Funeral By The Sea (5 page)

Gold took the chair that kept his back to the wall and relit the cheroot that he had partially smoked at the ford where Harrow had watered his team. Then he used the beer to chase two shots of good quality rye whiskey. Was ignored again until a Mexican woman - as fleshy as her man was skinny - delivered a dish of chili and a plate of dry bread to his table.

She was a match for her man’s age of something over fifty. And her dark eyes shot Gold a brief glance which expressed pity as she muttered a few words of Spanish.

‘I don’t understand your language, lady,’ he said.

A whore with dyed red hair who was doing some clumsy needlepoint at the next table growled, ‘She said you’re just a good-lookin’ young kid who oughta have listened to Seth Harrow.’

Outside, a man shrieked in terrified tones, ‘No, Miss Eve! Please don’t!’

It was Seth Harrow.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE exodus from the cantina was as unhurried as that which marked the arrival of Barnaby Gold in Oceanville. Drinks were finished and cigarettes and cigars were stubbed out before the men and whores rose from their chairs or turned from the bar counter to move toward the batwings.

This despite the fear-filled pleas that the old-timer was shrieking and which would have caused a headlong rush by curious citizens in any normal town.

Only the stranger to Oceanville and the Mexican bartender remained in the fetid, crudely furnished room after the batwings flapped closed.

Gold began to eat the food while the gaunt-faced Mexican attended to washing dirty glasses in a basin beneath the bar.

The old-timer’s tearful pleas subsided into a series of body-wracking sobs.

The fat Mexican woman shouted something in her native tongue in a tone of query from the kitchen. And the bartender snapped an angry response that silenced her.

Barnaby Gold asked, ‘Do you think this has anything to do with me?’

The skinny shoulders were shrugged. But he answered, That is not likely,
señor.
That woman has cause to be grateful to the unfortunate man for bringing you here.’ Another shrug. ‘She needs little excuse to punish a man.’

Gold recalled the look of evil he had seen briefly on the face of Eve Delroy, and heard in her voice. ‘Punish?’

The bartender grimaced and wiped a line of sweat beads from off his brow. ‘She has a whip,
señor.
’

There was a great deal of shouting outside now. From in front of the big house. Orders given and acknowledged. Enough noise to mask whatever sounds were venting from the throat of the terrified Seth Harrow.

Gold piled some bread on his plate of chili and rose from the table. Left his gear on the floor in the corner to go toward the batwings. When he stepped through them, he heard the Mexican mutter words he did not understand, but he detected that they were rasped in the tone of a taunt.

The scar-faced man almost knocked into him to reach the cantina entrance. And snarled over the tops of the doors, ‘You and your woman get out here, greaser!’

Two other Americans were swaggering along the curved row of adobe houses, banging on the doors and making similar demands.

Gold remained where he was in the shaft of light from the cantina doorway, able to see because of the rise in the street, over the heads of the gathering audience to the scene that was the centre of attention.

This was the top of the steps at the centre of the stoop. Where two men were in process of making Seth Harrow a helpless prisoner between the flanking pillars that supported the stoop roof in the area of the house doorway. The old-timer’s wrists were already lashed above his head and out to his sides to opposite pillars. And now his legs were forced apart, and his ankles were tied to the base of each pillar.

The shouting had ceased and there was an excited murmuring among the watching crowd, the audience growing larger as Mexican men, women and children shuffled reluctantly along the street.

Neither Hal nor Eve Delroy were in sight.

‘What did he do, mister?’ Gold asked the scar-faced man, who gave a grim-faced jerk of his
head to hurry the bartender and the fat woman toward the scene of the potential beating.

‘How the frig would I know, stud?’ came the rasping reply. ‘We’ll all hear soon enough.’

He glanced along the curve of the street to check that everyone except Gold was out front of the big house, then ambled away.

Gold ate bread soaked in chili and looked toward the house stoop as the old-timer was made secure - seemed to be unconscious in the way his head hung low between his up and outstretched arms.

‘All ready for you, Miss Eve!’ a man called.

Now Gold looked back along the deserted street. Up at the towering cliff face. At the beached boats on the ridge of sand that hid the ocean. But even if there was a chance of escape while all attention was held by the punishment of the hapless old-timer, it would be without a horse. And a mount was the sole reason why he had come to this morose community.

The doors of the big house swung inwards and Hal Delroy waited for the murmuring to finish before he said, ‘Ah, the entertainment.’

He had company now. An ash-blonde woman of about thirty with a beautiful face and a statuesque body who stood a head taller than her escort. She was dressed as appropriately for a formal dinner as was he. And, like Delroy, was cradling a brandy balloon in both her ring-encrusted hands. But while his smile was of pure pleasure, the one she wore had a strained quality. Which was even more apparent when Seth Harrow lifted his head to look at the two people on the threshold of the house.

‘Come, Eve, the night air is chili!’ Delroy called.

And swayed a little from the effects of liquor as he glanced over his shoulder.

Gold felt his hunger pangs diminish but knew it was just a temporary reaction to what was about to happen. And he hurried to finish the meal, setting aside an anxiety that he might vomit in a more drastic reaction to the impending violence.

Eve Delroy appeared at one end of the stoop and her footfalls rapped hollowly on the boarding as she strode purposefully along it, like an actress moving to the centre of the stage, clearly illuminated by the light from the windows.

She no longer wore a dress. Instead, English-style riding jodhpurs, tight fitting and tucked into knee-high boots. Black. And a white blouse with an upturned collar, unfastened low enough from the throat to reveal the upper, inner swell of her low breasts. She carried the short handle of a whip in her right hand while she ran her fisted left back and forth along the thin thong.

Even in his present predicament, Seth Harrow had not dared to plead with Hal Delroy. But when he twisted his head to the side and saw the top man’s sister, he began to beg for mercy again.

‘Please, Miss Eve. It weren’t my fault. I told the folks in the store exactly what you said you wanted. Showed them the picture. Just like you told me to and...’

Eve came to an abrupt halt and lashed out with the whip. It cut through the air with a sharp crack that erupted a cry from the old-timer and caused the woman with Hal Delroy to jerk backwards.

The short, fat man in the dinner suit rested a comforting hand on the arm of the ash-blonde and spoke soft words to her. Then took a swallow of brandy.

Because Harrow’s body, spread-eagled in the upright position, blocked the way to the steps, Eve swung lithely over the rail to the side and faced the audience, a grim expression of evil spite on her face that looked not at all pretty now. Her dark eyes searched the crowd for some moments before she spotted Barnaby Gold standing far to
the rear, in the light from the cantina
doorway.

‘Don’t you duck out on this, Gold!’ she instructed. ‘You stand and watch and be ready when I want you!’

Some members of the audience turned to look at him. Their expressions varied from contempt to mocking amusement, from pity to mild sympathy.

‘All right!’ Eve snapped to recapture the attention of all. The reason this man is going to be beaten is that he did not do what he was told by a Delroy. I specifically told him I wanted a dress that was black with white piping. What he brought me back was the exact reverse of that.’

‘It’s reason enough,’ her brother allowed after a few moments of pondering, like a judge considering evidence. Then his voice hardened. ‘But five at most, Eve. Seth is very useful to us. And he’s an old man.’

His sister grimaced her dislike of the sentence. Then turned sideways on to her victim and took a measured pace backwards, the thong of the whip trailing on the ground. Then she nodded her satisfaction that the range was correct.

The old-timer’s head was hanging down and a low moaning sound trickled from his throat.

Hal Delroy’s hand no longer rested lightly on the arm of his beautiful companion. Instead, it encircled her narrow waist and held her rock-firm, barring her from retreating into the brightly lit house.

When Eve swung the whip gently, to check that she had clearance, the Mexicans who had been forced to the front of the crowd pressed backwards, fearful of being struck by the tip of the thong.

Then, with a smile of unmitigated evil inscribed deep into the lines of her face, Eve Delroy landed the first blow.

The thong lashed across the centre of the old man’s thin back and his body responded to the stinging pain by becoming rigid, as his head was forced up so that he was staring past the front edge of the stoop roof at the night sky. To which he directed a shrill, long lasting scream.

The ash-blonde gasped and wrenched her head to the side. Hal Delroy sipped his brandy. The crowd remained still and silent. Eve glanced momentarily toward the front of the cantina as she ran the tip of her tongue along the undersides of her exposed upper teeth. And Barnaby Gold felt sweat ooze from every pore in his body with the strain of resisting the impulse to draw the Peacemaker from the holster.

When Seth Harrow became limp, Hal Delroy spoke above the old man’s whimpering. He said, ‘One.’

The second lash was delivered with greater power and the thin strip of leather cut through the fabric of Harrow’s shirt, the skin beneath, to draw blood.

Only the ash-blonde’s reaction was different. She began to sob. Against her weeping and the punished man’s weak wailing, Hal Delroy said, ‘Cut that out, Emily. Two.’

Then sipped some more brandy as his sister laid the third stroke across Harrow’s back. An inch higher. The brandy balloon slipped from Emily’s fingers and she crumpled to the stoop boarding, one of her unfeeling outstretched arms thudding down among the shards of broken glass. And drew blood. But not so much as that which was soaking the shredded shirt of the flogged man.

‘A criminal waste of fine liquor. That’s three, Eve.’

Harrow’s mind had been driven to that point beyond which it was incapable of accommodating further pain and he was unconscious. So there was neither a physical nor a vocal response to the fourth bite of the whip.

This aroused a frenzied anger within Eve Delroy, who vented an animalistic sound as her brother gave the count. And she used every ounce of strength in her body to deliver the final blow - directing the thong with expertise at her victim’s buttocks.

Then she leaned against the stoop rail, bent slightly from the waist, like she had been winded by great exertion.

Her brother drained his balloon dry and announced in a dull voice, ‘All right, you people. Entertainment is over. As always, keep this in mind whenever you’re told to do something by a Delroy. Joe, Vic, bring him down and make him comfortable. And have somebody clean up my porch.’

He leaned down, grasped the wrist of Emily’s bleeding arm and dragged her unceremoniously back across the threshold of the house.

The crowd began to disperse. Except for the scar-faced man and one with an inch-wide black beard that followed his jaw line and joined his sideburns, and an elderly Mexican woman who waited for them to cut down Seth Harrow so she could start to pick up the broken glass.

Eve Delroy straightened up and coiled the whip in one hand. Yelled, ‘Gold, give me time to clean up! Then come to the upstairs front room on the right!’

She pointed with the hand holding the whip to the window of her room. And the homegoing Mexicans and the Americans returning to the cantina looked at him with the same range of expressions as earlier. This as he lit a cheroot, the flame of the match in his cupped hands reflected in the green eyes that looked dead, so lacking in expression were they.

The unconscious Harrow was cut free and carried into the open doorway of the big house in the wake of Eve. The Mexican woman moved on to the stoop and squatted on her haunches, carefully picking up the broken glass and dropping it into the pouch of her dress between her thighs. A man smoking a pipe and picking at his fingernails with the point of a knife was the last member of the crowd to approach the cantina entrance.

His teeth, clenched to the pipe stem, gleamed in an embittered smile as he said, ‘Instead of a horse you get yourself a she-cat, stud. But I reckon she’s nice and ready to give you a fine ride,’