Murder in Dogleg City (12 page)

Susan and the other whores in the
parlor had scattered, not wanting to be anywhere near this trouble.
Nor was there any sign of the whores who were upstairs when the
ruckus broke out, or of their customers. They didn't want any part
of what was going on. The two bouncers appeared to be either
unconscious or dead, and Thaddeus couldn't be expected to stop a
monster like Cougar.

That left Ira.

He was no brawler, and Cougar had
several inches and fifty or sixty pounds on him. He wouldn't stand
a chance and he knew it.

He took a step forward, anyway, as
Cougar grabbed one of Marcelline's bare ankles and started dragging
her up the stairs.

Ira's foot bumped against something
that rolled on the floor. He glanced down and saw the bludgeon that
the second bouncer had carried. The man had dropped it when Cougar
kicked him in the face and knocked him out.

Ira didn't think about what he was
doing. He stooped, snatched up the club, and charged across the
foyer. He yelled incoherently as he started up the
stairs.

Cougar dropped Marcelline's leg, said,
“All right, you damned fool,” and leaped over her to tackle Ira,
who held the club in both hands and brought it down on Cougar's
back as hard as he could. The trapper didn't even seem to feel the
blow. He slammed Ira against the wall along the staircase with
bone-jarring force. Ira's vision spun crazily. He smashed the club
against Cougar's head.

As they both rebounded from the wall,
Cougar tripped over Marcelline's sprawled form. Since both of his
long, brawny arms were wrapped around Ira's torso, when Cougar
fell, Ira went with him. They toppled down the stairs.

Thankfully, the fall was a relatively
short one. When they hit the floor at the base of the stairs, the
impact jolted them apart. Ira already felt like Cougar had almost
squeezed him in two. His ribs ached, and his lungs cried out for
air. He rolled onto his side and gasped a couple of breaths before
he started trying to fight his way back to his feet.

He never had a chance to get up.
Cougar's thick-fingered hands grabbed the back of his coat and
lifted him into the air like a doll. Ira yelled as Cougar carried
him into the parlor, raised him even higher, and flung him onto one
of the tables. The spindly legs snapped under his weight and
collapsed, dumping him on the rug among the debris of the broken
table.

“
I'm gonna stomp you until
your guts come out your ears,” Cougar said in his gravelly voice.
To Ira's stunned brain, the words sounded like they were coming
from far, far away, but he heard them clearly enough to understand
them. And judging from everything he had seen so far, Cougar was
more than capable of making good on that threat.

Knowing that his life was in danger,
Ira forced his muscles to work. He grabbed one of the broken table
legs, rolled over, and thrust up with it. The jagged end went into
Cougar's groin. The trapper howled in pain.

Ira didn't have enough strength behind
the thrust to make it penetrate very far, though. It hurt Cougar
and enraged him even more, but it didn't come anywhere close to
incapacitating him. Cougar swatted the table leg aside.

“
Just for that, I'm gonna
make you pay, boy,” he said as he reached for the bone handle of
his knife and dragged the weapon out of its sheath. Ira had never
seen a bigger, more sinister blade in his life. Cougar continued,
“This here is a Arkansas Toothpick, and I'm gonna use it to peel
ever' bit of skin off you. You'll be screamin' and beggin' for me
to kill you afore I'm done with you.”

Frozen with horror, Ira didn't doubt
that one bit.

But as Cougar held the knife in his
right hand and reached for Ira with his left, something loomed up
behind the trapper, rising into the air and then coming down with
shattering force on Cougar's head. At the last second, Ira
recognized the object as the top of the broken table. It cracked
into two pieces as the blow landed with enough impact to drive
Cougar to his knees.

Ira caught a glimpse of Laird Jenkins
standing there and knew that his friend had struck the blow with
the table, saving him—at least for the moment. But Cougar was still
conscious and still a deadly threat, even on his knees. Ira drew
his legs up and kicked, driving both heels into Cougar's fur-matted
chest. The trapper went over backward. The Arkansas Toothpick
slipped from his hand.

Ira lunged, got his fingers around the
knife's handle, and lifted it. He had used knives before, but never
one this heavy. The weapon had superb balance, though, which helped
Ira lift it. He planted a knee in Cougar's stomach and brought the
tip of the blade to rest on the big man's throat under the jutting
beard.

“
Don't!” Cougar croaked.
“I give—”

Ira rammed down with the knife. It was
razor-sharp and glided into Cougar's neck. Ira felt a second of
resistance as the blade struck Cougar's spine, but it sliced on
through and didn't stop until the point embedded itself in the
hardwood floor. With a grotesque, gurgling sigh, Cougar’s arms and
legs splayed out and he went limp.

In the silence that followed, Laird
said, “You killed him. He was trying to surrender.”

Ira didn't look up. He kept on staring
into Cougar's dead eyes. Sweat dripped from Ira's face. One of the
drops fell into Cougar's left eye. He didn't blink.

“
Of course I killed him,”
Ira said. “You think I wanted a crazy animal like that walking
around holding a grudge against me?”

For a second, Laird didn't say
anything. Then he chuckled and said, “You've been listening when I
talk, haven't you? You recognized that the moment had come to end
it.”

Ira didn't respond to that. He
wrenched the knife free from the floor and pulled it out of the
dead man's neck. He stood up, a little shaky on his feet but
growing stronger, and bent down to wipe the bloody blade on one leg
of Cougar's buckskin trousers. Ira hesitated, then cut the rope
belt around the trapper's waist and pulled the fringed sheath from
it.

“
Souvenir?” Laird asked
dryly.

“
I figure I earned it.”
Ira looked at his friend. “Thanks for saving my life, by the
way.”

Laird shrugged. “It goes against the
grain to risk my own life to help someone else, but hell—it seemed
like the thing to do at the time.”

“
I won't forget it,” Ira
promised. He looked over at Thaddeus, who was still sitting down
but had scooted back against the foyer wall. “Am I going to have
trouble with the law over this?”

Thaddeus swallowed and shook his head.
“No, sir. We'll clean everything up, and once those two worthless
cretins come to, they'll dispose of the body. I don't think anyone
is likely to miss the late—gentleman.”

“
And you'll look after
Marcelline?”

Thaddeus looked over at the blonde,
who was curled up on the stairs, moaning. “We'll attend to any
injuries she has, Mister Breedlove,” the butler promised. “You can
be assured of that.”

Ira nodded and said, “Thanks.” He
tucked the Arkansas Toothpick under his coat. “Let's get out of
here.”

Laird said, “You don't want
to—”

“
Not in the mood
anymore.”

“
I can't say as I blame
you.” As they started for the door, Laird took a cheroot from his
vest pocket and put it in his mouth at a jaunty angle. “I finished
with Jessica, you know. Before I came downstairs to see what all
the commotion was about, I mean.”

“
I guess it's a good thing
for me you don't give a damn about satisfying a woman, only
yourself,” Ira said as they went out into the night.

Laird laughed as they walked back to
the carriage that had brought them to the Birdcage.

* * *

Ira could still hear that laughter in
his head as he sat in the little office off the main room of the
Wolf's Den, sipping cognac. He reached down to his left hip and let
his fingers brush over the bone handle of the Arkansas Toothpick he
had used to kill Cougar that night. He had killed other men with
that blade since then, when he had to, but that one had been
special.

Cougar was the first man whose life
Ira Breedlove had taken.

Cougar's death had taught Ira that he
could kill when it was necessary, without hesitation, without
remorse, without losing a damned second of sleep over what he had
done. It was a valuable lesson, quite probably the most valuable
one he had learned during his “education” in St. Louis.

Ira came to a decision and tossed back
the rest of the cognac that was in the glass. He stood up and went
to the door, opening it to call to the bartender, “Send somebody to
find Rattlesnake Jake and tell him to come see me.”

“
Right now,
boss?”

“
No, I want you to wait
until the grass grows under your feet,” Ira said. “Yes, right now,
damn it!”

He retreated into the office as the
bartender gulped and hurried to carry out his orders. Ira settled
down behind the desk again and reached for the bottle. There was no
doubt in his mind that Dab Henry had had something to do with
Laird's death. It was unlikely that the mayor had pulled the
trigger himself—Dab wouldn't want to get that much blood on his
hands – but he knew how and why Laird had died. Ira intended to see
to it that Dab paid for that. It might be a long campaign, but Ira
had a good idea for the opening salvo.

Of course, there was usually no profit
in revenge, he reminded himself as he poured another drink. He was
sorry that Laird was dead, and it would be fine with him if the
local law got the bottom of it, as he had told Sam
Gardner.

But Ira didn't have much faith in the
law. He had circumvented it himself often enough to know just how
inefficient those star packers could be. If Gardner and his
deputies traced Laird's murder back to Dab Henry, all well and
good.

One way or another, though, Ira meant
to see to it that Henry paid the price. Whether there was profit
involved or not, some debts just couldn't be put aside.

* * *

Rattlesnake Jake didn't knock on the
door. He opened it and came into the office. If anyone else had
done that, Ira would have been angered enough to throw the intruder
right back out. He was willing to give Jake some latitude, though,
because the bounty hunter was probably the only person Ira knew who
was as dangerous as he was.

Rattlesnake Jake had been coming and
going through Wolf Creek since the war ended. He had made the
Wolf's Den his unofficial headquarters when he was in town. Ira
knew absolutely nothing about the man's background, not even his
last name—it seemed that no one else in town did, either. Jake wore
a flat-crowned black hat and a black duster over nondescript range
clothes. He carried a Colt Navy on his hip. The one oddity about
his garb was that he preferred shoes, heavy brogans in his case, to
the boots most men wore.

“
You wanted to see me,
Mister Breedlove?” Jake asked. As usual, his face and voice gave
away nothing.

Ira waved toward the room's other
chair, but Jake gave a curt shake of the head, indicating that he
wasn't interested in sitting down.

“
In the past I've given
you a few tips on men you might be interested in looking into,” Ira
began.

“
And you never even asked
for a cut of the price on their heads,” Jake said. "That's sporting
of you.”

Ira smiled, but the expression was a
cold one. “Why, Jake, if I didn't know any better, I might suspect
that you just made a joke.” He leaned forward. “But that's neither
here nor there. I'm sure you've visited the Lucky Break from time
to time while you've been here in Wolf Creek.”

“
Are you askin' or
tellin'?”

“
I'm asking, I
suppose.”

“
Then I've been there,”
Jake said with a nod. “I like it here a mite better.”

“
It warms my merchant's
heart to hear that,” Ira said. “But when you were in the Lucky
Break, did you notice the house gambler who works for Mayor Henry?
I believe he goes by the name Samuel Jones.”

“
I've seen him.” Jake's
eyes narrowed slightly. “You say he goes by the name of Jones. Does
that mean his real name is something else?”

“
Honestly, I don't know,
although it seems likely. What I do know is that this morning Jones
shot and killed a man in a duel.”

Jake nodded slowly. “Heard something
about that, too, but I didn't pay it much mind.”

“
Perhaps you should
reconsider and think about it. The man Jones killed had been
searching for him. Searching for quite a while, if I had to guess.
I spoke to the man. His name was Valentine Hébert. From New
Orleans, judging by his accent.”

Jake regarded him silently for a
moment, then said, “This is interestin' as all hell, Mister
Breedlove, but I reckon I'd appreciate it if you'd come to the
point.”

“
Of course. Hébert was a
hired man. I know one when I see and talk to one. He was working
for someone who wants Samuel Jones—or whatever his name really
is—dead. Although I would say that it's likely Hébert had a bit of
a personal grudge against Jones as well. But what's important is
that someone has enough money to pay Hébert to look for Jones and
try to kill him.”