by Frank Leslie
Jesus had killed interlopers before. He’d seen it as his sacred duty. Emma saw it as hers, and she hated herself for being unable to do it.
“Get down out of those wagons,” Emma ordered, putting some steel into her voice. “Down! Now!”
They all just stared at her.
“I mean it!” Emma lowered the Winchester’s barrel and triggered a round into the ground between the two wagons. All three mules jerked with starts in their traces. One brayed and shifted around on its shod feet.
“Jesus Christ!” Cash Bundren cried. “I do believe she means it, Pa!”
“Down! All of you!” Emma bellowed. “Or the next bullet is goin’ into hide!”
“All right, all right!” Collie Bundren said, holding up his hands, studying Emma now with more wariness than shrewdness. Glancing at his sons and nephew, he said, “Best do as she says, boys. She’s a stubborn one—she purely is. Purty she may be, but she’s got the fire of murder in her eyes!”
Cash cursed and wrapped his reins around his wagon’s brake handle. He began to climb down from the driver’s seat.
“You—Dusty an’ Dewey,” Emma shouted, aiming the rifle threateningly, her heart pounding now with the gravity of what she’d suddenly found herself doing, “you both climb down the near side where I can keep an eye on you. Any of you try anything, the old man gets it first.”
She swung the carbine toward where Collie Bundren was climbing heavily down from his own wagon, over the wagon’s left front wheel.
“Ohh!” he cried suddenly, turning around to face Emma and dropping to a knee in the dirt. He slapped both hands to his chest and hardened his jaws, his face turning red behind gray beard stubble.
“Pa!” Cash yelled, running toward the old man. “You all right, Pa?”
“What’s wrong?” Emma said, scowling skeptically down at the old man.
“Pa!” Dewey scrambled down off the wagon’s near side and crouched over the old man, beside his bare-chested older brother, Cash. Dusty hurried up from the second wagon to stand over his cousins, gazing down with concern at his Uncle Collie.
“Oh…” Collie Bundren shook his head. He was staring at the ground, keeping both hands pressed taut to his chest. Both arms were quivering as though he’d been struck by lightning.
“What the hell is going on?” Emma said, keeping the carbine aimed at the elder Bundren’s bare head. “What’re you tryin’ to pull, old man?”
Cash looked up at Emma, his eyes wide with concern. “It’s his ticker. He’s got a bad one and it appears you’ve worked Pa up with all your hysterics, and it’s tightening up on him again!”
“Pa!” Dewey cried, placing a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Oh, Pa—please don’t die!”
Emma grinned, shook her head. “Bullshit. Get up, old man, or I’ll shoot you where you are. I didn’t just tumble off the old buffalo wagon!”
“It’s true!” Dewey cried. “Pa’s got a weak heart!”
“Get away from him!” Emma ordered. “Get away from him now. Git!”
When the younger man had stepped back away from Bundren, who kept his head down so that Emma couldn’t see his face, both fists clamped taut to his chest, Emma stepped cautiously forward. She kept her right index finger taut against the carbine’s trigger. She’d shoot the man if he tried anything. She purely would, and give the devil the hindmost…
She stopped a few feet in front of the man and planted her boots a little more than shoulder width apart. “Lift your head, Bundren,” Emma ordered, her voice drawn taut. “Let me see your face.”
Dewey was sobbing as he stared down at the old man.
Cash and Dusty both stared down at Collie Bundren, their eyes round. Emma would be damned if they both didn’t appear genuinely worried. Something told her she was being hornswoggled, though.
She just had a feeling…
“I said lift your head old man! I want to see your face!”
Bundren kept his head down. His left arm shook. He was breathing hard, making rumbling sounds through his fluttering lips.
“Lift your head, Bundren, or I will shoot you now!”
Slowly, Collie Bundren lifted his head. His chin came up slowly. His face was swollen and red. He had his eyes closed. When his face angled up toward Emma’s, he snapped both eyes wide open. He stuck his tongue out in a bizarre clown mask of a face, and loosed a bellowing guffaw.
“Got ya!” he shouted.
Emma’s heart leaped with a start. She jerked backward a half-step. Collie Bundren thrust his right arm out and sideways, cutting Emma’s feet out from beneath her. She tripped the carbine’s trigger. The bullet flew skyward as she plunged sideways and down, the rifle falling free of her hands.
She hit the ground hard, the wind punched from her lungs, her head smashing against a rock.
And then the world turned dark and quiet and very painful.
***
Emma lifted her head with a gasp.
She snapped her eyes open.
She blinked them, hoping to rid herself of the nightmare images that had assailed her sleep. But the faces of Collie Bundren and his two sons and Dusty Tull did not fade off into the fog of unconsciousness. She had not dreamed them. They were still with her, as they’d been before she’d lost consciousness. Only, now the four men sat before her, forming a ragged half-circle around a low fire over which a tin coffee pot gurgled and chugged.
All four were spooning beans into their mouths, the juices oozing out from between their lips to dribble down their chins as they chewed. She saw that they were in the canyon, near the church. Turning her head to her right, Emma saw the old stone chapel hunkered near the base of the canyon’s eastern wall, partly concealed by rocks and boulders that had tumbled down the ridge during the earthquake that had killed the Apache slaves. Oddly, the boulders had avoided the church, as though God or some higher power had wanted to leave it as a shrine to those who’d died filling it with gold.
It was dusk, and the pale of the stone chapel and the creams, tans, and beiges of the fallen rocks glowed in the weakening light, as though they radiated a burning luminescence inside them. The canyon walls were nearly concealed in shadows relieved only here and there by the saffron, coppers, salmons, and pinks of the sun tumbling behind toothy black crags looming in the west.
The air was cool and growing colder. Emma only half-noticed. What she noticed overall was a painful hammering inside her head, just beneath the crown. Secondly, she noticed the men’s eyes on her over here near the fire, where she was leaning back against one of several half-dead sycamores stippling this end of the canyon and rising like pale, crooked witches’ fingers from the clutter of rock from the fallen cliff walls. Her hands were tied behind her back.
Her ankles were tied before her.
“You’re awake,” said Collie Bundren around a mouthful of beans. He sniffed, raised his spoon to her, pointing at her chest. “I do apologize for my boy. A wanton, lustful creature.”
Emma followed the old man’s gaze down to where her shirt had been ripped partway open, revealing a good bit of her cleavage above her thin, cotton chemise. Two bone buttons were gone, leaving only small bristling threads to mark where they’d been ripped away from her shirt. The top of her chemise was partly torn and pulled down to reveal half of one of her pale breasts.
Anger and humiliation flared in Emma as she turned to where Dewey and Cash Bundren sat spooning beans into their mouths. The young brother, Dewey, was crouched over one knee, eating hungrily and loudly, sniffing and snorting with every bite. Dewey was grinning, snapping quick, furtive glances at Emma. Cash sat on a chunk of ancient driftwood beside Dewey, looking a little sheepish as he also plundered his tin bowl for the pinto beans.
His left eye was dark, the lower lid showing a swollen crescent beneath it.
“Don’t worry,” Collie Bundren said to Emma. “He paid for the way he pawed you. I’d ordered him to tie you and when I saw him…well…taking advantage like that…I hit him good wit
h the butt of my pistol.” The old man turned an angry look at Cash sitting to his right. “And he’ll get worse than that if he ever tries it again!”
Cash wrinkled his nose. He kept his head down, like a scolded dog, but when he looked up from beneath his brows at Emma, a sickening seediness touched his gaze that lingered on the her half-exposed breast. Emma wanted to draw her shirt closed but there was no way to do that—not with her hands tied behind her. The old man might have outwardly disapproved of Cash molesting her, but in the short time she’d been awake, she’d seen Collie’s own squalid eyes straying to her torn shirt.
Dirty bastards.
Dusty was the only one not casting quick, ogling glances at her. Keeping his eyes on his bean bowl, he seemed genuinely ashamed by how she’d been treated.
“Hungry?” Collie asked.
“No. My head hurts.”
Collie gave a crooked grin. “Sorry about that.”
“You’re a fool Bundren. You’re going to get yourself and your sons and Dusty killed. Maybe others, too.”
Chewing, Bundren glanced at the coffee pot hanging from an iron tripod mounted over the fire. “At least have a cup of coffee. It’ll make you feel better.”
Emma glanced toward where both wagons were parked near the church, their tongues drooping before them. “Have you taken anything out of the church yet?”
“Nope,” the old man said, dropping his spoon into his empty bowl then poking his thumb and index finger into his mouth. He plucked a bean skin from between his lips and flicked it into the fire. “Gonna wait till mornin’. By the time we got down here and tended the mules and set up camp, it was already gettin’ dark. We have plenty of time. No use pushin’ it.” He turned his head toward the old church, and his eyes glowed as though the fire had been suddenly built up, which it hadn’t. “That treasure has been here a long time. No one’s found it, I ‘spect, ‘ceptin’ you and your old buddy Jesus…an’ them three carcasses laid out for the predators.”
He turned to Emma and grinned knowingly.
“You saw?” she said.
“Sure, sure—we seen ‘em. Your friend Jesus do that?”
Emma drew her mouth corners down and nodded. Not far away lay the remains of three dead men. They were only sun-bleached bones staked out on the canyon floor. On the rock wall near the bones, Jesus had scratched in both English and Spanish: TURN BACK OR DIE. RETROCEDEN O MORIR.
It was grim business, protecting the canyon and the old church. Hard steps needed to be taken. Jesus had had the courage to do what needed to be done. Obviously, Emma had no such courage. She hadn’t been able to do what needed to be done. Collie Bundren’s party was still alive to plunder the gold.
Bundren tossed his empty bowl to Dewey. “You’re on cleanup duty, boy.” He spat on the ground, rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, and turned to Emma. “’The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, and debauchery; idolatry and sorcery…I warn you”—he wagged an admonishing finger—"…that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.’” He raised an admonishing brow. “That’s from the Good Book—Galatians, to be exact.”
“Yeah, well, you’d best tell that to the witch,” Emma said, snidely.
Bundren gave a reproving chuff and wagged his head.
“You got a shot of whiskey?” Emma asked him. “My head hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“Just as I do not utter farm talk, neither do I or my sons or nephew imbibe in spiritous beverages. It’s the milk of the devil.”
“Well, I could sure use a shot or two of the devil’s milk about now,” Emma sank back against the tree, stretching her lips back from her teeth against the pounding in her head. She lifted her head to look at Bundren. “What do you plan on doing with me?”
Pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee, the old man said, “I assure you, Miss Kosgrove, that as soon as our wagons are filled, I will set you free. I just want to make sure you don’t try to disrupt my intentions again nor send anyone else out here to do so.”
Cash laughed then covered it with a feigned cough.
Collie jerked a sharp look at the young man, who sat with a blanket draped across his bare shoulders. Cash looked away and whistled softly. Dewey had been gathering up the dirty utensils, but now he stopped and looked over at Emma. He stared at her darkly.
Collie fired a peeved look at his youngest and said, “I told you to clean dishes, boy! Not to stand gawking at the girl!” He lifted his long leg and rammed the heel of his boot against Dewey’s backside, shoving the kid violently forward. Dewey gave a cry and, nearly falling, dropped a couple of bowls and some forks.
“S-sorry, Pa!” The boy gathered up the utensils then hurried off in the direction of a nearby spring.
Emma turned to Bundren who was now whistling nonchalantly as he poked at the fire with a stick.
Fear was a cold hand splayed across your back. “You’re a fool, Bundren.”
“So you said.” The old man smiled mildly. “So you said…”
Emma wasn’t sure how she managed it, but despite the misery in her head, and her fear, she fell asleep. She had no idea how long she’d been out when something closed over her mouth, drawing her head back and to one side, waking her instantly.
She tried to cry out, but the hand held her mouth closed, making the scream only a low moan. Her heart raced, and cold sweat instantly bathed her. She drew every muscle in her body taut, awaiting the slash of a knife blade across her throat.
The killing slash did not come.
Instead, she stared up at the silhouetted head of a man staring down at her. A pale face hovered over her, sheathed by stars twinkling in the clear, dark sky above it. Rusty Tull stretched his index finger across his lips.
Her heart still racing but beginning to slow a little, Emma gave a feeble nod. Removing his hand from over her mouth, Rusty glanced over to where his uncle and cousins were dark lumps in their bedrolls on the other side of the fire that had burned down to gray ashes from which a single tendril of gray smoke rose.
The camp was eerily bathed in the milky light of a nearly full moon. The moon was so bright it was painful to look at directly.
Emma took slow, deep, calming breaths as she stared up at Rusty Tull. She heard the snick of steel against leather—a knife being slipped from a sheath. She suppressed an instinctual, terrified gasp a half-second before she felt the welcome slash of the knife’s blade against the ropes binding her wrists behind her back.
When those ropes were free, Rusty ducked down out of sight and behind Emma, who lay curled on her side, to go to work on the ropes binding her ankles. While he worked, having some trouble with the stout hemp, Emma glanced over at where the Bundrens laying slumbering. Collie’s blankets rose and fell heavily as he breathed, lying back against a flour sack. He breathed raspily; every fourth or fifth breath was a ripping, rattling snore.
Emma tightened her jaws, afraid the old man’s snores would awaken his sons.
She glanced down impatiently at where Rusty was sawing at the final coil of rope, using both hands and grunting as he worked. She was reaching for the handle, intending to finish the job herself, when the final strands of the rope broke away from the knife.
She kicked away the torn pieces and hurried to her feet, moving quietly, looking at Rusty curiously. What was he up to? Was he freeing her or did he have other intentions? If he wasn’t freeing her, she sure as hell would free herself—by smashing a rock against the young man’s head if necessary.
The boy canted his head toward where her horse and the mules were tied to a picket line roughly thirty yards away from the camp, down canyon from the church.
He was helping her get away!
As he moved off toward the picket line, Emma picked up her saddle and saddle blanket. She paused as she glanced around for her guns. She thought she saw her rifle leaning against the tree near which Collie slept. In the moon’s opal light and thick shadows, she couldn’t find her pistol. She cou
ld take a gun belonging to the Bundrens, but she didn’t want to push her luck. If she lingered here, scurrying around for a gun, she was liable to get caught.
Holding the saddle by its horn, she hurried off toward where Rusty’s slender shadow was approaching the horse and the mules. She stepped around him, moving toward her buckskin tied on the north end of the picket line. She hoped like hell none of the other animals, unfamiliar with her scent, brayed a warning to the sleeping Bundrens that something was amiss.
As Emma tossed a blanket over the buckskin’s back, one of the mules gave a start. It lifted its head, about to bray. Rusty grabbed its head in both his hands and slid one hand down over its nose, squeezing its nostrils closed and muffling the stillborn cry.
He spoke softly to Emma. “Uncle Collie intends to kill you.”
Emma’s heart quickened at the notion. “I figured. Do you know why?”
“He said since he didn’t file a claim on the church, there was a good chance the Yankee law might see plundering the gold out of it as a crime. Especialy when an ex-Confederate done it. They might say it belongs to the Spanish church or some such, or the Yankee government, and they might even arrest us. Uncle Collie don’t trust the Yankees, says theys all still carpetbaggers at heart.”
Emma snorted as she tossed her saddle onto the buckskin’s back and quickly cinched the latigo straps, tossing another quick glance toward where the Bundrens slept. Collie was still snoring. Not a peep out of Cash or Dewey.
Breathless with anxiety, Emma quickly slipped a bridle over the buckskin’s ears. “When your uncle realizes you helped me, you’ll have hell to pay. You’d best take a mule and ride with me back to Apache Springs.”
“Nah. He’ll take the whip to me, but I’m used to the whip.”
“Dusty, ride back to town with me,” Emma pleaded with the boy, taking up the bridle reins and leading the horse back away from the mules. “I don’t want you to get in trouble because of me.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“In that case, I’m sorry.”