Death Rattle Read online

  “Who in hell are they?” Abe said.

  “Detectives, probably,” Fincher said.

  “That’s what Cole aims to find out,” Becker said.

  “I know who they are,” Fincher said.

  “Yeah?” Carmichael said.

  “They’re trouble,” Fincher said, and pushed the bottle of Old Taylor across to Carmichael.

  In the quiet that followed, they could all hear the distant murmur of thunder, and the windows lit up like flash powder in a photographer’s tray.

  FIVE

  Brad rode toward the smoke over rugged land that taxed Ginger’s stamina. But the smoke was his only landmark, and he thought it might be the destination of the six men he tracked. Black clouds began to drift his way from the west, and he saw the latticework of lightning in their bulging muscles, felt the winds whirl and gust with increasing ferocity. The quail went silent, the hawks left the skies, and rabbits scurried underground. A sense of deep loneliness assailed him as he crossed the empty and broken land.

  He looked at the western sky and thought of Felicity and Pilar, along with her husband, Julio, caught in the storm that must be raining down on his ranch, the cattle lashed by wind and rain, the horses neighing in terror at the thunder and lightning. He should be with them, he thought. Pilar was terribly afraid of storms and would be jumping out of her skin at every bolt of lightning, every peal of thunder. Felicity would be calm but worried about him, worried that he was on his way back home, caught in the storm, soaked to the skin. He wished he could project his thoughts to her and that she could hear his voice saying that he was all right and would be under shelter by nightfall, safe in the Clarendon Hotel.

  But he knew she could not read his thoughts and that she would be worried about him until he showed up, safe and sound.

  Brad shook these thoughts from his mind and rode Ginger over the undulating land toward the shawl of black smoke rising to the sky where the wind tore the clouds to shreds that evaporated like steam against the gray billows overhead.

  And then the tracks appeared again, as if by magic, and he saw that they were leading to a jumble of buildings. He recognized them as part of a mining operation, and he circled to high ground above them and rode a parallel course to the horse tracks. Ahead, he saw a cut in the land that he knew was a road, and he headed that way. As he approached, he saw the buildings more clearly and knew he was looking at an old smelter, nestled in a bowl of cleared land, surrounded by low bluffs and rocky hills pocked with caves, and as he drew closer to the road, he could make out the tailings below the mine entrances, the green plants that had taken hold and grown out of the debris.

  He saw a small horse barn and a pole corral, the main building with its stone chimney and a smaller, boxy building joined to it where the pale orange light from a lamp streamed through the windows. A man was rubbing down a horse outside the stable while another was pushing a wheel-barrow full of hay from a small building to the livery. Another man was pumping water into a trough.

  Three men outside, he thought. Maybe another in the barn. And at least one in the smelting mill. How many in the lamp-lit room?

  More than he could handle alone, he knew.

  He rode across the road to the other side to see if there were any more outbuildings or perhaps men working one of the mines. He dismounted to get a better look. He tied Ginger’s reins to a low bush and walked over to a small hill that blocked his view of the smelter.

  The moment he stepped around the hill, Brad knew he had made a mistake.

  There, to his right, was a small building that resembled a blockhouse or a guard station. There were square openings on the sides and portholes for firearms on the side facing him. The door swung open, and two men stepped out.

  The first man, a small, wiry individual wearing a long woolen overcoat, held a rifle in his hands. He also carried a pistol on his gun belt. The second man was slightly taller and heavier with a full graying beard, hatless, wearing a wool-lined jacket of worn leather. He wore only a pistol, but his dark eyes were oily, glistening like a wolf’s under heavy brows. He worked a cud of tobacco in his mouth. His lips were wet and stained a sickly brown.

  “Hold it right there, mister,” the first man said, holding his rifle at the ready but not pointing it at Brad.

  “Steady,” Brad said.

  “I’ll steady you, pilgrim,” the first man said, letting the rifle barrel fall a few inches. He was still not aiming, Brad knew, but he was getting ready to draw down on him. His finger was inside the trigger guard, but the rifle, a Winchester, was not yet cocked. “State your business.”

  Brad stared at the two men, assessing his chances if either should open the ball.

  “You better answer Ned here, mister,” the second man said, “or you’ll draw lead like a magnet.” His right hand floated down to the butt of his Colt.

  “What was the question?” Brad said, still studying the two men. They had feral eyes, but he saw no evidence that either of them had brains. Such men, especially when armed, were dangerous. They couldn’t think past sourdough biscuits and whores, but they could act like the mindless hulks they were.

  “I asked you what the hell you were doin’ here,” Ned said. “This here’s private property.”

  “Oh, it is?” Brad said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, you know now,” the second man said.

  “Shut up, Tom. I’m talkin’ to this man.”

  Tom snorted.

  “I was goin’ to tell him to get the hell out of here,” Tom said.

  “I want to know what he’s a-doin’ here,” Ned said. “You better answer me, mister.” He lowered the barrel of his rifle a few inches.

  Brad sensed that neither man was ready to shoot him in cold blood. They were guards, but probably had never shot a human being before. They looked like hunters, not man killers.

  “I was hunting rattlesnakes,” Brad said, in a clear, even voice that was almost audible.

  “Huh?” Tom said.

  “What’s that?” Ned said.

  “Rattlers,” Brad said. “I saw two of them go right under that guardhouse yonder. Big ones.”

  Both men looked down at the ground, then at the stones under the corners of the guardhouse.

  Brad slipped the rattles quietly from under his shirt, held them in the palm of his left hand so that they made no sound.

  Ned looked up at Brad and lowered his rifle.

  “Mister, you’re full of shit,” he said. “We ain’t seen a rattler since we been here.”

  “Well, you just might, then.”

  “You ain’t huntin’ no rattlers,” Tom said, lifting his gaze to Brad. “We’d a heard ’em if’n they crawled under the guardhouse. He’s lyin’, Ned.”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right, Tom.”

  Ned brought the rifle down, aiming it at Brad’s gut. Ned’s thumb raised to a point just above the hammer.

  Brad opened his hand. The rattles dropped. He shook the thong and the rattles crackled with sound.

  Tom jumped backward. Ned’s eyes widened and his thumb came to rest on the hammer of his Winchester.

  Brad’s right hand flew to the butt of his pistol, a blur of flesh so fast that Ned couldn’t follow it or understand its meaning. Then he saw the dark bluing of the pistol’s snout and his thumb pressed down on the hammer of his rifle.

  Brad Storm cocked his Colt on the rise as he dipped into a fighting crouch.

  He squeezed the trigger and the pistol bucked in his hand. It spewed flame and white smoke from its muzzle. The sound was like that of a cannon, and it was the last thing Ned heard.

  Ned crumpled into a lifeless heap. His rifle slipped from his hand. His mouth gaped and his eyes frosted over in a dull wide-eyed stare into nothingness.

  Tom recovered, and he clawed for the butt of his pistol.

  Brad swung the barrel of his pistol, aiming at Tom’s head.

  “You bring that iron out and you’re a dead man,” Brad said.

 
Tom’s hand froze in midair. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

  Brad walked up to him and removed Tom’s pistol from its holster.

  “You want to live, I take it,” Brad said.

  “Yessir, I surely do.”

  “Then you start walking. Real slow. You can tell the men you ride with that I’ll be back.”

  “Who in hell are you? The law?”

  “I’m your worst enemy,” Brad said.

  “What’s your name?”

  Tom still stood there, his hands half-raised, a look of puzzlement on his face. He looked as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. His breathing was shallow. His neck and forehead oozed sweat.

  “They call me Sidewinder,” Brad said.

  “Sidewinder? Ain’t no sidewinders in this part of the country.”

  “There’s one.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, me.”

  “Then you ain’t huntin’ rattlesnakes like you said?”

  “Oh, I’m hunting rattlesnakes all right. That’s why I’ll be back. You can count on it. Now get moving. Go on down to the smelter and tell your friends I mean business.”

  “You’re outnumbered, man. I can tell you that.”

  “The more the merrier,” Brad said and stuck Tom’s pistol into his belt.

  Tom turned and walked around the guardhouse to a path that led down to the smelter. He still held his hands up like a man surrendering to an enemy.

  Brad holstered his pistol and walked back to his horse. He mounted Ginger and headed for the road that would take him to Leadville. He put the spurs to Ginger and galloped out of sight of the guardhouse. Ahead were bulging behemoths of black clouds and the lancing streaks of lightning accompanied by the rippling roar of distant thunder. And against his face and body he felt the sweeping wind that already carried the moist promise of rain, the bone-chilling cold of the snowcapped mountains far beyond the advancing storm clouds that blocked the light from the sun and turned the day into night at high noon.

  SIX

  Felicity Storm looked up at the darkening sky as she left the milking shed. She carried a large oak bucket in her left hand. The fresh milk sloshed against the sides of the wooden pail. The surface of the milk bubbled with foam, but she didn’t spill any of it as she walked with quick, sure steps to the house. Pilar Aragon, Julio’s wife, stood in the doorway, her aproned belly swollen with the child she was carrying.

  Pilar reached for the handle of the bucket.

  Felicity shook her head.

  “No, Pilar. You must not strain yourself,” Felicity said. She swung the bucket away from Pilar’s grasp.

  “You are too kind,” Pilar said. “You make me feel useless.”

  Felicity swept past Pilar and set the bucket on the kitchen sideboard. The house was dark and felt oppressive to her.

  “You could light a lamp for us, Pilar,” Felicity said, surprised at her own irritation that had crept up unbidden to the surface of her mind.

  “Por seguro,” Pilar said. “Do you want the lamp in the front room lighted or the one in the kitchen?”

  “The one in here,” Felicity snapped. “There is no light in here at all.”

  Pilar waddled into the kitchen. The lamp on the table was barely visible. She walked to the sideboard.

  “Where do you keep the matches?” she asked.

  “They’re on top of the stove.”

  She could have reached up and handed the matches to Pilar, but some perversity inside her, some unvoiced resentment against Pilar, made her stand there and watch Pilar strain to reach the top of the stove. It was not a good place to keep matches, as Brad often told her, but she preferred handiness over safety.

  Pilar opened the matchbox and struck a match on the sandpaper strip. Then she lifted the glass chimney and touched the flame to the wick, turning the handle so that the wick rose from its berth. The lamp flared, and she pulled the match away and dropped the chimney back into place.

  “Do you want me to make the butter?” Pilar asked.

  “Sit down, Pilar,” Felicity said. “There, at the table. Let the milk settle.”

  Pilar sat down in one of the three chairs at the table. Felicity pulled one out and sat down opposite Pilar. Brad had told her not to have more than three chairs at their table. “One guest is enough for you and me,” he had said.

  “What if we have two guests for supper?” Felicity had asked him.

  “I would discourage that.”

  “Why?”

  “This isn’t a stage stop. It’s our home. Private. Just you and me.”

  “And an occasional guest,” she had said with a trace of sarcasm in her voice.

  “Very occasional.”

  The lamplight glinted off of Felicity’s raven hair. She had brushed it to a high sheen. Pilar’s black hair was dull and absorbed the light. Her thick braids hung over her shoulders and framed her large breasts like a pair of snakes. Felicity’s hazel eyes glinted with gold and amber, a flicker of green light.

  “You are very lucky, Pilar,” Felicity said, looking at the pregnant woman’s swollen belly.

  “Why do you say this?”

  “You have a husband to sleep with every night. You know where he is all the time. I am practically a widow. And I will not have a baby by a man who might not be in my bed when I wake up.”

  “But your husband will be back soon,” Pilar said.

  Felicity ignored Pilar’s remark.

  “I wash my husband’s seeds from my womb when we sleep together. I do not want to have his child.”

  “But that is not right, Felicity. That is your duty. To give your husband a child, perhaps a son.”

  “No, it’s not my duty. It’s his duty to be a husband. Instead, he works for a detective agency. He is on a string, and a man in Denver, Harry Pendergast, just pulls it whenever he wants to.”

  “But Pendergast gave you money when you had lost the cattle. You were able to buy the cows, no?”

  “Yes. Blood money. I thought Brad ...”

  Her voice drifted off, and Pilar looked at her quizzically, her black eyes glittering in the lamp glow, the faint rouge on her cheeks flaring a faint orange as she breathed through her nostrils. It was as if the twin snakes were hissing, Felicity thought.

  “What did you think?” Pilar asked.

  Felicity flattened both hands and held them at a level under the lamp so that Pilar could see them.

  “Look at these,” Felicity said.

  Pilar looked at the backs of Felicity’s hands.

  “What do you wish me to see?” Pilar bent over the table until her eyes were a few inches from Felicity’s hands.

  “They’re all withered,” Felicity said. “Like an old woman’s. I feel as if my whole body is going to dry up like old parchment, like a corn husk in autumn, and I’ll look like an old woman, a sunbaked prune.”

  Felicity drew her hands away and clenched them into fists. “They were once beautiful,” she said.

  “They are still beautiful,” Pilar said. “Rub them with butter or lard and the dryness will go away.”

  Felicity uncurled her fists and splayed her fingers onto the table. A sadness came into her eyes and flickered there like broken colored glass in a kaleidoscope.

  “Underneath,” she said, “they would be the same as now, old and shriveled like my aching heart.”

  “Your heart aches?” Pilar said, a tenderness and concern in her soft voice.

  Thunder boomed overhead and lightning stabbed the ground, lighting the windows with a startling flash. Both women jumped in their chairs; their bodies jerked into a stiffened sense of alarm. The peals of thunder rolled across the skies and faded into a black silence.

  “For Brad,” Felicity said when she had composed herself. “He seems so far away, even when he’s here. Here at home. Since he hunted down and killed all those men, those cattle rustlers, he has changed into someone I no longer know.”

  “But you know him. You have love for him.”

&nbs
p; Felicity sighed and shook her head slightly.

  “I love him, yes, but I don’t know if he still loves me. He seems—oh, I don’t know how to say it—distant, as if he and I lived in separate worlds. I hope it is not that way with you and Julio.”

  “No, it is not that way with me and Julio.”

  “Does—oh, I don’t know how to ask this without embarrassing you—but does Julio, I mean does he, when you both go to bed together, want you as much as you want him?”

  “It is equal,” Pilar said. “He wants me as much as I want him. Is this not the way with your husband?”

  “No. I must constantly entice Brad to make love to me.”

  “What is entice?” Pilar asked.

  “He seems not to notice my perfume or the lace on my nightgown, the way I purr when he comes close. Entice means something like setting out bait to catch an animal. I have to lure him to make love to me, and afterward I feel cheap, as if I’ve asked him for money so that he will lie with me.”

  “Perhaps if you do not chase him, set out the bait, he will chase you.”

  “No. He will ignore me and just go to sleep.”

  “I do not know what to say, Felicity. A man, a real man, like my Julio, has the lust in his heart. He wants me all the time. You know?”

  “Yes, I know. It is good when Brad and I make love, but it is . . .” Felicity paused and took a deep breath as if searching for the words that would make Pilar understand.

  “Yes?” Pilar said, waiting for the rest of it like a pupil in class when the teacher interrupts a story at a dramatic point.

  “When Brad notices my perfume and tells me how nice I look, then I feel as if I have tricked him, that I have deceived him into making love to me. I feel like a very wicked woman.”

  “But that is not wicked, Felicity. That is what a woman does when she wants a man. Don’t you know?”

  “I know, I guess, but I wish, just once, Brad would pick me up in his arms, throw me onto the bed, and, well, have his way with me. I want to feel his lust, his desire, his power. I want to know that he wants me more than I want him. I want to surrender to him like a woman should surrender to the man she loves. I want him to take me again and again, without stopping. I want him to leave me soaked with perspiration and worn out, lifeless, at peace with the world and floating high above myself in a state of pure rapture.”