by Frank Leslie
In Mexico, Yakima had done the same when all the odds—rurales, Apaches, revolutionaries, banditos, and even a broiling underground river—were stacked against her. He’d gotten her and her brother through, even given them a home.
In her mind’s eye, she saw Yakima dragged from his stirrup, the bullet wound in his head glistening, and Wolf dragging him off over the sage- and piñon-stippled hogbacks, and out of sight.
Away from her, most likely, forever.
Turning forward, she glanced once more at the guns jutting from the kid’s holsters but was jolted from her violent fantasy when the mare crested a rise between two towering stone monoliths, and started down the other side, jerked into a trot by the kid. A couple of buildings appeared in the hollow below—a bowl sheathed in bald, craggy ridges.
On the bowl’s left side lay a long, L-shaped log cabin with stone steps rising to a broad front porch. From a large fieldstone chimney on the building’s far side, smoke tinged with the aromatic tang of mesquite fluttered like a gray flag in the cool, midday breeze.
On the bowl’s right side lay a couple of corrals, sun-blistered outbuildings, and dilapidated wagons, the corrals falling down and growing up with wiry brown brush, Spanish bayonet, and prickly pear. Crows like a string of black beads perched atop a log hut with a rusted tin roof. A scruffy tabby cat sat on the splintered sideboard of one of the wagons, staring intently into the brush, its tail curling and uncurling with predatory menace.
As Faith’s mare followed the other mounts toward the cabin, she saw five saddled horses standing before the two hitch rails, swishing their tails and rippling their withers. A freight wagon stood on the other side of the cabin, near a stock tank, the team of four mules eating from the feed sacks draped over their ears.
One of the saddle horses lifted a whinny and Kooch Manley’s blue roan replied in kind. Above the porch a long plank sign, splattered white with bird droppings, read SAND CREEK CAFÉ AND STAGE STATION.
Smaller letters to one side announced ANGUS HAGEN, PROP., only the word ANGUS was crossed out and above it was scribbled, in different colored letters, WIDOW.
“What do you suppose happened to Mr. Hagen?” asked Benny Freeze as he pulled up to the left hitch rail and then drew Faith’s mare up beside him.
“Killed by Apaches, most likely,” opined Kooch Manley as he swung down from his saddle with a weary groan.
“Or the senora herself,” Chulo Garza laughed, shucking his rifle from the saddle boot.
“Hope the widow’s food’s as good as it was when we swung through a few days ago,” Frank Miller said, rolling his thick, muscular shoulders and arms as he wound his reins around the hitch rail. “Damn, but that pot roast was good!”
As the others stretched, tied their mounts, and loosened saddle cinches, Faith glanced around at the outbuildings and then again at the five other horses and the freight wagons. Her heartbeat quickened hopefully—the horses and wagons meant there were other men here, men who might help her—until she looked down to her left.
Lowry Temple stood gazing up at her, a taut smile on his tattooed face. She’d noticed that the green cross seemed to change colors with his mood. Now it was blue black, and it appeared to be sunk deep in his windburned skin.
As he pulled out his bowie knife and cut the rawhide tying Faith’s hands to the saddle horn— deciding that her hands were enough, he no longer tied her ankles to her stirrups—he said, “We’re gonna go in and have us a nice sit-down meal.”
The rawhide gave between her wrists, but he continued drilling his hard eyes into hers. “You’ll be my wife. A well-behaved woman. You’ll sit beside me, keep your head down, and you won’t speak to anyone.”
Faith told him to do something physically impossible to himself. Then she swung down from the saddle and swatted dust from her denim-clad legs with her hat. Ignoring Temple hooking his arm out for her, she ducked under the hitch rail and strode along the front of the porch toward the steps.
Benny Freeze and Kooch Manley were climbing the stone steps. Frank Miller and Chulo Garza stood at the bottom, Garza casting his cautious gaze around the yard while biting the end off a cheap cigar. Miller was turned toward Faith and Lowry coming up behind her.
“If you get to play her man today, Temple,” he chuckled, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t be heard inside, “can I be her man tonight?”
Faith ignored his leer as she brushed past him and mounted the porch steps. Behind her, Temple said, “You wouldn’t want her today, Frank. She’s in one o’ them high-blooded moods given to her sex.”
“I could soften her up.”
“No,” muttered Garza, bringing up the rear as the other three followed Faith onto the porch. “It takes a real man to take the edge off a catamount like that, uh? A Mejican bull is required, amigos. Look how she swings those hips. Ay caramba!”
As Faith stepped through the door, she heard the rustle and a soft thud of someone getting slapped with a hat behind her. Garza and Miller chuckled again and then fell silent as they, too, entered the dark, smoky room around which a dozen or so square, oilcloth-covered tables were arranged.
Faith stopped a few feet inside the door, blinking against the smoke and waiting for her eyes to adjust. Deep, gravelly voices rose on her left and right, filling the cavelike, low-ceilinged room. As her vision cleared, she saw four beefy gents sitting at a large table against the left wall, and three more men—range riders, judging by their chaps, dusters, and fur jackets—to her right.
At the back of the room stretched a counter with a couple of wooden stools, and behind the counter a stocky woman in a shapeless frock, her silver hair in a bun, was frying steaks and onions while what looked like beans dribbled out from beneath the lid of a large cast-iron pot. A plump, young Chinese man in a pajama-like silk jacket and oversized denim trousers carried three plates out from behind the counter, the steaks still sizzling as he set them before the three men to the right.
Freeze and Manley were dragging out chairs at a table against the left wall, about midway down the room, tossing their hats onto the chairs beside them. As the other three cutthroats muttered behind Faith, Temple came up beside her, wrapped his hand around her arm, giving a painful squeeze, and nodded at a table just beyond Freeze and Manley.
“That one’ll do—won’t it, honey?”
Garza and Miller brushed past them, heading for the table. Faith stepped forward, wincing as Temple gave her arm another pinch. As she walked to the right of the outlaw leader, she noticed in the corner of her eyes the other men in the room giving her curious, appraising glances.
As she passed the three men to her right—two with their backs to the wall, one with his back to her—she saw that the man with his back to her wore a silver-plated pistol in a black holster thonged low on his striped trouser leg, just above a black, mule-eared boot hooked beneath his chair. She slid her gaze up from the man’s leg and saw, pinned to the open deer-hide coat of the man on the other side of the table, a copper star in which ARIZONA RANGER had been stamped.
Faith’s heart thumped. Just before she turned away, led by Temple’s firm hand, she saw the man gazing at her over the coffee mug he held in both his big brown hands, his trimmed gray mustache moving up and down as he chewed, his gray-blue eyes appraising her with keen male interest.
Turning her head forward, she caught a glimpse of another badge pinned to the vest of the man sitting beside the gray-mustached man, and her heart hammered harder.
Temple pulled a chair out for her. When she’d sat down and was jerking her chair toward the table, she nervously raked her eyes across the cutthroats’ faces.
They didn’t appear to have seen the badges. They joked and grunted as they took their seats, adjusting their guns and knife sheaths and poking their hats back off their foreheads or digging into shirt pockets for makings sacks. Frank Miller tilted back his chair, nudging the chair of Benny Freeze behind him, and Freeze gave Miller an elbow between his shoulder blades. Miller swatted him back
, and Temple, sitting to Faith’s right—she sat facing the front of the roadhouse—admonished them to act their ages and not their shoe sizes.
Faith cut her eyes to the three Rangers, assuming the third man, whose chest she couldn’t see from this angle, was also a lawman. They were big, capable-looking men. Getting on a little in years, maybe, but they all wore tied-down holsters from which big pistols jutted. Three rifles—two Henry repeaters and a Winchester—leaned against the wall behind their table.
A cream Stetson adorned with a red feather was hooked over the barrel of one of the Winchesters. The rifles were stock-worn and well oiled. Rifles that had, no doubt, taken down their share of border toughs like Temple and the others.
“Ho-ho. You like?”
Faith had been so intent on her desire to seek the Rangers’ help, staring at the lawmen out the corner of her eye, that she hadn’t noticed the young, round-faced Chinaman move up beside Temple. He held a small notebook and a pencil as he stared subserviently down at the oilcloth, waiting.
“Speaky English, China boy?” asked Manley, scowling belligerently up at the waiter from the other table.
“No much, see?” he chirped, sweat glistening on his almond features. He glanced around quickly, smiling, showing a chipped front tooth. “Steak, beans?”
“I want roast beef,” ordered Manley. “Give me potatoes and carrots with it. Slice of pie for dessert. You got peach? You had peach a couple weeks ago.”
“Ho.” The young man nodded, scribbling on the pad in his hand.
Faith was so intently staring at the young man’s pencil—she needed to get a message to the lawmen, but she had nothing to write on or with—that she didn’t realize all the others had ordered and that the young Chinaman was staring down at the table near Faith, waiting politely, before Temple said, “My wife will have steak and potatoes. Chop-chop, eh, boy? We got some ridin’ ahead.”
“Ho-ho,” the young man said, squinting at the pad and scribbling. “Steak . . . potato. Ho-ho. Good!”
Then he shuffled quickly off toward the old woman in the kitchen, and Miller said, “Ho-Ho,” and the others chuckled.
The young man returned with stone mugs of coffee, and set them in front of the outlaws and Faith. When he’d scampered off once more, in answer to the old woman’s ordering bark for clean plates, Garza spiced his coffee from a small, hide-covered flask. Before he could slip the flask back into his coat, Miller grabbed it out of his hand. The thick-necked blond grinned as he tipped the liquor into his own coffee, then handed the flask across the table to Temple, his cobalt blue eyes flashing crazily.
“Chrissakes, Chulo,” the lead bounty hunter said, shaking his head with mock disgust. “Ain’t I taught you no manners at all?”
Garza cursed, frowning at the flask, which Temple held out to Faith, cocking a brow. “Shot?”
Holding her mug in both hands in front of her chin, Faith blew on the hot, coal black belly wash. “No, thanks. I’ll wait till I’m shut of you boys. Then I’ll celebrate.”
Temple and Miller chuckled, and Garza cursed, narrowing those dark, deep-set eyes at her as he took the flask back from Temple and tucked it back into his coat.
Faith sneered at the Mexican and, sipping her coffee, glanced casually around the dim room. Plumes of tobacco smoke rose from the freighters’ table and from that of the Arizona Rangers. A loud conversational din filled the room, echoing off the log walls.
Faith glanced around casually, her mind racing, squeezing her stone coffee mug between her sweat-slick hands.
Behind her, the fire in the cookstove snapped and wheezed, and the old woman hummed softly to herself while the young Chinaman busily scrubbed plates in a tin dishpan. The beans bubbled and a coffeepot chugged. Outside, one of the mules brayed and another answered.
“Ah, shit,” groaned one of the freighters, raking his chair back from his table. “Sounds like Bennie and Jim are gettin’ into it again!”
He rose heavily from his chair—a heavy, bald gent with broad hips and shoulders—and, shrugging into his knee-length buffalo coat and donning his felt sombrero, sauntered through the door and outside.
“What do you suppose he’s gonna do to her?” Garza said, grinning at Faith from across the table. He was turned sideways in his chair, a boot hiked on a knee, twin plumes of blue cigar smoke jetting from both pitted nostrils.
“Who?” Miller asked, his voice just audible above the room’s low, conversational roar.
“Thornton—who do you think?” Garza grunted. “Santa Claus?”
“I think he’s gonna have some fun with her,” Miller rasped, dipping his chin to his chest and regarding Faith from beneath his thin white brows. He raked his weird blue eyes across her amply filled blouse showing through the unbuttoned flaps of her mackinaw. “A whole lot of fun . . . before”— he ran a finger across his neck, a quick slashing motion just above his knotted green neckerchief—“he cuts her throat from ear to ear!”
Garza laughed. Lounging back in his chair and chewing as much as smoking a cheap cigar, Temple scowled and looked around to make sure no one had seen or heard.
Faith suppressed a shudder as she set her coffee mug down—chilled as much by the prospect of meeting Thornton again as by Temple realizing he was sitting ten feet away from Arizona Rangers.
She took her slightly shaking hands away from the coffee mug. “While you boys think about it,” she said, “I think I’ll use the privy.”
“Now look what you did, Miller!” Garza slapped the blond hardcase’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “You got her so frightened she has dampened her drawers!”
As Faith slid her chair back and rose, Temple casually turned to her, grabbing her wrist and tipping his head back to smile up at her through the smoke wafting from his cigar. “Now, honey, do you really think I’d let you tramp around alone back there? This is Apache and cutthroat country. No tellin’ what might happen.”
He winked at her mockingly, then glanced at Miller. Keeping his voice low and mild, he said, “Go with her. But leave her alone or I’ll cut your nuts off.”
“Why do I have to go?” Miller complained, canting his head toward Garza. “Why not him?”
“’Cause I’m sendin’ you,” Temple growled.
When Miller had gained his feet, cursing under his breath and taking a long sip of his whiskey-laced coffee, Temple released Faith’s hand. She turned and headed toward the door to the left of the kitchen counter and the stove, hearing Miller’s thudding heels and chinking spurs behind her.
As she neared the back counter, she spied the young Chinaman’s notepad and pencil, which she had seen a minute ago, when she’d raked her gaze casually behind her. The pad and pencil lay at the left end of the counter, about four feet to the right of Faith’s path to the back door.
Her pulse sang in her ears as she eyed the stubby brown pencil, its lead dulled to a round nub. That’s all she needed. She could find something to write on in the privy. But how could she grab the pencil with Miller right behind her?
Chapter 13
When Faith was about three feet from the counter, she saw the chair angled out from the table just ahead and to the right of her. She angled toward it while turning her head as if to inspect a small heliograph on the wall to her left.
She caught a leg of the chair with the toe of her right boot, and stumbled forward, pushing slightly off her left foot and throwing herself up against the counter. She gave a mock-startled groan and closed her hand over the pencil.
“Jesus,” she grunted.
“Christ, girl,” Miller chuckled behind her. “I guess beauty and grace don’t necessarily go together.”
She pushed off the counter, palming the pencil and furtively poking it into her hip pocket, scowling up at Miller while blowing a wisp of hair from her eye.
“Grace and beauty—I reckon that’s your department, Miller.”