The Revenger Page 38

  Her cheeks were mottled pale.

  Sartain cursed again and ran to the back of the room and up the stairs.

  He laid the Henry down on the first landing and dropped to a knee beside Maggie Chance. Blood trickled out between the fingers of her left hand pressed to that side of her body.

  “Fool woman,” Sartain said. “Why didn’t you stay upstairs?”

  “If I had,” Maggie Chance said tightly, “you’d be dead as two fence posts, and I’d be on my back upstairs, with one of those low-down dirty ambushers pumping away between my legs in turn.”

  Sartain glanced anxiously over his shoulder and through the cantina’s door. The rider was gone. The man who’d fired through the door lay twisted in a bloody heap in the yard. Two magpies strutted around on the ground nearby, investigating a possible meal and clucking at one another with restrained enthusiasm.

  Farther away, the chickens pecked the ground, oblivious to the recent ruckus.

  Scrum would have to keep.

  Sartain turned back to Maggie. “How bad is it?”

  “I don’t think it’s all that bad,” she said, wincing. “It just hurts.”

  Sartain slid her coat away from her side and lifted her shirt and camisole to reveal her flat, pale belly and the ragged hole. He inspected it closely. “Looks like it just clipped you. We’d best get you up—”

  Someone moved behind him. He whipped his head around to see the cantina owner, a very short Mexican with thick salt-and-pepper hair swept back from his pronounced widow’s peak, and a goatee of the same color, walk around from behind the bar and into the drinking hall, warily surveying the room.

  He turned to stare up the stairs at Sartain and the woman.

  “There a sawbones in town?” the Revenger asked.

  The Mexican shook his head. “Not for several months.” Lifting his extended thumb to his lips, he said, “He drank himself drunk. Drove his buggy over a cliff. He sings now with the saints.” The man crossed himself and glanced toward the ceiling.

  “Heat some water and bring me a few clean towels. I’m taking her up to my room!”

  As the Mexican disappeared behind the bar, Sartain lifted the woman in his arms and carried her up the stairs. She wrapped her arms around his neck and stared up at him curiously. “I heard,” she said. “I heard it all.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Is that why you started hunting people for a living? Because of your girl?”

  “You’d best hush. Save your strength.”

  He thought he caught a quirk of a smile tugging at her broad, full mouth with a slightly, alluringly upturned upper lip. As he carried her down the hall, he felt her right bosom press against his chest. It was full and firm. He turned his mind away from it.

  He opened his door and carried her into his small room. He laid her gently down on the bed, lifted her shirt and undershirt again, and more closely inspected the wound.

  “It’s not too bad,” he said. “Looks like it went all the way through. I’ll have it closed up in no time.”

  She stared obliquely up at him, not saying anything. Her lips were slightly parted.

  “You rest easy.”

  “I am resting easy, Mr. Sartain. You have a way of making a woman feel... secure.”

  “How’s that?”

  “All those men you shot down there.”

  “Yeah, well—one of them got away.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make short work of him.” Maggie Chance smiled as Sartain ripped a strip from the sheet on the bed beneath her and then walked over to where his saddlebags hung from a ladder-back chair by the window. “I’ve read a lot about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, the newspapers around here have covered you quite thoroughly. There are always supposed sightings, federal lawmen riding through the area, claiming they’re on your trail and that you won’t be mocking law and order for much longer.”

  “Yeah, well...” Sartain pulled his bottle of Sam Clay bourbon out of a saddlebag pouch and soaked the cloth with the whiskey. Returning to the bed, he sat down on the edge of it and went to work slowly, gently cleaning the blood away from the small, ragged hole.

  “You cut a wide swath.”

  “I never intended to, Mrs. Chance. It’s just how things worked out, I reckon.”

  She winced as the whiskey-soaked cloth touched an edge of the wound. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Sartain didn’t know how to reply to that, so he didn’t say anything. When the Mexican had brought the towels and a pan of hot water and left, Sartain offered the Sam Clay to Maggie. “Better have you a swig. Then we’ll get down to business.”

  She tipped the bottle back and made a face as the whiskey plunged down her throat. She took one more sip and then another, and then she returned the bottle to the Cajun.

  He more aggressively cleaned the wound with the water and the whiskey, and then he laid a towel beneath her rump on the bed, to catch the blood, and threaded his sewing needle with the catgut he always kept on hand. The woman lay back on the bed and only groaned and sucked sharply through her teeth a couple of times until Sartain had sewn the wound closed.

  “There,” he said, rinsing his needle with whiskey. “Only five stitches. Shouldn’t even leave a mark.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “Thank you, Mr. Sartain.”

  “Call me Mike.”

  “All right, Mike. I’m Maggie.”

  He returned his needle and thread to his saddlebags and set the pitcher of bloody water and the towels on the floor outside the door. He glanced out the room’s single, curtained window. There was only a little saffron light shimmering in the east, beneath a dark-green sky.

  It would be dark soon. Too late to start after Scrum.

  That graveled the Revenger. The man had got away from him once, with a whole lot more lead than that rattling around in him now. But Sartain would catch up to him again. Sooner or later. It might do him some good to savor the experience of killing the last soldier who’d savaged and murdered Jewel.

  He closed the door and turned to Maggie.

  “Now, then,” he said. “Should we discuss the urgent matter that brought you here?”

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes were closed. Her chest rose and fell deeply, evenly.

  Apparently, the whiskey had knocked her out.

  He stared down at the beautiful woman; her tangled, thick, blond hair fanned out on the pillow behind her. Beautiful and sad. The sadness had been like two deep wells behind her copper-brown eyes.

  She looked as exhausted as she was tired from the wound and the whiskey.

  Who was she?

  Where was she from?

  Who was it that she needed killed so urgently?

  Chapter 3

  Sartain went downstairs and had a shot of tequila at the bar.

  Then he went out to the stables on the far side of the yard and stabled Maggie’s horse. He tended that mount as well as his own. When both mounts were fed and watered, Sartain headed back out into the yard.

  It was dark now. The chickens had been secured in their coop for the evening. Thunder rumbled in the near distance. Lightning flashed in the southwest.

  Sartain returned to the roadhouse, where the Mexican barman, whose name was Tio Rodriguez, served him a stew of beans, chicken, and onions. Rodriguez ate with Sartain, occasionally casting curious glances across the table at his guest. He hadn’t asked any questions after returning from his private shack and finding his saloon shot up, four dead men in his yard, and a couple of puddles of blood on his floor.

  In Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, one learned at an early age not to ask many questions of anyone, for a good third of the population would shoot you for such impertinence.

  When Sartain had finished his meal, he brought a bowl of the stew up to Maggie. He set it on the dresser where she’d find it if she awoke, though at the moment she still appeared deep asleep.

  Back
downstairs, he bought a bottle of Rodriguez’s tequila. The barman announced he was turning in. His business this evening appeared to have been damaged by all the shooting earlier.

  “Besides, with the rain...” The short Mexican shook his head and slapped his hands to his thighs. “You lock up?”

  “Yeah, I’ll lock up.”

  The barman left the room through a door behind the bar.

  Sartain blew out the only two lamps that were lit. He wanted to sit in the darkness and watch the storm that was approaching like a bad-tempered giant from the southwest. He liked the cleansing of a good storm.

  He sat at a table near one of the windows whose shutters remained open and poured himself a glass of tequila. Soon the storm was upon him, thunder peeling and shaking the floor beneath the Revenger’s boots. The rain hammered past the window like slender javelins. It roared as it hit the dry ground, quickly forming puddles.

  He sipped his tequila, his lips shaping a wry look of satisfaction.

  It was nice to have the storm outside his head for a change. Sometimes, his fury over Jewel’s and the old man’s fate was as loud as this late-summer, high-desert squall blowing from the Sacramentos.

  It also felt nice to have one more man to kill. The last man.

  Scrum Wallace.

  He sipped the tequila and set the glass on the table. The wind blew the rain at him. It was a tepid but refreshing spray. He closed his eyes to it. He jerked them open when a hand squeezed his shoulder. He reached for the LeMat on his thigh but left the gun in its holster.

  Maggie Chance stood to his right, staring down at him. Her hair hung in thick curls past her shoulders. She wore only her shirt. It was halfway open.

  As she stood before him, lit intermittently by the lightning flashes, the wind blew her hair sideways and sprayed her with the rain. The rain soon soaked her shirt, which clung to her like a second skin.

  She stared at Sartain with a grave expression her lips parted slightly. Sartain stared up at her. His heart pounded.

  He felt the desire for this sad, beautiful woman deep in his loins.

  He stood quickly, unbuckled his shell belt and coiled it around the holstered LeMat, and set it with his Bowie knife on the table.

  * * *

  Maggie lay slumped on top of the Revenger, her open mouth pressed against his neck. She was breathing hard, in time with the Cajun.

  “Tell me, Maggie—what is it you came to see me about?”

  She lifted her head and smiled strangely at him.

  She lowered her lips to his, kissed him lightly, tenderly, then pulled away and stared at him again with that strange smile on her lips.

  “I want you to kill my husband.”

  She didn’t wait for a response. She rose, pulled her shirt over her head, and moved back to the stairs—a shadow in the night. Moonlight from a clearing sky reflected off the puddles beyond the window flashed in her hair. Then the room’s deep shadows swallowed her, and she was gone, save for her light tread on the stairs.

  Sartain lay on the floor, frowning at the ceiling.

  Finally, he rose, pulled himself together, and wrapped his gun and Bowie knife around his hips. He made sure the derringer was still snuggled in the little pocket inside his vest. Then he grabbed his tequila bottle and shot glass and climbed the stairs.

  He knocked once on his door and opened it.

  She sat on the far side of the bed, her back to him, brushing her long hair. Lamplight reflected off the gold band on the dresser. He’d forgotten she was married.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him as she continued to slowly brush her hair. As though she’d been reading his mind, she said, “By way of explanation of what just happened downstairs, I haven’t enjoyed my marriage bed for a long time. And I thought prepayment couldn’t hurt. For—you know—your killing him for me.”

  She rested the brush, which she must have found in one of the dresser drawers, on her thigh. The bandage shone on her lower left side, slightly bloodstained. Sartain went over and sat beside her on the bed, brushing his finger against the bandage.

  “We have to be more careful,” he said. “Don’t want to open up those stitches.”

  Maggie looked down at it. “It doesn’t hurt much... thanks to your whiskey.” She smiled. “And you, too, I reckon.”

  “Why do you want your husband killed, Maggie?”

  “Because he’s evil, Mike. Seven kinds of evil, each one worse than the one before it.”

  “In what way? Does he beat you?”

  “Oh, no. That would be too obvious. He’s never laid a hand on me. In fact, he’s always been quite the gentleman. And he’s been a good provider for me all the years we’ve been married.”

  Sartain studied her gaze. What was he seeing in those wide, soulful orbs?

  Madness?

  He reached up and slid her hair back from her cheek. “I’m not sure I understand. If he’s never hit you and he’s a good provider, what’s... the problem?”

  “He’s killed all three of our sons. One after another. They’re all buried in a little cemetery behind our place near Gold Dust.”

  “Killed your sons?”

  “Yes. Of course, not in such a way that could prove he killed them, but each one of our boys was killed when they were with him. Alone. Each one, Marcus being the first, five years ago. He supposedly drowned. Daniel was supposedly kicked by a mule. I think Everett, my husband, beat him with a fence post. I found the fence post near where Everett said he found Daniel lying. Ephraim...”

  Maggie let her voice trail off. A watery sheen had been growing steadily in her eyes, and now her upper lip quivered as she turned to look out the room’s dark window over which the thin curtain danced. “Ephraim burned when the privy caught fire, and the door stuck so he couldn’t open it. Everett claimed he’d found the boy smoking in there once before and whipped him for it. My husband claims a cigarette had ignited a pile of newspapers and corn shucks. He speculated that Eph couldn’t open the door because the floor was badly bowed, and he was probably choking on smoke after trying desperately to put the fire out, so he wouldn’t get in trouble.”

  Her voice cracked. She sniffed, brushed a hand across her cheek.

  “You don’t believe him I take it.”

  “I smelled kerosene in those flames. There was a large rock nearby. I believe that was what Everett had used to wedge the door closed.”

  Sartain thought about it. If she was touched, she had a good reason. Three sons dead.

  She stared expressionlessly out the window, tears rolling down her cheeks. The heartbreak in her had been obvious the first time he’d seen her. It had been in the too-firm set of her shoulders when she’d first ridden into the cantina’s yard, in her eyes when she’d stood in the cantina’s door.

  Maybe that heartbreak, not unlike his own, was what had drawn him to her even before he’d seen how pretty she was.

  “Why... why would Everett do such a horrible thing, Maggie?”

  She turned slowly to him, blankly, as though she hadn’t understood him. She scowled, impatient with the question. “Because he’s evil. There’s no other explanation. I’ve seen it in his eyes when he didn’t think I was looking. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a dark, vacant look. As though he’s thinking about doing very bad things.”

  Sartain was having trouble comprehending what she was telling him. “There has to be something beyond evil that makes a man kill his own children. No man is that evil.”

  “Everett is.”

  “Maggie, do you think there’s any chance he might have thought...?” He didn’t quite know how to finish the sentence.

  “That the boys weren’t his?” She’d obviously anticipated the question. “None. He had no reason to believe that. I’ve never given him any reason to believe that... until tonight.” She lowered her eyes in faint chagrin. When she looked up at Sartain again, she turned her mouth corners down and shook her head slowly in frustration. “I know it’s hard to believe. No on
e else I’ve ever told has believed me.”

  “Who else have you told?”

  “My neighbor, Mrs. Douglas. And the minister who preaches at the church we go to—Everett and me.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said they thought I needed more rest. That I should come into town more, socialize with the other ladies. Maybe take part more in church activities—bake-offs, Bible studies, the Ladies of Gold Dust Sobriety League. They think the pain of having lost all of my children so tragically has addled me.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not it, Mike. I assure you. Everett is evil. It’s just a matter of time before he kills me... and others. His old father, Howard Chance, lives with us in a lean-to off the back of our cabin. I’ve caught Everett giving him that evil eye of his. Howard is senile. He’d be just as vulnerable as my sons were. In fact, I’m a little worried that... while I’m gone...”

  “Where does Everett think you are?”

  “He doesn’t know I rode out. I left when he was running down some horses. I have no idea where he thinks I’ve gone. I’m going to have to come up with a story. One he’ll believe. I am more worried about old Howard, though than myself.”

  “How far away is Gold Dust?”

  “Twelve miles, roughly.”

  “I’ll get you back in the morning.” Sartain looked at her bandage. “If you think you can ride.”

  “I can ride. Not sure how I’m going to explain my absence overnight... or this.”

  “We’ll say your horse ran off. You got caught in the storm, were wounded by a careless hunter’s bullet. I found you and stitched you up, brought you home.”

  “Does that mean you’ll kill him for me?”

  The directness with which she’d asked the question was a little off-putting. Especially since it had been mouthed by such beautiful lips, by a brown-eyed woman, who appeared as warm and tender as an early spring rain.

  “It means I’ll look into it.”

  “You’re not convinced I’m telling the truth?”