Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

Willa just looked at him. Rita managed a smile and a nod. Then he was gone.

Alone with Parker, the women stood on either side of the seated man, who stared straight ahead.

Willa asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Parker? Are you hurt?”

Quietly, he said, “I am ashamed.”

Rita frowned at him. “Why ashamed?”

“I failed you both. First I risked all of our lives by clumsily attacking those outlaws, managing only to get that poor stage driver and his guard butchered. Then I made an attempt to take down that fool boy and he bested me.”

“I know a little Shakespeare myself,” Rita said. “What’s done is done. Isn’t that Shakespeare? Hamlet or something?”

“Macbeth,” Willa said. She leaned in, rested a hand on his shoulder. “You have to pull yourself together, Mr. Parker. It’s the three of us against these outlaws, and I don’t think the people running this hotel are much better.”

Parker was still gazing straight ahead. “It seems to be some kind of outlaw hideout. But we are outnumbered and that Hargrave character is no fool. I bitterly regret the position I’ve put you ladies in.”

“Enough of that,” Rita snapped. “We have to think. You’re of value to them — you’re the strongbox they took off the stage.”

He nodded again. “Clearly they intend to ransom me.”

Willa said to her, “But the brother of that boy called Rita and myself witnesses. He wanted Hargrave to kill us. Perhaps he still will.”

Rita sighed. “I agree. Those rooms that two-bit Santa Claus says he has for us could be out back, getting dug while we speak. We clearly weren’t part of the plan. The gunman who killed that cowboy of yours, Willa, last night at the Victory? I think he was their inside man who got derailed into a jail cell by our mutual friend, Caleb York. Those murders today weren’t intended. Hargrave and his bunch meant to stop the stage, grab you , Mr. Parker, and ride off with the means for their ransom.”

Parker huffed bitterly. “And had I not been so impulsive, that is what the outlaws would have done. And those two men would be alive, and you two would be safe.”

“Stop it,” Rita ordered. “That doesn’t do any of us any good, you whipping yourself. We need to think. I can bargain with my body, and Miss Cullen can do the same, if she’s willing. But even so, after these lowdown bastards have had their way with us, six-foot-under ‘rooms’ out back are likely waiting. That pretentious highwayman may think he’s Hamlet, but he’s just another Simon Legree.”

Those words had barely passed Rita’s lips when the front doors opened and the boy and his brother hauled in the limp, unconscious form of Bemis, the outlaw resembling a miner who’d been shot by the stagecoach driver, as his bloody shirt testified — Randy at the shoulders, walking backward, Reese carrying the man under the knees.

Hargrave had held a door open for them, and now he stepped inside as the brothers paused with their cargo. The actor yelled, “Wiley! Attend us!”

The master of the house emerged from the kitchen with a tray on which were two shaky cups, one of tea, one of coffee, which he managed not to spill much of, delivering them to a small table near where the two women stood, then all but sprinting to his client.

Wiley smiled obsequiously and pressed his hands together before him. “How might I be of service, Mr. Hargrave?”

“Do you have a spare room on this floor?”

“Only the quarters of Mrs. Wiley and myself.”

“Is there a bedroom?”

“There are two — mine and hers. I use the guest room. My darling bride cannot abide my snoring.”

“Your room will do. Direct us.”

With only a pause to quench his disappointment at this inconvenience, Wiley said, “Of course, Mr. Hargrave,” and led the way, which took them through a door to the left of the stairway.

Before long, from behind the closed doorway to the Wiley living quarters, came a terrible cry of pain. Apparently, getting Bemis settled on the bed had wakened the man.

A woman came streaking down from the second floor. Striking, with beautiful features that hard living had coarsened, her long dark hair curling loose at her shoulders, she took the stairs, quick and hard, as if she were angry with them. She stopped two-thirds of the way down.

“Blaine! What the hell goes on?”

She wore a white peasant dress with a red sash and her complexion was dark, darker than Rita’s. She appeared to be full-blooded Mexican, and the low-cut dress emphasized her overwhelming voluptuousness.

Blaine appeared in the doorway to the innkeepers’ quarters.

“Juanita, my querida,” he said, “friend Bemis was wounded on the job today. He may yet breathe his last, but we’re looking after him as best we can. Did we disturb your siesta?”

Something about that last bit sounded sarcastic to Willa.

Juanita came down to meet Hargrave at the foot of the stairs. Though much shorter than him, she had a certain stature; she stood with her hands on her hips, her chin up, her bosom out.

“You will get yourself killed, querida ,” she said, “if you are not careful. This job you pull, it was very dangerous. Muy arriesgado .”

“Oh, what men dare do, to please their woman! To give her nice things.” He made a sweeping gesture. “Have you met our guests?”

She frowned as she took in the three strangers in the parlor off the lobby. Slowly, her eyes narrowed, like a cat prowling for prey, the Mexican woman approached the well-dressed older man in the leather chair and the two nicely garbed young women standing on either side of him.

Without addressing them, she said over her shoulder to Hargrave, who had slowly followed her, “This is the banker, the businessman. But who are these mujeres in-útiles ?”

“Mr. Bemis was not the only casualty, mi amor . We had to dispose of two employees of the stage line, who objected to our intrusion. These young women were along for the ride. We have decided to make them our guests.”

She turned, eyes flaring. “ Testigos ? And you did not leave them sangría ? There on la carretera ?” She shook the mane of black hair and stalked off, heading back up the stairs, muttering, “ Hombre tonto ,” her footsteps quick but heavy.

“My apologies,” Hargrave said, bowing yet again, and returned to the Wiley quarters.

Willa said, “She’s a danger. Could be the death of us.”

“Or the life,” Rita said with a smile, arms folded. “She’s not an ally, but she may be useful.”

Willa couldn’t see how.

Parker had been watching all this with a new alertness. The women deposited themselves on a two-seater red-and-black brocade sofa nearby. Both watched the businessman with keen interest. Several glances affirmed that they shared a sense that a new attitude had worked its way through his despair.

“We’ll find a way out of this,” he said. “I give you my pledge.”

That heartened Willa.

But she’d rather Caleb York were making that promise.

Getting to the relay station at Brentwood Junction took Caleb York under twenty minutes, but he had to ride hard.

He’d been pushing the black-maned, dappled-gray gelding all day, and figured it would be best to leave the animal here. He would pay Irvin Fosler, who ran the station, for the use of a fresh horse for the journey to Las Vegas, hoping to make it there by mid-evening, before the late train to Denver pulled out.

That was how he figured Ned Clutter — that was the name Crawley had given him for the Hargrave gang’s ransom messenger — would get himself to the Mile High City and Raymond Parker’s business partners.