.45-Caliber Cross Fire Read online

  She gritted her teeth, shifted her feet, and aimed the pistol at the man’s head. “What’re you gonna do about it?”

  Sapp stared at her, chewing his thick, blond mustache, a wariness drifting into his eyes.

  “I did what anyone would have done in my position—I got out of there first chance I got,” Flora continued, raging. “What was I supposed to do—stay there and face that Gatling gun all by myself?”

  Sapp held up his hand, palms out. “All right, all right! Put that damn gun down before you hurt yourself.”

  Flora gave a chuff and depressed the hammer but kept the pistol aimed at the lieutenant’s belly. “Don’t think you can soften me up and take this away from me, Sapp. Just cause you can’t see ’em don’t mean I don’t have more like it, and a tiny little knife I keep filed to a sharp edge.”

  Sapp raked a laugh, then winced and clutched his bloody shoulder. “Where you camped?”

  “Up yonder.”

  “Help me get the wagon off the road. Then I hope your nursin’ skills are as good as your bad-girl skills, ’cause you’re gonna have to burn this shoulder closed.”

  Flora looked at the wagon, feeling relief they’d lost only two more freighters instead of three more. That meant more money in her pockets. And she was also relieved to not be spending the night alone out here…

  Just to keep Sapp on his heels, she curled her upper lip with menace. “Don’t think you can order me around, you son of a bitch,” she said, shoving her pistol down hard into her holster.

  She reached up into the driver’s boot to release the wagon brake before tramping up toward the front of the mule team and leading it into the brush.

  The bowie knife’s silver blade glowed red, throbbing like a miniature sun, as Flora lifted it out of the fire’s flames and pressed it against the ragged, bloody wound in Sapp’s left shoulder.

  The lieutenant chomped down hard on his leather glove, throwing his head back and tensing until the muscles in his neck stood out like ropes.

  “P.U.!” Flora exclaimed, holding the hot knife against the wound, the smoke wafting away from it rife with the smell of scorched blood and skin. “That stinks worse than anything I ever smelled before!”

  Sapp mewled and groaned, his chest quivering.

  Flora held the knife against the wound, looking with unabashed delight up into Sapp’s agonized face. When he started to jerk his shoulders around and lower his head to glare at her, she pulled the knife away from the wound.

  “There you go, that oughta do it,” Flora said. “Don’t say I never did nothin’ for you, Dave. That’s a nasty business, cauterizing a bullet wound.”

  Sapp let the glove drop out of his mouth as he stared down at her, leaning against a rock at the edge of their camp beneath the sheltering western ridge. “Flora, I do believe you enjoyed that.”

  “I reckon I just enjoy helpin’ those in need. Probably should have been a nurse, if my old man would have let me be anything but his chambermaid.” Flora held the knife in the fire’s flames and watched the blood sizzle along the blade. “I reckon that’s what I should be doin’ ’stead of runnin’ around down here in Mexico with you curly wolves.”

  His body shuddering from spasming pain, his shoulder still sizzling, Sapp grabbed her arm and pulled her toward him and kissed her. “I think you like running around down here in Mexico with us curly wolves, Flora.” He kissed her again, hard. “Purely, I do!”

  She groaned against the pressure of his strong hand and pulled away from him, but it was with a jeering laugh that she said, “Don’t strain yourself, Dave. You’re in no condition to try sparkin’ me. Besides…” She held the knife up and slowly, lovingly cleaned the blade with a burlap cloth. “…I’m spoken for. Once we’ve sold the guns to Cuesta, Beers and me are gonna get hitched in Mexico City.”

  Sapp laughed painfully as he turned his head to inspect his shoulder. “You think so, do you?”

  “Sure,” she said with feinged insouciance. “You aren’t jealous, are you, Dave?”

  Sapp stood and pulled up his balbriggan top, then drew on his blue wool army shirt, moving easily to avoid straining his shoulder. “What if I said I was, Flora?” He stood and faced her as he buttoned the shirt. “What if I said I wanted you for myself?”

  Flora slid the knife into its sheath—she’d stolen both from a whiskey trader while the man had been passed out one afternoon in the noncommissioned officers’ quarters at Fort Bryce. She’d fleeced the Merwin Hulbert from an Apache scout, her proudest conquest. Leaning back against the rock Sapp had been resting against, she entwined her hands behind her head and crossed her ankles.

  “Well, to that I’d say, what do you have to offer?” Flora tittered. “I mean, besides what Beers offers on a nightly basis.”

  “I ’spect I can offer you more than what Beers is offerin’ you, little girl.” Sapp withdrew a bottle from his saddlebags, popped the cork with his teeth, and spat the cork into the fire as he sat down beside the dancing flames. “A whole lot more.” He tipped back the bottle, took three long swallows, and grinned. “Want me to show you?”

  “Keep it in your pants, mister. This little girl is interested in more than trouser snakes.” The image of the stocky blond pilgrim, Massey, floated behind her eyes, and disappointment twinged in her lower belly. She’d enjoyed her time with him, brief as it was, and she’d been hoping for more, though she’d wanted him to come around for it. She’d wanted him to need her, because there was nothing quite like having a man need you like a sip of water in a parched desert.

  That was one good thing that life had taught her—the glorious feeling of being desired.

  But, regarding Massey, it hadn’t been only the physical stuff she’d been thinking about. She’d thought maybe she could bring Cuno into her plans for Beers… for after they’d met and been paid by General Cuesta. She supposed it was best she found out about him now—how easily he could be turned from one side to the other—rather than later. That he was no more trustworthy than Beers, whom she was certain would throw her out like an empty bottle as soon as he’d had his fill of her, and no doubt take her cut of the gold.

  It was hard to find a man you could trust any farther than you could throw him uphill against a cyclone. Unfortunately, however, she needed one. The West was a big, lonely, dangerous place without one, though having one was often like sleeping beside a whole nest of diamondbacks.

  Sapp took another deep pull from the bottle and leaned on his good arm, wincing at the pain in his left shoulder. “What sparks your fancy, Miss Flora? Just name it, and”—he snapped his thumb—“it’s yours.”

  Flora leaned forward and grabbed the bottle out of his hand. “Don’t play me for a fool. You’re just horny tonight, Dave.”

  “I’m horny every night, Flora. And it ain’t easy, watchin’ you and Beers drift off to your private little camp in the brush, like you do.”

  Flora tipped the bottle back. The whiskey raked across her throat like sharp nails, and she choked but took another pull, knowing that the more she drank the easier it was to keep it all down. And the warm feeling it would give her. After her second pull, she handed the bottle back to Sapp and ran the back of her hand across her mouth. “That shit’s worse than the swill at Bryce!”

  “That there come from Tucson!”

  “It’s still shit.”

  “Never mind the whiskey.” Sapp scuttled over and sat beside her, leaning against the rock. She could feel the warmth of him against her arm and hip, and she found herself liking it despite the horse and sweat smell of the man, and the smell of harsh Mexican tobacco. “Let me tell you about my plans for the future.”

  Flora glanced at him in mock surprise. “Imagine that—a man with plans!”

  “No foolin’ now, Flora. I aim to take my cut of the gold and head up to Montana. That’s where I was born and raised and still have some family. Well, one uncle, anyways. He runs a ranch and wants to expand it and bring more cattle up from the Nations and even run so
me blooded horse stock. Maybe Thoroughbreds.”

  “Those are some mighty tall plans, Dave. I never figured you for the settlin’-down sort.”

  “You ain’t known me all that long, Flora. Me—I aim to make something of myself before it’s all said and done. This army wasn’t no place for me. To tell the truth, both me an’ Beers joined up to avoid a posse in Abilene.”

  “No!”

  “Sure as hell we did. But we had a work ethic, so we moved up fast in the ranks.”

  “And officers are sorta in short supply on the frontier,” Flora added, willing to put up with only so much bullshit.

  “All right, all right. Now, it’s a nice night out here—ain’t it? No reason to be nasty.”

  “Sorry,” Flora said, taking the bottle. “It’s just in my nature.”

  “What I’m tryin’ to say, Flora, is… I’m gonna need… want… a woman to join me up in Montana. I don’t mean just to cook and clean and to tussle with at night—but a woman to, you know, raise a family with. Spend my life with.”

  Flora tried to look genuinely surprised and pleased. “Why, Dave! That’s so sweet. But… what about Beers? You ain’t thinkin’ I’d play an angle on him with you, are you?”

  “You don’t think he ain’t playin’ an angle on you?” Sapp looked at her askance, one eye squinted. “Come on, Flora. Just between you an’ me, the longest Beers ever stayed with one woman—and I know him better’n anyone, as we hid out together for three years right here in the Mexican desert—was six months. And she was a whore, and we was stuck all winter in the Sierra Madres with nothin’ to do but play cards, drink whiskey, watch the rain and snow fall, and, if you’ll pardon my tongue, fuck.”

  “Six months, huh? Don’t you think he might’ve loved her just a little?”

  “Hah!”

  Sapp took the bottle back, took another pull, and sighed as he stared thoughtfully into the fire. Neither he nor Flora said anything for a long time.

  Then Flora leaned forward to toss another mesquite log on the fire, and said, quietly, timidly, “Where is this ranch you’re talkin’ about, Dave? Where in Montana? Is it purty country?”

  “Purty country?” Sapp handed her the bottle. “Hell, it’s on the Yellowstone River, in the shadow of the Absorky Mountains. Country don’t get no purtier’n that.”

  Flora took another drink and smacked her lips. It was going down easier now. And she was feeling as though she’d been wrapped in purple velvet.

  “What about Beers?”

  “You let me worry about Beers.”

  “You know what, Dave?”

  “What’s that?”

  Flora threw her leg over him, straddling him and grabbing his shirt collar in her fists. “I think you’ll do, Dave.”

  Sapp chuckled, winced at the pain in his shoulder.

  “That hurt?”

  “Just a little.”

  “Don’t worry.” Gently, she slid her butt down the length of him until she was straddling his knees. She leaned forward and began unbuckling his cartridge belt, smiling up at him coquettishly. “Flora knows just what you need.”

  Sapp chuckled as she opened his pants and stuck her hand through the fly of his balbriggans.

  Finding what she’d been seeking, she smiled up at him again, devilishly. Then she lowered her head.

  “Oooh… th-that’s good,” Sapp said, rolling his eyes up. “That’s real, real… good.”

  17

  ASLEEP ON THE padre’s front gallery, Cuno felt something touch his side. Instantly, even before he’d opened his eyes, his right hand reached for the Colt .45 in the holster he’d placed beside him. He closed his hand around the ivory grips, but he could not pull the gun from its holster.

  A moccasined foot pressed down on it hard.

  Cuno blinked. His heart hammering, he trailed his bleary gaze up from the moccasin to a narrow, copper-brown ankle and slender shin and then up past the knee to a well-turned thigh, smooth as whipped butter and broad and taut with horse-riding muscle, to a scrap of unadorned deerhide skirt. From there he saw the vest, the bare shoulders, the grizzly claw necklace, and the medicine pouch nestling in the deep cleavage.

  He trailed the long, slender neck up to the regal face with the long, clean nose and chocolate eyes that stared down at him without a trace of emotion.

  Cuno tensed, nerves firing, as though he were about to have his throat cut.

  “The old man,” she said softly, tonelessly, canting her head toward the cabin. “He says to wake you. The sun is up.”

  “Oh, he does, does he?”

  “He says you’re going with us.”

  In the same pitch and tone, Cuno said, “Oh, he does, does he?”

  The door opened behind Fire Eyes, and the haggard old lawman’s stooped frame filled the low doorway, a stone mug smoking in his gnarled, age-spotted brown hand. “Rise an’ shine, sprout. I need a deputy, and you’re it!”

  Cuno groaned as he sat up and ran both hands roughly through his hair, trying to clear the cobwebs. “You’re memory’s as sour as your ticker, Spurr. I’m an escaped convict from a federal penitentiary and a fugitive from justice.”

  “Let’s not split hairs.”

  Spurr crouched and held the coffee mug out to Cuno, then turned back into the shack. When he returned, he had another mug of the black, steaming brew in his hand, and as he walked over to the edge of the gallery steps, he blew on it and sipped and smacked his lips. “That’s good coffee. You get to be my age and in my condition, you get so’s you appreciate a simple cup of coffee on a cool Mexican morning.”

  Cuno took a sip, half consciously taking note of the taste, then heaved himself to his feet and stomped into one boot and then the other. Spurr looked at him. “So, what’s your answer?”

  “I didn’t know it was a question. Sounded like an order to me.”

  “Come on, kid—I know you well enough to know you don’t take orders from no one. I need a deputy. A partner. Whatever the hell you want to call it. Someone to back my play.”

  Cuno took another sip of his coffee and stared off across the sloping yard and through the scattered sage and pinyons toward the back of the church, which he could just make out in the dim light of the predawn. “What is your play, anyway?”

  “I want to intercept that wagon train before it gets to this General Cuesta the Yaqui girl told us about. And I want justice for my old buddy, Abel Hammerlich. Which means if I can’t haul any of those other killers back to the border, I’m gonna try like hell to haul her back.”

  Cuno looked at him in disbelief. He snorted a laugh. “You’re one man. If I go, we’re two men. Against a good fifteen, and the Mexican Federales.”

  “What other pressing business you got down here?”

  “Livin’.”

  “Take it from me, kid,” Spurr said, clamping a hand over Cuno’s right shoulder. “Just livin’ is overrated. It’s how you live that counts.”

  Cuno gave another snort and took another sip of the coffee.

  “I done already took out three wagons and five badmen.” Spurr winked. “That’s upped our odds.”

  “Two wagons and four badmen.”

  “What?”

  “One of ’em must’ve been playin’ possum, because when I went over to the barn to get my horse, one man was gone.” Cuno looked at Spurr pointedly. “One man and one wagon.”

  “Well, hell, kid—why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

  Cuno hiked a shoulder and finished his coffee in two long gulps. “Didn’t think much about it yesterday. Hell, I guess I was still sort of on the other side. To tell you the truth, old man, all this sort of has my mind spinning. I came down here to get away from trouble. Then I join up with them and run into you, and now you want me to throw in with you to go after them!”

  Spurr grinned. “It’s an exciting life you got, kid.”

  Cuno was rolling his blankets and muttering to himself.

  “So, what do you say?”

  Cuno
donned his hat and wrapped his shell belt around his waist. “I reckon it wouldn’t be right to let a senile old codger ride off to get himself killed. I’ll throw in with you, but just till you see the odds are stacked tit-high against us and agree to turn your wrinkled old ass for home.”

  “Good ’nough. Come on inside. The padre’s cooked us up some eggs and frijoles. We’ll shovel some down, saddle up, and hit the trail in a half hour.”

  Cuno set his blanket roll near his saddlebags, which he’d draped over the porch rail. His rifle leaned against a near porch post. He looked around the yard, which the gray light was slowly revealing.

  “Where’s Fire Eyes?”

  Spurr looked around, then, too.

  “Who knows? Maybe she got tired of all our palaver.”

  “Think she ran out on us?”

  “Doubt it,” Spurr said, looking around the yard. “She woke me a half hour ago by putting a cold bowie knife to my neck.” He chuckled. “She’s in a hurry to get on the trail, I reckon. Might already be scoutin’ it.” He arched a brow at Cuno. “Not sure where she spent the night. Out here with you, maybe?”

  “I’m alive, ain’t I?”

  “Right.”

  Spurr ambled on inside the shack.

  A fine drizzle began to fall just after sunup, and a thin ground fog moved like white snakes amongst the brush and cacti.

  In the gray, wet morning, Cuno and Spurr followed the wagon tracks away from the livery barn and into the western desert. Unshod hoofprints scored the trail before them, between the two fresh wheel furrows. Fire Eyes’s tracks.

  “That girl has pluck,” Spurr said. “Ridin’ out here all alone. Any man with a gun would shoot a Yaqui, even a pretty one like herself, on sight.”

  They followed the tracks through a canyon and to the edge of an arroyo, where they became confusing and overlaid, as though the wagon had left the trail and then turned onto it again. The arroyo was about half full of swirling, clay-colored water.

  Renegade whinnied a shrill warning. Cuno palmed his .45 and clicked the hammer back. He stared across the arroyo, in the same direction in which Renegade was staring, twitching an ear. Spurr slid his old, brass-framed Winchester from its boot and levered a shell into the chamber one-handed.