Blood at Bear Lake (9 page)

All three of the Wickershams drew their knives. They displayed the confidence of superior numbers. Three against one.

“I ast you a question, mister. You's gonna give us them horses now, ain't you?”

Joe did not know what sort of reaction they expected from him. Fear, probably, at the odds, fear at the sight of those deadly knives.

“Well?”

Joe grinned back at the eldest Wickersham.

23

“THEY'S NO PLACE for you to run, mister, so whyn't you give it up? We won't hurt you none. Just take that fine-lookin' horse and the mule. Take them an' whatever else you got.” He laughed. “But we won't touch a hair on your old gray head.”

Joe frowned. “Am I really starting to get some gray in my hair?”

Howard Wickersham looked puzzled. “Why in the hell are you worried 'bout your damned hair turnin' gray when there's three of us standin' here ready t' cut your gizzard out? An' don't think about pulling that pistol gun an' scaring us away. We don't scare. An' I got to warn you, mister. Do you go an' hurt any one of us, the other two'll cut you up to bite-size chunks for the buzzards.”

“No, seriously,” Joe said, “am I starting to go gray-headed?”

“Damn you, mister, you ain't takin' us serious.”

Joe shrugged. “Why should I worry about a bunch of dead men?”

“Where do you find any dea—
what
?” Howard turned to his brothers and shouted, “Get him, boys. Cut him good.”

Thomas started circling around Joe in one direction, Benjamin in the other. Joe suspected that their plan—one they must have used before with a successful outcome— was for the three of them to trap him in the center of a triangle so that his back had to be toward at least one of them at all times.

It was a perfectly good plan, he conceded. If he allowed them to carry it out.

“I bet you boys never faced one o' these,” Joe said as he pulled his Colt revolver out of his sash.

“Hey now—!” Howard yelped, his expression indignant. But then perhaps he considered it unfair for someone to fight back against the three of them.

Joe cocked the Colt.

“We was just—”

Joe triggered a ball into Howard's face, whirled, and dropped to his knee.

He pointed the revolver without aiming and fired again, this time at Benjamin, who was standing still, obviously shocked by the blood that was streaming down Howard's face and soaking into his beard.

Joe's bullet hit Benjamin in the chest. Benjamin dropped his knife and sank to his knees, but Joe did not see. He was already turning back toward Thomas, who was now charging forward with his knife extended, expecting to stick Joe in the back.

Joe threw himself down, somersaulting underneath Thomas's blade and coming to his feet beside the wiry younger man. He did not take time to cock the revolver or to reach for his own knife or tomahawk, but lashed out with the Colt. The barrel slashed across Thomas's face, the raised front sight cutting on top of his eyes.

Thomas cried out and tried to cut Joe, but Joe darted back from the sweeping blade, then stepped forward and again struck with the barrel of his revolver, this time smashing down on Thomas's wrist.

Thomas's knife fell from suddenly nerveless fingers and the dark-bearded killer stood there defenseless.

“Quarter,” Thomas cried quickly, spreading his hands wide and dropping to his knees. “I claim quarter.”

“What the hell d'you mean ‘quarter'?” Joe said.

“That means you can't hurt me. You gotta take me prisoner, mister.”

“I don't want no damn prisoners,” Joe told him.

“No, mister, that's the rule. Does a man claim quarter, you's gotta give it to him.”

“Where'd you learn such silly shit as that?” Joe asked, genuinely curious now.

“All my life I knowed it. Me an' all my fam'bly back home in the mountains. It's the rule, mister.”

“Well, I ain't from your mountains,” Joe said calmly.

“Mister, I a'tellin' you, I'm claiming quarter.”

“And if I don't wanta give quarter, just what are you gonna do about it?” Joe glanced over at Benjamin, who was flopping around on the ground with a bullet in his chest, then at Howard, who sat cross-legged with his head down and his hands in his lap, blood turning his beard red and dripping onto his belly.

“Quarter, mister,” Thomas shouted, “quarter.” He was beginning to sound frantic. And annoying.

“I'll give you quarter, you son of a bitch.”

“Oh, thank—”

Joe cocked the revolver and fired point-blank into Thomas's left temple. The youngest Wickersham went down face-first onto the gravel and did not even bounce when he hit the ground.

“Piece o' shit,” Joe muttered as he walked over and stood beside Benjamin.

“I'm shot,” Benjamin whined. “Help me. I'm shot.”

“Yes, you are,” Joe agreed. “Twice.” He took careful aim and shot Benjamin between the eyes.

He looked across the clearing to Howard, who had raised his chin and was looking at Joe with dull, almost disinterested eyes. “Don't . . . don't shoot me, mister. I'm beggin' you.”

“All right,” Joe said as he stepped over to Howard's side.

“You mean that, mister? You ain't gonna shoot me like you done my brothers?”

“I mean it.”

“Thank you. Thank you, I . . .
Jesus God!
” he screamed when he saw the bowie in Joe's hand.

Joe lifted Howard's beard out of the way and sliced the man's throat clear through his windpipe. A mixture of air and blood gurgled briefly in the suddenly opened throat; then Howard was still.

Joe grunted softly, then began reloading the fired chambers in his revolver. Handy damn things these revolvers, he reflected. He could have used one a time or two back in the old days.

He looked toward the wagon where the woman had scampered as soon as she saw what the brothers were up to.

24

“YOU CAN COME out now,” Joe said softly when he was done dragging the bodies off into the brush and kicking some dirt over the blood that was soaking into thirsty soil. “I ain't gonna hurt you.”

He hunkered down beside what was left of the fire and reached for the coffeepot. He was on his second cup when the woman's tear-streaked face finally appeared beneath the canvas wagon top.

“Are you hungry?”

Her only answer was a hesitant nod.

Joe stood, his knee cartilage cracking loudly, and walked over to the antelope carcass, where he sliced off a goodly chunk and carried it back to the fire. He replenished the coals to get a good flame to sear the outside of the meat and keep the juices in where they belonged, then laid the meat onto a flat rock that he shoved into the fire. The aroma of roasting meat quickly spread through the clearing where he had made his camp.

“Supper's ready,” he said a few minutes later. “Come and get it.”

He was not entirely sure the woman would risk coming near, but if she did not, that was her choice and she was entitled to it. If she could not figure out that he meant her no harm, then piss on her.

After a few more minutes, though, her face appeared again, this time at the front of the wagon. She peered out, then carefully climbed over the back of the seat and down to the ground. Joe remained by the fire.

“Can I . . . I mean . . .” She stood beside the fire, nervous and poised to flee should he make any sudden move.

Joe motioned toward the piece of cooked antelope. “It's yours. I already had what I wanted of it.”

“Oh, I . . . thank you.” She fluffed her skirts out and settled on the opposite side of the fire. At some point since she ran back to the wagon, she had properly buttoned her dress and combed her hair, too. She looked much better now. Joe suspected she had deliberately presented herself as unattractively as possible in order to minimize the brothers' interest in her. If so, it hadn't worked, but she looked much nicer now that her hair was combed. A proper brushing would positively make it shine, he thought. Not like Fiona's of course, but . . . He felt himself growing hard. It was not a reaction he wanted, but a man's body and his heart do not always travel in the same direction.

Joe cleared his throat abruptly and introduced himself. “What's your name, ma'am?”

“Brenda Coyle,” she said softly.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “I kinda thought you was married to one o' them Wickershams.”

“Lord, no,” the young woman said with considerable feeling. “I'd as leave marry a snake as one of them. I am . . . I mean I was . . . their slave. My husband and our baby girl was taken by influenza when we was trying to reach California. The Wickershams took me in. As a Christian charity, they said. Then they split off away from the train where I had friends who would have protected me.

“They made me . . . I don't want to talk about the things they did, but they made me their slave. You saw . . .” Her complexion darkened as she remembered how much this stranger had already seen. “You saw what they did this evening. They did much worse than that along the way.”

“That's all over now,” Joe said. He stood. “I expect the stuff in these wagons belongs to you now. You can do whatever you want about them, but was I in your shoes, I reckon I'd put all them animals into one hitch, throw out most o' the load on that one wagon, an' travel on without the rest of it.”

“That wagon . . . that one there . . . was my husband's and mine. It is better, I think, than theirs.”

“All right. Do you know how to rig the hitch an' drive them?”

“I think so.”

“Well, if you don't now, you damn soon will,” Joe told her.

“With your help,” she said.

Joe shook his head. “Something you'd best understand, Miz Coyle. You're headed for Colorado. I'm going t'other way. To Wyoming. I can't take the time to guide you west. And anyway, both you an' them animals need a chance to rest up and prepare yourselves for what lies ahead.

“If you think the worst part of the journey is over, ma'am, that's because you ain't yet seen the Sierras. An' I can't be taking the time to guide you. Make that clear in your mind, please.”

“But you can't just leave me out here by myself.”

“No, I won't do that. There's a Mormon settlement not too awful far ahead. You'd be safe there. I figure to take you to them . . . it won't be all that far off my way . . . and leave you there.

“Now, if you will excuse me, ma'am, I'd like to lay down and get some sleep tonight.”

“You have been very helpful, Mister . . . Moss, was it?”

“Yes, ma'am. Joseph Moss I be.”

“Thank you,” she said around a mouthful of antelope.

She was pretty, Joe thought. Even with grease running down her chin. “Good night.”

25

JOE WOKE SUDDENLY, his senses alerted to danger. Something in the night sounds was not right. He had no conscious recollection of whatever it was that roused him, but a lifetime spent living with danger kept him from doubting the need for caution.

Anyone observing him would not have been able to tell that he had wakened. His eyes remained closed and his breathing slow. But his hand tightened a little on the haft of the tomahawk that he slept with. And he focused all his attention on the sounds that surrounded him.

The soughing of the breeze and the flutter of a bird's wing were ignored. The soft, muted crunch of gravel underfoot was not.

Someone was very stealthily approaching from the other side of the dying fire.

Joe allowed his eyes to open a little. Not fully enough to reflect any lingering firelight, but enough to let him see just a little in the direction of those soft noises.

It was Mrs. Coyle. She was—he had to look again to make sure of it—completely naked. She had nothing in her hands. No gun or knife or any other object that he could see. She was bent over low to the ground and was placing her feet with great care, as if intending total silence.

Perhaps this was some sort of religious rite he had never heard of, he guessed. Or she could have been driven mad by the experience with the Wickershams. Might even have been mad before her capture and imprisonment.

For that matter, Joe had only her side of that story. It could be that she herself killed her husband. Their child, too. Joe had heard of such things among pioneering women who could not adapt to the hardships and the loneliness of life on the fringes of civilization. Brenda Coyle could well be one of those.

Come to think of it, he realized, he could not even be certain that her name indeed was Brenda Coyle. One of the Wickersham boys, he could not remember which one, referred to her as Tessa. Her true name could be either of those. Or neither.

Joe waited. Wondering. Feigning sleep.

The naked woman paused for a moment and stood poised in a low crouch, her tits dangling heavy and full. She took a deep breath and lowered herself to her hands and knees.

She did not stop again until she was kneeling beside Joe's blankets.

She reached forward and took hold of his blanket. Very slowly, she peeled it back, laying it open. Again she paused.

Then she began unfastening the buttons of his fly.

Why the hell was she trying to open his britches? Did she think he carried his money in a pouch there? Damn!

Joe did not for a moment believe he was in any danger from this unarmed five-foot-tall female. He decided to wait a little longer before acknowledging that he was awake.

He let her unbutton his fly and spread his trousers open.