Deadman's Crossing by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online Page A

whatever it was that needed to be done. But for the moment, he needed to find water for his horse and himself, grain the horse, then find a safe place to bed down. Or as safe a place as possible.
    Jebidiah walked down the street, and even though it was fall, he felt warm. The air was humid and the wind was hot. He walked until he came to the end of the street, finally walked back toward the Gentleman’s Hotel. He paused for a brief look at the overturned stagecoach, then turned and went into the hotel.
    He saw immediately from the look of it that it had been a brothel. There was a bar and there were a series of stalls, not too unlike horse stalls. He had seen that sort of thing once before, in a town near Mexico. Women worked the stalls. Once there might have been curtains around the stalls, which would have come to the women’s waist. But business would have been done there in each of them, the women hiking up their dresses so that cowboys, at two bits a pop, could clean their pipes and happy up their spirits, be cheered on by their comrades as they rode the whores like bucking horses. Upstairs, in the beds, the finer girls would work, bringing in five Yankee dollars per roll in the sheets.
    Jebidiah slid in behind the bar, saw that on the lower shelf were all manner of whiskey bottles. He chose one, held it up to the light. It was corked and full. He sat it on the bar and found some beer bottles with pry-up pressure caps. He took a couple of those as well. Clutching it all in his arms, he climbed the stairs. He kicked a few doors open, found a room with a large bed covered in dust. He placed the bottles on a night table, pulled the top blanket back, shook the dust onto the floor. After replacing the blanket, he went to the window and pushed it up. There wasn’t much air, and it was warm, but it was welcome in comparison to the still humidity of the room.
    Jebidiah had found his camp. He sat on the bed and opened one of the beers and took a cautious sip. It was as flat as North Texas. He took it and the other beer, which he didn’t bother to open, and tossed them out the window, sent them breaking and splattering into the dry, dirt street below. He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to do such a thing, but now it was done and he felt better for having done it.
    He went back to the nightstand, tugged the cork from the whisky with his teeth. He took a swig. The whiskey was warm both in temperature and spirit, and he could have cleaned his pistols with it, but it did the trick. He felt a comfortable heat in his throat and his stomach, a wave of relaxation soaking into his brain. It wasn’t food, and it wasn’t water, but it beat nothing in his stomach at all. After a moment, and a few more swigs, the whisky warmed him from head to toe, set a bit of a fire in his balls.
    He sat on the bed and took several sips before returning the cork to the bottle and going downstairs. He went out into the street again, still looking for someplace with water. He glanced at the stagecoach lying on its side, horseless, and noted something he had not noted before. The runner to which the horses would be hooked was dark with blood. Jebidiah examined it. Dried gore was all along the runner. And now he noted there were horse hooves, bits of hair, even a gray horse ear, and what looked like a strip of skin lying in the street. Not to mention a hat and a shotgun. There was a smell, too. Not just the smell of dried blood, but a kind of wet stink in the air. Jebidiah was sure the source was not from the blood or the horse remains. It was the stink of evil, and the smell of it made him absently push back his long black coat and touch the revolvers in their holsters.
    He heard a moan. It was coming from the stagecoach. Jebidiah scampered onto the runner and onto the side of the coach, moved along to the door with its cut away window, looked down and inside. Lying against the far side door that lay on the ground was a woman. Jebidiah reached through