Decker could count on the fingers of one hand the times in his life that he’d been with a whore. Most of them had taken place when he’d been much younger. In recent years, when he’d been with a woman, it was always by mutual choice; money had had nothing to do with it.
Martha was an exceptional whore. She was extremely lovely, with blonde hair, a slim waist, rounded hips, and full, shapely thighs. She was only about twenty-two and as close to being truly beautiful as any woman Decker had ever seen.
When she had taken a slightly drunk Decker to her room the night before, she had made him feel as if she were doing it out of desire. Through the night, when they’d made love, she’d made him feel as if he was the only man who had ever pleasured her like that.
When the bounty hunter woke up the next morning he felt embarrassed and glad that Martha was still asleep. He rose, dressed, and put some money on her dresser before leaving. He looked at her while she slept, and she seemed even prettier than she’d been the night before, when her face had been all painted. Now it was clean, and he could see what she really looked like. He was sorry she was a whore and that they hadn’t spent the night together just because they’d wanted to.
He knew why he’d gone with her. It had been a
reaction to almost being killed. The worst way for a man to die was to be shot in the back, and he hadn’t escaped by much last night. The best way for a man to know he was alive was to be with a woman—especially a woman as desirable and skilled in lovemaking as Martha.
Out on the street he stretched until his bones cracked. His eyes felt gritty because he’d only slept half the night, and his head ached from the whiskey he’d consumed hours before, but all in all he felt fine.
He was alive.
From his office Kyle Roman could see the Broadus House, and he happened to be looking out the window when Decker came out. Roman knew he couldn’t very well put the squeeze on Brand if Decker took him in. He was going to have to find a way to deal with Decker.
He watched until the bounty hunter was out of sight. Then he walked away from the window and poured himself another cup of coffee.
The only reason a man would be coming out of that place early in the morning would be Martha. For a moment the sheriff envied Decker. He’d spent some time with Martha himself.
The next moment, Roman smiled as he figured out a way to get Decker out of his way without killing him.
Decker entered the livery stable to check on John Henry and found the liveryman in an agitated state, mumbling to himself and shaking his head.
“What’s wrong?” Decker asked.
“Looks like there was a fire here last night,” the old man said.
“A fire?” Decker demanded. “Is my horse all right?”
“Oh, sure, mister. Your horse is fine. Fact of the matter is, it was just a small fire. Looks like somebody put it out with a blanket.”
“Where was the fire?”
“Come to think of it, it was in front of your horse’s stall.”
“Show me.”
The old man led Decker to the spot, and sure enough, there was a scorched patch of hay just across from John Henry’s stall. He went into the stall to check the horse.
“How you doing, boy?” he said. The gelding turned his head and looked at Decker. “Had some excitement here last night? Huh?”
He patted the gelding’s neck, checked him to make sure he hadn’t been injured, and then left the stall. As he did, he stepped on something and looked down.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“What?” the old man said.
Decker bent over and picked the object up. “It’s the heel of a shoe.”
“Looks like it’s from a woman’s shoe.”
“Yeah,” Decker said, turning it over in his hand. “Doesn’t it?”
He looked down at the burnt hay and the scorched blanket. Then he thought about what the man at the poker table had said the night before, about Josephine and her strange man. During the course of the game one of the men had mentioned that the house was at the south end of town.
He wondered if Miss Josephine wasn’t missing a heel from her shoe today.
Decker found a café that was open early and went inside for breakfast. He was glad to be the only customer and put the shoe heel on the table while he ate his eggs and bacon.
If the man living with Josephine was the Baron, then why would he have sent her to the livery? What would she have been doing near John Henry’s stall?
What would she have seen while she was there?
A horse…
A saddle…
And then it hit him.
The hangman’s noose.
His trademark.
Now the Baron knew that Decker was there, but how had he known to send someone to the livery to look? And how had he become aware that Decker was after him in the first place? There was only one answer to that.
Sheriff Kyle Roman.
For some reason, Roman had gone to the Baron and told him that Decker was in town—no, if he had mentioned Decker by name, then the Baron wouldn’t have sent his woman to the livery to check.
Roman was playing his own game here but what was it? If he and the Baron were friends, then he surely would have mentioned Decker by name. Why hadn’t he?
Decker was drinking a cup of coffee when Roman walked into the café. He spotted Decker and walked right over to his table.
“Decker,” he said, “I got to take you in.”
“For what?” the bounty hunter demanded.
“Murder.”
Decker stared at the man and said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You were with a girl named Martha last night.”
“So?”
“So this morning she’s dead, strangled.”
“What?”
“I’m arresting you for her murder.”
The instant Roman looked into Decker’s cold eyes he knew he’d made a terrible mistake. He went for his gun but Decker said, “Don’t do it, Sheriff.”
Roman froze.
“I’ve got my gun on you under the table. It’s been pointing at you since you walked in.”
Roman wet his lips and then said, “You’re bluffing.”
“Try me,” Decker said. “You’ve seen my gun. It won’t be any problem for me to fire through this table.”
Again, Roman wet his lips.
“You can’t do this, Decker. I’m the law here.”
“Piss-poor excuse for a lawman, if you ask me. What kind of evidence do you have against me to arrest me?”
“You were the last one with her.”
“She was alive when I left.”
“You can’t prove that.”
“And you can’t prove she wasn’t.”
“That’s for a jury to decide.”
“No,” Decker said, shaking his head. “What’s your game, Roman? You want me out of the way so you can deal with the Baron? You can’t collect the bounty. As a matter of fact, I doubt you’re man enough to even try him.”
Roman didn’t answer. He was standing there
very awkwardly, beginning to sweat, not knowing what to do.
“Oh, wait a minute, I get it now,” Decker said. “Blackmail. You and I are the only ones who know who he really is. Get me out of the way and you can make him pay for your silence, huh?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He won’t pay you, you know,” Decker said. “He’ll just kill you.”
Roman frowned, wetting his lips again.
“My breakfast is getting cold, Sheriff,” Decker said. “I’d appreciate it if you would get out of here and let me finish.”
“I’ll just wait for you outside and arrest you there, Decker.”
“No, you won’t. If you try me, Roman, I’ll kill you.”
“You can’t kill a town sheriff. You’d be on the run for the rest of your life.”
“That won’t concern you, because you’ll be dead. Think about that.”
When the sheriff didn’t move Decker took his sawed-off out from beneath the table just to show the lawman that he wasn’t bluffing.
“Jesus—” Roman muttered, staring at the shotgun. Then he slowly backed out of the café.
Decker holstered his gun and continued with his breakfast.
He was at odds now with the town sheriff, and that was not good at all.
He felt bad about Martha and figured that either the Baron killed her to frame him, or the sheriff himself did it. His money was on the sheriff. Roman didn’t have the nerve to try to kill Decker, but strangling a woman and pinning it on him was easier.
He didn’t think a man like the Baron would have murdered a woman. If he wanted Decker out of the way, he’d face him and try to kill him himself.
Decker’s shoulder twitched, and he suddenly realized that it must have been Sheriff Roman who’d taken the shot at him the night before. That made him wish the man
had
drawn on him.
Furious, Kyle Roman stalked back to his office. He had let Decker back him down and he hated himself for it. He also cursed himself for missing the man the night before. He should have taken the time to get himself a rifle and not tried to make the shot with a handgun.
In his office he slammed his door, kicked his desk, and threw himself into his chair. He looked at his hands, which were still shaking. Decker was crazy to threaten a lawman. In fact, the man was just plain crazy, he thought.
Kyle clenched his fists and wished he’d had the nerve to wait for Decker to come out of the café and arrest the bounty hunter then.
Shit! he thought, he’d sneaked up to Martha’s room and strangled her in her sleep for nothing. There was no way he could prove to anyone—least of all a federal judge—that Decker had killed the girl, and Roman didn’t want a judge in town while Decker could possibly point a finger at him.
Decker had to die, and if Roman couldn’t do the job himself, he knew someone who could.
Decker finished his breakfast and readied himself to go out into the street. He didn’t like the feeling of being on the wrong side of the law, but then he didn’t consider Sheriff Roman to be much of a
sheriff. The man was obviously out for himself, so it wouldn’t bother Decker to have to kill Roman if he got in his way. He’d have to square himself with the federal law on that, but he thought he could.
All he had to do was prove that Roman was using his badge to blackmail a wanted killer—and that he murdered an innocent woman as a means to further his own ends.
Decker stepped out on the boardwalk and looked around. He couldn’t see Roman anywhere, but if last night was any indication, the man was quite capable of back-shooting him. The only thing that might have kept him from doing that now was the fact that it was broad daylight.
Decker was really going to have to watch his step once darkness fell.
Decker walked to the telegraph office to see if he’d received any replies to his wires. Fairly sure now that the Baron was in Broadus, he didn’t really think the wires were important any longer, but if he had received any co-operation from the lawmen in the other towns, he wanted to be able to acknowledge them.
As it turned out, he received no offers of cooperation. Apparently the lawmen in all three towns had no liking for bounty hunters, for none of them offered him the slightest bit of help.
It was just as well.
He tore up the messages and discarded them, then stepped outside.
Over breakfast Josephine asked Brand, “What are we going to do?”
“About what?”
“About what?” she asked. “About that man Decker.”
Brand looked at her across the table. She had come home in a highly agitated state the night before and had not been able to sleep very well. She looked drawn and haggard.
“Don’t worry about it,” Brand said.
“How can I not worry about it?”
“Go to work.”
She looked at him as if he were crazy.
“I can’t go to work!” she said.
“Sure you can.”
“Lucy can run the shop,” she told him, referring to the woman who worked for her.
“I want you to go to work, Josephine,” Brand said softly. “I don’t want to have to worry about you. Worrying about you could get me killed.”
“I don’t—” Josephine said, and then she stopped. She had been about to say that she didn’t understand that, but suddenly she did.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll go to work.”
“Good girl.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think,” Brand said, “I’ll have a talk with our new friend, Decker.”
“You’re going to talk to the man who wants to kill you?” she asked incredulously.
“Maybe he can be reasoned with.”
“If everything you’ve said about him is true, I don’t see how you can hope to—”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I can be very persuasive.”
Kyle Roman was standing across the street from Josephine Hale’s house, waiting for her to go to work. For a while it looked as if she wasn’t going to leave, but finally the front door opened and she stepped out. He waited until she was out of sight before he crossed the street and knocked on the front door.
After a few moments the man known in Broadus as Brand, now known to Roman as the Baron, answered the door.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“We have to talk.”
“About what?”
“About a man called Decker,” Roman said, look
ing as if he expected the name to mean something to Brand.
“I know all about Decker.”
That deflated Roman for the moment.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Well…what are we going to do about him?”
“What are
we
going to do?” Brand asked.
“That’s right.” “Have you had breakfast yet, Sheriff?”
“No,” Roman said, looking confused.
“Well, come in and have a cup of coffee.”
At the poker game the night before Decker had not only found out where Josephine Hale lived, but also where she worked. He was standing across the street from her shop when she opened the front door with a key and entered. Only then did he step out of the doorway and start toward the southern end of town. Roman had two cups of coffee and listened to what Brand had to say.
“You want me to stay out of it?” he asked when Brand was fi nished.
“That’s right,” Brand said. “Decker is my prob lem, not yours.”
“But—”
“But what?”
“I—I—”
“Wait a minute,” Brand said. “I heard something about a shooting last night. That wasn’t you, was it?”
Roman stared helplessly at Brand.
“Did you try to shoot him in the back?” Brand asked.
“What are you getting so upset about?” Roman
demanded. “If I’d killed him, you wouldn’t have to worry about him.”
“You son of a bitch!” Brand said. He reached across the table and pulled Roman to him by the shirt front. “I’ve never shot a man in the back in my life. Are you that much of a spineless coward?”
“I—I—”
Brand released Roman and pushed him back into his chair, where the man sat and stared at him, bewildered.
Brand stood up and began to walk around the table.
“What else have you pulled?” Brand asked. “Tell me.”
“Well—”
“Come on!” Brand shouted, poking Roman in the arm, jarring him. “Tell me.”
“I…I tried to frame him for murder.”
“Well, that was smart. How did that work?”
“It didn’t.”
“Tell me about it. Come on, if we’re going to be partners in this, you have to tell me everything.”
Reluctantly, Roman told Brand what he had done to Martha after Decker had left her. Brand listened, continuing to circle the table.
“So, you killed an innocent woman for nothing.”
“Well, you—you killed an innocent boy, didn’t you? Isn’t that why Decker’s after you?”
“That was an accident,” Brand said, “an unfortunate accident. You, my friend, cold—bloodedly killed a woman who had nothing whatsoever to do with all of this.”
“It was the only thing I could think of.”
“And this,” Brand said, stopping behind Sheriff Kyle Roman, “is all I can think of.”
Too swiftly for the sheriff to realize what was happening, Brand slid his left forearm around Roman’s neck, put his right hand beneath the man’s chin, and twisted viciously. Roman’s body stiffened, shivered, and then went limp.
“That’s one problem solved,” Brand said, straightening up.
Decker stood across the street from Josephine’s house, trying to decide what to do. Finally he crossed the street and moved alongside the house, stealthily peering into windows as he went. When he finally got to the kitchen window he stopped and watched as a man stood behind the sheriff and quickly and efficiently broke his neck. There was no question about it. Only a man like the Baron would be capable of such an act. The bounty hunter had found his quarry at last.
Decker couldn’t really feel sorry for the sheriff. He had obviously gotten in way over his head due to greed.
Decker watched a moment longer, assessing his foe. The Baron lifted Roman up and tossed him over his shoulder. The man was obviously very strong, evidenced by both the move he’d used to break the man’s neck and the ease with which he was carrying the now-dead weight.
Rather than stay and watch the Baron dispose of the body, Decker decided to go somewhere to think and decide how best to confront this formidable opponent.