As she pressed the icy dressings into the hole, the man groaned and stirred, but his one eye did not open. After that the man lay still again. It was perhaps only her imagination, but it seemed to her that some of his color returned. She held the compress against the wound; soon the white cloth was dark with his blood, but the stream lessened and the dark pool by his side failed to grow any larger.
She stayed by his side until darkness. In the night he spoke to her and she helped him then to the mattress ...
By the time Weed reached the Deer River, he was in trouble and he knew it. He was unable to staunch the blood that pulsed from the hole in his upper arm and other one in his thigh that one-eyed son of a bitch had scored as he rode out of the barn. Both bullets had ripped on through, but they had torn out considerable muscle and there seemed no way for him to stop the bleeding.
What kept him riding was the rage smoking through his brain: rage at Mary for her attack from behind and rage at whoever it was had led that one-eyed bastard to his place. He had killed Swinnerton to keep his place hidden; had Luke or Abe told this fellow before they died—or had that been their bargaining wedge needed to stay alive? To think it so was to believe it, and the fire within Weed built to an inferno. He would live to search them out, both of them—and to finish Mary and the other one as well.
No ... he would bring Mary back to the valley. He would seal off the entrance to his roost and she would be his prisoner for as long as either of them lived. He would tame her. He would cuff her into submission until she gloried in his lust for her. He would make her weep for him to take her ...
In sight of the Hanks place at last, Weed tried to pull up. Instead, he pitched sideways off his horse. Dazedly, he looked up at the evening sky. It came to him then that he had ridden all night and most of the day. No wonder he was so tired. The grass held him with a soft gentleness he had never known before. The earth was like a gently rocking cradle lulling him into a delicious sleep.
Only he mustn’t sleep ... he had things to do, promises he had made to himself ... promises he intended to keep before that long sleep came. He noticed that the grass under him was becoming slick with his blood.
He closed his eyes to stop the universe from spinning. When he opened them again it was dark. His horse was quietly cropping the grass at his head. As he reached out for it, the horse drew back quickly, jingling its bit and snorting.
Weed waited until the horse returned to feeding on the lush grass near his head, reached quickly over and caught the reins. Again the horse shied back, but Weed hung on. The horse quieted, its ears flat, its flanks quivering. Weed pulled himself to his feet. Once upright, he leaned heavily on the horse.
He could see the light from the ranch window less than half a mile further on—the place Charlie Hanks and his woman had bought. They would have to take him in. If he got there.
He kept leaning against the horse, his one good hand on the pommel. Presently he thought he might have the strength needed to pull himself into the saddle. He lifted his left foot and somehow fumbled it into the stirrup. He tried then to pull himself up and got about halfway before he slid down again.
He waited and rested a minute, then tried it again. The third time he made it and dragged his right leg across the cantle. He did not try to fit the foot into the stirrup. Once secure in the saddle, he took a deep breath and urged his horse toward that yellow light still gleaming in the darkness beside the river. He rode sagged over the saddlehorn, clutching it with his one good hand. The blood pulsing out of his right thigh was causing the leg to grow so heavy that he was wondering if its weight would pull him off his horse.
But he kept on until he reached the front yard of the Hanks place. The horse pulled up abruptly. When he tried to dismount, he lost his balance. Snatching vainly at the horn, he felt himself slipping. He slid down the horse’s shoulder and leg and piled limply onto the ground.
The horse pulled away from him, blowing nervously. Weed tried to call out to Charlie Hanks, but little more than a groan came out. He was surprised at how dry his mouth was. He reached out for the horse, but misjudged the distance and struck it on the snout. The animal spooked, and uttering a startled whinny, bolted away from Weed and out of the yard.
As the thudding of the horse’s hooves died, Weed heard the ranch house door open. A splash of yellow light flooded the yard, falling short of his body by less than a foot. He heard footsteps in the grass by his head and closed his eyes wearily. It had become too much of an effort for him to keep his eyes open any longer. Through the closed lids he could see the light from a lantern held in the air just above his body.
And then he heard Charlie Hanks’ voice.
“Jesus Christ. Talk about bad pennies. It’s Weed!”
“Alias George Carver,” said Laura Placer.
The lantern loomed closer. “He’s been hit twice, looks like.” Charlie said. “Must of just got here. That was his horse we heard, most likely.”
“Leave him here, Charlie. Let him be. He’ll be dead in the morning. Look at the grass around him. He’s bleeding like a stuck pig.”
“Think we should?” Charlie sounded like all he needed was a little more convincing.
“You remember that time in Pecos City—when you and Kid Curry were on that job in Billings?”
“Yeah ...” Charlie’s voice went suddenly hard. “What about it?”
“This bleeding son of a bitch in the grass took me, damn him. And he wasn’t very polite about it, neither.”
Weed sighed, opened his eyes and pulled his one remaining six-gun from his belt. Cocking the weapon, he lifted the muzzle until it was trained on Charlie’s gun.
“Help me in, you two,” he said, his voice a harsh, painful whisper. “Or I’ll blow holes in both of you. Then we can all three bleed to death out here together.”
“Hell, Weed!” Charlie protested. “No need to talk like that. We wouldn’t leave you out here!”
“Bullshit. Now help me inside.”
Charlie took Weed’s shoulders, Laura the feet, and together they carried Weed into the ranch house. Once inside Weed felt a surge of vitality. Their sudden eagerness to placate him was balm for his weariness. He felt almost drunk.
Yessir, Laura hadn’t liked it that time; but he sure as hell had. And he had known she’d never forget it. The thought of her sent the blood coursing through him, warming him, banishing the chill he had begun to feel out there on the grass.
As they set him down on the living-room couch, next to the huge fireplace, he kept his revolver trained on Charlie as he spoke to Laura: “Get some packing to stop this bleeding, Laura. And then I’d like some coffee and grub. I’m starving.”
The sons of bitches were going to let him lie out there and bleed to death! His indignation fueled his rage and steadied the six-gun in his hand. And as Laura left them to get the bandages, Weed smiled at Charlie Hanks, his crooked yellow teeth gleaming like the fangs of an old, but still vicious dog.
Eight
Wolf opened his eye. His entire body felt stiff. He was looking at a window, he realized. Beneath it there was a sink. A wooden bucket was sitting beside it on the counter with a dipper handle sticking out of it. The window was dirty. Only a dim, feeble light filtered through it. It must be the end of a day, he thought.
He moved his head. The woman was lying on the wooden floor beside his mattress, asleep with her cheek resting on one forearm. A bloodstained bandage had been wrapped clumsily about her head. The right side of her face—the one facing up—was swollen and discolored, the skin around the eye puffy and shiny. Thick tufts of auburn hair spilled out from under the bandage. This reminded Wolf of something ... but it was too elusive to catch hold of at the moment. Was she dead? he wondered. She was so still. Then he saw the slow, steady rise and fall of her breast beneath the saloon girl’s dress she had put on. The skirt was black and red spangles, the blouse low cut. Thin black straps dug into the pale skin of her shoulders.
Again he was reminded of
something, but pushed it aside. He turned his head slightly and looked out through the cabin’s open door. What he saw filled him with a sudden realization of how good it was that somehow he was still alive. In the slanting rays of the dying sun a large mule deer was cropping the lush grass in front of the stable. It was a doe. Her black-tipped tail was tucked away as she foraged. Every once in a while she would raise her head, her large mule ears testing the air alertly.
Closer still, almost within the shadow of the cabin, an enormous jackrabbit was sitting on its haunches, peering into the cabin, its nose quivering, its long ears standing straight up at attention. Rangy animal though it was, it must still have weighed close to seven pounds. Abruptly it turned around, showed its impudent black tail to Wolf, and commenced feeding on the grass in front of the cabin.
Watching the animals, Wolf kept as still as he could. But this was not easy. With each passing moment the pain in his side was growing more insistent; and how long, he wondered, had he and the woman been lying here unconscious? The cabin must have been silent for some time, or these animals would not have dared venture so close to it.
He looked down at his right side. His pants had been peeled off and his shirt and vest removed. His longjohns were caked stiff with his blood and a blood-clotted bandage had been strapped to his wound with his gun belt. So tight in fact was it, that he became worried about the danger of gangrene.
As he reached down to loosen the belt, the woman stirred quickly, then sat up.
“Oh,” she cried, sleepily. “You’re al—! You’re awake!”
She was surprised to find him alive, it seemed. He managed a smile, then saw the deer and the jackrabbit freeze. He wanted to put his finger to his lips, but it was too late. The jackrabbit vanished in a single bound, while the mule deer took off in a series of springy, stiff-legged bounds and was gone almost as quickly as the jackrabbit.
“We had visitors,” Wolf told the woman.
She turned to look out the door, then glanced back at him. “Oh, you mean the animals.”
“That’s right.”
“I thought you meant him—and his friends.”
“Weed Leeper?”
“He calls himself George Carver—but that’s his real name all right.”
“You his woman?”
“He bought me—fair and square, you might say. But I don’t want to talk about it. Who are you, anyway? A lawman?”
“My name is Caulder,” he replied. “Wolf Caulder.” Then he reached down in an effort to unbuckle the gun belt. “I’m not a lawman.”
“You better not do that,” she cautioned him, moving closer on her knees and holding his hand back. “It was the only way I could stop the bleeding.”
“It’s stopped now. I don’t want gangrene.”
She looked at him, then shrugged and pulled back. He unbuckled the belt and felt almost immediate relief from the sharp throbbing pain. Then he lifted the bandage off, or as much of it as would come free. A good portion of it was stuck to the scabbed-over wound. He braced himself and pulled the rest of the bandage off. Black, yellowish pus oozed out of the puffy hole, and an area around it the size of his fist was a raw, angry red. The wound was infected, all right.
“Anyway,” he said, looking at the woman, “you stopped the bleeding.”
“It wasn’t easy. And you were kind of wild there for a while.”
“How long is a while?”
“For a couple of days. You were out of your head. You kept calling me Diego, and you spoke a lot of Spanish.”
“Sorry. Could you heat up some water for me now and get some more bandages?”
She nodded and got slowly, painfully to her feet. The saloon girl’s dress was wildly out of place under the circumstances and gave her a sad, almost pathetic, look as she limped over to the stove and began to build a fire. She seemed able to get around all right, but Weed had evidently beaten her quite severely; and there was an outside chance he might have caused permanent injury as he flailed away at her with that chair leg.
“How do you feel?” he asked her.
“I’m all right. I thought he broke some bones at first. It’s just my back that hurts now—and it’s getting better.”
Wolf nodded. “Do you have any strong soap?”
She nodded as she poured water from the bucket into a large pan.
“Good. While the water’s heating see if you can find my horse.”
“I did that already. You had him tied to a tree and he was kicking up a fuss. I unsaddled him and turned him into the pasture.”
“In my saddle bags there’s a small jar. It’s a salve. I’d like you to bring that in to me when you can.”
She nodded as she set the pan of water down onto the stove, turned painfully and started out of the cabin. Wolf leaned back. The bullet had struck one of his ribs, he realized, and skittered crazily up into his back. He could feel it burning under his right shoulder blade. She would have to dig that out as soon as she had cleaned out the wound in his side.
He hoped she was up to it.
She had to work in the light of their single coal oil lamp, but she was resolute and tough and followed directions well. First she cleaned out the wound with the hot water and soap, scrubbing it thoroughly under Wolf’s direction until the flesh around the puncture was bleeding cleanly. Then she applied the salve Wolf had been using on his right leg, after which she wrapped a fresh bandage around his waist. For this new bandage, he noticed, she tore into strips a new dress she must have bought recently. He could not help but catch the grim, yet controlled fury with which she accomplished this task. It was as if she had hated the dress.
During all this time Wolf had been sharpening a small paring knife. Finished with sharpening it, he passed the blade through the flame of the coal-oil lamp and handed the knife to her.
“When I roll over onto my stomach,” he told her. “Feel for the bullet under my right shoulder blade. I’ll tell you where it is when you hit it. Dig it out with the knife.”
She sat back on her haunches and looked at him, wide-eyed. “I can’t!”
“Yes, you can.” He smiled apologetically. “What’s your name?”
“Mary.”
“You can do it, Mary. I’ll tell you what to do.”
“But the pain.”
He smiled coldly at her. “Don’t give it a thought. I won’t cry out. I don’t want you to get scared or to panic. So, believe me, I won’t utter a sound.” Without another word to her, he turned over onto his stomach. After a moment’s hesitation, he felt her trembling hands feeling the flesh under his shoulder blade. When she came to the spot, he told her.
“Can you feel it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then dig it out.”
He felt her hesitating, and cursed softly, bitterly.
“I can’t,” she cried in a small, desperate voice. She was beginning to weep.
“It’s a cherry stone in a piece of pie! Cut it out!”
The pressure of one hand on his back increased. He felt something slicing into the flesh. The pain made his head swim, but he smiled. “That’s fine,” he said. “Just fine. Now cut it out.”
He wanted to tell her to hurry it up—to please hurry it up—but he knew that would unnerve her. The knife’s cutting edge seemed to grow in size as she worked—as if she had really driven a red hot poker into his back, the heat from it spreading fire deep into his lungs. He wanted to cry out—to roar like an animal—but kept his teeth clenched instead.
“You’re doing fine,” he managed. “Just take your time and dig it out.”
“All right,” she said, her voice small, intent. “I think ... I got it now. It’s so hard to tell if that’s it ...”
By this time he was almost ready to tell her to stop digging—to pull the knife out—when he heard her sigh, and felt the blade being withdrawn.
“Here,” she said, her voice unsteady but proud.
He turned his head. Between her bloody thumb and forefinger s
he held a blackened slug, mashed almost into a sphere from the force with which it had slammed into his rib.
He was too weak to say anything. He just nodded and rested his head down on his right forearm and took a deep, painful breath. He heard her drop the bullet on the floor, and a moment later she began to swab the hole she had had to dig in his back.
He closed his eyes and passed out.
Mary, he thought. Her name is Mary.
He was lying on the mattress which she had dragged out onto the grass in front of the cabin. The breeze cutting through a thick stand of pines at the edge of the yard was cooling him deliciously while he watched Mary work.
She had brought a large wooden tub out to the water pump, had filled it, and was now busy scrubbing his clothes and underclothes clean. She was using a washboard and the same huge bar of yellow soap she had used to clean his wound. She had removed the bandage from around her head a few days ago and now her thick auburn hair hung in long coils down past her shoulders. Every once in a while she would straighten up and brush the hair back over her shoulders.
Her name was Mary. She had worked in The Miner’s Palace before coming to this place with Weed. Her hair was thick and as auburn as Dan Tyler had described it. And there was a resemblance—definite and unmistakable—to Bobby Tyler.
He was as certain as he could be that she was Mary Tyler, the daughter that Dan Tyler had journeyed so far to find. He had been certain since the day after she had removed the slug from his back, but had said nothing to her about it yet—and was reluctant to bring the matter up.
For whenever he mentioned Weed or the fact of her having lived here with him, she became sullen, intractable—the hatred she felt for Weed driving her deep into herself. He could sense what she felt: shame, as well as a fury with herself for having allowed the man to so use her.
But if she was Mary Tyler, she had a right to know that her father and her brother were on the Deer River, sending down roots in the hope of finding her—and giving her a home again.
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