by Paul Bagdon
“She didn’t—”
“’Course she did,” Stone interrupted. “You made the whole gang look bad, gettin’ dropped in the dirt by a woman, an’ then rollin’ around like you was gut shot, whinin’ an’ carryin’ on. Even worse, you made me look bad. Tell me this: You ever heard about somebody ridin’ with Frank an’ Jesse outfought by a woman?”
“I didn’t get—”
Stone went on as if Danny hadn’t spoken. “You know what Quantrill an’ his boys woulda done? They’da strung you right up in the bank from a rafter an’ left you twitchin’ at the end of the rope for shamin’ them.” He drank and wiped his mouth. “An’ now, you ain’t even answered my question. I asked if you were gonna kill that woman—an’ I want an answer.”
Danny met Stone’s glare. “I’ll kill her slow. I’ll kill her so slow she screams until her voice don’t work no more.” His voice rose in volume and his words tumbled closer together. “Don’t you worry about that. I ain’t afraid of dyin’. The only thing I’m afraid of is livin’ on an’ not killin’ that woman.” He accepted the bottle from his leader’s hand and tipped it above his own mouth.
Stone grinned like a youngster with a new puppy. “Ain’t you somethin’, boy?” A moment later, he added, “She’s all yours. That woman is all yours.”
* * *
9
* * *
At first, neither Ben nor Lee recognized the dark heap far ahead of them on the side of the trail. As they rode closer, Ben reined in. The sickeningly sweet stench of rot enveloped them like a putrid blanket.
“This ain’t gonna be pretty,” he said. “That might be an animal up there, but I doubt it. You’d better stay back until I—”
Lee shook her head. “Let’s go,” she said.
A buzzing, churning cloud of blackflies rose off the corpse and formed into smaller clusters, sniping down at the body erratically but moving away from the approach of Ben and Lee. Ben loosened his bandana and handed it to her. “This’ll help a little. Cover your nose and mouth and don’t breathe deep.” When she started to protest, he held up his hand, cutting her off. “I’ve done this before. You haven’t. Put it on.”
Lee looked at the body for a moment and then wrapped the cloth around her head snugly and nodded. They rode the last few yards and dismounted. The horses were nervous at the smell of death; both were wide eyed, and their ears flicked fast, snapping abruptly from one point to another.
“There’s another one,” Ben said. He led Snorty back from the corpse and swept the area with his eyes. “Must have been drummers—either snake-oil an’ patent-medicine hustlers or common carriers of mercantile goods.”
Lee swung onto Dancer and walked him past the first corpse toward the second body. After she’d gone several yards, she turned in her saddle.
“There’s clothing here, Ben. And tools and nails and . . .” Her voice quivered, and she swallowed twice before she spoke again. “There’s dolls and some other toys. These weren’t hucksters. They were honest traders.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Lowlifes would’ve been armed and alert. They’d have dropped a couple of Stone’s men before they died. I need to get these corpses underground—and I sure have the tools to do it with.”
Lee rode toward a long curve in the trail, following a motion that’d caught her eye. At first she thought it was a bird trapped or caught somehow in the wood of a dead stump—and then she saw it wasn’t a bird at all.
“Ben,” she called.
He was in his saddle and next to her in a matter of seconds. “What’s . . . ?” he began, and then stopped and looked at the stump. Around it, chips and chunks of dried wood were scattered like snowflakes. The Bible, nailed to the stump, was torn apart by bullets, its back cover flapping with the breeze, its pages riddled with holes. The spine of the Bible, probably never the best of bindings, had given up, and sheaves of pages hung precariously, as if the first mild wind would tear them away and spread them over the prairie.
Ben and Lee were speechless for a minute. Then Ben smoothed the remaining pages as best he could and eased the book into his saddlebag. Lee noticed that his fingers were as gentle with the Bible as those of a new mother with her infant.
“Maybe you can see a bit better what I mean about needin’ to put an end to Zeb Stone and his gang,” he said. His voice was a strange melding of sadness and anger. “You understand now, Lee, don’t you?”
“I know what this means. I know that Stone finds it necessary to mock the Word of God. I know that he killed these two poor men. Yeah, Ben, I do understand. Let’s get to burying the dead and praying over them, and then ride on.” She shuddered slightly and was silent for a moment. “We’re getting closer, right?”
“Yeah. The manure around here is maybe a day and a half old. They have the wagon that belonged to the dead men, and it looks like they’re trailin’ some horses behind it, probably giving them a break from carryin’ saddles and men. And see those tracks? They came from mules—there’s no shoes and they have that wide, flat surface mules have. Stone can’t be travelin’ fast. We can be on him by early tomorrow, if we want.”
“That’s what I want, Ben,” she said. She looked at the corpses again. “These poor men didn’t deserve to be cut down like this, and they didn’t deserve to have animals and birds tear their bodies apart. I’ll help you dig. We . . . we . . .” Her voice collapsed, and the tears she’d been attempting to hide broke loose.
Ben eased Snorty next to Dancer and leaned to her, wrapping an arm clumsily but comfortingly around her.
“It’s so bad,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “I’m really afraid, but I’m more afraid to let them go on than I am for myself.”
He moved back and met her eyes. “We can do this, Lee. I know you’re scared—you’d be crazy not to be. But can you hold up? Is this too much for you?”
Lee snorted her nose dry and ran a wrist over her eyes. “There isn’t a whole lot that’s too much for me, Ben Flood, and you need to keep that in mind.”
“I know that,” he said. He held her eyes for a moment longer. Then he said, “We can’t leave these two like this. There’s a bundle of shovels off to the side of the trail up there. I’ll get to it.”
Lee nodded and glanced up at the sun, checking its position.
“Yeah, I know,” Ben said. “If I dig two graves, we’ll be here till midnight. The ground is baked and full of rocks. What I’ll do is dig one hole big enough for both men. At least it’ll keep the animals and vultures off them.”
They found a spot halfway between where the two bodies lay. Ben jammed the tip of a spade into the parched, heat-hardened earth a couple of inches and then kicked down on the top of the blade. There was a grinding screech as the steel was stopped dead by a rock. Ben tried again with the same result, and then again—and again. On his fifth attempt, the blade entered the ground without being blocked.
Even when the digging was good, it was bad. The sun drove down like the breath of Gehenna, and Ben’s shirt was soon wet with sweat. He worked mechanically at a pace he could maintain, even given the multitude of encumbering rocks that fought against his progress and yielded only when he used every bit of strength he possessed. When dizziness hit him, he dropped the shovel to his side, weaving slightly as he attempted to balance himself. Lee handed him a full canteen, and he drank half of it before handing it back.
“Take a rest. It’s my turn,” she said.
“You ain’t gonna—”
“Don’t start with me, Ben! If I can muck out a dozen stalls a day, I can shovel a little dirt.” She stepped past him, picking up the shovel, and went to work. When she’d been digging for half an hour, Ben took over again.
Once they were past the majority of rocks, the work became lighter, and the hole’s depth increased much more quickly. When he reached five feet, Ben hoisted himself out of the hole and wiped his face with a dripping wet sleeve. He drank deeply from a fresh canteen and sat, shoulders slumped, waiting for his breath to become reg
ular.
“There’s one thing I ain’t gonna argue with you about, Lee,” he said. “Pullin’ those men here and gettin’ them into the ground isn’t gonna be pretty. I want you to stand back when I do it—in fact, I want you to go off a bit with the horses an’ stay there till I call you back.”
Lee didn’t argue. She took Ben’s bandana from around her neck and handed it over to him, knowing he’d need it. She touched his face with the tips of her fingers, wiping away some dirt that was stuck to the sweat on his cheek. After a moment she turned away and walked to where the horses were grazing.
When Ben called her back, his voice was hoarse. They stood over the rock-covered mound and prayed together silently. After a few moments, they turned away to their horses and mounted up.
“Not much day left,” Ben said.
Lee noticed that he looked pale. “Are you all right, Ben? You look bad. Maybe we should ride on a bit and make camp for the night. I’ve got a little surprise for you,” she said, forcing a smile she didn’t really feel.
Ben seemed to weave slightly in his saddle, as if he were suddenly dizzy. “I think that’s what we gotta do,” he said. “I can’t ride like this—my clothes, my hair, my skin all stink of death. Burying those fellas was tough enough, but I can’t carry the smell with me.” He stood in his stirrups, supporting himself with a hand on his saddle horn, gazing off to one side. “Seems to me there’s a little stream off to the east. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me to wash my clothes and scrub myself off.”
“Good!” This time her smile felt real. “Don’t you want to hear my surprise?”
Ben grinned ruefully. “One thing I don’t need is another surprise.”
“You’ll like this one. Up next to the trail where I took the horses while you were burying the bodies, I found a five-pound tin of Armor’s potted meat. Let’s find that stream, and then all you have to do is build a fire and I’ll do the rest.”
Ben’s shoulders slumped with relief, and his smile cut through the dried sweat and dirt on his face. “I don’t think I could’ve hunted down an elephant if there was one a yard away from me. All I want to do is clean the stink off me an’ rest.”
“And eat?”
“I’m not so sure about eatin’. My stomach’s kinda arguin’ with me, tell you the truth.”
Lee grinned. “Let’s get you to that stream. Once you can stand to be next to yourself, you’ll eat like a timber wolf in a chicken coop—I guarantee it!”
The right-hand mule stumbled, seemed to catch its balance, and then stumbled again. This time it fell heavily to the left, taking down its equally exhausted partner in a tangle of legs, flailing hooves, and torn leather harness. The wagon wrenched to the left and stopped abruptly as a wheel jammed against a rock.
Stone cursed and spat blood off the side of the wagon. The crashing halt had jammed his bottle against his upper lip and front teeth. He slid off the wagon, spat again, and faced his gang. “Open up on them two useless critters,” he bellowed. “An’ don’ leave nothin’ but their fleas in one piece!”
The outlaws obeyed and poured everything they had into the downed mules. The end for the animals was quick, but the whoops, rebel yells, and hoarse laughter of the outlaws continued long after the shooting was finished.
Ben’s hide felt wind burned from the scrubbing he’d given himself with handfuls of sand. His hair had already dried and hung limp to his shoulders, where he’d pushed it back from his face. He pulled the slicker a bit more closely around him and picked a final chunk of potted meat from the twig he held.
“I never much cared for this stuff when I had a choice,” he mused, “but it sure tasted good today.” He muffled a belch with the back of his hand. “Think my clothes might be dry yet?”
Lee walked the few steps to where Ben’s pants, shirt, vest, and underdrawers were spread on the ground. After feeling the shirt between her thumb and first finger, she turned each piece over to take full advantage of the steadily descending sun. “Won’t be too long,” she said. “But we’re losing the sun. You’ll have to put them on even if they’re a tad damp.” She held the vest up to her face. “There’s no bad smell left, but they’re a little muddy.”
“Fine with me. I can live with the mud smell and the dampness. I’m sorry, Lee. But it seemed like I was in the grave with those boys.”
She sat again next to the fire, comfortably close to him. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s been a real long day. We both need rest.”
“Yeah. We do. I don’t think we’re a full day behind Stone. Things are going to pick up in a hurry.”
She shuddered involuntarily, hoping Ben hadn’t noticed. He had. “We’ll be OK,” he said. “It’s a matter of me becoming a sapper, like the sharpshooters at Bull Run. Those men made all the difference in the world. And you’re going to be harassing, not fighting.”
“I’ll fight if I need to.”
They watched the sun set without much more conversation. Then Ben stood, wrapped in the slicker, and stepped off to dress in the deeper darkness away from the fire. Lee, half asleep, considered calling it a night and settling in under her saddle blanket.
The crackle of gunfire startled both of them. Lee scurried away from the illumination of the fire and then dropped to the ground, Ben’s pistol in her hand. She saw Ben throwing himself to the ground too, his hand darting toward his right holster, which was empty because the pistol that ordinarily filled the holster was still where he’d put it near the fire. The rumble of the Sharp’s pealed like a dull, booming bell, and the sharp clatter of pistol and rifle fire continued, as if a pitched battle were being fought over the next hill.
“It’s OK!” Ben called to Lee. “They’re nowhere near us. The sound carries so clear out here, it liked to scare the pants offa me.”
The gunfire continued for a few moments and then stopped, except for a half-dozen pistol shots that sounded puny after the throaty din of the main fusillade.
Ben walked to Lee, extending his hand to her. She faced him and held out the pistol. “I guess you shouldn’t get too far away from this, now. Do you think it was Stone?”
“I know it was Stone—and they’re closer than I thought.” He holstered his weapon. “There’s no one in their right mind who’d put that much lead in the air an’ enjoy doing it. Did you hear the yells and laughter?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “You need to keep your gun with you every second from now until this whole thing is finished. Stick it under your belt or in one of your pockets if they’re deep enough, but make sure you can get to it in half a heartbeat.”
She nodded in agreement. “How far ahead do you think they are?”
“No more than two, maybe three, hours. The wagon must’ve slowed them down. There’s no way on earth to get a mule to move faster’n a walk when he’s hauling somethin’ behind him.”
They moved back to the fire. Lee sat; Ben hunkered down next to her. “I guess our days will turn over now—we’ll need to rest during the day and do our work at night.”
“Except for tonight, of course,” she said.
The quarter moon was pale; the hard-edged shadows of late night had not yet arrived.
“Light ain’t bad,” Ben observed.
There was a pause between them, and it was as if the air itself was charged with urgency.
“My uncle Noah used to say, ‘Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.’”
Ben grinned in the firelight. “He was a smart man, your uncle.”
Lee grinned back. “Let’s saddle up. We’re wasting time.”
The gang wasn’t more than six or seven miles ahead of them. Ben and Lee placed themselves in position, using the outlaws’ camp as a focal point, and rode toward it.
The first round from Ben’s rifle caused an almost volcanic eruption in the center of the still-blazing fire the outlaws had built. Men reached for their side arms and rifles, instinctively rolling, stumbling, or crawling away from the light of the fire. Stone was
on his feet, rifle to his shoulder, laying down sustained fire into the darkness as rapidly as he could jack the lever. Pistol shots banged around him, the positions of the outlaws momentarily revealed by the white-orange flame of muzzle flashes.
Ben scrambled away from his original vantage point, keeping low and holding his fire. Bullets ripped through the night air, their sibilant buzzing as frightening as a rattler’s warning. When Ben heard hoofbeats pounding toward him from behind, he began firing again until the click of metal against metal told him the rifle was empty. He dropped the rifle, and his pistol was in his hand before the long gun touched the earth. He zigzagged without a pattern, not allowing Stone or his men to draw a bead on him.
Lee rode bent forward, her head inches above Dancer’s neck, with the reins in her left hand and the pistol in her right. Dancer seemed to float over the prairie surface, swerving smoothly from one side to the other without a misstep, cued by Lee’s knees and lower legs. As she raced past Ben, his form, crouched and feeding shells into his rifle, registered for a fraction of a second and then was swept behind her.
Dancer covered the ground to the gunshot-ridden chaos around the fire like a wraith. The outlaws, Lee and Ben had discovered earlier as they’d watched the movement of the gang, had placed a single man to guard their horses fifty yards away from the fire. Lee saw the vague outline of the animals ahead of her and then, suddenly, the muzzle flash of the guard’s pistol. The flame looked big and hot away from the light of the campfire, and Lee swung Dancer sharply away from the burst of light as a slug hissed past her shoulder.
The outlaw fired again, and again she heard hot lead whisper past her. She fired twice toward the outlaw, not bothering to aim. His third shot responded almost immediately, and she quickly understood that this man was not only sober and alert, but he was also aiming each round toward what he could hear but not quite see. A bullet tugged like cold, probing fingers at the hair held in a shaggy bun at the top of her head. She threw another unaimed round toward the outlaw and hauled Dancer into a collision course with the flashes from the man’s weapon.
