Kate hid behind a pine tree, not too far from the Dugout door and peeked around the trunk. The door was wide open, flickering with fire light. Cora’s and Cracked Beak’s shadows flashed in the doorway, still cussing and cawing. The gun fired again. A window shattered.
Kate worried about Bart now, laying limp and unconscious there on the table.
Then she felt the tip of a blade prick the small of her back and heard the sinister chuckle of a man on the winning side of an unfair deal.
“I was worried that you would’ve smelled me coming,” Stick said. “What with that gargantuan schnoz of yours.”
Kate’s chest heaved and her nostrils flared. Her knees knocked as her head spun. She whimpered even, but was quick to stifle it.
“You ought to be scared,” Stick said, his mouth right by her ear.
“I’m not scared of a half-wit dude. ”
From behind, Stick snatched Kate from the tree. She clawed at his arm around her neck, but he squeezed all the more tightly and lifted her from the ground. Her feet flailed as she gasped for breath.
“I didn’t forget the last insult you spat my way,” he said, his spittle tickling the inside of her ear. And then he laughed. “Look at that nub arm of yours.”
It wiggled like a gopher in a sock as she writhed in his grip. The sleeve unpinned and slapped them in their faces.
“If I was a one-armed piece of dog meat,” he raised his other hand in front of her. The curved blade of a cavalry saber glinted in the scant moonlight. “I’d choose my words more wisely.” Stick flung her to the ground.
Kate hit the ground hard, her nose dug into the pine straw, raking it clear and she came up with musty dirt all over lips and in her teeth. She spat as she scrambled, desperate to get back up to her feet, but Stick pinned her to the ground with a heavy boot on her back and draped the sword’s blade across the back of her neck.
“You best heed me from here on out.”
“You think yourself a man? Bullying a helpless woman?”
Stick dragged the sword’s tip up the back of her head, letting it fold her ear up like a wad of paper, then let it rest on her cheek bone directly under her eye. Her nostrils flared and her breath haggard.
She yelped. A hot line of blood beaded on her cheek.
Stick sniggered. “You’re wanted alive, but nothing was said concerning the state of your being beyond that.”
He yanked her up by her hair. There were tears in her eyes and she bit down on her bottom lip to keep it from trembling. Stick snickered. “That’s better,” he said.
The door of the Dugout was still open. Several gunshots barked inside, the shots flashing in the darkening windows. Then something gray and big flew out of the doorway, cawing, and flying up into the shadows high up in the pines above Stick and Kate.
“What the Hell was that?” He asked.
A moment later, Cora appeared in the doorway and fired another shot in the direction in which the gray form had flown. “Get back here!”
Kate knew it must be Cracked Beak and cried for help, but Stick’s hand clamped over her mouth and pulled her back behind the tree, out of Cora’s sight. Cora aimed her revolver toward them (or at least toward where she had heard Kate’s cry), and swore, before dipping back behind the wall of the Dugout, vanishing from view. “Who’s out there?” She shouted.
Clenching the squirming Kate close to his chest, Stick shouted a reply, “I ain’t forgot, Cora! And now I got one of yours. You best come out if you don’t want her wearing two smiles!”
Thick smoke rose up out of the chimney. Pale curls in the bit of moonlight.
“Cora!” Stick shouted.
There came some movement to the right of Dugout, a flickering of shadows around the trunk of the dark pines. A black figure emerged, slender and tall, carrying something under his arm. He darted from the pines toward the squat building, stepping lightly, silent save the faint crinkle of pine needles, and then vanished behind it.
Kate kicked Stick’s shin, which loosened his hand from her mouth, giving her a second to holler out before he was able to muffle her voice again. He squeezed her tightly, which dug her teeth into the inside of her lips, drawing blood, its metallic taste leaking onto her tongue.
The figure had climbed up onto the roof of the Dugout, slipping, wood shingles skittering. A gunshot, blasting through the roof near the feet of the figure. He danced along the shingles, dodging four more reports of the revolver as he draped a blanket over the mouth of the smoking chimney. He leapt from the roof, landed and rolled in the pine straw, popping up at the ready with a pistol in hand. He ran up to the right side of the Dugout and pressed himself tight to the wall, peeking around the corner toward the front door, from which thick smoke began to billow out.
Then came the coughing. It was Cora, swearing and coughing, and Kate (despite her own situation in the cruel grip of Stick) thought of Bart again, wondering if he was still unconscious, breathing in all that smoke. But, Cora started shouting something about extinguishing the fire, and there came another set of coughs that sounded like Bart and she was further assured when both of them came tumbling out of the front door of the Dugout, hunched over, hacking and coughing. Bart fell to the ground on his hands and knees, while Cora waved her pistol and fired blindly toward her left, missing wildly. The black figure lunged forward, snatched the gun out of her hand. She dropped to her knees as well, still coughing. The figure looked toward Kate and Stick, whistling for them.
“Get on,” Stick said, shoving Kate from out behind the pine tree. She didn’t walk at first, but the saber pricking her back prodded her to move up the slope toward the Dugout.
Cora staggered to her feet.
“Don’t be silly now,” the black figure approached her, two pistols drawn, He still was cloaked in shadow, somehow blacker than the surrounding night. Save his red eyes.
Kate noticed those eyes and stopped there on the slope, still a few yards away from the trio in front of the Dugout. Smoke kept rolling out from the door behind them, rising up behind the black figure, behind those rheumatic eyes set in the pitch dark of a human silhouette. Those eyes shifted toward her and, beneath then, a toothy smile split open the inky visage. He holstered a pistol and tipped his hat toward her.
She shook her head, taking a step backward, but felt the saber tip dig into the flesh around her left kidney. She spun around and faced Stick. Her face pale as a bone in the moonlight. “It’s not possible. It can’t be him!”
Stick hesitated, letting the saber lower, before raising it again to her throat, but she immediately batted the blade away and rushed him, grabbing a fistful of his buckskin lapel. “It’s the Esau Slayer! It’s him! But it can’t be. He’s supposed to be dead! He’s dead!”
Stick shoved her away. “He just looks like the Slayer.”
“No it is him!”
The Stranger lifted his finger to his scant lips. “Miss Kate and I are well acquainted.”
Kate stood there, petrified and mouth gaping, as he sauntered her way. His britches swished and his silver toed boots crinkled the pine straw with every step. He stood in front of her now, those red eyes hovering so close to her nose. His breath was like a whistling breeze trapped in a cave, winding through its only way out which was a tunnel infested with bats and plastered with guano. She lurched back a single step. “I’m sad to see you have lost an arm,” he said. “Quite a trial. But, we press on, like good little soldiers. We press on to victory.”
She stumbled, falling on her butt to the ground. Stick came up and stood by the Stranger, not too close however, because even in Stick’s eyes was a wary twitch.
“Keep an eye on the other two,” the Stranger ordered.
Stick walked off behind the Stranger. Cora helped Bart up to his feet. Stick shucked his revolver and aimed it at Cora, saying some mean spirited words.
The Stranger crouched in front of Kate. With his arm propped on his knee, his grip was loose on the gun, letting it dangle from his fingertips. It pointed down at the ground.
“If you’re going to be all weak-willed,” he said, low enough that Stick and the others couldn’t hear. “This isn’t going to work.”
The Dugout was dark. Only faint trails of smoke wiggled from the corners of the door up into the darkness. Moonlight draped the midnight world, casting a glossy light on the bark of the trees and along the needles on the ground. The Stranger lifted his brim, tilting the hat further back on his head, his pale face veiled in the moon’s eerie glow. He wore the same kind of frown that a corpse wears when he’s all done up and laid in his coffin.
“But, we’ll figure something out,” he said. “Because I’m not going back.” He shook his head, looking dead into Kate’s eyes. “I’m not going back.”
Kate pushed her heels into the pine straw, her butt scraping along the ground, scooching further away from him.
He motioned his gun at her. “And because I’m not going back. I want to help you.”
She gazed at the Stranger, her open mouth closing. His rheumatic eyes didn’t stray from her.
“A barbaric practice,” he pointed at the nub of her right arm. “I sure hate that you incurred that operation.”
“I was going to die,” she said.
The scaly skin of his brow raised. “And I’m glad you didn’t.”
“You did this to me. You shot me.”
“Which I truly regret, from the shallowest depths of my little black heart. For now, that we have had this time apart, I realize that your murder would’ve been detrimental to my own progress. Because, if you had succumbed to the bullet, I would not be here, savoring the fresh night air, enjoying the kiss of the midnight dew. Instead, I would’ve been bound, bound deep in the darkness, dragged and tethered by the whims of a desire fully separate from my own. So, I thank the surgeon that saved your life! Profusely and adamantly. And now I wager that you see. Surely you understand. That what I am speaking is not very different from the affectations of your own heart. Wasn’t your life tied up in the fancy of another man’s? Wasn’t your life jeopardized by his foolishness? Aren’t you tired of another man’s decisions directing the sails of your own existence? I shall no longer live that way. I will decide the direction of my life. I will take my own steps in the freedom of my own determination.”
Kate’s nostrils flared. “You shouldn’t be alive. I saw the picture of your corpse in the paper.”
“Do you believe everything you read in the paper?”
She blinked, her chest heaving.
The Stranger snickered as he stood. “Yes, that was me. But, I do not understand how a woman who can transform into a coyote is so befuddled by such a trivial miracle as resurrection?”
Kate, keeping her eye on the Stranger, slowly stood. “I cannot turn into a coyote.”
“Because you have lost the clothes,” he said. “A simple fix, but not necessary for our endeavor. I’m sure by now that Cracked Beak has helped you recover some memory.” He glanced around into the trees and aimed the revolver at Kate. “We have a common enemy, you know. Very powerful. A liar. A murderer.”
There came shouts. Three shadows stood in front of the Dugout. But, one of them, Stick, pulled a revolver. Cora and Bart raised their hands.
The Stranger glanced back at Kate, who stared square into his eyes. “A murderer like you?”
“Yes,” he spread a toothy smile. “But I haven’t killed you… yet. A task that I have had ample time to do. And as they say, actions speak louder than words.”
“You speak of the Armadillo Shaman?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“You don’t want to help me. You want me to help you.”
“Consider it an investment, Miss Kate. If you help me, I won’t kill you.”
“Help you do what?” She asked.
“Destroy the Armadillo Shaman, of course. Don’t you want justice for your brother? To free your father of his spell?”
It was odd to feel so indifferent at the sound of those words: brother and father. All she remembered of her brother was the memory of intense grief. Even now, she felt the subtle knotting of her belly, the itch in the corner of her eyes. But, that was all it was. Not something born out of love or even affection, but only a feeling, a sense. It was like only smelling the sweet smells of a warm apple pie, but never actually eating it. And then her father? It was just a word. A name for an empty space. An entry in a dictionary and nothing more. The indifference uneased her. Her worry came more from that than any actual concern for her father.
“Well?” The Stranger asked.
A gunshot ripped the night. Up at the Dugout, there was a fight. Bart grappled with Stick, their arms entangled above their heads, Bart wrestling for a revolver and saber in Stick’s hands. Another silhouette, Cora, laid out on the ground was slowly staggering back up to her feet.
The Stranger watched the trio at the Dugout. “I believe it’s time we rejoin our friends. Oh? You’ve run off.”
Kate padded over the pine straw, darting quickly to a thick tangle of shadow in the trees. She hid, back to a tree trunk, forcing her breath through her nostrils, expecting to hear the crunch of the Stranger’s steps pursuing her, but they never came. She ventured a nervous peek around the tree and saw the Stranger saunter up to the trio in front of the Dugout.