Vengeance Moon Page 7

  Cotton shrugged. “I don’t remember. I heard it once or twice, but I don’t remember what it was. I didn’t pay much attention to it, I reckon.”

  “Was it Slaughter?” P. D. asked, watching intently as she waited for Cotton’s response.

  “Mighta been. Come to think of it, I believe it was Slaughter. Yeah, that was it.”

  P. D.’s eyes took on a definite gleam. She turned to smile at her three sons. She almost thought she detected a small spark of excitement in their otherwise blank faces. It was a welcome sight. During the past weeks, she and her sons had covered a lot of ground, all to no avail, and she was a little worried that they might be losing some of their original enthusiasm for the hunt. Without specific information of Slaughter’s whereabouts, she would never find him in the lofty, rugged mountains. She had counted on the woman with him to lead them to their man. A man alone might be content living in the mountains like an animal. But it was unusual for a woman not to yearn for some semblance of civilization. The two obscure trading posts she and the boys had encountered had not seen any white women. The only women they had seen were Shoshoni or Crow. Now, with the chance encounter with Cotton, she could feel her luck changing and the trail getting warmer.

  “Looks like we mighta struck gold here, boys,” she said, grinning at Cotton. “I expect we’d best do a little doctorin’ on that shoulder of your’n, Bill Cotton, and then I might have a little proposition for ya.”

  Cotton cocked an eye, suspicious of anyone offering a deal to someone they had just met in a saloon. Blinking hard to clear his eyes of the alcohol he’d just tossed down, he studied the faces of the three younger men seated with P. D. Trying to size them up, he looked first at the big one, the one referred to as Arlo. He looked to be the eldest of the three, but seated next to Arlo was the one Bill judged most dangerous. He had a surly look about him. The youngest seemed a minor threat. The four seemed to be the caliber of ruffians Bill had ridden with for most of his life.

  Up to that point the three had sat quietly, their faces as blank as a freshly washed blackboard, with identical inane grins their only expression. He switched his gaze back to take a hard look at P. D.—a short, squarely built person with rolls and bulges unusual for a man. It struck him only then that P. D. was a woman. About the ugliest woman I ever saw, at that, he thought.

  “I expect I’d best see if I can find a doctor,” Cotton said.

  “Nah, you don’t need no doctor,” P. D. insisted. “Have another drink. Another shot of that whiskey, and you won’t even feel that shoulder. I’ll dig that bullet outta there, and you won’t have to waste no money on a doctor.”

  “Ma’s dug ’em out before,” Arlo spoke up in support of his mother. “Good as any doctor.”

  Bo laughed at that. “She patched up Wiley’s pa, and then got mad at him and shot him herself.”

  P. D. aimed a sideways glance at her second son. “That was Arlo’s pa, son, as mean a snake as ever drew breath. Anyway, Mr. Cotton, here, don’t wanna hear nothin’ about that.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Cotton stammered. His head was beginning to spin just a little—the effect of the strong drink on an empty stomach. Knowing he had already had too much to drink, but unable to refuse free whiskey as long as it was offered, he continued to toss down shot after shot until he eventually went facedown on the table.

  “Get him up on his feet, boys,” P. D. instructed her sons. She walked over to the bar then to talk to the bartender, who seemed only mildly interested in Cotton’s welfare. “Poor feller,” P. D. said to the bartender, “set upon by a murderin’ devil. Me and my boys will tend to that shoulder for him.”

  The bartender shrugged indifferently. It was all the same to him. He was well accustomed to seeing drunks carried out of the Lucky Strike. Most of the time they woke up back of the building with their pockets empty. “That sounds like bad business,” he commented, “if that feller that shot him is doin’ all that killin’.”

  “I reckon that’s somethin’ that needs fixin’, all right,” P. D. said with a faint smile on her face, knowing who was going to do the fixing.

  With a considerable amount of the up-front money paid her by Jonathan Mathis still in pocket, P. D. had rented a couple of rooms in the hotel, one for her, and one for her three boys. But Cotton was not taken directly to the hotel for his doctoring. Instead, he was taken to the stables where their horses were boarded. There was a reason. As her sons had boasted, P. D. knew a thing or two about cutting lead out of a body, and she was interested in seeing Cotton recover. There were no stoves in the hotel rooms, and the stable offered a blacksmith’s forge for cauterizing the wound.

  Arlo and Bo laid the still-drunken Cotton in the hay and held him steady while P. D. went to work with a twelve-inch skinning knife. Wiley, the youngest, held a lantern and watched in gleeful excitement as his mother split the pus-filled lump that had formed over the entry wound. After letting it drain for a moment, she probed none too gently in the wound until the blade ticked on the lead ball. The stable filled with the putrid odor of the festered wound as it blended with the dank aroma of horse manure. Lolling in drunken oblivion to the butchering of his shoulder, Bill Cotton uttered only an occasional grunt in response to P. D.’s less-than-gentle touch. He became totally sober, however, after the bullet was removed, when P. D. laid the white-hot iron on the bloody wound. Emitting one ear-piercing scream, he sat bolt upright before falling back in the hay unconscious.

  * * *

  After the bullet was removed, Cotton’s recovery was rapid. Following a full night’s sleep, he awoke early the next morning, not quite sure where he was. Turning to look beside him, he could see that he had shared a bed with someone. He didn’t know who, and whoever it was, was already up. He threw his legs over the side and sat up. The room spun around for a few moments, but then settled down. From the looks of it, he guessed he was in the hotel. A few minutes later, his hunch was confirmed.

  “Well, looks like you done woke up.” Cotton looked toward the door to see a man standing there grinning; one of P. D.’s sons, he didn’t remember which one. The door was pushed open then and Arlo, P. D.’s eldest, walked into the room.

  Cotton started to get up, but then realized that he had nothing on but his socks. He immediately became alarmed. “Where the hell’s my clothes?”

  Arlo laughed and pointed toward a chair in the corner of the room. “Right yonder,” he replied.

  Cotton started for the chair, staggered slightly, stopped to steady himself, then made his way over to the corner. His first thought was to see if the little bit of money he had was still there. It was, so he relaxed a bit. “How the hell did I get here?” he asked as he climbed back into his pants.

  “We toted you up here,” Arlo answered. “Me and my brothers.”

  Cotton had awakened on many mornings before, after a night of drinking, not sure where he was. Usually he found himself in the back alley of a saloon with his pockets empty, or, if he wasn’t in a town, sprawled under a tree somewhere. But he’d never woken up in a hotel room, in a bed. Something fishy was going on. “I can’t pay for no hotel room,” he complained as he hitched up his belt.

  “You ain’t gotta pay for it,” Arlo informed him, still amused by Cotton’s confusion. “Ma’s payin’ for it.”

  “Ma?”

  Arlo nodded. “Yep, Ma,” he said. Then seeing that Cotton was even more confused, he said, “P. D.”

  Events of the night before came back to him then—the woman, P. D., and her three sons. Still it escaped him why they would go to the trouble to take him in. He looked back at the bed. “Which one of you slept in the bed with me?” For it was obvious that someone had.

  “Ma,” Arlo answered again. “Me and my brothers slept in the room next to this’un.”

  “Damn!” Cotton uttered, clearly astonished. Then another thought occurred to him. “Who took my clothes off?”

  “Ma” was the answer again, this time with a chuckle.

  �
�Damn!” Cotton repeated, and squinted his eyes tightly closed, trying to remember, but he could not. The entire evening before, after the saloon, was lost in a confusion of dreams and half dreams. The tenderness of his right shoulder was the only thing he was certain of at that moment.

  Seeing him flinch as he examined the wound, Arlo cautioned him. “Ma said that there arm’s gonna be a mite touchy for a day or two.”

  “I reckon,” Cotton agreed, wincing with the effort of pulling his shirt on. “I best be gettin’ outta here. Where’s my boots?”

  “Ma’s got ’em. She said you might wanna cut and run, so she’s got ’em downstairs with her. Her and my brothers is still eatin’ breakfast. They’ll be up directly. Ma sent me up here to look in on you. I always eat faster’n they do. Ma says I eat just like a dog—don’t hardly take time to chew, just choke it on down.” He laughed, amused by the mental picture of himself.

  Cotton just stared at the simple oaf of a man. Damn, he thought, he’s dumber’n Rainey. His patience wearing thin then, he started to get a little irritated at the thought of a woman virtually holding him prisoner. “Well, I’ve had about enough of this horseshit,” he announced, and reached for his gun belt, hanging on the back of the chair.

  Arlo watched in dumb silence, fascinated by Cotton’s painful efforts to strap the gun belt around his waist. After considerable difficulty, he settled the belt on his hips. Then, reaching across with his left hand, he drew his revolver from the holster. “Now, you damn moron, let’s go get my boots.”

  Arlo simply smiled at the cocked pistol pointed at his gut. Then, with nothing approaching a quick draw, he pulled his pistol and leveled it at Cotton. Cotton was amazed at the man’s apparent stupidity, but his reaction was automatic. He pulled the trigger only to hear the dull metallic click of the hammer as it fell on an empty chamber. Arlo’s smile told him it was useless to try again.

  “Ma took them bullets outta your gun. She said you might try somethin’ like that.” He stood there, his pistol still leveled at Cotton’s belly. “Ma’ll be up here directly,” he said. “She said I could shoot you if you tried to go, as long as I didn’t kill ya.”

  Frustrated and angry to the point of seething, Cotton was at a loss as to what he could do. If he had had two good arms, he would have considered making a move for the gun, even though Arlo was twice his size. It didn’t help that he felt foolish for standing there in his stocking feet, faced down by a halfwit wearing a huge grin, an unusually large halfwit at that. His desperate thoughts were interrupted in the next minute, however, by the arrival of P. D. and her other two sons.

  “Well, now, I see our patient’s on his feet again,” P. D. said as she preceded Bo and Wiley into the room. “Wiley, go get Bill’s boots from your room. I expect he’s gonna wanna go downstairs and get somethin’ to eat.” She paused to watch her youngest leave, then turned back to Cotton. “First, I’ve got a little business proposition for you. Arlo, put that gun away. Bill ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  Cotton was still lost in a quandary of confusion. He gazed at the square, solidly built figure of P. D. Wildmoon, dressed in men’s clothing from boots to Montana Peak, totally at a loss as to the woman’s interest in him. “What the hell do you want with me?” he finally asked. “You ain’t took me in just ’cause of my good looks.”

  She smiled, wide and friendly. “Well, now, Bill, that mighta had somethin’ to do with it.” She fixed him with an amused twinkle in her eye, then said, “You know where Slaughter is, and I wanna find him.”

  Astonished, Cotton gaped at the homely woman, her three dull-witted sons standing stoically behind her, like so many yard dogs. Finally, he shook his head in disbelief. “Hell, I told you where the tradin’ post was. I don’t know where the hell he is now.”

  P. D. continued to smile, but now the grin was forced. “From what you was babblin’ about last night, it sounds like Slaughter is mighty friendly with the Injuns in them mountains, and you know where that Crow village is.” She cocked her head for emphasis. “You could save me a lotta time if you led me to that village.” He was already shaking his head before she finished the sentence. “’Course, I ain’t expectin’ you to go along outta the kindness of your heart. Nossir, there’d be a sizable cut of the reward money for you.”

  This sparked Cotton’s interest. “Reward money?” he responded.

  “I thought that might send a spark up your ass,” P. D. said. She turned to glance at her boys. All three responded with knowing grins. They had a fair notion what Bill Cotton’s reward would be. P. D. went on to paint a mental picture for Cotton. “We’re being paid to hunt Slaughter down by a man back in Virginia. Already got half of it. When we take him back, we get the rest. If you help me find him, your share will be about five hundred dollars.”.

  Cotton didn’t say anything at once, not sure he had heard P. D. correctly. “How much?” he stammered after a moment.

  “Five hundred,” P. D. repeated. She glanced at Arlo and winked. “That is, if you can lead us to him.”

  “Hell, yes,” he eagerly agreed, “I can lead you to him. He ain’t gonna be easy to take, though. I can tell you that. But, hell, for five hundred dollars, I’d even shoot him for you.” The thought of having that much money in his hand at one time was enough to erase the fear he had felt when running for his life.

  “All right, then, partner,” P. D. said, her grin genuine now. “I reckon we’ll let you rest that shoulder up today, and head out first thing in the mornin’.”

  “Hell,” Cotton replied as he shook P. D.’s hand. “I’m feelin’ good enough to ride now. We can start back today if you want to.”

  “Nah,” P. D. insisted. “We’ll stay over one more night and let you get good and rested.” She cut a sharp eye at Bo when he started to snicker. “You boys go along now, but don’t be gettin’ in no trouble. Arlo, go down to the stable and make sure that son of a bitch feeds them horses some oats. And see that Bo and Wiley don’t wander off nowhere I can’t find ’em if I need ’em.” She turned back to Cotton. “Our new partner is most likely wantin’ some breakfast. Me and him’ll go downstairs. I could use another cup of coffee myself.”

  Arlo did as he was told. After he herded his two younger brothers out in the hallway, Wiley complained, “I want-some more coffee, too. I wanna go with Ma.”

  Bo giggled again. “Wiley, you dumb turd, Ma don’t want you around. She’s got the itch again, and I reckon she’s thinkin’ ol’ Bill Cotton can scratch it for her. Ain’t that right, Arlo?”

  “I reckon,” Arlo replied. “He don’t know it yet, but I expect he’s about to get rode harder’n he’s ever been rode before.”

  Wiley was close to eighteen years old, but his mental capacity had been filled by the time he saw his twelfth birthday. It had made little difference in his life to that point, having never been called upon to make any decisions that called for serious thought. Very few things seemed to bother him, but he was somewhat troubled by his mother’s tendency toward itches. It only happened about once a year, but he didn’t understand her need to spend time alone with some strange man in order to get relief from this strange itch. He and his brothers were all for any opportunity for a roll in the hay with some young female. That was only natural, but he couldn’t understand that his mother might be interested in the same sport. After all, she was an older woman, and his mother. Furthermore, he didn’t see why he couldn’t go have more coffee with the two of them. “She said she was gonna give him five hundred dollars,” he blurted, still pouting.

  Bo shook his head in mock amazement. “I swear, Wiley, you’re dumber’n a stump. What ol’ Bill Cotton is gonna get is a bullet in the back of the head once Ma’s through with him. Ain’t that right, Arlo?”

  “I expect,” Arlo said. “Forget about coffee, Wiley. We’ll go get us some beer. You’d druther have that, wouldn’t you?” Wiley nodded excitedly, his simple mind already blissful again.

  * * *

  While her three boys were enterta
ining themselves by taking in the many sights of Virginia City, P. D. was well into the preliminary stages of a planned sexual assault upon one Bill Cotton. She sat at the table with him as he finished off a sizable breakfast of flap-jacks and bacon, totally unsuspecting of the demands about to be placed upon his body. There was never a thought of anything remotely connected to a romantic adventure with a woman who looked every bit the man he was. In fact, he didn’t even give it a thought when the waitress greeted them with the words, “What can I get for you gents?” If it bothered P. D., she gave no indication.

  For a fact, P. D. was more man than woman by her own choosing, but deep inside her private mind she knew that she was female, and, as such, she experienced certain urges from time to time. Though not as often as in earlier years, when she had given birth to each of her three sons, when the urge hit her it was just as strong as in decades before. Like land that had been untended for years, time had been harsh on P. D. Rugged and woolly, the soil had dried out over the decades, but the land was still plowable, although it had long since lost its fertility.

  She was in no way attracted to the scruffy-looking bushwhacker, Bill Cotton. It was just that he had arrived on the scene at a strategic time. She was in heat. Before he showed up, she had already made up her mind that it was her time of year, and she had planned to satisfy her urges with some unsuspecting male before she left town. While not the least bit religious, she recognized the fact that Bill Cotton was the answer to two prayers, seeing as how he could also help her find Slaughter. For these reasons, P. D. was feeling exceptionally frisky as she watched Cotton wipe the grease from his two-week-old beard.

  His hunger satisfied, Cotton again suggested that they might as well start out for the Yellowstone then, instead of waiting for morning. He was anxious to get that five-hundred-dollar payday, although he was a little concerned about his chances of collecting. She didn’t say how or when he was to get the money. He didn’t figure he could trust P. D. to keep her end of the bargain unless he was careful to keep an eye on her and her sons. On the other hand, she had said that this man in Virginia had already paid her money up front. And, he wondered, if she could afford to give him five hundred, how much was she carrying on her? Maybe, he thought, there was the possibility of a bigger payday if he just took what she had on her for himself, and left her in a gully somewhere. Her three idiot sons were a problem, however. He would just have to wait for an opportunity.