by Len Levinson
There was silence for a few moments. “Looks like we got some hard ridin’ to do,” Slipchuck said. “Let’s load them supplies and hit the goddamned trail.”
Chapter Six
The four riders leaned into the wind that washed their faces and creased the brims of their hats. Slipchuck rode in front, and behind him was John Stone flanked by Calvin Blakemore and Luke Duvall. The horses’ pounding hooves shattered the stillness of the night, and the riders were sheathed in moonlight, as furtive little prairie animals watched the eerie spectacle from behind bushes and trees.
The three-quarter moon shone overhead, and a few flimsy clouds floated across the starry heavens. In the distance, the outlines of a mountain range could barely be perceived. The rustlers had a two-hour lead.
Tied to his saddle, John Stone tried to hang on. Whiskey and wounds pushed him into semi consciousness, and it was like a dream, or a nightmare. Every movement of his horse sent pain rocketing through his body, and hoofbeats tattooed his brain. His shirt was wet, and he looked at the widening stain—hard riding had opened his wounds. He thought about Cassandra, Truscott, and the others asleep around the campfire, and the rustlers sneaking up on them, to cut their throats. He clutched the pommel of his saddle as Tomahawk streaked over the grass, heading for the cow camp in the hills.
~*~
Cassandra opened her eyes; the segundo sat a few feet away, staring into the night. His head made slow, sweeping movements as he scanned the perimeter of the campsite.
Cassandra had seen the segundo on previous nights, guarding the campsite. He seemed to require no sleep, his skin was a peculiar shade of purple, and something terrible had happened to his mind.
He submissively followed any order that was given him, his will destroyed, a massive hulk with a big round head, sitting hatless on a rock, peering suspiciously into the darkness.
~*~
Five hundred yards away, the rustlers gathered around one-eyed Monty Kendrick as a night bird cried nearby.
Kendrick’s face was shadowy in the darkness, and his black eye patch looked like a hole through his head. “You stay with the horses,” he said to one of them. “The rest foller me, and we don’t want no gunplay if we can help it. When I give the word, you know what to do.”
Kendrick drew his knife, and the blade was eight inches long, flashing in the moonlight. He moved toward the campsite, and his men followed, to murder the sleeping cowboys where they lay.
~*~
Stone felt as though he was becoming unraveled. Black ink filled his eyes, his nervous system clicked off, and he sagged sideways in his saddle. Tomahawk felt the imbalance immediately, and slowed down as Calvin Blakemore reached out and caught Stone’s shirt before Stone hit the ground.
The horses stopped in the shadow of a mountain, while rolling hills spread out before them in the dim moonlight. The cowboys climbed down from their saddles and untied Stone, then eased him toward the ground, where he lay unconscious.
“He’s bleeding,” Blakemore said to Slipchuck.
“Cain’t leave him here,” Slipchuck said. “Coyotes’ll git him fer sure. Tie him head down over his saddle.”
He pulled the lariat down, while Blakemore and Duvall draped Stone over the worn leather. Slipchuck tied Stone’s ankles and wrists together, then lashed his torso to the pommel.
“Won’t be too comfortable,” Slipchuck said, “but neither are coyotes. I figger the camp is only about a half hour away. Let’s git movin’, boys! There ain’t much time!”
~*~
On a rock beside the charred remains of the campfire, the segundo sat still as a statue, staring blankly at the horizon, no expression on his filth-caked purple face. Everyone else was asleep, and the only sound was an occasional snore, murmur, or groan.
The segundo turned his head and made a deep, barely audible gurgle. He listened for a few moments, then stood and pulled out his gun. Crouching, peering ahead, he moved silently into the wilderness at the edge of the campsite.
~*~
Carrying their knives, the gang of rustlers moved across the prairie, their unshaven faces shadowy and sinister in the wan moonlight. They’d wait for Kendrick’s signal when they reached the edge of the campsite, then move in for the kill. The main thing was cover your victim’s nose and mouth, so no sound would escape as you ripped his throat from ear to ear.
Kendrick thought about the big payoff in a few weeks when they’d unload the herd. Every man would have a thousand dollars in his pocket, and they’d go to Mexico, live like kings until it was gone.
Kendrick had gathered them from the four corners of the frontier, men who found it easier to kill and steal than work and save. He thought of his favorite whorehouse in Mexico, with big feather beds and women wearing ball gowns with nothing underneath. He’d hire two of them and let them work him over, while he laid on his ass and smoked a cigar.
A shot rang out, and a bullet hole appeared suddenly in the middle of Kendrick’s forehead. His one eye wide open and staring, he fell like a tree chopped down by a lumberjack. The last thing he saw was an image of himself in bed with two whores.
The segundo charged into the campsite, his gun still smoking. Cassandra and the cowboys were on their feet, guns in hand.
“Unnh!” said Braswell, pointing behind him. “Unnh.”
“Somethin’s out there,” Truscott said. “Let’s see what it is.”
The segundo shook his head vigorously. “Unnh.”
“Out of my way, you goddamned idiot.”
Gun in hand, Truscott walked into the wilderness, followed by Cassandra and the cowboys. Ephraim jacked a round into his rifle as he brought up the rear. They advanced cautiously, and then Diego shouted, “Aqui!” He was on his hands and knees, holding Kendrick’s head by his hair. “Anybody know the son om a beetch?”
“There’s more prints over here!” said Ben Thorpe, the wrangler.
Truscott examined the ground. “’Bout a dozen of ’em. They was headed for our campsite, and they was a-gonna massacre us.”
A chill came over Cassandra. Diego was on his knees, studying the tracks. “That way!” he said, pointing into the darkness.
“Unless I miss my guess,” Truscott said, “they’re a-gonna try to stampede the herd! Git the horses!”
~*~
Slipchuck raised a hand, and the horses came to a stop in an arroyo bordered with cottonwood trees. He paused to listen, and shots could be heard in the distance.
“I think we’d better leave Johnny here,” he said, “and one of you’ll stay with him.”
“Not leaving me anywhere,” Stone whispered, bent double over his saddle. “Want to sit on my horse like a man.”
Blakemore replied, “Last time you sat on yer horse, you damn near fell on yer head.”
“Can do it,” Stone wheezed.
“The more of us the better, I s’pose,” Slipchuck said. “Untie him, boys!”
They removed the rope from Stone’s hands and ankles, and Stone slid out of his saddle. “Where’s my hat!”
Blakemore held it out and Stone placed it crookedly on his head.
“Sure you can ride, Johnny?” Slipchuck asked.
“Don’t leave me behind, pard.”
“Ain’t never left a pard behind in me life.” Slipchuck turned and listened to more gunshots in the distance. “Sounds like business is a-pickin’ up, boys. We best git movin’, or we’ll miss the fun!”
~*~
The cowboys and vaqueros ran toward their horses as gunfire pealed across the prairie, the rustlers stampeding the herd. Cassandra placed her foot in a stirrup and elevated herself to the saddle of her palomino mare.
“Where the hell you goin’!” Truscott hollered, coming alongside her.
“With you!”
“We don’t need no women in our goddamned road!”
“You get the hell out of my goddamned road, Truscott!”
She spurred her horse, and the animal sprang away from the speechless ramrod. Son
of a bitch, thought Truscott. Women’re supposed to take cover when there’s lead around, but this one’s got gunpowder in her veins. Truscott urged his chestnut stallion forward, while ahead of him in the night he saw Cassandra draw her gun. Her long blond hair trailed in the breeze as she raced across the prairie like an injun squaw looking for scalps.
~*~
The cattle were in full stampede, tongues hanging out and hooves hammering the ground. Behind them, rustlers whooped and fired their guns as they tried to keep them bunched and pointed toward their hideaway range. They’d stolen a herd, and now all they had to do was keep it.
The rustlers were a disciplined fighting unit, and most had been soldiers of one stripe or another during the war. Raggedy-ass cowboys wouldn’t risk their lives for another man’s cattle, and a hard charge was all it usually took to disperse them.
Four raggedy-ass cowboys on horseback suddenly appeared, guns in their hands. The rustlers aimed a barrage of lead at them, and the cowboys veered away, becoming indistinct in the dust and darkness. It appeared that one of the rustlers had scored a hit on a cowboy, and he was falling out of his saddle.
Stone was the cowboy, and he hadn’t been hit, but he was barely conscious, his fingers limp as boiled macaroni. Tomahawk tried to stop, and Stone toppled to the ground, rolled over, and landed on his back, his shirt soaked with blood.
“I’m . . . alright,” Stone muttered. “Help ... me ... git … on … my … horse.”
“Man’s dead,” Slipchuck said, “but he won’t lie down. Somebody’ll have to stay with him.”
Blakemore nodded as new gunfire broke out in the distance. “Sounds like Truscott and the others finally caught up with ’em.”
Slipchuck and Duvall rode off on their horses, leaving Stone on the ground, with Blakemore kneeling beside him. Stone felt permanently fused to the earth, and he was sure he was going to die.
“Do you remember that Gypsy in San Antone?” he said in a whisper.
“Sure, but you ain’t thinkin’ …”
“She said I’d die young, and I can feel that bitch creepin’ around here now.”
“She told me I’d die young too, but I’m still here and the only thing creepin’ around is rattlers.”
“Dig me a deep grave, so the coyotes don’t git me.”
“No coyote would want you,’cause you’d stink too bad.” But on the rim of the next mesa the lobos already were gathering, and thought it smelled just fine. Whenever man’s thunder sounded, they knew it meant a good meal. From all the surrounding territory they came, sniffing that peculiar essence of angry humans. Their long tongues licked over their teeth and snouts as they waited nervously in the moonlight.
~*~
The rustlers and cowboys galloped toward each other as the herd thundered off across the dirt and clumps of grass. The air filled with whistling bullets and shouts as men shot at each other in the light of the moon. The rustlers expected the cowboys to break and run before their firepower, but the cowboys and vaqueros kept coming, showing no sign of giving up the cattle without a fight.
Cassandra rode in the midst of her cowboys, gun in hand. She knew she might be killed, but there was no turning back now. The rustlers rode closer, aiming their guns while bouncing up and down on their saddles. Cassandra sighted down the barrel of her Colt at an unshaven rustler with a hatband made of wildcat teeth. She felt the shock wave of a bullet passing her cheek, and another bullet parted her hair. She fired a shot at the unshaven rustler, but he kept coming toward her, aiming his gun at her breast. She ducked, his gun fired, then a dark splotch appeared on his shirt and he fell backward over his horse’s tail.
Cassandra looked beside her and saw Don Emilio Maldonado, a smoking gun in his hand. “When you shoot, señora, do not miss.”
A rustler in a blue bandanna charged toward her, and she pulled her trigger when he was six feet away. His eyes rolled into his head, he sagged to the side and dropped out of his saddle. She turned to Don Emilio.
“Muy bueno, señora.”
Cowboys and rustlers rode through each other’s ranks, but it was hard to aim accurately amid the pitching and rolling of the horses. In seconds the surviving rustlers were behind the cowboys, while bodies lay on the ground, and wolves’ eyes glittered in the darkness.
Teague counted empty horses. A hard fight loomed, and he wasn’t ready to stop lead for a few longhorns. “Retreat!”
A rifle bullet sliced through his throat. He gurgled blood and fell off his horse ... for a few longhorns. And the wolves saw that the pack would dine well tonight.
“Let’s git out of here!” one of the rustlers shouted.
The rustlers were outgunned, and rode for their lives. Two shadowy figures appeared on a hill in the distance. One was short and spindly. Slipchuck. The other was broad across the chest. Duvall.
“No time to rest!” Truscott shouted.
He and his men rode off into the night, leaving bodies of dead rustlers bleeding onto the buffalo grass, because they’d taken on the wrong bunch of cowboys.
~*~
Blakemore placed a cigarette between Stone’s flaccid lips, then lit a match. Stone inhaled feebly, and the moon spun around the sky.
“Never thought I’d die with a Yankee in attendance,” he wheezed.
“You ain’t dying. Only the good die young, and you ain’t that good.” Blakemore’s brow creased, and he turned around. “Somebody’s comin’!”
Blakemore raised his rifle and pushed back the brim of his Yankee forage cap. Stone blacked out, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
~*~
Teague held up his hand, and the rustlers pulled their horses to a halt as a cloud of dust enveloped them. “I see horses,” he said.
The rustlers followed Teague’s finger and saw two outlined against the moonlit prairie.
“Let’s git ’em,” Teague said, digging his spurs into his horse’s flanks. “At least the night won’t be a whole loss.”
A shot was fired, and Teague slumped in his saddle. A rustler named Burkley screamed, clutching his stomach. He was sixteen years old, and left his daddy’s farm in Nebraska to make a fast buck on the trail, but now he’d feed a wolf family in Texas. The other rustlers were confused, then Harris took command. “There’s only two horses!” he hollered, and he’d served as a sergeant in the 15th Virginia, carried a good-luck rabbit’s foot in his pocket, and sincerely believed in it. “That means there’s only two cowboys! Foller me!”
Harris charged the spot where the rifle had fired, and the rustlers followed, sending forth a hail of bullets that forced Blakemore to duck his head. All that separated him and Stone from the oncoming riders was a gentle rise of prairie, and the rustlers were coming fast.
Then Blakemore heard hoofbeats behind him. Ephraim rode into view, pulled a rifle from its scabbard, jumped to the ground, and dived behind the rise.
“Was lookin’ for the others, and heard shots here,” he explained.
Ephraim and Blakemore raised their heads, held their rifles steady, and opened fire at the riders bearing down on them. The air filled with hot lead, and two rustlers were shot out of their saddles, but the others continued their charge. Stone desperately tried to pull his gun out of its holster, but his hand weighed a million pounds. Horses jumped over the rise, and Sergeant Harris aimed his gun directly at Stone.
It only lasted a moment, but for Stone it was an hour of waiting for the bullet, when Ephraim shot his rifle from the hip, and Sergeant Harris, late of the 15th Virginia, went down, a good-luck rabbit’s foot only carries a man so far. And it all began with a bright idea in the wrong saloon.
~*~
The prairie was strewn with bodies, and the lobos moved in. It was silent now, the cowboys had carried their dead away, leaving the rustlers. With quick snaps of their powerful jaws, they tore the clothes off the misters, and dug their teeth into warm steaming guts. Whining, snorting, howling ecstatically, they gulped the meat down. One clamped on something
hard and tasteless, and spit out Sergeant Harris’s good-luck rabbit charm.
The lobos feasted on human hopes and dreams, and the rustlers would never again leave a track that anyone would follow. Tomorrow morning ants would pick the bones, then shifting sands would polish them to a white gleaming shine, and finally the bones would become dust. The nearby mountain said: One day I will not be here either.
Chapter Seven
Cassandra sat on the ground near the chuck wagon, and Stone lay beside her, unconscious. On the other side of the campsite, cowboys dug a mass grave. The cost had been high. Calvin Blakemore was among the dead, a bullet lodged in his chest, his eyes closed and a grimace upon his frozen features.
Cassandra was bone-weary, hair unkempt, clothes filthy, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the rustler she’d shot last night. He’d been close enough so she could see his face when the bullet struck, and his features had wrenched horribly. Whoever he was, he’d been some woman’s son, and maybe another woman’s brother. Perhaps a good woman had shared her bed with him, or maybe nobody ever loved him, and he’d been an orphan cruelly buffeted by the world.
Cassandra had always been taught that a human life was sacred, yet she’d taken a life, and for what? But she knew if she hadn’t shot him, he would’ve shot her. It had been kill or be killed, and she’d done what she had to.
She heard footsteps, and looked at Truscott approaching. “Grave’s ready,” he said.
She arose and followed him to the hole, where the other cowboys and vaqueros were congregated, hats in their hands. Even the segundo was there, his hands hanging limply down his sides as he stared unswervingly into the murky grave.
It was one big ditch, because they didn’t have time to dig four separate ones. Cassandra came to the edge of the grave and looked at the four dead men lying on the ground. She’d sat around the campfire with them only last night, and now they were gone. Their corpses lay before her, grotesquely contorted by violent death, and not one was thirty. They’d hardly seen anything of life, and all they’d known was cattle.
