.45-Caliber Deathtrap (13 page)

His arms and legs shook for a time before McGraw fell over them in a bloody heap.

Then it was McGraw whose death spasms wracked his stocky frame for a time, before both prospectors lay limp in death, one atop the other.

“AFTERNOON, LADIES,” CUNO
Massey said, pinching his hat brim and squinting against the wagon dust catching up to him.

He, Serenity Parker, and the Chinaman, Kong, had just pulled up to the big, sprawling, unpainted barracks that was the Heaven's Bane Whorehouse, Saloon, and Gambling Parlor. Spread out upon the raised front stoop before them, a dozen or so girls lounged about the wicker chairs, bar stools, and porch rail, taking the cool, clear afternoon air. One of them played with a frisky, red retriever pup in her lap, the dog trying to chew her earrings.

Blackbirds were lined up on one of the roof's several peaks, taking in the strangers with black-eyed interest, occasionally giving an inquiring caw.

“Hidy,” said a small blonde sitting the railing in only her pantaloons and low-cut chemise, one arm on a rail post as she regarded the three newcomers over her left shoulder. “You boys stoppin' early for the day?”

Serenity Parker wheezed a chuckle and ran a gloved hand across his sunburned nose. “She's purty as a speckled pup!”

The oldster meant the compliment only for Cuno's ears, but the blonde had heard him. She turned her head to him, her smile growing. “Well, thank you, sir. You look like a man needin' a special dance—the mattress kind.” She winked.

Serenity wheezed another, louder laugh, coloring up like a desert sunset. “Honey, I'm afraid you'd stop this old heart!”

Several of the girls laughed. On the other side of Serenity, Kong found nothing to laugh at. He stared at the girls with grim purpose, his anxiety showing in his wide, brown eyes, in the veins standing out on his forehead.

“Actually, we ain't here for rompin', ladies. We're lookin' for a Chinese girl.” Cuno canted his head toward Kong. “This man's daughter. We were told she rode here with a gang two nights back.”

A haggard-looking brunette, leaning against the front wall near the door and smoking a long, black cheroot, blew smoke and chuckled huskily. “I'll say she did. Rode off with 'em too, after running a pigsticker through one man's jaws.”

“Right here,” said the blonde on the railing, placing a long, pale finger low against her cheek, right about where her jaws hinged. “Pinned to a wardrobe till one of his friends worked him free.”

“Gave the girl a good workin' over too,” said the brunette, gazing through her windblown hair at Kong. “I'm sorry, mister. There's no tellin' what's happened to her by now.”

Breathing sharply, Kong rose in his seat like a slow-blowing volcano. He clenched his fists at his sides. “Where is this sonuv'bitch Li Mei stab?
Where
is?”

All the girls looked at him wistfully. The brunette glanced at Cuno, who sat the wagon, the ribbons in his hands, saying nothing.

The brunette lifted the corners of her thin mouth slightly and shuttled her glance back to Kong. “He's upstairs. Room at the end of the hall. He's been in so much pain, carryin' on so crazy, breakin' things, we had to sedate him with laudanum and whiskey.” The corners of her mouth rose still higher. “And a few other things.”

Kong turned to Cuno. “We stop here for while.” It wasn't a question. The Chinaman pressed his hide-wrapped skinning knife against his belt, as if securing it. He climbed down the other side of the wagon, walked around the mules, and mounted the porch steps. He strode purposefully past the whores, though his moccasins barely made a sound on the unpainted porch planks, and entered the Heaven's Bane by one of its two front doors, leaving the door standing wide open behind him.

The retriever pup had eyed Kong's moccasins devilishly. Now the pup leapt from the whore's lap and, its toenails ticking across the planks, ran floppy-eared into the saloon behind the Chinaman.

“Dan-ny!” called the whore. Droopy-eyed, she gave a disgusted chuff, then took a long sip from her whiskey glass and sat back in her chair, lifting her face to the sun.

The blond whore regarded Cuno and Serenity with smoky eyes. “You boys want a drink or a poke while you're waitin'?”

“Speakin' for myself,” Cuno said, wrapping the reins around the brake handle, “I was wonderin' if you gals might have a fast horse in your stable. One I could rent for a few days.”

The blonde shrugged and deferred to the tired-looking brunette. “Most of our horses are buggy nags, but every once in a while our humble abode becomes a man's final restin' place…if you get my drift. You might be able to find one or two spry orphans out in the corral yonder. We got a hostler out there somewhere—Kimbal Logan—but he's probably fishin' this time of the day. Help yourself. Leave a dollar or two so Kimbal can buy him a new braid o' chaw.”

Cuno pinched his hat brim. “Obliged.”

He turned to Serenity, staring up at him curiously. “I'm gonna ride ahead, see if I can fetch Kong's daughter. I got a feelin' time's runnin' out for her. You take over the wagon. I'll trail back when I've found her.”

“How're you gonna get her back…with all them hard cases swarmin' around her?”

Cuno jumped down from the wagon. A cry sounded through the second story's open windows—shrill with anguish and unendurable pain.

A moment later, the retriever pup appeared, bolting out the main doors, slipping on the boards as it turned sharply and leapt into the lap of the whore it had left. The dog whimpered and buried its head in the girl's bosom. The other whores regarded the pup darkly, shuttling their gazes to the yawning front doors as another muffled, anguished cry echoed around inside.

“Oh, Jesus—not again! Help!”

Cuno turned his gaze back to Serenity. “I'll figure that out when I catch up to 'em.” He rummaged around in the wagon box for his war bag and bedroll, then grabbed his rifle and headed for the stables flanking the house. “Keep Kong with you.”

“You sure you know what you're doin'?” Serenity yelled behind him.

Cuno didn't turn around as he mounted the hill toward the corral and stables. “No.”

Cuno chose the only one of the three riding horses in the corral that looked like it still remembered what a saddle was and hadn't been spoiled by oats and long, lazy days following the buggy mares around with its proverbial hat in its hands. The blaze-faced roan was high-stepping and long-legged enough for fast travel, but its broad chest bespoke a good set of lungs as well.

Cuno rigged the horse with a worn but adequate saddle he found in the tack room, then gigged the horse around to the front of the whorehouse, halting beside the wagon. Inside, the wounded hard case was bawling and sobbing like an injured child. At times the voice sounded like that of an enraged, wounded mountain lion.

The bemused whores sat in fascinated silence, drinking and smoking. The pup was cowering on the floor, its head in its paws, between two slippered feet.

“He still at it?” Cuno asked Serenity.

Tugging anxiously on his beard, the old man turned to Cuno. “What do you think he's
doin'
to him in there?”

“Whatever it is, I wish he'd teach me the trick. It'd come in handy once I run down the leader of those butchering renegades.”

As the wails and whines turned to pants and then to a slowly rising squeal, Cuno ground his heels against the roan's flanks. He galloped down the hill and out of the yard, crossing the creek on the wooden bridge, then swerving back onto the main trail toward Sundance.

He soon found the roan was indeed fast as well as a stayer as he and the horse whipped through one canyon and over one pass after another, taking the switchbacks with their heads down, barely slowing for the turns, stopping only for short blows at ridge crests, or for water, or to let an ore wagon or a prospector's supply wagon pass.

The roan was nearly as much horse as Cuno's own paint, Renegade, which he'd left in his own wagon barn in Denver.

He rode hard the first afternoon out from Heaven's Bane, and camped in a hollow along a creek feeding into the St. Vrain River. Up at false dawn and not bothering with coffee, but only some jerky and dry biscuits, he and the horse galloped over the long, sloping shoulder of Taylor Mountain.

By one o'clock that afternoon, he trotted into a clearing in which a handful of makeshift tents and cabins sat on the north bank of the St. Vrain River.

Cloud shadows scudded. Hammer blows rang out as two stoop-shouldered, gray-haired men erected a shanty wall in a small aspen copse. Several others swirled pans in the river shallows, while a handful of women scrubbed clothes along the shore.

As Cuno rode toward the women, they cast him furtive, fearful glances. A stocky, plain-faced, middle-aged woman with dull red hair falling from her soiled poke bonnet stepped out from the crowd to meet him.

“Just ride on, mister,” she said, gritting her teeth and dipping her chin with anger. “We don't want no more trouble!”

Behind her, five other women of various ages seemed to cower as they sidestepped toward the river, holding hands. A few glanced at Cuno warily, then turned to mutter with the others.

Cuno tipped his hat back off his forehead. “I take it the Clayton Cannady bunch has been through here.”

The woman looked at him skeptically, flicked a lock of lusterless red hair from her face. “They sacked our camp, killed a good three quarters of our men, threw 'em in the river like trash. Killed two girls. Took another one for their pleasure.” Balling her wet apron in her freckled fists, the woman stared up at Cuno, her eyes flickering around his chest as if looking for something. “You law?”

Cuno shook his head. “I'm on Cannady's trail just the same, though. I aim to kill him and the rest of his horde.”

“He run roughshod over your camp too?”

“You could say that. How long since he left here?”

“Yesterday.” The woman canted her head upstream. “He left three killers behind. They're waitin' for someone Cannady left farther off down the trail. His kin, or some such. Those three took our weapons and been havin' one heck of a real good time while they wait.”

She glanced behind at the other women, several of whom sported bruised faces, including a couple black eyes, then turned back to Cuno. “The menfolk we're left with are either too old or too young or too
wounded
to do anything without a gun.”

Cuno looked upstream. He couldn't see much beyond a rocky bend. “Up thataway?”

“They're havin' a swim up beyond that horseshoe,” the woman said. “We're supposed to fix 'em a nice meal later…when we get done washin' their clothes.”

Cuno jerked back on the roan's reins, backing the horse away from the women and the river. “You can stop washing their clothes.”

“There's three, and they're poison mean,” the woman warned, shading her eyes with her hand. “You best ride on, young fella. Leave 'em to God.”

“How 'bout if I leave 'em to the devil?”

Cuno neck-reined the roan and trotted upstream, angling across the horseshoe. A dead, bloated dog lay in the short grass and sage, riddled with bullets and sending up a nose-wrinkling death stench.

When Cuno had ridden seventy yards, he spotted three men splashing in a wide, shallow stretch of river, the stones showing just beneath the surface. The water glittered in the afternoon light, the splashes sending up beaded jewels. Laughter rose above the river's own chuckle over the rocks.

Cuno halted the horse, keeping a low rise between him and the renegades.

Two men in the river. One stood along the shore, his back to Cuno, wearing a soggy pair of wash-worn balbriggans. The standing hard case bent his knees slightly and turned right, his stream of yellow piss arcing high over the water, glistening.

The man farther out in the stream, floating on his back in a shallow pool, shouted, “Quit pissin' in the stream, damn you, Germany!”

“You're making the water unfit fer man or beast!” the other man said with a laugh, lying flat in a sandy patch in the rocky bed, lolling like a dead man, his head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut. Like the other man in the river, he appeared naked.

“Fuck you—I'll piss where I want!” Germany retorted, watching his piss stream die, bending his knees and jutting his hips as if to keep it going.

Several other words were exchanged, but Cuno didn't pay attention. He dismounted from the roan, and looked at the Winchester's worn walnut stock jutting up from the saddle boot.

The rifle could be an awkward instrument at close range. The .45 Colt should be adequate.

Cuno turned and, leading the roan, strode toward the shoreline, where the man who'd been pissing now sat on a boulder, an ankle hiked on a knee, rolling a smoke from a hide makings pouch. A Spencer carbine leaned against the rock near the man's left elbow. He paused while rolling the quirley to brush something off his big left toe.

Cuno stopped fifteen feet behind him, and kicked a rock. The man jerked his head toward him, his long, wet hair plastered against his skull. Water shone in his mustache and beard.

He scowled angrily. “Who the hell're you?”