"That old bat is wrong," Thathanka-Ska said bitterly. "Everyone loved him."
"Keep your voice down," Lakhpia-Sha said. "Anyway, it's not like she doesn't have a reason to question it."
Haienwa'tha folded his hands under his head and said, "Something is wrong. Either the old woman is not telling us the truth, or we are overlooking something." He paused for a moment before letting out a deep, troubled sigh. "Or Thasuka-Witko was not the man we thought he was."
"I don't believe it," Thathanka-Ska said. "And if you say that again, I'm going to fight you. I don't care how much bigger than me you are."
Something moved in the shadows, near their destriers. There was a low whisper, nearly lost among the insect's songs of the mesa.
"What is that?" Lakhpia-Sha whispered.
Haienwa'tha motioned for him to be quiet as he rolled over and squinted to see into the darkness. Whatever it was, it had stopped moving.
"I heard it too," Thathanka-Ska said. "Over there."
A woman turned away from the circle to look back at them, and Haienwa'tha waved to her and announced, "I have to pee."
He walked over to where his destrier stood and looked everywhere for signs of movement. As he walked deeper into the shadows, he recalled the snarl of the werja. The feeling of its sharp fur tearing his skin while Lakhpia-Sha screamed for help. Haienwa'tha swallowed and put his hand up to pat his destrier on the side. "What was that noise, girl? Did you see anything?"
"Over here," came a soft whisper. A young woman held her hand up in the shadows and waved him closer. "Hurry. Quickly!"
He came around the side of his mount to where the girl was ducking low in the weeds. It was the same one he'd seen when he entered the camp. She handed him a small bowl and said, "Eat. I stole this for you."
Haienwa'tha looked down at the bowl of stew and said, "Thank you. Why did you do that?"
"I have to go," she said. "Hurry and get back before they become suspicious."
The girl turned to leave and he said, "What is your name?"
She stopped and looked back at him, smiling slightly. "Kachina. Leave the bowl in the grass here and I will fetch it later."
He tried to say something else, but she was gone. Haienwa'tha held the bowl up to his lips and downed the stew quickly, savoring the rich texture of its thick gravy. He licked his fingers and set the bowl down in the grass away from their destriers and made his way back toward their makeshift campsite.
"What was it? Did you see anything?" Lakhpia-Sha said.
"No. It was nothing. Now go to sleep." He rolled over on his side and closed his eyes, his insides warm and full from the stew and his mind spinning from the dimly-lit smile of the girl who'd brought it.
Chapter 14: For Someone Else's Better Tomorrow
Bob Ford forgot he could live like a desert rat. He'd done it before. As a child he'd eaten things a starving bassaricus wouldn't touch and learned to burrow himself deep in the ground at night and sleep under the loose dirt while worms and bugs slithered all over him.
He'd grown up doing it from time to time, when his old man had polished off a whiskey bottle and started swinging young Bob would scurry out the door and head into the hills. He ran until he couldn't hear his mother screaming anymore.
As he fled Seneca 6, Bob began to remember what a man needed in the wild. He remembered how to find it and how to find others who needed it too. Better than that, he remembered all the underground sites used by outlaws that no one discussed. The kinds of places where a man left behind a sack of horse feed and ammunition for the next group that came along, out of respect for the trade.
Gentleman Jim had shown him those. Shown him better ways to live than eating whatever was stuck under a damp rock and chewing on dry grass like a goat. "No reason we can't live well even when we're outdoors. There's leapers and fish and conejos. Hell, I'll eat a werja if you skin it and cook it right. You live like an animal and you start to act like one too. That's why you should always keep yourself clean, Bob," the bandit would say. "We're businessmen. You want to be respected, you need to look respectable. Right now we're taking people's money with a handgun, but someday, if we play our cards right, we'll do it with a briefcase. You understand?"
Bob didn't. Not the finer details of it anyway, but he would lay back and fold his hands under his head and listen contently, imagining the two of them standing side by side at a bank window or a grocery store, greeting customers as they walked in. Someday, they'd laugh about their old marauding ways.
He pictured the Sheriff of Seneca 6 in his mind. I should have shot you on the spot, Bob thought. Not for handing me over to the law. Shoot, I tried to do the same to you the first second they nabbed me.
That wasn't the betrayal. Not being out here was the betrayal. Not opening that bank or grocery store like you always said.
Plenty of highwaymen turned law at some point. They got tired of the highway and living on the run but didn't know how to do much more than use a pistol to intimidate people. Why not put that skill to good use and get paid for it at the same time? Bob thought. It just seemed so ordinary to him. So plain. The man who'd worn the mask had romance and flair. The one they'd written about in all them papers and caught the eye of all them ladies, even while they were being held up.
But there's still someone out there, Bob thought. Let's go find that man and let him know someone out here still remembers what it means to be an outlaw.
***
Bob Ford slipped off his boots and crouched low. He slid across the rocky surface, keeping his stockinged feet pressed to the ground at all times and made little more than a light, sweeping sound as he went. The guard was asleep. He stunk like a saloon's back alley anyway.
Bob's Devastator was drawn and ready, but it made little difference. There were over twenty men sleeping on either side of him. He zigzagged past snoring gunslingers who tossed sideways and grunted in their dreams. At the center of the men was the one he was looking for. The one wearing a mask.
Bob bent low over him and inspected his face, needing to be sure. With one look, he was. Whoever you are, you ain't him, Bob thought. It had to be that Sheriff back there. I knew it. He pressed the wide barrel of his handgun against the bandit's forehead and cocked his hammer back. "Wake up, partner," Bob said.
Brown eyes shot open under the mask's cut out eyeholes and in a moment of shock, the man tried to sit up and swat Bob's gun away. Bob pushed him back down and said, "Everybody wake up!"
A few of the more alert ones jumped to their feet and had their guns out. The expected litany of threats against Bob's life followed. Bob just shook his head and waited, his finger wrapped around the trigger of his gun. There were groans and curses as the men shouted for anyone who was asleep to get up, get armed, someone was about to kill the Boss. "You the boss?" Bob said. "The one they calling Gentleman Jim?"
"That's right," the bandit said. "And you got to be the stupidest, sorriest piece of bounty hunting trash on two legs 'cause you got 'bout twenty guns on you right now. You ain't walkin' out of here, even if you do kill me."
Bob shook the man by the shirt and said, "I didn't come here for no bounty. I came here for an answer. Depending on what you say depends on what happens after you answer them."
"What is it you want to know, stranger?"
Bob leaned forward and kept his voice real quiet to say, "Does anybody else know you're a lying piece of shit?"
The bandit blinked stupidly back at him and he finally managed to say, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"You're an imposter," Bob hissed. He lifted his head and raised his voice, "Don't you recognize me, Jim? I'm Bob Ford. You and me pulled all them jobs together last year right up until I got sent to Beltran 6. Anybody here can go look it up if they want to. Me and Gentleman Jim were in all the papers back then and it was front page news when I got arrested. I finally busted out and came here to get my old job back."
"Is that right?" the bandit sputtered.
Bob leaned clo
se to his ear and whispered, "When I sit up, you nod and say 'Who do you think sent you that money for your commissary?' real loud."
Bob sat up, and the bandit repeated the words loud enough for everyone around them to hear.
"I know I must look different," Bob said. "That probably accounts for why you didn't recognize me straight off." Bob looked around at the other men and said, "See, I thought the boss here was gonna let me rot in that stinking hole, but he just told me that it was him who furrowed me the money that let me escape. So me and him are square now, and I'm gonna put my gun down. You boys ought to do the same, being that we're all gonna be working together."
One of the gunmen said, "I remember reading about you. The paper said you tried to give up Jim, but he'd only given you a false name."
"Don't believe everything you read," Bob said. "I gave them a fake name on purpose, on account of that was the agreement me and the boss had. Ain't that right?"
Bob lifted his gun and the bandit sat up and said, "Yeah. That was the arrangement I recall. Whatever the case may be, it didn't slow me down none."
"How do we know you ain't a spy for the law?" another one said.
Bob turned toward the man and aimed his Devastator right at his face, "Because I'll put a hole in the first man's forehead who suggests it. I was riding the highways before any of you even got pistols. None of you are bad as me, you better believe it."
"Is that right?" the man said. He looked at Bob's gun and then back at him, "Bob's telling the truth. As you all know, I went through a ton of different assistants until I found the right one. Somebody just as ruthless and merciless as could be. In fact, he'll fit right in with this new operation we've got going."
"That's right," Bob said. "What are you boys up to nowadays anyway? We robbing banks? Taking hostages for ransom?"
"Naw," the bandit said. "We done graduated to newer, more profitable ventures. Let's show him, boys."
Bob followed them to a caged wagon behind the fire and a few of the men held torches up to the windows to show that it was packed with horrified, stricken-looking young women. "What the hell?" Bob whispered.
"This is what we do now, Bob Ford," the bandit said. "Just like you and me always talked about. We snatch up the women that nobody wants and sell 'em off to the highest bidder."
Bob put his hand against the window's bars and felt the nearest girl's heavy, terrified breaths. She's little more than a child, Bob thought. He spun around to face the masked man, who quickly fished a heavy iron key from his belt and undid the back of the wagon. He grabbed the girl's ankle and started to pull. Ruth Pettigrew screamed and tried holding onto one of the other women, but they all retracted their arms and legs from her, letting her go, letting her get pulled out of the wagon to where the men waited.
"Don't touch me!" Ruth screamed. She curled into a ball on the ground and covered herself as best as she could. "In the name of the Great Spirit, I order you to leave me be!"
"Uh oh," the bandit said. "Sounds like the Great Spirit's gonna be pissed at us, boys." He walked past her and closed the door again and locked it. "We were saving this one for a special occasion. And since you're back from that shithole, I'm gonna let you do the honors, Bob."
Bob looked down at the girl and felt bile rise in his throat. "Actually, I wanted us to talk first," Bob said.
"Come on now, Bob," the bandit said with a quick smile. "Don't be shy, boy! Show us how much badder than all us you are."
The gang members closed in around Bob and the wagon, forming a circle to watch, to keep the girl from running, to keep Bob standing there unable to do anything but look down at the pathetic, weeping woman.
"You want a few of them to go first? Been awhile since they had anything but itjin cooter. They sure would appreciate some fresh white meat, I reckon," the bandit said, cocking his thumb at the other men. They all nodded and muttered eagerly. "I warn you though, she might not be so pretty by the time you get to her. I'd go first if I was you."
"Please don't," Ruth begged. "I beg you. I beg all of you. Please don't."
The bandit put his arm around Bob's shoulder and whispered, "You turn sissy in the joint?"
"I can't do this," Bob said. "We never did anything like this when I rode with Jim. This ain't who we were."
"Oh, but it is who we have become, Bob Ford," the bandit said. "Unless you're law."
"I ain't law," Bob hissed.
The bandit pointed at Ruth and said, "Then your evening's entertainment awaits." He shoved Bob forward and all of the men whooped and shouted, making lewd gestures at the women in the wagon and telling Ruth all of the things she should do to a man just out of prison.
Bob bent down to her and leaned close to her ear, "I'm not gonna hurt you, I promise. I'll be real, real gentle. Don't cry, okay? Just don't cry."
Ruth turned and spat in his face and said, "Go to hell!"
Bob wiped off his face and closed his eyes, keeping them tightly shut as he started to pull up Ruth's long skirt.
***
Bob turned his back to the rest of the men and sat by the fire with his knees pulled up to his chin. All of the women were screaming now. The tall, sickly looking woman called Elizabeth Hall tried to escape and two of the men beat her to the ground. "Easy!" the bandit shouted. "Easy, now, goddamn it! Don't bruise 'em. We're meeting the buyer in a few days."
He stuffed his shirt back into his pants and zippered his fly as he walked over to Bob and sat down, leaning back against a thick log with both elbows. "How long you say you was in prison?"
"Almost a year," Bob said.
"Took you a little while to get started back there with little Ruth, but you sure went to town once it was underway. I think she almost enjoyed it."
Bob clutched his stomach, about to be sick. "Get the hell away from me."
"Come on, Bob," he said. He put his hand on Bob's shoulder and squeezed it, "We was just having some fun with the ladies is all." He looked back at his men to see that they were still occupied. "Anyway, I needed a distraction so you and me have some privacy, yeah?"
Bob put his hand between his knees where his gun was waiting and cocked the hammer back. The bandit looked down and smiled slyly, "It ain't like that, Bob. Listen, I'm actually glad you're here. It means you got some kind of loyalty to all this, whereas most of these cowpokes are just dumb and desperate. I need a man I can rely on."
"To kidnap women and rape them?"
"I told you that was just a little fun and a way of occupying my boys. We gonna harp on that all night? Or can we talk business like two gentlemen supposed to?"
"Fine," Bob said. "Talk."
"Here's the deal. I bring you into the gang as my second-in-command, my lieutenant. You forget all about this other feller what wore the mask before me. We got a good thing going here, and soon enough, you gonna see that. We're gonna make some real money before all this is through. Enough that you'll be able to get the hell off this planet and go live like a prince."
Bob looked back to the fire for a while before he finally nodded and said, "All right." He turned to the bandit and offered his hand. "It's good to be back together again, sir."
Chapter 15: The Man That You Fear
The sentries posted at the furthest edges of the Hopituh Shi-nu-mu camp spotted the small group of riders far in the distance, long before they knew they were seen. The woman formed her fingers into tight circles and pressed them against her eyes, a hunter's trick she'd seen her husband use a thousand times before. "It is him," she whispered. "It cannot be."
She watched the man brush dust from his suit coat's sleeves and whip the long braid from the back of his bald head around like a whip. All of the Beothuk warriors riding with him had rifles adored with feathers and fresh scalps with long, flowing black hair. She recognized them as the ones taken from her uncles and neighbors and the woman jumped up from beneath the dry patch of reeds and ran with her dusty blanket over her shoulders, trying to keep low. She jumped over the women still sleeping on their b
lankets as she raced toward the middle of the camp and collapsed at Hehewuti's feet. "Nukpana is coming!" she gasped. "A dozen men, all riding this way."
Panic set in immediately, sending all of the women racing around the camp to grab up their children and weapons, many of them struggling to hold both at the same time. "How far away are they?" Hehewuti said.
"A mile off, two at most."
"Were you seen?"
"I don't know. I don't think so," she said quickly.
The other women had gathered around the old woman, waiting for instructions. A few raced after their children, holding them tightly against their chest, trying not to panic. "We must run," someone said. Another argued that they could stand their ground against the lesser number of men, while others feared that they were being flanked by the rest from an unseen direction.
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