“Jessica.” The voice was husky. Something jolting had struck Jack under the heart somewhere. He had never had it happen before. It was crazy that it should hit him there and then, while the still warm blood of her dead brother and kinsmen was even then congealing only a few feet away.
“Jessica, drop the gun. Stand trial, Jessica.”
The girl shook her head and a wealth of taffy hair glinted under the dove-gray Stetson as her full bosom rose and fell irregularly under the sudden impact of a weak, delicious agony that ran wildly within her as their eyes locked. “What’s your name, Sheriff?”
“Jack. Jack Masters.”
“No, Jack. It’s too late for the trial.” There was an almost desperate wistfulness in her voice and eyes as she walked over close and looked up into the sheriff’s face, drawn and white with weakness and pain.
“Oh, Jack, I’ve had one awfully brief glance of what might have been tonight. I didn’t think it would ever happen, and now”—her round arm waved in a hard, frustrated little circle that covered the embattled ground of Cobb’s Ferry—“it not only did happen, but here, where there’s death.”
A slight sob echoed in her throat. She raised quickly on the toes of her boots, brushed a quick, soft little kiss over Jack’s mouth, and went out the door, off the porch, and down toward the horse corral. Jack, remembering suddenly, frantically, that Wes Flourney was out there somewhere, dropped his gun and lurched outside to yell a warning. His mouth was still open and wordless when the snarling blast of a single shot rang out. Jessica Tolliver took two faltering little steps, and fell.
Jack Masters ran drunkenly over the ragged earth where the long evening shadows were blotting out the devastation of the spent, blood-drenched day. He went down beside her and lifted her head. There was a raw bruise on her forehead and a welter of rich, vital blood was trickling from the valley between her breasts, high up near the top button of her shirt. “Jessica…”
“You, Jack?” There wasn’t a shred of reproach in the words. Wonder, maybe, but no accusation. He shook his head.
“No, Jessie. My deputy. He couldn’t tell in the dusk. He didn’t know, Jessie.”
“Is it bad, Jack?”
He bit back the acid that erupted in his throat and nodded his head gently. She smiled up at him. There was a peaceful finality on her face and she reached up shakily and dropped one small, dimpled hand over his filthy knuckles. “Jack, if I save a place beside me, up there, will you look for it when you ride over?”
Again he nodded. “Yes, Jessie. Save a place for me. I’ll be along. Wait for me, Jessie, promise?” She sighed a little and nodded, her moist, large eyes on his with a deep abiding faithfulness. They were dimming now and Jack’s soul was wrenched hard when the honey-colored hair fell loosely over his arm with a solemn, final grace.
The ride back to Mendocino was like the return of two wraiths. The darkness hid most of the brush scratches, the ragged, torn clothing, and the sunkeneyed, bone weariness. It hid the little string of rack horses that plodded patiently along behind Jack’s and his deputy’s horses. But all the darkness in the world couldn’t hide the soggy, plumping sounds as the corpses, lashed sideways over the saddles, bumped and lurched against the ropes that held them, taking their last ride on a horse.
The light of a new day made a difference. Yates had his bloodstained money from Link’s saddlebags and Bud Prouty was mending as well as could be expected. Mendocino’s boothill boasted of several new graves, but one grave, at the thin-lipped stubborn insistence of the sheriff, had been put apart. It was a better grave, too. There were flowers and a prayer and a silent renewal of a promise lying over it like an aura.
Mendocino was proud of her sheriff. There were triumphant celebrations and fireworks, and Jack Masters smiled his way through it all, the same old Jack, just a little quieter, perhaps, a little grayer in the face, and a little less willing to laugh, but to the cowmen and the townsmen these things went unnoticed and ignored. To them he was their conquering hero.
Vermilion Kid
Chapter One
To a man from a cesspool, the gutter is heaven. Those were the words. He turned the whiskey glass around and around in its own little sticky pool of clear liquid on the bar top, and thought of them. If a man had said them, he’d have killed him—shot him down with the ferocious fury of a self-made gunman. Called, drawn, and shot, all with the unbelievable speed that had made him feared, hated, and fawned over the width of the raw, rude frontier.
But it hadn’t been a man, it was a girl—a slip of a woman at that. Not over 110 pounds of fragile, violet-eyed, taffy-haired girl. The kind that made heroes out of their men while they themselves lived and died unsung. A real Western woman.
He couldn’t get the words out of his mind; they were sort of poetic. To a man from a cesspool, the gutter is heaven. Why, damn her, anyway. Her father was Buff Dodge. Big, wealthy, gruff, and friendly—one of the richest cowmen in the whole wide West, which, of course, meant the whole damned world. To hell with her old man and his money. The Vermilion Kid was pretty famous, too. And he had money—although no one but himself knew it.
He slid the whiskey glass along, making the little pool take on an oblong, roughly heart-shaped outline. He knew what she’d meant, though. He nodded slightly, morosely. There was a difference all right, sure there was. He was an outlaw. That the law had never caught him didn’t alter the facts one damned bit. She knew it, and he knew it, and, he surmised tartly, so did the whole damned world. Even so, it sure hurt, when he’d tried to scrape up an acquaintanceship to have her drown it with a sentence like that. He downed the whiskey and turned bitterly away from the bar.
The First Chance saloon was a bedlam of noise, pungent odors of tobacco, liquor, and human sweat. The Vermilion Kid grinned wryly, sourly to himself as he made his way through the press of raucous, writhing bodies to the faro table. He gambled with his usual indifferent luck and the warmth of the room—generated by the hissing, glaring lanterns, the feverish, recklessly hilarious patrons, and the dingy, worn little iron stove in a far corner—made a small wreath of sweaty beads stand out on his upper lip and his forehead. His slate gray eyes were somber, constantly moving over the room with a liquid, smooth movement and a look of sardonic ridicule had settled over his tanned, lean cheeks.
He marshaled his chips and counted them unconsciously, always aware of the toss of that taffy hair and the proud, piquant face, and then the dagger of the words spanked up hard against the back of his forehead.
To a man from a cesspool, the gutter is heaven. He quit the game, had another drink, and stalked out of the saloon. The night was warm and clear, with little tremors of coolness settling down on the earth after the vicious heat of the day. He went to the Royal House, hiked the stairs to his room, locked the door very carefully, and went to the bed with the same ten words of contempt drenching him with their frigid repugnance.
At breakfast the following morning, the Vermilion Kid’s badly mauled pride had shielded itself behind a mask of indifference, as it always did. In fact, he was pretty well along in the process of forgetting the whole damned episode—or so he told himself, when the hotel clerk came up to his table. He was the only occupant of the dining room and the man clearly showed that he had to talk to someone. The Kid motioned to a chair as the clerk hesitated. “Sit down.” The clerk sat with a slight, self-conscious nod of thanks.