Mankiller, Colorado

CHAPTER 16

Despite Lucinda’s pessimistic prediction, Bo and Scratch thoroughly enjoyed the meal, washing down the excellent food with several cups of coffee. When they were finished, they got to their feet and thanked Lucinda and Charley.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked.

“Well, I suppose we’ll go back over to the sheriff’s office and make sure nobody’s been looking for us,” Bo said. “Then I reckon we’ll get started on our evening rounds.”

“Where’s Biscuits?”

Scratch shook his head. “No idea.”

“You two are going to have to go it alone, you know that, don’t you? You can’t count on him for any help.”

“Never thought we could,” Bo said. “But maybe we can be a good influence on him and he’ll straighten up.”

Scratch snorted, showing just how much he believed that.

They left the café’s kitchen as they had entered it, through the back door. Full night had fallen while they were eating, so the alley behind the building was dark. The blackness was relieved slightly by the glow that came through the narrow passages between buildings from Main Street.

Even so, the shadows were thick back here, and Bo and Scratch were both wary and alert for trouble. Bushwhackers or some other threat could be lurking in the stygian gloom.

Nothing happened, though, as they made their way through the passage beside the café and came out on the boardwalk that lined the street. The settlement appeared to be as busy as ever. The boardwalks were crowded, and riders and wagons passed back and forth in the street. A blend of talk, laughter, and music filled the air. It should have been jarringly unmelodic, but somehow it wasn’t. It was the sound of life.

Bo listened for screams and gunshots, because those would have been the sounds of death, but he didn’t hear any. For the moment, at least, Mankiller was noisy but peaceful.

The sheriff’s office was still empty, with no sign that Biscuits O’Brien had even been there since the Texans left. Scratch looked around the place with disgust written on his weatherbeaten face and said, “You know, sooner or later we’re gonna have to go look for that sorry excuse for a lawman.”

Bo nodded. “I know. He’s probably somewhere either soaking up more booze or passed out from it, but I suppose he could be in real trouble.”

As if his words were a stage cue, the office door opened hurriedly and a short man in work clothes stuck his head in. “Are you fellas the deputies?” he asked in an excited voice.

“That’s right,” Bo said as he turned toward the door.

“Well, you’d better get down to Bella’s pronto! It looks like all hell’s gonna bust lose down there!”

“Hold on a minute,” Scratch said sharply to the townie. “What’s Bella’s, and where is it?”

The man looked at them like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but he said, “Bella’s is the biggest whorehouse in town. It’s a block over and two down on Grand Street.”

“Grand is the one that parallels Main on the north?” Bo asked as he and Scratch started toward the door.

The townsman nodded. “Yeah. You better hurry. Thad Devery’s on a rampage, and he’s got some of his cousins there to back him up.”

Bo and Scratch exchanged a glance as they went out the door. An urgent summons like this, with the Deverys involved, smacked of a trap of some sort. As lawmen, though, the Texans couldn’t just ignore it. It was possible that the madam and the girls who worked at Bella’s really did need their help.

Bo caught hold of the shoulder of the man who’d come to the office and turned him so that his face was in the light. “Your name wouldn’t happen to be Devery, too, would it?” Bo asked in a hard voice.

“Devery? Hell, no! My name’s Ernie Bond. I drive a freight wagon. I don’t have anything to do with the Deverys, other than the fact that I don’t like ’em much.”

The man seemed to be telling the truth. Bo figured that he and Scratch would have to accept it for now and check out the situation at Bella’s.

“Then lead the way,” Bo ordered.

Ernie Bond gulped and looked like he would have rather done just about anything other than head back to the whorehouse, but he nodded and said, “Sure.” He took off trotting along the boardwalk.

Bo and Scratch followed, their long legs allowing them to keep up with the smaller Ernie without much trouble.

They took the first cross street and cut over to Grand. The word must have gotten around town that there was some sort of trouble developing over at Bella’s, because quite a few men were hurrying in that direction besides Bo, Scratch, and Ernie Bond. The ones who were slower got out of the way of the lawmen.

Ernie had said that Bella’s was the biggest whorehouse in Mankiller. It lived up to that billing, Bo saw as they approached. The building took up half a block. Its windows were covered with thick curtains. The bottom half of the heavy front door featured elaborate woodworking, while the upper half had a pane of leaded glass surrounded by gold trim set into it. Painted on the glass in gold leaf was the simple legend BELLA’S PLACE. That was the only explanation anybody in Mankiller needed. Everybody knew what went on here.

Men clustered on the porch, pressing their faces to the glass as they tried to catch a glimpse through any tiny gaps in the curtains. More men were gathered in front of the door. Bo raised his voice and said, “All right, everybody step back. Let us through.”

Some of the men started guiltily and got out of the way. Others were slower and more sullen about it, but they stepped aside after a moment.

Bo nodded to Ernie Bond and said, “All right, thanks for bringing us here. You don’t have to go in.”

“I won’t, then,” the little townie said. “There’s liable to be bullets flyin’ around in there before it’s over!”

Bo hoped not, but he was prepared for anything as he opened the door and he and Scratch stepped into the whorehouse. They had their hands on their guns as they entered.

They found themselves in a foyer with a polished hardwood floor and fancy wallpaper. An oil lamp in a brass sconce lit the place up, revealing an arched entrance that led into a parlor to the left. A beaded curtain hung over the entrance. Straight ahead was a wide staircase with a carved banister.

Several women were clustered at the bottom of the stairs. The one in front was middle-aged but still quite attractive, with bright red hair piled high on her head in an elaborate arrangement of curls. She wore a sea-green gown cut low enough to reveal the pale swells of her breasts. The women behind her on the stairs were all considerably younger and skimpier dressed, so Bo pegged the redhead as Bella and the others as the soiled doves who worked here.

That thought was all he had time for before a loud crash came from inside the parlor.

“Thank God you’re here!” the redhead exclaimed. She waved a handkerchief that she had clutched in one hand toward the parlor. “They’ve gone loco! They’re going to tear the whole place up!”

“No, ma’am, they won’t,” Bo said. “Not if we can do anything about it. Is that Thad Devery in there?”

“Yes, and his cousins Reuben and Simeon. George tried to settle them down when they got upset, but I’m afraid they’ve killed him!”

That accusation made things even more serious. Bo and Scratch drew their guns as they turned toward the parlor.

“You and your gals better get upstairs, ma’am,” Scratch said.

Bella turned and began shooing the whores up the stairs like a mother hen chasing a bunch of chicks across a barnyard.

“I’m sure smellin’ a trap,” Scratch went on as he and Bo paused at the beaded curtain.

“Me, too,” Bo agreed, “but we’ve got to go in there anyway.” Sounds of destruction continued to come from the parlor.

There was a splintering crash just as the Texans stepped into the room. Bo saw a man holding two of the legs of a chair he had just smashed against the floor. A glance around the room revealed furniture overturned and broken, paintings ripped down from the walls and torn to pieces, and shards of glass scattered across the floor where glasses had been shattered. It looked almost like a cyclone had hit the place.

In addition to the man holding the busted chair, two more men were in the room. They had hold of a piano, and from the looks of it, they were about to try to tip it over. Bo leveled his gun at them while Scratch covered the other man.

“Hold it!” Bo snapped. He recognized one of the men at the piano as Thad Devery. The other two shared a family resemblance. They would be Luke’s brothers Reuben and Simeon.

“Drop those chair legs,” Scratch ordered the man he was covering.

“Go to hell!” the man yelled. “Nobody tells a Devery what to do!”

“You better listen to me, boy,” Scratch warned. “I’ll blow your legs right out from under you if I have to, and you’ll never walk right again.”

Thad took his hands off the piano and stepped back from the instrument. “Do what he says, Sim,” he told his cousin. “That old bastard’s crazy enough to do it.”

Glaring murderously at Scratch, Simeon Devery dropped the chair legs.

“What in blazes is going on here?” Bo asked.

“That’s none of your business,” Thad snapped at him.

“I reckon it is. You fellas are disturbing the peace if I ever saw it. This is wanton destruction of property, too. If you don’t have a mighty good explanation for all this, I’d say you’re facing some serious charges, Thad.”

“We had a right,” Reuben Devery said. “We paid our money, and then the gal said no. A whore can’t say no. It ain’t fittin’.”

“Yeah, it’s Bella you ought be threatenin’ to arrest,” Simeon added. “She tried to cheat us. Said she wasn’t gonna make the gal do what we wanted, and she wasn’t gonna give us our money back, neither!”

“Wait a minute,” Bo said as his eyes narrowed. “Are you talking about one girl?”

“One whore, you mean,” Thad said with his customary sneer that made his almost deformed face even uglier.

“And the three of you…”

“That’s right. You got a problem with that, lawman?”

“I do, you damned degenerate,” Scratch said. “I ought to do the world a favor and just gun down the three of you here and now.”

“Take it easy,” Bo told his old friend. “We’ll do this according to the law.” He motioned with his Colt. “The three of you take out your guns, nice and easy, and put them on the floor. Don’t make any sudden moves, and don’t try anything funny.”

“Reckon they already did that with the whore,” Scratch muttered.

“You got no right,” Thad insisted. “Deverys don’t answer to the law. Deverys are the law.”

“Not anymore,” Bo said. “Not after today.”

A groan came from behind an overturned sofa. A husky figure started to rise into view. Bo glanced in that direction and saw a bald-headed black man with blood dripping down his face from an ugly cut on his forehead. He recalled Bella’s comment about the Deverys killing somebody called George and figured this man was the house’s bouncer and bodyguard. One of the troublemakers must have walloped him and knocked him out, and now he had come to.

Taking his attention off Thad Devery was a mistake. Scratch shouted, “Watch it, Bo!”

Bo’s eyes flicked back to Thad and saw the young man dragging his gun from its holster. Thad was reasonably fast, although no one was ever going to mistake him for a real shootist like Smoke Jensen or Matt Bodine.

That was the kind of speed it would have taken to outdraw an already drawn gun. Bo didn’t have to hurry his shot. Thad had barely cleared leather when Bo’s Colt roared.

Because he’d had a chance to take aim, Bo didn’t have to kill Thad. He drilled Thad’s gun arm instead, the bullet breaking the bone about halfway between elbow and shoulder. Thad dropped his revolver, screamed in pain, and grabbed his arm as he slumped against the piano.

Bo switched his aim to Reuben while Scratch kept Simeon covered. “Either of you boys want to take cards in this game?” Bo asked in a hard, dangerous voice.

They shook their heads, eyes wide with shock as they looked at their cousin, who had slipped down to a sitting position on the floor. Thad whimpered and rocked back and forth as he clutched his wounded arm.

“You’re damned lucky you ain’t dead,” Scratch told him. “Bo could’ve put that round right through your ticker.”

Bo wiggled the barrel of his .44. “Guns, gents. On the floor.”

Reuben and Simeon hastened to follow the order this time. When they had put their irons on the floor and kicked them away, Bo said, “All right, give your cousin a hand. We’ll take him over to the jail and let the doctor have a look at him there.”

“You’re really arrestin’ us?” Reuben asked. “But we’re Deverys.”

“Get used to it,” Scratch said.