Magnificent Guns of Seneca 6 (37 page)

The woman still had not moved.
 
Haienwa'tha slid past her and grabbed the man's twitching arm to drag him into the water.
 
He yanked his arrow free and rinsed it off, then pushed the man downstream to send him out of view.

Ruth looked into the dark eyes of the young Beothuk and even as she realized he was not there to kill her, she felt nothing.
 
Death and dead things had always terrified her, but even as a corpse sailed past her in the water's current, it was meaningless.
 
He is one of the ones who forced himself on me,
she thought.
 
She remembered his grunting, remembered his sweat dripping on her face, remembered his rough hands.
 
Ruth watched his blood billow out into the water and imagined the fish would soon begin eating away at his flesh.
 
"There are many more of them up that hill," she whispered.
 
"If you go up this side, you can hide in the tall grass.
 
Get
them
.
 
Kill them
all
."

***

Jem looked down at Toquame Keewassee's smoldering corpse and said, "Well, I guess he's out of the equation."
 

Ichante held up her bound wrists and said, "It's a good thing too, because he would have never fallen for anything so stupid."

"I didn't hear any better ideas from you."

"You did, you just insisted on ignoring them."

They continued arguing while Father Charles bent over the pyre and took his hat off.
 
The old man closed his eyes and lowered his head.
 
"You pray for your enemies?" Ichante said.
 

"I pray for all of us."

"I knew I should have left you behind," Jem said.
 
"Can we get moving?"

"Of course.
 
Why would we want to be late to our own slaughter?" Ichante said.
 

Jem put one of his guns against Ichante's side and said, "I think this ruse would go a lot further if you were a little roughed up."
  

"Try it, wasichu.
 
Then decide what part of yourself you would like cut off."

Jem smiled, "You know what?
 
I think you people are too violent for me.
 
After this is over, I'm gonna start socializing with people more of my own social standing."

"I saw a pig farm for sale back in Seneca 5," Father Charles said.
 
"Is that what you had in mind?"

The three of them fell quiet as they passed under the mining camp's creaking wooden gate.
 
There were several men standing near the gate who turned to look at them as they entered.
 
Some of them stopped speaking completely and stood motionless.
 
Others looked around in confusion, searching for someone else to ask.
 
Finally, one of the men said, "Who the hell are you?"

Jem held up his hand and grinned foolishly, "Name's Woodson.
 
Heard you boys in the bidness of buyin' itjin women."

The man leered as he looked Ichante over, "She's a mighty pretty one."

Jem pinched Ichante on the cheek, "Ain't she though?
 
Tastes sweet as a bushel of berries too, tell you whut.
 
But don't trust her tho.
 
She'll cut you as soon as look at you if you ain't careful."

The man pointed at Father Charles, "Who's the old man?"

"Him?
 
Just my retarded uncle.
 
Can't hardly talk none," Jem said.
 
"Chewed off his own damn fingers one night after he dipped 'em in ketchup."

The man looked at the preacher's hands in disgust and said, "Come on.
 
I'll take you to see Jim."

"You just don't know when to quit," Father Charles muttered.

"They been telling me that since the day I was born," Jem said.
 
He led them into the camp and saw the man into a tent.
 
Seconds later, he emerged again, followed by a man wearing a mask.
 
"Here goes nothing," Jem whispered.
 
He smiled at the man as he walked up to them and stuck out his hand, "You must be Gentleman Jim!
 
I heard so much about you.
 
Sure is an honor, sir."

Jim shook his hand as he looked Ichante over, "What'd you bring me today?
 
Something nice?"
 
He slid the back of his hand along Ichante's face and said, "It would appear so.
 
Where'd you find her?"

"Her daddy sold her to us for two bottles of firewater and a mule.
 
Sad, really," Jem said.

"That right?" the bandit said.
 
He looked around at his men, "I think we can scare up some firewater, and I'll throw in a destrier.
 
How's that for a profit?"

Jem smiled, "That sounds nice, really, but I was hoping for compensation of a more monetarial variety?"

"How much compensation?"

"A hundred dollars severian."

Gentleman Jim smiled back at him, "A hundred dollars?
 
I reckon it would be a whole lot cheaper for me to just shoot you and your friend here and keep the lady, don't you?"
Jem looked past the bandit and the men standing behind him, watching Haienwa'tha creep up the path toward them.
 
"Now, that wouldn't be right.
 
Not from what I heard `bout the greatest outlaw ever lived."

Jim folded his arms in front of his chest and said, "It's the newspapers that made me great, Mr. Woodson.
 
It was a whole lot of robbin' and rapin' that made me an outlaw.
 
People tend to forget that when they're dealing with me."

"That right?" Jem said.

"Indeed it is."

"You sure is a famous one.
 
Thar's something I always wanted to ask you after I read `bout it in the paper.
 
When you robbed the stagecoach from the Daviess Savings and Loan, why'd you shoot that driver?
 
He give you lip?"

"In fact he did," Jim said.
 
"He said he'd rather die than hand over the money, and I obliged him."

Jem pressed his hand to his head and smiled stupidly, "I'm sorry, my mistake.
 
You didn't kill nobody that time."
 
Jem shook his head, "I meant to say the one for Gallatin.
That's
the man you killed."

"Exactly.
 
I didn't hear you right the first time on account of your hayseed accent."

"Whoops," Jem said slowly, locking eyes with the man in the mask.
 
When he spoke, there was no more accent.
 
"I just recalled that nobody got shot that time either.
 
You boys call yourselves
outlaws?
"
 
He looked around the rest of the group, "I been around a whole bunch of outlaws and don't see one among you.
 
Y'all are just trash."

"You got a hell of a death wish coming in here alone and saying that," Gentleman Jim said.

Jem nodded in agreement and said, "That's true.
 
Or rather, it would be if I came in here alone."

The arrow sailed a hundred feet over their heads in an arc and landed with a soft puff of dirt in the ground between the two groups.
 
The second struck Gentleman Jim in the left thigh, making him scream out.
 

Haienwa'tha knocked and fired one arrow after another, sending them
in different directions.
 
He aimed for legs and stomachs.
 
Shoot to scare and to scatter,
Jem had told him.
 
We'll do the killing.
 
Soon, the men were crashing into one another trying to get away.
 
     

Ichante slid her hands out of the ropes and rolled to the side, getting behind a large iron cooking pot for cover.
 
She drew out her pistol and fired at the first wasichu who went running past, her gun barking as the right side of the man's face burst open.
 
She fired again at the one behind him, then again at another.
   

Jem fired twice into the crowd and ran straight at them to grab the masked bandit and drag him out of the way.
 
The men that weren't running had drawn their weapons and were firing haphazardly into the bushes to save themselves from Haienwa'tha's arrows.
 
"Now, now!" Jem shouted at the old man.

Father Charles whipped his shotgun around and said, "The Lord is my sword and my shield."
 
He propped the end of the shotgun to his hip and fired at the group, knocking two of them down.
 
"Blessed is the Lord, for he trains my hands for war and my fingers to fight."

He fired again, blasting flurries of high-density buckshot at the group that ripped through their flesh and sent them crashing into one another.
 
One of the men collapsed to the ground in front of the preacher and he looked down at the man and said, "The righteous are as bold as lions.
 
They do not whimper."
 
He racked the shotgun slide back to eject the piping hot shell casing before lowering the weapon and firing.
 

Chapter 22: I'll Be Home Come Hell or High Water, and I Know I Will See You Soon

Ruth scrambled up the embankment toward the gunfire and screams.
 
A cloud of thin grey smoke hovered over the camp that bullets cut through like whistling birds.
 
Ruth ran blindly past the men to get to the tent at the farthest end, pushing her way past guns that fired in every direction.
 
An arrow punched through a man's jaw and sprayed her with blood.
 
She turned away just as one of the men fired a gun too close to her ear and Ruth went down clutching the side of her face, her skull rattled from the gun's deafening roar.
 

Everything was reduced to dull, low-frequency static.
 
She staggered to her feet in the midst of the battle but could not hear the rifles firing or the men screaming any longer.
 
Through the haze, she saw a hunched over, bone-thin woman emerge from the tent.
 
Elizabeth Hall's eyes were sunken and the flesh around them was yellow and loose like chicken skin.
 
Her clothing hung off her emaciated frame like dresses in a closet and Elizabeth looked around at the carnage with a confused, delighted smile.
 
She looked like an old person wandering around the rest home, amazed by everything.
 
Ruth screamed her name but heard nothing come out of her own mouth.
 
She covered her ears and screamed it again, "Elizabeth!
 
Get down!"

Elizabeth turned to look at Ruth in wonder, lifting her hand to wave when a bullet burst through her palm and punched her in the breastbone.
 
The loose fabric of her oversized dress fluttered as she fell to the ground.
 
Ruth cried out for her and tried to fight her way toward her, but someone grabbed her by the waist and lifted her into the air.