by Hondo Jinx
Spotting Braddock, the wounded horse-man roared in his ugly language and rolled his front quarters back and forth, trying to stand.
“Don’t bother,” Braddock told him, sliding the Henry into its boot. “Your back is broke.”
Braddock unfastened the tomahawk he’d taken off a dead Blackfoot three summers past.
The broken raider hawked up phlegm and spat in Braddock’s direction.
He had grit. Braddock had to give him that.
Braddock drew back his arm and hurled the slender ax. It tumbled end over end and whacked to a stop, buried deep in the horse-man’s skull like a chopping ax in a softwood stump.
There was no time to retrieve the weapon.
Up the trail Braddock rode. Maybe the final horse-man was waiting for him, but Braddock was all out of options, and he would sooner die than abandon Elizabeth O’Boyle.
But there was no ambush. Atop the ridge the land flattened out, and the thick hillside pines gave way to an open stand of towering hardwoods with shafts of sunlight sparkling in the wide spaces between the massive trunks.
A hundred yards away, the last raider stood in one of those shafts of illumination. He had Elizabeth thrown over one shoulder like a gunny sack.
Down on the ground, several short, stocky men with bows and spears gathered before him, listening as the horse-man barked commands.
Braddock smoothed a hand over the buckskin’s neck, stilling the beast, then shouldered the Henry, filled the sights with glossy black, and pulled the trigger.
The horse-man’s head exploded like a melon.
Elizabeth cried out, falling as the dead raider toppled.
Braddock swung the barrel and fired three times as fast as he could work the lever, targeting the archers first.
His gunshots echoed like thunderclaps across the hilltop forest. The bewildered spearmen fell into crouches beside the dead bowmen.
Elizabeth ran.
One of the stocky men popped up, drew back his spear, and fell dead as Braddock’s rifle boomed again.
Elizabeth whipped away through the trees.
The two remaining spearmen fled in the opposite direction and disappeared between tall timbers.
Braddock let them go and rode after Elizabeth, cutting an angle to head her off.
For a second she disappeared, but he spotted a flash of red hair and blue fabric plunging into a stand of tall ferns where the forest dipped into a shadowy gulley.
Reaching the edge of the ferns, Braddock judged Elizabeth’s trajectory by the wobbling of their curly tips.
“Wait here,” he told the buckskin, then dismounted and slipped into the ferns after the terrified woman.
Her trail was so obvious, a blind man could’ve tracked her walking backwards.
He caught up to her as she broke from the ferns and started scaling the opposite side of the gulley.
Hearing him, Elizabeth whirled with a desperate yawp, eyes flashing, teeth bared, fists raised like a boxer.
“Relax,” Braddock said, and stopped in his tracks, giving her a moment to come to her senses.
For a second, Elizabeth reeled with terror, more animal than woman. Then she lowered her fists, panting for breath and staring warily.
“It’s you, the one they call Wrangler.”
Braddock nodded, wanting to get back to the buckskin.
The stocky spearmen had probably hightailed it off the mountain, but Braddock wouldn’t risk his horse on that assumption.
“Come on.” Half turning, he gestured for Elizabeth to follow.
She hesitated, bosom heaving, and pierced him with her magnificent blue eyes. A bad scrape marked one cheek. Blood trickled from her split lower lip, which pouted with swelling.
Her hair had unparcelled into a wild and fiery tangle. The sleeve of her blue blouse was torn, and all of her, from the tips of disarrayed locks to the hem of her long plaid skirt, was spattered in gore and spackled with dirt and twigs and leaves.
Braddock walked into the ferns.
A few seconds later, he heard her follow. Slowly at first then faster until she was on his heels.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
Braddock stopped and raised a finger to his lips.
She seized his wrist. “Where are they?”
“Be quiet.”
“Tell me,” she demanded in a whisper.
“Later.” He started walking again.
Elizabeth rushed up beside him. “Where are we?”
He shrugged.
“Are there more of them?”
He nodded.
“Those men were centaurs. Mythological creatures. It isn’t possible, but that’s what they were. Do you understand?”
He nodded again, wishing she would shut up.
“I tried to break free. I bit the centaur’s arm, but it was like biting an ax handle. He just smiled at me, and—”
“Hush or you will get us killed.”
Elizabeth exhaled. “I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet. Just get me back to the wagon train.”
Braddock didn’t reckon that was possible. But now was not the time to explain, so he said nothing, led her through the ferns, and mounted up.
When he extended a hand, Elizabeth hesitated.
Which didn’t surprise him. Frightened people build up courage only to lose it again a moment later.
He scanned the forest. It was cool and quiet and, despite the corpses, quite lovely.
Elizabeth stood there wringing her hands. Then she gasped and held out her bloody palms, apparently noticing the gore for the first time.
She whimpered, eyes bulging as she patted her dress. Then she lifted her hands to the clotted mess of her hair and moaned with disgust.
Braddock snapped his fingers and held out his hand again.
Elizabeth stared at the outstretched hand for a second.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
Elizabeth shifted her gaze to his face, let out a shuddering breath, and slid her hand into his.
He hauled her up behind him and started back the way they had come, moving slowly and scanning the forest, doing his best to ignore the feel of her arms cinched around his middle and the way her body felt, pressing against his back.
How strange it felt to no longer ride alone.
Braddock was good at taking care of himself. He didn’t mind discomfort and didn’t much fear pain or even death.
But Elizabeth’s vulnerability suffused the moment with a breathless tension.
This woman needed him.
And riding through the unfamiliar forest, he sensed fate hanging in a balance that lay outside his control.
It was a strange feeling.
Braddock wondered, as they reentered the path and started down the steep hillside toward the river, if this might be what fear felt like.
3
After reloading the six-shooters and topping off the Henry’s fifteen-round tube magazine, Braddock braced his boot on the dead centaur’s skull and yanked the tomahawk free.
The dead raider was easily twenty hands at the withers with the upper body of a man who, had he walked on two legs of equal proportion, would have stood eight feet or taller.
Facing one of these things without a firearm would be suicide.
Sitting motionless atop the mustang, Elizabeth stared blankly through the bloody curtain of her disheveled hair.
Braddock patted the saddle in front of her. “Scooch forward.”
For a second, Elizabeth just stared. Not at Braddock. At the saddle. Then she moved forward and grabbed the pommel.
“Can you ride?” he asked.
She nodded.
He handed her the reins. “Stay behind me, you hear?”
With his rifle at the ready, Braddock started down the path. Elizabeth followed on the buckskin, who knew enough to tend a healthy gap.
At the bottom of the hill, Braddock scanned the knee-deep river and the meadow beyond.
Carrion birds that looked like crows with
crimson epaulets hopped among the dead, pecking and squabbling and pulling bloody scraps from shattered heads of the centaurs.
The O’Boyle wagon lay on its side. The tongue jutted at an unfortunate angle between the shattered front wheels. The schooner’s torn canvas lay pinned to the mossy riverbank by the things Elizabeth and her father had packed to start a new life in Wyoming.
Braddock crossed the river warily. The buckskin followed.
The carrion birds scattered, cawing loudly.
Seeing the wagon, Elizabeth roused from her semi-catatonic state. She dismounted and rushed forward, looking from the wreck to the meadow above. “Where is the portal?”
“Hush.”
“Don’t tell me to hush. Where is the portal? Take me back.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Listen to me. We have to go back to the wagon train.”
“We can’t go back.”
Elizabeth blinked at him.
“We can’t stay here, either,” he told her. “It’s too dangerous. We have to find someplace to hole up for the night.”
“Leave this spot? You must be joking. We can’t wander off. We have stay here. We have to find the door.”
“It’s gone.”
“It will reopen. I know it will.”
“No, it won’t.”
She rushed forward and grabbed his shirt, eyes flashing. “Why would you say something so cruel?”
“Because that big, ugly witchdoctor laying over yonder was the one who made the door, and it disappeared when I put a bullet through his head.”
“What?” Elizabeth screeched. “Why did you do that? Why didn’t you just threaten him?”
Braddock turned away. If somebody refuses to talk sense, it’s best to save your breath.
“Where are you going?”
“Away. All this racket you’re making, they’re sure to come.”
She grabbed his arm and turned him around and stared at him with huge eyes. “Who is sure to come?”
“I don’t know. I just know I don’t want to be here when they arrive.”
“Wait. Take me with you.”
He looked at her. “Darlin, you’re welcome to tag along. But this is Indian country, so we must adhere to the two main rules of surviving in hostile territory: keep your gun handy and your mouth shut.”
Elizabeth trembled. Her big blue eyes glistened with the tears, but she was bravely trying to hold them back.
Braddock liked that. It meant she had grit. And he reckoned she would need plenty of sand to survive here.
Reaching the overturned wagon, he studied the spilled contents. “Gather the most valuable and portable items and then we’ll hightail it out of here.”
“And go where?”
“Away. We can work out the details later.”
Sorting through the debris, Braddock ignored large items like the iron stove and butter churn and the fancy clock with brass works and a cracked face plate.
He lifted a patchwork quilt from the ground and threw it over his saddle.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth asked.
Apparently, she had already forgotten his simple plan. Which didn’t surprise him much. Most folks fall apart when the lead flies, then keep falling apart after the shooting’s over.
He crouched down, popped the latches on a wooden case, and smiled at the surgical tools inside.
Elizabeth seized his shoulder. “What are doing with father’s tools?”
Braddock closed the case and handed it to her and pointed to the horse. “Get a piggin’ strip out of that gunnysack and tie this to the saddle.”
She took the case but just stood there.
There wasn’t time to argue. Instead, he ignored her and rifled through the other goods quickly. “Every second we linger, trouble draws closer. That is the nature of life, darlin.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
Braddock reckoned she was probably sliding back into confusion and terror, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about that now. Vaguely, he noted the irony of his situation. For weeks, he had admired this woman like he had never admired another.
Now, they were stranded together in this strange world, and all he wanted from her was silence and some help tying down gear.
He pocketed a pair of spyglasses and a box of matches. “We’re out in the open with high ground on both sides, and don’t know anything about this land or its dangers. We need cover. The woods will do for now, but I hope to find a cave.”
Smashed like an egg on the rocks, a wooden barrel leaked bacon and bran. Next to it, expensive-looking leather work gloves lay tangled in coils of heavy rope.
All of this was valuable. But how could they transport it?
Braddock opened a large trunk and dumped linens and pillows and stacks of neatly folded clothing onto the mossy ground, pausing briefly to examine a suit coat of fine materials.
Too small. By a stretch.
“What are you doing with father’s clothes?”
Braddock ignored Elizabeth and kept moving, filling the emptied chest with things far more valuable than finery.
In went a hammer, a sack of nails, an adze, and a gimlet; a sewing kit, tin tableware, and a wooden ladle; soap, a washbowl, several candles, and a mold to make more. Around these items, he packed rice, dried beans, salt, and coffee, hoping to reduce and muffle clanking.
He shut the case, found it heavy and hard-edged, and reckoned he would carry it himself. Later, once they were some distance removed from this place, he would rig a way to load it onto the buckskin.
Elizabeth secured the medical case and threw a few blankets over the saddle.
Which meant she had come around again, at least for now.
Good.
She tugged at a suitcase, trying to extricate it from a pile of tools.
Braddock wanted the spade and pick, the shovel and augers, and especially the big, double-bladed ax. If they were stuck here, they would need these tools. The hoe and scythe, too. Even the plow.
The mustang lifted his head, and his ears set to twitching.
Many times in the past, the stallion’s keen ears had saved Braddock, so he tapped Elizabeth’s shoulder and gestured downstream, away from where the buckskin was staring.
“Just a moment,” Elizabeth protested. “Oh, my poor suitcase is terribly scratched.”
The horse snorted, and his big muscles rippled with apprehension.
Braddock grabbed Elizabeth’s arm and pulled her away from the suitcase.
“Release me this instant!” she demanded and pulled her arm free.
Across the canyon on the other side of the meadow, branches snapped loudly within the forested hillside. It sounded like a boulder was tumbling downhill. Treetops shook.
Braddock grabbed Elizabeth’s tiny waist in both hands and threw her over his shoulder.
She cried out and started beating on his back with her fists.
Braddock draped her over the stallion’s withers. The buckskin stamped nervously and stared across the meadow, his huge eyes rolling.
Elizabeth struggled, shaking her shapely bottom back and forth. “What are you doing?”
Even the sight of Elizabeth’s lovely posterior couldn’t pull Braddock’s eyes from the huge thing that lumbered out of the forest three hundred yards away.
It looked like a cinnamon-colored grizzly bear. Only no bear on earth was half that large. The thing had to be fifteen feet at the shoulder.
The bear threw back its head and shook the canyon with a tremendous bellow.
Elizabeth screamed.
Braddock mounted up in a hurry. The stallion bolted downstream, hooves pounding over the grassy strip flanking the base of the embankment.
“Here it comes!” Elizabeth shouted choppily.
Braddock glanced back and saw the giant bear charging after them.
Fast.
The buckskin charged downstream like a champion racehorse, but the bear was faster. Much faster.
Eliza
beth yodeled with alarm, bouncing up and down.
Braddock leaned forward over the sprinting horse’s neck, pinning the young woman in place, and glanced back again.
With every lunge, the huge bear devoured the gap and pitched hunks of sod high into the air behind it.
Braddock scanned the unfamiliar landscape, looking for someplace to hide. Here and there clustered boulders might have provided cover against human pursuers. But he saw nowhere to hide from the giant bear, which had already eaten half the distance between them.
Spotting another game trail on the heavily forested hillside across the river, Braddock angled the stallion in that direction.
“What are doing?” Elizabeth squawked. “Keep going! It’s getting closer!”
Braddock led the horse into the river, balancing speed with caution. If they went too fast and the buckskin broke its leg, they would be bear food.
Elizabeth screamed, too frightened for words.
Behind them the gigantic bear hit the river with a crystalline explosion of water. The massive snout yawned wide, baring fangs the size of Bowie knives. Its roar boomed like a high-country flash flood.
Twenty feet away now. Fifteen. Ten.
The buckskin slipped into the gap between the trees and scampered up the trail.
The bear slammed into the forest’s edge, snapping trees. A great paw shot into the trail, swiping at the horse. Scimitar claws slashed saplings in half, missing the mustang’s hind quarters by mere inches.
The bellowing bear raged, straining fruitlessly against thicker timbers, still batting as the stallion fled uphill.
A thunderhead of emotion burst in Braddock’s chest.
“What are you doing?” Elizabeth squawked, sounding incredulous. “Why in the world would you laugh at a time like this?”
Her shock made him laugh all the harder. Patting the buckskin’s neck, Braddock said, “Because we’re still alive, darlin.”
4
Braddock turned the mustang in a slow circle, stunned by the beautiful hilltop meadow and its panoramic views.
The sun, dipping toward the horizon, stretched their slender shadows across the swaying field, which spread away like a pioneer’s dream: hundreds of level acres of waving grass atop a broad plateau surrounded by breathtaking landscapes.