"It'll hold out if you will."

I found that neither arm worked as it should, and moving them sent awful pains through me. I couldn't use them to push myself up, so Jesse had to lend a hand. She stooped in front of me, clutched both my sides just under the armpits, and hoisted me up.

As I came off the floor, I went dizzy, staggered, and would've fallen except that she held me steady.

By and by, I was able to stay on my feet without her.

"I need my Colts," I told her.

"Aim to do some shooting tonight?" she asked. But already, she was hobbling along to fetch them. There were several revolvers scattered about, but she knew which belonged to me. She grimaced both times she crouched to pick them up, and I felt badly about making her do it. Needed my guns, though, and couldn't get them myself.

She came back to me, her face all sweaty from the pain.

"Sure these are the two you want? All this weaponry, there's likely better to be found."

"They suit me fine," I said.

She tucked one down the front of her belt, then emptied the sh.e.l.ls out of the other. Stepping in close, she put her arms around me. I felt the heat of her body, the push of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the tickle of her hair against my cheek as she worked with one hand to take fresh rounds from the loops at the back of my gunbelt. Then she stepped back and plugged them into the cylinder.

She dropped that Colt into my holster, pulled the other and sent its sh.e.l.ls falling. Once again, she snuggled in while she removed ammo from my belt loops. She was still at it when I kissed the side of her face.

Figured that would fetch me a remark. I was wrong, though. Instead of making a smart quip, she went and kissed me full on the mouth, ever so gentle and sweet. She didn't quit very soon, either, but kept her mouth to mine for the longest time. Her breathing filled me. I let my eyes drift shut, and felt as if Jesse was melting into me.

When she eased away, I near fell over. She braced me up with a Colt and a fistful of ammunition.

"Steady, pardner," she said.

Pretty soon, she let go of me and finished loading my weapon. She holstered it for me. "Reckon you'll need a shirt. The ones we wore in ain't much good."

She commenced to wade through the clothes and weapons and such, searching.

It struck me that one of the dresses scattered about on the chamber floor had likely belonged to Sarah. None looked familiar, though. I hoped that the dress Jesse wore wasn't Sarah's, but judged that it wasn't. Jesse was shorter and slimmer than Sarah, so the dress wouldn't have been such a good fit. Perhaps Sarah's was the dress that Jesse'd used for bandages, and parts of it were even now wrapped tight around the thigh of the woman who'd taken me from her.

"Here you go," Jesse said, and I was mighty glad to have my mind turned away from the track it'd been following.

She held up a shirt that was dark with dried blood.

"Nope," she said, and dropped it. "Ripped too bad."

Continuing with her search, she picked up quite a few more shirts, one at a time, groaning some with the pain and effort. They all looked quite b.l.o.o.d.y. A couple had rents in the back. None had any bullet holes at all. One didn't even have a tear in the fabric.

The shirts showed how Whittle must've murdered the posse. He'd killed the men with his knives. Likely dispatched them one at a time in the cave's darkness, and hauled them outside afterward.

While I pondered over that, it came to me that few of the dresses or petticoats or other female garments were soiled with blood. Whittle must've stripped the gals naked before laying into them. That came as no great surprise, actually.

I could wear a dress and stay shut of strangers' blood if I didn't mind looking like a girl. But the notion didn't thrill me much.

"That'll be fine," I said when Jesse picked up still another shirt.

"It's awful b.l.o.o.d.y."

"They all are."

She held it up toward the light of a torch. "Well, least this one ain't torn."

"He must've slit that poor bloke's throat."

A corner of her mouth turned up. "Same as I done him."

She helped me into that shirt. While it was still open, she ran her hands all over my chest and belly and sides. The caresses felt just splendid. Too soon, she quit and pulled the shirt together and b.u.t.toned it all the way up.

"We'd best get moving," she said.

She took a few steps backward, watching me as I had a go at walking. Then she fetched the torch that she'd used during her earlier venture outside. With the torch raised high, she led us to the front of the chamber.

There, I took a quick look back at the array of horrors. At the carved bodies. At the scalps and such on pikes. At Whittle, sprawled out dead. Finally, at what was left of Sarah. I hated to leave her in such a place. There was no way to take her with us, though.

One thing I've learned, the dead don't need help. They call for some grieving and often need vengeance, but not much else. It's those still alive who matter.

And so I turned away and followed Jesse toward the outside.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE.

The Downward Trail The coyotes scampered off, silent and eerie, when we came out into the moonlight. Jesse tossed the torch aside. It fell near a headless body, casting light on the ghastly work done by Whittle and the other beasts.

We staggered on, and reached the tethered horse. Jesse patted his neck and spoke gently to him.

Was this Matthew Forrest's horse, Saber? Quite likely.

I recalled the morning, so quiet, so lovely with fallen snow, when Sarah and I had entered the stable and discovered that Saber had gone missing. And how we had plotted together to deceive her grandfather. It seemed so long ago. It seemed almost as though a different fellow, not myself at all, had been the one to conspire with her.

Yet this must be Saber. Here, standing before me.

Quite suddenly, the many miles and months between that morning near Coney Island and this night somewhere in the Arizona Territory shrank down to nothing. It had had been me, not a different fellow at all. It might've been yesterday when Sarah and I gazed into the empty stable stall. been me, not a different fellow at all. It might've been yesterday when Sarah and I gazed into the empty stable stall.

Everything felt like yesterday. Standing there among the carnage while Jesse swung the saddle bags onto Saber's back, I quite fell apart. I bawled like a child. For Sarah. For McSween. For all of those who'd crossed my path and died. Even for strangers butchered by Whittle, as every victim this side of the Atlantic had died on my account. Maybe I cried for some I'd killed my own self, though certainly not for him. felt like yesterday. Standing there among the carnage while Jesse swung the saddle bags onto Saber's back, I quite fell apart. I bawled like a child. For Sarah. For McSween. For all of those who'd crossed my path and died. Even for strangers butchered by Whittle, as every victim this side of the Atlantic had died on my account. Maybe I cried for some I'd killed my own self, though certainly not for him.

Jesse took me into her arms. "It's all right," she whispered. "It's all right."

"It's awful," I blubbered. "So many. So many dead."

"I know."

She held me for a long while. At last, her embrace and caresses soothed me down. She brushed the tears from my cheeks. She kissed me. "You ready to go?"

I nodded.

She led Saber through the savaged remains of man and horse. At the boulder where we'd set our ambush, she tied our rifles together. She slung them over Saber, just in front of the saddle, then looped the straps of two canteens and the water bag over the saddle horn.

Holding the reins with one hand, she climbed atop the boulder. She lifted her long skirt, bunching it up so high I glimpsed the bandage around her thigh, then stepped into a stirrup and swung her wounded leg over the saddle.

I climbed the boulder. As Jesse snuggled the horse in close, I heaved a leg over his back and rather leaped with my other. Risky work, having no use of my arms. But Jesse stopped me when I started to fall off the other side. Her arm struck where I was gunshot on the left, and I yelped. But at least she saved me from a nasty tumble. I squirmed about until Saber was square between my legs.

"You okay?" Jesse asked.

"I've been better, actually."

"Same goes here. You ain't gonna fall off, now, are you?"

"Hope not."

"You can't hold on at all?"

"Not with my arms."

She started Saber walking. Instead of heading away, though, she turned him around. Steered him into the midst of the bodies. There, she dismounted. She limped over to a dead horse, fetched a coil of rope off its saddle, and came back. She made a loop at one end of the rope, swung it about a few times, and la.s.soed me. Stepping up close, she raised the loop beneath my arms, then slipped it tight around my chest.

At the boulder again, she hoisted her skirt and climbed aboard the saddle. She wrapped the rope around herself. When she finished, we were bound together, only enough slack between us so I wasn't quite mashed against her back.

"That oughta hold you," she said.

"It'll be a spot awkward if we need to climb down."

"I don't aim to take us nowhere the horse can't carry us," Jesse said. "We just gotta find where the posse came in."

She set Saber to moving at a slow walk. By and by, we found a gap that was wide enough for us. In we went, leaving behind the cave, the ghastly clearing, Sarah and Whittle and all the other dead.

It was mighty good to be going away from such things.

I figured we were lucky to get out alive.

And lucky to have a horse. Not that the bouncing about felt good. It shook me up considerable, and never gave me a rest from the pain. But this sure beat walking. No telling how we might've faired afoot. Not well, likely. But if we rode on steady and didn't get ourselves lost in the maze, we ought to be down off the mountain before sunup. From the trail at the base of Dogtooth, we'd be less than two days from Tombstone. We'd likely get there sometime tomorrow night.

I judged we could both last that long. Then we'd find ourselves a doctor and get patched up proper, and have no more business but to rest and recover.

The trick was to stay aboard Saber.

On a level trail, that wouldn't have been much of a problem. But our course through the rocks was rough. We not only had to wind this way and that and sometimes back out of dead ends, but every so often Saber had to charge up a steep place.

The first time that happened, it took me and Jesse by surprise. I yelped and pitched backward. I tried to reach for her, but my dang arms wouldn't move fast enough. The rope jerked taut, pretty near tearing Jesse out of the saddle. She cried out with pain, but clutched the pommel in time to stop us both from smashing to the ground.

At the top of the grade, she reined in Saber. Then she hunched over. I put my face against her back, and felt how she was twitching.

"This won't do," I told her.

She didn't answer.

"You'd best let me down. I'm fit enough to walk."

She sniffed. "You stay where you're at," she said, her voice tight and shaky. "We'll get by."

"That must've hurt you terribly."

"I ain't gonna have you walking." Slowly, she unhunched herself and sat up straight. "Next time, I'll give you a warning. Just lean up against me tight as you can."

So that's how we played it. Enough moonlight made its way down through the narrow walls of rock for her to see ahead of us. Usually. And usually, she gasped out "Lean!" just before Saber lunged up a slope or leaped across a gully. We'd both duck forward and come through it fine. Sometimes, though, he surprised us.

No less than eight more times, on our way across that d.a.m.n valley, Saber took unexpected jumps or clambered up night-shrouded slants in such a way that I was thrown backward against the rope. Each time, my fall was stopped by Jesse. It's a pure wonder that she was able to hold on, again and again, as the rope tugged so savagely at her chest. But hold on she did.

She rarely cried out, though the pain must've been terrible.

By the time we finally came out of the valley and halted before starting our descent down the mountain, my back was so abraded by the rope that it burned near as bad as my bullet holes. I felt blood sliding down beneath my shirt. Jesse's chest, I knew, could be in no better shape than my back.

I leaned forward against her. She was bent over the pommel, shuddering and sobbing.

"I'm so sorry," I gasped, weeping myself for her torment and bravery.

I longed to wrap my arms around her.

And did so, though the pain almost drove me senseless.

My hands met warm, slick blood.

"Oh, Jesse," I murmured.

She sat up a bit. Her trembling hands found mine and pressed them to her. She sniffled. After a while, she lifted my hands. She crossed them at the wrists, then eased them inside the open front of her dress and held them to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I pushed my face against the side of her neck. Later, I kissed her there.

We stayed that way for a long while, Saber shuffling beneath us but going nowhere. Off in the east, the horizon was going pale with the approach of daylight.

Jesse finally sat up straight and took a deep breath. "Reckon your hands ain't useless, after all."

I realized that I was caressing her with them. "They're all right for this, anyhow," I said.

"Lord, that was a h.e.l.lish ride."

"You were bully."

"I sorta kept a lookout for General. Maybe we'll find him down below."

"Maybe." I couldn't bring myself to care a whole lot, one way or the other.

"Least we didn't run into no rattlers," she said.