‘Surely, Ma’am. If’n you can handle it?’ Giving her the Colt from his belt. Even thumbing back the hammer for her. ‘Take care. Trigger’s bled for speed. Not to a hair but kind of light. You understand how to use it?’
Martha Verity smiled at him. Leveled the Peacemaker at Crow. ‘Surely can, you fuckin’ bastard,’ she shouted, and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twelve
The bled trigger saved Crow’s life.
Martha snatched at it in her anxiety to kill him and the pistol fired a fraction of stolen time before she really expected it. If it hadn’t been for that, the bullet would have ripped through his chest at point-blank range.
Crow had lived as far as his thirtieth year by being ready for anything. His reflexes carrying him through the tightest of situations. But he hadn’t been ready for Martha Verity’s attempt to murder him. With a man he’d have been faster. Ready with the scatter-gun to blast him away before he could have fired the pistol. But not a woman.
Not a woman that he was trying to rescue from a fate that might have been worse than death. And could easily have been death.
As she spoke, leveling the gun at him, Crow was already beginning to move. His reflexes carrying him away from the threat. His reflexes would also have allowed him to save his life by wasting her with the sawn-down Purdey, but his conscious mind over-ruled that. Simply disbelieving what was happening.
The bullet that would have torn out his heart didn’t entirely miss him. It passed beneath the floating ribs on the left side of his body, cutting through the flesh just above the belt. Spinning him away, sending him toppling helplessly into the water. The shot-gun falling from his hands.
The forty-live carried on through without hitting anything major. No bones shattered. No muscles shredded. Which also meant that conical nose on the bullet didn’t get smashed. Distorted out of shape so that it ripped a massive exit hole in his back.
But it was bad enough.
Crow was floundering in the shallow river, his side numb from the bullet. The Purdey fifteen feet away, near the woman’s boots. His Colt still gripped in her fist. His Winchester still bucketed on the stallion’s back and his saber useless to him.
‘Bastard!’ she spat. Pulling back on the hammer of the pistol, the triple click clearly audible to Crow as he sprawled in the water, looking up at her. Aware that the stream was running crimson with his blood.
‘I’ve come to…’ he yelled, rolling desperately to his right, the words drowned by the bark of the gun, the second bullet kicking up a gout of mud and water that splashed over him. Less than a foot from his head.
‘I know what you want, you fuckin’ dog! And I’ll see for you…!’
Crow managed to draw the saber, bracing himself for a last try at her. Knowing before he began to power himself from the stream bed that he was doomed. Once she was used to the lightness of the trigger she wouldn’t miss him again.
‘Martha!!’
It was a new voice, and it made her stop. Checking in the action of aiming at him. Looking back over her shoulder at someone that Crow couldn’t yet see.
‘Leave him be, damn it!’ said the voice, without any noticeable anger.
‘I want to blow his God-damned head clean off his God-damned shoulders, Ike. Please.’
The man appeared, and Crow saw out of the corner of his eye that several of the other kidnappers had also come into sight, a little up the river. Near the camp. It was the one that he’d seen throwing stones in the pool. The one who might have been tall or might have been standing on a boulder. Now he saw him up close, Crow saw which it was.
Ike was tall.
Very tall. Over six and a half feet. And broad with it. Crow guessed he would weigh in at something over three hundred pounds and not a lot of it was fat. Dressed in a blue shirt, patched across the shoulders with a piece of more faded material. Breeches that looked a touch too tight for comfort. A pair of workman-like Colts tied to his thighs, set low on the hips in a cutaway rig. His hair was grizzled at the temples, thinning on the top.
Crow made him for someone who had once been a shootist and who’d tried to get out while he was still ahead. Slipping easily into kidnapping. But there was something about this kidnapping that was beginning to smell very peculiar indeed.
The woman was staring at him, still holding the pistol in both hands.
‘Please, Ike. Let Martha kill him. You let me do them bastards back at the spread.’
There was no longer any doubt. Crow’s strange feelings about the kidnapping now all fell into place. It had been a set-up right from the start. The woman had arranged it. That was how it had all been so easy for them. With the wife on their side, then the husband must have been cold meat for the gang. .
‘No. Let’s talk a whiles. Feller here might have him some news for us. Ain’t that right, Mister?’
‘Oh, shit!’ said Martha Verity, throwing the gun down in the dirt in a fit of temper. Spinning on her heel in a swirl of skirts, and stamping off, back towards the camp.
Watched in silence by Crow and the other men. Ike gave a short laugh.
‘Fiery bitch, ain’t she, Mister?’
‘I guess you could say that,’ replied Crow, sheathing the saber. It wouldn’t be much use against a half dozen men with guns. Even though none of the kidnappers had yet bothered to draw iron on him.
‘She’ll go back and pick up that little quirt of her’n and beat the Jesus Christ out of her husband,’ laughed the big man. Joined by the rest. Crow didn’t laugh. There didn’t seem much about life at that particular moment that was very funny.
‘If’n you don’t mind…my feet are getting damned wet here. And I’m bleeding bad.’
His voice was as soft and considered as ever. Not begging. Not demanding. He didn’t wait for Ike to say anything back. Just stepping from the river and climbing up the bank. Looking down ruefully at his black breeches and coat. Now splashed with red mud. Soaked through with blood down the left side. There was blood on his hands. On his face. Running like tears across his cheeks. The bullet wound in his side was beginning to hurt.
‘For a man in your position, you’re showing a damned sight too much gall, Mister,’ said the big man. Face flushing with anger. Hands dropping over the butts of the pistols.
‘Don’t take much gall to draw on a man with no guns,’
replied Crow, quietly.
‘Do I know you?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
‘Abilene?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Tucson. Ten years back?'
‘Not ten years. Maybe eight.’ • ’
‘The Smith-Janson feud, up in Liston County?’
‘No. Wasn’t there.’
It was like two large carnivores circling each other.
Scenting each other.
‘Name?’
‘Crow.’
The big man’s face broke into a grin. ‘Hell! I surely heard about you, Crow. God damn that! My name’s Ike. Ike Holton.’
Crow nodded. Smiling back. Wondering whether he had a chance of cutting the big man’s throat and holding off the others with his pistol. Deciding it was way too slim.
‘I heard of you, Ike. They said you was bigger than that.’
For a moment Ike’s face darkened like a cloud crossing the sun. Then he smiled again. Throwing back his head and laughing. He wore a bristling beard, touched with gray like his hair.
‘That beats all. Crow. I’m surely pleased I stopped that bitch fillin’ your belly with lead. Wouldn’t have been a good way to go. Huh?’
‘I never heard nor seen what you might call a good way to go.’
Ike beckoned the others in closer. ‘Hear that? I heard the way to go was in bed with a dozen fifteen year old Mex gals, drunker’n Hell. On your hundredth birthday.’
His men laughed and Crow joined them. Taking what came close to being a liking for the big man. Knowing the breed of him as well as he knew himself. An ageing gun-fighter. Hanging on there
. Waiting for the moment he knew would come one day. The day that someone younger and faster came along and called him and beat him. And killed him.
‘What happens now, Ike?’
The two men looked at each other. The pain was biting deeper from Crow’s wound and he wanted to get it bound up tight. Ike shook his head.
‘Guess we’re goin’ to have to do us some talkin’ about that. And it’ll kind of rest with the lady.’
‘That gives me a whole lot of hope, Ike,’ said Crow, grimacing at the wound. Pressing his hand to his side. Making out it was worse than it was. Men took less note of a man hit bad. It might be a chance.
‘Yeah. But it’s her idea, all of this. She just plain hired us, Crow.’
‘It won’t work, Ike.’
‘You figure?’
‘They’ll pay. I can do a deal on that. But if you hold out for that much money there isn’t a prairie dog’s hole big enough to hide in from Vermont to Mexico.’
Ike nodded. ‘Somethin’ in that. But that woman is so it filled with hate, Crow. You don’t have no other name but Crow, do you? No. Well, she seems like she’s doin’ this out of spite against the whole of that town. Dead Hawk.’
It made sense. From the way folks had talked about Martha Verity, it wasn’t that surprising that she’d finally found a way back at them. Arranging for the kidnapping of her own husband. The head of the family.
‘All this is for revenge?’
Ike sniffed. ‘Guess so. Times is hard, Crow,’ trying to justify himself. ‘These good old boys here haven’t had much pickin’ for a while. Along comes the little lady holdin’ a fist of aces. She stole some money from home to pay us up front here. And we get a half share of the ransom money.’
‘Half of nothin’ ain’t a lot, Ike,’ replied Crow. Looking around at the rest of the gang. Seeing that they were the usual crowd of drifters and second-rate shootists he’d have expected. Nobody there he’d seen before; Yet he’d seen them all before. Men like them. Hanging around the bars in a hundred dusty townships, ready to hire out their guns for the price of the next few drinks and a run across the border for a good time. A good time that lasted three or four days and then it was back again. They were like jackals compared to Ike Holton.
‘You reckon it won’t work? ’Then what the Hell are you doin’ here, Crow? Figure you don’t come cheap.’
‘Cheaper than your askin’ price. It won’t work, Ike. You been around. You see that.’
‘Maybe.’
They stood locked together in silence. Crow watched the face of the big man, seeing the doubt growing in his eyes. Wondering if it was going to work. Be that easy.
‘Bring that bastard up here and patch him up before the son of a bitch bleeds to death on us!’
Martha Verity was back. Standing, legs apart near the tents, looking along at them. There was a small riding crop li dangling from a strap on her wrist and Crow noticed that she seemed out of breath. He saw the doubts disappear from Ike Holton’s eyes, like ripples vanishing from a pool after a pebble’s been thrown in it;
The ripples might disappear, but the pebble would still lie there.
That was his only hope.
It was all done in a decent, foot-shuffling, embarrassed way. Taking his cut-down saber. Fetching his stallion from where Crow had tethered it. There was no point in not telling them where it was. Chances were it might have died anyway. Or they’d have back-tracked him and found it.
This way it was more friendly.
Crow knew that many men found it harder to gun down someone with whom they had become friendly.
He never had that problem.
Partly- because he took precautions not to become friendly with anyone.
At Martha Verity’s instructions, Crow was brought to the camp, hands tied firmly behind his back. One of Ike’s men was delegated to do the tying, using a length of narrow rawhide. As he began it Crow braced his wrists against each other. An old Cheyenne trick, giving himself enough slack to the able to wriggle free later.
Ike stepped in closer and took the cord off his man. ‘I’ll do that, Jed,’ he said. ‘Guess you know I once fought against the Cheyenne, Crow. Had a squaw I figured to have hog-tied. Was havin’ a good time with her. Damned if she didn’t nearly strangle me with the damned cord she’d gotten free of.’
Crow didn’t speak. Didn’t have anything to say. Just allowed the big leader of the gang to tie him with a disinterested efficiency. Pulling the knots tight, so that the rawhide bit into the skin.
‘Sorry, Crow. You know how it is?’
‘Sure, Ike. I know how it is.’
Gradually the kidnappers’ camp returned to the way it had been. Ike led Crow towards the bushes, walking behind him. Not bothering to draw either of his pistols. They both knew there wasn’t any need.
They were two of a kind.
‘Word of advice, Crow.
‘Always listen to that.’
‘Martha Verity.’
They’d stopped close to the belt of green and brown undergrowth. Crow could see more clearly that the figure tied to one of the trees was indeed a naked man. Hanging by his arms. Appearing unconscious. He could also see streaks of blood across the man’s chest and back and around his loins, where he’d been savagely whipped.
He remembered that small quirt that Martha had been holding and he thought about debts that maybe should be paid.
‘What about her?’ he asked, his voice naturally low. ‘If’n she tells me to bust you, Crow, then you know I’ll do it.’ Ike had dropped his tone to a near-whisper.
‘I’d do the same. Job’s a job.’
There was a low moan from the bound figure of Mayor Abraham Verity and the branches of the tree shook, dry and dead.
‘Sure you would. Sure you would,’ repeated Holton, nodding his head in agreement.
‘Martha?’
‘Yeah. She ain’t nice and kindly, Crow. You remember that.’
So many people bad-mouthed Martha Verity, that Crow was finally coming to believe that they just could be right.
Chapter Thirteen
It was coming on towards twilight. The sun had slipped well down in the west, and the sky had reddened with the promise of another fine spring day to come. With the sun down, the canyon was becoming cooler and Crow was glad that Martha Verity had said nothing about his being stripped bare like her husband. Abe was still semi-conscious, hanging from his roped wrists, dried blood caking the knots. He had hardly moved when they tied Crow alongside of him, his eyes flicking open. Then closing again. He had moaned several times, shifting in his bonds. Taking the weight off his arms for a painful moment, then slumping helplessly again.
Martha Verity had gone straight to her tent, the nearest to the prisoners, and hadn’t stirred. Food had been taken to her but nothing had been given either to her husband or to Crow. Ike had walked past once and looked at the tall man in black. Shrugging his shoulders with a grin that came close to being apologetic.
Crow had been in worse places. Though his wrists were tightly bound, he had been allowed to sit down, back against the second of the dead trees. His ankles were left free, but Ike Holton had taken the basic precaution of knotting a cord firmly around .Crow’s neck on a running noose, squaring it off at the back of the trunk. If Crow tried to wriggle free he would simply choke himself to death.
He didn’t struggle. Content to sit and wait it out. Seeing which way the woman decided to play it. Certain sure that some time very soon she’d come out of her tent and talk to him.
She’d be too damned curious not to.
It was close to ten, by his reckoning, when she finally appeared.
Crow could tell immediately that Martha Verity had been drinking. And keeping close to the bottle at that. She had changed to a shorter dress. The kind that women wore for riding out of town. A dark leather skirt, barely reaching her calves, with riding boots beneath. A cotton blouse that looked in the moonlight to be too tight across the bosom for decency. Then
again, Crow already knew enough about Martha Verity to be sure that decency wasn’t a word that concerned her overmuch.
She paused in the opening to her tent, taking a deep breath of the cool night air. And when she began to walk towards the prisoners she took great care to place each foot safely in front of the other. So that nobody could possibly tell she was drunk.
The men were all sitting around their small fire. Skillfully made so that very little smoke rose into the night sky to betray their position. Crow hadn’t bothered to tell them that the Chiricahua had known where they were all along and that only the cholera had stopped them from being massacred.
But it was a good defensive position for them. If the Cavalry patrol had been able to locate such an excellent camping site the Apaches would never have dared risking an attack against them.
There was an occasional burst of laughter from the gang, out of sight of the two dead trees. Screened from the prisoners by the bushes. And constantly in the background was the trickling of the waterfall as it fell across the face of the rocks into the sheltered pool.
Martha Verity came and stood in front of her two captives, hands on hips. There was enough light from the high-sailing moon for Crow to see that she was smiling. But it wasn’t the sort of smile that brought him pleasure to watch.
‘Kind of nice night, ain’t it?’ she said, looking coquettishly up at the star scattered sky. .
Crow didn’t answer. Waiting to see what she wanted. Testing the knots around his wrists for the twentieth time, biting his lip at the sudden burst of pain from the tight bindings. Knowing what he’d known the previous nineteen times. That Ike was a pro who’d done his work well.
‘I’m speakin’ to you, Crow,’ Martha repeated. Though she wasn’t slurring her words, there was too much emphasis to them from liquor.
‘I hear you,’ he said.
‘My God! You’re an arrogant bastard, aren’t you, Crow? You know, my dear darling husband there used to be arrogant?’
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