Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

“Roll over,” I told her.

Her eyes opened in mock surprise, then narrowed lewdly.

“Why, señor!”

“Let’s not get cute,” I said. I grabbed her shoulder and shoved, and she rolled over, her skirt lifting with the movement, lifting over a soft, browned thigh. She pulled it down quickly, and I grabbed her hands and crossed them behind her back. I wrapped the belt around them tightly, looped it through, and took another turn. She sat up when I was finished, and studied my face carefully.

“My feet, señor. Are you not afraid I will kick you to death?”

She was mocking me, and I was ready to answer when I realized her last statement had been a carefully calculated one. She was trying to shame me into leaving her feet unbound.

I pulled my shirt tails out of the band of my dungarees, and started to unbutton the shirt. I was going to tear it into strips and use these to tie her feet together. I thought of the sun overhead, and I realized how pleasant it would be with a blistering sunburn and that fat pig across the dirt alley with a .45 pointed my way. I buttoned my shirt again and let it hang outside my trousers. Then I sat down across her knees quickly, pinning her legs to the ground. A surprised look crossed her face, and her eyes grew saucer-wide as I took the hem of her skirt in my hands and began tearing.

She tried to kick, so I shoved her back with the heel of my hand, and she sprawled onto her back and lay still while I tore a wide band from the bottom of her skirt. It made the skirt a good deal shorter. Her knees were round and smooth, and her calves were muscular, like a dancer’s calves, rippling with a supple, sinuous grace. She looked at me with unmasked hatred in her eyes. She was Carrera’s woman, all right, clear to the marrow.

I tore the band of material into narrower strips and reached for her ankles. She kicked out viciously, aiming for my face as I bent over her. I threw one arm across her legs, looped the material under her ankles. I straddled her then, my back to her face, and finished knotting the cloth around her ankles. I did a good job. Not so tight as to stop circulation, but tight enough to prevent any running around. I got up then and lit a cigarette, tucking the heavy Colt into my waistband.

“Now what?” she asked. She was leaning back against the rocks, a loose strand of hair falling over one eye.

“What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said.

“My name is Linda,” she said at length.

“Make yourself comfortable, Linda,” I told her. “We’re going to be here for quite some time.”

I meant that. I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to get my money from Carrera, but I knew damn well I was staying here until I did get it. Crossing the open dirt patch would have been suicide. But at the same time, Carrera couldn’t cross it either. Not unless he wanted a slug through his fat face. I thought of that, and I began to wish he would try to get across the clearing. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have his nose resting on the sight at the end of my gun muzzle.

Ten thousand bucks! Ten thousand, hard-earned American dollars. How had Carrera found out about it? Had I talked too much? Hell, it was general knowledge that I was putting away a nest egg to take back to the States. Carrera had probably been watching me for a long time, planning his larceny from a distance, waiting until I was ready to shove off for home.

“It’s getting dark,” Linda said suddenly.

I lifted my eyes to the sky. The sun was dipping low over the horizon, splashing the sky with brilliant reds and oranges. The peaks of the mountains glowed brilliantly as the dying rays lingered in the crevices and hollows. A crescent moon hung palely against the deepening wash of night, sharing the sky with the sinking sun.

And suddenly it was black. There was no transition, no dusk, no violets or purples. The sun was simply swallowed up, and the stars devoured the sky with hungry white mouths. The moon grinned down like a bigger, lopsided mouth against the blackness, and a stiff breeze worked its way down from the caps of the mountains, spreading cold where there had once been intolerable heat.

Linda shivered, hunching her shoulders together, pressing her elbows against her sides, hugging herself against the cold.

“You’d better get some sleep,” I said.

“And you?”

“With that pig across the way?” I asked. “I’ll stay awake, thanks.”

She grinned. “Carrera will sleep. You can bet on that.”

“I wish I could bet on that. I’d go right over and make sure he never woke up.”

“My, my,” she mocked, “such a tough one.”

“Hard as nails,” I said, a faint smile starting on my lips.

“You know, I don’t even know your name.”

“Jeff,” I told her. “Jeff MacCauley.”

She rolled over, trying to make herself comfortable. It wasn’t easy with her hands and feet bound. She settled for her left side, her arms behind her, her legs together.

“Well,” she said, “buenos noches, Jeff.”

I didn’t answer. I was watching the rocks across the clearing. Carrera may have planned on sleeping the night, but I wasn’t counting on it.

She woke at about two a.m. She pushed herself to a sitting position and stared into the darkness.

“Jeff,” she whispered. There was the faintest trace of an accent in her voice, and she made my name sound like “Jaif.”

I pulled the .45 from my waistband and walked over to her.

“What is it?”

“My hands. They’re... I can’t feel anything. I think the blood has stopped...”

I knelt down beside her and reached for her hands. The strap didn’t seem too tight. “You’ll be all right,” I said.

“But... but they feel numb. It’s like... like there is nothing below my wrists, Jeff.”

Her voice broke, and I wondered if she were telling the truth. Hell, I didn’t want the poor kid to suffer. I held the .45 in my right hand and tugged at the strap with my left. I loosened it, and she pulled her hands free and began massaging the wrists.

She breathed deeply, and the moon sent silver beams dancing across her breasts. “Ahhh,” she said, “that’s much better.”

I kept the .45 pointed at where her navel should be. She looked at the open muzzle and sighed, as if she were being patient with a precocious little boy.

She leaned back on her arms then, tilting her head to the sky, her black hair streaming down her back.

“Oh, it’s a beautiful night,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Just look at the moon, Jeff.”

I glanced up at the moon, taking my eyes off her for a second. That was all the time she needed.

She sprang with the litheness of a mountain lion, pushing herself up with her bound feet, her fingernails raking down the length of my arm, clawing at my gun hand. I yanked the gun back and she dove at me again, the nails slashing across my face. She threw herself onto my chest, and her hands sought the wrist of my gun hand, tightening there, the nails digging deep into my flesh.

I rolled over, slapping the muzzle of the .45 against her shoulder. She curled up like a caterpillar for a second, nursing her shoulder, and then she exploded again, teeth flashing, nails bared.

I flipped the .45 into my left hand and brought my right back across my chest. I slapped out backhanded, catching her on the side of her face. She fell backwards and then lunged forward again. I slapped her twice more, and she went into the caterpillar routine again, curling up into a soft little ball, her head bent, her chest heaving.

She looked up at me suddenly, her eyes sparking. “You lousy bastard,” she mumbled.