CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Put yourself in my position, Kyle,” Dave Shannon said, firelight flickering on his stubbled face. “Tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet into you right now and have it done?”
Kyle said, “Well, for one thing there’s honor among thieves.”
“No, there ain’t,” Shannon said.
“And for another, kill me and you don’t get the girl,” Kyle said. “I told Suzie Stanton to gun her if I don’t leave this camp alive.”
Shannon nodded. “Well, there’s always that. I need a woman around here, keep me entertained at night, that’s for damned sure.”
“So, can we . . .”
“Shut the hell up, Kyle,” Shannon said. “Get yourself coffee and let me study on this for a spell.” He waved a hand in the direction of a row of weathered canvas pup tents. “And while you’re at it, find a place to sleep.”
After ten minutes staring into the guttering fire, Shannon spoke again. He called Kyle over and said, “Kyle, here’s how I see it. Vigilantes have no legal authority, but their very presence here is annoying the hell out of me. The first order of business is to get rid of them. Once they’re dead, you give me the girl and you get out of the Sierra del Carmen and never again show your ugly face around here. If you ever do, I’ll shoot you down on sight like a dog. Do you comprende?”
Kyle nodded. “I understand, Dave. You’re true blue.”
“What about the Stanton woman?” Shannon said. “I hear she’s a real beauty.”
“Yeah, she’s a beauty all right, but her inclination don’t exactly run to men,” Kyle said. “Take Suzie to bed and you’ll wake up with a knife in your chest.”
“I could tame her,” Shannon said, “but I’ll settle for the other girl.” A look of momentary doubt crossed his face. “Here, she ain’t dangerous, is she?”
Kyle smiled. “She won’t bite, Dave. Hell, she’ll probably fall head over heels in love with you. She’s that kind of girl, all blonde hair, brown eyes, and innocence.”
A wind gust swept across the fire and sent up a fan-shaped torrent of sparks.
“The wind is rising,” Shannon said. “It can blow hard through these mountains. Sometimes if you listen hard enough, it sounds like the pines are whispering to one another up on the slopes. I remember hearing that sound when I was a boy in Tennessee, lying in bed all affeered that my pa would come home drunk again and beat my ma.”
“Bad way for a boy to be raised, Dave,” Kyle said.
Shannon shrugged. “As soon as I could lift it, I shot him with his own Kentucky rifle. After that me and Ma did just fine.”
“Is your ma still in Tennessee?” Kyle said, anxious to be sociable.
“No. She died of a summer cold the year before I saddled up the mule and left for Texas,” Shannon said. “I was thirteen then, and I’d already killed my first man.” He smiled. “Funny that, me being so young an’ all.” He rose to his feet and said to the dozen men in camp that night, “Listen up, all of you. Gabe Glass took a scout for me and he says the vigilantes are camped on a rise about thirty minutes from here. So it’s me for my blankets and you boys should do the same. We got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Vigilantes to kill,” Kyle said, grinning.
* * *
“Saddle your horse, we’re getting out of here,” Susan Stanton said.
“Why?” Jenny Calthrop said.
“Because I have a bad feeling . . . a feeling that something terrible is coming down,” Susan said. “I fell asleep and just before I woke saw fire fall from the sky like rose petals and there was a noise like thunder and there were dead men without heads lying on the ground, and it scared me.”
“I thought nothing scared you,” Jenny said.
“My dream scared me. My God, where did this wind come from?”
“It’s a north wind,” Jenny said. “Our pastor once told me that God appointed the north wind to remind us that we live in hell of our own making. You’re in hell, Susan Stanton.”
“Saddle your horse, you little slut, you’re talking nonsense,” Susan yelled. The slashing wind tossed strands of hair across her face, and her eyes were wild.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Jenny called back. “You’re evil. You’re a devil woman.”
Susan Stanton smiled. “You know what will happen to you when Clay gives you to Dave Shannon and his hard cases? You’ll be passed from man to man, every single day and night of your miserable life, and then, when you can’t bear it any longer, you’ll kill yourself. Is that what you want, you stupid, backwoods hick?” The woman pulled Jenny toward her by the front of her dress and when they were nose-to-nose, she said, “You’re better off with me.”
Jenny Calthrop was not particularly intelligent, but she was savvy enough to realize that the picture Susan Stanton painted for her was a horrific one and probably true. Her choices limited, she whispered, her head bowed, “I’ll go with you.”
“That’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say since we took you from that two-by-twice chicken farm your father called a ranch,” Susan said. “Turn around.” Then when the girl hesitated, “Now!”
With sudden aggression, Susan roughly gagged the girl with a bandana she’d earlier taken from the body of Loco Garrett and knotted it tight at the back of her head. Jenny’s eyes were wide with anger and terror and she tried to talk, but the gag bit so cruelly into her mouth, she couldn’t utter a word.
“We can’t have you crying out for help, girlie, can we?” Susan said. “Get used to it, because I plan to rope you to your saddle horn.” Tears starting in her eyes, Jenny again tried to talk . . . an outburst of muffled sounds. The woman’s smile was thin and mean. “Life’s tough all over, innit?”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, riding their horses through a vast and impenetrable darkness, heads bent against a wailing wind, Susan Stanton and Jenny Calthrop passed the hill where Dan Caine and his vigilantes were holed up.
They were neither seen nor heard.