“Please,” Teresa said, “just let Carole go.”
“She don’t want to go,” Clyde said, chuckling obscenely. “I’m payin’ her well, but she’s getting tired. I think you should spell your little friend for the rest of the night.”
Teresa looked up, her eyes filled with hatred. “Don’t even touch me, you horrible sonofabitch! I told you what I’d do if you ever touched me again.”
Clyde reached down and grabbed his big root. “Yeah, and that’s why I’m going to give this tonight. And I’ll do it right here against this wall if you don’t shut up and come inside.”
Rolf took a deep breath and filled his own doorway. “Clyde Zolliver, you aren’t doing anything to anyone anymore,” he said in a voice shrill with fear.
Clyde swung around, his hand still wrapped around his root. He stared and said, “Say, ain’t you that kid named …”
“Swensen. Rolf Swensen. It’s only fair that you know who killed you.”
Clyde started to let go of himself and lunge, but Rolf had anticipated the man’s reaction, and his finger was already squeezing his trigger. An explosion filled the hallway, and Rolf’s bullet went low, catching Clyde in the groin. The big man howled and tried to lunge forward, but Rolf raised the barrel of his pistol and shot him in the chest, knocking him back a step and jerking him up to attention.
“Gawddamn you, kid!” Clyde choked.
Rolf stood his ground and emptied his gun, placing his bullets in the giant’s hairy chest and driving him back through his own broken doorway. When Clyde toppled, he landed like a big tree, and then his bare heels danced spasmodically on the floor. Clyde’s stiff root momentarily waved around like a flag in battle before it slumped over as dead as the man.
“Holy gawd,” Rolf said, slumping against the doorway as Teresa threw herself into his arms. “I really did it. I killed Clyde Zolliver and now his brother and father will kill me.”
“No, they won’t!” Teresa said fiercely as she was joined by Carole. “We’re going away.”
“I’m going too!” Carole said, twisting around to stare at the dead man. “I’m not staying in Whiskey Creek another day!”
“What about Nathan?” Rolf asked, steadying himself and holding his girl tightly. “Is he … dead?”
“No, but he’s knocked out cold. Clyde pistol-whipped him hard. I don’t know, maybe he’ll die or his brains have been scrambled. I just don’t know!”
“I’ll find a doctor,” Rolf heard himself say as people began to open their doors and peek down the hallway.
“It’s over!” Teresa raged at them. “So just go back to sleep!”
One by one the doors closed. Teresa hurried inside, and all three of them hovered anxiously over Nathan as Teresa examined the unconscious counterfeiter.
“Well?” Rolf asked.
“He’s breathing and his pulse is good,” Teresa said.
“I think he’s going to be all right.”
“Maybe not,” Carole said. “You didn’t see how that big sonofabitchin’ Clyde just mashed his skull. He hit him really hard.”
“We had better not move him yet,” Teresa said. “But there’s no real doctor in Whiskey Creek.”
“No doctor?” Rolf began to reload his gun. “Nathan could die without a doctor.”
But Teresa shook her head. “I don’t think there’s anything even a real doctor could do.”
“So what can we do besides just wait?” Rolf asked as he finished reloading and jamming his six-gun back into his holster.
Carole interrupted. “The first thing we ought to do is to find somewhere to hide Clyde’s body. Somewhere that it won’t ever be found.”
“You’re right,” Teresa said, thinking hard. “I know of an abandoned mine. It’s a vertical shaft that drops about a hundred feet straight down. People sometimes throw dead things in it just to get rid of them.”
“But we should at least bury him,” Rolf said, appalled at the idea of pitching a human body into a disposal pit filled with all manner of ungodly things.
“Rolf, if it would make you feel any better,” Teresa said, “we can throw some rocks in after we dump his body. But I’ll have to find us a wagon or a carriage.”
“What about the hotel clerk and-“
“Peter acts uppity,” Carole said, “and he must have heard all the shouting and your gunshots, but you don’t see a trace of him, do you?”
“No.”
“That’s because he’s a rabbit,” Carole said, making no effort to conceal her disgust. “Peter won’t come up here and he won’t ask any questions. Not about the blood on the hotel carpets and not about the broken latch on Nathan’s door.”
“Good,” Rolf said.
“Let’s go,” Teresa said. “I’ll help you drag his body down the back stairs leading into the alley.”
“I think we ought to at least put some pants on him,” Rolf said, staring uneasily at the bloody giant’s naked body.
“No!” Carole’s eyes blazed away at the corpse. “Rolf,” she said, “you just toss Clyde down in the pit naked. If there are snakes, bugs, worms, or rats, all I want them to do is chew his damn cock off!”
Rolf shuddered and turned away from Carole. He could only imagine how much hatred both women had for Clyde Zolliver.
It took Rolf and Teresa an hour to borrow a buckboard and drive through the stormy night. Twice, they almost got stuck in the mud, but they finally managed to reach the pit and dump Clyde’s body into it. Rolf and Teresa both heard the corpse ricochet off the walls all the way down, and then they heard a tremendous splash as it struck bottom.
Rolf shivered. “With all this rain, the bottom of the pit must be filled with water.”
“Good! Clyde!” she yelled down into the black hole. “I hope you have to swim your way into hell!”
Rolf pulled Teresa away and then led her back to the buckboard. With the thunder and lightning all around, they drove away quickly. They did not speak at first, just sat close, their heads huddled low in the pouring rain. Rolf had never seen such hatred in his life. Rolf was badly shaken. He hadn’t believed that a woman could feel such deep hatred, a hatred every bit as alive and intense as any man’s.
“Rolf?” she asked as they neared Whiskey Creek and the rain let up a little.
“Yeah?”
“Did you mean it earlier tonight when you said you were going to California and wanted to marry me?”
“I did.”
“Do you still? I mean, after seeing the … the really terrible side of me?”
Rolf thought a moment or two before answering, then he looked sideways at Teresa and said, “We all have a dark side. Maybe it was good that I saw yours right away. Maybe you think I’m better than I am too.”
She hugged him tightly. “Rolf, there’s a side that I didn’t think you possessed.”
“Which side is that?”
“It was a strong side. A side that allowed you to just stand there and keep pumping bullets into Clyde, knowing how evil he was. It made me look at you differently, Rolf. It opened my eyes.”
“Does that mean we’re getting married?” he asked as the buckboard slid around a muddy street corner and Rolf turned it back into the alley behind their hotel.
She kissed his cheek. “It does, if Buck or his father don’t catch and kill us.”
Rolf smiled, and his eyes burned with tears so that he was thankful for the rain. With a close friend in Nathan Cox and a woman he loved with all his heart and had just consented to become his wife, everything in his life was now much, much different. And if he really was forced to do it, Rolf vowed he would somehow find a way to kill Buck and even old man Zolliver.
Chapter 11
Longarm was damned glad that the rain finally stopped falling and the skies had turned blue. It was cold though. He and Miss Diana Frank were bundled up in heavy coats and rain slickers, but they were still plenty chilly. There was snow atop the higher elevations of the Wasatch Mountains, and Longarm couldn’t help but think that Nathan Cox might have gotten trapped up there in this last storm and frozen to death along with the Thoroughbreds. That being the case, Longarm might not be able to recover their bodies or the stolen Denver mint plates and counterfeit currency until the next spring.