by Bill Brooks
He waited for her to cut and gather more stalks before moving, with a great deal of effort, to one of the dead horses. Cutting from the haunches, he managed to slice out two fair-sized slabs of meat.
Spearing the meat and turning it slowly over the fire, the “horse steaks” were soon ready for tasting.
“You go first,” she said.
He cut a slice from it and chewed on it carefully avoiding its heat. It wasn’t as tasty as he told her it would be, but he made a face like it was.
“It could use a little salt and pepper,” he said, with a shy grin, “but it’ll do.”
Reluctantly she followed his example. She chewed in silence for a time, not giving any indication as to what she thought of the horse flesh.
He chewed while watching her. Waited.
Finally, she finished a piece and said: “It’s not too bad.”
“See.”
“Well, I suppose as long as I don’t think of its source…”
“Heck,” he said. “Comanches will ride a horse until it’s played out and then eat the dang thing for supper. They get double use out of the ponies that way.”
“I hear they eat dog, as well,” she commented by making a face.
“Well now, dog is a different thing altogether, in my book it is,” he said. “But, I suppose if a body got hungry enough. . ..”
“Not me,” she shuddered. “This is as far as I’d go.”
“Don’t be too sure,” he teased.
They ate until they could eat no more, washing down the taste with careful amounts of water.
“We have to be real careful from here on out,” he suggested. “I know that there is water out there somewhere, but just exactly where, I’m not sure.”
“I understand.”
The effort of preparing the meal and eating it had left him tired.
“Let me rest just for a minute and then we must get started.”
“What are our chances, Pete?”
He had not been fully prepared for the question. It was one that he had been mulling over ever since he had awakened. Without horses, and with a limited supply of water, and with his wounds, the land was even more dangerous to them now than it had been. But, he reasoned, it was not an opinion that needed sharing right at this point.
His gaze searched the open plains before them; he saw nothing that offered him hope.
“Well, it’s most likely we’ll happen across water. And there are antelope and rabbits and deer, so most likely we’ll get a chance at meat. I’d say, we got just as good a chance as anybody else,” he said.
He saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, saw the corners of her mouth drop in resignation.
“In other words,” she said, “we’re in bad shape.” He had to admire her grit.
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it. But, I’m not ready to cash in my cards just yet.”
He stood to his full height, ignoring as much as possible the pain in his shoulder.
“I look at it this way,” he said. “We still got weapons, we got water, and we got our feet. There’s nothing out there except land. We walk across enough of it, we’re bound to get to somewhere.”
His courage offered her reason for hope. She found herself wanting to hold onto him, wanting to put her arms around him and gather in his strength for her own.
“Do you know how to weave?” he asked.
“Some.”
“Good, then go and cut a fist full of those yucca leaves and I’ll show you how to weave them into a hat. You’ll need head covering—this sun can get intense.”
He helped her with the project and when she finished, she put it atop her head.
“You look like a Chinese maiden,” he said.
She curtsied and said: “I do not.”
It caused them both to laugh.
“Strap the extra pistol on your hip,” he told her. She did so.
They each took a canteen and he carried the Winchester.
“We’ll head that way,” he pointed at an oblique angle toward the direction of the sun.
“Mormon Springs is in that direction according to my map.” He did not say that Mormon Springs lay fifty miles in that direction. He did not want to dishearten her. Nor did he want to think of this nearest town in terms of so many miles. From here on out, he reasoned, it would be one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.
“You ready?”
She nodded her head.
“Just a minute,” he said after the first few steps. She watched as he sat down and knocked the heels off his boots.
“These things weren’t built for walking,” he explained. “I walk too far in these, my legs will coil up like snakes.”
Chapter Seventeen
He had ridden the black until it started to falter. Begrudgingly he dismounted and began to walk, trailing the black behind. Half a horse seemed far better than no horse at all in a hostile land.
How long he had walked, he could not determine, but when the first buildings of Mormon Springs appeared, wavering in the distance through the rising heat of the prairie sod, he realized that his luck was still holding.
It was a town of clapboard houses, adobe buildings, and dirty canvas tents.
He found a livery. It was run by a pudgy faced man with a cockeye and a bowl haircut. The man looked to be a half-wit.
“Mistur,” the half-wit said. “Yore horse looks worn out.”
“Naw, he’s not wore out. I just been running races with him and he’s lathered is all.”
“He a racer?”
“Best there is.”
“Don’t look like a racer.”
“This here is a special horse, friend. Does tricks. He can run and do tricks, too.”
“Dang.”
“Wanna see?”
“Shore.”
Johnny Montana tapped the forelegs of the black making it kneel down, and then slapped the flank until it rolled over on its side.
“He plays dead,” said the outlaw. “All you got to do now is rub his nose and he’ll stay like that until you make him get up.”
“Dang!”
“Taught him that myself.”
“Dang and double dang!”
“I’m teaching him other things too. Like, to count.”
“No?”
“Yes sir. Trouble is, I have to sell him.”
He saw the man’s eyes grow wide with interest. “You goin’ to sell a smart horse like that?”
“Afraid so. Anyone with good sense would want him. I reckon I’ll sell him easy.”
The half-wit was thinking so hard it wrinkled the skin on his forehead and around his eyes.
“How much you askin’ for yore horse, mistur?” The outlaw continued to stroke the black’s nose, then, finally tugged on the reins until he rose and shook the dust from his hide.
“Well, ordinarily I wouldn’t take less than a thousand dollars for him.”
The half-wit whistled through parted teeth.
“But, seeing as how I’m in a desperate fix, I’ll take a hundred dollars, and maybe a fresh mount in exchange, for I do need me a horse to ride you understand.”
“Taa…a hundred dollars is a lot of money, mistur.”
“Not for a trick horse it ain’t. Not for a racer. You can make that much back in a single race. Hell, this here animal is as fast as the wind. Ain’t nothing can beat him. You don’t want him, that’s your business. I reckon he’ll sell fast enough. Just that you look like a good fellow. I’d prefer to see you have him.”
“All I got is sixty dollars. And, I’ll give you my best mare. That blaze-faced roan over there in the stall.”
Sixty dollars wasn’t much and neither was the mare, by the looks of her. But, the black was wore out and so was he. Hungry and wore out and he needed a drink.
“Everybody in this town as shrewd as you?”
“Don’t know, mistur. You want to trade?”
He put the saddle on the mare while the half-wit counted out the money�
��money he had pulled his shoe and sock off to get to.
As far as the half-wit was concerned, life had never been so sweet. He had traded the man a soft-mouthed mare and sixty dollars for a trick horse. And, one that could race, too.
Dang!
Johnny spent a dollar on dinner and another on whiskey. And when the whore asked him, he spent another on her.
Afterwards, he slept through the heat of the afternoon in the whore’s tent. He had to give her another dollar to let him do so.
“I’ll be gone by dark,” he said. She did not quibble or raise a fuss. Two dollars was damn near a fortune—especially in the middle of the day.
Later, he arose, went to the mercantile and bought a pistol for five dollars and a shotgun for ten. He paid fifty cents for shells.
The dream he’d had sleeping in the whore’s tent had disturbed him. He was drowning in a river, and Katie and the ranger were holding him under the water, laughing all the time.
By the time he mounted the mare, he had decided what he needed to do, where he needed to go, and who he needed to kill.
Henry Dollar arrived in Mormon Springs two hours after dark. It was a sleepy little village except for its barking dogs. The buckskin’s hooves spanked up dust as he rode down the street. He had ridden through the town once before, several years previous.
It proved to be like a lot of Texas frontier towns: cautious to strangers; no local law; and a known gathering spot for hard cases. Mormon Springs was just the sort of place that made it necessary for the state of Texas to hire men like Henry Dollar to wear a badge.
Unless he missed his guess, Pete Winter and his prisoners would pass through this town, if they hadn’t already.
He reined in at a small cantina with adobe walls and oilskin windows that leaked yellow light. He hoped for a meal and something to cut the dust from his throat.
A sleeping Mexican lay curled up in front of the doorway, his blanket a tattered serape.
“ ’Scuse me, señor,” he muttered as he stepped over the prostrate form and entered the cantina.
The air was warm and stale like old cigar smoke and beer and sweat. A few dour faces took notice of the stranger’s entrance.
He had been a lifetime reading faces. Those he saw now offered him no comfort. They were all Mexican, all hard-eyed and suspicious of his presence. But he was too hungry and thirsty to give a damn.
He moved to the bar, ordered tequila. Tequila was safer than whiskey in a place like this. He had known lots of places whose whiskey was little more than a barrel of alcohol with a plug of tobacco thrown in for color and rattlesnake heads for taste. Some called it Old Tose, he called it poison.
He put salt on his thumb, licked it, and downed the tequila. It warmed him through and through and took the edge off his weariness.
“Another, señor?”
The barkeep was swarthy, had a bad eye and worse breath. A bone white scar ridged his cheek. It was the sort of face that had seen some hard and pitiful things.
“No thanks, amigo. I’ve not yet et. What’s the chance of getting some beef and beans?”
“Si. Mamacita,” he called. A short squat woman appeared from behind a curtain at the rear of the cantina. She looked haggard, with oily black hair that was woven into braids. The man spoke to her in Spanish. The ranger understood that she was being told to go and prepare a meal and bring it to him. She shuffled away without a glance or a word.
“She bring you beef and frijoles and some tortillas real soon, señor,” said the barman.
“Gracias, amigo.”
He searched the room for a place to sit, saw one in the far corner.
There was little more sound in the room than the sound of expectant men breathing and the ring of his spurs as he moved to the chair and table.
He thought he could almost hear the ticking of the watch in his pocket as he waited for the woman to come with the food.
Someone moved in the recesses of the shadows. A woman, but not the same woman the Mexican barkeep had spoken to.
The light in the room was dim, as she neared his table he could see well enough to realize that she was a white woman. She had the gaunt features of someone in poor health. She was not young and even by frontier standards, she was not attractive.
She stopped there in the light, where it was best in order to give him a good look at her.
“How ’bout some fun, mister?”
“I’ll pass.”
“A drink, maybe?”
He nodded to the barman to bring the woman a drink.
“Whiskey,” she said.
“You and me could have us a good time,” she said. “Don’t get many white men in here, but you’re the second one today.”
“Young handsome boy? A lawman, maybe?”
“Don’t think so,” she said, raising the glass of amber liquid to her mouth. She held it there a long full second before drinking it in a single swallow.
“You a lawman?” she asked.
“I’m looking for a friend of mine. He’d be with two others—a man and a woman.”
“No, this fellow was by himself.” She made a snuffling sound through her nose. Her attempt at smiling revealed several discolored teeth.
He felt disappointed that the man had not been Pete Winter. It would have been too lucky a circumstance.
“My name’s Janey,” she told him. “What’s yours?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
The fat Mexican woman returned carrying a plate of food and sat it in front of him. The prostitute eyed the plate.
“Tell your woman to bring another plate of this,” he said to the bartender, shoving the food toward the whore.
“You look like you can stand a meal.”
She swallowed hard, turned her attention briefly to the dark curious faces around the room.
“Look, mister. You wanta buy me, that’s fine. And, it ain’t that I don’t appreciate the offer. But…Migelo, he don’t like me to waste my time socializing with the trade. It don’t make no money.”
“A man like that don’t sound like much of a man, sis. But, it’s your choice.” He reached for the plate, but she suddenly sat down in the chair across from him and gathered it in.
Her movements were quick and greedy as she spooned in the warm beans and slashed at the slab of beef.
He rolled himself a cigarette and looked away while she ate. It seemed to him too hard a thing to do to watch her hunger.
Her hands shook as she swiped up the juices left on the plate with the last of the tortillas and worked it in her mouth.
“I’ll say this for white trade,” she said, a sheen of grease staining her chin. “They can be generous almost to a fault. That fellow that was through here earlier paid me a whole dollar just to sleep awhile in my tent. Course, he paid me for other things too.”
He wasn’t interested in her business, and when brought his own meal, he ate it in silence. She watched him eat, seemed to study him until he finished.
He made a cigarette and smoked it. Still, she sat there observing him.
“I thought your man didn’t like you wasting time,” he said finally.
“He don’t. He catches me…” She rubbed the side of her face where he could see the dark tracing of an old bruise under the powder.
“Come on over to my tent, mister. I’ll let you have me for free, you want. Consider it a trade for the meal.”
“Sorry, sis. I’ve got things to do.”
“You don’t think I’m pretty enough?”
“Let’s just say I’ve ridden a long way and not in the mood and leave it at that.” It seemed enough to satisfy her.
“Well, you change your mind before you leave town, my tent is just down the street from here. You ask anybody and they’ll tell you where Janey’s tent is at…”
There was a disturbance near the door.
Several men entered at once. She said, “It’s Migelo!” They were Mexican, wearing broad hats and big spurs and pistols high on their hi
ps. They weren’t town Mexicans. They moved straight to the table where he sat with the woman.
He could smell the dust and sweat of their clothes. The big one in front eyed the woman first, then him.
“You with this man, eh?” he said.
“Just talking some business is all,” she said, pushing her chair back from the table.
“He want to buy you, eh?” The Mexican eyed the two empty plates, the two empty glasses.
“No,” she said. “We was just talking is all.”
“You talkin’ business with my woman, eh gringo?” Henry Dollar pushed back from the table and stood facing them.
“Don’t care for your tone, señor. Don’t care for your manners, either. A man that would see his woman sold to other men ain’t much in my book. Pardon.”
He stepped past the Mexican, walked to the bar and dropped two silver dollars on it. The sooner he made his leave the better for everybody. The Mexican was looking for trouble, he wasn’t.
He heard the hard smack of flesh on flesh, heard the woman cry out, turned in time to see her falling to the floor, saw the Mexican standing over her, saw the satisfaction in their faces.
He dropped the flap of the duster back over the butt of his pistol.
“You leave up, mister.”
The Mexican turned, his dark gaze coming to bear on the lawman.
“Hombre, you better go on while you can, eh?”
It was a joke, a game with them, the violence, the inflicting of pain. The frontier left some men idle, and others mean.
There was no time. The blow struck him from behind and across his shoulders. He heard the breaking of wood as he staggered. And suddenly, he was being pummeled from every side.
He swung a hard right fist that struck flesh and bone, and another that hit the softness of gut. But, for every blow he gave, he received many in return. And once down, they began to kick him.
In the final fading awareness, he could feel them stripping him of his guns and belt, they were lifting him, carrying him somewhere. He was dropped to the ground and he tasted dirt in his mouth, dirt and blood. Then the darkness came.
He came to with a jerk, still feeling the fists and boots driving into his body. The pain shot through his ribs and his head felt as if it would explode.
He opened the eye least swollen as much as he could and a stab of light caused him to wince.