Blood Duel (21 page)

Seamus took a couple of steps and leveled his revolver. It might scare her, but it served her right for all the bother she was putting people to. “Going somewhere, lady?”

Whirling, Ernestine put a hand to her throat. “Oh my! You quite startled me!”

“You have startled quite a few folks, yourself,” Seamus informed her. “I am taking you to the sheriff.”

“No, you are not,” declared a harsh voice, and a hard object was gouged into his lower back. “Toss your hardware on the bed, law dog, or I will blow you in half.”

Seamus’s skin prickled. He had blundered by not looking behind the door when he entered. “I am not here to hurt anyone,” he said.

“Then you shouldn’t sneak into rooms with your pistol out. Now do as I said with your six-shooter. I am not a patient man.”

“Jeeter Frost, I presume?” Seamus said as he flipped his revolver onto the quilt.

“My, don’t you talk nice?” Jeeter Frost came around to one side, the Colt Lightning rock steady in his hands, his eyes glittering like those of a wolverine about to pounce. “You would be Glickman.”

“You know me?”

“I know of you. I make it a point to ask about the local law when I mosey into a town. Fancy pants, was how you were described to me, and it fits. You are almost as pretty as my new wife.”

Ernestine came and stood next to Jeeter. “That will be enough of that. You are married now. You must be civil.”

“Hell,” Jeeter Frost said, but he smiled as he said it.

Seamus looked from one to the other. “I was right. You weren’t forced to take a vow against your will.”

“Excuse me?” Ernestine said.

Briefly, keenly aware every moment of the muzzle pointed at his chest, and the fact that the man pointing it had killed more men than he had fingers and toes, Seamus explained about the justice of the peace, and the posse being assembled. “Once word spreads, the whole town will be out for your husband’s hide, lady.”

“I don’t know as I like that,” Jeeter Frost said.

“Like what?” Seamus said. “That everyone wants you dead for stealing the schoolmarm?”

“I don’t know as I like how you call her lady. It doesn’t sound respectful enough. Call her ma’am. Or Mrs. Frost. One more lady and I will shoot you.”

Ernestine smiled. “I like how you stand up for me,” she said, and pecked Frost on the cheek.

To Seamus’s amazement, the most feared pistolero in the territory blushed. “I wish I was drunk,” he said.

“Why?” Jeeter Frost asked.

“So I could laugh without being shot.”

“You might be shot anyway, laugh or no laugh.” Jeeter gnawed on his lower lip, then declared, “We have us a predicament here, Ernestine. We can’t let this hombre go or he’ll run to the sheriff and tell where we are.”

“The solution is simple,” Ernestine said. “We fix it so he can’t run to Sheriff Hinkle.”

“It is nice we think alike,” Jeeter said. “Do you have a sharp knife I can borrow? I should do it quietlike. A shot would wake the other boarders.”

“We don’t need to kill him, dearest.”

“We don’t?”

Ernestine went to the dresser, opened a drawer, and came back with a scarf. “We tie him and gag him. By the time he is found, we will be long gone.”

Jeeter Frost winked at Seamus. “See why I married her? Brains and beauty, both. What more can a man ask for?”

“A bottle of whiskey,” Seamus said.

“A rope would be better, though, for tying him,” Jeeter mentioned to his new bride.

“I am afraid I don’t keep rope handy. I work with children, not cows.” Ernestine moved to the dresser
yet again. “I do have scissors. We can cut the scarf into strips. They will work as well.”

“Whatever you say, Mrs. Frost,” Jeeter teased.

Seamus did not resist. Not with the Missouri Man-Killer covering him and plainly itching for an excuse to put lead into him. The schoolmarm bound his wrists behind his back, and she did a thorough job, too, tying the knots so tight, his circulation was cut off.

“You are a woman of many talents,” Jeeter Frost complimented her after giving her handiwork a tug. “Next you will be telling me that you can break broncs.”

“I am good for more than reading and writing,” Ernestine said proudly. “You will find I can hold my own. Now let me finish packing.”

Jeeter watched her every movement as a puppy might watch its master. “Look at her. She is sunrise in a dress. How did I ever get so lucky?”

“Are you sure you don’t have some whiskey?” Seamus asked. “A flask will do.”

“We forgot to gag you.”

Ernestine was folding her unmentionables. “I will attend to the gagging in a minute, handsome. I need to pack in case someone else shows up and we must depart in a hurry.”

“Always one step ahead,” Jeeter said to Seamus. “She thinks she can keep me out of trouble and I am beginning to think she can.”

“I wish I had someone to keep me out of trouble,” Seamus Glickman said.

Ernestine Frost hurried out the rear of the boardinghouse. Behind her came Jeeter, puffing from the weight of her carpetbag. “I am so proud of you,” she told him.

Jeeter grunted. The carpetbag was not as heavy as the packs containing her books, which he had already loaded on the horse he had rented from the stable. But it was heavy enough that he would gladly drop it and leave it if Ernestine would not become upset.

“You didn’t kill him,” Ernestine said. “You had the opportunity but you refrained from squeezing the trigger.”

Jeeter had never really considered shooting Glickman. Not when the shot was bound to draw people, and more law. But he did not mention that to her.

“It shows that you can change,” Ernestine said. “That you are not the rabid killer everyone else thinks you are.”

“I’m not rabid,” Jeeter said.

“I know you are not, my love,” Ernestine sweetly declared, and held the gate open for him. “You have proven that my trust in you is not misplaced.”

“I’m glad.” Now that they were man and wife,
Jeeter naturally wanted to make her happy. But it surprised him considerably that she was so giddy over a trifle.

“I can’t wait to get settled somewhere and start our new life together,” Ernestine gushed. “Won’t it be wonderful?”

“Wonderful,” Jeeter echoed as he lugged the carpetbag to the packhorse. “The important thing now is not to be seen riding out of town. If we are seen we will head west to throw them off the scent and swing north later.”

“Maybe I should talk to the sheriff,” Ernestine said. “Let everyone know I am with you because my heart is swelled with love, and not because you took me against my will.”

“That deputy we left tied up in your room knows the truth,” Jeeter said. “He will tell the sheriff.”

“And all will be well!” Ernestine smiled and clasped her hands and raised her eyes to the starry sky. “Oh, thank you, Lord, for preserving us!”

Jeeter glanced skyward, and frowned. An oversight on his part had occurred to him. He had never asked her feelings on religion. “Talk to God much, do you?” he asked, trying to make the question sound perfectly innocent.

“No more than most, I would imagine,” Ernestine said. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.”

“Have you ever read the Bible?”

‘Not all the way through, I must confess. But I have read most of it, in snatches, at one time or another. We can read it together nights now that you have learned to read.”

Jeeter could think of something he would much
rather do at night than read, but again he held his tongue. “I admit I don’t know a lot about it. But something a parson said once has stuck with me. It is the truest thing I ever heard and it explains a lot.”

“A parson? You must attend church, then. This is a side to you I did not expect.”

Jeeter could not recall the last time he was in God’s house. The parson had sat next to him at a restaurant and gone on and on about the Almighty and the soul.

“What did he say that so impressed you?”

In the process of tying a knot, Jeeter answered, “That God sends his rain on the just and the unjust.”

Ernestine waited, and when he did not say anything else, she said, “That’s it? That one quote?”

“It’s enough,” Jeeter replied. “It is everything.”

“I am not sure I understand. There is a lot more to the Bible than that. It overflows with truth.”

“None of the other Bible sayings I have heard made a lot of sense to me,” Jeeter said. Particularly the one about turning the other cheek. If he had taken it to heart, he would have long since been dead. “But that one did.”

“Don’t you worry,” Ernestine said. “We will read the Bible together and I will explain everything that needs explaining and it will all make sense.” She paused. “But why that one quote more than any other?”

“Ever seen a baby that has had its brains dashed out? Or come upon a woman who has been staked out and raped? Or a man who has been tortured by Apaches?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“I have. And that there rain business is why I can sleep at nights,” Jeeter said.

“How can—” Ernestine began, and turned. Spurs had jingled in the alley. A man was coming toward them. He wore a high-crowned Stetson and tin gleamed on his shirt. “Oh no!” she whispered.

Jeeter had heard the spurs, too. His Lightning was in his hand, close to his leg, as he came around the packhorse. “Evening,” he said with a smile. “What can we do for you?”

“Good evening.” The man doffed his hat to Ernestine. “I am Deputy Powell. I am looking for Seamus Glickman and I wonder if you folks—” Powell stopped. “Hold on. Aren’t you the schoolmarm, ma’am?”

“She was,” Jeeter said, still smiling, and clubbed the deputy above the ear. Once, twice, three times he struck. At each blow Powell staggered. Powell tried to draw his revolver, but it was still in his holster as he oozed to the ground and lay twitching and groaning. Jeeter hit him one more time to shut him up.

“Oh my!” Ernestine breathed. She never did like violence, and this churned her stomach. “Did you have to be so brutal?”

Jeeter was examining his Colt. It appeared none the worse for the clubbing. “He is still alive.”

“That is something, I suppose,” Ernestine said without much enthusiasm. Here they were, barely married an hour, and already he had tied up one man and beaten another. Lawmen, no less. “I just hope this is the end of it.”

Jeeter shoved the Lightning into his holster. “Mount
up. We better light a shuck before someone else shows up.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to talk to the sheriff?”

“Not after what I have done to his deputies, no.”

“We don’t want a posse after us, do we?” Ernestine envisioned her new husband in blazing battle against superior numbers, and shuddered. She did not care to be a widow so soon after becoming a wife.

“They will come after me anyway,” Jeeter said.

“I can set things right. Don’t you want that?”

“What I want is for us to go on breathing,” Jeeter said. “Now, are you my woman or are you not my woman?”

“I said I do, didn’t I?”

“Then do as I say and climb on this horse.” Jeeter held the reins for her. “We can be long gone by the time this law dog and Glickman are found.”

Confused and hurt, Ernestine mounted. “I hope you are not one of those husbands who likes to boss his wife around.”

“I am not,” Jeeter assured her. “But I will be bossy if I think we will live longer.”

“You are off to a fine start.”

Jeeter put a hand on her leg. “Trust me. Please. Folks have been thinking bad things about me all my life. I have found that the best way to deal with their misguided notions is to avoid them.”

“My mother taught me that honesty is the best policy,” Ernestine imparted.

“Honesty is fine and dandy,” Jeeter said, “so long as it does not get you dead.”

 ∗   ∗   ∗

“It is all your fault, big brother,” Verve Larn said. “You told us it would be safe to come here.”

The four Larn brothers were sitting at the bar in the Tumbleweed, a seedy saloon frequented by those who liked their saloons dark and rarely visited by the law. The owner had spent a good many years behind bars and was friendly to those who had done the same or might end up there.

Stern Larn took a swig straight from his bottle and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. A minute ago, out on the street, there had been a lot of shouting and running around. Then a man had rushed into the saloon and loudly informed the owner that Crooked Creek Sam had been found murdered.

Now Stern said quietly so only his brothers heard, “They don’t know it was us who done it. Quit your frettin’.”

The man who had rushed in was not done. Puffed up with the importance of his news, he practically hollered, “And that is not all! The schoolmarm has been taken!”

“Taken how?” some asked. “Taken sick?”

“No, no,” the man said. “She was stolen.”

“Someone abducted the schoolmarm?”

“Hold on to your hat,” the man said. He had saved the best tidbit for last. “Word is, the hombre who stole her is Jeeter Frost.”

“The hell you say.”

Everyone in the saloon began talking at once, some asking questions, others divesting themselves of opinions about the character of any man who would stoop so low as to steal a schoolmarm.

A man at a table near the Larns stood up to say,
“I have done my share of deeds I am not proud of, but I would never stoop to stealin’ a woman.”

Happy Larn snickered and whispered to his brothers, “Listen to him. Shows how much he knows. We’ve stole women before. Remember that filly with the red hair? She sure was a wildcat.”

“It was a shame you strangled her,” Cordial Larn said.

Happy Larn shrugged. “She shouldn’t have riled me like she done. She had only herself to blame.”

Men were converging on the bar to hear more from the bearer of sensational tidings.

“I told you we had nothin’ to worry about,” Stern Larn reiterated. “We can finish up and ride on whenever we are of a mind.”

“What say we join the posse?” Verve Larn proposed. “It ain’t every day we get to hunt a jasper as famous as Jeeter Frost.”

His brothers stared at him as if they had never seen him before, and Stern said, “I have heard some lunkhead notions in my time, but that beats all. The idea is for us to fight shy of the law, not rub elbows with it.”