about half a second. When it finally dawned on me what was about to occur, I made an awkward, squatting lunge at the miniature shooter just as it went off. Burning powder singed my fingers when they wrapped around the weapon’s tiny cylinder.
The little gal’s well-aimed bullet hit the gravely wounded Roscoe right in the mouth. A searing chunk of peanut-sized lead knocked all his front teeth out, carved a tunnel through the soft tissue at the back of his throat, and blasted its way through a spot in his neck just below the skull bone. The bullet shoved most of his shattered teeth out the newly acquired port in his head and splattered the entire hair-covered mess onto the wooden porch prop he leaned against.
I ripped the smoking pistol from Clementine’s grasp, then rolled into the dust on my bony rump. Clumsily, I hopped up with all the red-faced embarrassment and alacrity of a suitor who’s just fallen down a series of steps right in front of a woman he was trying his best to impress.
“Damnation, girl,” I yelped, then flicked a glance at Roscoe Pickett’s shattered teeth, blasted skull, and sagging corpse. I shook my head in total disbelief, then locked Clementine in a narrow, steely gaze and added, “You’ve grown a mighty thick layer of hard bark around your heart since this morning, darlin’.”
The girl’s ferocious, crazed, turquoise gaze flashed from Pickett to me and back again. It sounded damn near unearthly when she snarled, “I thought about what these men did all the way from Devils River to here, Ranger Dodge. He deserved to die. Moreover, he deserved to die by my hand. Truth is, they all deserved to die by my hand.” She ran trembling fingers through her hair, as though clearing away any arguments against her conduct, then added, “It’s biblical, by God. In the Scripture. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Blood for blood.”
I cast a bewildered glance toward heaven. Felt as though she’d somehow confused me into silence. After several seconds, I glanced at the tiny pistol in my hand and snapped, “I told you I’d take care of this. Gave you my word.”
“True,” the girl snapped back. “Just thought you could use a little help bringing this particular part of the dance to a suitable conclusion.”
I wasn’t thinking when I went to offer the pissant-sized .32 back to her. She tried to snatch it from me as I asked her, “Where in the blue-eyed hell did you get this anyway?”
There was no hesitation when the stone-faced girl snapped, “Bought it over at that falling-down mercantile store next to Big Jim’s. Same place I got my hat.” She made an insistent
With considerable reluctance, I extended the weapon and said, “Think it best that you get on back over to Big Jim’s and wait for us. We’ll take care of these boys and get after them other two quick as we can. Probably best to go after ’em tomorrow morning. Not a good idea to be on the Del Rio road at night. Even for men like us. Just never know what might happen.”
“Then where’ll we stay?”
“Big Jim’s livery with the horses.”
The girl shook her head, turned on her heel, and stomped away. Me, Boz, and Glo stood amongst the carnage and watched as Bear gave a slobbery yelp and loped happily off behind her.
After near a minute of silence Boz said, “How ’bout we go inside and have a drink? Hell, maybe two or three. Don’t know you boys feelin’s on the subject, but I could sure as hell use one right now. Given what we just seen and did and all.”
With a loud metallic click, Glo broke the Greener open and extracted the brass jackets of the spent shells. He dropped the empties into his coat pocket and fished out a fresh pair of hot loads. He shoved the new shells in place, snapped the weapon closed, leisurely checked to make sure the hammers were down, then said, “Sounds like a good idea, Mistuh Boz. Back of my throat feels like a barbed wire bird’s nest.”
I stepped over Roscoe Pickett’s corpse, stomped onto the plank porch, and headed for the cantina’s door. Stopped a step from the rude threshold, turned, and gazed back at the bloody wreckage my friends and I’d wrought.
I let a flinty gaze flick over to the skull-shattered corpse of Cullen Pickett. The dead man had come to rest lying nigh on directly in the cantina’s entryway. After several seconds my gaze moved to the now-toothless carcass of Roscoe, gape-mouthed and held upright in an ungainly, twisted position against the porch prop. Then for several seconds, I glared over at the lifeless body of their brother, Priest, cut nearly in twain by a double-barreled load of Glo’s expertly delivered buckshot.
“Yeah,” I grunted, then laid the rifle across my arm again. “Sure enough. Think we could all use a drink ’bout now. Fact, more’n one sounds like a good idea to me.”
I suppose we stayed longer at Mendoza’s than we should have. ’Course, it took some time to negotiate the hows and whys of Arturo Mendoza’s disposal of the Pickett boys. The old bandit finally agreed when we told him he could keep everything they’d arrived with—including their horses, guns, other trappings, and such.
We were sitting at a table by the front door, working on our second tumbler of tequila, when a small band of Messicans showed up out of nowhere and went to carrying the corpses away. Took a spell, but when they finished you couldn’t see a spot of blood on Mendoza’s porch. It was darker than a barrel of black cats when we dropped money on the table and headed for Big Jim’s. Time we got back to the stable it must have been around ten o’clock. I dropped into my bedroll and slept like a felled tree.
I woke up next morning to find Glo standing over me. Do believe he looked more distressed than I’d seen him in quite a spell. Said, “ ’At ’ere li’l gal done gone, Mistuh Dodge. Figure she could already be in Del Rio by now.”
Swear ’fore Jesus, if God himself had reached down from Heaven’s front gate and slapped the bejabbers out of me, don’t think I would’ve been any more surprised. But, hell, it was becoming more and more clear to me that Clementine Webb was chock full of such mind-boggling astonishments.
I covered my eyes with one hand, thought it over for about a second, then said, “Go on and get after her. Me’n Boz will be comin’ along quick as we can. Probably catch up ’fore you can get to Del Rio.
Glo hit the door running. Minute later he was nothing more than a fading memory and a lingering cloud of dust.
Getting myself in gear and moving took some doing that morning. Felt like somebody stood over me the night before and beat me with a single tree. Boz appeared to have the same problem. When I finally did scramble up and set to the task, I must have said “Damnation,” twenty-five times or more while I saddled my animal. Just about had the job finished when Big Jim Boston strolled up and leaned against the stall rails. I glanced over at him and said, “You knew Clementine had struck out, didn’t you, Jim?”
The mountainous smithy had his hands shoved behind the bib on his scarred and soot-covered leather apron. He gifted me with a sheepish nod, then said, “Gal paid me to keep quiet till you boys woke up this mornin’, Lucius. Easiest money I’ve made in more’n a year.”
“She paid you?”
“Hell, yeah. Dropped a pair of ten-dollar gold pieces in my hand like they weren’t no more’n a couple a grains a sand. You got any idea how long it takes me to make twenty dollars around a windblown dump like Carta Blanca these days?”
“Not a clue,” I said and jerked my saddle’s cinch strap into place. “Sure it’s right tough though.”
One skillet-sized paw came from behind Big Jim’s apron. He waved at the world outside in a kind of meaningless, general, all-encompassing gesture. “Damned right, it’s tough. Takes a couple a weeks to make that much money these days, by Godfrey. Whole town’s a-dryin’ up like rotten fruit layin’ on the ground around a dyin’ tree. Couple more years won’t be nothin’ left but blowin’ dust and tumbleweeds ’round here.”
“Yeah, well, everybody’s got problems, Jim. You shouldn’t have let her go it alone. Gal don’t have no business roving the countryside around these parts unaccompanied.”
“Come on, Lucius, gotta cut me some slack here. What that little gal gave me to keep shut, plus what I made on the horse and saddle I sold her is more money than I’ve seen at one time in three, maybe four months. Hard to pass on a deal like that when you have a family to feed. ’Sides, she strikes me as the type who can damn well take care of herself.”
Snatched up the reins and backed Grizz out of the stall. Led him toward the door with Boston hobbling along beside me. “Unfortunately that’s the same mistake a lot of women make these days. But this one’s not a woman yet. Only a girl, Jim,” I said. “And a mighty young one at that.”
