Killer, p.11
Killer!, page 11
A lot of questions with only one answer—Esther Brill.
She was a fine-looking woman with a streak of common sense a mile wide and a hint of wickedness in bed that was somehow all the more exciting on account of you didn’t expect it. When they made love, Hawk experienced more satisfaction than he could remember before—and he was more interested in making sure that Esther felt satisfied too.
Neither a callow farm girl nor a ten-dollar whore, the kinds Hawk knew best, she was a woman worth spending time with, worth taking time to get to.
When he saw her she was wearing a white shirt with loose sleeves that billowed out when she moved. Her black cotton pants were tight and her boots were tighter. She looked up at him with brown eyes that showed surprise and pleasure. The trail dust came off his clothes onto her shirt as he kissed her and she laughed and didn’t mind.
‘You sorted things out?’
‘Reckon so.’
‘It took a little trouble.’ She was looking at the small knife mark on the side of his neck.
‘Some.’
‘You’re an awful modest man,’ she laughed.
Hawk shook his head. ‘No, I ain’t. And you know that for a fact.’
‘Maybe I do.’
They stood a while and looked at one another, uncertain of what to say or do.
‘You busy?’ Hawk asked finally. ‘Boarders an’ such.’
‘Pretty busy. Couple of salesmen passing through. A relation staying a few days.’
‘Relation?’ Hawk raised an eyebrow.
‘You’ll meet her at dinner.’
‘Oh.’
‘You are coming to dinner?’ she smiled.
‘Try and stop me.’
‘And then?’
‘You got a spare room?’ Hawk grinned. ‘Sounds to me like you’re pretty full. Maybe I’d best find a bed somewheres else.’
She shook her head slowly, smiling. ‘No need to do that. Not after you’ve ridden all this way.’
Hawk nodded and backed up. ‘I’ll get my horse across to Gimpey’s. See she’s tended to. Then I’d best …’
‘You’d best sink a beer or two to cut your thirst.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Dinner’s at six,’ she grinned. ‘Sharp.’
Hawk touched his fingers to the underside of his hat brim and watched her go back inside the house. Hell, he shook his head, she sure is some woman!
Esther’s relative proved to be a maiden aunt from Portland, Oregon, who had particularly strong views on everything from feeding dogs from the table to matters of liquor and tobacco. Hawk had wondered why he hadn’t seen Esther smoking one of her slim, black cigars and he guessed this was the reason. Neither was there anything to drink with dinner, much to the consternation of the other boarders. Just plain honest water: ‘All I’ve drunk for my sixty-nine years,’ the aunt informed the gathering, ‘and it’s done me more good than any of that beer or whiskey that some of you folk pour down into your systems. Much more good. Cold water through the day and evening, hot water first thing in the morning.’ She leaned towards Hawk and pointed at him with an admonishing finger. ‘Did you know that a glass of hot water taken regularly every morning is a wonderful thing for flushing the bowels?’
Hawk confessed that he did not.
Aunt Reba tried her best to get him to promise that he would try the procedure in future and Hawk allowed that he might give it a few days and see how it worked out.
‘You have trouble with your bowels, young man?’
‘Not normally, ma’am,’ Hawk replied.
‘Humph! If that’s the truth, you’re a rarity in this day and age. My contention is that if all the world took more trouble with its bowels, it would be a far happier place. Montana and Oregon, especially.’
Hawk looked across at Esther and saw that she was finding it hard not to laugh. As for himself he just wished that dinner wasn’t taking so long. Not that the food was anything less than excellent, but there were more pressing things on his mind than steak and bowel movements. And he hadn’t ridden for several days to hear what was wrong with the world from an old maid aunt.
Finally, the meal was over and Aunt Reba was safely installed in the parlor with her crochet work and a glass of water at her side. Esther did what was necessary in the kitchen and Hawk passed the time by playing a few hands of cards with the other boarders.
‘I’d appreciate it, Jared, if you’d help me with a trunk in your room. There’s some fresh bed linen inside and it’s too heavy for me to move on my own.’
Hawk stood up. ‘I’d be obliged.’
Inside the room, she leaned back against the door and shook her head. ‘You didn’t choose the best of times.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, my dear aunt has insisted on sharing my room with me and there isn’t going to be room in that bed for three of us.’
Hawk shuddered at the thought.
Esther walked towards him. It was a small room and there wasn’t far to go. Her arms slid around his neck and her small, still firm breasts pressed against his chest.
‘So for a few days we’ll have to be very good.’
‘I thought that’s what we were before—very good.’
‘No doubt about it. But waiting a while longer won’t hurt.’
Hawk raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t know how much.’
‘I’m sorry, Jared. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘You could pay me a visit in the middle of the night, couldn’t you?’
Esther shook her head, smiling, then kissed him quickly on the mouth. ‘She sleeps like old people often do, just on the edge of waking. If I as much as turn over in bed, she’s awake asking me what’s the matter.’
Hawk looked sorry for himself.
‘Besides,’ Esther went on, ‘I’m a little too old for sneaking round in the dark and climbing into young men’s beds for a quick half hour. I take my pleasures more seriously.’
‘I know you do.’
‘Well then …’ She took hold of a pair of sheets from the trunk and turned towards the door.
Hawk set one hand on her behind and the other on the nape of her neck and she froze. ‘Aunt Reba, what’s she doin’ now exactly?’
‘Crocheting a jumper.’
‘Where?’
‘In the parlor.’
‘With the door shut?’
‘Of course the door’s shut. Old people feel the cold.’
Hawk’s hands were moving, softly and persuasively, both of them.
Esther sighed and turned towards him; the sheets folded over her arms. ‘Are you going to give me time to put these down first?’ she smiled.
Hawk nodded.
She laid the sheets carefully back across the lid of the trunk, straightened up and immediately her hands went to the front of her shirt and began to undo the buttons.
Aunt Reba finally left on the morning stage three days after Hawk’s return. She faced a long journey with several changes of vehicle, numerous halts and not inconsiderable danger. For all of her nuisance value and her talk about bowels, Hawk reckoned she was a pretty admirable old lady.
But he was glad to see the back of her.
The boarders, too. One left with Reba on the stage, the other had ridden out the day before. As yet there was nobody else clamoring for a room and Hawk hoped it might stay that way for a while at least.
He passed his days talking here and there, riding out into the surrounding country with Esther, even engaging in a few games of checkers with the old men who gathered each day around the stove at the back of Gimpey’s livery stable.
He took the Meteor and wrapped it inside an old shirt and set it in one of the drawers in what was officially his room. Nothing would have persuaded him to have left off wearing the Colt, but the truth was that he felt more at ease, less on edge than he’d done for quite a spell.
‘He must’ve wanted your hide pretty bad,’ said Esther one day in the kitchen, slapping Hawk’s fingers at the same time to keep them away from the cake mixture she was stirring.
‘I guess so. If he was convinced I killed his son in cold blood, you can’t blame him.’
‘But now it’s over?’
‘Got to be. Ain’t no man can send hired killers after you forever. Ventura wouldn’t be able to afford it for one thing. And for another, he was lookin’ pretty sick last time I saw him. He might make a recovery, but I doubt it. Whatever happens, he ain’t goin’ to have a lot of strength. All that hate, it’ll seep out of him, bit by bit.’
‘Unless it lodges deep and festers.’
Hawk nodded. ‘In some men it will. But Ventura—I don’t know. Least he’s got his wife to lean on.’
‘You think she can take that amount of strain?’
Hawk thought about that one for a while. Camilla Ventura surely was a strange woman, ready to climb into bed with a stranger for a quick spell of excitement, yet strong and supportive of her husband when he was in need of her. He just didn’t know how true that affection for him was, how much strain it would take before it would break.
Esther scooped up a spoonful of the sweet mixture and held it up towards Hawk’s face. ‘Here, why don’t you eat this and stop thinking about it? Whatever’s going to happen, it’ll be without either of us having any say.’
Hawk didn’t believe that. If Ventura wasn’t finished in his quest for revenge, he’d have plenty to say about it. Like he had with the old mountain man, like he had with the bunch of men back in Long Ridge. But for now he wasn’t prepared to argue. He licked the top from the spoon of cake mixture and liked it well enough to let Esther slide the head of the spoon into his mouth so he could swallow the rest, creamy and sweet.
‘If you think that’s good,’ Esther smiled, ‘just wait till it comes out of the oven.’
Hawk looked at her and grinned. He thought he knew what she meant.
They took slices of the cake to bed with them early that evening. The sun was all but down, purple edges tagged around the horizon and it was getting colder. Esther cut the cake and set the pieces on plates bordered with the tiny blue flowers. Hawk moved across to the sideboard and reached inside, his hand coming out with a bottle of whiskey. Esther pointed to where he could find a pair of glasses.
‘We really turnin’ in this early?’ asked Hawk as they moved along the landing.
‘No,’ she shook her head, ‘it’s all in your imagination.’
Once they were inside the door, he felt the slight tremble of her breast to make sure she was real.
They pulled off their boots and a few of their clothes and started to eat the cake. Esther’s hand ran down Hawk’s chest, fingers pushing through the tangle of dark, curly hair and stopping at his belt buckle. He set down his plate and kissed her. He kissed her again. Her hand was just able to squeeze inside his buckle.
Afterwards they pulled the blankets over them and Esther held the glasses while Hawk poured two stiff shots of whiskey. Then he held both glasses while Esther lit herself a thin cigar and leaned back against the propped-up pillows, the sheet almost covering her nipples but not quite.
‘I’m glad I rode back this way,’ said Hawk, knowing as he spoke that he didn’t say things like that easily.
‘And I am too,’ she replied, ‘but you have to remember one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s nothing going down here for which you have to feel beholden.’
He stared at her for several silent moments.
‘You know what I’m saying?’
‘Uh-huh. I think so.’
‘I’m not a young girl waiting to be whisked off to a new life somewhere and neither am I an old maid who’s looking for her last chance to get wed. I’m a happy woman, content with her life, very happy to be spending some time with you, but that’s all.’
‘All?’
She let a thin line of smoke drift from the corner of her mouth. ‘Sure. What did you expect? Something that was going to last forever?’
Hawk glanced away.
‘Well, did you?’
‘No.’ Not looking at her. Then, ‘No,’ again, looking into her face.
‘Course you didn’t. You’re not that kind of a person and neither am I. But for now we’re good for one another. We make each other happy. Don’t we?’
Hawk nodded, smiling. They surely did.
It was likely around midnight. The lamp had long been turned down and the faint smell of its wick and the oil had left the room. Moonlight filtered through the blind and set the vaguest of shadows across the room. Hawk glanced at his gun belt hanging over the rail at the end of the bed, the butt of the Colt angled sideways. Alongside him Esther was sleeping soundly, her breath a soft whisper against the pillow. He reached over quietly and stroked the curve of her dark hair and almost at once she stirred and spoke his name.
‘Just lie close to me.’
She was warm and her mouth was warmer. She smelt of sleep. She smelt good. Soon they were not merely lying close. Hawk moved beneath her, sensing that she wished to be on top of him, her legs spreading wide so as to encompass his hips.
‘Sshh!’ she whispered as he began to moan with pleasure. ‘Quietly.’
But there was no one else within earshot and they both knew it didn’t matter. Esther started to rock and sway, moving herself back and forth in time to her own rhythm. Hawk picked it up and began to move with her, the pair of them nearing their climax simultaneously.
Esther’s fingers pushed deep into the flesh of Hawk’s shoulder as he reached his head forwards and took her breast in his mouth, teeth closing gently round the nipple.
She arched back away from him suddenly and her knees locked tight against him, her mouth opening in a scream of pleasure.
If there was a sound before the door was kicked open it was lost in that scream.
Wood splintered as the underside of the gunman’s boot crashed against the door close to the lock and it went flying back. His pistol was already drawn, the hammer ready cocked. He saw the swaying shape, the one above the other in the shadow and fired twice. Esther Brill was hurled forwards across Hawk’s face and arms, smothering him.
Hawk felt something warm and sticky on his neck and cheek and knew it was Esther’s blood. He pushed her aside and leaped for the gun at the end of the bed. His fingers missed it at the first attempt and he rolled sideways, feet touching the floor. He grasped the butt at the second go and he was out of the room and running down the landing, taking the stairs three, four steps at a time. The front door was locked; the back had been forced open and was open still. By the time Hawk hit the alley at the side of the house, the sound of galloping hooves was clear in the air. Clear and crisp and disappearing fast, heading north.
Hawk stood in the street, naked, the Colt Frontier in his hand.
He felt useless, empty; slowly he turned back towards the house.
Here and there voices were raised and lights beginning to show.
Hawk looked at the upstairs window, knowing what was waiting for him behind that drawn blind and knowing it was the last thing in the world he wanted to see.
A smudge of blood marked his chest as he walked back into the house, smears of it blurred his neck and shoulder, spotted his chin. There were tears at the back of his eyes and he hoped he would be back in the warmth of her room before he allowed them to fall.
Chapter Thirteen
HAWK DIDN’T STAY for the funeral. He said his goodbyes staring down at her wrecked body, torn apart by two .45 slugs fired from close range. By the time the marshal and the doctor had come to take her from the room Hawk didn’t give a damn who saw the tears that ran down his face. She was the best woman he’d ever met and now she was dead.
And the crying was over.
Other folk would follow the coffin to the cemetery at the edge of town, others would cry then, raise their heads and sing Christian hymns and throw scatterings of earth down over her.
Ashes to ashes, Hawk knew it well.
The crying was over and now there were things that had to be done.
He’d ridden away from the Ventura ranch and set himself up as a target, not caring who came after him because he was certain he could handle them, confident in his own abilities. That confidence had been misplaced. But still he had made a mistake: a fatal error, though not fatal for himself. He had assumed that Ventura would give up after a time, he’d felt certain that the succession of hired guns would dry up and even if it didn’t, well, he would still be faster and straighter.
He hadn’t taken into account what going back to Esther Brill might mean. Oh, he’d figured it out enough to stop himself from going directly there, he hadn’t wanted to lure any gunslingers directly to her, but he’d gone nonetheless. He’d bided his time and then ridden into her house and her arms and her bed and he’d taken a fatal gun with him. A gun fired in the darkness at a swaying, moaning shape the killer had clearly mistaken for Hawk’s own. A quick couple of shots in the dark directed at a man’s back and then a getaway.
Except that it hadn’t been a man’s back.
And even if it had, what kind would do that? What sort of gunslinger had Ventura hired himself this time?
By God, Hawk was going to find out.
He’d allowed himself to be the hunted and now the tables were turned and he was after his own prey. It was a role he’d grown used to. He was what he was and it ill-suited him to forget it. The kid’s words came back to him with the rise and fall of the saddle: You’re a bounty hunter, that’s what you are. You’re a gunman. A killer!
The boy had bought himself death with the words and Hawk had felt bad about what had gone down. But now he felt a whole lot worse than bad. Ventura clearly had no intention of calling a halt to things; he’d hired a man without scruple, a backshooter and a coward to boot. And now Hawk was going to see an end to it, once and for all, the way he should have done before.
