Arizona Embrace (43 page)

“Well the first thing I’m going to do is get you some clothes. If the ladies of this town ever find out I had a woman in my jail dressed like you, I’d be out of a job in ten minutes.”

A few minutes later, dressed in a shirt and a pair of pants much too large for her, Victoria stretched out on the cot on the same cell where she had stayed five years earlier and watched the scaffold go up outside her window. She never thought she’d be glad to be inside a jail again, but she felt safe. Either Ward or Trinity would find out where she was, she needn’t worry about sending a note. With Diablo guarding the rear of the jail, Ward would soon know where she was.

“You fool!” Myra glared at her son out of red, catlike eyes. “Three of you, and you can’t even capture one girl. I can’t trust you to do even the simplest thing.”

Even in her son’s eyes, Myra Winslow Blazer was a great beauty. Her features were classically perfect, but Myra’s strong personality kept her beauty from being merely insipid. Though into her late thirties, her hair was the color of ebony silk. It grew in such profusion and to such a length it took her maid nearly thirty minutes each day to dress it atop her head. She had flawless skin, a generous mouth, and eyes which seemed to turn every color in the rainbow depending on her mood.

There was a timelessness about Myra’s beauty and a forcefulness about her personality which never failed to subdue even the strongest male resistance. Over the years she had become accustomed to getting what she wanted, exactly what she wanted.

A woman of considerable property in her own right, she had achieved great wealth when she married Judge Blazer seven years earlier.

She kept a San Antonio seamstress and two assistants busy around the clock making gowns fashioned after the latest Paris designs. She wore enough jewels at her throat, in her hair, on her arms, and across her bosom to ransom a king. The house the Judge had built for her was spectacular even by Texas standards, but her bedroom was wormy of a Vanderbilt. A Louis the Sixteenth bed with a silk canopy dominated the enormous room. Gilt and velvet-upholstered furniture, red silk hangings, and an Aubusson carpet completed a room completely at variance with the rough and ready spirit of Texas.

“I keep telling you, I never saw a horse run like that,” Kirby replied. “We might as well have been riding jackasses.”

“At least you would have been appropriately mounted,” she snapped. Even in anger, Myra looked like a goddess. “Why did you let her reach the horse? Can she run faster than you?”

“I couldn’t just bust into that house. He could have been inside. He’d have been within his rights to shoot me. She must have seen us coming and run out the back just as we went in the front. We thought we had her, but that horse jumped the fence like it had wings.”

“Enough of this miraculous horse. You have bungled a perfectly simple job. Now I shall have to think of something else.”

“Why is it so important for you to see Victoria?” Kirby asked. “You never liked her much.”

“Because, you idiot, if Victoria has come back, it’s only to prove she didn’t kill Jeb.”

“But you never thought she did.”

“I know that, but as long as the Judge was convinced she did it, it didn’t matter what I said. Now it will.”

“I don’t understand. If she can prove she didn’t do it, you ought to be happy.”

“If she didn’t kill Jeb, you innocent fool, that means somebody else did.”

“So?”

“So you and I have the most to gain by Jeb’s death. We have the best motives. Even if they can’t find any evidence, the Judge can’t help but wonder. He might even decide to divorce me. I can’t allow that.”

“But we have alibis.”

“We could have hired someone else.”

“But we didn’t kill Jeb.”

“Apparently neither did Victoria, but they convicted her anyway”

“You mean they could convict us without evidence?”

That’s exactly what I mean.”

“But what good would it do to bring Victoria here?”

“If she never tells her story, everything will stay just the way it is now”

“But why would she agree to keep quiet?”

“I don’t imagine she will. Otherwise, why would she have left Arizona?”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“We’ve got to fix it so this can never happen again.”

“But you can’t mean to—”

“That’s exactly what I mean to do.”

It was a seedy hotel in a seedy town, but then Trinity expected that. It was nearly noon, not yet time for an afternoon
siesta,
but nothing moved. Not even in the American part of town.

The heat was stifling. It hovered over the town like a giant dome, drawing in the sunlight, shutting out the breeze from the river, turning the few raindrops, which dared fall, into steam. A horse stood at a hitching rail, too listless to fight off the flies that buzzed around its head. A skinny dog dozed in the strip of shade provided by a rickety bench.

Trinity had seen many such towns, towns that were dying because the reason for their birth no longer existed. The few unpainted buildings sagged a little more each year. Its population grew older and slower because the young moved on to more promising places. Trinity hated towns like this, but he didn’t expect to stay long. He had come to find Chalk Gillet.

There was nobody at the hotel desk when he entered. The place exuded an atmosphere of death. An exceedingly plain woman with wispy grey hair and a faded dress came in answer to his kick on the desk with his dusty boot.

“Don’t do that,” she complained. “It leaves scars.”

“I’m looking for Chalk Gillet,” Trinity told her. “They said you’d know where to find him.”

“Maybe I do. What’s in it for me?”

Greed and cunning shone brightly in her eyes.

“A dollar.”

She spat out a particularly foul curse. “I wouldn’t talk to the Devil for no more’n a dollar.”

“How about ten dollars?”

“You want him bad?”

“Enough to pay to find him.” She held out a bony hand for the money. “But not enough to pay more than five now and five later.”

She eyed him hatefully. “How’s I to know you’ll come back?”

“What proof do I have you know where he is?”

“Everybody knows. He’s been living here for years.”

“In that case I’ll ask someone a little less expensive.”

The woman dashed from behind the desk to stop him leaving the hotel. “Give me the five, and I’ll tell you.” Trinity handed her a coin which she inspected carefully. “You promise to give me the rest before you leave town?”

“If you’ll tell me if he has an escape route.”

The old woman eyed him suspiciously and then started to snicker.

“You’re a crafty one, you are. He lives in a house just outside of town. A cabin really, but he insists it’s a house. It backs up to a dry creek all covered in willows and mesquite thickets. If he sees somebody he don’t trust coming up the front, he drops down in that creek and is up in those hills in a minute. Keeps a horse back there.”

Trinity looked at the coin in his hand, then handed it to the woman.

“Anything else I ought to know?”

“He’s got the place stashed with guns. If he’s dressed, he’s got one up his sleeve. A knife in his boot, too.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He likes female company. Dora’s up there right now.”

Trinity stepped a little closer and said in a soft, deliberate voice, “If you’ve told me a single lie, I’ll come back for my money. Then I’ll burn down this rubbish heap with you in it.”

Looking a little less sure of herself, the old woman watched Trinity leave. “Come evening, Dora’s going to be looking for another job,” she muttered to herself.

Trinity relaxed in the shade of a cottonwood and willow grove. Close by a short, powerful paint pony munched oats from an open sack next to a tub one-third full of tepid water. Chalk hadn’t skimped on his security precautions.

Neither had Trinity. He had loosened the cinch on the saddle. It just sat on the pony’s back. And he had hobbled him. If Chalk was to get away, he would have to do it on foot. He looked at his watch. Ben ought to be approaching the front door in a couple of minutes. The hunt would soon come to an end.

It had taken more time than Trinity expected. When he reached Uvalde, he had found a message from Ben telling him to come to Santa Lucinda. That had taken another day’s ride. He intended to be on his way back tonight, but it would be two days before he could reach the Demon D. He hoped Victoria was all right.

The sound of footsteps along the rocky path up to the house brought Trinity to his feet. Ben was going to pretend to be a sheriff from Texas. He was wearing Trinity’s deputy sheriff badge. Trinity expected Chalk to reach the ravine about thirty seconds after Ben knocked on the front door.

He made it in twenty.

“I cut the cinch,” Trinity said when Chalk and the saddle ended up in a heap on the sandy floor of the ravine. “I hobbled him, too.”

“Who the hell are you?” Chalk demanded.

He was an ugly man, two inches shorter than Trinity, gone to fat, unshaven and unbathed. He eyed Trinity fearfully, but also with a crazy kind of courage, the courage of a man blessed with too much luck, a man who doesn’t believe anything really bad can happen to him.

He wore nothing but his pants and boots. At least he had no hidden gun.

“My name’s Trinity Smith. I’ve come to take you back to Bandera so you can testify that Victoria Blazer didn’t kill her husband.”

Chalk made a dash up the ravine, but Trinity intercepted him. Chalk’s muscles had all gone to fat, too. Trinity had no difficulty overpowering him.

“You’re crazy,” Chalk gasped, as Trinity hauled him up out of the sand. I’ll be killed if I ever go near that place again.”

“I’ll guarantee your safety. And I’ll see you get anywhere you want to go afterwards.”

“You can’t guarantee my safety from that devil.”

“You know who killed Jeb?”

“No, but I know the man he hired.”

“Tell me his name, or I’ll beat it out of you.”

“I don’t know it. I’ve only seen him twice. Even if I knew it, you could beat me to death, and I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to take you back to Bandera.”

“I’ll swear Victoria did it.”

“And I’ll produce Dora who’ll swear you told her Victoria didn’t do it.”

It was a bow drawn at venture, but Trinity couldn’t imagine a lazy swine like Chalk not having boasted of the truth to his mistress. Chalk’s response convinced him he’d guessed correctly.

Chalk’s hand flashed to his boot and came up holding a knife with a six-inch blade. He caught Trinity off balance and the two of them fell into the sand. Only Trinity’s superior strength prevented the knife from entering his throat.

He bashed Chalk’s wrist against a rock three times. The knife flew out of his grasp.

“Jesus God,” Chalk screamed in anguish, “you broke my wrist.”

“If I didn’t need your testimony, I’d have killed you,” Trinity said.

“I’ll never testify.”

“Then I guess well have to wait here until you change your mind.”

“But I’ve got to have a doctor for my wrist. You must have crushed the bone.”

Trinity made a quick assessment of Chalk’s character. The man couldn’t be depended upon to tell the truth. He’d do whatever he thought was in his own best interest. If Trinity tried to take him back to Bandera, even if he took him to a doctor first, he’d be twice as long on the trail. Clearly Chalk was a man who liked his creature comforts. He also guessed Chalk would find a way to make serious trouble along the way, trouble it might take him days to explain.

He couldn’t afford to take that much time.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Trinity said. “I sympathize with your not wanting to go back. I don’t want to be bothered with taking you. So if you’ll agree to swear before a judge that you saw Victoria walking away from Jeb Blazer when he was killed, I’ll take you to a doctor.”

“I’m not talking to any damned judge. I want a doctor.” He rolled in the sand, his wrist hanging at a peculiar angle.

“I want something. You want something. I think an even exchange is called for.”

To hell with you!” Chalk shouted.

“Doesn’t sound very cooperative to me,” Ben said, coming up the ravine.

“He says he won’t go back to Texas, and he won’t testify in court. I offered to let him make a statement before a judge here, but he refused. Looks like there’s nothing to do but to take him back just like he is. Maybe he’ll change his mind after a while.”

Ben looked thoughtful. “You’ll probably have to tie him to his horse. Tie his wrists, too. Can’t have him grabbing for a gun.” Ben inspected Chalk’s wrist. “Might be a good thing. Hold that wrist straight. It looks a mite crooked to me.”

Chalk held his wrist and groaned.

“If you’ll saddle up his pony, Ben, I’ll get him to his feet. I want to get started right away. We’ve got a long ride.”