Destined to Die (13 page)

‘It’s not our business,’ her husband said quickly.

Running footfalls sounded out on the street.

‘Somethin’ to do with them mountain folks, I’ll bet,’ the whore muttered. If she used a nightdress in her trade, it was not the one she wore now, which was of unappealing red flannel, draping her full body shapelessly.

There were gasps of shock and some strangled curses as the citizens of Bacall came close enough to see what was left of Chester.

Then: ‘Arnie? You and Fran okay? What happened here?’

‘Nobody gives a shit about me!’ Annie Kruger snarled. And turned to go back upstairs.

Gold took the same route.

‘I’ll have our mortician take care of the bodies,’ Dalton called.

‘Nobody will touch them except me.’ Gold’s voice was soft, but insistent, as some faces showed above the bat-wings. ‘Appreciate it if you’d have Mr Street open up his livery so I can get what I need.’

‘You’re leavin’?’ He sounded surprised, and ready to be pleased.

‘Not right now.’

The whore was halfway along the hallway to her room. When he reached the top of the stairs, she asked: ‘You want me again?’

‘Seeing a man get killed make you want a live one lady?’

‘Damn you, I was worried about you! After the shootin’ started.’

She swung around and hurried to reach her room. Again slammed the door. By which time Gold was in his room. He went to his saddlebags and took out two cartridges for the Murcott and three for the Colt. Reloaded both weapons and went back downstairs.

Fran Dalton was gone. Her husband was behind his bar, pouring drinks for the five men - coats on over their nightshirts and boots unlaced - who had run to the scene of the violence. All of them looked at the black-clad, shotgun-toting young man with apprehension.

‘Fred Street’s gone to open his place like you said, Mr Gold,’ Dalton said.

‘Them hillbillies wouldn’t’ve hired no gunslingers to do their dirty work, mister,’ a tall, gaunt-faced, bespectacled man added. Then, after Gold had given a nod of acknowledgement to Dalton and stooped to grab hold of the back of Jake’s coat collar: ‘I run the funeral parlour here in Bacall.’

‘I’m like the mountain people, sir. Do my own dirty work.’ He dragged his limp burden to the batwings, then paused to ask: ‘Any particular part of the cemetery you want me to bury them?’

An elderly man, short and pot-bellied, with a white beard, growled: ‘We don’t want filth like that buried in our churchyard.’

‘Fine.’

‘In our town even.’

This as the batwings flapped.

The street was deserted again, but with more lights on now. With the Murcott in the crook of an arm, Barnaby Gold got a grip on Chester with his free hand. Then began to move backwards in a crouch. Dragging both corpses to the end of the street, then across the shallow creek. The water came up to his knees. He left the remains at the side of the trail beyond the town marker and recrossed the creek.

Walking past the entrance to the saloon, he heard Arnie Dalton say: ‘... just before he started blastin’ into the empty room. He called that Gold feller an undertaker. And then...’

The middle-aged, powerfully-built, square-faced liveryman was still hungover from the drinks he had taken in the saloon. He was sitting on a wooden crate, cradling his head in his hands, when Gold entered - and saw that the horses of Jake and Chester were enstalled there.

‘You want your mount, mister?’

‘No, sir. Just something from my bedroll.’

There was no lamplight in the stable, but enough from the moon came in for Gold to see his way to the corner Street indicated, where his saddle and bedroll hung from a wall hook.

‘Appreciate you taking the trouble to open up for me, Mr Street.’

He carried the three pieces of the shovel outside. The liveryman followed him through the doorway and snapped the padlock closed.

‘Trouble? I don’t reckon I know the meanin’ of that word, mister.’

Then, despite his pounding head, watched in fascination as the younger man screwed the three pieces of the shovel together.

‘Bye-by,’ Gold said when the chore was done. And turned with the Murcott in one hand and the shovel in the other to go back up the sloping curve of the street.

‘What? Oh, yeah. Night to you, mister.’

Other eyes watched him out of sight. Then the men in the saloon surveyed him curiously as he went back over the creek. Until lighted windows began to darken. The group in the Riverside Saloon broke up and headed again for home. Casting backward glances toward Barnaby Gold who worked slowly and deliberately at digging a two-man grave beside the trail on the far side of the creek.

Soon, just a single lamp in the saloon augmented the moonlight. And only the rhythmic thud of the shovel into dirt provided sound in addition to those of the breeze and the running water.

Gold’s mind was empty of thoughts as he worked on the grave with the apparent ease that came with long experience.

First Arkin, then Davis. Now Jake and Chester, whose surnames he did not know. He had been warned that to anger the Channons of Texas was to invite the attention of every gunslinger greedy for a share of the family’s wealth.

What was the point of regretting the series of events that had caused him to give the Channons a thirst for vengeance? There was no way to alter the past. Just as pointless to wonder how many more like these he would have to bury. Before the Channons called a halt. Or, more likely, got off the first and decisive shot.

And this was undoubtedly the most likely ending the future held. Because the four men he had been forced to gun down on account of the Channon family’s reputation had all made the mistake of underestimating Barnaby Gold.

Arkin had known nothing of the young man except that he was a small town undertaker.

Clinton Davis had known that Arkin had failed - perhaps assumed he was dead - but was unaware of the details.

To Jake and Chester, he was
just a frigging kid.

But as the death toll mounted and the knowledge of it spread, the other hired guns who were out there in the darkness, even now hunting for him, would not be so easy to beat to the killing shot. They would be much more wary in approaching this blond-haired, green-eyed, good-looking young man who had already buried four of their kind.

Then there was the prospect of ending his trouble with the mountain people along the Colorado south of Bacall. The possibility that they had held off so far because of some deal that was reached with Jake and Chester.

Barnaby Gold might have considered some or all of these points while he dug the six foot deep grave, laid the two men face-up in the bottom and then refilled it. But he did not give a thought to any of them.

And only the fact that the Murcott was never out of arm’s reach as he was working indicated that he was aware of being in mortal danger that could strike at any time.

When he was finished, heaping the dirt into a neat mound along the length of the grave, he lit a cheroot and dismantled the shovel. His boots and pants were dry now and he used the footbridge to cross the creek.

In the saloon he closed and bolted the entrance doors, and doused the lamp before he went up to his room: noticing that Dalton had failed to wash up the dirty glasses from the late night drinking session, and neither had he swept up the shards from the bullet-shattered window.

Up in his room, in the moonlight, he saw there were five bullet holes in the bedcovers and mattress beneath. So there had been one shell left in Chester’s six-shooter when he climbed out on to the balcony to search for the man missing from the bed. He had died in pain and disappointment after confidence replaced anger and fear.

Gold laid the Murcott, his gun-belt and the dismantled shovel on the chair. Then undressed to the extent of removing his hat, frock coat and boots before he got under the bedcovers. The window remained fully opened, but no sounds loud enough to disturb his rest intruded into the room.

Instead, it was a woman.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HE did not hear the tentative knocking on the door, nor the gentle opening and closing of it. Followed by the padding of bare feet to the side of the bed. Her regular breathing as she stood in the moonlit, night-cooled room looking down at his head on the pillow for several seconds.

Then, very softly: ‘Barnaby. Barnaby Gold.’

He was sleeping the sleep of the contented. And she had to reach out a nervous hand, to touch his shoulder then call his given name again before his eyes snapped open. He blinked several times, disorientated in the first moments of waking. Not recognising her because she had her back to the window.

‘It’s me, Francis Dalton.’

‘Goddammit to hell,’ he murmured, and pulled himself up into a sitting posture, his back resting against the head of the bed. He fisted the grit of sleep from his eyes, ‘Something wrong, Mrs Dalton?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Nothing. I’m sorry to disturb you.’

‘Then why did you, lady?’

She was dressed in the same way as when he had last seen her in the immediate aftermath of the killings. With a long, dark coat draped over her shoulders. Clutching it together at her breasts, the lower front veered
open to
reveal a white nightgown. But her head-hugging, short hair was no longer dishevelled from sleeping. She had brushed it and it had a sheen in the moonlight.

She drew erect and tense at his curt, flatly-put query. Blurted softly: ‘I meant there’s nothing wrong for you, Barnaby. But me, I... I need help.’

He reached into his coat, draped over the chair to get the box of cheroots and matches. He lit one and on a stream of smoke asked: ‘Help?’

‘You’ll be leaving town tomorrow?’

‘If that’s when Sheriff Polk comes back, Mrs Dalton.’

‘He’s expected.’

‘Okay.’

‘So it has to be tonight.’

‘It does?’

‘Oh God, yes.’

‘What?’

‘Make love to me, Barnaby.’

She had been gazing directly into his face. But now she dropped her head to stare at both her hands clutching at the front of her coat

‘You want to pinch me, Mrs Dalton.’

‘What?’ She continued to hold the attitude of shame.

‘If I’m not dreaming this, that’ll be less painful than testing it with the lighted end of this cheroot.’

Now she forced her head half-up, to stare at his face with the tops of her eyes. There was a greater tension in her voice.

‘Annie told me how it was with you. She tells me how it is with any new man who pays to use her. Oh, God, this sounds awful. But you have to understand. Arnie’s a fine husband in so many ways. But when we’re in bed, he’s ... he’s so totally selfish.’

She shook her head. ‘No, it may not be like that. He can’t help himself, perhaps. It’s over so quickly for him.’

‘I don’t want to hear this, lady.’

‘Please, just so you’ll understand. At first, when we were married, I always told him it was good for me. I thought he’d get better. Make it so that I could get—’

‘I can’t help you, Mrs Dalton.’ His green eyes glinted in the moonlight and his tone was far colder than the night air entering through the same open window.

‘Just so I can know what it’s like,’ she blurted. ‘Just the once in my life. In a town like this there’s no chance for me to... with any of the men who live here.’

‘Best you leave this room now.’

‘I’ve never before. Not once with any of those other men Annie told me about. But when I first saw you downstairs ... when I brought you your meal ... you struck something inside me, Barnaby. Then when she told me. Said how you treated her up here. Her a whore.’

His eyes were accustomed to the low level of light now. He saw her pale face in the frame of jet black hair: knew that her dark eyes which were spilling tears down her cheeks would be expressing the same mixture of desperate pleading that sounded in her whispering voice.

‘I’ll give you two choices, Mrs Dalton.’

He sucked on the cheroot and in the red glow of the burning tobacco glimpsed the sudden eagerness, on the brink of high excitement, with which she looked at him.

‘Yes?’

‘You can go to the door, open it, go through it and close it behind you. Or I can open and close it for you. And in between, toss you through by the scruff of your neck.’

A sob escaped her throat. He drew hard against the cheroot again and in this period of brighter light he saw she looked on the verge of venting a string of curses at him.

But then she whirled around and went to
the door. Instead of opening it though, she halted, jerked the coat off her shoulders and dropped it to the floor. Then with a fast, fluid movement, pulled the nightgown up over her head, dropped it on top of the coat and turned to face the watching man on the bed.

Her naked body was a match for her face. Lean and angular, a world removed from the full-blown, obvious sexuality of Anne Kruger’s looks and figure. Slim-waisted and narrow-hipped, the belly flat and the thighs slender. The small breasts were firmly conical even while she was standing, her back pressed to the door. The area of the nipples small in the diameter of their darkness but large to the extent of her readiness to be taken. Just as the triangular marking of her sex was almost diminutive, but very bushy.