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

Her eyes moved past the girl to Daley who was lifting a sooty coffeepot off the stove. “Hey, Daley,” she yelled, “after you’ve done that, move your lazy ass and bring me a towel.”

“I’ve only got two hands, Lorraine,” Daley said, setting the pot and cups on the table.

“Nobody knows better than me how many hands you got, Daley.”

Nellie, looking prim, said, “I declare, Lorraine, you’re such a whore.”

“Takes one to know one, Nellie,” Lorraine said.

Daley looked at Nantan as all three women now fussed over her, then to Oates. “First time I’ve ever had an Apache in here. Usually they’re outside whoopin’ and hollerin’, if you catch my drift.”

“Sorry,” Oates said.

“Lipan, ain’t she?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“A man spends enough time around Apaches, he knows.” Daley shrugged. “I’ve never had no trouble with Lipan.”

The man turned away and walked behind the bar. Oates was uneasy. While he’d been talking to Daley he was sure he’d heard Nantan say the word “wife.”

Now Stella confirmed it. “Well, congratulations, Eddie,” she said, grinning. “I never took you for the marrying kind.”

“I’m not married and she’s not my wife,” Oates protested. “We didn’t have a churchin’ or nothing like that.”

“You could do worse, Eddie,” Rivette said. “She’s a right pretty girl.”

Then Shamus, the big, ugly, broken-nosed Irishman, did something strange. He stepped to the table, dropped a huge ham of a hand on Oates’ shoulder and said. “I can’t say it in Apache, but a Mescalero woman taught me their wedding chant—”

“Damn it all,” Oates said, “I told you, I’m not married.”

“If Nantan says you’re married, you’re married,” Lorraine said. She looked at Shamus. “Let the happy couple hear the wedding chant, Irishman. That ought to seal their bond, like.”

Shamus took a breath and, his hands pounding a drumbeat on the table, chanted.

Now you will feel no rain,

for each of you will be shelter for the other.

Now you will feel no cold,

for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there will be no loneliness,

for each of you will be friend to the other.

Now you are two persons,

but there are three lives before you: his life, her life and

your life together.

Go now to your dwelling place to enter into your days

together,

and may all your days be good and long upon the earth.

After Shamus was finished speaking, there was a round of applause. Rivette bowed and said, “Please sit at the table, Mrs. Oates, and have some coffee. It will warm you.”

Stella made a place for the girl beside Oates and he was freed from commenting on the wedding issue when Rivette said, “Eddie, I guess that was you back at the ridge when I was pinned down by the McWilliams riders.”

Oates poured coffee for him and Nantan, then nodded to the gambler ’s bandaged chest: “You took a bullet.”

“It could have been worse. You saved my life that day.”

Oates looked around the table, still hardly able to believe what he was seeing. “How did you all end up here?”

Rivette spoke up. “After I left the ridge, I knew I was hurt bad. Then at nightfall I saw a blazing fire on top of a mesa. I figured only you could be that dumb, Eddie. Anyway, I needed help, so I was willing to take a chance.”

Sam Tatum said, “It was my fault, Mr. Oates. I lit a fire too close to the tree.” The boy looked miserable. “I do silly things sometimes.”

“We all do silly things, Sammy,” Oates said. His eyes angled to Rivette. “Especially someone as dumb as me.”

Rivette caught the look and smiled. “Sorry, Eddie. Like I said, you’ve changed considerably, so being dumb doesn’t apply anymore.”

The gambler pulled the coffeepot and a cup toward him. He inspected the inside of the cup before he poured, then said, “The ladies here patched me up as best they could, but they knew I needed rest. We set out for Heartbreak, but I couldn’t make it, so I told them to detour here and we’d hole up until I recovered my strength.”

Rivette found a cigar in his shirt pocket, bit off the end and Stella lit it for him. Through a cloud of blue smoke he said, “Bill Daley used to have a clip joint on the San Francisco waterfront and one time I helped him out in a shooting scrape. He wrote me a letter before I drifted to Alma and told me he’d gone straight and was running the Cuchillo stage station with Shamus here. I figured he owed me a favor.”

Daley overheard and grinned. “Helping me out in a shooting scrape means he killed two men and wounded a third. They were trying to roll me in an alley, but made the mistake of drawing down on Rivette.” He nodded. “I’ll say I owe him a favor.”

“You’re lucky you found us, Eddie,” Stella said. “We’re heading for Heartbreak tomorrow.”

Then Oates told them the bad news.

Chapter 29

Warren Rivette stayed his hand as his cup was halfway to his mouth. He set the cup back on the table without tasting the coffee.

“Pete Pickles took a contract on Stella?” he asked, his handsome face stiff with shock.

Oates nodded. Earlier he’d told the others about Darlene McWilliams’ plan to marry Tom Carson and how she’d already moved her cattle onto the rancher’s grass. Then he described his meeting with Pickles and how Nantan had met the man on the trail to Heartbreak.

“Warren, do you know this man Pickles?” Nellie asked.

“I know about him,” Rivette answered. “I’ve heard some named guns, no pushovers themselves, say he’s the most dangerous man west of the Mississippi. When Pete Pickles accepts a contract to kill a man, from then on in that man is as good as dead.” He looked at Stella with bleak eyes. “Or woman.”

Nantan spoke for the first time. “He seemed such a nice man. He gave me a present of”—she turned to Oates—“what do you call them, Eddie?”

“Bloomers.” Oates looked at Rivette. “He’s posing as a bloomers salesman.”

The gambler’s fingers moved to the Colt in his shoulder holster, as though it brought him a measure of comfort. “Pete Pickles can be what he wants to be. He’s what the Navajo call a shape-shifter, a man who can himself turn into any animal he chooses. Now, Pete can’t become a wolf or a coyote, but he can present himself as a preacher, a frail old woman, a bloomers drummer . . . anything that will help him get the job done. He’s the original wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“He offers a money-back guarantee, but he’s never yet had to forgo his fee, no.”

“How many men has he killed?” This came from Lorraine, who looked strained and more than a little frightened.

“I don’t know exactly, but he set himself up in business at the end of the War Between the States and by this time the number of his victims could be in the hundreds. Most times Pickles kills with a rifle, but he’ll use a garrote, knife, poison, fire . . . whatever suits his purpose.”

Lorraine touched the back of Stella’s hand with the tips of her fingers. “Honey, there will be law in Heartbreak,” she said. “We’ll be safe there.”

Rivette said, “Eddie, can you and Nantan leave with us tomorrow at first light? There’s safety in numbers on a watched trail.”

Oates nodded. “Sure we will, though a man like Pickles will tend to be sudden.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. We’ll have four women riding with us and the only description he’ll have of Stella is the one Darlene McWilliams gave him.”

“Pickles will recognize me all the same,” Stella said. “He’ll know I’m the one that’s doing the trembling.”