Only Killers and Thieves(59)
“I ain’t done with that cunt yet.”
“So you keep saying,” Sullivan said, chuckling. “But you’ll have to find a way to reload your carbine first.”
Noone finished his presentation, released the woman back into the group, and steered the girl forward by the waist. He did not offer her to the other men. Instead he led her to his own horse, where he took a handkerchief from his pack and began dabbing at her tenderly, swabbing the mess away. The girl stood rigidly before him. Noone cleaned her cheeks, her neck, her chest, and her eyes never once left his face. While he worked, Noone called for Jarrah and Rabbit to see to the others: they dismounted and unraveled the neck chains, kicking aside the dogs. Rabbit brought the two men into line and Jarrah positioned the woman behind them, and like bewildered children they stood meekly as the chain was hung and the neck cuffs clamped shut. Jarrah groped the woman. Between her legs, her buttocks, her breasts. He grinned at her. She spat in his face. Jarrah slapped her and laughed and went back to his horse, and Tommy heard Sullivan mutter, “He can wait his fucking turn.”
Noone put the girl on his saddle, climbed up behind. He gave her his longcoat, draped it over her shoulders, she pulled the collar tight to her neck. Noone reached around for the reins, then left his hands there, clasped around her middle, the fingers of one hand splayed on the bare skin of her belly where the folds of the coat did not meet. He checked the group behind him and they rode on, making for the ranges again, each taking his place in line, Tommy behind his brother, same as it had always been. He could not see the captives without turning around and could not see the girl in front: he pinned his eyes on Billy’s back and tried to forget what had just occurred over the past quarter hour. He shook his head. Only a quarter hour they’d been waylaid. No longer than if they’d stopped to piss or fill their flasks. But now they rode to a percussion of neck chains and left a dead man in their wake, a pack of wild dogs picking at his body and the two of their own Locke had killed. A quarter hour, and all was changed.
21
In the last of the twilight they tied the horses in the trees and shambled with their packs up the rubbled hillside, dragging their captives high into the ranges and the smooth-walled canyon in which they made camp. A long and bell-shaped runnel hollowed out by the wind, broad in the belly and narrow at the neck, twisting like a wormhole through the rock. Dark in there too, little moonlight through the slim gap, only the fire to see by once they’d got one lit: the wood burned quick and hot and the curved walls cradled the warmth.
The group laid out their things. Bedrolls, weapons, packs, the whites taking up positions nearest the fire, the troopers staying close to the prisoners they held. They’d been separated: the women seated with their wrists bound on a ledge formed by the rock face; the men chained together on the other side of the canyon, back-to-back on the floor. Rabbit guarded the men; the others watched the woman and girl. Perched on their ledge, they sat with their heads down and their hands between their legs, the woman entirely naked still, the girl wearing Noone’s longcoat. All eyes on them. Sly and lustful stares. The occasional catcall. They didn’t ever respond. Leaning their shoulders and sometimes their heads together and closing their eyes as if asleep.
Supper was damper bread and the last of the roo meat—sweaty now, and tough, but it hadn’t yet turned—and afterward the group lazed about, smoking and taking their rest. Locke claimed a bottle of rum and wouldn’t give it up on any account, argued it helped soothe the pain of his wound. Pope was to see to it after supper: despite Locke’s protests, Noone had refused it done sooner. It could wait until they’d eaten, he said.
So Locke staggered around camp with the bottle in his hand, babbling like a barroom prophet and ignored by the rest of the group. He talked to the troopers, to the captives, to the moon and the stars in the sky. Like a fool ranting wildly in the streets. When he passed by the man who had stuck him, he sank down before him in a crouch. Peering into his face, but the man wouldn’t meet his eye. Locke took hold of his hair. It was short and knotted, and he gripped it like a fleece. He hoisted the man’s face level with his own, then let go of the hair and slid a finger up the man’s torso: crotch, belly, neck.
“I’m gonna gut you, nigger.”
“Leave him,” Noone warned, talking directly to the fire. “We’ve questions that need answering first.”
“So long as I get what’s owed after.”
“Being what exactly?”
“This darkie’s head on a stick.”
Noone turned his gaze on Tommy and Billy and regarded the brothers gravely. “I’d say these two boys have a better claim on him than you.”
Locke rose and lumbered to the fireside, stood over the gathered whites. “It wasn’t them two that did their lot. Fucker speared me, though.”
“And how are you so sure it wasn’t them?”
“Their two blackboys done it—ain’t that what you said?”
“What I was told,” Noone corrected. A lengthy silence hung. “Either way, they’re due a killing. Two of theirs for two of ours. You’ll remember that you were afforded the same courtesy, and with it you shot a dog.”
Locke stood there dumbly. He took a pull of rum. The liquid sloshed in the bottle and he gulped it down his throat, eyeing Tommy as he drank. Tommy looked away. Locke finished and wiped his mouth and shifted his weight from foot to foot, then he turned and moved on again. Reeling toward the troopers, calling, “Priest, I’m sick of waiting. Come and fix me fucking arm.”