Arroyo de la Muerte

by Frank Leslie

  “No.” Yakima turned away, mounted the brush-roofed gallery fronting the adobe brick jailhouse and kicked open the partly open door, glad to see the four cells lined up along the back wall empty. Galveston had likely collected the fines of the drunks he’d hauled in last night, and let them go. Good. Yakima wanted a little peace and quiet and a cup of coffee. Later, he’d head over to the doctor’s place to check on the Rio Grande Kid.

  He grabbed a blue-speckled pan and a washcloth off the copper-topped wash stand, walked back out onto the gallery, and grunted in frustration to see Julia standing before him, just outside the door. He dunked the pan in the water barrel on the stoop’s left side then turned and tramped back into the office.

  He set the pan on the desk which faced out from the left wall, flanked by a map of Arizona Territory as well as the thirty-eight starred red-white-and-blue. The office remained pretty much as Julia’s dead husband, Marshal Lon Taggart, had left it when he’d been killed by outlaws before Julia and Yakima’s own eyes, the half-breed having been locked up at the time that viciousness had occurred.

  Yakima sagged into the swivel Windsor chair behind the desk, opened the desk’s bottom drawer, and pulled out a whiskey bottle.

  In the periphery of his vision, he watched Julia enter the office stiffly, hesitantly, and stop a few feet in front of the door. Yakima dumped a quarter of the whiskey into the water then soaked a wash cloth in the whiskey-laced water, and wrung it out with both hands.

  “I talked to my father,” Julia said, squeezing her hands together.

  Yakima pulled his shirt out of his pants. He lifted the tail and peered under it at the bloody wound about six inches above his cartridge belt. He ripped the shirt open, laying his belly bare, then lifted the bottle to his lips, taking a healthy pull.

  “I know all about the lawman in Kansas,” Julia said, glancing at the hard, flat, copper slab of his belly.

  Yakima took another long pull from the whiskey, set the bottle down on the desk.

  “I don’t care,” Julia said.

  “Well, you should.” Yakima dabbed the rag at the ragged tear in his flesh. The bullet had nipped him, digging about a half inch of flesh out of his side. He’d lost flesh in nearly the exact place before, and it had grown back. It would grow back again, adding another knotty lair to the twisted white scar.

  Yakima sucked a sharp breath as he dabbed the rag at the wound again, a little harder this time, trying to mop up the half-dried blood masking a layer of gooier stuff.

  Julia walked quickly around the desk. “Here—let me!”

  “No!” His voice thundered around the small, adobe-walled, earthen-floored office.

  She withdrew, stomped a foot in frustration, and gave her back to Yakima, crossing her arms on her breasts and gazing down at the floor.

  Yakima wrung the bloody rag out in the now-bloody water and continued working on the wound, taking another sip of the whiskey, not wanting to get drunk because he knew what often happened when he over-indulged—his wolf would break its leash and run wild, howling—but wanting only to dull the pain. He wished Julia would leave. She wasn’t helping his agony any. She aggravated it.

  He needed to pull his picket pin. This couldn’t be a permanent home for him. He should have known that. A man with his violent past could never have a permanent home. He could never get this involved. Fall in love with another woman.

  Well, he knew it well enough now…

  Julia turned around to face him again. Her cheeks were touched with red and one eye was slightly crossed in barely contained anger. “Why is Emma always riding into the desert and staying out there for days?”

  Yakima didn’t say anything. He continued dabbing at the wound.

  She tapped a foot on the floor. “Is she meeting you at the old rattlesnake nest you have out there in the Javelina Bluffs?”

  “Yes,” he said, the lie biting at him even more painfully now than the bullet burn. At least, he hadn’t met Emma out there recently. He used to meet her out there, but he hadn’t met her since he’d fallen in love with Julia several months ago now. “I’m sorry, Julia. I really am. I just couldn’t help myself.”

  Fury sparked in her eyes. She lunged forward, pulling her right fist back behind her. Crouching, she heaved the fist forward and slammed it into Yakima’s left side—right smack dab in the dead center of his bullet burn. She gave an enraged wail and said, “There! Think about that the next time you meet that desert whore of yours!”

  She wheeled and strode, chin up, toward the door. She stopped with a gasp when a stocky figure shadowed the open doorway.

  “Now, that’s what I like to see!” Hugh Kosgrove threw his head back, slitting his blue eyes as he laughed his cackling, raspy laugh, his ruddy cheeks turning bright red. He held a half-smoked stogie between the index finger and thumb of his right hand, and the smoke was perfuming the somewhat pent up air of the jail office.

  “Pa!” Julia shrilled.

  Kosgrove stepped back and to one side, throwing an arm down and out, making way for his enraged oldest daughter. Flushed with humiliation, Julia lunged forward again to stride on out the door, down the steps and into the street, heading back in the direction of the Conquistador.

  Yakima had lurched forward out of his chair. He knelt on one knee, pressing his left hand and the wadded cloth to his wound, which felt as though it had just been doused with kerosene and set aflame. He could feel the bite of Julia’s punch all the way to his toes and to the hair at the top of his head.

  Chuckling his seedy laugh, Kosgrove strode into the office, puffing on the cigar. “I’ll be damned if she finally didn’t actually listen to her old man. This a red-letter day for me, Henry. A red-letter day. Hah!”

  “Gotta admit,” Yakima choked out, bowing his head as he continued pressing the cloth to the wound, grinding his molars, “she packs one hell of a punch. You teach her that?”

  “Nah. Prob’ly Emma. I used to worry about Emma around my miners until one grabbed her tit one day and she dislocated his jaw. Haven’t worried since!” Kosgrove laughed. He was leaning against the wall near the wash stand, facing Yakima and puffing the cigar, the expression of unabashed delight slow to fade from his features. “I been worried about Julia around the drunken jakes at the hotel, but now I see I don’t need to worry about her anymore, either. How you feelin’?”

  “I’ve felt better.”

  “She couldn’t have hit you that hard!”

  “She smacked me where a bullet kissed me about an hour ago.”

  “Oh, lordy—now, I’m even more impressed. She knows right where to land a punch!”

  Yakima scowled up at the fat little, red-faced Irishman all decked out in his three-piece, dark-green walrus suit with a metallic brown waistcoat and glistening gold watch chain and claw-hammer coat. He came complete with a bowler hat the same brown as the vest. “You have every right to be impressed, Kosgrove,” the lawman said. “Quite a gal, quite a gal. Any father would be right proud to have sired such a pole-cat. But I’d admire like hell if you’d take your delight and delight in it elsewhere. I’d like to caterwaul in private.”

  “She’s not the daughter I came over here for. I didn’t know Julia was over here.”

  Yakima drew a breath and managed to gather enough strength to lift himself up off the floor and settle back into his chair. “Oh?” he said tightly, the pain slow to give ground. “Well, then…to what…do I owe the privilege?” He took a quick swig from the bottle, then another.

  Kosgrove studied him through the smoke puffing in front of his face as he took several more deep drags off the stogie. “What happened?”

  Yakima drew a breath. “Huh?”

  “Who shot you, Henry? I believe I saw you ride in earlier with a couple of racks of fresh meat strapped to a couple of horses. I take it you’re not market hunting these days…?”

  “No, that was human beef. Good eye, Kosgrove.” Yakima turned to him sidelong, relieved to note a slight easing of the pain in his si
de. “Gabrielle Mankiller and Domando Guzman stuck a pig sticker in the back of Julian Barnes.”

  “Oh?”

  “Ain’t that’s somethin’?” Yakima took another pull off the bottle. The whiskey filed a little sharpness from the bite in his side.

  “It is somethin’,” Kosgrove said, now standing with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his waistcoat, regarding Yakima darkly from the shadows just inside the door, silhouetted by the bright sunlight pouring down behind his stocky, portly, garishly clad figure.

  Yakima dipped the cloth in the water bowl again. “I wonder why those two would go after Barnes. Doesn’t seem like their style—to go after an important man like that…in a whorehouse…just for what they could find in his pockets. They must have figured on a larger payout elsewhere.” He slid a dubious eye toward the wealthy businessman once more. “Wouldn’t you think so?”

  The Irish walrus sounded indignant as he puffed up his chest and said, “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m sayin’.” Yakima wrung out the cloth. “Didn’t he hornswoggle you out of a tidy sum awhile back?”

  “Huh?”

  “I heard from somebody…I forget who…that you and Barnes were in business together…till you had a falling out over money. They said he tricked you into making a shaky investment in a mine or some such…that he knew it was tricky…and that you ended up holding an empty sack while he came out flusher than before he went in. You didn’t lose all that much in the deal, overall, but it piss-burned you because he made you look stupid. That have any truth in it or am I blowing hot air?”

  “If you’re suggesting I sicced those two pole-cats on Barnes, you’re blowing hot air. If I wanted Barnes dead, I’d hire better men than those two scurvy dogs, and he’d be dead. Believe me.”

  “All right.”

  “Why is my daughter spending so much time out in the desert?”

  Ah, Yakima thought. Now we get down to what lured him over to the wrong side of the tracks.

  Chapter 7

  “Oh, hell.” Yakima took another pull from the bottle.

  “Tell me, dammit.” Kosgrove took two waddling steps forward, moving into the light from a window near Yakima’s desk, his blue eyes glinting with anger, his puffy cheeks like two red apples. “What’s going on out there? She’s gone more than she’s home. At first, I thought she was spending time in town with Julia, but Julia put the kibosh to that notion.”

  Yakima dabbed at the wound, which Julia had opened up again, bless her heart. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he enjoyed the pain. It took his mind off his mental misery over having lost another chance to find love, to find a place to settle down finally, a place to grow old in, to die in. A cemetery plot beside a woman he’d spent thirty or forty years with…

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Julia thinks you know.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “Stop runnin’ me around the Joshua tree, dammit! What is my daughter doing out there? Is she keeping house with you…in that old shack of yours?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  Yakima looked at the man. He studied him critically. He wanted to tell him that Emma was spending most of her time out in the desert watching over the old church in the mysterious canyon, to keep anyone from looting the treasure the ancient church contained, but he couldn’t do it. Part of him had suspected that old Kosgrove himself knew about it, and was biding his time, planning on ransacking it soon.

  But now Yakima knew that wasn’t true. Kosgrove wasn’t that good at hiding what was in his soul. Everything in his conniving head was all right there in those eerily blue eyes hazed by the webbing smoke from his cigar.

  “I got no damned idea, Kosgrove. Now, get the hell out of here!”

  “You have a guilty look.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  Yakima took another pull from the bottle then got to work, climbing up out of his chair and scouring the cluttered shelves of the office for an old shirt—a relatively clean one. When he found what he was looking for, he tore the sleeves off the shirt, folded it up tightly, placed a whiskey-soaked poultice over the wound, then wrapped the bandage over it. He tied it tightly, knotting it over the bullet burn; it made a small bulge.

  The exertion fatigued him, the whiskey-soaked poultice burning, biting him deep. He fell back into his chair and looked up to see Kosgrove grinning down at him, the mischievous light having returned to his malevolent little eyes.

  “You still here?” Yakima growled.

  “I was just enjoying your pain.” The businessman puffed his cigar.

  “Well, now that you’ve enjoyed it, you may take your leave.”

  “Your pain is just beginning, Henry. If you don’t haul your freight out of my town, the pain will get much worse for you.”

  “I’ll leave when I’m ready.”

  “Julia knows about you. You can’t have her—not that you ever could have had her. Why not leave now…before I wire the U.S. Marshal’s office in Prescott? Why let this get messy, Henry? I don’t want to have to call in the marshals.” Kosgrove threw out his hands. “Just leave. You can make this very simple for all of us!”

  Anger burned up from the nasty grief in Yakima’s left side. He hardened his jaws at the old man standing like an over-dressed walrus before his desk, slammed a fist onto the desk, and bellowed, “Get the hell out of my office before I blow your head off, Kosgrove!”

  Kosgrove’s eyes flared anew. He glanced toward the window, wondering if anyone had heard the tone in which one of his inferiors had addressed him. “You can’t talk to me that way!”

  Smiling, Yakima released the keeper thong from over the hammer of his stag-gripped .44. He slid the heavy piece from its holster thonged low on his right thigh, and aimed it out over the desk, slanting it upward as he drew a bead on the center of Kosgrove’s forehead, just below the narrow brim of the man’s bowler hat.

  Kosgrove laughed. Don’t think I’m afraid of you, you half-breed bum!

  Fury coursed through every vein and artery in Yakima’s large, husky body. It made his ears ring and his eyes throb. It didn’t matter where you went, how far you climbed--if your skin owned a definite copper tint and your hair was as black as a Colorado mountain midnight, people would always see the Indian in you first. And last.

  To them, you were no more than a dog. A half-wild dog, in Yakima’s case. Even more frightening.

  Staring into the big half-breed marshal’s hard jade eyes, Kosgrove must have realized his mistake. Wariness touched his own gaze a half-second before the Colt bucked and roared in Yakima’s hand.

  “Ach!” Kosgrove stumbled backward against the wall by the door, brushing his left hand across his ear. He looked at the hand and glared in astonishment at Yakima still holding the smoking Colt in his big, clenched, copper fist. “You did it! You shot me!”

  He held out his little paw to display the blood on it.

  Kosgrove brushed his ear once more. Again, his fist came away with blood from the little notch Yakima had drilled through the outside of the oversized appendage. A scarlet blood drop dribbled down that ear toward the lobe.

  Yakima smiled savagely up at the man—through the smoke from Kosgrove’s cigar as well as the powder smoke Yakima had added to the haze. “Get out.”

  The quiet mildness in his voice belied the savagery of his gaze.

  Kosgrove wheeled quickly for such a cumbersome man, and, cursing under his breath, wheezing with anxiety and rage, he clambered out the door and down the porch steps. The thunder of quick boots replaced the harried taps and scrapes of the old man’s shoes on the porch, and a second later Galveston Penny poked his head into the office, his eyes wide and white-ringed.

  He held one of his own fancy new Colts in his right hand.

  “Wha--?” the kid gasped. He glanced over his shoulder at Kosgrove still negotiating his clumsy way across the busy, dusty street. “What the hell?”

  “Just
took a notch out of that old ramrod’s ear for him.” Yakima grinned as he holstered the Colt. “Somethin’ to remember this low-down, dirty, good-for-nothin’ half-breed by.”

  Lower jaw hanging, Galveston turned his head to look toward Kosgrove once more. When he turned his head back to Yakima, the lawman said, “Run over to Hole 39 and fetch me a bottle of their cheapest rye.” Yakima held the bottle he’d been drinking out of up to the window. “Ain’t much left in this one.”

  “There’s a whole two thirds of it left.”

  “That’s not enough.” Yakima flipped a silver dollar through the air. Lunging, Galveston caught the coin against his chest. “Run, boy!”

  When the kid had hustled on out the door, Yakima sat back in his chair, sucking on the bottle. His mind was racing. He was angry and feeling sorry for himself by turns. He’d outstayed his welcome here in Apache Springs. He loved a woman but couldn’t have her because of the color of his skin and the wildness of his ways.

  Another home, gone. Another woman, lost.

  He wasn’t leaving because Hugh Kosgrove had ordered him out of town. He was leaving because Apache Springs had become a box canyon. He faced a rock wall. There was only one way out—the same way he’d come in.

  He held up the bottle again, stared at the level of the whiskey.

  First things first.

  When Galveston returned with a fresh bottle, Yakima rose from his chair. He removed his cartridge belt and Colt and sheathed bowie knife from around his waist. He coiled the belt around the holstered Colt and the knife, and laid the works on the desk.

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna get drunk.”

  “Huh?”

  Yakima picked up both bottles and walked into one of the jail cells running along the office’s back wall. He set the bottles on the lone chair in the cell then drew the door closed with a heavy steel bang! He twisted the key in the lock, tossed the key to Galveston, and stared pointedly through the bars at the young man.

  “You hold onto that until I’m back on my leash, understand?”