Better Off Dead Page 4

  “Who are they?”

  “Better ask Shawn O’Brien. His brother knows them both.” Hermon rubbed Trigger’s ears and said, “They ain’t nice people.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was two in the morning when Hamp Sedley, a judicious man, stopped walking toward the tent glowing a dull orange and called out, “It’s me. Coming in.” He bent and entered the tent.

  Shawn lay on his back, his battered face showing the signs of the beating he’d taken. Maria Cantrell continued her vigil over him. She wore a filmy black nightgown and a pocket watch on a silver chain hung around her neck. Her long legs were tucked under her as she dabbed at Shawn’s face with a wet cloth.

  “What happened, Hamp?” Shawn grimaced as he got up on one elbow. “Did you learn anything?”

  “Yeah, there was no shovel left around for digging up dead folks,” Sedley said.

  “I wasn’t in my right mind when I suggested that. I’m still not. Too many kicks to the head, I reckon.”

  “Well, I did learn something. I spoke to a man who saw the body before it was buried.” Sedley told of his encounter with Crop Hermon and the man’s description of the dead Abaddon worker. “You were right, Shawn. It looked to Crop that the man had been worked to death on mighty short rations.”

  Shawn nodded. “Slave labor. I had a feeling that was the case.”

  “It seems like men enter the Abaddon foundry but none ever come out again. A few of the dead are buried in the cemetery, but Hermon said most go up the chimney.” Sedley lightly touched Maria’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “We don’t know for sure Manuel is there,” Shawn said.

  “He’s there,” Maria said. “I know he is.”

  “Crop told me something else, Shawn,” Sedley said. “He says two men arrived in town yesterday, said you might know them. Jed Rose is one of them, but I can’t recollect the other feller’s name.”

  “Does Hank Locket ring a bell?” Shawn asked. “Sometimes goes by the El Reno Kid?”

  Sedley’s face brightened. “Yeah, that’s him. Crop says your brother Jake knows them.”

  “My brother Jake knows everybody. Rose and Locket work as a team. They’re guns for hire and surefire killers. A couple years back, Jake shot Jed Rose in Paddy Murphy’s saloon in a town called Gray-cott up in the Panhandle. I don’t remember all the details, but Rose was laid up for a three month and barely made it through. He was one dangerous hombre before he got shot and now he’s a sight worse. As for Locket, he’s fast on the draw and shoot. Last I heard, he’d killed eight men, but he’s probably added to that total since. Locket is poison, a man without a conscience or a shred of decency.”

  Sedley frowned. “Why are they here, you reckon? Because of us?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. I think the Abaddon toughs made it pretty clear that they don’t fear us.”

  “Then who?” Maria’s gown had slipped off her beautiful shoulders and ringlets of jet-black hair fell over her forehead. At any time and in any place, she would be considered a breathtakingly beautiful woman.

  “Rose and Locket are contract killers, very expensive.” Shawn looked to Maria. “Maria, who else knows you’re here?”

  “No one except Ambrose Hellen.”

  “And you trust him?”

  “Yes, I do. Shawn, are you trying to tell me that the hired guns might be after me?”

  “It’s possible. Unlikely maybe, but just possible.”

  “Now you’re scaring me, Shawn,” Maria said, her lovely black eyes haunted. “I mean, really scaring me.”

  “Best we all stay scared for a spell,” Shawn said. “It will make us more careful.”

  * * *

  The telescope was located in a crow’s nest at the very top of the Abaddon building, but set in a lofty pillar away from the worst of the smoke and heat. Round like a castle turret, supported by massive steel beams, the nest could rotate on its base so that the brass telescope, large as an Abaddon cannon, could be used to scan the terrain for miles around in all directions.

  The gray-haired man at the eyepiece pushed his hat and goggles higher on his head and intently studied the ground to the east, in particular the cemetery. After a couple minutes, he smiled. “Good, the foreman Anstruther Breens was right. There is a man living up there.”

  Breens had said he saw another man with him, though because of the darkness and the distance involved he couldn’t be sure. The big foreman had stepped out to smoke a cigar, not scout for spies. Still, it was probably nothing, just a couple tramps looking for a place to sleep for the night. But it was an irritation, and Caleb Perry could not afford to be irritated, not when there was so much at stake.

  Perry stepped to the speaking tube and told his secretary to send up the two guns he’d just hired. He’d meet them in his office just off the foundry’s main gantry.

  Jed Rose and Hank Locket seemed dazed when they were ushered into Perry’s office. Abaddon had that effect on people. It was a smoke-filled, massive black and scarlet cave with enormously high ceilings, massive, flaming furnaces, boilers three times the size of those on oceangoing steamships, the steady overhead passage of gigantic cannons amid a hellish cacophony of clanging, roaring, hissing clamor that could make sane men mad. Among it all toiled starved, half-naked laborers, their tight skins gleaming with sweat, driven on to ever-greater efforts by the brawny foremen with their whips and billy clubs and savage faces.

  “Ah, gentlemen, how nice of you to visit. Can I interest you in a refreshment?” Perry smiled, revealing canines as large and gleaming as those of a lobo wolf. “The preferred tipple of the Abaddon foundry is black rum, but you may have anything you wish.”

  The gunmen opted for rum and Perry filled a pair of fluted glasses to the brim. “Please be seated.” He looked over his latest hires and liked what he saw.

  Rose was a tall, gaunt man with the eyes of a carrion eater. Like Locket he carried only one gun, a plain blue Colt in a shoulder holster. Locket affected the dress and demeanor of a country parson and wore spats over his buttoned ankle boots. Both men had been given goggles as a protection against flying sparks and they hung loosely around their necks.

  “I have a job for you gentlemen, a killing,” Perry said. “It’s hardly worthy of your talents, but it will be the first of many, I’ll be bound.”

  “Bless you, sir, and we are willing and able to do your bidding. For us, no job is too large or too small,” Locket said in the pulpit drone of a preacher. “When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.” The gunman smiled. “I quote from the Book of Proverbs.”

  Rose said, “Who do you want us to kill?”

  “No one important. Just a vagrant who seems to be living in the cemetery,” Perry said. “He might be a spy but probably not. Still I don’t want to take any chances. I have much at stake, as you gentlemen will learn.”

  “When?” Rose asked.

  “This evening would be fine.”

  Rose nodded. “Then we’ll get it done. A straight-up kill? No fire? No cutting?”

  “Just blow his brains out. I’ve got nothing personal against the man, whoever he is. We’ll reserve the torture for people I don’t like, and that includes just about everybody.”

  An adjoining door opened and a woman stepped into the office. She wore a tight corset of brown leather, laced at the sides, over a short frilled dress and knee-high boots adorned with half-a-dozen brass buckles. A mane of blond hair fell over her naked shoulders and pushed-up breasts and her scarlet fingernails were painted the same shade as her pretty, pouting mouth.

  “Ah, here’s Lizzie at last,” Perry said, clapping his hands. “Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Miss Lizzie Skates? She’ll entertain you while I get on with my paperwork. Oh, and good hunting tonight. It should make for some fine sport.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  To say that big Jacob O’Brien was irritated would be something of an understatement. In fact, he was boiling mad. Combined with his uncertain temp
er and deadly gun skills, that made for a dangerous mix.

  The rail journey from the New Mexico Territory had been ordeal enough. He’d kicked his heels in out-of-the-way rail stations in one-horse cow towns and waited for trains that were always hours late. That and eating bad food and drinking worse coffee took its toll on a man. And just as the train crossed the border into Texas, the locomotive had lurched to a clanking, steam-hissing halt.

  And the guard had just stuck his head into the car and yelled, “Road agents! It’s a holdup!”

  Across from Jacob, a slender young girl in a gray silk travelling dress, a straw boater hat perched on her upswept auburn hair, looked back at the door, her pretty face alarmed. He rose to his feet. A big-shouldered, unshaven man dressed in whatever shabby duds he could patch together, he indicated the seat beside him and said, “Here, miss, sit by the window near me.”

  Intimidated by his bulk, rough-hewn face, and bristling black mustache, the girl hesitated. “Will . . . will the bandits rob us?”

  “Not if you’re sitting by me they won’t,” Jacob said.

  A shot racketed from outside the train and the girl changed seats with amazing alacrity. She smelled of wildflowers.

  Jacob liked that. “Now you just sit there real quiet and let me do the talking.”

  “Will there be more shooting?” the girl asked.

  “Well, I guess that all depends on how the talking goes,” Jacob said.

  A few moments later, the door at the opposite end of the carriage crashed open and three armed men rushed inside, their lower faces covered by bandanas. One of the three carried a burlap sack. “All donations are welcome folks. Money, rings, watches, whatever you got. Come now, don’t be shy.”

  The dozen or so passengers complained and threatened the robbers with the law, but the presence of Colts pointed at their heads soon silenced them and the sack began to fill.

  Then came Jacob O’Brien’s turn.

  The man with the sack stared at Jacob for a while and then his mouth moved under the bandana. “Jake! Jake O’Brien! What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Getting robbed, seems like.”

  Quickly pulling down his bandana before replacing it again, the man said, “It’s me, Jake. Elmer Oddlin as ever was.”

  “Hell, I thought you were still in the bank robbing profession,” Jacob said.

  Oddlin shook his head. “It’s getting too crowded. It’s becoming a game for amateurs and now the law is always on guard when strangers ride into a town. The glory days of Jesse and them are over.”

  “How’s your ma and your brother Newt?” Jacob asked.

  “Apart from the rheumatisms Ma’s fine. Newt is back there robbing folks in another car. Who’s the young lady?”

  “My niece. I’m escorting her to a burg called Big Buck down the Pecos River way.”

  Oddlin lifted his hat. “Right pleased to meet you, miss. You sure are purty.”

  The girl blushed. “Thank you, sir.”

  Oddlin turned his head and called out to his two companions, “Hey, Sam, June, look who’s here. It’s Jake O’Brien, headed down to the Pecos country with a pretty gal.”

  A great deal of handshaking, backslapping and grinning followed. “We got to be going, Jake.” After a moment’s hesitation, Oddlin said, “Jake, I really hate to ask you this, but I’d be right honored if you could see your way clear to dropping something in the sack. It’s a thing I could tell my grandkids one day.”

  “Gather around, kids, and let me tell you about the day I robbed Jacob O’Brien, huh?”

  “Yeah. It would be a fine story to tell and robbing you would be a great honor, Jake. Sam, June, ain’t that right?”

  “Sure is,” Sam said. “It would be the acme of our outlaw career an’ no mistake. And your ma would be so proud, ain’t that so, Elmer?”

  “Proud? Why she’d strut around like a gobbler at layin’ time,” Oddlin said.

  “All right, just this once,” Jacob said, raising his hands. “Don’t shoot.” He took a silver dollar from his shirt pocket and dropped it into the sack. “How’s that?”

  “Damn it all, Jake, it was perfect.” Oddlin’s eyes above the bandana were misted by tears. “I always said you was a white man through and through and as true blue as a man ever was.”

  “Well, good luck with the new profession, Elmer,” Jacob said. “And give my regards to Newt and your ma.”

  “I sure will, Jake. And Newt will be right sorry he missed you. Good luck to you too, Jake. Good luck.”

  * * *

  The girl got off at a whistle stop just south of the Texas border where she planned to care for an ailing aunt. She gave Jacob a kiss on the cheek before she left and that pleased him greatly.

  Amid the hubbub generated by the robbed passengers and the placating talk of the guard, Jacob reread Maria Cantrell’s letter for the hundredth time. Yes, the town was Big Buck, no mistake about that, and Shawn was probably already there. He’d sent his brother to do a job he should have done himself, all the time knowing that Shawn was easily led astray by a pretty face or a well-turned ankle and could easily land himself in all kinds of trouble. But during his last stay at Dromore, Jacob had buried himself in a deep depression as all the demons that haunted him returned to demand their due. He had confined himself to his room, talked to no one, and hit the bottle pretty hard.

  Finally Luther Ironside, his father’s grim old segundo, had taken him aside. Jake gave some thought to their conversation.

  * * *

  “Jake, your pa won’t tell you this, but I will. As I see it, you got two choices: You either just give up now and blow your brains out or you go to Texas and see what you’ve done to Shawn. The decision is yours.”

  “You’re telling me that I’ve cast a dark shadow over Dromore long enough. Is that the way of it, Luther?”

  “Damn right. That’s the way of it,” Luther said. “When you were a boy, I’d have taken a willow switch to you before now, but you’ve grown too old for that, so heed me. I’ve lived long enough around Irishmen that some of how they think and feel has rubbed off on me. Like your saintly mother, may God rest her, I’ve had dreams, bad dreams that Shawn is in trouble. For some reason, I was given a glimpse into hell, a flaming, roaring place where the damned toil naked among the fires. It’s a dream no good Presbyterian man should ever have.”

  Jacob nodded. “It’s an Irish dream, all right, Luther, and it speaks a prophecy to you in your sleep. It must have been a terrible dream.”

  “Yes, it was a terrible dream. Go to Texas Jake, and by the good God that made me, I pray you will not be too late.”

  * * *

  Jacob had left Dromore that very day.

  He shook off the memory, folded Maria’s letter, and put it back into his pocket. “Damn this train. How much longer before I reach Big Buck?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Damn this lying on my back.” Shawn O’Brien sat up and his world, shrunken to the four walls and roof of a tent, spun around him. The pain of his broken ribs stabbed at him and he decided he couldn’t place a dime on any part of his body that didn’t hurt.

  Hamp Sedley was gathering firewood, planning to drag a bundle behind his horse, and Maria Cantrell had gone to bathe at the nearby creek. Left to himself, Shawn was determined to stand on his own two feet like a man should. It took him fifteen minutes to pull on his pants and stomp into his boots and by that time, he felt as though he was ninety years old and ailing. Buttoning on his shirt over his bandaged ribs was out of the question and bending to get through the tent flap took a good deal of thought before he attempted the task.

  Finally he made it outside. Since his Colt had been taken, the Remington derringer that Sedley had left behind was in his pocket, but it offered little consolation. After the flat land stopped bucking and wheeling around him, Shawn took a few steps.

  “So far so good.” He walked with little pain, though his bruised, swollen eyes were sensitive to the morning sunlight.
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  He no longer heard Maria singing as she bathed at the creek and he decided to head that way and walk back with her. He smiled to himself. Make that toddle back with her. His hesitant baby steps could hardly be called walking.

  Maria had said she used the water every day at a spot shielded from prying eyes by an abandoned stage station and scattered wild oaks. There was no sign of Sedley, who had a tendency to wander, and the only sound was the scuffing of Shawn’s boots through dry summer grass. After a few minutes, he came to the old stage road, much overgrown by brush, but it gave him a path to follow that was surer underfoot. The Comanche had known the area well and their uncomfortable coming and going was probably what led to the abandonment of the stage station. The Comanche had left no sign of their presence, no scars on the land, nor had the Apache who’d followed them. Away from Maria’s campsite, it was a lost, lonely place, a haunt of owls and herons that humans rarely visited.

  Shawn stopped in his tracks, every nerve in his body taut as a fiddle string.

  Ahead, he heard a man talking, his voice rough and husky with lust, a tone old Luther Ironside called a cathouse growl. Shawn heard Maria plead with the man. The only answer was a laugh as cruel and painful as a slap in the face. Weak and hurting as he was, armed only with a belly gun, Shawn knew he was in no shape for a fight. He’d come out the loser and most probably be dead.

  Maria shrieked and Shawn reached a decision. No matter the odds he had it to do. There was no one else.

  He tottered forward, his breath coming in short painful gasps. He felt dizzy in the morning heat but tried to increase his pace. Maria’s shrieks were louder and came more often as she tried to fight off her assailant, a man with violent rape on his mind.

  The stage station was just ahead, only two adobe walls and the sagging relic of a pole corral still standing. Scattered wild oak and a single cottonwood grew along the creek bank. He saw a sudden white flash of a woman’s naked body on the ground and a man standing over her, his pants and underwear around his ankles.