Read Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter Online
Authors: William W. Johnstone
Luke Jensen, Bounty Hunter (14 page)
First, though, he wanted something to eat. The hotel had no dining room, he had noticed, but there was a café across the street.
Hobie was coming out of the next room as Luke stepped into the hall. “I was going to get something to eat. . . .”
“Great minds think alike,” Luke said. “Come on.” They went downstairs and walked across to the café, where the proprietor and his wife fed them tortillas, beans, and bowls of savory stew full of chunks of meat and chili peppers. They washed the meal down with several cups of coffee.
“Do you think Miss Wheeler got anything to eat?” Hobie asked as they were finishing up.
“I'm sure if she was hungry, she managed to find something,” Luke said. Thinking of the gun she had taken out of her handbag, he added, “She strikes me as a capable young woman.”
“And a mighty pretty one.”
“That goes without saying.”
“I wonder where she's bound for,” Hobie said. “You think she's going to visit relatives?”
Luke shook his head. “I don't have any idea. And it's not really any of our business, is it?”
Hobie grinned. “We keep saying that, but somehow we get mixed up in one ruckus after another, anyway.”
“Yes, I've noticed. And it's a disturbing trend, in my opinion.”
They went back across the street to the hotel. As they entered the lobby, Hobie said, “Maybe I'll ask the clerk about Miss Wheelerâ”
Luke put a hand on the young man's arm and steered him toward the stairs instead of the desk. “Go get some sleep, Romeo. We need to make an early start in the morning.”
Hobie looked like he wanted to argue, but said, “Yeah, I guess you're right.” They started up the stairs. “We still need to track down those two bank robbersâ”
He stopped short as the sound of a woman's scream came from somewhere on the second floor.
CHAPTER 16
Hobie stood still only for a second, then exploded into motion again, lunging up the stairs as he shouted, “That's Miss Wheeler!”
Luke thought he was right, although it was difficult to tell one woman's scream from another. He charged after Hobie, drawing his right-hand Remington.
They reached the second-floor landing together, turning to their right as the screams continued. Two men were at the far end of the hallway, one of them struggling to drag Jessica down the rear staircase, the other bringing up the rear with a gun in his hand.
She was putting up quite a fight, Luke saw in the brief glimpse he caught before the man with the gun fired at him and Hobie.
Luke's instincts had already taken over. As the gun was coming up, he grabbed Hobie's shoulder and shoved the young man to the left, toward the wall. At the same time, Luke darted right.
The bullet sizzled through the air between them.
A fraction of a second later, Luke's Remington blasted. He couldn't afford to get fancy and try for a disabling shot that might miss and hit Jessica instead. He aimed for the gunman's body.
The slug smashed into the man's chest and drove him backward, crashing into the two people wrestling at the top of the stairs. A shout of alarm came from the second gunman as he and Jessica toppled out of sight.
“No!” Hobie yelled. He sprinted along the hall toward the rear stairs, fear for Jessica's safety making him move so fast Luke couldn't keep up with him.
Hobie disappeared down the stairs. Jessica had stopped screaming, which was a good signâor a bad one.
Luke reached the far landing, stepped past the body of the man he had just shot, and looked down to see Hobie at the bottom of the stairs, locked in desperate combat with the second gunman. Jessica lay sprawled at their feet, apparently unconscious.
Hobie's opponent had lost his hat, but he'd held on to his revolver. He had it in his hand, fighting to bring it to bear on Hobie.
The young man had both hands wrapped around the would-be kidnapper's wrist, holding the gun muzzle away from him. He ducked his head as the man threw a punch with his other hand. The blow glanced off his skull. He brought his head up and used it as a weapon, butting the gunman in the face.
Blood spurted as the man's nose flattened under the impact. He yelled in pain and hauled Hobie around, smashing the young man into the wall. The impact knocked loose his grip on the kidnapper's gun hand and the man jerked back, flinging the gun up.
Luke had the Remington already leveled. Having only a small target, and aiming down at an angle made the shot trickier. He had only a split second to save Hobie's life. At point-blank range, the gunman couldn't miss.
Luke fired.
The gunman's head snapped back as the slug caught him in the forehead and bored on into his brain. A dying reflex made him jerk the trigger, but his gun had already swung out of line, and the bullet struck one of the stair risers. The gunman's legs folded up, dumping him on the floor next to Jessica.
Luke's shot was deafeningly loud in the close confines of the narrow stairwell. His ears rang, but he still heard Hobie desperately calling Jessica's name as he dropped to his knees beside her and gathered her up into his arms.
Luke wanted to find out whether Jessica was still alive, too, but first he checked on the gunman at the top of the stairs. As he'd expected, the man was dead. He had seen the tag on the tobacco pouch in the man's shirt pocket jump when the bullet struck, which meant there was a good chance he had gotten him in the heart.
With that confirmed, Luke went down the stairs quickly, taking them two at a time. When he reached Hobie, he asked, “How is she?”
“She's still breathing. I was afraid she'd broken her neck falling down the stairs. But she won't wake up!”
“She probably hit her head on the way down.” Luke holstered his gun and knelt beside the two of them. He reached out and gently explored Jessica's head. Her red hair was loose, falling around her shoulders and down her back. That, along with the nightdress she wore, told Luke she had been getting ready for bed when the two men burst in and dragged her out of her room.
“Yes, I thought so. There's a goose egg here where she hit her head. She should be all right, Hobie. We'll know more when she wakes up.”
“When's that going to be?” the young man asked miserably.
“That's hard to say in a case like this. Can you carry her back upstairs to her room?”
“Sure.” Hobie's arms were already around her. He shifted them a little and stood up, grunting with effort as he came to his feet. Even a slender young woman like Jessica was quite a bit of dead weight when she couldn't help out any.
“I can give you a handâ”
“No, I've got her,” Hobie insisted.
He was on the first step, when a man's loud, harsh voice said, “Hold it! Nobody move there!”
Luke started to reach for a gun, but the ominous double click of a Greener being cocked stopped him. Stalking along the first floor corridor toward them was a tall man with a drooping white mustache and a double-barreled shotgun. The newcomer also had a badge pinned to the lapel of the sober black coat he wore.
“Take it easy, Marshal,” Luke said. “You don't need that scattergun. The shooting's all over, and we have an injured girl here.”
“I'll be the judge of when the shootin's over,” the lawman snapped. He kept the twin barrels leveled at Luke and Hobie as he came up to them. “You two are strangers, and I don't cotton to it when folks I don't know start shootin' up my town.”
“What about this man?” Luke asked with a nod toward the corpse at their feet. “Is he a stranger, too?”
The lawman squinted at the body for a second, then said, “As a matter of fact, yeah, he is. That don't make it any better.”
With worry pulling his voice tight, Hobie said, “Miss Wheeler needs a doctor. She took a bad spill down these stairs.”
“Carry her into the lobby, then. I'll send for the doc.”
“I can't do that.” Hobie lowered his voice to a whisper. “
She's in her nightclothes!”
She's in her nightclothes!”
“Reckon I can see that. Do what I told you.” The marshal jerked the shotgun's barrels toward the front of the hotel to emphasize the command.
“Better do what he says,” Luke advised Hobie. He didn't know how steady the old-timer's trigger finger was. It was always better not to take chances with a shotgun.
Hobie sighed and carried Jessica toward the lobby as the marshal moved aside. The lawman motioned for Luke to go ahead, too. At least he hadn't demanded that Luke and Hobie give up their guns, and Luke was grateful for that. The two dead kidnappers might have partners somewhere close by.
Luke's thoughts were racing. While it was possible the two men had tried to abduct Jessica simply because she was a very attractive young woman, he didn't think that was what was going on. It was more likely the attempt was related to the attack on the stagecoach earlier in the day. Luke was fairly well convinced that Jessica had been the target of that, as well.
When they reached the lobby, the marshal told Hobie to put Jessica down on a divan that had a potted plant at each end. Hobie lowered her carefully to the cushions. She was pale and still unconscious.
The hotel clerk and a number of townspeople were gathered in the lobby. Luke knew the citizens had been drawn by the shooting.
The marshal told the crowd, “Somebody run fetch Doc Bismarck. And bring Cassius Mulvaney back here, too!” He glanced over at Luke. “Mulvaney's the local undertaker.”
“He'll have work to do, all right,” Luke agreed. “There's another dead man up on the second floor.”
The marshal glared at him. “Are you responsible for both of 'em, mister?”
“I killed them, yes, but in self-defense and in defense of my young friend here,” Luke replied. “Do you know Jim Pierce and Ben Wallace, the driver and guard on the stagecoach run?”
“What if I do?” the marshal asked with a suspicious frown.
“They'll vouch for us.”
A new voice said from the main stairs, “So will I, Marshal.”
Luke looked up and saw Stephen Langston descending toward them, wearing a long nightshirt with a coat over it.
“And who might you be?” the marshal asked.
“Stephen Langston, owner of Langston's Emporium and Freight Company, over in Moss City, Arizona.”
Luke thought his guess that Langston was a successful businessman looked like it was correct.
“These men saved the stagecoach from outlaws earlier today,” Langston went on. “They saved all the passengers from certain death, including my wife Edna and me. If they're involved in some sort of trouble here tonight, I assure you they're in the right.”
The marshal squinted at Luke. “Supposin' you just tell me what in blazes happened here?”
Luke did so, starting with the attack on the stagecoach and continuing to their rescue of Jessica from the two men. “Miss Wheeler started screaming while Hobie and I were going up the stairs. You can ask the clerk about that. He's bound to have heard her, too.”
The marshal looked over at the man. “How about it, Ambrose?”
The clerk nodded without hesitation. “It's like Mr. Jensen said, Marshal. The trouble started before he and his friend ever reached the second floor.”
The marshal told Luke, “It's startin' to look like I got no choice but to believe you.” He didn't look particularly happy about that, however. “What I want to know now is what all this ruckus is about. If these two varmints tonight are part of the same bunch that jumped the stage, what's so all-fired special about this gal that makes them want to grab her so bad?”
“I'm afraid we're going to have to wait for Miss Wheeler to wake up and answer that,” Luke said.
“Hasn't somebody got a blanket or something so we can cover her up?” Hobie asked. “She shouldn't be lying here in her nightclothes with all these people around gawking at her.”
Ambrose went through a door behind the registration counter and came back with a blanket. Hobie took it and spread it carefully over Jessica, nodding in satisfaction when he stepped back. “That's better.”
The doctor came into the lobby a few minutes later. He frowned when he saw Luke and Hobie. “Does trouble just follow you two around?”
“It's starting to seem like it,” Luke said.
“Never mind that,” Hobie said with a note of impatience in his voice. He gestured toward the divan where Jessica's blanket-covered form lay. “There's your patient. She fell down a flight of stairs.”
“Any broken bones?” Dr. Bismarck asked as he bent over Jessica and lifted one of her eyelids.
“I don't think so, but she's been unconscious ever since she fell.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Five minutes, maybe,” Hobie replied with a shrug.
Bismarck checked Jessica's other eye, then said, “Not an uncommon amount of time to be out cold after a good knock on the head. She needs to wake up soon, though.” He quickly ran his hands over her limbs. “Like you said, no breaks. She's lucky in that respect. Her eyes look all right. Let's try some smelling salts.”
He took a small bottle from his black medical bag, uncorked it, and held it under Jessica's nose. At first, she didn't react, but after a second she flinched away from it and her eyelids began to flutter. A moment later, she opened her eyes all the way and gasped.
“There you go,” the doctor said as he put the cork back in the bottle. “Works every time.”
“What . . . where am I?” Jessica asked as she tried to sit up.
Bismarck's hand on her shoulder held her down.
“You're in the hotel lobby, Miss Wheeler,” Luke told her. “Don't worry, you're safe now.”
“Those men . . . two men . . . they burst into my room and grabbed me when I about to go to bedâ” Jessica stopped short and looked down at herself, then at the crowd of people around her. “Oh, my God. This . . . this is so embarrassing.”
“You don't need to be embarrassed,” Hobie said. “This isn't your fault.”
“How . . . how did I get away from them?”
Langston waved a hand at Luke and Hobie. “These two desert knights saved you, Miss Wheeler, just like they saved all of us earlier when those outlaws attacked us.”
Jessica looked at them. “I can't thank you enough.”
“No thanks necessary,” Hobie said. “And you almost got hurt bad while we were trying to help you, so if you had, I reckon that would've been our fault.”
“Nonsense,” Luke said. “It would have been the fault of those two men who tried to kidnap Miss Wheeler.”
“That's right,” Jessica agreed. “Please don't blame yourself for anything, Mr. McCullough.”
“Hobie.”
She smiled and nodded and said, “Hobie,” which put a big grin on the young man's face. Jessica went on, “Do you think I could go back up to my room?”
Luke looked at the doctor, who said, “I don't see why not. Does your head hurt, my dear?”
“Yes, it does.”
“I'm not surprised, after feeling that lump on your head. It may hurt for a day or two, but I think you're going to be all right. If the pain suddenly gets worse, you'll need to let me know.”
“But . . . I won't be here. The stage is leaving again in the morning.”
Bismarck frowned. “I'm not sure it would be a good idea for you to travel so soon.”
“But I have to!” Again, Jessica started to sit up, clutching the blanket around her.
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