.45-Caliber Deathtrap

by Peter Brandvold

  The leader scowled. “You return—bullshit!”

  Cuno spied movement ahead and left. The man who’d been shooting his pistol into the air gave a drunken chuckle as he stepped out from behind another man who was holding an ax handle. The shooter flicked his old Navy toward Cuno, thumbing the hammer back.

  Cuno pivoted, swinging the Winchester’s barrel toward the shooter. The Winchester spoke. The shooter screamed. He dropped the Navy. Smacking the ground, the pistol discharged. The slug plunked into the ankle of another prospector, who yelled and jumped on his good foot before falling into the crowd.

  The man Cuno had shot clutched his bloody forearm. “Son of a bitch shot me!”

  Cuno lowered the Winchester’s barrel slightly, triggered another shot, spraying up gravel into the man’s face and knocking him back on his hands with a terrified howl.

  Cuno gritted his teeth at him. “Shut up.” He glanced at Kong. “Head over to the wagon. Move!”

  As Kong heaved himself to his feet, the leader stared at the smoking barrel of Cuno’s Winchester and stepped back, holding his hands chest-high in supplication. A scowl still pinched his nose, but fear had entered his eyes. He didn’t say anything as Cuno backed toward the wagon, swinging the Winchester’s barrel around the crowd, which had gone unnaturally quiet.

  The two wounded men groaned softly. The dogs made the most noise, sniffing around and panting.

  Cuno backed to within fifteen feet of the wagon, then turned. Kong sat in the driver’s box beside Serenity, who was sawing through the rope tying Kong’s wrists behind his back. Cuno walked around to the driver’s side, climbed aboard, grabbed the reins off the brake handle, and released the brake.

  He flicked the reins. As the wagon jerked forward, he appraised the crowd, the prospectors now milling and conversing in angry, albeit hushed, tones. The dogs had lost interest in the men and were chasing a rabbit up the northern ridge through the pines.

  As the wagon rolled even with the two boys sitting the old, swaybacked paint bareback, the youngsters watched Cuno with keen interest.

  “You a gunslinger?” asked the boy in front, swiveling his head as the wagon passed. He wore a soiled trail hat manufactured for a much older man.

  Serenity cackled wickedly, jerked a thumb at Cuno. “He’ll shoot ye dead and turn ye inside out, boys!” The old man threw his head back on his shoulders and roared.

  Sobering, he cleared his throat and brushed a finger across his beaklike nose. “Less’n you’re a deer, that is…”

  12

  “WHAT CAUSED YOU to pull such a fool stunt anyway?” Serenity asked the Chinaman when they’d ridden for a while in grim silence and they were sure the prospectors weren’t trailing them.

  “His daughter,” Cuno said when Kong didn’t answer but only stared, brooding, over the mules’ twitching ears. “He thought he’d steal a mount and ride on up to The Committee, twanging away with his bow and arrow, and rip the girl right out from under ’em.”

  Serenity had been working a good cheek of chaw for the past forty-five minutes. Now he spat a quarter of it onto the double-tree hitch, then sat back and ran a greasy sleeve across his beard.

  The air had warmed and they no longer wore coats. The only sign of last night’s snow was a quicker pace to the streams they hugged as they climbed toward Sundance through fir-walled valleys.

  “Good way to get her killed,” Serenity said. “Good way to get yourself killed too. Me, I seen The Committee at work. Armed with just a bow and arrow, you wouldn’t have a chance.”

  Kong stared straight ahead, the bridge of his blunt nose deeply creased. “Kong no dummy. I find Li Mei, wait for night. Go in and”—he made a snatching motion with his hand—“steal her away!”

  “That might work,” Cuno allowed. “It’d work better, though, to bide your time, trail the gang slow. They’re heading for Sundance. Got ’em a bank to rob. No doubt, they’ll split up a time or two before they get there. A gang that size never hangs together long. They get in women trouble or fighting trouble. Besides, Cannady left his brother and several other men behind. He probably expects to meet up with them again soon.”

  Serenity chuckled dryly.

  Cuno continued. “Some’ll fall back for a while, catch up to the others later. If we can knock off the stragglers, we’ll have a smaller bunch to face when we finally meet Cannady in Sundance.”

  “They ride horses,” Kong pointed out. “We may not catch up to them. They might rob and be on their way, like rabbits with a fox on their heels!”

  “Maybe,” Cuno said. “Comes to that, we’ll rent horses in Sundance. Trail ’em from there.”

  “By then, Li Mei could be dead.”

  “That’s true too,” Cuno said. “A good way to make sure she’s killed is to ride in like a donkey with cans tied to its tail.”

  “With just a bow and arrow,” added Serenity.

  “Take it from me.” Cuno turned to Kong. “The keys to getting your daughter back are patience and relentlessness.”

  Kong held his gaze with a dark one of his own. “You young to know so much about manhunting.”

  Cuno squinted into the dust. “Yep.”

  They hadn’t ridden much farther before a four-mule hitch and a big Cleveland dead-axle freight wagon appeared, heading toward them around a bend in the trail ahead. Cuno recognized Bull Stevens and his cousin, Lyle, sitting the driver’s box, their floppy-brimmed hats flapping in the wind. By the way the wagon bounced and rattled over the ruts, Cuno knew it was empty.

  Cuno reined in his own team. Bull Stevens did likewise, throwing his shoulders back and bellowing, “Hooooooahhh!”

  The wagons sat side by side, dust sifting, the mules braying contentiously, stomping their feet. One of Stevens’s big Arkansas blacks dropped several plops in the trail dust to Cuno’s left.

  Stevens grinned and slitted his good eye. He’d lost the other to the man who’d cuckolded him during the fight that left the cuckolder’s throat laid wide, the man’s soul sent to heaven. “That’s what he thinks of you, Massey.”

  “Your hitch doesn’t have any better manners than you do, Bull. How they hangin’, Lyle?”

  Lyle Stevens grimaced and cupped his crotch. “Funny you should mention ’em. Think I picked up some drip on the way up trail.”

  “Which whorehouse?” Serenity asked with alarm.

  “Heaven’s Bane.”

  “Aptly named,” Serenity said.

  Bull scowled at the old man. “What the hell you doin’ up here, Parker? You’re s’posed to be in Columbine, tendin’ that privy you call a saloon.”

  “You’ll have to wet your whistle at Mrs. Mondova’s,” Serenity told the freighter. “Me and Cuno got business. Manhuntin’ business.”

  Cuno reproved the old man with a look, then turned to the freighters. “A pack of owlhoots killed Wade,” he explained. “Should be about two days ahead. Call themselves The Committee.”

  “Ah, shit,” Stevens said. “That pack of curly wolves?”

  “Seen ’em?”

  Stevens jerked a gloved thumb over his shoulder. “Hell, one of ’em is laid up at Heaven’s Bane. Seen him last night. Some girl they had with ’em ran a pigsticker through his jaws.”

  Lyle laughed and scratched his flabby, bare bicep, red and swollen from an insect bite. “Pinned his head to a wardrobe! Ugly damn mess. Still got blood on the floor, and the poor bastard’s upstairs howlin’ like a trapped timber wolf.”

  Cuno glanced at Kong. The Chinaman stared at the two freighters, wide-eyed, veins bulging in his forehead.

  Cuno looked at Bull. “The others?”

  “Headed up the trail. We met ’em on the trail yesterday. Still had the girl with ’em. They hoorawed our mules out of sheer orneriness.”

  “Damn near ran us off the road,” said Lyle. “If we hadn’t already off-loaded our freight, we’d be toothpicks at the bottom of Pilgrim’s Gulch.”

  “Least your pecker wouldn’t be pussin’ up,” Bull told
him. “Shit, I can smell it on you!”

  “Have a good one, boys.” Cuno flicked the reins across the mules’ backs. As the wagon rolled forward, Cuno favored Kong with another glance.

  The Chinaman stared ahead, his brows like a black anvil hooding his eyes. “I knew she would fight.”

  “At least she’s still alive, Kong,” Serenity said gently.

  “Yesterday,” Kong grunted. “What of today?”

  Li Mei winced when the horse she rode double with the outlaw leader, Cannady, faltered suddenly as the man turned in his saddle to shout over the girl’s head. “Rock farmers’ camp—fifty yards an’ closin’!”

  The man whooped with glee.

  Li Mei winced again, this time at the man’s loud, grating voice in her ears. The Chinese girl, who knew more English than her parents’ native tongue, leaned out from the horse slightly to see around the man’s broad, sweaty back. Ahead, tents and plank-board shacks appeared along a narrow, sun-dappled stream.

  Men stood knee-deep in the stream, working over long, wooden boxes mounted on legs. Some swirled sand and water in tin pans, staring into the pans intently, the brims of their floppy hats pushed off their foreheads. Several women worked along with the men, working in the water or slinging picks or shovels along the rocky banks. Some carried babies in makeshift packs or watched over others playing in the sand along the shoreline.

  Behind Li Mei, other men whooped. She heard the big black man, whose name she’d learned was Brown, laugh his raucous guffaw. It gave her gooseflesh and pricked the hair on the back of her neck.

  Cannady spurred the horse into a gallop, and Li Mei closed her tied hands about his waist, pressed her face against his back with an expression of deep distaste, hating the fetor of the man’s shirt, the slick, wet feel of his sweat against her cheek. She had no choice but to cling to the man, however. With her hands tied about his waist, if she slipped off the horse’s back, she’d merely dangle off a hip. Cannady would probably let her drag.

  “Fuckin’ rock pickers!” the outlaw leader shouted as the horse galloped into the encampment, setting dogs barking and babies crying.

  The other outlaws spread out on both sides of Cannady and Li Mei, several triggering pistols. Brown kicked over a tent while another man leaned out from his horse to upend a wrought-iron spit upon which several birds roasted. One of the prospectors—tall, bearded, wearing a hat and a begrimed, white undershirt—ran out from behind a canvas-and-wood cabin, several split logs in his arms.

  “Hey, what the hell you think you’re doin’?” he shouted, red-faced with fury.

  Cannady slowed his horse. He grabbed a coiled rope off his saddle horn, raised a loop above his head, and swung it out to the right. It settled over the bearded miner’s head. Li Mei’s eyes widened in astonishment as Cannady jerked the rope taut around the prospector’s shoulders, laughing.

  As the horse plunged on past the prospector, the man screamed and dropped the wood as the taut rope jerked him off his feet so quickly he seemed to dive forward, as if into a stream—but with his arms clamped to his sides.

  He looked up as the rope dragged him along the ground, losing his hat, gritting his teeth, and cursing. He grabbed the rope in both hands, apparently trying to steer himself around obstacles while trying to squirm out from under the taut loop.

  As Cannady made for the other end of the settlement, the man plowed through a small cook fire, showering sparks and stretching his lips back from his teeth as he screamed. His clothes and hair smoked for a time as he smashed through sage shrubs and haycocks, and bounced over hummocks and tree stumps. He skidded across a rocky freshet with a splash, mud basting his face.

  Li Mei stared so intently at the poor prospector, her eyes wide with horror, that she was only vaguely aware of the destruction and terror the other riders wreaked to both sides of her and Cannady—shooting out windows, kicking over tents and small wagons, and sending the prospector families running for their lives. Ahead of her on the saddle, Cannady loosed several celebratory whoops, guffawing and throwing his head back on his shoulders, flicking occasional looks behind to appraise his work with the fishtailing prospector.

  “No!” Li Mei heard herself plead. “Stop!”

  As the man plowed through the bare yard of a small cabin, two dogs chasing him and barking and nipping at his trouser cuffs, the rope slid up over his shoulders and head, releasing him. Li Mei felt relief as the man rolled to a dusty stop at the edge of the cabin yard.

  She closed her eyes as Cannady continued straight on past the village. Li Mei could hear the thunder of the others galloping behind her, but she didn’t open her eyes to see. She didn’t open her eyes again until, a few minutes later, the horse’s stride slowed.

  She peered around Cannady. Ahead and right of the wagon trail they’d been following, a small cabin sat in a meadow between the creek and the pine forest carpeting a high mountain slope. The cabin was one of the biggest Li Mei had seen lately—two stories with a lean-to addition, constructed of peeled, upright pine poles. The windows were filled with real, albeit grubby-looking, glass.

  Several corrals and pens stood to the right, a barn to the left.

  At the moment, a girl with sandy-blond hair was throwing slop to red chickens in a small, fenced pen. To Li Mei’s left, a tall, stoop-shouldered man wearing a coonskin cap was hauling two wooden water buckets, each attached to an end of the pole draped across his shoulders, up from the creek. Under the water’s weight, the tall man walked as though trudging through mud. He looked up from the furry brim of his cap, glowering at the riders gathering in his yard under a thick dust cloud.

  Cannady regarded the man in the fur cap with passing interest. His gaze settled on the sandy-haired young woman who wore a homespun shirt and denim trousers, her hair gathered in a ponytail. Barefoot, one hand shading her eyes, she stood regarding the group from inside the pen, with an expression much like that of the tall man’s.

  The cabin door opened and two more girls stepped out. One—short, dark, and round-faced—appeared around Li Mei’s age, thirteen. The other, taller and with hair the same color as the girl in the chicken pen, looked to be around seventeen or eighteen.

  All three were pretty. The two oldest girls filled out their dresses.

  Li Mei gave a silent sob, castigating herself for the relief she felt. Tonight, these girls would no doubt take some of the attention away from her.

  13

  “WHAT CAN I do fer you gents?”

  It was the tall, bearded man in the coonskin cap. He’d apparently figured out who the gang’s leader was, and while Cannady was raking his eyes across the three comely young ladies, the man had stopped near Cannady’s horse. The man slid his brown eyes between the group’s leader and Li Mei, the bridge of his nose wrinkled with apprehension and curiosity.

  Cannady spat a wad of dust and saliva onto a rock near one of the man’s hobnailed boots, and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “Well, now, it ain’t what you can do for us, amigo. It’s what we can do for you.”

  The wooden pole sagging across his shoulders, the bearded man raked his eyes across the gang nearly filling the cabin’s small yard, horses blowing and swishing their tails, a couple drawing water from a stock trough near the barn. His face was long and weathered, the skin drawn tight to the bones, with a purple mole on the nub of his right cheek. His furry chin pointed like an angry finger at Cannady.

  “How’s that?”

  “We come bearing gifts!”

  Cannady glanced at Young Knife and El Lobo, both of whom sat their horses several yards off the right hip of Cannady’s mount. Small, bloodstained mountain goats were draped over the rumps of both horses, the horned heads hanging slack down one side, rear legs sagging down the other.

  The open eyes of both goats appeared to be taking in the scene with wan disinterest.

  “My compadres there,” Cannady said, canting his head toward Young Knife and El Lobo, “shot ’em a couple mountain goats a few mile
s back. We were thinkin’ about stoppin’ early today and havin’ us a nice, big bonfire and a mountain goat supper. How’d it be if you and your girls do the cookin’ and servin’ in exchange for the succulent meat of two prime young goats fattened off Rocky Mountain wild grass and willow leaves?”

  Cannady grinned down at the man expectantly, one hand holding his reins, the other resting on his thigh.

  The man said nothing, only studied the gang thoroughly, flicking his wary glance back to Cannady and the Chinese girl riding, hang-headed and bruised, behind him. To Cannady’s left, the creek gurgled between its sandy banks. To his right, the chickens clucked. One of the two girls at the house’s open front door muttered something to the other one, too softly for Cannady to hear.

  Finally, Ned Crockett gigged his horse up to Cannady’s left. The oldest of the gang members slid his long-barreled .44 from his tied-down holster and held it negligently across his saddle horn, aimed in the general direction of the bearded gent. He canted his head at the man, spreading a toothy grin.

  “The only acceptable answer here, sir, is yes.”

  The bearded man scowled.

  Cannady threw up his right hand and twisted around in his saddle to regard the others. “It’s a deal, boys. The man says yes. We provide the food, they serve!”

  While the others whooped victoriously and gigged their tired mounts toward the barn, Cannady cast his glance toward the chicken coop. The full-figured, sandy-blond girl stood just outside the pen’s door, her empty slop pail in one hand. Her other hand was fisted on her hip. She cocked one foot, canted her head to the side, and slitted one eye at him.

  Cannady chuckled and gigged his horse up the slight hill, turned the horse sideways to the girl, and stopped. He closed the lid over his bad eye and grinned down at her.

  “Hidy, there. Name’s Cannady.”

  The girl’s pretty, heart-shaped face was implacable. “You’re outlaws, ain’t you?”