Ralph Compton - Down on Gila River

“I’ve been hurt real bad before. Got trampled once by a stampeding herd up Kansas way.” He smiled, and regretted it as his stretched lips pulled on his cheeks. Then, talking over some pain, he said, “I thought fer sure I was a goner that night, an’ me barely sixteen year old an’ skinny as a bed slat.”

The depression wasn’t large enough for Sam and Hannah to sit side by side, so they faced each other, their knees drawn up.

“You need a doctor, Sam,” Hannah said.

“Well, there ain’t one around here, is there?” Sam said.

As though jealous that the rain was getting all the attention, thunder ripped across the sky and lightning glimmered among the trees.

After a while, Sam said, “Hannah, why did you risk your life to save me?”

“Because I think I love you, Sam,” Hannah said, saying it right out.

“I’m no bargain,” Sam said. “And I don’t reckon I ever was.”

“I don’t see any price tag on you.”

“I’m fifty years old, Hannah. You need a younger man, someone who’ll give you babies and be at your side as they grow up.”

“My husband was a younger man and he gave me a baby,” Hannah said. “But as soon as Lori began to grow up, he quit on us.”

“I wouldn’t have done that—quit on you, I mean.”

“Look at me, Sam,” Hannah said.

“All right, I’m looking.”

“Do you love me?”

“That’s a helluva question to ask a man.”

“Well, do you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no idea what love is.”

“You’ve never loved anyone?”

“My ma, maybe.”

“Sam, love is a desire to be with one person, today, tomorrow, and forever. It feels like a fire, here, in the bosom.”

“Maybe I’m too old to feel that way.”

“A man is never too old to fall in love.”

“A man is never too old to catch measles either,” Sam said. “And that don’t exactly do him a power o’ good.”

Hannah was silent for a while. Then she said, “I understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That you don’t care for me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Hannah made no answer, and after a clash of thunder, Sam said, “You took me by surprise, Hannah, is all. Let me study on this love thing fer a spell.”

“And then?”

“And then I’ll tell you if I’ve caught the bug.”

Chapter 40

“Who in tarnation was it, Dan?” Jake Wells said.

“I think it was Moseley’s woman.”

“Why her?”

“Maybe Sawyer is sweet on her. Maybe he owes her money. How should I know why her?”

“You going after them, Dan?”

“Sure, but not right now. They won’t get far in this rain and I’ll pull out at first light.” Dan Wells looked at his brother. “Do you want the woman?”

“You bet I do, now that all the women of your’n skedaddled.”

“I hope I run into them one day,” Dan said.

Jake nodded. “Me too. I’ll put a bullet in each an’ laugh while I’m doin’ it.”

Dan stepped behind the bar and picked up a bottle. “Drink?”

Jake shook his head. “Nah, maybe later.”

Dan poured himself a shot of bourbon, downed it, and poured another. He came back to the table.

“Who do you suppose killed Matt Laurie—Lorelei, Mosley’s woman, or somebody else?” he said.

“You care?” Jake said. “What difference does it make? He’s dead, ain’t he?”

“No difference, just making conversation, passing time.”

“Probably Sawyer,” Jake said after a while. “When I see him again, I’ll ask him.”

“When you see him again, skin him,” Dan said. “And be done with it.”

“I will,” Jake said. “Hell, if I’d done like you say, he’d be skun by this time.”

A moment later, Jake started in his chair.

“What was that?” he said.

“Just a wolf,” Dan said. “Howling out there someplace, hunting jackrabbits.”

“Close, ain’t he?” Jake’s face changed. “Here, you don’t think it’s—”

“No, it ain’t. Santos is a bounty hunter and that’s all he is. Forget that skinwalker crap.”

“He ain’t right in the head, Dan.”

“I know he ain’t right in the head, an’ that’s why we’re gonna kill him just as soon as your leg heals. You want his woman, don’t you?”

The wolf howled again, slicing loud through the lightning-torn fabric of the night as the rain hissed like a snake.

“I don’t like that sound,” Jake said. “Danged wolf is hungry.”

“Wolves are always hungry,” Dan said.

Dan Wells stepped to the dugout window and stared into the darkness. Rain rattled against the panes, coalesced, then branched down the glass like the arteries of a skinless corpse.

He thought about Moseley’s woman.

His brother had been right. Now that all his women had fled, he could use the woman as a replacement. For a while at least she’d be worth his two-dollar price. Then he’d get rid of her.

There it was again, the wolf howl.

Dan scowled. Was it Santos trying to scare him?

As soon as he gave thought to that, he dismissed it.

Hell, the breed was already in bed, listening to the rain.

Chapter 41

Sunlight filtering through the trees woke Sam Sawyer with a start.

Across from him Hannah still slept. Her head rested on her crossed arms, and the morning sun had already tangled itself in her hair.

Sam climbed out of the hole, his entire bruised body punishing him. He stood, arched backward, and worked out a few kinks, but a whole passel more remained stubbornly unkinked and he groaned as he barefooted it in the direction of the Gila.

Sam stopped at the edge of the aspen line and studied the trail along the riverbank. As far as his shortsighted eyes could tell, there was no one in sight.

The rain had stopped, but the river was still swollen and moving fast, showing white water. Eddies caused by outcroppings of rock jutting from the banks slowed the flow here and there, and Sam was sure he saw a wading bird taking advantage of the quieter current, but it might well have been a skinny tree branch.

Sam stayed a few minutes longer. The wind shook the aspens, and a few remaining raindrops spattered on his hat. The morning had been washed free of dust, and Sam thought he could even smell drifting rainbow trout in the river.

He settled his bare butt on a patch of grass and gave in to worry.

Where was Dan Wells?

Had he ridden past already and failed to see him and Hannah in the trees? Or was he hiding somewhere, watching and waiting?

Sam gave up. He had no way of knowing where Wells was, so there was no good gathering bundles of sticks to build a bridge he might never have to cross.

He rose and returned to last night’s shelter, where Hannah was already awake, trying to pull back her hair made unruly by rain and wind.

Sam had the tobacco and coffee hunger, but had neither, and his mood deteriorated as the morning wore on. For her part, Hannah seemed lost in thought, her pretty face solemn, her worry about Lori weighing heavily on her.

After some discussion, they decided to stay where they were until nightfall and then struggle through darkness to rejoin the others.

Until then, all they could do was endure thirst, hunger, and the heat of the long day.

* * *

Sam and Hannah spent the morning sitting apart, each wrapped in a dark mantle of misery.

The sun rose higher in the sky, and the tree canopies filtered the light and tinted the slanting beams with color as though they shone through stained-glass windows. There was no breeze; the only sound was the song of birds in the aspen.

Sam drowsed and his head drooped, but suddenly he jerked upright, chilled, his back crawling, like a man who hears footsteps behind him in a graveyard. Hannah felt it too, because she looked at him with wide eyes.