10
Toby had seen the raging anger in the face of the Indian who was riding by at breakneck speed, screaming like a madman, and firing his Henry. The Indian was the one who’d put the bullet in him. Lying on his back and wondering if they’d bury him, Toby began losing consciousness. Shots and screams of men and horses could be heard all around him. Toby worried that their own stock would stomp him to death as they danced about, some wounded. Then he fainted, and it was late in the day when he awoke. His chest felt like someone had driven a spear into him. It hurt like fire to cough. He listened. The only sound was the snort of their nearby horses. No shooting. No war cries.
“You awake?” Kelso asked, kneeling over him. “I got some whiskey for the pain. Can I hold your head up and you sip it?”
“Where are the fucking Indians?” Toby asked in such a rusty-sounding voice that it shocked him.
“Gone. We won.”
“My boys?”
“Polo’s arm is okay. Guerra is scouting the dead ones to be certain they’re really dead, huh?”
“They left their dead?” It hurt like hell when Kelso lifted his head and gave him some whiskey from the tin cup.
Damn liquor tasted like peppery piss. Bad stuff to drink. It was old cheap whiskey, but he needed more of it to ease the pain. Damn, how bad could his condition get? He was loaded up with a bullet in his chest. What were his chances of surviving out there in God knows where? No one could answer that for him. No one knew a damn thing anyway.
“We’re close to that woman’s place. She’s kind of a witch, but she might could help you out,” said Kelso. “But she ain’t a whore and she gets mad as hell if you accuse her or even act like she’s one. Don’t make her mad. We need to heal you up to go find your wife, and this woman has the only place we can do it out here. Savvy?”
After Toby agreed, Kelso put more liquor to his lips. Sipping it made Toby cough and he hurt worse. Oh, hell, maybe he’d die and it would all be over. He closed his eyes as he started to black out.
Toby awoke on a pallet under a roof. Where was he? Where were his shirt and vest? He had on his pants under the cover. He must be at the woman’s place. Where was she? His chest really hurt like he was hugging a fireball. With his right hand, he felt bandages on his chest.
“So you are alive,” she said.
All he could see were her brown ankles and sandals under the ruffled hem of her skirt. He tried to clear his throat—that hurt.
“Yes,” he managed to get out.
“Do you want that bullet out or left in you?”
He could see she was of medium height for a Mexican woman. She hugged her pert-looking bustline with her arms folded. Nice figure despite her age—he guessed thirties—not some big-bellied slob. Not a raving beauty, but he’d screwed worse-looking ones. He must be going to live. He had sex on his mind. “What’s best?” he asked.
She looked undecided. “I think take it out. It’s lead and foreign to your body. Your wound probably won’t ever heal if you leave it in.”
“You took them out before?”
“Yes.”
“Is it deep?”
She shook her head. “I tested for it while you were out. It is in the muscles. But I must cauterize it when I am through.”
“What in the hell is that?”
“I will fill the wound full of black powder and set it on fire to seal the blood vessels. It also will keep down any infection. An infection would kill you.”
He tried to look up at her. “You a doctor?”
“I have been one here to many men who have been shot, and in Mexico to those who were wounded.”
“My name’s Toby—Job Toby.”
“I am Dominga. Your men and Kelso went on to find the woman those outlaws have.”
“I bet I don’t have even a horse to ride.”
She shook her head. “They had to leave some pack goods because they were short on horses. Several were shot or had to be shot.”
“This outlaw Earl, is he tough?”
“A mean sumbitch. He raped me when they were here, and I will kill him if I ever see him again.”
“This woman they have?”
“Oh, they have abused her so. I hope Slocum reaches her and cuts their balls out for what they have done to her. She doesn’t answer anyone. She never spoke. Her eyes have a film over them. And she is so pretty. Is she kin to you?”
Toby nodded. “You need them here to operate on me?”
“No, but I must strap you down, because even full of laudanum, you will have pain.”
“How can you do that?”
“A man a few years ago who I operated on to get some arrowheads out of his back, later made the straps for me as a present.”
“Nice of him. You think Slocum will catch them?”
She nodded.
“He ever tell you why he had her?”
“No, but he is a good hombre.”
“Others say he is a killer.”
“Maybe he kills those who need to be killed.”
Toby closed his eyes. “When you get ready, take the damn thing out. I have a ranch to run.”
“I will have to boil my things and get you on the table.”
He nodded and closed his heavy eyes. In seconds, he fell back asleep. A troubled sleep with dreams about Juliana. The night he handed her over to the two pistoleros, she was heavily doped on laudanum. He dreamed that she came back to the house naked. He had to gag and tie her up in the saddle room, then lock the door so the house help didn’t see her. Then he and Valdez argued about those sorry bastards that his man had hired to take her away. They were arguing when one of the house girls, Tia, came in and told him that his wife was in the barn screaming. So to keep Tia quiet, he choked the girl to death with his bare hands so she didn’t tell the others. He was busy killing the house help one by one to conceal his plan. Then he woke up screaming.
In front of his blurry vision, the woman held in her fingers the .50-caliber bullet. “I have it out. Lie still. I must stop the bleeding,” she said, getting up off her knees to go for something.
Soaked in his own sweat, he found he was bound head to toe on the hard boards under his back by several thick leather straps. The urinelike smell of gunpowder hit his nose as she filled the wound. Then she threw a towel over his face.
There was a flash that came through the cloth, and at the lightning pain in his upper chest, he pissed in his pants. He could hear himself screaming, but it sounded so far away—then his world went black.
When he awoke, she was there on her knees beside him. “How are you today?”
“I don’t know. How long have I been out of it?” He realized he had no clothes on under the light cover.
“A day. But that is good. You heal better asleep than fussing.”
“Am I healing?”
“I can’t tell this soon. But it shows no angry red signs of infection.”
“I will owe you for saving my life. What do you want?”
“What can I have?”
“Money?”
“I would take money. I need some things. A pump for my well and more goats. The coyotes are hard on them. They eat more of them than I do.”
“In late summer, I will have the money from a cattle drive and I will pay you with goats, a pump, and cash.”
“Fine,” she said. “I will help you up so you can use the toilet.”
“I’m naked.”
She laughed. “Who has changed your bedding and washed your pants and wiped your butt while you were out of it?”
“Sorry.”
“They are normal things.” She shrugged them off, pulling on his good arm. “Get up easy, you may faint. I can’t hold you up.”
He nodded, and she was right. His head did get very dizzy when he stood on his feet, and she took her time getting him outside into the too-bright sun. He emptied his bladder in the dirt beyond her door. The strong wind swept his bare skin until the last dribble came out. Then he nodded that he was ready to go back inside. Shuffling his bare soles on the hard ground and relying on her as a crutch, he headed for the open doorway.
How were his pistoleros doing? He didn’t like the fact that the cowardly whiskey trader, Kelso, was leading them. Besides, what was Kelso’s real intention here? Kelso might have sold her back to the savages if Slocum had not found her in his camp.
Before Dominga helped him to lie down on the pallet, she laughed at him. “You must be getting better. Your friend down there is coming alive.”
She meant his dick. Glancing down, he realized his rod was halfway stiff. “What can we do about that?”
She tapped him on the good shoulder with her small index finger. “You are too weak to do much more than lie on your back. I can handle the rest.”
And she did so, with her hot mouth and fierce fist, until he emptied his balls in a great fountain on his belly. Then he fell unconscious and went to sleep.
The next day, his boys Polo and Guerra still had not returned, and he began to worry about them. They should have caught those bastards by this time and been back. Even if he was able to ride, he couldn’t leave this place. He had no horse to ride.
Three more days passed, and he was pacing the jacal’s hard-packed floor. She came in with her hands full of goat entrails from the billy she had just butchered.
“Your men are returning. They seem to have several horses with saddles and packs.”
“Oh, thank God,” he said. Hurrying to the doorway to greet them, he grew light-headed and sunk his shoulder against the door facing as he saw Polo and Guerra approaching on some fine horses.
“What took you so long?” He frowned at the two as they dismounted. “Where’s Kelso?”
Polo looked around as if to be sure they were alone. The dirty bandage on his arm needed to be replaced. He waved Toby over to a dun packhorse. Toby took unsteady steps until he was standing beside it. He used the horse to steady his balance on. Looking serious, Polo undid the straps and lifted the flap for him to see inside the canvas pannier.
Bundles and bundles of money. More gawdamn U.S. paperbacks than he’d ever seen in his entire life. Thousands of dollars.
“Where is she at?” Toby asked.
In Spanish, Guerra, standing behind him, said, “Like the smoke, she is gone.”