He got up and approached me warily. This time I was holding my own. I had hung around enough gyms to pick up the odds and ends of the manly art of self-defense, and at the moment, I was using the womanly art of Wing Chun. It’s designed to help a woman fend off a man, and I wasn’t so full of machismo that I missed its relevance here. The object is to wear down a larger attacker by making him miss. My strategy was to infuriate him, make him lose his patience. At the same time, I was testing his endurance. With him chasing me, throwing punches would deplete him.
There’s an analogy in the animal kingdom. A stork attacks a snake with its beak, but the snake darts away, then lunges for the stork’s head. The stork deflects the counterattack with its wing, and the whole process starts again. Whoever wears out first will likely lose an eye or suffer a fatal bite. If both are exhausted, they withdraw and live to fight another day.
Right now, a draw sounded just fine. I had come here, adrenaline flowing, wanting to inflict serious damage. I had felt strong, my confidence fueled by virtuous anger. Now, I was merely defending myself, having been wrongfully accused. The power of righteousness resided in K. C. Cimarron’s meaty fists.
This time, he faked the kick, and I dropped a hand to deflect a foot that never came. He hooked me in the ribs, either with his right fist or a sledgehammer, I couldn’t tell which. I used my right hand as a claw, the kumade in karate. I went for his eyes and ended up sticking two fingers in his nose. I was too close inside, and he wrapped his left arm around my head. He cocked his right hand to smash me in the face, and I pulled back with all my strength, flexing my knees, twisting my torso, trying to break free. My movement threw him off, and his punch landed on my forehead, but he never let go.
We moved like that, back and forth across the loft, a couple of drunken sailors trying to dance. He was puffing hard now. Big, but not in shape. I caught the whiff of sour mash whiskey on his pained breaths. As we struggled in each other’s grip, feet scuffling along the wooden floor, I found a point of leverage, planted my feet, pivoted a hip and swung him backward into the wall. His head thunked off a wooden plank, causing more damage to the wood than his skull. When he came off the wall, his knees seemed to buckle, and I went at him.
Mistake.
He was playing possum. I threw a left, which he ducked, and then he came inside and doubled me over with a short right to the gut. I gasped and he moved behind me, slipping an arm under my chin and across my neck. I flailed away at him, but caught only air, and his grip tightened, squeezing off my air.
Still choking me, he slammed me headfirst into the wall. This time, the plank cracked, or maybe it was my skull. I heard Jo Jo screaming. “No, Simmy! You’ll kill him! Don’t!”
How thoughtful.
How considerate.
How late.
I was about to black out, but just then the pressure eased around my neck. I opened my eyes, but I was dizzy, and Kit Carson Cimarron seemed to be spinning around me. I lifted an arm to fend him off, and he grabbed me by the wrist, twisted it behind my back and spun me into the wall again. This time, I hit it with my full weight, and the plank tore loose and fell to the ground outside. I am wider than the plank, or I would have gone with it, which would have been fine with me.
I bounced off the wall, and he grabbed me by the same wrist, twisted it behind my back again, and whipped me the other wav where I smacked into a wooden railing that looked over the stalls. Maybe the railing had termites, or maybe the equation of my mass times my velocity was too much energy for the old wood. Whatever the reason, the railing split and I fell through open space.
I landed with a thud on a thousand pounds of Appaloosa. It was moving, and making noise, and I slid to the floor, where it stepped on me and kicked me. I covered my head with my arms, and rolled over, spitting out blood and dirt and straw, trying to focus my eyes. Above me, half a ton of horseflesh was baring its teeth, stomping its feet, and loudly complaining about sharing its stall.
I was aware of voices. Jo Jo was shouting, but I couldn’t make out the words. Kip was out there somewhere, too, saying something, and suddenly, I was worried about him. If Cimarron killed me, what would he do to the little witness?
I tried to clear my head. I heard footsteps on the ladder. Heavy footsteps. I hoisted myself to my feet, grabbing the mane of the horse. If this were a movie, when I fell, I would have landed astride the mighty steed without doing any damage to my private parts. I would have whispered some magical incantation in the great beast’s ear, and he would pound down the door to the stall. With a Hi-ho, Silver, I would have scooped up Kip, and we would have galloped out of the barn and into the moonlight, the evening breeze tousling my hair.
But this wasn’t a movie, and I could barely see, and as best I could tell, my head was covered with a mixture of blood and horseshit.
The stall door swung open, and I heard his voice. “C’mon out, lawyer. I’m not through with you.”
I eased back to the wall, behind the horse, where they tell you never to stand. I smacked him on the rear, and he bolted through the open door, with me right behind.
K. C. Cimarron was not born yesterday, and he had a lot of quick for a big man. He stepped to one side and did not get trampled or even brushed by the horse, but at least I had a moving pick bigger than Charles Barkley, and it got me out of the stall without being clobbered.
The horse bolted for the open door, and I stepped that way, but Cimarron anticipated the move. He blocked me, and I raised my hands in surrender. “Enough. I’ve had enough.”
He stood there watching me.
“ Simmy!” Her voice came down from the loft. Shrill and hysterical. “Simmy, he raped me! Are you going to let him go?”
Wait a second. Didn’t she just try to stop him from killing me? Just what the hell was going on here?
“ No,” he said, stepping to the wall and pulling down a bullwhip from a wooden dowel peg. “He’s not going anywhere. I’m going to flog him. I’m going to leave scars he’ll remember till the day he dies.”
The yell came from my left. Cimarron and I both looked that way.
“ I am Spartacus!” With that, Kip charged him, a five-pronged pitchfork aimed at the big man’s groin. Cimarron pivoted to one side, reducing the target to his flank. The blades glanced his leg, and then in one smooth motion, Cimarron grabbed the pitchfork just where the wooden pole met the steel fork. He did have a lot of quick.
With a flick of the wrist, he lifted boy and pitchfork, Kip hanging on, as if practicing his pole vault. Cimarron shook the pitchfork and Kip tumbled to the floor.
“ Next time,” I said to my nephew, “don’t yell first.”
“ No need for this,” Cimarron said, cocking his arm, and sailing the pitchfork over my head. I ducked anyway, and it landed with a thud in the far wall, where it sunk in and vibrated like a tuning fork.
“ Now, boy, you git out of here,” he said to Kip, who hesitated.
“ I’ll be all right,” I lied, and Kip headed for the open barn door, looking back at me with sadness and fear.
“ Now, you,” Cimarron said. “Let’s finish this.”
We stood maybe fifteen feet apart, facing each other. “I’ve never touched a woman against her will in my life,” I said. “She’s lying to you. I don’t know why. I don’t know who killed Hornback, or what happened to Blinky, or why Jo Jo came up here, or even why I followed her, but I know I didn’t touch her.”
Cimarron brought his right hand up behind his ear and snapped his wrist forward. The bullwhip flicked toward me unseen, and cracked, the tip catching me on the shoulder. I thought I’d been stabbed. I backed up, trying to get out of range, and Cimarron advanced, lashing the whip at me, coming up short. He lowered his arm, flicked his wrist, and this time, the tip caught me on the thigh, sending a stinging pain down my leg.