Joseph West - The Man From Nowhere - A Ralph Compton Novel

Suddenly Oates was chilled to the marrow of his bones. It had only been a fleeting glimpse, an impression he’d caught for just an instant.

He rose to his feet, looking after the man. What had he seen in Pickles’ face?

Chapter 26

Eddie Oates leaned on the corral fence in the bright morning light, looking at but not seeing the mustang. For its part, the little paint had retreated to a far corner, recalling the wagon and the hot, dusty misery of Black Mountain. It had no desire to go back there ever again.

But cutting into lava with pick and shovel was far from Oates’ mind. He was trying to visualize Pickles’ face again, the way it was for that instant. It was as though the man’s mask had slipped and . . .

No, it wasn’t that.

Then he remembered. It was his eyes. Slanted in his direction, for a single moment they’d gleamed green, feral, menacing, the untamed eyes of a dangerous hunting animal. They were the eyes of a man who could kill coldly and professionally, without hate.

Oates shook his head. He was being ridiculous. The little, inoffensive man sold bloomers, not his gun, if he even had a gun.

What was in the leather case?

The man had tapped the case when he spoke of his merchandise, but it was long and narrow. How were bloomers packed? Oates allowed that he was not an expert on women’s fixings, but surely they were folded and not rolled lengthwise.

Was it a rifle case, for a high-powered weapon?

P. J. Pickles, a sure-thing killer hired by Darlene McWilliams to get her money back and murder those responsible for its theft? Or Peter Jasper Pickles, drummer and expert on female garments of an intimate nature?

What was he?

Oates pushed away from the corral. He was being ridiculous. A bad dream about Jacob Yearly had him spooked, was all. Pickles was what he seemed, a traveling drummer.

Then he remembered the man’s eyes . . . and he wasn’t sure of anything.

His indecision made Oates remain close to the cabin that day, but he was careful to stay away from the door and window after the lamp was lit.

That night he slept with a gun close at hand, and he was awake before first light. He made a quick breakfast of canned meat and coffee, saddled the paint and was on the trail east just as dawn was breaking.

He had reached a decision in the night. If Pickles was really a hired killer, then he must warn Stella and the others. They were with the man who freed them from the siege at the cave, but if he was still alive, he might trust an inoffensive little man who sold bloomers for a living. He might even turn his back on him. . . .

Oates kicked the paint into a trot. He had already lost too much time by hanging around the cabin yesterday and he cursed himself for being an indecisive fool.

He’d let Pickles lure him into a false sense of security. He’d heard it said that Billy the Kid was a harmless-looking fellow, and so were lawmen Bat Masterson and Texas John Slaughter. Small, quiet-spoken men, none of them seemed likely killers, but they were.

Around the saloons, Oates had often heard men talk of hired, sure-thing assassins and bounty hunters.

If Pickles was indeed one of those, his looks were deceiving. No doubt he depended on them as a cover when he rode into a place, killed someone and then quietly left.

There was nothing about the little man that would draw attention to him. In his guise as a bloomers drummer, he would make sure to stay away from saloons where rotgut whiskey often led to offense when none was intended and then to war talk and gunfire.

Men like Pickles did not seek fame or a reputation as gunfighters. He’d consider it the height of folly to engage a man in a gunfight when there was no profit in it. That was not good business. Manhunting was his profession and he’d be good at it.

The more he thought about it, the more Oates became convinced that Pickles was the nightmare Jacob Yearly had talked about in his dream.

“Something wicked this way comes. . . .”

And it came, not in the shape of a ferocious gunman, but in the guise of a small, dyspeptic drummer riding a one-eared flea-bait mule.

Oates rode alert in the saddle, his eyes constantly searching the trees and high, rocky ridges. The trail east from Black Mountain was becoming more familiar to him and wherever possible he kept close to the ponderosa pine and aspen forests where a man could find cover fast if he was put to it.

But when the day was just beginning to fade, Oates again entered unknown country, the pine-covered slope of Lookout Mountain rising just ahead of him. To the northeast lay the Sierra Cuchillo and to the west the waterless, desert badlands began.

Oates sat his horse and looked around him. He saw no evidence of a town.

Then something to the south caught his eye.

Behind a shallow ridge, smoke was rising straight as a string into the air, a smudge of black against the red and lilac sky.

Was that where Heartbreak lay?

Keeping the paint to a walk, Oates rode across a hundred yards of flat ground, then urged the mustang up the sage and piñon slope. At the top he drew rein and felt a pang of disappointment.

Below, next to a thin ribbon of creek, lay a ramshackle, unpainted shack and beside it a sorry corral, cobbled together by baling wire and whatever crooked rails were easily available. A shed that did duty as a barn was drunkenly lopsided and was supported by slanted poles. Muddy black pigs rooted close to the cabin and the grounds were dirty and unkempt, littered with discarded food cans and whiskey bottles. Even from his lofty perch on the ridge, Oates caught the vile stench of the place.

There were three horses in the corral, all of them good-quality animals.

It was a spot to avoid, but whoever lived there might know where he could find Heartbreak.

Oates came off the ridge and reined up outside the shack.

Suddenly a huge, bearded man with ugly, piggy eyes loomed in the doorway.

“What the hell do you want?” he said. His right hand was out of sight.

It was an unfriendly greeting to be sure, but Oates let it go. No one knew better than he that not everyone in the West was a paragon of hospitality.

“I’m looking for—”

“Be off with you,” the big man snapped. “There’s no bed and grub for you here.”

Oates opened his mouth to speak again, but stopped when a young Apache girl, carrying a water jug, brushed past the man and headed for the creek.

The girl, barely a teenager, was dressed in the Mexican fashion in a shirt and long skirt, a leather belt decorated with conchas around her slim waist. Her swollen, bruised face testified to a recent beating and she walked with a limp, favoring her left leg.

When Oates looked back to the door, two men were now standing there. The bigger man had stepped aside and next to him was a towheaded runt wearing a dirty undershirt and long johns. He’d buckled a Colt around his waist and had also strapped on an insolent grin.

“What’s the saddle tramp want?” he asked the big man.

“A bed an’ grub probably. I’ve told him to git, an’ he better git fast.”

The towhead stood on tiptoe and whispered something into the bearded man’s ear and Oates saw his expression change. He’d been surly before; now he looked sly.

“Dallas here has just reminded me of my bounden duty to be hospitable to strangers,” he said. “I most profoundly apologize. Why don’t you step down, Mister, and come inside, like you was visiting kinfolk?”

The towhead put space between him and the big man, and he grinned as he studied Oates thinking things over.

Oates had no illusions over what was going to happen. The Winchester under his knee, the Colt on his hip, his horse and saddle represented more than three months wages to trash like this. They were not about to let him ride out of here alive.