Last Stage to Hell Junction

Chapter Ten

On the porch, down to the left a ways as York exited through the hotel’s double doors, the compact Indian known as Broken Knife was sitting cross-legged, arms folded, chin on his chest. Apparently asleep... although York wouldn’t bet on it. Next to the quiet but deeply breathing figure, a rifle across his lap, were an empty plate and cup — seemed the Indian had taken supper out here.

The figure didn’t stir as York stepped across the creaky plank porch and down the equally noisy steps. But, again, the sheriff of Trinidad County would not have been surprised to turn and see eyes glittering at him in the dark, like a cougar studying its prey from the brush.

As York walked the crushed-rock, tumbleweed-touched Main Street of Hale Junction, moonlight washed the deserted mining town in blue-tinged ivory, giving everything an otherworldly glow. Wind gave a gentle ghostly howl, as if the dead were bored.

Out in front of the inn, to one side of the porch steps, some horses were tied up for easy access in case of an unwanted variety of visitors — a posse, perhaps, or a sheriff wearing a badge and not a false name. The doctor’s buckboard with his trotter, still hitched up, was out front as well, parallel to the building on the other side of those steps. York was all too aware that the wicker coffin in back, draped with a tarp, held its own kind of hostage.

That none of the outlaws had thought to check the identity of Doc Miller’s silent passenger was a blessing; but the possibility of that turning to a curse hung over everything.

For the next half hour York strolled Main Street, taking in the weathered façades of the theater where Hargrave had likely once performed, a general store, café, post office, saloon, assay office, and dead lumberyard, among others. He was a military man taking stock of a potential future battlefield.

On the side streets and two streets behind Main on either side were perfectly good houses, if paint-blistered and broken-windowed, their yards scruffy with weeds, echoes of the boisterous, growing community Hale Junction had not long ago been.

It was as if some plague out of the Middle Ages had hit, decimating the population and leaving their dwellings and businesses behind. How easily Trinidad could become such a place, if dire circumstances prevailed. York felt those who tried to keep the railroad out might have consigned Trinidad to a similar fate, but that bullet had been narrowly dodged. Fear of natural progress could be as deadly as the Black Death.

York returned to the hotel, where the Indian still apparently slept on the porch — the lawman collected the dappled gelding and walked it to the livery stable. There he found the stagecoach stowed away, as Hargrave had indicated, its Morgan horses in stalls. Gert, Tulley’s mule, was in a stall here, too — obviously the old boy had done some scouting himself, and found the back way into the livery.

The man who wasn’t Bret McCory fed hay to the gelding, then used those rear doors to skirt behind several buildings, winding up at the two-story structure whose bottom floor had once been the general store. The living quarters above, abandoned obviously, were accessible by an exposed stairway on the far side of the structure, not visible to the Indian on guard across the way, should the red man’s slumber turn out to be faked.

After going in through what had been a kitchen, and crossing a hallway that cut the second floor in half, York entered a front parlor, where Tulley was seated near double windows that wore what little remained of its glass in jagged irregular teeth around the edges. Moonlight leached in, giving the desert-rat-turned-deputy and the area near the broken windows puddles of ivory to bask in on the street side of a room otherwise lost in darkness.

Unlike the Indian on the porch, Jonathan Tulley — scattergun across his lap, much as that ex-cavalry scout’s rifle had been across his — was definitely asleep... unless the snoring the deputy was doing was worthy of an actor more skilled even than Blaine Hargrave. At least the sound of the logs Tulley was sawing didn’t carry — York had walked past the general store and heard nothing.

The sheriff stepped gingerly into the darkness, but his boots announced him, crunching under their tread.

Tulley was instantly awake, jerking that shotgun and its twin black eyes up toward York, who said quietly, “It’s me, Deputy. Lower that scattergun if you want your next paycheck.”

Tulley’s smile appeared in his beard like a blade glittering in the night. “You ain’t much on sneakin’ up on folks, is you, Caleb York?”

York knelt, his night vision with him enough now to see that Tulley had spread pebbles from the street all around the entry area into the room. Smiling, he rose and moved past the crunching little rocks that had exposed his presence. Then he crouched near Tulley by the windows onto Main.

“I tell people all the time,” York said, “that they underestimate you. You took a look around, I see.”

“How do ye know that?”

York brushed some dust and dirt away from the floor and sat by his deputy, his back against the wall.

“I figured,” he said, “Gert didn’t put herself in that stall. Come sunup, if nothing has transpired, you best move her back behind this building. There’s trees back there where you can hitch her up.”

Tulley nodded. “Best nobody from them lodgings ’crost the way should spy a strange mule amongst their familiar steeds.”

“Right. But for now Gert’s fine where she is.” He gestured toward the street. “What did you see? Anyone standing guard or working the periphery?”

“Nossir. Jest that injun feller. He’s small but big trouble, I reckon, iffen you should get on the wrong side of him.”

“An ex-cavalry Apache scout? Yes. I’d wager he’s the most dangerous one over there. But a couple of them are damned dumb, and nothing is more dangerous than an idiot with a gun.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Tulley said, nodding as he clutched the scattergun to him like a baby.

York almost grinned at that, but Tulley was no idiot — though the old boy was dangerous in his own right.

“Was that Doc Miller,” Tulley asked, excited suddenly, his head bobbing toward the street, “I seen go up in there?”

York explained that the doctor had been brought here to deal with a wounded gang member, and also told his deputy about the wicker coffin the buckboard bore.

“Iffen somebody spies that dead feller,” Tulley said, eyes wide, “we’re gonna have a shootin’ war upon us.”

“We will at that. Only they’re a regiment and we’re a couple of spare troopers.”

Tulley squinted at his boss. “What’s your plan, Caleb? Knowin’ you as I do, there must be a plan.”

“Just the beginnings of one. All I really know is that the longer I wait to spring those hostages, the worse off we’ll all be. Best we do this before morning, with the dark for a friend.”

“No argyment.”

York grimaced. “But I still haven’t had an opportunity to get a handle on the layout of that damn place. Haven’t even been upstairs yet. It’s my intention, my hope, to find a back way out, and sneak those hostages free.”

Tulley frowned in thought. “Where does I come in?”

York gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. “When I give you the signal, head down to the livery and hitch those horses up to that stagecoach. Go in those rear doors, of course. Keep the horses settled. Be nice and easy with ’em as you hitch ’em up. You don’t want to attract any unwanted attention.”

“Shore don’t.”

York shook a finger at his deputy. “Stay right there, sit tight and wait. If things get noisy across the way — gunfire, yelling — that’ll tell you something went awry. Drive that coach up to the hotel, hell bent. I should be flying out of there with those folks.”

“From around back?”

“Probably from in back, but I can’t be sure. So when you bring that coach to a stop, position it between the hotel and its neighbor to the east. The assay office.”

“Assay office, yessir.”

“If you don’t hear anything alerting you to trouble,” York said, “just stay put there in the livery. It’s possible I can make my way there with the hostages without alerting anybody.”

“Iffen we take that coach down Main,” Tulley reminded him, “they’ll know we’re leavin’, all right.”

York held up a cautionary palm. “If I’m able to sneak everybody out, we’ll head over to the livery and meet you there, going in the back way. Willa Cullen is a skilled rider — she can go bareback on one of those Morgans. Parker knows how to ride and the Filley woman, too — maybe not expert, but good enough.”

“What about the doc?”

“If Miller can’t get to his buckboard, we’ll need a horse for him, as well. He can muddle through a bareback ride, if need be. If we can sneak out on the street behind us, we won’t be chased, not for a while anyway. But if they’re on to us, we need the coach. And going down Main’ll be the least of our worries. Got all that?”

Tulley was thinking. “Might be they’s saddles somewhere in that livery.”

“Might be. After you hitch those Morgans up to the coach, you can scout around for saddles and such. We need to be ready, a couple of ways.”

Tulley’s eyes were tight. “How outnumbered is we?”

“Well, there’s Blaine and the two Randabaugh brothers...”

“Is they the idjits?”

York nodded. “The wounded man, Bemis, may be up to joining the fray. The Apache, of course. Hargrave’s woman is a hellfire Mexican gal. She’ll wade in with the men, all right, bullet for bullet. The innkeeper, Wiley, has a business to protect, and his wife looks like she’d sooner kill you than look at you.”

“But the menfolk only numbers five or mebbe six. That ain’t no regiment, Caleb. And we’s a two-man army, you ask me.”

York put a hand on his deputy’s shoulder. “You’re not wrong, Jonathan Tulley.”

The old boy grinned, and his eyes popped. “Got me an i-dee, Caleb!”

He grinned back. “The name’s Bret McCory — which was also your ‘i-dee’ — but let’s hear it.”

Tulley’s gaze was glittering. “Why not wait till all them outlaws is asleep, and you and me just go in and shoot ’em in their beds!”

That actually wasn’t the worst idea Caleb York had ever heard.

“I believe,” York said, “that damned Indian never sleeps. Or if he does, he’s got pebbles scattered in his brain that start crunching when anybody approaches.”

Tulley’s face fell. “Hell, Caleb. Thought I had somethin’ there.”

“They are murderous kidnappers, my friend, and I would lose no sleep shooting them in theirs. But we are still just two men, and those outlaws will be spread out in three or more beds in three or more rooms, and that doesn’t count the Apache on the porch. No, Deputy Tulley, we will have to find a more civilized way to send these sinners to Hell.”

Tulley shrugged. “Anyways, we wouldn’t want to kill that Mexie woman of Hargrave’s. ’Taint right, killin’ a woman in her sleep, all helpless and dreamin’ like.”

Again York put his hand on Tulley’s shoulder. “Deputy, that woman is the first one I’d shoot.”

Hearing that, Tulley’s eyes went wide and his face seemed to turn as white as his beard. Or maybe it was just the moonlight.

Getting to his feet, York said, “I’m going to finally get the lay of the damn land over there — pinpoint who is in what room, see what kind of back way out we have. There’s also a colored girl, a servant, who might be an ally. Might. We’ll see.”

“Shore is a lot of womenfolk over there.”

“Yes. All very beautiful, and each in her own way... dangerous. Now, after I get a fix on the geography of that hotel, I will stroll back outside and roll myself a smoke. Just kind of take in the air.”

Tulley grinned. “That be the signal, right?”

“Right. It’s a signal that means two things — first, that I’ve found a back way out of that place. And second, that it’s time for you to go over to the livery and hitch up that stagecoach.”

Tulley’s nods came quick. “And be ready to roll, should things go haywire, shootin’ and screamin’ and such.”

“Shooting and screaming and such, yes. But with luck we won’t need the coach.”

Tulley squinted one eye. “But we’ll need them horses, iffen your escape goes as quiet-like as you wish.”

“Yes, but unhitching those animals won’t take long, and we need the option of you picking us up and creating a commotion, should, yes, the shooting and screaming start.”

Tulley had kept nodding through all of that. He was raring.

“If you don’t see me signal you,” York said, “just sit tight, like I said. Tight and alert. You follow?”

“I foller.”

“Deputy,” York said, sighing the word, “four good friends of ours are counting on us. We have to stay sharp, and we have to be ready... for anything. And remember — we’re here to free prisoners — not to take any.”

That knife-blade grin came again. “Which is your way of sayin’, kill them sons of bitches.”

“Your eloquence is worthy of the Bard, Jonathan Tulley.”

“Of who?”

“Not important,” York said, gave his friend a smile, and went out, crunching pebbles.

The Apache on the porch continued his apparent sleep as York returned, having collected his saddlebags at the livery, where he’d entered from the rear and then exited out the front. Now he was coming up the hotel steps and across to the front doors with the usual creaking of wood beneath his boots.

The Indian did not stir.

York went in and was greeted by Mahalia, who flew from a chair near the check-in desk, apparently having been waiting for him. The lovely colored girl in the white turban dangled a key before him. Part of him wished it were hers.

But it proved to be his — 1B.

“You be in the first room to the right,” she said, gesturing toward the open stairs. Her apron was gone and the maid’s uniform fit her trimly, hugging supple curves. She was very pretty, a mix of Africa and Europe, her complexion like milk chocolate.

Nice smile, too, as she said, “Two doors at the top is the inside privies. One for gentlemans and the other for ladies.”

“This must have been quite a place in its prime,” York said, taking the key from her with his right hand, his saddlebags slung over his left arm. “Separate baths. Indoor plumbing yet.”

She nodded. “From a well outside, yes. I worked here back in them days. You could get a heated tub of firewood-warm water for fifty cents.”

“That’s not available now, I take it.”

Her eyes widened a little. “I could do that for you, if you like. No charge.”

“No. Thank you, though, Mahalia. Do they treat you right?”

“The guests?”

“The Wileys.”

Her chin crinkled. “They works me pretty hard. But they pays me. Not much, but it’s better than the plantation life my people knowed. I’m savin’ up for another life.”

“Good for you. Hide your treasure well.”

“Sir?”

“Your ‘guests’ would steal the pennies from a dead man’s eyes.”

“That sure true, sir. That sure true.”

He drew closer to her and quietly asked, “Are the women upstairs, and the older well-to-do gent — are they locked in their rooms?”

She nodded.

“Mahalia, could you spare a hairpin?”

“Sir?”

He dug in his pocket and brought back a gold eagle, then pressed the coin in her hand.

With another surreptitious look left and right, Mahalia plucked a pin from under her white turban. She gave the metal pin to York, who glanced at its two flexible prongs, one straight, the other ridged.

Just what he needed. All he needed now was a little information...

Very softly he asked her, “Which rooms are the unwilling guests in?”

He wasn’t sure she would know what he meant, but she immediately did, her response barely audible. “The gentleman is in room 2B, he next to you. The ladies, they shares a room next door to his — 3B.”

“Where does Hargrave and his woman sleep? And those Randabaugh boys?”

She told him.

“What about that doctor?”

“Don’t know. Never saw him come out from bein’ in with the sick man.”

He nodded slowly. Then: “And where do you sleep?”

Mahalia’s eyes widened.

He grinned at her. “Nothing untoward. I just want to get a handle on my surroundings.”

Nodding, she said, “I’m off the kitchen.” Her expression said perhaps she wouldn’t have minded something untoward from him. “I can show you around some.”

“Please.”

The living quarters of the Wileys were off-limits, of course, but off the dining room, behind the front lobby, was the good-size kitchen, still redolent of tonight’s good fare. Mahalia had a small bedroom — with little more than a cot and one tiny dresser — just off to one side. It had a door. The back exit was from the kitchen, directly at the rear of the building.

York asked, “Does anyone stand guard out there?”

Mahalia shook her head.

York opened the back door, which was unlocked. No porch awaited, just a few wooden steps. This was a street across which were the untended yards of dead houses, with another street of abandoned residences behind them, and woods beyond.

“That Indian,” York said, “does he come around checking in back, from time to time?”

She shook her head again, but added, “Not that I ever seen.”

He reached in his pocket for another gold eagle. Pressed it into the warmth of her palm. Her expression, smiling some, was warm, too.

“Sleep sound tonight,” he told her. “Don’t open your door unless someone comes pounding. Really pounding. Understood?”

“Understood, mister.”

“These guests of yours... the willing ones... are very bad people. Even for the likes of this place. Stay well out of anything that might occur. Got that?”

“Gots it.”

He gave her a smile and a nod.

She gave him a shy smile and a nod back, then slipped into her little bedroom, began to shut the door, hesitated, smiled again, not shyly, and shut herself in.

You have enough women in your life already, Caleb York, he told himself.

At the top of the stairs were the doors marked GENTLEMEN and LADIES. Over to the left, on a chair leaned back in the corner, sat Randy Randabaugh, on guard but sleeping. Revolver in hand in his lap.

York unlocked 1B with his key and found a room that rivaled his own back at the Trinidad House. The bedclothes were a tad threadbare, the wallpaper getting faded, but otherwise this might have been any hotel in a town that was alive and well.

He tossed his saddlebags on the bed and returned to the hall.

Knocking gently on the door of 2B, he said, “Mr. Parker,” softly, “Bret McCory. Sit tight.”

York got the double-pronged hairpin from his pocket and pulled the pin apart, straightening it some. In the keyhole of 2B, he stuck the straight end in about a third of an inch, and applied enough pressure to bend the end of the pin into a hook. Then he placed the closed end of the pin about an inch into the keyhole and applied pressure downward until he had bent the pin ninety degrees.

Now he had his lock pick, and he used it.

“Try your door, Mr. Parker,” York whispered.

Parker opened the door a crack, eyes narrowing at the sight of York standing there alone, and let his friend in. The businessman was still in his white shirt and trousers and shoes, divested only of his tie, vest, and coat. The man was, York was pleased to see, ready to travel.

“We can make it out of here,” York said, skipping any preliminaries, “through the kitchen. Door opens onto the back. No porch. No guard.”

Parker nodded, listening as York explained the plan to sneak over to the livery, where Tulley would be readying horses.

“Have you an extra gun?” Parker asked.

“I do, in my saddlebags, and I’ll get it to you when we make our move.” York did not want Parker armed now in case one of the outlaws checked on him, and got things started prematurely.

Parker was trembling in excitement, but also fear. “How soon do we go?”

“Damn soon.” York bobbed his head toward the door. “The younger Randabaugh is on guard right now, in the hall. I’ll take him out and then we’ll just go down and out through the kitchen. Should be no fuss.”

Parker frowned. “If you shoot that fool—”

“I’ll pistol-whip him good. Likely kill him, which is fine by me.”

“What of Willa? And Miss Filley?”

York gestured toward the door. “I’m going to fill them in now. I’ll leave your door unlocked. But stay put.”

Back in the hall, he knocked softly on 3B.

Rita’s voice, irritated, said, “What is it?”

“Bret McCory,” York whispered. “Hold on a minute.”

Again he used his makeshift lock pick, glancing over at the slumbering Randy from time to time. Some rustling — of clothes, not cattle — came from within as he worked.

“Try your door,” he said quietly.

Rita opened it halfway and York slipped in.

The two women had been sharing a big brass bed, which was enough to give a man ideas. The two females had been provided their luggage and both had availed themselves of dressing gowns — Willa in powder blue, Rita in black-trimmed scarlet. Fitting in several ways, the colors telling a story, the gowns tied tight at the waist. The women’s lovely faces, free of face paint, echoed each other with bright, brilliant smiles.

But it was Willa who threw herself into York’s arms, hugging him tight. Over her shoulder, he gave a smirking Rita a shrugging expression, then held Willa out away from him.

“Very soon,” he said, “I’m getting you out of here.”

He told them how.

“When?” Rita asked.

He jerked a thumb at the door. “I just need to signal Tulley, across the way.”

Willa asked, “Is everyone accounted for?”

“I think Doc Miller is within the living quarters of the innkeepers, as best I can tell. Randy is asleep in the hall, but he may be a light sleeper. And he’s armed, of course. Hargrave and his woman are across the stairwell. The Randabaugh brothers share a room over there, as well. The Wileys and the wounded man are downstairs.”

“And that Indian?” Rita asked. “Still on the porch?”

“Still on the porch. He’s asleep too, but I think a bug passing wind could wake him. Excuse the crudity.”

Willa smiled a little. “You’re excused this once.”

He raised his hands, palms high, as if somebody was sticking him up. “Just stay calm and alert. We’re going out quietly, but things could get noisy.”

They nodded. Willa hugged him again. Behind her, Rita blew him a smirky kiss.

Then York went downstairs, where all was quiet. Front lobby, parlor, dining room, kitchen with Mahalia’s bedroom door closed — nobody, and nothing.

Satisfied, he went quietly out the front doors. The Apache seemed to slumber.

Good, he thought. Let’s keep it that way.

York went down the porch stairs and stood near where the buckboard and the trotter were hitched up, and he got out the makings for a smoke, made one and lighted up, sucked in smoke, let smoke out. In nice full view of where Tulley could take him in from the perch above the empty general store.

Then the Indian was next to him.

The little Apache, the rifle held in one tight grip, only came to York’s shoulders, but the man’s dark-eyed look stood tall. “You go out earlier.”

“So what?”

The silence of the night made a buzzing nearby seem louder than it was.

The Indian clutched York’s arm and squinted at him, as if trying to bring the bigger man into focus. “Why you gone so long?”

“Just getting a feel for this place,” York said. “I don’t like surprises. And I don’t like people putting their hands on me.”

Then he shook the Indian’s arm off.

The buzzing was building.

The Apache looked past York at the buckboard, where flies were gathering over the tarp-draped wicker coffin, like locusts looking to strip a field of its crops. The night was cool but not cold enough, it seemed, to keep the flies away.

The Indian strode past York and went over to the buckboard, where he leaned in, grabbed the tarp, and flipped it away. Then the hard little man in the blue cavalry coat climbed up there, as insects scattered, and opened the lid on the wicker coffin.

Looked in.

Standing high in back of the buckboard, Broken Knife looked down at York, who felt oddly small suddenly, and said, “No like surprises, too.”