The Loner: Seven Days to Die (16 page)

After supper at the café, The Kid and Pete headed down the street toward Rosarita’s. The sun had set almost an hour earlier, and stars had come out in the sable panoply of the sky overhead.

Something was nagging at The Kid’s brain. “Do you know where Malone and Woods are?” he asked Pete. He hadn’t seen the two gunmen around since early that morning.

“Nope,” Pete replied with a shake of his head. “Could be they’re off doin’ somethin’ for the boss. Or they could just be holed up somewhere drinkin’. J.P.’s got a real fondness for that Who-hit-John. He goes on a bender now and then.”

The Kid nodded. Pete’s explanation was certainly reasonable, but he would have felt better, knowing exactly where Malone and Woods were.

The blind guitar player Viejo wasn’t on the porch, but Rosarita’s was open for business again. When the two men went into the parlor, The Kid saw that the blood had been scrubbed up off the floor. He could still see the ragged crimson stains in his mind’s eye, along with the bullet-riddled bodies from which the blood had leaked. Quietly, he asked Pete, “Did you do any of that shooting in here last night?”

“Naw. I can handle the gun work when I have to, but I ain’t all that fond of it. That was the other fellas’ doin’.”

The Kid nodded, for some reason glad to know that Pete hadn’t participated in the massacre. The big Viking was an outlaw and a hired killer, but The Kid felt a certain degree of liking for him, anyway. He didn’t seem quite as cold-blooded as the others.

Several young Mexican women lounged around the parlor in various stages of undress. They smiled in welcome at the two men. A couple got up from a brocaded divan and came over to greet The Kid and Pete.

“You wish to be entertained this evening, señores?” one of them asked. She was short and stocky, with a definite earthy beauty about her. Her companion was taller and more slender. They looked like they might be sisters.

“That’s right, little darlin’,” Pete replied with a big grin. “You reckon you’re up for the chore?”

“You’re the one who will have to be up for it, muchacho,” the woman said as she leaned closer to Dakota Pete, who was practically licking his lips in appreciation of the cleavage displayed in the soiled dove’s silk shift.

“Oh, I am,” he declared. “You damn well betcha I am!”

The Kid said, “Before we go upstairs, I need to talk to Rosarita for a minute.”

The taller of the two whores shook her head and said, “She don’ go with the customers, señor. But I’ll be plenty of woman for you, you’ll see.”

“I still want to talk to her.”

The woman sighed and called, “Brady!”

The fat bouncer came out of another room. He frowned at The Kid and asked, “Don’t I know you?”

“I was here for a little while last night. I went upstairs and talked with Rosarita.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brady said. “I remember now. You come back to sample our girls?”

“Yeah, in a minute, as soon as I talk to Rosarita.”

Pete asked, “How come, Kid? Is there a problem?”

“No, no problem,” The Kid replied smoothly. “We just hit it off last night, and I want to say hello to her.”

“That can wait,” Pete said. He was starting to look impatient.

The Kid pasted a smile on his face. “No, I’ll be too worn out afterward.” He slid an arm around the waist of the taller whore. “I think this pretty little señorita is going to take all of my strength to handle.”

She giggled and turned so that the soft, warm mound of her breast pressed against his arm. “You are right about that, señor,” she said.

“Yeah, fine,” Brady said. “Come on upstairs.”

“What about me and this gal?” Pete asked as he draped an arm over the shoulder of the shorter whore and fondled one of her breasts through the shift. “Reckon we can go ahead and get started?”

“Sure, have a good time,” The Kid said. “Don’t expect to see me for a while, though.” He squeezed the woman with him. “I’ve got lots of ideas I want to try out, so I reckon I’ll be up there for a while. You can just wait for me down here if you get through first, Pete.” He leered at the other soiled doves in the room. “I reckon the company will be pretty good.”

“You’re damn right,” Pete said. He tugged the shorter woman toward the stairs. “Come on, honey.”

As they all started up to the second floor, the woman with The Kid leaned her head on his shoulder. “There are some things I don’ do, mister,” she said. She giggled again. “There must be. But I ain’t foun’ ’em yet!”

While Pete and his companion for the evening went off into one of the rooms, Brady knocked on the door of Rosarita’s bedchamber and office.

“Fella out here wants to see you, ma’am,” he called through the door.

The door opened a moment later. Rosarita looked out with a frown on her attractive face.

“Who—” Her almond-shaped eyes fell on The Kid. “You again,” she said.

“I just need a minute of your time,” he told her.

Rosarita looked like she was going to tell him to go away and not bother her, but then she shrugged and relented. “All right.” She stepped back a little. “Come in.”

The taller whore squeezed The Kid’s arm, pointed to another door, and said, “I’ll be right in there, honey, waiting for you. And I’ll be
ready
.”

He gave her a playful little swat on the butt as she started down the hall.

The smile dropped off The Kid’s face as he stepped into Rosarita’s room and she closed the door behind him.

“What do you want?” she asked sharply.

“A favor.”

“I offered you a favor last night. You weren’t interested.”

“Not that kind of favor,” The Kid said. “I want you and the gal I brought up here to do something for me.”

Rosarita’s eyes widened. She said something in Chinese that was probably a curse. She looked like she was about to yell for Brady when The Kid held up a hand to stop her.

“Whatever you’re thinking, that’s not it,” he told her. “I want the two of you to pretend that I’m here for the next couple of hours.”

“What do you mean, pretend you’re here? You
are
here.”

“Yeah, but I won’t be, if you’ve got some back stairs and a way out of here where nobody will see me leaving.”

Understanding began to dawn in Rosarita’s eyes. “I heard that you killed Alonzo Cragg and then took his place working for Matthew Harrison.”

“That’s sort of the way it worked out, all right,” The Kid admitted.

“I also know that Harrison likes to keep pretty close tabs on his men. You told him you were coming here tonight, but you really want to go somewhere else.”

“Right again.”

“Are you double-crossing Harrison?”

“That’s something I’d rather not discuss,” The Kid said. Let her draw her own conclusions, he thought.

Rosarita did. She drew in a breath and said, “I could sell you out to him, you know.”

“Maybe you could. He might not believe you.”

“If you weren’t here, where you said you’d be, that would be proof, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose. But you don’t have any reason to do that.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Harrison might pay me for the information, or make me pay less. Either way, it’s more money for me.”

“Right now it is,” The Kid said. “Over the long run, Harrison’s going to suck all the life out of this town like a leech.”

Rosarita looked at him intently for a long moment before nodding. “You’re probably right about that,” she said. “Just what is it you’re planning?”

“It’s better if you don’t know that.”

“Better for who? Me or you?”

“Everybody,” The Kid said. “Everybody except Harrison and his men.”

Again she regarded him for a moment. “You’re putting a great deal of trust in me,” she pointed out.

“If I’m going to ask you to trust me, I have to be prepared to trust you.”

“That’s true.”

“What about the girl who’s waiting for me?”

“Aliciana?” Rosarita shook her head. “Don’t worry about her. She’s not very bright, but she’s very loyal. She’ll do and say whatever I tell her.”

The Kid smiled a little. “Then tell her that I’m sorry I won’t be enjoying her company tonight. She needs to stay in that room and maybe make some noise every now and then, as if I’m in there with her.”

“She can do that,” Rosarita said with a nod. “You realize that this is going to cost you, don’t you?”

“Of course.” He took a twenty-dollar gold piece from his pocket and handed it to her. “If that’s not enough, we can discuss it when I get back.”

“And if you…don’t get back?”

“Well, you and Aliciana have made some money, anyway.”

“All right.” She slipped the coin in a pocket of her gown. “Part of me says you’re loco, and an even bigger part says
I’m
loco for going along with you…but we’ll do what you want. Go down to the end of the hall and turn right into the alcove you’ll find there. There are some stairs leading down to a door that opens into the alley behind the building. It’s dark back there, and if you don’t have a light, no one will see you leaving.”

The Kid nodded. “That’s just what I need. Much obliged.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re going off to do something that might get you killed, I think, and I’m helping you to do it.” She shook her head and muttered, “Loco.”

“You’ll tell Aliciana what she’s supposed to do?”

Rosarita waved a hand. “Go. I’ll take care of it.”

The Kid nodded and went to the door. He opened it enough to see that the hall was deserted before he pulled it wider and slipped out.

The stairs were where Rosarita said they were, and they were shrouded so thickly with shadow that The Kid had to put a hand on one wall of the stairwell to help guide him as he descended. When he reached the bottom, he found the unlocked door and stole out into the night.

Next was the matter of finding a horse. He couldn’t get his own mount from the livery stable without alerting the proprietor, and since he already had to trust Rosarita and Aliciana, he didn’t want to involve anyone else in the plan. The more people who knew about something, the harder it was to keep it quiet.

There were plenty of horses tied at the hitch rails along the street, and since he was already a fugitive, he didn’t think stealing a horse would add all that much to his troubles. Besides, he intended to bring it back. The animal’s owner might not even miss it.

The Kid followed the alley for a couple blocks, then catfooted along the side of a building until he reached the street. After checking carefully to make sure no one was close by, he stepped out, went to the nearest hitch rail, and picked out one of the horses tied there.

He jerked on the reins, swung up into the saddle, and turned the animal. With his hat pulled low to shield his face, he rode unhurriedly out of Gehenna.

Nobody yelled, “Stop! Horse thief!” behind him, and The Kid was profoundly grateful for that.

Once he was clear of the settlement, he urged the horse to a faster pace. There was enough light from the stars for him to spot the landmarks he had noticed on his way into town the night before, so he was able to head in a fairly straight line toward the camp where he had left Carl Drake and Jillian Fletcher.

His heart slugged a little harder in his chest as he thought about them. He would be glad to reach the camp and make sure they were all right.

It took him less than half an hour to get to the ridge where the three of them had reined in the day before and seen Gehenna sprawled in the distance across the Arizona landscape. His eyes searched the night for the clump of trees that marked the campsite. Spotting the trees, he rode toward them at a steady lope.

When he was close, he reined the stolen horse back to a walk and called softly, “Hello, the camp!” He didn’t want to ride in, spook Drake, and have the man start shooting at him.

There was no response.

“Drake!” The Kid called. “Jillian! It’s me, Morgan!”

Nothing.

Snakes of worry began to slither around in The Kid’s belly. He rode closer, moving faster again. The reins were in his left hand. With his right, he drew the Colt.

He rode into the trees, wondering briefly if he had somehow come to the wrong place.

But no, there was the clearing where they’d made camp, and even in the dim light, he was able to make out some of their gear scattered around.

But there was no sign of Drake or Jillian.

They were gone.

With a feeling of alarm growing inside him, The Kid scouted up and down the area along the base of the ridge. He called out the names of Drake and Jillian, but no one answered.

The Kid turned the stolen mount and rode back to the camp. All five of the horses that had been there when he left were missing as well.

He swung down from the saddle and reached in his pocket for a match, intending to strike a light. His fingers froze on the lucifer as he realized that might be exactly what somebody was waiting for him to do. It was possible a bushwhacker was watching the camp at that very moment. If he lit the match, he would just be giving them a target to aim at.

He hunkered on his heels instead and let his eyes adjust to the darkness as much as they would. After a few moments, he was able to make out scuff marks in the dirt where it looked like there had been a struggle.

Someone had slipped up on the camp, jumped Drake and Jillian, and taken them prisoner. One man couldn’t have done that by himself. There must have been at least two of them, possibly even more.

Instantly, The Kid thought about J.P. Malone and Clyde Woods and the way they had been gone from Gehenna for most of the day.

Malone and Woods could have ridden out there and taken some of Bledsoe’s other hired gunmen with them. In the short time The Kid had been in Gehenna, he hadn’t met all of the gang, so he wouldn’t have missed some of them if they were gone.

But why would they have done that, The Kid asked himself. How could they have known that Drake and Jillian were even there?

The Kid couldn’t answer those questions. What was important was that his two partners were gone, and he had to get back to Gehenna before his ruse to get out of town without being noticed was discovered. With his face set in grim lines, The Kid mounted up and rode back toward the settlement.

The man who owned the horse might have realized that it was gone, so The Kid decided it would be better not to ride openly into town, as he had ridden out. He circled instead, so he could approach Gehenna without being seen. He would tie the horse behind one of the buildings, where it would be found and returned to its owner sooner or later.

As he rode closer, he didn’t hear anything going on except the normal raucous music and laughter. There was no hue and cry, as there would be if the whole town was looking for a horse thief.

He dismounted and led the horse on foot the last couple hundred yards. Reaching a darkened building, probably some business that was closed down for the night, he tied the reins to a post and patted the horse’s shoulder. “Thanks for the ride,” The Kid whispered. Then he headed up the alley for the back door of Rosarita’s place.

No one had come along and locked it while he was gone, he found as he tried the knob a few minutes later. The door opened silently on well-oiled hinges.

He probably wasn’t the first hombre to sneak in and out the back door of this whorehouse, he reflected with a wry smile as he started up the stairs, feeling his way along in the shadows.

He reached the top and stepped out of the alcove into the dimly lit corridor. He went to the room where Aliciana was supposed to be waiting for him and eased the door open.

A candle burned in a holder on a small table next to the wall. Its flickering yellow light revealed a shape under the pulled-up sheet on the bed.

For a split second, The Kid had a bad feeling, a premonition of something about to happen that he wasn’t going to like.

What if Aliciana was under that sheet with her throat cut? What if Bledsoe had found out somehow who he was and why he was there, and he had taken revenge on the soiled dove for helping him?

Then a soft snore came from the figure on the bed, and with a sigh, The Kid relaxed.

He moved to the bed and sat down gently beside her. She stirred and rolled over toward him, and when he put a hand on her shoulder, her eyes opened and she smiled up at him, looking lovely with her thick black hair tousled around her face from sleep.

“Querida!”
she exclaimed. “You came back to me.”

“Didn’t Rosarita tell you that I would?”

Aliciana shrugged her shoulders, which made the sheet fall away from them and reveal that they were bare. Chances were, she didn’t have anything on under the sheet.

“She said you were a loco hombre doing things that might get you killed.” She slid her arms from under the sheet and reached for him. “I’m glad you didn’t get killed.”

“The night’s not over yet,” The Kid reminded her.

She pouted. “Don’ talk like that. Now that you’re here, we can do wha’ we came up here for, eh?”

The Kid took hold of her wrists as she tried to caress him intimately. “As far as anybody knows, that’s what we’ve been doing for the past hour and a half. I need to get back downstairs. I’ll bet Dakota Pete is waiting for me.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But you paid for all this time. You got to get something out of it.”

“I have,” The Kid said, although in truth the only thing he had gotten out of his visit to the camp was a lot of worry.

He had intended to talk to Drake and Jillian and figure out their next move. Now that option had been taken out of his hands. In all likelihood, the two of them were somewhere in Gehenna, since it was the only settlement in the area.

He had to find them. And the first step in that, he had a hunch, would be to find Malone and Woods.

“Now get dressed,” he told Aliciana as he patted her sheet-covered hip. “We’ll go downstairs together, like we’ve both been up here the whole time.”

With a disgusted snort, she threw the sheet back, confirming his hunch about what she was wearing underneath it—nothing.

“Loco hombre is right,” she muttered as she sat up and swung sleek legs out of bed.

The Kid stood up and turned his back while she got dressed. That didn’t take long, since it just consisted of pulling the thin shift over her head and then running her fingers through her hair to straighten it.

“You might try to look satisfied,” he said as he opened the door and they started out of the room.

“It won’ be easy,” she said, “but I’ll try.”

They went along the hall toward the stairs. The Kid thought about stopping at Rosarita’s room and knocking on the door to let her know that he was back, but decided it wasn’t necessary. Aliciana could tell her later.

“You know not to mention this to anybody but your boss,” he told her under his breath.

“Sí, sí, I understand. For what you paid, you get to keep your big secret.”

“Gracias,” he said as they reached the top of the stairs.

One of the other soiled doves, accompanied by a client, was headed up to her room. They were about halfway up the stairs. The Kid touched Aliciana’s arm and stepped back, intending for them to give the couple room to pass.

The Kid wasn’t paying much attention to the other whore or the man with her. The man was just a big hombre in a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat. But then he lifted his head to look up at the top of the stairs.

The Kid felt a shock go through him as he recognized the face of Tom Haggarty, the bounty hunter who had shot him, pistol-whipped him, and dragged him to Hell Gate Prison.

That wasn’t the worst of it. With widening eyes, Haggarty recognized him, too, and swept the long coat back to claw at the butt of the holstered Colt on his hip.