CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Papa Mace Rathmore was aware of the limitations of the horses and didn’t push them hard. They’d fed on grass and not much of that and were not in good shape. He didn’t expect a pursuit and was content to hold them to a walk.
Ella turned her pretty but hard-bitten face to Mace and said, “What do you think happened back there, Papa? That sure as hell was gunfire we heard.”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Mace said. “Maybe Malachi shot the prisoners.”
“He used a lot of cartridges to kill two men,” Ella said. Mace had given her Red’s plug hat and she wore it tilted back on her head, her dirty blond hair falling over the shoulders of her dress.
“Malachi ain’t much of a shot.” Mace took a cigar from a silver case with the initials TL engraved on it, lit the smoke, and passed it to the woman. He lit another for himself and said, “When we reach Fort Worth, we’ll turn this gold into cash and then set up in business. I got it all planned.”
“Is whoring still part of it?” Ella said, frowning. “I figured I was all through with that.”
“Yeah, but only for a while, until we’re well set up, and then you can quit.” He gave her a sidelong look. “We all got to make sacrifices, Ella. You sell your body, and when I’m working a con, I sell my words. In the end it’s all the same.”
“Maybe, but you’ll get out and meet hifalutin folks,” Ella said. “All I’ll do is lie on my back and count the cracks in a boardinghouse ceiling. That ain’t the same.”
“You’ll meet folks,” Mace said. His great belly juddered with every step of the horse. “I already promised you, no two-dollar tricks. You’ll be a lady whore, the kind that makes the big money.”
“I wish I was in Fort Worth already, away from this damned desert, making big money and wearing all them nice clothes like they do,” Ella said from behind a blue curtain of cigar smoke.
“Soon, my love, soon,” Mace said. “There’s a long, dusty trail ahead of us and not much grub, but when we arrive in Fort Worth, we’ll look back and say, ‘Well, there was value in every miserable mile we rode to get here.’” Mace smiled, “Yup, value all right. Fort Worth is a burg with snap, and it’s crying out for sporting folks like you and me, Ella.”
By noon the sun was a fireball in the sky that scorched the wasteland and all who were foolish enough to move across it. Papa Mace removed his frock coat and tied a rust-colored bandana around his bald head before replacing his hat. He sweated like a pig, and his thick-lipped mouth was open, gasping for air. And he smelled rank.
Not for the first time, Ella thought him a repulsive creature, and the thought of his dank hands exploring her again made her skin crawl. But, at least for the time being, he was a necessary evil. She made up her mind to dump him at the first opportunity . . . after he’d cashed in the gold. She clenched her cigar between her teeth and smiled inwardly at the thought she’d just had . . . Killing him is not out of the question.
* * *
The afternoon wore on, and Ella Rathmore and Papa Mace drowsed in the saddle, the only sound the creak of saddle leather and the soft fall of the horses’ hooves.
Something made Ella jerk wide awake. A woman’s intuition perhaps.
She looked uneasily at Mace, but his head nodded in sleep, his many chins rolled around his throat like a string of sausages. Ella turned and studied their back trail . . . and spotted a thin column of dust behind them.
She shook Mace awake and said, “Dust behind us.” She looked again. “And it’s coming on fast.”
Mace drew rein, swung his horse around and stared.
“Do you see it?” Ella said.
“Hell, yeah, I see it,” Mace said, irritated. “I’m not blind.”
“Who could it be?”
“How the hell should I know?” Mace said.
“Malachi. It could be Malachi.”
“Whoever it is, he’s seen us,” Mace said. “We can’t outrun him on these horses. They’re about done for the day as it is.”
“Can you kill him?”
“Yeah, I can kill him.” Mace slid the Winchester from the boot under his knee. “I can kill him easy . . . and I plan to do just that.” He held his rifle at the ready and watched the rider come on at a run. What he needed was the patience to make sure of his shot. Around him the silence was so profound he heard the short, nervous gasps of Ella’s breathing.
The rider closed the distance. He carried some kind of long gun, held straight out at his side, and a ribbon of dust trailed behind him.
Soon . . .
Papa Mace threw the scarred stock of the Winchester to his shoulder . . .
And it was then he made the biggest mistake of his life.
* * *
Mace recognized the blue coat with the silver buttons and the stocky shape of the rider. It was Muldoon, the man he’d left to die of thirst in the mine shaft. The feller was still alive and bearing down on him. What had happened back there?
Papa Mace was a man filled with hatreds, and he directed all of that hate at the stage driver. In that moment, Mace’s loathing for the man possessed him like a form of insanity. Muldoon had to die . . . and Mace had to watch him die . . . and gloat . . . and torment him as he drew his last breath.
Mace screamed in demented fury and fired. A miss. The rider galloped closer.
Shrieking curses, Mace raked his big-roweled spurs across his mount’s flanks and the abused horse lurched into a run. As he rode, the fat man levered shot after shot at Buttons but scored no hits. Buttons held his fire, closing the distance.
A hit!
A bullet burned across Buttons’s left shoulder, gouging deep, drawing blood. It would have made a careful man wary, but Buttons threw caution to the wind and relentlessly advanced on Mace.
The two riders were madmen, each bent on destroying the other, roaring curses, eyes blazing with crazed anger. Then a disaster struck Mace that he’d not anticipated.
The hammer of his rifle snapped on an empty chamber. He levered again and again . . . Snap! Snap! But there could be no retreat. He was too close to the hated Muldoon.
The two men closed, cursing their loathing for one another.
Mace reined in his horse and grabbed his rifle by the barrel. He raised it above his head, planning to bring down a crunching blow on Muldoon’s skull. But Buttons ducked the blow, and for an instant Mace’s motion exposed the left side of his belly and chest. As the riders passed, Buttons triggered the scattergun. Two barrels of buckshot ripped into Mace and almost turned him inside out. Blood exploded everywhere. The fat man screeched in pain and terror, the Winchester cartwheeling away from him. Mace rode on for a few yards and then toppled out of the saddle, dead when he hit the ground.
Buttons drew rein and walked his paint to the sprawled body, a great mound of bloody flesh slowly turning the desert sand red.
“Dead, ain’t he?” Ella Rathmore said. She’d dismounted and led her horse to the obscene corpse, staring down at it.
“As he’s ever gonna be,” Buttons said, a dreadful weariness on him, sapping what remained of his strength. He looked at Ella with dull eyes. “He wasn’t much, but he was a man who needed killing.”
A silence grew between them until Ella said, “No, he wasn’t much. But he was my only hope.”
“Hope for what?” Buttons said, short and tight, not liking the woman.
“Hope for a new life in Fort Worth. Mace told me I’d wear all the nice clothes and eat nice food and live off the fat of the land.”
“He promised you that?”
“Yes, he did. And more.”
“And you believed him?”
“No, I didn’t believe him, but I wanted to believe him. I needed hope. A woman like me, a two-dollar whore and common as dirt, needs hope.”
Buttons warmed to the woman, but only slightly. Above them, a hawk suddenly dived into the brush and something small died in the waning afternoon.
“Well, everything happens for a reason.” Buttons said. “I heard that once.”
Ella’s smile was slight. “Hell, mister, I wish I knew what the hell that reason was.” Then, “Are you planning to shoot me?”
Buttons shook his head. “As a general principle, I don’t shoot women. I bet the Abe Patterson and Son Stage and Express Company has a rule about shooting women, and it’s wrote down somewhere, I’m sure.”
“You look all used up,” Ella said. Then after a while, “I wanted Mace to kill you, blow you away.”
Buttons nodded. “You didn’t want to lose all hope, such as that was, huh?”
“Yeah, something like that. You’ve spoiled everything.”
“Go bring in his horse.”
“Mace’s gold is on the horse, if you want to take it,” Ella said. “He left me to carry the grub.”
“Bring it in.” Buttons waited until the woman led the horse back to where he stood, and he found the gold in the saddlebags, divided between two burlap sacks. Buttons opened one of the bags and let a handful of small nuggets and flakes, mixed with some quartz, trickle through his fingers. “Gold. That’s the color of hope, ain’t it?”
“It’s what hope is made of,” Ella said. “But now that hope is gone, it might as well be ashes.”
“Take it,” Buttons said. “Take the gold.”
She was shocked. “What did you say?”
“I said for you to take the gold,” Buttons said. “It’s yours.” Then, after some thought, “Lady, it’s a long way to Fort Worth, and you’ll cross some mighty rough and hostile country, to say nothing of outlaws or bronco Apaches or wolf packs. This gold brought nothing but death and misery to the Rathmores, and do you know why? I’ll tell you why . . . because it’s cursed. Now, after all that, are you sure you want it?”
“I’ll take my chances,” Ella said. “What have I got to lose? My life? Without the gold I don’t have a life.”
“Then all I can say is good luck, and God help you.” Buttons pointed east. “That’s the way to Fort Worth. Now give me the hat you’re wearing. It belongs to a friend of mine.”
The woman handed over Red’s plug hat and then said, “What about him?”
“What about who?”
“Papa Mace. You just gonna leave him there?”
“The coyotes will take care of him,” Buttons said.
“No they won’t. They’ll gag on him,” Ella said. “He’ll still be lying there ten years from now.”
Buttons Muldoon watched the woman ride into the gathering dusk. He then mounted and pointed his horse back toward the Cornudas Mountains . . . and reckoned that you couldn’t put a silver dollar on any part of him that didn’t hurt.