Last Stage to Hell Junction

Chapter Twelve

When York reached the top of the stairs, the younger Randabaugh was already asleep in his chair in the corner, to the left of the indoor privies. The boy’s head was lolled to one side, his arms hanging loose, but the .45 revolver dangling on his hip — its holster tie undone — would be deadly even in the hands of a dunce like this.

York went over and shook the boy by a shoulder, jerking him awake, Randy’s close-set eyes leaping open, his hand dropping to his weapon. But York swatted the kid’s arm away — not hard. No need to alienate him.

“Hargrave has a new post for you,” York said.

Randy batted his eyes. “...huh?”

“He’s in the parlor waiting with instructions.”

The boy tasted his mouth, grimaced at the flavor, got to his feet, and went rattling down the stairs, stumbling once but catching himself.

Too bad, York thought. If he broke his neck, he might save me some trouble...

The lawman sat down in the chair where Randy had been, and waited. In about fifteen minutes, Hargrave came up the stairs, his usual confident self. The actor ambled over to the seated York.

“Quiet?” Hargrave asked.

“Not a peep.”

Hargrave heaved a sigh, half-smirked, his arms folded. “ ‘We have seen better days.’ ”

York grinned up at him. “That you or Shakespeare talkin’?”

“Both. We’ll have a better day tomorrow. Riches await.”

“Don’t count Parker and his people out,” York advised. “ ‘A rich man’s wealth is his fortress.’ ”

Hargrave half-smiled. “That’s not the Bard.”

“No, it’s the Bible.”

Hargrave shrugged. “To each his own.”

The outlaw leader walked down the corridor across the stairwell from the rooms of the hostages. He knocked at his own door and a smiling Juanita answered in a loose white nightgown, her breasts moving beneath the fabric like kittens playing in a sack. She threw her arms around him, as if they’d been apart for weeks. Hargrave kissed her the same way, put his hands on her waist and lifted her off her bare feet, then walked her in backward, using a heel to kick the door shut behind them. Lustful noises followed, including but not limited to bedsprings singing.

York waited it out. Silence came in ten minutes or so, but he took a good half hour before getting up and going over to knock lightly at 2B.

“Me,” he told the door, and worked the master key in the lock and went in.

Parker met him, closing the door quietly behind them.

“We’ve caught some luck,” York said, keeping his voice down. “I’ve replaced young Randabaugh as this floor’s watchdog.”

Parker spoke softly, too. “How did you manage that?”

“I didn’t. Hargrave moved the dolt to the kitchen to stand guard at the back. There’s some bad luck in that, too — Hargrave’s increasing the guard everywhere, in anticipation of the legendary Caleb York coming.”

Parker smiled, his first in a while. “They don’t know he’s already here.”

“Thankfully, no,” York said. “Those thieves took your watch off you, didn’t they?”

“Yes. How on earth did you know that?”

“Never mind. Here’s another. Thought one might come in handy for you.” He passed it to Parker.

While a mildly puzzled Parker took the spare watch, York removed his own timepiece from his left-hand trouser pocket. “I have five after one.”

“I’m closer to ten after.”

“Set it back to jibe with mine. At four sharp, unless there’s been gunfire or some other commotion, collect the women and come down to the kitchen. I’ll leave the doors to these rooms unlocked.”

Parker looked puzzled again. “Why would there be gunfire, Caleb?”

He pointed at the floor. “Randy is guarding the back door now, remember — which is our best escape route. I’m going in there and taking him out.”

“Kill him?”

“Why, do you object?”

Parker grunted a laugh. “Kill him twice for all I care.”

“I mean to pistol-whip him hard enough that he may never wake. I’ll tie his hands behind him in case he does. But should I encounter trouble that I don’t anticipate — for example, should the Randabaugh kid be smarter than I think he is...”

“Which I doubt.”

“As do I. But maybe he’s tougher than I imagine, or perhaps someone will happen along while I’m dealing with him... in which case bullets will fly and you’ll hear ’em. In that event, stay put and I’ll collect you, if I survive. If I don’t, your people will have to pay that ransom.”

“Understood. But this bunch won’t get the better of you, Caleb York.”

“It could happen. An idiot killed Hickok, you know.” He patted the businessman on the shoulder. “I’ll alert the ladies.”

York knocked at 3B, unlocked it, but didn’t go in, whispering, “Are you decent, ladies?”

Rita appeared at the cracked door. “I would imagine that’s a matter of opinion.” Even without face paint, she was a pretty damn thing. Maybe prettier without it.

York slipped inside, shut himself in. Willa was standing near the bed, her expression keen and only touched with trouble. Both women were still in their waist-sashed dressing robes. He doubted either had been sleeping.

Very quickly, Rita said, “We’ve been talking, Caleb. We have a window...” She pointed at it. “... and can see a wooded area nearby, back there, beyond the empty houses. Why don’t we tie together these bedclothes...”

“As a makeshift rope,” Willa added.

“... and you could be on the ground, armed and ready, and—”

Overwhelmed by the rush of words, York held his palms out in a “stop” motion, and softly said, “Much as I admire your ingenuity, ladies, and despite how it pleases me to see the two of you working so well together... the situation has changed.”

He explained that Randy Randabaugh was watching the back door now, there in the kitchen. But he also told them he intended to “take care of” the boy and lead them to freedom without resorting to tying sheets and blankets together and risking a fall.

Rita smirked. “Now I wish I hadn’t bothered buttering that boy up.”

As Rita stood there facing him, with Willa coming up behind her, York said, “Do either of you have a timepiece?”

Neither did.

“No matter,” he said. “Parker does, and he’ll gather you at four a.m. — it’s just past two now — and you three will sneak down to the kitchen and out with me.”

Willa asked, “What about the doctor?”

“I haven’t worked that out,” York admitted. “We may have to leave him here on his own best devices. The gang has a wounded man and Miller’s a doctor, after all. That may be enough to keep him alive.”

Rita said, “You don’t fool me, Caleb.”

“I’m not trying to.”

Her eyes were tight. “Yes you are. You’ll get us out of here and have your deputy accompany us, then when once we’re safely away, you will go back in here, gun blazing, to effect the doctor’s rescue.”

She was exactly right.

“No,” he said. “I’ll return with a posse.”

Rita paused but then left it at that, though he doubted she really believed him. She surely knew that by the time he could escort them back to Trinidad and raise a posse and return, the Hargrave bunch would be long gone, either dragging the doc along or leaving him behind.

Dead.

“Do either of you,” York asked, “have riding breeches along?”

Rita smirked. “For a clothes-buying spree in Denver? Not hardly.”

Willa moved up next to the saloon owner. “I do. Several pair.”

Rita gave her a funny look.

Willa gave Rita a funny look right back, saying to her, “I like to go riding. It’s beautiful country there. Some of us see the West for more than a place to make money off the weaknesses of men.”

Rita’s expression clearly said the other female was a lunatic, and appeared to be looking for just the right words to express that opinion, so York thought he’d better settle them some.

“You two need to keep getting along,” he said. “You can wait till we’re back in Trinidad before goin’ all catty again.”

That made both girls smile. They, too, hadn’t smiled much lately, and even embarrassed smiles were better than none at all.

York asked Willa, “Will a pair of those breeches fit Miss Filley?”

But it was Rita who answered. “They should. We’re built about the same.”

For some reason that sent red to Willa’s cheeks.

“Good,” York said. “Get into them. Match ’em up with shirts that aren’t frilly. You must have brought some of your plaid shirts along, Willa, if you were planning to ride the mountain trails.”

Rita was smiling, Willa still blushing.

“I brought two,” Willa said. “She’s heavier up top than me, but I can always sew new buttons on.”

Rita giggled at that, and then so did Willa.

How had he come to find himself in the middle of this hen party? Of course, replacing Randy on watch up here made him the fox guarding the chickens.

“Get into the shirts and breeches,” he told them, “but put those robes back on over them, and roll up the pant legs so they don’t show. Should you be seen, for some reason, before we make our break for it, the suggestion of sleep attire could save your lives.”

The women exchanged serious looks, then both nodded at York.

That was when the scream came.

They all heard it, a woman’s scream, and two more like it, though the sound was muffled, coming from below.

“Sit tight,” he told them, and rushed out, Rita closing the door behind him.

As he came down the stairs and into the lobby, the screams, interrupted by sobbing female entreaties — “No! No! Stop! Please!” — remained muffled but audible. Yet not loud enough that either Hargrave above or Reese Randabaugh at his new post was responding to them.

The screams came from the kitchen, where the only sign of Randy being posted here was an empty chair. Behind the closed door to Mahalia’s room, however, came cries that were turning to whimpers.

York shouldered open the door and Randy, in pale yellow long-johns, was on top of Mahalia on her sad little cot, a child’s thing on which a ripe woman lay, her off-white nightgown torn off the top of her, exposing creamy milk chocolate flesh, bursting with young beauty, her pretty face turned ugly by its contorted mouth and wide terrified eyes.

The attack was in its earliest stages, the boy holding her down with one hand and unbuttoning his long-johns with the other, or at least he had been until York burst in and the boy’s hands froze on buttons nearing his waist. The brown-eyed face was blister white, eyes half-lidded, mouth hanging open like a trap door, drool trickling off the corners of his wet lips.

On the floor in the cubbyhole of a room were Randy’s shirt and trousers and his gun belt. They implied a story: the younger Randabaugh had come into the room where Mahalia was sleeping; he undressed, not waking her, then stepped out of his things and climbed onto her and ripped her nightgown and her screams and terror began.

York came straight at the boy on the girl, but the boy beat him to it, lurching off the cot to leap at York, revealing quick reflexes that included flailing arms and hard fists. The impact sat York down, and suddenly he was the one under a boy whose swollen manhood tented his yellow drawers, already shrinking as its owner’s priority shifted from lust to self-defense. Randy was pummeling at the man’s chest when York’s fist swung into the side of the boy’s face with such power that it nearly tore the jaw off its hinges, and sent its owner toppling onto the floor on his side.

The young woman on the bed was sitting up, clutching bedsheets and blankets to herself, protectively, hiding her nearly compromised innocence but not her fear as her screams continued and accelerated, shrill in the small space.

York, on his feet now, kicked Randy in the side, repeatedly, boots digging deep, cracking ribs like celery stalks, and now the boy was screaming too, but a completely different sort of scream. Picking him up by the loose long-johns shirt, York thrust Randy against the wall and banged his head into it, again and again and again, dimpling faded wallpaper. He was still doing that, even though the eyes in the boy’s head had rolled back into what must have been blessed unconsciousness, when Reese Randabaugh appeared in the doorway, leaning in, horrified, yelling, “Stop! Goddamn you, stop!”

York did, and turned, and Reese was coming at him, fists ready, but the undercover sheriff whipped out the .44 and thrust its snout in the angry brother’s face, stopping him there in trembling fury.

Then suddenly Hargrave was in the doorway, his hands leaning against the jambs, as casual as if he’d come across a couple of fellows playing checkers.

“Gentlemen,” the actor said, calm but firm, then came over and up behind Reese to put a tight hand on his shoulder. “It would seem things have gotten out of hand.”

Reese was seething, his brother an unconscious heap on the floor, saliva and blood gathering at his open mouth. Mahalia, sitting up on her little bed, had finally stopped screaming, but she was shivering, as if a chill had taken her, her face streaked with tears, the bedclothes still clutched to her, the girl clinging to modesty in the shame thrust upon her.

Reese could barely speak, but he managed. “Gonna... gonna kill him... gonna kill you... bastard.”

“You are welcome to try,” York said coolly. “But your brother was about to rape this girl.”

“So what?” Reese spat. “She’s just a nigger whore!”

York backhanded him.

Reese, blood trickling from a corner of his mouth, tried to wrest himself away from Hargrave, who was holding him from behind by the arms now. Tight.

“Let me go! Damnit, Blaine, let me go!”

“Let him go if you like,” York said to Hargrave. “But it’s cramped quarters for killing. Front lobby maybe?”

“Bastard... son of a bitch...”

“You’re one bad name away from getting gut-shot. Keep it up.”

“Boys!” Hargrave held firm to Reese’s arms, whispering in his ear: “You need to settle yourself, friend. Your brother had a job to do and let himself be distracted. That endangered us all.”

Reese was straining under the actor’s grip, breathing hard, saying, “Maybe so, but he done nothin’ to deserve this whooping!”

“Perhaps not. But your brother clearly doesn’t understand the basics of life, such as one doesn’t diddle one’s cook without her blessing. You want hemlock in your soup?”

“I’ll kill him, I tell you!”

“You do, and you and I are done.”

Reese’s breathing slowed; he stopped straining. Seemed to calm himself. Then he nodded.

Hargrave let go of him and the older brother went over and tended to the younger one, just a crumpled thing on the floor of the small space.

“What have you done, McCory?” Reese said, choking back tears as he knelt over the boy, glaring back at him.

“Well, I didn’t kill the fool,” York said. “Ribs heal. Might be concussed.”

“Somebody get that damn doctor!”

Hargrave bent and patted Reese on the shoulder. “I’ll see to it, my friend.” The actor turned to the young woman, who was breathing slow, in the calm after her storm.

“My dear,” Hargrave said to her, “there’s a room upstairs I’d like you to make use of.”

Juanita had appeared in the kitchen by now. Hargrave walked Mahalia to her, said, “Look after her, querida, but first bid the doctor join us here.”

The gypsy-haired woman guided the younger female out, an arm around her, showing surprising tenderness. The blankets were draped around Mahalia’s shoulders, squaw-like.

“Get back to your post, Mr. Randabaugh,” Hargrave commanded Reese. “We should profit by the lesson of your brother giving over to distraction.”

Reese sucked in air, glared at York, nodded to Hargrave, then collected the clothes his brother had dropped to the floor, gun belt included. He glanced one last time at Randy, and went out.

Hargrave and York were alone now in the servant girl’s cubbyhole.

“Well,” the actor said, “wasn’t that unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate that he was raping the girl, or that I stopped him?”

“You did the right thing. Your chivalry is to be commended, just as that lad’s stupidity is to be abhorred. But I need my little crew, friend Bret. Now is not the time for the winter of our discontent. We need to band together.”

“Yeah. I know. I just don’t cotton to women being taken that way.”

Hargrave put a hand on York’s shoulder, squeezed in a gentle, friendly manner. With his other hand, the actor gestured vaguely to the world beyond the ghost-town hotel.

“Somewhere out there,” Hargrave said, “this Caleb York is gathering the dogs of war against us. We must be ready. United.” He shrugged, glanced at Randy, who was still unconscious, then whispered in York’s ear: “But when all is said and done, only you and I need still be standing.”

The doctor’s voice came in before he did, as the plump little man made his way across the kitchen. “What’s happened here?”

Doc Miller, in trousers and an unbuttoned shirt, Gladstone bag in hand, lumbered in, frowning as he paused to take in the pile of bones and flesh in long-johns slumped against the wall. He knelt and began his examination.

“I kicked him in the ribs, doctor,” York said, helpfully. “On his left. Broke a couple, pretty sure.”

“We can tape him up,” Miller muttered. He glanced back with a scowl. “Are you people battering each other now?”

“The youth,” Hargrave said, “was peckish but not for pie. He approached the cook, tried to serve himself a piece of a different sort, and Mr. McCory here took issue.”

“You did this?” the doctor asked, as York knelt next to him.

“I did. In my defense, they stopped me. I was going to kill him. Rapists get on my bad side. Should’ve kicked him where he deserved it.”

“Ah. A gentleman at heart.”

Another voice came from the doorway: Broken Knife’s.

“What?” the Indian asked, frowning at the crumpled, still unconscious Randy.

Hargrave walked him into the kitchen and explained what had gone on.

Meanwhile, York whispered to the doctor, filling him in on what was now his plan. A new plan, and perhaps not much of one at that. But the best he could come up with at short notice.

Hargrave was shooing Broken Knife back to his post on the porch when York came out of the little room and joined the outlaw leader in the kitchen.

“I should get back upstairs,” York said. “Our guests seem to have slept through the merriment. But for all we know they could have taken advantage of the commotion to sneak out.”

Hargrave only smiled. “I hardly think so. Still, go up and check, then stay on watch. With young Randabaugh out of action at present, I will assume the kitchen post myself.”

“Seems prudent. All right with you if I stretch out on my bed, with the door open, should there be any mischief worth hearing?”

The actor shrugged. “Why not? Nap a little if you like. You asleep is worth ten wide-awake Randabaughs.”

Soon York was upstairs, meeting first with Parker and then with the women. In both cases he explained that the inhabitants of the hotel were too awake, their hosts too alert, for York and the hostages to stage the escape as planned. Hargrave himself was on guard in the kitchen, a more formidable barrier than the boy would have been; and dawn was creeping up on them.

York used the same words with the women that he had with Parker.

“I have a plan,” he said. “It’s not without hazard, I admit. And I’m open to suggestion. It will be dangerous, but I will put myself in a position to protect you. All of you.”

Then he told them what he wanted them to do.