Shorty had once been a puncher for Simon Prather and I recalled that he’d pulled his weight and did his job without complaint. But the lure of easy money had attracted the little man to the outlaw life and he’d soon hooked up with a couple of hard cases out of El Paso. The last I’d heard, the trio had robbed a bank down on the Peg Leg Crossing country and shot their way out of town, a stray bullet killing a ten-year-old girl as they made their escape.
Riding slow and careful, I circled around Shorty’s body and headed toward the dugout, the rain-lashed hills around me waiting in patient silence for what was to come. A dead man lay on his back a few feet away from the door and another hung, head down, over the top rail of the corral.
The Apaches had caught all three out in the open and quickly killed the two El Paso hard cases. I reckon Shorty must have been born under a dark star because he had been the one unlucky enough to be captured alive.
I rode back to where the little man’s body hung. The fire was now dead, extinguished by the rain and by Shorty’s brains, which had run out after the heat cracked his skull wide open.
It had been a terrible way to die, and I vowed right there and then that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t let the Apaches take me alive. Or Lila either.
I found my knife and cut Shorty loose and he fell to the ground with an ungainly thump, legs and arms splayed, ugly and undignified in death. I swung out of the saddle and dragged the man into a clump of long, bluestem grass beside the creek where he’d be hidden from sight. That done, one by one I looped my rope around the feet of the other two outlaws and dragged them behind my horse and laid them beside Shorty.
There was no time for a burying, and I figured this way Lila would not see the bodies and be disturbed by them.
After stretching out the last outlaw, I straightened up and worked a crick out of the small of my back. I swung into the saddle and rode to the ridge of the hogback. Lila was down there, looking for me, her open hand shielding her eyes from the teeming rain. I waved to her, indicating that she should bring up the wagon. The girl cracked her whip and soon the ox team was plodding toward me, heads low as they leaned into the yoke and labored up the slope.
Scouting around, I found a clearing among the rocks and waved Lila toward it. The oxen reached the ridge and headed into the clearing where Lila halted them.
“What did you find?” she asked, looking up at me with eyes that were wide and just a tad frightened.
“There’s a dugout cabin on the hill opposite this one and a barn where we can put up my horse and the oxen.”
“People?”
I shook my head at her. “No people,” I lied. “Who ever lived here probably moved out when the Apache scare began.” I smiled, trying to reassure her. “Lila, we can spend the night in the cabin if the place is halfway decent. At least we’ll be out of the rain.”
Doubt clouded Lila’s eyes and for a moment I thought she knew I was lying to her. But to my relief she said: “I was just thinking about Pa. This journey has been hard on him and he’s not as young as he used to be.”
Well, I let that go. If, as I suspected, Ned Tryon was always as drunk as a hoedown fiddler, no wonder he was aging so fast.
Lila took my silence as agreement because she glanced up at the darkening sky and said: “He’ll be all right when we get to the new place. There’s still time to put in a crop.”
“Maybe so,” I muttered, not wanting to pursue the matter further. Then, more brusquely than I intended:
“I’m going to check out the cabin. Bring the wagon down, but be careful. The slope is slippery from the rain.”
Without waiting for a reply I swung the black around and headed back down the hill.
My brief conversation with Lila had disturbed me deeply. Pinning all her hope for the future on her drunken father was bucking a cold deck. Ned was too far gone in drink and dreams to make it as a farmer. Changing locations would not change the man, and soon the two of them would be running again, leaving one defeat only to chase another.
I hadn’t been lying to her when I told her the thin soil of the Brazos country wasn’t good for farming. But that was something she’d have to find out for herself, and the thought saddened me.
I was just eighteen that spring, yet as I swung out of the saddle and stepped wearily toward the dugout, I felt years older than both Lila and her pa and, in a way I couldn’t fully understand, responsible for both of them.
But I vowed that responsibility would end come morning. They would have to make their own way as I would have to make mine, or else I’d have no chance of catching up with Lafe Wingo and saving the SP Connected from ruin.
Though, as I opened the door of the dugout and stepped inside, the unbidden thought came to me that my chances of getting back the thirty thousand dollars were mighty thin—and all the time getting thinner.
To my surprise, the inside of the dugout was clean and well kept. The dirt floor had been recently swept and the blankets on the three bunks had been pulled up and squared away.
A rusty potbellied stove, long gone cold, stood at one end of the dugout and there was a table with a couple of roughly made benches drawn up to it.
The Apaches must have taken what supplies Shorty and the others had, because the place had been picked clean. Only a scattering of tin cups and a small wooden box remained on the table. When I opened the box I found a couple of dollars in nickels and dimes, a timetable for the Katy Flier and a page torn from a tally book with a sketch of a steep grade where Shorty and the others had hoped to stop the train.
It seemed the outlaws had planned to graduate from robbing banks to robbing trains—that is, until the Apaches had put the final period on the last sentence of the last chapter of their lives.
Looking around me at the cramped, spare cabin, I figured the hunted, wretched existence of the three men lay about me like an open book. The only thing was, there wasn’t much to read. Like so many others who rode the owlhoot trail, the three had died too young and too violently and the greater part of the story of their lives must forever remain unwritten.
Oddly depressed, rainwater dripping from my slicker onto the dirt floor, I stood for a few moments in a joyless silence that whispered of other men’s lives, then opened the door and stepped outside.
Lila stood beside the wagon and I motioned her into the cabin. But she hesitated at the doorway and asked: “Dusty, what about Pa? We can’t leave him in the wagon.”
Oh yes, we can, I thought, but said: “I’ll help him inside.” I felt the soaking wet shoulders of her cloak. “You better get out of those wet clothes and later I’ll build a fire to dry them.”
Lila took a step back from me, her eyes shocked. “You want me to sit there stark naked?”
“Wrap yourself in a blanket,” I said. Then, lying through my teeth, trying to make myself sound a lot more worldly than I was, I added: “Hell, I’ve seen a naked woman before.”
“Have you now, Mr. Hannah?” Lila asked, her left eyebrow arching. “Well, you haven’t seen this one.” She thought things over for a spell, then said: “I suppose you’re talking about that Sally Coleman person.”
“Maybe,” I said, defiant as all get out, but beginning to wish fervently I’d never mentioned naked women in the first place.
“You’re quite the rake, aren’t you, Mr. Hannah?” Lila asked, frosting over like a corral post in winter.
I had no answer for that, so I retreated into confusion, mumbling: “I’ll go see to the livestock.”
As I walked away, I felt Lila’s eyes burning into my back. She was very young, little more than a girl, yet she had an assurance and poise that constantly kept me off balance. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand a woman, and this was one of those times.
Was Lila jealous of Sally Coleman?
I shook my head, dismissing the thought. Lila was pretty enough to have her pick of men. Why would she be interested in a forty-a-month puncher like me who couldn’t even grow a man’s mustache? It jus
t didn’t make any sense.
Besides, I would wed Sally very soon. Sally, born and bred on the range, knew and accepted the narrow limitations of the puncher’s life, so the whole thing just wasn’t worth thinking about.
But as I stepped to the wagon, the face I kept seeing in my mind’s eye was Lila’s, not Sally’s, and that bothered me considerable.
Ned Tryon was sound asleep in the back of the wagon, his mouth open, trickling saliva, the whiskey fumes vile on his breath. I let him stay where he was and unhitched the oxen.
I didn’t have much experience with oxen, but when I turned them loose, the big animals immediately started to graze, so I figured they weren’t much bothered by the rain and I let them be.
The black I led into the barn, which was small but dry and warm. I unsaddled him and rubbed him down with a piece of sacking. The droppings told me there had been three horses there, no doubt taken by the Apaches, and the saddles were gone, too.
There was no hay but I found a sack of oats and I poured a generous amount into a bucket.
After that, I spent some time pulling up grass for the horse and laid an armful in front of him and only then did I go back to the wagon for Ned.
The man was still unconscious and I half dragged, half carried him into the cabin. I dropped him, none too gently, onto one of the bunks, then turned my attention to Lila.
Her clothes hung on a string the outlaws had tied from one of the cabin walls to the other, probably for this very purpose, and Lila sat at the table, a blanket drawn around her.
I figured she’d planned to do this all along, but had made all that fuss about being naked just to see me suffer.
She rose from the table and said: “I’ll take Pa’s boots off.”
Lila stepped to the bunk and pulled off one of her pa’s boots, then the other. But not before the blanket slipped from her shoulders and I caught a fleeting glimpse of a small, firm breast, creamy white, tipped with pink.
My breath catching in my throat, blood rising to my cheeks, I suddenly felt shabby and awkward in my faded blue shirt and down-at-the-heel boots and stepped quickly to the stove, muttering over my shoulder: “I’ll see about lighting a fire.”
“Yes, you do that, Dusty.”
The husky tone of Lila’s voice surprised me and made me turn. She was standing there, the blanket once again firmly in place, smiling at me, a bemused expression on her face I couldn’t read.
“Getting cold in here,” I said, the breath once again balling up in my throat. Had she let the blanket slip on purpose?
No, that couldn’t be. And yet . . .
“We have some bacon and flour in the wagon,” Lila said, interrupting my thoughts, and her smile was gone.
I nodded. “I’ll get it after I get the fire going.”
“What about the Apaches?”
“I figure they’ve moved on,” I replied. “I’ll keep the fire small and trust to the rain and wind to scatter the smoke.”
“You’re so wise, Dusty,” Lila said, smiling again, just a faint tugging at the corners of her beautiful mouth.
“I try to be,” I said, trying to regain control of the situation. “Now there’s got to be wood around here somewheres.”
There was a small stack of oak and cottonwood branches beside the stove and with them some pages torn from a woman’s corset catalog.
I fed paper and wood into the stove and within a few minutes had a fair blaze growing. Thankfully the wood was very dry and didn’t send up much smoke.
I’d told Lila that the Apaches were gone, but with Indians there were no certainties, just guesses. They were mighty notional by times and might just decide to ride back this way.
I filled the coffeepot at the creek and later fried up some bacon, adding thin strips of my own salt pork. I made a batch of pan bread, stirring flour and salt into the fat, then dished up the meal.
Lila crossed the room and tried to wake up her pa, but the man just thrashed and groaned in his stupor, and waved her away.
She came back to the table and I poured coffee for us both, my hand unsteady on the pot, the scented, woman closeness of her and the sight of her dark loveliness filling my reeling brain like a growing thing.
After we ate, Lila talked and I listened. Mostly, she spun sugarcoated dreams about how she and her pa would make their farm a success and how he would give up his drinking.
“All he needs is another chance in life, Dusty,” she said, touching the back of my hand with her fingertips, her slender arm exposed to the shoulder. “We tried to make it on one hardscrabble farm after another, but it just never seemed to work out for us. Then, after Ma died, Pa started to drink heavier and everything fell apart quicker than usual.”
Her eyes searched mine, pleading for something I knew I could not give. “You think we can make it this time, don’t you, Dusty?”
I went part of the way, unwilling to surrender more. “Lila, that’s hard country down on the Brazos. Maybe you can make it, maybe you can’t. But believe me, it won’t be easy.”
The girl nodded, reading more into what I’d said than was intended. “Thank you, Dusty. I needed to hear that, especially from you.”
She touched my hand, and again I found it hard to breathe.
Later, after Lila was bedded down on one of the bunks, I took up my Winchester and scouted around outside.
The rain had stopped for now. A waning moon rode high in the sky, hiding her face behind a hazy halo of silver, dark lilac and pale blue, and the air smelled of grass and the tang of distant thunder. The shadowed hills were still as things asleep and the fragile night silence crowded around me like broken glass.
I climbed to the ridge of the hogback and looked down at the trail below, seeing nothing but a wall of darkness.
Then I heard a muffled step behind me.
Chapter 11
I turned as the Apache came at me fast as a panther, a knife upraised in his right fist. As he closed I swung the butt of the Winchester, trying for his head. The Indian saw it coming, dodged at the last moment and the rifle hit only the hard muscle of his left shoulder. The impact was enough to stagger the man, but he recovered quickly and jumped at me again.
Around us were only jagged rock and the dark canopy of the sky and I realized with a sickening certainty that soon, very soon, a man must die here tonight, and maybe two.
I grappled with the Apache, my left hand on his wrist, desperately keeping his knife away from me. Now, our feet shuffling on the wet grass, I felt his wiry strength and it scared me. This man was taller than me and he was as strong, and maybe stronger, than I was.
We moved very close to each other, the warrior’s belly pushed against my own. He was bending me backward with the sheer, brute strength of his arms and shoulders, and his merciless black eyes glinted in triumph.
I let myself fall on my back and the Apache landed on top of me. His knife hand broke free and he raised it to strike. I twisted my body and arched upward, my bared teeth lunging for his throat. I bit down hard on the left side of his neck and tasted smoky blood as his knife came down. The blade raked along the outside of my shoulder, burning like a red-hot iron, and I heaved with all my strength to my right, throwing the Apache off me.
The man rose, his knife poised. I circled to my left, keeping the Indian in front of me and feinted with the rifle butt. But the warrior was not fooled and he just stood there watching for an opening, the blood from the deep bite wound on his neck running down the shoulder and front of his yellow shirt.
I didn’t know how many Apaches were out there. If I fired the rifle I could bring a passel of them down on top of me and right now that was the last thing I wanted.
But the Winchester was the only weapon I had; the folding knife in my pocket was useless in a fight like this.
I smelled the musky, feral odor of the Apache and my own rank sweat as we circled each other. My mouth was dry and my hurtling heartbeats hammered in my ears like muffled drums.
The Apache crouch
ed a little, feinted with the knife, then switched to an underhand motion and slashed upward, trying to gut me. I hit his upcoming forearm hard with the barrel of the rifle and heard bone crack. The warrior cried out and the knife slipped from his nerveless fingers.
I moved in and smashed a powerful right to the man’s chin, then another. The Apache reeled back a step, steadied himself, then dove for the knife. But my swinging boot crashed into his face when he was still in the air and that hurt him. He rolled on his back and slammed up against one of the rocks, the wind coming out of him in a sharp gasp.
Snarling, the Apache lay still for a few moments, then sprang to his feet. He came at me, his clawed fingers wide, seeking my eyes.
As he came in, I threw another right, but my fist glanced across his cheekbone and the Apache shrugged it off. We closed, his fingers still reaching for my eyes. As we wrestled, snarling like wild animals, our faces only inches apart, I felt the warrior’s strength weakening.
The terrible, raw wound in his neck where I’d torn at him was streaming bright scarlet and it looked to me that I’d chewed through a vein that carried his lifeblood.
The Apache seemed to realize this too and knew he had to finish the fight soon. He took a half-step closer to me, his right foot swinging, trying to kick my legs out from under me.
I stepped away from him, threw a hook that missed and left myself wide-open for his right hand. The Apache’s thumb, with its long, hard nail, dug into my eye, trying to blind me and I felt a sudden gush of blood on my cheek. I reached up with my left and grabbed his forearm. The broken bone crunched under my fingers and I squeezed harder. The warrior screamed and tried to jerk his arm away but I held on, grinding my fingers deeper.
The Indian again cried out, his face shocked and white from pain, and tore free of me. I didn’t let him get set but swung the rifle again. This time the butt caught him squarely on the side of the head and he crashed violently into a rock and crumpled to the ground.
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