Longarm 242: Red-light (13 page)

“Yes, but I'm not through with you, Custis. Not by a long shot.”

And just what, wondered Longarm, did she mean by
that?
He didn't have long to ponder the question, because he fell asleep like that, with Nola wrapped snugly in his arms.

Longarm had been told more than once by various sawbones who had patched him up that he had the constitution of an ox. Over the next couple of days, that quality demonstrated itself once again. Strength flowed back into his body, and the stiffness and soreness in his side where the bullet had ventilated him began to ease. He wasn't ready to hop on the back of a bucking bronc, but he was sure starting to feel more like himself again.

Nola had a lot to do with that, he knew. She watched over him like a hawk, making sure that he got plenty to eat and plenty of rest, too. And if she wasn't around to tend to his every need, then Angie or Rafaela or Mickey were there with him. He could dress himself without too much trouble now, so he got up several times a day and walked around the room to keep his muscles limber.

A couple of times a day, Nola made sure that one muscle in particular stayed good and limber. Longarm still had to lie on his back while she rode him, but that was all right—for now. Sooner or later, though, he vowed, he was going to climb on top of her and show her what he could do when he really got to going.

Angie would have been glad to take over that duty from Nola, Longarm suspected, but the big blond always stopped at just flirting with him. He had a feeling that Nola had given Angie orders not to carry her nursemaiding too far.

By the morning of the third day after the trouble downstairs, Longarm was getting edgy. He had come to Galena City to find Ben Mallory and put a stop to the silver robberies, after all, and he was no closer to that now than when he had ridden into the settlement. His mood grew even more tense when Mickey brought in his breakfast and he found a copy of this week's Galena City Bugle lying next to his plate. The newspaper was folded, but Longarm could read several of the headlines. One of them announced,
Stagecoach Robbery
—
Another Atrocity Committed
—
Killersat Large.

He snatched up the paper so violently that Mickey gasped in surprise and stepped back. He glanced up at her and muttered, “Sorry.” Then he returned his attention to the newspaper article that had caught his eye.

The story was bylined J. Emerson Dupree, as were several other articles on the front page, including one whose headline read
Crusading Editor Vilely Assaulted.
Dupree had recovered enough to write the story of his own wounding at the hands of the bushwhacker who had been trying to kill Longarm. The lawman was glad to know that Dupree was evidently all right.

He read the story of the latest stagecoach robbery first. Two days earlier, a coach from Bat Thompson's California & Nevada line had been stopped by bandits between Rawhide and Carson City. The outlaws had stolen the mailbags and looted the valuables from the passengers, and when one of them, a drummer named Clancy, had been too slow to turn over his watch, one of the bandits had brutally gunned him down. The killer was rumored to be none other than Ben Mallory, the reputed leader of the gang.

Longarm frowned when he read that. Dupree was liable to get in trouble with Mallory by printing such accusations in his newspaper. On the other hand, Mallory might be the sort who enjoyed the notoriety. A surprising number of badmen didn't care what was written about them, as long as their names were spelled right. A lot of outlaws had that in common with politicians, among other things, reflected Longarm.

Mickey broke into his reverie by asking, “You not like breakfast?”

Longarm looked up and realized he hadn't touched the food or the coffee Mickey had brought to him. “It's fine,” he told her. “I was just looking at something here in the paper.”

He forced himself to put the
Bugle
aside and eat some of the scrambled eggs and sausage and biscuits. He washed it down with several sips of black coffee and wished he had his bottle of Maryland rye. A dollop or two of it would go mighty good in the coffee.

Well, you're in the biggest saloon in town, old son, he told himself. They probably had a bottle of Tom Moore downstairs. He asked Mickey about it, and she nodded with an eager smile. “I go fetch,” she said, and hurried out of the room.

That gave Longarm a chance to look at the newspaper again without offending her. He read the rest of the story about the stagecoach holdup without really learning anything more, then scanned the article concerning Dupree's shooting. According to Dupree's story, he had been accidentally wounded when he got caught in a fracas between a local miner and an unknown visitor to Galena City. The stranger had killed the miner and then dropped out of sight.

There was no mention of Ben Mallory in this story, and that was just fine with Longarm. Mallory had to be wondering what had happened to the mysterious stranger who had ridden into town, asked some questions, killed a man, been wounded, then disappeared.

Let him wonder. That would help keep him off balance until Longarm was ready to make a move again—although it didn't seem to have stopped him from continuing his murderous reign of terror along the stagecoach route.

With a sigh, Longarm put the paper aside. He wondered if the drummer who had been murdered in the latest holdup had been one of the men who had ridden the stagecoach with him before. Too many people had died or been hurt in this case: Amelia Loftus, Mrs. Keegan, even J. Emerson Dupree. All of them had suffered because of Ben Mallory's greed.

He was going to take particular pleasure in seeing Mallory brought to justice.

 

Nola had her ledgers spread out on one of the poker tables downstairs. She was sitting in a corner, out of the way. At this time of day, the Silver Slipper didn't have as many customers, but the place was still fairly busy. Nola enjoyed listening to the buzz of conversation, the clink of bottle on glass, the whisper of pasteboards being shuffled and dealt, as she worked on her books.

Mickey came down the stairs and went behind the bar. That caught Nola's eye. The young Chinese woman was supposed to take breakfast up to their special guest this morning, and here she was rummaging around behind the bar. Nola's lips tightened as she stood up. She would have to have a talk with Mickey.

She was waiting at the end of the bar when Mickey came back with a bottle of Maryland rye in her hands. Instantly, Nola figured out what she was doing, and she had a twinge of guilt over the flash of anger she'd felt toward Mickey. She nodded at the bottle and asked in a low voice that only Mickey could hear, “Is that for our guest?”

“He want,” replied Mickey with a nod. “I say I bring to him.” Suddenly, she looked worried. “I do wrong?”

Nola smiled and shook her head. “No, not at all.” She reached for the bottle of rye. “I'll take it up to him, though.”

Before she could take the bottle from Mickey, the doors opened loudly and made Nola look around. A cold wind whipped into the room, and with it came three men. Nola recognized them instantly. Two of them had been in the bunch she had kicked out of the saloon a few nights earlier.

The third man, the one in the lead, was Ben Mallory.

He was tall and slender, but his build was deceptive. Nola had felt for herself the strength in his ropy muscles. He wore a hip-length coat open over a black-and-white cowhide vest. A bright red scarf was knotted around his neck, and his hat was cocked back jauntily on his black curly hair. He was grinning, as usual, but the expression did little to disguise the cruelty in his eyes. When his gaze found her standing at the end of the bar, he called loudly, “Nola! How you doin', beautiful?”

She greeted him with a nod and said coolly, “Ben. How are you?”

“Why, I'm just fine, just fine and dandy.” He always sounded as if he was on the verge of breaking into delighted laughter. She could tell he wasn't as amused as he sounded, though. His jaw was taut, and anger glittered in his eyes.

Maybe she could head off this trouble. With a smile of her own, she asked, “How about a drink? It's on the house.”

“All right,” he agreed. “That's mighty nice of you. Yes, ma'am, mighty hospitable.”

Nola turned toward Mickey and motioned for her to take the bottle and go on. She hoped mightily that Custis stayed upstairs and didn't find out Mallory was down here. She wasn't sure what connection there was between the two men, only that it involved the law somehow, and in her line of work, she had learned not to ask too many questions. But obviously there was bad blood between the two men, otherwise Mallory's gunnies wouldn't have put a bullet through Custis and then chased him into her office.

One of the bartenders had a bottle and a glass ready for her when she reached for them. As she was pouring the drink for Mallory, she said, “I always try to be hospitable, Ben, you know that.”

“Well, I always thought so,” said Mallory. He took the glass of whiskey she handed to him. While he lifted it to his lips and drained it with one swift backward tilt of his head, Nola signaled to the bartender to pour drinks for Mallory's men, too. Mallory lowered his glass, licked his lips, and said, “Ahhh.” He set the glass on the bar. “Mighty nice, Nola. But I hear you weren't so nice to some of my boys the other night. In fact, I hear you shot Brewster in the back.”

His tone was mild, and he still sounded as if he wanted to chuckle. Nola knew that meant he was even more dangerous than usual. She tried not to let him see how nervous she was as she said, “He was shooting up my place. He was liable to kill one of my customers. I couldn't have that, so I stopped him.”

“By shooting him?” Mallory prodded with a sly smile.

Suddenly, she couldn't take any more of his smug arrogance. “Yes, by shooting him,” she snapped. “But I didn't kill him, and I could have.”

“No, Brewster ain't dead,” agreed Mallory, “but he's no good to me anymore, either. His shoulder's smashed, and he may never heal up so that he can ride and shoot like he used to.”

Nola shrugged. “That's a shame. But I didn't make him get liquored up and start raising hell in my place.”

“Now, Nola,” said Mallory in a gently chiding voice, “you wouldn't even have a place if it wasn't for me, and you know it.”

“That's not true,” she said. “The Silver Slipper is mine.”

“And Galena City is mine.” His bantering tone finally dropped away as he went on. “The only reason you have this saloon is because I let you keep it.”

Nola took a deep breath. She had nearly let this situation get out of control, and she had to stop things from getting worse. She smiled again and put her hand on Mallory's arm, moving closer to him as she said, “Now, Ben, there's no need to get upset. Why don't we go upstairs and talk about this?”

Even as she posed the question, she knew that she would have to take him to one of the other rooms. Her own bedroom was occupied at the moment—by the man Mallory evidently wanted dead. But that was all right, she could come up with some excuse Mallory would accept for the change in rooms—

“I don't think so,” Mallory said coldly.

Nola blinked in surprise. “What?”

“I ain't goin' to let you and your honeypot talk me out of doin' what's right, Nola. I can't let you get away with what you did. If I was to do that, some of the other pisspoor excuses for citizens in this town might start to get ideas.”

“Ben, you can't—”

“I can do anything I damn well want to,” he snarled.

Then he backhanded her savagely across the face.

The blow rocked Nola's head sharply to the side and made rockets explode behind her eyes. She staggered and might have fallen if Mallory had not grabbed her arm and jerked her cruelly toward him. He slapped her again, once, twice. The pain and the shock robbed Nola of her senses. Mallory shoved her roughly against the bar. The impact knocked the wind out of her.

As she held on to the bar to keep from falling, she saw that several of the Silver Slipper's patrons had jumped to their feet in outrage. But Mallory's men had drawn their guns, one of them covering the bartenders, the other menacing the customers spread around the room. Nola gasped for breath and called out, “No! No, it ... it's all right.” She motioned weakly for the bartenders to back off and for everyone else to sit down.

No one was going to die in here today, not if she could do anything to prevent it.

Mallory had that maddening grin on his face again. “I'm sorry I had to do that, Nola,” he said, but he didn't sound sorry at all to her. “Reckon I had to teach you a lesson, though. You ought to know by now who really runs things around here, and just because I enjoy beddin' you now and then, that don't make no difference. You understand?”

She understood, all right.

When she didn't say anything, he reached out and took hold of her chin, roughly jerking her head up. “I said, do you—”

“I understand,” she hissed at him through gritted teeth. Her jaw ached like blazes where he had hit her, and she could feel her face beginning to puff up already. The bruises would begin to show before long.

“Good,” he said, and then, unbelievably, he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “Just because I had to teach you a lesson don't mean I don't still love you.”

The son of a bitch. The complete, utter son of a bitch. She hoped that what passed for his soul would rot in hell for a thousand eternities.

But she managed to smile a little through the pain and nodded as she said, “I know.”

Mallory turned toward the bar. He gestured toward his men and said, “You can put them guns away now, boys. Nobody's goin' to cause any trouble in here. We're just as welcome as we can be. Ain't that right, Nola?”