Escape from Fire River

by Ralph Cotton

  The flesh surrounding the wound had turned rosy red and was hot and tight to the touch. Yet it looked and felt better than it had the day before. For the time being, better would have to do, he told himself. The main thing is he’d gotten away. He managed a weak smile, thinking about how he’d slipped away from Jane Crowly, rifle and all. To hell with her . . . and Fast Larry Shaw too.

  “Fastest Gun Alive, my ass . . . ,” he murmured to himself. Reaching around behind him, he examined the hard swollen lump where the bullet had failed to bore its way out of his back. “I guess I showed you both, you can’t hold ole Heaton down.” Beside him his horse drew water deep and steadily from the cool running stream.

  Ten yards away in a stand of dry bracken palo chino and Mexican ironwood, a Border Dog gunman named Elijah Chase whispered to the man named Arnold Stroud standing beside him, “He’s lost his mind—he’s babbling to himself.”

  “He’s shot, Eli,” Stroud replied. “What do you expect from a man, a bullet in him in this kind of heat?”

  “All right,” Chase said, “but let’s watch him close. Heaton’s never been real sane even when he’s at his best game.”

  Stroud raised a hand and gave a signal to three other men standing spread out and hidden among the low-standing ironwoods and bracken on the other side of the stream.

  “To think this ornery belly-shot sonsabitch used to be married to my sister,” Chase whispered to himself.

  “I never knew that.” Stroud studied him as the men across the stream returned his signal and stood ready to make their move.

  “Well, you know it now,” said Chase. “Anyway, look at him, gut shot and most likely dying. My ma—God rest her soul—would have given anything to seen this.”

  “Yeah, well . . . ,” said Stroud, “let’s get to it. Cantro is waiting to hear what happened to those three.” He stepped away silently in a low crouch.

  At the stream, Heaton caught the slightest rustling of dried brush behind him. He stopped dipping the water onto his wound and lay listening intently, his bloodstained shirt off, lying in the gravel and rocks beside him.

  Seeing Heaton freeze and listen, Stroud said, “He’s caught us!” He ran onto the open stream bank, his rifle up but not pointed, Chase right behind him. “Heaton, wait, it’s us!” he called out.

  Feverish and scared, Heaton bolted up, snatched up another small hideout pistol he’d kept stashed in his saddlebags and fired a wild shot at Stroud as he leaped into his saddle, his side and back throbbing with pain.

  “Don’t kill him, Pond!” Stroud shouted out across the stream.

  Heaton was on his way, his horse splashing through the braided shallow water. But on the other side of the stream a young, solemn gunman named Elvis Pond appeared as if from out of nowhere and swung his rifle around by its barrel. The blow lifted Heaton from his saddle and sent him sprawling backward into the running water.

  “Well, he’s dead . . . ,” Stroud remarked.

  “Good riddance,” Chase whispered with a smug little grin.

  Yet, walking quickly forward, Stroud saw the shirtless Heaton rise up onto both palms and shake his head, slinging water from his wet hair, trying to maintain consciousness.

  “Elvis! Don’t kill him!” Stroud shouted again as the young southern gunman stalked forward toward Heaton, the rifle raised for a deadly blow to the back of his head. “Jesus, is he deaf?” Stroud shouted to the other two gunmen running from the ironwoods toward Heaton in the stream.

  “Hold it, Elvis,” said an older ex-Confederate sergeant named Bale Harmon. He ran up in time to put himself between Elvis Pond and Heaton and raised a hand to hold Pond back. “We need him alive!”

  Pond didn’t reply, but he backed off grudgingly and stood staring down coldly at Heaton as the wounded man fell over onto his side and clasped his belly wound. Fresh blood seeped through his fingers. “I’ll kill . . . you,” Heaton managed to squeeze out through his pain.

  Elvis stepped forward again, expressionless, this time drawing back his boot to kick Heaton. But again Harmon interceded. “Elvis! That’s enough!”

  Running up, Stroud looked down at Heaton, then at Elvis Pond. “Didn’t you hear me, Pond? We need Heaton to tell us what they learned out there.”

  Pond stared blankly.

  Helping Heaton up into a pained crouch, Stroud and Harmon half assisted and half carried him to the bank of the stream. They lowered him onto his knees, looking down at his bleeding wound as he bowed forward, clutching his stomach.

  Chase walked up slowly and looked down at Heaton. “Yep, you’re dead, Roy, end of string.” He couldn’t completely hide a slight smile of satisfaction. “I’ll tell Althia how it happened if you want me to.”

  “I’m . . . not . . . done,” Heaton said. He rose slightly, gave Chase a dark, hateful stare, then turned the same look toward Pond. “If you can keep this jackass . . . from killing me.”

  Before anyone could stop him, Pond planted his boot toe firmly into Heaton’s blood-soaked belly.

  Heaton screamed loud and long. Stroud and Harmon grabbed Pond and pulled him back. Heaton screamed again. But this time anger overcame his pain and he grabbed a palm-sized rock and started to rise to his feet. “I’ll bash your—”

  Pond shot his boot toe between the two men holding him and kicked Heaton again. Heaton fell back screaming, a wide stream of fresh blood spilling down his stomach.

  “Jesus! Elvis. Damn it to hell, what’s wrong with you?” Stroud shouted, shoving Pond backward, snatching the rifle from his hands. Pond didn’t respond but he stood staring in defiance.

  “He’s new, Roy,” said another gunman, Corey Trent, stooping down and helping Heaton back onto his knees. He took Heaton by his arm and helped him uncoil enough for him to take a look at the wound.

  “Why does . . . he keep kicking me?” Heaton gasped, opening his fingers for Trent to see better.

  “I told you he’s new,” said Trent, wincing a little at the red swollen flesh surrounding the wound. “He’s some kin to Lewis Davenport, a nephew, cousin or something.” He leaned and looked at the hard reddened lump on Heaton’s back. “You’ve got a bullet that needs cutting out.” He looked back at Heaton’s face. “You’re full of lead fever too.”

  “Just keep that jackass away from me,” said Heaton. He looked up at Pond’s leering, mindless stare. “If I need cutting, let’s get it done,” he said to Trent. “You’re never going to believe who shot me. . . .”

  “Yeah, who’s that?” Trent said, pulling him up into a crouch. He looked at the others for support as he turned Heaton and walked him farther away from the stream.

  “Jane Crowly,” said Heaton, almost proudly.

  “The Jane Crowly?” Harmon asked, walking alongside him opposite of Trent, keeping an eye on Elvis Pond. “The half-man, half-woman Jane Crowly?”

  “The Jane Crowly,” said Heaton in a strained and rasping voice, “leastwise the only Jane Crowly I ever heard of.”

  “He’s awfully fevered,” said Trent, looking dubiously at Stroud and the others.

  “I’m not out of my mind,” Heaton insisted, his strength seeming to rise a little as he defended his mental capacity. “It was her . . . she’s traveling with Lawrence Shaw.”

  Trent considered it as they walked along; so did Stroud and the others. “You don’t mean Fast Larry Shaw, do you?” Stroud asked.

  “One . . . and the same,” said Heaton, sounding better still.

  “Hell, Fast Larry’s dead,” offered Harmon, walking along beside Elvis Pond to keep him out of trouble. “He was held captive and eaten by a bear up in the high country as I recall.”

  “You best recall all over again,” said Heaton. “Shaw’s alive . . . he’s a lawman . . . rounding up curs along these badlands. Take my word . . . for it.”

  “Sure thing, Roy, whatever you say,” said Trent. Looking at the others, Trent shook his head, keeping Heaton from seeing him. “You’ll feel better once we get this bullet out of your back and get you
r fever down.”

  “I don’t have the fever . . . damn it to hell,” Heaton insisted, struggling along toward a clearing inside the stand of ironwood and palo chino.

  “Let me cut it out,” Pond said in a flat but menacing voice.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Elvis?” Harmon asked, giving the young Southern gunman a look of disbelief. He’d never seen the newcomer act this way toward anybody.

  Pond stared back as if in defiance. “Nothing’s wrong with me. I don’t like this son of a bitch,” he said, turning a hate-filled gaze down toward Heaton.

  When Trent had finished working on his wound, Heaton sat slumped, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. Trent had sliced an inch-long incision in his back, a quarter of an inch deep, and let the bullet plop out onto his palm. Then he’d washed the incision with hot water heated sterile over a small fire Harmon had built.

  “And that’s the whole of it,” Heaton said in conclusion, having told Stroud and the others about what happened in Agua Mala. He’d told them about Shaw saying he’d spent the gold, about Shaw killing Sid Nutt, and about his being captured by Shaw and Jane Crowly. Finally he’d told them about his escape, and getting shot. “I got to my horse and made flight. Here’s where I ended up.”

  “You’re lucky to be alive,” said Stroud, watching Trent wind stripes of cotton cloth around Heaton’s waist, covering both front and back wounds. “I’ve never seen a rifle shot from that close not go all the way through a man.”

  “You’ve seen it now,” Heaton said, sipping the whiskey, feeling himself getting stronger, feeling the heat of his fever starting to wane.

  “He’s lying,” Pond said flatly, standing back from the others.

  “Damn it, Elvis,” said Harmon. “I don’t know what to do about you.”

  “Lying, am I?” Heaton struggled to stand, but Stroud and Trent both held him down in place.

  “Take Elvis and go tend to the horses,” Stroud ordered Harmon, starting to get testy over the young gunman’s surly attitude toward Heaton, a man he didn’t even know.

  “Let’s go, Elvis,” said Harmon, wanting to keep down any trouble among the men. He pulled the young man away by his arm, toward the horses a few yards away. Pond kept looking back over his shoulder with a hard, angry stare.

  “Are you sure you don’t know him?” Stroud asked Heaton, trying to get an idea as to why Elvis Pond hated him so badly.

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life,” said Heaton. He gestured toward Chase. “Ask Elijah here. He knows near everybody I do. We’re from the same hilltop in Arkansas. I was married to—”

  “Eli told me,” said Stroud, cutting Heaton off sharply. “Forget Pond. Tell me this. Did you, Red Burke and Sid Nutt intend to come back to the rest of us Dogs with news about the gold?”

  Heaton heard the accusation in Arnold Stroud’s voice. Stroud was one of Garris Cantro’s right-hand men, a captain in the Border Dogs fighting ranks the same as he’d been in Cantro’s regular command during the war. “I raise my hand to heaven, Captain Stroud,” Heaton said, “that was our intention. If Red Burke was here he’d attest to it.”

  “Where were you headed when we caught you?” Trent asked, finishing up with the wound.

  Heaton gave him an irritated look. “I’m obliged for you cutting my bullet out and trussing me up, Corey. But I wasn’t caught by you. You found me . . . and I was on my way back to the Dogs when you come upon me.” He turned to Stroud and said, “As you can tell by my direction.” He gestured the whiskey bottle toward the hills.

  Stroud studied the trail both ways, looking back and forth across the desert floor. “You could have been headed either way,” he said quietly. Before Heaton could argue the point he asked, “What about Jane Crowly and Fast Larry Shaw?”

  “What about them?” Heaton asked, determined to weigh each word carefully until he found where he stood with Stroud.

  “Were they really with the wagonload of gold, or was Shaw saying all that to throw us off?”

  “I don’t follow your thinking,” said Heaton, his expression turning curious.

  “It’s a big desert,” said Stroud. “Maybe Shaw was saying it to draw us after him, while Juan Lupo and the American lawmen cut across the desert with the wagon and up off these badlands.” He turned and walked away a few feet and stood staring out across the rolling desert below.

  Heaton sipped the coffee and watched Trent walk over and stand beside Stroud. “Maybe Shaw wasn’t lying, Captain,” Trent said, “maybe he did spend it.”

  Stroud’s silence let the young Mississippian know that his humor wasn’t welcome. “That gold is the difference between us keeping the war alive or going down in defeat, Corey.”

  “Yes, sir, I know that. I apologize,” said Trent.

  But his apology went unacknowledged. “Take the best horse we have and prepare to ride,” Stroud said.

  “Ride, sir?” said Trent. “Where am I headed, Captain Stroud?”

  “Back to get word of the gold wagon to Cantro. We’ve got to stop that wagon before it crosses out of these badlands.” He took a deep breath and continued to stare out across the wavering heat. “Tell Cantro it’s time we let the Dogs out.”

  Chapter 11

  In Mal Vuelve the twin whores dropped down from behind Burke and Sergio’s saddles, giggling playfully. No sooner than their bare feet touched the ground, they padded away from the hitching irons and into an adobe brothel owned by a one-eyed Frenchman named Cluteau LaPrey. He was better known as Clute by the few remaining miners and settlers in the fringe of the higher Mexican badlands.

  The commotion of clattering chickens, barking dogs and squealing pigs in the street of Mal Vuelve brought Clute to the open doorway. He stepped out into the harsh sunlight to meet the giggling twin whores, his arms resting around their still naked waists. The women had not bothered to stop long enough to dress on the dusty ride along the hill trail.

  “Well, well, well, but aren’t the two of you some durty-gi-rils . . . ,” Clute said in a lewd, suggestive voice, looking them up and down.

  Staring down at Clute’s black-gray hair sticking out from beneath a yellow, curly wig, Red Burke asked River Johnson in a lowered voice, “What the hell is this?” Clute wore purple stage makeup on his lips and sported thinly blackened eyebrows.

  Sitting on his horse beside Burke, Johnson gave a slight smile. “It’s ole Clute LaPrey himself. Don’t worry, once you get past his perfume and peculiarities, he sort of grows on you.”

  “If he does, I’ll scrape him off with a skinning knife,” Burke replied.

  “Gentlemen, Gentlemen!” said LaPrey, his arms still around the whores. Burke noticed warily that the man’s thumbnails were painted black with silver dots in their middles. “Welcome to Wrong Turn! I always say, ‘Every turn is a right turn in Wrong Turn!’ ”

  “I already want to kill him,” Burke whispered sidelong. River Johnson chuckled.

  On Burke’s other side, Sergio said to his brother Ernesto, “He is an idiot, I think.”

  “I see you have brought along your own entertainment, eh?” said LaPrey, a hand sliding up each of the whores’ dusty sides. He grinned. Each hand jiggled a firm dust-coated breast.

  “Si,” Ernesto said in hushed reply to Sergio without taking his eyes off LaPrey.

  “If this francés raro tries to take our twin whores, I will torture him so slowly he will be an old man when he dies,” whispered Antonio.

  “But that suits me fine, gentlemen.” LaPrey continued rattling on regarding the two new whores’ arrival in town. “The more the merrier, I always say. In fact, if you’d like to do some trading, I’m always open to any—”

  “Turn loose of my wives,” Burke said testily, cutting him off. “What have you got to eat in this shit-hole that ain’t crawling off the plate?”

  LaPrey’s hands came down off the twin whores as if the women had turned red-hot. He left imprints in the dust on their breasts and long streaks d
own their sides. He could not tell if Burke was joking or not, but from the looks of the trail-hardened gunman he didn’t want to find out. “Oh, we have much good food for you here, monsieur,” said LaPrey. “Good food, good drink, dope, more wives, for you, if you want more wives!” He stopped short of reaching his arms back around the twin whores.

  “We’re not his wives,” said Falina in a pouting tone.

  “Oh . . . ?” LaPrey gave her an uncertain look.

  “No, he is our Daddy,” said Malina, smiling, cocking a well-rounded hip toward Burke.

  “Ah, I get it,” said LaPrey, giving a Burke a sly, knowing grin. “You are the Papa! Uhhh, yes, of course. How lewd. I like that.” He raised a long-nailed finger for emphasis.

  “I’m not pretending I’m their Pa, you filthy-minded turd,” said Burke. “I’m Daddy to them. There’s a hell of a difference.”

  “Oui, of course,” said LaPrey, “how stupid of me.” He slapped himself on his purple-painted lips. “I chastise myself!”

  “I bet that ain’t all you do to yourself,” said River Johnson, having stepped down from his saddle and walked over to LaPrey. “How are you, Clute?” He grabbed the brothel owner in a firm headlock and scrubbed his fist back and forth on top of the curly wig.

  “I—I am good, River Johnson,” LaPrey said, a bit startled and shaken by Johnson’s rough greeting. He straightened his curly wig and touched his fingers to his smeared purple lipstick. “I hope you are too?”

  Johnson hung his arm loosely around the Frenchman’s neck, leaned against him and grinned up at Burke. “Ole Clute never knows if I’m going to kill him or just cut him real deep and watch him bleed, right, Clute?” He shook the tense brothel owner roughly.

  “I’m afraid it is true,” Clute said to Burke as Burke and the others stepped down from their horses. “With this one, I never know.”

  “You’ll know with me,” Burke said bluntly, walking up and putting his arms around the nearly naked twins. “Mr. Frenchy, I’m Red Sage Burke, leader of the Border Dogs.”