Savage

by Richard Laymon

  She jerked her hands away and the breasts came springing out. They looked a bit red.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “I’ve got half a notion to cut ‘em clean off.”

  Whittle’s work slammed through my mind. “Bloody hell!” I blurted. “Don’t you ever say that!”

  She gaped at me, startled. “Land sakes! What’s the matter with you? I was only just joshing.”

  “There’s nothing at all funny about it!”

  “Settle down, settle down.” She took hold of my shoulders, looked me in the eyes. “What is it? Trevor?”

  I shook my head.

  “Tell me. We’re pardners, right?”

  “It’s Whittle. He…he didn’t only cut their throats. The women I told you about. He carved them up terribly. And…and he cut off their breasts.”

  Jesse’s hands tightened on my shoulders. She didn’t say anything, but just knelt there in front of me, hanging on. By and by, she leaned closer until her forehead met mine. “I’m ever so sorry I said such a thing,” she whispered.

  “If he should ever get his hands on you…”

  “He won’t.”

  “He’d cut yours off. Then you’d get your wish.”

  “It ain’t my wish. I was only just joshing.”

  I lifted my hands to Jesse’s breasts. I held them gently, feeling their chilly wetness, their slickness and weight, the press of their nipples. She didn’t stop me. Instead, she eased herself lower against my hands. Then she kissed my lips.

  “We ain’t never gonna kill Whittle,” she finally said, “‘less we hit the trail.”

  Then she kissed me again, leaned back and unwrapped the shirt sleeves from around her neck. Reaching high up behind her, she pushed her arms into the sleeves.

  As she fastened the buttons, I realized what she’d just said. “We aren’t going to kill Whittle,” I told her. “It’s my duty, and I won’t have you involved in such an enterprise.”

  “That so.”

  “Quite.”

  We got to our feet, climbed down from the rock, and Jesse watched while I strapped on my gunbelt.

  “You ain’t going nowhere without me,” she said.

  “Eager to get yourself butchered, are you?”

  “You might just need me, you know.”

  “I don’t need you dead.”

  “Same goes both ways. How you think I’d like it, you went off and got yourself killed? I’ll tell you how I’d like it—not much. So I’m sticking with you. Better get used to the notion.”

  Well, I could see no advantage to arguing. With most women, you might as well try and argue with a stump. And Jesse was worse than most that way.

  “Whatever you say,” I told her.

  She gave me a look so I knew she wasn’t fooled. But there was more to her look than that. It seemed to say, “Just you go ahead and try going after Whittle without me.”

  Back at our campsite, we gathered up the strips of jerky. We each chewed on a piece while we wrapped the rest in a rag and tucked it into one of the saddlebags. It didn’t taste near as ornery as I figured it might, but chewing so hard made my jaw sore. We washed it down with water from the whiskey bottle.

  After that, Jesse cut the traces off the buckboard. She mucked about for quite a long spell, and managed to fashion a bridle for General.

  We slipped it over his head, then harnessed the swollen tubes of water onto his back with more straps from the traces. When those were in place, there wasn’t room for more than one rider. But we didn’t have much choice in the matter, as we needed the water.

  We strung the two rifles together with a rope tied around the stock of each, and hung them across General’s back.

  Finally, I put on my hat and Jesse wrapped the German’s trouser leg around her head like before.

  She mounted up.

  We started off northward alongside the creek, me walking.

  I felt rather sorry to leave our camp behind. Never mind we’d killed the German there. It was the place where I’d found Jesse alive, against all odds, where we’d worked together and solved a passel of problems, where we’d quarreled and settled differences, where we’d laughed and kissed and held each other, where we’d become somewhat more than “pardners.”

  It was our place by the creek. Its upside-down buckboard was still in sight when I already took to missing it.

  But we couldn’t stay there forever.

  Whittle was waiting for me.

  He would always be waiting for me, giving me no peace, until I’d found him and put him down.

  We knew the flood had washed away the trail, so I sat by the creek while Jesse rode in search of it. I felt mighty lonesome and jittery after she was gone. I worried and worried.

  By and by, I noticed a tree off beyond the other shore. Its stump was jammed into a familiar nest of rocks. It was the very same tree where I’d found the German’s wife and boy, though the water’d gone away and left it on dry land.

  The sight of it turned my insides cold. I wished I hadn’t recognized it. But there it was.

  I turned my eyes away quick before they could search out the bodies that I’d left on the bank downstream. I knew they were there somewhere. Sure didn’t want a look at them.

  At last, Jesse came riding back.

  I was mighty glad to see her.

  “Found it!” she called. “Still a ways off.”

  We followed the creek for a while longer.

  By and by, we crossed to the other side and caught up to the trail about a hundred yards farther west. That much of it had gotten itself swept out by the flood.

  We followed it, taking turns riding General, sometimes both of us walking to give him a rest. When we got hungry, we ate jerky. We satisfied our thirst, and General’s, with water from one of the gut tubes. Neither the food nor the drink was much to brag about, but it took care of our needs.

  The first day, we didn’t meet up with any other travelers. To keep it that way, we made our camp a good distance from the trail. The next day, we met a man from Bisbee who’d come up by way of Tombstone. He caused us no trouble, but told us how to get to Tombstone, and we were glad to hear that our destination was only sixty or seventy miles off.

  For the next three days, we made our way in the direction he’d told us. We managed to shoot some game so we had a few meals other than mule jerky, we found enough fresh water to keep our gut bags full, and we encountered more travelers but no trouble.

  Jesse didn’t shuck off her shirt again, the whole trip. Not in front of me, leastwise. I reckon she kept it on so I wouldn’t be reminded of Whittle.

  I thought about him plenty, anyhow. The nearer we got to Tombstone, the more he crept into my head. If Jesse’d skinned off her shirt a few times, I likely would’ve spent a heap less time worrying about him and more time feeling good. But she didn’t, and I stayed clear of the topic.

  We never did get us a blanket. We managed to keep warm at night, anyhow, snuggling together on the ground. Even though Jesse didn’t allow me to take liberties with her, not even to touch her as I’d done by the creek, the nights were quite wonderful.

  I got to wishing we wouldn’t find Tombstone, at all.

  But long about sundown of our third traveling day after meeting the Bisbee man, we looked down from a rise and found a town sprawled in the distance, maybe no more than five miles off.

  “I reckon it’s Tombstone,” Jesse said. Then she slid off General’s back, stretched, and rubbed the seat of her dungarees.

  We stood side by side, gazing at the far-off town. There wasn’t much to see. A pattern of streets, rows of buildings near the middle and a bunch of other buildings scattered about the area. It was too distant for us to make out any of the people there.

  Jesse stopped gazing after a while. She handed the reins to me and wandered over to a rock, where she sat down with her back to the town. She unwrapped her turban. She used it to wipe her sweaty face.

  “Well,” she said, “looks as how we made it.”
She gave me a rather grim, one-sided smile. “What’ll we do when we get there?”

  I led General closer to her, and found myself a rock. It felt all-fired good to sit down after so much walking. “We’ll have ourselves a splendid meal in a restaurant,” I said.

  Her smile brightened some. “Tired of mule?”

  I made a snorty “Hee-haw,” and she laughed.

  “What I’m hankering for’s a bath,” she said. “I could use some fresh duds, too, before I sit down to a meal.”

  “I’ll buy you a fine dress.”

  “Buy a dress, and you can be the one that wears it. Ain’t gonna catch me in any such getup.”

  “I’d certainly like to see you in one.”

  “Ain’t about to, so you’d best forget it.”

  “You are a woman, you know.”

  “None of my doing. I’d a sight rather be a man.”

  “I’m quite glad you’re not one.”

  “Oh, I sure do know that.”

  I flustered some when she said that, but I was so hot and sweaty she likely couldn’t notice. “Well, I don’t aim to force you into wearing a dress.”

  “Couldn’t if you tried.”

  “I suppose you’d take your knife to me.”

  I expected a snappy retort, but instead she frowned down at her boots. “I wouldn’t cut you,” she muttered. “You oughta know that.”

  “I know.”

  She hung her head and rested her elbows on her legs.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Jesse?”

  She looked up at me. Her green eyes were awful solemn.

  Going all soft and squirmy inside, my throat tightening on me, I hurried over to her. She stood and I took her in my arms. She held onto me tight. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “Oh…everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Can’t we…stay here? I don’t wanta…” She shook her head.

  I held her and patted her. “We’ll stay here. Maybe not here. We’ll find ourselves a good spot to camp. We won’t go into Tombstone. Not tonight. All right?”

  She nodded.

  “We don’t need to go into Tombstone at all,” I said. “We’ll just ride on by, tomorrow, if that’s what you want.”

  She kept holding onto me for a spell, then eased herself out of my arms. She put her hands on both sides of my face. She gave my lips a gentle kiss, then gazed into my eyes.

  “We’ll go in,” she whispered. “Tomorrow. But I just ain’t ready for it yet. Not yet.”

  PART FIVE

  The End of the Trail

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Tombstone Shy

  We made our camp in a dry wash on the north side of the rise so we couldn’t see Tombstone. Jesse was uncommon quiet, maybe embarrassed by the way she’d backed out of going into town, or maybe it was just that she had too much on her mind in need of sorting out. Whatever, I didn’t press her.

  We sat by a small campfire, and ate our jerky in silence.

  When we finished, we kept on sitting there. I opened my mouth time and time again, figuring to ask her what the trouble was. Each time, though, I thought better of it.

  She was on the other side of the fire, and sometimes gave me strange looks through the smoke.

  Finally, I said, “I’m not actually eager, myself, to ride into Tombstone.”

  “You’re only just saying that.”

  “It’s the honest truth.”

  “What about that-there fine meal in a restaurant?”

  “Oh, I should like that. And I daresay you should enjoy having a bath and new clothes.”

  “But not a dress.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “So how come you ain’t eager?” she asked.

  “I don’t quite know, really. It would be different, I suppose. I reckon I’ve just gotten used to traveling with you. I hate for that to end. There’d be other people about. We wouldn’t be alone together. It just wouldn’t be at all the same. I like things the way they’ve been.”

  Jesse stared at me for a bit, then got up and came around to my side of the fire. She sat on the ground beside me, leaned against me and put an arm around my back.

  “You’d have yourself a real bed,” she said.

  “In a hotel. Where the wind wouldn’t freeze us up and make you lie with me to keep warm.”

  “Maybe I’d lie with you anyhow.”

  “Would you do that?”

  “Maybe. Long as you behaved.”

  “Tombstone might be all right, then.”

  Jesse went quiet again, but not for long. “Maybe you’d rather have Sarah in the bed with you.”

  “Jesse!”

  “Well? You ain’t thought about it, I sure have. She might just be in town there, waiting for you. What’ll you do, then? Give me the boot?”

  “No! Good grief! That’s what you’ve been fretting about, is it?”

  “I know you claimed I’m prettier, and all, and how you’re done with her, but you might just see things different when you’re face to face. Maybe you forgot how pretty she is. Maybe you’ll remember, right quick, and remember a few other things, besides, like how it was to be with her. You been with her, Trevor. You ain’t never been with me.”

  I looked at Jesse.

  “Don’t you get no funny ideas, buster!”

  “You’re the one who brought it up, actually.”

  “Well, put it right outa your head. I’m gonna stay pure for the man that marries me, or die trying.”

  “Perhaps I’m that man,” I said, my heart all of a sudden bashing fit to explode.

  “And perhaps not. Just perhaps you’ll run into your fancy Sarah tomorrow and that’ll be it for Jesse Sue Longley.”

  “That won’t happen,” I said.

  “I reckon we’ll find out, soon enough.”

  “She’s nowhere near Tombstone.”

  “It’s where you were heading with her.”

  “That was before I got pitched off the train. For all she knows, I might be dead. You’re daft if you think she made the rest of the trip and she’s waiting around in town for me to pop in.”

  “That’s where I’d be,” Jesse said.

  I pondered on that for a while, and judged Jesse was right. She would go on, hoping I’d finally make my way to Tombstone. She would. Jesse. But I had strong doubts about Sarah. Mostly because of how Sarah had taken on with Briggs.

  “I’ll be mighty surprised if she’s there,” I said.

  “Like I said, we’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Even if she is, there’s no call for you to fret.”

  “So you say.”

  “If it worries you so, why don’t we put the town to our backs and head elsewhere?”

  “How we gonna track down Whittle if we don’t go in and ask around? It’s where we gotta go if we’re gonna pick up on his trail.”

  “I doubt he has any trail to pick up, actually. It must be two months since he murdered those Clemons women. He likely dodged off long ago.”

  “He didn’t bolt straight outa London.”

  Indeed, he’d continued his grisly work in the East End for more than two months, and might’ve kept at it longer if I hadn’t mucked him up. “That was quite a different situation,” I pointed out. “London’s a great metropolis with vast crowds of people and hundreds of streets and alleys. A bloke might duck around a corner and disappear forever. Whittle might’ve gone on forever there. But not in a town like Tombstone. Why, he was lucky he didn’t get himself caught. Especially being a stranger there, and without a nose. I doubt he stayed in town long enough to see the sunrise.”

  “Maybe,” Jesse said. “Maybe not. He’d have no call to run off if nobody saw him kill them gals. He might just be in town this very minute.”

  “That’s why you wanted to stay out!” I blurted, having her on a bit.

&
nbsp; “That ain’t why, and you know it.”

  “You’ve got Whittle and Sarah both down there, just itching to have a go at me!”

  “Whittle don’t worry me none.”

  “Well, he ought to.”

  “I hope he is down there in town. We can have us a race to see who’s first to pump him full of lead. With any luck at all, maybe we’ll catch your Sarah in the crossfire.”

  That last was an ornery thing to say, but it plucked a laugh out of me. I locked my arm around Jesse’s head and clamped it tight and gave her a few gentle punches in the belly. Then she slipped her head free, flung herself against me and bowled me over sideways. I didn’t struggle much except to swing my boots clear of the fire. While I concerned myself with that, she got me onto my back and straddled me. With her knees, she pinned my arms to the ground. I was still laughing, spite of her weight on my chest.

  “I always knew I could take you,” Jesse gasped.

  “You’ve got me.”

  “Yup.” She gave a bounce that made the air grunt out of me. “Gotcha right where I want you.”

  “Delighted to be here,” I said.

  At that, she backhanded my face. Not so much a slap as a pat. “Don’t get crude, Trevor.”

  “I meant nothing crude. Not at all.”

  She fetched my face another whap, a bit harder than the last. “Did too.”

  “You’re the one that’s put me between your legs!”

  “Ah-ha!” She whacked me again.

  So I kicked up my legs, swinging them up till I hooked her shoulders with my boots, and flung her backward. She let out a whuff when she slammed the ground. I scurried up right quick, knocked her knees out of my way, and dropped down flat atop her. She squirmed under me, laughing fit to bust.

  Instead of pinning her arms, I used my hands to dig into her sides. She fairly squealed. She bucked and thrashed and grabbed at my hands, trying to hold them off.

  “Quit!” she blurted between her squeals. “You quit!”

  “Gotcha right where I want you!”

  “I mean it! Quit, now! ‘Fore I bust a seam!”