The bully turned and hurried away. Rolf met Teresa’s eyes and he thought he saw pride. But he didn’t wait around to hear any more or to face another bully. Rolf stepped inside the general store and quickly began to make his purchases.
“Where you headed?” the store clerk asked, looking nervous as he hurried to fill Rolf’s order.
“Maybe Prescott or Flagstaff.”
“Flagstaff is a lot closer. Growin’ too fast, though, since the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad passed through. They say Flagstaff is now the fastest-growin’ town on the line runnin’ between Albuquerque and the Pacific Coast.”
“Is it surrounded by high desert sage like these parts?”
“Nope, pines. They get some pretty good snow up there.”
“Ranching country?”
“Some. Prescott is better though. Not so cold and the grass has a longer growing season. You a rancher?”
“Nope. Just hopin’ to be a good cowboy,” Rolf admitted. “Is there a real doctor in this town?”
“Fraid not. People here either die or get well all on their own. Only the strong survive in Purgatory.”
“Purgatory, huh.” Rolf collected his goods in a burlap sack. “How much do I owe you, mister?”
“I’ll tally it up.”
Rolf thought he heard Teresa and she sounded angry. “Here,” he said, tossing a twenty-dollar bill on the counter. “That ought to cover it.”
“Why … why, thanks!”
Rolf hurried outside to see a man with a gun strapped on his lean hip reaching for Teresa.
“Hold it!” Rolf ordered.
The man whirled, drawing his gun so fast that Rolf didn’t have time to drop his sack of provisions. And there he was, caught flat-footed and helpless.
“Mister,” the gunman said with a look of triumph on his face, “you got the drop on that other fella, but I’ve just turned the tables on you. What are you going to do about that?”
The sack slipped out of Rolf’s hand and he flexed his fingers. “Maybe I’ll get off a shot,” he heard himself tell the man.
“You’re even stupider than you look, kid!”
Rolf wanted to draw, but he was so damned scared, he felt as if his body had turned to solid ice.
“Drop it!” Teresa ordered, cocking back the hammer of a derringer that had appeared in her little fist. “Drop it or I’ll shoot you in the back, mister!”
The gunman turned and he saw not only Teresa with a derringer, but Carole also had one pointing at his chest.
“Whew!” he said, eyes falling to his own six-gun. “The odds aren’t good anymore.”
“Drop it,” Teresa repeated.
The gunman was handsome in a lean, predatory way. He smiled and took a step toward Teresa, starting to say something, when her derringer barked smoke and flame. A red, red rose blossomed across the gunman’s shoulder, and his fancy six-gun jumped from his hand as if it had a life of its own. He staggered and tried to stoop for the gun, but Teresa shot him in the knee and he went down bawling.
Rolf jumped forward and disarmed the gunman. Stuffing the man’s ivory-handled six-gun into his waistband and scooping up the sack of provisions, Rolf leaped back into the buckboard.
“Have a nice day!” he called as he slapped the lines down hard on the rumps of the team and the buckboard lurched into the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea.
None of them looked back at Purgatory and they kept moving at a brisk trot until the evil little mining town was just a speck of dust on the bleak, gray horizon.
“You saved my bacon,” Rolf said, taking Teresa’s hand.
“Yeah, but you were brave and fast with that first fella,” Teresa said proudly. “Wasn’t he brave, Carole?”
“He sure was, but almost dead.”
“Yeah, I was that too,” Rolf said, feeling good about himself as he twisted around for about the tenth time to make sure that they were not being followed.
“Where are we going?” Carole asked.
“Flagstaff, then maybe Prescott,” Rolf told her as they jounced onward in the face of a crimson and gold desert sunset.
Chapter 14
There had been a foot of snow on the ground in Flagstaff and the temperature barely got above freezing the day Rolf drove the buckboard through the northern Arizona railroad town. They found a Dr. Osmond, but he wasn’t very encouraging after a cursory examination of Nathan Cox.
“I’d say the poor fellow has permanent and irreversible brain damage,” was Osmond’s grim prognosis.
“You’re wrong!” Carole had insisted, and then they’d dragged poor Nathan out of the doctor’s office and loaded him back into the buckboard.
