Gun Work: The Further Exploits of Hayden Tilden (22 page)

“Please forgive the impetuousness of my younger brother, gentlemen,” she said.

Then, she glanced at the boy, appeared to grit her teeth, patted him on the arm, and with a tight grin on her face, turned back to us. “Of course, you're absolutely right, Marshal Tilden. Cannot imagine what I was thinking when I said that I wouldn't go back to Fort Smith with you. Tomorrow morning we'll be packed and ready to leave at your convenience. I trust you'll send someone by to pick us up for the trip to the depot?”

“Indeed. We'll engage the services of a gentleman named Fletcher Turnbow. Mr. Turnbow owns a wagon yard and livery about four blocks south of here on Main Street. He has transportation more than adequate to meet your needs.”

The girl stood. Hands daintily clasped to one side, she flashed a cold, thin-lipped, dismissive smile. Said, “Well, then, if you'll excuse us, my brother and I will see to our belongings and prepare for the trip.” Then she stepped forward, shook my hand, moved to Carl, and on to Nate. She threw us a final, wooden nod and headed for the suite's bedroom.

The brother kept his position and glared at us.

Barely detectable hitch in Daisy Cassidy's step as I called out to her back, “As Marshal Farmer's policemen will remain posted outside your door tonight, miss, I would recommend that both of you keep to the room.” Didn't even hear the door as she pushed it closed behind her.

Carl slipped his hat on and mumbled, “Appears Her Royal Highness has left the room, and we've been summarily dismissed, gents.”

When we hit the first-floor landing near the hotel's desk, Nate pulled us to a stop in the lobby and said, “Is it just me, or did you boys come away from that meeting with the feeling we'd just witnessed some sort of unsettling game?”

Carlton cast a darting glance around the hotel's reception area. “Not sure how to feel about the whole dance myself. But I'll tell you one thing, boys, those kids are hiding something. Ain't a single thing about the pair of 'em seems right. Be willing to bet the family manse they ain't brother and sister, tell you that for sure.”

Spent the rest of that afternoon in the hotel's bar, or down at Turnbow's wagon yard. While we checked over our mounts, ole Fletch flashed a snaggle-toothed grin and said, “Aw, hell, yeah. I'll get that little gal and her brother to the depot in high style. Won't even charge you fer the trip, bein' as how you fellers kept these animals a yern with me. Be my pleasure.”

By the time the sun went down, came to feel pretty good about getting on back to Fort Smith. Looked forward to heading home to Elizabeth quick as I could. But, as sometimes happens, not long after I drifted into a dreamless sleep that evening, fate stepped in and reared its ugly, unruly head.

SWEAR I MUST have been a lot more worn down by the previous week's events than I thought when my head hit the pillow that night. Plunged into the pitch-black well of deep sleep, and guess I didn't even so much as twitch for about an hour or so. Then, I tossed, turned, and spent the rest of that night plagued by a nightmare that never seemed to end.

Can't say as I remember all that much in the way of details about the unearthly vision. Can recall as how it had something to do with being pulled into a sucking, howling, bottomless pit by a grasping, vinelike morass of human arms—women's arms. Then, about half a second before I felt like a calamitous ruination was most assuredly descending upon me, a thunderous pounding at the back of my dozing brain snapped my more-than-willing eyes open quicker than Heaven's golden gate could slam shut on hated Judas.

Blinked myself to something akin to wakefulness just as the shadowy figure of Nate Swords, dressed in nothing but a pair of balbriggans and run-down boots, stumbled across the room. Pistol in hand, he caught his toe on something, swore, then jerked the door open.

Sounded right snappish when Nate said, “For the love of sweet Jesus, it's the middle of the night, Bob. What the hell you want?”

Bob Evans stood in the doorway and went to yammering like an escapee from the lunatic ward of one of those hospitals for the criminally insane. But none of what he was saying seemed to make any sense.

Sat up. Shook a mess of nightmarish cobwebs out of my head. Climbed out of the bed as Nate moved to a nightstand. He turned the wick up on a kerosene lamp to put a bit of light on the situation. Honest to God, in that lantern's flickering, reddish-yellow glow, Deputy Town Marshal Bob Evans had all the outward manifestations of a man who'd just seen a ghost. Or maybe something real that had proved way beyond his ability to understand it.

“Hurry. You fellers need to hurry. Don't have to be fully dressed,” Evans said and sucked air as though drowning. “Just get yourselves decent. Come on. Have something you've gotta come see.”

“What?” Carlton growled and rolled to a sitting position on the edge of the couch where he'd been sleeping. He ran a hand through a head of thick, matted, red hair and said, “What on God's earth could you need to show us at this time of the night, Bob?”

Carlton pushed both elbows backward until I heard his spine make cracking noises, then added, “Hell, feels like I just got to sleep a few minutes ago. Now you come bustin' in here running off at the mouth like a man who's left the better part of his brain out in the hall somewhere.”

Evans's dark-eyed, panic-stricken glance shot from one of us to the other, as if he were looking at ghoulish specters straight out of Beelzebub's sulfurous pit. “Swear 'fore Jesus, there's just no point trying to describe what I'm here for. Get yourselves dressed. Right now, dammit. Hurry. Hurry.”

Well, we couldn't work fast enough to suit him. In fact, none of us had managed to get ourselves anywhere near completely outfitted, when he said, “That's enough, for the love of sweet Mary. Come the hell on.”

Still working like a field hand at getting my pants up, as I followed ole Bob up to the third floor in my sock feet. Hadn't gone far when I realized that he was leading us toward Daisy Cassidy's digs. Couldn't really see much. Just no way for me to get a decent look around the man's sizable bulk in the narrow, poorly lit hallway.

Had to push our way past several of the city policemen we'd seen in Sam Farmer's office when we first arrived in town. Seemed as though every lawman in Fort Worth, and a good many of their closest friends, had wedged themselves into that jam-packed passageway. Couple of spots were so choked with milling, mumbling people we had a real problem getting by.

Finally, Nate, Carl, and I bunched together on one side of the open door to Daisy Cassidy's room. Evans backed up against the opposite wall as far out of the way as he could get.

Heard Nate suck in a ragged breath. Carlton coughed and backed away from the horrific sight Evans's calculated side-long move revealed.

Blood-soaked scene came near stunning me to the bottoms of my bootless feet. Hadn't laid my eyes on anything quite so horrific since the time Dennis Limberhand led us all over hell and the Indian Nations looking for those murderous Crooke boys.

Boo Higgins and Carter Dillworthy sat in chairs opposite each other beneath the ghoulish glow of a couple of flickering wall sconces. Higgins had the seat on the far side of the hotel room's door closest to the street below. Man sported the bloody-handled head of a hatchet buried in his skull just above the right ear. Better part of the leaked brain matter and oozing body fluids that sizable hole in his busted noggin had released rested on one shoulder. Stuff was pooled up in a shimmering glob of reddish-gray viscera the size of a number-three grain scoop.

Just right of where a trembling Bob Evans stood, the vacant-eyed Carter Dillworthy sat bolt upright and stared across the narrow hallway at his butchered friend. Near half the massive blade of a knife protruded from Dillworthy's upper right chest. Crude, wooden handle of the big sticker sported the emblazoned words MIGHTY OAK. A glistening river of sticky blood ran from the ragged wound, saturated that side of his shirt and the waist of his pants. Then, the grisly stream coursed over the edge of the ladder-backed chair's woven seat and dripped into a growing puddle on the hotel's carpeted floor.

Carlton slapped me on the arm, coughed again, and pointed at Higgins. “These killings must've happened mighty fast, Hayden. Appears to me as how neither one of these sad wretches had much of a chance to move out of harm's way 'fore he got sent to his Maker.”

“Poor jokers evidently trusted whoever did this,” Nate said and stared at the ceiling. “Nobody in his right mind would sit still to be murdered in such a fashion, unless he knew and trusted the person what done the deed and let 'em get close enough to pull off such an atrocity.”

More to myself than anyone else, I said, “Then again, they could've just been asleep, or almost asleep, when the attack occurred. Might not have been paying strict attention. Maybe they were bored and someone just snuck up and caught them flat-footed, unawares.”

A clearly distressed Bob Evans snaked out a tentative hand and placed it on Carter Dillworthy's shoulder. As Evans started to speak, the brutally stabbed Dillworthy's head jerked up. Man sucked in a tremendous lungful of air, then groaned.

“Sweet Jesus,” Evans squawked, snatched his hand away as though he'd just touched liquid iron, and jumped back a full step.

The wooden-handled knife, jutting from Dillworthy's body, rose and fell with the rapid heaving of his chest. “Wha . . . Wha . . . What the hell?” he said and made a hesitant, awkward, grasping move toward the blade.

Evans quickly stepped forward, grabbed Dillworthy's hand, and pushed it aside. Wild-eyed jasper had assumed the appearance of a man completely baffled, when he said, “Don't touch it, Dill. Don't dare touch that pigsticker. Might make the situation even worse'n it is now. Doc's on his way. Should be here soon. Maybe he can get the damned thing free and not do too much more in the way of damage.”

Dillworthy stared down at the knife like a baffled child. “Yeah, but . . .”

Evans patted his friend's shoulder. “No. You go pullin' a blade that size loose now and you might well bleed slap out, right where you're sittin'.”

Dillworthy's stunned, buglike gaze rubbered up to Evans, then from one of us to the other, back down to the knife, and finally landed on Higgins. “He's d-d-dead, ain't he, B-B-Bob?”

Evans nodded. “Sure as hell seems so. 'Course we thought you were a goner, too, Dill. Would be something of a shocker if ole Boo was to go and sit up. Snatch that hatchet out of his own head. Such a sight would sure 'nuff send me to church Sunday morning, and that's a fact.”

Leaned over to a point where Dillworthy could see me and said, “Who did this to you, Carter?”

Took some doing, but with a gurgling froth oozing from one corner of his mouth like an ever-widening, pink river of bubbles, he said, “That d-d-damned gal. Was sittin' here tryin' to keep my eyes open, you know. B-B-Bored slap silly. Of a sudden, she jerked . . . the door to the room . . . open. Come a flyin' out . . . like some kinda b- b-broom-ridin' banshee.”

“Daisy Cassidy? You mean Daisy Cassidy?” I said.

“Yeah. Gal jumped into the hall . . . like a b-b-branded bobcat. Hit poor Boo with that hatchet . . . quicker'n a b-b-body can spit.”

Glanced at Carl and Nate. They both looked dumbfounded and shrugged.

“You're certain?” I said.

“H-H-Hell, yeah. Happened so fast I d-d-didn't even know what she'd done 'fore she was on me like st-st-stink on cow flops with this here knife.” He gingerly slid an inquisitive finger up and down the blade's rough hilt. “S-S-Shit. Little gal went and stabbed the bejabberous h-h-hell outta me 'fore I could even react. Who'd a thunk it?”

A clearly unsettled Bob Evans patted his friend's shoulder again. “God forgive us, but we thought you were deader'n a drowned dog, Dill.”

Like a chicken charmed by a snake, Dillworthy gazed at the knife's hilt, as it rose and fell with his labored breathing. “M-M-Me, too. She musta hit somethin' as p-p-paralyzed me, Bob. Couldn't get my b-b-breath, doancha know. And then, Lord G-G-God help me, I couldn't m-m-move. Felt as how I'd been turned to stone, or somethin'. Still havin' trouble b-b-breathin'.”

Evans stared at his badly wounded friend and shook his head in bug-eyed disbelief.

Dillworthy tilted a wobbling head back against the wall and groaned. Sounded a thousand miles away when he said, “Tell you true, boys, they was . . . a time or two there, th-th-thought I'd already gone on up to Heaven. Swear 'fore Jesus, I seen my gr-gr-grandpap. That old man's been d-d-dead n-n-nigh on thirty year. Then you touched me, Bob. Felt like some kinda hot, nerve-tinglin' spark shot through my whole b-b-body when your hand hit my shoulder. Sure 'nuff brung me b-b-back from wherever'n hell I'd went.”

Didn't look around when I heard Nate say, “The kids are gone, Hayden. Ain't a sign of 'em in the room.”

Squatted down in front of Dillworthy. “You have any idea where the Cassidys were headed, Carter?”

“Know exactly where they were g-g-goin', Marshal Tilden,” he said.

“You're certain?”

Dillworthy's head bobbled around on his neck as if it were mounted on a piece of spring steel. Thought for a second he'd passed out. But then he appeared to snap back to reality and hissed, “P-P-Pretty sure that gal thought she'd gone and k-k-kilt me. Heard the pair of 'em whisperin' back and forth as they went sneaking off down the hall. They was arguin' 'bout what to do and where to go.”

“Arguing?”