped to his knees, setting the rolled hide on the ground before the fire. He untied the rawhide straps securing the bundle, and flipped out the corners, revealing the dark meat expertly carved, several small roasts tied with sinew. Nothing had gone to waste. The heart, lungs, liver, tongue, and even the gall bladder were there, gleaming succulently in the fire's umber glow.

“Would you look at that?” Parker rubbed his hands together. “That looks good 'nough to eat raw!”

“We no eat raw.” The Chinaman set his bow and arrows against the log on which Cuno sat, and stood. Sliding a knife from a sheath beneath his quilted coat, he scuttled off into the darkness.

Sipping their coffee, Cuno and Parker listened to the man thrashing around in the pines, trampling brush and snapping branches. The night was so quiet that they could hear his industrious grunts and sighs above the creek's relentless murmur.

A few minutes later, he shuffled back into the firelight. He carried two long aspen sticks under one arm. In his hands he was sharpening another long stick with a wide-bladed, bone-handled knife.

When he had a good point on the stick, he knelt before the venison chunks, picked through the roasts, then skewered a fist-sized hunk of tenderloin onto the stick he'd just sharpened. Smiling and bowing, he handed the stick to Cuno, breathing sharply and making soft, satisfied sounds through his parted lips. His thin, stringy chin whiskers brushed his chest.

Cuno took the stick. “Obliged.” He held the roast over the fire.

The Chinaman sharpened another stick, skewered another fist-sized roast onto the end, and handed that stick to Parker, who'd watched the man like a hungry dog awaiting a dropped scrap. Parker accepted the stick with an eager grin, several beans still crusted in his beard, and held the meat out over the fire.

Parker shook his head, his blue eyes sparkling in the firelight. “There ain't nothin' like venison when you thought you was gonna have to hit the hay on beans!”

Cuno gave him a wry look from beneath his brows. The old man's grin faded, a contrite look taking its place as he returned his eyes to the meat beginning to smoke at the end of his stick.

When the Chinaman was roasting half the liver on his own stick, sitting Indian style before the fire, Cuno glanced at the bow and arrow leaning against the log to his left. “Well-put-together shootin' tools you got there.”

The Chinaman looked at the short bow and the quiver, and chuckled huskily. “Very sharp…and very quiet.”

“If I didn't know better,” Parker said, inspecting his meat, “I'd say you was part Injun.”

“I work the railroad with the son of an old Indian chief,” the Chinaman said, slowly turning the stick so the liver cooked evenly. “A Cheyenne brave. He taught me to make bow and arrow, to hunt.” He shook his head with gravity. “To be very quiet!”

Cuno turned his own stick and said dryly, “You learned right well.”

“I am Kong.”

Cuno held out his hand, and the Chinaman shook it. “Cuno Massey. The old man with the dirty beard yonder is Serenity Parker.”

“You can call me Serenity,” the old man said, shaking the Chinaman's hand. “What brings you so far from the railroad, Mr. Kong?”

The Chinaman's eyes lost any semblance of humor as they stared at the liver browning nicely in the licking flames. “I have daughter, but my wife die. I quit railroad. It is hard life for child. I come to mountains, prospect for gold.” He shook his head. “I find none, so I work in saloon. Now, saloon burn down. Bad men burn it down. Take my daughter.”

Cuno turned his gaze to the Chinaman gritting his teeth as he stared angrily into the flames. “This happen recently?” the freighter asked.

Kong nodded.

“Big gang of men?” Serenity gazed at the Chinaman now too. “Call themselves The Committee?”

Scowl lines cutting deep into his forehead, Kong looked at Parker, then at Cuno. “You know these men?”

“Know
of
'em.” Cuno lifted his coffee to his lips, and sipped. “I'm gonna kill 'em.”