Lone Star 04 (15 page)

“You see,” Ki said soberly, “you are giving me all my own arguments, Jessie. There is only one thing that could cause a man like Torgler to act rashly. A blow to his pride. You have given him good reason to strike back.”

“He's already
got
good reason.”

Ki shrugged. “It's over. There is no need to talk about it.”

Jessie looked up at his tone, and reached across the table to touch his hand. “Ki, I'm sorry. I know you've got my best interests at heart, and I guess it was a foolish thing to do. All right?”

Ki couldn't stand up against her saucy grin. His somber face broke into a smile, and Jessie laughed. “You have to admit it was a good idea, now don't you? If there's a wolf within a hundred miles of Roster, it'll head north for Canada real soon. You finished? Let's get the horses and get out of here.”

Ki nodded and left money on the table. Jessie downed the last of her coffee and made her way through the tables for the door. The street had cleared some outside, but there was still a crowd in front of McTavish's window.

As they turned toward the stables, Jessie saw Feodor approaching on horseback. She waved and called out, “Feodor! Over here!”

Feodor waved back and turned his horse in to the hitching post before the café. Jessie started for him, and had taken two quick steps before a bullet snapped past her head and shattered the window of the café. Jessie turned, startled, and heard Ki's hoarse warning a split second before his body hit her hard and slammed her to the sidewalk. Bright showers of glass sprinkled the street. A woman screamed somewhere, and a man cursed inside the café. Ki rolled Jessie roughly off the sidewalk and into the dirt. Three rapid shots followed the first, plowing up sand and stitching a path behind him. Ki came up in a crouch, covering Jessie's body and quickly scanning the building across the street.

“Get down!” Feodor shouted. Ki hugged the dirt as a shot parted his hair and Feodor's rifle opened up. Ki saw a rifle barrel disappear from a dark window, and sprinted across the street under Feodor's covering fire. Jessie came to her feet and scrambled around the side of Feodor's mount.

“Did he make it all right?”

“He's inside,” snapped Feodor. “Keep down, Jessica!” He leveled another shell into the Winchester and fired into the window where the gunman had disappeared. Keeping one eye on the building, he clawed a handful of shells out of his saddlebag and stuffed them in his jacket. “I'm going around back,” he told Jessie. “If your friend flushes him out, maybe I can get him when he makes a run for it.”

“Good idea,” Jessie agreed. “Glad you showed up when you—”

Feodor stopped in mid-stride. “Jessica, where do you think you're going?”

“With you. What do you think I'm going to do? Stay here?”

“It seems like a good idea. That gunman was after
you,
you know.”

Jessie's eyes flashed. “You sound just like Ki! Everyone thinks they have to take care of poor old Jessie!”

Feodor gave her a narrow look and started across the street. “Now why would anyone think that?”

Jessie caught up with him and glared. “Making love to me does not give you branding privileges, mister. It'd be a good idea if you remembered that!”

Feodor didn't even bother to answer.

 

 

Ki edged quickly up the narrow wooden stairs, his slipper-clad feet making no sound at all. The door at the top was open. Fancy gold lettering on frosted glass read LANSDALE & SHINER, INC., FERTILIZER & FEED. Ki flattened against the wall, listened a brief moment, then threw himself into the room and rolled for cover. The small office was empty, but the floor by the far window was littered with empty brass casings. Ki turned and swept his eyes across the room. There was a back window, leading to a narrow walkway over the alley. He grasped the two three-pronged sai in one hand, moved a leg over the sill, and peered up the side of the building. The gunman could have jumped into the alley, but Ki figured he hadn't. It was a long drop onto a pile of splintered crates and broken glass. The roof was the easy way, with no chance of breaking a leg or running into pursuers coming around from the street. Ki thrust the weapons into his belt, grabbed the high coping along the window, and jerked himself onto the flat roof. He came to his feet in a roll, the weapons already in his hands. Something moved on the roof next door. Ki threw himself flat as the rifle fired twice. He jerked to the left, then reversed himself and came to his feet where the rifleman wouldn't expect him. Another shot rang out, but Ki wasn't there. He whirled the sai in his hand and set it flying. A silver blur flashed through the air. The gunman threw up the rifle and cried out, stunbled back and nearly fell, then limped to cover under a pile of new lumber.

Ki muttered a curse and leaped the space between his building and the next. The gunman wasn't hurt, the
sai
had only nicked him. And it wasn't a
him
at all, damn it, it was the redheaded assassin Torgler had so kindly released from jail. She was wearing a man's clothing, but Ki wasn't blind. He'd been shot at before, and none of the gunmen had ever looked anything like Lucy.

He went to his hands and knees behind a tar barrel and peered cautiously around the side. “Give it up,” he called out. “There's no place to go, Lucy!”

“I'm hurt real bad . . .” Lucy said softly. “What the hell did you cut me with?”

“Come out of there and I'll show you. And you're not hurt, so don't give me that.”

“Ha! Fat chance. You'll
kill
me is what you'll do. That lady friend of yours wants me dead!” Lucy wailed.

“Lucy,” Ki said wearily, “forget the little-girl act. I am not the late town marshal.” Ki waited. “Lucy? Give it up. All right?”

Lucy didn't answer. Ki wasn't about to swallow a trick like that. She was still right there, behind the pile of lumber. If she tried to get off the roof, he'd hear her for sure. If she stayed where she was—

Lucy cried out, and Ki came suddenly alert. He cocked his head to listen, realized with a start what was wrong, and scrambled desperately for the stack of boards. The scream hadn't come from there at all—it had come from somewhere else!

Ki froze in his tracks and cursed himself for a fool. Lucy was gone. There was a small trapdoor behind the lumber leading down into the building. She'd tripped on the stepladder or he'd never have heard her at all.

He flew down the ladder, hardly touching the rungs. The ladder went farther than he thought, clear down to street level. The building was a dark, two-story warehouse and stank to high heaven. Ki soon saw the reason. The warehouse belonged to the office he'd entered next door. The room was full of big bales marked LANSDALE & SHINER. Ki walked cautiously around a corner. A dusty beam of light from high above glanced off the floor. Ki went to his knees and listened. A rat scampered by on a rafter. Sounds drifted in from the street. Other than that...

Lucy moved, a shadow to the right less than twenty yards away. “Don‘t!” Ki warned her. “I'll use it, Lucy!”

The girl turned, leveled a pistol at him, and squeezed off two quick shots. Ki threw the
sai
into darkness and dove for cover. Bales exploded behind him and showered him with foul-smelling dirt. He jerked to his feet and moved fast. Hazy light flooded the room and he caught a quick glimpse of Lucy Jordan slipping through an outside door. Ki ran, found the street, and jerked to a stop, searching both ends of Main. He saw her then, keeping to the board sidewalk and racing for the far end of town like a deer. Ki went after her, gaining on her fast. “Stop that girl!” he called out. “Stop her!”

Men and women turned in the street to stare. “Stop her!” Ki yelled angrily. “She's a killer!”

Suddenly, Lucy disappeared in a small crowd of men clustered in front of the Morgan Dollar. Half a second later she burst out the other side, a different Lucy Jordan altogether.

“Rape! Rape!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs. “Oh, God help me—the Chinaman's gone and
raped
me!”

Ki came to an abrupt halt. A few of the men turned on him and glared. Some had trouble taking their eyes off Lucy. She'd ripped her blouse clear down to her waist, baring one delicious breast altogether, and offering a provocative peek at the other.

“Get him!” a hefty cowhand bellowed. “Get the goddamn chink!” One man took up the cry, then another, and the whole crowd surged toward Ki. A dozen men boiled out of the saloon. They had no idea where they were going, but it sounded like something to do.

Ki turned on his heel and ran down Main toward the tracks. The men behind him shouted out warnings ahead. Helpful citizens raced to cut him off. Ki cursed under his breath and bolted into an alley.

“Hold it right there, mister!”

Two hammers clicked louder than any Ki had ever heard. He raised his arms fast and stared into the cavernous double bores of a Greener shotgun. A calm blue eye squinted back from over the barrels.

“This is a mistake,” Ki said evenly. “Be careful with that thing.”

“Yeah, an' you're the one made it!” the man snapped.

“By God, you tell ‘im, Sy!”

“If he moves, shoot his yeller eyes out!”

Men crowded into the alley from both sides. Ki backed up against the wall. One man drew his Colt and emptied it into the air. That started the others, and the alley soon sounded like a small war.

Deputy Mac Delbert shouldered his way through the crowd, Jessie and Feodor close on his heels. Ki breathed a sigh of relief. Delbert held up his hands to stop the noise.

“Pete, Joe Bob—what in the
hell
you think you're doin‘?” He looked about the circle in disgust. “You all get on back to drinkin' or whatever 'twas you was doin‘.”

“Mac,” blurted a man at the rear, “this feller here—”

“—hasn't done shit. Now go on,
git!”
The men muttered their disappointment, turning their anger from Ki to the deputy. “Sorry about this, mister,” said Delbert. “You're all right, I guess.”

“Fine,” said Ki. “Anyone see which way Lucy Jordan went?”

Delbert grinned. “Hell, I reckon every man in town can likely tell you that. Never seen such—uh, sorry, ma‘am.” He looked sheepishly at Jessie and bit his jaw.

Jessie ignored him. “South, I think, Ki. Someone was yelling down Main about his horse.”

Ki nodded and turned on Delbert. “How many men can you get together fast?”

Delbert looked blank. “Uh—get together for what?”

“To go after Lucy Jordan! Deputy, that girl is a cold-blooded—”

“Yeah, I know.” Delbert waved him off. “Wish I could help, but I ain't really a deputy no more—since there ain't no one to be deputy to.” Delbert stopped and scratched his head. “An' if there was, it'd be a town marshal, wouldn't it? Which means I got no business twice-removed goin' after that gal, do I? Thing is—”

Ki wasn't listening. He was already stalking angrily toward the stable, half hoping one of the patrons of the Morgan Dollar would get in his way...

Chapter 12

Jessie deliberately hurried Feodor through his errands at the store, getting him on his horse and out of town as quickly as possible. Jessie's manner irritated him no end, but she stood her ground and refused to answer his questions or even grant him a friendly smile. When Roster was well behind them, she breathed a sigh of relief, brought her horse up to Feodor‘s, stretched out of her saddle to kiss his cheek.

“I'm sorry,” she told him, “I really
had
to get out of there, and there wasn't time to talk about it. An awful lot's been happening, Feodor.”

“So I gather,” he said shortly. “Jessie, will you please pull up a minute and stop this business?” He reached out for her reins, and Jessie jerked away.

“Just listen, all right? And trust me, Feodor. I don't
want
to stop now.”

“Then we won‘t,” he shrugged. “You're not worried about that Lucy Jordan, are you? I doubt she'll hang around here with Ki on her trail.”

“No, but Lucy's friends might—and she's got plenty of them around Roster.” Jessie hurriedly brought him up to date on the events of the night before, starting with Torgler's involvement with Lucy and Marshal Gaiter, and Gaiter's death in the street later on, in front of both Ki and herself.

“What!” Feodor sat bolt upright in the saddle at the mention of the wolf. “Are you certain, Jessie? The—the creature killed this man in
Roster?”

“I saw it happen, Feodor.”

“And the bullets did not harm the thing,” he said tightly.