Lookout Hill (9781101606735)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

  With the big mongrel’s weight off his chest, Siebert sat up, bloody from head to waist from dog bites, his shirt shredded down the front. His chest wound was throbbing. The big crucifix swung from its rawhide strip around his neck.

  “Are you a man of faith, then?” the voice asked. The circling light came in closer. “I can see you’re not a Mex.”

  “Mister, faith ain’t even the word for it,” Siebert said. “If it wasn’t for this cross I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “Oh…?” The man seemed to consider it. “What are you doing coming around here unannounced, the middle of the night?”

  Unannounced? Siebert looked around. He was over two hundred yards from the house, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Instead he shook his lowered head.

  “I don’t know,” he replied in defeat. “Just being plain stupid, I guess.”

  The man chuckled behind the flickering lamp as he opened the shotgun and slipped a fresh load in the empty barrel.

  “Here that, boys?” he said to the growling dogs, snapping the shotgun shut. “Just stupid, he guesses.” He tucked the shotgun under his arm and reached a hand down to Siebert. “Here, come on up from there. Let’s go get you looked at.” He clasped Siebert’s hand firmly and pulled. “Can you eat something, Mr…. ?” He trailed his words.

  “Howard, John Logan Howard, and, yes, I could eat the ass-end out of a running wildcat—pardon my language,” Siebert said, rising to his feet, dusting the seat of his trousers.

  “Dudley Bryant,” said the man, introducing himself. “Don’t be saying nothing like a wildcat’s ass in front of the woman,” he warned. “She can’t see worth spit. But she’ll swing a broom handle on you if she hears blackguarding of any kind.”

  “She’ll hear none from me,” Siebert assured the man. “Can I pick up my gun now?”

  “Yes, you can, brother Howard,” the man said. “Big…Little, both of yas get back,” he commanded the growling dogs. “Let this man pick his gun up.”

  Brother Howard…?

  Siebert just looked at him. As he stood up from grabbing his Colt, Dudley Bryant leaned in close to him with the lamp and smiled at the gun from behind a thick white mustache.

  “Say, now, brother Howard,” he said, “is that possibly an 1862 Navy Colt Conversion?”

  “You’re good, brother Dudley.” said Siebert. “It is that.” As he spoke, he turned the gun back and forth in his hand and held it between them, pointed loosely at the ground. “This one has the custom Eagle handle grip.”

  “The eagle holding the snake in its beak and talon?” the man asked, looking excited at the prospect.

  “Right you are again, brother Dudley,” said Siebert, impressed. “I think I’m in the presence of a man who knows his Colts.”

  The white mustache spread wide in a smile.

  “May I, then?” he asked, his thick hand stretched out toward the pistol.

  “Of course,” said Siebert, handing him the Colt. “I’ll hold your shotgun and lamp.”

  The two exchanged guns and Siebert took the lamp.

  “My, my, brother Howard,” said Dudley, looking the gun over good. “What I wouldn’t give for a huckleberry like this.” He turned the gun in his hand and held it out to Siebert.

  Siebert took the gun and looked down at it, still holding the shotgun and lamp in his left hand.

  “Addle-brained as it sounds, I can hardly ever remember if this gun is a five- or a six-shot,” he said.

  “That’s not so addle-brained,” said Dudley Bryant. “I’ve seen both, you know.”

  “My goodness, you are right again!” said Siebert. “Aren’t you just the one!” He grinned and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Dudley Bryant in the heart at a distance of two feet. Fire and smoke puffed on his shirt. He staggered backward, a stunned look on his face.

  Siebert swung the shotgun toward the two dogs as they went into a fit of growling and barking. The big dog had crouched for a leap at him. But two fast blasts from the shotgun silenced both dogs at once.

  He turned his face back and forth on the night air, searching for any power from the killing—nothing. Disappointed again, he walked toward the house, toward the sound of the black mare crying out in the night. When he found her, she stood nickering and thrashing against her reins, the juniper bush she was tied to stuck firmly between two rocks.

  “Look at you now, idiot,” Siebert said, stepping in to free up her reins. “You’re damn lucky I even want to fool with you—the way you’ve treated me.”

  As he settled the mare and untangled its reins, he looked toward the house and saw a figure step out onto the porch.

  “Dudley?” a woman called out in a shaken voice.

  Siebert grinned to himself and said in a mock voice, “Dudley ain’t talking.”

  “Well, who are you?” she asked. “I heard shooting. Where’s the dogs? What’s going on?”

  “One thing at a time, ma’am,” said Siebert, leading the mare toward the house, the lamp raised in his hand. “Your dogs nearly ate me alive. Dudley said you can’t see much, but you’re a fair hand with a needle and thread?”

  “He’s right, I am,” the woman said. She paused and looked all around in the darkness. “I don’t like this at all. Where is he anyway?”

  “You’d better be good, ma’am,” Siebert said menacingly. “I don’t want you stitching an eye shut.” He grinned.

  “What are you talking about? Where’s Dudley and the dogs?” the woman said to the night. “I don’t like them being gone this way.”

  “You’ll be with them soon enough, ma’am,” said Siebert as man and animal swayed closer in the flickering glow of light.

  Chapter 7

  Siebert sat shirtless, clenching the edge of a wooden table with his left hand. Daphne Bryant rethreaded her needle and went back to sewing up a gruesome gash atop his left shoulder. In Siebert’s right hand he held the small Colt Pocket. A cup of whiskey sat within close reach.

  “Dudley brewed this himself, eh?” he asked, feeling tipsy. He’d been taking a swig every time Daphne finished running the needle and thread through another ripped and gaping bite wound.

  “Yes, he did,” Daphne said, paying close attention to her handiwork. She wore a pair of thick spectacles with a magnifying lens tied in front of one of them. She glanced up at Siebert with eyes that appeared to be the size of skillets. Her thick, frizzled hair stood out around her black, leathery face like a silver-white mesquite bush.

  “Get ready to take another drink,” she advised grimly.

  “Dammmmn!” Siebert lamented painfully as the needle slid through his sore flesh and tightened down onto the coarse thread. He raised the wooden cup to his lips and threw his head back, pouring a long, fiery drink down his throat. “I love whiskey as much as the next fellow, but dammmmnnn!” he screamed again as the needle sank into him. He set the wooden cup down and wrapped his hand back around the pocket pistol.

  “We’re nearly finished,” the woman said.

  Siebert stared at her large, empty eyes.

  “You can’t see shit, can you, old Daphne?” he said drunkenly.

  “I see well enough,” the old woman said. Readying her bloody fingertips to take another plunge with the needle, she stopped and said, “You want to do this yourself?”

  Siebert didn’t answer. Instead he chuckled drunkenly under his breath and shook his swirling head.

  “When this is over…oh, I swear to God…,” he said. Then he stiffened and said, “Dammmnnn!” again as the needle made another stab into his shoulder.

  “We’re stopping for a spell,” Daphne said. She took off her spectacles and laid them in front of her. Her eyes seemed to shrink to the size of small berries. She folded her bloody fingers on the table. “You’ve killed Dudley, ain’t you?” she asked. She’d also asked him the same question three other times since she’d started sewing his wounds.

  “Hell no, I told you I didn’t,” Siebert said. “But I will if you keep crowding
me about it.”

  “Okay, then, where’s the dogs?” Daphne challenged matter-of-factly.

  Siebert gave her a drunken stare. He reached over to the side of her head and clutched a handful of spongy silver-white hair.

  “Do you think I’d do that, kill your man?” he asked.

  “I don’t see no dogs,” she said with a shrug.

  “You know, you’re not a bad-looking old gal,” Siebert said, appraising her in his whiskey lull. His eyes swerved; he caught himself and sat up stiffly. “Okay, listen to me.” He jiggled her head, then turned her hair loose and placed his hand over hers. “I want you to feel something of mine.” He picked her hand up and pulled it toward him.

  “Huh-uh, I ain’t that way,” she said bluntly.

  “Damn it, just feel it!” Siebert insisted. He jerked her weathered hand over and laid it on his bare chest. He squeezed it closed over the cross. “There, did that hurt any?”

  “No, it didn’t,” said the old woman. She settled down with a slight sigh. “I’m careful what gets put in my hand, bad as my eyes are.”

  Siebert just stared at her.

  “My point is,” he said, “would a man wearing a cross kill your old man, your dogs either, far as that goes?”

  “I’m not saying,” Daphne replied curtly. “People carry a cross for all sorts of makeup—some for pure evil, just to catch folks unawares, I’m thinking.”

  “Jesus…,” said Siebert. “Let’s get to sewing.” He threw back a long drink, set the cup down and laid his hand over the pocket pistol.

  Daphne’s bloody fingers crawled across the tabletop and felt of his hand.

  “Why do you keep your hand on this little thing all the time?” she asked.

  Siebert grinned behind a warm whiskey glow.

  “Because it’s all I have right now,” he said.

  “Dudley’s got a bigger one,” she said.

  “Really…?” said Siebert. “Where’s it at?”

  “Back in the bedroom under a plank beneath the bed,” the woman said. “We’ll go get it when I’m finished here. There’s a good liver dun horse in the barn too,” she added.

  “No fooling?” said Siebert. “Why are you telling me all this, Daphne?”

  She paused for a moment before saying, “I’m hoping if I give you everything we’ve got, you won’t kill us.”

  “Listen to you, old sweetheart,” Siebert said affectionately. He cupped his hand over hers again. “God forbid if I were to harm a hair on your precious head—Dudley’s either.” He smiled and sighed. “Now get on with the sewing.”

  Even with the whiskey surging through his veins, he still felt every sharp sting of the needle sliding through his flesh, every draw of thread as the old woman tightened on it. But by the time the last stitch was looped and tied, he had fallen into a painful lull that kept him from being either asleep or awake. Twice in the night he either felt, or thought he’d felt, the old woman try to raise his hand from the pocket gun lying on the table. Both times he gripped the gun and gave a warning growl. Finally he turned half-closed eyes to the woman and saw her knobby hands folded on the tabletop.

  “Are we through?” he asked.

  “We’ve been through for a while,” the old woman said. “It’s near daylight. Do you want some coffee? I’ve got some boiling.”

  Barely awake, Siebert looked around at the ray of venturing sunlight stabbing slantwise through the front window. His wet eyes swam around the room to a coiled lariat hanging from a peg.

  “Yeah, I want some,” he said. His gaze moved back to the table and focused on a large Dance Brothers .44 revolver staring at him from the tabletop. Beside the big gun lay a large tin of ammunition. “Holy dogs,” he whispered.

  “I went and got it for you,” said Daphne.

  “Did you load it?” Siebert grinned, reaching for the pistol.

  “I was afraid to,” said the woman. “I was afraid you’d wake up and get the wrong notion.”

  “You should have been my ma,” Siebert said. He picked up the big pistol and turned it in his hands. “What about that coffee?” he said stiffly, feeling the tightness of the fresh stitches all over his face, his head and his upper body.

  The old woman went to a small hearth and poured coffee into a battered tin cup. Siebert stood up, loaded the revolver and spun it on his finger, liking the feel of it.

  “All right,” he said. He twirled the gun into his empty holster, drew it, reholstered it loosely and let his hand rest on the bone handles. “I need to see how it shoots.”

  Daphne set the cup of steaming coffee on the table. Siebert stuck the Colt Pocket down in front of his gun belt. He picked up the tin of ammunition and tucked it into the crook of his arm.

  “Get on the table,” he commanded.

  Daphne stared at him through her thick spectacles.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I told you to,” said Siebert, his palm resting on the butt of the small Colt, his fingers tapping idly.

  “I never done nothing this crazy in my life,” the old woman said. But she crawled up atop the table on all fours.

  “You have now,” said Siebert. “Lie on your back.”

  She stared questioningly at him through the spectacles, one lens covered by the magnifying glass.

  “So I can tie you up,” said Siebert, gesturing toward the lariat hanging on the wall. “I don’t trust you anymore.”

  “Oh,” she said as if she understood.

  In the night, the boy had shaken his sleeping father as soon as he’d heard the sound of distant gunfire. Yet by the time his father was awake, the gunfire had seized. The night beyond the open windows of their small hillside adobe lay as silent as stone.

  “I heard it, Papa,” said the young man with determination when his father seemed skeptical. “By the saints, I heard it—this was not thunder.”

  His father stared at him and batted the clinging remnants of sleep from his eyes. He let out a long breath and looked around for his trousers even though they hung from the same peg where he’d hung his trousers for twenty years.

  “Do you not believe me, Papa?” the young man asked.

  “Sí, Julio, I believe you, my son,” Umberto said. He pulled the thin peasant trousers down from the peg and shook them for scorpions before stepping into them. “From the gringos locos, you say?”

  “Sí, from the crazy americanos,” said Julio. “The shot of a pistol and the double blasts of an escopeta.”

  “The escopeta is for wolves and coyotes,” said Umberto. “The old gringo uses it too freely, I think. But the pistola is worrisome, especially in the night.” He tied the strings of his trousers at the waist and picked up a machete from against the wall. “We go.”

  “Sí, we go,” said Julio. Having anticipated his father’s decision, he’d put on his sandals, his trousers and shirt, and thrown on a frayed poncho. A machete was hooked to his waistband, and a straw sombrero hung behind his shoulders from a string around his neck. “It is at times like this I wish we owned a horse.”

  “Oh?” said Umberto, eyeing him. “Why? So we could kill it on these dark high trails?”

  Julio didn’t answer.

  “Besides, we travel across the rocks from here to the gringos locos quicker than any horse,” Umberto said. “A horse must have a trail of some sort. We need no trail, nothing but a place to put a foot, a spot to clasp a hand, eh?”

  “Sí, Papa,” said Julio, wishing he had kept his mouth shut. A man did not speak of things he wished for. Wishing was for fools and wistful young girls. He kept a hand on the handle of his machete.

  When they’d left the adobe, they did not walk down to the trail lying two hundred feet below. Instead they had moved right out the side door of the house and onto the steep, rocky hillside and negotiated the jagged terrain like driven, agile spiders.

  They climbed silently upward and sidelong over boulder and spur and moved effortlessly down broken rock faces like two dark teardrops. At a steep, ro
cky ledge, Umberto made it a point to stop long enough for his son to look down at a sharp turn in the winding switchback trail that they both knew would have taken over an hour longer to reach were they relying on horse or donkey.

  The two stared out across a steep wall of rock that rimmed the trails and hillsides in a half circle and stood high and vertical against the night sky.

  “Desea un caballo, eh?” Umberto asked his son.

  Julio gave a slight smile.

  “No, Papa, I do not want a horse,” he said.

  “Qué?” said Umberto, taunting his son a little. “I did not hear you.”

  “I said, ‘No, Papa,’” said Julio. “No caballo.”

  Umberto chuckled as they both took off their sandals and dusted the soles together before shoving them down into their waistbands.

  “Ahora el viaje comienza,” Umberto said, standing.

  “Sí, Papa,” said Julio, “now the travel begins.”

  They stepped over the edge of the cliff and moved on.

  It was silvery daylight when they had walked onto the hillside overlooking the Bryants’ narrow home on the rocky valley floor. When they reached the bottom of the hillside and started across the stretch of brush and wild grass, they stopped at the sight of Dudley Bryant and both dogs, Big and Little, lying dead and bloody on the ground. No sooner had they come upon the gruesome sight than they ducked down quickly as the sound of rapid pistol fire erupted from the direction of the house.

  A loud yell and a round of maniacal laughter arose behind the echoing gunfire. Both Umberto and his son let out a breath, realizing that this was just wild, random firing—at least no one was firing at them. Umberto gave a troubled look at the dead lying strewn on the ground beside them.

  “That is not the old woman, Daphne,” he whispered warily.

  “No, it is not,” said Julio. He rose into a crouch enough to duck-walk over to his father’s side.

  “Stay close to me,” Umberto said. “We must see about the woman.”

  The two moved forward in a crouch as another round of gunfire erupted, then ended in a loud yell and another peel of laughter. During a reloading lull, they ran the last few yards and ducked for cover at the corner of the house. They both looked down curiously at long lines scraped in the dirt from the porch, around the corner and to the rear of the house. They stiffened as six more pistol shots erupted rapidly followed by a cackle of laughter as a man’s voice called out, “Yiiii-hiii! I’ve never owned so many bullets in my whole damned life!”