I woke with a start as the darkness died around me, probing fingers of dawn light forcing open my eyes.
I stood, stiff and weary, and studied the land around me. The plains and sentinel hills lay still, bathed in brightness from broken clouds that looked like someone had dipped a giant brush in gold paint and stippled them across the vast blue canvas of the sky.
Many people believe the sky is a thing separate from the earth, but it’s not—it’s part of it. And soon we’d be traveling, not under its arching canopy, but through it, golden light stretching out all around us.
Last night I’d feared to build a fire, but now, wishful for coffee, I gathered a few sticks of dry wood from the hillside, then filled the pot from the wash, where I’d seen the buffalo.
The fire I kept small, just enough to boil the coffee, and when it was done I poured a cup for Lila and brought it to her. The girl woke and smiled at me and I felt my heart thud in my chest. Lila took the coffee gratefully, handling the hot tin cup with care.
I poured coffee for myself, squatted beside her and built a smoke. I thumbed a match into flame and lit the cigarette.
“We should wake Pa,” Lila said.
I nodded. “Soon. He had a pretty restless night, crying out in his sleep an’ all. I reckon we’ll let him rest for a few more minutes.”
Lila glanced over at her sleeping father. “He’ll be just fine when we reach our farm,” she said, a wistfulness touching her voice. She looked at me, almost challenging me to say different. “I know he will.”
Me, I let it go. I’d said all I needed to say on the subject of Ned Tryon and I’d no call to speak further. Deflecting any possible questions, I said: “I reckon we’ll cross the Brazos tomorrow about twelve miles north of Round Timbers. Before then we’ll reach the headwaters of the Little Wichita and then Deepwater Creek.” I drew deep on my cigarette. “It’s good country down there, plenty of grass and wood.”
Lila picked up her cup gingerly, holding it with her thumb and forefinger by the rim. “The farm has been my dream and Pa’s dream for months,” she said. “I can hardly believe it soon will come true.”
I tossed away my cold cigarette butt. “Best we get moving,” I said.
Thirty minutes later we took to the trail again, but this time I rode the black, scouting just ahead of the wagon.
The sun was straight above my head and the day was warm when the three riders came.
And there was no mistaking the huge, yellow-haired man who rode grimly at their head, a scoped rifle across the horn of his saddle.
It was Lafe Wingo.
Chapter 13
Wingo rode my paint, and he sat upright in the saddle, heavy-shouldered, his bold blue eyes taking in everything, missing nothing. He wore a soft, thigh-length buckskin shirt decorated with Cheyenne beadwork and gray pants tucked into expensive boots. The tooled gun belt around his waist carried a long barreled Colt with ivory handles and he affected the elegant mustache and Imperial worn by many Texas gunmen of the period. Wingo wore a silver necklace made of disks decorated with blue stones in the Navaho manner and his thick wrists were adorned with wide, hammered silver bracelets. A gold ring with a green gem glittered on the little finger of his left hand.
He looked well-nourished and sleek, a man used to the best bonded whiskey, fine cigars and beautiful women.
Cold-blooded murder paid well, though I could understand why a man with his expensive tastes would need the thirty thousand dollars he’d been so willing to kill to acquire.
Gold and blood. The two so often went together, all summed up in this one killer.
Lafe Wingo reined up when he was a few yards from me, looked me up and down, and I saw his lips curl as he mentally dismissed me as no danger.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, the challenge in his voice unmistakable. “You’re way off your range, ain’t you, puncher?”
I wanted badly to kill this man, but he had moved the muzzle of his rifle so it was pointing right at my belly. I could shuck a gun fast, but all Wingo had to do was twitch his trigger finger and I was a dead man. The odds were against me and right now all I could do was bide my time.
Behind Wingo a tall man in a black shirt and cowhide vest sat bent over in the saddle. I couldn’t see his face but the bottom half of his shirt was dark with crusted blood and I heard him groan in pain.
Beside the wounded outlaw rode a tall, red-bearded man with thick, untamed eyebrows and penetrating black eyes. He carried a Colt in a cross-draw holster, and unlike Wingo, this man wasn’t underestimating me. His careful eyes watched me like a hawk on the prod and right there and then I decided this man could be even more dangerous than Wingo.
The blond gunman was waiting for my answer, so I swallowed my anger and jerked a thumb over my shoulder, playing the green puncher to the hilt. “Name’s Dusty Hannah and I’m escorting a wagon down to the Brazos country.”
Wingo was suddenly interested. “Wagon? What kind of wagon?”
I shrugged. “Four-wheeled farm wagon hauled by a team of oxen.”
Wingo nodded. “They call me Lafe Wingo.” He paused, shrewd eyes boring into mine. “Mean anything to you, boy?”
I shook my head at him. “No. Should it?”
The realization came to me then that Wingo, with the hired killer’s total disregard for his victims, didn’t recognize me. He had shot me at a distance, then up close had kicked me in the ribs, but to him I’d been another faceless, nameless nonentity who’d fallen to his gun.
“My name means much to many people in many places,” Wingo said, his gunman’s pride wounded. “I guess you’ve led a sheltered life.”
He nodded to the man slumped in the saddle. “This here is Hank Owens. He’s gut-shot and I don’t expect him to live.” He jutted his chin toward the bearded man. “That’s his brother Ezra. We had a run-in with Apaches last night and Hank was gut-shot and Charlie, another brother, was killed.”
Alone among Indians, Apaches usually chose not to fight at night, believing that a warrior unfortunate enough to get killed must wander for all eternity in darkness. But the Apache is notional, and he’ll fight in the dark if put to it, especially if he senses an advantage.
My life depended on me playing the part of the innocent young puncher, so I looked at Ezra and said: “I’m mighty sorry about your brother, mister.”
The man shrugged, his black eyes unreadable. “Charlie was all right. Had him a limp and he talked too much was all.”
Hank Owens groaned. He lifted his head and looked at Wingo. “Lafe, you got to get me to a doctor. My belly’s on fire.”
Wingo turned to the man and smiled. “We got a wagon for you to ride in, Hank. I reckon we can make you right comfortable.”
“Where are you headed?” I said, knowing what the answer would be as soon as I asked the question.
“Why, where you’re headed, boy. I guess the Brazos country is as good as anyplace else and we may need an extry rifle before we’re done,” Wingo answered. He smiled, his eyes mean. “That is, if you can hit anything with a rifle.”
“I do all right,” I said, refusing to be baited. My eyes slid to my saddlebags slung behind Wingo’s blanket roll and the man, missing nothing, demanded suspiciously: “You got something stuck in your craw, boy? If you do, spit it out.”
I shook my head at him. “No, I was just admiring your paint. Nice pony.”
Wingo’s suspicions were not laid to rest. “You mind your business, boy,” he said. “That is, if you want to keep on breathing.”
Lafe Wingo was a trouble-hunting man and right now he held all the aces, so I bit my tongue and said nothing.
