No sign of a bartender or whoever ran the way station. Was he or any helper dead in the kitchen? Tied up or huddled there? Or had they been run off? Who knew?
“Well, now!” Rhomer said, yellow teeth peeking out of bristly red. “The lovely Lola! What an honor! Such a fine lady. Might I tempt you with a libation?”
He said this while sloshing more whiskey into his own glass.
She stepped deeper into the grubby space, dirty floor whining under her boots. Pools of clotting blood were here and there, like some terrible dish had been spilled on its way to the dining tables.
She met Rhomer’s sneering gaze with a blank one. Kept her tone business-like. “Where’s Harry?”
The deputy gestured with his glass toward the outside, spilling a little. “He went on up the road to meet the stage. Y’see, when we seen you ridin’ off, we figured maybe you heard us talkin’ about comin’ out here to greet the buyers. Well, Gauge didn’t want to take no chances... She come alone, Cole?”
Colton nodded. “Yep. All by her lonesome.”
Drink still in his right hand, Rhomer curled the forefinger of his left, wiggling it, as if summoning a child. “Come here, lovely Lola. Have that drink.”
She just looked at him.
“Come on, darlin’. I won’t bite. Have a drink.”
Not caring to rile him, she came over slowly. “No thanks. I’ll wait for Harry and have one then.”
“No. Have it now.”
He splashed the drink in her face.
The whiskey burning her eyes, she barely saw the hand that came around to slap her, viciously. She went down on her knees, the flooring crying out when she didn’t.
Eyes wild, he loomed over her. “What did you do, Lola? Ride out and try to find the others to warn ’em? But you couldn’t, could you? They’s all out on the range. You know, honey — ‘where the deer and the antelope play’?”
He slapped her again and her mouth filled with the coppery taste of blood.
Hovering over her, he said, “No, it’s just you and me now, honey. Not even Harry’s around to have an opinion.”
“Keep... keep away from me.”
“I don’t think I will. See, if I see somethin’ in the street that somebody tossed away, like it was garbage? Sometimes I think I can still see some use in that somethin’.”
“Harry will kill you.”
Rhomer shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he gives a diddle-doodle damn about you, no more, sweet thing. And, anyway, like I said — Harry ain’t here.”
She tried to kick him between the legs, but he blocked it, and came in and began to beat her with his fists. The blows and pain that followed seemed to come from everywhere. She began to reel from it, and soon was praying for unconsciousness.
“No, no, no... now don’t you go to sleep, honey. Daddy’s not through tucking you in yet.”
Not far away, from where he slumped, Cullen cried out, “What are you doing to her? Leave her alone, you miserable bastard! If I could see, I’d... I’d...”
“Who knows?” Rhomer cackled, taking off his gun belt and tossing it on the bar. “You might just enjoy what you’d see, old man. Might bring back memories.”
The old man’s voice was a whisper, but a whisper with spine in it. “Leave her alone. If you are any kind of man, Rhomer... leave her alone.”
“Sorry, no can do. But along them lines, Mr. Cullen, sir, I’m about to show this ravin’ beauty what kind of man I am. But first I got to... kind of pound on her a mite more. You know, like when you’re making a tough piece of beef more tender?”
He leaned down and hit her, again and again. She became groggy with pain, then began to grow numb from it and to it. Then he rose and began to unbutton his pants.
Colton was grinning wetly, eyes bright. “Give it to her, Rhomer!”
Maxwell was next to him, buggy eyes even bigger than usual. He said nothing, but was licking his lips.
Rhomer frowned at them, as if he’d forgotten they were there; maybe he had. “Get the hell out, you two. Nobody needs to be lookin’ at me but that blind man, okay? Anyway, you birds go out there and get that body buried, before the stage rolls in. Plant it out back.”
“Awww,” they said as one, and went sullenly out through the swinging doors.
Then Rhomer grinned down at her. “Bet you wish you was dead about now.”
“So... so much,” she said.
“You know what they say — ‘if wishes was horses, beggars would ride.’ ”
And he began ripping at her clothes.
The guard on the barn was heavyset but sturdy, tall, clean-shaven, in a tan Stetson and a black shirt with denims tucked in tooled boots. He stood with his hand on the butt of a Colt dragoon revolver, alert, not missing a thing passing in front of him.
But he didn’t see — or hear for that matter — Caleb York enter through the barn’s rear doors and come up behind him, where the guard stood with his back to the front ones. York pulled him quickly inside, nudging the doors shut again with a foot, then he drew the Bowie blade across the man’s throat, sending a stream of blood across barnwood.
From experience York knew the blood would spray forward, so it was no surprise that there wasn’t a drop of the stuff on the tan Stetson that he borrowed from the dead man, tossing his own aside.
York had been lucky — the guard on the barn was the easiest to come up behind, and on top of that wore a black shirt and bore a superficial resemblance to the man who’d just killed him — clean-shaven, tall, a revolver low on his right hip. Everything but the pearl buttons and gray collar and cuff trim.
In the tan Stetson now — leaving his shotgun behind, too, since the guard hadn’t been holding one — he eased over to the corral and the man posted there. This guard was short but burly, wearing typical cowhand garb down to the leather chaps, and cradling a double-barreled shotgun — a twelve-gauge, like York’s own back in the barn.
That might prove lucky as well, since the cartridges in his pocket would work in that weapon as well.
Strolling over to the cowboy, York kept his head slightly lowered — the resemblance didn’t carry that far — and the man asked, “What is it, Sam? Somethin’ up?”
York raised a forefinger of his left hand as if to say, “Just a minute,” and when he got close enough, put that left over the guard’s mouth as with his right he shoved the Bowie deep into the man’s belly. Stepping slightly to one side, York made a circular motion with the inserted blade, opening him up, then let the dead man fall onto what had emptied out of him.
York started dragging the gutted figure on its belly by the elbows to hide him behind a nearby trough, leaving a snail-like trail.
When the final watchdog, the one who roamed, came around from in back of the relay station building, he saw York, who was only halfway to the trough with his cargo. With much of the relay station frontage between them, the man contorted his face as he raised his Winchester, taking aim.
But York’s swift sideways throw of the Bowie caught the guard in the chest and rocked him back, rifle fumbling from his fingers and clunking to the ground. Still on his feet, the guard wavered, his mouth dropping open and his eyes popping wide, though he had nothing to say and nothing to see. He fell backward with the knife extended from him like a handle.
York moved quickly to him, not running, because the hard-packed earth of the apron where stages pulled up might give heavy footfall away. He removed the knife and dragged the body behind some barrels, leaving it there. Then — hearing conversation and something else... digging? — he crept around the near side of the weathered gray building, keeping low, knife in his fist.