The big gundown (16 page)

The Kid didn’t hear anything, but he trusted Elena’s hearing, which was keener than his. They both stepped away from the hidden door. Elena pushed it shut. It clicked into place just before Señora Lopez stepped into the dining room.

The older woman spoke sharply in Spanish. The Kid understood enough of it to comprehend that Señora Lopez wanted to know why Elena wasn’t tending to his wounds. Elena replied that she had already cleaned them.

“That’s right, señora,” The Kid said in English. “I’m fine. Elena did a good job of taking care of me.”

Señora Lopez sniffed and continued to glare at the young woman. Even though Elena couldn’t see that, The Kid had a hunch she sensed it. She had a pretty good feel for most of Señora Lopez’s moods and knew when to avoid her if possible.

Señora Lopez snapped at Elena to go to the kitchen. Elena left the dining room, moving with an ease and assurance that made it difficult to remember that she was blind.

The Kid said to the Indian woman, “I’m going to my room to rest some more. Please let me know if Colonel Black requires my presence.”

“If the colonel wants you, you will know,” she replied. “He will see to that.”

The Kid didn’t doubt it. He went to his room, lit the candle, and closed the door behind him.

He wished he’d had a chance to talk some more with Elena, so they could work out their plans. He also wished she had told him in which room Glory Sheffield was being held. Until he had that information, The Kid had to rely on Elena. He still didn’t think that she had been trying to trick him, but he supposed time would tell about that.

He was tired. He hadn’t gotten enough rest before, and the fight with Cranston and Terhune had taken even more out of him. He stretched out on the bed, knowing that he was liable to doze off.

He fell asleep even faster than he expected, almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

The last thing he thought about was the beautiful face of a blue-eyed blind girl.

The Kid’s muscles were stiff when he woke up, but he didn’t have any trouble moving around. He put on his hat and gun and went into the dining room.

Glory was sitting at the table.

She leaped to her feet and ran to him as soon as she saw him, practically throwing herself into his arms. “Kid!” she cried. “I didn’t know where you were, and that horrible Indian woman won’t tell me anything! Are you all right?”

The Kid put his hands on her shoulders and moved her back a little. “I’m fine, Glory,” he told her. “How about you?”

She nodded. “I was able to sleep some. I didn’t think I could possibly sleep in this awful place, but I did. Have you thought of some way to get us out of here?”

“Keep your voice down,” he cautioned her, lowering his own voice to a whisper. “Black’s made me his aide. He expects your husband, along with Bateman and the rest of those hired guns, to get here late tomorrow sometime.”

“Do we have to stay that long? Can’t we try to escape now?”

The Kid cast a glance toward the wall that contained the hidden door. Sure, he could open the door and they could go up those stairs to the top, and if what Elena had told him was true, they would come out on top of the Red Skull and be free.

Yeah, free somewhere in the Dragoons, on foot, with no horses, no supplies, and only a limited amount of ammunition. Plus a whole camp full of enemies who would come looking for them as soon as it was discovered that they were gone. Those weren’t the sort of odds that The Kid liked.

They’d be better off biding their time until he could think of a better plan, or at least some sort of plan, period, instead of just rushing up that hidden staircase. Glory might not see it that way, so for now he wasn’t going to tell her about the stairs.

“We’ll get out, don’t worry about that. It might be better to wait until your husband gets here, though. Black will be more distracted that way.”

“Are you sure?” Glory pleaded. “If we stay here, there’s no telling what he’ll do. I know, I tried to put a brave face on it earlier, but I don’t want to have to…to have to…”

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” The Kid said.

“If we can get away before Edward gets here,” Glory went on, “maybe we can stop him before there’s another battle. I can’t let anything happen to Edward, Kid. I just
can’t!”

“No offense, but I didn’t think you even liked him all that much, what with the way you’ve been trying to get me into your bed the past few days.”

She stared at him, anger smoldering in her eyes. “You don’t know anything about it, Kid. One thing doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other, you know.”

He grunted and shook his head. “That’s not the way it’s been in my experience.”

“Anyway, I can’t let anything happen to Edward because we haven’t been married for eighteen months yet.”

The light dawned in The Kid’s brain. “You have to be married that long before you get his money if anything happens to him!”

“That’s right,” Glory replied in a sulky tone. “He said he wasn’t going to change his will until he was sure the marriage would last…the suspicious bastard!”

The Kid shook his head and laughed. Glory was full of surprises, yet completely predictable.

“So you see, that’s why we can’t let him be killed,” she went on. “If you can get me out of this, Kid, and destroy Gideon without Edward coming to any harm, I’ll see to it that you’re well rewarded. Financially…or any other way you’d like.”

“You don’t give up easy, do you?”

“I
never
give up when there’s something I want.” Glory’s eyes suddenly darted to something behind him. She said, “Kid…”

He turned and saw Elena coming into the room. “Señor Morgan?” she asked.

“I’m here, Elena.”

“And…the Señora Sheffield?”

“Yes, she’s here, too.”

Elena’s voice was cooler than usual as she said, “Señora Lopez told me to find you. She said Colonel Black and his staff will be meeting in here shortly.”

“Thank you,” The Kid said. “I’ll just wait for them, if that’s all right.”

“I should take Señora Sheffield back to her room. She should not be wandering around. Señora Lopez would not be pleased.”

Glory gave a defiant toss of her head that sent her red hair swirling around her face. “I don’t give a damn whether that old hag is pleased or not.”

“Just go with Elena,” The Kid told her. “I’ll see you later.”

She gave him a look. He saw desperation in her eyes.
Don’t forget,
she mouthed.

The two young women left the room, with Elena leading the way even though she was blind. The Kid sat down at the table. He thought about helping himself to a drink. The hour had to be getting late in the day. He decided to wait, figuring that Black would probably order Lopez to pour drinks all around once the meeting got underway. They would probably have dinner, too.

The Kid didn’t have to wait long before Black, Cranston, and Terhune came in, accompanied by two more outlaws he hadn’t met. Terhune’s broken nose was swollen and ugly, but he didn’t seem particularly angry at The Kid. He just grunted and said, “Good fight, Morgan. I figured Cranston and me would stomp the hell out of you.”

“You were lucky,” Cranston said coldly. He seemed to hold more of a grudge than Terhune, although the only visible sign of injury he had was a bruise on his jaw where one of The Kid’s punches had landed.

Black shook his head and said, “Luck had nothing to do with it, Captain. I was watching. Lieutenant Morgan acquitted himself quite well.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Cranston’s admission was grudging.

Black waved toward the table. “Sit down, gentlemen. We have work to do. Morgan, this is Lieutenant Harkins and Lieutenant Brill.”

The Kid nodded to the other two outlaws. The men took their places around the table. Black stood at the head of the table and addressed them.

“I have lookouts stationed between here and Titusville to keep watch for the approach of Edward Sheffield and his men. They’ll send signals so that we’ll have plenty of warning before the enemy arrives, probably late in the day tomorrow. We’ll position marksmen around the gap at the entrance to the valley so that once Sheffield and his men are in our sights, they won’t be able to retreat. I intend to allow Sheffield to approach the stronghold, but once my business with him is concluded, we shall open fire with cannon and rifles on his men and wipe them out. If any of them attempt to flee, the sharpshooters at the gap will cut them down. I want a clean sweep, gentlemen. No mercy. No quarter. Sheffield and all his men will die.” The colonel looked around the table. “Any questions?”

No one spoke. Colonel Black might be loco, The Kid thought, but unfortunately, the plan he had come up with to wipe out Sheffield and his hired gunfighters was a good one. It sounded like it would work.

“Very well, then,” Black said. “I want suggestions as to how we can best deploy our forces. I want our ten best rifle shots to close off the gap.”

For the next few minutes, Black and the other outlaws hashed out the details of who would be posted where and what the signals would be to start the attack. As the colonel’s aide, The Kid would be at Black’s side, of course.

At one point, Black glanced at The Kid and frowned. “You should be getting all this down,” he said.

“Sorry, Colonel,” The Kid said. “I didn’t realize I was supposed to take notes.”

“As my aide, what did you think your job was?”

The Kid refrained from pointing out that he had never been in the army, let alone served as the aide to a colonel. Instead he said, “When the meeting is over, I’ll get paper and a pen from Lopez and write up a report while my memory is still fresh.”

Black nodded curtly. “That will be sufficient, but in the future, please be better prepared.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few minutes later, Black told Lopez to bring in a bottle of wine and also to have dinner served. The Kid had smelled some delicious aromas drifting out from the kitchen, and they reminded him that he still hadn’t caught up on his eating.

With the details of the plan worked out, Black picked up the wine glass Lopez had filled for him. The other men picked up their glasses as well.

“If fortune smiles on us, by this time tomorrow evening Edward Sheffield will be dead and all of us will be even wealthier than we are now. I won’t forget the services that all of you have rendered in our cause.” Black raised his glass. “To good fortune, gentlemen…and to the death of our enemies!”

The Kid didn’t see Glory again that evening. He hoped that Black would leave her alone, and an offhand remark the colonel made gave reason to think that might be possible. While ranting about Edward Sheffield and the way the tycoon had double crossed him, Black said, “Once Sheffield is dead, then Gloriana can truly be mine again!”

It would be just like Black’s warped sense of honor to believe that he couldn’t molest Glory while she was still married to Sheffield. Once she was a widow, though, it would be a different story.

Either way, there was nothing The Kid could do about it. He remained in the dining room with Black and the other outlaws until the hour was quite late.

Once he had been dismissed and returned to his room, he blew out the candle and waited in the darkness for an hour, until he thought it might be safe to do some prowling in the halls. He went to the door, listened intently, and didn’t hear anyone moving around on the other side of it.

The Kid eased the door open and stepped into the corridor. Only a single candle was still lit, and it illuminated the hallway dimly. He wished he knew which room was Glory’s…if, indeed, any of them were. It was possible she was being held in some other part of the semi-subterranean fortress.

He catfooted along the corridor, once again listening at doors and hearing nothing. He couldn’t call out Glory’s name, even softly, for fear that someone else might hear. It wouldn’t do to be calling Glory’s name through the door of Black’s room.

Frustrated, The Kid turned toward the short hallway that led to the dining room. He stole along it through the shadows, and as he reached the opening into the dining room, he stopped short at the sight of a ghostly figure moving around in there. All he could see was a moving patch of white.

The figure turned toward him and came closer, and he saw that it was Elena, wearing a long white gown. She must have sensed that someone was there, because she stopped and whispered,
“Que?”

“It’s me, Elena,” The Kid whispered back to her.

“Señor Morgan!” She hurried to him. “Señor Morgan, I was about to come to your room. You must leave this place! I just overheard those men Terhune and Cranston talking to the colonel, outside in the compound. They do not trust you. They are trying to persuade him that you should be made a prisoner and killed tomorrow along with the man Sheffield. I think the colonel is going to agree with them!”

The Kid bit back a curse. It looked like he was going to be rushed into action after all, whether he was prepared or not.

“All right,” he said. “You have to tell me where Señora Sheffield is being held. We’ll get her and take her with us.”

Elena hesitated, then said, “Why? That will just anger Colonel Black even more and make him pursue you and kill you.”

“I can’t leave her here, Elena.”

“I heard you earlier today. I heard the two of you talking. She is more to you than a friend.”

The Kid’s jaw tightened. Elena was jealous, all right. That was just about the last thing in the world he needed.

“Listen to me,” he told her. He reached out and rested his hands on her shoulders for emphasis. “Just because Señora Sheffield would like for there to be more between us doesn’t mean that there is, or ever will be. I don’t want her like that. I just want her to be safe.”

“You give me your word on this, Señor Morgan…Kid?”

“Of course.”

You should feel real proud of yourself,
he thought. Leading on a blind girl so she would help him escape from a band of vicious outlaws. But she wanted to get away from them, too, he reminded himself. More than likely she had suffered at their hands, as well as at the hands of Señora Lopez.

“All right,” she whispered. “I will show you.”

She took his hand and led him out of the dining room, through the door to the kitchen. Another passage branched off from it, and after a moment they were in almost utter darkness. The Kid could barely make out the lightness of Elena’s gown. She moved with easy confidence, completely at home in the darkness.

After a few moments, The Kid saw another patch of light ahead of them. They were reaching a turn in the tunnel. Elena paused and put her mouth close to his ear.

“The colonel’s quarters are back here, and so is the room where the señora is being kept. We must be very quiet. The colonel is not here. He is with the men in the compound, but Señora Lopez is here, and she has a gun.”

The Kid didn’t like the sound of that. A gunshot would bring trouble in a hurry, and plenty of it.

“I will tell her that the colonel is looking for her,” Elena went on. “You stay here, and when she comes around the corner you can take hold of her and strangle her. Do not let go until she is dead.”

The casual way Elena said that made The Kid’s eyebrows rise in surprise. For all her gentleness, she could be ruthless, too. He supposed she’d had to learn to be in order to survive.

“Go ahead,” The Kid told her. He had no intention of choking Señora Lopez to death, but Elena didn’t have to know that.

He put his back against the stone wall of the passage and waited while Elena’s slippered feet whispered around the corner. A moment later, he heard soft voices as she talked with Señora Lopez. The Kid couldn’t make out the words, but he thought the Indian woman sounded angry. She was still muttering under her breath as she approached the bend in the tunnel. Her footsteps were much heavier than Elena’s. The light grew brighter from the lantern she carried. The Kid held his breath as she came around the corner.

She stepped right past him without seeing him at first. Then she caught sight of him from the corner of her eye, and turned toward him, her mouth opened to yell.

Before she could make a sound, The Kid hit her. It was a short, sharp punch with enough power behind it to stun the woman and make her eyes roll up in their sockets. The Kid grabbed the lantern as it slid out of her hand. Señora Lopez fell to her knees and rolled onto her side.

The Kid placed the lantern on the floor of the tunnel and went to work swiftly. He tore strips of cloth from the woman’s long skirt and used them to bind her wrists behind her back. He tied her ankles together as well to keep her from moving around. Then he used another piece of cloth as a gag, working it into her mouth and tying it in place with one of the strips. When he was finished, he lifted her and leaned her against the wall in a sitting position.

Her eyelids flickered open, and she glared at him with murderous intensity as she made muffled sounds through the gag. The Kid was glad he couldn’t hear what she was saying to him.

He slipped his Colt from its holster and told Señora Lopez, “Settle down, or I’ll tap you with the barrel of this gun and knock you out again.”

She continued to glare at him, but at least she stopped making so much racket. He stepped around the corner where he could still keep an eye on her and motioned to Elena before he remembered that that didn’t do a bit of good.

“Elena,” he called softly. “Elena, get Señora Sheffield, and let’s get out of here.”

For a moment, the girl didn’t move, and The Kid thought she might have changed her mind about taking Glory with them. But then Elena reached out and fumbled for a second with the door latch. Such awkwardness was unusual for her, but she probably hadn’t had to unlock the door of a room where a prisoner was being held all that often, if ever.

The latch slid back, and Elena opened the door. “Señora Sheffield,” she said. “Come. We must leave this place.”

The Kid heard Glory ask from inside the room, “What’s going on here?” She sounded suspicious, like she wasn’t inclined to trust Elena, and The Kid supposed he couldn’t blame her for that. Glory had no way of knowing that Elena was on their side.

He took a step along the hallway, past the corner, and called, “Glory! Come on! It’s The Kid!”

Glory appeared in the doorway, wearing a green silk gown that Black must have had on hand for her. She stared at him and said, “Kid!”

Then her eyes widened as she glanced past him, and she added, “Look out!”

The Kid whirled around. Somehow, Señora Lopez had gotten to her feet, and her hands were free. The faint candlelight glinted on the short blade of the knife in her hand. The Kid realized that it must have been hidden in her dress, somewhere she could reach it. He hadn’t searched her.

She dropped the knife, reached into a pocket, and pulled out a short-barreled pistol. As she swung the gun up The Kid lunged toward her, closing his left hand around the pistol’s cylinder so it wouldn’t fire and shoving it to the side while he struck her with the barrel of the Colt in his right hand. The blow drove her against the wall. She slid down it, out cold.

Glory and Elena hurried up behind The Kid. “I told you you should kill her,” Elena said.

“I don’t kill in cold blood,” he snapped, which wasn’t exactly true. He had, but only under the most extreme provocation.

He shoved the thought of his wife’s death out of his mind. He didn’t need any distractions. He took hold of Glory’s bare upper arm and went on, “There’s a way out of here. Elena will show you. I’ll get some supplies together as quickly as I can and follow you. We’ll meet on top of the Red Skull.”

“The-the what?”

“The big rock on top of the cliff. That’s where the stairs come out. Wait for me there…but if you hear shooting down here, then the two of you get as far away from here as you can, as fast as you can. If you can figure out what direction Titusville is, head for it. You should run into Sheffield and his men on the way.”

“You mean you want us to leave you here, Kid?” Glory shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

“Nor can I, señor,” Elena put in.

“Maybe you won’t have to.” The Kid smiled. “Maybe we’ll be lucky—”

The Kid knew better than to tempt fate by saying something like that. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a heavy roar sounded somewhere outside, followed by a wave of gunfire.