Blood and Gold

Chapter 3

I didn’t hear the report of the rifle, but I felt the smashing impact of the heavy bullet that crashed against my head and felled me to the ground.

I lay there stunned, unable to move. The shot had paralyzed me. I couldn’t feel my arms and legs but I tasted the smoky tang of blood mixed with rain as blood ran down my face and into my mouth.

My eyes were just half-open slits, but they were open wide enough for me to see four men leave the base of the bluff and walk toward me. As they got closer, I saw a tall man, long yellow hair spilling over his shoulders from under his hat, leave the others and sprint toward me.

“Yee-ha!” the man yelled, grinning from ear to ear, punching into the air. “Lookee here, boys! I nailed him right through the head.”

Despite the scarlet haze of blood pouring into my eyes, I made out the .50-90 Sharps rifle the man was carrying, some kind of brass telescopic sight running the entire length of the barrel.

“Lafe, does he have the money?” another man asked.

“Hell, he wouldn’t be carrying it on him,” the yellow-haired man said. “Search them saddlebags on the paint.”

There was a few moments’ silence; then I heard a man’s exultant yell: “It’s here, Lafe! Every damn cent of it.”

“Lemme see that,” Lafe said.

Through stinging eyes that I could barely hold open, I saw the four men gather around the saddlebags.

“Hell,” Lafe whispered, “I ain’t seen that much money in all my born days.” He threw the saddlebags over his shoulder. “Right, let’s get out of here. And I want that paint. Hell, he must go sixteen hands if he’s an inch.”

Only money, a lot of it, would have brought these men into the wild hill country. So far the trail I had taken from Dodge had led to blood and death . . . and unless they killed me, I vowed this wouldn’t be the end of it.

Footsteps swished through the wet grass as the bandits walked away. But then the man called Lafe came back and kicked me viciously, his boot thudding into my ribs once . . . twice . . . three times. . . . Then the shocking, blinding pain made me lose count.

“Hey, Lafe, how come you’re kicking a dead man?” somebody yelled.

I heard Lafe laugh, a loud, cruel bellow. “For making me stay out here in the damn rain,” he yelled. “That’s how come.”

And he giggled and kicked me again.

Then I knew nothing but darkness and with it came a merciful end to pain.

I woke to a throbbing agony in my head and each gasping breath raked my chest like a red-hot knife blade.

Rain battered at my upturned face and from somewhere far off I heard the angry rumble of thunder. I clenched and unclenched my fists, and to my relief, the feeling slowly returned to my fingers. After a few minutes I was able to move my legs, and I struggled into a sitting position.

My horse was gone, and with it the saddlebags and Simon Prather’s money.

But I had no time to contemplate the disaster that had befallen me. I had to get to the buckskin and go after those robbers.

The rain was still painting the sides of the surrounding buttes and mesas bloodred, and the sentinel trees stood soaked and silent. The wind had dropped some, but the rumble of thunder was much closer and every now and then as the sky banged and flashed white, the buckskin raised his head and stood stiff-legged in alarm.

The horse was getting spooked and I was in no shape to be chasing him down.

I couldn’t tell how badly hurt I was. My head ached and when I put fingers to the right side of my scalp they came away stained with blood.

The men who had bushwhacked me had taken my horse, but they’d left my guns, and I figured, with the arrogance of youth, that they’d made a big mistake.

That I was too sore wounded to follow them never even entered my head. And that was my mistake.

Slowly I fetched up to my feet, and immediately the land around me spun like a weather vane in a whirl-wind, then lurched right and left, so that I figured the mesas were standing on end and the trees were dancing. Nauseous, I sank to my knees and was violently sick, retching up all the coffee I’d drunk a short time before.

I didn’t need anybody to tell me right then that I was as weak as a two-day-old kittlin’ and in a whole heap of trouble.

Off to my left, a lean coyote stepped out of the trees again and looked at me with keen interest, every now and then tossing his head as he licked his chops. To him, I was just a poor, wounded creature that might die pretty soon and provide an easy meal or three.

I directed all my pent-up anger and despair at that coyote, yelling at him to stay the hell away from me and go find himself a rabbit to kill.

Of course, all my hooting and hollering did nothing to ease the mind of the buckskin and he trotted maybe fifty yards closer to the base of the bluff, stirrups bouncing, figuring me for a crazy man.

I guess the coyote studied on things some and reckoned I was still mighty spry because he slipped back into the trees and was gone like a puff of smoke.

Desperately I tried to concentrate, summoning up whatever little strength I still possessed.

Somehow, I had to make it to the buckskin.

Fury drove me. I swore to myself that when I caught up with the long-haired man called Lafe, there would be a new face in hell for breakfast in the morning.

Slowly, painfully, I crawled on my hands and knees toward the grazing buckskin.

As I inched closer, he’d raise his head now and then to look at me, trot away a couple of steps to maintain the same distance between us, then go back to his grazing.

Thunder rolled across the iron sky and lightning forked among the hills around me, plunging again and again into the wet earth with skeletal fingers. A lone cedar growing on the gradual slope of a hill just beyond the bluff suddenly took a direct hit. A deafening crack, accompanied by a searing flash of light, and the tree seemed to explode, branches scattering into the air every which way. Fire spurted as the blasted cedar lurched on its side, the flames dying immediately in the teeming rain.

All this was way too much for the jittery buckskin.

The horse turned in my direction, arched his back, then took off, galloping across the distance between us. Neck stretched out, his eyes rolling white, the buckskin pounded past, his kicking hooves beating on the wet grass like the cadenced thump of a muffled drum.

“Hold up there, boy!” I yelled, in a totally futile effort.

The buckskin was gone, splitting the wind and skinning the ground, and soon he was lost to sight among the crowding grayness of the rain-lashed hills.

Me, I knew I had to go after the horse.

I rose to my feet, staggered a few steps, then stumbled, stretching my length on the grass. I rose again, fell again, got to my knees and looked around.

The land was spinning wildly and the pain in my head was a living thing, eating all the life out of me. I tried to struggle to my feet, crashed hard onto my back and mercifully knew no more.

I woke to a dark face bisected by a huge walrus mustache looking down into mine. Guttering firelight revealed concern and a hint of amusement in the black eyes, and I saw the flash of white teeth as the face split into a smile.

“Ah,” the man said, “young Lazarus awakes.”

Another robber!

I grabbed for my Colt but it wasn’t there. The black man had followed my movement and now his smile widened. “Is that how you thank a man who just saved your life? Gun him?”

Then, reading the panic in my eyes, he said, “Your Colt is close by, young feller, and so is your rifle. And I brung in your horse.”

I opened my mouth to speak, failed, then tried again. “My paint?”

The man shook his head. “Big buckskin. I found him out there in the hills. I whistled an’ he came to me, nice as you please.” My rescuer frowned. “Here, are you telling me he ain’t your bronc?”

I shook my head slightly, a movement that caused me considerable pain. “My horse was stole.”

Right then I didn’t know if I could trust this man, and I guess it showed in my eyes because he pulled his yellow slicker aside, flashed the badge pinned to his coat and said: “Name’s Bass Reeves. I’m a deputy U.S. marshal for Judge Isaac Parker out of Fort Smith with jurisdiction over the Indian territory.” He smiled. “Does that set your mind at ease, boy?”

“What . . . what are you doing out here?” I asked, understanding nothing.

Bass Reeves shrugged. “Hell, boy, out here is where the desperadoes be.”

I glanced around me. The rain had stopped and I was back in the shallow cave at the base of the gypsum hill. Beyond Reeves’ wide shoulder the cobalt blue sky was streaked with bands of gold, lilac-colored clouds building high above the horizon. The fire crackled and I smelled wood smoke and bubbling coffee.

I struggled to rise, but Reeves pushed me back with a firm but gentle hand. “Best you lay there still for a spell, boy,” he said. “I think maybe your head might be broke.”

Gingerly, I reached up to feel my wound, but my fingers touched only a thick bandage.

“Spare shirt I found in your blanket roll,” Reeves said. “I tore it up for bandages. Used it on your ribs too. Figure they might be broke as well.”

That shirt was brand-new. It had cost me three dollars in Dodge and I’d expected to wear it and cut a dash when I met Sally and commenced to courting her. That Reeves had ripped it apart chapped my butt, but I didn’t think it polite to tell that to a man who’d saved my life.

Instead, I said, “How did you find me?”

The lawman jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Found three men out there. Two of them dead, all shot to pieces, one half-dead.” Without even a hint of a smile, he added, “The half-dead one was you, of course.” Reeves sat back on his haunches and rolled a cigarette. “You smoke, boy?”

“Name’s Dusty Hannah,” I said. “And, yes, I smoke.”

Reeves nodded. “Smoking is bad for a young feller, Dusty. Stunts his growth and takes his wind.” He lit his cigarette with a brand from the fire, the scarlet flame casting bronze shadows under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. “Want to tell me about it?” he asked.

“Are you asking me in your capacity as my savior or as a deputy U.S. marshal with jurisdiction over the Indian territory?”

Reeves nodded. “A little of both, Dusty. A little of both, I’d say.”

I was irritated that Reeves was so obviously enjoying his smoke and hadn’t thought to share, but I fought that down and in as few words as possible told the lawman the story of how I came by thirty thousand dollars only to lose it to bushwhackers.

Reeves listened in silence, and when I quit talking he nodded and said, “The man who shot you is Lafe Wingo. He’s a sure-thing killer for hire and he’ll gun any man, woman or child for fifty dollars. Ol’ Lafe now, he has maybe twenty killings under his belt and he’s trying real hard for more. Mostly he carries a scoped Sharps, but he’s fast enough with the Colt when put to it.”

Reeves took off his hat, revealing sparse curly hair, wiped off the band and settled the hat back on his head. “Last I heard Lafe was running with the three Owens brothers, Hank, Charlie and Ezra. Of the three, I’d say the oldest, Ezra, is the meanest, but that don’t mean the other two are any kind of bargain. All three of them can shoot and they’ve killed their share.” Reeves thought that through for a spell, then added, “More than their share.”

A silence stretched between us; then the lawman said, “How did you get tied up with this Simon Prather feller?”

I fetched up on one elbow and this time Reeves didn’t stop me. “I were just a younker when the cholera took my folks,” I said. “I was taken in by my pa’s brother, Ben, who has him a tumbleweed ranch down on the Neuces River country.

“Uncle Ben was all right I guess, but he had a son four years older than me by the name of Wiley, and me and him used to go at it with our fists, buck, tooth and hangnail.

“Over the years, Wiley beat me 173 times and I beat him once—the last time.”

“You mean you kept count?”

“Uh-huh. Scratched each time we fought on the inside of the barn wall with a nail, and when I’d make ten, I’d put a line through them lines and start all over again.”

My hand strayed to my shirt pocket for the makings, but Reeves threw me his own, an act that made him rise considerably in my esteem.

I rolled a smoke, lit it, then said: “Maybe it was my last fight with Wiley that helped Uncle Ben make up his mind. That night he drew me aside and said real thoughtful that he couldn’t afford to feed me no more on account of how I could eat my weight in groceries. And besides, he said, the ranch would go to Wiley one day and there would be no place for me.

“Then he said: ‘Dusty, I got two daughters and I’ll have to find dowries for them both, so you see how things are with me.’

“Well, I said I did and then I said on account of how I’d finally pummeled Wiley, there sure didn’t seem much point of me staying around anymore.

“As it turned out, Uncle Ben did all right by me. He gave me five dollars, his third best pony, a .44.40 Winchester and a new Colt. And even Wiley came through. He said I’d given him a black eye and his nose was broke but he had no hard feelings and he gave me his lucky rabbit’s foot and fifty cents he’d saved.”

Reeves nodded. “Rabbit’s foot can bring a man luck, if he’s real careful and steps light around trouble.”

“Maybe so, but up until now, that’s sure not been the case with me.”

“So how old were you when you signed on with Prather down to the Red River country?”

“Fourteen,” I replied. “And since then, I’ve been up the trail three times.”

Reeves let that pass without comment and asked, “How do you feel?”

“How do you think I feel? My head’s busted and I think my ribs are busted. I feel like hell.”

The lawman smiled. “You were lucky, boy. If ol’ Lafe’s bullet had hit another inch to the left, you’d have been a goner for sure.”

He hesitated a few moments and asked: “How come Prather didn’t carry the money back to Texas his ownself?”

I was rapidly getting too tired to talk, but I lay back and made the effort. “In Dodge, after he sold the herd, something broke inside Simon’s chest. He woke up one morning with his left side paralyzed and his face all twisted. Later that day he called me into his hotel room, where a doctor was attending him, and asked me to take the thirty thousand back to Ma. He said I was like a son to him and Ma and I was the only one of his riders he could trust. That’s what he said, and I figured he meant it too.”

“Hell, he should have just stuck his money in the bank,” Reeves said.

I shook my head, very slightly. “Simon don’t trust banks. He said all banks do is try to cheat a man. That is, when they ain’t being robbed or getting caught on fire. He don’t trust the boxcars either. He told me there’s no place to run when you’re riding the cars and I’d lose the money to train robbers for sure.”

I shrugged. “Mr. Prather made it plain to me that he set store by his money and that’s how it happened I was heading back the way I come, down the Western Trail. And I already told you,” I added, a bitter taste in my mouth, “how I let Simon’s money be took from me.”

Bass Reeves pondered this doleful intelligence for a few moments, then said: “Judging by the tracks I saw, Lafe and the Owens boys are trailing south, back into Texas, where they can spend the money on women and whiskey at their leisure.”

“And I’m going after them,” I said.

The lawman shook his head. “You ain’t fit, boy. You’re all broke to pieces and the bullet that creased your head has addled your brain”—Reeves shrugged—“unless, of course, you wasn’t too smart to begin with.”

“I’m riding at first light,” I said, stepping around that last remark as I tried to sound a lot braver and more determined than I felt right at that moment.

“Well,” Reeves said, taking his makings back from me, “there’s another complication that’s muddying up the water.”

“What’s that?” I asked, knowing the news I was about to hear would be bad.

The lawman lit his smoke. “The Warm Springs Apaches are out and they’re playing hob. The warriors are led by a young war chief by the name of Victorio and he’s mean as a curly wolf. Since you’ve been gone he’s been killing, burning and looting all over west Texas.”

Reeves shook his head and smiled. “That Indian sure hates the white man.”

I felt a sudden pang of fear. The SP Connected was southwest of the Red, and if what Reeves was telling me was correct, the ranch was right in the Apaches’ path. Ma was there with the cook and a couple of stove-up old hands, good enough men, but too few and too stiff to stand off a Mescalero war party.

I sat up and when my head stopped swimming I asked: “Where are the soldiers?”

Reeves shrugged. “The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry with their Navaho and Apache scouts are out after them. Buffalo soldiers”—he said this last without noticeable pride—“but they won’t catch Victorio. He’s way too smart for horse sod’jers.”

“Ma Prather and the SP Connected are in west Texas,” I said, giving voice to my fears.

“Then she’s in a hell of a fix, ain’t she, boy?” Bass Reeves said.