How wonderful to be wise, to be able to analyze and interpret things. Wisdom lights up a person’s face.” –Ecclesiastes 8:1 (NLT)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
His gun was clearing leather when I hit the ground. Immediately I kicked out hitting his knee causing him to lean my direction, then I struck with my fist to the spot where my bullet had taken him. The impact and the pain caused him to drop to the ground and he released his grip on the pistol. My hand came back bloody. Unless I could get him down from these rocks he most likely would bleed out.
Picking his gun up from where he dropped it, I stuck it behind my gunbelt. “Mister, if’n you don’t cooperate, there’s a good chance you’re gonna die here in these rocks.” He was still quite pale from the blow I had given him. “You have a name, I don’t like to bury men without knowin’ their names.”
“Sims,” he said, finally gaining control of himself. “Luke Sims.”
I shook my head slightly as I tried to remember his face or anyone by that name. Nothing came. “Why are you stalkin’ me? I don’t know you from Adam.”
“Get me down from here and I’ll tell you.”
He was in no condition to bargain, so I simply told him, “You’re going down, either alive or dead. It really don’t make any difference why you’re after me. I, at least won’t have to be worryin’ about you any more.” I paused, letting him chew on that for a few seconds.
“I’m a-hurtin’,” he proclaimed with a grimace.
Giving him a half-grin, I simply replied, “I can imagine. Now you can bleed out, or we can get you down and perhaps you’ll have a chance to live and go to prison.”
He held out his hand to me, so I could help him to his feet. There was a little path down to my right which we started down with him going first as there was room for only one person at a time. The path came out where he had his horse tied.
“You have anything in your belongin’s that I can use to bandage you up?”
“There’s a shirt that you can use,” he muttered.
I went over, first emptying his rifle, then thrusting it in the scabbard. Then I opened his saddlebags finding the shirt. I folded it over a couple times, leaving the sleeve dangle to use to help tying it in place. The shirt he was wearing was plastered to the wound, the blood beginning to coagulate. I would leave it up to Doc to take care of that and I placed the shirt over his wound and tied it down tightly in place.
“Think you can ride?” I asked, and he knew that the alternative would be to tie him belly-down.
He put his boot in the stirrup. “If you give me a boost to get in the saddle, I can ride.”
A few seconds later he was in the saddle, leaning over to ease the pain in his side. “Hold on, my horse is down in the arroyo.”
Ten minutes later we arrived. I handed him up the reins as I went down into the arroyo to get Star. As soon as I reached the bottom, I heard a “harrup” and Luke Sims took off over the desert land. I didn’t rush, I mounted Star and we went back down the wash until he found a place where he could climb out. Reaching the top I could see Sims thirty yards away, weaving in the saddle.
Patting Star on the neck, I said, “I don’t reckon I know what he’s tryin’ to do. Let’s just mosey towards him and keep watch.”
It wasn’t long, maybe twenty seconds, he…