Last Stage to Hell Junction Read online

  “Randy!” a female voice called.

  The blond boy froze and his eyes went to the source, a female figure in the window, the same one where Ben Bemis died; framed in the broken-glass teeth, she stood holding a double-barreled shotgun, its twin black bottomless eyes aimed down.

  Mahalia either had experience with such a weapon or was just plain lucky. The first barrel turned the boy’s groin into a bloody mess. His mouth opened but nothing came out, as if screaming just didn’t cover his loss. The second barrel took his head off. Blood shot up like an oil well coming in. But the gusher was brief.

  York got to his feet and smiled up at the girl. She was smiling, too. He tipped his hat to her and moved on.

  This left only Hargrave and Juanita. York figured the woman was at least as dangerous as the man, unless they both had covered their tails by siccing the Randabaughs and Bemis on him while they quietly left out a backstage door.

  No, he thought. He had ruined enough things for Hargrave and his honey to keep them here seeking revenge. Hamlet was the actor’s most famous role, after all. . . .

  York walked past the Buckhorn Saloon, its broken window saying only BUC and OON now. Next door was the Palace Theater, where Hargrave had likely once performed; its façade had no windows at all, just the bold lettering announcing itself and a marquee to add who was playing. No one, right now. Unless . . .

  Surely the actor would not take refuge there, of all places!

  But actors, particularly Shakespearean ones, had a love of poetry, and of the inherently dramatic gesture, and what more dramatic, poetic place could there be for the last confrontation between archenemies than the ghost town’s playhouse?

  And, indeed, the front doors of the Palace Theater stood open. Someone—well, there were only two possibilities—had engaged the wedges that had once upon a time been used to keep those doors open to the public.

  York, .44 in hand, slowly entered the small foyer. A box-office booth, its gilded cage festooned with spiderwebs, was to the right. Staying close to the wall, York crept over there, to see if Hargrave or the woman might be within, waiting to jack-in-the-box up and hand him, on the house, a ticket to hell.

  But no.

  The space within was empty, home only to more spiders and their webs.

  The two inner doors were also wedged open. Hargrave was staging the production with some care, considering the lack of time available. York stepped inside, under a balcony’s overhang. The chamber seemed vast, though the structure itself was not elaborate, just a wooden husk whose red and gold decorative paint was blistered where it wasn’t gone. Several box seats on either side overlooked the stage, whose frayed curtains, open to expose an empty, dusty proscenium, seemed to be hanging on for dear life.

  No seats in this theater. Likely the space had been used for dances as well as plays and musical events, so folding chairs that could be cleared when necessary had provided seating. What had become of them was lost to the ages, as if anyone cared.

  York stepped out from under the balcony, listening for any sign of either of them. Glanced up there and saw nothing. Perhaps they had led him here in order to come up on him from behind. But he heard nothing.

  Then came applause—the sound of one person clapping.

  It rang through the high-ceilinged room, echoing, as if it were announcing the star of this performance.

  Which it was.

  Blaine Hargrave, in his customary black, stepped from the wings and kept clapping till he reached center stage. His jacket was back to reveal the revolver on his hip, low and tied-down. Was that the show the outlaw planned? To shoot it out with his Brutus?

  “It’s what I get,” Hargrave said, his voice carrying without trying too hard, “for wearing my heart on my sleeve.”

  “More like hoist on your own petard.”

  Hargrave gestured with his left hand, perhaps realizing a movement of his right, near his weapon, could get him killed. He said, “ ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars . . .’”

  “That’s enough of this bull,” York said. “Unbuckle that gun belt and let it drop. I’m taking you to Trinidad. Your next performance is in front of the circuit judge. Anything clever or Shakespearean to say about that?”

  The actor, alone on his stage, shook his head. “No. I prefer to save my farewell speech for the gallows.”

  Some particles of dirt drifted down and landed on York’s shoulder. He hurled himself out onto the dusty floor, looking up to see just who he expected: Juanita—at the rail of the balcony, with a revolver in her hand and hatred on her pretty face. She was trying to draw a bead on York when he shot her, the angle of the bullet starting under a cheek and traveling out the top of the back of her head, a spray of red blossoming like a beautiful, terrible flower that wilted at once.

  The shot took her backward and she slipped out of sight just as she slipped out of life. The scream from the stage told York that he best roll to one side and face that direction. There he saw Hargrave leaping, revolver in hand, handsome face contorted into agonized ugliness, jumping from the stage much as he’d done when that heckler taunted him and sent him down a torturous path that was ending here.

  Hargrave was still in the air when York’s bullet lanced through him, in the chest, and when he hit the floor, it was with no grace at all.

  The gun had fled the actor’s fingers, but even if it hadn’t, the man was so close to death that when York approached him, no danger awaited. The lawman knelt over the outlaw.

  Hargrave, sprawled on his back, was smiling. At first York thought the man was looking at him, but no—the actor was looking through York.

  Then the dying man said, weakly but with perfect enunciation despite a bubbling mouthful of blood, “ ‘Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.’ ”

  York stood, wondering if that was from the balcony scene.

  Sure seemed like it should have been.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Gun in hand, not sure of what or who he’d find, York checked the hotel, top to bottom, though as far as he knew those presenting any real problem were nicely deceased. But he was in particular looking to see what had become of the Wileys, who were surely still breathing.

  Their well-appointed living quarters, in which York had previously not set foot, evidenced signs of a quick departure—dresser drawers open and empty or nearly so, a wardrobe with perhaps a third of the clothing missing and the rest in disarray. It would seem they had used the melee to provide cover for a back-door escape.

  That made sense, as now that the sheriff of Trinidad County knew of the Hell Junction Inn’s existence, its value to the outlaw world would be nil. York had already determined to shut the place down.

  The colored servant, Mahalia, he found in her room off the kitchen, where she sat on the edge of the cot, looking entirely self-composed. She was neatly dressed in a dark blue calico winter day dress that must have been what she wore to church.

  Maybe that was why York instinctively took off his hat when he spoke to her. “Are you all right, miss?”

  “You a lawman.”

  “I am.”

  “You gon’ take me to the pokey?”

  He went over and sat next to her, his hat in his hands and in his lap. His smile was gentle. “I’d sooner throw you a dinner in your honor at a real hotel,” he said.

  “I killed a man.”

  “Not much of one. You saved my life.”

  Her eyes were big and dark and locking on his. “You saved me last night.”

  That embarrassed him. “Do you have something you could gather your things in?”

  “Pillow case?”

  “The Wileys seem to have vacated their quarters.”

  “I heard them scurry. Thought they might collect me. They didn’t.”

  “Why don’t you go over to their quarters and see if they left behind a carpetbag or such? If they did, fill it and come out front and wait.”

  She nodded. He patted her shoulder, and went out.

 
; The hotel was otherwise empty. He collected his own things, including his saddlebags, then walked over to the livery. He noticed two horses that had been stabled there were gone—probably the Wileys’ own animals. But two of four horses that had been the outlaws’, hitched in front of the hotel, were also gone. The couple had likely commandeered them as pack animals to take as many of their belongings as they could quickly assemble.

  However you cut it, the innkeepers had skedaddled—guests who were running out on their bill. York didn’t much care. He’d put a stop to their business of providing a hideout with clean sheets and indoor privies for the likes of the Hargrave bunch, and that was good enough for him.

  Tulley’s mule, Gert, had a stall. So that made four animals to lead back to Trinidad. If that servant girl could drive a buckboard, he could ride along on his gelding with Gert behind him and two horses behind the wagon. That would spare him a trip back to this place. He would see.

  For now the hardest part of this damn day lay ahead: gathering the dead. He could have left them to feed the critters and take their own good time turning to skeletons. But he felt he owed it to the men he’d killed—and the woman—to haul them back to civilization.

  Anyway, he was pretty sure he had wanted posters on Bemis and the Randabaughs, and there were places outside the territory where Hargrave was worth at least a thousand, dead or alive. Corpses could be shipped, after all. Worth a try. A sheriff depended on such rewards to supplement his somewhat meager pay.

  And so Caleb York began dragging the bodies from where they fell, the blood fresh enough to leave snail-like trails. He reunited the Hargrave gang, piling the bodies like cordwood in the back of the buckboard, having to stack Hargrave himself on top of Clutter’s wicker coffin, which crunched some from that.

  The worst was the woman.

  Well, not the worst—the headless Randy Randabaugh was not pleasant to view, though York didn’t mind not seeing that stupid face with its close-set eyes again. But the woman? Caleb York had never killed a woman before, and felt a mite bad about it.

  He rested her, facedown, on top of Hargrave, face up, figuring that’s how they’d want it, though the nasty exit wound on the top of her head made him twitch a frown. He covered their final embrace with the tarp. Piling them up like that had invited a war party of flies that he’d been batting away at, getting bit a few times.

  Nasty work. Nastier than killing them.

  The back of the buckboard was stacked so high with the dead that he wouldn’t bother stopping on the road to add Broken Knife to his collection. He didn’t know of any warrants out on the Apache, and anyway, many people in this part of the world still didn’t value Indians much alive, let alone dead.

  But York knew Broken Knife had been the toughest, hardest man he’d fought today, and he respected that.

  Mahalia watched much of this from the porch, standing with a small carpetbag in her two hands, held primly in front of her. If she was troubled or sickened by the sight of him hauling dead bodies and loading them up in a wagon like bags of grain, she did not show it.

  When he was done, York was sweating and worn out. Dealing with dead men was harder than handling living ones. He fanned his face with the battered gray Stetson and looked up at her from the bottom of the stairs.

  “You ever drive a buckboard, miss?”

  “I done it for the Wileys afore.”

  He snugged on the Stetson. “Good. If you have a hanky you can tear, you might stuff some strips up your nostrils. That’ll cut the stench. Some of these freshly dead soiled themselves dyin’, and there’s one from yesterday going ripe already.”

  “I’ll do that. Sheriff York?”

  “Yes, miss?”

  “You really not taking me to jail?”

  “No, miss.”

  “Where are you takin’ me?”

  “The town of Trinidad will pay for a ticket on the stage to Las Vegas, and a train ticket from there to anywhere you like.”

  “They do that?”

  “When you save the sheriff’s life, they do. But I think Miss Filley—Rita—can find something for you at the Victory Saloon. She’ll help you with a room, too. Or Miss Cullen might have something at her ranch.”

  She licked her lips. “You’re awful good to me, sir. How can I repay you?”

  She was a lovely thing, but he already had one woman too many. So he simply said, “Just help me get the dead back to town. I know an undertaker who is going to be a real happy man today.”

  Despite the weighted-down load, the girl did well with the buckboard. York rode alongside her, with a mule tied behind him and two horses trailing the load of corpses. When they got to the narrow road out of Hale Junction, he would move up and lead the way.

  For now, they rode out of the ghost town, buckboard rumbling, York and his gelding loping along. The Main Street was so like Trinidad, with only the faded façades and blistered paint and weathered wood to say the municipality was no more. He wondered if maybe he shouldn’t burn this place down—the hotel anyway. One lit match would do the trick.

  But it just didn’t seem right, somehow.

  Not right at all, burning down a ghost town when it just acquired so many new residents.

  photo by Barbara Collins, circa 2000

  About the Authors

  MICKEY SPILLANE and MAX ALLAN COLLINS collaborated on numerous projects, including twelve anthologies, three films, and the Mike Danger comic book series.

  Spillane was the bestselling American mystery writer of the twentieth century. He introduced Mike Hammer in I, the Jury (1947), which sold in the millions, as did the six tough mysteries that soon followed. The controversial P.I. has been the subject of a radio show, comic strip, and several television series, starring Darren McGavin in the 1950s and Stacy Keach in the ’80s and ’90s. Numerous gritty movies have been made from Spillane novels, notably director Robert Aldrich’s seminal film noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and The Girl Hunters (1963), in which the writer played his own famous hero. His posthumously published final novel, The Last Stand (2018), published to celebrate the centenary of his birth, received rave reviews and extensive national coverage.

  Collins has earned an unprecedented twenty-two Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning for the novels True Detective (1983) and Stolen Away (1993) in his Nathan Heller series, and for “So Long, Chief,” a Mike Hammer short story begun by Spillane and completed by Collins. His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award–winning film starring Tom Hanks. A filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half a dozen feature screenplays produced, including The Last Lullaby (2008), based on his innovative Quarry novels, also the basis of a recent Cinemax TV series. With A. Brad Schwartz, he wrote the acclaimed non-fiction work Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness and the Battle for Chicago (2018). As “Barbara Allan,” he and his wife Barbara write the Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series (recently Antiques Ravin’).

  Both Spillane (who died in 2006) and Collins received the Private Eye Writers life achievement award, the Eye, and were presented “Edgar” awards as Grand Masters by the Mystery Writers of America in 1995 and 2017, respectively.