by Paul Bagdon
The cold nugget of fear that had stirred in her stomach with the first shot now grew to an uncontrollable, arctic chill that launched a shiver throughout her body and sent electric tingles to her limbs. The curses and shouts of the outlaws and the barrage of bullets became to her a mélange of fear and death, and she felt as if she were being dragged through the gates of hell. Dancer missed a stride at the same moment that a burst of yellow-red light flared, followed by a blast of thunder that attacked her like a living thing.
Dancer went down on his left shoulder, and shards of bone and blood slapped Lee’s face like an unexpected burst of hard rain. She kicked out of the stirrups a moment before being slammed against the dirt and scrub of the prairie. Her breath whooshed out of her, and she rolled like a flung rag doll. Both her nostrils began spewing blood. A second ball of light exploded, and she swung her pistol toward it just as the ear-shattering report reached her. She fired two shots rapidly, by instinct, and a quick, high-pitched scream started and stopped within the same second.
“Lee! Are you all right? Lee!”
She struggled to her feet, gasping for breath. Ben hollered “Behind me! Swing up behind me!” at the top of his lungs, and she heard hooves pounding toward her above the continuing gunfire of the outlaws. Snorty swung past her to her left, stretched to a full gallop and turning tightly around her.
“Swing!” Ben shouted, but she already had her arms clamped around his waist, demanding that Snorty’s juggernaut momentum carry her up and onto his back.
“We’ve got to get you a horse!” Ben hollered.
She pointed to the left of where the outlaw had stood. “There! Go!” she demanded, and then, “Wait! Stop! I need my hackamore!”
Ben hauled back on the reins and dragged his horse to a sliding halt. Lee was off Snorty before he was completely stopped, and she ran toward the dark form on the ground that was Dancer.
Tears seared her eyes as she tore the hackamore from Dancer’s destroyed head, his blood warm on her hands. She took a quick moment to stroke the dead horse’s neck, and then Ben and Snorty were by her again. She grabbed Ben’s waist and was behind him on Snorty as if the short break in time—the time in which she’d said good-bye to a horse she’d come to love—had never occurred.
Ben aimed for the center of the group of horses that were tethered along a lariat attached to the wagon at one end and the wooden shaft from the mules’ harness rig at the other. Lee pushed off Snorty’s back as Ben swung away from her toward the campfire. She heard him firing as she stumbled along the line of snorting, wide-eyed horses. A gray, taller than the animals on either side of him, caught her eye. She ran her hands quickly over his back—no saddle sores—and across his chest—good width, decent muscle, but thin, sharp ribs. She untied the line from his halter to the tether. In a moment the hackamore was over his muzzle. Grabbing a handful of mane, she hauled herself onto his back and jammed her heels into his sides. Whether or not he’d been trained to a hackamore, he’d be sure to understand what a quick punch in his side meant.
Lee rode her new mount hard, the balance and skill she’d built up over the years keeping her welded to the horse’s back. She stuffed her pistol—still clutched in her hand as if it were an extension of her wrist—into the deep pocket of her skirt. The gray handled himself well; he was agile and quick around obstacles she couldn’t see until she was past them. But she could feel him failing. Even an animal with heart couldn’t sustain a hard run without the benefit of decent feed.
Where is Ben?
Lee checked her horse’s run, unsure if he was responding to the hackamore or if he was simply unable to continue the headlong gallop. His wheezing told her he was very tired, but the taut muscles of his chest and behind his withers promised he’d go on if she demanded he do so. Easing him into a jog and scribing a wide circle, she ended up facing in the direction from which she’d come. There was no more gunfire, but she heard hoofbeats coming toward her. Her pistol was empty, and the cartridges Ben had given her were in Dancer’s saddlebags.
If it was one of the outlaws coming after her and she called to him or even gave some sort of signal, she’d be dead in seconds. But if she didn’t call out and it was Ben, he could ride right past her and continue searching for her until it was light. She couldn’t let that happen. She and Ben needed rest badly, and the mount she’d just stolen was not far from caving in.
She let the galloping horse draw closer and then yelled out, “Ben! Over here!” Almost immediately the rhythm of the hoofbeats changed tempo and turned more directly toward where she sat on her exhausted horse. She closed her eyes and prayed for deliverance if the approaching rider was not Ben Flood.
When he called out to her with panic in his voice, she answered with another yell. He was beside her in a moment. He took her into his arms from atop his horse, and she leaned into his embrace from her mount. Her body shook almost spastically as she clung to him. Once the tears began, she choked and coughed and let them flow, knowing there was no way she could stop them.
“You let a Bible-thumper an’ a woman raid the camp, an’ you didn’t get either one of them—an’ then you let them steal one of our horses?” Stone sprayed saliva as he ranted. He began pacing rapidly through the group of men, who parted as he approached them, giving him plenty of room. None of them met his eyes; they knew better than to do that.
“What happened to the lookouts? Where’s that useless baggage Charlie, who was supposed to be watchin’ the horses?” He glared at the men. “Charlie! Charlie, git over here an’ face me like a man!” He moved a few steps closer to the fire.
“Charlie, he caught a bullet, Boss,” a voice from the group said.
“Dead?” Stone demanded.
“Yeah. The Sharp’s is all busted up too. The slug musta hit it an’ blew it up in his face. He was on the ground, an’ he—”
Stone yelled and threw up his hands in despair, cutting off the outlaws with his motion, as if he’d received the worst possible news he’d ever heard. The men looked stunned. Their leader never reacted to death—anyone’s death—in such a manner. Gang members had died in robberies and barroom gunfights, and Stone himself had killed more than a few of them, but he’d never paid any more attention to a bloody death than he would to stepping on an ant.
Stone stood for a long time, looking down at the dirt between his boots, not speaking. The men looked increasingly more nervous, as if this was a side of their leader they’d never experienced. Finally, Stone broke the tense silence.
“My Sharp’s is wrecked. That voodoo man busted up my Sharp’s.”
They sat at the side of the stream they’d left a few hours earlier. False dawn was creeping into the sky in the east. Lee was shaky, feeling hollow, as if the life had been drained from her.
“I hit the man, Ben. I fired at him and I hit him.”
Ben waited a moment before answering. “You had no choice. He was tryin’ to kill you. He’d just killed a fine horse tryin’ to put a bullet in you. He was shootin’ at you with the most powerful rifle ever made.”
He stood and faced her, reaching down to lock his hands on her shoulders and forcing her to meet his eyes. “You didn’t set out to kill that man—an’ you don’t know for sure that you did kill him.”
“He’s dead. When I went back to get my hackamore, his body was still there—right where he fell when I shot him.”
Ben released Lee’s shoulders and hunkered down next to her, taking her hand. “Let’s pray,” he said gently. Lee swallowed hard and then nodded.
“Lord,” he began, “we’re right up against it. We need your help and guidance more than either of us ever has before. Your daughter Lee may have taken a life in what we believe is a just and righteous quest. She ain’t a killer, Lord, an’ I know you recognize that. I ask you to come to her now and make your divine presence felt—an’ send her away from here an’ back to Burnt Rock if that’s what’s best for her. The responsibility for what happened last night is mine, not hers. I s
houlda never let her—”
“Please, Ben, don’t,” Lee whispered, her head still bowed. She prayed to herself silently. Then she forced all thoughts from her mind and let herself become completely open to God’s counsel. Almost immediately, her shoulders relaxed and the cold knot in her heart eased. She felt warm and whole.
She didn’t realize how tightly she’d been hanging on to Ben’s hand until she released the pressure. But she didn’t open her eyes yet.
“I acted on my own when I demanded to come with you to stop Stone’s gang,” she said. Her voice was low. “Pray for strength and speed, Ben, and ask that the Lord protect us as we go on—together.”
After a moment, Ben continued. “We ask your help, Lord. We beg you to ride with us, that you keep your hands on us as we do this thing that we believe must be done. Amen.”
When a long moment of comfortable silence ended, he stood and stretched. “You gotta get some sleep now. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
“Back? Where do you think you’re going without me?”
Ben grinned. “I ain’t gonna have you ridin’ that sawback you picked up last night without a saddle.” He held up his palms to her as if to stave off the tirade he knew was coming. “I know, I know—you learned to ride bareback as a kid an’ you’re just as comfortable without a saddle an’ all that. Thing is, I don’t care. I want you to have some leather to grab if you need to. You get some rest.”
“Rest? How in the world do you think I’ll be able to rest? You think Stone will hand over a saddle if you tell him we’re one short?”
“He will if I ask him nice an’ polite. You get some sleep, OK?”
Ben headed off at a lope, Snorty working well under him and covering ground quickly but without undue exertion. He was sure Stone’s gang had moved on, but nevertheless, he drew rein a good mile from where he estimated Dancer’s corpse to be and went in that direction on foot. He scanned the prairie in all four directions as he walked, ready to throw himself to the ground if Stone had set up an ambush. Above him, buzzards were gathering, swinging lazy quarter-mile-long ovals in the sky, their harsh screee! the only sound that reached his ears.
Ben looked at Dancer as little as possible as he unfastened the girth and tugged the saddle off the dead animal’s back. The left stirrup was under Dancer’s side, and Ben dug in the dirt with his hands before using all his strength to haul the stirrup and fender free.
The large group of buzzards had separated into two distinct flocks of fifteen or twenty each. One cluster was circling over where the outlaws’ camp had been, while the other stayed above Ben and the dead horse. Ben set the saddle aside, wiped sweat from his face, and strode to where the gunman would have been standing. It was impossible to miss the location of the body; the vultures were beginning to descend in twos and threes.
From where he stood, Ben saw both the body and the singed barrel of the Sharp’s rifle split its full length. The lever mechanism of the buffalo gun was angled upward, blown and twisted from its original position by the explosion of Lee’s bullet striking the firing chamber. The stock was splintered and blackened.
Ben stood looking at the dead outlaw longer than he needed to. The corpse’s left arm was extended, and the hand was a perfect thing, its fingers curling easily toward the palm.
He collected the saddle and walked back to where he’d left Snorty.
* * *
10
* * *
There were too many of them, and they were riding too fast for him to lead them with his rifle. Their gunfire was constant, one report part of another so that it sounded as if a Gatling gun was trained on his and Lee’s camp. Bullets whined past him like tiny comets, striking rocks and careening off into the night with high-pitched screams.
She was standing with his pistol in one hand and the rusted, broken weapon she’d taken from the dead outlaw’s saddlebag in the other, firing at the riders. Their slugs spit past her face, touching her hair and her clothing. He yelled at her to get down, but she didn’t seem to hear.
Now her guns were empty, but she continued pulling the triggers. He worked the lever of his rifle, and the mechanism stuck in midstroke. As he tugged at it, the metal stretched like still-warm taffy. At the same time, the blued-steel barrel drooped toward the ground, hanging from the wooden stock like a length of old rope.
She was still standing, but now she was crying, choking out heart-wrenching sobs that hurt him more than any outlaw bullet would have. She was calling to him, gasping his name, but he couldn’t move. The barrel of his rifle had wrapped itself around his boots, and his upper body was numb and lifeless, as if his limbs were no longer attached to him, as if they existed somewhere far away from him. She called again and again . . .
“Ben! Ben!”
Someone was shaking his shoulder. He screamed again, his legs kicking and his body writhing. He opened his eyes and stared around, wide-eyed, without really seeing, his mind spinning with the images and the raw fear of the dream. He pulled a sleeve across his sweat-drenched face and attempted to speak, but his tongue was stuck in the dryness of his mouth. He swallowed to generate saliva and then croaked to Lee, “I’m OK. Jus’ a bad dream.”
“It must have been real bad. I was sound asleep, and then I heard you scrambling around in the dirt. I didn’t know what to think.”
Ben stood shakily, looking for his pistol in the stingy light of the new moon. He found the gun ten feet away, where apparently it’d been kicked as he’d thrashed around. He remembered going to sleep with the tips of his right fingers touching the grips.
Lee moved to his side. “Want to tell me about it?” she asked softly.
He shook his head. “Doesn’t warrant telling,” he said. “Kid stuff is all it was.”
He picked up a stick and poked at the small fire they’d built earlier in the day. He’d killed and cooked a rabbit, and then they’d slept the day away in the sparse shade of a cluster of mesquite and desert pine.
“I had kind of a bad one too, during the day,” Lee said. “About Dancer and how he went down.”
He nodded. “This whole thing is gonna give us bad dreams for a while.” After a moment, he added, “We better get ready to ride. I want to get those men to the point where they’re afraid to see the sun start to go down ’cause of what they know is coming when it does.”
“They’ll have more guards posted tonight, won’t they?”
“That’s the thing. We have no way of knowing what Stone will do. Any normal man would double his lookouts, maybe even have an outrider circle the camp all night. Maybe he’ll do that. Maybe he won’t. It’s like tryin’ to guess which way a scalded cat’s gonna run.”
“What can we do, then?”
Ben gripped her hand for a second, and then released it. “Nothin’ says we can’t be crazier than they are.”
There were two fires, about fifty or so feet apart. Even from where they sat on their horses a couple of miles out, Lee and Ben could see the orange-red tongues of flame.
“I’ve got an idea,” Ben said quietly. “We can’t hit them like we did last night, and we got to assume they have at least a couple sober lookouts around. What I need you to do is hold tight until you hear shooting, and then ride in closer and put as much lead in the air as you possibly can. Don’t get within pistol range. Afterward, you ride hard this way. If we can’t find each other tonight, we will in the mornin’. An’ remember what I said about stayin’ out of range. Hear?”
“But suppose—”
“No supposin’. You do like I say this time out.”
Lee began to speak, but Ben put his hand on her shoulder, silencing her. “We ain’t got time for this.”
“I don’t even know what you plan to do!” she protested.
“I’m pretty sure if I told you what I’m up to, you wouldn’t like it much. You got to trust me a little here. OK?”
She nodded, and then, not sure if Ben had seen her head move in the darkness, said “OK.”
Ben leaned to his side from his saddle and kissed her. She was surprised by the kiss, and he seemed a bit surprised too. But it was very much welcome. Her hand found its way to the back of his neck. He moved his mouth from hers and put his face next to her head. Snorty shifted his rump a bit, and the two moved apart.
Ben clucked to Snorty, and the horse took a stride away from the gray Lee was riding. “All set?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He tapped Snorty with his heels, riding off to one side, away from both her and the fires. She set her horse ahead at a walk, the pistol in her right hand and the reins in her left. After a few yards, she stopped, reached back into her saddlebag, and removed some cartridges. She placed six of them between her lips, holding the bullet ends lightly between her teeth. She could hear the light drumming of Snorty’s hooves, and she cringed each time one of his shoes struck a stone; the ringing clanged in her head like an alarm bell.
Ben reached into his saddlebag and whispered a quick prayer of gratitude that Nick had loaded him up so well with ammunition. There wasn’t much light, which was both good and bad. The outlaws would have more trouble seeing him and Lee, but, on the other hand, the floor of the prairie could be dangerous—fatal—at a gallop. The risk, he decided, was one he had to take.
In less than an hour, he was behind the fires, watching the flames reach into the sky ahead of him. As he jogged Snorty closer, his shoulder and back muscles tensed; he could almost feel the cold blue rifle sights moving with him, past him, and then back to him as an outlaw tracked him by sound and eased the trigger back.
