Читать книгу A Good Day for a Massacre - William W. Johnstone - Страница 8

CHAPTER 3

Slash and Pecos chinned for a time about what to do with the dead men.

Slash wanted to drag them off the trail and bury them under a few rocks. They weren’t worth burying, but since they were men, albeit no-accounts to a man-jack of them, he supposed someone should make at least a little effort by way of laying them to rest.

Pecos, more tenderhearted than his lean, dark, and moody partner, wanted to deliver the dead men to the town marshal in Fort Collins. “I mean, they might have family in the area, Slash. Or family somewhere. If one of your kin met his demise, you’d want to know about it. You wouldn’t just want to have to think about it all the rest of your life, would you? To be left to imagine all the various nasty ways they might have met their ends? I mean, even if said kin had gotten exactly what they deserved . . .”

Pecos usually won such arguments. He won this one, as well. As hard and cynical as Slash was, he knew his partner was the better man. Besides, he always felt guiltily wicked when he found himself trying to argue with Pecos’s moral authority. He might have been a wicked man in other folks’ eyes, but he didn’t like feeling that way himself.

Also, he had an ulterior motive in caving in to his partner’s wishes so easily. There was a chance there was a bounty on the heads of one or all of these men. Slash figured this wasn’t their first holdup. If so, and if someone had put a reward on their heads—well, in this humbler life the two former cutthroats were now living on the right side of the law—he and Pecos could use all the extra cash they could get.

They loaded the dead men into the wagon, covered them with the canvas tarpaulin they’d used to cover their freight on the way into the mountains a couple of days ago, and vamoosed on up the trail. When they came to a broad, grassy area in some trees along Marmot Creek, they pulled off the trail and into the shade of the breeze-ruffled aspens and pines. They fed and watered the mules and built a fire over which they boiled coffee.

It was midday, after all. They had only a few hours of travel before they’d be home, and besides, they weren’t as young as they used to be—a fact so wickedly emphasized by the men now lying belly-up in the wagon.

Slash Braddock and the Pecos River Kid needed a break.

“How in the hell did you do that, Pecos?” Slash asked after he’d taken a sip of his piping-hot, oily black mud.

Pecos glanced at him from where he sprawled against a grain sack on the other side of the fire. “How did I do what?”

“You know—make your face go so pale and cause that sweat to pop out on your forehead. For a few seconds there, you had me goin’. I was afraid you really were having a heart stroke!”

“Truth be told,” Pecos said, taking a sip from his own, steaming cup, “for a few seconds there, I was worried I was, too!” He gave a sheepish chuckle, then took another sip of his coffee.

“What?”

“I wasn’t fakin’ it, Slash.” Pecos looked at him directly over the low, crackling flames. “At least, not at first. For some reason, when I tossed away my weapons and it was just you and me sittin’ up there, facin’ them four cutthroats who looked so damn eager to snuff our wicks, a strange feelin’ came over me. It was like I was suddenly runnin’ a powerful fever. My heart started poundin’ and bangin’ against my ribs. I felt like someone had shoved a dull, rusty knife in my guts. My back got so damn stiff, I felt I couldn’t move!”

He shook his head and stared off into space. “I can’t figure it, partner. You an’ me rode roughshod over thirty years. We faced lawmen an’ bounty hunters—some o’ the best on the whole damn frontier—an’ nothin’ like that ever happened to me before. Seems like . . . seems like lately . . . I been more aware of . . .”

He let his voice trail off, as though he were having trouble finding the right words. He turned to Slash and continued with, “I don’t know . . . I guess lately I just been more aware of the sand in the ole hourglass. You know? Been . . . well, I been thinkin’ about . . . you know . . . the end. Kinda scares me a little. You know?”

“Yeah.” Slash nodded as he stared into the dancing flames. “I know.”

“You, too?”

Slash looked at Pecos. “Yeah. Me, too.” He sipped his coffee, sighed, and thumbed his hat back off his forehead. “That young juniper’s crazy eyes sort o’ got to me, as well. It was like death starin’ right at me, an’ I realized then and there that I wasn’t ready for it.”

“Hell’s bells.” Pecos raked a thumb down his bearded cheek and shook his head fatefully.

“You know what I think’s causin’ us both to get gloomy?”

“What’s that?”

“Boredom.”

Pecos scowled. “Huh?”

“You heard me. Neither of us had jobs like this—haulin’ freight. Aside from what happened earlier, these long hauls have been nothin’ but back-busting on each end and boring in between. Hell, sometimes I imagine we got a posse on our tails just to keep from falling asleep . . . or just to entertain myself, to keep my heart pumpin’!”

Pecos shrugged and recrossed his ankles, stretched out before him. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Slash. I don’t think I’m bored.”

“You’re bored, Pecos. You just don’t wanna admit it.”

“Okay, so say we are bored. Say we do have too much time to think about things. What’re we gonna do about it?”

Slash shrugged. “Nothin’.”

“Nothin’, huh?”

“What else can we do? We’re gettin’ old. Our holdup days are over. Even if we wanted to go back to ’em, we couldn’t. Old Bleed-Em-So would have us run down in a matter of days. His marshals would hang us right where they ran us down, and that would be the end of it.”

Pecos took a bite of the jerky he was nibbling, along with his coffee. “Hell,” he said, chewing, “maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Yeah . . . well, maybe.”

They didn’t say anything for a few minutes. They both just sat there, staring into the fire’s small, orange flames that leaped around like ghostly yellow snakes in the brassy sunshine filtering through the forest canopy.

Finally, Pecos frowned across the fire at Slash. “What you got there?”

Slash glanced up at him, dark brows arched over his cinnamon eyes. “Huh?”

“What you foolin’ with in your pocket there? You was foolin’ with it earlier, before the stickup.”

Slash pulled his hand out of his pocket and sat back with a sheepish air. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” He sipped his coffee and looked off through the trees.

“Ah, come on, Slash. What you got in your pocket? You was fingerin’ it on the way up, and you been fingerin’ it on the way down.”

“It’s the derringer.”

“No, it isn’t. You keep the Double-D in your right-hand pocket. Whatever you was fingerin’ you got in your left pocket.”

“Oh, never mind!”

“Ah, come on! Humor this old reprobate, Slash! I’m burnin’ up with boredom!”

“It’s Jimmy, damnit, Melvin. We gotta remember to use our given names. Slash an’ Pecos are dead.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Ah, hell!” Slash brushed his hat off his head and ran a hand through his still-thick and mostly dark brown hair, give or take a few strands of gray, which hung down over his ears and his collar. He raked it up like a shaggy tumbleweed, then threw it straight back off his forehead. “It’s . . . it’s a, uh . . .”

“It’s a what? Come on, Slash . . . er, I mean Jimmy . . . you can say it. Spit it out.”

Slash drew a deep breath and stared up at the forest canopy, where a crow was doing battle with an angrily chittering squirrel. “It’s a ring.”

“Huh?”

“My mother’s ring.”

“Your mother’s ring?”

“Weddin’ ring.”

“What you got your mother’s weddin’ ring for, Sla . . . I mean, Jimmy?”

“I wrote to my sister in Missouri, had her send it to me. Since I’m the only livin’ boy in the family, she’s been savin’ it for me.”

“Okay, well, let me ask you again—what you got your mama’s weddin’ ring for, Jimmy?” Pecos’s eyes snapped wide, and he opened his mouth in sudden recognition. “Oh . . . hell!”

He grinned across the fire at his sheepish partner. “You . . . Jay . . . you’re gonna pop the question—ain’t ya, you old rattlesnake?”

Slash tried to snap a fly out of the air in front of him with his hand, and missed. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? If you went to the trouble of sending for your momma’s ring, you must know!”

Slash cast him a fiery look, his cheeks reddening beneath his deep brown tan. “Ah, hell—I never shoulda told you a damn thing. Look at you—you’re actin’ like you got ants in your pants!”

Pecos dipped his chin demurely and held up his hands in supplication. “I’m sorry, partner. I apologize. I shouldn’t make fun. It’s just that—well, hell, you really caught me by surprise. I mean, I know you an’ Jay got . . . well, got somethin’ goin’ on, though I can’t rightly put my finger on just what it is. You take her out to breakfast a whole lot, an’ she buys you more beers than what you pay for at her saloon, but . . . Well, you’re pretty tight-lipped on the subject of women, Slash. You always have been.”

Pecos studied his stoic partner, who was looking off through the trees again as though he were watching for Apaches. In fact, Pecos could tell that Slash would probably rather tussle with Apaches than continue the current conversation. James Braddock was not a man who could speak frankly on subjects of the heart.

“All right, all right,” Pecos said, using a glove to grab the coffeepot from the iron spider over the fire. “You’ll tell me when you’re good an’ ready. I won’t prod you about it no more.”

He refilled his coffee cup, then held the steaming pot up to Slash. “More mud? Pretty good pot, if I do say so my—”

“I think I’m gonna ask her.” Slash was still staring off as though watching for those imaginary Apaches. He turned to Pecos again and said, “You think she’ll have me?”

Pecos just stared back at him for a few seconds, still overcome with shock. Slash had never confided in him about women before. Pecos had confided plenty in Slash, but never the other way around. Mainly because Slash had never seemed interested in women. At least, none beyond the sporting variety. Oh, he’d made time with plenty of parlor girls, but Jimmy Braddock had always been a love-’em-an’-leave-’em kind of fella.

“Well,” Pecos said, when he found his tongue. “I think she’s too good for you, but, yes, I think she’ll have you.” He grinned, chuckled. “Yes, I do indeed think that Jaycee Breckenridge will accept your hand, James.”

“Son of a buck! Do you really think so, or are you just sayin’ that to humor me?”

It was Pecos’s turn to cloud up and rain. “You dad-blasted fool! What does it take to convince you? Can’t you see the way she looks at you? Why, as soon as we step into that saloon of hers, her eyes light up like a Christmas tree. Like a barn fire! And a flush always—always! —rises in her cheeks. And, believe me, it ain’t me she’s lookin’ at. Why, that pretty li’l redhead is pure-dee gone for you, Slash!”

“Jimmy.”

“I mean Jimmy!”

“Okay, okay,” Slash said, running a sleeve across his nose. “If you say so.”

“Can’t you see it for yourself?”

Slash winced, shrugged. “I’m a little slow that way, I gotta admit. Besides . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t know, Pecos, but—”

“Melvin.”

“Melvin, I mean. But it always feels like there’s a hand inside me, holdin’ me back.” He punched the end of his fist against his chest.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” Slash raised a knee and hooked his arm over it. He picked up a stick with his other hand and poked it into the flames. “I’ve never been good with women. I’ve never really known how to talk to ’em. I reckon that’s why I always preferred parlor girls to . . . well, you know, to real women. Real ladies like Jaycee.”

“Well, that just don’t make sense.”

Slash frowned. “What don’t?”

“Women fall all over you, Slash. I mean, Jimmy. They always have. Leastways, they always seem primed to. It’s your looks. You’re a square-jawed, handsome devil. I’ve always been jealous of that. I suppose we’re so old now it don’t matter if I go ahead and confess it.”

“Pshaw.” Slash flushed.

“No, no. You’re a dark-eyed, handsome devil. Me? I’m too big an’ lumbering. I’m an ole bulldog. And I got this stringy hair, an’ the sun makes my face all splotchy instead of Injun-dark like yours. Oh, I’ve had me some women over the years. I don’t deny that. Some I’ve loved. Some have even loved me back.” He chuckled as he stared into his steaming coffee cup. “But I’ve always had to work for the ladies. You? Hell, all you gotta do is walk into a saloon or restaurant, and the eyes of every girl in the place just naturally shuttle to you like steel to a magnet.”

“Well, I sure wish I knew how to talk to ’em.”

“You gotta pretend like they’re just people.”

“Huh?”

“Like they’re just like you an’ me. ’Cause they are. Just start talkin’ like you’d start talkin’ to a man an’ see where it goes from there. You’d be surprised. But, then, hell—you already got that figured out with Jaycee. I seen you two huddled over some long, serious conversations lately. You appeared to be givin’ back as good as you was gettin’.”

Slash nodded. “It’s easier. Talkin’ to her. Always was—leastways, it was when Pistol Pete was still alive.”

Jaycee Breckenridge had been married to Slash and Pecos’s outlaw partner, Pistol Pete Johnson, until Pete had met his end by way of a posse rider’s bullet late one night in a deep-mountain box canyon. That had been five years ago now. Slash had loved Jaycee before she’d married up with Pete, but he hadn’t known how to tell her. Or even how to just carry on a casual conversation with her.

He’d gotten more comfortable with her, though, over the years that she was married to Pete, and they—Jaycee, Pete, Pecos, and Slash—had holed up together in Jay and Pete’s remote shack high in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, on the back side of jobs they’d sprung. He supposed Jay’s being married to Pete had taken some of the pressure off his expectations, since she was already married and there was room for a genuine friendship to grow.

Now, however, Pete was dead.

“Well, you go for it, then, you son of a devil!” Pecos spat into the fire, then ran a sleeve across his eyes. His voice pinched as he added, “Go ahead and leave me high an’ dry!”

“Don’t tell me you’re cryin’!”

Pecos blinked as he stared guiltily into the fire. A few tears dribbled down his cheeks and into his short blond beard. “Yeah, I reckon a little. Not out of sadness. Just chokes me, is all—hearin’ about you an’ Jay. Here, I figured you’d be the one to die alone pinin’ for some woman you never had. I figured I’d be the one with a woman keepin’ my feet warm on cold winter nights, feelin’ guilty about you out in some desert cabin—just you an’ the scorpions an’ centipedes.”

“Well, let’s not put the cart before the horse. I haven’t asked her yet, and just thinkin’ about it is givin’ me the fantods. I might still be shackin’ up with the scorpions an’ centipedes.”

“Oh, you’ll do it. You’ll ask her. She’ll accept. And you two will be standin’ up before some sky pilot grinnin’ at each other all dewy-eyed, and you’ll slip Mama Braddock’s ring on Jay’s purty finger, and you’ll tie the damn knot!”

Slash shuddered as he stared across the fire at his teary-eyed partner. “Jesus, will ya shut up? You’re startin’ to give me cold feet all over again!”

“An’ you’ll leave ole Pecos—I mean Melvin—all high an’ dry.” Pecos sleeved more tears from his cheeks.

“Ah, hell,” Slash said. “You might be uglier’n a five-legged goat, but you’re a silver-tongued devil. That’s what always made me jealous of you, Melvin! You may not have a woman right now, but you’ll wrangle one soon enough with that gold-plated charm of yours. The trick for you is—can you keep her long enough to marry her before you tumble for another?”

They both had a good laugh over that.

Belly laughs, both. Until they thought their ribs were gonna bust and poke out of their bellies.

They sobered up right quick when one of the mules brayed a sharp warning.