by Jane Toombs
“Guess maybe I’ll drop back and get me a chaw of tobacco off Wilson,” he said. He slowed the gray, wheeled and rode back to where Wilson brought up the rear. Ezra and O’Folliard edged closer together as they continued on. A light shone in Bowdre’s house--they were almost there. O’Folliard pulled a little ahead, rode up to the porch. His horse stopped suddenly and Ezra started to rein in.
“Halt!” a man shouted from the porch.
Ezra saw O’Folliard grab for his holster as he reached for his own Colt. Before he touched it, two Winchesters cracked, almost in unison. Fire ripped along Ezra’s side.
He heard O’Folliard scream in pain, heard two more shots.
Ezra’s mount bolted. Groaning with the agony in his side, he tried to wrestle the pinto under control, couldn’t even hold on, slid off, slamming onto his back in the snow. The pinto raced off, following other riders fleeing back toward Wilcox’s.
There were shouts behind Ezra. Shots. Hooves. Painfully, he rolled onto his stomach, pushed himself to his hands and knees and crawled into the shadows along an adobe wall. A dog jumped through a break in the wall and sniffed at him. With great effort he forced himself up and through the hole. The dog followed him. Ezra tried to stand, bracing himself against the wall. Pain sliced through him—his head spun. As his knees sagged, darkness settled over him and he slipped into oblivion.
* * *
Tessa watched Mark help Pat Garrett ease the badly wounded Tom O’Folliard off his horse and carry him into the house where they laid him on a cot. “I thought for certain it’d be
Billy leading them.” Garrett said to Mark. “He always leads them.”
O’Folliard groaned. “Am I dying?” he gasped, blood trickling from his mouth.
Tessa looked at his chest wound where blood oozed in a steady stream from the bullet hole made by the sheriff’s Winchester.
Garrett leaned closer to him. “Tom, your time is short,” he said.
O’Folliard tried to sit up, gasped. Blood gushed from his mouth and he fell back, trembled all over and lay still.
Garrett shook his head and straightened. “The rest of the gang’ll be making for Wilcox’s,” he said to Mark. “I don’t reckon we’ll head that way tonight.
Wait and see what develops.”
Tessa slipped away into the kitchen where she glanced toward the door, her hands clenched in apprehension. She hadn’t dared leave the house, lest Mark suspect and come in search of her.
The minute she’d heard O’Folliard had been shot, she’d been in deadly fear. Tom, Billy, Ezra. Those three always led the gang.
What had happened to Ezra? Was he all right?
As soon as the shooting had stopped, she’d made Violet go out to reconnoiter.
“Make certain Ezra isn’t lying someplace close by, wounded and helpless,” she told the girl. “Look good.” Then she’d thought of the incentive Violet might need. “Look for Billy, too. They both would have been riding with Tom O’Folliard.”
Violet’s eyes were wide and frightened. Tessa tried to assure herself it was better for the girl to feel some emotion than to drift around in a daze.
“You have to go,” she said impatiently. “I can’t.”
“What if--” Violet spoke so low she could hardly hear her. “What if he’s dead?”
“He’s not,” Tessa had said, not knowing which one the girl meant. Most likely Billy. She herself meant Ezra. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. “Don’t waste any more time. Go out there and look!”
That had been at least a half-hour ago and the girl hadn’t returned. Where was she?
Mark came into the kitchen. “Tom O’Folliard’s dead,” he said. “We’re going to have to leave his body here until morning.”
“Why bother to tell me?” she said. “You didn’t ask anyone’s permission to take over the house and set up your ambush. I can’t help thinking it might have been Ezra lying dead instead of poor Tom.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you I saw Ezra high-tailing it out of here on his pinto, following the others. He’s all right.”
Tessa clasped her hands together. “Did you really see him?”
Mark nodded. “Billy got away, too.”
She closed her eyes momentarily. “Oh, I was so worried.” She glanced at the door again and bit her lip, “I have to confess I sent Violet out to see if Ezra might have been hurt. I’d better go and find her.”
Garrett called to Mark from the next room. He hesitated.
“Tessa, wait, I’ll go with you,” Mark said.
“No. I’ll be right back.”
Mark looked at her for a moment, then nodded, “Be careful. It’s cold out there.” He left the kitchen.
Tessa ran into the snow calling Violet’s name. Where had the girl gotten to?
“Violet. Where are you?” she called over and over as, she hurried through yards and around buildings, heading eastward.
“Tessa!’’ the cry was faint.
Tessa called again, pinpointed the answering call. Violet was on the other side of a crumbling adobe wall.
“Come home--it’s all right,” she told the girl.
“No, I can’t come. Please help me,” Violet cried. “Hurry!” What on earth could be wrong? Tessa wondered.
It took her a few minutes to find a way to get over the wall. She saw Violet huddled in the snow beside a dark figure and ran to her.
“What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Who is it?”
“Oh, Tessa,” Violet sobbed, “you told me he wouldn’t be dead. Why did you lie to me? What will I do now that’s he’s gone? I can’t bear it.”
Billy? Tessa dropped to her knees and bent over the still figure whose head Violet cradled in her lap.
Not Billy’s thin face, his wispy mustache.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as she touched Ezra’s cold face with trembling hands. She felt along his temple to just above his ear where her father had taught her to find a pulse.
At first she couldn’t believe what she felt, thought she was only willing herself to feel the thready beat under her fingers. She moved her hand to his other temple and sighed in relief.
“He’s not dead, Violet.”
Tessa put her mouth to Ezra’s ear, calling his name.
He moaned.
“Ezra, wake up, she said. “You have to wake up and help us.”
His eyelids fluttered, opened. He looked directly into Violet’s face. He whispered her name.
“Were you shot?” Tessa demanded.
His hand moved, reaching toward his right side. He winced. She saw the dark splotch of blood on his jacket. She glanced around, saw a dilapidated lean-to stable a few yards away.
“Can you move?” she asked.
“Can try,” he muttered.
With their help, Ezra staggered into the shelter of the lean-to.
“Doesn’t hurt so bad as it did at first,” he said. “Don’t think I’m bleeding much either.”
Tessa thought quickly. “You can’t stay in Sumner. They’ll find you.”
“If I had me a horse,” he said, his voice sounding stronger, “I’d light out for Wilcox’s ranch.”
Tessa couldn’t come up with an alternative. “Violet and I will go back to the house,” she said. “I’ll pretend to go to bed with Violet, then slip out and bring you a horse.”
“Sounds good. Thanks, Tessa.”
“Thank Violet. She found you.”
“I thought—I guess I was dreaming—that I was in heaven,” he said,
Looking at Violet. He half laughed. “I reckon I don’t have much of a chance of ever getting there.”
Violet reached out her hand to him.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Tessa said, taking Violet’s ice-cold hand and pulling her away.
As she hurried the girl toward Bowdre’s house, Tessa decided it was too dangerous to let Ezra try to ride to the ranch wounded and alone. She’d bring two horses when she returned to him. She’d ride with him. If
that made her an outlaw, so be it.
Chapter 19
As Tessa and Ezra rode toward Wilcox’s ranch, snow began to fall. Tessa watched her brother sway in the saddle, hunched over against the bite of the north wind, and wondered if he could hang on until they got there. When at last she saw the lights of the ranch house flickering fitfully through the veil of snow, she sent up a prayer of thankfulness.
She banged at the rear door of the house and was greeted by a Colt thrust into her face. It was held by Dave Rudabaugh, in her opinion the worst of the men who followed Billy. She detested him.
“I need help,” she said. “Ezra’s with me and hurt.” Dave thrust away his gun and called to Billy.
As soon as Tessa got Ezra inside, she took a look at his wound. The rifle bullet had gone through the flesh of his right side just below the waist, gone in and come out again. Ezra’s pain was mostly in the hip now, and it was all he could do to move his right leg.
“Probably took a chip off the hip bone,” Charlie Bowdre said. “I seen that happen before. Might take a while to heal, but he’ll be okay. Only thing is, he ain’t riding a horse tomorrow or the next day.”
“Can’t we stay here, Ezra and I?” she asked, not understanding.
“You’re gonna have to—leastways, Ez is,” Charlie said.
Tessa put a pad of cotton against the wound and tied it on, realizing as she did so what Charlie had meant. They’d be left behind when the others moved on.
Billy knelt on the opposite side of the cot and grinned at Ezra. “You’re still lucky, companero” His smile faded. “Old Tom wasn’t. How is he?” “He’s dead,” Tessa said.
Billy’s jaw clenched as he looked at her. “Garrett coming after us?” he asked after a minute.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. “Not tonight. I heard him say so. But I think he means to follow you sooner or later.”
Billy nodded. “We’ll rest up and get out of here tomorrow,” he said. When the others left Ezra’s side, Tessa rolled herself in a blanket and lay on the floor next to his cot. He woke later in the night, asking for water. She rose and made her way into the kitchen where a lamp burned low. She skirted the chopping block, where a slab of bacon lay with a knife thrust in it, and went to the water pail.
She’d lifted the tin dipper to scoop water out of the pail when an arm snaked around her throat from behind. Before she could cry out, her breath was choked off. The dipper fell from her hand and then darkness overwhelmed her. She came to on the kitchen floor with her denim pants yanked down around her ankles, her legs shoved apart and Dave Rudabaugh’s vile-smelling hulk above her, fumbling to open his trousers.
Tessa scooted backwards, sliding along the floor. She rolled over and staggered to her feet, aiming for the knife on the chopping block. Her fingers grasped the handle just as Dave’s hands grabbed her legs.
Tessa twisted as she fell, raised the knife and slashed at Dave. Felt the blade slide through
cloth. Into flesh. Heard his curse as he let go of her.
She pulled the knife out. Scrambled to her feet and yanked at her pants with her free hand, pulling them up.
Dave advanced toward her, hands out, blood staining his right shirt sleeve. She leaped to the side and collided with someone else. She spun away and crouched, knife in hand, staring from Dave to the other man. It was Billy.
“What the hell’s this all about, Dave?” Billy demanded.
“Fucking bitch sliced me,” Dave muttered, holding his hand over his right shoulder. “She had good reason, looks like. Leave her alone, you hear, Dave?” “I don’t take orders from you or any man.” Dave glowered at Billy.
But, after a moment, he lurched out of the kitchen, cursing under his breath.
Billy looked after him. “Trouble with this business is,” he said to Tessa in a low tone, “it gets so you can’t choose your company.” She didn’t reply, shaken by what had happened. Her hand trembled as she laid the knife on the chopping block and reached for the dipper on the floor by the water pail.
“I was bringing Ezra a drink,” she said.
Billy took the dipper from her. “I’ll do that”
When she was ready to curl into her blanket again, she saw that Billy, wrapped in his own blanket, was sitting in a chair on the other side of Ezra, his feet propped onto the metal frame of the cot. “Good night, Tessa,” he said.
But she couldn’t sleep. Not that she feared Rudabaugh would return to attack her. Billy’s presence guaranteed no one would bother her. It was the lust she’d seen in his piggy eyes. And by the realization she’d meant to kill him.
The other time, in the hotel with Hank Kilgore, she’d been frightened when she used his boot knife, stabbing at him only in final desperation, with no intent to kill, only to get away from him. She’d never thought of herself as someone who’d kill another person. She’d shot at Apaches, true, but that had been like a bad dream. She’d been scared out of her wits, with no conscious urge to kill. Was she then no better than these outlaws?
* * *
Violet managed to conceal Tessa’s absence from Mark until almost noon by looking so frail and ill that he couldn’t bring himself to question what she said.
“Gone,” she finally admitted when he forced the truth from her. “She took Ezra to Wilcox’s ranch after I found him wounded in the snow. I thought he was dead.”
Mark stood at the window staring out at the falling snow. He couldn’t go after Tessa. That would upset Garrett’s plans if he rode out ahead of the posse. Besides, likely he’d only get himself shot at. She ought to be safe enough at the ranch for the moment. Damn her for a conniving little minx. All for Ezra, of course. He wished she cared that much for him. Garrett wouldn’t ride until he knew Billy had left the ranch. No sense in attacking five, maybe six good marksmen all foiled up in comfort while you froze in the snow. That was a losing game. But the waiting galled Mark.
Around midnight, one of Wilcox’s hands brought word to Garrett that Billy and his gang had moved on. The man didn’t know where they’d gone. Garrett started out at first light with a seven-man posse and Mark. The sun came up before they reached the ranch. Its rays glittered from the snow covering ground and hills, the pinon branches thick and white and shining with diamond brilliance. The country was transformed into a land of eerie beauty.
“It’ll make the tracking easy as shooting a treed coon,” Garrett said to Mark, his Alabama drawl edged with satisfaction. “With any luck we’ll bring them in before Christmas. Though, to tell you the truth, I’m aiming to just out-and-out shoot Billy and get it over with. The rest’ll give up quick enough, once Billy’s gone.”
Mark couldn’t fault Garrett’s reasoning. If he caught Billy and had to keep him in jail for a couple of months waiting for the trial, there’d be the chance of a jailbreak and then he’d have to do it all over.
“What do you aim to do about Ezra?” Mark asked.
“Well, I reckon if he’s shot up bad enough, he won’t be with the others. If he ain’t with the others, I guess I won’t be after him.”
When they reached the ranch, Mark was the first inside. Tessa sat beside Ezra’s cot, staring defiantly up at him. “It’s no use asking where they went--I don’t know. And don’t you dare bother Ezra. He’s feverish.”
Ezra looked at Mark and Garrett without interest from glazed and dull eyes.
“Nothing for us here,” Garrett decided.
Outside, the trail was plain, leading east toward Arroyo Taiban, the horses’ tracks a straight line away from the ranch.
“There’s a way station for herders at Stinking Springs,” Garrett said.
“As I recall, there’s a rock house there to sleep in. That’s where they’ll be making for. I reckon Billy’s just plain forgot I know this country as well as he does.”
They were tracking five men, Mark knew. Charlie Bowdre, Billie Wilson, Dave Rudabaugh and a new recruit by the name of Tom Pickett. And the Kid himself. Billy the Kid.
“I heard you knew the Kid pretty well,” Garrett said.
Mark nodded, thinking of riding line with Billy, the slight seventeen-year-old whistling his perennial “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” He remembered them riding to rescue the Nesbitt wagon from the Mescaleros and fleeing from room to room in McSween’s house as it burned--Billy leading the way out.
Damn it, he’d always liked Billy. How had it come to this, him tracking Billy down like an animal in the snow?
“I knew him when I lived in Sumner,” Garrett said. “We used to play monte together. Likeable cuss, always smiling. I hear he keeps right on smiling when he guns down a man.”
At dusk they were within a mile of the way station, still following the trail when Garrett stopped the posse.
“Billy and the boys are sure to be holed up for the night in that rock house,” he told them. “We’ll slip up and take a look-see before we decide what’s best to do. When we get close, I want every man to be damn quiet.
No sense in telegraphing we’re here.”
When they were about four hundred yards away, Garrett split up the posse, half covering one side while he led the others into a dry arroyo running almost to the front of the rock house.
Mark saw it was a small hut, scarcely big enough for the five men and the two horses they must have brought in with them—only three were tethered outside. The building had no windows and only one entrance with no door on it.
The opening gaped, dark and sinister. There was a chimney, but no smoke came from it. Must be cold as hell inside.
Garrett waved his men back and they returned to where they’d split up and waited for the
others to rejoin them.
“Do we slip in and try to take them by surprise tonight? If they’re asleep, we could go right into the hut. Or should we wait until morning when they’ll know we’re here?” he asked.
“Wait,” Stewart, the Texan who was second in command, said. “I don’t fancy our chances with those boys in the dark. They might be surprised and again they might not be.” Garrett glanced at the others. One or two frowned, but none disagreed.
He nodded. “Going to be a long, cold night,” he said. “Now most of you don’t know Billy too well, so if any one of them comes out before it’s good and light, I’ll bet we want to kill.”