Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 

Wetherill Springs was typical of thousands of frontier pesthole villes. There was a narrow main street that choked you in dust during the summer and drowned you in thick, black glutinous mud throughout the rest of the year.

 

The boardwalk was mostly rotted through and was lined by tumbling, leaning houses. There were a couple of stores, remnants of a church or a school, a row of outdoor privies with their fetid odors and swarms of glistening flies, a saloon with bat's-wing doors and stinking brass cuspidors that overflowed onto the stained planks of the floor. Most time you found that the gaudy and the drinker were in the same building. Occasionally it might have a name like The Silver Dollar or The Lucky Chance. Other times there could be a hand-lettered sign, weathered by rain and wind and frost, that would simply read "Sluts."

 

Ryan and J.B. must have visited hundreds of similar places and knew the variety of common factors that you always found in them faro dealers and barkeeps with false smiles permanently pasted in place; drink that would peel the enamel off of your teeth if you were too slow in swallowing it. Food was rudimentary, with grease as the common unifying factorfried eggs, blackened at the edges, with fried bacon, fried bread, fried tomatoes, fried chicken, fried potatoes and fried mushrooms.

 

The gaudy whores all looked the same. Ryan had once read an old guidebook that said that the big motel chains were so cunningly designed that you could wake up in one and not have the slightest clue whether you were in Tallahassee or Nantucket or Chinle or Missoula.

 

Sluts were like that.

 

You could wake up in bed with one, the remnants of a hangover throbbing at your temples and the sickly taste of bile in your throat. You'd look around the cheap room with faded pictures tacked to the plasterboard walls, the jug and bowl, unmatched or chipped or cracked, the narrow bed and rickety chair with one leg shorter than the rest.

 

Tawdry clothes hung on a rail behind a half-drawn curtain, stained and torn underwear on the floor with down-at-heel shoes or midcalf boots, the leather cracked and grease-stained.

 

And the nameless woman snoring at your side. Her cheeks would be puffy from the booze, or haggard from the jolt that made life barely tolerable, broken veins in the backs of her thighs and across the face, mouth hung open to show the broken teeth standing proud among the gaps, like the old telegraph poles strung across the high plains country.

 

And the indescribably appalling cavern of Eros at the junction of her flabby legs, a valley that truly concealed the shadow of death.

 

Her customers would also be interchangeable, hardly varying from one pesthole to another. You might get more Hispanic types in the Southwest, more Asiatic-looking men up toward the far Northwest. Hunters and farmers. Cowboys and wranglers. Local good old boys with brains the size of teacups and an infinite capacity for drinking, whoring and fighting.

 

Yes. Wetherill Springs was much like any of the thousands of frontier pestholes.

 

Only it was currently hosting a couple of dozen buffalo hunters, following the herds of animals as they moved restlessly across the prairies and mountains.

 

 

 

THE CARAVAN ARRIVED from the south in the middle of the following morning. Ellie drove the first wag, holding the pair of lions, with her daughters bringing in the other rigs. Ryan came along at the rear in the LAV-25, J.B. perched in the turret, riding shotgun on the big armored wag.

 

The gaudy house rejoiced in the name of The Shangri-La. There was an old orchard out back, with a broken picket fence partly enclosing it. There were ancient, blighted apple and pear trees, all with immensely long, spindly branches, some of them with a single withered fruit at their end.

 

After a quick tour of the small ville, Ellie picked that abandoned paddock to put on their show.

 

"Miss Satana and her wild animals will be appearing here at noon, three and six," she announced to the crowd of drinkers in the bar of the Shangri-La.

 

"Drop your panties!" yelled one of the buffalo hunters, a huge mountain of a man in a fur coat, a jagged scar disfiguring one side of his face.

 

"Show us your tits!" screeched another of the hunters, involved in an expensive game of draw poker at a corner table.

 

Ellie tapped the quirt on her boots, keeping her smile going at full radiance. "Gentlemen out there seem real interested in what I got to show that I'm not showing right now." There was a roar from the crowd, overlaid with whistling and table-banging. The tall, bald barkeep looked around worriedly.

 

"Show us, lady!"

 

"Well, now, there's times that I do and there's times that I don't. But what I will promise to show you" Someone bellowed something inaudible, and she dropped a curtsey in his direction. "Forgive me talking while you're interrupting, mister." The quip drew a burst of sympathetic laughter. "I promise to show you animals that none of you will ever have seen. A royal tiger, the meanest and most powerful carnivore in the entire ever-loving history of creation. A proven man killer with over thirty corpses to its name."

 

Ryan glanced sideways at J.B., who was standing at the bar with him and with the three daughters. "Good at it, isn't she?" he mouthed.

 

"Should see her when the shills are difficult," Julie said, downing a shot glass of whiskey in a single gulp.

 

"Shills?"

 

"The crowd, Ryan. Ma's at her best when her back's to the wall. This bunch is blind kittens for her."

 

Ellie was winding up her spiel. "Lions and bears and a tiger. Plus a dozen rattlers."

 

"Snakes?" asked J.B., who wasn't known for his love of crawling reptiles.

 

"Sure. Katie milks 'em every other day, but they got the fangs and Ma does get bit now and then."

 

"Out back!" Ellie shouted. "You know the times. Be noon real soon, friends. Come and be amazed."

 

 

 

WHEN RYAN and J.B. strolled over to their wag, they found four of the hunters standing around it. Another one was up on top, looking like he was trying, unsuccessfully, to lever open the turret hatch.

 

"What are you aiming to do if you manage to get inside?" Ryan asked, his voice friendly and gentle, his hand on the bun of the SIG-Sauer.

 

"Nothing, friend," the man by the turret replied. He had a straggling beard and wore a necklace of what looked like the skulls of minks. "Just sort of checking. Wouldn't object to that, would you now?"

 

"Yeah, we would," J.B. stated, noisily levering a flechette round under the hammer of the shotgun. "Anyone touches our wag could get hurt."

 

"Two of you outlanders," another man said, looking uncertainly at his companions for support. "There's plenty of us buffalo boys in town. Could be you and your one-eyed friend there that gets to be hurt."

 

Ryan had plenty of experience of this sort of prickly situation. Trader used to say that if you took one foot backward, then you'd likely end up with six feet of cold clay lying on your breast.

 

He didn't hesitate for a moment, utterly confident that the Armorer was ready for him to make the move and would back him all the way.

 

Ryan stepped in closer to the man, sizing him up. He was just on six feet tall, with his two hundred pounds centered around the belly and hips. He wore a torn vest, and a home-built single-shot flintlock pistol on the hip. His eyes were bloodshot, and Ryan could smell the 'shine on his breath.

 

"Hey, now" the hunter said, seeing the cold anger in Ryan's face.

 

He was watching for the automatic that lay under Ryan's right hand and never saw the wickedly curving left jab that didn't travel more than about fourteen inches before it exploded into his midriff.

 

Having delivered the punch, Ryan immediately took three paces back, finally drawing the SIG-Sauer, covering the man on top of the wag as well as his shaken companions.

 

The other reason for moving out of the way was to avoid the spurt of stinking vomit that fountained from the injured hunter's mouth as he doubled over in the dirt.

 

He lay groaning at Ryan's feet, his legs drawn up, face the color of milk and grits, mouth wide open as he fought to suck in some air.

 

"Fuck'n chilled 'im," said the man with the uncertain beard. "No cause"

 

Ryan looked up at him, gesturing with the barrel of the 9 mm blaster. "Down," he said. "You got a warning about being hurt. We only give one warning."

 

"You bastard." The words a painful whisper from the buffalo hunter on his hands and knees. "No call for that."

 

Ryan considered laying him out with a kick behind the right ear, but decided that the lesson had probably been learned by the group of men. Word of the lesson would spread quickly through Wetherill Springs.

 

"Now move away. Next person we see within spitting distance of our wag ends up hurt bad."

 

Two of the hunters helped up their injured friend, and they all shambled away, not even looking back at J.B. and Ryan over their shoulders.

 

"Nice punch," the Armorer commented. "Pretty. Trader would've been proud of you."

 

"Thanks." Ryan bolstered the blaster. "We going to watch this show?"

 

"Sure. Sounds to me like it could be real interesting."

 

It was more than interesting.