Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

Sam’s anger rose, but he was in no position to intervene. He gritted his teeth and he too made no sound.

The youngest brother, the one who’d drawn down on Sam, jumped to his feet and tried to drag Hannah away from the table.

Ma rose and cut him hard across the back with her riding crop.

“Not yet,” she said, over the sound of her son’s hurting yelp. “Don’t touch her until after the wedding, when it’s all nice and legal-like.”

“Ma, how’s Clem gonna wed us with his jaw broke?” Calvin said, his voice a reedy whine.

“He can say the words”—she turned and looked at her son—“cain’t you, boy?”

Clem made a noise between clenched teeth that sounded like “Nunnn . . . nunnn . . . nunnn . . .”

Ma nodded. “Yeah, well, that’s close enough for a marrying.”

She moved beside Hannah and put a hand on her head. “Calvin, you an’ Cole will wed this’n. When the other’n is on her feet, I’m giving her to Clem.”

“Aw, Ma, we got to share?” Cole said, a thin, loose-geared man with a matted beard down to his waistband.

“Yeah, you boys will learn to share fer a change. There’s enough between her legs fer both of you. You ain’t gonna wear it out.”

Ma sat at the table again. “I want this cabin filled with young’uns, you hear me?”

“You already got a young’un here, Ma,” Cole said.

“I know.” The woman looked at Hannah. “What’s her name?”

Hannah spoke for the first time since she was dragged into the cabin.

“Her name is Lori.”

“Tell her to come over here, to Ma Capps.”

“She’s asleep,” Hannah said.

“Then wake her.”

“No, I won’t do that.”

Ma jumped to her feet, her masculine face twisted into a mask of rage. She raised the riding crop to strike, but Hannah stared at her, unflinching.

Ma’s anger fled as quickly as it had arrived.

“All right, dearie,” she said, “I don’t want a horsewhipping to spoil tomorrow’s wedding day.” The big woman leaned across the table, her face close to Hannah’s. “Bless your heart, child, you don’t need to be afeerd o’ me. I plan on teaching my brand-new granddaughter all I know about wolfin’, scalp-huntin’, and whorin’ if she’s that way inclined. I’ll help little Lori make her mark, you can put the kettle on the fire fer that.”

“You’ll leave my daughter alone,” Hannah said, slapping Cole’s hand away before pulling her dress closed. “There’s nothing a monster like you can teach her.”

Ma Capps’s hot anger scorched her face.

“Monster, am I?” she screamed. “And me a decent, God-fearing woman as ever was.” She turned on Cole. “Take her outside. I’ll whip some respect into her.”

“Not my wife, Ma!” Cole protested.

“She ain’t your wife yet, Cole,” Ma said.

“Cole’s right, Ma,” Calvin said. “We shouldn’t whip her.”

Ma Capps smiled. “I cain’t refuse my boys anything, can I?”

Sam Sawyer roared and tried to get to his feet, but the rowel of his right spur dug awkwardly into the dirt floor and he toppled forward.

For the moment, Ma Capps forgot about Hannah. She rushed on Sam like a great she-bear. Her whip slashed at the helpless man, frenzied back-and-forth blows that cut and stung and drew blood. Ma punctuated her raging screams with every vicious, raking stroke of her whip. “You . . . broke . . . my . . . boy’s . . . jaw . . . you . . . piece . . . of . . . trash. . . .”

Sam tried to shield his face by burrowing his chin into his chest, but the whip found his cheeks and forehead, cutting deep, breaking skin. He felt blood trickle onto his neck, and his anger blazed. He threw himself to his left side and kicked out with both feet, aiming for Ma’s knees. Both his boot heels made contact and their big-roweled Texas spurs dug deep into her skin.

Ma screamed and staggered backward on suddenly unsteady legs. She crashed onto the table, and then rolled over on Clem. Unable to support his ma’s great weight, Clem tumbled onto the floor, and the woman fell on top of him.

Sam heard feet pound toward him and he tried to turn to face this new danger. But it was the Kiowa. Like Sam’s, James’s hands were tied behind his back.

“Get up, Sammy,” he said. “She’ll kill you.”

James giving him what little assistance he could, Sam struggled to his feet.

Cole and Calvin were trying to lift their mother off Clem, who was kicking and moaning in pain.

Sam looked quickly around him, gathering fleeting impressions of the shadowed cabin.

Lorelei lay on her back on a blanket in the corner to his left, her eyes wide, fixed on Sam. Hannah had Lori in her arms, the child white-faced but too frightened to cry. Outside, the Cappses’ cur dog barked and howled in a frenzy and yanked on the chain that bound him to a stake hammered into the dirt.

But Calvin had straightened up, and his gun was in his hand, pointed at Sam’s belly.

“They got us buffaloed, James,” Sam said. He felt sick to his stomach, from the beating he’d taken or from fear of another. Either way, he couldn’t tell.

Ma had hauled her bulk onto the bench beside the table. Like her son’s, her eyes were fixed on Sam.

“Want me to shoot him in the belly, Ma?” Calvin said.

The woman’s voice was a demonic growl, as though it had been dredged up from the lowest levels of hell. “No,” she said, “I want him alive.”

Clem sat at the table, groaning as he nursed the broken jaw that his falling mother had reinjured.

“Ma,” Cole said, his eyes alight, “here’s a fun lark. Why don’t we hang him an’ the Indian at the wedding tomorrow?”

Ma Capps shook her head. “You can hang the Indian as part of your nuptials, Cole. I don’t care.” She pointed at Sam. “But I want him skinned. I’ll nail up his hide with the wolf pelts.”

Cole and Calvin laughed, and even Clem, though it hurt him badly, joined in the mirth.

“Who’s gonna skin him, Ma?” Cole said, grinning. “Who, Ma, huh? Huh?”

“Me,” Ma said. Her eyes were black ice that froze Sam to the marrow of his bones. “It’s been a long time since I skinned a man.”

All that was left to Sam Sawyer now was defiance. “All of you can go to hell,” he said.

For a few tense moments Sam’s words hung in the cabin’s stillness . . . only to be blown away by a wind that carried the howl of a hunting wolf.

Chapter 29

“Cole, git your rifle,” Ma Capps said. “That there sounds like a big lobo. I want his pelt. The whippin’ can wait.”

“Ma, are you loco? It’s dark out there,” Cole said.

“You watch your tongue, boy,” Ma said. “Now git the wolf. He sounds big enough an’ mean enough to bring ten dollars in Silver City.”

“You sceered of the big bad wolf, brother?” Calvin sneered.

“If you ain’t sceered, you go get him,” Cole said.

Calvin rose to his feet and picked up a Winchester from beside the stone fireplace. “I’ll get him, Ma,” he said. “A big ol’ lobo don’t sceer me none.”

“Use one bullet, boy,” Ma said. “I don’t want the pelt all shot to pieces like you did last time.”

Calvin nodded. “One bullet, Ma, I promise,” Then with a last contemptuous glance at Cole, he opened the cabin door and stepped into darkness.

* * *

Ma Capps stood at the window and her eyes searched into the night.

The moon rode high and silvered the wind-trembling aspen. The pines cast arrowheads of shadow that small, gibbering things passed though, rustling from light to dark and back again.

She looked down at Clem. “You hear anything?”

The man shook his head. The bow-tied bandanna made him look like a huge, grotesque rabbit.