I stepped quickly away and snapped a right to Wingo’s mouth, followed by another. Blood spurted, but my punches were weakening as the bigger man wore down my strength, and Wingo just grinned and shrugged them off.
I swung a left hook, hoping to drive him away from me. Too late. My fist bounced harmlessly off the side of Wingo’s head and his arms were around me, his hands locking on the small of my back.
Wingo pulled me to him, and slowly forced me backward. A searing white-hot pain stabbed at me and I struggled desperately to break the gunman’s hold. But Wingo’s strength was enormous and he was grinning wildly as he sought to snap my backbone.
Right then I figured I’d maybe seconds to live and that thought drove me. I suddenly went limp and Wingo roared in triumph and hugged me closer. I judged the distance to the bridge of his nose, suddenly stiffened and hammered my forehead, hard and fast, into the target I’d chosen.
I heard the bone crack and Wingo cursed and let me go, staggering backward, with blood splashed all over his face.
Relentless now, my fear replaced by anger, I waded after him and swung both fists to his chin. Left. Right.
Wingo went down, tumbling forward, but I met his face with my knee and his head snapped up, his shattered nose spraying a scarlet fountain of blood.
The gunman crashed onto his back and lay there for a few moments and I waited, gasping for breath, my fists ready.
By the fire, I was aware of Ezra watching me, his hand on his gun.
Was he going to make a play if I won this fight?
Beyond caring, I watched Wingo rise slowly to his feet and I moved in quickly. I drove a right and a left into his face, then summed it all up with a terrific right uppercut that jerked Wingo’s head backward and the big man went down on his knees.
I circled, wary and waiting, my jaw hanging loose as I battled to breathe.
“Let it go, boy.” Ezra’s voice cut into my consciousness. “You’ve whipped him.”
I don’t know how long I stood there. A minute, maybe longer.
Then Wingo’s bloody, battered head slowly came up and his burning eyes met mine. “Now I’m going to kill you, boy,” he snarled.
His hand flashed for the gun at his waist, but Ezra stepped in quickly. He grabbed Wingo’s gun arm and said: “No, Lafe. We’ll cross the Brazos tomorrow and until then we may need his rifle.”
“Let me be,” Wingo roared, jerking his arm free.
“Lafe!” Ezra yelled urgently. “Damn it, man, think of the money!”
Me, I was ready to make my draw, determined to go down fighting. But I had no need. Somehow Ezra’s logic had penetrated the killing fog of Wingo’s brain and I could see the man think it through.
“Lafe, we’ll cross the Brazos tomorrow,” Ezra said, voice soft and reasoning. “By then we’ll be clear of the Apaches and you can kill this man.” And again: “Think of the money. We’ve come too far to risk it all now.”
It took Wingo a long time to make up his mind. Finally he holstered his Colt. “After we cross the river, I’m dropping you, boy,” he said.
Wingo rose to his feet and staggered to the creek under a cold moon. He lay on the bank and splashed water onto his battered face, snuffling and snorting like a butchered pig.
Ezra stepped close to me, his black eyes in shadow. “Do you believe in God, boy?” he asked.
“I guess I do,” I said.
The gunman nodded. “Then I advise you to make your peace with Him, because from this moment on, you’re a walking dead man.”
Chapter 15
I stepped back to the fire and Lila sat beside me. She had a canteen in her hand and she tenderly began to wipe blood away from my face.
“You’re all cut up and bruised,” she whispered.
“I’ll be all right,” I said. “I’ve been cut up and bruised plenty before.”
I looked into her eyes and saw the awakening of something. What was it? Love?
I shook my head, a movement that caused me more than a little pain.
I couldn’t have seen love in Lila’s eyes, it was impossible. And yet . . .
“You did well, Dusty,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “You stood up for Pa and you stood up for me.”
I managed a smile. “And damned near got myself killed for my trouble.”
She kissed me then, just a soft, tender meeting of her lips on mine.
“Thank you, Dusty,” she whispered. “Thank you for so much.”
Gently I pushed her away. “Go see to your pa, Lila,” I said. “His mouth and beard are covered in sand.”
The girl got up and did as I’d told her and I sat there comparing her in my mind to pretty Sally Coleman.
Did Sally love me?
One time, down by the creek near her pa’s ranch, she’d taken one of them motto candies that girls like from a paper sack in her purse and she’d studied the writing for a long time.
“What does it say?” I’d asked.
She’d smiled at me and giggled. “It says, ‘I love you,’ silly.”
Well, Sally looked at that motto for a long time; then she’d just sighed, kind of soft and low, and popped the candy into her mouth.
I’d expected her to give me that candy. It was pink, and I would have tucked it away and treasured it. But she never did.
That didn’t tell me much then, but now it planted a seed of doubt in my mind.
Did Sally love me?
The answer was: I didn’t know.
Did Lila love me?
I didn’t know that either.
Either way, maybe it didn’t matter a hill of beans. A day from now I could be a dead man and all the love in the world would not be enough to change that and bring me back again.
The time was fast approaching when I’d have to stand up and be counted. My first duty was to get back Simon Prather’s money, but even so I resolved not to let Wingo and Ezra Owens stampede me. I was fated to meet them in a gunfight, but it would be at a time and place of my own choosing, where the advantage, however slight, would be on my side.
But fate is a fickle thing, and in the end the true measure of a man is not fate itself but how he masters it. As events would soon reveal, the fate I was imagining for myself would be very different from the reality: a reality that would be much worse, and much more sudden, bloody and violent, than anything I could visualize.
We took to the trail at dawn under a pale lemon sky banded with scarlet.
Wingo rode point. He was surly and uncommunicative, but the eyes in his battered face blazed with hate when he looked at me. He was setting himself up for a killing, and even for a man like him who loved to kill, my death would mean something special to him.
Lila took her place at the back of the wagon with Hank, who was now far gone, drifting into unconsciousness more and more, and I figured the outlaw must welcome each brief period of oblivion as a blessed respite from pain.
Ned urged on the oxen with his whip, stumbling forward like an automaton. The poetry had fled from the man and all that remained was a dry, empty-eyed husk and, within that, a soundless soul where the music of the verses he’d so loved no longer played.
As always, Ezra rode behind me, wary and alert, a silent, dangerous man ready for anything.
We traveled through the gathering day across that hard land, and yet when I looked around me, I found myself wishing for no other.
Nothing in my life had been easy, but that was the way of Texas. This land did not give freely, and what you wanted from it you took, then fought to keep. Only the strong survived and became part of it, became Texans.
Now, as the smoking sun rose to its highest point and branded the sky, the air I breathed smelled clean, of Texas.
I was young and life surged strong in me and I dearly wished to remain part of this land. I wanted to live and go on living, but an inner voice told me that this could only be to my disadvantage in the fight to come.
Bass Reeves once said that a man who clings too tenaciously to l
ife will hesitate before going to the gun, maybe hoping for another way, maybe hoping for a miracle.
With men like Lafe Wingo and Ezra Owens, that moment’s hesitation was all the edge they needed and their victims, lying pale in dust-blown graves across the West, could testify how wrong it is for a man to put his trust in miracles.
Me, I decided right there and then as we sought a likely spot to camp, best I put my trust in a miracle of steel and walnut made by Sam’l Colt and do my testifying with five rounds of lead.
Sure, maybe I was getting too big for my britches, but remember I was but eighteen and couldn’t yet grow a man’s mustache. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders, and looking back, I realize I should have been a lot more scared than I was, and believe me, even then I was plenty scared.
We were still a couple of hours north of the Brazos, and Wingo decided we should rest for an hour before we made the crossing.
I helped Lila boil coffee and fry up some salt pork, and then while the others ate, she took me aside and slipped off a chain from her neck with a little silver cross on the end.
“Wear this, Dusty,” she said. “It will help.”
I took the chain from her and put it around my own neck, feeling the warmth of Lila’s body still on it. “You don’t think I’m going to make it through the day, do you?” I asked.
Lila opened her mouth to speak, found the words dying in her throat and shook her head, her eyes misting.
I tapped the Colt at my waist. “I’m pretty good with this thing, you know.”
The girl looked over my shoulder at Wingo and Ezra as they sat hunched over a hatful of fire. “Dusty,” she whispered, her lips very close to my ear, “shoot them in the back. Destroy them any way you can. You can’t stand up to those gunmen in a fair fight. They’ll kill you for sure.”
I was neither shocked nor surprised, because I’d given some thought to that very idea and had pretty soon rejected it.
“If I killed those men like that, I’d maybe go on living, Lila,” I said. “But it wouldn’t really be living, because every single day of my life I would remember and die a little death.”
“Dusty, those aren’t men. They’re animals,” Lila said. “You’ve killed animals before and they don’t lay heavy on your conscience.”
I nodded. “I’ve killed my share of deer, but deer aren’t men.” I held her close to me. “Lila, out here there’s a code—a code that dates all the way back to the days when gentlemen settled quarrels with a duel, and it demands that you meet your enemy honorably and face-to-face. Now maybe it’s an outdated code, but where Western men gather to talk, they still judge the actions of others by that code.”
I saw the puzzled look in Lila’s eyes, her complete lack of understanding of the West and Westerners, and I found myself groping for the right words. “I was raised hard, but even so, I was taught to believe in that code and I can’t turn my back on it now.”
“Then you’re a fool,” Lila snapped, breaking away from me.
I watched her walk back to the fire, my heart heavy. Was she right and was I wrong?
I shook my head. No matter what happened, I didn’t want to be known as the man who shot Lafe Wingo and Ezra Owens in the back. There would be no living with myself after that, and there would be no living with others, men who would be quick to judge and slow to forgive and forget.
I had to draw the line somewhere, and I drew it now. Killing a man in fair fight was one thing—cold-blooded murder was quite another, and I’d have no part of it.
Killing from ambush was Lafe Wingo’s way. It wasn’t Dusty Hannah’s way.
After an hour, we headed south once more, and this time Wingo told me to ride alongside of him.
Around us, the flat land was thick with mesquite, tasajillo, yucca and skunkbush. Heat hazed the pale blue sky above us. The sun’s brightness was subdued, like it was shining behind a steamed-up window. But the day was hot, and sweat stained the front of my shirt, turning the faded blue a darker color.
I rode beside Wingo in silence for a few minutes, feeling the man’s hate like the heat of a campfire. Recent events had taught me to live with awareness, to notice and sense what I had not noticed and sensed before. My more innocent days, the days when I saw other men as a human beings and not potential enemies, were long behind me, maybe never to return.
In most men, hate springs from fear or envy, but not in Wingo, since I knew he neither envied nor feared me. His hatred sprang from his own need for self-approval and from his humbled gunman’s pride.
I knew, as he did, that he could not let me live to spread talk that I’d whipped him with my fists. His reputation was at stake and he couldn’t let it founder on the sharp rocks of idle frontier gossip.
Finally Wingo eased himself in the saddle and, looking straight ahead, asked: “What you thinking, boy?”
I shrugged. “Not much. About the Apaches maybe.”
Wingo turned and looked at me, his battered mouth twisting in a sneer. “You got maybe an hour or so to live, and that’s all you’re thinking about, Apaches?”
“It doesn’t pay a man to dwell on uncertain things,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be the one to die.”
Wingo let out with a roaring laugh, then winced as one of the cuts on his bottom lip opened up. “Boy, this is how it’s going to be,” he said, choosing his words carefully, each one tolling like a funeral bell. “As soon as we clear the Brazos, I’m not going to call you out and I’m not going to let you draw down on me. You may be talking to the little lady. You might be eating your beans and bacon. Hell, you might be on your knees saying your prayers. But no matter what you’re doing, all at once I’m just going to draw and put a bullet in your belly.”
No matter how I studied on it, Wingo’s warning was pretty much a conversation stopper, but finally I managed: “Thanks for the kind words. I’ll be ready.”
Wingo laughed again, and I was uncomfortably mindful that Ezra was riding close behind me. If I tried to shoot Wingo, I’d be a dead man. Ezra would see to that.
“Boy,” Wingo said, “I’ve killed more men than they say, and a few women besides. I’ve taken much pleasure in each of them, but nothing is going to give me more enjoyment than putting a bullet into you.”
To my surprise, the big gunman reached out and draped his arm around my shoulder. “Until then,” he said, smiling, “let’s you and me be real good amigos. Hell, boy, you whipped me real easy and you just a scrawny little feller an’ all. Ain’t nobody ever done that to me before, and I mean nobody.” He turned in the saddle. “Ain’t that right, Ezra?”
Behind me, Owens nodded. “Sure enough, Lafe.” “See,” Wingo said. “I always speak the truth about what I’ve done and what I’m gonna do.”
His thick arm lay heavy on my shoulder, and I had a mind to throw caution to the wind, brush it off and cuss him for a cheap tinhorn. But I never got the chance.
A bullet furrowed the air above my head—and a split second later I heard the sharp, venomous crack of a rifle.
Chapter 16
The Apaches boiled out of the flat, featureless land like wraiths, two dozen of them, well-mounted, firing and yelling as they came.
All hell was breaking loose fast—too fast. I slid my Winchester out of the boot, turned in the saddle and cranked off a few quick shots. Beside me, Wingo was doing the same. It’s no easy task to sight on a target through a scope off the back of a rearing horse, but Wingo made it look easy.
One Apache suddenly threw up his arms and toppled off his paint pony and another pulled up and slumped over his horse’s neck, hit hard.
Ned Tryon yelled something I couldn’t hear and whipped up the oxen. The huge animals lumbered into a shambling trot, but no matter how they strained against the yoke, hooves kicking up clouds of dust, their pace was painfully slow.
Wingo wheeled his mount and rode to the back of the wagon. He reached out his hand and yelled to Lila: “Get up here!”
Ezra was firing steadily, his sm
oking Colt bellowing, and the Apache charge broke, the warriors splitting up, streaming to the right and left of us.
“What about him?” Lila asked.
“Leave him,” Wingo hollered. “He’s already a dead man.”
“Lafe!” Hank screamed. “For God’s sake take me with you!”
The big gunman glanced down at the stricken outlaw, his blue eyes pitiless. “Not a chance, Hank. You’re our ticket out of here. They’ll be so busy with you, they might forget about the rest of us.”
“No!” Lila cried. “You can’t leave him here.”
“Damn right I can,” Wingo yelled. He leaned from the saddle, scooped Lila into his arms and held her close in front of him. The gunman savagely raked the paint with his spurs, drawing long streaks of blood, and was gone in a cloud of dust, the pony’s steel shoes winking in the sunlight.
Ezra emptied his gun at the Apaches, then swung his horse around and followed Wingo.
There was no time to be lost. I fired at a big warrior on a bay horse, missed, fired again. My second bullet hit the target because this time the Indian’s rifle spun away from him and he crashed heavily to the ground.
I rode toward Ned and kicked my right foot free of the stirrup. “Ned,” I yelled, “take a stirrup.”
Ned waved me away. “Go,” he shouted. “Save yourself and Lila.”
I galloped beside the man and reined up hard. The black reared and his hindquarters slammed into the ground, his churning hooves throwing up clods of earth.
“Ned, damn you, take the stirrup,” I yelled, fighting the horse as he tried his best to bolt on me.
A bullet plowed into the wagon, a shower of splinters exploding into the air, and another kicked up a startled exclamation point of danger between Ned’s feet.
The Apaches were closing on us now from two sides, yelling in triumph, wishful of taking us alive.
I slid the Winchester back into the boot and drew my Colt. As the black reared again and angrily fought the bit, I slammed a couple of fast shots at the Indians nearest us and saw them waver and break.
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