Between Hell and Texas (11 page)

Lematte stood puffing his cigar, letting Freedman talk while the other two deputies slipped up behind him. When they were in position, Lematte shouted quickly, “Grab him, Deputies!”

The deputies, Hogo Metacino and Eddie Grafe, grabbed Freedman by his arms and held him. He struggled in an effort to resist their grasp. But only for a moment. Then, seeing he was powerless against the two men, he turned to Lematte and said, “You won’t get away with this! I’ll see to it you face charges for this if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Careful now,” Lematte warned, “it just might be.” To Joe Poole he said, “Get a rope.” Turning to the two deputies holding Freedman, he said, “Tie his arms out along the bar.” He cracked the whip again as if loosening it up.

“Sheriff, please, for God sakes!” said one of the other councilmen. “You can’t do this! Freedman is the head councilman for this town!”

“Oh, I see. Then perhaps you’d like to take his place?” Lematte asked.

The two councilmen stepped back, a look of terror on their faces. They watched the deputies press Freedman against the bar and stretch his arms out along the edge. Deputy Hogo Metacino laughed and hooted aloud as he grabbed both tails of the councilman’s linen swallowtail coat and ripped the back
open all the way up to the collar. He did the same with Freedman’s white shirt. “Somebody do something, please!” Freedman pleaded, trying to glance over his shoulder at the other councilmen.

“Just to clear up any further misunderstanding about whether or not I already
have
taken over this town,” said Lematte, disregarding Freedman and cracking the whip again in the air beside him. “I want everybody here to see that
I
and
I alone
crack the whip in this town from now on!” As the deputies tied ropes around Freedman’s wrists and stretched his arms out along the bar, Lematte stepped in close to the trembling man’s face and said, “You want to know what went wrong for me in Hide City? I’ll tell you what went wrong! I was too damn easy on the town leaders. But I’m not making that mistake again, no
sir
!”

Lematte stepped back ten feet and, without another word, unleashed a vicious lash of the long bullwhip. Freedman screamed long and loud as the whip cracked against the pale flesh on his back.

A few feet from the bar, Karl Nolly said to Henry Snead, “Come on, let’s gather the rest of the deputies.”

“Right now?” Snead asked, as if stunned by such a suggestion. Nodding toward the gruesome exhibition going on before him, Snead said, “I don’t want to miss any of this! I love this kind of stuff!”

“I said, come on, Snead!” This time Nolly put more force in his words. Snead tore his eyes away from the spectacle just as another loud crack of the whip resounded above the councilman’s screams. “We need to get our other three men here in case somebody in this town decides to be a hero.” He looked back at the whip flashing through the air as they
headed out the door. “Damn it, Lematte,” he said to himself. Then to Henry Snead he said, “Don’t worry, I expect you’ll be getting your fair share of
this kind of stuff
if Martin Lematte has any say in it.”

On the boardwalk out front of the Silver Seven Saloon, Karl Nolly looked both ways along the dirt street and saw the other three deputies walking quickly toward the saloon. Two of the deputies, Delbert Collins and Jewel Higgs, carried sawed-off shotguns. The third deputy, Rowland Lenz, held a pistol cocked in his hand. As they approached the boardwalk where Nolly and Snead stood waiting, they had to walk wide of two horsemen who had ridden up to the hitch rail. The two horsemen, Moon Braden and Cleveland Ellis, watched the gathering of deputies with curiosity as they listened to the sound of the bullwhip and the screams it evoked.

“What’s going on in there?” Delbert Collins asked Karl Nolly, nodding at the doors of the saloon.

“Aw,” said Nolly with a trace of a cruel grin. “Our
sheriff
needed to teach a councilman a lesson in manners I reckon. You three get on in there and see to it no townsman gets out of control.”

The three deputies walked inside as the two horsemen sat staring in astonishment. Finally Nolly asked in an impatient tone, “Is there something we can do for you?”

“If the sheriff of this town is Martin Lematte,” said Cleveland Ellis, “I believe there is something you can do for us.” He nodded to his side, saying, “This is Moon Braden…I’m Cleveland Ellis. We heard Lematte was getting together some deputies to keep peace here in Somos Santos.” A dark grin crept onto Ellis’s face.

“Yeah,” said Nolly, his voice becoming more
friendly. “I’ve heard Lematte talk about you two. Step down and make yourselves at home. The sheriff is straightening out a councilman right now, but he won’t be a minute.”

“Sounds like some serious
straightening
,” said Moon Braden. “We heard the screaming all the way from the edge of town.” The two stepped down, twirled their reins around the hitch rail, and stepped up onto the boardwalk.

“Anything we can do to help?” asked Ellis.

“Obliged, but no thanks. I believe we’ve got things covered pretty good,” said Nolly. “Who have you boys been working for lately?”

“We just left a job poking steers for the Double D Spread,” said Moon. “The fact is, we got run off over some trouble we had with a big gunman named Crayton Dawson. Have you ever heard of him?”

Nolly and Snead both grinned. “Yeah, I’ll say we’ve heard of him,” said Karl Nolly. He pointed at Henry Snead. “This man just beat the blue living hell out of him a week back, sent him crawling in the dirt.”

Braden and Ellis looked Snead up and down, then Ellis gave Nolly a skeptical look. “
This
man?”

Henry Snead gave Ellis a harsh stare.

“Yes, this man,” said Nolly, dropping a palm firmly on Snead’s broad, powerful shoulder. “Meet Henry Snead, gentlemen. Mister Snead here spends his time lifting nail kegs just for the fun of it.”

“The fun of it?” Moon gave a bemused look.

“
This
man?” Cleveland Ellis repeated, pointing at Snead as if no one had adequately answered him before.

Henry Snead wasn’t about to let the insult go twice
unattended. “Damn right,
this man
,” he said, stepping forward in his own defense. “What of it?”

“Whoa now,” said Ellis. “No offense intended. I was just making sure I got all the particulars right.”

“I can make it more clear to you.” Snead expanded his chest like a game rooster.

“Well, you sure have got all the particulars right.” Nolly grinned broadly, cutting in on Henry Snead before things got out of hand. “Snead here made him look bad in front of the whole saloon.”

“Anybody who put a hurting on Crayton Dawson is A-OK in my book,” Moon Braden offered, hoping to smooth over anybody’s injured pride. “I’ll be glad to hook up with Lematte again. I’ve stared up a steer’s ass so long I was starting to worry about myself. It’ll be good to get back to some decent work. I just hope it goes well this time…not like it went for us over in Hide City.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nolly. This time is different. Lematte even has a big hired gun coming to town to keep things pinned down for us, in case anybody tries to muscle in after we get this town going the way we want it to.”

“A big gun, huh?” said Cleveland Ellis. “Who is it?”

“It’s a big secret,” said Nolly. Lematte hasn’t even told
me
yet. But it will be somebody good, you can bet on it.” He pointed a finger at the two and added, “But I can tell you one thing; you don’t have to worry about Crayton Dawson any more. He don’t want to tangle with us.”

Moon Braden and Cleveland Ellis looked at one another, then back at Karl Nolly. “Who said we was
worried
about Dawson?” asked Ellis. He patted the
Colt on his hip. “The fact is, we plan on killing him, first chance we get. Ain’t that right Moon?”

“Sure is right,” said Moon, a grin coming across his whisker-stubbled face. “First chance we get, he’s graveyard dead.”

“Graveyard dead,” Nolly chuckled. “I admire a man with confidence.” Looking them up and down, he wondered if their confidence was founded on anything more than tough talk. “It doesn’t bother either of you, the things folks are saying about Dawson killing three men at Turkey Creek?”

“I’d have to see the
three men
before I’d be greatly impressed,” said Cleveland Ellis. “I heard one was an idiot who stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time.”

As they spoke, the two councilmen came dragging Freedman out of the saloon between them, his arms draped limply over their shoulders. Freedman moaned pitifully, his head bobbing slightly on his chest. His back was a glistening pulp of blood and tortured flesh. “Lord!” said Moon Braden, “He looks like a skinned possum!”

“I heard how things went wrong for Lematte in Hide City,” said Nolly. “He doesn’t intend to let the same thing happen here. We’re keeping this town under our thumbs.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Ellis. “Suppose we can buy ourselves a drink now that all the bullwhipping is over?”

“Not if I can help it,” said Martin Lematte, stepping out onto the boardwalk straightening his coat sleeves. He offered the two newcomers a friendly smile as he pulled out a handkerchief and blotted his sweat-beaded brow. “Your money is no good here today. Drinks are on the house.”

“Howdy, Lematte,” said Cleveland Ellis, returning Lematte’s grin. “It’s about damn time somebody bought me a drink. I was beginning to think me and Moon smelled bad.”

“Nonsense!” said Lematte, “You smell no worse than you ever did. Come on inside, take a look at our setup…I might even manage to round you up a couple of women to straighten the kinks out of your backs.”

“Moon,” said Ellis as they walked into the saloon, “I like this place already.”

Cray Dawson watched Carmelita stand up from the bed naked and not bother to pick up a robe, or a sheet, or anything else to cover herself. For some reason that bothered him. He had no idea why, since there was no one within miles and there were no secrets their bodies had held back from one another. The first two days he’d been here had been little more than blur. He recalled her washing him with a cool, wet cloth. He had glimpses of her spoonfeeding him warm broth and soup and raw eggs and goat milk until his stomach grew more acceptable to holding down solid food. He had been like a man with a terrible fever, and he could not accurately say when that fever had broken.

But in the middle of the third night, as his strength and his senses came back to him, she had slipped into the bed beside him, naked, and held him against the length of her until she felt his needs awaken and press against her warm flesh. “Rest, relax, I will be gentle,” she had whispered warmly into his ear. And so she was…

Now he watched her pad barefoot across the stone floor through the early morning shadows of the
hacienda
. When she was no longer in sight he waited for
a moment, listening until he heard the slight creak of the front door closing. Then he looked out the half-raised window of the bedroom and saw her in the side yard. First he saw her through wavering panes of glass, then more clearly when he lowered his level of vision and saw her beneath the raised window edge.

Rosa
…he murmured silently to himself.

In the thin dawn light she became ghostlike, still naked but wearing his tall boots. Dawson thought of her sister as he watched her gather mesquite twigs and oak kindling and strike up a small fire in the
chimnea
. It troubled him that he thought so often of Rosa as he held Carmelita, that he smelled the scent of Rosa even as he pressed his face into Carmelita’s hair. In the height of his passion it was nonetheless Rosa he tasted, Rosa he caressed. And it was Rosa whose body surrendered, and shuddered, and received him without hesitance, without question.

Stop it
, he told himself.

The woman he saw in the soft glow of firelight from the
chimnea
needn’t be held in second place to any woman, living or dead. Yet, being honest to himself, he knew it was her likeness to her sister that had drawn him here. It was some crazed hope that he might lose himself in Carmelita, at least until the pain of losing Rosa became more bearable. How wrong was it, he asked himself, his hand falling idly to the mending incisions on his lower belly. Carmelita knew nothing of his loving her sister. So if he treated her right, if he gave back to her as much as he took, if he held her special…if she never knew otherwise, was that so wrong?