Payback at Morning Peak (35 page)

“She’s gone!” Jubal shouted. “Wetherford went out the back door with her. The judge has Al at gunpoint.” He sprinted past the startled lawman and headed toward the walking path stretching up toward Paseo Segundo. One of the horses he’d noticed earlier was missing, and a
pair of papier-mâché masks lay crushed on the dirt path. Jubal continued up the trail toward the hotel. A number of people milled about in front of the building.

Heavy smoke thickened the air. The stable behind the hotel was fully engulfed in flames. Jubal made his way past the onlookers and scrambled around to the orchard to find Frisk. It looked as though she had fought her restraints, rebelling against the smoke that swept through the orchard. The sky was a dirty gray, the wind carrying most of the smoke east, obscuring the mountains.

He grabbed Frisk’s mane close to her withers and vaulted onto her back. He rode out in pursuit, stopping an older man and his wife to ask if they had seen a horseman with a young girl. The old man shook his head as if it were a peculiar question, given the turmoil in the streets.

Jubal trotted Frisk in a circle to loosen her, then galloped down to the jail, finding the sheriff crouched over the burnt bodies of Billy Tauson and Ed Thompson.

“Sir, Judge Wickham is holding Al Wetherford at gunpoint at his house. Brother Pete’s got Cybil held hostage somewhere, and Marshal Turner is wandering near the house, Lord knows where.”

“Is that who’s behind this mess? Pete Wetherford?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You say the judge has Al?” He paused, looking behind Jubal toward the hotel.

Marshal Turner was marching Al down the street toward the jail. “You, there, why didn’t you do as I said?” Turner called out to Jubal. Drawing closer, he continued to shout, pushing Al violently into the waiting arms of the sheriff. “This jackanapes needs to be locked up, Fred.” He
then looked to the skeletal remains of the jail. “Jesus wept, what happened here?”

Jubal turned Frisk in a complete circle, looking for Pete and Cybil on horseback. No sign of them, only people wandering the street.

“These fellers started at least three fires, Marshal,” the sheriff said. “Where in the hell have you been?”

“Why?”

It looked to Jubal as if Turner resented the sheriff questioning him, but the sheriff continued. “While you were out roaming around, that jackass Pete Wetherford started these fires to cover up the fact they were robbing the bank. What did you think, all those separate fires started on their own, all at once? I asked you a question. Where you been?”

Frustrated as the two upstanding lawmen squabbled, Jubal turned and moved past the men.

He had no idea which way to go. Where, he asked himself, would Pete want to be—to fulfill whatever twisted dream he had about Cybil? The man probably had tied her to the saddle. In his haste to get to Frisk, Jubal realized he had ignored signs of which direction Pete might have gone. Jubal reversed his direction and headed back toward the Wickham house.

From the base of the tree where the horses had been tied, a set of hoofprints led west across a vegetable garden and between two houses on the street behind the Wickhams’. Jubal led Frisk on foot around the garden and out onto the adjoining street. A woman standing with a child in her arms looked across the open expanse to the east, gazing at the transformed sky.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Have you seen a big cowboy on horseback in the last few minutes? Maybe with a young girl, she’s probably tied?”

“Sorry, just came out of the house a moment ago to watch the smoke and fire. What happened?”

Jubal looked back toward the darkening skies. “Lord only knows, ma’am.” He started up the street toward Paseo Segundo and the hotel.

“I did hear some shouting a while back, down toward Paloma.”

Jubal turned Frisk and headed back down the street toward the crossroad La Paloma, at the far end of which stood a large residence known to most residents in Cerro Vista as the Dove’s Nest, a house of ill repute situated at the edge of town. Jubal had never seen the place, but it might be something that Pete would be drawn to.

“You’re a total bastard, you know that, don’t you?” Cybil, her hands tied in front of her, struggled to loosen her bonds. Pulling a rope lashed tightly to the saddle horn of a dapple-gray mare, Wetherford led them into the stable behind the Dove’s Nest.

“You make my nether regions swell with joy when you speak, sweetness. So keep it up. I know this will be difficult, but you’ll have to endure a few minutes without me while I talk to my compadre about a room for the two of us, so we can fulfill your dreams.”

Cybil struggled once again with the rope around her wrists and waist. “I have only nightmares about you.”

Wetherford took several steps toward her, moving his hands slowly up and down around his loins. “You heard
what I said, how those sweet words stir my ole Johnson.” He hissed, posing with his hips thrust out. “If I hear you carrying on, I’ll come back out and shoot you right smack in your belly button, got it?” He stood beside Cybil’s left leg, running his hand under her long dress and up her bare thigh until he felt her tense.

“Keep away from me.” She bent her leg, ready to kick him in the face.

He stepped back and once again rubbed himself. “Mind what I say,” he hissed. Pete walked toward the barn door. “My ma used to call women like you ‘bitches.’ Haughty, kind of pretty, and full of themselves, but in the night when the devil lights his fires… they change to vixens.”

“Your schooling concerning women is sorely lacking.”

Wetherford started back toward Cybil. “Never you mind about my getting on with women. I’ll beat your face, missy.” He continued toward her.

“Of course you’ll beat my face, that’s what you do, because you’re afraid to be a human being. Tie me up like a pig sent to market, then try to terrify me with ugly threats. That’s what little children do because they don’t know any better. But you’re not a child, that’s what makes you so pitiful. I’m scared to death of you, of what you’ll do to me.… Even you must be shocked at your behavior.” She struggled to keep her composure. “No one can go through life so out of control and not have at least one thought about what it is they’re doing.” Cybil stopped to catch her breath.

Wetherford stood in the gray light of the stable, small particles of dust floating in the air. The mare pawed the
floor, causing the matted straw to give off a musky staleness, the only other sound the occasional snorting of the mare.

“You stand there rubbing yourself like a five-year-old, do you actually think anyone would be attracted to something like that?” Cybil stopped and wept, her head bowed, nose running. “You provoke people so you’ll have an excuse to beat them up or to rape them or in some way diminish them so that you’ll feel better about your… miserable self.”

A bird flew under the eaves of the hayloft sitting high above the stable floor. It called a few times to its mate in a soft cooing sound, then fluttered in a wide circle and escaped through a gap in the top of the structure.

“Let me go, please.” Cybil’s voice broke. “I’ll do… no, I won’t do… just, please.” She sobbed for a minute, then tried to pull herself together. Wetherford stomped around the stable muttering to himself, finally shouting at her.

“Who gave you the right to say I’m some kind of child? You haughty rich girl. Talking about women and such. I do what I like ‘cause it pleasures me. I got my own rules and if so-called proper folks don’t like them, they can kiss my behind.… What do you mean, I don’t think about anything I do? You calling me stupid… I ain’t no sissy boy. Treat everybody the same, men and women… afraid of nothing.”

Cybil raised her head. “Why do you have me trussed up this way? Because you’re afraid someone might say no to you? A woman outside of a whorehouse might actually have an opinion about you that you couldn’t handle.”

“You got a… got a… right smart mouth on you.”
Wetherford surprised himself when he stammered. He usually didn’t allow anyone to talk to him like that. He was glad it was dark in the stable. He felt his face reddening. His impulse was to jerk the girl off the horse and punish her. She had made him stammer and he didn’t like it. But he hesitated, forced a chuckle, then latched the large double doors behind him.

Jubal turned on La Paloma and headed west. The sun turned the sky a soft pink, the smoke changing the light from bright blue to a rosy hue. The row of houses thinned, and a crude sign haphazardly stuck in the earth at the side of the road showed a white dove winking an eye and flying toward the end of the road. The combination of smoke-filled light and setting sun made the house shimmer as if it were suspended in midair, balancing delicately on what appeared to be a band of water.

He stopped up the road from the two-story Victorian and slipped off Frisk’s broad back. There were very few houses other than the lone frame building for at least a hundred yards. He moved off the road, tied his horse to a cottonwood, and walked through a copse of juniper toward the dwelling. Sparrows and robins bickered in the branches above him as he made his way carefully toward the back of the Dove’s Nest. The light softened, diminishing any color remaining, changing the trees and bushes into gray silhouettes.

Jubal stopped at a clearing overlooking the side of the house and several outbuildings, along with the stable and a broken-down windmill. He could hear music from the house, a spirited rendition of “Dixie” on an out-of-tune
piano. Jubal hadn’t any real way of knowing if Wetherford was there, but it seemed to be of his speed and want. He sprinted toward the side of the building and pressed himself against the aged shingles.

The sound of horses and men’s drunken voices came from the road. A hitching post at the front of the house would soon be occupied by the partying horsemen. They would see him; he had to move.

The largest of the adobe buildings in the compound was an outdoor privy. Jubal stood on the side farthest from the house, having decided he would hold on until the light had truly diminished.

“What’s you doing, cowboy? Trying to get a free peekaboo?” A woman of thirty or so came from the outhouse lighting a cheroot.

“Ah, no, ma’am. Just looking for a friend.”

The woman’s spangled red dress matched her bright crimson lipstick. Her eyes were blackened under the brows with lashes that seemed inordinately long. “What’s your friend’s name, hon?”

“Ah, Pete. Yeah, goes by Pete. Sort of.”

“Pete sort of? Ahh, you’re cute. There’s a customer talking to Willy D. Tall, dark hair, looks like the devil’s helper… that your friend?”

“Yep, sounds like old Petey. If you’re going back inside, miss, don’t say anything to old Petey. I’m trying to surprise him, okay?”

“You’re a funny little young’un, you know that?” She took a long drag on her square-cut cheroot. “If you’re looking for a trip around the world later, look me up. Ask for Lavern. Deal?”

“Deal,” Jubal said. He moved farther back on the property next to an open toolshed, crouching down next to a double plow and trying to figure out what to do next. Behind him, the stable’s long east-pointing shadow darkened a group of piñon. A large cottonwood close to the Rio embankment sheltered him as he dodged to the far side of the stable. He felt he was safe for the time being, but then his expression changed and he took off angry.

“I can’t have you making a fuss in here, Pete. You get my drift? Got to look out for my regulars. I’ll let you use the apartment in the back, but nothing loud and unruly.”

“Look here, Willy D.,” Wetherford said. “I never did you no dirt and don’t intend to start now. I need a place to lay low ‘til the middle of the night, then I’ll be gone. In the meantime, I got my nuptials to take care of. This heifer is kind of new to the ways of bump and diddle, so she might be shouting for joy, but that shouldn’t bother your class of quick finishers, should it?”

“Upstairs to the right, last door facing the stairs, windows got a good view of the Rio Grande and another one south toward the cowshed.” Willy D. tossed Pete a key. “You can either watch the sunset over her shoulder while you do her or contemplate your early days doing the sheep in an old red-painted barn.”

Willy D. thought that to be quite funny as Wetherford pressed a handful of coins into his outstretched paw.

“I never affaired with no sheep, Mr. D. Watch your mouth.” Pete headed out toward the stable and his talkative virgin.

Jubal eased his trim frame between the corral fence and the edge of the stable. It would be dark in another half hour and easier to move about.

The back of the stable faced south, showing wear from the sun. Jubal could see the stable layout between several slats of weathered boards. “Unused” would be the best way to describe it. Several empty stalls on the left smelled of moldy hay and the structure lacked any hint of fresh manure.

A wide weathered plank at the back of the structure, decayed at the bottom, came away easily from the vertical studs. It would be more prudent to go in the back rather than expose himself at the stable door, facing the house. He slid quietly through the opening and was surprised to hear the movement of a large animal. He crouched in a dusty stall, listening.

A horse stomped a hoof several stalls away on the
right side of the dark stable. A few stripes of light filtered through gaps in the stable boards, making eerie patterns on the earthen floor. Jubal listened again. The animal breathed heavily, and just under that sound he heard a faint cry. A woman’s whispered catch in the throat.

The soft weeping of Cybil Wickham.

Jubal wasn’t sure if she was alone. He eased his pistol from his belt, straining to see in the dark, and took a chance.

“Cybil?” he whispered.

A quick intake of her breath. “Jube?”

Staying crouched, Jubal made his way along the bank of stalls to where she was, then slipped the circle of rope from the top of the stall door and eased in next to her horse. He looked up to her on the mare. “Are you all right?”

“He said he’d kill me if I made a sound.… Are my parents okay? Are they harmed?”

“They’re fine,” Jubal said. “Slip off that horse. I have to get you out of here.”