The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 17

Oates moved instantly. He grabbed a rifle and threw the other to Stella.

“Get down!” he yelled.

Bullets probed into the cave, whining off the rock walls. Oates saw a puff of smoke among the pine trees and fired into it, then dusted two fast shots to the left and right. He was rewarded by a yelp of pain and a string of curses.

“Nellie!” Lorraine yelled. “Are you hit?”

“I’m hit bad,” the woman answered.

“Where?”

“Don’t be such a whore, Lorraine.”

“Where?”

“In the ass!”

“Stay where you are.”

“Hell, I’m not going anywhere with a shot-up ass.”

Stella looked across at Oates. “See anything?”

He shook his head.

“You burned one of them. I didn’t think you could shoot like that.”

“Old Jacob taught me.”

“We could do with old Jacob here right now.”

“He’s dead.”

The rain was falling harder and Oates studied the terrain around him. Where was Sammy Tatum? He saw no sign of the boy, or anyone else.

A few minutes passed, and a voice called out from the trees. “You in the cave!”

“What do you want?” Stella yelled.

“Miss McWilliams wants the money you bitches stole from her.”

“Go to hell!” Stella hollered. “We earned that money for three months of slavery.”

“That was none of Miss McWilliams’ doing,” the voice yelled back.

“She did her share!”

Bullets whined into the cave again and Lorraine cried out as splinters of rock tore across her cheek. From outside Nellie’s voice rose in a terrified shout.

“Help me, somebody! They’re shooting at me!”

“Here, take this.” Oates passed his rifle to Lorraine.

“Where are you going?”

“To get Nellie.”

“You’ll get killed if you go out there.”

“And Nellie will get killed if I don’t.”

Lorraine opened her mouth to object, but Oates, Colt in his hand, was already up and running.

Nellie was lying at the base of the ridge, her back pressed against the rock. He kneeled by her side just as a man wearing a black-and-white cowhide vest jumped up from the pines, aiming his rifle.

Oates took a snap shot, fired again, and the man staggered backward, then fell.

“Get up on my shoulder, Miss Nellie,” Oates said, his old way of addressing the woman coming to him naturally.

The girl was petite and slim, but she was still a considerable weight. As Oates got to his feet, Nellie over his shoulder, he was grateful for his three months of hard labor at Black Mountain.

He turned and stumbled back to the cave, thumbing off a couple of shots into the pines along the way. Lorraine and Stella opened fire, laying down a covering barrage.

Oates carried the girl to the back of the cave and set her gently on the ground. He turned to Lorraine. “Better see to her,” he said.

The woman nodded. “You’ve come a long way, Eddie. Thank you.”

Oates smiled. “I’ve still got a long road to travel.”

He took the rifle from Lorraine and bellied beside Stella. His eyes searched the pines for movement, but he saw nothing but the falling rain.

Minutes passed before Oates turned his eyes to the woman. “Tell me about the money,” he said.

“Sure. I took it, all I could grab.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. Could be five thousand in gold. We never counted it.”

“Why?”

“Wages, if you can put a dollar amount on rape and slavery.” Stella read something in Oates’ eyes. “Go on, tell me you can’t rape a two-dollar whore.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. I didn’t even think it.”

As though she hadn’t heard, Stella said, “When a man takes pleasure in a woman’s pain, it’s rape, whether she be a fine lady in a mansion or a whore working the line.”

“Now I think that maybe five thousand wasn’t enough,” Oates said.

“You got that right, Mister.”

Oates looked back into the cave. “How is she?” he asked.

“The bullet is in deep,” Lorraine said. “We’ll have to dig it out of there.”

“You’re jealous, Lorraine,” Nellie said. “Because you got a big ass, you want to cut up mine. You’re such a whore.”

In a surprisingly gentle voice, Lorraine said, “You hush and lie quiet, child. You’ve lost a lot of blood and I don’t want you losing more.”

“I could sure use some of that coffee,” Nellie said.

“We’ll get you some. Real soon.”

“You in the cave!”

“What do you want?” Stella yelled.

“Is that you, Stella?”

“It’s me.”

“This is Clem, Stella. You know what I can do to you. I can hurt you real bad, honey. Now, throw out the money and we’ll ride away from here, and what’s done will be done and forgotten and there’s an end to it.”

Stella threw the Winchester to her shoulder and fired into the trees. “There’s your answer!” she yelled.

“I’m coming for you, Stella. And I’ll hurt you bad, bitch.”

Angrily the woman levered another round, but Oates stretched out a hand and stopped her. “Save ammunition,” he said. “If you can’t see him, you can’t shoot him.”

As the morning gave way to afternoon, the rain stopped and the clouds parted. The motionless sun hung in the sky, cobwebbed with rays of blazing yellow, and the day grew hot, the drying rain turning to steam. Only now and then did a stealthy wind blow a cooling breeze into the cave.

Leaving his rifle with Stella, Oates crawled back to check on Nellie. The girl was very pale and an hour ago had ceased to complain about her wound, her words fading into a silence. Now her blond head lay on Lorraine’s lap and she looked like a child in sleep.

“The bullet has got to come out and soon,” Lorraine said. “If blood poisoning sets in, we’ll lose her.”

The wound looked bad, red and inflamed against the white of Nellie’s hip, a single azure vein showing under the skin.

“Let’s get it done,” Oates said. “Stella can keep watch.”

Oates had carried a Green River knife since his first day at the lava rock workings. He slid the blade from the sheath on his belt and looked at his hands.

“They’re steady enough,” Lorraine said. “If you’re steady enough.”

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Oates said.

“So now you’ve got it to do, Mr. Oates.”

Throwing a couple of pieces of wood on the fire, Oates waited until they were burning well, then shoved the knife blade into the flames.

“I saw a doctor do this one time before a cutting,” he said. “I don’t remember when or where or why.”

“Whiskey is better,” Lorraine said. “You pour it over the blade. But we got none o’ that.”

“No, we got none o’ that,” Oates said.

The blade was glowing hot. He removed it from the flames and let it cool in his hand. His mouth was dry and his belly was lurching. He met Lorraine’s faded brown eyes. “Hold her,” he said.

He bent his head to his task.

The knife had to cut deep and Nellie woke, screaming. Oates was aware of the single, horrified glance Stella threw in his direction. He wiped sweat from his eyes with his sleeve and dug deeper.

He felt the tip of the blade scrape bone and Nellie began to thrash, shrieking louder. To add to Oates’ problems, bullets slammed into the cave, ricocheting off the walls with a venomous spaaang!

Stella was firing steadily and levered the rifle dry. She immediately reached out and took up the other Winchester. With his left hand, Oates unbuckled his cartridge belt and holster and tossed it to the woman. “Load the rifles from the loops,” he said.

He did not wait to see the woman’s reaction. He worked his knife again, and, as Lorraine held Nellie down, finally dug out the bullet, bringing gory flesh and skin with it.

It looked to Oates that the wound he’d made was enormous, a huge, gaping hole in the woman’s hip that immediately filled with blood.

“I’ll see to her now,” Lorraine whispered, her voice husky. “You’d better help Stella.”

Oates nodded. Then his eyes met the woman’s. “I butchered her,” he said.

“You did your best.”

“It wasn’t near good enough,” Oates said. He felt sick and exhausted and under his coat his shirt was sodden with sweat. He bellied down beside Stella and took up his rifle.

“It’s loaded,” the woman said. She did not ask about Nellie. The pain in Oates’ eyes told her all she needed to know.

“Did you hit anybody?” Oates asked.

“No, but I came close, close enough that they turned tail and scampered into the trees again, Clem Halleck leading the way.

“They’ll be back.”

“Count on it,” Stella said.