“She’s still breathing!” Ann started to turn her over and then thought better of it. “It’s bad, she took it near the heart!”
“Clear this place,” Lawson commanded. “Everyone out!” He didn’t have to give that order twice. Money was scooped up, bottles were drained and cards were left scattered across the tables. The piano-player abandoned his instrument. Nealsen took a long drink from a bottle and he too took to the wind. “Stand with your backs against the bar and your hands behind your heads!” Lawson told Mathias and Presco. “Lock your fingers! Eric, is there a doctor here?”
“Yes, he’s…”
“Go get him. Fast.”
Eric went, and then the vampire and the sharpshooter were left with the three dregs and the girl on the floor whose pooling blood began to make the ichor in Lawson’s veins burn with desire.
Mathias showed a cruel smile. “Shall I give the girl her money now?”
Lawson came so close…so close to putting his gun’s barrel against the man’s throat and making him eat the last of the Marsh-Wheeling, but he was a gentleman and he would not stoop to such a thing.
“You’ve hurt one of my friends,” Mathias went on. “Probably finished his gunhand, looks to me. Well…the girl got in the way, so I guess Johnny deserved it.”
Johnny made a strangled sound, showing that he disagreed with the man’s opinion.
“Take Eric and go on,” said Mathias. “The girl’s dying. Go on and take him to the train. If he wants to leave so badly. But I’ll tell you this, sir…” And here the man’s smooth voice became harsh and ugly. “I don’t know what those letters said, but Eric James did some things the law would be very interested in. Now I can find out who those letters went to. Take me maybe five minutes with that post clerk. So take him on home, sir, and I’m glad to be rid of him.”
“We could kill you all and be done with it,” Lawson answered.
“Oh…you two may be hired guns but you’re not natural-born killers. Otherwise we’d already be laid out on the floor.”
“Jesus, Deuce!” Presco’s voice was like a saw grinding over rusted iron. “Don’t give ’em ideas!”
“Just giving him food for thought,” was the reply, delivered with a nasty smirk. “Just food for thought.”
Lawson was thinking about food. The feast of the vampire. The blood that was flowing from Blue’s body only a few feet from where he stood. In fact, tendrils of the blood were reaching toward his boots, a further enticement to fall upon the dying girl and drink her dry. He shivered; he was so very cold.
In the distance the train’s whistle blew, announcing an imminent departure. There were two trips a day, one in the late afternoon from Helena and one back in the early dark, the last train from Perdition.
Lawson could almost hear the girl bleeding.
Mathias laughed at some joke he had manufactured in his head. The wicks of the oil lamps overhead sizzled and hissed like a den of vipers, and beneath them the vampire gunfighter held onto his humanity with all the strength he could find.
Four.
Through the canvas entrance to the Palace came not Eric and a doctor, but Nealsen and a broad-shouldered, beer-bellied man in a beaver-fur coat and black derby hat. He had a florid, pock-marked face and a brown beard that reached to the silver eagle on his belt-buckle.
“What the hell’s goin’ on in here?” the man shouted in a voice that nearly shook the timbers. He looked down at Blue and her life’s-blood and made a face as if he’d bitten into a sour pickle. “Christ Almighty, what a mess! Somebody’s gonna pay to scrub this damned floor!”
“Mr. Cantrell, I assume,” said Lawson, his pistol still aimed between Mathias and Presco, as Rebinaux whined and clutched his mangled hand.
“And who the hell are you?” Cantrell almost thrust his face into Lawson’s, but seemed to decide it was not a wise move. His eyes were bloodshot with rage as they slid from Lawson to Ann and back again.
“Bounty hunters from New Orleans,” Lawson said, for he’d made up his mind what he had to do. “These three men are wanted dead or alive in the Dakota and the Wyoming territories. We’re taking them to the federal marshall in Cheyenne.”
“Ha!” said Mathias, with no trace of humor.
“You got papers?” Cantrell demanded.
Lawson produced his cowhide wallet with one hand and from it offered Cantrell a business card. Cantrell spent a few seconds studying the lines All Matters Handled and I Travel By Night.
He pushed the card away. “I don’t think you two are proper bounty hunters. This thing don’t smell right.”
“Aromatics aside,” said Lawson, “we’re taking these men to Cheyenne. As your bartender probably told you, the girl was shot by that one.” He nodded toward Johnny Rebinaux. “Helped in the endeavor by Mr. Mathias here. You see their guns on the floor. So…we regret the inconvenience to your profiteering, but we make no apologies for our intent.”
“Damn, you talk funny!” Cantrell said, but some of his anger had flown away. He scowled as he took stock of the dying girl and the three outlaws. “She was a good un’. Made me lots of money. And you boys…I oughta shoot you m’self, save the law from wastin’ time tyin’ nooses for your three worthless necks!”
“What Mr. Lawson fails to realize,” Mathias said in his calm and oily voice, “is that four nooses will have to be made ready in Cheyenne. Eric James rode with us for many months of his own free will. He’s not exactly an innocent. I imagine he’s realized that…and he knows he can’t ever go home again, so he’s likely gone straight to our cabin to break open my strongbox. Get himself enough money for the train and a new life in San Francisco, and to hell with the doctor and this wench.”
“What’s he talkin’ about?” Cantrell asked.
“Eric could’ve left here anytime he pleased,” Mathias went on, directing his comments to Lawson. “I wasn’t keeping him locked up.”
“Maybe not him locked up, but I think he probably had no way to get money for the trip unless he did break open your strongbox. And you were not going to let him or either of these two very far from your sight, were you? No trust or honor among thieves and killers, am I correct?”
Blue moaned. Ann was kneeling at her side. “She’s in a bad way,” Ann said. “Where’s that damn doctor?”
“He’s not coming,” said Mathias. “Eric’s gone for the money.”
“Bleedin’ all over my floor,” Cantell muttered. “New boards and all!”
The whistle blew again, maybe announcing an intention to pull out early. Lawson said, “Nealsen, I’ll pay you ten dollars to go to the station and hold that train for twenty minutes. Ann, would you get our bags packed and put aboard?”
“I will,” she said, and hurriedly left the Palace. Nealsen looked for permission from Cantrell, who said, “I wouldn’t mind earnin’ ten my own self, but go on. Tell Tabbers to do what you say because I’m sayin’ it.”
Nealsen left, also in a hurry.
“Mind if I have a drink while we wait for Eric James not to come back with the doctor?” Mathias asked.
“I do. Stand where you are.”
“Blood on my boots!” said Cantrell. “Sheeeeyit!”
Not fifteen seconds later the canvas was whipped aside and in came a slender wisp of a man, about fifty years of age, with sad eyes and a sallow complexion. He wore spectacles and a stained brown overcoat and carried a doctor’s bag. Snowflakes clung to his gray hair and powdered the shoulders of his coat. Behind him came Eric Cavanaugh, the sight of which brought forth a dry chuckle and a shake of the head from Deuce Mathias.