feet, and loudly complaining about sharing its stall.
I was aware of voices. Jo Jo was shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words. Kip was out there somewhere, too, saying something, and suddenly, I was worried about him. If Cimarron killed me, what would he do to the little witness?
I tried to clear my head. I heard footsteps on the ladder. Heavy footsteps. I hoisted myself to my feet, grabbing the mane of the horse. If this were a movie, when I fell, I would have landed astride the mighty steed without doing any damage to my private parts. I would have whispered some magical incantation in the great beast’s ear, and he would pound down the door to the stall. With a Hi-ho, Silver, I would have scooped up Kip, and we would have galloped out of the barn and into the moonlight, the evening breeze tousling my hair.
But this wasn’t a movie, and I could barely see, and as best I could tell, my head was covered with a mixture of blood and horseshit.
The stall door swung open, and I heard his voice. “C’mon out, lawyer. I’m not through with you.”
I eased back to the wall, behind the horse, where they tell you never to stand. I smacked him on the rear, and he bolted through the open door, with me right behind.
K. C. Cimarron was not born yesterday, and he had a lot of quick for a big man. He stepped to one side and did not get trampled or even brushed by the horse, but at least I had a moving pick bigger than Charles Barkley, and it got me out of the stall without being clobbered.
The horse bolted for the open door, and I stepped that way, but Cimarron anticipated the move. He blocked me, and I raised my hands in surrender. “Enough. I’ve had enough.”
He stood there watching me.
“ Simmy!” Her voice came down from the loft. Shrill and hysterical. “Simmy, he raped me! Are you going to let him go?”
Wait a second. Didn’t she just try to stop him from killing me? Just what the hell was going on here?
“ No,” he said, stepping to the wall and pulling down a bullwhip from a wooden dowel peg. “He’s not going anywhere. I’m going to flog him. I’m going to leave scars he’ll remember till the day he dies.”
The yell came from my left. Cimarron and I both looked that way.
“ I am Spartacus!” With that, Kip charged him, a five-pronged pitchfork aimed at the big man’s groin. Cimarron pivoted to one side, reducing the target to his flank. The blades glanced his leg, and then in one smooth motion, Cimarron grabbed the pitchfork just where the wooden pole met the steel fork. He did have a lot of quick.
With a flick of the wrist, he lifted boy and pitchfork, Kip hanging on, as if practicing his pole vault. Cimarron shook the pitchfork and Kip tumbled to the floor.
“ Next time,” I said to my nephew, “don’t yell first.”
“ No need for this,” Cimarron said, cocking his arm, and sailing the pitchfork over my head. I ducked anyway, and it landed with a thud in the far wall, where it sunk in and vibrated like a tuning fork.
“ Now, boy, you git out of here,” he said to Kip, who hesitated.
“ I’ll be all right,” I lied, and Kip headed for the open barn door, looking back at me with sadness and fear.
“ Now, you,” Cimarron said. “Let’s finish this.”
We stood maybe fifteen feet apart, facing each other. “I’ve never touched a woman against her will in my life,” I said. “She’s lying to you. I don’t know why. I don’t know who killed Hornback, or what happened to Blinky, or why Jo Jo came up here, or even why I followed her, but I know I didn’t touch her.”
Cimarron brought his right hand up behind his ear and snapped his wrist forward. The bullwhip flicked toward me unseen, and cracked, the tip catching me on the shoulder. I thought I’d been stabbed. I backed up, trying to get out of range, and Cimarron advanced, lashing the whip at me, coming up short. He lowered his arm, flicked his wrist, and this time, the tip caught me on the thigh, sending a stinging pain down my leg.
He had cut off my path to the open door, and now I hobbled toward a window, but this was one he had boarded up after the hailstorm. Two steel support posts supported the loft here, and I squeezed between them to block the oncoming whip. Cimarron still tried, though, snapping the leather against the steel posts with the sound of ricocheting gunshots.
After three or four tries, he dropped the whip and just came after me. I backed farther along the wall, studded with dowels hung with bridles, reins, and blinders. Still facing Cimarron, I moved backward, my hand feeling along the wall, until my fingers wrapped round the cold metal of a bit and bridle.
He was on me then, reaching for me with open palm, trying to grab me around the neck. As he did, I swung the bridle, and the bit cracked his front teeth and sunk between his jaws. I kept pushing and he gagged, his tongue stuck under the bit. I had his head bent back, and still I pushed, cutting the sides of his mouth, his tongue and gums, forcing his mouth open, farther still.
Then he bit down.
He clamped the metal bit between his jaws and stopped my movement. Both my hands were on the bridle, and both his hands were free. He boxed my ears with a thunderous double punch. I sank to my knees, my head ringing, and he kicked me in the solar plexus. I pitched forward, heaving, and he grabbed my hair and knocked me over backward. I stumbled back two steps, tripped over a two-by-four railing and tumbled into a corncrib. I was on all fours, gagging, staving off the urge to vomit, trying to catch my breath.
Cimarron stood watching me, his eyes blazing with hate. His tongue flicked the corners of his mouth, where blood trickled down his chin. I tried to get to my feet, but the corncobs rolled under my feet and I fell. When I looked up, Cimarron was pointing something at me. At first, I thought it was a gun.
I blinked twice.
“ Don’t move, lawyer, or I’ll nail you to the barn wall. I’ll crucify you, and no court in the land would convict me. Even the Lord would understand.”
I was trying to get up again.
“ I mean it, lawyer.”
“ Jo Jo,” I called out. “Where are you? Tell him the truth. Tell him how you got me out here. Tell him that you told me he beat and raped you.”
I heard the floorboards creaking overhead and caught sight of her coming down the ladder. In a moment she was beside Cimarron, clutching the blanket at her throat, looking small and vulnerable. “He raped me, Simmy, and then attacked you. And you’re right, no one would blame you. You’ll never even be charged. I know. It’s what I do for a living. You were protecting a loved one and defending yourself. It’s justifiable homicide.”
“ She’s lying,” I said, my voice weak and unconvincing. “She’s lying about everything.”
I was half crouching, half standing, like some prehistoric ape-man, ancestor to us all. He aimed the stud gun at my chest, then carefully lowered it toward my groin, then lowered it an inch more.
“ You’re bluffing,” I said. “It won’t fire that way. The barrel has to press against the target…”
Whomp. A carbon steel nail ricocheted off an ear of corn beneath my feet.
“…unless you modified it,” I said.
Cimarron slipped another nail into the barrel, raised the gun, aimed at the center of my forehead, then turned his wrist a fraction of an inch.
I felt the whistle of the nail by my ear and heard it whomp into the wall. Again, he slipped a nail into the barrel. Whomp, into a cross-hatched beam just above my head.
When I looked back at him, he was aiming at my midsection. Click.
“ Damn. Josefina, there’s a full clip over by the sawhorse.”
Cimarron stood ten feet away. I could launch myself out of the corncrib, lower a shoulder and send him flying. I could fake and juke and zig and zag and get the hell out of there. Sure, and I could fly to the moon, but at the moment, I couldn’t lift one leg. Exhaustion and fear had paralyzed me.
I saw Jo Jo hand Cimarron something, heard the sound of metal sliding against metal. He was pointing the stud gun at me again. “A fellow could grow tired pulling this trigger all day. Gives you respect for roofers and carpenters. I’ve got some pretty strong wrists, and already I’m getting tuckered out. Maybe I should just end the game.”
He aimed at my heart, lowered to my groin, moved down to my knee, then back to the heart. “Bang,” he said, then laughed as I winced.
He quickly moved the gun to a point high over my head.
