Bodyguard

by James W. Marvin

  Groaning with pain at the cold the merchant clambered upright, tottering unsteadily over the rutted ice to stoop and check his son. Laying a hand on the boy’s temple, pulling the blankets tighter around his neck.

  ‘Seems the same. Fever’s no higher. What do you think?’

  ‘Doesn’t give a damn what I think. You’d sell your soul to get to the mine, now we’re this close.’

  ‘I guess it has come to mean a lot. The business back home hasn’t been doing all it might, and that’s a fact.’ He hunkered down alongside Crow, the blanket across his shoulders making him look like a refugee.

  ‘Make or break, huh? Everything ridin’ on the wings of that old black bird?’

  Okie tried a smile, but it turned into a shiver. ‘Must be someone walking over my grave, Crow. Yes, I’ll not deny that if the mine is not there, then I fear we shall return to Boston to find a battling throng of bailiffs and assorted creditors, ready to snatch everything I have ever possessed. I am close to bankruptcy, and that’s the truth, may God help me.’

  ‘I’m surely glad I don’t have that restin’ on anything. I just figure my concern is bringing myself out alive.’

  ‘You aren’t going to leave us! We have an agreement!’

  ‘That lasts long as I want.’

  ‘I’ll double the money.’

  ‘Money’s not all,’ replied Crow, seeing that Amy was moving carefully towards them, her duty completed. She was carrying the pistol in her right hand.

  ‘Then what else? Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus! This cold bites through my marrow. It feels as though my veins are choking with ice.’

  ‘It looks like I don’t have a whole lot of choice. If the money you’re going to pay me rests on us finding the silver mine, then I’d be a damned fool to pull out. I’ll take the double offer for a start, and thank you.’

  ‘What did you mean about the money not being all, Crow?’ asked Okie.

  The shootist didn’t answer. Sitting and looking past the Easterner as though he didn’t exist. The moon flickered across Crow’s face and Okie shuddered again, thinking that he had never seen such a frightening man. The eyes glittered in their deep sockets like frozen diamonds, staring at Amy Okie as she drew nearer.

  ‘Oh,’ said Richard Okie, awareness flooding in on him like the bursting of a spring dam. The gunslinger wanted his wife. Wanted to lie with her. That was going to be his price for carrying on as scout and as bodyguard for them.

  ‘I didn’t say a word,’ he heard. In that softest of voices from the shootist.

  ‘But it’s Amy that . . .’

  Crow still didn’t look at him, eyes locked to the woman. Okie shuffled his feet, the ice crackling under his boots. Trying to believe what was happening.

  Life had been so secure until Radley had appeared, dying, with that hunk of silver and the neat map. Now he was out in the frozen deeps of this great wilderness, with one son dead and the other ailing. Considering whether he ought to allow his wife to be ravished by the tall, skinny gunman.

  Not even “allow.” That wasn’t the right word. The only hope left in Okie’s life, narrowing like a long tunnel, was the light of the mine and striking it rich.

  ‘All right,’ he said, quietly. ‘All right with me, Crow. I’ll go stand guard.’

  ‘That’s good, then,’ replied the shootist, not moving, not looking at him.

  As he walked away, fingers round the cold butt of the Peacemaker, Richard Okie swore that the first thing he would buy with the silver, when he’d made it big, was a hired killer to murder that cold-hearted bastard, Crow.

  Her husband might have considered that he was leaving his sweet woman to be ravished by Crow. But that wasn’t the right word, either.

  When Amy joined the shootist, without having exchanged a single word with her husband, she was almost rigid with the cold and on the edge of a breakdown from her addiction. She knelt down in the ice, close by Crow, and started to weep. Very quietly, but without making any effort to stop herself, great tears falling in the frozen snow, leaving tiny salt craters about her.

  ‘Crying sometimes helps. I know it’s hard, Amy. I’ve seen a lot of men crying like that when they’ve lost their drugs. Morphine, heroin . . . it’s all the same. You get to depend on it to make life seem good.’

  ‘Oh, no, Crow. Not to make it seem good,’ she said bitterly. ‘Just to make life seem normal.’

  ‘It’ll pass.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘It will.’

  She shook her head. ‘I swear it’ll kill me first.’

  ‘Not unless you let it, Amy,’ he said, putting out a hand and resting it on her shoulder.

  ‘It will. I’ve dreamed that I’m bound to die in these mountains. I’ll die here with no grave.’

  He patted her, feeling her trembling. She was thin, but not desperately skinny, yet it felt as if he was touching a tiny bird, frail-boned.

  ‘Oh, Crow!’ she said, in a strangled moan, throwing herself into his arms, her own cloak flapping about them both.

  Over her shoulder Crow saw Richard Okie turn, still holding his pistol, and stare at the tableau, of his wife in the arms of another man. While the shootist watched he stood still, then turned and disappeared on the spire of rock they used as a look-out. And Crow knew then that he would do well not to turn his back for long on the eminent Bostonian once they’d found the Black Bird Mine.

  ‘Please, Crow,’ stammered Amaryllis, her hands delving under his blankets, reaching for him. Finding his belt and loosening it, hands cold as death on his maleness. Despite the iciness of her fingers he was roused, ready for her.

  ‘Goin’ to be difficult,’ he said, his own hands inside her dress, cupping a breast, making her moan as his finger and thumb tightened on an erect nipple.

  She misunderstood him. ‘There is no danger. He will not be able to see clearly from there. And we can see him should he return early.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘But you are fearful of being caught!’ she gasped. Rolling down her own breeches to her ankles, drawing his fingers to her moistness. Rubbing at herself and writhing with her own desperate need for him.

  ‘Mr. Okie doesn’t much mind.’

  ‘He knows!’

  The shock stopped her.

  ‘Sure. I said I’d go and leave you all if I didn’t get to lay you here and now.’ He paused, considering. ‘I guess I didn’t come right out and say that, but my meaning was plain enough.’

  ‘And he agreed! Oh, the devil.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry overmuch, Amy. Come on. I meant it’d be difficult with all these blankets and the snow. Guess I’ll lay back and you can start with some riding.’

  Already the problem with Richard was forgotten. Crow noticed that she was oblivious to her sickly son, lying only-ten feet from them. All she wanted to do was couple with the lethal killing machine called Crow. She’d wanted it right from the first time she’d seen him. Wanted him to hurt her and possess her.

  Crow satisfied Amy.

  Four times in the next three hours, before it was time for him to leave her and go and take his spell on watch. There was a temptation to simply call out to Okie to stay out there while he pleasured himself, but one thing stopped him. Not fear or remorse or conscience. Okie would be tired and angry, and that made for carelessness. Crow didn’t value sex higher than living.

  So after the fourth time he pulled away and tugged up his breeches, wincing at the stickiness. Grinning wolfishly down at the woman as she lay, spread-thighed, the evidence of their long love-making glistening between her legs. Her face was swollen, bruised around the lips and with cuts on her cheeks. A trickle of blood showed on both naked breasts.

  She’d whispered for him to be brutal with her, and Crow hadn’t hesitated, slapping her several times, flat-palmed, across the face, digging his nails into her body and pinching her flesh. She’d cried with the shock and the pain, but moaned for him to do it more. Tossing her head, blank-eyed, from side to s
ide, grinding her hips up to meet him as he thrust down into her. Slapping her booted heels against him until he’d stopped her with a fist to the mouth, making her lie still until he’d taken his own pleasure.

  As he’d stood up, she’d lain there, his come oozing out of her on the snow, and she’d smiled at him.

  And at that moment he’d begun to be aware that Amaryllis Okie might be a very dangerous woman indeed.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day was cold and clear. Skies blue from east across the west, with the snow frozen and dazzling under foot. It was better weather for traveling, the snow not yet deep enough to make it impossible to move on. But one more fall like the last one and Crow knew that it might be spring before the sun thawed out their bones.

  ‘It’s the sort of day we wanted,’ exclaimed Richard Okie.

  Crow didn’t know whether the husband and wife had talked about the events of the previous night, and he didn’t much care. But to not care was a long ways off not taking care.

  ‘It is, and it isn’t,’ he replied. ‘Life’s hardly ever truly what you want. Sure the snow’s stopped. But in this sun you could see a beetle taking a shit at a half mile. We’ll stand out once we move just like a corpse at a christening. Look back there.’

  Both of them turned to look where he was pointing, following the line of the black-gloved finger.

  ‘Smoke. But a ways off, and well behind us,’ said the Easterner.

  ‘Right. Now look ahead of us, over that next ridge there.’

  ‘Lights,’ exclaimed Amy Okie.

  ‘No. It’s the sun reflected off something.’

  ‘Something like a mirror held in the hands of an Apache,’ said Crow.

  ‘A mirror?’

  ‘Signaling. Just like the pony soldiers do. The Indian isn’t the damned fool some whites try and make out, Okie. He watches the whites and sometimes they do something he can learn. By God, but he learns good.’

  Amy sniffed. ‘I’m sure that’s the only way he can learn anything and improve from being a naked, scalping savage heathen!’

  Crow came as close as he ever did to a grin. ‘Guess if’n I knew as little as you, Ma’am, about what I was saying, then I’d keep my mouth sewn tight shut.’

  ‘What do you mean by that, Crow?’ she snapped.

  ‘I mean that it was the whites that introduced scalping to this fair land. Sure the Indian picked it up. Like I said; he’s a fast learner.’

  For reasons that Crow didn’t understand, the woman seemed to be keeping a much tighter hold on herself that day. She had stopped sweating and the shakes had gone, though they had to halt three times while she dismounted from her mule and vomited, helpless on hands and knees by the side of the trail.

  Bringing up nothing but strings of pale yellow bile that coiled in the clean snow.

  It was as though she was making a superhuman effort to fight against her body’s craving for the missing heroin. And she was winning. From what Crow knew of such things, the person involved had to have a strong will to overcome the addiction. Which made him question just what it was that was driving the woman on.

  Again he wondered whether his first estimate of Amaryllis Okie as a washed-out little wife was maybe a little wrong.

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Not far. Weather holds like it is we might make it by the evening after this.’

  ‘How’s Edgar?’ asked his father.

  ‘Bearing up. Sleeps a lot.’

  ‘I could maybe walk some and let him have this mule.’

  Crow shook his head. ‘Nice offer, but I guess not. If they’re busy signaling, I figure that they’re going to be talking about us. Means we haven’t done with them yet. You get down and you’re dead if they hit us suddenly.’

  ‘Still don’t like to see you carrying him. Edgar’s my son, Crow. My boy. My responsibility.’

  ‘You’re paying me … one way and another, and that means I’m bodyguard. I guard your body and I guard your wife and your son. All of you.’

  The reference to Amy Okie struck deep and for a moment Crow thought that the man was going to face him down about the incident, but his eyes dropped and he heeled the burro forwards.

  As far as the shootist was concerned, there was little chance of his lying with Amy again. Women were just another itch to Crow, and once he’d scratched that itch it stayed away for some time.

  They made better progress than Crow had hoped, which was the good part of the day. But the ill tidings were that the boy had relapsed again, lying a dead weight in Crow’s arms as they moved on, higher and higher. His pulse had slowed and his breathing was light and shallow.

  What was strange was that the parents seemed to be reversing their roles. From the first it had been Richard Okie who was prepared to make any kind of sacrifice to get to the mine, including allowing the night of sex between Crow and his wife. Amy, on the other hand, had been far more the worried mother, worrying about the well-being of the family,

  Now, that had changed.

  Now it was Richard who was concerned for his son’s health, suggesting that they might try and find a sheltered place and stop a while. Nodding reluctantly when Crow pointed out that they had little enough food and that the Apaches were likely to hit them again pretty soon.

  But Amy seemed to have wandered off inside her own head, finding a room she’d never opened. Entering it and closing the door firmly behind her. She showed little interest in Edgar’s failing health, nor did she seem worried about the Indians. All that mattered now to Amaryllis Okie was that she get to the Black Bird Mine and become rich.

  They saw lights flashing around the hills, clear as fire against the glittering whiteness of the freezing snow. Visibility was excellent and twice Crow caught glimpses of a single rider, less than a mile away, shadowing them from a higher trail. And once he saw smoke signals, coming from ahead of them, indicating that there was going to be a lethal reception waiting for them, somewhere further along the line.

  Just before evening the weather warmed up, and there was even a flurry of rain, making the surface of the trail slushy and treacherous. The boy stirred in Crow’s arms, leaning back against his chest. Far off to the north the shootist heard the distant rumble of thunder, bringing the threat of further storms.

  ‘What’s that?’ whispered Edgar, blinking in the dull yellow light of late afternoon.

  ‘Nothing, son,’ replied Crow, reining in to allow the Okies to catch him up.

  ‘Is it thunder? Will there be thunder and will there be … be lightning?’

  ‘Not thunder, boy. Cannons in the rain, that’s all that is.’

  The rain passed and they stopped. Crow figured that some time towards the end of the next day, if they all lived that long, they might come within sight of the almost mythical black bird that would give them the clue to the location of the silver mine.

  If they all lived that long.

  The animals were suffering from hunger and one of the mules started to cry out, its mournful moans ringing across the space beyond the edge of the cliffs. Crow didn’t waste any time on trying to calm it, stepping close by the animal. Drawing the heavy Colt from the back of his belt. Swinging the two pounds and four ounces to his shoulder and bringing it down with a stunning crack between the startled eyes of the protesting burro. With a great sigh it slumped to its knees, rolling half on its side, head wavering as it tried to fight its way back to its feet, sliding in the wet snow.

  ‘You might have killed it, Crow,’ complained Richard Okie, standing watching the brutal tableau.

  ‘Wrong, Mister,’ replied Crow.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It might have killed us.’

  ‘I murdered Radley. My cousin.’

  ‘What?’

  Okie looked at his feet. He was huddled under a blanket, chewing on a tough piece of dried meat. ‘Just that I somehow felt I had to tell you.’

  ‘You didn’t have to,’ replied Crow, shaking his head at the oddities of human nature.


  Over to the right Amy was dozing, feet tucked under her, with Edgar in a deep sleep at her side. It was a little after ten at night and the temperature had again dropped savagely.

  ‘Maybe not. Not truly had to, my dear Crow. But it has rested heavy on my conscience.’

  ‘Man sometimes has to kill. If’n he worries on it then he maybe isn’t set out to be a killer.’

  ‘Do you worry? Do you think about the men you’ve shot and killed, Crow? I would dearly love to know the answer to that.’

  The shootist drew a deep breath, holding it and letting it out slowly, watching it steam in the freezing air, almost white in the silvered gleam of the moon.

  ‘Do I think on them? The men and women I’ve killed? No. I could sit here and run through them. Faces, names to some, places. With a few of them I could maybe even tell you why.’

  ‘Most for money?’

  ‘Some. Yeah, most, one way or the other. No margin in killin’, less’n you gain something by it. Getting rid of a nagging wife or a rich uncle.’ Turning so that his eyes seemed to drill through Okie. ‘Or to lay your hands on some silver.’

  The Bostonian nodded. ‘That was why. I didn’t … you know … allow him to suffer.’

  ‘I’ve never seen a whole lot of difference between easy and hard when it came to murder. Nor fast nor slow. It’s all death. Just depends on how you stand off and look at it.’

  ‘Upon my soul, Crow, but I don’t think I quite see what . . .’

  ‘How you look at it. I was down a ways north of New Orleans, years back. Saw this woman out there, swimming away. Close by a bridge. There was some wagons rattling by making a damned din. She was waving away, and calling out. And most folks waved back. Figurin’ she was having herself a real good time.’ He let the silence roll between them until Okie spoke.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We thought she was waving. Minute later she just disappeared. Easy as sleeping. Must have had a cramp but we couldn’t hear her. She wasn’t waving, but drowning.’

  ‘I see what you mean, now. Radley would have died anyway. But it took too long. So I went in with a large bolster. Goose feathers it was. Our best one. Laid it on his face while he slept and just held it there.’ His thoughts turned inwards and back. ‘He didn’t struggle hard, but he lived longer than I would have thought. Minutes and minutes. He had no need of that mine and the silver. But I did. I do.’