The man with the black hat and black sideburns framing his broad, harsh face nudged the other man, who was slightly shorter, with a large, hard gut and greasy red hair spilling down from his cream plainsman. The black-haired hombre jerked his head toward the front of the hotel. The red-haired gent nodded and hefted his double-barreled Greener in both hands across his thick chest.
The black-haired gent quietly raked a shell into the breech of his Henry rifle and straightened. With a last cautious glance at the window from which passionate sighs and groans emanated, above the wet ticks of the raindrops dripping off the roof of the hotel and the privy, he moved off at an angle toward Diamondback's main street.
The red-haired gent followed, taking quick, mincing steps with his stubby legs, his small, booted feet making sucking sounds in the mud.
They tried to avoid the largest puddles as they approached the hotel's west front corner and mounted the boardwalk. As the black-haired gent reached for the front door, a face appeared in the shadows on the other side of the building, at the far end of the boardwalk.
The black-haired gent stopped suddenly, turning his head and tensing.
The figure walked into the light emanating from the curtained front window, upon which gold-leaf letters formed the words “THE RUTHERFORD B. HAYES HOTEL.” The third man was tall and lanky in his spruce green duster and bowler hat, a long, thin cheroot protruding from between his teeth.
He held a sawed-off ten-gauge in one hand, a Buntline Special in the other. A grin twisted his lips around the cheroot.
“Gonna get yourself shot, Pyle, you son of a bitch,” the black-haired gent said.
“Try it someday, Giff. I want you to.”
“Shut-up, both of yas!” intervened the red-haired hombre, who's name was Sloan, as he stepped between them both and opened the hotel's front door. “We got a job to do, and I'm thirsty.”
As the men stepped inside the hotel's small, carpeted lobby, where a fire smoked in the hearth, they turned to the front desk at the right side of the room. A birdlike woman with a tight cap of red gray curls and small, round spectacles sat behind the desk, reading a Bible spread open before her, beside the hotel register, a pen, and an ink bottle.
She was shaking her head, lips pursed with disgust.
As the three men approached the desk, she placed a finger on the page she'd been reading, to hold her place, and looked up.
As her eyes took in the three gun-packing hard cases before her, her hazel eyes sharpened and her paper white cheeks colored.
The squawking of the bed upstairs could be heard as if from far away, the ceiling timbers complaining faintly, the chandelier at the base of the stairs jostling, the cylinders chiming.
Sloan smiled, his small eyes slanting wickedly, as he aimed his shotgun at the woman's sparrow chest, her pointy nubbin breasts pushing at her black, lace-edged shirtwaist. “Key for the room where the, uh”âhe jerked his head toward the staircase flanking the deskâ“
entertainin's
goin' on.”
Chapter 6
The birdlike woman gasped and jerked back in her chair. Her eyes rose from the twin barrels yawning at her spindly bosom, and her nostrils flared angrily. “Appears the devil is having a high old time in town tonight.”
A muffled squeal rose from the top of the stairs.
Sloan narrowed his steel blue eyes even more, his plump, freckled cheeks balling humorously. On the other side of the black-haired gent called Giff, the tall man, Pyle, said, “Lady, you ain't seen nothin' yet.”
Sloan snapped his fingers. “Hand over the key.”
The woman swallowed, eyes twitching fearfully, one hand spread upon her chest. “I . . . I believe the marshal is in there.”
Giff bounded forward, bellying up to the counter and reaching across to grab the old woman by the front of her shirtwaist, jerking her bony face up close to his. He bunched his lips and spoke through gritted teeth, keeping his voice down.
“Lady, hand over the fuckin' key, or I'm gonna drill an extra hole in your ugly face. Got it?”
Her eyes bulged. Her mouth formed a thin, downward-curving slash.
Moving only her hand, she reached under the desk, feeling around blindly, making a soft clanking noise, before finally setting a black key on the desk. To the key was attached a round metal plate engraved with the number 12.
Giff dropped his gaze to the key. Still clutching the woman's dress, keeping her face six inches from his, he said, “Now, do we need to hogtie you and cut out your tongue, or you gonna be a good ugly bitch and stay right here behind this desk . . . with your fucking mouth
shut
?”
Her small voice shook. “Amos Falcon sent you, didn't he? On account of what”âshe glanced at the ceiling near the stairsâ“the marshal done to his son.”
“That wasn't the answer I was lookin' for.”
“Oh, Lordy,” the woman chirped, tears squeezing out her eyes and dribbling down her pasty cheeks. “Yes . . . I'll stay here and be quiet. Please don't hurt me!”
“If your old man comes snoopin' around, you keep him here, too, understand?”
The woman jerked her head up and down.
Giff tossed her back against the cubbyholes built into the back wall. He turned, glanced darkly at Sloan and Pyle, and headed for the stairs.
With Sloan and Pyle following in a shaggy line, Giff took the stairs quietly, two steps at a time, on the balls of his feet. Sloan tried doing the same, but his legs were too short, so he took only one step at a time. Long-legged Pyle scowled behind him as he followed the stocky redhead, having to move more slowly than he was comfortable with.
As Giff approached the top of the stairs, the groans and the bed squawks got louder.
He set his left boot down on the third step from the top. It squeaked like a baby bird fallen from its nest. He froze, gritting his teeth, pricking his ears to listen.
The bed squawks and the passionate sounds of lovemaking continued without pause. Giff smiled. He turned to the others, shook his head with relief, indicated the loose step with his rifle barrel, then stepped up and over it to the top of the stairs.
As the men stole quietly down the hall, the bedsprings went
shee-saw
,
shee-saw
,
shee-saw
, while the man grunted and cursed. Beneath the man's low exclamations, the girl groaned and sighed.
“Oh, god, Custis . . . oh . . . Jesus
Christ
!”
Giff glanced at Sloan slightly flanking him on his right, and smiled crookedly. They stopped before the door, Pyle behind them, a full head taller. Giff reached for the doorknob, then stopped. The door wasn't quite latched.
“Oh, Christ, you fuck soooo good, Custis!” fairly shouted the marshal above the bed's sawing and the man's grunting and cursing.
Pyle snorted softly and whispered. “Sometimes this job is just too easy.”
Giff motioned for the other two men to crab out beside him. At the same time, he took two steps straight back, holding the rifle in his right hand, aimed at the door's center. He raised his left foot and, swinging his left arm out for balance, slammed his boot against the door, just left of the knob.
The door banged back against the wall with a thunderous boom, making the whole room jump. Giff grinned wolfishly and shouted, “Message from Amos Falcon, Marshal!” He took two long strides into the lantern-lit room and aimed the rifle with both hands at the bed.
He froze before he could get the barn-blaster's stock leveled. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
On the bed before him stood Marshal Blassingame in all her butt-naked splendor. She'd just risen three feet above the bed, yellow hair and big, round tits rising then falling as her feet plunged back toward the rumpled sheets below.
She grinned, eyes bright, as she raised a Winchester straight out from her belly.
Giff's lower jaw sagged as he brought the rifle to bear. “Shit.”
Before he could pull the trigger, the marshal's Winchester's stabbed smoke and flames, the shot sounding like crashing boulders in the close quarters.
Â
In his balbriggans and hat, double-action Colt extended in his right hand, Longarm had crouched in front of the dresser. He'd glimpsed two shadows hunkered by the privy when he'd gotten out of bed to light a cigar.
Now, Merle's first shot slammed into the black-haired gent with the Henry rifle. Screaming, the man stumbled straight back toward the door, triggering both rifle barrels into the ceiling over the bed.
The twin blasts rocked the entire building, plaster and wood raining onto the bed in front of Diamondback's naked marshal, who quickly recocked her Winchester.
Longarm squeezed his Colt's trigger a half second after Merle had fired her Winchester, his own slug drilling the man through his right arm. The man fell back into a short, fat gent with long, red hair and wielding a double-barreled Greener. The red-haired gent threw the black-haired hombre to one side, stepped forward, and began raising his Greener.
Longarm and Marshal Blassingame fired at the same time, the shots ripping through the man's lumpy chest.
He screamed, mouth forming a horseshoe-sized O as he stumbled back, tripping over the black-haired gent and slamming against the wall on the other side of the hall. He continued shrieking while trying to raise the carbine.
Longarm and Merle pumped two more shots into his chest and belly. Blood spurting from the holes and spraying the papered wall behind him, he dropped the Greener and staggered sideways, stumbling out of Longarm's view behind the wall right of the open door.
A loud thump said he'd fallen at the same time that the tall gent in the bowler and duster leaped behind the wall on the left side of the door. The tall man snaked a sawed-off ten-gauge around the door latch and settled the barrels on Merle.
Longarm drilled a round into the door casing, but the rider held the shotgun steady.
Both barrels of the gut-shredder exploded.
To Longarm's right, Merle leaped in a long, high arc off the bed's right side as the double-ought buck sliced the air where she'd been standing and blew two horse collar-sized holes in the plastered wall at the head of the bed.
Longarm fired another round, then Merle fired four in a straight line along the wall left of the door. The shotgunner screamed, staying out of sight behind the wall. Longarm triggered his pistol from one knee, then ducked as a long, silver-plated revolver barrel snaked around the door frame and popped twice.
Longarm threw himself forward and lay belly-flat as a slug shattered a window behind him while another barked through a metal handle on the dresser.
The shooter bellowed with anger and pain. Then, as Longarm thumbed open his empty Colt's loading gate, the man dashed past the door, clamping his left hand, which also held the Buntline Special, to his bloody right shoulder. He disappeared past the wall, boots pounding the floorboards.
“Goddamnit, I'm out!” Longarm barked.
“Me, too,” Merle shouted from the other side of the bed. She tossed Longarm's Winchester onto the bed, then leaped onto the bed herself, running toward the chair over which her shell belt hung. “Don't you federals keep your long guns loaded?”
“As poor as you're shootin' tonight, sweetheart, I reckon next time I better get ya a damn
Gatling
gun!” Longarm knocked the spent shells from his Colt's cylinder then reached toward his cartridge belt.
“Poor as
I'm
shooting? What were you aiming atâthe
wall
? Here!” Kneeling at the edge of the bed, breasts dipping toward the floor, Merle tossed her own Colt toward Longarm.
He caught the revolver and flipped it so the grips were in his palm. “I reckon bein' half-naked fouled my aim.” He tossed his own empty Colt onto the bed and ran out the door.
“Finish that son of a bitch!” Merle shouted behind him.
“What the hell you think I'm doin'âgoin' out for a smoke?” Longarm grumbled, sprinting barefoot down the hall toward the stairs, pistol held straight up in his right hand, balbriggans stretched taut across his chest and thighs.
On the first floor, a woman screamed. A man shouted.
Longarm dashed down the stairs two steps at a time, into the pale, buttery light shed by the chandelier at the bottom of the stairs and from lamps in the lobby to the right.
When he was half-down, a gun barked. The slug chewed into the railing before him, peppering his balbriggans with wooden shards and splinters.
Longarm ducked and extended his pistol over the railing.
“I'll kill her!” the tall hombre in the bowler and duster shouted, eyes bright with fury as he held the wife of the hotel's proprieter before him, one arm around her neck.
She flopped before him like a rag doll, gagging as he drew his forearm taught against her throat and snugged the end of the Buntline Special against her temple.
“Throw the gun down, you federal son of a bitch, or I'll blow this bitch's brains all over this lobby.”
Longarm never wore his badge unless he was arresting someone, but after the saloon shootings word must have somehow gotten out that he was a lawman.
A foolproof way of getting turned down with a shovel was giving up your weapon to a badman. Longarm made as if he were about to drop the revolver over the railing, then gripped it once more, took hasty aim at the tall man's head jutting over the hotelier's wife, and fired.
The hotelman's wife screamed and the tall man bellowed as the slug sliced his left ear sticking out from beneath his bowler's frayed brim. He released the woman and staggered back, dropping to one knee and facing the door, cursing loudly.