Fighting Men

by Ralph Cotton

  Dahl’s first shot hit Sattler in the heart and sent him backward onto the foot of the cot, causing the woman to scream and kick wildly, as two dead men were now on top of her. As the cot broke under the weight, Dahl’s second shot, deliberate and well aimed, hit Duval squarely in his forehead as the black outlaw wildly fanned his fourth and final shot, and sprawled dead on the dirt floor.

  Chapter 2

  In the ringing silence, amid the strong smell of burnt gunpowder and spilled whiskey, the woman struggled with the heavy bodies atop her until she flung a bloody gunman’s arm from her face and looked out from the broken cot beneath the tangle of arms and legs, like a raccoon checking outside its lair before venturing out.

  “Hey, over there,” she said in a raspy voice, “can I get a hand here? I’m being crushed.”

  Sherman Dahl stood leaning back against the bulletscarred wall, his rifle and Colt hanging loosely from his hands. As the woman stared at him and started to say something more to get his attention, she saw him slide down the wall and sit, staring blankly back at her.

  “My God, mister,” she said, “you’re hit bad, aren’t you?”

  Dahl let both guns fall to the dirt on either side of him. A string of saliva spilled from his lower lip. He gripped his chest with his right hand. His face had grown so red that it had begun to turn purple as he struggled and strained to catch his breath.

  “Wait, hold on, mister—don’t die! I’m coming!” the woman said, struggling more fiercely with the weight of the two dead men until she somehow wriggled from beneath them and crawled toward him. Then, just as she reached him, she saw his breath come back to him sudden and strong. He took it in with a hard, painful-sounding gasp.

  “Here, let me see!” she said, moving his hand and throwing his duster open, looking for the bloody hole she knew she would find in his chest.

  “I’m . . . all right,” Dahl said in a weak, halting voice, trying to look into her face.

  “Yeah, sure you are, mister,” the woman said skeptically, still searching for the bullet hole. “I’m surprised you’re not dead already. You will be if I can’t get you to Pine Ridge. There’s a doctor there, a sheriff too. We can tell him what happened here, how you acted to save my life—”

  “No doctor,” Dahl said, cutting her off. “No sheriff.” He managed to wrap his fingers around her wrist, stopping her quest for the invisible chest wound. “I’m all right.” He sounded better already.

  She watched him stiffly pick up his Colt, slip it down into its holster and push himself up the wall to his feet. Seeing him try to get his shoulder out of his black duster, she said, “Here, let me help you. You came in here and saved my life, you.”

  Saved her life . . . ? Dahl stopped struggling with his duster for a moment and stared into her eyes. “I came here to kill Curly Joe Hobbs and his men, ma’am. You happened to be here when I arrived.” His voice sounded stronger but still pained.

  “Well, you saved my life all the same,” the woman said, undaunted by his words. She peeled the duster from his back and watched him unbutton his shirt with his left hand, having difficulty with the simple task. “At least let me help you out of your coat.”

  “Obliged,” Dahl said, letting her take over, dropping his arms to his sides.

  Still looking for a bleeding wound, she stopped in surprise when she opened his shirt and saw the quilted padding on his chest. “What’s this?” She pulled her fingers back as if they had come upon something she shouldn’t touch.

  “A bulletproof vest,” said Dahl. He looked down at the bullet-sized hole in the thick quilted padding. “The French military call it a bouclier de balle—a bullet shield.”

  The woman looked at him closely, unaccustomed to the mild, soft-spoken aura of the man. In spite of the deadly action she’d seen him take without hesitancy, she understood right away that this was no ordinary range hand or frontier drifter. “Trust the French for the latest in fashion, eh?”

  Dahl ignored her attempt at wit. Looking away from her, he said, “Maybe you need to put on some clothes.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said, as if she’d forgotten that she stood naked except for the ragged remnants of the blouse Sattler had all but ripped from her back. She looked up and down her blood-splattered body and instinctively covered as much of her breasts as she could with the ragged blouse. “I have some boots and riding clothes here somewhere.”

  Dahl reached up, unhooked a corner of the quilted vest and eased it to the side, revealing a large dark circle of swollen flesh already turning the color of fruit going bad. He sighed from the strain of lifting his arm against the pain in his deeply bruised chest. Then he slumped and let his arm fall.

  “My Lord, look at you, mister!” the woman said, her attention back to him now as his legs went weak and he slid almost a foot down along the wall before he caught himself. “Is this the best it can do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never used it before,” Dahl said, the hard impact of the bullet still affecting his voice.

  “If it is, you ought to find the French sumbitch who sold it to you and beat the hell out of him.” She steadied him for a moment.

  Dahl moved his forearm from under her hand and said quietly, “There’s no cause for that kind of language with me, ma’am. I’m not impressed by it.”

  “What kind of language?” the woman asked.

  “The cursing, the blackguarding,” Dahl said. “It’s coarse and vulgar—it doesn’t bode well for you in my regard.”

  She saw his eyes turn distant and detached, a man on the verge of passing out.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she said, as if taken aback by his words. “Pardon me from now on.” She hooked a hand onto her naked hip. In spite of his moving his forearm from her hand, she stood prepared to steady him, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before he went down. “There are men who pay me sizable sums of money to say worse things than that to them.”

  “Like . . . those men?” Dahl said, fighting hard against his dimming senses. He gestured a nod toward the men lying dead on the floor.

  “This had just turned ugly,” the woman said in her defense. “It didn’t start out this way.”

  Dahl didn’t seem to hear her. He stared at her, fading fast. “Aren’t you . . . a who—”

  He couldn’t finish his words before a blackness drew around him and pressed him back down the wall to the dirt floor. “A whore?” the woman said, finishing for him, taking his arms, sinking down with him, helping to lighten his fall as much as she could. “Yes, ordinarily that would be the case,” she said as if he could still hear her. His broad-brimmed hat tipped off his head. She brushed a long strand of yellow hair from his face and looked at him closely. “Tonight, I started out whoring, but it looks like I’m going to be in the nursemaid business.”

  No matter how bad Sherman Dahl felt immediately after the bullet had slammed into his chest, when he awakened more than an hour later, the pain had grown worse. He could barely lift his right arm—his gun hand. His left arm was not much better, although he could lift his hand enough to place it on his throbbing, swollen chest and feel the heavy beat of his heart. He did so carefully.

  “Coarse language aside,” said the woman, “I meant what I said about whoever sold you the bullet vest.” She sat on the floor beside him, her legs folded under her, dressed now, her hair pulled back and pinned in place. She had spread a blanket on the floor and dragged him over onto it, nearer to the stone hearth. Dahl noted she had built a fire in the hearth. The heat felt good down deep in his bones, in his sore and tender chest.

  “It did what it’s supposed to do. I’m alive,” he replied. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and said, “I meant no offense, ma’am, what I said earlier. I was not myself.”

  “No offense taken,” the woman said. “I saw the shape you were in.”

  “That doesn’t excuse my rudeness,” Dahl said, “and I hope you will accept my apology.”

  The woman managed to smile through
a bruised lip that bore a half circle of teeth marks left there by one of the drunken outlaws. “You still saved my life, whether you meant to or not.” She nodded toward a small dark room off to the side of the cabin. “I found a skeleton wrapped in a woman’s shawl and shoved into a corner in there, earlier. That’s one reason I decided to make a break for it. I figure she’s what’s left of the last dove they hired to come make a party with them.”

  Dahl only stared at her. She knew the kind of men they were, yet she had accompanied them there anyway.

  Uncomfortable with his silence, she shrugged as if knowing what went through his mind. “It’s a tough business. I know I should have been more careful. I’m only working out of the Eubanks Fair and Square Saloon until I can stake myself and get out of the lousy shi—” She caught herself and stopped. “I mean, this lousy pig wallow.”

  Dahl winced slightly, the pain in his chest still throbbing, but lessening some.

  “I’m Lilly Jones,” the woman said. “Most of the folks around here call me Knee-high.”

  “I’m Sherman Dahl. Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said with an honest air of formality. “Is Knee-high a name of your choosing, or someone else’s?”

  “I don’t have a pimp, if that’s what you’re asking me,” the young woman replied matter-of-factly. “I did acquire the name because a miner from Riley once said he thought I’d been whoring since I was knee high to a short pony.”

  “I’ll call you Miss Lilly, ma’am,” said Dahl, “if it is all the same with you.”

  Dahl saw her actually blush. “Well, it suits me, if it suits you, Sherman Dahl. But just plain Lilly is more to my liking, if I get my say-so on the matter.”

  “Then Lilly it is,” Dahl said in his quiet tone. By the look on his face, the pain in his chest appeared to have subsided. She saw the drawn look around his eyes had cleared some. He’d even managed to show a trace of cropped smile beneath a drooping mustache.

  “Thank you, Sherman Dahl,” she said, liking the pleasant, courteous nature he summoned from her. “I’ll be honored to have you call me Lilly.”

  “Good evening, Lilly.” He nodded stiffly, keeping up the polite banter between them.

  “Good evening, Sherman Dahl,” she replied. She liked his smile. It was closed and cautious; it came more from his eyes than it did from his lips. And while smiling did not appear to come easily to him, once there his smile lingered long enough to show that it was real. There was a peacefulness to him, she thought. But as soon as she thought it, she had to remind herself that she had watched him mercilessly kill three men within the confines of this small shack.

  This soft-spoken man had given no regard for either her life or his own when the shooting had started. Yet now, she could see nothing harsh or violent in him. He was not at all the kind of man she had grown accustomed to in her line of work.

  At first she had almost considered him a bit of a dandy. But no dandy could have done what she’d seen him do—could he? she wondered. But not for long. No, she told herself, this man was not a dandy. He was simply quiet and courteous. Was that so bad? No, it was not bad at all, not after all she’d witnessed from men, the miners, drovers, drifters and ne’er-do-wells she had come across in this rugged, merciless land.

  Dahl looked at her, noticing that she seemed preoccupied in her thoughts. “Lilly,” he said, his voice still courteous, still quiet, yet seeming to have taken on a more somber tone, “where is Curly Joe Hobbs? Why is he not here with the rest of his gang?”

  “Oh . . .” She seemed to snap back from somewhere far away. “Curly Joe keeps a woman all of his own, Geneva Darrows, at the Eubanks Fair and Square, back in Pine Ridge,” she said. “Leastwise, she makes Joe think she’s all his alone, if you know what I mean. She’s never turned down a poke for a poke. You know, a poke of gold for a poke in her bed.”

  “I understand,” said Dahl.

  “Henry Eubanks, the owner of the Eubanks Fair and Square, slips some customers her way any time Curly Joe’s not around.” She shrugged. “I suspect Joe even knows about it. But some men like Joe think so highly of themselves they fool themselves into believing they own a gal’s heart—” She gave a mischievous smile. “So why not let them? Especially when it’s a man like Curly Joe. He goes killing crazy when he sees anybody even standing too close to Geneva Darrows.”

  Dahl let her finish speaking, even though she had gone far beyond telling him what he’d wanted to hear. “I’ve got to get up and get going,” he said, struggling to push himself upright in spite of the pain in his sore, purple chest.

  “Why? What’s your hurry?” Lilly asked, even as she stood up with him and steadied him a bit with a hand on his arm. “Curly Joe’s not going anywhere.”

  “He will when Big Chicago gets to Pine Ridge and tells him he heard gunshots when he made his getaway,” Dahl replied quietly.

  “You know Chester Goines? Big Chicago?” Lilly asked.

  “I saw his wanted poster,” said Dahl. “He’s the one I followed here from up along the trail. He was the last one to arrive here, and the first one to leave. Living on the run must’ve taught him to make an early getaway. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m not after him, unless he makes a stand against me.”

  “You saw his wanted poster? Are you a—a bounty hunter, Sherman Dahl?” she asked delicately.

  “No, Lilly,” Dahl replied, “I’m not a bounty hunter. I’m employed by a man whose daughter these men killed in a bank robbery a while back, right before Big Chicago joined up with them.”

  A paid killer . . . ? She had searched his eyes closely. She had judged his ways, his mannerism, his demeanor, none of which had given her any sign of him being such a man. “Oh, I see,” she said. “So now you’re going to go to Pine Ridge and kill Curly Joe Hobbs?” she asked in a conversational manner, as if it were the sort of question that came up frequently.

  Dahl stared at her for a moment, then said, “Yes, I leave before first light, as soon as my horse is rested and I have collected proof that these men are dead.”

  “You’re taking their bodies to town with you?” Lilly asked.

  “Only enough to satisfy my employer,” Dahl replied. He tried rounding his right arm to get it working. The pain in his chest caused him to wince and clench his teeth.

  “But won’t Curly Joe see you coming from a mile away?” she asked, misunderstanding his words. “Big Chicago has already warned him. All he needs now is to see you leading these three bodies into town.”

  “I’m not taking their bodies—only enough of them to show proof of kill,” Dahl said, trying to keep his words as gentle as possible.

  “Proof of kill?” Lilly asked.

  Dahl only stared at her knowingly.

  After a moment, her face took on a look of dread and horror. “Oh no!” She covered her ears with both hands. “I don’t want to hear any more!”

  “You’re welcome to ride into Pine Ridge with me,” Dahl said. He looked all around at the bodies, wondering where to start. Then he looked back at her. “But you best clean yourself up and get some sleep. Like I said, I’ll be leaving before daylight.”

  Chapter 3

  In the midst of a troubled sleep, she had half awakened to the feel of him nestled against her back. Lying in the heat of the open hearth fire, she had felt his arm move over her from behind and she had tucked it to her bosom and gone back to sleep, less troubled somehow. Yet when she’d awakened again, before dawn, he was not lying there and it came to her that he never had been.

  “Sherman Dahl . . . ?” she whispered. She waited as sleep drifted away from her. She sighed and lay still for a moment, staring into the pale glowing embers. Her hand still pressed his arm to her bosom, but his arm had vanished and with it had gone the warmth of him, as she realized it had only been a dream.

  She rose and pulled on her boots, then walked outside, wearing a large wool shirt Dahl had rummaged for her from one of the dead outlaws’ saddlebags. She found him seated on a short stool, hunched
slightly over a small, licking fire. In the soft glow of light, she saw a large sewing needle rise between his fingertips and tug on its thick thread, then go back down out of sight.

  “Good morning, Lilly,” he said without looking around from his work. “I hope you managed to rest well.”

  “Morning, Sherman Dahl,” she replied, seeing his fingertips repeat their rise, tug and fall uninterrupted by her. She liked the way he did things, the way he brought a fresh mannerism out of her . . . a niceness of sorts, she thought. “Yes, well enough, thank you. And yourself?”

  Dahl’s answer was only a courteous nod as his sewing continued. If any pain lingered in his chest or his arms, he refused to let it show.

  “There’s coffee beans inside,” Lilly said. “I can break some and boil us a pot?”

  “I found them, thank you. I have a fresh pot waiting for you here.” Dahl gestured a nod toward the small fire. It was not until he mentioned it that she smelled the aroma of fresh coffee. “I even have a clean cup waiting for you. Let me first put aside my work so you can get to it.” He began the first motion of rising sidelong with a small bundle of cloth in hand.

  “That’s most considerate of you,” Lilly said with a smile. But instead of waiting for him to move aside with his sewing, she said, “Don’t get up,” and stepped forward beside him, seeing the pot sitting in the edge of the glowing coals. “I can get to it.”

  “No, please—” Dahl said. He tried to turn away in time to keep her from seeing his handiwork, but he was too late.

  She caught a glimpse of the bundle of canvas in his hand. “Are you repairing your vest?” But even as she asked, her words ended in a gasp as the flicker of fire-light revealed his bloodstained fingertips and the wet crimson cloth.