Wild to the Bone (2 page)

2

M
iss Downing, cowering on
the seat in the stage's opposite corner, screamed again. The Merwin & Hulbert cracked and flashed on the heels of the stage's violent pitch to the left. It seemed a well-placed rock under the coach wheel had saved Haskell's life, for the .41-caliber slug flew a good seven inches to the left of his head.

Bear didn't let the hardcase cock the Merwin & Hulbert again. He jabbed Green Checks twice in the mouth with his fist—hard, resounding smacks that sent the man falling against the forward seat, his lower face looking as though someone had basted it with a ripe tomato.

The pocket pistol dropped from his hand and thudded to the floor.

“Son of a
bitch
!” the owlhoot cried, trying to heave himself up off the seat to the right of the cowering, screaming girl.

Bear let the man get himself into a half-standing position before he buried his other fist in the man's gut so deep he nearly felt the man's spine rake his knuckles. The man jackknifed forward with a violent chuff of expelled air.

Haskell then smashed his knee into the man's nose and grabbed the back of his collar, jerking him forward and sideways and then hurling him through the door on the opposite side of the stage from where the first man had exited.

The owlhoot was a long, downward-arcing blur of green as he tumbled onto the trail to bounce and roll and disappear in a cloud of roiling, tan-colored dust.

“What the fuck is goin' on down there?” Bear heard the jehu, Earl Holliman, scream from up in the driver's boot.

Haskell fell back against the rear seat to keep the pitching stage from hurling him through one of the two open doors and shouted, “Lightened your load a little, Earl.”

“Riders ahead!” the driver called.

Haskell felt the stage begin to slow slightly.

He saw his prized Yellowboy repeater sliding along the floor toward the door and grabbed it just as it was about to tumble onto the trail. Falling back against the rear seat again, he pumped a live round into the chamber and shouted, “Don't stop, Earl! It's a holdup! Keep them horses movin' toward Montrose!”

“A holdup?” the girl cried, clinging to one of the four hand straps jostling from the ceiling. “Oh, my God—it's a
holdup
!”

That last came out in such an ear-rattlingly shrill scream that Haskell didn't hear what the driver said next, although he'd heard him shout something. And then the man bellowed, “
He-yahh! He-yahh!
Git up there, you cayuses!”

Old Holliman's voice had been pitched especially loud and high with anxiety. That made a cold stone drop in the Pinkerton's belly.

Even before Haskell threw himself up to the left-side doorframe, the unlatched door flapping like a wing before him, he knew that he was going to see something he didn't like. And no, he didn't at all care to see those half-dozen well-armed riders sitting in the trail only about fifty yards ahead of the lead horses.

Haskell didn't like that at all, despite it not being much of a surprise.

As the stage barreled toward the mounted tough nuts, all of whom were wielding carbines and had
bandanas
drawn up over their mouths and noses, the group wheeled their mounts off both sides of the trail. They'd been expecting the stage to stop, and now that they saw it picking up speed, they yelled and shouted,
bandanas
billowing in and out, and raised their carbines.

Haskell dropped to a knee and poked the barrel of his own rifle out the door, drawing a bead on one of the would-be robbers, firing, drawing a bead on another, and firing again. He watched two men fly out of their saddles, although because the stage was pitching so violently, only the first had been one of the two he'd aimed at.

The other had taken a wild round, but that was all right.

He'd take whatever he could get.

As the lead horses drew abreast of the shouting, milling outlaws—there were four on the left side of the trail, maybe five or six on the other side—Haskell racked another round. But before he could squeeze off the shot, the stagecoach pitched again violently, and he heard himself yowl as he was thrown back off his knees to hit the floor on his back. He was vaguely aware of the rataplan of rifles and the screaming of horses and the yelling of men as the stage pitched again.

There was another, nearer scream, and suddenly, the girl was on top of Haskell, her hair like silk snakes in his mouth and eyes and between his lips, her breasts flattened against his chest, her groin grinding against his belly.

The girl continued to scream and thrash against Bear, and he was only somewhat surprised and vaguely chagrined to realize that even at such a dire time, his manhood was responding to the girl's warm, supple body on top of his.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” the girl cried, continuing to grind against him as though in a carnal frenzy.

The shooting continued.

As Haskell elbowed the girl off of him and onto the floor, he heard Earl Holliman cry, “Oh, ya mangy dungbeetle!” Out the carriage's left side window, Haskell saw a bald man with a billowy yellow neckerchief drop briefly into view, followed by a tan Stetson hat, before old Holliman hit the ground outside the flapping door, bounced once, and rolled out of sight behind the carriage.

A dynamite-like blast sounded from up on the roof.

There was a scream, and Haskell whipped his head around to see one of the riders go tumbling backward off his mount. As the now-riderless horse angled off away from the trail, there was another blast—the second barrel of the shotgun rider's ten-gauge coach gun—and another rider's face turned bright red as the man's hat flew off to be followed by the man's head itself.

The headless rider stayed in the saddle for another three or four strides before his hands opened, the reins dropped, and the headless corpse sagged to the right and dropped off its horse to roll into the rocks and cactus.

There was more shooting from galloping riders on both sides of the trail. A sharp grunt from the top of the coach cut through the cacophony. Haskell winced, knowing the shotgun rider had had his ticket punched.

A shadow dropped down the right side of the stage, a hat blowing off in the wind. The shotgun messenger hit the ground with a crunching
thump
, and Haskell watched in wide-eyed shock and dread as the dead man rolled wildly, limbs flailing, into the rocks and sage beyond the trail.

Meanwhile, the stage seemed to be picking up speed. The short hairs on the back of Bear's neck pricked eerily, for he suddenly realized that the stage was beginning to fishtail as the horses, frightened by the gunfire, were galloping hell-for-leather, without anyone holding the ribbons or in any control at all.

“Unhand me, you brigand!” the girl cried, sitting up with her back to the rear seat and giving Haskell a hard shove.

He looked at her, realizing after the fact that he'd pinned her back for her own safety against the seat, his forearm pressed across her ample bust. Her shirtwaist had been pulled down far enough that part of one tender, pink nipple was showing. Her skirt had blown up to expose one long, silk-stockinged leg, a pink garter belt, and a little tuft of pubic hair peeking out her panties.

Haskell lowered his arm. The girl wasn't doing anything for him anymore. Good. That meant he wasn't a
total
animal. Realizing that he was aboard a runaway stage, with three—no, four—owlhoots still galloping after him and flinging lead at him was better than a bucket of icy snowmelt thrown directly on his crotch.

“Grab onto somethin' and hold on tight!” Haskell shouted as he reached for his Yellowboy near the left doorjamb.

“Oh, my God!” Miss Downing cried, stretching her arms out along the edge of the seat behind her, her lithe body flopping around like windblown wash on a line. “There's no driver, is there? I saw him fall, and if he fell, and the shotgun rider is gone
as well
 . . .”

“Just hold on tight, Miss Downing!”

Haskell racked a live round into the Winchester's breech. He looked out both sides of the stage.

Both doors banged against the doorframe as the stage pitched and swayed, rocks clanging off the iron-shod wheels. Four owlhoots remained, two galloping just off the carriage's left rear wheel, the other two galloping off its right rear wheel. They were too busy trying to catch up to the runaway team—and the strongbox chained to the roof—to continue firing.

Planting one of his size-thirteen boots against the coach's rear seat and pressing a shoulder against the doorframe on the coach's left side, Haskell pressed the rear stock of his Winchester against his shoulder, laid a bead on one of the two riders galloping on that side of the stage, and promptly emptied the man's saddle.

He emptied the saddle of the other horse and then swung around to the stage's opposite side.

Both riders over there, having watched another two of their party tumble off into the dirt, their riderless horses galloping off away from the trail, shaking their heads miserably, suddenly drew rein, staring incredulously after the stage. They curveted their mounts in the trail and grew smaller and smaller beyond the roiling dust cloud.

Apparently, they no longer liked the odds.

Or maybe they were going to let the runaway team finish their business for them and then ride in and scoop the strongbox out of the wreckage . . .

Not if Haskell could help it.

Still sitting on the floor with her arms stretched along the edge of the rear seat, Miss Downing looked to both sides and cried, “Oh, my God
—we've left the trail!
”

Haskell jerked a look out both flopping doors. They were hammering across a relatively flat stretch of low grass and tangled sage tufts, buttes rising in the far distance. Glancing at the ground nearer the coach's churning wheels, he saw only more grass and low-growing sage over which the wheels were bouncing raucously, breaking off sage branches and throwing them up behind the rear luggage boot.

Bear looked behind the coach to see the stage trail they'd been on now forming a slender, pale, horizontal line behind them, dipping around behind a sandstone-capped butte.

Another stone dropped in Haskell's belly. This one colder than before.

The girl was right. Something had caused the team to leave the trail. Where they were headed now only the good Lord knew, and he wasn't telling.

“So we have,” he said, his bemused tone belying the dread twisting his innards in a knot. “So we have.”

As he stowed his rifle behind the forward seat, he glanced at Miss Downing, who now had her eyes squeezed closed and was silently moving her lips in prayer.

“Send up one for this old sinner, will you, girl?” Bear moved to the right-side door, gave his back to the passing countryside, the rushing wind blowing his thick dark brown hair around his big sunburned head, and winked. “Unless you don't want the association.”

He looked up over the edge of the coach's roof, spied the brass rail running along the side, and then glanced once more at the pretty girl, whose hair had come undone from its French braid and was now bouncing prettily atop her slender shoulders. “For that I wouldn't blame you one bit.”

He leaped up and grabbed the rail and said through a strained grunt, “Nope, wouldn't blame you one damn bit. But you hold on, now, hear?”

He began to hoist himself up with his powerful arms and shoulders. But before he could throw a knee over the rail, the stage tipped toward him hard, and his legs went flying out into the rushing air.

One hand was ripped free of the rail, and it, too, went whipping out into the rushing wind.

Miss Downing screamed, “Doomed! Oh, God, I'm
doooomed
!”

3

H
askell managed somehow to
keep his left hand wrapped around the rail. He could feel that hand slipping, however, as the wind became a hundred stout arms trying to rip him off the bouncing coach and hurl him into the rocks and sage.

Again, Miss Downing screamed. “You fool! Oh, you fool! What are you
doing
, crazy man?”

Haskell pulled his right arm out of the wind's taut grasp and wrapped that hand around the rail. By now, the coach had settled back onto all four wheels, and he was hanging nearly straight down the side of the carriage, the door beating him like a jealous lover.

As he began to pull himself up over the edge of the roof once more, he said through a grunt, veins bulging in his temples, “Just tryin' to pull our fat out of the fire, my peach.”

With a louder grunt, he hoisted himself up until he'd locked his arms above the rail. He swung his right boot over, and then the left one, and then he rolled his big body over the rail and onto the roof. He lay on his back, breathing hard. He took about three seconds to catch his breath before rising to all fours.

Hunkered near the stout lockbox chained to the rails, he stared out over the driver's seat, which was splattered with blood, and over the team still galloping as though the devil's hounds were nipping at their hocks. He squinted against the dust and bits of grass and sage being thrown up by the hammering hooves. The warm midsummer wind blew his hair.

Another heavy, cold, sharp-edged stone dropped in his guts, made his intestines flatten, spread, and writhe.

The team was lunging toward a canyon that cut a dark line in the rolling, high-altitude prairie before them, a half-mile away but sliding toward them fast. With every foot the team dragged the stage farther to the west, the canyon seemed to open like the jaws of a giant steel trap.

The sight of that trap opening wider and wider caused Haskell to grow light in the head. His knees and his toes tingled as he imagined the plunge of the team and the two-thousand-pound coach into the canyon. Him, the girl, the money he was guarding—all scattered like matchsticks and pummeled to cherry jelly.

Instantly, he bolted forward and leaped down into the driver's boot. He looked around for the lines and had another dark moment when he saw all six ribbons tattered and broken and dragging along the ground, popping up from the scissoring hooves like striking black rattlers.

Since Bear had no time to shake his clenched fists at the heavens, he stepped over the dashboard and balanced there on the slight steel ledge over the front axle, watching the ground slide past in a green-brown blur beneath him.

Grounding his heels on the ledge, he steadied himself and looked at the horse nearest him.

Knowing he didn't have time to think about the damn fool thing he was about to do—and knowing that if he thought about it, he wouldn't do it and might only piss his pants—he eased himself down onto the tongue, which was bouncing like a canoe on a storm-tossed sea. He'd barely gotten his weight onto it before he let its upward thrust propel him up onto the back of the left wheeler.

The horse's back was frothed with silver sweat and slick as hell. He almost slid over the wheeler's left side but managed to reach up and grab the leather collar and hang on for dear life while the horse's back pitched beneath him more violently than the stage had. The horse's wild thrusts set up an ache in Bear's balls, and he used the pain to help propel him onto his hands and knees and then to a crouched standing position atop the horse's withers.

What in Sam Hill is Alma Haskell's middle boy doin' now?
he asked himself as his heart turned somersaults in his chest.

There was no backing out now. Nowhere to go but down . . .

He funneled every ounce of his considerable strength into his ankles and legs and heaved himself up and over the wheeler's bouncing head. It was hard to gauge how hard to throw himself from one wildly moving horse to another, but he landed on the back of the swing horse up near the animal's neck.

For a mind-numbing second, he almost fell down the sweat-slick horse's right flank, but, grabbing the horse's collar, harness straps, and mane, he managed to right himself, spitting dirt and bits of chopped sage from his lips and blinking it out of his eyes.

Clinging to the swing horse's collar, he lowered his head and sucked a shallow breath against the javelin of sharp pain ripping through both his tender oysters, and then he rose again to a crouch before making a last, what he hoped would be death-defying leap.

The canyon was less than sixty yards before him, near enough to see the eroded opposite wall and the thin stream twisting along the bottom. A couple of white water birds were sunning themselves on a slender sandbar, and a blue heron was just then winging up from a nest of shrubs toward the crest of the opposite ridge.

Wider and wider the chasm grew, so that he could see more and more of the bottom.

“Holy shit!” Haskell shouted, and he lunged forward to grab the ribbons dangling from the puller's bit.

He drew back on the reins gently at first, so the horse wouldn't take a header. Then, when he felt the horse slowing, he drew back with more pressure, yelling, “Whoaa, there, hoss!
Whooo-ahhhhhh!
”

The puller shook its head belligerently, not liking having a man on its back, much less tugging on its bit. Nevertheless, it slowed, and the one to the right of it also slowed. All the others followed suit.

Still, the canyon yawned before Haskell, who kept his fear-bright eyes on it as the horses continued to run toward it, seemingly oblivious to the danger that lay twenty, fifteen, ten yards ahead.

Nothin' dumber than a goddamn hoss!

Hunkered low against the puller's sweat-slick neck, pressing his left cheek into the foamy mane, Haskell pulled back harder on the ribbons.

“
Who-ahhhhh
, you mangy, good-for-nothin' cayuses!” he cried, stretching his bearded lips back from his teeth and staring at the edge of the canyon sliding closer and closer toward the puller's chopping hooves.

Which suddenly stopped no less than two feet from the drop.

The two white water birds that had been sunning themselves on the sandbar took wing, squawking their dismay at the intrusion.

A rock broke loose from the lip of the ridge and bounced down the cliff—tick, tick, tick—for two hundred feet before striking bottom.

Haskell eased himself off the side of the puller and dropped to his knees. He leaned forward, pressing his wrists against his bruised and battered balls and drawing deep, heavy breaths. Remembering the girl, he turned to stare back at the coach, obscured behind a heavy red-tan veil of dust.

The door on the near side was swinging slowly back against the carriage.

The horses heaved like six separate blacksmith's bellows.

The girl appeared on her hands and knees in the open doorway. She was caked in dirt, and her hair was in total disarray. She looked around warily, spotted Haskell, and then climbed heavily down out of the coach.

She strode drunkenly toward him, a beaded reticule still hanging from her right wrist. Her powder-gray dress clung to her like a glove, accentuating the fullness of her bosom and the flatness of her belly.

“Oh, you dear man,” she said thinly, standing over Haskell, staring down at him, her ripe breasts rising and falling as she breathed.

She stared out into the canyon. Her green eyes grew wider for a moment when she realized how close they'd been to bloody ruination. She licked her lips. Then she dropped to her knees before Bear and wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her bosom to his chest.

“How can I ever repay you for saving my life?” she trilled.

“Ah, hell,” Bear said with a self-effacing chuff.

“No, I mean it,” she said, pulling her head back from his chest, placing her hands on both sides of his face, and staring deeply into his eyes. “How can I ever repay you, you dear, dear man?”