Schuyler followed suit, and then the two men turned and left the tavern. No one paid them any mind.
They hurried around the building. Full night had fallen by now, and they had to find the back stairs in the dark. Schuyler tripped over something and nearly fell, and Fairfax cursed under his breath and told him to be careful. Then they came to the stairs and began a slow, careful ascent.
They reached the door at the top of the stairs and slipped inside. They found themselves in a narrow corridor with doors on both sides. The hallway was lit by a single candle stuck on a shelf at the far end, where the landing for the main staircase was. Thick shadows cloaked this end of the corridor.
Fairfax motioned for Schuyler to take the lead. Schuyler hesitated, then grimaced and started walking carefully along the hall, staying close to the wall. He paused at each door he came to and pressed his ear to the panel. Finally, at the third door on the right, he motioned for Fairfax to follow him.
“I can hear ’em splashin’ around in there,” Schuyler whispered in his partner’s ear. “Sounds like they’re havin’ a fine old time.”
Fairfax reached under his coat and drew out a short-barreled pistol. “It’s about to get finer…for us,” he said as he drew back the weapon’s hammer.
Preacher took the two pistols from behind his belt and placed them on a chair near the tub, along with the heavy-bladed hunting knife in its fringed sheath and the tomahawk he also carried. His long rifle was leaned against the wall in a corner. Then he stripped off his greasy, dirty buckskins and tossed them in a different corner of the room.
By that time, Abby had peeled her homespun dress up and over her head, along with the thin shift she wore underneath it. That left her naked as a jaybird. She was cuter than a jaybird, Preacher thought. He stepped into the tub, wincing a little as his foot touched the hot water. He climbed the rest of the way in and sank down, motioning for Abby to join him.
Considering that she was a pretty solidly built young woman, her movements were a mite dainty as she got into the tub and lowered herself onto Preacher’s lap. They embraced and kissed again, shifting around to make themselves more comfortable in the close confines of the tub. Some of the water sloshed over the sides.
Preacher luxuriated in the heat, letting it soak away all the aches and pains he had stored up in his lanky body during the long months spent in the wilderness. Abby did a lot of kissing and playing around, but he was almost too tired to really get into the spirit of the thing. He was thinking about telling her that they ought to consider postponing the rest of their get-together until the next night, when he heard a floorboard creak in the hallway outside the door.
Preacher’s thick, dark eyebrows drew down in a frown. The sound didn’t have to mean anything. Just somebody else who had rented one of Fargo’s rooms passing by in the corridor, that was all.
But the creak had been
Unless, of course, they were up to no good.
Now that he thought about it, he realized that he’d had a tiny feeling of unease ever since he had arrived in St. Louis. He had put it down to the fact that he was in a settlement again, with people all around, rather than out by himself on the high, lonesome plains or in the rugged, isolated mountains. He had figured that nobody was really watching him.
But maybe he’d been wrong about that. Maybe that uneasy feeling had been a warning that trouble was lurking in those crowds.
Preacher sat up a little straighter in the tub and took his hands off Abby’s heavy breasts. He reached for the butts of the pistols on the nearby chair instead, and she frowned and asked, “What’s wrong, honey?”
Before Preacher could answer, the door to the corridor slammed open and two men rushed into the room, each of them brandishing a gun.
Chapter Three
Preacher filled his hands about as fast as it was possible for any man to do so, leaning to the side out of the washtub as he did so.
But at that same moment, Abby cried out in surprise and started to stand up, even though Preacher yelled for her to stay down.
The warning came too late. Both of the intruders fired, and as their pistols roared and powder smoke spouted from the muzzles, the heavy lead balls slammed into the young redhead’s back.
Abby was thrown forward by the horrible impact. She crashed against Preacher, who was trying to stand up now that he was armed. The combination of the collision and the wet tub made his feet slip out from under him. He fell backward, out of the tub.
Images and impressions were jumbled together in his brain. He saw the blood spurting from the holes in Abby’s chest where the pistol balls had gone all the way through her body and torn their way out. He saw the look of pain and shock filling her wide green eyes. He saw the two killers, one short, one tall, but that was all that had registered during the quick glimpse he had gotten of them. And he saw the ceiling of the room as he smashed down on his back on the floor.
Instinct saved his life then, causing his muscles to spring into action even though he was too stunned to think about what he was doing at that moment. He rolled to the side as another gun roared. At least one of the assassins had a second pistol. The ball chewed splinters from the floorboards near his head. He felt several of the little wood slivers sting his face. He came to a stop on his belly, the pistols in his hands tilted up but still unfired.
There was nothing to shoot at, Preacher realized. The two intruders were gone. They must have realized that to stand around and try to reload was to invite certain death at his hands. He heard swift footsteps in the corridor and knew they were fleeing.
As he leaped to his feet, he saw Abby draped over the side of the washtub. She had fallen to her knees and then pitched forward, so that the upper half of her body dangled outside the tub and the tangled strands of her long, wet red hair hung down and brushed the floor. Preacher had seen the extent of the terrible wounds she had suffered and knew she was dead. Nobody survived having a couple of fist-sized holes blown through their chest.
