Jim sat up and ran his hand across his face, then scratched his scalp as he yawned. “I told you, I’m awake,” he said.
“It’s four o’clock. It’s your watch.”
Jim stood up, walked over to one side and urinated, then came back to sit down on a rock near his bedroll while he pulled on his boots.
“Anything happen during the night?” he asked.
“Not a thing,” Gene said, pulling his own boots off. “What time we goin’ to get started today?”
“I figure round sunup,” Jim replied.
“Damn. It’ll take me that long to get back to sleep,” Gene said.
Despite his protestations, Gene fell asleep within minutes, his snoring joining that of the others in camp. Jim took a walk around the perimeter of the camp. Satisfied that everything was as it should be, he found a rock and sat down.
It wasn’t too long afterward that he heard the noise. Pulling his gun from his holster, he moved quietly to investigate. A minute later he located the sound’s source and, when he saw what it was, stopped dead in his tracks.
There, in the bright spill of predawn moonlight was Katie Kincaid standing in the stream of water, totally nude. She was taking a bath, and because she had no soap, she was using the grit of a handful of sand. The result made her skin pink and shiny.
Jim caught his breath. He didn’t like the idea of spying on the woman in her private moment, but he could barely take his eyes off her. He knew she was a handsome woman, but he had no idea how beautiful she really was.
Katie seemed intent on scrubbing her body, rubbing herself down with sand so hard that Jim thought she was about to rub herself raw. At first, he couldn’t understand why she was so intense with her bath. Then he realized exactly what she was doing, and his heart went out to her.
Katie Kincaid was trying to wash away all the degradation and humiliation she had suffered over the last several days. And at that moment it dawned on Jim that, by spying on her, he might actually be adding to her humiliation, so he turned and started to walk away.
“You needn’t leave, Mr. Robison,” Katie said from the stream.
Jim was shocked by the words. He had no idea she even knew he was here. He stopped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude,” he said.
Katie emerged from the water dripping wet. She started toward him, but he stood riveted to the spot, his eyes still averted.
“You aren’t intruding,” she said. “I heard you making out the watch last night. I knew when you would have the watch, so I chose this time to take my bath. You turn around, Mr. Robison,” she said.
Jim turned, then gasped. He had seen naked women, of course, but they had all been whores, often wasted by dissipation. Katie Kincaid had lived a difficult life, but it was one made up of hard work and clean living. As a result, her body was firm and well-toned. Whereas the whores Jim had encountered often had large pillowy breasts, Katie’s breasts were small and well formed, and he was keenly aware of her tightly drawn and sharply protruding nipples.
“I have to know,” Katie said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I have to know,” Katie said again. “The men I was with: Shardeen, Whitey, and Red. They used me, degraded me. I have to know if any normal man will ever want me again.”
“I promise you, Mrs. Kincaid,” Jim said, “that’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Thank you,’ Katie said. Without another word, she turned and walked away from him, disappearing into the morning darkness. Jim stood there for a long moment afterward, wondering if the encounter had really happened. Or if it was merely a hallucination, brought on by a trick of fatigue and shadow.
Chapter 14
Alamosa, Colorado
When the sun came up, Clay Allison was sitting out on the hotel balcony, holding his hand to his aching jaw. The pain had kept him awake all night and he was now groggy and irritable.
He took a drink of whiskey, swirled it around in his mouth, then spat it out. He had been doing that throughout the night and, so far, had gone through three bottles. It seemed to help some, but it was a terrible waste of whiskey.
Clay had come into town the day before to have his aching tooth pulled. The dentist didn’t believe in using chloroform, nor did he offer a tincture of laudanum. As a result, the extraction had been extremely painful. Clay accepted it, however, as being necessary for the greater good of getting rid of his toothache.
It now seemed, however, that it was all for naught. The pain of the extraction had eased, but the toothache was still there. Clay spent the night in agony, waiting until the dentist opened his office again so he could go see him.
Gradually, the little town began to come awake. A loaded freight wagon rolled slowly out of town. The smell of sizzling bacon began drifting up the street. Across from the hotel, the proprietor of the general store opened his doors, then stepped out onto the porch wearing a clean, white apron and began sweeping. Down the street the blacksmith started working, and the ringing of his hammer played counterpoint to the scratch of the broom.
Finally Clay saw a small, nearly bald man with rimless glasses walking up the sidewalk, heading toward the dental office. Dr. Chidister was whistling a jaunty little tune as he sauntered along. He reached his dental office, marked by the hanging sign of a tooth, opened the door, and went in. The little sign in the window was turned from CLOSED to OPEN.
“It’s about damn time you came to work,” Clay mumbled angrily.
Clay stood up from his chair, rinsed his mouth out with whiskey one more time, spat over the balcony railing without regard as to who or what was below, then followed that with a healthy swallow. He had been going through the same procedure all night, rinsing, spitting, then drinking. As a result he was very drunk.
Clay left the hotel and walked across the street to the dentist’s office. An old man with white hair and a beard was sitting in the dental chair. His head was tipped back and his mouth was open. Clay’s entrance into the office wasn’t a quiet one. He slammed the door hard behind him, causing both doctor and patient to look around.
“Get out,” Clay said to the patient. He indicated the front door with a jerk of his hand.
“What?” the patient asked.
“See here, you can’t come in here and run my patients off like that,” the dentist said.
“Yeah, I can,” Clay said easily. He pulled his pistol and cocked it, then looked directly at the patient. “Ain’t that right, Mr. Peabody?”
“That’s right, Mr. Allison,” Peabody said, getting up from the chair and taking off the apron Dr. Chidister had draped around him. Peabody worked as a clerk in the leather goods store and knew Clay Allison by sight. In fact, as Clay’s ranch was so close by, most knew him by sight. And all knew him by reputation.
Clay waited until Peabody was gone. Then he climbed into the dental chair.
“I must say, Mr. Allison, you do have a way of getting someone’s attention. Now what can I do for you?”
“My tooth is still hurting,” Clay said.
Chidister laughed lightly. “Oh, I’m afraid that is quite impossible.”
“You may think it is impossible, but I’m telling you it’s still hurting,” Clay said. “Fact is, the son of a bitch is killing me. See what you can do about it.”
“All right, let me have a look,” Chidister said, leaning down over Clay’s open mouth. He looked down inside, then clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Oh, my, this is awful. How could this have happened?”
“How could what happen?” Clay mumbled through his open mouth.
Chidister cleared his throat, nervously. “Mr. Allison, uh, we all make mistakes,” he said.
“Mistakes? What kind of mistakes?”
“A rather big mistake, I’m afraid,” Chidister said. “I’m going to have to pull the tooth that is bothering you.”
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you pull that tooth yesterday?”
“I’m afraid not. I, uh, pul
led the wrong tooth,” Chidister said.
“What!” Clay bellowed, yelling so loudly that people half a block away could hear him.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Chidister said. “But such things happen all the time. I’m not the first person to make such a mistake.”
“Well, you are the first person ever to make a mistake like that on me,” Clay said. Although he had just put his gun away, he pulled it again and jammed the barrel into Chidister’s belly. “Now you make sure to pull the right one this time.”
“Y-y-y-yes, sir,” Chidister stuttered.
Because he was frightened and nervous, Chidister’s hands fumbled and quaked as he worked in Clay’s mouth. Allison let out a bellow of pain as Chidister, dripping with sweat, finally pulled the tooth out, then held it up for Clay to see.
“Here it is,” he said. “As you can see, it is rotten with decay.” He smiled. “I reckon I got the right one this time.”
“Why didn’t you get it right the last time, you son of a bitch?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Allison,” the dentist said.
“Get in the chair,” Allison ordered.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you deaf? I said get in the chair!”
“No, sir. Of course I’m not deaf. I just don’t understand what you want,” Chidister said as he sat down.
Clay picked up the pulling pliers, still dripping with his own blood and saliva. “Open your mouth,” he ordered.
“What?” Chidister asked in a weak voice, beginning to understand what Clay had in mind.
“I said open your damn mouth,” Clay said. “You owe me two teeth, and I aim to take ’em.”
“Mr. Allison, you . . . you can’t be serious!”
“Oh, I’m dead serious. Open your mouth, friend. I’m either going to pull two of your teeth, or I’m going to blow your brains out. And it makes me no never mind either way. What’s it goin’ to be, Doc? Do I kill you? Or do I pull a few of your teeth? It’s up to you.”
By that evening, there wasn’t anyone in town who didn’t know the story of Clay Allison pulling two of Dr. Chidister’s teeth. Chidister was not a popular man in town. As a dentist, he was rough-handed, and the fact that he didn’t use any painkillers—claiming that he didn’t believe in them, though others said he was too cheap to use them—made his extractions even more painful.
As it turned out, Clay Allison wasn’t the first person to have the wrong tooth pulled. As a result, several people wanted to express their thanks to him for doing something they would like to have done but lacked the nerve to do so.
The good citizens of the town expressed their thanks by buying drinks. By nightfall, Clay had long forgotten about his toothache. He was so drunk that he no longer felt anything. His state of inebriation created a condition that he seldom experienced. He was unable to perform when he took Hazel Lee up to her room above the Silver Nugget Saloon.
“It’s all right, honey,” Hazel Lee said when, after an outburst of frustration, Clay Allison swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. “It happens to lots of men.”
“Well, it ain’t never happened to me,” Clay said.
“You’re just tired, that’s all. You didn’t sleep none last night, what with your toothache and all. And you been goin’ all day, besides. Why, it’s only natural that you can’t get it up right now.”
“Ain’t nothin’ natural about it a’tall,” Clay said. Getting up, he walked over to the window, and looked down on the street of the town. It was quite busy tonight as men moved from saloon to saloon. “Look at ’em all down there,” he said.
“Beg pardon, honey?” Hazel Lee said from her bed.
Clay looked over toward her. She was not a small woman, and as she lay on her back, her large breasts looked like giant folds of flesh. She was pockmarked and hairy. He had never had any problems before with her, but perhaps he had never really looked at her before, as he was looking at her now.
“Damn,” Clay said. “You are one ugly woman—do you know that, Hazel Lee?”
“What?”
“How the hell is a man supposed to get it up with someone like you?”
Hazel Lee sat up in bed, then pulled the bed cover to shield herself against his cold glare.
“You, sir, are no gentleman,” she said, mus tering as much dignity as she could under the circumstances. “And I would appreciate it if you would leave my room.”
“Hell yes, I’ll leave your room,” Clay said, resolutely. “The longer I look at you, the uglier you get.”
Clay put on his hat, then sat on a chair and pulled on his boots. After that, he strapped on his pistol. Except for the hat, boots, and pistol belt, he was totally naked.
“I will go now,” he said with a belch. “By your leave, madam.”
Hazel Lee pointed to his shirt and pants and started to mention to him that he had forgotten something. Then, with a small smile, she let her hand drop.
“By your leave,” Hazel Lee replied.
All conversation in the saloon stopped as Clay Allison tromped down the stairs. Everyone looked at him with horrified expressions on their faces, wanting desperately to laugh, but terrified to do so.
“What’s the matter with everyone?” Clay asked. “Have I suddenly gone green?”
“No, Mr. Allison,” the barkeep replied.
“Why are you all lookin’ at me?”
Instantly, everyone looked away.
Clay pushed through the front door and stepped out onto the boardwalk outside. Two men were coming into the saloon at that moment, and they looked at Clay with their mouths open in shock.
“What are you looking at?” Clay demanded.
Without answering him, the men pushed through the batwing doors to go inside.
When Clay stepped into the middle of the street, he saw that several people were now looking at him, pointing and laughing. Angrily, Clay pulled his pistol.
“By God, the next son of a bitch who looks at me is goin’ to get hisself shot!” Clay shouted. He began firing his gun, shooting holes through signs, shooting out the windows in Dr. Chidister’s office, shooting holes in a couple of watering troughs so that the water began gurgling out into the street.
Not until he was out of bullets and looked down to his cartridge belt to punch out some more shells did he see that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Then, slowly, he turned and walked back into the saloon.
“I forgot my pants,” he said, trying to make the words as nonchalant as if he had walked out of the saloon without his hat. He started up the stairs, got about halfway to the top, then felt an overpowering tiredness overtake him. “I’ll just take a little nap,” he said. Lying down right there halfway between the ground floor and the upper landing, Clay Allison passed out.
Chapter 15
Shardeen climbed up onto a rock from which he could see for nearly two miles back across the Sonoran Desert. A small rise hid everything beyond that point.
“See anything?” Whitey asked.
“No,” Shardeen answered. Shardeen took the last swallow from a whiskey bottle, then tossed it against a nearby rock. The bottle shattered into several pieces.
“Dammit, Shardeen, what the hell did you go and break that bottle for?” Whitey complained. “We coulda sold that bottle for three or four centavos.”
“Three or four centavos?” Shardeen snorted. “If I wanted to sell something that cheap, I’d sell that gold tooth of your’n.”
“You ain’t never goin’ to get your hands on my tooth,” Whitey said.
“It’s prob’ly not even real gold,” Shardeen answered. “But it don’t matter none, ’cause once we get them womenfolk back, we’ll sell ’em to the Mexican bandidos, just like we started out to.”
“Yeah, well, we ain’t got ’em yet,” Whitey said.
“We’ll get ’em. They can’t get far, not on their own, anyhow.”
“I don’t know ’bout that. They’ve done pretty good on their own so far. They got away from u
s and they spooked our horses so that it took us half a day to get ’em back. Besides which, they also kilt Red.”
“Red getting kilt ain’t no big loss, believe me,” Shardeen said. “If they hadn’t kilt him, I most likely would done it myself. That boy was just too damn stupid to live.”
“Hey, Shardeen, lookie there,” Whitey said, pointing off in the distance. “I think they’re a-comin’.”
“No, it couldn’t be,” Shardeen said. “There’s too many of ’em.”
Whitey shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted off into the distance.
“The hell it ain’t them,” Whitey said. “Take a good look.”
Studying the distant party of riders, Shardeen saw that it was, indeed, the three women who had made good their escape. He saw, too, that they weren’t alone, for they were in the company of four men.
“What the hell?” Shardeen said aloud.
“Who do you reckon them men are?” Whitey asked.
“Like as not, someone who’s wantin’ to do what we was goin’ to do,” Shardeen said.
“What? You mean someone who’s plannin’ to sell the women?”
“Yes,” Shardeen said. “Our women.”
Whitey studied the approaching riders for a moment longer. “I don’t know,” he said. “You ask me, them women don’t look captured. Looks to me like they’re ridin’ with ’em by choice.”
Shardeen spit out a stream of tobacco juice. “Yeah, well, it don’t matter none whether they stole ’em or the women went to ’em. All that matters is, they got the women and we don’t.”
“Sons of bitches,” Whitey said. “And they’s four of them to only two of us.”
“Yeah, well, get your rifle,” Shardeen ordered. “We’ll take ’em out ’fore they even know we’re here.”
“Two of us against four of them? That don’t make too much sense if you ask me.”
“Just don’t miss with your first shot,” Shardeen said as he moved into position with his rifle.
Jim heard the angry buzz of a bullet sizzling past his ear even before he heard the sound of the shot. He knew instantly what it was, and he shouted at the others as he spurred his horse to get off the trail.
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