The Loner: Seven Days to Die (12 page)

The Kid stepped back and his hand went to the butt of the holstered Colt on his hip. He was ready to hook and draw if any of the shots came his way.

The roaring volley lasted only a few seconds, then an echoing silence fell over the night. The shots had quieted everything else in Gehenna, too.

There was movement in the whorehouse. A man stepped up to the doorway and brushed aside the beaded curtain. He wore a flat-crowned black hat, a black vest, and leather wrist cuffs over a white shirt, and black whipcord trousers. His clean-shaven face looked like it had been whittled out of hardwood.

As he stepped out, he spotted The Kid standing on the porch and froze. “Looking for trouble, friend?” the man rasped.

The Kid shook his head and moved his hand away from his gun. “Not hardly.” He hated to do anything that smacked of backing down, but he had come too far, risked too much, to get mixed up right away in a gunfight.

The man chuckled. “That’s the smart answer.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at The Kid. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so. I just rode into town about a minute ago. Never been here before.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been lots of other places…but I reckon you just look a little like somebody I know.” The man turned his head and added over his shoulder, “Let’s go.”

Three men followed him out of the whorehouse and down the steps to the horses lined up at the hitch rails. One was a lean, hatchet-faced man in range clothes, one was a dandy with the long, slim fingers of a gambler, and the last man out the door was huge and had long blond hair and a beard. He reminded The Kid of pictures he had seen in books about Vikings. That is, if Vikings had worn fringed buckskins.

All of them eyed The Kid coldly as they passed him. He knew he was looking at a band of killers.

The four men mounted up and galloped off. The Kid didn’t see where they went, but the pounding hoofbeats stopped after only a moment, so he knew they hadn’t left Gehenna. They had only gone to one of the other buildings.

Inside Rosarita’s, a woman began to wail piteously.

“They are gone, no?” the old blind guitarist asked.

“They’re gone,” The Kid confirmed.

“You are fortunate that they already vented their killing rage, amigo. If you had gone inside, you might be dead, too.”

“Or some of them might be,” The Kid said.

The old man’s leathery face added some more wrinkles as he smiled. “Ho, ho! You have the fire in your belly, no?”

“I don’t run away from a fight.” The Kid paused. “You knew hell was about to break loose in there, didn’t you?”

The old man didn’t say anything, just inclined his head to show his agreement with what The Kid said.

“How did you know?”

“Because I cannot see, you mean? When the eyes go, the other senses strengthen to take their place. I heard the angry words and knew that Señor Cragg and his friends would have to spill blood.”

“You were playing the guitar. How could you hear that?”

The old man’s narrow shoulders rose and fell. “As I said, my other senses are stronger since the clouds came over my eyes.”

“Cragg was the first one who came out?”

“Sí. Alonzo Cragg. You have heard of him?”

The name was vaguely familiar to The Kid. Cragg was a gunman and outlaw, rumored to be fast on the draw.

Evidently the rumors had some basis in fact.

“I’ve heard of him. What about the other three?”

“J.P. Malone, a man with a face like an ax. Clyde Woods, with the fancy clothes and the face of a man who seldom sees the sun. And the big one, the young giant, I know only as Dakota Pete.”

“That’s them, all right,” The Kid said. “How do you know what they look like?”

“I have asked people to describe them to me. I know what many of the people in this town look like.” The old man smiled again. “I know what the girls who work in Rosarita’s look like, and I know the soft warmth of their breasts because from time to time they take pity on an old blind fool who can play the guitar.”

The Kid grunted. “What’s your name, old-timer?”

“They call me only Viejo. I had another name once, but it no longer matters.”

Viejo…
Old Man. It fit, all right, The Kid thought.

The wailing inside had increased, with several women joining in the cries of grief. Even though Viejo couldn’t see him, The Kid nodded toward the door and asked, “What happened in there?”

“What happens all too often now. Men argued, and men died.”

“The argument was over a woman?”

“What else? Although if it had not been that, it would have been something else. Men such as Cragg seek any excuse to spill blood. Death is like air and wine to them.”

“Where did they go? It didn’t sound like they went very far.”

Viejo shook his head. “Not far. To Señor Harrison’s saloon.”

“Who’s Harrison?”

“Cragg and the others work for him. They enforce his will on the town.”

So this man Harrison had the settlement under his thumb. That was good to know, The Kid thought, but it didn’t answer the question that had brought him there.

“What about a man called Bledsoe? Is he here in Gehenna?”

“A friend of yours, amigo?”

“I’ve never met him,” The Kid said, “but I need to talk to him.”

Viejo sighed. “Regretfully, I cannot help you. I know nothing of this hombre Bledsoe.”

The Kid’s spirits sank a little. The old-timer seemed to know everybody and everything about Gehenna. If he said Bledsoe wasn’t there, it was a strong possibility the fugitive from Hell Gate had never made it that far.

Something could have happened to Bledsoe on the way, or he could have simply decided to go somewhere else, despite what he had told Carl Drake. Either way, it meant the long trip from New Mexico had been for nothing.

It was too soon to give up, The Kid told himself, regardless of what the old man said. According to Drake, Bledsoe had been a regular customer at Rosarita’s. He ought to at least go inside and ask around.

The Kid took a step toward the doorway, then stopped again as Viejo said, “Señor, please…”

“What is it?” The Kid dug in a pocket for one of the coins they had found in the saddlebags of the dead outlaws. “I can give you something—”

“No, señor. I want for nothing. My songs and my words I give freely. Only…a small boon, if you would.”

“If I can,” The Kid said.

“I would like to touch your face and let my fingers see you as only they can.”

The Kid grimaced. He didn’t like the idea of the old-timer pawing at his face. But he supposed it was a small enough favor to grant. “All right,” he said.

Viejo set the guitar aside and stood up. He moved closer to The Kid. He was a head shorter, but he reached up and unerringly touched The Kid’s cheek with his fingertips. His hand was dry and scaly, like the skin of a lizard, as he moved it across the younger man’s features.

Viejo’s eyes began to widen.
“Madre de Dios!”
he breathed. He passed his hand across The Kid’s eyes, then suddenly jerked it back.
“El Diablo!”
he said. “You…you have the face of Satan himself!”

“That’s the first time anybody’s ever said that about me.”

“You…you should leave this place. Nothing good can come of you being here.”

“Sorry, old-timer. I won’t be riding out until I’m good and ready. I’ve got business to take care of here in Gehenna.”

“The Devil’s business!”

“Maybe,” The Kid said, as he stepped past the old man, who was making the sign of the cross with a trembling hand, and went into the whorehouse.

Women were still carrying on in the parlor in which The Kid found himself. Three of them were on their knees next to the bullet-riddled corpses of three men, two Mexicans and one American. The Kid wondered if they were from one of those mule trains Drake had mentioned that carried ore from the mines in Mexico to the railroad in Tucson.

The mourning women were all Mexican, as were the others who stood around watching. They wore silk robes and not much else.

One of the wailing women climbed to her feet and threw herself at a man who stood by with a worried frown on his face. She began beating at his chest and cursing him in Spanish. She lapsed into English as she demanded, “Why did you not stop them? Why?”

The man was fat and middle-aged, with thinning brown hair and a brush of a mustache. He said, “How could I stop them? If I’d got in the middle of that, Harrison’s butchers would’ve cut me down, too!”

The Kid pegged the man as the whorehouse’s bouncer, whose job was to handle customers who got too drunk or started being too rough with the soiled doves. Interfering with professional gunmen like Cragg and the others would be beyond his capabilities.

The woman was too grief-stricken to accept that. She kept beating at the man’s chest. He stood there and took it until a voice spoke sharply from a staircase leading to the second floor.

“That’s enough, Julietta.”

The woman stopped hitting the man. She stepped back, covered her face with her hands, and continued sobbing.

“Brady, have you sent for the undertaker?” the woman on the stairs asked.

The fat man nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I sure did. He ought to be here soon.”

“Good. The ladies will be able to gain control of themselves easier once the bodies are out of here.” She turned her head to look at The Kid. No one else in the room seemed to have noticed him as he stood just inside the doorway. “Who are you?”

She seemed to be in charge, which probably meant she was Rosarita. The Kid kept the surprise he felt off his face as he looked up at her. She didn’t look like any Rosarita he would have expected. She was in her thirties, he guessed, and sleekly beautiful in a red gown that hugged her body.

She was also Chinese, or at least part Chinese, with smooth golden skin, almond-shaped eyes, and a mass of lustrous black hair piled high on her head.

The Kid lifted a finger to the brim of his hat. “I don’t mean to intrude, ma’am. I figured to do a little business, but I got here just as the ruckus broke out.”

He deliberately made himself sound like a cowboy. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by revealing his true background and education.

The woman regarded him solemnly and said, “You’re lucky you didn’t arrive a little earlier. You might have gotten in the way of a stray bullet.”

“Yes, ma’am. I can’t argue with that.”

“Come back later,” she said with a dismissive gesture. “We’re closed for the time being.” She nodded toward the dead men, as if their presence was reason enough for her decree.

“Actually, I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if that’s all right. I could come upstairs—”

“I don’t go with the customers,” she snapped.

“But you
are
Rosarita?”

“That’s the name I use now, yes. What business is that of yours?”

“I’m looking for someone you probably used to know.”

She sighed. “You’re going to be persistent, aren’t you?”

Brady asked, “You want me to run this fella off, ma’am?”

“I doubt if you could,” Rosarita said. “He doesn’t look like he would run off easily.” She lifted a hand to motion to The Kid. “All right. Come on. But I warn you”—her hand moved again and it held a small pistol that seemed to have materialized by magic—“if you’re looking for trouble, you’ll regret it.”

The Kid shook his head. “No trouble, ma’am. You have my word on that.” He moved past Brady and started up the stairs.

Rosarita kept the pistol in her hand as she turned and led the way to a bedroom furnished with a heavy four-poster bed and a low, leather sofa. It was more than the madam’s bedroom. It was also her office, as evidenced by the big roll-top desk with several ledgers sitting open on it.

“Leave the door open,” Rosarita said as she turned to face him again. “What do you want?”

As anxious as he was to find out about Bledsoe, The Kid satisfied another curious itch first. “How did you come to be called Rosarita?”

“You mean because I’m Chinese? I worked here, for the original Rosarita. Before she died, she told me she wanted me to take over the place and keep her name on it. I thought if this was going to continue to be Rosarita’s, the woman who ran it should be known by that name, too.” She slipped the gun back into the hidden pocket in her dress and turned to a sidebar. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thanks,” The Kid said.

Rosarita picked up a decanter and poured a drink for herself into a squat crystal glass. She sipped it as she turned back to him.

“You didn’t come here to ask me about my name. You wouldn’t have been so insistent about that. Ask what you came to find out.”

“I’m looking for work,” he said. He had mentioned Bledsoe by name to the old man outside, which had been a mistake. He took a different tack with the woman.

The almond-shaped eyes narrowed as she studied him. “I don’t hire men, except to keep things peaceful here in the house. You have the look of a man who would be a lot more capable of that than Brady…but I doubt if I could afford you.”

“I’m not talking about working in a whorehouse. No offense.”

She smiled coldly. “None taken. What
are
you talking about, then?”

“I reckon you know. Gun work. Gehenna’s got a reputation as a wide-open town. I figured somebody around here might have need of my services. The madam of the best whorehouse in town generally knows all the men in town who have money.”

She inclined her head in acknowledgment of that point.

“I was hoping you could point me in the right direction,” The Kid went on.

She came closer to him. Now that he had a better look at her, he saw she was older than he’d thought at first. Probably forty, although it was a well-preserved forty, especially for a woman who’d been in her line of work.

“The man you want to see,” she said, “is Matthew Harrison. At least, that would be the case if he didn’t already have several perfectly capable gunmen working for him.”

“Cragg and the others I saw leaving the place, after they’d gunned down those three men in your parlor?”

“That’s right. I’m afraid if you showed up at Harrison’s and tried to take the place of any of them, you’d wind up as dead as those poor men downstairs.”

“Maybe. But if Harrison’s the only one hiring around here…”

Rosarita’s lips twisted bitterly. “It’s more than that. It’s only been a few weeks since he showed up, but in that time, Harrison has taken over almost everything in Gehenna. Nobody knows what happened to George Hopkins, who owned The Birdcage Saloon before Harrison took it over and renamed it after himself. All the other businesses have to pay him a share of their profits now, or else bad things happen to them that no one can explain…but everyone knows who’s behind them.” She tossed back the rest of her drink. “Why the hell am I telling you all this? If you
did
wind up working for Harrison, you could tell him I was trying to stir up sentiment against him.”

The Kid smiled wryly. “It sounds to me like he doesn’t have any trouble doing that himself. I don’t see how a man can take over a whole town with only four gun-wolves, though.”

“Oh, he has a dozen other men working for him. Cragg, Woods, Malone, and Dakota Pete are just the worst of the bunch.”

Something else she said had caught The Kid’s interest. “You said Harrison’s only been here in town for a short time?”

“A little over a month. That just goes to show you a lot can change in a hurry, if there are enough guns involved.”

The Kid didn’t doubt that. “Do you know where he came from?”

“No idea,” Rosarita said.

“What does he look like?”

The madam tilted her head to the side and frowned as she gazed at The Kid. “That’s it,” she murmured. “There’s something about you that seems familiar, and now I’ve finally figured out what it is. You look a little like him. Harrison, I mean. You’re younger, and he has a beard, but there’s a definite resemblance.”

The Kid’s heart slugged heavily in his chest. With an effort, he kept his face under control so it didn’t reveal what he was feeling.

Bledsoe was in Gehenna. For some unknown reason, he was calling himself Matthew Harrison, but everything else fit. He had seized power in the border town and surrounded himself with gunmen. Capturing him and taking him back to Hell Gate wasn’t going to be easy.

But The Kid had never expected it to be easy. It was just one more challenge he would have to meet.

He had the glimmering of an idea how he might be able to do it.

The woman had moved closer to him, close enough she was able to lift a hand and rest her fingers lightly against his chest. She looked up at him with dark brown eyes and said, “You should stay away from Harrison’s place. You don’t need to get yourself killed.”

“A man’s got to eat and have a place to stay.”

“Stay here for a few days,” she suggested.

“You’ve already got a bouncer.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t say I wanted to hire you.”

“I don’t have enough money to afford to stay.”

“You wouldn’t have to pay.” Her hand slid up to his shoulder and stole behind his neck. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek.

“You said you don’t go with the customers.”

“You wouldn’t be a customer if you weren’t paying,” she pointed out. She lifted her face to his and pressed her mouth against his lips. When she drew back a moment later, she whispered, “Damn it, I’ve always had a weakness for a young, handsome man…”

It was tempting. He couldn’t deny that. Rosarita was quite a bit older than him, but she had a timeless beauty about her. It might be nice to take some comfort with her. It wouldn’t mean anything. Just some momentary pleasure to take the edge off what had been a rough few weeks.

“Sorry,” The Kid said quietly as he took hold of her wrist and moved her hand from the back of his neck. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to pass.”

Her face hardened. “The opportunity won’t come around again, you know.”

“I know. There may be some cold, lonely nights when I regret the decision and call myself a damned fool. But that’s the way it is.”

“You
are
a damned fool,” she said. “You’re going down there, aren’t you? You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“No, I’m going to see a man about a job.”

“You men and your guns,” she said bitterly as she stepped back. “It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?”

“Not always,” The Kid said. “But often enough.”

“Then go. Go on, damn you. If you live, don’t come back here.” She turned away. “I don’t want to see you.”

“Fine.” He paused at the door. “I’m obliged for the information, and sorry about what happened downstairs.”

“It was none of your doing. It’ll happen again, as long as Harrison and his men are running things around here. And you…you’ll either be one of them, or you’ll be dead, soon enough.”

There was a third option, The Kid thought, but he couldn’t explain that to her. Perhaps he could sometime in the future, if luck was with him.

He went downstairs. The soiled doves had all disappeared. Brady and the undertaker were carrying out the corpses and loading them into the back of a wagon.

The Kid stepped onto the boardwalk and turned in the direction Cragg and the other gunmen had gone earlier. His steps took him past the old man, who was sitting in the chair again and rubbing his fingers over the smooth wood of his guitar.

“El Diablo walks the night,” Viejo said to The Kid’s back. “The man who wears Satan’s face.”

The old man’s voice trailed off into a muttered prayer.