Shotgun (20 page)

Crawford stood before the Morning Star. “You won't believe what happened, Chisha. Hell, you probably knew before I did.” He punched the ground in front of Horace's marker with his shovel, quick-turning the earth only a few inches before hitting the coffin.

Crawford tossed the shovel aside, pried the lid until it opened.

Batting the smell away from his nose, he scooped a pile of moldy hats and bloodstained jackets with his giant hands, tossing it all on Archisha's grave beside him. He added a tangle of kerchiefs, monogrammed things, and a sheriff's badge cut by a bullet hole to the pile, before yanking up the coffin's false bottom.

The coffin was actually built deep enough for four men lying on top of each other, which meant that Crawford could store at least fifty rifles and as many pistols as he could tuck in around them. Each weapon was wrapped in oilcloth, and he checked them carefully, searching for a specific shotgun he'd taken off a Swede who had been passing through years before.

Crawford found the Shuster double-barrel, and remembered the kill: the Swede was a family man, and surprised as hell when Crawford peeled two slugs into him after he'd just paid to have his horses shod.

Most of the others had fought back. He'd been chopped and shot, but one way or another Crawford got them, their horses, or their wagons. That's when he was White Claw, ripping through whoever came his way. Other times, he just did his work in the smith shop, lived a righteous life. It all depended on his mood.

He packed away the guns and clothes of the dead, covered the coffin up again. Tucking the Swede's gun under his arm, he picked up the lantern, and said to his wife's marker, “I'm giving
Vóhkêhésoa
a gift. She always heard you—get her to take it.”

 

 

Bishop watched Fox from the rope-mattress bed as she knelt by the fire, pouring water for tea. Her naked legs were long, meeting her waist a little high on her body. They were muscular, the sinews working too close to the surface of her skin, as they did on her upper arms.

Her toned strength was almost masculine, except where it melted into the flat of her stomach, or the full curve of her breasts. Her hair fell in front of her face, until she threw it back over her shoulder, glancing back with a smile for him alone.

Her smile was so rare it felt like a privilege to see it. It always started with her eyes, warming from cold to welcoming, letting him inside. She stood, carrying the tea to the bed, walking proud, and just as fine exposing the multiple scars on her left side as she was with the flawlessness on her right.

Bishop sat up in bed, propped on his one arm, as she settled under the bearskin, holding out the tea.

“It surely tastes better than the whiskey.”

She sipped after he did, nodded, put the cup aside, and then wrapped herself around his body. He could feel her scars among the softness, the rough flesh left behind after his surgeries and the signs of recent violence that were healing.

She murmured, running her fingers across his chest, lightly kissing to his shoulders, across them. Bishop's half-arm pressed against her back, holding her tight to him. All she felt was his strength, not any sort of compromise. Her hands traveled back across his wounds, brushing his nose with a giggle.

Her laugh was something Bishop had heard only a few times, and he didn't want it to stop, but her smile was fading, and a different feeling was taking over her eyes.

He kissed her, and they lost themselves in each other again.

 

 

Bishop shifted to the other side of the bed, curling under the bearskin, reaching for Fox in his sleep, when the distant thunder jostled him. There was a second strike, and Bishop sat up and saw that he was alone, except for a pot of coffee boiling over.

Bishop stayed in bed until the blast faded, his thoughts about his wife and son.

Outside, Crawford shucked the spent shells from the double barrel, checked the dead oak he'd used as a target. The buckshot spread was good, and the damage severe. He set the gun on his workbench to adjust the special triggers he'd made, when Bishop limped around the side of the dugout, struggling to put on his left boot.

“So that's why God gave us two hands!” Crawford was still laughing when he grabbed the bootstrap, pulled it up. “Doctor, I guess there are still some things you need help with.”

“A few, thanks.”

“Your boots, not shooting this here.”

Crawford moved to his bench, held up the new shotgun rig with tired, toothless pride. “Say somethin', damn it.”

The weapon was swivel breeched-open to the side, with the stock cut shorter to fit flush into the amputee cup. Jointed metal supports kept the gun steady in any position, while a catgut line looped around both the triggers, and was knotted to a small chain bracing across the cut-leather shoulder straps, and then anchored to the left arm at the wrist.

“That's fine workmanship, Mr. Crawford.”

“Told you I was going to do it.”

Bishop slipped his half-arm into the padded cup as Crawford fastened the new leather rig across his back. “This is a damn sight better than what that son of a bitch fixed up for ya.”

“Did Fox see all this?”

“She's running her horse.”

Crawford brought the trigger line from Bishop's right arm, and fastened it to a small, Cheyenne-silver band that he slipped on his left wrist, giving the line a little play. Bishop buttoned his shirt, rolled down his sleeves. He nodded; the rig was perfect under his clothes.

Crawford said, “This needs saying: we're not on terms, but I'm still her pa. Any kindness I'm doing? Because of her.” Crawford held up two twelve-gauge shells. “So?”

Bishop loaded both barrels, snapped the breech shut.

“That's a Shuler swivel-breech for a quicker reload. And these barrels can take anything. Straighten your left arm.”

Bishop straightened his left at his side, the chain from his wrist snapping tight across his shoulders, instantly bringing the shotgun rig on his right waist-high and steady, twice as fast as before.

“Position and shoot. So, who're you going to face down, Doctor?”

Bishop turned from Crawford, brought back the hammers, and snapped his wrist pulling the trigger line. The first barrel blasted the oak dead center like a man's chest, the metal braces absorbing the gun's recoil into Bishop's body.

Bishop said, “It really feels like a part of me.”

“Over here!”

Bishop half-turned, and the rig reacted, swinging in the direction of Crawford's voice, and locking, but not firing.

Crawford laughed, “She won't do nothin' you don't want her to. Go ahead, shoot. The line's tight, use your shoulders.”

Bishop spun on his heel, as if taken by surprise, and shrugged. The second barrel ripped apart two limbs. Bishop swung open the rig, popped the shells.

They clattered to the floor, black-powder smoking.

Crawford said, “That's faster than a lot of men can draw. And I made you this here.”

Crawford held out a small bandolier, sized to fit Bishop's arm. “It'll hold six, so you ain't fumbling for shells. I also got a loader for you.”

Bishop regarded Crawford. “If you've heard anything about money I'm supposed to have—”

“Because I'm White Claw? I know you had to get that insulting shit out of the way, but forget it. She picked you, Doc, and this rig's to keep her safe as long as she's with you. If you ride on alone, this pays back all you done for her.”

“I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for her.”

“I settle my own accounts.” Crawford stepped back to admire his work. “Either way, them dogs you're chasin' won't know what hit 'em. It ain't flapdoodle—I'm damn good.”

Bishop checked the sights. “We came close to getting the leader.”

“You'll get him, you'll feel the revenge for your family. But that'll go, and you'll go after more. Killing a man ain't nothing more than flipping a switch, and there's always some that's asking for it.”

“I'll finish what I have to do, then put it behind me.”

“The hell you say. You've already crossed the river. Look at the way you handle that rig. Like God's own power, ain't it? Some days you'll be the doc, other days you'll be the shotgun man. Then one day, you'll only be shotgun. And I hope she ain't with you when that happens.”

Bishop said, “Maybe,” the truth punching him.

He bent his elbow, bringing the rig up to him, as if it were on a precise gear-set. He moved his body, and the double barrel adjusted its height and position to compensate. “You have skills, sir, and at this moment, I'm a doctor and I need them.”

“A week.”

“What?”

“Rifled your saddlebag.”

“Not much there, Claw.”

“I saw what you sketched out for that breather box. She needs a new one, gave the old one away? One week, and it'll be better than what she had. But don't tell her it's from me, 'cause she'd rather choke to death than use it.”

Crawford held out two more shotgun shells. “Ain't you gonna reload, Doc?”

White Fox ran the painted through the woods, heading for the clearing where her father had set his traps. She had a long blade tied to her thigh, and a vision of red hanging in front of her eyes like blinders.

It was dark red, as dark as the night sky above it, and spreading wide against the snow. It was the first thing Fox had seen as she'd ridden toward the little house with the porch and rocking chairs. She'd had a present for Dr. Bishop's son tucked under her jacket, away from the evening weather, and had been rehearsing a birthday song when she saw the circle of blood around the two bodies lying in the yard.

Fox pushed the painted harder, thinking of how she'd run to Amaryllis, who had been shot twice and had still been cradling her son. The boy, his face buried against his mother, had had a single bullet wound to the head.

They had been holding hands, gently.

The painted broke to a full gallop. White Fox was pushing against the images of Bishop's wife, but they kept coming. She remembered touching the side of her face, color gone, her skin turning with the cold, frozen tears on her cheeks. Fox had taken a blanket from her horse, draped it over mother and son.

That's when she'd heard John Bishop's voice from the house. He had crawled inside, arm gone, and had been trying to get to a rifle behind a shattered china cabinet. Bishop had pleaded about his family, but Fox hadn't known what to say to make him understand. She hadn't had the words.

He was dying in front of her.

She'd brought the painted right to the front door, helped him climb from the chair onto its back, where he'd collapsed. She'd swung on behind him, holding him on, and they'd galloped away from that ruined house, leaving wife, son, and a birthday present lying in the snow.

That was a year ago. She'd had the same painted then, running the same way, and she was now on her own mission to revenge that night. Her revenge. The Cheyenne word is
óoxo'eéh
, and it was the first she'd taught Bishop to say—the first he'd wanted to learn.

This moment, it was all she could think of as she got closer.

She leapt the small gully before reaching the clearing, and Fox stopped the painted feet away from the trip lines around the pine trees. She cut rope after rope with the long blade, releasing the tied-back branches, hurling packed snow and ice like flaming bales from a catapult.

She rode beyond White Claw's traps, to a small slope leading to a split of two tall-grass hills damped with snow, a stream running between them—a tiny valley. Fox heeled, and looked down into the split at a fifty or so horses, all good stock, held behind a barrier of fallen trees. She pulled the lasso from her saddle, and headed toward them.

 

 

Bishop was packed and saddled, when Fox brought the painted down the small trail to the dugout, a second stallion tied behind her. There were small cuts and bruises on her hands and face, and her expression was dark. Bishop stayed by the bay, as Fox rode her horse to Crawford and stopped just inches away, looking down on him from the painted's back.

Crawford's beard and bearskin coat buried him in hair, with only his two black eyes showing through the tangle. Staring at her. “Thought you might head out to Wyoming.”

“Don't know anyone there.”

“That ain't always a bad thing. I got your man outfitted with a whole new deal.”

“Don't call the doctor that.”

“Doubt that he minds.” Crawford opened the gate to the corral, looked beyond Fox to the horse tied behind her. “Catch one of my strays?”