After an unladylike snort, she said, “Kill you first. Then Crutchfield’s assassins.”
Which got Whip laughing almost as hard as Candy Crutchfield, but his laugh didn’t sound like hyenas or coyotes. Sounded more like old Satan himself. He turned around to bark an order at Mr. Clark.
“Find Crutchfield. If she’s dead, shoot her again. If she ain’t, kill her, then bring her body to me.”
I didn’t give him no indication as to which way I’d seen, or thought I’d seen, Candy Crutchfield run. Whip barked more orders about making sure the dead was dead, getting the brides together, seeing how many mules were fit to haul some of the wagons. I saw two Whip Watsons, then four, then eight, and was about to fall back when I realized that I was now in Jingfei’s arms, and she was holding my arm.
Cloth ripped, and somehow I knowed she was wrapping that bullet wound with the silk fabric of her copper blouse.
“You hit?” Whip had just noticed that I was bleeding like a stuck pig.
“If you please,” a deep baritone intoned, “allow me,” and I saw Doc John Milton sitting on the other side of me. His hands reached for my arm, and I was too weak to scream, because I could just see that Mad Dog ending my life with a scalpel or one of those Tabloids he’d make me swallow.
“Aren’t you Franklin Kent?” Whip Watson asked.
The doctor was too busy tending my arm, with Jingfei his nurse.
“‘What’s in a name?’” he said, not even looking at Whip. “‘That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’”
If they had asked me, I would have told that Mad Dog doctor to go work on somebody else, and let Jingfei nurse me, but I hurt too much to talk, nobody asked me, and somebody was helping Jingfei up, away from me, leaving me in the care of John Milton, to whom I whispered: “I ain’t never kicked no puppy, Doc.”
His expression didn’t change, but my arm suddenly hurt like hell, and I cried out.
Juan Pedro rode up, and he and Whip Watson palavered while the doctor asked one of Whip’s other boys to fetch a black bag from the omnibus. He lifted a bloody hand to push the spectacles up on his nose. Only now, both of his lenses was missing from them glasses.
“Do not fret,” he told me, and he smiled. “Sepsis is usually the danger of a wound such as this one, but the bullet passed completely through while striking neither bone nor artery. I should be able to remove the thread and cloth and have enough gin left to stop any infection.”
I thought I’d rather drink the gin, but my stomach was dancing and my head was getting foggy, and I wasn’t sure I could say nothing.
Whip’s boy returned, and his face was ashen. He dropped the bag down by John Milton and shook his head. “God,” he said, “what a mess.”
By that time, Whip was done talking to Juan Pedro, who spurred his horse and rode off to bark his own orders in Spanish, and Whip knelt beside us. Then I jumped because Jingfei jumped and John Milton jumped, and I was real thankful that Milton at that moment wasn’t trying to pull some thread and cloth from the hole in my arm with them real sinister-looking tweezers he was gripping.
Another pop sounded, and I jerked again.
“Ah,” Whip said, and he smiled the ugliest smile I’d ever seen. “The coup de grâce.”
His boys was finishing off the wounded, and from the way Whip had spoke and that light in his eyes, I understood that he wasn’t talking about putting wounded mules out of their misery. I rolled over and vomited. Right in Jingfei’s lap. She didn’t even seem offended. That’s the kind of woman she was.
“You rest,” Whip told me. Then he told me everything that had been going on since Candy Crutchfield had attacked his train.
After the wagonload of women got taken by Candy Crutchfield’s crew, Whip returned to camp to see how bad things was. All in all, he surmised, it wasn’t that bad of a loss. Oh, sure, six of his brides had been woman-napped by Crutchfield, and six more was lying dead, along with several oxen, a few mules, and a healthy number of his gunmen. But he said he still had twelve women to get to Calico.
“Eleven,” one of his men pointed out. “The Chinese bitch stole your horse.”
Whip drawed his Colt and shot that fellow dead, Whip Watson never being the type of killer who tolerated being corrected, especially after just getting caught with his britches down, so to speak, and being whupped by a woman bandit.
“Canfield said Crutchfield was bringing in her own whores to Calico,” Whip told his surviving boys. “If she’s bringing twenty-four, that’ll give us forty when we take them back.”
This time, nobody, not even Juan Pedro, corrected Whip’s math.
When Mr. Clark come back with some of the horses that had run off during the fracas, they cut the oxen loose, and decided to transport the dozen brides in one of the farm wagons. Whip needed to make good time, so he sent a few of his men with the remaining women to Calico. He also sent the remaining Columbus carriages, as he still refused to give up on his idea of parading the brides straight down Main Street in fancy wagons all the way to The Palace of Calico.
They were ordered to wait in one of the canyons in the Painted Hills near Calico, since Whip Watson and Candy Crutchfield obviously often thought a lot alike.
The best of Whip’s gunmen, of course, come with him, riding after Candy Crutchfield on mules and horses that had been pulling farm wagons. Crutchfield’s tracks was easy to follow. Whip saw the Conestoga wagon that we’d seen, saw how Crutchfield’s boys had transferred the contents of that Conestoga onto fast horses, and had lit a shuck into the Mojave. Whip saw how we was following them in Peach Fuzz’s Columbus carriage. He saw the canyon and the pass they’d have to go through. He saw how it was the perfect place for an ambush.
They didn’t go through that pass. They dismounted, using the old Army tactic of having one man hold four horses, and the others go to battle. Sneaked into the rocks, found the culprits, and opened fire.
Which was the sound of gunfire we’d heard. Candy had thought—at least she’d said she thought—that was the sound of her boys murdering Whip Watson and his boys. Turned out, ’twas the other way around.
Candy Crutchfield was jo-fired to get us through the Devil’s Playground and over those dunes, but Whip Watson knowed who he was after. He knowed she wouldn’t take one of the easy trails to Calico, knowed she couldn’t.
He had found Crutchfield, and had set up the ambush.
Course, it had cost him. Zeke was lying dead on the other side of our omnibus, shot to pieces by the Gatling gun. I noticed how Juan Pedro held a bloody right arm, and spied that Bug Beard’s left ear had gotten shot off. Saw a lot of dead horses, too, and few mounts with empty saddles. I wouldn’t call this fight something to brag about, but Whip Watson looked like he was amused by everything.
He even smiled when Juan Pedro rode up, slid from the saddle, and whispered something. The only words I caught was patrón and puta, but I knowed what the Mexican was talking about. Whip sighed, then shrugged.
“She has no horse,” he said. “No water. In these dunes, she’ll be dead in two or three days. Forget her.”
So Candy Crutchfield had made it away. To what? Stuck afoot in the Devil’s Playground, it might have been better for her had those first bullets of battle killed her, and not her horse.
“All right,” Whip ordered, “let’s see what we have left, what wagons will work, how we can get our brides”—he grinned at the girls, those who had been woman-napped from him, and those he was woman-napping from the soon-to-be late Candy Crutchfield—“see how we can get these poor brides to their awaiting husbands in Calico.”
I looked behind me. The girls, those who had crawled from underneath the omnibus, and those who had moved from the other horse-buses, stared right back at Whip Watson with cold, deadly eyes. I think now, after all they’d been through, after all they’d seen and endured, they all knowed that this wasn’t what they had bargained for. And they understood that they wouldn’t find some nice prince and a re
al preacher awaiting them in Calico.
Even the redheaded twins, Caireann and Caoilainn Lannon, looked mighty tetchy.
Jingfei helped me up, though I was so weak, I had to lean on her. Well, maybe I didn’t, but it felt good.
Caireann, or perhaps it was Caoilainn, had been leaning against the omnibus. She turned, opened the door, started inside, then jerked back like she’d been snapped at by a Mojave rattler. “Oh . . .” She clutched her bosom, and sank to her knees, Caoilainn—or perhaps it was Caireann—hurrying over to assist her twin.
Jingfei left me, and hurried to that open door. She peered inside, turned away real fast, squeezing her eyes shut but for a moment, bringing a tiny hand to her delicate mouth, then leaping into the coach. Some of the girls started for that door, but one of the twins managed to block their stampede. “No,” she said. “Don’t . . . look.”
I had stumbled over to the bus, behind the redhead, almost fell against the horse-bus, and looked through a window.
What I saw, I won’t write down. Ain’t fit to describe, because it wasn’t fit to see. Inside, even Jingfei sobbed. Whip Watson came to the door, peeked inside, then said, “There’s nothing you can do for them, my China doll. Come on. Come on out.”
I didn’t know which ones they were, if they’d been among them woman-napped by Crutchfield or were some of the brides Crutchfield was bringing to Calico. Lucky, we had gotten most of them out, and even some I’d told to lie on the floor had managed to get out. The brunette, for one, she was standing beside me, crying real loud.
All I knowed was those few girls still inside that coach, which had been shot to pieces with a Gatling, had come a long way with high hopes of finding true love, only to find death in the Devil’s Playground.
Whip fetched his whip and walked away, the Irish twins from Savannah now hugging each other, crying on their shoulders, and other brides-to-be cried to one another. It was real sad. Worser even than when Jingfei and me had hauled out those dead brides from the wrecked Conestoga.
When I helped Jingfei out, she didn’t say nothing, and her face had turned to stone again, eyes full of hate. We went around the mules still in their traces, waiting patiently, walked around the two dead ones, and I heard Whip cussing. He was running up the hill.
“NO!” Jingfei pulled away from me, and chased after Whip.
I saw it, too, and if those dead girls in that omnibus had broken my heart, the ugly scene on that hillside sure done the job. I couldn’t run so fast, not with my arm patched with Jingfei’s moiré sleeve and some of John Milton’s bandaging and gin purification. I stumbled a few times, but kept climbing up that dune of wet sand.
Whip circled the carriage, breaking the Commandment about not taking the Lord God’s name in vain.
Jingfei knelt over a body. I’d heard her gasp, and cuss, and even sob, but never had I heard her wail. Yet that’s what she done, crying like her heart was broken. Both of our hearts had busted wide apart on that dune.
I staggered past her, though, and looked at the Columbus carriage. Two dead Percherons still in their harness, the canopy ripped the shreds, bullets from the Gatling gun having torn through the leather seats.
“This coach—this carriage!” In his own way, Whip Watson’s heart had broke, too. “Three hundred dollars it cost me in Prescott. And it’s ruined. Jesus Christ in heaven, it’s ruined.” Some more broken commandments, then he started popping that whip, like he was blaming it on God.
No, this wasn’t the hand of God. Couldn’t even blame Candy Crutchfield. It was all Whip Watson’s fault.
Holding my throbbing left arm, I knelt beside Peach Fuzz.
Let go of my arm long enough to brush sand off his cold face, thinking: I told him Gatling guns was prone to jam. And likely it had. Only not till after it had killed him.
Felt something run down my bearded cheeks.
Some things you just can’t figure. I didn’t even know if Crutchfield’s boys had shot the carriage. Maybe they thought Peach Fuzz was racing up that hill to join Whip Watson. Perhaps Whip’s boys, after they’d taken over the Gatling, they had opened fire. Maybe . . . maybe . . . It’s one of those questions we’ll never know the answer to.
What I knowed was this. Peach Fuzz lay dead, chest blowed apart. I guess he’d stumbled out of the carriage and was trying to reach Bonnie when he’d died.
Though tears blinded me, I turned toward Jingfei, who kept wailing. And I saw poor Bonnie, who was reaching out, trying to be touching Peach Fuzz when she’d died.
They’d killed her, too.
“Three hundred dollars!” Whip railed. “Three hundred dollars that I’ll never see again!”
That’s when I went berserk. Completely mad.
I forgot all about the bruised ribs, the back, the bullet through my left arm. I stumbled to my feet, and went up that still-wet sand, and Whip stopped and stared at me and I’ll never forget that look on his face when my right fist connected to his jaw and down he went.
“You son of a bitch!” I roared. “Those two lovers are dead and all you care about is that damned carriage.”
He was getting to his feet when I decked him again.
But that was all I had in me. My left arm commenced to spasming and I twisted and groaned and fell to my knees. I saw Jingfei, her porcelain face streaked with tears. She wasn’t bawling no more. She was looking at me with either bewilderment or praise. Then I saw fear in those lovely eyes, and I saw her mouth open, but never heard her warning.
That’s when Whip Watson’s blacksnake whip tore through my waterlogged and already ruined blue shirt.
With a yelp, I fell facedown in the Devil’s Playground. The whip sliced again. I tried to get up, but something burned across my back, and my mind kept telling me, Stay down, stay down, he can’t castrate you if you’re lying facedown.
But I was so riled, so mule-headed, and now Jingfei started screaming, so I kept trying to get up, and my back was burning and bleeding, and my shirt, wet now from blood and the downpour, already in tatters. Suddenly, just like that, it stopped.
Jingfei wasn’t screaming. Whip wasn’t cussing. His blacksnake wasn’t slashing. Even I wasn’t saying nothing, but I stopped trying to get up, and just lay there in the sand, staring at Jingfei and the bloody body of the late Bonnie Little. Doc John Milton had run over, and he had both hands on Jingfei’s shoulders, maybe to keep her from charging into Whip’s whip to protect me. Juan Pedro and Mr. Clark and three or four of Whip’s men stood on that hill, too. Not speaking. Staring. Fear shone in their eyes, too.
“No.” That was Whip’s voice. “It ain’t right.” Heard footsteps in the sand, and seen Whip’s black boots and black trousers. He had moved between me and Jingfei and John Milton. “You don’t kill a man whose life you’ve saved. It ain’t right. Mister Clark.”
Mr. Clark, I figured, could kill me since he hadn’t saved my life. I pushed myself to my knees. If I was going to die, it wasn’t going to be lying down in this sand.
“Hand me your Spencer.”
Mr. Clark tossed him that big carbine.
“Doctor Kent.”
John Milton left Jingfei in a hurry. Whip threw the big gun to him.
“Kill him.”
“Sir?”
“Kill Micah Bishop. Shoot him down like a dog. Or I’ll flay the hide off you.”
Jingfei started to stand, but I shot out, “No.” To my surprise, she stopped, and even a bigger shock to me, I managed to climb to my feet.
Whip looked back at me. Give me some satisfaction that his lip was bleeding.
John Milton cocked the Spencer. He shrugged. “Truly, I am sorry to have to do this, my good man, but you see how things are.”
I walked a bit downhill. To get closer.
“I tell you what, old chap,” John Milton said. “To make things sporting, you run up that hill.” He pointed to the other hill, meaning I’d have to run down the one I was halfway up, then climb the other one, the one that probably rose two hundred feet.
“I shall let you reach the top.”
“Kent,” Whip Watson said, “if he lives, you die.”
“Fear not, my new friend,” John Milton told Whip. “I have had much practice at these kind of things.” He was already wetting the front sight with his thumb. “Shooting uphill makes things sporting, but during the late war, I gave many Transvaal Boers the same chance I’m giving you, Mister Bishop.” The peckerwood even winked at me. “You had better hurry,” he said softly.
So I ran. Well, running ain’t the best way to describe it. More like weaved and staggered. Even tripped a couple of times. You’d run, too, especially if you knowed what a .56-.50 round will do to a human body at close range.
The Irish twins from Savannah shouted, “Run, Micah, run!”
Breath heaving, heart pounding, me sweating, my left arm was bleeding again, back burning and also bleeding from Whip’s blacksnake, I did my best to make the top of the hill. Funny thing is that briefly, for just an instant, I thought that I might even have a chance.
Reached the top.
Then John Milton shot me dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dear reader, I reckon it won’t shock you to learn that I wasn’t dead. But, by jacks, how I died! Once again, I have to thank the spirit of Big Tim Pruett for saving my hide. You see, having seen Henry IV, Part I, I knowed plenty about how actors died on stage, and, now that I think on things, having seen as many people shot to death as I’ve seen, that also played a bit into how I died so fine.
Anyhow, as soon as I heard that Spencer roar, I arched my back real good, leaped off my feet, but not too far, and let out a groan, put some rattle of death in my breathing, fell hard to the ground, and rolled down the hill, not all the way down, because rolling that far might have made me sick, and then I’d be on my knees and vomiting when Whip or John Milton or some of Whip’s boys rode up top to make sure I had gone under.
Rolling down the dune, I also bit my bottom lip. Likely, that helped persuade whoever would ride up that hill—I heard the horse blowing real hard—because blood had poured down my chin from my mouth, so it must have looked like I’d been lung shot. I held my breath, tried not to shake, move my eyes, do nothing that might give me away.
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