Diamond In The Rough (Bodie Kendrick - Bounty Hunter Book 3) Read online

  “Oh, I think she understood you just fine,” Amelia replied.

  Now Mama’s tone became a full-fledged screech. “Pao!”

  “Oh, shit. That ain’t good,” Dawson said.

  Before Kendrick could ask what he meant by that, the answer became all too clear. A seam in the curtains behind and slightly to one side of Mama suddenly shot open and the hulking shape of a man lunged into view. The newcomer was at least a half foot taller than Kendrick’s six-one, shoulders as broad as the hauling bed of a freight wagon. Hands the size of shovels hung at his sides. The crown of his head was shaved bald, with heavy-lidded eyes beneath scowling brows and a long mustache dripping down like black icicles on either side of a cruel mouth.

  “These people are intruders,” Mama said to him. “They are not welcome here. I want them gone immediately.”

  The giant took a deliberate step forward, edging closer to Kendrick. He raised one massive arm and pointed down the short hallway, back the way they had come. The meaning was plain.

  Kendrick stood his ground. Ordinarily, by now he would have had the .44 in his fist with its muzzle aimed dead center between the giant’s eyes. But both Sheriff Watson and Amelia had pointed out within the past dozen hours that he was getting a mite too hasty about going around shooting folks. If their goal here was to try and get some answers out of the hombre they’d taken to calling Fancy Vest—instead of filling him full of lead—then it followed that Kendrick ought to hold off on opening fire at the first sign of trouble.

  “Sorry, pal,” Kendrick said to the pointing giant. “But we came here on some business, and we ain’t finished yet.”

  “On the contrary, Pao, their business here is finished,” said the crone. “It is time for them to leave!”

  Pao stopped pointing and brought his hand to rest on Kendrick’s shoulder. The weight of it was like a sack of sand. If the giant wanted to, Kendrick thought, he could probably close that hand and grind the shoulder bones to powder.

  But, instead, Pao merely gripped the shoulder, firmly but almost gently. Then he shoved Kendrick. It didn’t really seem like much of a shove, but it was enough to send Kendrick staggering back two full steps.

  And while he’d been able to will himself not to draw his gun, getting shoved like that triggered an instinctive response there was no chance at all for Kendrick to try and hold in check. He retaliated instantly with a sizzling right cross that crashed squarely against Pao’s jaw.

  The blow would have flattened most men. But the only reaction it got from Pao was to rock him back on his heels slightly, cause him to blink once or twice, and then frown as if annoyed. Kendrick was shocked by the minimal effect his punch had, but the last thing he could afford to do was hold back now. So he immediately cocked his left fist and aimed a body shot to the giant’s exposed ribs. It was like hitting the trunk of a tree and all it netted was a faint huff! of expelled air.

  Before Kendrick could launch another punch—which he remained hell bent on doing—Pao’s great paws grabbed him by a double fistful of shirtfront, lifted him three feet off the ground, then hurled him through the air like a rag doll. The giant moved with amazing speed and performed the task as effortlessly as someone else might have tossed one of the colorful pillows from Mama’s couch.

  Kendrick slammed against and partly on top of the shelves of smoking paraphernalia. The shelves held for a fraction of a second but then splintered and broke apart under the impact of his weight. He was dumped to the ground amidst broken slabs of wood and a spill of rattling, clanging pipes and lamps.

  An unintelligible wail of anger and anguish—coming from Mama—cut through the smoky air.

  Kendrick scrambled to regain his footing, but the jumble of broken wood and odd-shaped items rolling around underneath him made it hard to get his balance. Pao was lumbering toward where he lay.

  He couldn’t tell where Dawson had gotten to, but suddenly Kendrick saw Amelia launch herself at the giant’s back, clawing and scratching and pounding the mass of muscle and flesh with her knobby fists. Surely she knew her efforts were having little effect, but at least she was trying to distract the man-monster.

  Pao just kept plodding forward, though, as if he didn’t notice. Then, almost nonchalantly, he reached around behind himself and got hold of one of Amelia’s arms. Giving the limb a twist and then an outward yank, he peeled the girl from his back and sent her tumbling.

  Kendrick spat an enraged curse.

  Pao was hovering over him now, starting to lean forward, getting ready to reach down and drag him to his feet. As Pao leaned closer, Kendrick suddenly spotted something he might be able to use to his advantage. One of the slabs of broken shelving had fallen in such a way that it lay partly across one of the blocky uprights—now tipped over on its side—that had formerly supported the shelves. The longer end of the slab extended directly under Pao as he leaned in; the shorter end, thrusting upward, was only a few inches from Kendrick’s right foot. Desperately, Kendrick raised his right leg and then slammed his heel as hard as he could down on the elevated end of the slab.

  The longer extension of thick wood flipped up sharply and smacked Pao right across the mouth, just under the blunt tip of his nose. The sound of the blow was meaty and solid. Pao’s face jerked away from the impact, its expression confused. The downward momentum of his head and shoulders halted.

  Kendrick didn’t hesitate. He stomped his foot again and again the wooden slab snapped up and banged against Pao’s mouth and chin. This time the giant tilted to the right and his knee on that side dropped to the ground. Blood bubbled from between his lips and trickled out one corner of his mouth.

  Fueled by having found a chink in the monster’s invincibility, Kendrick clambered madly to shove himself to a standing position. Pao remained on one knee, weaving unsteadily, eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to get re-focused.

  Mama continued to emit her long, keening wail.

  Once more on his feet, Kendrick knew he had to act fast in order to maintain the tenuous advantage he’d gained. Yanking the Bowie knife from the sheath on his left hip, he swept the razor-sharp blade in an upward arc and cut the horizontal rope from which a row of curtains hung directly behind where Pao teetered. The curtains spilled down, unfolding in a heap over the partially kneeling giant. Even in his dazed state, Pao instinctively flailed against being enveloped in this manner, his body twisting, his thick arms swinging and swatting—all of which only served to entangle him more tightly and cause him to topple over onto one side.

  Looking past the fallen giant, Kendrick saw that Dawson had evidently assisted Amelia back to her feet and the two of them stood watching, wide-eyed, as he battled Pao.

  “I’ve got this,” he shouted. “Go find Fancy Vest and drag him out here!”

  They disappeared.

  Mama continued to wail.

  Spinning around, Kendrick reached for one of the tall, wrought iron candle stands. He plucked the row of candles from their holders, dropped them to the ground and stomped out their flames. Then, after hefting the sturdy stand, checking it for balance and weight, he turned back to the still-struggling shape of Pao trying to get untangled from the curtains.

  The round ball of the giant’s head was easy to make out under the writhing folds of cloth. Kendrick drew back the stand and swung it like a baseball bat. The clang of iron against cloth, flesh, and skull rang out smartly and most of Pao’s struggling stopped. It took one more swat with the makeshift club before the struggling ceased altogether and the lumpy shape under the blanket fell flat.

  Kendrick tossed aside the candle stand and took a minute to catch his breath. He’d broken a sweat. He stepped over and retrieved his Stetson, which had gotten knocked off when he was flung into the shelves of smoking paraphernalia. After sleeving some of the sweat from his face and forehead, he settled the hat back in place.

  Then he turned to Mama, who was still wailing.

  “Knock it off,” he growled, drawing his Colt and leisurely swinging
the muzzle in her direction. “I’ve held off usin’ this about long enough. So stop your damn caterwallin’ or I stop it for you.”

  Mama’s mouth clapped shut with a sharp smack of empty gums. Her eyes went momentarily wide, fearful of what he might do. And then, when no bullet came, they narrowed again to hate-filled slits. “You are a pig and a coward,” she hissed, “to aim a gun at a helpless old woman.”

  Kendrick eyed her coldly. “I ain’t rightly sure you’re even human, you crone, but you for damn sure ain’t helpless. If you’d’ve shown a little simple cooperation, it didn’t have to come to this.”

  Her mouth curled into an ugly thing and she spat at him.

  Kendrick ignored her. Turning his head, he called, “Hickory! Amelia! You havin’ any luck findin’—?”

  They reappeared at that moment, stepping through a seam in the curtains and shoving ahead of them a tousle-haired, bleary-eyed man in a patterned cowhide vest.

  Kendrick smiled faintly and gave an approving nod. “Good work,” he said. He twirled the Peacemaker once, just for the hell of it, before dropping it back into its holster. “I think our welcome here is about wore out. Let’s take our new friend and find some place a little more hospitable to have a chat with him.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “You warned me not to do anything to spoil you havin’ a nice, peaceful breakfast. Remember?”

  “And you figured leaving a man handcuffed to the hitch post out front of my office—right where he’d be the first blamed thing I saw when I got here this morning—wasn’t gonna do anything to upset the fine meal I’d finished only a short time before?”

  “You didn’t say nothing about after you’d had breakfast,” Kendrick protested. “There’s only so much a body can guarantee. And, in case you didn’t notice, ain’t a single bullet hole in that rascal, either.”

  “Well, hallelujah for that much,” Sheriff Watson declared as he paced back and forth behind his desk. In one hand he brandished an empty tin coffee cup, impatiently waiting for something to pour into it as soon as the pot on top of the round-bellied stove in the middle of the room was finished brewing.

  In front of the desk, off to one end, Kendrick lounged on a straight-backed wooden chair, its front legs tilted up so that his shoulders rested against the wall. He had a stack of Wanted posters in his lap and was slowly thumbing through them.

  As he continued to pace, Watson jabbed a thumb toward the heavy wooden door that led back to the cellblock. “What’d you say the name of my new guest is? Grimes?”

  “What he claims. Cornelius Grimes is the whole of it, he says. Figure it’s probably the truth. If a fella was gonna make up a name for himself, seems likely he could do better than that.”

  Watson grunted. “And you’re sure he’s one of the jaspers who hit the stagecoach and tried to ambush you in the street last night?”

  “He admitted as much before I cuffed him to that post.”

  “But he’s singin’ a different tune now. According to what he told me before you showed up to unlock him, he says he only made those admissions to keep you from beating on him some more.”

  “Both Amelia Gailwood and Hickory Dawson can positive ID him for the stagecoach business. Far as the attempt on me last night, I already told you I couldn’t make him out. But considerin’ he was with Reese Eckert and all, is there really any doubt?”

  The truth of the matter was that Kendrick had beaten some information out of Grimes after hauling him out of Mama Ling’s in the wee hours. Kendrick had no intention of going into every detail with the sheriff right now, but Grimes’s admission to participating in the stagecoach attack and the attempted ambush of Kendrick was only part of what he’d spilled.

  They’d found a little creek off one corner of the tent city and, while Amelia and Dawson stood by uneasily, Kendrick had sloshed Grimes in and out of the water until some of the opium haze was washed away. Then he’d dunked him some more, mixing in a few punches and threats of holding him under past any sign of bubbles, until the prisoner was babbling everything he knew about anything. A surprising amount of it had to do with the recovery of the Devotion Diamond. Which meant that Brandon Totter—or at least his reach—was a hell of a lot closer than Amelia had anticipated.

  Once Kendrick was satisfied he had gotten everything there was to get out of the no-account gunny, he’d dragged him to the hitch post in front of the jail and left him cuffed there for the sheriff to find when he got to work in the morning. He’d also left a note impaled on a nail sticking out of the post, telling Watson to send for him once he’d discovered the surprise package that was waiting for him.

  After that, with a couple hours still left before daybreak, Kendrick had gone back to his room at Harrup’s to grab what shuteye he could.

  “You’re right,” Sheriff Watson agreed now. “If Miss Gailwood and Hickory Dawson will come by and sign statements identifying this owlhoot, that will be plenty for me to hold him behind bars until some judge hands down a final sentence. I’m sure that Cyrus Cavendish’s lawyers for the stage line will come up with enough charges to put the damn fool away for a long time. Hell, considerin’ two men got killed, he might even get the gallows.”

  “Miss Gailwood and Hickory will be by,” Kendrick said confidently. “In fact, if you get the statements prepared, I’m pretty sure they’ll want to come by and take care of them yet this morning. You see, the lot of us will be heading out of Lowdown some time later. As soon as provisions and other necessary preparations have been taken care of.”

  Now that the coffee was finally ready, Watson froze with the pot poised to pour some into his cup. “How’s that?” he said, frowning. “What do you mean you’re all leaving town?”

  “I mean we’re ridin’ out to tend to the business that brought Miss Gailwood and her companions here in the first place. I’ve hired on as a replacement for Crandall, the detective who got killed. Hickory will be joining us, too.”

  “Well now. Kind of a sudden turn of events, ain’t it?”

  Kendrick flipped over the last of the Wanteds he’d been looking through. “No matches here—either by name or description—to fit our boy Cornelius,” he said. He let his chair tip back level and reached to place the stack of papers on the sheriff’s desk.

  “Are you gonna answer my question or not?” Watson wanted to know.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, there’ve been a lot of things happenin’ sudden-like around here.”

  “Yeah. Mostly since you showed up.”

  Kendrick pointed. “You gonna pour yourself some of that coffee you’ve been so antsy to get at, or wait until the pot’s gone cold?”

  “Damn right I’m going to have myself some,” Watson said, looking agitated as he finally proceeded to pour a stream of steaming, potent-looking brew from the pot.

  “How about offerin’ me some? I had a mighty chopped-up night’s sleep, you know, going out and rounding up a dangerous criminal for you like I did.”

  “Extra cups in the desk drawer, bottom right hand side.”

  Kendrick rummaged to find one, then walked over to the sheriff, holding his selection out to be filled.

  As he did some more pouring, Watson said, “You’ll have to pardon me if I’m a little slow expressin’ my gratitude for all your work thinnin’ out the criminal herd in my county. Uninvited, I might add.”

  The lawman finished pouring and then placed the pot back on the stove without ever taking his gaze off Kendrick. “But like I told you yesterday, I’ve thought from the beginning there was something fishy about that writer gal and her bunch. You had thoughts along those same lines, as I recall. Now, all of a sudden, you’re tellin’ me you’re ready to throw in with her. You expect me to keep from thinking that makes it all seem even fishier?”

  Kendrick held Watson’s gaze as he blew across the top of his coffee cup. “Since you and I talked yesterday, I’ve had some things explained to me,” he said. “I understand better now what it is Miss Amelia is after and
why she’s going about things the way she is.”

  “Care to pass along some of that explainin’?”

  “Don’t reckon that’s my place. I’ll leave it to Miss Amelia to explain what she wants to who she wants. You can ask her about it when she comes by to sign those papers.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  “Just keep one thing in mind, Sheriff. We’re not on the wrong side of things in this. Not Amelia Gailwood, not any of the rest of us in it with her. But there’s more trouble on the way. The stagecoach ambush was just the start. If you want, you can try and get more particulars out of your new prisoner as far as who put him and his pals up to it. I’ll say this: The name Anse Wilby came out of what he told me. I’d be surprised if that name ain’t already familiar to you.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I shouldn’t have to tell you that if he’s been hired by those who are after the same thing as Amelia, they’re the kind who won’t let anything stand in the way of getting what they want.”

  Watson smiled thinly. “I might say thanks for the warning … if it wasn’t so damn vague as to be meaningless.”

  “I have no way of knowing where the real trouble will erupt. I only know Wilby is on his way here. Just watch out you don’t get caught in the crossfire. Stay real sharp, real frosty. That plain enough?” Kendrick’s mouth spread in his own thin smile. “Don’t think I especially give a damn what happens to you, you nosy old star packer, but I won’t have time to collect all of the bounty money owed me before I light out in a little while. I just want to make sure you’re still here, in one piece, to have it waitin’ when I come back for it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  It was past noon before they got started.

  Kendrick and Amelia rode in front; Faleejah and Kazmir came next; Hickory Dawson brought up the rear, leading two heavily-laden pack horses.

  They rode in the direction of the Dos Cabezas, angling northeast toward the first slopes of the foothills, following the main trail that led up to the heaviest concentration of mining activity. The sun, starting its descent in the western sky, poured heat down onto their shoulders and threw lengthening shadows on the ground ahead of them.