A Wolf in the Fold

“I might have to,” I said, and turned as if about to lower myself onto my belly. Instead, I lunged and slashed. The blade caught him right where I wanted it to, at the back of his knee, biting deep. He yelped as his right leg gave out from under him. The Colt went off, but he missed and before he could cock it I sliced him across the hand, opening his knuckles and nearly severing two of his fingers. He couldn’t hold on to the Colt if he wanted to.

Cursing, Seton threw himself at me, but I rolled aside and rose. I cut his left leg at the same spot I had cut his right, then skipped back, unfurling.

Bart Seton was nearly beside himself. He tried to stand and fell, tried to stand again and fell. Dumfounded, he glanced at his legs, then at me. “What have you done?” he bleated.

“Your hamstrings,” I said.

Shock set in. Seton slid his hands under his chest and got to his knees. The instant he straightened, I was on him. My first stroke opened his right elbow to the bone. He instinctively clutched at the wound with his left hand and I opened the left elbow the same way.

Seton reached for me, but his forearms were useless. A howl tore from his throat as he realized what I had done. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t walk. He couldn’t hold a revolver. He was totally and completely helpless, totally and completely at my mercy. “God, no!” he breathed.

“You’ll find out soon enough if there is one,” I said, and turned my back on him.

“Where are you going?”

As if he had to ask.

“You can’t leave me like this.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” He would keep. I hurried, afraid Gertrude would ride off before I got there, but to my surprise she was huddled by the fire, cradling her face in her hands and rocking back and forth. She heard me and stiffened.

“Bart? Is that you?”

I saw her face, and stopped.

“Did you get him? Answer me, damn you! It’s my eyes! He burned them! I can hardly see! Everything is a blur. Take a look and tell me how bad they are.”

I stepped up to her and bent and touched the cheek under her right eye and then the cheek under her left eye. “They’re bad,” I said.

“You!” Gertrude recoiled and groped for the Winchester, but I beat her to it. She stopped after a bit and glanced wildly about. “Where are you? What did you do to Bart?”

“He’ll join us shortly.”

I had to hand it to her. She was beat, and she had to have some notion of what was in store, but she squared her shoulders and said with no hint of fear, “All this because I double-crossed you and shot you in the back.”

“No,” I said.

“Why, then?”

“All this because of what you let him do to Daisy.”

Gertrude absorbed that. “You were fond of that little tramp?” Then she did the worst thing she could have done: she laughed.

They were two days dying.

On the third day I added their horses to my string and gigged Brisco to the southeast. I was heading for Galveston. From there I could take a ship to anywhere in the world. South America, maybe. I would hide out down there for a year or so and then come back. By then the Texas Rangers were bound to have lost interest.

Cows can fly, too.