Blade 5 Page 3

  Blade said: ‘If it’s any comfort to you, ladies, me and my partner will stick around for a while.’

  Red-gold said: ‘Do you really mean that?’

  The dark girl said: ‘We should be so grateful.’ Then she looked with disgust at the prone Doke and added: ‘But your friend isn’t too much use, is he?’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Blade said seriously, ‘he was a good man once. And he’ll be a good man again.’

  They both looked at him doubtfully. Blade hoped that he was telling the truth.

  Chapter Three

  The dark girl’s name was Roxanne Barclay. The red-gold girl was her cousin and was called Salome Richardson. Unlikely names, Blade thought, but he did not make too much of it, because they were unlikely girls. They did not say where they came from and they did not say where they were going. Blade didn’t ask them. The questions hardly seemed worth the effort, considering that he knew he would not get the truth in reply.

  As soon as dark fell, Blade bundled Doke into the wagon, filled the vacant place in the mule team with his own animal (much to its disgust) and moved the camp a couple of miles further down the valley. When he unhitched the mules he put hobbles on them and put them out to grass. Then he found a sleeping spot for the girls away from the wagon and found some rocks on a hillock for himself. From there, he reckoned, he had a good view of the whole camp area. He checked that the girls were armed and settled his back against a boulder for a night of catnapping.

  He had scarcely closed his eyes, or so it seemed, than he heard cautious sounds near him. He at once vacated his position, went around the boulder and caught Salome Richardson, creeping up on him on hands and knees. When he announced his presence behind her, she declared that he had scared her so she thought she would simply die. She was so scared that she clung to him quite piteously. He found the experience, as you might imagine, not an unpleasant one. In fact, for his money, that lovely woman could have stayed scared all night.

  But it was not to be. Courage returned to her very quickly, in fact. Within ten minutes, she was downright bold.

  As she clung to him, she told him how it seemed fated that they should meet this way, how their being together seemed just right.

  ‘How strange,’ she said with all the originality of a heroine from a popular novel, ‘that fate should decree that we should come together after those terrible men attacked us. I mean—I thought the end of the world would come and now here we are together in the moonlight.’

  Blade said: ‘Salome, what is the real reason why those men attacked your wagon?’

  She leaned back in his arms and the expression on her face was one of acute puzzlement.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘The way you and your cousin told it, those men first attacked you two days ago back at the crossing and killed your ma and pa. You mean to say they killed just so they could have their way with you?’

  ‘Don’t you think we are attractive enough for that?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ he said. ‘I think you are both terrific. Now, I’m on your side, I think you’re both lovely, irresistible, but the story don’t ring true. I don’t blame you for telling me a lie. No ma’am, you and your cousin are two defenseless women in a man’s world, and so on and so forth.’

  ‘Joseph Blade,’ cried Salome, ‘you’re no goddam gentleman.’ With which statement, she took a pace back from his arms and brought her right hand up in a swinging flat-handed blow that made his ears ring and nearly knocked him from his feet.

  Before he could grab her, she turned and walked away. He shook his head to clear it and found it still ringing. He sat down with his back to the boulder and thought about women.

  He was scarcely through his first thought when he saw a pale figure approaching him. It halted six or seven paces from him and whispered: ‘Mr. Blade, are you asleep?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said, ‘I’m awake.’

  ‘Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘Ma’am, when you’re in sight, you’re disturbing me.’

  She giggled delightfully. ‘Mr. Blade, you are a bad man, I do declare.’

  Modestly, he said: ‘I have my moments. Right now I’m in business to accept offers to stay with a wagon and protect two helpless young ladies in a wicked wicked world.’

  She came closer and knelt on the ground.

  ‘Are you always so uncomfortably direct?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not being direct,’ he said, ‘I’m being devious. As you shall find out. I am curious. Your cousin tried to persuade me to stay to protect you from a fate worse than death. What do you want me to protect you from?’

  She looked surprised.

  ‘What else could there be?’

  ‘Wa-al,’ said Blade, ‘let’s try this one for size—maybe you want me to stop those men finding what you have hidden under the false floor in your wagon.’

  Roxanne gasped.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you evil man.’

  ‘Didn’t you stop to think that the truth might do you more good than a lie?’

  She opened her lovely eyes wide and looked straight into his. She looked as pure as the driven snow. Any man who mistrusted her would be nothing but a villain.

  ‘I thought when I first saw you, when you saved Salome and I, that you were a man to be trusted. Utterly. A man of honor and integrity. A gentleman.’

  He said, solemn-faced: ‘A leopard cannot change his spots. I was born to be mistrusted by women.’

  She pouted like an innocent sixteen-year-old. ‘You’re laughing at me.’

  ‘Come right out with it,’ he said. ‘What’s your proposition?’

  She turned and looked away into the night She did it very dramatically. He was impressed, but not fooled.

  ‘Guard Salome and I to Denver City.’

  ‘How much?’

  She turned and looked at him hard.

  ‘One hundred dollars,’ she said.

  ‘Each.’

  ‘I meant between the two. But, all right, one hundred each.’

  She held out her hand and said: ‘We’ll shake on that.’

  ‘I have a better idea,’ said Blade and drew her to him.

  She was a small girl and she had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. He put his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet. She put her arms around his neck and in one second flat, their appetites and hungers exploded in them. She writhed against him with a small moan of longing and pleasure. They were clenched tightly together, loin to loin and hip to hip. Her mouth opened beneath his and she shuddered slightly.

  She took her mouth from his and said: ‘I think we just sealed the bargain.’

  He let her feet touch the ground. She clung to him with her head on his chest.

  ‘I think we should seal it a mite firmer than that,’ he said.

  From six feet from them came Salome’s tart voice. ‘Roxanne, this kind of thing was not in our agreement.’

  Blade laughed. ‘You should grumble. It worked.’

  Roxanne was pretty mad at her cousin. She wrenched herself from Blade’s arms and stormed back to her sleeping place.

  Salome stood there, arms folded, the red-gold warrior maiden, looking every inch an ancient Germanic goddess.

  ‘From here on in,’ she declared, ‘please remember, Mr. Blade, that you are our hired hand.’

  He touched a humble forelock and said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  As she stalked away in the moonlight, he watched her go feeling nothing but the greatest admiration for her. He returned to his boulder to find that sleep was a long way off now_. He reckoned the warmth that Roxanne had engendered would cool only in the cold of dawn. So he sat there and listened to his instinct and that instinct was something he took notice of. This instinct didn’t exactly spell out for him in detail wherein danger lay, but it told him without any room for argument that he had just bought himself a large package of trouble. Roxanne and Salome were fatal women all right and they were going to lead him into a heap o
f grief. Just the same, he knew there was no going back. His curiosity had got the better of him.

  Chapter Four

  Doke Struther woke thinking he was slap bang in the middle of a nightmare. And nobody could blame him for that. So far as he could make out, he was upside down staring at the earth, which bobbed and weaved before his very eyes. At the same time, something pretty hard was hitting him in the belly. As he was badly hungover, this had disastrous effects.

  Several seconds of agony passed before he realized that he was lying draped over the saddle of a horse. When he tried to straighten himself up before his eyeballs fell out, he came off the saddle and hit the ground, hard. The animal which had carried him so ignominiously tried a backward kick at him and an iron-shod hoof missed his head by about one eighth of an inch. Once he was lying on firm ground again, Doke tried to go back to sleep, but before he could do so, strong hands seized him, lifted him from the ground and hurled him through the air.

  Quite a considerable time seemed to pass before he struck another element. This time it was water and ice-cold water at that. It snatched his breath away and seemed to be reluctant to hand it back. He floundered and gasped, thought he was drowning and saw his life start to pass before his eyes. But before he could review the whole of those misspent years, a strong hand seized him by the scruff of his neck and hauled him ashore. He lay on small rocks that tried to penetrate his tender flesh and stared at the uninviting waters of the creek.

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself looking at Blade’s grim face.

  ‘You bastard,’ he said with malice.

  Blade picked him up and tossed him back in the creek again. Which, you would have thought, would have taught him a lesson. But drunks don’t learn lessons that easily. He called Blade a naughty word again and Blade tossed him back again. This time the message soaked through to his drink-addled brains. He lay on the beach and he said: ‘All right, you ain’t a bastard. But you’re the great original son-of-a-bitch. How does that ride with you?’

  Blade said: ‘That’s an improvement. I reckon you’re in a fit state now to understand me talking to you. The girls have hired you and me to escort them to Denver City.’

  ‘What do we guard them against?’

  ‘Everything.’

  Doke stood up. It took him some time and he did not do it very well.

  ‘I feel like hell,’ he said. ‘I want a drink.’

  ‘There’s none left. You drank it all. And for your information, there won’t be a drink between here and Denver City. What’s more you’ll be damned lucky if I let you have one there.’

  ‘What the hell do you think you are? My keeper?’

  Brightly, Blade answered: ‘Yeah, you hit it. I’m your keeper.’

  ‘Why?’

  Blade smiled.

  ‘All will be revealed in good time. Now go hitch up the team.’

  Doke choked: ‘You can’t give me orders. Besides, I didn’t eat yet.’

  Blade said: ‘You couldn’t eat, the state you’re in. But there’s some coffee in the pot.’

  Doke said blurrily: ‘You know, Blade, I guess I hate you like I never hated a man before.’

  Blade nodded approvingly.

  ‘That can only be good,’ he said. He strolled back to camp and Doke stumbled after him.

  Roxanne, looking incredibly beautiful for so early an hour, said: ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Not as terrible as I feel.’ said Doke and took his humiliation and rage out on the mules. When they were ready to move out, he tried to ride in the wagon. Travel of any kind was not his favorite pastime at that moment. The thought of forking a horse was a nightmare. But the girls would not have him in the wagon and Blade insisted that both men should be on horses the better to defend the wagon should it be attacked. That brought Doke’s mind to the possibility of being shot and the idea of riding a horse was even less tempting.

  ‘I didn’t make any kind of contract with these women,’ he protested. ‘You don’t have any right to make an agreement for me.’

  ‘I just did it,’ said Blade.

  ‘I could just ride off,’ Doke declared.

  ‘You don’t have a horse,’ said Blade mercilessly. ‘And if you ride off on that one, I’ll treat you like any other horse thief.’

  ‘You…’ Doke began, but he saw the terrible look on Blade’s face and he stopped himself from calling him a bastard. He dragged his hangover into the middle and settled down to hate the world in general, Blade in particular and to eat the wagon’s dust.

  The trail had started to climb by mid-morning and their speed of travel was slow with the mules leaning into their collars and straining to drag the wagon up an ever-increasingly difficult trail. Doke rode, silent and morose, first made miserable by his hangover, then by his hunger. Every half-hour he demanded that they stop and eat. When they did finally stop for coffee and a small cold meal, he complained of being sick to the stomach and unable to touch nothing except a little coffee. The girls were inclined to offer him sympathy, but Blade was not having any of that and growled them off him. So far as he was concerned, he said, Doke was nothing but a drunken bum and he would treat him as one until he ceased to be a drunken bum.

  Salome said: ‘I don’t think you’re being fair to the poor man, Blade.’

  Blade replied: ‘He’s not your partner, ma’am.’

  Doke said: ‘I ain’t your partner. I’m an independent person with rights of my own.’

  Blade said: ‘You’re a drunken bum and you don’t have any rights. And if we argue this any further, I’ll drop you in the next stream we come to.’

  Doke pointed a finger of fury at him and stuttered out: ‘One day, one day, Blade, I’m goin’ to beat your head in for a remark like that.’

  ‘If your defending angels will allow me to be so bold, sir,’ said Blade, ‘that’ll be the day, by God. Now get off your butt and hitch up the team.’

  ‘An’ if I refuse?’ demanded Doke, looking suddenly belligerent.

  Blade said: ‘I’ll knock your teeth in.’

  Doke tried to stare him down, but finally gave up and went to hitch up the mules.

  Roxanne said: ‘I think you’re a violent brute, Blade.’

  ‘But I’ll keep him sober,’ said Blade and stalked after Doke to see he did his chores right.

  Before night, they climbed on to a small plateau that slanted very gently into the north-west. Travel next day would be easier. Blade and Doke hobbled the mules and put them on good grass. There was water nearby and Blade had to tell the girls not to sleep too near the water. They liked the sound of it, they said.

  ‘It drowns all other sound,’ Blade explained. ‘We want to hear anybody moving in on us.’

  ‘Then,’ said Salome pertly, ‘one of you stay awake and stand guard. That’s what we’re paying you for.’

  ‘My horse,’ Blade told her, ‘is better than any watchdog. He’ll hear anybody getting near us.’

  ‘I don’t care to believe that,’ said Roxanne.

  ‘You’d better, ma’am,’ said Blade. ‘Because that’s who’s going to keep watch tonight.’

  The girls settled near each other in the lee of some rocks. Doke lay down under the wagon, not a dozen paces from them. He was complaining of a headache and stomach cramps. Blade didn’t show much sympathy and told him to go take a dip in the creek. Blade himself sat fully clothed about forty paces from the main camp, just off the only trail leading to the site. He tied his horse to his wrist and catnapped with his rifle under his hand.

  True enough, bearing out his claim for his horse, the animal whickered gently about two hours after midnight.

  Blade was awake in an instant. He threw off his blanket, released his horse from his wrist and worked his way a little down-trail. It was not long before he heard first the chink of an iron shoe on rock and then the light music of a bridle-chain. He hurried back to camp and saddled his horse. Then he woke Doke or rather half-woke him because Doke was in a deep sleep. He told h
im to move into the rocks and stay still. Then he woke the two girls and told them to join Doke. To his surprise they made no protest, but, draped in their blankets at once went into the rocks. Next, Blade quickly molded some brush and the groundsheets the girls had lain on into shapes that resembled two sleeping forms and built up the fire. Then he retired into some brush and rocks to the north of the camp so that, if he had to shoot, the girls and Doke would not be in his line of fire.

  So much time passed then, that he began to wonder if he had been mistaken. Crouched down there in the darkness just beyond the edge of the circle of light from the fire, Blade admitted to himself that he hoped he had. He didn’t at all like the idea of two women being mixed up with violence or gunplay. A stray bullet and a girl could be lying dead. He cursed himself for not thinking to give Doke clear instructions on what to do. If Doke began throwing lead and the men approaching the camp turned their guns in the direction of the wagon ...

  He caught his breath in surprise.

  A solitary dark figure stood on the edge of the circle of light. He had come with absolute silence. It was as if he had simply materialized out of the darkness itself. It was so uncanny that Blade wondered if his eyes were playing tricks.

  Blade strained to see if there was anybody close behind the figure, but he could make out nothing.

  The man took a half-pace forward and halted again. Blade could read doubt and caution in every line of his body. Now, going by the man’s movements and the facial features revealed as he drew closer to the light from the fire, Blade saw that he was Indian. Most likely a Delaware, a people so often used as scouts in the West

  For one uncomfortable moment, Blade wondered if this man was an army scout. If so, he could find himself in a very embarrassing position.

  The Indian was searching the camp with his eyes, turning his head slowly. For a moment he seemed to look straight at Blade, who held his Winchester pointed straight at him. The slightest sign of the man spotting him and he would have fired. But the man’s eyes moved on and rested on the girls’ sleeping places.

  Blade told himself that if Doke was going to shoot recklessly he would have done so by now. That meant the fellow was using some sense. For all Blade knew the whole camp could have been surrounded. That thought gave him an uneasy feeling in his back as though there was danger right behind him. It was as much as he could do to keep his eyes on the figure in the firelight.