She turned to shout at Joe, but her words caught in her throat when she saw Big Tom’s men whipping their horse’s flanks and shouting them forward. They weren’t more than a quarter-mile behind, which was nearly close enough — if any of them were a fair shot — to fire on Joe without fear of hitting her. Even as she looked, a man reined in his horse and dropped to the ground. He shucked his rifle from the boot scabbard and laid it out over the saddle and hunkered down behind it as the other riders rushed past him.
She ducked.
The whistle of a bullet seared overhead, but the boom that followed came from ahead, not behind. She raised her eyes and felt her heart skip a beat. A man was running toward them. He was tall and wide in the shoulder and he ran with a slight limp, and he was barreling directly down the center of the main drag, straight toward her, straight toward Joe.
The Colt .45 Joe had given her was strapped to her hip. She clawed for it. The horse beneath her scrambled forward, onto the main drag, buildings to her right and left.
Behind her the drumming of pounding hooves grew louder.
The stranger had drawn no weapon, his hands were raised, and when Valeria bore down on him with the revolver he veered left and shouted something.
Her finger cramped on the trigger. Confusion whipped at her. Was he really a stranger? She thought she’d seen his face before. How could Big Tom’s men be both ahead and behind?
Another shot barked from the second-story window. She looked again at the man running toward her and saw not vengeance in his face, but something unexpected: concern.
Balum. The name flashed over her like a hot iron. She lowered the Colt, swung the horse to the saloon from where the shots were blasting, and looked back in time to see him grab Joe’s frantic horse by the neck and bring it to a stop, lift Joe off its back like a sacrificial offering and carry him under the awning and through the saloon doors just as Big Tom’s men came pounding down the street.
29
Before he crossed the doorway, Balum looked behind him at Big Tom and his men hammering down the lane.
They charged like mounted demons — their beards soaked in horse blood and their shirtfronts smeared red with it. It painted the ends of their uncut hair and it dripped onto pant legs and onto the flanks of horses. The smell of it hovered over them and over the animals, and the smell was dank and pungent, and were it not for this the horses would have surely collapsed in exhaustion instead of careening forward like mindless crazed beasts under their masters’ commands.
Splayed out behind them near the two planks, a man stared face-up with his arms bent strangely beneath him. This man too was covered in blood; the blood of the horse on which he’d drunk, and his own, glistening bright in the sunlight. It drizzled out of a hole in his chest the size of a man’s fist and pooled beside him in a thick dark puddle that was already attracting carrion birds from faraway places.
Another body lay in the street not far from Elsworth’s Gold Shack. This one shot through the belly and still crawling. It was not until he was torn from his saddle that Big Tom and his men fully realized they were taking fire, and like a flock of sparrows spying a hawk, they scattered and were gone.
Balum took the stairs two at a time. Valeria right behind. Joe’s body weighed twenty pounds less than it should have. Balum kicked open a door and laid him out on the bed and into Josephine’s care, then turned without a word and crossed back through the door and into the hallway and down to the corner room where Kiki and Chloe sat each at a window and each with a rifle perched over the sills.
‘Where’s Valeria?’ said Chloe.
Balum hunched down below the window ledge. ‘With Joe.’
‘Are they alright?’
Balum didn’t answer. He edged forward and peered over the sill and down into the street where the gut-shot man crawled with one hand clutching out ahead of him at nothing and behind him a thin trail of his own insides marking his path. The man pulled himself forward 0n his elbows. His legs seemed not to work. He tried to call out but he was too weak.
‘Pass me that Winchester,’ said Balum.
‘Why?’ said Chloe.
‘To put that man out of his suffering.’
‘I’d rather let him.’
‘Let him what?’
‘Suffer.’
Balum looked at her like he’d not fully seen her before.
‘I agree,’ said Kiki. ‘That’s Houston O’Connor. He’s a miserable creep. All those men are — every last one. They’re evil. Besides, when they come out to help him I’ll cut another of them down.’
O’Connor raised his hand up again and again it dropped. The shadow of a buzzard flitted over the streak of intestines trailing out behind him. The bird circled and came back.
Balum looked at the two women. ‘I understand that feeling,’ he said. ‘I do. Fact is, Joe isn’t okay. He lost a lot of blood and he’s shot up, and yes, it’s those men down there that did the shooting. Whether he lives or dies, I plan on sending every last one of them to hell. But I’m not them and neither are you, and there ain’t no reason to make a man suffer beyond snuffing his life from the earth. Besides, like you said — those men are evil. Not a one of them is going to risk sticking his neck out to help that fellow. So pass me that Winchester. I’m ending it.’
The shot took Houston O’Connor through the crown of his head and left a scene in the middle of Main Street so hideous that they turned their eyes from it and for a minute could not even look upon one another.
When Valeria appeared in the doorway the two women leapt up and rushed to embrace her. They held each other like that — the three of them in tears and clutching each other in a circle — until Balum shouted at them to get to the ground. Just as they hit the hardwood, a bullet sliced through the window. It slammed into the ceiling boards and whipped splinters against the wall.
Balum fed the Winchester out the window and returned fire. Valeria crawled her way across the floor and hunkered down beside him.
He turned to her. Her face was sunburned and dry. Dark circles ringed her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.
She started to speak, but only her lips trembled, and when he wrapped an arm around her and hugged her she began to sob.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You’re alright now, you’re safe.’ He rubbed her shoulder and felt her shudder against him. He looked at Kiki and Chloe where they’d taken up positions at the windows. ‘Have you two got the street covered?’ he asked.
They did.
He laid the Winchester against the wall and helped Valeria to her feet and took her out of the room. Her toes dragged across the floor. He half carried her down the stairs and to the kitchen where he poured her a glass of water and set a bowl of stew before her.
‘It’s okay,’ he said again. ‘Drink this, you’ll feel better.’
She looked up at him. Her eyes were wet and glistening, and through a hiccup she whispered Joe’s name.
‘It’s going to take more than a few bullets to put him away. I know it looks bad right now, but he’s tougher than buffalo leather. He’ll pull through. Josephine is working on him right now. So let’s get you sorted. Drink up,’ he motioned to the water. ‘You’re safe now.’
When she’d drunk three cups of water and emptied the pewter bowl, he led her up the stairs to a room where she fell immediately unconscious upon the bed. He stood over her a moment. Joe’s love. The cause of all of this. Something heavy dipped in his chest and he felt a thickness clog in his throat. He smiled slightly and bowed his head, and softly closed the door behind him.
In the corner room again he snaked the Winchester out over the window sill and kept his eye glued on the end. Behind the windows nothing stirred. All calm in the street. Kiki and Chloe sat still and quiet.
After a while Kiki spoke. ‘Why were they all covered in blood?’
‘It wasn’t their own,’ said Balum. ‘You can bet whatever water Joe found out there he made damn-well sure there wasn’t any left for them. Tha
t blood all over them is horse blood.’
Kiki stared back, incredulous. ‘Horse blood?’
He nodded. ‘A man will do most anything to stay alive. They wouldn’t have thought twice about killing a horse.’ He looked back out the window. ‘I reckon Big Tom is scratching his head right now. He’ll want to figure out just what he’s up against, and I doubt he’ll do much while it’s daylight. So go on. One of you go get some rest. We’ll split the rest of the day into shifts.’
Chloe went first. Balum remained with Kiki another half an hour staring into the empty street and running his tongue along the spot in his jaw where he wished he had a plug of tobacco. Finally he got up and left.
The hallway was empty. Quiet. He paused at the door, took a breath. He took his hat off when he entered and immediately wished he hadn’t. A funeral gesture. He put it back on.
Josephine had cut away Joe’s shirt and washed his torso clean with a rag and a pan of water, then flipped him to his stomach and opened a medical case over a bedside table. In the case were a few bottles containing liquids, tweezers of varying sizes, needle and thread and hooks and scalpels, but what Josephine chose just as Balum entered were a pair of metal forceps that curved sharply at the end and made a metallic scraping sound when her fingers tightened the ends together.
She didn’t bother to look at Balum, only said, ‘Hold him.’
Balum at the bedside placed one hand over Joe’s head, the other at his waist. ‘Maybe he’d like a shot of whiskey first,’ he said. ‘There’s a bottle behind the bar.’
‘I’m sure he would. But I don’t operate on men who’ve been drinking — it thins the blood. At the rate he’s been losing it, he doesn't have much left.’
She bent over Joe’s back and placed her fingers alongside the wound and gently spread it open, then sunk the forceps in. No hesitation, no doubt. Joe’s body jerked beneath Balum’s hands. A strange exhale tumbled from his throat. He twitched, the muscles all around his shoulder shimmying as the forceps caught the bullet and then slipped off, caught it again, and pulled it out with a wet sucking sound like boots being drawn out of mud.
She dropped the bullet and the forceps on the bedside table and immediately bathed the wound again. This done, she took up suture and thread. Her motions fluid. She pierced Joe’s skin and drew the thread through, turned the needle, repeated the motion. Her rhythm appeared no different than a seamstress at work over a ream of fabric.
When she’d sewn the abrasion in the shoulder she instructed Balum to help roll Joe over. On his back again, she set to working over his ribs with the suturing needle and thread. All the while Joe shook and twitched and clenched his jaw, wide awake now, Balum’s hands pinning him hard to the bed. Blood everywhere, no matter how many swabs Josephine gave him with the rag.
By the time it was over, Balum’s arms were exhausted and the fight had gone out of Joe. Or maybe the pain was too much. Either way, his eyes closed and his breath calmed and, after Josephine gave each lesion one more inspections, they left him there stretched out on the bloody sheets, his forehead glistening with sweat and his long hair black and matted around his face.
30
Balum relieved Kiki from watch. He couldn’t sleep. His hands were smeared in Joe’s blood, his vision cluttered with images of Josephine’s forceps, the suturing needles, the red-stained rag. He snatched the Winchester up with his bloody hands and settled into position beside the window ledge, then dug out a wad of tobacco and stuffed it in his cheek. Not a thought as to the state of his fingers.
The tobacco juice flowed. His eyes quit their roving, but not his mind. Time to time he would stand and stretch his legs and make the rounds of the upstairs windows. He checked all four sides of the Independent: the alleyways on either side, the lane in back, Main Street out front. All quiet. The moon had grown over the past few days, but its light on the desolate town seemed to create shadows where before there was only darkness. Darkness under which Big Tom’s men roamed the shops and outbuildings, scouring the town, getting an idea of what they had to work with. If they came up against the saloon walls Balum would see them, but they stayed away. He nearly wished they would attack, if only to ease his mind from other worries.
They didn’t, and five hours later Chloe relieved him. He passed over the Winchester and left the girl alone at the window.
First thing he did was check on Joe. He didn’t hope for a miracle, only that his friend was still alive. He stepped softly so as not to creak the floorboards. Perhaps not to disturb his own worried mind.
No movement came from the bed, no rise and fall of his chest, no motion behind his eyelids.
Balum’s throat clenched. He leaned closer. He held a palm over Joe’s mouth and when the faintest stream of breath hit it, his throat eased up.
He left as softly as he’d entered. In the kitchen downstairs he washed his hands and face and ate a bowl of cold stew. He rubbed his temples. He climbed back up the staircase, head heavy with sleep, and when he reached his room he stripped naked and dropped onto the mattress and lied their staring at the ceiling and listening to the emptiness of the desert outside.
The damn yoke around his neck. He needed to sleep, he told himself. Tired as he was, he felt as though he’d drunk a pot of coffee. Angry, nearly. Only one thing he could think to do about it.
He shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose. No , he said aloud to the empty room. Lay quiet and sleep.
Ten minutes later he rose and walked naked out of his room and into the hallway and through Josephine’s unlocked door. She slept naked on her bed. The moon cut slants of light through the windowpanes that lay like streaks of white lightning over her thighs.
When the weight of his body sank onto her, her eyes flashed open. She moaned his name and wrapped her arms around him, and when he plowed the length of his shaft inside her, her eyes flew back and her legs fell apart to receive him.
Morning brought more silence. Empty streets. Kiki watchful at the window.
It also brought life to Joe. Maybe it was the morning sun through the window, perhaps the nurse’s attention, but either way, when Balum entered the room with soft steps over the floorboards, he found Joe sitting upright sipping a bowl of broth that Valeria held tipped to his lips. He swallowed the last few drops and Valeria set it back on the bedside table and excused herself and left the two men alone.
‘You old dog,’ said Balum. He walked past the bed to where a slat chair was shoved against a wall and brought it back to the bedside and turned it around and sat with his arms crossed over the chairback.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ said Joe. He managed a smile. Then his eyes went to Balum’s hip. ‘You limping?’
‘Yeah. My own fault though. Let myself be duped by one of Big Tom’s clowns.’
‘Pat Swinton?’
Balum raised an eyebrow. ‘How’d you know?’
Joe told the story.
‘That’s a helluva thing,’ said Balum, ‘you sneaking into their camp like that.’
‘We needed the horse.’
‘What you needed was to wait for me. I only missed you by a few days.’
‘I couldn’t. Big Tom knew I was around. It was either grab her and go, or lose the chance.’
‘I figured as much,’ said Balum. He laced his fingers together. ‘But the Scarlands? On one horse?’
Joe gave half a shrug.
‘Ah hell,’ said Balum. ‘I’m nobody to point a finger. It’s funny what a man will do — for the love of a woman.’
‘Like sign her on to your bank account?’
Balum grinned. He dropped his chin and felt a laugh shake through his shoulders.
‘Goddamnit, Balum. I’m glad to see you.’
‘Me too, buddy.’
They remained silent for the space of a minute while the sunlight streamed in and crept ever so slowly across the room.
‘So what’s our plan?’ said Joe.
‘Plan is to sit tight and wait. First thing we did when we go
t here was go through town…’
‘We?’ Joe cut in.
‘Me and the girls.’
‘You mean you brought more than the nurse?’
‘Ah…’ Balum smiled again. ‘There’s a couple more.’ He laid out exactly how he’d come to be traveling with a nurse and two showgirls.
‘You can’t go far without a flock of women tagging along, huh?’
‘They’re fine shots, both of them.’
‘Is that right?’
‘I’ll admit, they’ve helped temper the stress.’
Joe’s eyes narrowed. One side of his lip curled in smile.
‘But as I was saying,’ continued Balum. ‘We went through town. Filled three tubs with water, then we cut the well rope. We got our hands on every bit of food, brought that in along with the horses.’
‘Weapons?’
‘Two Hawken rifles. Some ammo. I found a box of dynamite but the wicks were frayed out. It’s too bad. Would have been an easy thing taking care of those boys if that stuff was any good,’ Balum shook his head.
‘So we just wait them out is what you’re saying.’
‘That’s right. They’ve got no water. No food unless they shoot their horses, which, come to think about it, they probably will. But these saloon walls are thick — they can’t fire through them, and from the windows we can cover the town with rifles.’
‘What about at night?’
‘Hard to see out there, but there’s not much they can do at night either.’
Joe mused. He looked down and nodded his head slowly.
‘What are you thinking?’
Joe looked up. ‘Thinking about getting burned out.’
‘I considered that,’ said Balum. ‘They can get close enough to chuck a torch against the wall, but they’ve got nothing for it to catch with. There’s no kerosene, no tar, no oil lamps sitting around — nothing to make it take. All they can do is light a stick and toss it up against the walls and cross their fingers. It wouldn’t be hard for us to pour a bucket of water out a window, and that’s if whatever they throw even stays lit.’
Balum's Harem Page 15
