“I’m due to pick up a shipment for the Wells Fargo bank. Fifteen thousand in cash. I was going to put it in the carriage but the axle broke.”
“How much did you say?”
“Fifteen thousand dollars. Cash money,” Connor swallowed.
“Really?” Sara drew out the word in a long sultry note.
She stepped closer, close enough Connor could smell the scented soap in her hair. Her eyes melted into his. He felt his knees go weak. No wonder Balum wanted her. The fun he could have with a woman like this.
“Is there some way I can help?” she asked.
“Actually, it’s just around the corner here. I’m worried about getting robbed, but if I had a fair lady beside me I think folks would consider twice before attacking. Perhaps you could accompany me.”
His phrases sounded even more stupid than when he had rehearsed them in the tent with Floyd and Delmar. He’d never uttered the words ‘fair lady’ before in his life, and he felt like a fool saying them now.
Then she said yes.
“I’m sorry?”
“Yes,” she repeated. “I’ll be happy to help you. You say it’s just around the corner? Fifteen thousand dollars?”
“Right this way,” said Connor, bending his elbow out so she might lace her arm through his.
Before reaching the end of the block he turned up a side street. The spot he had decided on was not far; a narrow walkway that saw few pedestrians. Floyd waited there with a sack and a gag rope. Back at the carriage, Delmar was reattaching the wheel to the axle.
It was all going so smoothly. Connor couldn’t believe his luck. Sara was saying something beside him, complimenting him on his attire. Connor could hardly process it. The feel of her arm in his was mesmerizing. He could feel the heat coming off her body. In the small boots his toes cramped and shot sparks of pain up his calves, but he continued forward. He walked her up the alley, turned her into the walkway like a butcher leading a calf to slaughter.
Right where Floyd was supposed to be waiting, he was. He jumped out from the wall and looped the gag rope over Sara’s head and in an instant had it tied in back. He followed with the rope, coiling it around her arms and legs, Connor working in tandem with him. The sack was something Delmar had stolen along with the razor, and Floyd pitched it over Sara’s head. It covered her nearly to her feet. On a three count, Floyd and Connor heaved her up and carried her through the alleyway. Just as they emerged on the other side, Delmar drove up with the carriage. He hopped down, opened the door, and although a few curious glances were cast in their direction, the Bell brothers tossed Sara Sanderson into the back, then jumped in behind her, and the carriage sailed out of town at a hard trot.
A mile outside the city they slowed down and whooped and hollered and made general fools of themselves in praise of their own ingenuity. When they unwrapped Sara from the sack they found a derringer tied to her thigh.
“Look at that, Connor,” said Floyd. “She was gonna kill you.”
Connor ripped it from its cradle and slipped it into his pocket. “Not no more.”
“Hey,” said Delmar. “Who’s gonna have first turn with her?”
“Nobody,” said Connor. “We need to get up the road that leads into town. Balum will be driving that stage down it and we need to be there when he comes in.”
“Just give us an hour is all,” pleaded Delmar.
“Nope,” said Connor. “He should have been in days ago. We got lucky is all. Something must have held him up. Besides, he ain’t gonna trade Buford for no damaged goods. He finds out you soiled his woman, he might want to shoot you. And you heard the stories about him.”
“What do we do, then?”
“We ride out and we wait for him. Then we offer up his woman for Buford. He’ll make the trade.” He looked at Sara lying tied up on the floor of the carriage. “I don’t doubt it for a minute.”
29
Balum pounded the last stake into the desert sand and cinched the trip wire tight around it. He flicked the can and listened to the pebble rattle, then sat in a flat patch of sand and listened to the desert shift to evening. The way the wind sounded as it wove over the sand. Lizards scurrying, rustling the dry branches of creosote. Somewhere far off, a Gambel’s quail.
Balum wondered where in all that dry wilderness the Bell brothers might be. It had been so long since they’d attacked at night that stringing the trip wire seemed nothing but an old tradition, a relic from some other age. It seemed nearly pointless to stay awake half the night, staring into the darkness for an enemy that never came.
But they would. And soon. San Antonio was only just up the road. Already they had begun to see signs of travel. Peasant tracks, herded goats, hand pulled carts and horse-drawn carriages. A makeshift trail had begun, and as they drove the stage east toward the city, the tracks converged until it might be called a road. Somewhere on it were three Bell brothers. The attack would come, Balum was sure of it, he just didn’t know when. It might be that very night.
He watched the sun set, then turned his back to the fading glow in the western sky and picked out landmarks that in the dark might look like a person. He found low spots in the ground where a man might hide, and he made a mental note of them. Then he waited. He thought of Angelique, thought of the long ride back to Cheyenne. He thought of Charles and Will, and wondered how Chester fared at the gambling.
The attack he expected never came. Halfway through the night he woke Joe, then curled up in the sand beneath his blanket and slept until morning.
On the driving bench again, the Spencer over his knees, he strained his eyes to the east and wondered if the blur on the horizon might be the first of the houses scattered on the outskirts of San Antonio. He stuck a wad of tobacco in his cheek and checked the backtrail. It was all too quiet. Too easy. Caleb kept his horse closer alongside the stage than usual. A bullet out of the desert was what Balum half expected, and apparently Caleb did too.
What Balum did not expect were three men standing in the road waving a pair of soiled long johns from a stick. They’d once been white, but time and use had turned them an orangish-brown. Despite the unpleasant look of them, the intention was clear enough. Whatever other intention the men had, Balum could make no sense of. One of them, Connor he guessed, held a woman against his chest. Resting against her temple was the end of his gun barrel.
Joe eased the team to a stop. “That’s the Bells, you can bet on it.”
“Who’s the woman?” said Balum. The distance was over a hundred yards. He saw blond hair, a dress, but the gag rope tied around her mouth hid a good portion of her face.
Joe narrowed his eyes. “My guess is Sara.”
Balum felt his hands go cold around the Spencer. Joe was right. He couldn’t see her whole face, but the hair was right, the shape of the body. But none of it made sense. What the hell were they thinking?
“What you want to do, Balum?” Caleb stepped his horse up close to the driving bench.
Balum passed the rifle to Joe. “They’re waving the flag, they want to talk.”
“Ain’t nothing to talk about.”
“It’ll be a short conversation then.” He stepped down from the stage. He looked through the window bars at Buford, then walked out past the horses.
The man holding the long johns lowered the stick and tossed it aside. As Balum closed the distance he sized them up. Connor stood in the middle with Sara against him. On either side was a brother, guns in their holsters, hands empty beside them. At fifty paces out he could see Sara’s eyes. They bored through him. The same hard blue eyes that had captivated him, seduced him, fleeced him like a fool.
“Hey don’t come no closer,” shouted Connor.
Balum stopped. There was no wind, no scurrying lizards. No sound but Connor’s voice.
“You know who this is?”
Balum didn’t answer. Whatever plan Connor had, he could state it.
“This here is Sara Sanderson,” Connor shouted the answer to his own quest
ion. Again he waited for some reaction from Balum, but Balum gave nothing back. “We know you want her. Well here she is. You hand over Buford and we’ll give her to you. You don’t, and she’ll catch a bullet to the head.”
Sara’s eyes didn’t waver off Balum. He looked across the fifty yards of sand and patchy scrubgrass, and into Sara’s steely blue orbs unblinking and full of memory. Connor was right; Balum had come for her. He’d crossed a thousand miles of country for her. And now he was tired. The poor sleep, the constant stress, it had built to the point where Balum didn’t much give a damn anymore. He was ready for Buford to get thrown in a hole in the ground, and his brothers could go there with him. And as for Sara… he saw her eyes widen just a touch. She knew just how misguided Connor’s plan was too.
Balum’s hand dropped.
To draw on three men was generally regarded as a fool thing to do. Didn’t matter how fast a man was, three on one was just plain bad odds. Anybody knew that. The Bell brothers knew it. They stood with their legs wide apart, guns at the ready, but none had seriously considered that Balum might draw on them. But that’s what he did.
Six pairs of eyes watched him. Four in front, two behind, all awaiting his answer. Yet for as focused as they were, all they saw was a blur. A flash of his hand, a sharp crack, and a puff of dust from Sara’s dress. It came off her shoulder in a small plume. The bullet sliced through the tissue just above her clavicle and tore through the other side, straight through Connor’s ribcage, lodging itself finally in the right ventricle of his heart.
Before either Connor or Sara so much as dropped, Balum’s left hand slapped back the hammer on the Dragoon and he fired another bullet into the brother at Connor’s left. The man spun, and Balum swung the revolver around, cocking back the hammer a third time. The last Bell brother had snuck his revolver out, but before he’d raised it level, Balum’s bullet caught him in the throat. A shot slammed into the ground at the man’s feet and he fell backward to the dust.
Balum drew back the hammer a fourth time and walked forward. Sara had fallen. Blood streamed out of her shoulder. It stained her dress in an ugly smear as it picked up dust along the way. She moved, a snake’s wiggle tied up as she was. The Bell brother to Connor’s left put a hand beneath himself and pushed up, and Balum fired into him without changing the cadence of his stride. The bullet jolted the man back to the ground. He didn’t move again.
Sara reached a kneeling position. She looked at her shoulder, at the blood leaking down her bust, and whipped her head around at Balum.
The Dragoon hung in his hand, all four and a half pounds of it. When he reached her he stopped. Even covered in dust, her hair wild and loose down her back, tired and bloody, she was still beautiful. Still captivating. He slid a finger between the gag rope and her cheek, and jerked it down past her chin.
She took several panting breaths and stared him in the eye. “Are you going to shoot me, Balum? Is that it? One last bullet for revenge?”
He eased the hammer forward. “No. There’s a hangman for that. I’m just taking you to him.”
30
Riding into San Antonio they passed a hanging sign advertising the services of a doctor, but Balum waved Joe on. Instead, they trotted the horses by an old Spanish mission with massive stoned arches, past the San Fernando Cathedral, and into the Military Plaza where they found not the city sheriff, but a U.S. Marshal stationed in one of the army offices. His name was Edmund Wales, and with one look inside the stage, he ordered for the Governor to be informed.
Buford was pulled off the stage and led to a cell somewhere in the dark recesses of the fort. Sara was led to another. A doctor was called for her, and while they waited, Balum gave the marshal her story. When he finished, the marshal ran his thumb and forefinger down his mustache.
“I know her,” he said. “There’s been a case mounting against her, but the amount of evidence it takes to hang a woman in the West is nine times as much as required for a man. You know that. With your testimony, you being a deputized U.S. Marshal, she’ll hang. You can bet on it.”
“Any chance that’ll be a speedy trial? I’ve been away from Cheyenne too long.”
“Soon as she’s fit to sit for it. It’ll be quick, don’t you worry.”
The Governor arrived an hour later. He brought the reward money with him. Before he handed it over he was led back to Buford’s cell. He returned fifteen minutes later with a smile on his face and a bounce in his step. He praised all three of them and extended a formal invitation to the Governor’s mansion for dinner that evening.
After he’d ridden away, Caleb whistled. “Never thought I’d be invited to no Govner’s mansion. Whooee.”
“You might want to by some fresh clothes with some of that reward money.”
“You know what, Balum? Honorable as it is getting the invitation, there’s somewhere else I’d rather be.”
Balum knew where that was. “You can’t wait one day?”
“Maybe I could, but the missus can’t. She’ll be wanting me back. She hears I’ve been puttin’ on airs and spending the money on fancy clothes, she’ll whup my ass. You know I can’t have that.”
“What about you, Joe?”
Joe gave a slow shake of his head. “Valeria,” was all he said.
Balum promised Caleb he’d stop through Blacktown on his way back, promised Joe he’d catch up to him in the silver town. The two rode out of town while the sun was still high. Caleb due north, Joe to the west. Balum watched them go. He wished he was on the roan.
He attended dinner that evening dressed in a store bought suit. He’d bought a haircut and a shave, and had the hotel draw him a hot bath. The banquet was set for over twenty guests, dignitaries and their wives, men of importance. They pried the story out of Balum-- the trip down, the constant threat of attack. They were city folk, and though Balum left out half the details, they listened enraptured as if the rugged looking man seated with them was some mystical bit of folklore dropped in from another place altogether.
The following two days Balum drifted around town. He sat on a bench in the plaza, looked in the store windows. He didn’t gamble and he didn’t drink. Mostly he thought of Angelique. He wished to be back in her arms, but that day was far away. He spent an afternoon composing a letter to her. He recounted everything that had happened. Everything. When he finished he saw there was still an inch of blank space on the paper. He thought of the desert colors and way the air hung motionless in the mornings, and he wrote her a poem in that small space at the end of the page. Something he felt mildly silly doing, but he knew she’d treasure it. He handed it over to the postmaster and when he left the post office he thought about the distance the letter had to travel. The distance separating him from his woman.
Adding to that distance was the silver town. He’d promised Joe he’d meet him there, but every bone in his body expected trouble. He’d be thrown once more into danger, into violence. He was tired of it. Tired of guns and killing and the hunt of man on man in the dark of night. But even so, he’d fire every last round in the Dragoon if he had to. And he would. Joe was only going to find trouble in that town, and Balum knew it.
On the third day, the day before her trial began, he visited Sara Sanderson. He didn’t quite know why. But he went anyway. She sat in a cot in a cell, her shoulder bandaged and a fresh dress over her. She scowled at him when he appeared, then rose and walked to the bars.
“You don’t need to do this, Balum,” she said.
“No?”
“I’ll give you your ten thousand dollars. You’ll get it all back. Just get me out of here.”
“It’s not about the money.”
“What is it then? It’s revenge, isn’t it. Look at you. You’ve traveled a thousand miles on pure hatred. It’s pathetic.”
Her face was pressed between the bars. She was angry, but even then she was beautiful.
“No,” he said. “It’s not revenge either. I was a fool to let you rob me, but maybe a fool deserves it. I’
ve got no hatred for you.”
“Then what is it? Why testify against me? They’ll hang me, don’t you know that?”
“I know it. This is about something else. Something you don’t figure with. It’s about justice. About what’s right. It’s one thing stealing a man’s money, but there’s innocent young men that have died because of you. You’re evil, plain and simple. And there’s not enough room in this world for that.”
She spat at him through the bars. “Go to hell, Balum.”
Balum stepped away. He took a last look at her and said, “Maybe I will. If I do I’ll see you there.”
The trial the following day lasted all of four hours. The jury deliberated ten minutes and returned to the courtroom with a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced her to death by hanging, to be carried out in two day’s time. It might have been sooner, but Buford had been sentenced to hang the same day, and the judge knew that two hangings would draw a bigger crowd, and the business would be good for the citizens of San Antonio.
Balum stayed for it. He didn’t queue up as did a hundred or so others. Instead he found himself an oak tree in the plaza where the gallows stood, and leaned a shoulder against it. The scene reminded him of Bette’s Creek. One man, one woman, one hangman. A preacher. A crowd of onlookers. The Governor had a front row seat.
Balum listened to the small speech. A couple mockingbirds chirped in the oak branches above him. When the hangman pulled the lever releasing the floorboards a strange sensation hit him. Buford and Sara dropped. Their bodies jerked when the ropes snapped tight and suddenly they were lifeless and swinging in the hot Texas air.
He swallowed. Evil as they were, it was a hard thing to watch.
From his hotel he gathered up the suit coat he’d bought. He rolled his blanket, packed his saddlebags with food he’d purchased.
In the livery the roan seemed happy to see him. He reached a hand up and scratched its jaw, and led it into the sunlight. Before he took to the saddle he pulled the pouch of tobacco from his pocket and stuffed a good solid wad in his cheek. What lay behind him and what lay ahead were times of hardship. Times of struggle and violence, and sleepless lonely nights. But for the moment there was peace. The open plains, the Texas sun, and the roan between his legs.
Shotgun Riders Page 19
