Long Road to LaRosa (West Texas Sunrise Book #2)

by Paul Bagdon

  She then corrected Dancer’s path slightly, pointing him more directly at the rise she could see through the ripples of merciless heat. Another bird circled and then banked downward. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She remembered when she and Ben had ridden south from Burnt Rock last summer, much farther than they’d planned to, and how they’d shared the single canteen they’d brought along. Or so she’d thought until she’d noticed that Ben’s throat never moved as he held the canteen to his mouth. She’d reached out and touched his hand with her fingertips, and their eyes had met for a moment. Lee swallowed hard.

  He’s coming alone.

  The scent of water reached Dancer, and he tried to break into a jog. Lee reined him back and held the walk until they reached the oasis. The birds and prairie dogs drinking at the shallow puddle at the base of the rise begrudgingly gave way as Dancer picked a path down the steep face. The water was warm and silty, but that made no difference. She let Dancer suck as much water as he wanted for a couple of minutes and then led him to where a patch of scrub grass had grown in the shade of the rise.

  After he’d grazed a bit, she tugged up his head and brought him back to the water. After three such trips, he was happy to forage in the grass, his thirst finally sated. Lee took three pieces of the stone-hard sticks of jerky, soaked them in the puddle while Dancer drank, and gnawed on them as he grazed. The meat was as tasty as a mouthful of wet leather, but after enough chewing, it began to yield some nourishment.

  A flash—not even a complete thought—caused her to shiver in spite of the sweat on her forehead and the relentless sun above her. She saw Ben facing Stone and his murderous crew, one man against ten.

  “I can help him!” she said loudly enough to cause Dancer to snap his head up and stare at her. “I can help him,” she repeated quietly.

  She wouldn’t go back to Burnt Rock. She would find Ben and ride with him. Dancer and Snorty were both excellent horses; she and Ben would be able to harass the gang without fear of being caught by the outlaws’ mounts. She and Dancer could divert the attention of the gang while Ben did the actual damage. She had a quick mind—she’d be a strong ally. It was a good plan.

  The idea grew in her mind. She figured the only way they could take Stone would be to pick away at the gang, hitting them at night and riding in and out before the outlaws knew what happened. Maybe strike them twice—or even three times—in the course of a single night. Breed dissension in the gang so they would fight among themselves.

  She led Dancer back to the water. He dropped his head to it, sucked for a few seconds, and backed away. Then Lee dropped to her stomach at the edge of the puddle, forced herself to swallow several mouthfuls, and stood. Ben, she figured, wasn’t far from her. He’d probably ridden through the night just as she and the gang had. She wasn’t sure of the directions, but east and west were always clear. Stone had said he was headed west toward the border. She’d simply ride long sweeps first north and then swing back south, until she saw Ben or he saw her. The immensity of the prairie began to push into her consciousness like a dark cloud over a church picnic, but she chased the thought before it could settle and do any damage.

  She mounted and turned Dancer toward another, steeper rise that shimmered in the heat a few miles from them. I’ll have a decent vantage point from there. And maybe I’ll find Ben right away!

  Lee came to some water at dusk, when the harsh sun had faded and the edges of things were becoming softer and less distinct. She was in great need of a rest. Her blouse stuck to her back as if it were glued with library paste, and her hair hung in knotted clumps, adhering to the sweat on her face. Her throat was so dry that she couldn’t generate enough saliva to wet her lips, which were swollen from the constant sun. Her stomach was growling, and at one point in the day, she’d dozed in the saddle for a few minutes and dreamed of beef stew with buttermilk biscuits and a glass of sweet tea made with icy branch water. The backs of her hands and her face were burned red, and she had a sun blister on the end of her nose. Her other blister, from Stone’s cigar, weeped liquid down her cheek and throbbed with her pulse. And Dancer had become cranky and fought for his head every so often, weary of the snail’s pace and wanting to cover some ground to get somewhere—anywhere—away from the sun.

  She slid down Dancer’s side and fell to her knees in the water. Blessedly cool, the tiny pond was fed by an underground spring. She splashed her face and hair while Dancer submerged his muzzle and drank next to her. When she stood, she looked down at herself in the waning light. Her once-white blouse was stained with sweat and dirt, and her skirt looked as if it had been dragged behind her rather than worn. Her shoes were dried, grayish husks, and the soles were separating from the uppers.

  After cooling herself in the water, she sank to the ground, too exhausted to think clearly. She hadn’t found Ben, she was terribly hungry and sore, and she had nothing to feed her horse. She was quite sure that things couldn’t be much worse.

  In the distance, she thought she heard thunder. She listened intently, eyes closed, and heard it again.

  * * *

  5

  * * *

  Ben had killed men before, so he wasn’t surprised by the complete exhaustion that covered him like a heavy, suffocating blanket when the adrenaline in his system receded. More than anything else, he wanted to sleep, to refresh his body and ease the pain that was throbbing on the side of his head where the rifle bullet had come within an inch of ending his life. He wanted to let sleep wash from his mind the image of the bloody corpse on the ground.

  Instead, he replaced the spent cartridges in his pistols, taking the fresh shells from the loops in his gun belt and sliding them into the cylinders, giving no thought to the process. The smell of burned gunpowder clung stubbornly to his hands and his shirt and vest, and the stench made the jerky and water in his stomach churn and climb hotly into his throat.

  After a few minutes, the shifting and thinning of the cloud cover gave Ben enough light to do what he needed to do. He stripped the stock saddle and bridle from the outlaw’s horse and smacked the animal on the rump. The horse broke into a run without a look back, and his hoofbeats resounded in the still air for what seemed like a very long time. Ben searched through the saddlebags and transferred some of what he found to his own bags. The sack of Arbuckle’s coffee brought a tired grin to his face. The can of sliced peaches in heavy syrup was an unexpected treat. He found a small paper sack that held the gunman’s supply of hempa and a few packages of rolling papers, but he upended the bag and scattered the contents on the ground. He put a block of lucifers into his vest pocket and untied a slicker from the saddle and put it behind his own. A fourteen-inch, straight-bladed knife he found had a razor edge, was well oiled, and fit snugly into a deerskin sheath. He attached this to his gun belt behind the pistol on his left side. He practiced pulling it a few times until his fingers and palm automatically found the bone grip of the knife. Then he turned to the corpse.

  The outlaw was sprawled on his back, one arm outstretched, the other across his chest. Ben drew the man’s pistol. It was a Smith & Wesson .45 revolver that even in the weak light showed rust and lack of maintenance. He tossed it aside. He saw a gold chain that indicated a pocket watch rested in the man’s vest pocket. He left it there. He considered the bandoleer, but it was blood soaked and foul. He found the rifle eight or ten feet from the body. It seemed sound; he worked the action, and the mechanism clicked smoothly. He tied it over the dead man’s slicker on Snorty’s saddle.

  Not far from the rifle, Ben found an unlabeled quart bottle of whiskey. He took the bandana from around his neck, doused it thoroughly with whiskey, and pressed it to the wound on his head. Staggering with the pain, he felt as if he’d been touched with a white-hot branding iron. When the feeling began to diminish, he wrung out the bandana, saturated it again, and repeated the process. A groan escaped through his clenched teeth.

  After the third time, he pitched the bottle far out into the prairie, sa
t shakily on the ground, and tried to clear his mind. He had no idea how close the rest of the gang might be, or if they’d swing back to check on this outlaw when he failed to rejoin them with Ben as his prisoner. Would Stone turn from being the pursued to the pursuer in order to avenge his dead henchman? Unlikely. The death of the outlaw who lay a few feet from Ben would only put more money in the pot for the others.

  Ben shook his head and immediately regretted it. The throbbing of his wound had lessened a bit when he’d sat down, but the quick movement brought it back again with almost stunning power. He decided to rest for another moment and then move on.

  As he climbed into his saddle a few minutes later, he saw that the sky to the east was beginning to lose some darkness as the pastels of early morning pushed up into the horizon. He hadn’t watered Snorty, but he didn’t intend to be riding long.

  As he rode away, the dead man he’d left behind and unburied preyed on his mind. He’d snuffed out the life of another human being—another one of God’s children—and the enormity of what he’d done awed and frightened him. He couldn’t push away the questions. How much of his relentless dogging of Stone was about his concern over Lee? How much was generated by his sinful desire for revenge against the man who’d murdered his father? Was he truly doing the job he was called to do, or was he simply bent on killing another man?

  Of course it’s Lee. His feelings for her were strong and ran deep. He’d give his life to rescue her from Stone if that were required.

  One hour later, Ben put tentative fingers to his wound. Most of it was crusted over with dried blood, but a bit of fluid seeped in a couple of places. The gouge continued to transmit shattering jolts of pain throughout his head whenever Snorty sidestepped a rock or a patch of tall scrub.

  He held the exploring fingers in front of his face and squinted at them. The liquid appeared to be clear, which was good, but its putrid odor made him gag, which could be very bad. He wondered if he’d been too quick to use the outlaw’s whiskey as a disinfectant. The unlabeled bottle flickered in his mind. Properly distilled liquor worked just fine, but Mexican booze was often made from rotten fruit, wormy corn, and whatever else happened to be around the still. He’d been told by a vaquero once that it was a common practice to toss a butchered hog’s head or a couple of dead rats into the vat to speed up fermentation. The thought made him cringe.

  Ben hardly noticed the sun clearing the horizon. Riding the foothills took his attention, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate and guide Snorty around obstacles. Copses of trees lay ahead, but they seemed to move along with him so that he never got any closer. He considered taking off his shirt and vest, and then wondered at the stupidity of such a notion. Where had it come from? If he did that, the sun would bake him like a suckling pig on a spit in a matter of a few hours. He couldn’t recall being so hot this early in the morning before. And there was a strange buzzing sound in both his ears, as if an insect was trapped inside his head.

  There was something terribly wrong. He swung from a state of near exhaustion and wrenching pain to a state of bizarre euphoria—and then back to the depths. Sweat sheeted his face, and his body was on fire. But then his teeth chattered, and his entire frame trembled with shivers. His vision was distorted. And he was scared—almost terrified—but he didn’t know the cause of the fear. It seemed to encompass him like a cloud.

  When a jackrabbit bolted from under a skunkbush, Ben drew his Colt and opened fire. Spurts of dirt sprang up near the rabbit, some within a few inches of it, others several feet away. He fired until the hammer clicked hollowly on empty cartridges. Snorty began to pitch and spin, and Ben pawed clumsily at his saddle horn. The sun set in a fraction of a second, and a thick darkness enveloped him.

  He looked around. The sun was back. He was sitting on the ground for some reason, and he had no idea how he’d gotten there. Snorty nickered behind him, but he could hardly hear through the constant droning in his ears. He was hotter than he’d ever been, hotter than when he’d been ten hours out of Lubbock, when the horse he was riding spooked at a snake and threw him, and he’d had to walk back. Late in that day, he’d seen a lake not far ahead of him and had run toward it, but didn’t get any closer. He’d fallen, gotten up, fallen again, and gotten up again—and then stayed down the next time he dropped. The miner’s mule had hee-hawed at him, and it sounded like the back door of the barn Pa never got around to oiling the hinges on, and the old man—the miner—had come along and said there wasn’t any lake and that . . .

  Ben struggled to consciousness through the crazy images and the buzzing in his head. He found that he was facedown in a stilted patch of scrub. He knew he needed water. It was hard to think or to remember where he was, but he knew he had to have some water. When he tried to stand, the ground moved under his boots. He wanted water. He needed water. There was water in his saddlebags, canteens full of it.

  Where is Snorty?

  He slept again, for an hour—or a minute or half a week. He didn’t know. His horse was gone. He had no water. He must have water soon or he’d die.

  When Snorty’s muzzle touched the back of his neck, he screamed, and the horse reared in panic. Ben found himself on his knees, fighting for balance. In a moment he fell back on his seat, legs askew in front of him. Snorty cautiously approached again, huffing through his nostrils. Ben knew that if he scared his horse again, he might never get close enough to grab a rein or a stirrup.

  He knew what he needed to do. Whether or not he could do it was the question. He didn’t dare stand, or even reach out—the awkward, uncoordinated action of his body would be frighteningly unfamiliar to the animal. He didn’t want the confused horse to run away.

  He attempted to slide himself around to face Snorty’s side, since the horse was standing directly behind him. The animal flinched as Ben was forced to push out a hand and arm to keep himself from falling. Snorty’s left stirrup was less than two feet from where his right hand was planted against the soil. Even if he snagged the stirrup, he knew there was the chance that Snorty would panic and bolt. Still, the familiar weight in the stirrup and the sense of being handled and controlled could take over, and he might manage to get to his feet and reach into a saddlebag for a canteen.

  He had no choice. He tried his voice, hoping it didn’t sound as raspy and distorted to Snorty as it did to himself. Words were too hard to form, but he could hum a single note—a fairly low note—that the horse might find comforting. Lee had taught him that . . . when?

  He waited until the dizziness was about to claim him again and then pulled his hand from the ground and stuck it through the stirrup, grabbing the leathers as tightly as he could. Snorty jerked back slightly and then stood stock still, as if the feeble pressure Ben was exerting could hold him in place. Using the stirrup as a support, Ben pulled himself awkwardly to his knees and then to his feet. With his left hand in a death grip on the saddle horn, he pawed through the saddlebag with his right hand and dragged out a canteen. Pulling the cork with his teeth, he drank deeply, letting the tepid water flow into his parched mouth and throat and down into his gut.

  The water brought some clarity to his mind, and he looked around. Ahead stood a copse of stunted trees, which meant there was both water and shade there. Ben knew he couldn’t stay where he was; if he fell and slept again, he wouldn’t live to see the next day. The sun would squeeze every drop of moisture from his body.

  He draped the canteen cord around his neck and extended his right arm and hand to the far side of the saddle, keeping his hold on the saddle horn with his left. He gathered what little strength he had and tried to boost himself high enough to get his left boot into the stirrup. His legs were weak—his attempt succeeded only in raising him to his toes. He knew that, at best, he had one more try in him; if he failed this time, his strength would be gone. Quickly, before he could think it over, he shoved against the ground with his right foot and picked up his left, poking the toe of his boot to where the stirrup should be. His
arms and shoulders screamed at him as he hung on to the saddle with all the strength he had. His boot brushed the stirrup aside once, and then again. He was beginning to slide lower on Snorty’s side—his grip was weakening. Then he felt his boot brush leather. With his final speck of strength, he commanded his arms to drag him up a few inches higher. Please, God . . .

  The sensation of the sole of his boot against the rough leather inside the stirrup was one of the most beautiful things Ben had ever felt. Hauling his right leg up and over Snorty’s side and back was another battle, one that brought a groan of effort from deep inside him. When he finally slumped in the saddle, both hands grasping the saddle horn, his arms trembled with exhaustion. He leaned forward at the waist to grab a rein and welded the other to the horn. He repeated the move for the other rein and then urged Snorty ahead with the most leg pressure he could manage.

  He crouched in his saddle, disorienting peaks of dizziness stealing his balance. Black specks drifted randomly in his vision and began to move faster, soon swarming like dark snowflakes in a winter storm. In his head was a constant, discordant buzz he couldn’t escape. The water he’d drunk so rapidly rode up in his throat, and the sun pounded at him, its cruel fingers jabbing at the raw channel above his ear. Images in his fevered mind appeared and disappeared quickly, until a scene that was etched into his very being played itself out in front of him.

  A saloon built from unpainted scrap wood stood beside a ramshackle mercantile that threatened to collapse at any moment. A hand-painted sign over the sagging batwings of the saloon announced simply “Cerveza.” An unrecognizable melody from an out-of-tune guitar drifted into the ovenlike heat of the street. A couple of mules were tied to the hitching post, along with three lathered saddle horses carrying good-quality American stock saddles.