DEAD TOMORROW

A CORT STORY THAT WILL KICK YOU RIGHT IN THE GUT WITH ITS INTENSITY OF ACTION AND EMOTION. (NC-17 for sexual content)

By Darcy

 Redemption, Arizona Territory

"Señor? You will consider our offer?"

Cort stared at the elderly Mexican who had taken it upon himself to act as alcalde in the aftermath of Ellen's vengeance, and then dropped his gaze to the tin star she'd flung at him. Silently accusing, almost mocking, it was lying on the rough wooden table next to a bottle of aguardiente. He reached for the brandy and took a long pull.

"Si, hombre viejo," he said tiredly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I'll consider it."

The alcalde nodded, but his eyes were shrewd. This scruff-bearded pistolero preacher, who had not smiled once since the gringa who shot el diablo Herod rode out of town, was not going to stay and help the people. They'd offered to build him a church and a jailhouse, asked him to be their lawman as well as their spiritual leader. Even though he was not of the True Church, it was plain he had God on his side. And so on the day after the town exploded, they had asked him to pray in the plaza to thank God and Virgin for their deliverance from evil. Everyone was assembled and waiting, the women in their black rebozos, rosaries clutched in their work-roughened hands, the men with their heads bare in the unrelenting sun.

But the gringo padre had curtly refused. Alcalde Fernando knew he'd been drinking steadily since then, and he seemed angry...muy enojado. And angry drunkards were to be feared, especially those skilled with the gun.

The old man backed meekly away from the table with his eyes downcast, almost as he would have from John Herod. Obviously intimidated by Cort's dark mood, he muttered, "I will leave you to your bottle, Señor. Gracias..."

Observing his obeisant departure, Cort realized he could take over the town, run it just as Herod had, if he was of a mind to. It was ripe for the picking; these poor peons were already so cowed from living under an iron-fisted ruler that they'd fall right into line. He could set himself up like a prince, but he wasn't interested in their town, or in any kind of redemption. He'd had his taste of redemption, and it was bitter in his mouth. What had it gotten him? A burned mission, more killings to his name, and sweet Lord, one night in heaven.

Ellen.

He raised the bottle again and pulled deeply, gulping aguardiente as if it were no more than sarsaparilla. It hit his all but empty belly and burned like the liquid fire it was. He grimaced as the bile rose in his throat in protest, for he hadn't eaten since yesterday. The women in town had brought him food before then...bowls of beans and rice, crisp carnitas, tortillas...good things that had reminded him of Hermosillo and the meals the good sisters would cook, when there was food to be had.

Until he'd refused to hold a public prayer meeting for them. Then his meals had stopped, as if the withholding of food would chastise him into compliance.

They'd come to him, these poor people, sure he would be only too happy to give thanks to the Lord who had finally delivered them from Herod and his minions. And if Cort had managed to resist all the temptation that had come his way since his arrival in Redemption, he would have gladly done as they wished. But not now. Not with unclean hands. He would not raise his voice to the Lord in thanksgiving and devotion while his soul was blackened with the killings of more men. He wouldn't offer prayers of supplication when his body and soul cried out for her, and not for the solace of his God.

"Ellen..."

He said it aloud, said it in a voice that was hoarse from drink. And because he didn't know any other way to assuage the pain, he raised the bottle to his mouth once more.

e e e

Drunk to the point of sodden unconsciousness, his bed a dirty blanket on the floor of one of the few remaining buildings in town, Cort slept the day away and rose up in the early evening to stumble outside to relieve his straining bladder. The sky was glorious, washed in layers of color; orange fading to rose pink fading to blue and lavender. Long after his piss had soaked into the parched ground, he stood and squinted at the setting sun while his mind cleared. After it sank beneath the horizon and nothing was left but a rosy orange glow behind the hills, he kicked at the scorpions that had scrabbled over the baked earth, attracted by his urine, then turned and walked toward the plaza and the well. He dipped his cupped hands and gulped water, finished by sluicing some over his face and neck. When he straightened, the old man was near again, his manner respectful and guarded.

Cort gazed at the blackened storefronts, the piles of rubble blocking the street. "What's left of Herod's place?" he asked brusquely, drying his face with his sleeve.

Fernando shrugged. "Nada. Everything went…" he gestured with his hands… "up into the air."

"I need a horse, a gun. Where can I get them?"

"Ah, Señor Herod's stable was left untouched, as were the animals inside. My son-in-law turned them out to pasture himself only yesterday." His hooded eyes grew wary. "But I do not know where you can find another pistola."

A stable left standing. Horses, saddles, tack. Maybe a gun, to replace the rusted Colt Herod had bought from the Kid. In the west, the last rays of the setting sun faded. Cort lifted his eyes and saw stars shimmering overhead, a slice of luminous moon rising over the Santa Rita Mountains.

"I'm taking one of those horses, maybe two," he said finally, and started off toward the remains of Herod's house, his cracked shoes puffing dust with every step.

Fernando watched him go, shoulders straight and broad under the dusty brown coat. So the gringo padre wouldn't be staying among them, didn't care for their offer. Remembering the look on his face and the coldness in his eyes, the old man was very grateful that the Señor was leaving Redemption, for he suddenly appeared to be touched by evil too. The town would be better off without him.

Fernando spat on the ground, and made a hasty sign of the cross against the devil.

e e e

As if they hadn't wanted to touch anything that had been tarred with the brush of Herod's ownership, the people of Redemption had left the stable intact. He pushed the double doors wide and peered inside. It was too dark to see much besides shadows. Cort struck a lucifer and lighted a lantern hanging from a nail near the door. Cautiously, the Colts in hand, he searched the stable and behind the last stall, pushed open a door and hit pay dirt.

The room had obviously been used as a bunkhouse for Herod's gang. On pegs driven into the wall clothing hung, as if waiting for its owners to return, and though none of it was of good quality, it was better than his. He exchanged his filthy shirt for a cleaner one and a plain dark coat that didn't bear the stink of the man who'd worn it. Found a pair of boots that fitted him well enough, and a low-crowned black hat to keep the sun out of his eyes. A long gray duster, split to accommodate the saddle, would keep off the rain. And in a locked rack nailed to the plank wall, he beheld an arsenal...two Winchester 73 rifles, a pair of ivory-gripped Peacemakers, and a Remington .38 revolver. Cort eyed them hungrily...it was almost as good as being turned loose in the Kid's gun shop.

He broke the hasp with a blacksmith's hammer and helped himself to a rifle and the Peacemakers. The pistols were Buntline specials, modified by Colt to use the same shells as the rifle, a convenience he appreciated. He hefted them in his hand, liked their solid weight, then spun one into the well-worn holster Ratsy strapped on him at the beginning of the contest. The fit was snug but smooth. Cort decided the holster would do...he had never been one for the fancy hand-tooled and silver-studded leathers that bantam cocks like Ace Hanlon affected. Plain and serviceable had always been good enough for him. He slid the other revolver into his waistband and practiced a draw, cleared leather in a blur of movement. Grimacing, he reminded himself that the weapons were for protection and hunting, not fighting. He told himself that, but he knew a man who carried guns often found himself forced to use them. When he turned to go back into the stable, his face was grim, like it was carved from stone.

A rummage through the stable acquired him all that he would need. He packed his gear into saddlebags and bedded down on a pile of straw, disdaining the stained mattresses on the bunks. He spread his borrowed blankets and used a sack of grain as a pillow, and dropped off as soon as he lay down. It was the first night since Ellen rode out of town that he hadn't had to get drunk to find sleep.

But he dreamed of her, naked on her knees before him, her mouth bringing him a pleasure sweeter than any he'd known before, and then jolted awake, wracked by the pleasure of a nocturnal release. He lay awake the remainder of the night with his semen drying on his belly, thinking of her, wondering why it had been so easy for her to ride away from him. Did she feel nothing for the man she had refused to kill? Was there no tenderness in her at all? And he wondered why, of all the women he'd known, it should be this one, so soul-scarred and troubled, who had stolen his heart.

At dawn he filled a measure of oats from a bin and went outside, shook it and whistled. Several horses answered his call, trotting toward him curiously with their ears twitching and their heads tossing. The first was a fancy bay with white socks that he passed over as too flashy. Horses that fine were easily remembered, and Cort didn't want to be remembered. A buckskin gelding with a black mane and tail thrust his nose inquisitively into the oats. Cort caught him by the halter, tied him to the corral fence, and approached another gelding, a nondescript brown with no distinguishing marks. He examined teeth and hooves, ran his hand over withers and flanks. They'd do. He led them back to the stable, fed them both on oats and hay, and as they chewed their breakfast, Cort got ready to leave Redemption forever.

He rode out of town when the sun was barely over the horizon, feeling the eyes of the people on his back. He didn't bother with farewells.

Noon found him forty miles east on the outskirts of Oracle. He'd followed the Gila River and as the burning sun reached its zenith, he stopped to water his animals and eat some jerked beef from his saddlebag. He chewed absently, taking no pleasure from the food, eating only for nourishment. His eyes were on the town, marking wagon traffic. There wasn't much; it seemed a lazy, somnolent place.

With his hobbled horses contentedly cropping the wiry gramma grass, Cort lay back against his saddle and closed his eyes. Again Ellen's face came to mind, the look in her eyes as she found her pleasure in his arms that last night, the tenderness of her mouth as she kissed him before leaving at dawn. He remembered her determination, the raw courage as she faced her fear and challenged Herod, the cunning and intelligence that led her to devise a plan to defeat the man she'd come to Redemption to kill. And he remembered his cruel disappointment when she'd tossed him her father's badge and left town without so much as a backward glance.

The bile rose in his throat, and he reached for his canteen and gulped brackish water. 'Should have brought some whiskey,' he thought, but whiskey was a head-blurring temptation he'd indulged in too often of late; he needed to be sharp for what he planned to do. Go into Oracle and case the town, just like he'd done when he rode with Herod. The only difference was this time, he'd do it for himself. And if it played out right, he'd take the bank.

"Just before closing time..."

He uttered the words aloud; the horses' ears twitched at the sound of his voice. His mind made up, he stood, undressed, and waded hip deep into the slow-moving river. With his bandana, he scrubbed his body, then washed his old shirt as well as he could without soap. Lying on his back in the water, he let the current wash him a little way downstream. And when he felt clean again, he slogged out of the river and sat on a rock in the sun to let it dry his skin.

By the time the sun was well over the meridian, he was saddled and ready, the buckskin hobbled and staked, his gear loaded on its back. He checked the loads in his pistols, slid one into the leather holster, the other into his belt, and mounted the brown gelding. Ten minutes ride brought him to the edge of town. The place didn't seem any busier than it had at noon. The marshal was in front of the jailhouse, sprawled in a chair he'd tipped back against the building, with his hat over his face to blank out the sunshine. Cort ignored him, rode past at a slow walk with his eyes straight ahead. In front of the bank he reined up and tied the gelding to the hitching rail. His eyes flickered as he took in the all but deserted street, and then he walked into the First Bank of Oracle.

Inside there was only one clerk, one customer. Cort ambled to the table against the wall and with his back to them, stalled until he heard the clerk say, "That's five hundred even, Joe. I'll put it in the safe," before he went to the room where a massive I. A. Goodwin safe reposed, its heavy metal door standing conveniently wide open.

"See you in church, Ben."

Joe waved, and as soon as the door closed behind the departing customer, Cort locked it and vaulted the counter. His gun at the back of the stunned teller's head, he said softly, "Give me what's there or you're a dead man." For emphasis, he thumbed back the hammer on his revolver, the metallic click as loud as a clap of thunder.

It was over in a minute. Cort stuffed his pockets with greenbacks and gold coins, gagged, tied, and locked the clerk in the room with the now closed and empty safe. He sauntered out of the bank, stopped to look up at the sky as if he had all the time in the world before mounting his horse to ride slowly out of town. 'Take heed that no man deceive you...' he quoted softly, then nodded pleasantly at the sunning marshal, who lifted his hat and nodded back disinterestedly. On the outskirts of Oracle, Cort spurred his gelding into a canter until he got to the river and his waiting packhorse. In minutes he was headed toward the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains. Cochise had hidden out there for ten years. Cort reckoned he could manage to do the same until the marshal of Oracle gave up searching for him.

e e e

"Buy you a drink, little lady?"

Ellen raised her head from her folded arms and focused on the voice. Bleared eyes slid over the man standing in front of her table, took in the rough clothing, the empty holster at his hip. There was a law against carrying weapons in Bisbee, enacted by the town council to keep the miners and the cowboys from shooting up the place when they came into town to spend their wages. Her holster was just as barren...she felt oddly naked without her guns.

The fellow didn't look all that appealing, but he had offered to buy her a drink, and another drink was what she needed. She managed to slur out the words: "Rye. Make it a double."

The cowboy let his eyes linger a beat on her bosom. As bosoms went, hers wasn't much to write home about...barely made a bump in her shirt...but at least she had a pair of tits, even if she was dressed in pants. And that yellow hair...damn, but he liked yellow hair on a woman. It was scarce as hen's teeth in these parts, overrun as it was with Mex and Injuns.

A five dollar gold piece slapped on the bar bought him a bottle, he brought it and a pair of glasses and set them on the table before taking a seat himself.

"You from around these parts?" he began. When she remained silent, he went on conversationally, "I'm from Alabama myself. Came out west when the silver strike hit. Couldn't abide mining, though. Took up cow punchin' instead. Now I'm foreman on the Elkhorn Ranch. Heard of it?"

She wanted to cut him with one of her usual curt replies, but he had the bottle, and she was flat broke. Didn't even have the means to pay for room for the night, but she'd slept with her horse before. 'Should have picked up some of those greenbacks, I could be sitting pretty now…' she berated herself, remembering the way Herod's money had floated through the air like fat snowflakes after she'd blown up his town. The cowboy was still talking, she knocked back the first shot of whiskey, gave him a bored glance, and reached to pour another one.

His hand covered hers, pressed it to the table.

"Easy now, ma'am. Pardon my sayin' so, but you look like you had ought to take it slow." His eyes went over her hollowed cheeks, her dark-ringed eyes. "You et much of anything lately?"

She glared angrily. "Why? You gonna buy me supper, too?"

The man cocked his head. There was something about this woman that both warned him off and called him on. It was the look in her eyes, haunted, sorrowing. Reminded him of his mama's eyes when it was plain his daddy wasn't coming home after Appomattox. But his mama was always kind, this lady was hard and cold. Mighty cold. A sudden chill chased down his spine, but he shook it off and told himself she was only a little woman, for all that she dressed like a man. He grinned to see if he could coax a smile out of her and said, "I might do, if you'd tell me your name. Mine's Rafe."

She snorted in derision. "Seems like every goddamn ex-Rebel I meet is named Rafe...you boys aren't very original, are you?" She looked away from his penetrating gaze. She couldn't stand it, the look in his eyes. Wondering, full of questions. For Christ's sake, pitying...

He poured another shot, she reached for it with a shaking hand. The whiskey burned its way down her throat and she waited for it to work its magic, blur the jagged edges of the pain that killing Herod hadn't cured. And just as she set the glass back on the table, two other slyly grinning cowboys came over to the table and pulled out chairs.

Ellen got mad, and the anger chased away the pain even better than the whiskey could.

"I don't need more company," she gritted, her eyes suddenly focused and clear as the two settled in and greeted Rafe. In a surge of enraged violence, she wished she had her guns; these hombres wouldn't look so goddamned smug if she had the Colts at her hip. She pushed her chair back, intent on leaving, but Rafe covered her hand again and said softly to his compadres, "You boys get on back to the ranch. Me and the little lady're gonna have us some supper."

The tension didn't ebb when they shrugged good-naturedly and left the saloon. Ellen glared at Rafe and dragged her hand away roughly. "Listen, mister. I might be a drunk but I ain't a whore. If you think I'll bed you to pay for a couple of drinks and a dinner, I won't. You might as well go to the cathouse with your friends."

Rafe leaned closer and said softly, "Have I been disrespectful to you, ma'am? Done one thing that you could take offense at?"

Ellen opened her mouth to retort, then bit back the rude words. He hadn't been insulting at all. Fact was, there was something about him that reminded her of the handsome preacher in Redemption. He had the same placid demeanor, non-threatening, easy. She relaxed a little, shook her head.

"You reckon you could stop bein' so mad at me then? Maybe tell me your name?" He smiled, displaying a full set of teeth that were still white and unstained, and a chastened Ellen looked down at the scarred tabletop and nodded.

She dragged a sleeve across her mouth and stood.

"If we're going to supper, I'd best freshen up a little," she said, her sense of pride rising up to remind her that she was still a woman. "Be right back. And...uh...my name is Ellen." She gave him a hint of a smile, and it was enough to keep Rafe in his chair until she returned, her face washed, hair brushed and tied into a queue at her nape, a fresh shirt replacing her dirty one.

He stood, offered her his arm, and with an air of propriety, escorted her to Mrs. Kincaid's dining room across the square.

e e e

In the end, she slept with him. Over supper he offered to take a room for them at the Silver Queen Hotel, and dreading a sleepless night alone out in the desert, Ellen accepted. She wasn't drunk anymore, so she couldn't blame her weakness on that. It was just that he reminded her of Cort with his respectful manners, his lazy drawl, his kindness. She felt needful of some kindness, of a sudden.

They didn't talk on the way up the staircase. With an air of nervous anticipation much like a bridegroom's, Rafe unlocked the door, lighted the lamp, and stood aside to let her enter the room before him. She glanced around in the dim flickering light and saw that though plain, the place was clean, and there was water, soap and towels on the washstand. She strode across the room and poured water into the bowl, her intentions plain.

Clearing his throat, Rafe made an excuse and left while she bathed, and when he came back, she was naked and waiting under the coarse muslin sheet, her hair spread in a halo around her head. He fisted it in his hands, rubbed the skeins of yellow against his lips, and it was this lover-like gesture that thawed her heart. Ellen squeezed her eyes closed and allowed him to kiss her. He was gentle, if clumsy, and spent himself almost as soon as he entered her, sobbing as he came. Sated, he kissed her again as if she were likely to break, then fell asleep with his head pillowed on her breasts.

Ellen lay awake for a long time, lightly stroking his head, feeling his breath warm her skin while his semen cooled between her thighs. And in the darkness, with his crisp hair curling between her fingers, she remembered someone else.

Part 2: Another Bordello
 

Tombstone, Arizona Territory

With a glass of suspiciously pale whiskey in hand, Cort leaned on the rough wooden bar and watched the room from under the lowered brim of his hat. His eyes were narrowed, restless. They moved over each new arrival, flickered often to the men he had already made as shooters. He was quiet and almost blended into the shadows, but he knew the gunmen in the saloon had taken his measure, just as he had taken theirs. The old instincts had come to the fore as if they had never been discarded, and in only a month's time he had put aside all he had learned in service to God and was once again what John Herod had made him.

He was a killer.

Cort sipped his whiskey and grimaced, muttering, "Goddamn rotgut…" But he drank it anyway, then caught the bartender's attention and pointed to the empty glass. "Another."

"Bourbon, ain't it?"

"I doubt that's bourbon, but hit me again," Cort said.

The barkeep pulled a bottle from the shelf, poured a double, and took the silver half dollar from the bar top. He loitered a moment, wiping at the rough wood with a towel until he finally said, "You look like a hombre could use a little pussy, friend. There's a whore upstairs who'll ride you for six bits. Or she'll suck your prick for a quarter."

For a moment Cort's interest was piqued, until he heard the price. He had no use for a cheap crib girl, diseased, ugly, dirty...wasn't that hard up. His eyes flashed behind the curtain of hair and caught the barkeep's. "No thanks," he said evenly.

"We got us a boy if you're inclined that way..." the man began, but didn't get any further.

"I said I ain't interested." There was no mistaking the finality in Cort's tone, or the contempt.

The bartender backed off, wary at last. "Sure mister. Just trying to be friendly, is all." He turned away.

Cort sipped his whiskey and grimaced at the taste. "Bourbon, my ass," he muttered under his breath.

e e e

Hanging over the bar was a life-sized painting in a gilded frame. Cort stared at it until he could have told off every detail. The dusky-hued lady reclined in what looked to be a damned uncomfortable position. Her upper body was twisted to reveal her tits, but her ass was in plain sight too. It was a nice ass, full and round, and the dark place between her thighs beckoned his eyes. He rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. Maybe he did need a woman. Ellen had been the first in a long time, and she had awakened the carnal need in him that he'd suppressed since he'd added the 'Reverend' before his name. And now he'd turned away from the comfort of his God. Might be that the touch of soft hands and lips would ease the ache in his heart, the darkness in his soul.

He'd been looking for Ellen for almost a month, trailed her from Cascabel to Mescal to Dos Cabezas, and then into New Mexico. In Shakespeare, a saloon girl told him she'd seen the lady and talked to her. Said she'd mentioned El Paso, so Cort crossed over the border into Chihuahua and followed an old trail he knew to Texas. But Ellen wasn't in El Paso, and nobody there had seen her. He followed his instincts and came back to Arizona, and now he was in Tombstone, getting drunk and randy in the Black Dog Saloon.

He looked at the painting again and made up his mind, was about ready to leave the saloon to find a whore that cost considerably more than six bits when a dust-covered man stepped closer and stood next to him. Cort had marked him before, sensed the aura of danger that surrounded him. The stranger faced straight ahead while he spoke, but Cort knew he was talking to him.

"You lookin' for work, pard?" The stranger raised his drink and slung it back.

Cort kept his eyes on the painting. "Might be. Got some needs doing?"

"I do if you got the sand for it. Takin' a ride into Mexico tomorrow...gonna cross the border after full dark. Bring a herd of beef on the hoof back to Bisbee."

Rustling. It was a hanging offense, but not if you got your stock from Mexico. Nobody gave a damn if you stole cattle from the beaners, as long as you didn't bother Arizona ranchers. Cort turned slightly until he could see the man's profile. "What about the Rurales?"

"Chasing banditos down in Chihuahua."

That took care of the Mexican policia. Cort grunted, "Got a rendezvous in mind?"

"You familiar with these parts?"

"I am."

A nod. "There's a ridge outside Naco...got three wooden crosses on the crest. You know it?"

"I do."

"Tomorrow night, full dark. I take it you know how to cowboy?"

Cort thought of his youth back in Texas. He'd joined up with an outfit driving cattle to Abilene when he was just a squirt. The trail boss was a good man, never too busy to spend time with a curious kid who was anxious to learn everything he could. Cort became adept at running cattle during the two years he'd stayed with them. He thought it might be his life's work, until he'd met up with Herod...and then he'd learned how to do other, more interesting things.

"Reckon I can cowboy enough to get them longhorns across the border," Cort answered laconically.

"Good enough." The man finished his drink and turned to go.

Cort's voice stopped him. "Not so fast, amigo. We ain't discussed the pay."

The stranger's eyes were calculating. Cort met his gaze coolly, waited until he said, "Full share, divided betwixt the riders. I take two shares."

"How many men?"

"You make six. All we need." He changed his mind about leaving, dropped a dollar on the bar and beckoned. The bartender poured two shots and when he'd gone, the stranger asked gruffly, "You in or not?"

Cort thought of the greenbacks he had left from the Oracle robbery. There was still a goodly amount of money in his pockets, but who knew how long it would take to find Ellen? Might as well earn more, and in his experience, stealing cattle was a sight safer than robbing banks.

"I'm in," he said, straightening.

The man turned his back on the bar, leaned on it. "Name's McCabe. Frank McCabe, in case you want to ask around," he offered.

"I don't need to ask." Cort had already taken note of the sixgun on McCabe's hip, the steel in his eyes. They were silent testimonials, but more convincing than any words could be.

McCabe's eyes flickered with something like suspicion. "You got a name, pard?"

"Cort."

"Cort what?" asked McCabe.

"Just Cort." He set his empty glass on the bar. "I'll see you at Tres Cruces tomorrow at twilight."

McCabe watched him push through the swinging doors into the desert night, and wondered if he'd done right, asking the stranger to ride with his men. Cort. The name sounded familiar, dimly associated with a man McCabe had once feared and respected. Word had come that John Herod was dead this last month, dead and largely unmourned. Some said a woman had bested him, shot him down in the street to top off his own quick draw contest.

McCabe sipped whiskey, wondered if this Cort hombre had anything to do with it.

e e e

Outside a brisk wind whistled through the street and tore the fog of his breath away as soon as he exhaled. Cort strode the plank sidewalk, his bootheels striking the splintered wood with a hollow thud, his spurs marking every step with a metallic ring. When he reached the end of the walk, he crossed the dust-deviled street to the livery and fetched his saddlebags, then headed to the bathhouse. Two bits bought him a wooden tub full of hot water, and a sliver of soap. An extra dime got him towels that hadn't been used by the man before him, and another dime tossed to the old Mexican abuelo sent him outside to beat the dust from Cort's pants and coat.

When the old Mex brought his clothes back, Cort dressed. He sat on a bench to tug on his boots, then stood to buckle his gun belt. A broken piece of mirror hung from a bent nail, and the sudden flickering of his reflection caught his attention.

He stared at his own face, lean and scruff-bearded, hungry-looking, the face of a desperado. No wonder McCabe had come to him with his offer of work; if anyone in the Black Dog looked like he knew how to steal and kill, it was himself. He dragged his hand along his cheek, thought he ought to see the town barber. His hair hung almost to his shoulders, and even damp, it looked wild, like a lion's mane. Scowling, Cort brushed it straight back with his fingers and set his hat to hold it out of his face, and then examined his reflection in the glass. A mite more presentable. At least he didn't look so predatory.

Tombstone, like all mining towns, had a thriving red-light district below the railroad tracks. Cort made his way there, stopping once to touch the brim of his hat and respectfully step aside for a couple out walking. Once across the tracks, he bypassed several sporting houses until he came to one that looked discreet, almost proper. He squinted to read the name painted in gold script on an inconspicuous sign---Twyla's House of Flowers ---and pushed open the door.

Warm light from pink-shaded parlor lamps soothed his eyes. A man looking to rut is a man with every sense heightened, and as Cort stood in the vestibule, he took in the flocked red wallpaper, the scent of lilacs, the tinkling of a honkytonk piano. His eyes drifted into the parlor, and there they were. Miss Twyla's fancy ladies. Only problem was, they all had callers.

The four whores were in the customary stages of provocative undress...chemises and corsets over frilly bloomers or petticoats; one wore a dressing gown of virginal white. For a minute he stood silent, his hat in hand, and just looked his fill at ripe tits pouting over the edge of a tight corset, a waist cinched in so small he could have spanned it, a pert ass in white cotton bloomers, full enough to fill a man's hands. As he stood enjoying the view an older woman approached him, rigged out in a fancy blue dress glittering with jet beads. He turned to greet her, saw that she was handsome but past her prime. Cort hoped she wasn't all that was left, or he'd be searching out another cathouse.

"Ma'am," he said gravely, inclining his head. "Evenin'."

Twyla cast an experienced eye over the man standing in her vestibule, her gaze lingering just a moment on the bulge at the juncture of his thighs, accented by a pistol in a scarred leather holster. It was a professional appraisal; she wasn't one to entertain riff raff in her establishment, didn't tolerate rude behavior. This fellow seemed courteous and quiet, despite the gun on his hip. His clothes were rough, but he didn't appear to be. He was clean, and he was certainly virile, if the package he toted was anything to go by.

The madam gave Cort a smile that was both friendly and calculating. "Welcome to Twyla's. Can I offer you a drink?"

Cort nodded. "Bourbon if you have it."

She led the way to a sideboard where liquor waited in glittering cut glass decanters. He followed, glancing hungrily at the whores. Twyla took note, said in a soft voice as she poured his drink, "Those are my Flowers. That's Rose, Ivy, Daisy, and Iris."

The girls smiled and waved languid hands. Cort nodded a greeting.

Her eyes tilted up to his. "See anything you like?"

He grinned. "I like 'em all."

He sipped from the glass, gave an appreciative grunt of pleasure at the sweet taste of unadulterated bourbon. Miss Twyla didn't water her liquor. The madam snapped open a black lace fan and flirted it like the professional she was. The scent of her cologne wafted toward him, Cort sniffed appreciatively.

Twyla thought of the new Flower tucked away upstairs in the rear bedroom. Might be this was the man to pluck that bud. She'd bought the whore only the day before from an Illinois pimp on a tour through the mining towns. He'd said the girl knew her business, but he'd stretched the truth a bit...the girl had no experience at all. It made no matter because the new Flower...rechristened Violet...was a pretty little thing, and best of all, she was fresh. But she was also naive and had fallen prey to the oldest con in the book, and now that she'd seen the light, all she wanted was to go home to Chicago. Weeping bitterly, Violet confessed that she'd never had relations with anyone but her stepfather and the man who'd brought her here, and it had not been her choice to accommodate either of them. She didn't know how to please a man, all she knew to do was lie still, close her eyes, and grit her teeth while they had their way with her.

It didn't matter to Twyla how sad Violet's story was. She'd heard it all in her time and feeling sorry for whores was bad for business. Violet could leave the House of Flowers as soon as she'd paid off her debt and a little more, and she'd best start taking tricks and work hard at pleasing her callers or she'd never get home until she was old and dried up, a temptation to no man. The madam was not unkind, nor so hardened that she had no sympathy for Violet's plight. But life was hard, and the sooner the girl realized it the better off she would be. There was no Prince Charming waiting in the wings to marry her; there were only lonely men willing to pay well for a night of sexual gratification and a warm bed to sleep in. Twyla gave her a day to settle in and come to grips with the reality of her new life. And she promised Violet that she would choose her first trick personally.

She said softly to the visitor, "Unfortunately, these ladies are all busy, but I do have one more Flower in my bouquet. A new girl, fresh from Chicago." She tapped him lightly on the arm with her fan. "You look like a man who knows how to break in a new girl."

"I reckon I could handle it," Cort said, with a charmingly devilish smile that made even an old doxy like Twyla catch her breath. Without looking away from his eyes, she indicated a chair.

"Will you have a seat while I see if Violet is ready to receive company?"

His gaze slid to the other Flowers, and the madam's eyes flickered knowingly before she lowered her lashes and asked, "Or do you see someone else who takes your fancy here? Ivy, perhaps?"

He shrugged. "She's pretty. They all are. But I'm not in the mood to wait." His gaze traveled the room. "And those fellers don't appear to be in any hurry."

She took his glass and topped it off with more of the rich amber liquor, handed it back. "We only have the finest at Twyla's House of Flowers. Is it any wonder the gentlemen want to take their time and savor them?"

"Reckon not," Cort agreed mildly. "How about you go up and see if the lady from Chicago is ready for her first customer?"

Twyla inclined her head. "Of course. Will you have a seat, Mr...?"

She paused, waited for him to supply a name, and was both pleased and intrigued when he lifted her hand to his lips like a cavalier of the Old South.

"Just call me Cort, ma'am."

e e e

It seemed like a long time, the waiting. On her way through to the stairs, he watched the madam discreetly signal to her girls, and one by one, they left the parlor and led their gentlemen callers up the carpeted stairs. The piano player began a new tune. It was a Chopin sonata, both the music and the composer were unfamiliar to Cort, though he thought it pretty. All he knew was that it was softly played, not loud and rollicking like the earlier tunes. Didn't drown out the bedsprings squeaking above his head, the sound bled through Chopin and the floorboards. Slowly at first, then faster, until the steady thumping of the bed against a wooden wall provided a percussion section. Low moans and muffled curses had him off his chair and pacing, his hands gripping his hat. He'd broken a sweat before the madam returned.

"Violet will see you directly. We'll discuss price now, Mr. Cort." With a swish of silk skirts, she sat at a dainty French escritoire and indicated a chair across from her. Cort settled down again, his hat held discreetly over the bulge in his pants.

"This house is often used as a hotel by some of our gentleman callers," Twyla explained. "There is a small increase in the charge if you expect to avail yourself of that service. Breakfast is included, as are the favors of the lady until morning. We would expect you to leave us by nine o'clock, or make some other arrangement."

Cort's eyebrow lifted. He had never heard of such a thing...but then, he had never been in a whorehouse of this quality.

"There is also the matter of the girl being a fancy," the madam continued. "She's not a virgin, but close enough to satisfy most men. Her price is slightly higher for that reason."

He leaned back in the chair, replied in a lazy drawl, "Miss Twyla, sounds to me like the girl is inexperienced. Seems her price should be considerably lower, since she don't know her job as yet."

Twyla stared at him, her amusement plain. She hadn't figured him to be a haggler, and she wasn't one to bargain over her Flowers. She offered only quality, thus her prices were high, and they were firm.

"I'm sure you'll leave her bed satisfied," she said, a trace of humor in her voice. "Now, will you be staying the night?"

"No ma'am." He'd already taken a room at the Miner's Friend Hotel. No sense wasting money...he was here to get his ashes hauled and that was all. And he was ready to get on with it.

"That will be ten dollars then, payable in advance."

Ten dollars was a steep price for a whore, but Cort was too randy to wait any longer. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a gold eagle, handed it over.

"There's no charge for the liquor," the madam said, discreetly sliding the coin into her desk drawer. "Would you like another?"

"You might top it off some," Cort allowed.

She moved to the sideboard, took the stopper from the decanter and poured, wishing she was ten years younger. In her time, she'd have given a man like this one a ride he'd remember all his life. She still could, because in her business, experience counted and Twyla had not forgotten the tricks that pleased men. But those days were long past. She took no men into her bed now, not even when a former favorite asked for her.

"Enjoy your evening." Madam Twyla smiled and handed him the glass. "Violet awaits your pleasure in Room 7, top of the stairs and to your right."

e e e

Cort rapped once on the door and without waiting, opened it.

The girl stood near the window, dressed in a dark red wrapper that formed a deep V at the front to draw the eye to her bosom. From across the room, he saw her clench the folds of her skirts to still the trembling in her hands. His eyes lighted on her face. She was a pretty thing, with light brown hair and tip-tilted dark eyes. Wary eyes.

Cort stepped into the room and closed the door firmly behind him. He stood waiting, watching, his posture non-threatening, relaxed and easy. After a moment, he sipped from the glass, set it down on the bureau. He took off his hat, hung it on a hook near the door. And all that time, she stood silent and watchful, tiny pearl-like teeth worrying at her bottom lip.

"I won't hurt you." His tone was gentling, coaxing, but she still started at the sound of his voice. Cort said softly, "Come here, darlin'."

Violet took a tentative step, thinking of what Miss Twyla had said. That this fellow seemed decent, even gentlemanly. That if she did as he asked and was pleasant, it would go well. But she couldn't make her feet carry her any closer. She looked up, her eyes huge and frightened, imploring.

Cort nodded encouragingly. "That's it, come close. Let me see your pretty face."

He lifted his hand, held it out to her. Two more steps brought her near enough. She slipped her hand into his; he squeezed it gently. His voice was deep and pleasant, almost soothing.

"There you are, darlin'. Not so dreadful, am I?"

She shook her head, but started again when Cort raised his hand to touch her cheek.

"Here now…easy does it. Just want to look at you." He lifted her chin with two fingers, murmured approvingly. "Real pretty. What's your name again, little one?"

"Ginny...umm...no." She swallowed. "Violet."

A flower's name, a whore's name. It didn't matter, not to him. But maybe it did to her.

"So which is it, darlin'? What do you want me to call you? Ginny or Violet?"

"Miss Twyla said to tell you my name's Violet."

As she spoke, he watched her mouth form the words and his mind pictured those sweet pink lips pursed tight around his cock. Cort didn't realize that his eyes narrowed then and changed his expression from benevolent to feral, but he saw the confusion on her face.

He reached for the glass of whiskey.

"Let's sit down over here, Violet." He walked to the bed, sat on the edge to the creak of protesting bedsprings. After a moment's hesitation, she followed to perch primly beside him. Cort offered her the glass. "Take a drink, honey."

She shook her head. "I don't like it."

He put the glass near her lips. "I want you to take a little sip or two. It'll make things easier if you relax some. Whiskey'll help. Come on now, darlin'. Just a little."

Tentatively, she leaned in and Cort tipped the glass for her like he would for a child. Her nose wrinkled and she grimaced as she pulled away. "It burns," she said, and coughed.

"It's a good burn, honey. Warms you up..." his grin widened to a leer. "Gonna warm you up for me." He brought the glass closer. "Take another sip now, a big one," and when she obediently took another without choking, he praised her with a low, "Good girl..." and drank some himself. She watched for his reaction, but there was none.

"It doesn't burn your throat?"

Cort held up the heavy glass tumbler and eyed the amber liquid inside. "Whiskey's an acquired taste, darlin'. I reckon I acquired it long ago."

He stood and put the glass down on the table beside the bed. Violet watched anxiously as he shrugged out of his coat, undid the buckle of his gun belt. He hung it on the post at the foot of the bed and sat to tug off his boots, then threw them carelessly into the corner. His braces next, pulled down off his wide shoulders, and then the shirt, unbuttoned and drawn over his head. When his hands reached for the buttons on his pants, she stood up nervously and took another drink without his urging. Behind her, she heard his soft laugh, felt his hands circle her waist.

"Little..." Cort murmured, as his fingertips met. "You're a pretty little thing, Violet. Gonna have all the boys after you for sure."

He drew her wrapper away to kiss her bare shoulder, and the shock of his warm lips on her skin traveled down her spine. As he murmured softly in appreciation, Twyla's voice echoed in Violet's head: 'Listen to me, missy. It's a sight easier to work on your back than to wear yourself out slaving for some man who's no better than he ought to be. You play this right and you'll have them lining up for you. Make your pile while you're young and get out before it's too late. Marry some nice greenhorn who doesn't know you sucked pricks for a living and forget all about what you were. That's my advice, and if you're smart, you'll take it...'

Cort's voice came from behind her, soft and low, but demanding. "Turn around now, Violet." She wanted to obey him, but she couldn't make herself move.

"I'm not going to hurt you, honey...but I won't take no for an answer."

His fingers dug lightly into her waist, he turned her to face him. Disjointed images of her stepfather's leering face, memories of pain and humiliation, and then Cort's fingers tipped her chin and his mouth came down over hers. His lips were warm and tasted of whiskey, and his hands were gentle on her back. He was nothing like Daddy Ambrose, nothing like the man who'd brought her to Twyla's. His tongue pried her lips apart, he took a half-step and drew her in closer to his body. Through her thin petticoat she felt him grow hard against her belly, and for the first time, there was a quickening in her blood, a leaping of her pulse, a thrill that chased ripples down her arms. Unconsciously, her hands lifted to his waist and she held on as his mouth moved to her throat.

"You taste sweet," Cort whispered against her skin. "Smell like flowers...I reckon that's fitting." He chuffed a soft laugh at his own joke then slid his hands to the hook that fastened her wrapper at the waist. "Take this off, honey. I want to see you."

Obediently, she let the dressing gown go, shrugged it off her shoulders.

He caught it with one hand and tossed it onto a chair, bent to whisper against her ear. "That's better, ain't it?"

She felt his smile, and even though it seemed like the only barriers between them were going too quickly, she smiled too. His hands cupped the back of her head and brought her face to his. Nuzzling at her ear, he spoke softly so that his breath fanned her cheek.

"This is what a man wants, darlin'. He wants to think you like him, or at least that it don't disgust you, being with him. He wants to smell sweet perfume, feel soft skin. He wants the comforts of a woman. It ain't all just the pokin'. You remember that, and you'll do all right."

She nodded, slipped her arms around his waist and held him.

"That's it, touch me," Cort urged, his breath coming faster. He pressed her closer, rocked himself into her belly. "Feel that, darlin'?" At her tentative nod, he licked delicately along her neck. "That means a man wants you real bad. When he's hard like this, he'll do most anything to lay you down."

She stiffened and he told himself to take it slow, give her a little something more than an impersonal fuck for her first time out of the gate. She was still trembling, but her breath was coming faster. Cort ran his hands down her arms and back up, smiled when she shivered again. They moved to her waist, then lower. He cupped her buttocks, squeezed, then let her go. She swayed a little, leaning toward him as if she didn't want him to stop, and a glance at her eyes told him she was feeling the effects of the liquor.

He unbuttoned his pants the rest of the way, took them off. His cotton drawers followed, and then he was standing naked and rampant before her, unashamed of his lust. His hand went to her shoulder and tugged at the strap of her chemise. "Take this off, Violet."

She shook her head. "Miss Twyla said most men would just push my skirts up."

"I ain't most men, honey. Take it off."

"Please, mister..."

"Shhh, now...let me help you."

Deft fingers worked the buttons of her bodice, spread it open. She watched his face, his eyes, saw the flare of lust when her breasts were bared. Behind her back, he untied the waist tapes of her petticoat and pulled at the band. The white muslin garment fell to the floor, leaving her as naked as he was. He guided her to the bed, lifted her onto it and crawled in beside her.

"Lay back, let me love you," he breathed.

Suddenly afraid, Violet tried to rise, but a gentle hand pushed her down onto the pillow. And then his mouth found her breast. She wasn't prepared for it, hadn't expected the surge of intense sensation. Her eyes snapped closed as his tongue rasped against her nipple, she felt it pucker and draw as the delicate skin responded. His hand glided from her waist to her hip, slid to her sex with a touch so light she was not certain he'd actually gone there. But then long fingers stroked through soft curls, parted her to slide inside and stroke. And all the while, his mouth moved on her breast, lips brushing back and forth over the nipple, tongue lapping like a cat laps cream. His long hair was like a soft delicate brush that drifted across her skin, raising gooseflesh in its trailing path.

"Gonna make you come for me, darlin'."

She knew what he meant. That was the reason men did this, to come. It felt good...it had to, judging from their faces and the helpless sounds they made when they spilled their seed. It had never occurred to her that women could feel that way too, but as his fingers played, sliding rapidly in a circle, the faint warmth in her belly flared into a concentrated heat. She could not keep still, but rocked against him, could no longer breathe without gasping.

Cort leaned up to kiss her open mouth, spoke gentling words against her lips in a low murmur that throbbed deep in his chest. Violet soaked up his lust, felt it in the prodding hardness against her thigh, the trembling that seemed to ripple under his skin. And for the first time, she understood the power women had over men.

His voice was a hoarse whisper: "Feels good, don't it honey? Most fellers won't do this for you. They'll be too taken up with chasin' their own to worry about how you feel. But I want you to know the pleasure for yourself."

His finger moved faster, circling and pressing, and each time it passed over a certain place, a burst of sweetness radiated in her belly and she writhed. His lips moved back to her nipple, nursed in rhythmic pulls. His hips seemed to have a life of their own; they rocked into her thigh, pressed his hardness into her flesh. Her breath was heavy and she tensed, reaching for something, straining toward it. Her legs stiffened; she whimpered.

And as her first orgasm rushed and broke over her in rippling waves, her hips rose off the bed, rocking of their own volition in a motion both instinctive and primal, and her knees dropped open as if inviting him inside.

Cort's mouth left her breast and swooped to cover hers, his tongue pressing inside, sweeping, tasting. Violet clutched him, drew him down closer, returned his kiss with a fervor that drove him wild. He crawled between her legs, pushed them open wider. The sight of her pink and glistening sex fired him, his nostrils dilated as the scent of her flowing juices reached his nose. He took himself in hand and eased inside a little way then stopped, waiting.

She made no protest, just watched him, eyes locked on his.

He gave her more. Pushed in deeper, almost all the way. She was tight around him, tight and hot and sweet Jesus, slick from her coming. Cort sank until his hips kissed hers, until the crisp hair that nested his cock pressed and melded with the damp curls between her thighs.

"Move with me, Violet. Mmm, sweet Violet..." He braced on one arm, reached with the other and drew her leg up to circle his waist.

He showed her how, taught her the motion with a hand gripping her hip. From under drooping lashes, Violet watched as his head dipped, saw the muscles in his shoulders bunch and flex. Sweat dripped from the chestnut colored hair that hung over his face and fell to her chest. She thought him beautiful, young and strong and virile. The power and depth of his passion excited her, her belly felt like it caged a flock of birds, and below, in the place where his body joined hers, heat grew and pulsed. He threw his head back, clenched his teeth and grunted each time his hips plunged, and his thrusts grew powerful enough to shunt her backward. Dimly, Violet heard the squeak of bedsprings and the solid thump of the bed against the wall. She flung her arms over her head and braced her hands against the headboard.

"That's it, honey..." he panted. "Hold on. Sweet Jesus...."

His rhythm faltered, his hips hitched and then he was motionless, his body tensed over hers. His lashes fell, he grunted once, again, then shuddered violently. And for the first time in her life, Violet folded her arms around a man while he spilled his seed into her body, and held him. Cort plunged, ground hard against her and collapsed, gasping, to bury his face in her throat. As he struggled to recover his breath, she tentatively caressed his head, winding her fingers through his disheveled hair. It was then she realized she had not once thought of her stepfather, for this…this sweetness…had been nothing like the cold and sinister coupling she'd endured in Chicago and on the road west. Shyly, she kissed Cort's cheek, grateful that he had made her forget.

e e e

She woke to the sensation of warm wet kisses. Violet lay still as his lips nuzzled her breasts and traveled over her ribs. Butterflies fluttered in her belly, her skin twitched under his caressing mouth. Her breath left her in a low pleasured moan, but she protested when he rose up over her and straddled her waist with his knees. His prick jutted from his body, bobbed like a divining rod just below her chin.

"Time for a new lesson, honey." Cort hushed her protests with a finger laid across her lips, then leaned over her to grasp the brass headboard. Hot and throbbing, his manhood lay against her cheek. He guided it to her mouth, lay the tip against her lips. "Open up, darlin'."

She tamped down a rising panic, a surge of disgust. And then she remembered Miss Twyla's almost clinical instructions, her assurance that done correctly, such favors brought hefty tips from men. With soft lips, she kissed the reddened head of Cort's cock and he hissed through gritted teeth. She opened, allowed him into her mouth. A musky smell, not altogether unpleasant, and the taste of salt. The skin of his member felt soft as velvet against her tongue. Above her he groaned, and that same feeling of power bloomed, the realization that she could make a strong man weak as a kitten.

"Suck it, darlin'."

The crude words sent a thrill coursing down her spine, made her feel wanton and decadent. Made her want to please him and earn that fat tip. Thinking of gold eagles, she dragged her tongue experimentally along his length, ran her hands up his thighs to his rock-hard buttocks.

A shuddering Cort lifted his free hand to the brass headboard, hung on desperately as beneath him, Violet sucked her first cock with a novice's clumsiness. But Christ, it felt so good, beginner though she was. He winced as the sharp edges of her teeth suddenly scraped him until she instinctively covered them with her lips, and then he felt nothing but heat and the press of her tongue.

"Harder..." he grunted.

Her cheeks caved as she sucked, the sound of it enflamed his lust. So obedient, this little whore under him. She was a natural, and what she didn't yet possess in skill she more than made up for in sweet compliance. His hips angled in short thrusts as he responded to the instinctive urge to fuck. He was so hot it would only take a little more to make him come. She kept on, her head bobbing in time to his thrusts.

"Ah, sweet Christ!"

His semen erupted with the oath, boiling out of him like a volcano discharges its flow of lava. And she took it, by God...swallowed it down without gagging or pulling away, her lips still closed around his prick. Cort's arms, anchored to the bedstead by his gripping fists, shook with the sweet hot pleasure of his ejaculation. For a moment he hung there, too weakened to move, and then he looked down at Violet. His rapidly deflating cock rested against her flushed cheek, and if he had not just shot his load twice in an hour, he knew the sight of that would have had him hard again. He slid down until his face was over her breasts, then lowered his head and kissed first one pert nipple, then the other.

Violet lay quietly, her eyes closed, long lashes like ebony fans on her cheeks. The bed dipped and sagged as he eased down next to her, and her heart was touched when he gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. She rolled toward his warm body, soothed him with gentle hands trailed over his back, continued her caresses long after he had fallen asleep, his head heavy on her shoulder. And she thought.

It would not always be this way, Violet knew that. The man in her arms was a decent sort to treat her so well her first time…but there were others who would be as coldly distant as her stepfather had been. They would use her as no more than a receptacle for their seed, and some would do worse. But this one, her first one, she would always remember for his kindness.

She looked down at the man asleep in her arms, smiled at her foolish surge of tenderness for him. She didn't even know his name.

Part 3: Come Full Circle

Tres Cruces, near the Mexican border

There is no honor among thieves. He'd been a thief long enough to realize that men who made their living on the wrong side of the law couldn't be trusted. McCabe came off as a sly one, so Cort made it his business to be at the rendezvous early. Twilight settled into the sky with the sinking sun as he pushed his horse over loose rocky ground to the crest of Tres Cruces hill. He rode the nondescript brown gelding, had chosen it over the buckskin for his night's work, because he put a greater value on his sure-footedness and even temper than on the buck's speed. He wasn't a trained cutting horse, but the brown was as stoic a mount as he was plain. When the steadiness of his mount could mean the difference between a man living to spend his share of the take or dying under the hooves of a herd of panicked longhorns, Cort reckoned he'd go for steady every time.

Both the buck and the brown pleased him well enough, but they weren't companions. He'd owned horses in the past that had been more like old friends, but Cort hadn't even troubled to name the two he'd taken from Herod's stable. There was a cold indifference in him now that kept him from feeling too much. It was as if he were dead and suspended in limbo; living, but not alive. He reckoned the day he found Ellen was the day he'd start to feel things inside again.

Stiff from hours in the saddle and his vigorous session with the Chicago whore, Cort dismounted and stretched out his back and legs before loosening the brown's saddle girth. He picketed him with enough rein to graze on the sparse grass while he waited for McCabe to show up, then took the canteen he had slung from his saddle.

The whiskey he'd drunk the night before had left him with a thirst that parched his throat and belly. Cort couldn't get enough water, seemed like. He tipped his head and drank until the water ran down his chin and wetted his shirtfront, then sat with his back against the pitted gray wood of the tallest cross and gazed out over miles of cactus-studded land to the foothills of Sonora Province, Mexico.

Hermosillo was there in the distance, two hundred miles southwest of where he sat. Guilt-tinged sorrow pricked his conscience when he thought of the little ones and the good sisters who'd worked with him at his poor mission. They'd suffered because his past had caught up and fallen on him like a pack of rabid dogs. Cort reckoned a man couldn't outrun his past, but he wished now he'd fought back when Herod's men came for him. Instead he'd gone as meek as a lamb to the slaughter, hoping to diffuse their bloodlust and save what could be saved.

'Resist not an evildoer, if thine enemy strike you, turn to him the other cheek.'

Well, he'd turned the other cheek. Let them beat and humiliate him in front of his orphans. That his submission had done no good infuriated him still, and he was sorry he hadn't killed Herod's men as soon as they'd ridden into Hermosillo.

Cort hung his head, stared at the ground between his splayed legs, and fought down his shame. He'd tried, but he wasn't able to keep to the straight and narrow path of righteousness. His convictions were weak, his faith had failed him, and pridefulness had been his downfall. He wasn't strong-willed enough to stand and let himself be killed in a gunfight when he knew he could draw faster and shoot straighter. And his own words came back to haunt him, for they'd presaged his failure: "I'd like to kill them all for what they've done…but I won't."

He’d sworn he wouldn't, but he had. Maybe it was instinct that made him do it, something natural in him, because he'd shot them down as easy as you please. And for a bright hot moment, he'd felt nothing but relief that those worthless men were dead…relief and a quick surge of pride that melted into self-hatred and disgust when Herod tore away his collar and threw it contemptuously in the dust, triumph twisting his cruel features.

'Welcome back, killer…'

He closed his eyes and took several deep calming breaths, looked inside himself and examined his conscience as he had been taught to do by the old padres. He saw nothing but failings. When the Lord had seen fit to spare him despite his sinfulness, he should have remained in Redemption to help its people rebuild their blighted town. But he hadn't. He should have returned to Hermosillo and done what he could to re-establish the mission. He hadn't. At the least, he should have gone to see if his orphans and the sisters who'd helped him were still alive.

But he had barely thought of them until now, reminded by the sight of the familiar land. And he reckoned that despite his time as a man of God, and for all that he'd tried, he'd never changed more than skin deep. Was evil in his blood, a part of him? He thought it must be, for when challenged, he'd responded with a killer's instinct. When tempted, he'd given in to sin, just like he'd always done. And now, with the need burning inside him to find Ellen, Cort knew nothing would keep him from her.

Ellen had become his mission, had taken the place of faith in his life. Consumed by a desperate need for the woman who had known what he was and taken him into her body in spite of it, he refused to give up his search. He wouldn't stop until he had her in his arms again, in his bed, would not rest until he convinced her to stop her aimless wandering and settle down with him somewhere…he didn't care where. He needed to love her. Protect her.

More than either of those things, he needed her to love him.

Fine thoughts for a man just hours from a whore's bed, but buying relief from a whore meant nothing to him and never had. Cort didn't feel the need to repent the appeasement of his lust. There were times when a man had to lay down with a woman or go loco. For too long he'd smothered his carnal nature, pushed it down and fought it with prayer, battled the pure cussedness that came with it. He thought he'd conquered his need, tempered his callousness, but it looked like he hadn't.

Still, lust was one thing, love was something altogether different. Love was what he felt for Ellen, though a part of him realized that to form such a strong attachment after only a short time bordered on the absurd. And although he knew she didn't feel the same, he was still driven to find her. With no more inspiration than a few stolen hours and the memory of the desperation in Ellen's eyes, he had given up on his struggle to become a good man, and was ready to do whatever it took to find her. Save her.

Save them both.

Cort dragged a hand across his mouth, as if he could wipe a bitter taste from his lips. He was no savior. A man can't lie to himself and the truth was, he'd given up the struggle to live a straight life pretty damned easy. The truth was, he wasn't a good man at all.

But he could be. If he had Ellen, he could be. If she'd love him enough to help him, if she'd love him enough to let him help her, they could build a life together. Marry, maybe have some young ones of their own. With the money he had left from the Oracle bank and the share he'd earn from tonight's raid, they could make a start toward a good life. Buy a spread someplace, far from the dark memories they both had of Arizona. Go north to Montana where there was fine green land for the asking, get shed of this everlasting desert. Or move farther west to California, where there was plenty of opportunity for a man and woman who needed to forget what they'd been, and learn what they could be.

Cort pulled the stopper from his canteen, took another mouthful of tepid water, and sat with his thoughts in the gathering darkness until he heard the gelding's low warning whicker, felt the infinitesimal vibration of the ground under him. He rose and surveyed the land to the northwest until he caught sight of approaching riders, their horses raising a cloud of dust that hovered and rolled behind them.

McCabe's gang. Five men riding in a tight formation, McCabe maybe a length ahead on a light dapple gray that charged out of the twilight like an avenging ghost. A snippet of scripture came to his mind, an unwanted, vaguely malevolent portent on this night when he intended to break the seventh commandment, and might be forced to violate the third as well.

And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

"Behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death…" Cort muttered. And suddenly he knew that once again, he was standing at another fork in the road of his life, and that this time, the wrong turning would be the end of him.

For a long moment, he stared at the approaching horsemen, his jaw tight, his conscience a torment, and then a sudden wild rush of rebellion made him throw out the dare: "So be it. Fuck you, old Satan. You want a piece of my hide, then come get some…"

He cinched his saddle and catching the reins, climbed up and nudged his horse out of the shadows to ride out and meet McCabe and the devil.

e e e

"Listen up, now. Ain't gonna tell you but once."

Cort stood, reins in hand, listening to McCabe explain his plan. He studied the faces in a semi-circle around him, saw cunning as well as stupidity as his eyes moved over the men McCabe called 'the boys'.

The plan was a simple one. They'd make the thirty mile ride to Las Huertas, the estancia of Don Esteban Reyes y Santiago in Sonora province in two hours, pushing their horses hard enough to make good time, but not so hard as to use them up. The old Mex ran ten thousand head of cattle on a ranch the size of Cochise County...had one of those old Spanish land grants that he'd managed to hold onto through the war by supporting Porfirio Díaz. The land was unfenced, the northern boundary marked by tall cairns of piled stone. His cattle were pastured in smaller herds scattered over the estancia. McCabe said they'd find one of those herds, cut out and steal as many head as they could handle, and run the longhorns back over the border into Arizona.

One of the men threw out a question: "Where we gonna keep 'em 'til we sell 'em off?"

McCabe lit a cheroot, taking his time before he answered. "I got a place staked out...box canyon, close to Bisbee. We'll barricade those cows inside until we collect our price, then deliver the herd to the buyer." He blew a lungful of smoke toward the sky, looked at Cort as if daring him. "Any more questions?"

Cort met him stare for stare, his mouth a grim line, his jaw tight. The plan was full of holes and he had his doubts about Frank McCabe. But he kept his mouth shut.

McCabe flicked his cheroot away. "Let's ride for Mexico, boys."

e e e

There was no moon, only starlight to guide them on their foray into Sonora. Cort kept his mount at a steady mile-eating lope, riding slightly behind the rest until McCabe called a halt and said they'd reached the northernmost border of Santiago's land. From there on, they walked their horses and didn't talk, for even the slightest sound could carry in the still night air and spook the half-wild longhorns, or alert Santiago's vaqueros that they were coming.

Halfway up a long slope, Cort's horse snorted and blew, his ears twitching a warning. The riders topped the low rise and there, spread out below them on a grassy plain, was a goodly-sized chunk of the Las Huertas herd.

McCabe leaned forward in the saddle and rested his arm on his knee, greed prompting him to silently tot up the profit he might realize from this night's work. "By Christ, look at that," he murmured low. "Must be a thousand head."

"Near enough," agreed Cort. His eyes flickered to the horizon, where the dark sky met the even darker land. Following the ridgeline, he picked out the dim glow of a dying campfire.

"No sign of vaqueros," McCabe grunted. "I reckon Santiago feels pretty safe, the damn fool don't have sense enough to post a guard on these cows."

Cort scowled. The more he listened to him, the more he realized McCabe didn't know shit about rustling cattle, and he had poor vision to boot. He pointed to the dull orange glow far away. "He's got guards," he said softly. "There...and there." He moved his arm to indicate two men on horseback on the far side of the herd. "Those two pass each other twice, every circuit around the herd. It's how it's done...same way we did it nights on the trail from Texas to Kansas back when I was a sprout."

McCabe followed his finger, shrugged. "So I was wrong. Don't make no difference in the end."

Disgusted, Cort said, "You're going to have to shoot it out with those greasers, so let's get these damn cows moving and get the hell out of here."

McCabe had the same low opinion of Mexican cowboys as the rest of Arizona and shrugged off Cort's urgency. "If those Mex's are up for a fight, let 'em come and try to stop us. We got enough fire power to convince 'em to lay back and let us go peaceable." He looked over his shoulder and beckoned the others in a hoarse whisper. "Let's go, boys...time's a-wasting," and to Cort, "Once we get them moving, you ride drag on these cows, hombre. You and Skidmore."

"Whatever you say," Cort agreed, turning his horse with a jerk of the reins, "as long as we get the hell started."

Two of the men peeled off and rode easily into the milling, grazing cattle, cut off a few dozen head, and started them north. The longhorns nearest them followed instinctively. Another of McCabe's boys rode into the herd and waved his hat, using his horse to turn the more reluctant cows. Cort heard low-pitched whistles before the sound was muffled by the thud of a hundred hooves. He flapped his hat and used his horse's height and bulk to nudge the longhorns into motion, calling quietly, "Yeah, dogie...geeyap, cow," but he kept his eye on the pair of Mexican cowboys, and saw it when they split up. One came on to see what had his cattle moving in the night, the other turned toward the camp, running for help from his compañeros.

Beside him McCabe hissed, "Drop him, goddammit!"

Cort stared, astonished. "You loco? These broadhorns will stampede for sure."

"Goddammit, I said to drop him!"

Muttering, "It's your funeral, boss man," Cort lifted his Winchester to his shoulder. He sighted down the barrel and gently squeezed the trigger. The muzzle belched a shower of sparks and Santiago's vaquero slumped to the side, then tumbled from his horse. It veered off, ran wild out into the foothills.

The other rider was too far away, but McCabe fired at him and didn't stop until Cort knocked the muzzle of his rifle toward the sky. The repeated loud reports had turned the herd from compliant cows into a seething mass of crazed beef on the hoof. Lowing in fear and swinging their wicked horns, they reacted as one and stampeded northward. In the blink of an eye, the whole picture changed. Panicked himself, McCabe sawed his mount around, dug hard with his spurs. His horse leapt ahead, plunged into the herd. Cursing him for a bungling ass, Cort rode hard to take up the drag. A bullet whistled past his head but he didn't bother to return fire.

The night dissolved into confusion, galloping cattle, unbelievable noise. Skidmore disappeared, Cort didn't know if he'd stopped a bullet or been thrown. He raced alongside the cattle, kept the brown out of reach of their wickedly lethal horns. The noise became deafening, the ground quaked. Dust rose in a cloud to obscure his vision. The hair on the back of Cort's neck prickled as he bent low over the saddle; the certainty that he made a good target had his skin crawling. He couldn't hear and he couldn't see, but a keener sense told him the Santiago vaqueros were coming up hard on his heels.

He was sure of it a moment later when a bullet slammed through his right shoulder and blasted out just below his collarbone. The impact stunned him; he jerked the reins up short until he regained sense enough to spur his horse into a run again. Wet warmth ran down his belly, he marveled that he felt no pain. He crouched lower in the saddle and urged the brown on, thinking ruefully that he should have brought the faster buckskin after all. A twisting glance over his shoulder brought agony that set his right side afire. Through a break in the rolling dust clouds he saw that Santiago's vaqueros were after them, eight well-mounted men not half a mile away.

"Goddammit!"

There was no chance to outrun them, the brown didn't have the speed for it and Cort felt his strength fading with every drop of blood that flowed from his wounds. He looked for another way out, and found a trail behind an outcropping of rock that led up into the foothills. McCabe and his men were ahead with the herd, riding hard for Arizona and safety. His passage hidden by the rocks, Cort wagered the vaqueros would miss him in the darkness, choose to follow the herd and take the cattle back if they could. He urged his horse up a narrow defile between tumbled boulders and sheer cliffs, the sound of gunfire fading behind him. After a while he slowed, searching for a place to hole up, a ledge that would give him the advantage of height and cover if he had to defend himself. When he came upon a lateral ravine half enclosed by rock, he dismounted and left the brown to fend for himself on the canyon floor. Cort forced himself to climb until he could see the approach to his hideout. He took cover behind the rocks, reloaded his Winchester with hands that were steady. He waited.

An hour passed and Santiago's men didn't come. Either they'd chosen to go after the cattle, or they hadn't seen him slip away. Cort looked down at his shirt front as the gray light of dawn poured over the horizon. It was stained rusty red, stiff with dried blood. He slipped his hand inside and gingerly felt the wound. It burned like fire, but his fingers came away clean. The bleeding had stopped.

As it is with all wounded men, his thirst was ferocious, torturing him as another hour went by. Full daylight came and Cort surveyed the land, saw that the canyon trail turned north and broke into open country a few miles from where he waited. He stayed hidden as long as he could ignore his need for water, and then half slid, half walked back down the rocky trail until he stood firm on the canyon floor. A whistle through his teeth brought the brown limping toward him, it was then he saw that the gelding had taken a bullet too. His flank was laid open in a long furrow that already buzzed with flies. Cort chased them off and reached for the canteen on his saddle, his thirst a bitter craving.

But the canteen was dry, punctured by the bullet that had wounded his horse. "Son of a bitch," he muttered, leaning his head against the saddle as a wave of dizziness left him reeling. An innate sense of urgency told him it was time to get out of the canyon in case Santiago's men returned to search. He put his foot in the stirrup, and murmuring a low, “Sorry boy, I got to,” Cort mounted his weakening horse.

Consciousness ebbed like the tide. He didn’t black out but at times, it was as if his face was covered with a gray blanket that kept him from seeing things clear. His strength faded as the miles passed and his wound pained him viciously, but it was his thirst that was a pure torture, as punishing as the fires of hell. He searched the land for a telltale clump of the cottonwood trees that grew near springs and creek beds, but there was nothing but miles of empty land, with only an occasional bare-limbed palo verde or a skeletal saguaro cactus in sight. Thinking of Ellen was all that kept him doggedly following the trail toward Arizona. Sometimes Cort thought he saw her riding her big black stallion far ahead, her yellow hair spilling out from under her hat, blazing gold in the sun. He called to her, but she didn’t hear him. On and on, as the sun rose higher and the heat sapped the moisture from his body, he pushed himself and his horse. It was high noon when he saw the three crosses silhouetted against the sky, and realized he was back in Arizona. He pushed the horse up Tres Cruces hill, and through eyes blurred by pain and his body’s waning strength, he looked for some sign of McCabe and the herd.

There was nothing.

e e e

Bisbee, Arizona

“Come on, darlin’…give us a kiss. I’m dyin’ for a kiss from the prettiest girl in Arizona Territory.” He pressed into her from behind, let her know just how much he wanted her.

Sweet talk, sweeter kisses. Nothing but bullshit from a charmer, but Ellen was partial to a drawl like Rafe’s, and it was good to hear sweet things from a man again. His voice purred in her ear, and the hint of laughter floating just under the surface made her smile. Rafe Carradine had a fine sense of humor. No matter how blue she felt, he always managed to make her smile. She turned in his arms to press her lips to his.

Rafe growled into her throat, nipped at her ear. “Little filly, you got me randy as a goat again. Feel like another poke, sweetheart?”

She hid her face, hiding her reluctance to service him yet again. “Ain’t you had enough pokin’ for one day?” she asked wryly.

He lifted the mass of her hair and buried his face in it. Lord, but she smelled good. A sight better than she had the first night he’d seen her in the saloon, when the whiskey fumes had been strong enough to blister paint.

“Never get enough of my sweet Ellen,” he murmured softly. “I could fuck you all the day long – don’t you know that by now, darlin’?”

She reckoned she knew. When Rafe came into town, that was just about all they did. Hole up in her room above the Bon Ton Saloon in Brewery Gulch, share a bottle of red eye, and fuck. But Ellen had no complaints, despite the fact that she was sore by the time he left her, and she still had her portion of randy cowboys and miners to service. But it was worth it. Rafe was good to her, made her forget what she’d lost, and what she’d become.

‘You stole my life…’

It was still the truth. Killing him hadn’t changed things, even with her lover's lips on her throat and his hands stealing around to cup and massage her, she still found herself thinking of Herod. After a while Rafe's loving could distract her, but she couldn't take him again. They'd been all day in bed together, and her pussy was raw and sore. She could slick herself with sweet oil, but she'd done that once and he'd been insulted and mad, said he felt like she didn't want him enough. 'Men are damn fools,' thought Ellen. What made them think a woman wanted to fuck all day, and then all night, too? It wasn't that appealing. Still, she'd learned a few tricks in her time…a woman didn't have to screw a man to please him. Ellen kissed her lover, teased his mouth with her tongue, then crawled down his body to kneel between his legs.

As she took him into her mouth, Rafe threw his head back and groaned like a man in agony. His fingers plunged into the tumbling mass of yellow hair to gently guide her head. Lord forgive him, but there was nothing better than Ellen with his prick in her sweet mouth. The tricks she could do with her tongue made a sucking better than a poke any day. He fisted her hair, forgot his strength and pulled too hard, but she didn't complain. His Ellen knew the torturing pleasure of her mouth made him lose his sense towards the end.

Rafe grunted and swore as he spilled his seed, his shaking hands holding her head still as he pumped into her. Ellen let him fill her mouth, then got up to spit into the slop jar. He closed his eyes, grimaced at the sound of his semen splattering against the china bowl. Vaguely resentful, he wished she'd keep it with her, just once. Because sometimes, when she spat out his seed so violently, it felt like she was spitting him out, too.

e e e

An hour later, he was still lazing on her bed, smoking a cheroot and absently scratching his groin. It was plain he'd stay there all night if she'd let him, but she could already hear raucous voices downstairs in the saloon, calling for whores.

"Get up and get," she said over her shoulder as she stood in front of the mirror to pin her hair up in an untidy swirl. "I have to go work."

He stretched lazily. "I get me a little more saved, you won't be throwing me out of an evening," Rafe drawled. He tucked his arms behind his head and admired the way her breasts moved without a corset to hold them high and up-thrust, like ripe fruits on a shelf. He liked Ellen's little tits better in their natural state. Corsets made a tiny waist on a woman, but he didn't much care for them. They were troublesome to take off and the cruel grooves the whalebone left in her delicate skin made him feel bad. When he saved enough to buy his own spread and married her, he swore Ellen would never wear a corset again. She could run around all the day long in one of those loose wrappers, her tits jiggling with every step.

He didn't notice that she made no reply, kept studying her while Ellen studied herself in the mirror, wondering why Rafe wanted to marry a piece of damaged goods like her. God knew she wasn't of a cheerful nature…unlike most whores, she didn't even bother to feign a good disposition for the men who bedded her. She didn't like being a whore and she didn't care who knew it, but the miners and cowboys who bought her favors didn't seem to mind at all. She had more customers than she wanted. Sometimes she thought of her father and how it would pain him to know she'd taken up the sporting life. He'd been the kind of man who believed in marriage, but she'd marry Rafe soon enough. Until then, unless she wanted to ruin her looks and slave herself to death in a laundry or eating house, the only thing she could do to survive was whore or work the dance halls. Dancing didn't appeal to Ellen any better than whoring did, but at least her feet weren't tired every night.

Her hand stilled as she stared into the mirror. There was always the bounty hunting, she could go back to that, but just the thought of those wandering days made her eyes go flat and cold. No sense even pretending she could take up that kind of life again. Scratching out a livelihood hunting outlaws who didn't want to be found, living hand to mouth between rewards. Sleeping in the rough more often than not, her meals whatever she could kill and cook over an open fire out in the desert. Out-smarting the men she hunted, out-shooting them when it was necessary.

Those men couldn't believe a woman had been cunning enough to capture them, and they never forgot it, either. She'd made lots of enemies. Ellen leaned forward and smoothed coralline salve over her lips with her little finger. Her former prisoners wouldn't recognize her now, in her whore's finery and paint. She'd entertained two of them since she'd started sporting, and to her surprise, neither had realized they were screwing the woman who'd once brought them to justice, trussed up like plucked chickens.

Behind her, the bedsprings protested as Rafe uncoiled his lean body and stood to stretch. She returned to tucking her hair up and he began to dress methodically, his mind on the coming evening. He didn't have business until McCabe showed up, and since his sweetheart would be too busy entertaining tricks to pay any mind to him tonight, he had nothing to do but sit in the saloon and get likkered. He dug in his pants pocket, pulled out the greenbacks and silver he had left. Rafe hadn't lied to Ellen, he really was saving for his own place, and had already deposited most of his money in the Wells Fargo office before he'd come to Brewery Gulch. He knew a man could get drunk and foolish, spend a month's wages on whiskey before he went broke. Rafe swore that wouldn't happen to him; he kept his money safely out of reach when he was in the mood to drink himself stupid.

Ellen turned from the mirror and saw him counting coins. "What's that you're doing…you going to tip me for a change?" she asked wryly.

"Nope. I'm figuring how many drinks I can buy before I run out of money." Rafe grinned. "Reckon six dollars will last me until I go back to the Elkhorn?"

She turned back to the mirror. "Not if you tip me. Better hold on to it."

Rafe slid the money back into his pocket. "Here's a tip for you, darlin'..." he leaned close and whispered, "...always take an umbrella in the rain." His lips brushed the back of her neck, then plucked at a loose blonde strand that had refused to stay confined. "Wouldn't want that pretty yellow hair to get wet."

He grinned as he reached past her to grab his hat, then dropped it on his head with a glance into the mirror to make sure it had the rakish tilt he preferred. Halfway through the door he said over his shoulder, "I'll be back come sunup, honey...help you throw the last feller out of your bed."

"So you can take his place?"

He gave her a last teasing wink. "You bet. Now don't work too hard, and don't give any of those cowboys a treat like you gave me."

She smiled at him and lied without conscience. "You know I won't. That's something special, just for you, Rafe."

As the door closed behind him, she shrugged. Men were damn fools, even the good ones.

e e e

He'd lost the reins, they'd slipped out of his numb hands miles back and he rode slumped in the saddle, hanging onto the brown's mane by pure instinct. When his shuddering horse finally stopped and blew, Cort raised sun-faded eyes and squinted into the blazing light. For a moment he thought it was a trick of his mind, a vision he saw because he wanted it so bad, but he was wrong. The brown had brought them to an arroyo no bigger than a trickle, but with water enough to quench his thirst.

"Good boy..." he muttered, then half-slid, half-fell from the saddle. The horse shied, side-stepped away as Cort's spur dragged across his injured flank. He crawled to the creek and lay on his belly to lap water like a dog, disregarding the mud bugs that skittered away across the surface. When his belly felt like it was close to bursting, he rolled to his back and closed his eyes against the sun's glare, breathing deep. His shoulder throbbed, but after a moment he forced himself upright to loosen the saddle-girth and take the bit from the brown's frothing mouth. He'd turned out to be one hell of a good horse, a better companion than any other.

Cort stroked the animal's neck until his knees buckled and he sank to the ground. "Good boy...saved my life," he rasped, just before everything went black.

e e e

"You reckon he's dead?" The young cowpoke, barely fourteen, looked down from his horse at the body sprawled on the ground.

His older companion said dryly, "Ain't gonna find out from the back of your Cayuse.  Git on down there and see."

The boy jumped nimbly from the saddle and bent to lay his cheek against Cort's chest. "He's breathin'." He cocked his head, lifted the blood-stiffened shirt and peered inside. He ain't bleedin' no more. Pretty big hole, though." He glanced up at his pard. "Bute? What we gon' do with him?"

"You ride back to the Elkhorn and bring a wagon. We'll load him up and take him to old Ignacio, let him doctor on the poor bastard." He leaned over and spat a stream of tobacco juice into the dirt, looked at the youngster still kneeling beside Cort. "Well? What you waiting on...sundown? Git."

"Yessir," the boy replied, already climbing his horse.

e e e

Cort came to as soon as they lifted him. Pain shot through his shoulder and he groaned, swore out loud.

"Jesus Christ!"

"He's alive for sure," Bute said laconically, and to Cort, "Run into a bullet, did ya?"

Cort squinted them into focus, an old man a boy between hay and grass. "Who are you?"

"They call me Bute. This here sprout is Pete." He pushed up his hat brim, eyed Cort curiously. "And now I return the question, young feller. Who are you?"

"Name's Cort. Jesus..." he hissed through gritted teeth, as the pain throbbed into a knifing wrench. "Where's my horse?"

"Right here...barely strayed a yard. We'll bring him along." Bute spat tobacco juice directly at a scorpion that ventured too near his boot. It scuttled back, tail curling. "Looks like your Cayuse run into a bullet too."

"Met up with some banditos south of the border. Chased me."

Bute grinned. "Lucky you got away, ain't it?"

Cort ignored the question, asked one of his own. "Where you takin' me?"

"Back to the Elkhorn. Got a cook there who doubles as a curandero. He'll set you to rights." He looked to Pete. "Jump up there son, and get this rig moving. We ain't got all day."

The boy obeyed, clambering onto the wagon seat. He let off the brake and clucked a geeyap to the mules. The wagon started off with a jolt.

"Jeeeesus...." Cort lay back against a sack of grain and gritted his teeth as the pain in his shoulder flared higher. He looked at Bute, riding alongside on a paint mare, and saw the canteen hanging from his saddle horn. "I'd be obliged for a drink, friend."

The old cowboy passed it over. "Take all you want."

Cort wished it was whiskey, but he reckoned that was too much to ask. He raised the canteen and gulped water, and as he lowered it to wipe his mouth, Bute passed him a bottle.

"It's only forty-rod, but it'll take the edge off. Was I you, I'd drink it dry before we get back. Ignacio ain't known for his gentle hands."

e e e

Cort slumped at a scrubbed wooden table in the cook house, waiting while the curandero got his things ready. His eyes traveled over the peeled log rafters, took in the bundles of herbs and strings of dried peppers that hung from them. The place was more like a covered patio than a room, open to the air on two sides. Bake ovens of mortared stone and a high wide fireplace were built into one adobe wall. A soot-blackened coffeepot sat on a cast iron cookstove, and a kettle of chili bubbled over the fire, sending forth an aroma that had Cort's mouth watering. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd eaten.

Dried blood had stuck his shirt to his wounds, and when the curandero peeled it gently away, the bleeding began again. He leaned forward to brace his elbows on the table, wincing as Ignacio cut it off.

"I God..." breathed Bute, as the hole in Cort's back was revealed. "Reckon that hurts like the devil." He looked on as the curandero began to examine the wound with a thin metal probe, but turned away when it disappeared into the reddened flesh. Cort's body shivered, muscles twitching under the skin, but he didn't flinch away or utter a sound.

Bute coughed uncomfortably. "How bad is it, amigo?"

Ignacio shrugged. "Bad enough...I would not like to have such a hole in my back. But it is clean, and the wound will heal well. The bullet hit no bones, only muscle," the old Mexican said after a while. He laid the probe on the table top. "You are lucky, señor."

Sweat ran in rivulets down Cort's drawn face. "Was I so goddamn lucky, the goddamn bullet wouldn't have caught me in the first goddamn place," he grated.

Ignacio shook his head. Some men were unappreciative of the graces sent their way. If he were in this hombre's place, he would thank the Lord on his knees that his life had been spared. But from the scowl on the wounded one's face, Ignacio could see he was of the impatient sort who had no time for God. He moved to the stove, came back with a bowl of hot water and began to wash away the clotted blood.

Cort bit down, gritting his teeth against the pain. The wounds cleaned, the curandero took moldy bread he had soaked in water infused with herbs, and squeezed it dry. He wrapped the bread in clean cheesecloth to make two pads, then began to wind strips of muslin around Cort's upper body. When he had enough strips in place to support their weight, he tucked the pads inside against the holes in the gringo's chest and back, then wound more muslin to hold them in place. To finish, he tore the ends of the bandages into laces that he tied so tightly, his patient grunted in discomfort.

Cort sat still, breathing deep, and wondered if the pain was really lessening, or if he only imagined it was so. "What's in those pads?" he asked, looking down and touching the bandages with hesitant fingers.

"Just a poultice. It will kill the pain and make you heal faster."

Cort nodded, glanced at Bute. "You were right, he's a good sawbones. Reckon you could get me the other shirt from my saddlebag?"

"Someone could, I reckon." The old man cupped a hand to his mouth and called, "Pete!"

The boy appeared around the corner, a flea-bitten dog at his heels. "Yessir?"

"You put up this feller's horse like I tolt you?" At Pete's nod, Bute said, "Fetch his saddlebag and bring it here."

"Yessir."

Bute grinned at Cort. "No sense in an old man runnin' when a youngun is close to hand. Only reason I could ever see for having one around."

His belly growled as Cort sniffed the redolent air. "I could use a cup of that coffee," he said, as Ignacio began to clear away his instruments. "And a bowl of that chili you got cookin'."

"You should drink a lot of water and eat some beefsteak," Ignacio advised. "You have lost a lot of blood. The peppers in the chili are not good for you." He cocked his head, studied the dark rings around Cort's eyes. "A good sleep would help you, too."

In truth, he thought the loss of blood the worst of the gringo's wound. The holes in his back and chest were not so large, but if the man's clothes were anything to judge by, they had bled heavily. Ignacio knew the loss of lifeblood would weaken a man more than anything else. And with wounds so long untreated, there was always the risk of fever.

"Well, since I ain't got a beefsteak, the chili will have to do," Cort replied, short tempered from hunger and pain. "I'm so damned hungry I'm like to faint, so I'd be obliged if you'd serve some up. Pronto," he added, when the curandero didn't move.

The boy came back with the saddlebag, laid it down near his feet. Cort reached for it, but the bulky bandaging made movement difficult. "In the left pocket," he said, breathing against the flaring pain. "There's another shirt."

Bute hunkered down and unbuckled the strap, found the shirt and pulled it from the bag. "This here's a go over your head shirt," he said, shaking out the folds. "I expect you can't lift that arm."

"Cut it," ordered Cort. "I ain't walking around half shucked."

Ignacio brought scissors and used them to cut through the muslin, straight down from the buttons to the hem. He and Bute held the shirt while Cort struggled into it, his lips pressed together tight.

"I can sew it closed..." Ignacio suggested, but Cort shook his head. "I'll just fold it over, tuck it under my belt." He looked up through his hair. "You want to do me a favor, hombre viejo? Feed me."

Ignacio nodded, brought him water and a cup of strong black coffee, then returned with a bowl of chili. "Eat, señor...and then you must sleep."

"I ain't got time to sleep." Tilting his head back and opening his throat, Cort drained the water at a gulp. Saliva flowed into his mouth even before he shoveled in the first spoonful of meat and beans, so hungry he hardly bothered to chew. Ignacio brought tortillas on a tin plate, hot from the griddle. Cort took one and spooned chili inside, rolled up the thin bread and bit in.

He fixed his eyes on Bute and said between mouthfuls, "You know a man name of Frank McCabe?"

Disgust flitted across Bute's face, changing his expression from openly friendly to wary. "I know him. Why?"

"I'm looking for him. He owes me money."

"Good luck collectin' on your debt," Bute said shortly. He sat at the table across from Cort and leaned back in the splint bottomed chair. "In these parts, McCabe ain't known for bein' honest."

Ignacio brought the speckled pot and filled their coffee cups. "This McCabe...I know him. He was here today, looking for señor Rafael. I speak to him."

Cort froze, his tortilla halfway to his mouth. He set it down on the plate and said softly, "He was here?"

"Si, this morning."

"And who might this Señor Rafael be?"

"He is el jefe...the boss. Rafael Carradine," the Mexican said, R's rolling off his tongue. "Señor Barker's foreman. He go to Bisbee. I hear the cowboys talking, they say he has a woman there. She is said to be very pretty, muy lindo, with yellow hair and blue eyes.

Ellen… Her image slammed into Cort's head. Blue eyes, yellow hair. Could it be? He stared at the bemused curandero. "What about the woman? You know her?"

Ignacio shrugged. "I see her only once when he bring her to our fiesta. She rode a black horse that looked fierce as the devil."

"Tall woman?" Cort gritted. "Wears a man's britches?"

"Si," the Mexican nodded. "That is her."

Cort's fingers tightened on the edge of the table. "You say she lives in Bisbee?"

There was something in his tone made Ignacio take a wary step back before answering. "The cowboys say she works there."

There wasn't much a woman could do in a rough town like Bisbee. He knew the answer, but Cort asked the question anyway. "Doin' what?"

There was no mistaking the menace in his voice, or the anger. Ignacio backed away. "Senor..."

Cort stood up, his hand hovering near the gun on his hip. "Goddammit, answer me!"

Young Pete scrambled behind the wall for cover, but his head popped around the corner, his eyes huge. His heart hammered in excitement. Was there going to be a gunfight? He'd never seen one and almost hoped so, only something told him his old friends Bute and Ignacio would not win against the stranger.

"Here now..." Bute stood and laid a restraining hand on Cort's arm. "Don't get your dander up, pard. It ain't 'Nacho's fault if..."

Cort threw his hand off and glared at the cowering Mexican. "Answer me, old man."

Ignacio had never seen a man look as ferocious as the wounded gringo. He held the coffeepot in front of his chest like a shield and stammered, "The boys in the bunkhouse say she is a puta..."

With the utterance of the word, rage unlike anything he'd felt before possessed Cort's mind and body. It blanked his pain, invigorated his exhausted body with strength the long day had sapped. He forgot everything else as his mind filled with Ellen.

Ellen his love. Ellen, a whore...

His voice sounded dead and cold when he said, "Where?"

Bute answered him quietly. "The lady sports at the Bon Ton."

Cort bent to pick up his saddle bag, took a step to go, and remembered. "I'm obliged for the meal and the doctoring." His voice was deceptively soft as he reached into his pocket and pulled out two silver dollars. "This take care of it?"

"You should not ride with that shoulder," said Ignacio, ignoring the money. "It will bleed again if you do."

Cort tossed the coins on the table and picked up his hat, dropped it on his head. His eyes went to Bute. "I'm asking for the loan of a horse," he said. "Mine's done in."

Bute nodded. "You can take mine. Leave her at Spade's Livery. If you ain't back by sun up, I'll bring yours in to town and make the trade." He wanted to advise Cort to stay clear of trouble, but he didn't have the sand for it. There was something in the feller's eyes that told him they'd best keep out of his way. He stayed mute as Cort stalked out of the cook house, his long lean body showing no sign of weakness or pain.

"Ain't it a wonderment," Bute mused, "what a good spate of wrathfulness can do to a feller? Give him the strength of ten men, and at the same time, cloud his head until he got no more sense than a prairie chicken."

They watched Cort climb the mare and start her toward town at a lope. Bute stared after him and said dryly to Ignacio, "He's up to no good, that feller."

"He has been marked by the woman. The goodness drained out of him with his blood, and now all that is left inside is the bad." Ignacio shook his head and made the sign of the cross. "There will be trouble in Bisbee tonight."

Part 4: Come Full Circle
 

A sinking sun only heightened the sense of urgency that drove him. He ignored the old curandero's advice to rest, knew he couldn't have anyway, not with the unholy rage burning inside him. It scared him, that rage…because he knew what he was capable of. Cort wanted to ride like the wind, outrun it, but Bute's paint mare wasn't one to be hurried. She loped along at a gait that was somewhere between a trot and a canter, and couldn't be persuaded to gallop no matter how often he gave her the spur. So it was twelve miles to Bisbee, twelve long miles with nothing to distract him from his torturing thoughts, his bittersweet memories, his fury.

He'd spent months looking for her, gone all the way to Texas and back, and she'd been in Arizona the whole time. Jesus, if he could only have found her before Rafe Carradine got hold   of her, ruined her.

Ellen.

He wanted to think of her as sweet, but he couldn't. She wasn't sweet. Brave and smart, she'd been different from any woman he'd ever known. He'd admired it from the moment he'd first talked with her, the defiance, the determination, the cool demeanor that never faltered, not even in the face of death. Cort had sensed right away she'd been terrified of John Herod, but she'd gone for him anyway. She never spoke of her reason for hating John, but she didn't hide her contempt. Refused to give voice to the dark memories that tortured her mind, hid her fear behind a hard-bitten man-woman exterior. Yet Cort had seen the goodness in her, cloaked by a feigned indifference.

Her actions had spoken louder than her hard-hearted posturing. In the short time she spent in Redemption, she'd brought hope and light to a town that had lived in darkness and despair for too long. He remembered the little girl...the saloon owner's daughter. Ellen's courageous decision to live with the freedom of a man in a disapproving world had shown young Katie that she didn't have to go down that road to whoredom. And in the end, she'd saved the girl from entering the life. Cort had been chained outside, but he'd peered through the streaked window, seen her go for that sick bastard Eugene Dred like a wildcat. She kicked hell out of him so bad that the pimp had no choice but to challenge her to save his reputation. Cort had seen Ellen gun Dred down himself, witnessed her refusal to finish him off. In the end she'd had to kill him. But self-defense wasn't cold-blooded murder, and some people deserve to die for what they've done. For all his bloodcurdling threats to kill her, it was Dred who was feeding worms now.

And sweet Christ, she'd saved his own life when she shot him down in the saloon. He was seconds away from a strangling death, and only she had been courageous enough to end Herod's vicious game. She'd rescued him that last night in the bordello too, saved him from becoming the main player in a sick sideshow when she burst into the whore's room and dragged him out of the door to safety. That night... Cort grimaced. Sweet Jesus, that night. She had saved him then, and not just from whores and perverted sinners. For it was that night that she had touched his soul, that night that he had come to love her.

It had only been a month since then. How could she have changed so much as to forget who she was? How could a woman like Ellen let it all go...her pride, her dignity, her courage? As far as Cort could see, there was only one reason for the change in her. One thing that was different. Rafe Carradine. He'd led Ellen astray, somehow convinced her to throw away her principles, enticed her into a life of shame.

Cort shifted in the saddle, wished he had some whiskey to dull the pain in his shoulder, and gingerly tucked his arm into his shirt for support. His eyes closed to block out the darkening land that spun dizzily around him. Lord, he was feeling a mite light in the head, and tired, so tired...like he could lay down and go to sleep for a week. Maybe the old Mex was right; he'd lost too much blood.

But the blood he had left was hot, the old killing rage was on him with a vengeance. Cort's spine stiffened, he sat straighter in the saddle. If the Elkhorn boss cowboy was a good man, he might have found it in his heart to ride off and let Ellen live her life with him. But Carradine wasn't a good man. Carradine was a thief like himself, McCabe's anonymous partner, the buyer for the stolen Mexican herd. The cabron who'd led Ellen into a life of degradation and shame.

As far as Cort was concerned, he was a man who deserved to die.

He rode past clusters of ghostly saguaro cactus, their lateral branches like arms lifted in supplication that reminded him of lost souls begging for salvation. And the thought came unbidden that his own soul would be lost forever, beyond redemption, if he kept on killing. Had not the lights of Bisbee winked like low-slung stars as he topped the last rise, he might have listened to the angel's voice whispering in his ear and turned back. But the lights called him on with an unrelenting pull, more powerful than his weakness, his weariness.

So close. Wouldn't be long now. He'd find Rafe Carradine. Challenge him. And gun him down.

During his time on this earth, there had been men who'd earned their deaths at his hands. Might even have been some who'd asked for it, and he'd been glad to oblige. There were a few he'd taken satisfaction in killing, cruel men who deserved their fate. But he'd never looked forward to seeing them suffer, never wanted to watch the light flicker out of their eyes like he wanted to see it fade from Rafe Carradine's.

Cort set his jaw, ignored the throbbing fire in his shoulder, and gave the paint a sharp slap on the haunch. She broke into a shambling run, covering ground at a smarter pace. He leaned forward in the saddle, the bloodlust in him seething like a live thing while the lights of Bisbee beckoned in the distance.

Ellen. Revenge. Justice.

e e e

Rafe Carradine was pleasantly drunk, just likkered enough on the Bon Ton's rye whiskey to feel mellow. He stood at the bar making desultory talk with the men who came in to wet their throats and chew the fat, ignored the fellers who regularly visited Ellen. It was getting hard for him not to care about the tricks she led upstairs to her room. Hard not think about what was going on right above his head.

A sudden craving for solitude took him, and he signaled for another drink and moved off down the bar to ponder over the last month. Seemed like things had gone pretty good for him since he'd met his sweet Ellen. He reckoned she was his lucky charm; too bad he couldn't tuck her in his pocket and take her with him everywhere, like some fellers toted a rabbit's foot or a gold piece. He stared down at the scarred bar top, blind and deaf to the hubbub around him, remembering the day he'd found her drunk in a saloon in Tombstone. He remembered all the days that had passed between then and now, the sweetness of her kiss, the comfort of her body. The sadness in her eyes that all his good nature hadn't been enough to erase.

From the corner of his eye he caught a flash of garish color, and a woman drifted into his peripheral vision. For a moment he thought it might be Ellen, but it was old Trixie, the whore known for her willingness to take a man's cock up her ass. Rafe grimaced and turned deliberately away to avoid her. She was a sorry piece, old Trixie. Been rode hard and put away wet a few times too often. All the rice powder and French rouge in the territory wouldn't be enough to cover the network of broken veins and the deep lines in her age-ravaged face. She wore tight corsets to push her tits back up to where they'd been long ago, but the flesh of her bosom was sallow and creased like a turkey's wattle. Long past the bloom of youth, her specialty was the only reason she was still permitted to sport in the Bon Ton. Were it not for the goodly number of ass-fuckers in town, she would have been kicked out to make her way in the cribs  long ago.

He couldn't help comparing her with Ellen. Though she wasn't a girl any more, Ellen still had roses in her cheeks, a sparkle in her eye. She still had her freshness, a beauty as sweet and new as an early morning. But Rafe knew it wouldn't take long for it all to fade, were she to stay in the sporting life. A good look at Trixie was enough proof that whoring was hard on a woman. The work wasn't hard, but it used a woman up. Took something out of her that could never be replaced. And the drink---especially the drink. Most whores drank, and Ellen came to the life already too partial to whiskey. Rafe knew she drank to forget. He just wasn't sure what she wanted to forget so bad that she would down a whole bottle of red eye in the attempt. His efforts to get her to tell him had come to naught.

He raised impatient eyes, searched the saloon for McCabe. Everything hinged on his deal with the rustler. The money he made skimming the profit would put him over the top, and he swore that after tonight, Ellen would never whore again. He’d save her from ending up like Trixie. They'd move away from Arizona, from people who wouldn't forget what she'd been. He'd make her respectable, a wife, a mother. By Christ he'd make her happy, or die trying.

e e e

It was suppertime when Frank McCabe finally pushed through the swinging doors of the Bon Ton, his eyes searching the crowd. He elbowed his way to Carradine, greeted him like a long lost brother. Rafe, both glad and relieved to see him, slapped McCabe's back so hard the dust puffed from his shirt. They had a drink together at the bar, then at Rafe's suggestion they walked across the street to a dining hall that catered to miners and cattlemen. At a table out of earshot of other men eating Miss Nellie's fried chicken and mashed potatoes, they squared their deal.

"Eight hundred eighty prime Mex longhorns, five dollars a head. Take it or leave it," said McCabe, leaning across the table, his voice purposefully low.

Rafe puffed a cheroot into life and tossed the spent lucifer away. He calculated quickly in his head: They'd settle on four fifty, but he'd tell old man Barker he'd had to pay five, and pocket the four hundred and forty dollars difference. That cash added to what was in his account in the Wells Fargo office would be enough to buy a good piece of land in Colorado. One more bout of trailing cattle for the army. One more trip that fattened Barker's purse, for the rancher would sell those cows for a sight more than five dollars the head. But as soon as he delivered the herd to Fort Bayard, he'd quit the Elkhorn and marry Ellen. And then he could watch those little tits jiggle loose all day, just for him.

He drawled lazily, hiding his impatience and greed, "Five's too much, pardner. Four's my top price."

McCabe shook his head. "Ain't enough, amigo. Them cows came dear. I lost a man on the way back...Mex's got him. Poor bastard's likely buzzard bait by now."

Rafe snorted in derision. "What’s that got to do with your price? Losing a man saved you money...you ain't got to pay him his share." He drew on the cheroot, smiled through the smoke. "You forget I know how you operate...we done business together long enough."

McCabe scowled. "Listen, you rebel son of a bitch...it was me who took the risks, got my ass shot at while you were back here as safe as in your mama's arms. That's worth five dollars a head."

The 'rebel son of a bitch' rankled. Rafe's eyes went cold and his tone went colder. "Mebbe it is…but I'm offerin' four and a half. You don't like it, you can trail them fuckin' cows to the fort yourself."

McCabe sat up. He was an outlaw, not a drover, and no more wanted to hit the trail with a herd of stolen Mexican cattle than he wanted to run across a lawman with a warrant on him. For a moment there was a tense silence as hard men stared each other down, and then McCabe dropped his eyes and gave way, just as Rafe expected.

"Cash on the barrelhead," he muttered. "I ain't takin' no goddamn rancher's scrip."

Rafe offered his hand and they shook on it. "Cash it is, as soon as the Wells Fargo office opens in the morning and I take a look at the herd." He paused as the serving girl set their plates down on the red checked tablecloth, then tucked his napkin in his shirt. "Now let's eat up this fine fried chicken, and then we'll go have us a drink to seal it up proper," he said.

e e e

The streets were crowded in Brewery Gulch. Torches placed along the plank sidewalks lighted them enough for Cort to see they were full of roughly-clad men going from saloon to gambling house to brothel. He saw a few women, knew them for crib girls, those pathetic whores who sold themselves for a few bits and worked out of leaning shacks or patched tents that held only a cot or a bedroll. The men who used them more often than not found themselves pissing blood and fire before long.

He rode at a slow pace, passed the Alhambra and the Lucky Strike until he finally saw a sign illuminated by a rank of flaring torches. The Bon Ton Saloon boasted a grand edifice, a false front three stories high with a balcony off the second floor. Cort gazed up at lighted windows, some curtained, some with shades pulled low, and wondered which was Ellen's.

He tied Bute's mare to the hitch rail and mounted the wooden steps from the street to the plank sidewalk. At the top he had to stop to catch his breath. He slid his hand inside his shirt, it came away red and sticky. Bleeding again, but it was no matter. Soon enough his business would be finished, and he could rest and heal up for a long spell. Cort pushed through the batwing doors, surveyed the saloon.

The Bon Ton lived up to its name. Fancy red flocked wallpaper, a mite stained in places, but still gaudily pretty. Chandeliers as big as wagon wheels hung suspended from the ceiling. Cort's eyes took in the faro tables, the dudes playing poker in the corner. He heard the click of wooden chips tossed into the pot, the muffled rolling thud of diced tossed on green felt. A piano player pounded the keys in a rollicking version of Buffalo Gals, adding to the general din. His eye lighting on a vacant table in the corner, Cort bought himself a bottle and went there to sit with his back against the wall. He poured a drink and tossed it back, poured another to sip. He settled in to wait.

e e e

Ellen closed the door behind her last trick and went to the washstand in the corner. She stirred up her usual soda water and vinegar douche, and propping one leg on a chair, took care of his leavings. It was warm in the little room, she could feel the sweat trickling down her ribs under her corset. A sniff under her arms proved a toilette was in order. There was water in the pitcher, she poured some into the bowl and washed. A dispassionate glance in the mirror told her she needed more coralline salve on her lips, and her hair had to be pinned up again. She performed those tasks absently, and when her ablutions were finished, she threw on a light wrapper and went downstairs to the saloon.

The loud voices, the equally loud music, irritated her. She was nervous tonight, she didn't know why. There was a tension inside her that made her feel skittish as a young colt. When the bartender came to collect her tokens, she handed them over with two bits extra and asked for a drink.

Clancy jerked his head toward Boss Lemmon, the owner of the Bon Ton, who sat at a table playing poker and watching over his kingdom. "You know he don't like you ladies drinking on the job," the bartender demurred.

"I need it tonight, Clancy. I'm nervous...feel jumpier than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Please...just one."

He poured her a short one, shook his head at the practiced way she threw back her head and downed the raw whiskey. As she set the empty glass on the bar Ellen asked, "Where's Rafe?"

Clancy shrugged. "Left with Frank McCabe a while ago. Said he'd be back."

She nodded, looked around the saloon. More miners than cowboys tonight, but not too many of either. If she had to choose one over the other, Ellen preferred miners. As a rule, they were more generous than cowboys, who worked for wages. Usually, by the time a cowboy came to her, all he had left was enough to pay her. But miners were an optimistic race. When they made a lucky strike, or if they even thought they might hit pay dirt some day, miners were in the mood to celebrate. They always tipped her above the price of a poke, and tips were hers to keep.

Pale blue and coolly appraising, her eyes drifted over the sparse crowd. Plenty of suckers at the faro table, but then there always were. Cowboys loved to buck the tiger. Couple of poker games going, the usual players around the table. She recognized one or two sharps, professional gamblers who made their living fleecing greenhorns. No point in looking for a trick there, the winners never bought a whore until the game was over, and the losers were always broke.

Her gaze settled on a man far across the room. He was alone at a corner table, had his back to the wall, a bottle and glass in front of him. He wasn't a miner or a cowboy, didn't have the look of either. 'Outlaw,' she thought, and idly wondered if the Bisbee marshal had any paper on him. The stranger looked vaguely familiar, but his hat was pulled low over his eyes and she couldn't make out his features. But he seemed to be aware of her, and she was about ready to go over and ask if he wanted to buy a poke when a prospector slipped his arm around her waist, whispered in her ear, and tugged her toward the stairs. Ellen forgot about the stranger and led her next customer up the wide wooden staircase to her room.

e e e

Cort shook with fury. She'd looked right at him and hadn't known him. He loved her enough to kill for her, and she hadn't recognized his face.

He poured another shot, tossed it back to dull the pain that radiated from his shoulder all the way down his arm. He flexed his hand, grimaced at the jolt of pure fire that skittered up his arm. Whatever was in those poultices had stopped working, and he hadn't had enough whiskey to make a difference. He sat in his corner drinking, waiting, trying to shut out the voices in his head.

'She didn't know you.'

He wanted to make excuses for her. It was dark in the saloon, he'd kept his hat on. But her eyes had gone straight to him and there was nothing in them, no spark of recognition, no sign of warmth or tenderness. He poured another shot, drank it down.

'You're nothing to her...she doesn't remember you...'

His hand clenched on the glass and his eyes went hot as he thought of the night they'd spent together. Her frantic kisses, burning into him, lighting a fire that hadn't gone out yet. Her hands stroking, touching, fingers twisting in his hair. She made him want her, drove him crazy with her mouth until he couldn't stand it anymore. Everything she did that night told him she needed his love. How could she forget him when he hadn't been able to get her out of his mind? He raised his gaze to the ceiling, stared at it, wondering if she was just above his head this minute, sucking another man...

There was a burst of laughter and raucous voices, louder than the rest in the saloon. Two men walked in from the street, Frank McCabe and another fellow with a gun at his hip. They went to the bar, ordered drinks. Cort saw McCabe slap his companion on the back.

It had to be him. Rafe Carradine, boss cowboy on the Elkhorn. Ellen's new lover.

Cort drank his whiskey, his eyes narrowed in hatred. It tortured him, but Carradine didn't seem to mind that Ellen was upstairs servicing another man. What kind of man allowed his woman to whore for him? The voices answered for him: 'No kind of man at all...'

McCabe and his compadre leaned on the bar, ordered drinks. Cort lurched to his feet, cursed his numb right hand under his breath. He shouldered his way to the bar, stood close enough to hear them talk. He wanted proof, waited to hear the name Rafe Carradine, but he heard worse.

e e e

McCabe knew damned well where Rafe's yellow-haired whore was, but he asked anyway. "Where's your filly?"

Rafe gave him a cool look. "No doubt she's upstairs." He poured himself a shot, pushed the bottle toward McCabe. "Have another, pardner. On me."

"Don't that bother you none?" McCabe poured, drank. "That she's up there fuckin' another man?"

Rafe shrugged, took pains to hide his anguish at Ellen's profession. Wouldn't do to let McCabe see a weakness in him.

"My daddy always said a woman's like a loaf of bread," he shrugged. "Once the first slice is off, you can't tell how many been's cut." He downed his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Besides, she's not long for it. We're gettin' hitched soon enough."

Behind them, a man spoke quietly, and with deadly menace. "The hell you say."

McCabe turned at the familiar voice, astonishment plain on his stubbled face. "By God, I thought you was dead!" he exclaimed.

"Looks to me you were glad of it," Cort said coolly. His eyes slid to Carradine, flickered in disgust. He let go with a deliberate taunt. "I hear your friend here lets his woman whore for him. We got a name for that where I come from."

Carradine's face flushed a dark red and he stood up straight, his body tense, his eyes wary. His gaze went to McCabe. "Frank? Who the hell is this feller?"

Cort took a menacing step forward, shouldered McCabe out of the way. "I'm the man who's going to kill you, cabron."

It happens sometimes in crowds, when there is a moment of unusual quiet and something is said that resounds in the dead air. Cort's insult carried over the room, settling like a blanket. Those in the saloon who understood Spanish...and that was almost all of them, the border was so close...drew shocked breaths and turned to watch what would happen. Only Carradine did not realize that in one descriptive Spanish word, Cort had just called him less than a man, a weakling who permits others to fuck his woman. But the deadly menace in the stranger standing so coolly before him penetrated his mellow drunkenness, and he looked at Frank McCabe in confusion.

"Kill me? For what?" Carradine spluttered a nervous laugh. "I ain't never seen you in my life."

"Rafe...shut up," McCabe warned, and then said tensely to Cort, "Listen, amigo, why don't you come outside with me? Forget this. We'll go across to the Alhambra and have us a drink." He threw a casual arm across Cort's shoulder, froze when he knocked it away.

"Come out in the street," Cort said softly, his eyes boring into Rafe Carradine's. "You and me, we got some business together."

Rafe stilled, hardly dared to breathe. By Christ if the stranger wasn't serious...he meant to kill him. He could see it in the cold eyes that didn't blink or waver, in the hand that hovered near the butt of a gun tucked into his waistband.

"Mister..." Rafe shook his head. "I ain't going nowhere."

"You're going straight to hell," Cort said quietly.

Later, most of the patrons said they didn’t see the stranger draw his gun. They were watching Carradine, some said, waiting to see if he would swallow the insult. Others claimed to be watching the stranger, but didn't see him fire. All they could swear to was hearing the shot, and then the man was standing over Rafe's prostrate body.

Carradine's eyes widened in shock as the .45 caliber bullet slammed into his belly. The moment stretched endlessly until his knees buckled, and he clamped his hand to his abdomen to stanch the flow of warm trickling blood.

"Jesus...you shot me." He said it like a child's petulant accusation before he slid to the floor.

Cort watched him collapse, stared down into his wide open eyes. Carradine didn't notice, his gaze was on the stairs. "Ellen?" he whispered. "Somebody get my sweet Ellen..."

And at the sound of her name profaning his lips, Cort shot him again. As the bullet punched into Rafe's chest, Cort saw the light go out of his eyes like a snuffed candle, his mouth fall slack. His chest heaving, he stood over the body, silent, triumphantly victorious.

There was a shocked silence. Gray wisps of gun smoke curled and rose, wreathing Cort's head. A chair scraped, and boot heels pounding across the wooden floor sounded like claps of thunder. Overhead there was a pattering of bare feet, the slam of a hastily closed door. And then she was on the stairs, one hand on the wooden balustrade, the other holding her wrapper closed at her neck. Her eyes went to Rafe's body, then to the man standing over him, his smoking gun still in his hand.

She started down, her steps jerky and uncoordinated, as if she were a marionette in the control of an amateur puppeteer. Even those hard-bitten men who watched felt the stirrings of pity, for her face was white, her eyes staring in disbelief. They shuffled back, made way for her until she stood above her fallen lover.

"Rafe?" She dropped to her knees, her hands fluttering helplessly over the bloody wounds. "Rafe?"

Cort shifted, the soles of his boots scraping on the sanded wooden floor. He shoved the gun into his waistband, reached for her. "Ellen," he said softly. "Ellen."

She didn't hear, didn't trouble to look at him. "Ellen," he said again, "I'm here. I came for you. Come on, sweetheart. Come away from him."

She recoiled when his hands closed on her arm, and faster than any of the men in the Bon Ton could have imagined, she jerked Rafe's pistol from his holster. In the blink of an eye it was pointed at Cort's chest, in another blink she had pulled the trigger. A hole bloomed in the middle of his chest, the flesh and fabric around it peppered with black powder that burst into flame and ignited his shirt. As Cort dropped to his knees, Ellen struggled to her feet. The gun fell from her numb fingers to bounce off Rafe's lifeless body and clatter to the floor.

Someone threw a beer on him and extinguished the tiny licking flames. On his knees at her feet, Cort swayed, reached for Ellen's skirts. An expression of confusion clouded his features. He couldn't catch his breath, he was blinded by smoke. He stared up through it into her coldly expressionless face. His hands balled the silk of her dressing gown, clutched at it.

She didn't understand...it was all for nothing, and the gates of a fiery hell yawned before him. "I loved you," he whispered, his eyes pleading. "I loved you."

Looking down into his face, she realized who he was. Ellen staggered under his dead weight and stepped away from him, breaking his hold on her skirts.

"I hate you," she said coldly.

It was the last thing he heard. Cort fell to the bloody floor to lie next to the man he'd killed for her.

e e e

"It's time."

The marshal slid his key into the lock on her cell and swung the door open. He stepped back, waited until the woman dressed in leather britches and a soft white shirt passed by him into the office, where his deputies waited.

It troubled Tom Crutchfield to hang a woman. Such things didn't happen much in these parts, there was certainly no precedent for it in Bisbee. But the whore had shot a man in cold blood, killed him out of revenge for her lover. Some of the fellers in the Bon Ton that night claimed it was a justified killing, but Mayor Flickinger didn't want whores thinking they could just shoot a man and get away with it. Whores killing men was bad for business. So the mayor had a talk with the circuit judge, let him know which way the town wanted the hearing to go. He almost hadn't had to...the woman never said a word in her own defense, sat as silent as the grave through the entire trial. Didn't blink an eye when the verdict came in, either. It was almost like she expected the judge’s sentence.

The silent deputies formed a cordon around her, marched her out the back door into the torrid heat of an Arizona midday. A hastily knocked together gallows cast a skeletal shadow over sun-parched dust. Crutchfield and his men guided her to the stairs. She didn't hesitate, went up them with a steady step, her cool blue eyes on the hangman waiting above. Ranged in a loose a semi-circle in front stood the Cochise County sheriff, Mayor Flickinger, and the members of the town council. There were no other spectators, the curious townsfolk thronging the street were held back by a line of strong men, hastily deputized that morning to keep them away.

The Reverend Mr. Hartland from the Congregational Church stepped forward, a Bible in one hand, the other raised in blessing.

"Are you sorry for your sins, ma'am? Ready to face the Lord and repent of them?"

Ellen turned a cool glance his way. "I ain't much of a one for preachers. I'll make my peace with the Lord in my own way, thanks."

Hartland stepped away, but he didn't leave the platform. She heard him quietly imploring God to receive her soul, and shrugged. Let him pray. She didn't care.

The hangman beckoned, "Over here, ma'am," and she moved to stand squarely in the center of the trapdoor. Her hands were bound behind her, just like her father's had been, and when they started to slide a muslin hood over her head, she stopped them.

"I don't want it," she said.

"It's common practice at a hanging," the hangman began.

She hadn't asked for anything, so she said now, "Then let's call it my last wish. I don't want my eyes covered."

"Let it go," the marshal ordered. "Any final words, ma'am?"

"I should have let him die," she murmured absently. "Back in Redemption, I should have let him die."

"Who ma'am? Who should you have let die?" Tom Crutchfield bent to look in her eyes, but she turned away.

"It doesn't matter. Not anymore." She shook her head. "Get on with it."

She stilled as the noose was placed just so, with the knot resting to the left of the delicate bones of her spine. Her eyes went to the men standing below as if she were searching for a particular face. And then at a signal, a deputy knocked away the plank that had been holding the trapdoor from below. As her body dropped through the platform she saw the shadow of a man, stark and black against the pale dust, swinging in a slow arc.

"Daddy?"

The witnesses waited until her body stopped jerking. The hangman released the ballast rope, and Marshal Crutchfield came down from the gallows to catch her lifeless body himself. He carried her to the undertaker waiting with a coffin on the back of a buckboard, thinking maybe they'd made a mistake, that a woman who died so brave deserved to live.

It was all the mourning she got.

The undertaker fitted her body into the coffin and nailed on the lid, the hammer blows echoing in the heavy air. When he was finished, he clambered down and signaled to his assistant. The man clucked to the mules, and the buckboard rattled off toward Boot Hill. To their credit, the men who had watched her die removed their hats as it passed by.

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The Butterfield stage from Tombstone pulled into town just after high noon on the day of Ellen's hanging. The streets of the town were crowded, and old Scratch Dann the driver had to rein in his team and guide them carefully to keep from running folks over.

"What the hell's going on here?" He pulled up, got the coach stopped in front of the depot, and looked questioningly at his pard riding shotgun. "Is they a parade or somethin'?"

His companion shrugged.

Scratch jumped nimbly down from the high seat and after a stretch, jerked open the passenger door. The stage was crowded with fancy ladies...whores come to Bisbee from Tombstone. Miss Twyla's Flowers, relocating to a town the madam deemed less violent. Scratch didn't know if Bisbee was peaceful enough for her, but he was sure glad to have the madam and her fancy ladies in town. They were a sight fancier than the ones he was used to, and he'd heard tell one of them was all the way from Chicago.

One by one they stepped down, smiling at him, offering thanks, daintily adjusting hats and skirts like real ladies. Miss Twyla was the last one out, and she stopped to have a word with Scratch. As soon as she laid her gloved hand on his arm, he blushed red and whipped off his dusty hat to stand bareheaded in the relentless sun.

The madam's voice was low and musical. "You've been very helpful, Mr. Dann, and I most certainly appreciate it. One more question, if you please...where is the Brewery Gulch section of town?"

A red-cheeked Scratch managed to point north up the street, thinking it was mighty nice of her to call him Mr. Dann. Most folks just called him by his unfortunate nickname, earned when he'd caught the crabs from a whore when he was a young feller. It had been an unpleasant experience, and those lice were hard to get shed of, but it hadn't hurt his opinion of whores any.

"There's a hotel just up the street a ways." He managed to keep his eyes on her face and not let them dip to the display of cleavage almost hidden by her ruffled bodice. "Fine new hotel...the Copper Queen. Can't miss it. I'll get a wagon and fetch your baggage along, if that's where you'll be stayin'."

"For now, it will do. Thank you." Miss Twyla smiled and patted him again, and Scratch turned a shade darker. He pulled his bandana and wiped sweat from his forehead before he put his hat back on, and watched her gather up her Flowers for the walk to the hotel.

"That's a fine lookin' woman," he muttered under his breath as the whores mounted the steps to the wooden sidewalk. "Gonna pay her a visit as soon as she sets up shop."

Madam Twyla walked beside her freshest Flower as they made their way up the sidewalk. Disregarding the insult of proper women pulling their skirts aside as if to avoid contamination, Violet looked around with interested eyes. Bisbee seemed about as big as Tombstone, had as many stores and such. She even saw a steeple or two. But this was the proper side of town. She'd wait to pass judgment on her new home until they got to Brewery Gulch.

Their passage went unimpeded until they were almost to the Copper Queen. A dense crowd of loud cigar-smoking men gathered in front of Simm's General Mercantile. Twyla and her flock of soiled doves pushed their way through with murmured apologies.

"Must be giving something away," Violet thought, demurely waiting while Miss Twyla tapped a man on the shoulder and said, "Excuse me, let us by, please." A hole opened, large enough for them to pass through. But Violet and Twyla stopped dead, stunned into immobility by the scene before them.

Two wooden coffins leaned against a bench, like pictures propped on an artist's easel. One was glossy black and trimmed with fine silver fittings. A glass window over the face of the departed allowed a view of the nice-looking young man who reposed inside. His face was pasty and white except where the undertaker had applied two spots of rouge, high on his cheekbones, and his mouth sagged slightly open.

Beside it was a rough box, seemingly knocked together out of old planks. The lid of the coffin leaned beside it against the wall of the Mercantile. The corpse was dusty, as if nobody had troubled to prepare it for burial. The hair was chestnut in color, thick and full, and hung almost to his shoulders, And around the neck of the dead man was a crudely lettered cardboard sign that said simply, KILLER.

Aghast, Violet put a lace-mittened hand to her mouth and caught her breath in shock. Twyla recognized him, too. She hastily slid her arm around her favorite Flower and forcibly turned Violet's head onto her shoulder so she could no longer look on that unforgettable face, handsome even in death.

She remembered him well, they both did. He was the kind of man who made an impression on a woman, especially if he was her first. His name came to mind as easily as if she'd met him only the day before...she could see him bowing over her hand, all courtliness and good manners, feel his lips brush softly over her knuckles as he said in a drawling, low-pitched voice, "Just call me Cort, ma'am."

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THE END

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