by Gene Curry
She sounded defiant, that crazy girl. “You think you could? Kill me? I don’t think you have the guts to do anything but run off at the mouth. You have some kind of reputation as a gunfighter, but that’s in the past. Maybe it takes a woman to show you up for what you are.”
I was genuinely tired. “Sure,” I said. “Why not. Time you were on your way. They’ll hang you for sure and it won’t be up to me to say no.”
Jessie yelled, “Why don’t you be a man for once in your life? We always knew it would come to this, and now you’re trying to back off. Behind all the big talk you’re yellow, Saddler. You don’t have what it takes!”
“Probably I don’t. You faced up to me and I backed off. You can tell that all over and I won’t deny it. One more time, are you going to stay or go? There’s the horse and New Mexico is that way.”
“All right, I’ll go,” she said with a sneer. “I don’t know that you’re worth killing. Don’t expect any thanks from me, shit-kicker.”
She turned toward where my horse was hitched and then, fast as a striking sidewinder, her double-action Colt .38 was out and firing at my head. The last sound I heard was my own gun going off, then the street came up and hit me in the face.
~*~
Once again, it was Curly Fitch who brought me back from the edge of the next world, and when I opened my eyes I was lying in the bunk in the cell. Faces stared down at me and my head throbbed like an Apache war drum. I felt cold and sick and a fit of shivering took hold of me. Curly Fitch covered me with a blanket and held a whiskey bottle to my mouth. My teeth rattled against the glass as I drank.
“Better drink some more,” Curly Fitch said. “I’m going to wash out the wound. You got a long crease above the right ear. Who did it? The girl?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. “How long’s she been gone? Makes no difference—we’ll catch up to her.”
“No,” I said. “You leave that to me.”
I winced as he poured whiskey into the wound and dabbed at it with a strip of cloth. The pain brought me back to reality. I drank what was left in the bottle and Curly Fitch said, “I guess you’ll live. You know where she’s gone, Saddler?”
“No,” I said, “but I’ll find her.”
Curly Fitch gave me a mean grin. “You didn’t do so good this time.”
The whiskey did something, not much, for the pain in my skull. “Next time I’ll do better,” I said while Curly Fitch wound a bandage around my head. There was blood all over my shirt, and so much for doing good deeds to wayward females. The little bitch had caught me with my pants down and I wondered why I wasn’t dead. Either she thought the head shot had finished me, or she had changed her mind. There was no way to be sure which it was, but I intended to ask her before I killed her. I had given her a chance to go on living and she had turned on me like a snake. From start to finish it had been a dumb play on my part, and horse’s ass that I was, I was paying for it now. Well, we all get what we deserve and I deserved to have my hind end kicked all the way to the Mexican border.
“Well, next time I’ll find her and I’ll kill her,” I said.
Curly Fitch nodded. “I’ll settle for that and so will the rest of the men. Don’t let us down, Saddler, or maybe we’ll come looking for you.”
I managed to sit up. “You have my word on that, Curly. I’ll do what I should have done and didn’t.”
“Still, you’re hardly fit to travel,” Curly Fitch said, and he was right. My legs were like butter, my head like molten lead. “You better take some whiskey along.”
That I was willing to do after I swung my legs off the bunk and found them more or less able to hold me up. Curly Fitch said I could take his horse and refused to take payment for it. “Just get the job done and that’ll be payment enough,” he said. “I’ll walk out with you and introduce you to your new mount.”
We were outside and Curly Fitch said, “This is a hell of a thing, Saddler.”
“That it is, Curly.”
“You should have killed her when you had the chance, but I can see where you might have had a soft spot for that girl.”
“Something like that,” I said. “How’s your head?”
Curly Fitch grinned. The darkness was thinning out; soon it would be morning. “My head’s sore but I’ll live. You sure you don’t want to rest up before you start? You don’t look so good.”
“No worse than I feel. Like the bandit said who was about to be shot by a firing squad, “This will be a good lesson for me.”’
Curly Fitch held out his work-calloused hand. “Too bad we got off on the wrong foot, Saddler. We could have been friends.”
I took his hand and shook it. “Hell, we are friends, you big ox.” And then I was gone from Dade City, a place I never wanted to see again as long as I lived.
Chapter Fifteen
Well, I had come to Arizona from New Mexico and now I was going back there but to a different part of the Territory. Lincoln County is in the south not far from the border. I had been there a few years before Major Murphy and his partner, Dolan, got a yearning to take over the whole county. To give things the appearance of legality, not that it mattered much, they had a trained sheriff named Brady on a leash. The only one who stood up to them was the Englishman, Tunstall. He didn’t stand up for long: Brady or one of his hard case deputies shot the Englishman from ambush and William Bonney, a rat-faced killer otherwise known as Billy the Kid, did in Brady and a whole lot of others before Pat Garrett put him to bed with a shovel. Smart hombres that they were, Murphy and Dolan survived the Lincoln County War, getting richer and more arrogant with every year that passed. Murphy, a silky bearded, smooth mannered scoundrel, was the brains of the partnership. He thought up the dirty work and Dolan arranged to have it done. It was said that Murphy’s next move would be to buy or bully his way into the govern-ship of New Mexico. He had a small but highly efficient army of gunmen to back him up. I wondered how he would take my darling Jessie when she showed up in her tight pants and wearing that fast-firing Colt Lightning.
I sincerely hoped she hadn’t changed her mind and was headed for some other part of the world. Anything was possible with the good-looking killer. I wanted her to be in Lincoln County when I got there, that is if I didn’t catch up with her along the way. I didn’t want to kill her because she had tried to kill me. Others have tried to kill me, but I have always regarded that sort of thing as part of the life I lead. You can’t get mad about little things like that, or you’d be in a bad temper all your life. By now the pain in my head wasn’t much worse than a very bad hangover. No, that wasn’t it. What got under my skin like a cocklebur was that I had made a stupid mistake. Jessie hadn’t helped: I had done it all by my lonesome. Dumb fool that I was, I didn’t need any help. She had murdered good men in cold blood and I had been willing to let her get away with it. Oh yes, there was some conceit in my willingness to let her walk away from her crimes. Fess up, Saddler, I thought, you never believed that she would really try to kill you.
I rode until the sun was full up and by then I was as dizzy as a new bride. Out on the desert the heat shimmers matched the shakes in my head. Up ahead on the trail there was no sign of her. Why should there be? She had a good horse under her—my God damned horse! As good a horse as gambling money could buy. Curly Fitch’s horse was a good animal too, but I was new to him, him to me. It takes a while to get a new mount used to your ways.
I drank some whiskey and it didn’t make me feel much better. At times nothing helps but rest and sleep, if you can get it. The blood on my shirt was dry now, stiff and caked. Early morning sun beat down on me, and I shivered when I wasn’t sweating. There was no more shade left in all the world, but then finally I saw some big rocks grown over with thorn bush and I climbed down, none too steady on my feet, and spilled water into my hat so the horse could drink.
I tethered the horse to a bush and crawled into the shade of the rocks after poking in there with a stick to make sure I wasn’t disturbing a nest of
snakes. I felt better after I was out of the sun, which was inching up toward the noon position when I woke up. I was stiff and sore, but my head was all right. I could look at the sunlight without wanting to put a bullet through my head. I gave the horse more water and myself some whiskey. I saw a rattler crawling in my direction. I pulled my belt gun and he regarded me and I did the same for him. He crawled away and I holstered my gun and stood up without too much difficulty, though my legs were arguing with my head about which way they wanted it to be. Standing up won out and a slug of whiskey helped me to stay on my feet.
“Well, horse,” I said, “we better be on our way.”
You see how it was with me—I was talking to horses.
I pushed on all that day and there was still no sign of my lady or anything else. That night I made camp by a waterhole not far from the New Mexico line. The water was alkaline but drinkable and while I fixed a fire my horse munched on what bunch grass there was to be had. A cold wind blew up and it felt good after the baking heat of the day. I drank whiskey and chewed on some jerked beef. My head had stopped hurting but my neck was stiff and I was careful how I moved it. Even so, I was getting better, and I thought with some regret of the food I hadn’t brought along. It’s always a good sign when you get hungry, but there was nothing I could do about that. Going after a jack rabbit was just too much trouble. I subdued but didn’t kill my hunger with whiskey and jerky, and after I saw to the horse I rolled up in my blankets and lay there by the fire with the cold night wind blowing over me, looking up at the stars. At some point I fell asleep.
At first, it wasn’t good sleep; bad dreams came crowding into my head. Jessie was in all the bad dreams. She taunted me, and sometimes she threatened. In the dreams she wasn’t so very different from her real self. I’d reach for her and she’d push me away with that hard mean look in her eyes. Later she’d come back and say she was sorry because she didn’t know what she was doing. It was cold, even with two blankets and the fire, and still I was sweating. More than once I woke up with the Colt cocked and ready in my hand, and every time that happened I could have sworn that I heard her out there in the dark, coming back to kill me while I slept.
But as the night wore on the bad dreams went away. When you get tired enough nothing matters but sleep. The fire burned down to embers, and I was too tired to build it up again. I slept well now, not sweating or troubled now, rolled in my blankets and glad to be alive.
In the morning I was up early. First light was some time away and the world was cold and red and peaceful, the sun still below the horizon but inching up with every minute that passed. I raked the fire until I got wood coals in a small heap, then added twigs until I had a blaze going. My horse—Curly Fitch’s horse—whinnied when I got out of the blankets and rolled them up, and he whinnied again when I untethered him from the bush and spoke to him and let him drink at the waterhole.
“Good horse,” I said. “First place we come to you can eat your fill of hay or oats.”
I was talking to horses again, but now I knew I was doing it. My head felt all right, the neck still stiff but less painful than it had been. I filled my hat with the brackish water from the hole, cold at that hour before the sun hit it, and spilled it over my head. I did it again, rubbing the cold water on the back of my neck, and shivering in the early morning cold.
I shot a sage hen and roasted it on a stick over the fire. It was an old bird and the meat was stringy, but it was better than nothing. I took the bandage off my head so the shallow wound could heal in the sun. By noon I had crossed the New Mexico line at a place called Luna, nothing more than a few shacks at a wide place in the road. An old Mexican told me that a girl who looked like Jessie had passed through late the night before, stopping just long enough to buy some canned goods at the town’s single store. Then she rode on.
“Such a young girl to be traveling alone in this country,” the old man marveled.
I didn’t tell him that Jessie was as dangerous as the country. I stocked up on food at the store and headed east again. Lincoln County was about in the middle of the Territory, and there was still a long ride ahead. Jessie was making better time than I was, but I figured to catch up now that I was getting my strength back, and this time there would be no palaver. But I would still give her the chance she hadn’t given me. It was possible that she might beat me to the draw. That didn’t matter: I’d still make it a fair fight.
All that day I rode across the sun blasted expanse of Catron County. After that there would be only one county between me and Lincoln. Late in the afternoon I spotted a wagon up ahead on the trail. A dead man lay sprawled in the dirt; a few feet away another man was dying. The dead man had been shot in the head; the dying man had been shot twice in the chest. Air whistled out of the holes in his chest and frothy blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth. He opened his eyes when he heard me coming close. I climbed down and gave him a drink of whiskey.
“She shot the both of us,” he whispered through bloody lips. “Me and Deke. All we figured was to have a little fun, and she shot us. Just a bitty gal and she shot the both of us.”
The dying man’s pants were unbuttoned and I knew the kind of fun he’d had in mind. I didn’t feel sorry for the son of a bitch because when you mess with strangers, even women, you often get more than you bargained for. I could well imagine how surprised these two bastards were when Jessie yanked out that Colt Lightning and started blasting.
“You got to help me,” the dying rapist mumbled. “Up ahead there’s a town. I still got a chance.”
Of course he didn’t, but even if it had been possible to help him I wouldn’t have taken the time. I wiped off the bottle and corked it and left him there to die. Jessie’s list of dead men was getting longer all the time, and I wondered how many more men would fall in front of her double-action before I caught up with her. It was time—and past time—to send her where she couldn’t do any more killing.
It was getting dark when I rode into the town of Spanish Wells. I turned my horse over to the livery man and went to the saloon to get a drink. The beer was warm but it was wet, and I was finishing the second bottle when the town marshal came in. He was a haggard looking man of fifty or so, and I could tell he didn’t like strangers in his town.
“You’re a long way from Dade County,” he said, when I told him how far I’d come. “She was through here all right. I’d say about three o’clock. Hard to believe she’s the killer you say she is, a nice looking girl like that. Still and all, you never know. Came in here bold as brass and drank at the bar like a man. Told me who she was and where she was going was none of my business. Then she bought a bottle and left town. You think she’s headed for Lincoln County?”
“That’s what she said. How are things over that way? Is Murphy still trying to grab everything in sight?”
“What Murphy does over there is his business, but you might say he hasn’t changed much. Tunstall’s younger brother carne out from England about a year ago and there’s a big fight building up. Murphy tried to buy him out, but he won’t sell. So it’s back to rustling and bushwhacking. Nothing as bad as it was when Billy the Kid was there. Bad enough. This new Englishman is a lot tougher than his brother. He’s still alive and knowing Murphy that’s something. You figure this crazy girl plans to mix into the trouble?”
“The trouble can only get worse if she’s there. A word of caution, Marshal. If she comes back this way don’t try to take her in. You’ll get killed if you do.”
After I left the saloon I ate a steak and fried potatoes in a three-stool restaurant and went to get my horse. I kept going until well after dark, then made camp by a greasewood tree, and was up again before first light. I felt all right now, all the sick feeling gone, and the wound in my head healing fast.
The sun was coming up when I saw the smoke from a campfire in a gully to the right of the trail. I left the trail and circled out wide and came in from the other side of the gully. Then I got down and started into the gully with th
e Colt in my hand. The fire was dying out and there was no sign of Jessie, and I wasn’t even sure she had been there until I found a page from the book she had been reading back at John Wingate’s house. The True Life of Jesse James, or whatever it was called, and I wondered how much of her own story was true. One thing was sure: she wasn’t all that far ahead of me.
I followed the tracks from the gully back to the trail and kept going. Late in the afternoon, stopping only to water the horse, I crossed into the next county, pushing it as hard as I could. Lincoln County was dead ahead and somehow I knew it would end there, one way or another. I wanted to get it over with. There was no hatred for Jessie in my mind. I had saved her life and now I was going to take it away. It was something that had to be done. And after it was done, and she was dead, I would go to some town where nobody knew me and get drunk for a week or as long as it took to get rid of the bad feeling that pressed down on me.
Close to the Lincoln County line I happened on a Navaho family, man and wife and three children, and the man said a woman in striped pants had passed that way. The man said she had eaten some of their deer meat stew and later gave them two silver dollars, a lot of money to the Navahos. That was more of her craziness—a charitable killer. But that’s how it is with killers. A few years back there had been a town marshal in El Paso named Dallas Stoudenmire who liked to beat Mexicans to death with a club when he was drunk, but was kind to animals.
“A nice white lady,” the tame Indian said to me, and I didn’t tell him otherwise. At times my darling Jessie could be a very nice lady, sort of anyway, and remembering our nights together gave me a twinge when I thought about it.
All the way from Arizona I had been traveling across flat country, but now the trail began to take an upward climb. The mountains of Lincoln County stuck up in the distance. Soon I would be in good, well-grassed country over which men had been fighting and dying for years. The town of Lincoln was the county seat, a Mexican looking town in spite of its name, and it probably had another name long before Abe Lincoln was born and did his reading by the light of the fire. There Major Murphy was king, or something like it, giving orders to his gunmen, while staying away from the bullets himself. Murphy knew his business—even his worst enemies said that for him. When he was a poor kid growing up in San Pedro it was said that he said he would quit the rough stuff after he had his first half million dollars on ice. He was well past that now, but it seemed as if he had changed his mind. Men like Murphy always do.
