“Good for you,” he said. “Because I do.”
Lola unlocked the door of her room at the hotel and flinched, startled by the sight of Sheriff Harry Gauge, seated in a hardback chair arranged to face her upon her arrival.
“What’s the idea?” she said irritably, shutting the door behind her. “Want me to jump out of my skin?”
He didn’t look at all friendly. He leaned forward, hands clasped and dropped between spread knees, his holstered .45 hanging loose, too, its tie-down strap dangling. He was at once casual and deadly.
“Well?” he said.
“Well... what?”
“What did you get out of that S.O.B.?”
She sat on the edge of the nearby bed, a bed big enough for two; its springs whined. “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”
He frowned. “You mean, no name? No nothing? Damn, woman, do you have any idea how long you were in there with him?”
She shrugged. “He was dog-tired. Been riding all night, and probably exerted himself killing your stupid underlings. No hotel rooms available, so I let him nap all afternoon in one of the girls’ cribs.”
Gauge scowled. “You mean, you had him alone in a room, asleep, and didn’t tell me?”
She curled her upper lip at him. “Why, so you could stage another killing in my saloon? And the answer is, yes — what I got out of him is exactly what I said. Nothing.”
His smile was terrible. “You aren’t that stupid. You got two little fingers you can wrap men around, and I’ve seen you do it.”
She shrugged, shook her head. “He doesn’t talk much. Plays his cards close to the vest... Speaking of which, he won several hundred this afternoon. Man knows his poker.”
“Tell me you picked up something.”
She thought about it. “Well... whoever he is, he doesn’t want it known. Very cagey about that. I think he really may be passing through. Could be wanted.”
“A dude like that?”
She let out a little laugh. “A dude that shot down two of your boys who already had the drop on him. You can see that this one’s got all the instincts of a gunfighter. I wouldn’t pay any never-mind to the way he dresses. Hell, look how Bill Hickok used to dude up.”
“He ain’t no Hickok.”
“But he’s somebody. He’s got a style about him that I just can’t put my finger on.”
Gauge got up suddenly, standing as straight as he’d been slumped before. “Maybe you’d like to lay more than just a finger on him, huh?”
She bared her teeth. “And what if I do? What if I did? Didn’t you say you wanted me to use my talents?”
“I don’t care about that. Once a whore, always a whore. Just don’t go takin’ a shine to that dude or anything.” He started toward her, a fist raised like a rock. “Or I’ll...”
“Or you’ll nothing,” she said, and she showed him the derringer she’d had up her sleeve. “You’re not to hit me no more, Harry. Remember?”
“Not bad,” he said, grinning appreciatively, nodding at the little gun. “Maybe I should’ve sent you to kill that stranger, not Britt and Manning.”
She frowned. “You wouldn’t send saddle tramps like those two to take that one down, would you?”
“Wouldn’t I?”
She shook her head, rolled her eyes. “They aren’t man enough for the job, Harry.”
“We’ll see.”
She found his gaze and held it. “There’s only one man in this town who could take that stranger, Harry... and I’m looking at him.”
He came over and kissed her roughly.
But he didn’t hit her.
Willa, in the recession of the barbershop doorway, watched as the stranger unhitched his horse with his left hand, the shotgun stock clutched in his right. He was looking everywhere, listening intently for any hint of sound over the muffled fun from the Victory.
Nothing.
She left the recession of the doorway and stepped across the boardwalk and down into the street, approaching him. He spun toward her, swinging the shotgun her way, making her jump back a little.
Then he let out so much air that he might have collapsed. “I told you stay back, woman.”
She gestured to the quiet, dark street around them. “You’re imagining things. Who are you meeting, anyway?”
He took a step closer to her. Softly he said, “You. I want to ride out to your father’s ranch for a talk.”
This news widened her eyes, threw her off balance. “Well... that’s why I came to town. To talk to you.”
A tiny click froze them both.
Just the smallest little noise...
... a gun cocking?
Swiftly the stranger shoved her to the street, where she landed whump in a dust cloud of her making, and he ducked down to where that desert rat was napping, pulling out from under Tulley the seed bag that had been the old boy’s mattress, and slinging the thing over the saddle of his horse, whose rump he slapped, sending the animal charging down the street, galloping in the direction of the hotel.
A dark-mustached man in a black vest emerged fast from the alley across the way, to aim a pistol at what he must have figured was the stranger on horseback, trying to get away.
But the stranger was in the midst of the street now and the shooter turned in surprise and got a bellyful of buckshot for his trouble. Blown onto his backside, the openmouthed ambusher stared at the sky, but wasn’t seeing it.
From the alley off to her right came another attacker, a smaller man but burly, on the move, firing a pistol at the stranger, three shots cracking the night, but his target had hit the street in a roll and came up in a crouch, letting loose the other barrel of the shotgun with a boom that sounded like dynamite exploding.
The smaller man was lifted off his feet, then fell back and splashed onto his own spilled blood and innards.
Now she could smell it.
Gunsmoke in the air like gray-blue drifting fog, the stranger was getting to his feet, slowly, looking all around him.
She stayed down, trembling, wondering what might come next, and from her vantage point she could see men pouring out of the Victory down one way and people coming out more tentatively from the hotel down the other. The glow of lights came to windows of second-floor living quarters here and there, folks leaning out for a look, as the stranger calmly, almost casually walked first to one corpse, kicking it, then to the other, and doing the same.
A cowboy, who’d come out of the Victory, close enough to see, called out, “My gosh, he got Jake Britt! And Lars Manning!”
Townspeople, men mostly, tucking nightshirts into trousers they quickly stepped into, some in bare feet, were emerging from this place and that one for a look. Pushing through this assembling wall of gawkers, came the sheriff.
“All right!” Gauge yelled. “All right, get back, back, all of you!”
The stranger was standing near the second of the dead bodies he’d made, the shotgun cradled in his arms.
The sheriff faced the stranger, putting perhaps three feet between them. He almost snarled as he said, “What is this? What happened here?”
“I’d call it an ambush,” the stranger said offhandedly, breaking the shotgun, snapping out shells, reloading but leaving the gun open. “Or I guess in more official terms? An attempted ambush.”
Gauge backed away a few steps, hands on hips, and called around to those gathered at this latest shooting scene, “Anybody see what happened here?”