Touched by Angels (25 page)

The room seemed empty.

He raised the trap all the way, and eased it down onto the rafters.

Then he listened hard for a minute or so, before lowering himself through. Then, hanging from the wooden lip either side, he saw that he would have to drop the last foot, and that it would make a bang he had no way of muffling.

He gritted his teeth and let go.

The bang seemed out of all proportion to the force, and Quint ran around to the other side of the bed, shaking, while two doors down, Billy gazed at a revolver that looked brand new, in spite of the fact Sullivan had assured him it was more than twenty years old.

***

It was of polished chromed steel, yet the grip was as black as night.

He spent some time looking at that alone, not sure what it was made of.

“Heartwood ebony,” Sam told him. “One of only three ever made.”

Billy spun it round and grinned as he thumbed back the hammer, revelling in the delicious sounding, well oiled clicks.

“The very gun I killed that man with, in ninety-two,” Sam told him. “It’s not been fired since.” He watched disillusioned, as the boy held it out straight, drawing a bead on one of the pipes in the rack.

Ebony. A black wood for a black heart.

***

Quint was determined too, as he looked at an open copy of the
New York Sun
that lay on the floor, next to the bed.

Several minutes had passed, and he was almost sure he was alone.

A portion of the advertisements page had been torn out, though enough of it remained to tell him who it promoted. It was the Western Trading Company, a place from where he had procured supplies himself, over the years.

Knowing her plan now, locating her was going to be easier than he thought.

He grinned, knowing she was intending to draw him out, by leaving a trail a mile wide, with the loot as bait. He admired her thinking, but the pity for her was, she would be luring him to the sort of place where he felt most at home. He laughed out loud, knowing they didn’t stand a chance.

Sixty-four

Lil, however, was not at all amused as she was presented with a revolver with mother of pearl grips, which had to be one of the smallest in the world.

She and Robert were outside, on the shooting range, where a dozen large tin cans stood atop a shot splintered log, ten yards away. Either side, as if on guard, were life-sized targets, depicting men holding revolvers at the hip.

A table before her carried about forty different handguns, from revolvers to semi-automatic pistols, in varying calibres, sizes and finishes. She had been told that all of them were loaded and ready for firing.

“This is a lady’s weapon,” said George Brady, the balding, combed-over proprietor, as he held it delicately between finger and thumb. “You can keep it in your purse, or handbag, discreetly, and if you are threatened, you can…”

Ignoring him, she reached out and picked up a revolver that was about five times the size, and a look of horror spread across his face.

“Ma’am, that’s a Colt service revolver. It kicks like a mare. It’s not really a lady’s…”

“I need it to stop a man, not a mouse.”

She thumbed back the hammer, aimed and pulled the trigger. There was a bang like the Day of Judgement and the can was blown into pieces.

He shook his head in amazement, as the fragments fell about them, making tinkling noises.

***

Less than two hours after she had left, Jack Quint was listening to what George Brady had to say, not sure whether he believed him, though he didn’t think he’d dare lie.

Brady had just closed up shop when a shot rang out, blowing another of the tin cans to pieces.

When he saw Quint step out from behind one of the man-shaped targets, with the gun now pointed at him, he lost control of his bowels, thinking he was about to die.

He just wanted information about that English woman and kid, thank God, so when he told him how she had fired six shots
and
demolished five cans from ten paces though, Quint was sceptical.

He snatched his gun from its holster, shoved it under his chin and began pushing him backwards until he fetched up against the wall with the map.

He thumbed the hammer back and pressed even harder, making his eyes water.

“You’re lyin’, I know the dame. She’s never fired a gun in her life.”

“But… she, she did… honest. Some people, even dames, are born…”

“Phew, you stink. Shit your pants?”

“Yeah… I…”

His combed-over hair had fallen into his eyes.

His hands waving about at his sides, as if he was trying to work up the guts to lash out.

“Don’t, or you’ll be dead before you can blink, and if you don’t start truthin’ too, like right now, there’ll be more than just shit oozin’ out of you.”

“But… but I am. It’s like she was a natural. Honest, sure as I’m standin’ here. Please, would I lie to you?”

Terrified, and with the pressure on his larynx, his voice had become a high-pitched yammer.

Quint lowered the gun and released the pressure from his throat.

He slid down the wall, coughing and spluttering, both hands massaging his neck.

“Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know.”

The gun was back, this time on the end of his nose.

Seeing two barrels through crossed eyes, Brady gasped, with visions of his brains coming out the back of his skull, “She was looking at the map, said she was going to Holly Springs to meet somebody.”

***

Quint’s eyes flicked to the side, as he took the gun away from Brady’s nose. He grinned, seeing the town marked, and knew that with the skull and crossed bones printed by it, she was luring him there for a very good reason.

It was deserted, and had been for more than fifty years, since a well had poisoned all but a few with cholera, and then driven them out.

He shoved Brady into the map and said, “I’m going to take a few things.” He looked at him earnestly.

Brady laughed as if in nervous recognition that it looked as though he would live. He trailed behind Quint, rubbing his hands together, as though sucking up to his favourite customer.

Quint took a new gun belt, this one hand stitched, with loops for fifty bullets, which he filled, before slipping it around his waist. He threw his jacket to the floor and replaced it with a cream coloured duster that hung almost to his ankles.

He grabbed a handful of cigars and dropped them in his shirt pocket, before walking over to the till.

“Open it.”

Brady gulped and Quint saw beads of sweat across his upper lip. Quint lowered his hand, with deliberate slowness, to his gun.

“I said…”

“OK, OK.”

Brady held his trembling hands up in defeat, pressed one of the large brass keys and the drawer shot out.

Without a trace of expression, Quint took every note he could see. He folded them in half and the wad disappeared into one of his pockets. Quint looked at the sick-looking man in front of him, winked, and lit a cigar before going back the way he had come.

***

Sam and Billy watched, from where they had been concealed the whole time, after following Quint when he had left the hotel.

Billy muttered, “What a stinkin’, low down…”

“Save your breath. It’s them that gets even, that wins. Anyway I know this guy Brady, and there’s none more deservin’. He’d take his grandma’s last cent if she wasn’t lookin’. Come on. At least we know where he’s headed.”

By now it was almost dark. They ducked down and made their way along the splintered wall that formed the back of the range.

Sixty-five

As Billy and Sam were following Quint to the railway station, Lil Smith stood in a motionless train, with Robert, after pulling the emergency cord, with assorted luggage around her, where it had tumbled from overhead racks.

She had been sitting in the cramped, smoky compartment for three hours, with men darting lecherous peeks, and their frumpy wives nudging them, glaring daggers.

Amid the light tan of her face, her eyes shone like coals.

She heard one of the women, a particularly portly one, mutter, “Brazen hussy!” before kicking her small, sweating husband on the ankle.

Sometimes the giggling faces of children appeared over the backs of the seats in front, before disappearing as quickly.

Other passengers were muttering among themselves, because Holly Springs was a place that nobody ever talked about.

“What’s your trouble, ma’am?” the ticket inspector asked.

“I need to get off. I’m expecting to meet somebody here.”

Her accent brought more odd looks.

He was about to warn her of the five-dollar fine, but then his eyes wandered down to her pistol belt and thought better of it.

“You’ll die if you stay.”

“I’ll die if I don’t. But at least here, a man will die with me.”

Without another word, she lifted the suitcase and disembarked, feeling the chill of the coming night.

Then, as she held Robert’s hand, and her other hand settled on her gun, she watched as the train trundled off.

***

Eighteen hours later, on another train, Quint grinned to himself, not knowing Samuel Sullivan and Billy Tweed were sitting in another compartment, waiting for the train to stop.

Sam, who had left Sylvester in the care of his sister, was smoking another of his pipes, a bone one that had turned buttery yellow over the years.

Billy, who had been telling him exactly how he thought it best to tackle Quint when they got there, felt as though he’d been slapped in the face, when Sam cut him short by saying, “I want you to stay on the train, go back the way you came, and wait for me.”

He took his pipe from his mouth and pressed the bowl with his thumb. He looked into the boy’s eyes as smoke trickled through his teeth.

“But…”

“Forget it. You don’t stand a chance against Quint. He’s fast…”

“But I hate him. It’s not the money…”

Sam smiled as he nodded sagely. “Go on. It’s the principle.”

“Well… yeah! I suppose it is.”

Sam struck another match, plied it to the bowl and said between puffs, “Boy, let me tell you a sad, but true fact of life. You can be up to your asshole in principles, but them and scruples never paid for bread on the table, beer in your belly or a low woman, and so far in my fifty-five years, no amount of prayin’ bought ’em either. It’s a hard ol’ world out there, and only money gets you things, ’cept o’ course, breedin’, respect and affection. Thems you earn.”

He took a fountain pen and an old envelope from his top pocket.

“I’m going to write here what
I
think is sound advice, which you may take or leave as you please. But remember one thing.”

He stabbed the air with the stem of his pipe.

“Of all the people you have met so far in your life, you may trust me the most. I’ll not turn my back on you, boy.” He wrote silently for about a minute, while Billy watched on, sometimes glancing out at the unfurling countryside.

The sun was high in the sky, so it must be nearly midday. Sam finished writing just before they heard a squealing noise as the train’s brakes were applied so suddenly, Sam found himself in a tumble of arms and legs on the floor, cursing.

Billy was still fixed where he was, with his back pressed into the seat, laughing as he saw Sam getting up, and dusting himself down.

Then he caught a glimpse of the envelope, where it had fallen and four of the words rang on his ears as Sam snatched it up.

…
for your own good…

Whenever he had heard that expression before, it had always been as a harbinger of disappointment, pain or loss.

This time was no different, as he caught a glimpse of his fist as it swung up like lightning under his jaw.

The world went black.

***

Sam looked down at Billy’s unconscious form, shaking his head at the thin dribble of blood running from the corner of his mouth. He adjusted his hat and tapped out his pipe in the palm of his hand.

He folded the envelope into quarters and tucked it into the boy’s top shirt pocket, half poking out, so he couldn’t miss it and muttered, “As I said, it’s for your own good.” He lowered the window, looked out, and could see they were just short of Holly Springs.

He knew that Quint had pulled the emergency cord.

What he did see at once, as it was directly opposite, was the communal grave of the town’s cholera victims, with a simple marker placed upon it to commemorate them.

He opened the door on the opposite side of the train, so it would hide him, and climbed down onto the baking rails of the oncoming track, hearing the engine going torrr, tishhh, torrr, tishhh, torrr…

An oily smell came to him on the breeze.

He looked up and saw faces peering out; a preacher, whose pince nez fell from his nose, crossing himself, and in the next carriage, a small boy pulling his mother’s sleeve and pointing.

Sam crouched down to see beneath the train as it started to move, with its chimney sending back a sulphurous smog. He wanted to see Quint’s legs, so he could anticipate his next move, but couldn’t see anything except the opposite bank.

He looked behind himself and saw an old storage hut, the door long ago bashed in, hanging against the mildewy inner wall on one rusty hinge.

He stepped inside, just as the train passed. Through the shattered window, where he kept back in the shadows, Sam saw Quint about two hundred yards off, drawing his gun, as he made his way past an old goods train in a siding.

He watched as Quint stopped at the end of the crumbling waiting room, with the town’s name above it, the last letter S hanging upside down.

Beyond this, was the dead world itself.

***

Quint thumbed back the hammer on his gun. In the silence, broken only by a wisp of wind, the clicks sounded deafening.

Wherever she was, she was a dead woman, unless she gave him the money without a fuss.

Robert was watching from a room above the dress shop, where he had been told he must stay, whatever happened.