Mart Storm thought that if a woman could look beautiful in the cold light of dawn after sleeping in the open all night then she must be beautiful right through to her bones.
Vanessa Hargreaves came from her blankets smiling, fresh as a newly awakened child and with a lock of hair dropping fetchingly over her face.
Mart just sat there and stared. Not only was Miss Hargreaves not annoyed by his rudeness, she was totally unaware of it. Or so it seemed. She stretched luxuriously, thus revealing a fact to him that he already knew—that her body was as superb as her face. Which was saying something. She threw back her blankets and pulled on her boots. That done, she deigned to become aware of his presence, threw him a slightly superior but not unfriendly smile and said: ‘Good morning to you, Mr. Storm.’
‘Sleep well?’ he enquired.
‘Admirably,’ she replied. ‘I am more than ready for breakfast. But I would like a wash first.’
‘No breakfast,’ he said.
‘But I—’
‘And no wash.’
‘I certainly—’
‘No time an’ no water.’ He rose to his feet, adding: ‘Roll your blankets while I catch up the horses.’
She came up to him and put her hands on his arm.
‘Mr. Storm,’ she said, ‘if I asked you nicely. I do like to start the day with a cup of coffee. If you do that for me I promise that I shall behave and do all that you tell me.’
He looked around. The trees were pretty thick here. He might safely build a fire over yonder. He could drink a cup himself. Maybe there was no harm. Which goes to show just how soft a tough man can be with a woman like Vanessa Hargreaves.
He put off fetching in the horses, he built a fire that did not give off much smoke and he boiled some water from his canteen. They sat by the fire and sipped together in companionable silence. After a while, she said: ‘What will you do, Mr. Storm, when you have delivered me to my aunt?’
‘Ride.’
‘I didn’t presume that you would do anything else considering that it is the means of locomotion in this country,’ she told him.
‘Head for New Mexico,’ he said. ‘I have friends down there.’
‘Won’t the law find you there?’
‘It’s local county law that wants me here,’ he said. ‘Distance will most likely solve that problem.’ Would it solve his problem? he asked himself. How far would the friends of Pat Shaw and Stu Aintree be prepared to ride in search of him?
‘You’re a strange man.’
Mart didn’t know whether that was meant as a compliment or not.
‘You’re a strange woman,’ he said.
She smiled. She took that as a compliment.
From some thirty yards away, Darky whickered softly. Mart sat up. That could mean anything or nothing. He took it to mean something. That was the safest way.
He touched her on the arm and said softly: ‘Stay right where you’re at.’
He gave her credit. She was still. She merely turned her head and looked at him as if she wanted to judge the moment by the look on his face.
Then his sharp ears heard a faint sound. That told him that Darky was in the right. It also told him how far distant at least some of the danger was.
He signed her to lie down flat under a deadfall. Somewhat to his surprise, she obeyed him without a word.
He reached for his carbine.
The rumble of Darky’s whicker came again. Mart heard both horses moving, though he could not see them. He wondered if he himself had been spotted and decided to take a chance that he had not. He half rose, ran three quick paces away from the deadfall and dropped to the ground. Now he listened with enormous care.
A twig snapped.
He rolled gently into better cover, braced one leg under him for a quick movement. He was listening now to know if he was being advanced upon from another direction.
Another sound. A gun-hammer was being brought back to full cock. He squinted through the foliage in front of him, caught a slight movement. He could fire now and kill. Maybe for the sake of the girl he should. But he held back. Maybe it was curiosity that made him do that.
They were starting to move past him now. Suddenly, he had brief and partial but clear view of part of them. Now he was certain that there were two and they were close together. No more than a dozen paces from him. They crouched forward, guns in hand, one slightly beyond the other.
They passed him slowly, came in sight of the fire and halted.
‘Christ,’ one said, ‘the woman.’
He should have fired on them. It was too late.
He twisted himself and came up on one knee.
‘H’ist ’em,’ he called softly.
The next few seconds would take all his concentration or the physical and mental control he possessed. One of those guns was cocked. The girl could be hurt. Or killed.
One man was partially covered by the other. The far man moved, using the other, the older of the two.
‘No,’ said the older man, ‘no.’ There was a deathly apprehension in his voice.
Mart moved as the shot came. It tore at his sleeve and he fired the carbine.
The bullet hit the far man and turned him, hurling him to the ground.
The older man went into action as Mart fired. The fastest reaction Mart had ever seen in his life. One second the man was there, the next he wasn’t in sight. Mart knew he was on the far side of the bush behind which he had taken cover himself. He levered and fired as fast as he knew how. Again and again, levering in a kind of fury. The bullets ripped the green savagely. He heard them strike the other side and go whining away. But he knew he’d missed the man.
He leapt two long paces, missing the two bullets that were aimed at him. Then he heard another gun and knew that they were fired by the man he’d hit. Something caught him in the shoulder and jerked him back against the trunk of a tree, jarring him breathless.
Sudden movement beyond the leafy wall. He knew he was caught in a crossfire at close range. A veteran like him suckered like a greenhorn.
Then another gun sounded to his right.
He saw the wounded man on his knees, the carbine slipping from his nerveless fingers.
Mart found he had dropped his rifle.
The man beyond the bush fired and the lead hit the tree with a dull thunk. Mart found that the carbine refused to be he held with his right hand. His gun-hand was useless. Another shot and he felt the wind past his face.
A desperate urgency tore at his nerves. He let the carbine fall to the ground and swung himself left-handed around the tree. Reaching across his body, he awkwardly drew his gun.
A curious thing—a right-handed man often shot better with his left hand. Not so fast, but more accurately. He could only hope that he would do so now. He hadn’t practiced with his left hand for years.
He dropped to one knee, bracing his left wrist against the tree.
Leaves rustled. He held his fire. He was going to get this bastard with the next shot.
The man fired. The lead flirted with the tail of his coat.
Mart fired on sound.
The man grunted as the bullet went home. Mart cocked awkwardly with his left thumb and fired again immediately.
There was a soft crash. A branch snapped. A man groaned gently. Then there was silence, smoke drifted, the air was thick with the smell of burned powder.
Softly, almost fearfully, he heard the girl call: ‘Are you all right, Mr. Storm?’
He stood up and said: ‘Stay right where you are, Miss Hargreaves.’ It was nice keeping it formal, even at a time like this.
Then he added: ‘I’m all right, thanks. And you?’
‘Perfectly well, thank you.’ Her voice shook a little.
He walked forward, quietly, like a big cat, putting his feet down with care. His shoulder did not hurt, but there was a numbing weight tied to his right arm.
He rounded the bush and came on the man lying half in it on his face. Mart raised his gun and cocked it. He’d been caught like this before.
‘If you don’t move,’ he said, ‘I’m goin’ to blow your head off.’ The man didn’t move. Mart put his gun into the top of his pants, caught the man by his collar and turned him over on his back. He was shot through the brisket and the face. He didn’t make a pretty sight.
Mart started to walk back to the girl. His legs were starting to cave under him. He had run so there would be no more killing. But the opportunity to kill chased after him.
The girl was standing watching him out of large dark eyes. She was very pale and she was shaking.
The whole scene seemed to shift uneasily and crazily before his eyes. The final shame would be to faint in front of a woman. A Texan’s nightmare.
As he reached the girl, she said: ‘I think I’ve killed a man. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that.’
He laughed hollowly.
‘There’s a first time for everythin’,’ he said.
‘I think I may faint,’ she said.
‘You can’t do that,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ she asked in vague curiosity.
‘One, it’s not allowed,’ he told her. ‘Two, I’m goin’ to pass out first.’
She dropped the gun and reached out both hands for him.
‘In heaven’s name,’ she said. ‘You’re wounded.’
Her face was all concern, but he couldn’t see it too well. It seemed that she guided him to the deadfall because the next thing he realized was that he was sitting on it and she was picking at the bloody cloth of his coat with her fingers.
She said: ‘If you give me your knife I’ll cut the cloth away from the wound.’
‘No, ma’am. This is the only coat I have.’
So they struggled to get it off him and, as they did so, the numbness in the arm went and the pain started to seep up the arm through the shoulder and into the rest of his body. He began to fear that the lead had broken the bone and was still in there. That opened up a formidable prospect—almost alone here in the hills with a wound that could go bad, no doctor for several day’s ride. Even if he could reach a doctor, it could be too late. Medical men weren’t miracle workers. He broke into a cold sweat and shook a little.
She wiped his forehead with a very small handkerchief. The wound was bleeding profusely and the blood was running down his arm.
‘I shall have to cut the shirt,’ she said, ‘and we’ll need plenty of rag.’
‘There’s bear-grease and whiskey in my saddlebags,’ he told her.
He reached for his knife and handed it to her. She cut the shirt, then ripped it and peeled it from him. He felt her cool fingers on his flesh and even under those circumstances he found that he liked it.
‘Being wounded,’ he said, ‘has its compensations.’
‘The situation,’ she rebuked him, ‘is too serious for flirting.’
He laughed and patted her arm affectionately. He liked this woman. She had sand and she was beautiful. A combination that appealed to him.
She said: ‘You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Storm.’
‘Under the circumstances, I think you could get around to calling me Martin.’
‘Just because we’ve killed two men between us and you’ve kissed me, that doesn’t mean to say that we can afford to be familiar. As I was saying, Mr. Storm, you’re a lucky man. The bullet, though it has injured the bone slightly, has passed right through you and is not lodged in the flesh.’
He looked at her with fresh interest.
‘You sound as if you know what you’re talkin’ about, Miss Hargreaves.’
‘You don’t spend your life exploring the wild places of the earth without learning something about gunshot wounds. My aunt and I fought off the Shilluks on the Nile, had a brush with the Indians in Chile and a running fight with aborigines in Australia.’
‘Nice to know I’m bein’ nursed by a lady who’s mixed in the best society,’ said Mart.
She laughed and slapped him lightly.
‘Have you thought,’ she said, ‘that we might still be in danger?’
‘All the time,’ he answered. ‘You patch me up, girl, an’ we ’light outa here. Fast.’
She padded the wound and told him to hold the pad firm. Then she fetched the bear-grease and whiskey. She cleaned the wound out with the whiskey, then worked to stop the bleeding. He could just manage to see the wound by craning his neck and squinting and it looked to him as if his shoulder had been mashed up badly.
‘You press hard on that pad, my lad,’ she told him. She started tearing his shirt in strips, pursing her lips as she pulled on the stout cloth.
Darky whickered.
Mart jerked to attention and pulled the gun from the top of his pants.
‘Get under cover,’ he told the girl.
‘Far more important,’ she told him, ‘To get this wound covered.’
She untied the bandanna around his neck, used the rag to bind the pad down on the wound, then wound the bandanna around it to hold it in place. But the wound was in an awkward spot, it could slip. She hesitated, moved to the nearest dead man and removed his bandanna. Mart watched her with some admiration while his ears did their work, listening for anybody approaching. She returned with the bandanna and fixed it around his body, down from the right shoulder underneath his left armpit.
‘Now get under cover,’ he said.
She gave him a little smile and obeyed.
Mart heard a horse approaching. Then he heard a short whistle, followed by a long one. He replied with two long ones.
‘You can come on out,’ he told the girl, ‘it’s a friend.’
She came out. She saw his rifle lying on the ground and picked it up.
‘You can’t be too sure,’ she said.
‘That’s a fact,’ he admitted.
There were several horses approaching. Mart was curious. His curiosity was satisfied when a rider appeared, leading two saddled but riderless horses. It was Joe Widbee.
Joe stopped his horse and looked solemnly from Mart to the girl and back to Mart again. Mart glanced at the girl, he wanted to know how she would take Joe.
‘Miss Hargreaves,’ he said, ‘this is Joe Widbee, a friend of mine. Joe, this is Miss Vanessa Hargreaves.’
She smiled and reclined her head slightly. It was the first time Mart had ever seen a white woman of the girl’s social standing do this to a black man. She had taken her cue from him.
‘How do you do, Mr. Widbee?’ she said.
‘I do purty well, thank you, ma’am,’ said Joe, lifting his battered hat from his head. ‘How-dee-do yourse’f, ma’am.’
He stepped down from the saddle, walked to each of the dead men in turn and came back to Mart and the girl.
‘You know them?’ he asked softly.
‘No.’
‘Dillon Wells and Mort Cromby. Hired guns. You done did the human race a real service, boy.’
‘That’s nice,’ Mart said.
‘I think,’ the girl said, ‘it’s time I fainted.’
‘Don’t spoil it,’ Mart told her. ‘I was just startin’ to think you a woman in a million.’
‘Well perhaps I shall just sit down,’ she conceded and she sat down beside him on the deadfall.
Joe squatted.
Mart told him his side of the situation, about the Indians, how he was trying to get the girl back to her aunt. The girl said that it was now important that they find her aunt because she would be able to attend to the wound properly. The wound was serious and Mr. Storm must have attention soon. Joe nodded. He then told them about the posse. Mart nodded. Joe told them he had embarrassed the posse a little and slowed them down. He had also made them a little nervous. He suggested it might be a good thing if Mart disappeared into the hills and he, Joe, took Miss Hargreaves on to her party. But the girl wouldn’t hear of it. Mr. Storm must go to her camp. Joe sighed. Women!
‘All right,’ he said, ‘you go ahead. There’s saddles there for the takin’. You can ride easy. I’ll stay an’ plant the stiffs. Then I’ll maybe kinda ride around and pass the time of day with the sheriff an’ his crowd.’
‘You’ve done enough,’ Mart said.
Joe ignored him.
He said: ‘This is Ed Brack back of this. You know that. He’s whittlin’ the Storms down. He puts you outa the way and that makes things kinda easier.’
‘You could be right.’
‘I know I’s right.’
‘Ed Brack,’ said the girl. ‘Why, my aunt knows him. She met him in Baltimore. We have an invitation to stay at his ranch.’
Mart and Joe looked at each other.
‘That’s interestin’,’ Mart said, ‘maybe you should take him up on that invite, Miss Hargreaves. I’ve a mind to call on him myself.’
Joe was grinning.
‘Git on,’ he said.
The girl helped Mart dress. She was very tender with his wounded shoulder. Joe transferred a saddle from a captured horse to Old Stripes and packed the supplies on Mart and the girl’s horses. Then he sent the two horses of the dead men scampering into the hills. He’d done a lot of things he shouldn’t in his time, but he’d never stolen a horse in his life. Not for long, at any rate. He helped Mart into the saddle and told him: ‘You lie up some place till that shoulder mended.’
Mart said: ‘See you, Joe.’
Joe touched his hat to the girl and she bade him a polite and warm goodbye. As they rode west she said: ‘A remarkable man, Mr. Storm.’
‘You can say that again,’ Mart agreed.
‘What is his story?’
‘He was my father’s slave. He grew up with my brother Will an’ me.’
‘I never saw a man less like a slave in my life.’
‘Me neither, Miss Hargreaves.’
They went on west. Mart had to admit that, in spite of being on the run and wounded, he liked being with this girl.