The Graves at Seven Devils (10 page)

Her heart throbbed. She ground her teeth with fury. The gun in her hands quivered. She didn't know exactly how she'd go about it, but, by God, she was going to drill as many of those savages as she could before they killed her.

A latch clicked a few feet ahead. A door on the left side of the hall opened a few feet and a girl screamed, “You bastard!” a half second before she poked her head through the gap between the door and the wall. It was one of the doxies, who called herself Nola Kentucky. A dark brown hand grabbed Nola's right arm, and the doxie's horrified green eyes found Marie Antoinette in the hall.

Her mouth shot wide as she cried, “Marie, hel—”

The scream trailed off as she was jerked back into the room, the door opening wide behind her.

“I didn't say you was
dismissed
!” a man's deep, resonant voiced thundered.

Marie Antoinette took two steps forward and turned toward the open door. The black man from the outlaw gang—Marie Antoinette had heard him called Heinz—had his back to her as he moved into the room, toward Nola Kentucky who lay sprawled on the floor, staring up at him and sobbing. The black man was dressed only in wash-worn balbriggans, a feather-trimmed hat, and boots from which the striped red tops of heavy wool socks protruded.

“Don't you know who I
am
?” he barked as he moved toward her, fists balled at his sides. “I'm Rosco Heinz, and no girl runs out on
me
less'n—”

He must have heard or seen Marie Antoinette out the corner of his left eye, for he turned quickly, both eyes widening and chin jutting angrily. Marie Antoinette raised the pistol in both hands, taking hasty aim at the man's scarred ebony face, and squeezed the revolver's trigger.

The man had flinched sideways, and the bullet had drawn a thin, red line across his right cheek before it zinged past his right ear to hammer through a window behind him with a tinny clatter.

“Son of a bitch!” Marie Antoinette quickly cocked the gun once more and, slitting her eyes against the explosion, squeezed off another shot.

The black man dove onto the bed to his left, and Marie's second shot sparked off the brass frame with an ear-numbing clang. Marie fired again as the man, moving with the fluidity and speed of an attacking panther, bounced off the bed's far side and disappeared between the bed and the wall, hitting the floor with a loud thud and a pinched curse.

Marie's third shot plunked into the wainscoted wall.

“I'll kill
all
of you murdering sons of
bitches
!” Marie shrieked as she bounded into the room and raised the gun once more.

The feather-trimmed crown of the man's black hat stuck up above the bed. Marie drew a bead on it and pulled the trigger. The gun's hammer clicked benignly against the firing pin.

Marie screamed with fury and flung the gun as hard as she could, knocking the man's hat off as his hand snaked up toward a long-barreled revolver jutting from a holster hanging from a bedpost above his head. As the man cursed again and grabbed the gun, Marie swung toward the door, catching a glimpse of Nola Kentucky, dressed in only a torn slip, scrambling under the bed as she screamed for Miss Kate.

Voices rose from below in anger, and boots thumped on the stairs.

“No!” Marie Antoinette heard herself wail—enraged and frustrated by the fact that the gun she'd endured so much to get her hands on had been holding only three bullets. And that all those bullets had hit nothing but glass, brass, and wood.

Hearing the shouts and boot thumps growing louder—and the crazy redhead shouting, “What in the hell are you
doin'
up there, Rosco?”—Marie Antoinette wheeled and ran back down the hall, bare feet slapping the carpet runner, arms scissoring at her sides.

She'd wanted to kill at least five of the gang members. She killed none of them. She hadn't even
wounded
one of them. What she would do now, she had no idea.

There was a vague, panic-muddled thought, as she turned at the end of the hall and headed for the outside door, that her death now would be pointless. If she could find a horse, she could ride to the next town west of Seven Devils—Mescalero—and fetch its lawman.

The floor beneath her bare feet shook as the gang members gained the second-story hall behind her.

She opened the door and ran out onto the top of the outside stairs. She started down, missed a step, fell, and rolled four steps before grabbing the rail and pulling herself back to her feet. Mildly surprised that she hadn't been injured—in fact, she hadn't felt a thing except a slight scrape on her left knee—she continued to the bottom of the stairs and swung left down the alley behind the whorehouse.

She ran toward the rear of Wayne Day's livery barn, casting a quick glance back toward the top of the stairs behind her. One of the three identical men—the one in the stovepipe hat and rose-colored glasses—aimed a pistol at her, squinting an eye as he sighted down the barrel.

Marie Antoinette groaned and continued running down the alley as the pistol popped three times, chewing up sand and gravel behind her bare feet. One slug barked into the rear corner of the livery barn as she darted back behind it.

At the far side of the barn she paused to peer left, over the livery barn's corral toward the street. No saddled horses anywhere. Only a couple of unsaddled mounts stood in the corral, shading each other and regarding her with mild, dark-eyed interest as they ground hay between their jaws.

“Shit!
Goddamnit!
” Marie Antoinette hadn't realized she'd screamed as loudly as she had. Her voice echoed shrilly. She cursed again, more softly, and peered behind her, catching a glimpse of men running down the whorehouse's outside staircase, hearing the thunder of boot heels and the ching of spurs.

“Oh, Christ,” she sobbed as she wheeled right and began running as fast as she could into the rocks and chaparral north of town. There were few cabins in this direction, only a couple of abandoned mine shafts, and a chicken coop or two. Few places to hide. She'd continue running into the desert and hope that the outlaws were too drunk to pursue her.

“Which way'd she go?” the redheaded girl's voice sounded behind her.

“Behind the barn!” a man returned, his voice thick from drink.

There was a clattering sound, as though someone fell down the stairs.

“Bitch damn near blew my head off!”

Marie Antoinette sucked air in and out of her lungs as she ran, weaving around junipers and mesquite shrubs and cracked boulders. The blood mixed with sweat in her eyes, and burned. She sleeved it away quickly and, only barely registering the sharp slashes of the thorns and gravel beneath her bare feet, continued running, pulling away from the edge of town and entering the open desert.

If she stumbled onto a good place to hide, she could hole up there until the outlaws tired of drinking and tearing up the whorehouse and assaulting the girls and rode on back to where they'd come from. The slight optimism she felt dropped suddenly out of her, like a rock tossed down a deep, dark well, when in her mind's eye she saw her son being blown back from the saloon doors and out into the street, the several bullet holes in Colter's chest sprouting rich red blood.

As Marie Antoinette had run to the boy and dropped to her knees, he had time only to roll his eyes up to hers, as though he were about to ask her a question, before he gave a ragged, final sigh, and his chest fell still.

The memory stopped Marie Antoinette cold, and her knees buckled. She dropped to the sand and gravel and sobbed into her hands.

Colter.

Toby.

Foot thuds and spur chings rose behind her. It was like a cold slap to the face. She whipped her head around.

Without realizing, she'd climbed a considerable rise stippled with rocks, saguaros, and mesquite shrubs. The men and the girl were moving up the slope behind her, spread out in a ragged parallel line. All except the girl were in various states of semi-dress and running heavy-footed and weaving slightly. Sykes seemed to be the drunkest; he was bringing up the rear—hatless, a bloody gash on his forehead and a hole torn in his trouser knee. He'd no doubt been the one who'd tumbled down the whorehouse's outside steps.

“There she is!” shouted the crazy redhead with bizarre cheer.

Marie Antoinette scrambled to her feet and continued running up the rise. There were more rocks and shrubs. She could hear herself sobbing as she ran, her left knee weakening. Glancing down, she saw a large patch of sand-crusted blood on her dress over the knee. She'd done more damage than she'd thought when she'd fallen down those outside steps herself, and now she could feel the bone-deep, aching burn.

She sobbed louder as the knee barked and she heard the footsteps growing louder behind her. The rise steepened. A gun cracked. The slug spanged off a rock just right of Marie Antoinette's bare right foot.

“Hold your fire, Rosco!” one of the men admonished.

“Hold this, Rafe! That bitch done tried to perforate my hide!”

“Wouldn't be the first time a girl tried to turn you under, Rosco,” said the redhead. “Doubt it'll be the last, neither.”

A couple of the others chuckled, but Marie Antoinette didn't hear. She found herself at the top of the rise, peering down the other side. She'd never wandered this far north of town and didn't know the terrain. But what she found herself staring down at was not a slope like the one she'd just climbed, but a deep, rocky ravine choked with cactus and wiry brush poking out from cracks between the red, brick-like rock lining both sides of the canyon.

The bottom of the cut was a good two hundred feet straight down, with a narrow, glassy blue stream snaking along the bottom. A scrawny, gray coyote had been drinking from the stream. Now it stood staring up at Marie Antoinette warily, lapping water from its jaws.

Behind Marie Antoinette, Sykes laughed thickly, and the coyote wheeled and loped away upstream, disappearing behind a thumb in the canyon's jagged wall. “What's the matter, girl? Come to the end of the line?”

Marie Antoinette's back crawled and her stomach dropped. Her eyes searched for a route into the canyon. Finding none, she glanced behind her once more. All six of the gang members were within twenty yards and closing, all grinning except Sykes, who held his cocked revolver straight out before him. His lips were bunched with fury.

The redhead glanced at Sykes. “Sykes, put that hogleg away. Look at her. She's injured.” The redhead had turned back to Marie Antoinette and frowned as she moved slowly straight up the rise, holding out her hand.

“Come on, precious. Let's get you cleaned up.” The big-boned girl's green eyes roamed with keen interest across Marie Antoinette's body, which was only partly concealed by the torn dress. She smiled. “Come on now. I won't hurt you. I won't let these animals hurt you no more, neither.”

Marie Antoinette stood atop a flat rock at the very lip of the ravine, facing the killers. She backed closer to the edge as she stared at the men and the girl moving toward her, the girl's eyes raking her body with the same lust as that in the drunk-bleary eyes of the men.

One of the three look-alikes puffed a fat cigar and blinked his deep-set dark eyes. “Sure 'nough. Now that we're done with her, Cora, she's all yours.” He grinned around the cigar. His chest was bare—pale and thin with a scrap of black hair along his breastbone. “She'll clean up right purty.”

“Shut up, Billy Earl!” Cora waggled her fingers at Marie Antoinette. “Come on, honey. Let's go back to the whorehouse and get you in a hot tub.” She smiled broadly, showing all her large, white teeth, her cheeks dimpling with schoolgirl charm. “What do you say?”

A chill of revulsion and horror rippled through Marie Antoinette. She glanced over her shoulder at the canyon yawning below. She turned back to the girl and the men who'd stopped ten feet away from her and set her jaw defiantly.

“I hope all you crazy bastards burn in hell.”

Then she turned, stepped out into the air over the canyon, and dropped like a stone.

LOU PROPHET STARED at his comely partner.

Statue-still, Louisa sat her pinto pony forty yards ahead and right of him on the far side of the narrow, high-walled canyon painted ochre by the west-angling sun. A moment ago, a covey of quail had exploded out of a mesquite snag about a hundred yards straight ahead of her. She'd reined the pony to an instant stop, raising her carbine in one hand from her saddlebow. She sat straight-backed now, tensely looking around and listening.

What had spooked the quail? It might have been her presence they'd detected. But it might have been Apaches, too, or banditos, white marauders, possibly a bobcat. All brand of danger stalked this wild, remote, devil's playground of deep-cut canyons, pedestal rocks, and tabletop mesas, which loomed lemon-colored in the brassy distance.

Prophet had a better angle, so he knew that it was only a small Sonoran deer that had spooked the quail where they'd no doubt been foraging mesquite beans. As the doe stepped out from the shade of the canyon to drink at a runout spring, Prophet continued staring at Louisa.

He was amazed at how keen her senses were, how trail savvy she'd become in only the three short years she'd been riding roughshod across the frontier, stalking outlaws. He'd taught her a few things, but most she'd learned herself, instinctively knowing that in order to hunt without becoming the hunted she needed to keep her eyes and ears open always, to question every sound and movement, and to read the sign around her. It required patience, concentration, single-mindedness, and the constant willingness to kill if necessary. Such traits were rare, and few bounty hunters lived to become journeymen.