He dropped the shirt in the water where the soap bubbles popped on the surface and said, "Oh, my," before he picked it back up again and tossed it in the pile. Ruth didn't even look. Then he saw the feverfew flowers were still in the road, trampled now to muddy pulp.
Bob snapped his fingers at Ruth, "Make sure my shirt gets cleaned next, woman."
Ruth looked sideways at him and said, "Sure thing, Bob."
"You sassing me, girl?"
"Not at all, Bob."
Bob went down to the edge of the water until it ran over the edge of his boots and leaned forward, "You best not be sassing me. I'm the lieutenant of this outfit and what I say goes before anybody else as far as it concerns the likes of you."
Ruth kept her eyes on the laundry in her hand, "I understand."
"You deserve to be talked to like this, because you chose this. I offered you something else. Something better, but apparently you'd rather wash clothes and whore than have a respectable life."
Ruth turned to say something but stopped at the sight of Bob's red face, his shaking hands resting so close to the menacing gun strapped across his narrow hips. There was no one close enough to hear her in time if he snapped. "Bob, I just don't think it could work is all," she said. "I don't want to get my hopes up. Everyone seems pretty sure we're getting sold in the next few days."
"So that's what you think but it ain't what you know," he said. "All you ever needed to say was the word and I'd have gone and taken care of it."
"Okay, Bob."
"You want me to go and find out?"
"If that's what you want me to do."
"I guess that's the only way we'll know for sure, ain't it?"
Bob hitched up his pants and turned to head back up to the camp. Gentleman Jim was standing at the top of the hill looking down, "Didn't I tell you to burn that itjin?"
Bob hurried up to him and said, "I am on my way back there right now to make sure it's finished."
"I already made sure of that for you, Bob. Why do I need a lieutenant if I have to run around double-checking everything, Bob?"
"I don't know that I have a good answer for that. Maybe I'm too distracted. There's something I need to talk to you about. A favor I need to ask."
"A favor?" Jim said. "You wait until after you screw up to ask a favor? Must be a daisy."
Bob took as deep a breath as he could manage and let the air out real slow, taking the time to sum up his courage all in one breath and say, "I want to buy Ruth off you. Whatever you were gonna get from those men, I'll match it. I'll pay more. Anything it takes."
Gentleman Jim stared at Bob in confusion, not knowing whether to smile or not. "You being serious?"
"I got a little bit of money. I got this gun. You can have both, plus my share of whatever I earned with you. If that ain't enough, we can draw up a contract real official and I'll pay you once a month until we're square."
The outlaw closed his eyes as Bob spoke, his face the sudden expression of bemused realization. When Bob stopped talking, Jim put his arm around Bob's shoulders and pulled him close. "Bob, Bob, Bob," he said softly. "You are a romantic soul. I understand that, because I too am a romantic soul. Let me ask you something and you tell me the truth, all right?"
"All right," Bob said.
"Was that girl down there your first?"
Bob didn't answer.
"Come on now, don't be shy. She was, wuddint she?"
"Yes," Bob finally said.
"What you're having is a completely normal reaction. It happens to all of us. Shoot, my first was a four dollar whore in Seneca Two. By the time we was finished, I was fixed to propose!"
"This is something different," Bob said.
"Of course it is. It's always different, Bob. That's the beauty of it. Every woman alive shares a few of the same qualities with all the others. She's also got something unique that sets her completely apart. You can taste all the flavors you want. Know what? Next time we kick a little ass, I'm gonna find me a grey-haired old lady. Know why? Never had one before and I'm just curious."
"That's good," Bob said. "I want Ruth, though."
"No you don't, Bob. You might think you do but pretty soon you'll start thinking about all the fellas around here that gave her a poke and it'll start creeping into your mind like a cancer. Bob, I even gave her a turn or five. Especially after them other ones went goofy on us. I'm doing you a favor right now. As your friend."
Bob groaned and slammed his hands against the man's chest, "You have no right to keep us from being together! I'm offering to pay you good money for her."
Jim threw his arm around Bob's head and wrenched his head back as he came up with the itjin's knife. He pressed the blade to Bob's throat tight enough that Bob was afraid he'd slice off his Adam's Apple if he swallowed. "Don't you ever raise up to me again, you hear me?" Jim whispered in Bob's ear.
"Yes, sir."
"I have any right I say. If I order these men to line up along the river and plug up the holes in your sweetheart like she was a bowling ball, I can."
"Please. Please don't," Bob said.
"Next time you so much as talk to that whore or mention her name to me I'm gonna cut her belly open and yank out her innards, then I'm gonna nail to them a tree and set them on fire while she dances around. Won't that be fun, Bob?"
"I'll never talk to her again. I swear."
Jim pushed Bob away and sheathed his knife. "This damn woman's got you so polluted inside that you don't know what's right and wrong. Lucky for you, I understand how that feels. Let's not speak of this again."
Bob clutched his throat and checked for blood on his hand as Jim walked away. There was a fine line of crimson stained across his palm. He wiped it on his pants only to see a dozen of the other men standing nearby looking at him. He spun to look down the embankment. Ruth lowered her gaze and concentrated on washing his shirt.
The waters of the Wabash were stinking and felt hot against Haienwa'tha's stomach as he waded through it, keeping his arrow fitted in his bow and ready to fire. Bugs stung his eyes. Fish and snakes and other unseen things slithered past him under the water's dark surface as he crept closer toward the campsite. He walked gently over jagged rocks as if they were soft cushions, but when his toes squished into a bed of black river mud, he stopped and scooped up a handful to inspect it.
It smelled like sulfur and sparkled with sediment, but as he smeared it over his arms, it stuck. He quickly rubbed it on his face and neck and the rest of his torso until none of his skin showed through. The sun's intense heat started to bake the layer of mud onto him immediately and even though it cracked and flaked as he moved, it left him nearly imperceptible from the water.
A noise made him stop suddenly and lower himself down to his chin. He saw a white woman ahead standing in the water up to her knees, washing clothes. This is just another hunt, he told himself. She is just another animal. Do it.
The woman suddenly looked up at him and Haienwa'tha froze. She did not make a sound. Her only movement was that she closed her eyes and clasped her hands together.
"Hey, you gonna take all day with them shirts or what?"
Haienwa'tha stood up from the water at the sight of the wasichu walking up behind the woman and yanked his bow string back. The man's jaw fell open and the long blade of grass he was chewing on fell out of his mouth. Haienwa'tha's arrow sailed over the woman's head and struck the man in the throat, turning his cry for help into a bubbling gurgle. The wasichu regurgitated blood down the front of his shirt and reached up to touch the arrow's shaft with his fingers just before he fell flat on the beach.
The woman still had not moved. Haienwa'tha slid past her and grabbed the man's twitching arm to drag him into the water. He yanked his arrow free and rinsed it off, then pushed the man downstream to send him out of view.
Ruth looked into the dark eyes of the young Beothuk and even as she realized he was not there to kill her, she felt nothing. Death and dead things had always terrified her, but even as a cor
pse sailed past her in the water's current, it was meaningless. He is one of the ones who forced himself on me, she thought. She remembered his grunting, remembered his sweat dripping on her face, remembered his rough hands. Ruth watched his blood billow out into the water and imagined the fish would soon begin eating away at his flesh. "There are many more of them up that hill," she whispered. "If you go up this side, you can hide in the tall grass. Get them. Kill them all."
Jem looked down at Toquame Keewassee's smoldering corpse and said, "Well, I guess he's out of the equation."
Ichante held up her bound wrists and said, "It's a good thing too, because he would have never fallen for anything so stupid."
"I didn't hear any better ideas from you."
"You did, you just insisted on ignoring them."
They continued arguing while Father Charles bent over the pyre and took his hat off. The old man closed his eyes and lowered his head. "You pray for your enemies?" Ichante said.
"I pray for all of us."
"I knew I should have left you behind," Jem said. "Can we get moving?"
"Of course. Why would we want to be late to our own slaughter?" Ichante said.
Jem put one of his guns against Ichante's side and said, "I think this ruse would go a lot further if you were a little roughed up."
"Try it, wasichu. Then decide what part of yourself you would like cut off."
Jem smiled, "You know what? I think you people are too violent for me. After this is over, I'm gonna start socializing with people more of my own social standing."
"I saw a pig farm for sale back in Seneca 5," Father Charles said. "Is that what you had in mind?"
The three of them fell quiet as they passed under the mining camp's creaking wooden gate. There were several men standing near the gate who turned to look at them as they entered. Some of them stopped speaking completely and stood motionless. Others looked around in confusion, searching for someone else to ask. Finally, one of the men said, "Who the hell are you?"
Jem held up his hand and grinned foolishly, "Name's Woodson. Heard you boys in the bidness of buyin' itjin women."
The man leered as he looked Ichante over, "She's a mighty pretty one."
Jem pinched Ichante on the cheek, "Ain't she though? Tastes sweet as a bushel of berries too, tell you whut. But don't trust her tho. She'll cut you as soon as look at you if you ain't careful."
The man pointed at Father Charles, "Who's the old man?"
"Him? Just my retarded uncle. Can't hardly talk none," Jem said. "Chewed off his own damn fingers one night after he dipped 'em in ketchup."
The man looked at the preacher's hands in disgust and said, "Come on. I'll take you to see Jim."
"You just don't know when to quit," Father Charles muttered.
"They been telling me that since the day I was born," Jem said. He led them into the camp and saw the man go into a tent. Seconds later, he emerged again, followed by a man wearing a mask. "Here goes nothing," Jem whispered. He smiled at the man as he walked up to them and stuck out his hand, "You must be Gentleman Jim! I heard so much about you. Sure is an honor, sir."
Jim shook his hand as he looked Ichante over, "What'd you bring me today? Something nice?" He slid the back of his hand along Ichante's face and said, "It would appear so. Where'd you find her?"
"Her daddy sold her to us for two bottles of firewater and a mule. Sad, really," Jem said.
"That right?" the bandit said. He looked around at his men, "I think we can scare up some firewater, and I'll throw in a destrier. How's that for a profit?"
Jem smiled, "That sounds nice, really, but I was hoping for compensation of a more monetarial variety?"
"How much compensation?"
"A hundred dollars severian."
Gentleman Jim smiled back at him, "A hundred dollars? I reckon it would be a whole lot cheaper for me to just shoot you and your friend here and keep the lady, don't you?"
Jem looked past the bandit and the men standing behind him, watching Haienwa'tha creep up the path toward them. "Now, that wouldn't be right. Not from what I heard `bout the greatest outlaw ever lived."
Jim folded his arms in front of his chest and said, "It's the newspapers that made me great, Mr. Woodson. It was a whole lot of robbin' and rapin' that made me an outlaw. People tend to forget that when they're dealing with me."
"That right?" Jem said.
"Indeed it is."
"You sure is a famous one. Thar's something I always wanted to ask you after I read `bout it in the paper. When you robbed the stagecoach from the Daviess Savings and Loan, why'd you shoot that driver? He give you lip?"
"In fact he did," Jim said. "He said he'd rather die than hand over the money, and I obliged him."
Jem pressed his hand to his head and smiled stupidly, "I'm sorry, my mistake. You didn't kill nobody that time." Jem shook his head, "I meant to say the one for Gallatin. That's the man you killed."
"Exactly. I didn't hear you right the first time on account of your hayseed accent."
"Whoops," Jem said slowly, locking eyes with the man in the mask. When he spoke, there was no more accent. "I just recalled that nobody got shot that time either. You boys call yourselves outlaws?" He looked around the rest of the group, "I been around a whole bunch of outlaws and don't see one among you. Y'all are just trash."
"You got a hell of a death wish coming in here alone and saying that," Gentleman Jim said.
Jem nodded in agreement and said, "That's true. Or rather, it would be if I came in here alone."
The arrow sailed a hundred feet over their heads in an arc and landed with a soft puff of dirt in the ground between the two groups. The second struck Gentleman Jim in the left thigh, making him scream out.
Haienwa'tha knocked and fired one arrow after another, sending them in different directions. He aimed for legs and stomachs. Shoot to scare and to scatter, Jem had told him. We'll do the killing. Soon, the men were crashing into one another trying to get away.
Ichante slid her hands out of the ropes and rolled to the side, getting behind a large iron cooking pot for cover. She drew out her pistol and fired at the first wasichu who went running past, her gun barking as the right side of the man's face burst open. She fired again at the one behind him, then again at another.
Jem fired twice into the crowd and ran straight at them to grab the masked bandit and drag him out of the way. The men that weren't running had drawn their weapons and were firing haphazardly into the bushes to save themselves from Haienwa'tha's arrows. "Now, now!" Jem shouted at the old man.
Father Charles whipped his shotgun around and said, "The Lord is my sword and my shield." He propped the end of the shotgun to his hip and fired at the group, knocking two of them down. "Blessed is the Lord, for he trains my hands for war and my fingers to fight."
He fired again, blasting flurries of high-density buckshot at the group that ripped through their flesh and sent them crashing into one another. One of the men collapsed to the ground in front of the preacher and he looked down at the man and said, "The righteous are as bold as lions. They do not whimper." He racked the shotgun slide back to eject the piping hot shell casing before lowering the weapon and firing.
Chapter 22: I'll Be Home Come Hell or High Water, and I Know I Will See You Soon
Ruth scrambled up the embankment toward the gunfire and screams. A cloud of thin grey smoke hovered over the camp that bullets cut through like whistling birds. Ruth ran blindly past the men to get to the tent at the farthest end, pushing her way past guns that fired in every direction. An arrow punched through a man's jaw and sprayed her with blood. She turned away just as one of the men fired a gun too close to her ear and Ruth went down clutching the side of her face, her skull rattled from the gun's deafening roar.
Everything was reduced to dull, low-frequency static. She staggered to her feet in the midst of the battle but could not hear the rifles firing or the men screaming any longer. Through the haze, she saw a hunched over, bone-thin woman emerge fro
m the tent. Elizabeth Hall's eyes were sunken and the flesh around them was yellow and loose like chicken skin. Her clothing hung off her emaciated frame like dresses in a closet and Elizabeth looked around at the carnage with a confused, delighted smile. She looked like an old person wandering around the rest home, amazed by everything. Ruth screamed her name but heard nothing come out of her own mouth. She covered her ears and screamed it again, "Elizabeth! Get down!"
Elizabeth turned to look at Ruth in wonder, lifting her hand to wave when a bullet burst through her palm and punched her in the breastbone. The loose fabric of her oversized dress fluttered as she fell to the ground. Ruth cried out for her and tried to fight her way toward her, but someone grabbed her by the waist and lifted her into the air.
"Let me go!" Ruth screamed, pounding the man on the back between his shoulder blades and on the back of his head. "Put me down!"
Bob Ford raced around the bodies of fallen men and pivoted out of the way of anything that blocked him with a grace and agility he'd never possessed before. Bullets singed past him so close he felt the heat of their metal casings but nothing could stop him from getting where he needed to. He raced down the trail with Ruth over his shoulder and finally set her down, yelling, "Come on, into the water!"
She tore her hand away and looked at him in stricken horror. "I'm not going anywhere with you!"
"Come on, Ruth! It's our only chance. Trust me."
"I could never trust you! How could you think that I ever could?"
"You can't trust me?" Bob said. He looked back at the melee still taking place in the camp and said, "Here. Take this. Then you can trust me." Bob unhooked his belt and holster and handed it to Ruth. "You can keep that as long as you like. My dad gave it to me, so it's kind of an heirloom."
Guns of Seneca 6 Box Set Collected Saga (Chambers 1-4) Page 39