by Paul Bagdon
That’s the way it went. I handed over sixty dollars for whatever they needed to Teresa an’ Blanca an’ sent them on their way that Sunday morning.
The extra rifles and ammunition would be tabbed by the mercantile owner and we’d pay him next time in town.
We stood outside the barn watching the surrey pull away, the women bundled in their heavy clothes, the big buffalo robe covering both their laps. There hadn’t been much snow lately, but there’d been lots of wind. There were some bare spots on our land an’ on the road to town. “Winter is ’bout over,” I said.
“No it ain’t,” Arm said. “We ain’t had the beeg one yet—the storm that people, they talk ’bout for years after. Nossir, winter is no over.”
It turned out Arm was right.
But, the storm hadn’t caused all the bloodshed and dead men.
You see, Blanca and Teresa set off for Mass that Sunday morning, and by afternoon, they hadn’t come back.
“We can follow the tracks, no? Theese is too goddamn long they be gone.”
It was about then that one of Dansworth’s boys rode in. I recognized him, although I never knew his name. I saw him kill a man in a saloon in Laredo with a knife he pulled from his boot—sliced the poor guy’s throat—and then walk outside and draw on the sheriff—kill him, and drop the law’s deputy, as well.
He was awful handy and awful quick with his Colt. The sheriff of Laredo wasn’t half bad, but he wasn’t a gunfighter. The deputy couldn’t outdraw a goat.
The gunman got on his horse—although there were lots of men who wanted to put a bullet into him. He hauled ass out of town before I had a chance to face him.
I was one of the men who thought he should be dead.
Killing like he did ain’t nowhere right—’specially the deputy. He was maybe twenty years old, a towhead, whose badge was polished so much he musta worked on it every night.
The killer had a wolflike face—one I’ll never forget. His eyes were set closely together in a narrow forehead and his nose and mouth stood out a bit, like the muzzle of a dog or a wolf.
The gunslinger rode up to our barn and dismounted. He stood there holding his reins, letting us walk from the house to him. His horse was a nice-looking black mare with a blaze on her face, but she needed some weight, and their were spur marks on her flanks. A large Mexican bit— what’s called a “spade bit,” which is a cruel bit of tack—was buckled too tight over her muzzle.
“I’m here to pick up a buckskin mare for Mr. Dansworth,” he said. “Wanna fetch her out for me?”
“The mare isn’t for sale,” I said. “You know that and so does Dansworth. You’d best get on your horse and get the hell—”
“You got things all wrong,” the gunslinger interrupted. “I ain’t talkin’ about buyin’ the mare— I’m talkin’ about a little barter between us.” He stepped away from his horse, dropping the reins to the ground. The mare stood—she’d been taught to ground-tie.
The gunfighter wore a Colt .45 low an’ tied down. He pulled off his gloves by grabbing them with his teeth and let them, too, fall to the ground.
“You got nothin’ we want to trade for,” I said.
“You can get on your horse an’ ride out, or you can ride out dead, tied over your saddle. That ees up to you,” Arm said. He took a couple steps away from me, to the side.
The gunslinger went on as if Armando hadn’t spoken. “I think we do have somethin’ to trade for the horse,” he said. “A pair of fat Mex hags an’ a surrey. I take the mare with me now an’ we let the putas go. Simple as that. They’d be back here in an hour, maybe less.”
My hand had already dropped to my side, and my fingertips brushed the grips of my Colt. “Where are they?”
The gunfighter was in a pose much like mine, hand hovering near his weapon, his body turned slightly to make a smaller target.
I could barely hear what Arm said. “Lemme have this sumbitch.”
I knew Arm’s skills. He was pretty fast and his accuracy wasn’t bad with his Colt. With his 30.30 he could shoot the tongue out of a sidewinder’s mouth at a hundred yards on a moonless night. But against a killer like this one, he didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell. “Not this time, Arm,” I said. “I seen this piece of crap cut a man’s throat an’ gun a sheriff an’ deputy in Laredo and I’ve wanted him for a long time. He’s mine, partner.”
Arm didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “Don’ make no difference whose bullets kill theese scum, jus’ as long as he’s dead. Is right, no?”
“Yeah,” I said. I met the ’slinger’s eyes. “You got a pair of ways to keep on breathing. You mount up an’ send our women home, or you tell us where they are an’ we go get them. There’s nothin’ in between.”
“Ain’t you a cocky pup.” The gunfighter grinned. “I guess I gotta tell Mr. Dansworth you fellas wasn’t interested in no trade, then. I’ll take you both down an’ go off with the buckskin. What happens to them Mex women ain’t no nevermin’ to me.”
There’s always some sort of a physical rush in a gunfight. The thought of winning and living or losing and dying generates a tingling—a tautness—through a man’s body. I saw the gunfighter’s fingers grasp the grips of his pistol— but it was like watching one of those stereopticon things, where movement is fast and jerky.
Maybe at one time he’d been very fast. He wasn’t any longer—either that, or he was off guard, figuring I was jus’ some shit-kicker he’d put a couple slugs into and have plenty of time to drop Arm, as well.
I felt as if a bolt of lightning struck me; everything leaped into a flat-out gallop in my mind and in my body. I could hear my pulse in my ears, feel my heart beat. I saw the gunfighter’s Colt begin to leave his holster, until only the barrel was left in the leather. That’s as far as it got. I fired three times, putting three bullets into his chest. The impacts threw him back but he didn’t go down right away. His fingers released his Colt and it dropped back into his holster. He took half a stumble step back, and then dropped. Three blossoms of red appeared on his shirt and vest. His feet and legs trembled a bit and then were still.
I walked over to his horse, ignoring the corpse, and unbuckled and removed the spade bit from the black mare’s mouth. “Let’s tie him to his saddle,” I said. “His horse’ll get him home. He’s been around long enough for the mare to know where her stall is. If he comes untied and drops off, the coyotes’ll eat good tonight.”
“Or el buzzards tomorrow. They eat mierda such as theese,” Arm said.
We didn’t want to waste good rope on the killer. We took his gun belt an’ Colt but didn’t bother going through his pockets or saddlebags. We draped him over his saddle and used baling twine to run a double line under the mare, holding the gunslinger’s hands and feet as tight to the horse as possible. The mare was a little jittery; the scent of blood was scaring her. I slapped her on the rump and she skittered away and then began to cut a path toward Hulberton.
“We’d bes’ get our horses,” Arm said. “We can follow the surrey’s tracks good enough—’least to we get to town. Then we see what’s what.”
I saddled my horse and tugged the Sharps from its scabbard, checking that it was loaded. It was. I replaced the spent cartridges in my Colt and stuck the killer’s Colt between my gun belt and my gut. I got a 30.30 from the house an’ carried that across my lap once I was mounted.
Arm, too, checked the loads on his Colt and his rifle. We jogged away from the barn. There was really no need to follow the wide-wheeled tracks of the surrey early on; there was only one logical way to make it to the church in town. What we did look for were those tire tracks veering off in any directions, and hoofprints around and near the surrey.
“Tiny, he would like to be here,” Arm said.
“He would. But this ain’t his fight. The two of us have been able to handle anything thrown at us before. We’ll do the same thing this time.”
“Es verdad.”
It was damned cold and the wind
was picking up. There’d been some teasing signs of spring in the last few days, but the temperature and the wind showed us that’s all those signs were: teasing. We’d wrapped scarves around our heads to cover our ears and then jammed down our hats to keep the whole mess together. We both wore fingered gloves, but even through them our hands were numbing up some. I was working my fingers almost constantly, clenching and opening my fists to keep the blood running, an’ I saw Arm was doing the same thing.
We came upon what we were searching for about forty-five minutes later. At least four men on horseback had come upon the surrey. The tracks there scuffled a good bit; it looked like Teresa and Blanca had tried to make a run for it. They didn’t get far. The tracks then showed a man on horseback was leading the surrey horse and that the others were spaced around it.
We rode to the top of a gradual rise and stopped a few hundred yards below what must have been an abandoned farm with a barn that’d caved in on itself. The house was still standing and smoke was leaving the chimney and being immediately whisked away by the biting wind. Four saddle horses and the surrey horse were tied to a long rail in front of the house.
We figured they’d have a couple lookouts and there were. They were on foot, and their faces were cherry red from the cold. Neither made an effort to hide himself. Both cradled rifles.
There was a dim lamp in the farmhouse but the windows were so dirty we couldn’t see any movement through them. I drew my Sharps and tied a fresh white pillowcase to it that I’d taken from the house. “I’ll go on down,” I said to Arm. “You watch the lookouts. You see or hear any shooting, you take them down. Okay?”
“Sí.”
I rode to the farmhouse with the barrel of my Sharps raised, the pillowcase whipping in the wind.
As I approached, a single man stepped out of the house, a rifle cradled in his arms, the butt ready to find his shoulder. I reined to a stop in front of him.
“Where are the women?” The wind carried most of my voice away but the fella heard me. I recognized him from the saloon. He was one of the cluster that constantly hung about Dansworth.
“They’re inside,” he said. “Though I gotta say we ain’t any too happy bein’ closed in with a couple of stinkin’ Mexicans.”
“I want to see them.”
“Sure.”
He said something over his shoulder and Blanca and then Teresa were brought past the now-open door. There was dried blood under Teresa’s nose.
“Here’s the deal,” the kidnapper said. “We go from here to your place with two of my men riding in the surrey with the women. If there’s any screwin’ around, both putas die. Get it? Anything out of the ordinary happens an’ they’re dead. Then we’ll deal with you an’ your pard.”
He spat a stream of tobacco juice to the ground. “We all go to your place an’ git the mare. That’s where we let your women go. You try to follow us an’ the men already waiting by your place will shoot your asses off.”
“How do I know your word is good?”
“You don’t—but you got no choice. We’re goin’ to get that buckskin one way or another. This is the best deal you’re gonna git. Take it or leave it.”
Before I could answer, he added, “One other thing. I want that Sharps.”
“Seems like you got all the cards an’ the hand ain’t been dealt yet,” I said.
“Sure do look like it, don’t it.” He grinned.
A sudden gust of wind slammed the door inward, giving me a quick view inside. Teresa and Blanca, standing near the fireplace with their arms around each other, were white-faced, either with cold or fear. A fella sat at a rickety table with a bottle in front of him.
I began to speak to the man in front of me— some nonsense about the trade not being fair— and lowered the barrel of my Sharps. I blew a hole through his midsection large enough to ride a draft horse through, let my Sharps fall, and drew my Colt. The man at the table had the bottle to his mouth, upended, sucking whiskey. I was firing rapidly so it was hard to tell which round smashed the bottle, but from the pulp, hair, and crud behind him on the wall, all four of my slugs had taken him in the head.
Teresa and Blanca commenced to scream. Behind me I heard gunfire—two rapid shots, one more—and then silence. Armando’s whoop told me he’d taken care of his part of the mission.
The women took some calming down. They’d never seen a gunfight before, much less seen a man catch four rounds from a .45 at close range in his head. Armando rode down and spoke to them in Spanish, touching their shoulders, holding their hands. He was pretty good at it. After maybe fifteen minutes they seemed to have shed all the tears they were going to and some color was returning to their faces. Both refused to cast their eyes anywhere near the wall with the gore still dripping down its rough boards to the floor.
During that fifteen minutes, the wind had begun to pound on the old house, shaking it, bringing forth screams and groans of wood long since overly dry and without real weight-bearing power.
“We gotta git outta here ’fore the whole damn place, she comes down on our heads,” Arm warned.
“Yeah. I’ll get the surrey an’ load up the ladies. You untack the horses this scum rode in on, an’ send ’em on their way. Ain’t no use in lettin’ them freeze to death. ’Least they have a chance to join up with some mustangs.”
Neither of us gave a thought to the bodies of the two lookouts or the pair in the farmhouse—no more than we’d mourn over killing a rat in our barn. In fact, I figured, that’s pretty much what we’d done: rid the world of some vermin.
The snow had begun and it was coming on hard, almost parallel to the ground as it was driven by the snarling of the wind. Arm was driving the surrey, jammed between Teresa and Blanca, his horse tied to the back, following the cart. I stayed in my saddle but didn’t wander far from the surrey. If we got stuck out here it was the only shelter we had—and piss-poor shelter, at that.
Arm wasn’t much good at directions, and neither was I. The best use for a map, we believed, was to tack it up inside an outhouse. We’d operated by instinct and by guessing, but we’d never been in quite a situation as this one. The storm my partner had predicted had fallen on us like a slavering, starving timber wolf.
I could barely see Arm and the women although I was riding a yard away from them. “You know where you’re going?” I hollered to Arm.
“Sheet,” he yelled back. “I don’ know where nada is, Jake.”
A brief lapse in the wind allowed me to see Blanca tuck her face very close to Arm’s. I could see her mouth moving, but the wind caught up with itself again and I lost any words exchanged.
“Stee close,” Armando yelled. “We turn to the left a bit now.”
I had no better suggestions so I followed the surrey as it swung in a long arc to the left. It seemed to me that all that accomplished was to give the wind and snow a better bite at my face, but like I said, I had no better suggestions.
I lost all sense or orientation or direction; I might just as well have been ridin’ on the surface of the damned moon. I’d gone a couple feet beyond the surrey horse, because I had no idea what sort of obstacle he could get tangled in—rock out-croppings, snowdrifts, whatever-the-hell, and I was in a much better position to handle my animal than Arm was with the surrey horse and the long reins.
I began to think of making a shelter from the surrey; tip it on its side, break off a few boards, and tie the horses in snug enough so that they’d make a sort of a wall. I couldn’t see a damned thing, and I was just about to turn to yell to Arm about building, pulling in, and waiting out the worst of the storm, when my horse walked into the side of our barn.
Chapter Seven
I figured it had to be our barn; there were no other barns around our land that were still standing, and even if it wasn’t ours, it’d provide better shelter from the lashing wind and whiteout snow.
The thing is, although I knew it was a barn, I had no idea where we positioned on it. A couple feet from the main door? T
he very back of the structure? One of the sides?
There was only one way to find out: dismount, tie my horse to the surrey, and start walking, keeping at least one hand on the wood siding. That wasn’t nearly as easy as it sounded—the wind was doing its level best to tear my legs out from under me. I imagined myself being whisked away like a tumbleweed, to die in a snowbank.
I climbed down from my horse and followed the traces of the surrey to Arm and handed my reins to him. I leaned in close. “I’m gonna follow the siding until I come to a door an’ then I’ll be back to get you. Ain’t no other way to do it.” Arm shouted something but the storm carried his words away before they reached me.
I took short steps, facing the barn, both hands in contact with it. It was hard and clumsy walking. I fell a couple of times, tripping over things I couldn’t see. There was a flash of panic each time: suppose I rolled or was blown away from the structure. I had no choice. I went on.
Actually, we were fairly fortunate. We’d struck the barn on the north side, not many feet from where the rectangle made its turn to the front. The feel of that big sliding door was wonderful. I backtracked just as slowly as I’d come to the door and walked into the side of my horse. I grabbed the surrey horse’s bit with one hand and set out again, retracing my path to the door, one hand always in contact with the wood.
The door was a bitch to open with the wind blowing against it, but I got it open wide enough for the surrey to pass through. The wood inside screamed under the stress of the storm, and it was as cold as a tomb, but we were out of the wind. I muscled the door closed while Arm fumbled around near the tack room, scouting for one of the lamps we kept hanging here and there. He found one, lit it, and the light shoved the darkness aside.
Blanca and Teresa were making the sign of the cross and praying, seemingly frozen to their seat.
“I gotta bring the mustang in,” I told Arm. “There’s no way we can build anything to keep him outta the wind.”
My partner’s lips were blue and numb. He mumbled rather than spoke. “Always with hand on wood,” he managed to get out. I nodded. “You need rope for open space.”