Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

Hargrave backhanded the boy, then got behind him and pulled the chair back rudely three or four feet, jostling him. Randy swallowed and blinked back tears, the corner of his mouth trickling red.

Standing behind him, Hargrave placed a fatherly hand on the boy’s shoulder, leaned in to speak softly into an ear. “You are not to trifle with the guests .” Then he looked at Rita, realizing that she had been seated directly before the young man. “Nor are you to trifle with this innocent, ladies.”

Willa said acidly, “ I haven’t spoken to him.”

“I believe you,” Hargrave said, then gave Rita a wicked smile that said he saw right through her. To the boy, he said, “ ‘Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.’ ”

Randy was frowning, shaking his head, not happy with his boss. “It’s red injuns what kills with arrows.”

Hargrave slapped him on the top of the head. “Go see if you can be helpful in the sickroom, lad. Do it now. I’ll take over here, for the nonce.”

“Yessir,” he said, got up, and paddled off with his head down, crossing to the door to the Wiley quarters and disappearing within.

Hargrave turned the chair around and sat backward in it, for some kind of dramatic effect apparently. Rita considered him an ass... if a very dangerous one. And a person kicked in the head by an ass could be just as dead as one trampled by a thoroughbred steed.

Which wasn’t Shakespeare, but pure Rita Filley.

“You lovely ladies,” Hargrave said, with a sweeping hand gesture that tried to be casual, though he wasn’t quite actor enough to sell it, “would be well-advised to keep to yourselves. Cause us no trouble and when Mr. Parker’s friends pay the freight, we’ll free you as well.”

Innkeeper Wiley emerged from the door to his quarters and called over to Hargrave. “A word, sir?”

Hargrave rose, gave the two women a cautionary raised forefinger, then went to see what Wiley wanted.

Willa whispered harshly, “What in the world were you doing with that boy? He’s dangerous!”

“They’re all dangerous,” Rita whispered back. “But we can use some friends among the natives. You get friendly with Hamlet.”

Hargrave and Wiley ended their conversation, the innkeeper quickly returning to his quarters and the outlaw leader loping into the lounge area. But this time the actor did not sit in that chair, forward or backward or otherwise. Instead he perched on the arm of the two-seater sofa, next to Willa. Parker was taking this in, being careful to maintain his beaten-down manner.

The actor’s arm slipped behind Willa, not touching her shoulders, just resting along the upper edge of the sofa’s back.

“I must apologize for that young ruffian,” he said, his words more for Willa than Rita. Really, entirely for Willa...

“He doesn’t know better,” Willa said, “although some people should .”

His mouth twitched with amusement. “Where were you educated, my dear?”

Willa frowned at the familiarity. “I was taught at home by my mother. She was educated back east, very well, and she passed it on to me.”

“I would have thought you the product of a private school for girls,” he said. “You display a cultured, even refined manner that, frankly, makes me miss the company I once kept.”

Rita doubted that. Actors were rootless vagabonds who just knew how to be flowery and well, particularly when someone else had written the words. But they really weren’t any better than... well, any better than a saloon-keeper.

Willa asked her host, “Why do you keep such low company now?”

His shrug was an elaborate thing. “I’m afraid that where I was once sought by the finest theaters in the United States and their territories, I am now wanted only by the representatives of so-called law and order.”

“Does that have anything to do,” Willa asked with quiet condescension, “with going around holding up stagecoaches?”

He grinned wickedly. “It does, and trains and banks. But it began with an impulse I could not control. Someone insulted me and I took his life. Then, in one fell swoop, as the Bard says, ‘My life was forever changed.’ ”

“Why not demonstrate that some good still lives within you?” Willa said quietly; then she touched his hand, which rested near his lap as he sat on the sofa’s arm. “Let my friend and me go. What use would two women be to desperate men like yourselves, anyway?”

Rita thought, If she doesn’t know ...

“Your gentleness beggars description,” Hargrave said, and there was something tender in his expression. Perhaps Willa Cullen knew what she was doing after all!

“Eres un cerdo asqueroso!” a female voice called from across the lobby, where it echoed in the high ceiling.

Rita was Mexican enough to know what that meant — Hargrave was being called a swine. She smiled to herself.

The voluptuous dark-haired, dark-hued woman in the overflowing peasant dress was storming toward them, fists clenched, eyes blazing.

She was waving, in her right hand, a revolver. A .38, if Rita wasn’t mistaken.

Hargrave slipped off the sofa arm and Juanita was right there on him, shoving him to one side with her free hand; she leaned in and grabbed Willa by an arm, still waving that revolver (a Lightning Colt with a pearl handle, Rita further noted), and shook her like she would a disobedient child. Then the woman’s left hand shoved Willa against the sofa’s cushioned back, and leaned way in, the attacker’s face almost nose to nose with the captive’s, the snout of the .38 revolver against Willa’s right breast. Rita was impressed with Willa’s stony-faced reaction.

White teeth flashed. “Maldita pícara! Aléjate de mi hombre!”

Then Hargrave grabbed the small, volatile woman by the arm and dragged her back kicking and screaming to the doorway near the stairs; she was still waving the revolver, like a payday cowboy in town looking for a window to shoot out. They stood there shouting at each other, the woman using Spanish, the man using profane English that had nothing to do with William Shakespeare.

Willa, breathing hard, turned to Rita, who was smiling, arms folded.

“Do you see now?” Rita said, sotto voce. “Make friends and sew discontent. And perhaps reap the rewards.”

Parker said, quietly, “Good job, ladies.”

They sat quietly for several hours, with no guard at all for a while, though Rita and her two companions in captivity knew there was nowhere for them to go.

They had discussed it briefly.

“No one’s watching us,” Willa said.

Rita said, “That Indian is — out on the porch, standing guard?”

Frowning in thought, Willa said, “Maybe we could get out the back way.”

“Through the kitchen? Overtake Mrs. Wiley? Who we haven’t even seen yet, so can hardly judge her mettle. Still — perhaps that’s possible. And then what?”

Willa shrugged. “Just run into the hills and take cover until they give up and get out.”

“Or until they find us.”

Parker, who hadn’t spoken a word in some time, said, “We don’t know our way around this place. Once we’re shown to our rooms, we can start taking stock. Keep track of the layout of this structure. If we make an escape, it will almost certainly have to be after dark.”

“Agreed,” Rita said.

The businessman sighed. “We must stay alert and keep an eye out for escape possibilities. But nothing hasty — these are desperate, violent men.”

Willa was just starting to say something when Randy reappeared. He came slump-shouldered out of the door near the stairway, crossed the check-in area, and returned to his chair, which he positioned several additional feet away from his charges.