by Paul Bagdon
Ben’s right hand jerked, startling both his horse and himself. He patted Snorty on the neck with his left hand. He didn’t want to remember facing Zeb Stone in a bar in Juarez. He wished he could burn the memory of that day from his mind with the same finality that a fire had burned the stinking, blood-soaked den of sin to the ground ten days later. He didn’t want to remember putting a slug purposely and with forethought in Stone’s gut, knowing the outlaw would die an excruciating death. That was the one time in the course of his career in law enforcement that he couldn’t justify his actions.
As a rule, he wholeheartedly believed in upholding the law and arresting those who broke it, just as he believed he was performing the life mission God had established for him. His bloody vengeance on Zebulon Stone rode heavily in his mind and in his heart. He’d gone not as a lawman to Juarez, but as a gunfighter, seeking to pay a personal debt with a bullet.
But this is different. This isn’t the same as it was twenty years ago. Lee is with killers. This is my job.
After a while, Snorty needed a break from the monotony, and so did Ben. He reined in near a small water hole that reflected the light of the moon on its still surface. He released the cinch of his saddle and allowed the cool night air to circulate under the seat. A quick sweep of his palm under the saddle told him there were no lumps or folds in the blanket, and he eased the saddle back into place on Snorty’s withers. After letting his horse drink several long swallows, he had him graze in the scrub grass. Then he ate a handful of jerky and quenched his thirst with the brackish-tasting water, opposite from where his horse had drunk.
After fifteen minutes of rest, they were back on the trail again. Snorty ate miles effortlessly, the smooth motion of his back lulling Ben into a mild state of semi-sleep. When the darkness began to yield to the first subtle light of dawn, Ben searched for some shade in which to spend the day.
But he could not keep his mind from nagging at him like a persistent toothache. He knew that the longer Lee was a captive, the more likely she was to be harmed or killed. Thoughts of what might be happening at Stone’s camp brought bile to the back of his throat, and he seethed with an impotent rage. He’d done his best to keep such thoughts locked away, but the cruel images appeared nevertheless.
He knew that a daylight attack on the outlaws would get him killed and, no doubt, forfeit Lee’s life as well, but what he knew didn’t have much effect on what he felt. There was only one thing he could do at that moment. As he lowered his head in silent prayer, his mind became more clear and focused. He was willing to settle for that.
And he couldn’t help but feel some measure of peace as the sunrise made the prairie come alive; the first soft light made the Busted Back range of steep, rugged hills seem as if they were sculpted from gold, while the scattered desert pines slowly became visible as the light gained strength.
A few miles ahead, eight or ten turkey vultures swept in wide circles above the ground. The circles they scribed in the sky became smaller in diameter and came closer to the earth as Ben’s eyes followed them. It could be anything—a dead steer that wandered off from a herd, an old buffalo pulled down by coyotes, a mustang with a broken leg that died of thirst.
Snorty threw himself ahead as Ben’s heels banged his sides. The horse stretched to a gallop in a very few strides. Not until he’d covered almost two miles did Ben slow him to a lope.
He noticed that several of the birds had disappeared from sight, angling in toward their prey. Other vultures were arriving, rapidly growing from mere dots in the morning sky to the squawking, ravenous outcasts that they were. Their raucous, blood-chilling screeches reached him before he’d covered half the distance to where they were landing. He slid his 30.30 from the scabbard at his right knee and levered a cartridge into the chamber. The rifle didn’t have the range he needed, but the reverberation of the reports would carry.
He jammed the rifle back into the scabbard and snarled like an enraged animal. Of course the sound will carry—maybe to the outlaws’ camp so Stone can be ready with his Sharp’s on a tripod to pick me off. I can’t take that chance.
He held Snorty to a fast lope and covered the last mile at that pace. When he topped a slight rise, he saw about fifteen vultures gathered around a thick patch of scrub and bush. Part of a leg and an entire foot stuck out from the scrub. He got a quick look at it as the vultures shoved and fought for position. The foot was a dull, lifeless white, and it looked small to Ben—his mind told him it was feminine.
He pointed Snorty at the birds and let him run. The vulture farthest from the corpse screamed as the horse’s hooves slammed into him, crushing his ribs and wings. Those around the body in the scrub lumbered away from the horse and rider hurtling toward them, their wings flailing in the air as they sought escape.
When he slowed Snorty to a stop, Ben stepped down and walked toward the brush. The air was heavy with the stench of blood and death. He felt as if his boots weighed a thousand pounds as he approached the site of the vulture’s malignant feast.
The eyeless corpse of a man gaped up at Ben, its face and body crusted with blood. The body had been stripped of anything useful, including his boots and most of his clothing. Ben had no idea what had led to the man’s death, but the gaping hole in his chest told that his end had been quick. He buried the corpse as well as he could, digging the hard ground with his sheath knife and his hands.
Ben did his best to sweep thoughts of Zeb Stone out of his mind as he mounted and pointed Snorty at a small grouping of sparse trees. He dismounted there and pulled his tack from Snorty. Then he rubbed the horse’s back and chest with handfuls of dry grass and let him drink from the tepid water in the small sinkhole that fed the trees and the grass around it. Ben too drank from the sinkhole. He couldn’t afford to waste canteen water.
The spotty shade of the trees was a blessed relief from the malevolence of the midday sun. Ben walked beyond the sinkhole far enough to be sure of the direction in which the Stone gang was headed and then returned to the shade and slept for six hours.
It was Snorty’s woofing and snuffling that finally pulled him out of his sleep. He rolled wildly to one side and came to his knees with his Colt extended in front of him—his mission had returned with the force of an ice-cold bucket of water in the face.
He ate a few pieces of jerky, wishing for a cup of coffee, and then tended to Snorty, rationing some crimped oats and allowing two hats full of water. He grinned. A good Stetson had many more uses than covering a head.
By the time he mounted up, the sun was sliding away. But that made little difference to him. He wouldn’t have to search the ground. He could tell from the tracks he’d seen that Stone was headed to the Busted Backs.
The moon had waned a bit since the night before, but the light was still good. The prairie looked like a welltended pasture in the softness of the night, but appearances were deceiving. The clefts and rocks and ruts were cloaked in the uniform darkness of the prairie, and it took a good horse to pick them out. But Ben had few worries on that account. He knew that Snorty would take him where he needed to go.
Ben was holding Snorty at a walk when the first chain of lightning ignited the sky. The horse’s back tightened and his neck became hard, as if he were anticipating a blow. Ben knew that only Snorty’s loyalty kept him contained; his instincts screamed at him to run, to get away from what was suddenly tearing apart the sky and bellowing at him from all directions.
The sky changed rapidly as the lightning struck; the weak light of the waning moon became the heavy darkness of a closed coffin. The wind pounded at Ben and Snorty, changing its direction so rapidly that its full force was impossible to avoid. There was no putting a back to this wind—it slapped them with stinging stalks of buffalo grass and peppered them with grit and dirt.
Snorty whirled in an attempt to escape the onslaught, but there was no escape. Ben could feel the horse’s panic. He drew Snorty’s head to the left as far as he could and took two wraps around the saddle horn with
the rest of the rein.
When the rain hit, it was powerful—and cold. Snorty squealed and wouldn’t move beyond stilted half steps sideways. Ben talked to the horse, stroked his neck, and very slowly let the rein slip around the horn.
The storm careened away almost as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving behind a sea of mud, thick cloud cover impermeable to the moon, and a brisk wind that dropped the temperature at least fifteen degrees in a matter of minutes.
As he slid out of the saddle, Ben debated on whether or not to build a fire. Then he shook his head at his own foolishness—there probably wasn’t a dry piece of anything within ten miles, let alone kindling or firewood, or even mesquite. And even if he had fuel, he couldn’t risk a fire. He trudged on beside his horse, taunted by an image of a hot mug of very black and thickly sugared coffee.
Much of the dark sky seemed to follow the storm as it fled. Soon moonlight made travel possible again. Ben checked his horse’s cinch, let him drink from a rain-filled depression, and ate a few sticks of jerky. Then he mounted up and began riding.
Snorty had recovered from the effects of the storm, but he was tired, so Ben reduced the lope sequence by half and dropped the gallop because of the treacherous footing the storm had left behind. Toward dawn they came upon a water hole surrounded by a few trees. Ben reined in. He was bone tired and his stomach was growling for food other than salty, wooden-tasting strips of beef.
He used the bandana wrapped around his hand to rub down Snorty’s back and chest and then fed him a ration of crimped oats. He hung the saddle blanket over a branch to dry—as well as his denim pants, work shirt, and vest. Then he stretched out on some grass and slept soundly for almost seven hours.
When he woke up, his pants, shirt, and vest were dry and warm from the sun and smelled of the sweet prairie breeze. He dressed and argued his feet into his boots. Then he sat in the sun, wiping down the action of his pistol and his rifle with oil from a small tin can.
The sky was cloudless, and the depth of its blue approached the cyan gleam of a precious stone. An eagle scribed lazy circles above the foothills, seeking prey. Ben fed Snorty from the diminishing supply of oats and forced down several sticks of jerky. And as he checked his gear in preparation for the night’s ride, he prayed.
Lord Jesus—I’m not thinkin’ like a lawman. I want to tell you that I’m not after revenge for Pa and for Lee—and I can’t do that just now. I ask that you help me so that I can say that to you. An’ I ask that you keep Lee safe and help me bring in Stone and his men as I’m sworn to.
The ground dried during the course of the day, making the storm only a memory. Still, the traveling was more difficult. The closer they drew to the hills, the more uneven the ground became. Snorty wanted to run, but Ben held him to a slow lope, even while the light remained good. But as the sun eased down behind the hills, he slowed his horse to a jog and held him at that gait. Clouds moved in with the darkness, and the slice of moon was stingy with its light. Shadows seemed to blend together into indistinct masses.
Ben stopped after midnight to spend a few minutes out of the saddle while Snorty drank from a depression that still held a couple inches of rainwater. He allowed himself several short swallows of water as well and then stepped into a stirrup. As he sat back in the saddle, he was startled by the shrill cry of a night bird that sounded eerily like a woman screaming. He’d done his best to block the thoughts that prodded him. But now, vile scenes of what could be happening to Lee broke through the wall and formed in the darkness in front of him.
For the first time since the war, he was truly afraid. His hands trembled, and he felt sweat sliding down his sides from his armpits. His heart rattled in his chest, its beat like that of a Gatling gun. His good sense told him he was doing the right thing, traveling at the right pace. But everything else screamed to send Snorty into a headlong gallop.
He used a prayer to chase the demons from his mind and to still his heart. After a couple of miles he sighed heavily and held his right hand in front of his face. It was steady. The Lee Morgan in his mind was smiling, and her warmth encompassed him. He rode on.
Ben jerked awake. He’d been dozing, letting his mount do all the work. Now alert, he looked around. The darkness was as thick as molasses, but some shapes appeared less black than the area surrounding them.
One of those shapes spoke.
“Keep your hands away from them guns, or you’re dead right now, lawman.” The whiskey-rough voice was followed by a sound no lawman could fail to recognize: the metallic slide and click of a round being levered into place. “Get down offa that horse an’ keep your hands high.”
“I think you’re makin’ a big mistake, partner. I ain’t no law—”
The slug whistled past Ben’s ear a heartbeat before the sharp report reached him. He raised both hands over his shoulders, swung his leg over the saddle, and slid to the ground. Thoughts chased one another through his mind, most of them bitter and self-berating. How many times had he nagged Nick about the life-and-death importance of vigilance? And now he’d been caught asleep in the saddle like a Pinkerton recruit on his first field assignment.
“Step on away from your horse.” There was no fear in the voice, and no nervousness either.
The man remained only an indistinct form in Ben’s vision, yet he seemed to see Ben much more clearly. Then a vagrant night breeze carried a cloying, musty odor in the air. Ben could smell hempa, a wild-growing drug that not only produced a state of mild euphoria but also dilated the pupils of the user’s eyes, making night vision significantly more acute.
“I ain’t tellin’ you again, Flood. I got no reason not to pull this trigger.”
Ben felt his heart sink. He had hoped the outlaw was a drifter with no allegiance to Stone. The fact that the man knew his name stepped on that thought.
Ben took a pair of tentative steps away from Snorty, a plan coming together in his mind as he did so. He’d learned a few things about hempa from his confrontations with the Mexican vaqueros and American cowboys who smoked the weed. It slowed them down both physically and mentally, making a gunfighter with notches on the grip of his pistol seem clumsy and unsure of his moves. That fact, taken with the alcohol he smelled on the man’s breath, might offer the slight edge he needed. The outlaw didn’t have to draw—he had a cocked and ready rifle trained on Ben, a rifle that could drop an elk at two hundred yards with a single round. Still, Ben reasoned, any break was better than no break at all.
“Look,” he said, “I don’t know what this is all about. The Circle D is movin’ a herd in a couple of days, and I’m their point man. I can show you the letter from Mr. Terhune, the man who hired me . . .” As his right hand began to move downward, the sandy soil between his boots exploded, peppering his legs with dirt and pebbles. The outlaw worked the lever as quickly as a man could snap his fingers and at the same time raised the barrel once again to hold its mark on Ben’s chest.
“Zeb tol’ me you was a tricky one, lawman. He also tol’ me he wanted you alive, but if you give me trouble, I’ll kill you right here an’ it won’t make no nevermind. Play it the way you want. Die here or die when I get you in front of Stone. It’s up to you.”
The outlaw’s gravelly voice hadn’t changed after the shot. That he was used to fast action was clear.
“Maybe you an’ me, we can work something out,” Ben said. “I’m carrying money for Mr. Terhune—his shipping fee and payroll. I ain’t about to die for it. You get the money, an’ we ride in different directions, an’ nobody gets hurt.”
The gunman’s chuckle sounded rich and warm, but his words shattered that impression. “You take me for a idjit, Flood?” He spit toward Ben’s feet. “I seen enough of you in that town of yours to know who I’m talkin’ to. I don’ want to hear nothin’ else from you—not a word.”
A sliver of moonlight slipped from behind the overcast sky. Ben’s captor was a bearded, stocky man with a pair of holstered army Colts low on his hips, tied down with latigo. A single
bandoleer crossed his chest, the brass of 30.06 cartridges catching and reflecting the feeble light for a quick moment. Holding his rifle steady, he pointed the bore at Ben’s chest. His eyes burned with the effects of the hempa.
Ben’s arms were becoming tired, and a tingling sensation was creeping its way into his hands. He knew that if he was forced to maintain his position much longer, his arms would become wooden and his hands would be those of an arthritic old man. He wouldn’t be able to draw, aim, or fire his pistols with the speed and skill he’d developed over the years. What he needed, he knew, was a distraction—something to cause the outlaw to shift his eyes for the briefest part of a second. And Ben needed that distraction very soon, while his hands could still respond to his commands.
“You’re gonna turn your back to me,” the outlaw said, “and then you’re gonna bring them hands down behind you, an’ bring ’em together to be tied. An’ I’ll tell you this: You even think of makin’ a move for that Colt, an’ I’ll open a hole in you big enough to run a buffalo through.”
Ben’s mind raced, half-formed thoughts tripping over one another. He knew bringing his arms down would put his hand close to his side arm, but he also knew the outlaw would shoot if his hand flinched toward the pistol. He began lowering his arms, slowly drawing his fingers inward toward his palms. He moved his fingers, and the tingling dwindled as he slowly lowered his arms. It was a fool’s move, he realized, but he had no choice. His hands were at shoulder height, his right fingers now loose and ready to find the grips they’d become so used to over countless hours of practice. Sweat burned in his eyes, and his throat felt dry and dusty. He shifted some of his weight to his left side, planning to dive in that direction . . .