The Killing Breed (24 page)
Authors: Frank Leslie
Dust sifted from the rafters, and smoke wafted.
“Jesus Christ!” someone behind Yakima trilled.
Chairs squawked and groaned as the sitters jerked their attentions to the bar.
The bartender had bounded back to one side, raising his hands defensively. Now he swung his head from the broken bottles and the two bullet holes in the cabinet behind them, to Yakima, his broad, broken-nosed face flushed with fury.
“Just who in the hell do you think—?”
“He’s just a man wanting a drink and a bowl of chili, partner,” Harms said as Yakima stared across the bar at the apron, his revolver cocked and ready to cut loose once more—this time at the apron’s head. “Make it two of each.” He sighed and looked at Yakima. “I’m drinking again.”
The barman’s glance flicked between Yakima and Harms.
Muttering rose from behind. Someone chuckled softly. The woman said, just as softly, “Dirty savage . . .”
The barman’s face softened slightly, his eyes apprehensive. He snarled a curse, then grabbed two shot glasses off a pyramid atop the bar, and filled each with whiskey. He slid the drinks in front of Yakima and Harms, then walked down to where a smoking, grease-splattered iron range sat against the back wall.
He ladled two bowls of chili from a black pot, set those too before the newcomers, then rattled spoons down beside the bowls. Crossing his arms on his broad chest, he fixed Yakima with a belligerent stare. “That’ll be two dollars. I don’t barter or extend credit to . . . strangers.”
Yakima twirled his Colt on his finger, dropped it into his holster, then reached into his jeans pocket. When he’d tossed a few coins onto the counter, he picked up his shot glass, poked his hat back off his bandaged forehead, and sipped. Ignoring the barman still glaring down at him and the stares of the others burning into his back, he leaned forward, picked up his spoon, and began casually eating the chili.
When he’d taken a couple bites, he glanced to his right. Harms stood looking across his shoulder at the men and the woman at the tables, a look of consternation on his bespectacled face.
Yakima reached over and flicked the man’s spoon into the air. It hit the bar top with a clatter that made Harms jump with a start and turn his gaze back to Yakima.
“Eat up,” the half-breed said, glancing briefly at the barman still glaring down at him with his arms crossed on his chest. “He ain’t much for manners, but his chili ain’t half bad.”
Harms made a nervous face, then, glancing once more at the tables, leaned forward and spooned up some chili. When he’d eaten a couple of bites, he threw back his entire whiskey shot and slid the empty glass toward the bartender. “Refill that for me, will you?”
When, chuffing angrily, the barman had refilled the shot glass, Harms took a small sip, then resumed eating. Yakima could sense the Easterner was nervous. He, too, was edgy, though he continued to eat the chili and take small sips from his whiskey as though it were a lazy Sunday noon and he had all day to enjoy his meal.
He detected barely audible whispers behind him; then someone grunted and several chairs scraped across the puncheons. Harms turned his head to look over his shoulder again as Yakima kept his head tipped over his chili bowl. But in the corner of his left eye, he watched three men rise from their chairs and, moving around the near table, saunter up toward Yakima and Harms, their thumbs hooked behind their shell belts.
“Ah, shit,” Harms sighed, dropping his spoon into his half-empty chili bowl. “I feel a bad case of heartburn coming on.”
Yakima swallowed a mouthful of chili, washed it down with the whiskey, then glanced over his shoulder. He arched a brow, as though surprised to see the three men—a big man and two others a couple inches shorter than Yakima—standing behind him, heads canted back on their shoulders, challenging looks on their hard, weathered faces.
Yakima turned full around. As he did, he shoved Harms off down toward the end of the bar with his left hand. Harms stepped away, stopped to grab his chili bowl and his shot glass, then continued scuffing back along the bar, his wary gaze on the three men facing Yakima.
Yakima rested his elbows on the bar top as he blandly regarded the three—the big man in the middle, the shorter gents to each side. The big man had a rectangular head with wide-spaced dark eyes, a handlebar mustache, and a lantern jaw. He wore a sheepskin vest and no hat. His thick, wavy, salt-and-pepper hair hung down over his ears.
The man on the left—a pale, blue-eyed gent with a broad-brimmed black hat decorated with silver conchos—wore woolly chaps and an old Colt Navy revolver positioned for the cross draw on his left hip. A whiskey-damp mustache drooped down over both sides of his mouth.
The man to Yakima’s right wore his long, frizzy red hair parted on one side. He had a matching soup-strainer mustache and opaque gray eyes, one pale lid pulled down low beneath a knotted scar. A necklace of wolf teeth hung from a thong over his bullhide, fleece-lined vest that was as scratched and cracked as a desert playa.
He, too, wore a Colt Navy while the big man in the group’s middle wore two big bowie knives on his hips, with a Colt .45 angled over his belly.
The pale gent on the left angled his head toward the chalkboard. “That rule is townwide. It ain’t just Finnegan’s.”
Yakima returned his stare, expressionless, leaning back on his elbows.
“That means you’re breakin’ a town ordinance, breed,” said the gent with frizzy red hair. His mustache was so thick his lips didn’t appear to move when he talked. “Me an’ Skip and Sundance work for the town marshal on weekends and holidays. So when we tell you to get your red ass outta here, it’s the law talkin’, not just a passel of range riders who don’t like Injuns—mixed breeds or otherwise.”
“Even though we don’t,” added the cowboy who Yakima assumed was Sundance.
Skip hadn’t yet said anything, but just stood glowering at Yakima from his full six feet five inches, a cruel smile pulling at his mouth corners, thumbs hooked behind his cartridge belt.
“I’ll take that under consideration,” Yakima grunted. “Now suppose you fellas take your gorilla and go back and sit down so I can finish my chili. As soon as I’m done, I’ll vamoose.” He hardened his eyes but tried to keep his rage on a short leash. “But not before I’ve eaten my chili.”
He started to turn back toward the bar.
Skip reached toward Yakima’s shoulder. “Who you callin’ gorilla, Red—?”
Wheeling back suddenly, Yakima sank his right fist liver-deep into Skip’s solar plexus, so that the last syllable of “Redskin” burst from the big man’s lips as a sort of “Skawhhhh!” as he doubled over and drew both his thick arms across his gut.
As the man staggered back, head down, Yakima snapped his right knee up against his forehead. The man’s head jerked up, and he stumbled straight back, bellowing like a poleaxed bull.
At the same time, the redheaded cowboy reached for his Colt, but his hand had barely touched the walnut grips before Yakima, jumping up and wheeling two feet above the floor, smashed his right heel against the side of the man’s face.
The connection made a crunching
smack
.
smack
.
Screaming, the red-haired gent flew sideways across a vacant table, his lower jaw hanging askew.
Yakima turned left, ready to parry a blow from Sundance. Brody Harms smashed his own right hand down on the hand Sundance was using to raise his Colt Navy toward Yakima.
The man cursed as the gun hit the floor, the revolver roaring and the slug thumping into the ceiling. Harms rammed his left fist against the back of Sundance’s head, then his right against his forehead, dropping him in his tracks.
Sundance raised both hands to his head, shouting, “Goddamn
sons o’ bitches
!”
sons o’ bitches
!”
Yakima wheeled back the other way, raking his eyes between the barman, who stood red faced and mute behind the bar, pooching out his thick lips with disgust, and the five other cowboys and the whore at the other table about twenty feet away.
One of the men was frozen half out of his chair, hand on his gun, regarding Yakima from beneath shaggy salt-and-pepper brows.
Yakima stared at him hard and the man melted like butter back down into his chair, raising his hands casually above the table, where he picked up a card deck but kept his hate-filled eyes on Yakima. The others stared at him as well, angry and wary.
The whore looked scared—glassy eyed, red faced, and holding her shawl across her enormous breasts, as though she’d suddenly found herself in the presence of a wounded bobcat.
Yakima glanced at Harms. The Easterner stood over Sundance, who was still down and rolling around in pain, cursing.
“Nice one. Grab his gun.”
As Harms reached down to disarm Sundance, Yakima walked over to pluck the Colt from the red-haired cowboy’s holster. The man lay on the floor with his head propped against a ceiling joist. He probed his swelling jaw with both hands, groaning, his mouth sounding as though he were chomping on jawbreakers.
“You . . . you broke my jaw, you bastard.”
Yakima tossed his Colt into a far corner, then walked over to Skip. The big man was on his hands and knees, bellowing, “Goddamnit!” over and over through bloody hands clamped over his nose.
Yakima placed his moccasin boot between the man’s shoulder blades and kicked him belly down against the floor. Then he removed Skip’s knives from his hip holsters and tossed them into a corner. He kicked the man over onto his back, delivering another savage blow to his ribs, and pulled the Colt .45 from Skip’s belly holster. He tossed the gun into the corner with the knives.
Drawing his Colt from its holster, and cocking the hammer, Yakima backed toward the bar. “I’m amending the rule a bit. Injuns are now allowed, but assholes are hereby banned from the premises.” He popped a shot into the puncheons between Skip and Sundance. “All three of you assholes—
out!
”
out!
”
The red-haired gent, words bizarrely garbled, told Yakima to diddle his mother. At least, that’s what it sounded like through the jawbreakers.
Yakima drilled a bullet into the ceiling joist above the cowboy’s head. The man jerked with a curse, wide-eyed with horror, and began heaving himself to his feet.
Sundance and Skip did likewise, and as Yakima held his cocked Colt on them, keeping one eye skinned on the bartender and on the other men in the room, they made their way to the door. Like the walking wounded of a long, pitched battle, they stumbled outside and across the porch, groaning and cursing, their boots scuffing and thudding, leaving the door standing wide behind them.
Brody Harms went over and closed the door, then turned to look at Yakima anxiously.
Yakima set his revolver on the bar and turned to his chili. He took a bite, set his spoon down, shoved his bowl forward, and looked at the bartender. “Food’s cold. Throw in some hot. Refill my partner’s bowl, too. We have a long ride ahead.”
Grumbling, the bartender did as he was told. As the other customers and the whore spoke in hushed tones off Yakima’s left flank, Brody Harms pressed his back to the bar beside him and said in a conspiratorial tone, “Shouldn’t we, uh, maybe light on out of here?”
Yakima’s fury was still a wildfire in his belly. He knew a good deal of his anger was caused by shot nerves over Faith, but he’d never taken to being treated like a mangy dog, and, the world be damned, he’d go down fighting such treatment like a gut-shot wolverine.
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