The Revenger

by Peter Brandvold

  “I said,” Mercy repeated, keeping her voice low and gently pressing her bare toes into The Revenger’s belly. “It’s cold.”

  “You oughta put more clothes on.”

  She blinked down at him. “You gonna let me in?”

  “I don’t know. Am I gonna get a knife in my guts?”

  Mercy slid the buffalo jacket off her shoulders. She let it drop to the ground at her feet. “If you can find a knife on me, you’re welcome to take it.”

  Sartain let his eyes roam around on the delightful girl. She had long legs and a flat belly. Her hair hung down to frame her face.

  Sartain rolled back and opened his blankets. She folded down beside him. She lay on her back with her head on his saddle.

  The Cajun glanced across the soft, pink coals of the fire. Old Van der Deutsch continued to snore about once every five seconds, loudly. Sartain turned back to the girl, looked down at her like a feast before him.

  His blood was heating quickly. Lust tugged at him.

  “Well, now, to what do I owe the honor?”

  She held her hands together beneath her breasts, steepling her two index fingers together. “I don’t know. I guess...I sorta...think you got nice eyes. I liked your smile earlier when you were lookin’ at me.” She glanced at him, her eyes glinting in the moonlight. “You don’t find too many men in these parts with nice eyes...and a friendly smile.”

  With two fingers, Sartain slid a lock of dark-brown hair back from Mercy’s cheek, which was as smooth as polished oak except for the pale scar on the nub. “Well, I’ll be hanged. If you’re not suddenly all shy.”

  “I’m always shy. The gruff demeanor is so folks won’t know. Besides, a girl can’t be too careful. Men around here are quick to mistake a girl’s glance, you know.” She rolled toward him and stuck a finger through his shirt and through the V in his ballbriggans. She pressed it against his chest. It felt warm. “You gonna make love to me, Mike or you just gonna lay there, starin’ at me?”

  “I could stare at you all night, Mercy.”

  “I’d rather you made love to me.”

  Sartain glanced at the large, brown shape of old Van der Deutsch, whose belly and chest rose heavily as he snored. “You sure he won’t wake up?”

  “After all the whiskey I gave him?” Mercy rolled onto her side and pressed her love nest against the growing, hardening lump in the Cajun’s trousers. “He’ll be sound asleep till sunrise.”

  “In that case...”

  Van der Deutch kept snoring.

  Mercy’s teeth dug painfully into the Cajun’s shoulder, but it was a sweet pain that complemented the frenzied bliss of his climax.

  When they stopped shuddering together, Sartain rolled off the girl and onto his side, still breathing hard. Mercy gave a deep sigh then rubbed her hands across her belly.

  “I’ll be right back,” she whispered, snorting a laugh.

  She swept the blankets aside, gained her feet, shrugged into her coat, and pranced off into the woods toward the chuckling creek that glistened in the moonlight. She returned to the camp a few minutes later, shivering. She grabbed her bedroll and then lay down beside Sartain, covering them both with her blankets. They lay entangled together for a long time, whispering, nibbling each other’s ears, nose, and lips, occasionally pointing out falling stars.

  They made love again, this time more leisurely, with Mercy climbing on top. When they finished, she slumped down against his chest. He could feel her breasts expanding and contracting against his chest as her breathing slowed, and she fell asleep. He meant to rouse her and shoo her away to her side of the fire so her father wouldn’t find them together.

  But he must have fallen asleep himself. Because when he woke, gray light was pushing through the trees. The naked Mercy was curled against him, her right cheek resting against his left shoulder, one bare leg hooked over his own. A large tree stood in silhouette against the murky light, much closer than The Revenger remembered.

  But then he blinked his vision clear and saw that it wasn’t a tree standing so close.

  It was Ludwig Van der Deutch, aiming Sartain’s own Henry rifle at him, eyes blazing. The rifle’s barrel was ten inches from Sartain’s head.

  “Crap!” The Revenger said, jerking his head up with a start.

  Mercy gasped and lifted her head. She gasped again when she saw the rifle.

  “Pa!” she cried, holding a blanket taut against her bare breasts.

  Van der Deutsch kept his cheek pressed against the neck of The Revenger’s rifle, glaring down the barrel at the owner of the gun. “Why, you blue-eyed, double-dealin’, Cajun son of a bitch! Conivin’ your way into my camp with your syrupy Cajun tongue, lurin’ my daughter into your blankets and relievin’ her of her under frillies, not to mention her honor!”

  The big German loudly cocked the Henry.

  “Pa, don’t shoot!” Mercy cried, staring in horror at the red-faced old man hovering over them.

  Sartain didn’t know what to say. So, he said nothing. What could he say in such a situation? He supposed the man was right. He had a bullet coming, all right.

  The Revenger lay back against his saddle, ready for it. He never thought he’d go out this way, shot by an indignant father. He’d always hoped he’d go out dealing some cold-blooded killer his just deserts. But here it was, death in the form of his own rifle staring him in the face from a foot away.

  The barrel of his gun was the universe opening wide to accept him.

  Then Van der Deutsch depressed the Henry’s hammer. Slowly, he lowered the weapon, his broad, fleshy face shaping a slow smile, eyes glinting in the wan light.

  “What, you two didn’t think I heard ya? I’ll be damned if you weren’t goin’ at it like a coupla horny wolves!” The big, burly man lifted his knee and slapped his thigh. “Hell, when you’d pipe down, I’d drift back to sleep only to wake up a few minutes later to more gruntin’ and groanin’. You two sure made them blankets fly!”

  “Pa!” Mercy cajoled the old man.

  “Ah, hell, I ain’t mad!” said Van der Deutsch, leaning the Cajun’s rifle against a tree while laughing raucously. “I was so damn relieved to hear this girl gettin’ her ashes hauled that I sent up a prayer to her Maker himself. ‘Bout blazin’ time, if you ask me. Why, she’s been so nasty of late that me an’ her ma been contemplatin’ makin’ her live in the barn!”

  “Oh, Pa!” Mercy cried again, this time in embarrassment.

  She leaped to her feet, clutching a blanket over her nakedness, and ran off into the woods, sobbing.

  The old man slapped his thigh again, roaring.

  * * *

  It turned out that Mercy wasn’t one to hold a grudge. She stayed in the woods for only about fifteen minutes or so. When she returned to the camp, she didn’t even look like she’d been crying though her cheeks were still faintly flushed with chagrin.

  She dropped her buffalo coat as though to assault her old man with her nakedness, called him an old fool, snickered at Sartain, and stooped to gather her clothes.

  Old Van der Deutsch merely stared at the beautiful, naked girl in awe and then chuckled and continued putting a pot of coffee on to boil while Sartain gathered wood with which to build up the fire. He couldn’t help taking a couple of ganders at the beautiful girl, as well. He’d seen her naked only by moonlight. It the buttery light of dawn, she caused his heart to twist counter-clockwise one-quarter notch and make him wish it were night again.

  The Revenger stayed in the Van der Deutch camp throughout the day, helping Mercy gather, cut, split, and stack wood in the box of hers and her father’s heavy-axled ore wagon. He had to admit that while he felt obligated to help with the wood because the old man was laid up with his bum ankle, he also looked forward to spending another night in the bewitching girl’s company.

  Having recently completed another revenge mission in Minnesota, he’d been alone for the past three weeks, riding around the plains, generally gravitating south in hopes of outrunning th
e winter snows. That’s what had probably prompted him to ride into the Van der Deutsch’s camp, when, a loner by nature, he usually preferred to camp alone.

  That and the fact he’d seen the pair had been facing the long night without supper.

  The old man remained near the fire, his ankle propped on a stump. He tended the pain in his swollen limb with another bottle of whiskey. He must have squirreled several into his possibles sack. Mercy didn’t seem to mind. All day as she and Sartain worked together, she cast the Cajun frequent, lusty gazes, humming softly as she gathered the logs he split, and stacked them into the wagon.

  That night they ate more of the roasted venison. The old man was in his cups early, but then, Sartain and the girl had thought he’d been dead out the night before. When they’d cleaned the supper dishes down by the creek, they stayed down there and made love on a blanket, a good fifty yards from the old man’s prying ears.

  When they returned to camp together, Van der Deutsch was snoring raucously, an empty bottle beside him. Sartain kissed the girl tenderly, caressed her cheek with his thumb, and then rolled up in his blankets while she rolled up in hers. It took Sartain awhile to drift off to sleep, for down by the creek, when they’d finished making love, he’d told her that he’d be heading out at first light.

  He’d told her goodbye.

  That had been hard for him. His brief time with Mercy Van der Deutsch had reminded him of his time with his beloved Jewel. In fact, Mercy reminded him of Jewel. Tough yet gentle under the covers, with eyes that glittered with an open, unabashed joy and zest for life.

  Sartain managed to saddle Boss and slip out of camp before either of the Van der Deutsches stirred from the blanket rolls. He rode away with a heavy heart but with memories of his two nights with Mercy causing a fond smile to pluck at his mouth corners.

  He’d remember Miss Mercy.

  Half a mile or so from camp, he reined up suddenly and looked around, frowning.

  A rumble rose.

  It rose steadily until he could feel the ground shaking. His horse could, too. Boss sidestepped and loosed an anxious whinny.

  Sartain stared incredulously at the ground, which felt and sounded as though it were about to come apart at the seams.

  Chapter 6

  “Whoa, Pa,” Mercy said, holding up her left hand while pulling back on her horse’s bridle reins with her right. “Hold up.”

  When Ludwig Van der Deutsch had checked down the two horses in the traces of the loaded wood wagon, he said, “What is it, girl?”

  “Listen.”

  Now that the rattling wagon was stopped, Mercy could hear it clearly.

  A low rumbling.

  She looked back along the trail that she and her father were taking back to their small ranchstead. The rumbling continued to grow as, from a hundred and fifty or so yards back along the trail, horseback riders were galloping toward Mercy and her father. They were a broad, dark mass over and behind which a tan dust cloud hovered.

  “Holy Jesus,” old Van der Deutsch muttered, scraping a gloved hand along his jaw. “What have we here?”

  Mercy slid her Winchester carbine from its scabbard. “Trouble is what it looks like to me.”

  “Now, hold on, girl. Don’t be so hasty with that thing!”

  “That’s a lot of riders, and they’re heading right for us. I’m not just gonna sit here and whistle Dixie.”

  “Whistle another tune, then, but put that Winchester away!” Van der Deutsch shook his reins over the backs of the two horses in the wagon’s harness and pulled the team and the wagon off to the trail’s left side.

  Mercy sat her sorrel, staring back in the direction of the riders. The mass of men and horses grew larger and larger until she could make out individual men and animals. There had to be close to fifty men in that pack, strung out for several feet along both sides of the trail. No telling how deep the pack was, but Mercy thought her estimation of fifty or so was close.

  “Mercy, would you mind your pa!” Van der Deutch beckoned angrily. “Holster that iron and get the hell off the trail unless you want them riders to run you down!”

  Mercy reined the sorrel off the trail, flanking the wagon. She did not holster the Winchester, however, but held the rifle across the bow of her saddle. Van der Deutsch didn’t seem to notice. He was craned around on the wagon’s seat, staring back along the trail at the riders bounding toward him and his daughter.

  The rumbling grew louder and louder.

  Mercy could feel the reverberation in the ground beneath the sorrel’s hooves.

  The group of men and horses was within fifty yards now. One man rode out in front of the others. He was a tall, fair-skinned man with a ginger beard. He wore a brown square-crowned Stetson and knee-high riding boots. Two cartridge bandoliers crisscrossed his chest, under a long, black leather duster that billowed out behind him in the wind. A bowie knife jutted from the well of each boot.

  He wore a white shirt, a businessmen’s red foulard tie, and pinstriped trousers stuffed into the boots.

  He raised his black-gloved right hand and drew back on his horse’s reins with his left. As he slowed his big chestnut stallion with four white stockings, the men behind him slowed their horses as well. The mounts were blowing hard, and sweat lather foamed on their necks. Tack leather squawked, and bridle reins jangled.

  The lead rider slowed his horse to a canter. Within fifteen feet of Mercy and her father, he stopped the tired horse stomping and blowing in place, chomping at the bit drawn back taut against its mouth. The other men stopped their horses as well, the flanking riders standing in their stirrups and leaning out slightly from their saddles to see what they’d stopped for.

  Mercy’s gut was twisted in a tight knot. She’d first thought that maybe the gang was a herd of ranch hands heading hell for leather to Brimley, the next town up the trail another twelve miles. But these men did not look like cowpunchers. They were too well armed, their eyes too grim and purposeful.

  To a man, they had a hard, savage look about them. And their horses were worth too much money for your average drover; they all looked sleek and clean-lined. They’d been chosen for speed and endurance. They were the horses of men who often found themselves on the run.

  The lead rider sized up the old man and the girl. His eyes returned to Mercy with the faint glow of male interest. They flicked down and up again, and he leaned forward against his saddle horn.

  “Señorita, why do you aim that Winchester at me?” Oddly, despite his frosty blue eyes set beneath ginger brows, he spoke with a thick Spanish accent.

  “Mercy!” her father scolded. “What did I tell you?”

  Mercy looked down at the rifle. She hadn’t realized that she was aiming the rifle at the man, from over her sorrel’s right wither. Sensing the innate threat in the gang in general and the lead rider in particular, she must have unconsciously slid the barrel toward him.

  Despite the fear causing her heart to beat a steady, quick rhythm against her breastbone, she flared her nose defiantly. “What do you want?”

  The man said in a low, hard voice, “I simply want you to turn that rifle away from me, señorita.”

  “Mercy!” old Van der Deutsch cajoled.

  The girl lifted the gun back up onto the saddle horn.

  She said again, “What do you want?”

  “What she means, is how can we help you fellas?” asked her father, smiling unctuously at the hard-eyed men grouped before him.

  “Help us?” The lead rider shook his head slowly. “We don’t need no help.”

  Van der Deutsch’s smile grew tense. “Oh...well...I just figured that...since you stopped and all...”

  Staring with his cold, lusty blue eyes at Mercy, the lead rider said, “Is this lovely creature your daughter, señor?”

  “Yes...yes, she is...”

  “Her name?”

  “Mercy,” replied Van der Deutsch, as though Mercy couldn’t answer for herself. He smiled again and made as if to turn forward a
gain on the wagon seat. “And if you’ll excuse us, we’re already late getting back to the ranch with this firewood. My wife’ll be wonderin’ where we...”

  The old man’s voice trailed off as the lead rider gigged his horse up to Mercy. He stopped beside the girl, his stirrup not two feet away from hers, and scrutinized her with brash male interest. Again, he kept his eyes on Mercy while addressing the old man.

  “How much?”

  Van der Deutsch frowned. “Say again...”

  “How much do you want for this beautiful creature? I will pay you in cash for her.”

  The old man stared in shock at the man. And then he chuffed as though the gang leader hadn’t been serious. “That’s a good one, now, if you’ll gents excuse us...”

  “I asked you a very serious question, señor,” said the blue-eyed Mexican leader. “How much for your daughter? A hundred dollars? Two hundred?” He stretched his lips back from his teeth. A front one was gone. “I will give you three hundred dollars for this beautiful creature.”

  “You can go diddle yourself!” Mercy retorted, bunching her lips and flaring her nostrils.

  The leader flung his right hand behind his left shoulder and smashed the back of it across Mercy’s face. The girl screamed as the blow sent her flying out of her saddle.

  “Bah!” old Van der Deutsch decried, rage and exasperation burning in his eyes. “You son of a bitch!”

  The outlaw leader quickly slid his long-barreled, silver-chased revolver from its holster, and shot Van der Deutsch through the heart, blowing the old man off his wagon and onto the trail below. The two horses in the traces whinnied and pitched and then lunged into their collars, galloping up the trail, the wagon bouncing along behind.

  Both left wheels smashed the old man’s body and sent him rolling into the brush off the side of the trail.

  “Pa!” Mercy screamed, climbing to her knees and flinging her hair out of her eyes. “Oh, Paaaa!”

  The outlaw leader turned to the man riding to his left and canted his head toward the girl scrambling over to her fallen father. Then the leader ground his spurs into his horse’s flanks and galloped ahead. As the man he’d signaled put his horse forward, toward the girl, the rest of the gang galloped around him, following their leader up the trail, dust once again roiling into the air.