Better Off Dead Page 3

  After fifteen minutes of climbing, the top of the hill still seemed a long way off and Sir James stopped on a flat ledge of rock to take a breather.

  The rain had turned to a slashing sleet, carried on the knifing north wind. The night grew colder and darker. After scanning the tor, he pulled the collar of his coat closer around his face, like a turtle retreating into its shell “There’s a wild sheep on the tor. Would it remain there with armed men around?”

  “I don’t know,” Shawn said. “Show me.”

  “There,” Sir James said, pointing.

  Shawn saw what the older man had seen, but with younger, farseeing eyes. Suddenly, everything inside him died. He looked broken.

  That was no sheep on the tor.

  It was the slender white body of Lady Judith Lovell, spread-eagled on a flat slab, a naked sacrifice to the lusts of men who were not fit to breathe the same air as the rest of humanity.

  “Oh, my God,” Sir James whispered, reading Shawn’s face. He buried his face in gloved hands. “Oh, my God . . .”

  Shawn did not cry out in his pain and rage. He was silent, filled with an icy, calm, his hands steady, as is the way of the gunfighting man when there’s killing to be done. Without waiting to see if Sir James followed, he climbed the hill.

  Shawn kissed his dead wife’s lips. They were cold and lifeless as marble. Pain beyond pain knifed through him and he wanted to turn his face to the torn sky and scream his grief.

  Biting sleet cartwheeling around him, he stood in moon-splashed darkness, gun in hand, and watched the dull orange glow of a fire among the rocks ahead of him.

  He was aware of Sir James stepping beside him. The man no longer wore his coat. Shawn accepted what that implied without comment.

  Then in a whisper he said, “They’re camped out among the rocks, sheltered from the wind.”

  Sir James nodded.

  “This will be real close,” Shawn said. “When you get your work in, aim low for the belly. A bullet in the gut will stop any man.”

  Again Sir James nodded and said nothing. His eyes were lost in shadow.

  His face a stiff, joyless mask, Shawn said, “Then let’s get it done.”

  Their steps were silent on the slushy, uneven ground. Half hidden behind the shifting shroud of the sleet, the two men advanced on the rocks. Shawn smelled wood smoke, the heavy odor of wet earth, and the sword blade tang of the sleet itself, cold and raw and honed sharp.

  Three convicts sat between a pair of massive boulders, and had pulled over their heads a makeshift roof of thin sheets of black shale. Vicious predators who for too long had stalked a peaceful, pastured land with impunity, they were dressed in blue canvas jackets, pants of the same color, and heavy, steel-studded boots.

  A draw fighter schooled by draw fighters, Shawn O’Brien stood above them. He was no pale, puny, prattling prelate who’d just watched them rape his wife and loot his village church’s poor box. He was death.

  Startled, the convicts dived for the Martini-Henry rifles propped against the boulders . . . but they never made it.

  At a distance of less than six feet, Shawn O’Brien didn’t miss.

  He thumbed three fast shots and all three men went down, hit hard. He scored two headshots, killing the convicts instantly. The face of the third crashed into the fire, erupting flame, sparks, and a scream of sudden agony. Then silence. His booted feet gouged the ground as he cringed away from the visitation from hell. He had taken Shawn’s bullet in the throat. The side of his neck between earlobe and shoulder was a mass of red, mangled meat that pumped blood.

  Sir James, gun in hand, stepped beside Shawn and looked into the smoke-streaked hideout.

  In a wet, gurgling voice the wounded convict screamed to the older man, “Help me! I’m hurt bad and I need a doctor!”

  Sir James, in shock, turned to Shawn. “He says he needs a doctor.”

  Shawn nodded, thumbed back the hammer of his Colt, and shot the man between the eyes. “He just got one.”

  Shawn spent the rest of the long night with his dead wife in his arms, holding her close to his chest as the slanting sleet bladed around him.

  Come the dawn, Sir James, his face gray as ash, gently tried to take his daughter from Shawn’s arms. “I’ll bring the horses.”

  “No. I don’t want the horses.” Shawn lifted Judith’s body, her face as beautiful in death as it had been in life. “I’ll carry her. I’ll carry my wife home.”

  He turned his face to the black, uncaring sky and called out in terrible agony, “Judith! Judith! Judith!”

  * * *

  “It’s all right, Shawn. I’m with you.”

  Shawn pried open his swollen eyes. The dark-eyed woman bent over him. A lamp burned somewhere in darkness and spread a dim orange light. “I . . . it was a dream. . . .”

  “Yes. It was a bad dream. Banish those visions of the past from your mind and sleep now. Sleep, Shawn. Sleep.”

  Shawn O’Brien closed his eyes and knew no more.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jays quarreled in a tree, kicking up a fuss and waking Shawn O’Brien. He heard the distant sound of a clanging locomotive bell as a fly buzzed around his face. It was only when he lifted a hand to swat the pest away that he realized how badly he was hurt. His hands, arms . . . his entire body ached and the pain in his chest when he breathed warned him that he could have broken ribs. Only one of his eyes would open, but it was enough to tell him that he lay in a tent of some kind. Its canvas flapped in a strong breeze, the oil lamp hanging from the ridgepole moved back and forth, and the glass chimney chinked quietly.

  He tried to sit up, but the effort was too much for him. Defeated, he groaned and lay back again, weak as a day-old kitten. He had no memory of his dream. It had come and gone like a mist.

  The tent flap opened and a woman stooped inside. She wore a black taffeta skirt that rustled, black high-heeled ankle boots, and a boned red corset tied up the front with a black lace. Her hair, dark and glossy as ink, tumbled over her bare shoulders and the top of her breasts. Her wide, expressive mouth was bright red, as though she’d been eating strawberries. She smiled, her teeth white. “You are with us again, Shawn.”

  “I reckon. What’s left of me at least.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “As bad as I look.” Then, “Hamp?”

  “He’s outside tending to the coffee. He wasn’t beaten as badly as you.”

  “Why didn’t they finish me?” Shawn asked.

  “I would say because your father is rich and influential and you have Jacob O’Brien as a brother. They want you gone, not dead.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m the old lady who bumped into you on the boardwalk.”

  “Then you’re Doña Maria Cantrell?”

  “None other. But please call me Maria.”

  Shawn tried to think, his head reeling. “Old lady, young lady . . . I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple, really,” Maria said. “I came to Big Buck and started to ask questions about my brother, but I was told to go back to Mexico or I’d find a grave out in the thorn brush. I left and came here, but I still go into town disguised as an old crone.”

  “And have you learned anything?”

  “No. That’s why I wanted to talk with you.”

  Shawn winced. “All I know is that whoever the man is who owns the cannon foundry isn’t partial to people poking their noses into his business.”

  “Manuel is there. I know he is. For weeks Abaddon was all he wanted to talk about. He said he could make his fortune and return to Mexico a rich man. He said he would restore the Cantrell family’s honor and fortune.”

  Isolated in his own pain and misery, Shawn made no answer.

  Maria continued. “Once, the Cantrell rancho was the biggest in all of Mexico. My father and mother drove in a carriage drawn by four fine horses and our cattle numbered in the tens of thousands. A hundred guests at a time were entertained at our hacienda and my father would h
ave the fountains flow with wine. The name Cantrell was honored and respected throughout the land.”

  “What happened?” Shawn grimaced. It even hurt to talk.

  “My father gambled it all away. When he was young, he was lucky with the cards and dice, but as he grew older his luck changed. It took several years, but we lost everything. My mother died from nothing more serious than a summer cold, the doctor said, but it was from a broken heart. A year later, when he finally lost the hacienda, my father took his own life. I use the title Doña before my name because my mother always did, but I have as little right to it as any peon.”

  “And Manuel hopes to change all that?” Shawn asked.

  Maria nodded. “He said there was big money to be made in the cannon foundry, enough to give us a new start. It was the foolish dream of an eighteen-year-old boy. To restore what we had would take millions of pesos. If you lost Dromore, how much would it take to rebuild what you have now?”

  “A fortune, I guess.” Shawn’s voice was barely a whisper. “Unless my pa was content to start small.”

  “I would be content with that, but Manuel has big plans.” Then, slowly, as though a memory was painful, she said, “I have to tell you something, Shawn. A week before he left Mexico, my brother killed a man who wished to use me for his pleasure. Manuel took it as an affront to the Cantrell honor, sought out the man, and shot him. How many more men will he challenge until he himself is killed?”

  “Maria, don’t build houses on a bridge we haven’t crossed yet,” Shawn said. “Let’s find him first.”

  “You’ve done enough for me as it is. I will find Manuel.”

  Shawn shook his head, and then as pain spiked at him, he wished he hadn’t. “I’m not doing this for you, Maria. I’m doing it because my brother asked me to. The O’Brien family loyalties also run deep and there’s no getting away from that.”

  Hamp Sedley ducked into the tent. His left arm was in a makeshift sling and his battered face looked like a strawberry pie that had just been stepped on by a drunken baker. “How are you feeling, Shawn?”

  “Terrible. And you?”

  “Can’t complain. Maria is an excellent nurse.” He held out a tin cup. “Here, drink this. It’s beef tea.”

  “What’s beef tea?”

  “A chunk of beef brought to the boil and simmered for hours. Drain off the meat, add a little salt and pepper to the liquid and you’ve got yourself beef tea. I read one time that Lillie Langtry swears by it. Says it brings roses to her cheeks.”

  Maria supported Shawn’s head as he sipped from the cup. “Tastes like ordinary old beef broth to me.”

  “Don’t tell Lillie that,” Sedley said. “She calls it beef tea because that’s what old Queen Vic calls it. Or so they say.”

  “The arm, Hamp. What happened?” Shawn asked.

  “After the towhead kid fired his rifle I drew and got a shot off. I didn’t hit anybody though. Next thing I know I’m on the ground and a bunch of big Irish micks are laying the boot into me. Ambrose Hellen put an end to it and brought what was left of us here.”

  “He’s the only person I trust in Big Buck,” Maria said. “He’s a good man.”

  “So what about the arm?” Shawn asked again.

  “It isn’t broken. Just badly bruised.”

  “Hamp, I want you to do something for me that I’m in no shape to do for myself.”

  “Name it. By times, I’m a real obliging feller.”

  Shawn named it and Sedley’s hair stood on end.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  As the clocks of Big Buck chimed midnight, Hamp Sedley made his way across the waste ground at the east of town. The night was cloudy and there was little moonlight. He walked carefully, calculating each step. In the distance, the sky was on fire above the Abaddon foundry and thick columns of smoke stood dirty gray against the darkness. The Abaddon thugs had taken his Colt and the weight of Maria’s derringer in his pocket did little to reassure him. If he ran into trouble, he could do little damage with a belly gun unless he was hugging close.

  Coyotes hunting near the town yipped into the night as he angled toward the cemetery. “Look for the whitewashed pillars of the gate,” Maria had told him, but his eyes were badly swollen and he saw little but a curtain of darkness ahead. He stumbled on, walking though the canyons of the witching hour like a man lost. But he could hear just fine.

  And the man hidden in the gloom stated his intentions loud and clear enough. “Hold up right there, sonny, or I’ll blow your damn head off with this here Greener cannon I got in my hands. She’s both wife and child to me and I don’t miss with her.”

  Sedley heard grass rustle underfoot, steps coming toward him.

  “What you doing out here at this unchristian hour of the night when the hurting dead walk?”

  Frozen in his tracks, Sedley answered, “I’m looking for the graveyard.”

  “Hell, boy, you’re standing on it,” the hidden man said.

  “I couldn’t see the gateway,” Sedley explained.

  “That’s because the gate ain’t here. It’s a fair piece down thataway to the west. What you doing here? Answer plain and short and make no fancy moves. I ain’t what you might call a trusting feller.”

  “The answer is that I’m here to find a grave. Then I aim to find a shovel and plan to dig up a body.”

  “There ain’t no shovels around. Where did you expect to find one?”

  “Figured there had to be a caretaker’s hut or something.”

  “Well, there ain’t and I’m the caretaker. Here, you ain’t one of them resurrectionists are you, digging up bodies and selling them to medical men?”

  A small, skinny old man dressed in an ancient gray overcoat and bowler hat stepped out of the shadows. He held a scattergun so that the muzzles pointed at Sedley’s belly. Alarmed by the voices, an owl questioned the night and at a distance, a terrified thing squealed, a small death in the darkness.

  “I’m no body snatcher. I’m a gambler, born and bred.” Sedley stood in a glimmer of moonlight. “And I’d be obliged if you pointed that there widowmaker somewhere else.”

  “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” the old man said. “What body was you interested in, like?”

  “The man carried out of the Abaddon foundry yesterday.”

  “He was buried this morning just after sunup. I seen him. You work for them Abaddon people?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “May be just as well because iffen you did, I’d feel inclined to let you have both barrels in the gut. Just lettin’ you know.”

  “Look at my face,” Sedley said. “Abaddon toughs did this.”

  “It ain’t pretty.”

  “Yeah, well my friend’s face is even worse.”

  “What name does he go by?”

  “Shawn O’Brien. He’s out of the New Mexico Territory.”

  “And what’s your handle?”

  “Hamp Sedley.”

  “You said you’re a gambling man.”

  “Yeah, but I’m running from a three-year losing streak. So far, it’s been catching up with me.”

  “It happens. I know an O’Brien from up New Mexico way, big Jake O’Brien. He’s two shades meaner than the devil himself but plays the piano real sweet.”

  “Jake is Shawn’s brother,” Sedley said.

  The shotgun barrel lowered and the old man said, “Name’s Crop Hermon. I ain’t really the caretaker here, but I camp nearby. It’s real quiet and well away from the noise and stink of the damn foundry.”

  “You say you saw the dead man this morning?” Sedley asked.

  “Yeah, I did. But you come with me afore you break a leg or something. I got coffee on the bile.”

  * * *

  Crop Hermon had set up his camp within a stand of wild oak near a thin-running stream. He’d made himself a lean-to from timber scraps, canvas, and whatever else he could find. His coffee was good and his information better.

  “I seen the body after Dorian Steggle
s rolled it out of a sheet and it laid there all naked on the ground.” Herman’s eyes met Sedley’s in the firelight. “I fit Yankees, Comanche, Apache, and one time a Ute nearly took my hair up in the Yampa River country, so I’ve seen my share of dead men. But that Abaddon feller couldn’t rightly be called a man, more like he was a living skeleton when he was alive.” Hermon took time to light his pipe. “Look at your wrist, gambling man. Well, his arm was no bigger around than that. His jaws were so sunken you’d have thought he was grinning and his ribs showed, stood out all in a row, if you catch my drift.”

  “What did you think when you saw him, Crop?”

  “Well, here’s how I saw it. Either that man was mighty sick with a cancer or he’d been starved to death. There ain’t no other explanation for how he looked, at least none that I can come up with.”

  “How many Abaddon workers are buried in the cemetery?” Sedley asked.

  “A handful, just to make things look good. Afore he disappeared, I had some talk with Sheriff Asa Chapman. He was a nice, older feller who was sheriff here even before Abaddon got built. Asa told me that a lot of fellers die in the foundry and that most go up the chimney, some of them only half-dead when they was thrown into the furnaces. God rest him, Asa planned to investigate and that was the last anyone ever saw or heard of him. That’s the reason I hide out here. If Abaddon finds out that Asa spoke with me, I’m a dead man.”

  Sedley smiled. “You’re taking a risk telling me, Crop.”

  “If you’re a friend of Jake O’Brien’s brother then you’re true blue in my book, Hamp. He’s a wild one is Jake, but honest as the day is long when it comes to ordinary folks. Ah, here’s Trigger. Where have you been, boy?”

  A black-and-white collie dog emerged from the darkness, greeted Sedley politely, then jumped on his master’s lap and smothered him with sloppy kisses.

  “I smell jackrabbit on your breath, boy,” Hermon said. “You just ate supper, did ye?”

  Feeling like an intruder, Sedley rose to his feet. “Thank you for the coffee and information, Crop. Now I got to be getting back.”

  “One word afore you go, gambling man,” Harmon said, talking over his dog’s head. “Jed Rose arrived in town yesterday by the three o’clock train, him and Hank Locket, the one they call the El Reno Kid.”