“They aren't,” the old man said. “They just recently posted up out there, and we've been trying to telegram the Marshals, but they seem like they don't want to come out because we all know that, by the time they do, the bandits will be gone. Doesn't send a very good message though not to respond at all, I say.”
I nodded as I stepped onto the boardwalk and made my way toward the saloon.
“I agree,” I said. “The Marshals act like they have better things to do.”
“Right now they seem more like debt collectors than anything else,” the old man said, hustling to keep up with me, all the while sounding like a broken wind chime with the racket his gear made. “I wish it wasn't like that because it leaves little towns like this place in a hard spot. I can serve as a lawman if I need to, but I'm not a good one. If I'd been younger, I would have been able to make it to the top of the saloon in time to help you, maybe even have shot one.”
I walked into the saloon, and the man followed, deftly moving behind the bar and pouring me a drink.
“This one is one the house,” he said.
Then he left me be, which I appreciated. I didn't ask him where he was headed to, but I got the feeling he was going up on top of the roof to make sure none of the bandits were slowly making their way to the small town under cover of darkness.
I sat there slowly nursing the drink he'd given me. Whatever it was, it was watered down, and the glass came to a cheating tapered bottom. I wondered if the owner was the kind of person who thought it a good idea to put the heads of rattlesnakes in his moonshine to make it more “potent.” I sure hoped not, the last thing I needed to worry about was getting sick from a concoction that didn't really make any sense. As my mind mulled over the murk I drank, my eyes roved the interior of the saloon. It was like the rest of them, or nearly. There was sawdust on the floor and spittoons. There didn't seem to be anyone else until my eyes adjusted and I saw the lithe figure of a man sitting with his back to the corner. I pushed away from the bar and made my way over to him.
“Howdy, stranger,” I said. “You wouldn't happen to be Emmanuel, would you?”
The figure stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. My left hand trailed behind me to feel the grip of the pistol in the small of my back—I know I'd have the drop on him if he tried anything because my drink in my right hand seemed to indicate I'd be a second behind, not a second ahead.
“Yes, I'm Emmanuel,” he said. “Are you the woman who has been looking for me? What's your name again?”
“My name?” I said. “Well, I guess there isn't much harm in you knowing it. My name is Samantha, and I'm a bounty hunter looking for the notorious Emma. We spoke very briefly over telegram.”
The figure nodded and motioned that I sit across from him. Instead of sitting across from him, with my back to the door, I sat beside him at the table. I didn't care if it made him uncomfortable for whatever reason, I wasn't trying to get shot in the back in some dive bar in the middle of goddamn nowhere.
“We have spoken,” Emmanuel said. “And we have much to discuss. Tell me, what do you know of Emma?”
I took a long drink, then spoke.
“Not too much,” I said. “I know that she was born and raised in a small cow town before she set off on her own. For awhile she was on the straight and narrow, but before too long things outside of the law called her name. Besides that, I know what everyone else who wants the bounty knows: what she's done.”
Emmanuel nodded and leaned back in his chair. He seemed uneasy about something, but I couldn't figure out what. Certainly, it couldn't be me, considering how I wasn't intimidating at all. I wondered if he was going to proposition me for help or offer to help me. If he did, we'd have to talk about splitting up the reward and other details. The saloon wouldn't be the best place for that. As I studied Emmanuel, someone else walked through the saloon doors. I looked over for a moment and found it wasn't someone entering but someone leaving—the old man headed back out into the night. When I looked back, Emmanuel had a pistol leveled at my head.
“You think it's so easy to catch this Emma, do you?” Emmanuel asked. “You think you can just ride around the desert chasing her and never have to worry about what happens after you find her? Is that's what's going on?”
I wasn't sure what to do, but I did know that if I made any sudden moves, my brains would splatter all over the walls behind me.
“Listen,” I said. “I have no idea what's going on right now, but please believe me when I say that I only came here to speak to you about this because when I sent you a telegram you replied that you wanted to speak with me. All I want to do is talk to you, hear what you know about Emma, that's it. I'm not here to give you a hard time or anything, and if you're after her too, then maybe we can team-up? If not, I'll be on my way, and head back the direction I came.”
Emmanuel studied me as if mulling it over. I studied him back, for the first time realizing that he was awful slim for a man. There was something about him that just seemed off as if I wasn't missing something right in front of my face. The more I looked at Emmanuel, the more I realized I'd missing something big.
“You wouldn't happen to be Emma, would you,” I said. “Because if you are, prepare to be placed under arrest.”
Emma fired just as I knocked the pistol away from my face. The sound was deafening in the small space and left me disoriented. Before I knew what was going on Emma had kicked me over in my chair and was headed for the door. I pulled the gun from my hip and let loose a few errant shots after her, and then was on my feet following. I had no idea where the old-timer had gone, but I didn't really care—I just hoped that he didn't end up shooting me in the back in all of the excitement.
When I got back out on the boardwalk, I could see the shadowy figure which had just tried to kill me making its way toward what looked to be a very small hotel. I silently cursed this tiny town and all the small things in it: the small bar, the tiny hotel, all of it. Why did Emma have to be hiding here? And why had she responded to my telegram anyway?
When I made it up to her room, following the sound of her footsteps, it was just in time to catch a board to the back of my head. Everything went black.
~*~
When I came to I was tied to a chair and Emma was in another chair facing me, sitting so she could lean forward on its back. The room was barely lit, and there didn't seem to be anyone coming to check on us. It made me wonder if the small town was in cahoots with her if she'd struck some kind of deal with the townspeople that required their silence about her presence in exchange for their safety. It was hard to say, but I planned on asking her about it. I did, after all, have her undivided attention.
She was no longer disguised as a man. I took in her delicate features, her hair black as raven's wings, and her red lips. She was striking beautiful and tried to hide her big bust under clothing. It nearly worked, but not quite. The room was barren, save for a few of her things piled up in the corner. Most of it looked to be riding gear and a few guns. There was also a chest filled with what I guessed to be stolen goods of some kind.
“Yeah, that chest is full of money I stole,” Emma said. “You know the heist I'm talking about. The one in the last town. They didn't seem to think that a female bandit could pull it off because 'I'm a girl,' or some other nonsense like that. Well, as you can see, me being a woman didn't stop me from taking what I wanted from those ignorant, backwater, pukes. I hate people like that, the kind that are so short-sighted they can't see to the end of their noses.”
I could relate. Many people in the world didn't think that I would make a decent bounty hunter because I was a woman. Of course, they couldn't be more wrong, but there was no way for them to realize that without me proving them wrong first.
“So, tell me, Samantha,” Emma said. “What were you planning to do when you found me?”
I shrugged. There wasn't much to say. We both knew that I was going to try to arrest her when I ran into her in the saloon. Now the tables were turned, tho
ugh.
“I think the real question is what you plan to do with me,” I said.
Emma laughed.
“Well, that depends,” she said. “You see, you did wing one of the Rooster Gang members pretty good. Which was stupid, by the way. You could have made it here safe and sound without doing that. Now, if he dies, they'll be on us tomorrow night and who knows what will happen.”
“So it's like I thought,” I said. “You've exchanged protection for the townsfolk for your ability to stay here 'unnoticed.' Why did you respond to my telegram?”
“You seemed exciting,” Emma said. “And I figured if you turned out to be a real asshole I could just kill you. But I wanted to meet you first. It's not every day that I get to meet a female bounty hunter. Especially one . . .”
Emma's voice trailed off leaving me to wonder what she was going to say. I couldn't help but notice how beautiful she was, but I hated her so much at the moment there was nothing but rage felt toward her. I didn't want her to be beautiful, or thoughtful, I wanted her to be a boorish brute.
“Listen,” Emma said. “I'll let you out of those restraints if you promise to behave. I'll even give you your weapons back. Right now we're on the same team, for the moment, so there's no reason for you to try to pull some dumb, crazy shit like trying to arrest me again. And seriously, did you really think it would be that easy in the saloon? The bounty on my head is high, really high. Did you think it was high for no reason?”
Just then what sounded like an explosion rocked the small town. I'd heard such noises before at mining operations, but never away from them. Emma hurried to untie me, and we both armed ourselves before venturing out into the night. It was the saloon. The bandits had ridden into town and set it on fire in the evening. The man who had owned it swung from a nearby post, his neck pulled at a funny angle by a noose. The booze instead the saloon had ignited, causing an explosion.
“Jesus,” Emma said. “I never thought they'd actually take it this far. I mean, I expected some kind of retribution, but I figured it would be a few pot shots.”
It meant that I'd killed whoever I'd shot. My blood ran cold. It was hard to think clearly, and I found myself just following Emma's lead. Soon, with her help, we had most of the rest of the town's people armed and on top of roofs, waiting for the bandits to return. We both stood guard at the front of the town, but the entrance.
“What is the name of this place, anyway?” I asked.
“No idea,” Emma said. “Does it really matter?”
“I'd just like to know the name of the place I'm getting ready to fight, and maybe die, for.”
Emma put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. She smelled so good, like cinnamon and vanilla. She held me tight for a second, before giving me a squeeze and letting me go.
“I know you're scared right now, but you don't have to be. I'm here,” she said.
We both stared out into the night, trying to see the shapes of anyone approaching. My mind was spinning. I'd either killed a man or wounded him badly enough that another man had died for it. Not only this, but I was finding myself attracted to a woman I'd come to take into custody. I wasn't so concerned that she was a woman, and I was too—I'd grown up with two aunts who lived together and would have been married had it been allowed. But this woman, Emma, was a hardened criminal. There was no way that I could be having feelings for her; it just wasn't right. Not only this, but it might compromise my ability to do my job. After all, my soul purpose for being in the little town with no name, and now no saloon or lawman, was to bring her in for her crimes. Only when I did that would I be paid, and my doing so would probably put Emma on the wrong end of a noose.
I looked over at Emma and caught her staring at me. At first, I thought she might be checking me out, but then she gave me a look that could only be considered contempt. I understood where she was coming from. It was probably hard to stand her by my side and support me when I was someone who wanted to use her for my own ends. But maybe that was something Emma was used to by now. I couldn't be the first person that had tracked her down, in particular by the way she'd talked back in the hotel.
“How long are we going to man, or woman, this post?” I asked.
“All night,” Emma said. “I don't want any more of those scumbags sneaking in here and taking good peoples' lives. It's not fair to the rest of the town, and it sure as hell isn't fair to the bandits. They came here looking for a fight, and by God, I'm going to give it to them.
I appreciated Emma's resolved, but I wasn't sure keeping everyone up all night was the best idea. It would just make people tired and irritable tomorrow. I didn't think the bandits would come back. They'd got their satisfaction, for the moment at least. Now they were most likely getting drunk around some campfire by the mesa, talking about what big bad men they were. That was the part I hated most about the bushwhacking types. They all thought they were real tough guys, even though their way of handling actual hard men was to shoot them in the back as they rode by.
“Emma,” I said. “I think we need to set up a fire watch like the military does. We could get an hourly rotation going. People could sleep dressed, with their guns by the bed. Keeping everyone up is going to wear people out, and that's what we don't want. Especially if the bandits keep this up. For all, we know they're going to do this every night until there is nothing left. What we need to do is be ready for that.”
Emma didn't say anything, but I could tell she was mulling it over. She knew I had a point. The bandits were basically guerrilla fighters, and they would use guerrilla tactics to try to win.
“Think about it Emma,” I said. “We're big and stationary, they're small and mobile. We have to be ready to defend all the time, while they can pick and choose the moments when they attack. We need to accept the situation and adapt to it—we can't just have everyone up all the time. And as soon as people figure out that's what's going on, they'll think, 'Hey, I can go to sleep for a little bit,' and that's when someone is going to miss seeing them coming, and then they'll try to swarm us when we're out in the open.”
“All right, all right, I get it,” Emma said. “What are you, some kind of Marshal?”
I laughed before I replied, taking a second to really scan the horizon before I answered.
“No Marshal, but I've been in some pretty sticky situations before, and I know what works and what doesn't. One time up north I got stuck in a fort when the local Indian leaders laid siege to it. It was a nightmare, but because the sergeant in charge knew what to do, it minimized what could have been fatal to all of us. Did we lose people? Sure. But did we prevail? Eventually.”
The night went quiet. I decided not to say anything else and just let Emma make the decision about how she wanted to handle it. I figured that if I kept pushing she would just dig in her heels and not want to do anything that wasn't already happening. That's not what any of us needed, though. The town needed Emma to start listening to me and to start thinking more long term than just one night. That's when it occurred to me that she might have known the saloon owner, the man who had done his best to be the law for this small town in the middle of the desert.
“Let's set up a watch.”
That was all Emma said. She turned and strode to the closest building with people on the roof. Setting up a watch wouldn't be hard, and I needed to stay and man the post. Besides that, I knew that there was no way I would be of much help considering I didn't know any of the town's people. I hoped that Emma was using her best judgment when she assigned posts and told people when their watch was. One week link could break the entire chain. But I had to trust this to her if I wanted to work with her during this time of crisis. I knew that much. If I wanted the bounty, both of us needed to make it out alive.
When Emma returned, she walked over and stood close to me, so close that I caught her scent again. It was intoxicating, and I tried to push it out of my mind.
“Everything is set up,” Emma said. “You and I need to get some rest because
we'll be busy tomorrow. I want to put some fences up—tanglefoot style—to catch those fucks the next time they try to ride into town.”
We made our way back to the hotel. I wasn't sure what to expect from the rest of the night. I didn't think the bandits would be coming back, but I did believe that Emma and I were going to end up having words. When we were back in her room, I turned on one of the oil lamps and immediately a bullet flew through the window.
“Holy shit,” Emma said. “Are you all right?! You're bleeding! Just stay down, all right? Stay down. We need to get that lamp off.”
I was winged in the neck, but I didn't know how badly. If it were really bad, there would be no way for Emma to help me, much less save me. But if it wasn't too terrible there would be a good chance that I could bounce back in just a few days time. They didn't even have just a few days, though. They needed to be ready now.
Emma moved deftly around the room, crawling to avoid straying into the sniper's line of sight. She finally got the lamp turned off, and then crawled over to check on me. Her hands were sure of themselves, not the hands of someone who had no idea how to handle a gunshot wound. I felt like I was in the care of someone who would see me through. Emma quickly produced some iodine from a dresser and cleaned my wound. While she was doing so, I couldn't help looking deep into her dark brown, nearly black eyes. At first, I don't think she noticed, but then, after a few minutes, it became obvious.
“I never liked the color of my eyes,” Emma said. “They just don't pop like the other colors. Sure, brown leaves a lot to the imagination, but I want them to be big and bold. I don't want them to be something that can only be seen in daylight.”
I couldn't believe I was hearing Emma speak so candidly to me. Maybe seeing me shot and bleeding on the floor had softened her to me a little bit. I wasn't really sure. But whatever it was, I liked it. Even though I hated myself for it, I liked Emma's touch, the way her hands were gentle yet firm. It was so unlike the coarse touch of a man, and so unlike any other touch I'd felt before.
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