by Ralph Cotton
“Look at him,” Manning said to Hardin, nodding toward Orez. “I believe he’s crazy as a blind cricket.” He shook his head. “If only I’d seen it before.”
“It’s never too late to turn away,” Hardin replied quietly. “To tell you the truth, seeing what he did gave me the willies.”
“Really? The willies?” Manning just looked at him curiously. “I wouldn’t go so far as to admit that if I was you. Lucky for you nobody can hear it, except me.”
Hardin looked a little embarrassed.
“I don’t mean it gives me the wild, screaming, jerk-my-hair-out-by-the-roots willies,” he said. “Just the plain ol’ willies, is all.” He shrugged.
“Just call it unsettling,” Manning suggested, “and let it go at that.”
Hardin nodded. He took in a breath and let it out.
“All right,” he said. “It was unsettling.”
“I knew a man who bounty-hunted Apache scalps for the Mex government back in forty-eight, forty-nine,” said Manning. “He said the red savages would do stuff like this to the bodies when they got their hands on a white man. Even worse with a white woman.”
“I’ve heard that myself,” Hardin said. “But damn!” He shook his head and stared off at Orez.
“It’s meant to scare people,” Manning said. He gave a dark chuckle. “Looks like it worked pretty well in your case.”
“All right, damn it, it was a mistake saying it gave me the willies,” Hardin said beneath his dripping hat brim. “But I’ve never seen a white man do something like I saw him doing to those dead men, have you?”
“No,” said Manning, “I admit I haven’t.”
“He looked like some blood-sated fiend out there,” said Hardin in grizzly reflection, “cutting, hacking, slashing them corpses that way, throwing parts of them around like they were a slaughter beast.” He drew up tighter in his wet rain slicker. “Oh yes, that was most unsettling. No sane white man would do something like that.”
“That wasn’t his white blood behind any of that,” Manning said. “That was his wild bloodthirsty Apache side stirring him up, getting the best of him.” Staring out, he watched Orez turn around and step down onto a slick path leading back from the lookout point he’d found. “I expect a man who has mixed blood, sooner or later the savage blood boils over, makes him as wild and as savage as the ones he sprung from.”
“Yeah,” said Hardin, pondering the matter, watching Orez make his way toward them through the pouring rain. “They say the moon has lots to do with it too,” he said. A full yellow moon drives folks crazy. A blue moon makes them do things they would never do.”
“What about a red moon?” Manning asked.
“A red moon brings out the killing,” said Hardin. “They say folks commence to killing free and easy on a red moon, especially these frontier savages. They can’t stop themselves.”
“I’ve heard that but I’ve never believed it,” said Manning.
“I’m afraid to say I don’t believe it,” Hardin said.
“Afraid?” Manning grinned. “I never knew you was so easily unsettled and worrisome of mind. Now I’m hearing you’re superstitious, to boot?” he chuckled.
The two watched Orez step in under the overhang in a crouch and stoop down beside Rosa Dulce.
“I’m not superstitious,” said Hardin. “I just don’t like tempting fate against me.”
“If you think fate can be tempted for or against you, that’s about as superstitious as you can get,” said Manning.
“Have it your way, Freeman,” Hardin said, shutting up on the matter. “I don’t like talking about fate either.”
“Jesus,” said Manning with a chuckle under his breath.
“Speaking of fate,” Hardin said, “here comes ours right now.”
The two watched as Orez stood and walked toward them on a slim path along the hillside. Neither of them said another word until Orez stopped and stood over them, holding his rifle cradled in the crook of his arm.
“Are you two ready to rob a bank?” he said flatly.
“Well, hell yes,” Manning replied with a grin. “We’re always ready to rob a bank. “Where? What have you got in mind?”
“Trade City said Orez. “It’s less than a two-hour ride from here. Right across the border.”
“Comercio el Pueblo,” Manning said, repeating the Mexican town’s name in Spanish. “Sounds damn good to us,” said Manning. He looked at Hardin.
“Ain’t Trade City the Mexican town the rail spur set up last year?”
“Yes, it is,” said Manning. “But it’s more Texan than it is Mexican. That’s why there’s money there.” He stood, brushing the seat of his damp trousers. “It’s about time somebody nailed their bank. It’s fat with railroad and cattle cash, trade money from both sides of the border.”
Hardin stood up and grinned.
“Then we owe it to ourselves to rob it,” he said. He looked at Orez. “I say let’s do it first thing.”
“Good,” said Orez, “we’ll be there by midafternoon if we ride hard.”
“Whoa!” said Manning. “You mean rob it today, in all this rain?”
“Yes,” said Orez. “They won’t be expecting to get robbed in weather like this.”
“I can see why they wouldn’t expect it,” said Manning, looking up and all around at the dark sky, the flicker of lightning in the distance. “I have to say I’m a little taken aback by the notion.”
“It’s not a notion,” Orez said. “We’re doing it. Both of you get your horses. We’re headed there.”
“What about her?” Hardin asked, nodding toward Rosa Dulce.
“What about her?” Orez asked sharply.
“Where is she going be while we’re robbing the bank?” Hardin asked.
“Don’t worry about her,” said Orez. “She’s with me now. She’ll do what I say.”
Chapter 13
Riding abreast through three inches of lying floodwater, the four had ridden less than an hour when the black-streaked sky overhead turned dead calm. The rain stopped as fast as an off-turned water spigot. The wind seemed to be grabbed by some mighty and unseen hand and drawn backward across the wet tortured terrain. The change came so strong and sudden, Wilson Orez brought his bay to a short abrupt halt and stared at the black distant sky. Beside him, Rosa Dulce stopped too. So did Manning and Hardin.
“Now, this just suits the living hell out of me,” Manning commented, taking off his wet hat, slapping it against his thigh. “What about you, Evan?”
“It pleases my soul plumb down to its sap,” Hardin said, unbuttoning the top two buttons of his slicker and fanning air inside it. “It stopped so fast my ears popped.”
“Mine did too, come to think of it,” said Manning.
The two gunmen looked to Orez for a comment. But the leader sat staring straight ahead, stone-faced, his head cocked a bit toward a deep steady rumble in the distance.
Seeing his attention was drawn to a rising swirl over the curve of the horizon, Manning and Hardin listened too. Beside Orez, Rosa Dulce sat staring with a look of terror on her face, edging her horse away from Orez as if prepared to make a getaway.
“We must be closer to the new rail spur than I thought,” said Manning. “I can hear a train from here.”
“They haven’t started building on the new spur yet,” Orez said without looking around. Rosa’s horse reared slightly, nervous, feeling the fear of its rider. Beneath Orez his big bay turned restless. He held it firmly by its reins.
“It ain’t built yet?” Manning laughed and put his hat back on. His horse also grew anxious, agitated, and back-stepped against its reins. “Then somebody’d better tell that train,” he said, turning his laughter to Hardin beside him. “Because it’s bearing right at us.”
“You see any rail tracks?” Orez asked him flatly, starin
g straight ahead.
“Well, no.” Manning looked all around, confused.
“Damned fool,” Orez said under his breath, sharply cutting his bay to his right. Beside him Rosa had already turned her horse. She batted her feet to its sides out of habit, but her horse had already sensed what was coming and bolted away, wanting no part of it.
“Now, where are those two going?” Manning asked with a bemused chuckle, looking at Hardin. “Are they afraid of trains?”
“Jesus, God Almighty,” said Hardin, “look at that!” He stared at the distant horizon, at a high rise of blackness swirling up into sight.
“Tornado, tornado!” Rosa shouted back at them in her native tongue. Her horse splashed water high around her as the animal ran for a line of hills and cliffs over a mile away, following the direction of Orez atop his horse.
“Tornado?” said Manning, still not catching on. “The hell does she mean?”
“She means run, Freeman!” Hardin shouted, jerking his horse around, batting his heels to its sides.
“Holy God, a twister!” shouted Manning, realization finally striking him like a hammer blow. He nailed his bootheels to the horse’s sides even though the frightened animal needed no goading. The deafening roar of twisting wind tearing its way across flatlands and low hills was enough to send the animal into a full frantic run, splashing muddy water, nickering loudly as it sped away.
“Wait for me, Evan!” Manning shouted, the sound of the twister growing louder, closer, more terrifying behind him.
Ahead of Manning, Hardin barely heard him through the roar of the powerful wind. But he didn’t dare slow down, and he didn’t dare venture a look back over his shoulder. Lying low on his horse, he raced along through the shallow floodwater as if competing on a racetrack. He followed Orez and the woman, barely able to keep them in sight through the muddy spray they left hanging in their wake.
By the time he reached the low hills, the wind roared and howled at his horse’s heels as if pursuing them like some creature of prey. As he neared the shelter of the hills, he felt his hat whip off his head. Swirling wet sand chewed at his neck and his face and pelted his rain slicker like handfuls of tiny darts. Beneath him the horse whinnied as it ran. Hardin felt the wind try to lift him from his saddle; he felt the animal’s rear quarters struggle to keep from flying sideways out from under him.
Somehow he managed to make it onto a thin path up into the rocky hillside, still with no shelter in sight. The wind twisted violently at his back, wrenching harder at him and the horse, the lower tip of the long spinning funnel drawing closer behind them.
“In here!” Orez shouted at Hardin as the fleeing outlaw’s horse became overpowered by the outer perimeter of the twisting wind. It stopped in fear and confusion on the low hillside. Hardin leaped from his saddle but held the horse’s reins. Orez appeared beside him and the two dragged the scared horse along with them behind a large, land-stuck boulder where Hardin saw the woman stretched out on the ground, her horse lying nervously flat beneath her. She held her other arm looped over the neck of Orez’s flattened bay.
“Take your horse down,” Orez shouted at the top of his lungs above the incoming wind.
Hardin felled his horse quickly and lay flat with his head lowered as chunks of cactus and lengths of tree limbs bounced across the top of the large boulder and flew off, twisting wildly up the hillside.
Hardin heard Freeman Manning cry out loudly from the outer edge of the powerful wind, his voice barely audible above the whistling, grinding roar of it. Lying flat, he clung to his horse’s neck and shoulder to hold them both to the ground. He squinted out through the black-gray swirl just in time to see Manning’s horse go rolling and bouncing across the ground just below the hill path, twenty yards away. Following the horse came Manning himself, rolling and bouncing like some strange new species of screaming tumbleweed.
“Over here, Freeman!” Hardin shouted, but it did no good. Manning could neither hear him nor help himself. Hardin watched as his partner spun ten feet in the air, his slicker tails whipping wildly, and flew onto the hillside path. The twisting wind rolled him uphill along the thin trail, past the boulder and his hunkered-down partner.
Orez and the woman stayed flat over their horses, keeping the animals down, keeping themselves low, down out of the wind, Hardin noted. He debated with himself for about two seconds whether or not to try to help Manning. But he put the matter out of his mind, catching a glimpse of Manning bouncing and rolling, seemingly from rock to rock, on his rough tumbling path up the hillside.
“God, no!” Hardin bellowed, and shut his eyes tight, having just witnessed the wind’s appearing to have ripped Manning’s legs from his body against the side of a rock and sent them flying limply upward in the black wind funnel.
There was nothing he could do. He hugged down tight against his horse’s neck, keeping the stunned animal flat to the rocky ground. The horse lay quivering, its legs jerking at times in reflex, as the wind pelted them both with rock, sand and debris. When Hardin ventured to open his eyes, he saw the woman and the two horses lying flat, Orez lying atop them, protecting Rosa from the debris and loose swirl of rocks.
Hearing a long, loud scream, Hardin turned his squinting eyes in time to see Manning rolling back down the hill, bouncing over rock and off the sides of boulders, his legs still in place, but his trousers missing beneath his flapping slicker tails. At the bottom of the hill trail, the wind picked Manning up four feet off the ground and bounced him in place like a child’s rubber ball.
Hardin screamed and buried his face on his horse’s side and lay as if in a trance until at length—he knew not how long—the roar of the wind fell away over the hill and moved on. As suddenly as it had come upon them, it had left, he realized, lying in a white ringing silence.
“Get up, get up, it’s gone,” shouted Orez, nudging his boot toe into his side. Hardin looked up and saw Orez standing over him, his hat gone, his long silver-black hair pressed in strands across his face. Beside Orez, his horse shook itself off. Next to his horse stood the woman and her horse, both of them looking badly shaken.
“Let’s get Manning and get out of here before more twisters come calling,” said Orez.
The three looked down at the bottom of the thin hill trail where Manning had miraculously struggled to his feet and stood turning in a complete circle, his arms outspread, his slicker tails split all the way up his back. His trousers were gone. He stood shakily in his muddy socked feet, his gun belt sagging down his thighs, held loosely by the tie-down string of his holster. When he stopped circling, he looked up at them in his long johns and staggered back and forth mindlessly.
“I’m near ruint here!” he called out in a rasping drunken-sounding voice.
“Jesus, he’s alive,” Hardin said in awe, rising, shaking off sand and gravel and bits of chewed-up cactus.
The three led their horses dizzily down the trail toward where Manning stood staring all around, as if having just arrived in a new and strange place. Fifty yards away his horse came splashing through the shallow floodwater, covered with mud, its saddle hanging half down its side, but looking otherwise uninjured.
“I’m ruint here,” Manning repeated numbly as the three approached him, Hardin swinging wide to intercept his horse and bring it to him.
Straightening the muddy horse’s saddle and adjusting its cinch, Hardin put the reins in Manning’s hand.
“You’re going to be all right, pard,” Hardin said. He guided him up the side of his horse and onto his muddy saddle. “We’ve got to get out of here before another one comes along.”
“Get moving, Manning. We’ve still got a bank to rob,” said Orez, up in his saddle now and straightening out his reins.
“A bank to rob?” said Manning, as if having no idea what Orez was talking about. He looked around, struggling to make sense of things. Rosa sat atop her horse beside him, looki
ng dazed and trembling.
“You heard him, Freeman. Let’s go,” said Hardin. “You’ll feel better in a while.”
• • •
The Ranger had kept himself and the three horses above the thin blanket of muddy floodwater covering the low lands and valley floors. When he’d left the old Killing Grounds Fortress, he’d searched along the wet hillsides until he found the partial, smeared and fading tracks left by the four horses headed south along the badlands border. Only by a stroke of good fortune did he find tracks and scrapings where the party had sheltered out of the rain beneath the cliff overhang. But how long ago had that been?
As soon as he had asked, he saw the dark arch of urine Evan Hardin had left on the inner stone wall. He could see it wasn’t dark wet, but it was still wet enough to be seen. On the floor it had soaked in but left a round dark circle.
“Obliged,” he said under his breath to whoever had stood there relieving himself.
As he turned away and walked the length of the overhang, he had stopped at the far end and stood looking around closely when he noted another short length of dark thread. All right . . . This was no coincidence. He stooped and picked it up and held it between his thumb and finger, studying it.
There was no doubt that the woman had left this unraveled thread intentionally for someone to find. She must have hoped against all odds that whoever saw the words smeared in blood would also find this short piece of raveling where she had dropped it. Sam turned the thread between his fingertips. She had dropped it so subtly that she could have denied doing so had anyone pressed her on the matter. He thought about it. The blood-smeared word on the low edge of the wall had been risky and desperate on her part. But the thread, first on the pallet, now here on this rocky hillside. Here was a woman leaving signs where she had little hope of them ever being found.
She was playing to win, he decided.
Keep it up, he said silently to her, gazing out across the black skies, the sodden, shadowy land. This is how you’ll get away. Keep playing whatever hand you’re dealt. . . . I’ll find you. You have my word. He clutched the piece of thread in his fist.
