MacKinnon snorted up whiskey.
Mother. Like hell. I ought to teach Jace a few things about lying. You don’t push your bull too far. But I haven’t done a stupid thing in months. And Charley the Trey’s the biggest jackass in the county.
* * * * *
No, MacKinnon now realized, Jace Martin was a bigger ass. If MacKinnon had not been fairly drunk at the time, and broke, and just a stupid thirty-a-month cowhand, he would have laughed in Jace Martin’s face, thanked him for the whiskey, and ridden down to Seven Rivers to see if he could find work there. Only a fool would not have seen how Jace Martin was playing MacKinnon. But Sam MacKinnon had often been a fool, known to do foolish things.
That had been a failing for many a year.
“Mother,” he said, spit, and gripped a tree branch for support. He studied the path down, saw about a hundred rocks and dead branches that he might trip over, and looked for something he could use as a crutch. He hated the thought of using a crutch—about as much as he despised being afoot. But it wasn’t like anyone could see him in these hills.
Problem was, there wasn’t anything he could find to help him move.
Carefully, he put one foot ahead.
He carried on a conversation with himself. In his head. That’s how he always night-herded, or passed the time riding drag on a cattle drive.
When a man has seen better than forty years pass him by, after more chuckleheaded horses than he can count, a bad shoulder, an aching back, and countless joints that needed a good oiling, he realizes that he should have done a better job of saving his wages. Remember that old cook up along the Pecos toward Glorieta Mesa? Not the Mexican, but before that. Eli. Yep. Eli was his name. Eli Radovan. Kept most of his wages in a whiskey jug he kept buried behind the privy. Everybody laughed at the old belly-cheater, but old Eli Radovan might have been smarter than any banker in the territory.
Two years back, or thereabouts. Remember? Hung my hat on the elk horn by the door and found a spot on the counter at Eli’s Café by the railroad depot in Lamy. Eli wasn’t even doing the cooking. He just sat in a corner in his Prince Albert and a silk shirt with mother of pearl buttons. Just sat, and watched people eat. I paid fifteen cents for a steak, posole, and tortillas. With coffee, too. Eli never served grub like that over at Glorieta.
There ain’t much to Lamy, but the trains stop there, and a spur carries passengers to Santa Fe. Eli’s Café was doing business morning, noon, and night, and Eli Radovan tells me, after we shake hands, that he’s keeping his money in two banks. Two! Didn’t offer to pay for my supper, neither, that belly-cheating miser.
Maybe that’s why Sam MacKinnon had talked himself into riding into Bonito City with Jace Martin that Sunday morning.
* * * * *
A few years back, there was no such place as Bonito City, and Bonito Cañon remained empty except for trees, deer, bears, and bobcats. The Río Bonito provided pretty good water, during wet years at least, and it wasn’t hard for folks from Ruidoso or White Oaks to get to. Miners started putting up cabins, and when one of them discovered silver ore, Bonito City was born.
These days, Bonito City had three mercantiles, a halfway decent blacksmith, a hotel that also housed the post office, one lawyer, a café, a constable who would be sleeping off his Saturday drunk and long hours this morning, several shanties for miners, and quite a few lode mines, mainly the Río Bonito Mining Company. Folks had talked about building a church to go with the graveyard, and maybe even a schoolhouse to make the town respectable. Of course, there was Charley the Trey’s Three of Spades Saloon. Charley the Trey did not put rotgut whiskey in Old Overholt bottles. He imported Scotch, even French brandy. Charged San Francisco prices, too.
A man who raked in that much money, and who still had his gamblers cheat, could afford to lose some money, MacKinnon reasoned.
At the livery stable on the edge of town, the five riders reined up. They fished wheat sacks from their saddlebags, removed their hats, and slipped the coarse material over their heads. Four-Eyes Sherman eased the spectacles from the bridge of his nose, folded the earpieces, and carefully placed the eyeglasses in the pocket of his shirtfront, which he buttoned for safekeeping. MacKinnon studied the wheat sack before slipping it over his own head. Holes had been cut out for the eyes, so MacKinnon adjusted his and breathed in ground wheat. He let his hat fall behind his back, secured with a rawhide string that he positioned underneath the tied ends of his frayed bandanna. That would help keep the rawhide from chocking him if he had to put his mare into a hard lope on the way out of town.
The stagecoach was scheduled to arrive at seven fifteen. Jace Martin pulled the heavy watch out of his vest pocket, smiled, and slipped the watch out of sight. “Should be just a few more …” He stopped, and stood in the stirrups. A door had opened, closed. Footsteps sounded on the boardwalk, then stopped. “Let’s start the ball, boys,” Martin said. The wheat sack also masked his voice.
Drawing revolvers from their holsters, the five men turned their horses, spurred them hard, and rounded the livery, churning sod as they galloped down Bonito City’s main street.
Charley the Trey’s saloon stood between two vacant lots on the west side of the street. The lot between the saloon and the hotel served as sort of a pen for the change of teams for the stagecoach. Charley the Trey had stopped in the lot, talking to the old-timer who always helped change the team for the stage. A pair of saddlebags hung over Charley’s left shoulder. The cheating saloonkeeper must have thought the hoof beats meant the stagecoach was pulling in a few minutes early, because he just kept talking to the old coot with the four mules.
When Charley the Trey looked up, he straightened and reached for the pistol he wore butt forward on his left hip.
By then he was too late, and he knew it.
MacKinnon reined up his sorrel mare, and leveled the Remington .44 at Charley the Trey’s nose. MacKinnon’s mouth opened, but no words came out. He couldn’t think of what to say.
“Don’t say a word!” Martin swung out of his saddle. “Run those mules off.”
Harry Parker, the kid, eased his gelding toward the bald-headed old man and the mules.
Martin jerked the nickel-plated Schofield from Charley the Trey’s holster, and pitched it into the street. Chuckling, Martin removed the saddlebags off the gambler’s shoulder.
“Heavy,” Martin said. “More than I expected. Must have been better than a normal weekend for you.”
Quit talking, MacKinnon thought as he ground his teeth. The Remington felt like a mountain howitzer in his hand. His breathing became ragged, and he felt himself sweating underneath the choking, floury smelling wheat sack. He cursed himself for a coward. Next to Four-Eyes Sherman, MacKinnon was the oldest man riding with Jace Martin. And acting greener than Harry Parker.
He felt that way until Harry Parker started shooting his pistol in the air.
The sorrel bucked at the rapid gunfire that sent echoes bouncing back and forth along Bonito Cañon. MacKinnon tightened his legs against the mare’s sides. His left hand gripped the reins like a vice, and his right hand reached for the saddle horn. He saw the Remington falling to the ground at Charley the Trey’s feet.
MacKinnon swore as he tried to get control of Honey, his sorrel.
She was a sweet horse. Eight years old. Loved apples. Never complained. Had an easy gait. Even her trot wouldn’t break an old man’s backbone. She could cut cattle with the best Texas gelding. Honey never bucked.
Till this morning.
Eight jumps later, he had Honey under control. He wanted to spur her, run her hard up and down the town’s main road, Bonito City’s only road that was little more than a mule trace or footpath. Teach her a lesson.
As MacKinnon managed to turn Honey around, he saw four, five, maybe six men tumbling out of the front door to the hotel. Across the street, more men came out of the café. Down the street, a
man with long dark hair and a big black hat stepped from the livery stable.
Jace Martin’s plan was fraying.
One of the men in front of the café pushed back his jacket.
“Robbery!” he shouted, and MacKinnon caught a glimpse of something pinned on the lapel of the man’s checked vest.
This wasn’t Bonito City’s constable. The constable was an old man with spectacles who carried a single-shot shotgun that he kept loaded with birdshot, not buckshot.
The man with the badge bore a striking resemblance to Nelson Bookbinder, sheriff of Lincoln County. MacKinnon had once heard him give a speech in Tularosa. And he had read three of the books written about him by that Colonel What’s-His-Name at a line shack on the Plains of San Agustin.
A bullet sang past MacKinnon’s nose. He leaned in the saddle, saw Charley the Trey rolling on the grass between his saloon and the hotel. The mules ran toward the river, and the old stock tender chased after them on bowed legs.
Jace Martin threw the saddlebags in front of his saddle before he climbed aboard his buckskin.
Four-Eyes Sherman fired three shots at the men in front of the café. The men dived this way and that, except for the one who had almost shot off MacKinnon’s nose. That man barely moved, didn’t blink or shudder, just moved his arm, thumb, and finger. The pistol roared. Four-Eyes Sherman swore, and swung his horse toward the hotel and livery.
“Not that way!” MacKinnon yelled. “The stage. We’ll meet the stage!”
The kid Parker tried to climb into his saddle, but his horse kept kicking and bucking. Chico Archuleta fired two shots at the men by the hotel, and spurred his gelding across the empty lot. Jace Martin raced right behind him. MacKinnon kicked the sorrel into a lope. Honey needed little urging, but he reined her to a sliding stop when he came to Parker. Four-Eyes Sherman thundered past. MacKinnon leaned forward till his fingers slipped into the headstall on Parker’s horse. A bullet whistled over MacKinnon’s shoulder. Parker’s horse twisted, turned, but MacKinnon kept his grip, and—after a bullet whined off a rock in front of them—the kid managed to climb halfway into the saddle. Which was enough for MacKinnon. He released his grip, and watched the horse thunder across the lot. Parker somehow managed not to fall and somehow swung his right leg over the saddle at a lope. The horse rounded the rear of the saloon, and MacKinnon felt a bullet clip his collar before Honey carried him behind the log building. More bullets thudded into the logs.
The three others were a good fifty yards ahead of MacKinnon and Parker. The trio did not show any intention of waiting for the two to catch up. They just rode. They did not even remove the wheat sacks from their heads.
Chapter Four
The five men did not stop until they reached the road to La Iglesia de San Patricio, and they did not rest there for long.
“What the Sam Hill were you doing, boy?” Jace Martin snapped at Parker after whipping off the wheat sack and dropping it on the road.
“Chasing off the mules,” the kid stammered. He had trouble getting the sack off his face. He had also lost his hat.
The hats belonging to the others, including Sam MacKinnon, had been saved by stampede strings. MacKinnon let his sack fall to the ground, and he pulled the hat from his back and shoved it on his sweaty hair. The uncovered faces of the men were wet with sweat and stained here and there with traces of flour.
“Which way?” Four-Eyes Sherman asked.
“Not on this road,” Martin said. “We’d be easy targets.” His horse wanted to keep running, and Martin had trouble keeping him under control. He pointed at the forested hills on the other side of the road. “That way!”
“There ain’t no path,” Sherman said.
“Exactly.”
* * * * *
They should have stuck to the road.
Climbing up, down, around, ducking underneath branches, squeezing between towering trees, making poor time. At some places, they had to dismount and pull skittish horses across rugged terrain.
They reached what passed for a clearing. MacKinnon waved his hands to chase away the bugs. His clothes were wet with sweat, and the air cooled him. The four others appeared in equally wretched condition.
Parker reached for his canteen. MacKinnon twisted in the saddle and stared down the mountainside.
“What is it?” Jace Martin did not sound calm.
“They’re behind us,” MacKinnon said.
“They cannot be,” Chico Archuleta said.
“They are,” MacKinnon insisted.
The men fell silent, but kept breathing in deeply, struggling for breath. Their horses labored just as hard.
Metal hoofs on hard stone. Snapping branches. A rock tumbling. A man’s curse.
Jace Martin swore softly, and pulled his black hat lower and tighter on his head. He studied MacKinnon and asked: “What happened to your revolver?”
MacKinnon’s right hand dropped toward the holster on his right hip. Sure enough, it was empty. Then he remembered the kid’s cannonade to frighten the mules had sent Honey into a bucking fit. “Dropped it,” he said, “during the ruction.”
“You might need it if we sit here much longer,” Four-Eyes Sherman said.
“I’ve got my long gun.” Still, MacKinnon shot a glance at the scabbard just to make sure. For all he could recall, he had lost the Winchester, too.
“Let’s go,” Martin said, and they continued to climb, to descend, to twist and turn.
The pistol left in Bonito City wasn’t much, MacKinnon told himself. An old Remington .44 cap and ball from the Civil War era that had been converted to take brass cartridges. Sam MacKinnon had used it more often as a hammer than as a weapon. In fact, he could count the times he had pulled its trigger, and couldn’t remember the last time he had even cleaned it. It had not occurred to him even to check the loads before riding into Bonito City that morning. Like most cowhands, the pistol usually came out of its holster to drive a nail or tack into a barn wall, a bunkhouse, a privy, or, Lord forbid, a fence post.
As they rode up the mountain, he remembered something else about the old piece of iron. When he had first bought the revolver, he had taken a knife and scratched his initials in the metal underneath the handle. That had been so long ago, though, he doubted if anyone could make out the crudely carved SM, but that had not been enough for a young cowboy with a revolver. So he had carved those initials into the walnut grips, and those had been deep, easy for anyone to see.
He tried to think how many men in Bonito City might know him, and who could identify an old Remington conversion as belonging to Sam MacKinnon.
Nobody knows me in Bonito City. And I had a sack over my face. Even without that mask, Nelson Bookbinder won’t know me from Adam’s off ox. No. And maybe that wasn’t Bookbinder. Just my imagination. Yeah. Bookbinder wouldn’t have no call to be in Bonito City. Charley the Trey saw me eighteen months ago, and I lost money. He’s got no reason to remember some sucker who lost money. And … was that an Indian I saw? Wearing a black hat? Maybe Bookbinder’s Apache? No. No. Don’t get yourself worked up. Aw, Sam MacKinnon, you done put yourself where you don’t want to be.
* * * * *
They came to what served as a bridge across a sharp drop to their left, and a shorter fall to the right. The birds had stopped singing, but the limbs of trees rustled above them. In some places you could make out the sky. In other spots, there was little to see except granite and green.
Twisting in the saddle, MacKinnon listened.
Was that the sound of revolvers being cocked, and ejection rods shoving out empty brass casings? Then a sound like a cork being popped out of a canteen. MacKinnon leaned forward, and his eyes searched through the trees and rocks. Jace Martin moved his horse beside MacKinnon.
“Well?” Martin asked.
“They sound closer,” MacKinnon said.
“They can’t be!
” Archuleta said.
“Shut up, Chico.” Jace Martin held his revolver in his right hand.
“When do we get off this mountain?” Four-Eyes Sherman asked.
“Another rise,” Martin said, “then we’ll swing down. East. Make for Roswell. They’ll think we’re headed for Mexico. We’ll move for Texas.”
“That country’s the worst you’ll find in the territory,” Chico Archuleta said.
“Yeah. And it’s hard to follow a trail across that wasteland.” Martin smiled at MacKinnon. “What do you think?”
“They might give up, but …” MacKinnon sighed and stared at Martin. “I thought I saw Nelson Bookbinder and his Mescalero man hunter back there.”
Martin paled. “You’re joking.”
MacKinnon shrugged. “I hope I’m wrong.”
Martin looked down the mountain. “Charley the Trey will likely put up a reward,” he said.
“It’d take a mighty big bankroll for a man to chase anyone through that country,” MacKinnon said. “They wouldn’t pull in that much money in Bonito City.” He looked back down the trail. “They’re coming, whoever they are. Maybe it was just my imagination. I hope so. I’d rather deal with Charley the Trey than …” He let the names trail off.
“Cinch up, boys,” Martin said. “We probably won’t have time to stop for a while.”
MacKinnon was already slipping to the ground. He shoved the stirrup up, and began working the cinch.
“Of course,” Martin said with a smirk, “if we left someone behind, that might slake their thirst. Give them someone to arrest. Or hang.”
MacKinnon looked up. He saw that glint in Jace Martin’s eyes, and MacKinnon’s right hand dashed for the Remington that had been lost in Bonito City. Martin leaned forward, and slammed the barrel of his revolver across MacKinnon’s head. Honey reared, whinnied, and MacKinnon thought he saw Jace Martin fighting to right himself in his saddle, to keep his horse from backing off the edge. But it was hard to tell, because MacKinnon lay on his back, his head throbbing, blood and sweat mingling, dripping, burning his eyes. He heard Honey’s hoofs as the horse started to turn toward him. He hit a rock, rolled over saplings, felt the earth moving with him as he slid, rolling and toppling. The horse kicked a small avalanche after him as MacKinnon kept tumbling down.
MacKinnon Page 3
