Midnight Rider (Ralph Cotton Western Series) (4 page)

But Rock still took his time. He stood to the edge of the door frame, twisted the knob and shoved the door open, leaving the two gunmen staring at an empty room for just a second before he appeared at the right edge of the door.

The two looked at the wooden chair and at the Remington in Rochenbach’s hand.

“Damn,” said Spiller, “a man takes all this precaution, you must be guilty as sin.”

Rochenbach took his thumb off the Remington’s hammer and lowered the gun to his side as he gestured for the two to come inside.

“That’s in case somebody had a key to my room,” Rock said flatly, staring at Spiller.

“Oh. Well…,” said Spiller, holding a big skeleton key in his hand. He looked a little put off. But then he collected himself quickly and said, “Grolin told us to come get you and take you with us. It is
his
hotel.” He pitched the key up; Rochenbach caught it in his left hand without taking his eyes off Spiller.

“Where we going?” he asked.

Spiller grinned at Casings, then turned back to Rochenbach.

“If Mr. Grolin wanted you to know, he’d have already told you,” said Spiller. “Get your gun belt and boots—hurry the hell up.” He gestured toward the belly rig hanging from the bedpost.

“Grolin said you’d tell me,” Rochenbach replied without moving an inch. It didn’t matter to him. But he wasn’t going to let Spiller get started telling him what to do.

“Yeah, but I’m not going to
tell you
,” Spiller said with a cold expression.

“I understand,” Rock said. “So, now you can go tell Grolin.”

Spiller looked at him curiously. “Tell him what?” he asked.

“Tell him that you weren’t able to make me leave this room,” said Rochenbach with finality.

“Now, listen,
damn it
!” said Spiller in a threatening tone. He took a step toward Rochenbach.

The Remington cocked at Rock’s side.

Spiller stopped.

“I’m listening,” said Rock.

Casings stood watching intently. This man was hard to deal with. But that didn’t bother him.

Spiller froze for a tense second, weighing his chances. Then he let out a breath of exasperation.

“All right, Rochenbach,” he said, “if this is how you’re going to be.” He spread his hands in a show of peace. “Mr. Grolin wants you to ride out with us, collect a debt for him.”

“I’m a
debt collector
?” questioned Rochenbach, feigning offense.

“Don’t get piqued. He just wants to see how you handle yourself,” Pres Casings cut in.

Rock shook his head. Without another word on the matter, he walked over beside the bed and pulled on
his ill-fitting boots. The two gunmen watched as he put on his gun belt beneath his long wool coat and shoved the Remington into the belly holster.

“You always sleep with your coat on, Rock?” Casings asked. He gave him a half-friendly smile.

Rock, huh?
Rochenbach noted to himself.

“Doesn’t everybody?” he replied, half friendly himself now that Casings had made the first gesture. He picked up his Spencer rifle and saddlebags from against the wall, slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and walked back to the two gunmen, rifle in hand. “After you, gentlemen,” he said, sweeping a hand toward the open door.

“Meaning, he doesn’t want us behind his back,” Casings said to Spiller, turning toward the door.

“I know what the hell he means,” Spiller said in an angry tone, turning behind him.

After getting his horse from the livery barn, Rochenbach left the two gunmen waiting atop their horses at a hitch rail while he walked inside a trading post.

“What the hell is this? He leaves us sitting here while he
browses
?” Spiller grumbled to Casings, watching through the open doorway as Rochenbach moved among the stacks of men’s hats and clothing.

“Said he needs a hat and gloves,” Casings replied. He liked the way Rochenbach handled himself—cool, calm, no hurry.

“A sumbitch should already have a hat and gloves when he shows up,” Spiller said. “This is no child’s game.”

“Jesus. Why don’t you take it easy, Dent?” said
Casings. “The man is no rube when it comes to this business. Grolin brought him in because he’s a good safe man. That means we must have something big in the works.”

“Did you just tell me to
take it easy
?” Spiller said, his face lit red with anger and disbelief. His right hand moved up onto the butt of a Colt standing in his tied-down holster.

Casings saw the threat, but he didn’t back an inch.

“You heard me right,” he said. His thumb slid over the hammer of his Winchester lying across his lap, barrel leveled in Spiller’s direction. “Is any of this worth us going to the iron over?”

Spiller cooled a little, but his hand stayed on the butt of the Colt.

“I don’t give a damn about his hat and gloves!” he said, switching the subject of the conversation back to Rochenbach. “Once we get back, maybe you and him would like to explain to Grolin why this trip took so damn long.”

Casings tossed a glance up at the gray afternoon sky. “I didn’t blame a man wanting gloves and a hat in this kind of weather.”

They sat for a moment longer, Spiller’s temper swelling.

“To hell with this!” he said, swinging down from his saddle, and headed inside the trading post. But he stopped as Rochenbach stepped out through the door, putting on a new pair of snug-fitting black leather gloves, which he’d cut the thumbs and fingers off of. He’d shoved the scraps down into his coat pocket.

“Ready to go?” Rochenbach asked quietly. “We’ll be running out of daylight.”

Along with the fingerless gloves, he wore a new black slouch-style hat and a pair of black high-welled miner’s boots. He’d purchased a pair of warm wool socks and wasted no time putting them on. Hiswool pin-striped trouser legs were tucked inside his boot wells.

Spiller stared at him coldly.

Casings lowered his head and hid a thin smile. He managed to compose himself when Spiller stepped into his saddle beside him and jerked his horse around toward the dirt street.

“Let’s ride,” Spiller said over his shoulder. “The sooner we get this over with, the better.”

They rode west in silence for over an hour until they stopped atop a rocky rise overlooking a short stretch of dried grassland. In the center of the grass stood a stone and weathered-plank shack, badly tilted to one side. Thirty yards from the shack, a flock of vultures were feasting and bickering on the carcass of a dead cow. Spiller drew his rifle from his saddle boot, checked it and stood it on his thigh.

“I’ll be damned,” he said to himself, seeing smoke curl from the chimney of the weathered shack.

Rochenbach and Casings eased their horses up on either side of Spiller.

“Here’s the deal,” Spiller said. “The man living there is Edmund Bell. He owes Grolin over three hundred dollars in old gambling markers. Grolin said if we can’t collect payment, do whatever we think needs
doing. Make an example of him. He’s tired of fooling with this beefer.”

“Meaning?” said Rock.

“Meaning kill him, far as Grolin cares. He holds the marker against this shack and acreage,” said Spiller. He turned his face to Rochenbach. “He can go to court, take this place and resell it if he’s a mind to. Do you have any qualms with killing a losing beefer?”

“Yes, I do,” said Rock. “I wasn’t hired to kill a man over a gambling debt. That’s not where I saw my future headed.”

“Your future, huh?” Spiller said with contempt. “Then you best lag back out of our way. If we don’t get the money, I’d rather kill him than have to ride back out here.” He nudged his horse forward at a loose gallop.

“Don’t worry about it, Rock,” said Casings, the two falling in behind Spiller. “Most times we put a scare into these beefers and miners, they usually offer up some money—enough to buy themselves more time. That’s all Grolin is after anyway.”

Rochenbach didn’t reply. They galloped along in the afternoon gloom.

From the front window of the shack, a young dark-haired woman named Mira Bell looked out and saw three men ride down onto the grassland. Cupping both hands beneath a belly heavy with child, she turned from the window and looked at her husband, who was roasting a slab of beef on an iron rod over an open-hearth fire.

“Sonny, there’s riders coming!” she said, her dark eyes showing her fear. “It looks like the same men as last time—from the Lucky Nut!”

“Oh no! It’s too soon for them to be coming back here!” said the young man, standing, laying the sizzling meat in a tin pan on the stone hearth. “Pa said they’d be coming back, but I figured we’d have time to clear out!”

“What are we going to do, Sonny?” she cried out, near tears. “We don’t have any money for them.”

“I don’t know, Mira,” said Sonny. He jerked up a shotgun that stood leaning against a wall beside the hearth and hurried to the front door. He turned around toward her and leaned back against the door for a moment as if preparing himself to face an impossible task. “Whatever happens out there, you keep this door locked. Don’t come outside for nothing.”

Slowing their horses into an easy lope the last twenty yards toward the weathered shack, the three riders looked over at the feasting buzzards, then toward the scent of roasted beef wafting in the gray smoke from the chimney.

“Looks like we’ve caught ol’ Edmund sitting down to supper,” said Spiller with a laugh.

“Hey, what do we have here?” Casings asked, veering his horse over toward a grave marker standing in fresh-turned soil.

Rochenbach and Spiller turned their horses with him, rode over, jerked their horses to a halt and looked down.

“I’ll be damned,” said Spiller, reading the name
Edmund Bell carved on the grave board. “This sumbitch has gone and died on us.”

Spiller turned his horse back toward the house and booted it forward as Sonny Bell stepped out the door, shotgun in hand. Rochenbach and Casings followed, booting their horses up, flanking him.

Sonny Bell took a stand between the coming riders and the shack, gripping the shotgun with both hands.

“That’s close enough,” he called out, cocking the single-barreled shotgun. “My pa’s dead. He said we had time to clear out of here. Grolin can have this place soon as my woman and I—”

“
Close enough
?” Spiller said, cutting him off. He pushed his horse closer, then stopped with a cruel, bemused smile. The other two stopped beside him. “I’ll tell you what’s
close enough
,” he said, his Colt coming up fast, firing on the upswing. “Point a scattergun at me!”

The bullet grazed Sonny Bell’s upper arm and twisted him sideways. The shotgun flew from his hands and hit the ground. Rochenbach saw the shotgun hammer drop as the gun hit the ground. But no shot exploded from the barrel.

Empty…?

“Hold up, Spiller!” Rock said, seeing the gunman ready to fire again, this time taking close aim.

Spiller stared at Rochenbach as Rock nudged his horse forward, dropped from his saddle, picked up the shotgun and checked it.
Yep, empty,
he told himself, looking up at the young man.

“That’s either awfully brave or awfully foolish,” he said between the two of them.

“What the hell choice did I have, mister?” the young man said through clenched teeth, gripping his bleeding arm. “My pa said I’d have time to get us out of here before you men came back.”

“How long has that been?” Rock asked.

But the young man didn’t answer.

Mira Bell, who had seen her husband get shot, threw open the door and rushed outside screaming, her hands supporting her large, round belly.

“Get back in that house, Mira!” the young man shouted at her, but she ignored him.

“This is starting to look like fun,” Spiller said to Casings. “Come on, Pres, let’s get acquainted with this little filly.”

“Jesus! Are you crazy, Dent?” said Casings. “She looks ready to foal any minute.”

“I don’t have time for this,” Rochenbach said under his breath, watching Spiller and Casings swing down from their saddles. He asked Sonny Bell, “How much money can you give them, get them out of here?”

“I don’t have a penny, mister,” said young Bell. “We’re sharing dead cow with buzzards. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

With his back to the other two, Rochenbach fished a fold of dollars from inside his coat. Sonny’s eyes widened as he watched Rochenbach riffle through the money.

“Mister, my wife is not for sale,” Sonny said to Rock.

“Take this,” Rock said, stuffing eighty dollars down into one of the young man’s shirt pockets. He shoved thirty dollars more down into his other pocket.

Sonny reached for his shirt pocket with his bloody hand. “Mister, I told you, my wife ain’t for—”

His words were cut short as Rock’s fist nailed his jaw and sent him sprawling on the ground.

The young woman screamed and tried to run to her husband’s side, but Spiller caught her by her arm.

“Hey, little filly, you ain’t going nowhere,” Spiller said, “unless it’s back inside that shack with me.”

Rochenbach stooped down over an unconscious Sonny, jerked the money back out of his shirt pocket in a way that allowed the two gunmen to see it.

“Here we go,” he called out, standing, holding the money toward Spiller and Casings. “Eighty dollars. Turn her loose, Spiller.”

The two gunmen looked surprised at the money; so did Mira Bell.

But Spiller kept a firm grip on the young woman’s thin arm.

“Too late,” he said. “This will teach them not to hold out on us next time we come to collect.”

Rochenbach calmly stooped down and shoved thirty dollars of the money back into Sonny’s shirt pocket. Sonny shook his head, trying to regain consciousness.

“Take the rest, and you and your woman clear out of here before they come back,” he whispered under his breath. “Do you hear me?”

“Ye-yes, but—” Sonny stammered.

“Shut up,” Rochenbach said in a firm tone. “Next time you pull that shotgun, have it loaded.”

“My—my wife,” Sonny said, trying to struggle up onto his feet.

Rochenbach didn’t answer. Instead he walked over to where Spiller held the sobbing woman by her arm.