Destined to Die (9 page)

‘He had something on his mind.’

‘Killin’ you.’ She paused to invite a comment, but none was forthcoming. ‘The whys and wherefores of that ain’t got nothin’ to do with me and I don’t wanna know them.’

It was a lie. Gertrude Wolfe was deeply intrigued by this black-clad, slow-to-talk and totally unruffled young man, calmly burying a stranger on this peaceful riverside which was liable at any moment to explode with renewed violence. Intrigued by him and . . . something else. A mixture of things. Horrified and yet attracted. Admiring his firmness of resolve and at the same time repelled by his callous lack of emotion. She wanted him to be done and be gone; yet felt a strong desire to know why he was as he was. When she could maybe help him to be different. Such a fine looking young man with that blond hair and green eyes. His body so lithe and strong.

The life-wearied and time-lined woman made a sound deep in her throat. Of self-anger. Then felt her sallow complexion become flushed when Barnaby Gold finished his chore and turned toward her, as if she feared he had glimpsed in her expression some clue to her disgusting train of thought.

‘Festus and me go to bed early,’ she blurted out quickly. ‘Sleep deep with clear consciences. We wouldn’t hear no one ridin’ down the trail in the dead of night. Unless he was makin’ a real racket.’

Gold was unscrewing the three pieces of the shovel.

‘Appreciate the thought, Mrs Wolfe.’

He started toward his horse to stow the dismantled tool in his bedroll.

‘That Joanne Engels a high and mighty miss for her age. Don’t like it that we won’t allow marriage before a person is sixteen. Mary-Ann was only talkin’ about her last night. About how she was sorry she ever let her know that she was only eleven when she got wed to Virgil back east. Said, too, how she didn’t like for the girl to be walkin’ out with that no-good Jesse Gershel.’

Barnaby Gold had returned to the edge of the river. To hunker down, wash the dirt from his hands and the sweat from his face.

‘But you people didn’t leave all the mountain ways behind, lady,’ he said as he came erect, wiped his hands dry on his coat and took out a cheroot.

‘We take care of our own, sure enough. Deal with our own troubles. But we ain’t never had none as big as this before.’

He struck a match on the stock of the Murcott and lit the cheroot before he swung up into the saddle. Saw something akin to sorrow in the dark eyes of the woman. Maybe apology, maybe pity. But in response to his implacable gaze, her feeling turned to anger.

‘But you got no call to look so high and mighty about it! Seems to me I never did come across anyone before so set on doin’ things his own way! Least we got rules we abide by because they was made for the good of all of us.’

‘Sure, Mrs Wolfe. Where there are people, you have to have rules. I’m just one person. Bye-bye.’

CHAPTER TEN

FESTUS Wolfe had brought seven other men down the trail on the Arizona side of the river, but during the remainder of the afternoon, Barnaby Gold rode by only five homesteads. Frame houses and outbuildings amid carefully tended fields of crops.

A dog barked in one of the barns as he approached and went on by. In the house on another property he heard a baby crying. Once, as he rounded an outcrop of rock, he caught sight of a slim woman with auburn hair. She dashed from the house, snatched up a boy of about four playing with a toy handcart and rushed back inside with him. The slamming of the door curtailed the child’s tearful protests.

He rode across the front of each river-facing house with the Murcott resting on the saddle horn. Knowing he was being watched from behind windows that glinted in the sunlight. Aware of the possibility that perhaps not every man had responded to Will Gershel’s call. Or that a woman, more familiar with guns than Gertrude Wolfe, might be driven to blasting at him by some vivid mental image of wholesale slaughter: conjured up by his appearance on the trail.

But his passing was merely noted. Surreptitiously and fearfully. And he was followed only by the anxious gazes of the watchers for as long as he remained in their sight. Also, there was no sign of the men who had ridden so hard toward the Gershel homestead in the wake of the bloody killing of Clinton Davis.

Which would have struck most men as odd. But Barnaby Gold gave it no thought. An aroma of cooking food had been mixed in with the smell of woodsmoke curling from the chimney of the last homestead he passed, and thus, after a long period of feeling nothing except for weariness, he began to consider his hunger and how to satisfy it. Decided that the town of Bacall, which could not now be far up the trail, was likely to offer more appetising fare than he carried in his saddlebags. And he smoked another cheroot to help stave off the demands of his stomach for hot food.

The sun sank to a crimson death beyond the ridges of the Chemehuevi Mountains across the river and, when the short-lived dusk had run its course, he saw lights ahead of him. More glints of yellow through blackness than a mere homestead would merit. A mile away from him and
more than two hundred feet above. The river curved to the left but the trail continued due north, rising in a series of short grades with lengths of flat between.

The street began at the end of an avenue of pinions, was even more clearly defined by a lettered board, two wagon widths long and supported on twenty foot high poles to either side. Moonlight illuminated the legend: BACALL WELCOMES ALL.

There was just the one street, rising and curving gently toward the left. The best part of half a mile in length. A hundred feet wide beyond the town marker portal. The buildings to either side isolated on their own broad lots. Most of frame construction. A few of stone and, here and there, one which mixed the two materials.

Houses at the southern end, some of them with fenced property lines. All with shade trees and one with a neatly tended flower garden. Midway along the street, at the top of the curve, were business premises. Stores supplying the basic needs of life, a livery stable, blacksmith’s forge, barber shop and a bank. And a funeral parlour to which Barnaby Gold paid no more attention than any other building, as he rode slowly along the centre of the deserted street. All of these darkened and locked up for the night, their hours of business at an end for another day.

Beyond, two more houses on either side of the street, like those behind the newcomer, three had lights in some windows. One of them had a shingle to proclaim it was a boarding house. Across from this, a doctor advertised his presence.

At one time, this had been the extent of Bacall’s northern limit. Although there may have been an older church on the site of the obviously recently built one next to the darkened house. Its neighbour was a meeting hall, then came the stage depot and telegraph office, with the wire stretching northwards from its roof on a line of poles. The Riverside Saloon, named for a narrow creek that cut across the end of the street, was the last building on the left. On the other side, the law office and gaol were next to the boarding house. Then there was a Chinese laundry and the foundations of a new building with a pile of planks nearby.

The creek had a twenty foot long timber bridge with a rail, just wide enough for two people to walk on. But was shallow enough to be forded by wagons and horses. On the far side was another portal, its cross-member doubtless lettered in the same way as that at the southern end of the town.

The only lights on this side of town came from the two-storey frame-built saloon, which looked to be the newest property in town. And it was toward the stooped and balconied facade of this that the black-clad, trail-dusty, travel-weary and hungry Barnaby Gold angled his gelding.

Vented a soft sigh of relief as he got out of the saddle and allowed his horse to drink from a wooden trough before he hitched the reins to the rail. The sounds of the gelding gulping down the water and of the creek rippling past the bridge pilings, the chirping of crickets and the rustling of tree foliage in a gentle breeze were all that disturbed the peace of Bacall.

The batwinged entrance and two windows to either side of this spilled kerosene lamplight across the stoop on which stood two Boston rockers. None of the upstairs rooms were illuminated. And there were no sounds from inside until Barnaby Gold pushed open the batwings and stepped over the threshold.

When a man said: ‘Evenin’ to you ... oh, my God!’

It started out friendly and finished on a note of fear.

A woman greeted sensuously: ‘Well, hello to you, stranger.’

The saloon was wider than it was deep, with the bar counter running partway along the rear wall: an entertainments platform to the right and a stairway to the left. Fifteen chair-ringed tables took up most of the floor area and there was a circular dance floor with a piano at the side in
front of the dais. The walls were white and hung with oil paintings in ornate gilt frames. The ceiling was black with yellow stars and a half-moon painted on it. A dozen lamps hung from the ceiling or wall brackets, but only four of them were lit.

The place smelled of fresh paint and new timber and the furnishings looked virtually unused. A mirror ran along the wall behind the bar, slightly tilted from
the top, the section immediately opposite the entrance not fronted by glass and bottle-lined shelves. So that the newcomer had an unobstructed view, in reflection of his appearance that triggered the two comments.

The battered hat with the narrow brim curled up all around. The frock coat with the two bullet holes in the left pocket. The shirt buttoned to the neck. The pants. The boots. All of them black, powdered with grey dust. Creased, crinkled or scuffed. His face, the lower half heavily bristled while his cheeks and forehead were smeared with dust, ingrained from when he had wiped sweat from the flesh. The gun-belt with several looped bullets in view with the coat open, but the Peacemakers seen only as bulges. The Murcott which he had taken off the rigging ring, gripped in his right, blood-crusted hand, the sawn-off twin barrels pointed at the floor.

He probably looked worse because of the contrast with his surroundings. He felt wearier and dirtier as he crossed the unsullied floor to where the apprehensive bartender stood, dropping motes of dust behind him.

‘Hello. Hot food for sale here, sir?’

‘We sell everything a man needs in the way of home comforts, stranger.’

This from the woman who sat at a table near the stairway end of the bar. She was as close to thirty as made no difference, with long blonde hair, black roots starting to show. Good-looking, but with a predatory cast to her rounded features. No taller than five feet three inches with an amply curved body that had probably been a little slimmer when she first bought the high-necked, long-sleeved dress she wore. Flame-red with some fancy white trimmings on the bodice, hem and cuffs.

‘Food is what the man’s hungry for right now, Annie,’ the bartender said quickly, struggling to overcome his initial fright at seeing the unsmiling, black-clad, shotgun-toting young man between the batwings. ‘Ain’t that right?’

‘Sure is, sir. Can you do it?’

‘No trouble. Annie, go tell the missus, why don’t you?’

He was fifty or so. No taller than Annie, who left her game of solitaire to come along the bar. Running her dark brown, heavily made up eyes over the length of Barnaby Gold. Then went through the double doors at the other end of the bar.

‘Drink while you’re waitin’, stranger? Lay the trail dust.’

‘Beer would be nice.’

He hurried to draw the drink. A short, rotund man with a circle of black curly hair around his shiny dome. Square-faced and clean-shaven. Hardly any neck. Dressed in a clean white shirt and black bow-tie. With a leather apron tied around his waist.

Gold had leaned the Murcott against the front of the bar and placed a dollar bill on the polished top when the beer was delivered.

‘Appreciate it.’

‘First one’s on the house to any new customer comes in, stranger. On account we’ve only been open three weeks. Kinda encouragement for folks to call again.’

‘Nice of you.’ He sank the beer at a swallow and set the empty glass down on the bill. ‘Like to pay for another now.’

The house whore re-entered the room while the second beer was being drawn from the
pump. ‘Mrs Dalton says she hopes meat loaf, beans and sweet potatoes will be okay.’

‘Sounds good, lady.’

She sidled seductively along the front of the bar. ‘Want to buy me a drink?’

The bartender was in the process of making change from a pocket in the front of his apron. He paused and eyed Gold expectantly.

‘No, lady, I don’t.’

The seductive pose abruptly switched to one of injured pride. While the bartender hurried to get out the right coins after directing a warning glance at the whore.

Annie bit back on an obscenity and said brittlely: ‘Well, you don’t have to be so damn rude about it.’

‘Was always taught it was rude to ask strangers for anything.’

He sipped his fresh beer.