My Desperado (2 page)

Katherine, however, was shocked to immobility.

"Daisy!"

"What?" asked the other with a squeak and a start.

"You can't put it there," Katherine whispered nervously. "It's indecent."

"And diddlin' 'im t' death ain't?" Daisy scowled, pragmatic to the last. "But any'ow, 'e's dead. 'E don't mind. And we're in a bit of a rush, aye?"

The reminder was as subtle as Daisy could be and was the perfect means of jolting Katherine into motion. They heaved together, dragging George through the doorway and standing red-faced in the hall, drawing breath in deep gulps.

"George," Daisy explained laconically, "'e liked 'is pleasures."

Katherine could only assume the other was explaining the mayor's rather ponderous form, but she couldn't help blushing nevertheless. After all, if old George had employed a bit more discretionary self-discipline, they'd all be a sight better off.

They heaved again. The hall was runnered by a worn scarlet carpet, which muffled the sound but did nothing to speed their progress. Eventually they arrived at the steps.

Katherine eyed the descent and grimaced. He was far too heavy for them to carry. They'd have to drag him. She closed her eyes with a silent apology. She'd come from a conservative Protestant family, where speaking ill of the dead was considered a sin. What would they think of dragging the same down a flight of stairs by his heels? She shivered, prayed again, and took a step backward, refusing to look as poor George's head bumped against the top step.

After a grizzly eternity the threesome was outside. The street was still quiet. A grinning full moon sliced out from behind a dark, bubbling cloud, casting its spooky light upon the shadowed town. The women shuffled backward down the boardwalk, crossing the hard-packed clay of Silver Ridge's main thoroughfare and reaching the broken step with a lurch and a groan. Their breathing was labored, their muscles aching, but they'd reached their destination.

"We've done it." Katherine paused, still trying to catch her breath. "Now we have to make it look like a natural fall."

"Right-oh." Daisy grasped the walking stick to pull it from George's pants. Katherine shuddered and snatched his hat from the tart's head, placing it just so, a short distance from the corpse.

The satchel, which had caused them a good deal of difficulty by insisting on sliding from the sloping plane of George's chest, was now placed just out of reach of his hand.

The women stepped back a pace, studying their handiwork in the waning light of the moon.

"What do you think?" Katherine asked, nervously twisting the heavy black braid that had fallen over her shoulder.

"'E looks right peaceful t' me," Daisy whispered, hands on hips. "Y'd never know 'e was drug from there t' 'ere."

"You think not? Maybe we should turn him over. Maybe--"

"Maybe," a deep voice from the shadows suggested, "you should wipe that grin off his face."

Chapter 2

The two women gasped in unison, clutching each other with frantic fingers.

"Who are you?" Katherine demanded in a whisper not loud enough to shake the dew from a dandelion puff.

Silence held the street in its chilly grip, but finally was broken by a smoky voice. "Can I give you ladies a hand?"

Katherine mouthed an inaudible response, found her voice with great difficulty, and squawked, "This isn't at all as it appears."

The shadow's head tilted, proof he was looking at the corpse then straightened again. "And how does it appear?" he asked in a tone deep as the night.

"Well..." Katherine could feel herself tremble. They'd been caught dead to rights. God help them! And she was barely able to raise her voice above a murmur in her own defense. "Well it might look as if..." She was completely out of her depth.

To date, her most traumatic experience had been when little Johnny Tensel had put the toad in her coat pocket and the entire classroom had erupted into howling chaos when she'd fainted dead away.

She wished she could faint now, but her consciousness was stubbornly intact. "It might look as if..." she began again, swallowing hard and glancing, against her will, at the ghoulish corpse."Well... How does it look?" she sputtered suddenly.

If she wasn't mistaken, the shadow chuckled, the sound so deep and quiet she had to cock her head to catch just a whisper of it.

"It looks like he's dead," came the response finally. "Real dead." The shadow approached a step, causing the women to retreat cautiously backward, still gripping hands in desperate terror.

"Oh!" Her mother had been right, Katherine thought in frenzied retrospect. She should never have read those dime novels about the heroes of the West. She should have married Edgar Winston when he'd first asked and should never have left Boston. "Well yes, actually," she admitted with a spasmodic nod. "He is dead. Quite dead, I'm afraid. But we aren't responsible." She was breathing hard and wishing she'd had those twelve babies of Edgar's, even though he was potbellied and holier-than-thou.

There were worse things than being married to a sanctimonious stuffed shirt.

Being hanged for instance. Being hanged was at the very bottom of her list. "I mean," Katherine continued, "we are responsible, but we didn't mean to do it."

"Looks like he died happy," said the dusky voice from the darkness.

Katherine scowled, canting her head again and wishing to God she could see his face. "I beg your pardon."

"He died happy," the shadow repeated. "I can only assume one of you two should get the credit for that."

Daisy and Katherine turned face-to-face, seeing the identical mixture of horror and confusion in the other's expression.

"Which of you was it?" he asked quietly.

The women's eyes widened to an even greater extent.

Daisy moaned in silence. She'd never see that picket fence, never have babies and give them a better life than she'd known.

Poor Mother, lamented Katherine in anguish. She'd die of shame when she learned the truth of her daughter's demise. But it had been Katherine's decision to accept the saloon as her inheritance and with that the responsibility of looking after her employees.

"Me," they said in squeaky union, each courageously trying to save the other.

"Who?" The stranger's tone was mildly surprised, and the two women turned inward, each telepathically ordering the other to silence before staring at the shadow again.

"Me," they echoed a second time.

"Riding double?" intoned the stranger, taking a step forward and seeming to grow in size as he nodded briskly toward the corpse. "He was a lucky man."

The women squeezed closer together, backing away, with Daisy moaning a bit in utter mental anguish. She'd held so tenaciously to the hope of a better future.

Katherine felt Daisy's emotional agony like a stab in her conscience. Her own life had been so uncomplicated that she'd fantasized about enduring and miraculously overcoming the hardships of the West. While Daisy on the other hand, had never been given a chance at a decent life. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right, and Katherine couldn't bear to have her take the blame for a death she hadn't meant to cause.

"It was my fault," Katherine blurted. "All mine. But I didn't kill him."

"'E died o' natural causes," chimed Daisy. "Real natural."

The stranger tilted his head slightly. "There's nothing more natural than—"

"Please, sir," interrupted Katherine, frantically hoping not to hear the word he was about to say. "There's been no foul play here. I promise you I—"

"It ain't none of my concern."

Utter silence gripped the place, then, "What?" both women questioned numbly.

"I'm in town to conduct business and get out. What you ladies do to entertain your friends is none of my affair," assured the whiskey-voiced stranger.

Katherine knew she should be grateful. She knew God had saved her foolish skin, and she should chant salutations of praise and promise everlasting holy servitude. "But he's dead," she said abruptly, somehow appalled by the man's callous acceptance of the situation. "Dead."

"Looks damn dead to me," remarked the shadow dryly. "So if you ladies will excuse me, I'll leave you to your diversions and see to my business." He turned slightly, ready to leave.

Katherine was shocked speechless, while Daisy, made practical by circumstance and a strong desire to survive, pulled her hands from her employer's grip and took a pace forward.

"That's specially kind of y’ stranger," she called, smoothing a hand down her waist to her hip. "P'raps I can repay the favor."

The man stopped, pausing a moment before tipping his hat. "I appreciate the offer. But I only have a couple of hours before my business appointment, and I can see a woman like you would deserve more time."

Daisy, flattered by the words spoken in a gravelly, seductive tone, straightened her back. "After yer business?"

"It's unfortunate, but I'm meeting a man and then I leave."

"Cooo." Daisy cocked her hip in open invitation. "Seems a pity. But maybe at a later time. What's yer name, stranger?"

Quiet held the street.

"Ryland," he answered. "Travis Ryland."

"God save us!" Daisy's sudden desperate plea was no more than a whimper. "Y've really come, then. God save us!" She stumbled backward, but Katherine caught her about her hunched shoulders.

"Daisy. What's wrong? What is it?"

"Ryland!" the woman whispered, raising a limp hand toward the towering shadow. "It's really him! The one they calls The Ghost."

Katherine had never heard of Ryland, The Ghost, but could guess by Daisy's response that his presence there was not good news for them.

The large shadowy figure had gone perfectly still.

"Don't 'urt us," pleaded Daisy.

The shadow flexed. "I've sworn off eating helpless little soiled doves," he said.

"What do you want here?" Katherine whispered.

"It's none of your concern. My business is with the mayor."

It felt as if Katherine's very life was seeping from her body onto the darkened street. Daisy was slumped beside her like a broken doll.

"Mayor?" Katherine's voice was so squeaky and weak that Travis had to step forward to hear her, and it was with horror that Katherine learned she had no strength left to retreat. "You're here to see the mayor?"

Ryland loomed closer, towering over her. She saw his face was bearded, and his eyes shone down from just below the rim of his hat.

"Do you know the mayor?" he asked, his voice slow, dramatically deep, and cautiously quiet.

"Know him?" Katherine asked, hoping to buy some time. "In what sense do you mean?"

She doggedly refused to allow her gaze to stray to the smiling corpse. Sweat had suddenly appeared on her shaky hands, and a quiver shook her voice. She didn't want to die on a dusty street so far from home. Maybe she'd been all wrong about adventures. Right now her once thrilling dreams seemed frightful, terrible things that made her quake from the inside out.

"Do you know him?" repeated the stranger. "Biblically, or otherwise?"

Katherine's mouth opened to respond but she could think of no clever lie.

"No." She shook her head. "No, I didn't know the good mayor."

"You didn't know him?" The man took a step nearer. "You didn't know him?"

"I mean..." Katherine failed again to back away, though Daisy had slipped behind her and was tugging weakly at her nightshift. "I mean... I don't know him. I don't!" She shook her head again. There'd be no need for him to shoot her. She was going to die of sheer fright right here on the spot.

The moon eased from behind a silver-gilded cloud, laughing at such human melodrama and casting just a glimmer of light on the deadly stranger. But the illumination gave Katherine no added hope, for his shoulders were double the width of her own, and his body looked huge and hard, awaiting action.

"You killed the mayor?" he asked now, his voice still even. "You humped the mayor to death?"

Never in all her days had Katherine ever imagined she would hear such a question addressed to her. She'd been known to blush at the mention of a body part as innocent as an elbow.

Her mouth fell open, her lips moving hopelessly, her skin burning.

"Is the money in the bag?" he asked in a gruff voice.

"What money?" Katherine asked, but Ryland was already lifting the satchel from the dirt. "You can't do that," she said weakly, her sense of decency immediately offended. "It's not yours."

"He brought it for me," countered Ryland darkly.

Katherine's overdeveloped sense of fairness was absolutely affronted now, allowing her to raise her voice above a whisper. "How do you know it was meant for you? Perhaps it contains his personal..."

Daisy's gasp stopped Katherine's words. From the satchel the stranger had drawn a tidy stack of rectangular papers.

"Coo," breathed Daisy as she peeked over Katherine's shoulder. "'E's Ryland all right. But 'e ain't no ghost. Leastways, if 'e is, I can't tell. 'E's come t' croak Delias fer stealin' them miners' wages, and there's the bills t' pay 'im."

Deftly Travis Ryland removed the bands of rubber to fan the papers then shifted his gaze to the women. "Where's the rest?"

"The rest?" Katherine gulped, hearing the threat in his gravelly tone.

"I was promised a goodly sum," said Ryland. "This..." He lifted the bundle. "This is only two bills at the ends of blank pieces of paper. And I'd like to know where the rest is." He took a step toward them, and they stumbled back in unison, with Daisy's small form pulling Katherine along.

"We don't know anything about the money!" declared Katherine quickly.

"I want to know where it is," exclaimed Ryland evenly. "I don't mind killing Delias," he said in a midnight voice, "but I expect to be well-paid for it."

Katherine could feel her heart thumping against her ribs. "I don't know anything about this. Honestly."

"But you were the one who humped him to death," he reasoned.

"No," she wanted to scream. She'd never even met the mayor. Never laid eyes on him before an hour ago. But Daisy hadn't taken the money. Katherine knew it in her soul. 'That's such a crude way to refer to it," she said.