CHAPTER SIX
There wasn’t much to share among eight riders. Ninety dollars and six cents from the moneybox, Tom Calthrop’s silver Waltham pocket watch and gold Masonic fob, Nancy’s wedding ring, and cheap necklaces worn by the twins. There were also two Colt revolvers, a Winchester rifle, a Greener shotgun . . . and sixteen-year-old Jenny Calthrop.
“I want the ring,” Arch Pitman said. “Ye can share the rest, except for the girl. I say we all have a taste right now and sell what’s left of her.”
Pitman was a thin man of medium height with a slack mouth and yellow, reptilian eyes. An outlaw of low intelligence, Pitman was nonetheless fast and accurate with a gun, and the rumor was that he’d killed four men. He himself had been stabbed, shot several times, and thrown from a moving train, breaking bones in his back, hip, and right leg. That he’d survived this kind of damage was a testament to his endurance and animalistic courage. Arch Pitman was a hard man to kill.
“What gives you the right to first choice, Pitman?” Clay Kyle said.
“Getting uppity in your old age, Arch?” Susan Stanton said. She stood with her long, booted legs apart, short black skirt, and scarlet tights, and an open, steel gray coat with wide, padded shoulders fell to her ankles. Her thick hair, the color of flame, cascaded in glossy waves from under a man’s top hat decorated with a beaded, three-inch-tall band made by a Comanche woman. Two Colts in crossed gunbelts hung on her magnificent hips, and a purple corset pushed up her breasts, between them on a gold chain an oval medallion of Macha, the man slaughterer, the Celtic goddess of war and death. Black-Eyed Susan’s face was stunningly beautiful, the way a Greek marble statue of a woman is beautiful, fine featured, and slightly masculine. Flawless skin. An orphan raised by a brothel madame who had no idea she’d created a monster.
Susan Stanton was a stone-cold killer, but Arch Pitman, when the time was right, had plans for her . . . after he’d tamed the cussedness out of her with a horsewhip.
Whining now, the outlaw said, “Clay, I cut the woman’s finger off to get that ring. By rights it’s mine.”
“And you had the first go at her,” Susan said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“No. I want her ring,” Pitman said. “It fits the middle finger of my gun hand real good, and it will bring me luck on the draw.” He pointed at Jenny Calthrop. Her pretty face was terrified. “And I want my fair share of that little whore tonight.” His grin was ugly. “Help me sleep, like.”
Susan looked across the fire at Kyle. A coffeepot smoked on the coals. “Clay?”
“Ah, let Arch have the ring,” Kyle said. “It ain’t worth much. But nobody touches the girl. In Mexico any brothel will pay big money for a young white woman, especially if she’s still intact . . . and they have ways of verifying that.”
“She’s a virgin, never had a man, ain’t that right, honey?” Susan said to Jenny Calthrop.
The girl was scared enough to answer the tall woman with two guns, the prairie wind blowing open her duster, revealing shapely legs in high black boots.
“Tom Walker stole a kiss from me one time,” Jenny said.
“Did he, now?” Susan said. “Is that all Tom Walker did?”
“Yes. He branded a three-month-old calf and then stole his kiss.” Her fingers strayed to her face. “Here, on my cheek.”
“Lucky he didn’t slap his brand on you,” Susan said.
The girl said nothing and looked down at herself, tears falling as unbearable grief caught up with her, overcoming, at least for now, her cold fear.
Susan smiled, staring at a girl in a plain brown dress with several snowy white petticoats underneath. She had square-toed, lace-up shoes on her feet, and her fair hair was pulled back in an unraveling bun and tied with a cherry-red ribbon. Jenny Calthrop had large, expressive brown eyes, well-shaped arms and hands, and her small, high breasts barely swelled the front of her dress. She was a pretty girl in a utilitarian sort of way, but unlike Susan Stanton, could lay no claim to beauty.
But in a Tijuana whorehouse, that wouldn’t matter.
“Suzie, what do you think?” Kyle said.
“It’s pretty obvious that the little slut still has her maidenhead.”
“That’s good.”
“Bad for her,” Susan Stanton said. “She won’t last a year in a brothel.”
“Not my concern, is it?” Kyle said. He turned to the others. “Hear that? Leave the girl alone. When we get to Tijuana and she’s sold, you can get your pesos ready and rent her by the hour.”
This brought another laugh. But Arch Pitman sat scowling, his lean, hard face pitted and scarred, a grotesque red mask in the firelight.
“Listen up, you damned lowlifes, and listen good,” he said. “When we get to Tijuana, I’ll kill any man who tries to have the Calthrop girl afore me. I want to be first and for that I’ll pay good money.”
“Hell, Arch, there’s plenty of other whores south of the Rio Bravo,” Kyle said. He stared at Jenny. “What’s so special about her, huh? Nothing.”
“I had the mother and I want the daughter,” Pitman said.
Kyle shook his head. “Arch, you’re crazy.”
“Maybe so, but I want what I want, and I want the girl and I want the lucky ring,” Pitman said.
“Arch, you want, want, want,” Susan Stanton said. “Maybe I’ll keep the ring for myself. Or maybe I’ll give it to . . . what’s her name? . . . Jenny.”
“You heard what Clay told me,” Pitman said.
“I want the ring for myself,” Susan said. Her dark eyes glittered in the flickering firelight.
“And I said that you heard Clay,” Pitman said, his voice, low, level, full of menace. His gun hand was close to his holstered Colt. “Now give the ring to me.” Then, to drive home his warning, “I’ve shot a woman afore. Didn’t bother me none.”
“I know you have, Arch,” Susan said. “Didn’t I see you kill the Calthrop woman?”
“Yeah, you did. Kill one, kill another. It’s even easier the second time, lady,” Pitman said. He was ready, ready for the draw.
Kyle said, “Suzie,” using his pet name for her, “give Arch the ring. Give it to him now.”
The woman smiled and nodded. “Anything you say. Here, Arch, catch!”
Pitman stood to Susan Stanton’s right, between Shadow Beck, the San Antonio gunman, and the breed Doug Avila. The ring spun through the air, glinting in the firelight, and as Pitman reached out to catch it, Susan drew and fired, both Colts hammering. His face a mask of horror and surprise, Pitman took four bullets to the chest. There was no miracle survival this time. Pitman was dead when he hit the ground, and later Kyle covered all four bullet holes with a Queen of Spades playing card and complimented Black-Eyed Susan on her marksmanship. But initially he was irritated. “Why kill him?” he said.
“He called me lady,” Susan said, her smoke-trickling Colts hanging at her sides. “I guess he found out that I’m not a lady.” She shrugged her beautiful shoulders. “I wanted the ring, Clay. But I don’t want it any longer. It’s cheap.”
“Shadow, find that ring,” Kyle said.
Along with Loco Garrett, Shadow Beck had been a member of the welcoming committee that greeted the outlaw when he crossed the Brazos, and Kyle set store by him. “The ring is worth a few dollars, so you keep it,” Kyle said.
Beck, a tall, lanky gunman dressed in black broadcloth and a collarless white shirt, scrambled around in the grass for a few moments, found the ring, and then stood and held it aloft. His glance took in the other men around the campfire. “Anybody give me ten dollars for it?”
“Hell, no,” a stocky man with a broken nose said. “The damned thing is cursed.”
“Five dollars,” Beck said. “And it ain’t cursed, Charlie.”
“Damn right it is,” Charlie Bates said.
“Let me see that,” the breed Doug Avila said, rising to his feet. He wore a vaquero’s finery, high-crowned, flat-brimmed hat, short jacket, thigh-high chaperraras tied to a belt at his waist and worn over split-leg pants, fancy boots, and spurs with rowels as large as teacups. He wore a nickel-plated Colt with a pearl handle that he could shuck from the leather with flashing speed. Nobody messed with Avila or called him a breed to his face, and those who did seldom lived long enough to regret it.
After a few silent moments, Avila said, “Look how the ring glows red in the firelight. It’s stained with the blood of dead Sioux and the woman who wore it and that’s why it’s cursed. I saw Arch Pitman take the ring and now he is dead.” He stared at Beck. “Nobody wants your damned ring. It is an accursed thing.”
“Hell, then I’ll wear it myself,” Beck said. He shoved the ring onto the thumb of his left hand. “I ain’t scared of curses.”
“Or of any man,” Susan said. “Isn’t that right, Shadow?”
“Hell, yeah,” Beck said. “And I don’t count on anybody to back my play either.”
“Yes, I imagine you don’t, Shadow,” Susan said. “Tell me something. When did you rape the nice ranch lady who once wore it? Was it after she was dead?”
Shadow Beck, tall and angular, with the long, hard face of a Yankee undertaker and mud-colored eyes, shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Susan holstered her guns, her face unreadable. “Wear the ring in good health, Shadow,” she said.