A wolf lunged, came underneath the mule’s body between the front and back feet. Its head lifted upward and it snapped at Bartholomew’s belly, but the mule leaped up. Florrie lost her grip on the rope, and she fell to the dirt. The mule turned, kicked, turned, and kicked again. By that moment, Katie was sprinting across the ground. Bartholomew swung around, brayed, and Katie dived, both hands reaching out for the frayed rope. Her right hand caught it, and her fingers sprang tight like a vise. By that time, however, Bartholomew had started to turn to flee into the night, to run as far as he could, to Lincoln or Tularosa or all the way to Silver City. Katie felt her dress rip and stones and cactus cut into her stomach as the mule dragged her.
Somehow, she managed to lift her head, and through the dust and pain she saw a wolf leap onto the mule’s head. Its teeth must have latched onto Bartholomew’s ear, for the mule stopped running and began swinging his head up and down, left and right, but the wolf refused to release its hold.
Katie pushed herself to her knees, pulled the rope, until she braced it against her back, holding it with both hands. The hemp burned through her ruined dress, and carved across her camisole, biting into her skin. She cursed. Blinked. Realized that it was not a wolf holding the mule’s ear.
“Florrie!” Katie called out, but barely heard her own voice.
Her sister had managed to grab hold of the headstall. Bartholomew kept trying to shake off Florrie, tossing her like a ragdoll, but Florrie refused to release her hold. The wolves started again.
Katie told herself to let go of the rope, let Bartholomew run. He might escape the wolves. But what would happen to Florrie? Maybe her hands were caught in the leather. Maybe she couldn’t let go.
“God!” she yelled.
A cannon roared behind her.
One wolf somersaulted and came up clawing and kicking, in pain, before it scampered away. The noise echoed and rang in Katie’s ears. The mule struggled harder. Florrie kept bouncing up and down, but the other wolves quickly backed away. The cannon detonated again, and this time all the wolves—even those behind her and near the grave—yelped and retreated. Pellets bounced off the earth.
Katie moved forward, still clutching the rope. The mule tried to pull this way and that, but Katie and Florrie did not let go. Eventually, realizing the wolves had fled, Bartholomew, exhausted from the fight, stopped kicking and twisting. Florrie dropped to her knees, rolled over, and sobbed. Katie looked at the wagon, and saw Gary leaning against the wagon’s tailgate. The double-barreled shotgun lay by his feet.
Trying to catch her breath, trying to shake clarity back into her head, Katie moved toward Bartholomew, and gently reached up and rubbed his neck. “It’s all right. You did good,” she said, uncertain if she were trying to reassure the mule, her siblings, or herself.
“It’s … all …”
Her knees gave out, and she sank into the sand. She dropped the rope. If the mule wanted to run away now, she could not stop him. She crawled to her sister, and hugged her tightly. A moment later, Gary had joined them, and they clutched each other for support.
“It’s my … fault …,” Katie whispered. “I’m … sorry.”
“No,” Florrie said.
“No,” Gary struggled.
Clutching each other, they settled into a cocoon, and somehow, some time later, they fell asleep in the dirt.
Chapter Ten
“No coffee?”
Nelson Bookbinder threaded the latigo through the cinch and D rings without looking at or answering the posse member named Mort. He focused on the saddle.
The one called Davis said: “It got cold last night.”
Ignoring those two, Sheriff Nelson Bookbinder waited until he had the saddle snug, then laced the end of the latigo through the keeper, and unhooked the left stirrup from the horn and let it fall against his horse’s side.
He stared over the saddle at the two worthless members of his posse. “Ever been to Wyoming?” he asked.
Mort and Davis shook their heads.
“Then you don’t know what cold is.”
He grabbed the reins to his dun and led the gelding toward the camp. There was no coffee, no breakfast, no fire. Such was the policy of Nelson Bookbinder when he was chasing a felon or felons. He explained, though he did not like to waste his breath on picayune matters. “A hunted man can see a campfire in the night. He can see smoke in the daylight. If he’s close enough, he can smell bacon frying or coffee boiling. You ride with me, your breakfast is cold, and you drink water from your canteen … if you’re lucky enough to have water. When we reached the mountains yesterday, you boys could’ve turned back to Bonito City with Charley the Trey and the other boys. They didn’t like the idea of following those boys into the hills, or leaving all the comforts—and profits—of Bonito City. But you stuck with me.”
Mort started: “Charley promised us …” He didn’t finish.
“Chew tobacco,” Bookbinder said. “Curbs your appetite.” He pulled out the plug from his pocket. “Gives your mouth something to do that don’t involve idle chatter.”
Davis and Mort stared at their boots as Bookbinder tore off a mouthful of tobacco before shoving the plug back into his vest pocket.
“You want to explain again what happened to that robber you shot?” the lawman asked.
Mort and Davis exchanged glances, then studied their boots before Mort finally lifted his eyes at the lawman and wet his lips. His mouth opened, but that was as far as he got. He grinned and shrugged, as Davis said: “We told you all that when we caught up with you yesterday.”
“Yeah.” Bookbinder did not blink. “But I’m getting long in the tooth so my memory ain’t as good as it used to be. Refresh my memory.”
It was not a request. The two oafs looked at each other. Davis tilted his head at Mort. Mort glared back. Davis shrugged. Mort swallowed and fidgeted with his bedroll as he tried to secure it behind the cantle of his saddle. “Well, it’s like we said yesterday. We killed him.”
“One shot,” Davis added.
“Yeah,” said Mort. “One shot. Davis done it.”
“Right through his brisket,” Davis said.
“And you just left him there?” Bookbinder worked on softening the tobacco with his molars.
“No,” Mort sang out. “Not at all. I mean … we buried him.”
“That’s what you said yesterday,” Bookbinder said.
“Right,” Mort said. “We buried him.”
“You caught up with us pretty quickly considering the time it would take to do that,” Bookbinder said. “So it wasn’t that deep of a grave, I take it.”
“Well.” Davis took over, as Mort started licking his lips over and over again. “He fell in this hole, you see.”
“I see.”
“Sinkhole,” Mort said, just as Davis cried out: “Fox’s den.” They glared at one another.
“Something like that anyhow,” Davis said. “I thought it was a fox’s den, but Mort said it weren’t nothin’ but a sinkhole.”
Bookbinder spit. “You didn’t want to bring the body back to Bonito City?” he asked, as he corked the canteen and wrapped the canvas strap around the saddle horn.
“He didn’t have no money with him,” Davis said.
“Besides, we figured you might need us, too,” Mort added.
Bookbinder studied both men briefly. “So you just left him in the … this fox den or sinkhole of some kind?”
“We covered him up,” Davis said.
“To keep the animals from gettin’ him,” Mort put in.
“But that hole was mighty deep,” Davis said.
“So … naturally … we didn’t fill the whole thing in,” Mort said, and his eyes turned murderous as he stared at his pard.
“Think you could find it?” Bookbinder asked.
They studied one another and shrugged.
“I don’t know,” Mort said.
“Maybe,” Davis said.
“If no critters don’t get him first,” Mort said.
For a while, Bookbinder kept chewing the tobacco, and wondering how come a lawman of his stature got saddled with Mort and Davis. Finally, he walked the dun out of their camping spot, and called out to the two worthless liars. “Well, if he didn’t have the money, I’m fairly certain that Charley the Trey won’t have any interest in his carcass. Come along, gents. We’re burning daylight, and it’s time to catch up with Nikita.”
He waited till the two men mounted their horses and caught up with him. Then he tightened the cinch, and swung into the saddle.
They rode toward the sun, walking at first, then pushing their horses into a trot. Seeing how uncomfortable his two deputies—if one could call Mort and Davis that—looked at posting a trot, Bookbinder kept the dun at that gait longer than he would have otherwise. Eventually, he relented, and reined his horse into a walk.
By then he saw the Mescalero, kneeling beside his pinto gelding about four hundred yards ahead. He studied the country around him, saw nothing that demanded his attention, and put his spurs against the dun’s flanks.
He slowed as he neared the Apache, let the dust settle, easing the dun into a walk the last few rods before coming up to the scout.
Nikita did not look up until Bookbinder halted, and the two others caught up a few moments later.
The Apache lifted his right hand and opened his fingers.
Bookbinder nodded. “How old?”
Nikita let the horse apples fall to the ground as he rose, wiping his palms and fingers on his denim trousers. “Last night.”
“Just one horse?” Bookbinder asked.
“One bowel movement,” the Apache said, which caused Davis and Mort to chuckle like schoolboys before Bookbinder turned his saddle and silenced them with a cold glare.
“Four horses,” Nikita said.
“You’d think they’d split up,” Mort said.
Bookbinder did not comment.
“Yeah,” Davis said. “Send two toward Texas or Mexico to the south, and the other two east.”
“Maybe north,” Mort said. “Nobody would guess they’d ride north.”
“Shut up,” Bookbinder said. “Both of you.” Bookbinder looked at the horse manure at Nikita’s feet, thinking. “You two were right,” he finally said to Mort and Davis. “The guy you shot back in the hills, he didn’t have the money.”
“See,” Davis exclaimed in triumph, looking at Mort, “I told you!”
“Maybe,” Mort said to the lawman, “you can put in a word to Charley the Trey on account we did dispatch one of ’em vermin.”
“It was me that shot him,” Davis declared.
“Well, but I seen him first,” Mort said, glaring at Davis. “I told you where he was. And I—”
“Why don’t you two boys ride on ahead a ways.” Bookbinder’s tone again made it clear that this was not just a suggestion. “Maybe you can dispatch another one of those bad men.”
Davis and Mort sank into their saddles, and eyed one another again.
“Boys,” Bookbinder said, “I don’t see one likely place those thieves could set up an ambush hereabouts. Just ride on ahead. Nikita and I will catch up with you before you’re even out of sight.”
They rode off at a deliberately slow pace, so Nelson Bookbinder stood, watching and chewing his tobacco. His wife detested the habit, but Bookbinder found satisfaction in its routine. It made him think better. Or more clearly.
“You have good men with you, Bookbinder,” the Apache said.
Bookbinder spit juice at the scout’s feet.
He had known Nikita since the troubles back in the 1860s, when the Mescaleros had been imprisoned with the Navajos at Bosque Redondo up north at Fort Sumner. Eventually, the Mescaleros got tired of living there and pretty much just left and returned to their homeland. The government, for once, did something right and let the Apaches settle there. After all, the soldier boys at Fort Stanton could keep their eyes on the Indians. When Nelson Bookbinder needed a scout, he got permission from the Army and the agency and he hired Nikita, paying him two dollars a day. The Apache was worth a whole lot more than that.
Nikita could find trails when no one else could. He had more patience than any man Bookbinder had ever known, and Bookbinder, for a lawman, had always considered himself to be an oyster when it came to patience. If a trail went cold, Nikita found a way to warm it up.
If Nelson Bookbinder could make that Apache a deputy sheriff, he would do it gladly—even if he knew it would cost him the election.
“What do you think about the one left in the mountains?” Nikita asked.
“He didn’t have the money.”
“No.” The Apache swung into the saddle. “Do you think those two killed that man?”
“It doesn’t matter if they did or if they didn’t. He didn’t have the money. His pards likely left him behind to slow us down. If Charley the Trey had led this posse, which isn’t much of a posse, it would have worked just like those ruffians planned.”
Nikita adjusted his black hat. “You white men do funny things to your friends.”
“I’m dead certain that’s what that fellow they left in the mountains is thinking, too.”
* * * * *
They rode slowly. Bookbinder was lucky to have Nikita with him, but luck always played a part in law enforcement. With Nikita’s help, he had tracked down a stagecoach robber named Dowdy and had him locked up in White Oaks. They had just stopped in at Bonito City to have Bookbinder’s dun reshod on their way back to the Mescalero reservation. That’s the only reason they had been in the town when the Three of Spades Saloon was robbed.
“Those two.” Nikita tipped his head toward the slow-riding deputies. “Those two will slow us down.”
Bookbinder shifted his chaw to the other side of his mouth. “In this country, slow is a good way to go. The horses. Are they being pushed?”
“Harder than they need to be,” Nikita said. He looked to the west. “I do not think those two killed that one in the mountains.”
“I wouldn’t bet against that notion.”
“He could have the money,” the Apache said.
Bookbinder’s head shook, and he removed the pipe, and dropped it back inside his vest pocket. “Those four horses are together,” he said. “They didn’t split up because one of those horses is carrying all the money.”
“If they wanted to go to Mexico, they would start heading south by now,” Nikita observed.
Bookbinder’s head bobbed. “Which means they’re probably riding for Texas.”
“Roswell?”
Bookbinder shrugged. “We’ll see. That’s your job.”
“What about the man in the mountains?”
“I’m not wasting my time with him. Seems he already made a bad decision, getting left behind. He’ll make another, and it’ll cost him aplenty. It’s the other four I want, or at least the one with the money.”
Nikita looked over his shoulder. “I don’t like having a gun behind me.”
“You can go track him down if you don’t believe he’s dead in some hole back there, if you want. Me … I don’t like having four gunmen riding in front of me, especially when they’re heading out of my jurisdiction.”
Chapter Eleven
The sun awakened him. He shook his head, found the canteen, and took a quick swallow.
How many times he had dozed in the saddle during the night, MacKinnon could not count. He recalled being jerked awake by the noise of the sorrel’s hoofs on the desert track. That he now found himself still in the saddle and Honey standing in the center of the road, asleep, seemed a miracle. He was tired and he seriously considered turning Honey around and heading back to Bonito City, where he could turn himself in and throw h
imself at the mercy of Charley the Trey.
MacKinnon yawned. He wanted to wash his face, just a little, but knew better than to waste water. Honey could use a drink, too. The mare snorted, and pawed the earth with her left forehoof. Holding the canteen, MacKinnon slowly drew in a breath, and let it out. He didn’t shudder. He didn’t almost vomit. His bones ached, his left foot was asleep, but he had not felt that sharp pain that made him double over. He wet his lips and slowly tried to swing his right leg over the back of the sorrel.
That did it.
When he could breathe again, he was leaning toward Honey’s withers, eyes clamped shut, drooling, and desperately clutching the canvas straps of the canteen. Luckily, he realized when his eyes finally opened, he had screwed the cap back onto the canteen. Minutes later, once he could move his left hand away from his ribs, he managed to sit relatively upright in the saddle.
“I’m sorry, girl,” he told the horse in a rasping voice. “Maybe we’ll find some water up ahead.” He knew there were a few water holes along the road, providing they had not dried up. He tried to calculate how far away the closest one might be, but gave up, and wrapped the straps around the horn.
“We’ll get you some water soon, girl,” he said. “Ribs don’t feel as bad as they did yesterday.” He shut up. Talking hurt, too. But he told himself that, surely, come evening, he’d be able to climb out of the saddle and back into it. He had busted his ribs before. Once, down around Seven Rivers, he had stoved up his left arm so bad, he couldn’t raise it to his shoulder. Yet he had still been able to saddle his gelding and ride at a hard lope. And even with a busted leg, Bad Finger Chaney climbed onto the back of that rank little colt he owned and rode from Hillsboro to Silver City.
Course, they had to saw off his leg once he got to Silver City.
He wondered if Bad Finger Chaney was still hobbling around that burg, sweeping out the stores and stables to earn his keep.
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