Massacre Canyon

by William W. Johnstone

  He shook his head and said, “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

  “Are you sure?” Her lips curved in a subtle smile that promised a great deal. “I think we’d both enjoy getting to know each other better.”

  Luke pushed his chair back.

  “I’ll be riding to St. Johns early in the morning with Sheriff Rakestraw and the posse,” he said. “Reckon I’d better get some rest.”

  Darcy looked disappointed. She said, “It’s really not that late—”

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Luke broke in, “what with standing guard in the marshal’s office and all. I enjoyed our dinner, Miss Garnett.”

  “You should call me Darcy.”

  He ignored that and went on. “But I’ll be saying good night now.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Positive,” Luke said, even though there was a part of him that really wanted to keep talking to her and eventually accept the invitation she seemed to be offering him. He hadn’t been with a woman in quite a while.

  But Darcy Garnett wasn’t some trail town whore. That was the sort Luke usually looked to for female companionship. She was a lady, and he wasn’t going to take advantage of her journalistic ambitions.

  She sighed and said, “Well, then, thank you for dinner, and for telling me about your capture of Mordecai Kroll and answering my questions. I’m sure it’ll make a stirring story.”

  Luke got to his feet and nodded to her.

  “Good night, then.”

  “Good night, Luke.”

  The way his name sounded coming from her lips almost made him reconsider, but then he turned and left the dining room. He had told her the truth when he said he was tired. And Sheriff Rakestraw wanted to start for the county seat at first light.

  Luke was going to be mighty glad when Mordecai Kroll was locked up in the jail at St. Johns.

  Despite the weariness that gripped him, Luke’s slumber was restless and haunted by violent dreams ranging from the war on up to the desperate fight in the hotel room with Mordecai. He was more than happy to get up early the next morning. Doing something was always better than remembering and brooding.

  It nagged at him that he had told Darcy Garnett about being Smoke’s brother. He wondered if she would be willing to leave that out of the story she sent to Harper’s Weekly. She probably wouldn’t want to, but he figured it wouldn’t do any harm to ask. As he went downstairs to the lobby with his saddlebags slung over his shoulder and his Winchester in his left hand, he decided that he would write her a note and leave it with the clerk for her. He was sure he would be on the trail to St. Johns with Rakestraw and the posse before Darcy got up.

  The lobby was empty. Luke went to the writing desk tucked into one corner and quickly wrote a note for Darcy in his neat script. He thanked her for her company at dinner and asked her to consider not saying anything about Smoke in her story, since it was supposed to be about the Kroll brothers and Mordecai’s capture, and Smoke hadn’t played any part in that.

  The request might not do any good, but at least he had tried, he thought as he slipped the note into an envelope and sealed it.

  The clerk still wasn’t at the desk when Luke went over to it. He hit the bell that sat on the counter, and the clear note from it made the door behind the desk open a moment later. The clerk came out, yawning and running his fingers through his rumpled hair.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Jensen?” he asked.

  Luke held up the envelope and said, “I’d like for you to give this to Miss Garnett when she comes down.”

  “I can’t do that, sir,” the clerk said.

  Luke reached in his pocket for a coin, but the clerk stopped him by raising a hand.

  “No, sir, Mr. Jensen, I mean I really can’t do that,” he said. “Miss Garnett isn’t here anymore. She checked out and left town a half hour ago.”

  That news took Luke by surprise and made him frown. He asked, “Was she headed back to St. Johns?”

  “I’m afraid she didn’t say, sir.”

  Luke looked at the envelope in his hand. The message it contained didn’t mean a blasted thing anymore. He crumpled it into a ball, tossed it to the startled clerk, and said, “Then throw that away for me, would you?”

  He left a couple of gold pieces on the counter to cover his bill, turned, and walked out of the hotel.

  The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour, but the jail wagon was already in front of the livery stable as Abner Porter and his son Benji hitched up the team. Sheriff Wesley Rakestraw stood by and watched with a rifle tucked under his left arm. He gave Luke a curt nod of greeting.

  “Quiet night?” Luke asked.

  “Very,” Rakestraw replied. “I have a hunch Rudolph Kroll doesn’t know yet that his little brother has been taken into custody.”

  “Or maybe he’s waiting to ambush you on the road between here and St. Johns,” Luke suggested.

  “If he tries, he’ll get an unpleasant surprise. Every one of my deputies is a marksman.”

  That was all well and good, Luke thought, but if the posse was outnumbered by two to one or more, it might not be enough to make a difference.

  “The café is already open,” Rakestraw went on. “There’ll be time to get some breakfast before we start.”

  “I’ll just see to saddling my horse first,” Luke said.

  When the dun was ready to ride, Luke walked over to the café. The sheriff and several of his deputies were already in there. He sat apart from them and washed down a hearty breakfast with several cups of coffee. He felt considerably better when he walked down to the jail.

  The wagon that would take Mordecai to the county seat was parked in front of the building. Two of the deputies stood on the boardwalk holding Winchesters. They gave Luke hard stares as he went inside.

  Marshal Jerome Dunlap sat behind the desk with a worried look on his face. He said, “I’m glad to see you, Jensen. I’m ready to have that varmint out of my jail, so things can go back to normal around here. I don’t reckon I slept more than an hour last night.”

  Rakestraw came in a minute later, followed by four deputies. All five men wore grim expressions.

  “Has the prisoner had his breakfast?” Rakestraw asked.

  “He sure has, sheriff,” Dunlap replied.

  “He’s ready to go, then.”

  “More than ready. At least I’m ready for him to go,” Dunlap said again. He took the ring of keys from a nail on the wall and went to the cell block door.

  Luke was aware that he was barely breathing. A feeling of tension gripped him like a physical fist. His instincts told him that something was bound to happen. Hell had a habit of breaking loose in situations like this.

  Instead, Rakestraw and his deputies brought Mordecai out of the jail and locked him in the back of the sturdy wagon without incident. Mordecai had an arrogant grin on his face as he climbed into the wagon, as if he expected his brother to show up and rescue him at the last minute, but as the door swung closed Luke caught a glimpse of the fear that abruptly appeared in Mordecai’s eyes. The big padlock snapped closed. The deputies, mounted now, surrounded the wagon and Rakestraw called out a command. The vehicle lurched into motion. Luke rode behind the group of lawmen.

  Mordecai Kroll was on his way to jail . . . and ultimately to the gallows, if there was any justice in the world.

  Chapter 7

  Two months later

  Rugged peaks loomed over the big old adobe house on all sides. The wide canyon in which it sat was accessible from the south through a mountain pass. From the north, a creek flowed into the canyon, but it was bordered by high, sheer cliffs that not even a mountain goat could have climbed, and it ran deep and swift through dangerous rapids where jagged rocks stuck up like a giant’s fangs. A man would risk his life trying to navigate those rapids, and a few guards with rifles could make the canyon’s southern entrance impassable.

  For those reasons, this isolated canyon in the Superstition Mo
untains made a perfect hideout for the Kroll gang.

  The little creek also provided enough water before it disappeared underground to support some vegetation, making the canyon one of the few spots of green in this brown, black, and tan wasteland. Cottonwoods and hardy grass grew along the stream. Farther from the water, manzanita, barrel cactus, and the majestic, somewhat eerie saguaros covered the landscape.

  The big house had two stories, with terraced steps leading up to its entrance and a balcony along the second floor at the front. From there Rudolph Kroll could see much of the compound that was also surrounded by a high adobe wall with wrought-iron gates set into the main entrance. The barns and corrals, the long, low bunkhouse, the blacksmith shop, smokehouse, and granary all testified that once this had been a hacienda instead of an outlaw stronghold.

  Kroll wasn’t sure what had happened to the early Spanish settler who had established this ranch. More than likely he and his family had died screaming at the hands of the Apaches.

  All Kroll knew for sure was that when he and his men retreated to this canyon after pulling one of their jobs, they were safe. The law wasn’t likely to find them here, and even if that happened, they could hold off a small army.

  Yes, it was safe here, Kroll thought as he stood at the wall around the balcony and looked out over the hideout with the reddish light from the setting sun washing over his face . . . if you had enough sense to stay in the canyon and not sneak out to get drunk and dally with whores.

  If you weren’t as stupid as his little brother, Mordecai!

  A massive, bearded man wearing a long vest decorated with Indian beadwork in intricate patterns came onto the balcony behind Kroll and said, “Supper’s ready, boss. You want the woman to bring it out here?”

  Kroll considered the question for a moment and then shook his head.

  “No, Galt, I’ll come inside in a few minutes,” he said.

  Galt grunted and nodded. He retreated through the French doors into the house.

  Kroll had spent a considerable amount of money repairing and refurnishing the buildings of the abandoned rancho when he decided to make this the gang’s headquarters. He didn’t mind admitting that he enjoyed luxury. Growing up on a hardscrabble farm in Kansas before the Civil War, there hadn’t been any of it. There hadn’t been much of anything except squalor, backbreaking work, and near-starvation. Mordecai was younger. He didn’t really remember much about those days or understand what that life had been like.

  And that ignorance was one of the things that made him stupid.

  Kroll turned away from the spectacular view and went into the house. This was his bedroom, but a table was set up so that he could take his meals here, too.

  An attractive, middle-aged Mexican woman named Valencia brought his meal in on a tray and placed it on the table. She shared Kroll’s bed from time to time. There were other women here to serve the gang’s needs, too, some of them very young and beautiful. Mordecai hadn’t needed to leave the canyon just because the itch was on him. He could have satisfied it without setting foot out of the stronghold.

  No, as soon as Kroll had received word of Mordecai’s capture from one of the spies he had spread out across the southwest, he knew what had happened. Mordecai had slipped out of the canyon out of sheer defiance. He didn’t like his older brother riding herd on him all the time. They had clashed repeatedly over that issue, as well as over the way Rudolph ran the gang. Like most young men, Mordecai thought he knew everything.

  Now he was locked up, sentenced to death.

  “Is there anything else, Señor Rudolph?” Valencia asked. She was slender, with a beautiful face and hair as dark as a raven’s wing except where it was touched with silver threads that just gave her more character.

  “No,” Kroll said, then changed his mind and went on. “Yes. Light a fire before you leave.”

  “Sí, señor.”

  There was a big fireplace on the other side of the room. Most nights here in the higher eastern slopes of the Superstitions, the temperature was chilly enough that the warmth from a fire felt good. That would probably be true tonight, too, but Kroll had something else in mind.

  He sat down to eat. The meal was simple fare—corn bread, beans, ham—but it was what he liked. Valencia had left a glass of tequila on the table, too, along with the bottle. That warmed Kroll as well.

  Tonight, however, the food seemed tasteless in his mouth. After toying with it for a few minutes, he pushed it away.

  Valencia had kindled the fire in the fireplace. She stood in front of it now, silhouetted by the growing flames behind her. When she saw that Kroll wasn’t eating, she asked, “Is something wrong, señor?”

  He shook his head.

  “Just not hungry tonight, I suppose,” he said.

  “Would you like for me to take it away?”

  “Yes, por favor. But leave the tequila. And send Galt back up here.”

  She nodded, gathered up the food, and left. When she was gone, Kroll reached over and picked up a magazine that was lying on the table.

  It was a recent edition of Harper’s Weekly, brought to the hideout in a load of supplies from Phoenix. The woodcut illustration on the cover depicted a scene of violent gunplay between two men. Under the picture were the words “Daring Capture of Desperado Mordecai Kroll.”

  Rudolph had read the story inside the magazine at least a dozen times since Galt had given it to him. It was written in florid, breathless prose by someone named D. J. Garnett and told how Mordecai had been captured in a small town in Apache County by someone named Luke Jensen. Although Garnett didn’t spell it out, it was obvious to Rudolph that this man Jensen was the lowest form of life: a bounty hunter.

  The story ended with Mordecai being taken to St. Johns to be held there until jurisdiction was decided. Rudolph had kept up with the rest of the story through newspaper accounts and reports from his spies. He knew that even though warrants for Mordecai’s arrest had been issued in more than a dozen states and territories, Arizona authorities had refused to give him up. He was wanted in this territory on numerous counts of murder, rape, and robbery. Eventually, he had been taken to Phoenix to stand trial on those charges.

  Rudolph had considered trying to rescue his brother from the law while Mordecai was being transported from St. Johns to Phoenix, but in the end he had decided the risk was too great. Fearing just such an attempt, the territorial governor had asked for help from the army, so Mordecai was guarded during the trip by soldiers as well as deputies. The word was out, too, that the soldiers had unofficial orders to shoot Mordecai down if it looked like he was going to escape.

  Once the trial began, it hadn’t taken long for Mordecai to be found guilty on all counts and sentenced to hang. He would have been dead already if some of the states where he was wanted hadn’t continued their efforts to have him brought there for another trial. All this legal wrangling had delayed things, and while that was going on, Mordecai had sat in Yuma Prison under sentence of death, waiting to be hanged.

  Just because Rudolph had been forced to bide his time didn’t mean that he had given up on getting Mordecai out of there. But the simple fact of the matter was that this wasn’t a job for a bunch of outlaws. It required more finesse than that.

  Kroll stood up, slapped the rolled magazine against his thigh, and walked over to the fireplace carrying a freshly topped-off glass of tequila. He stood there sipping the liquor and watching the flames until the big outlaw Galt, who served as his majordomo here at the hideout, came into the room behind him.

  “You wanted me, boss?” Galt rumbled.

  “That’s right.”

  Kroll opened the copy of Harper’s Weekly to the story about Mordecai’s capture. Some of the paragraphs concerning Luke Jensen mentioned that Jensen’s brother was Smoke Jensen, the famous gunfighter who now owned the Sugarloaf ranch near the town of Big Rock, Colorado. The author touched on Smoke Jensen’s own notorious history and played up the fact that he was one of the most dangerous gunme
n who had ever slapped leather. Perhaps even the most dangerous of them all....

  Rudolph Kroll’s mouth tightened into a grim line as he read that passage again. An idea had begun to form in his head. He needed Luke Jensen, not so that he could take vengeance on the bounty hunter, but for another purpose entirely. Everything might depend on it.

  Anger surged up inside Kroll. He threw the glass in his left hand into the fire. The glass shattered, and the tequila that was still in it ignited and went up with a whoosh!

  In the next heartbeat, Kroll flung the magazine into the fireplace, too. The flames, burning even hotter because they were fueled by the liquor, consumed the pages in a matter of moments. As the cover illustrating Mordecai’s downfall curled and blackened into ash, Kroll watched it and said to Galt without turning around, “I don’t care what it takes. Bring me Luke Jensen.”

  Chapter 8

  Skunk Creek, Wyoming

  The town lived up to its name, Luke thought as he walked the dun along the settlement’s muddy main street. A cold rain sluiced down and dripped from the low-pulled brim of his hat. But even in the rain, which usually washed the air clean, the place smelled bad. Something about the seeps along the edge of the creek that ran behind the buildings, he supposed. Didn’t really smell like polecat, but it was bad enough on its own.

  He wore a slicker, but of course the stubborn rain had found ways to worm trails under the oilcloth and soak his regular clothes. That meant Luke felt cold and clammy and wanted nothing more than to find a nice hot fire to sit beside, so he could dry out some and warm his bones.

  Instead, there was a good chance that in the next twenty minutes he would either have to kill somebody . . . or be killed himself.

  It was only the middle of the afternoon, but the thick gray overcast made the sky look like dusk. Because of that, the lamps were already lit in most of the buildings along either side of the street in the block where Skunk Creek’s business establishments were located. The windows showed up as yellow rectangles in the gloom.