"The Stake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

Two

Along the road leading into Sagebrush Flat were the remains of shacks that had been picked apart by the desert winds. Houses of stone, adobe, and brick had fared better, but even those looked battered, their doors hanging open or gone, their windows smashed. Here and there boards lay scattered on the ground near doorways and windows. Larry supposed that the lumber had once been used to seal the dwellings.

The weathered walls of the old houses were pocked with bullet holes, scribbled with sketches and messages in spray paint. Contributions from visitors to this dead town, making a playground of its carcass.

Many of the yards were bordered by broken-down fences. Along with cactus and brush, Larry saw pieces of old furniture in front of some houses: a sofa, a couple of cane chairs, an aluminum lawn chair with its frame twisted crooked. One house had a bathtub off to the side. Another had an overturned bathroom toilet that looked as if it had been the subject of target practice. The rusted hood of a car was leaning against a porch. Nearby lay a couple of tires, and Larry recalled the abandoned, tireless car he’d seen a few minutes ago.

“Isn’t exactly Beverly Hills, huh?” Pete remarked.

“Love it,” Larry said.

“Gee, and we forgot our spray cans,” Jean said. “How can we properly deface the place without our paint?”

“We could shoot it up some.” Pete reached beneath his seat and came up with a revolver. It was sheathed in a beltless holster. Larry recognized it as the .357 Smith amp; Wesson that he’d fired a few times when they’d gone shooting last month. A beauty.

“Put that away,” Barbara said. “For godsake.”

“Just kidding around. Don’t get your balls in an uproar.”

As he concealed the handgun under his seat, Barbara said, “Men and their toys.”

Pete swung the van off the road and stopped beside a pair of gasoline pumps. He beeped the horn a couple of times as if signaling for service.

“God,” Barbara muttered.

“Hey, wouldn’t it be something if a guy showed up?”

Larry gazed past the pumps. The porch stairs led up to a country store with a screen door hanging by a single hinge. A faded wooden sign above the doorway identified the place as Holman’s. A row of windows faced the road. Not a single pane was still intact. The window openings looked like mouths with sharp glass teeth.

“Might as well start here,” Pete said.

“Great,” Larry said. He thought it might be interesting to go through some of the houses they’d passed on the way in, but those could wait for another day. He was more eager to explore the downtown area.

He climbed out of the van. The wind and heat hit him. Jean grimaced when she stepped down. The wind blew her hair back, made her blouse and skirt cling to the front of her slim body as if they were wet.

“Better lock up,” Pete called.

“There’s nobody around to steal anything,” Barbara said.

“Would you rather I take the magnum along?”

“Okay, okay, we’ll lock the doors.”

Larry took care of their side. They met Pete and Barbara in front of the van.

“I would feel better if we took the gun with us,” Pete said.

“Well, I wouldn’t.”

“You never know about a place like this.”

“If you think it’s dangerous, we shouldn’t be here.” Barbara tossed her head to clear her face of blowing blond hair. The wind parted her untucked blouse below the last button, and Larry glimpsed a triangle of tanned belly.

“Might be rattlers,” Pete said.

“We’ll watch our step,” Jean told him. Like Larry, she was no doubt eager to end the gun debate before it could escalate into a quarrel.

“Yeah,” Larry said. “And if we run into any bad guys, we’ll send you back here for the artillery.”

“Oh, thanks. While you guys hide.”

“You wouldn’t mind, would you, honey?”

He answered by clamping a hand on Barbara’s rump. The way she flinched and jumped away, he must’ve done it hard. She whirled toward him. “Just watch it, huh?”

“Let’s see what’s in Holman’s,” Jean said, and hurried toward the stairs.

Larry went after her. “Careful,” he said. The boards, bleached pale, were warped and threaded with splits. The one before the top was broken in the middle, half gone and half hanging down by rusty nails.

Jean held the railing, stepped over the demolished stair and made it safely across the porch. While she dragged the screen door open, Larry climbed the stairs. They creaked under his weight but held him.

“You better not try it,” Pete warned Barbara, looking back at her as he trotted up the old planks. “You’ll snap ‘em like matchsticks.”

“Give it a rest,” she said.

Larry admired her restraint. It seemed so damn stupid of Pete to poke fun at his wife’s size. She was big, probably a shade over six feet tall. Though not a beanpole, like many tall women, she certainly wasn’t overweight. Larry had seen her in all kinds of attire, including swimsuits and nightgowns, and considered her body terrific. He knew that Pete was proud of her appearance. Pete was compact and powerful, but lifting all the weights in the world wouldn’t give him the six inches of height he would need to meet Barbara eye to eye.

Instead of calling him “short stuff” or “pip-squeak,” she’d simply told him to give it a break. Admirable.

She climbed the stairs without bursting any of them.

Inside, Holman’s smelled of dry, ancient wood. Larry expected the place to be stifling, but the shade and the breeze from the broken windows kept it bearable. A thin layer of sand coated the hardwood floor. It had blown into small drifts against the walls, the foot of the L — shaped lunch counter, and the metal bases of the swivel stools along the counter.

The eating area occupied about a third of the room. There had probably once been tables between the counter and the wall, but they were long gone.

“Bet they served great cheeseburgers,” Jean said. She was very fond of diners with character. To Jean, dumpy old places that many people would disparage as “greasy spoons” promised delights unattainable in clean and modern fast-food chains.

“Shakes,” Barbara said. “I could go for one about now.”

“I could go for a beer,” Pete said.

“I think I saw a saloon up the road,” Jean told him.

“But they only serve Ghost-Light,” Larry said.

“Let’s break a few out of the van before we move on.”

“You’ve got a beer?” Larry could tasteit.

“Surely you jest. The desert’s one dry mother. You think I’d brave her without my survival stash?”

“All right!”

Pete headed for the door.

“Aren’t you going to look around?” Barbara asked.

“What’s to see?” He hurried outside.

“I guess he’s right,” Jean said, scanning the room.

“The rest of it must’ve been a general store,” Larry said. “I bet they carried everything.”

Nothing remained, not even shelves. Except for the lunch counter and stools, the room was bare. Behind the counter was a serving window. Farther down, Larry saw a closed door that probably connected with the kitchen. Past the end of the counter was an alcove. “That’s probably where the rest rooms were.”

“I think I’ll check out the ladies‘,” Barbara said.

“Lotsa luck,” Jean told her.

“Can’t hurt to have a look.”

She walked into the alcove, opened a door, and whirled away clutching her mouth.

“Apparently,” Larry said, “it did hurt to take a look.”

Barbara scrunched up her face.

“You’re a little green around the gills,” Jean told her.

She lowered her hand and took a deep breath. “Guess I’ll find a place around back.”

They left Holman’s. She followed the porch, jumped off, and disappeared around a corner of the building.

Larry and Jean went to the van. When Pete came out he had four bottles of beer clutched to his chest. “Where’s Barb?”

“Went behind the building.”

“Answering a call of nature,” Jean said.

He scowled. “She shouldn’t have gone off by herself.”

“She may not want an audience,” Jean explained.

“Damn it. Barb!” he yelled.

No answer. He called again, and Larry saw a trace of worry in his eyes.

“She probably can’t hear you,” Larry said. “The wind and everything.”

“Take these, okay? I’ve gotta make sure she’s okay.”

Jean and Larry each took two bottles from his arms. “She’s only been gone a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah, well...” He hurried away, jogging toward the far end of Holman’s.

“Hope he doesn’t tear her head off,” Jean said.

“At least he’s worried about her. That’s something, anyway.”

“I sure wish they’d quit bickering.”

“They must enjoy it.”

Jean wandered toward the road, and Larry stayed at her side. The bottles of beer felt cold and wet in his hands. He took a drink from the one in his right.

“You’ll be having to go yourself, if you don’t watch it.”

“Don’t let Pete come to my rescue,” he said, and turned his attention to the town.

The central road had broad, gravel shoulders for parking. The sidewalks were concrete, not the elevated planking common to such old west towns as Silver Junction, where they’d spent the morning. The citizens had made some modern improvements before leaving Sagebrush Flat to the desert.

“I wonder why they left,” Larry said.

“Wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t live anywhere that doesn’t have movie theaters.”

“Well, I don’t see any.”

Neither did Larry. From his position in the middle of the road, he could see the entire town. Not one of the buildings had a movie marquee jutting over the sidewalk. He saw a barber pole in front of one small shop; a place on the left with a faded sign that proclaimed it to be Sam’s Saloon; about a dozen other enterprises altogether. He guessed that they’d once been hardware stores, cafes, possibly a bakery, clothing stores, maybe a pharmacy and a five-and-ten, a dentist’s and doctor’s office — and how about an optimistic realtor? — and certainly a sporting goods store. Not even the smallest back-country town in California was without a place to buy guns and ammo. Way at the far end of town, on the left, stood an adobe building with a pair of bay doors and service islands in front. Babe’s Garage.

The centerpiece of town appeared to be the three-story, wood-frame structure of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel, right next door to Sam’s Saloon.

“That’s the place I’d like to explore,” Larry said.

“Sam’s?”

“That, too. But the hotel. It looks like it’s been around for a while.”

“We’d better go there next, then. No telling how long this little expedition’s going to last, those two start fighting.”

“We’ll have to come back by ourselves, sometime, and really check the place out.”

“I don’t know.” She drank some beer. “I’m not sure I’d want to come here without some company.”

“Hey, what am I, chopped liver?”

“You know what I mean.”

He knew. Though he and Jean shared a desire for adventure, they were limited by a certain timidity. The presence of another couple seemed to erase that weakness.

They needed backup.

Backup like Pete and Barbara. In spite of the bickering, each was endowed with self-confidence and force. Led by that pair, Larry and Jean were willing to venture where they wouldn’t go on their own.

Even if we’d known about this place, Larry thought, we wouldn’t have dared to explore it by ourselves. The chance of a return trip, at least in the near future, was slim.

Jean turned around and looked toward the corner of Holman’s. “I wonder what’s keeping them.”

“Should we go find out?”

“I don’t think so.”

Larry took a swig of cold beer.

“Why don’t we get out of the sun?” Jean suggested.

They wandered back past the van, climbed the rickety stairs to Holman’s shaded porch and sat down. They rested the two extra beers on the wood between them. Jean crossed her legs. She rubbed her bare thighs with the base of her bottle. The wetness left slicks on her skin. She lifted the bottle to her face and slid it over her cheeks and forehead.

Larry imagined Jean opening her blouse, rolling the chilled, dripping bottle against her bare breasts. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would ever do that, though. Hell, she wouldn’t even step out of the house unless she had a bra on.

Too bad life can’t be more like fiction, he told himself, and drank some more beer. A gal in one of his books would have that wet bottle sliding over her chest in about two shakes. Then, of course, the guy would get in on the action.

That’d be a scene worth writing.

You’ll never get a chance to liveit, not in this lifetime, but...

“Larry, I’m starting to get worried.”

“They’ll be along.”

“Something must be wrong.”

“Maybe she has a problem.”

“Like the trots?”

“Who knows?”

“They’d be back by now if somethinghadn’t happened,” Jean said.

“Maybe Pete got lucky.”

“They wouldn’t do that.”

“Obviously they did it back at that old ruin we passed.”

“Sounded like it. But they were alone. They wouldn’t do that here with us waiting.”

“If you’re so sure, why don’t we go around back and look for them?”

“Go right on ahead.” She gave him an annoyed glance.

“Nah.” He put a hand on her back. Her blouse was damp. He untucked it and slipped his hand beneath it. She sat up straight, and sighed as he caressed her.

When he fingered the catches of her bra, she said, “Don’t get carried away. They could show up any second.”

“On the other hand, maybe they won’t show up at all.”

“Don’t kid around like that, okay?”

“I’m not entirely kidding.”

“Maybe they arescrewing around.”

“You said they wouldn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know, damn it.”

“Maybe we’d better go see.”

Jean wrinkled her nose.

“If they did run into trouble,” Larry said, “we aren’t making matters any better by procrastinating. They might need help.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Besides, their beers are getting warm.”

He picked up the bottle for Pete, stood, and waited for Jean. Then they walked to the end of the porch. Larry peered around the corner. The area alongside the building was clear, so he leaped down. Jean covered the mouth of Barbara’s bottle with her thumb and jumped.

“I don’t know about this,” she said.

“They can’t expect us to wait forever.”

Larry led the way, wanting to be a few strides ahead of Jean in case there really was trouble.

At times like this he wished his imagination would take a holiday. But it never left him alone. It was always busy churning up possibilities — most of them grim.

He pictured Pete and Barbara dead, of course. Slaughtered by the same pack of desert scavengers he’d dreamed up when he saw the overturned car.

Maybe Pete had been killed, Barbara abducted.

We’d have to go looking for her. Run back to the van first and get Pete’s gun.

Maybe they both got killed by a criminal using the old town as a hideout.

Or by an old lunatic on the lookout for claim jumpers.

Maybe they’ll just be gone. Vanished without a trace.

Pete has the keys to the van. We’d have to walk out of here.

He supposed the nearest town was Silver Junction.

God, it’d take hours to get there. And maybe someone would be after them, hunting them down.

“Better warn ‘em we’re coming,” Jean said.

He stopped near the corner of the building, looked back at her and shook his head. “If they ran into someone...”

“Don’t even think it, okay?”

From the look on Jean’s face, he could see that she’d already considered the possibility.

“Just go ahead and call out,” she said. “We don’t want to barge in on something.”

Speak for yourself, he thought. If Pete was having at her, he wouldn’t mind a glimpse of it. Not at all. But he kept the thoughts to himself.

Without looking around the corner, he yelled, “Pete! Barbara! You all right?”

No answer came.

A second ago he’d pictured them rutting. Now he saw them sprawled dead, murderous savages hunched over their bodies, heads turning at the sound of his voice.

He gestured for Jean to wait, and stepped past the end of the building.