Rides a Stranger

by Bill Brooks

  She shrugged. “Nothing,” she said. “Money? I don’t know what else it could be. Maybe he’s just one of those damn fool men who once they take on a job want to see it through.”

  The horse cropped bunch grass. It was like they were two lovers out for a midnight ride.

  The moon stood balanced on the jagged teeth of a mountain range.

  “Hunter’s moon,” he said, looking at it.

  They mounted again and this time she rode the horse at a trot rather than a gallop, trying to preserve its stamina.

  “I know of a cave not far from here,” she said. He could feel the strands of her hair against his face; they were like silk threads.

  The cave was covered in brush at the foot of a smooth rock wall that had been carved and shaped by a million years of wind and rain, the same rock he’d seen earlier in the day in the canyon, beautiful if foreboding.

  He helped her clear away the brush enough so they could enter and bring the horse in with them.

  “We’ll need a fire,” she said, and together they gathered some of the brush that lay along the slope of the ground leading to the cave and dragged it inside then recovered the entrance once they’d got a fire started. The floor of the cave was sand with scattered small rocks and clay chips she said were from the days when the ancient people lived in this cave. “It’s shards of their pots and dishes,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  “You’ve been in these caves before?”

  “No. But I have read about these people.”

  She unsaddled the horse and it stood out of the fire’s light, sleeping on its feet, weary from the weight of two riders, the pace.

  The light danced along the cave’s ceiling, which was several feet taller than Tom when he stood.

  “I brought a little food,” she said, reaching into the saddlebags she’d placed next to the saddle. She retrieved a large wedge of cheese and some crackers, a bottle of whiskey and one of wine. He took notice.

  “How’s your arm?” she said.

  “I’d just as soon I didn’t own it.”

  They ate measuredly, taking small bits of the cheese and crackers. She said, “Do you prefer wine or the harder stuff?”

  “Wine,” he said.

  She handed the bottle to him and he watched as she took the cork from the whiskey and tipped it to her mouth. She did not drink indelicately, but he thought she was someone who wasn’t tasting whiskey for the first time. He noticed too the way her hands shook.

  “What causes that?” he said.

  “Causes what?”

  “Your hands to shake the way they are.”

  She looked at them then took another drink of the whiskey.

  “I’m just cold,” she said.

  “Not some other reason, afraid maybe?”

  “No,” she said. “Just cold.”

  Later she lay with the saddle blanket over her, her head resting on the saddle, the bottle cradled in the crook of her arm; she’d drank nearly half. He knew then what caused her hands to shake.

  He sat with his knees pulled up, feeding the fire when it needed it. Inside the cave it was pure silence except for the sound of water dripping somewhere deeper, a rhythmic steady sound. He did his best to ease the pain of his broken arm; he didn’t think it was broken badly, a small bone somewhere in the forearm, he guessed it to be. Just added misery to the healing snakebite. He closed his eyes and tried not to think of the sharp little stabs of pain that came and went. His weariness overcame him.

  He awoke to the darkness and saw needle points of light penetrating the brush covering the entryway. The woman was yet asleep and he took the half-empty bottle from her and replaced it in her saddlebags then shook her shoulder till she came awake.

  “God,” she moaned, cupping her head in her hands. “I always forget what whiskey does to me—not like opium at all…”

  Then realizing what she’d said, she tried making a joke of it.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I understand.”

  She looked into his eyes and saw something she hadn’t seen in a man’s eyes since she saw it in those of Chalk Bronson’s.

  “We better get the hell out of here,” she said, and rose and took the saddle blanket and saddle and swung it up on the horse’s back and tightened the cinch while he went to the entrance and tried to see out through the brush pile.

  “What’s it look like?” she said over her shoulder as she made the final loop of the cinch strap.

  “Looks clear,” he said.

  “How’s your arm?”

  He looked down at it, his fingers cold and stiff, but he could flex his hand at the wrist without too much pain.

  “It’s good,” he said.

  She came over and said, “Let me see.” He held it to the light coming through the brush. Her fingers felt his.

  “This hurt?”

  “No.”

  “How about this?”

  “Yes, a little.”

  They were standing inches apart and he could feel something tense between the two of them and he wasn’t sure what it was—his imagination or something other.

  Her fingers lingered a moment longer there along his wrist.

  “I thought at one time I wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “I don’t know why I never did anything more with my life than I have…”

  “You’re still young enough yet to do things you want,” he said.

  Her gaze lowered from his.

  “We should try and find you a doctor soon as possible,” she said. He looked down at her lingering fingers; there was nothing unusual about them except for the way they felt against his pain.

  She turned then and went and took the horse’s reins while he pushed aside the brush enough so she could lead the animal out. The sun had not yet risen above the red rocks, and the sky was colorless at that hour. Somewhere in the chaparral they could hear quail dusting themselves and cooing. She swung up into the saddle and kicked a foot free from the stirrup so he could swing up behind her. She waited until he put his good arm around her waist. She felt somehow safe with it there.

  For him, the feeling of holding to her was different somehow this morning than it had been last night. They were pressed together in a way that was comforting to each of them. It seemed to him like she waited a long time before heeling the horse into a lope, but it had only been a moment in their lives.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  I’d heard rumors that the last of Custer’s men shot each other to prevent their enemies from capturing them, knowing as they must the results if taken alive. Whether or not it was true, I could understand men in dire straits doing that very thing. I’d half considered saving my last bullet for me, knowing as I did what Waco would have done to me by his drovers.

  But when it came right down to it, I’d rather have spent that last bullet in the hopes it would blow up one of their hearts than to take my own life with it. Something about shooting myself seemed cowardly, or maybe it was just the opposite—maybe it was too brave a thing.

  I sat there like I was waiting for them when they found me. They leveled their guns and I figured it was execution time until Waco said, “Don’t kill him, not yet anyway.

  “Where are they?” he said.

  “Gone,” I said. “Fled. Left me here to die, the dirty bastards.” I said it with a smile.

  “Where’d they go, goddamn it!”

  “Big country,” I said. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “And you just what, stayed behind to be the hero?”

  “I would have gone with them,” I said, “but we flipped a coin and I lost.”

  “Get him on his feet, boys.”

  Two of them yanked me to a standing position and Waco backhanded me hard, but I’d been hit harder.

  “You will tell me,” he said.

  I spat out a mouthful of blood.

  “Probably not, since I don’t know any more than you do where they’re at. They say ignorance is bliss.”

&nbs
p; “Who’s the other one who was with you?” he asked.

  “John Wesley Hardin.”

  He backhanded me again and my ears rang.

  “Can’t get blood out of a turnip,” I said.

  “Yeah, you’re right, but I sure as hell can get it out of you.”

  He hit me again, this time with his closed fist, and it would have dropped me to my knees except for the two holding me up.

  “Take him back to the house and lock him in the smoke shed,” Waco ordered. “We can’t track them tonight but we’ll head out first thing in the morning. Harker, go find the Indian and bring him.”

  I was tied at the wrists and a rope was dropped over me and cinched around my middle by some chap-wearing waddie who dallied the other end of his lariat round his saddle horn. He said, “You best keep up, or this is going to hurt.”

  Then he spurred his horse into a trot and of course I ran for about twenty paces before I stumbled over a rock I couldn’t see in that nightglow of moonlight and fell and that waddie was true to his word about it hurting, being dragged through the chaparral like that.

  Time we reached the ranch I was feeling about half dead and almost wished I was because being bounced over that rough ground like that wasn’t anything you’d want to do twice. He dismounted and let the rope go slack and a couple of others came up and lifted me and half carried me to the smokehouse and locked me in it. I by God didn’t do much but try and not think how bad off I felt over every inch of my body. Hadn’t been for that canvas coat of mine and those tough Levi’s, I wouldn’t have been fit to feed to the dogs.

  I wondered why Waco didn’t just have me killed instead of going to all this trouble. But it was late and I was too tired and hurting to care. At that point killing me would have been doing me a favor. I closed my eyes. I’d made my peace.

  The door rattled open and morning light came in so sharp it hurt my eyes and two of Waco’s men dragged me out by the arms and dropped me at the feet of a few dozen horses upon one of which sat Johnny Waco in a big sheepskin coat.

  The morning was cool and bright as polished steel. Next to Waco sat a dark-skinned man I guessed to be the Indian. He sat staring balefully down at me the way you might look at horse apples.

  “It’s not over yet, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Waco said. Then to the boys on either side of me: “Get him on a horse.”

  I didn’t figure they were going to go through all the trouble of riding me out a ways just to kill me, that there was some purpose to his madness. But I was damned if I knew what it was.

  We rode to the grove again and the Indian began to cut sign and we rode on through the grove and out the other side and I looked but couldn’t see how the Indian could cut sign when nothing seemed visible. But he did and we rode in a due westerly fashion, down the slope of a ridge and across what I guessed was still part of Bitch Creek and out the other side. We halted while the Indian rode up and down then waved us on. I counted nearly thirty riders and I didn’t know why he needed so many other than to make sure there was nothing left to chance. Waco rode out in front of his crew but behind the lead of the Indian.

  That Indian tracked over hard rock and how he did it was anybody’s guess, but Waco seemed to have full faith in him and by mid-morning we reached a rock wall with lots of brush blown up at its base. The Indian pointed and Waco pulled his gun and ordered some of the drovers, “Go see what that fucking Indian is pointing at.”

  Several of them rode forward and dismounted and turned and one of them said, “We don’t see nothing what he’s pointing at, boss.”

  Waco looked at the Indian again and he heeled his horse forward and leaned and pulled away a chunk of brush and there was a hole in the wall.

  It proved to be a cave but there wasn’t anyone in it.

  “Looks like they may have camped the night, or somebody did,” one of the drovers said, coming out again and brushing gray ash from his hands.

  Waco looked at the Indian, and he rode up and down cutting sign and it didn’t take him long before he started off in one direction—this time east. I figured Antonia was doing as I suggested, heading for Texas.

  We rode on at a steady pace till noon when we had to give the horses a blow, and I stood feeling weak and sore as hell and some of the drovers took out jerky from their saddlebags and chewed on it while we waited and others smoked. Waco was talking to one of his hands and looking over at me and I figured it could come at any moment—my execution. Then the two of them walked over and I could see now that he had his coat unbuttoned, Waco was heeled with a Colt revolver with staghorn grips riding his hip; he wore it butt forward in his holster.

  “How’d you get involved in my business?” he said.

  “Money,” I said.

  “You are going to live to regret your greed.”

  “I already do.”

  His gaze was unflinching. He removed his Stetson and slapped it against his leg and I saw he had a receding hairline and was probably younger than he looked.

  “Why carry me along on this?” I said.

  He nodded as though I’d just told him something important and he was in agreement with me.

  “I want you to see what I’m going to do to them—Antonia and your friend. I want you to watch them suffer before I kill you. You see, that’s the way it is with me; I want to know that the man who crosses me does have to pay a heavy price. Shooting you in the head wouldn’t give me any satisfaction. Having my men kill you slow after they’ve finished with her and him, that will give me satisfaction. You ever think you’d live to see a woman killed in a very bad way, Glass?”

  I didn’t doubt he’d do it and with his own hands. Me and Tom he might let his men do, but with Antonia he was going to extract his own personal revenge.

  I could tell he was looking at the cuts and scratches on my face, examining them closely like a doctor might.

  “You shouldn’t have come into this county and gotten into my business,” he said, then turned and walked away.

  We were on the march again in thirty minutes. I couldn’t help but wonder how Tom and Antonia were going to outrun them riding double. I figured at best they had a couple hours lead on Waco, if that.

  I figured by nightfall we’d all be dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The horse was starting to break down under their weight so they took turns walking, knowing it was going to slow them down.

  At one point Tom said, “You go on.”

  “No,” she said.

  “They’ll catch us at this rate. No point in both of us getting caught. Your husband doesn’t know who I am. Even if they catch me, I can deny I even know you.”

  “You’re the one with the broke arm,” she said. “You best go on.”

  “I’m not the kind to leave a woman behind.”

  “Really? Don’t tell me you’re one of those do-gooders.”

  “How’d you know?”

  She looked down at him and he was smiling.

  They kept moving, neither one willing to give in. Late afternoon they reached a spring and knelt and drank using their hands to scoop up the cool clean water and filled the one canteen.

  “You know where we’re going?” he said.

  “I think to Texas if we keep going this direction,” she said.

  “How far do you reckon it is to Texas?”

  “It’s a good ways yet.”

  Their horse drank. The sun was gaining strength. Things almost seemed normal.

  “You think they’re following us?” she said.

  He shrugged. “You know him better than I do. I don’t know him at all.”

  “I think they’re following us.”

  “We better not sit here then.”

  “I think I recognize some of this country,” she said.

  He looked around.

  “It all looks pretty much the same to me.”

  “I came up through here once with Johnny, back when things weren’t so bad between us. He was going to a place
called Gando to buy some horses. I don’t think it’s all that far from here.”

  “You think you can find it?”

  “I think so.”

  They debated whose turn it was to ride; he finally convinced her it was hers.

  By the time they topped a rock ridge and looked down on a set of shacks, the sun was a foot off the lip of the horizon.

  “That’s the place,” she said. “That’s Gando as I remember it.”

  He studied it.

  “Looks deserted to me.”

  They each felt hope sink as they made their way down the loose rock slope.

  He had been right, the place was deserted. The last of the day’s light fell on ridged but rusty tin roofs that covered ill-constructed buildings of weathered gray planks, the broken glass of their windows glittering in the dying sun. A wind that cut down through a gorge whistled like a lonesome man as they stood there feeling defeated. The stock pens stood empty, as though they’d never been used. A couple of the buildings had been burnt to charred remnants.

  They picked one of the buildings and tied off their horse and went inside knowing it wasn’t much if any sort of refuge but knowing they couldn’t go on either.

  “I think this was the place where Johnny did business,” she said, looking around. It was empty except for motes of dust swirling in the light. The floorboards creaked underfoot.

  “What now?” she said.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “We can’t go on, the horse is shot.”

  “I know it,” he said.

  “Wait here.”

  She left and returned carrying her saddlebags and set them on the floor between them then slid down and sat with her back against the wall, and he sat with his back against it too. She opened the bags and took out the two bottles—one of wine and the other of whiskey and something else too: a small silver derringer.

  “Whiskey and guns don’t mix,” he said, “so I’ve heard. What do you intend to do with that?”

  She uncorked the bottle with the whiskey and took a long drink and said, “I don’t know. But I figure when the time is right I’ll know what to do with it.” She held out the bottle for him. He declined.