Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

The woman smiled, humorless as a hangman.

“Remember Mary Sullivan, the little gal who loved to sing, Matt? Remember how you cut her in half with your shotgun when she tried to leave you after you beat her one time too many? You remember that?”

“She was nothing to you,” Laurie said.

“She was my sister.”

Laurie turned and made a staggering reach for the shotgun.

Lorelei fired again, and this time the man went down and then rolled onto his back, staring at her.

“Get your daughter,” Lorelei yelled to Hannah, her face wreathed in gray gun smoke.

Hannah stepped warily around Laurie. Then she ran for the storeroom behind the bar.

After Hannah left, Lorelei got a bottle of whiskey from the bar and tossed it onto Laurie’s prone body.

“You’ve got two bullets in your belly, Matt,” she said. “And you’ll be a long time a-dying. The whiskey won’t make it any easier, but in your case it’ll stand in place of prayers.”

“Curse you, Lorelei,” Laurie said through teeth gritted against pain. “Put one in between my eyes. Get it over with.”

The woman shook her head. “Mister, the whiskey is as far as I go. I’m doing you no more favors.”

* * *

Hannah returned with Lori. The child seemed unharmed, though her eyes widened in terror and she clutched onto her mother when she saw the wounded man writhing on the floor.

Lorelei grabbed the shotgun and motioned to Hannah to leave.

“There are horses in the barn,” she said. “Saddle a couple while I round up some grub.”

“What about him?” Hannah said.

“What about him?”

“Shouldn’t we help him?”

“He’s beyond help,” Lorelei said. “I gave him a bottle. That’s all the help he gets.”

Hannah opened her mouth to speak, but the other woman pushed her toward the door. “There’s no time for talking. Get the horses saddled. We sure as hell don’t want to be here when Moseley and Dan Wells get back.”

* * *

When Lorelei showed up at the barn, she carried a sack of supplies and a couple of yellow slickers. She wore two battered hats on her head.

She tied the sack to her saddle horn, then handed one of the slickers to Hannah. “And this’ll keep the rain off that nice yellow hair,” she said, removing one of the shapeless hats. “Now let’s ride.”

Hannah shrugged into the slicker and settled the hat on her head.

“Now you don’t look so much like a schoolma’am,” Lorelei said. She smiled. “I don’t know what the hell you look like.”

Both women mounted and Hannah took Lori up in front of her.

“Where are we headed?” Hannah said.

“To London to have tea with the queen,” Lorelei said. “How should I know where we’re headed? Well away from here—that’s fer sure.”

“We could go to my place up near Haystack Mountain,” Hannah said.

“First place Moseley would look for us, there and at Lost Mine,” Lorelei said. She managed a smile. “Cheer up, schoolma’am. I’ll figure something out.” She kneed her horse into motion. “Silver City, maybe, where there’s law.”

Lorelei led the way out of the barn and into the steel curtain of the rain.

At first Hannah thought she’d heard a blast of thunder, but when she looked at Lorelei the woman was clutching her right shoulder, blood trickling through her fingers.

A second shot split the air above Hannah’s head. Then she saw him.

Matt Laurie stood at the door of the saloon, supporting himself with one hand on the frame, his other raised to eye level, working a Colt.

Lorelei swung her horse around. “Let’s get the hell away from here!”

A few ineffective shots followed them as the women left the shelf and hit the ancient, hardened talus slope at a run.

Their horses’ hooves kicking up scattering showers of shale and gravel, they cleared the slope and reached the flat. Hannah followed as Lorelei swung north along the Gila.

As Watson Mountain came into view, they crossed the river at a fast-running shallow and took the trail as it looped west.

Thunder crashed above the women’s heads, and blue lightning branded the sky and smelled of ozone. Lori sheltered under Hannah’s slicker, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes wide and scared.

“We have to find shelter soon,” Hannah yelled above the bedlam of the storm.

Lorelei nodded but said nothing.

Her face was white in the lightning flashes and she turned quickly away from Hannah so the woman wouldn’t see the pink blood mingled with rain that ran down the front of her yellow slicker.

Chapter 21

Sam Sawyer jumped to his feet, his hand clawing for his gun, as the rider entered the clearing at a slow walk.

Thunder roared above him as Sam barked a challenge that the rider didn’t hear. In the lull that followed he yelled again, “Stay right there or I’ll drill ya.”

Lashed by rain, the rider lifted his head. “Sammy, you’re as blind as a posthole. It’s me—James.”

Sam leaned forward and peered through the downpour. “Is it you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, and I ain’t gettin’ down less’n you say you can see me, Sammy,” the Kiowa said. “I ain’t stupid. Now I’m getting off this pony real slow, and I don’t want you cuttin’ loose on me.”

“You got a dry match?” Sam said, holstering his gun.

James tossed his crutch on the ground and climbed out of the saddle. His bony paint wandered away to find graze.

“How did you find me?” Sam said.

“I am Kiowa.”

“I know, but you ain’t exactly a prime specimen. Do you have a match?”

Rain ran off the brim of James’s hat as he moved closer to the meager shelter of the rock wall. He limped badly.

“Big wind blew me here,” he said. “You leave white man’s tracks. Then rain come, big storm, no more tracks.”

“You got a match?” Sam said.

“I see where your horse bolted. That was clear in the grass. Then I look around and see arroyo. Only Sammy Sawyer dumb enough to hide out in a box canyon, so I come in here.”

“You got a match?” Sam said.

“Maybe so,” the Kiowa said.

For the first time he noticed the blood on Sam’s shirt.

“You been hurt, Sammy?” he said.

“Shot through and through. I need that match.”

“Let me see wound.”

Sam heaved a long, silent sigh, slipped the suspender off his shoulder, and pulled up his shirt. “You ain’t a doctor, James, not even a witch doctor.”

“Maybe not, but when man is shot all to pieces, I usually can tell.”

“You got that match handy?” Sam said. “If you have, I’d be right grateful.”

The Kiowa studied Sam’s wound in silence, but his head-shaking and occasional “tut-tut-tut” frayed the older man’s already fiddle string nerves.

“For Pete’s sake, how bad is it?” Sam yelled. “Tell me.”

“A little longer,” the Kiowa said, his fingers probing.

“Where’s that match?” Sam said.

After another minute or so of head shaking, James wiped rain from his eyes and said, “Looks like bullet burned your ribs, Sammy. Nothing broke.”

“You sure? It feels worse than that, like I’m all shot to pieces.”

“Sure, I’m sure. You got burned, is all.”

“I’m bleeding like a stuck hog and I hurt like the blazes.”

“That’s because you’re a white man. If you were Indian man, no hurt at all.”

“Where’s that match?” Sam said.

* * *

Sam put a match to his fourth cigarette. He’d battled rain and damp makings to build his smokes, but it was worth it. The tobacco had worked its magic and his thrumming nerves had quieted.

“Why did you come back for me?” he said to the Kiowa, talking out a trail of blue smoke. He was wishful for coffee but had none.