.45-Caliber Deathtrap (8 page)

Cannady threw back one of his two whiskey shots and slowly set the glass on the table, studying on what he'd just been told. He nodded slowly. “They'll get the drop on the sheriff and any other deputies, so we'll only have to worry about any heroes on the street.”

“And guards from the mine,” Burdette said, licking beer foam from his giant, drooping mustache. “The way Case figured it, we'll hit the bank as the loot's bein' transferred to this big, steel-frame wagon they been usin' to haul the gold down the mountains to Camp Collins in the eastern foothills. That's easiest. If we wait till the gold's in that wagon, which is more or less a big goddamn bank vault on wheels, we'll need a ton of Giant black powder to get to it…and probably blow ourselves to smithereens.”

“Still gonna hit on Saturday?”

Burdette shook his head. “Next Tuesday. Full week. They keep changin' the schedule. That's another good reason to have Willie and Alfred workin' the inside. They're privy to every schedule change as soon as it's made. They and the sheriff and the two other deputies will be helpin' the mine guards make the transfer from the bank to the hell wagon.”

“Hell wagon?”

“That's what that big steel wagon's come to be called by our fellow long riders,” said Burdette with a chuckle. “Because once that gold's inside, it might as well be in hell for all the good it's gonna do anybody tryin' to get it out.”

“Clayton Cannady, you son of a bitch!”

Cannady turned his head. A handsome, medium-tall gent was walking toward him, a tan duster flapping about his whipcord trousers and revealing a pearl-gripped Colt in a shoulder holster. Case Oddfellow smiled, showing a full set of perfect white teeth, a raven's wing of wavy hair flopping across his forehead. He moseyed up and stuck his hand out to Cannady.

“Had a French lesson yet?” he shouted above the unceasing noise. “They do 'em good around here!”

“Not yet,” Cannady said. “But since Karl's done filled me in on Sundance, I reckon—”

Two pistol pops sounded somewhere above Cannady's head. A girl screamed—a long, shrill, bewitching exclamation of gut-wrenching terror.

The whorehouse din softened only slightly.

The pistol popped two more times, and a man shouted. The words were badly garbled, as if the man was yelling around a mouthful of rocks.

Cannady made out the words “Fuckin' bitch whore, I'll see you in holy hell!”

The din died to a low murmur.

“Shit,” Cannady said, standing heavily after the hard ride and his two whiskey shots. “Think I recognize that voice.”

He hitched up his gun belt, cursed again, and made for the stairs.

AS CANNADY CLIMBED
the stairs, the girl screamed again. Again, the pistol barked, and the bullet clanged sharply off metal.

Cannady chuckled dryly and hurried his pace. Nothing like shootin' up a whorehouse to draw attention to the whole gang.

Several half-clad men and girls were standing around the second-story hall, casting agitated glances at the closed, plank-board door at the hall's far end. The hall was so dark, lit only by flickering lamplight angling through a couple of open doors to the right and left, that Cannady didn't see Ed Brown till he'd nearly passed the man.

“Sounds like Paxton.” Naked save for his feathered black hat, Brown wheezed a soft laugh. “Let me know if ye need any help.” He turned back into the room, in which Cannady glimpsed a pair of naked female legs and a woman's bare ass on a bed, and closed the door behind him.

Cannady stopped at the door behind which the shots had been fired. Now only soft whimpers sounded, like those of a small dog, and a wooden scratching, as if rats were chewing the curtains.

Cannady tapped the door. “Paxton, what the fuck is goin' on in there, boy? You tryin' to alert Judge Bean over to Fort Smith?”

Paxton sobbed. There was a wooden thump and another scratch. Cannady drew his pistol, threw the door open, and peered into the shadows cast by a single candle flickering in a shot glass. Naked, Paxton knelt on the other side of the small room, his left cheek pressed to a stout wooden cabinet.

His chest rose and fell sharply. Sweat shone on his pale back. His right arm was covered with blood. So was his cheek and shoulder, Cannady saw as his eyes adjusted. He also saw the hilt and handle of the knife protruding from Paxton's face. Apparently, the blade had gone through Paxton's face, pinning his head to the bureau.

One of Paxton's Colt Navies lay in a spray of blood near his right foot, not far from a wooden water bucket, a bedsheet that had been twisted, soaked, and knotted into a deadly whip, and strewn clothes.

His face carved with incredulity, Cannady stepped into the room. He stopped when Paxton, grunting and cursing, lifted his second Navy in his left hand, then, keeping his left cheek pressed snug against the cabinet, extended the gun toward the bed and fired.

Though he'd seen it coming, Cannady jumped at the loud report, his nostrils peppered with powder smoke.

“Paxton, ye crazy—”

Candlelight flickered off the smooth, obsidian handle of the knife embedded in Paxton's right jaw. Every movement evoked a cry or a muffled curse or both.

Again, Paxton fired toward the bed, the bullet sparking off the brass frame and embedding itself in the wall beyond with a crisp smack. Cannady heard the girl's sobs, but he couldn't see her. Probably under the bed.

“Christ!”

The outlaw leader moved forward, grabbed Paxton's pistol as the man raised it once more, jerked it from his hand, and flung it against the far wall. He took his own pistol in his left hand, wrapped his right hand around the knife's black handle, and gave it a jerk. It wouldn't come.

Paxton slapped a hand to the cabinet and bellowed like a poleaxed bull.

Reasserting his grip on the knife's handle, Cannady propped his left boot against the cabinet and pulled again.

Paxton's scream seared Cannady's eardrums as the knife sprang free of wood and flesh in a blood spray. Paxton fell back against the armoire, arms flapping like a crazed bird's wings, eyelids fluttering before staying closed.

His head slumped to the floor, and he lay still.

Cannady inspected the bloody knife. He'd never seen a handle so black. Some wood he'd never seen. The blade was long, thin, and serrated, the very tip hooked to make removal not only excruciating but deadly.

“Shit,” Cannady grunted, bemused.

He became aware of breathing and shuffling behind him, and turned to the door. Several half-clad gang members were peering into the room, keeping their feet planted in the hall as if afraid to enter a werewolf's den.

Cannady canted his head toward Paxton. “Tend him.” He turned to the bed. His dark gums and brown teeth shone between his spread lips as he grabbed the bed frame, pulled it brusquely out from the wall, and aimed his pistol at the gap.

The girl cowered on her knees, head in her hands. Feeling the bed pulled away, she jerked her head up, her pale, oval face horrified, cheeks slick with tears.

“Come on, honey,” Cannady said, depressing his pistol's hammer and dropping the gun in its sheath. He bent down, grabbed the girl's arm, and slung her over his shoulder as if she weighed little more than a feather pillow. She shuddered and made a keening sound as he headed for the door.

“You deserve a man like yourself,” Cannady said, pushing into the hall. “And you done found him.”

An hour after sunup the next morning, Cuno Massey and Serenity Parker rode into a small, unnamed crossroads settlement situated in the V between two sun-dappled creeks. The sounds of picks and chisels hammering rock rose from the upper slopes, and an occasional dynamite blast echoed, scaring waxwings from the pine trees.

A young bearded man in a flat-brimmed, low-crowned leather hat and high, laced boots stood knee-deep in the southern fork, swirling a partly submerged pan while a golden retriever splashed from bank to bank, chasing invisible ducks.

As Massey steered his wagon toward the chinked-log blacksmith barn on their right, loud voices rose from the big canvas and wood structure, a board shingle announcing
MERCANTILE
, on their left. The mercantile's double doors burst open and four big men in long coats appeared on the broad front stoop, carrying a small, round-faced, black-haired gent between them like a battering ram.

The four saddle horses tied to the hitch rack gave a start, sidling away, as the four men swung the diminutive gent forward and back, counting the swings.

“Five!”

They catapulted the little gent a good fifteen feet straight out from the boardwalk, his body a blur as it arced over the street before Cuno's wagon. It plopped belly-down in mud left by a passing shower.

There was no splash. Just a dull, wet plop.

“Like Wild Dan said,” shouted one of the throwers, black-bearded, pale-skinned, and wearing a broad-brimmed Stetson, “no Chinks allowed!”

Laughing, he and the other three wheeled and walked back into the mercantile. The doors stood wide behind them. The chimney pipe poking from the roof sent blue smoke flattening out over the dirty canvas and tinging the air with pine.

Cuno stopped his mules fifteen feet from the short, slender man lying belly-down in the mud. The man lifted his round, mud-smeared face, spat filth from his lips. He raised an arm to clean his face, only smearing it. Finally, he pushed himself onto his knees. As he looked around through enraged eyes, his gaze landed on Cuno and Serenity.

“Why you stare?” he growled in a heavy Chinese accent. He raised his small, pale fists. “I in way? Go 'round! Get the hell outta my sight, or I climb up and beat the hell outta you both!”

Cuno held the man's gaze for a moment, glanced again at the mercantile, then gigged the mule forward, swinging wide of the Chinaman and stopping before the blacksmith barn. He set the break and dropped over the wheel, landing flat-footed.

“Have the smithy tend that rim and tar the axle,” he told Serenity. Without waiting for a reply, he strode over to where the Chinamen knelt in the mud.

“Gosh darn,” Serenity said, rubbing a nervous hand across his beard. “It's awful early fer trouble…”

As Serenity sidled around the mule, heading for the barn's open door while casting nervous glances at Cuno, Cuno crouched beside the Chinaman.

The man was rubbing a sleeve of his black, wool coat across his face. Lowering the arm, he saw Cuno, and jerked with a start. Cuno extended a clean, red handkerchief. The man looked at it, his black eyes gaining a wary cast as they returned to Cuno's.

The freighter canted his head toward the mercantile. “What do you need?”

Skeptically, as if expecting the handkerchief to be snapped away, he pinched the dangling cloth between two fingers green-caked with fresh horse shit. “Tea, flour. Rope.”

Cuno stood and began moving toward the mercantile.

“Monkshood tea.”

Cuno stopped, turned.

“Some ground wheat and beans,” the Chinaman added somberly, bowing his head. “And a little molasses…for sweet.”

Cuno snorted, turned, and mounted the mercantile's broad stoop, glanced at the live chickens hunkered in cages stacked left of the door. A sign over one of the cages read:
RHODE ISLAND REDS—$1.
Passing through the open doors, Cuno slung his gaze around the broad tent lined with overflowing shelves on two sides and packed with crates and barrels. A long counter stood to his right.

Near the smoky stove in the far left corner, the four bearded men played Red Dog atop a nail keg, hats shoved back on their heads. The man whom Cuno took to be the leader sat his chair backward, resting a brawny arm on the back and berating one of his brethren for betting too low. He wore a long braid down his back, Indian style, though he was definitely a white man.

The air smelled of tobacco smoke, moldy canvas, and the assorted dry goods straining the whipsawed pine shelves.

As Cuno looked around, a portly, clean-shaven gent in soiled duck trousers and a black opera hat entered through the back door with an armload of split pine logs. He gave Cuno a bored glance, dumped the wood into the crate beside the stove, then sauntered behind the counter. He stopped across from Cuno, who was eyeing the new repeaters racked beside a Cuckoo clock trimmed with a placard that promised,
MADE IN SWITSERLAND!

“What'll it be, mister?” the big gent said with a tired sigh.

“Rope, molasses, wheat, beans, and tea. Monkshood tea. On a separate ticket, put a bag of Arbuckles, bottle of whiskey, ten pounds of oats, four boxes of forty-four shells, one of forty-fives.”

The man's dull blue eyes sharpened suspiciously as he studied Cuno from beneath the brim of the shabby opera hat, the crown of which was decorated with a single, long, curved tooth of a grizzly bear. Cuno held the man's gaze with a mild one of his own. Behind him and left, the four bearded gents stopped bickering. Cuno felt their eyes on his back.

The portly gent behind the counter slid a quick glance at the others, then slowly turned to begin filling the order.

A man behind Cuno grunted, “Monkshood tea.” A slight pause. “Ain't that what that slanty-eyed heathen ordered?”

Cuno kept his back to the man, fists on the countertop. top. “That's what he ordered.”

The portly clerk stopped dipping molasses into a jar to regard Cuno gravely, then slid his eyes to the rear of the room. At length, he continued filling Cuno's order.

Cuno looked into a sack of hard candy, perused a box of miners' denim. He'd picked up a hobnailed boot and was inspecting the heel when a chair scraped across the hard-packed floor.

Boots scuffed toward him. The big gent with the braid appeared to Cuno's left, bending over the counter to get a look at his face.

“You buyin' tea fer that Chink?” The man curled his upper lip. “Who the hell you think you are?”

Cuno set the boot down and turned to the man, whose brown eyes flashed angry little darts. “Name's Massey, and I'll buy tea or anything else for anyone I like.”

The clerk set a small burlap bag on the counter. “That's the tea an' such,” he grumbled.

The bearded gent with the braid kept his eyes on Cuno, but addressed the clerk. “Put it back, Roy.”

Roy's lips moved, but he didn't say anything as he shuttled his tentative glance between Massey and the hard case with the braid.

“Total it up,” Cuno told him.

The hard case stretched a disbelieving smile and hitched an elbow on the counter. He cast a glance at the back of the room, where the other three men had fallen silent, then returned his mocking gaze to Cuno.

“Young man, what'd I just tell you? Roy here has a policy against servin' heathen furriners.”

Cuno kept his eyes on the hard case, but addressed Roy. “Total it up and start fillin' the other order.”

The hard case chuffed and dropped his head sharply, as if he couldn't believe the stupidity of this tinhorn.

The men at the back of the tent chuckled. “Maybe he's foreign his ownself and needs an English lesson,” said one.

A chair scraped back, and the man nearest the stove, wearing a deerskin cloak around his shoulders, said, “Maybe he needs the same English lesson we gave the Chink.”

“I don't know,” said the man nearest Cuno, staring at the others, chuckling. “Maybe he just needs his ears cleaned out. And you know me, boys. I got just the thing.”

He wheeled toward Cuno, swinging his right fist. Cuno raised his left hand, palm out.

The hard case's fist smacked into it as if against a stone wall. The hard case's eyes narrowed in shock. Cuno stared into them blandly as he closed his fingers over the hard case's fist, snapped the man's hand back sharply.