For the Love of a Woman

by Orrin Russell

  The details of the CW ranch came into focus. Angelique had already arrived, and commotion had ensued. Cowhands and vaqueros ran across the open area fetching rifles from the bunkhouse. The four behind him lagged at under two hundred yards. Balum put the roan to a gallop, the men behind him the same, and they charged forward until a rifle shot cracked out over the plain and the riders behind him jerked their horses around and rode back out of range.

  22

  Balum sat at Charles’ kitchen table with the Dragoon’s cylinder spun open. Angelique sat across from him, the four other chairs occupied by Charles, Will, Tessa, and Juanita. Sara had been seated in a chair, a rope at her waist fastening her to it. Outside, men patrolled the perimeter like soldiers on guard duty. The ranch had morphed into a temporary fortress.

  Balum bent over the revolver and measured out a bit of powder which he sifted into each cylinder. He followed each pour with a wad, then a bullet, and compacted them all until they were tight, and swung the cylinder closed.

  ‘It’s a hell of a situation,’ said Charles, leaning back in his chair. ‘What would you say, Will? If you was sitting on a jury. All you know is Balum was on that train along with them bandits and robbed ‘em. One passenger dead, shot through the face.’

  ‘It looks bad,’ said Will. ‘Angelique could testify. She knows why you did it. You didn’t have a loaded gun, but who knows that but you?’

  ‘I’m through with the courts,’ said Balum. He slipped the Dragoon into the holster on his gunbelt.

  ‘What about her?’ Charles motioned to Sara.

  Balum kept his eyes on Charles and gave his shoulders a slight shrug.

  ‘You can stay here as long as you like, Balum,’ said Charles. ‘You and Angelique both.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But them boys ain’t gonna tire. There’s no sheriff in Cheyenne. Not since you run off Teddy Boiler. You take the law into your own hands and you’ll only dig yourself a deeper hole.’

  ‘I had the law in my own hands. I was the law. I had Nelson dead to rights, and no reason to let him live. But I did. All because some Eastern dandies got their knickers worked up about due process and salvation and I don’t know what else. And look where it got me. No. I’ll deal out the sentences this time around.’

  ‘Even if you battle it out with the four that are left,’ said Will, ‘even assuming you kill every last one of ‘em, this girl needs to be taken to trial. You can’t just hang her. Folks won’t stand for it.’

  ‘People don’t like the idea of hanging a woman,’ said Charles.

  Will took a look at Sara tied at the chair.

  There was a moment of silence, and Angelique spoke up. ‘You two know Balum. Just as well as I do. We all know what’s coming. There’ll be a trip to Denver and several dead men along the way. So let’s not waste time moaning about the injustices of the law, and get you prepared for that ride.’

  ‘Is that what you’re planning, Balum?’ asked Charles.

  ‘Angelique’s right. That girl deserves to hang by a rope, but it won’t be my hand that ties the noose. She needs to go through the system, as shoddy as that is. As for the others...I gave the courts their chance and they failed. Those men escaped justice once. It won’t happen again. If I ride down to Denver with Sara in tow, they’ll follow. They won’t want me reaching town with her across my saddle. It’d put screws into their whole story.’

  ‘Stay the night at least,’ said Will. ‘Don’t go riding off tired and hungry and without a plan.’

  ‘You’re right, Will. Let’s get that grub served.’

  They ate chiles rellenos and tamales filled with rajas. Everyone’s eyes teared and their noses ran from the picante searing their palates, but they continued eating anyway, Juanita’s cooking earning no second places. Sara sat watching from the far wall. Her stomach grumbled but she said nothing.

  They left her tied there all night. Ropes were secured over her feet, her hands pulled behind the chairback and bound at the wrists, and another coil of braided rope looped over her chest and tied in a double knot at the back.

  ‘You’ll never reach Denver,’ Sara hissed when the ropes had been checked. ‘My father and Uncle Frederick will shoot you down and leave your dead body to rot under the sun.’

  Balum looked at the soft lips forming the words. Lips he had kissed. He looked into her eyes, eyes of a woman he had fooled himself into thinking he loved. He had no response for her, and none did he give her.

  Night had come. The ranch hands were given instructions to remain awake on shifts. Ten men on, ten men off. They chose areas favorable to making a defensive stand and hunkered down for the night.

  Charles had built his ranch house large and spacious, empty bedrooms waiting in hopes of future children, visitors and guests. Will and Tessa took one after determining the danger to be too great to leave the ranch for their own house only a mile away.

  Balum and Angelique took another. They closed the door to the comfortably furnished room and immediately took each other in their arms, their lips meeting in the dark, hands running over each other’s bodies. Balum threw her to the bed and peeled off his shirt. Angelique shuffled her shoulders out of the straps of her dress and unveiled her voluptuous breasts in the light of the moon coming through the window. She pushed the dress down her hips in one motion, her panties quickly following, and lay on her back with her legs spread apart, her fingers gently playing with her pussy while Balum kicked off his trousers and let his gunbelt fall to the floor.

  He mounted her on the bed and she clutched him tightly to her body. Two lovers, their aching for each other unmet for too long. His chest pressed against her heavy breasts, and he clutched them in his hands and bent his head to suck the nipples. She moaned, reached for his swollen cock and pulled it forward between her legs to her soaking pussy. He thrust himself into her, her firm hips wide, eager for him. Their skin pressed together from their cheeks down to their ankles. They breathed in each other’s scent, gripped each other’s bodies in the frenzy of passion. Their lips met again, tongues running into each other’s mouths, tasting each other. Angelique’s moans grew louder. Neither cared that others might hear. Their sweat mingled together and their arms wrapped tightly about one another until they orgasmed in unisoned gasps and lay exhausted on their sides still holding on to one another.

  The moon arched over the heavens outside the window. Crickets sounded in the distance.

  ‘I missed you, Angelique,’ said Balum.

  ‘I missed you too. I’ll miss you even more if you let yourself get shot out there on the way to Denver.’

  ‘I won’t let that happen.’

  ‘Keep the girl close to you. They won’t risk shooting you if she’s in the way.’

  ‘I expect not.’

  ‘They’ll aim to kill you in the night. It’s their chance to get close. Plan for that. Don’t waste words in silly talk. Just put bullets into them and haul the corpses into Denver. To hell with Johnny Freed or anyone else’s opinion. It’s only ours that matters. You do that, and come back to me, Balum. We have a life to start together.’

  23

  A campfire burned a half mile out from the ranch. They’d built it in the mottled ground at the base of a knoll, in the leeward side where the wind wouldn’t touch it. By midnight it had whittled down to coals.

  The vaqueros watched the flame contract and whither from their selected positions buttressed up along the bunkhouse walls. It spit and cracked and shrank from its flamboyant yellow into orange, and finally a deep and fading red until it disappeared as if the very earth had opened up to swallow it from existence. When it was gone the vaqueros sat and smoked cigarillos and drank coffee throughout the night without incident. When morning broke they could see the men and their horses, watching and waiting from the foot of the knoll.

  Balum dressed himself and walked into the morning air. A cow hand pointed out where the men had spent the night. Three men only. Balum counted again. Three men, three horses. He sta
red hard at the figures in the grass. Shane Carly was gone.

  Balum’s mind worked over the change. Shane Carly was a weak man, not only in a physical sense, but in his constitution. He had jumped at the chance to ride with big hombres; men he considered top of the chain. But the going had gotten rough. Lead had begun to fly. Whether he’d run off or been discarded out of uselessness, Balum didn’t know. Whatever it was, the odds had shifted slightly. They still fell heavily in favor of Aston and Nelson, but it gave Balum a mental strength to see his enemies lose faith.

  In the ranch house Juanita had prepared chilaquiles and machaca. The six of them ate in near silence with Sara still tied to the chair where she had spent the night in discomfort. They untied her hands and offered her a glass of water and nothing more. The breakfast was over in the space of a few minutes. It was not a meal of conviviality, though the individuals present found pleasure in each other’s company. It was a meal of functionality. A meal filled with silent anxiety, each person’s mind on the future.

  Charles fidgeted with a mug of atole and finally spun it around and slapped his hand on the table. ‘I’m coming with. I can roundup a dozen boys, all loaded down with rifles. Nelson won’t touch us.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ Balum’s response was firm. ‘This has nothing to do with you. You either, Will. I appreciate the offer and I know it’s sincere, but this is a mess of my own making. It’s something I’ll clean up myself. There’ll be a trial. One for Sara, one for anyone else who lives through it, myself included. I need you alive and well to testify as to what’s gone on. That’s all I ask.’

  ‘If that's the way you want it, Balum.’

  ‘That’s the way.’

  They rose and sent a vaquero to fetch the roan and a spare from the stable. He returned shortly with the animals saddled, fed and watered, and refreshed from the day before.

  Sara was the first onto a horse. Her hands had been tied once more and her feet remained bound by the same ropes that had held her through the night. Balum bent and picked her up from the legs and dumped her over the saddle in the same manner as Frederick Nelson had ridden, and no differently than Balum had been thrown over his own horse. Will tossed the trailing rope from her wrists under the horse’s belly and Balum winched it around her ankles on the other side. Sara made no sound, no complaint.

  ‘Not a one of ‘em has got a rifle, Balum,’ said Charles after Balum had swung into the saddle. ‘That’s an advantage in your favor. So take the Winchester. They come closer than you feel comfortable and you let go a couple rounds. That’ll keep ‘em a few hundred yards back.’

  Balum took the rifle and a sack of cartridges. He laid it across the saddle in front of him.

  ‘Lend me a knife. A big one.’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Charles. He entered the house and returned a minute later with a bowie knife sporting a nine inch blade forged from Damascus steel in a leather-bound handle. He held it up to Balum. ‘Even Joe would approve of this one.’

  Balum took it and looked down at his friends. His eyes held Angelique’s the longest.

  With his hat, Charles swatted the roan’s backside and Balum rode out of the ranch yard with Sara belly-down over the spare horse beside him. He aimed due south and no sooner had he left the premises than the three riders on the hillside took to their mounts and fell in line behind him like a chain of unsmiling pilgrims marching to some drab and sober reckoning.

  They made no effort to catch him. Not for the first few miles after leaving the ranch. Balum twisted his head back often, measuring the distance with his eyes, wondering at their intentions. After an hour of riding, the pursuers drew comfort in their judgement that Balum had indeed ridden out alone and his friends had remained behind. They picked up the pace of their horses and began to close in.

  Balum turned in the saddle, saw their advancement, and drew his horse around to face them. He raised up the Winchester and set the butt of the stock into his shoulder. At the motion the men scattered like a stone thrown into a flock of birds. Balum sat watching them retreat out of rifle shot, but did not move the roan again for a fair stretch of time. Instead he watched the men sitting their horses out on the plain.

  From his saddlebag he drew out a patch of tobacco and pinched a wad with his fingers. He nestled the plug into his cheek and waited a minute, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his arms and legs. After a while he spat.

  ‘Balum,’ Sara’s voice came from the side of her horse. ‘Untie me. Or leave me tied but at least let me sit up.’

  ‘Blood all rushing to your face, is it?’

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘Believe me, I know.’

  Mucus had gathered at her nose. She coughed and hacked phlegm to the ground.

  ‘I was wondering,’ he spat and wiped his face with the back of his hand. ‘That ten thousand you stole. Now where might I find that money?’

  She breathed heavily but no answer came.

  ‘You let your mind work that over,’ he said and turned the roan back south.

  They rode at a steady pace, though not a taxing one. The three riders trailing them declined to advance. They rode upright in their saddles with Balum forever in their sight. He sought not to break away, for there was nowhere to hide. The plains stretched open and offered no hiding save for small stands of gnarled pines and cottonwood trees crowded in tight bunches. Occasional dips in the terrain and the rise and fall of gentle hills would afford no sanctuary. Concealment was illusory. Neither was there any need for it. Night would come, and in the cover of darkness a settling of grievances would be metered out in death.

  In the heat of the afternoon they stopped at a meandering stream measuring only a few feet wide running between two shapeless swaths of earth that held nothing but woody grass browned from thirst. Shrubby potentilla clutched to the muck at the stream’s edge. The horses dunked their muzzles into the water and lifted them dripping and wet when they’d drunk their fill.

  Balum drank his canteen empty and refilled it in the running water. He brought it to Sara and tilted her head to the side with his hand on her jaw and poured some into her mouth. It splashed over her face, some of it running up her nose, and she coughed and spat and cursed him.

  ‘You figure on telling me about that money?’ he asked.

  ‘Go to hell. They’ll kill you tonight. You realize that? You can’t make it to Denver before nightfall, and they’ll find you in the dark. You’re a deadman.’

  ‘So tell a dying man where his money all went.’

  ‘That’s what this is about? I tell you and you’ll set me free?’

  ‘No. I won’t do that. I’ll go light when I testify against you though. Maybe you’ll just get a few years in prison as opposed to the gallows.’

  ‘Women don’t get hung out here. Not in the West.’

  Balum recalled Deborah DeLace. The image of her body swinging from a rope alongside her father, the town of Bette’s Creek gathered in silent testimony. Sara reminded him of the woman more than he had first realized.

  ‘Only the worst of them,’ he said.

  ‘Not me. You’ll be dead by morning. You’ll never see that money again. It’s gone anyway. Wired out to Kansas City. And all of it legal. All it took was one good cock sucking.’

  ‘They say a fool and his money are soon parted,’ rambled Balum, his eyes staring off to the north where the three riders sat. ‘At least I had a good time losing it.’

  She gave no response other than a snort that sent a stream of snot to the ground.

  Balum mounted the roan again and took up the reins of Sara’s horse. They left the stream behind them and rode out under a cloudless sky with the foothills of the Rockies far to the west. The horses flushed out quail and pheasant from the grass, and an occasional rabbit would dart in zigzagged patterns before stopping to look back at the two travelers riding in silence.

  Evening approached. The sun turned the flat clouds along the horizon into an array of peach and violet, a glistening ring of
gold tracing the outline along each mass of solid vapor. In the east the broken edge of the moon had risen to begin its trek across the nighttime firmament. Shapes lost their sharpness. A grey-lavender hue overtook the land. Riding mercilessly behind them the three figures turned dark.

  Balum’s eyes had been searching. His mind had enjoyed the full length of a day to consider the coming night. In the darkening window of the evening he reined in the horses on the flat of a long plateau. A few miles to the southeast, a grove of trees larger than most of the frail and thin stands they had ridden past during daylight covered a thick swath of land. Oak and cedar and pine mixed together; enough to form a canopy that stretched over a hundred yards and nearly as wide.

  As they waited for nightfall he untied the bandana around his neck. He swung to the ground and fished Sara’s kerchief from her dress pocket, then wadded it up and shoved it in her mouth, suffering more than one bite to his fingers as he did so. He wrapped his bandana tight overtop and secured it with a knot behind her head. His fingers quickly worked the rope holding her wrists and ankles together, and when she was free she remained where she was, face-down over the saddle, too weak to move. He coiled the rope and looped it over his saddle horn then mounted up again and raised the Winchester in warning to the anxious men watching from the northern horizon.

  The bright oranges and yellows left the clouds. They turned purple, then grey, and the stars above them began to appear out of the night. The three figures in the distance moved, blurred, and when they vanished behind the veil of darkness Balum grabbed up the reins of both horses and charged across the plateau to the stand of black forest beyond.

  24

  In a gallop they crashed into the underbrush of the forest. Branches popped underfoot as they were crushed and snapped by the weight of the horses barreling forward. At his side Sara screamed silently into the gag tied over her mouth. Balum put an arm up to shield his face from the boughs whipping into him, and bent low across the roan’s neck as it skittered between trees with the second horse following blindly behind it.