Chapter 29
Catfish rode to the far front corner of the jailhouse, checked Jasper down, and extended his Colt straight out in front of him, aiming down the jailhouse’s north side. The man he’d just seen ran around the rear corner, disappearing for a second before he reappeared. At least his right hand reappeared. So did the revolver in that hand, aimed toward Catfish, who could see the man’s head now, as well as the front brim of a low-crowned black hat.
Catfish fired, blowing the hat off Juan Montana’s head a quarter second before the kid’s Colt spoke, flames lapping from the barrel, sending the bullet high and wide as the kid yelped and stumbled backward. He disappeared until Catfish gigged Jasper into a run down the side of the jailhouse. At the rear corner, he checked the horse down again and saw the kid on his butt, just then sitting up and reaching for the silver-chased Colt he’d dropped.
Catfish triggered another round into the ground an inch to the gun’s right, and the kid drew his hand back with another yelp, clutching it to his chest and staring down at it worriedly, likely counting his fingers. As he did, Catfish swung down from Jasper’s back, holstered his Colt, walked over, and slapped the kid’s young, handsome mug, first with the palm of his hand and then with the back of it.
“What a little tinhorn demon,” Catfish said. “What were you about to do—bust Skinny out of jail so you could take him out in the country and hang him?”
“It’s better than he deserves!”
“Were you gonna shoot the jailer I hired, too?”
The kid didn’t seem to know how to answer that. He let the question go, briefly looking sheepish, then glared up at Catfish and said, “He killed my sister. My own flesh and blood! He deserves to die! Raven deserves to be avenged!”
He let out a strangled sob, and his brown eyes glistened with emotion as he continued to glare up at Catfish.
“Look, kid,” Catfish said, moderating his tone and hooking his thumbs behind his cartridge belt, “I can’t let you do that. I know Skinny deserves rough justice, but I run things in this town. If you were to go in, shoot my jailer, and hang Skinny, you’d hang, too. Now, what would be the point of that?!”
“You don’t understand, lawman! He killed my sister! She was all I had in this world! Now she’s gone—because of him!”
“You don’t think I know what it’s like to lose somebody? Well, I do. I lost my entire family—Ma, Pa, two sisters, and an older brother to the Comanche up by Palo Duro Canyon, on our little shotgun spread. I was only seven years old. My ma sent me to hide in some shrubs, and from there, I watched the whole thing. Believe me, I saw every detail . . . remember every detail. I hear the screams of my family dang near every night, wake in a cold sweat dang near every night!”
Catfish paused, shook his head. “Don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone. Most do. You’ve just joined the party, kid. And don’t think I haven’t seen you skulkin’ around town, keepin’ an eye on me an’ Brazos, looking for your opportunity to bust into the jailhouse. I have just been too busy to slap you down about it. But now I am!”
He grabbed the kid’s gun, slid it behind his cartridge belt; then, using the young man’s collar, he jerked the kid to his feet.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doin’, you old scudder?”
“Chargin’ you.”
“For what?”
Catfish gave him a shove, sending him back around the jailhouse’s rear corner. “You took a shot at me, ya tinhorn! That’s the attempted murder of a lawman. And then you insulted me, to boot!”
Catfish gave the kid another shove, up along the side of the jailhouse. “Get your hands up!”
The kid did not comply, just kept walking straight ahead. He turned his head slightly to one side, stealing a look behind him. Catfish knew he was considering making a move on him. No sooner had the thought passed through Catfish’s brain than the kid, indeed, whipped around, eyes glittering devilishly in the lemony light of the sun just then clearing the Rawhides.
Catfish rammed his right fist across Montana’s left temple.
His prisoner grunted and dropped to a knee.
“That’ll get you even more time.” Catfish jerked him to his feet again, gave him a hard shove around the jailhouse’s front corner. “You’ll be spending plenty of time with Skinny, all right. Time right here until the judge comes—don’t rightly know what’s keeping old Hangin’ Hiram—and time aboard the judge’s jail wagon manned by two deputy U.S. marshals. You an’ Skinny will have plenty of time to palaver about your fates!”
“I’ll strangle him through the bars!”
“No, you won’t.” Catfish shoved him up the steps of the jailhouse’s front stoop. “It’s just that I’m startin’ to see more similarities than differences in your characters. A pair of young tinhorns who can’t mind your manners or your betters!”
Another hard shove sent Montana stumbling into the jailhouse; Catfish, tight on his heels, kicked the door shut behind him. Despite his rough tone, he felt sorry for the kid. He’d hold him for a few days, and when he thought Montana was no longer a threat, he’d let him go.
“What in holy blazes is goin’ on, Catfish!” exclaimed Harold Simmons, one of the two jailers Catfish and Brazos had hired to keep an eye on their prisoners while the two lawmen tried to get the lid back on the town. “Heard the shots, an’—”
“We have another prisoner, Harold. You can go on home now. Tell Miriam hello.” Miriam was the wife of the tall, elderly, stoop-shouldered gent wielding a double-barreled shotgun in front of Catfish’s desk.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
While Catfish shoved his prisoner toward the four cells lined up at the room’s rear—only two of which were now occupied, the other prisoners having paid their fines—Simmons set the shotgun on the desk, donned his hat, and headed for the door. Skinny glared through the bars of his cell on the far side of the block, and said, “Him! What’d you bring him here for? You know he wants me dead!”
The cell next to Skinny’s held two bearded prospectors; they’d gone head-to-head in a back alley over a claim dispute, with each man wielding a pickax. They stared incredulously through the bars at Catfish and his new prisoner. Neither had money to pay their ten-dollar fines, so Catfish was still considering what to do with them. Probably send them out to muck out livery barn stalls or to sweep out saloons for a few days. He just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
“Shut up or I’ll throw him in your cell and you two can work it out your ownselves,” Catfish shot back at the thin killer. “It’ll be cheap entertainment!”
“That would be just fine with me!” Montana barked over his shoulder at Catfish before casting an enraged look at Skinny.
Skinny blanched.
“Yes, I know it would; I know it would,” Catfish said, opening the door of the cell on the opposite side of the block from Skinny. “Gotta admit I wouldn’t mind seein’ that. Better’n he deserves.”
He shoved Montana into the cell and closed the door. He hung the ring of keys on a ceiling support post, then walked over to his desk and sagged into his chair. He gave a weary sigh and tossed his hat onto the desk, over the shotgun Simmons had left there.
He was blown out. Worn to death, felt like. But he had more to do, and he was on duty today, since Brazos was likely out for the day. Catfish wanted to check on Brazos, but first he had to stable Jasper. Then he wanted to go back over to the Lone Star Outpost and check on Miss Julia’s condition. His eyes were heavy, however. Blurry with weariness. Exhaustion weighed like an anvil on his shoulders.
He glanced at Montana, glaring through his cell bars toward Skinny, who’d slumped onto his cot, ignoring the brother of the girl he’d killed. The two prospectors, standing in their own cell between Montana and Skinny, looked apprehensive as all get-out, as though they feared they might get caught in a cross fire.
Catfish chuckled at that. He opened a desk drawer, pulled out the bottle, and splashed a liberal shot of whiskey into his cracked stone mug. He returned the bottle to the drawer, then got up and walked over to the stove sitting in the middle of the room. Simmons had left a pot of gurgling coffee on the warming rack. He filled the cup with the coffee and took a few bracing swallows. Then he retrieved his hat, hitched up his pants and cartridge belt, told his prisoners to behave themselves, and went out.
As he led Jasper over to the livery barn in which he lodged the mount, he went over all his problems, which included his continued taming of Wolfwater, once more. He needed to find the men who’d stomped the stuffing out of Brazos, the men who’d shot Julia, including her vile and obviously poison-mean Russian husband. He also needed to find the mysterious Black Taggart, who’d apparently decided to snuff Catfish’s wick once and for all.
Why?
Had he just ridden through town and seen that Catfish was back in commission? Maybe instead of letting Catfish get crossways with him for the back-shooting varmint having lodged a bullet up close to Catfish’s spine, he’d decided to rid his back trail of him. Maybe he was paranoid, believing Catfish was looking for him, and he was tired of having to look over his shoulder.
Whatever the reason, Catfish was going to take the man out before Taggart could take Catfish out. If he was still in the area, that was. Maybe after last night, he’d decided to hightail it once more.
Probably not. Since he’d come after Catfish again, Catfish had to assume he’d stay to finish the job. That meant he, Catfish, would have to keep looking over his shoulder. Though he would be suspicious, even if Black Taggart wasn’t after him—what, with all the hard cases looking to perforate his and Brazos’s hides for whatever reason.
Walking back over to the Lone Star in the full flush of morning, he felt chicken flesh rise across his back, up high between his shoulders. It was as though some witch had drawn a target on his back with a cold finger. He looked around carefully, his still-keen gaze scouring all nooks and crannies along both sides of the street from which a would-be assassin might be drawing a bead on him.
He stepped over the newly laid, silver rails glistening brightly in the morning sun, and cursed once against the coming of the iron horse as he took one more look around. Something moved on a rooftop behind him. He saw a hatted head—a gunman hunkered down up there, ready to trigger a shot!
Catfish gave a grunt as he unsnapped the keeper thong from over his .44 and jerked the revolver out of its holster. Crouching, spreading his feet for better balance, he raised the piece up toward the roof of O’Malley’s Gun Repair and started to tighten his right index finger on the trigger.
Just as suddenly, he drew his finger away from the trigger.
More of the hatted head had come into view. The head was moving, the man’s face in profile, as the man was working a crowbar up under a shake. Nails bristled from between Gabriel Montoya’s lips, beneath his flowing black mustache, as the man winced with effort as he jerked down on the crowbar’s handle. The shake leaped up, out of the roof, and Montoya grabbed it before it could slide down the steeply pitched roof.
Catfish lowered the Colt with a relieved sigh.
The Mexican roofer was repairing some shakes on the establishment’s roof.
Catfish’s heart, which had started racing the moment he’d seen the hat, now slowed. The beefy lawman looked around, feeling the blood of embarrassment rise in his fleshy face. Several passersby, including two men in business suits and bowler hats, were regarding him sheepishly. Two bosomy old hens in flowered dresses, shawls, and big picture hats—two ladies from Widow Kotzwinkle’s Women’s Sobriety League—were just then passing on the boardwalk fronting the gun repair shop, arm in arm, woven baskets hooked over their free arms, regarding Catfish with incredulous scowls on their bloated, deeply lined faces.
As they continued their stroll, one turned to the other, tipped her head back, and raised her fist, thumb extended toward her lipless mouth in a jeering pantomime of a man taking a drink. A big drink, which Catfish suddenly needed. They laughed, then stepped off the boardwalk, paused to let a farm wagon pass on the cross street, and continued walking in the direction of the haberdashery on the street’s other side.
Blood continuing to burn in Catfish’s cheeks, he quickly pouched his pistol, removed his hat, ran his arm across his forehead, then returned the topper to his head and continued across the consarned rails to the other side of the street.
Was he losing his nerve?
Well, heck, who wouldn’t get a little jumpy after all the lead that had been flung his way?
Silently cursing the judgmental, jeering SOB who lived in his head, he climbed the broad steps fronting the Lone Star Outpost, nodded to a couple of Julia’s beefy bouncers standing on the stoop, talking in their Irish accents, smoking fat cigars, and . . . what? Were they regarding him with mocking derision?
Never mind them!
He pushed through the heavy oak doors and, a minute later, stopped on the steps rising to the saloon/ brothel/gambling parlor’s third story as Doc Overholser suddenly appeared on the steps before him, black leather medical kit in his hand. He had a grim expression on his pale face, his lips set in a straight line beneath his carefully trimmed gray mustache.
“Doc . . . ?” Catfish said, squeezing the varnished wooden rail on the right side of the carpeted stairs.
“She’s alive,” the medico said. He wagged his head gravely. “I couldn’t get the bullet out. It’s too close to her heart.”
“Oh . . .”
The spare-framed doctor in his customary gray suit stopped on the riser just above Catfish. “She’s lost a lot of blood. She’s going to be weak for a good many days. I told Beth to try to get as much broth down her as she can. I’ll stop by again this evening.”
“Is she . . . gonna . . . ?”
The doctor, who’d started down the stairs again, stopped and glanced over his shoulder at the lawman. “Die? Only time will tell. She’s conscious. You can go up and have a word with her, but only for a minute. What she needs now is sleep and food.” The doctor’s scowl deepened. “Who on God’s green earth shot her? What was she doing out there?”
Catfish didn’t know what to say, except “Later, Doc.”
The doctor gave his head a single, slow wag, then continued down the stairs.
Heavy with worry, Catfish watched him cross the saloon’s main drinking hall, sparsely populated this early hour of the day, and push out through the doors and become absorbed by the West Texas sun’s lens-clear light.
Catfish gave the rail another frustrated squeeze, then continued on up the stairs and into the hall. He tapped lightly on the door.
“Who is it?” Beth Wilkes asked in her soft, low voice.
His hat in his hand, Catfish opened the door and poked his head into the room. “Me, honey.”
Beth was sitting in the chair drawn up close to the bed. A water basin sat on the table beside the bed. Beth was just then wringing out a cloth in the basin. Running the cloth gently across Julia’s forehead, she said, “Hello, Catfish.”
Julia’s open eyes regarded Catfish warmly, though there was the darkness of pain in them as well. Her mouth corners quirked up with an attempt at a smile, and she said even more softly than Beth, “Hello, Catfish. Come.” She blinked slowly and tried to quirk another smile. She slid a pale hand out from under the bedcovers to gesture at Beth. “Meet my nurse.”
Moving slowly into the room, Catfish regarded Beth and smiled.
He was surprised to see her not wearing the nightclothes of before. She wore what he assumed was one of Julia’s dresses—a lime-green affair trimmed with white lace. She wore a gold brooch around her neck, and her dark brown hair, which shone with a recent, thorough brushing, was pulled back in a queue and tied with a ribbon that matched the dress.
The young woman’s eyes were brighter than before, and she’d lost some of her deathly pallor. Her fingernails, formerly bitten to the nubs, were now touched with a healthy pink. Julia’s ill health had apparently distracted Beth from her own. She had a purpose, albeit a grim one, in nursing her benefactor back to health.
Catfish returned his gaze to Julia, who looked frighteningly pale as she rested her head back against the pillow and her own brown hair, which made a thick, lovely nest for it. She slid her right leg close to the left one beneath the heavy covers and gently patted the bed beside her.
“Come,” she said, “sit.”
“Ah . . . I don’t know if I should. Doc says you need your rest.”
Julia tried another smile. A bemused light shone in her eyes, briefly. “I need my friends more.” She glanced at Beth. “My only two in the world.”