Hell's Angel (21 page)

“Just like a man to say that.
Wait till later.
You don't know what they're going through!” Louisa's eyes were fairly glowing now with reflected starlight and the blazing fires of her passion. “If we go up there, grab the high ground, we can shoot all those men, Lou. Or near enough to make the others pull their picket pins and hightail it, leaving the wagons!”

Prophet easily kept her hands pinned to the ground on each side of her head. “Ain't gonna happen.”

“You can't stop me, Lou!”

“Louisa, I do apologize.”

Shock flashed across her gaze. “You wouldn't dare!”

Prophet released her left hand and smacked her across the jaw. He'd held back so as not to seriously injure the girl but only to cause bees to buzz between her ears as she drifted off into semiconsciousness.

Her eyes rolled back in her head. Her head fell back against the ground. She sighed, and her eyelids fluttered closed.

“Easy does it,” Prophet said, rising, pulling the girl up over his right shoulder, so that her head and arms dangled down his back with his scattergun. He wrapped his own big arm across her taut, round rump and began walking back in the direction of the hacienda.

Colter Farrow walked out of the mesquites to meet him, and after inquiring about what had happened to Louisa, shook his head. “You and Miss Bonaventure sure have a strange relationship, Lou.”

“Some might say that.”

28

GROWLING AND CURSING
around the cigar in his teeth, Mordecai Moon peeled the linen bandage from his hand, which he cradled like a sick pup against his spindly chest. He grimaced down at the wounded appendage.

The hand was swollen and blue. Yellow puss issued from the hole in his palm. The misery in his hand made the appendage feel like a twenty-pound exposed nerve hanging off the end of his arm. The throbbing, burning pain had blossomed all the way up his arm and into his shoulder and neck.

He hadn't felt this miserable since his last bout with syphilis.
Syphilis.
Ah . . .

The dwarf dropped down the edge of his bed and waddled over to a dresser. He reached into the second drawer down from the top and pulled out a small brown, rectangular bottle with a cream label, which read in blocky blue lettering:
CALOMEL TRITURATES. 1–2 GRAIN.
At the bottom the manufacturer was identified in white letters against blue:
SHARP & DOHME, BALTIMORE
.

The mercury-derived cure-all had been prescribed by a physician in San Marcos, Texas, who'd assured the dwarf that it would not only cure his infrequent bouts with syphilis but apoplexy and sundry other grievances, including the more common “male” complaints. Moon remembered that the man had warned him to take only one or two pills at a time for no longer than three days; any more than that would cause his hair and teeth to fall out and “drive him mad as a hatter.”

The dwarf must have taken more than his fair share, for he had lost much of his hair and several teeth, but he'd maintained his sanity, by God. And the pony drip had cleared up right fast!

He shook the bottle in his knobby fist. He still had at least ten pills rattling around in there. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and shook two tablets onto his tongue. He washed the pills down with whiskey from an open bottle on the dresser, and then ambled back to the bed. He leaped up onto the edge of it, near the washstand beside it.

He closed his eyes and growled and cursed loudly through gritted teeth at the misery the jostling movement kicked up in his throbbing hand.

When the pain had abated as much as he thought it would, though it was still firing hot javelins up and down his arm, he poured whiskey from another bottle atop the washstand over his hand that was thick as a modest-sized potato and the color a ripe plum. He kicked the side of the bed and, his face swollen and sunset red, eyes appearing ready to pop out of his head, he waited for that bout of pain to subside also.

A little pain now was better than having the hand and maybe his entire arm turn gangrenous later.

He wiped his brow with a swatch of his old bandage and then rewrapped the hand very tenderly, continuing to cradle the injured limb against his chest like a kitten, and bit off the end. He tossed the linen roll onto the washstand, and climbed gingerly down to the floor.

He walked over to a mirror hanging low on the wall. His forehead was purple but only slightly swollen. There was a slight hole where the bullet, after piercing his hand, had ricocheted off his stout skull.

Moon chuckled at that. He'd always said his noggin was as hard as a cinder block. Well, there was the proof, by God . . . though he had to admit that the bullet had likely been hurled by a tired-out old pistol and the gunpowder had probably been fouled. That, coupled with his hand softening the blow, had probably really been what had saved him aside from putting him into a twenty-four-hour coma.

Someone knocked on the door.

Moon said, “What?”

“It's Sheriff Rio, Mr. Moon. The wagons is just now heading into town. Looks like Luke Thursday's bunch and a whole passel of new Injun gals!”

“You don't say!”

Moon ambled over to the window and walked up the wooden ramp to the chair he kept perched just beneath the window frame. There were no panes in any of the House's upper-story windows. Both shutters were thrown back from this one.

Sucking on the cigar clamped in the right corner of his mouth and holding his bandaged left hand in the right one, he peered down into the street. Sure enough, men in dusty cavalry uniforms were just now entering town from the north, a half-dozen men riding in front of a covered wagon obscured by the dust wafting up from behind the horseback riders.

The dwarf grinned. His joy at the prospect of a whole new batch of dusky-skinned, black-haired sex slaves eased the throbbing in his bullet-torn hand. New, fresh girls—most probably virgin girls—meant new, fresh money. His customers loved the Injun gals, especially the
virginal
Injun gals.

Moon walked back down the wooden ramp to the floor, strapped his shell belt and Colt Lightning on his hip, took a couple of leisurely puffs off his cigar, blowing the smoke out through his nose, and reached up to open the door.

The Rio Bravo Kid stood just outside the door, grinning down at Moon in that unctuous way of his, showing his too-large front teeth.

“Mr. Moon,” the Kid said, pinching his hat brim. His sheriff's badge was pinned to his pinto vest, and it shone brightly, as though he'd spent all night polishing it.

“Yeah, yeah—what is it?” the dwarf snapped.

“Just wanted to let you know that Luke Thursday's—”

“I heard you the first time!”

Moon did not like the Rio Bravo Kid. He also did not like that Griselda had made him head sheriff as soon as she thought that Moon had expired. He'd have reversed the switch had he not wanted to find out what the town's new sheriff and Griselda were up to.

He'd play along as best he could . . . till then.

Glaring up at the tall, blond-haired kid in the tight jeans and pinto vest, Moon barked, “Back up, Stretch. Give me some room here, huh?” He clutched his wounded appendage. “Don't want you brushin' up against my hand. You nudge my hand, even blow hot air on it, and I'll shoot you in both feet!”

The Kid shuffled backward, glowering down at the pugnacious little man before him.

“Any word on Mrs. Rose and that big bounty hunter she's with?” Moon asked.

“N-no, sir. Just that they're still runnin' free as Apaches up in them mountains, and there's two men and two women, includin' Mrs. Rose, sir.”

“You keep men after 'em, hear?” Moon burned with fury. His head and his hand throbbed. “I want them all dead and brung to me strapped over their horses. All except Mrs. Rose. I want her alive, hear?”

“You bet I hear you, sir.”

“Tell the men to keep after 'em . . . and to shoot straight, fer chrissakes!”

“You got it, Mr. Moon!”

Adjusting the Colt Lightning on his hip, Moon swung around and started down the hall. A door opened on his left. One of his Mexican slave whores stared out at him and gasped, jerking her head back, crossing herself.

Moon grinned and pinched his hat brim to the girl.

She quickly closed the door.

Moon continued down the hall, a bemused expression crinkling his eye corners. All the Mexicans in the town and Apache girls in the brothel were in awe of him. The Mexicans thought him a saint. He thought that the Apaches might regard him as demon-like, because they turned pale as Irishmen whenever they saw him. As much as an Apache girl ever swooned, they swooned when they saw Mordecai Moon—the devil risen from the dirt.

Ha!

He went downstairs to find the saloon doing a good business for only ten o'clock in the morning.

Several freighters were drinking while two more were bucking the tiger in the dark gambling layout behind the stairs. Griselda was behind the bar, checking off items on a freight order while the barman, Mort Findlay, set the bottles on the back bar shelves. Through the front windows and open front doors, Moon saw the two covered slave wagons pull up in front of his House, and his little heart quickened at the prospect of fresh meat.

The thunder of many hooves rose. Dust wafted, blazing copper in the midmorning light.

“Mr. Moon.”

It was Lee Mortimer. The man was standing at the bar amongst several beefy young prospectors, one of whom was making time with a bored-looking Apache girl—why in the hell do they always have to look so bored?! Still, their smoldering savagery and customary aloofness was what attracted most men, including Moon himself.

“What is it,
Deputy
?” Moon stopped near the front door and grinned at Mortimer. While he took umbrage with Griselda's demotion of the man, Moon couldn't help rubbing Mortimer's nose in it.

“Can I have a minute?”

Moon scowled and glanced at the wagons. He supposed he could give Mortimer a minute and let the dust settle outside. He ambled over to the bar where Mortimer stood, back to the bar, elbows resting on the bar top. “All right, but make it fast. What the hell is it?”

The deputy poked his flat-brimmed hat up off his high, broad forehead. His eyes glittered drunkenly. That was odd for Mortimer. Moon knew the old outlaw to keep a short leash on his vices, especially this early in the day. Mortimer held a half-finished beer in his fist, however, and an empty shot glass sat on the bar near his left elbow.

“It's about Wanda.” Mortimer tipped the heavy beer mug back, taking a drink. His ears were red. He didn't look good at all.

“That sickly woman of yours?” the dwarf said, grimacing. “She still alive?”

Nothing that the dwarf said shocked or offended Mortimer. He'd heard it all before.

Evenly, keeping his face implacable, he said, “Still kickin'. But feelin' poorly. I think it might be that spider-infested hovel I have her in. I was wonderin' if you'd see fit to give her a room here in the House . . . seein' as how you got so many an' all. Many you don't even use.”

“
Give
her a room?”

“I'd pay for it, of course.”

“Now, you asked me that before, Mortimer. Don't you remember what I said?”

Mortimer's ears turned redder. “You said no, but—”

“But nothin'. Ain't nothin' worse than to have a whinin' sick woman around a bordello. And consumptives are worst of all! They look bad. They smell bad. They cough and spit blood all over the place. No, sir—you keep her the hell away from Moon's House of a Thousand Delights!”

“She's not that bad, Moon. She's getting better.”

The dwarf blazed his eyes at the ex-sheriff.

“I meant . . . Mr. Moon,” Mortimer corrected, glancing down into his beer glass. Moon thought the man might have hardened his jaws in anger. “She could run a faro table for you. She's good at that. She did that once up in—”

“No.”

Mortimer flared his nostrils. “Look, she's on the mend. All she needs is—”

“I said
no
!” Moon was about to cloud up and rain all over Mortimer when he glimpsed Griselda in the periphery of his vision. The girl was looking over the bar at someone behind Moon. He glanced over his shoulder to see the Rio Bravo Kid standing about six feet behind him.

The Kid had been gazing at Griselda, a smirk on his clean-shaven mug. Now he looked at Moon, and his face turned as red as Mortimer's ears. Griselda's own cheeks were mottled red and white. She parted her lips slightly as though she were about to say something but thought better of it.

A wave of raw fury swept through Moon. He felt the flames licking at the backsides of his eyeballs. He balled his fists at his sides and drew a deep breath. He released it slowly, reining in his rage. He wouldn't find out anything about what Griselda had going with the Rio Bravo Kid if he blew his top.

He could not resist doing one thing, however.

Moon walked up to the Kid and plucked the badge from the Kid's pinto vest. “There's just somethin' about you, boy, that wouldn't make a full-fledged lawman if you lived to a hundred and twenty. I owe it to the good citizens of my town to have a capable man in that office.”

He swung around and tossed the badge to Mortimer, who snapped it out of the air.

“That's one thing I will do for you, Sheriff. There—you're reinstated. Maybe you can do somethin' about bringin' that Mrs. Rose to me. I'd feel much better about you if you done that, Sheriff. Now, don't go draggin' your tail around here like a whipped dog. You got your old job back. That's as good as it gets around here. You keep that sick saloon girl of yours out of my sight!”

Moon didn't look at Griselda. If he did, she'd likely see by his expression, if she hadn't already guessed, that he was suspicious of her and the Rio Bravo Kid. Moon wanted to keep her and the Kid guessing but not knowing for sure what he himself was up to.

He had a feeling he knew what their ploy was, of course. And the mere thought of what she might have going on the side made his heart ache nearly as bad as his hand, and his belly burn with fury.

Damnit, he loved the girl! And he'd thought she loved him!

Had she really grieved him for the short duration of his death?

He was near the open doors when three men climbed the gallery steps, the sun causing the wafting dust behind them to dance like the fires of hell. All three men were caked in so much dirt that their navy blue cavalry tunics resembled the dove gray of the old Confederacy. Their beards, brows, and eyelashes were coated in it, too.

“Mr. Moon!” said the leader of the slave traders, Luke Thursday, stopping on the gallery and swiping his hat against his trousers, causing even more dust to billow. “Got some fresh . . . say, what the hell happened to you, there, sir? Why, you look like you wrestled with about five Apache warriors in a two-hole privy with the door locked!”

“Just prone to accidents, I reckon,” Moon grumbled, stepping out onto the gallery. “Come on and show me what you brung me. Any fat ones? A few o' my freighters been askin' fer some Apache girls with a little tallow on their bones. You know—somethin' they can hold on to!”

“Come on out, and I'll show you!” Thursday said.

He was big and dark with a full, dark brown beard and cobalt blue eyes. He wore a captain's bars on his shoulders and considered himself the captain of the slave train, as did the other curly wolves in his outfit, the dwarf reckoned.