CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The heat of the noonday sun on his back convinced Donny Bryson that waiting for the blonde woman to return from Fredericksburg was backing a loser. He cursed under his breath. Heck, she might spend days in the dress and hat shops.
Donny had coffee on the boil and was about to leave the rise when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He bellied down again, raised his telescope, and trained it to the west, about half a mile on the far side of the wagon road. Yes, there it was again . . . two figures, only one of them riding, emerged from the heat shimmer and moved slowly in his direction.
The sun baked him, a dry breeze parched his skin, and his mouth was as dry as mummy dust. But as enduring and patient as an Apache, Donny remained still for a long fifteen minutes, the glass to his eye. Damn, there might be profit in this. Little by little, the two figures came into focus . . . a man riding a mule and walking beside him a boy, or maybe a small, slight woman.
A few more minutes passed and Donny let them come within hailing distance before he rose to his feet, his Winchester cradled in his arms. The man on the mule saw him and drew rein. He was a graybeard, roughly dressed, with the look of a tin pan about him, and the woman seemed to be very young, no more than fifteen years old, wearing a thin, tattered, knee-length dress, washed out by the sun to a pale green color. Donny smiled. Things were starting to look up.
The rider mopped his face with a large red bandana and then said, “I smell something. Is that coffee on the bile?”
“Yeah, it is, and you’re welcome,” Donny said. He waved behind him. “My camp’s back yonder.”
“Well, I could sure use a cup,” the man said. He was chunky, white-haired, and looked to be about sixty. His eyes were bright blue, overhung by bushy brows, but his skin was as dark as a field hand’s, roughened to scuffed brown leather by sun and wind. He urged his rangy mule forward and followed Donny off the rise to his camp.
Before he told the man to step down and set a spell, Donny nodded in the direction of the girl and said, “Who is she?”
“Nobody,” the man said. “My name’s Lucas Bell. On my way to San Antone.”
Donny said to the girl, “What’s your name?”
“She don’t have a name,” Bell said.
The girl looked at Donny with dull, lifeless brown eyes. She was plain-faced, stringy hair, small breasts and narrow hips under her dress, large feet flopping around inside a mismatched pair of male, cast-off shoes.
“Does she talk?” Donny said.
“I don’t know,” Bell said. “Maybe she does, but I’ve never asked her a question or spoke to her much.”
“Where did you find her?” Donny said.
“I didn’t find her. I bought her for five dollars from a hog farm up Buffalo Gap way. The feller in charge said she was too plain and lean flanked to ever be a whore, so he let her go cheap.”
“What do you use her for?” Donny said.
Bell jerked back surprised. “What are you, some kind of preacher? What the heck do you think I use her for?”
“Just asking,” Donny said, the Sharps .50-90 across Bell’s saddle horn inclining him to be social.
“She ain’t much, but when it’s all a man has, then he makes do or does without,” Bell said. “But I intend to sell her in San Antone first chance I get. Maybe somebody will offer me ten dollars for her. Now how about that coffee?”
* * *
Donny Bryson was a twisted, vicious, homicidal killer and rapist, but even he considered Lucas Bell a thoroughly unpleasant man. He had no conversation apart from brothels, dance halls, whores, and whiskey. He spoke about the daily beatings he gave the girl and how, no matter how hard he hit her, she refused to cry out. Then, worn and weary from the trail and the talk, he told Donny he’d stretch out under a tree and catch a nap.
He picked up his Sharps and said, “Mister, this here Big Fifty is both wife and child to me, and I keep her close.” Then, scowling, “Keep that in mind.”
Donny was a careful man. The only things of value Bell owned were the rifle and the mule. And the girl, of course. And she was worth five bucks, though he figured the tin pan could have gotten her for three dollars and fifty cents. He decided to let Bell rest unmolested. Nothing the man had was worth risking a bullet from the Sharps.
His rifle handy beside him, Bell found a shady spot, lay on his back, and within minutes was snoring.
Years after the event, a reporter for the Gillespie Tattler famously told Theodore Roosevelt, “Lucas Bell lay down for a nap and to this day has still not woke up.”
* * *
Donny Bryson drank coffee and then built a cigarette, watching the girl, who sat with her back to the rise in the full glare of the sun. He felt no real desire for her. He liked his women clean and pretty, and the girl was neither. But maybe if he got desperate. But would he ever be that desperate? Donny could come up with no answer to the question.
The girl rose to her feet, found Bell’s canteen, and drank loud and long. She corked the canteen, tossed it aside, and then slipped her feet out of her oversized shoes. She saw Donny watching her and smiled for the first time, a slight tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Hot, ain’t it?” she said. “I don’t always say ain’t. I was raised by nuns, and I can talk proper when I want.”
An Appalachian mountain accent. Kentucky, Donny guessed. “Some hot, I reckon,” he said.
The girl nodded and walked toward the wild oaks and the snoring Bell. She was short, not as ungainly in bare feet. Like Bell she was very brown, strands of her dirty blonde hair bleached almost white by the sun. She stopped. “Y’all drank coffee without me.”
“I didn’t know you wanted any,” Donny said.
“Don’t I look like I need coffee?” the girl said.
“Well, you ain’t looking too lively at that,” Donny said.
“Then pour me a cup, will ya?”
“Where are you headed?”
“I got something to do. Pour me a cup. The stronger the better.”
“Bell said you never talk,” Donny said.
“Not to him. He didn’t want to talk.”
“What’s your name?”
“I ain’t got one.”
“Everybody’s got a name.”
“I don’t. The nuns never got around to giving me one. Pour the coffee. Fill the cup to the brim. I got something to do.”
“What you got to do?” Donny said.
The girl didn’t answer. She resumed her walk toward the wild oaks. The day was still, no breeze, Bell’s steady snoring rasping in the silence. Donny poured coffee as black as coal into a cup, never taking his eyes off the girl. What the blazes was she up to?
On cat feet the girl stepped to Bell and stood beside him. She looked down at the man, taking her time, staring into his bearded face. And then . . . slow as molasses in January . . . she bent from the waist and put both hands on the Sharps. She remained in that position for long moments and then with infinite patience, inched the rifle toward her. Bell stirred, muttered something in his sleep, and the girl froze.
Donny Bryson watched, smiling slightly, fascinated.
After a few tense moments, the girl moved again. She grasped the Sharps and lifted.
Lucas Bell’s eyes flew open.
The girl was small and slight, and she struggled to bring the nine-and-a-half-pound rifle to bear. Bell sprang to his feet, knocked the Sharps from her hands, and then backhanded her across the face. Hit hard, the girl staggered back and fell. Bell drew a wicked-looking bowie knife from his belt, raised it aloft and screeched, “You hussy, I’ll kill you.”
Donny was no longer amused. He drew and fired and hit Bell on his right side. The bullet entered his chest just under the armpit, and exited through the man’s left shoulder blade in a scarlet mist of blood and bone chips. It was a terrible wound, and Bell screamed in pain and rage. But he was thickset and strong, and he took the bullet and stayed on his feet. Bell made a dive for the Sharps as Donny fired again. Another hit. Snarling like a wounded animal, his face twisted in hate, the tin pan hefted the Sharps to his waist and got off a shot that cracked the air inches from Donny’s head.
But Bell was done.
Donny fired again. A hit. Bell rode that third bullet into Hell.
In the ringing silence that followed, Donny Bryson and the girl stared at each other for a long time before the girl moved her gaze to the body and said, “He’s bleeding out like a butchered pig. Blood all over the ground.” She got to her feet and said, “You saved my life, mister.”
Donny thumbed cartridges into his Colt and grinned. “What life?”
“The one I’m gonna have someday.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. In a town.”
“Fredericksburg is close. It’s the only town around these parts.”
“Then that will do for a start.”
“If I let you live,” Donny said. “I haven’t made up my mind.”
“You’ll let me live,” the girl said. A trickle of blood from her mouth reached her chin. She used a foot to turn Bell’s head so that his open eyes looked blindly to his left. “I want him to watch,” she said. She pulled her dress over her head and stood naked. Her arms and legs were brown, her torso white as bleached bone. The girl lay on her back, spread her legs wide, and said, “Come here.”
Donny stared at her, hesitated a moment, then said, “I reckon I will let you live.”
“I figured you would,” the girl said.