Savage. Part 48

It was about half full.

I held it up for Jesse, sloshed the whiskey around, and watched her smile.

"This should help the steaks go down a spot better," I said.

Then I sat on the ground and took over my own share of the cooking. It wasn't long before the slabs of meat were good and crispy on the outside. We swung them away from the flames, waited till they quit smoking, plucked them off their sticks, and commenced to rip into them with our teeth.

If I hadn't known my steak was mule, I would've known anyhow that it sure wasn't beef. It was tough and stringy and had an ornery flavor.

After a couple of mouthfuls, I was mighty appreciative of the whiskey.

I took a swallow and offered the bottle to Jesse.

She used one hand to take the steak away from her mouth. With the other, she wiped the grease and soot off her lips and chin. Looking at the bottle, she chewed real hard for a spell. She rolled her eyes upward, and kept on chewing.

I grinned. "How's supper?"

"I've eaten worse," she judged, her voice a bit m.u.f.fled. After a grimace and a swallow, she took hold of the bottle.

"This is better than rattlesnake?" I asked her.

She had herself a sip, and gave the bottle back to me. "Didn't say that."

We both took to laughing. Then we ate more mule and drank more whiskey. The more whiskey I drank, the better the mule tasted. Not that the critter ever did quite reach the stage where it gave me any great pleasure in the eating.

I was glad to swallow the last of it and be done.

"What we should've done," I allowed, "was spare the mule and eat the German."

Jesse laughed so sudden and hard that it sprayed her last mouthful into the fire. I looked on, mighty pleased with myself till she commenced to choke. Then I pounded on her back. She took turns coughing and laughing for a while. When she finally got herself under control, her eyes were teary, her nose running. I fetched the bandanna out of my pocket. It was still moist from my swim in the creek. She used it to clean herself, then stuffed it into a pocket of her dungarees.

"Didn't want it back, did you?"

"Consider it yours," I told her.

"You dang near killed me."

"I'm bound to kill you sooner or later," I said. "I gave you fair warning yesterday, didn't I?"

When I said that, it took some of the fun out of matters. Not just for me, but for Jesse as well.

She looked at me somber. "You're a good man, Trevor Bentley. Don't go running yourself down that way. Now let's go and gut ourselves a mule."

"Let's finish the whiskey first."

We pa.s.sed it back and forth a couple of times. When it was empty, I held it up and said, "I don't suppose this will hold enough water to suffice us on the trail."

"If you've got a few more like it."

"Only the one, I'm afraid. Though I did have an opportunity to purchase ten bottles of Glory Elixir a couple of days back."

"Glory Elixir?" she asked, getting to her feet.

"Good for what ails you."

Then I told her about my encounter with Dr. Lazarus and Ely while we went over and got to work on the mule. She seemed to enjoy the tale, and telling it helped take my mind off our ghastly task.

Not that it was all that ghastly for me.

Jesse took it upon herself to slit open the mule's belly and haul out the guts. Mostly, I stood guard. I wasn't exactly worried that intruders might come along, but keeping watch gave me a reason to avert my eyes from the mess.

The few times I did look, it put me in mind of poor Mary in her Whitchapel digs and poor Trudy the way she'd been the last time I saw her on the yacht. What with all my other troubles, it had been some time since I'd given much thought to Whittle.

I wondered how many more women he'd butchered since those luckless ladies in Tombstone. And where was he now? And how was I to go about tracking him down?

It wouldn't be an easy trick, but I judged there was no advantage to worrying about it. For now, what mattered was to take care of a day at a time and get us safe to Tombstone.

"How much of this do we want?" Jesse asked.

I figured it was time to join in. We cut off two sections of intestine, each about a yard long, and stretched them out along the ground. They looked like a pair of slimy fire hoses.

We mashed them flat to empty them, then laid them across a rock by the creek.

After shucking off our boots and socks and rolling up our trouser legs, we picked up the guts and waded in.

We held them under the surface so water flowed in one end and out the other. Kept them under for a long time. When we judged they were as washed out as they were likely to get, we tied a knot at one end of each and filled them up till they were swollen and heavy. Then we twisted them shut at the other end and lugged them back to the fire. With short pieces of the rope that the German had used to tie Jesse, we bound the twisted ends.

We hefted the bloated tubes onto the buckboard, stepped back, and grinned at each other.

"Looks like we got us traveling water," Jesse said.

"I'm quite surprised it worked, actually."

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.

No Rain, Storms Aplenty The sun went down while we packed some innards back inside the mule and dragged it to the water. We watched it float off toward the south, then washed ourselves and the knives. We carried our things back to the fire.

We added some more wood and sat there, warming our bare feet.

"It's a shame we drank up all the whiskey," I said.

"We can have us a smoke."

So we rolled cigarettes and used a brand from the fire to light them up.

"Hope it don't rain," Jesse said.

Rain seemed mighty unlikely, so we had us a small laugh about her quip. Then we just sat quiet for a spell, enjoying our smokes. When our feet were dry, we got into our socks and boots. I broke some more wood off the buckboard to keep the fire going. Jesse took the whiskey bottle over to the creek and came back with it full. We pa.s.sed it back and forth.

I watched as she unwrapped the turban from around her head. She folded it, then rubbed her scalp and fluffed up her hair, which shone all golden in the firelight. "You never got to tell me about that feller you knifed in the alley," she said. Then she pulled the hat off my head. She stuffed her cloth inside, and set my hat aside. "Let's hear all about it."

It seemed like days ago that I'd commenced the tale of my adventures, only to get stopped by the downpour. It seemed like years ago that I'd been led by Sue into that East End alley. I spent a few moments collecting my memories, then took up the story where I'd left it off last night.

This time, we didn't have any storm or flashflood. Nothing interrupted. We sat by the fire, sometimes adding wood to it and sometimes having a sip of water, while I talked and talked. I didn't stop with the fight in the alley, but went on and told about taking refuge in Mary's digs, about Whittle and the ocean voyage and my escape from him at Gravesend Bay. I gave Jesse pretty much the same version as what I'd told McSween and the boys around the campfire that time I drank myself into a stupor and fell down. I went easy, though, telling about the murders. I only said Whittle'd cut the women's throats, and didn't let on about the way he'd butchered them.

She asked questions now and again. Mostly, she just listened. About the time I had me and Sarah on the train heading west (of course, I didn't tell her that we'd been more than friends), Jesse stretched herself out along the ground and rested her head on my lap.

"Shall I quit now?" I asked.

"Nope. Just getting comfortable."

So I plugged on, lying considerable about the trouble with Briggs, but coming back to the truth once he'd pitched me off the train. I told how I'd met up with the gang and got pulled into the robbery, all about "buying" General and the shootout at Bailey's Corner, how we'd led the posse into a bushwhack, and finally about the attack on our camp.

"Nothing much happened after that," I finished, "until you came along and brained me."

"I sure am sorry about all your friends," she said. "That was a mighty hard thing. But you oughta not go blaming yourself. McSween's the feller that took General."

"Only on account of my needing a horse. If I hadn't chosen to ride with the gang..."

"Blame Briggs, then. He's the snake that chucked you off the train. Or put the blame on Whittle. You got no call to be ashamed of anything you done, Trevor. Why, you'd still be home in England and wouldn't none of it have happened except you took on Whittle to save that gal. The one he was fixing to kill on the street there. That's how I see it, leastwise."

"I see it that way myself, sometimes," I told her.

"It ain't rightly your fault Whittle killed them folks on the boat. Nor even that you shot up the posse. Those boys aimed to kill you, plain and simple. Wasn't no better than murder, how they rode in and shot up the gang. The wonder's that you lived through such a pa.s.sel of close shaves."

"I just wish none of it had happened at all."

That was sure the wrong thing to tell Jesse.

She opened her mouth, but didn't say anything. She just gazed up at me, her eyes shiny with firelight.

"What?" I asked, a bit slow at seeing my mistake.

She shook her head, then got to her feet and stomped off toward the creek.

I went in the other direction and relieved myself, wondering what had put the burr under Jesse's saddle. She'd turned as chilly as the night air, and it didn't make a lick of sense.

Back at the fire, I looked around and spotted General. I recalled how I'd nearly lost him and Jesse both in the flood on account of hobbling him, so it seemed best to leave him free. He wasn't likely to wander far.

By and by, Jesse came along.

"We oughta break up some more wood and keep our meat smoking," she said. "'Sides, gonna be a cold night less we keep the fire up."

So we commenced to rip some more planks off the buckboard and hack them to pieces with our knives.

"It's a shame we lost our blankets," I said.

"Well, you only lost the dang things cause you was fool enough to leave home. Should've stayed there with your ma."

"Oh?"

"Yep. You would've gone and missed out on every last one of the nasty mean things that's come your way."

"Oh," I said. Now, I was commencing to catch on to the nature of the problem.

"Yep."

We carried our loads of wood over to the fire and dropped them into a heap.

Jesse wiped her hands on the front of her shirt.

"I don't regret every everything," I said. "I'm quite glad that I met you."

"That so? Well, you oughta just keep it in mind when you go to wishing you'd stayed home. How do you reckon I feel, you say such things? And after I gone and kissed you, too."

When she said that, I stepped right up to her and put my arms around her and pulled her close against me and kissed her on the mouth. I rather expected her to shove me away. She didn't do it, though. Instead, she moaned and squeezed me tight. I couldn't rightly believe my luck. I was actually holding Jesse in my arms, kissing her mouth, and she wasn't fighting me off. It was bully.

But then Sarah came into my head. I took to feeling guilty. She'd given herself to me, heart and body. And here I was, taking up with the first pretty gal who'd come my way.

She's more than just a pretty gal, I told myself. She's Jesse Sue Longley.

I might never see Sarah again, anyhow.

Besides, she seemed like part of my past, part of the life I'd left behind when I took up with the outlaws. She'd never met the train robber, the horse thief, the murderer. The boy she'd known was dead and gone. She'd likely have no use for me.

With Jesse in my arms, I had no more use for Sarah, either.

Best to forget about her.

Jesse pulled back and looked me in the eyes. "What's troubling you?" she asked.

"Nothing at all."

"Don't you fib to me. What is it?"

I just shook my head. I tried to hug her again, but she held me off.

"Time we got us some sleep," she said.

"But Jesse..."

She didn't say anything, but pulled the German's pistol out of her belt. Stepping past me, she fetched the folded trouser leg from inside my hat.