by Mark Henry
Billy looked down at his hand, his eyes wide in horror as if the rotting process might have already begun. He held it out to his companion, who spun the leather drawstring back and forth around a thick forefinger. “Billy, you’re a slobberin’ idiot,” the new man said, shaking his head. “That Apache buck is just tryin’ to make a fool of you, and I’d say he’s doin’ a good job of it.”
Javier shrugged, fishing something from his back teeth with the tip of his tongue. He turned to walk back to where he’d tied his horse in the trees. “Suit yourself,” he said over his shoulder. “When pieces of you begin to stink and turn black, there will be nothing you can do.”
“You don’t scare me, you thievin’ red bastard.”
Juan Caesar perked up at the insult, and moved like quicksilver from his place in the shadows to beside the other Apache.
Feak began to panic. “Hold on here, boys. Everybody be simmerin’ down now. The boss wouldn’t take kindly to us killin’ each other before the job’s done. Let’s us all just play nice for a little longer. We got some money now, but we got a chance at a hell of a lot more if we just see this through.”
The two Indians eyed the other men for a long minute. Feak didn’t know about Scudder and the newcomer, but the Apaches scared him, and he didn’t mind saying so. Controlling them was like trying to eat a soup sandwich. They did as they pleased when it pleased them. He wasn’t sure the money meant much to them, and suspected they only came along with hot revenge burning a hole in their brains.
Everyone jerked, including Feak’s horse, when Juan Caesar wheeled and walk away into the darkness. Feak let out the half lung of air he’d been holding.
“I wish you could be keepin’ your fool mouth shut till all this is over,” Lucius said. “I think it would be wise for you to remember what them A-patch done to that old boy back at Goblin Creek.” Lucius climbed into the saddle and spit, his nervous grimace a blue-gray gash across his face. “After you’re mounted, you be ridin’ up here by me. I got a little plan. Think we might need to do a little changin’ out on our horses.”
The newcomer dangled the medicine bag in front of Scudder’s face. He curled his own ring finger down so it looked like it had already fallen off. “You want this back, Billy?”
Scudder tried to put on a brave face, but he wouldn’t get near the bag. “Naw, you go ahead and hang onto it. Maybe it’ll bring you some luck.”
CHAPTER 15
Maggie rolled a wet blanket lengthwise and stuffed it under the door to keep out as much of the smoke as she could. It was difficult to move with Shad dogging her every move, but she didn’t have the heart to tell him to sit down. She could hear the crackling of burning timbers outside mingled with the shouts of men working to put out the fire. Already, smoke poured in through cracks in the storeroom walls like fingers on a ghostly apparition, and threatened to suffocate them before the fire actually got to them. Maggie had a fleeting thought that it would likely be better to pass out from smoke than be burned alive. But it wasn’t in her nature to give up. She was no quitter.
The temperature in the stuffy room was already rising. Maggie put her hand on the door. It was hot enough to the touch that she couldn’t keep her hand on it for more than a second or two. Shad put his hand next to hers, and immediately jerked it away.
He yelped and looked at her. “I don’t want to hide anymore. I’d rather just die out here with you. Are we going to die, Miss Maggie?”
“I don’t know,” she said with an honest shrug that appeared more relaxed than she really was. “I’m not ready to die quite yet. I’d like to see some grandchildren and watch you grow up.” Her mind raced while she spoke.
The crackling outside the door grew louder, and the blanket she’d stuffed under the door began to smolder. Sticky black pitch boiled out of seams in the thick wooden door.
Maggie cast her eyes back and forth around the room, struggling to figure out what to do. Jumping up on the cot, she yanked at the iron bars that blocked the window above her head. She’d hoped one might be loose enough to get Shad out, even if she was doomed.
More men’s voices buzzed past the window and she cried out.
“Help us! There’s a child in here with me!” The roar of flames and snapping of timbers combined with the general hubbub of the bucket crew and covered any pleas for help.
One of the five bars in the window did wiggle in her hand a bit. If she could just get one out, Shad might be able to get though.
“Shad, honey.” She glanced over her shoulder at the boy while she continued to work at the bar. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“No, please, Miss Maggie. I can’t. I can’t hide and let you get killed.” He was racked with a series of violent sobbing coughs.
“I’m not asking you to hide, child. I need you to get my rifle. I may be able to shoot this bar loose so you . . . we can climb out through here.”
He slowed his crying and handed her the gun, plugging his ears with the palms of both hands after she took it.
Maggie figured it would be better to shoot at the wood that held the thick iron than the bars themselves. She set the muzzle where she thought it would do the most good, then turned her head before she pulled the trigger to keep from getting flying splinters in her eyes. It was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. The entire door smoked as if it were ready to burst into flames.
“Shad!” she barked after she shot, and levered another shell into her rifle. “Can you throw that bucket of water against the door?”
The boy jumped off the cot and did as he was told. The water hit the superheated wood with a great hiss of steam, turning the room into a sauna.
“Good job,” Maggie said between pulling the trigger. “Keep doing that and we may be able to get out of here.”
Someone outside screamed for everyone to get away from the burning building, warning that the ammunition inside was cooking off in the fire.
Six deafening shots later, she leaned the gun against the wall. Wrapping both hands around the loose iron bar, she bore down against it with a mighty heave. It didn’t move. If anything, the stubborn bar seemed more solid than before.
She still had four rounds left, but was loath to shoot the gun dry. Even if she did succeed in getting the boy out, someone out there still wanted to kill him. Trap had always told her to leave an extra round or two. She’d learned better than to empty her weapon back with her own people when she was only thirteen, during the Battle of Big Hole, but she chose to let Trap believe he was the one to teach her.
“There’s not much water left, Miss Maggie,” Shad said, splashing another bucket against the steaming door.
The situation looked hopeless. For her entire life, Maggie Sundown O’Shannon had been a great believer in hope. Now, there seemed to be no avenue of escape, no Trap O’Shannon there to help her save herself from the evil things of the world. He was busy on the trail as he’d been so many times before, depending on her to take care of herself.
He would not—could not come. No one would.
Maggie slumped down on the cot and motioned Shad to her with a flick of her hand. The smoke and steam were thick now, and she could hardly see him. It would only be a matter of seconds before the door ignited and flames rushed into the room. She tried to say something to comfort the boy, but found a hard knot in her throat so she couldn’t speak. She tried to sing the song she’d used to comfort him at Dr. Bruner’s office, but sobs gripped her chest and she began to cry.
Shad leaned against her, coughing. “It’s all right, Miss Maggie. I only said I wouldn’t hide. Why don’t you hide this time?”
Maggie rubbed her eyes and looked at the boy through the thickening smoke. “Why all this talk of hiding?”
“It was awful dark in that box, and I could hear Mama screaming . . . I don’t want to go in there again.”
“That was on the coach, child,” Maggie said, pulling the poor boy’s head closer to her breast. “You won’t have to go in there anymore, I
promise.”
Shad wriggled away from her grip. “I know that. I’m talking about the one under the bed.”
“What?”
“There’s another hole under the bed. I was going to hide in it when you went out and the man cut you, but it was too dark. I’m scared, but you . . .”
Maggie lifted the boy up and slid the bed to one side. Along the floor was a trapdoor. With no time to lose, she yanked on the metal ring and found it opened easily. It was indeed dark down the square hole, but the air was remarkably cool and free from smoke.
“Come with me, Shad.” Maggie coughed, grabbing her rifle off the cot and hiking up her dress so she could step down on the wooden ladder she could just make out in the blackness.
“No, it’s too dark,” said Shad.
She took his hand. “I need you to protect me.”
The door burst into flames.
“Hurry, Shad, we need to go now. We’ll protect each other.”
The boy looked at the flaming door, then down at the black cavern below him. He took a step toward her, and Maggie pulled him in before he could change his mind.
Once they were inside the narrow crawl space, it was relatively easy to work their way to the latticework vent at the side of the building. Shadows and light from the fire reflecting off the hotel cast eerie orange shapes along the dirt floor. Spiders and rat droppings littered the ground, but Maggie was happy to be away from the fire and didn’t care. Shad hung onto the hem of her dress while she crawled on her hands and knees to the louvered wooden vent.
People milled about outside. They’d suspended their bucket work, now only watching for stray sparks that threatened the nearby hotel.
Maggie used the butt of her rifle to break the brittle wood away from the vent. It was almost too hot to breathe around the opening, but it was the only way out and she was overjoyed to have it.
A man in striped bib overalls and no shirt stared in shock and dropped his empty bucket as she pushed a wriggling Shad through the small opening and squirmed out with her rifle directly on his heels.
A group of volunteers, including the man in overalls, ran forward to brave the flames and grabbed the two scorched survivors and dragged them to safety. Doc Bruner was in the crowd. He herded them away quickly before any of the local townsfolk could recover from the shock of seeing them escape from the belly of such a fiery beast.
When they were a half block away, the doctor looked at them and whistled under his breath at the wound across Maggie’s chest.
“I should put some ointment on that. You’ve been through it, young lady. Looks like you may need stitches.”
Maggie chuckled in spite of her appearance at the thought of anyone calling her young. “May we stay for a while at your place? It might put you in danger.”
The doctor shook his head in amazement. “Of course, of course. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wish my wife would have had your pluck.”
Pluck. Maggie knew she had many qualities, but she’d never been told she had pluck. She’d have to tell Trap about that one.
Turning to get a last look at the fire that had almost beaten her, Maggie froze in her tracks.
Well away from the blaze, at the fringe of the bucket brigade, stood a man from the past—a man she was certain had been dead for over twenty years.
CHAPTER 16
August 20, early morning
Trap O’Shannon woke before the fires with the dream of Maggie’s breath like a warm breeze in his ear. His back and shoulders ached from the packed earthen bed. Clay stirred when he heard Trap roll out, and threw his arms back in a long, yawning stretch. It was just after four in the morning, and dawn was only beginning to gather up her orange skirts behind the eastern mountains.
“Blast this cold, hard ground for a mattress,” Madsen said through his yawn. “If you boys wouldn’t have trounced that bartender, Franco, so soundly, I might have been able to spend the night with Cora on a real bed in that little room of hers.”
Blake sat up in his bedroll and rubbed a hand through his mussed black hair. Ky was already standing and making water a few yards away. His shirttail hung loose with leather suspenders around his britches. He looked over his shoulder at Clay.
“Sure you would. I only gave the man a severe thrashing. I do believe you would have killed him had you come back and found your rotund Miss Cora in the same position we found her.”
Madsen stumbled to one knee and pushed himself up, still cussing the ground. “Indeed I would have, sir. That is a plain fact, but I might point out that if Franco was dead, I would still have had a bed to sleep in. As it stands now, with the job half done, Cora’s sought a place to roost her bones elsewhere and I am forced to spend my repose against the cold, unfeeling bosom of Mother Earth.” He glanced over at Blake.
“You don’t know Roman. He don’t get angry, he gets indignant. Believe me, that’s much worse. When you’re full of righteous indignation like he gets, he believes the Good Lord is on his side. That’s when he gets hard to stop. Spit in his face, he’ll wipe it off and walk away. Mistreat an innocent—even an innocent whore—and you best watch yourself ’cause you’re about to receive one of Captain Roman’s famous layin’ on of hands.”
Once on his feet, Clay put both hands on his knees and pushed himself to a semi-upright position. Still hunched forward like a man twice his age, he hobbled to the edge of the woods to relieve himself. Trap watched him walk back and stoop slowly to retrieve his blankets.
“What are you looking at, O’Shannon?” Madsen smiled at his friend. “I don’t see you up and boundin’ about like a prairie dog either. I reckon my bladder wakes up a mite quicker than my old back does—too many rank horses and fistfights in my time.”
Trap nodded. He was every bit as sore and bent as Clay, and it took him as long to get up in the morning; he just did it without all the moans and groans. Trap had never possessed his friend’s flair for the dramatic.
After wolfing down a quick breakfast of coffee—except for Ky, who stuck with water—and cold lamb and tortillas compliments of Maggie, the four lawmen took to their saddles. Trap settled into the lead. He had a general idea of the kidnappers’ direction of travel after they’d left Moira Gumm’s place. First light was always his preference for tracking. In a few minutes the sun would be low and bright on the horizon, its long shadow casting over the parched ground to make all kinds of sign virtually jump out at the eye.
The outlaws had traveled in single file. Someone had ridden a clumsy, big-footed horse that stumbled back and forth along the trail without any guidance from its rider—likely the Kenworth girl. All four sets of tracks led along the rough road toward the mountains to the west—into the High and Lonesome. A glow of pink and orange already tinged the hazy fog that clung to the highest peaks. Smoke from a dozen spot fires billowed straight up from the dark green forests in giant plumes, shooting skyward, then flattening out as it cooled on the chilly pillow of morning air.
The kidnappers’ trail led directly into the fires.
Clay jabbered quietly while they rode, intent on imparting some of his wisdom to Blake whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“You know why the Nez Percé rode Appaloosas into battle?” Clay gave Blake’s spotted horse the once-over from under the brim of his hat.
Blake shook his head.
“On accounta they wanted to be good and mad when they got there.” Clay slapped his leg and guffawed at his own joke. “Your mama used to threaten to skin me alive the way I picked on her favorite ponies so much.”
Trap rolled his eyes and winked at his son. “Don’t let him get started, boy. Take it from me. He’ll wear you out if you let him.”
“You just pay attention to the trail, O’Shannon.” Clay waved off his old friend. “This here conversation doesn’t concern you. How old are you now, Blake?”
“Twenty-four.”
“You know, my daddy once told me a man couldn’t call hisself a man till he was past thirty. Well, sir, I
hit thirty-one and paid the old man a visit. He looked me over and up and down and says to me, ‘Son, it takes some men a mite longer that others.’”
Trap slid out of his saddle and squatted beside the jumble of tracks in the dust. He studied them for a while, touching the ground with his ungloved hand. Hashkee stood by stoically, ears pinned back and grumpy, but otherwise obedient. At length, Trap stood, took off his hat, and scanned their back trail. He had a habit of chewing on the inside of his cheek when something troubled him.
“Blake, come check my eyes, son, and tell me how many tracks you count,” he said, rescuing the boy from Clay’s tutelage.
The younger O’Shannon spurred his Appaloosa up next to his father and dismounted. He looked at the ground, studying it for a moment, and then scanned the valley behind them.
“Four?”
“That’s the way I figured it.”
Ky and Clay rode up to take a look.
Though none of them would ever admit it, deep down they all gave at least a pinch of credence to the notion that tracking expertise was a gift at which Indians—especially those with Apache blood—excelled. Expert trackers in their own right, either Roman or Madsen could follow bandits across bare stone if pressed. But if Trap was around, they always yielded to that extra sense of his that no one ever even tried to explain.
“So we’re short by one?” Ky rubbed his chin, ruminating on the new information.
“That we are, Captain,” Trap said. “There were five sets of tracks leaving the site of the massacre: the four bandits and the girl’s. Looks to me like they put the girl on this plow horse.” He poked the leather tip of Hashkee’s reins at the huge tracks that meandered along the narrow road.
“She wouldn’t be able to outrun anyone on that beast,” Clay said, perusing the large impressions. “I think I dated a gal with feet that big once—she had a pretty face, though, and a butt like a barmaid. Come to think of it, she never did go lame on me.”
Roman rolled his eyes. “So one of them’s split off. Blake, you make it your job to watch our back trail for a piece while your pa concentrates on the tracking. Clay and I will keep our eyes peeled to the sides.”