Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

“I do right, Sheriff?” the deputy asked.

“You did fine, Tulley,” York said, and handed his .44 off to him. “Now go put your shirt on. You look undignified in just the BVD top. And don’t forget your bottle of sarsaparilla in the next-door cell.”

Tulley, chuckling maniacally, hustled off.

Crawley was sitting slumped, eyes on the floor. He knew he’d been buffaloed.

“Could have shot you, escaping,” York said, looming over the prisoner, arms folded.

Crawley nodded.

“Still could,” York said. “Or I could beat it out of you, what you know.”

Crawley shrugged.

“I’d just as soon give you a thrashing as not,” the sheriff said easily. “Two good men were shot down dead on the road to the Brentwood relay station.”

Crawley’s head came up, alarm coloring the light blue eyes in the narrow, pockmarked face. “Two men... dead?”

“Two men dead, but don’t worry. You can only be hanged once.”

“I didn’t do it! I was right here in this cell! You know that!”

“You were meant to be part of it. Are you denying the plan was for you to be on that stage, and make sure Raymond Parker didn’t cause any trouble? No, Mr. Crawley, you are as guilty of those two killings as you are of gunning down that cowboy last night.”

His dark eyebrows met as if they too were in desperate thought. “What if... what if people didn’t know I was part of that gang? What if when the circuit judge comes I was to plead guilty to manslaughter where that cowboy’s concerned?”

“Those are a couple of interesting ‘what if’s.’ ”

The prisoner looked like he might cry. “What do you want from me, Sheriff?”

“Mr. Crawley — I want it all.”

Crawley spilled his guts.

He was indeed supposed to be the inside man when the stage hijacking took place, set to pull a gun on the other passengers and keep them in check. The target was, as York had deduced, Raymond L. Parker, for whom his Denver business partners would surely pay a hefty ransom.

York sat next to Crawley on the cot. “How will the ransom demand be made?”

“One of the gang, Ned Clutter, has a fairly smooth way about him. He’ll go on to Denver and deliver the demand, posin’ as a party whose own wife was on the stage, and now a hostage herself. A drop’ll be arranged and Clutter would bring the cash back to where the gang is waiting.”

“How much?”

“Fifty thousand.”

A king’s ransom , York thought.

“Where?”

“Some ghost town in the hills,” Crawley said, shrugging. “I’m not from these parts. That’s all I know.”

“There’s something you do know.”

“No, honest to God, York — that’s everything!”

“It isn’t. You haven’t said who you’re riding with.”

The dark eyebrows went up. “Oh. Well... the Hargrave bunch. You know them?”

He knew of them. And this wasn’t good news. The former actor and his followers had left a trail of bloody corpses behind them, innocent witnesses made permanently mute.

York asked, “What does this Clutter look like?”

Crawley told him. “Do we have a deal, Sheriff?”

“A deal?”

“You back me on the manslaughter charge. Forget my part in rustling that stagecoach. Okay?”

York stood. “If I get Raymond Parker back, and the two women traveling with him... and if I live through the effort? I’ll consider it.”

Crawley moaned at the unfairness of that. Or maybe it was just his mangled foot.

Caleb York wasted no more time with the worthless gunhand. He collected his .44 from Tulley and headed out. The rain may have washed away the outlaws’ tracks, but he had a lead: Ned Clutter would likely be planning to take the last train out from Las Vegas.

York might still have time to catch him there.

Willa Cullen knew now that the woman seated next to her in the coach was no longer an adversary.

Rita Filley seemed to feel the same, as one sharp, wide-eyed glance between them made their new position, their mutual plight, clear. Rita’s hand found Willa’s and squeezed, and the two women stayed clasped for some time, like childhood friends supporting each other as they walked through a particularly scary forest.

A rumbling sky and a sudden darkness, as if sundown had come half a day early, further made fear their companion. Just as swiftly, a coldness came upon them, God or maybe Mother Nature reminding them that, even in New Mexico, winter was here.

The stolen stagecoach, driven by an outlaw with Hargrave leading the way on horseback, rumbled along its winding upward way, joggling and frequently jolting them. Across from Willa was a still unconscious Raymond Parker, slumped in the corner between wall and window; opposite the other woman was the young blond outlaw called Randy, whose apparent brother was up top, driving with the wounded man slumped next to him.

The lad’s revolver was limp in his grasp, dangling between his legs, and that unnerving grin had taken on an unsettling, lascivious aspect. His eyes looked them up and down, again and again, a starving man regarding a banquet.

“I’m Randy,” he said, as they bounced with the stagecoach as it rolled over rocks.

The two women exchanged glances, affirming that each already knew this boy was randy, but Rita said, almost friendly, “My name is Rita. This is Willa.”

He grinned. It was a yellow thing that might have been attractive had its hue not been so sweet-corn-colored and its bearer not had such greedy, close-set eyes, light brown but with some yellow in them, too.

“Ain’t no reason,” he said, “why we cain’t be friendly.” Neither woman said anything, though the sky expressed its opinion by way of a growl of thunder.

“Hope we get there,” the boy said, “’fore this rain comes down.”

Willa, quietly, said, “Where are we headed, Randy?”

“Next stop’s Hell Junction,” he said.

Rita frowned, as if that meant something to her, or perhaps it was just the implication of the word “hell.” Willa thought there was something familiar about the name, but couldn’t place what.

“You seem like a nice young man,” Willa lied to the boy. “I’m not without means. Perhaps you could help us out of this.”

“Lady, I’m who got you in it!” He was grinning, shaking his head. “Now, I ain’t gonna be mean to you or nothin’, but don’t go thinkin’ I can help you. My big brother would give me a whuppin’ and Mr. Hargrave would like as not shoot me down. No, we three got to settle for bein’ friendly is all.”

Willa thought she sensed something different about Parker — was their businessman friend playing possum? Perhaps waiting for the right moment...?

Willa asked, “What’s your brother’s name, Randy?”

“Reese. We’s the Randabaugh boys.” He grinned embarrassedly. “Don’t want you thinkin’ he whups me all the time or some such. Only if I needs it. Nobody’s better to me in the whole wide world. Hostiles killed our folks when we was young ’uns. He raised me hisself. Raised me right.”

Obviously.

The Filley woman, picking up on Willa working on the boy, said, “If you ever decide to get out of the outlaw life, I could use a strapping young man like you at my saloon.”

His eyes and grin went wide. “You work at a saloon? You prettier than most saloon gals.”

“I own a saloon. I bet you’d make a fine bartender. I’m always on the lookout for smart young men who can handle themselves.”

His grin had “aw shucks” in it. “Might kind of you to offer, but I kinder like ridin’ with Reese, and this job is gonna pay real high, wide, and—”

Parker lurched for the boy, grabbing at the gun that had seemed so loose in that dangling hand, only now the hand became a fist and the gun’s snout got jabbed in the businessman’s belly.