Sweeney helped him with the body, and then they unloaded the hooch from the burro and shut him in the corral for the time being. They unhitched their three horses and settled them in the barn where they discovered Vince’s horse. He was an old bangtail gelding, a solid blue roan, and hungry looking. Sweeney grained him good and set out hay and fresh, clear water for the horses and the burro.
Blue kept an eye on them, as if monitoring the proceedings.
After they’d taken care of the horses, Monahan took pity on Sweeney. “All right. Back to the saloon, again.”
They started across the road, and Sweeney, who hadn’t said much in the last hour or so, asked, “What the hell just happened?”
Monahan slid him a glance, like he was looking at an idiot. “We just took care of the stock, Butch.”
Sweeney grumbled, “I’m talking about the whole thing, Dooley.”
They gained the other side of the street and the saloon. Flies were already crawling over the dead man’s face and were thick on the bloody head. Sweeney looked away and stepped through the batwing doors. He went to his chair, sat down, and faced Monahan. “Dooley? You gonna tell me, or what?”
“Don’t know exactly what it is you want me to tell you, son.”
Sweeney raised his voice in frustration. “What just happened, and why, and how come we’re any of us still alive?”
Julia, still sitting where they’d left her, put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes closed.
Monahan lay his head down on the floor—well, leastwise on his saddle, which was serving as a pillow, as usual—and closed his eyes. They had done what they had come to do, and he couldn’t make it more simple that that. He was still alive and Vince George was out front, drawing flies, and that was nothing more than a whim of fate. One of the fates had chosen to smile upon Monahan for a change.
It was not often fate shrugged off a whim in his direction, especially in his favor, and he intended to sit back and enjoy it while he could. He had explained it to Sweeney the best and only way he knew how, and the boy had accepted it. The girl had been easier. He didn’t have to tell her anything. She had just closed her eyes in that woman way—he didn’t know how else to describe it—and it was understood, just like that.
On the other hand, Sweeney had seemed to accept it, but he was still sitting up at a table, nursing a bourbon and contemplating the night sky through the open doors.
Oh well, Dooley thought. Whether he can fathom it or not, it’s done. And I’m goin’ to sleep. He settled himself more comfortably on the floor, wondering that he’d remembered a big chunk of his past—a miracle in its own right—and had scored a victory over a demon from it.
He gave his head a little shake, snorted out air, and pulled his hat down over his eyes. It was May the second, a day to remember, all right.
Dev and Alf Baylor rode into Yuma, stopping just long enough to pick up word about travelers fitting the descriptions of Monahan and his friends, right down to the dog, and to spot an old “friend” in the prison yard.
Alf was about to call out and raise his arm in greeting—and alert everyone in the surrounding area that they were on the owlhoot trail—but Dev stopped him just in time.
Alf never made things any easier.
He was running true to form an hour later when they ran across a fellow’s campsite between the side of the road—which had petered out into a trail by then—and the river. He was a big fellow, cooking his beans and didn’t seem happy to see them.
Alf rode right over and slid down off his horse. “Howdy!” he said, holding out his hand.
Dev cringed, remembering advice he’d heard from someone, somewhere. Never, never offer your hand to a stranger, for reasons too obvious to go into.
Luckily, the stranger ignored Alf’s offer. “If you boys’re plannin’ to rob me, you’re gonna be plumb disappointed.”
“No, sir,” Dev answered right off. Unlike his brother, he had wisely stayed mounted. “Didn’t even plan to stop. Sorry to bother you. C’mon, Alf.”
Alf simply sank down onto his heels and asked, “You run across an old geezer name o’ Monahan? He’s ridin’ with a young feller and a gal—she’s just a kid—and some kinda dog? Got word they were headed down this way.” Having finished his speech, he smiled in self-congratulation.
The man looked up. “Your friend call you Alf? That your name?”
Alf nodded.
“Well, it’s like this, Alf. They’re headed down to a little wide spot in the road called Heber’s Kiss. Probably there already. You find ’em before me, you can do whatever you want with ’em, but leave the girl be. She’s mine.”
The chilling tone sent ice shooting down Dev’s spine and clear to the bottom of his boots . . . but was completely lost on Alf.
Dev wondered what on earth the girl was to the man—kin or hired help? He was pretty intense for her to be just hired help, though. She wasn’t somebody just doing his dishes or sweeping his floors. Mayhap she was a runaway. “We’ll leave the gal be, mister. Got no quarrel with her.”
The big man nodded. “Name’s Smithers. Kirby Smithers.”
Dev nodded in acknowledgement. “We’re the Baylors. I’m Dev. This is—”
“Alf!” he cried, jumping to his feet.
“And Alf,” Dev repeated, shaking his head slowly.
Kirby Smithers hiked a brow, but said nothing.
He had been grossly misnamed, Dev thought, with uncharacteristic sympathy. What kind of parents would give the moniker of traveling notions salesman to a rough fellow better suited to busting broncs or wrestling steers than to promenading a poodle in the park somewhere?
“C’mon, Alf,” he said. “Let’s leave Mr. Smithers alone.”
“But, Dev—”
“Now, Alf.”
Reluctantly, Alf remounted and tipped his hat to Smithers, who did little more than scowl.
“Thank you kindly,” Dev said. “We’ll heed your advice about the girl.”
“You’d better,” growled Smithers, turning his attention back to his cook fire.
“Dev?” Alf asked in a strained voice when they were a decent way off from Smithers’ camp. “How come we couldn’t eat? He was makin’ stew!”
“’Cause he didn’t ask us, that’s why. And we can make our own damn stew,” Dev said, still puzzling over why Smithers was trailing that girl child.
“But have we got any meat? I can shoot some, I think. Can you shoot a fish? Or mayhap we could have frog stew. I hear ’em croakin’ out there!”
Dev closed his eyes for a moment. “There’s ham in my saddlebags. Just shut the hell up and keep ridin’. I mean it!”
21
The next morning Monahan woke early as usual, and tended the horses while Julia and Sweeney were still asleep. Everything was fine outside, except for the burro. He’d apparently taken exception to the horses, and had climbed up on top of the straw mound to sleep. How he’d gotten up there, Monahan couldn’t figure, but he sure had a dickens of a time talking him down.
By the time he’d finished feeding and watering, Blue was carrying on something awful to rush him along. The dog wanted breakfast right that minute, and Monahan couldn’t say as how he blamed him. The day before had been long and he figured they all were past peckish.
He walked past the corpse out front, just beginning to bloat, and went inside with Blue tagging his heels. Sweeney was awake and sitting up in a chair, but Julia was nowhere in sight. Monahan’s face wrinkled. “Where’s—”
“She found the kitchen. Says it ain’t nothin’ to brag on, but it’ll do,” Sweeney broke in.
At the sound of a bang, they turned toward the back room. A muffled female curse followed, and they turned back toward each other again.
Monahan asked, “You reckon she found a pump back there, too?”
“Must’ve. She said as how she’s makin’ coffee.”
It was good news to his ears, because it meant he was off the hook for making breakfast. He co
llapsed into a chair, rolled a smoke, lit it, and leaned back. It was a good morning for reflection.
“I was born and raised up on my family’s farm in Iowa,” he began, addressing no one in particular. “They were the Monahans, David and Janine, and they came from Pennsylvania. When I was about twenty, I rode south, toward the Missouri border, to pick up a new milk cow for my ma, except I got waylaid by bad company . . . .”
He rambled on through the years, about Monty’s Raiders and Kathy and the chain gang and all the rest that he remembered—or at least, from what Buckshot Bob had told him. Sweeney had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and let the old man talk himself out, talk it dry and to the bone, and say it all while he remembered it as clear as he was ever going to.
He ended with the burro up on the big pile of straw outside, and the body swelling up in front of the saloon, and then he knit his fingers together behind his head. “And that’s the end of the story.”
“Not yet, it ain’t,” said a cocky young female, who’d entered the main room of the saloon along with the tantalizing scent of fried ham. She rounded the end of the bar, a plate in each hand, and slid them onto the table. “There you go. Fried ham out of a can and some good canned tomatoes I found in the back. Not much to choose from, but then, I figure beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll get the coffee.”
The men didn’t waste any time. They dug right in, and boy, it was good! In fact, Monahan didn’t miss having potatoes or toast one bit. Julia brought out the coffee and her own plate and joined them for the rest of the meal.
Monahan was feeling so chipper he thought he might give old Vince a semblance of a burial today. After all, nothing else was apt to pull his attention away from it. He verbalized the notion to the other two.
“It’s about time,” Julia said flatly.
“Be glad to lend you a hand, Dooley.”
Monahan ignored Julia, but said, “I’d be right appreciative there, Butch. After we let breakfast settle a mite?”
“Sounds good to me.” Sweeney pushed away his empty plate, polished off his cup of coffee, and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed over his belly. “I could use a nap.”
“Quit statin’ the obvious.” Julia was clearing the table, and snatched up Sweeney’s plate and mug. “You’re practically facedown in your coffee, you slug.”
“Stop it.” Monahan said, hands raised, before they could start in. “Just hold on.”
Julia, hands full of dirty dishes, walked back around the bar and threw Sweeney a dirty look before she disappeared into the back room.
Monahan and Sweeney were out front, digging the grave, when Julia heard a shot. Alarmed, she started to run out the front of the saloon but was stopped by the old cowboy’s warning shout.
On the ground by the half-dug grave, Sweeney was bleeding. He tried to roll closer to Monahan, who’d managed to roll close to the saloon steps, and was tucked under the narrow lip of the walk.
A second shot missed Sweeney by a foot, but cut a groove into the dirt near his head. He held mostly still after that, but managed to get his gun drawn. He held it low, hugged next to his body.
Julia ran for Monahan’s rifle, which he’d left in the saloon with his saddlebags. She wrestled it free, and quickly locked the building’s back door. Back up to the front, she cocked the rifle and stood at the ready.
And then, nothing happened.
She waited a tense five minutes before she whispered, “Where are they, Dooley?”
A hand slowly rose up from below, at the edge of the walk. It pointed behind her and behind the saloon, then sank back down.
She furrowed her brow. After another quick look around, she softly called the dog. “Blue?”
There was an understated noise, something like a mumbled bark, before the dog entered the saloon by slinking under the batwing doors, setting one of them slightly swinging. Before she knew it, he was pushing his head into her hands. It was hard to take it and hold the rifle at the same time, but she managed. She dropped her head down toward his and whispered, “Who’s out there, Blue? Who’s shootin’ at us?”
Blue licked her face, but didn’t answer her.
She heard a noise from the back of the building. Blue did, too, because he started to growl, low and menacing. The noise was coming from the door she’d just locked. Somebody was trying to break in!
Quickly, she shifted herself and the dog. She leaned back against the front wall and rested the rifle on her knees. She had a straight shot down the back hall to the rear door. Whether he broke the latch or busted in the lone window in the storage room off to the right and crawled in that way, whoever it was would have to walk up that short little hall, and she was convinced he wouldn’t live to get to the end of it.
She might have been only thirteen, but she was bound and determined to be a hundred years’ worth of trouble to anyone who tried to mess with her. Or Dooley, or Butch, or Blue.
From outside, she heard Monahan loudly whisper, “Julia! Julie girl!” and turned toward the sound. There was nothing but wall behind her. To peek under the doors, she’d have to scoot over seven, maybe eight feet, but didn’t want to take her eyes off that back hall.
So she sat where she was, eyes pinned to the rear of the building, and hissed, “What?”
“Julia! Whatever you do, don’t—”
Bang! The door burst in. Julia steadied her aim and squeezed the trigger. But the form kept coming at her, and she had to repeat the process.
Blue leaped up and raced toward the crumpled form halfway down the back hall, barking and snarling.
From out front, came Dooley’s whispered, “What the hell’s happenin’ in there?”
“Got ’im!” she almost shouted.
“Got who?”
“Dunno. One of ’em, anyway.” She started to stand, but Dooley’s voice stopped her.
“Don’t move!” came the whispered call, more along the order of a croak.
Julia slumped back to her former position, got the rifle settled on her knees again, then called the dog. He came and she pulled him close, even though he had a bloody front from nosing the corpse. “This time you stay here no matter what,” she said, soft and low.
“I love you, you big dope,” she whispered, one arm around the dog and the other steadying the rifle. “Don’t you go runnin’ between me and that hall. I’m dangerous!”
According to Monahan’s figuring, the remaining Baylor boy was still around the side of the building, biding his time. He could be six inches from the front or six inches from the back, or anywhere in between. And on either side of the building! But wherever he was, Monahan hoped the petty outlaw had heard Julia say she’d killed his brother.
Sweeney was still lying near the grave; leastwise, the beginnings of it. But he was all right, thank God. He had signaled Monahan with his eyes just before that Baylor had taken his last shot.
“Pssst!”
Monahan looked toward the source of the sound.
Sweeney whispered, “He’s walked around the back o’ the saloon. Tell Julia.”
“You coulda told her yourself!”
Butch scowled. “You’re closer.”
“Aw, criminy!” Dooley turned toward the saloon, raised his head, and called out to the girl, again. “Julia! He’s comin’ your way.”
She didn’t answer.
He was about to call to her again when the rifle barked, followed shortly by a pistol shot, followed immediately by another blast from the rifle, and then . . . nothing.
Monahan started to sit straight up, banged his forehead on the walk’s overhang, readjusted, then sat up all the way. “Julia!” he called, rubbing his head. He wondered which astrology sign covered the head, because he was surely bound and determined to bang his up. Wasn’t there a woman up in . . . somewhere, he forgot where . . . who’d drawn up his chart one time? Hadn’t she said . . . He pulled himself back to the present. “Julie, honey, you hear me?”
Preceded by a soft whoosh of parting a
ir, an arrow dug into the dirt not a foot and a half from him. He jumped to the side, but his panic wasn’t long-lived. It turned into downright terror when he realized the arrow piercing the dirt too near him was Apache in origin, just like the next that came whizzing in and sank effortlessly into the hard, clay soil next to it.
Inside, Julia sat in the same place. Wide-eyed, her expression momentarily frozen with shock, her fingers were laced through the thick coat on the dog’s neck and locked into place. Blue had attempted to cross the room after the second rifle shot, but her hand had stilled him.
Down the hall lay the Baylors, sprawled over each other in a dark, back-lit heap. The second one had come in quick, but she’d been ready. He had fired, but he hadn’t hit anything except for an old slate, hung up when the saloon had pretended to offer food.
Her second shot had been the lucky one. Well, lucky for her. She supposed it depended on which end of the lead she was on. She’d been on the fortunate side.
But he wasn’t dead yet. One leg, bent at the knee, kept thumping against the wall. She wasn’t going to go check him, and she couldn’t unlock her fingers from the dog’s coat so that he could go, which he was getting pretty insistent about.
She finally found her voice, and over the dog’s fussing, she called, “I’m all right. But he’s not dead! What do I do?”
Monahan didn’t whisper any longer. “Just keep shootin’ till he stops doin’ whatever it is that’s got you worried.”
“C-can you do it?” For the first time, terror began to seep into her voice. She hadn’t realized how very frightened she was, and the realization only served to frighten her even more.
Monahan didn’t answer her. His attention was drawn elsewhere. “Can you move?” he hissed at Sweeney, who had eyes for nothing but the twin arrows.
“Th-think so,” Sweeney stammered. “I mean, don’t we gotta?”
“Start crawlin’ up toward the steps.”
The young cowboy made slow progress, and when he reached the two steps up to the boardwalk, he took them on his belly. It wasn’t that he was a coward: he just didn’t like to take unnecessary chances. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.
The Trail West Page 16
