Last Stage to Hell Junction

Chapter Four

Willa Cullen knew now that the woman seated next to her in the coach was no longer an adversary.

Rita Filley seemed to feel the same, as one sharp, wide-eyed glance between them made their new position, their mutual plight, clear. Rita’s hand found Willa’s and squeezed, and the two women stayed clasped for some time, like childhood friends supporting each other as they walked through a particularly scary forest.

A rumbling sky and a sudden darkness, as if sundown had come half a day early, further made fear their companion. Just as swiftly, a coldness came upon them, God or maybe Mother Nature reminding them that, even in New Mexico, winter was here.

The stolen stagecoach, driven by an outlaw with Hargrave leading the way on horseback, rumbled along its winding upward way, joggling and frequently jolting them. Across from Willa was a still unconscious Raymond Parker, slumped in the corner between wall and window; opposite the other woman was the young blond outlaw called Randy, whose apparent brother was up top, driving with the wounded man slumped next to him.

The lad’s revolver was limp in his grasp, dangling between his legs, and that unnerving grin had taken on an unsettling, lascivious aspect. His eyes looked them up and down, again and again, a starving man regarding a banquet.

“I’m Randy,” he said, as they bounced with the stagecoach as it rolled over rocks.

The two women exchanged glances, affirming that each already knew this boy was randy, but Rita said, almost friendly, “My name is Rita. This is Willa.”

He grinned. It was a yellow thing that might have been attractive had its hue not been so sweet-corn-colored and its bearer not had such greedy, close-set eyes, light brown but with some yellow in them, too.

“Ain’t no reason,” he said, “why we cain’t be friendly.” Neither woman said anything, though the sky expressed its opinion by way of a growl of thunder.

“Hope we get there,” the boy said, “’fore this rain comes down.”

Willa, quietly, said, “Where are we headed, Randy?”

“Next stop’s Hell Junction,” he said.

Rita frowned, as if that meant something to her, or perhaps it was just the implication of the word “hell.” Willa thought there was something familiar about the name, but couldn’t place what.

“You seem like a nice young man,” Willa lied to the boy. “I’m not without means. Perhaps you could help us out of this.”

“Lady, I’m who got you in it!” He was grinning, shaking his head. “Now, I ain’t gonna be mean to you or nothin’, but don’t go thinkin’ I can help you. My big brother would give me a whuppin’ and Mr. Hargrave would like as not shoot me down. No, we three got to settle for bein’ friendly is all.”

Willa thought she sensed something different about Parker — was their businessman friend playing possum? Perhaps waiting for the right moment...?

Willa asked, “What’s your brother’s name, Randy?”

“Reese. We’s the Randabaugh boys.” He grinned embarrassedly. “Don’t want you thinkin’ he whups me all the time or some such. Only if I needs it. Nobody’s better to me in the whole wide world. Hostiles killed our folks when we was young ’uns. He raised me hisself. Raised me right.”

Obviously.

The Filley woman, picking up on Willa working on the boy, said, “If you ever decide to get out of the outlaw life, I could use a strapping young man like you at my saloon.”

His eyes and grin went wide. “You work at a saloon? You prettier than most saloon gals.”

“I own a saloon. I bet you’d make a fine bartender. I’m always on the lookout for smart young men who can handle themselves.”

His grin had “aw shucks” in it. “Might kind of you to offer, but I kinder like ridin’ with Reese, and this job is gonna pay real high, wide, and—”

Parker lurched for the boy, grabbing at the gun that had seemed so loose in that dangling hand, only now the hand became a fist and the gun’s snout got jabbed in the businessman’s belly.

Hard.

With the back of his free hand, Randy slapped Parker, like a child who sassed.

Then he shoved the dignified man — who was a rumpled mess now, a trickle of red trailing down his cheek — back to his corner.

Rita said, “I was right about you.” She was smiling at the boy. “You can handle yourself.”

The boy grinned. “That I can, ma’am. That I can.”

Willa admired the Filley woman for that, the remark distracting the boy and calming him down.

A few moments later the sky let loose and the rain came so hard you could barely hear the hoofbeats. Parker just sat there, no longer slumped, but glazed and dejected, his eyes now meeting those of the women, as if he were ashamed of his failure.

Perhaps he was.

Parker came out of it only enough to shutter his window, as did the women and their escort.

The hammering rain did not last long — perhaps twenty minutes — but when the shutters opened, the air stayed humid, as if the sky wanted to be able to change its mind at a second’s notice. The coach was on a downward slope now, heading into a little valley between rocky hillsides.

Willa watched out her window and saw something she’d long known about but never seen: one of the many ghost towns scattered around New Mexico territory, mining camps turned bustling hamlets whose buildings were now abandoned like the dreams of getting rich quick they’d been built on. A sign at the outskirts told much of the story. The first word of HALE JUNCTION, neatly lettered, had been replaced by a free-hand jagged scrawl of red that said, HELL. A neatly lettered POP. 280 had its number crossed out half a dozen times, until the final designation (also in ragged red) was 3.

The Filley woman said, “Silver mine went bust.”

Willa asked, “How do you know that?”

Her dark-eyed, dark-haired sister captive seemed to have to think before answering that. “Not much gold in these parts... Anyway, people in Trinidad have mentioned it.”

That answer seemed somewhat on the mysterious side, but Willa didn’t follow up.

The woman said, “There’s other ghost towns in these hills — coal and copper, too. If the vein isn’t rich, the town dies, and everybody moves on, sometimes overnight.”

Willa felt vaguely embarrassed that this relative newcomer seemed to know more about the area than she did. Of course, a woman who worked in a saloon could pick up plenty from her male clientele.

The land flattened out and the coach was soon rumbling over crushed rock down a main street where the rain showed no signs of having touched the little town. The storm seemed to have missed it, or perhaps this was not a town at all, but a mirage.

The buildings were gray and weathered, their façades paint-blistered, windows broken out or boarded up; still, it wasn’t hard to imagine townsfolk like Trinidad’s strolling these boardwalks, over which signs read GOOD EATS, HALE JCT LUMBER, HALE JCT LAUNDRY, ASSAY OFFICE, U.S. POST OFFICE, PALACE THEATER, BUCKHORN SALOON, LIVERY STABLE. At the far end was a dead church, its bell tower minus a bell, either scavenged or taken along to the next community. The bell was also missing from atop what had likely been a one-room schoolhouse.

The abandoned town had the expected ghostly silence, the whinnies and neighing of the slowed horses of both the coach and its accompanying riders heightened in the stillness. Wind whispered down the pebbled street, tumbleweed chasing tumbleweed. Somewhere a dog barked, sharp and high — a terrier? Somewhere else a bird cawed — a crow?

And along the low-slung boardwalk, missing planks like teeth gone from a geezer’s smile, scurried small animals, squirrels on the left, rats on the right, each little army keeping to itself.

A rodent by any other name, Willa thought.

At the livery stable, down near the dearly departed church, Hargrave got down from his horse and opened the double barn doors. The coach was driven in, the driver getting down to help Hargrave unhitch and then guide the stage’s horses into stalls.

The outlaw in the blue army shirt, whose blond-haired resemblance to the boy made him Reese, the brother, approached Hargrave while Willa watched out her window. Rita couldn’t see much from hers but was doing her best. Parker seemed morose, staring at nothing except, perhaps, his limited prospects.

Down on the straw floor of the livery, Reese was saying to the gang leader, “Enough room to stable our hosses right here, Blaine.”

Interesting, Willa thought. Some of these outlaws called the head man “Mr. Hargrave,” but this one used the actor’s given name. Second in command, perhaps?

“No,” Hargrave said. “We will instruct Broken Knife to hitch our steeds outside the Inn.”

The Inn? she wondered. What in blazes was the Inn? And who or what was Broken Knife?

Hargrave said, “We’ll be safe enough there, but one never knows when... how does the cliché go?”

“The what?”

“One never knows in this life when one must make a fast getaway.”

Shakespeare hadn’t said that, Willa thought.

“Oh,” Reese said. “Right.”

“We’ll let Mr. Bemis rest up on top of the coach till we get these women and our honored guest suitably housed.”

“Should we round up a doc for Ben?”

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, my friend.”

Now that was Shakespeare, Willa thought.

“You mean, if he dies he dies?”

“I mean we will not risk taking that step unless necessary... Boy!”

Randy stuck his head out his coach window. “Yessir, Mr. Hargrave?”

“Escort our guests across the street, would you? There’s a good lad.”

“Yessir.”

Randy waved his gun at Parker and nodded toward the coach door. Parker opened the door and stepped down from the coach, using the fold-down step unsteadily, but obeying.

Hargrave was waiting, looking like a pirate with his ruffled shirt, curling chest hair, and black jacket and pants. But it was a long-barreled revolver, not a cutlass, that he pointed at the dejected businessman.

Randy smiled — such a pleasant, almost handsome boy, if dim — and gestured with the hand that didn’t have a gun in it.

“Ladies,” he said. “Best watch your step.”

Willa climbed down from the coach first and stood beside Parker, who didn’t meet her eyes. The stable smells, manure and hay, were strong and almost comforting to a girl raised on a ranch. The horses, after the long ride, were still settling. The outlaw called Reese was wiping one animal down.

The Filley woman stepped from the coach and, judging by a momentarily startled expression that became a knowing little smile, Willa could deduce Randy must have put his hand somewhere it didn’t belong. The dark-eyed woman winked at Willa, as if to say, Our best chance to escape is right behind me.

Willa nodded, barely, as if to say, You are not wrong.

Randy took Parker by the arm, sticking the snout of the gun in the man’s side, and directed Willa and her companion to walk in front of them.

“Just across the street and down to the left some,” the boy said.

The two women both wore button-up boots, with slight heels, which made for steady enough walking, but the crushed rock underfoot was awkwardly navigated nonetheless. Willa stumbled and the Filley woman caught her by the arm.

“Got you, Willa,” she said.

Willa glanced at her. “Thank you, Miss Filley.”

That came off in a way Willa hadn’t intended.

“I mean to take no liberty,” the other woman said. “But I think we are at the point where using each other’s first names is only natural and right. Please call me Rita.”

“Please call me Willa.”

They smiled at each other, Willa weakly but indeed smiling.

And then there it was, with a high-riding sign by way of identification: HALE JUNCTION INN in red-edged black letters, though the HALE here had also been replaced with a jagged scarlet HELL. The front of the place was wider than most businesses along Main Street, and though its windows were boarded up, the façade had seen a whitewashing within recent memory. The boardwalk out front bore no missing planks, and no vermin were in sight, except the human one escorting them. While it didn’t shout its difference from the neighbors, and did not stand out, the inn was not your usual ghost-town hovel.

For half a second, Willa took the small dark figure standing near the doors with arms folded for a cigar-store Indian, but then realized this statue with its immobile carved features was a living, breathing man — red turban, blue army jacket, buckskin trousers, high leather boots, knife at his hip, and a rifle propped against the wall. He was the guard at the gate. Only those dark watchful eyes moved.

This must be Broken Knife.

The women paused under the overhang before double doors, heavy carved dark wood ones that, unlike the school and church bells, for some reason hadn’t been scavenged; and the window panels were stained glass — unbroken!

“Allow me,” came the cultured baritone of their captor.

They hadn’t noticed Hargrave catching up with them, and Willa started a bit when he announced himself. Rita gave her a raised-eyebrow look.

“Your luggage will be brought to you,” he said, with a sweeping bow.

Was that supposed to be funny, Willa wondered, or could he really be that pompous?

The man in black and ruffled white opened both doors for the women, stepped aside for them to go in, then followed, shut those doors, and hovered. What the women found within was not lavish, but neither was it something normally found in a ghost town.

They were in a hotel lobby. Nothing else about it was as fancy as those stained-glass doors, and the interior had not been maintained as well as it might have been, had the rest of the town been alive and well. But this interior was relatively clean, and the various chairs and sofas, scattered around where the lobby opened up into a parlor at the right, were holding onto their stuffing, and even a couple of potted plants were apparently getting enough water to survive.

At the left stairs rose to guest rooms, apparently, with a check-in desk tucked back and facing them, behind which was a plump little man with a practiced smile waiting before his wall of keys — round-lensed spectacles perched on his red knob of a nose, his white hair was a wispy memory, his full cheeks home to the white bristle of an indifferent, infrequent shave, and his black vest and high-collared white shirt had a slightly dingy look.

The whole place did. The carpeting was faded and frayed, but it was carpeting, all right, with a fancy black-and-white pattern. The parlor’s stone fireplace way off to the right had Indian pottery along the mantle; antlers rode the surrounding wall. Something about the Inn reminded her of an off-season resort before a maintenance and cleanup crew had arrived.

Into this area, Randy guided Parker to an overstuffed leather chair, the businessman looking dejected and dazed. The boy lingered nearby, keeping an eye trained and his pistol in hand. Willa and Rita remained in the outer area with Hargrave.

“Welcome, ladies,” said the man behind the check-in counter.

The two women said nothing.

The desk man’s voice was a raspy, high-pitched, folksy thing. “No need to be shy, ladies. Step right up, step right up.”

After exchanged glances and eyebrow shrugs, they responded to this carnival-barker entreaty and walked to the counter, Hargrave looking on with obvious amusement.

“What a pleasant surprise you are!” the chubby elf of a man said. “Oh, excuse me. I should introduce myself.” He lowered his head and touched his chest with short, fat fingers. “I am the proprietor of the Hale Junction Inn — Wilmer Wiley. You’ll meet the Mrs. Wiley soon enough. Her name is Vera and she runs a tight ship.”

Rita asked, “We’re a surprise?”

“Yes, and, as I say, a pleasant one. I had not been told we would have guests of the female persuasion. But, as it happens, we can provide you lovely ladies with a room to share, as soon as our colored girl dusts and straightens up a bit.” He looked past the women. “Will that be to your liking, Mr. Hargrave?”

Hargrave stepped forward, his black hat in hand; he was always ready to take center stage.

“Quite suitable,” he said. “Add their rooms to my bill... and I will put money in thy purse for meals, as well.” His attention turned to Willa and Rita. “Ladies, there is no need for you to sign the guest register. This is a special sort of hostelry.”

What in heaven’s name kind of place is this? Willa wondered.

Hargrave was saying, “For the sake of civility, good ladies, what appellations might you answer to?”

Willa hesitated, but her companion said, “I’m Rita. This is Willa.” Last names were conspicuously absent.

He gestured with an open hand. “Lovely names for lovely ladies. We will get to know each other better when time allows. For the nonce, I must deal with my wounded comrade.”

Another bow, and he made his exit.

Rita raised an eyebrow and said softly, “For the nonce?”

“At least he’s a gentleman.”

Very softly Rita said, “For a kidnapping murdering stagecoach bandit.”

Their rotund, elfin host gestured toward the parlor. “Ladies, if you’ll make yourself comfortable, perhaps I could offer a potable? Not too early for wine, you think?”

Not for him, most likely.

Willa said, “Do you have coffee?”

“My, yes,” he said, eager to please. His twinkly eyes lived under bushy white brows. “And you, my dear?”

Willa said, “Tea, perhaps?”

“Tea it is.”

He came out from behind the desk and waddled through the wide archway into the parlor. The women followed him, hanging back some, then paused as he cut left. Through open double doors in a wall of wood and mostly glass, the innkeeper entered a typical if modest hotel dining room where tables bore no cloths and framed landscapes hung crooked. At the back left, he slipped through a door that was presumably to the kitchen.

Rita looked at Willa with wide eyes, and Willa did the same to Rita. Then the pair looked around at the overstuffed furnishings and stone fireplace and looming deer heads. Parker was already seated, lost in gloom.

Randy came over to the women, equally eager to please.

“Not what you expected, huh?” he asked, and laughed like a horse with something caught in its throat. “Like a fancy hotel in Denver or such like.”

“Oh yes,” Rita said.

Oh no, Willa thought. Nothing like Denver.

But exactly like a mining town hotel gone to seed. This must be what the Inn had been like during the months of Hale Junction’s decline into abandonment.

Only, why was it still here? And some kind of going concern?

“Make yourself to home,” the boy said, as if delighted he could show them such a good time. “I best get over to the livery and help Mr. Hargrave. You gals stay put.”

He started out, then stopped, turned, the friendliness gone.

“Best you pay heed,” he said firmly, gesturing with the gun in his hand, not threatening, just a thing he happened to be holding. “Ol’ Wiley’ll call the troops out on you, and his wife is mean as a rattler and will shoot you soon as look at you. And Broken Knife, standin’ guard out there? That’s just his name. His knife ain’t broke at all.”

Willa just looked at him. Rita managed a smile and a nod. Then he was gone.

Alone with Parker, the women stood on either side of the seated man, who stared straight ahead.

Willa asked, “Are you all right, Mr. Parker? Are you hurt?”

Quietly, he said, “I am ashamed.”

Rita frowned at him. “Why ashamed?”

“I failed you both. First I risked all of our lives by clumsily attacking those outlaws, managing only to get that poor stage driver and his guard butchered. Then I made an attempt to take down that fool boy and he bested me.”

“I know a little Shakespeare myself,” Rita said. “What’s done is done. Isn’t that Shakespeare? Hamlet or something?”

“Macbeth,” Willa said. She leaned in, rested a hand on his shoulder. “You have to pull yourself together, Mr. Parker. It’s the three of us against these outlaws, and I don’t think the people running this hotel are much better.”

Parker was still gazing straight ahead. “It seems to be some kind of outlaw hideout. But we are outnumbered and that Hargrave character is no fool. I bitterly regret the position I’ve put you ladies in.”

“Enough of that,” Rita snapped. “We have to think. You’re of value to them — you’re the strongbox they took off the stage.”

He nodded again. “Clearly they intend to ransom me.”

Willa said to her, “But the brother of that boy called Rita and myself witnesses. He wanted Hargrave to kill us. Perhaps he still will.”

Rita sighed. “I agree. Those rooms that two-bit Santa Claus says he has for us could be out back, getting dug while we speak. We clearly weren’t part of the plan. The gunman who killed that cowboy of yours, Willa, last night at the Victory? I think he was their inside man who got derailed into a jail cell by our mutual friend, Caleb York. Those murders today weren’t intended. Hargrave and his bunch meant to stop the stage, grab you, Mr. Parker, and ride off with the means for their ransom.”

Parker huffed bitterly. “And had I not been so impulsive, that is what the outlaws would have done. And those two men would be alive, and you two would be safe.”

“Stop it,” Rita ordered. “That doesn’t do any of us any good, you whipping yourself. We need to think. I can bargain with my body, and Miss Cullen can do the same, if she’s willing. But even so, after these lowdown bastards have had their way with us, six-foot-under ‘rooms’ out back are likely waiting. That pretentious highwayman may think he’s Hamlet, but he’s just another Simon Legree.”

Those words had barely passed Rita’s lips when the front doors opened and the boy and his brother hauled in the limp, unconscious form of Bemis, the outlaw resembling a miner who’d been shot by the stagecoach driver, as his bloody shirt testified — Randy at the shoulders, walking backward, Reese carrying the man under the knees.

Hargrave had held a door open for them, and now he stepped inside as the brothers paused with their cargo. The actor yelled, “Wiley! Attend us!”

The master of the house emerged from the kitchen with a tray on which were two shaky cups, one of tea, one of coffee, which he managed not to spill much of, delivering them to a small table near where the two women stood, then all but sprinting to his client.

Wiley smiled obsequiously and pressed his hands together before him. “How might I be of service, Mr. Hargrave?”

“Do you have a spare room on this floor?”

“Only the quarters of Mrs. Wiley and myself.”

“Is there a bedroom?”

“There are two — mine and hers. I use the guest room. My darling bride cannot abide my snoring.”

“Your room will do. Direct us.”

With only a pause to quench his disappointment at this inconvenience, Wiley said, “Of course, Mr. Hargrave,” and led the way, which took them through a door to the left of the stairway.

Before long, from behind the closed doorway to the Wiley living quarters, came a terrible cry of pain. Apparently, getting Bemis settled on the bed had wakened the man.

A woman came streaking down from the second floor. Striking, with beautiful features that hard living had coarsened, her long dark hair curling loose at her shoulders, she took the stairs, quick and hard, as if she were angry with them. She stopped two-thirds of the way down.

“Blaine! What the hell goes on?”

She wore a white peasant dress with a red sash and her complexion was dark, darker than Rita’s. She appeared to be full-blooded Mexican, and the low-cut dress emphasized her overwhelming voluptuousness.

Blaine appeared in the doorway to the innkeepers’ quarters.

“Juanita, my querida,” he said, “friend Bemis was wounded on the job today. He may yet breathe his last, but we’re looking after him as best we can. Did we disturb your siesta?”

Something about that last bit sounded sarcastic to Willa.

Juanita came down to meet Hargrave at the foot of the stairs. Though much shorter than him, she had a certain stature; she stood with her hands on her hips, her chin up, her bosom out.

“You will get yourself killed, querida,” she said, “if you are not careful. This job you pull, it was very dangerous. Muy arriesgado.”

“Oh, what men dare do, to please their woman! To give her nice things.” He made a sweeping gesture. “Have you met our guests?”

She frowned as she took in the three strangers in the parlor off the lobby. Slowly, her eyes narrowed, like a cat prowling for prey, the Mexican woman approached the well-dressed older man in the leather chair and the two nicely garbed young women standing on either side of him.

Without addressing them, she said over her shoulder to Hargrave, who had slowly followed her, “This is the banker, the businessman. But who are these mujeres in-útiles?”

“Mr. Bemis was not the only casualty, mi amor. We had to dispose of two employees of the stage line, who objected to our intrusion. These young women were along for the ride. We have decided to make them our guests.”

She turned, eyes flaring. “Testigos? And you did not leave them sangría? There on la carretera?” She shook the mane of black hair and stalked off, heading back up the stairs, muttering, “Hombre tonto,” her footsteps quick but heavy.

“My apologies,” Hargrave said, bowing yet again, and returned to the Wiley quarters.

Willa said, “She’s a danger. Could be the death of us.”

“Or the life,” Rita said with a smile, arms folded. “She’s not an ally, but she may be useful.”

Willa couldn’t see how.

Parker had been watching all this with a new alertness. The women deposited themselves on a two-seater red-and-black brocade sofa nearby. Both watched the businessman with keen interest. Several glances affirmed that they shared a sense that a new attitude had worked its way through his despair.

“We’ll find a way out of this,” he said. “I give you my pledge.”

That heartened Willa.

But she’d rather Caleb York were making that promise.