Latigo 3, page 24
In the thick growth of pines that would soon be felled to provide lumber for the booming town, Cole stated the matter plainly. “I want to know who killed Helen. Also known as Cindy Lou. You’ve got five seconds.”
Bend squeaked in terror. Cole’s gun was not pointed at the head or the heart or the belly, but at the groin. “Gattling told me he done it!”
“Cut her throat.”
“Yeah.” Bend’s mouth shook. “Showed me the knife.”
“Raped her first.”
“Yeah ... yeah, kinda made a joke. Havin’ it free in a whorehouse ...”
Cole had to hold himself in from smashing the loose mouth. “You think somebody’s going to rescue you, Bend,” Cole said. “They’re not. You’ve got a choice. Want to hear it?”
Bend’s sick eyes were fastened to the gun barrel still angled at his groin. “What ... what choice?”
Cole would either take him to the Crow camp to let them deal with him for the death of Tall Tree. Or he could go with Cole to New Sodom and face Sheriff Dolan with a written confession naming Gattling as Helen’s murderer and Claudius Max as the one who had paid him. While Bend, breathing hard, turned it over in his mind, Cole casually spoke of Broken Lance, who had survived a night of terror in the Crow camp only to suffer death at dawn.
“I can still hear his screams,” Cole finished.
Billy Bend didn’t need to be told how the Indian treated one of his own who had broken the tribal law against murder.
“With a hang rope it’s over quick. But the Crows might keep you alive two days. Maybe three.”
Bend looked ghastly. In the hills beyond the town, coyotes yipped at the sun.
On the previous evening Theodora had donned the blue satin she had worn at the dreadful banquet in New Sodom. It made her feel better to dress and take her mind off Rego Gattling. She had trembled earlier when she saw Gattling through the wide window, striding toward the carriage house, with that arrogant thrust to his jaw.
When Max plopped himself down at the head of the table, she had an urge to comment on the haggard mouth, the eyes veined with small red lines. He had been in one of his raging moods lately. She wondered if his two young playmates of the past month bore black-and-blue marks as a result of that mood. They deserved their Claudius medals. She’d had hers. “You were late again last night,” she said sweetly.
“Also tonight,” he rumbled as he cut into a great slab of blood-red beef. “Union Pacific thinks they can give me trouble. I’ve just about put a stop to it. It’s taken me over a month working late …” Claudius chewed, then said, “By the way, we’re leaving for New Sodom in the morning.”
He went on to say he was being honored there. Then he said, “It damn well better be more of an honor than last time or I just might start pulling up tracks.”
Seeing him finish off the slab of beef and cut another reminded her of a ravenous animal. She was a little surprised he didn’t take the two girls to New Sodom and leave her in Basin City.
When Claudius had had his fill, he came along the table, bent down and kissed her cheek. She looked up at the chandelier while he said, “I’ll be able to give you a little more attention now that the Union Pacific matter will be settled.” You are too late with your attentions, she wanted to say. After Claudius had left the house she tried to read a book. But it was no use. When plump Martha finally retired for the evening, Theodora looked out at the carriage house. The windows were dark. She felt let down.
Rego Gattling had retired early to get plenty of rest. But his thoughts kept drifting. It had been some weeks since he’d enjoyed a woman. He discounted the young madam at Scalplock, who had been about as responsive as if she had been carved from a block of ice. Frozen with terror, he supposed.
He stared at the ceiling and around the shadowed room. Lacy curtains at windows, a sofa in a corner, chest of drawers. The big bed where he was lying, trying to fall asleep. It had originally been two small apartments. Max had ordered a wall knocked out to give Gattling more room. Gattling couldn’t complain about his treatment since going to work for Python. The pay was excellent, and Max seemed easier to get along with than he had been led to believe. The only outburst came when he learned Cantrell was still alive. Max had cussed a few times and looked mad enough to chew a hole in brass, but he hadn’t blamed Gattling.
Well, Cantrell was as good as dead. No worries there. All Gattling had to do was make sure Cantrell didn’t pull one of his tricks. According to what Gattling had heard, the half-breed Crow was full of them.
And barely had that crossed his mind when he heard a creaking from one of the stair treads. Slipping a gun into his hand, he got out of bed and hurried on bare feet to the door. Silently he turned the key, then stood back. Another tread gave off a sound like a trapped mouse. Gattling waited in the dark...
Theodora was sure her heartbeat was loud enough to startle horses in their stalls below. She wondered how men felt about women coming to them. She paused, listening. What if he hadn’t come home?
She longed for him to look at her and see that admiration for her body in his eyes. How nice it would be to have him tease her mouth and her breasts and feel his hand sliding over her skin.
She reached the top step and felt a warm sensation spread over her body.
She tried the door to his room. The knob turned. She pushed the door open to threads of moonlight filtering through a window. His bed was rumpled. But was he there? She couldn’t be sure because of the uncertain light.
She took a step, then heard the door slam behind her. Strong arms were clamped to her waist, and she was dragged to the floor. She felt a cold metallic ring press at the back of her neck and knew it was a gun.
A hand fumbled under her as if for a weapon but instead found a breast. Then she heard soft laughter.
“I guess you’re not Cantrell. Not with a chest like that.”
Still laughing, he carried her to the bed and set her down gently. “Did I hurt you?”
“The floor was pretty hard.” She rubbed herself.
He locked the door, then returned to the bed and peeled out of his underwear. He threw it on a chair seat and put his gun on the floor. She was staring raptly, excited that his maleness offered a semaphore of his need for her.
Somehow his violent nature itself was stimulating. She felt lightheaded when he drew off her coat. Under it she wore a sheer nightgown, the color of pale cream and edged with yards of lace.
He ran his hands over the softness, and she felt a delightful shiver down her spine.
“A pretty nightgown,” he murmured.
“From Paris.”
Gattling leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. Her lips parted, and she returned his kiss. He began to stroke her shoulders, her back, down her sides, her thighs. Carefully he avoided her breasts. He kissed her until she was frantic and out of breath, but the delight wasn’t finished, for he took his time exploring her mouth.
“Don’t wait, don’t wait,” she begged, and he lowered his body to hers.
When it was over she lay very still, thinking, Now I can go back to bed and sleep without torment. Her fingers toyed with the hair around his ears, the neck bristle that a barber shears had cropped.
“I was in too much of a hurry,” she whispered. “Guess I was afraid ...”
“You’ve got a long night ahead of you.”
“I think I should go now ...” She started to sit up. He pushed her back.
“And deprive me?”
She stared at the hard lines of his face, etched in moonlight. Then she reached for his shoulders, but he had slid down in the bed and was kissing her stomach.
Suddenly she felt a shock that at first was almost painful. But then the sensitive spot of her body began to produce a sensation almost overwhelming.
“Where ... where did you learn to do that?” she gasped, peering down at the top of his blond head.
“A girl from Marseilles taught me.”
What a teacher, she almost said. But she couldn’t think. Her mind was blank. She was suddenly drained and lazy and realized that she had reached down to grip the hard bone of his shoulders.
“How nice,” she whispered. “How very nice.” Her hands fell limply to the bed.
“You’ve barely started.”
“You foolish man, there isn’t a centimeter of energy left in my poor ravished body.” Her grin was weak.
“Then you’ll be surprised when I prove otherwise.”
He came up from the bed so that he was even with her face. Then he pulled off her nightgown and threw it on the floor.
“Honestly, Rego, I’m just not able to ...”
Never had she felt so warm in her life. Her skin glowed. She didn’t mind his weight. Her arms crossed hard across his back as if fearful he would get away and stop the lovely thing he was doing to her. He was right, she wasn’t drained at all.
And when at last the universe crumpled in on the world, she found his hand clapped to her mouth.
“You almost screamed,” he said.
“My God, I felt like it. Now you have finished me,” she said softly. “And I must go. My husband ...” She let it trail away.
In the morning, in the private car coupled to the train, she gave Gattling a cool nod. When they were seated, Claudius said gruffly, “Wouldn’t hurt you to speak to him. He does have a name.”
“Gattling, isn’t it?”
“And remember he’s my bodyguard. Also hired to protect you.”
That he did last night, she thought, smothering me with his body.
She turned to face the window as Basin City began to slide away, so Claudius couldn’t see the expression on her face ...
Chapter Thirty-One
SHERIFF CADY DOLAN liked his new headquarters: six cells and a roomy office. An improvement over the original, a lean-to next to the saddle shop. And the town was going to vote him an extra deputy, which would make two.
It was going to be a warm spring day. He knotted a bandanna around his heavy neck so that when sweat started to drip down his jowls it wouldn’t stain his clean shirt. As he stared absently out the window at the railroad tracks across the busy street, he thought about his job. Only five more years, and he’d have enough put aside to buy a place on a creek where he could spend the rest of his days with a fishpole in his hands and a jug at his feet. By then he’d only be fifty.
He watched a freight train starting to chuff-chuff away from the end-of-track log barrier. A man was running to catch up to the slow-moving train. Dolan saw him scramble aboard. Although he had only a fleeting glimpse of the man climbing onto an empty flatcar, he was certain it was Roy Collins, former conductor for the line. Good riddance, Dolan thought, although he did feel sorry for the man. Since being fired from C-P, Collins had poured enough whiskey down his gullet to float a barn.
An off-key voice began to sing of mother and a pet dog. It was his only prisoner, a drunk who had been refused service at the Four Aces, down the block, and in protest had urinated on the floor.
Down the block, at the Intermountain office, Martin Gale was reading a letter from his niece, Carrie. The girl and her traveling companion, Annetta, had been seeing the sights and had spent some time in Basin City. They would arrive soon in New Sodom.
The stage that had brought the letter had also carried Cole Cantrell and Billy Bend, the latter with hands roped and a hangdog look about him.
Gale commented on the letter from his niece. “Haven’t been in Basin City in over a month. Too bad. Could’ve seen Carrie and her friend.”
Cole made no comment. Tom McAdams, of the Basin City Intermountain office, had relayed gossip about the niece and her friend. Martin Gale was curious about Cole’s prisoner. But Cole didn’t feel like discussing it.
“I hope you’re coming back to work with me, Cole ...”
“We’ll talk about it. Right now I want the sheriff.”
Gale told him about the new jail and sheriff’s office being open down the street. Cole thanked him and hurried along the alley with Bend. He had hoped to enter the sheriffs new quarters by the rear door; the fewer eyes to spot them, the better. Cole felt the off-key singing of a drunk in one of the cells helped drown out the sounds of him knocking on the locked alley door.
Cole gave up and pushed Bend toward the main street. “Let’s go.”
It was half a block to the entrance, and on the crowded street many passersby turned to stare curiously at Cole and his prisoner. Some recognized Cole and spoke. Cole nodded.
Dolan was slouched in a chair sturdy enough for his weight, booted feet on a desk. He was scanning a newspaper through half-moon glasses. Upon seeing Cole, he removed the glasses, put them on the desk and lowered his feet.
Cole didn’t waste time with preliminaries but showed Dolan a confession bearing Billy Bend’s signature, barely legible, and witnessed by Tom McAdams, who held down the Intermountain office in Basin City.
Dolan read it through once; then, shaking his head, reread it. “Jesus Christ,” the sheriff exclaimed. “Claudius Max behind it all?” Dolan looked gray around the mouth. Outside, wagons rumbled.
In a cold, emotionless voice Cole elaborated on the charges, telling of the murders of his parents by five men hired by Python. How those men later had found a girl afoot in the mountains and raped her. The men getting drunk, and some of them bragging to the girl about the crime they had committed down in the valley. Shooting the girl, leaving her for dead. And after Cole found her and dropped her off at the Lockwood ranch to recover, there were other attempts on her life from the same source.
Cole told the rest of it, and Dolan gave him a sharp look. “I recollect her now. Sentenced to hang up at El Dorado Gulch. Took over Annie’s place down at Scalplock ...”
“The same.”
“A prostitute ...”
“A human being, Dolan. A nice person. Very damned nice and ...” Cole’s voice was charged with emotion. “She didn’t deserve to die like she did!”
Billy Bend edged toward the door, suddenly pivoted and made a rush for the street. Cole lunged, caught him by an arm and slammed him against the wall.
“If I have to break you in pieces,” Cole said through his teeth, “the hangman won’t be able to do a decent job on you.” At that moment Cole didn’t know which man looked sicker— Bend, who had been threatened with the gallows, or Dolan, who was expected to take action against Claudius Max. This was something Dolan had to think over very carefully ...
After the climb up the mountain the freight train halted so the locomotive could take on water. A fireman, sweaty and smudged with smoke, sprang out and reached for a rusted length of six-inch pipe attached to a large wooden water tank, reinforced with steel bands. A small stream of water sliding down a mossy cleft in a cliff wall kept the tank filled Overflow made the ground around it a permanent bog.
A sudden clanking sound alerted the engineer, and he looked back through the cab window, then swung frantically down the iron ladder.
“Hey, Collins, what the hell you doin’!”
Roy Collins, former conductor of the C-P line, was uncoupling the string of freight cars from the locomotive.
“For Claudius Max!” Collins cried with a wild laugh.
“Collins, you crazy bastard, you can’t ...”
But the engineer was wasting his breath. The cars were already moving back down a gentle grade. Collins had missed the handhold on a boxcar but managed to hop onto the coupling and straddle it. Already the caboose had dipped onto the steep grade. Screams erupted from the caboose. A man jumped, went rolling down an embankment, arms and legs loose.
As the string of cars gained momentum, Collins hung desperately to his precarious seat on the coupling. His brain, long ago burned out by rotgut, failed to signal the danger. He had intended to jump off but now he was frozen as he watched the ties whip past his eyes, saw the stunted trees on the cliff side of the tracks become a blur of green. Clickety-click, clickety-click blended into a continuous metallic roar. The cars swayed, wheel flanges howling as they hit the first curve much too fast.
Dizziness produced by whiskey and fear unseated Collins at last. Boxcars leaned, leaned, creaked, wooden sides straining. Then they leaned into upright position. At sixty miles an hour Collins hit the ties on his face.
Up the mountain the engineer had already made a decision; it would be impossible to catch up to the cars, because they were already out of sight.
His only hope was to reach the telegraph station at Alder Summit and send a warning. Even that might be too late.
“If we ain’t in time,” the engineer said in a strained voice, “them cars’ll rip through town like runaway mules through a straw fence!” He fed all possible steam to his pistons.
There was always the possibility that the speeding cars would derail before reaching New Sodom. If not, there was nothing ahead for the town but trouble.
Rego Gattling barged into the suite of rooms Claudius Max used as an office at the Peerless Hotel. Lackman paled and cried, “Mr. Max cannot be disturbed at this time!”
Gattling, out of breath from running up the many flights of stairs, shot a cold glance at the closed door to the inner room and then at a hapless Lackman.
“Tell him quick. Grubb just saw Cole Cantrell with Billy Bend. They’re with the sheriff!”
Lackman timidly knocked on the door and in a shaking voice relayed the message.
“We’ve got him!” Max cried behind the closed door. Quickly he reached for his trousers.
Theodora straightened up and eased the strain from her back. Her fingers ached from holding onto the edge of the desk for so long. Thankful for the respite, she dropped a gray dress over her head and began to button it.
By then Max had stormed to the outer office, slamming the door behind him, the steel-blue eyes glowing. “I don’t give a damn about Bend!” he cried when Gattling attempted to outline a plan. “We’ll let Grubb jump Cantrell ... grudge fight,” Max said excitedly. “When it’s over with, you call Cantrell out. You understand, Rego? I’ll see there are plenty of witnesses. And once and for all kill him!”
