by Ralph Cotton
“With me, yes, a little,” Sam said. “With a jury? I don’t know. Either way you look at it, you had the stolen bank money on you when I found you striking out on foot. You did bring these gunmen some fresh horses. The only question is whether or not you knew they were going to rob something.”
“If you were the jury, Ranger, what would you think?” she asked anxiously.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Sam said, shaking his head. “I’d think, guilty as charged.”
“What if I helped you catch them?” she asked quickly.
“That would be helpful,” Sam said.
“I mean, I do have a good idea where they’re headed,” she said.
“So do I,” said Sam.
“You do?” She looked curious.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said. “I expect as soon as the Cheyenne Kid opens his saddlebags and sees what you’ve done to him, he’ll be headed to wherever he thinks you are.”
“Oh . . . ,” she said. Her tone revealed that the possibility hadn’t yet occurred to her.
“Until he finds out,” Sam said, “I’m sticking to their trail. I want to be somewhere between you and him, when him and his gang comes looking for you.”
“But don’t forget, there’s four of them, Ranger,” she said.
“I’ll try not to,” the Ranger said in an even tone. He gestured toward the two horses on the lead rope. “Pick yourself one. If there’s a blanket inside the shack, we can go back and get it, something for you to sit on until we can find you a saddle—”
“There’s one back in the shack—a saddle, that is,” she cut in. “A bridle too. It’s over in a corner. It’s old and dried out, but it’ll do for now.”
“Good,” said the Ranger. “Let’s get it and go. These horses are both tired, but we can rest one while you ride the other.”
“All right,” she said, sounding agreeable to setting off onto another adventure.
Sam saw her eye the money in his hands, then look away from it quickly. But not quick enough to keep him from seeing that she still had designs on it.
“Should we wait until morning?” she asked. “Because there’s beans and some coffee in the shack too—”
“We’re leaving right now,” Sam said, cutting her off. He nodded at the distant wall of black across the rock chasm below them, the gray creeping smoke rising like slow floodwater among the valleys and wooded hills. “By morning we could be trapped here, roasted alive, or choked to death in our sleep.”
“Oh, the fire . . . ,” she said, looking out and down with him. “Lucky for me, I’m not what you’d call concerned with wildfire.”
Sam looked at her.
“Lucky for you, I am,” he said.
* * *
The Cheyenne Kid caught up to his gang on a winding high trail where the three had stopped and stepped down from their saddles to rest their horses. When Cheyenne spotted them and rode forward, they turned from looking out across the rock chasm at the blackened terrain. Countless spirals of smoke still curled upward here and there; stubs of charred timber with burnt, spiked branches replaced the plush green pine canopy that had existed only hours earlier.
“We were starting to wonder about you,” said Gantry as Cheyenne reined down among them.
“You never have to wonder about me, Red,” said Cheyenne in a short tone. He stared out across the valley and rock chasm at the scorched land. He swung down from his saddle and pushed his tired horse on its rump. The horse stepped away and stopped alongside the other three horses.
Dock Latin caught the horse’s reins and hitched it to a short juniper.
“You took care of everything?” Gantry asked Cheyenne.
Cheyenne just stared at him coldly.
“I’m asking for all our sakes,” Gantry said evenly. “I mean no offense.”
Cheyenne jerked a thumb toward the full saddlebags on his horse’s back.
“I gathered my gear and got out of there,” he said, hoping to change the subject quickly. “There was another fire blowing in. I gave her four shots before I left.”
Gave her four shots . . . ? The three gunmen looked at each other.
“So, you did kill her before you left?” Gantry said, not letting go of the matter.
“We tussled,” Cheyenne said coldly. “She managed to get away from me and run out the door. Like I said, I fired four shots at her. I’m satisfied that at least a couple of them hit her.”
“You walked her down—saw her body, made sure she was dead, then?” Gantry pressed.
“What is this, Gantry?” Cheyenne asked, staring hard at the seasoned gunman. “You doubting my word?”
“No,” Gantry said, without backing an inch, “not if you’re giving it.” He paused before adding, “So give it.”
“You don’t tell me to give my word I killed her, Red,” said Cheyenne. “That’s the same as saying I’m lying.” He took one short step backward and put his hand on the butt on his Colt.
“All he’s trying to do is pin you down, Kid,” Latin cut in, speaking in a calm, quiet voice. “To tell you the truth, I’m not clear myself whether or not you killed her.”
“Neither am I,” said Royal Tarpis. He and Latin spread out a little, facing Cheyenne.
Cheyenne kept cool and shrugged.
“All right, let’s not make a shooting deal of it,” he said. “I saw my bullets hit her, so I didn’t walk her down. I figured she ran until she dropped, then bled out there—like a deer might do.”
“Except this one deer can get us all hanged if she didn’t bleed out,” Gantry said, still pushing the matter.
“He’s right, Kid,” said Tarpis. “Not to crowd you, but why didn’t you walk her down, pop one in her noggin?”
“The looks of that fire coming, I figured it wise to get out while the getting was good,” said Cheyenne. “Besides, I chased off the horses. If she didn’t bleed out, I left her stuck there. She’ll be roasted to a turn by the time anybody comes upon her.”
The three considered it.
Finally, Latin said, “Roasted to a turn . . . I wonder how that would taste, a sweet little woman like that, young, tender . . .”
“Jesus!” said Royal Tarpis with a dark chuckle. “Stay away from me, Dock, you depraved man-eating sumbitch.”
“Not a man-eater, Roy,” Latin said, raising a finger for emphasis, making himself clear. “That would be depraved.”
“So would eating a woman,” said Gantry. “Eating any kind of human flesh is a crime against nature, roasted to a turn or otherwise.”
“So is having congress with a pet heifer,” said Latin, “but them who’ve done it swear by it.”
The others looked at him.
“Or so I’ve heard,” he said in a waning voice.
“I’m not going to stand here talking about eating human flesh or fornicating with a cow,” Gantry said in disgust.
“Neither am I,” said Latin. “I was only saying . . .”
“Anyway,” said Tarpis, gazing off across the chasm and back in the direction of the shack, which now lay miles behind them. “Once that fire gets through with Gilley, she won’t be fit to eat. When the heat rises up from the valleys, it’ll burn anything on the hillsides hard as stone.”
Latin grinned at Cheyenne.
“So, Kid,” he said, “I hope you had a good time with her while it lasted.”
“You can bet I did,” Cheyenne said boastfully. “She said nobody ever made her feel—”
“Whoa! Look at this,” Tarpis said, cutting him off, gesturing down across the rock chasm, where a black oily wall of smoke rose quickly into sight, roiled throughout with orange-red flames. As they turned and stared back at it, the smoke and flames loomed higher and wider in the sky, pushed in their direction on a hot, strong wind.
Seeing the monster inferno climb and block out the late evening sun, Dock Tarpis backed away toward the horses.
“Damned if I know where it’s coming from,” he said, his eyes darkly a-glitter in the high, licking flames, “but I know where it’s headed. It’s headed this way.”
The others backed away with him, as if retreating slowly to keep from stirring some raging dragon.
“It won’t cross the rock lands down there,” Cheyenne said, unhitching his tired horse while the others did the same.
“You mean it hasn’t yet,” Gantry said.
Cheyenne just stared at him as all four of them swung up into their saddles. In the distance across the chasm, they heard a low, billowing roar.
“Wherever the hell it’s headed,” said Latin, “I hope it’s headed where I’m not.” The four turned their horses to the trail and rode away as the gray smoke rose up the hillside from the valleys, gullies and rock chasms as if seeking them out.
“These winds keep changing back and forth,” Dock Latin called out to the others above the pound of the horses’ hooves, “it’s going to burn this whole damned world down!”
“It better not,” Gantry shouted, “not before I spend all my bank money!”
“Yee-hiii! I’m with you on that!” Royal Tarpis shouted, riding hard behind him.
In the rear distance the fire raged and billowed on the wind. Silvery-black ash blew in like snowflakes. The riders felt the scorching, overheated breeze creep up onto their backs and shoulders as they rode on.
* * *
Sitting atop a stolen horse, looking down on the four riders as they galloped away ahead of the encroaching smoke, a young man named Segan Udall watched from a high, rocky perch. He breathed deep, a look of satisfaction on his face. His eyes glistened with tears. Below, gray smoke spread slowly along and across the rock chasm, filling the low spots and reaching upward. Segan looked farther back and across the land, seeing pockets of brown-black smoke that appeared to outline his trail for the past two weeks.
“It took, Caroline,” the broad-shouldered young man called out to his wife, who sat in their open wagon a few safe yards back from the jagged edge of the cliff. “So help me, God, they’ve every one took!” he said in a grateful, bliss-filled voice.
The woman sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap, holding the reins to the team of tired wagon horses who stood with their heads bowed in the afternoon heat. She watched her husband of three months turn his horse and ride back to the wagon.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, sidling up close to where she sat in the wagon seat. “They all took.” He smiled at her expectantly, wanting her to share in his joy. Yet, as usual, she noticed that his smile looked tight and troubled.
“I heard you, Segan,” she said flatly, cautious not to say anything to get him agitated.
“Well, is that all you can say?” he asked, his smile melting from his face. “You heard me?”
“I’m—I’m happy for you?” she said hesitantly. “I just wonder if it’s the right thing to do.”
Over the past three months of their yet-to-be-consummated marriage, almost since the moment he’d slipped the ring onto her finger, she’d watched her husband turn from a sweet, kind, caring young gentleman into a brooding, hot-tempered, easily vexed madman.
Madman . . . ? she asked herself. Was that being a little harsh? No, she decided quickly, it wasn’t. She didn’t like admitting it, but there was no use in denying the truth any longer. Her young husband’s mind was no more reliable than a broken watch.
“It is the right thing to do, Caroline,” Segan said. “When I think about another man’s hands on you, it’s the only thing that keeps me from going killing crazy.”
She saw his hands tighten on his horse’s reins just thinking about it.
“He—he was my husband, Segan,” she offered meekly. “It was with God’s blessing—”
“I don’t care,” said Segan, cutting her short “I can’t abide it. I can’t block it from my mind.” He raised his knuckles to his forehead, squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s killing me!” he half sobbed. “All’s I see is him and you together . . . his hands, his mouth all over you—all the rest of it!”
His shoulders shuddered with his anguish.
She reached over and laid a hand on his bowed back, attempting to console him. But he shoved her hand away.
“Don’t touch me with your shameless hands, not when I’m seeing something like this!” he sobbed. “It’s taking all I’ve got to keep from stripping you naked and wearing out a switch on you, right here and now!” He raised his tortured face and looked at her through flooded eyes. “I hate wanting to do something like that . . . switching your naked bottom so bad that it’s red and welted, and throbbing with pain!”
She winced a little thinking about it and stared at him for a moment.
“Would—” She halted, then asked as if considering it, “Would that help you get over it . . . my being married before?”
“I just don’t know,” Segan said, shaking his head. “All I know is I hurt so bad, I feel better when I see this world burning to a damned cinder.”
Caroline stared out across the distance at pockets of looming smoke.
“Because, if I thought that would help . . . ,” she murmured under her breath.
“I can’t say, Caroline,” Segan said, clenching his fists tightly, squeezing his eyes shut. “I only know if I’m not setting something ablaze, I’m hurting something awful.”
A switching . . . my God, she thought with dread, gazing out across the blackened sky. He was serious; and it wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned it either, she reminded herself. Oh yes. He had spoken of taking a hickory switch to her more than once or twice. In fact, he’d even mentioned her taking switch to him! See? He was a madman, no doubt about it, she resolved.
Lord, what kind of mess had she gotten tangled into?
Chapter 5
Cheyenne and his men pushed their horses hard for the next hour, widening the distance between themselves and the encroaching smoke. For the next hour they rode at an easier gait, but kept watch over their shoulders, making sure the fire stayed far behind them in spite of the buffer of rock land separating them from the heart of the flames. It was almost dark when they stopped along the trail where a stretch of woodlands reached out flat for a half mile before pitching upward onto a long, steep slope.
“You need to pay attention, men,” Cheyenne said, nodding back toward the distant gray haze and the brown-blackish smoke beyond it. “This is what hell’s going to look like when you get there.” Deeper inside the turbulent smoke, orange flames become visible in the darkening evening light.
Gantry let out a laugh and jerked his horse around beside Royal Tarpis.
“If you ask me,” he said, “hell is going to have to heat up some to get itself hotter than this—”
“Quiet, Red!” Tarpis said, cutting him off. He looked around at the others, then off into the trees. “Anybody hear that?”
“Hear what, Roy?” said Gantry, not liking the idea of being interrupted.
“I heard it,” said Cheyenne, lifting his rifle from across his lap. “Sounded like a wounded panther crying out.” He looked at Dock Latin. “You hear it, Dock?”
“Shhhh . . . ,” Dock Latin said. He sat listening intently, his hearing piqued toward the woodlands.
The other three followed suit, listening in silence.
Finally, Gantry said, “That’s no panther, that’s no wounded panther . . . that’s a wounded woman.”
A short, shrill cry resounded from the woodlands. The men looked at each other.
“Dock, I think you’re
right,” Cheyenne said quietly. “Not too far in either.” He swung down from his saddle, rifle in hand. The others followed suit.
“If it’s a woman, we get to keep her, don’t we?” Gantry whispered in excitement.
“Split up,” Cheyenne said without answering him. “Find where it’s coming from and circle around it.” He started walking into the trees and whispered, “Be care-
ful we don’t shoot each other.”
“What does he think, we’re a bunch of damn fools?” Gantry whispered to Royal Tarpis.
“That would be my guess,” Tarpis said matter-of-
factly as they moved out into the dense pine woods.
As Cheyenne walked deeper into the forest, he heard the sound of short gasps of pain continue for a few minutes longer and then turn into muffled sobbing. He looked all around and saw his three men closing in with him on the cries. But just before they got ready to move in quickly, they heard another voice rise above the woman’s sobbing as a man cried out as if in agony, “I can’t do it, Caroline! I just can’t do it!”
“It’s all right, Segan,” the woman’s voice replied, filled with tearful pain. “We tried! And we’ll try again.”
In their wide circle, Cheyenne and his men gave each other curious looks as they moved in closer.
In a small clearing in the waning light of evening, Segan Udall had walked away from Caroline and tossed a long, thin pine branch away. He stood staring at the ground, his wide shoulders slumped, his eyes shut against a well of tears.
“It’s never going to work for us, Caroline, no matter what we do,” Segan sobbed. “I have taken a switch to you for nothing. These terrible things I see are just too much to live with. I’ll never consummate this marriage!”
“Maybe I can help!” Red Gantry called out, stepping into the clearing, a crazy grin on his flushed face.
“What the hell is he doing?” Cheyenne growled to himself, seeing Gantry jump into the clearing.
Segan turned quickly toward the sound of Gantry’s voice. Caroline snatched a wool blanket up and pulled it around herself with a fearful gasp.
Seeing the stranger’s eyes on his wife before Caroline managed to cover herself, Segan flew into a blind rage. With a loud bellow like that of a bull, he raced across the clearing, head down, and plowed into Red Gantry before the startled outlaw could get his Colt up from its holster.