Trackdown (9781101619384) (19 page)

Bassett groaned as he hurried along, still holding the now-bloody rag to his face.

“Don’t go lookin’ for any sympathy from me because you got hurt,” Mordecai snapped. “Fella who’d mess around with another man’s wife is just about the lowest form of humanity there is, far as I’m concerned.”

“It’s not like—” Bassett began. He broke off with a shake of his head and another moan. “It doesn’t matter now. I just don’t want him to kill her.”

“Neither do I,” Mordecai said. “How much farther is it?”

Bassett stopped and pointed to a house.

“That’s it right there.”

As far as Mordecai could see, no lights were burning in the house. It looked quiet and peaceful, as if the folks who lived there were sleeping.

Or dead, he thought grimly. He drew his gun and told Bassett, “All right, you stay back. I don’t want you gettin’ in my way.”

“I’ll open the gate in the fence for you.”

“Well, that’d be helpful, seein’ as I got this bad wing.”

Bassett swung the gate open. Mordecai went through, stalked up a flagstone walk, and climbed three steps to the small front porch. He glanced over his shoulder at Bassett, who stood waiting just outside the gate.

Mordecai used the barrel of his gun to rap sharply on the door and called, “Wake up in there! Open the door! This here’s the law!”

There was no response from inside. Mordecai drew back a foot and kicked the door, hard.

“Open up, I say! Tom Gentry! Open this damned door!”

Nothing.

“You have to break the door down,” Bassett called from the fence. “You need to get in there right away. She may already be dead!”

“Do I look like I’m in any shape to go bustin’ down doors?” Mordecai demanded irritably.

“I’ll do it.”

Without waiting for Mordecai to tell him it was all right, Bassett came through the gate and started up the walk toward the house.

“Dadgum it—” Mordecai stopped his protest. Maybe between the two of them, they could get the door open, he thought.

When Bassett reached the porch, the deputy went on, “Try the knob, just to make sure it ain’t already open.”

Bassett rattled the knob, then shook his head.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“All right, we’ll both kick it at the same time,” Mordecai said. “You ready?”

Bassett nodded.

“When the door opens, you back off, quick-like,” Mordecai added. “If Gentry’s in there with a gun, he’s liable to shoot. I don’t want no innocent bystander gettin’ shot…although I ain’t so sure how innocent you are.”

“Let’s worry about that later,” Bassett said.

“Yeah. Get ready.”

The men braced themselves as each lifted a foot and poised it. Together, they rammed their legs forward. Their boot heels crashed against the door, and with a splintering of wood as the jamb broke, it flew open.

Mordecai thrust his good arm in front of Bassett and shoved the man back. He swept his gun forward again and moved fast into the darkened house, halfway expecting to see Colt flame bloom in the shadows.

Nothing happened. Mordecai stopped a few steps into the house and listened. At first he heard only the pounding of his own pulse, but then he caught a faint whimper coming from somewhere nearby.

He needed some light. To get it meant that he would have to holster his gun, but it looked like he was going to have to take that chance. He pouched the iron and reached in his trouser pocket for the tin of matches he always carried.

Again it was awkward because he had only one hand, but he managed to fumble out one of the lucifers. A flick of his thumbnail snapped it to life.

As Mordecai lifted the match, the glare from the little flame washed over the room. He squinted against the sudden light and looked around.

The first thing he saw was a man slumped, apparently
senseless, in an armchair. Then his eyes moved down to a huddled form lying on the floor. That shape trembled, and another whimper came from it. The figure was that of a woman in a blood-splattered robe, Mordecai realized. She lifted her head.

From behind the deputy, Ned Bassett whispered, “My God. My God.”

Those were Mordecai’s sentiments exactly.

“I thought I told you to stay outside,” Mordecai croaked.

Bassett ignored that.

“Look…look at what he did to her.” He took a step toward the man in the armchair. “That bastard!”

Mordecai had already spotted a pistol lying on a small round table next to the armchair. He got between Bassett and the man in the chair and said, “Take this match, damn it!”

He wanted his own gun in his hand again. That revolver was in easy reach of Tom Gentry, if that was who the fella in the chair was, as seemed likely.

Bassett hesitated, then took the lucifer from Mordecai. Mordecai gave him the tin with the other matches in it and ordered, “Find a lamp and get it lit.”

Keeping his eyes on Gentry, he drew his gun again. The young man still hadn’t moved. His eyes were open, but other than that he might as well have been unconscious. He didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on around him.

Yellow light welled up as Bassett lowered the glass chimney on the lamp he had just lit.

Now that Mordecai could see better, he stared at Virginia Gentry and struggled to control the impulse he felt to blast a
couple of holes in the man who had done this to her. At this moment it didn’t matter to him that Tom Gentry was her husband.

Nobody had a right to do this.

The woman hadn’t been pistol-whipped like Ned Bassett. Mordecai could tell that much. This damage had been done with fists.

Fists slamming savagely into Virginia Gentry’s face again and again until every bit of it was swollen and smashed. Her eyes were closed, her nose and mouth were crushed and bleeding. She barely looked human.

Mordecai didn’t see how she got any words out of that wreck of a mouth, but she managed to croak, “H-help…me…”

Bassett took a couple of steps toward her. That movement finally got through to Tom Gentry. His eyes flicked toward Bassett, and his stunned face contorted with rage. He started up out of the chair.

“Stay away from her!” he roared at Bassett. “This is all your fault!”

Bassett changed course. Even though he was weak and shaky from his injuries, he turned and plunged straight at Gentry, tackling him around the waist and driving him backward. Both men fell onto the armchair, which tipped back from the impact and fell over, dumping them on the floor.

“Blast it!” Mordecai yelled. “Stop that, you damned fools!”

Neither man paid any attention to him. Bassett slugged ineffectively at Gentry, but there wasn’t enough power behind the blows to do any damage. Gentry seemed disoriented by the attack and wasn’t fighting back yet. That saved Bassett, but only for the moment.

Gentry came to his senses and grabbed Bassett around the throat. He tightened his hold and rolled over, taking Bassett with him. As soon as Bassett was on the bottom and Gentry on top, Gentry slammed his opponent’s head against the floor.

“I’ll kill you the way I should have before!” Gentry howled.

Mordecai reversed his grip on the Colt, stepped in closer,
and lifted the gun. He hammered the butt down on Gentry’s head. The blow made Gentry fall to the side, out cold. Maybe even dead.

Right now, Mordecai didn’t much care which one.

Bassett was gasping for breath now that Gentry’s hands weren’t trying to choke the life out of him. His nose and the gash on his cheek were still bleeding. His whole face was a gory mess. He and Virginia Gentry were a pretty good match for each other now, Mordecai thought.

He needed help. He couldn’t handle this crisis on his own. He didn’t want to leave Tom Gentry here with the injured woman while he went to fetch somebody, either. If Gentry regained consciousness, there was no telling what he might do.

That left Bassett to go for help.

Mordecai holstered his gun, bent down, and got hold of Bassett’s arm. With a grunt of effort, he helped the man stand up.

“You got to go down to the Prairie Queen Saloon,” Mordecai told Bassett. “The bartender there, Glenn Morley, has experience patchin’ up wounded folks. He can help you, and Miz Gentry needs help, too. You got to go fetch him.”

“What…what about Gentry? He might try to…hurt her again.”

Mordecai shook his head.

“That’s why I’m stayin’ here, to make sure he don’t. Now go on, Bassett. I know you’re in bad shape and it’s askin’ a lot of you, but there ain’t no choice in the matter. You’re the only one who can do this.”

Bassett nodded, causing the loose flap of flesh on his face to move.

“Yes. I’ll be back. Don’t let him hurt her again.”

“He ain’t gonna,” Mordecai promised. “I’ll shoot him in the knee if I have to.”

Stumbling and staggering, Bassett left the house. Mordecai hoped he made it to the saloon without collapsing.

A desk sat on one side of the room. Mordecai went over and leaned on it, feeling the exhaustion in every fiber of his being. He was injured, too, and his arm ached almost intolerably
even though he’d been able to avoid using it. Just moving around as much as he had tonight made it hurt.

He could hear Tom Gentry’s harsh breathing, so he knew the man was still alive. So was Gentry’s wife, although she had slumped to the floor again and lay there making tiny noises of pain. The fingers of one hand flexed slowly against the floor.

Mordecai had never been married, but back in his fur-trapping days he had spent some winters with the Indians and taken a squaw for a wife as long as the cold weather lasted. He’d never laid a hand in anger on any of those gals. He had known plenty of men who swore that a fella had to beat his wife every now and then just to keep her in line, but it had always seemed to Mordecai that there were better ways.

Anyway, what Gentry had done to
his
wife went beyond that. This was the act of a crazy man. He had beaten Virginia to within an inch of her life.

What was Walter Shelton going to do when he found out what had happened to his daughter?

And how was Burkhart Gentry going to react when he heard that his son Tom was in jail?

Because the one thing Mordecai knew for sure was that Tom Gentry was going to end this night behind bars, locked up like the loco animal he obviously was.

“Dear Lord,” Annabelle Hudson breathed when she followed Morley into the room and saw Virginia Gentry lying on the floor. “What did he do to her?”

“It’s pretty bad,” Mordecai told the woman. “Where’s Bassett?”

“The man you sent to the saloon to get Glenn?” Annabelle asked. Morley was already at Virginia’s side, gently turning her over so that he could see the extent of her injuries. “I have some of my girls looking after him. He insisted that he would be all right and said Glenn should come down here right away to tend to the woman. Then he passed out.”

“He’d lost a lot of blood, by the looks of it,” Morley said
over his shoulder, “but I think he’ll be all right. I can sew up that cut on his face once I get back to the saloon and try to set his nose. I’m not sure it’ll ever be the same, though.”

“How about Mrs. Gentry?” Mordecai asked. He kept an eye on Tom Gentry, but the man still seemed to be unconscious.

“She hasn’t bled as much,” Morley said as he took hold of her jaw and carefully moved her head back and forth a little. “No telling how bad she’s hurt inside, though. Anybody who gets hit in the head as many times as she obviously has, as hard as she was hit, runs a real risk of something being wrong with their brain.” He spread the robe open. “From the looks of the bruises he punched her quite a few times in the belly and chest, too.” Morley gave a grim shake of his head. “All I can do is clean her up, then we’ll wait and see.”

Mordecai nodded and said, “All right, do your best.” He turned to Annabelle. “Did you bring anybody else with you?”

“Some of my customers followed us down here, of course,” she said. An edge came into her voice as she went on, “People are always eager to witness any sort of tragedy as long as it doesn’t involve them.”

“I’d be obliged if you’d go out and get a couple of men to haul this varmint down to the jail for me.”