CHAPTER 13
When he first saw the sun shining off the brass maw of that Gatling gun perched in the car’s open doorway, flanked by three black-clad federals, Slash’s heart bucked like a wild bronc in his chest.
“Holy cow!” Pecos bellowed.
He and Slash hit the ground as though their legs suddenly evaporated.
At the same time, the Gatling gun roared with a caterwauling cry of RAT-A-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
The .45-caliber bullets screamed over the two cowering cutthroats’ heads, drumming into the slope behind them, a few screaming even louder as they glanced off rocks. Lying belly down against the ground, his cheek grinding on a knobby rock, Slash glared at Pecos, who lay staring back at him, gritting his teeth as the hot lead stormed over their heads, a few cratering the ground just off the heels of their toe-down boots.
When the gun’s witchlike cries died, Slash said, “You plug-headed polecat!”
He lifted his head but slammed it back down again when he heard the Gatling gun’s birdlike chirp as it dropped on its swivel, and then another deafening caterwauling broke out. Ten or so more rounds drilled into the ground in front of Slash’s and Pecos’s heads, between them and the Wells Fargo car.
When the gun’s screech died again suddenly, leaving only a high-pitched ringing in Slash’s ears, he looked over to see Pecos’s lips move. He couldn’t hear what his partner said above the ringing in his own ears, but he could read Pecos’s lips. What he said wasn’t something Slash would repeat to his grandchildren, if he lived to have grandchildren one day, which at the moment seemed doubtful.
Slash kept his cheek down against the knobby rock, but when the Gatling did not speak again and no bullets tore into his flesh, he lifted his head and cast a dubious glance into the express car where the three federals crouched, grinning through the wafting powder smoke. The deputy who’d been firing the Gatling gun straightened slightly, removed the long black cigar from between his teeth, and added a long plume to the powder smoke.
“Toss away your weapons!” he barked, flexing his black-gloved right hand threateningly around the Gatling’s wooden handle.
Slash looked at the man’s dark eyes. He looked at the Gatling gun from the maw of which thick smoke curled. The other two federals had raised rifles, and they cocked them loudly now, raised them to their shoulders, and angled the barrels down toward the prone cutthroats.
Slash could feel at least one bead being drawn on his forehead.
He looked at Pecos, who returned the look with a constipated one of his own.
“Ah, hell!” Defeat burned inside Slash. He reflected briefly on growing old in the federal pen but was mildly comforted by the notion he’d probably hang. He just hoped they calculated the drop right, so he didn’t dangle too long, dancing while the crowd roared, the dogs barked, and the children beat his legs with sticks.
He considered drawing his Colt, ending it all right here. But that was too much like suicide. Suicide was a coward’s way out. Slash was no coward. He’d face what he had to face, a necktie party if that’s what was in the cards he’d been dealt, and shake hands with that fork-tailed old demon, Scratch, afterward . . .
Giving a ragged sigh, he unsnapped the keeper thong from over his right-side Colt, shucked the weapon, and tossed it out away from him. When he’d tossed away his second Colt and his bowie knife, and Pecos had tossed away his Russian .44, his sawed-off shotgun, and Colt revolving rifle, the cigar-smoking federal said, “The rest!”
Slash and Pecos shared another dark glance, rolling their eyes. They sat up and dug into their boot wells for their hideout pistols, and tossed those away, as well.
“That it?” asked the cigar-smoking federal.
“Yep,” said Slash.
“Don’t worry—we’ll be checking every nook and cranny,” the federal barked back at him.
“I don’t know, partner,” Pecos said. “He sounds awfully eager to check our nooks and crannies.”
“Shut up!” the federal admonished above the chuckles of the two other deputies. “You’ll get a rifle butt to the head for every other hideout we find!”
“Oh, go to hell!” Slash said.
Apparently finding the tolerance to ignore the admonition, the federal said, “Get up! Try to run, and I’ll cut you in two!”
Grunting and cursing and spitting sand and weed seeds from his lips, Slash heaved himself to his feet. Pecos must have bruised his knee when he’d hit the ground; he was having trouble getting up. Slash gave him a hand, and the two stood facing the three federals—the two with rifles, the cigar-smoking devil on one knee behind the Gatling gun, daintily flicking ashes from his cigar.
All three were chuckling in delight at the two middle-aged cutthroats before them—two rarely seen wildcats they and many others had been hunting for years with no success.
Here they were before them now.
Slash felt like a caged circus animal, and he wasn’t even in a cage yet.
He gazed back at the three deputy U.S. marshals and shook his head in deep befuddlement. “How . . . ?” he tried. “How in the hell did you know . . . ?”
He let the question dissolve on his lips when he heard a click and turned to see the rear door of the coach car open onto its brass-railed vestibule. A nattily attired, grinning man in a wheelchair was rolled out through the open door and onto the car’s outer platform. He was pale and clean-shaven, vaguely skeletal in appearance, with cobalt eyes set in deep sockets. Cottony hair poked out from beneath the brim of his bullet-crowned black hat.
Slash heard Pecos draw air sharply through his teeth. Or maybe it was his own startled intake he’d heard above the bells of disbelief tolling in his ears. Again, his own heart kicked him, like a young colt’s hoof, as he saw that the person rolling Chief Marshal Luther T. “Bleed-’Em-So” Bledsoe out onto the vestibule was none other than Jaycee Breckenridge.
“Jay?” Pecos grunted, jerking his head back with a start.
He glanced at Slash, who blinked his eyes as if to clear them. When that didn’t work, he used his thumb and index finger.
Still, it was Jay standing there behind Chief Marshal Bledsoe, standing out on the vestibule now, the sunlight glowing richly in her copper hair that hung to her shoulders in thick, curly waves. She wore a rich green traveling gown, low-cut and trimmed with white lace at the full bodice and sleeves. Her cleavage was shaded, like the mouth of a deep canyon at dusk. Around her neck was a double strand of luminous white pearls.
Christ, even pearl earrings dangled from her ears!
Slash could smell the intoxicating fragrance she wore—the sweet scent of ripe raspberries cut with sage.
“Hidy, boys!” Bledsoe called, spreading his thin lips in a grin that revealed nearly all of his oversized, false teeth. He held a sawed-off, double-barreled greener across the arms of his chair. His right thumb was caressing one of the rabbit-ear hammers. “Been a long time! I don’t know that we’ve ever been formally introduced. But I’m sure we all know who each other is, don’t we? Oh, and I reckon Miss Breckenridge here needs no introduction—does she, boys?”
He looked over his left shoulder at Jaycee standing over him, behind him, then turned forward to see the expressions on Slash’s and Pecos’s faces. Suddenly, he broke into hysterical laughter.
Pecos was almost unable to get the words out. “J-Jay? Jay . . . wh-what the hell?”
“Why, Jay?” Slash said, shaking his head with a keen incomprehension.
Jay gazed back at them through tear-glazed eyes. Her upper lip quivered.
Pecos stepped forward, thrusting his arm up and pointing an accusing finger at her. “You double-crossed us, Jay!” he bellowed. “Why?”
Bledsoe slapped his thigh and rocked with laughter.
Jay lowered her gaze to her tightly entwined fingers, tears streaming down her cheeks. She lifted her gaze again to Slash and Pecos.
“I’m sorry, Slash,” she said, sobbing, her face a mask of grief and bitter regret. “Pecos, I’m sorry!”
She wheeled, her hair and her long skirt flying, and ran back into the private car.
Slash and Pecos shared another befuddled look.
“I don’t get it,” Pecos said, shaking his head. “I just don’t get it.”
“Me, neither,” Slash said, and turned his enraged gaze to Bledsoe, who sat laughing in his chair on the private car’s fancy vestibule.
Through his laughter he managed to order his deputies to cuff and shackle their prisoners, adding to Slash and Pecos after he’d sobered somewhat, “We’ll be heading on down to Saguache, boys. Got a little party for you. One of the necktie variety. Oh, of course there’ll be a trial an’ all beforehand. A fair one, of course. A federal judge is on his way down here from Denver even as we speak.”
The chief marshal widened his eyes demonically and jutted his chin like a cocked .45. “Then we’re gonna hang you on the main drag, in front of the whole town. In fact, the good citizens of Saguache are already preparing for the festivities!”
That made him rock back in his chair and howl once more, slapping the arms of his chair.
As two deputies dropped down out of the express car, each with a pair of handcuffs and spancels, the cigar-smoking deputy remained behind the Gatling gun, narrowing one eye as he aimed down the brass canister at the two cutthroats, grinning as though daring them to resist arrest.
Slash returned his incredulous gaze to the broadly, victoriously grinning Bledsoe. He’d never seen a man look so pleased with himself. The crippled old marshal appeared about to leap up out of his chair, jump down from the train car, and hop around his two, long-sought prisoners, yowling like a crazed Injun on the night before a battle.
“How’d you do it?” Slash spit out at the old lawman. “How’d you get her to double-cross us? How’d you do it, Bledsoe?”
“Oh, it wasn’t so hard,” Bledsoe said, shrugging a shoulder. “She’s a woman, isn’t she?”
“Not just any woman,” Pecos said as his arms were jerked around behind his back and cuffs were closed over his wrists. “What’d you do? How’d you threaten her?”
Bledsoe merely sat back in his chair, smiling and taking the sun. “Load ’em up, boys,” he said, plucking a gold timepiece from a pocket of his brocade vest. “If we leave now we should be back to Saguache in time for a late lunch.” He returned the watch to its pocket and winked at Slash and Pecos. “The special over at the Colorado House is the prime rib sandwich and a boiler maker,” he said. “Not that that means anything to you two. You’ll be dinin’ on burned beans, moldy bread, and stale water till you’re dancin’ the midair two-step!”
He closed a knobby hand around his neck and stuck out his tongue, feigning strangulation.
Then he slapped his leg and howled again.
“Hurry up, dammit, boys!” he urged the two deputies. “Get ’em aboard and let’s get this heap back to civilization. Success of this caliber makes the chief marshal hungry!”