I ignored the man, mustered my Spanish and yelled: “Qué usted desea?”
“What did you say?” Wingo asked, irritation edging his voice. “I don’t speak that damned Messkin lingo.”
“I asked him what he wants, but it seems he don’t much feel like telling me.”
The Apache had given me a name, but I didn’t know his. For him, this was powerful medicine that would weaken me if we ever met in a fight.
A few moments passed, the warrior sitting his horse, never for one moment taking his eyes off me. Finally, the Apache raised his arm and pointed in my direction, aiming his forefinger like a gun.
He stayed like that for a long time, in complete silence, then swung the gray around and loped away.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Apache had just warned me. He was telling me by his sign that he knew me and had me marked as a mortal enemy, someone he must destroy.
Maybe he was kin of the Apache I’d killed among the rocks, for he sure seemed to be holding a grudge.
Wingo realized that too, because he looked at me, grinning. “Boy,” he said, “near as I can tell, you got a powerful lot of enemies and mighty few friends.”
I nodded. “Seems that way.”
The big gunman slapped me hard on the shoulder. “Well, don’t you worry about it none because very soon now it will be all over for you.”
“Go to hell,” I said, my anger flaring as I pushed him away from me.
Wingo didn’t answer. He just took a single step back and went for his gun.
Chapter 18
Ned Tryon came out of nowhere.
As Wingo’s Colt swung up, Ned dived for his arm. The old man’s forward motion slammed Wingo’s gun hand downward and the outlaw triggered a shot into the dirt at his feet.
I palmed my Colt but didn’t shoot because suddenly Lila ran between me and Wingo. The outlaw cursed and grabbed the girl, holding her in front of him. Then he directed his attention to Ned Tryon.
“Damn you, you old goat!” he roared, his face twisted in fury. He leveled his gun and pumped a shot into Ned, then another.
My own gun was ready, but if I shot at Wingo, I’d likely hit Lila. The outlaw grabbed his rifle and backed up toward my saddled black, Lila shielding him. I sidestepped to the cover of the wagon, all my attention riveted on Wingo, desperately hoping for a clear shot.
I had already felt the outlaw’s strength, and now he demonstrated it again, effortlessly swinging Lila into the saddle. Keeping the horse between us, Wingo mounted, then hugged the girl close, and I knew he was going to throw a shot at me.
Lila was sobbing uncontrollably, limp as a rag doll in Wingo’s arms. I stood there tense and ready. Could I fire and take the risk of hitting her?
Wingo sat the black, grinning at me. His Colt swung up fast and level.
Suddenly Lila came alive.
She turned in the saddle and raked her fingernails down Wingo’s face, opening up bloody furrows in the man’s cheek from his left eye to his chin.
Wingo roared in pain and fury, his hand jerking to his face and Lila took her chance to squirm away from him. She jumped off the black and landed on all fours on the ground. Wingo, his ruined face streaming blood, cursed and swung his gun on her.
I fired. Too fast.
My bullet clipped the lobe from Wingo’s ear and the outlaw roared again, a cry soon dwarfed by the louder roar of his Colt. I felt a sledgehammer blow to my left shoulder and I was jerked around from the impact. That movement saved my life. Wingo’s second shot—the one that would have crashed into the center of my chest—whined past harmlessly. I was hit hard, but still strong enough to stay in the fight. I triggered another shot at Wingo, missed as he battled the scared, prancing black and shot again.
But the outlaw had decided not to stick around. He spurred the black and all I could do was waste a couple of bullets firing at his fast-retreating back.
Staggering from pain and shock, scarlet fingers of blood trickling down my left arm from my shoulder, I stumbled toward Lila, who was kneeling beside her pa.
“How is he?” I asked.
Lila looked at me, her face gray. “He’s dead, Dusty. He’s gone.”
The old man’s eyes were shut, like he was asleep, and his face was more peaceful than at any time since I’d met him. Whatever his inner torments, he was at rest now.
“He was so strong once,” Lila whispered, “a good farmer when he was younger.”
“I guess he was once,” I said. “The hand of the reaper takes the ears that are hoary, but the voice of the weeper wails manhood in glory.”
Lila’s eyes searched mine. “Dusty, did you just think that up?”
I shook my head at her. “No, I heard it once. I don’t recollect where.”
“It’s true,” Lila said, her voice breaking on the words. “I will always remember him as he was when Ma was alive, not what he became.”
“Ned saved my life,” I said. “That’s a thing I won’t forget.”
Suddenly deathly tired, I slumped against the wagon. Lila saw the blood on my shirt and gave a little gasp of alarm.
“Dusty, you’ve been shot.”
I nodded. “Took one of Wingo’s bullets in the shoulder.”
Her father lay dead beside her, but Lila decided her duty was to the living. She said, her dark eyes concerned: “Unbutton your shirt and let me look.”
I did as the girl asked and after she examined the wound her face was pale with shock. “The bullet’s still in there, Dusty. It’s very deep.”
“Figured that,” I said.
I dug into the pocket of my pants and brought out my folding knife and opened the blade with my teeth. “Lila, you’re going to have to cut the bullet out of there. With this.”
Looking back, I don’t know what I expected: Lila to faint maybe or shriek and say she couldn’t do it. That was what pretty Sally Coleman would have done, I’m sure, since she wasn’t big on blood and such.
But Lila surprised me. There was steel in her and she was stronger, a lot stronger, than I had ever imagined.
The girl took the knife, her face frightened but her little chin was set and determined. “This will hurt,” she said.
“Figured that,” I said, smiling, pretending I was a lot braver than I really was.
Lila nodded. “Now I wish you’d saved some of Pa’s whiskey.”
“So do I,” I said. “Right about now, I’d be ready to swallow the whole jug.”
“Not for you, Dusty,” the girl said. She wasn’t scolding me, just being practical. “To clean the knife blade.” She managed a small smile. “God knows where it’s been.”
I nodded toward the dying fire. “Stick the blade in the reddest part of the coals. Heat will clean it as good as whiskey.”
Lila did as she was told, and when she came back to my side after a few moments, the point of the blade glowed a dull cherry red.
The girl pushed aside my wide suspenders and held the knife close to my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dusty,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t get a chance to answer because she immediately plunged the blade into my shoulder and I went rigid, my mouth wide-open, screaming silent screams I heard only in my head.
Lila dug deeper, her eyes intent only on the knife. Pain slammed at me time and time again and sweat trickled down my face. I clenched my teeth and arched my back, each hissing breath coming quick and shallow.
“Be brave, Dusty,” Lila whispered, her eyes not seeking mine. “Be brave.”
The knife dug deeper . . . deeper still . . . cutting . . . probing . . . grinding on lead and bone.
Jolts of agony cartwheeled through my entire body and my head was reeling, bright bursts of dazzling light exploding like Fourth of July rockets in my brain. I had to make it stop, push Lila’s hand away, admit myself to be much less than she was.
“Got it!” Lila yelled. She held up a bloody hand, the bullet held between her forefinger and thumb.
&nb
sp; “Thank you,” I said. And promptly fainted.
I woke to Lila’s face hovering over mine, her brown eyes anxiously searching my own. “How do you feel, Dusty?” she asked.
In truth, I felt weak, drained, so I stepped around her question. “How long have I been out?” I asked.
The girl smiled. “A long time. It’s almost noon.”
My fingers strayed to my wounded shoulder and touched a thick bandage. Lila smiled. “I used a piece of my shift. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m honored,” I said, meaning it.
I glanced around. “Where’s . . . I mean . . .”
Lila nodded. “I laid my pa to rest while you were asleep.” She nodded toward the cottonwood. “Over there where you’d dug a trench. I made it deeper.”
I shook my head at her. “Lila, you should have waited. I’d have helped.”
Tears started in the girl’s eyes. “Death diminished Pa, made him smaller somehow. His body was small and light. I managed.” She attempted a smile. “Be sides, you couldn’t dig a grave with that shoulder.”
Yet again, I marveled at Lila’s strength. Once I’d thought her too young and too featherbrained, her ambition to farm her own land just a ramshackle castle she was building in the sky. Now I wasn’t so sure. Something told me this lovely, frail-looking girl had hidden reserves of courage and backbone I couldn’t even guess at. I knew then with growing certainty that with her own hands she could and would build a home from what had been only wilderness, as tens of thousands of hardy pioneer women had done before her and would do after.
It came to me then that I could be happy with this woman, content to sit with her quiet and close of an evening after the day’s chores were done and look out on the darkening land where our brindled cattle grazed, taking pleasure in it, knowing what lay around us had been tamed by our will and by the strength of our backs.
I reached out with my good arm and pulled Lila close to me and kissed her. It was a kiss with little passion but with much tenderness and she perfectly understood its implications.
“Dusty,” she whispered, “when this is all over and you’re back at the SP Connected, will you come calling on me?”
“Sure will,” I answered. “I’ll bring you flowers and them little motto candies all the girls like.”
“Will you call on pretty Sally Coleman and bring her flowers and candy?”
I’d walked into that little trap with my eyes wide-open and now I desperately sought a way out of it.
“Lila—” I began, having no idea what I would say next, but was saved from having to answer her question by the clatter of hooves on the trail.
Lila helped me get to my feet in time to see a column of about thirty buffalo soldiers come to a dusty, jingling halt near the wagon, their heads turning this way and that as they looked around at the dead Apaches.
What caught my eye was my paint, led by one of the troopers—and the fact that the saddlebags were still there.
The sergeant in charge, a thick-shouldered man with an eye patch and a magnificent set of sideburns, swung his horse out of the column and rode toward us.
“What went on here?” he asked, his black eyes searching mine. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Found this horse wandering and a dead white man back there.”
“The horse is mine, Sergeant,” I said. “You’ll find an SP brand on his flank.”
The sergeant turned in the saddle and called a trooper by name. “Check the brand on that paint, hoss,” he said.
The soldier did as he was told and yelled back. “SP, sergeant.”
The big noncom nodded and turned back to me. “The brand is as you say.” His eyes shrewd, he added: “Now tell me about the dead man back there.”
My troubles were none of this soldier’s, so in as few words as possible I told him about my troubles with Lafe Wingo, our battle with the Apaches and his killing of Ezra Owens and Ned.
After I finished speaking, the sergeant sat in silence for a few moments, then said: “Young feller, my orders are to pursue and engage hostile Apaches wherever I find them and compel them to surrender or be destroyed. All I can do for you is report what you’ve told me to the appropriate civilian authority.”
I expected nothing more and I nodded my thanks.
“Where are you folks headed?” the sergeant asked, his puzzled eyes on Lila.
“We expect to cross the Brazos at the Clear Fork later today,” I said. “Then we’ll head south to my home ranch.”
“River is low,” the soldier said, “so you’ll have no difficulty there.” He shook his head at me. “But you’re heading into a hornet’s nest. Victorio and his main band are south of the Brazos and all ain’t well in the chicken coop. The Apaches are burning and killing as far east as Abilene and I heard tell a couple of days ago they ambushed and cut up a Ranger patrol on the North Concho. Three Rangers dead and twice that many wounded is what I heard.”
“Once we clear the Brazos, it’s only a few miles to the SP ranch, Sergeant,” I said. “We’ll be safe there.”
The man nodded. “Well, I sure hope so, for your sake and the little lady’s.” His restless gaze took in the bandage on my shoulder. “Here, you’ve been hit.”
“Took one of Lafe Wingo’s bullets,” I said. “Lila cut it out for me.”
The sergeant looked at Lila, a dawning respect in his eyes. “I’ll get the doc to take a look at it,” he said.
“You have a doctor with the column?” I asked, surprised.
“Mule doctor,” the soldier replied, smiling. “But he’s right good with bullet and knife wounds. Good with the croup too, come to that.”
The mule doctor was a tall, lanky corporal with mournful eyes and gentle hands. He unbuttoned my bloodstained shirt and looked the wound over, probing carefully. “Couldn’t have done better my ownself,” he said finally. “Clean as a whistle.” He turned to Lila. “You done real good, ma’am.”
Lila smiled and dropped an elegant little curtsy. “There’s a first time for everything, Corporal,” she said.
The sergeant called the corporal over to him, leaned over from the saddle and whispered something I couldn’t hear. The soldier nodded and stepped to one of the pack mules, returning with a folded blue army shirt, which he handed to me.
“It ain’t new,” the sergeant said. “But it’s clean and in a heap better shape than the one you’re wearing.”
Gratefully I stripped off my own shirt and buttoned into the new one. The color was faded almost to a pale blue, but the shirt was soft and smelled of yellow laundry soap. I slipped the suspenders back over my shoulders and thanked the sergeant for his kindness, but he just waved me off and returned to his men.
The soldiers spent the next hour burying the dead Apaches and then Ezra Owens, carefully segregating the graves.
After a break for coffee, the troopers mounted again and the sergeant rode over to Lila and me. “We got to get moving along,” he said. “You folks take care, you hear.”
“Plan to, Sergeant,” I replied. “And you too. Ride careful.”
The soldier nodded. “I’ll do that.” He touched the brim of his hat to Lila and waved his men forward. And after they were gone, the land around us once again descended into silence and loneliness, the dust of the troops’ passing slowly settling back to the dry earth.
The sun was burning white-hot in a lemon sky as Lila and me took our farewell of Ned. I stood beside Lila, my hat in my hands, looking down at the fresh-dug grave, and could find no words.
This man had saved my life and I owed him a debt I could never repay, but decided right there and then that somehow I’d find a way to pay it in full to his daughter.
Lila had gathered some wilted wildflowers; she placed them on the grave. When she rose she looked at me with dry eyes, a little, sad smile on her face. “I think Pa will like it here,” she said.
I looked around at the other graves, a heaviness inside me. “One thing, he won’t ever pine for co
mpany,” I said.
Finally, Lila whispered a last prayer then turned and walked with me to the paint.
“Dusty,” she said, “we must find the wagon.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m sure the Apaches stripped it good.”
“Maybe,” Lila said. “But Pa made a little secret compartment in the bed where he stashed two hundred dollars in double eagles. It was seed money, he said, and if I’m to plant a crop I’ll need it.”
Now wasn’t the time to cuss and discuss about farming, so I let it go and said: “Well, let’s go see. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the money is still there.”
It was. Ten gold coins in a small canvas pouch hidden in a tiny box cut into the bed of the wagon, like Lila had said.
Riding double, we took the dusty trail south toward the Brazos, riding under a hot sun, the only sound the plodding of the paint’s hooves and the constant hum of bees and the chatter of saw-legged insects in the buffalo grass.
We splashed across the Clear Fork near the old But terfield stage road just as day was shading into night. The paint was tired from the long trail behind him and the double load he carried, so I decided to hole up somewhere and head for the SP Connected early next morning.
We made a cold camp among some sheltering rocks on the slope of a shallow rise, spreading our blankets on some fine grass that felt as soft as any hotel bed.
Lila came to me in the night and lay beside me and I understood her need and held her close, comforting her as best I could. Gradually, her breathing slowed and she slept.
My wounded shoulder throbbed unmercifully and kept me from sleep. I turned on my back and looked at the sky above, where a million stars glowed brilliant, beautiful, but coldly indifferent to all that happened on the small, dusty planet far beneath them.
Lila stirred in her sleep and gave a little cry and I held her close again, the memory of her mouth on mine a sudden rush of sweet pain. Around us, hidden by darkness, spread the impossibly ancient land, and we two, neither of us past our twentieth birthday, lay quiet in its embrace.
As the night birds called and a coyote barked his hunger to the uncaring stars, I at last fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
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