Into the cowboy’s blood-soaked shirt, the woman said, “If you get shot…I…I’ll…I’ll—”
“I won’t.” Brent kissed her cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” Dolores hugged him fiercely. “You’re my favorite always.”
“You too.”
The cowboy withdrew from his sister and walked to the eastern door, through which the dandy, Stevie and Patch Up had recently carried supplies. Using the tip of his nickel-plated revolver, Brent slid the iron bolt north. He stepped aside, and a gentle wind pushed the door open. From the water well to the distant horizon, the azure terrain appeared tranquil.
Brent followed his outthrust pistol into the open world and hastened to the rear of the fort. No weapons were discharged during his beeline.
In the swath of dirt that laid in-between the edifice and the sunken stable stood Deep Lakes. The azure light of dawn shone eerily in his eyes. From the neck of his unique bow jutted the steel tips of five arrows and stuck into the ground around him like wooden topiary were one hundred more shafts.
Brent holstered his revolver, reached the iron ladder that led to the top of the fort, stepped onto the lowest rung and climbed, sliding his good hand along the outer bar. The north wall sank.
Pained and weak, the cowboy reached the inclined roof (the angle of which blocked his view of the opposition), clambered onto the desiccated wood and crawled. Sweat dripped from curls of his brown hair, and the spyglass that depended from his neck swung back and forth. Four yards from the southern edge, he lowered himself to his belly and slid, serpentine. Splinters pierced his chest and left cheek. “Hell.”
Brent peered over the edge of the roof and saw a blue photograph that was the strange, funereal terrain. Chill winds carried the smells of charcoal, gunpowder, metal and burnt flesh, as well as the sound of the distant argument in which men shouted words that the cowboy did not understand. He considered removing the splinters from his face and body, but decided that they were not worth the effort.
A gunstock knocked thrice upon the ceiling.
“Next time I signal,” Long Clay said from below, “shove a stake deep into a captive’s rectum and leave it in.”
“Not me!” shouted the inverted Midwesterner. “Please. I helped you and…and…I didn’t know what Gris did to your sisters, I swear to—”
“It ain’t gonna be you,” said the cowboy.
“Thank you. Thank you.”
Brent slid to the southwest corner of the roof and peered over the edge. Suspended from an iron stake were filthy feet, shredded ankles, a gory phallus and a pale belly that hid the inverted man’s top half. The cowboy poked the captive’s left heel with the tip of his revolver.
“¡No! ¡Por favor, no!”
The man jerked and twisted, and Brent glimpsed his very distinct handlebar mustache.
This creature had raped Dolores.
“I ain’t gonna hesitate with you.” The cowboy withdrew from the edge of the roof, prostrated himself behind the incline and arrayed his stakes, magazines, repeater rifle and spyglass. He knocked thrice upon the ceiling. “Ready.”
“¡Escúchame!” shouted Long Clay. “¡Danos Gris!”
On the far side of the battlefield, the bickering opposition quietened.
A man with a heavy accent said, “We want our mens first. Trade.”
“No,” replied Long Clay. “Give us Gris and go home. After you’re gone, we’ll send the men. There will be no trade.”
“Then no Gris.”
Three knocks sounded upon the ceiling.
Brent thought of Dolores’s agony, gripped the two-foot long iron stake, went to the edge of the roof, placed the narrow end in-between the captive’s pale buttocks, poked his hairy rectum and thrust through rubbery guts until the sharp tip clicked against a hip bone.
The man’s shriek was an inhuman skirl.
Repulsed, Brent released the rod, retreated to safety and prostrated himself upon the wood. His hands were shaking, and his heart was pounding. A moment later, the protruding half of the iron stake clanked against the stone façade, and the mortally-sodomized captive shrieked anew.
The opposition yelled across the nascent graveyard, “¡Diablo! ¡Eres el Diablo!”
“Barbarian!”
“Evil gringo!”
The captive’s vocal cords ruptured, and his voice cut out.
Guns exploded. Bullets whistled over Brent’s head and cracked into the mountain wall. He flung his trigger guard and inched forward on his belly. Invisible death whistled above his back, while below his chest, Long Clay and Dolores fired through their slits.
Brent reached the southern edge and looked for a clear shot.
The iron clanked against the façade, and the mute man hissed.
“I got one,” Dolores called up from below.
Five arrows plummeted from the sky, directly behind the line of vehicles. A man screamed. Underneath the wagons and between the stagecoaches, guns thundered a reverberant polyrhythm.
Long Clay and Dolores fired continually.
A gun flashed inside of the turquoise stagecoach, and Brent aimed at the open window. He squeezed, flung his trigger guard and sent a second bullet after the first. A long rifle fell from the vehicle into the trench and was followed by the shootist.
Behind the cowboy, Deep Lakes released another quintet of arrows. The shafts flew into the sky, arced downward and fell behind enemy lines. A man yelled, “¡Puta, puta, puta!”
The wagons and stagecoaches shimmied upon their wheels.
Brent turned back to the Indian and yelled, “They’ve hid for cover in the vehicles!”
Deep Lakes adjusted his aim, sent arrows into the sky, notched five more and released.
The cowboy flung his trigger guard. As the spent shell clinked to the roof and rolled past his elbow, waist and feet he surveyed the vehicles through his spyglass, looking for a solid shot. In the middle of the line, the crimson stagecoach sank and rocked ponderously on its wheels.
“Watch the red one, far left,” Brent shouted, “it’s full up and I’m gonna tip it!” He aimed at the vehicle’s large rear wheel, fired, expelled the used cartridge and sent a second shot. Wooden spokes shattered, and the hub cracked loose. The vehicle sagged, jerked like a living animal and tilted toward the trench.
The door swung open.
Into the gaping portal, Brent, Dolores and Long Clay sent a twenty shot barrage. Two men wearing dark cherry suits spilled outside and fell into the trench.
“¡Roberto!” cried a bereft man. “¡Francisco!”
“Those’re Gris’s sons,” remarked Dolores from below. “We’ll get your whole goddamn family!” she yelled across the terrain. “We’ll kill all of you!”
Two shafts plummeted into the trench, five thudded into stagecoach roofs and three pierced wagon canopies. A man stumbled out into the open, unable to yell past the feathers of the arrow that he had swallowed.
“Hold fire,” ordered Long Clay.
Brent flung his trigger guard. The ejected shell clinked to the roof and rolled north.
“¡Escúchame!” shouted Long Clay. “¡Danos Gris!” The demand echoed across the battlefield and smelled like gunpowder. “Give us Gris or we’ll massacre all of you!”
“I will be out presently,” said a man who spoke English as precisely as the dandy and Samuel C. Upfield IV.
“That’s his voice,” Dolores said through her opening. “That’s Gris.”
Chapter VII
The Deep Defeat
Dolores Plugford looked beyond the azure veil of gunpowder and at the crimson stagecoach that was parked one hundred and fifteen yards south of the fort. Inside that distant vehicle was the man who had defeated her.
Sitting at the far end of the oaken dining
room table, the one-eyed Spaniard nodded his head in approbation. “Jorge Calao complimented your beauty and amenability. And Eduardo Ramirez, who described you as affectionate, prefers you over every other woman in Catacumbas.”
“There ain’t no pleasure in any of it. None at all—it’s just…” Dolores rubbed her palms along the armrests of the stone chair in which she was seated. “It’s just easier not to fight sometimes.”
“That is exactly what I said to you three months earlier, when you first arrived.”
“Roast in Hell.”
“I ask for you to accept the fact that you are now my employee. If you do embrace your vocation, you will be treated well and granted the same privileges that—”
“I ain’t no whore. Never.”
A plate of shrimp and rice was set before the Spaniard and each of the six wraiths that sat beside him. Luminous eyes alternately observed the redheaded gringa and the steaming food.
“You are fucked by strangers,” Gris said to Dolores. “You are from a lower class background and are poorly educated. Should I return you to society, no man would ever want to marry you, and cancan dancing will not provide you with very much income once you are middle-aged.” The Spaniard unfolded his silk napkin and set it upon his lap. “The only thing that separates you from the other whores who work for me is that you have no say regarding what happens to you.” He lifted a silver fork and speared a pink shrimp that looked like an embryo. “I would prefer to treat you well. But first, you must accept that you are my employee.”
Gris put the shellfish into his mouth, chewed and swallowed.
The silent men picked up their forks, and the light from the candelabra flashed across polished silver.
Although Dolores knew that the quality of her life would be improved if she accepted Gris’s offer, the thought of acquiescence filled her with shame.
A plate of real food landed on the table in front her, and the rich smells of butter, garlic, onions, peppers and shrimp caused her to salivate. Presently, a glass of aromatic red wine materialized. For three months Dolores had subsisted on sour chicken soup that was distributed by a pump through a pig’s intestine.
Gris thrust four tines into a large pink shrimp. “I am pleased to see that you are taking my offer seriously.”
Dolores ate the proffered meal and summarily accepted her forced vocation.
Three weeks later, she attacked one of her regular customers and had her foot shot off.
“You’ve got ten seconds!” warned Long Clay.
Dolores Plugford returned from her grim recollections and surveyed the world that opposed the barrel of her rifle. Horizontal rays of sunlight brightened the fog and turned charred corpses into obsidian abstractions. From the open portal of the crimson stagecoach emerged a man in a white suit that was spattered with blood.
“Go to the other animals!” yelled a man from within the turquoise stagecoach.
“Don’t fire,” Long Clay told the siblings. “We need to be sure.”
“Okay,” said Brent.
The gunfighter handed his telescopic sight to Dolores. “Identify him.”
Holding the optical device before her right eye, the redheaded woman looked across the battlefield. The white-haired, one-eyed Spaniard stood at the edge of the trench, looking down at his dead progeny. Hatred filled the woman’s belly. “That’s him.”
Dolores released the telescopic sight and grabbed her rifle.
Gris dropped into the trench, out of view.
Long Clay snatched the weapon from Dolores’s hands and cast it across the fort. “A bad shot or an injury will prolong the engagement.” He picked up his telescopic sight and reattached it to his long-range rifle. “Gris! Get out of the trench!”
“I want to shoot him,” said Dolores. “After…after what he made me—I get to do it myself.”
“Revenge isn’t a tactic.”
The crippled woman from Texas would not allow another man to take something from her ever again. With both hands, she seized the barrel of the telescopic rifle. “Give it over!”
The gunfighter grabbed the woman’s left wrist and twisted. “Let go.”
“Gris just bolted,” Brent remarked from the roof.
Long Clay slapped Dolores.
The woman capsized her stool and fell to the ground. “Bastard!” The fort wobbled before her eyes, and her left cheek stung.
“What the hell’s goin’ on down there?!?” shouted Brent.
Long Clay threw a cold look at Dolores. “Don’t make this worse.”
If she told Brent what had happened, he would climb down from the roof, race into the fort and confront a man who could easily kill him. “Nothin’.” This was not the first time she had lied for the benefit of a Plugford man.
“You sure?” asked Brent.
“I’m sure.”
Long Clay pointed his gun through the crenellation. “Brent. Where is he?”
“He jumped into a crater.”
“Which one?”
“On the west. I’m not sure which exactly—he moved fast.”
Deep Lakes appeared in the east entrance, entered the fort, closed the door, slid the iron bolt north, strode beside Dolores and helped her onto her stool. His dark eyes noted the scarlet mark upon her left cheek, and his face grew grave. “Long Clay.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t ever hit J.L.’s daughter.”
“I had a reason.”
“No you didn’t. Strike her again and our partnership will end.”
“Fine. Take a look outside.”
The Indian kissed the woman’s stinging cheek, stood up and walked to the far side of the south wall.
Dolores looked though her slit. Pulled by hasty horses, the wagons and the turquoise stagecoach rolled downhill toward the woodlands. “They’re leavin’,” remarked the redheaded woman, perplexed. The significance of the opposition’s descent struck her a moment later. “Brent!” A tingling hope electrified her nerves. “They’re leavin’—they’re runnin’ off!”
“I see ‘em!” her brother enthused from the roof. “Now it’s only Gris we gotta get.”
Hundreds of yards south of the fort, hooves thundered and wooden wheels spun. The opposing force retreated, careening.
“I don’t like this,” Long Clay said to the Indian.
“Nor do I.” Deep Lakes fitted three arrows to his bow.
“But we won,” opined Dolores, confused by the duo’s concerns. “It’s only Gris out there.”
The triangular stock of a repeater rifle appeared before her face.
“Take it,” said Long Clay.
Dolores reclaimed the weapon.
“Shoot him if you see him,” the gunfighter announced, “it no longer matters if it’s clean or in pieces.”
“Okay,” replied the siblings.
Dolores extracted the rifle’s depleted magazine, dropped it to the ground, slotted a replacement, flung the trigger guard and pointed the barrel south. The retreating force was more than a mile away, and on the near side of the trench, the riven land was still. Three black cruciforms that were vultures wheeled in the dark blue sky.
Brent inquired, “Should we go out and hunt for—”
Two black lines shot up from a southern crater. The oblongs, each orbited by circle of white fire, spun end-over-end, landed fifty yards south of the fort, rolled two feet and exploded. Dolores squinted and was pushed back from her slit. Dawn sunlight turned the cloud of dust into a brilliant flower that obscured half of the horizon.
“Hell,” remarked Brent from above.
Long Clay did not fire, nor did Deep Lakes release.
“Brent,” the gunfighter asked, “can you see past that?”
“No.”
S
omewhere behind the brilliant flower, a gun resounded.
Deep Lakes stumbled back from his slit and clutched his gory throat. Three shafts thudded into the ceiling, and the Indian fell to the ground, gurgling.
“Oh God.”
Dolores pointed her rifle in the general direction of the unseen report, fired, expelled the spent shell and sent another bullet. Four red oblongs flew from the opposite side of the brilliant white flower and landed less than ten yards from the fort.
“No,” muttered Dolores.
The dynamite exploded. White fire and dirt flew through the slit, splashed Dolores’s face and knocked her from her stool. The floor slammed into her back and concussed her head. Along the façade, the captives shrieked. Gunshots rang out.
Unable to see, Dolores discarded her rifle. She spat out a paste of gore and sand, scooped detritus from her tingling face and tugged upon a cord that was anchored to the back of her left eye socket.
“No.”
Guns exploded pell-mell in the world of men.
“Your entire family shall perish!” The voice belonged to Gris.
Footsteps pounded across the fort. A hissing stick smacked Dolores Plugford’s nose, bounced to the floor and rolled.
“Whore.”
Chapter VIII
The Application of Hooked Beaks
Prone atop the southwest corner of the roof, Brent Plugford wiped grit from his face and ripped a splinter lose. “Hell.” The brilliant limbo of sunlit dust enveloped him like heaven collapsed, and he could not see anything but light.
“Brent!” Dolores shouted from the opposite side of the fort. “Don’t get killed! I love y—”
Thunder boomed. The eastern half of the roof erupted, and mortar, wood and bricks flew into the air. Brent was hurled from the west side into a bright white purgatory. Behind him, the fort shrank. The sere ground slammed into his left shoulder, and his right knee popped.
Brent lost consciousness and awakened a moment later, ears ringing and pains singing. On the far side of the blasted fort, stones and wood thudded against the ground. He prayed that Dolores had somehow survived the explosion. “Please,” he said to the dirt.
Wraiths of the Broken Land Page 30