She lifted her right thigh, flipped up the saddle blanket, and plucked her spare Colt off the ground. Raising it, she clicked the hammer back, aimed at the one-eyed gent, and fired. The man's eye disappeared, vaporized as the bullet smashed through it and out the back of his head, throwing him straight back into the brush with nary a shriek.
“Hey!”
barked the man with the muttonchops, swinging toward Saradee.
Quickly but calmly, Saradee shuttled the Colt toward him, thumbing back the hammer, and fired. He hadn't hit the ground, triggering his own pistol into the fire, before Saradee had drilled a slug through the chest of the man with the muttonchop whiskers.
The three men dropped like cans off fence posts.
As her third shot still echoed, out of the corner of her eye Saradee saw the redhead jerk back, shouting and raising his rifle. She hadn't yet recocked the Colt. Knowing he had the drop on her, Saradee threw herself forward and to the left. As she rolled off her left shoulder, the redhead's rifle barked, the slug slamming the rock where she'd been sitting an eye wink before.
Saradee came up off the shoulder, Colt cocked and extended, and fired.
“Ach!” cried the redhead, his right shoulder jerking back. He dropped the rifle and grabbed his upper right chest, bending at the waist and slitting his eyes.
“Bitch!”
“That any way to talk to a helpless girl travelin' alone?” Saradee gained both knees, aimed the Colt, and fired. As she'd tripped the trigger, an ember in the fire had popped, and she'd jerked the slug slightly wide.
“Unh!”
the redhead cried, as his right arm flapped out away from his body, the bullet searing his bicep and spraying blood. “Copper-riveted
whore
!”
He whipped away, fell to a knee, pushed up, and began running, tracing a jerky course through the darkening sage toward the horse trail.
Saradee knit her brows.
“Goddamnit.”
She rose to her feet with a sigh. As the redhead's shrieks faded with distance, she stepped out away from the fire, stopped, spread her feet, aimed the Colt straight out before her, squinted down the barrel, and fired.
The redhead's head snapped forward. He ran a few more yards, all four limbs flopping crazily, then hit the ground on his chest and slid another ten feet before coming to rest against a Joshua tree.
Through the wafting powder smoke, Saradee looked around at the three ragtag hard cases nearest the fire. All appeared quite dead. She holstered her Colt, dragged them far enough away from her camp that she wouldn't trip over them during the night, then strolled off in search of their horses.
A half hour later, she sat by the fire, biscuits browning in her greased pan, side pork frying in another. She sipped her coffee seasoned with the hard cases' whiskey, and counted the money from their saddlebags.
“Three thousand, four hundred and thirty-six dollars,” she said when she was shoving the greenbacks back in the pouch. “Not bad for a no-account girl from the Panhandle.”
18.
CAGED
I
N the small but comfortable casa she shared with Dona
Carmelita Sandoval, Juliana lifted her head from her straw sleeping pallet and pricked her ears, listening.
Low snores drifted from behind the woven curtain separating the girl's room from Carmelita's. Satisfied the old woman was sound asleep, Juliana flung her blankets aside, rose, lifted her nightdress over her head, and tossed it onto a dresser.
She'd gone to bed several hours ago, but had only dozed as she waited for the chill night to settle over the canyon and for Carmelita to drift into deep sleep. Now, the night had settled, so cold that goose bumps rose on Juliana's arms as she padded about the earthen-floored room, blindly gathering her clothes in the stygian darkness, and dressing.
When she'd donned heavy underclothes, a simple gray dress, a poncho, and sandals, she slipped out of her room and into the casa's small kitchen area. Moving toward the beehive fireplace still emanating heat and a dull, orange glow, she kicked a chair. The leg scraped the floor with a low bark.
Juliana sucked a breath and lifted her head, tensing and listening. Carmelita's snores had ceased. Juliana waited, her hands squeezing the chair back. She'd begun stepping backward, intending to return to her room, when the old woman smacked her lips, sighed, and resumed snoring once more.
Juliana released a heavy breath and moved toward a shelf to the right of the fireplace. Rising up on her toes, she slid a tea can and several jars aside and felt around until her hand found what she was looking for. She pulled out the old, heavy pistol Carmelita had found in one of the shacks the miners had abandoned when the gold had played out.
Juliana had never fired the gun. She didn't even know if it was loaded. Carmelita kept it around to ward off unwanted callers for Juliana, so it must have had bullets in it.
The gun repelled her, and she didn't look at it too closely, but she slid it into the poncho's deep front pocket, over her belly, then stepped lightly through the casa's main living area to the front door.
She took one last look behind her, only the dim umber glow showing at the back of the house, then opened the timbered door, stepped outside, and latched the door softly behind her. She shoved her hands into the openings on each side of the poncho's single pocket. Clasping the gun, she hunched her shoulders against the cold and began moving quickly across the yard and into the night.
When she arrived at the cobbled main street, she crouched behind a wheelless wagon, staring westward toward the saloon. To the left, the small, stone jailhouse hunched between an abandoned blacksmith shop and a harness maker's. A dim light shone in the two barred windows facing the main street. A man sat under the brush arbor, in a chair tipped back against the front wallâa hatted silhouette against the white stone, a rifle resting across his lap.
Juliana lightly tapped her fingers against the wagon's rotting sideboards as she considered the situation. If she tried to cross the street here, the deputy would no doubt see her.
Finally, she rose, turned into an alley, crossed the main street a hundred yards east of the jailhouse, and approached the jailhouse from the alley behind it.
To her left, a stand of tall cottonwoods tossed their large leaves in the breeze. Starlight played on the stream curving behind the trees, with its low, tinny murmur. The sound of the water should cover any sounds she herself might make.
Stepping slowly across the shale and through the spindly shrubs that had grown up around the jailhouse, she pressed her hands to the cold stones of the rear wall. Four barred windows were small, rectangular shapes in the wall above her, nearly six feet off the ground. She reached up, grabbed the ledge of the first window, rose up on the tips of her toes, and edged a look into the cell.
The cell itself was dark, but she could see that it was empty, its door hanging halfway open. Beyond the cell and to the left was a desk on which a lamp burned low. Sitting at the desk, his feet crossed on the desk top, sat one of the deputies. He leaned back in a swivel chair, hands crossed behind his head. Soft snores rose.
She turned her head to look into the next cell, but it was too dark to see anything from this angle. She removed her hands from the ledge and looked warily around, hearing only the leaves and the stream. She moved to the next window, rose up again on her tiptoes, and peered inside.
At the same time that she saw a silhouetted face staring back at her, a familiar, hushed voice said her name. She jerked back with a start, heart pounding. She looked again at the window. Gideon stared back at her through the barsâa gaunt, haunted figure in the darkness.
“Gideon,” she whispered, moving back to the wall, placing her hands on the crumbling ledge grainy with dust and old pigeon droppings.
“Go home, Juliana.”
She moved her face up close to his.
His eyes had receded within their dark sockets, and the leathery skin had tightened across his cheekbones. He seemed depleted, somehow. Sapped of energy and life. Seeing him there, like a caged animal, wrenched her heart, and a sudden sob escaped her lips.
Tears dribbled down her cheeks.
“Gideon, Iâ”
He closed his hand around hers on one of the bars. “It isn't safe here. If you want to help me, you'll go home and stay there till these men are gone.”
“I
love
you, Gideon. I want us to be together always. What I've done haunts me . . . how I led them right to you!”
“They would've gotten me, anyway.”
“You would've gotten them.”
“You want to be married to a killer?”
She lifted her head to answer, but he cut her off.
“You're good and sweet and honorable, Juliana. Go home and forget me. Wait for the right man. Raise a big family, and shower your love all over them. You've got a lot of it to shower, Juliana.
Love
your family. Hold them close every day, because you never know . . .”
Hawk let the sentence die on his lips. He lowered his eyes, removed his hand from hers. He stepped back, kept his voice just above a whisper. “Go home.”
A sleep-thick voice grumbled behind him. “Hey, who you talkin' to over there?”
Hawk turned his head sharply, heart thudding. Beyond the dark cell, kicked back in the chair, Franco Villard had turned his head to regard Hawk incredulously.
“Go back to sleep,” Hawk told him. “I was just watching the starâ”
Beyond the window, Juliana gave a clipped scream. Hawk whipped his head around to see a tall, duster-clad figure holding her hands. Starlight winked off the object in her right hand and off the badge pinned to the deputy's duster lapel. J.C. Garth's voice was a chuckling reprimand. “What the hell you think you're doin' out here, sweet-heart?”
Hawk grabbed the bars. “Let her go!”
Behind him, Villard shouted, “What the hell's goin' on out there?”
Hawk hardly heard him. He was watching Juliana struggle with the deputy. Garth dodged a kick and wrenched Juliana's right hand behind her back. She yowled as her head jerked back, hair flying.
“No!”
There was the solid, metallic thud of a heavy gun hitting the ground.
Both Garth and Juliana froze, staring down at the old-model Colt in the dust. Garth's head snapped up and he took one long stride toward Juliana, swinging his right hand back to his left shoulder. “You little
bitch
!”
He brought the open hand forward, the knuckles connecting solidly with Juliana's right cheek. She gave a cry as she whipped around and fell against the stone wall with a smack.
“Garth!” Hawk barked, squeezing the bars, half-hearing the jailhouse's front door slam and boots pounding the stoop. Running footsteps sounded on the west side of the jail, and then Villard ran around the corner, hatless, breathing hard.
“What the hell'sâ?”
Garth reached down for the gun. He turned it in his hands, studying it. “Little bitch brought our friend a weapon. Here.”
He tossed the revolver to Villard, who caught it, gave it a quick study, then lowered it, dropping his gaze to the girl. Hawk could see only Juliana's legs beneath the window and to the right. Her skirts had come up, revealing nearly all of one finely turned thigh. She'd lost her sandals, and her bare feet pushed at the dirt and rocks beneath her, seeking purchase.
The cool night air was tinged with the smell of whiskey. The deputies had been sharing a bottle for the past two hours. Pulse throbbing in his temples, Hawk renewed his grip on the bars and shuttled his gaze between the two men staring silently down at Juliana. Garth's hand was fisted, and his chest rose and fell heavily.
“Let her go, boys. She meant no harm.”
Silence. The men's breath mixed with the rasping of the cottonwood leaves barely audible above the stream's trickle over the rocks behind them.
Villard gave his head a hard shake, ran his hand through his curly red hair. “A fine-lookin' girl you got here, Hawk. Yessir. Fine piece of work.”
Garth swallowed. “Girls just throw themselves at a
hero
, don't they?”
Hawk's voice was low and pitched with menace. “Let her go.”
“Why should we?” said Villard. “She's trash mixin' with outlaw trash and callin' him a damn hero.”
“You're lawmen.”
Villard laughed. “That's real funny, comin' from you, Hawk.”
Juliana dug her heels into the sand, pushed herself to her feet, and lunged toward the side of the jailhouse. Villard grabbed her poncho and threw her down.
She sat up, tossing her hair from her eyes and turning to Hawk. “Gideon!”
Garth moved toward her, heavy-footed, swaying drunkenly. Hawk warned through gritted teeth, spittle spraying from his lips, “You touch her, I'll kill you both.”
Garth spat. “Fuckin' bitch. Tryin' to give him a gun . . . what? . . . so's he can shoot us? You're nothin' but a whore!
His
whore. Now you're gonna be
my
whore.”
He grabbed her arm, jerked her to her feet.
Juliana whipped her head again to Hawk, beseeching with her eyes. “No!”
Villard lunged toward her. “Shut up, whore!” He slapped her hard across the face. She twisted around and fell in a heap, sobbing. “Please, no!”
Staring through the window, Hawk clutched the bars as if to bend them with his fists. There was no give at all. He pulled and jerked till his knuckles felt as though they'd pop through his skin, veins bulging in his forehead. Outside, Villard grabbed Juliana's arm and jerked her up.
“No!” She lunged at him, fists flying.
Villard laughed and ducked, turned her around, grabbed her from behind, and nuzzled her neck. She turned, rammed a knee into his groin. As Villard bent over his bruised oysters, cursing, Garth staggered toward her and raised his fist.
“Garth!” Hawk raged.
At the same time, Garth shouted, “Whore!” and slammed his fist against Juliana's right cheek. The girl flew like a rag doll, hitting the ground in a heap. She lay writhing and groaning.
Rage burning through him like fire-tipped arrows, Hawk wheeled and lunged at the door. He shook the bars, rattling the lock. The bolt held fast.
“Goddamnit!”
He wheeled again to the window. Garth and Villard were dragging Juliana off toward the cottonwoods, the girl a slumped figure between them, her legs dragging along the ground.
“Villard!”
The deputy glanced behind him, starlight making his sweaty face glisten. “Sit tight, Hawk. Take a load off. We'll be back shortly.”
Both deputies chuckled as they disappeared into the darkness of the cottonwoods.
Gripping the bars in both fists, Hawk closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. In the distance, just above the stream's gurgle, he heard the men laughing, heard the sound of clothes tearing, Juliana whimpering and pleading. Hawk shoved the sounds aside, replaced them with images of both deputies lying dead upon the rocks, their heads bashed in with stones.
Juliana's cry rose shrilly, muffled by the stream and the men's laughter. “No . . . no . . . please . . .”
Hawk's eyes flickered. He squeezed them shut, clamped his jaws till their hinges dimpled, the muscles in his crimson cheeks fairly leaping out from beneath the skin.
When he'd been standing there at the barred window for what seemed like hours but was probably only a few minutes, a loud smack jerked his eyes open. It sounded like a stout branch smashed against a boulder. A man yowled.
Another voice. “Hey . . . what do you? . . .”
A choking, gurgling sound, like that from a man with his throat cut.
Hawk spied movement back in the treesâtwo shadows running toward him, one before the other. The first ran, faltering, with both hands clutched to his throat, blood glistening in the starlight. As his gait lurched and he dropped to his knees, the second silhouetteâshort, and wearing a low-crowned sombreroâlifted a heavy plank above his head and slammed it down with a resolute, cracking thud against the head of the first.
The first man arched his back, and he sat for several seconds, as if staring skyward and praying. Then he sagged to his side, both hands coming away from his throat.
The sombrero-clad shadow tossed the plank into the brush and walked toward Hawk. As he drew closer, the stooped, bandy-legged figure of Palomar Rojas took shape in the darkness.
“Ayee!” the old man wheezed, wincing and holding one arm taut against his side. “That hurt me more than him, I think.”