Arroyo de la Muerte

by Frank Leslie

  Galveston just stared at him, holding the heavy key and ring against his chest, lower jaw hanging, his eyes as wide and round as two full moons. “I don’t…I don’t…”

  “I’m gonna get good an’ drunk. You keep me in here, understand? No matter how I demand and threaten you to let me out, you keep me right here. Do I make myself clear?”

  “No, no…I don’t…”

  “When I get drunk, I tend to get wild-crazy-mean. I’ve been known to destroy one saloon and go onto the next and the next until there’s nothing left but smoke and cinders down a whole down block. I don’t want to do that here. So you keep me right here until I’ve got my wolf back on its leash.” Yakima took a deep pull from the bottle, then another. Scrubbing his forearm across his mouth, he said, “Oh…and kid?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t take it to heart.”

  “Don’t…don’t, uh…don’t take what to heart, M-Marshal Henry?”

  “Don’t take to heart the things I’ll say to you when my wolf is runnin’ free and wild, all right? I won’t mean any of it. Most of all, you keep a good hold of those keys and my gun and knife. Don’t let ‘em get closer to me than that desk.”

  Galveston looked and sounded miserable. “Yak…Marshal…Marshal Henry—I just don’t understand.”

  “That’s all right.” Yakima sat down on the cot and picked up the bottle he’d already started on. “You don’t have to understand anything except the importance of keeping that door locked and any and all weapons far away from me. At least, till tomorrow. I’ll probably have a collar on my wild side by sunup.”

  Yakima raised the bottle. “Salute, kid!”

  Chapter 8

  Emma Kosgrove, aka the Wildcat of the Sierra Estrada, dropped her tin coffee cup with a start.

  It landed with a ping between her boots. She kicked dirt on her small fire then, grabbing her Winchester carbine from where it leaned against a rock beside her, threw herself backward off the rock she’d been sitting on.

  She rolled onto her belly and rose to her knees, quietly pumping a cartridge into the rifle’s action. Staying low, she stared off through the chaparral, in the direction from which she’d heard a mule bray. Her buckskin gave a startled whinny where it stood tied to a picket pin behind her.

  She sucked a sharp breath through her teeth, cursing. At the same time, she spied movement in the bristling chaparral and rocks before her. Hooves thudded. Suddenly, the movement stopped, and a man’s voice said, “You hear that, Pa?”

  Another, older man’s voice said, “I did, indeed.”

  Emma cursed again. Heart drumming against her breastbone, she heaved herself to her feet and strode quickly through the brush toward the trail that led down from the tableland and into the canyon she’d vowed she’d protect at all costs. As she closed in on the trail, she saw two wagons stopped on it, a beefy mule in the traces of the first one, two stouter, younger mules hitched to the second one. The first mule wore a battered sombrero with holes cut for its ears.

  An old man wearing a shabby, dusty opera hat and a beefy young blond boy sat in the driver’s box of the first wagon. Two young men manned the second wagon. Emma recognized one of the two as the scrawny stringbean named Rusty Tull. The other was Rusty’s cousin, Cash Bundren—tall and lean and with brown hair under a palm-leaf sombrero so battered and sun-bleached that it might have been taken off the body of some old Mexican prospector who’d died in the desert long ago, his body devoured by hawks and coyotes.

  The old man driving the first wagon was Collie Bundren, who leaned forward over his knees, the single, old mule’s leather ribbons in his gloved hands. The stocky blond boy beside him was his son Dewey, Cash’s younger brother. They were all staring cautiously toward the slender, buxom, flaxen-haired twenty-year-old woman striding toward them, aiming her brush-scarred Winchester carbine at them. The tails of Emma’s black duster buffeted around her long, slender legs clad in wash-worn gray denim that clung to her fine body like a second skin.

  Old Collie Bundren reached for the Sharps rifle leaning against the driver’s seat between him and Dewey. Emma fired a round, blowing old Bundren’s dusty black opera hat off his head, setting free the worm-like curls of his gray hair to glisten in the brassy light.

  “Bad decision, old man!” Emma chided the man as she stepped onto the edge of the trail.

  “Pa, it’s that girl!” Dewey exclaimed, his expression an odd combination of fearful exasperation and a weird male delight at seeing the pretty, wild blonde whom he’d seen before in Yakima Henry’s office in Apache Springs. Emma was not so unaware of her charms…nor so humble…that she did not realize that to these men she was probably the manifestation of an erotic apparition from a young man’s restless dreams, appearing as she had out of nowhere in this dry, hot, colorless desert.

  From an old man’s restless dreams, also, she thought, glancing again at old Collie Bundren.

  Emma had met the Bundrens when Collie and his two sons, Cash and Dewey, had come to Apache Springs to meet their nephews and cousins, Rusty and Chickasaw. Only, by the time the Bundrens had arrived in town, Chickasaw was dead and young Rusty was locked up in one of Yakima’s jail cells for his own protection. Emma had found Rusty in the desert, near the canyon. Chickasaw had lain dead nearby. It had appeared the older Tull brother had stabbed himself to death, ripping out his own innards in a mad frenzy to release some vile creature inside him—perhaps the rattlesnake he and Rusy had both eaten that night in a stew.

  The sudden, horrific violence--not to mention the scene of the snake slithering out of his older brother’s lifeless body--had left Rusty in shock and speechless, in a state of utter helplessness. Or nearly speechless, anyway. When Emma had found him, all the young, rusty-headed kid had been able to say was: “Snake…snake…snake…” Yakima had locked him up so he couldn’t hurt himself.

  Emma had learned that the two brothers, Rusty and Chickasaw, had discovered the old church in the mysterious canyon, and they’d begun looting some of the church’s untold wealth in the form of gold and ancient Spanish bullion. Doing so, they’d become the victims of the curse of a long-dead Apache witch who’d vowed death and destruction to anyone who looted the gold from the church and the canyon, which Emma had privately dubbed Arroyo de la Muerte, the Canyon of Death.

  Her old, now-dead friend, Jesus, had shared with her the canyon’s story, for Jesus, whom Emma had found living in the canyon, had been one of several generations of ancient Apache slave descendants who’d given their lives to protect the secret of the Apache gold, living out their lives in that very canyon. Jesus was the last of his people. He’d died when a rattlesnake had slithered into his bed one night for warmth, and hadn’t liked the company.

  According to Jesus, the gold was considered sacred by the ancient Apaches, for it had been mined by the witch’s own people—local Apaches enslaved by the vile Jesuit priests who’d come to this country several hundred years ago to plunder the desert for its rich gold deposits. When an earthquake had destroyed the mines and killed hordes of innocent Apache slaves, the witch had placed a curse on the gold.

  And a curse on anyone who found that wealth and tried to gain by it—to prosper off the sweat and blood…off the lives…of the generations of enslaved and brutalized Apaches who’d mined it.

  Emma had no doubt that Chickasaw had paid for looting the church with his life, and that the curse would spread and more and more would die if the church continued to be ransacked for its blood-stained, misery-besotted riches.

  “Yeah, it’s her from town!” said Cash Bundren in the second wagon. “What the hell you doin’ out here, Missy? Put that gun down! You take a shot at my pa again, an’ I’ll--”

  He stopped abruptly when Emma swung the rifle toward him, keeping her cheek pressed up against the Winchester’s rear stock, narrowing one cool hazel eye as she aimed down the barrel, drawing a bead on his sun-burned forehead below the sombrero’s brim. Cash Bundren wore no shirt, only suspenders holding gr
easy broadcloth trousers up on his skinny hips. He was as dark as a Mexican, and he had a thin, patchy beard and one half-crossed, crazy-looking eye. He was an ugly, rat-faced kid around Emma’s age.

  “Trash,” Emma said, flaring a nostril as she continued drawing the bead on Cash’s forehead. “Ugly, Southern, hillbilly trash. I oughta just kill all four of you right now!”

  “Bahh!” Cash cried, lifting both hands and scrubbing his hat off his head as though by doing so he was removing the Winchester’s sights. “Don’t aim that long gun at me, by god, or I’ll paddle your behind you little whore!”

  “Whore is it?” Emma grinned icily.

  The old man, Collie Bundren, must have seen Emma’s index finger start to squeeze the carbine’s trigger, for he raised both his arms, waving them broadly and yelling, “Hey-hey-hey! Eeezeee, now! Easy, Miss, uh…Miss…Miss Kosgrove, was it?”

  Emma slid the rifle back to the elder Bundren, a horse-faced man with sun-burned, hollow cheeks carpeted in several days’ worth of beard stubble the color of iron filings.

  “It still is,” Emma said.

  “Easy, now, Miss Kosgrove. There’s no reason to shoot anyone here. We’re no threat to you.”

  Ignoring the man, Emma lowered the rifle slightly and turned her enraged eyes to Dusty Tull sitting in the second wagon’s driver’s seat, on the other side of Cash Bundren. Dusty gazed at Emma warily, skeptically, stretching his thick lips back from his large teeth in a grimace against the sun. He wore no hat, and his patched denims and linsey-woolsey tunic were virtual rags. He was like a human scarecrow sitting in the rickety looking second wagon. No doubt more than a little soft in the head, to boot.

  “Looks like you must’ve got your memory back—eh, Dusty?” Emma said, her voice pitched with cold accusing.

  Dusty’s scowl deepened, carving deep lines across his high, dome-like forehead. “Who’re you?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  Cash cackled out a sleazy laugh, speaking to Dusty but keeping his oily eyes on Emma. On her shirt, primarily. “How can you forget that, cousin?”

  “That will be enough of that kind of farm talk, Cash!” Collie Bundren reprimanded his oldest boy. “You mind the way you were raised and treat the fairer sex with the proper respect they deserve or I will beat the hide off your behind!” He switched his gaze back to Emma. “Now, then, Miss Kosgrove--how can we be of help to you today?”

  “You can be of help to me…and to yourselves…by turning those contraptions around and riding the hell out of here. Forget what you know about that canyon.” Emma canted her head to her left, indicating the arroyo dropping away below them. It didn’t look like a canyon from here, but only a boulder-choked gorge or dry wash. That’s why hardly anyone knew about the canyon and why no one ever found it by anything other than accident, as Emma had herself nearly three years ago now, meeting old Jesus, who’d dwelled in the canyon alone for years, only a year or so before he died.

  That’s likely how Dusty and his brother Chickasaw had discovered it, too, damn their blasted hides…

  Now she realized that the reason she’d lost the Bundrens’ and Dusty’s trail was because, likely having seen how much treasure was in the church, they’d returned to town for the second wagon and the two stout mules.

  “I don’t understand,” said Collie Bundren. “We are merely on a little exploratory expedition, following the geologic indications downslope toward what we hope are some promising looking quartz deposits. A river appears to have passed through here--years ago, of course--possibly washing good color into those rocks, an’--”

  “Bullshit.”

  Bundren scowled, his hollow cheeks pinkening. “Say, now, that’s no way for a lady to talk. Who raised you, child?”

  “I was raised by wolves, some say. And you, Mister Bundren, are a bald-faced liar.”

  Bundren’s eyes blazed. “Why, I oughtta climb down off this wagon, cut a switch, and tan your bare bottom!”

  “Can I do it, Pa?” laughed Cash.

  “Stay out of this, boy!” Bundren straightened up on his wagon seat, and puffed out his cheeks. “Where we come from, ladies don’t talk like that.”

  Emma gave a caustic laugh. “I don’t care how ladies talk where you come from, Bundren. You make one move in my direction, I’ll blow you through the smoking gates.” She stood holding the Winchester in one hand, the butt propped against her nicely curved hip. “And you take one more step down this trail and into that canyon yonder, I’ll also blow you through the smoking gates and into the smoking butane rivers beyond!”

  “What is wrong with her, Pa?” asked Dewey Bundren, staring at Emma in wide-eyed exasperation.

  “Vile creature,” said the old man, wrinkling a nostril distastefully at the girl. “Pure vile. Thinks she owns this desert, she does.”

  Emma turned to Dusty. “You don’t remember me?”

  Dusty wagged his head. “Purely I don’t, Miss.”

  “You remember what happened to your brother?”

  “I…” Dusty turned his befuddled gaze to his uncle sitting in the wagon ahead of him. “I guess it was sunstroke. Or maybe that snake we ate had a sickness.”

  “That what he told you?” Emma cut her eyes to the old man.

  Dusty didn’t seem to know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He just sat there beside Cash, staring at Emma as though he was trying to read something written in a foreign language.

  She turned again to the old man. “You don’t understand what you’re messin’ in here, Bundren. You got no idea.”

  “Yes, I do.” Bundren smiled with satisfaction. “I take it you know as well as I do. You’ve seen it--haven’t you, Miss Kosgrove?”

  “I have.”

  “You have no claim on it, I take it. If you had, you’d have taken the treasure by now.”

  “My only claim on that treasure is to protect it. You see, Mister Bundren, that treasure is cursed. If you take gold out of that canyon, the curse will spread and infect us all. All of Apache Springs. Who knows? Maybe the entire territory. Hell, it might even take over the whole damn world! Just depends on how powerful the old witch was, I reckon. Old Jesus said her spirit still lives here. She’s likely watchin’ us right now!”

  They all just stared at Emma, blank-faced.

  Cash Bundren turned to his father. “She’s addlepated, Pa.”

  “Likely the sun,” said the elder Bundren. “Too many days and nights alone out in the desert. You’ve been tracking us for a while now—haven’t you, Miss Kosgrove?”

  “Several days. I lost your trail a day and a half ago, so I thought I’d camp out here on the lip of the canyon on the off-chance Dusty remembered the route back down to the church, and you came this way.”

  “And lo and behold he did.” Collie Bundren smiled broadly. It appeared an odd expression for his horsey face to make. Not at all an attractive one. “Two days ago, Dusty woke up from a long night’s slumber an’ started talkin’ so’s we couldn’t shut him up. He remembered the canyon, the church, but nothin’ much after his brother died…God bless the young man’s soul.” He glanced at Dusty and added as though for comfort: “You can rest easy in the knowledge that Chickasaw is in a better place, nephew.”

  Dusty looked back at him dully and did not respond. He looked a little like he’d been on a bender and didn’t have all his marbles back in their rightful pockets yet. He had remembered the old church in the canyon, though, damn his hide…

  Collie Bundren turned to Emma. “What in the name of God are you planning to do with that rifle, girl?”

  Emma stared back at him. She looked down at the rifle; she opened and closed her right gloved hand around the neck, her thumb caressing the cocked hammer.

  Good question, she thought.

  Chapter 9

  Gazing shrewdly at Emma, Collie Bundren fingered the steel-colored beard stubble on his chin.

  He said, “Perhaps we can work something out, Miss Kosgrove. I mean, I
’ve seen the church.” A greedy smile twitched across his thin, chapped lips. “There’s more than enough treasure. We can cut you in, let you have what we don’t take. I figured we’d fill both wagons with what’s easy enough to load and carry, and leave the rest. I mean, how much money can the four of us spend? There’s millions and millions of dollars’ worth of loot in there.”

  The old man was breaking out in a sweat just thinking and talking about the amount of wealth he’d seen in the church. His eyes glittered as though reflecting the unseen gold. His lids drew down and his pupils dilated. He looked like a man about to be overtaken by paroxysms.

  “Two wagon-loads would do us all for the rest of our lives,” he continued. “All that I ask is you don’t tell anyone else about the church until we’re out of here, on the way to California to see about exchanging the loot for…”

  He let his voice trail off when he saw Emma shaking her head and pursing her lips. She too was sweating. Not from the heat or from thoughts of untold wealth but from the images of utter devastation caroming through her mind.

  “I can’t let you do it, Bundren.”

  “You can’t stop us, you silly fool!” scolded Cash.

  “Yes, I can.”

  “No, she can’t—can she, Pa?” Dewey asked Collie.

  “I ask you again,” Collie Bundren said slowly, mildly, shrewdly. “What are you going to do with that Winchester, Miss Kosgrove? Are you going to shoot all four of us? Are you going to kill us in cold blood?”

  Dewey looked up at his father again and said in a hushed, fearful voice: “She won’t—will she, Pa?”

  For a few seconds, Emma considered it. That’s what she should do. But when she imagined shooting Collie Bundren out of his wagon, and then the boy, Dewey, and then Cash and Dusty, as well, her knees stiffened up and her hands began to shake. Revulsion filled her belly like a quart of bad milk.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill this old man and these young men in cold blood. For the life of her, she couldn’t do it though she could practically hear old Jesus calling down from Heaven to her: “Do it, Emma! Kill them! Disparales!”