Grace scratched her temple. “Someone tipped them off,” she muttered. She didn’t turn to Jessie, but the slight shift in her stance, the rise of her shoulders, told him she knew it was him.
Tokota shrugged. “It does not matter how they know. What matters is they stand armed. And unless words are spoken, this will end badly. With blood.” He paused for a long moment, then said, “I will ride down and speak to them.”
Both Grace and Enapay spoke at once, and Jessie guessed they were both saying, “No!”
“At least let me speak with them. I’m white after all,” Grace said.
Enapay shook his head and waved his hand at Grace. As he spoke Tokota’s back stiffened and he opened his mouth to retort. Enapay held up his hand and continued. After a moment, Tokota slumped as though defeated. He turned to Grace and said, “The three of us will go.”
Jessie frowned. “Four of us. Enapay don’t speak English, and the white folk won’t listen to no Injun or sage hen. I might be the only one those dudes will pay sense to.”
Grace returned Jessie’s frown, opened her mouth, and drew in a sharp breath. She eyed him for a moment, then closed her mouth and pressed her lips together. She gave a curt nod, though her eyes were frosty. Jessie gulped and felt his heart flutter beneath his vest. Perhaps there was a chance he could undo the damage he’d unwittingly done.
Tokota communicated to the Sioux behind him, and with a tight-lipped smile at Enapay, he nudged Uzeblikblik forward. Enapay, Grace, and Jessie rode beside him at a slow, measured pace.
Jessie gazed down the street as a small group of three mounted men broke from the throng and trotted toward them. He tried to control his breathing and turned his gaze briefly on the crowd. As he squinted at the assembled white folk, he saw a woman on the outskirts. His heart sank as he recognized the blue-checked dress and bonnet. Bess. What was she doing here? Why couldn’t they just leave before all this rot started up?
Jessie wrenched his eyes back to the approaching riders. He and his party came to a stop halfway between the Sioux and the Whitestand Hollow folk. Grace held her arms out beside her as if to demonstrate she wasn’t holding iron. Jessie did the same as he scrutinized the approaching Hollowers. The overhead sun glinted off a star pinned to the lapels of two of the riders. Bulls. The third was richly dressed and portly. He put Jessie in mind of a traveling salesman.
“You folk picked the wrong side. Cavorting about with Injuns... Going to see you hang for this, you know.”
Jessie blanched at the straight-talking dandy’s words. He glanced at Grace, who yawned and leaned on her saddle horn. She waved a hand languidly and said, “You the mayor of this burg, or just a bloated dung beetle out for a bite?”
The man frowned and his face reddened. “Missy, you got a right streak in you, addressing me like that. I am the mayor of Whitestand Hollow, and I’m officiating over this here parley to tell you all to surrender yourselves over to the long arm of the law.”
“Or what?” Grace asked.
The mayor blinked and frowned. He gazed askance at his lawmen and turned back to Grace. “Or...or it’ll come to bloodshed.”
Grace smirked. “See, I got a study it won’t. Might have if you folk were just staring down a bunch of old Sioux with bows and arrows. But you ain’t. You’re staring down these.”
Grace slid her dirty fingers between her lips and gave a piercing whistle. Kaga and two Ba’cho wolves emerged from the crowd of Sioux and horses and slunk forward. They moved like shadows—fluidly, coldly. The lawmen, mayor, and their horses balked at the sight of the three large wolves. One of the lawmen cocked a gleaming Sharps rifle nervously.
Kaga crept silently forward until he stood at Grace’s side. His ears flattened and his fangs peeked over his lips.
Grace smiled.
Tokota drew himself up and gestured at the wolves. “You see more of them back there?”
After a moment of silence, the mayor nodded, his face leeched of all color.
Tokota nodded in response. “Good. What you do not see are the ones flanking the town. In your streets. In your alleys. In your houses... They wait only for a word.”
“And if they get that word, they’ll rip the balls off anyone stupid enough to fight back. Get it?” Grace snarled.
The mayor blinked and smacked his lips. He fidgeted with the reins and cussed loudly. He raked his gaze across Enapay, Tokota, Jessie, and finished with Grace.
“Fine. We’ll talk.”
Jessie let loose the breath he’d been holding and couldn’t quite stop a grin from sliding across his lips. He flicked his gaze to the Hollower crowd and caught a glimpse of Bess. His stomach did a little somersault at the sight of her.
A gunshot cracked, and Jessie wrenched his head, drawn by the sudden movement beside him as Enapay screamed and clutched his chest. He twisted sideways and fell from his saddle.
“Enapay!” Tokota screamed.
Jessie whipped around, glanced across the lawmen and the mayor, who stared dumbly at the dropped Sioux, and did a double take on a third-story window a few yards away. Jessie narrowed his eyes and screwed up his face as he stared up at the window. A flash of light glinted off a rifle, and as it lowered, an unmistakable figure was revealed, perched in the window frame.
“Holy Mary,” Jessie whispered as he stared up at the Darksome Gunman.
“Sonuva...” Grace trailed off; her gaze locked on the Gunman. He gave her a mocking salute and disappeared from the window.
Jessie turned slowly, sluggishly, as though in a dream, and was too numb to say or do anything as Grace whipped out Justice and Mercy and leveled them at the lawmen.
“They’re in cahoots with him!” she screamed.
Jessie had time to see the mayor’s confused face and hear a babbled litany fall from the man’s mouth before Justice and Mercy boomed and the lawmen and the mayor fell from their horses.
“Grace, wait!” Jessie cried too late.
Grace flung herself from the saddle and scrambled across the dirt to Tokota. He squatted beside Enapay, awkwardly holding the chief in his arms. He was covered in blood.
Down the other end of the street, the Whitestand Hollow folk were whooping and crying. A rifle cracked and a bullet ricocheted off the ground a few feet from Jessie and Paul. Another bullet whizzed through the air as Grace dropped to her knees beside Tokota and grabbed his tunic.
“Tokota, listen to me. Listen to me!” Grace shouted into his face. Tokota’s cheeks were wet with tears and his lips were pulled back in an ugly snarl.
“Enapay,” Tokota said, his voice cracking on the last syllable.
“I know. They beefed him cold. The Gunman beefed him cold. And now they’re coming to do the same to us, and I can’t get to him unless we get rid of them first! So, what are you gonna do about it?”
Jessie licked his lips as sweat ran down his spine. He shot a glance down the end of the street where the Hollower men were dashing about, aiming and firing rifles. He twisted and looked up at the third-story window, but it was vacant; the Gunman long gone.
Tokota raised his eyes and they were as black as a summer squall. “War. We go to war.” He spoke so softly Jessie almost didn’t hear him.
Jessie drew in a sharp breath as Grace leaped to her feet, yanked Crowbait’s reins, and flung herself into the saddle. “We’re going to war! Yeeahh!”
Jessie cried out, but his scream was lost in the thundering hooves of the Sioux riders. The Ba’cho surged ahead and charged along the road. The men of Whitestand Hollow fired shots at the black, nightmarish fiends, but not one man hit his mark.
Then the wolves were upon them and everything ran red with blood.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paul was caught up in the rush of horses pounding beside him. Despite Jessie’s protests, the gelding charged into the thick of the action, kicking and bucking as he stampeded along. Jessie gripped the horse’s reins and added his own screams to the whoop and war cries of the Sioux, the shouts of the Whitestand
Hollow folk, and the thunder of gunfire. Chaos reigned and everything was a blur of bodies and blood as Sioux fell to a hail of bullets, and men slumped to their knees with arrows in their throats. Some Sioux warriors fired rifles at the Hollowers, and Paul reared as a man’s head exploded in a spray of blood and brain. Somehow Jessie managed to draw his Colt as Paul danced among the flailing throng.
A Hollower kicked a Ba’cho wolf who was savaging another man. The Hollower aimed a pistol at the stunned wolf and leered. Jessie swung his Colt and fired. The Hollower screamed and clutched his chest. He fell to the ground, and the Ba’cho wolf tore into him with vicious savagery.
Jessie turned away and his gaze fell on two Sioux warriors dragging a woman from a house. One backhanded her and she fell to the ground. The other warrior dropped to his knees and tore at her skirts and petticoats. Jessie’s cheeks were wet with salty tears as he turned the Colt on the Sioux warrior and fired. The first shot went wide but the second took the kneeling Sioux in the face. He fell on top of the screaming woman. The sight of his dead friend was enough to send the second warrior fleeing.
Jessie grabbed Paul’s reins and tugged his gelding to the side of the road. He swept the battlefield and frowned as he spied Tokota sitting in the middle of the road, Enapay’s body cradled in his arms. The Whitestand Hollow sheriff lay on his back beside them in a pool of blood, his rifle by Tokota’s side. Tokota’s eyes were closed and his lips moved as he clutched Enapay to his breast. Jessie recognized the expression on Tokota’s face; Grace had worn the same expression when she’d held Kaga after the Darksome Gunman put a bullet in him. It was the expression of unutterable grief.
Jessie turned away and caught sight of Grace. She rode in the thick of it all with a Smith &Wesson in each hand. She turned to a Hollower and fired Justice. He dropped down, dead. She turned the other way, toward a deputy locked in hand-to-hand combat with a Sioux warrior. She fired Mercy and another body dropped to the ground.
Someone always dies Jessie.
Jessie’s glazed eyes roved over the battlefield. Screams filled the air. Stench wafted into his nostrils—blood, feces, urine, smoke. Somewhere, something was on fire. He gazed at the carnage and frowned as he spied a swatch of pale blue on the road. A dress tangled up over a large bustle obscured the face of the woman who lay in a pool of blood. Jessie didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. He didn’t need to see the chestnut hair that had come loose and spilled in the mud and blood-covered street.
He slithered out of the saddle and winced as he put weight on his injured leg. A man flew through the air behind him and smashed into Paul’s rump. The gelding squealed and took off. Jessie’s eyes were fixed on Bess. He made a beeline for her and only stopped when a face loomed up before him and a gun jammed against his chest. The person jerked sideways as a bullet took him down. Jessie didn’t stop to look. He scrambled through the press of bodies until he came to the girl lying on the road. He couldn’t squat, not with his wounded leg, so he dropped to his knees in the mud and blood beside her. He reached out, almost against his will, and took hold of her shoulder. As he rolled her over, Bess’s lifeless eyes stared straight up into the blue sky. Her pretty dress was stained, and a small hole had been shorn through the fabric into the flesh beneath. She’d been shot through the heart.
“Shame. Pretty young thing.”
Jessie turned as though in a dream. Who would so casually speak as a war raged around them? His gaze fell on the grizzled prospector, the old moss who’d been present at Redrock Ridge the night Jessie had first met Grace. The same old man who’d spoken so weirdly in Grindgulch about donning armor and fighting on the side of good.
Somehow Jessie wasn’t surprised to find him here in Whitestand Hollow.
“She deserved far better than to eat a bullet in the middle of some senseless war,” Jessie murmured and turned to Bess.
“No doubt. But Jessie, she was just a low card.”
Jessie frowned and turned to the prospector. “Who are you?”
The old moss bobbed his head. “Cross. Clinton Cross. Folk tend to just call me Cottonmouth on account of the long yarns I’m fond of spinning.”
Jessie blinked. His head felt thick, foggy. Around them, the war raged on, but somehow they were untouched in their strange conversation. “What did you mean, she was a low card?”
“In the game. She weren’t anything to bluff with. Not like an ace or a cowboy or even a pair of jakes.”
“This ain’t no game of poker,” Jessie snapped. “This is real! This is my life!”
Cottonmouth chuckled. “Course it is, son! All life is just a game of poque. A bluff here, a gamble there, and you know the only way to win, son?”
Jessie looked at Cottonmouth. He wished the man would just go away.
Cottonmouth leaned in and his watery eyes pierced Jessie. “Be the better player.”
Jessie frowned and wrenched his gaze back to Bess.
“Yessir, you listen to old Cottonmouth, boy. He speaks the plain truth.” The man clambered to his feet, heedless of the screams and danger around them. Jessie winced as a man crashed to the ground mere feet away from Cottonmouth. The prospector didn’t even glance at the dying Hollower; he might have been standing on any old street corner having a yarn for all the concern he took in the war raging around them.
Jessie sniffed and looked up at the prospector. “Do you know the Darksome Gunman?” he asked quietly.
Cottonmouth nodded. There was no smile across his face now. He lowered a gnarled hand to Jessie’s shoulder. Jessie flinched.
“I know that cuss alright and let me tell you this about him, he plays an ace-high game, son.”
Jessie turned back to Bess’s body. He heard soft footfalls as Cottonmouth walked away. He felt like crying, but he didn’t have any tears left to shed for Bess. He didn’t have any tears left for himself.
He knelt on the road as Whitestand Hollow burned to the ground around him.
Hundreds of people were dead.
The folk of Whitestand Hollow suffered the greatest loss. Nearly all their menfolk were killed or injured. A handful of women also died in the war on Whitestand Hollow, and an unknown number were brutalized as the Sioux rampaged through town and torched buildings to claim back their land.
The survivors were told to leave. Simple as that. They were given no provisions and were told they were lucky to have their lives. The stream of miserable, beaten folk filed past Tokota as he sat atop Uzeblikblik and stared down with impassive eyes. On the back of his horse, wrapped in bloodstained cloth was Enapay. With that shrouded burden pressed up against him, Tokota showed no mercy to the folk of Whitestand Hollow. Where once Jessie had seen fairness and justice in Tokota’s eyes, there was nothing now. Not even cold fury. Merely an absence of all humanity. War had done that to Tokota. The Gunman had done that to Tokota.
Grace rode Crowbait and waved her Smith & Wessons about. She gave directions and saw to the practicalities of war. Wounded, maimed, and mutilated Hollowers were put out of their misery with a quick knife thrust to the heart. Wounded Sioux were rounded up where their medicine man could look over them. Very few Ba’cho had sustained injury during the battle. A handful had taken a bullet or copped a broken limb, and those who were wounded skulked together and snarled at anyone who approached to offer them aid.
Jessie eyed Grace from the raised deck out the front of Madame Beulah’s Come and Go Cathouse. His hat sat on one side of him, and a body in pale blue lay on the other. Thick, roiling smoke plumed into the sky, and he wasn’t sure if night was falling or the smoke made it seem prematurely dark. Grace rode through the smoke, and as she emerged on the other side, she looked like one of the bad spirits Tokota was always jabbering about.
Jessie had watched her clamber through building after building in search of the Darksome Gunman, each time emerging dirtier and more frustrated by her futile search.
Jessie’s gaze dropped to the bloodstained corpse beside him. He’d dragged Bess off the road
as the war waged around him. He didn’t know why it seemed so important to get her off the road, just that he had to do it. He wasn’t strong enough to lift her in his arms, so he’d had to pull her by her wrists and now the back of her gown was torn and shredded, the bustle dented and wrecked.
Grace cantered down the street and when her eyes fell on Jessie, she jerked the reins and Crowbait wandered across to him.
“Goddammit, Jessie! I been looking for you everywhere!” Grace slid from the saddle and stomped over to Jessie. She grabbed his arm, jerked him up, and pulled him into a crushing embrace. All Jessie could think about was the smell of smoke and death that clung to her and filled his nostrils.
Grace pushed back and frowned. “What? What’s wrong?”
Jessie’s eyebrows raised. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?! Look around you for the Lord’s sake! But he didn’t give voice to his thoughts. Instead, he gestured to Bess.
Grace looked down at the girl and sighed. “This the little bit you warned about the battle then?”
Jessie studied his boots and bit his lip. “I had to try and get her pa to listen. Get her out of town.” He raised his gaze to Grace. “I didn’t know he’d blab to the sheriff. I didn’t—”
Grace slapped him across the mouth hard enough to draw blood. Jessie’s head rocked back, and when he turned to Grace, his eyes glistened, and blood oozed from his split lip.
Grace grabbed him by the lapels and dragged him close. “Goddammit, Jessie! You could’ve been ditched! You could’ve been beefed! You damn near got the rest of us all squabashed! Didn’t you think? Christ, boy, you need to do some growing up.”
Fury bubbled up inside Jessie as his eyes burned with unshed tears. He shoved Grace backward and broke her grasp. Grace stumbled a step and frowned as Jessie rounded on her.
“Just shut up! Just you shut your God-cursed mouth! You clout me out for not thinking, but I was trying to save her. I was trying to save Bess! And all you were doing was helping them hard case Injuns because it might get you closer to the damned Darksome Gunman! And all those folk had to die just for you and your damn revenge!”
Guns of Perdition Page 11