Death Valley Drifter, page 15
“Why didn’t you tell us this before, you old idiot, when we asked if anyone had been through?” Stevens asked.
“This morning, early,” he said, then straightened with importance. “The privacy of my guests is sacred to me, like a wedding vow—but these are particular circumstances we have here.”
Voight swung the shotgun toward him. “And this isn’t church! Start recollecting.”
A voice came from behind the group. “Take that gun off my husband and put it down.”
The voice, stern and unruffled, came from inside the way station where only Voight and Stevens could see, but everyone could hear. The two Rebels looked back.
Elizabeth Moore stood with a revolver pointed at the head of the unconscious Lieutenant Martins. The man lay on the dining table, surrounded by two pans of water—one dirty, one clean—and the bandages and implements that had been used to dress and redress his injury.
Voight and Stevens stood still.
A hammer cocked. “The graves of two Confederate renegades and one Injun are behind the chicken coop. I’ll dig more.”
“All I done was dig ’em,” Zebulon remarked.
“All right, stay calm,” Voight said quietly.
“She’s always calm,” Zebulon said. “Else she couldn’t shoot straight.”
Voight showed disgust with the proprietor but lowered the barrel.
“Put it on the ground,” Elizabeth added.
Voight bent and placed the shotgun in the dirt.
Elizabeth shifted slightly so the gun was on Stevens. “You with the Colt. Disarm yourself as well. Then both of you come back inside, though by all rights I should send you to the barn to saddle up.”
Stevens did as he was told.
“You’re guests here,” Elizabeth went on. “You don’t come to a place and start pointing gun barrels and making demands. Not under the Moore roof you don’t.”
Zebulon came over and, talking to himself, collected the weapons. Quinn turned and picked up his knife, wiped it against his trousers, and flipped it so the point faced toward him, along his wrist—to conceal it? To throw? He did not know why; he only knew that he had done it before.
To sheath it, he realized as he naturally slid the knife into its beaded sheath. Zebulon waited while the two unarmed men reentered the station. The proprietor followed them in, Quinn coming after.
“Good manners sometimes has to be enforced with bad ones,” Zebulon confided to the other man.
Quinn made no comment. His heart was beginning to thump harder as he looked at the two men who were now both covered by Elizabeth’s six-shooter. She had moved and was standing behind the table so the men could not jump her. She had gray hair piled on her head and a stern, set expression that seemed to move only by the shifting light of lanterns. One lamp sat on the table, the other hung on the wall on the opposite side of the group near the front door. There were only the faintest pinpoints of ruddy light in the fireplace behind the woman.
“Close the door, Zebulon,” she said. “I saw that rogue coyote.”
“See? I told you,” Zebulon said to Voight. He laid the guns on a rocking chair and shut the door.
Quinn was standing beside the door, and he moved so Zebulon could close it. Elizabeth motioned him closer to the other two and looked at the three men.
“I don’t care what any of you has done, and I’ll patch anyone who’s injured as best I can. But I won’t have harm committed under my roof.” Cocking her head at the door, she added, “That means any of my roofs.”
“Ma’am, I understand your sentiment,” Voight said. “But this is the man who left Lieutenant Martins for dead.”
“So I heard. I also heard this man was your man’s prisoner. I’m no judge, but that seems a good reason to crack someone’s skull.”
“This fella and his partner stole from us at knifepoint,” Voight went on. “We only want what’s rightfully ours.”
“I heard that, too,” she said.
“We got quite an education standing there,” Zebulon said.
Quinn shook his head slowly. “Mr. and Mrs. Moore, if I did such a thing, I don’t remember it. Lieutenant Martins found me being nursed at a station east of here, on the desert.”
“The Smith place?” Elizabeth asked.
“That’s it, ma’am. Mrs. Smith was most kind, generous, and trusting. The injured man took me from Mrs. Smith’s care in the hopes I’d remember something. But a hope is all it was. Until a few minutes ago, when I saw the satchel in the barn, I didn’t even remember my name.”
“What satchel?” the woman asked her husband.
“Something Mr. Beaudine gave me to hold.”
She looked at her husband.
“For a silver dollar and another to come,” he added reluctantly.
Elizabeth gave him a look that said the discussion was not over; then she glanced back at the others. “I’m sorry for you, Mr. Quinn. I should send you on your way, too. Mrs. Smith could use a man around—”
Elizabeth Moore froze in midsentence. Her eyes and mouth were both wide, her extended throat wheezing down air. The lieutenant had been awake, his eyes shut, and he had found the scissors Elizabeth had used to cut his bandages. He had turned suddenly on his shoulder and pushed both wide-open blades into her belly. He withdrew the shears for a second thrust, but she had already dropped her gun and staggered back. The woman hit the wall beside the fireplace and slid to the floor. She sat stiff against the logs, and her thin fingers slapped audibly on two patches of blood that merged to one on the fabric just above her waist. The dog rose, slunk toward her, and pressed his nose to her cheek.
A chaos of motion followed. Zebulon cried out and ran to his wife, bumping into the table and upsetting the lantern, the glass chimney shattering, the flame starting a small fire with the upended kerosene. Voight immediately jumped to where Zebulon had been standing, beside the chair with the guns. Shocked by Martins’ action, Quinn was a moment late following Voight. But his old reflexes were not delayed. The knife was already in his right hand. Voight went for the shotgun, and Quinn reached for the revolver with his left hand. Stevens was a step behind Quinn, bent like a bull and running at him.
The three men smashed awkwardly against the chair, upsetting it and sending the guns crashing to the floor. In the hellish light in the middle of the room, and still wielding the scissors, Lieutenant Martins swung slowly from the table, immediately going faint and dropping to both knees. Zebulon was kneeling beside his wife, pressing his palm to the wound and feeling its inexorable spread.
The three men, entangled like a tumbleweed, fought in the near dark. Quinn’s skull burned painfully as Voight and Stevens simultaneously wrestled him onto his back and tried to pin him.
“Hold him!” Voight shouted. “I’ll get the shotgun!”
Quinn squeezed his eyes shut. He did not need to see, only to feel. By instinct, he rotated his wrist and snaked his right hand from under Stevens’ forceful intentions, then slashed outward with the knife. The wide sweep cut skin to the bone and drew a wail from Stevens. Quinn opened his eyes, which felt like they were in a slowly closing vise. Through pulsing red circles, he looked into the flickering light from the lamp by the door. He saw the man’s torso looming above him, felt blood dripping on his arm. Quinn had slashed the man in the left shoulder. The wounded private had lost some, but not all, of his grappling fury. Apparently unaware of his companion’s injury, Voight continued his assault against Quinn, a palm pressing down on the man’s left arm while the colonel gropingly sought a weapon.
Quinn had taken all of this in during the space of a heartbeat. Stevens hung there, still a potential threat; on the swift return swipe, Quinn’s knife cut deeply through the man’s throat. Blood poured down like a waterfall, Stevens dropping and Quinn rolling out from under him toward Voight. The dying man flopped to the floor, clutching at his throat, which bubbled as he exhaled and caused him to gag horribly when he inhaled.
Voight did not continue to struggle with Quinn but released him and rose, the shotgun in his hands. He pointed the weapon at Quinn and straddled his chest, simultaneously stepping on the man’s right wrist, pinning it. Quinn could barely see through the sharp pain.
“You bloody snake, where is Beaudine?” the colonel screamed as his companion writhed incongruously at his feet. Voight pointed the gun at Quinn’s mouth. “Talk!”
Quinn could barely see through the pain, let alone speak. Moving images appeared in his memory, of night, of the man on the horse beside him, of the blond mane bucking from a sudden halt. Along with them came words, fragments of heated disagreement—
“You haven’t even told me why we’re here!”
“Look, keeping secrets wasn’t my choice. Those were orders.”
Quinn remembered hesitating, and then the other man came toward him, a man who must have been William Beaudine. A man he remembered as having a jaw like rock, eyes like a wolf’s, hair the color of pitch. Beaudine held a metal box under one arm, the same arm that carried a six-shooter. The other hand held the reins. They were making their way through flat terrain lit by the moon.
He remembered more. Abstract things that had eluded him to this point. He knew that Beaudine had said if they rode hard, they could time the attack to coincide with the full moon.
Quinn remembered deeper. He saw them riding hard, the setting sun behind them. They had been farther west . . . at a boat.
And then, as quickly as the memories had returned, as quickly as they flashed by, the sights and sounds were gone. He was breathing heavily on his back, his chest aching from where it had hit the chair—
Quinn felt his scalp dampen with blood that was not his own. It belonged to Stevens, lying to his left. At forced rest now, his vision cleared. He saw Voight towering above him and his hard-breathing, scowling face loomed large—but only for a moment.
“Watch out!” Martins cried thinly.
A water basin flashed white as it crashed against the right side of Voight’s skull, spraying ruddy water in all directions. Quinn rolled to his left, toward the inert Stevens, as the shotgun discharged, punching through the floorboards. Splinters, dust, and countless speckles of Stevens’ pooling blood flew into the air. Voight staggered forward but did not fall.
The iron basin clattered to the ground and the man who had wielded it, Zebulon, raised it again and threw it down hard on Voight’s face.
“You killed her, bastards! You killed my wife!”
The proprietor turned his angry eyes on the man who still wielded the scissors. Martins was struggling to rise. Noticing the fire, Zebulon stormed back and overturned the second basin on the flame.
“You won’t have my home, too!” the grieving man cried.
Still wielding the scissors, Martins continued to use the edge of the table to pull himself up. Before Zebulon could charge him, the staggered but conscious Voight had revived somewhat. Quinn, still recovering from having ducked the shot, got halfway to his feet but was not quick enough to reach the shotgun. Voight still held it and spun on the other men.
Without thinking, Quinn threw the Bowie knife. It missed the man and struck wood somewhere. Quinn rolled over Stevens as the shotgun fired again, the blast missing him but hitting the twin-domed hanging lamp suspended above the center of the room. Glass, flames, and fuel rained down, tinkling and burning where they hit the floor or cushioned chairs.
Lieutenant Martins was on his feet in the near black room, wielding the scissors before him. Voight used the shotgun as a crutch to get to his feet. Snarling in pain and anger, he made ready to fire into the dark where he had last seen Quinn.
“Not this!” Martins said to him. “The mission! Let’s go!”
Voight hesitated.
“Help me! Now!” Martins yelled.
Voight shoved his way through the dark, encountering Zebulon and driving the stock of the weapon into his gut. Zebulon cried out and doubled over. Voight pushed him aside and reached Martins, who was upright and shuffling toward the door. Voight tucked a shoulder under the man’s arms and bared his teeth at the dark.
“You will both die, Quinn!” he cried as he yanked open the door. “You and Bloody Bill will both die!”
Quinn stayed where he was, flat on the floor, on his belly, shielded by the corpse, until the two men were out the door. Then he rose as fast as his aching head would permit and began stomping or swatting out the small fires that burned at the door. Before crushing the last, he picked up a piece of the chair back and set it ablaze for a torch.
The carnage he saw, that he had inadvertently brought on the Moores, made him physically ill.
Zebulon had not bothered to stand up after the blow. He had dropped to the floor, beside his wife, and held her, sobbing. The dog lay low, on his forepaws, still and quiet. Giving Zebulon his privacy, Quinn looked around for his knife. It was stuck in a wall about an inch above where Voight’s head would have been. He went over and pulled it out. Then he went to the door.
There was muted sound in the barn, and Quinn was inclined to pick up one of the guns and finish this. Then he considered the odds. For all he knew, Martins was waiting for him to do just that while Voight saddled the horses. Quinn knew that a gun was not his natural weapon. Though he felt cowardly, he stayed where he was.
Quinn knew only a little more about himself than when he had been hiding behind the outhouse. But he had learned two things: Beaudine had left him to rot in the desert, and he hated Martins and Voight. His own odyssey was no longer just about finding William Beaudine and finishing whatever it was he had set out to do.
His new undertaking was to find and kill two, possibly three men.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LIVING WHERE SHE did, Jane could always see potential trouble coming. That was the advantage of being on the borderline between a desert and a flat plain. People coming from one were sapped of energy, and from the other were visible a good half mile distant. There was no need for quick decisions.
But life was not a desert or a plain, and the life of her son could well hang on what Jane Smith decided in the next few seconds.
One of the men had obviously noticed that Douglas was not where he should have been, and there was a great and swelling commotion that was bound to crash against her here. If Douglas was to have a chance of getting away, there was only one thing to do.
She said to him quickly and aloud, “I want you to stay under the blanket, and when I tell you, start counting to fifty silently. Do it just like we do when counting how far away thunder is. You hear?”
“Yes—”
“At fifty, you run hard for the river. If they see you, just keep running. If anyone is there, hide. If they find you, bite, kick, punch, do whatever you have to, but you get in the water and let the current carry you away, hear?”
“Yes, Ma. Yes.”
The boy was listening to her, to the soldiers, and he was fully alert. Soldiers were pointing toward her, and she struggled to rise.
“You can’t help me,” she told her son without looking down at the blanket. “You must save yourself!” She was nearly to her feet. “Start counting now!”
“One . . . two . . . three . . . like that?”
“Yes! To yourself!”
Men were moving all around the dark camp. Horses were being mounted bareback, in haste. From the sounds of the whinnies and the shouts the men were running in all directions. That was good. They could not be certain Douglas had made for the river. If he was careful, the men who went that way might be far along, in the wrong direction, before he arrived.
As the boy huddled low, the woman finally managed to get her feet under her. She showed herself moments before Captain Dupré finished circling the perimeter of the camp. He carried a pistol; the gun and his pale hand looked like ice in the moonlight. Her hands helpless behind her, Jane affected a posture and an expression of concern as she stepped from her bedding. She struggled to be free of her bonds, rending her skin.
“What’s happening?” she asked, looking around frantically, like a roadrunner.
“Where is your son?”
“My son? What are you talking about!”
“Don’t lie to me—”
“I don’t know, Captain—you took him from me!” She shouted, “Douglas! Douglas, what are you doing? Answer me!”
The officer stopped abruptly before her, both of them silent and listening. He looked behind her at the clump of blanket. He aimed his gun.
“No!” Jane screamed, throwing herself in front of him.
The captain pushed her roughly aside, the woman stumbling and falling as he stepped past. Dupré bent by the blanket and pulled it away.
A cry, half shout, half growl, caused the officer to jump back. He reacted as if a bobcat and not a boy with a pointed stick had leapt up at him, snarling. Landing on his feet, Douglas ducked low, beneath the groping arms of the officer, and bolted past him. He kept running. Because his mother had been given a clearing in the name of modesty, it took a moment before the men nearest her crossed that buffer and mustered a pursuit.
The officer leveled his gun above the head of the fleeing boy. Watching with horror, Jane fell back on her knees. She hurled her shoulder at the officer’s legs. The shot flew wide to the north, nearly cutting down one of his own men.
The captain yelled an order in French and then glared down at Jane. He did not raise his gun for fear of using it.
“When the boy is captured, this will cost him an ear!” he yelled.
“Creature!” Jane howled. She spit at the man and drove her shoulder into him again, this time at his waist. The captain staggered back and drew a knee up hard into her jaw. The woman fell back, stunned. As she landed on her tortured, bleeding wrists, one of the soldiers had arrived and grabbed her by her bound wrists.
“Tie her to a tree,” Dupré ordered. “She can watch when we bring in the boy.”
