The leader leans in until I can smell the animal fat in his greasy, black braid. His calloused fingers reach for me and I cringe. He grips my chin and wrenches my head from side to side. If my mouth weren’t so dry, I’d spit on him. I grit my teeth and keep working on the twine.

“No benders,” he says to Bennett.

“She’s got breasts,” Bennett says.

The leader pokes at the sore on his mouth with his tongue as he looks me over again. He grabs my shirt and pulls me to him.

“A woman would make the Good Mother pleased,” he says, nodding. “Oh yes. Very pleased indeed.”

My heart is thrumming in my chest. I can smell excitement on him like a thick musk. He tugs up my shirt, revealing the dirty cotton binding on my breasts. His fingers trace my skin. His panting pulses against my neck. The sick longing on his face is unmistakable.

My right wrist slips out of the twine. I’m free! I wait as the leader leans toward me, his fingers reaching for the cotton binding on my chest. I force myself to look away from the Rider’s spit-flecked tongue that circles his dark red lips. The shotgun, I think. In a minute it’ll be mine.

He flicks out a small knife of whittled bone and slips it under the binding on my breasts. I feel the coolness of the blade against my stomach. I turn my eyes skyward and wait to be exposed. The bottom of the bandage frays against the blade. I close my eyes.

A gun blast crashes through the desert.

As if in slow motion, a bullet removes half of the leader’s head.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Warm blood splatters my face. The leader’s hair blows up as part of his scalp curls over his forehead. Blood spurts like a fountain, drenching his hair, his neck, pattering on the Jeep. And the grayish clumps that can only be … I squeeze my eyes shut. The leader falls like a sack of cement, sending a cloud of dust up around his twitching body. I stare at the blood that pours into the dirt.

The place breaks into chaos.

The horses bolt into the distance, kicking up dust. Three Riders swivel and draw weapons. The semi-automatic rifle strung across Bear Paws’s shoulders gets tossed to the dirt as he lunges for his leader’s rifle. Just as I thought, no bullets. I might have a chance to grab a gun with everyone’s eyes on the horizon, but that would mean coming out of cover. I can’t do that until I know who’s shooting.

The landscape falls deadly silent as we wait. From where I lie in the Jeep trunk, I can see boulders, shrubs, and buttes off in the distance. Who is shooting? We wait, barely breathing.