Magnificent Guns of Seneca 6 (36 page)
The other men wanted to do things to the dead itjin's body before they burned it but Bob said no.
After that, they mostly stood around watching while Bob built the pyre, regardless of how many times he told them to, "Get to it."
Finally, he finished assembling the bed of sticks and dried out branches and said, "Either you all drag him over here or I go get Jim."
Each of them grabbed one of Toquame Keewassee's limbs and hurled him onto the pyre.
Bob bent down to light a match when he felt water sprinkling his hand.
He leapt back when he realized the rest of the men were pissing on the itjin.
"Real funny!" Bob cried.
"Real smart, too.
We're trying to start a fire and you're all wetting him down."
Bob swiped his hand in the dirt in disgust.
He tossed the book of matches at the closest man and said, "Don't come back until he's cooking.
That's an order!"
They smirked as he walked away and he could make out one of them repeating his words in a high-pitched voice.
Go on and let them underestimate,
Bob thought.
Been using it to your advantage all your life.
They're a bunch of white trash and you're a bonafide outlaw.
He hurried through the camp to get to the embankment.
He saw Ruth through the tall river grass growing there.
Still washing clothes, like she hadn't even made a dent in the pile of dirty shirts and under britches laying scattered on the beach.
Bob walked past her without speaking to dunk his hands in the water and started scrubbing.
The elbows of his sleeves were wet but he couldn't tell whether it was from the river or the other men, so he quickly lowered his suspenders and undid the buttons.
It was probably piss.
He pictured Ruth picking the shirt up out of the pile and saying,
"Somebody been pissing on you, Bob?"
He dropped the shirt in the water where the soap bubbles popped on the surface and said, "Oh, my," before he picked it back up again and tossed it in the pile.
Ruth didn't even look.
Then he saw the feverfew flowers were still in the road, trampled now to muddy pulp.
Bob snapped his fingers at Ruth, "Make sure my shirt gets cleaned next, woman."
Ruth looked sideways at him and said, "Sure thing, Bob."
"You sassing me, girl?"
"Not at all, Bob."
Bob went down to the edge of the water until it ran over the edge of his boots and leaned forward, "You best not be sassing me.
I'm the lieutenant of this outfit and what I say goes before anybody else as far as it concerns the likes of you."
Ruth kept her eyes on the laundry in her hand, "I understand."
"You deserve to be talked to like this, because you chose this.
I offered you something else.
Something better, but apparently you'd rather wash clothes and whore than have a respectable life."
Ruth turned to say something but stopped at the sight of Bob's red face, his shaking hands resting so close to the menacing gun strapped across his narrow hips.
There was no one close enough to hear her in time if he snapped.
"Bob, I just don't think it could work is all," she said.
"I don't want to get my hopes up.
Everyone seems pretty sure we're getting sold in the next few days."
"So that's what you think but it ain't what you know," he said.
"All you ever needed to say was the word and I'd have gone and taken care of it."
"Okay, Bob."
"You want me to go and find out?"
"If that's what you want me to do."
"I guess that's the only way we'll know for sure, ain't it?"
Bob hitched up his pants and turned to head back up to the camp.
Gentleman Jim was standing at the top of the hill looking down, "Didn't I tell you to burn that itjin?"
Bob hurried up to him and said, "I am on my way back there right now to make sure it's finished."
"I already made sure of that for you, Bob.
Why do I need a lieutenant if I have to run around double-checking everything, Bob?"
"I don't know that I have a good answer for that.
Maybe I'm too distracted.
There's something I need to talk to you about.
A favor I need to ask."
"A favor?" Jim said.
"You wait until after you screw up to ask a favor?
Must be a daisy."
Bob took as deep a breath as he could manage and let the air out real slow, taking the time to sum up his courage all in one breath and say, "I want to buy Ruth off you.
Whatever you were gonna get from those men, I'll match it. I'll pay more.
Anything it takes."
Gentleman Jim stared at Bob in confusion, not knowing whether to smile or not.
"You being serious?"
"I got a little bit of money.
I got this gun.
You can have both, plus my share of whatever I earned with you.
If that ain't enough, we can draw up a contract real official and I'll pay you once a month until we're square."
The outlaw closed his eyes as Bob spoke, his face the sudden expression of bemused realization.
When Bob stopped talking, Jim put his arm around Bob's shoulders and pulled him close.
"Bob, Bob, Bob," he said softly.
"You are a romantic soul.
I understand that, because I too am a romantic soul.
Let me ask you something and you tell me the truth, all right?"
"All right," Bob said.
"Was that girl down there your first?"
Bob didn't answer.
"Come on now, don't be shy.
She was, wuddint she?"
"Yes," Bob finally said.
"What you're having is a completely normal reaction.
It happens to all of us.
Shoot, my first was a four dollar whore in Seneca Two.
By the time we was finished, I was fixed to propose!"
"This is something different," Bob said.
"Of course it is.
It's always different, Bob.
That's the beauty of it.
Every woman alive shares a few of the same qualities with all the others.
She's also got something unique that sets her completely apart.
You can taste all the flavors you want.
Know what?
Next time we kick a little ass, I'm gonna find me an old lady.
Know why?
Never had one before."
"That's good," Bob said.
"I want Ruth, though."
"No you don't, Bob.
You might think you do but pretty soon you'll start thinking about all the fellas around here that gave her a poke and it'll start creeping into your mind like a cancer.
Bob, I even gave her a turn or five.
Especially after them other ones went goofy on us.
I'm doing you a favor right now.
As your friend."
Bob groaned and slammed his hands against the man's chest, "You have no right to keep us from being together!
I'm offering to pay you good money for her."
Jim threw his arm around Bob's head and wrenched his head back as he came up with the itjin's knife.
He pressed the blade to Bob's throat tight enough that Bob was afraid he'd slice off his Adam's Apple if he swallowed.
"Don't you ever raise up to me again, you hear me?" Jim whispered in Bob's ear.
"Yes, sir."
"I have any right I say.
If I order these men to line up along the river and plug up the holes in your sweetheart like she was a bowling ball, I can."
"Please.
Please don't," Bob said.
"Next time you so much as talk to that whore or mention her name to me I'm gonna cut her belly open and yank out her innards, then I'm gonna nail to them a tree and set them on fire while she dances around.
Won't that be fun, Bob?"
"I'll never talk to her again.
I swear."
Jim pushed Bob away and sheathed his knife.
"This damn woman's got you so polluted inside that you don't know what's right and wrong.
Lucky for you, I understand how that feels.
Let's not speak of this again."
Bob clutched his throat and checked for blood on his hand as Jim walked away.
There was a fine line of crimson stained across his palm.
He wiped it on his pants only to see a dozen of the other men standing nearby looking at him.
He spun to look down the embankment.
Ruth lowered her gaze and concentrated on washing his shirt.
***
The waters of the Wabash were stinking and felt hot against Haienwa'tha's stomach as he waded through it, keeping his arrow fitted in his bow and ready to fire.
Bugs stung his eyes. Fish and snakes and other unseen things slithered past him under the water's dark surface as he crept closer toward the campsite.
He walked gently over jagged rocks as if they were soft cushions, but when his toes squished into a bed of black river mud, he stopped and scooped up a handful to inspect it.
It smelled like sulfur and sparkled with sediment, but as he smeared it over his arms, it stuck.
He quickly rubbed it on his face and neck and the rest of his torso until none of his skin showed through.
The sun's intense heat started to bake the layer of mud onto him immediately and even though it cracked and flaked as he moved, it left him nearly imperceptible from the water.
A noise made him stop suddenly and lower himself down to his chin.
He saw a white woman ahead standing in the water up to her knees, washing clothes.
This is just another hunt,
he told himself.
She is just another animal.
Do it.
The woman suddenly looked up at him and Haienwa'tha froze.
She did not make a sound.
Her only movement was that she closed her eyes and clasped her hands together.
"Hey, you gonna take all day with them shirts or what?"
Haienwa'tha stood up from the water at the sight of the wasichu walking up behind the woman and yanked his bow string back.
The man's jaw fell open and the long blade of grass he was chewing on fell out of his mouth.
Haienwa'tha's arrow sailed over the woman's head and struck the man in the throat, turning his cry for help into a bubbling gurgle.
The wasichu regurgitated blood down the front of his shirt and reached up to touch the arrow's shaft with his fingers just before he fell flat on the beach.
