Anya looked swiftly at Yancey but the big man had obviously been expecting this. “Not likely, Reno ... It wouldn’t buy us anything.”
“Might,” Reno said, kneeling beside the girl and grabbing her short hair to yank her head back. She looked at him blankly as he placed the muzzle of Yancey’s gun against her temple. “Might save your kid sister a bad time, Banner ... You savvy?”
Yancey nodded, tensed, on a spot. “I savvy ... let me think about it.”
“Sure. That’s okay. Take all the time you want ... Long as you’ve decided by morning.” He uncocked the gun and stood up, ramming it into his belt with the Smith and Wesson. “Meantime, we’ll tie you up.”
There was nothing they could do but allow Reno to tie their wrists and ankles together while Lem stood guard with his rifle. Reno, testing the rawhide strips and satisfied, stood up, nodding to Lem, who lowered his rifle, came forward to drop to one knee by the girl, rifle butt resting on the ground. He twisted, his fingers in her hair, yanked her head back as Reno had done, then turned her face towards the fire, studying it closely.
“So you’re not a boy called Andy ... What’s your real name, sis?”
“An ... ” she began but stopped before she pronounced the last syllable. “Ann ... my name’s Ann,” she said.
Lem frowned, looking closely at her face again before shoving her back roughly. He went to the fire that Reno was building up. There was no need to worry about Indians now. They had avenged themselves on Mundy and would be long gone. Lem squatted down, staring across the flames towards Yancey and the girl.
“What’s ailin’ you, brother?” Reno asked, seeing the direction of Lem’s gaze. “You look kind of worried by that gal.”
“Yeah. She reminds me of someone ... That broad kind of face and head … ” He tensed abruptly. “By hell! Squarehead! Don’t she remind you of them squareheaded Swedes? Johansen and his wife. Huh? Don’t she, Reno?”
Anya and Yancey lay there quietly, both knotted up inside as the Slades stared hard at the girl. She flushed.
“What was their kid’s name?” Reno asked, without taking his eyes off the girl. “The one the woman kept callin’ out for? Wasn’t it Ann? Or Anna? No, Anya. That’s it. Anya! And she started to say somethin’ more than ‘Ann’ when you asked her her name ... Damned if you couldn’t be right, Lem!”
He leapt to his feet abruptly and strode across to Yancey. He towered above the bound man and kicked him hard in the side. Yancey fell onto his side. Reno went around him and kicked him until he pushed himself upright.
“And who does that make you, mister?” he gritted. “If the gal’s Anya Johansen, just who the hell’re you?”
Yancey’s teeth were bared in pain, his breath coming raggedly. “Yancey Banner ... and she’s my kid sister, Ann. Dunno who this Johansen is.”
“What you reckon, Lem?”
Lem shrugged. “I dunno ... the gal sure looks like that Johansen woman. But it don’t much matter for now. Let ’em sweat on it tonight. We’ll have another talk with ’em come sunup.” He grinned evilly. “I’ll start with the girl.”
The Slades went to take care of the horses and Yancey edged closer to the girl.
“With a little luck, we should be gone by morning,” he whispered and she started at his words.
“What? How? Oh, never mind. I’ve learnt by now that you don’t just talk to hear the sound of your voice, Yancey ... But what about Cato? D’you think he’s dead?”
Yancey’s mouth tightened. “I don’t know ... If I have to, I can try to convince them that I was lying all along and that he stole the gold from us, but I didn’t want to admit it. At least, that way they’ll look for him ... But, like I say, there’s a chance we’ll be out of here before sunup. It won’t be easy and, if they see us, it’ll be a shoot-out. They won’t waste any more time on us, Anya. They’ll shoot to kill.”
The girl nodded but said nothing as Reno and Lem came back.
“Chet must’ve been carryin’ both his own share and Jimi’s if he took all the horses,” Lem said, trying to figure things out all the time. “Might be we should look for those horses. Lot of dinero, Reno…”
“Injuns would’ve taken ’em.”
“Maybe not,” Lem said. “Chet would have had to let two of ’em go when the Injuns jumped him. They might’ve run off and still be runnin’. Could even have gone back the way he come and stayed around their campsite ... Can’t be too far off. I reckon we should take a look tomorrow.”
Reno shrugged, stretching out on his blankets. “Suit yourself.” He glanced once more at Yancey and the girl before settling back. “Check their bonds before you turn in, Lem.” Lem muttered but he did it, enjoying the grimace of pain on Anya’s face as he pulled the rawhide tight. Yancey kept his face blank, although Lem yanked hard enough for the rawhide strips to bite into his flesh. Lem curled a lip and gave him a casual kick in the ribs before, returning to his blanket and stretching out.
Yancey curled up and moved around to get comfortable as if ready to go to sleep. The girl lay on her side, eyes open, watching the two brothers on the far side of the dying fire.
Chapter Nine – Revenge … Not So Sweet
Johnny Cato figured he must have slept right through the day, for it was dark again when he came around. At first he thought it was still part of the same night but things had a different feel to them, some intangible thing that he couldn’t put a name to, but that he had come to recognize after years in the outdoors. Of his thirty-five years he figured he must have spent at least twenty outdoors, and that wasn’t counting his childhood on his parents’ farm back in Ohio. He would bet that this was another night and not the one on which he had killed the cougar.
His head was much clearer though his wound was painful, his left arm stiff and swollen. The cat’s carcass was still across his legs and he had a hard time working his way free, but he finally did it, sweating and gasping. There was moonlight and he could see the Mexican’s body still lying against the rocks, but, by the shape of it, he figured something had been at it. Likely vultures or coyotes ... He shuddered. He was lucky they hadn’t started on him.
He could also see the coffee pot lying half on its side and he crawled over to it, the effort making him dizzy so that he fell about four feet short of his objective. But he dragged himself the rest of the way and fumbled the cold metal to his mouth. There was maybe half a cup of bitter black liquid in the bottom, mixed with the dregs. He drank, nearly choked as some grounds caught his windpipe and then, when the coughing was past, he scooped out the ground-up beans and chewed on them. It was an effort to swallow them but the caffeine in them would stimulate him a little. The fire was long dead but he had enough light from the moon to see by.
When he had rested, he crawled back by the cougar’s body and got his gun. He reloaded awkwardly with his right hand but pushed cartridges into each of the eight chambers in the cylinder and then took a shot shell from his pocket and loaded it behind the special underslung barrel. He was exhausted but felt a heap better now that he was armed again.
Next thing was the wound. It was swollen and closed over so it had stopped bleeding, but likely infection was working on it. The flesh around it felt warm to the touch and he figured inflammation was spreading. He already had a poisoned hand, thanks to that damn one-eyed cat, and he figured he could lose his arm unless he did something to clean it up. He had no water or whisky, so it looked like the old frontiersman’s method was all that was left to him. He backed off from it for a spell, but his probing fingers told him there must have been all kinds of filth on that knife blade when it went in. If he didn’t face up to a little pain now, he might have to have his arm amputated or, worse, he would die. The latter was more likely out here.
Taking a deep breath, Cato probed at the wound again with his fingers, feeling the edges where they were stuck together with dried blood. He clamped his teeth together and forced the lips apart, almost fainting with the pain. Throbbing started almost immediatel
y and he beat the ground with his right fist, nearly insane with pain. But gradually it eased and he felt blood crawling across his flesh again. Blood or corruption, he couldn’t tell which. Now, for the next step ...
He fumbled a shotgun shell out of his pocket, picked at the crimped end with his thumbnail until he had it open and then spilled out the charge of buckshot. He pulled out the wad covering the powder and poured a small quantity directly into the wound. It stung fiercely and brought tears to his eyes. Then he poured some more until he had a small pyramid of black powder on his skin over the wound. He took out a vesta and sat there for a long time, making up his mind. Then, abruptly, deciding it had to be, he snapped the vesta into flame and touched it to the pile of powder. It flared instantly.
He screamed, a terrible sound of pure agony, and fell back almost unconscious ... Nothing was going to be easy. He remained just on the edge of consciousness for a long time, the pain refusing to let him fall into oblivion. Then, gradually, it subsided and shock crept through his body and his forehead sagged against the ground and he slept.
~*~
The Slades had searched Yancey for hidden weapons, but not well enough. There was a knife on him that they hadn’t found, simply because they hadn’t known where to look and, although the handle was in plain sight, they had not recognized it as such.
It was Yancey’s belt buckle. A heavy, square brass affair two-and-a-half inches wide, without a tongue. The billet end of his belt passed through the square brass frame and then hooked over a brass stud protruding from the buckle-end of the leather. Holes in the billet slipped over the stud to give adjustment. But that brass stud served two purposes: it also held the buckle itself to the belt, protruding through the leather from a stitched pocket. The stitching was in the traditional style and shape, running parallel to the belt edges for a few inches, before tapering in to meet in a point. If anyone looked closely, they would see that this resembled the outline of a knife blade, and that’s just what nested inside that pocket between the leather strips. The buckle was brazed to a steel blade, four inches long and an inch-and-a-quarter wide.
It was what the New Orleans riverboat gamblers termed a ‘pushknife’, though some had fancy ivory or pearl handles instead of the brass buckle. To free it, it was necessary to push the stud through the hole in the leather and then slide it out of the special pocket. It sounded easy and Yancey had done it many a time: it was basically a survival weapon, though he had used it to defend himself in a couple of tight corners. But he soon found out that someone else, especially with rawhide-bound hands, couldn’t free that blade quite so simply.
For one thing, you needed two hands, one to push the stud through the leather, the other to squeeze the belt so that the pocket opened up and allowed the blade to slip free. Anya simply couldn’t manage it with her hands constricted as they were behind her back. She even had trouble getting the belt tongue free of the buckle, though Yancey had sucked his stomach in to take the strain off. She had finally managed to feed it through the buckle frame but pushing that holding stud through its snug hole in the pocket wall seemed like an impossible job.
She had been trying on and off for an hour and now she collapsed on the ground beside him again, biting back a sob of frustration.
“It’s—no—use!” she gasped, shaking her head. “No—damn—use ... !”
“It’s got to come out!” Yancey gritted. “Damn you, gal, you got us into this mess! There’s a way out and it’s up to you to do your part! If you don’t, they’ll kill us both in the morning and what good’ll that do you? You want to see them dead for what they did to your parents, don’t you? ... Well, do something! Or they’ll just add us both to their list!”
The girl struggled into a sitting position again, turning her head to glare at Yancey in the dull firelight. “Damn you! Don’t you talk to me like that!”
Yancey smiled faintly at the new spirit in her voice. That little bit of prodding had done the trick. At least she was trying again and he could hear her biting back pain as her fingers scrabbled at the leather and the sharp edges of the stud, the nails breaking. He sucked in his stomach again.
“Don’t do that, goddamn you!” she whispered. “It’s better if you tense your muscles, give me something solid to press down against.”
So Yancey tensed his muscles as hard as he could and felt the pressure as she twisted her fingers around the edge of the belt, squeezing it against him so that the leather bowed apart. “That’s it!” he gritted. “That’s it!”
“Shut up!” She fumbled, straining, feeling her fingers slippery with blood as they tried to force the stud back through the hole in the leather.
Abruptly, she fell back against him and he heard the buckle-knife clatter to the ground. He looked across the glowing coals of the fire to where the Slades lay in their blankets. One of them was snoring. The other moved restlessly but did not awaken. Yancey released a breath through his teeth.
“Good work,” he whispered. “Now pick it up by the handle and I’ll turn around and you can start sawing at the rawhide ... If your hands are too cramped, just hold the blade steady and I’ll move my wrists.”
She didn’t reply but he felt her struggling and straining to get a grip on the buckle. Then she had it in her hands and nodded to him. He turned his back to her, felt gingerly about with his bound hands and pulled back quickly as the back of his hand touched the knife blade edge.
“Hold it the other way ... straight up and down,” he said. “Can you manage?”
“I’ll ... manage,” she panted, fumbling again until she had the short blade vertical. “That’s the best I can do ... I can hardly feel my fingers. I think you had better move your hands ... If I start sawing, I’ll probably cut your hand off.”
Yancey smiled faintly. At least there was a touch of humor left in her: she sure didn’t give up easy, this gal, and she had been through some pretty tough situations, coming straight from finishing school. She had plenty of spunk. He felt the cold steel slide across his flesh and then make contact with the twisted rawhide bonds.
He began to move his hands up and down the blade edge, knowing it was going to take time and hoping the Slades didn’t waken to build up the fire, for it was turning cold at this late hour. He felt the girl shivering, but whether from cold or exertion he didn’t know.
He kept sawing away at the rawhide, wanting to tell Anya to hold the damn blade steadier, but not having the heart to put any more stress on her.
~*~
The pain woke Cato again and there was no casual transition from sleep to full consciousness. One second he was in feverish sleep, the next he was wide awake, groaning, clutching the cauterized wound. God almighty it was sore! If he even so much as flicked a finger, knives of red hot agony stabbed through his whole arm, shoulder and neck. Well, if that flash of gunpowder hadn’t killed off the infection, then he would just have to lose the arm: there wasn’t anything else he could do, except to bind it up with his kerchief.
It was an awkward and painful job but he managed it somehow and then he sat, back sweating, feeling it begin to chill on his flesh. He shivered, at first thinking that it was fever causing the rigor, but suddenly realizing that the stars were gone and the moon was down. It was the black hour before dawn. He was beginning to doze again when he jerked awake, instinctively snatching up his six-gun, barely able to hold the heavy Manstopper in his weakened condition.
What was it that had brought him awake with such a start, he wondered. Some noise, familiar but unexpected at this time ... There it was again and he couldn’t believe his ears. He figured it must be delirium. That was the click of a shod horse’s hoof against rock.
He cocked the heavy gun, holding it across his midriff, hoping he would have the strength to lift it and fire if the rider proved to be an enemy.
He struggled to a more upright position as the hoof beats came closer. The horse whickered and he figured the rider wasn’t very cautious or he didn’t realize anyone was here, this
close.
Then he jumped as the horse suddenly came into the circle of rocks: he could just make out its darker shape against the sky. It was riderless.
He didn’t believe it: a riderless, saddled horse walking into camp this way, just when he needed it. But when he pulled himself upright by the stirrup, he felt the heavy tooling of the big Mexican saddle and knew it must be Jiminez’s mount, come back of its own accord. Jiminez had always been very close to his horse, had trained it like a trick-horse ... And now it had come looking for its master. So Mundy could not be far away. Cato no longer cared. He was interested only in the canteen hanging from the saddle horn and whatever food he could find in those big saddlebags.
By the time the first pale touch of gray appeared in the eastern sky, Cato was feeling strong enough to ride. He managed to get aboard the horse without too much difficulty by climbing onto a rock beside it, but the jar of settling into leather brought a groan to his lips. He looped the reins around his right wrist, touched his heels to the horse and set it walking, his only thought now to try to find Yancey and, if that was impossible, then to make for the rendezvous.
~*~
The sky was beginning to pale in the east before Yancey felt the last strand of rawhide part and he sagged, bringing his hands around to the front of him, shaking them to try to get some circulation working. The wrists were gashed in several places where he had slipped against the blade, but there were no serious wounds. He heard the buckle knife clatter to the ground as Anya released it with a little moan. It had been a strain and he wished the knife edge had been sharper, but if was not possible to keep it too finely honed or it would cut through the stitching of the pocket. He figured that, if he got out of this deal alive, he would have that pocket stitched with wire in future so he could put a razor edge on the knife blade. But he was free now and that was the main thing. The Slades were still sleeping, though he didn’t figure they would be for much longer. He untied the ankle cords swiftly.
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