Mississippi

by J. B. Richard

  “If I had wanted to kill ya, Tom…” He let that sink in, making sure Tom got the point.

  Mississippi gave a hard look out the window. Rascal’s fall had been caught by an angled roof covering a large storage area between the two buildings. It also would have blocked Floyd’s aim while Rascal was under the roof’s cover until he sprang out for the last few steps around the next building.

  “I will kill him.”

  Rascal was probably miles away. He knew how to hide a trail as well as any other wanted man. Floyd might be having a rough go of tailing him.

  Mississippi glanced at Tom, whose color had returned to his face. “I would like to lend a hand.”

  “Curry won’t be agreeable with that. He hates you.” Tom got to his feet.

  “Don’t you mean he hates every wanted man?”

  “Nope. I mean to tell ya he hates you.” Tom looked uncomfortable and scratched the back of his neck. “Maybe shouldn’t be telling ya this.”

  “You brought it up. Finish it.” Every minute they stood there while Tom made up his mind, Rascal was getting farther away.

  “All right. You killed his best friend, Frank Mitchel. They were closer than brothers. Why do you think Curry’s so hell-bent on locking up that girl, making sure she sits before a judge?” Tom threw out a careless wave of his arm, indicating Jessa.

  So that was the reason for Curry pursuing Jessa. It had nothing to do with proving innocence or guilt. Any and all forms of pain were to be inflicted upon Mississippi, and to Curry, that meant Jessa was fair game. Mississippi pictured himself stringing up that crooked lawman.

  “Frank…” Tom went on. “He was one of the posse that day of the robbery. Sam Curry stood as Frank’s best man just a few weeks ago. We were all there, practically the whole town. We were all good friends.” Tom glanced regretfully at Martha. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Both Jessa and the older widow put their arms around her, holding her as she began to sob.

  Anytime the gang had robbed a place, directly afterward, of course, they hightailed it out of that area. Mississippi had never before had to face the aftermath. “How do you know it was me?”

  It could have been Clint, Rascal, or Porter, maybe Jay, or even Butch. Perhaps it had been the dead Chuck Connelly. Bullets had been flying every which way. Who was to say who shot whom?

  “Because my brother, the one you sent home to his wife and babies, told us. See, Curry’s best friend was one of the other two men that you shot and killed.”

  Mississippi apologetically stared at the grieving woman wrapped in the arms of the two trying desperately to console her as her body was racked with grief. He was not entirely alone in the cause, but he had done that. Always, somewhere in his mind, he had understood the consequences, the reality left behind after killing a man.

  “Mrs. Mitchel.” He didn’t know what to say to Martha. Sorry just wasn’t a strong enough word for this. She looked over at him with the saddest eyes. “Please forgive me.”

  It was a hell of thing to ask. She had every right to hate his guts. The sincerity was in his soft voice, but she buried her face in her hands and wept. The older widow hinted at a grin, a sign that he had done right by Martha. Maybe someday, after time had healed her, she would forgive him. In the meantime, there was something he could do for her, if Tom would allow it.

  “Tom, Curry ain’t here, but I am.” Mississippi then looked at Stan. “You take Jessa to the jailhouse. That place is made of brick, a good stronghold. Keep her inside and lock the door. Don’t open it for anyone, least not ‘til Pike gets back.”

  Stan nodded.

  Jessa turned on her heel. “I ain’t sitting in no jailhouse all day and night. I’ll stay here with these ladies.”

  “Then you’re putting them in danger,” Mississippi snapped. This wasn’t the time for her to be stubborn. Rascal had snuck right in there under their noses and almost gotten away with her. That was too near of a miss for Mississippi’s comfort. She should be afraid. Rascal might not be the smartest, but nonetheless, he was dangerous.

  “I’ll go with ya. After we get Martha settled down,” the older widow said.

  “What’s your name?” Mississippi was curious about this one. Her faking that faint had probably saved them all. She’d pulled that off pretty smooth, which made him wonder about her life before becoming a widow.

  “Flora Dillard.”

  There was probably a good story behind that woman. What she’d done was right savvy. He could see that taking care of the girls brought out a happiness in her, maybe a sense of purpose. Oftentimes, a woman’s identity was that of her man, of her family. Both of those women had lost that. Jessa would be next. And to use that trick, so unrehearsed, Flora Dillard’s late husband must have been quite a card.

  Stan looked at Mississippi for the okay. He nodded. Flora was obviously canny and a woman of strong character. Likely, she had a few more tricks up her sleeve, which led Mississippi to believe she’d been in situations like this before. She’d keep the girls safe with Stan standing by with a gun. If Mississippi had to bet, he’d lay down every cent of that one hundred thousand dollars that Flora could handle a rifle as good as any man.

  “We ridin’ together, Tom?”

  CHAPTER 13

  They ran out the door together toward their horses. It was not hard to pick up Floyd’s fresh trail out of town, his hoofprints smattering those of Rascal’s horse. Twenty minutes later, they entered an easy-flowing steam. That was a well-known trick to try to hide one’s trail. Water didn’t leave behind horse tracks to follow. The hoof marks of Floyd’s horse were on the muddy bank too.

  Mississippi and Tom rode one along each edge of the creek bed to find where the men ahead of them had come out. Once in the water, it was hard to tell which direction Rascal had gone. Mississippi had a hunch that he would flee toward the mountains. All that space, easy place to maybe lose what was biting at your tail if you didn’t run into the Apache.

  Rascal was like Clint in one way. Neither could be counted on to do what made the most sense. What if Rascal had gone downstream instead? No one would be expecting that. He could circle back to town. Stan had best be on guard. Clint was somewhere too. Had Pike caught up with him? For all Mississippi knew, they might have shot the hell out of one another and were both dead. Clint never gave up a fight. He wouldn’t be taken alive.

  “Over here.” Tom gave a wave.

  Mississippi crossed over the stream and came out on the other bank. On the ground were five sets of prints, two shod and three Indian ponies. They must have stopped there to water their horses, seen Rascal’s and Floyd’s trails, and figured to get themselves a couple scalps.

  An hour later and deep into the mountain range, Mississippi’s gut was awful uneasy. Rascal seemed to have disappeared. Not one hoofprint had turned up in the past half hour. Floyd was clearly still moving west, and sign of those Apache following him was strongly present. Where had Rascal gone? Mississippi and Tom couldn’t just leave Floyd and backtrack to hunt for him. The Apache were bound to catch up with Floyd sooner rather than later. This was their territory. They were born in these hills, so they’d know every rock, tree, and rabbit trail. They could sneak up on a man right quiet too.

  Ahead of them was the spot where the two trappers had been tortured to death. The dirt mounded over them seemed bright against the forest of green that surrounded the graves, a stark reminder of what could happen at any minute. Mississippi jerked up on the reins. Blood drops, a trail of red heading toward the Devil’s Cauldron. It was unlikely it was a wounded animal. They weren’t following a hunting party. That was a war party ahead of them, and it seemed they had hit Floyd. Tom reined in next to Mississippi’s gelding just as a shot rang out, echoing through the hills, which made it hard to judge the distance. At least a mile, maybe more. One Apache brave could fight like two men. Poor Floyd was facing three of those devils. That would be the same as taking on an army.

  As they cautiously ran their horses along a narrow
game trail, a second shot fired, then another. Only, it sounded different, pitched from another direction. Who else was shooting, and were they shooting at each other or the Apache? Neither Mississippi nor Tom could be sure of what they might find.

  Mississippi pulled his rifle. Up ahead, hunkered down among some rocks on the west-facing side of a gorge, Floyd was taking aim. A broken arrow shaft stuck out of his back, but what he was shooting at wasn’t an Apache. Mississippi couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Clint up on the rim. Where was Pike? Was Rascal there somewhere?

  All of a sudden, there was a cry so shrill it made Mississippi’s ears nearly bleed. They appeared as though rising right up out of the ground. Except there wasn’t just three of them. At least a dozen braves dressed in buckskin breeches and fur-trimmed moccasins of the same color. The sneaky bastards blended into the backdrop of rocks and a forest of trees, which they had used as cover and crept up close.

  Mississippi aimed at the one slinking up behind Floyd with a hatchet raised, the sun glinting off the sharp blade. He squeezed the trigger. Floyd jerked around toward the painful cry. Three feet from a strike, the hatchet dropped, and the redskin crumpled over a saw-toothed slab of stone. Crazy whoops and hollers flew from everywhere. A second brave, his black hair shining, came out of nowhere, slashing with a blade and lunging at Floyd. They rolled down the rocky hillside as if playing leapfrog, smacking off stones and kicking dust into the air. Deeper down inside the gorge, Floyd looked like a miniature figure swinging his rifle around like an ax at the Indian. There was no easy way of getting down there without taking the same damn tumble.

  Tom’s horse reared as a lance stuck in the ground at the animal’s feet. “Mississippi!” He flipped off his saddle.

  His shoulder was stained red, same as the tip of the long spear held by one of those two red fighters who were forcing Tom, now that he was on his feet, to back up. Only, there wasn’t much space in that rocky area for retreat. Tom stopped, but not because he wanted to. His spine pressed flat against a tall, smooth boulder. He was cornered. It wasn’t a fear of dying that made him call for Mississippi. Help wasn’t what he was asking for.

  There was a hate in his calculating eyes, and his jaw was clenched as he searched those red bastards for weakness, for a way out of that death trap. But if he didn’t find that way, he’d give them a hell of a fight.

  Their mean friend, a third devil—this one tall for a red man, with a bony face—was crouched and his steps silent. Feathers dangled from the long spear held ready over his lean, muscular shoulder. Mississippi might not have seen that danger had it not been for Tom’s warning.

  Tom’s gun blasted. One of the Apache screeched as the bullet spun him up on his tiptoes. Then he fell in the dirt, blood pumping out of his chest.

  Red and yellow paint, zigzagging in strange designs, masked the face and chest of the filthy heathen wielding his spear. He broke into a run out of the bushes at Mississippi. All those red squiggles made him think of the blood that bastard aimed to spill from him. He skinned his Colt with lightning speed, drilling the savage in the gullet. Then Mississippi twisted in Tom’s direction.

  There were two dead at Tom’s feet, and two more had taken their place. One gripped a knife, and Tom had him held off by the wrists, grunting and spinning around in a circle. The other thrust a lance at Tom’s back. Mississippi hammered back on the trigger. His first bullet hit the stone tip, busting the lance into pieces. Two slugs then hit the chest of the one who dropped the splintered lance, and the force of the lead tearing through his flesh sent him flipping backward down among the rocks. Mississippi plugged the one fighting Tom between the shoulder blades. The heathen dropped straight into the dirt, dragging Tom down with him.

  Mississippi jumped off his horse to pull Tom up. The man was injured, not life-threatening, but he was bleeding from a hole in his shoulder. As Mississippi bent, a bullet tore at his arm, spinning him around where his boot toe caught hold of rattlesnake brush root, and he landed on all fours. He didn’t stay in that position but a second before rolling behind the nearest rock. A bullet bounced off the boulder, flying in another direction. Had to be Clint shooting at him. Maybe the Apache hadn’t made it up on the rim yet. Though, there was a slim chance they hadn’t noticed him up there. He obviously figured waiting for the right opportunity was worth the risk of getting scalped. Clint would probably take to running his horse out of there fast once those red sons of bitches turned an eye on him.

  A shot rang out from atop the rocky wall behind Mississippi. Even at a distance of seventy-five feet or more, the shine of the tin star pinned on the black vest gave Pike away. He was aiming across the gorge. Gunfire blasted back and forth.

  Mississippi ran hunched over to where Tom was hunkered down. A bumper of jagged rock stuck out from the mountainside in a spot cut out in the shape of a roof truss. It was wide open on the one end, facing out into the gorge. Mississippi ducked inside. The space was barely tall enough for him to stand. Tom fired at a redskin who was on his horse and seemed to be retreating, because all that could be spotted here and there between the trees was his back and the ass of his brown mare.

  There were no more shots from either side of the gorge. Mississippi craned his neck to have a look down in the bottom where Floyd was either hiding or dead. It was awful quiet down there, and Floyd wasn’t in sight.

  “I’m going after Floyd.” Mississippi slipped out, ducked behind a ledge of stone, and crept down through a rocky wash.

  Tom had covered his hide before, so there was no need to tell him. Mississippi wasn’t one of them, but they had recognized—or at least Tom had—that he was no longer the enemy.

  Out of the brush came a slight rustling noise. Mississippi was better than halfway down the steep hillside, and that noise made him hold still for a few seconds. Someone was in there. In one step, Mississippi ducked between twin towering rocks, seven feet in height, with bramble shading the bottom half of the crack. Pointed out toward where he had just stood was the Colt in his hand. The crack wasn’t wide enough for a man to slip in, not even sideways, and he wasn’t a so-called thick-chested fella. Even so, he didn’t fit. His dark clothing blended with the black of the crack. It would take a second glance for anyone to realize that it was a man standing in the shadows and not just the shape of the crack widening near the base of the rocks.

  A few seconds later, a feather-wearing Apache with braids crept past, his eyes focused up the hill that Mississippi had just come down. Had he killed Floyd? He saw no fresh bloody scalp. If Mississippi took a shot, his hiding place would no longer be of any use, and if Floyd was alive, they might need it as a resting spot. Aside from that, Clint would then know Mississippi’s exact location, if he wasn’t on the run from the damn Indians.

  When he no longer heard the breath of the savage and the scatter of loose gravel under his moccasins had faded away, Mississippi started down toward the bottom again. This time, he stayed out of the wash and cleverly weaved through the sage and taller brush and rock clusters. Now and then, he passed a single tree growing out of the rock. It was slow going, for it was steep and some of the rocks were loose and could tumble under a man’s weight, which might start a slide. Floyd was down there somewhere.

  Martha couldn’t lose two men. Not if Mississippi could help it. Duty wasn’t the reason Floyd had carried her packages across the street earlier that day. Mississippi supposed that was a good thing. And it was apparent she was accepting of his attention. No decent woman, particularly a widow, would have let him escort her as he had if she didn’t find it flattering.

  Ten feet from the bottom lay a dead warrior. Flies buzzed around his eyes, and his neck was bent at a queer angle. It was the one who’d taken the tumble with Floyd, but there was no Floyd and not too many places to hide. There were no trees in this part of the gorge, just scant amounts of sage, some thistles, itch weed, and rocks—a lot of them. Had Floyd gotten out? Maybe he had climbed the wash while all the fighting was going on and was up top some
where.

  No, he couldn’t have. He’d had an arrow in his back before the fall. Mississippi would’ve found blood drops if he had gone up through the wash. His rifle lay in two pieces not far away. Three or four feet from there, blood stained the ground. Could have been from the dead Indian, but Mississippi’s gut tightened. Cautiously, he stepped forward while searching every nook in the rocks that appeared big enough to hide a man.

  A pistol banged up on the rim. Tom must have gotten that Indian. A faint moan rose up from behind several stones that formed what looked like a lean-to. A long, flat rock, about a foot thick, leaned at an angle against a short, round boulder. Any space in that cramped hollow between couldn’t have been much, but someone was hiding there, squeezed in tight no doubt. Was it Floyd or a wounded Apache?

  All around, the bright sunlight glistened off both the smooth and sharp edges of each and every stone, nearly blinding Mississippi. The hollow appeared as a black hole. Each step closer was taken with more caution. If he skidded a pebble under either boot, then whoever was in there would be alerted. And from everything he knew about the Apache, facing a wounded one would be no different than making a fight with an injured cougar.

  Blood spots had dried in the heat on the ground outside the rocky lean-to. Near the entrance, the dirt had been pressed so the trail was smooth. Someone had dragged themselves the last few feet. Floyd didn’t know that Tom had set Mississippi free for the time being. He had seen him slap shackles on him. Floyd would have a pistol and had no way of knowing that Mississippi hadn’t escaped.

  Rifle fire rang down from above. Tom, Pike, or Clint was alive up there. Mississippi kept out of sight of the lean-to, making his way around a square-edged boulder while yanking off his bandanna. That little piece of cloth was an almighty useful wear. It kept the dust out of your face during dry spells, could be used for a bandage in a pinch, and although his was not white, it would serve as a sign of peace once he got it tied on the end of his rifle.