by Ralph Cotton
“Then you ain’t awfully upset with me, over Heathen getting away?” she asked meekly.
“No,” Shaw said. “As much gold as there is involved, it’ll draw him back to us sooner or later.” A crash of thunder roared overhead. “Meanwhile, we sit out this storm, rest ourselves and the horses.”
Overhead the storm had turned more severe. Hail pounded the walls and half roof like bullets. The wind had lessened, but only a little as the sky turned dark as night. Lightning split the dark, boiling clouds, followed by cannon-fire thunder that shook the crumbling adobe. The horses whinnied in protest from within their lean-to shelter.
“It’s going to be tomorrow morning before this sky-buster is over,” Jane calculated, looking up at the black heavens through the missing part of the ceiling. She stooped down to the smoldering fire and blew on it, then stopped as if in deep contemplation. She touched a hand to the bosom of her fringed buckskin shirt and let her fingers toy idly but nervously with the top button.
In the late evening, when the storm had slackened to a hard, windless rain, Shaw sat on his blanket in a dry spot on the dirt floor and sipped coffee in the glow of firelight. He cleaned and checked his big Colt, while to the northeast thunder still growled low beneath an occasional faded steak of lightning.
In a rear corner of the adobe Jane had stretched a ragged, discarded blanket she’d found in the rubble across two rickety chair backs. She undressed behind the blanket and bathed herself with fresh rainwater she’d collected in a large clay urn. She used a small bar of lye soap Shaw had given her from his saddlebags. “Lawrence,” she said quietly, out of the blue, “before Heathen got away, he and I were talking some.”
“Yeah?” Shaw didn’t look up. He sat checking the action of his Colt by turning the cylinder slowly between his fingertips. “Is that what helped him get away—he caught you off guard?”
“Hell no,” she snapped back at him. “He didn’t get the drop on me.”
“I understand,” Shaw said, not trying to pursue the matter.
“I—I told him something that maybe I shouldn’t have,” she said hesitantly.
“What’s that?” Shaw asked, his attention still drawn to the revolver in his hand.
“I told him you and me are man and woman,” she said, almost holding her breath after saying it.
A silent pause followed.
“Was that all right?” Jane asked after a moment, her voice sounding anxious, unsteady.
“Was what all right?” Shaw asked quietly, “us being man and woman . . . or just you telling him that we are?”
Jane breathed a short sigh of relief and smiled demurely to herself. “Either one . . . both,” she said, quickly catching herself. “Damn it . . . It would be all right, that is, as far as I’m concerned. You know, the two of us, together?” She paused and listened intently, not daring to look around the edge of the blanket and face him. “I know there’s been some bad things said about me . . . things that ain’t true. I’m as normal as the next person. I want you to know that.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Janie,” Shaw said. “I put no stock in stories passed along bars and gambling tables.” He finished with the Colt and slid it into his holster.
“Well, thank you very damn much,” Jane said with sarcasm. She grumbled and cursed under her breath, then said, “I’m not trying to prove a damned thing. I just figured you’re here, and I’m here. I just went a little soft for you for a minute—” She cut herself short and said, “Aw, hell, forget it.”
She stood up, naked above the top edge of the hanging blanket. She began pulling on her buckskin trousers. “Don’t go thinking you’d be the first hardheaded gunslinging fool I ever let crawl up my leg. You wouldn’t—and you won’t be the last, either. I’ve always had a partiality for misfits and idiots. . . .” Her words fell back into a muffled grumbling.
Shaw sat in silence. He watched as she struggled with the close-fitting buckskin, seeing her firm, bare breasts without the binder she usually wore to keep them flattened. Jesus . . . He set his tin cup down and rose to his feet. He’d never realized what a shapely woman she was beneath her men’s trail clothes and breast binder.
With her trousers up but not buttoned, in a huff she gathered her hair back and began tying a strip of rawhide around it. “I’ll tell you another damned thing, too, Mr. Fastest Gun Alive,” she said. “When I was a schoolgirl, I had men come to court me the likes of which—”
This time it was Shaw’s finger on her lips that cut her off. “Are you going to talk all the while?” he said quietly, standing close to her.
“No, I’m not,” she said, taken aback at his sudden appearance. She raised a hand as if to cover her bare breasts. “But I just wanted to let you know—”
Shaw cut her off again, this time with his lips pressed to hers. He kissed her long and deep, at first feeling some strange awkward resistance from her. But it quickly passed, or melted away, as she moaned and let go of something inside herself. She had clenched her fists when he’d begun the kiss, but she opened her hands and let them fall upon his shoulders.
When the kiss ended, she gasped for breath and held him at arm’s length. Her hair fell undone around her shoulders, the rawhide strip clinging to it. “I—I wasn’t prepared . . .”
“Are you now?” Shaw asked. He looked deep into her eyes in the soft flicker of firelight.
“Yes, I am. I mean, I think so,” she said, sounding not quite certain. She shrugged clumsily and started to say more, but before she could, he swept her up off her feet and carried her to his blanket. “Oh my . . . ,” she said as he laid her down gently but firmly.
She writhed out of her unbuttoned trousers as Shaw pulled them down and off and pitched them aside. “You do move fast when you’ve put your mind to it,” she gasped, spreading her legs and pulling him down between them.
He wanted her to shut up, but he had a feeling she wasn’t going to.
“I hope you . . . don’t think that this is something I let everybody in the world—” Her words stopped again, this time in a deeper, louder gasp. “Oh my!” she repeated, this time crying out the words. She felt the heat of him, the hard powerful presence of him, and she gasped wide-eyed, staring off through the missing roof at the darkness overhead. “Oh yes, Lawrence! Oh, damn it, yes . . .”
He’d been right. She wasn’t about to shut up. This was how it was going to be all the way.
Moments later, when they had finished and lay side by side looking up at the dark, clearing sky, she reached a hand over and drew circles on his chest. “Was it . . . good?” she asked.
“Yes,” Shaw said, feeling strange, being asked something like that, “it was good.” He stared straight up, trying to remember whether she had talked all through their lovemaking. He believed she had.
“Just good?” she asked.
Here we go. . . . “No, it was better than good, Janie. It was really good.”
“Because that was the first time in a long time for me,” she said, relaxing against him. She laid her head on his chest and said, looking up at the clearing sky, “Look, the stars are coming out.” She paused and smiled to herself. “We made love in the desert, under the stars, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did.” Shaw wondered if this had been a mistake. But he stroked her naked back, felt her breasts warm against his chest and put aside any doubts. “I know you’re tired,” he said. “Go on and get some sleep. I understand.”
After a pause, Jane said quietly, “I’m not tired at all.”
Shaw lay gazing at the stars through remnants of drifting clouds.
“I always worry afterward, what a man thinks of me. I don’t want to be looked at like I’m some kind of line whore,” she said.
“I don’t look at you like that at all, Janie,” Shaw offered, hoping it would do, yet knowing somehow that it wouldn’t.
“Ever since I was a young girl I’ve worried about that.” She paused in reflection. “I took over raising five brothe
rs and sisters when I was just a strip myself, so I didn’t get much time to figure how men and women ought to act with one another. You could say I missed out on some things.” She shrugged. “Anyhow, I always got along better riding and hunting with the men than I ever did sewing and chatting and taking tea with the lady folk. Is that wrong . . . ?”
“No,” Shaw said quietly. He could tell it had been a long time since she’d talked to anybody this way. He let her get it all out. He continued listening as his eyes fell closed. He drifted with the dark passing clouds. He felt Rosa warm against him, then Rosa’s sister, Carmelita, with whom he had lived for a while following Rosa’s death.
“I took what men’s work I could find to feed my orphaned brothers and sisters, because women’s work didn’t pay worth a squat. . . .”
It was the same with the women in his life, Shaw reminded himself, nodding, seeing countless other faces of women come and go behind his lowered eyelids. And now among those faces, Jane Crowly, he thought, hearing her voice grow farther and farther away as sleep overtook him. Jane continued talking for a while. She raised her head from his chest enough to look up at his face and see that he had fallen asleep.
“Well, I can’t say it’s the first time I’ve talked one under the table,” she whispered to herself. Snuggling back onto his chest, she turned her eyes to the dark, clearing sky and sighed. “It’s still a beautiful night. . . .”
Chapter 6
Just before dawn Shaw opened his eyes to the smell of boiling coffee. Jane was already up. She looked over at him from where she sat stooped beside the fire. Seeing him return her gaze, she looked away, lowering her head, her floppy hat brim shielding her eyes from him. “I figured you’d be waking up hungry this morning,” she said. Reaching out a hand, she stirred beans and peppers in a small tin skillet over the low fire. “I know I did.”
Shaw looked at her, not knowing what to say and not really wanting to say anything. He thought about the night before and felt strange now seeing her back in her buckskins, wearing her big heavy miner’s boots, her breasts flattened by her binder, her hair back and pushed up under her hat.
Jane stood and walked over and stooped beside him with a cup of steaming coffee. “Here, drink this. It’ll make you feel better about last night,” she said as if reading whatever concerns might be crossing his mind. She gave a slight grin, holding the cup out to him. “Don’t worry, I ain’t holding nothing over you. What happened last night don’t make us married.”
“Obliged,” Shaw said, referring to the coffee, not sure how else to respond to her. He took the cup, blew on the brew and sipped it.
“Although,” she continued, “I can see how this kind of partnership could be good for both of us if we wanted it to. I bet there’s many a pilgrim wishes he had a pard he could trail with all day and rub bellies with all night.”
“I never gave it much thought,” Shaw said. He didn’t like the image her words conjured up in his mind now that she was back in her buckskins and miner’s boots. He paused for a moment, then said, “Look, Jane, last night was something that maybe we—”
“I know what you’re going to say, Lawrence,” Jane cut in, “but lest you think I’m going to go getting all moony-eyed and talking stupid, let me tell you straight out: I’m free as a bird and I intend staying that way. What happened last night was really good—you said so yourself. But it might happen again or it might not.”
Shaw sat staring, lost for words. “So let’s neither one go counting on anything from the other, okay?” She pushed a stand of hair from his eyes and smiled. “Ain’t that sort of what you were fixing to say?”
“Yeah,” Shaw lied, “something like that.” He wasn’t clear on what she was saying or why she was saying it, but he breathed a silent sigh of relief hearing her lay to rest any notions of romance between them. With that, he decided it best to sip his coffee and let her clear the air on the matter.
“You see, Lawrence, I’ve never allowed myself to be hurt by a man, like some women have. I’ve never had time for it. I pull my trousers on when I’m satisfied, and I go on about my business. Do you understand me?” She offered another smile. It was stiff and unconvincing, but Shaw decided it would have to do.
“Yeah, I understand,” said Shaw. How much of this was the plain truth, and how much was Jane’s tough-sounding pretense, he didn’t know. But this was neither the time nor the place for him to sort through it. She offered him a way out and he took it.
“Good,” Jane said, standing, backing away. “Now, I expect we can eat breakfast and go on riding together without any foolish expectations of each other.”
Enough said . . . Shaw nodded. Standing, he pulled on his trousers and his bib-front shirt. He tucked the shirttail in, buttoned his fly and hooked his gallowses over his shoulders. He picked up his gun belt, slung it on and buckled it. Jane watched him draw his Colt, check it, then slide it back into the holster.
After a breakfast of peppers and beans, they attended to the horses and were on the trail before the first rays of sunlight rose above the eastern horizon. They rode upward into a low line of jagged hills. When they stopped at daylight, they stepped down from their saddles and scooped up hailstones into their hats and held the offering up to the horses’ muzzles.
Crunching on a piece of hail herself, Jane gestured toward a stretch of flatlands below to the northwest of the hill line. “After that storm your pals and the wagon will do well to keep to the foot of the hills, at least until the sun dries things up some.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figure,” said Shaw, gazing in the same direction, realizing that the lawmen and the wagonload of gold lay somewhere out there, hidden in the vastness of the rugged desert hill country. “We’ll keep scouting east of them until we find some fresh tracks or turn something up. As long as we keep ourselves between the wagon and the thieves, we’ll have the upper hand.”
“I’ve rode enough for the army to know that ‘scout’ is ofttimes just another word for ‘decoy.’ ”She offered a crooked smile. “Hell, sometimes all it means is ‘live bait.’ ”
“Then let’s make sure we do all we can to keep the ‘live bait’ alive,” Shaw said. He slung a few remaining hailstones from his hat, placed the hat back atop his head and swung up into his saddle.
“I’m with you on that, pard,” Jane said, slinging water and crunched ice from her hat. She stepped up into her saddle next to him and the two nudged their horses forward onto a path leading down to the desert flatlands.
“There’s three villages over there?” Shaw asked, gesturing toward the rolling hills east of the flatlands.
“Yes,” said Jane. “The first is Suerte Buena, meaning Good Luck.” She gave her crooked grin. “I was through there once, but no good luck rubbed off on me. What about you?”
“I was too drunk to remember what my luck was at the time. Good or bad, I managed to ride it out.” Nodding off into the distance, he said, “There’s two more towns past Suerte Buena.” He searched his memory. “There’s Mal Vuelve. . . .” He stalled, having a hard time remembering the third.
“Ciudad de Almas Perdidas,” Jane said, helping his memory along, “the City of Lost Souls.”
“That’s right,” Shaw said, “it’s Ciudad de Almas Perdidas.” He spoke the three names in order. “Suerte Buena, Mal Vuelve and Ciudad de Almas Perdidas.”
Jane translated the names to English, saying, “Good Luck, Wrong Turn and City of Lost Souls.” She smiled, nudging her horse forward. “Sounds like some kind of dark prophecy, don’t it? Life wishes you good luck, then sends you down the wrong trail, then ends up sweeping you in with all the other lost souls.”
Shaw didn’t respond.
“But I never blame life for my making any wrong turns,” Jane added, feeling a need to lighten such a hopeless line of thought. “Seems like wrong turns is where I always developed a keener sense of direction.”
“Let’s hope this trip does the same,” Shaw said as they rode on.
W
hen Red Burke and the five Mexican banditos rode into Suerte Buena, they watched doors and windows slam shut along the narrow dirt street lying before them. A man wearing a stove-pipe hat and carrying chickens by their feet scurried into an alley. Guitar and accordion music coming from within a cantina stopped suddenly. Sitting atop his horse between the Alevario brothers, Sergio and Ernesto, Red Burke slapped dust from his shoulder and said, “We just got here and I already feel unwelcome.” He gave Sergio a grimace. “I hope you boys’ cloudy reputation hasn’t dampened any chance of a warm reception.”
Sergio spit in disgust. “These stinking piglets,” he said, staring from one closed door to the next. “They will pay for shaming me this way in front of an amigo.” He looked at Ernesto. “Take this pigsty apart, my brother. Perhaps the next time we come here they will remember this lesson.”
Ernesto started to spur his horse forward. But Burke stopped him with a raised hand. “Hold it. . . . What have we here?” He gestured toward a spindly legged old man who stepped out into the street thirty yards away with a large, ancient shotgun in his hands. He wore a drooping gray suit with a red sash around his waist and a tin badge pinned crookedly on his lapel. Atop his head was a wide flat-crowned hat, like the kind worn by lawmen on the American side of the border.
Sergio chuckled and said, “Oh no, they have elected another lawman for us to shoot.”
“Si, and I will shoot him right now,” said Ernesto, “so he does not have to walk all this distance in the afternoon heat.” He drew his long Remington from his waist and cocked it.
“No, wait,” said Red Burke. “Let’s talk to him, hear what he might have heard about the stolen gold. He could be of some use to us.”
“What? This one?” Ernesto laughed. “He will do us no good. They are hardheaded, these old ones. They take upholding the law much too serious.”
“In that case we can always kill him,” said Burke, sounding firm on the matter, “but for now we’ll talk, and see what he has to say.”
