* * *
* * *
We should make camp somewhere,” Odell said.
“Way our luck’s been going, I’d rather ride,” Sinclair said. “Any of this look familiar to you? You said you been out this way to visit Jesse and them before.”
“Not in the dark,” Odell said. “Maybe if we camp, I’ll be able to get my bearings in the daylight.”
“What about you, Lorenzo?” Sinclair asked. “Ride now, or make camp and wait until morning?”
“Mr. Wolfe said Granger’s ranch is this way. It’s a quiet night and the light’s not bad. Seems like all we’ve done is run into snakes, cannibals, and now there’s giants?” Escalante asked. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather keep going and get this over with as fast as we can.”
“Well put,” Sinclair said. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out a piece of corn bread. As he took a bite and chewed, he leaned forward and caught sight of someone standing in the road ahead. Whoever it was, was standing off to the side in a ditch by a row of trees, then came out into the road and waved their hands at the sight of the men on horseback.
“Help! Help me, please!” the figure called out. A woman’s voice, and she sounded in distress.
Sinclair stopped his horse. “Welp, changed my mind. Turn around and let’s make camp.”
“Hang on,” Odell said.
“No hang on. Forget it,” Sinclair said and started to turn his horse around.
“Please don’t go! I need help!” she cried.
“We can’t just leave,” Odell said.
“Hell we can’t.”
“This young woman is out here in the middle of the night asking for our help. I don’t know about the two of you, but I have plenty in my life to atone for. What about you, Mr. Escalante?”
Escalante frowned. He rubbed his chin in thought. “What’s the problem, young lady?” he called out.
“Our wagon got stuck and my husband took the horse to go find help, but he hasn’t been back for hours. I’m afraid something happened to him,” she said.
“Which way did he go?” Odell asked.
She pointed east.
“Then it’s possible, I suppose. We came from the other direction,” Odell said.
“Of course she said he went that way, you idiot. She saw us coming from this direction and knew we wouldn’t have run into him,” Sinclair snapped.
“Where’s the wagon?” Escalante asked.
“It’s right here,” she said. She walked toward the trees and pointed at the darkness. “I don’t have a light to show you it better, but it’s here. You’ll see it if you ride up. Please just help me.”
“No!” Sinclair shouted. “We ain’t falling for this little ruse. You and whoever you got hidden in those trees out there will have to wait for some other rube.”
“There’s no one!” she cried. “Please come check! I won’t harm you, I promise. I just can’t stay out here by myself any longer.” She started to weep and buried her face in her hands. “Can’t one of you just let me ride with you until daylight so I’m not all alone here in the dark? I beg of you. Please.”
“You’re a monster, Ashford,” Odell said. “Look what you’ve done to this poor girl.”
“Let’s just see if there’s really a wagon before we make our decision,” Escalante said.
The two of them snapped their reins to get their horses to walk toward the wagon and Sinclair watched them go. “You’re both fools,” he said.
“Go make camp then,” Odell called back. “Some men would rather be fools than cowards.”
“Damn you both to hell,” Sinclair said, and told his horse to follow them.
“Look at us. Men they used to call outlaws,” Odell said. “Now they can call us the kind of men who come to the aid of damsels in distress on dark roads.”
As they approached, the woman pointed at a wagon and said, “See? I told you.” It was unhitched and pushed up against one of the trees, with a broken wheel. “Just like I said.”
“I told you she wasn’t lying,” Odell said. “Madam, we are here to assist you.”
They heard the mechanical clicks of gun hammers being cocked as a man stood up from behind the wagon. He had a rusty long-barreled pistol in each hand and he pointed one at the center of Henry Odell’s chest and the other at Sinclair’s forehead. “We sure do appreciate your assistance,” the bandit sneered.
Sinclair pointed at Odell and said, “Please, sir, before you do anything else, shoot this fool.”
“Shut up, Ashford.”
“Yeah, shut up, Ashford!” the woman said. “You all do as you’re told!”
“No problem. I’m just saying I’d be grateful if you shot him.”
The bandit leveled his gun at Sinclair’s leg. “I will put a bullet in your kneecap if you say one more word, you old goat.”
Sinclair lowered his head and stopped speaking.
“What do you want?” Escalante asked.
“All your money. Your gold. Your weapons. Right now.”
“Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, sir, but we have nothing but a few dollars between the three of us. We certainly have no gold and our only weapon is a shotgun without any shells,” Odell said.
“Don’t tell him that!” Sinclair snapped. “Why would you tell him our gun is unloaded?”
“Well, I don’t want him to shoot us, thinking he’s got a chance of being shot!” Odell said.
“How in the hell did you manage to maraud for so long being such a complete idiot?”
“Just remember, I shot you first and you only shot me by dumb luck!” Odell shouted. “If you’d have died like you were supposed to, neither one of us would have gotten caught!”
“Hey!” the bandit shouted over them. “Both of you shut up!”
They shut up.
Both pistols were shaking in the bandit’s hands. “Now, give us all your money, your gold, and your weapons. Right now.” He kept his pistols on them while the woman walked toward Sinclair.
He looked down at her. “What?”
“You heard what he said! Hand it over.”
Sinclair folded his hands on his saddle. “No.”
“What did you say?” the bandit asked.
“I said no.”
“I swear to God, I will shoot you dead, old man!”
“Go on. Shoot. Just make sure you shoot this one-handed idiot too.”
“Ashford!” Odell shouted.
“You crazy bastard, I’ll kill all of you!”
“Well, go on and do it then,” Sinclair said, “for I am tired of listening to you say it! I’m tired of standing on this road, and I am tired of listening to so many idle and empty threats from a do-nothing coward who looks ready to wet his pants at the idea of even pointing a weapon at a grown man.”
The woman was looking at the bandit in confusion. The bandit looked on the verge of tears. “I’ll do it.”
“Do it.”
“I will.”
“I’m waiting,” Sinclair said.
“Do it, honey,” the woman said.
The bandit clenched his eyes shut and gave out a loud groan.
“You can do it!” she shouted.
“Aw, I told you I couldn’t do it,” the bandit moaned. “I told you this was a bad idea. Goddamn you, you old goat!” He worked his left hand to decock the pistol and lowered it. Then he tried to do the same with the right. Instead, as he lowered the hammer, his finger struck the trigger and the gun went off.
Behind the gunshot came a wet splattering sound from Odell’s horse’s neck. The creature screamed and a font of hot blood burst from its wound that sprayed Escalante and both bandits.
Odell’s horse staggered and dropped, its blood still spraying. Sinclair’s horse caught the scent of the blood and reared ba
ck in a panic. It kicked the air wildly with its front legs and one of its scrambling hooves cracked the woman in the side of the head so hard, it split open and sprayed her blood across the wheels of the wagon behind her.
The bandit cried out for the woman. “You killed her!”
He turned to aim his gun at Sinclair and there was a whistling sound in the air that stopped the man from saying anything else. He just stood there and made gurgling noises from his throat as his eyes fell upon the shaft and the steel tip at the end of it.
His arms dropped to his sides and the guns fell to the ground. He stared at the object in wonder. Where had it come from? Why was it sticking out of his neck? He looked like he meant to touch it and examine it with the tips of his fingers, but before he could reach it, his legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the road.
Escalante leapt down from his horse and went over to where Odell was sprawled out on the road. “Are you all right?”
“Barely. I jumped off just before she went down. Is she dead?”
Escalante nodded. “She is.”
Odell cursed. “What about the two robbers?”
Escalante walked over to look at the woman in the ditch. Her eyes were wide open and blank. He could see the white of her skull where it had been cracked along the length of her temple. He bent down to check on her and said, “She’s gone.”
“What about the man? What happened to him?” Odell asked. “I didn’t see.”
Sinclair finally got his horse calm enough to stand still. He patted it on the neck and told it that it was a good boy. “All I saw was him go down. Nice work, Lorenzo. You get him with a knife?”
“It wasn’t me,” Escalante said.
They walked over to where the bandit was lying facedown, and Escalante used the toe of his boot to turn him over. There was an arrow sticking out of the man’s neck, and Odell whispered, “My God, it’s Indians.”
“Would you stop saying it’s Indians all the time!” Sinclair snapped.
“It’s not Indians,” Escalante said.
“Are you sure?” Odell asked.
“It’s not the Indians,” Escalante muttered. His eyes blazed with anger. He cupped his hand against the side of his mouth and turned toward the darkness, shouting, “Where are you?”
There was no answer.
“Get out here right now, damn it!”
After a moment they heard rustling in the bushes behind the wagon. Someone was coming toward them from the darkness. Odell and Sinclair both stepped back. Escalante put his hands on his hips and said, “Show yourself.”
A young woman emerged from behind the wagon with an arrow still cocked in her bow. She had long black hair worn in a single braid and smooth bronzed skin. Her eyes were large and brown, the same color and shape as Escalante’s.
“You killed this man!” Escalante shouted.
“He was going to kill you, Papa! He shot that old man’s horse and was going to shoot the older old man.”
“Hang on one second,” Sinclair said. “I’m not older than Henry Odell.”
“You look it,” Odell said.
“Shut up. Lorenzo? Who the hell is this?”
Escalante gritted his teeth together and said, “This is my daughter Mirta. You know your mother is going to have both our hides for this, right?”
CHAPTER TEN
Sinclair inspected the bandit’s pistols while the others struggled to get Odell’s saddle off of his deceased horse.
“These are both junk. Bullets are all corroded in the chamber. Things look more likely to blow up in your hand than shoot.”
“Well, he shot my horse with it just fine,” Odell said.
“That he did. Shame his aim was a little low.” Sinclair tucked one gun in his waist and walked the other over to Odell. “Here. Take it.”
“I don’t want it. You keep it.”
“Lorenzo has his shotgun. The girl has her bow. Now me and you will each have one of these. Even if they don’t hardly work, folk’ll be less likely to try to rob us if they think we all have weapons. Especially if you can somehow manage to resist telling them we ain’t got no ammo. Take it.”
“I said I don’t want it!” Odell said. “I’m not carrying guns anymore. You keep it.”
“You really are an idiot. Do you know that? After everything we’ve just been through, you can’t understand what I’m saying here? What, you gave up drinking in prison and now you’re giving up guns too?”
“Something like that,” Odell said.
Sinclair turned to Escalante. “Here.”
Escalante frowned at the decrepit-looking weapon. “I’m not taking that.”
“Fine. Suit yourself,” Sinclair said. “How about you, little lady?”
“No, thank you, sir,” Mirta said.
“Way you handled that bow, you need it the least of us. Your daddy showed you how to use that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, he was always good with any kind of weapon. Sometimes in the old days when we rode together—”
Escalante coughed and shook his head at Sinclair.
“He always knew just what to do,” Sinclair said and smiled.
“Were you a gold prospector with my father back before he met my mother?” Mirta asked him.
“Gold prospector?” Sinclair said with a laugh until a look from Escalante silenced him. He cleared his throat and said, “Yes, I suppose that’s exactly what we were. Him and me, always out there looking for gold.”
“Let’s go,” Escalante said. “Mirta, where’s your horse?”
“Tied up next to the one the bandits have by a tree back there.”
“Go get both. Mr. Odell will need to ride it now.”
“Okay, Papa,” Mirta said, and ran to get the horses.
Escalante put his fists against his forehead and moaned, “I can’t believe she followed us out here.”
“Well, I for one am grateful she did,” Odell said. “That was a hell of a shot. She saved our lives.”
“To hell with our lives! She shouldn’t be here!” Escalante shouted. “If either of you had children you cared about, you wouldn’t be sitting here saying how grateful you are my daughter has been out following us all this time! What if she’d run into those lunatics in the woods?”
“All right, Lorenzo,” Sinclair said. “It’s going to be all right. She’s with us now, and she’s safe. We’ll make sure she stays that way.”
When Mirta emerged on her horse and leading the bandits’, Escalante said, “Mirta, from now on you ride next to me at all times. You understand?”
She told him that she did, and they all mounted their horses and rode east.
* * *
* * *
Hey, Lorenzo?” Sinclair called out.
“Yes?”
“That girl sees any deer along the way, I hope you encourage her to take it. I’d be most inclined to eat some of that venison stew you were talking about. I’m about at my limit on beans and beaver jerky.”
“We’ll see,” Escalante said.
“There’s four of us now and one of us is what you’d call, you know, delicate. I hate imposing our rough trail ways on an object of such girlish innocence.”
Mirta’s head snapped toward him. “I’m not an object of girlish innocence.”
“Oh, I know, darling,” Sinclair said. “I was talking about Mr. Odell.”
* * *
* * *
They sat around the campfire and ate from their bowls. Sinclair mopped up what was left with a chunk of bread and said, “That was the best venison I ever ate. You’re a dead shot with that bow, Miss Escalante. Better than your daddy ever was, I reckon, and he was the best man in our gang—group. Our group of gold prospectors. All those g’s I get confused. We’d gang up on all the gold in the ground and just beat it up until it w
as ours. That’s what I meant to say.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sinclair,” Mirta said.
“How far do you figure we are from Granger’s ranch?” Escalante asked.
“Another day at least,” Odell said. “I recognize where we are now.”
“We’ll need to stop somewhere before then. Is there a train station or a stagecoach around here?”
“Around here?” Odell asked. “Not as far as I know. Why?”
Escalante’s eyes shifted toward his daughter.
“I see,” Odell said. He stirred the food in his bowl and said, “There’s a ranch we could stop at. I’m sure they’d put up anybody we needed them to put up, plus take care of our horses and let us get a good night’s rest. Give us whatever supplies we need. We could head out from there and be at Granger’s in a day or less.”
“What ranch is that?” Sinclair asked.
“William and Jesse’s.”
Sinclair set his bowl down. “I’m not certain she’d be too happy to have me show up unannounced. It’s been a long time since she and I have seen each other.”
“If it makes you feel any better, she’ll probably be only a little less unhappy to see me,” Odell said. “I think, whatever her reaction is, it’s in our best interests not to let on what our intentions are with Nelson Granger. I doubt they’d accept our help easily.”
“She’s going to wonder what the two of you are doing out on the road together,” Escalante said.
“Good point,” Odell said. “We’ll tell her that you wanted to see where William was buried, so you bit the bullet and asked me to bring you out to the ranch.”
Sinclair pointed at Escalante. “And what about him?”
“Him and me knew each other from business dealings over the years, so you went and found him, and together, you both came and got me. His lovely daughter came along because she’s never seen this part of the country before. What do you think? Sound pretty good?”
The other men shrugged and agreed it sounded as good as any other explanation.
Mirta leaned forward and asked Sinclair, “Who was William?”
Ralph Compton Face of a Snake Page 12