Bone's Country 15

Sophia was not used to being denied. She wasn't used to wanting something enough for it to matter whether she got it or not. There was a certain pleasure in the yearning. It went beyond sensation. She could identify, in the vast swathes of nothingness that she did not feel, that it wasn't all simple numbness. There was a space that could fit something, a completeness that could be hers. It colored everything when she'd been used to the world being black and white.

She felt her horse plunging and rising with each step and thought of having Bone beneath her, inside her, a part of every move she made. It wasn't enough merely to remember it. She wanted a taste as irresistibly as a child would want a piece of chocolate. It was all she could do to go without touching herself. She knew exactly how his hands would feel running up her body. She thought she could make her body feel the same with her own hands.

All she saw was the clean, pure simplicity of the sand scabbed over with plants, with rocks, with themselves.

Suddenly she whipped her horse into a gallop. Her breath came in short, gulping gasps that grew more frequent, more pronounced. She heard Bone behind her, spurring his stead after her with a hard “YAH!” and the thought of being pursued glazed her eyes. She playfully cast a look behind her at him, bouncing up and down in the saddle with every wicked stride her horse made.

Bone was bringing Frenly along with him and Sophia didn’t want that. She wanted him to park that awful man somewhere they couldn’t hear him and then find some shade with her—it was the only reasonable thing to do at this blistering time of day, with the sun directly overhead. Siesta.

Why Bone had to push himself at a time like this, she couldn’t understand. She didn’t care to understand. All she knew was that she was being dragged along by whatever demon drove him and she didn’t like—

Thunder cracks rode over the landscape. Not God's. Man's.

Bone twisted his head. Sophia knew he wanted no more games. She reined in her horse; the sound of its hooves fell away quickly. There were many more thunder blasts to hear. Bone listened through those jabs of sound to what else the wind carried.

“War whoops,” he identified. “Indians!”

Sophia sucked in breath. Whoever had run across the Indians, they were poor devils indeed. Everyone knew that death by torture was the fate of any white man who didn't meet a bullet.

There was a look of malice on Bone’s face. That there was any look at all was a surprise.

“We can avoid them, right?” Sophia asked.

“Someone's firing a Greener. The coachmen last night had a Greener.”

“If anyone deserves God playing a trick on them…”

“God didn't do anything to those people. I did.” Bone shook his head. “Hell… you've got your gun?”

It was his gun. He'd said he wanted her to carry it so he wasn't overladen and she wasn't useless. But she had it.

Sophia nodded.

“Keep it in your hand until I get back. Don't let Frenly get up.”

“Get up?” Frenly asked.

Bone slugged him in the face. He spilled from his saddle to pile on the ground.

“I mean it,” he told Sophia. “If he moves, shoot him. The bounty's for him dead or alive.”

“Then why not kill him in the first place?”

Bone chuffed a laugh so short it was barely there. “Wanted someone I could talk to besides you.”

***

Bone rode and rode hard. Hooves slashing sand from its plate flat resting place. He overed a crest and came on the whole fracas. The stagecoach from the night before was riding at full gallop, kicking up so much earth that the ground seemed bleeding in a vast plume up in the air.

In that gout of dirt infecting the air, the five riders were almost lost. Bone’s hunting eyes sought them out, though. They harried the coach like flies carrying dread disease and he heard the snapping of their lead cutting through the squeal of wagon wheels and the crashing of hooves. The roar of the Greener rose above the din, but only rarely. Bone knew the man could hardly reload with a busted wing.

My fault, he thought, and didn't think to argue it with himself. He could try to convince himself he held no responsibility for this, but if he intervened, he'd know he'd made good, no matter the wrong. And action felt better than the inside of his head.

His mind had briefly separated. Halves came together again after he'd spurred his horse to motion. No more thought, only deed. He drew his rifle from its scabbard and leveled it. He could hold the sights on the distant riders, but he feared adding to the storm of bullets falling on the coach.

As his horse closed the distance, he aimed at the furthest horseman from the stage and fired. The rifle barked, the rider staggered. Bone fired again. Blood flew from the man's neck, hit the air as a woman's powderpuff. He squirted out of the saddle like a cake of soap from a wet hand.

An oath pealed from one rider; another shouted an order. All but the tenor of the cries was devoured by the distance, but one rider split from the group and rode for Bone. Something about his headlong charge magnified the blast of his shots. They reached Bone’s ears as peals of thunder before whistling by him.

He dropped low to his mount’s withers and returned fire. His hat jerked–he sensed wind swirling into it and rolling at his bald pate. Bastard had shot his hat. Bone fired, fired, fired. Before his rifle snapped empty, he saw his target shift in the saddle as a man only would with a bullet gone into him.

The gunslick’s Colt fell from his fingers and he grasped at his reins, trying to regain control. They were almost upon each other now. Bone reversed the rifle in his grip and swung it as they passed. The butt plate crashed into the man's sternum with a sound as of kindling snapped small. He toppled from his horse, hit the ground with another crisp breaking.

The coach and its attackers had sped by as Bone jousted with his challenger. He wheeled around and lashed his horse into a thundering pursuit, trading his empty rifle for a six-shooter.

He was eating grit, riding in the wake of the coach, and the attackers tried to make him eat bullets. Turning in their saddles to fire back at Bone. He crouched low in the saddle and sent his own bullets screaming back.

A round took one in the shoulder, twisting him around enough to come loose of his saddle and fall to the ground’s rough embrace. Bone whipped his horse over him. Heard in passing a hoof going through midsection like some ripe fruit being squeezed to juice.

Two remained now, but they were not only shooting at Bone. Ennis caught a bullet. He crowed, flung up his arms, and came off the roof of the coach like a stain being washed from a plate. There one moment, then as if he had never been.

With the guard gone, all attention went to Bone. The closer of the two riders leaned back and leveled his Smith and Wesson on Bone. The trigger danced with his forefinger, but the gun misfired. 

“Leave him,” came a strangely high voice from the further rider. Feminine. “Don't let her get away.” 

She rode up on the coach and grasped hold of it, swinging herself up onto the coach's roof.

The remaining rider dug his spurs in. Bone did the same and they both drew up on the coach. The rider was closer. His galloping horse blocked Bones from touching it. He reached for the carriage to follow his boss's lead.

Bone stood in his stirrups and threw himself over the other horse's saddle. The rider stood now on the carriage’s step, pressed flat to the carriage. He was pulling himself up to the roof.

Bone grabbed him by the hair and drove his face through the window in the door. He heard a feminine squeal from within the coach. Grabbing the side of the window, Bone pulled himself onto the carriage and caught an elbow in the ribs.

“Get off me!” the man screamed. “Help, help!”

The other rider appeared over them. She held Ennis’s Greener. Aimed it downward.

Bone pulled back on his opponent’s hair. Bending him backwards so that when the woman fired, the buckshot filled his chest and didn't reach Bone.

Still, the force of the blast knocked both of them from their perch. Bone hit the ground with his enemy, but he grabbed the footstep as he did. He was dragged along the ground, pulled forward by his hold on the racing stagecoach.