Between Hell and Texas

by Ralph Cotton

  Now he watched her pad barefoot across the stone floor through the early morning shadows of the hacienda. When she was no longer in sight he waited for a moment, listening until he heard the slight creak of the front door closing. Then he looked out the half-raised window of the bedroom and saw her in the side yard. First he saw her through wavering panes of glass, then more clearly when he lowered his level of vision and saw her beneath the raised window edge.

  Rosa…he murmured silently to himself.

  In the thin dawn light she became ghostlike, still naked but wearing his tall boots. Dawson thought of her sister as he watched her gather mesquite twigs and oak kindling and strike up a small fire in the chimnea. It troubled him that he thought so often of Rosa as he held Carmelita, that he smelled the scent of Rosa even as he pressed his face into Carmelita’s hair. In the height of his passion it was nonetheless Rosa he tasted, Rosa he caressed. And it was Rosa whose body surrendered, and shuddered, and received him without hesitance, without question.

  Stop it, he told himself.

  The woman he saw in the soft glow of firelight from the chimnea needn’t be held in second place to any woman, living or dead. Yet, being honest to himself, he knew it was her likeness to her sister that had drawn him here. It was some crazed hope that he might lose himself in Carmelita, at least until the pain of losing Rosa became more bearable. How wrong was it, he asked himself, his hand falling idly to the mending incisions on his lower belly. Carmelita knew nothing of his loving her sister. So if he treated her right, if he gave back to her as much as he took, if he held her special…if she never knew otherwise, was that so wrong?

  He did not attempt to answer the question he asked himself, because he knew an honest answer would not suit him. Instead, he relaxed on his side, watching her through the waver of glass and silver morning air as she picked up the metal coffeepot from a row of pegs on the weathered sideboard and stepped out of sight toward the well. He saw her return moments later and place the filled pot atop the fire. Dawson marveled how, at any particular time, Carmelita might appear and suddenly remind him so much of Rosa that it would almost take his breath.

  Stoking the small fire with a stick, Carmelita pretended not to know he was watching her until she had picked up a tiny twig with her free hand and quickly threw it against the window. Then she smiled and faced him from where she sat stooped in front of the chimnea in his tall, brush-scarred boots, her skin aglow in the firelight. “It is not polite to watch someone when they do not know it.”

  “Sorry,” said Dawson.

  Carmelita shrugged. “You should get up and come join me,” she said. “Sometimes coffee boils quicker when two people are watching it.”

  Standing up from the bed, Dawson picked up his trousers from a chair back and said, “I believe I will then. It’s time I start earning my keep here.”

  She looked around and saw him step into his trousers. She smiled softly to herself and gazed into the fire until she heard him close the front door behind himself. This was the first time in a week that he had gotten up as early as she did. She knew that for a man to grow restless of recuperating was a good sign. Cray Dawson had come to her very near death, over a week ago, she reminded herself. She had done all that was in her power to save him. She had fed and nursed him, and teased and seduced. She had brought to him all a woman could bring to a wounded man, to help heal both his body and his spirit. “Be careful you do not step on a scorpion or a snake,” she said over her bare shoulder to him as he walked barefoot across the yard.

  “Any snake or scorpion out at this time of morning is looking to get stepped on,” he said, his voice stronger than it had been since he’d arrived.

  He stooped down beside her and spread a blanket over her bare back. “There,” he said. “The morning air is still cold, I thought you might want this.”

  She could have told him that the heat of the fire was more than enough, and that she enjoyed being naked at this time of morning, aglow in firelight, and that yes, she enjoyed his eyes upon her. But she knew by now that Cray Dawon was a modest man, as most men were when they were sober, when they were wounded, or when they were in some other sense vulnerable. She smiled patiently into the fire and said “Si, gracias,” gathering the blanket across her breasts.

  A moment of silence passed, then Dawson said, “I think I ought to take the buckboard up into the hills and chop some firewood this morning.”

  “If you feel like it.” She nodded.

  “We’ll be needing it before long,” he said.

  “Si, before long,” she said, realizing that this was his way of saying he would not be leaving her, at least not for a while longer.

  She noted to herself that the amount of firewood he brought back today would be significant in measuring what time they had left together. Men…She knew that leaving had already crossed his mind, and she knew that being the kind of man he was he would be wondering how she would take it when it came time for him to tell her good-bye. She’d only been with him a week, yet that was long enough for her to know that he was a good man. He would feel guilty leaving her, although he had never said that he loved her, nor had she said such a thing to him. Even if they had spoken such words to one another, she would have realized it was only in their passion, or perhaps in his pain. She would not hold him accountable to anything when it came time for him to leave.

  She gazed into the fire until at length he cupped her cheek in his hand and said, as if having heard her thoughts, “I can’t tell you how much it means to me being here with you.” He looked into her eyes as if seeing in them a familiarity that was puzzling to her. “I don’t think I could have gone much longer the shape I was in. I don’t think I even wanted to go on much longer.”

  “But you are stronger now, si?” she asked, leaning back slightly, letting the blanket slip down below her shoulders.

  “Si—Yes,” he said, “I am stronger now. I have you to thank for it.”

  Carmelita shrugged it off. “You feel well enough to chop wood all morning?” she asked, a smile forming on her face as she let the blanket fall farther down her back, the glow of the firelight dancing on her skin and glistening in her raven hair.

  Dawson sensed what she was up to, returning her smile. “Yes, I feel like I could do most anything today,” he said.

  “Good.” Carmelita let the blanket fall and she hiked herself up and spread it loosely beneath her on the ground. She lay back onto her elbows and kept her knees bent and spread, the heels of the boots rocking back and forth slowly, invitingly. “Then now it is my turn.”

  “Lord, yes, Carmelita!” Cray Dawson gasped, “I’d say it is.”

  In the crackling glow of firelight they made love until daylight spilled bright and clear over the eastern edge of the earth. When they had finished with one another, they lay sated on the blanket catching the last cool, lingering breeze off of the hills north of the hacienda. Dawson in his modesty slipped his trousers back on, but Carmelita seemed to take great pleasure in lying naked in the heat of the fire and the first rays of morning sunlight. On his side facing her, Dawson caressed her stomach gently and said, “I will never doubt the healing properties of sleeping with a beautiful woman.”

  She smiled with her eyes closed, luxuriating beneath his warm touch. “Oh, you think I am beautiful? Really beautiful?” she said.

  “I think you are about one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen,” Dawson said, knowing in his heart that while his words were true, the image of Rosa loomed near.

  “One of the most…” said Carmelita, dreamily, with her eyes still closed. She let her words trail, not pursuing any more on the matter. Cray Dawson fell silent for a moment until Carmelita asked, “Should I prepare something for you to take with you to eat?”

  “No,” said Dawson, letting his hand lie still on her flat stomach. “I won’t be gone over a few hours. I’ll eat when I get back.”

  “Then you must eat before you leave,” she said.

  “I’m
not hungry right now,” Dawson replied.

  “Still, I will fix you something from the cupboard while the fire is still burning,” she said, standing and stepping out of his tall boots before turning and walking toward the hacienda. Dawson sat up and watched her, enjoying the sight of her, naked in the morning light.

  Before she returned, Dawson had stood up and pulled on his boots and fastened the loose waist of his trousers. As he did so he caught the sharp glint of sunlight on metal coming from the nearby line of low, jagged hills. For a second he felt himself tense up, wondering if he had just stood in somebody’s gun sight.

  Then, without hurrying or turning his eyes in that direction, he walked to the hacienda and met Carmelita as she came out the door carrying a bowl of fresh corn tortillas and beans to be reheated from the night before. She had slipped on a thin cotton dress and pulled her hair back with a ribbon tie. Seeing the look on Dawson’s face, she asked, “What is wrong?” as he guided her back inside.

  “Probably nothing,” Dawson said, closing the door, but leaving it slightly cracked, enough for him to look through and scan the hillsides. “I caught a flash of something from up there. Let’s just play it safe.”

  “Play it safe how?” Carmelita said, closing the thin cotton dress at her throat.

  “By going on with what we were doing,” said Dawson. “Only I’m going to circle around the trail on horseback instead of taking the wagon. If someone has been watching us, maybe I can catch them by surprise.”

  “Someone been watching us?” Carmelita’s expression turned concerned at the possibility of what someone might have seen them doing in the earlier hour of morning. “How— How long?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dawson. “There might be nothing to it. But that’s what I intend to find out.”

  On a flat terrace of rock, partially hidden by a pile of broken boulders and scrub juniper, Jewel Higgs lowered his battered army telescope and closed it between his gloved hands. With a sigh he said, “Looks like the show is over, boys. It’s been almost an hour. She ain’t come out since Dawson left.”

  “Damn it,” said Eddie Grafe, the youngest of the three gunmen. He stood high in his stirrups and squinted toward the distant hacienda below. “I didn’t get to see near enough!”

  “Hummph.” Joe Poole spit and ran a hand across his mouth. “If you saw any more, it could cause you to do something to embarrass yourself.” He and Jewel Higgs laughed in unison.

  Eddie Grafe scowled at them. “What’s so damn funny? I don’t get it!”

  “Think about it for a while,” said Joe Poole. “It’ll come to you.”

  “I’ve got no time for figuring out what you two gun buzzards think is funny,” said Grafe. Looking down at the empty yard of the hacienda, he changed the subject by saying, “Man, I ain’t never seen a woman look that good, straight-up naked in my whole life! Now that he’s rode off, it wouldn’t take much for me to trot down, snatch that woman up under my arm, and take off with her.”

  “If I was a few years younger I might join you,” said Jewel Higgs, staring down at the hacienda.

  “Let’s not get sidetracked, boys,” said Joe Poole. “Don’t forget, we was sent to check on Crayton Dawson…see what he’s up to.”

  “Well, we sure as hell seen that,” Jewel Higgs chuckled. “He’s up to his neck in warm woman! By God! What does a man have to do to deserve something like that?”

  “I never seen a big gun yet who didn’t have women falling all over him,” said Poole. “It’s enough to make me sick.” He backed his horse a step and turned it. “I guess we just as well get on back to town. Hell, we spent all day yesterday and last night looking for Dawson. I reckon Lematte ought to show us some gratitude.” He rubbed his thumb and finger together in the universal sign of greed. “Maybe a little special bonus, since we had to track him all the way from that shack to here.”

  “Good luck getting a bonus from Lematte,” Eddie Grafe said sullenly, jerking his horse around beside Poole.

  The three rode a rough switchback trail seventy-five yards around the hillside until they came to a larger trail that meandered down toward a stretch of flatlands. After a contemplative silence Eddie Grafe said, “I don’t know about you two, but I’m coming back to see more of that woman, first chance I get. Do you suppose she runs around naked like that all the time? Because if she does, I’m half of a mind to bring Lenz and Collins and charge them a dollar or two just to—”

  His words cut short as a rifle shot exploded from a ridgeline above them. The shot ricocheted off of a rock and whined upward an inch from Jewel Higgs’s ear. “Jesus!” Higgs shouted. His horse spooked and reared high as he ducked away from the whistling bullet. As the horse touched down, Higgs flew forward, headlong out of his saddle onto the hard rocky ground, his forehead slamming hard against the earth.

  “Jewel is shot dead!” shouted Joe Poole, snatching for his pistol with one hand as he tried to settle his horse with his other. Above them a succession of rifle shots exploded, kicking up dirt and loose rock around the hooves of the already spooked horses.

  “Run for it!” screamed Eddie Grafe. “They’ve got us surrounded!”

  Twenty yards above the trail, Cray Dawson stood up, watching the two gunmen race their terrified horses along the widening trail toward Somos Santos. Dust billowed high in their wake. Looking almost straight down, Dawson saw Jewel Higgs’s horse making a wild run for the flatlands. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and sent a bullet pounding into the dirt in front of the horse, causing it to spin and run back and forth aimlessly along the switchback trail past its downed rider. Dawson watched and waited until the horse settled into a restless trot. Then Dawson cradled his rifle in his arm, walked back to where he’d left his horse, and rode it down to the lower trail.

  Chapter 8

  Twenty minutes had passed before Jewel Higgs responded to the persistent nudge of Cray Dawson’s rifle barrel in his ribs. Having caught the loose horse and hitched it to a rock spur, Dawson had rolled the unconscious man onto his back with the toe of his boot and winced at the large goose-egg knot on his forehead. He’d lifted the pistol from Higgs’s holster and shoved it down inside his belt. By the time Higgs groaned in acknowledgment of Dawson’s rifle barrel, Dawson had untied the man’s bandanna, soaked it with water from a canteen, and held it ready for when he awakened.

  “Jesus, God almighty, what hit me?” Higgs moaned as the pain sliced through his head. He raised a dirt-streaked hand to his forehead, but upon touching the knot his eyes rolled up into his head in agony. “It’s like…a hammer striking an anvil in my head.”

  Dawson could see that it pained him to even talk. “Here, put this on it,” he said, holding the wet rag down to him without taking the tip of the rifle barrel away from his chest.

  Jewel Higgs looked first at the rifle barrel, then up at Dawson’s face. “Obliged, Mister,” he said. Then as recollection caught up to him he asked in a strained, halting voice, “You— You didn’t kill Joe Poole and Eddie Grafe, did you?”

  Dawson noted the two names for future reference. “If you mean the two men riding with you, no,” said Dawson. “They lit out and left you laying in the dirt.”

  Higgs took the wet rag and touched it carefully to his forehead. “That figures,” he said flatly, the pain in his forehead throbbing with no letup. “I never…left a pal behind in my life. First time something…like this happens to me, there they go.” He looked hurt and disgusted. “It’s a wonder they didn’t steal my boots, I reckon. If you hadn’t been up there shooting at us…I expect they would have.”

  “What were you doing up here, anyway?” asked Dawson. “I mean, besides watching something that was none of your business.”

  “We was looking down that way…but we never saw nothing, Mister,” said Higgs, his face reddening. “I swear we never. It’s too far away.”

  “Even with this?” asked Dawson, taking the dusty telescope from inside his shirt and wagging it back and forth.

&nb
sp; “Well, hell, all right. You got me straight up,” said Higgs, holding the wet rag to his forehead as he spoke. “It ain’t something worth killing a man over, is it?”

  “No,” said Dawson, “it’s not.”

  “I mean…if you two hadn’t been doing it, we couldn’t have been watching. Any red-blooded man sees something like that going on, Lord!” said Higgs, shaking his head carefully. “I reckon he’s bound to watch for a little while. Just long enough to see what’s—”

  “That’s enough,” said Dawson, cutting him off. Now it was his face that reddened. “I told you it’s not worth killing a man over.” He stuck the telescope back inside his shirt. “But that wasn’t what you came here to see. Who are you? What were you doing here?”

  “All right, I’m going to be honest with you, Mister Dawson,” Higgs said, wincing slightly from the pain. “We knew who you are. Martin Lematte sent us to check up on you. He was worried that you might be coming back to Somos Santos to even the score for what Henry Snead did to you.”

  “Henry Snead?” Dawson asked. “Is that the name of the man who hit me?”

  “Are you going to tell anybody I told you?” Higgs asked, slipping a glance back and forth as if someone might be listening.

  “No, I won’t tell,” said Dawson.

  “All right then, yes, it was Henry Snead who hit you. He’s a tough hombre…it’s nothing to be ashamed of, being beaten up by Snead.” He looked Dawson up and down, appraising him, then asked, “What was wrong with you anyway? You don’t look like a weakling. One punch in the gut and you folded like a busted army tent.”

  Dawson wasn’t about to tell him about his stomach wound. Instead he said, “I was just caught off guard, that’s all. It never happened before. It won’t happen again.”

  “Can I have a drink of that water?” asked Higgs, pointing his free hand toward the canteen hanging by its strap from Dawson’s shoulder.

  “Sure,” said Dawson, dropping it off his shoulder and handing it down to him. “Why did Lematte think I would blame him? Does this Snead fellow work for him?”