When he was naked from the waist down and his face was blotched with silent fury, he turned around and lay belly down on the bed, the springs squeaking under his weight. “You won't get away with it,” he rasped. “You crazy bitch, I'll hunt you down, kill you like a rogue she-grizâ”
“She-griz,” Saradee chuckled, setting the pistol aside and picking up the sheet she'd torn from the bed. “I like that. That's kind of how I've always seen myself.”
She tore four long strips from the sheet and tied Flagg's wrists and ankles to the bedposts. The marshal cursed her all the while, and cursed Baskin and Rojas downstairs, blood seeping out from under his bandages to soak the bed beneath his arms.
When she'd made sure that all the knots were tight, she grabbed her quirt off the washstand and stepped up to the bed, holding the quirt's braided leather shaft in one hand while running the other along the loop at the business end, the two long, horsehair whangs hanging off the loop like streamers.
“Where I come from, these are called rug beaters,” Saradee said, slashing the loop through the air over Flagg's naked ass.
His bottom was rather broad for a man's, with patches of thin brown hair and several tender-looking saddle galls sprouting from the powder-white skin. “That's one tender ass you have there, Flagg. You need to stop spending so much time in the office.”
Arms stretched above his head, Flagg turned an eye to her, his chalky, sweaty face mottled red. “I'm gonna hunt you down.”
“You won't need to pull your shirt up,” Saradee said, ignoring him and flicking the quirt through the air once more. It made a savage whistle. “Your ass is all
I
want.”
As the last two words left her mouth, she slammed the quirt down resolutely upon Flagg's ass. Flagg made no sound, just lifted his head straight off the bed and pulled at the ties holding his wrists to the bedposts.
A dark-pink welt rose instantly across the middle of both buttocks.
“Doesn't feel very good, does it, Marshal?” She swung the quirt over her shoulder, the noose flopping against her back. She raised it high, slammed it down on Flagg's butt.
Again, Flagg lifted his head sharply, breathing through his nose and fisting his tied hands.
His voice was thin and shaky, just above a whisper. “Goddamn you. Goddamn you fucking cunt whore to hell!”
Crack!
“That one feel any better? No? How 'bout
that
one?”
Crack!
Flagg loosed a taut whimper. “I'm gonna . . . I'm gonna kill Baskin and Rojas. I'm gonna fucking
kill
'em!”
When she'd flogged him five times and was finding her stride, Flagg kept his head raised above the bed, teeth gritted, eyes squeezed shut. He gave a little, coyotelike yodel now and then, but mostly he held his body taut and sucked air sharply through his nose.
After about ten minutes, his head sagged slowly down to the pillow, and his body fell slack. She laid into him for another couple of minutes, then, breathless and sweating, she stopped. Heart pounding, she stared down at Flagg's ass.
It was a mess of bloody stripes, the galls looking as though they'd exploded from the inside out. The quirt was bloody, too. She tossed it down on Flagg's back, ran her wrist across her mouth, then retrieved the whiskey bottle from the washstand.
She popped the cork and took several long pulls. After the last pull, she wiped her mouth again and set the bottle back down on the washstand.
She glanced at Flagg, sneered, adjusted her pistols on her hips, and moved to the door.
Flagg made a gurgling sound. The bed creaked. Saradee stopped with one hand on the doorknob, turned her head toward the bed. Flagg lay with his right cheek pressed to the mattress, eyes slitted. His ass looked like a raw roast.
“For god sakes,” Flagg croaked. “Untie me.”
“Untie you?” Saradee threw her head back, laughing. “Sure.”
She squared her shoulders at the bed, drew both her Colts. With the left one, she drilled a bullet through Flagg's left wrist.
Flagg screamed. It was a long, ululating wail, like the shriek of a mountain lion.
With the right, Saradee drilled a bullet through his right ankle.
The scream rose again, louder, pricking the short hairs at the back of Saradee's neck.
She swung the left pistol up, fired, and a neat round hole appeared in the marshal's right wrist.
The scream was much thinner this time, but before its echo had died, she'd popped a slug through Flagg's left ankle.
The bed shook as Flagg flopped around like a fish on a landed stringer, howling.
Saradee scowled. “Such a racket, Marshal.”
She twirled both smoking pistols before dropping them into their holsters, opening the door, and heading into the hall.
She moved down the stairs, boots chinging.
Below, the broken-nosed bartender stood behind the bar, staring up at her and arching one sandy brow. The old Mexican sat at the same table he'd been sitting at before, only five or six cards spread out before him. He held the deck in both hands and stared up at her, smiling crookedly.
“I do believe I ruined a perfectly good bed,” Saradee said as she crossed the main room to the batwings. She stopped and turned toward Baskin, who'd swiveled his head toward her. “I'll leave you another hundred on the porch.”
She turned, hesitated, and turned back to the room. “Hawk headed west?”
Glancing at her over his right shoulder, still grinning, Rojas nodded with a caballero's flourish.
Saradee pinched her hat brim and pushed through the doors. “Good day, gentlemen.”
“Good day,” said Rojas. He chuckled and turned back to his cards. “Be careful out there. The trails are not safe for pretty, defenseless senoritas.”
21.
WITHOUT MERCY
G
IDEON Hawk rose up from behind a boulder on the canyon's northern ridge and, teeth gritted, raised his Winchester to his right shoulder.
He planted a bead on the hat of Deputy Bill Houston riding at the head of the four-man pack clomping along the canyon floor. Hawk let the bead drop into the V-shaped notch on the rifle's receiver. Houston turned toward him slightly, opening his mouth to speak to Press Miller.
“This one's for Juliana,” Hawk muttered, and pulled the trigger.
The rifle leapt and boomed, the report echoing.
Houston's head jerked toward his left shoulder. He dropped his reins, and his horse screamed, rearing. Without a sound from his own lips, Houston sagged back off the dun's left hip, bounced off a boulder, and piled up in a cholla patch, unmoving.
“Jesus Christ!” screamed Galen Allidore, losing his own adobe-trimmed, bullet-crowned hat as his whitesocked black horse sun-fished sharply.
Hawk grinned tightly. At first, he'd been appalled by the notion of killing lawmen, but it was easier than he'd thought. He hoped Juliana was watching from heaven, as he'd hoped Linda and Jubal had watched him hang Three-Fingers Ned Meade.
He drilled another round into the ground beneath the shifting hooves of Allidore's black, then grinned as the horse reared, throwing the deputy off its back and into the rocks near Bill Houston.
Lowering the smoking Winchester, Hawk glanced right. Press Miller had dismounted. As his horse scrambled off up canyon, reins trailing, Miller dove behind a boulder and snaked his own Winchester over the top. Hawk jerked his head behind his cover as Miller's rifle popped and the slug slammed into the boulder in front of Hawk, spraying shards as the bullet ricocheted.
Hawk lifted his head above the boulder, extended his Winchester toward Miller, grunted a curse, and fired two quick rounds a half second after Miller ducked. Another rifle shot exploded to Hawk's left.
Hound-Dog Tuttle had dropped to one broad knee in the middle of the trail, his horse's dust still sifting around him as he jacked another round into his Winchester's breech and aimed the barrel up the ridge.
Hawk ducked, turned, and pressed his back to the boulder. Tuttle's slug blew up scree on his right.
They were making a game of it. That was all right. He needed all the practice he could get.
He pushed off his heels and ran straight up the ridge, another slug spanging off the rocks to his left. He dodged behind a witch's finger of sandstone, and another slug blasted the finger, spraying shards on both sides.
Hawk edged his rifle around the finger's left side. Below, the three surviving deputies were scrambling up the ridge, dodging behind cover.
His death's-head grin in place, Hawk levered and fired three times. When his smoke and dust were settling, all three deputies had gone to ground behind boulders. Gritting his teeth, rage and fury blending to turn his blood black, Hawk snapped off two more shots, then gave a whoop, dashed out from behind the finger, and scrambled straight up the ridge.
He glanced left and up, where Juliana's lifeless body lay concealed in the rocks. A fresh wave of rage washed through him, making his heart pound. Switching course slightly, skipping and leaping over stones and holding the Winchester in his right hand, he ran northeast toward the sharply pitched, sun-baked boulder field near the ridge's notched crest, a good three hundred feet away.
He'd lead these bastards toward the ridge, kill them one by one along the way, and let the buzzards and desert wolves scatter their bones along the rocks.
Two rifles blasted simultaneously, the slugs plowing sand and gravel a good ten feet below Hawk's heels. He stopped, turned, fired two quick shots toward Allidore, another toward Hound-Dog Tuttle farther down the ridge, then leapt behind a knob from which a spindly cedar grew.
A bullet punched into the cedar, which folded over itself with a crackling sound.
Press Miller's voice rose from several yards down the ridge. “Galen! Hound-Dog!”
Hawk doffed his hat and, crabbing forward, edged a look over the knob. He saw part of a hat thirty yards below and right, between two rocks. He recognized it as Miller's Texas-creased, black Stetson, with a braided leather band. The hat jerked to and fro, as though Miller was sending hand signals to the other two men spread out along the ridge to Hawk's left.
Seconds later, keeping their heads down so that Hawk could see only the tops of their crowns, the men spread out across the ridge, no doubt intending to surround him.
Hawk peered up the rocky, cactus-studded slope turning russet by the westward-falling sun, shadows angling out from the rock formations. A hundred yards up and right, two rock palisades rose from a vast crag of solid, black granite.
He scrambled out of the hollow and, swinging his gaze behind, catching glimpses of all three deputies spread out and moving toward him, ran straight up the ridge. He zigzagged around barrel cacti and boulders as his pursuers fired from below, most shots either too high or too low, though one carved a notch from his right boot heel.
“Come on, you sons o' bitches!” he shouted. “You wanted me. Here I am!”
Fifteen minutes after leaving the hollow, he gained the granite crag. He ran a hand along the pitted and fissured stone wall as he cast another glance behind.
He could see only Miller and Tuttle from this angle, crouching and climbing toward him, slipping in scree and dodging behind cover. Tuttle had lost his hat and, in the cool, still air, Hawk could hear his labored, rattling breaths. Hound-Dog was one of the best trackers Hawk had known, but his overindulgence at the supper table made him useless without his horse.
Hawk wheezed a laugh through his own labored breaths, then moved farther up the slope and turned and began climbing the crag, probing the eroded wall for hand-and footholds. He used only his left hand, as the Winchester occupied his right. He was two-thirds to the top of the main scarp when a bullet barked into the wall about six inches to his right, showering his face with granite slivers. Several stung like spider bites.
A wink later, the report echoed from behind.
As small streams of blood dribbled from the rock slivers in his cheeks and forehead, he cast a look over his right shoulder. Fifty yards away, Press Miller crouched behind a greasewood shrub, ejecting the spent shell from his rifle's breech.
Hawk turned back to the wall and barreled up and over the top as another slug slammed into the wall, the shot reverberating around the canyon, nearly drowning out Miller's shouted epithet and the metallic rasp of his rifle's cocking lever.
Hawk moved to the opposite side of the crag, his boots crunching the fine, black gravel and dried bird shit, the sandstone palisades rising on either side and a hundred feet above. At the far side, he dropped to a knee behind one of the towers, edged a look down slope.
Galen Allidore was moving up through boulders and catclaw, crouched over the dusty rifle he held in both hands, his gray duster flapping around his six-shooters and black denims. Allidore was peering sharply to Hawk's right, a quizzical frown pinching his features.
Hawk snugged the Winchester to his shoulder, aimed down the barrel, waited for the deputy to clear two wagon-sized rocks. “Turn back, Galen,” he shouted. “Go back to your kids. I don't want to kill you!”
Allidore whipped his head from left to right. Looking up, he spotted Hawk and snapped the rifle to his shoulder.
Hawk pursed his lips and fired. The shaggy-headed deputy screamed as the slug punched through his upper right chest, blowing him off his feet. He landed on his butt, back resting straight up and down against a boulder.
He dropped the rifle, which rolled off his thighs. As he clutched the wound, grimacing, Hawk racked another shell, aimed, and fired.
This round punched through the middle of Allidore's chest, killing him instantly, his legs jerking as his torso slid slowly groundward.
Before Allidore's hatless head hit the gravel, Hawk turned and ran back to the other end of the scarp. Both Miller and Tuttle were running toward the crag's base, hat brims shading their faces. Miller was coming from farther away, so Hawk crouched and shot Hound-Dog Tuttle's right knee out from under him.
Hound-Dog dropped to both knees and screamed. To his right, Miller switched course and ran toward Tuttle.
One hand to his bloody knee, Hound-Dog raised his head, face etched with pain, bellowing like a poleaxed mule.
“Crawl back behind the rocks!” Miller shouted at him.
When Miller was fifteen feet to Hound-Dog's right, Hawk cocked and aimed, pulled the trigger. A neat round hole blossomed in the middle of Hound-Dog's sun-bronzed forehead.
Hawk quickly ejected the spent shell and looked at Miller. The senior deputy had stopped in his tracks, shuttling his exasperated glance from Hound-Dog to Hawk.
Hawk planted a bead on Miller's badge winking in the fading light. As he squeezed the trigger, Miller dove to his right. He leapt to his feet and dove behind a boulder as Hawk again triggered the Winchester, the slug clipping the boulder's lip and spraying adobe-colored sand.
Hawk turned, edged around the northernmost palisade, and followed the scarp to where it feathered into the ridge, then resumed climbing. The terrain grew rocky and boulder-strewn, and he hopped from rock to rock.
Reaching the crest, he peered down the opposite side. A deep, brown barranca dropped away, a corduroy landscape much like the canyon Hawk had just climbed out of. There way no way into it from there, however, as the ridge was a sheer rock wall five hundred feet deep.
Hawk turned around. Miller was scampering up the rocks, dropping to his knees as he slipped in talus slides and tripped over cactus, aiming his Winchester uphill in his right hand.
Hawk leapt onto a boulder then dropped into the hollow on the other side, the sharp, geometrical lines of tumbled boulders surrounding him. There was no comfortable place to sit, so he leaned back and twisted his torso slightly sideways, his legs wedged among the slab-sided rocks. He rested his rifle on a rock edge and ducked his head, so he wouldn't be seen from down slope.
He waited, thumbing the Winchester's stock.
He craned his head to stare through a slight gap between two boulders above him. Beyond the gap, a shadow moved, and there was the slight ching of a spur, the rake of a boot heel.
Hawk set his right boot, straightened, and lifted his head above the hollow. Miller stood twelve feet away, on a titled rock slab, crouching and looking to Hawk's left.
“Right here, Press!” Hawk snaked the rifle over the boulder before him and tripped the trigger.
Miller dodged the bullet, swung his own Winchester toward Hawk. The rifle spoke, tearing up shards before Hawk's face. Hawk blinked as he cocked the Winchester, tracked Miller, and fired.
Miller sidestepped from the bullet's path as he cocked his own weapon and fired again.
Hawk ducked, lifted the Winchester, emptied it into the air over and around Miller's bobbing head. As Miller, who'd clambered into a shallow notch to Hawk's right, blasted away with his own rifle, Hawk dropped his Winchester and clawed his Russian and his Colt from their holsters.
If anyone had been in the area, they would have thought a small war was being played out atop that ridge. The two men fired without pause, most of their rounds hammering only rock, until Hawk's pistols clicked on empty cylinders.
He pulled his head back into the hollow, dropped the Colt into its holster, and, choking on his own wafting powder smoke, flipped open the Russian's loading gate. His ears rang from the din.
He'd gotten only three shells seated in their chambers before a shadow passed over him.
“Put it down, you son of a bitch!” Miller's taut voice was a decibel higher than the ringing in Hawk's ears.
Hawk's hands froze. He looked up. Miller stood over him, a black-gripped Colt Army extended in his right hand, the hammer cocked. Miller's lips shaped a diabolical smile, one eye squeezed nearly closed.
“Climb on out of there or die like a rat in its hole.”
Hawk stared up at him, his face burning. How could he have let a tinhorn like Press Miller get the drop on him? He should have kept one gun loaded.
For a second, he considered flipping the Russian's loading gate closed, spinning the cylinder, and taking his chances with the three seated shells. But he'd no doubt be dead before the loading gate had fallen against the pistol's silver chasing.
“Drop 'em both,” Miller growled.
Hawk cursed silently, squeezed the gun in his hands as he stared up at the deputy. He could put the Russian to his own head, deny Miller the satisfaction. But then, he'd never respected suicide. Miller's spruce-green duster danced about his scuffed, stovepipe boots.
“Drop 'em both,” Miller repeated, edging his voice with menace.
Hawk shrugged, set both pistols at his feet, grabbed the boulder ledge above, and began climbing out of the crypt-like hollow. Miller stepped back, turning sideways and aiming his Colt straight out from his shoulder.
The deputy was partially silhouetted by the falling sun, but enough light reached his face to show the several bullet grazes and cuts from rock shards. Blood shone on the top of his right shoulder, where his duster was torn.
Hawk stood before him, raised his hands shoulder high. He offered a sinister smile. “Well, you got me, Deputy. I'm all yours.”
“Put your hands down.”
“Don't you want to cuff me?”
Miller steadied the pistol in his hand, aiming down the barrel at Hawk, one eye nearly closed, the other reflecting the sunset's copper-lemon glow. “Why would I wanna do that?”