As Brindley opened his mouth to protest, Higgins said quickly, "I'll take over the wood-splittin' chores for one week."
"And mortar the well coping?"
Higgins spat down the far side of his horse and studied the ground for a few seconds. He turned to Brindley. "All right."
With a heavy sigh, Brindley swung out of his saddle, his hand aching, his head throbbing dully from its meeting with that crazy savage's rifle. As Higgins rode toward the barn, leading the claybank, Brindley stared at the roadhouse, light from the small window at the right of the front door angling onto the rough boards of the porch floor.
A shadow moved in the far right window of the second story—a man's silhouette, hips thrusting, head bobbing. Faintly, Brindley heard the squawks of bedsprings getting a workout and the low groans of a whore.
It didn't appear that last night's foofaraw had cut into Kansas Jen's business any.
Brindley took another deep breath, fingering the swollen knot at the back of his head. He mounted the stoop and pushed through the roadhouse door. Since most of the furniture was now stacked with the firewood out back, only a couple of men were sitting. Six or seven others were bellied up to the bar—a couple of regular freighters in canvas coats and suspenders, and denim-clad waddies from nearby cattle outfits.
The two freighters were playing two-handed poker while most of the waddies were gathered around the Mex whore, Carmella, who was selling peeks down her sheer red negligee for nickels. The waddies probably couldn't afford pokes again till they got paid at the end of the month.
"Hey, Brindley, you get that half-breed?" a freighter called from the other side of the room, his voice thick with drink.
Cisco Squires stopped pounding the piano and voices hushed as all eyes shuttled to Brindley. The hostler kept his eyes forward as he elbowed past a couple of drovers and set an arm on the bar.
"Give me a whiskey, Sykes."
"Comin', Roy." Sykes set a fresh-drawn beer onto the bar before a bearded drover, then, wiping his hands on his soiled apron, moved toward Brindley, frowning. "What happened out there?"
"Just give me the goddamn drink!"
The bartender filled a shot glass and set it on the bar. Brindley grabbed the glass, threw the whiskey back, and skidded the empty glass across the mahogany. The scrape on the bar rose like thunder in the silent room.
Brindley ran a wrist across his mustache. "Boss upstairs?"
"Where else would he be?"
Brindley pushed through the wranglers gathered around Carmella. One of the men—a tall gent with long black hair and evilly slanted eyes beneath a torn hat brim—hugged Carmella from behind, nuzzling her neck. As he hefted the girl's breasts through her negligee, he winked at Brindley.
"He's feelin' right poorly, too, Roy. Sure hope you got the heads o' that whore and that savage hangin' off your saddle horn."
Tightening his jaw and trying to quell his pounding heart, Brindley moved up the stairs one step at a time, sliding a hand along the railing. He felt the stares of those below but kept his businesslike gaze on the wall at the top of the stairs, which was decorated with a painting of a voluptuous naked woman draped across a lush silk bed, a giant black horse rising on its back legs behind her.
Like a man marching toward the gallows, Brindley walked along the hall, boots clomping softly on the sour runner, ignoring the grunts, sighs, and squawking bedsprings emanating from behind closed doors. He turned left down the branching corridor, removed his hat, and stopped at the last door on the right.
He knocked twice.
Light footsteps sounded.
The door opened a crack. The pale, spindly whore, Jo-Letta, angled one blue, red-rimmed eye through the crack.
"I gotta talk to Thornton."
"He's asleep."
Behind her, bedsprings groaned. Thornton coughed twice, cleared his throat. "Who is it?"
Brindley shoved the door open. As the girl stumbled back, frowning indignantly, nearly tripping over the hem of her long flannel housecoat, Brindley strode to the bed. Best get this over with, then go back downstairs and have another drink.
He looked down at the bed.
Thornton lay on his right side, pillow wadded beneath his head, sheets and quilts twisted about his legs. His face was flushed and wet. The room smelled like a bear den. The slop bucket beside the bed was half filled with bloody bandages soaked with urine.
Thornton stared up at Brindley, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he tried to focus. "You get 'em?"
Brindley fingered his railroad hat. "Sorry, Mr. Thornton. That savage ambushed us. He killed Willie. We buried him in the rocks, and then it was dark, so ..."
"So what?" Thornton snarled, angry eyes suddenly focusing. The hostler felt like a Gatling gun was aimed at his face. "You came back without him and that miserable whore 'cause you were afraid of the dark!”
"Boss—"
Brindley gasped as Thornton reached up and grabbed his shirt. The roadhouse proprietor pulled the hostler's head down to within a foot of his own. Thornton's breath was sour, tinged with whiskey and opium.
His grip was surprisingly strong, considering his weakened state. He squeezed the collar so tight that Brindley's face burned with trapped blood.
"I want you to saddle a fresh horse and ride out after Bardoul. Right now. Tonight. In the dark" Thornton spoke slowly, his voice a taut, mocking rasp. "He's headed for Denver City. If you ride hard, you should be able to overtake him before he gets to Fort Collins. You think you can handle that, or should I send Jo-Letta?"
Brindley winced against the pain in his pinched throat. "Wha—what should I tell Bardoul?"
"Tell him to bring me the heads of that rock worshiper and the girl. Tell him I'll pay him a thousand dollars and throw in free mattress dances for the rest of the year!"
Thornton jerked Brindley's head closer to his own, as if to punctuate the order.
Brindley nodded, grimacing at the hot, fetid breath in his face. "Y-you got it, Mr. Thornton."
"You won't get scared in the dark and piss yourself?"
"No, sir."
Thornton released Brindley's shirt. "Bust ass!"
"Yessir!" Brindley wheeled and headed for the door, the pale whore sidestepping out of his way.
"Brindley?"
The hostler turned back to the bed, slitting one eye as if expecting Thornton to throw something at him.
"A couple of the girls took advantage of my injury and ran out on me. When the stage came through, bitches hopped it." Thornton coughed, wincing at the pain, fresh sweat popping out on his forehead. The bed bounced like a skiff in a storm-tossed sea. "If you run into 'em along the trail, my direct orders to you are to put a bullet in 'em both. Understand?"
Brindley glanced at Jo-Letta, who stood back in the shadows, eyes sheepishly downcast. Turning back to Thornton, Brindley nodded. "You got it, boss."
He wheeled back to the door and donned his hat, then strode into the hall and down the stairs. Heading across the saloon's main hall toward the front door, he didn't stop to entertain questions from the waiting crowd of waddies, freighters, barmen, and whores.
He pushed through the front door and leapt off the stoop, heading for the barn. Ace Higgins was walking toward him, hands in the pockets of his buckskin coat as he nibbled his mustache.
"How'd it go?" he asked as Cisco Squires began pounding the piano with strained jubilance.
"Next time," Brindley spat as he marched toward the barn, "you can give Thornton the bad news, and I'll fix the well coping my ownself!"
Chapter Eight
Yakima urged his horse across a wide, flat creek, the water resembling a giant black snake winking in the starlight. He put the horse up the opposite bank through buckbrush and wild mahogany and reined the black into a hollow amid monolithic, mushroom-shaped boulders.
He looked around and, satisfied the place was well sheltered and hidden from the main trail, swung his right leg over the saddle horn and dropped straight down to th
e ground.
Faith groaned as, sound asleep, she slumped forward toward the saddle. Yakima grabbed her arm and gentled her off the black's rump. She'd wrapped up in a blanket as the cool mountain night had descended, and now as the blanket slid off her shoulder, Yakima grabbed it. He carried her across the hollow, past an old, charred fire ring, and eased her down against a rock.
As he drew the blanket across her, she lifted her head and looked around. "Where are we?"
"South Fork of Crying Squaw Creek, if I remember."
Numb with exhaustion and shivering against the cold, she slid onto her right shoulder as she curled her legs and drew the blanket up to her neck.
"I'll get a fire going in a minute," Yakima said.
He turned to the horse standing hang-headed on the other side of the hollow. It had been a long, hard ride, with two people on his back. Wolf's lungs expanded and contracted, making the leather squawk, the sweat-lather bubbling around the stirrup fenders. He blew and rippled his withers.
When Yakima had unsaddled the horse and walked him around a little to cool him before watering him, he staked him in high grass. He rubbed him down with an old gunnysack, then gathered wood and built a fire. He grabbed his hatchet from his saddlebags, stalked off through the boulders, and returned ten minutes later with his arms heaped with cedar boughs.
Fashioning the boughs into a bed near the crackling fire, he spread his bedroll over them and set his saddle at the head. He lifted the sleeping girl into his arms once more and eased her down on the bed so that her head lolled softly against the saddle.
She groaned. Her eyes fluttered but didn't open. Yakima adjusted the boughs around her, removing a couple of sharp stones from underneath, then grabbed his striped wool blanket and added it to the girl's bedding.
Satisfied that she would stay relatively warm if he kept the fire built up, he grabbed a battered tin pot and filled it at the creek. A few minutes later, he crouched beside Faith, a steaming cup in his hand, and nudged the girl's shoulder.
"Better have some tea."
She groaned and smacked her lips, slid her head lower on the saddle. "I'm not thirsty."
"You need something."
Faith's eyes remained closed. After a few seconds, her lips parted, and her breath resumed its steady rhythm.
Yakima straightened, stretched his back, feeling his own fatigue deep in his back and in the bullet-pierced arm. He fished a peach tin from his possibles bag, opened it with his bowie knife, then slumped against a rock on the other side of the fire from Faith, sipping the tea and plucking peaches from the can. The creek probably had fish in it, but he was too exhausted to string a line—more tired than hungry.
When he'd finished the peaches and tea, he chunked another log on the fire, drew his spare blanket up, stretched out his legs, and crossed his ankles.
He fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.
When Faith opened her eyes again, copper morning light angled over the dark, craggy buttes to the west. The cedar boughs rustled beneath her, rocking her gently, and she looked around, then down at the branches, trying to remember where she was and how she'd gotten here.
It all came rushing back through the stiffness in her seat and thighs, rising through the mental fog that lingered though she'd slept all night—Thornton, Yakima, the endless ride.
She looked at the two heavy blankets covering her, damp with dew and smelling of horse and pine smoke. Before her, a fire popped, the warmth pushing against her, the smoke stinging her eyes. A kettle of steaming water sat to one side of the flames. A single brown blanket lay twisted on the ground to her right, near scuff marks showing where Yakima had no doubt lain.
Holding the bottom blanket around her, she got her stiff legs under her and stood, looking around the rocks for Yakima. Except for the blanket and the steaming water, there was no sign of him.
"Yakima?"
She held the blanket closed with both hands as she moved through the boulders, the ground cool and damp beneath her feet. She followed a game trail down a hill. The breeze was fresh against her face, rife with the smell of water. She crossed a sage-stippled flat, climbed another rise, and stopped.
Below, a narrow creek rippled over rocks, the golden sunlight sparkling on the glossy, blue-green surface. On the shore, Yakima stood bare-chested, feet spread shoulder-width apart, knees bent, arms extended. In each upturned palm he held a tin cup full of water rippling about the rim.
Faith opened her mouth to call out, but then she saw the concentration on Yakima's face, the muscles in his flat cheeks drawn taut.
His buckskin breeches shifted across his flexing thighs. Corded tendons stood out from his neck, and his long black hair blew about his sun-bronzed face. His belly was flat, hard as a boardwalk, his hairless chest rising toward hub-sized shoulders in a nearly perfect V. His biceps bulged like giant goose eggs, the bandage on his right arm strained by the writhing muscles beneath.
Watching the muscles shift and slide under his scarred, ruddy skin, Faith felt a warmth move up from the back of her neck, spread across her head to her ears. Her heart speeded up.
Yakima's right hand quivered, and water splashed over the brim. Grunting, he turned his head toward Faith.
She gave a start. "Sorry. I didn't know where you were."
Yakima's arms relaxed slightly. He lifted his voice above the breeze and the creek's chuckle behind him. "Hungry?"
"I could eat a grizzly bear." She slid a lock of hair behind her left ear. "What are you doing there, anyway, practicing for a circus?"
"Flexibility training."
Yakima tossed both cups straight up in the air. He shifted his arms slightly and caught both of them from above, closing his fingertips around their rims. Crouching, he set both cups on a flat rock before him, without spilling a drop of water, then straightened and grabbed his shirt off a boulder.
He ran the shirt across his chest and behind his neck. "Learned it from a Chinaman. A Shaolin monk."
"Chow what?"
"We worked on the railroad together. In our free time, he taught me kung fu—Eastern fighting."
"Looks right uncomfortable, if you ask me."
"Shaolin masters, includin' the hombre I knew, could hold that pose for hours. So far, I've only made it to twenty minutes, and I'll be damned if I can make it to one minute more."
He donned the shirt. Leaving it unbuttoned, he wrapped his pistol belt around his waist, then strode to the edge of the creek, dropped to a knee, and pulled a braided rawhide cord from the water.
At the end of the cord, five brook trout flopped and twisted in the air, pale bellies flashing in the sunlight. He grabbed his hat and boots from a boulder and strode up the bank toward Faith, sand sifting beneath his bare feet.
"I was waiting for you to wake up," he said, brushing past her. "I'll get these fryin'."
Faith wheeled to follow. "Yakima, where are we going?"
"Denver City, I reckon. Where else?"
"He'll look for me there."
"He'll look for both of us there, but where else you gonna go?" He glanced at the blue peaks in the west. "It's comin' on winter. You can blend into the crowd in a city. Up there, you'll freeze to death." He added with a wry smile, "Or get stuck in a snowdrift."
Later, when he'd fried the fish in lard, they sat around the snapping fire, eating the tender meat with their fingers and drinking green tea from tin cups.
"Whatever made you return to Thornton's?" Faith asked him, dropping another morsel into her mouth.
"My horse and my rifle."
Faith widened her eyes at him. "Must be some valuable possessions, to risk your life for."
"They're all I have." Yakima swallowed, plucked a chunk of trout from the bowl between his index finger and thumb. "The horse I traded an old Arapaho for, when of Wolf was still just a colt. The Winchester was a gift from a friend."
He glanced at the Winchester, the morning sunlight glistening on the gold-plated breech and the oiled walnut stock. The s
ide opposite the receiver bore an etching of a wolf fighting a grizzly in deep grass.
Old Ralph had given Yakima the valuable rifle—specially built for the governor of Colorado Territory—after Ralph had won it in a poker game. Being a Shaolin kung fu master from China, Ralph had had no use for rifles or weapons of any sort. He shouldn't have had any use for gambling, either, but he didn't deny himself the vice. It was his way of communing with his fellow man after long, brutal days laying railroad track in the unforgiving Western sun.
Yakima had met Ralph when he'd hunted meat for the railroad line.
Of course, Ralph hadn't been the Chinaman's real name, but that was the name he'd given everyone, including Yakima, grinning his shit-eating grin, his slanted obsidian eyes flashing beneath his peaked straw coolie hat. He'd claimed that no one but his fellow Sons of Han could have pronounced his real name.
So Ralph was the name he'd gone by ... till Yakima had found him hanging from a big Cottonwood on the outskirts of Yankton, Dakota Territory, his wiry body stripped naked, tarred, and feathered. His killers had stretched his neck a good seven inches, and his tongue had ballooned to the size and color of a ripe plum.
One gambling win too many, no doubt.
Yakima had spent untold hours with the man, learning how to fight in the Shaolin style, but he'd never learned—or couldn't remember learning—how Shaolin masters were supposed to be interred. So he'd cremated Ralph on a funeral pyre, then buried his remains under six feet of dirt and rock marked with a crude wooden cross engraved simply:
RALPH: A GOOD TEACHER
He'd said a few words in both his native Lutheran and Cheyenne and hoped that Ralph found his way to wherever it was he was supposed to go.
"I thought maybe," Faith said now, wiping her fingers on her dress, "you'd come back to see how I was getting along ... you know, after those four savages ..."
Yakima shook his head. "I saw you were all right." He stopped chewing, glanced at her. "Why'd you shoot Thornton?"
The Lonely Breed : A Western Fiction Classic (Yakima Henry Book 1) Page 6