The Outlaws (14 page)

“Who?”

“Tessa Nesbitt. Where is she?”

Matthews grinned. “Old Hank carried her upstairs a while ago. Reckon he’s having himself a bang-up good time.” He nudged Mark, laughing.

Mark raced for the stairs, took them two at a time, reached the top and flung open the first door he came to.

A stubble-faced man snored drunkenly on a bed.

Not bothering to close the door, Mark strode to the next room, slammed the door open.

Empty.

The third door was locked.

“Kilgore!” Mark shouted

No answer. He hesitated, was about to go on to the next door when he heard a woman’s muffled scream from behind the locked door.

Mark raised his foot and slammed against the door. The heavy wood resisted his kick. The corridor was too narrow to give him room to run at it, so he drew his Colt and blasted the lock.

The door swung open.

Kilgore stood beside the bed, gaping at Mark, a knife in his hand. Blood dripped from the blade.

Redness clouded Mark’s vision. He thrust the Colt into the holster as he went for Kilgore. Kicking the knife from his hand, knocking the man to the floor, fingers gripping his throat.

Kill. Kill the bastard.

A woman called his name over and over. He could barely hear her voice above the thrum of rage that blotted out sound.

“No, Mark, please. Mark!”

Someone tugged at his arm, He came to partial awareness.

St. Louis. Brendon York’s fat neck under his fingers. Kill Brendon. Kill him like the murdering sneak he was.

“Mark, he’s dead! Stop!”

Tessa’s voice. Tessa didn’t belong in St. Louis. Mark blinked and his vision cleared. He let her pull his hands away from Brendon’s throat.

No, not Brendon. Mark stared down at the mottled face of Hank Kilgore.

Tessa was on her knees next to Mark, clutching at his arm, still calling his name.

He rose to his feet, pulling her up with him.

“The knife,” he said. “Are you hurt?”

“I stabbed him with that knife,” she said, her eyes widening with remembered horror. “I pulled it out of his boot and shoved it into his side. Then he—he stood up and grabbed the knife and . . .” She put her hand to her mouth.

“After that he meant to kill me.”

Mark saw her disheveled hair, her torn dress. He clenched his fists.

“He tried to—to force me, Mark. That’s why I grabbed his knife.” She reached for him, burying her face against his chest. “Oh, Mark, it’s so dreadful,” she sobbed. “Take me home.

Please take me home.”

He held her close, stroking her hair. At his feet, Kilgore groaned.

Mark turned his head to look at him. Color had seeped back into Kilgore’s face. Blood stained his shirt on the right side.

Mark felt both relieved and angry that he hadn’t killed the man. Not that Kilgore deserved to live any more than Brendon York had. Still, Mark had made a vow seven years ago he’d never take another life except in self-defense.

The Whortley was no place for Tessa. Kilgore might be out of commission, but the hotel was filled with men Mark didn’t trust. Come to that, he didn’t trust Jim Dolan any more either.

“Your arm’s bleeding, Mark,” Tessa said, pulling away to look at him.

“A scratch. We’ve got to get out of here, Tessa. I’ll see you to McSween’s.”

The men downstairs stared at Mark and Tessa, but no one tried to stop them when he pushed open the front door and they stepped into the street.

Someone shouted from Dolan’s store as he headed east along the road. Tessa pressed close to his side, her arm in his. He ignored the shout, tried not to think of the Winchesters aimed at them. When they neared the McSween house, Tessa said, “Thank God you’re on our side now.”

“I don’t know if your side is in the right,” he said, “but I’m damn sure Dolan’s in the wrong.”

Inside the house Mark confronted McSween and the Kid. “Dolan’s convinced Peppin to send for the army,” Mark told them. “Colonel Dudley’s been trying to find a reason to help

Dolan and my bet is he’ll come riding in with troopers by sundown.” Billy and McSween eyed one another.

“Dudley hates your guts,” Billy told McSween. “We can’t fight the army.” “I’d advise getting out of town under cover of darkness,” Mark said.

“I’m through running,” Alex said grimly. “A man’s home is his castle, and I’ll defend mine.”

Mark nodded. He understood how McSween felt. There was a time to run and a time to fort up and defend what was yours.

O’Folliard, who’d come up to stand beside Billy, asked, “How do ya know this turncoat’s telling you the truth?”

“Well now,” Billy said, “Mark and me road the river together awhile back and he never lied to me yet.”

O’Folliard shrugged and turned away.

“I expected to see Rutledge here,” Mark said.

Billy grinned. “Seems like he’s one sinner who gets religion when the shooting starts, except the church he picks is out of town. Seems he had important business in Santa Fe.”

Ezra sauntered up and Mark resisted the impulse to raise his eyebrows. The boy had Billy’s walk down pat and even tied his kerchief at the same rakish angle as Billy’s. Only the fact that Ezra didn’t have buckteeth made his smile different from Billy’s.

“Glad to have you join the outfit,” Ezra said. “Knew you’d change your mind someday.” “I’d feel better about it if you and Jules and Tessa were out of this house,” Mark said.

Ezra’s smile faded. “Jules is already over with the Ealy’s. Maybe Tessa and the other women ought to leave, I won’t argue that. But I aim to stay here as long as I’m needed. Right, Billy?”

“I can always count on Ez,” Billy said.

Ezra beamed. “Always!” he said fervently.

Mark didn’t see Tessa that evening, except briefly when she helped the other women serve the supper. He watched her, and when their eyes met, Mark felt his heart leap in his chest.

When the army gets this damn feud settled, he told himself, I have to do something about Tessa. Have to straighten out my past so I have a name to offer her. Lies aren’t for Tessa.

If the army does settle anything. And if the past can ever be righted.

At ten-thirty the next morning, Colonel Dudley rode into Lincoln at the head of forty soldiers, both officers and men. He brought not only cavalry and infantry but a Gatling gun and a mountain howitzer. He halted the troops in front of the Whortley Hotel and spoke to Sheriff Peppin, then proceeded east and set up camp in a field across from Montano’s store, between Ellis’ and McSween’s.

Ezra, peering from a gun port, announced, “They’ve got the cannon pointed at Montano’s. Reckon they’re going to blast it?”

“Whatever happens, for God’s sake don’t shoot a soldier,” McSween warned. “We’ve no quarrel with them and we’ll really be in for it if one of them is even wounded, much less killed,”

Men crowded to the ports to watch as the twenty-five pro-McSween Mexicans in the Montano house filed out the front door and trudged east down the road, past the army camp. “Going for their horses at Ellis’.” Billy said. “Hard to face a cannon.” “The men at Ellis’ will leave next,” Mark predicted.

“Not Bowdre,” Billy said. “Middleton and Skurlock’s there, too. They won’t give up any more than I would.”

During the night, some of the men at McSween’s had slipped over to Ellis’. Manuel and Rosalita had gone with them. Ezra counted how many there were left in the house. Thirteen men, but Mark had no rifle with him, just a Colt, and Alex didn’t shoot at all. Three women, five children.

The lookout on the roof was the first to spot the men riding from Ellis to cross the Rio Bonito.

“More than just the Mexicans leaving,” he reported to Billy. “They’ve all gone. Bowdre, too; I’d know that old hat of his anywhere.”

“Here comes Peppin, bold as brass,” O’Folliard said a few minutes later. “I reckon I could pop him off--”

“No!” McSween ordered. “Hold your fire. I can see soldiers behind him.” “Ain’t gonna hit none of them black bastards,” O’Folliard muttered. “Just Peppin.” “Don’t shoot,” McSween repeated.

Peppin halted some yards from the house, the soldiers stopping behind him. Deputy Turner, with five of Peppin’s posse, came up, turned in the gate and walked to the door.

“I hold a warrant for the arrest of Alexander McSween,” he called. “Come out, McSween.”

“Yeah? Well, we got warrants for some of you,” Billy shouted back.

“Damn it then, come out and serve them!” Turner called.

“A bullet’s the only warrant I mean to serve,” Billy replied.

McSween, who’d said nothing, sighed when he saw Turner turn away and walk back to where Peppin waited. The sheriff, his men and the soldiers all withdrew from the road.

“I’m not giving myself up to Peppin,” McSween said. “It’s certain death if I do.”

“Then I think we ought to get the women and children to safety,” Mark said. “The house is bound to be attacked.”

“Wait,” McSween said, sitting down at his desk. “I’ll write an appeal to Colonel Dudley.

Surely he won’t let his men stand by while Dolan tries to force us out.”

“Send the note if you want,” Billy said. “Can’t do any harm.”

McSween handed his note to Minnie, one of the Shield children, and sent her to the army camp two houses away. She brought back a reply from the colonel’s adjutant, informing McSween that Colonel Dudley refused to correspond with him in any way.

McSween sat at his desk chewing his lip. “I’ll try once more,” he said. “I’ll offer to give myself up to Dudley but to no other.”

At noon, Minnie brought back an answer from the colonel’s adjutant.

“Colonel Dudley wishes me to inform you he has no authority to accept your surrender to him, that he is here solely to protect the women and children.”

“Dolan’s men are surrounding the house,” Billy reported as McSween sat staring at the reply. “They’ve holed up in Stanley’s across the road and now they’re slipping into Mills’ and Chavez’s houses west of us. We can’t get a clear shot at them on account of those damn soldiers all over the place.”

A child in the east wing screamed. Seconds later Elizabeth Shield cried, “Fire! Fire!”

As men rushed from the west wing to the east wing, shots cracked from the warehouse by Tunstall’s store, were answered by rifle fire so close it sounded like it came from directly outside the house. Billy paused, then turned back to the west wing, followed by Ezra.

A fusillade of rifle fire popped as Billy and Ezra got their own Winchesters in position. Ezra knew Coe, Brown and Smith were in the warehouse, having gone over from Montano’s two nights before. McSween men. But someone was shooting back at the three of them from the McSween stable to the northwest.

It had to be Dolan men. They must have slipped into the stable unseen by mingling with the soldiers patrolling the town.

The acrid smell of burning wood mixed with the sweet stink of kerosene hung heavy in the room.

“Seems like that east wing fire’s pretty bad to make so much smoke,” Ezra said.

“Wind’s from the east,” Billy reminded him. “Blowing smoke this way.”

Ezra nodded. It was the wood in an adobe house that burned. Flooring, rafters, doors, windows. The fire would be spreading slowly, were it not for that damn east wind fanning the flames back against the house.

O’Folliard ran into the room. “That fire was set outside the east wing kitchen door,” he told them. “We got it out, but we used up all the water.”

Billy and Ezra looked at one another. Tendrils of smoke continued to drift into the parlor.

With one accord they dashed for the west wing kitchen.

Flames licked through the charred wood of the kitchen’s back door.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Billy exclaimed.

“I’1l tend to this fire,” Ezra said. He yanked bricks away from a window, opened it and started to climb out. The fire was blazing against the back wall of the house. A bullet whistled past his head and buried itself in the adobe. A second bullet clipped his pants leg. He ducked back inside.

“It’s those Dolan bastards in the stable,” he said. “We’ll have one hell of a time getting past their bullets to put out the fire.”

Billy stared at the flames. “Better here than in the east wing,” he muttered. “The wind’s in our favor. It’ll take a long time for this fire to burn us out. Bound to be night before the house is gone. When it’s dark, we can make a break for the river.’’ “Give up, you mean?” Ezra asked.

“Get away, I mean.”

Ezra looked at Billy for a moment, then nodded. There’d be no choice but to flee or surrender.

“I’ll tell Tessa to get the women and children ready to leave,” Ezra said. “They’ll have to go over to the Ealy’s.”

Susie McSween refused to go, clinging to her husband. “1 won’t leave you,” “Please go with your sister and the others,” he said. “I want you safe.”

Tessa put her arm around Susie. “Elizabeth needs you to help with the children,” she said.