Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

York asked, “Does anyone stand guard out there?”

Mahalia shook her head.

York opened the back door, which was unlocked. No porch awaited, just a few wooden steps. This was a street across which were the untended yards of dead houses, with another street of abandoned residences behind them, and woods beyond.

“That Indian,” York said, “does he come around checking in back, from time to time?”

She shook her head again, but added, “Not that I ever seen.”

He reached in his pocket for another gold eagle. Pressed it into the warmth of her palm. Her expression, smiling some, was warm, too.

“Sleep sound tonight,” he told her. “Don’t open your door unless someone comes pounding. Really pounding. Understood?”

“Understood, mister.”

“These guests of yours... the willing ones... are very bad people. Even for the likes of this place. Stay well out of anything that might occur. Got that?”

“Gots it.”

He gave her a smile and a nod.

She gave him a shy smile and a nod back, then slipped into her little bedroom, began to shut the door, hesitated, smiled again, not shyly, and shut herself in.

You have enough women in your life already, Caleb York, he told himself.

At the top of the stairs were the doors marked GENTLEMEN and LADIES. Over to the left, on a chair leaned back in the corner, sat Randy Randabaugh, on guard but sleeping. Revolver in hand in his lap.

York unlocked 1B with his key and found a room that rivaled his own back at the Trinidad House. The bedclothes were a tad threadbare, the wallpaper getting faded, but otherwise this might have been any hotel in a town that was alive and well.

He tossed his saddlebags on the bed and returned to the hall.

Knocking gently on the door of 2B, he said, “Mr. Parker,” softly, “Bret McCory. Sit tight.”

York got the double-pronged hairpin from his pocket and pulled the pin apart, straightening it some. In the keyhole of 2B, he stuck the straight end in about a third of an inch, and applied enough pressure to bend the end of the pin into a hook. Then he placed the closed end of the pin about an inch into the keyhole and applied pressure downward until he had bent the pin ninety degrees.

Now he had his lock pick, and he used it.

“Try your door, Mr. Parker,” York whispered.

Parker opened the door a crack, eyes narrowing at the sight of York standing there alone, and let his friend in. The businessman was still in his white shirt and trousers and shoes, divested only of his tie, vest, and coat. The man was, York was pleased to see, ready to travel.

“We can make it out of here,” York said, skipping any preliminaries, “through the kitchen. Door opens onto the back. No porch. No guard.”

Parker nodded, listening as York explained the plan to sneak over to the livery, where Tulley would be readying horses.

“Have you an extra gun?” Parker asked.

“I do, in my saddlebags, and I’ll get it to you when we make our move.” York did not want Parker armed now in case one of the outlaws checked on him, and got things started prematurely.

Parker was trembling in excitement, but also fear. “How soon do we go?”

“Damn soon.” York bobbed his head toward the door. “The younger Randabaugh is on guard right now, in the hall. I’ll take him out and then we’ll just go down and out through the kitchen. Should be no fuss.”

Parker frowned. “If you shoot that fool—”

“I’ll pistol-whip him good. Likely kill him, which is fine by me.”

“What of Willa? And Miss Filley?”

York gestured toward the door. “I’m going to fill them in now. I’ll leave your door unlocked. But stay put.”

Back in the hall, he knocked softly on 3B.

Rita’s voice, irritated, said, “What is it?”

“Bret McCory,” York whispered. “Hold on a minute.”

Again he used his makeshift lock pick, glancing over at the slumbering Randy from time to time. Some rustling — of clothes, not cattle — came from within as he worked.

“Try your door,” he said quietly.

Rita opened it halfway and York slipped in.

The two women had been sharing a big brass bed, which was enough to give a man ideas. The two females had been provided their luggage and both had availed themselves of dressing gowns — Willa in powder blue, Rita in black-trimmed scarlet. Fitting in several ways, the colors telling a story, the gowns tied tight at the waist. The women’s lovely faces, free of face paint, echoed each other with bright, brilliant smiles.

But it was Willa who threw herself into York’s arms, hugging him tight. Over her shoulder, he gave a smirking Rita a shrugging expression, then held Willa out away from him.

“Very soon,” he said, “I’m getting you out of here.”

He told them how.

“When?” Rita asked.

He jerked a thumb at the door. “I just need to signal Tulley, across the way.”

Willa asked, “Is everyone accounted for?”

“I think Doc Miller is within the living quarters of the innkeepers, as best I can tell. Randy is asleep in the hall, but he may be a light sleeper. And he’s armed, of course. Hargrave and his woman are across the stairwell. The Randabaugh brothers share a room over there, as well. The Wileys and the wounded man are downstairs.”

“And that Indian?” Rita asked. “Still on the porch?”

“Still on the porch. He’s asleep too, but I think a bug passing wind could wake him. Excuse the crudity.”

Willa smiled a little. “You’re excused this once.”

He raised his hands, palms high, as if somebody was sticking him up. “Just stay calm and alert. We’re going out quietly, but things could get noisy.”

They nodded. Willa hugged him again. Behind her, Rita blew him a smirky kiss.

Then York went downstairs, where all was quiet. Front lobby, parlor, dining room, kitchen with Mahalia’s bedroom door closed — nobody, and nothing.

Satisfied, he went quietly out the front doors. The Apache seemed to slumber.

Good , he thought. Let’s keep it that way.

York went down the porch stairs and stood near where the buckboard and the trotter were hitched up, and he got out the makings for a smoke, made one and lighted up, sucked in smoke, let smoke out. In nice full view of where Tulley could take him in from the perch above the empty general store.

Then the Indian was next to him.

The little Apache, the rifle held in one tight grip, only came to York’s shoulders, but the man’s dark-eyed look stood tall. “You go out earlier.”

“So what?”

The silence of the night made a buzzing nearby seem louder than it was.

The Indian clutched York’s arm and squinted at him, as if trying to bring the bigger man into focus. “Why you gone so long?”

“Just getting a feel for this place,” York said. “I don’t like surprises. And I don’t like people putting their hands on me.”

Then he shook the Indian’s arm off.

The buzzing was building.

The Apache looked past York at the buckboard, where flies were gathering over the tarp-draped wicker coffin, like locusts looking to strip a field of its crops. The night was cool but not cold enough, it seemed, to keep the flies away.

The Indian strode past York and went over to the buckboard, where he leaned in, grabbed the tarp, and flipped it away. Then the hard little man in the blue cavalry coat climbed up there, as insects scattered, and opened the lid on the wicker coffin.

Looked in.

Standing high in back of the buckboard, Broken Knife looked down at York, who felt oddly small suddenly, and said, “No like surprises, too.”

Raymond L. Parker lay on his bed in room 2B at the Hale Junction Inn, in his shirt and trousers and even his shoes, his coat, vest, and tie draped over a chair nearby.