by Chuck Tyrell
“Dead end,” he hollered. “Back up to the mouth of the canyon.”
“Shee-it.” Finn tried to spit but no moisture rose. He sat lopsided on the saddle. His frequent trips to meet Mother Nature left him with a mighty sore anus and spots of blood on his union suit.
“Don’t swear, boy,” Lester said.
“Goldurn horses won’t be worth salt purty soon,” Finn said. “An’ we’ve got no idea wherebouts we are.”
“We’re on Hell’s Trail,” Lester said, “and we know which way is east by the sun. Bear up, youngster. Bear up.”
“Gotta go,” Finn said. He piled off his horse and left the reins hanging. He didn’t make it out of sight. There, no more than a dozen paces off the trail, he fought at the buttons on his trousers, let them drop down around his ankles, then unbuttoned the flap in the backside of his union suit to bare his backside.
Hardly had he pushed his butt through the flap when his gut erupted, sending a red-brown stream of feces and blood out onto the ground. “Ungh, ungh, ungh.” Even after the gush slowed to a drip, Finn groaned and squeezed and tried to rid his system of whatever the rotgut from Alamo put in it.
Lester Dent sidled his horse over to where he could see the splotch Finn had spread on the sand. Finn still squatted and grunted and little spurts of blood made their way out his anus to drip onto the sandy ground. “Geez, boy. You gotta be bleeding a bunch inside your guts to push out stuff out the back like that. What in Hell’s got into you anyway?”
Finn groaned.
“What is it?” Lester said, a hard edge on his voice.
“Dunno, pa. Feels like sumpin’s eating me up, inside out. Feels like I gotta shit every minute. I hold it back until I can’t stand it no longer. ‘N’ blood’s the only thing that comes out.” Finn swallowed dry. His mouth had no spit in it. “I’ll be okay, truly I will.”
“You don’t keep up, Finn, an’ you gets left behind. Hear?”
“Yeah, pa.” Finn struggled to pull his trousers up.
Lester reined his horse away from the stinking splotch of blood and feces. Blowflies had already gathered. He headed back toward the mouth of the canyon, followed by Lee Roy, who led the heavily laden mule, Wee Willy, Molly, and after a while, Finn.
If he’d known the trail, Lester Dent would’ve traveled by night. But he didn’t, so the Dents and Molly Miller rode by day. Still, they meandered into more blind canyons than they did open trail. For every mile they made good toward Dos Cabezas in the east, they spent hours riding their gaunt horses into the depths of the Hell’s Trail labyrinth. True, Finn Dent had brought back eight big canteens, which they had filled before striking out into Hell’s Trail.
The high redrock walls of the canyons kept the sun from hitting the Dents directly, except for three or four hours around midday.
The Dent party reached the mouth of the dead-end canyon as the sun jumped up high enough to send blazing rays all the way to the sand at the bottom of the canyon.
“We’ll wait out the noonday over there,” Lester Dent said, pointing to an overhang that jutted from the opposite canyon wall. “You’ll want to unsaddle your horses and give them a hatful of water.” He made for the overhang, not looking back to see if the others followed.
Finn got to the shadow of the overhang at least three horse-lengths behind Molly. He yanked his horse to a halt before it was all the way into the shade of the overhang. His face screwed up with pain. He almost fell from the saddle. Without any attempt to find a private place, he fought to get his britches down and the union suit flap open. “Ungh. Ungh. Ungh.” He made little groaning sounds as he worked. Butt bare, he squatted in the shadow of his horse and released a red-purple squirt of fluid. “Ungh. Ungh.” He strained to make more come, but drips of blood were all he got.
“Goldurn, boy. Do you have to foul up our only resting place? That shit smells to high heaven.” Lester Dent’s short temper showed, but Finn was too far gone to register his father’s disdain.
Molly watched placidly as Finn started struggling to get himself presentable.
“Makes you right happy, don’t it?” Lester Dent’s steely voice cut into her consciousness. She automatically raised her forearm to ward of Dent’s blow.
“I’m not happy, Mr. Dent,” she said, “not in the least.”
“Then stop smirkin’. Help the boy.”
Molly dismounted and approached Finn.
“Ungh. Ungh.” Finn still squatted, his face in his hands, which were supported by elbows on knees. “Ungh. Ungh. Ungh.” A bloody splotch of feces jumped from Finn’s anus and splatted against the ground.
She put a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “Hurt?” she asked.
“No, missus. Your hand’s all right.” Finn bit back another groan.
“Must have been a lot of kerosene in the rotgut you drank in Alamo, Finn. I’ve heard that kerosene can eat the guts right out of a man.”
“Ungh. Ungh.”
“How much did you drink?” Molly’s question was matter of fact, without any hint of the fact that she personally felt drinking rotgut whiskey was the height of folly.
“Ungh. Ungh.” Finn shook his head back and forth like an angry bull. “Ungh.” He pulled his wits together. “Um. Three drinks, missus. Mebbe a full glass, all told.”
“The rotgut must have had more kerosene than ordinary,” Molly said. “Maybe they planned to rob you or something.” She turned to Lester Dent. “Finn will die if you don’t get water into him. He’s been losing water every time he’s lowered his pants, much less when peeing alongside the trail. I’m telling you.” Molly’s voice grew stronger. Now she had a lever to use on Lester Dent. If she could keep Finn alive then the older Dent would owe her, or so she thought.
Finn tried to stand up, but couldn’t make it. He went back down into a squat, then slowly toppled over onto the hot sand. Eyes closed, hat lying off to one side, mouth open, he groaned. “Ungh. Ungh. Ungh.” Little clouds of sand rose when he groaned, born by his breath, but not far.
“Water Mr. Dent?” Molly’s voice carried command and her ragged clothing took nothing from her commanding stance.
“He’ll just puke it back up,” Dent said.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She still held her hand out.
“One try, missus. An’ not too much. They’s more of us, ya know.” Dent unhooked a canteen strap and handed the container to Molly. She smiled. She’d won one.
If she had some white willow bark or even black walnut, she could make some tea that would help his diarrhea and bleeding, but she had nothing. She pulled the cork and kneeled beside Finn. “You must drink a little water,” she said.
“Ungh. Ungh. Ungh.” His breath made tiny puffs of sand in front of his mouth just like before.
“Finn? Finn!”
He tried to lift his head. He tried like the dickens, but couldn’t raise it even an inch off the sand. “Ungh,” he said. “Ungh.”
Molly looked at him for a long time, as if she were weighing pros and cons. She nodded to herself and tipped the big canteen up so she could take a large mouthful.
“The dadburned water ain’t for you,” Dent said.
She held up a hand and, keeping the water in her mouth, bent over Finn. She tipped his face upward and placed her mouth on his. Dribble by dribble, she released the water into his mouth. “Ungh,” he said against her lips. He swallowed. Then swallowed again.
When her mouth was empty, she let go of Finn. “Lie still for a while, Finn,” she said. “We don’t have to move for another hour or two.” She stood and returned the canteen to Lester Dent. “We’ll need to give him more water in an hour or so,” she said.
Lester took the canteen very carefully. “All right,” he said. “You tell me when it needs doing. Rest up. No one’s gonna bother you.”
“Thank you,” she said. She crawled back to the lowest part of the overhang and seemed to go to sleep.
“You leave that woman alone now, Lee Roy. She needs rest, and she’s taking care of F
inn. You hear?”
“Yeah, pa.”
“An’ you give the horses and mules a hatful of water each.”
“Yeah, pa.”
The horses taken care of, the Dents settled down to wait out the infernal midday hours.”
More than a dozen miles to the south, Stryker and Carpenter slept away the daytime hours, not caring where Taklishim might be.
West of the Dents, Nate Cousins and his gunmen shaded up and stared at the columns of redrock that marked Hell’s Trail.
John Walker, the white Pima, guided a rabble of men out of Alamo. He had no idea why they chased a man called Finn Dent, and only cared that they paid him in advance. Whitemen had crossed John Walker too many times. As the men from Alamo shaded up, John Walker ranged ahead. About a mile from those he led, Walker reined in next to a redrock spire. He used the Yavapai word for enemy. “What do you want, ‘pace?”
“I see you, John Walker,” said Norrosso. “I would know where you go.”
“I guide white-eyes in search of men who guard gold,” Walker said.
“Do you see sign of many men?”
Walker shook his head. “Four riders. One pack mule with heavy load.”
Norrosso said, “One is a woman. Wife of Dodge Miller, from Miller’s Well. My friend would take her away from those who stole her and use her. Can you hold those who pay you for your guidance away for another day?”
“How much?”
Norrosso shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Who is your friend?”
“His name is Matt Stryker. We call him Caracortada. His face is scarred.”
“I heard about Sonora.” Walker stared at the ground. “Tell Caracortada I will hold back. Tell him I know he will be fair.” Walker turned his three-color paint and returned to where he left the Alamo men.
Chapter Ten
Takishim led Stryker and Carpenter to the rim of the canyons that formed Hell’s Trail. He held up his hand, stopping the two riders. “Walk now,” he said.
“Where is the woman?” Stryker asked.
Taklishim waved toward the bottom of the canyon. “Down there.”
“Not moving?”
“Sleeping,” Taklishim said.
“Sleeping?”
“The old man cannot follow a trail by night.”
“How do we get down?” Stryker said.
“There is a way. But not for horses.”
Stryker frowned. “How do we get the women and the men out of the canyon?”
“There is a way. Two nights to come back here.”
“We go,” Stryker said.
Taklishim showed them a copse of live oak where they left the horses after removing their bridles and fitting them with rope hackamores, and unsaddling them. Grass growing around the bases of the trees would give the horses sparse feed, but they’d not starve. Each got a hatful of water before Stryker and Carpenter followed Taklishim toward the canyon rim.
Stryker took two boxes of Winchester .45-75 center fire cartridges for his Winchester ’76, and filled his gunbelt’s loops with .45 cartridges for his Remington Army. On a hunch, he pulled an extra shirt and pair of trousers from his roll. “You ready, Lige?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be, I reckon.”
Taklishim watched, but said nothing. He carried a ’66 Yellow Boy Winchester, a long knife, and a converted Colt Army.
Stryker could barely make out Carpenter’s face in the moonless night. He raised his eyebrows and Carpenter nodded. Stryker turned and indicated to Taklishim that he should lead on. The Apache seemed to disappear, but when Stryker squinted, he could see the Indian ahead, waiting. He followed, placing his feet carefully. Now was not the time to sound like a Brahma bull in a ketch pen. Carpenter followed. He, too, knew how to be quiet.
An eyebrow of a trail led down from the heights, sometimes too narrow to walk normally, so the men faced the cliff with rifles slung on their backs to sidle down the eyebrow toward the bottom of the narrow canyon. They placed each foot carefully, seeking out loose pebbles by touch and avoiding them. Still, once in a while, sand or gravel or a small pebble would slide off the eyebrow and either bounce from the ledges below or trickle down the face of the cliff. The sound was very nearly natural, but not quite.
As the sky lightened with the dawn, they were still nearly a hundred feet up the canyon wall. A shot sounded. A bullet spanged off the rocks and whined away into space. A second shot came, followed almost instantly by a screech. No ricochet. Someone had caught a slug.
Another rifle roared, the deep resonating sound of a buffalo gun. The bullet smacked rock and screamed its ricochet. Missed.
Taklishim nearly sprinted down the rest of the trail. In moments, he was lost from sight among the scramble of rocks at the base of the canyon wall. Stryker tried to emulate the Apache but was nowhere near as swift. Carpenter followed Stryker stride for stride.
Two more shots. Two more ricochets. The buffalo gun roared again. No ricochet.
On the canyon floor, Taklishim, Stryker, and Carpenter snaked toward the gunfire. Taklishim held up five fingers and indicated the far side of a canyon that intersected the one they were in.
Nate Cousins.
The buffalo gun sounded again, this time to their right, up the canyon away from the Cousins gunmen. A man arched backwards from a hidey hole back of some boulders.
“Gone,” Carpenter said. “Reckon that’s the old man.”
“Yup. Cousins is down one man.”
“Mebbe the Dents, too. One of them bullets made someone screech.”
“Did at that.” Stryker slid the barrel of his ’76 between two rocks and waited for a target. He faced the Cousins outfit’s position.
A puff of smoke rose a split second before the rifle’s report reached Stryker. He aimed at the flat face of rock slightly to the right of the rising smoke and squeezed off a shot. He rolled to the left, toward the canyon wall, coming up behind a chunk that fell off the canyon in eons past. No one shot at the cloud of smoke his ’76 left behind, but then, they weren’t expecting fire from Stryker’s direction. Next time, someone would be watching. He couldn’t tell if he’d nicked the shooter.
Carpenter snaked in the direction of the Dents’ position. Stryker only caught a movement or two, but he knew what to look for. He could see no sign of Taklishim.
The headgear of Nate Cousins’ men proved a disadvantage. Most were dark brown with broad curled brims. The shapes did not appear in natural rock formations and helped Stryker pinpoint riflemen. He inched the ’76 slowly, very slowly out from the bolder he’d chosen as shelter. He searched the jumble of cliff fragments where Cousins’ gunmen hid. He reviewed the men in his mind. Ben Kilgallen. Gunman from Lincoln County. Not known well as Bill Bonney, but could cut more notches on his gun if he had a mind to. Marty Henshaw. Used to run with the Snider Gang in Round Valley until he crossed Gus Snider. Art Rennick. Younger brother to King Rennick, who Stryker killed in Ponderosa. Rennick could be lusting for Stryker blood as well as the gold in yonder cave. Garth Upton. A youngster hunting a rep in a time when a rep as a killer meant less with each sunrise.
They were after Old Dominion gold, but Stryker being after the same thing, or being after Molly Miller, which amounted to the same objective, gave some of Cousins’ bunch even more reason to ride along. Get rid of Stryker, for whatever reason, and grab 250 pounds of gold at the same time. Or vice versa.
Maybe that’s why Catherine went to San Francisco. He didn’t blame her. She was royalty in the old country. All he could do was wear a badge or hung wanted men. A shadow moved among the rocks across the way. Stryker squinted. Tears rolled down his ravished cheek unchecked. The shadow resolved into a silhouette. Brim and crown of a hat, cut in two by a crack in the rock. But the hat itself was out of sight.
Taklishim slithered up behind Stryker.
“Young man dead. Other young man very sick. Very big young man don’t fight. Old man now tied up. You come.”
Stryker slid backward, away from
the boulder that sheltered him. Taklishim led the way, showing Stryker how to hide, where to zig, when to zag, until they reached the deep cavern where Lester Dent and his boys, and Molly Miller, spent the night.
Rocks fallen from the cliffs above formed a breastwork of a sort in front of the cave, but sooner or later, Cousins’ fighters would shoot at the roof of the cavern, trying to ricochet bullets around and kill or wound those inside.
As if Stryker’s thoughts had triggered them, rifles began pouring hot lead into the cavern. He hit the ground and wriggled to a point where he could see the rocks that lay scattered along the towering canyon walls.
“Trying for ricochets, eh? The 5th Cavalry did that against the Apaches at Skeleton Cave,” Carpenter said.
“Yavapai,” Stryker said. “What’s the situation here?”
“Yavapai?”
“Yeah. The Indians at Skeleton Cave were Yavapais. What’s the situation here?” he asked again.
“Middle boy shot dead,” Carpenter said. “Oldest’s got the raging shits from something. Molly figures it’s too much rotgut with too much kerosene in it. Et him up inside, she figures. He’s useless. Wee Willy, that’s the big kid, he’s stuck by Molly’s side. Don’t even have a gun.”
“The bushwhacker?”
“Dent? Taklishim’s got him tied by the thumbs with a strip of rawhide. He’s fumin’, but he ain’t going nowhere.”
“Molly all right?”
Another flurry of shots came from across the canyon. “Angle ain’t giving them the ricochets they want,” Carpenter said.
Stryker aimed at a little cut from which smoke still rose. He started to pull the trigger, then released the tension. No use wasting bullets. “Molly?” he said again.
“Hard to tell. I reckon it’s not been a Sunday outing for her.”
Stryker shot a glance at Carpenter, but he was staring straight ahead, eyes searching for a target among the rocks. “Yeah,” Stryker said.
