Holt 2, page 11
He smoked after the cold meal, then wrapped his arms around his knees and gazed at the flames, thinking the situation out under the serenity of the starry night.
If the object of their expedition into the mountains was to find Gutt, it had not been a total failure. This Farley character would talk, as men in isolated parts always did, and Gutt would put names to the man and woman he and Moon had run into. Would Gutt then run or come after them? No way to be sure, but Holt could not help but recall Gutt’s promise at their meeting in Utah: to kill him if he approached again.
He thought of the odd duck Geeson, and the Morgans, the rancher and his brother Prospect and his strange daughter Charity, the allegations of Indian rustling, Quint and Gutt and Emma.
And Sam, lying close to him two nights previous, her softness and her warmth through all the clothing they both wore ...
A billow of increasingly erotic thoughts rose, and on its crest Holt dozed.
Awkwardly slumped on the rock, he would have slept fitfully anyway, but he’d long ago learned the trick of willing himself to awake after a set period. The fire had to be fed hourly.
The third time he roused himself, he was not alone.
The bulk of a figure crouched on the other side of the flame, tending to Holt’s chore for him. “Saw your setup. It looked inviting.” The figure rose. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
That seemed a mild enough introduction, and besides, if this man meant mischief, Holt thought, it would have already occurred while he was in dreamland. The fire fed on the fresh fuel and flared up, so Holt made him out more clearly. He had very dark hair that descended in two oiled braids over a buckskin jacket, and wore matching pants and moccasins of soft leather. First glance revealed no evident armament, although there was room for some under the blanket draped over his shoulders.
“I’ve seen you.” Holt shook cobwebs from his half-asleep brain, tried to place the man. “With Charity Morgan, while we were gathering cows.”
“Fool’s Eagle,” the man said.
From the creek came a noise, and Holt smelled horse fart.
“My name,” the Indian explained.
Holt nodded. “I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Fool’s Eagle said.
Holt wouldn’t have minded knowing what Charity had to do with this fellow, and exactly how much he did know. He settled on asking, “Blackfoot?”
Fool’s Eagle had a dusky handsome face, which creased now into a sardonic smile. “And then, seeing as how you work for Morgan,” he said, “you’ll want to talk rustling.” He poked a stick into the fire, watching its end glow and then burst into flame. Fool’s Eagle shook his head. “Ask are my people stealing his cows.”
“Are you ... I mean, they?”
This time the Indian laughed. “Yes and no. I’ll show you.”
“When?”
Fool’s Eagle made a gesture, as if that were a stupid question at this time of night. “You didn’t find him,” he said.
“Find who?”
“The big man, calls himself Gutt.”
This Indian certainly seemed up on current events—mostly his, Holt thought. “How do you come by all this information?”
Fool’s Eagle shrugged. “I move around and I keep my eyes and ears open. Quint’ll talk to me.”
“I thought he hated Indians like a cat hates a bath.”
“Worse,” Fool’s Eagle said, “if you believe all he spouts. But some of it’s an act, and anyway he’ll take our money or trade goods. I’m the one deals with him.”
“Why you?”
Fool’s Eagle stared into the fire and smiled humorlessly at some memory. “I sort of insisted on it.”
Holt got out his makings, sensing that Fool’s Eagle had a story that would take time in the telling, sensing as well that this man, despite whatever it was he knew, was not an enemy.
“You heard of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School?” Holt shook his head no.
“Carlisle, Pennsylvania,” Fool’s Eagle explained. “Set up by do-gooders to provide a few special redskins with an education beyond what most of us got, which was classes usually taught by some Indian agent’s wife who could barely read and cipher herself.”
That explained why Fool’s Eagle spoke English so well, though Holt was otherwise mystified as to where this was going.
“I was packed off to there about five years back. I did want the learning, but it was a sad and lonely period for me.” He shook his head absently at the cigarette Holt offered. “It wasn’t too good a time for my wife, either.” Fool’s Eagle sighed. “Quint has gussied up the story so it tells more picaresque. He stole my wife about six months before I returned. The Emma Franks woman was not on the scene in those days; she’d never have allowed it.”
“She does seem to have some grip over him. Wonder how she manages it.”
“Pay attention,” Fool’s Eagle said, a little sharply. “When my wife’s father came after her, Quint shot him in cold blood. He kept my wife locked in a shack hardly bigger than a chicken coop, and brutalized her repeatedly for all that time.”
“Sorry,” Holt muttered.
“When I returned and learned of this, I waited in ambush outside the shack. He came on the second night. He unlocked the hut and I confronted him. I had a Remington rifle. I meant to give him a chance to draw and then shoot him in the chest, but he charged at me. I was startled and rushed my shot, got him in the jaw instead.” He shook his head sardonically. “I’d lost some of my gun skills while I was getting civilized.”
Holt lit the cigarette with a branch from the fire.
“My wife was cowering in the shack’s corner, and hardly seemed to recognize me. Though it was late, people would have heard the shot. I got her away from there on horseback, riding double behind me. We moved quickly until we were several miles out. It wasn’t until then, when we stopped to rest the horse, that I had my first good look at her.”
Fool’s Eagle’s face was stoic, but his eyes were moist. “She was filthy, and gaunt as a skeleton. One of her eyes had been recently blackened, and her front teeth were missing. She shied away from me, and though it was a warm night, she shivered. There was madness in her eyes, but through it she could see how I looked at her.”
He gazed at Holt. “I could feel the expression on my face, and I can feel it still, and will always be haunted by it. A few minutes after we reached camp, she got hold of a pistol and used it on herself.”
“Jesus,” Holt breathed. “And now you and him are trading partners?”
“It suits my purposes,” Fool’s Eagle said. “When you’re a redskin in a white man’s world, you learn to be pragmatic.”
He paused a moment. “I knew it wasn’t over, that I had to remove the threat of revenge from Quint because it would menace all my people. The best way was to give him the opportunity and get it over with.
“After Quint came back with his metal jaw, word went out and arrangements were made. If Quint broke the agreement, he was promised the torching of his town and a full-scale Indian war.”
Fool’s Eagle pointed across the prairie to the east. “We were there, halfway between Lobo and my people’s encampment. A dozen men from town—this was before wolfing—and twice that many Blackfoot braves, but we had fewer guns. Quint and I fought.”
Fool’s Eagle stared toward where this had happened. “First I was scared and then I was outraged, and I let it possess me and strengthen me. I felt mystically empowered, and I truly believe a spirit possessed me.”
He smiled. “Though I could have used a stronger spirit. Like any scared animal, Quint will strike out if his back is forced to the wall. Before it was over, Quint broke my arm and a couple of ribs. And here is an irony: I fractured my hand on his steel plate. Yet when it ended, he lay on his back in the dirt, conscious but too battered to move, and I sat on his chest and held a rock above him in my good hand, and I smashed it down to his face.”
Holt stared, enrapt.
“I stopped a fraction of an inch before driving his nose into his brain, and that finished it. My people helped me away and eventually I healed. Quint was not so stupid he didn’t realize that something extraordinary had happened, that I’d held him by the heels over a bottomless well in which he could see his own mortality.”
Fool’s Eagle set another branch on the fire. “It scared him, scared him badly and permanently. When Emma Franks drifted into Lobo, she saw the fear on him like the mark of Cain, and took advantage.”
Holt let out his breath. “That’s some tale,” he said, “and you’re some species of Indian.”
“Thanks,” Fool’s Eagle said.
Despite his weariness, Holt felt there was still something to this encounter unresolved in his mind. “You’re not here by accident,” he guessed.
“I’m here to help. After that you’re going to help me.”
“Sounds fair,” Holt said. “Where do we start?”
“By getting some sleep.” Fool’s Eagle examined the sky; the moon was up. “I make it about ten o’clock, so we’ve got plenty of time for shut-eye before we move out.”
“To where?”
“Lobo,” Fool’s Eagle said, “to rescue your woman.”
Holt felt as if he’d been kicked in the stomach. So Sam was alive, and yet he thought about what Quint had done to Fool’s Eagle’s wife, this new revelation of the viciousness of which the man was capable ...
“There’s Emma to hold him off,” Fool’s Eagle said, divining Holt’s notions, “and anyway, nothing we can do now.”
“Why not?”
“Doesn’t fit my plan,” Fool’s Eagle said.
He wrapped the blanket around him and stretched out on the ground close to the fire. His breathing became regular before a minute had passed.
It took Holt a good deal longer to sleep, and as had been happening lately, he awoke frequently. Each time it was with a jolt, and thoughts of Sam.
Chapter Fourteen
Sam lay on the pallet in the locked cabin, staring into the darkness. The room contained no lamp, nor anything to occupy her if she did have light. She was wide-awake, having dozed on and off again throughout the day and evening, to salubrious effect. Her head and hand both worked again, and she felt vigor, impatience, and more than a little concern.
She got up and went to the tiny window to check her watch in the moon’s glow. It was nearly midnight, her thirtieth hour as a prisoner. In that time she’d been given water but nothing to eat, so she was famished, though that was not a major concern. Emma Franks was playing games with her, and damned if Sam understood the rules.
Emma was shrewd enough to know that isolation, hunger, cold, and uncertainty softened up a person—but so did violence or its threat. While Sam had exhibited more than a little courage to Emma, both were aware that anytime Emma wished, she could no doubt compel her to reveal the facts about herself and Holt.
Which led to only one conclusion: Emma already knew.
Another unresolved question came back to her. About midday she’d been awakened from one of her naps by the sound of riders. She could see nothing from the angle of the window, but thought she heard Quint’s voice, receding from her. That opened other imponderables, confusing and not comforting.
Sam turned from the window, reexamined the spare furnishing of the room. After a time she went to the table, upended it. It was crudely built, the legs attached only by toed-in nails.
Sam clubbed both hands around one, planted her boot on the upside-down tabletop and began levering the leg loose.
A key scratched at the lock a quarter hour later. Sam snatched up the table leg and sprang to the wall beside the entry, her back flat against it.
The door was kicked open, bounced halfway back. There was no other movement nor sound for a long moment, and then a clunk as something struck the ground. Emma Franks said, “Show yourself.”
Sam drew breath, held it, whirled toward the door and swung the makeshift club. Emma darted back, and the tip of the table leg caught the doorjamb. Emma lunged, got both hands around it, jerked it away and flung it outside. Her eyes burning dully, Emma punched Sam in the jaw. Sam’s knees buckled, but Emma jerked her upright by the shoulders, pushed her backward across the room and threw her on the bed.
“You’re not very smart, are you?”
It took time for Sam to refocus her vision, and when she was able, she saw Emma’s plain visage, and before it, larger and even more lethal, the muzzle of a revolver.
“For the time being you are worth more to me alive than dead,” Emma said. “But not much more.”
Emma regarded the three-legged table sourly. “All you are is bait, on the off chance that man of yours does make it out of those mountains. And when he realizes this is the only place you could be, we’ll be ready for him.”
As if she had lost interest, Emma went out, retrieved the bucket that Sam had heard her drop outside the door. She decanted the water into the pitcher.
“You made up any good tales for me?” Emma said.
“I don’t have to.” Sam sat up. “I don’t know what wrong ideas you’ve gotten, but—”
“It’s true they was only ideas when I decided to let you go off after Gutt two days ago,” Emma interrupted. “Since then they’ve become facts.”
Emma turned to face her. “When you first showed up in these parts, I figured you were a thorn in my side.” She grinned. “How was I to know you were actually money in my pocket?”
Sam kept dismay from the steady gaze she returned. “Where did you get that notion?”
Emma continued smiling as she went to the door. “You ponder on that question,” she said. “It might help you pass the hours.”
“What the hell are we waiting for?” Holt demanded for the third time.
Fool’s Eagle pointed across what passed for Lobo’s main street. “She’s in there.”
Holt followed his gaze to the cabin, perhaps thirty feet distant from where he and Fool’s Eagle crouched in the shadow of Quint’s livery barn. “So let’s get her out of there,” Holt said.
“My wife was pent in that shack,” Fool’s Eagle said. “What we are going to do is burn it to the ground.”
“After we release Sam, I presume,” Holt said dryly. Something moved to Holt’s right. He dropped and turned, bringing up the gun already in his hand.
Charity Morgan hunched down beside him. “Here’s what you were waiting for.” She produced a metal pry bar.
“For God’s sake,” Holt said with disbelief. “I could have shot off the lock.”
“That only happens in dime novels,” Fool’s Eagle said. “Plus we needed the kerosene.”
Holt saw that Charity was also toting a five-gallon jug. “We don’t need to burn down the town,” Holt said. “You left out a few things, such as that you still got a mad on for Quint.”
“Quint isn’t here,” Fool’s Eagle said.
Before Holt could inquire as to where he came by this latest bit of intelligence, Charity said, “The horses, yours and hers, will be in the barn, so we’ve got to bust them out.”
“Damned straight,” Holt said. “I’m not leaving my animals and gear to Quint.”
Fool’s Eagle’s mount, a handsome dappled pinto, was picketed on the range a half mile out, beyond earshot of any random noise—which, Holt decided, would principally come from farting. It was one of the most odoriferously gaseous animals Holt had ever encountered.
“Emma is all we got to worry about, and she’s your job,” Fool’s Eagle said.
The unlikeliness of all of this—Sam within yards of rescue, unanswered questions galore, and his own uncertainty as to just what the hell was going on—was maddening.
“This plan of yours,” he said to Fool’s Eagle. “Are you about ready to share it with me?”
Holt wedged the pry bar in the space between the shutters of the saloon’s front door, then wrapped his bandanna around the whole business. It deadened the noise to a subdued click as he pressed down and the lock plate ripped from the dry planing inside.
“Don’t mess up,” Charity whispered in his ear. “We need her to entice Quint.”
Whatever the hell that meant. Holt paused while she fetched the bar to Fool’s Eagle, who applied it to the barn’s lock. When Fool’s Eagle swung open the double doors, Holt pushed into the barroom.
He stood for a few moments searching for movement and letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. All was still. Holt advanced to the stairs, took them one cautious silent step at a time.
At the top was a short corridor, doors to either side. Holt palmed the knob of the one on the left, turned it. He waited another minute, eased it open.
He faintly made out twin beds, other rough furnishings. He took a step inside. Neither bed was occupied.
A muzzle punched hard into the small of his back. Holt froze, and his own gun was plucked from his hand.
“Dead or alive, is what I heard.” Emma Franks’ voice was soft in his ear. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Holt raised his hands. Emma said, “Move off a few steps, then turn around.” Holt did as she ordered.
Emma seemed ghostly in the dim light, but the guns in each of her hands were real enough. She waggled them.
“Let’s go re-une with that girl of yours,” Emma said. “I guess I got me a brace of birds this night.”
Sam heard the lock on the cabin door rattle once again. She stood in the middle of the close room, waiting.
More scratching noise preceded the louder sound of metal screws splintering out of wood. The door swung inward to reveal a man—Sam recognized the Indian who’d been with Charity on the prairie, and in fact Charity was there as well, standing behind him. He handed her a crowbar and she disappeared as he entered, carrying a large canister.
