A Dangerous Man (9 page)

Tam Sullivan stood at his hotel room window and watched Tom Archer's posse ride in, a group of exhausted, frozen men. They'd suffered no casualties and showed no signs of wounds, so they'd obviously been defeated by weather, not Utes.

But where were Longley and Tate?

Those two boys knew how to take care of their own skins and must have fallen behind for some reason.

Sullivan smiled. Probably stopped off to rob somebody.

He watched as the riders dismounted then followed Archer into the saloon in search of whiskey to defrost their bones.

Thinking about it later, Sullivan reckoned it might have been better for the storekeeper if he'd gone straight home to the bosom of his family.

Sullivan moved from the window and put on his hat and coat and wrapped a yellow muffler around his neck. It was a purchase he'd made that morning after the saleslady had assured him that yellow mufflers were all the rage since Queen Vic's cousin, a German prince, had been seen wearing one grouse shooting in Scotland.

“Just feel the quality,” the woman had said. “The wool is of course from Scottish sheep.”

“Smells like Scottish sheep, too,” Sullivan had said, but he bought the muffler anyway.

 

 

“Nothing from Santa Fe for you yet, Mr. Sullivan,” Isaac Loomis said.

“I should have heard by this time.” Sullivan was disappointed.

“Maybe the lines are down,” the stationmaster said. “This has been a severe winter so far. Coffee?”

“Yeah, please.” Sullivan took a seat after Loomis poured the coffee, wondering when the lines might be repaired.

“Depends,” Loomis said.

Sullivan tested his coffee. “On what?”

“On how the weather shapes up or if there's Indian trouble. I hear tell the Apaches are out.”

“Seems like, from what I've heard.”

“Maybe two, three days for an answer from Santa Fe,” Loomis said. “It's my best guess.”

“That's a lifetime in a burg like Comanche Crossing.”

The stationmaster shrugged like a little bird ruffling its feathers. “Oh, I don't know. We got a real nice church and there's a choir.”

“I don't go to church.”

“Neither do I, but we got a real nice one if you felt inclined.”

Sullivan lit a cigar and puffed until the end glowed. “What do you know about Lady Clotilde Wainright? Lives in the big house at the edge of town?”

“She's never caught a train here,” Loomis said.

“That's not telling me much. Nobody's ever caught a train here.”

“But if we did have trains, and I'm not saying we don't, Lady Wainright never caught one.”

Sullivan didn't even try to work out the logic of that. “So you know nothing about her, huh?”

“Only that she's a strange one. Keeps to herself.” The stationmaster leaned across the table and said in a conspiratorial tone, “But I tell you what, though. Sometimes she keeps strange hours. I've seen her lamps burn all night and she only turns them off at sunup.”

“Maybe she can't sleep,” Sullivan said.

“That could be,” Loomis agreed, “but there are them who say she has visitors arriving after midnight and sometimes in closed carriages.” He sat back in his chair. “What do you think of them shenanigans?”

“You ever hear tell of a ranny by the name of Bill Longley?” Sullivan asked.

“Wild Bill Longley, the Texas outlaw? Sure. Telegraph operators keep each other informed. We call it professional courtesy.”

“Why would Lady Wainright know him?”

Loomis shook his head. “I haven't a clue.”

“So you've just heard about him, huh?”

“Yes, but not much. The only strange thing I ever heard about Wild Bill Longley was he got hung once and it didn't take.”

“Yeah, I know about that,” Sullivan said. “Seems to me it was a pity. Bill only getting half hung, I mean.”

“Did you hear how he got the noose off from around his neck? Now there's a strange story. Hamp Dickson, an operator farther down the line told me.”

Sullivan shook his head, only mildly interested.

“Well, they say his woman bit through the rope. Fancy that.”

 

 

Dusk made the gloomy day gloomier as Tam Sullivan left the station and made his way toward the saloon.

For a while a huge coyote, as silver as moonlight, kept pace with him, trotting through the pines like a phantom before vanishing into shadow.

Sullivan thought it strange but dismissed the animal from his mind when he walked in the saloon and stepped to the bar. He ordered a rye and a beer then took a seat at a table, his back against the wall as was the habit of men who made a living by the gun.

Tom Archer strolled over, looking like he'd been through it. “Never saw an Indian. Never saw nothing but snow and ice and mountains.”

“You don't say,” Sullivan said. “Now that really surprises me.”

“I'm glad we didn't get into a scrape. After hours of freezing in the saddle, the expedition was in no shape to take on Utes.”

“I reckon not,” Sullivan said, looking over the exhausted men at the bar. “Where's Bill Longley?”

“I don't know.”

“It's always good to know where Longley is.”

Archer shut down for long moments before he spoke again. “Him and Booker Tate left us to scout toward the Cimarron breaks. He said if he ran into trouble he'd fire three shots and that we should come on fast.”

“And did you?”

“No. We heard the shots, but by then my men were finished.” Archer took a long swig from his whiskey glass. “What did Longley and Tate mean to us? I wouldn't risk the lives of my men to save a couple outlaws.”

Sullivan slammed the knuckles of his right hand into the wall behind him. “Archer, you see writing on that? If you don't, I think maybe you should.”

“Longley's probably dead by now. If the cold didn't get him, the savages did.”

“Don't count on it. He's survived hard times and he's got more lives than a cat. Something else, Archer. Longley was raised to the reckoning and he's an unforgiving man.”

His face troubled, the storekeeper turned and stepped back to the bar.

And Sullivan waited for the tragedy he knew must inevitably come.

By midnight, only Tom Archer and three of his posse remained in the saloon. Well, them, a saloon girl, and Tam Sullivan.

The girl wasn't Montana Maine and that disappointed him.

The oil lamps that guttered against the gloom cast pools of orange light along the bar and hollowed the faces of the men with dark blue shadows. The raw whiskey had long since lost its soothing magic, and they drank to get drunk in somber, sullen silence.

The girl, bored, stood at the piano and picked out the opening notes of Chopin's Nocturne in F minor. Every time she fingered a wrong key she sighed and started over. Behind the bar, the bartender fed a little calico kitten morsels of cheese and stroked her arched back.

Sullivan stubbed out his cigar in the ashtray. After two whiskies and three beers, he was about ready to give up his vigil and go to bed.

It seemed that a vengeful Bill Longley was not going to show.

At least not that night.

But no sooner had he risen to his feet than the door slammed open and Longley and Tate barged inside, bringing a gust of wind, snow, and knifing cold with them.

Longley's coat was open and pushed back. His butt-forward revolvers made a belligerent statement. He laid his Henry on the bar then glared at the drinking men. “You three with Archer, I got a dead horse at the hitching rail outside. Bury it.”

“Now?” The man who asked was small and wiry with a stubble of gray beard.

“Yeah. Now,” Longley said.

“And if we don't?” This came from a bigger, tougher, and more aggressive redhead who was already half drunk.

“Then I'll kill you,” Longley's voice was flat. At that moment, he looked like the wrath of God.

“It's time you boys went home, anyway,” Archer said. “Just dab a loop on the horse and drag it into the trees somewhere. The coyotes will take care of it.”

“I told them to bury it,” Longley said.

“The ground is too hard,” Archer said.

“Then how are they gonna bury you?” Longley was primed for a killing and there would be no going back from it. “I changed my mind. You three get my saddle off the hoss and take it to the livery. Then haul the carcass up to the graveyard. You'll have some buryin' to do come morning.”

The three men carried holstered guns, but they were up against it. No man in his right mind wanted to haul iron on a Texas draw fighter in a tight space . . . not if he wanted to keep on living, he didn't.

The big red-haired man considered his courses of action, didn't find one he liked, and decided to call it a day. “Come on, boys. Let's get the dead horse off of the street.”

“And don't forget my saddle and bridle,” Longley said.

“I'll go with them,” Tom Archer said, stepping away from the bar.

“You stay right where you are.” Without turning his head, Longley said, “You aiming to take a hand in this, Sullivan?”

Sullivan shook his head. “Ain't my game. I reckon I'll set here quiet and see how things turn out.”

“We didn't mean to leave you in the lurch, Bill. You got it all wrong,” Archer said.

“After you heard my shots, how did I get it all wrong?” Longley said.

Archer searched his brain for something, anything. But he was scared, wasn't thinking straight, and couldn't find a way out. “The men were tired. They couldn't make a go of it,” he said finally.

“So you left me and Bill to die like dogs?” Tate put in. “Was that the way of it?”

“No, that's not how it was,” Archer said. “We . . . the men were in no shape to fight Utes.”

“It was Apaches,” Longley said. “I killed three or four of them, but they still got lead into me.”

“Geez, Bill, I'm sorry,” Archer said. “It was just an impossible situation. I mean, we were in the middle of a blizzard. You know how Indians fight. We could've headed right into an ambush.”

Longley smiled and nodded his understanding.

And at that moment Tam Sullivan knew Tom Archer was a dead man.

“You a married man, Tom?” Longley asked quietly.

“I sure am. My wife's name is Mary and I have two kids. John is fifteen, Emily a year younger. She wants to be a schoolteacher.”

“Nice, very nice. It's tough for a man to put his life on the line when he has a happy little family waiting for him at home,” Longley said.

“Then you see how it is with me, Bill,” Archer said. “I hoped you would.”

“Of course I know how it is with you. Go home now, and no hard feelings. It was all an unfortunate misunderstanding.”

Relief showed on Archer's face. He smiled as he walked past Longley and stepped quickly to the door.

“Oh, Tom,” Longley called.

Archer turned, still smiling.

The two .44 balls that crashed into his chest removed his smile forever. He was seconds from death when he hit the sawdust.

Sullivan stood and cleared his iron as Longley swung in his direction, just as he knew he would. “Don't try it, Bill. I can drill you right where you stand.”

Longley smiled and holstered the Dance. “It was a jest, Sullivan. Just a
bon mot
, you understand.”

“Sense of humor like yours will get you killed one day.” Keeping Longley in front of him, Sullivan got down on one knee beside Archer. He'd seen a lot of dead men in his day and the storekeeper was one of them.

“Is he gone?” The bartender was a big man, thick across the shoulders and chest. His name was Buck Bowman and he'd been a Texas Ranger for a spell and still carried a Comanche arrowhead deep in his lower back.

“Yeah, he's dead as he's ever gonna be,” Sullivan said, getting to his feet.

Bowman, a man with no backup in him, stared at Longley. “Tom Archer has friends in this town.”

“Tell them to bury him, or they can let him lie there and rot. I don't give a damn,” Longley said.

Bowman eyes moved to Sullivan. “Did you see it as fair play, mister?”

“His wounds are in the front.”

“He didn't have a chance,” Bowman said.

“No, no he didn't,” Sullivan agreed. “Not a hope in hell.”

Longley hitched his guns into place and said to Bowman, “Let this be a warning. I'll kill any man in this town who crosses me or does me wrong.” His spurs chiming, he walked to the door and a grinning Booker Tate followed him like a trained puppy.

“Why didn't you take a hand?” the bartender asked Sullivan. “You could have made a play.”

Gun smoke drifted around the saloon like the ghost of Tom Archer rising from the dead.

“Best advice I ever got was to never interfere with something that ain't bothering me none. It was Archer's fight, not mine.”

Bowman let out a drawn-out sigh as he stared at the dead man. “No, I guess it wasn't. But I think I'm going to make it my fight real soon.”

A sleepless man, Bill Longley knew every crack, patch of flaking plaster, and spiderweb on the ceiling and how the silver luster of snow light cast by the window looked like frost in the darkness. He blinked rapidly, his brain working.

So she had come back to claim what was hers by right. His life.

But why here and now? And how had she discovered where he was?

She hadn't, of course.

Clotilde being in Comanche Crossing was just a stroke of bad luck. Or was it fate, fortune, destiny? He could think of a dozen names for it, but not one was adequate.

Damn her to hell!

Longley got out of bed, slid one of his revolvers from the holster, and stepped to the window.

The big grandfather clock in the lobby downstairs chimed one.

She was there. He knew she'd be there.

The woman stood on the boardwalk opposite the hotel, her black cloak and unbound hair streaming in the wind, her eyes fixed on his window.

“Hag,” Longley whispered. “You vile English hag.” He pulled on his boots, buttoned his fur coat over his long underwear, then shoved the Dance into the pocket.

It was time to have it out with Lady Clotilde Wainright.

He owed her his life, but not his soul. She couldn't force him back into the old ways . . . the ways that had gotten her damned husband killed.

Longley crept downstairs and stepped onto the porch. The night was cold, the color of slate, and snow added its cartwheeling chaos to the carefree wildness of the north wind.

Across the street the boardwalk was deserted.

Everywhere he looked was shadow, deep, black, mysterious, the dark mouths of the alleys brooding like the portals of hell.

He stepped along the boardwalk, eyes restless, gun in hand....

Doctor Allan's Pharmacy . . . The New York Hat Shoppe . . . Sloan's Rod & Gun . . . Archer's General Store . . . Brian T. Grossman, Attorney . . . Brown's Boots and Shoes . . . The storefronts came and went.

Longley reached the end of the timber walk. On the hill, the Wainright mansion was ablaze with light. His mouth suddenly dry, he licked snow off the back of his gun hand and stared at the house. All the curtains were drawn, and he saw nothing of what was happening inside.

But he knew.

It was time he had a plan. He'd kick the door in, find the hag and kill her. Simplicity itself.

Who in this hick town would arrest him for murder? There was no one.

Well, Sullivan maybe. But the bounty hunter was only passing through and didn't care.

Longley grimaced and shook his head. He'd let his anger get the better of him.

It was too damned risky. Cheng was dangerous and so was the grotesque man-thing she kept so well hidden.

And there would be witnesses. That could be awkward.

He'd find another way.

Longley turned to walk back the hotel—and then heard the growl.

He peered through the murk at a patch of sagebrush some twenty yards from the end of the boardwalk and caught a glimpse of an animal . . . a coat the color of tarnished silver . . . the gleam of fangs . . . a huge animal.

Warily, he raised his revolver, his heart thudding in his chest.

A minute slid past, the growl seeming to be coming from all around him, a savage, liquid rumble that spoke of hunger—and slavering jaws.

Fearful, he stepped back, holding close to the front of a footwear store. A sign in the window said ALL BOOTS SOLD AT COST.

The growl came again.

Closer.

Longley studied the brush, searching for the animal, hoping for a clean shot.

Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .

Something dripped on his hat.

He shook. What the hell? Probably drops from melting icicles that hung from the roof of the storefront. Yes, that's what it was, he decided.

A string of something that glistened hung from the brim of his hat. Then another. And another.

He lifted a hand and touched the stuff. It was warm and slimy. Slobber!

Longley jumped back from the store, looked up, and saw the massive head of a dog, saliva stringing from its jaws, staring down at him from the flat store roof.

He brought up his revolver, but the dog was no longer there.

A surge of panic rammed through his gut like a cavalry saber. O sweet Jesu! The animal was stalking him!

Longley shrieked, turned, and sprinted along the boardwalk. Behind him, he heard the heavy thud of clawed paws on the timber and a low predatory snarl.

He yelled and uttered a strangled cry for help.

The animal would soon rend, rip, slash, lacerate, devour him. . . .

“Help me!” he screamed. “Dear God, help me!” Terror lending wings to his feet, Longley reached the hotel door and, gasping, slammed it shut behind him.

A moment later something big, heavy, and demonic slammed against the door and rattled the glass panels. Then . . . silence.

The clock in the lobby sounded.
Tick . . . tick . . . tick
in the quiet.

“What scared you, Bill?”

Longley whirled, gun in hand.

Tam Sullivan stood halfway up the staircase. He wore his long underwear and hat, and held a cocked revolver.

“It's you, Sullivan.” Longley was breathing hard and his face was fish-belly white. He holstered his gun.

“As ever was, Bill. I heard boots running on the boardwalk, then the door crashed open and closed. I declare, it shook the hotel to its foundations. I figured it had to be you.”

Sullivan grinned. “See a boogeyman out there?”

“It was a dog. Damned thing was stalking me.”

“A dog? You mean a little bow-wow dog?”

“Damn you, Sullivan, it was huge. Some kind of mastiff with jaws and teeth like a bear trap.”

“Did it bite your butt, Bill? I sure hope it didn't.”

“No, it didn't bite me. Damned cur wanted to tear my throat out.”

“Why were you out so late?” Sullivan asked. “You know you shouldn't be out in the dark by yourself.”

“None of your damned business,” Longley gritted out. He began to mount the steps. “Get the hell out of my way.”

Sullivan stepped aside, let the gunman pass, and watched him until he went all the way upstairs then returned to his room. He dressed and made his way onto the front porch, quietly closing the door behind him.

Something had badly scared Longley and he needed to know what it was. There was already enough bad stuff going on in Comanche Crossing and a wild animal on the loose was the last thing Sullivan needed.

In his book, anything that had even the potential to delay his departure was a bad thing.

He pulled up his collar and retraced Longley's steps, clearly visible in the half inch of blown snow that had accumulated on the boardwalk. There were also animal tracks, probably from a dog, but they were huge, made by very large animal.

He'd once met an English Mastiff named Bruno in a sporting house in Denver, kept there to protect the girls from aggressive clients. The dog was affable enough, but intensely devoted to his charges. His three hundred pound presence was enough to ensure that even the baddest bad men behaved themselves.

The mastiff that made the tracks on the walk may have been even bigger and a whole lot meaner than Bruno.

Sullivan stopped where Longley had taken shelter against the storefront. With his booted toe, he probed a slimy, damp spot that indeed seem like drool from an animal's jaws.

At the top of the hill across the street, light showed in every room of Lady Wainright's house and a couple of parked carriages stood in the shadows, their teams presumably in the stable.

Sullivan was puzzled. Why would visitors hazard the bad winter weather and the war talk about Utes and Apaches? And from where did they come?

He had no answers, but one thing he did know. Only something mighty important would bring folks out with winter coming down like thunder.

The dog was Lady Wainright's guard mastiff, of that he had no doubt.

Did it sense danger in Bill Longley? Or had the animal known him before and harbored a grudge? Those were more unanswerable questions.

Suddenly chilled, Sullivan made his way back to the hotel, wind and snow driving into his face. He continually glanced over this shoulder, fearing that he might see a massive dog with red eyes and fangs like butcher's knives stalking him.

His imagination working overtime, he was relieved when he stepped into his room and turned the key in the lock.

Happy it actually worked.