.45-Caliber Deathtrap (2 page)

The ache and the burn chilled him. The boardwalk tipped this way and that, like an unmoored dock.

“Bastards,” he grunted. “Sons of thievin', no-good, dirty, soulless whores…the lot of ya.”

Christ, he'd lost the whole damn load. Over three thousand dollars worth of freight. What would he tell Cuno? What would
they
tell the bank?

He laid his head down against the scarred planks. As the blood drained out his knee, his body weakened, his vision dimmed. Vaguely, as if from far away, he heard the whoops and jubilant yells of the freight thieves. He didn't know how much time had passed when the smell of kerosene filled his nostrils.

He looked at the wagon. They'd turned it around so the mules faced the way Scanlon had come. The bandit leader—the tall, bearded man with three pistols—was shaking kerosene over the near-empty Murphy from one of the large cans Scanlon had been hauling.

“Bastard,” Scanlon grunted, not sure if his words carried. “Don't burn my wagon, you bastards.”

The gang leader dropped a single match into the bed.

Whoo-oof!

As the inferno grew, the mules kicked and brayed and bolted off down the main drag toward the edge of town. The blazing wagon, a ball of raging fire, bounced along behind. It careened to and fro along the street before it disappeared, leaving a trail of sooty, black smoke in its wake. Behind it, the hard cases coughed and hollered.

There was a shrill scream followed by a ghastly clamor, like distant thunderclaps. Scanlon gnashed his teeth and ground his head against the boardwalk planks, groaning and cursing.

The mules had run off the road and into the gorge northwest of town.

He slitted his tear-glazed eyes as he returned his gaze to the street.

In front of the saloon, two hard cases danced arm-in-arm, laughing. One wore a new fur cap and fur mittens while the other had donned a woman's torn gingham dress and a poke bonnet. The others were still going through the crates and barrels they'd tossed from the wagon. A couple were shoving each other and cursing.

In his mind's eye, Scanlon saw Serenity Parker's sawed-off gut shredder.

He threw out his bloody right hand, reaching under the door, digging his fingers between puncheons for purchase. Before he could crawl more than three feet, someone grabbed his ankle and pulled him back onto the boardwalk.

Scanlon felt as though an ax had been driven through his knee. The freighter screamed.

The bandit leader crouched over him, shaking his head. A red-throated hummingbird had been tattooed into the man's right cheek, above his scraggly black beard and just below his blind, milky eye. His misshapen nose was broad as a wedge.

“What am I gonna do with you, kangaroo-man?”

Scanlon cursed and spat in the man's face.

The man only grinned and raised one of his three pistols. He extended the barrel at Scanlon's head.

The freighter grimaced. Not so much for himself. He'd let down the only man who'd offered him a decent stake since he'd lost his leg.

Cannady's index finger drew taut against the trigger.

The hammer snapped down.

Scanlon didn't feel a thing.

SITTING THE DRIVER'S
box of his big Murphy freight wagon—a platform-spring dray, with a high seat and chains from axle to double-tree for sharp cornering—Cuno Massey poked his flat-brimmed Stetson off his forehead and loosened his neckerchief.

His second day on the trail, he was fifty miles northwest of Denver. He and his two stocky mules rode straight through the heart of desolate nowhere—into the foothills and sandstone scarps of the Rocky Mountain's Front Range, with only rabbitbrush, sage, occasional cottonwoods, and autumn flocks of raucous blackbirds for company.

A warm wind blew over the high, western peaks, bringing the smell of sage and dry sand and…coffee.

He sniffed the wind.

Sure enough.

Someone was brewing a pot of good six-shooter mud not far to the south. The worry lines in Cuno's blond brow softened. He'd probably just found his partner, Wade Scanlon, with whom Cuno had opened a freight business a year ago this December. Actually, it was Cuno's father's old business. Cuno had bought it back from the man he'd sold it to when he'd gone after the two men who'd raped and murdered his stepmother before killing his father as well. Cuno had then moved the business from Nebraska to Denver, to shuttle freight between Denver and the gold camps dotting the Front Range.

Wade Scanlon was two days late getting back to town after the load of dry goods and rifles he'd hauled to the new settlement along Sunburst Creek. Cuno had feared Wade had run into Southern Cheyenne, known to be on the prowl in this neck of the rimrocks.

The coffee could indeed be Wade's. The only thing Wade enjoyed more than coffee was beer.

Cuno plucked his Winchester repeater off the wagon seat, jacked a shell into the chamber, off-cocked the hammer, and laid the rifle across his knees. He removed his right glove in case he needed that hand for shooting. He steered the wagon off the road and stared expectantly over the mules' bobbing heads as he crested a low rise and started down the other side.

At the bottom of the hill, in a fold between fall-brown hogbacks, two men sat around a wind-battered fire, slumped deep in their patched wool coats, steaming tin cups in their hands. Their collars were pulled up, their hats pulled down over their eyes. One wore a muffler over his hat, tied beneath his chin.

Both looked up, frowning as the big wagon rolled toward them behind the lumbering mules, whose breath rose and tore on the wind. Neither of the men was Wade Scanlon, and Wade's Murphy was nowhere in sight.

Damn.

Balancing his rifle across his knees, Cuno hauled back on the reins. “Whoo-ahh. Whoah, now.”

One of the two men around the fire gained his feet. The other man, whose long, salt-and-pepper hair fell to his shoulders, remained where he was. A Spencer .56 leaned against the log beside him. He squinted at Cuno, carving deep lines around his eyes and down both sides of his long, thin nose.

The mules stopped. Sensing no danger here, Cuno left the rifle where it was, holding the ribbons but ready to drop them if his instincts proved wrong.

He raised his voice to be heard against the wind and crackling fire. “Howdy.”

The older man remained squatting, expressionless. The younger, standing man nodded, offering a cordial “How-do.”

“A little chilly today.”

“A mite,” said the squatting man. He looked Cuno over closely, then glanced at the charred pot resting on a flat rock in the fire. “We have some coffee here. You're welcome to a cup.”

Cuno didn't want coffee just yet. He'd intended to make it to Columbine Creek before full dark. But it was impolite to turn down the offer, and he couldn't ask about Wade until he partook of the pilgrims' generosity. He gave them another quick glance. Probably a couple of market hunters or saddle tramps riding the winter grub-line, heading south toward warmer weather.

Cuno set the wagon's brake, left his rifle on the wagon seat, and climbed down. He rummaged around in the wagon box for a cup, then walked over, squatted down, and filled the cup. He blew on the hot liquid, sipped. He had to swallow twice to keep it down.

“That's good.” Cuno cleared his throat. What had they made this stuff out of—mule shit? “Damn good.”

“Billy made it,” the younger man said.

The older gent flushed slightly as he stared at the flames. “Trick is to add a little eatin' tobaccy and sugar to the grounds. Just a pinch of black powder.” Without pausing, he added, “I'm Billy Hopgood, and that's Delvin Squires. We're headed down Texas way.” They were both too shy and backward to shake hands, so Cuno didn't attempt the gesture either.

“We're cousins,” Squires said, chuckling as if it were a joke between them.

“Our daddies were cousins,” Billy said. “But hell, I'm old enough to be the kid's uncle. And I have to act that way half the time, or Delvin'd find himself up shit creek without a bull boat!”

He laughed. Delvin bit his lower lip and flushed. He poked a stick at the fire, stirring the ashes around the pot. So quickly as to be nearly imperceptible, his eyes flicked over Cuno's right shoulder, brushing the mules and wagon behind him, canvas stretched over the high side panels on the outside of which hung feed bags, a pick and shovel, an iron wedge, and a jack. Just as quickly, the small, gray-blue eyes slid conspiratorially toward the older man before returning to the stick with which he stirred the ashes.

Cuno pretended not to notice. He introduced himself, told the two men he was taking his freight load to Welcome, and asked if they'd seen his partner anywhere along the road. “Big, friendly man in a blue coat. Would have been driving a wagon like mine.”

Billy and Delvin said they hadn't seen him.

Cuno finished the putrid coffee as fast as he could without throwing up. He tossed the grounds into the fire.

“You'll be headin' out then?” Billy said.

“Better get back on the trail.”

Billy's eyes flicked to his partner, cunning burning in them like a slow-building fire. When they turned to Cuno, they looked distracted. While Billy kept a neutral expression on his face, his shoulders grew taut.

Cuno looked at him directly. “Don't do it, Billy. My rifle's in the wagon, but I've got two forty-fives under this coat.” Cuno switched his gaze to Delvin. “My coat's buttoned, but I'll guaran-damn-tee you that I can reach my pistols before you can aim those rifles.”

Flushing, Billy furrowed his brows, slitted his eyes, and pooched out his lips. His eyes rolled toward Delvin, who had slipped his hand halfway into his coat.

“Show me that hand,” Cuno told him mildly.

Dropping his gaze with chagrin, Delvin slid his hand out of his coat.

“Button up.”

“Ah, hellkatoot!” Delvin complained.

When he'd buttoned the two buttons he'd opened while he'd thought the freighter had been obliviously sipping his coffee, Cuno rose and backed toward his mules. His instincts hadn't failed him. Billy and Delvin were harmless enough. They were also down-at-heel enough that staring across the fire at Cuno's wagon, mounted with valuable freight, they'd acquired dangerous ideas. They hadn't seen Wade, but even if they had, Wade, who'd been a deputy sheriff as well as a shotgun rider for a stage line, could have handled these two with ease.

“Hey,” Billy said as Cuno climbed up to his seat. “You said your name was Cuno?”

“That's right.”

“Shit.” Billy looked at Delvin, still hanging his head in shame. “He's the younker that took down those two hide hunters that killed his parents. What were their names? Spoon and…and…”

Cuno slipped the reins from the brake handle and released the brake with a single chop of his left hand. “Sammy Spoon and Rolf Anderson.”

Delvin raised his eyes, more closely scrutinizing Cuno's husky, muscular frame, the wheat-blond hair falling from the young freighter's slouch hat to brush his broad shoulders. “Damn, that was you?”

“That's right.”

“How'd you kill those two varmints anyways?” asked Billy.

“I shot Spoon through the brisket as he charged me on horseback,” Cuno said, adjusting the reins in his hands. “Beat the hell out of Anderson, drove his own knife through his head.”

Billy and Delvin stared over the fire at him, their jaws sagging, apprehension and admiration narrowing their eyes.

Cuno backed the team away from the fire. Over the mules' heads, he regarded the grub-liners with pinched eyes and a heavy jaw, trying to look as crazy as the bounty hunter, Ruben Pacheca, who too had once fogged his trail, before Cuno had killed him.

“I didn't leave either one with very nice-lookin' corpses.” Cuno wrinkled his nose. “After I cut their heads off and gouged out their eyes, I cut out their livers and ate 'em both raw.” He stopped the team, turned it back toward the trail, and glanced over his shoulder at the two men regarding him warily. “Developed kind of a taste for man liver.”

He turned forward, flicked the reins over the mules' backs, and headed back over the rise.

Owl-eyed, Delvin turned to Billy. “Shee-it.”

Driving deeper into the foothills, Cuno meandered through the hogbacks and river bottoms. He saw no sign of Wade. It wasn't possible that he could have missed his partner. While the country was crisscrossed with old Indian traces and stock trails, there was only one main wagon trail curving around the camelbacks and rimrocks dividing the mountains from the prairie.

Late in the day, with shadows tilting out from the vaulting western ridges, Cuno approached Columbine Creek, the roofs of the livery barn and saloon rising above the bunchgrass tufts and sage. He turned to look into the ravine opening right of the trail, then hauled back on the reins, planting both boots against the dashboard and yelling, “Whooooo-ah! Hold up there, boys.”

He stared into the ravine, twenty feet deep by thirty feet wide. Piled up at the base of the opposite side lay the charred and broken wreckage of a wagon. The wagon lay atop the charred, broken carcasses of two heavy horses or mules.

It looked as though the wagon had tried to leap the ravine but hadn't made it.

But no wagon master—not even a
drunk
wagon master—would try such a fool stunt, even with a wagon as empty as that one had been.

But Cuno knew the wagon hadn't tried to leap the ravine. His mind was only trying to busy itself, spinning in circles, avoiding what Cuno knew in his heart was true.

He set the brake, hit the dirt with both heels, and scrambled down the ravine. Breathing hard, he hunkered down beside the burned-out hulk, wincing against the stench of the charred, rotting mule carcasses.

The hide was so badly burned that he couldn't tell the color of either mule, but he saw the brand burned into one—the brand of the man from whom he'd purchased the beast. The wagon owned the heavy chassis and stocky, high-walled box of a Murphy.

No sign of Wade. That didn't mean he wasn't here. He could be under the mules or under the wagon, burned to fine ashes.

Where was the freight?

Cuno stood and made a reconnaissance, tramping up and down the ravine for a half mile in each direction. Finding no sign of Wade, he scrambled back up to his wagon, threw the brake, and flicked the ribbons over the team.

Riding with his jaws set hard, he raked his eyes along both sides of the trail. The wagon rounded a slow bend and cleaved the little town of Columbine, the livery barn and whorehouse appearing on his left, the Hog's Head Saloon shoving up on his right.

Scanlon was known to frequent the whorehouse on occasion, but he'd have had a beer first with Serenity Parker.

Cuno stopped the wagon near the three saddle horses tied to the hitch rack in front of the Hog's Head. He remained seated, staring around the street at the several empty crates and barrels littering the street near the saloon, several overturned or broken, their lids tossed about like a child's discarded toys.

He climbed down, glanced at the horses, mounted the boardwalk, and pushed through the hovel's single batwing.

The old man's gray-bearded visage hovered over the bar.

“Serenity, you seen Wade?”

The old man's face bleached. His eyes grew sharp and tense as he glanced over the bar at the three men lounging around the table to Cuno's left. Two sat with their backs to the wall, one arm on the table, near shot glasses and beer schooners. Their rheumy eyes regarded Cuno with casual insolence. The third man faced the wall, elbows on the table. He craned his neck to peer around his chair back, coolly taking Cuno's measure.

They were all armed with pistols. Two rifles leaned against the wall nearby.

Serenity Parker sputtered and stammered. “C-come on back here. There's somethin' I want you to see.”

He ambled down the bar and into the room's rear shadows. Cuno tossed another glance at the three men to his left, then followed Serenity to the back and out the rear door.

There was a stable out back, near a thin neck of the same ravine in which Cuno had found the wagon. He followed the oldster inside and stared down at a hand-hewn coffin resting on a rusty wheelbarrow. Fresh sawdust and shavings told Cuno the coffin had been built recently. Yesterday or even today.