To Hell and Back (21 page)

 
“And if he won’t bluff?”

Hollander picked up his tin cup and poured himself another cup of the strong coffee.
 

“Then we run like hell—again.”

Amanda peered at him through the steam rising from the cup cradled between her palms.
 

“Then we better be sure the horses are well rested and sound before we ride into town.”

Hollander grinned. “I like your style, lady.”

“It’s more bravado than substance, I can guarantee you that, but we’ve come this far. It seems to me like we should finish it.”

She meant what she said, but speaking the words out loud sent a chill up her back. It seemed that along with everything else she’d learned on the trail, she had also managed to cultivate a sense of caution and self-preservation. Along with that, she had discovered another truth along the trail. Quite simply, there was very little that was worth her life. Even if, in the end, it meant running.

“All right,” Amanda said at last, “Let’s see if we can make John Berglund back up and take notice.”

Chapter 19

Jake Hollander and Amanda Cleary made their way back into Phoenix under the cover of darkness. Their horses moved at an easy pace and they slouched in their saddles, hats pulled low. There was no moon, but the stars lay across the black sky in a sparkling blanket. They gleamed and twinkled through the clear, crisp air, appearing near enough to touch.

From somewhere nearby the smell of beef cooking and potatoes frying, drifted past their noses. Their bellies were full. They had never really gone hungry more than a day at a stretch, and that because they had been on the move. Hollander had seen to it. Nonetheless their mouths watered. The last time they’d had anything but their odd assortment of trail food had been the night before their scheduled hanging.

“When this is over,” Amanda murmured to Hollander riding at her side, “we’re going to get some real food. Steak. Potatoes. Fresh eggs and some milk cooled in a clay vessel hung up in the breeze.”

“What? You’ve been eating good. Plenty of rabbit. Ground squirrel, occasional snake.”

“Those didn’t bother me. What did bother me were the ones you never did identify.”

He grinned at her his teeth a slash of white against the night’s darkness.

“What I miss is fruit. In a can. Dried. I don’t care.”

Amanda sighed. “I’m sorry you got caught up in all this.”

As was his way, Hollander rode ready for trouble, hand hanging near his six-gun, rifle tucked up against his knee. The main street was deserted, the back streets they traversed now were even less frequented. He gave her a solemn look, lightened by a quirky lift of his pale eyebrow.

“Well, my life ain’t never been easy. Just seemed to have gotten a mite worse than usual after I came to Phoenix.”

Amanda gave an appreciative laugh as their mounts continued at a walk, hoofs making soft clopping sounds. Colorado was again sound, Hollander had made sure of that before they had head out across open desert.

He glanced at Amanda through the darkness, aware of every feature, every nuance, despite the gloom of night. She had done something to him, this woman, over the long weeks they’d spent together as the heat of desert summer had subtly shifted and shaded into the chill of southwest winter. In a strange way he wasn’t sure he wanted it to end.

“You’re the damndest woman I’ve ever known,” he said from out of the blue. “You watch yourself now and remember what you learned.”

Amanda looked at Hollander, gave a nod, and straightened in her saddle as they walked their horses along behind the string of buildings that faced the street. They were headed Laura Chambly’s house at the far end of the row.
 

Hollander eased the loop off the hammer of his gun about the same time as Amanda. Together their eyes probed deeply into the night surrounding them. They were aware of their vulnerability, depending on surprise as an ally. If it didn’t work it could be over in a heartbeat. Both wished for eyes in the backs of their heads.

“I’ll talk to Laura. It’d be better if you don’t show yourself until I can explain things to her.”

Hollander grunted his agreement.

At the end of the street, they pulled up behind the little painted frame house. Amanda slid to the ground and moved to the back door, knocking softly while Hollander stayed in the saddle and held her horse, staying out of view. Seconds dragged past while she stood in the darkness of the shadowed doorway, waiting.

Then, from inside, light footsteps and a latch snicked back. In the next moment the lamplight flooded through the door, haloing Amanda briefly in its yellow glow before she jumped to one side blending with the shadows of the night.

But Laura had already gotten herself a good enough look. She stepped back pulling the door more fully open.

“Oh my God, Amanda! Are you crazy? Get inside before someone sees you!”

Nightgown and wrapper flowing, long brown braid flapping over her left shoulder, Laura reached out, grasping Amanda by the wrist and dragged her inside, swiftly latching it behind them without taking notice of Hollander occupying the darker shadows. A few seconds later the door swung open again, and Amanda signaled Hollander to join them. Hollander was aware of that old, familiar, tingling feeling of being watched. He saw nothing to be the cause of it, but it made him damned nervous when he tied the horses and started for the door.

He allowed his eyes to wander the back street one last time while his hand rested on the door latch. Then he slipped inside, jittery and unsatisfied.
 

* * *

Sprawled in the back alley way where he had staggered, dead drunk, earlier in the evening to sleep it off in privacy, Rubin, the town drunk, woke to the soft, nearby clip-clop of horses’ hoofs. It was dark, but he recognized Hollander and Amanda right away despite the startling changes in the woman since that trial. She sure as hell didn’t sit that saddle like no lady. And damned if she wasn’t toting iron. At first he’d been sure the liquor induced haze had to be playing tricks on him. Rubin had been a drunk for more years than he cared to think about, but he had some shreds of pride remaining and he considered himself a good citizen. Bank robbers and murders shouldn’t be allowed to run loose thataway.

His rheumy eyes glittered. There were posters out on both of them. Being a good citizen could have its rewards. It would be worth a lot of money to someone to know they were right here in town and even in his befuddled state he knew who that someone would be.

He waited until he figured the door to the school teacher’s house wasn’t likely to swing open again real soon, then climbed unsteadily to his feet. In a disjointed, fuzzy sort of way, he thought about going to the sheriff then decided his first choice had been the correct one. He’d go to John Berglund. The banker was a fair man, had even bought him a couple of drinks in the past. He’d pay him the reward even though Rubin conceded he wasn’t going to do any of the capturing himself. Any fair man could tell with just one look that he wasn’t capable of that. But his efforts deserved recognition. And that recognition appeared as a long line of bottles to his pickled brain.

* * *

John Berglund, clad in a light buckskin jacket he’d had made for cool evenings at home, a comfortable pair of trousers and hand-made slippers, listened with interest to what the old drunk, Rubin, had to say. The town sot wasn’t worth much, and his red-rimmed, eyes were always watery, always staring with a sort of kicked-dog look. Still, Berglund was, and always had been, of the opinion that it was to his benefit to have others beholden to him, including a soused reprobate. Now it was paying off. He didn’t know how much of what the old man was telling him was truth, but the matter was worth investigating.

He narrowed cold brown eyes, drew himself up and peered down at Rubin from his full height, imposing, intimidating. When he spoke his voice was rough, words blunt.

“You’re sure? You can’t be mistaken about seeing those two bank robbers behind Miss Chambly’s house? You’ve been drinking. A man can make mistakes when he’s been getting into the liquor. Could it have been someone else?”

Clutching his tattered, canvas hat in his permanently soiled, gnarled hands as a humble servant would, Rubin shook his head. He was more sober now than he had been in months.

“No sir, Mr. Berglund. “I mean yes sir. There’s no mistake. That Amanda woman, she sat the saddle like a Texas ranger, but it was her all right.”

The banker strode back and forth across the parlor while the old fool before him remained standing, the closed door at his back.

“Amanda was scared to death of horses.”

Rubin turned his hat in his hands.

“Well she sure ain’t now. Looked like she was born to the saddle, dressed in pants just like a man. Saw her in the moonlight I did. Then, again, in the light from Miss Chambly’s back door. She darkened up some out here in the desert sun. Hair thick and black. And I remember those eyes too, I surely do. Couldn’t believe they were going to hang a woman who looked like that.”

Berglund was turning it all over in his mind. To have survived in the desert all this time, there had to have been some changes in Amanda. Plenty of them. And there’d been the man with her, the man she’d broke jail with. The man named Hollander. Fresh in from ram-rodding a trail drive he had claimed. Such a man would know the land. No doubt it had been he who had engineered the jailbreak. But what had brought them back to Phoenix?
 

The answers which occurred to him, Berglund didn’t care for. If they had a brain between them, there was only one thing that could have brought them back to Phoenix, risking their necks to the hangman. They had to know what had happened in the bank that day and he was no less sure they had to have some proof.

 
Laura Chambly had been a friend of Amanda’s. If they were hiding out in her little frame house tonight, they undoubtedly planned on having Laura contact the sheriff for them in the morning. That meant he had to move before the day arrived.

He handed Rubin a five dollar gold piece then opened the door and ushered him out. On the doorstep he hesitated only a moment to cement his informant’s continued cooperation.

“Thank you, Rubin, you’ve been a big help. There’ll be more from where that came from when we capture them and they’re brought to justice.”

A silly smile creased the drunk’s face when he tightened his fist around the piece of gold Berglund had given him. Why he didn’t even have to bite it to be sure it was real. He dipped his head in a deferential nod, slapped his grubby hat on his head, and disappeared into the darkness. By the time the sun rose, Rubin decided as he hurried along, heading back to his ramshackle hut on the edge of town, he’d be a hero. The whole town would know it was he who turned in the two outlaws, spotted them when they rode back into town.

He hurried on. When the trouble started he didn’t intend to be on the street. It was with a little guilt he recalled that, in his eagerness, he had not mentioned he had seen the woman wearing a gun.

Oh, hell, he decided, that didn’t matter none! Humming tunelessly to himself he walked along the dark street. John Berglund would keep him in whiskey the rest of his life.

* * *

Berglund watched Rubin move off down the street with disgust. He closed the door insuring his privacy, then cursed roundly under his breath. He had to act swiftly. The arrival of that pair in town could only mean trouble for him. But, whatever they believed they could accomplish, they hadn’t brazenly ridden in the light of day. That gave him reason to believe he could still head off whatever disaster they were planning.

Clarissa Berglund, clad in her night clothes of sweeping white gown and burgundy robe, stood at the top of the stairs, her smile fixed, as if carved in stone, as she’d already heard more than she cared to. Her eyes were hard, their level stare coolly directed at John.

Her husband felt the weight of her gaze and glanced up.

“Trouble on the other side of town. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He tossed out the conciliatory words like penny candy to a child, then turned, completely dismissing her from his thoughts as he threw off the chamois jacket and donned a more sober darkly tailored jacket against the night chill.

Then he strapped on his gun with a few deft movements, thinking of Amanda Cleary and Laura Chambly as he did. As different as night and day those two. Laura had been a possession once. She still was, if it came down to it. Laura, timid and shy, was afraid to cause trouble. Berglund had spotted her when she’d arrived in Phoenix. He’d thought her a pretty little thing and he’d been bored with the whores over the saloon. It had been a simple matter to coerce her into becoming his mistress by subtly threatening to use his influence to cost her her job at the school and have no recommendation elsewhere. It had been enough, and theirs had become a steady, and satisfying relationship. He had been discreet to protect her reputation in the eyes of the school board.

The little school teacher had never been feisty like Amanda, who could be, by turns, oblique, infuriating, and so desirable it made his teeth hurt. Laura had held little interest for him once he’d focused on Amanda.

He’d wanted Amanda from the first, had made it plain to her, even, in his opinion, humbled himself for her. But she had wanted none of it. Would have no part of him except as boss at the bank. As she’d put it very plainly; he was a married man.