Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

“Like a grand lady in a carriage,” Sam said.

“The hell I will, Pops,” Lorelei said. “I’ll be what I am—a shot-up witch dragging behind a hoss.”

“Let me take a look at your shoulder,” Hannah said, unbuttoning the other woman’s dress.

Sam drew off a ways and built a cigarette, his eyes fixed on his back trail. Blinking like an owl, he peered into the distance but saw only a haze of green earth and blue sky. As near as he could tell, there were no riders in sight, but he wouldn’t bet the farm on that being the case.

“What do you see, Sammy?”

Sam jumped, so startled his tobacco spilled from the paper.

The Kiowa smiled. “I like sneaking up on people.”

“Gettin’ shot is a sure cure fer that,” Sam said, sour as a crab apple. He looked the Indian over. “Where are the poles for the travois?”

“I didn’t find any, but I found something better.”

“A stagecoach, maybe? Or a stalled train deadheading home from Silver City?”

Sam’s irony was lost on James. “A cabin,” he said. He pointed to the hill. “Up there, just over the ridge.”

“What kind of cabin?”

“The log kind of cabin.”

“Is there anyone living in the cabin?” Sam said.

The Kiowa nodded. “Yes, I saw a woman draw water from a well.”

Sam considered that. “A woman, you say? Sounds like they might be respectable, God-fearing folks living there.” He nodded to himself. “Yep, a good place for Lorelei to rest up and a hideout well away from the trail. Surely they’ll offer us food and a bed out of Christian charity.”

“That was my thinking after I could not find pine poles for the travois,” James said.

“Did you know how to make a travois in the first place?” Sam said.

“No.”

“Then why did you tell us you could build one?”

“I thought I might be able to figure it out.”

Sam shook his head. “You’re a mighty useless Kiowa, do you know that?”

“I found the cabin,” James said, his mahogany face solemn.

“Yeah, you did,” Sam said. “Remind me to thank you fer that later.”

“Nice fat lady drawing water,” the Kiowa said. “Looks like she cooks fried chicken and biscuits, maybe so.”

“Fat ladies always make buttermilk biscuits, the best kind,” Sam said. He put a hand on the Kiowa’s thin shoulder. “I got a good feeling about this, Injun. A real crackerjack good feelin’, you might say.”

He had no way of knowing it then, but later those words would come back to haunt him . . . and cause him a world of hurt.

Chapter 27

“Hello the cabin,” Sam Sawyer yelled.

Behind him Lorelei sat her horse, supported by Hannah. The Kiowa carried Lori in his arms, and the little girl looked around her with huge eyes.

Sam got no answer and he called out again.

“Hello the cabin! We’re weary travelers who need a place to light an’ set for a spell.”

The cabin was a ramshackle affair that looked to be held together by baling wire and string. It had a sagging roof, a rickety porch out front with a bench, and a couple of rockers. Set off a ways was a pole corral and a barn, as dilapidated as the cabin, an outhouse that looked wide enough to be a two-holer, a toolshed, and a smokehouse.

The cabin had been built in the lee of a jutting, prow-shaped outcropping of rock, and it was shaded by a couple of tall cottonwoods that grew beside a tumbling stream.

“I don’t think there’s anybody to home,” Sam said.

But no sooner had he uttered the words than the cabin door creaked open on rusty hinges and a woman stepped onto the porch, a riding crop dangling from a loop on her right wrist.

“What do you want?” the woman said. There was nothing friendly in her harsh, low-pitched voice. She stood as tall as a man but was twice as wide, and Sam mentally figured she’d dress out at around three hundred pounds.

“Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,” Sam said, touching his hat brim, “but I’ve got a wounded woman here. She needs a place to rest for a couple of days.”

The woman didn’t answer. She turned her head and yelled, “Calvin, Cole, Clem, git out here.”

From somewhere inside the cabin, a male voice said, “What is it, Ma?”

“You an’ your brothers git out here, boy, like I tole you,” the woman said. Then, her voice rising to a shout: “Now!”

Three tall, gangling youths barged through the door and tumbled onto the porch. Each wore a holstered Colt and they shared a common expression—the slack-jawed, dull-eyed look of the inbred.

“Lookee what we have here, boys,” the woman said. “Pilgrims, an’ one o’ them right poorly.”

“Are them women fer us, Ma?” one of the young men asked, his face eager.

“Bless your heart, Clem. No, they ain’t,” his ma said. “At least not yet they ain’t.”

Sam liked nothing about the woman’s talk or her sons’, and now he tried to back away from it.

“Well, ma’am,” he said, “I can see you got a full bunkhouse already, so we’ll be on our way. An’ I’m right sorry to have troubled you, an’ all.”

“They call me Ma Capps,” the woman said. “And you’re welcome to stay the night.”

Before Sam could refuse the offer and turn to leave, the big woman’s voice stopped him.

“Boys,” she said, “get the women off’n them hosses and bring them inside.” Then, obviously from experience, she felt the need to clarify that. “I mean bring the women inside, not the hosses.”

Her sons needed no second bidding. They jumped off the porch and made a rush for Hannah and Lorelei.

Unfortunately for the man named Clem, Sam was something of a pugilist. Skull, knuckle, and boot fighting was an art he’d learned the hard way and he’d spat teeth into the sawdust after many a knock-down, drag-out saloon brawl.

Clem, his idiotic grin as wide as the wave in a slop bucket, reached up to grab Hannah, but Sam’s hard-knuckled fist to the man’s bearded chin dropped him cold and drooling on the ground.

Another of the brothers drove a roundhouse right at Sam’s head, but he telegraphed the punch and Sam sidestepped. Then he nailed the man in the mouth with a hard straight left.

As the man fell, the third brother, younger than the other two, backed off, his hand clawing for his gun.

“He’s drawing, Sammy!” the Kiowa yelled.

Even as Sam hauled iron, a voice in his head screamed, You’re way too slow!

But as his Colt leveled, a whiskey bottle swung by Ma Capps crashed into the back of Sam’s head.

He staggered a step or two, but then his lights went out and he collapsed to the dirt in a heap.

Chapter 28

The cabin was lit with oil lamps that cast deep shadows when Sam Sawyer woke with a splitting headache.

He heard the murmur of voices, at first far off. Then as his consciousness returned, they grew closer. He also became aware that he was propped up in a sitting position against a wall, his hands bound behind him.

The smell in the cabin was horrendous, an amalgam of ancient sweat, the decaying memory of rancid food, and the stench of people who wallowed in their own filth. A breeze wafted through the unglazed back window, bringing with it the odors of the outhouse and the sharp tang of pig manure.

Sam opened one eye, staying perfectly unmoving as though he was still out of it. Hannah sat at a table in the middle of the room, two of the brothers crowded around her. There was no sign of Lorelei, the Kiowa, or Lori.

A bandanna was wrapped tightly around Clem’s jaw, tied in a knot at the top of his head. He sat with his mother, watching his drooling brothers paw and tug at Hannah.

For her part, Hannah made no protest, her face empty, as though this was an ordeal that had to be silently endured.