.45-Caliber Desperado (9 page)

Spurr gained the mouth of the second-story hall. About halfway down, a girl stood there, facing the open door of a room on the hall's right side. She was naked—a slender blonde with mussed hair and full breasts—and she was aiming a long-barreled, black-handled pistol through the open door with both hands.

Spurr's eye widened. “Hold it, girl!” He spread his feet and snugged the Winchester's stock against his right cheek, lining up the sights on the girl's head. The gun in her hands roared, the smoke and blue-red flames stabbing into the room on the right side of the hall. Turning toward Spurr, she screamed and raised the pistol once more.

Spurr held the sights steady on the girl's head, drew a dreadful breath, and squeezed the Winchester's trigger. The girl's head snapped violently back. She jerked the big pistol in her hands straight up, fired a round into the ceiling, flew back several feet, and hit the floor with a slapping thud on her naked back.

Spurr lowered the Winchester slightly, staring wide-eyed through his own powder smoke. Slowly, he lowered the Winchester's cocking lever, ejecting the spent casing, which clattered onto the floor around his boots, then slid a fresh shell into the chamber. A head appeared in the open doorway, wearing Mason's hat. Automatically, Spurr aimed the rifle at the man. The head turned toward the girl lying naked on the floor, a quarter-sized hole in her forehead, then Mason showed his face as he turned to look at Spurr.

The young marshal's eyes were saucer-round, and his mouth was open, forming a small, dark circle as he stepped slowly into the hall. He held his rifle in his right hand. He was holding his left hand to his ear. Blood oozed from between his fingers.

Wicked laughter sounded from the open doorway behind him.

Mason stepped over the girl, holding his rifle on the open doorway but staring down at the girl's pale body. Heart chugging slowly in his chest and his arm and shoulder feeling heavy and tingly but not as sore as before, Spurr walked slowly down the hall toward Mason and the girl, his moccasins snicking softly on the scarred puncheons.

Neither he nor Mason said anything for a long time. The smoke in the hall settled. Beyond the open door, Marvin ‘the Maiden Killer Candles' lay naked on his belly, pale, hairy ass in the air. His wrists were cuffed behind his back. His body spasmed as he laughed, holding his chin off the floor. Tears dribbled down his cheeks.

Spurr looked at Mason, who was staring stone-faced at the girl. “I told you he was holed up with a girl back in Wheaton. Lucy Murphy.”

Mason swallowed. “This here's Lucy . . . ?”

“He sparks 'em. Sorta mesmerizes 'em like what diamondbacks do to cats . . . before he kills 'em. He's a goddamn sick son of a bitch, Sheriff. I done told you that.”

Mason brushed sweat from his forehead and mustache with his shirtsleeve. “Well, you killed her deader'n hell, didn't you, Spurr?” He stepped over the dead girl's body, brushed past the federal lawman, and walked into the room where Candles was laughing as though at the funniest joke he'd ever heard.

“Wouldn't have to, if you hadn't left that crazy bastard's pistol out in the hall.”

“What's done is done,” the sheriff muttered, not looking at Spurr.

Candles continued to laugh hysterically, eyes pinched shut.

Spurr glowered at the lanky outlaw, whose neck was so sunburned in contrast to the rest of his flour-white body that he appeared to be wearing a red neckerchief. His hair was thin, showing his scalp.

“You think that's funny, do you?” Spurr seethed.

“Oh, it's real funny, Spurr. I think it's damn funny. Only wish you'd left her for me to finish. Woulda gotten around to it when she'd finished pleasin' me. For havin' such an upstandin' ole pa back home in Wheaton, she sure knew how to—” Candles cut himself off as he widened his eyes in terror. “Hey!”

Spurr rammed his forehead with the butt of his Winchester. It made a strangely pleasing sound after the man's bizarre laughter and oddly high-pitched, raspy voice. Candles's head dropped to the floor, jerking a short time before the Maiden Killer lay still, breathing softly, openmouthed, against a sour-smelling hemp scatter rug.

Spurr stepped back, both hands shaking now. Mason looked at him, drawing the corners of his mouth down, his blue eyes dark as the high-altitude sky. He didn't say anything, just shouldered his rifle and began digging into a pocket of his wool shirt for a half-smoked cheroot.

As he lit it, hooves thudded in the yard outside the roadhouse. Spurr walked over to a window, saw the Mexican apron standing in the yard, still holding his hands above his head as he faced three men riding in from the east. All three wore dusters, and Spurr thought he saw badges flashing amidst the billowing dust as they drew up in front of the fat bartender, who regarded them desperately, as though hoping they would tell him he could lower his hands.

“What now?” Spurr growled.

“What is it?” Sheriff Mason asked, puffing the cheroot as he rolled it between his lips, holding his rifle down low under his right arm.

Spurr stepped over Candles's still form and out into the hall. Stepping over dead Lucy Murphy, keeping his gaze from the girl's tender, parted lips and pale breasts, her eyes staring at the ceiling in shock at her own too-early annihilation—he headed on down the hall and then down the stairs. As he crossed the main saloon hall, which was growing thick with buzzing flies amidst the coppery smell of spilled blood and viscera, he tramped on out through the missing batwings and onto the roadhouse's front gallery.

The three newcomers held their jumpy, sweaty horses on short reins as they turned toward Spurr. The man with the handlebar mustache was Sheriff Walter McQueen from Holyoke, the county seat about forty miles east of here. He furled bleached-yellow brows at the federal lawman. “What in the hell brings you way out here, Spurr?”

“Lookin' for a barn dance.” Shouldering his rifle, Spurr flexed his left hand and squinted into the sunlit yard. “What're you doin' here, Walt? I was told the last whore left this place nigh on a year ago now. Keep my ear to the rail on such matters.”

“You ain't heard?”

“Heard what?”

McQueen shook his head darkly and spat a long wad of chew into the dust at the Mexican's feet. “Got the message over the telegraph 'bout an hour ago. The federal prison over at Limon.” He jerked his chin to indicate west. “Been a break. A big one. And all them howlin' devils is runnin' wild for the hills.”

 

Trouble broke out amongst the outlaws when someone finally gave into their lust and ripped the blouse of Romer Gaffney's sullen, redheaded niece, Wanda, off her freckled shoulder, exposing one entire breast. Gaffney got shouting mad.

The niece appeared as though she'd been in this position before and was relatively unruffled by it, though she held her torn blouse up over her breast and glared at her attacker. De Cava got mad then, too, because he'd promised Gaffney that his men would leave the half-breed rancher's women alone, and he was a man of his word. Also, Cuno figured, the ranch was a valuable relay stop when de Cava was on the run, which he almost always was. The outlaw leader backhanded the culprit savagely, splitting the man's lip, and made him apologize not only to the eternally sullen Wanda but to Gaffney, as well.

Then he ordered everyone to stow their gear, saddle their horses grazing by the creek, and head on up the trail.

Cuno rode somewhere in the middle of the pack, near Camilla, who kept looking over at him as though gauging his mood. The food and water at the ranch had made him feel better, but after the pummeling he'd taken from Mule Zimmerman, and his night in the Pit without food or water, and with a broken nose, he tired quickly.

The clothes he'd taken from White-Eye's stash made the ride in the hot sun more bearable, however, despite their stench of whiskey sweat. He kept the sombrero tipped low on his forehead, and gave Renegade his head, letting the skewbald paint follow along with the others as they traced dry watercourses on a generally southwestern course across southern Colorado, possibly northern New Mexico by now.

In the west, the Sangre de Cristos grew tall above the plain, the sun shifting across the high, snow-mantled ridges, making it appear a different range altogether each time Cuno glanced at it.

He was glad when they stopped in the late afternoon and holed up in a badland area just beyond the ruins of an abandoned military outpost.

“You know where we're headin', kid?” Frank Skinner asked him as they unsaddled their horses in a deep, gravel-floored canyon with a series of notch caves showing darkly in the canyon's chalky western wall.

“Can't say as I do.”

“Well, just the same, I appreciate your friends.”

“They're not my friends,” Cuno said, as he set his saddle on a rock and glanced at the other tired, dusty, sun-reddened riders unrigging their horses, a few joking and laughing and breaking out whiskey bottles. “Just the girl.”

“
Bonita
senorita.”

Cuno gave the train robber an icy look. “Easy, Frank.”

Skinner laughed as he ripped up some dry grass and began to rub his sweaty horse's back with it. “Don't worry about me, kid. I ain't one to mess with Mateo de Cava's little sis.” He narrowed a deep-set, red-rheumy eye at the young freighter. “No, it ain't me you got to worry about. It's de Cava's other men. I'd sleep light tonight, if I was you. And I'd check regular for rattlesnakes in my bedroll.”

Cuno began rubbing Renegade down with a scrap of burlap he found in his saddlebags. “Thanks for the advice.”

“Don't mention it.”

Suddenly, as though to validate the train robber's warning, de Cava's voice broke above the general din. “Hey, Senor Massey!”

Cuno looked at de Cava's grinning, bearded countenance regarding him over the back of his black Arabian stallion. The outlaw leader jerked a thumb at the big Yank, Wayne Brouschard, who stood beside de Cava, grinning through his yellow-blond beard at Cuno. He stood a good four inches above Mateo, who himself was a good six feet tall. The west-falling sun angled under the brim of his sombrero and made his eyes glow demonically.

“
Mi
amigo here wants to fight you for the affections of my sister,” the outlaw leader said. “What do you say, huh? It is a tradition in Mexico to fight with knives with a fivefoot length of rawhide clamped in the opponents' jaws.”

Brouschard stepped out from behind his coyote dun mustang, shucked a horn-handled bowie knife from a sheath strapped low on his left thigh, and tossed the blade straight up, flipping it slowly above his head. Catching it by its handle, he stared at Cuno as he touched a thumb to the blade and gave a mock wince. “Ouch!”

Mateo was absently rubbing his horse down with a feed sack. “Brouschard has killed many an unfortunate Rurale with that blade. Cut their heads off in about two swipes.”

“You gotta keep 'em sharp and well oiled,” said the big Yankee, who had a west Texas accent. Probably from the Big Bend down close to the border.

Cuno glanced at Camilla, who was staring over the back of her own horse at her brother. Her lips were white with fury. Stepping out to face the big Texan, Cuno set his feet wide apart and hiked a shoulder. Canting his head toward Camilla and thumbing his chest, he said, “The girl's mine. But the .45's all I have.”

From ahead and right, a blade flashed in the air. The knife landed at his feet. Another big bowie with a hand-carved wooden handle wrapped with rawhide. The blade was rust-spotted, with dried blood crusted to the rust. Cuno glanced at the man who'd thrown it. The man smiled—a short, beefy American with a shabby brown bowler hat and two silver eyeteeth. Cuno had seen him hanging around close to Brouschard. His name was Eldon Wald.

Cuno leaned down and picked up the knife. He flipped it in the air, caught it by its handle, and stepped forward. As the other outlaws began closing a circle around the two challengers, Camilla tramped out from behind her horse, brushed past Cuno, and stopped in front of Brouschard, who towered over the petite senorita.

Instantly, she cut loose with a string of Spanish, rising up on the toes of her stockmen's boots, her face red and eyes spitting fire.

Cuno had a pretty good understanding of Spanish, but she was speaking so quickly that he couldn't make out much more than the frequent curses, but he was relatively certain that she was denouncing not only the Texan in no uncertain terms, but several generations of his family, as well. She ended her tirade, which rocked the big man back on his undershot heels while evoking laughter from the others, by gesturing with one hand at Brouschard's crotch, holding her other hand up in front of his face, and spreading her thumb and index finger about two inches apart. Casting an admiring glance at Cuno, she held both hands up in front of Brouschard once more and spread them about two feet apart, palms facing each other.

She curled her upper lip at the big man disdainfully and crossed her arms on her breasts.

Brouschard's face turned as red an Arizona sunset.

Mateo and the other men roared.

Brouschard looked so exasperated and embarrassed that Cuno couldn't help laughing, as well. He'd been around such men as these enough to know he couldn't allow the senorita to defend him without showing some of his own spleen. After what he'd been through, he had little strength for his next move, but from somewhere deep in his bones he summoned a last reserve. Bounding toward the girl, laughing, he pulled her around to face him, crouched, and slung her over his shoulder like a fifty-pound sack of cracked corn.

Camilla screamed as he spun twice around, laughing like a victor holding up his trophy.