by Ralph Cotton
Fresh horses? Good enough. He’d stick with that notion until something proved otherwise, he decided, staring up along the rocky, winding trail. He had their tracks. He’d catch up to them and take them down. He only hoped none of the fire had jumped across the chasm and rekindled among the pines woodlands in front of him. It was the season for wildfires, he thought, dry, hot, deadly—there was nothing he could do about that. His work had to go on, wildfires or not. He cradled the rifle in his arm while the horse stood drawing water beside him.
Chapter 2
Red Gantry climbed down from a lookout spot atop a large boulder where he’d been perched like a hawk for the past hour. He walked to the shack, his Spencer rifle across his shoulders, his gloved hands draped over either end.
A steely-eyed gunman named Dockery Latin sat on a short empty nail keg out in front of the shack, dealing himself a hand of solitaire in the dirt between his spread boots. Seeing Red Gantry coming, he looked up from beneath a wide-brimmed slouch hat.
“No sign of anybody?” he asked, putting down a card.
“Not a soul, not a sight, not a sound, Dock,” Gantry said. He grinned and stopped beside his fresh horse at a short hitch rail. Three other fresh horses stood there, hitched, saddled and ready to ride. In a lean-to shelter farther across the small clearing, their four spent horses stood resting.
“Hmmph,” Latin said, with a distrusting scowl. He turned over a card in his hand and studied it.
“I think we’re in good shape,” said Gantry. He swung his rifle down and shoved it into a saddle boot. “Sometimes you’ve got to relax and appreciate your good fortune.”
“Relax, huh?” said Latin, staring at him.
“That’s right,” said Gantry. “We’ve got away clean. Let’s be glad of it.”
From inside the cabin came a painful moan.
“Ask Cheyenne how clean we got away,” said Latin, nodding toward an open window. “See how glad he is.”
“This long-riding business, you’re bound to lose a man now and then,” said Gantry, “even if it is the boss.” He grinned again. “You might say it sweetens the pot for all of us.”
Another moan resonated from the window, this one sounding less painful.
“I’d like to know what that little gal is doing to him,” Gantry said, staring at the window. “I might want to moan out loud myself.”
Latin gave a dark chuckle, pitching another card down on the dirt between his feet.
“Wait until Cheyenne tells her she ain’t going with us,” he said. “She’ll make him moan, sure enough—she might even make him holler out loud.”
“He was wise to wait until she gets his wound cleaned and bandaged,” said Gantry.
“Yeah, the Kid’s no fool,” said Latin, “at least not when it comes to looking out for himself.”
Gantry eyed him. “Are you saying you’re good with him shooting the sheriff and the bank teller down, making sure we’ve got a hanging coming to us?”
“Naw, I can’t say I was happy with that,” Latin replied in a lowered voice. He fell quiet and studied the deck of cards in his hand.
“Neither am I,” Gantry said quietly.
Royal Tarpis, a bearded, heavyset gunman, stepped out onto the porch wearing a long yellow trail duster and a dust-streaked derby hat.
“I can’t take it no more in there,” he said, stepping down off the porch and over with the other two gunmen, a Winchester rifle in his gloved hand.
“All the moaning and bleeding got to you, did it?” Latin asked, turning over another card and studying it in his hand.
“Moaning and bleeding . . . ? No,” said Tarpis. “I’m talking about watching the fine little gal frisk around like there ain’t an eye in the place on her.”
“Hell, Roy,” Gantry said to Tarpis in a lowered voice, “there’s nothing stopping you. Unless maybe Cheyenne puts a bullet in your ear.”
The three gave each other a look.
“Nothing stopping all three of us, far as that goes,” Latin said. “It’s a free country, is what they always say.”
Finally Royal Tarpis said, “Boys, I’m sided with Cheyenne, at least for now. I couldn’t do something like that to the boss’s gal.”
“She’s not his gal,” said Gantry. “He’s made that clear enough.”
“That what he says now, but still . . . ,” said Tarpis. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Do what, Roy?” said Gantry, again with a teasing grin.
“You know . . . ,” said Tarpis, embarrassed. “Jerk little Gilley’s britches down, Cheyenne lying right there.” He shook his big head. “It ain’t in me.”
Gantry chuckled and looked back and forth between the other two men.
“I bet you wasn’t raised that way, was you, Roy?” he asked secretively.
“Come down to it, no, I expect I wasn’t,” Royal Tarpis said proudly.
“But that’s today, you wasn’t,” said Latin, himself giving a grudging grin, flipping a card into the dirt. “Hang around here a day or two longer, see her flaunting that pretty little rear end around the dinner table, bending over the cook stove. Sooner or later your raising will fly plumb out the window.” He turned over another card in his hand and studied it. “I know that I wouldn’t trust myself too much longer if we were to overstay—”
“That’s why we’re leaving here right now,” said the Cheyenne Kid, cutting him off. He stood stiff and shirtless in the open doorway, his trunk wrapped in strips of dingy white bandage, from his waist all the way up under his arms. A big Colt horse pistol hung from his right hand.
“Hey, Cheyenne,” said Latin, taking on a cautious look, “I meant no harm, anything I was saying. We was all just play-talking. No offense intended.”
“None’s taken, Dock,” said Cheyenne, staring coldly at the older outlaw. “If it was, I would have walked out here shooting.” He gave Latin a hard stare. Then he turned from one man to the other. “Did anybody hear me say we’re leaving?”
“What about Gilley?” Gantry asked in a lowered voice.
“What about her?” said Cheyenne.
“You said she wasn’t going with us,” Gantry said, almost in a whisper.
“She’s not,” said Cheyenne in the same guarded tone. “She met us here with fresh horses. I’m done with her.”
“That’s all well and good. But I hate leaving a soreheaded woman behind,” Gantry cautioned. “If she’s mad enough at you, there’s no telling what she’ll say to whoever comes by asking about us.”
“Who’s leading this bunch, Gantry, you or me?” Cheyenne asked flatly, his hand tightening around the big Colt.
“You are, Cheyenne,” Gantry replied quickly. “I’m just stating the way—”
“Gilley’s not telling anybody anything. I’ll take care of her once and for all before I leave here,” Cheyenne said, cutting him off. “Don’t you worry about it.” He nodded down at the knife handle protruding from his boot well.
The three men looked at each other with a slight nod of agreement.
“We’re good,” said Gantry.
“I’m real glad to hear that,” Cheyenne said with sarcasm, stepping down off the porch, his movements stiff. “Now get some horse under you and ride on ahead. I’ll take care of Gilley and catch up the next mile or two.” He reached over and pulled a bag of chopped tobacco from the shirt pocket behind Latin’s brush-scarred trail duster.
The men looked at each other again.
“Well . . . ?” said Cheyenne in a raised voice. “What the hell are you waiting for?” He took the rolling paper that Latin handed up to him and began building himself a smoke.
* * *
Inside the shack, Gilley Maclaine hurriedly jerked seven paper-bound packets of bank money from inside Cheyenne’s saddlebags—his share of the b
ank robbery in Phoebe—and pitched them under the bed.
Kill me . . . ? That son of a bitch!
She’d show him, she thought to herself.
Moments earlier she’d gone out the rear door and picked up an armload of kindling for the cook stove, thinking they’d be here at least for supper. She’d made her way around the side of the house to the front door to announce that she’d be boiling some beans when she’d caught the words being passed back and forth in a secretive tone.
That son of a bitch! she repeated to herself, retying the saddlebags and laying them back on the chair beside the bed where Cheyenne had kept them. She’d done everything he’d asked of her. She’d brought horses for him and his gang, risked getting both her and the horses roasted alive coming down from the high trail while the wildfire still raged out of the north. She’d slept with him! Anger flared in her eyes, on her face. She’d tended his gunshot wound! She was nobody’s nursemaid—that son of a bitch!
Kill her? Huh-uh. She didn’t think so, not if she had any say in the matter. And why was he doing this? she asked herself, slipping over to the front window and peeping out, seeing him smoking his cigarette, staring off in the direction the others had taken. Just to cheat her out of her share—money he’d promised her for bringing the horses. He wasn’t worried about her keeping her mouth shut. She’d never given him reason to think he couldn’t trust her. She’d been straight with him, as straight as any man he could have hired to do the job.
To hell with him, then. . . .
She snatched up a pile of scrap bandage, a riding blouse and a pair of dirty underwear she’d left lying on the floor by the bed, and stuffed them all down in the saddlebags to fill the void left by the money she’d taken.
Now it was time to go, she thought, turning, heading out the rear door. As she reached for the door handle, she heard Cheyenne’s boots step up onto the porch. Inside her head she listened to a voice telling her to hurry, make a run for it before it was too late. All right, that was what she needed to do.
But she stopped with her hand on the door handle. No, she couldn’t just turn tail and run this way. Even though he intended to kill her, she had to take some measure of satisfaction for herself.
This is crazy! the inner voice warned her. But she refused to listen. She turned from the door and walked calmly forward, meeting Cheyenne as he stepped inside the shack and stood with the big Colt shoved down into his waist.
“Everybody’s gone,” she said, as if surprised. “I was going to fix some supper.”
“Not tonight, Gilley,” Cheyenne said, facing her, his feet spread shoulder width apart—a gunfighter’s stance, she reminded herself. Did he think she was dumb enough not to see he was up to something? Or did he think it didn’t matter, that there was nothing she could do about it anyway? She stood a little over five feet, lean, not skinny, certainly not big enough to handle a big, strong man like him.
“Then, we’re leaving too?” she asked. “I suppose it’s time you give me my cut?”
“Yeah, about that . . . ,” said Cheyenne. He paused and smiled; she saw the handle of the knife in his boot well. “Come closer, Gilley, let me look in your eyes.”
You must be out of your mind! the voice said to her.
“Sure,” she said, smiling, stepping forward. She knew she should turn and run, but she wasn’t going to. She stopped three feet from him and smiled, looking up into his eyes as he reached his left hand out and placed it on her shoulder, his right hand free to reach down for the knife.
“I’ve got to do something and I wish I didn’t have to, Gilley,” he said. She felt his hand tighten on her shoulder.
Here it came, she told herself, seeing his right hand ready to reach down for the knife, moving a little stiff and slow owing to his side wound.
“Oh? So do I,” she said, cocking her head slightly, still staring into his eyes like some moonstruck schoolgirl.
He gave her a curious look and almost stopped to ask what dreadful thing she had to do. But before he got the chance, the hard, pointed toe of her boot swung up with all of her anger, fear and fury and buried itself like a hatchet high in his crotch.
“There, you bastard!” she shouted. “Try and kill me!”
She sidestepped out of his way as he rose onto his toes and jackknifed violently forward, his mouth agape, toward the floor.
Cheyenne gagged and staggered, his left hand coming away from her shoulder. He grasped himself tight with both hands up between his legs.
“Oh? Does that hurt?” she said mockingly, as a long string of spittle swung from his lips.
“Plea-please—” he groaned, staggering, bowed, struggling for breath as she reached down and jerked the long knife from his boot well.
“Is this what you had in mind for me?” she said, holding the knife blade down where he could see it though a watery veil.
“No—” he rasped. “I wasn’t going to—”
“Don’t lie to me again,” she hissed, pressing the tip of the knife against the back of his neck hard enough to draw blood. “I heard every word you and your buzzards said out there. To think that I trusted you—gave myself to you!”
In spite of the wound in his side and having been kicked in the groin, Cheyenne summoned up his strength when he felt the sharp steel bite into his neck. As Gilley spoke, the bowed gunman swung up and around suddenly. His arm knocked her away from him; he made a quick, desperate grab for the Colt on his waist. Gilley hit the floor; the knife flew from her hand. Seeing the Colt come into play, she knew there was nothing for her to do but scramble away and out the rear door as a bullet whistled past the side of her head.
She raced away zigzagging across the small clearing, bullets spitting into the ground, nipping at her feet, causing her to alter direction wildly until she bounded into the shelter of tree and rock and stopped long enough to look back.
In the doorway of the shack, Cheyenne stood, still bowed, holding on to the door frame for support. Firing the last bullet in his Colt, he held the empty gun up smoking in his hand, scanning the pine woodlands for Gilley. Remembering what Red Gantry had said about leaving an angered woman behind, he calmed himself, gathering his breath and his reasoning.
That crazy bitch, he thought, knowing he’d have to get her back here and kill her.
He swallowed his anger and some of the pain in his groin and called to her in a strained voice, “Gilley? Gilley, sweetheart? Listen to me. I don’t know what just happened here, but I’m sorry. Hear me? I’m truly sorry.”
He waited, lowering the smoking Colt and listening toward the woods. He reached around inside the doorway, took a bandoleer of bullets down from a wall peg and hung it over his forearm. He dropped the spent shells from his Colt onto the porch and replaced them with fresh rounds as he spoke.
“I hope you weren’t hit, darling,” he called out. “God, I’d never forgive myself if you were.”
Gilley watched from cover, also catching her breath, checking her body to make sure she wasn’t hit.
Cheyenne finished loading the Colt, spun the cylinder and cocked it. “I don’t know what I did to cause you to kick me, but you come on out now, you hear? Whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it, you and me, together.” He managed a weak grin toward the woods, fresh blood spreading across his bandaged side.
Gilley saw Cheyenne turn the cocked Colt quickly toward the sound of a bird rising from the woodlands floor. Seeing it was only a bird, he lowered the Colt an inch but kept it ready.
“Mercy, but that was some little spat we just had,” he said, his voice growing stronger. “But no harm done, eh? It’s nothing we can’t sit down and talk over, is it?” His grin widened. “They say making up is the best part of these little lover spats.”
In a pig’s eye! Gilley told herself, turning, creeping farther away into the rugged shelter of rock and woodlands.
Chapter 3
The Cheyenne Kid turned back from the doorway and straightened up, more of his strength coming back. He managed a dark chuckle of appreciation, thinking about how much guts it took for Gilley Maclaine to make such a stand for herself. Most women, hearing what she heard, would have made a run for it and never looked back. Not her, he thought. She didn’t wait for it to happen. She didn’t shy back from a fight. She saw it coming and brought it to him—you had to admire her for that.
Still, he’d have to kill her before he left, he reminded himself, thinking about Gantry and the other two, what they would think if he let her get away. He almost felt bad about it now that he saw how she’d handled herself. She was a petite woman, svelte, but seasoned and hard, the kind of body this land sculpted a woman into if she stayed alive long enough.
He found his bloodstained shirt and put it on, keeping an eye out for the woman through an open window. A Winchester rifle stood in its saddle boot. Would she slip in and make a try for it? He’d see. . . .
He gave himself a slight smile as he buttoned the bib of his shirt and stuffed its tails down into his trousers. He winced as he stooped, picked up his knife and shoved it into his boot well, his wounded side feeling stiff and sore, his crotch still throbbing in lingering pain.
He had to admit there was something he liked about her kicking him that way. He picked up his saddlebags without checking them and draped them over his shoulder. Not the kick itself, he corrected himself quickly, walking to the open doorway. That certainly wasn’t something he enjoyed. A man would have to be twisted in his brain to enjoy getting kicked in the sack. But the idea that she didn’t hesitate for a second to let him have it? Yeah, something about that he liked—he liked his women tough, he decided. What was wrong with that? He continued to ponder these thoughts as he made his way over to his waiting horse and unhitched its reins.