Death in the Desert Read online

  “Oh, God,” she said, biting him on the shoulder as she started to move up and down on him.

  He grunted as she came down on him, her nails raking his back.

  “Shhh, shhh,” she said in his ear, even though he wasn’t making much noise. “We don’t want to wake Emily.”

  “Then we have to stay here,” he said. “We can’t move to the bedroom.”

  She tightened her legs around him, and her insides seemed to grip him tighter.

  “Here’s just fine with me,” she said into his ear, then bit his earlobe. She kissed his neck and shoulders as she bounced up and down on him, splashing water onto the floor. She let her head fall back and bit her lips as she moved faster. He placed his hands against the small of her back, supporting her. She grew flushed, and her breathing became labored as she neared her time. Suddenly, she was a frenzy of movement on him and it was all he could do to keep her from leaping out of the tub. And through it all she managed to keep quiet, even when a small trail of blood made its way down her chin from where she had bitten her lip. He held her tightly by the hips until he erupted inside her, biting back his own grunts. The water splashed and splashed and then suddenly they both stopped and slumped against each other in the tub.

  “Oh God,” she said with her mouth against his neck, “I needed that.”

  “I know,” he said. “It’s good to be alive.”

  “Exactly!” she said.

  They sat that way until the water started to cool, and then she drew back first.

  “I’m not . . .” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  Suddenly embarrassed, she got out of the tub and picked up her dress. She turned, looked at him, holding her dress in front of her, then went to the door, peered out, and left.

  Clint got out of the tub, dried himself off, and tried on the clothes Kathy had left for him. They fit pretty well, although they probably had belonged to a heavier man.

  He carried his gun belt down the hall to the living room, where Kathy was sitting, wearing a different dress.

  “You can have your pick of any room upstairs,” she said. “I put Emily in the front room. It’s next to mine and I’ll be able to hear her.”

  “Well,” he said, “maybe I’ll take a room in the back, then.”

  “Do you really need to keep that gun with you in the house?” she asked.

  “This gun has become a part of me,” he said. “And I’m not convinced there aren’t other people here. I saw some tracks at the livery.”

  “What kind of tracks? Animals?”

  “A man.”

  “One man?”

  “So far,” Clint said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ll follow the tracks tomorrow morning,” he said. “I want to find out if we’re alone or not.”

  “What if we aren’t?”

  “Then I’ll find out who the others are, and what they want.”

  “And if there aren’t any others?”

  “I’ll have to decide what to do then,” Clint said. “I plan on leaving town, but I don’t know when. I have to make sure I’m not sick.”

  “How do you feel now?” she asked.

  “I feel pretty good,” he said, “especially after my bath.”

  She blushed.

  “How long did it take you to fall sick?” he asked.

  “A lot of people had died before I started to feel sick,” she said, “and then . . . I don’t know, I was probably in bed after a couple of days.”

  “Well,” he said, “tomorrow will be two days for me. If I’m not sick after, say, five, I guess it will be safe for me to leave.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I was thinking I’d take Emily and try to find her parents,” Clint said, “but that was when I thought we were here alone.”

  “You want to leave her with me?”

  “Do you intend to stay here?”

  “I—I can’t just leave my house,” she said.

  “What happens when you run out of food?”

  “I’m sure there must still be food in town,” she said.

  “Sure,” he said, “canned goods. I think there are still some on the shelves of the general store, and certainly in some of the other homes. We can go around and collect as much as we can so you can stock up, but it’s got to run out eventually.”

  “I guess I’ll deal with that situation when it comes,” she said.

  “The other thing is all the dead bodies,” he said. “If you’re going to stay, I can’t just leave them where they are.”

  “B-But how can you dig so many graves?”

  “Not so many,” he said. “One mass grave. Then I’ll use a buckboard to take the bodies to the hole.”

  “You would do that?”

  “Why not?” Clint asked. “I have to be here for another few days anyway. I can probably do it over that time.”

  “I’ll help,” she said. “I mean, since you’re doing it for me.”

  “Okay,” he said, “maybe you can drive the buckboard.”

  “No” she said, “I’ll help you dig.”

  “Sure,” he said, “but first I’ll find out if there’s anyone else in town. If there is, then I might have help burying the dead.”

  “All right, then,” she said. “I guess I better turn in. It looks like we’ll have some busy days ahead of us.” She stood up. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that you’re here, Clint.”

  She blushed again when she realized how that sounded, and quickly went up the steps to her room.

  TWELVE

  Clint woke up the next morning and spent a few moments taking stock of himself. He felt fine, especially after a good night’s sleep. He sat up, put his feet on the ground, flexed his hands, stretched his arms over his head, rubbed his hands over his face. Then stood up.

  There was no sign of weakness, or illness.

  He grabbed the fresh clothes Kathy had supplied and put them on, then strapped on his gun and went downstairs. Halfway down he could hear Emily’s voice, and smell the bacon.

  As he entered the kitchen, he saw Kathy and Emily at the stove, laughing and cooking.

  “What are you two up to?” he asked.

  “Clint!” Emily shouted. “We’re makin’ breakfast—a real breakfast, with bacon!”

  “That sounds great.”

  “You go and sit in the dining room,” Kathy said. “I’ll bring out some coffee and biscuits.”

  “Okay.”

  He went out to the large table where Kathy would normally feed her boarders. In moments, Kathy was there with the promised coffee and biscuits. She also brought some butter.

  “Bacon and eggs will be right out,” she said.

  “I’ll be here.”

  She smiled and returned to the kitchen.

  Clint buttered a biscuit and bit into it. It was light and fluffy, wonderful. He washed it down with coffee, which was very good. It could have been stronger, but it was better than the coffee Emily had made for him.

  Kathy and Emily came out with plates and platters and set them on the table, then sat down. The table was very long, but they sat at the same end with Clint.

  “Go ahead,” Kathy said, spooning eggs onto Emily’s plate, “help yourself.”

  “You didn’t have to do this,” he said, glad that she had.

  “I wanted to,” she said. “It’s been a while since I’ve cooked for people.”

  Clint filled his plate with bacon and eggs, took more biscuits, and poured himself some more coffee. After that, they all just started eating.

  “This is so good,” Emily said. “This is better than my cooking.”

  “Thank you,” Kathy said.

  “Is her coffee better than mine, Clint?”

  “W
ell,” he said, “it’s different.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, “I know I don’t make good coffee. But Kathy’s gonna teach me to cook better.”

  “She is? That’s great.”

  “Yeah, it is!”

  They went back to eating and before long all the platters were empty.

  “Emily and I will clean up,” Kathy said.

  “I’ll help.”

  “No,” she said, “that’s okay. You finish the coffee.”

  He decided not to argue. As they carried everything back to the kitchen, he poured himself the last of the coffee. By the time Kathy came back out, he was finished.

  “Emily is such a good girl,” she said. “She doesn’t complain, even though I know she misses her parents.”

  “I know,” Clint said. “She’s . . . good.” He stood up.

  “Are you going out now?”

  “Yes.”

  “To look for those people?”

  “To look for any people,” he said, “but I’ll start with those tracks I found at the livery.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No,” he said, “you have to stay here with Emily. I’ll be back later.”

  “For lunch?” she asked. “I can make lunch.”

  “That’d be great,” Clint told her, because it would give her something to do. “I’ll be back for lunch.”

  She nodded. He went to the front door and out. As he was walking to the street, the front door opened and Emily ran out, almost screaming.

  “Clint! Clint!”

  He turned. She ran to him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “Are you coming back?” she asked.

  He removed her arms, then crouched down in front of her and held her by the shoulders.

  “Emily, yes, of course I’m coming back,” he told her. “I’m just going to have another look around town to see if I can find anybody else.”

  “You wouldn’t leave me, would you?”

  “No, honey,” he said, hugging her to him, “I wouldn’t leave you.” She’d already been left by too many people.

  He walked her back to the front porch, where Kathy was waiting. She put her arms around the girl and they both watched as Clint walked away.

  • • •

  Clint walked to the livery, where he could pick up the tracks he had seen. But first he checked on Eclipse, to make sure the gelding was okay.

  “How you doing, buddy?” Clint asked. He ran his hand over the horse’s flanks. He thought about taking the horse, but decided to go on foot. He wasn’t really worried about somebody coming to the stable and stealing him. Eclipse wouldn’t permit that. One or two men would have a hard time taking the Darley Arabian anywhere he didn’t want to go.

  “I’ll be back later,” he said, and left the livery.

  • • •

  The man’s boot tracks were easy to pick up and follow. They led Clint to a part of town he really hadn’t spent much time in yet. The town had some stockyards, which were, of course, empty at the moment. The lack of dead cows or horses further enforced his assumption that animals had not been affected by the disease.

  The tracks seemed to lead to a stable behind the stockyards. He approached carefully, just in case Kathy was right and he was about to run into a bunch of looters.

  Inside the stable he didn’t find looters, but he did find loot—and a lot of it. It was stacked in crates and cartons in the center of the stable. He wondered who had done the stacking, how many of them, and how they intended to transport the stuff.

  He walked around the pile of loot, checking the ground. There were several tracks in the dirt, all looking like men’s boots. It could have been three men who never left town and stayed behind to clean it out, or three men who rode in, found it abandoned, and figured they could clean up. Either way, they wouldn’t be happy to see him. Clint wasn’t sure how the law would stand on this, and they probably weren’t either. It might depend on whether or not the law considered Medicine Bow to be a ghost town. If it was, then the contents were probably all fair game.

  His intention had been to scour the town for other people. And, in fact, there might still be others in town like Kathy, who had fallen ill, but recovered and stayed behind to protect what was theirs. And maybe they were also doing what Kathy did and staying indoors. They were no danger to anyone. The three looters, however, might act violently if they saw someone else in town. He needed to find them, disarm them, and then question them. And rather than going out to locate them, the smart thing might be to just stay right where he was and let them come to him. Sooner or later, they’d be coming back with some more loot.

  Clint wondered where they had put their own horses. While he’d seen the tracks of one man at the livery, there were no horses and no tracks left by horses.

  THIRTEEN

  By lunchtime nobody had returned. They could have been in any part of town, loading up the buckboard that had left the tracks he later found behind the building. Kathy and Emily would be worried about him, and he could always return later to find the looters.

  He thought about wiping out his tracks, but the marks he’d leave behind would probably be even more obvious than his footprints. He doubted the looters would come back and notice his tracks in the dirt. He’d come back later, see if they had returned.

  Walking back to Kathy’s boardinghouse, he wondered how he had missed seeing fresh buckboard tracks around town. Or any sign of the three men. Was it possible they were looting a part of town he simply had not been in yet?

  When he got back to the house, he checked the ground in front to see if anyone had been there since he’d left. As long as he was staying with Kathy, they’d have to take some precautions against the looters until he found them.

  As he entered the house, he could once again smell what the girls were cooking. It looked like Kathy was serious about using some of the food she’d stocked up since all her boarders left. If she wasn’t careful, she’d leave herself short when he and Emily left.

  Unless he decided to leave Emily behind. He had told the little girl he wouldn’t leave her, but wouldn’t she be better off with a woman than with him? And a woman like Kathy, who was used to taking care of people?

  Or maybe he could convince Kathy to leave with them, and he could leave both of them in the next town.

  “I’m back,” he called out.

  There was no answer.

  “Emily? Kathy?”

  Suddenly, the two girls appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, but there was a man behind them, holding a gun. They both looked too frightened to talk.

  The man was taller than Kathy, tall enough to look at Clint over her head.

  “Just take it easy and nobody will get hurt,” the man said.

  Clint didn’t believe him. He knew a man bent on killing when he saw one. But Clint wouldn’t kill him until he found out if he was alone.

  “What do you want?”

  “H-He came in the back door,” Kathy said. “He said he wanted—”

  “Shut up!”

  “He hurt Kathy, Clint!” Emily yelled.

  “Shut up, both of you!” the man shouted. Both girls flinched.

  “What do you want?”

  “The big one here tells me your name is Jones,” the man said. “Well, okay, Jones—Clint Jones?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Put your gun on the floor.”

  “Not just yet.”

  The man had the gun pointed at Clint from between the two girls. Now he cocked the hammer back.

  “Do like I tell you.”

  “Are you one of three, or are there more of you?” Clint asked.

  “Three?”

  “Yeah, I saw the tracks of three of you, over in the stockyards where you’ve got your loot. Just the thre
e of you?”

  “First,” the man said, “you tell me how many of you there are.”

  “Just me,” Clint said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I was passing through, didn’t know about the disease,” Clint said.

  “Did you get sick?” the man asked.

  “Not yet. You?”

  “No,” the man said, “we knew we were immune. That’s why we came back.”

  Well, that made sense. They left with everyone else, but came back to loot the town.

  “Then you know where everyone else went?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where?”

  “Why do you wanna know that?”

  “I want to take this little girl to her parents.”

  “Her parents?” the man asked. “The ones who left her here to die? Why?”

  “Because they’re her parents.”

  “Never mind.” He waggled the barrel of the gun. “Let’s get back to your gun. Drop it.”

  “I told you,” Clint said, “I can’t.”

  “I’ll kill one of these bitches.”

  “To do that, you’d have to take the gun off me and point it at one of them,” Clint told him. “When you do that, I’ll kill you.”

  The man laughed.

  “You think you’re that fast?”

  “Lots of people think so,” Clint said. “See, my last name is not really Jones.”

  “I didn’t think so. What is it?”

  “Adams.”

  The man froze.

  “Clint Adams?”

  “That’s right.”

  He saw by the look in the man’s eyes that he was going to pull the trigger. Clint drew. He had only the sliver of space between Kathy and Emily to work with. His bullet went right between them and hit the man in the belly. He grunted, staggered back, and dropped his gun.

  “Move!” Clint shouted at the girls.