Blood Lands

by Ralph Cotton

  How long had she been alone now, she asked herself. Jesus, how long?

  She spent her nights wrapped in the wool blanket, lying close to the warm glowing bed of embers. Before dawn she would awaken, feed some dried twigs and larger bits of kindling into the dying embers and stoke up enough fire to heat the remains of coffee from the night before. Then she would prepare herself a small breakfast before saddling the horse and getting back on the trail.

  The black barb gelding was what she had asked for and what she’d expected. He was green, and more than a little skittish. The powerful half-wild plains horse stood constantly alert, as if eager to bolt out of control at the slightest provocation. Ordinarily these would be considered bad traits in a riding animal. This was not the horse for a weekend trip to town, or to hitch to a family buggy for a picnic outing.

  But Julie knew that such an animal would have not only speed, but also razor-sharp reflexes, and a lightning-fast start. It was up to her to bring the horse to accept her commands on instinct and come to accept her upon his back as if she were a part of himself.

  Time and patience, she’d told herself, rubbing the barb’s muzzle, the day she’d let him run himself out on a long stretch of flat trail a day west of Topeka. Afterward, while the two of them rested in the shade of a cottonwood tree, she could see that the horse had wanted to run that hard and that far for a long time.

  “You’re sweating out fears and shadows, aren’t you, boy?” she asked, supposing correctly that for the rest of the day and for an undetermined number of days to come, the powerful animal would be as tame as a lapdog. She pondered her words for a moment, still rubbing the black’s muzzle, and said quietly to herself, “I reckon I’m doing the same.”

  After a week on the trail, Julie rode into the small but growing town of Abilene, a place that she had passed through on her way to her father’s house only weeks earlier. Among log cabins and sod-roofed dugouts stood newer homes, and bare frames of houses still under construction. The sound of hammers resounded out across the open land.

  Passing alongside a creek, Julie noted the large difference only a few weeks had made in this city of the plains. A tinny piano sang out through the open doors of one newly built saloon standing on a street amid three other such establishments. Boardwalks ran back and forth from one doorway to the next across a wide dark mire that served as the main street. Julie kept the black barb to one side of the odorous thoroughfare and slowly walked the animal along.

  “Hey, you-hoo! Julie!” a voice called out, causing Julie to look around and see a young pale-skinned woman her own age plodding along through ankle-deep mud. She held up her cheap gaudy saloon-girl dress with both hands, revealing her unstrung hobnail boots. “Stop! It’s me, Ruthie! Remember me?”

  Julie brought the barb to a halt and looked down at the painted face and at the ace of hearts with an arrow through it tattooed above the woman’s thin left breast. “Yes, I do, Ruthie,” Julie said, recalling their meeting on her trip down.

  But before Julie could say another word, the young saloon-girl spoke quickly, as if still desperate to make Julie recognize her. “You and me ate supper together at the hash house? I just had got here? You were riding through? We talked about why didn’t you stay and go to work for Daniel, like I did? Remember?”

  “Yes, Ruthie, I remember,” Julie said, offering a cordial smile. “How are things going for you?”

  “Me?” The pale-skinned girl shrugged her thin shoulders. “Oh, I’m doing real good, you bet I am! Couldn’t be better!” She swished back and forth as far as the mud-stuck boots would allow, showing Julie her gaudy gold and red striped dress. “Just look at me! Daniel has these trappers and drovers and buffalo hunters treating me like a princess!” She laughed melodiously; yet Julie could tell the laugh was not authentic. She’d grown up hearing that sort of laughter. She’d always thought of it as laughter to cover a cry of pain.

  “That’s good, Ruthie,” Julie said.

  “Yeah, ain’t it though,” the young woman said. “And how about you, Julie? Did you come back to go to work for Daniel . . . Because if you did”—her voice lowered—“it would sure look good on me, if I told him you’re a friend of mine, and that I sent for you.”

  “No,” Julie said patiently, taking no offense, “I didn’t come here looking for work. Once again, I’m just passing through.” She didn’t want to confide in the young woman. “I’m taking on some trail supplies, on my way back up north.” She paused for a moment, then said, “But it’s good to see you again . . . to hear you’re doing well.”

  “Yeah, real well,” said Ruthie. But Julie saw her clouded brow. “It only takes about a minute or so for these randy ole trappers to peter out. Half the time the drovers pass out drunk before they even get it in me.” She grinned and giggled mischievously. “All I’ve got to fear is that I don’t get the sickness from them, you know?” She patted her flat lower belly. “But I’ve been lucky so far, and I wash down there and attend myself afterward almost every time.”

  “Take care of yourself, Ruthie,” Julie said, about to give the barb a nudge forward.

  But Ruthie continued, stepping heavily alongside the horse, needing to talk. “Mostly, they never get rough, these trappers, surveyors and whatnot. If they do, Daniel cracks their head for them!” She grinned, but in doing so looked closer at Julie, seeing the fading bruises about her eyes and cheek. “Did they get rough with you where you worked?” she asked. “Is that why you’re headed back this way?”

  “No,” said Julie, still patient. “I told you that’s not my line of work. I ran into some bad characters. But I’m getting better now.”

  “I remembered you said you wasn’t one of us,” said Ruthie. “But I thought maybe you used to be, and had stopped being. Because you seemed like you were.” She looked to Julie for an answer.

  “I have to go, Ruthie.”

  “And because you look like one of us, sort of,” Ruthie said, “no offence intended.” She plodded along again as Julie nudged the barb slowly forward.

  “No offence taken, Ruthie,” said Julie. She stepped up the barb’s walking pace.

  “I hope you’ll change your mind,” Ruthie called out, stopping and standing in the mud. “There’s talk that this is going to be railhead. Now that the war’s over there’s going to be a lot going on here! Think about that! There’s going to be more cattle-men here than a hundred girls can handle!”

  Julie raised a hand in farewell without looking back, and rode on to where three men stood atop ladders, nailing a long wooden sign reading MERCANTILE above a new clapboard storefront. A smaller sign on the entry door read OPEN FOR BUSINESS. The three workmen barely gave Julie a glance as she stepped down from her saddle, spun her reins around a wooden hitch rail and walked inside.

  But a hundred yards away, out front of the saloon where Ruthie walked laboriously back through the mud, two pairs of eyes had been watching Julie like hawks. Once Julie had stepped out of sight into the mercantile store, a pimp named Daniel Tandy in a dirty gray swallow-tailed coat and a dingy derby hat said insistently to Ruthie, “Who was that? Where do you know her from?”

  Ruthie, having learned to look out for her own advantage, replied, “Oh, she’s a friend of mine. We came here together. I told you about her. She rode on over past Topeka . . . to see about her father, I believe.”

  “You believe?” said Tandy, with skepticism. “If she’s a friend of yours, you ought to know for sure.”

  “Well, I do know,” said Ruthie. “That’s what she told me she was doing . . . going to see her father, that is.”

  “Is she a whore?” a man three feet tall and missing an arm asked bluntly. After he’d spoken, he glanced straight up at Daniel with a thin crooked smile.

  “She’s on her way north, I think,” said Ruthie.

  “Ruthie, you heard the dwarf, gawddamn it,” said the pimp. “Is your so-called friend a whore?”

  “Don’t call me a dwarf!” the man fumed, staring up at the pi
mp. “My name’s Thomas!”

  Daniel chuckled and shrugged. “All right,” he said to Ruthie, “you heard General Tom Thumb; he wants to know if she’s a whore.”

  “She says not,” Ruthie said, “but she seems to know about the life . . . Seems like she’s either been one or been around plenty. I’m talking to her about coming to work with us.”

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  “Said no,” Ruthie replied. “But she could change her mind, right?”

  “Yeah, right,” said Daniel. “It makes no sense, a woman out here, alone. What the hell is she going to do?” He shrugged again. “Why wouldn’t she sell it? How does she make a living for herself?”

  “Maybe she’s selling it and keeping on the quiet about it,” Thomas speculated.

  “Maybe she’s a swabber,” said Daniel, staring off at the mercantile store. “Yeah, that’s it. She’s probably been a swabber at a big whorehouse somewhere. Cleaning up after them with the guts enough to sell it.” He winked and grinned at Ruthie. “Like our Ruthie here.”

  “Yeah, a swabber,” said Thomas. “That figures.” He gave a sour expression. “I hate those bitches. You always see them sneaking around and about like a cat, an arm full of towels. It’s unnatural, them cleaning up other people’s messes, I say.”

  “Or, maybe she’s a manly woman,” Daniel said, still going through his mental list of possibilities.

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Thomas. “I hate them too. I’d like to smack them in the face every time I see one.” He curled his thick upper lip at the thought of it. “Fact is I don’t care much for any woman who ain’t a whore. A whore is the only woman a man can trust.”

  “Amen to that,” Ruthie said in proud agreement, standing in the mud in her saloon dress.

  The three stood in silence for a moment longer; then Daniel said to Ruthie, “Are you asleep out there?”

  “Huh, what?” Ruthie said in surprise.

  “You’ve let one on horseback and three in a buckboard ride right past you. Are you taking the day off?”

  “Oh! Sorry,” Ruthie said, looking fearful. She knew how quickly Daniel’s mood could turn dark, and how suddenly his easygoing charm could turn ugly and violent.

  Turning back to the mud street, she pirouetted like a marionette on strings and called out sweetly to a passing horseman, “Yoo-hoo. Did you come here to see me? I sure hope you did!”

  On the short boardwalk, Daniel and Thomas watched her for a moment with faint smiles on their faces. “Show him something,” Daniel said to Ruthie, keeping his voice lowered.

  Ruthie quickly raised her dress up past her waist, exposing her pantaloons to the horseman, who slowed down, made a wide circle in the mud street and nudged his horse back toward her.

  “Dumb whores,” Daniel said under his breath. He gave another glance toward the mercantile store and said, “What would any of them ever do without us?”

  “Yeah, what would they ever?” said Thomas with a cocky swagger as they both turned and walked inside the saloon.

  Chapter 16

  Colorado Territory

  Baines Meredith reached out with a gloved hand and gave his stallion, Joseph, a slight nudge on the rump. The big horse galloped away quickly into a tall stand of pines clinging to the sloping hillside. Walking slowly forward, his eyes scanning across a low ravine to a rocky slope facing him, Baines raised the brass rear sight on his newer-model Winchester repeating rifle and turned the screw tight with his fingertips.

  “Bobby Bantree!” he called out into the thin chilled air. “Lew Kerns!”

  No reply resounded across the ravine.

  Baines waited another silent moment, watching a hawk circle high and effortlessly on an updraft of air. “Lucky bastard.” He grinned to himself. To the other side of the ravine, he called out, “Bantree! Be a man about this. There’s nothing left for you out here, not with me dogging you everywhere you go. One of us has to die before the other can go on about our business. Come out and get it over with.”

  Baines looked surprised when a voice called out, “He ain’t afraid of you, Meredith!”

  Baines tracked the sound of the voice with his eyes and raised the rifle to his shoulder. Under his breath, he whispered, “Much obliged, Lew.” He scanned the slope through his rifle sights until he caught a glimpse of a horse’s mane move back and forth behind a stand of rock. He held the position for a moment, then drifted all around it, searching intently.

  Across the ravine, Bobby Bantree could barely control his anger. “Gawddamn it, Kerns! Why did you shoot your mouth off that way? That’s all he was trying to do was to get one of us to say something!”

  Lew Kerns stared at him with a dull expression. “You ain’t, are you?”

  “Ain’t what?” Bantree asked, his anger growing by the minute.

  “Afraid of this bounty dog!” said Kerns, nodding in Baines’ direction.

  “What the hell difference would it make if I was?” said Bantree. “You’ve just seen to it I’m going to have to face him down! You and your gawddamn big mouth!”

  Kerns shrugged. “Hell, I’ll face him. I’ve been wanting to face him one-on-one to begin with. I ain’t afraid of the sonsabitch.”

  Bantree stared at him coldly. “If you’ve been wanting to face him, why the hell didn’t you do it three days ago, save us all this trouble?”

  Baines spotted the horse’s man again through his rifle sight. Watching closely, he saw the top of a hat move from right to left. He watched, his finger across the rifle trigger. “We’re coming out, Meredith!” Kerns shouted across the ravine. “Hold your fire!”

  “Step out slow like, with your hands up where I can see them,” Baines shouted in reply.

  Taking a close aim down his rifle sight, Baines watched first Kerns, then Bantree step out from behind the rock, their hands chest-high. “You’re the one taking the lead on this, Lew. Don’t freeze up on me,” Bantree said quietly to his pal, although there was no way Baines could have heard them from such a distance.

  “I’ve got this all worked out in my mind,” Kerns whispered in reply. “Just make sure you’re there if I need you.” He stared hard toward the other side of the ravine, but saw no sign of Baines Meredith.

  “Don’t worry about me, pard,” said Bantree. “I’m backing your play on this.”

  “Start walking down this way, slowly,” Baines called out.

  “What about our horses?” Bantree asked.

  Baines half smiled to himself, seeing what Bantree was up to. “We’ll come back for them directly, Bobby,” Baines replied. “Are they hitched good and sound?”

  “Yeah,” said Bantree, “they’ll keep.”

  Kerns called out, “Baines! Don’t worry about the horses. As soon as we’re in pistol range, I’m calling you out, one-on-one!”

  “Ah, Jesus!” Bantree said to Kerns under his breath.

  “Why?” said Kerns. “I ain’t afraid of telling him what we’re going to—”

  Bantree had already dropped his hands and made a dash back behind the cover of rock when a bloody hole appeared in Kerns’ chest, followed by the loud blast from Baines’ rifle. Kerns crumbled backward onto the rocky ground and began sliding limply down the slope over rock and low, dry brush.

  Baines wasted no time. He levered a fresh round into his rifle chamber and sighted it along the edge of the rock, ready for Bantree as two horses bolted into sight.

  But Bantree had thought ahead. Instead of sitting upright in his saddle, he’d dropped over onto his horse’s side, using the two animals as his shield. “You could have done better than that,” Baines said, quietly shaking his head, then taking aim.

  Knowing Bantree couldn’t make it far riding that way on the rough sloping ground, Baines waited until he saw the fugitive drop off the horse’s side and scramble for the shelter of trees, thinking Baines could not see him. “End of hunt,” Baines said to himself. He fired a shot that dug up a clump of rock and dirt in front of Bantree’s head as the man c
lawed and scratched his way toward shelter.

  Knowing the shot had been a warning and that Baines was just telling him that the next shot would be dead center, Bantree stopped scrambling on the ground, jumped to his feet, threw his hands up and shouted, “All right, I’m done! I give up! See? My hands are up! I surrender!”

  Baines took close aim, dead center at Bantree’s chest. He took a breath and held it, ready to squeeze the trigger and put an end to the matter. But then, on second thought, he let out his breath, lowered the rifle an inch and looked left of Bantree where the two horses had come to a halt, then slowly made their way down into the ravine, their muzzles already down, searching for graze. “What the hell,” Baines said. He lowered his rifle more, stood up from behind the rock and gave his stallion a hand signal, bringing the animal to him from within the trees.

  “I’m not going to shoot him, Joseph,” Baines said to the black stallion, as if the big animal understood him. “I should though, the way he was about to jackpot his partner.” Together, Baines and the stallion walked down the slope.

  “Obliged, Meredith,” said Bantree, when the two men reached the bottom of the rocky ravine at about the same time.

  Without a reply, Baines stepped forward, his rifle cocked and aimed at Bantree’s chest. He reached out and jerked the pistol from the holster on the outlaw’s hip. Shoving the pistol down into his belt, he gave Bantree a harsh stare. “Shame on you, Bobby. That poor fool didn’t have to die.” He made a twirling gesture with his gloved finger.

  “Yeah,” said Bantree, turning slowly in a full circle to show he had nothing behind his back, “if that poor fool had enough sense to keep his lip buttoned, me and him both would have given you the slip and been out of here.”

  Baines stared at him coldly. “What you mean is, if he’d kept quiet, you two would have ambushed me when I started up the hill.”