CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Red Ryan woke with a thumping headache and opened his eyes to darkness. Slowly, as his senses returned, the full seriousness of his predicament dawned on him. His wrists were roped to a huge rear wheel of the Conestoga, and his ankles were tied. His shirt and boots were gone and so was his derby hat, bullet-holed now, but bought new only a couple of weeks before.

Red cursed under his breath. He’d fallen in with thieves.

A horned moon hung high in the night sky surrounded by the clustered stars. The wind restlessly prowled around the wagon and rocked it gently, soothing its snoring occupant that Ryan guessed was Ma Buck, the formidable matriarch of her mangy clan.

As coyotes yipped out in the long grass, Red tried moving his wrists, but they were securely bound to the wheel and didn’t budge. He gave up and looked around him. The blanketed Bucks lay sleeping around the low, guttering campfire, one of the women muttering in uneasy slumber. Beyond the somnambulists, neatly piled on a white-streaked chicken cage, were Red’s clothes, his gunbelt, still with his Colt in the holster, on top. It seemed that Ma Buck had not yet decided to whom would go the spoils, deciding to wait until daylight to determine who among her brood was the most deserving.

Red stared at his gun . . . if only . . .

Not a chance. When the Bucks tied a man to a wagon wheel, they tied him good.

And then a thought: Why the hell was he still alive?

Red couldn’t figure that one.

Unless . . . torture was a possibility. He shook his head. Nah, white folks didn’t torture people. Did they? Of course not. Red dismissed the thought, but then hit on the obvious . . . Ma Buck would kill him at her leisure, probably come morning after breakfast and before she and her clan moved out.

Well, there was no dismissing that possibility, and Red moved it forward in his mind from probable to dead certain. He smiled to himself. He hadn’t even warned Ma about the Apaches, and that served her right. She was no better than an Apache herself.

Ryan sighed over his perilous plight and then dropped his head and dozed.

He woke up with a start, thinking that it was morning, but the night was still dark, and the moon remained in her heaven and Ma Buck continued to snore in the wagon. Red tried his bonds again, a futile struggle that only hurt his wrists and deepened his despair. No matter how he cut it, he was doomed and that was a natural fact.

Then, a whisper in the darkness, not a voice but the soft rustle of booted feet moving through long grass . . . followed by silence. Ryan’s eyes searched the gloom. He saw nothing. Heard nothing. His heart sank. He was imagining things. One of the Buck men snorted, turned over on his side and then lay still. Long seconds passed . . .

Wait, there it was again, louder now, making more noise than even the clumsiest Apache ever would. It could only be a tangle-footed white man trying to injun closer.

Buttons Muldoon emerged from the murk, a rifle in his hands and an uneasy look on his face. He looked around, saw Red, and sneaked toward him with all the stealth of a longhorn bull in a brothel. Buttons took a knee beside Red, put a finger to his lips and said, “Shh . . .” so loud that it sounded like steam escaping a burst boiler.

Red looked around him in a panic, but the Buck family still slept and Ma’s steady snoring reassured him.

Buttons produced a barlow, opened the blade, and sawed on the rope binding Red’s left wrist. In a moment, his arm was free. Then the right . . .

Ma Buck stopped snoring and the ensuing silence was as ominous as a skeleton dangling in a cottonwood tree.

Urgently now, Buttons slashed the rope away from Ryan’s ankles and whispered, “Let’s go.”

“My duds,” Red said.

“Leave them,” Buttons said.

“The hell I will,” Red said.

“Oh my God, we’re all gonna be killed,” Buttons said.

On sock feet Red tiptoed past the sleeping Bucks, put on his derby, then grabbed his gunbelt, boots, and shirt and followed Buttons into the sheltering darkness.

But then an unexpected disaster . . .

Ryan yelled, “Owww! Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!”

Buttons turned and saw Red hopping around on one leg, his face twisted in pain. “What happened?” he said, no longer bothering to whisper.

“I stubbed my toe on a rock!” Ryan wailed. “I think I broke it!”

Rifles roared and bullets buzzed through the air like angry hornets.

Buttons said, “That was a damned fool thing to do!”

“It’s dark,” Red said. “I didn’t even see the damned rock. I think it’s broke. I’m sure my big toe is broke.”

“Well, no matter, you’ll have run on it. We need to get out of here,” Buttons said.

Then Ma Buck’s voice, echoing into the darkness like the hoarse cawing of an enraged crow, “Get them! Kill them!”

More shots shattered into the night, one so close that it almost trimmed Red’s mustache. “The hell with this,” he said. He pulled his Colt from the holster and dusted off five shots in the direction of the dim glow of the Buck firelight. Then to Buttons, “That will keep them honest for a spell.”

“Go, go, go!” Buttons said. “Follow me.”

Red followed, hobbling on his tormented left foot, his every step accompanied by a painful, “Ow!” Ow! Ow!”

Buttons made his way through the gloom that was once again getting punctured by shots, and then, grazing in a patch of moonlight was a ground-tied horse, one of the big, strong wheelers from the stage stripped of its harness except for a bridle. With surprising alacrity, Buttons jumped on the horse and pulled Red up behind him. “Ow!” Red said. Buttons kicked the horse into a flat-out run, and he and Red were pursued by a few parting shots from the outraged Bucks . . . but they fired blindly into the darkness and came nowhere close.