The thunder of hooves drew Yakima's eyes to his back trail.
The dark shape of the horse and rider grew, the man hunkered low over his horse's neck, extending a pistol straight out from the horse's right shoulder. Starlight winked off the barrel. The revolver flashed and popped, the slug throwing up dirt and grass two feet beyond Yakima's left shoulder.
Yakima flinched and scrambled onto his haunches. As the rider neared, extending his revolver at Yakima's head, the half-breed ducked. The gun popped, blowing up dirt at Yakima's boots.
Horse and rider continued past Yakima in a rush of wind and sifting dust, the ground vibrating beneath the pounding hooves. As the rider pulled back on the reins, Yakima bolted to the dead horse. It had fallen on its rifle boot, but he could see the rifle's stock sticking up in front of the hip.
Wrapping both hands around the stock, he glanced behind him. The rider was turning his horse toward Yakima, thumbing back his revolver's hammer.
Yakima dug his boot heels into the prairie sod and gave the stock a hard tug. Behind him, the rider triggered another shot. Yakima winced as the bullet seared through his right arm. He gave the rifle another hard jerk. It popped free of the sheath. Yakima swung around, falling back against the horse and levering a round into the Winchester's breech.
The rider thundered toward him, sneering, "Stinkin' goddamn savage!"
He'd just extended the revolver again when Yakima triggered the Winchester. The man grunted and winced. The pistol sagged in his hand, stabbing flames and drilling a slug into the dead pie's belly.
As the man's horse continued on past Yakima, nickering and skitter-stepping sideways, Yakima ejected the spent shell. He started to ram fresh brass into the breech when he realized he'd fired his last shot. The rifle was empty. He looked at the rider.
The man stared back at Yakima; the darkness obscuring the expression on his face. He held the pistol straight down from his thigh. The pistol tumbled to the ground. The man sagged slowly in his saddle and disappeared down the opposite side of his horse, hitting the ground with a heavy thump and a sigh. The horse bucked, wheeled, and ran.
Yakima tossed away the Winchester.
He clutched the bloody wound, halfway between his shoulder and elbow. Pain seared through him, lanced up and down his arm and through his chest.
He looked down at the rider, who lay with his arms and one leg splayed, the other leg curled beneath his body. Blood gleamed low on his chest. The pistol lay in a tuft of bunchgrass.
Yakima picked up the gun, turned it in his hand so he could see the back end of the cylinder. Only one shell was left.
Hearing men yelling and hooves thudding, he cast a wary gaze back the way he and the dead man had ridden. He couldn't see anything, but judging by the sounds, the others had heard the shooting and were heading toward him.
Yakima looked around. The bench was flat and sparsely stippled with bunchgrass and sage, occasional pockets of chokecherry. To the east, the direction he'd been heading when he'd lost the pie, the rimrock rose on the other side of a brushy swale. A man could hide in the rocks at the top of that butte.
Wedging the pistol in the waistband of his buckskin breeches, Yakima turned to the dead man. He crouched, jerked off the man's neckerchief, and quickly wrapped it around the bullet wound, tying it one-handed.
Pulling the knot tight, he ran toward the butte, leaping sage shrubs and the occasional rocks. He didn't sprint but held himself to a jog, not wanting to spend himself before he reached the butte's base two, maybe three miles away.
He wished he had his moccasins instead of the stockman's boots, which weren't made for walking, much less running. But the moccasins were back in his quarters in Thornton's barn, along with his mountain-bred mustang and his prized Winchester '73.
Gradually, the thuds and voices got louder. Yakima increased his pace, sucking air through clenched teeth, every jolting step sending fire through his wounded arm.
The night turned around him, the ground rising and falling like a pitch-black, storm-churned sea. He was growing dizzy from the pain and the blood loss. Every third or fourth step he stumbled.
Behind him, gunfire rose.
He threw a quick glance over his shoulder. Five riders galloped toward him, yelling and whooping like flesh-hungry lobos, triggering pistols and rifles. The shots plunked the sod around Yakima, clipping rocks and snapping sage branches.
Yakima stumbled, ran, stumbled again, continued running, keeping his gaze locked on the black anvil-shaped rimrock looming before him, seemingly the same distance away as when he'd started running. His breath hissed in and out through his teeth, through his nose. It sounded like a dull saw grinding through green lumber.
Cutting wood had been his last job. At the moment, he wished he had kept it.
Sweat dribbled down from his forehead and into his eyes, obscuring his vision. It funneled the dust on his cheeks, soaked his back and chest, his shirt flapping like a wet sheet.
His right arm grew heavy. He looked down, half expecting to see a poison-tipped arrow protruding from the bone.
Guns popped, the bullets closer, whistling past his ears. Horses' hooves shook the ground beneath his boots.
He stumbled, dropped to a knee, pushed off the ground with his right hand, the pain searing anew, and continued running.
A bullet clipped his boot heel. It threw his stride off. He fell, looked up. A line of brush appeared straight ahead, twenty yards away. Beyond it, the base of the rimrock.
Can't be more than a mile away now...
He gave a quiet, rasping whoop, urging himself on. He climbed to his feet and ran through the brush, the branches whipping his legs.
Behind him, the riders closed. Their horses seemed to be blowing in his ears. He could hear the men breathing, the leather squeaking like trees rubbing together, the bits rattling against the horses' teeth, the bridle chains jangling like rusty sleigh bells.
"Got the son of a bitch!" a man yelled.
"Blow his head off!"
Yakima lifted his head and closed his eyes, pumping his legs and arms.
Behind him, a man yelled shrilly, "Woooo-ahhh! Pull up, boys!"
Behind Yakima, a horse screamed. Hooves skidded across sod, snapping brush and grinding rocks.
Yakima's stride didn't slow.
His boots stopped thudding. The ground disappeared.
For two strides, he ran through air, began falling, cool air from below wafting over him, lifting his shirt flaps, blowing his hair above his head.
He opened his eyes, looked down. Below, a narrow fissure of silvery-liquid darkness rose toward him.
Chapter Four
"What a bloody mess," Bill Thornton said as he and one of his two bartenders hauled the fourth and last carcass out of Faith's second-story room. "What a bloody goddamn mess!"
"It shore is," said the barman. Avery Sykes was a square-headed gent with massive tattooed forearms and thick red hair and mustache. Like Thornton, Sykes was nearly covered in blood from all the bodies he and Thornton and the other bartender and hostlers had hauled out of the roadhouse.
"You ever seen anything like it?"
"Nope," said Sykes. "I've worked in saloons from Tucson to Fort Dodge, but I can't say as I ever seen a fracas like this one here." As he and Thornton descended the stairs, Thornton holding the dead man's arms while the barman walked backward, clutching the dead man's ankles, Sykes frowned thoughtfully. "You know, there mighta been one bad as this—in Abilene. Yes, come to think of it, there was.”
"Shut up," growled Thornton, slipping in dripped blood on the tenth step from the top. "I don't wanna hear about it. When I get my hands on that half-breed son of a bitch, he's gonna rue the day he ever set eyes on this place."
The roadhouse proprietor scraped his boot on a dry step, then continued down the stairs, grunting and cursing. "Out of the goodness of my heart, I gave that dog-eater a job, and this is the thanks I get."
He cast a glance over the stair rail. The saloon's main hall looked as
though a pie-eyed waddie had gone through on a bucking bronc, triggering a brace of six-shooters. Thornton and the others had hauled out most of the broken tables and chairs before they'd removed the bodies.
Now, where three-quarters of the furniture had stood, blood was pooled. Lakes of it. The room was littered with broken glass, playing cards, coins, paper money, bottles, shot glasses, and beer schooners. A blood-splattered stockman's hat sat precariously atop a window ledge. Thornton hadn't yet gotten around to removing the wagon wheel chandelier the Indian had pulled out of the ceiling. It leaned against a four-by-four joist as though it had recently broken off a wagon axle. Only luck had kept the spilled coal oil from igniting and the entire saloon from going up in flames.
Not long after the dust had settled, half the bullwhackers, saddle tramps, and drummers who'd helped destroy the place had lit a shuck, while six men with saddle horses— drovers from the nearby Roberts Basin Ranch, the bounty hunter Wit Bardoul, and Thornton's two hostlers—had gone after the breed.
"Yakima saved my life, Bill."
The blond whore, Faith, peered at Thornton over the rim of her soapy water bucket. She and the other whores were scrubbing and mopping up the blood pools, their clothes disheveled, their hair in their eyes, injured expressions on their faces. "If it wasn't for him, I'd likely have been butchered."
"They weren't gonna kill you." Thornton chuckled dryly, casting a nervous glance at the other girls. He and Sykes crossed the main hall, weaving around the whores and the blood pools as they headed toward the tied-open batwing doors. He noted his own halting tone as he added, "They were just gonna steal a few pokes, that's all. I'd have sent Willie after 'em later."
"They were gonna kill me," Faith called behind Thornton. "I could tell by the looks in their eyes. They were gonna cut my heart out and leave it for you in my washbowl!"
"The girl always was a little on the hysterical side," Thornton said woodenly, covering his own chagrin as he and Sykes swung the dead man onto the wagon parked before the stoop. He hadn't convinced himself, however. The possibility of someone killing his best whore to spite him made his jaws lock in anger. He should have had Willie keep a closer eye on the stairs.
Half a dozen bodies already graced the wagon's bloody box. They were stacked like cordwood, the sightless staring eyes, belt buckles, and spurs glistening in the light. If no one claimed them by noon tomorrow, Thornton would have Willie and the hostlers toss the lot in a distant, deep ravine— a real smorgasbord for area predators.
The last body tumbled over the others, thumping and rustling, a boot smacking a sideboard with a hollow thud. Thornton brushed his hands on his breeches and turned to Sykes, who sucked a deep breath. "A little loopy, Faith, but she makes more money on a weekend than all the other girls put together. Somethin' about her makes men turn to sugar."
Hooves thudded in the darkness. Thornton turned his head toward the sound, watched as three figures took shape beyond the roadhouse yard. The thuds grew louder as the three riders trotted their horses past the corral and the hay barn, the mounts snorting and blowing, the tack squeaking.
Behind Thornton, the stoop's floorboards squawked. The roadhouse proprietor turned to see Faith move to the edge of the porch, clutching a light wrapper around her shoulders as she cast her expectant gaze at the riders.
The bounty hunter, Wit Bardoul, checked his buckskin down a few yards to the right of the wagon. Thornton's two hostlers, Ace Higgins and Roy Brindley—burly farmhands from Iowa who'd given up prospecting last year when they'd been burned by two bad mountain winters—did likewise. All three were breathing hard and sweating atop their lathered horses.
As Bardoul's buckskin dipped its muzzle into the stock trough between the hitchrack and the stoop, the tall, snaggletoothed bounty hunter poked his battered sombrero off his forehead.
"He's dead," he said smugly through a deep sigh.
"You kill him?"
The bounty hunter chuckled. "He killed himself."
"Fell into Bear Creek," said Roy Brindley, doffing his railroader's pin-striped hat and shaking sweat from his long brown hair like a dog. "This time of year, that creek don't hold more than two feet of water, and he fell into the gorge below Snake Butte."
Ace Higgins patted the old cap-and-ball pistol he wore in a soft leather holster on his right thigh. "I winged him first, though."
“That was a lucky shot, you stupid granger," the bounty hunter snorted. "Prob'ly a ricochet."
Higgins opened his mouth to speak, but Thornton cut him off. "Where're the other riders?"
Bardoul dismounted and tossed his reins to Higgins. "After we seen that breed get sucked down that gorge, they went on back to the ranch. Stable my horses, will you, boys? I'm gonna get me some shut-eye, then light a shuck at first light." He mounted the porch and smiled down at Faith. "How 'bout I get a free poke for my effort, Thornton?"
Faith had been staring westward. Now she turned to the bounty hunter, making a face as though she smelled something rotten. "I've taken my shingle down for the evening, Mr. Bardoul. Maybe next time you're through." She turned toward the saloon but kept her angry, defiant eyes locked on the bounty hunter for an extra second, then strode through the tied-back doors.
Bardoul shouted after her, "Bet you'd turn your shingle out for that breed!"
Thornton whipped his head around toward the man. "Shut up, Bardoul. Don't go startin' rumors, sullyin' my girls' reputations."
"Rumors?" the bounty hunter said, stepping off the porch, grabbing his saddlebags and shucking his .56 Spencer rifle from his saddle boot. Both hostlers still sat their tired mounts, watching Bardoul with vague, disdainful interest.
"Hell," Bardoul continued, running a hand down his oiled rifle to clean off the trail dust, "I thought it was common knowledge your purtiest whore's been makin' time with that half-breed." He mounted the porch. As he passed inside, he added with a throaty chuckle, "I can tell by that look on her face it's true, too."
As Bardoul disappeared inside, his boots thumping atop the puncheons and grinding broken glass, Thornton stared at the door. His mouth was open as if he were about to speak. But he said nothing. He felt as though he'd been slapped.
Had Faith really been diddling the breed?
Fury grew in him, a rat gnawing at his guts. Thornton had never really acknowledged it to himself, but he was in love with Faith, had been ever since he'd bought her from that well-heeled pimp Ivan Piatt, in Cheyenne. There was something about her intelligent, bemused eyes and the regal way she carried herself, her porcelain-pale, sumptuous body. She had an aloof air about her, as if she were just going through the motions of not only whoring but living, as if she were just biding time till her real life, her true, noble calling, suddenly swept her away. A mysterious, beguiling creature, for sure.
That she was a whore, and a damn good one, didn't lessen her attraction. Those were business transactions. Thornton made good money off of Faith, more than he'd made off of any other whore in his thirteen-year career. In a way, he saw himself and Faith as coconspirators even more than business partners. Their arrangement was their joke, and everyone else was being duped.
But the fact—or the rumor—that she'd been sleeping with the half-breed for free, and that Thornton himself had been duped, was something he couldn't get his mind around. His face burned with betrayal, and the rat in his guts was working its way up toward his throat.
The sound of hoofbeats jolted him out of his reverie. Heart pounding insistently, he turned toward the yard as Ace Higgins reined his steeldust toward the barn and corrals, jerking Bardoul's and Brindley's horses along behind. Brindley himself had climbed atop the wagon.
As Higgins trotted off across the yard, Brindley slipped the wagon ribbons from the brake handle and said without turning around, "I'll take these carcasses out behind the barn, boss."
Thornton glowered at the backs of both men. Their sheepish demeanors told him they, too, knew something he didn't.
"Haul those stinkin' stiff
s off first thing in the morning," Thornton called, his voice betraying his fury. "Anyone wants 'em, they can go wrestle 'em away from the coyotes!"
Brindley raised a hand as the darkness on the other side of the yard consumed him, the wagon rattling, the wheels squeaking under dry axle hubs.
"And while you're out there," Thornton added, "look around for that breed. I want to be certain-sure that bastard's dead before I call the dogs off for good!"
"You bet, Mr. Thornton," Higgins said, a thin shadow dismounting before the corral.
"First light, boss," assured Brindley, his voice almost inaudible as the wagon rattled off along the barn's north side.
Thornton spat and turned back to the saloon, finding himself alone out here. Just him and the wind lifting dust in the yard, jostling tumbleweeds. Somehow, the bartender, Sykes, had drifted off without Thornton's realizing it. Now the roadhouse proprietor raked a hand through his sweat-soaked mustache and goatee, mounted the stoop, and stepped between the doors.
Five of his six girls were still scrubbing at the bloodstains with mops and rags while Sykes swept glass to Thornton's left, near one of the woodstoves. Faith must have gone upstairs.
The other bartender, Devlin McNair—a dandy with thin, pomaded hair and a carefully trimmed beard—was picking unbroken bottles out of the mess atop the backbar and stacking them on shelves before the bullet-shattered mirror.
They were sneering at him. Maybe not outwardly, but they were sneering, mocking him.
Bunching his fists at his thighs but trying to keep a lid on his anger, Thornton strode wide of a long mare's tail of blood and brains on the floor and planted an elbow on the bar. "Give me a bottle, Mac."
The thin-faced barman turned from the mirror, his pale features flushed, thin lips stretched from his teeth in a wince. Or was he sneering, too?
How long had Faith been diddling the breed, anyway, and why was he the last to know? Thornton prided himself on keeping tabs on his help, from the whores to the two Mennonites he hired to haul away his trash.
McNair grabbed a bottle off the backbar, and the wince became a smile of sorts. "In luck, boss. Found a couple that didn't get shot to pieces."
The Lonely Breed : A Western Fiction Classic (Yakima Henry Book 1) Page 3