Prairie Fire, page 3
He took a step backward, bringing the bucktoothed bartender into sight. The man had his hand halfway to the pistol butt in his belt. He froze when he realized Luke was watching him.
“You’ve had your drink, mister,” he rasped. “Maybe you should go.”
“Can’t say as I care much for the company anyway,” Luke said. “I’m going to back out that door now. I’ve been riding for a long time, and I want a woman. I see any of you again, I’ll assume you’re there to kill me. I will just start shooting, I promise you that.”
“You should ride far away from here, pendejo,” Fat Juan said.
His long, thick mustache was so bushy it barely moved when he spoke. His eyes, beady as the feral hogs outside, were almost swallowed up by his fat, pock-scarred cheeks.
“Someone take a cheese grater to your face, Gordo?” Luke asked.
Fat Juan snarled in response. Not a curse, but an actual growl, like some rabid cur. Luke felt the beaded curtain at his back. He stepped back with one leg then stopped and lifted the rifle to his shoulder.
“You, long hair,” he said to the blond man still sitting with his back to him. “You think you can turn around quick enough to beat the bullet I’ll put in the back of your head, you just keep reaching for that hogleg.”
Grudgingly, the blond man lifted his hands so Luke could see them. The bounty hunter stepped through the curtain and then to the side. The rotgut burned in his stomach. It had in no way been any sort of fifty-cent-a-shot liquor.
“I’ll be watching this door,” Luke warned. “The first person who shows themselves before I’m knee-deep in whatever passes for women around here gets shot.”
He stepped farther to the side, putting the sod wall between himself and any clear aim. He slammed shut the door he figured was only closed when the bartender slept, or in the winter.
A wise man would get on his horse and ride hell-bent for leather. Men like those three nursed grudges like expensive liquor and were stone-cold bushwhackers.
But a salty gunhand, like say a John Wesley Hardin, wouldn’t think twice about staying in the town. A practiced don’t-give-a-damn killer would dare lesser trail scum like Yellow Dog’s gang to come after him. Luke Jensen wasn’t leaving Craig’s Fork without Daniel Yellow Dog. So it was a lot safer if everyone here thought he was a mean pistoleer instead of an outgunned hunter of wanted men.
He had a hunch his troubles were just starting.
CHAPTER 3
Going to the far side of his horse, Luke walked up the street, keeping his mount between him and the trading post door. Holding the Winchester at the ready, he walked the animal toward the derelict looking hotel. When he got there, he took his horse down an alley between it and another of the town’s ubiquitous sod buildings.
Going around to the rear, he found the hotel’s back door. Several yards away stood an outhouse. Off a little way from it hung a clothesline, heavy with bed sheets rustling softly in the wind.
Holding the Winchester down at his side, Luke entered the hotel through the rear door. He walked with a light step down a narrow hall, past a row of hanging rain slickers. He came out into what had been the hotel lobby some time ago, when the armies of buffalo hunters and hide skinners had been active.
A tall, older black man with iron gray hair, wearing homespun clothes, used a straw broom to idly sweep the floor. He stopped what he was doing when Luke appeared and stared openly at the bounty hunter.
Two soiled doves lounged on an ancient striped divan on the other side of the lobby. The women wore threadbare dresses a far cry from the spangled saloon-girl outfits he’d seen on whores in the cow and mining boomtown meccas of Deadwood, Kansas City, or Denver.
As worn as their clothes were, they perfectly matched the women wearing them. Young, pretty whores didn’t end up in dying towns like Craig’s Fork, for the most part. To his surprise, Luke knew one of them. Upon reflection, he realized he shouldn’t be as surprised as he was by that fact.
The frontier was a vast, wild space, millions of square miles in size. But people congregated in the towns and the denizens of boomtowns tended to be nomadic, migrating as one lively town died down and another popped up somewhere else. Whores were no different from gunmen, gamblers, or dry-goods merchants; they all followed the money.
The woman’s name was Sally Masters, but when he’d known her in Abilene, Texas, and Silver City, New Mexico, she’d been famous under the moniker of Buffalo Hump. She claimed it was because for $10—or a double eagle if the town was truly booming—she’d “hump you like a dern buffalo cow.” While he couldn’t speak personally to her enthusiasm or skill, Luke thought the nickname might have as much to do with her prodigious size as anything else.
When he’d last seen her in Silver City, Buffalo Hump had been well over three hundred pounds at barely five feet tall. Now, she was positively svelte by comparison, a relatively slim two-hundred-twenty pounds or so. Buffalo Hump was going hungry, he realized.
Not only that, but her left eye was purple and black, puffy with swelling. She’d tried hiding it with rouge, pancake makeup, and eyeshadow the same garish red shade as her henna-dyed hair.
Someone had smacked her around a good bit. Luke thought he knew who. As he watched, she poured a slug of something brown and thick from a patent medicine bottle into a spoon and slurped it down.
The face of the woman sitting next to Buffalo Hump was just as battered. Besides sharing a shiner, the woman was almost comically opposite the much larger woman in every way. Tall, she was thin and bony to the point of gauntness. She smoked a fat cigar with disinterested apathy. A bottle of trading-post whiskey sat on the dusty floor between her feet.
Luke stood still for a moment, unsure of how to best play the situation. Daniel Yellow Dog wasn’t anywhere in sight. He assumed the murderer was upstairs with another woman. But Buffalo Hump knew Luke Jensen well. She knew he was a bounty hunter and as unlikely a man to ride the outlaw trail as ever was. Once she recognized him, the charade of him as a desperate gunhawk come to Craig’s Fork, same as any other saddle tramp, was over.
“Howdy, sir,” the black man said, speaking with a pure Alabama river-bottom accent.
At the sound of his voice, both of the women looked over. Immediately Buffalo Hump’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Why, I declare,” she exclaimed. Her words slurred together. “As I live and breathe, Luke Jensen!”
The scrawny prairie hen of a whore next to Buffalo Hump regarded the tall newcomer with interest. As far as potential customers went, this drifter was a rather large step up from the usual Craig’s Fork clientele.
“Hey there, stranger,” she said around her stogie. “Are you looking to enjoy some female company for a while?”
Luke sighed. “Not this time, ladies.”
“The Luke Jensen I know didn’t mind seeing the elephant with a sporting girl,” Buffalo Hump giggled, “or two.”
“I’m here for business.” No sense beating around the bush, he figured. “Not pleasure, I’m afraid.”
Buffalo Hump lost her smile. Her eyes, pupils contracted to pinpoints by whatever narcotic was in the snake oil she drank, flickered toward the stairs leading up to the second floor. Buffalo Hump was a lot of things, Luke thought, but stupid wasn’t one of them. She had wasted no time putting together why he was here.
“What kind of business, mister?” the skinny whore asked.
“Luke Jensen only knows one kind of business,” Buffalo Hump said. “And that’s gun business. He’s a bounty hunter, Misty May.”
Now Misty May’s eyes grew large. In an almost comical mirror of Buffalo Hump, her eyes also flickered upstairs. Unconsciously, she began puffing on her cigar faster, putting out smoke like a locomotive engine.
“Oh,” she replied in a small voice.
Forgoing the spoon this time, Buffalo Hump took a slurp straight from her medicine bottle. When she lowered the bottle, her face was set in a hard scowl, and Luke caught a glimpse of the strong woman he’d known during better times.
“I hope you kill that half-breed skunk,” she spat. “Kill him dead then hang his body from a tree.”
“He’s upstairs, then,” Luke confirmed. “Daniel Yellow Dog.”
“Upstairs beating on Lil’ Kate,” Misty May said, sullen.
“First room,” Buffalo Hump added. “You be careful when you start throwing lead, Luke,” she said. “Katey ain’t even eighteen years old yet.”
“I’m always careful,” Luke told her. “Especially when I’m throwing lead.” Suddenly he realized something was wrong. The black man’s broom was leaning against the wall and he was nowhere to be seen. “Where did the fella who was sweeping up go to?”
“Snuck out the damn window,” Buffalo Hump said. “Luke, that owlhoot Yellow Dog has a gang with him.”
“Yeah, they’re down to the old trading post, drinking. Old Moses is looking to get free drinks from the owner. Those bandits is friends of his,” Misty May added.
“I know about Yellow Dog’s gang,” Luke said. “You ladies best make yourselves scarce.”
“You heard the man,” Buffalo Hump told Misty May.
Heaving her considerable bulk off the sagging couch, Buffalo Hump took hold of her friend’s hand and pulled her up.
“I don’t need to be told twice,” Misty May protested. “I’m coming!”
The skinny whore grabbed the bottle of whiskey off the floor as she rose and the two painted ladies made for a door set in the wall behind the front desk. Luke turned and looked up the staircase as they disappeared.
What he’d come for was right up those steps.
* * *
At the top of the steps ran a short balcony with a railing on one side and several doors opposite. Luke climbed the stairs slowly, rifle ready. Soon Yellow Dog’s men would be coming, and he wanted to face them from a position of strength.
Halfway up the stairs, sound began bleeding out from behind the first door: the telltale sound of mattress springs singing as someone put them through their paces. A few more steps and Luke heard the woman crying despite the racket the bed made. Clearly, she wasn’t enjoying herself.
Luke frowned. He didn’t like seeing women mistreated. That went for sporting girls as well as proper ladies. Whores led rough enough lives as it was. Yellow Dog and his men had obviously been very hard on the women. Reaching the top of the stairs, he paused outside the door, listening.
The squeak of the bed springs was louder here. So was the woman’s crying. Mixed in, Luke made out a series of low grunts coming from a deep, male voice. Rage welled up inside him. His hand went to the doorknob, found it locked.
He switched the Winchester to his left hand.
Snarling, he stepped back and brought the heel of one boot up and kicked hard. He put his foot just inches from the handle and ripped the lock from the doorframe with a loud, flat bang like a gunshot. The door exploded inward and Luke stepped into the room.
He automatically scanned the room for threats, devising tactics on the move.
The room was tiny. A battered dresser stood to his right as he entered. The top of it held a collection of perfume bottles and glass phials. In front of him a nightstand was shoved against the wall. On it was a mirror and metal washbasin next to a clay pitcher. He recognized two or three empty patent medicine bottles like the one Buffalo Hump drank from. Directly opposite the room door was an open window, ratty curtains flapping lazily in the breeze.
Taking up the middle of the cramped room sat a worn, iron frame bed with dirty sheets on a sagging mattress. The whore named Katey lay facedown on it, sobbing. Daniel Yellow Dog covered her naked body like a blanket.
Startled and angered by the door being kicked in, he whipped his head around and shouted, “Who the hell—”
On the far side of the bed sat a wooden chair. On it lay Yellow Dog’s filthy dungarees and leather gunbelt. In the holster was a bone handled Colt Peacemaker.
“Get your hands up!” Luke barked.
Instead, Yellow Dog lunged for the .45 with his left hand. Luke stepped around the bed and whipped down the barrel of the Winchester. It struck the outlaw’s forearm with a meaty thwack, and Yellow Dog cried out in pain.
“Next time you get a bullet,” Luke warned. “Now get off that girl and stand in the corner by the dresser. Go on.”
Yellow Dog was a big man. Tall enough to look Luke in the eye. His large frame was heavily muscled. Several nasty scars showed on his coppery skin. He moved slowly to get off the bed, and when he shifted, Luke saw Katey for the first time.
She was young. Younger by far than Buffalo Hump or Misty May. Her body was covered with bruises and bite marks, her makeup ran in streaks from her tears. She continued sobbing. Her nose was broken, leaving dark bruises under both her blue eyes. Her lip was swollen and split.
Seeing the abuse, Luke decided Yellow Dog wasn’t moving fast enough. He clubbed him across the face with the Winchester barrel. Yellow Dog’s head snapped around as blood and teeth fragments flew from his mouth. The outlaw staggered, still naked, into the corner.
Luke leveled the Winchester.
“Give me an excuse,” he all but pleaded. “You breathe the wrong way and I’ll put holes in you.”
“Go to hell, lawman,” Yellow Dog answered.
He may have been cruel and a bully, but he was clearly no coward, for all his mistreatment of women. His black eyes burned with hate, and Luke knew if he hadn’t caught him with his pants down, the killer would have gone down fighting.
“Katey,” Luke asked, voice gentle, “can you get up?”
The girl looked at him blankly. Luke feared the shock of his entrance after Yellow Dog’s mistreatment had been too much for her. Her eyes were unfocused as if her mind were far away. She seemed to be staring out through the window curtains and into the vast space of the prairie beyond.
“Katey?” Luke repeated softly. “Katey, can you hear me? Honey, I need you to get up now.”
“Can’t wait to take your turn, lawman?” Yellow Dog taunted. Turning his square, brutish head, he spat out a stream of blood.
“I’m not a lawdog,” Luke told him. “I hunt bounties. Since yours gets paid off dead just as well as alive, I’d consider shutting your damn mouth.”
“You’re never making it out of this dung heap alive.”
“You’re not making it out of this room alive if I have to tell you to shut the hell up one more time.”
The outlaw glared at him but kept silent. For the moment.
“Katey?” Luke urged. He feared he didn’t have long until Yellow Dog’s men showed up.
The young girl blinked and the focus slowly returned to her eyes. She still lay prone on the bed, trembling. Without moving, she looked away from the window and found where Luke stood.
“Is he gone?”
Her voice sounded small and soft. But when Yellow Dog began laughing at her question, a look of terror seized her face and she fell silent again.
Downstairs the front door slammed open and Luke heard several boots pounding the floorboards. Cursing, he looked at the outlaw. Yellow Dog smiled. He knew as well as Luke did that his men had arrived. There was no time to waste.
Moving quickly, Luke leaned his Winchester against the wall behind him and took hold of Katey’s arm. He hauled her upright and stood her next to him while keeping his eye on Yellow Dog. Katey started crying again as her knees buckled and she stumbled against him.
He caught her easily enough, but in the half-second he looked away from Yellow Dog, the outlaw sprang. If he’d tried diving for the door, Luke would have killed him easily enough. Instead, he leaped forward, screaming a warning to his men.
“Up here!”
Luke fired, but Yellow Dog was already lunging under the muzzle of the Remington. The naked killer slammed into Katey and drove her slight body into Luke’s. Luke staggered backward, and his shoulders rammed against the wall.
Katey screamed in terror and confusion as Luke, desperate now, tried pushing her clear. Outside the door, footsteps clomped up the steps at a run. Yellow Dog snatched his Peacemaker clear of the holster resting on the chair.
Luke slung Katey to the side, throwing her sprawling across the bed. Yellow Dog was already turned and leveling the Colt .45 at the bounty hunter. In the doorway, Ole Dirty appeared with a hogleg Colt Dragoon .44 caliber pistol in his hands.
Luke threw himself to the side, covering Katey’s body with his own as he fired. The Remington barked and jumped in his hand. The Peacemaker belched flame at the same time, and the double report echoed loudly in the tiny room.
A bullet punched into the mattress next to Luke’s head, kicking up a confetti-like snow of ticking and fiber. Katey screamed. Yellow Dog’s throat exploded, spraying blood and gristle across the wall. He slumped, eyes crossed as if trying to see the wound that killed him, and fell.
Luke rolled toward the foot of the bed, still shielding the girl’s body with his own. He brought his pistol around with him.
Ole Dirty was in the room. The Dragoon looked like a cannon in his skeleton-thin hands. Luke aimed the Remington and fanned the hammer. The gun boomed in his hand, muzzle spitting flame. From point-blank range, three slugs drilled the skinny owlhoot.
Bright blossoms of scarlet opened on his chest, and his knees buckled. Two of the heavy-caliber bullets burst out his back and shattered the mirror on the night table with a crash. Martin Hascomb fell hard, and the last beats of his heart pumped blood from his wounds with enough force to splash the dresser.
Luke stayed in motion, rolling over until his stomach was on the bed. He held the Remington one handed and fired the last two shots at Fat Juan as he drew his second pistol.
“Get on the floor, Katey!” he shouted.
His shots took the Mexican bandit in the belly, and the killer triggered his pistol into the ceiling as he spun. Right behind him was the bartender, the bucktoothed man holding a Greener double-barrel .12 gauge.
He jumped to avoid the big Mexican’s falling body and tried swinging the shotgun to bear, but Luke had pulled the second Remington. Katey screamed again. The cry was a high, piercing sound that echoed as loudly as the guns. Gunsmoke hung in an acrid, miasmic cloud.
