“Hah!” Pecos said. “Kansas City Dave can’t find his butt with both hands most days of the week. Too much of the . . .” He hooked his thumb to his mouth, pantomiming a pull from a bottle.
“Used to be a good man,” Slash said. “But, yeah, the drink got him.”
“Cal Thornton?”
“Nah.”
“There’s the Johnson brothers—Goose and C.J.”
“Neither one of them two could command the respect of the rest of the boys.”
Pecos took a deep, thoughtful drag off his quirley, then, blowing the smoke into the wind, he turned to Slash. “What’re we gonna do—hunt all them fellas down an’ kill ’em? It was most likely Sanchez and Squires who abused old Bleed-’Em-So’s granddaughter.”
“Possibly the Johnson brothers.”
“Yeah.” Pecos lifted his chin and scratched his neck, pensive. “I reckon Kansas City Dave might’ve taken a turn. Thornton, too. Prob’ly the half-breed.”
“Floyd Three Eagles?”
“Yeah. We’ve both had to pull him off more than one doxie, or he woulda cut their throats. When he was smokin’ that wild tobacco from Mexico, you remember. But neither him nor most of the others would’ve initiated none of that with Bledsoe’s granddaughter. I s’pect they was just followin’ Sanchez’s and Squires’s lead.”
Slash stared down at his saddle horn. “No way young Billy woulda had anything to do with any of that.”
“Billy Pinto?” Pecos said. “Oh, hell no! Yeah—think about him, Slash. Young Billy. He’s part of the gang. What’re we gonna do—hunt down young Billy and shoot him, too? Hell, you was like a father to Billy!”
“Older brother.”
“Whatever,” Pecos said. “That’s what Bledsoe wants us to do.”
“Yep.” Slash reached back to pat the saddlebags in which his half of the three thousand dollars was riding. “Paid us good money to do it. If we don’t do it—we’ll be wanted men again. He’ll run us down and give us another necktie party. A real one this time!”
“Crap,” Pecos said. “I don’t want to talk about that. That was a nasty experience. One I don’t ever care to have again!”
“Me, neither.”
The men thought it over.
Finally, Pecos looked at Slash, narrowing one eye. “What’re we gonna tell Bleed-’Em-So?”
“Nothin’. Maybe we oughta just head on down to Mexico. Hole up there till they plant us.”
“What’re we gonna live on?”
Slash grinned as he leaned back and patted his saddlebags again. “We got us a three-thousand-dollar head start on a new life!” He chuckled.
“That won’t get us far. Not the way we go through it. Sooner or later, we’ll have to get jobs.”
“Crap,” Slash said.
“Yeah.”
“You were right. That’s a nasty word.”
“Ain’t it, though?” Pecos looked around and sighed. “I reckon we could buy a freighting business down there as easy as up here,” he said speculatively. “If we make it that far. If we light out with that three thousand dollars, Bledsoe’s likely gonna send a posse for us. U.S. marshals and Pinkertons, most like. He’ll wire sheriffs and bounty hunters between here an’ the border.”
“Yeah,” Slash said, spatting into the dust of the narrow trail. “They’ll likely cut us off well north of the border.”
They paused, thinking again.
“Crap,” Pecos said.
“Yeah,” agreed Slash. “Maybe we oughta just keep ridin’ up toward Ouray or Silverton. I know some parlor houses up there, some purty doxies. We can get us a coupla bottles, a coupla women, maybe play a little poker and think about our futures.”
“Yeah, there’s nothin’ like drinkin’ an’ whorin’ to figure things out,” Pecos agreed, nodding. He reined his horse back up the trail. “All right, let’s mosey. Gonna be dark soon. We’d best find a place to camp. Should pull into one o’ them towns on up the Animas by—”
He stopped and looked at Slash.
“What was that?”
Slash stared into the forest off the trail’s right side. “A girl’s scream?”
“Out here?” Pecos scoffed. “Musta been a trick of the river.”
But then it came again—the agonized cry of a female in distress.
CHAPTER 27
Slash and Pecos galloped off the trail and into the brush north of the Animas.
The girl’s cry had come from the forest about a hundred yards off the trail, from the slope aproning up toward the towering northern crags. The forest was too thick to ride through any faster than a slow, careful walk, so Slash and Pecos checked their mounts down at the edge of the trees and swung down from their saddles.
Slash shucked his Yellowboy from his rifle boot.
Pecos slid his sawed-off twelve again around to his chest, taking the shotgun in both hands.
Slash moved slowly into the forest, holding the Yellowboy up high against his chest, wary of a trap. More than one bounty hunter had tried luring him and his partner into a trail baited with women. This wasn’t the cutthroats’ first rodeo.
Pecos moved along slowly to Slash’s right, both men stepping over deadfall trees and large, fallen branches. The forest was thick and filled with shadows angling down from the northern crags. It may have been only three in the afternoon or so, but in here it was near dusk. The tangy air had a knife edge chill to it.
The men stopped, looked around.
“You see anything?” Pecos whispered.
Slash shook his head.
He continued moving forward but had taken only one step when he heard a girl’s voice say, “Oh, damn!” A slight pause, then: “Damn, damn, dammit all, anyway!”
The cursing was followed by a guttural groan of deep frustration.
Slash and Pecos looked at each other.
The girl seemed to be just ahead, on the other side of a low knoll. Slash motioned with his hand and then he and Pecos split up, Slash moving around the knoll’s left side, Pecos moving around its right side. As the knoll slipped away, giving Slash a view of what lay on the other side of it, he stopped.
He drew a breath and held it. The girl sat on a log about twenty feet before him now, near a saddled calico mare that stood grazing just beyond her.
She appeared a pretty little thing, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a thick head of curly auburn hair to which pine needles and bits of dead leaves clung. She sat on a log, facing away toward Slash’s left. Pecos would be flanking her on her own left. She was leaning forward, grunting her discontentment as she unlaced the ankle-high work boot on her left foot.
She wore baggy dungarees with rope suspenders, and a baggy gray plaid shirt that was ripped partway down the middle. Slash could easily see that she wasn’t wearing anything at all beneath the shirt. Even without really wanting to, he could see deep into it—what with her bent so far forward like that.
Chagrin warmed Slash’s cheeks. The girl was obviously in distress, and here this old cutthroat stood, ogling her.
He turned to his right. Pecos had stepped out around the far side of the knoll, flanking the girl. He gave Slash a slantwise look of admonishment, as though he realized where Slash’s gaze had been feasting itself. Cheeks turning even warmer, Slash stepped forward, setting his rifle on his shoulder and saying, “Hello, there, little girl. Looks like you’re in need of a little—”
“Oh, crap!” the girl cried, grabbing a pistol that had been resting atop the log beside her. She jerked to her feet with a terrified start and raised the old-model hogleg.
“Hold on! Hold on!” Slash and Pecos cried in unison.
She triggered a shot toward Slash, who threw himself straight back and to his right as the bullet plunked into the spongy forest duff behind him. As he hit the ground on his chest and belly, the girl screamed.
Slash whipped around to see that she’d fallen back over the log and lay writhing and cursing. She’d dropped the pistol. It lay in front of the log, several
feet away from her now. A relatively safe distance, Slash opined. He just hoped she didn’t have another one.
Slash heaved himself to his feet, cursing at the pain the tumble had aggravated in his back and neck after his circus-act in the saloon only a few hours earlier. Retrieving his rifle from the ground, he glanced at Pecos, who looked at him wide-eyed and shrugged. The big man was unsure how to proceed.
Slash hurried forward, holding his rifle out in one hand, barrel up, and holding his left hand wide to his other side. “It’s all right, miss. We’re not gonna hurt you. We just heard you scream is all, and came to investigate.”
He crouched to scoop the girl’s pistol, an old rusted Remington conversion, out of the dead leaves and dirt. Straightening, he looked down at her.
She was in a half-sitting position on her rump, writhing in pain. She’d gotten the boot and sock off her left foot, and she held it up now, her face swollen and red with fear and misery, her light-brown eyes switching from Slash to Pecos and back again, saying, “Leave me alone, you rapscallions! Oh, please leave me alone! I don’t have anything of value except my hoss, an’ she’s lame! That there pistol’s my dead pappy’s, and it misfires more times than it shoots, but it’s the only protection I got from wolves like you—preying on injured girls!”
She glared at each man, regaling them with, “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk the forest for innocent young ladies!”
Pecos looked exasperated. “We wasn’t stalkin’ the forest for no innocent young ladies!”
The girl flopped back against the ground, writhing, her torn shirt showing way too much of her for the cutthroats’ comfort. “Oh, just go ahead and rape me and kill me and get it over with. Go ahead. My life has gone to hell, anyways, since Daddy died!”
She flung her arm over her eyes and bawled.
Slash set the girl’s old hogleg on the log and dropped to a knee beside her. He wiped his hands on the thighs of his corduroy trousers, glanced tentatively up at Pecos hovering over the girl now, as well, and poked her arm very softly.
“Miss . . . ?”
“Oh, just rape me and get it over with!” she sobbed.
Again, Slash poked her very gently. “Miss . . . ?”
She jerked her arm away from her eyes and glared up at him. “Oh, what is it, fer chrissakes!”
“We ain’t gonna rape you,” Slash said.
“We ain’t gonna kill you,” Pecos added.
She blinked up at Slash. Then she blinked up at Pecos. “You ain’t?”
“Nah,” Slash said. “We done grown weary of stalkin’ the forest for purty girls to rape and murder. That’s work for younger men.”
She stared up at him uncertainly through a sheen of wavering tears. She sat up and rested against the heels of her hands, shuttling her gaze between the two men before her. “Is this some kind of trick to get me to let my guard down?”
“No, it ain’t no trick,” Pecos said.
She frowned skeptically. “You two look like cutthroats to me!”
Slash and Pecos shared a guilty glance.
“Th-that we were, little lady,” Pecos said, slowly easing his own bulk down to a knee on the other side of the girl from Slash. “But we cashed in our chips. We’re gonna be good now.”
“No more stalkin’ the forest for purty girls, though if we was, I doubt we could’ve found a purtier one than the one we found here.” Slash smiled affably down at the frightened child, then glanced at Pecos. “Ain’t that right, Pec . . . I mean, Melvin?”
“That sure is right, uh . . . James. You’re purtier’n pumpkin pie, miss, but we swear we’re only here to help you. We heard you scream an’ all, and couldn’t very well just ride off and leave you alone way out here. It’s a good half a day’s ride to Silverton.”
Slash said, “What’s your name, honey?”
She was still frowning warily at both men, as though they were coyotes milling around her chicken coop and she didn’t have a rifle handy. She sniffed and swiped a hand across her cheeks, brushing away the tears.
“Myra Thompson,” she said softly, and sniffed again.
“Right purty name,” Pecos opined.
“You from around here, Myra?”
The girl nodded. “Leastways, I was. Pa died a few days back. I was making my way to Silverton to look for work. Pa was a prospector. His mule kicked him in the head last week. Killed him. Not outright. I doctored him for a week. I went into his room one morning, and he was dead. Just starin’ at me. He didn’t leave much but he did leave me a fair-sized poke.”
Realizing she’d said too much, she gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, crap!”
“We ain’t after your poke, Myra,” Slash said gently.
“You ain’t?”
“Nope,” Pecos said, shaking his head certainly.
“You ain’t after my poke and you ain’t after my body,” Myra said, beetling her thin, light-brown brows over those pretty tan eyes. “What kind of men are you, then?”
She’d meant it as a serious question.
“Good, honorable, upstandin’ citizens,” Slash said.
“Even way out here?” Myra just didn’t seem able to wrap her mind around such a thing.
“Even way out here,” Pecos said. “Now, what happened? What’d you do to your foot, Miss Myra?”
“Well, first the mare threw a shoe about a mile back. I just couldn’t bring myself to back trail myself to that lonely old cabin, so I thought I’d lead her until I found someone who could nail the shoe back on. There’s a fella who travels through here often, shoeing horses for the prospectors. But now I think Elvira—I named her after my dear old grams—has gone lame, to boot. I was leading her through these trees, looking for the main trail, when I tripped over that cotton-pickin’ log. I think I broke my ankle!”
The girl scrunched up her face, gritting her teeth, and punched the ground. “Oh, misery—thy name is Myra Thompson!”
“Oh, now, I don’t think it’s all that bad,” Pecos said.
Slash gestured at her ankle. “Can I take a look?”
Myra shrugged and rolled her head. “I guess if you’re not gonna rape and kill me, you might as well stay an’ help.”
“I’ll take a look at the mare,” Pecos said. “I’m right handy with a shoein’ hammer.”
While the big man walked over to where the mare now stood eyeing both strangers warily, Slash removed his gloves and took the girl’s foot in his hand. It was an uncommonly pretty, delicate appendage, with cute little feminine toes, each one resembling a tiny baby’s nose. He tried not to entertain any unclean thoughts about this girl, who was young enough to be his—well, young enough to be his oldest daughter if he’d fathered the child when he was still a boy himself.
“What’re you chuckling about?” Myra said, frowning suspiciously at him, as he gently probed her bare foot with his fingers.
Slash’s cheeks warmed slightly. “Was I chuckling? I didn’t realize. Just the uncommonly odd turnings of my mind, girl. Nothing to worry about. We older fellas get a little soft in our thinker boxes. I think it’s due to an overabundance of memories. Every damn thing we see reminds us of something else we saw. And by my age, we’ve seen a few things!”
“Really?” the girl said, staring up at him while he continued to probe her foot, turning it gently this way and that while carefully prodding the ankle, feeling around for swelling. “What does my foot remind you of?”
“Youth,” Slash said, smiling at her fondly.
“I suppose you had your pick of the girls at one time. You’re kinda handsome for an old fella. I bet you were uncommonly wicked to heat up a girl’s bloomers back when you were my age.” For the first time since he’d met her, Myra Thompson smiled.
Slash hiked a shoulder and looked away, embarrassed. “Hell.”
“Hell,” Myra said, playfully mocking him.
“Hell,” Slash said, chuckling.
“You’re shy, ain’t ya, James?”
&nbs
p; “Me? Hell, no!”
Slash released Myra’s foot, though it had felt pleasingly warm and supple in his hands. He hadn’t touched a foot of a girl Myra’s age in many a year, and he hadn’t realized it till now how much he’d missed it. Nor how much he’d missed being young enough again for such occurrences to be somewhat commonplace.
Maybe as the years pass, it’s best if we forget what we long for, he vaguely, silently opined.
“Hell,” Slash said. “That ankle’s just fine, Miss Myra. You might’ve twisted it some, made it ache. But it sure ain’t broke and I don’t think it’s even sprained. I couldn’t feel any swelling, and believe me if it was broke or sprained, it be swelling like a balloon by now.”
“Really?” the girl said hopefully, looking at her foot, which she waggled around, flexing her cute little toes. “You know, I think you’re right. It doesn’t hurt half as much as it did before you two came.”
“I think you were mainly just scared,” Slash said.
“Yeah,” Myra said. “I think you’re right. Hey—what did you say your names were?”
CHAPTER 28
Slash rose, doffed his hat, and held it over his chest. “Miss Myra Thompson, I am James Braddock. Please call me Jimmy.”
He glanced over to where Pecos was down on one knee, examining the calico mare’s left rear hoof. “That big drink o’ water over there is . . . is, uh . . . Melvin Baker.” He knew Pecos’s given name well enough. It was just that he hadn’t called him or even thought of him as anything but the Pecos River Kid for so long that “Melvin Baker” felt funny coming off his tongue.
Pecos looked over toward Slash and Myra and pinched his hat brim to the girl. Flashing a smile, he said, “Call me Melvin.”
Myra canted her head to one side and narrowed an eye at Slash. “Melvin Baker, eh? Have you always called him Melvin Baker, Jimmy?”
Again, Slash colored up like a summer sunset. He gave a nervous laugh. “Of course I have! Of course I have! What else would I call him—besides ‘Big ’n’ Stupid,’ of course?”
Pecos scowled at him.
Slash laughed again and called, “How’s Myra’s mare look, Melvin?”
Cutthroats Page 21
