“Son of a bitch,” Billy muttered under his breath as they rode around to the rear. “That horse tied behind the outhouse? That’s Parmelee’s buckskin. From the piles of horse shit behind him, I’d say we’re a couple of hours late and a dollar short, George.”
“Well, shit. Let’s go see what’s left of Sarah. That sick bastard has a thing for playing with knives while he’s fucking them.”
Billy rode up behind the house, tied his horse off on a heavy sawbuck, and walked up to the back door. Locked. Down beside the stairs a workman had left a crowbar.
Ten seconds later the door was open—if a little splintered.
“Follow me,” George told him, leading the way. “If that bastard hasn’t left me something to humiliate, and hurt, and pay back, you can kill him twice. Slowly.”
Billy shucked his Remington and kept a couple of steps behind. One thing he could say for Sarah Anderson, she was building one hell of a house. What was a lone woman going to do with a rambling hulk like this? Turn it into an orphanage?
George led the way through the kitchen and into a dining room. Billy spotted the liquor bottles on the back wall’s unfinished hutch and grinned. If he had to wait on George, there’d be liquid entertainment. Quality if he could judge from the labels.
They’d just made it into the parlor when a muffled bang from upstairs brought them both to a halt. Pistol shot?
“Son of a bitch!” Parmelee’s shout carried from above.
Another bang.
A door slammed open, boots pounding on stairs as someone hurried down.
Parmelee came reeling in from the foyer, a hand to his cheek, face like a strained mask. Blood, like a crimson blossom, spread on his shirt just below his right collarbone.
He stopped short, gaping at George, and then Billy. “What in tarnal hell?”
“Win Parmelee,” George drawled slowly. “Run out of a woman’s bedroom.”
“Who the hell are you?” Parmelee dabbed at the blood leaking out of his cheek and grimaced. “She shot me in the fucking face! Bloody fucker, that hurts!”
Billy covered Parmelee with his Remington as he heard footsteps on the stairs. The woman was coming, which meant things might get a little interesting if she had more than a two-shot derringer.
George sounded pleasant. “How’d you get away from my men outside Virginia City, Parmelee? Heard that they had you to rights, but somehow you killed them all.”
“Billy did that.” Parmelee sounded dull, his voice starting to slur as if in great pain.
“Indeed,” George whispered. “Sometime in the future that will make for an interesting conversation.”
“She shot me in the face!” Parmelee moaned. “It’s like a hot poker shoved into my head!”
“It’s about the pain and fear,” a woman’s cultured voice said from the foyer. “Or so I’ve been told.” Then she added, “Hello, George. Is Parmelee one of yours? Or is this just happenstance?”
Billy began to shake. Sarah’s voice!
From the dreams.
But different.
His mouth went dry, blood rushing. Clutching the Remington, he began to tremble.
Visions flashed behind his eyes, Sarah rising naked and abused. Towering over him, her eyes like blue burning fire. She was reaching down for him, death and horror in her eyes.
He stumbled back into the dining room, ducked behind the partition. Back to the wall his knees went weak, and he slid down to the floor.
Images of the nightmares kept playing behind his eyes; he began to weep.
123
June 29, 1868
Sarah stepped into the main room, her .36-caliber Colt pocket revolver ready, hammer cocked. Parmelee’s face was a mask of pain, blood streaming between his fingers. The wet blossom on his shirt had begun to soak down in a V.
George Nichols, wearing a short black sack coat and starched white shirt, stood with one booted foot forward. Neither his fine black linen vest with its wide lapels, nor the jaunty, flat-topped felt hat with narrow brim, offset the .41-caliber Sharps single-shot pistol he held. They just emphasized the black rage seething behind his eyes.
“I’m glad to see you’ve still got your clothes on, Sarah,” George greeted her. “Ripping them off gives me something to look forward to.”
Sarah thought she heard a mewling sound from the dining room, as if someone were whimpering.
“I’m delighted to see you, too, George.” Who did she cover with her revolver? Parmelee, or George? She had three shots left. George had one.
And who, in God’s name, was sobbing behind the wall in her dining room? As if it stroked some distant memory …
The spell broke when Parmelee’s eyes rolled back in his head. His knees buckled. She felt it through the floor when he hit with a bony thump.
Sarah shifted her aim to George. “So, here we stand. Each of us armed, and—”
“No one gets away with what you did to me. I came to close accounts, to pay you back for—”
“Heard you’re broke,” she told him dryly. The sham was over. She could see it in his eyes. Nothing left to lose. “Is what they’re saying about the Piute Lode true? That you bet everything on a hill of worthless rock?”
His face blanched, a snakelike emptiness behind his eyes as he raised the pistol, shaking it at her as if the jerking pistol could emphasize his words. “How did you hear? What do you know about…”
She was looking into George’s eyes when his gun went off. Saw the surprise there as the report cracked in the room.
She felt the impact in her left thigh, like a painless slap. George’s mouth was open, eyes wide.
“You son of a bitch!” She took her time, raised the Colt. Over the sights she saw his shock mixed with glassy terror. He pitched sideways as she shot. Even without the smoke and flame, she couldn’t have seen if she hit him. As he whirled away, he threw his pistol at her.
She tried to duck, the heavy Sharps glancing off her thrown-up left arm, giving her a hard knock on the head as it went by.
She
