City of Widows (23 page)

The third stick came to rest near the foundation to the left of the ragged hole where the front door had been. Ortíz was sighting in on it when a shout came from inside.

“Don't shoot! We're coming out!”

Some fifty guns posted on that side of the house leveled on the opening. Inside, the first grasping fingers of flame clambered up the curtain to one of the windows and scratched at the casing.

One by one, obeying Whiteside's shouted instructions, seven men stepped down from the ruins of the porch, weaponless, hands high. Their faces and clothing were smeared with burnt powder. Two of them were limping, their trousers slicked with blood. Another two supported a third man between them with his chin on his chest, half his head apparently blown away.

There was someone missing, and with Ortiz in possession of the barn there was only one other place he could be. I checked the load in the Deane-Adams five-shot and contemplated the distance I had to cross to reach the house, burning steadily now and spilling gouts of black smoke out through the bullet-shattered panes.

23

I
CAST AROUND
for the pair of mules Wendigo had unhitched from the wagon. Mules are smarter than horses and rarely stray far from men and the comfort and security they represent. I spotted them, still joined by the double harness, grazing in the feathergrass a hundred yards upwind of the noise and smoke. I found a coil of rope in the wagon and strolled their way, taking my time to avoid spooking them. They were skittish, but not nearly as much as untrained horses would be under those circumstances, and the breeching prevented them from employing most of their best evasions. I threw the loop over the head of the near animal, jerked it tight before it could duck out, and set my heels. After the standard test of wills, and with strokes and whispered words I never used with any woman, I got them calm enough to let me walk them to the wagon.

The cowboys and vaqueros had meanwhile taken charge of the desperadoes from the house, inspected them for arms, and begun trussing them for transportation to Socorro City or a serviceable cottonwood, whichever was closest. All seemed peaceful, and I was wondering if I weren't being overcautious when the man with the Springfield opened fire once again from somewhere inside the burning house, scattering the men who had ventured too near in their eagerness to claim the prisoners and sparking a crackle of return fire from the posse. And now I knew beyond doubt the identity of the rifleman.

I pointed the mules at the house and straddled one. Grasping its collar and reaching across to grip the other, I slipped down between them. It was a close fit and they didn't want me there; their restless whickers rumbled like growls from their ribs to mine. But nervous was good. I raised my feet, filled my lungs, emptied them in a high-pitched yell, and sank my teeth into the neck of the animal to my right. I tasted salt and blood. The mule brayed and they bolted, jolting my arms nearly out of their sockets. Hoofs drummed, the wind lashed my face, cold then hot as we neared the flames. Smoke stung my eyes but I didn't dare close them. If I calculated wrong they could wire me back to Montana in a Western Union envelope.

Through the water I saw the ruins of the porch come up and the instant before the mules turned to avoid a collision I let go. Splinters of pain shot up from the soles of my feet when I struck down. My knees buckled and I nearly fell in the terrified animals' path, but recovered myself on the run and bounded up and over the shambles of broken lumber, drawing the Deane-Adams in midair and landing on my chest and elbows inside what used to be the front door.

For a second I lay there, floor-burned and slightly stunned, the revolver clamped in front of me between both palms. Then I rolled to the side. It was a time-tested tactic, but wasted. I was alone in the room.

It was a large parlor, and even through the blue haze I could see that it was elegantly furnished, with a Brussels carpet and overstuffed chairs and a massive old breakfront in the corner, eight feet tall and filled with blue china. Flames were snaffling at the printed wallpaper, blistering and blackening and peeling it as I watched and pouncing across the ceiling with a suckling roar. Orange coals the size of acorns dropped to the carpet and burned black holes on contact.

Ortiz had provided me with a description of the floor plan, and climbing to my feet I started toward the center of the house and the staircase leading to the tower. On the way there I spotted a corner of the carpet turned back. In the section of floor thus exposed I saw a square outline.

With only a small trapdoor to defend, a man in that dark hole might withstand a siege of many months.

Crouching on my heels to avoid silhouetting myself in the opening, I inserted my fingers in the crack between the boards and lifted.

Something scuffed the carpet behind me. I turned with the revolver. White light, brighter than any of the dynamite blasts, filled my skull. I felt myself tipping, threw out a hand to brace myself, and touched space. Warm moist blackness broke my fall.

*   *   *

A train was champing at the platform, maintaining a head of steam.

The long hoarse chugs carried me back from wherever I'd been, to gray cold darkness and the beginning of an ache I knew from old experience would be with me for days and possibly weeks. Chiefly it was in my head, a living, breathing pain that bulged out of time with the uneven chugs and the smaller, sharper pains in my knees and elbows. The headache belonged to the blow that had taken me away from wherever I was now. I had acquired the others when I fell or was pushed to the hard smooth stony surface on which I lay. I placed a palm against it. Not stone; too even and, I sensed, not as hard. Not man-made, either; not even enough for that. Clay?

I turned onto my side. Through the murk I made out the faint gleam of light on glass, rows of curved glass objects stacked one on top of another, as on shelves. Jars? I began to know something.

Again I turned. I was on my back now, looking up at stripes of light some eight feet above me. I was disappointed in Ortiz. A good carpenter should be able to fit floorboards closer than that. As I was looking, a fall of glowing cinders showered down through the cracks and I threw a forearm across my eyes. The sparks stung my hand and face like hornets. The fire was still blazing. I couldn't have been out more than a few minutes.

The chugging continued, accompanied by a stream of dust and fresh cinders from above. Something blocked the light through several cracks. I remembered the big breakfront in the parlor then. Someone was dragging it across the floor in the direction of the trapdoor. I thought I knew who.

The pain in my head bulged when I sat up, blinding me for a second. I reached up, touched the sticky mass behind my right ear, and snatched my hand away when a fresh bolt shot straight to the top of my skull. I put the hand down to push myself up and felt something I'd missed without even knowing it was gone. The cool solid patient shape of the Deane-Adams made me want to cry out. It must have dropped from my hand through the opening before Baronet could catch it. It was the only thing that had gone wrong with the trap he'd laid; but when a gambler's streak turns bad it doesn't stop.

I curled my fingers around the butt, rose to my knees, breathed, swallowed bile, and stood up. The basement did a slow Virginia reel and rocked to a standstill. I was ready to help move furniture.

A wooden ladder bolted to the stone wall led to the trapdoor. I holstered the pistol, climbed, and pushed with my hand. It didn't give. I went up another rung and leaned my shoulder against it. It was latched. I might have shot my way through. I might have cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted for freedom. Either way I would lose my only advantage. I climbed back down.

The man struggling with the breakfront paused to wheeze. I recognized Frank Baronet's voice. By now the ground floor would be full of smoke. Soon the boards would catch fire and collapse upon me, followed by the walls and roof. The trap had felt warm against my palm.

I drew the five-shot and looked up, calculating. Before my peacekeeping days I had spent a winter between roundups freighting iron stoves for a cartage company based in Saint Louis. My partner had a bad back and refused to pull against a weight, explaining that pushing was easier and not as likely to cause injury. His back wasn't nearly as bad as the sheriff's, not having a bullet in it. I waited until the breakfront began moving again, noting the angle by the pattern of falling dust and the shadow between the boards, and paced off the distance to the back. I pointed the revolver straight up and emptied the cylinder, spreading my shots in a loose pattern. Smoky light poked down through the holes.

There was a short space of silence. Then something thudded the floor, hard enough to shake loose a pound of old dirt and dry rot.

I reloaded from the loops on my belt, stepped beneath the trapdoor, and placed all five bullets in a tight group in one corner. The result was a ragged, fist-size hole. Once again I shook out the empty shells and replaced them with fresh cartridges, the last in my possession. I scaled the ladder, inserted my fingers in the hole, and pushed hard with the heel of my hand. The door gave a little. I mounted the last rung, placed my shoulder against the door and one foot against the nearest joist, and heaved upward. A moment's resistance, then the agonized shriek of tearing wood, and suddenly I was breathing the hot smoky air of freedom.

The walls were totally engulfed. Part of the ceiling was gone, having fallen into a pile of flaming debris that blocked the exit. The carpet, which Baronet had rucked back in order to move the breakfront, was burning, and threads of flame were blistering the veneer on that massive piece. Coughing and covering my nose and mouth with one hand, I stepped behind the breakfront. A smear of blood stained the floor and dribbled out into the hall leading to the back of the house. I followed it, gun in hand.

The drops grew faint and hard to distinguish against the brown leaf pattern on the hall runner. Then I came across a gout of it on the bottom step of the central staircase, as if he had paused there, hemorrhaging and supporting himself on the newel post. The trail continued up the stairs.

I climbed the first flight, flattened against the banister with the revolver pointed up the well. At the top was a landing and a steep flight of naked wooden steps ending in another trapdoor. This one hung open, releasing a flood of sunlight down the narrow passage from the open sentry tower atop the house. The blood trail led squarely up the middle.

My head throbbed. It seemed to be saying,
Not again.

A second-floor hallway ran north and south from the landing. I peered in both directions. Through the roiling smoke it seemed to me I saw a faint smear where someone had mopped a fresh spill from the oiled floor in front of the first door south of the staircase.

Keeping the Deane-Adams in front of me, I backed toward the steep flight of steps and climbed them backward. They creaked loudly.

The door in the hallway flew open. I took an instant to identify Frank Baronet lunging across the threshold, his big Remington rolling-block pistol trained up the stairs. I fired twice into the thickest part of him. He stumbled, faltered, raised the pistol again. I fired again. He retreated into the room. The door closed.

I descended the steps. In the hallway I spread-eagled against the wall and stretched a hand toward the doorknob. The latch hadn't caught. The door opened at a touch. When no shots came from inside I pivoted around and through the opening, clasping the revolver in front of me at arm's length.

It was a bedroom, paneled in dark grainy oak and containing a bed with a six-foot carved headboard, a marble washstand, and a dropleaf secretary and matching cherrywood chair. Baronet sat in the chair with his back to the desk and his long legs splayed out in front of him, one arm curled over the back of the chair to prevent him from sliding. He was in his vest and shirtsleeves, just as he was when he dealt faro at the Orient, but his collar and cravat were missing and his white shirt was crosshatched with soot. His right hand rested in his lap with the single-shot pistol in it. A .45-70 Springfield rifle leaned in the corner next to the bed. It looked like the same one Ross Baronet had carried into the Apache Princess the night of the robbery.

“‘Satan's Sixgun.'” The sheriff laughed wheezily. “That piece doesn't even hold six.”

His black hair, dank with sweat, hung in his eyes. His handlebars needed waxing. They drooped at the ends. The front of his person from the notch of his vest to the knees of his striped trousers was stained dark.

“Right now it's holding two,” I said. “You should have shot me when you had the upper hand, instead of pistol-whipping me and dumping me into the cellar.”

“We burn wife-stealers in this county.”

It wasn't a subject for that part of the conversation. “You're all used up, Frank.”

“I am not alone. There is no leaving this house now, for you or me. I designed it for dying in.” A spasm shot through him, twisting his face into a rictus and tightening his grip on the back of the chair until his knuckles showed yellow. When it passed he was visibly weaker. Oxygen came hard. “I have got to ask why you carried it this far, Murdock. It wasn't because Ross tried to raid your place in San Sábado. Was it Colleen?”

“I didn't know about you and Colleen until a week ago.”

“What, then? Did I use you so hard that day in Socorro City?”

“I've been used harder, and by worse than you,” I said. “You should have let Dave and Vespa Spooner alone up in Lincoln. They made no difference to the war, and they got you killed.”

He cast back. His brain was dying and thinking was a slow painful process. “That was months ago. What were the Spooners to you?”

“To me, nothing. Dave's father saved Judge Blackthorn's hide during the war with Mexico. The Judge asked me to come down here and pay his debt.”