On learning that Calamity would not reach Mulrooney until around ten o’clock at night, Grosvenor had promised to telegraph and reserve a room for her at the Railroad House Hotel. She had hinted that she would be satisfied with some less opulent surroundings, but he was adamant. To make up for her inconvenience, she must be accommodated in the town’s best hotel.
Never a girl to look a gift-horse in the mouth, Calamity had accepted. Meeting Freddie Woods on the train had been enjoyable. They had discussed the reason for Calamity’s trip without reaching any conclusions. Not that Calamity worried. Her philosophy—although she had never heard the word—had always been to live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself.
Clad only in a pair of knee-long cotton drawers, Calamity drew open the covers. Then the aroma of the perfume crept back. Knowing that she would never sleep because of it, she crossed to the window. Drawing open the drapes a little, she discovered that no building overlooked the room. So she pulled them right back and raised the bottom half of the window a few inches. Putting out the light, she was approaching the bed when the call of nature struck again. Cursing Freddie’s wine, she made further use of the chamber-pot before climbing into bed.
At first Calamity reveled in the unaccustomed sensation of sinking into a soft feather mattress, between clean sheets and using a down-filled pillow. Then she found herself unable to settle down. Used to much rougher conditions, bedding down on the unyielding floor of her wagon or in less luxurious surroundings than the Railroad House, she found its comforts a mixed blessing.
Time dragged by and the noises of the town died away as midnight passed. Calamity still tossed and turned as sleep continued to elude her. Although the building had been silent for at least an hour, a crack of light still glinted beneath her door. She guessed that the passage outside was kept illuminated all night for the benefit of guests returning late to their rooms. Wanting to blame something for her inability to sleep, she laid the fault on the slight glow under the door and developed a hatred for its source.
“Damned if I don’t go out there and bust that blasted lamp!” she muttered, without any intention of doing it. “If this’s what living in——”
A faint thud from outside the window brought her comments to a halt and caused her to sit up. Peering through the darkness, she could detect nothing to account for the sound. Deciding that it must have been imagination, she slumped back and turned on to her right side. Scowling across the bed, she eyed the door malevolently. Then an uneasy feeling that something was wrong began to seep through her.
After a moment’s thought, she realized what was wrong. Looking again, she found that there was no longer an unbroken line of light at the base of the door. Instead, it had become split into three separate segments. Somebody was standing outside, his or her feet breaking the disturbing elongated glow. At first Calamity assumed that another of the hotel’s guests had come to her door by mistake.
The assumption only lasted for an instant.
Lifting herself on to the right elbow, she watched a sheet of newspaper slide through the space between the bottom of the door and the floor. Maybe her formal education had been neglected, but she understood the full implications of what she saw. Sufficiently well for her to take instant action.
Rolling out of the bed on the side away from the door, she sank into a kneeling position by it. From there she watched the key, which the boy had brought inside and she had turned before undressing, begin to creep slowly backward from the lock. It fell with a gentle clink on to the sheet of paper. After a brief pause, while the intruder in the passage waited to hear if the room’s occupant had been disturbed and meant to raise the alarm, the paper started to move at a snail’s pace in the direction from which it had come.
“If you’re fixing to come in here and rob poor, sleeping lil me,” Calamity breathed, “you’ve got one helluva surprise headed your way.”
Chapter 2 HE SURE WON’T SMELL LIKE A ROSE
EVEN AS THE SENTIMENT LEFT HER LIPS, CALAMITY realized that she had committed a serious error in tactics. Her Winchester carbine, with twelve flat-nosed Tyler B. Henry .44 cartridges in its magazine tube, was leaning against the head of the bed; but on the opposite side to her position. Worse than that; her gunbelt, holding the Navy Colt and coiled bull-whip, was draped around the bed-post above the carbine.
About to rise and rectify the mistake, she heard another faint sound from outside the window. Turning her head, she found that she had a better view. What she discovered was not comforting. Two square-shaped knobs appeared to have sprouted above the straight line of the windowsill. Before a somewhat larger, more oval shape started to rise between them, she had identified the protuberances as the top end of a ladder. It most certainly had not been there when she had pulled the drapes. Nor did she need closer observation to know the rising shape was the head of a man.
Taken with the disappearance of her key, riding slowly under the door on the retreating sheet of newspaper, the presence of a man ascending a ladder to her window rang a whole series of alarm bells for Calamity.
Listening for the click that would warn her the man in the passage was making use of the key, Calamity watched the shape across the room develop into a bare head and wide shoulders as the second intruder rose higher on the ladder. Discovering that the window was open, the man came to a halt. From what Calamity could make out, he possessed a sufficiently hefty build for her not to relish the prospect of tangling with him barehanded. Slowly and carefully, he started to ease upward the bottom half of the window; which, Calamity recollected bitterly, she had obligingly opened just before she had climbed into that dad-blasted feather bed.
“No!” she thought. “Not just before!”
Between opening the window and climbing into bed, she had performed a natural function made necessary by consuming a bottle of wine and several cups of coffee in Freddie Woods’ private railroad car.
Unlike her armament, the item she had used during her last act before climbing into bed was at the side where she now knelt. A grin of delight creased Calamity’s face as she thought of the elegant pot’s sturdy construction. Handled correctly, it ought to make a mighty effective deterrent against the man at the window.
So far the intruder at the window showed no sign of knowing that his proposed victim was awake, alert and no longer in bed. Ducking his head forward, he prepared to enter the room. Luckily the second man had not unlocked the door. As long as she could take the first cuss out of the game, Calamity figured she ought to be able to reach her more conventional weapons. Holding the carbine, Colt or whip, she reckoned that she could then show her visitors a real hospitable welcome.
Gripping the handle of the chamber-pot, she drew it from beneath the bed. At any moment she expected to hear the lock click and see the door open. There was no time to lose if she hoped to achieve her ambition regarding the big man.
Swiftly Calamity thrust herself erect and into motion, darting alongside the bed and across the room. She heard the lock snap open mingled with a startled exclamation from the man on the ladder.
“She’s awake, Otón!” the big intruder at the window bawled.
Light flooded into the room as the door began to open. Calamity knew that there would not be time for her to reach the window and make the speaker a present of the chamberpot for a hat, then return to the bed and grab a firearm, before his companion cut in. So she did not try.