A Different Trade (10 page)

The following morning, Clint strode up Sharp Bend along a route that had become all too familiar. When he arrived at his destination, however, he stopped and stared at the saloon's front window for a good long while. The lettering painted upon the glass was blacked out and two boys in their teens worked to hang a sign from a post near the door. One of the boys was handing the sign up to the other, who stood precariously atop a ladder. Since he couldn't decide which one was about to get hurt first, Clint rushed over to the closer young man. He made it just as the sign began to slip from his grasp.

“Thanks, mister,” the teen said. “I been holding that up there all damn day.”

The boy on top of the ladder replied, “That's only because you wouldn't help me get these hooks where they were supposed to be!”

“It ain't a two-man job!”

“Now it's a three-man job,” Clint said. “How about we just get it done?”

Both of the boys looked at him and nodded. “Yes, sir,” replied the one on the ladder.

As they worked to get a few hooks embedded into the post protruding from the saloon's front wall and hang the sign, Clint asked, “Whose idea was this?”

“Miss Henrietta's,” said the kid helping Clint to lift the sign. “She sent us out to pick up the sign and then hang it. Paying us a dollar to do it, too.”

“That's . . . fifty cents each,” corrected the boy on the ladder.

“Right. Like I'd cheat my own brother.”

Clint winced as he thought about the bad blood flowing between brothers at that particular saloon, but kept his thoughts to himself. The sign was wrapped in burlap, which made it slippery to handle. “It would sure be easier if we took off this cover,” he said.

“No!” both teens said in unison. As the one up top guided the rings on the sign's upper edge into the hooks in the post, the other one explained, “She wanted to keep it covered.”

“For how long?” Clint asked.

“Until you got here,” Henrietta said from just behind the batwing doors. Placing a hand on each door, she pushed them open while stepping outside. She looked up at the sign, which loomed well over the top of her head. Making up for her short stature with a strong flick of her wrist, she tossed a fifty-cent piece up to the boy on top of the ladder. “You've done a great job.” Shifting a critical gaze toward the closer of the two boys, she added, “And it only took you twice as long as I thought it would.”

Once again, the boys spoke in unison when they pointed to each other and said, “It's his fault!”

“You can both thank your lucky stars that Mr. Adams arrived later than I expected as well,” she said. “Are you about finished here?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the boy standing beside Clint.

Henrietta clapped her hands together. “Excellent! It's time for the unveiling. I'm sure you'll enjoy this, Clint.”

“I can barely wait,” he said.

After getting a nod from Henrietta, the boy at the top of the ladder pulled off the burlap that had been covering the sign.

“The Howling Hound?” Clint asked as he read the flowing letters. Those words framed a black drawing resembling the wolf's head on the label of the liquor that had brought him to Larga Noche in the first place. “Does Leo have a fondness for dogs?”

“Yes, indeed. At least this dog has stopped digging and is setting its sights higher.”

After taking a moment to study it, Clint nodded. “I like it.”

“As do I.” Leaning in and nudging him with her elbow, Henrietta added, “And it beats the hell out of the other terrible names Leo came up with.”

“Can we go now?” the boy on the ladder asked.

“Absolutely.”

The boy next to Clint spoke up as well. Handing over his fifty-cent piece, he asked, “Can I have some of that fancy liquor I heard about?”

“You can't afford it,” she said, “but please spread the word.”

Clearly disappointed, the boy tightened his fist around his coin and started walking down the street. His brother jumped down from the ladder so both of them could cross Sharp Bend and run straight toward Miss Tasha's.

“Boys will be boys,” Clint said.

“And men will be late. Especially,” Henrietta said, “men connected to this saloon.”

“Why do you say that?” Clint asked.

“Because Leo hasn't shown up today.”

“What?”

Her face darkened. “He stood up to his brother last night, and now he's at his house, Clint. You should go and see him.”

Judging by the look in her eyes, it wasn't going to be a pleasant visit.

Getting directions to Leo's home near the outskirts of town wasn't difficult. Following them, on the other hand, was a challenge. Clint may have had an easier time if Leo had lived just outside of town so he could leave Larga Noche's boundaries and circle in from there. Since that wasn't the case, he had to navigate the infuriating tangle of streets until he found the house he was after.

Clint's knuckles pounded on the door hard enough to rattle it in its frame. When the door was opened, Leo scowled out at him while saying, “Easy! If you intended on knocking the damn thing down, you would have at least saved me the trouble of getting up!”

“Henrietta told me you stood up to Westin last night,” Clint said as he immediately looked down at Leo's bandaged hand. “I take it that didn't go well.”

Leo stepped aside so Clint could enter, and then he shut the door. His house was barely larger than a cabin. Most of the entryway was taken up by a hat rack and a set of stairs leading to the second floor. Straight ahead was a kitchen and small table while to the right of the front door was a parlor with a fireplace, a rocker, and a small table with a few books stacked upon it.

Making his way to the rocker, Leo sat down with a labored grunt. “What did she tell you?” he asked.

“Just that Westin and one of his men came along last night and she asked you to show them the door. You had a word with them and the three of you took it outside.”

“That's it?”

“She said she thought she heard gunshots.”

“Yeah,” Leo said. “That's the part where it would have been nice to have a little backup.”

“I'm sorry. I should've been there.”

“You're doing enough. Henrietta may be small, but she knows how to handle that shotgun I keep below the bar.”

“She wasn't even certain she'd heard the shots,” Clint explained. “She told me as much. She also told me she went outside to look for you when you didn't come back in and she found you passed out lying against a wall.”

Leo stared down at the flickering light in his fireplace. “When I woke up, I was in my own bed with the doctor looking down at me. I thought I was dead.”

“Something tells me you wouldn't have needed a doctor if that was the case,” Clint said.

“Well, I wasn't thinking too straight at the time. I didn't even think about how I got here.”

“Henrietta found you, gathered whoever she could, and brought you back here. She sends her best, by the way.”

“She's a good woman. I'm glad she didn't try to come out when Westin and that one-armed son of a bitch did this to me.”

Clint looked down at Leo's hand. “If you don't mind me asking, what did they do to you?”

“See for yourself,” Leo said as he unwrapped enough of the bandages for Clint to see the bloody little nubs where the two middle fingers of his right hand had been.

Clint pulled in a sharp breath. “Damn! What the hell was that for?”

“They was proving a point.” Leo wrapped up his hand again and set in gingerly across his lap. “I knew my brother had a mean streak and that he didn't care for me too much, but I never thought he'd go so far as to maim me this way.”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Clint said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means they could have killed you. Why didn't they?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know?”

Clint walked to the kitchen to get them both some water. The house was small enough that he didn't have to raise his voice very much to be heard in the next room when he said, “I heard of a gunman out in Nebraska, I think, who got his hand hurt a lot worse than that. He needed a special gun made, but he was back out and raising hell before too long.”

“What happened to him?” Leo asked.

Walking into the parlor carrying two cups of water, Clint told him, “I'm not sure. I'll have to ask around next time I'm out that way. All we need to worry about for the moment, though, is what happens to you. Where do you go from here, Leo?”

“Hell if I know,” he sighed.

“Why don't you start by telling me what happened last night.”

After taking a sip of water, Leo steeled himself and then began speaking in a steady voice to describe what happened the last time he'd seen his stepbrother. Every so often, his voice wavered but another deep breath and drink of cool water put him back on track. “When the first shot was fired,” he said, “I thought I was dead. The second one came and I don't recall much from there.”

“Understandable,” Clint said. “Must've hurt like a bastard.”

“Still does.”

“So they want you to piece together some sort of contract so you can legally hand over Madeline?”

“That's right,” Leo said. “Most likely, I'd say she's going to be the first girl in a long line. If I hand her over, there'll just be more.”

“You mentioned something about another business they wanted to start?” Clint asked.

Leo nodded. “Opium.”

“They want to turn your saloon into an opium den?”

“No. They want to sell opium and some other things like that from my place. They also want to use my saloon to store boxes while they're being shipped across the country. Kind of like a depot.”

“Could be guns,” Clint said. “Or stolen property.”

“Or any number of illegal things,” Leo said as he jumped to his feet. “Otherwise, they could just ship the damn things like normal folks! What gets under my skin is what they want to do to Madeline and the other girls they intend on bringing to my place. I can't even imagine . . .”

Clint could imagine it just fine. Doing so lit a fire deep in his gullet. “They're scared,” he said.

“Funny,” Leo replied as he held up his bandaged hand, “they didn't seem that way to me.”

“They're nervous about something, which is why they've stepped up their game.”

“I still doubt they're scared of anything.”

Clint grinned. “Then we'll just have to see what we can do to remedy that.”

It hadn't taken much to find someone who recognized Clint's description of Westin's men. In fact, one of the first people he'd asked was the desk clerk at the hotel where he was staying. Clint had just been finishing breakfast when he'd noticed the front desk of his hotel faced a window that looked directly out to Linden Street.

“I don't know about any one-armed man,” the clerk had told him, “but that big bald fellow sounds familiar. He spends a lot of time at Mackie's.”

Mackie's was another one of Larga Noche's saloons. Clint had been there a handful of times when he'd been scouting such places in town. Also, it was just down the street from his hotel so he'd stopped in there for a drink when he wasn't of a mind to go all the way to Leo's place. “When was the last time he was there?” Clint asked.

“He's there every morning for biscuits and gravy.”

“You know what he eats?”

The clerk shrugged. “Lots of folks go there for biscuits and gravy. Mackie's serves 'em up almost every morning. They taste like bricks and mortar, but they're cheap and there's always plenty of them.”

Clint had figured someone like Westin and those other two couldn't be too hard to miss in a town the size of Larga Noche, but he thought he'd have to look a bit harder than that. Without questioning his bit of good luck, he thanked the clerk and headed out the door.

Thanks to the rest he'd had over the last day or two, Clint was able to move without feeling a stabbing jolt of pain from his ribs. What hurt even more was the jab he felt to his pride whenever he thought about how his ribs had gotten that sore in the first place. He felt a whole lot better once he caught sight of Kurt sitting at a table in the little saloon down the street.

Mackie's was half the size of Leo's place. Its main room contained only a bar and seven tables situated near a stage that was just big enough to hold three dancing girls as long as they didn't move around very much. At the moment, the only thing on that stage was a table stacked high with breakfast so the few paying customers there could help themselves. Since there was only one door in or out of the main room, Clint picked a spot across the street where he could wait without being easily seen.

Before too long, Kurt stepped outside wearing a big smile on his face and gravy stains on the front of his shirt. He didn't cast a second glance in Clint's direction before heading up Linden Street and turning onto Third Avenue.

By this time, Clint could have walked to Larga Noche's largest collection of saloons in his sleep. He had no trouble whatsoever following Kurt through town all the way to Sharp Bend. When the big bald man drew closer to Leo's place, Clint rested his hand upon his holstered Colt in anticipation of putting it to use. Instead of barging in to pay Leo a visit, Kurt took a few moments to gaze up at the new sign before moving along.

Kurt's next stop was Miss Tasha's. When he got there, he did a lot more than just look at the sign over the door. He stepped up onto the porch and was immediately greeted by a dark-haired girl wearing a slip of a dress with a neckline that was cut low enough to expose a generous portion of her small breasts. She went to work on him right away by rubbing his chest and pressing herself against him. Although Clint couldn't hear what the two of them were saying, Kurt's leering smile was easy enough to read from afar. It seemed the two of them had just about bartered an agreeable price as Clint crossed the street and prepared to step inside the cathouse in Kurt's wake. With any luck, he'd be able to talk to one of the girls long enough for Kurt to get nice and comfortable in his room before Clint cut his visit short.

As Clint opened the door, he could see Kurt inside being led upstairs by the skinny girl who'd set her sights on him. Even closer, however, was a young man with a very familiar face. That young man recognized Clint right away and ruined Clint's hopes of following Kurt unseen when he said, “Mr. Adams!”

Just past the young man, Kurt stopped on the stairs and began turning around.