by Paul Bagdon
“Any money?”
“None I seen, but we ain’t found their personal stuff yet. This is a pretty fair load of merchandise. They might have some money or gold hid out.”
Stone took a drag from his cigar and tossed the last inch or so to the side. He exhaled a stream of smoke and then raised his arm to wave the rest of the gang forward.
The outlaws came on like a wave, skinning down from their horses and clambering over the wagon, punching and kicking their mates away from the crates, cursing, shouting, claiming goods they couldn’t yet see as they used their saddle or sheath knives to force open the wooden boxes. Several of them grabbed bottles of whiskey from the already-opened case. Dishes—saucers, plates, a serving platter—sailed into the air, where they were shattered by an elongated burst of gunfire. An outlaw kicked a case of lanterns off the edge of the wagon, and the crash of breaking glass was overcome by the melee.
The mules, wide-eyed and almost petrified with fear, stood rigid and unmoving, the hide over their backs twitching frantically. A crate of hammers joined the lanterns on the ground next to the wagon, and a cheer went up as another case of whiskey was found. Several outlaws fought viciously over a crate of boots, although there were more pairs than desperadoes.
Stone stepped from his saddle to the wagon and grabbed the two nearest men. “Git them mules unhitched an’ tie ’em off by them trees. Make sure they don’ git away—we can use ’em.” He shoved a man pawing at the second case of whiskey and tossed a bottle to each of the outlaws he’d ordered to secure the mules. The hardness left their faces and their eyes, and they stopped to pull corks and dump liquor down their throats before hustling the mules away from the frenzy.
Ladies’ corsets filled the air for a moment and were almost immediately replaced by a flurry of camisoles and bloomers. Axes and hatchets bound together with heavy wire in bundles of ten were shoved to the ground, where the heads clanged together almost musically.
Stone swung onto his horse’s back and rode a few yards away from the wagon, watching. He’d seen timber wolves tearing the life out of an aged moose chased into exhaustion when he’d been on the run in Canada; watching his men now was almost as much fun. He kicked his boots out of the stirrups and lit another cigar. Up ahead where the boys were tying the mules was as good a place as any to make camp for the night.
All in all, it hadn’t been a bad haul. The drummers were carrying mostly dry goods and tools and other worthless weight, but the cases of whiskey had been a good find. And there’d been a thousand rounds of .45 caliber bullets that’d been manufactured by Remington, which meant the bullets would fire properly, unlike the army junk that presented a crapshoot each time the trigger was pulled. The boots were Mexican made and looked to be of decent quality; those who weren’t too drunk to do so hauled off their old boots and replaced them with the new. And several outlaws now had turnipshaped pocket watches on silver chains, which were as useless as the ladies’ bloomers to them, since only Stone and one other man knew how to set or read a watch.
The drummers hadn’t had much money with them; the freight they were hauling most likely represented C.O.D. contracts. Stone found a good pair of spurs in a carpetbag hidden under the board seat of the wagon, along with a framed daguerreotype of a hefty, plain-faced woman standing stiffly and staring grimly at the camera, with her hands on the shoulders of a young boy. He casually tossed the picture aside. He was about to discard the bag too when he felt the weight of something he’d missed at its bottom. Reaching in, he pulled out a small, well-used Bible. His face wrinkled in disgust. He was about to throw the book into the scrub when he got a better idea—a much better idea. He slipped the book into his saddlebag.
The wagon and mules would come in handy. And they’d found a case of five-pound cans of Armor’s potted meat, so they’d eat well for a while. He watched as his men set fire to sheaves of sheet music and several pounds of novels.
It had been a very good day.
The two horses glared at one another, their movements jerky, almost wooden, sweat gleaming on the rigid muscles of their chests. Ben gave Snorty the slightest bit of rein to ease him out of a walk. The horse got under the mild bit and launched himself forward as if he’d been fired from a powerful catapult.
Dancer jammed ahead in response, his rear hooves scattering dirt and pebbles as he wrestled with Lee’s firm hands on the reins. She gave him his head for a heartbeat, but at the same time used the hackamore to bring him around in a wide circle, ending up a few feet to the right of Ben and Snorty—the same place she’d started from.
“I always enjoy an early morning ride on a well-behaved mount,” she said, her brow showing sweat although they’d been in the saddle less than five minutes.
“You’re the one with patience with horses,” Ben said. “My idea is to take these two bangtails and slam their silly heads together till they listen to reason.”
“Patience? Right this minute, I’ve got about as much patience as a scorpion in a frying pan.” She pushed back with her forearm the hair glued by sweat to her forehead. “Let’s see if I can follow you. Go on ahead—I’ll let you gain ten yards or so on me and see what happens.”
Ben tapped his heels against Snorty’s barrel. Snorty wrenched his head and showed his teeth to Dancer, and then he stepped ahead very reluctantly, his tail beginning to revolve like the blades on a windmill. Ben was turning his body to speak to Lee when she and Dancer wheeled past him, moving clumsily sideways, rising a cloud of dust. Before Ben could tighten his own reins, Snorty stretched his neck and tore a mouthful of hide out of Dancer’s flank, leaving a bare and bloody wound the size of a man’s palm.
Dancer tried to rear, even though Lee had his head almost welded to his own left side and the reins in a death grip in her hands. The awkward and unbalanced position seemed to have no effect on Dancer—he spun as close to a gallop as a bent-in-half horse could do. Lee’s face was crimson, although the color was difficult to see, since all the dust she and her horse had put into the air seemed to be adhering to her face.
She wrapped the left rein around the saddle horn to hold Dancer’s head in place. Standing in the stirrups, she leaned far forward and took the horse’s right ear in her mouth. Then she bit down hard. Dancer stopped quickly, as if he had run into a stone wall, and stood with frantic eyes. His breath came out in rasps and a squeal of pain formed in his throat. Lee let off the pressure, and when Dancer once again began to spin, she chewed down on his ear, stopping him so quickly that he stumbled over himself and came close to going down.
Ben watched the scene before him. He kept a tight hold on Snorty, which was difficult to do, not because Snorty was acting up, but because he himself was laughing so hard.
Lee again eased the pressure of her teeth off Dancer’s ear. He began to spin, but his movements were now unsure and much slower than they had been before. She grabbed his ear between her teeth for the third time, and the horse stopped. And again, she released her teeth. This time, Dancer stood still, his eyes as wide as wagon wheels. He shook his head, and she unwrapped the rein from her saddle horn and cued the horse to walk. Dancer did so, and Ben watched incredulously as the tension left the animal and his muscles returned to their normal state.
Ben jogged Snorty up beside Lee and wasn’t surprised to see him settle down and lose interest in battling with Dancer. Ben knew it took two to make a fight or a race, and if one of the parties wasn’t interested, there was no dispute. Just like the previous night; if Snorty and Dancer didn’t infringe upon one another, they got along just fine.
Lee daintily turned her head away from Ben as she picked horsehairs from her lips and off her tongue. When she turned back, she said quite seriously, “I hope you were paying attention, because if you don’t behave, I’ll do the same thing to you.”
Ben couldn’t laugh anymore. He wiped the tears from his eyes and face with his sleeve and gasped for breath. “You’re most definitely a horse corrector, Miss Morgan,” he said. “I’ve seen a
few men who’ll grab an ear in their fist when they’re ridin’ down a real rank horse, but I never saw anyone bite an ear before.”
“I wasn’t just biting. I was blowing air into his ear too. I’ve won more than a minor skirmish here. Dancer knows I can do it again.”
“’Deed he does. You know, I was thinkin’ we should let them run it out—see who was the fastest, tire them out a bit, and then look for some cooperation after we got their edges off. Your way worked better. Dancer might not have taken well to bein’ dusted by Snorty. A good horse can lose his spirit when—”
“Ben, there’s more bottom in this horse than you’ve ever dreamed of. Early speed doesn’t make a good mount. It’s how he behaves after eighteen hours under saddle, picking strays out of brambles . . . or . . .”
Ben smiled at her. “I guess we’ll find out one day, won’t we?”
She responded to his supercilious smile with one of her own. “We sure will find out.” She cued Dancer into a gentle lope. Ben and Snorty stayed at her side, and the horses moved in unison, covering ground with so little effort that it seemed they could hold the lope for the rest of the day without slowing.
As they rode toward the Busted Backs, the mountains seemed bizarrely elusive. It seemed that each stride the horses took pushed the shambling group of foothills farther away. When they stopped midday to share a canteen of water and to fill Ben’s Stetson for each of the horses, Lee dismounted and stretched her back. Then she cocked her hand over her eyes like a visor and said, “It looks like there’s a lake up ahead. Is there? With all the shimmering from the heat, it’s hard to tell, but it sure looks like water.”
“There’s no water and no lake, Lee. That’s a mirage and nothin’ but a mirage.” He wiped his sleeve across his face and caught the quick look of dejection on her face. “Don’t let it get to you. We’re doin’ fine, eating miles and making good time. The thing is, the way things look get all fouled up out here in this heat. It can cause a person to see things that aren’t there, and particularly things he or she most wants to see—like the lake that’s teasin’ you.” He wiped his face again. “We’ll stop for a bit at the first water hole we come to, and in another few hours I’ll start watchin’ for our supper.”
“I’d give anything to wash out these clothes I’m wearing,” Lee sighed. “And I’m as grubby as a saloon floor myself. I must smell like a month’s hard labor.”
He grinned at her. “Neither one of us are what you’d call a fresh rose right now. I’m right sure we’ll cut a stream a few miles into the Backs. It’s probably not runnin’ real hard right now, but it’s runnin’, an’ we’ll be able to wash our clothes and ourselves in it.”
“That sounds wonderful. Let’s keep moving. I want to make sure you’re not wrong, and that is a lake up ahead.”
* * *
8
* * *
They covered good distance the next day, coming upon clear water twice. The hunting that evening, though, had been a waste of time. Ben had walked around in semidarkness for over an hour and never lifted the rifle off his shoulder. And although the water hole they’d stumbled upon just before dark afforded some grazing for the horses, the water itself was tepid, muddy, and foul tasting.
Ben built a fire and fueled it with mesquite branches, but the smoke did little but remind the two of them how hungry they were. They prayed together aloud and then individually as they settled in for the night on opposite sides of the fire. The day’s ride under the unrelenting sun had pushed them both to the edge of exhaustion.
Coyotes woke Ben.
He checked the position of the moon without moving, noting that the night was approaching its end. There was a vague line of soft yellow-red light at the eastern horizon, but the prairie was still dark. When the coyote bayed again, Ben scanned the hills, seeking it out. He was surprised—and thankful—when he located it about seventy-five yards away, on a small knoll that defined the animal’s lean body against the horizon. Ben’s rifle was next to him, just outside the saddle blanket he’d wrapped around himself. He eyed the coyote again.
Probably closer to a hundred yards than seventy-five, he thought. Coyote ain’t much for flavor. Meat’s bound to be stringy and overly lean, an’ we got nothin’ to put on it to make it taste better. Will Lee eat it? He smiled. He knew the answer to that question. He listened to her breathing for several moments, gauging the depth of her sleep. A blast from the 30.30 would wake her in a big hurry. Can’t be helped.
He eased his hand out from under the saddle blanket and touched the cold barrel of the rifle. He’d have to sit up and bring the stock to his shoulder in a single motion. His body position was good; the coyote would appear in the front sight with very little movement on his part. He’d jacked a round into place the night before, so he didn’t need to cock the rifle.
Ben knew that coyotes stay alive by being skittish; any metallic sound screamed “man” at them. But he felt no wind, no breeze, on the skin of his face. The shot would be dead-on. He moved his hand down the barrel toward the stock as carefully as if he were stroking a feverish infant.
“What are you doing?”
The whisper was so quiet that Ben wondered if it was a thought rather than a sound until he looked at Lee and saw her opened eyes. A tiny bit of reflected moonlight caught on something metal, and he squinted toward her. The damaged pistol was curled in her hand, its muzzle pointed upward. He moved his head an inch to either side to indicate there was no danger and shifted his concentration back to the coyote.
The animal’s head was coming up, and a howl was beginning to resonate from deep within its chest. Ben fit his hand to the action of the 30.30 and sat up, the saddle blanket falling to his lap from his upper body. He brought the rifle to his shoulder rapidly but smoothly, leaning his cheek against the cold wood. The sight slid effortlessly through the chill air to the point where it stopped on the juncture of the coyote’s chest and neck. Ben held a shallow breath and eased the trigger back. He’d been ready for the thunderous report and so had Lee, but they both flinched at the deep-throated blast. The coyote appeared to leap straight up at the sky, then it fell to its side and was still. The echo from the shot reverberated in the hills around them, dying slowly.
Ben stood and ratcheted out the empty cartridge. “He’s down for good,” he said. “See if you can get any life out of the fire. I’ll skin the coyote and be back with the meat. It’ll probably be like eating a tin roof, but it’ll stick with us. We got a hard day coming up.”
Lee stood and stretched. “Nice shot. I’ve never eaten coyote. Have you?”
“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “The last time I had dinner with the Queen of England. She’s real partial to it.”
Lee grinned as she poked at the fire with a length of mesquite and found live embers below the surface of burned-out coals. “If it’s good enough for the Queen, it’s good enough for me.”
There was an otherworldly texture to everything around Ben as he walked to the knoll where the coyote lay. The silence wrapped itself around him like a shroud, and although he knew there was abundant life around and even under the prairie, he could hear nothing. It was the sort of silence he imagined would exist on the moon.
As it always did in the moments before dawn, the narrow strand of new light at the horizon promised a new day, a good day. Ben stopped for a moment and watched as the pastels began to harden into brighter, more vivid colors and the shadows lost their sharp edges and began to creep back to the objects that cast them.
He hunkered down next to the dead coyote with his boot knife in his hand, its blade sharper than that of a straight razor. The process didn’t take long.
The fire was burning nicely when Ben carried the meat back to their camp. He found Lee leading Snorty away from the water hole. “Neither one of them drank much,” she said. “They’re leery about the taste. They’ll need a long drink of the first sweet water we cross.”
“This stuff tastes like it ran off a saloon floor, but there�
�s lots of small streams and spring-fed water holes ahead. There’ll be plenty of good water.” He speared the thin slabs of red meat on a mesquite branch and held it over the flames. In a moment, what little fat there was began to drip, and the fire grew, reaching toward the skewered meat as if claiming it.
“Smells pretty good,” Lee observed.
The coyote did smell good; the smoke that surrounded the campfire brought saliva to his mouth.
“Can we take any of the meat with us?”
He shook his head. “I wish we could—but we can’t. Even after a single day in the heat, it’ll be unfit to eat.” He rotated the stick slowly, checking the meat. “Looks like it’s about as done as it’ll ever be. Ready?”
The coyote meat had the texture of scorched rope and was sharp tasting, as if it had been marinated in lamp fuel. Neither Ben nor Lee commented on the flavor. “Like you said the other day,” Ben finally offered, “food is food.”
The climb was gradual through most of the morning. Soon, however, when the sun was at its highest, the ground seemed to tilt sharply upward, presenting faces that were bare of any growth and littered with rocks and loose stones.
The slanting, baking walls looked as upright as the side of a good barn and seemed to stretch toward the sky for miles. Lee knew Snorty was a good climber and that he used his muscles and the weight of his body athletically, gaining the most ground with the least possible expenditure of energy.
Dancer was another story. He broke a nervous sweat as she guided him up the first climb. His eyes grew wide as he struggled upward, and his hide seemed tense enough to strike a match on. When his breathing grew raspy and hoarse—from fear rather than exertion—Lee reined in at the face of a long climb and dismounted.
Ben stopped next to her as she checked her girth and the set of the hackamore. “Trouble?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” she answered. “I don’t want to goad him, but I can’t afford to spend the day arguing with him at the base of each slope either.” She stepped ahead and ran her hand the length of Dancer’s sweaty neck. “He’s just scared is all. He’s one of the most agile and quick-footed horses I’ve ever ridden, but he doesn’t know that yet.” She shook Dancer’s sweat off her hand. “His heart’s beating way too fast. He’ll run himself into the ground before we’re halfway to the other side.”
