Wilderness Double Edition 15, page 21
Milhouse’s warning came a fraction of a second too late. Erskine had surged up off the ground, producing a knife from under his shirt—Louisa’s Green River knife, which Erskine thrust at Zach’s ribs. By the width of a whisker, Zach evaded it by wrenching aside. He whipped the barrel against Erskine’s temple, but it didn’t have any effect.
Growling like a feral beast, Erskine pounced, grabbing for the rifle with one hand while lancing the knife at Zach. To save himself, Zach seized the man’s wrist. Then they were down, grappling, rolling back and forth. Erskine’s grip on the Hawken prevented Zach from swinging it, while Zach’s hold on Erskine’s wrist kept the blade at bay. But it wouldn’t for long. Erskine was a full-grown man, Zach a stripling. Erskine outweighed Zach by sixty or seventy pounds. Gradually, the knife inched toward its target.
Zach flipped to the right, to the left. His foe continued to push the knife nearer, ever nearer. He arced his knee up, but it struck Erskine’s leg instead of where it would hurt the most. Erskine returned the favor, but Zach anticipated as much and shifted just enough to deflect the brunt of the blow.
Zach glimpsed Milhouse, covering the others. Given the situation, it was all the trapper could do. To try and shoot Erskine was too risky, what with the constant shifting and rolling. The slug might core the wrong one. So Zach was on his own. He had to end it, and end it quickly.
To do so, Zach resorted to a tactic he’d seen a Shoshone warrior by the name of Touch the Clouds use. Zach drove his forehead into Erskine’s face, into the man’s nose. Cartilage crunched, and wet drops spattered Zach’s cheeks.
A howl of rage and pain was torn from Erskine, but he didn’t let go of the knife as Zach had hoped. No, the scarred brute redoubled his effort to sink it in Zach, throwing all of his superior weight into the attempt.
The tip of the blade touched Zach’s buckskin shirt. If he was going to save himself, now was the time. Another thirty seconds and it would be over. He saw bloodlust gleaming in Erskine’s eyes. Bloodlust, and triumph. But the whites had a saying: Never put the cart before the horse. The man hadn’t won yet.
Zach suddenly released the Hawken and lanced his forefingers into Erskine’s eyes. His nails scraped deep. Erskine bellowed and pushed away, blinking frantically to try to restore his vision. The tension went out of Erskine’s knife arm. Instantly, Zach grasped it with his other hand. Then, coiling his shoulder muscles, he forced Erskine’s right forearm up and in, sinking the steel into Erskine’s own throat.
Scrambling backward, Zach snatched the Hawken and stood. Everyone was gaping at Erskine, who had foolishly ripped the blade out and was now attempting in vain to staunch the river of blood pouring from the cavity. Convulsions ended, the big man flopping like a fish out of water, sputtering and gasping the whole while. It was soon over. The convulsions lessened, the sputtering tapered. Erskine went limp, mouth agape. A spreading pool formed.
“You killed him!” Sylvia Banner exclaimed, aghast.
Zach pivoted. What else did she expect? Titus, Zach noticed, had undone only one of the knots. “You’ll be next if you don’t finish!” he warned, thumbing back the Hawken’s hammer. At the loud click, Titus stiffened. Lou was still doubled over, still breathing hard.
Louisa couldn’t help herself. Her stomach, still sore from Erskine’s punches when she was first caught, had flared with exquisite agony when he hit her again. She’d brought it on herself. Dread of being drugged and raped had spurred her into slamming her legs against Erskine’s shins, and in retaliation he had held her down and driven his fist into her abdomen.
Only now was Lou regaining her senses. She’d heard Zach’s voice and tried to straighten, but her head was swimming so badly she felt nauseous. She saw thick fingers pick at the loops around her ankles. As the rope fell, she slowly unfurled and beheld Erskine, dead. “Good riddance,” she said bitterly. “I just regret it wasn’t me who did him in, like I did that Coyfield.”
Sylvia Banner looked at her. “You’ve killed before?”
“When I’ve had to,” Lou answered. The last time had been when a bunch of hill folk from Arkansas tried to wipe out the King family.
“But you’re just a snip of a girl,” Banner said.
Titus was fumbling at the rope around Lou’s wrists. She smiled at her beloved, wanting to throw her arms around him. Beyond Zach was an old-timer she had never seen before. Over by the van, another man was holding a bloody hand to his side. The driver had his arms in the air and was wisely standing stock-still.
“I was worried sick,” Zach said, a lump forming in his throat as waves of affection rippled through him. It required considerable effort to focus on the matter at hand. There would be time enough later to tell her exactly how worried he had been, and how glad he was to have her safe and sound. “You and me both,” Lou replied.
Titus unraveled the last knot and threw the rope down. “I’m sorry about Erskine hurting you.”
“I know you are,” Lou said. “Take my advice and find a new line of work. As for you …” Lou turned toward Sylvia Banner. “This is for what you did to me.” Her fist caught the brunette square on the jaw. Banner tottered rearward as if drunk, her hands flailing for support that wasn’t there. “And this is for what you did to all those other poor girls.” Again Lou swung, a solid right that sent Banner stumbling against the van.
“These are just for the hell of it.” Lou hit Sylvia again and again, in the face, in the stomach. Compelled by red-hot fury, she boxed the woman’s ear, smashed her on the nose, split her upper and lower lip. Not once did Banner try to defend herself. Groaning, she slumped to the ground, stunned. Lou would have hit her some more had Zach not spoken.
“Move out of the way and I’ll shoot her.”
Breathing heavily, Lou shook her head. “No. We can’t.”
“We must,” Zach said. “All of them deserve to die.” They were enemies, were they not? And first and foremost, he was a Shoshone warrior.
Lou stepped back, placing a hand on the barrel of his rifle. “No,” she insisted. She didn’t care about the others, but Titus had treated her decently enough, and he had a family.
“Your fiancée is right, son,” George Milhouse said. “Murder a white woman and an army of whites will be after your hide. They’ll tear this city apart to find you. Much as I hate to say it, we should let Banner live.”
Zach boiled with rage that demanded release. “What about this one?” He leveled the rifle at the driver. “And the one who tried to shoot me.”
Milhouse came up beside him. “They’re scum, I grant you. If anyone deserves to be rubbed out, they do. But the shots are bound to be heard. And keep in mind that whoever is runnin’ this operation is going to be mad enough as it is at losin’ your gal.”
“He’s going to lose more than her,” Zach stated. Shoving the Hawken into Lou’s hands, he climbed in the van.
Light spilling from the building’s open door into the van revealed five young women, bound and seated on long benches on either side. They had heard what transpired. A blonde nervously slid toward him, asking, “Are you fixing to free us, Injun? For real?”
Zach let his Bowie answer her. One by one he freed them all. Several drew back at his touch, whether in fear or disgust, Zach couldn’t say. When he was done, they looked at one another in amazement.
The blonde rose. “This is awful white of you, Injun.”
She meant it as a compliment. It was a standard figure of speech on the frontier. But it angered Zach, because it implied only whites had noble sentiments. “No, it is awful Shoshone of me. Remember this the next time you hear someone say the only good Indian is a dead one.”
“I will,” the young woman promised. With that, she was gone, bolting like a doe, and on her heels fled the others, jostling one another in their haste to get out the narrow doorway.
Lou hadn’t realized the van contained other captives. She smiled as Zach emerged, sheathing his Bowie. “That’s five more lives you’ve saved tonight, Stalking Coyote,” she said proudly.
Sylvia Banner had sat up, her back propped against a front wheel. “Gloat while you can, you little witch. He won’t be able to save your skin or his once Lon hears about this. None of you are long for this world.”
Zach almost kicked her in the teeth. The fact she was a woman was of no consequence. An enemy was an enemy. She had brought suffering to the one he loved. Backing away from the driver and Titus, he reclaimed his rifle, then clasped Louisa’s hand. “Do not attempt to follow us. Any of you.”
“It won’t be us who blows out your wick,” Banner said. “The man who runs this operation will send a pack of hired killers to do the job. You won’t stand a prayer.”
“They’ll never find us,” Zach said. “Not in a city this size.”
Banner touched a finger to her bloody lips. “Don’t kid yourself, savage. Maybe you’ll run off to the mountains to save your skin, but that won’t help you. And in the meantime we have Milhouse.”
“How do you mean?”
“The old man has nowhere to go, nowhere he can hide. George can hole up in his store if he wants, but they’ll just burn it to the ground with him inside.”
“If they try, they will answer to me,” Zach vowed.
Banner uttered a brittle laugh. “Idiot. Do you expect Lon Festerman to quake in his boots because an upstart savage threatens him?”
Lou did not like the look on Zach’s face. She pulled him toward the alley, saying, “Ignore her. She’s just mad. This will be the end of it, I’m sure.”
More laughter pealed as they retreated around the corner, George Milhouse hobbling rapidly to keep up. Zach checked the street before crossing, then swiveled and didn’t take his eyes off the mouth of the alley until they were in the Trapper’s Haven. Barring the door, he turned, and was nearly knocked off his feet by his sweetheart.
“Oh, Stalking Coyote! For a while I thought I’d never see you again!” Lou gave rein to her joy. She hugged him, lavishing kisses on his cheeks and lips, forgetting they weren’t alone until a chair scraped. Composing herself, she wrapped her left arm around Zach’s waist and turned.
“I reckon you young’uns should light a shuck while you can,” George Milhouse said. “It’ll be a spell before anyone comes after us.”
Zach placed a hand on a pistol. “You stuck by me when Lou was in trouble. We’ll stick by you now.”
The trapper leaned his walking stick against the stove. “I admire any coon with grit, and you’ve got more than most, boy. But you’ve got your filly to think of. She was lucky this time. If she falls into their clutches again, they’ll do things to her no gentleman can talk about in mixed company.”
Louisa knew nothing about the old man other than that he had risked his life to save hers. That alone was enough to earn him her undying gratitude and respect. “Why don’t you come with us?” she suggested. “I have relatives who can help.”
“Are these kin of yours mountaineers?” Milhouse asked hopefully. “A handful of mountain men are worth a hundred city fellers.”
“They’re visiting from Ohio. Uncle Earnest is a lawyer, and Uncle Thomas works at the mill.”
“Fat lot of good they’ll do, unless your uncle Earnest beats Festerman to death with his law books.”
“We don’t need them,” Zach interjected. “We don’t need anyone. This is our problem, and we’ll settle it ourselves.” He detached himself from Lou and squatted in front of Milhouse. “I want to know all there is to learn about this Lon Festerman.”
“Why? What do you have in mind?”
Zach gazed from Milhouse to Lou and back again. “There is only one way to end this. We must kill him before he kills us.”
Chapter Five
Half an hour later a shadow detached itself from the front of the Trapper’s Haven and glided into the alley beside the dress shop. Zachary King, Bowie knife in hand, came to the yard at the rear.
His Hawken was with Lou. Persuading her to stay with Milhouse had been a challenge, but it was for the best. She would object if she knew what he planned to do. He had told her he was going to find out where their horses were, which wasn’t the whole truth.
The yard was empty except for Erskine’s body, which lay where it had fallen. The van had clattered off a while ago, Horace lashing the team in a frenzy and casting a menacing glare at the trapper’s shop. Were it up to Zach, he’d have shot Horace from the seat, but George Milhouse protested it would cause too much of a stir. As the oldster had put it, “Firing a gun in the city limits is the one thing our peerless constables won’t allow. Even for duelin’. Which is why all duels are now held on Bloody Island, out on the Mississippi. So long as a person commits murder quietly, the constables don’t much mind. Unless it’s one of the city’s bigwigs.”
Lon Festerman qualified. According to Milhouse, Festerman was one of the leading citizens. A wealthy man whose ill-gotten riches were reaped in the flesh trade, Festerman peddled young women like ordinary merchants peddled pots and pans. He sold their bodies to anyone with enough money to afford an hour of their time.
Zach had heard about the white practice of prostitution from friends of his father. Mountaineers who returned from trips east bragged of their exploits. But it had always struck him as despicable, as showing an utter lack of respect for women.
Once, Zach had asked his pa why any woman would do such a thing: Why would they let strange men paw them for money? “Believe it or not,” his pa had said, “some women like to. Others are forced into selling themselves. They’re broke and have nowhere else to turn. What it boils down to is money. A woman can earn a lot in a short amount of time, more than they can at any other job.” The whites and their money! Zach thought.
Among Indian tribes the practice was rarely indulged. Some tribes, in fact, were noted for the purity of their women. Cheyenne maidens wore rope chastity belts so they would be untouched when they took a mate. Among the Apaches and a few others, any woman who prostituted herself was punished by being mutilated, by having her nose cut off, or an ear.
Prostitution among the Shoshones was unheard of. Married women were expected to be loyal to their husbands. Unmarried maidens were allowed to do as they pleased. But since few warriors wanted to take as their wife any woman who had a reputation for sharing herself with every male in the tribe, maidens tended to stay maidens until they shared a lodge with their husband.
The Crows were different. A Crow warrior might offer his wife to a visiting white for a night in exchange for trade goods, and saw nothing wrong in doing so. But then, the Crows and the Shoshones did not see eye to eye on many things. Bitter enemies, they routinely raided one another. So low was the Shoshone opinion of Crows that one of the worst insults a Shoshone could inflict was to say another Shoshone was “just like a Crow.”
Zach had counted coup on Crows, as well as Piegans, Bloods, and Sioux. He had counted coup on whites, too, and was about to do so again. Stealthily moving toward the rear door, he pressed an ear to it. All seemed quiet. He tested and found the door unlocked. Opening it a crack, he gazed into an empty room that contained a table, chairs, and a cot. On his left was another door, partly ajar.
Slipping inside, Zach heard voices. He crept up behind the other door. A man was talking.
“... much like the notion of leaving you alone, Miss Banner.”
“I’ll be fine, Titus,” Sylvia Banner said. “Odds are, those three have hightailed it. If not, they wouldn’t be stupid enough to hurt me. And someone has to be here when Lon’s boys arrive.”
“I still don’t like it,” Titus said.
“Do as I say. Go to the livery and get their horses.”
“You really want me to buy them back? Garcia will think we’re crazy. You just sold that dun and the mare to him earlier today.”
“For him to dispose of as he sees fit, yes. But we’ve done Garcia many favors in the past. Now I need one in return. We must have both horses, both saddles, and everything else the savage and the girl own.” Banner paused. “I just hope he hasn’t gotten rid of everything already.”
“Why is it so important?”
“Think, Titus, think. Lon might send some of the constables on his payroll. To make it look legal, they’ll need proof the savage murdered Erskine. And what better proof than the savage’s own horse, found at the scene?”
“Oh. I get it.”
“Good. Now, off you go. Don’t dally. It shouldn’t take you more than fifteen minutes. If Garcia gripes, tell him he can explain to Lon Festerman personally tomorrow. There’s nothing like a good threat to motivate people.”
The front door opened and closed. Zach sidled to the jamb. Sylvia Banner was staring out the window, watching Titus depart. When she turned, she wore a twisted smile made more so by her swollen lips and puffy cheek. Walking down an aisle to a cabinet, she opened it and removed a bottle of liquor and a tall glass. “I can’t wait to spit on that savage’s corpse,” she remarked.
As noiseless as a mountain lion, Zach stalked to within arm’s reach of her. Banner tilted her head and swallowed. Sighing, she rotated. Shock riveted her in place and she dropped the glass, which shattered at her feet.
“You!”
“Me.”
Banner glanced at the Bowie and blanched. Recovering her composure, she snapped, “What brings you back so soon, bastard?”
“I came for our horses,” Zach said. That wasn’t all he had come for, but she didn’t need to know that just yet.
“You’re wasting your time. I don’t know where they are.”
Zach held the knife low, at waist level. “Yet another lie. Among my people it is said that someone who lies speaks with two tongues. You speak with ten.”
“This from a filthy savage?” Banner laughed. “Ever hear of a kettle calling the pot black?”
What she was implying wasn’t lost on Zach. “Because I’m part Indian, I must be as big a liar as you? Is that it?” The wicked smile curled her lips again. “You’re smarter than I gave you credit for. So do the smart thing and leave.”
“I’m staying until our horses show up.”
