Bargain at Bravebank, Part II: Highway Robbers
(if you missed Part I, you can still read it here)
I feared I had made a grave mistake.
But it was too late to turn back now. Too late to tell Nine-Fingered Nan that she and her deal could both go to hell. Too late to decide I should have put a bullet in her brain the second I first laid eyes on her. Too late to take back my willingness to owe her a debt that would probably get me killed.
I stopped in my trek across the burnin’ sands. My hat brim should have shielded my eyes from the sun’s infernal glare, but out here it seemed to hardly help. The unendin’ onslaught of light dazzled my vision. Sweat stung my eyes and made my shirt cling to my skin. The throbbin’ agony in my left leg had finally subsided into a warm ache, but I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. I’d cut a length of my saddle girth and tied it around my leg above the wound, but there was a thin trickle of blood still paintin’ a long trail of red in the fabric of my pants.
The heat, the distance, the sand, and havin’ only one good leg was killin’ me, already.
I wouldn’t have to wait to die on an errand for Nan at this rate.
I’d die here. Now. In this damned desert without a soul in sight.
Shadows in the shapes of birds slid over me, soundless, and raced ahead, then circled back again. Vultures. Bastards had been followin’ me since I’d left Nan’s rocky oasis.
They knew. They always knew.
I lifted my hat from my head briefly to swipe at the sweat on my brow with my forearm. The heat came off the sand in waves, making everythin’ waver. I wavered where I stood, too. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was caused by the heat and what was caused by exhaustion and blood loss.
I blinked hard and shifted my saddle bag on my shoulder. I’d taken what I could manage to carry off my dead horse, of course. But there was only so much one man could carry. And only so far one man with a bullet in his leg could walk.
If only she hadn’t shot my horse.
I’d liked that horse, damnit. He’d been my best one yet. Cost me twenty-five dollars. Shaking my head, I uncapped my one canteen—also rescued off my saddle—and allowed myself a small sip. Not that it would matter.
Wouldn’t matter that my horse was dead. Wouldn’t matter that I was out twenty-five dollars. Wouldn’t matter that I had half a canteen of water left.
I was makin’ slow progress. Too slow.
The birds would have me soon enough. Long before I reached the outskirts of Bravebank.
Damnit, Van. How could you be so stupid?
I closed my eyes, but it seemed the sun still burned there, straight through my eyelids. Burnin’, always burnin’. Burnin’ away my eyes, my mind, my soul.
I thought of Ethelyn then, and the last time I’d seen her. Nine years ago. In the black of night. Both of us splattered with blood that wasn’t ours. And her eyes … her big brown eyes wide in terror, the whites shining in the dark. Her small fingers clutching hard at my arm.
She had begged me not to go. Begged me.
But we couldn’t stay there. And I’d move faster without her. I had to find a safe place for us to lay low. So I’d promised I’d be back soon as I could. And I’d gone, anyway. I’d left her there, huddled in the abandoned homestead over by Clearwater Lake. Alone.
Three days I was away, that’s all. Three days.
When I’d returned … she was gone.
Three days away and I’d lost my sister for nine years.
I drew in a sharp breath of air that tasted of furnace. I swallowed though I had no more spit. And I started hobblin’ forward again. I trudged onward through the sand and rock, mostly draggin’ my left foot behind me as I had done for all the last miles.
The sun was steadily droppin’ toward the horizon I aimed for, lightin’ the way toward the western-most town of Bravebank. Pointin’ the way, and blindin’ me, too.
Mockin’ me.
With every step I heard Nan’s voice in my mind: Get to Bravebank alive and with yer wits intact first, boy, then we’ll discuss terms.
My right hand fell to the pistol on my hip. The pistol with the dent of another bullet in its cylinder now. The six-shooter pistol Nan had made a five-shooter when she’d shot it clean outta my hand. I s’pose it was some small mercy she hadn’t taken off a finger, too, in some twisted sense of poetic justice for the finger my pa had taken from her.
But maybe it hadn’t been him who’d shot that finger off of her, after all.
My own fingers, all full five of ‘em, curled around that worn grip, and I used its familiar feel to bolster my resolve. If I ever saw Nine-Fingered Nan again, I was gonna kill her.
No more talkin’. No more negotiations.
She thought this was a game, fine. I’d play it just long enough to end it. For good. She thought the desert’d kill me? Thought she could dismiss me to go die in the wastes while she sold my sister off, anyway?
Well, I’d show her.
I’d show her just what Van Jensen Delano was made of, all right. I might not have inherited my father’s luck, but Holt knew as well as anyone else who’d ever spent any time with me that I’d sure as hell inherited his stubbornness. And Mama’s, too.
Holt often said I been cursed with a double-barreled shot-gun of mulishness.
It almost made me laugh now, half outta my mind with blood loss and heat and sloggin’ through the endless sand.
If not for that, I’d’a for sure been dead a long time ago. And probably Ethelyn, too.
And as much as Holt cursed that trait a’ mine, it’d served the ol’ bastard well enough on plenty of our jobs. He’d never complained about it, then.
And so I walked on.
I held the memory of Nan’s disdainful sneer in my mind, and Ethelyn’s terrified ten-year-old face, and kept on walkin’. Into the shimmerin’ fire of the settin’ sun. Toward Bravebank. Toward Ethelyn’s freedom. Toward Nine-Fingered Nan’s eventual end.
Toward my own salvation.
#
I awoke to harsh whispers and the vague feelin’ of hands pattin’ at my body.
It didn’t take thinkin’ to react. I reached for my guns as I surged up sittin’ with an angry yell, and the bandits tryin’ to rob me jumped back with startled cries of their own.
It took me a good long minute to realize both my hands were still empty.
I blinked hard in the darkness, tryin’ to make my swimmin’ vision clear. The chill of the desert’s night air hit me then and I shivered violently, though my skin was still wet with sweat.
Then one of the robbin’ bastards laughed and held up two pistols of his own.
No, wait. They was my pistols. The backwater sonuvacunt had my goddamn guns!
“Lookin’ fer these?” he drawled. He held them forward, lettin’ ‘em slip down and dangle from his index fingers by their trigger guards.
I gritted my teeth. I wanted to leap up and wrap my hands around his throat. Throttle that smirk right off his sunburned, pock-marked face. But I was only sittin’ down, and already the ground was rockin’ under me, everything lookin’ like the sun was still up, waverin’ and shiftin’.
His partner chuckled. “Always disarm those ya gonna rob first,” he quipped. “Even if ya think they’re dead.”
“’Xactly,” the man with my guns said, and he grinned like a fool as he tucked my guns into the rim of his pants.
Rage burned in my throat. I was going to kill them. Both of them.
The problem was, they had my saddle bags, too, and my canteen. They had everything off me already, and I had nothin’ left.
“Well, wha’ should we do wif ‘em now?” the one who didn’t have my guns asked his sonuvacunt friend. He held a revolver, and had it pointed at my chest.
I took a quick look around the area best I could with my wobbly vision while they debated. I didn’t recognize anything. I had no idea where I was.
I didn’t remember passin’ out. I didn’t remember hittin’ the sand.
But I must have lost consciousness at some point, and then just dropped right in the middle of the damned desert. Right in a prime spot for lazy bastards like these to find me.
My frantic searchin’ stopped at the sight of their horses. Two perfectly good horses, standin’ patiently not too far away. Loaded with saddle bags of their own, and bedrolls. And more canteens. I tried to swallow. By God was I thirsty.
“Mebee sell ‘em?” the one holdin’ the revolver suggested to his friend.
But his friend shook his head. “Nah. Lookit ‘em. He’s mostly dead already. Wouldn’t fetch much.”
“Shoot ‘em, then?” his friend suggested next.
I wished they’d stop talkin’ bout me like I wasn’t sittin’ right there, plottin’ how to murder ‘em both. But I s’pose I couldn’t really blame them. I surely felt mostly dead. Wasn’t sure I coulda got up off the ground anyway, even if my life depended on it.
Which it might.
It was all up to how this debate of theirs turned out.
The one with my guns studied me with beady black eyes that glinted in the light of the full moon. It cast our shadows out long across the sand, as if it were tryin’ so hard to live up to the fierceness of its bigger, brighter cousin. But its pale, silvery light didn’t burn away your sanity like the sun did. It only cloaked the scrawny man sizin’ me up in hard, silver angles as he spat into the parched dirt. “Nah. Be a waste of a bullet. Lookit that leg a’ his. It’ll get ‘em. We don’t need ta do it.”
His friend appeared irritated at this assessment. “Well wha’, then?”
The man with my guns stared at me for a long, silent moment, and I glared back at him, bracin’ myself with both hands against the ground to keep from swoonin’ over. Then he smiled, but I noticed he didn’t get no closer to me. They were both out of arm’s reach, damn it all.
I didn’t even have my knife to hurl at ‘em. They had that, too.
The skinny, pock-faced fella shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Nothin’,” he answered simply. “Leave ‘em fer the buzzards. Let’s go.”
He turned and made for his horse. With my guns, and my saddle bags, and the little bit of water I had left.
His friend seemed unsure. He looked from his no-good partner to me and then back again. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.” The other man didn’t even look back. He was so sure I was no threat he couldn’t be bothered to waste any more time on me.
I made some sort of growl and lunged toward the ankles of the one still standin’ there holdin’ a revolver at me. He yelped and staggered backwards, and my reachin’ hands grabbed only dust and sand.
The other fella laughed at his friend and swung up on his horse. “C’mon, Clint. Stop foolin’ around. Let’s go ‘fore this night gets any older. I wanna get some female company ‘fore dawn.”
I could see Clint’s face darken even in the moonlight, embarrassed at bein’ startled by the likes a’ me. He grumbled, namin’ me foul names, and shoved his revolver back into its holster. Then he scuffed a boot into the ground, givin’ me a nice shower of the same dust and sand that was still gripped in both my fists.
I ducked my head just in time, but my hat was missin’, too. I shut my eyes as the grit rained over me, then coughed.
Clint grumbled under his breath all the way to his horse.
I struggled to my feet, anger blockin’ the pain of my leg, the exhaustion, the thirst. My vision narrowed, but I could still see the silhouettes of Clint and his sonuvacunt friend. And that was all that mattered.
I swayed and staggered, but somehow managed to keep upright. “Leavin’ already?” I husked. My voice sounded like gravel in a set of rusty gears. “But we was just gettin’ to know each other.”
Clint turned to face me just as he was about to mount up, the full moon highlighting his widened eyes and open mouth.
His friend just shook his head, one hand going to rest on the grip of my gun as he leaned forward on his saddle horn. “You wanna die quick, boy? Keep talkin’ and I’ll letcha.”
I widened my stance a bit, plantin’ my boots into the ground to steady myself. Felt like the whole world was rockin’ somethin’ fierce now, but I hoped this sunuvabitch couldn’t see that. I hooked my thumbs into my belt. My empty belt. “You wanna die slow?” I asked in return.
He straightened in his saddle at my threat and looked to his pal.
Clint, for his part, clambered up on his own mount in a hurry and reined it around to face me. I saw his right hand drop back down to his revolver.
Then the pock-faced thief chuckled. He looked me over again, like he was makin’ fer sure I couldn’t really deliver on my threat, and sighed. “I kinda like you, kid.” His fingers slid off my gun and went back to his reins. “Too bad we won’t be seein’ ya around again.” He tossed me a mock salute. “Adios.” He turned his horse and waved for Clint to follow after, and Clint did so, lookin’ over his shoulder at me fer a second longer before turnin’ his attention to the trail ahead.
I swore and hobbled after ‘em quick as I could, but I hadn’t really thought this far ahead.
‘Course he hadn’t believed my threat… but I’d had to say it, anyway. I couldn’t just let a pair of highwaymen rob me blind without tryin’.
And I sure as hell was gonna try.
I saw a pile of the red, flinty rocks that dotted these sands off to my right, and a few chipped pieces on the ground ‘bout as big as my palm. I stumbled over to them and scooped one of the bigger ones up just as Clint and his bastard friend kicked their horses into a trot.
I hurled the rock after ‘em with all my strength, aiming for the one who still had my guns.
The rock thumped into his horse’s rear and the animal startled, jumpin’ sideways with his ears pinned and kickin’ out with both back feet. It was enough to unseat his thief of a rider, who hit the sandy ground with a grunt.
I ran at him fast as I could manage, half-limpin’ and half-lurchin’, and tackled him just as he was comin’ to his feet.
He gave another grunt as my weight came down on top of him, but I’d already yanked my pistol from his waistline. I pressed the barrel into his middle and fired.
The shot was half-muffled by our bodies, but he jerked as the bullet tore through his gut, and his eyes grew wide and white as the moon, watchin’ us impassively from on high with her cold, pale gaze.
Clint gave a yell of mixed surprise and horror, snappin’ my attention to him, instead.
I rolled off his pal just as he fired, takin’ my left pistol with me, too, and his bullet sent up a spray of dirt right next to his friend. I landed on my back and brought both pistols to bear on Clint, firin’ simultaneously.
My twin shots hit him in the chest, leavin’ an arc of blood as he went clean off his horse, sprawlin’ limp to the ground. His horse swiveled its ears and pranced in place, snortin’ nervously. But it didn’t bolt.
That was a good horse.
There was movement from the skinny man I’d tackled and I reflexively shifted my guns to him. He froze. We were both still layin’ flat out on the ground, only I had loaded irons in my hands, and he was only just reachin’ for his.
Had been reachin’. Till he’d seen my two barrels swing toward him again. “Easy now,” I prompted. “I said you’d die slow, remember?”
His face contorted into a scowl, mostly anger, but some pain, too.
A bullet to the gut was a bad way to go, I’d heard.
He glared at me hard, right in the eyes. And his reachin’ hand twitched.
I fired again, point blank, tearin’ up his left shoulder real good.
His screams echoed out across the distance, overlappin’ the noise of my gunshot.
“I did warn ya,” I said as he writhed in the dirt. “Twice.”
He looked back at me with eyes full of murder and hate and agony.
I drug myself up outta that same dirt and staggered again to my feet, keepin’ my pistols aimed straight at him. I was feelin’ plenty of agony myself. “Now,” I rasped, “you just throw your gun my way, nice and slow.” I fought hard to keep my own pain outta my face. Fought hard to keep my hands steady.
“You can go fuck yourself,” he spat.
I gave him a smile. What else was I gonna do? The fella was just about as stubborn as me. I shoulda put a bullet in his forehead then, but I’d told him I was gonna let him die slow, and I liked to keep my promises. He wasn’t going to talk himself outta that.
I limped around him, bein’ careful to not break eye contact. He’d shoot me the second I looked away, no doubt. I went to his right side, and he watched me warily, a sheen of sweat now glistenin’ on his brow. His breathin’ was harsh and ragged, his jaw clenched tight.
Well, maybe with that shoulder bleedin’ out like it was, he wouldn’t last as long as I would have liked. But that couldn’t be helped now. “Hands up,” I ordered.
He slowly complied. At least with his right hand. His left was still clutchin’ at the hole in his gut. And I imagined it was suitably useless now, given the state of that shoulder. I also imagined he thought I’d come nice and close to grab his gun fer myself.
But I knew better. I’d learned that lesson years ago. So I focused on his right hand, the one that could still move, and blew another hole straight through his palm.
His screamin’ was more like shriekin’ now, and I stepped backward as he flopped around bad as a fish tossed outta water.
Clint’s horse, steady though it was, shied sideways at all the motion and commotion.
I just stood and watched fer a minute.
Then, satisfied he could no longer shoot me in the back as I left, I turned stiffly and hobbled away from him, over to Clint’s horse. I holstered my weapons back where they belonged, then heaved myself up into the saddle. I nearly blacked out as I swung my left leg over the cantle, but I clutched the horse’s mane in my white-knuckled fists and somehow managed to pull myself back from the darkness, settlin’ heavy into the saddle seat.
The horse shifted uneasily beneath me.
“Easy,” I whispered. “Easy there.” I was talkin’ as much to myself as the horse. The night seemed to have gotten darker despite the full moon. No matter how hard or how much I blinked, my vision just wouldn’t clear. It took a lot of effort to detangle my fingers from the mane and get them on the reins, and more effort still to nudge the horse forward.
It took a few uncertain steps and then stopped.
The thief I’d shot full of holes spat curses at me from the ground. Some real bad ones. And some real creative ones.
I twisted in the saddle to look down at him. “Too bad I won’t be seein’ you around again,” I said, echoin’ his own words he’d said to me back to him. Poetic justice, that’s what Holt’d call it. And that it was. I gave him the same mock salute he’d given me, too. “Adios.”
And I forced my heels into the horse’s side, even the left one, though it sent a shock of pain through my leg that made my breath hitch. I closed my eyes, concentratin’ on stayin’ in the saddle as the horse picked up into an easy lope. I leaned precariously to one side before draggin’ myself upright again.
The thief’s screamin’ and cursin’ was growin’ fainter behind me.
Good.
He should have just left well enough alone.
I slowed the horse again. I wasn’t gonna last long at a lope. It was hard enough to keep my seat at a damned walk. Clint and his sonuvacunt friend were no good bastards, but they been right about one thing: I was mostly dead already.
I lifted my face to the sky, squintin’ at the stars and tryin’ to orient myself. But the cursed moon’s light washed some of ‘em out, and the rest kept slidin’ and jumpin’ all over the place. I shut my eyes again and rubbed at ‘em with two fingers.
You ain’t never gonna be able to tell where you’re goin’ in this state. You can hardly keep yerself sittin’ up straight!
The horse kept ploddin’ along, calm again now that’d we’d left the scene of carnage behind.
I remembered what the pock-faced thief had said about wantin’ female company ‘fore dawn, and a shred of hope flickered to life inside me. Bravebank was the only town in this desert for miles and miles. That meant he and his pal Clint had been headed there when they’d found me. And if they coulda got there ‘fore dawn, the town couldn’ta been too far away now.
I slumped in the saddle, lettin’ the reins go slack. The horse could find the way from here, surely. The surly beasts always seemed to know the way to the nearest barn.
And this time, that’s exactly where I wanted to go.
I let myself relax, one hand reachin’ for the canteen looped over the saddle horn.
Approachin’ hoofbeats brought me to high alert again and I had one gun out and aimed toward the noise long before my sluggish mind caught up to what I was seein’.
A riderless horse appeared outta the cloud of dust it was kickin’ up. Eventually I recognized it. It was the horse of the man who’d taken my guns. The horse I’d hit in the ass with a rock. The horse that’d thrown its rider so I could kill him slow.
I holstered my pistol as the second horse drew up alongside its companion and snorted. It dropped into an easy walk to match our pace. I lifted my brows. Apparently these two had been together awhile now, and one couldn’t stand to be without the other. Well, one horse was surely better than none. And two horses was better than one. Maybe I could even make back my twenty-five dollars.
Maybe.
I pulled up the canteen and uncapped it, then took a long swig. It felt like a brick in my hand, and puttin’ the cap back on was far more difficult than it should have been.
Damnit, Van. Get it together. You gotta make it. Nine years of searchin’… you can’t let it end here, not when you’re so close. You’re almost there now. Just hang on a little longer… just a little longer…
I wrapped my fingers in the horse’s mane again, hopin’ it’d be enough to keep me in the saddle. I was fadin’, I could feel it.
Just so tired.
All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep. Close my eyes and let it all go.
Just fer a minute…
Copyright 2019 J. R. Frontera
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Part III is here!
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