HARRY CROUSE WAS big, square, powerful, moving toward fat. In the hotel room he lay on his back naked, asleep. He did not hear the door sigh open, hear Lassiter come in.
The entry was direct. Lassiter had stayed with the girl until the hotel slept, Yuma slept, as much as it ever did. Then he had gone downstairs and taken the key from the board behind the napping night clerk.
He crossed the room, silent under Crouse’s snores, his gun held loosely, struck a match, saw that Crouse was not playing possum, and lit the lamp. Crouse stirred as Lassiter walked to the bed, did not wake until he was prodded in the ribs with the gun.
“Come on, fatso. Roll out.”
Crouse stared, blinked against the light. He had drunk a lot, was still fogged. “What the hell?” He rolled to his side, fumbled his feet to the floor. “Who the hell are you?”
“I ran you out of the saloon of the Caprice Queen.”
Crouse turned red. “The bastard who shot at my men?”
“If I’d shot at them they’d be dead. Maybe I’ll shoot you.”
Crouse had thick hair on his chest, legs, shoulders, gorilla hair. He scrubbed at the mat on his stomach. “Now why would you want to do that?”
“May have to, if I can’t convince you that you didn’t see Parson Parsons talking to any pirates.”
The big man’s chin thrust out. “Who says we didn’t? We all three saw it.”
“I say none of you did.”
“What’s the matter? What are you getting at?”
“I want Parsons out. The way to get him out is to get you to change your testimony. They’ll have nothing to hold him on.”
Even with the gun on him, Crouse was bold. His lips curled back. He got to his feet. “Mister, you can plumb go to hell.”
Lassiter hit him on the side of the head with the gun. Crouse dropped back to the bed, bleeding, shook himself, stood up again.
“You play rough …”
Lassiter knocked him back again. “And will. Until you tell them you lied about Parsons.”
“Screw you. You can’t make me …”
“Get up. Get some clothes on.” Lassiter stepped back, leveled the gun, cocked it.
The man’s eyes were black, hating, fastened on the gun. He sucked in a full breath, then reached toward the chair for his pants.
Lassiter said, “Where are the two sergeants?”
Crouse was a long time answering. The gun persuaded him. “At the fort across the river.” A heavy grin cracked his face. “You going to try to take them out of there?”
“At the moment, no. You first. We’re going to walk out of this hotel and down to the livery. I’ll be close enough behind you to put a bullet in your spine, if you open your mouth or try for a break.”
Crouse believed him now. The eyes showed it. They walked. Neither bothered to turn out the light.
Frenchy waked when he heard them come through the office door. He started, seeing Crouse’s uniform, said nothing.
Lassiter winked at him across Crouse’s shoulder, showed him the gun, nose first.
“I need two horses, friend, as a gift.”
Frenchy gaped, sidled past Crouse, brushed a hand against Lassiter’s leg. He understood. The play was aimed to protect him in case Crouse was ever able to take the story to the sheriff. He got the horse already saddled from the corral, brought a second from its stall and saddled it. He whined and complained.
“You know what you’re gonna do, you two. You’re going to lose me my job, that’s what.”
“You’ll lose your face if you don’t shut it. Bring some rope. Mount up, Crouse.”
The Captain glanced at the gun, debating whether he could swing the horse, ride Lassiter down. He decided against it. When he was up, when Frenchy was back with the rope, Lassiter said:
“Tie the Captain’s wrists to the horn. Do it good. I’m watching.” He waited until the job was finished, then motioned with the gun. “Now get in the office and shut the door.”
Then he herded Crouse out through the alley. They rode around the prison, picked a way down through the swampy bank and put the horses into the fast water of the Gila. On the north bank Lassiter took the lead, took the reins of Crouse’s horse and headed for Pasquinada.
Howling, naked children and barking, scrawny dogs circled them, escorted them to the chief’s hut. Pasquinada did not deign to come outside to see what the commotion was. Lassiter went in to him, made his greeting.
“We are on the track of our gold, friend. You’ll have a bigger share if you help a little. Come on outside and put on a show.”
The Buddha figure rose, stepped through his door, stared at the prisoner with round, inscrutable dignity. Lassiter flicked a hand toward Crouse, raised his voice.
“Chief, you keep this blue-belly for me until he wants to talk. Keep him alive.”
Generally the Mojaves were a peaceful people, but they lost no love on soldiers Crouse knew, and reacted.
“Man, hell, you ain’t leaving me here alone with these dog eaters?”
“You’ll learn to like chihuahua if you stay here long. You can leave when you decide you didn’t see Parsons with the hijackers.”
“Damn you … damn you …”
Pasquinada regally raised his hands, clapped them twice. Two young braves ran in, listened to orders, wrestled Crouse off the horse and badgered him across the yard. Crouse fought, yelled, cursed, stumbling, half running, trying to drag his arms loose from the brown hands.
Pasquinada smiled. “We’ll turn him over to the squaws. They’ll enjoy him, make his life miserable while he lasts.”
“Women can do that. But you see that he lasts if you want that gold.”
“Sure thing. And what more can I do?”
“You can feed me. My last meal was here.”
Pasquinada made sympathetic sounds and summoned his second wife. Lassiter went with her to the community pot hung over the fire in the middle of the yard. She was a willowy child, her skin a copper bordering on cream. Her eyes slewed over him as she served him. It didn’t matter, he thought, what color their hide, they all wanted the same thing. He ignored her. One way to get along with Indians was to leave their women strictly alone.
He ate, then slept, waked with the sun slanting over the hills on the far bank of the Colorado. He ate again, still ravenous. Two young boys saddled his horse, brought the animal Crouse had ridden only when he insisted. He didn’t need two, they said. They wanted to keep it. He tossed them a coin, watched them scrabble for it, and rode out. The thirty-mile ride back to Yuma took him well into the night. Frenchy was surprised to see him turn in at the rear of the livery.
“I didn’t think you’d bring them back so soon.”
“What did your boss say?”
“Don’t even know they were gone. He don’t come over here unless he’s got something to beef about. Spends his time at the poker tables.”
“Win?”
“Sometimes, and not happy when he does. He’s a compulsive loser.”
“So’s the captain I took out of here. Look,” Lassiter changed the subject. “Supposing you wanted to break a man out of the prison. You know all there is about that place, how would you work it?”
“I wouldn’t. You can’t win that game.”
“Yes you can. How would you try?”
“Forget it.” Frenchy shook his head hard. “Oh, I know you been busting out of jails from here to Canada. But not Yuma. Listen. The guards watch each other, squeal on the one that relaxes. So they don’t relax. And say you did make it out, where would you go? The desert is south. It will kill you if the dogs don’t run you down. The town is west and anybody here would grab you. The rivers are north and east … too wide to swim, and if you did, there’s Indians all along. They get a bounty on every escapee they bring back. Guess who’s side they’re on. Who do you want out? Parsons?”
“Why do you think that?”
“It was his woman asking about you. It figures. The one thing you’re silly about is women.”
“All right; Parsons.”
“He’s in solitary. You might fly him out through the air hole.”
“Or dig him out? Widen the air hole enough to lift him?”
Frenchy’s mouth opened, the scar pulling it sideways. He began to laugh, high with ridicule.
“Brother. That’s the one. That cave is down twenty, thirty feet below surface. It takes time to dig that far. The northern guard tower’s got a bead on anyone on that hill at any time.”
“All right, what else?”
“So you get rid of the guard and start digging. You got to be quiet or you’ll have people crawling over you and the Gatling gun spraying you like crazy. That’s a real wicked weapon, throws bullets worse than the biggest shotgun you ever heard of. You want to go up against all that for another man’s woman, pretty as she is?’’
“What kind of ground is it to dig in?’’
Frenchy sighed. “Hard. A mixture. Like chalk and clay and granite, and full of these damn pebbles, some little as your thumb nail, some big as your fist. Every time you stick a shovel down you hang up on the pebbles. I know. I must have dug fifty graves in that damned cemetery. It’s brutal. Forget it. Forget it.’’
“Thanks.”
Lassiter left the livery and headed for the rear of the hotel. His box was where he had left it. He went to the roof and tapped on Amelia’s window. She was there, welcoming him in the way that set him afire. All women roused him. Each was different, but this one had a way to dazzle him.
He carried her to the bed, took the long pleasure of undressing her, took the longtime of caressing, of love play. This night might have to last him a long while. If his plan fell apart.
He made it last. Had the full of it. When it was done she settled back, eyes closed, smiling, her tongue around her lips savoring her love sweat. When her breathing was even again, she reached for his hand, pressed it.
“I was afraid you’d left Yuma for good.”
He kissed her ear. “I had a little business.”
“The strangest thing happened today. Captain Crouse disappeared.”
“The hell.” He sounded surprised.
“His bed had been slept in, the lamp was still burning when the maid went in, but no one has seen him all day.”
“Maybe he went over to the fort.”
“The ferry man says no. The liveryman says he didn’t get a horse. There aren’t too many places in Yuma for a man to be.”
Lassiter sounded indifferent. “What do you care?”
“I don’t, really. Just curiosity from boredom, sitting around the hotel.”
“How long are you going to stay in Yuma?”
She opened her eyes wide, turned her head to him. “I haven’t any place to go, not with Parsons in prison, not unless I want to go back to my husband, which I don’t.”
“Maybe I can get Parsons out.”
She moved like a pouncing cat, sat up, caught his shoulders, dug her nails into them.
“You’ll try? You think you can?”
“Possible. Maybe. With an assist from you.”
“What? Anything. Tell me.”
“First, you’re not to breathe a hint of it to anybody.” He told her the project, to ream out the air hole, pull the gambler up through it. “The first thing is to get word to Parsons, alert him to be ready. You’ll have to do that.”
“Go on.”
“In the morning hunt up Sidney Blood, say you’ve thought over his deal, you’re marooned here and desperate, you need Parsons free. Say you’re ready to work on Parsons to agree to help trap me. Blood will get you in to see him.”
“And what do I tell Blood after I’ve been to the prison?”
“That Parsons refuses the offer. Won’t help Blood.”
Her breath was shallow. “It sounds dangerous. I hear the place is horrible.”
She reached for him, trembling, but not with fright.
Apparently, like himself, she reacted to danger with a surging need for sex.
Amelia Huitt was born Emily Kelly in one of the poorer districts of New Orleans. From first memory she fought to escape the misery of poverty. At sixteen she trapped Albert Huitt into marriage, said she was pregnant. Huitt was rich, but life on the plantation bored her as prison would. Then she found the chance to run off with Parsons. But a gambler’s woman on the Colorado steamships was as bored as a plantation wife. The living area was prison small, the contacts brief, unexciting. While Parsons played cards, she dreamed of another escape, of finding a source of money to take her to Europe, to the sparkling life there.
She had one weapon, one tool. A knowledge of men and how to please and how to manipulate them. She rose in the morning thinking of Lassiter. He was a man to match her. But instinct told her he could not be held. Even by her. She would not try. She would content herself with what came through using him.
Wearing her best dress, she moved into the day looking for Blood. She found him in the sheriff’s office at the courthouse, made her appeal direct, in apparent artless honesty.
“Please, may I talk to you alone?”
By nature Sidney Blood was full bodied, with strong appetite for women himself. By training, he was squeezed into suspicion of them, a law man. He watched all his flanks, exposed himself to no one. This woman, this lady, he saw as temptation. In reaction he shied from her closeness, put a distance between them while he walked her down the empty hall.
There at the steps she stopped, used a deep sigh. “I can’t stay in Yuma alone much longer, and I can’t leave while Parsons is in prison …”
Blood’s eyes lighted. “So?”
“About your offer … I’ve decided. I will try to talk him into helping you with Lassiter.”
Blood almost kissed her. He did take her elbow, walked her up the bluff to the prison gate, and sent for the warden.
The warden didn’t like it. Visitors were not allowed to see prisoners in the solitary cell. But the power of Wells Fargo was greater than that of any Territorial official, and Blood called it up. Reluctantly, he led them across the exercise yard, past the rows of cell blocks to the grilled door of the long passage. The guard there opened the heavy lock. The warden bowed in apology.
“Ma’am, I’m afraid the only way you can go in is to crawl.”
She had been repelled by the rows of bearded, hungry eyed faces, men who had not seen a woman for months or years. She thought she could smell the animal attention she created. The low passage was abhorrent, even though they gave her a lantern. The idea of vermin within it gagged her. Only strong purpose made her lift her dress, kneel and go forward on hands and knees.
The room at the end was igloo shaped, the natural rock roof arched. At its apex a man could barely stand erect. Parsons could not stand. A ring bolt driven deep in the rock wall held a short leg chain. It was cuffed around his ankle. He squinted against the lantern light.
“Who is it?’’ The voice was rusty.
“Amelia.’’ She opened her dress, offered the sandwiches she had hidden there. “I brought you food.”
His hands clawed out for it. “Why …? Why are you here?”
She sat close to him, ignoring the smell. She talked low, explaining. “Tonight, tonight,” she emphasized it. “Lassiter will come for you tonight.”
The gambler wolfed the bread and meat, the first food he had had in over a week. He talked as he chewed.
“I haven’t the strength to climb up, the bastards.”
“He’ll pull you out.”
“Why would he take the chance?”
“Because you saved his life.”
Parsons hardly believed it. Not from the man he had sized up on the boat. But weakness convinced him against good judgment.
“I’ll be waiting. All I want is to get out of here and find that lying Crouse.”
It was what she wanted to hear. She sounded indignant. “I don’t blame you. He ought to be killed.”
“He will be.” Even weak, the voice was grim.
“He’s worse than you know. He’s been after me ever since you’ve been in here. He thinks I’m fair game now.”
Parsons interrupted his eating, reached for her hand. “Poor Amelia,” he said. “Poor Amelia. Never mind, we’ll find him.”