At daybreak I rose and stretched, working the stiffness out of my muscles. Mr. Fullerton had packed me a thick steak sandwich and a bottle of ginger beer and I ate and drank and then built a cigarette.
The scattering of butts around my feet grew in number as the morning progressed, and just before noon I saddled the dun and headed for the cabin.
Around me the wild land was being hammered into submission by the sun. The only living thing I saw was a tiny antelope fawn that limped from the thin shelter of a mesquite bush and hobbled quickly away from me, a wounded, stricken thing destined only for death.
I rode on, strangely disturbed. Maybe the fawn was an animal of ill omen, a warning to turn back. But that was something I could not do, my fate, for good or ill, as preordained and as inevitable as that of the fawn.
When the cabin came in view, Lafe Wingo’s horse was tethered outside, but I saw nothing of him or Lila.
I swung out of the saddle and took up my rifle and the saddlebags, choosing to go the rest of the way on foot, keeping to what little cover I could find.
When I was about a hundred yards from the cabin, I stopped beside a stunted juniper and yelled: “Wingo!”
A few moments of silence passed. Then the cabin door opened a crack and Wingo called out: “Did you bring the money?”
I held the saddlebags high enough so Wingo could see them clear.
“Come on in,” the gunman hollered. “And leave the damn Winchester behind.”
I propped the rifle against the branches of the juniper and walked slowly toward the cabin. Moving my head as little as possible I glanced around, but saw no sign of Jim Meldrum.
Sweat trickled down my back and my insides were knotted up with fear. I was out in the open and Wingo could gun me from the cabin window if he had a mind to.
But that concern was laid to rest when the big gunman, as brutal and arrogant as ever, stepped outside the cabin, holding Lila close to him.
The girl was deathly pale and a huge red bruise swelled angrily on her left cheekbone. Even from where I stood I could see that her eyes were haunted, circled by dark shadows.
I badly wanted to draw down on Wingo right then, but he was partly shielded by Lila and I couldn’t take the chance of hitting her.
Wingo waved me forward. “Boy, get close enough to throw them saddlebags and then step back,” he said.
I did as he told me and threw the saddlebags at his feet. I reckoned this might be my chance to get him in the clear, but he held Lila even closer as he bent and picked them up.
The gunman said something to Lila I couldn’t hear, and the girl undid the rawhide ties of the bags and opened them. Wingo inclined his head and looked inside, and I saw the anger rise scarlet and immediate on his cheeks.
“Boy,” he said, turning his cold eyes in my direction, “this was ill done.” He threw Lila away from him and she sprawled heavily on the grass.
“I told you I’d kill you, boy, and now I will,” Wingo said, his hand close to his gun. “And after you’re dead, I’ll go get the damned money my ownself.”
He smiled, a cruel, vicious sneer. “Want me to tell you what I did to your woman last night, boy? Want me to tell you how much she enjoyed it?”
I knew what Wingo was doing. He was trying to keep me off balance, get me so riled up I couldn’t think or shoot straight.
And he might have succeeded, because I was about to go for my gun—but Jim Meldrum chose that moment to make his play.
Rightly or wrongly, Meldrum lived by the unwritten code of the riverboat gambler and Southern gentleman. As the code dictated, he would not shoot at Wingo before calling him out. And he did that now.
The lanky puncher rose quickly out of the grass, his rifle in his hands, and yelled: “Wingo!”
Drawing as he turned, Wingo’s gun came up with incredible speed. His shot roared a split second later and Meldrum, hit hard, took a step back, his rifle spinning away from him.
I made my draw as Meldrum went for his holstered Colt. Years without practice had taken its toll. He was slow, way too slow. His gun was still clearing the leather when Wingo shot him again.
Wingo didn’t wait to see Meldrum fall. He swung toward me, a triumphant grin stretching his mouth under his sweeping mustache. The Colt in my fist hammered and the gunman jerked as my bullet hit him. Wingo triggered his own gun. A miss. The lead sang past my left ear. I fired again and Wingo, hit a second time, staggered a couple of steps back and slammed against the cabin wall, his eyes wide with shock and disbelief. He had not expected me to be any kind of gunfighter and now I was reading to him from the Book. With growing horror, Wingo must have realized that the error of his ways was being writ loud and clear—in hot lead.
Her face pale and scared, Lila suddenly ran toward me and I yelled: “No, Lila! Go back!”
Wingo fired. Lila took the bullet, cried out, spun around, then fell.
My Colt hammered again. And again. Both bullets found their mark and blood splashed scarlet over the front of Wingo’s buckskin shirt. The gunman shrieked his rage and staggered toward me, trying to raise a Colt that suddenly seemed too heavy for him.
“You . . . you . . .” he mumbled, his eyes wild, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a savage snarl.
I felt as cold as ice. I raised my gun to eye level, sighted, and fired.
The bullet crashed into the middle of Wingo’s forehead and blew out the back of his skull, an obscene halo of blood and brain erupting scarlet in the air around him.
The gunman rose up on his toes, his eyes rolled back in his head, and then he crashed to the ground on his face.
I holstered my smoking Colt and ran to Lila, dropping on one knee beside her. She’d been hit in the back, high on her left shoulder and the bullet had gone all the way through, coming out just below her collarbone.
“Lila,” I said, “can you hear me?”
The girl opened her eyes, and to my surprise, she managed a weak smile. “Carry me into my home, Dusty,” she whispered.
I gathered Lila in my arms and carried her inside and laid her gently on the bunk, then sat beside her.
“Lila, I need to get you to the SP,” I said, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. “We have to find you a doctor.”
She nodded. “But take time first, Dusty,” she said. “Take time to bury Jim Meldrum.”
“I can do that later,” I said. “Jim is dead, and you’re still alive. He would understand that your need comes first.”
Lila shook her head. “Bury him, Dusty. Don’t leave him to lie out here.” She looked at me, her eyes pleading. “Jim died trying to save me. Years from now, I want to know that he lies here, that I did right by him.”
“But you’re losing blood, Lila,” I protested. “We don’t have time.”
“I’ll be all right,” the girl said. “Take time, Dusty. Jim was a brave man. Bury him right. Please, Dusty, do it for me.”
I rose slowly to my feet, knowing further argument was useless. “I’ll do it, Lila. I’ll bury him right, the way you say.”
There was a question I had to ask, nagging at me like a bad toothache, yet I feared to ask it. But it was not the question I feared—it was the answer.
“Lila,” I said, picking my words carefully, like a man chooses stepping-stones across a fast-running brook, “last night, did Wingo do anything. I mean, did he . . . ?”
“Dusty,” Lila said, her voice slashing across mine like a knife, “don’t ask me that question. As long as you live, never ask me that question again.”
I looked into her eyes and saw no anger, only a world of pain and hurt. It was plain that the hurt went deep, deep into Lila’s soul, everything that made her a woman scarred and cut about with terrible wounds that would be slow to heal, if they ever did. It was a pain I had never experienced, and thus I could only guess at its intensity, knowing I would always fall far short of the appalling reality.
Me, I looked into Lila’s eyes and saw all the answer to my question I’d ever need.
