Blood and Gold

I slid the Winchester back into the boot and drew my Colt. As the black reared again and angrily fought the bit, I slammed a couple of fast shots at the Indians nearest us and saw them waver and break.

“Now damn you!” I yelled at Ned.

The man finally realized how desperate things were and his left foot smacked into the stirrup. I spurred the black and, Ned grimly hanging on to the saddle horn, took off after the others. Behind me I heard Hank scream in terror and scream again, shrieking, shattering screeches that scraped my strung-out nerves raw.

After about a hundred yards I turned, looking for pursuers. But the Apaches were milling around the wagon, yipping war cries, intent only on Hank.

I had no regard for killers like Hank Owens, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was about to die a hideous, agonizing death. Even though gut-shot, his dying would not come quickly or easily. The Apaches knew well how to keep a man alive, the better to prolong the torments they inflicted on him. Hank would last many long, suffering hours, and in the end, he’d curse Lafe Wingo, curse God and curse the day he was born and the father who sired him and the mother who bore him.

His only hope was that he’d die out of his mind, no longer capable of understanding his appalling reality, and so travel beyond the reach of the Apaches.

Wingo had been right though, heartless as it was. His sacrifice of Hank had bought us time. The question was: Had he bought us enough?

As I rode in the dust of Wingo and Ezra Owens, I had no answer to that question.

I’ve been told that small worries cast big shadows, but what was facing me now was no small worry and uppermost in my mind wasn’t Simon Prather’s money or Lafe Wingo. It was all Lila, and that surprised me.

I slowed the black to a walk and Ned stepped down. Ahead of us, Wingo and Ezra had done the same, and I saw their heads swivel this way and that as they hunted for any kind of cover.

They found it a few minutes later, an abandoned wagon lying tipped on its side about fifty yards off the trail. Beyond the wagon ran a creek, maybe twenty feet wide with steep banks, a single cottonwood spreading leafy branches over twelve inches or so of sluggish water. Some curly mesquite grew quite close to the creek and here and there catclaw peeped from the buffalo grass.

Wingo and Ezra dismounted and took positions with their rifles at either end of the wagon. As Ned and I got closer, Lila came out from behind the wagon and stepped toward us.

She looked at Ned, the afternoon light harshly revealing the sunken planes of his unshaven cheeks and the dark circles under his sagging eyes.

“Pa,” she asked, “are you all right?”

The man nodded. “I just need to rest for a while.”

I swung down from the saddle and followed Lila and her pa to the wagon. Then I ground tied the black and slid the rifle from the boot.

“Boy, you keep watch behind us,” Wingo yelled. “I don’t want them Apaches coming at us across the damned creek.”

“They got Hank,” I said. I was telling Wingo something he already knew, but I was determined to leave the outlaw at least that three-word epitaph.

“The hell with him,” Wingo said, leaving him quite another.

The big gunman seemed to have forgotten about killing me, at least for now. Judging by the tenseness in his jaw and the way his knuckles showed white on the stock of his rifle, I figured the Apaches were his more urgent concern.

I took up a position near the creekbank, keeping the cottonwood to my left, and glanced around. The ashes of a fire lay in a circle near the bank and a battered coffeepot and a man’s flat-crowned hat were half-hidden in the grass.

It looked like the teamster who had driven this wagon had been attacked by Apaches only a couple of days before. I had no doubt they’d killed the man, but a scattering of shiny brass cartridge cases around the wagon showed where he’d made a good fight of it.

Just the previous spring, having all the confidence of the young, I figured that life was forever. But now, as the hours ticked slowly toward late afternoon, I had the uneasy feeling that maybe I wasn’t as immortal as I’d thought.

Unbidden, the thought came into my mind: Dusty, if Wingo doesn’t get you, the Apaches will.

I realized that I was in one hell of a fix and that realization brought me no comfort.

Over by the wagon, Wingo yelled at Lila: “Girl, see if you can find some wood or maybe some dry cow chips. We’re going to need coffee.”

“Lafe, you think that’s wise?” Ezra asked, his face strained, thin mouth pinched. “I mean the smoke.”

Wingo slowly shook his head, acting like he was feeling more sorrow than anger. “Ezra,” he said, real slow, “don’t you think the Apaches already know exactly where we are?”

A dawning realization crossed the man’s face and he gulped. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess they do.” Ezra’s eyes scanned the empty land around him. “I’m jumpy, is all. It’s this damned waiting that’s getting to me.”