Larry and Stretch 14 Page 6

  Nichols swung hard. The gun barrel ploughed a dent in the crown of Larry’s Stetson, drove it down to his ears. He was dazed, slumping over the rail, when Nichols bent, grabbed his legs and heaved upward. Then, just as his second victim disappeared, the killer was conscious of sudden darkness. The Special had entered a tunnel. Crazy luck—and all of it going his way! He could now sneak back into the carriage and resume his seat, feeling his way. His mission was completed, and the sudden darkness was like a bonus.

  When, a few moments later, the Special emerged from the tunnel, Nichols was back in his seat, his head again buried in his newspaper, his nerves rock-steady.

  Every bone and sinew—just about every inch of the muscular body of Larry Valentine—was aching a protest, when he opened his eyes. He was sprawled on his back, beginning the effort to think clearly and asking himself the inevitable question—what the hell had happened to him?

  No bones broken. Well, in a way, that was small comfort, because they ached as though they were broken. Groggily, he struggled to his feet. Where was he? In the mouth of a tunnel, with one foot braced against a steel rail. He couldn’t hear the Special, but the rail vibrated beneath his foot. He could hear the rushing current of the Platte—and that reminded him of something.

  Wincing and cursing, he trudged away from the railroad tracks and back towards the bridge. His eyes were narrowed and his heart thumping as he veered leftward to the near bank of that broad waterway. That flash of red—where was it now? He advanced to within a few feet of the bank before spotting it again. Down a ways, in midstream. The top half of a semi-submerged rock. The strip of cherry-red seemingly wrapped about the rock. No, by Godfrey! He could see more clearly now—the flowing hair, the bare arms.

  He hustled to a point at a right-angle to the rock, yelled at the top of his voice, as he tugged off coat, hat, vest and shirt. Stripped to his pants, he yelled again, bounded forward and hurled himself into the river.

  Half-way to the rock, her voice reached him, shrill, unintelligible.

  “Hang on!” he bellowed. “For gosh sakes—hang on!” The current buffeted him, threatening to force him off course. He cursed the irony of fate. At this section of the great river, why couldn’t the current be slow? Well, his head had ceased to ache; that was something. He struggled on until he was close enough to touch her. She was clinging for dear life to that jutting finger of rock.

  “I—can’t swim ...!” she gasped.

  “All right,” he panted. He made it to the rock, got a grip on it. “If you can’t swim—don’t try. Well—wait a couple minutes; I got to catch my breath.”

  “You’ll drown,” she fretted, “trying to rescue me.”

  “That,” he retorted, “kind of depends on you.”

  “I’ll do ...” She had to raise her voice above the din of the pounding water, “anything you say ...!”

  He didn’t attempt to instruct her until he was breathing easily again. He felt stronger now, equal to this hefty chore.

  “When I give you the word, you take hold of my belt. One-handed—savvy? Just hang on tight and strike out with your other arm.”

  “I’m ready when you are!” she called.

  He put his mouth to her ear.

  “I know you’re scared. You’d be a fool if you weren’t. But try to forget it. We’re gonna make it to the bank—and that’s a promise. Now—grab for my belt.”

  As she took hold, he kicked away from the rock. The current caught them and swept them further downstream. Never in her life had Addy Chapman fought so hard against the icy fingers of panic. She took strength from the grim-faced, reckless man to whom she clung, while he struck out with all the power of his formidable muscles. And that struggle seemed to last an eternity, though it was only a matter of minutes before Larry had drawn his burden free of the fast flow of midstream. The water moved slower and the bank was in sight.

  Another twenty yards and it was safe for her to let go. They were out of deep water. He draped a brawny arm about her trembling shoulders, as they waded to the grassy bank. On dry ground, she flopped with her head in her hands, weeping in relief and trying to murmur a speech of thanks.

  “Save it,” he grunted. “We can talk later. Not much use me haulin’ you out of that river—if you’re gonna catch your death.” He raised his eyes to the sky. “Sun’s plenty hot. Well, that’s a mercy.” Then, after scanning their immediate surroundings, “This is as good a place as any.”

  “For what?” she wearily enquired.

  “For you to peel off all those wet duds,” he growled. He was pointing to a clump of brush and a scattering of boulders. “You go round in back of the brush and strip. Hang your duds on the bushes or spread ’em over the rocks. In this kind of heat, they ought to dry fast.”

  “But ...” she began.

  “I’ll hustle back to where I left my own stuff,” he announced, as he turned away from her. “There’s matches in my vest pockets, so we can have a fire. And my coat will cover you decent, while you’re waitin’ for your clothes to dry.”

  Despite his weariness, he moved briskly, striding back along the bank. She stared after him. What to do now? What, indeed? For the first time in her life, a man had ordered her to remove her clothes—all of them—and in a tone that invited no argument. If Larry came back and found her this way, still clad in her dripping garments, he might suspect the truth, that Addy Chapman was no hard-boiled, worldly-wise saloon-woman, but merely a timid and acutely embarrassed spinster from a dreary backwater town.

  And then it occurred to her that Larry’s command had its practical side. He had risked his life to save hers. It would be a poor return for his efforts, if she remained clad in wet clothing and caught a chill. Shivering, she retreated to the brush and began disrobing.

  By the time she had removed the last intimate item of underwear, her skin was drying, the hot sun smiting it with full force. She draped the gown and petticoats over the bushes, moved out to the soft grass to spread her other garments on the rocks.

  Five minutes later, Larry’s Lone Star gallantry moved him to emit a shrill whistle, to warn her of his coming. She scuttled around behind the bushes and waited, standing first on one foot, then on the other.

  “Whichaway?” he called.

  “I’m ...” She swallowed a lump in her throat, “over here—behind the bushes.”

  “Catch this,” he offered, as he tossed his coat.

  The garment sailed over the bushes and fell beside her.

  “Put it on,” he ordered, “and come out here. I’m a heap taller than you, Addy.”

  “Taller than me?” she blinked. “Is that important?”

  “You’ll think so,” he drawled, “when you button all those buttons. That coat’ll cover everything—except your feet.”

  He turned his back on the bushes and made short work of gathering kindling for a fire. Smoke from that fire was rising high above the river bank, when Addy emerged to join him. She had rolled up his coat sleeves and had buttoned every button. The bottom of the coat hung clear to her ankles. Gingerly, she moved over to where he sat, and squatted beside him. He was tossing moist grass onto the fire.

  “Why do you do that?” she demanded.

  “Need to raise plenty smoke,” he calmly explained. “Maybe you think I stopped that train, to get off and come look for you? No siree, Addy. It didn’t happen that way at all.”

  “You mean ...” she eyed him aghast, “we’re stranded here?”

  “Not for long,” he predicted. “Stretch’ll start frettin’. He’ll search the whole doggone train for me, and then he’ll make ’em stop and come back.”

  “Can he do that?” she wondered.

  “Count on it,” he grinned. “That skinny sidekick of mine, he’ll manage it—if he has to climb into the engine cabin and put a gun on the driver.” His grin faded, as he took up his coiled gunbelt and strapped it about his hips. “And now, little Miss Addy, you can start talkin’.”

  “About what happened to
me?” she frowned.

  “What the heck else?” he challenged.

  “Larry,” she sighed, “I just don’t know. I’m so terribly confused.”

  “So take your time,” he shrugged. “Think back. What’s the last thing you remember? Maybe I can help. You were with Stretch and Tim and me in the club car ...”

  “Yes, I remember that much.”

  “Where’d you go? Back to the end car?”

  “That’s right. It’s—getting clearer now. I felt—I mean—I needed a breath of fresh air. I went out onto the rear platform. I vaguely recall the train was crossing the bridge—and then everything went black.”

  “How’s your head?”

  “What …?”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “A little, but ...”

  “Turn around,” he gruffly ordered.

  She twisted slightly, her left shoulder nudging his chest. His questing fingers parted her hair in several places.

  “I can’t imagine,” she fretted, “what you’re looking for.”

  “A bump,” he grunted. “You recall you went out to that rear platform—but you don’t know how you got into the river.”

  “That’s true enough,” she nodded. “It was all—so sudden—as though I’d woken from a dream. I was in the water. It was cold, and ...”

  “Be grateful it was cold,” he muttered. “It’s my hunch that’s what snapped you out of it.” He fired another order. “Grab all that purty hair of yours and lift it. Go on. Pull it up high.” She did as he demanded, so that the back of her neck was bared for his inspection. Abruptly, he said, “Okay, you can let it hang again.”

  She turned to face him.

  “What is it, Larry?”

  “A bruise,” he frowned. “Just in back of your left ear. That’d do it, I reckon.”

  “Do what?” she demanded. “Larry, I simply don’t understand ...”

  “The butt of a six-shooter could leave that mark,” he reflected. And then he shook his head. “Nope. If you’d been slugged with anything that hard, you’d never have woken up—even in the cold water. More likely it was a fist. Yeah.”

  “You mean ...?” Her eyes widened.

  “I mean,” said Larry, “you haven’t had an accident, lady, not by a long shot. Somebody clobbered you. You didn’t just fall off that platform. You were pushed—or maybe lifted and shoved.” He showed her a wry grin, dribbled smoke through his nostrils. “Somebody tried to kill you, Addy, as if you haven’t guessed.”

  “I can’t believe it!” she breathed.

  “You damn well better believe it,” he growled. He doffed his Stetson, captured her hand and raised it to his head. “Feel that bump. Ask me how I got it.”

  “How ...?” she frowned.

  “You didn’t look so all-fired spry after that shot of whiskey. After you left us, I went lookin’ for you.” He told her of his return to the end car, his chancing to glimpse the bright red of her gown in the waters of the Platte. “And then I hustled out to the rear platform and—wham! Next thing I knew, I was pickin’ myself up off the railroad tracks in front of a tunnel. Plain enough, wouldn’t you say? Whoever tried to kill you, he was still out there.”

  Vehemently, Addy declared,

  “I haven’t an enemy in the world.”

  “Hogwash,” he scoffed. “Everybody makes enemies sometime, someplace, somehow. It ain’t somethin’ we try to do. It just happens. Take you, for instance. You work saloons, right? Plenty hombres makin’ a play for you, right?”

  “Well ...” she shrugged.

  “There’s always some galoot,” Larry asserted, “that can’t abide to be refused by a woman—if you know what I mean. So, instead of forgettin’ her, he broods about it and turns mean. Think of all the men you’ve seen on that train. Are they, all strangers to you, or is one of ’em some jasper you’ve seen before?”

  “No—honestly,” she murmured. “There’s nobody.”

  “All right,” said Larry. “But somebody did try to kill you. And, for that, there has to be a reason.”

  “Aren’t you just as curious,” she challenged, “as to why he tried to kill you?”

  “No mystery about that,” shrugged Larry. “He couldn’t afford for me to see him—and remember his face. Sooner or later, you’ll be missed. Folks’ll start askin’ questions, and wouldn’t I remember some hombre hidin’ back there at the end of the car? Sure I would. And that’s why he had to put me away.” His mouth set in a hard line. “Well, it didn’t work.”

  “It didn’t work,” Addy soberly agreed. “We’re still alive, and I’m humbly grateful to you for saving my life, but the mystery isn’t any clearer, is it? We don’t know who attacked us. We’ll probably never find out.”

  “You think not?” He jutted his jaw aggressively. “Guess again, Addy. There’s nothin’ plagues me worse than a mystery. I’m a hombre that just has to have the answers.”

  “So you’ll try to find out ...?” she began.

  “Damn right,” he nodded.

  He threw her a sidelong glance and drawled another question, the one she’d dreaded. Sooner or later, he had to ask it, and she had only herself to blame. During the past hectic hour, she had dropped her guard.

  “Addy,” he frowned, “are you really a sure-enough saloon gal—or are you only pretendin’?”

  Chapter Six: Emergency

  Larry rose up, moved closer to the bank to pluck fistfuls of damp grass. The fire flared. He tossed a goodly quantity of moist grass into the flames, producing another spiral of smoke. There was no breeze, so the smoke wafted upwards in an almost perpendicular column. Stalling for time, searching her mind for the right words, Addy quit the fire and moved across to the rocks to check her drying garments.

  “The sun must be awfully strong,” she remarked. “These things are hardly damp now.”

  “What’s the matter?” he called. “Can’t you abide a straight question?”

  “I’d call it a very peculiar question,” she retorted, with her back to him.

  “I’d call it a very fair question,” said Larry. “With you, I get the strangest doggone feelin’. It’s like you’re two different women, instead of just one. Back there on the train, I pegged you for a regular saloon singer, because I’ve known plenty of that kind. But here—right from the time I hauled you out of the river—you act and talk like a nervous school ma’am.”

  “I’m no schoolma’am,” said Addy, somewhat defiantly. She turned to face him, and was careful to revert to the jaunty mode of speech by which she had so easily deceived Tim Blake. “Have a heart, Larry. Why wouldn’t I be nervous? I nearly drowned just now. And here I am—as bare as the day I was born—except for your coat. Do you suppose every saloon entertainer is—is ...?”

  Her voice choked off. She was blushing again, and his crooked grin didn’t help.

  “Plenty saloon gals are,” he drawled. “But not you, Addy.”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” she frowned.

  “Forget it,” he shrugged. “I guess you are what you say you are.”

  “Darn right I am,” she assured him, with spirit.

  “You sing for your livin’,” said Larry, “in saloons—casinos—any kind of joy-house. You’re as tough as any other saloon-woman. It’s just that you get a mite nervous any time some jasper tries to kill you. Well—that sounds reasonable.”

  “I really meant it,” she murmured, “when I said there’s nobody would want to kill me.”

  “Somebody tried to,” he coolly reminded her. “What you mean, Addy, is you don’t know who’d want to kill you.” She returned to the fire and, after cautiously checking the hang of his coat, seated herself opposite him.

  “Larry—could it be a case of mistaken identity?”

  “How’s that again?” he prodded.

  “Mistaken identity,” she doggedly repeated. “You know? Maybe I resemble some other woman—and she’s the one he meant to kill.”

  “That’s a possibility,” he conce
ded. And then he threw another question. It was well-timed and loaded, but she was ready for it. “I guess you won’t be singin’ for us at the Cooney Palace in Cargell tonight, huh, Addy? What I mean—after all you’ve been through—you wouldn’t feel up to it.” It’s a chance, she was thinking, and an ideal excuse. They could hardly blame me, under the circumstances.

  But, conscious of his probing scrutiny, she lifted her chin defiantly and replied,

  “Well, of course I’ll sing. Tim wants to hear me. Could I expect him to hire me—and just take my word for it? Besides, I promised, and I never go back on a promise.”

  Inevitably, it was Stretch Emerson who pulled the cord labeled: “FOR EMERGENCY ONLY.” Returning to the rear car with Tim Blake and failing to sight Larry, he was immediately curious. Curiosity first—apprehension later. Marshal Jefford had a vague recollection of seeing Larry going to the rear of the car—only a vague recollection because, of necessity, he was concentrating all his attention on his prisoner. The heavyset man in the checkered suit, seated at the back end of the carriage, suggested that Larry might have returned to the club car.

  “He couldn’t,” argued Stretch. “Not without us spottin’ him.”

  “It was dark,” Nichols reminded him, “when we went through that tunnel. I remember, because I was reading my paper, and ...”

  “Hey,” frowned Tim, “I don’t see Addy neither!”

  “The hell with this!” growled Stretch.

  He checked the observation platform, then hustled back to the first passenger car. In this carriage, he opened the door to every private compartment, to the accompaniment of heated protests from the various occupants. Then back to the club bar and, as far as he was concerned, that was far enough. It didn’t seem likely that Larry and Addy would be visiting with the conductor in the caboose.

  “How,” Stretch demanded, “do we stop this doggone train?”

  “You don’t, sir,” frowned the steward. “Not unless you’re looking for trouble. It’s a breach of railroad regulations, except in an emergency.”