Better Off Dead Page 10

  “Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, Edmund made the shot look easy,” Marcellus rhymed.

  “All right. You’ve earned your second chance, boys.” Perry smiled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Two shots, two drifts of gun smoke. Shawn O’Brien was on the trail of a pair of bushwhackers. He believed them to be a couple of Caleb Perry’s draw fighters masquerading as ironworkers . . . yet he had a niggling doubt. Shoes as small as a woman’s had left the tracks he’d discovered at the top of the rise, dainty almost, and the ejected shells, both .45-70 caliber, suggested target rifles, not a common weapon among Texas’s hired gunmen.

  Something at the back of Shawn’s mind tugged at him and gave him no peace. He rode under the shelter of a wild oak out of the morning sun and built a cigarette, the tobacco and papers one of Maria Cantrell’s thoughtful purchases, and the smoke sharpened his concentration.

  Was it Jake who’d said . . . no, not Jake . . . somebody else . . . somebody . . . He remembered. It had been Luther Ironside, back at Dromore. Much to Colonel Shamus O’Brien’s dismay, Luther had taught his sons much about draw fighting, tracking, fallen women, whiskey, profanity, the exploits of famous gunmen and nothing, in the Colonel’s mind at least, of scripture and devotion to Holy Mother Church.

  Memory came flooding back to Shawn. On his last visit home, just after the death of his wife, he recalled Luther talking about the best pair of contract killers in the West, sharpshooting twins who could knock a man off his horse at two hundred yards. According to Luther, when the twins rode into a town, the local law went fishing. A sheriff who’d think nothing of facing off against an all horns and rattles revolver fighter feared men who could kill him stone dead before he even heard the report of their rifles. And there was something else . . . something Luther had said about the twins’ mother being the brains of the outfit. Had it been her footprints he’d seen on the rise? Had a woman been one of the shooters?

  Shawn had figured two small men and a packmule. But it was possible that the pair’s mother was a third rider. Jake would gun the woman without giving it a second thought. As Shawn rode out from under the oak, he was troubled. Killing a woman had never entered his thinking, but soon he’d be faced with it . . . and he’d no idea how he’d respond.

  Tracking the twins, if that’s who they were, was easy. Fearing nothing, they’d left plenty of signs behind and their direction pointed right at the town of Big Buck.

  Main Street was busy with shoppers and horse traffic when Shawn rode into town. Smoke from the cannon foundry’s chimney cast a pall over everything, like the London fog he remembered from his time in England. He bypassed the Rest and Be Thankful Hotel, rode directly to the livery stable, dismounted, and stepped inside.

  A tall thin man emerged from the gloom at the back of the stable. “Stall and hay, two bits. Oats ten cents extry.” Studying Shawn’s bruised face, he said, “Hell mister, did you ride into a tree in the dark?”

  “Something like that.”

  The man’s eyes slid to the Colt on Shawn’s hip. “Looking for gun work at the foundry? Seems there’s a lot of fellers doing that nowadays.”

  “No, I just want to look around town.”

  “Not much profit in that.”

  Shawn spun a dollar that the man caught deftly. “I need some information.”

  “If I got it, you got it,” the liveryman said.

  “Did a woman ride in on the white mule? Did she have two men with her?”

  “Two little men with big rifles rode in on the horses you see over there in the stalls. The only thing on the mule was pack.”

  “Did they give you a name?”

  “Lute. They didn’t put out their first names. They said they’d left their ma at the hotel, except they called her mommy. Who the hell calls his ma mommy?”

  “The Lute twins, I guess,” Shawn said. “Are they at the hotel?”

  “No. I saw them two boys head for the foundry. Looking for work, I guess, except”—the man placed his hand palm-down at waist level—“they’re only this tall. Sure don’t look like ironworkers . . . or shootists either . . . but something about them bothered me. Once upon a time, I was a peace officer and I guess I still have the instinct for spotting danger because right off, I pegged those little men as trouble.”

  Shawn nodded his thanks. “Take care of my horse and give him a double scoop of oats. I’ll be back later.” He stepped to the livery door, but the man’s voice stopped him.

  “You ever hear anybody play a lute? Like they did back in the olden days?”

  “Yeah. Once in my life in England,” Shawn said.

  “My guess it that if you go after them two little men you’ll hear somebody playing the harp, and it could be you.”

  Shawn said nothing, but his face asked a question.

  “Mister, I’ve been in the West for a long time, a lot of years, and in my day I’ve seen gun hands of all kinds. I can sense them, like I figured you for a feller who’s killed his man.”

  Shawn raised his eyebrows. “And?”

  “Them two little men are surefire killers and they’re a few bricks shy of a load. I reckon they don’t carry Remington rifles taller than they are for show.”

  “Something to remember.”

  The tall man nodded. “Just step careful, draw fighter.”

  * * *

  His jingle-bob spurs ringing, Shawn walked into the cool dark lobby of the hotel and stepped to the desk.

  The clerk had a long gloomy face as though he’d never been told a joke in his life. After a glance at Shawn’s Colt and the obvious good quality of his blue shirt and canvas pants, he said, “What can I do for you, mister?”

  “Two little white men standing this high. What room?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty—” The clerk looked cross-eyed at the revolver muzzle shoved into the bridge of his nose.

  “Last time. Two little white men standing this high. What room?”

  “Room twenty-two upstairs,” the clerk said, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing. He took a key from a hook behind him.

  “I’m much obliged.” Shawn climbed the stairs, unlocked the door to the room, and stepped inside. The mattress of the unmade bed still showed the imprint of two fat little bodies. Two canvas rifle cases stood propped against the far wall and a large leather bag containing something round lay on the table by the window.

  Realizing that he might be recognized and that the clerk was probably already squealing like a stuck pig, Shawn acted quickly. He removed the Remingtons from their cases then pried the lead out of two. 45 cartridges. Using a short piece of iron rod he’d picked up at the abandoned cabin as a dowel, he used the butt of his revolver to hammer a bullet a couple inches into the barrels of the rifles. He then placed the rifles back in their cases and leaned them against the wall again.

  His time was running out. The last thing he wanted was to get into a gunfight in the middle of Big Buck, but the leather bag on the table intrigued him. If it was a jug of whiskey he’d take it with him. He untied the bag’s rawhide string and . . . almost yelped in fright.

  Suspended in the jar was the pickled head of an old woman, her blue eyes staring at him in lifeless accusation. The man at the livery said the Lute twins had left their ma at the hotel. The head must belong to the woman they called mommy. It seemed that the Lute boys were asking the advice of a dead woman.

  Shawn tied up the bag and took it with him as he made his way back to the desk. To his surprise, the clerk was still there, ... wearing a bowler hat and goggles as though about to leave. The man gave the leather sack a sidelong glance but said nothing.

  “I want you to give the Lute twins a message from me,” Shawn said.

  The clerk grabbed a notebook and mechanical pencil. “All right. Let me have it.”

  That was an unfortunate choice of words, but Shawn let it pass. “Write this. I’ve taken Mommy for a ride. You can meet her again at the spot where you murdered Hamp Sedley.”

&nb
sp; “Do you want to say who it’s from?” the clerk asked.

  “Yeah. Just sign it Shawn O’Brien.”

  The clerk’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead like hairy caterpillars, but he said nothing except, “I’ll make sure the gentlemen get it.”

  Shawn nodded. “Good. They’ll be so pleased.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Heartrending was the lamentation of the Lute twins when the clerk handed them Shawn’s note and they rushed upstairs to find Mommy gone.

  Marcellus and Edmund fell on each other’s shoulders and cried and cried, like two little potbellied bookends bereft of books.

  Through his sobbing, Marcellus said, “Mommy is in terrible danger. She’s in the hands of the barbarian.” This brought on more wailing and then he said, “We must save her from the ogre.”

  Such was their grief that the twins fell to the floor, rolled around, tore at their clothing, and screeched in a torment of sorrow. A pounding at the door ended the proceedings.

  A ladies’ corsets drummer suffering from a rum punch hangover entered. “Hell, boys, I’ve been listening to your racket. If your ma’s been kidnapped, saddle up and go after her and leave a man to his sleep.”

  Marcellus spoke up, choking a little on his sobs. “That’s just the advice Mommy would have given us.”

  “You bet it is,” the drummer said. “Now, stop acting like a couple maiden aunts at a cat’s funeral and ride. That’s the ticket, boys.”

  And so it was that the Lute twins rode out after Shawn O’Brien . . . who’d left a trail so obvious a rube could have followed it.

  * * *

  Shawn left his rifle behind with his horse as he stepped out of the wild oak into the open. He wore only his Colt and stood relaxed, a pose to reassure the Lute twins who were coming on at a walk. Knowing they’d nothing to fear from a revolver at distance, Marcellus and Edmund dismounted when they were still a hundred yards away.

  Only then did they see Mommy’s head at Shawn’s feet, pieces of the smashed jar lying around it.

  Enraged, Edmund yelled, “You fiend!” He dropped his pants, turned, bent over, and flipped up the tails of his claw-hammer coat, exposing his round white butt.

  “Take that, you demon!” his brother yelled. “That’s what we think of you.”

  Shawn waited, praying that the bullets stuck in the barrels of the Remingtons would soon turn them into wall hangers. To hurry the agenda, he placed his booted foot on Mommy’s gray head and watched the Lute twins turn completely loco.

  Edmund pulled up his pants and they slid their rifles from the boots and got down on one knee in front of their horses. “In the belly!” he yelled. “Because you’re smelly!”

  “In the heart because you fart,” Marcellus hollered.

  The twins threw the Remingtons to their shoulders and Marcellus nodded off a count . . . one . . . two . . . three . . .

  They fired in unison and the result was devastating.

  It all happened so fast it took Shawn a few moments to realize what destruction he had wrought. He saw the breech of Edmund’s rifle explode and the little man shrieked and staggered back, his hands to his face. The barrel of Marcellus’s Remington had bulged and then peeled back like a banana. The screaming man dropped the rifle like a hot brick. His hands and cheeks were black with powder residue and his pants had fallen around his ankles.

  Shawn O’Brien drew his Colt and his long strides quickly covered the distance between himself and the howling twins. He looked at the little men and was horrified. Edmund’s eyes had been blown out of his head and he stumbled around with his arms outstretched . . . a blind man. Marcellus had lost the thumb and two fingers of his shooting hand. He stared at the bloody stumps in horror and then his gaze lifted to Shawn, seeing him for the first time.

  “All this is for my friend Hamp Sedley, the man you murdered,” Shawn said.

  “He stepped in front of my bullet,” Marcellus said. “He was a fool.”

  “Who paid you to kill me, Lute?” Shawn spared a glance for Edmund, who was on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his shattered face.

  “A nicer man than you,” Marcellus yelled.

  “Who? Tell me or I’ll shoot off your other hand,” Shawn threatened.

  “It was Mr. Perry who made us merry.”

  “Your poetry stinks, little man.”

  “Then kill us and be done,” Marcellus said. “Take your revenge, damn you to hell, O’Brien.”

  “I already have. You and your brother can ride away anytime you feel like it. I suggest you find a good doctor. You two badly need one and so does your mommy.”

  Marcellus said above the wailing of his twin, “O’Brien, you’re a hard, unforgiving, and vengeful man.”

  Shawn nodded. “Yup. I was raised among those.”

  * * *

  Maria Cantrell poured a shot of Old Crow into Shawn’s coffee. “Why didn’t you kill them?” She wore a black corset, a long scarlet skirt, and high boots.

  Shawn thought she looked like a cross between a fine Spanish lady and an East End of London streetwalker. Either way, she was a breathtakingly desirable woman. Returning his mind to her question, he said, “The punishment of the Lute twins is only beginning. Neither of them will trigger a rifle again. They’ll go somewhere and they’ll die.”

  “It’s sad in a way.”

  “No, it’s not. When they murdered Hamp, they brought down a reckoning. And there’s a reckoning on the way for Caleb Perry.”

  “So you’re not leaving?”

  “Not until Perry is dead and Big Buck returns to being what it was before, a cow town clinging to its railroad spur like a drowning man clings to a lifebelt.” He tried his whiskey-laced coffee. “This is good. And what about you, Maria?”

  “Hamp’s death changed everything. If you’re staying, then so am I.” She touched the back of Shawn’s hand with her fingertips. “It’s difficult for you, isn’t it Shawn?”

  He saw something in the woman’s eyes and understood what she meant. “Yes, Maria. It’s difficult.”

  The woman smiled and placed his hand between the swell of her breast and her collarbone. “Then sleep in the cabin with me tonight, Shawn. Tonight and every night.”

  Shawn held Maria close and kissed her. There was no need for words.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “First Stubbings and now the two best hired assassins in the country. Does this man O’Brien have a charmed life?” Caleb Perry snapped.

  “Seems like, boss,” Valentine Kilcoyn said.

  “Is it bad?”

  “You mean for the Lute twins?”

  “Yes, yes, is it bad for the Lute twins?”

  “It’s bad. Marcellus got most of his gun hand shot off and his brother lost both eyes.”

  “O’Brien did that?” Perry sounded on edge.

  “Yeah. He did that and then he let them go. He knows they’ll crawl away and die somewhere.”

  “Damn it all, man, where are they?”

  “Well, an hour ago they were at the doctor’s office with big Buck Ross guarding them. I told Ross after the doc finished to take them to the hotel and stay there himself in case O’Brien decides to come back and finish the job.”

  “Maybe it would be better for us if he did,” Perry said.

  Lizzie Skates had been probing between her breasts for a lost earring. She gave her attention to Perry and said, “Send them up the chimney, Caleb. I hated those two little gnomes.”

  Perry smiled. “Because they refused mattress time with you, Lizzie?”

  “Fancy boys if you ask me.” She sniffed.

  Perry nodded. “Do as Lizzie says, Val. Bring the twins back here and shoot them. You know what to do with the bodies.”

  “Fat little goblins like them two will burn like torches,” Lizzie said.

  “Don’t involve Ross,” Perry said. “Let’s keep some things secret for now. He might be a man who blabs. We don’t know.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Kilco
yn said. “An hour from now, all that’s left of the Lute twins will be black smoke.”

  * * *

  Nurse Clementina Rooksbee raised icy eyes to Val Kilcoyn. “Not here, you won’t.”

  “But your office is private and no one will notice,” the big foreman said. “Hell, this is the quietest place in the foundry.”

  “I’ll notice when I have to wash blood and brains from the floor,” Nurse Rooksbee said.

  “Get a troll to do it.”

  “A troll won’t clean the floor to my satisfaction.” Kilcoyn was suddenly angry. “Damn it, woman, I have to shoot them someplace. I don’t want to drag them into the middle of the floor and shoot them there. It upsets the trolls.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Outside, wailing and kicking up a fuss. They want you to repickle their ma’s head.”

  “Repickle? What in the world does that mean?”

  “It means you stick her head in a glass jar with embalming fluid, I guess. Anyway, once I shoot them you won’t have to do it. Mommy’s head will go in the furnace.”

  “Who’s with them?”

  “Buck Ross, the new foreman.”

  Nurse Rooksbee shook her head. “There’s a better way. Send the foreman away and bring the twins inside.”

  Kilcoyn frowned. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll give them something to relieve their pain”—the woman smiled, revealing teeth the size of yellowed piano keys—“permanently.”

  Kilcoyn smiled. “Now I catch your drift. I’ll tell Ross to beat it and I’ll bring them boys in.”

  * * *

  Had Valentine Kilcoyn been listening at the door, he would have heard a snippet of conversation between Jacob O’Brien and the Lute twins.

  “I’ve heard about him,” Jacob said. “And you’re right, Shawn O’Brien is a dastardly villain. Did he have a woman with him?”

  “No. Just a man, the one we shot.” Marcellus was in terrible pain and he gasped as he spoke.

  Next to him, sightless Edmund screeched, “He has destroyed us.”

  “The savage!” Jacob agreed. “Where did this happen?”

  Kilcoyn opened the door, and the exchange ended. “Buck, go back to the construction bay. I’ll take care of these boys now.”