layin’ a hand on Purv as I thought I would. When I said that Jube was quick for a big man, I didn’t tell the half of it.
I hadn’t got more’n a foot off the ground when his big paw come down on my right shoulder, clampin’ up so tight I felt my arm turnin’ numb. Then he yanked me back and upwards, throwing his left arm acrost my throat so’s I didn’t even have a chanct to cuss or yell out.
I’d played at this game a time or two my ownself, though. So I turned my head and tucked my chin into my chest almost without thinkin’. But when Jube grabbed a big fistful of hair with his free hand and started in to pull, it hurt so fierce I almost couldn’t keep my wits about me. Just barely managed to kick back with a spurred boot heel and grind it down onto his bare foot.
That colored man was a heap better at followin’ orders than I’d of been at a time like that. ’Cause he didn’t hardly yelp or cry out a-tall. Just made a little sound like a wheezin’ grunt whilst he stepped back an’ throwed me to the ground, usin’ his grip on my hair for leverage. I felt a bunch of it come loose in his fingers ’bout the same time my nose bored into the dirt. A instant later the breath was bein’ crushed out of me by a big heavy knee in the small of my back.
Jube let me have a whoppin’ left and a right to the ears with his open palms, purely out of meanness for the hurt I’d caused him. Then he got his fingers round my throat and started in to squeeze.
I mean I was in some sorry shape at that moment. My mouth was fillin’ up with sand so’s I couldn’t take a breath. Couldn’t hardly twitch my arms or legs, much less turn over with that four hundred pounds of meat an’ gristle pressin’ down on top of me. It weren’t too much longer before my eyes begun to roll up, and I could see orange an’ silver flashes against a real deep shade of velvet black.
After another minute there wasn’t even that. Only a kind of a helpless fallin’ feeling, like I was slippin’ off into some bottomless hole without no way of catchin’ myself.
I reckon I must of faded out there for a pretty good while, what with Jube’s big fingers shuttin’ off my windpipe and his weight pressin’ the air an’ life out of me. If he’d waited another half second before gettin’ up from what he was doin’, I expect I’d of been ever bit as dead as I prob’ly appeared to him an’ Lila right then. But luck was with me, ’cause somethin’ they’d heard was makin’ ’em skittish and anxious to leave out before they could be real certain the job was finished proper.
None of this come into my head right away, you understand. It weren’t until I felt a woman’s fingers goin’ through my pockets real quick and thorough that I begun to even halfway recollect where I was. Then I could hear Lila’s harsh whisper as she called out to the others:
“Mount up and let’s ride! That buggy’ll be showin’ itself over the rise yonder in just another couple minutes!”
It didn’t take no partic’lar effort for me to keep lyin’ real still like the corpse they thought I was. Her voice got fainter when she stood up and moved off into the road. “Purv, you got a lead rope on that roan? All right then, let’s be travelin’!”
While the sounds of their harness an’ hoofbeats faded out to the south, I decided to see could I drag my hands up underneath me and push my shoulders a couple inches off the ground. Turned out that weren’t near the easy job it appeared at first glance. Took me a couple, three tries to manage it, and then it seemed like my head wasn’t stayin’ attached to my body the way it was accustomed to a mite earlier. I couldn’t hardly keep my eyebrows from scrapin’ the dirt.
After another minute I gagged an’ coughed up a mouthful of earth and sandspurs. Then I rolled real slow over onto my back.
The sky was a pale robin’s egg blue, with only a couple fleecy clouds away off in the distance. It was a right pretty sight, and I just let myself lay there, breathin’ kind of shallow and thinkin’ how lucky I was to look up an’ see any kind of a sky one more time. Finally I begun to notice the clip-clop an’ rattle of some kind of a rig movin’ down the road towards me.
When it got up close enough to make stirrin’ worth the effort, I turned my head to find out who my new visitors was.
What I seen was this brand new lookin’ surrey, all shiny black with fringed tassels an’ black leather seats, being drawed by a high-steppin’ charcoal gelding what had these red ribbons tied in its mane and tail. I got a real close look at that outfit when it slowed down for a couple seconds to steer past where I was sprawled there in the sand.
“Hey!” I croaked, tryin’ to push myself up onto one elbow but not quite able to manage it. “Hey, mister!” The voice what come out of my crushed windpipe weren’t hardly much stronger than a whisper.
This gent in a white straw hat an’ broadcloth suit peered back over his shoulder at me, his face all twisted up like he’d just finished a big old dinner of lemon seeds an’ pickles. Then he turned round and whipped his gelding into a trot, mutterin’ something real spiteful ’bout “drunken Southern trash” to the woman on the seat next to him. Just before they went out of sight round the bend up ahead, I heard her answer him with a couple remarks of her own, what had to do with “in-breeding,” and somethin’ sounded to me like “Miss Seegy Nation.”
And there I was again, all by my lonesome an’ feeling helpless as a new-hatched sparrow in a yard full of chicken snakes. I figured it was gettin’ to be a plumb miserable world whenever a hurt man couldn’t even expect no help nor sympathy from passin’ travelers.
After a little while I got up the strength to hitch myself into a sittin’ position, with my arms hugging my knees and my chin restin’ on top of ’em. I sat there for a time longer, takin’ in a couple deep breaths what made me want to yell out from the pain in my ribs, before finally openin’ my eyes. When I’d had a quick glance up an’ down the road, I begun to take stock.
2
NOT THAT THERE WAS so awful much left to take stock of. My Ole Roan horse was gone, which was bad enough. But along with him was just about my entire outfit: a big Texas saddle with some good years of use left in it, a bedroll and saddlebags what carried a week’s worth of provisions that I’d bought only the day before yesterday when I got paid off from that cow-hunt an’ cattle-drivin’ job up to Lake City. And worst of all, my Winchester .44 in the saddle boot with a couple hundred rounds of spare ammunition.
My pistol belt had been stripped off too, along with the Bowie knife in its sheath at the side; and I knew there weren’t no point to go lookin’ for my Dragoon Colt now, what Jube had took and throwed on the ground. With them weapons missin’ I felt about as naked as if they’d done stole my pants an’ boots at the same time they was stealin’ everthing else.
Speakin’ of boots, I realized of a sudden I wasn’t wearing any. A quick look around showed ’em both layin’ off to the edge of the road next to my hat. So at least them no-counts had left me that much. But then I remembered somethin’ else had happened before Lila an’ them others rode away, and I started checkin’ through the pockets of my shirt and britches real careful-like, gruntin’ and cussin’ ever time I come acrost a bruise or some other hurt Jube had give me.
When I got done, I took my time and did a more thorough job of cussin’.
That Lila had cleaned me out en-tire, from my Barlow knife and whetstone to even the cigarette makin’s in my shirt pocket. ’Course there wasn’t no sign of the money I’d had left
