Paradise Sky

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“We seen what you do,” the cripple said. “Kill them all. You bad men, and we need bad men. We cook. Give free pussy.”

“We can’t take you with us.”

“They kill us,” said the cripple, who seemed to be the mouthpiece for the three of them, but I noted the ugly one seemed to be paying right smart attention, and this was a thing that would matter later. “His brothers, they take us and chop us up. Make chop suey.”

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“He done it before,” said the crip. “You ate some white man tonight. No Chinese girl yet. But white man.”

I sorted that one around in my bean, said, “You mean that wasn’t a calf’s eyeball?”

“No calf’s eyeball.”

“Hell,” Cullen said. “It tasted all right, though. Salty, but all right.”

The cripple kept talking. “Fat man sleeping. Chun kill him with ax. He do the same to you, he got chance.”

“He won’t,” Cullen said, nodding at the Chinaman on the ground.

Down below in Ransack there was starting to be a stirring. White men and Chinamen was both moving in our direction. I said, “Cullen, you was a buggy driver. Can you drive a wagon?”

“I can,” he said.

Cullen climbed up, edged the cripple aside on the driver’s seat, and took the reins.

I looked out across the dark prairie, seen a storm was coming. Lightning was working its way across the sky in angry yellow slits, and thunder roared like big ca

“Take the wagon into them trees,” I said, “and don’t spare the horses. Get down in the creek bed if you can. You can hold out better there.”

“What about you?” he said.

“You worry about you and them women,” I said.

Cullen turned the team, started across the prairie, clattering away, urging the horses on. From where I stood it seemed to me that wagon and those horses was hardly touching ground. I could see those China girls bouncing around in the back like they was popping corn in a greasy skillet.

There was a half dozen mounted men riding my way, followed by a bunch of screaming lunatics on foot—whites, mostly, and some Chinamen, all of them on the run and sounding like someone had invited them to a free di

Still holding my Winchester, I leaped on Satan’s back, hoping after the day Satan had been through he still had some serious horse left in him.

12

Satan was a black grass fire shoved by the wind, the fastest, smoothest-ru

That quarter mile melted away. As I come up on the trees, I seen the wagon was pulled down into the creek mostly, but the tail end of it was still sticking up. I could hear Cullen yelling to the horses, “Go on” and such, and gradually the wagon bumped over the bank and out of sight and into the shallow creek, which wasn’t really any more than a trickle of water.

I rode Satan down in there, flung myself off of him, led him into a run of trees alongside the bank below the firing line. I tied him off and took the saddlebags of ammunition and climbed up with the Winchester and found me a spot. That posse of men was coming and would soon be on us.

I beaded along the Winchester and shot the horse in the forefront of the line through the chest. It went down, and so did the rider. It was a bad thing for the horse but a good thing for us. The rider struck the ground so hard on his head I could hear his neck crack like someone had stepped on a clay pot. He got up, crawled in our direction for a short ways, determined that wasn’t a good idea, and like a dog looking for a place to lie down, turned about on his hands and knees a couple times, then flattened out and didn’t move. All the while he had done this with his head at an odd angle, like he was trying to look back and see if his asshole was properly centered. I think his neck finally come loose of something it needed, and it done him in.

The others had already turned their horses and rode back in the direction of town. They stopped about halfway there where they met up with all the men on foot that had been ru

“I think you discouraged them, Nat,” Cullen said.

“Yeah, but I don’t know I’ve given them enough of it,” I said. “I was them, I would try and flank us. Though they’d have to come down through the trees or along the creek if they did that, and that still ain’t positions to their good.”

“They could come up behind us,” Cullen said.

“Two men, one on either side of the creek, could hold them off pretty damn good cause we got the cover and the better shooting position, and they ain’t Apaches. We done dealt with some of the best sneakers there is, so these boys don’t worry me the same.”

“We got to come out of here eventually,” Cullen said.

“That’s true,” I said. “And they got to decide how many men they want to lose before we do.”

“They could rush us,” Cullen said.

“They could, but I bet they won’t. We got to wait until the right moment and roll out. I think we might do better to leave the wagon. Make some reins and bridles out of those lines, put the women on the wagon horses, get you on Satan with me, and creep out of here like a medicine show.”

“I don’t know,” Cullen said.

“Damn it, Cullen. I’m trying to be on the ups about this. Quit putting a weight on my head.”

“I don’t know,” he said again.

The rain was starting now, lightning was blasting away, the thunder was still rumbling. The rain was cold, and it rolled off my hat and run down the back of my shirt and made me tremble. I was thinking that with the clouds growing thick, maybe we could steal out under cover of darkness, but the constant lightning flashes made that tricky. I was turning all this around in my mind, trying to figure the odds, when I seen someone coming on horseback, all alone, sitting ramrod straight in the saddle. It was an old horse, and it walked with its head down. It rambled here and there and finally set a course toward us.

“What in the world is he thinking?” Cullen said. He propped the Spencer against the bank and took a bead.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

On came the rider, stiff in the saddle, dark as night, hat pulled down over his eyes. His arms dangled at his sides. There was a flash of lightning, and in that quick glow I could see the reins was tied to the saddle horn and there was a big pole fastened to it, too; the rider was fixed firmly against that saddle horn and pole. I saw all this in that flash. Saw, too, that he was a colored man, and the wind carrying his stink, along with another flash of lightning, a

The horse trotted right up to the bank. I stood in front of it so I wasn’t being sighted by a rifle, took the reins, and guided the horse down into the shallow creek bed, Cramp wobbling in the saddle.

I tied the horse to the back of the wagon, nodded at the China girls in the rig, and hustled back to my spot and peeped over the bank. There was shapes of men and horses out in the distance, lights from the town flickering behind them.

“There’s your friend,” a voice called out from among them. “Bury him somewhere else. You done go

I hadn’t pla