To Hell and Beyond Page 12

  Shad opened the door behind them, bathing the hallway in light. The man with the knife froze like a cockroach caught in the flare of a newly lit lamp. His eyes wide as silver dollars, he looked Maggie in the face and screamed.

  He wheeled, stumbling on his own feet, and ran out the back door, slamming it behind him.

  Breathing heavily, Maggie scooped up her rifle and peeked cautiously inside the storage room door, scanning for danger. She’d seen Shad out of the corner of her eye when he opened the door, but the piercing screech from her would-be killer had sent him back into the little room. Maggie scanned for other intruders. Trap had taught her an old saying he used many times to save his own life when it came to attackers—see one, think two. Luckily, it seemed this killer was alone.

  The boy stood in front of the cot, tears streaming down his face.

  “I heard a noise,” Shad sobbed. “Sorry I hollered, but I couldn’t hide again while they killed you too Miss Maggie.”

  The blanket above him still billowed in the breeze. Maggie bolted the door solidly behind her, then took Shad in her arms and held him.

  “It’s all right now. He’s gone.”

  When she backed away, Maggie saw the front of Shad’s shirt was covered in blood. She frantically searched for wounds on his chest. He sniffed and pointed to her.

  “It’s not me, Miss Maggie. It’s you.”

  She looked down. The front of her dress, across her breast, had been slashed by the man’s razor-sharp blade. She’d been able to push away fast enough that the cut was only superficial, but blood oozed from the long gash that ran almost from armpit to armpit. Shad looked at her in growing horror.

  “Are you going to die?”

  “I’m fine,” she assured him. “It’s only a scra . . .”

  The sound was faint at first, just a creaking of wood barely audible above Maggie’s breath. The creak grew louder directly outside the door. Maggie trained her rifle on the threshold. She chided herself for not barring the front entry when she’d had the chance. A toss of her head told Shad to get back behind her on the cot.

  Seconds ticked by, and she realized her forehead was dripping with sweat. She sat motionless as a loud rapping bowed the storeroom door. Expecting someone to burst through it at any moment, she let her finger tighten on the trigger.

  The knocking stopped.

  Maggie risked a glance over her shoulder at Shad, who still sat unmoving on the cot. A coarse chuckle came in under the door, along with a peculiar crackling sound she couldn’t quite place.

  Then she smelled it. Smoke. The jail was on fire.

  Maggie put her shoulder to the door and shoved. It didn’t budge. Someone had boarded it shut from the outside. Whoever killed John Loudermilk planned to burn them all alive. She would have to move quickly if they were to survive.

  Looking back at Shad, she prayed for guidance. Instinctively, she reached for the leather bag around her neck. Moist blood covered her chest.

  The medicine bag was gone.

  * * *

  Taft’s volunteer bucket brigade turned out with amazing speed at the first sign of flames from the jail. No one cared so much about who might be inside, especially the lawman. They were more interested in getting the blaze put out before it could jump to the nearby Berryman Tavern and its large supply of whiskey. The mere mention of a spark could reduce any of the nearby buildings to ashes.

  Billy Scudder sat panting in the shadows at the end of the train platform, a block away. The Indian witch’s medicine bag rested in the palm of his hand. He must have cut it off when he lashed out at her in the dark. He felt foolish for screaming, but that wasn’t the worst of it. When the door had opened and light spilled out into the hallway, the woman before him had borne an uncanny resemblance to his mama. The same mama the sheriff in New Mexico had hung by her neck until she was good and dead. The same mama that had a fair aim with a stick of stove wood when she got riled. The sight of her rattled Billy’s bones and scared him so bad he’d wet his britches.

  After he ran outside, Billy realized the witch had beguiled him. She’d turned herself into his mama to save her skin. The fact that he’d lost control of his bladder infuriated the trembling outlaw. There was fresh blood on his knife along with the darker stain from the dead lawman. He knew he’d cut her, but he didn’t know how bad. Feak would be furious if the witch showed up alive, so he had to make sure.

  The boy still needed killing. Billy had started to go back in and finish the job, but made it only as far as the front office. The chance he might run headlong into his mama again hit him like a shovel in the face. That’s when he came up with the idea to burn the whole building down. No one would ever suspect arson. There were fires all over the mountains; a stray spark could have blown in from anywhere. He’d been able to scrounge up some nails and a hammer from the deputy’s desk. The rest was easy.

  From his hiding place by the train station, Scudder watched the flames lick away at the heavy, stacked timbers of the wooden jail and nodded to himself. That would teach the damn witch to take on Mama’s visage.

  A long line of people, some still in their nightclothes, formed a bucket line from a water trough to the building, but they weren’t doing much good. Most of their efforts went toward the Berryman Tavern.

  Scudder rubbed his sparse mustache and drew a ragged breath, trying to rid himself of some of the tension he had from meeting the witch face-to-face. By now, he hoped his mama was giving her a good welcoming to Hell.

  Billy clambered to his feet and caught a whiff of himself. It wouldn’t do to go back to Feak and the A-patch smelling like he’d pissed himself. He remembered the clothesline he’d passed on his way to the jail, and headed in that direction. The same looseness he’d felt in his bowels came back to haunt him again, and he picked up his pace.

  Even from over a block away, Scudder could feel the fire against his back. The witch and the boy were both dead by now; they had to be.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Couldn’t get a good look, but I think there’s only one man in there with her. He’s kind of a grump.” Trap used his .45-70 to point at the shack. Moonlight glinted lazily off the octagonal barrel in the hazy blue darkness. “She called him Sam.”

  “A customer?” Clay rubbed a thumb and forefinger down his drooping mustache.

  “That’s what I’m thinkin’. I’d like to have a look around for tracks out back. There’s a privy beyond that stump row there from the door. Should be a whole load of tracks going back and forth. As far as I can tell, it’s the only way in or out.”

  “A whore’s door nearly always leads to the back,” Clay whispered. The rough catch still lingered in his voice. He had a way of taking on strays. Given time, Cora would become his project for redemption whether she was willing or not.

  Clay looked intently at the shack for a moment, then waved his pistol toward it. “Shall we go interrupt poor Sam’s riotous evening?” His voice smoothed out at the prospect of adventure. All but a hint of the melancholy that had filled him fled by the time they reached the door. The shine of tears that moistened his eyes only moments before was replaced by the glint of mischief as he rapped on the wood with the edge of a closed fist.

  “Later.” A tired voice barely made it through the thin walls. If a voice could have a hue, this one was drab.

  “Can’t wait.” Clay stood to the right of the door while he knocked again. Harder this time; a persistent knock that bowed the door in on its hinges and left no doubt that the one knocking was there to stay. Trap took up a position oblique to Clay’s, a few feet back with his rifle trained on the threshold—just in case they were wrong and it was Feak who was inside.

  “Be gone, damn you.” This time it was a man’s voice, thin and brittle as cheap glass. More whining plea than threat, it was hard to take as an order. “Can’t you see she’s got the book in the window?”

  Clay looked back at Trap, who bobbed his head at an ornately bound book with a red cloth spine, resting inside t
he cloudy window on the edge of the sill. A small circle of dust and grime was rubbed away to make the book visible through the otherwise opaque glass.

  “Must be her sign that she’s otherwise occupied,” Clay said, loud enough for everyone within a block to hear. A few shanties down, a dog began to bark at the disturbance.

  “You’re damn right that’s what it is,” the voice whined from inside.

  “Open the door, Sammy.” Clay’s mouth was a wide grin. He was enjoying this far too much.

  “Now, you look, mister. I was here first. Off with you.” Sam’s voice took on an edge now. It was louder, and close to the door.

  Trap withdrew another step into the shadows as the door creaked open an inch. A metal belt buckle jingled inside, and the black barrel of a pistol nosed its way out at chest level.

  “I said get outta here. You’re a slow learner whoever. . .” The intense heat of his preoccupation with Moira had imbued Sam with a little too much counterfeit bravery.

  Clay grabbed the pistol easily and shouldered his way in through the door.

  “Wh . . . wha . . . what do you think you’re doin’?” Sam was even thinner than his voice, with a long craning neck that seemed too narrow to hold his lolling head upright. He wore no shirt, and hadn’t had the time to get his suspenders up over bony shoulders. A bony hand held up the bunched front of his sagging britches.

  As soon as Clay breeched the door, Trap moved up and peeked in. A sallow woman, with lifeless hair the color of sun-bleached wood, slumped in a rumpled pile of sheets on a sagging bed along the side wall. Beads of sweat covered her forehead. Knobby bare legs hung like sticks, akimbo from under the frayed hem of a dingy sheet. Jutting collarbones peeked out from above. It seemed absurd that such a woman would pretend any sort of modesty under the circumstances. Even Trap found it hard to believe anyone could pick a woman like this over the robust and smiling Cora.

  Inside the shack, the tight air had the dank, sour odor of an illness. If not for the welcome scent of wood smoke that came through the open door, Trap felt he might get sick to his stomach.

  Clay shook his head at the gangly man in front of him. “You know, friend, women are worse than whiskey for giving a man a swelled-up view of his own abilities.” He emptied the offending revolver, shell by shell.

  Sam’s eyes twitched as if he’d been shot each time one of the heavy bullets clattered to the wooden floor. He hitched up his pants, looked back over a bony shoulder at Moira, and attempted to hitch up his courage.

  “Now see here.” The raw whine caught in his throat, but he plowed ahead in a stutter. “I d . . . done p . . . paid.”

  Clay took a deep breath, swelling his already puffed chest, and advanced on the quaking man. “Mister, I got the only two reasons I need to put a boot in your ass. I’m mad and you’re handy. Now, you best git while I’m in the mood to let you.”

  Sam’s head sunk on the end of his long neck and settled in the hollow of his chest, which looked like it was made for it. Deflated, he picked up his shirt and slinked to the door.

  “I’ll come back later,” he said to Moira. “You still owe me.”

  She shrugged and ignored him, apparently more concerned now with the new men in her life. Trap stepped in as Sam disappeared through the doorway. A muffled yelp came through the door behind him, and Ky stepped in following Trap.

  “I believe you let one get away,” Roman observed.

  Blake came in next and winked at his father. The two new men finally got a reaction from the sullen woman when she realized she wasn’t dealing with customers.

  “Now, what could you all want with me?” Moira groaned, raising her arms above her head to slither into a threadbare yellow dress. She squinted through rheumy eyes, as if she were looking into the sun, though the lamp globe was so covered with lampblack it hardly gave off any light.

  Clay pulled up a wobbly wooden chair and flipped it around so he could sit and lean forward across the backrest while he spoke. He sat only a few feet from the bed.

  “We’re lookin’ for a man you’re familiar with.”

  “I’m familiar with a whole passel of men.” There was a sense of gloom about her as heavy and squalid as the room. Without warning, she launched into a coughing fit that added some color to her face for a moment. It made the vein on the side of her neck bulge with effort. Spittle pooled in frothy bits at the corners of her mouth. When she regained her composure and her face had returned to its normal pallid hue, Clay began again.

  “This one likes to cut the fingers off of young girls.”

  “Did Cora send you? That little whore, I’ll tear her heart out for this.” Moira’s words came hard and vehement from an impassive face, like fire from the cold steel barrel of a gun.

  Trap thought it funny how a woman like this could call another woman a whore and consider it an insult. He let his eyes play around the small room, as much to give them something to look at besides Moira as anything. “Blake, take a look at those quilts.” He pointed his rifle at a pile of blankets against the far wall.

  Clay rested his chin on his hands along the back of the chair and closed his eyes. “Listen, hon, you got a dark future ahead of you. As things stand now, the only thing that’ll save you from the gallows is if the vigilantes get to you first and hang you from a tree.”

  Moira sat forward and cocked her head to one side. Only the slightest bit of animation perked the corners of her otherwise lifeless eyes. Her voice was as gray and lifeless as the faded pillows behind her. A peculiar rattle gurgled in her lungs when she spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I ain’t done nothin’ worth anybody hangin’ me over.”

  Clay nodded. “Consortin’ with murderous men . . .”

  She snorted, coughed again, and spit something thick and putrid into a rusty can by the bed. “If consortin’ was enough, my neck woulda been stretched long ago. Hell, you’d have to hang all the sports in this little burg.”

  “And going along with a kidnapping.” Blake squatted on the rough floor beside a pile of soiled quilts. “The Kenworth girl was here. Looks like they made her sleep on the floor.” The young lawman used the barrel of his pistol to poke through the dirty blankets. A louse scurried down the front sight and he shook it off in disgust. “There’re some bloody rags here. Looks like they came off a bandaged finger.”

  Clay turned his attention back to Moira, opening both palms in front of him. “There’s nothin’ we can do for you if the Kenworth girl dies.”

  Ky moved up beside him. “If that girl dies, young lady, I’ll come back and hang you myself.” Roman stared hard across his hooked nose. He was not a man to make idle threats. If Roman said you were about to hang, you’d best start in with your praying.

  Moira threw up her hands. “Look, fellas. She was alive when she left here. What did you want me to do? Slip off and report this to the old fart of a railroad agent? He’s got the croup so fierce, Lucius woulda killed him before he got halfway up the street. I’m only one woman. What was I supposed to do?”

  Clay looked at her and nodded slowly. The other three men were content to let him do the talking. “I see what you mean. But chew on this for a second, kiddo. What you do from now on can make a big difference in your future.” He paused for a moment, staring at the hardened face. “Did Feak say where he planned to take the girl?”

  Moira’s head twitched slightly. “I know they were taking her to meet somebody else. This wasn’t all Lucius’s idea, you know.”

  “Who?” Ky couldn’t help but chime in. “Who are they supposed to meet?”

  “Didn’t say.” Moira shrugged. “I’d tell you if I knew. When he mentioned it, Lucius just called him the boss.”

  “Did Lucius say which way they were goin’?” Clay looked at Ky while he spoke.

  “Nope. But I’m pretty sure they were headed deeper into the mountains. Whoever they’re meetin’ was a private sort of fella. Didn’t want to be seen around here.”

  “When is this meeti
ng supposed to take place?” Ky asked as Blake joined the men beside the bed.

  “Look, gents.” Moira lay back on the sagging bed and covered her face with a forearm. “I told you what I know and I know that ain’t much. Lucius keeps important matters between hisself and the Apaches. He don’t even tell that stupid kid, Scudder.”

  Clay glanced back at Trap and Blake. “The Indians with Feak are Apaches then?”

  Moira nodded behind her arm.

  “How many?”

  “Two. A youngster, about the age of that young buck here with you.” She peered over her forearm at Blake. “And an older one with a scarred-up face. He wears an eye patch, but he’s got enough meanness in him that one lonesome eye will melt you for sure.”

  Trap looked over at Ky, who met his gaze with a nod.

  “Did Lucius ever call these Apaches by their names?” Ky touched his pistol absentmindedly as he spoke.

  “Not so as I would remember. I called ’em Ugly and Uglier. Most of the time they was off somewhere and Lucius had me . . . otherwise occupied, if you know what I mean.”

  “What about this Scudder kid?” Clay reached out with his boot toe and kicked at the bed to keep Moira focused. “Tell us about him.”

  “Billy Scudder. He’s a mean one, he is. Gets his jollies by threatenin’ me, but he’s too scared of Lucius to take it any further than that.”

  “When did they go?” Clay stood and hitched his belt like he was ready to leave. Leaving seemed like a good idea to Trap. The closeness of the room and the sour smell of the woman worked hard against his churning stomach. Even with the cracks in the walls, there didn’t seem to be enough air in the tiny room for everyone.

  “Just after sundown—about a half hour before old Sam came by.” Moira suddenly swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat upright. “Listen, boys, are you about to take me to jail or what? The night is still young and I got appointments to keep if you ain’t.”

  “I reckon that’s up to you,” Clay said. He took a half step backward and almost bumped into Ky. Even he was surprised by the woman’s sudden boldness.