Bullet for a Half-Breed

Lightning flashed in the windows, illuminating Rathbone’s wafting cigar smoke so that it glowed like cobwebs in reflected sunlight. A moment of silence, like a held breath. Then thunder echoed like the gods flinging boulders across a canyon high in the Coronados.

The naked sheriff sat back against the headboard of his bed in the Stockmen’s House Hotel, and stared across the room, through the billowing smoke, to where Rae Roman stood before his dresser, clad in only a gauzy wrap and silk slippers as she ran a tortoiseshell brush through her hair. She was illuminated by the violet bracket lamps on the wall before her, silhouetting her curvaceous body deliciously. The shaded sides of her heavy breasts bulged out darkly, delightfully.

Rathbone felt a tightness in his chest, a thickness in his throat. He could never get enough of this woman. Every minute, every hour with her only made him want more, more, more. Thank God she’d been able to convince him she’d had nothing to do with that dummy strongbox, that that had been her father’s and the Sand Creek manager’s planning, and she hadn’t known about it until long after Rathbone and his men had ridden out after it. The Sand Creek manager had wanted the secret kept between himself and Delbert Roman, with not even Rae or Elmwood, the loan officer, knowing.

Thank God she hadn’t crossed him as he still found himself fearing she had or might still. He’d have killed her and missed out on tonight, tomorrow night, and all the nights hereafter. ...

“The night is young. And, like you said, the old man’s in a poker game.” Holding the stogie in one hand, Rathbone rose from the bed and walked toward her. “Take my word for it, having been in on those stud marathons of his myself, he’ll be there till breakfast.”

Rae stared at herself in the mirror, the luminous dark eyes, the full breasts that the wrap did not so much conceal as accentuate and make all the more inviting. She’d always been proud of her breasts, and in spite of the disgusted looks she customarily gave the men she found stealing peeks at them even with their wives present, or outright ogling them as though they were freshly polished, melon-sized pearls, she’d always basked in the attention. And it wasn’t just the attention she savored. Her body had always given her a certain sense of security, knowing that in the world of lustful men, no matter how poor she got, or downtrodden, or how desperate to leave this godforsaken hellhole, she could always rely on her figure to dig her out.

As long as she had it, that is. As long as she had her relative youth. Neither would last forever. And she saw what became of women who’d weathered on past their prime.

She had to use her natural endowments now to her best advantage, and set herself up for the rest of her life, for the days when her face grew wrinkled and leathery, her belly bulged to an unfashionable degree, and her breasts sagged like half-filled bladder flasks.

His hands groped her not altogether unpleasingly, and she tilted her head away from his, watching his hands in the mirror. “Later, Frank. After you’ve ordered up a couple of steaks from the kitchen.”

He snorted in frustration as he nibbled her ear, the nibbles growing smaller until he gave her lobe a little, last tug, his mustache scratching against her ear and neck. “All right, all right.”

He looked at her over her shoulder in the mirror and lowered his hands to her hips. “But first, before the T-bones—when’re you and the old man gonna get another stage up and running? More importantly, when’re you gonna get another one up and running and hauling another strongbox? I assume the Sand Creek boys done picked up the one the old bastard had hauled in here by Arnold McGinnis’s bull train.”

She raised her arms to gently shove his away from her, and resumed brushing her brown hair out in the mirror, lifting a shine that the lamplight caused to glisten. She waited till a loud clap of thunder had passed, then said primly, “Well, you’re wrong in your assumptions, my dear Frank.”

What a simpleton he was. She’d known all along, having eavesdropped on her father’s conversation with the Sand Creek manager, that the stage would be carrying a dummy box and that McGinnis’s outfit would be hauling it. She’d simply wanted Rathbone to go after the stage in hopes that the savage Yakima Henry would kill him or that he would kill Yakima Henry. She needed both men out of her way. In the meantime, she’d sent a couple of professional gunmen after the bull train, but, not knowing the country, the fools had gotten lost and missed the train altogether.

So, now she needed Rathbone again to help her get the money out of the bank. When he’d done that, and turned over her cut, she’d have him killed and then take his cut, as well. What she was going to do with the other two men she had in her employ and who were still hanging around town, awaiting her orders, she had no idea. She’d think of something. If she were a man who was good with a gun, she’d simply kill them.

Sometimes she really hated being female. At least the limitation had caused her to hone her wits as well as her wiles to a razor’s edge, and she’d benefited from that as well as been distracted from the tawdriness of this ramshackle, backwater town.

“All this rain has likely flooded the river that runs between here and Red Hill, and the Sand Creek manager hasn’t been able to get a contingent of armed men through to pick it up. We’ll likely have a couple of days or until the rains let up and the flood waters recede.”

“I already told you I don’t.” Rae put some steel into her voice. Her father hadn’t given the combination to her, but only to the loan officer, because the combination was changed every two weeks and he didn’t want her “pretty head cluttered up with such nonsense.” She’d always wondered if it was because deep down he really didn’t trust her.

“Ronald Elmwood has the combination,” Rae continued, speaking softly now beneath the clattering storm. “Today is what—Friday? I say Monday morning you and your men meet Ronald at the bank. He’s always the first one there, sometimes as early as seven o’clock.”

She set her brush down and placed her hand against his face, continuing to stare at his mirror image gravely, darkly, with a pasteboard smile stretching her lips. “Rest assured that if you try to double-cross me, Frank, I’ll have you hunted and killed like the rabid cur you are. There’ll be nowhere for you to hide.”

She dug her long fingernails into his cheek and made a rasping sound as she raked his beard stubble. “It might take me months, or even a few years. But you’d better plan on keeping a careful watch over your shoulder while you’re spending our money, because eventually you’ll pay dearly for every penny you stole from me!”

Rathbone smiled, then ran his hands up her sides and slid them forward to brusquely grab her breasts. He kneaded them hard and nuzzled her neck so roughly, raking her unblemished skin with his mustache, that she gave an indignant yelp.

The next morning, Rathbone and his deputies sat down to a breakfast of steak and eggs in the dining room of the Stockmen’s Hotel. Quietly, when the waitress was out of hearing in the kitchen—only two other tables were occupied, as Saturday mornings at the hotel as in all of Red Hill were usually sedate—the sheriff informed Stall and Silver of the plan for Monday morning.

“Any packing you need to do, any last-minute business, needs to be taken care of this weekend. Once we’re out of town with the money, we’re out of town for good.”

Silver shoved the last bit of egg into his mouth and sat back in his chair, frowning across the table at Rathbone. “How do you know that horse money’s still in the bank, boss?”

“I figure they won’t be in till the river’s gone down,” the sheriff added, swabbing the steak grease from his plate with a thick wedge of toast.

“If we run out, folks’re gonna know who stole the loot,” Stall said. “They’ll put it together right quick. Maybe we best just kill ole Elmwood as planned, then stash the loot like we done with the rest of it, and wait for the dust to settle. Then we can say we all done got an offer for better jobs up north or down south, and light a shuck without nobody the wiser. If we play it like you said, boss, we’re likely to have a posse on our asses.”

He intended to kill Stall and Silver and then head off to St. Louis with the loot. He’d wait for Rae there, and split the money with her. He wouldn’t double-cross her as he’d once intended. Not that any sense of honor restrained him. It was the woman herself. That body had gotten under his skin. Maybe more than that. God, he hoped not, but he was beginning to wonder if his hatred for her coupled with his animal cravings had somehow transmogrified into a weird, perverted form of love.

After her father had been ruined—the lost coach along with the stolen Sand Creek money would likely be the straw that finally broke Roman’s back—Rae would pull out and join Rathbone in St. Louis, where they’d both change their names in case anyone put them together with the stolen loot, and make their way farther east, where’d they live like king and queen. He’d have preferred California, but, hell, he wasn’t picky.

If Rae wanted to go East, they’d go East. As Mr. and Mrs. Rasmussen, Rathbone thought. He liked the ring of that. That had been his mother’s maiden name. Seemed only fitting. Frederick and Racine Rasmussen.

Rathbone grinned behind the coffee mug he held high before his face. “You two just leave the thinkin’ to me,” he scolded. “I’ve done right by you so far, ain’t I?”

Stall and Silver looked at him uncertainly. Something about that didn’t sound right to the big deputy, but he had more important things on his mind.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, my friend.” Rathbone swallowed a mouthful of lukewarm coffee and set his cup down with a sigh. “Just make sure there’re no witnesses. I don’t want anything, not even the score you got with the breed, to interfere with our plans for Monday morning.”