by Jory Sherman
Emma, confused, stared at Manolo as if he had lost his mind.
As Gasparo and Gent came closer, Eva gasped. “Why, that’s John’s horse,” she said to Dobbins.
“Yep, ’pears so, missy,” Ornery said.
“Where’s John?” she wailed.
“He did not come,” Gasparo said. “Only the horse.”
“What happened to it?”
“Bear,” Gasparo replied as he halted near Dobbins.
Dobbins walked around the horse, saw the wounds.
“I think I got something in the wagon that will help,” he said. “First we’ll clean those scratches with alcohol and then rub in some medicinal salve.”
Emma heard this exchange and recovered her senses enough to go back inside the cabin. Manolo walked over to comfort Eva and help out Gasparo.
“Do not worry, Eva,” Manolo said. “We will find John.”
He began loosening the single cinch on the saddle. Gasparo removed the saddlebags and rummaged through them, looking for a halter. Dobbins reappeared with a bottle of alcohol and a tin of salve.
“Manolo, you and Gasparo hold the horse real steady while I doctor him,” Dobbins said.
Ben and Carlos carried the body of Pepito over to the unfinished house and lay him under a spruce tree. He looked, Ben thought, like a bloody rag doll, so small and lifeless, his face turning to brown parchment.
“Did you see where the shot came from, Carlos?” Ben asked.
“I think it sound like it come from up there, other side of the creek.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right. I got me a big problem right now.”
“Un problema, yes. I think so.”
“Do we look for John or chase after whoever shot Pepito?”
“You ask the serious question. I think the one who shot Pepito has run away. I do not know where John is, but his horse leaves tracks, no?”
“We got claim jumpers out to kill me and John, and maybe one of them shot Pepito. John will know what to do. I say we go look for him, follow Gent’s tracks. Maybe those bastards bushwhacked John.”
“Maybe. I do not like this, Ben.”
“Me, neither.” Ben could not look at Pepito again. Carlos took a last look and crossed himself.
“Let’s get on our horses and find John,” Ben said. “Be ready to shoot if you see any of those claim jumpers.”
“Now, they are no longer claim jumpers,” Carlos said. “They are assassins.”
“You are a very wise man, Carlos,” Ben said, and they both walked away from the spruce tree and caught up their horses.
They hardly noticed all the activity up by the cabin as they rode into the timber, following Gent’s backtrail, hoping they would find John Savage still alive.
Or, Ben thought, find the men who killed him.
He knew that neither he nor Carlos would show them any mercy.
“You see any of ’em, Carlos,” Ben said, “you shoot to kill.”
Carlos patted his pistol and tapped the butt of his rifle in its boot.
“I do not ask no questions, Ben. I send them to hell for Pepito if John still lives.”
“Pepito would like that, I think.”
“I would like that, too,” Carlos said.
The two spoke no more as they followed the meandering track of Gent. Dread cloaked Ben’s chest in the thick timber, and fear was in his throat and deep in his belly, like some slavering beast just waiting to devour him. If John was dead, so was a part of Ben. He prayed, in his simple way, that they would find John alive and well.
But he would settle for just finding him alive.
30
WHIT LINED UP THE SIGHTS ON HIS FATHER’S SHARPS CARBINE. There, with that bunch of Mexican vaqueros, was the man he hated, Ben Russell. The men were moving around, jabbering to one another. He recognized John’s horse, but saw no sign of Savage. He didn’t care. Ben had mistreated him, kept calling him “boy” and “kid.” Well, he wasn’t a kid no more, by God, and he’d show all of them: Manolo, his mother, his sister, John Savage. All of them.
Whit held his breath and squeezed the trigger. He had Ben lined up in his sights. The recoil kicked his shoulder. Orange sparks and white smoke burst from the muzzle and the bullet was on its way. A half second after he fired, he realized he had missed. One of the Mexicans had stepped in front of Ben. Whit’s heart caught in his throat. It felt as if it had leaped from his chest. Smoke and burnt powder stung his nostrils. Some of the men were looking straight at him. He crawled out of the brush and ran to the packhorse he had taken from Savage. He climbed into the saddle, sheathed the Sharps in its boot, and rode away as fast as he could, the horse dodging trees and rocks and brush. Whit’s heart was pounding. He cursed himself for missing the man he wanted to kill.
He was still cursing when he ran straight into Krieger and Short, who halted his horse and snatched the reins out of Whit’s hand.
“Well, well, well,” Krieger said, “what do we have here?”
“It’s that snot-nosed kid we gave a larruping to, Al.”
“I know who the hell it is,” Krieger said. To Whit, he said, “Looks like you been doin’ my job for me, kid. Nice shot. That your daddy’s Sharps you got there?”
“Uh-huh,” Whit said, clutching the rifle to his chest.
“Gimme that,” Short said, snatching the rifle from Whit’s hands. “That’s a Big Fifty, kid. Much too big for you to handle.”
“Hey, maybe not,” Krieger said. “Maybe the kid can help us. Would you like to help us, kid?”
“Y-yeah, sure.”
“You killed a Mexican. Can you kill a white man?”
“That’s what I was tryin’ to do. I aimed to shoot Ben Russell. I missed him.”
“Maybe you’ll get another chance. You come with us, talk to the boss. If he says okay, you’ll get your pap’s rifle back.”
Whit said nothing. The two men braced him as they rode deeper into the timber. After a short while, they came to a camp nestled among some spruces and junipers that grew in a wide circle. The camp could not be seen from outside the ring of trees.
“I heard a shot,” Thatcher said, hobbling up to Krieger’s horse. “You draw blood, Al?”
“It was the kid here. Killed a greaser.”
“Here’s his rifle,” Short said, handing it down to Thatcher.
Ferguson and Rosset walked over to Whit, looked up at him.
“You’re gettin’ pretty big for your britches, ain’t you, kid?” Ferguson said.
“No,” Whit said.
“He wants to kill that Ben Russell, Lem. Said he just missed him.”
“Oh, he does, does he? Well, we could use another gun. You trust him, Walt?”
“We can use him, Al. He tries to double-cross us, one of us’ll be at his back. One shot and he’d be out of our hair.”
Thatcher grinned.
“How’d it look over there, Harry?” Thatcher said.
“Most of ’em are up at that cabin. Heard a lot of yellin’ and women screamin’. I think something’s happened to Savage. Didn’t see him, but the Mexes was leadin’ his lame horse up to the chuck wagon. Be hard to make sense out of what’s goin’ on, and they’re probably all real touchy about now.”
“Agreed,” Thatcher said.
“One down, at least,” Krieger said.
“I want Savage,” Thatcher said. “Maybe he’ll show up by morning.”
“And then what?” Ferguson said, his tone laced with skepticism.
“Then, all five of us start dropping Mexes and anybody else we see.”
“That include the womenfolk?” Short asked.
Ferguson shot a hard glance at Thatcher.
“Anything that moves,” Thatcher said. “Savage won’t have much fight in him once he starts diggin’ graves.”
“You seem pretty damned sure of yourself, Al,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson tapped the butt of his pistol.
“The six-gun,” he said, “is the best tool ever invente
d. Savage won’t expect all of us. I have six bullets in here. Every one of them has got his name on it.”
“You gonna kill Savage six times?” Ferguson said, sarcastically.
“If that’s what it takes.”
“I guess tomorrow will tell the tale,” Ferguson said. He turned to Whit. “You’ll get your rifle back in the mornin’. I hope you drop Ben Russell with it.”
“I hope so, too,” Whit said, but he did not sound confident.
He felt as if he was in a dream and that nothing was real. But he could smell the sweat of the men and knew that he was among killers. That gave him a thrill, but it also made him afraid.
Deathly afraid.
31
BEN STARED AT THE GROUND WHERE THE EARTH TOLD A STORY OF the bear attack, the flight of Gent, and a pair of cubs.
“It happened here,” Ben said to Carlos. “The tracks tell me that this is where Gent got clawed by a mama bear.”
“Where is John?” Carlos asked, looking all around.
Ben dismounted, handed his reins to Carlos. “Let me see if I can figure this out,” he said.
He walked across and around the tracks, reading a tale of surprise and flight, of savagery and fear. At the edge of the drop-off, he looked down, saw broken limbs and skid marks where a body had slid downward.
“Shake out your lariat,” Carlos said. “Tie one end around your waist and hold on.”
Ben started down the ridge slope, holding on to the rope. Carlos braced himself and held on as Ben lowered himself to the bottom.
John lay unconscious atop a smashed fir tree. His hat was gone, his face gaunt and bloodless. Dried blood caked one side of his head.
Ben’s heart quickened when he saw him.
“John, John,” he called, as he stepped away from the bank and onto a limb.
John groaned, but his eyes did not open.
Ben leaned over him, then ran his hands over his body. No broken bones.
“Can you hear me, John?”
Savage’s eyes opened in silent surprise.
Ben’s heart skipped a beat.
“Carlos is with me, John. We’ll get you out of here. Don’t move.”
“It feels like my back is broken,” John said.
“It ain’t.”
Ben yelled up to Carlos.
“Bring the horses down here. John’s alive.”
Carlos peered over the edge, then along the ridge. He nodded.
It took Carlos a good two hours to make his way down off the ridge to where Ben and John waited. John was sitting up, wincing at the pain in his head.
“First thing John wanted to know was how Gent was doin’,” Ben said to Carlos.
“He is more scratched up than you are, John,” Carlos said.
John grinned, a sheepish look of relief on his face.
He climbed into Ben’s saddle. Ben climbed up behind him.
They reached the grassy tabletop at sunset, three weary men and two tired horses.
Eva rushed out to meet them. Emma stood in the doorway, one hand raised in greeting.
Corny walked away from the chuck wagon, carrying a plate of grub. He grinned at John and sat on a stump, his shirt stained with sweat, face washed clean with springwater.
“Oh, John,” Eva cried, “I’m so glad to see you.”
He slid out of the saddle and took her in his arms.
“Am I hurting you?” she said, as she squeezed him tight against her.
“Just enough to make me want you to keep doing it,” he said.
They walked to the cabin together. Emma stepped aside to let them in.
“Where are you taking him, Eva?” she asked.
“To my bed,” she said.
Emma gasped.
Eva gave her mother a wicked smile, and her chest swelled with a feeling of deep satisfaction.
The moon rose over a hushed land, a land that had already been bloodied.
Men slept, men stood guard. Men waited for morning.
And, sometime before dawn, before the first horse whickered, it seemed to some that time had stood still.
Juanito smoked a cigarette and thought the night would never end, that morning would never come.
32
WALT FERGUSON WAS BEGINNING TO THINK THAT LEM MIGHT HAVE more brains than a darning egg.
“That’s not a bad plan, Lem,” he said. “Might work.”
“I learned something from being at Gettysburg, Walt. A better lay of the land than we had when the federals held the high ground.”
“There ain’t no high ground yonder,” Ferguson said. “Well, you seen it.”
“Yeah, last night told me all I needed to know. Savage and his hands will all be up by that cabin. We’ll catch ’em by surprise at first light.”
He looked around at the others, Short, Rosset, Krieger, and the kid, their faces lit by the orange glow of a low fire. He held a sharpened stick in his hand, and there was a bare patch of ground where he had drawn up his battle plan.
“Any questions before we ride over there and take up our positions?” Thatcher asked.
Krieger spit tobacco juice a good yard beyond the fire. Short wrinkled his lips around a chaw, but didn’t say anything. Rosset shifted his weight and pulled a small stone from under his leg, tossed it into the fire. Sparks fluttered in the chill predawn air like golden dust.
“You make it all look easy, Lem,” Rosset said.
“It won’t be easy, Pete,” Thatcher said. “But we have the advantage. They won’t be expectin’ us and they’re all bunched up in one place. You take the first man you see, down him, and we’ll swarm all over them like a cloud of locusts.”
“They’ll be on foot,” Short said. “We’ll all be on horseback. That should make a big difference.”
“And we all got Henrys, ’ceptin’ for the kid,” Krieger said.
“I wish you’d all quit callin’ me kid. That’s why I want to shoot Ben Russell dead.”
“You show us somethin’ today, kid, and I’ll call you Mr. Blanchett,” Ferguson said. “And you can call me Walt.”
Whit grinned and began to feel better. He was clutching his Sharps as if it were a precious possession given to him by a god.
“Put out the fire, Pete,” Thatcher said, “and let’s get to it. Slow and quiet. It’ll be daybreak right soon.”
“I can smell the dawn,” Krieger said, rising to his feet, using his Henry like a crutch or a cane.
“And it smells like blood,” Short said, his eyes glittering like a serpent going after prey.
In moments, the fire was out and they were all mounted on their horses, slipping through the timber like wraiths, their jaws set, their rifles at the ready, their bellies boiling with butterflies and bumblebees.
The pines sighed in the whispering breeze that wafted down from the snowcaps where the mountains stood like ancient citadels in that deep darkness just before dawn.
33
SOMETHING TICKED IN JOHN’S BRAIN. HE OPENED HIS EYES TO darkness and moonlight. For a long moment, he did not know where he was, but seemed caught somewhere between a dreamscape and this small room with a beam of gauzy white light streaming through the window. He heard breathing next to him, and saw the dim outline of a face. The face of Eva, her pigtails let out, her hair a dark fan on the pillow. He slid out of bed, and motes danced in the moonbeam like tiny white insects. He bent over and groped on the floor for his clothing, picked up his rumpled shirt and trousers. He put his shirt on, then lifted a leg and stuck it in his trousers, hopping on one bare foot to a chair. He sat down and slid his other leg into his pants. He found his boots and socks, put those on, and reached under the bed for his pistol and holster. He stood up and strapped on his gunbelt.
“John,” she whispered, “where are you going? It’s still dark.”
“Outside,” he said softly. “Go back to sleep.”
“Mmmm,” she moaned, and he saw her turn over and bury her face in the pillow, her mane of black hair blotting her head u
ntil it was invisible in the darkness. He felt his head, found the lump where it had struck a rock. Hatless, he walked through the silent cabin and out the front door.
A few feet away, he saw a man smoking a quirly. He walked over to him, wondering who it was.
“John? You rise early,” the man said in Spanish.
“Juanito. You stand guard.”
“Yes.”
“That cigarette gives you away. It glows like a fat lightning bug.”
“It is quiet. The world sleeps.”
“Where is Ben sleeping?”
“Under the chuck wagon with Dobbins.”
“Go get him. Bring him here.”
“You will stand watch?”
“Yes. Go on.”
Their whispers died on their lips and it was quiet again. John looked at the eastern horizon, beyond the plateau and the bluffs below, to the far rim of the world. A redness was blazing in the east, spreading like a thin crimson scar across a dull grayness of clouds.
“Red sky at morning,” John murmured to himself, the lump on his head throbbing faintly as if the ticking that had awakened him was turning into a slight drumbeat of pain. The sky to the east was turning pale, the paleness washing over the stars until they faded and disappeared from the sky.
Juanito returned with Ben in tow.
“John, you after a worm?” Ben said, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
“Huh?”
“You’re a dadgummed early bird.”
“How’s Gent?” John asked.
“I don’t know. Probably a mite better’n you after that knock on the head.”
“Where is he? I want to see him.”
“We got him down in the new house. How’s your head?”
“I’ll get some powders from Eva later. It’s all right.”
“You need a hat, too,” Ben said.
“All in due time, Ben. Let’s go see Gent. Anybody watchin’ him?”
Ben looked up at the paling sky, the vanishing stars.
“Manolo should be with him. Ornery rubbed some kind of liniment on Gent’s wounds. Cuts ain’t too deep. They should scab over in a few days.”
