Save us, please. Somebody. Boon spurred into the cottonwoods and froze. Five women hung from one limb, wrists lashed in rawhide. The tall one lifted her head, eyes locking on the scar, splitting his eyebrow.
"You came." Crack. A rifle shot from the rimrock ripped bark a foot from his head. Boon dove from the saddle. The packhorse screamed and went down. Canteens bursting.
His last water hissing into the sand. How many? "One," came her stone-calm reply. "He drinks. He shoots slow after noon." Boon swung the Winchester up.
Fired, missed, fired again under the hat brim. His knife slashed the rawhide. One, two. Five. On the dead man, He found a folded paper. Reward: $500.
Five Apache women wanted for murder. Their price his warrant. He came down slow, badge glinting, hand on the cuffs. Two sisters started forward. The tall one's hand rose.
They froze. "Hold out your wrists." She stared at the iron. "You cut us down to put us back in rope." 3 weeks on one trail does something to a man. It sands him down.
It takes the talk out of him and leaves only the listening. So when the wind came up the dry creek that afternoon carrying a sound that was not wind, I heard it. And I wished I hadn't. A voice, then another, thin as wire. Help us, please, somebody.
My name is Boon Halleran, Deputy United States Marshal for the territory of Arizona, 35 years old, most of them spent in a saddle, and I had been following Clee Dupre and his riders since the last day of June, since the Pickering Freight wagons, since two brothers were left face down in the road with their mules cut loose and their cargo gone and a dozen moccasin prints pressed neatly into the dust around them. too neatly. I remember thinking that too neat for people who walk soft by habit. I turned my sorrel toward the creek bed. The packhorse came along behind on its lead, sloshing with the last of my good water. The cottonwood grove sat in the bend like an island of green somebody forgot to take away.
One tree stood taller than the rest. All split by lightning years back and healed crooked and hanging from its lowest limb. Wrists lashed with rawhide over the branch. feet barely scraping the sand were five women. Five. I stopped breathing for a second, which is a thing a lawman learns not to do and does anyway.
They wore buckskin and faded calico torn at the shoulders from fighting the ropes. Moccasins, hair loose and full of dust. A patchy by the look of the beadwork, and alive. All of them alive. Their arms had gone dark from the wrists up the color of a bruise left too long.
The one in the middle lifted her head, tall, even hanging. A face like a blade that had been sharpened on something hard. Dark eyes that looked at me and did not beg. They measured. You came two words, quiet, like she'd been waiting on a stage that was running late.
Her eyes went to my face and stopped on the old scar that splits my left eyebrow and stayed there a beat longer than a stranger's eyes should. I didn't have time to wonder what she meant because the rifle shot cracked off the rocks above the grove and took a piece out of the cottonwood bark a foot from my head. Down off the horse, sand in my teeth. A second shot. The packhorse screamed.
I heard it go down hard behind me. Heard the canteens burst and the water hiss into the dry ground. And that sound hurt worse than the bullet would have. Water out here. Gone into the dirt in a breath.
The shooter was up in the rimrock to the east. A little nest of boulders with a fine view of the tree. A lookout left behind to watch the bait because that's what these women were. Bait or a lesson or both? How many up there?
I kept my voice low, sliding along the bank toward the trunk. The tall one answered without turning her head. One. He drinks. He shoots slow.
Afternoon. It's afternoon. Then he shoots slow. Another shot. Slow.
She was right. It kicked sand between my boots and the creek bank. I brought the Winchester up, waited for the glint, and gave him one through the rocks. Mist, he moved, gave me his hat brim. I gave him the second round under it.
Then nothing. Just the wind again and five women breathing hard above me and the packhorse kicking its last in the sand. I didn't go check him yet. First things first. I pulled my knife and went to the tree.
The tall one shook her head when I reached for her rope. Not me, her first. Her chin pointed at the end of the line. The youngest is the weakest at the wrists. The youngest was not young the way a child is young.
She was a grown woman, maybe 20, with a sharp mouth and a scrape across her cheekbone. And when I cut her down, she fell against my chest like a sack of feed and then shoved off me like I'd insulted her. I can stand. You can't. Watch me.
She stood, wobbled, stood again, and spat sand. Water. Horses dead. Water's in the ground. and I've got a canteen on my saddle. Then why are you still talking?
I liked her right away, which worried me. I cut the next one down. A woman with a rifleman's shoulders and a scar across the back of one hand, then a quiet one who looked first at the other's wrists before her own, the way healers do. Then a lean, watchful one who dropped to her knees, pressed her palm flat against the ground, and closed her eyes like she was listening to the earth breathe. The tall one last.
She came down light. didn't stagger, rubbed her wrists once hard, and the blood went back into her hands, and I watched her not show a single thing on her face. Who did this? Men, I gathered that. Then you gathered right. She walked past me to my sorrel, took the canteen off the horn, and handed it first to the youngest, then down the line, and drank last.