The Trail West (16 page)

“You’d better,” growled Smithers, turning his attention back to his cook fire.

“Dev?” Alf asked in a strained voice when they were a decent way off from Smithers’ camp. “How come we couldn’t eat? He was makin’ stew!”

“’Cause he didn’t ask us, that’s why. And we can make our own damn stew,” Dev said, still puzzling over why Smithers was trailing that girl child.

“But have we got any meat? I can shoot some, I think. Can you shoot a fish? Or mayhap we could have frog stew. I hear ’em croakin’ out there!”

Dev closed his eyes for a moment. “There’s ham in my saddlebags. Just shut the hell up and keep ridin’. I mean it!”

The next morning Monahan woke early as usual, and tended the horses while Julia and Sweeney were still asleep. Everything was fine outside, except for the burro. He’d apparently taken exception to the horses, and had climbed up on top of the straw mound to sleep. How he’d gotten up there, Monahan couldn’t figure, but he sure had a dickens of a time talking him down.

By the time he’d finished feeding and watering, Blue was carrying on something awful to rush him along. The dog wanted breakfast right that minute, and Monahan couldn’t say as how he blamed him. The day before had been long and he figured they all were past peckish.

He walked past the corpse out front, just beginning to bloat, and went inside with Blue tagging his heels. Sweeney was awake and sitting up in a chair, but Julia was nowhere in sight. Monahan’s face wrinkled. “Where’s—”

“She found the kitchen. Says it ain’t nothin’ to brag on, but it’ll do,” Sweeney broke in.

At the sound of a bang, they turned toward the back room. A muffled female curse followed, and they turned back toward each other again.

Monahan asked, “You reckon she found a pump back there, too?”

“Must’ve. She said as how she’s makin’ coffee.”

It was good news to his ears, because it meant he was off the hook for making breakfast. He collapsed into a chair, rolled a smoke, lit it, and leaned back. It was a good morning for reflection.

“I was born and raised up on my family’s farm in Iowa,” he began, addressing no one in particular. “They were the Monahans, David and Janine, and they came from Pennsylvania. When I was about twenty, I rode south, toward the Missouri border, to pick up a new milk cow for my ma, except I got waylaid by bad company . . . .”

He rambled on through the years, about Monty’s Raiders and Kathy and the chain gang and all the rest that he remembered—or at least, from what Buckshot Bob had told him. Sweeney had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and let the old man talk himself out, talk it dry and to the bone, and say it all while he remembered it as clear as he was ever going to.

He ended with the burro up on the big pile of straw outside, and the body swelling up in front of the saloon, and then he knit his fingers together behind his head. “And that’s the end of the story.”

“Not yet, it ain’t,” said a cocky young female, who’d entered the main room of the saloon along with the tantalizing scent of fried ham. She rounded the end of the bar, a plate in each hand, and slid them onto the table. “There you go. Fried ham out of a can and some good canned tomatoes I found in the back. Not much to choose from, but then, I figure beggars can’t be choosers. I’ll get the coffee.”

The men didn’t waste any time. They dug right in, and boy, it was good! In fact, Monahan didn’t miss having potatoes or toast one bit. Julia brought out the coffee and her own plate and joined them for the rest of the meal.

Monahan was feeling so chipper he thought he might give old Vince a semblance of a burial today. After all, nothing else was apt to pull his attention away from it. He verbalized the notion to the other two.

“It’s about time,” Julia said flatly.

“Be glad to lend you a hand, Dooley.”

Monahan ignored Julia, but said, “I’d be right appreciative there, Butch. After we let breakfast settle a mite?”

“Sounds good to me.” Sweeney pushed away his empty plate, polished off his cup of coffee, and leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed over his belly. “I could use a nap.”

“Quit statin’ the obvious.” Julia was clearing the table, and snatched up Sweeney’s plate and mug. “You’re practically facedown in your coffee, you slug.”

“Stop it.” Monahan said, hands raised, before they could start in. “Just hold on.”

Julia, hands full of dirty dishes, walked back around the bar and threw Sweeney a dirty look before she disappeared into the back room.

 

 

Monahan and Sweeney were out front, digging the grave, when Julia heard a shot. Alarmed, she started to run out the front of the saloon but was stopped by the old cowboy’s warning shout.

On the ground by the half-dug grave, Sweeney was bleeding. He tried to roll closer to Monahan, who’d managed to roll close to the saloon steps, and was tucked under the narrow lip of the walk.

A second shot missed Sweeney by a foot, but cut a groove into the dirt near his head. He held mostly still after that, but managed to get his gun drawn. He held it low, hugged next to his body.

Julia ran for Monahan’s rifle, which he’d left in the saloon with his saddlebags. She wrestled it free, and quickly locked the building’s back door. Back up to the front, she cocked the rifle and stood at the ready.

And then, nothing happened.

She waited a tense five minutes before she whispered, “Where are they, Dooley?”

A hand slowly rose up from below, at the edge of the walk. It pointed behind her and behind the saloon, then sank back down.

She furrowed her brow. After another quick look around, she softly called the dog. “Blue?”

There was an understated noise, something like a mumbled bark, before the dog entered the saloon by slinking under the batwing doors, setting one of them slightly swinging. Before she knew it, he was pushing his head into her hands. It was hard to take it and hold the rifle at the same time, but she managed. She dropped her head down toward his and whispered, “Who’s out there, Blue? Who’s shootin’ at us?”

Blue licked her face, but didn’t answer her.

She heard a noise from the back of the building. Blue did, too, because he started to growl, low and menacing. The noise was coming from the door she’d just locked. Somebody was trying to break in!

Quickly, she shifted herself and the dog. She leaned back against the front wall and rested the rifle on her knees. She had a straight shot down the back hall to the rear door. Whether he broke the latch or busted in the lone window in the storage room off to the right and crawled in that way, whoever it was would have to walk up that short little hall, and she was convinced he wouldn’t live to get to the end of it.

She might have been only thirteen, but she was bound and determined to be a hundred years’ worth of trouble to anyone who tried to mess with her. Or Dooley, or Butch, or Blue.

From outside, she heard Monahan loudly whisper, “Julia! Julie girl!” and turned toward the sound. There was nothing but wall behind her. To peek under the doors, she’d have to scoot over seven, maybe eight feet, but didn’t want to take her eyes off that back hall.

So she sat where she was, eyes pinned to the rear of the building, and hissed,
“What?”

“Julia! Whatever you do, don’t—”

Bang!
The door burst in. Julia steadied her aim and squeezed the trigger. But the form kept coming at her, and she had to repeat the process.

Blue leaped up and raced toward the crumpled form halfway down the back hall, barking and snarling.

From out front, came Dooley’s whispered, “What the hell’s happenin’ in there?”

“Got ’im!” she almost shouted.

“Got who?”

“Dunno. One of ’em, anyway.” She started to stand, but Dooley’s voice stopped her.

“Don’t move!” came the whispered call, more along the order of a croak.

Julia slumped back to her former position, got the rifle settled on her knees again, then called the dog. He came and she pulled him close, even though he had a bloody front from nosing the corpse. “This time you stay here no matter what,” she said, soft and low.

“I love you, you big dope,” she whispered, one arm around the dog and the other steadying the rifle. “Don’t you go runnin’ between me and that hall. I’m dangerous!”

According to Monahan’s figuring, the remaining Baylor boy was still around the side of the building, biding his time. He could be six inches from the front or six inches from the back, or anywhere in between. And on either side of the building! But wherever he was, Monahan hoped the petty outlaw had heard Julia say she’d killed his brother.

Sweeney was still lying near the grave; leastwise, the beginnings of it. But he was all right, thank God. He had signaled Monahan with his eyes just before that Baylor had taken his last shot.

“Pssst!”

Monahan looked toward the source of the sound.

Sweeney whispered, “He’s walked around the back o’ the saloon. Tell Julia.”

“You coulda told her yourself!”

Butch scowled. “You’re closer.”

“Aw, criminy!” Dooley turned toward the saloon, raised his head, and called out to the girl, again. “Julia! He’s comin’ your way.”

She didn’t answer.

He was about to call to her again when the rifle barked, followed shortly by a pistol shot, followed immediately by another blast from the rifle, and then . . . nothing.

Monahan started to sit straight up, banged his forehead on the walk’s overhang, readjusted, then sat up all the way. “Julia!” he called, rubbing his head. He wondered which astrology sign covered the head, because he was surely bound and determined to bang his up. Wasn’t there a woman up in . . . somewhere, he forgot where . . . who’d drawn up his chart one time? Hadn’t she said . . . He pulled himself back to the present. “Julie, honey, you hear me?”

Preceded by a soft whoosh of parting air, an arrow dug into the dirt not a foot and a half from him. He jumped to the side, but his panic wasn’t long-lived. It turned into downright terror when he realized the arrow piercing the dirt too near him was Apache in origin, just like the next that came whizzing in and sank effortlessly into the hard, clay soil next to it.

Inside, Julia sat in the same place. Wide-eyed, her expression momentarily frozen with shock, her fingers were laced through the thick coat on the dog’s neck and locked into place. Blue had attempted to cross the room after the second rifle shot, but her hand had stilled him.

Down the hall lay the Baylors, sprawled over each other in a dark, back-lit heap. The second one had come in quick, but she’d been ready. He had fired, but he hadn’t hit anything except for an old slate, hung up when the saloon had pretended to offer food.

Her second shot had been the lucky one. Well, lucky for her. She supposed it depended on which end of the lead she was on. She’d been on the fortunate side.

But he wasn’t dead yet. One leg, bent at the knee, kept thumping against the wall. She wasn’t going to go check him, and she couldn’t unlock her fingers from the dog’s coat so that he could go, which he was getting pretty insistent about.

She finally found her voice, and over the dog’s fussing, she called, “I’m all right. But he’s not dead! What do I do?”

Monahan didn’t whisper any longer. “Just keep shootin’ till he stops doin’ whatever it is that’s got you worried.”

“C-can you do it?” For the first time, terror began to seep into her voice. She hadn’t realized how very frightened she was, and the realization only served to frighten her even more.

Monahan didn’t answer her. His attention was drawn elsewhere. “Can you move?” he hissed at Sweeney, who had eyes for nothing but the twin arrows.

“Th-think so,” Sweeney stammered. “I mean, don’t we gotta?”

“Start crawlin’ up toward the steps.”

The young cowboy made slow progress, and when he reached the two steps up to the boardwalk, he took them on his belly. It wasn’t that he was a coward: he just didn’t like to take unnecessary chances. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself.

He felt something kick him in the heel as he dragged himself the last few inches through the bar’s door. Once he was through and clear, he turned over, ready to holler at Monahan for kicking a wounded man. But no one was there. Nothing, but for an arrow, sprouting from the side of the thick heel of his left boot.

Momentarily forgetting himself, he shouted, “Katie, bar the door!” and made another scramble into the saloon. It moved him back another five feet and out of the line of fire from the back hall—down which, a transfixed Julia seemed to be staring. Only the dog initiated any movement. Blue was trying to get away, to move ahead of her and get after something down the hall, but her thin fingers appeared to be threaded through the coat on his neck and locked tight.

From outside, he heard Monahan’s age-rasped voice call, “Butch!”

“Come on ahead!” Sweeney shouted without thinking, then quickly regrouped and dragged himself a few feet farther inside.

It was just in time. Monahan came hurling through those batwing doors like he’d been shot from a cannon’s mouth. Several arrows came right along with him, landing in the floor, the swinging doors, into a stray case of whiskey sitting out on the porch, which exploded on the impact, and the wall just above Sweeney’s lowered head. But not into Monahan.

The thought flitted through Sweeney’s brain that Monahan was too old and corded up, too twisted and petrified, for an arrow to penetrate.

“Where?” Monahan stood just inside the front door.

Julia said, “B-b-back hall.”

He nodded and motioned Sweeney to the far wall. Though the young cowboy paid him no mind, Monahan went toward the bodies. He bent over them for what seemed like hours, during which time Sweeney was roused from his torpor by another arrow that missed his shoulder by inches and sent him scrambling for the far side of the building.

The old cowboy turned toward Julia. “It’s all right, honey. It was just a muscle twitchin’. They’re both dead as a couple o’ fence posts.” He turned to Sweeney. “Get over here, boy, and lemme dig that lead outta you.”

Julia began to cry.