Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

Hard.

With the back of his free hand, Randy slapped Parker, like a child who sassed.

Then he shoved the dignified man — who was a rumpled mess now, a trickle of red trailing down his cheek — back to his corner.

Rita said, “I was right about you.” She was smiling at the boy. “You can handle yourself.”

The boy grinned. “That I can, ma’am. That I can.”

Willa admired the Filley woman for that, the remark distracting the boy and calming him down.

A few moments later the sky let loose and the rain came so hard you could barely hear the hoofbeats. Parker just sat there, no longer slumped, but glazed and dejected, his eyes now meeting those of the women, as if he were ashamed of his failure.

Perhaps he was.

Parker came out of it only enough to shutter his window, as did the women and their escort.

The hammering rain did not last long — perhaps twenty minutes — but when the shutters opened, the air stayed humid, as if the sky wanted to be able to change its mind at a second’s notice. The coach was on a downward slope now, heading into a little valley between rocky hillsides.

Willa watched out her window and saw something she’d long known about but never seen: one of the many ghost towns scattered around New Mexico territory, mining camps turned bustling hamlets whose buildings were now abandoned like the dreams of getting rich quick they’d been built on. A sign at the outskirts told much of the story. The first word of HALE JUNCTION, neatly lettered, had been replaced by a free-hand jagged scrawl of red that said, HELL. A neatly lettered POP. 280 had its number crossed out half a dozen times, until the final designation (also in ragged red) was 3.

The Filley woman said, “Silver mine went bust.”

Willa asked, “How do you know that?”

Her dark-eyed, dark-haired sister captive seemed to have to think before answering that. “Not much gold in these parts... Anyway, people in Trinidad have mentioned it.”

That answer seemed somewhat on the mysterious side, but Willa didn’t follow up.

The woman said, “There’s other ghost towns in these hills — coal and copper, too. If the vein isn’t rich, the town dies, and everybody moves on, sometimes overnight.”

Willa felt vaguely embarrassed that this relative newcomer seemed to know more about the area than she did. Of course, a woman who worked in a saloon could pick up plenty from her male clientele.

The land flattened out and the coach was soon rumbling over crushed rock down a main street where the rain showed no signs of having touched the little town. The storm seemed to have missed it, or perhaps this was not a town at all, but a mirage.

The buildings were gray and weathered, their façades paint-blistered, windows broken out or boarded up; still, it wasn’t hard to imagine townsfolk like Trinidad’s strolling these boardwalks, over which signs read GOOD EATS, HALE JCT LUMBER, HALE JCT LAUNDRY, ASSAY OFFICE, U.S. POST OFFICE, PALACE THEATER, BUCKHORN SALOON, LIVERY STABLE. At the far end was a dead church, its bell tower minus a bell, either scavenged or taken along to the next community. The bell was also missing from atop what had likely been a one-room schoolhouse.

The abandoned town had the expected ghostly silence, the whinnies and neighing of the slowed horses of both the coach and its accompanying riders heightened in the stillness. Wind whispered down the pebbled street, tumbleweed chasing tumbleweed. Somewhere a dog barked, sharp and high — a terrier? Somewhere else a bird cawed — a crow?

And along the low-slung boardwalk, missing planks like teeth gone from a geezer’s smile, scurried small animals, squirrels on the left, rats on the right, each little army keeping to itself.

A rodent by any other name , Willa thought.

At the livery stable, down near the dearly departed church, Hargrave got down from his horse and opened the double barn doors. The coach was driven in, the driver getting down to help Hargrave unhitch and then guide the stage’s horses into stalls.

The outlaw in the blue army shirt, whose blond-haired resemblance to the boy made him Reese, the brother, approached Hargrave while Willa watched out her window. Rita couldn’t see much from hers but was doing her best. Parker seemed morose, staring at nothing except, perhaps, his limited prospects.

Down on the straw floor of the livery, Reese was saying to the gang leader, “Enough room to stable our hosses right here, Blaine.”

Interesting, Willa thought. Some of these outlaws called the head man “Mr. Hargrave,” but this one used the actor’s given name. Second in command, perhaps?

“No,” Hargrave said. “We will instruct Broken Knife to hitch our steeds outside the Inn.”

The Inn? she wondered. What in blazes was the Inn? And who or what was Broken Knife?

Hargrave said, “We’ll be safe enough there, but one never knows when... how does the cliché go?”

“The what?”

“One never knows in this life when one must make a fast getaway.”

Shakespeare hadn’t said that, Willa thought.

“Oh,” Reese said. “Right.”

“We’ll let Mr. Bemis rest up on top of the coach till we get these women and our honored guest suitably housed.”

“Should we round up a doc for Ben?”

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, my friend.”

Now that was Shakespeare, Willa thought.

“You mean, if he dies he dies?”

“I mean we will not risk taking that step unless necessary... Boy! ”

Randy stuck his head out his coach window. “Yessir, Mr. Hargrave?”

“Escort our guests across the street, would you? There’s a good lad.”

“Yessir.”

Randy waved his gun at Parker and nodded toward the coach door. Parker opened the door and stepped down from the coach, using the fold-down step unsteadily, but obeying.

Hargrave was waiting, looking like a pirate with his ruffled shirt, curling chest hair, and black jacket and pants. But it was a long-barreled revolver, not a cutlass, that he pointed at the dejected businessman.

Randy smiled — such a pleasant, almost handsome boy, if dim — and gestured with the hand that didn’t have a gun in it.

“Ladies,” he said. “Best watch your step.”

Willa climbed down from the coach first and stood beside Parker, who didn’t meet her eyes. The stable smells, manure and hay, were strong and almost comforting to a girl raised on a ranch. The horses, after the long ride, were still settling. The outlaw called Reese was wiping one animal down.

The Filley woman stepped from the coach and, judging by a momentarily startled expression that became a knowing little smile, Willa could deduce Randy must have put his hand somewhere it didn’t belong. The dark-eyed woman winked at Willa, as if to say, Our best chance to escape is right behind me.

Willa nodded, barely, as if to say, You are not wrong.

Randy took Parker by the arm, sticking the snout of the gun in the man’s side, and directed Willa and her companion to walk in front of them.

“Just across the street and down to the left some,” the boy said.

The two women both wore button-up boots, with slight heels, which made for steady enough walking, but the crushed rock underfoot was awkwardly navigated nonetheless. Willa stumbled and the Filley woman caught her by the arm.

“Got you, Willa,” she said.

Willa glanced at her. “Thank you, Miss Filley.”

That came off in a way Willa hadn’t intended.

“I mean to take no liberty,” the other woman said. “But I think we are at the point where using each other’s first names is only natural and right. Please call me Rita.”