Judgment day the lawmen.., p.6
Judgment Day (The Lawmen Western #3), page 6
Jennie took off her shawl and hung it along the polished bed rail at the end of her bed. Rheumatics or not, Granma wasn’t one to let a day go by without doing the cleaning and tidying round.
Jennie sat on the hard-backed chair in front of the dressing table. She examined her face carefully, looking for lines that were not yet there, searching for any diminishing in the color of her eyes. If she were allowed to live that long, she might one day look like Granma Harvey. Most people out west died a whole lot younger than she.
Jennie began to brush her hair. There were times when she felt old already; older than Granma, for all her tales of life in the touring companies back in England. So much had happened to her in her young life that maybe she was right. Jennie finished fixing her hair and stood up. It would soon be time for her to go to work.
She reached inside the drawer of the dressing table where she had put her underthings and felt beneath them until her fingers closed on a small woolen glove. Soft white wool with a piece of shiny white material threaded through near the top to tie it with. She had bought them for Shannon, for the journey west, but one had been lost and she had kept the other with her.
As a memento: a keepsake.
When I see her again, Jennie had told herself, I shall buy her a new pair, exactly like this one.
Jennie replaced the glove on the top of the dressing table and got ready for an evening’s arduous waitressing. At the last moment, she went back and picked up the tiny glove and carefully slipped it down inside her dress so that it nestled next to her bosom.
‘Hey! Lady! Let’s have some service over here!’
‘Got a hole in my gut big enough to get a whole cow in, horns an’ all!’
‘Jesus, I could handle a beer!’
‘Hey, Jennie! C’mon, Jennie!’
‘This steak’s as tough as my old woman’s tit!’
‘Jennie!’
‘Jennie!’
‘Jennie!’
The interior of the dining-room was a sweaty, steaming morass of arms and faces, plates and voices. End of the week and those who were going to get paid had money to spend; those who were never going to get paid anyway, had begged, borrowed or stolen the price of a meal and a few shots in the saloon before and after.
The large plate glass mirror that took up a good part of one wall was frosted with steam and it was all but impossible to read the menu that was written in scrawly lines across it.
‘Where in hell’s name’s my pie?’ A big man with a bald head that seemed to be carved from solid bone, swayed up into the gangway between the rows of tables. His skull shone with sweat and his eyes stared across the room in the direction of the kitchen.
Jennie came out with a tray of plates balanced over her left arm and held in check against her body, two glasses of beer somehow held in her right hand. Her hair, that she had so skillfully arranged earlier, now dangled down both sides of her pale face. Perspiration dripped down from her eyebrows and lashes and blurred her sight.
She saw the big man and sidestepped round him, heading for the end of the room.
‘Where’s my pie?’
He stood back and made a grab for her as she hurried past, his paw of a hand missing her by a number of inches.
Jennie plonked the glasses of beer in front of two cowboys, splashing froth and liquid on to the table and their forearms. Neither of the men seemed worried. They grinned and shouted lifted the glasses to their thirsty faces.
By that time Jennie had moved off to deposit the five plates of food on a number of other tables.
‘And there’s your pie!’ she said firmly, bouncing the oval plate between his hands. The man stared up at her as the meat and potato pie plopped off the plate and into a pool of beer on the table.
‘Look at that!’ he yelled up at her.
Jennie reached down with her right hand and flipped the pie back on to the plate. ‘If it wasn’t for that bull-calf noise of yours, maybe I wouldn’t have got all hassled. Some folk could use learning a little patience.’
And she rounded her back on him and headed for the kitchen.
Five minutes later a hand grasped Jennie’s wrist as she was standing for a moment, trying to recapture her breath and remember what was wanted next.
She tugged her arm to free herself but the grip held fast.
‘Take it easy, why don’t you?’
He was a thin, weasel-faced man with a wispy beard that didn’t seem to belong to his chin. There were several blotches of red scattered over his face and his nose was sharply pointed and scarred above one nostril.
‘You are running around too much, aren’t you?’
He spoke with a strong accent. Jennie looked down at the thin but strong fingers about her wrist; he followed her gaze and very slowly opened his fist so that she could move away.
‘Jennie, you got some more apple pie there?’
She gave the thin man a final flicker of her blue eyes and hurried up the room to get the slices of deep-bed apple pie from the kitchen. Along with the steaks, it was the Colorado Springs Dining Rooms specialty. On a good night, they got through more than a dozen large round dishes of it.
‘You all right?’ asked the sandy-haired man up to his elbows in washing-up water.
Jennie flicked her hair back. ‘Sure, I’m all right. It’s just busy in there tonight, that’s all.’
The man grinned and nodded his head towards the stacked plates and mugs to his right. ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ he said.
Jennie finished slicing the apple pie and went back into the main room.
‘Could I have some coffee? Please. But don’t you hurry none.’
It was the weasel-faced man.
When she poured his coffee, he shifted his leg across under the table so that it was just touching her own as she stood there and poured the dark, hot liquid from the enamel pot.
‘Your name is Jennie?’
Jennie carried on pouring, ignoring his leg, ignoring his question. He knew full well what her name was.
‘I am Bjorn. Bjorn Andersen.’
Jennie began to turn away.
‘Miss!’ He said it loud enough for several of the other diners to look round.
The dark eyes set deep into his head were narrowed and intense. Jennie hesitated. He lifted a hand towards her, fingers spread, pointing.
‘Too much you are hurrying, always running in and out, up and down. You should rest. Relax. After you finish we go for a drink. Nice talk.’
She stopped staring at the man’s eyes and stepped back and then away. She didn’t want even to answer him.
‘Got yourself an admirer,’ called one of the men with a laugh.
‘How about me, Jennie!’ sang out an old-timer without a single tooth in his head. ‘We’ll hit the town so hard it’ll never get over it.’
Jennie smiled and rubbed at the skimpy strands of grey hair on the man’s head. ‘Sure we will, Pop, you an’ me, we’ll rule the world.’
He sat back down and nudged the man next to him. ‘Just hear what she said t’ me. Just hear what she said!’
And he began to chuckle and guffaw until a fit of coughing overtook him and his friends had to slap him on the back and fetch him glass after glass of water.
When Jennie next went past the Swede’s table, he had gone. His cup of coffee was still two-thirds full.
‘You want to finish this chunk of pie?’ Julia Lawrence held the plate aloft and looked at Jennie and the washer-up.
‘No, thanks.’
‘No, ma’am.’
The owner of the Dining Rooms raised her eyebrows and set the plate back down on the table. ‘Suit yourselves. But it’ll be wasted.’
The sandy-haired man looked at her and grinned. ‘Well, okay, ma’am, seein’ as you put it that way.’
Julia slid the plate along the wood table towards him. She was a sizeable woman, with good strong arms from making pastry and kneading dough most of the hours God sent. Her husband had made a small stake prospecting and since Julia had always wanted to own and run a restaurant, that was what he’d bought her. Soon as she was settled and trade was coming in, he’d headed further west—prospecting was deep in his blood, like a rich silver vein that could never be fully tapped.
‘See you tomorrow, Jennie.’
‘All right. Good night.’
The lights over the street from the saloon still spilled out on to the black mud. Six or seven horses stood tethered at the hitching rail. The sound of a pianola tinkled tinnily through the slates of the batwing doors. Men who wanted anything but to go home.
The rest of the town was shut up, quiet. Jennie hurried on, right hand on her shawl. Past the general store, the chandlers, barber’s and the clothing store. The alley between one set of stables and the bath house.
Feet clipping the boards.
‘Jennie!’
It was a chill hiss like an intake of breath. Despite herself, she halted in her tracks.
‘Over here.’
Despite herself, she turned her head.
‘It’s only me.’
Despite herself …
He moved out of the shadows fast and the grip this time was round her upper arm and twice as fierce. The deeply sunk eyes she knew were staring at her although she could hardly pick them out in the darkness.
‘What do you …?’
‘Just to talk a little.’
He began to pull her back towards the alley and she resisted.
‘You would not come for a drink with me.’
‘No, I …’
‘Another man asking, you would be going.’
‘No.’
Jennie looked round, back towards the saloon and saw one of the doors push open. Before her lips could part there was something sharp and cold against her throat and she knew that he had a knife and that he would not hesitate to use it.
‘Just to talk a little.’
The Swede backed off the main street, pulling her after him, all the while keeping the knife in position to the left of her windpipe.
‘Now, Jennie. We are alone.’
She sensed the knife move away and the hand at her arm moved as he pressed himself against her. His face sought for hers and she smelt the sour breath from between his lips as he tried to kiss her.
She moved her hands and did her best to push him off, keeping her head to one side. But the knife was back and although the man was thin, he was strong.
‘Only a little …’
The wisps of his beard moved across her eyes, down her cheeks; his mouth was there again and because there was nothing else to do Jennie kissed him. He tried to push his tongue inside her and she wriggled until he clasped the back of her head and held her still.
She knew the knife was close to her side.
The Swede pulled his head away: ‘Nice, yes?’
A lone rider went past the end of the alley, whistling to himself—or to his horse. He could have been a hundred miles away.
‘Nice?’
The blade was hard against her; harder.
‘Yes, yes, it … it was nice. I must go. Tomorrow we can meet maybe. I …’
He kissed her again and this time his teeth bit down into her lower lip. They seemed pointed, like the teeth of a small animal. His hand was at her breast, pressing against it. The thumb, pressing hard against it.
She moved her own tongue and knew that he had drawn blood.
‘Come!’
He was trying to drag her deeper into the alley.
‘No. No! Help! I …’
He punched her and she fell backwards, stumbling and banging her back against the side of the building. Desperately, she flung up both hands and one of them caught the open blade of the knife. The Swede drew it back across the palm of her hand.
She screamed and he kicked down into her body.
As Jennie lay there he fell on top of her, one hand already pulling at her skirt, trying to lift her underthings clear. She struggled to rid herself of him, but he rode her and pressed down on one of her arms with his knee.
She could hear his breathing and although she could not see his face now, she could picture it clearly. The pain in her right hand sang keenly; blood trickled back inside her own mouth from her lip. His hand was pushing up between her legs and he changed position so as to use his knees to force her legs apart.
‘You let! You let!’
Jennie screamed or she thought she screamed.
He slapped hard at her face and then the knife was there, laid alongside her cheek, the point against the edge of her eye socket, waiting.
Jennie allowed him to spread her legs wide.
Even with her eyes clenched tight shut, Jennie was aware of the sudden light. The Swede scrambled around on top of her and the night was blasted by the single shot of a gun. She opened her eyes in time to see the man falling across her, one hand still clutching the knife, the other tugging at his pants where they were down about his buttocks.
Tom Harvey stood at the end of the alley, kerosene lantern in one hand, big old gun in the other.
‘Granma an’ me, we was getting’ a mite worried.’
When Jennie finally undressed herself in her room, she found that her child’s soft glove had been almost stuck to her breast, soaked through with the blood of the dead man.
Chapter Eight
LEE FISHER WAS leading his horse. Walking slow, real slow. The arches of his feet ached, the skin where it met the rock through his boots burned. Solid rock. Even in the fall sun it was burning. Unrelieved shades of red spread all about him. In that light they didn’t even temper down to buff or brown.
If Fisher had thought Paradise City something akin to hell, he knew now that this was a whole lot more like the real thing.
Had to be.
Somewhere out of sight below him, he could hear the Colorado as it roared its way between narrow ravines and over rocky rapids towards the Green River coming southwards to meet it.
Fisher could see far beyond where he sensed the Green River to be flowing. A maze of canyons topped by a mixture of spires and towers and domes that was like a city hewn by some unknown hand from red sandstone: the Land of Standing Rocks.
To the east, over his left shoulder, he could clearly see the snow-topped mountains of the La Sals. South from there he knew that it was Navajo country. More savage than almost any other place he’d met with on God’s earth.
Or was it the Devil’s?
And ahead nothing but more of what he stood on, what he walked across. Endless turns of sandstone, with hardly a scrubby bush for every hundred yards. Get lost here and there were thousands of mesas, arroyos and caves just waiting to claim you for their own. Let your mount go lame or drop under you from exhaustion, run clear out of water—might as well lie down in the sun at midday and wait for a snake to sidle across the sizzling rock, head raised ready to strike.
Fisher stopped: half a mile ahead, moving slowly over the expanse of emptiness, were four figures.
There on a flattened near-circle of rock, suddenly visible, where previously they had been sheltered from his sight—four men. They were mounted and moving from right to left across his vision; bodies hunched forward over their saddles, hats pulled down to shelter their faces. To look at them, it would have been high summer.
Fisher guessed that they had been traveling for a long while: longer then himself.
He did not think they were aware of his presence.
The men were traveling in the same general direction as himself. It was foolish to wind a way wide of them and there was too little time to wait until they had passed well ahead.
Fisher released the hammer of his Colt Navy from the leather thong that held it firmly in place; he checked that the weapon was loaded and ready. Spun it twice on his finger, the movement easy despite the heaviness of the gun. Slipped it back into his holster. Made sure the second loop of leather, keeping the bottom of the holster close to his thigh, was secure.
Then he pulled himself up into the saddle, the horse moving several paces to the side as he settled himself.
Fisher checked the two rifles.
It would be possible to move a little closer, pick his spot and drop one, maybe two men before riding in fast on the others.
But that might not be necessary. Why should it? They were simply four men, riding ahead on the same trail as himself.
Fisher watched as the first moved off the round of rock and disappeared from sight into the opening of a steep canyon. The second and the third. As the last man moved into the black space, Fisher stroked the side of his animal’s neck and swayed his body back and forth in the saddle.
Time to see for himself at closer quarters.
The entire canyon seemed filled with deep shadow. The rock to the north loomed outwards in a gigantic overhang which blotted out the majority of the light; heat, also.
There it was cold. Fall, right enough, even if the flat land higher up thought it still summer. A wind cut through the slices of rock towards him and Fisher instinctively pulled at the lapels of his coat.
He let the horse go forwards cautiously, choosing its own footholds. His own eyes were elsewhere. Unless fatigue had overcome them completely, the riders must be aware of another man coming along behind them. The canyon carried the noise, amplified it.
His eyes flickered under the wide brim of the black hat, searching for any possible signs of ambush. But the sides of the canyon were such that hiding would have been difficult, almost impossible.
Even so, he was taking no chances. As few chances as the situation would allow. His right hand was close by the wooden stock of the Springfield, close too by the Colt at his hip. He could make a move for either at the least warning.
Half-way in now and still no sign.
Fisher reined in his horse and listened. Ahead of him the slow stepping of hooves on rocks—it was not possible to distinguish, to tell how many. Hooves. Horses. Men.
Then, high to the left, he saw him. One of them. A smudge of shape that darted back behind a piece of dark rock a split second too late.
The rifle was freed from its scabbard and held in the right hand, barrel angled across the saddle. Fisher kept going, back straight, eyes keened towards that spot on the cliff where the man was hiding.
