Arroyo de la Muerte

by Frank Leslie

  No sign of the big Indian.

  What the hell?

  Something clicked to Yakima’s right. Her jerked the Colt in that direction, and fired, instantly realizing that he’d been tricked. Mankiller had thrown a rock to distract him.

  Chapter 4

  A roaring howl rose from Yakima’s far right.

  Mankiller grinned from over the top of the earth mounded up around the base of a large saguaro, extending his own Colt toward Yakima.

  Shit!

  As smoke and flames lapped from the Indian’s six-shooter, Yakima leaped up and hurled himself backward over his rock—an acrobatic move spurred by the threat of instant peril. Mankiller hadn’t expected a man Yakima’s size to move that fast. Yakima himself hadn’t. The bullet slammed into the face of the rock where Yakima had been crouched only a quarter-second before.

  Yakima extended his .44 over the top of the rock, quickly lined up the sights on the big dark face glowering from over the mounded earth, and fired. Mankiller’s head drew back and down, obscured by Yakima’s and the Indian’s own smoke haze.

  Yakima clicked the gun’s hammer back and aimed through the smoke, waiting.

  Waiting.

  No movement over there.

  Silence.

  The rotten egg smell of cordite hung heavy in the still, hot desert air. The wound in Yakima’s side burned and throbbed like a son of a bitch. The pain made it hard to stay focused. It made him feel queasy, his knees weak.

  Yakima triggered another shot, blowing up gravel from near the saguaro’s base. Still, nothing moved. No sounds.

  Slowly, keeping the cocked Colt extended toward the mound of earth, Yakima gained his feet. He brushed his left hand across his side. It came away bloody. He looked down. His shirt and coat were bloody. He’d taken a hot one, all right. He couldn’t tell how bad it was. It hurt like hell, but they all hurt like hell, the bad as well as the not-so-bad ones.

  He moved slowly forward, squeezing the cocked Colt in his right hand. Apprehension drew his muscles taut. A trickster, Mankiller might be playing possum. But as Yakima stepped past the saguaro, he eased the tension in his trigger finger.

  If Mankiller was playing possum, he was one hell of an actor.

  The Indian lay stretched out on the ground about six feet beyond the saguaro. His arms were raised as though in surrender, the Colt still in his right hand, the hammer down. His legs were spread wide. He stared up at the sky. At least one eye stared skyward. The other had been blown to tomato paste. The same bullet had obviously blown out the back of his head, for a good deal of blood and white bone matter pillowed his head and stained his long, coal-black hair fanned out beneath him.

  A sound rose from behind Yakima. He swung around heavily, the pain making him weak and dizzy. He raised the Colt again. He saw nothing. Scraping thuds and grunts sounded in the desert to the southeast, toward the dyke, which was brassy with sunlight now.

  Yakima moved forward. As he did, he removed a handkerchief from his back pocket, wadded it, and pressed it taut against the wound to stem the blood flow. The throbbing pain made him shiver. As the grunts and scraping sounds continued issuing from somewhere ahead, he quickened his pace.

  When he’d strode maybe twenty yards, weaving through the chaparral, he saw Guzman staggering through the desert, dragging one leg, moving away from Yakima. Beyond the Mexican, two horses stood tied to the short, skeletal branches of a fallen tree. Yakima strode forward. Hearing him, Guzman stopped, snaked a pistol around his body, and snapped off a shot toward Yakima.

  The man was staggering, holding the pistol unsteadily, and the bullet flew wide. He turned his head forward and continued dragging his wounded leg toward the horses.

  Yakima kept walking, raising his Colt. “You ain’t gonna make it, Domando!”

  Again, Guzman snaked the pistol around his body and snapped another shot toward Yakima—or within two dozen yards of him, anyway. The wild round plunked into a saguaro far to Yakima’s right.

  Yakima aimed the Colt and blew the Mexican’s other leg out from under him. Guzman yelped and fell in a heap.

  Yakima walked up to where the man lay writhing. He’d dropped his pistol and was clutching at both bullet-torn legs. The man’s left leg was nearly covered in blood. The right leg was well on its way toward the same condition. The bullet in his left leg had chewed through an artery. With no sawbones near, he’d be saddling a golden cloud soon.

  “You ain’t gonna make it,” Yakima repeated.

  Guzman lay belly down. He lifted his head and gave an agonized wail of pain before flopping over onto his back. He glared up at the man who’d shot him.

  He had an oddly moon-shaped face free of hair except a sparse, dark-brown mustache mantling his upper lip. His nose was short and broad, his dark eyes set wide beneath a single, bushy brow. The fire-breathing dragon took up most of his broad, high forehead, beneath a cap of tightly curled, dark-brown hair caked with adobe-colored dust.

  Now Guzman lifted his ugly head up off the ground, jutting his weak chin at Yakima. It was like being threatened by an infant’s fist. The Mexican cut loose with a wild string of Spanish only half of which Yakima could understand and which dealt with Yakima’s questionable bloodline and several other things too personal to mention. By the time the Mexican was finished, he’d spent himself; spittle frothed on his thick, liver-colored lips.

  He sagged back against the ground.

  “As I was sayin’,” Yakima said. “You ain’t gonna make it. Why did Mankiller stick that knife in Barnes’s back?”

  “Go to the devil, you Indio bastardo!”

  “Joke’s on you, Domando,” Yakima said. “The way you’re bleedin’ out, you’re almost there.”

  Guzman gave a hideous laugh though no humor reached his flattening gaze. “The joke’s on you, Indio lawman. The joke’s on you!”

  That last took the last bit of venom out of the dying man. His body convulsed then relaxed. He gave a ragged sigh. His muddy eyes rolled up in his head and he gave one more small spasm and a fart, and lay still.

  Yakima scowled down at him. “What the hell’d you mean by that?”

  ***

  Julia Taggart strode down the Conquistador Inn’s third floor hall, quiet this early in the morning, and stopped at a door at the hall’s far end. She drew a calming breath and raised her hand. She hesitated, chewing her lower lip, pensive, then went ahead and tapped on the door.

  “Pa,” she said, leaning close to the door, keeping her voice down in deference to the hour. “It’s Julia. A word, please?”

  No response.

  She frowned. The sun was up, which meant it was likely going on eight o’clock. She knew her father to be an early riser. At least, he usually rose early when he was at their sprawling house near the headquarters of his gold mine, the Conquistador. He often saw his regular trips to town as sojourns from the isolation of his life in the Sierra Estrada, and often slept in a little later than usual after indulging his taste for poker and whiskey with his business associates.

  He was in town now, staying in his usual suite at the hotel, for the celebration of the railroad’s arrival, so it was more than possible he’d enjoyed himself even more than usual last night, and was sleeping off a hangover. Julia had seen him in the Puma Den downstairs, the Conquistador’s lavish gambling parlor, with two territorial senators and men from the Central Arizona Railroad’s Board of Directors. Hugh Kosgrove had been throwing back his favored Scotch whiskey, and, rosy-cheeked and glassy-eyed, not to mention typically loud, he’d obviously been feeling no pain.

  Julia knocked again, louder. She didn’t care how much pain the old goat was feeling. She needed to talk to him, and she wasn’t going to wait.

  “Pa?” she said through the upper panel. “It’s Julia. I’d like…” She tried the knob and was surprised to hear the latching bolt click back into the door.

  She drew it open and stepped inside, looking around. “Pa?”

  She was in the parlor/office a
rea of his two-room suite. No lamps were lit and the velveteen curtains were closed against the weak morning sunlight. On the book case to Julia’s left, a silver kitchen tray held a silver coffee server and two china cups and saucers. There were also two still-steaming sweet rolls in a basket. The coffee and the sweet rolls flavored the air enticingly, making Julia realize how hungry she was.

  When he was staying at the Conquistador, Hugh Kosgrove always had the breakfast cook bring him coffee and a roll. Apparently, this morning, old Kosgrove had not been ready to receive the tray, so the cook, Charlie Wentz, had left the tray where Julia’s father would find it once he arose.

  Voices issuing from the partially open door in the wall to Julia’s left clarified things. She heard her father’s low voice, speaking softly. It was followed by a female voice. A girl’s voice. A voice that Julia recognized. Behind that partly open door, Kosgrove gave a long, weary sigh. The girl giggled.

  Julia strode across the room and paused at the door, fingering the knob, hesitating. Finally, she glanced into the room briefly, quickly turning away but not before the damage had been done. In that one-second glance, she’d seen her father sitting on the edge of his bed, his stubby, heavy-bellied body clad in absolutely nothing. A naked young doxie—Nellie Pearl—knelt between his spread knees.

  Hugh Kosgrove sagged back toward the bed, propped on his locked arms, chin tipped toward the bed’s spruce green canopy, a dreamy smile on his goatish old face. The doxie raised and lowered her head, her hair hanging down over both cheeks.

  Anger flaming inside Julia, she turned her head back for another glaring look into the room, and said, “Really, Pa? Nellie?” She gave a deep groan of disdain and slammed the door.

  “Julia!” he exclaimed in his shrill, raspy voice that still owned a little of his native Irish brogue. “What on God’s green--”

  Behind the door, the doxie, Nellie Pearl, gave a thick laugh. Julia heard the bed creak and sigh as Hugh Kosgrove heaved his bullet-shaped bulk up and then stomped around the room, likely gathering his clothes.

  Smiling with a devilish but deserved satisfaction—at least deserved to her way of thinking--Julia walked back over to the server, poured herself a cup of coffee, and strode over to a window on the room’s far side, near the potbelly stove. Her father’s desk was on the opposite side of the room from the bedroom, under the head of a large elk he shot himself on the Mogollon Rim, on one of his storied hunting expeditions with business associates which usually included a few territorial senators, an attorney general or two, and sometimes even a governor.

  While her father continued cursing and stumbling around in the bedroom, Julia opened the drapes so she could stare out over the smoky rooftops toward the west, toward where the shiny new rails curved across the plain. The sun was well on the rise, turning saffron the plain below the plateau on which Apache Springs sprawled, on the first rise of the Sierra Estrada.

  Behind Julia, the bedroom door opened. Julia turned to see Nellie step out and close the door behind her. Her slender, snow-white body was clad in only several coils of faux pearls. Her breasts were hardly larger than mosquito bites. The pretty, blue-eyed dove pulled a thin chemise down over her head then tossed her thick, blonde hair back behind her shoulders and glanced sheepishly toward Julia.

  Her pale cheeks were as red as roses.

  “He paid me extra, Miss Julia!” The girl shrugged, hurried to the door, opened it, and cast one more obsequious glance at Julia. She stepped into the hall then drew the door quietly closed behind her.

  The bedroom came open again and the penguin-like Hugh Kosgrove stepped through the door belly-first, his fleshy face as red as Nellie’s had been. His bullet-shaped head owned a short cap of close-cropped, silver hair, and long silver muttonchops framed his swarthy face. He wore his royal red bathrobe, and he was tying the drawstring around his considerable girth, half of an unlit stogie protruding from a corner of his mouth. His spindly legs were clad in silk longhandles. Wool-lined, elk skin slippers adorned his small, white feet.

  “Well, that was one hell of a rude interruption!” he intoned, waddling across the room to the serving tray. “I sent you girls to the best schools in the country, and you still got the manners of waterfront orphans.”

  “Did you ask her how old she is?”

  “I don’t care how old they are!” Kosgrove spat out, glowering incredulously at his oldest daughter regarding him with the brightly cajoling eyes of a schoolmarm.

  “She’s not yet seventeen!”

  “Really?” Kosgrove poured himself a cup of coffee, wagging his head and smiling his amazement. “Could have fooled me.” He chuckled, dropped his cigar into a pocket of his robe, and lifted the coffee to his lips.

  “You’re disgusting.”

  Kosgrove sipped his coffee, swallowed, and hiked a shoulder. “I’m a man.” He moved toward the sofa running along the wall dividing the bedroom from the parlor/office part of the suite.

  “One and the same—is that it?”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I’m sorry to say, I do.” Julia’s mood turned grim as she thought of Yakima Henry and her younger sister, Emma.

  “You know—I think John Clare might be a little above the norm.” Kosgrove sat on the couch and, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, held the cup to his lips with both of his small, thick hands. He wore a gold ring on his right pinky, which he extended with improbable daintiness as he sipped. Hugh Kosgrove was many things, but he was not a dainty man. “I hope you’re taking his fawning seriously.”

  John Clare Hopkins was a business associate of Kosgrove’s—a dapper, handsome Englishman in his thirties who had so much family money that he could travel around the world amusing himself by speculating in various business ventures, including gold mines and railroads and such. He’d helped Hugh out of a tight spot when the older man had gotten himself in dire financial straits with some risky investments.

  Hopkins seemed to like Hugh immensely. He resided here in Apache Springs for what seemed the sole purpose of drinking and carousing and gambling with Julia’s adventurous and charismatic father. He owned interests in several businesses, including the Conquistador Hotel as well as the mine, but Julia was still under the impression that John Clare Hopkins remained here in this relative jerkwater because he so enjoyed her father. In fact, he fawned over the shorter, older, louder man like the adoring son Hugh had never had.

  Ignoring her father’s comment concerning the attentions Hopkins also paid Julia, she changed the subject to the one she’d come here for: “What do you have on Yakima Henry?”

  Chapter 5

  “How do you know about that?” Hugh Kosgrove asked.

  “I just do. What is it? What’s the big secret?”

  Kosgrove took another sip of his coffee then sank back in the sofa. He set the coffee on a knee. “He killed a deputy marshal up in Kansas.”

  “Why?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might.”

  “All that matters is he killed a federal lawman, Julia. He has a federal warrant as well as a two-thousand-dollar bounty on his head.” Kosgrove scowled, shook his red-faced head with his red jowls and piercing blue eyes. “Why are we talking about him? You can’t have feelings for that man, Julia. You can’t!”

  Looking miserable, Kosgrove set his coffee on the table before him, rose, and ambled over to where his daughter stood in front of the window. She was an inch or two taller than her father, though he was a good bit thicker and wider. He reached up and gently caressed her cheek with the back of his plump, beringed hand.

  “Julia, look at you. You’re a beautiful woman. The spitting image of your dear ma. You can have any man you want!”

  Gazing down at the ugly little man with the fiery Irish gaze, Julia gave an ironic curl of her mouth. Hugh of course didn’t recognize the irony in the fact that Julia’s mother had married him, the brass Irish penguin, despite that she probably had the pick of several litters herself. But, the
n, of course Hugh didn’t see Yakima Henry as a handsome man. He saw only his red skin. He saw a savage. When he imagined his daughter and Yakima together, he likely pictured several half-breed children running around, yipping like coyotes.

  Julia suppressed another smile. For some reason, the image amused her. She thought that she could be very happy bearing Yakima Henry’s children. A whole litter of them. The idea of the big, half-wild man’s seed taking root in her womb brought a flush to her face.

  She turned to the window, giving her father her back.

  Kosgrove placed a hand on her shoulder. “I have three words for you, my beauty: John Clare Hopkins.”

  “It’s not that I’m not attracted to Mister Hopkins, Pa.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Julia crossed her arms on her breasts that she felt coming alive with desire. “I love him, Pa.”

  “Well, that’s just silly!” Kosgrove gave an angry wail and walked back over to the sofa and sank into it. He scrubbed a hand over his unshaven face and swollen jowls. “Lord in Heaven—what did I do to you two girls to treat me this way? First you marry a…a local lawman…”

  “Lon was a good man, Pa!”

  “Oh, hell—I know that. Yes, yes, Lon Taggart was a very good man. But he was a lawman, honey. He was never going to amount to much—may God rest his soul,” Kosgrove added in his own obligatory nod to decorum.

  Julia gave a frustrated groan and turned to face the old man, balling her fists at her sides. Before she could lash into him, professing the higher morality of character over money, her father continued with: “And then you fall for a half-breed. Another lawman! A half-breed lawman who killed a deputy U.S. marshal in Kansas! Not only that, but your sister has fallen for the same damn rock-worshipper!”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Julia pressed her hands to her temples, feeling as though her head were about to explode. “I have to get out of here!”

  Keeping her hands to her head, she made her way to the door.