CHAPTER 19

Slash felt something warm against the side of his neck. A warm breath.

He chuckled in his sleep, dreaming that he was in a warm doxie’s cozy bed. “That tickles, darlin’.”

There was a soft snorting sound.

“Go back to sleep, darlin’. Slash is too sleepy to play.”

Something cold and rubbery touched his neck. That woke him, his eyes snapping wide, remembering instantly that he was not in a whorehouse but on the step of Carlisle’s in Dry Fork. He turned to his right . . . and stared into two cinnamon-colored eyes set close together atop a long, gray, black-tipped snout.

The coyote’s pupils contracted. The bristled lips rose above sharp white teeth, including two impressive fangs.

Slash jerked his head back and gave a shrill yell that he was immediately embarrassed by. It sounded womanish—girlish—even to his own ears.

“I ain’t dead, you smelly, mangy, louse-infested vermin!”

The coyote yipped with its own start, lunged backward, twisted around in a blur of quick motion, and leaped down off Carlisle’s steps and into the street. It bolted off to the east so fast as to resemble a large gray bullet, quickly disappearing in the murky gloom of a soaking wet dawn.

Slash had been so startled by the nosy beast that he’d dropped his rifle, which he’d been holding across his thighs when he’d drifted into his nap maybe an hour or so ago. Now he bent to pick it up from a step below him, wincing as his stiff, old spine grieved him. It felt as though it would snap like dry kindling. This cold, wet weather didn’t set well in an old man’s bones.

“What’s the matter, you old devil?” called one of the prisoners in the jail wagon. “That coyote think you was dead? Well, you’re gonna be dead. You’re gonna pay for makin’ us stay out here all night without even a blanket and no tendin’ for our wounds. That wasn’t the only coyote on the prowl last night. A good half-dozen of ’em circled this wagon several times, sniffin’ an’ snortin’ an’ growlin’ through the bars!”

“Stop your caterwaulin’, Chaney,” Slash said, using his rifle as a cane with which to help hoist him to his feet.

Behind him, a floorboard squawked, and Pecos said, “You all right, boss?”

“I’m all right,” Slash said with a groan, planting a hand on his hip and leaning backward to stretch his spine. “Who screamed?”

“Never mind.” Pecos snorted.

“Coyote thought I was one of the dead citizens of Dry Fork,” Slash said. “You’d scream like a girl in pigtails, too, if you woke to see a coyote eyein’ you like breakfast.” He grimaced, shaking his head. “Foul-smelling breath, too! Nasty!”

“They probably been suppin’ on the town overnight.”

“Yeah, I heard ’em.”

“Come on in for a cup of coffee. I got a pot brewin’. Then I reckon we’d best hitch the horses to the wagon and start south.” Pecos turned and walked back into the saloon.

Slash turned to the wagon. In the misty gray light he could see the three prisoners sitting on the wagon’s near side, glaring at him like hungry zoo animals.

“I’ll be in shortly,” Slash yelled to Pecos. He moved down off the steps and started walking toward the wagon. “I’m gonna have me a little talk with the clientele.”

“Just don’t cheat the hangman!” Pecos yelled back at him.

“I know, I know,” Slash said, striding toward the wagon, his rifle on his shoulder. “Hangmen gotta eat, too.”

“So do federal prisoners,” Hell-Raisin’ Frank Beecher said. He sat to the right of Talon Chaney, who sat between Beecher and Black Pot. “I believe you overlooked supper last night. How ’bout some breakfast?”

“Yeah, how ’bout breakfast, you old toad!” said Black Pot, shoving his face into a gap between the bars. He had his hands wrapped taught around two of the iron bands.

Slash jerked his rifle down off his shoulder and rammed the butt against Black Pot’s left-hand fingers. “Owww!” the half-breed yowled, jerking both hands back and clutching the injured one in the healthy one.

“That there’s what I came out here to talk to you about,” Slash said, glancing from Black Pot to Chaney and Beecher, who both wisely removed their hands from the cage’s iron bands.

The three looked like a trio of half-drowned rats. Their clothes were still wet from the downpour. Their hair was only starting to dry. Blood shone through the bandages wrapped around Beecher and Chaney’s leg wounds. They were tired, hungry, miserable, and madder than the proverbial old wet hen.

“What’d you come out here to talk to us about?” Chaney asked through a searing glare. “Breakfast? I’ll have four eggs over easy, a pile of bacon, a mess of fried potatoes with onions, and six buckwheat cakes!”

“You’ll get breakfast,” Slash said. “A meager one. But you’ll get breakfast . . . as long as you’re nice. You understand?”

“As long as we’re nice?” Beecher laughed his effeminate laugh. “We’re outlaws, you old coyote. You’re taking us to Denver to hang us. How can you expect us to be nice?” He laughed through his teeth and slid his lunatic-bright eyes to his two compatriots to his left.

“Because if you ain’t nice, you won’t be fed. You won’t get your slop bucket emptied, neither.” Slash looked at the wooden pale in the wagon’s far corner. “Now, see here,” the old ex-cutthroat added, “I want you to be on especially good behavior when that young schoolteacher comes out here.”

“What young schoolteacher?” Chaney sneered.

Slash glared back at him, suppressing the fire of rage burning behind his heart. “The one you so badly abused.” He drew adeep, calming breath. “But, then, you abused so many, you probably don’t remember.”

Beecher turned to Chaney and snickered through his teeth.

Chaney grinned.

Black Pot snorted.

“Now, she’s gonna be ridin’ along with us, see? In the wagon here.” Slash canted his head to the driver’s seat.

“Who?” Black Pot said, still holding his injured hand. “The teacher is?”

“That’s right. She wants to go to Denver. So we’re gonna take her there.”

Beecher grinned and whistled, rubbing his hands together.

Slash switched his gaze to the effeminate hell-raiser. “If any of you says anything off-color to her, or even looks at her in a way I don’t like, or does anything in general that I think might remotely offend her, I’m gonna . . .”

Slash switched his rifle to his left hand. Fast as lightning, he drew his right-side Colt, aimed, and fired between the bars. The blast thundered around the town, echoes ringing off the jail wagon’s bars.

Beecher slapped his hand to his left ear, eyes wide with shock. Blood dribbled down from beneath the hand clamped to that side of his head.

“What the hell . . . ?” said Black Pot.

Both he and Chaney turned to Beecher.

“Did he shoot you, Beech?” Chaney asked him.

“Yes, he shot me!” Beecher glared in enraged exasperation at Slash, who smiled at him through the smoke curling up from his Colt’s barrel. “He shot my ear!” He looked at Chaney and removed his hand from his ear. “Take a look!”

Chaney looked at Beecher’s ear. “Damn, he shot your earlobe right off!”

“The whole damn thing?” asked Beecher.

“Most of it. All you got left is a bloody little nub!”

Black Pot stared at what was left of Beecher’s ear in hang-jawed awe.

Beecher covered the ear with his hand again and bent forward at the waist. “Damn, that burns!” He looked at Slash. Rage flared again in his eyes.

He opened his mouth to speak but closed it when Slash cocked the Colt again and said, “Consider very carefully what you say next, Frank.”

He aimed at Beecher’s other ear.

Beecher just glared at him. The outlaw’s eyes appeared ready to leap out of their sockets. All three prisoners glared at Slash, but they kept their mouths shut.

“We understand each other now?” Slash asked. “You’re not gonna say a word to the teacher, understand? No leers or lewd gestures or anything even close.” He paused and looked at Beecher again. “Right, Frank?”

Beecher just glared at him, his chest rising and falling heavily as he breathed.

Slash put some steel in his voice as he said again while aiming down his Colt’s barrel, “Right, Frank?”

Beecher flinched, glanced away. “All right, all right . . . yes, yes. Butter won’t melt in my mouth.”

Slash switched his gaze as he aimed the Colt’s barrel at Talon Chaney. “Right, Chaney?”

Chaney held Slash’s gaze for about five seconds before he said, “All right, all right.”

Slash slid his gaze, as well as the Colt, to Black Pot. “Right?”

“Sure, sure. If you say so, you old—”

Slash squeezed the Colt’s trigger.

Black Pot leaped nearly a foot up off the wagon’s floor as Slash’s bullet ricocheted off a bar in front of the half-breed, then echoed off one to his left and then off another band at the front of the cage, behind Beecher and Chaney, who lowered their heads and clamped their hands over their ears.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” Black Pot wailed. “For the love o’ God!”

“Christ Almighty!” Chaney exclaimed, staring at Slash as though at some savage beast of the wild. “You ain’t even half-right in the head!”

“No, I’m not.” Slash holstered his Colt. “You remember that. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .” He swung around and began heading back toward the saloon. “I’m going to go enjoy that first cup of morning coffee.”

“Don’t forget our breakfast!” Chaney shouted behind him.

Slash stopped, half turned, and glared back at the man. He draped his right hand over his Colt.

Chaney flushed, winced. “Please.”

Slash smiled and continued to Carlisle’s. He climbed the porch steps and stopped. Jenny Claymore stood just outside the batwings, holding a stone mug of steaming black coffee. She gave Slash a coyote smile, glancing at the jail wagon and then shifting her gaze back to Slash again.

“Here you go,” she said.

“For me?”

“For you.”

Slash smiled as he accepted the cup. “Why, thank you, Jenny.”

She moved up close to him, rose onto her toes, and pressed her lips to his cheek. “Anytime.”

Slash flushed and moved on into the saloon, where Pecos sat drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. “You know what, Pecos?” Slash pressed his hand to the warm, moist spot Jenny’s lips had left on his cheek, and said, “I don’t think this is gonna be such a hard trip, after all.”

Pecos glanced at Jenny moving into the saloon behind Slash, and laughed.

Jenny continued walking on down the bar to a door at the rear, to the left of the stairs. “I’ll have breakfast out in five minutes,” she said.

Slash frowned at her retreating back, then sniffed the air. “Is that . . . bacon?” he asked Pecos.

“It is, indeed. She found some bacon and eggs, an’ she’s even makin’ biscuits.”

“I’ll be damned. I didn’t know schoolteachers could cook.” Slash sat down in his chair. “I guess I thought that was why they became schoolteachers.”

“Shows how much you know about the world, Slash,” Pecos said, taking a deep drag off his quirley.

“Don’t start in on me,” Slash said. “Besides, you’re just jealous, knowin’ I’m likely the only one of us who’s gonna get kissed by a purty girl today.”

Boots thudded on the stairs. Slash and Pecos turned to see the young town marshal, Glenn Larsen, dropping slowly toward them. Larsen appeared to be moving considerably better this morning. He was dressed in clean duds, as well—a white shirt buttoned to the collar, and blue denim trousers that were just a tad too short in the legs. He wore brown boots, suspenders, and a dark brown, bullet-shaped, round-brimmed hat.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Pecos said. “Look at that.”

Slash said, “Good mornin’, young marshal. I see you survived the night. Look some better, to boot. Even found some clothes that almost fit you.”

“A sheepherder kept a room here and a set of fresh clothes. These are his. He’s a little shorter in the legs than I am, but they’ll do. I’ll shop for new ones in Denver.”

Slash and Pecos shared a curious look.

“Denver?” Pecos asked.

“Yes, Denver.” Larsen came to the bottom of the stairs and stopped. With one hand on the newel post, he cast Slash and Pecos a hard, determined look and said, “I’ll be riding with you. I want to make damned good and sure those three devils make it to Denver and swing for what they did here. For what they did to my wife.”

Pecos glanced at Slash, then grabbed a mug off the bar and filled it with coffee. Turning to the young marshal, he said, “Mud? It ain’t very good, but it’s black.”