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A down mattress and clean sheets in a four-poster bed beat a horse blanket and saddle pillow on the hard ground any day, but civilization often means the law and sometimes trouble. Of course, trouble can track you down in the wilderness, but the desert rules are different from town rules, and you feel so free! Here under the desert sky you can see for miles and, almost all the time, not a single human being seen in any direction, and no trouble you cannot handle all by yourself—well, yourself and a rifle, a couple of hand guns, a honed Bowie knife and your native wit. Still, once in a great while, you take the risk and seek the comforts of a town, and one town particularly, worth all the rest put together—I mean Albuquerque where I was born and where I had agreed to meet Kit, again.
Even if you have to leave in a hurry, shinnying down the bed sheets through an upstairs window and running all the way to the stable and your horse, judging that the law had not figured on your making a break for it before daylight. And was he worth it? Is anyone really worth the powder, the humiliation, the time? Say for yourself and do what you want to do: as for me, I do what I please, when I please, as I like it. And I do like Kit most of the time when he is sober. Yes, I admit, this time Kit was worth it, every bit. He was so kind and gentle. But the odds did not favor my sticking around Albuquerque just then, even in my favorite city with my favorite loving man. So in my buckskin britches and soft deerskin boots with spurs on before the crack of dawn, Nance the Bottle Blonde—that, my friends is Kit’s nickname for me--snuck out and rode on!
I reckon that Kit can take care of himself, and besides I always know how to find him--or let him find me, again. I see no percentage in our hitting the trail together. We are entirely different in nearly every way except our restlessness, our love of fun, and our sometimes affection for each other.
Two days’ ride and high on a mesa looking backwards across the pink and brown desert across the mesa’s grand shadow in the early light, I see no sign of pursuit to disturb my morning routine, but sometimes looks do deceive, particularly when you are on the run and looking only where you just came from but not behind you.
I tended my pinyon pine fire over which I boiled my morning coffee and roasted my breakfast dried beef on a stick with desert sage and rosemary seasoning. The furs and hides I had fixed for barter were laid out in the morning sunshine—beautiful—portending good trading ahead at the Navajo settlement.
Animals are always better than humans about knowing the score, and I have learned to trust their instincts and study their habits. Animals can save your life. That morning, for sure, my animal saved mine. My horse snuffled and danced signifying company coming nearby--so much for thinking I was safe from harm. In quick motions, I put another couple of sticks on the fire, picked up one of my revolvers and dived for my hidey-hole, just as two huge mountain men appeared on the mesa from the sunrise side, making a straight line path to my camp. It was a close thing, and I was almost breathless, my heart pounding, but I did not think I had been seen.
I kept low, waiting. I checked my ammunition, just in case. It was good that I did so. I have seen some mean hombres, but these two men were huge predators, both over six feet tall. I knew of them--they were thieves, murderers, and rapists, in short: evil personified, not sane and predictable only in their inhuman ways. Big Ned Rockfall seemed as fat as his horse was tall, and he sweated fat in all weather. His sidekick Red Pete Drury, was tall too, and he was as scrawny as Big Ned was fat, wiry and nervous with his eyes always moving around in circles. They made a misshapen pair, and their horses were misshapen too, believe me, ugly in every way, both inside and outside. Kit told me he would shoot either of them on sight simply as a precaution, but Kit was many miles behind me now, and I was alone with these uncouth men on the mesa.
The two outlaws were a sight in the early breaking morning dawn. Big Ned and Red Pete were filthy from riding, unshaven for at least three days, their faces covered with carbuncles and scars, and their horses were burdened down. I surmised that the two were, as usual for them, scavenging the high country for anything they could steal. As Kit told me, a fair price was on their heads, dead or alive, so they would be desperate in any encounter. By any guess, they intended nothing but harm to me. Robbery was the least I could expect. Killing meant nothing to these men, and they intended much worse than mere killing to such as me, but it would end in death all the same. Rape was their only gift to their opposite sex, and that was just the beginning of their abuse of women. They were known for their ingenuity in the art of torture—slow skinning was a specialty they delighted in. So far, none of their rape victims, white or Indian, had survived.
You doubt me about their intentions? Well, they sneaked up on my camp warily though mounted, with their weapons drawn. I will never know whether they were stalking me personally this morning, and it hardly matters anyway. Whoever they found in the camp would have been robbed and killed.
Red Pete dismounted to inspect my horse blanket and saddle while his companion Big Ned circled alongside my horse and took her reins. This annoyed my horse, who reared and kicked and pulled away, but she did not run. With his revolver in one hand, Big Ned on horseback drew his rifle and flip-cocked it with his other hand. He knew a lone camper was close by somewhere in hiding. He raised his head as a gesture to his sidekick to get on with the search and plunder.
Red Pete lifted my furs and hides to inspect them, and pointed his gun in all directions while he turned nervously, as if looking for me. Not seeing me in my hide, he could not believe his luck. He laughed out loud and said something to his partner about their just taking the horse, furs, hides and everything and riding on. Who cared if their owner was too scared to come out of hiding? Feeling proud and knowing he was protected now by his partner’s covering rifle, Red Pete holstered his gun and picked up all my furs and, last, my buckskin britches, which he raised to his gnarled nose. Taking a long whiff, he dropped everything but my britches. Red Pete was caught somewhere between greed and lust, and the two men exchanged glances that indicated everything that they saw in the possibility of finding the woman to whom the britches belonged and doing whatever they wanted with her, to their hearts’ delight.
Red Pete grinned as he held my britches up for his partner to see and to understand that, for him at least, the game was afoot. He uttered a few obscenities about there being more than hides to take possession of hereabouts. Then he got a puzzled, squinting look as he scanned all around again for the britches’ owner. Lust clearly had won over greed. Dead or alive, I did not stand a chance as long as either of those two men remained alive. The game belonged now to the victor--either them or me, survivor taking all. So I shrugged, gritted my teeth and took careful aim.
My first shot from hiding hit the rider in the forehead and startled all three horses. Big Ned slipped off his horse in a heap, never to rise again. As dismounted Red Pete turned frantically towards the sound of the shot that killed his partner, he dropped my britches and drew his gun again. That was when I stood up and stepped forward.
He was totally astonished and undone by seeing me standing there unclothed with my hair hanging down the front of me and my smoking gun now leveled at his chest. I do hate dressing for breakfast. I also hate gawkers who won’t respect my right to privacy and more—who won’t respect a woman’s right to protect herself. His gun continued to rise, so my second shot hit him square under the left eye and sprayed the contents of his tiny brain all over what lay behind him. That was the end of both of their thieving, murdering, marauding, raping, torturing, good-for-nothing ways for all time. Justice may have been served on some level. I only felt relief.
It took me almost a half an hour to clean up afterwards. I do hate the twitching that bodies do as death sets in. It sets me shuddering for a spell when I see it happen. Even so, I searched the bodies, then caught and calmed their horses and searched their saddle bags. Between them Big Ned and Red Pete had been carrying gold and silver money from both sides of the border, some Indian things and enough ammunition to keep me well supplied. All these I kept. Their clothes, horses, canteens and arms might be good for trading, but carrying them would involve unnecessary risks and questions, so I decided to leave them behind.
Fortunately, the murdering thieves had not harmed my merchandise or my clothes. So I stripped their horses and set them free. And I left the two bodies where they lay on either side of the fire pit. They looked in death almost as if they had killed each other in a fight. Burial is a rite for the civilized. The corpses of those two savages would be good eating for the coyotes, wolves, vultures and foxes. I reckoned the bodies would not last three days before they were picked clean to the bone. Let someone else collect the reward on those two men as best they could. For me, the reward for their deaths was simply my own life and safety.
Once everything else was arranged for my departure, I took care to clean my fire arm thoroughly and to reload. As my Daddy always said, you never know when you will need a gun in prime working condition, so clean it well and keep it ready for action. This morning he would have been proud of me, I think, not that I care, really. What has to be, has to be. I am my father’s child in that sentiment also.
Finally, I ate the last of my roasted, spiced beef, drank the rest of my coffee, then kicked the hearth with sand and, feeling exhilarated by the morning’s unexpected exercise and target practice, dressed. With blue sky stretching for hundreds of miles all over the desert and the sun looking like a gold coin twenty degrees in elevation above the horizon, all in all it was going to be a wonderful day for trading with the Navajo.