Wild Hearts on the Western Frontier:

Lewis and Young Publishing
All rights reserved

The Huntress

1875, Wyoming Territory

Sandstone bit into the heel of Harriet Jane Grant’s hand, hot already though the sun had not cleared the rim by much. Above, the sky struck the eyes so blue and bright, it appeared tranquil. But this day would be anything but. Down in the box canyon, three men burned daylight the lazy way.

“Nothing but coffee boilers,” Harriet said.

Jeb Wilson sprawled flat on his back, all elbows and kicking legs, his laugh carrying up easy as a cough. Nate Smith hunched at the fire, poked the embers, and saw the smoke climb. Buckman leaned against a boulder, eyes hidden under the line of his hat, boots crossed, every rib of his shirt picking up the light.

The ravine itself ran tight and shallow, walls scarred with run-off gouges, floor crowded up with cheatgrass and snakeweed. The mounts huddled along the east face, heads down, picket lines strung to a sun-bleached cottonwood. Flies covered the gelding’s flank like spilled pepper.

Harriet let her weight settle on her haunches.

Then, she wiped sweat from her cheek with the inside of her wrist. The next part was arithmetic. Twenty-five yards downhill, another ten to the campfire, seven to the horses. Drawing the Colt with her right hand, Harriet spun the cylinder with the other.

Using her thumb, she opened the loading gate, rolled the chambers with her palm, counting the brass. Danger time, so she added the sixth pill into her blue lightnin’. Finding the grip’s heft and balance, she holstered it again. Nothing in her mind was different, no tremor or quickening, only the solid habit of doing.

Below, Jeb howled at something Buckman said, voice splitting open and spilling out into the morning’s calm. Nate snorted, hawked, and spat a fat, gooey wad into the dirt. They had a rhythm, a pattern, and the leader, Buckman, moved the least.

Rising from cover, Harriet Grant straightened her spine, set her feet. No talk, no warning. The sun caught the metal of the Colt. Her first shot cut the chasm’s air, flew true. Jeb’s laugh ended with it—one second a shriek, next a red spray and wet silence. His body jerked once and toppled to the ground.

Before the peel ended, Buckman’s head came up, eyes thin and sharp as a snake’s. Rolling off the sarsen, he vanished behind the fire pit. Scrambling for his Yellow Boy, Nate plunged, fingers fumbling. The horses yanked in unison, nostrils flaring, rope lines pulling taut. Dust rose in small gusts.

Harriet moved left along the rim, boots scraping grit, steps calculated. Ducking under an overhang, she ran a hand over the warm boulder to anchor herself. Below, Nate managed the Winchester, levered a round, and shot wild. The bullet zinged up the rock’s face, kicked a fleck of stone, which hissed past her ear.

She lined up her sights and let her second round do the work. The report rolled down the slope, bucked through the fire and found Nate high in the chest. He went over backward, rifle held in both hands, mouth opening but no words coming out. The smell of burned cloth hit the air, acrid and strong. He sprawled out, spasmed, stopped.

Buckman kept down, crab-walked across the flat, a Navy Colt conversion in one hand, the other tucked tight. As he crawled on, his boots dug gouges in the dust, but James Buckman never glimpsed back at his men. Looking back was a dangerous habit. Tracking the line of his movement, Harriet discovered what he was after.

The cayuses.

She watched the distance close. At twelve yards she fired again, missed on purpose, saw him flinch and flatten. The next shot she put through his left shoulder. The impact spun him off his knees, revolver sliding ahead of his hand. He hit the ground rolling, raised his free arm, palm open to the sky.

Everything stopped. Even the flies paused, hung between bodies. The resonance of the shots rattled out, faded, and died hollow in the arroyo. The beasties stamped, eyes wild, ringed with white, sweat darkening the lines along their ribs. The picket rope whined against its anchor point. Black powder stench filled the air, hot metal and burned prairie.

With a slow settling, Jeb’s corpse twitched sometimes, legs spasming alongside the loose rock. Having folded in on himself, Nate appeared weak, eyes open, the Golden Boy Winchester still locked in his grip. Ragged and fast, Buckman’s breathing carried across the space, sucking down the stench of gunsmoke with each gasp.

Harriet stood above it, hand on her weapon, eyes flat and cold. The fissure went dead quiet except for the animals and the flies buzzing about. That was all.

Walking the rim until the slope gentled, Harriet Grant’s boots gouged troughs in the fragile crust. The sun burned in earnest, pushed heat through the air like breath against skin. She found a line of descent, made her way down, all of her steps calculated to keep loose rock from betraying her. The Peacemaker led the way, blued barrel steady, always aimed at Buckman’s ribcage.

He stayed sprawled in the dust, hand still raised. With teeth clenched so tight Harriet saw the muscles pop in Buckman’s cheeks, his face turned the color of tallow. Blood soaked his shirt and painted the side of his neck. The left arm flopped useless. He tried to speak, found nothing.

She stopped five feet out, kicking his Navy pistol away with her boot, casting it into a small scree. Buckman watched it skid away, and down. He strained again to talk. This time the words came up cracked and thin.

“You’re not the law.” The sentence hung there. “Damned, black, bounty hunter woman, you bushwacked us. Turned my men into buzzard bait.”

Harriet didn’t answer.

Crouching beside him, she pressed the Colt’s business end to his sternum. With her other hand, she grabbed his wrist, bent it behind his back, used the torque to roll him over. He yelped, breath sharp. She probed the shoulder, found the exit, and nodded to herself. Bad, but not a death wound.

The fight drained from him.

She hauled him up by his good arm. He staggered, close to falling over again, but caught himself against her bulk. She had at least six inches and forty pounds on him. The way he sagged said he understood it all. She pointed with the gun: to the bodies first, to the fire, and finally, the horses. He read the instructions in her eyes. No words needed.

When he moved toward his fallen companions, he said, “This ain’t gonna be easy; you shot me.”

“If you don’t want to get another bullet, get busy.”

Jeb’s corpse was still warm. Blood leached into the dirt, dried around the entry, a dark ring of spilled life. Nate’s body slouched at the fire, the head turned at a wrong angle, eyes wild, and tears leaked from them despite his expiration. Buckman peered at them both. Grinding his teeth, he made no other noise.

Harriet gestured at the horses, to the deceased. Thinking about objecting, Buckman caught the glower on her face, and shut his mouth. At that point, he limped to the dead men. She watched him try to lift Jeb with one arm. The effort made him almost faint. He dragged the body by the ankles, let it flop against the schist, and put it on the Morgan in ugly stages. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead.

Kneeling by the fire, Harriet found the canteen, took a pull, never taking her eyes off the brigand. Buckman wrangled both corpses onto saddles, tied them off with rawhide. With voice ragged as gravel, he cursed under his breath. When the work was done, he slumped into a picket, scowled at her with hate and something akin to animal fear.

Once again, Harriet opened the loading gate, ejecting spent cartridges, replaced all but one, and lowered the hammer on an empty chamber. She stood. Gestured for Buckman to strip the camp, empty every bag. He did it, hands shaking, left arm glued to his ribs. Bullets, a tin of beans, six sticks of dynamite in greasy paper, and a pouch of gold coins. She pointed at the loot and the saddlebags. He packed them in.

At long last, she walked to Buckman’s own mount. A grey mustang mare, steady and deep-chested, eyes dark as polished stone. The livestock struggled, chopping at their bits, hoofs digging into the ground. The black woman touched one’s face, another’s shoulder; all three settled. She released Buckman’s mount. Walking away, the it followed her.

“What are you doing?” Buckman asked.

She didn’t answer. First she removed the bridle and let it fall. She loosened the cinch. Lifting the rig off the pony’s back in one motion, blanket and all, she let it drop in the dirt beside the bridle.

“Don’t,” he said, words thick with snot and shame. “I can’t—”

Without answering him, she slapped the pony’s flank hard, shouted, “Gee haw,” and sent her bolting down the canyon in a wild, graceful line. The horse was out of sight in seconds, hooves making hollow music against the scrabble surface.

“What in hell did you do, you whang-leather nigger, bitch?”

Sliding the picket pin out of the ground, she coiled the rope.

Buckman took a step toward her, only stopped when she glowered at him.

“That’s my cayuse.”

Holding her tongue, she stood her ground.

“That’s my critter, you—”

Cutting him off. “Call me a nigger, go ahead, say it,” she said, pulling the gun and leveling it at his eye. “Give me a reason, you addle-headed fool.”

Trying to run after it, he tripped, staggered forward, and landed on both knees. The movement reopened his shoulder wound. A new wash of blood bloomed down his sleeve. He glanced back at Harriet, hate gone, face blank.

“It was mine. Paid good money for her. Didn’t even steal that one.”

Sliding the Colt back in the holster, she picked up the lead ropes of both dead men’s horses, and pointed down the canyon’s mouth. No words.

Buckman got to his feet, swayed, and walked.

Thirty miles to Cheyenne, and every step a lesson in pain.

They walked out onto the prairie, nothing behind them but the canyon’s notch and a smear of gunsmoke baked into memory. The land ran flat for miles, grass cracked and dry as old teeth, every stalk burnt to yellow by the unusual June heat. Overhead, buzzards cut slow circles, their shadows stuttering over Buckman’s bowed shoulders.

The country opened out flat in every direction, with mountains off in the distance behind, and to the west. Blades of grass stood knee-high and bleached pale, hot yellow, dry enough to whisper against their legs as they walked. There were no trees, no shade. Above them the sky was a cloudless blue from one end of the world to the other, and the sun stood three hands above the western horizon, giving no quarter.

“Over those foothills, right yonder,” Harriet said, pointing west, “Laramie.”

“‘Taint nothing of interest to me there?”

“A mite to me though. A colored widow woman, you kilt her husband. Wanna visit her, bein’s we’re so close?”

“Think not.”

“Too bad, I figured on lending her my pistola and seeing how good a shot she is.”

Holding his tongue, bidding his time, James Buckman thought only of ways to escape.

They continued on, and Harriet kept her mount and two other horses behind, both corpses bouncing against the saddles, heads lolling with every rut in the trail. Jeb’s jaw worked open and shut, like he was chewing his last insult in death. Nate’s hands trailed loose.

Walking point, Buckman moved with his whole upper half twisted by the painful wound. Blood clotted at his collar, ran in crooked lines down his chest. Every other step he stumbled, almost pitched forward, but he’d grit through and keep on. No talk or complaints.

Harriet let him take five paces lead. Sometimes six. Her hand hovered near the Colt. Not because she expected trouble, but because men got stupid when they saw the end coming up at them. Even the smart ones.

Hours passed in hard, slow chunks. The sun dropped. Heat dropped with it, replaced by wind that licked every scrap of sweat off skin and left the taste of dust in the mouth. Buckman started to list, his steps uneven, head rolling, a man searching for rescue from a blank sky.

Near sundown he started talking. “Miss Darkie, you could cut me loose. Let me ride.” The words broke off and drifted back, eaten by the wind.

“Since I’m not riding, why would you expect to?”

“You ain’t no law.” He turned back once, face a smear of sweat and hate. Harriet’s only answer was a long glare.

When the first star popped out, Buckman slowed to nothing. He looked at the ground, at the two steeds, at Harriet. He worked his jaw. “Bitch.” His voice was whisper soft.

With that, he turned. Came at Grant fast for a man near dead, all legs and momentum. She braced for a gun grab, but he ducked and hit her midsection, put his whole good side into it. The world flipped over, dirt filled her mouth, the sky spun.

She lost grip on the Colt. It went flying, landed somewhere in the dry grass. Her left hand caught Buckman’s shirt, bunched it up, tried to twist him off. He had both hands around her throat. The bad arm didn’t work, but he used his body weight to press her down, face contorted into something near-animal.

She drove a knee up into his ribs. Cartilage snapped under the pressure. Groaning, Buckman doubled, but didn’t let go. She clawed at his wrists. He leaned in, got a mouthful of her cheek, biting down so hard the skin tore. Hot spit ran down her neck.

The ground around them thumped with the sound of the two horses, still tethered together, stepping to the left to avoid the mess. At that point, Jeb’s body slipped off the saddle, hit the earth with a dull wet smack.

When the blood made his grip oily, Buckman’s hands slipped. Catching his thumb, she bent it back until it broke. He howled. But he shifted weight, got both knees on her biceps, pinning her flat.

Somewhere away from them, a coyote yipped. From the other direction, another answered.

Finding a fist-sized rock in the dirt, he grabbed it. She saw the shadow of it before the pain. The first hit rang in her skull, white light behind the eyes. The second hit mashed the world antigoglin. The third one didn’t even register.

When she came to, the sun was a slice above the horizon, turning the world red. Beside her, belly down, face in the grass, Buckman made slow, dying groans and moans. His left arm bent behind him, twisted wrong, blood pooled in the hollow of his back.