Blaze 1, page 2
The three men at the first table pushed back their chairs. The scraping sound of chair leg on floorboard was overly loud in the close air of the big room. The men slipped out the door, and the two at the other table tossed back their drinks and rose to follow. The thin-waisted man darted out a hand and locked onto the second drinker’s arm.
“You go fetch that old man you call a town marshal,” the thin-waisted man said. “You tell him there’s men here who’d be pleased to make his acquaintance.”
His victim nodded vigorously, eager to please.
“Get going.” The thin-waisted man pushed the man through the doors, hard enough so he fell to the boardwalk. The stocky man laughed.
Blaze poured himself another drink. Near as he could tell, this was none of his never mind. He didn’t much care what these two hombres did as long as they didn’t involve him in their shenanigans. He’d be moving on in a while. A drink or two more, he reckoned, time enough for the bartender to shake loose of his skittishness, and then a little palaver with the man. Bartenders generally suited his purpose: they saw plenty and liked to chatter on about it. Then, after he found out what he needed to know, Blaze’d be heading on and leaving Destiny to stew in its fear.
The two gunmen came up to the bar and called for whiskey. The bartender scurried over with an unmarked bottle and two glasses, and stood waiting expectantly while the stocky man poured two drinks. One man lifted his drink, eyed it speculatively, then put it down in one noisy gulp. His eyes were watering and his hand a little shaky when he replaced the glass on the bar.
“Holy Christ, Mase!” he gasped when he got his voice back. “This son of a bitch is trying to poison us.” He reached out a hammy hand and grabbed a fistful of the bartender’s dingy shirt. “You call this cat’s piss whiskey, you fucking runt?”
“B-b-b-b-best in the house.”
The stocky man gave the bartender a hard shove. The little man lost his balance and one elbow crashed into the back bar. Glasses shattered and a bottle came off a shelf and fetched him a glancing blow on the temple. When he reached one hand to steady himself he gashed it on the jagged remains of a shot glass.
“Don’t bust him up too much, Karley,” Mase said. “If you do we’ll have to fetch this bilge water ourselves.”
The bartender shrank away from them, his cut hand under his arm. Blood stained his white shirt. Karley was reaching for him again when the doors swung open.
The man standing there was on the sun set side of fifty. Behind a carefully waxed gray mustache his face was etched with apprehension. His shoulders were slumped, like a man used to being whipped by life. He wore a silver star pinned to his vest.
“Howdy, old man,” Mase said. He was rubbing the tapered fingers of his right hand like he was limbering them up. Behind him, the little bartender sidled along the back shelf until he reached the end, then darted through a door there. Nobody paid him any mind.
“State your business, boys.” The marshal’s voice was sort of weak and watery, like his eyes.
“Just stopped in to pass the bacon,” Mase said. “Chew the fat, like the man says.”
“How you been, Pop?” Karley said. “You been getting ready for the big show?”
“You boys do your drinking and keep peaceable,” the marshal said. “You do that and we’ll get along fine.”
“We ain’t real interested in getting along,” Mase said. “What we got in mind, us and Lassiter, ain’t got nothing in common with getting along.”
“You gonna draw down on him, Pop?” Karley taunted. “You gonna face Lassiter when he rides in?”
“Now, boys ...”
“Or you gonna turn tail and mm like a snake-spooked heifer? It ain’t easy to contemplate, facing a man as fast as Lassiter, is it, Pop?”
“Maybe you need a little practice, old man.” Mase stepped away from the bar. Moving very slowly, he put down his glass and let his hand hover over his six-gun.
“Why don’t you try to practice on me, old man?” Mase said.
The marshal looked from one to the other, and suddenly he looked weak, insubstantial, as if his bones were fragile as reeds. His face was pallid with the foreknowledge of death, and no way around it.
“I’m gonna count three, old man,” Mase said. “If you don’t draw by then, I will.” He grinned. “One.”
The marshal’s gun hand trembled like it was palsied.
“Two.”
The marshal blinked sweat out of his eyes.
“Adios, old man,” Mase said.
“Hold it! You hold it right there!”
A woman was standing halfway down the stairs at the end of the bar. She was somewhere in her twenties, and pretty—if a man’s taste ran toward the kind of female who was a mite hard around the edges. She had wavy dark hair that was done up with rhinestone pins. Her dress ended just above the knees and was cut in a deep low V in front, her breasts straining against the satiny material as they heaved with her anger.
“Who the fuck are you, lady?” Karley snapped.
“I run this place. I got no abiding interest in seeing it shot up by your sort.”
Mase grinned and took his time looking the woman up and down. “What sort is that?”
“Get out of here, Jason,” the woman said to the marshal. He nodded gratefully and slipped out the door. The woman looked back to Mase. “Saddlebums,” she said evenly. “White trash. That sort.”
Mase’s grin evaporated. “You can’t...”
“Drift,” the woman said. “I ain’t so busted I need your kind of business.”
Blaze grinned. Very little amused him, but this, this woman standing, arms akimbo, talking down these two gun punks, that tickled his fancy.
“Something funny, stranger?” the stocky man, Karley, said.
Blaze sighed. From the moment these two had walked in, a voice inside him said it would end up something like this. Ignoring the voice didn’t make any difference; it never did. Blaze pushed away from the bar, turned so he was facing the two men and the inevitability of the moment. The slightest trace of uncertainty flitted across Karley’s gross features as he watched Blaze ease the leather scabbard off his shoulder and lay it on the bar.
Blaze swept back the right skirt of the long duster, fastened it to a snap clasp at the coat’s back, let the two men see the Colt’s on his hip.
“Yeah,” Blaze rasped. “What’s funny is you boys.” He tipped back his hat brim, rubbed unconsciously at the shock of white hair above his forehead. “Real entertaining.”
He stood like that, easy and waiting, eyeing the two hombres maybe six feet in front of him.
“He can’t take us both, Karley,” Mase said. “No man is that fast.”
“Sure.” Karley did not sound convinced.
For just a moment Blaze looked past the two at the woman on the stairs. He knew somehow that this fight was one she would not try to stop. She met his gaze and shrugged.
“Take him, Karley!” Mase snapped, and dug for his Colt’s.
But Blaze’s gun was already in his right hand; his first shot shattered the heavy stillness of the moment before Mase had cleared leather. Blaze shot him in the middle of the chest, the big .44 slug splintering through the tough heart muscle, bits of organ and bone and blood spraying out of the exit wound. A startled expression froze on the gunman’s face as he caromed off the bar and crashed to the floor.
Blaze’s gun tracked on to Karley, and in the fraction of a second before he fired again he saw the stocky man involuntarily flinch away from the falling body of his partner. He should have paid more attention to the matter at hand. Blaze shot him in the throat, and blood fountained in an obscene three-foot arc from his severed jugular as he flopped over on his back. He lived for a few seconds after that, long enough anyway to see and feel the life pulse out of him to soak into the floorboards, long enough to realize he had mouthed off once too often.
Blaze holstered his Colt’s and unloosed the snap clasp so the skirt of his white duster hung free again. The woman on the stairs had not moved. Her face was flushed, and sweat glistened in the fleshy valley between her full upthrust breasts. They rose and fell with her breathing. Her lips were parted in a hint of a smile; the look she gave Blaze was carnivorous.
Blaze felt himself kneading those soft breasts in his hands, felt them crushed hard against his bare chest. The woman took her time looking him over, let her gaze rest on his crotch.
“Nice,” she said softly, so he was unsure whether she meant his gun work or the obvious bulge in his britches. But there would be plenty of time to take care of that. Blaze would have her eventually; he knew women well enough to have no doubts on that score. It would be something to look forward to. But meantime, there were still questions that needed answering.
Blaze showed her the unlabeled bottle. “Your bartender called this stuff bourbon. Could be he was mistaken.”
The woman came the rest of the way down the stairs and went behind the bar. She crouched, came up with a green-tinted bottle, and filled Blaze’s glass. This bottle had a label and the whiskey was less raw, though not much. The woman leaned forward on her elbows to watch him drink and give him another angle on her tits.
She refilled Blaze’s glass, and this time poured one for herself as well, then came around to stand beside him. She was close enough so the tips of her breasts caressed the lapels of his duster, and she smelled of whiskey and perfume and woman musk. She would be a handful—maybe a mite dangerous, too. Well, that would be all right ...
“That was real fine,” the woman murmured, “the way you handled them two.”
“I didn’t ask to buy in,” Blaze said in his soft voice.
“Well now, looks like you did anyway. Could be what you bought into is a peck of trouble.” She eased closer so he felt the insistent crush of her breasts through his duster and shirt. “’Course there are other things a man like you could buy into,” she said huskily, “if he had a mind to.”
“I reckon I could,” Blaze said, thinking about the flush of sexual excitement the gunplay had produced in the girl. He stepped back from her touch, replaced the leather scabbard over his shoulder. He pointed with his chin at the two men crumpled on the floor. “Who were they?”
“Gunhands.” She shrugged; there was nothing in dead men to interest her. “Mase and Karley is what I’ve heard ’em called.”
“What do they call you?”
“My friends call me Jewel.”
“That ah?”
She came up close again and reached a hand to brush along his face. Her fingertips were warm, and Blaze could feel the phantom presence of the trails they left. The hand moved down across his chest and stomach, then lower. Instantly he began to swell within her cupped palm.
“Jewel is enough,” she said, her breath warm in his face. “For my friends.” Her fingers tightened around his growing cock. “You want to be my friend, don’t you?”
The hinges of the batwing door creaked and a stem voice said, “What’s this all about?” The marshal was back, standing inside the door with his hand on his gun butt, looking real brave and in charge now that the two gunmen were laid out in puddles of their own gore.
Jewel pulled away from Blaze. “Mase and Karley wanted to kill the stranger. He wouldn’t let them.”
The marshal put on an official look, suitable for studying the goings on. “Well, two against one,” he mumbled finally. “Self-defense, I reckon.”
“You worked that out real quick,” Jewel said.
The marshal looked away and shook his head, like it was a damn shame this sort of thing had to happen in his fine town. Behind him, out on the boardwalk, a crowd was gathering. A cacophony of voices was raised in excitement and curiosity. The marshal glanced over his shoulder and shook his head again.
“Wanted to thank you, Jewel,” he mumbled, not looking at her, “for stopping them two boys before.”
“Don’t give it a thought, Jason,” Jewel said. “I never could stand to see a dog whipped just ’cause he was old and stove up.”
The marshal’s shoulders slumped some more. Behind him a bald head poked in the door. Blaze recognized it as belonging to Ephraim F. X. McNamer, the lawyer.
“Everybody okay in here?” McNamer asked in a bluff hearty voice.
Blaze nodded at the two blood-washed corpses. “These two hombres aren’t doing so good,” he said softly.
McNamer looked at the corpses, gulped, and; came on into the saloon. A few other townspeople pushed in after him and stood looking at the mess in front of the bar. They stayed clustered up near the door, as if they were afraid Mase and Karley were maybe going to sit up suddenly and start shooting again.
“Move along now,” the marshal said. “This ain’t no raree show.” Nobody paid him much mind.
Blaze showed them his back and splashed more whiskey into his glass. Before he could raise it, Jewel slipped it out of his fingers and tossed it back herself. Blaze frowned. He was refilling the glass when the big man pushed through the crowd.
He was not so much fat as massive. Everything about him was huge, like someone had begun to trowel on the flesh and forgot to stop. He looked to be several inches over Blaze’s six feet, and easily weighed three hundred pounds. His legs were big around as a normal man’s waist, and his trunk was the size and shape of a hogshead of whiskey. He wore a gray serge suit and a vest, with a heavy gold watch chain depending from its pocket. Although he seemed well into his forties, he had a full head of dark hair, which he wore parted in the middle and slicked back on either side. He stood with his feet slightly spread and his hands on his hips, planted like it would take a pony keg of black powder to move him.
“What the hell is this all about?” he said. He had a low thick voice that suited his body.
Blaze cocked his head toward the floor. “Something they drank disagreed with them.”
The big man gave Blaze a narrow look and pursed his lips. “Who are they?” he asked.
It was Jewel who answered. “Were, ” she said. “They were a couple of gun punks. Now they’re a couple of dead gun punks.”
“Lassiter’s men?”
Jewel shrugged. “How would I know?”
The big man scowled at her. Behind him the townsfolk were silent, eyes darting from the two grisly messes on the floor to the tall dark gunman at the bar.
“I asked you a question,” the big man said to Jewel, his voice a low rumble.
“What do you think?” she snapped.
The big man gave her a hard stare, then turned his look on Blaze.
“How do you fit into this?”
“I saw him ride in not a half hour ago,” McNamer piped up. “Came in from the east, riding ...”
The lawyer caught the look on Blaze’s face and shut his mouth abruptly. He seemed all of a sudden real interested in the toes of his low shoes.
“This is my town,” the big man announced to Blaze.
“Are you braggin’ or bitchin’?”
The big man smiled politely. “There’s trouble in these parts. I’d be obliged if you’d tell me what you’re doing here.”
“Looking for a man.”
The big man nodded, as if so far the conversation was progressing to his satisfaction. “This man got a name?”
“You got a lot of questions,” Blaze rasped. “That’s right,” the big man said, “and I’m used to getting answers.”
Blaze put his hand on the big man’s chest. He didn’t push but just let it stay there for a moment, while he met the big man’s gaze. Without looking at her he said, “Adios, Jewel,” and let his hand drop as he moved past the big man.
The big man grabbed his arm.
Blaze went stock still and stared at the hand gripping his bicep, then slowly raised his look to the big man’s face. For the first time the big man’s self-assurance wavered. He snatched back his hand as if he’d touched something hot. Where the hand had been, on his arm, Blaze felt an unpleasant dampness even through his duster.
“See here,” the big man said. His thick deep voice cracked a mite and he cleared his throat. “I want to offer you a job.”
“As what?”
“Town marshal.”
Blaze glanced at the slump-shouldered old jasper at the door. “You got one.”
“Wait just one minute, Whitaker.” Ephraim McNamer risked a look at Blaze and shook himself like a man about to dive into an ice-cold creek. “We don’t know anything about this man.”
“He shoots real good,” the marshal mumbled. “Beckon we know that much.”
“Well yes,” McNamer went on officiously. “But how do we know for sure he isn’t one of this Lassiter’s henchmen?”
“Shut up, McNamer,” the big man said. He looked at Blaze. “Well?”
“What’re you offering?” Blaze rasped.
The big man smiled sourly. “What do you want?”
“Right now,” Blaze said, “I could use a bath.”
Jewel touched his arm lightly. “I got me a tub upstairs. Got me a boy to haul water, too.”
“Pine.”
“Does that mean you’ll take the job?” Whitaker said eagerly.
“Nope.” Blaze looked at Jewel. “But I’ll take the bath.”
Two
Blaze eased down into the soapy water up to his chin and felt the trail dust start to soak out of his pores. Wisps of steam rose up around his ears. The iron tub was nearly as big as a bed, anyway big enough for a man to stretch out and take his ease. The tub sat in the corner of Jewel’s bedroom. Considering how the saloon downstairs looked, she had fixed up the room pretty nice. There was a double-size bed topped with a multicolored stuffed quilt; a vanity, a sideboard with whiskey and glasses, and two overstuffed chairs covered in plush velvet. The carpet was a mite worn, but it was better than bare wood.
The only window looked north out over the prairie, away from Destiny and the heat of the early-afternoon sun. Inside the room it was twilight dim and almost cool.
