precious water on no woman who’ll be dead in ten minutes,” Harrah said.
Pardo saw the little Sharps in her waistband, saw her pull it, long before Harrah did, and grinned at the girl’s spunk. It was a four-barreled .32 Triumph, and the kid jammed it into Harrah’s crotch.
“You don’t get some water, you’ll not have any balls to speak of,” she told him, and thumbed back the tiny hammer.
The Greek laughed.
“What the hell’s the matter with you people?” Pardo snapped. “That’s a lady lying there, and she needs water.” He went to Harrah and the girl, jerked the .32 from her hand, and gave Harrah a savage shove. “Fetch a canteen. Phil, I reckon we’ll need the buckboard after all.”
“We’re takin’ ’em with us, boss man?” Duke asked.
“Yes. Of course we are. Ain’t that right, Ma?”
“Whatever you say, Jim.”
Chaucer shook his head. “This whole thing has been a bust.”
“You think so, Wade?” Pardo dropped to a knee, put the back of his left hand against the woman’s cheek. If not for the blood, the busted nose, she’d probably be a fine-looking woman, and her breasts put Three-Fingers Lacy’s to shame. He grinned. Lacy would be almighty pissed to have this woman tagging along with them. She might strangle the woman in her sleep.
Harrah handed him a canteen, and he wet down his bandana, put it on the woman’s forehead. She stirred slightly, shivered, and went still again. Pardo bit his lip until he detected her chest rising and falling.
“I don’t think it was a bust, Wade,” he said again, washing the blood off her pale face. “Not at all.”
“We didn’t get that money,” Duke reminded him.
“And the Army ain’t, neither. Blue-bellies can’t spend ashes, and that’s all that’ll be left of that damned Yankee payroll.” He looked up at Harrah. “What’d you collect off the people inside?”
“Not much,” Harrah said timidly.
“What?” Pardo demanded.
“A couple of watches and a money belt. And a broach.”
“Too busy looting the dead to notice a kid and her ma, I reckon.”
“You told us to—” Harrah stopped himself.
“Give your plunder to Phil. Have him put it in the wagon. We’ll split it up when we get back to the Dragoons. Like we always do.” He handed Harrah the canteen, checked the woman’s ribs, her arms, her legs. “I don’t think she broke anything except the nose and some ribs,” he told the girl. “And I can fix the nose.” He winked at the kid. “I’m right experienced with busted noses.”
The kid lifted her mother’s head, and let Harrah give her a sip from the canteen. Most of it ran down her face and into the dust.
“She might be bleeding inside,” the girl said.
“Can’t do nothing about that,” Pardo said, “except bury her when the time comes.”
Somewhere from the bowels of the wreckage, a scream suddenly sliced through the morning air. The whippersnapper of a girl went rigid, and Harrah dropped the canteen.
“Careful with that water, you damned fool,” Pardo barked.
Another scream. Then nothing but the roar of the inferno.
“Poor bastard,” Pardo muttered. He looked at the girl again. “What’s your name, kid?”
She glared at him. “I don’t have to tell you damned bushwhackers anything.”
He backhanded her and stuck a finger under her trembling lip. “And I can throw you and your ma back inside that coach, and you can burn like that poor, dumb, screaming bastard just did. I like grit, kid, but just a little of it for flavor. What’s your name?”
Her lips still quavered. But she was too damned stubborn to cry. “Blanche,” she answered at last.
“How old are you?”
“Ten.”
Ten, and a mouth like that. He stared at the unconscious woman. That would make the woman thirty, perhaps younger. Didn’t look much older, even with her face and body all beat to hell.
“And your ma? What’s her name?”
“Dagmar.”
“Dagmar what?”
“Dagmar Wilhelm.”
“All right, Blanche Wilhelm, we’re going—”
“I’m not Wilhelm. My name’s Blanche Gottschalk.”
Pardo blinked.
“My father died,” the girl had to explain. “My mother remarried.”
“Gottschalk. Wilhelm. I don’t know which name’s ornerier on the tongue.”
“Gottschalk,” Chaucer said. “It means ‘God’s servant.’”
“I wouldn’t know nothing about that,” the kid said, which got a laugh out of Chaucer.
“Where were you bound?” Pardo asked.
“Tucson,” she said.
“That where your pa, your new pa, lives?” Pardo asked. He was thinking that a husband might pay a handsome reward for a woman like this, maybe a few bucks for the spitfire of a stepdaughter, too. It was something, he figured. Something to keep a lid on the tempers of the boys, because, no matter what he could claim about burning Army money, Chaucer had been right. This damned robbery was a bust.
“Sigmund Wilhelm,” the girl said, “was probably that poor, dumb, screaming bastard we just heard.” She turned away, dropped her head, and whispered, “He was a poor, dumb bastard, too.”
“That ain’t right, girl,” Pardo roared, his finger back in Blanche’s face. “You don’t speak like that of your pa, stepfather, no kin. You don’t speak of them like that.” But he was thinking: My pa was the same, kid. Just a poor, dumb bastard.
He rode in the wagon with Ma, the kid, and the woman. Wouldn’t trust any of his men with such a fine-looking lady. He also rode with the watches—one with the glass busted, no longer running, but the gold would bring enough for a whiskey—broach, money belt, and other items Harrah hadn’t bothered to mention, their loot for their first, and last, train robbery. Pardo decided he’d stick to other ventures such as stagecoaches, banks, and the like.
They had left the burning wreckage, camped that night in an arroyo, and crossed Alkali Flat the following morning. Most of the boys wanted to stop at Dos Cabezas, but Pardo and his mother knew better than that. Yankees weren’t fools. Nor were the Southern Pacific brass and Cochise County’s law. Probably, a posse was already
