Free Cheyenne Saturday - Empty-Grave Extended Edition by Richard Jessup Page B

flight, and the Texan quickly shaved the shaft to a point to ease the withdrawal. 
    “This is going to hurt like hell, woman.”
    “Just pull it out and stop your yammering,” she said tartly.
    Ellis glanced back at the open sump, and, seeing no sign of the Cheyenne, pulled the shaft out of her thigh. He massaged the wound to make it bleed, and then stripped off his shirt.
    “You tend to the savages,” she said. “I'll bind this thing up.” 
    “How about your shoulder?”
    “That one's all right. It's already dried up in its own blood.” 
    She tore the shirt into several strips and bound her leg tightly. Then she began to bend it at the knee to keep the circulation going and to work out the soreness that was sure to come to the injured muscle.
    “We're in a hell of a situation,” Ellis said, turning his attention to the face of the cut. 
    “Ain't near's bad as we was back in that draw,” she said quietly. “I guess there wasn't too much I coulda done for ol' Jake noway. He looked pretty gone already. I'm glad they didn't put an arrow in his innards, so he'd lie there and suffer.”
    Ellis turned. “I never saw anything like it in my life,” he said reverently. “You got more Goddam grit in your craw, woman, than any company of Georgia Confeds.”
    “Turn your head, God damn it,” Liza Reeves said angrily. “Lookin' at my nakedness when you have to is one thing, but I'm tryin' to make a skitter-cover outa this shirt and I don't want you watchin' me tie it on.”
    Ellis could not help but grin. He swept the plains for signs of grass moving unnaturally or against the breath of the wind. He saw nothing, heard nothing.
    “All right, you kin look now,” Liza said. She had pulled the shirt around her thighs as a diaper and tied the sleeves around her waist.
    “As I was sayin',” Ellis began, “you fought like a damned wildcat—”
    Her eyes flashed. “Whatcha want me to do? They was gonna kill us, warn't they? You heard what that chile said about stampedin' the bluffer into the camp with us leadin' the shebang—” She stopped short. “So that's what that youngun has in his mind! I thought they was mighty few Goddam Cheyenne in that draw. And then him ridin' off like that.”
    Ellis nodded grimly. “Probably goin' to stampede the herd, and then attack from the north or east durin' the confusion.”
    Liza Reeves massaged her thigh. Her face twisted in a grimace of pain. “Ain't goin' to be any easier with all them laborin' men gettin' drunk on their pay tonight, neither.”
    “And we're pinned down tighter than a cinch strap on a sweatin' mule,” Ellis said tightly. “How do you feel?”
    “Like fightin',” she said. “We ain't goin' to last long in this wallow. I'm already about to perish to death from thirst.”
    Ellis turned back to sweep the crust of the sump and, beyond it, the wavering plains grass. It was a sure bet the Cheyenne were behind them and they would be planning. It wasn't likely they would rush them again, sweeping past on their ponies. They would try trickery.
    “What would you do,” Liza asked, as though she were reading his mind, “if you had two fellows holed up like this? How would you figure it?”
    Ellis scratched his chin. “With me bein' a Cheyenne, I'd be pretty good with bow 'n' arrow. I think I'd get over yonder in the high grass over the crust of the wallow hole and fire them shafts—”
    “That's all right,” Liza said. “Where would you put your horses?”
    “I wouldn't put them in back 'cause a stray arrow might get one,” Ellis said thoughtfully. “I think I'd hobble them farther east. Where I could keep my eye on them.”
    “Then let's just wait until we see if that's what they're gonna do,” Liza Reeves said and continued to massage her leg.
    Ellis watched her, really seeing for the first time her thigh and the full swell of her hard little belly and her rump and the tilt of her breasts against the rough buckskin blouse. He swallowed hard. She