Pale Moon Stalker (The Nymph Trilogy) (26 page)

"I told you, old man, I wish to run a score. I will pay when I have sampled enough of your swill." Deuce's voice was a surprising baritone, rumbling deeply across the noisy room.

Old or not, the barkeep was having none of it. "An' I tole yew, Deuce, ya gotta pay fer ever' drink when I pour it, jest like ever'one else. Now, it's time ta pay up."

Max approached Deuce, who turned when his adversary said in equally cultivated British tones, "This man is correct, Johnny boy. It is time to pay up. Right now."

Deuce placed the shot glass on the bar, his thirst forgotten as he looked at his countryman's harsh face. If he was afraid, he gave no indication of it. Rather, a feverish excitement leaped into his pale gray eyes. "Well, my old friend Stanhope. You have traveled quite some distance to, ah, renew our acquaintance."

Max shrugged. "What are a few hundred miles to collect on a debt, Johnny?" He paused, then added, "Oh, and by the by, I am not your friend nor ever have been."

Deuce laughed, a rumbling, ugly sound deep in his narrow chest. "No, I imagine the Limey can claim as few friends in this benighted land as can I. But as to the debt you have come to collect... I do believe the only thing you will collect this evening is a bullet."

"I wouldn't count on that," Max said calmly.

The crowd at the bar, sensing the animosity between the two gunmen, began to back away. The barkeep ducked down and crawled on all fours from the far end of his post to watch the show.

Sky could hear the deadly undertone in Max's voice and knew he was poised, ready to fight. But so was the evil little man facing him. The hatred radiating from both antagonists swept over the now silent room. She scanned the crowd, looking to see if anyone would go to Deuce's aid and was relieved when there were no takers—at least not yet.

"Ah, but I do count on that. You see, old chap, the last time you caught me when I was a bit under the weather." He gestured with his left hand to the whiskey glass sitting on the bar. "I am much faster when sober...and you have the grave misfortune to have come upon me while I am as yet quite unafflicted."

"I did not just happen on you,
old chap
. I've been hunting you. Do you, by the by, recall a young priest up in Yankton country about a year ago? Father Brewster was much beloved by my wife's people. And you shot him in the back when he rescued a young girl whom you were beating."

A hostile murmur went up around the room at the mention of back-shooting a priest.

Deuce sneered. "She was just a filthy little wog, an Indian—and her protector was what the Americans quaintly call an 'Injun-lover.' " He appeared pleased when some of the outrage subsided.

Sky flinched, tightening her grip on the rifle in her hand. Oh, how she ached to shoot him herself—not in the back as he'd done to Will, but to call him out and blast him face-to-face! True Dreamer had been right. This was a rabid animal who would keep on killing until someone stopped him. But if she interfered, she might get Max killed in a crossfire. Sky bit her lip and waited in silence.

"Oh, and you're not an 'Injun lover'?" Max parried. "Then why do you have an eleven-year-old Cheyenne girl locked up in your hotel room right now? Is she the only female you can force to do your perverted bidding? You like to whip young girls, don't you, Johnny? It really doesn't matter if they're red or white. In fact, that's the reason you were run out of England—for abusing the daughter of a member of parliament."

Now the murmuring grew hostile, turning against Deuce once more.

The little killer smirked evilly. "You were forced to flee our beloved homeland in disgrace as well. Oh, I heard the rumors about your tawdry affair with an older—and very married—viscountess. I understand your uncle was quite upset when you left university and joined the army."

"I did so to keep from killing her husband, a brave if foolish old man who felt constrained to defend the honor of a woman who possessed none," Max replied tightly. "Killing him would've been on my conscience. But killing a child-abusing weasel-snake such as you is quite another matter."

Sky suppressed a gasp of shock. No wonder her husband did not want to speak about why he'd broken his uncle's heart by leaving England.

Now, Deuce pushed away from the bar, his narrow, pockmarked face red with fury, pale eyes slitted, glittering like those of a rattler ready to strike. "You bloody wog-loving son of a bitch!"

He reached the pearl-handled Colt at his hip and cleared the holster, but he was not fast enough. Max's Smith & Wesson slug smashed into his chest, sending him sprawling along the bar, clawing at the scarred edge, as if desperately trying to hold on to life. His gun discharged into the floor, splintering the whiskey-soaked wood a few feet in front of Max's boots. Then it fell from his hand and clattered across the rough planking.

Deuce dropped to the floor immediately after it, lying flat on his back with one arm hanging over a spittoon. The stain on his chest blossomed deep red. Sky swallowed her gorge, remembering how similar spots had spread across Will's back when Deuce had emptied his hidden gun into the gentle giant. Something impelled her to step out from behind the stairs, uncocking the Yellow Boy as she walked over to where Deuce lay.

Max's expression hardened when he saw her, but she ignored him. Instead of moving to his side, she knelt next to the dying man. He coughed blood and looked at her with partially focused eyes. "Who...?" He coughed again.

"I was Father Brewster's wife," she said quietly. Her words echoed in the silent room as if it were a cave.

Deuce's lips twisted into a grimace. "Pray for me then," he gasped.

Sky could not tell if the words were a sneer or a plea. Perhaps it did not matter. Nothing she or anyone else could do would spare Jonathan Ducelin Framme the pangs of hell. His eyes glazed over and the last breath left his body. She stared at the dead man for a moment, then stood up and walked over to Max's side.

"You never could get the part about obeying correct, could you?" he asked her, cursing the dead man for what he had revealed.

"I couldn't leave you to face him alone. True Dreamer agreed that I should follow." This was not the time to discuss Deuce's accusations.

Then the room erupted in tension-purging noise and laughter.

"So, the leetle snake back-shot a sky pilot. Pitchforks in hell must be extry sharp fer the likes of the Deuce," a gambler sitting at a front table said, spitting in the general direction of a cuspidor.

"Damn, 'magine Deuce kilt by another Englishman," one cowboy hiccupped.

"That there's the Limey, you fool," his companion corrected him.

"Hellfire, I heerd o' him up in Colorado," an old man said. "He's a bounty man. I knowed thet little bastard musta had a price on his haid." He took a tentative step toward Max. "Ya come to collect a re-ward, Mr. Limey?"

Before Max could reply, the first drunken cowboy, a kid barely old enough to shave, eyed Sky and asked, "Hey, Mr. Limey, who's the Injun gal? She don't look like the one you talked 'bout. Too growed up."

"Yeah, an too purty," another chimed in.

Max pinned the inebriated boy with an ice-cold stare and the room went silent again. "This is no 'Injun gal.' This is a lady...and my wife."

The quiet was broken when an elderly man got up from a table in the back of the room and took off his battered Stetson, revealing a shock of thick, white hair. He said in a gravelly voice, "How do, Mrs. Limey."

That occasioned a spate of nervous shuffling and hat tipping. Holding her Yellow Boy rifle and standing beside the dangerous bounty hunter, Sky and her husband made a formidable-looking couple. Several of the braver men followed the old man's lead, although in less courtly terms, tipping their hats and saying, "Howdy, ma'am." "Hullo, Mrs. Limey." "No offense intended, ma'am."

Sky nodded tersely and turned sharply toward the door. Before following her out to the street, Max said, "If the town marshal wants to question me, I will remain in Fort Worth for the next few days. He will find me at the Excelsior Hotel."

The white-haired old man scoffed. "No cause fer the marshal to be mixin' in. Ya done a civic duty, Mr. Limey, shootin' thet bastard."

Max touched the brim of his hat. "I'm obliged, sir. I've always aspired to be a good citizen."

He caught up to her half a block down the street. "Bloody hell, Sky, you could've been killed! I don't care what True Dreamer said, you should not have been in that saloon."

She looked at him with anguish. "I wanted to kill him so bad I could taste it—to yell at him and open up this." She raised the Yellow Boy. "But I knew if I did, you would be in greater danger. True Dreamer was right. That man had to die before he killed another human being."

He touched her cheek gently. "It's over, Sky. Can we begin again?"
Now that your priest can rest in peace.

Sky knew what he was asking. Slowly, she nodded. "Yes, Max, we can," she said gravely, not wanting to ruin the moment by asking about his affair with a married woman. But it explained much about why he had never wanted to return home.

A relieved smile broke across his face and all the coldness she'd seen in his eyes when he faced Deuce evaporated like morning fog. He was no longer the Limey, but the man she loved now—her husband, the one with whom she would spend the rest of her life. She placed her hand over his arm and they resumed walking down the street.

"We'll have to find out where the Excelsior is," he said, looking for someone to ask.

"I only pray what Deuce did to Fawn can be undone," she murmured. In her happiness to have Max safe and alive, she'd momentarily forgotten the awful plight of their friend's granddaughter.

"True Dreamer didn't appear worried. I imagine he'd be in the best position to know," he replied, hoping to reassure her, although he had a fair idea about what a depraved creature like Deuce was capable of doing.

They received directions to the hotel and walked the short distance to a ramshackle clapboard structure that appeared ready to fall down from neglect. When they entered, the clerk took one look at Sky and sneered. He was Ichabod Crane come to life, tall and emaciated with an exceedingly large Adam's apple that bobbed at the base of his scrawny neck.

"I don't rent to Injuns, even if they's only breeds," he said, looking at Sky's buckskins and exotic coloring as if she were some creature in a carnival sideshow.

Max's expression became glacial. "Nor would I subject my wife to a night in this sty, but I do require the key to Johnny Deuce's room." Without further warning, he reached across the desk and grabbed a handful of Ichabod's shirtfront, pulling the man halfway across the counter. "Give me the key to his room—now!"

The clerk began to sweat, squirming in Max's less than gentle grasp. "Listen, mister, I cain't give you his key. He's snake mean and real particular." A quick glance in Sky's direction indicated to them that he knew about the Indian girl in the room. When Max gave another twist to his filthy shirt, cutting off blood flow to his head, he quickly gasped out, "H-he s-said seven was his l-lucky number—"

"Well, it wasn't his lucky number today, old chap. I just killed him. Now, if you think seven is your lucky number..." He released his hold on the clerk, who shrank back against the wall, terror etched on his bony face, Adam's apple bobbing like a cork on rough seas.

"Hell, no! Here's the damn key," he choked out, seizing the key from its slot and throwing it at Max, who caught it with ease, left-handed.

Max gave the key to Sky. "We probably don't require it. I'd bet True Dreamer's found a way to reach Fawn, but she'll need a doctor. I'll fetch one."

Sky bit her lip and nodded, turning toward the rickety stairs as Max asked the frightened clerk where the nearest doctor's office was located. This time he got no argument.

"Onliest one who might treat 'er's named Aaron Torres. Over on Calhoun Street," Ichabod replied.

As soon as he walked outside the hotel, Max looked down the street. Drunken cowboys and locals staggered from saloon to saloon celebrating Saturday night. No good. Then he saw what he was looking for—a young boy, obviously a townie, dressed in shabby clothes as if he worked in a stable or smithy's place. Most importantly, he appeared sober.

He pulled a wad of money from his pocket and motioned to the lad to approach, knowing the flash of the bills would catch his eye. "Do you know where Dr. Torres' office is?" he asked.

"Shore do, mister," the boy replied eagerly.

Max tore a five-dollar greenback in two and gave the boy half of it. "Fetch him to the Excelsior Hotel for me and you'll get the other half. Tell him there's a badly hurt girl there."

The youth sprinted down the street after pocketing his partial treasure. Max returned to the hotel, certain the boy would bring the doctor if he had to beg. He'd probably never seen that much money in his life. Max hoped Sky and True Dreamer would have Fawn reassured by now. The thought of the girl being dead or so badly injured that she was beyond medical help did not enter his mind.

The old man would have known.

He waited in the hotel lobby, knowing that another white man with an English accent was the last thing the girl would want to see or hear. As to this Dr. Aaron Torres, well, he would damn well treat an Indian child or he'd be in need of a doctor himself!