“Loggins and Kiowa are in town. Stew and White-Eye are at the pass outside the canyon, and Vic and Flossy are in the cabin. We have the water to ourselves, and no one will ever know.”
“I thought you were afraid Loggins might shoot me.”
“Maybe I’m just suddenly feeling brave. And the more I know you, the more I’m starting to think maybe you are as tough as you and Dusty say you are. Come on in.”
He shook his head. “Thanks, but it wouldn’t be right.”
She frowned a bit with lack of understanding, her head lilting to one side slightly. She reminded Josh comically and yet endearingly of a confused puppy, perking its ears and cocking its head to one side. “Why not?”
“It’s not the way things are done. Wouldn’t be proper. It’s not the way you treat a lady.”
Josh turned and started away from the creek, up a small incline and into a grove of pines. Why had he gone down to the water, anyway? He knew he would have been asking for trouble. But he had gone down regardless.
He leaned his back against the trunk of a pine. Damn! Why did life have to be so complicated?
“Josh.” Temperance spoke from beside him. She must have followed him up from the creek, padding softly along in bare feet.
She had wrapped the blanket about her, pulling it tightly a bit below each shoulder. He noticed the suppleness of her neck, as water beaded and rolled down. Her hair fell in a dripping tangle against her back.
He found himself being pulled toward her as if by some unseen force. Their lips touched, lightly at first, then more powerfully.
Then he pulled his mouth from her. “Temperance. This is not right.”
“Why not?”
“Because...because..,” he was having trouble focusing his mind enough to find the words.
“Josh, I’m just a saloon whore. It’s all right.”
“No, you’re not.” He took her by the shoulders. “You’re a woman. One who has had to do some unpleasant things just to survive, yes. But you’re only a saloon whore if that’s how you think of yourself. And you don’t have to think of yourself like that any longer.”
“Take me, Josh. Right here. Right now.”
“I can’t. I’d be treating you no better than all the other men have.”
“There’s one big difference. With those other men, I never had any choice. I had to, so I wouldn’t starve. And with Loggins, I don’t have a choice either. With you, I do. And I choose you.”
“You can leave all of this behind you,” he said. “Come with me, and I’ll take you away from all of it, and you can start over again.”
She pulled away, a surge of panic rushing through her. “What are you saying? Leave? I can’t go with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because..,” she found herself reaching frantically for words that wouldn’t come because of the suddenness of it all, ideas that wouldn’t fully form.
“Because, I can’t!” she turned and ran.
That night, she stood before a mirror mounted on the wall of one of the two bedrooms in the cabin. By the light of a candle standing on a small table in one corner, she was trying to tie her hair into a fashion she had seen worn by the wife of the mine owner in town, but couldn’t quite figure it out.
She was wearing a slip only, and when Loggins parted the blanket that served as a door and stepped in and planted a kiss on her neck, she did not find herself smiling. She found herself thinking of Josh.
“What’re you doin’?” he asked.
“Trying to fix my hair.”
“Why?” he seemed truly perplexed.
“So I can look pretty.”
“Pretty?” A chuckle began, and grew into a laugh. “You? Pretty?”
She let her arms drop to her sides, her hair falling loosely to her shoulders.
“Nothin’ your hair can do will make you look pretty. Not with that nose, and your eyes too close together. You’re a saloon whore, Tempy. You don’t need to look pretty. All you need to do is satisfy your man.”
He saw her jeans lying on the bed. “I don’t know what’s getting’ into you, girl, wearin’ that dress-thing. You know I like you better in jeans. Show’s the roundness of your ass better,” his hands reached for and grabbed her bottom. “Get this foolish thing off.”
She did as instructed, letting it drop to the rough hewn floorboards, and he pulled her to the bed and under the covers.
When he was done, he lay snoring, the smell of his whiskey-soaked breath filling the room. She curled up under the blankets at the far side of the bed, and wept silently until sleep finally took her.
The following afternoon, Vic Falcone sent Flossy to fetch Dusty, then sent her to the garden so Falcone could be alone in the cabin with his guest.
This time, Falcone didn’t offer him a drink.
“I’ve made my decision,” Falcone said.
Falcone strolled thoughtfully toward the hearth, then turned to face Dusty. “As much as I would like to trust you, Dusty, I can’t afford the chance of being wrong.”
As if on cue, which Dusty realized it probably was, Loggins and Kiowa stepped from the back room, each with a pistol trained at him.
“In the morning,” Falcone said, “you and Josh will be shot. I am truly sorry.”
Kiowa smiled. “I ain’t.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Dusty sighed, long and wearily and with much exasperation, as Loggins bound his wrists behind his back with a strip of rawhide. Loggins then did the same with Josh, and left them both sitting at the crest of the grassy slope behind the cabin.
Loggins stepped away, to where Stew was sitting at a bench alongside Kiowa at the cabin wall. Kiowa held a pint bottle of clearish liquid Dusty guessed to be corn squeezings?
Kiowa raised the bottle to Dusty in a mock salute. He called out, “Tomorrow morning, muchacho, I gut you like a pig. I’ve been waiting to do this ever since Patterson first took you in. I will gut you like a pig, and watch you slowly die.”
“I take it your plan didn’t work,” Josh muttered to Dusty, with an edge of sarcasm.
Dusty shook his head grimly. “How about you? I noticed you were trying to work that girl. Did you get anywhere with her?”
Dusty didn’t realize quite how loaded a question that was.
Josh had seen Temperance a handful of times that day. She had been again wearing jeans and a range shirt, and he had caught her looking at him a couple of times with open sadness in her eyes. One time their eyes had met for a moment, then she looked away. Josh called to her, but she turned and ran into the woods. That had been around noon, and now the sun was drifting low in the western sky.
“No,” he said. “My plan was a complete failure. In more ways than one. I guess I made the mistake of getting too close to her. I’m still new at this.”
“I can’t fault you for that. I grew up in this life, and I didn’t do any better.”
A question occurred to Josh. “Why is Falcone holding off until tomorrow on letting Kiowa kill us? Why not do it right now?”
“Falcone is just enough of a military man to want things done by a sort of schedule. He used to teach at a military school back east, or so I’m told. A condemned man is always given a least a night to ponder his fate and make peace with his maker before he’s put in front of a firing squad.”
“Hey!” Kiowa called over to them. “No talking, or I will go to work on you tonight.”
“And violate Falcone’s order?” Dusty called back. “You don’t have the backbone for that.”
Kiowa drew his knife, a bowie that gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight. “Shut your mouth, little muchacho, or I will show you how much guts I have.”
Dusty said to Josh, “We may have a way out of this, yet.”
He then raised his voice to Kiowa. “You know something, Kiowa? You’ve been wanting to kill me ever since I was eight years old. And the sad part is, when you finally get your chance, it still won’t change what you are.”
“And wha
t is that, muchacho?”
“You’re a coward. A stupid one, at that. You always have been, and killing me won’t change that.”
Loggins said, “I’d shut up if I was you, boy. If you want to live the night.”
Josh could tell where this was going. Despite the fact that he was tied up and due to be killed slowly in the morning, he had to admit he was enjoying the thrill of this. Like poker, but with deadly stakes.
“I wouldn’t stand by Kiowa,” Josh said to Loggins. “Not considering the way I’ve seen him look at your woman. And from what I hear, when he’s done with a woman, he doesn’t leave much left.”
Loggins shot a glance to Kiowa, but Kiowa rose to his feet, ignoring Loggins, and took a few steps toward Josh and Dusty. His knife was in one hand and his whiskey bottle in the other. “Another word out of either of you, and I will cut your tongues out.”
Dusty rolled over to his knees, then rose to his feet. “Spoken like a coward, Kiowa. Only a coward would have to wait until a man’s hands are tied to kill him.”
Kiowa started for him. Dusty attempted to side step, but Kiowa slammed him in the chest with the whiskey bottle, whiskey slopping onto Dusty’s buckskin shirt, and Dusty was knocked backward. Kiowa continued forward, standing over Dusty with his knife ready. He tossed aside the bottle.
“Now, little muchacho,” Kiowa hissed. “You don’t feel so brave, do you? There ain’t no Sam Patterson to protect you. Maybe I skin you alive, and not wait for morning?”
Dusty raised a leg and drove the sole of his boot into Kiowa’s groin. Kiowa gave a sharp, raspy inhale, and his eyes went wide as he dropped to his knees. He was well within range of Josh, who raised a foot and drove it into Kiowa’s shoulder.
Kiowa tumbled down the hill, his legs now folded under him.
Stew and Loggins were making no attempt to suppress their laughter; it simply rolled from them.
Dusty rose to his feet again. “It’s a good thing my hands are tied,” he called down to Kiowa. “You’d be in a lot worse shape than you are now. You ain’t dealing with an eight-year old boy now.”
A gun went off, and all heads turned toward the cabin, and the source. There stood Falcone. A revolver was in his hand, aimed toward the sky. Smoke drifted from the barrel.
“What’s going on here?” he bellowed.
“Just teaching that madman you call a scout some manners,” Dusty said.
Loggins had ceased his laughter at the boss’s gunshot, but he was still smiling. “He took Kiowa out of the fight with his hands tied.”
“Hey,” Josh said, indignant. “I helped.”
Falcone looked at Dusty curiously, and holstered his pistol. He said nothing, but nodded approvingly.
From the bottom of the slope, Kiowa screamed, “I’ll kill you!”
Kiowa was on his knees, still bent forward from the pain reaching upward into his kidneys, and down into his legs. He drew his pistol and cocked the hammer. “I’ll shoot you down where you stand.”
Falcone whipped his own pistol once again into his hand cocking it as he drew, and placed a shot that kicked up dirt inches from Kiowa. Kiowa pulled back, lost his balance, and fell onto his side.
“Not until morning!” Falcone shouted. “That is my order. Disobey it, and I will shoot you myself.”
Dusty stepped forward. “Vic, I want to have a word with you.”
“I am not changing my mind,” Falcone said firmly.
“I have a proposal for you.”
“A proposal? You are hardly in the position..,”
“I want to talk to you in private.”
Falcone was silent a moment, considering. Then, he said, wearily, “Step into the cabin.”
Dusty, his wrists still bound behind him, stepped into the cabin, followed by Falcone.
The lighting inside the cabin was dim this late in the afternoon. Falcone struck a match and brought to life the lamp standing on the table, then turned the flame up. Its pale glow filled the small room.
Falcone walked around to the other side of the table, pulled out a chair and dropped into it. He reached for an empty whiskey bottle beside the lamp, gave it a glance, saw it was empty and set it back down.
“Vic, what’s happened to you?” Dusty asked.
Falcone carried himself with a military stiffness, like he had years earlier. But now his hair was unkempt, which it had never been. There was a dark circle under each eye, and he was drinking more than he ever had. From what Dusty could determine, Falcone spent most of his time inside this cabin with Flossy and a bottle of whiskey.
Falcone looked at him a moment, as if he needed a moment for the question to settle in. Then he carelessly shrugged his shoulders. Sort of a combination of I don’t know, and I don’t really care.
Dusty continued. “You drink way too much, Vic. You spend all your days in this cabin, drinking and whoring. How much longer do you think you can keep a handle on those men, especially Kiowa, like this?”
“I’ve been learning something, Dusty. Something I suppose I knew all along, which is sometimes the hardest thing to learn. This sort of life is a dead end. I fear my demise is probably coming soon, regardless. After all, how long can a man live this life?”
Damn, but he was hard to follow, sometimes, throwing around ten dollar words. Kind of like Aunt Ginny.
Falcone continued, “Maybe the attack on the McCabe Ranch that went so poorly was part of it. I guess I felt like the wind came out of my sails when that happened. I rode in with as large a complement of men as Patterson had ever assembled, and we were more than cut in half. Thirteen went in. Only five rode away.”
“Do you really think this is the end of the road?”
He lowered his gaze and nodded. “I suppose I do. Soon one of the men, probably Kiowa, is going to place a bullet in my back. Then Loggins will probably take over. Kiowa might try, but does not have the gray matter to lead men.”
“So, what do you do? Just stay in this cabin, whoring and drinking and going through the motions of leading these men, waiting for one of them to kill you?”
He nodded. “I suppose.’
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Vic. Listen to my proposal. It might be just what you need.”
Falcone sighed, long and wearily. “All right. I’m listening.”
“You need a right-hand man. Someone you can count on. Someone other than Loggins or Stew, or, god-help-us, Kiowa.”
“You?”
“I’m young, Vic, and have enough energy and stamina for both of us. But I need your savvy, your experience. Together, we can form a new gang.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “I’d like to believe you, Dusty. Really, I would. But there’s that problem with integrity, again. I just don’t believe you’re cut out for a life like this.”
“How can I prove it to you?”
“I don’t know.”
Dusty turned, and began pacing impatiently to one side. He would have to make what he was about to say sound like a spontaneous idea, not something he had pieced together before he had even started baiting Kiowa.
He stopped short, then turned suddenly to Falcone. “I know. A trial by combat. Me and Kiowa. At sunrise. If I kill him, then that can be my way of proving myself to you.”
Falcone shook his head. “You could never just kill a man like that. You don’t have it in you to fight a man to the death. In self-defense, maybe, but never just to prove a point.”
“And if I do? Then will I have proven myself to you?”
Falcone was silent, letting all of this toss itself about in his whiskey-addled mind. A smile of amusement crept across his face. “Kiowa is the most deadly hand-to-hand fighter I have ever encountered, you know.”
Dusty shook his head. “Second most deadly. Sam taught me all he knew, and I’ve learned a bit more on my own, and I’m willing to use all of it. If I kill Kiowa, then two of your problems are solved. You’ll have a man you can rely on, and you won’t have to worry about Kiowa. And you won’t even m
iss Kiowa as a scout.”
Falcone nodded as he let the ideas work their way through his mind. One hand went to his chin.
“All right, Dusty. I’ll give you the chance. In the morning, a trial by combat it is.”
It was Loggins’ turn to stand guard. He crouched on his heels, his rifle balanced across one knee. Josh and Dusty sat in the grass. They were no longer tied – apparently Dusty had again won at least some trust from Falcone. The sun set behind the ridges, and the canyon slowly descended into blackness. Behind them, a window from the cabin flickered with the pale light from a lamp. Overhead, stars speckled the night sky. There was no moon this night. The wind from the mountains was cool, and the grass beneath Dusty and Josh was becoming wet with dew.
Loggins rose to his feet and said, “Oh, hell. I ain’t gonna sit in the wet grass. It ain’t like you two can go anywhere, anyway.”
He walked over to the cabin, dropping onto the bench that rested against the back wall. Had it been daylight, he would have been within sight of Josh and Dusty, but in this darkness, all they could see of him was the faint red glow of his cigarette every time he took a draw.
Dusty whispered, “Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you run fast?”
“Pa used to say I ran like a jack rabbit. Why?”
“When the fight begins, I want you to get out of here. They’ll all be paying attention to me. I want you to slip past them and run like hell.”
“No. I ain’t leaving you.”
“Yes, you are. That’s why I set up this fight. You got to get back to the ranch, to warn Pa. If Kiowa kills me, then Vic and the men will be attacking with a new plan, trying to sneak in by daylight, when the ranch is mostly unmanned. Once you’re out of the canyon, keep moving. Once they realize you’re gone, they’ll probably come after you. Find a horse somewhere, and get back to the ranch.”
“Dusty, it should be me that’s fighting him, not you. You’re great with a gun, but I’m the better one when it comes to scrappin’. I handled you, remember?”
“Have you ever fought with a knife before?”
Josh shrugged with his brows. “Well, no.”
The Long Trail (The McCabes Book 1) Page 38