Free .45-Caliber Deathtrap by Peter Brandvold Page B

casting frightened looks over their shoulders, ran toward a stone hut crouched in hemlocks and cedars.
    Whooping and howling like wolves, the gang climbed the shelves rising to the bluff upon which the whorehouse sat, its windows glowing yellow against the purple twilight. Riding at the head of the group, Waco and El Lobo triggered pistols into the air. The big black man, Ed Brown, guffawed at some joke the man riding beside him, Ned Crockett, had told.
    When Clayton Cannady had pulled his horse up to the hitch racks before the broad front porch set atop high, wide steps, he turned to regard the group gathering in the yard behind him. He ordered Waco and El Lobo to holster their pistols, to quit acting like tinhorns, and to stable the gangs’ mounts in the barn.
    As he began to dismount, he cast a glance back the way he and the others had come, and froze, staring. Sunflower Paxton rode slowly up the last rise, the young Chink girl riding wedged between the blond hard case and his saddle horn. The girl’s head sagged between her shoulders. She was half-asleep, terrified and exhausted from travel.
    Cannady’s voice was sharp. “Paxton, I thought I told you to give that girl the send-off and toss her in a ravine. She’s slowin’ you down.”
    As the lathered, hang-headed horse approached the group, Paxton shrugged. “What’s the hurry, Boss?”
    â€œThat roan is tired. Look at him. He ain’t big enough to carry double, even a girl small as her. Now, grow some sense, will you, or I’m gonna give you the send-off just for actin’ stupid.”
    â€œAh, come on, Cannady. I ain’t had her yet, and you know I’m partial to slanty-eyes. Besides, after I’ve had my fill of her, I’ll sell her to one of these lonely prospectors, make some extry cash.”
    The Indian, Young Knife, walked over to Paxton’s horse, reached up to brush the girl’s hair back from her face, and roughly grabbed the back of her neck to stare into her eyes. As Li Mei howled and tried to pull away, the Indian grinned, his black gums showing.
    â€œShit, you might sell her to me, Sunflower. I like skinny women with slits for eyes.” He rubbed his belly and laughed. “Most Injun women very fat!”
    â€œWith big asses too!” said Ned Crockett, chuckling and tossing his horse’s reins to Waco, who had gathered a good half dozen already.
    â€œThere, you see, Boss?” Paxton said to Cannady. He slipped down from his saddle and turned to the gang leader still sitting his own stallion. “This girl’s in high demand around here.”
    â€œWhy bother with her?” said the old graybeard called Whinnie. Having dismounted and turned his horse over to El Lobo, he was brushing dust from his brush-scarred chaps, his necklace of dried human ears—the ears of a posse that had once trailed him—flopping around his hairy, naked chest. He wore only a thin deer-hide vest, with no shirt underneath, and two big, stag-gripped pistols jutted high on both hips. “Shit, once we get our hands on that mine money in Sundance, you won’t—”
    The graybeard clipped his sentence when Li Mei kicked her left slippered foot into Paxton’s throat, shrieking like an Asian witch. As Paxton staggered back, she reached down, grabbed the reins, slid back in the saddle, jabbed her heels into the roan’s ribs, and screamed, “Gooo!”
    The tired horse leapt off its rear hooves and bounded forward. As it lit out across the yard between the whorehouse and the barn, its right shoulder slammed into Whinnie. The graybeard flew sideways, bellowing and clawing at one of his .44s.
    The others scrambled out of the way, yelling and cursing.
    â€œChristalmighty, shoot that bitch!” ordered Cannady, holding his stallion’s reins in one hand and thumbing his Smith & Wesson’s hammer back.
    Paxton knelt on the ground, trying to suck wind down his