“Well, don’t just stand there,” Southwell said. “You heard my wife: Kill the son of a bitch.”
Vestal nodded. “Just as you say, Park.”
He and Lee exchanged a single glance, but it was one that held memories of shared pleasures past and the promise of many more to come.
“That man is as big an idiot as the rest of the hands,” Southwell said after Vestal left.
Lee said nothing. As her husband’s hand went to her body again, squeezing, twisting, Lee consoled herself with one exquisite thought . . . .
Soon she’d kill the old man who was so greedily pawing her, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth.
And then she and Shad would be free.
And rich.
Chapter 17
By the time he had retrieved his horse and staked him out on a patch of grass among some wild oak, Cage’s leg had started to bleed again and the pain was a living thing.
After he returned to the old boxcar, he tried to numb the searing pain with the Old Crow, but he couldn’t drink too much, not if he was to dig out the .45 ball buried in his thigh.
Clayton opened his Barlow knife and poured whiskey over the carbon steel blade. He dropped his pants; then, as careful as a naked man climbing over barbed wire, he shoved the point of the blade into the open wound.
Clayton bit back a scream.
Oh God, I can’t do this.
His courage wasn’t up to the task, and that was the long and short of the thing. He gritted his teeth.
Cage, you damn coward, get it done. There ain’t nobody but you.
He plunged the knife deeper, and this time he screamed. He reached out, grabbed the Old Crow with a trembling hand, and gulped down nearly half a pint. The bourbon danced around in his head for a while, then hit him hard.
“Bastard!” Clayton yelled, but whether at the man who’d shot him, the whiskey, or the bullet, even he couldn’t tell. He rammed the blade into his leg again.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!” He drank another slug of booze. Deeper. Blood spurted. The pain was white hot. His body shrieked at him to stop. Deeper still. The steel scraped on . . . something. The bullet? Bone? He didn’t know. He levered the tip of the blade upward.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
More whiskey. Damn, the bottle was almost empty.
Dig down, tip the blade upward.
“Ah! Ah! Ah!”
He saw it! The bullet, a gray iris in a scarlet eyeball. He shoved the blade under the ball. Gritted his teeth. Now! Tip it up and out!
The bullet jerked from of the wound, described an arc in the air, and landed with a thud on the floor. Clayton didn’t hear it.
He’d already fainted.
When Cage Clayton woke, he was lying on the floor, the top of his head wedged tight against a wall.
How long had he been out?
He looked at his watch. It had just gone on three o’clock and the night was still full dark. An hour, then, maybe less.
He rose slowly to his feet, the wound in his leg paining him like blazes. A quick search of the room uncovered a clean white shirt left by its recently deceased owner.
Hungover, his head pounding, Clayton poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat at the table again. The wound looked red and inflamed, but it had stopped bleeding. He drank coffee, then built and lit a cigarette, steeling himself for what he had to do.
He picked up the Old Crow. Good, there was enough left. Now wasn’t the time to hesitate. Clayton poured the contents of the bottle into his open wound.
He roared as shrieking pain slammed at him, coming in waves, each one more agonizing than the one before.
This time he didn’t faint, but he vented his lungs.
“Aaaarrrgh . . . ya son of a bitch!”
It took him time to recover, but after a few minutes Clayton used the shirt to bind his wound. He stood, gingerly tested the leg. It took his weight, but the pain was considerable.
He sat again, smoked a cigarette, and drank more coffee.
Then he heard the train whistle.
Chapter 18
There was a real possibility that more hard cases were on the train, and Clayton knew he was in no condition to fight anybody. Pain had sapped his strength, and the Old Crow had turned on him and was no longer his best friend.
He rose, looked around the room, then picked up his rifle and staggered outside. Lightning still flashed across the sky, lighting up the clouds, and the rain was still coming down hard, hissing like a dragon in the dark.
Limping badly, he stopped and looked along the tracks. The approaching locomotive was a point of light in the distance, but under his feet the rails were thrumming to the rhythm of its wheels.
Clayton walked around the refrigerator car and dragged the dead guard’s body into the underbrush. The effort fatigued him and for a minute he stood with his back against the side of the car, breathing heavily. Then he pushed himself to round the car again and go back to the tracks.
The train seemed no nearer, but the whistle was louder, its five notes echoing through the rain-lashed hollow of the night. Clayton hesitated, then made up his mind.
It was now or never. He was going to see what was inside those damned boxes. The guard had been ready to kill to keep their secret, so the contents were precious to somebody.
His hearing reaching out to the train, Clayton opened the car. It smelled of meat and blood and ice. And death.
His wounded leg would not allow him to climb inside, but a box, smaller than the others, was near him. He dragged it closer and used the toe of his rifle butt to hammer it open.
The cheap thin pine splintered and Clayton pulled a piece free. He thumbed a match into flame and looked into the box.
A child stared back at him with wide black eyes.
Startled, Clayton took a step back. He heard the clack of the locomotive’s wheels, and its whistle again pierced the night. He leaned over the box again and lit another match. In the shifting yellow light, he saw the dead face of a little girl, black hair falling over her shoulders. She wore a buckskin dress that somebody, her mother probably, had decorated with blue Apache beads.
The girl showed no sign of physical violence, but when Clayton looked closer, he saw that she’d vomited down the front of her dress.
The child had been poisoned.
She’d been given something to eat or drink and it had killed her.
A sickness in him, he did not have the time or desire to check the remaining boxes. He had a good idea what they contained.
He laid the splintered pine plank back on top of the box, then slammed shut the car door. As quickly as he could on his bad leg, he stepped away from the tracks and quartered back to where his horse was tethered. There, among the trees, he would not be seen by anyone from the train.
The locomotive huffed on the tracks as it took on water and wood. From his hiding place, Clayton watched a man step inside the boxcar office. He’d left the bourbon bottle, and hopefully all the blood he’d spilled was hidden by the table.
The man was inside only for a minute or so, then reappeared. He laughed and said something to the engineer, then helped hitch the locomotive to the refrigerator car. As Clayton had hoped, the man had seen the bottle and figured the guard had wandered off drunk somewhere.
Clayton sighed his relief. Another gun battle was the last thing on earth he needed. After the locomotive left with the refrigerator car, Clayton returned to the office. The stove still burned with a good heat and wearily he stretched out beside it. Despite the nagging pain in his leg, he slept.