Seemed the world stilled with Chip. His mouth almost curved up in a surreal smirk. The Indian had him.

  I charted my surroundings. Where I stood was furthest away from the threat, so I reached out and regained the pistol from Chip’s belt and yanked Dunbar in front of me. Two quick moves shielded me in my escape.

  ***

  Pressing my back against the spokes of the wagon wheel, I had the pistol drawn and pointed upwards, surveying each way and aloft for tribesmen.

  A horse trampled by; the warrior mounted on it had his bow arched. I inhaled, hoping the night hid me. A minute later, he passed by again, moving toward the front of the mule train where his army was capturing our driver.

  Seemed with the distraction, the coast would be clear for an interval. I had but one path forward, and that was to leave my so-called posse behind.

  Just as I would flee, two loincloth wearing men climbed into a wagon in the back. “Diamond,” I said aloud. My heart sunk. “Goddamn it.”

  I jogged forward, stopped, and briefly squeezed my eyes shut to the worst of imaginable things, then turned back and went in her direction. Gun an inch to the right of my face, barrel toward the heavens, mind braced to react to any danger, I prodded on, until I came to a stop at her wagon door and peeked in.

  The two red men smiled at each other and ogled down her nightgown. She stepped backwards onto the bench. “Now, you boys don’t know what you’re messing with. Lay one hand on me, and I’ll—”

  She shrieked as the shorter one darted forward and jerked her to the base of the wagon. Before he could make his move, the feisty gal hauled off and punched him. This gave her a route to try to escape out the window. When she took it, the taller Indian used a single hand to tug her to the bench.

  “Now you listen…” Just as she would tell him what’s for, she caught my peeping eye and gulped. “Now listen, you are much more handsome than that other guy.” She brushed his hair. When he heaved her close, I fired off a shot. Blood squirted out his back, and he went down. Right when the shorter one turned in my direction, a second blast ended him.

  Diamond stepped over the dead Indians and through smolder to get to me and give me the tightest hug. When I pulled her back to assure her that she would be alright, her gaze enlarged, and she said, “Uh oh.”

  “Shit.” The patrolling Indian on horseback had me in the crosshair.

  “Drop the gun,” he said in English.

  I complied and lifted my hands in surrender. The spotted appaloosa let him off, and he reversed us back into the wooden prison from whence we had broken free from.

  Out his loin cloth, he extracted a scalping knife that he proceeded to behead the corpses of his own men with, threw their heads out then dragged their bodies to the same fate. Diamond had her head buried in my chest.

  Behind skull paint, he possessed a look of disgust. “Sit.”

  We obeyed, then I replied, “You speak English?”

  “Only me and the chief do. But that is all you will hear from me. You’re lucky that he wishes us to bring you alive. He likes his meals fresh.”

  Another Indian emerged through the door. In passing, the English-speaking man gave him orders in their native tongue and stepped out. While the hijacker stared stony face and wielded his bow, the besieged wagon began its transport of— I supposed—tribal chief food.

  “Well, no matter what happens, thank you for coming for me, Doc Apollo,” Diamond said.

  I nodded and straightened my suit jacket. “For all I’ve seen you do for everyone, I couldn’t leave you.”

  “We have to cowboy up now. You hear?”

  “Yes, young lady, I do.”

  “Young lady.” She snickered and spoke nervously. “Chip’s the same age as you, thirty-five or so. Doesn’t stop him from liking me.” She deterred her gaze. “Wonder how he is doing, anyway.”

  “Should be alive. You heard them. That’s the way the chief wants us delivered.”

  As we inched forward under cold observation, she used the tone of her voice to keep us both calm. “I thoink one reason I prefer Dylan is he’s twenty-three, my age. You’re right. You and Chip are fogies.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  I wanted to offer a laugh, but best I had to give was a deep breath.

  ***

  When we came to a stop, the warriors lined up Charlie Bass, his two muleskinner drivers, Chip, Dunbar, Diamond, and me. They forced us along their campground of teepees and ocotillos spread about.

  The moon’s crescent, curved around its shadowy part, guided us through the strange aura and presumed loathing of our indigenous audience. Not long after my leg muscles tensed up on the hills’ incline, I lay eyes on our path ahead. It loomed above their tented population and would take us into a cave.

  On the way, red cacti seemed to bend their stems and spy on us, as if they’d report back to Calamity. Above the cave, on the mountain’s peek, the silhouette of a puma stalked about. It panted with every pace up we made. Directly ahead of me, the plodding Charlie Bass took it in and muttered, “Nature sides with spirituel people.”

  In the cave, the tribesmen separated us at a fork. They escorted Dunbar and the muleskinners right and Diamond, Chip, and me left to a downward muddy slope. There, we slid into the confines of a barbed wire fence. They closed the fence door, locked us in, spoke in their language, and departed.

  Chip placed his hands on his hips. “They’re going to get their chief, and let me warn you, he’s pretty scary.”

  “How did you know what they said?” Diamond inquired. These were her first words to Chip since their fight outside the taxi wagon.

  “Don’t ask.”

  Still angry at him for siding with Dunbar over me, I argued, “If you don’t want us asking, by all good rights, you can shut it.”

  Chip pushed me down to the mud. I bolted right up, but he sent me down again.

  “Would you two stawp,” Diamond scolded. “We noid each other, and you’re acting like schoolboys.”

  The sight of lamps and sound of chanting emerged from the room ahead. “Giant Chief, Giant Chief,” tribesmen sang wildly.

  A seven-foot man, as wide as he was tall, came gliding down to our cage. All three of us coward back. He roared from behind paint that was too small for his enormous face. He had curly hair jutting out to the breadth of his shoulders. His hungry, gummy teeth were gigantic but proportioned to his hands, which he used to rattle our cell.

  Right when I felt a warm stream down my trousers, he laughed with a rumble no beast could compete with. All I could do was plead, “Don’t eat us.”

  He turned to his people. “Did any of you thank creator for these delicious looking meals?” He repeated it in their dialect. At their shameful silence, he admonished, “Figures. All you know is war,” and waved them off.

  He turned his leer toward us again and with a thunderous pitch, said, “Oh, I not going to eat you. That only a joke.”

  Diamond trembled with sweat trickling down her sheepish countenance. “You better not, you—you big auger. I’m poison. Let me tell you. Last giant that bit me was sick for months.”

  He chuckled. “I like you. You free to go. I have teepee waiting.”

  The three of us gazed at one another in doubt, but he opened the cage on a whim, and when she went to leave, I sneaked behind.

  She stopped and said, “What about my friends?”

  He pushed me back. “They stay. You free.”

  “Diamond, hurry,” Chip said.

  She made some steps forward, looked back, locked her hands in a praying motion, and moved out of sight.

  “Maybe, she pray to the light entities for you,” Giant Chief said. “That good. You need it.”

  Chip scowled. “Why don’t we go ahead and address one another, Giant Chief Big Owl.”

  The Indian replied, “Tree Stump.”

  I gaped. “You two know each other?”

  Chip threw up hands that were reliably thick, but not next to this man’s. Chip said, “Your beef’s with me. Let us settle it, mano on giant, and let the others go. For heaven’s sake, the man by my side is only a doctor.”

  “So, he Doc Apollo? My warrior heard his name. My warrior say that Doc Apollo kill Horny Toad and Stinkin’ Dead Feathers. Very bad men who I only allow to live for the sake of balance. But my others are mad that Doc Apollo kill them. Now they want him to die with you.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t eat us,” I said.

  “Oh, I not eat you, but I kill you and cut your head off.”

  I could say nothing, neither could Chip.

  “Tell you what, Tree Stump. You betray me and become sheriff of people who we war always with. But I remember first time you came out West, I taught you to wrestle. I like to gamble, so tonight, you beat your teacher in wrestling, and you go free. You lose, and I kill your men in front of you. Same way you kill mine.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Chip. He knew this giant and betrayed him the same way he did me? Now he was willing to sacrifice himself for me?

  The boom in Giant Chief’s voice interrupted my thoughts. He said, “Oh yeah, and you wear this. No shirts.” He dropped savage dresses for us to change in. “If you no wear it, you die on spot.” The chief turned and exited.

  Chip quickly threw his clothes off, while I glared at my dress. “Well, I reckon so,” I said. After we finished changing, I turned to Chip with folded arms. “What in dad’s name is with you?”

  “I thought for sure I was dead when that Indian drew his bow on me back in the wagon.”

  “Now, since when did you start getting bees in that bonnet and begin a-thinking?”

  “Listen, I detest Dunbar as much as you do. Thing is, he’s the only one of us who knows which part of Mexico where the witch is settling.”

  “And how do you figure he learned that?”

  “The evangelist who healed him.”

  “Come on, Sheriff, you going to buy blarney from every snake oil salesman in Texas?”

  “You saw him all boogered up. Something had to restore him.”

  I shook my head.

  He went on. “Look, I probably won’t make it out this fight alive, but Big Owl’s a great guy at heart. He aspires to lead this band of Comanches—the Nagawitchi— to be a more spiritual tribe than most around these plains. I think I can convince him to spare you.”

  “What’s with you and this sudden dismal take on your mortality?”

  “Okay.” He paused to draw a breath. “I’ll level with you on what the mayor disclosed to me, but don’t share this with Diamond.”

  I nodded.

  “The evangelist prophesied that any law-and-order figure who opposes Sam Hill will perish. Except, he said there’s a young Mexican vaquero who will take a stand when he grows old enough.”

  “Well.” I placed my hands on my grass laden hips and bowed up, noticing the deficit of my exposed bird chest to his pecks. “If you believe all that wobblin’ jawing, why don’t you—as you like to say—lay low. Let the vaquero deal with it.”

  “Grand Jose doesn’t have twenty years for him to grow up. I have a job that I swore an oath on. Finish what you start…"

  I sighed and completed his sentence. “It’s in the code of the West.”