Langston nodded. “We weren’t hit. But I don’t see how, with all that lead flying around!”
“Hitting a moving target is a lot more difficult than some people make it out to be,” Luke said with a faint smile. “And sometimes there’s a great deal of luck involved, too. I’d say that luck was on our side today.”
“Ain’t no denyin’ that,” Pierce rasped from the driver’s seat. “Dietrich damn near choked me to death, that no-good varmint.”
“He paid the price for that and all his other sins,” Luke said as he looked back at the ragged, bloody remains of Milton Dietrich. Sometimes all the money and power in the world didn’t matter a damned bit, he thought.
Hobie was still holding Jessica. He saw where Luke was looking and asked, “Do we have to take what’s left of him on to Moss City with us?”
“What, and cheat the buzzards out of a good meal?” Luke asked.
They all agreed. If anyone back in Boston wondered what had become of Milton Dietrich, it was best to let them wonder. After the scavengers were done with what was left of Dietrich, no one would ever be sure who he was or what had happened to him.
Dietrich’s disappearance somewhere in the West would just be . . . a mystery.
When the stagecoach reached Moss City later that day, Jim Pierce reported to the local stationmaster that Banty Sinclair and Sinclair’s two sons were dead, apparently murdered by unknown outlaws who had raided the way station and then tried to waylay the stagecoach. That was true enough, in its own way. No one knew who had pulled the triggers when the three men were gunned down.
Luke hoped the killers had met their own ends during the battles at the canyon or in the hills.
Pierce blamed his hoarse voice on an illness, and the stationmaster told him to see the doctor. Another driver and shotgun guard would be taking the coach on the next leg of its journey to California, starting bright and early the next morning.
Luke got a hotel room and cleaned up, glad for the chance to do so without anybody shooting at him. He had lost track of Hobie, but assumed the young man was with Jessica or somewhere close by her, wherever she was.
The hotel had a decent dining room, and that evening Luke was carving his way through a thick steak when Hobie came in, glanced around the room, and spotted him. The young man had cleaned up and changed clothes, too. He took his hat off and walked across the room toward Luke.
When he reached the table, Luke gestured toward one of the empty chairs. “Why don’t you join me?”
“Sorry, Luke, but I, uh, can’t. I’m supposed to meet Jessica in a little while and have supper with her. She’s staying at the Sunset House.”
That was the other hotel in Moss City, a little nicer than the one where Luke had taken a room. He patted his lips with a napkin. “All right, but you look like you have something to tell me. You can sit down long enough to do that, anyway.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” Hobie pulled out the chair and sank into it. “Jess and I have been talking about her plans now that Dietrich’s dead.”
“Jess,” Luke repeated, smiling. “From the sound of that, the two of you have gotten pretty friendly in a hurry.”
“Yeah, bein’ in the middle of a hell of a lot of trouble together will do that, I reckon.”
“Is she going back to Boston?”
Hobie shook his head. “No, she’s decided she wants to go on to California, anyway. Her brother’s still the only family she has left.”
“That makes sense,” Luke said with a nod. “I think it’s a good decision.”
Hobie took a deep breath. “And I’m going with her.” He rushed the words out as if he were afraid he couldn’t say them if he didn’t.
Luke just sat there, still smiling slightly.
“Well?” Hobie demanded. “Aren’t you going to try to talk me out of it?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well . . . well, you and me are partners! We set out to bring in Gunner Kelly and Dog Eater!”
“If you remember correctly,” Luke said, “we didn’t exactly set out to accomplish that goal together. You followed me from Rio Rojo.”
“Yeah, and it’s a darned good thing I did, too, or those Rurales would’ve put you up in front of a firing squad in La Farva!”
“Possibly,” Luke admitted. “Our time together has had its benefits, I won’t deny that. But I’m used to working alone, Hobie. I’ve been doing that for years and years.”
“You’re sayin’ you don’t want me partnering up with you anymore.” Hobie sounded a little hurt.
“I’m saying that you’re in love with a fine young woman who evidently returns that feeling, and you’d be a damned fool to turn your back on that. Think about it, Hobie. Fate brought you and Jessica Wheeler together, and something . . . some force . . . kept both of you alive until you came out on the other side of all the trouble. I don’t believe you should fly in the face of what’s obviously meant to be.”
“You really think so?” Hobie asked with a frown.
Luke nodded. “I really think so.”
Hobie heaved a sigh. “Well . . . I reckon you’ve got a point. It does seem like me and Jess were meant to be together.”
“There you go. Fate.”
“But you’re going on after Kelly and Dog Eater?”
“They have my five thousand dollars,” Luke said, his voice hardening. “I intend to get it back.”
“You think you can find them?”
“I can find them. However long it takes, however far I have to ride.”
CHAPTER 24
Crossing from Arizona into Mexico was like crossing the border between Arizona and New Mexico Territory. If there hadn’t been a marker beside the trail, burned into a weathered slab of wood, Luke wouldn’t have been able to tell that he had passed from one country into the other.
The brushy, semiarid terrain was the same almost as far as the eye could see. Several small ranges of hills broke it up in the distance.
Luke was about a hundred miles southwest of Moss City, where he had said good-bye to Hobie and Jessica several days earlier. Jessica had hugged him and told him to be sure and stop at her brother’s ranch to see them if he ever got to that part of California. Luke had promised that he would, but didn’t really expect to keep that promise. He had ridden alone for too long to break the habit.
He had used his time in Moss City to find out whatever he could about the mysterious Don del Oro, mentioning the name in every saloon and cantina in town. For a while, it seemed like he was going to be frustrated in his efforts, but one night he had bought a beer for an old desert rat with a scruffy beard and a battered hat with a turned-up brim and had been rewarded.
As he rode farther into Mexico, Luke remembered the conversation.
“Oh, yeah, sure, the Don del Oro mine,” the old-timer said after licking beer foam off his mustache and sighing in appreciation. “Gift of gold, they called it, and maybe it was for a while, but the vein played out a long time ago. Place has been abandoned for twenty years or more. Reckon that’s why most folks have never heard of it.”
“Is it here in Arizona?” Luke asked.
The desert rat took another long swallow from his mug and then shook his head. “Nope, down across the line in ol’ Meh-hee-co. In the Sierra Diablitos.”
“The Little Devils,” Luke muttered.
“Yep. Good name for ’em, too. Them mountains might not be too tall, but they’re rugged as all get-out. Back in them days, too, they was full o’ Yaquis and bandidos. It was worth a man’s life to be caught out alone. Or so I’ve heard, you understand. I never laid eyes on the place myself, but I knowed several fellas who worked there. I think they was just as glad when the vein petered out. They didn’t have to risk their lives workin’ there no more.”
“What about now? Are the Yaquis and bandits still in those parts?”
“I could use a mite more lubrication,” the old-timer whined. “My throat’s gettin’ dry.”
Luke sign
aled for the bartender to send over another beer.
When it arrived, the prospector sucked down a healthy slug of suds and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “The way I hear it, them Yaquis has pulled out and gone farther south into the mountains. The Rurales made it pretty hot for ’em for a while. Most of them Mex lawmen are crookeder ’n a snake with the rheumatiz, but they’re decent Injun fighters when they put their minds to it.”
Thinking of the Rurales pulled Luke from his memories. After meeting up with Captain Almanzar and his men at La Farva, he had his own opinion of the Rurales, and it wasn’t a favorable one. He hadn’t brought that up in his conversation with the old prospector, though.
He shifted in his saddle and continued his ride, mulling over what he had learned about Don del Oro.
“As for the bandidos, though,” the old-timer went on, “I couldn’t say. That’s mighty lonely country down yonder, just made for owlhoots.”
“So you think that mine is still deserted?” Luke asked.
“No reason for it not to be,” the desert rat replied. “Unless somebody come along and found some more gold in it, and I think I’d have heard about that if it happened. I keep my ear pretty close to the ground, you know. No tellin’ when or where you might hear news of a strike.”
The old man licked his lips. The thirst for gold that lurked inside him was even stronger than his thirst for beer or whiskey. It was the sort of powerful drive that sent some men out into the desert or the mountains again and again until they either struck it rich or found a final desolate resting place for their bones.
“You said you’d never been to the Don del Oro,” Luke prompted.
“Yeah, but I know where to find it, if that’s what you’re after, son.” The old man’s rheumy eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t be holdin’ out on me, would you? You ain’t heard rumors that there’s been a strike there?”
“I give you my word that I haven’t,” Luke said. “Some men I know mentioned the place. I thought I might look for them there.”
“If they’re at the Don del Oro, they must not like comp’ny. That’s about the lonesomest place an hombre could find.”
“That sounds just like what they would look for,” Luke said.
The old-timer hadn’t been able to give Luke exact directions to the abandoned mine, but he’d told him enough to get to the Diablitos. They loomed ahead of him, a rugged line of gray peaks.
As usual, the mountains were farther away than they appeared. By the time Luke made camp that night, he didn’t seem any closer to them than he had been when he first sighted them. He knew from experience that he had to just keep going until he reached his destination.
He was aware that in Mexico he had less legal standing than he did in the States. Because of that, he made sure his fire was small, using it only to boil coffee, and he doused the flames with sand, putting it out before night had fallen completely. His supper consisted of jerky and some hard biscuits he had bought in a tiny settlement not far north of the border.
After circling his lasso around his bedroll to keep snakes out, he crawled into his blankets and slept. His horse was picketed nearby and would let him know if anybody or anything came around. The animal was a better sentry than a lot of humans Luke knew.
In the morning, Luke pushed on toward the Little Devils. By midday, the mountains were starting to look somewhat closer. He lost sight of them, however, when he entered an area of ridges and gullies that formed a forbidding badlands. There was no telling how far the breaks stretched to either side, so he had no choice except to cross them.
Luke had been following a serpentine path through the rugged terrain for about an hour when he spotted a little plume of dirt and pebbles sliding down a steep slope ahead of him and to the left. That served as a warning that something had just moved up there above him. He reined in, jerked his head back to look up the slope, and reached across his body with his right hand for the Remington.
A shot rang out, its echo bouncing around crazily from the multitude of rock walls all around him. Dust flew as the bullet chipped stone to his right. A voice called out in Spanish, ordering him not to move.
The same man’s voice continued in English, “Take your hand away from your gun, señor. I would hate to have to tell my men to shoot you.”
Luke wasn’t convinced the fella would hate it all that much. He lifted his hand away from the Remington’s walnut grips and raised it shoulder high while he held the reins in his other hand. His eyes scanned the slopes. At first, he didn’t see anything, but then he picked out several rifle barrels protruding menacingly from behind rocks.
“You have the advantage of me, my friends,” he called. “I’m not looking for trouble, though.”
“You are an American,” the unseen speaker said. He made it sound like an accusation.
“That’s true,” Luke admitted.
“What are you doing in my country?”
“Looking for two more Americans.” As an Apache, Dog Eater might not take kindly to being called an American, but since he’d been traveling with Gunner Kelly, Luke thought it was all right to lump the two of them together.
“Stay where you are,” the man told him.
“All right,” Luke agreed. He heard more rocks rattling as somebody shifted around.
Suddenly, a gray, steeple-crowned sombrero came into view above one of the boulders that littered the slope to his left. Luke recognized it instantly. The sombrero was the sort of headgear worn by the Rurales.
This could be bad, he thought grimly. If he had run into a Rurale patrol, there was every possibility they would try to kill him and steal his horse and all his other belongings.
The man who came out from behind the boulder and slid down to the trail wore the gray trousers and short jacket of the Rurales. He was young and clean-shaven. Lines etched around his eyes and mouth showed that he wasn’t quite as innocent as he first appeared. “I am Lieutenant Diego Sanchez,” he announced.
“Luke Jensen. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant. At least . . . I hope I am.”
“You are alone?”
“I suspect that you’ve been watching me for a while and you know I am.”
Sanchez shrugged. “At least you did not lie. You are more than a day’s ride from the border, Señor Jensen. What brings you to Mexico?”
“I’m looking for someone.”
“Friends of yours?”
“Acquaintances.” Luke had traded shots with Kelly and Dog Eater. That was enough reason to say they were acquainted, he supposed.
“What makes you think they are here?”
“I was told they were bound for the Diablitos.” That was stretching the truth, but it made sense. The outlaws had mentioned the name of an abandoned mine in the Little Devils, and a place like that would make a good hideout.
“Have you seen any other Rurales?”
The sharply-voiced question took Luke by surprise. He was about to say that the only other Rurales he had seen had been across the border in New Mexico Territory, at the settlement called La Farva, but some instinct made him stop.
He shook his head. “You and your men are the only ones I’ve run into since I crossed the border.”
That statement was true, when you came right down to it.
“You are fortunate,” Sanchez said. “The men we seek are criminals. They deserted their post and have become renegados. They would have killed you without a second thought and taken everything you own.”
Luke thought it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to mention that the same idea had crossed his mind about the lieutenant and his men. He said, “So you’re looking for some of your own, eh?”
Sanchez turned his head and spat eloquently on the ground. “Not my own,” he said with a note of outrage in his voice. “They are traitors! They have turned their backs on their duty. Their captain, a man named Almanzar, is nothing more than scum.”
Having had the dubious pleasure of meeting the man, Luk
e couldn’t disagree. While Lieutenant Sanchez, on the other hand, seemed to be that rarest of creatures: an honest Rurale. He appeared to be genuinely offended by Almanzar’s lawlessness.
“I appreciate the warning, Lieutenant. I’ll certainly keep my eyes peeled for those men and do my best to avoid them.”
“You should turn around and return to the United States, Señor Jensen. The Diablitos are not safe for anyone, especially a gringo.”
“It’s important that I find those men,” Luke said. “They have something that belongs to me.”
Five grand, to be precise, but he wasn’t going to mention that to Sanchez, either. Whether the lieutenant was honest or not, there was no point in tempting him.
“I could order you to return to your country,” Sanchez said sternly. “I could take you into custody.”
“You have a job of your own to do,” Luke pointed out. “You don’t need to be burdened with a prisoner. And even if I turned around and started north, you wouldn’t know whether I kept going or doubled back.”
Sanchez’s dark eyes narrowed. “I could just have you shot.”
“For no good reason? I don’t think you’d do that, Lieutenant.” Luke knew he was gambling his life on the judgment he had made about Sanchez’s character.
After a few seconds, Sanchez sighed and said, “No, I would not. Consider yourself warned, Señor Jensen, and if you ride on, it will be at your own risk.”
“It usually is,” Luke said dryly.
“If I ever find out that you lied to me about the men I seek, I will find you and make you regret it.”
That seemed like a pretty empty threat to Luke, but he nodded solemnly. “I understand.”
Sanchez stood aside and motioned for Luke to go ahead.
As Luke nudged his horse into motion and rode past the lieutenant, he was acutely aware that an unknown number of men were still staring at him over the barrels of their rifles. All he could do was hope they would follow their officer’s orders and allow him to pass.
Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter Dead Shot Page 19
