.45-Caliber Firebrand

by Peter Brandvold

  Cuno lunged back toward the long, narrow opening, grabbing a saddlebag pouch with one hand and pulling it in behind him. He did the same with the blanket roll. Then, as the bear swatted at the opening with both paws, slashing with those sickle-like, razor-edged claws and mewling and bellowing so loudly that Cuno thought his eardrums would shatter, the young freighter kicked himself as far into the cave as he could.

  He was glad to find that he could slide back a good ten feet before the back of his head and his shoulder smacked a solid stone wall. The bear’s shadow slid this way and that across the gap and across a small, cup-sized hole a couple of feet above it, and in that hole Cuno saw a flash of white, snarling teeth and blazing red eyes.

  A shudder racked him.

  “Go ’way!” Camilla cried, heeling sand and gravel toward the gap.

  One of the bear’s flailing paws almost caught her right moccasin, and Cuno grabbed her arm and pulled her taut against him, his voice nearly drowned by the bear’s bellowing tirade as he yelled, “Keep your legs in, girl, or he’ll rip ’em off!”

  “Son of a bitch!” the girl cried again, closing her hands over her ears. “El oso loco, go away!”

  Raising her knees to her chest, she pressed the side of her face against Cuno’s shoulder, clutching his left arm with both her hands, digging her fingers painfully into his bicep as she drew him taut against her. Cuno kept his own knees raised and angled toward the girl, and he laid a shielding hand across her head, feeling her starts and shudders beneath it. He gritted his teeth against the din, against the smell of the bear pushing through the gap and the sand he was throwing up into their faces.

  He planted his right hand over his .45’s ivory grips, and he considered taking another shot as he watched the bear scoop sand out away from the gap now and occasionally lower his head to peer with those blazing eyes into the cave. The bear sniffed loudly, then opened his mouth, unfolding that broad, pink tongue and revealing those long, savage fangs.

  Camilla pushed even harder against Cuno, driving her knees up against his side and cowering against his shoulder as she yelled incoherently amidst the bear’s mad roar. The griz closed his mouth, pulled back slightly, and for a moment hope welled in Cuno like an elixir.

  Had the beast given up?

  But then the broad shadow closed like a savage fetid night of hell over the gap once more, and the broad, shaggy paws with those horrific claws appeared, swiping at the orange sand and gravel at the bottom of the opening.

  “He’s trying to work his way in,” Cuno muttered, hearing the awe in his own voice as the bear grunted and snorted and made snicking and scratching sounds as he dug a hole at the bottom of the gap.

  Cuno flicked the keeper thong from over his .45’s hammer with his index finger and pulled the iron from its holster. He held the six-shooter out halfheartedly, staring at the gap in which the paws worked and the broad snout with contracting and expanding nostrils appeared fleetingly from time to time.

  If Cuno could shoot the bear through one of its eyes, he might kill it.

  Cuno waited.

  The bear dug, grunting and groaning with savage eagerness, no doubt anticipating the taste of the human flesh on his tongue.

  Camilla sobbed and pulled at Cuno’s arm. He could feel the wetness of her tears through the sleeve of his buckskin tunic.

  He rocked the Colt’s hammer back. At almost the same time, the bear loosed another bellowing, echoing roar as he lay flat on his side and threw one front paw deep into the hole. The claw slashed the sand only a few feet in front of Cuno’s boots. One eye at the bottom of the gap flashed.

  Cuno aimed the Colt at the bear’s eye and began taking the slack from his trigger finger. Suddenly, the bear lifted his head, and the eye was gone. The paw snaked back out of the hole. Cuno muttered a curse and let the Colt sag in his hand. The bear went to work wildly again on the hole at the bottom of the gap’s entrance, roaring and raging, sand flying in all directions.

  Then he stopped. Dust sifted. The bear grunted, and Cuno could hear him out there, crunching sand and kicking gravel, breathing hard and sort of groaning as though with defeat. The bulky shadow slid back away from the gap, and the grunts and groans and the crunch of sand and gravel and grass dwindled gradually.

  The silence inside the cave was like a heavy physical presence. It was so quiet that Cuno thought he could hear the quiet ticking of the dust settling back down on the floor. Camilla sniffed and turned her head quickly, startled by the sudden silence.

  They both listened for a time, saying nothing.

  Camilla turned to Cuno and whispered, “He is gone?”

  The bear was still grunting and groaning angrily, but the sounds seemed to emanate from the bottom of the canyon. There was the distant snap of a twig under a heavy foot.

  Cuno drew his legs under him and crawled over to the cave’s opening and, crouching, peered out. The bear was on the canyon floor, ambling slowly back across the stream, his heavy shoulders and haunches rippling with each step, his big head swinging under the large hump between his shoulders.

  Cuno glanced back at Camilla still hunched up against the cave’s rear wall, her hair mussed, her brown eyes glistening in the light from the entrance. “Stay put.”

  He crawled out and knelt in front of the opening, hands on his thighs, staring down the slope toward where the bear was now ambling across the rocks on the far side of the stream. He was heading back toward the trees between this lesser stream and the main one snaking along the base of the opposite canyon wall.

  Cuno started to rise but stopped when the bear wheeled suddenly. He dropped back down to his knees and lowered his head as the massive bruin rose up on his rear legs and, throwing his head back on his shoulders and clawing at the air with his raised front paws, loosed another bellow that echoed around the canyon like near thunder.

  He kept the bellow up a good, long time, shambling back toward Cuno and the cave.

  Cuno turned and crawled back into the notch cave.

  Camilla regarded him sidelong and skeptically, sliding her mussed hair back from one side of her face.

  “I’m not all that familiar with bears,” Cuno said, sagging back down against the wall beside the girl. “But I have a suspicion he’s trying to lure us out. We best settle in here for a time, see if he moseys along.” He snapped a curse, biting his lower lip and resting an arm on his upraised knee. “I wish I had my Winchester!”

  “You shouldn’t have left it on your horse,” Camilla whispered.

  Cuno gave her a wry glance, then swept his gaze back toward the low, oval opening letting in just enough gray daylight to fill the cave with shadows.

  “We never should have stopped here,” Camilla continued in her admonishing whisper. “It was foolish with a bear around!”

  “I thought he was up on the rim, holing up with all the other bears holing up this time of the year,” Cuno grunted, the tips of his ears warming with chagrin. “Besides, damnit, the horse needed a blow. He’s not used to having two people on his back, and you’re not exactly a little wisp, you know.”

  The girl only snorted and raked her angry gaze from him to the cave entry. She extended her right leg and sucked a sharp breath through gritted teeth.

  Cuno looked at her. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said, in a snit.

  “Come on—what’d you do to your leg?”

  “It’s not my leg. It’s my ankle. It’s all right.”

  Cuno slid out from the wall and lifted the hems of the girl’s skirts above her ankle-high moccasin, then rolled up a cuff of the men’s red longhandles she wore, as well. Camilla sucked a breath but made no move to stop him.

  Cuno leaned down to inspect her ankle. It seemed to be swelling around the top of the beaded moccasin and turning the color of rifle bluing under her natural tan. “What’d you do?”

  “What did you do? It twisted when you jerked my arm.”

  “Oh, so this is my fault, too, huh?” Cuno c
huckled without humor as he continued inspecting her ankle.

  He moved her foot from side to side, and Camilla lunged forward from the cave wall. “Mierda! It hurts, damnit!”

  “Shit. Now we’re really fixed. You can’t walk and we got no horse.”

  Cuno jerked her longhandle cuff down, and then the hems of her skirts. He sagged back against the cave wall, running his hands up his face in frustration and dislodging his hat. It tumbled off his shoulder and landed crown down on the cave floor.

  It wasn’t just him and Camilla he was concerned about. This fix was Serenity and the children’s fix, as well. Valuable time was ticking away and, meanwhile, Leaping Wolf’s braves might be closing in on the wagons.

  Cuno thought it over for a time.

  “I reckon we wait till the bear leaves. Then I’ll try to run down Renegade and bring him back here.”

  Camilla leaned forward and down, turning her head up slightly to glance at the sky. “It is getting late. Only a few hours before the sun sets.”

  “I know that,” Cuno said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice.

  “I was just saying it,” the girl said sharply, leaning back against the wall and crossing her arms on her chest in disgust.

  The bear went on bellowing and stomping around the canyon bottom. Cuno and Camilla settled into an uneasy wait, staring at the cave mouth and watching the sunlight angle steadily to the right as the afternoon drew toward early evening.

  With his mind, Cuno tried to hold the light. He wanted to find Renegade—if the horse was anywhere within ten miles of here—and get back to the wagons before good night closed down over the mountains. Serenity was probably waiting for him at the stream at the base of the high saddle, or he might have come on south, expecting to run into Cuno and Camilla along the way.

  He wouldn’t make it this far before nightfall, however. He’d have to hole up somewhere north of here. If the bruin didn’t find him, the Indians might. Serenity was tough as wang leather, but he wasn’t as handy as he claimed he was with a rifle. He and the kids would be easy prey.

  Christ!

  Cuno wished he hadn’t listened to Camilla’s idea about the shortcut. It wasn’t her fault they’d run into the bear—they might have run into one the other way, as well—but sitting quietly like this, horseless and rifleless—the mind tended to imagine all the possibilities and chew on all the should/shouldn’t haves.

  About an hour before sunset, the grizzly fell silent, and Cuno decided to scout around and see if the beast was still nearby. If not, he’d head out after Renegade and hope to find the horse before good dark. He was halfway across the stream, however, when the bear—a dark, lumbering shape in the grass and black tree columns—came lumbering and rumbling up out of the pines.

  Cuno cursed, scrambled back up the slope and into the cave.

  “What happened?” Camilla asked.

  Cuno winced at the cold stream water freshly soaking his deerhide breeches. “Best get comfortable. Looks like we’re gonna be spending the night right here.”

  22

  “WHAT HAS MADE Leaping Wolf so killing angry?” Camilla asked later than night, when the mountain night had filled the cave with black ink.

  She and Cuno had found a passageway to a wider cavern with a gap at the top for a smoke hole. The cavern was only about the size of a large wagon bed, but it was well protected from the outside. Cuno had gathered wood along the outside slope and built a fire in the middle of the cavern floor.

  Now the umber flames sparkled in the girl’s dark eyes as she regarded Cuno curiously, a strip of jerky in one hand, a cup of smoking coffee in the other.

  Cuno set a small chunk of wood on the fire. Out of shame, Trent had probably never confessed the reason for the Indian attack to Mrs. Lassiter, who had lost her husband because of it, and then, probably, her own life. Of course, no one would have told the children or Camilla. Michelle still didn’t know the reason, and there was no point in her knowing.

  Camilla had a right to know, however. Cuno told her as he stared at the light of the flames dancing on the cracked stone wall on the other side of the fire.

  The girl only nodded knowingly, fatefully, and ripped a chunk of jerky from the strip in her hands and chewed. She sat Indian style, her elbows on her knees, as she stared into the dancing flames.

  After a time, Cuno dug another strip of jerky out of the pouch lying between them, and leaned back against the wall. “How long you worked for the Lassiters?”

  “Almost a year.” She frowned as she studied the flames. “No, a year now.”

  Since she offered nothing more, he threw politeness to the wind. “Where you from?”

  She continued chewing as she stared into the fire as though mesmerized. She spoke softly, dreamily. “All over. I was born in the Arizona Territory.” She glanced at Cuno. “You?”

  “Nebraska Territory. My parents were killed a few years back. My old man was a freighter, so I took up the trade. Didn’t know what else to do.” Cuno chuckled around a mouthful of jerky. “Pays the bill if you can hold on to your wagons and your mules. And you don’t get all your drivers shot.”

  “It is better here,” Camilla said. “In Arizona, the Apaches make Leaping Wolf look tame.”

  “What brought you here?”

  “My father was a prospector. Mejicano. My mother was Lipan Apache. I was born in Agua Prieta, and my parents ran a goat farm. When my mother left and went back to her tribe, Papa gave up the farm and started prospecting for gold. He found little but rocks and dust and the carcasses of soldiers killed by Apaches. When I was ten he took me to Tucson and left me there on the doorstep of the Butterfield stage manager.”

  Camilla extended her right leg, moving the injured foot around in a circle, wincing slightly as she stared at her beaded moccasin. “The manager was not a nice man, if you get my drift”—the girl snorted her distaste for the man—“so I took to the streets. I met a gambler—a nice enough gringo, as far as gringos go—and followed him to Laramie. He was shot there while using a privy behind a whorehouse by a man he’d cheated at stud.”

  Camilla glanced at Cuno, her lips shaping a grim smile. “When his money started running out and they kicked me out of the hotel I was in, I started looking for work. That is when Mr. Lassiter came to town, looking for a girl to help with the children and chores on his ranch. It was a good job. The Lassiters were good folks.”

  Cuno swallowed his last bit of jerky and washed it down with coffee, resting his elbow on his knee as he looked down at the girl staring up at him obliquely. “Where will you go after the fort?” he asked her.

  “I will see to the children. Then . . .” Camilla shook her head. “We haven’t even gotten to the fort yet. I think we will do well by getting out of this cave without becoming el oso loco’s last big meal before he turns in for the winter.”

  “Haven’t heard him out there for a while. Could be he got sleepy, decided to bed down for the evening at least.”

  As Cuno stared at the narrow passageway leading to the front of the cave and the opening, Camilla clamped her hand down on his thigh quickly and spoke with frightened urgency. “Do not go tonight. Don’t leave me.”

  Cuno turned to her, frowning. She must have thought he was considering going after his horse in the dark. “I’m not gonna . . .”

  He let his voice trail off, felt himself falling into her wide brown eyes. He leaned toward her and ran the first two fingers of his right hand along the straight, firm line of her jaw, over the long, pale scar to her ear. Her eyes grew wider as he stared into them, and when he lowered his mouth to hers, her lips opened for him.

  He pressed his lips to hers and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her taut against him, and he could feel her breasts heave beneath her clothes as they kissed hungrily. She groaned softly and ran her hands up his back and into his hair, holding his kiss and pressing her chest against his, as though she were afraid he’d let her go.

  Her mouth was ripe and sweet-tas
ting, and her tongue darted in and out of his mouth, entangling with his, and he could feel his body warming from inside, his loins swelling. Suddenly, he pulled her away from him and jerked his tunic out of his pants. As he lifted the garment over his head, she went to work shucking out of her own clothes, both of them sitting across from each other in the low ceilinged cave, flushed and breathing hard with a furious, elemental desire.

  Cuno tossed aside his gun belt and kicked out of his boots, wrestled his breeches and then his longhandles down his legs. He sat naked in the firelight, waiting for her to finish shucking out of her clothing. His pale body, rounded and strapped with hard muscles, his belly flat and ribbed as a washboard, his blond hair falling to his shoulders, was copper-colored in the dancing flames. His dong jutted, fully engorged, from between his heavy, hairless thighs.

  His chest rose and fell as he watched Camilla, naked from the waist down, lift her camisole over her head and toss it away, her hair tumbling back down across her face and shoulders, her brown eyes peering out from behind the long, coarse, black strands. Her legs, angled before the fire, knees slightly bent, were long and smooth, the calves and thighs nicely muscled, her feet long and slender. A small, silver crucifix hung from a rawhide thong between her full, round, light brown breasts framed by her hair.

  Cuno grabbed her by the shoulders and drew her to him. He kissed her again hungrily, and then she lowered her head to his crotch, licking and nuzzling his jutting, throbbing member, her hair dancing across his chest. She lay back on his bedroll, propping herself on her elbows, and spread her knees. She stared up at him smokily, expectantly, through her screening hair.

  As her breasts rose and fell, nudging the silver crucifix from side to side, the brown nipples jutting, Cuno positioned himself before her spread legs, laid his hands against the sides of her face, and, pressing the hair back from her cheeks, felt her guide him into her hot, wet core.

  “Oh,” she said as he drove in slowly, deeply, arching his back and neck and squeezing his eyes closed, savoring the moment. “Oh . . . Cristo!”