“Goddamn you, girl, I told you to stand!” Dupree shouted, reaching down and jerking the girl to her knees by a handful of hair.
Before Karla knew what she was doing, she’d bolted forward and slammed her left shoulder into Dupree’s chest, knocking the hardcase backward. “Leave her alone, you son of a bitch!”
Chapter 17
Setting his feet beneath him, Dupree looked at Karla with wild-eyed rage. The men who’d been resetting the saddles had turned to watch the show, chuckling.
“That girl there—she’s got spunk,” one remarked.
Dupree’s face turned even redder. He drew his right arm back, then suddenly forward, slamming the back of his hand against Karla’s face. Karla spun and flew, falling on her stomach. She heaved herself up on her arms. Her right cheek burning, her lower lip split and beginning to bleed, she turned quickly to see Dupree glaring at her as he moved toward her slowly, hands balled into tight fists, eyes glassy with rage. Karla scooted back on her seat and drew her knees up to protect herself from another blow.
“No one pushes Derrold Dupree. You hear?”
“Hold it, Dee.”
The voice had come from behind Dupree. The leader, Edgar Bontemps, stood beside his horse—a tall Chickasaw with two black socks and two white. One hand shoved down in his left saddlebag, he frowned across his horse’s rump at Dupree.
Dupree stopped in his tracks, staring furiously down at Karla. Bontemps grimaced, pulled his hand out of the saddlebag, and walked around his horse. As he strolled up to Dupree, his liquid blue eyes softened, and he laid a casual hand on the man’s thin shoulder.
“You know we don’t hit the girls,” Bontemps said, keeping his voice low and mild, one friend speaking to another. “Those are the rules, Dee. You understand the rules, right? We don’t get paid for damaged merchandise.”
Dupree stared hard at Karla for several more seconds. Then his shoulders loosened, and some of the flintiness left his colorless eyes. “Right, Edgar.”
Bontemps looked over his shoulder, where the other men were cinching their saddles and removing the feedbags from their horses’ snouts. Karla’s Arabian stood among the other horses, the hardcases having picked it up somewhere along the trail.
“Willis, come over here and tend the women, will you?” Bontemps said. “Dee’s a mite frustrated and needs a break.”
“You got it, Edgar,” Willis said, grinning and waving his coffeepot in the air, drying it before dropping it into a telescoping leather travel bag. “Be happy to.”
Bontemps smiled at Dupree. “Go tend your own mount. I want you and Granger to scout ahead this afternoon.” He slapped the man’s shoulder twice, puffing dust from Dupree’s black shirt and dyed hemp vest. “Best get a move on.”
When Dupree had gone, Bontemps jerked his trousers up his thighs and squatted over Karla. She removed her fingers from her swollen lip and peered reluctantly up at the grotesque man.
His oily, wildly curly hair made his bowler hat sit unevenly upon his head. He had curious and disturbing dark rings around his eyes, and gold earrings in both ears, which caused the lobes to droop grotesquely. On his arms, below the folded sleeves of an orange silk shirt with ruffled sleeves, were tattoos of snakes and trees and naked women. Karla had seen earlier that the palms of both his hands had been tattooed with bright red apples, each missing a bite.
With exaggerated tolerance, drawing out his Southern accent, he said, “Don’t make my boys mad, young lady. As you can see, you won’t like ’em when they’re mad.”
Karla brushed at the blood trickling down her lip.
Bontemps reached out, thumbed some of the blood from her chin, then looked at his thumb as though he’d never seen blood before. Rubbing his thumb on a patched trouser knee, he glanced at the sobbing Marlene and said to Karla, “Now get that cryin’ brat on her horse before I shoot her and throw her in a ravine. That girl’ll bring a nice sum, all young and smooth, but I don’t put up with bullshit.”
With that, Bontemps rose and walked away.
When Willis came over, stood before Karla, and crossed his big arms on his chest, threatening, Karla knelt down beside Marlene. The girl had stopped crying. She lay on her side, shivering and staring at the ground, her skirts and petticoats fanned out around her legs.
Karla swept a lock of copper blond hair back from the girl’s cheek. “Come on, Marlene. You have to get up now.”
The girl said nothing. A shiver racked her like an electrical charge. The desert air had dried the tears on her cheeks, leaving a salty patina.
“Please, Marlene.” Karla was surprised by the sudden resolve she was feeling. She’d thought she’d given up, but the prospect of the girl being killed forced her to put some steel into her voice as she spoke into the girl’s right ear. “If you don’t get up, Marlene, they’re going to kill you, and you’ll never see your family again.”
Thinly, the girl said, “I won’t see them again, anyway.”
“Yes, you will,” Karla whispered in the girl’s ear. “I promise you will.” She knew she had no grounds to make such a promise, but the words were out before she could take them back. She’d spoken them with such quiet force that she found herself strangely buoyed by them. It was almost as if she’d heard them spoken by someone else.
All the other girls were mounted now, and looking wanly down at Karla and Marlene. One of them—a sixteen-year-old, Billie, who’d worked at a stage station near Benson—had tears in her hazel eyes. “Come on, Marlene. Listen to Karla. We’ll be all right.”
“Come on, come on,” Willis growled. “We ain’t got all goddamn day!”
Marlene lifted her head and looked at Karla, hope showing in her eyes. Karla gave the girl her floppy black hat, which had been lying nearby, and tugged on the girl’s arm. Marlene snugged her hat on her head and slowly gained her feet. Karla led her over to her horse, helped her poke a dirty bare foot into a stirrup, then lifted her up into the saddle.
Stoically, Marlene stared down at Karla as Willis tied the girl’s hands to the saddle horn, the slaver muttering and shaking his head as he worked. Karla patted Marlene’s thigh encouragingly.
When Willis finished tying Marlene’s hands, he turned to Karla and gave her a brusque shove toward the pinto she’d been riding. “Come on, Mother,” he said with dry mockery. “Climb into the saddle. I’m tired of this foolishness.”
As Karla stumbled back toward the paint, she glanced at the skinning knife riding in the beaded leather sheath on the man’s left hip. As she reached up for her saddle horn and poked a bare foot through the left stirrup, the image remained in her vision, as if burned into her retina.
Having fought off her inertia, she began turning a plan in her mind.
If she could only get her hands on a knife . . .
Later, as the group rode across a cedar-pocked flat, Karla found herself positioned off the left rear hip of Marlene’s mare.
“How are you doing, Marlene?”
Marlene turned to her, the floppy black hat shading the girl’s small face. She glanced at Willis riding several yards behind Karla, trimming his fingernails with a folding knife, whistling and swaying lazily in his saddle.
“Am I really gonna see my folks again, Karla . . . or were you just saying that?”
“I meant every word of it, Marlene,” Karla said, keeping her voice low. As she stared straight ahead, her eyes were resolute. “We’re going to get away from these men.”