Scott was watching Johnny get cleaned up at the washstand from his perch on his bed. He was stretched out with both hands behind his neck. His jaw throbbed but he wasn’t about to mention that to Nurse Nightingale over there. Instead, he cleared his throat. “Uh, Johnny, what was it you were sayin’ about wanting to stay here tonight for a reason?”
Johnny re-buttoned his blue and white print shirt and turned towards his brother. “While I was waitin’ in the saloon for you, I overheard two hombres talking about a job they were here for. Something about Morro Coyo and Lancer.”
Scott sat up suddenly, bringing his hands around to rest on his bent knees. “Lancer? What were they talking about Lancer for?”
Johnny stepped toward his brother and tapped him sharply on the shoulder with his comb. “Well I dunno, brother, but I sure as heck am gonna find out tonight.”
Scott swung his legs around and started reaching for his boots. “I’m coming with you!”
Johnny sat on his own bunk and started pulling his boots over thick white socks. “Oh no you don’t, Scott. Johnny Madrid is taking care of this one. I can find out more on my own; I can mingle with this bunch. You’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” He had pulled on one boot and was working on the second one. “’Sides, you can’t drink and you’ll look mighty funny hanging around a hotel bar and not drinkin’ anything.”
Scott scowled. The look he shot his brother could have made a lesser man pee in his pants. As it was, Johnny knew his brother too well, and at this point was secure in his position as the one in possession of the upper hand.
Johnny released the boot and stamped his foot loudly on the floor to settle his foot in all the way. Then he stood and reached for his tan jacket.
“How do you know they’re in the hotel bar?”
Johnny searched around for his hat, spotting it on the floor by the washstand where he’d flipped it earlier. “I don’t. It’s a hunch.” He bent to pick up the hat and dusted it off. “I saw the two and another two meet up and come in this hotel. I’m guessing they’re meeting with the main man and I want to be around. Maybe make myself available. “
“And just what am I supposed to do while you’re doing all this skullduggery?”
Johnny shot him a questioning glance, deciding it prudent to not ask for a definition just now. “You’ll stay here and eat Obediah’s soup and take that dope and rest.”
As if on cue, a loud knock sounded at the door. Johnny lunged for it. “Speak of the devil.” He glanced over at his fuming brother. “Oh, by the way, if anyone asks, you’re Scott Madrid,” he added quickly.
Scott’s eyes widened. “WHA…?”
Johnny swung the door open quickly and revealed the stunningly draped Pearl who dripped with jewels both real and costume. Apparently she was one who considered beauty a result of quantity. She floated in the door without being admitted holding a large tray aloft.
“My man, Percy was on his break so I decided to bring this up to you myself before it got cold.” She set the large tray down on the bed in front of Scott. While in his immediate proximity, she reached out those two massive hands and squeezed is face between them. “You poor dear. You look like you’re in so much pain!” The fact that her palm was resting directly over the source of his pain was lost on her. “Well, never you mind. Obediah’s special chicken soup will fix you right up and then you can sleep in our luxurious bed and no one will disturb you. You have Pearl’s word on that.” She gave his head a little shake and let him go.
Johnny was quietly edging his way out the door when Pearl rounded on him. “And you young man! Are you leaving your poor brother in this unfortunate condition all by himself?”
Johnny glanced over at his ‘poor unfortunate brother’ and was met with a disturbingly amused smirk that immediately turned to a hang-dog expression when Pearl turned back to him momentarily. “Uh, no ma’am. I was just goin’ to take care of some business and then I was gonna come back and tuck ol’ Scott in.”
Pearl’s eyes narrowed and then an amused smile split her face. “You are so full of it, handsome.” She turned and winked at Scott. “And I’m just a hovering old woman,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. Shooing Johnny out the door, she said, “You go on out. I’ll see that your brother is settled and that he takes his medicine. You git on, now. Scoot!”
Johnny looked over at Scott who shot him a withering-mixed-with-terrified gaze. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be back shortly.” Johnny turned quickly and headed off down the hall at a good clip before he could be stopped. Settling his hat on his head, he smiled broadly as he tripped nimbly down the stairs to the garish lower level of Pearl’s establishment. He’d have hell to pay from Scott later, but it was all worth it to see the look on his face.
His smile died on his face when he spotted the object of his search seated at a corner table in the bustling hotel bar. The tall white-haired man was unmistakable, even across a crowded room. Johnny scanned the rest of the table and spotted the shorter bulldog man and the two that had occupied the neighboring table over at the saloon. Joining them was a man he’d seen in Green River. They had not been introduced, but Johnny knew him to be Clay Elizondo.
Elizondo was an imposing figure, as tall as Murdoch, about the same age, broad shouldered and solid. He had the look of a past-his-prime prizefighter who had been unable to keep away the middle-aged paunch, but retained his powerful build.
Johnny moved casually over to the end of the bar nearest the table and ordered a beer. When it was set before him, he picked it up, drew it to his lips and turned around as if to casually scan the room. There was a high stakes poker game going on near the windows that overlooked the street. A number of people had gathered around to watch.
From his vantage point, he could see his quarry well, but he could not hear over the din of the party atmosphere in the room. He fleetingly wondered if the prizefighter would recognize him as Johnny Lancer, then quickly dismissed the thought. He had seen the man once in Green River and asked a shop owner who he was. The man had not seen him, and Johnny had not been back to that town since that event. He was fairly certain that he was anonymous here in Everafter; anonymous, at least as far as Johnny Lancer was concerned. So far, he had not been to a town where Johnny Madrid was completely unknown.
He was brought out of his inner thoughts when the four men at the corner table abruptly stood up and left the room, trooping up the stairs to the second floor of the hotel.
Johnny unobtrusively put his beer down and followed, bounding lightly up the stairs as the men rounded the corner at the top. He stopped at the top of the stairs and peered around the corner, spotting the men just as they rounded the corner at the far end of the hall.
Johnny hurried quietly down the hall but then he had to slow his pace and tip his hat when a well-dressed man and woman stepped out of their room. They moved off toward the stairs and Johnny hurried to the end and peered around the corner, pausing to look cautiously down the second hallway, the same hallway where his and Scott’s room was located. He glimpsed a foot disappear just as a door about halfway down closed. It was two doors away and on the same side as his own room.
Johnny stepped down the hall to his room door and entered quietly in case Scott was asleep. The room was darkened as the sun had gone down, but an oil lamp illuminated the half of the room where Scott lay stretched out on top of his bed, a book lying open on his chest. He snored softly. The remains of Obediah’s soup bowl, and teacup sat on a tray next to the bed. Scott had either eaten it all, or poured it out the window.
Johnny moved quietly over to the window and peered out into the darkness, not at the ground below, but at the balcony. Yes, there was a very narrow, decorative balcony about three feet below the window ledge and maybe a foot deep. It had latticework attached to the outer edge that stood up to about knee level. It didn’t look too substantial, but Johnny hoped it would support his weight. They were on the side of the hotel that ran along a side street, so he hoped no one would spot him from below. He quietly lifted the heavy wood-framed window and winced as it let out a squeal of wood on wood.
“What the hell are you doing?” The voice behind him made him jump and drop the window. Lacking any support, the heavy window slid down slowly but stopped short of the sill, coming to rest about three inches above.
“Dammit, Scott! You scared me!” he said in a loud whisper. He let go the window and turned to face his older brother.
“I scared you? You come sneaking in here in the dark, and start messing with the window…”
Johnny shushed him and moved quickly over to the bed, glancing back at the still partially open window.
“Shhh, they might hear you.”
Scott’s eyes widened as he tossed the book on the bed and sat up. “Who?” he whispered, now interested.
“The four men from the bar. They’re in a room two doors down.”
Scott swung his long legs off the bed and sat on the edge. “You gonna go out the window?” he said, quickly getting into the spirit of things.
Johnny reached over and turned the lamp wick down until it was almost, but not quite out. He then moved back over to the window. “I’m gonna try to hear what they’re saying through their window. You stay here and be quiet!”
Scott silently got up and accompanied his brother over to the window, and helped him lift it, holding it for him as Johnny slipped through. Johnny tested the balcony, holding to the windowsill as he bounced gingerly. Since he didn’t crash to the ground below, he figured it was sound enough.
He glanced up at his brother, gave him a reassuring wink, and began to move off toward the window to his left. His destination was easy to see because the room in question poured light out onto the balcony. They must have had every lamp in the room turned full up. As he moved closer, he heard voices. They weren’t speaking loudly, but he could make out a few words from several feet away. Moving up to the window’s edge, he leaned over just enough to peek around.
The four men he recognized from the bar were all there, in addition to one other man. This one he knew. It was a face that he’d hoped he’d never see again.
Virgil McCoy was a gunfighter that Johnny had run into in Nogales. Virgil was a few years older than Johnny, tall and wiry. He had a mustache that drooped below his chin. He fancied it his trademark and he could always be seen stroking it, or twirling it. He was sharp, he was good, and he hated being called Virgil.
Johnny knew he might very well have met his match when they had met three years ago. They had become uneasy allies in a local war, so Johnny’s curiosity about whether he could take McCoy had never been tested. He had seen McCoy work though. He lacked scruples and he was cold, like a shark. After they finished the job that they had been hired for, Johnny observed as McCoy took another job locally. What he saw sickened him. He left Nogales shortly after that and had never seen McCoy again, but had heard snippets of stories for several years. McCoy had a reputation for taking any job if the money was right. When he took a job, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
A cold knot took up residence in the pit of Johnny’s stomach. A strong sense of foreboding enveloped him like a fog. He leaned back against the brick wall of the hotel and swallowed hard. Listening to the rumbling voices inside, he heard what he was most afraid he would hear.
The man, Brubaker was hiring guns for Elizondo. McCoy was apparently his chief gun. McCoy had that same arrogant air about him that Johnny remembered. A smugness that made you want to slap him silly just for being in the room.
They were planning to leave soon for Elizondo’s camp outside town. They were going to make a move against Lancer. That was all he could gather from the snippets that he could hear. He heard his father’s name mentioned. He heard a reference to an orphanage and a land grant.
Johnny knew there was a very large church-run orphanage on the eastern-most border of Lancer, around sixty or seventy miles from the house. Murdoch supported them financially and possibly with land, he wasn’t sure. Johnny mentally kicked himself for not taking more of an interest in the business end of the ranch. He knew there were remote land holdings, but had not made it his business to learn more.
He had apparently arrived near the end of the meeting because the men started to move around the room, retrieving hats and making ready to leave. Brubaker was expecting more arrivals the following day.
Johnny waited until all of the others had left, leaving only Brubaker and Elizondo in the room. They smoked cigars and drank from an assortment of bottles on the table.
Elizondo’s back was to Johnny, so his words weren’t clear, but Elizondo had continued to talk about Lancer. It seemed that he spoke of Lancer as if it were a thing, not a man. It was an institution to be taken and dismantled. Murdoch’s name was rarely mentioned, and his sons, never. Perhaps Elizondo did not know Murdoch personally and therefore knew nothing about his family. That could work to their advantage.
The orphanage was mentioned by name several times. Our Lady of Hope Children’s Home and Refuge. A high falutin’ name for an orphanage, Johnny thought. It seemed to be the land and buildings that Elizondo was after. The orphans were just in the way it seemed.
Apparently the orphanage was housed in an ancient Spanish estate with many outbuildings including a mission. The buildings may have been valuable to a historian, but he doubted that Elizondo was very interested in history. No, there was something else.
Johnny’s legs were stiff. He was cold and his back hurt pressed stiffly against the cold brick. McCoy got up to leave, and Johnny took that as a signal to move. Nothing else would be learned tonight. Looking back towards his own window, he could see Scott’s head poked out and looking at him through the darkness. Johnny quietly, and with infinite care, moved back towards Scott, inching along the wooden balcony trying to avoid loose boards, or anything that would make a noise. As he neared their room, Scott reached out a hand and Johnny grasped it as Scott helped him inside.
Thankful to be in the relative warmth of the room, Johnny collapsed on his bed, his mind racing a mile a minute. Scott sat next to him.
“Well?” Scott asked anxiously.
Johnny rose up on his elbows. “Well, I think we’re in trouble.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
Finally Scott looked down at his brother. “You will explain that, won’t you?”
“Did you take your medicine?” Johnny asked absently.
Scott sighed. He knew Johnny wasn’t meaning to be cruel, he was just preoccupied. “Johnny, what happened over there?”
“Did you?”
“No, I wanted to wait until you got back. Now tell me!” The shouting made him wince and his hand flew to his jaw.
Johnny got up from the bed and walked over to get the little brown bottle that Kate had given them. He poured a half glass of water from the carafe on the table and put five drops of the medicine in it and swirled it around. Handing it to his brother, he said, “As soon as you drink this.”
Scott glared at him, but took the medicine and swallowed it down in one gulp. “There, satisfied?” he said as he involuntarily shuddered.
Johnny shrugged off his jacket and sat to remove his boots. “Yup.”
Scott stood up menacingly over his brother. “If you don’t start talkin’…”
Johnny smiled, though he didn’t feel too happy just then. “Okay, okay. Sit down.”
Scott sat on his own bed and listened raptly as Johnny relayed everything he’d seen and heard both downstairs and in the room down the hall.
Chapter 11
Jess had ridden straight for several days, stopping only for short breaks, and to sleep when he had to. He couldn’t put his finger on his anxiety, but he was pushing himself to get to California and the end of his journey.
He hadn’t been in a town in days. He’d seen signs, but he skirted them. He stopped at a small farm and bought some feed for Traveler from the owner and they had given him some biscuits in the deal. They didn’t have much and he thanked them graciously for their generosity. They had allowed him to spend the night in their barn, and he had ridden out again early the next morning before the chickens were up.
Jess could feel a melancholy laying over him. He wasn’t normally given to it, but it took him anyway and he was too tired to fight it. His hope lay in California where he could start all over again. He’d heard that was why people went to California- for the many opportunities and to start over. He wanted that. He wanted to forget.
For all he knew, he could be in California already. The landscape was new. There were gentle rolling hills of yellow grass and patches of green trees. Not the towering pines of the south, or the scrubby bushes of Wyoming, but big, thick dark green trees of substance and weight. From a distance they looked low and squat, as wide as they were tall.
Without realizing it, he had headed right into a storm. He had been dozing in the saddle. It was late afternoon and he had let Traveler go. The horse had stopped at some point and was grazing happily in the thick grass of a small valley. Jess looked up and saw menacing black clouds overhead and he felt the first drops of rain hit the brim of his hat.
Looking around for shelter, he saw a small copse of the trees he had admired from a distance, and he nudged Traveler toward them. He knew a tree wasn’t the best place to be in a lightning storm, but neither was out on the open grasslands. He chose shelter from the wind and some of the wet over the remote possibility of lightening finding his hiding place.
As he sat huddled under a makeshift shelter made from his bedroll, he tried to remember why he had decided to come to sunny California. The rain pelted down in waves so thick it was hard to see. He was soaked to the skin; the bedroll provided no protection after about two minutes of the relentless deluge. The ground on which he sat was soaked and soft with thick mud.
He had lost sight of Traveler who had been tied on a long lead to a nearby tree. He berated himself for allowing himself to get in this fix. Jess was trail savvy, had been drifting for five years before he stopped in Laramie. He knew to look ahead at weather and find proper shelter. He’d allowed himself to get too tired. He’d gotten careless and a very uncomfortable night was the price he would pay.
Despite the uncomfortable wet and the penetrating cold, he lay down on his side, pulled his bedroll over him and fell into a deep sleep. He did not wake the entire night.
The next morning, a cold soft nudge woke him. He squinted up into the face of his horse, almost nose to nose with him. Glancing around he saw that the sun was hidden behind more dark clouds, and the rain continued to fall, not as harshly as the night before, but still a gully washer. He gently shoved Traveler’s nose out of the way and pushed himself to a sitting position.
A hitch caught in his ribs; a sharp pain that made him gasp and pulled him up short. A moment later, a hard cough racked his body and the pain in his rib stabbed like a knife. When the coughing fit was over, he was left limp with exhaustion and out of breath. He lay back down on the cold ground, unable to get up, and unwilling to try.
He was cold; a dangerous cold that seeped into the bones and with no way to get warm. He closed his eyes and tried to think what to do. It wasn’t long before the world faded away to blackness. His last thought was that Slim was gonna kill him for gettin’ in this mess.
Chapter 12
Johnny and Scott had stayed up discussing and planning until Scott became too sleepy to keep his eyes open. Johnny noticed his pupils were big and his eyes unfocused as he struggled to concentrate on the conversation. Johnny recalled the last time he had been given a similar drug. He’d slept for two days.
Johnny lay on his bed, hands behind his head as he stared into the darkness. He heard Scott’s soft breathing and an occasional snore and rustle of sheets as he would change position.
Johnny couldn’t close his eyes. The implications of what he had overheard were stirring around in his head. Lancer was in danger. Murdoch’s life was in danger too if Virgil McCoy was involved. Johnny was well aware of the standard gun-for-hire tactics. Go for the head man as soon as possible and hope that the rest of the organization would disintegrate. It was an old battle tactic. Johnny ruefully thought that it was old because it worked.
He resented having to trot out Johnny Madrid again. Johnny Madrid was himself, but a part of himself that he thought he had put behind him. He was not ashamed of Madrid, he never attempted to make his past a secret, but after coming to Lancer, he wanted to start over.
He had never done anything technically illegal as Madrid, but he had done things of which he was not proud. It just seemed that circumstances demanded Madrid put in an appearance now and then. Johnny wasn’t above it, but he was weary of the need for his old friend.
The sun was still just below the horizon when Scott’s throbbing jaw woke him. He rolled over, holding his hand to his jaw, tenderly probing in a perverse attempt to locate and subdue the source of the ache. The medicine had helped him sleep, but had obviously reached the limits of its effectiveness sometime during the night.
He sat up and looked over to his brother, visible in the gray dawn across the room. Johnny was sprawled on his stomach across the bed, one arm hugging the pillow on which his head rested, while the other hung over the side of the bed and dangled above the floor. He had not bothered to remove any clothes except for his boots and his hat was hanging by its strap from the post at the head of the bed.
The room was cold and Scott decided it was too early to get up. He stood up stiffly and darted across the room on bare feet, pulled the quilt out from under Johnny’s feet and laid it over his sleeping brother, folding the top away from his face. Then he took Johnny’s dangling hand and pushed it up under the quilt, noting how cold his fingers were.
Then he moved over to the steam radiator near the window and turned the knob, releasing the steam that would heat the iron contraption, and presumably the room as well, with its radiant heat. He had seen these in Boston, but had not encountered one this far west before. He thought fleetingly of the perversity of California weather at this time of year. In a few hours, this room would be stifling. Quickly he darted back to his own bed and dove under the covers, pulling them up to his chin.
Scott tried to concentrate on anything other than his throbbing mouth. The memory of Kate, her green eyes, her soft rounded curves; anticipation of seeing her again today occupied him for a few minutes, but that quickly led to what Johnny had learned last night. He knew Johnny would put himself right in the middle of it. Johnny and trouble were old acquaintances and Scott knew that Johnny could no more just up and go home, than he could fly.
He glanced over at his younger brother just as he began to stir. Johnny moaned and turned onto his side, hugging his pillow as he sighed deeply. His eyes had lazily opened momentarily, but he was not yet awake, nor was there any awareness in them. He settled again and Scott resumed his disinterested examination of the ceiling.
After a few minutes, Scott rolled over, pulled his quilt up and tried to go back to sleep.
