.45-Caliber Firebrand

by Peter Brandvold

  Spittle stringed from his lips as he leaned forward to shout mockingly into Michelle’s pain-racked face, his tightly wound braids jostling down the back of his wolf-skin tunic, the banded tips brushing the oak-colored lobes of his naked ass.

  One of the braves at the head of the table cried out suddenly, snapping his head toward Cuno. His grotesquely painted face shown in the growing light pushing through the window, and the beads studding his headband glistened dully. The wild smell of the Indians filled the kitchen with the smell of a bear den.

  Cuno drew a bead on the headband and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. The boom filled the room, causing another jar to shatter on the wooden floor.

  As the first Indian was punched against the brave to his right, the one raping Michelle jerked his dusky, eagle-featured face toward Cuno, his mixed breed’s hazel eyes flashing with exasperation beneath the beaver hat’s narrow curled brim, his lower jaw dropping. Cuno drilled a round through his chest, levered a fresh one, and shot the third brave, who’d turned to run toward the open back door.

  The .44-40 round took him through his right shoulder blade. He yelped and stumbled forward, twisted around and falling.

  The brave who’d been raping Michelle now stood facing Cuno, his back to the window, head turned to one side, stretching his lips back from his teeth as the hole in his chest gushed blood onto his wolf-skin tunic liberally decorated with bone talismans.

  Cuno stepped forward, ejecting a spent round, which bounced off his chest and clattered onto the floor around a massive black cook range. Gritting his teeth, he seated a fresh cartridge and shot the half-naked brave once more in his chest and then pumped one more into his left cheek.

  The rapist’s head slammed back, cracking the window. The beaver hat tumbled off his head. His body spasmed wildly before he sagged forward, knees buckling, and fell face down beneath Michelle’s bare feet dangling down the end of the table.

  Scuffs and grunts sounded at the right end of the kitchen. Cuno moved around the table to the open timbered door. The shoulder-shot brave was half crawling, half running toward the three Indian ponies tied in the cottonwoods near a large, L-shaped pile of split firewood.

  Cuno thumbed fresh rounds into the Winchester’s loading gate. Standing just outside the open door, he coolly raised the rifle to his shoulder and drilled three more quick slugs into the fleeing Indian’s back, on either side of his arrow-filled quiver—slamming him forward into a long, loose run. The brave hit the ground and rolled, groaning and causing the tied ponies to whinny and skitter-hop sideways.

  “Son of a bitch.” Cuno ejected the smoking cartridge casing.

  There was a thump behind him, and Michelle groaned. He wheeled and ran back into the kitchen. The girl was on the floor, crawling on her hands and knees toward the door to the dining room. She was sort of mewling and sobbing. Gooseflesh stood out on the milk-colored skin of her curved, slender back and rounded hips.

  Before Cuno got to her, she fell onto her side, silently sobbing, tears streaking her bruised cheeks. Her split, bloody lips were drawn wide, quivering. She drew her knees up toward her chafed breasts, and pressed her long, pale, bare feet together.

  “Easy now, easy,” Cuno said, looking around. He could hear running feet behind him and men shouting and the whumps of someone trying to put out the fire in the dining room.

  A large denim jacket hung on a nearby wall hook. He rushed over, grabbed it, and threw it over the girl, then set his rifle on the table. Kneeling, he snaked his arms under Michelle’s neck and beneath her knees and rose with her slowly.

  “Easy now, easy, I got you—you’re gonna be okay.” Cuno pushed through the door into the dining room. Henry Kuttner was helping Trent to his feet while two other men from the bunkhouse were ripping the burning drapes down and stomping on them, one beating the flames with chair cushions.

  Cuno realized he’d been in the house probably no more than two minutes. Time had slowed down. That and the smoke and the horror of what he’d witnessed in the kitchen disoriented him. He felt as though he’d taken a war club to the solar plexus.

  Stumbling, he crossed the dining room. Trent wobbled toward him, blood from a nasty gash in his forehead dribbling down his weathered, brick-red face.

  “Oh, Christ—what’d they do to my girl?”

  “Where’s her bed?” Cuno choked.

  Kuttner jerked his head toward the dining room door. “Upstairs!”

  “Oh, no!” Trent wailed, stretching an arthritic hand toward Michelle’s blond head. “What’d they do to her?”

  “What the hell do you think they did to her?” Cuno said with exasperation.

  He had to get the girl to a bed so that someone who knew what they were doing could help her. He could tell from her dimming eyes and her silent, choking sobs that she was probably in shock. The cuts and bruises on her face didn’t look too bad, but she might have taken one hell of a clubbing on top of everything else they’d done to her.

  Cuno started down the hall with Kuttner and Trent trailing him, Trent limping and cursing.

  “Through the parlor!” Trent yelled. “There’s a stairway—closer!”

  One hell of an oddly designed house. The house of a man with a whimsical, independent mind. Cuno turned into the sitting room adorned with a giant bear rug, leather couches, and heavy wooden tables. There was a half-open stairway against the west wall, and Cuno took the steps two at a time.

  Behind him, he heard Trent order Kuttner outside to see to his men and organize a posse to trail the savages to their lair—“and bring back every one of their fucking heads on a stick!”

  At the top of the stairs, Cuno moved down the broad hall, the walls on both sides constructed of square-hewn pine timbers chinked with cement and trimmed with occasional tintypes and oil paintings. Three doors stood ajar, two on either side of the hall and one at the end.

  Likely the one appointed with the pink lamps, a dressing table strewn with perfume bottles and combs, and a frilly canopied bed was Michelle’s. He laid her gently on the bed. She gave a start and clung to him for a second, then, turning her head and seeing the bed beneath her, removed her hands from his neck. She had a dim, faraway look in her glassy eyes.

  “It’s okay,” Cuno said. “You’re all right now. There, easy . . .”

  As he drew the cotton sheets and heavy quilts and a panther hide up over her trim, frail, heartbreakingly fragile-looking body, she turned away from him slowly, buried her head in her feather pillow, and drew her knees up to her chest, shivering.

  “It’s okay,” Cuno whispered again.

  He turned as Trent came in, clad in only his nightgown, his silver, curly hair mussed about his head. Blood continued to run down from the nasty gash in the side of his head. As he moved toward the bed, he said hoarsely, feebly, “Ming. Please . . . fetch Ming. He’ll know what to do for my daughter . . .”

  Cuno hadn’t been formally introduced to the Chinese cook and bathhouse captain, but Ming was no doubt him. He backed toward the door as Trent leaned over the bed, half lying on it and patting the head of his daughter, who lay staring silently at the far wall, unmoving.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” the rancher sobbed. “Oh, Jesus, what’d they do to you?”

  Cuno left the room feeling as though he had a large rock in his gut. He retraced his steps to the dining room, trying to remember where he’d left his rifle. When he got to the kitchen, the two men who’d been stomping out the flames in the dining room were now dragging one of the two dead Indians out of the kitchen.

  The Sioux cook, Runs-with-the-Ponies, sat at the table, stiff-backed and puffy-faced, his eyes red and rheumy from drink. Cuno had forgotten about him. He must have been passed out in the room off the kitchen when the Indians had attacked. He was clad in suspenders, a ragged undershirt, and baggy buckskin trousers. His stocking feet were set flat on the floor beneath the table, one hideously twisted and swollen.

  He sat with a bottle and a half-filled glass of whiskey in f
ront of him, a cornhusk cigarette clamped between two callused fingers. His was singing softly, almost under his breath, his lips barely moving. Some Sioux dirge, no doubt. Or a prayer. It sounded like a morning breeze over a weed-sheathed pond.

  Now he prays, Cuno thought with a vague spurt of anger, reaching for his rifle.

  “Verr bad.”

  Cuno looked at the Indian. Run’s red eyes were fixed on Cuno now, or somewhere just over Cuno’s right shoulder. Run tilted his head at the Indian whom the two half-clad drovers were now dragging around the table, toward the open door.

  “Verr bad,” the Indian repeated, blowing smoke out his broad, dark nostrils. “Him a son of Leaping Wolf.”

  Cuno looked at the dead Indian who’d been wearing the hat and savaging Michelle when Cuno had entered the kitchen. The two drovers looked at Cuno, faintly incredulous, and then they hauled the bloody carcass out the door and into the yard, leaving a long, broad smear of blood, flour, and cornmeal on the wooden floor behind them.

  “Ahh-eeeee!” The Sioux sighed, lifting his chin toward the rafters. “Verr, verr bad.”

  11

  CUNO LEFT THE kitchen and headed down the smoky hall of the Trent house to the front door. Dawn had broken and the birds were chirping as though it were a morning like any other. Magpies wheeled, their long, iridescent blue wings and tails flashing against the sky.

  Cuno stopped ten feet from the front door and stared straight ahead. Jedediah Gallantly sat with his back to the hall’s right side, leaning his head back against the wall. His hands rested on his thighs, and one leg was curled beneath the other. His other bare, pink foot was extended over the threshold onto the porch.

  Cuno moved closer. Gallantly’s head was tilted toward his shoulder, and his cheeks were already ashen. Blood still gushed out around the arrow to pool on the porch between his legs. His half-open eyes seemed to study something in vague fascination on the opposite side of the door frame.

  Cuno considered dragging the body out of the doorway and onto the porch, but he decided to leave the job to Trent or one of Trent’s men.

  He stepped over the dead man’s legs. Boot thumps and spur chings rose from the yard, and he looked out to see Henry Kuttner approaching—fully dressed now, with a .45 thonged on his thigh. Gloves were wedged behind his shell belt. He limped slightly on his grazed right leg, blood spotting his denim trousers just below the knee.

  Cuno stood at the top of the steps as Kuttner moved up past him, his face a bitter mask, and looked down at Gallantly’s corpse. “Poor son of a bitch.” He looked at Cuno. “I reckon you’re feelin’ pretty smug. Them Injuns did a real nice job of proving the point you made over supper last night.”

  “I didn’t need their help.”

  “Yep, feelin’ pretty smug.”

  Cuno’s chest heaved and his jaws hardened. “What do I have to feel smug about, Kuttner? Because two of your cork-headed line riders raped an Indian girl, I have a man dead, a burned wagon, and six dead mules. I just watched a pretty girl get mauled on her own kitchen table, and I’m pinned down here with Utes swarming like bees in a clover field.”

  Cuno shook his head tightly and squared his shoulders at the foreman. “Don’t give me any of your copper-plated grief, Kuttner. I got a burr under my tail and one hell of an itchy trigger finger.”

  Kuttner’s eyes dropped to Cuno’s bone-gripped .45 jutting from the holster on the freighter’s stout, right thigh. They flicked up again to Cuno’s face. The foreman said nothing. His features maintained that grave, masklike expression.

  Cuno swung around and dropped down the steps. He was striding down the hill when Kuttner said, “Massey?”

  Cuno turned.

  Kuttner was still standing on the porch. “You got another man down.” The foreman jerked his head toward the outbuildings and said softly, “In the bunkhouse.”

  “Which one?”

  “Snowberger.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough.” Kuttner reached down to pull Gallantly’s corpse out of the doorway.

  Cuno cursed under his breath and continued down the hill, moving quickly, his expression grim beneath his hat brim. He slowed, his expression softening, when the clatter of a wagon rose in the west. He directed his gaze that way, through the shadows the rising sun was spreading across the road and the rolling, sage-and-cedar-stippled tableland of the valley beyond the creek and the ranch portal.

  A wagon was rattling along the curving trail, the bay in the traces galloping full out, its jostling mane glistening as the sun peeked over the high eastern ridge. The wagon behind it was a simple farm wagon, painted dark red, with a woman in a long gray dress in the traces, her hair piled atop her head.

  There were two more people on the seat beside her. Two girls—one a little towhead wrapped in blankets and wearing a pink knit cap with earflaps. The other girl was older, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with long dark hair and Mexican features. She wore a man’s denim jacket over a worn, green wool dress, and her felt hat was tied to her head with a spruce green scarf. The morning breeze whipped her hair and her red neckerchief out behind her in the wind.

  The driver hoorahed the horse like a seasoned mule skinner, flicking the reins wildly across the charging animal’s back. No one drove a wagon at that speed unless they were trying to outrun trouble. Indeed, trouble shone in the face of the woman and the two girls, Cuno saw, as the horse and the wagon bounded over the bridge and under the portal, then angled across the yard and headed up the grade toward the house.

  “Mr. Trent!” the woman yelled as the wagon approached the house. Her plain-featured face—Cuno figured she was in her early or mid-forties—was gaunt and pale, the eyes bright with anxiety and exasperation. “Trent!”

  The woman hauled the horse to a stop near Cuno and, ramming the brake home with a wince, glanced at the freighter. “Is your boss here?”

  Cuno hesitated, realizing the woman naturally assumed he worked here. Hooking his thumb at the lodge, he said, “In the house.”

  He moved toward the wagon as the woman reached to her left and lifted the blond girl onto her lap. The blonde, between ten and twelve, owned the same blank, shocked look as Cuno had seen in Michelle Trent’s face only a few minutes ago.

  The woman rose in her seat slightly and held the girl down to Cuno, who took the expressionless, blue-eyed child in his arms and eased her onto the ground. She set her feet beneath her and looked around as though lost, fear now showing in her face, and tears beginning to squeeze out from her eyes to roll down her smooth, plump cheeks streaked with dust and soot.

  Cuno reached up for the woman and set her down beside the girl. As the woman scrambled around to the back of the wagon, Cuno looked up at the other girl on the driver’s seat. Her long, raven hair framed a pretty oval face with a straight nose and broad, high, flat cheeks.

  Tentatively, she moved toward the edge of the wagon. Cuno held up his hand to her. Ignoring his offered help, she steadied herself on the wagon seat, dropped her left foot to the front wheel, and leapt fleetly from there to the ground, giving a little grunt.

  She smelled smoky, and her olive features were streaked with soot and dust. There was a slight cut on the nub of her left cheek, and a long, pale scar traced her right jawline. Her eyes grave, she said nothing as she moved up behind the little blonde and set her mittened hands on the girl’s shoulders.

  “You all right?” Cuno said, kneeling beside the little blonde and placing a hand on her shoulder.

  She wouldn’t look at him, but only continued to stare across the yard. Cuno followed her frightened, tearful gaze south toward the rolling hills turning copper and lime green under the sun’s first, soft rays. The girl raised her right hand beneath the blanket wrapped around her, and he saw that it held a stuffed, slightly fire-charred bear.

  Cuno straightened and looked at the Mexican girl standing in grim silence behind the blonde. “What happened?”

  The girl parted her lips to speak, but stopped when th
e woman behind Cuno said, “All right, boys, go to the house, now. Hurry!”

  Cuno turned. He hadn’t seen the boys when the wagon had first pulled up. They’d been hidden by the sideboards and the robes piled in the box. There were two of them—one seven or eight, the other thirteen or fourteen, both dressed in homespun shirts and patched denim coveralls. They moved out in front of the woman, sullen-faced, eyes downcast, the older one with his hands in his pockets, and began scuffling toward the house.

  “Come, come,” the harried woman said to the girls, wrapping an arm around the little blonde’s shoulders. “Go, now!”

  Boots thumped on the porch, and Trent and Kuttner came out. Trent, dressed now, but hatless, his hair uncombed, negotiated the steps and limped down the grade to the woman and the children. “Louise, for chrissakes!” Trent said. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Indians burned us out, Logan,” the woman sobbed, ushering the little blonde along ahead of her, her gray skirts swishing about her legs and heavy, black shoes. “They killed Harry and the hired man . . . and they burned everything!”

  “Ah, for chrissakes!” Trent said, throwing up his hands.

  “Can you send men out after them, Logan?”

  Trent glanced at Kuttner flanking him, feet spread wide, his thumbs hooked behind his cartridge belts. “Henry’s sending men out now, Louise. As many as I can spare.”

  Trent wrapped an arm around the woman’s shoulders, and they all continued toward the house, their backs to Cuno, the Mexican girl tagging along behind the woman and the boys as though she didn’t quite belong.

  They were drifting beyond Cuno now, mounting the porch, but the freighter heard the rancher say, “We, too, were hit about a half hour ago. Henry says I lost five men, with three more wounded. Children, turn away. Henry, get something and cover Jedediah, for chrissakes!”

  Trent’s shrill voice faded as the group headed on into the house, the tall, rangy Kuttner bringing up the rear, behind the Mexican girl.