by Ralph Cotton
“I said a hard kill, but not impossible,” said Glick, reaching over with his fingerless gloves on and picking up the coffeepot. He filled a tin cup and passed it over to Prado. “Here, drink up, knock the chill off the night air.” It was more of an order than an invitation.
Prado swallowed the last of a strip of elk jerky and wiped a hand across his mouth. He took up the cup with his gloved hands, blew on the steaming coffee and sipped. “So, what do you say, Dutchman, the two of us, taking down Beck, killing the ranger if he’s in our way?” He blew and sipped again.
Glick gathered the few strips of jerky and put them back inside his coat. “I have stopped hunting down bounty prey of late, Prado,” he said, gazing off as if in profound contemplation. “I find it much better to give the prey a reason to come to me.” He gestured a half nod in Shala’s direction. “You know, the way you and Hook-nose did.”
“You mean this was all a setup, Glick?” said Prado, sounding angry. “You knew we were watching, that we’d come on in, because of the woman . . . her traipsing around naked before us?”
Glick gave a pale, ill-looking grin. “Will it hurt your feelings if I tell you, yes, I did set it up and have it all planned to work out that way?”
“Hurt my feelings, I doubt it,” said Prado, his temper starting to flare, even with Glick still holding a gun pointed loosely in his direction. He set the coffee cup down. “What it does, is make me madder than a hornet.” Seeing that Glick didn’t bother raising his gun barrel only emboldened Prado, who continued. “For two cents I’d—” His words halted as if stuck in his throat.
He tried to rise from the ground toward Glick, who sat seven feet away. But suddenly he didn’t have the strength to push himself up.
Glick cocked his head to one side, watching curiously as Prado sank back into place and struggled to keep his head raised. “How are you feeling, Lew Prado?” he asked quietly, wearing a pale, smug grin.
“I’m fine, just fine,” Prado said with a confused look on his face. His eyelids drooped, as did his shoulders. No sooner than he’d answered Glick, he followed with, “You’ve poisoned me.”
“Oh?” Glick raised his hairless brow. “Well, surprise, surprise. Didn’t you suppose I would? Haven’t you heard that poisoning is one of my many ways of ridding vermin?”
“You dirty rotten . . .” Prado’s eyes showed flashes of anger, of wanting to pounce forward and grasp Glick by the throat. But he was powerless to make it happen. His body had begun slipping away from him. His arms were growing more and more limp and numb.
“It’s called Chondo,” Glick said in a conversational tone. “It’s made in South America from the Chondodendron plant. The savages call it wild grape, but I like to call it living death. I’m sure you see why.”
“I—I’ve got to—” Prado struggled but couldn’t force himself up.
“No, no, there’s nothing you’ve got to do,” said Glick with a dark chuckle. Then he went on, saying, “The savages use Chondo in their blowguns to hunt game. But nowadays it has been refined. It can be used orally—a much more civilized manner, I think.” He gave a thin smile, watching Prado put more effort into breathing.
“Why not . . . a bullet? Why . . . this?” Prado managed to say.
“Because I take solace in watching death move slowly,” said Glick. “I kill men quickly with a gun and knife as a means of making my living. But poisoning is something I enjoy doing. I need to savor it.” He took a deep breath and said, “But enough pleasant conversation.” He stood up in his big bearskin coat, his Colt hanging cocked but unneeded at his side. “I’m going to have Shala cut your head from your body while you’re still alive and aware of what’s going on around you.”
“Glick . . . you son of . . .” Prado couldn’t move. He was a man trapped inside a thick, smothering membrane that seemed to draw tighter and tighter around him.
Glick saw the terror, the anger and the look of helplessness in his eyes. Chuckling under his breath, he said, “Don’t worry, it isn’t going to hurt. You’ll be aware of everything going on, the blade slicing back and forth, going deeper, and so forth. But you’ll be so numb, you won’t feel any pain.”
“You—you—” Prado struggled to say something, but he wasn’t able to get the words out.
“Hush now,” Glick said, wagging a finger toward him. He turned toward the animals and called out to Shala, “Get over here, young lady. It’s time you started helping me out in this business of ours.”
Shala, who had been watching and listening, stepped forward warily. She stared down at the dying man as Glick sidled over to her and placed the handle of the big knife in her hand. “Start from the side,” he said quietly, “so I can get a longer look at his face.”
Chapter 20
Shala needed time to think. Yet there was no time, she told herself. Glick had made clear what he expected of her. But why now? What is he up to? she asked herself. Was this a test? She wanted to tell him that she couldn’t do this, cut the head off a living man! But something inside her warned her not to say a word. Yes, it’s a test.
Glick must know she’d heard what Prado said about a man falling out of the pines into the ranger and Memphis Beck’s campsite. Now he wanted to see where she stood. She’d learned that with the Dutchman everything was done to constantly gauge the world around him. She never knew what really went on inside that pale, slick head of his.
She knew how to keep him at arm’s length this long, she reminded herself. Yet she wondered if even that wasn’t, in some complicated way, him keeping control by appearing not to have it. She tensed the knife handle in her hand, knowing that how she handled this situation might be a matter of her life or death. Here goes, she thought.
“I’m not going to do this, Mr. Glick,” she said firmly, turning to him from five feet away.
“Oh? I’m disappointed.” Glick looked at the knife in her hand—and in his hand the cocked Colt. “If we’re to be partners, you’re going to have to show me you’re serious about this profession.
Partners? Serious about this profession? She stared at him, unyielding. Oh, yes, this was him testing her.
“All right then,” the crafty old assassin said before she could reply, “you cut the other one’s head off. This one will be dead shortly.”
Shala took a deep breath. Something was at stake here; she knew it. This was Glick seeing where she stood. There was no turning away from this. She had a feeling that her life lay on the scale, balanced against just how far she would go to stay alive and be a part of his terrible world. “You’ve got a deal,” she said through clenched teeth.
Even as Prado felt himself slipping farther and farther into a dark tunnel, he watched Shala step over, take Cleaver by his hair and carry out her grisly task. He saw Glick watch with a gleam in his eyes. Then he saw Glick turn to him and say, “She’s good, isn’t she?”
Prado couldn’t respond. He could only stare, unable even to close his eyes beyond the drooping pull of gravity, which Glick reached down and corrected with an upward pull of his thumb and forefinger. “There,” the Dutchman said, opening Prado’s eyes wider, “I don’t want you to miss any of this.”
When Shala had finished, and Cleaver’s head lay in a wide puddle of dark blood, she stepped back, breathing heavily. Her stomach tried to surge upward, but she held it down with determination. This she did, not because she felt it important to whatever sick game the Dutchman was playing with her. This she did for herself, with determination, because she wasn’t going to allow herself to crumble and fold. She was strong. She always had been. She wouldn’t give up her strength.
“Where are you going?” Glick asked as she turned and trudged toward the horses, her breathing hard and tight.
Shala didn’t answer, not until she stomped back to where Cleaver’s head lay on the ground. Then she dropped the heavy, rancid-smelling sack on the ground. “This one is starting to fill up.” She wiped a strand of hair from her face with her shirt cuff and tacked on, “We’
ll have to start another one before we catch up to Beck.”
Glick grinned, seeming to like what he heard. He looked at the dying Prado and winked. Then he held the head bag open with his free hand while Shala picked up Cleaver’s head and dropped it into the sack with a soft thud.
“I’m afraid this one is still alive, young lady,” Glick said, turning to where Prado sat slumped and watching, his eyes drooping again, a string of saliva bobbing from his gaping lips.
Shala stood staring, uncertain of what to do, of what to say. She had reached a point where her nerves and emotions were wire-tight. She wasn’t sure what her response would be to anything the Dutchman asked of her right then.
Glick studied her from the side, seeing her condition, knowing what he saw now was the real woman. Whatever response he got from her at this moment would be raw and honest. “Here,” he said, turning the gun in his hand and handing it to her, butt first. “Put a bullet in his head first, if that helps you.” Glick reached out and gently took the knife from her hand.
Shala looked at the cocked Colt held out to her. More testing . . . She looked into Glick’s eyes, then wrapped her hand around the warm gun butt and took it from him, her finger going inside the trigger guard, ready to fire. She thought about it, even as Glick’s hand slipped away from the barrel and left the tip of it pointed at his heart. Yet she fought the temptation to simply pull the trigger and leave the Dutchman lying dead on the ground.
Her finger was already on it. She had no compunction about killing him. He deserved to die, more so than any wolf, bison, panther, or grizzly she’d ever shot. But something told her it wasn’t right. This was too easy. Glick didn’t make mistakes like this. With her eyes caged to hide her thoughts, she turned the gun quickly away from Glick and held it out at arm’s length, less than two feet from Prado’s bowed head.
He’d be dead any second, she told herself, justifying what she was about to do. There was nothing going to happen, no great miracle that would save him. She braced herself, knowing she had to do it. She either had to pull the trigger on Prado, or turn the gun back to Glick and kill him. That would make this whole terrible nightmare end, she reminded herself. Yet something would not allow it.
Stop it, she scolded herself. This had to be done, she wasn’t sure why. Concentrating on a curl of damp, dark hair atop Prado’s bare head, she clenched her teeth and pulled the trigger.
She didn’t flinch as the hammer fell—a fact that Glick took favorable note of. When it came down to it, this woman could put a bullet through a man’s head without batting an eye, he thought. She’d just proved it to him.
“Ooops,” he said, giving a thin smile at the quiet click of metal sounding instead of the blazing roar of a gunshot. “I must’ve forgotten to load it after I cleaned it earlier.” She noted the way he’d been standing, feet spread, the knife ready in his clenched fist, as if he were ready to use it at any second.
Shala felt herself uncoil. So that was it. . . . She let the gun point to the ground at her side and cocked and pulled the trigger five times in a row, until satisfied the gun had been empty all along. There was his test. She let out a breath, staring down at Prado’s bowed head. Well, she had passed it, she told herself. Now to find out what she’d gained from it, aside from her life.
“That’s a bad thing to do, Mr. Glick,” she said, turning the gun back to him, butt first, the way she’d received it. “Do you want to load it and we’ll do this all over?” She gazed into his eyes coolly, calmly, not revealing anything about what she might do if he were to hand her a loaded gun right then.
“No, that will do,” said Glick innocently. “Anyway, it appears Prado has already died on us.” He smiled, as if pleased at how Shala had conducted herself throughout the situation. “You go wash your pretty hands, young lady,” he said. “I’ll attend to this brute and drop him in with his friends.”
Shala walked back to the fire, feeling a sense of relief, knowing how she had handled herself was beyond any reproach. Glick had tested her; she had passed. Yet she wasn’t sure what the old killer would be up to next. How safe was she now? She had no idea, she decided. She stooped and poured water from a canteen over her knife hand, watching Cleaver’s blood turn thin and pink as it braided its way to the ground.
Figuring out the Dutchman’s next move would be no easy task, she told herself. She finished washing her hands, then stood and forced herself to go through the motions of preparing the camp for the night while her thoughts raced through her mind.
She felt a startled chill run up her spine when she suddenly heard the Dutchman whisper close to her ear, “You done good, my darling.”
She turned instinctively and found herself in his brittle arms, his pale face close to hers, the outline of the smoke-cured scalp wig glistening crawly in the firelight. Oh, God, no . . . !
In the middle of the night, Shala lay feigning sleep, listening to the sound of the Dutchman snoring mildly beneath his blankets and his bearskin coat less than five feet away. She knew that tonight was the night she had to take her chances and get away from him. Stanley was alive, she was certain, but whether he was dead or alive, there was nothing holding her here now. She could stand no more of the Dutchman or this dark, twisted assassin’s life he’d forced her into.
Tonight the death, blood and depravity had brought Glick closer than he had yet been to consummating his dark, fanciful relationship with her. She knew that with Glick’s persistence, his wits and wiles, it would be only a matter of time before he would have her mentally cornered, and she would have to take him into her. She couldn’t keep him at arm’s length forever, she thought.
Sitting up in the waning flicker of firelight, she eased into her boots and coat and pulled her hat down onto her head. She crawled silently away from her blanket. When she knew her shadow from the firelight would not pass over the snoring Dutchman, she rose to her feet and moved catlike to where the horses stood at a rope drawn between two trees. On one of the trees, the bag of heads hung from a low limb. She turned her head from the rancid smell of death as she slipped past it.
She didn’t take time to saddle her horse. She simply slipped the rope hackamore from its muzzle, replaced it with bit and reins and led the animal away into the darkness. She listened intently for any sound from the campsite as she slipped up onto the horse’s back and rode away at a walk.
Fifty yards from the campsite, in the thin light of a quarter moon, Shala stopped the horse at the trail’s edge and listened for a few seconds. She heard nothing but the silent whisper of night. This seemed too easy, she told herself, knowing the wily ways of the Dutchman, and feeling that he had some hand even in her slipping away like this. But that didn’t matter now, she reminded herself. She was free of him. With a bat of her heels to the horse’s sides, she put the animal into a safe trot along the rocky, winding trail.
She kept the horse at a quick pace throughout the night, stopping only long enough to rest the animal for a few minutes as she tried to keep her bearings and listen to the empty trail behind her. At dawn, she had reached a place where the high trail widened as it dipped down into a basin filled with boulders and lined with birch, white fir and aspen. In the silvery light of morning, she saw the outline of a stream below and had just turned her horse toward it when she saw a figure step out of the dark shadows twenty feet ahead of her.
“Hello the trail,” Memphis Beck called out to her.
“Hello the trail,” Shala repeated in kind, keeping the horse moving forward, but at a slow walk.
Hearing a woman’s voice, Beck called out as she grew nearer, “Ma’am, what brings you out at such an hour?” He stepped forward, his rifle lowered, and put a hand to her horse’s steaming muzzle as she stopped and looked down at him.
“I’m Shala Lowden. I’m looking for my husband, Stanley Lowden,” she said, gazing past Beck and recognizing the ranger’s pearl gray sombrero as he stepped into sight onto the trail. She raised her voice to include the ranger, saying, “I heard
that Stanley is riding with you, Ranger Burrack.” She looked back down at Beck and said, “And with you, if you’re Memphis Beck, the train robber from Hole-in-the-wall.”
“Well, I am Memphis Beck, ma’am,” Beck replied in a cordial tone, touching his hat brim, “but as train robbing goes, nothing’s ever been proven.”
“Stanley was with us, ma’am,” Sam said, walking in closer and standing beside Beck. “But he’s injured, so we sent him on to the Havelin Mines.” Seeing the look on Shala’s face at the news of her husband, Sam added quickly, “Nothing serious. He’s just banged up a bit.”
“As much as he deserves, from what he told us,” Beck put in.
Shala didn’t seem to hear Beck. She looked back warily along the trail behind her, then looked at the ranger. “May I step down and get off the trail, Ranger Burrack? Glick the Dutchman might be coming along after me any minute.”
Seeing how hard the horse had been ridden, and the red patches of blood on the woman’s cheeks and her gloveless hands, Sam said, “Yes, ma’am. It would be a good idea to get you out of sight—” She had climbed down from the horse’s bare back and turned to him before he’d gotten the words out of his mouth. “You look like you could use a hot cup of coffee and a warm fire in front of you,” he concluded.
“Oh, Ranger, thank God I found you. I’m so sorry for what happened to you last fall.”
Sam gave Beck a glance as Shala Lowden fell against him, weeping onto his shoulder. He paused for a moment, his arms outstretched as if wondering what to do. But then, realizing what was needed, he closed his arms around her and felt her shudder against him. “Now now, ma’am, you’re safe here,” he said, consoling her. “Stanley told me what happened last fall. That’s over and done with.”
Sam turned her toward the spot alongside the running creek, where a campfire glowed in the silver light and where Hector, having already seen the woman, threw more wood into the flames. “Stanley told you . . . about me shooting you?” she said, trying to stop sobbing.
