by Paul Bagdon
Ben stepped down and stood next to her. “If we can get him up an’ over a couple of climbs, he’ll be fine. Be good if we could rope him to Snorty, but that won’t work—they’re still sorting things out between them, an’ a ruckus on a slope could hurt either or both of them real bad.”
“You’re right—that’s too dangerous.” Lee wiped the sweat from her forehead. “We might just as well water them here. I need a couple of minutes to think this over. I know Dancer can top these climbs, but I’ve got to get him to realize that too.”
Dancer didn’t completely refuse a climb until later that afternoon. The face was a long one, steep and treacherous because of its composition of flint and shale. The horse wheeled, flinging long strands of spittle from his gaping mouth. His muscles were so tight that they trembled under his sweat-drenched skin, and his breathing sounded like a rasp being dragged across rusted steel.
Ben eased Snorty past Lee and Dancer. “I’ll take it first, and maybe he’ll follow.”
“No—just give me some room. I’m going up this climb on my horse one way or another.” She gave Dancer some rein and let him scramble a few yards away from the slope. She pointed him at it and sat still in her saddle, letting the horse eye the stone face as long as he cared to. Come on, Dancer. You can do it.
The horse walked toward the climb when she cued him to do so. She reined him in and sat quietly in the saddle. Then she took a couple of deep breaths and opened her mouth wide.
Her scream was so loud, so piercing, and so unexpected that Dancer forgot about his fear. Lee knew that his instinct and his heart were telling him to get away from the banshee that was attacking him. He charged ahead in panic, putting a storm of grit and stone in the air as he fought for traction.
At the top, he hung his head for a couple of minutes, gulping air. When he raised his head and turned back to look at Lee, the lack of white around his eyes told her the fear was gone. She stroked his neck.
“Good boy, Dancer,” she murmured. Then she hollered down to Ben. “Come on! You’re wasting time!”
They stayed in the saddle for the rest of the day, stopped at a water hole at dusk, and decided to ride into the night, since the sky was so clear and the moon was offering good light. They camped well after midnight in a narrow little valley between two buttes. There was no need for a fire; they’d crossed no game during the long day. But there was good grazing for the horses and sweet water in the valley.
The next morning, Lee awakened to someone gently shaking her shoulder.
“I think we’re gettin’ close, Lee,” Ben was saying. “I want to head out as soon as you’re ready.”
She rolled out of the slicker, stretched like a cat, and smiled. Not a bad way to be awakened, she thought.
It was late afternoon when they struck the stream Ben had mentioned the day before. It was shallow but running well, and a small copse of trees and grass made the scene idyllic. They loosened their saddles and let the horses drink their fill before turning them out into the grass. Lee attached the hobbles to Dancer’s forelegs but allowed him so much slack that he could almost gallop if he’d wanted to. The horses grazed happily, maintaining enough space between them so that neither felt threatened. Lee told Ben that she planned to be rid of the hobbles when they rode out. Dancer showed no interest in leaving her. After seeing to the horses, she filled the canteens at the edge of the stream and then pulled off her battered shoes, groaning with the pleasure of it.
“What I’d like you to do is go out and shoot something to eat, Ben. Call out before you ride back in, because I’m going to take a bath, and I don’t want to be surprised.” She thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you something: I can’t stand these clothes another minute. I’m going to wash them too. Why don’t you go ahead and take a bath yourself and shoot our supper, and I’ll join you when my clothes are dry enough to put back on. That shouldn’t be long, even with the sun starting to set. OK?”
“Suits me fine. I’ll follow the stream for a bit till I find a good site and set up a fire. Then I’ll take a bath an’ let my clothes dry right on me. I should have something to cook before you catch up.” He took his backup Colt from his saddlebag and handed it, grips first, to Lee. “I’m worried about that piece of junk you’re carryin’. You got lucky with it, but chances are it’ll blow up in your face if you pull the trigger again. I’d like you to pitch it an’ keep this one with you.”
She reached out and accepted the pistol. “Are you going to be all right without this? Won’t you feel kind of . . . well . . . naked without it?”
Ben’s smile was wide. “If it came to a time when I needed that gun, I probably couldn’t get to it fast enough to save my hide. My second gun is nothing but insurance, and poor insurance at that. We’ll transfer some bullets from my saddlebag to yours later on.”
“Thanks, Ben.” She hefted the pistol, feeling the weight of it. It fit her hand well. She rolled out the cylinder to check the load. “This isn’t going to do me any good if I don’t know how it handles.”
He nodded. “Go right ahead an’ run some rounds through it. The pistol’s dead-on up to about thirty feet; then it tends to the left a little. You’ve got a good eye—you’ll figure it out.”
He tugged a dozen or so cartridges from the loops in his gun belt and handed them to Lee, who dropped them into her pocket. She held back one, which she inserted into the empty space under the hammer. The other five spaces already contained bullets.
She looked over at him. “What about the noise? If we’re close to Stone, he’s bound to hear the shots.”
“Don’t make any difference now. He knows I’m comin’ on after him. What he doesn’t know is when I’ll hit him. Go ahead an’ shoot.”
Lee glanced over to where the horses were grazing and then turned to the open prairie. The weight of the .45 caused her to hold her right wrist with her left hand, not in a death lock, but more as a support. As she lifted the pistol chest high, she extended it at arm’s length and swung it an arc in front of her, finger outside of the trigger guard.
“That rock there by the tumbleweed is about twenty feet out,” Ben said, standing a couple of feet behind her. “Give it a try at that range.”
She eased her left foot back a bit, aligning her body with the target. Then she squeezed off a round that dug a rut in the sandy soil a couple of inches to the left of her target. After lowering the pistol, she paused for a moment, raised it, and fired again. The first shot launched the rock a yard into the air. She glanced at the horses, who were watching but not overly concerned. When the rock landed, her third and fourth rounds skittered it along the ground several feet. The fifth shattered it, putting a cloud of brown grit and shards of stone into the air. Her sixth shot clipped a small piece broken from the original target and sent it spinning off to one side.
“Good shootin’,” Ben said. Good? It was terrific shootin’! “Try something farther out.”
Lee loaded the cylinder, closed it, and scanned the ground beyond the shattered rock. A small saguaro cactus thirty-five feet away caught her eye. She fast-fired this time, squeezing the trigger smoothly but quickly. The first round whined past the cactus; the second exploded the ground a foot in front of it. The last four shots shredded the plant, scattering the pulpy whiteness of its core in all directions. She lowered the pistol to reload.
“It’s a real fine weapon, Ben. Thanks again.” She closed the cylinder. “Now, how about going down the stream so a lady can have a bath?”
“Sure.” He turned away before she could see the awed smile on his face. The lady shoots like John Wesley Hardin, he thought. She’s a Christian, she eats snake an’ coyote without a word, and she cares enough about me to risk her life. For the first time in many years, Ben found himself whistling as he walked along.
Lee found a small pool the size of a large tabletop and about three feet deep. The water was clear, and the bottom was sandy. She undressed quickly and settled into the pool, sighing with pleasure. The water was
colder than she thought it would be, but that made no difference. She leaned forward, submerged her head, and rubbed vigorously at the dirt and sweat that had accumulated in her hair. When she came up for air, she spewed water from her mouth like a fountain. She scoured her body with handfuls of sand until her skin felt fresh and a whole lot cleaner. Finally, she rubbed at her hair again until it squeaked under her kneading fingers. She left the pool for a moment, padded to where she’d left her clothing, carried it to the pool, and lowered herself back in.
The current had returned the water to its original crystal clarity in the short time she’d been out of it. She scrubbed her clothes with sand and rinsed everything thoroughly. As she worked on her skirt, her fingers touched a hard lump in a pocket. She found the lump again and pulled out the piece of blade-shaped stone she’d picked up when she was a captive. She returned it to the pocket. Finally, she laid out everything on the ground to dry.
Her body dried quickly, even though the sun was beginning to relinquish its power for the day. When her clothes had dried enough to be considered only damp, she dressed.
Ben picked off a pair of rabbits with an equal number of shots as he followed the stream away from Lee. About a mile from where he’d left her, he came upon a campsite that looked good; the stream, swift but shallow here, offered all the water they could use, and there was some patchy grass for grazing. Mesquite trees grew close together in a ragged jumble of limbs and branches a few yards from the stream. He tugged off dead branches and gathered those already on the ground and stacked them as neatly as he could, creating a broad-based campfire that would burn all night. Without lighting the fire, he ground tied Snorty and walked farther along the stream until he came to a section that seemed deeper. He wrestled his boots off on the shore, took off his vest and gun belt, emptied his pockets, and tiptoed into the water.
The water was chilly but not actually cold; it felt good as it soaked him to the waist. He held his Stetson under the water, wrung it out, and repeated the operation before tossing the hat back toward his boots and gun. When he crouched down in the running water, he felt the cold more, but the sensation remained good as the current washed dirt and sweat from his face and hair and swept most of the dust and dried mud from his pants and shirt. His fingers found the furrow over his left ear, and he was surprised to feel that hair was already sprouting there.
He stood in the stream and scrubbed his face with his hands, feeling good, realizing that whatever had caused his illness a few days ago was gone, and that his full strength and energy had returned. He walked to shore, grunting each time he trod on a sharp stone, and pushed into an opening inside the mesquite cluster. He quickly stripped and twisted and wrenched all the water he could out of his clothing, dressed again, and went out into the fading sun to clean the rabbits.
At that moment, he believed that what he was doing—the quest that now involved Lee—was his job, not a vendetta against the man who’d killed his father. He needed to put an end to Zeb Stone. In doing that, he’d be living up to the oath he’d taken when he became a marshall.
The night was as clear as springwater—the stars were handfuls of carved diamonds spread unevenly on an endless background of black velvet. The slightest of breezes that moved the smoke from the fire was warm and sweet smelling. Next to Ben, Lee gazed into the fire with the same degree of attention she’d give to a book. She explored the embers, watching each whisper of smoke as it was touched and then gently carried away by the breeze.
“I think we’re getting closer to them,” Ben said. “We’ll meet up with the slow route tomorrow sometime, an’ then we’ll start to see some sign. A big group like that can’t travel without leaving a trail, and with Stone and his cutthroats, it’ll be even more clear. They’ll be just as prone to ride away from a smoldering fire as put it out, an’ they’ll drop bottles and other junk.” He paused. “It’d be good if we knew what town Stone has in mind. I’d like to be there waiting for him and get this thing over with.”
“If our first plan works, maybe we won’t need the town. Could be that we can harass the gang enough so that they begin to chew on each other—do our work for us.”
“Could be,” he answered. “I doubt it, though. From what you said, Stone’s dead set on a gunfight with me—one-on-one. I can’t see him changing his mind.”
Lee poked lightly at the coals with a stick, not really paying attention to what she was doing. “You don’t have to face him, you know. There are other ways. If we can cause the gang enough trouble, we may be able to take Stone out here, before we even make it to the town.”
“That ain’t going to happen, Lee. Stone’s obsessed. He’ll have his gunfight.”
A silence that wasn’t quite comfortable stretched between them. When Lee spoke, her voice was cold. “You want it too, Ben. You want to fight Stone almost as much as he wants to fight you.”
“What I want is to do my job.”
She stood up quickly, startling him. “Don’t hide behind your job, Ben Flood,” she said hotly. “If all you wanted to do was drop Zeb Stone, you could shoot him with a rifle from a hundred yards away. Or you could get some help—Texas Rangers, maybe some of your Pinkerton friends—to bring him in.”
“Sounds like you’re worried about me,” Ben said, grinning.
Her reaction caused him to flinch. “Of course I’m worried about you, you half-wit!” she shouted.
He stood and faced her. “I’m sorry, Lee. I didn’t mean to make light.” He reached out to her, taking her arm just above her elbow. Her muscle was as rigid as a bar of steel. “C’mon, let’s sit down again, OK?”
Lee allowed herself to be guided back to the spot in which she’d been sitting, but where she’d been relaxed before, she was now as taut as a guitar string. “We need to be sure what we’re doing—what I’m helping you to do—is godly. If it isn’t, we’ve climbed these hills and eaten rattlesnake and coyote for nothing, and we should head back to Burnt Rock first thing in the morning and forget about Zeb Stone.”
Ben hunkered next to her. He was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his words were quiet, without his usual authority behind them. “Zeb Stone robbed the bank in my town and came close to killing Sam Turner. He carried off and injured a woman who is very important to me. And twenty years ago Stone killed my father. Do I want to punish him for what he’s done? Yeah, I do. Any man would. You’re wondering if I’m looking for revenge. I hope I’m not. But I won’t lie to you. I’ve been wrestling with whether or not my oath as a lawman covers what I’m feeling. I know this much: Stone is a plague, and I can’t let him go on. He’ll keep on killing and stealing until he’s dead or in a cell. Stopping him is my job, Lee.” He poked a stick into the fire simply to have something to do with his hands, stirring up a fountain of sparks.
“I believe in you, Ben. I believe you’re a good marshall and, more importantly, a good Christian.”
“I . . . well, uhh . . .” he sputtered.
Lee smiled. “Oh, hush, lawman. Let’s just look at the fire for a while.”
The rough bed of the wagon was about as comfortable as a pile of rocks. Discomfort only added fuel to the fire that always burned in Stone’s brain. In addition to that, the mules were beginning to fail. They’d had little to eat since leaving behind the murdered peddler and his friend, and their water stops were brief; the men didn’t care to spend the time taking them out of the harnesses and then reharnessing them.
“Start lookin’ for a place to spend the night,” he called to the driver. From where he sat on the side of the wagon, drinking from a bottle of whiskey and smoking a cigar, he motioned to a pair of outlaws who paced the wagon aboard their own horses. “Go on up ahead an’ see what you can shoot. I’m right sick of this potted meat—stuff has no more taste than a hunka wood.”
Before midday tomorrow, Stone figured, they’d be out of the Backs and headed to LaRosa, maybe a two-day ride. A wide smile spread across his face. He built the scene once again in his mind, as if it had
all happened already. His eyes welded to Flood’s, the sweat he’d see on the lawman’s forehead—sweat of fear—the dead silence in the barroom, the movement of their hands to the grips of their pistols, the heartbeat by which his weapon would clear leather ahead of Flood’s, the realization appearing in Flood’s eyes as he saw his death sentence being carried out, the crashing, deafening report of his pistol and the metal-to-wood sound when Flood’s weapon dropped from his fingers to the floor.
Stone lifted the bottle again, and this time some whiskey flowed over his chin and onto his shirt. He’d been drinking almost nonstop since they’d stolen the wagon. He never got drunk to the point of losing control of his body or even slurring his words, but the change in his mood, his personality, was as obvious as a stroke of lightning on a sunny day. Sober, Zeb Stone was dangerous and unpredictable; drunk, he was a wave of death that struck without reason, its sole purpose to extinguish life.
He lofted the now-empty bottle into the sky and drew, shattering it with a single pistol shot before it began its descent. He stood and walked the few steps to where the wooden case held the few remaining bottles. Moving like a seaman on the ocean, he shifted his weight easily with the erratic movement of the wagon over the rutted trail. He knew the men on horseback were watching him, amazed at his balance after the amount he’d had to drink.
He sat in the place he’d left and pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth. He held the whiskey out to the man nearest him, the same man the woman had shamed in the bank in Burnt Rock. “I’ll bet that sweet li’l lady’s comin’ right along with Flood,” Stone said as the man nudged his horse forward next to the wagon and accepted the liquor. “Danny, you got any problem with killin’ her? See, I don’t much care to have anybody alive who puts one of my men on the floor like he was a little kid behind the schoolhouse.”
