As soon as the two gunmen went out the door, John started to sag against the door jamb, having held on for as long as he could. Robert was able to get a shoulder under him before he went to the floor. Belle ran from behind the counter to help. “Watch ’em, Belle,” John gasped, a growing stain of crimson spreading on his shirt. “Watch ’em,” he warned.
“I watch ’em,” she said. “Robert, get him back to bed.” She took but a second to make sure Robert was enough support to get her giant-sized husband back to his bed. Like John, she had a feeling they weren’t through with the two strangers claiming to be government agents. So her rifle still in hand, she hurried over to take a position behind the stack of flour sacks piled up in the corner opposite the counter where she could watch the door.
Outside, the tempers were hot, fueled by the humiliating defeat at the hands of the Indian woman and her husband. Had they known that her husband was on the verge of collapse, they might not have backed down. As they stood ready to climb on their horses, Yancey glanced back to notice that no one was even standing in the door to make sure they left. “That Injun bitch,” he muttered. “She’s stuck in my craw, and that’s a fact.”
“Mine, too,” Lonnie said. “I’m thinkin’ about throwin’ a few shots through that door before I ride off.”
“There ain’t nobody watchin’ the door,” Yancey pointed out. “We could shoot the place up before they knew what hit ’em.” It was all the encouragement Lonnie needed. He nodded and drew his .44 from his holster, and they both suddenly charged through the door with guns blazing.
With both men concentrating their fire on the counter, after first discovering there was no longer anyone standing in the doorway to the house, their barrage succeeded in shooting holes in the front of the counter and the shelves behind. So intent upon their surprise attack, neither man noticed the Winchester rifle resting on the top sack of flour on the pile in the opposite corner of the room—or the Indian woman carefully taking aim on the one man who had stepped all the way inside the room. The unlucky man was Lonnie, and he let out a grunt and staggered backward into Yancey when the slug from Belle’s rifle slammed into his chest. Yancey escaped injury when Lonnie unintentionally shielded him from the second shot that struck not six inches from the first. Not wishing the same as his partner, Yancey ran for the horses. Lonnie, still on his feet, staggered drunkenly after him, and managed to grab the saddle horn when his horse started to follow Yancey’s. The two extra horses were left behind in the panic to escape out of rifle range.
Yancey did not look back until reaching cover in the trees along the river. Only then did he realize that Lonnie was still alive. The wounded man, unable to lift himself into the saddle, was holding on desperately to his saddle horn while his horse dragged him along, his feet plowing the dust as he went. After taking a look behind them to make sure there was no pursuit, Yancey pulled to a stop and dismounted to help Lonnie up in the saddle. “Damn, partner, I thought you was in the saddle,” he lied. “I didn’t know you was hit that bad.” Once Lonnie was settled, Yancey put the reins in his hand and asked, “Can you ride?”
“I damn-sure will,” Lonnie gasped. “I ain’t stayin’ here.” He fell over on his horse’s neck.
Yancey hesitated a moment to make sure Lonnie was going to stay on, and when it appeared that he was, he hurried back to his horse and mounted. “Let’s get the hell outta here,” he said, and started off at a gallop. He didn’t ride more than half a mile before reining the horse back to a fast walk and waiting for Lonnie to catch up. “You ain’t lookin’ too good,” he told him when his horse pulled up beside his. Lonnie could only shake his head slowly as he suffered through his pain. Yancey took a longer look at him, trying to decide what to do. “Well,” he said, “we might as well find us a place to camp, since we ain’t got but one horse apiece now. We’ll let ’em rest tonight and see how you’re feelin’ in the mornin’.” This was welcome news to Lonnie, because he knew he couldn’t stay on his horse much longer.
Yancey picked a place to camp close to the water’s edge, and helped Lonnie settle himself next to a cottonwood trunk for support. “I’ll take care of the horses. Then I’ll take a look at them wounds,” he said. With the horses watered and hobbled, he returned to build a fire before tending to Lonnie’s needs. “Two of ’em,” he muttered, looking at the twin holes in Lonnie’s chest. “Both of ’em bleedin’ like hell. There ain’t nothin’ I can do for you. Looks like they both went deep inside.” He was fairly satisfied that his partner was a goner, but he didn’t want to tell him that. Lonnie had a coughing fit that lasted for a couple of minutes before he was again able to control it. However, the coughing brought up a small quantity of blood that ran down the corner of Lonnie’s mouth and into his chin whiskers. That was enough to confirm Yancey’s suspicions. “We’ll see how you feel in the mornin’ after you’ve had a little rest.” He made him as comfortable as he could, even tried to feed him something, but Lonnie couldn’t eat without a choking sensation, so Yancey let him rest.
In an effort to take his mind off his pain, for Lonnie was groaning with every breath, Yancey rambled on about his plans for them to continue the search for Grayson. “We ain’t got no tracks to follow, but I figure he was plannin’ to follow the river right on into Fort Smith. He’s been trying to swing wide, so nobody would look for him this far north, but he’d be a damn fool to keep goin’ east now, past the river. He’s got to cut back sometime, and this is where he’s doin’ it. I’d bet my share of that reward on it.” He paused to see how Lonnie was doing, and the suffering man could only groan. Yancey decided he wasn’t hearing a thing he said.
Somewhat to Yancey’s disappointment, his partner was still alive the next morning, and determined to gut it out in the saddle, although he still could not eat. “You just help me up in the saddle,” Lonnie said, “and I’ll make it all right.”
“Damn, partner,” Yancey told him, “I wasn’t sure you’d make it through the night, but you must be tougher’n a bull elk. We’ll get saddled up and get on down this river. We’ll catch that son of a bitch before long.” He decided to make an effort to remain positive in hopes of encouraging Lonnie to gut it out. He was sure they had been rapidly closing the gap between themselves and Grayson, and he was reluctant to lose what they might have already gained.
The ride was hard on the wounded man that day, but he stubbornly held on, determined to make it until dusk. Before, they had ridden on into the night, but they had to be more concerned with their horses now. So when they came upon a bend in the river that looked like it was made for camping, Yancey suggested they stop there for the night. There was ample evidence that testified to the fact that the spot they picked was a popular one. After he got Lonnie reclined against a tree, he looked around the area to see what he could find. There were six or eight spots where campfires had been, their ashes dead and gray now, but some were more recent. Farther down the riverbank, he found a recent camp, indeed, for there were horse droppings that still looked moist, almost fresh. Somebody was here not long ago, he thought. Then a hoofprint in the sand by the water caught his attention, and his heart skipped a beat, for the edges were sharp, like the ones he and Lonnie had been following. Billy’s Appaloosa, he thought, I’m sure of it! He couldn’t believe his luck. It was unusual to find the edges on those shoes still fairly sharp after traveling so many miles. More likely they had stumbled upon somebody else’s trail who had recently had his horse shod. “No, hell, no!” he said defiantly. “That was Billy’s horse that left these tracks!” They were back on Grayson’s trail, and from the looks of the droppings he had found, they weren’t far behind. He hurried back to tell Lonnie about the tracks.
“We’ll get on his trail in the morning,” Lonnie forced through pale lips when Yancey reported his find. His face looked even more haggard than before, but his will was there and he was determined to heal from his wounds. He tried to sip a little bit of coff
ee, and he went into another of his coughing fits. Yancey studied him carefully, and began to think the situation through. It didn’t take much thought before he came to the conclusion that there were decisions to be made.
In spite of Lonnie’s determination, Yancey wasn’t convinced that his partner was going to make it. The wounds he suffered were deep and involved his inside organs. He wasn’t even confident that a doctor could save him. Hard to say, though, he told himself, I’ve seen some fellows shot to pieces and live to talk about it. He looked again at the suffering man lying next to the tree, trying to find some position that would lessen the pain. And he had to think that it was a hell of a time for Lonnie to get shot, for he was certain now that they had almost overtaken Grayson and Billy. Then he began to feel a little perturbed by the constant moaning that seemed never to cease. He couldn’t help thinking that if Lonnie would go on and die, he could get hot on Grayson’s trail, and he would once again have a spare horse to alternate with his. Mr. Blanchard had offered six hundred dollars to the two of them to get the job done. It seemed to Yancey that the money should be the same, even if just one of them came to collect it. I’ll see how Lonnie passes the night, he thought. We’ve been riding together, on one job or another, for a good many years now.
His thoughts of compassion were interrupted by a loud groan from the wounded man, and he told himself, Ain’t neither one of us gonna get any sleep with that going on. Hell, he’ll likely be dead by morning. There ain’t no sense in letting him keep me awake all night. Thoughts of that six hundred dollars riding farther away from him were enough to make up his mind.
Lonnie rolled his eyes up to gaze mournfully at his partner when Yancey walked over to stand before him. “I’m beholden to you for standin’ by me,” he said, and tried to smile.
“Well, hell, I wouldn’t leave you out here on the prairie to die,” Yancey replied. “How you feelin’? Is it gettin’ any better?”
“I’m gonna make it,” Lonnie answered. “I think I’m a little bit better, but I’m still hurtin’ right smart.”
“I think I can fix that,” Yancey said, and whipped out his .44 Colt and shot the surprised man in the head. He intended to put the bullet right between his eyes, but Lonnie had tried to turn away in that last fatal instant causing the bullet to hit him in the side of the head, right at the temple. The recoil banged his head against the tree trunk, and he slumped in death. “No hard feelin’s,” Yancey said, “but you was slowin’ me down.” He went about stripping the body of anything useful to him, then looked around to determine where best to drag it out of the way. Making a quick decision, he grabbed Lonnie’s feet and dragged him over to the embankment of the river, and rolled him over the edge to drop about four feet to rest on the sand at the water’s edge. With that chore done, he went back to the fire he had built and began to cut some bacon to put in his frying pan.
He lay down to sleep that night feeling satisfied to roll up in his blanket without the constant groaning of his late partner to keep him awake. Sleep did not come easily, however, and when it did, it was not for long, for he was wide awake long before sunup. He told himself that he was just too anxious to get started on Grayson’s trail in the morning, and that was the reason he found it difficult to wait out the morning light. In truth, however, he found it hard to forget about Lonnie’s body lying below the riverbank. Did he check real closely to make sure Lonnie was dead? How could he be alive with a bullet in his brain? He couldn’t, his common sense told him, and yet he finally got out of his blanket, and with the light of a full moon, walked back to the riverbank to make sure the body hadn’t moved.
Lying face up, the body appeared to meet his gaze, causing him to leap back from the edge of the bank, startled, almost falling down. Regaining some measure of control over his emotions, he moved cautiously up to the edge of the bank and looked again at the cold dead eyes of his late partner staring up in the moonlight to meet his. “Lonnie?” he couldn’t help asking, not sure what he would do if there was a response. When there was none, he breathed a sigh of relief. Then his heart skipped a beat when Lonnie seemed to stir slightly. Yancey’s frightened reaction was to jerk the trigger and shoot the corpse of his friend once more, realizing immediately after that he had just let himself get spooked. “Damn you, Lonnie, you’re dead as you can get. Whaddaya wanna devil me for? You was gonna die anyway.” The corpse shifted slightly again, but this time Yancey realized that the river had risen just enough during the night for water to inch up on the sand and gently rock Lonnie’s body.
There would be no more sleep that night, his nerves having been thoroughly frazzled, but he thought it necessary to wait until sunup to give him a better chance to follow Grayson’s tracks away from the camp. He was still convinced that the bounty hunter was riding the river down to Fort Smith, and he was bound to overtake him before another day, two at the most. But he wanted to see the tracks of his horses leaving the camp to verify it. So he went back to his blanket, built up his fire, and waited for the sun to appear.
* * *
“You a religious man, Grayson?” Billy asked, not expecting an answer. Grayson seldom bothered to answer his prisoner’s cocky rambling, but that never seemed to discourage Billy. He did it just to annoy the somber bounty hunter. “Whaddaya reckon it’s gonna be like when one of my brothers puts a bullet in your brain? You reckon there’s gonna be a big ol’ angel waitin’ to take you by the hand—maybe lead you up them golden stairs to a mansion in the sky?” Seated at the base of a cottonwood, his hands tied around the trunk, he watched Grayson preparing their supper. “Maybe it’ll be one of the devil’s boys that comes to meet you instead,” he started again. “That’d be more like it, ’cause there ain’t nothin’ lower than a bounty hunter when it comes to pure scum.” There was still not even a glance in his direction from the object of his taunting. “You’d better hope it’s Slate that gets you. He’ll most likely put a bullet right through your head, make it quick-like, and you’ll be right on your way to hell. Now, if it’s Troy, well, that’ll be a different story. Troy’s got a real nasty streak. He’s gonna wanna kill you slow-like, so he can enjoy it longer.”
Grayson pulled his coffeepot to the edge of the fire when it started to boil. After it simmered down a bit, he poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it cautiously to keep from burning his lips. Then he stirred the bacon around in the pan, and turned it over to fry the other side, all the while ignoring the constant rambling of Billy’s mouth. Although he never showed any indication that Billy’s attempts to annoy him had any effect upon him, he secretly wondered if he was going to make it to Fort Smith without cutting the brazen killer’s tongue out.
The wound in Billy’s thigh, although swollen and a little red around the bullet hole, was healing to the point where it was not so painful. Grayson suspected this to be the reason that his prisoner was feeling sassy enough to try constantly to annoy him. I should have shot him in the head instead of the leg, he thought as he pulled the pan from the hot flames. When he lifted some of the meat out of the pan and placed it on a tin plate, Billy stopped talking, in anticipation of eating his supper. Just as he had ignored the senseless banter, however, Grayson ignored his silence. He picked up his coffee, took his plate, and walked several yards away to sit down against a tree to eat.
At once alarmed, Billy sang out, “Hey, wait a minute! Where’s mine? I’m hungry, too. You gotta feed me, dammit, it’s the law.”
Grayson took a deliberate look at him and had a couple more sips of his coffee before speaking. “There ain’t no law that says I gotta feed you. Even if there was, I ain’t a lawman.” He tore off a bite of bacon with his teeth and chewed the tough meat for a few seconds. “Besides, it seemed to me that you were more in the mood to use your mouth for talkin’ instead of eatin’, so I figured you could decide when the talkin’ was done, and maybe you’d let me know.”
“Ah, come on, Grayson,” Billy pleaded, his co
ckiness gone now. “I been ridin’ as hard as you have. You gotta feed me.” Grayson was not moved by the contrite tone he had adopted, so Billy promised, “All right, I’ll shut up if you let me eat.”
“You sure now?” Grayson paused, then took another bite of bacon. “’Cause if you don’t, I’m gonna have to bend my rifle barrel over your head to shut you up.”
“I’m sure,” Billy replied meekly. “I’ll shut up. Just untie me from this tree.” You hard-ass son of a bitch, he thought to himself, you just get careless one time, and I’ll cut your gizzard out. He had no sooner thought it when he noticed something that might offer his opportunity. During all the long days since leaving Rabbit Creek, Grayson had never been careless once. When Billy was not tied hand and foot, he was under Grayson’s constant vigilance. He never made a mistake—except for this one time—when he left the knife he had used to slice off the bacon sticking in the butt end of a large limb by the fire. The sight of the long, razor-sharp skinning knife caused the wheels in Billy’s mind to churn anxiously, and he tried not to stare at it while Grayson was untying the rope that held him to the tree trunk.
Billy was past the point where he might consider desperation attempts as too risky. Too many days had already passed with no sign that he was going to get help from his father, and the harsh reality that he was on his way to be hanged made any attempt worth the gamble. He shifted his gaze to directly lock on the stoic bounty hunter as he pulled the knot loose. Is he going to remember that knife he left by the fire? Or did he leave it there as bait, hoping I would make a move for it? There was no way to tell by studying the impassive face of his captor.
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