Ralph Compton - Blood and Gold

I knew, as he did, that he could not let me live to spread talk that I’d whipped him with my fists. His reputation was at stake and he couldn’t let it founder on the sharp rocks of idle frontier gossip.

Finally Wingo eased himself in the saddle and, looking straight ahead, asked: “What you thinking, boy?”

I shrugged. “Not much. About the Apaches maybe.”

Wingo turned and looked at me, his battered mouth twisting in a sneer. “You got maybe an hour or so to live, and that’s all you’re thinking about, Apaches?”

“It doesn’t pay a man to dwell on uncertain things,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be the one to die.”

Wingo let out with a roaring laugh, then winced as one of the cuts on his bottom lip opened up. “Boy, this is how it’s going to be,” he said, choosing his words carefully, each one tolling like a funeral bell. “As soon as we clear the Brazos, I’m not going to call you out and I’m not going to let you draw down on me. You may be talking to the little lady. You might be eating your beans and bacon. Hell, you might be on your knees saying your prayers. But no matter what you’re doing, all at once I’m just going to draw and put a bullet in your belly.”

No matter how I studied on it, Wingo’s warning was pretty much a conversation stopper, but finally I managed: “Thanks for the kind words. I’ll be ready.”

Wingo laughed again, and I was uncomfortably mindful that Ezra was riding close behind me. If I tried to shoot Wingo, I’d be a dead man. Ezra would see to that.

“Boy,” Wingo said, “I’ve killed more men than they say, and a few women besides. I’ve taken much pleasure in each of them, but nothing is going to give me more enjoyment than putting a bullet into you.”

To my surprise, the big gunman reached out and draped his arm around my shoulder. “Until then,” he said, smiling, “let’s you and me be real good amigos. Hell, boy, you whipped me real easy and you just a scrawny little feller an’ all. Ain’t nobody ever done that to me before, and I mean nobody.” He turned in the saddle. “Ain’t that right, Ezra?”

Behind me, Owens nodded. “Sure enough, Lafe.” “See,” Wingo said. “I always speak the truth about what I’ve done and what I’m gonna do.”

His thick arm lay heavy on my shoulder, and I had a mind to throw caution to the wind, brush it off and cuss him for a cheap tinhorn. But I never got the chance.

A bullet furrowed the air above my head—and a split second later I heard the sharp, venomous crack of a rifle.

Chapter 16

The Apaches boiled out of the flat, featureless land like wraiths, two dozen of them, well-mounted, firing and yelling as they came.

All hell was breaking loose fast—too fast. I slid my Winchester out of the boot, turned in the saddle and cranked off a few quick shots. Beside me, Wingo was doing the same. It’s no easy task to sight on a target through a scope off the back of a rearing horse, but Wingo made it look easy.

One Apache suddenly threw up his arms and toppled off his paint pony and another pulled up and slumped over his horse’s neck, hit hard.

Ned Tryon yelled something I couldn’t hear and whipped up the oxen. The huge animals lumbered into a shambling trot, but no matter how they strained against the yoke, hooves kicking up clouds of dust, their pace was painfully slow.

Wingo wheeled his mount and rode to the back of the wagon. He reached out his hand and yelled to Lila: “Get up here!”

Ezra was firing steadily, his smoking Colt bellowing, and the Apache charge broke, the warriors splitting up, streaming to the right and left of us.

“What about him?” Lila asked.

“Leave him,” Wingo hollered. “He’s already a dead man.”

“Lafe!” Hank screamed. “For God’s sake take me with you!”

The big gunman glanced down at the stricken outlaw, his blue eyes pitiless. “Not a chance, Hank. You’re our ticket out of here. They’ll be so busy with you, they might forget about the rest of us.”

“No!” Lila cried. “You can’t leave him here.”

“Damn right I can,” Wingo yelled. He leaned from the saddle, scooped Lila into his arms and held her close in front of him. The gunman savagely raked the paint with his spurs, drawing long streaks of blood, and was gone in a cloud of dust, the pony’s steel shoes winking in the sunlight.

Ezra emptied his gun at the Apaches, then swung his horse around and followed Wingo.

There was no time to be lost. I fired at a big warrior on a bay horse, missed, fired again. My second bullet hit the target because this time the Indian’s rifle spun away from him and he crashed heavily to the ground.

I rode toward Ned and kicked my right foot free of the stirrup. “Ned,” I yelled, “take a stirrup.”

Ned waved me away. “Go,” he shouted. “Save yourself and Lila.”

I galloped beside the man and reined up hard. The black reared and his hindquarters slammed into the ground, his churning hooves throwing up clods of earth.

“Ned, damn you, take the stirrup,” I yelled, fighting the horse as he tried his best to bolt on me.

A bullet plowed into the wagon, a shower of splinters exploding into the air, and another kicked up a startled exclamation point of danger between Ned’s feet.

The Apaches were closing on us now from two sides, yelling in triumph, wishful of taking us alive.

I slid the Winchester back into the boot and drew my Colt. As the black reared again and angrily fought the bit, I slammed a couple of fast shots at the Indians nearest us and saw them waver and break.

“Now damn you!” I yelled at Ned.

The man finally realized how desperate things were and his left foot smacked into the stirrup. I spurred the black and, Ned grimly hanging on to the saddle horn, took off after the others. Behind me I heard Hank scream in terror and scream again, shrieking, shattering screeches that scraped my strung-out nerves raw.

After about a hundred yards I turned, looking for pursuers. But the Apaches were milling around the wagon, yipping war cries, intent only on Hank.

I had no regard for killers like Hank Owens, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was about to die a hideous, agonizing death. Even though gut-shot, his dying would not come quickly or easily. The Apaches knew well how to keep a man alive, the better to prolong the torments they inflicted on him. Hank would last many long, suffering hours, and in the end, he’d curse Lafe Wingo, curse God and curse the day he was born and the father who sired him and the mother who bore him.

His only hope was that he’d die out of his mind, no longer capable of understanding his appalling reality, and so travel beyond the reach of the Apaches.

Wingo had been right though, heartless as it was. His sacrifice of Hank had bought us time. The question was: Had he bought us enough?

As I rode in the dust of Wingo and Ezra Owens, I had no answer to that question.

I’ve been told that small worries cast big shadows, but what was facing me now was no small worry and uppermost in my mind wasn’t Simon Prather’s money or Lafe Wingo. It was all Lila, and that surprised me.

I slowed the black to a walk and Ned stepped down. Ahead of us, Wingo and Ezra had done the same, and I saw their heads swivel this way and that as they hunted for any kind of cover.

They found it a few minutes later, an abandoned wagon lying tipped on its side about fifty yards off the trail. Beyond the wagon ran a creek, maybe twenty feet wide with steep banks, a single cottonwood spreading leafy branches over twelve inches or so of sluggish water. Some curly mesquite grew quite close to the creek and here and there catclaw peeped from the buffalo grass.

Wingo and Ezra dismounted and took positions with their rifles at either end of the wagon. As Ned and I got closer, Lila came out from behind the wagon and stepped toward us.