Bandit and the Big 1

The sun was a white-hot yellow blaze in the sky,  creating a a hunting silence on the land. The heat shimmered off the red dirt, making the distant mesas look like they were melting into the sky. Althea "Bandit" Crow didn't move. She crouched behind a jagged outcrop of sandstone, her breath slow and shallow, the air tasting of grit and ancient dust. A man didn't waste words in country this quiet, and a woman didn't waste oxygen when she was hunting. She watched the trail, her amber eyes tracking the shimmering horizon where the stagecoach would soon appear. The silence of the High Plains was heavy, a physical weight that pressed against her skin, broken only by the occasional dry rattle of a lizard moving through the scrub.

She adjusted the bandolier across her chest, the brass casings of the .44 rounds gleaming like gold teeth. Below her, the road was a scar across the earth, a line of pale dust waiting to be stirred. Bandit pulled her bandana up over her nose, the scent of her own sweat and the iron tang of gun oil filling her senses. She wasn't here for the payroll or the jewelry of some cattle baron’s wife. Her mission was far more desperate. Back in the cool dark of the Hidden Mesa cave, the Big 1 was burning up. An old wound on his shoulder, a souvenir from a run-in with a bounty hunter near the border, had turned angry and red. The fever was stealing his strength, turning the massive mountain of a man into a shivering ghost. He needed the patent medicine rumored to be in the doctor’s bag on the midday coach, and Althea would burn the whole territory down to get it for him.

The sound came first—a rhythmic thudding that vibrated through the rock beneath her boots. Then, a plume of dust rose in the distance, a tan banner announcing the arrival of the Wells Fargo stage. Bandit shifted her weight, her muscles coiling like a mountain lion's. She moved with predatory grace, sliding down the embankment toward the bend where the driver would have to slow the team. Her twin revolvers, ivory-handled and heavy, were already clearing leather before the coach had even rounded the final rock. She didn't shout a warning. The law of the West didn't favor the loud; it favored the fast.

The coach roared around the bend, the four-horse team foaming at the bits. The guard on the roof, a young man with a face like unbaked dough, spotted her and reached for his Winchester. Bandit didn't hesitate. The roar of her first shot echoed off the canyon walls, the heavy lead slug catching the guard square in the chest. The shot opened him up like he was made of paper. He tumbled backward, his rifle clattering against the wooden roof before he hit the dirt with a sickening thud. The driver hauled on the reins, screaming at the horses as the coach lurched and skidded, the wheels screaming in protest against the rocky ground.

“Throw down the bag!” Bandit’s voice was a sharp crack in the heat. She stepped into the middle of the trail, both revolvers leveled at the driver’s head. The man’s hands were shaking so hard the reins were whipping like snakes. He didn't speak; he just sat on his seat and watched the dust settle on the trail, his eyes wide with a terror that transcended words. From the window of the coach, a businessman in a fine wool suit peered out, his face pale and slick with sweat. He started to reach for a derringer tucked into his vest, but Bandit’s second shot clipped the window frame, sending a spray of splinters into his cheek. Don’t move, she thought, her eyes flashing with a lethal light. Just give me what I came for.

“The doctor’s bag,” she barked. “The one with the blue seal. Throw it, or I start painting this dirt with the rest of you.”

The driver scrambled to obey, kicking a leather satchel off the footboard. It landed in the dust with a heavy thud. Bandit kept her irons steady as she backed toward her horse, a buckskin mare hidden in the draws. She grabbed the bag, her fingers tracing the cold leather, and swung into the saddle. She didn't look back at the carnage. She had what she needed. As she galloped away, she didn't notice the passenger who had climbed out of the far side of the coach, a man who had seen her face clearly, a man who would soon be telling his story to a marshal with a thirst for blood. And she certainly didn't see the envelope that had fallen from the guard's pocket, a secret dispatch detailing the exact coordinates of the Hidden Mesa, addressed to a man named Silas Varga.

The ride back to the cave was a blur of red rock and shimmering heat. By the time Bandit reached the narrow slit in the mesa wall, the sun was beginning to dip, turning the sky the color of a fresh bruise. She dismounted and hurried into the shadows, the temperature dropping twenty degrees the moment she crossed the threshold. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of woodsmoke and sickness. Jax—the Big 1—was sprawled across a bed of buffalo furs, his massive 6'6" frame looking out of place in the confined space. His skin, usually the color of polished mahogany, was slick with a greyish sheen of sweat. He was a wall of muscle, but right now, that wall was crumbling.

“Althea?” his voice was a deep, rumbling baritone, weakened by the fire in his blood. He tried to sit up, his chest as wide as an oak barrel heaving with the effort. The silvered scars of the lash on his back caught the flickering light of the small fire, a map of a past that wouldn't let him go.

“Hush, Jax. I got it.” She was beside him in an instant, her hands moving over his face. He was burning. She opened the satchel, pulling out the glass vials of medicine. Her hands, which hadn't trembled once during the robbery, were shaking now. She hated seeing him like this. To the world, he was a ghost, a legendary killer, a monster in a duster. To her, he was the only man who had ever looked at her and seen a human being instead of a half-breed curiosity.

She administered the medicine, forcing the bitter liquid down his throat. He slumped back against the furs, his intelligent eyes finding hers. Even in his delirium, there was a raw, carnal pull between them that the fever couldn't touch. The Big 1 reached out, his hand touching her hip so lightly it could’ve been a breeze. He pulled her toward him, his hot breath pulling goosebumps up the side of her neck. He smelled like expensive whiskey and trouble, and despite the danger, she leaned into him. The touch was explosive. Her voice suddenly vanished, replaced by the frantic beating of her heart against her ribs. She wanted to tell him to rest, but the look in his eyes was hungry, a desperate promise for the night to come.

“You shouldn’t have gone,” he rumbled, his hand sliding up under her flannel shirt to find the soft skin of her waist. “The law... they’re close, Bandit. I can feel ‘em in the wind.”

“Let ‘em come,” she whispered, her lips brushing against the jagged scar on his temple. “They want you, they got to go through me first. And I ain't in a sharing mood.”

The intimacy between them was a fierce, physical thing that echoed off the cave walls. As the medicine began to work its slow magic, the tension in the room shifted from the medicinal to the carnal. Bandit stripped away her dusty clothes, her mahogany skin glowing in the firelight. She climbed over him, her lean, muscular build a stark contrast to his massive bulk. Every touch was a prayer for a freedom they'd never truly known. He groaned as she pressed her body against his, his large hands gripping her thighs with a strength that suggested the fever was already breaking. They moved together with a raw intensity, a desperate celebration of life in a world that wanted them dead. The smell of gun oil and sweat was thick between them, a perfume of the frontier. For those moments, the bounty on his head and the blood on her hands didn't matter. There was only the heat of his skin and the frantic, rhythmic pulse of their joined bodies.

Later, as they lay tangled together on the furs, the fire dying down to a bed of glowing embers, Jax’s breathing had steadied. The infection in his old wound was still there, but the madness of the fever had retreated. He watched the shadows dance on the ceiling, his expression stoic and weary. He knew the cost of the day’s work. He knew that every bullet fired was a beacon for the men like Marshal Thorne who viewed their existence as a sin to be purged.

“The stagecoach,” Jax said, his voice a low rumble. “There will be a posse. Maybe a federal man.”

Bandit leaned over him, tracing the lines of his chest with a tender, lethal hand. She grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dark. “Let ‘em bring the whole damn army, Big Man. I got two irons and a whole lot of spite left in me. No man is ever putting chains on you again while I still draw breath. I promise you that on my mother’s grave.”

Jax didn't speak. He just looked at her, his honeyed eyes reflecting the dying fire. He reached out and pulled her back down to his chest, his massive arms wrapping around her like a sanctuary. Outside, the wind began to howl through the canyons, a lonely sound that spoke of the long miles of desert between them and any kind of peace. The red dust was settling on the trail, but the peace was a lie. The hunt was already moving toward them, cold and relentless as the winter that would eventually follow the heat. But for tonight, in the belly of the mesa, they were kings of their own lawless kingdom, and that was enough. Bandit closed her eyes, listening to the steady beat of his heart, and dreamed of the lead they would soon have to trade for their lives.