Ralph Compton - West of the Law

Prescott shrugged. ‘‘War prefers its victims young. But he was man-grown enough to carry a gun and ride with wild ones. He took his chances, but the deck was stacked against him, maybe from the day and hour he was born.’’ The gunfighter stepped closer to McBride. ‘‘We don’t have much time. If there are Celestials in the shack yonder, the fire could spread from the cabin and we’ll have more dead young ones on our hands.’’ He hesitated a moment, then: ‘‘Have you made up your mind?’’

‘‘I’ll go along with the killing if there’s no other way.’’

‘‘There is no other way. Our talking is done, John. From now until we come out on the other side, we let our guns speak for us.’’

‘‘Then that will be the way of it. Now let’s get those girls out of there,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Before they burn to death.’’

The cabin was an inferno of smoke and flame that tinged the sky red. Inside the corral, the horses were wild-eyed, trotting in circles, snorting, tossing their heads, terrified of a predator that was worse than any other. The shack was about ten paces from the burning cabin and when McBride reached the door the heat was intense. As a torrent of sparks cascaded around him, he slammed back the wooden bolt and opened the door.

It was dark inside, but the light from the blazing cabin splashed a triangle of flickering orange on the dirt floor, revealing a pair of slippered feet. As his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, McBride made out the shadowy shapes of four women cowering against the far wall. They made no attempt to get to their feet.

Prescott stepped beside him and took in the situation at a glance. ‘‘Out!’’ he yelled.

The frightened women clung closer together but did not move.

‘‘Out!’’ Prescott yelled again, to no effect. ‘‘What the hell is Chinese for ‘out’?’’ he demanded. Smoke was rapidly filling the shack and the heat was growing more intense. ‘‘Outee!’’ Prescott hollered.

‘‘Drag them out, Luke,’’ McBride said. ‘‘They won’t move by themselves.’’

The girls were tiny, small-boned and light as birds. McBride and Prescott lifted them one by one and carried them outside, well away from the cabin. A few minutes later the shack caught fire.

Made ragged by heat, the wind gusted, fanning the flames of both cabin and shack. Prescott turned the frantic horses out of the corral, trusting that they would not run long and far. He and McBride got on each side of the wagon and pushed it well away from sparks. When they returned, the girls were still sitting where they’d left them, faces blank, black eyes reflecting the flames of the fire but nothing else.

One by one, McBride pushed up the sleeves of the girls’ tunics and saw what he’d expected, the track marks of a needle, like insect bites on their smooth skin.

He turned to Prescott.

‘‘I didn’t see any drugs in the shack, did you?’’

The man shook his head.

‘‘Probably burned up in the cabin.’’

‘‘You ever seen a heroin addict who can’t get the drug any longer?’’ McBride asked.

‘‘Can’t say as I have.’’

‘‘I did, a couple of times. It’s nasty. In a few hours we’re going to have our hands full with these women.’’

Luke Prescott laughed.

‘‘Women? They’re only children. What age do you make them out to be?’’

McBride took a knee and cupped his hand around the chin of one of the girls, lifting her face to the dying light of the cabin fire.

‘‘Twelve.’’ He moved to another. ‘‘About the same age.’’ Another. ‘‘Thirteen maybe.’’ He looked at the last girl awhile longer. ‘‘This one is older. Fifteen, I’d say.’’

‘‘Trask likes them young,’’ Prescott said, smiling without humor.

McBride remembered Hell’s Kitchen and the brothels of the Four Corners. ‘‘The men Trask sells them to like them young. It’s their business—they cater to perverts.’’ He turned bleak eyes to Prescott. ‘‘In some brothels I’ve known, a man can rape a girl, then beat her to death if that’s his inclination, just so long as he has the money to pay for it.’’

‘‘Glad I’ve always steered clear of big cities,’’ Prescott said. ‘‘I didn’t even know men like that existed.’’

McBride’s laugh was bitter. ‘‘They exist all right, and the men who supply them with what they want are just as bad.’’

‘‘Like Trask?’’

‘‘Just like Trask.’’ McBride was silent for a few moments as he studied the vacant faces of the four girls. Then he said, ‘‘Now we’ve got them, what do we do with them?’’

Prescott had been building a cigarette. Now his eyes lifted from tobacco and paper to McBride. ‘‘I’ve been studying on that. We can’t take them back to High Hopes, but I know a man who might shelter them for a spell, if you pay him enough.’’

‘‘Where is he?’’

‘‘About ten miles north of here on Cucharas Creek, a mountain stream that runs over bedrock across some pretty wild country. The man’s name is Angus McKenzie. He’s a trapper, sometime prospector, and he lives with a Kiowa woman in a cabin up there.’’

‘‘Can we trust him?’’

Prescott sealed his cigarette, placed it between his lips and thumbed a match into flame. He lit his smoke and flicked away the dead match before he answered McBride’s question. ‘‘Do we have any choice?’’

‘‘No, I guess not. We can’t be burdened with four young girls when we come up against Trask.’’

‘‘You said that right,’’ Prescott observed. He rose to his feet. ‘‘Now we got work to do.’’

He and McBride pulled the corral apart and threw the pine poles into the smoldering cabin, where they blazed immediately. Both the cabin and shack were now blackened ruins and there was little else damage to be done.

‘‘I’d like to see Trask’s face when he hears about this,’’ Prescott said, watching the poles burn. ‘‘Four of his men dead and this place in ruins.’’

‘‘He can always rebuild and hire more men,’’ McBride said. ‘‘Unless we stop him.’’

‘‘We will, John. Trust me, we will.’’ Prescott smiled. ‘‘Unless we’re dead, of course, and that possibility is just as likely as the other.’’

Later they ate the last of the salt pork and drank coffee. The Chinese girls refused both, huddling together, their wide almond eyes revealing nothing.

McBride and Prescott took turns guarding the girls throughout the night, fearing that they might run. But as the darkness shaded into the gray dawn, they had not moved, sitting dull and compliant, making no sound. After McBride rose and stretched, working the kinks out of his still-hurting back, the oldest girl reached out her arm and said something in Chinese he could not understand. But her meaning was clear—she needed heroin.

McBride felt a stab of pity as he shook his head. The girl dropped her arm, saying nothing. She shivered violently and moved closer to the girl beside her, cold, not from the cool morning, but from the lack of the drug.

He and Prescott rounded up the horses and hitched a pair to the wagon. Then Prescott saddled a rawboned bay for himself and a paint for McBride. ‘‘You can tie him to the back of the wagon until we get to McKenzie’s place,’’ he said.

But McBride refused. ‘‘Just throw the saddle into the wagon. I’ll stick with the mustang.’’

Prescott laughed, but did as he was told, leaving McBride to brood about his ability to drive a horse team. The little gunfighter returned a few minutes later, a small brick of a tarry brown substance in his hand. ‘‘I threw the saddle into the wagon like you said and it sure made a hollow sound to me.’’