by Gene Curry
Now she was across the empty street and running into another alley beside the sheriff’s office. I fired off the last round in the Colt and stopped to reload the Winchester. There was no return fire from the shotgun, and maybe she was finally out of shells. I knew I was right when she started popping with the Colt .38. I threw myself flat in the rubbish strewn alley and once again I drove her back with rapid rifle fire. I was halfway across the street when I heard the clatter of hoofs in the dark.
I fired at random and didn’t bring down horse or rider. Give Jessie her due: she was a hard woman to kill. I ran back down the street to get my horse and by then she was out of the alley, heading south at a gallop. Once again she had put some distance—and now she was riding for her life. I kicked my horse into a gallop and took after her.
Riding fast out of town, I could hear her making good time up ahead. Out past town on the south road there was a fork, and when I got there she was still far ahead of me. Earlier it had been dark but now the moon came through the storm clouds that had been gathering all afternoon. I knew I was beginning to gain on her when I saw her turn in the saddle. I heard her yelling at her pony as the distance between us began to lessen. Before long she would be in my sights and I could go back to the poker games and the whores.
I was getting even closer when, God damn it to hell, it began to rain.
Chapter Fourteen
The bulging, black clouds opened up and tried to drown the world in water. Lightning ripped a jagged hole in the sky and rolled like massed artillery. In seconds the road turned to mud as the rain poured down, cold and relentless. Now she had the advantage again because her mount was a small cow pony, light and nimble, better suited to that kind of weather.
In the next streak of lightning I spotted her three or four hundred yards ahead, riding like the hammers of hell. I only saw her for a moment at the top of a rise, then she was over it and going fast down the other side. I crossed the rise and again she was out of sight. Every second it was getting harder to push my horse through the churned-up mud. The wagon ruts were running like creeks and the crown of the road was like mush.
Up ahead there were lights—the judge’s house—and I cursed him for waiting around to be killed. I spurred my horse to great speed, knowing that the animal might stumble and fall at any moment. The lights of the judge’s house were dead ahead, and I wondered if the door was bolted and if he knew how to shoot a gun.
By the light of the next lightning flash I saw that she was riding straight at the picket fence that surrounded the house. I tried to fire the Winchester one-handed. I knew it wasn’t going to work. I tried anyway. I fired and didn’t come close to hitting her. She was still riding straight at the fence. I heard her yelling at the pony as she tried to jump him over it. There was a terrible scream as the small animal impaled itself on the sharp points of the fence. It kept on screaming as I rode closer.
I jumped down and looked for Jessie and found her lying stunned in the mud inside the fence. I rolled her over on her back and yanked the .38 from its holster. Then I turned and put a rifle bullet through the dying pony’s skull. The animal kicked and died instantly.
There was no longer any need to hurry.
Jessie was groaning when I lifted her up and slapped her face. Her eyes opened and she tried to break away from me, but I held her in a tight grip. I pushed toward the house and banged on the door. Nobody answered at first. Nobody answered until I started kicking it. Finally it opened and the judge, quavering and old, stood there in his nightshirt.
“Be in Dade City in the morning,” I said. “You’re going to set a date for a hanging. Be there or I’ll come and get you. The sheriff is dead so now you’re the only law, understand?”
He nodded feebly and I dragged Jessie away before there was any more talk.
“Kill me!” Jessie said. “Please kill me! You owe me that much.”
I said I didn’t owe her a thing.
The thunder rolled away in the west, and when it crossed the mountains it was no louder than a far away battle. On the horizon lightning still forked from sky to earth, but the storm was losing its force. Soon the rain would stop and the moon would break through. Already there was the clean smell the desert country always has after a storm.
While I was putting Jessie up in front of me, just as I had on the day I saved her life, she tried to make a grab for my belt gun. I slapped her hand away before I slapped her face. I put plenty of force in that slap and said she’d get more if she tried anything else.
The rain stopped and we rode in silence for a while. “Please shoot me,” she said again, shivering with fear and cold. “You can’t let them hang me, Saddler. I know you won’t let me go. All I’m asking is—please kill me.”
I threatened to slap her again, but I knew I wouldn’t. The time for that was over. “Don’t talk,” I said. “I don’t want to talk.”
“What does it matter how I die?” she said. “You want me dead. Shoot me and I’ll be dead. For God’s sake, a bullet isn’t much to ask. If you ever liked me you’ll do that for me.”
I warned her to keep her mouth shut.
~*~
Dade City was still lit up and deserted when I walked my horse down to the jail. The sheriff and the deputy were still lying dead where she had killed them. There was no expression on her face when I dismounted and told her to climb down.
Her face remained the same when she had to step over the dead sheriff on her way into the jail. I found the key ring on a peg and pushed her into one of the cells and locked the door. The slamming of the cell door seemed to do something to her; she gripped the bars so hard that her knuckles showed white.
“Oh Jesus!” she called out. “They can’t hang me—I’m a woman!”
“A little late to be thinking of that,” I said without meaning to say it. A man—or woman—facing the hangman doesn’t need any extra punishment.
“There’s nothing I can do,” I said. “I’ll get you a drink if you want one.”
“Go on, ease your conscience, you son-of-a-bitch!” she screamed. “Doing what you’re doing you better have a big drink yourself.”
Her anger turned to tears and she sat down on the bunk and began to sob, and more than ever I wished to hell I had stayed in that poker game in Goldfield, New Mexico. Anything but this! Any goddamned thing you could name!
I found a nearly full quart of whiskey and two glasses in the sheriff’s desk. Her hands were shaking as they reached out through the bars to take the drink. She drank it quickly and reached out again, and I poured another full glass of whiskey.
Standing there, looking at her, I drank some of my own drink, but it didn’t taste right. All the way back from the judge’s house I thought there was nothing I wanted more than a drink, a lot of drinks; now I didn’t want to drink at all.
Suddenly Jessie broke the empty glass on the bars of the cell and held the jagged edge to her jugular vein. “The hell with you, mealy mouth—I’ll die my own way! Try and stop me, Sheriff!”
I looked at her wearily. It was getting so that nothing mattered anymore. I wanted to lie down in a dark room, close my eyes—and make all this go away.
“Go ahead,” I said. “I won’t try to stop you.”
She smashed the glass on the floor, sat down again and began to cry. I don’t know how real the tears were; she did have a good reason to cry.
I tried to finish the drink, but it tasted worse than before. I set it down unfinished and when I turned back to her the tears had dried up.
I knew she was going to try something else—and she did. She sniffled a little to show how heartbroken she was.
“Saddler, why don’t you let me go?” she said in a little girl voice that was supposed to melt my stony heart. “There’s still time before the judge and the others get here. Let me go and I’ll swear I’ll never do anything bad again in my life.”
“No,” I said, “but you can have my glass if you like. I can’t let you go, Jessie. It doesn’t matter tha
t you tried to kill me. I don’t give a damn about that—it’s all the others. Wingate, Pardee, all the others who died here.”
I needed a deep breath to go on. “And all the others who’ll die if I let you go.”
“But I swear.”
“I can’t let you go on killing. If you can’t understand that—oh what the hell!”
“You are a mealy mouth bastard!” she screamed, realizing that the little-girl-lost appeal was a bust. “Now what about another goddamned drink?”
I gave her the bottle and the glass. After that I sat in the dead sheriff’s chair and began the long wait until morning. I didn’t want to look at Jessie, to talk to Jessie. Behind me, in the cell, I heard whiskey splashing into the glass.
Then she put down the bottle and I heard her moving around in the cell. I still didn’t look at her. I thought about getting the sheriff’s body out of the doorway and decided against it. The hell with the sheriff! The hell with the whole world!
When Jessie spoke again her voice was soft and seductive, so much so that I turned quickly to see what she was up to now. Jesus Christ! She was naked!
She was close to the bars and she was smiling. “You like what you see, don’t you, Saddler? Don’t tell me you don’t because I know you do. Why sit out there with a frown on your face when you can be in here with me. Go on, make a liar of yourself: say you don’t want me.”
Of all the strange situations I’d ever been in this was the strangest. At first I thought she was trying the last trick she owned; when I took a better look I knew she was really aroused. The nipples on her perfectly shaped young breasts were erect and she was panting heavily, running her tongue over moist lips.
And I wanted her too. Sweet Jesus! I was ready to see her hang—and I still wanted her. Some of her craziness must have rubbed off on me because I took a step toward her, the key in my hand, before I forced myself to stop.
“Come on,” she coaxed me. “There’s nothing to stop you. If you think I want to take your gun, leave it outside. I don’t care about the gun.”
My hands were sweating as I threw the key back on the desk. “Put your clothes on,” I said.
“Bastard!” she yelled and tried to throw the glass at my head. It broke against the bars.
“Put your shoes on too,” I said. “You’ll cut your feet.”
“If I could get out of here I’d cut your goddamned throat.”
At that instant I made up my mind. It was a crazy decision, and maybe I was crazy to make it, but somehow it was the right thing to do.
I picked up the key again and her eyes widened. “I’m sorry I called you a bastard,” she said. “It’s a long time till morning. Nobody will ever have to know.”
“Hurry up, get dressed.”
“What for?”
“Don’t ask questions. I said get dressed.”
She wasn’t sure what to expect and I don’t blame her. But she did what she was told.
I unlocked the door. “Come out now,” I said.
“What’s going on?”
“Come out now or stay there for good.”
Suddenly there was real fear in her eyes. She tried to press her body against mine, but I pushed her away.
“You’re going to shoot me! I didn’t mean it when I asked you to do that. I thought if I said that you’d feel sorry for me. You can’t just shoot me. What are you going to do, Saddler?”
“Give you a chance.”
“You mean you’re going to let me go.”
“Not that kind of a chance. I’m going to give you a better chance than you gave those men you killed.”
“You mean ...?”
“That’s right. You always said you could take me. Now is the time to prove it.”
Her eyes darted to the Colt Lightning and gunbelt lying on the sheriff’s desk. She was smiling when her eyes returned to mine.
“I can take you.”
“We’ll see.”
“No tricks. You won’t shoot me as I walk out the door?”
“No tricks, little miss. Just you and me in an empty town.”
Jessie, still smiling, said she liked that. “Do I get the gun now?”
“When we’re outside. Only then.”
“I mean to kill you, Saddler. I don’t want to, but that’s what is going to happen.”
“Step lively.”
There it was, the two lovebirds getting set for their last and final tussle. Once again we stepped over the sheriff and went into the middle of the silent street.
I handed her the gunbelt first and she strapped it on. Instead of giving her the gun I pushed it into its holster and began to back away from her, watching her eyes all the time I was doing it.
“That’s far enough,” I said, a sick, lonely feeling in my gut.
“Anytime you’re ready,” my sweet Jessie said.
“Ladies first,” I said, knowing that I shouldn’t give her any chance at all. I should have pulled my gun and shot her in the back of the head as she walked out the door. It wouldn’t have hurt anyone but me. It was no more than she deserved, but I still couldn’t do it. And yet if she killed me, this blue-eyed killer would walk away, free to go on killing. She would go on to make a name for herself in gunsmoke and blood.
I wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t kill me because you can never be sure, no matter how good you are. All the threatened gunplay between us had been just that: a rehearsal for what was about to happen. I had seen her shoot and I knew how good—how fast—she was. I knew she had killed other men—but nobody with a reputation. If she had, she would have bragged about it. My reputation wasn’t big but people knew who I was, at least in the Southwest, and if she killed me, then she could go on to bigger and better things. Take her place among the bad women of the West, and maybe become the most deadly of all the deadly females. And don’t believe them when they say women can’t shoot.
All this ran through my mind as we prepared to shoot it out in the deserted town. Pools of water stood in the wagon ruts and the wind was still cold and damp. Our boots squelched in the mud that would bake hard again once the sun came up. Dade City was like a ghost town with all the lamps lit.
Across the street the dead deputy lay soaked in water and blood. Jessie didn’t even look at the corpse. None of it seemed to bother her, but I was through passing judgment on her. I watched carefully.
Her voice had excitement running through; I knew she wasn’t frightened and it wasn’t because she thought she could outdraw me. No, that wasn’t it—she just wasn’t frightened.
“How long has it been, Saddler?”
“Not long, a week or so.”
“A lot has happened.”
“You made most of it happen.”
She really wanted to know the answer to her next question. “Did you think it would come to this?”
I said, “First it was just a feeling. Then I hoped it could be avoided. Later I knew it couldn’t be any other way.”
Out at the ranch old John Wingate lay with his bony hands folded across the clean white shirt, the brass-clasped Bible beside him on the bed, the Indian women wailing their grief.
I thought of that and other things. In minutes—less—one of us would be dead.
“I had the same feeling,” Jessie said, moving like a cat. “The first time I saw you I thought—there’s a man who is going to change everything for me. That feeling never left me. You were a challenge, Saddler; I knew I had to find out sooner or later.”
“Now it’s later—and too late.”
She was actually smiling. There are people like that—running to greet death with both arms outstretched. Most of them don’t know it, don’t want to know it, but that’s what they’re doing. After a while they get impatient because it’s so easy to stay alive, so they push the odds, box themselves in, do things that just have to get them killed. Finally they know that death is what they wanted all the time.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Jessie said, still smiling, and if she killed
me she could look for her death somewhere else. “You want to start it, Saddler?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to start it.” What I said next went against all good sense, but I said it anyway. “I’m going to let you go, Jessie. I swore I wouldn’t and that was only minutes ago. I can’t police the whole world even if I wanted to. You’re crazy and I know you’re crazy, but that doesn’t help. Get away from here and away from me and don’t come back. Murphy will probably hire you on and I’d say he’ll be sorry for it, but that’s his business. I just know I can’t fight you. You can take my horse.”
There was anger instead of gratitude in her voice. “You’re not going soft, are you, Saddler? Because if you think just because I’m a woman ... I told you more than once I don’t need any favors from you or any other man.”
“This favor isn’t for you,” I said. “I’m doing this for myself.”
It was funny to be talking about life and death in the middle of the street, with not a soul around. What I was doing was wrong, and I knew it was, and I didn’t give a damn any more. “You better get going,” I said. “They’ll be looking for you. If you go now there’s a good chance they’ll never find you. Nobody knows about Lincoln County but me and I won’t talk. Don’t hang on too long, Jessie. I might change my mind.”
“Who asked you to do anything, Saddler? You wouldn’t be afraid of me, would you?”
“Not afraid, just tired. Go on now. It’s not for me to kill you. You’ll find your death soon enough.”
