Lookout Hill (9781101606735) (12 page)

Two men filed out through the tent fly, the one in front carrying a smoking revolver in one hand, a short-handled blacksmith hammer in the other. He crouched over the bloody man on the ground, drew the hammer back and dealt him a hard blow to the base of his skull.
The body flopped once on the ground, then fell still as stone. The man with the blacksmith hammer stood ready to swing the big hammer again.

“Figure he’s dead?” he said to the man behind him.

The second man stood holding a shotgun at port arms.

“If he’s not, I want no part of him,” he said.

“You’re right,” said the man with the big hammer. He dropped the hammer beside the body on the ground and wiped his palm on his trouser leg. “I’m obliged to you for catching him cheating. I hate a card cheat worse than anything.”

“Whoa, now,” said the man with the shotgun, “I never said he was a card cheat. I said that a red-striped suit was
hard to beat.
”

“Jesus…,” the other man said. He rounded a finger deep inside his ear. “I’m getting to where I can’t hear worth a damn.” He looked at the body on the ground, then back to the man with the shotgun. “He was a card cheat, though. I can see it in him, can’t you?”

The shotgun holder considered it for a moment. “I’d have to say yes, he was a cheat,” he said. “Let’s not go blaming ourselves for this, Harvey. There’s folks gets killed every day.” He reached a thumb over the shotgun hammers and let them both down. “We need to clear out of here before Pettigo’s mercenaries catch wind of this.”

“Pettigo and his mercs don’t give a blue damn about one dead gambler—” Harvey Moran said. Then he cut himself short and said, “Wait. What’s this?” He stared at Bobby Hugh Bellibar, who stood watching, his hand
resting on the Remington behind his gun belt. “What the hell you looking at?” he asked menacingly, the smoking Colt still in hand.

“Whatever suits me,” Bellibar replied calmly, rapping his fingertips idly on the gun butt.

“Yeah?” Harvey took a step toward him, then stopped.

“Yeah,” said Bellibar, not backing an inch. He’d heard four shots, meaning the man only had two shots left—
one
, if he kept his hammer resting on an empty chamber.

“Say, I know these two horses,” said the man with the shotgun, eyeing the dead outlaws’ horses standing next to Siebert’s roan. “They belong to Saginaw Sparks and Paco, the Mex.” His eyes cut from the horses back to Bellibar. “What’re you doing with them?”

“Whatever suits me,” Bellibar repeated. His fingers stopped tapping.

“Whatever suits you….” A dark chuckle came from Moran, who stood loosening and tightening his grip on the Colt, realizing how short he was on bullets. “Is that your answer for everything, hombre?”

“Pretty much,” said Bellibar. He gave a smug little grin that told Moran he knew how many shots he was facing and wasn’t worried in the least. “Are you going to scold me for it?” he asked.

The man with the shotgun had also realized their situation, he himself not wearing his gun belt, owing to a fiery rash around his waist. He started to put his thumb back over the gun hammers.

“You’re making the last mistake in your life,” Bellibar
said, his grin disappearing as easily as it had arrived.

The man’s thumb moved away from the gun hammers; the shotgun slumped in his hand.

“I know Saginaw Sparks,” he said in a cautious tone. “He’d never give up that horse long as he was alive.”

“Ain’t that the truth, though?” Bellibar said calmly.

A tense silence fell around the three. Inside the tent a guitar, a trumpet and an accordion spilled mariachi music tinto the dry evening air. After a moment Harvey Moran let out a tight breath.

“Well, well,” he said, keeping cool in spite of his shortage of firepower. “Here we are, three ol’ Anglo boys having ourselves a Mexican standoff…in Mexico, no less.”

Bellibar just stared at him.

“I’ve got an idea,” Moran offered Bellibar, trying not to stand down too easily. “You drag this dead fool away, hurry back here and Bad Sharlo and I will buy you a drink.”

“Bad Sharlo Bering…?” Bellibar cocked his head slightly. “I’ve heard of you.”

“Yeah?” said Berring, his chest puffing a little. He and Moran looked almost relieved. But then Bellibar returned to the matter at hand.

“I’ve got a better idea,” he said to Moran. “Drag him away yourselves, both of you hurry back here and buy me a drink.”

“You’ve heard of Lookout Hill?” Moran asked, not letting the newcomer’s words affect him.

“Yep,” said Bellibar, “that’s where I’m headed, looking to ride with the Cady brothers, Bert and Fletcher.”

“That’s who we ride for,” Moran said bluntly. “What do you say now?”

“I say in that case, you can both hurry back and buy me
two
drinks,” Bellibar said.

Bad Sharlo bristled; Moran stopped him with a look.

“Can’t you see he’s just scouring us both down?” He looked at Bellibar and said, “You’re a crazy sumbitch, ain’t you?”

“And then some,” Bellibar replied with the same flat expression.

At a makeshift bar, Bellibar and the two gunmen stood tossing back tequila from wooden cups. An empty bowl and a food-smeared spoon stood at Bellibar’s elbow, flies circling above scraps of goat gristle and bean sauce. An hour earlier Bellibar had handed the reins to the roan and the other two horses to a Mexican stable boy. When the boy brought the horses back rested, watered and grained, he hitched them to the iron posts out in front of the tent cantina.

The boy’s eyes grew wide as he crossed the dirt floor to the bar, watching two half-naked prostitutes roll and kick and brawl in the dirt beside an overturned table, their bare breasts bobbing and bouncing freely, glistening with sweat. Above the women’s screams and curses, the mariachis played vigorously in a low swirl of cigar and pipe smoke.

“Don’t try to tell me you two mullets live this good all the time,” Bellibar said, raising his half-full cup of tequila as if in a toast.

“You ain’t seen nothing,” Moran replied above the
music, screaming and laughter. “Wait ’til tonight when everybody starts getting rowdy.”

Bellibar turned to the young stable boy, who couldn’t pull his eyes away from the two naked fighters. A shredded skirt rose in the air; onlookers hooted and whistled and clapped.

“Don’t be watching them,” Bellibar warned the boy, tapping his shoulder sharply with a gold coin. “It’ll make your bed wet.”

“I have no bed, señor,” said the boy. He looked up long enough to take the coin and close his fist around it.

Bellibar grinned.

“Oh…in that case, have at it,” he said, gesturing the boy toward the fighting women.

But instead of looking back toward the battling women, the boy slid a look past Moran and Bering and motioned for Bellibar to lean down closer to him.

“Yeah, what?” Bellibar said, stooping to ear level, in order to hear and be heard above the din of place.

“You said to tell you anything I hear about someone coming to town behind you?” the boy reminded him. He held his hand out to Bellibar.

“Yep, what have you got for me?” said Bellibar, fishing in his trouser pocket for another coin.

“The
soldados de mercenaries
from Pettigo Mining are in town.”

Mercenary soldiers
…Bellibar gave a cautious look toward the front of the tent.

“Where are they?” he asked quietly.

“They are at the
librea
barn. They will be coming here soon, señor,” the boy said in a whisper. “Someone
has told them what happened to the man in red, I think.”

Bellibar handed him the coin.

“
Gracias
, kid,” he said. He started to straighten up but stopped when he saw the boy had more to say.

“Should I also warn your amigos?” he asked, clasping the gold coins in his fist in a manner that implied more coins could be coming his way.

“Well, you see, kid,” Bellibar said, “we’re not what you call amigos. We’re not even what you call
compañeros
, these fellows and me.” He chuckled a little and added, “The fact is, I don’t even know these plug-looking sons a’ bitches. Never laid eyes on them until I arrived in town a few hours ago.”

“I see,” the boy said. He lowered his fist and his expectations, but asked anyway, “I will still warn them, if you want me to.”

“I don’t know….” Bellibar clucked his cheek, seeming to struggle with the matter. “They’re having such a good time. I hate to piss on their campfire.” He fished another coin from his pocket and slipped it to the boy. “Why don’t you ease out front and lead my horses around back for me—hitch them loose,
por favor
?”

“
Sí
, hitch them loose,” the boy repeated, smiling at the third coin in his palm. “This I will do.” He walked out the fly without turning another glance toward the female combatants.

“Damn, pard,” Moran said to Bellibar, “you’re palavering with that stable boy and missing all the fun.” He nodded at a low cloud of dust in the center of the dirt floor where the two women had fought their way
up onto their knees. The crowd remained seated, but they’d drawn their chairs in a circle around the women. Music still blared. Fists waved money in the air; wagers were made. A knife appeared as if out of nowhere in one woman’s hand. The crowd roared. The other woman grabbed her wrist and the two grappled and fell back to the dirt.

“It’s like this all the time?” Bellibar grinned.

“It never
stops
!” Bad Sharlo screamed with laughter.

“It’s like dying, going to
Mejico
heaven!” said Moran, waving his cup, tequila slopping over the edge of it.

“All right, I’m going to live here from now on, that’s all there is to it,” Bellibar said in another toast. He licked his thumb, stuck it in a bowl of salt and put it in his mouth. He threw back a swig of tequila, stuck his thumb in the salt again and swallowed one more shot.

“I’ve got to choke a lizard,” he said. “Don’t let these gals stop fighting until I get back—I mean it.” He pointed a finger and wagged it at the two gunmen as he moved away toward the rear of the tent.

“He’s not such a bad sort, as it turns out,” Moran said to Bad Sharlo, the two of them watching bleary-eyed as Bellibar left the tent.

In the town livery barn across the street and a block down from the ragged tent cantina, Dale Pettigo stood with five of his father’s hired gunmen. He smoked a black cigar he held between the fingers of tan-colored riding gloves. A pale blond mustache drooped above his thin lips, and blond hair spiked out from under his wide, flat-crowned plainsman’s hat. He wore a brown
duster buttoned up to his throat, hiding a new tooled-leather holster tucked up under his left arm. A cutout slot in his duster allowed his right hand to slip inside and grasp the bone handles of a fully engraved Colt .45 if needed.

Ashes fell from the blunt tip of Dale Pettigo’s cigar and landed on the body in the red pin-striped suit.

“No finely schooled accountant deserves to die this way,” said a burly, red-faced gunman standing across the body from the young Pettigo.

Dale Pettigo raised sharp eyes to the man and said in a dry, critical voice, “How does a
finely schooled accountant
deserve to die, Denver? You tell all of us, for future reference.”

Denver Jennings felt pressed; he slid red, bloodshot eyes over the other men gathered round the body. He gave a shrug, a rifle propped back over his broad shoulder.

“All’s I’m saying is not like this.” He nodded down at the bloody pin-striped suit, the ragged half-missing right foot. “He died too young.”

“Harold Wartler was a simpering, milk-sucking house dog who just had to run with the hounds now and then,” Dale Pettigo concluded. He looked from one stoic face to another. “Save all your words of praise and condolences for my father. He thought the world of this fool—I didn’t. I always thought he’d rub a man’s leg, to be honest about it.”

“I don’t know what to make of that,” said a rough-faced older gunman named Dodge Peterson. “But he liked playing the stage role of a rake and a gambler.
Look at him,” he added in disgust to Denver Jennings. “A man wears a suit like that, how long should he
expect
to live?”

“It’s a rake’s garb he’s wearing, and that’s a fact of it,” said a former Pinkerton agent named Gus “Shady” Quinn. “Rubbing a man’s leg, I don’t know….”

“That was just a figure of speech,” said Pettigo. “The poor bastard.” He shook his head in disgust, staring down at the dead man’s red-striped suit.

“What say you about the dear departed, Foot?” a former assassin named Newton Ridge asked a half-breed Cheyenne, Clayton “Cold Foot” Cain. Cold Foot stood a step back from the others, eyeing the body in the dirt more closely.

“He’s dead,” said the half-breed with finality, his deep voice sounding like a single clap of thunder from within a deep cave.

Pettigo and the men gave a dark chuckle under their breath, staring down at the body with the half-breed.

“Can’t argue with Cold Foot,” Pettigo said. He turned his head only an inch and spit in the dirt beside the dead man’s bloody foot. “Damned degenerate. He couldn’t just play the tables like any man might. He had to pretend himself to be some kind of slick-eyed gambling man.” He paused, then added, “But that’ll make no never mind to my father. He’s going to want the men who did this swinging from a pole.” He took the rifle from over his shoulder and levered a round into its chamber. “Let’s get to it.”