Longarm in Hell's Half Acre (15 page)

Rifle at the ready, Willard made his way into the room a step ahead of Longarm and stumbled to a stunned stop at the foot of the bed. Ballentine was nowhere to be seen. Spread-eagled across a filthy, blood-stained mattress a wide-eyed, gagged, stark-naked girl bucked and twisted against rawhide thongs that bound her hands and feet to the iron posts of the bed.

“Jesus,” Willard said. He propped his rifle against the bed, then went to work on the girl's bindings with a knife he fished from his boot. He freed her feet first, then her arms, which fell to her sides as though she'd lost any controlled use of them.

Longarm grabbed a discarded blanket from the filthy floor and threw it over the bruised, nude body. He picked at the knotted gag, then lifted it away from her battered face. He ran a comforting hand across the girl's forehead and smoothed sweaty hair away from her eyes.

“Can you speak, miss?” he asked.

She nodded, then worked at it, but for several seconds couldn't get the words to come out.

“Take your time. We're here to help.” Willard offered, then patted the beaten girl on the shoulder.

In a rough, barely perceptible whisper she finally gasped, “Where's my sister?”

Longarm glanced at Willard, then said, “Stay here. I'll check the other room. Anyone comes through this door but me, don't hesitate, shoot 'em.”

In a rush of noise that sounded like a West Texas cyclone raging, Longarm charged across the hallway, hit the door to room number five, and turned it into a pile of kindling. He stumbled across the room and ricocheted off the iron bedstead before regaining his balance. The scene before the astonished lawman took his breath away.

“Christ Almighty,” he breathed. An unconscious, black-haired girl, who couldn't have been any more than fourteen years old, lay across the bed. For several seconds he thought she might be dead. A scarlet puddle of drying gore that testified to her recently taken virginity spread from the spot between splayed, limp legs. Knife cuts and ugly pricked spots decorated her inner thighs and belly. Bloody handprints decorated the child's pale arms and legs, and were smeared across her badly bruised body.

Longarm turned his pistol toward the noise coming from the hallway. Willard Allred stood in the rendered door and gasped. “Good God. Thought I'd seen the worst of it. Shit, she ain't nothin' more'n a child, Marshal Long. Ain't even tied like the other girl. Bet them Caine boys done this'un.”

“Thought I told you to…ah hell, it doesn't matter. Go get your wagon. We gotta get both these girls to Doc Wheeler's office quick as we can.”

“Whatta ya think happened to Quincy?”

Longarm shook his head. “Best I can come up with is he probably went out the back way. Now go get the wagon, this can't wait.”

Willard nodded. “Be right back,” he snapped, then stormed down the hallway like a cyclone.

In a frenzy of bustling noise and action, Longarm and Allred moved the two damaged females out of the rooms, through the Drover's Inn's lobby, and into Willard's wagon.

During the entire noisy fracas, the hotel's desk clerk dithered around them, got in the way, and squealed, “Swear to Jesus, I didn't know nothin' about none of this. Never heard nothin' outta the ordinary. 'Cept maybe a bit of what I'd call girly squeals of pleasure. You know what I mean?”

Longarm laid the girl from room four in the bed of the wagon, then turned on the clerk and said, “Get the hell away from me, you spineless piece of shit. You might not've known
exactly
what was happenin', but ain't no way you didn't have a pretty fair idea. Makes me sick just lookin' at you.”

He hopped onto the seat beside Allred. “Whip 'em up, Willard. Not sure how bad the one I found is hurt. 'Sides, we don't get away from here fast I'm gonna kick hell outta that stupid fuckin' clerk.”

Doctor John Wheeler stepped from the larger of his private examining rooms, then eased the door closed behind him. He ran a trembling hand through thinning hair. As though lifting an anvil, he pulled the stethoscope from around his birdlike neck, and shook his head. He glanced around the crowded office. His fleeting looks skittered from the tired faces of Marshal Sam Farmer and a pair of Fort Worth's policemen, over to Willard Allred, and finally hesitated on Custis Long.

“Well, what's the verdict?” Long snapped.

Wheeler strode across the congested room, placed a hand on Longarm's shoulder, and ushered him onto the boardwalk. He pulled the door closed behind them for some privacy. As they stood on the edge of the rough walkway, Wheeler let out a tired sigh, then said, “You got an extra cheroot on you, Marshal?”

Longarm fished a square-cut stogie from his vest pocket. He fired a match and watched as the haggard-looking sawbones puffed the cigar to life.

Wheeler leaned back on his heels, sent blue-gray smoke toward the darkening sky, then said, “Actually, their condition isn't quite as bad as it first appeared, Marshal. I know they looked pretty rough when you brought 'em in. But the truth is, other than being roughly treated beyond describing, held down, and havin' the hell raped out of 'em, neither girl has suffered through nearly the kind of severe beating Miss Wayland did. Recovery for these young ladies is simply a matter of a few days' rest and recuperation. Youngest of 'em appears to have suffered the most damage. Have to admit, the flower of her innocence was rather forcefully taken from her.”

“Find out what their names are, Doc?”

“Poleman, I believe. Oldest girl's name is Anita. Younger one's called Martha. Near as I was able to ascertain, they're from a family livin' over around Springtown.”

“That fits with information Willard and I forced out of an associate of Ballentine's named Brakett. Wish now I'd have squeezed him a mite harder. Did either girl say why they made the mistake of comin' to Hell's Half Acre with Ballentine in the first place?”

“Miss Anita said the man made claims to the rather lofty positon of impresario. Said he had ties and great influence at the Centennial Theater and the Theatre Comique. Told 'em their beauty and obvious talent would ensure a spot onstage. Guess it's easy to put stars in a country girl's eyes. We certainly see plenty of disillusioned young women down in the Acre.”

Longarm spat in disgust, then snapped, “Damned shame, if you ask me.”

Doc Wheeler rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “Have you by any chance got the impression this whole incident might've been staged for your benefit, Marshal?”

“What? What the hell does that mean, Doc?”

“Just thinking out loud.”

Longarm shook his head, then cast a darting glance into the busy thoroughfare. “No. I don't believe that for a second. 'Course, I suppose someone at the White Elephant could've told him who I am—my lawman's background and such. No, still don't believe it. There's just not any way Quincy's that smart.”

“Sons of bitches are oftentimes smarter'n we like to think.”

“Look, Doc, I can understand why, and how, he caught Mattie out in the street and beat hell out of her. But his treatment of these girls was simply the kind of behavior you can expect from an abusive pimp in the process of conditioning new women for his own nefarious and exploitative ends. Me'n Willard just happened to break in on the whole mess before it had a chance to go any further. Lord knows what the Poleman girls would've looked like a week from now if we hadn't stepped in on 'em when we did.”

Wheeler took a deep drag off his cigar. He blew the smoke skyward again. “Don't doubt your assessment a bit, Marshal. Please believe that my question was nothing more than the random musings of an inquisitive mind. Whole business just seems a mite coincidental, don't you think? I mean, you'd had contact with Miss Wayland before her brutal beating, and then you go and find the Poleman girls after they'd been terribly mistreated by the same man.”

Longarm glared at the Fort Worth physician. “Well, you can believe me when I tell you, Doc, he won't get a chance to do anything like this again.”

Both men turned to face City Marshal Sam Farmer when he stepped onto the boardwalk with them. “We have anywhere from two to five soiled doves a year who die right here in the Acre, Marshal Long,” Farmer said. “Some by their own hand, others at the hands of passing, drunken cowboys. And every once in a while, as was almost the case in this instance, an irate pimp kills one of 'em.”

“Dangerous work, that's for sure,” Wheeler said.

Farmer nodded. “Sellin' her body to strangers is a hard life for any woman. If the alcohol, drugs, or disease don't get 'em, depression, suicide, or murder probably will.”

Longarm shifted his stance, then leaned against a porch pillar. “You're not tellin' me anything I don't already know, Sam. But what we've got here is the brutal attempted murder of one woman, and the wicked, unconscionable abuse of two others—one of whom appeared to be an untouched virgin, pure as the driven snow in Montana. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm gonna have Willard searchin' in every crack and cranny of the Acre for Quincy Ballentine and the Caine boys. And God have mercy on their collective sorry asses when we find 'em—'cause I've hit the end of my string with the whole sorry bunch. Got no use for men who'll abuse women like this.”

Farmer pushed his hat back and scratched his head. He yanked the hat down low over his eyes, then said, “We'll be lookin' as well. Can't have this kind of heartless brutality happenin' on my watch. Gonna take everything I can do just to keep it out of the damned newspapers. Scribblin' sons of bitches get hold of a story like this, it'll be weeks 'fore they turn it loose.”

Longarm's pointed stare bored in on Farmer. “You're not gonna let the tale get out?”

“Not if I can stop it. Kind of story has the power to destroy just about any elected lawman who ever pinned on a badge. No, we'll find Ballentine, and the others, and deal with them ourselves.”

“Not if I find 'em first,” Longarm snorted. “I'm gonna put Willard on their trail and, sure as God made little green apples, I'd bet he finds Ballentine and the Caine boys by mornin'.”

The sun had been up for almost three hours the next day, and no word had yet arrived from Willard Allred. Longarm lounged in his favorite brocaded chair in the El Paso Hotel's busy lobby. Loaded and ready for instant use, his ten-gauge Greener stood discreetly propped against the wall behind a dainty, curve-legged, walnut table next to the overstuffed seat. He nursed a big mug of dark, viscous, aromatic coffee from the nearby bar and scanned a copy of that morning's
Fort Worth Daily Gazette
. True to his word, it appeared Marshal Sam Farmer had kept any mention of Mattie Wayland's brutal beating, or the equally vicious attack on the Poleman girls, from appearing in the paper.

He'd just folded the town's favorite rag and closed his eyes for a second when Willard hustled up with a toothy grin on his face. “Found 'em, Marshal Long. Found all of 'em.”

Longarm sprang to his feet, stuffed his hat on, then grabbed the shotgun. “Where? Where are they?”

“Well, they're right across the street, over by the White Elephant. Been askin' questions of anyone who'll stand still long enough. Tryin' to find you, actually.”

“That a fact?”

“Yep. Tell ya, it's been a helluva night, Marshal. Tracked 'em all the way from the Empress Saloon, where we last seen the Caine boys, down to the Emerald. They went from the Emerald to the Headlight Bar on Ninth. Sons of bitches drank up everthang they could lay a lip on. They got right belligerent in their travels, too. Picked a fight damn near ever' place they stopped. Nobody stupid enough to accommodate 'em, though. Rogued around all night long from one waterin' hole to the next. Kept steady movin' north.”

“That's how they ended up right outside?”

“Who knows? There's rumors all over the Acre 'bout how somebody come and spirited them two girls outta the Drover's Inn. Ballentine's been a-slingin' it around durin' his travels as how he's gonna kill the hell outta whoever stole his
property.
Could be as how the clerk at the Drover's told Ballentine and the Caines who spirited them little gals away, and it just took 'em all night to finally build up enough liquor-fueled nerve to finally get up here.”

“Stole his property?”

“Yep. Get the impression as how old Quincy harbors pretty strong feelin's on the issue. He feels like he owns them gals.”

Longarm cracked the shotgun open, pulled out each load and examined it, then snapped the weapon shut and propped it on his hip. “Say they're outside in the street?”

“Well, they wuz over on the corner, hangin' 'round the entrance to the White Elephant. Think maybe durin' his searchin' last night, Ballentine finally also made some kind of connection between the feller what pistol-whipped his sorry ass in Luke Short's restaurant, and the marshal who took them girls of his'n what disappeared.”

“Surprised he didn't recognize you, given that the clerk at the Drover's knows you a lot better'n he knows me.”

“Figured the same thing, so I stayed outta sight much as I could. Didn't give 'em the opportunity to spot me.”

Longarm glanced across the lobby at the El Paso Hotel's front entrance. “You up for the possibility of a blisterin' gunfight, Willard?”

A wide grin flashed across Allred's bedraggled, friendly face. “Born ready, Marshal Long. Especially when there's the possibility I can put right some of the horrors carried out on them poor young women by bastards like Ballentine and the Caine brothers.”

“You see any of Marshal Farmer's Fort Worth policemen on the street 'fore you came in here?”

“Not a single one. Typical of their behavior, though. Gutless sons of bitches tend not to be around when a body really needs 'em. 'Specially if'n there's the possibility of hot lead a-fillin' up the air.”

Longarm slapped the old Confederate soldier on the shoulder. “We don't need 'em, Willard. Just wanted to make sure they're not around to meddle, or get in the way.”

“Well, then, let's go round this bunch of woman-abusin' bastards up, or send 'em to the devil's doorstep, if'n we're forced to, by God.”

“Once we get out on the street, we'll get as close to the trio as we can, and I'll try to arrest 'em. Turn 'em over to Farmer and let local law take its due course, if'n they're willin' to throw down their weapons. But if that don't work, they'll likely fight. Shootin' starts, I want you to go for Quincy. Aim for the biggest part of 'im with that rifle of yours. I'll use the shotgun on the Caine boys. Figure they'll stick fairly close to each other and make a good target. All of that clear enough?”

Allred grinned, then levered a live round into the chamber of his rifle. “Go on ahead, Marshal. Cut 'er loose and let 'er buck.”