Destined to Die (14 page)

‘Annie has more of everything,’ she said softly after allowing a silence during which Barnaby Gold surveyed her nakedness. ‘But she’s been used so many times. Only one man has had me, and all he’s ever done is prepare me for...’

She let her voice trail away, and her look of challenge was replaced by one of breathless expectancy while she watched him slowly turn back the bedcovers and swing his feet to the floor. Stand up and crush out the cheroot on the wall. Check that all the sparks were out before he started to come toward her.

Then she held out her arms to him, her lips parted and she ran the tip of her tongue along between her teeth.

‘I promise you, you won’t be sorry, Barnaby.’ She closed her eyes and vented a soft sigh as he moved between her outstretched arms.

‘Okay, Mrs Dalton.’

‘Fran.’

She interlocked her fingers at the nape of his neck. And her flesh trembled when he stooped to hook one arm behind her knees as the other went around her back. Then she moaned and pushed her face into the crook of his neck when he lifted her smoothly and easily off her feet.

‘Treat me like the woman I know I am, Barnaby,’ she whispered, her warm breath on his ear. ‘Make me feel the way a woman is supposed to when she gives herself to a man.’

He started to carry her toward the bed.

‘Oh, how I’ve longed for a moment like this, my darling.’

He stopped and leaned forward slightly.

‘You have to let go from around my neck now, lady.’

‘Oh, yes. Anything. I’ll do anything you ask me to, Barnaby.’

She freed her hold on him. And he let her go. It was too far to fall. She started a gasp of alarmed surprise. Then vented a short scream as her naked flesh hit the night-cooled, scummy water in the hipbath. The sound short-lived, because the coldness of the water took her breath away.

Barnaby Gold came erect after holding down his hand to keep the back of her head from banging against the rim of the tub.

‘You evil monster!’ she rasped at him.

After staring up at him in rage: venting her anger in a whisper when she saw his warning finger pressed to his lips. Then she struggled to get out of the water, but he dropped on to his haunches and held her down with a hand under the surface, splayed on her belly.

‘I am what I am, lady.’

She bit back on a snarling retort. Asked simply: ‘Why?’

‘It’s the way I’m made.’

She shook her head. ‘Why did you do this to me?’ Anger got the better of puzzlement. ‘You’re nothing like the man Annie thinks you are. Can’t you handle two women in one night?’

‘Not when one of them’s married, lady.’

‘That’s no damn excuse.’

He nodded. ‘Not an excuse. A reason.’ He stood up. ‘Best you dry off now and go back to your husband. If he wants anything, guess you’ll be glad it’ll be over fast’

He went to the bed and sat on it. Watched her while she got from the tub, towelled herself vigorously and put on her sparse clothing. Bitter resentment was inscribed deeply into the flesh of her face and showed in her every move. Then, when she was ready to leave, a different brand
of pleading was directed toward Barnaby Gold.

‘You won’t mention this to Arnie?’

‘Best for him if he never knows. Or only finds out after you’re dead, Mrs Dalton.’

She looked hard at him, trying to read what lay behind his deadpan expression and flat tone. Then said suddenly: ‘You were married. And she cheated on you.’

‘Just go, Mrs Dalton.’

She opened the door. ‘And she’s the reason you are what you are.’

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘No, lady. She’s the reason why I have to kill some men before I can be what I want to be.’

‘What’s that?’

‘In Europe.’

She seemed about to ask another question. But from the way he sat on the edge of the bed, peering across the room and out through the window, his profile hard-set, she decided against it. Was about to close the door on him.

‘Mrs Dalton?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do something for me?’

‘Why the hell should I?’

‘Part of the service here.’

‘What?’

‘Go get the whore and send her to me.’

‘Whoring won’t get you over losing a woman you loved as much as your wife.’

‘It’ll ease the feeling I’ve got from seeing and holding you stark naked, lady,’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SHERIFF Floyd Polk was a big man in build. Three inches taller than six feet and weighing close to two hundred and fifty pounds. He was in his mid-forties and maturely good-looking with liquid brown eyes and a full and generous mouth: his lined and tanned complexion emphasised by a full head of slicked down, whitening hair that showed just an occasional strand of black.

He was dressed in blue denim pants, a brown shirt with white piping on it, red kerchief with white polka dots and a brown Stetson. Despite the trail dust clinging to his outfit, the clothing looked newly purchased. As did the gun-belt with an etched Remington .44 in the right hip holster.

The pinto gelding he rode and the saddle he rode in were past their prime, but well cared for.

Barnaby Gold watched
Bacall’s lawman ride down the north trail a little after sunrise:
standing at the open window in the process of getting dressed while Anne Kruger continued to sleep soundly in the bullet-holed bed, her naked body covered by blankets.

The lone rider, who looked pleasantly weary from a long but not arduous trip, did a double-take at the mound of the fresh grave before fording the creek. Then briefly surveyed the saloon’s shattered window: but gave no indication that he was aware of being watched from above as he moved on by, down the deserted curve of the street, the five-pointed bright metal star pinned to his left breast pocket glinting in the early sunlight.

He dismounted just beyond the church and went from sight between it and the house next door.

Gold finished dressing and then went out through the window, along the balcony and down the stairs at the creek side of the hotel, wearing his gun-belt but leaving the Murcott in the room. By the time he was seated in the rocker from which he had fired the shotgun a few hours earlier, the sheriff had opened the front door and two windows to rid his house of the stuffiness from being empty for a lengthy period. Gold lit his first cheroot of the day and waited patiently as smoke began to wisp from the house chimney.

It was perhaps fifteen minutes before Polk reappeared on the street, his clothing brushed free of dust and carrying a large mug of steaming coffee. To cross diagonally toward the law office and gaolhouse.

Gold set out on a converging course and Polk was turning a key in the lock of the door when
his caller reached him.

‘You opening up for business, Sheriff Polk?’

‘My job lasts twenty-four hours in a day if it’s necessary, son. Leave the door open, will you.’

The office was small and functional. A desk with a comfortable chair in back of it and a hard-seated, straight-backed one in front. A small table with a freestanding closet next to it against one wall. A rifle rack with six Winchesters padlocked in place across from this. A one-piece metal door with a spy-hole in it which gave on to the gaol section of the building. No clutter and just a thin coating of dust on everything, this having gained entry along with the stuffy air via ill-fitting windows and the crack around the door.

Polk set down his mug on the desk, dropped loose-limbed into the chair behind it and indicated his visitor should take the other one in front. Then he began to sip his coffee noisily, eyeing Gold expectantly over the rim of the mug. Until he noticed the ash on Gold’s cheroot was growing long. When he drew open a drawer, took out a burn-stained tin can lid and pushed it across the desk.

‘Appreciate it.’

‘No trouble, son. Way I like it to be in this town.’

‘How far does your jurisdiction extend, sheriff?’

From another drawer, he took out a large sheet of paper, folded several times. Gave Gold the chore of unfolding it to see it was a three foot by four foot map of the area around Bacall. With a heavy red pencil line marking the boundaries of Polk’s authority. A strip of terrain much longer
than it was broad, limited to the west by the Colorado, the high points of the Mohave Mountains to the east and the Bacall Creek to the north. His domain spread far enough southward to encompass all the homesteads worked by the mountain people from Tennessee.

Gold refolded the map and pushed it back across the desk. ‘There was a lot of trouble during yesterday and last night.’

A nod. ‘It goes with your kind, son.’

‘My kind?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me. The ordinary man doesn’t wear the kind of rig you got slung around your middle, son.’

‘I came here to tell you about the trouble, sheriff.’

‘I’m listening.’

Barnaby Gold told him. Giving him an even-voiced catalogue of the killings since he discovered the carelessly buried corpses of Virgil and Mary-Ann Engel.

When Polk had finished his coffee and did not have the big mug to hide behind, his face was seen to be as impassive as that of the black-clad young man he was listening to.

Then: ‘This Clinton Davis and the two men you buried on the far side of the creek? Just personal, you say. So as lawmen hereabouts I can just forget them three are dead and in the ground.’

Gold clicked his tongue and crushed out what remained of his cheroot in the lid. ‘Pro gunslingers, sheriff. Hired by a family in west Texas called the Channons. To find me and kill me. There’ll be more. Which is why I want this trouble with the homesteaders cleared up.’

‘Reckon I can understand that. But first I’ll need to be sure about the three men you buried, son.’

‘Okay.’

‘Can’t just take your word about the way they died. Talk to the Daltons and Annie about the
shoot-out at the hotel. Then take a ride down to the Wolfe place. Because if you didn’t shoot down two men in self-defence and that Clinton Davis didn’t die the way you told it...’ He shrugged his broad, expensively clothed shoulders. ‘Well, son, I’ll be forced to conclude you lied about the rest of it.’

The two men gazed into each other’s eyes fixedly.

‘You get my drift, son?’

‘When you can’t sweep trouble under the carpet, you sell it down the river, Sheriff?’

Another shrug. ‘A man can only be hanged once. And it seems to me, it don’t matter who does the lousy job.’

Gold got to his feet. ‘Appreciate you being such a good listener, sheriff.’

‘Make one stipulation, though.’

‘Uh?’

‘I need to be sure the man is guilty of a hanging crime.’

Gold nodded and turned to leave the office.

‘Son?’

The younger man halted on the threshold and looked back over his shoulder.

‘You best remain in town until I’ve completed my investigation. Because if you don’t, I may have to consider flight as an admission of guilt. And even if I or the hillbillies don’t catch up with you, some sheriff or bounty hunter will. After I’ve telegraphed a wanted flyer on you. All right?’

‘All right.’

Barnaby Gold stepped out on to the sun-bright street and smelled the woodsmoke from many chimneys in the warm air.

He turned to walk down the curving slope, heading for the commercial section of Bacall, his good-looking face offering no clue to how he felt about the attitude of Sheriff Floyd Polk.

It was still very early and none of the stores were open so he went on by. And the aromas of cooking food and bubbling coffee began to permeate the smoke-tainted atmosphere as he took his lone walk to the southern end of the street.

Moving between the tree-shaded houses with their picket-fenced gardens in this section of town, he sensed eyes watching his progress. And paid them no heed.

He crossed the town limit under the overhead sign and came to a halt. Stood for several minutes gazing implacably out along the trail that snaked down the high ground into the valley, where lived a group of people who took care of their own trouble.

No homestead was close enough to be seen from this viewpoint. And there was no sign that the men who worked the homesteads were riding toward Bacall. To ensure, perhaps, that the gunslingers hired by the Channons of Texas had for once relieved the Gershels and the Wolfes and the rest of the need to utilise vigilante justice.

Ride for Bacall they certainly would. Unless Sheriff Floyd Polk was better at his trade than Jake and Chester, Clinton Davis and Arkin had been.

Barnaby Gold moved off the trail to the side of a small wood. Selected a lightning-struck oak some twenty feet away, drew the Peacemaker from the holster and emptied its chambers into the charred and dead tree. Gripping the gun double-handed and holding it out at arm’s length, at eye level.

The burst of gunfire erupted shouts of alarm from the houses at the southern end of the street.

He glanced briefly and indifferently at the men and women who came from doorways to see
the reason for the shooting. Then closed to within ten feet of the oak and began to practise with the swivel-rigged Peacemaker. Spacing the shots at three-second intervals.