Comanche Heart (3 page)

For an instant he found himself wishing the years could roll away, that he rode with good friends, his long hair drifting in the wind, that just beyond his line of vision lay a Comanche village. It was a frequent wish of Swift’s and so sweet, so vivid, that he could almost smell fresh meat over open fires.

In the distance a church bell chimed, telling him what day it was and that a town rested over the rise. His mouth quirked, and he sniffed the air again. Judging from the scent, someone had a side of beef skewered over an open pit. He ran his hand along his whiskery jaw. Right now he could do with a bath and a jug of good whiskey.

Chink Gabriel, who rode beside Swift, reined his roan to a walk. “Be damned if that ain’t a church bell. There’s a town over yonder. Been so long since I sniffed a skirt, I’m as randy as a buck in rut.”

Slightly behind them, Jos’ Rodriguez spat tobacco and said, “The last time I had me a gal, I was so damned drunk, the next mornin’ I couldn’t even remember givin’ her a poke. I left town feelin’ as randy as when I got there.”

Bull Jesperson, whose name suited his massive frame, gave a disgusted snort. “One of these days, y’re gonna pay dearly for drinkin’ that heavy.”

“Oh, yeah? How you figger?” Rodriguez challenged.

“Y’re gonna tie up with somethin’ diseased, that’s how. You’ll wake up some mornin’ and yer pistol will be rottin’ off.”

“What’d’ya expect for two dollars?” another man grumbled. “Them last whores we run across was the durtiest bunch of females I ever saw.”

Rodriguez chuckled. “The only clean spot on the one I had was her left tit, and that was because Bull went upstairs with her before me.”

“Hey, Bull!” someone yelled. “Yer pistol been lookin’ peculiar lately? Jos”s is rottin’ clean off!”

Laughter erupted, and the men began exchanging their favorite stories about whores. Swift listened with half an ear. He had paid a woman for her favors only once, not because she demanded money, but because her dress had been threadbare. Among the Comanches, a woman never had to sell her body to survive. To Swift’s way of thinking, men who patronized sporting houses were encouraging a savagery far more heartless than any the Comanches had ever committed.

Charlie Stone, a stout redhead with a grizzled beard, pulled his gray to a stop. “My neck’s swole, too. How’s about you, Lopez?”

Acutely aware that the question carried a challenge and that his response was unlikely to sway the vote of twenty men, Swift removed his timepiece from his pocket and checked the hour. “It’s early yet.”

“Yep, all the little pleasure doves might still be abed,” someone inserted.

“Mebbe business was slow last night,” Chink countered. “If not, an extra ten dollars will wake ’em up right fast.”

Swift didn’t cotton to entering towns in broad daylight. He was especially leery today because Chink and the others were itching for trouble. Reining his horse around, he looked across the rolling open range. On the horizon he could see a ranch house. Returning his watch to his pocket, he withdrew a five-dollar gold piece and flipped it through the air to Chink. “I reckon I’ll just take a snooze. Bring me back a bottle.”

“Ya can’t poke no goddamn bottle,” Charlie retorted. “Y’re not normal, Lopez. You figger y’re too good for whores, or what?” When Swift made no reply, Charlie curled his lip. “Where we go, you go. That’s the rule. Ain’t that right, Chink?”

Swift swung off his black, his spurs ringing as the rowels caught in the grass.

“Y’re jist runnin’ short on guts, that’s what,” Charlie jabbed. “Afraid some green kid might recognize that purty face of yers and take it into his head to draw down on ya. That’s it, ain’t it, Lopez? Y’re gettin’ squeamish.”

Keeping his face devoid of expression, Swift met Charlie Stone’s gaze, all the while loosening his saddle cinch. After a few tension-packed moments, Charlie’s larynx bobbed in a nervous swallow. He glanced away. Swift pulled the saddle off his horse and, skirting the other riders, carried it to a patch of sparse shade under a bush.

Chink sighed and wheeled his gelding toward town. Swift knew the comanchero leader resented it when one of his men didn’t stay with the group, but Swift didn’t count himself as one of Chink’s men, never had, and would be damned if he’d start now. The only reason he had fallen in with Chink a year and a half ago was to stay on the move. Trouble had a way of dogging a man’s heels, and he had to step smart if he wanted to avoid it.

“You sure you don’t wanna come?” Chink called.

Swift ground-tied his stallion, then stretched out on his back in the shade, using his saddle as a pillow. Without answering, he closed his eyes. He knew Chink ran too short on guts to swap lead with him over something so trivial.

“Come on,” Charlie said. “Leave the greasy son of a bitch to sleep.”

When the sound of the horses’ hooves grew distant, Swift pulled his nickel-plated .45 Colt revolvers from their holsters, habit compelling him to check the cylinders for cartridges. When he settled back against his saddle, he drifted off to sleep with the confidence of a man who had two loaded guns, sharp hearing, and fast reflexes.

Only a few minutes passed before Swift put both his hearing and reflexes to the test. Horses approached, coming fast. He shot to his feet and pulled his gun before he completely registered the sound. He relaxed a little when he recognized Chink Gabriel on the lead horse. The men were pushing their mounts, and that usually meant trouble nipped at their rumps. Swift holstered his Colt and quickly re-saddled his black so he’d be ready to ride.

“Lookee what we found,” Chink yelled as he barreled his horse up beside Swift’s. “A girlee, and hot damn if she ain’t the purtiest little thing you ever saw.”

Swift squinted into the sun and saw that Charlie carried a girl draped over his saddle. Her blond hair had come loose and hung like a shimmering curtain down the horse’s belly.

Swift’s stomach lurched. Since learning of Amy’s death three years ago, he seldom allowed himself to think of her, but every once in a while, like now, the memories came rushing back, bittersweet, filling him with a sense of loss. This girl’s hair was yellow blond, while Amy’s had been the rich gold of honey, but the similarity still struck him like a well-placed blow. Years ago Amy too had fallen victim to a band of comanchero.

Chink swung off his horse, his whiskery face split in a broad grin. Clamping a hand over his crotch, he gave himself a fondle. “She’ll bring a mighty fine price across the border, but a little breakin’ in won’t hurt her value none.”

Charlie rode up and dumped the girl off his gray. She screamed when she hit shoulder first on the grass, then staggered to her feet. She wore clothing like none Swift had ever seen, a pantlike skirt and a tailored blouse that skimmed her breasts like a second skin. Swift guessed that the outfit had been designed for horseback riding, but whatever its original purpose, the figure-revealing lines now served to whet male appetites—twenty of them.

The girl ran. Three men wheeled their horses to chase her, making sport of her attempts to escape. Swift set his jaw. He didn’t cotton to rape, but he couldn’t do one hell of a lot to stop it when twenty guns voted yea to his nay. The damned fool girl shouldn’t have been out riding alone in the first place.

Chink left his horse’s reins dangling and ran to catch the blonde, whooping with laughter when she bucked and tried to kick as he carried her back to the spot of shade. The other men leaped off their horses and followed along like ducklings in a queue. Swift watched in passive silence as Chink tossed the girl down and grabbed hold of her blouse. The buttons flew. Cloth ripped. She gave a horrified screech and renewed her struggles to get free.

“Hot damn, Bull, ya won’t hafta suck them tits clean,” someone yelled.

“Somebody help me git her britches off,” Chink ordered.

Swift turned and walked away. Only a fool would get himself killed over a female he didn’t know. She’d been asking to get her legs spread, wearing clothes like that. He finished tightening the saddle cinch, doing a fair job of blocking out the girl’s screaming. Did she think anyone could hear her way out here? No one who gave a damn, anyway.

Chink grunted as if he had been kicked. The next instant Swift heard the sickening thud of a fist against flesh. The girl screamed again. “Hold the little bitch still,” Chink rasped. “Grab her ankles, you two. Not too tight. I like ’em with a little fight. You gonna fight me, sweet thing? You gonna buck and give me a ride to remember?”

Several men laughed and whooped encouragement. Swift knew without looking that Chink was getting into position. He turned his attention to his saddlebags, tightening the straps. The men’s laughter nearly drowned out the girl’s weakening cries. Even so, Swift’s ears began to home in on the sobbing. Sweat popped out on his face. He gave one of the saddlebag straps a vicious jerk. Since there was little he could do, it seemed futile to stay and listen.

Grabbing his saddle horn, he stuck a boot in his stirrup. The girl screamed, “Oh, please, God!” Swift froze. Memories of Amy spun through his mind. This girl had no connection whatsoever with Amy, of course, except that she was blond and female. He closed his eyes, telling himself he would be ten times a fool if he interfered.

Then, before he could talk himself out of it, he removed his foot from the stirrup and took off his hat, looping the bonnet strings around the saddle horn. It
was
Sunday. Though Swift didn’t hold with
tosi
religion, he didn’t figure anybody who did ought to get raped on the Sabbath. He slapped his stallion on the rump so it would run off to safety, relieved when Chink’s mount followed. There was no point in the horses getting hurt.

Swift slowly turned, heartened by the sight of Chink’s bare butt shining in the sun. A man couldn’t draw too fast with his britches down. “Chink!”

Sudden silence fell. Even the girl grew quiet. All eyes shifted to Swift, who stood with his long, black-clad legs spread, elbows bent and slightly behind him, his hands poised over his holsters. Chink’s blue eyes narrowed. “You ain’t plannin’ to draw on twenty men,” he said. “Not even a leather slapper like you would be that crazy.”

Swift didn’t need Chink to tell him what he was about to do was insane. He’d end up dead, and the girl would get raped anyway. It was mostly a question of how low a man wanted to sink, and he’d sunk as low as he could comfortably go and still live with himself.

“I’m taking you out first,” Swift told Chink softly.

The girl sobbed and took advantage of the distraction to slither her hips away from the man who had nearly impaled her. Swift registered everything with sharpened senses, acutely aware of the breeze tossing his shortly cropped hair, the abrasiveness of his shirt collar against his neck, the weight of his guns where they rode his hips. For an instant he envisioned Amy’s face, comforted by the knowledge that she waited for him in the Great Beyond, and that by doing this he could join her there with a clean heart.

Chink’s eyes narrowed even more. “I’ll see you in hell, then, you turncoat bastard.” As the comanchero spoke, he went for his gun.

With the speed that had made his name legend, Swift drew, cocking the hammer of his gun with his thumb, bringing his left hand across his midriff to fan the hammer spur. Some of the others around Chink reacted, grabbing for their weapons. To Swift, they became faceless blurs of movement, targets that would kill him unless he killed them first. Six shots rang out from his gun in such rapid succession that they sounded like one explosion. Chink fell backward across the girl. Five other men sprawled, dead before they cleared leather. The girl began to scream, trying to pull her leg from under Chink’s body. The horses, accustomed to gunfire, sidestepped and whinnied.

Swift threw himself to the grass and rolled. A slight rise to the ground provided him meager cover. Dirt geysered around him as the remaining fourteen men came to their senses and started firing. He drew his other single-action and, in a second blur of movement, fired three more shots. Three men went down.

In a lull between shots, Swift came up on one elbow, adrenaline numbing him to the fear, his palm poised over the hammer spur. “Which of you bastards wants it next?”

Between them, the remaining eleven men had at least a hundred cartridges, ready to fire. When no one ventured another shot, Swift said, “I’m as good as dead, and you all know it. But if I go, I’m taking three more of you with me.” Well aware that Jos’ was the closest thing to a leader the men had left, Swift sighted in on him. “Rodriguez, you’re going to be first.”

A spasm of fear contorted the Mexican’s swarthy face. Pupils dilating, he stared at the barrel of Swift’s .45. After a moment he holstered his revolver and lifted his hands. “Ain’t no woman alive worth gettin’ plugged over.”

Swift saw several of the other men cast bewildered glances at Chink. Without their leader spouting orders, Swift guessed they weren’t quite sure what to do. Taking Rodriguez’s lead, they all retreated a step, holstering their guns.

“You want her that bad, you can have her,” one said.

“I don’t want no trouble with you, Lopez.”

Bull spat and shot Swift a murderous glare. “I knowed you was trouble the first time I set eyes on ya. You ain’t seen the last of this. I promise you that.”

“Shut up, Bull, and git on yer goddamn horse,” Rodriguez ordered.

Swift remained prone on the grass until all eleven men had ridden off. Then he turned his gaze to the girl, who had gone strangely silent. She sat hunched over, buck naked and shivering, her blue eyes riveted to Chink’s bare lower torso. Swift guessed she had never seen a nude man. There was no help for that. Seeing was far better than what had almost happened.

He rose and holstered his guns, his hands stricken with the uncontrollable quivering that always followed a gunfight. His gaze slid over the scattered bodies, and his guts twisted. He closed his eyes and flexed his fingers, the sweat on his body turning ice cold.
Killing.
He was so weary of it, so sick-to-death weary. Yet no matter what he did, it never seemed to end.