by Steve Hayes
This is for my wife, Robbin
and
Louis L’Amour
Thanks for your friendship
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
About the Author
Copyright
PROLOGUE
He was almost out of the Sierra Madre now. Another grueling day’s descent, two at most, he thought, and he would reach the foothills. Hopefully, there or in the adjoining valley he’d glimpsed from the ridgeline, he could find a remote area where he could build some kind of shelter and hole up for a spell.
Gunshots interrupted his thinking. Reining up, the tall man sat motionless in the saddle, listening intently as he tried to pinpoint exactly where the shots had come from. It wasn’t easy. The shots, made by rifles and pistols, were being fired so rapidly they sounded more like fireworks exploding than gunfire. He listened as their echoes bounced off the steep, brush-covered hills surrounding him – and finally decided they were coming from a wooded canyon to his right.
He pulled his Winchester from its boot and nudged the all-black stallion forward, ready to shoot any one he saw who appeared threatening.
Ahead, the winding dirt trail descended through dense, waist-high brush and clumps of cactus and stumpy pine trees. Here and there great slabs of rock bared themselves, his keen gaze spotting tiny mottled-green lizards basking in the glaring, oven-hot sun.
As he approached a fork in the trail, the shots stopped as suddenly as they began. Again, he reined up. Now he could hear raucous laughter and drunken voices – men, whooping it up, he decided. Probably bandidos celebrating the spoils from their last raid. Wanting no trouble, he guided the horse toward the fork that led away from the canyon.
That was when he heard the scream – a man’s scream, one long wailing cry filled with despair and excruciating agony.
He hesitated. He hated to think of what kind of torture was needed to produce a scream that awful, but at the same time he remembered why he had come to Mexico in the first place; deciding this was none of his business, he urged the stallion forward.
A second scream, just as agonizing to his ear as the first, made him rein up again. Damn, the tall man thought. Damn, damn, damn. And against his better judgment he turned the horse around and headed it toward the screams.
He dismounted at the mouth of the canyon, chambered a shell into his Winchester and crawled through the brush toward a clearing from which smoke spiraled up. The screams had stopped, but he could now hear the men taunting their victim. Though they spoke in Spanish he understood every word and realized they were demanding that their prisoner reveal the whereabouts of his gold – gold they apparently believed he’d cached somewhere.
Eventually he parted the brush fringing the clearing and saw six raggedly dressed bandits gathered around an old, white-bearded prospector who was spread-eagled over a fire. Barely alive, his clothes had been burned off and his flesh charred by the flames.
Enraged, the tall man got to his feet, steadied himself and shot the nearest bandit, who collapsed, dead. He killed two more before the others had time to grab their rifles. Then, grimly walking toward them, he pumped shot after shot into the three remaining bandidos until all of them lay dead.
Two of them fell into the fire, their filthy rags promptly ignited by the flames. Ignoring them, the tall man dropped his Winchester, gently picked up the old prospector and carried him to the rocks where he made him as comfortable as possible.
There was nothing anyone could do for him. The tall man pressed his ear against the old-timer’s lips and heard his last words:
‘M-Miss Alice,’ he whispered, ‘—is sh-she still ’live?’
The tall man looked around. There were no other human beings in sight, but a few yards away a pack-mule lay dead on its side. He shook his head. The prospector, his facial skin so charred by the flames that the cheek bones showed, blinked his thanks.
‘G-Gold,’ he said, his burned lips barely moving. ‘B-Buried it … ’neath … rocks by c-cabin … west end … valley b-below. …’
The tall man nodded to show he understood.
‘N-Not much … but … ’nuff for a grub s-stake. …’
‘Thanks,’ the tall man said. ‘But I ain’t a prospector.’
The dying man frowned, puzzled. ‘Why … y-you here … then?’
Before the tall man could reply, the prospector’s eyes rolled upward and he stiffened. The tall man didn’t need to check his pulse to know the old-timer was dead. Gently, he closed the prospector’s blackened eyelids.
Overhead, buzzards were already circling.
The tall man decided to cheat them of at least one meal. He covered the prospector’s corpse with rocks, then stepped into the saddle and rode away from the canyon.
CHAPTER ONE
The stallion saw the wagon first. Though it was just entering the valley and still a mile off, the smell of strangers made the horse nervous. It snorted, tossing its head so that its long black mane gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, and anxiously pawed the ground. Then, after cantering up the steep rise to the cabin, it stopped beside a man dozing on the doorstep and whinnied.
‘It’s OK,’ the man said softly. ‘I see ’em.’
He rose and he looked around to make sure no other strangers were on the horizon and then entered the cabin. He was a tall, rangy man who moved with the lethal ease of an Apache. His long once-black hair was now prematurely flecked with gray and his eyes, deep-set and the palest of blues, had a wintry chill to them that made most men step aside rather than risk a fight. He grabbed a well-oiled Winchester ’73 and field glasses from the deer rack above the door and returned outside.
The wagon inched across the flat scrubland toward him, its image distorted by heat waves rising from the sunbaked desert. The man held the glasses to his eyes, adjusting the focus until suddenly the mule-drawn wagon leaped into view.
Raising the glasses a fraction, he focused on the two people riding on it. The driver was an old Mexican whose weathered brown face was barely visible below the brim of his frayed sombrero, while the passenger was a woman dressed all in black, as if in mourning. Despite the broiling sun, she wore Sunday-morning gloves and kept her hands clasped primly in her lap. A dust-caked veil prevented him from seeing what she looked like, but by her stylish hat the man guessed she was American.
No threat there, he thought. The Mex is too old to be a pistolero and the woman so slender I could break her like a stick. But she’s iron-willed, he thought admiringly, to sit so ladylike on a buckboard in this God-awful heat.
He lowered the glasses and returned to the doorstep. On the way he brushed past the stallion. He came too close to suit the all-black Morgan. It took a nip at him, then shied away before the man could slap it with his old, sweat-stained campaign hat.
He waited, with a patience only a man who has served time behind bars could possess, and after what seemed like an eternity the wagon at last reined up in front of him.
‘Buenos tardes, señor,’ the old Mexican said politely.
‘Buenos tardes.’ The man rose, tipped his hat to the woman and then pointed his rifle toward the stream that descended from the Sierra Madre foothills and ran curving between the rocks behind the cabin. ‘You’re welcome to water the mules if you’ve a mind to.’
‘Mucho gracias, señor.’
‘An’ if you’re hungry, there’s coffee an’ biscuits left over from a batch I made this mornin’.’
The woman, who had been studying him from behind her veil, now leaned forward wearily as if to get a closer look.
‘That’s most generous of you,’ she said in a parched, cultured voice. ‘But first I’d like to introduce myself and my companion. I’m Miss Kincaide, Ellen Kincaide, and this is my good friend, Señor Miguel Escalero.’
She waited, expecting the man to respond by telling her his name. When he didn’t, she steadied herself by grasping the side of the wagon and said:
‘And you are, señor?’
He didn’t answer. But instinctively, his finger curled around the rifle trigger.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, alarmed. ‘I’m not trying to be nosy. I’m only asking because I’m looking for someone.’
He eyed her suspiciously, wishing now he hadn’t been so sociable.
‘An’ who might that be?’
‘A man … about your age … who once knew my sister in Santa Rosa.’
Santa Rosa! The name of the New Mexico pueblo leaped out of his past.
Intrigued, he stepped closer to the woman. ‘Be obliged if you’d lift your veil, ma’am.’
Ellen Kincaide obeyed, her stiff, aching muscles crying out for rest.
The man frowned, surprised. She was younger than he had expected by the mature timbre of her voice: in her late twenties, at most. Even more surprising, her pale, fine-boned oval face, though caked with trail dust that had been kicked up by the mules and had seeped through her veil, looked vaguely familiar; especially her expressive, wide-set violet eyes and elegantly tilted chin.
‘Do I know you, ma’am?’
‘I don’t believe so. This is my first venture into Mexico. And I was away at school when the man I’m looking for was in Santa Rosa. But Cally said he came into her cantina every night—’
‘Cally?’ Once more his past came rushing back to him, along with a flood of buried emotions that he had forgotten existed. ‘Your sister’s name is Cally?’
‘Yes. Cally Sage. She kept her husband’s name after he suddenly died of pneumonia.’
Gabriel smiled inwardly. Willard Sage, a railroad gambler with tencent morals and hundred-dollar dreams, had died of lead poisoning when a passenger caught him dealing from the bottom of the deck.
‘You did know her, didn’t you?’ Ellen persisted. ‘I can tell by the way you just looked.’
‘It’s possible,’ he said guardedly. ‘I’ve ‘chased the rabbit’ in a cantina or two.’
‘Then for heaven’s sake tell me your name! Because if you are the man I pray you are then this god-forsaken journey is finally over.’
He hesitated, still surprised to find himself talking to Cally’s sister after all these years, then said quietly:
‘It’s Moonlight, ma’am. Gabriel Moonlight.’
For a moment he thought she was going to faint from disappointment. The old Mexican thought the same thing and quickly grabbed her arms, steadying her.
‘It – it’s all right, I’m fine,’ Ellen assured him. Pulling herself together, she turned to Gabriel. ‘Thank you, Mr Moonlight. I’m sorry if I made you suspicious, but—’
‘So I ain’t the man you’re lookin’ for?’
‘No. His name’s Mesquite Jennings.’
Expecting as much, Gabriel forced himself not to react.
‘An’ this Jennings fella – it’s important you find him?’
‘A matter of life and death.’
She bravely fought back tears, looking so distressed he was tempted to tell her the truth. But before he could decide if she was worth risking his life for, she gathered herself and asked him if the coffee and biscuits he had offered were still available.
‘Take but a minute to heat up, ma’am.’
‘Then I accept. Now if you’ll kindly help me down, I’ll—’ She broke off, eyes rolling up into her head, and collapsed into his outstretched arms.
CHAPTER TWO
Gabriel carried the still-unconscious woman into the cabin, put her on his cot and slipped a pillow under her head. Then, after dipping a towel in the bucket of water he kept by the stove, he bathed her grimy face and parched lips and placed the cool wet cloth on her forehead.
‘How long you been eatin’ dust?’ he asked Escalero.
‘Six – maybe eight days, I think, señor.’
‘From where?’
‘North of the border, señor. Las Cruces.’ Sombrero in hand, he looked at the woman he’d befriended two years ago with admiration. ‘It is the miracle of miracles that Sis – the señorita did not collapse long before this.’
Gabriel had wondered the same thing about the old man but, after a second look at him, changed his mind. Though small, and at least seventy, he looked tough as goat meat. Yet there was an air of dignity about him. Below his large, drooping white mustache his mouth had an honest set to it; and under bristly white eyebrows his brown eyes were bright with compassion.
Taking a half-full bottle of J. H. Cutter from a cupboard, Gabriel removed the cork and wiped the only glass he owned clean on his sleeve before pouring some whiskey into it. He then gently pried open Ellen’s lips and dribbled a few drops into her mouth.
She choked, coughing and sputtering as the alcohol burned her throat, and stared vacantly about her.
‘Easy, lady,’ he said quietly. ‘Take it slow.’
It took a few minutes but eventually Ellen recovered enough to sit up. Gabriel filled a tin basin from the water barrel out back and set it on the table so she could wash the trail dirt from her face and hands.
Having not seen a white woman since he’d fled across the border almost two years ago, he watched her out the corner of his eye as he stoked the embers and heated the coffee and biscuits atop the stove. Eggshells lay scattered around the old greasy skillet. He hadn’t noticed them at breakfast, or if he had they hadn’t bothered him, but now because of the woman they did and he scraped them up with the spatula and dumped them into the flames. If she was still here tomorrow, he told himself, he must be more careful when he cracked his eggs into the spitting bacon grease.
Why it would bother him if Cally’s sister thought he was messy, he couldn’t explain. But it did and he accepted it with the same stoic resignation he accepted the stallion’s sour disposition or the mud that every year threatened to flood his cabin during rainy season.
As he continued to watch her something puzzled him; earlier, when she had prepared to wash, she’d rolled up her sleeves and opened her blouse at her throat, but never removed her hat. He wondered why. Years ago he’d worked as a hostler at a stagecoach stop and the first thing women did when they came inside to clean up was take off their hats.
He also noticed that the upper part of her forehead was much paler than the rest of her face, as if it hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. He wondered what had made the mark. But feeling it would be impertinent to ask her, he pushed it from his mind. He brought the now-hot coffee and biscuits to the table and stood there, silently leaning against the door, while she ate and drank.
‘Aren’t you going to join me?’
‘I already ate, ma’am.�
��
‘Some coffee, then?’
Rather than tell her he only had one cup, he said: ‘Thanks. I’ve had my fill.’
Ellen continued eating for a few moments before saying: ‘These biscuits are … well, they’re wonderful. So soft and flaky. Far better than any I’ve ever made.’
He accepted her compliment in silence.
‘You … uh … live here by yourself, Mr Moonlight?’
He nodded.
‘Don’t you ever get lonely?’
He shook his head.
‘How extraordinary. I would never have thought that by looking at you.’
Curiosity aroused, he said: ‘What would you have thought?’
‘Well, of course I don’t know you but … you give me the impression that you haven’t always been a loner – that once you were full of fun and liked having a good time.’
‘You can tell all that just by lookin’ at me?’
She sensed he resented her prying, though she couldn’t imagine why, and shrugged. ‘Call it woman’s intuition.’
She waited for him to confirm or deny her impression of him, but he remained silent.
‘Personally, I enjoy having people around me. The more the merrier – which I’m afraid often conflicts with my … uh … vocation.’ She noticed Escalero signaling to her with his eyes. As if reminded of something, she fell silent and finished her coffee. Its harsh bitterness, made worse by reheating, made her grimace. But she drank it without complaint, all the while watched over by the old Mexican.
His protectiveness of her was endearing; though equally parched and hungry, he refused to drink or eat until she assured him that she was all right. He then gulped down a full dipper of water, humbly accepted two of the remaining biscuits and went outside.
