Death Rides Alone (11 page)

Luke tried not to roll his eyes in disgust. After the day they'd had, the last thing they needed to encounter was some obnoxious young buck who probably thought he was fast on the draw, that fantasy no doubt fueled by liquor and countless dime-novel scenarios pored over in bunkhouses and outhouses.

Tyler said, “I'm not scared. Just not looking for trouble. Why don't you go back to your friends, let us talk to the lady for a while, and then if she wants to do some more business with you, that'll be up to her.”

“You keep callin' her a lady? Don't you know a dirty whore when you see one?” The Texan let out a raucous laugh. “Oh, I get it now! You're one o' them fellas who ain't interested in gals. That's why you ain't taken her over yonder to the rooms. You wouldn't know what to do with her if you did.” He jabbed his left thumb against his chest. “Well,
I
sure as hell do!”

“Yeah,” Millie said, “that's why we sat back there playin' cards for twenty minutes so you could lie to your friends about everything you done to me.”

The Texan's eyes widened in outrage. He yelled, “You lyin' bitch!” His left arm swung out before Luke or Tyler could stop him, and the back of his hand cracked across Millie's face with enough force to knock her out of the chair to the floor.

Tyler exploded out of his chair with a shout and tackled the Texan, driving him off his feet.

Luke was on his feet a split-second later with both Remingtons drawn and cocked.

One was aimed in the general direction of the two men sitting at a table. They had been sharing drinks from a bottle after finishing their supper. Both were middle-aged and tired-looking, and although they watched the fracas between Tyler and the Texan, neither of them seemed to have any inclination to join in.

The same wasn't true of the two men at the bar, the youngster's friends. They had looked startled when Tyler tackled the Texan, but then they'd scowled and started forward as if to help their partner.

Luke's other Remington, its long barrel pointed straight at them, stopped them in their tracks. They wore furious expressions, but staring down the barrel of the revolver had frozen their feet.

“Right there, boys,” Luke said. “You'll do just fine staying exactly where you are.”

On the rough, sawdust-littered floor, Tyler and his opponent had rolled over several times, punching and kicking and gouging. There might have even been some biting going on; Luke couldn't tell. There were no rules in this fight, which the young Texan demonstrated by trying to ram his chaps-clad knee into Tyler's groin.

Tyler twisted away from that vicious blow and clapped a hand over the other man's face, digging for his eyes. The Texan jerked his head away and clipped Tyler on the chin with a wild punch. That rocked Tyler's head back. The Texan grabbed Tyler's shirt front and slung him to the side.

As Tyler rolled over again, the Texan scrambled to his feet and went after him. A boot toe thudded into Tyler's ribs.

Luke didn't like to see anybody being kicked while he was down, but he knew if he took his attention off of the Texan's friends, they would rush to join the fight.

Tyler was on his own in this battle.

The Texan tried to kick him again, but this time Tyler got his hands up and grabbed the young man's boot as it came at him. Tyler heaved, throwing the Texan off his feet and sending him crashing to the floor on his back. That knocked the breath out of the Texan and stunned him long enough for Tyler to make it to his feet. He had to grab the back of a chair and brace himself on it until his legs steadied.

The Texan rolled onto his side and then got his hands and knees under him. As he came up, he yelled, “I'm gonna blow your lights out, you bastard!”

Before he could reach for his gun, though, Pettifer leveled a shotgun at him from behind the counter and said, “Keep your hand away from that hogleg!”

The young Texan glared at him but didn't make a move for the Colt on his hip.

“I don't mind fights in my place,” Pettifer went on, “but they're gonna be fair. You two can beat yourselves to death if you're of a mind to, but no gunplay!”

Luke didn't feel any admiration for Pettifer—the man harbored outlaws and was a whoremonger—but at least he still had a semblance of honor about him. That Western code of fair play could be found in most people who lived on the frontier, even its lowest denizens.

For a second the Texan looked like he was going to slap leather anyway, despite the threatening scattergun, but then he thought better of it. Instead he reached for the buckle of his gunbelt, unfastened it, and lowered the belt and holstered gun onto one of the tables.

Then he balled his fists and charged at Tyler, bellowing out his rage as he did so.

Tyler met the attack with hard fists of his own. He blocked some of the Texan's punches, absorbed the force of the ones that got through, and swung blow after blow of his own.

For a long moment, the two young men stood toe to toe, slugging away at each other, as stubborn and brutal as primordial beasts struggling in the dawn of time, Luke thought. Both faces were bloody now, and drops of crimson flew every time a fist crashed into flesh.

Then one of Tyler's feet slipped as he tried to shift to a different position, causing his guard to drop. The Texan's right flew in and slammed into Tyler's cheekbone with enough force to send him reeling back against the bar.

The Texan crowded against him, keeping him pinned there while hooking punch after punch into Tyler's midsection. Tyler was helpless and gasping for breath. His face had gone gray under the onslaught.

Luke didn't want to see Tyler beaten to death. That would assure that the truth about Rachel Montgomery's murder would never be revealed. He was about to step in when Tyler made a desperate grab and got hold of the Texan's left ear.

Tyler twisted as hard as he could, and more blood flew as skin ripped and separated. The Texan howled in pain and tried to jerk away, but Tyler kept twisting until the ear was torn halfway off his opponent's head.

He finally let go and swung his left in a wicked hook. The punch wasn't moving very fast, but the Texan was so concerned with his mutilated ear that he couldn't get out of the way in time. Tyler's fist caught him on the jaw and jerked his head to the side. Tyler hit him with a right. The Texan staggered back a couple of steps.

Now Tyler was the one crowding his opponent, keeping the Texan off balance with a flurry of punches. Luke could tell that Tyler was putting the last of his strength into this counterattack. If it failed to end the fight, Tyler was probably done for.

The Texan couldn't get his hands up anymore, though, so punch after punch thudded home. As the Texan began to sway, Tyler swung a roundhouse right that landed solidly and lifted the youngster completely off his feet.

This time when the Texan crashed down, it was with a finality that said he wouldn't be getting up again anytime soon.

Millie had long since gotten to her feet after the Texan knocked her out of the chair. Luke had seen that from the corner of his eye. She had stood to one side, watching anxiously as the two young men battled.

Now, with the Texan out cold, she stepped up hurriedly to Tyler and caught hold of his arm to steady him as he swayed and looked like he might fall down, too.

“You didn't have to stand up for me like that,” she told him, then smiled. “But I've got to admit, it was kind of nice.”

Tyler managed to return the smile, although it looked like it hurt him to move his bruised, bloody face.

“Yes'm,” he said as his breath rasped in his throat. “I can't abide . . . anybody hurtin' . . . a lady.”

“Well, the kid was right about that part, I reckon. I ain't no ways a lady. But it's nice somebody might think so and act like it, whether it's true or not.”

Luke motioned with the Remington's barrel to the Texan's two friends and said, “Get him up and out of here.” He looked at Pettifer. “That is, if you have no objection.”

Pettifer had lowered the shotgun but still held the double-barreled weapon. He shook his head and said, “They hadn't paid for rooms for the night, just booze and a poke for the kid. That gives you more of a say on who stays and who goes, as far as I'm concerned.”

Luke nodded toward the Texan's senseless form again, and this time the other two men came forward to pick him up, although they wore surly frowns as they did so.

They got him to his feet, but it took both of them to keep him there. The Texan had started to make incoherent noises and move his head a little, but he was still a long way from having his wits about him.

As the other two started half carrying, half dragging him toward the entrance, one of the men who'd been sitting at the table stood, picked up the Texan's hat, and put it on the youngster's head. The Texan didn't seem to notice.

“Hell of a fight,” the older man said to Tyler. “Wish it could have gone on longer.”

“No offense,” Tyler said, “but I sure as hell don't.”

The Texan's two companions hauled him out of the trading post and into the night. When the door had swung closed behind them, Luke looked at the two older men and said, “You fellas didn't have any cards in that game, did you?”

The one still sitting at the table said, “Not hardly, mister. Mack and me are just passin' through. We don't know any of you folks and would just as soon keep it that way.”

“Sounds good to me,” Luke said. He holstered both guns. He would remain alert, of course, but his instincts told him the other two customers didn't represent any threat.

“Honey, let's get you set down,” Millie said to Tyler as she helped him over to the table. “You look a little green.”

“Yeah, I might not have . . . eaten that big bowl of stew . . . if I'd known I was gonna get punched in the belly so much.”

Tyler didn't make it to the table. He turned and lurched toward the door instead, holding a hand to his mouth. Millie went with him, helping hold him up, and they made it outside before Tyler began losing his supper.

Pettifer put the shotgun somewhere back under the bar where he had gotten it and told Luke, “No refunds on the stew because it didn't stay down.”

“Not your fault that it didn't,” Luke said. “You might have stepped in, though, when that obnoxious Texan began to mistreat the young woman.”

“I wouldn't have let him do any real harm to her,” Pettifer said as his beefy shoulders went up and down again. “A whore's got to be used to getting knocked around a little, though. That's just the way things are.”

And that code of honor Luke had been thinking about earlier didn't run very deep in this place's proprietor, obviously.

Luke was turning back toward the table where his Winchester still lay when he spotted someone he hadn't seen before standing at the end of the bar. She was a short, stocky woman with long black hair done in two braids. Clearly an Indian, even though she wore white woman's clothing. Luke recalled Pettifer asking Millie about somebody called Spotted Fawn, and he knew that was who he was looking at now.

When the trouble broke out, she had been in one of the rooms on the other side of the building, servicing a customer. Luke figured she had come back into this part of the trading post while the fight was going on between Tyler and the Texan, and he hadn't noticed her because he'd been keeping his attention focused on the Texan's two friends and on the battle itself.

That thought put a frown on Luke's face. He didn't like the fact that someone had been able to move around in here without him noticing.

And there was no sign of Spotted Fawn's customer, either. Was he still over there on the other side of the building, sleeping in one of the little rooms, or had he managed to get out of the trading post without Luke seeing him? The idea that someone could be drifting around out there, unaccounted for, his identity unknown, was pretty worrisome.

That thought had barely had time to form in Luke's brain before a gunshot suddenly blasted, somewhere outside.

Luke lunged toward the door, cursing bitterly to himself because he knew that Tyler was outside and might be in danger. Of course, he would have needed eyes in the back of his head to see everything that had gone on in the trading post during the ruckus . . . but to Luke's way of thinking, that was exactly what he should have done.

Another shot roared. One of the Remingtons was in Luke's right hand as he used his left to throw the door open. Colt flame bloomed in the darkness to his right as a third shot split the night.

He didn't know who was behind the gun, so he couldn't target the muzzle flash. Instead he darted through the door and veered sharply left to look for some cover.

There was none to be found. A second later, his left foot struck something soft and yielding and he stumbled, going to a knee. Thinking he had just tripped on Tyler's body, he thrust out his left hand to touch the motionless figure sprawled on the ground in front of him.

The contours he discovered were definitely female. He didn't detect any signs of life, either.

Millie, he thought as he edged over next to the wall, into the shadows. He was counting on his dark clothing concealing him from the gunman, at least for a moment or two.

Tyler was still out here somewhere. Was it possible that was him with the gun? Could he have gotten his hands on a weapon somehow and shot Millie in order to lure Luke out here and gun him down, too?

The idea was so far-fetched that Luke discarded it almost at once. It was true that Tyler had been desperate to escape when Luke first captured him, but over the past few days he seemed to have accepted the fact that going back to White Fork and exposing Spence Douglas's guilt was the best course open to him.

Besides, Luke didn't believe for a second that Tyler would have shot the blonde, especially after fighting such a brutal battle to defend her the way he had done.

But that left Tyler's whereabouts a mystery, as was the identity of the would-be killer.

No more shots had sounded. Luke figured that meant the gunman couldn't see him and was watching for some sign, something for him to shoot at.

Luke couldn't stay where he was, even though moving was a risk. Hugging the wall, he slipped as quietly as possible toward the corner of the building. The gunman was over by the corral, so Luke thought he might be able to surprise the man by circling around behind the trading post.

He wasn't the only one who'd had that idea. An angry shout suddenly rang out, followed less than a heartbeat later by the explosion of another shot. Luke saw a tongue of orange flame spurt from a gun muzzle, then he heard the sounds of a struggle, punctuated by grunts of effort.

Luke abandoned the shadows and raced toward the fight. He had a feeling that Judd Tyler was in the thick of it, and he didn't know what the odds were. The would-be killer might be the man who had been with Spotted Fawn, in which case he was probably alone, but it was possible the young Texan and his friends had lingered outside, hoping to get revenge on Tyler.

Either way, Luke knew Tyler needed his help. The young man was outnumbered, outgunned—or both.

Another shot shattered the night air. This time Luke was close enough to make out the two struggling figures in the glare from the muzzle flash. He heard one of them cry out as the shapes parted. The lean form stumbled backward.

“Tyler, hit the dirt!” Luke shouted.

The man who'd evidently been hit dropped to the ground while the other shape twisted back toward Luke. He still couldn't be absolutely certain which one was which, but when the gun went off yet again and Luke heard the slap of the slug just past his ear, he figured it didn't really matter.

Anybody trying to kill him was going to get a bullet—or several—in return.

The Remington roared and bucked in his fist. He triggered three swift shots, and with each blast the man who had lurked outside, waiting to kill, rocked back under the impact of the bullets. The man fell sideways to his knees, then crumpled forward.

Luke used his left hand to fish a lucifer out of his shirt pocket, then snapped the match to life with an iron-hard thumbnail. His eyes were slitted against the glare. He held the lucifer so that its light fell across the man on the ground.

Luke couldn't see the man's face because of the way he was lying, but his hat had fallen off and revealed a skull that was as bald as a billiard ball.

Definitely
not
Judd Tyler.

A moan came from the other man, then a gasped question: “Luke?”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “How bad are you hit, Tyler?”

“I dunno . . . Not bad, I think. But what about Millie?”

“We'll have to check on her and see,” Luke said, although from what he had found earlier, he wasn't very optimistic about the young woman's condition.

The match had burned down. Luke dropped it and lit another, and while it was burning brightly he used the toe of his boot to roll the man he'd shot onto his back. The blankly staring eyes and the shirt front sodden with blood that was black in the harsh light confirmed that the man was dead.

Tyler had gotten up, hurried over to Millie, and dropped to his knees beside her. He said, “Oh, damn. Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

Luke shook out the second match before it could burn his fingers and swung away from the dead man.

“She didn't make it?”

“No.” Tyler's voice was choked with emotion. “It looks like that first shot hit her right in the heart. It was meant for me. The bastard was aiming at
me
, Luke. She stepped in front of me just as the gun went off. Pure bad luck. Neither of us knew he was anywhere around.”

“The workings of fate are often beyond our comprehension.”

“Damn it, don't spew quotes at me! Not now.”

“I'm not,” Luke said. “It's just the truth . . . unpleasant though it may be sometimes.”

“Didn't really know her at all,” Tyler muttered. “Barely even met her. Just knew her name and that she was a . . . a whore. But she saved my life anyway.”

“You know a man with a bald head, even though he's not very old? Maybe thirty.”

Tyler looked up and repeated, “A bald head? Let me see.”

He stood up and stumbled over while Luke lit another lucifer. Tyler stared down at the corpse with hate in his eyes and said, “That's Cue Ball Hennessy. He's one of Axtell's deputies, too. I told you they were probably closin' in on us.”

“No badge pinned to his shirt,” Luke said.

“It's probably in his pocket or his saddlebags. I reckon he must've taken it off before he rode in here, knowing that he wouldn't get any cooperation from Pettifer or any of the place's customers if they knew he was a lawman . . . even the pitiful excuse for one that he was.”

The mention of Pettifer made Luke glance toward the door. The trading post's owner and the other two men were still inside. None of them had even poked a head out, as far as Luke knew. Which wasn't surprising. The sort of
hombres
who would stop at a place like this knew how to mind their own business.

Luke was curious about something, though. He called, “Pettifer! Get out here!”

A moment later, Pettifer's bulky figure appeared in the open doorway. He had the shotgun in his hands again. Caution cloaked the trading post owner as he looked around.

“All the shooting over?” he asked.

“That's right,” Luke said. “Fetch a lantern, Pettifer.”

Pettifer cocked his head to the side and said, “Why do you want me to do that?”

“Something here I want you to take a look at. A couple of somethings, in fact.” Luke's voice hardened. “Get that lantern.”

Instead of doing what Luke told him, Pettifer turned his head and shouted over his shoulder, “Spotted Fawn! Light a lantern and bring it out here!”

The Indian woman appeared a minute later, holding the burning lantern in front of her. She stepped out and lifted it higher, so that the circle of yellow light it cast washed over Millie's body.

A choked sound came from Pettifer's throat. He said, “Aw ... aw, hell. She's dead, isn't she?”

“Indeed she is,” Luke said. “This man fired the shot that killed her.”

Spotted Fawn turned, throwing the light over Luke, Tyler—who had moved to stand beside him—and the body of Cue Ball Hennessy.

“Recognize him?” Luke asked. His voice was still flat and hard.

“He's the, uh, fella who was with Spotted Fawn when you gents came in,” Pettifer said.

“Are you in the habit of helping lawmen now?”

The two older men who had been in the trading post had come out to stand just in front of the door. Both stiffened when they heard Luke's question.

“He's a lawman?” Pettifer's response was practically an alarmed yelp. “He's not wearing a badge!”

“Yeah, but I recognize him,” Tyler said. “He's one of Sheriff Gus Axtell's deputies from White Fork, across the line in Montana Territory.”

“Well, how in blazes could I be expected to know that?” Pettifer's voice became more blustery as he regained some of his confidence. “I can't recognize every lawman on the whole damn frontier. If a fella comes into my place and he's not wearing a badge, and he doesn't
tell
me he's a lawman, I don't have any way of knowin' about it.”

“What
did
he tell you?” Luke asked. “I'm betting he had a few questions, didn't he?”

“Well, uh . . .” Suddenly, Pettifer was more uncertain again. “He might've said he was looking for a couple of friends of his.”

“Did he describe them?”

“One of them.” Pettifer nodded toward Tyler. “Description sounded sort of like this young fella here. I told him I hadn't seen anybody lately who looked like that.”

“What did he do then?”

“Had a drink and decided to take Spotted Fawn over to the other side of the building for a poke. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as I could tell.”

“But when we came in,” Luke said, “you didn't think to let us know that a man who might be looking for us was only a few feet away?”

“Hell, it was none of my business! I figured the fella would come out sooner or later and see you, and if you were the ones he was looking for, he'd recognize you. If you weren't, what the hell did it matter?”

“But he came out while that fight was going on and no one noticed him. Then he waited out here to bushwhack my friend. And because of that, Millie is dead.”

“But it's not my fault! I couldn't have known any of that was gonna happen.”

“Actions have consequences, intended or not,” Luke said. “Tomorrow morning, one of those consequences will be a burial.”